Among The Gods 01: Cardinal Sins

Though she had never looked at them closely, she recognised that they seemed to be everywhere. All throughout the town, anywhere flowers would grow, these grew - and the Cardinal had a broad vase of them on the counter, kept fresh with water from the well. They were beautiful - wide flowers with layers of interlaced petals, almost like roses. The petals were the most unique of any flower she had ever seen, so thin and fine as to be almost translucent, allowing her to see the shifting shadows of the stem's leaves through them. The bulk of the petal was a bright, semi-opaque white, but the edges were coloured every hue of the rainbow, from bloody scarlet to rich violet. The colours changed and shifted as the flower stirred in the breeze, like light catching the edge of a blade, or reflecting from oil in water.

"I wonder what these are?" she said.

"Hmm?" Eli said. Looking up, she saw that he was distracted by something. She followed his eye line, picking out one of the drooping trees, and in the shadows beneath it - she gasped and froze.

In the shadows beneath the three, another couple was... cavorting. The woman seemed to be completely naked, clothes discarded somewhere nearby. Fortunately, her back was to the pair, but Mia could easily trace the outline of her naked body, from her slender shoulders, over the swell of her chests and breasts, then in around her waist and back out again at her hips. She was straddling an equally naked young man, hips rolling back and forth rhythmically, grinding the private place between her legs against him. His hands wandered shamelessly all over, massaging her rump, caressing the smooth outline of her figure up to her bust, tending to the ripe fullness of her breasts - Mia could see the flesh shifting as he touched her, even if she couldn't see the details.

Face white and sweating, Mia grabbed Eli's arm again, pulling him away from the pair into the nearest available exit. This archway was covered in vines and flowers of red and orange, as well as those peculiar rainbow blooms that seemed to flourish everywhere. It did not lead out of the park, but into some sort of corridor of hedgerows - still, at least the rutting couple were out of sight.

"Are you okay?" Eli asked, touching her shoulder with concern. She jerked away from him instinctively, and he lowered his hand, trying his best to hide the sudden pang of hurt he felt at her reaction.

She sighed. "This place," she said, tiredly. "It's obscene! What are they even doing?" Mia knew, in very general terms, that certain activities took place within the confines of marriage, necessary to the creation of children. She also knew that it had something to do with the delicate, intimate area between her legs. She did not know any of the details.

Eli shrugged, noncommittally. Having grown up on a farm, he knew in general terms what they were doing - baby animals had to come from somewhere, after all.

"Come on," Mia sighed, when a little of the colour had returned to her face. "We should... go back, I guess?" She continued to lead the way through the hedgerow corridor, turning the first corner she came to.

Which turned out to be the wrong decision, as they realised when they discovered the woman, and the people surrounding her.

Mia stood, frozen in shock, gaping at the scene in front of her. It was... a lot. Too much to take in and absorb in one go. The pair had found themselves in a small circular area, surrounded by dark green hedges; four entrances in total led out into hedgerow corridors like the one they had taken to get here, creating an island of isolation in the park. Most of the area was soft grass, with a few tall trees providing shade. In the centre, three wide steps led up to a wide circular dais of smooth, dark grey stone.

It was on this dais that the woman lay. She was completely naked, not a stitch of clothing covering her smooth, tanned skin. Like most of the women in the town, she abounded with curves that Mia didn't have: wide hips, a comfortable stomach, a generous rump - and while her breasts were less ample than Mia might have expected, they were still round and soft-looking, with small, pink nipples. Her auburn hair was long, and spread about her head in an uneven halo, a glowing splash of scarlet in the afternoon sun.

What Mia found her eyes drawn to most, however, was what the woman was doing. She lay on the warm stone, knees bent and legs spread obscenely open. The area between her legs was smooth and hairless, making it easy to see her fingers caressing the folds and petals of her vagina. Two fingers stroked the lips of her labia, occasionally dipping inside her body on some unknown purpose; her other hand was busy working her the small nub above, rubbing her clitoris in languid circles. Her eyes were closed, her attention completely on her own body, and she moaned as she openly pleasured herself - long, drawn out, surprisingly deep sounds of satisfaction.

The people around her were no better. A number of them were also completely naked, clothes discarded unthinkingly around them. While a couple stood, most were on the ground, sat with legs crossed or open, lying on the ground, or on their knees, facing the dais - all joining her in her outrageous activities. The women's own hands were busy between their legs, and although the angle and the hair that many of them sported made it hard to see the details, Mia could now imagine exactly what they were doing. The mens' activities were far more obvious. They all seemed to be rampant, their... intimate parts (as Mia thought of them) standing erect. Most had taken themselves in hand, and were pleasuring themself with slow, languid strokes, moaning and sighing in time with the woman on the dais.

An increase in the intensity of the performer's moans drew Mia's attention back to her. She was writhing now, hips pressing upwards away from the stone as her breathing got quicker and quicker. Her pink nipples had darkened, standing out starkly under the hot sunlight; her fingers, lips, and even parts of her inner thighs shone in the light, damp with sweat or perhaps something else. She began to pant, her hips shaking, faint ripples spreading through the soft, supple skin of her thighs, stomach, and breasts.

And then, it - whatever it was - happened. Her breath stopped, caught in her throat for several seconds, and then released in a long, drawn out groan of something that sounded very much like pleasure. Her body suddenly relaxed, her hips falling back to the stone with a faint, wet slap.

The woman on the dais was not only one to experience that... whatever it was. Several of the women moaned with her, and a number of the men grunted, their bodies shaking. One of the men nearby - a middle-aged man with a well toned body, up on his knees as he watched the woman's wanton fingers - began to pant and grunt, drawing Mia's attention. A moment later, his arms and shoulders tensed up, and he let out a long growl, like a cornered animal. His hand - or what was in his hand - twitched, and a long arc of pearlescent white shot through the air, splattering against the dark stone. It was followed by several more, before the man collapsed back onto his rump, panting. He slipped his hands behind his head as he rolled easily onto his back, laughing softly, a smile plastered on his face. Mia's eyes almost bugged out of her head as she got a full, unrestricted view of his penis, still hard, twitching slightly, long drips of thick, white fluid dribbling out of it onto his stomach.

Everyone seemed to be smiling now, and there were a couple of instances of slow, relaxed applause, although whether they were directed at the woman or one of the others, Mia couldn't guess. Even the woman on the dais was giggling, her eyes now open and staring down at the man who had recently splattered her steps with white.

One of the men who had not... whatever it was suddenly rolled to his feet, approaching the dais, manhood bobbing shamelessly in the air in front of him. The woman smiled as he mounted the steps and lay back down, opening her legs again - opening her legs for him, Mia thought with reflexive and ingrained disgust. He knelt beside her and dipped his head, placing a number of kisses on her inner thighs, and a playing lick along the most intimate part of her body. Mia's face burned hotter and redder than ever, this new act now taking the place of the most lascivious thing she had ever seen.

The woman did not seem interested in that particular kind of obscenity, though. Instead, she grabbed the man's hair, pulling him up her body so that she could kiss him, while her other hand took a firm hold of his penis and guided him inside her, in full view of everyone. Her wide open legs and lack of hair allowed Mia to see every detail.

A lot of things suddenly made a lot of sense to Mia. She saw it again in her mind's eye - Dina and Roth, facing each other, her naked legs wrapped around his hips; the young pair in the park, the woman straddling the man like a horse - again, hips to hips. All for this, this - this entrance, the man entering the woman. It looked like it should be painful, and yet the woman moaned lustily as it happened, and the man gasped, grinning like an idiot.

A jolt suddenly shot through Mia's body, and she spun away, grabbing Eli's arm as she did so. Again, she ran, dragging the young man behind her, fleeing back to the Cardinal.

Neither Mia nor Eli spoke about what they had seen in the park - indeed, Mia barely spoke at all. She was in shock at the shameless, wanton indecency of it: to come upon their hosts, apparently so charitable and good hearted, locked in a tryst in the taproom where anyone might see. Then the couple in the park, a woman Mia's age riding man Eli's age where anyone might observe. Then finally, a garden of sheer corruptive debauchery - a group of people openly touching themselves, all surrounding a naked woman who was performing for them. her fingers exploring the most intimate parts of herself for all to see. And then, in the ultimate act of sin, the man who had entered her in full view of everyone.

Eli sighed, staring into the darkness above their shared bed. It had been a surreal day, after that. They had almost run back to the inn, where at least they knew they had a room to hide in. A part of Eli had expected Dina and Roth, their generous hosts, to be contrite or embarrassed when they saw them again. But they weren't. Instead, they all sat down to dinner, like they did every evening. In one of the few sentences she had spoken during the day, Mia had said she thought they found the whole thing somehow funny.

Eli had seen little evidence of most of the legends about Irnu - no cruel masters, no broken slaves, no cannibalism, and certainly no monstrous demon gods. The indecency of the place, though - those stories were right on the money.

But right now, Eli had a more immediate problem than a sense of moral outrage: pain. Specifically, pain in his... That is to say, there was discomfort in... He was experiencing a fierce ache in...

The fact was that while he had tried to push the spectacle of the day's events out of his mind, he had failed miserably. Any time his mind wandered even slightly, it wandered back there, to the warm smooth stone, and the unclothed woman who lay on it. And every time, his manhood had reacted, twitching and growing in his loose trouser. After a half day of that, he was left with a fierce ache in his testicles. It was bad enough when he stayed still, but every time he moved, it flared up. It had made most of his evening a hell, and now it was keeping him from sleeping.

Eli gritted his teeth. Moving slowly, he swung his legs out of bed, slipping out from under his blanket - a separate blanket from the one that Mia slept under, not two feet away. He moved carefully across the room, slipping out of the door, and into the darkness of the inn.

Mia listened to the door softly close as Eli left her alone - most likely to use the bathroom, she thought. She was glad - she could do with some time alone, to try and organise the chaos that her mind had become. The scene at the park had unsettled her like almost nothing she had ever seen. Even the bloodshed that had taken her home had seemed somehow less... wrong than the simple, honest obscenity of this place. There was only one thing that disgusted her more, and that was the warm, churning feeling she got when she thought about it, the feeling that started in the lowest part of her belly, and spread downwards in the direction of her -

She rolled onto her back, staring up into the darkness, taking long, deliberate breaths. She thought of her home, of the village and her people. Of the stone dais in the center of the village, topped with the tall stone obelisk, its surface carved with the one hundred and one edicts of the Litany of the Monolith. It had been a dark stone, not unlike that which the woman had -

No! Mia squeezed her eyes shut, calling to mind the edicts of the Litany to protect her. "I am foolish," she whispered into the dark. "I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith in search of wisdom. I am weak; I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith for the protection of its strength. I am unclean; I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith so that I may be made pure." Another deep breath. This was how the corruptive evil of Irnu must work, she realised. It was not a howling demon, tearing into your flesh; it was a snake, slithering into the mind and curling round it, gently bending and guiding it down an enticing path to spiritual ruin. Paths like those walked by men who had knelt around the woman in the parks, hands busily -

"I am but one," she hissed. "I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith so that I may stand among many." All these people, completely without guidance, wisdom, unclean, filthy in soul and body, lying naked under the sun, hand and fingers tracing along skin, kissed planted on the soft skin of -

"I am petty; I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith, forged by those greater and wiser than I," she growled.

Like every adult in their village, Eli knew all one hundred and one edicts of the Litany by heart. He could recite them all, in order, if he needed to. Up to and including the ones he thought probably applied in this situation: My soul is frail; I will not allow it to be broken by base desires. Edict sixty nine, he thought it was. Or was it seventy? No, seventy was My eyes are blinded; I will not gaze upon lustful sights. So much for that.

While Mia had very little idea about what had been going on in the park today, Eli was a little wiser. His father had been a farmer, as had his father's father, and so on back for countless generations - a long line of practical, earthy men, working the land since before it had been conquered and called Thusea. Growing up on a farm, he knew how some animals became more animals, and it hadn't taken him long to figure out that the same rules applied to people. Additionally, his father - ever the practical man - had taken him aside years before, for a frank if short discussion. There were certain limitations imposed on a man's body, he had explained. Certain things were dictated by nature, whatever the Monolith might say. At the time, Eli had been shocked that his father might imply that the Monolith could be wrong, or even incomplete. A few seasons later, his body had started to change, and it had started to make sense.

So it was that Eli knew where this pain came from, and what he would have to do about it. He eased open the rear door of the inn, slipping out into the dark solitude of the walled yard. There was a chill in the air - not enough to make him shiver, but enough to bite, very gently, at his exposed skin. In the middle, a tree stump lay, the wood axe still buried in it to protect the sharpness of the blade. At least here, he thought, he would have some privacy.

Mia twisted, burying her face in the pillow. "My soul is frail; I will not allow it to be broken by base desires," she said, her words muffled by the soft down. "My eyes are blinded; I will not gaze upon lustful sights!" But she had. She had gazed. Gazed for what had turned out to be really quite a long time, now she thought about it. She recalled the edicts that followed that one; the next was about ears and seductive words (the woman in the park had spoken no words, but the noises she did make had been more than enough), then the next was about the tongue and the fruits of lust (her tongue, at least, was pure). Then came My hands are disloyal; I will not turn them to wanton actions. Mia thought about the woman's hands, and their wanton actions.

It was not what she had seen that had disturbed her - it was how the things she had seen continued to play on her mind, obsessing her. All day she had fought down the heat that seemed to rise in her body whenever she thought about the people in the park, about the complete lack of shame they had in their nakedness and behaviour. Particularly, she thought about the woman, and how she had smiled. She definitely hadn't looked ashamed - nor did she look evil, demonic, or even particularly impure. Mostly, she had just looked happy. No, more than that - in the moments after she came down from whatever peak she had reached, she had looked calm. She had looked serene - the kind of serenity that only the pure and the enlightened were supposed to be able to attain. The face carved into the top of the stone obelisk in her village had worn that expression; she wondered if he (one of the founders of the Monolith, she thought) had been busy with his hands right before posing for the sculpture.

Mia could not remember the last time she had felt serene, or if she ever had. Growing up, she had to please her mother, respect her father, make sure she behaved in a proper fashion. Then would come marriage, home making, and presumably the rearing of children, sooner of later. And above all, she had to obey the Edicts that made up the Litany of the Monolith. The Edicts that made it clear how worthless and unworthy she was, how base and corrupt. She wondered if she was supposed to feel serene with her lot in life, or if her feelings even mattered.

She sighed, suddenly missing the warm, reliable presence of Eli. Improper as it was to share a bed with a man to whom she wasn't married, she didn't think she could have survived these last few weeks without him there. She wrapped her arms around her pillow, pulling it close to her, pretending it was Eli as she rested her head on it, draping her leg across it -

A small gasp escaped her lips as the pillow rubbed against the warm, sensitive area between her legs, sending a rippling shock of sensation through her body. She rolled immediately onto her back, chanting through gritted teeth. "I am foolish; I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith in search of wisdom. I am weak; I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith for the protection of its strength. I am unclean; I stay to the narrow path of the Monolith so that I may be made pure." The words did not douse the fire that now seemed to be roiling in the bottom of her stomach, crawling down between her legs to slither and prickle.

Biting her lip, she slipped one hand beneath her blanket, and down past the soft band of the ragged trousers she was using as night clothes. Perhaps she could douse the fire, somehow. Make the feeling go away. He fingertips brushed against the soft, honey blond hair between her legs, running through it to the folds of her labia. The first touch made her shudder in sudden pleasure.