Chapter 21 – The Rite of Ankadiseth

The three girls, Beatrice, Ginny, and Lothelea all felt it too. Wide eyed, they turned their heads this way and that, trying to find the source of this oppressive feeling.

I looked around the arena.

Chloe was still on her knees, but no longer servicing her partner. Pinky was curled up in a little ball, no longer being serviced, but lying in the fetal position, resting her head on Chloe’s lap. Chloe gently stroked her head trying to soothe the terrified monster girl. Foxy was still on top of Milah, still impaled on his member but was no longer grinding on him. She was hunched low, chest pressed against his face, covering his body with her own to protect him. Her hackles were raised, and she was growling defensively, looking around but failing to identify the threat.

“W-what’s happening?” Ginny whimpered.

“You know how we were joking about the gods smiting these bastards?” I asked.

“No… no way,” Beatrice stammered.

“Yes way,” I said, grinning evily. I was looking forward to seeing these bastards pay.

“Be humble, be deferent,” Lothelea hissed a warning. “Do not call their wrath upon us.”

A single voice called out. A young girl’s voice, one I recognized instantly. It wasn’t loud, but it was strong, somehow perfectly audible to me despite the distance and walls between us.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath! Despair all ye sinners, and repent! For the Slithering Violation is called once again to taste the light of the mortal realm.”

It was Emi’s voice. What the fuck was this?

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath! Despair all ye sinners, and repent! For the Despoiler of Purity has judged your worth and found it lacking.”

Emi’s voice grew more powerful, uncountable numbers of soft whispers joined in with her voice in a great hissing choir. Emi’s voice was fine, but the whispers my head when I tried to focus on them individually.

“Okay, so that’s my friend Emi… another traveller from my world and she’s… what is she doing?” I stammered.

“She’s calling a god.” Lothelea gasped in horror. “The rite of Ankadiseth, a dark elven ritual. The very same that doomed our world. It’s happening again!”

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath! Despair all ye sinners, and repent! Open the gate to the Cathedral of Eternal Violation. Let your voices sing! Sing for Him! Sing!”

Another wave of power crashed over me. I felt a great and unnatural compulsion to sing. I had to join the Choir. I had to show proper respect. I crushed the feeling with my Willpower, recognizing it as artificial.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath!”

Both Beatrice and Ginny sitting next to me had joined the Choir. Lothelea and Chloe were both able to resist the compulsion.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath!”

A great Choir sung out. A thousand voices or more. The entire town sung the Elder One’s praises. I felt another wave of power. Curious, I activated my [Sense Mana].

Infinite and Beautiful, Blinding and Overpowering. My eyes rolled back and I lost consciousness.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath!”

I woke up again, flat on my back, probably only a few seconds later. My mana sense was deactivated once more. I wasn’t about to try something like that again.

[Sense Mana] Skill has reached rank 9[Sense Mana] Skill has reached rank 10 (MAX)

Two skill levels in an instant, for merely attempting to sense a god’s power. Fuck.

“Are you okay?” Lothelea gasped.

“Yeah… I just tried to [Sense Mana]. Bad idea, don’t do that.” I explained.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath! Despair all ye sinners, and repent! The bargain is struck!”

There was a noise. It was an inhuman screech, as high as loud as shrieking steel, and as low and rumbling as a fog horn. It was an explosive wall of sound that would have knocked me off my feet, had I been standing.

Then… there was a terrible silence. Perfect and pure. Cold sweat dripped down my back, and I held my breath.

Then there was rumbling. And then… the world above me exploded.

A shapeless mass of black tentacles crashed through the walls and ceiling, slithering, grasping, ripping and tearing. A shower of wood splinters fell on me.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath!” The Choir sang.

“Ia! Ia! Nyar’Shiggurath!” Lothelea, Chloe and I all joined them, unable to bear witness the divine being in front of us and not sing its praise.

The mass of writhing tentacles poured down on me from above. The tendrils enveloped me, smothering all light, slithering and tasting my flesh. My feet left the sandy floor and I was lost in the void, an entire universe composed of only slime and slithering.

The Great Violator touched me everywhere, arms, legs, breasts, back, toes, thighs… And yes, the Elder God of Defiled Purity raped me, as was his divine right. Tentacles forcefully entered my mouth, vagina, and anus, all at once. Despite the violence of His blessing, there was little pain.

I moaned against the tentacle in my mouth, and grinded my hips against the tentacles in my ass and pussy. They explored me deeply and roughly. I relaxed and let the creature bless me with its sacramental forced intercourse. There would be no fighting this one. I felt warm slime coat every inch of my body, inside and out. It tingled and relieved aches and pains I didn’t even know I had.

Then, only a few seconds later, the tentacles withdrew.

I was no longer cowering in the corner of the pit with the other girls. I was now standing in the exact center. I had the memory of being covered in slime, yet I could find none on my body. I was perfectly clean and healthy. The soreness in my vagina from Crabby’s earlier penetration was gone, as was the scratch on my thigh from Foxy.

I was healed and restored, perfectly refreshed. Despite not having eaten since the previous morning, or slept at all, I was neither hungry not tired.

Standing next to me, unharmed, healthy and whole was Chloe. The old slave collar around her neck was gone, replaced with a new one. This one was made of a black metal, almost like wrought iron, and gave off an ominous aura like that of the old god himself. It was beautifully ornate, carved with an exquisitely detailed pattern of slithering tentacles that seemed to shift and change whenever I wasn’t looking directly at it.

Kneeling in a circle around us, facing me, kneeling with their heads to the floor, were twenty or so slaves. I recognized them as my fellow torture slaves from the dungeons down below. There were a few new faces, however. Dark elves, clad in maid outfits, probably the rest of Lord Anthony’s unfortunate harem. They were all wearing new collars of black metal, decorated with the same tentacle motif as Chloe. I felt my own neck, and it was bare. I was no longer a slave, apparently.

“W-what the fuck happened?” I stammered.

I looked around. The monster corpses were reduced to a barely recognizable bloody pulp. Purple as well, had been decisively finished off by the tentacles, reduced to a mash of purple flesh and green glowing blood scattered and spread across the sand. I couldn’t find any trace of Milah or Foxy near the spot where they’d once been fucking. I looked around and spotted Milah in the crowd of slaves, kneeling with the others, no longer in any danger.

Despite being monsters, Foxy and Pinky were both spared the god’s wrath for some reason. They were far outside the circle of slaves, yet positioned the same as them, kneeling with their faces to the sand. They both had their old collars replaced with new tentacle styled ones. Foxy was soon kneeling up, back on her haunches, looking around warily, too scared to move from her position or rape any of the three male slaves present. Pinky, however, didn’t dare straighten up or move from her submissive position at all.

As for the rest of the torture brothel… What torture brothel?

Everything above the rim of the arena pit was just… gone. The building was scoured clean, down to the foundation, like the aftermath of a passing tornado.

I heard the groaning of men from above us. Clearly there were some survivors. I had to admit, I was a little disappointed by that.

“Huh… okay then,” I muttered.

“W-what do we do?” one of the slaves muttered.

“The masters are… gone?” another gasped in disbelief, looking at the open sky, now lit in pre-dawn twilight.

“A-are we… yours now, Mistress?” Lothelea asked me uncertainly.

I looked down at her, kneeling at my feet.

“Honestly, I have no idea, but I suppose the position we find ourselves in is probably… meaningful,” I told her.

“I think so too, Mistress,” Lothelea said. “Please take care of me well.”

“Sure, if I actually am your Mistress,” I chucked.

“Why am I standing then? I’m still a slave right?” Chloe asked.

“A head slave? Or perhaps merely a favored one? Perhaps the Despoiler of Purity wanted you to be above us in hierarchy?” Lothelea suggested.

“M-maybe…” Chloe said, looking at me nervously.

“Well, if I were to gain ownership of everyone here, and actually set up a hierarchy, I would give Chloe a place of privilege. I’ve known her for a lot longer, and trust her,” I awkwardly explained.

“If our position reflects your desires, then perhaps we really are yours,” Lothelea said.

“Is there any way to check?” I asked.

“Have a priest or artisan mage analyze the collars?” another elf I hadn’t met yet suggested.

“I don’t suppose anyone here can do that?” I asked, looking around the crowd. Nobody raised their hands.

So now what? New collars meant new enchantments. And if these were gifts from the tentacle god, odds were decent that the slaves wouldn’t die if they tried to leave the brothel now. That wasn’t a guarantee though. Similarly, I had no idea if I rightfully owned these slaves or not. Even if the god-crafted collars bound them to me, that still sort of made them stolen property, didn’t it? I certainly hadn’t bought any of them. Wouldn’t I need to register them or whatever?

Also, where was I going to go? Somehow I doubted twenty or more slaves would fit inside that little bedroom in the rectory hall. And how much did slave gruel cost? I had twenty-something mouths to feed, didn’t I? Oh, and clothes? Everyone but the dark elven maids were naked.

Eventually, my panicked indecision was cured by the sound of commotion upstairs, shouts and the sound of jingling chainmail armour.

“Try to remember who your neighbours are, and where you’re kneeling in this array, I’ll draw a chart later,” I ordered.

I heard two dozen murmurs of ‘Yes Mistress.’ Hehe… that was kind of awesome. I had more submissive slaves than I could easily count at a glance. Mistress Tyler’s found herself a slave harem. If they were all mine, I’d have to avoid letting the power go to my head.

“Okay then, I’ll go poke my nose out upstairs and figure out what’s going on. Then I’ll call for you all to follow if it’s safe.” I said.

More murmurs of ‘Yes Mistress.’

I walked over to the door at the side of the arena, the one I’d entered by. Before the tentacles, it had been a thick, monster resistant door, firmly barred shut. Now it was just missing, torn straight off its hinges. I crept up the narrow staircase to the ground level.

The upstairs was utterly demolished. Not a single shred of debris larger than my palm stood intact. The tiny shards of timber were spread around most of the town, poking out of roofs and littering yards. I could see the footprint of the brothel and its stone foundation. Most of the stone was still intact, but the underground torture chamber had been dug out, each individual brick crushed and scattered, leaving behind a deep empty pit of raw dirt. No other buildings had been damaged by the tentacles.

And then there were the bodies. Probably close to a hundred corpses, crushed and wrung out like dirty rags. Blood splattered every surface. There were maybe another twenty human survivors among the brothel’s clients. They no longer wore their red robes and masks. Each was completely naked yet miraculously unharmed. There was a pretty obvious message behind that. ‘Don’t be a torture brothel customer anymore.’

I saw a row of town guards around the perimeter of the property, keeping curious townsfolk away from the scene of devastation, yet more and more curious people continued to join the crowds. After a few moments, I saw Lysander and Maddie in the crowd, waving at me. I waved back. I couldn’t see Emi anywhere.

I also saw Father Jordan, three other priests and a half dozen acolytes who I hadn’t met yet. They were combing the wreckage, checking on survivors, and distributing modesty blankets to cover the men. Father Jordan spotted me, and approached me carefully.

“Lady Tyler… it… seems you’re unharmed,” he said awkwardly, handing me a modesty blanket.

I took it gratefully and covered myself. I was getting tired of always being naked.

“Yep, Old Shiggy was a real gentleman. What a surprise, eh? He was nice enough to personally rescue me from the dungeon and even fixed up a few little injuries for me.”

Father Jordan paled when he heard me call the great and powerful Nyar’Shiggurath by such a casual title. I smirked. Based on the gods I met so far, I suspected few of them actually gave a shit about formality. For Nyar’Shiggurath in particular, from the brief moment of carnal communion I had with him, I got the impression that referring to him in a casual manner would actually be seen as endearing. The Violator of Purity was a lover, not a dominator.

“This… shouldn’t have happened,” Father Jordan said, apologetically.

Yeah no shit! I grumbled internally. I shouldn’t have needed a god to save me, I shouldn’t have been kidnapped, and this brothel shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

I gave him a dirty glare, “Yeah, makes me wonder how those guys managed to get Chloe’s old slave collar off, or put a fresh one on me without officially registering me. Any idea which priest Lord Volda bought?”

Father Jordan looked guilty, “We’re… investigating.”

That sounded like bullshit to me, but I guess there was a chance that he might have been telling the truth about wanting to seriously investigate the brothel’s illegal slaves. Not wanting to piss him off, I decided to let the matter drop for now.

“Does your church worship Nyar’Shiggurath too?” I asked, curiously.

“Erm… no, the elder gods are best… left to their own devices, but none of the other gods seem at all displeased by his actions. That alone is quite significant. This was the first time one of the three Elders has manifested an Avatar in the mortal realm since Nyar’Loaketer first Tainted the world. Yet this was not seen as an act of aggression, none of the pantheon are raising alarm about it. They… approve of this destruction. It seems the gods value you and your friends quite highly, even going so far as to allow the summoning of an Elder’s Avatar to progress uninterrupted.”

“Ah, well I guess I should be flattered,” I said.

Father Jordan sighed, and held his head, “I’ll be honest. This is a world-shaking event, and I have no idea what to do with you. I’ll be sending word to Baltour, to the main temple, for advice on how to progress from here. The Archbishop will surely want to speak with those who motivated the direct intervention of a deity.”

“Technically, I motivated three… Vyreth brought me here in the first place then Trindon blessed me, changing my species to Aasimar, a sort of divinely blessed human,” I said.

“Ah yes… I heard about that from your peers,” Father Jordan narrowed his eyes, and looked at my neck uncomfortably.

I sighed, “Yes, I suppose I’m technically a demihuman now, but there isn’t a trace of Taint on or in my body. I’m part angel… I’m like, the opposite of Tainted. Also, remember a literal god just removed my collar, and made a very deliberate decision not to put a new one on me. With that in mind, I think maybe it might be wise to make an exception regarding enslaving me on sight?”

“It is not for us to know the gods’ wills,” Father Jordan said cautiously. “Perhaps you were merely meant to wear a different collar. We can of course register you to your friends, as you did with Chloe.”

I led Father Jordan over to the edge of the pit, “Let me show you something.”

I gestured to… I quickly counted them… twenty four collared slaves, and two collared monsters. Every one of them was wearing a black collar, patterned with ornately carved tentacles, each collar an artifact of divine manufacture.

“They all got shiny new collars, yet my neck is bare.” I explained.

Father Jordan swallowed nervously, “I see.”

“Maybe we should try to summon Nyar’Shiggurath again? Then you can ask him whether he just forgot about me. He’s pretty old right? Maybe you’re suggesting he’s going senile?” I said innocently.

“N-no, that won’t be necessary.” Father Jordan stammered.

I grinned. That was a win for me. I’d like to see him try to enslave me now, knowing that a literal god just disintegrated a building to free me from the last asshole that tried to do that.

“Oh, speaking of collars, are you able to tell who they’re registered to? I’ve got a feeling they might be mine,” I said.

“Yes, I can do that,” he said.

“Perfect.” I waved at the slaves, “Hey guys! Come on up. The scary people are… mostly squished. I have a feeling that the few survivors left behind were the less evil ones. We can analyze your collars and figure out what to do with you now. You probably don’t want to stay here, right?”

There was murmured agreement, and a few seconds of nervous hesitation, before the slaves climbed to their feet and started shuffling through the narrow door and up the stairs. Interestingly, not only did the two monsters not molest anyone while my back was turned, but they remained behind, still kneeling obediently in their original positions. Pinky still hadn’t even raised her head from the dirt.

“We have records of mana signatures at the town hall,” Father Jordan explained. “If these do not match you or the late Lord Volda, then it might take a while to find out who they now belong to.”

“Late Lord Volda?” I asked, grinning shamelessly.

“Err… yes. We found his… pieces spread all over his former mansion.” The priest explained uncomfortably.

“Glad to hear it.” I said, staring the priest in the eye.

“This is… not a good thing,” He grumbled. “He was… a rather prominent member of the community.”

“Remind me to tell you what, exactly, he did to one of his maids… I’m sure by the end of my story, you’ll agree that the bastard needed to be stopped. I seriously doubt he restricted himself to only torturing slaves. The man was sick.”

“I… wouldn’t know,” Father Jordan said awkwardly.

I glared at the man bitterly. Was he complicit, or just incompetent? Was he in on it? Or was he just willfully blind to the evil in his society? Even the monsters weren’t as fucked up as that so-called Untainted human. There was no way this priest didn’t know what sort of shit happened in this brothel.

Whatever, I could chew this guy out later, once I was no longer naked beneath a blanket and relying on his help to identify my slave collars.

“But yes, the collars, sure, I’m mostly just curious to know whether they’re mine or not anyway,” I said.

Father Jordan nodded, eager to be free of my glare, walked over and analyzed the first slave to make it up the stairs, Beatrice the wolfgirl. He closed his eyes and held his palm up to the collar.

“The enchantment is so… alien… like nothing I’ve ever seen before…” he muttered. “But it’s… letting me read it… Let’s see. Shared ownership, you, Ash, Emi, Lysander, Maddie and Chloe. Equal authority. No primary or secondaries designated.”

“Slaves can own other slaves?” I asked.

“No… not legally, but that’s the way the collar is registered and… I can’t exactly change it. The collar reacts to my church authority, letting me see what information it wants me to see, but it specifically blocks me from removing it or making changes.”

“Read only permissions?”

“Uhm… yes I suppose that’s a succinct way of describing it.” the priest replied.

One by one, the priest inspected every slave. Sure enough, every single one of them now belonged to me and my fellows from the tabletop gaming club. Or at least their collars seemed to think so.

Chloe was only slightly different. She had the same permissions as before. Unlike with the others, where all six of us were equals, for Chloe I was, once again, the primary owner, while the others were secondaries. Chloe gave me a relieved smile when she found out.

It took a good twenty minutes for Father Jordan to check everybody, but soon enough all the slaves were standing around in a big huddle, looking around at the carnage nervously, and watching the other priests and guards help the fallen humans who survived the mansion’s demolition. Unlike me, they weren’t given any modesty blankets.

“What about the monsters?” I asked. The two monster girls were still kneeling inside the pit.

“They have divine collars too?” he asked.

I just gestured towards them, the black metal collars were plainly visible, even from our view from the pit’s side above them.

“The keeping of captive monsters is legal with special permission, if their masters can demonstrate they have a noble bearing and have the resources and proper facilities to keep them safely confined. In this case, the entirety of House Volda has that permission. If these monsters are yours… and you want to… keep them? This is… going to be bureaucratically complicated.”

“Feel free to direct all your complaints to the Slithering Violation personally, I’m sure he’ll offer you a sympathetic ear,” I snarked.

“Yes, yes. The laws of man must bow to the laws of the heavens…” Father Jordan grumbled. “Let’s just hope these collars have the standard embedded commands. That’s the bare minimum of safety for monster collars.”

Father Jordan started descending the stairs to the monster pit, I followed.

“Embedded commands?” I asked.

“Stop, sleep, follow, and go are the required ones, though many of the more expensive collars have more than just those commands,” he explained. “To activate them, they’re usually prefixed by the word ‘command.’ For example, Command: Stop, Command: Follow, and so on. You can also release them from control with Command: Release, when you want them to return to their natural behaviour.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

Father Jordan led the way out onto the sandy arena floor. Pinky still hadn’t raised her head. Foxy focused intently on the priest, a cool and patient desire in her gaze. She still hadn’t moved off her knees.

The priest sighed, “Of course one of them had to be a Manhunter too… I hate dealing with Manhunters,” he grumbled.

Father Jordan pointed at Foxy, “Command: Sleep.”

I felt a little tingle in the back of my brain. A sort of confirmation. Did I want this pathetic unworthy excuse for a priest to command my god-given monster? That was… an interesting way to phrase it. Clearly, whatever shred of intelligence Nyar’Shiggurath embedded in the collar had some strong opinions about the current Church of the Untainted and their clergy.

I confirmed the prompt mentally. An instant later, the fox girl’s eyes closed, and she flopped over sideways like a puppet with her strings cut.

“There was a small delay… but it seems it works,” Father Jordan said thoughtfully.

I smirked. I suspected the default monster collars didn’t have the ‘ask Tyler’s permission before letting the priest mess with your monsters’ feature as standard.

I pointed at Pinky “Command: Release.”

Father Jordan gasped, and leaped away, “What are you doing!” he snapped angrily.

Pinky stayed on her knees, and raised her head just barely high enough to peek at me. She took a moment to decide what to do, blinking a few times, then sat back on her haunches, and shifted herself until she faced me directly. She stayed on her knees like a good girl, yet her eyes travelled all over my body hungrily. A little drop of drool dripped out of her mouth, and her massive eternally-hard erection bulged out obscenely now that she’d changed her posture. It throbbed, and a little drop of precum wept out from its tip.

“She’s not attacking…” the priest said, confused.

“Yeah, she’s a good girl. Strangely docile, for a monster.” I explained.

I walked over to the kneeling demonblood elf and gently patted her on the head to show how tame she was. I was confident in her good behaviour, and showing off for someone important, so of course, like any good pet, she did something stupid to embarrass me. She suddenly lunged forward, tongue extended, trying to lick my crotch through a gap in the blanket. I took a step back, dodging back from the overly aggressive cunnilingus.

“Nah uh!” I waggled my finger at her. “Later if you’re a good girl, but not right now.”

Pinky had no idea what I was saying. She had no concept of ‘later.’ She just looked hurt and betrayed. There was a pussy in her face, but then there wasn’t, and now she was very sad the pussy went away. She stayed on her knees, but scooted forward a little bit. Slowly, bit by bit, she scooted closer to my crotch to maybe get in a sneaky little lick without alerting me to her dastardly scheme. It… wasn’t terribly subtle.

“Command: Stop,” I tried.

Pinky froze halfway through her movement, and then sat back down on her haunches. She gave me a pitiful wide-eyed puppy dog stare, complete with trembling lower lip, but she stopped trying to creep toward me. She still had her eyes completely fixated on my crotch however, biting her lip with desire. Clearly the command stopped her from doing things, but it didn’t make her want to stop.

“Fancy,” I said.

“It seems the collars work.” Father Jordan commented.

“Well, they were made by a tentacle god, I assume they’d be pretty high quality,” I shrugged.

Father Jordan stared at me, incredulous, “You have no idea what you have, do you?”

“Some super good quality slave collars?” I replied, uncertainly.

“Setting aside the value of the slaves and captured monsters themselves, you have twenty-six personally attuned divine artefacts in your possession. Every single one of those is priceless. You’ve literally just doubled the number of known divine artifacts in the entire world.”

“Oh wow, that might be a problem. Are people going to kill my slaves to steal their collars?” I asked.

“They’re attuned to you, and as divine artifacts that attunement can’t be overridden by mortal means. Most attuned divine artifacts are… exceedingly lethal to prospective thieves, and most thieves know this. I doubt any would be foolish enough to risk it.”

“Ah that’s good,” I said. “So uuh… what happens now?”

“Now? Those slaves are officially yours by divine mandate. As a rule, it is the Church, and not individuals who are liable to acts of divinity. So, congratulations I suppose… We register twenty four slaves and two monsters in your name, use church funds to compensate their previous owners, or their families if they’re no longer alive, and wait for word from the Capital on what to do with this strange group of travellers so blatantly favored by the gods.”

“Where do we put them? I slaves, I mean,” I asked. “Is there space in the rectory hall?”

“For tonight, maybe. I’ll have one of the Acolytes ask around and find a modest manor house to lease for the month. Hopefully by the end of the month we’ll have word from the Capital and perhaps time to arrange a caravan.” the priest explained.

“Uhm… isn’t renting a mansion like that a lot of gold?” I said nervously.

“Reimbursement for twenty four slaves, market value between fifty and a hundred gold pieces each, plus registration fee of one gold twenty silver per slave... Compared to the price of the slaves the god stole on your behalf, the ten-gold monthly lease for a medium sized manor is just a drop in the bucket.”

I did some quick lazy math in my head, 75 gold times 24 slaves… how much were captured monsters worth? Let’s just call it 2000 gold pieces once everything was said and done. If one gold was $2000… I had just stolen something like four million dollars worth of slaves from this brothel.

I really didn’t feel bad about that.

“Yeah… that seems a little expensive,” I said nervously.

“A little expensive, she says,” Father Jordan grumbled.

“Okay… a lot expensive…” I admitted.