The Sacrifice

Content warning: This story is smut, including themes of bondage, ritual sacrifice (but no death/injury), lack of consent/agency, and drugs. It is not even remotely safe for work.

Dedicated to Emily and Terra

You are awoken before dawn. In the warm darkness of your hut, the dog makes a contented sigh as the silent monk gestures for you to rise and clothe yourself. Outside, the sky is just starting to glow pink as the sun makes its steady march up from the underworld.

In the still pre-dawn air, you are led, stumbling with lingering sleep, to a cave mouth that you have always known of, but never before been allowed to enter. It gives you a thrill, that you will finally see the forbidden caverns.

As you enter the cave mouth, darkness quickly envelops you. Your world shrinks to the monk's hand leading you forward, a faint bitter smell you recognize but cannot place, and the echoing of your footsteps. You realize that somehow, the monk's footsteps do not echo. Suddenly, the echo retreats and grows, and you sense that you are in a much larger space. It takes some minutes for your eyes to adjust to the very faint glow of the luminescent growth near ground level, during which time you begin to see the shadows of rocks or growths or furniture in this large space, you cannot tell what.

Eventually, traveling through a labyrinth of passages, some utterly black, others with the faint glow, you are led to a chamber with warm, moist air and instructed to disrobe by the silent monk. A match flares in the darkness, and a flame is passed from candle to candle, the dim light blinding to your dark-adjusted eyes. Through the glare, you make out an indentation in the rock, which is full of gently roiling water. Steam visibly rises from it, and you are urged into the water by the five women you now see by the light of candles placed about the uneven walls. The water slips around your legs, and your hidden parts, and your torso. It is pleasantly warm. The attending women gently scrub your body, cleansing it with rough cloths infused with scented oils and bearing soft, fresh-smelling leaves.

It does not occur to you to wonder at this extraordinary scene. You have heard whispers in the village, and they ring in your head now. You are in a rite of passage, though you do not know what it involves, or what it connotes; you know it is important, and sacred, and rare. You welcome it, the mystery of it filling your mind, unfocused joy swelling your soul.

Apparently satisfied that you are clean enough, the women draw you out of the warm pool and buff your skin with cloths, drying the water. A long white dress is placed over your head, tugging tight over your chest, your wet hair leaving a trail of coolness down your back. It has, you can see by the light of the candles, finely embroidered white flowers along the neck; possibly yours were the hands responsible for this work, you have done things like this, though the shape of the dress is unfamiliar to you.

You are led once more away from the lit chamber, though your guide is now one of the women, who you recognize from the village, but she does not speak. Again, the passages are dark, and only after several minutes can you see the faint blue glow again.

The echoes recede into the distance again at the same time you feel the presence of others: this room is not so large as that first chamber, and it has people in it. The scent of bodies, the sussurus of fabric sliding over fabric, the calm breathing of the people are all plain to you in your sight-deprived state.

The voice is sudden, and it speaks your name. It tells you that you have been selected for a rare honor, for a sacrifice. You are to please the gods. The voice is of the priestess, who is a woman, but who has the hidden parts of a man, and thus is the most beloved of the gods. The voice of the gods. The earthly vessel of the gods. You have never spoken to her before, though you have longed to, for you too suspect that you may be beloved of the gods but are not certain, and would never presume to claim such an honor for yourself.

Her voice murmurs something you cannot understand, and flames are struck again. This time you close your eyes before they are dazzled, and crack them open when you feel a hand upon your face: the priestess looks down at you, her finger tracing patterns across your brow, across your cheeks, upon your chin. Her finger has something dark at the tip, and as she pulls back, you smell the odor of paint. With another finger, she traces your lips, and you have to restrain the urge to purse them and kiss the finger. The sensation upon your face is strong, the skin rubbed clean from bathing.

The light has faded down, and you can see the glow of charcoal in braziers, with incense smoke rising from them. It is the bitter smell you were unable to place before, intoxicating and heady, calling back to when you were but a child: a powerful, rushing-in memory of another time your face was painted for you, when you were presented to the priestess who came before.

You are led to what you suppose to be a raised platform of some kind, and which turns out to be a table of rock rising from the ground, warm to the touch, and more than a person-height across. The priestess and two serving-women bid you lay down, carefully arranging your hair about your head. In the periphery of your vision, you see candles being lit from braziers, and placed around you, forming a circle. At the same time, a low chant starts up, with a thrumming, hypnotic rhythm that puts you in mind of a heartbeat at rest.

This lasts for some minutes: the voices interweave in their chant. The people gathered in the chamber with you seem to grow and shrink in number, the darkness and ebb and flow of the chant rhythm making it difficult to tell if you are surrounded by a handful or several dozen. The smoke in the candle-glow continues drifting lazily upward as the whole space seems suffused with an internal light. You are aware of the priestess doing something by your feet, her presence drawing you like a moth to flame, though you are content to lie back and wash in the experience without need to analyze.

The assembled figures become more active, moving through the steps of a dance with you at its center point. The chanting is supplemented by the sound of an enormous, deep-speaking drum, whose low reverberations make your chest thrum with each strike. The words of the chant are unknown to you, but you feel your body respond to them. Your skin is tingling. The smoke in your lungs has changed from bitter to warming. Your face is flushed and prickled as if you've been blowing on a fire too long.

You feel hands taking your wrists and your ankles and guiding them outward, so you are spread wide on the table. It is with some pleasure that you feel cords being laced around ankle and wrist, and feel them drawn tight. Your limbs are no longer your concern; they have been tended to for you. Shadows dance across the roof of the cavern, both from the flicker of the flames themselves, and from the movement of the unseen people around you.

The priestess's voice cuts clearly across the low chant, and causes you to look down to where you can feel her standing. You see that at some point, symbols you do not recognize have been drawn around you, forming a circle divided into five parts. The resonance of five flickers through your mind: it is a sacred number. You are pleased to be associated with it.

The priestess stands with her eyes rolled back in her head, intoning words in a language you have not heard before, though its rhythms and intonations feel somehow familiar. Her voice is husky and mellifluous, and unlike anyone else's; another sign of her holiness. You suspect it is the language of the gods. It is said the priestess speaks with the gods. You become aware for the first time that she is clothed in a long robe of dark cloth, which is split down the front. Around her waist is a belt bearing a pair of ritual daggers you have seen her use before to sacrifice lambs on holy days. You idly wonder if you are meant to be sacrificed in that way, but the thought does not concern you -- it comes as a thrill, if anything, though you think you would be sad not to see your friends again in this form.

She continues speaking, and the words of the chant underlying her words increase in tempo and volume, becoming more urgent. The drumbeat accelerates along with the chant, and you find your heart matching the new pace, as if it is connected to the pulse of the drummer's mallet. Your breath speeds as well, to match your heartbeat. Seeing her there, with her arms raised, the robe gapping faintly open to show that she wears nothing under the robe, stirs your hidden parts, and suddenly you can think of little else.

She circles the raised rock table, passing from candlelight to candlelight, her face distorting and leaping in each new configuration of light and shadow. Your head turns to follow her. The words continue, melting something in your soul you had not known was frozen. You know there are other people in the cavern, but somehow she is the only one you can see. Details now come to you: the embroidered white flowers upon her dark gown; the leering red stripe along the black leather of the nearer dagger's sheath; the flowers and leaves woven into her hair, which you have never seen down before -- you had no understanding it was so long or so voluminous.

She stops at your feet, having completed the circle, and you are aware that flower petals have been strewn around the circle, obscuring the symbols, but also somehow enhancing them. Perhaps they fell from her hand, you cannot recall. The glow in the air feels richer. As she raises her arms again, imploring, two figures separate from the crowd and come to her side. She blesses each of them in turn with a careful blue mark on the forehead from her paint-bearing fingertips, and each draws one of the daggers, reaching across her body to form an X over her torso before silvery blades flash in the light. Your heartbeat increases, and you realize the drum has also sped up, and the chanting is growing more urgent.

The two figures come toward you, approaching from each side, and the chanting circle closes in. Hands are upon you, touching every part of your arms and legs, your face, running through your hair. You feel the cold thrill of a knife blade against each arm, but find there is no pain. The blades move in, toward your heart, and you realize the sharp edges are pointed upward; they cut away the dress, not your flesh.

The priestess is standing over you, a foot on either side of your chest, and in the candlelight, you have a clear view of her parts, no longer hidden, and much more substantial than you had thought possible. The cold line of knifeblade continues down, over your heart, and down your legs, which had stretched the dress's skirt tight. But the tension disappears as the chill of naked steel reaches your shins, robes trailing across your body. It is not clear how the two knife maidens passed their blades so smoothly across each other and through the priestess's legs, but this is a distant concern now.

The crowding hands which had pressed your arms and legs slowly draw away the flaps of the sacrificed dress, laying you bare beneath the staring eyes of the priestess. You feel her in your soul. You feel the connection between you, crackling like lightning, if it could sustain itself instead of flashing and disappearing.

The priestess is kneeling over you now, heat radiating from the nearness of her body, and the chant has increased in urgency and pace. The drum is a constant rolling of thunder echoing, no longer sounding discernible beats. Her face comes down to each tied wrist, your arms, your shoulders, and you feel her lips upon them. Each kiss ignites a line of fire across your body. She moves to your face: forehead, eyelids, mouth, cheeks, neck. The pounding of your pulse must surely be reverberating in the room as much as the drum ever was. Her hair trails behind her head, across your chest, caressing your face, tantalizing your hands and arms. You are glad for the cords as your hands convulse -- you know that if they had not been tended to, you would be grasping at her without thought or control, and the indignity would be shameful.

She continues down your torso, each kiss strengthening the lines of fire which started at your wrists and extend to your very toes. Your hidden parts are also no longer hidden, and they are eager in a way you have never felt before. You can feel the heat from her parts as she moves the caress of her mouth down your body, and the only thing you want in the world is to feel her as close to you as possible, inside you, even, if such a thing were possible. Your hips rise, unbidden and out of your control, but she expertly keeps her body and yours separated by a space no thicker than the fabric of the dress which was cut away.

Finally she comes to your no-longer-hidden parts, and you feel the warm kiss where you want it most, but she doesn't linger, instead passing to your legs and down to your feet, though she does reverse her position so that the hem of her robe drapes across your chest, stoking the flames as you feel her lips down each leg. The chanting has become more urgent yet, swelling to a crescendo until you think you might burst from the energy of it, from the fires of your body, from the heat of her legs tingling your belly.

She stands, and now has a small jar in her hand, from which she pours a thin stream of viscous liquid onto your body. The warm liquid traces the lines of fire which still course through you, crossing from wrists, across your chest, doubling back across your eager parts, and down your legs in a double-X shape. You feel its presence on your skin like liquid flame, but it burns with pleasure rather than pain.

Suddenly, with a loud exclamation, she is whirling above you, her robes flying out like the wings of a massive black bird for a moment, before the robe spins off and disappears from your view. She stands over you fully unclothed, her chest heaving up and down, her gaze heavy upon your face. You see a single, glistening drop fall from her deliciously incongruous man's parts to your belly, shimmering in the light of those candles which remain lit. You have never felt desire like this in your life, your whole body straining to be united with hers. Where the drop landed is suddenly cold, then hot, sending waves radiating out to your limbs.

And just as suddenly she is upon you, her body hot on yours, your sight doused in a flurry of hair and flowers, her mouth upon your neck, pressing to your thudding pulse. You feel her somehow inside you, an explosion of pleasure and pressure and sensation you had dreamed of in secret for so long coming to astounding reality. The chorus of chanting has finally reached its full ecstasy, and your head pulls back, your body arches, and a scream pierces the rhythm -- you realize it is your own voice, calling down the blessing of the gods in a language you did not know you knew. Waves of pure light radiate from where she is inside you outward; what a thunderstorm would feel like if it were contained in your body, hot with day's heat and astounding power as shocks ground themselves in your bound wrists and ankles, in your chest, in your head, in the thrusts of the priestess between your legs, in your own parts' convulsions and flaming pleasure. You think your body cannot stand any more, that surely your heart will explode from the shock of this exaltation, like nothing you have ever felt before.

But your heart does not explode. The waves of pleasure, of sensation, of connection, echo and recede slowly, at the same pace the lake water recedes after the rains have stopped. Slowly, so slowly, the priestess comes to stillness above you, making noises with her breath that cause your insides to churn with satisfied desire.

It is nearly pitch dark. One candle remains alight. The priestess rises from your chest. You can feel her hair tracing across your torso, the fires in your body now banked coals, cooking you gently, beautifully, from the inside. You realize your entire body is drenched in sweat. You convulse slightly with the echo of pleasure as she slides out of you, and runs fingers down your body, tracing exactly where the lines of fire were. Her touch quenches the fires, stills the shivers as your body rebounds from the experience it just had, and you find your soul filling with a peace you have never felt before. Your arms and legs are free. Were they ever tied in the first place? You cannot be sure.

The chanting has slowed and cooled, weaving its hypnotic pattern as, one by one, voices cease singing until a single pure soprano voice holds a single high note of such clarity and perfection you think your soul will break with the beauty of it. When it ends, there is a silence so profound it deafens you. You can hear no further sound from those who had been chanting and dancing around you.

The priestess beckons you to rise to a sitting position, and folds her legs around you, directing you to do the same. You sit facing one another, very close, legs wrapped around each others' torsos. She leans back, and you feel rather than see her reach for something. There is the soft scrape of steel upon stone, the flash of one of her blades in the light of the remaining candle. Wordlessly, she traces her finger down the center of your chest, between where you have always secretly imagined breasts should rest. With a comforting murmur, you feel the sharp heat of the blade cutting your skin where your heart thuds. You look down to see a single drop of blood welling where the skin was pierced. She cuts herself in the same way. With the tip of her finger, she brings her blood to yours, and then yours back to hers. You feel a wave of something like pleasure radiate out from where she intermingled your blood with hers, and know that you have been forever changed. She reaches to the remaining candle, waves her red-wetted fingertip once, twice, thrice through the flame, then pinches it out, plunging the chamber into utter blackness.

Reclining you onto your back again, the priestess lies at your side, her head upon your shoulder and her leg thrown across you possessively, her hand pressed to your side, arm heavy across your belly. The nick on your chest has already healed, though you think you will never forget the sensation of her lifeblood mingling with yours. She murmurs something in your ear that you understand, but cannot recall a moment later. You feel a cloth settle over you, placed by unseen hands, and the room is silent and still. The only sound is of your breath and hers, matched in pace and depth as you slide into a deep sleep. You dream of dancing atop the hill, the glory of the bonfire, and the beauty of the moon.

The ritual is complete. You are the chosen of the gods. All will be well from now. You will, in time, be a priestess as well. Your fondest wish, unacknowledged outside your own mind, has come to you, and you slumber in the priestess's arms, and she in yours.