Archive of Our Own ^beta

Renounce the Fallen One
Obey the Goddess
Serve the Goddess
Fear the Goddess
Love the Goddess

These are the tenets of the Almighty. She is the Creator of Stars, the Eternal and Forever, the Lady of Paradise, the Queen of Hearts. She is your Salvation.

Forget not the tenets, at your peril.

“Your Sacredness?” You kneel before the Goddess where she’s casually lounging in a chair, and fix your eyes firmly on her feet, not daring to look up.

“Oh? You’re all penitent! You’re never like this, unless you’ve been suffering from sinful thoughts creeping in again.” There’s something in her voice you can’t place: triumph, almost? You’re suddenly afraid to study her face, even at the edges of your vision as it is. What would you see there? “Is that it? Do you want to confess to me? Do you want me to take them away?”

“Um, it’s not really that, Your Sacredness? Or, I think it isn’t? But it’s … I don’t understand something, My Lady.” You’re almost shaking now, the uncertainty and fear bubbling up in you. “It’s just - why me? Why would you want me to be your High Priestess? Why would you want me to like look at you and make you feel good and why do you want to make me feel good?”

Having trailed off into near silence, you stop a second, trying to breathe properly. That was horrifyingly embarrassing to say, and there’s an ache in your head and a burning at the edges of your eyes. It hurts so badly to doubt her and you’re so afraid she won’t have an answer and she’ll suddenly realise it and send you away: or that, worse, your doubt itself is enough to lose you your place. You pray silently, even right in front of your Goddess, that she’ll understand, and you go on, to a part you’re surer about. You tilt your head up, and look her straight in the eyes, something you never do except when you’re kissing. “I, I, I’m not pretty: I know that. I’m small and I’m thin and I’m so so far from your loveliness. I can be in the same room as you but for that we’re a whole galaxy apart. There are so many other worshippers for you, so many that are prettier and less awkward and can please you better and”

“Your Sacredness. I. Why ?”

“You don’t like your body, little Priestess?” the Goddess teases, her expression infinitely kind and infinitely terrifying: she can’t even smile without being awe-inspiringly divine, a dream beyond the dreams of mortals. “We could take care of that. We totally could.”

You bow your head to her will, even if you don’t quite understand what she means. But then, suddenly, she’s close. she is much much too close oh goddess

Her body presses against your back and her breath caresses your ear. You squeak. “Except, little Priestess, I do like your body. As perfect as my form is, you don’t have to have curves everywhere to be beautiful.” She runs a hand down your side, lingering just a little as she grazes the edge of your breast, and sets it on the bones of your hip. You shiver at the slide of her touch over sensitive skin, the wonderfully rich and delicate cloth of your robes barely seeming to be there at all. Her thumb begins making careful little circles on your side: not even enough to tickle, but enough to create of shock of need that slams into you.

Tingles race across your body and you feel the beginnings of with the mix of shame-desire that the Goddess always brings out of you: the impossible want for your mistress who’s so wonderful and so kind and so so so beautiful that you feel like you’re a dirty stain in her presence: she shouldn’t talk to you, shouldn’t touch you, shouldn’t - ohhhh - stroke you like this.

“And you don’t have to have arms that could swing a sword all day, either.” A single finger from her other hand begins to trace a slow, wandering pattern over the bare skin at the back of your neck. “No broad shoulders, as much as I enjoy them, no tight muscles.” The Goddess hums softly in your ear, an intimate little vibration that makes you flush with heat; she lets her finger slip further down, her nail scratching at you just a little as it goes, before turning its path sideways and drawing a wide loop back and forth across your shoulderblades. She stops for a moment, presses a featherlight kiss to your nape, and lets out a whisper of a sigh - wistful, regretful, though you can’t tell why - and then goes on.

“You, just like this, are wonderful. Slim, and pretty, and delicate, and gorgeous. You’re my cute and dedicated Priestess. So don’t you ever doubt yourself again, or my regard for you. Understood?”

Heat. Heat in your face, which isn’t exactly unusual for you, but another kind warming your chest, and a third beginning to pool further below.

“So let’s seal that, Priestess. You know how. Promise you’ll forget all this, forget that you thought you weren’t tall enough or ample enough or beautiful enough. I chose you, and I know I wasn’t wrong. Remember that, and give me your hand.”

You nod, nearly in a daze. Her words full of kindness and reassurance and even want, the constant warm murmur of her breath over your skin, her touch that seems to make you unbearably sensitive all over, desire filling you. You’re overwhelmed; you couldn’t tell her no if you wanted to - and why ever would you want to?

You offer up your hand and she takes it, twining her fingers around yours. You make your oath to the Goddess silently, swearing a vow you don’t think you could even have contemplated an hour ago but you haven’t the faintest doubt you can now keep. Something dark in your mind slips away - the fear and insecurity the Goddess has helped you overcome, you think - and you welcome the soft pink happiness that replaces it.

“Mmm, yes. Good girl. But now, just to re-assure you, just so you know how beautiful you are -”

One hand still grasping yours tight, the other slips down lower …

One day, your fingers won’t light the Goddess’ devotional torches, trembling and shaking. But when she finds you and takes one hand in yours, the other becomes as steady as it’s ever been, or better.

*

You stand in front of the Goddess’ Titans, just staring up at them for what could be an age for all you know. But she comes to you, strangely solemn, and stops beside you, and you wait there, hand-in-hand, for something you can’t name.

*

Someone paints cruel words, spiteful words, hateful words about the Goddess and your relationship across a wall inside Paradise’s temple. You find them in the night, guided to them, you think, by a dream. She holds one hand all the time, her grip tight, as you scrub the fingers of the other raw so that none of the dawn worshippers have to see the blasphemy.

*

You make her favourite breakfast and she eats it all without letting go of you, a warm smile on her face.

*

In the aftermath, the sheets always seem to end up wrapped around her, while you’re open and bare and blushing as soon as you come back to yourself. But when she twines her fingers through yours, that’s all you need to feel warm.

You wake.

It’s been so long since the last time you did this - or at least, you think so. The divine timelessness of Paradise doesn’t make it easy to measure. But the Phoenix in the back of your mind has been pressed down again and again, until she’s barely more than a whisper of the Radiant and Fallen.

You blink as the darkness comes back, swirling in your skull. The pink light of Paradise is muted: it’s the end of the ‘day’ so far as that concept exists here. You’re alone in your room, with all its rich hangings, its exquisite dresser, its soft (and very large, oh Goddess) bed. Before, you’d never have wanted any of this, never needed any of it. You were happy with your simple bedroll. This is so … so much, all of it given to you when you suddenly ended up High Priestess.

But that doesn’t matter. It’s, um, nice, you suppose, but far far more important is the true Goddess. You’ve got to go to her.

You put your hand on the latch of your door, then look down at yourself and blush violently. You’re not in the modest shift you used to wear to sleep when you were just an acolyte. This was chosen for you - you think: you’re pretty sure you didn’t ask for it to please Her. Probably. It’s a terrifyingly, wonderfully soft and silky chemise, in a pale shade of rose. It’s also really short and really sheer. Wow. That’s … wow.

Anyway! You shouldn’t go out like this. There’s only one person - or, well, being - you (kinda) want seeing you in this. So you find one of the way-too-fancy High Priestess cloaks and wrap it around yourself. It’s not the best cover, exactly, but that’s all right.

You sneak down the halls, quiet as they are at this time.

Your heart is pounding.

Your breath is fast.

It’s finally time.

You open a door.

“I’m not a High Priestess. I’m not a Priestess at all. I’m barely an Acolyte, newly initiated.”

The Goddess waits, her head cocked and her expression flat. You’ve never been this blatant before, always acted, and you think you’ve thrown her. There’s a breath, and you ask her, “Can I hold your hand?”

She freezes for a second, and the light of Paradise deepens to nearly red before whiplashing back to a pink so pale it’s almost white.

“Well now, Temple Girl,” she says, half to herself, “isn’t this something?” Then her focus sharpens again, to a deadly point, all aimed at you. “And why would you like this? You defied me. You swore never to worship me, that you’d love the Goddess forever, to die rather than submit.”

There’s something very close to hope in her voice, and you wonder what put it there.

Your head feels a little fuzzy when you say it, but you tell her anyway. “Because you really are the First, and the True, and the Sacred. Because you’ve looked after me in spite of everything I’ve done. Because you made the one person who defied you your High Priestess. Because I’ve worshipped you for so long I can’t count. Because you make me feel safe and cared for and loved when you hold me. Because I can’t barely remember why I loved the Fallen so much, and I think maybe I didn’t all along, just these statues and dreams of her. Because … because I’ve been your High Priestess right next to you all this time - and I love you now.”

You wait. “A-and. because it feels good”

The Goddess waits, so still you almost might think she was one of her perfectly-carved statues. She’s a Goddess, of course, so you suppose she doesn’t have to breathe, but it’s kind of weird to see it.

She smiles. There’s a twist to it at the corner of her mouth that you can’t quite decipher, but she smiles all the same.

“Go on, then. Tell me now. Say those words, Acolyte: swear your loyalty. And become the High Priestess you always should have been.”

So you do.

“O Ancient Creator, Origin of the Galaxy,

I come before you in prayer.

In your overflowing mercy, you forgave my sins;

With your divine power, you drove out the Fallen Goddess;

Here, in the safety of Paradise, my heart sings praises without end.

May I never give you cause to turn your back;

The terror of the Fallen awaits the Faithless.

I am your faithful servant, O Goddess;

Always my soul is true ...”

You chant the Fifty Verses and the Hundred Praises flawlessly, in a way you never could have as an Acolyte. You’d have tripped over something by the end of the first stanza, with your tongue or with your feet, graceless. And, at the end of it all, the Goddess stands from where she’d been sitting on her bed. She reaches out her hand to you, palm up.

She doesn’t say anything. She just waits.

You take her hand, turn it over and then, quickly, dare to drop your head and press a kiss to it. Then another, and another, and another.

There’s a roaring in your ears, a pounding in your veins. It’s so strong, stronger than it ever has been since the first time, and maybe even stronger than that. You’re panting, short and high and just barely short of moaning. Your legs are trembling already; your nipples tight under a heavy, cloying, concealing robe that your free hand is suddenly scrabbling to undo. You’re hot. You’re wet.

And you’re still kissing her hand.

Thoughts and memories whirl through what little of your mind isn’t purely given over to lust by now. A time when you were an Acolyte in a temple to the Fallen One, when the Goddess didn’t rule. A representative of the still-living Distant Stars, a Phoenix, and her kiss. A dream without colour but full of radiance, where you touched the divine for the first time.

You throw them all into the roaring wind, and let it carry them away.

There’s a sudden sense of vertigo - the Goddess has slowly started pulling you over toward her bed by the hand you’re still kissing - except now you’d swear the hand was bigger than you, bigger than the bed, bigger than the room. Yet you’re still in the room, and now on the bed.

No-one said the Goddess had to make sense for you, you hazily suppose, before letting the strangeness of it all pass over you and through you.

She lies back on the pale sheets - she’s naked: when did that happen? - and you shift up her body to start pressing your kisses to her chest. You don’t exactly tease her, you wouldn’t dare, but you worship her patiently and reverently. Light, closed-mouth kisses slowly scattered across the upper slopes of her breasts: these are kisses for the sake of kisses, almost, ways to say “I’m here”, “I adore you”, “You’re beautiful” rather than please her physically. Then, you start trying to pull murmurs of real satisfaction from her, adding the little flicks of your tongue and short scrapes of your teeth which make her breath hitch. It’s almost a game, seeing how long you can build this simple, low glow of pleasure, before the pair of you lose patience and you descend to her nipple. You give it a quick, hard suck into your mouth - the way she likes it, a way you’re sure you’d have been far too embarrassed ever to do as the Acolyte - and set your tongue to work.

She gasps out a “Good girl” as her head falls back, and the vertigo strikes you again. You’re something tiny nuzzled up to the life-giving breast of the Creator and Progenitor, an infant barely large enough even to nurse from her.

The Goddess herself snaps you out of that one, throwing off your half-undone cloak and running her hand down your spine; then, as you pull away from her and arch your back, she slips the other down to touch your breast through your chemise. You whine: you’re way more sensitive than she is, and she always seems to enjoy this fact tremendously.

“Oh, precious Priestess, you dressed up for me. My favourite. You are a good girl.” Her smile is teasing and smug, but her eyes are hungry from where they look up at you. She shifts and rolls you beneath her, then sets to working you up even more than you are already. Under her fingers, fine silk glides over your skin and sends out ripples of tingling goosebumps; she circles your nipples, and the fabric rubs and catches and lights up your body with jolts of pleasure.

She drags her nails slowly up over your stomach until she’s just pressing the edges into your breasts’ tender underside, then draws away; she quickly lowers her head to you and mouths your breast, rasping her tongue and your not-thin-enough nightwear against the peak; she does everything and won’t stop until you’re trembling and gasping, a holy mantra spilling from your lips: “Please please please pleasepleaseplease.” Then, finally, at last she draws the silk up over your hips and begins to explore with her fingers.

Her touch begins considering and irregular, darting in to press on your outer lips and then flick away, or just holding still right on your clit, giving you little pressure and no friction, or quickly slipping the tip of a finger inside you (which is frighteningly easy) and then withdrawing. It’s like she wants to learn you all over again, despite how often she’s left you a wrung-out mess on these exact sheets.

And yet it’s still enough to push you further and further onward, tightening the knot inside you. Your legs try to close around her hand, a confused attempt to get her to stop, to give you relief from the pleasure that’s starting to become unbearable. But she won’t let you stop her, won’t let you hold yourself off from this. Trapped between your thighs, her hand keeps moving: faster now, harder now, two fingers instead of one, the heel of her palm pulsing over your clit.

Your legs spread again, your mouth opens, and you make a wordless cry that still means “Thank you” and “Praise” and “Goddess” and “Lover” all at once. You come undone.

When you return to yourself, she’s still going, and it really is beginning to get too much now, pleasure mixing with pain as the Goddess keeps caressing you where you're most sensitive. You're whining, keening; your hips are twitching to try to get away, and then pressing back to get more; but she pulls you through it, pushes you onward, and with the wake of your first orgasm barely past, you fall into another as tears begin to prickle at the corner of your eyes. It's agony and it's bliss and it is completely and utterly overwhelming.

You lie there panting, heart and lungs going a mile a minute, sore and sticky and wow actually really sore, and you revel in it. This is how it's meant to be. This is how you're meant to be.

"Come on, High Priestess. Don't be lazy. You've still got a duty to perform."

The Goddess is smiling, but there's nothing casual or patient about the way she shifts up your body and settles herself over your face.

And, as exhausted as you are, you do have your duty. Technically, as the High Priestess of the Goddess, it's the most important duty in the galaxy. But, just as much, it's joyous and wondrous as well. You raise trembling arms to her hips, dig your fingers into her backside just a little, and pull her down to meet your mouth.

Your lips and tongue guide her to peak after peak, until you lose track of even Paradise's time. For a little while, you keep count of her climaxes instead, but eventually she's reduced to quivering at just your touch and her voice is starting to rasp instead of calling out at the edge. Your jaw is now just as sore as your lower lips, but you keep going and going until she weakly puts a hand on your shoulder, pushes you back, and slumps down. She turns as she falls, just barely avoiding landing her full weight on top of you, but for what you think might be the first time, she leaves an arm draped over you as you each give yourself over to sleep.

"Well done, Priestess," she mumbles. "Good girl."