Chapter 127: Nursing Her With Nectar
The Desert Spirit sprints to her mother’s side, weeping crystalline tears that shatter softly against the stone as she falls to her knees. "No, no, no! Please don’t go, Mother, pleeeeease..."
Her mother’s lips move, barely a whisper. The Desert Spirit leans in close, her ear almost touching her mother’s mouth, straining to catch her final words.
"...m-m-more... p-pounding." the demi-goddess breathes before going completely silent
The desert spirit’s eyes fly open. She whips around toward the altar. "MORE POUNDING!"
Raikya springs back into motion instantly, jaw set, legs locked into position, mound hitting metal, fully committed to the cause as she rides Pip’s pelvis like lives dependanted on it... which it did in this case.
Penelo and Lula slap both palms against Pip’s chest. "Us too! Hurry!" Penelo pleads. "The water! The vines!" Lula begs.
"STOP!" Vuvi’s voice cracks across the chamber like a whip. She strides forward, chest puffed, chin high. "You three can relax. I’ve got this."
She saunters over, entirely unbothered, while the Desert Spirit gapes at her. "What are you doing? She’s dying, we need more tribute!"
Vuvi just smirks and produces a small vial from her pocket, swishing the glowing, iridescent liquid inside with a flourish. "Tribute delivered. Straight from the tap."
Sera perks up immediately. "Ooooh, this I have to see."
"Blackthorn! Are you sure about this?" Veena asks, alarmed. "We don’t know what it does to something someone that powerful!"
"It turned Sera into a walking siege weapon," Vuvi calls back over her shoulder. "I’m sure it’ll be fine."
"That is not the reassurance you think it is." Veena replies, "That’s an ancient demi-goddess you’re about feed Pip’s... sauce to." she shudders at the thought.
"Worked on me," Sera says with a shrug, already jogging after her.
Penelo and Lula leap off the altar, snatching their scattered clothes off the floor as they scramble after Vuvi.
"Can demi-gods get a powerup?" Penelo giggles as she skips toward them.
"I think they just become a god then." Lula shrugs behind her.
Pip starts to rise too, then freezes midway as Raikya slowly and eagerly resumes bouncing against his hips.
"Shhh," she whispers as she grins down at him. "Two more minutes. Please."
Pip lets out a low, thoroughly defeated boop as his pelvic servos whirs back into gear and gently works against Raikya’s thrust. She chokes down a squeal with both paws.
Vuvi crouches beside the Earth Mother. "Bottoms up." She tips the vial straight down the goddess’s throat.
The Earth Mother’s eyes snap open. She blinks twice, then bolts upright, gasping. "GREAT MOTHER’S MILK. That was origin nectar!"
The demi-goddess stood even taller than the desert spirit, her hair a literal shower of gold, and her body carved of flawless stone, sculpted with heavenly precision, every curve calculated for divine levels of debauchery, like a statue of the Great Mother herself come to life.
"That’s just ridiculous." Sera whispers, biting her lip. "Those curves could crush a kingdom."
Penelo and Lula both nod vigorously in agreement.
Zora floats above them all, diligently sketching the Earth Mother’s hips from three different angles.
The Desert Spirit throws herself onto her mother, a shower of gold shimmering around them as they embrace. Her mother grabs her back so hard that sand bursts off the Spirit’s body, prompting a muffled squeal of mercy.
"You revived me!" the Earth Mother squeals excitedly, pulling back to study her daughter properly for the first time, cataloguing every inch of her new, powerful, statuesque form with visible pride. "And look at you. Absolutely radiant. Mother’s mercy, look at those thighs! You’ve grown beautifully." She sniffs once, wiping at her eye. "This must have been agonizing to arrange. You brought a demi-god!? They never leave their domains willing. Whoever you dragged out here must be someone very special." Her eyes narrow toward Vuvi, sizing her up head to toe. "Which does raise the question... what kind of deity are you, exactly? You don’t smell like one. You smell like the inside of a flask."
"No, no, Mother, she’s not a..." the Desert Spirit tries to explain.
"Allow me," Vuvi cuts in smoothly, whipping out a small card and presenting it with a practiced tilt. "Vuvela Blackthorn. It is my pleasure... to provide pleasure."
Veena smacks her arm. "You do not hand business cards to deities."
"Watch me." Vuvi replies, smooth as silk. "Everyone’s a potential, repeat, client."
"She’s a demi-goddess, Vuvi, not some rich noble."
"Demi-goddesses have needs too, Veena. I don’t discriminate based on divinity. That’s just rude."
The Earth Mother squints at the card, mouthing the words. "’The Pleasure Prince’s Personal Pleasure Service?’" She tilts her head, baffled.
"That’s us. Well... mostly him." Vuvi glances around for Pip and finds the altar instead, where Raikya is currently bouncing on him with the enthusiasm of a lovesick jackhammer, both paws clamped over her mouth to smother every howl trying desperately to escape.
Vuvi gasps.
Behind her, the rest of the team dissolves into poorly disguised snickering.
"CUT THAT OUT YOU TWO! We are trying to conduct business here."
Pip startles at her shout, his hips twist slightly left, his pelvis hitting Raikya’s at a perculiar angle at a particularly unfortunate moment. Raikya’s eyes roll back, arms going limp, and she lets out one small, pathetic, shuddering howl before collapsing forward onto his chest plate dissolving into a quivering heap of fur, her tailing lolling gentling from side to side.
Pips chassis hisses as a cloud of cooling steam slowly covers the two of them in a fine mist.
Vuvi presses two fingers to the bridge of her nose, drawing a long, steadying breath. "We’re usually better behaved than this," she tells the Earth Mother, with the strained dignity of a woman trying very hard, and failing badly, to keep a business meeting on track.
"Are you, though?" Veena asks. +
Sera, Lula, and Penelo all snort in unison. Vuvi shoots them a glare sharp enough to cut diamonds.
Then she catches the look on the Earth Mother’s face, and every emotion is drained from hers.
"So... let, me get this straight." the demi-goddess says again, quieter now, brow furrowed. "You’re not a deity,"
"Uhhh...No?" Vuvi answers cautiously.
The Earth Mother nods slowly, wipes a trace of glowing fluid from the edge of her own lips, and holds the finger out accusingly. "Then where, precisely, did a mortal get her hands on origin nectar? That belongs to the gods! Not to grubby little hands like yours. I should smite you for even thinking about having it!"
Vuvi opens her mouth but only ejaculates a stream of barely coherent babble.
The Earth Mother snaps her fingers.
Torrents of sand erupt from the floor in five separate columns, snatching Vuvi, Veena, Sera, Penelo, and Lula off their feet and spinning them each into their own private, choking little tornado.
They scream, thrashing helplessly against the current, spinning faster and faster.
"THIS... IS SO... UNDIGNIFIED," Vuvi manages between rotations, her hair slapping her across the face.
"I TOLD YOU... NOT TO HAND... OUT THE CARD!" Veena shouts back from her own funnel, spinning past.
"IN HINDSIGHT... MAYBE." Vuvi semi-concedes, whipping past her in the opposite direction.
Sera, on the other hand, appeared to be treating the whole ordeal as a mildly enjoyable carnival ride, whooping every time she completes a full rotation and attempting to twist herself upside down somehow.
Penelo and Lula, tangled together in a single, merged column, could just cling to each other and scream in stereo.
"Mind your possessions around mortals, sweetheart," the Earth Mother tells her daughter, watching them spin with mild disgust. "Sneaky little gremlins. Can never keep their grubby paws out off what isn’t theirs." She sighs, wistful. "Still can’t imagine where they stole the Great Mother’s own nectar from..."
Pip lets out a sharp, whistling, guilt-filled, puff of steam and Raikya’s head pops up groggily, blinking the haze out of her eyes just in time to watch her new friends spinning through the air like dirty laundry in a storm.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" she cries in confusion.
The Earth Mother squints at the wolf-kin, then sighs, appalled. "More of them." With a lazy twirl of her finger, the entire altar, with Raikya still strandling Pip, slides across the stone floor, screeching to a stop directly at her feet.
She looks down at the two of them, both frozen stiff.
"And what," she says, pointing at Pip with a grimace, " is that?"
Raikya starts babbling something incoherent, words tumbling over each other in a nervous stream. Something about a glowing rod, who got dibs, some kind of secret sauce, and a five point plan. The Earth Mother wrinkles her nose in disgust, and flicks a finger at Raikya. A sixth sand-column swallows her whole, spinning her up into the air alongside the rest, her indignant yelping lost somewhere in the roar.
"COoooOOoME... OooooNNNnnnN," Raikya yowls, tumbling past Vuvi mid-spin.
"WELCOME...TO THE CLUB," Vuvi shouts back.
"MOTHER! Stop putting people in tornadoes!" The desert sprite pleads.
"But that’s kind of my whole thing," the Earth Mother protests, gesturing vaguely at herself, the murals, the entire temple. "It’s my theme. You can’t just ask a sand goddess to stop with the sand tornadoes, that’s like asking a fish to stop being wet."
"You could smite people in a normal way."
"Boring. Unoriginal. Also I don’t actually know how to smite people normally, I’ve never had to learn. Sand tornadoes work for me."
"These people saved you, Mother." the Desert Spirit says again, firmer this time, planting herself between her mother and the altar. "At least give them a chance to explain."
Pip, still lying flat on the altar, gives a slow nod of agreement, and sends out a single, unmistakable thought-wave filled with trust. Honesty. A simple, aching desire to help.
The Earth Mother’s breath catches.
She stumbles backward, as a golden glow starts emanates under Pip’s chestplate. She grabs her daughter’s arm, eyes wide and glistening like diamonds.
"That... metal man," she mutters, voice trembling with something close to reverence, "just whispered to my soul."