hooves&paws

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“This one,” the hag creaked, gnarled fingers turning over the spindle so that her guest could see it clearly in the dim firefly glow, “is a fine fate, dearie. The life of a beloved artisan, if I scry it right. Wealth could be yours. Respect. Power, even, at the guild. A fate to be envied.”

Her guest, sat opposite the hag, eyed the rich, carmine thread wrapped around the spindle queasily. Her face was hidden behind her dark cloak, so she could pretend the hag didn’t know exactly who she saw.

“What else?” the guest said gruffly. Her voice was a song pulled taut, burdened by the deepest imaginable exhaustion.

The hag let out a cough that sounded like a wet chain being scraped across a stone floor. “Not to your taste, dearie? As you like, as you like…”

She stood, although her upper body remained just as hunched over as it had been. The hag tottered across to the cabinet behind her and began picking through countless other thread-laden spindles, all while the guest’s bloodshot eyes remained fixed firmly on the hag’s back. The guest’s eyes were flawless sapphires; utterly beautiful and utterly unique, but spoiled by two heavy, gray bags that sagged beneath them.

“This one, perhaps?” the hag creaked as she sat slowly back down and presented another spindle, this one bearing a thick, shaggy, green thread. “I think…” She lifted the spindle to her lips. Her tongue shot out, frog-like, and touched wetly against the yarn. “Yes! Oh my, yes. A family, a full family. A kind spouse, half a dozen children, dozens of grandchildren. A warm hearth, a laden table. Truly, a fate anyone would envy.”

The way her voice warbled upward as she spoke made it sound as though the hag was mocking her guest—which, as they both knew, she was. The guest quivered, and tightened her grip on something under her cloak.

But she did not protest.

“What… else?”

The hag cackled again, louder than before. “What’s the matter, dearie? With a fine future like yours, you could have any fate you please! Are an old woman’s offerings really so lacking?”

“I need…” The guest’s handsome voice broke for a moment. She quickly recovered. “You must have something else.”

The hag leaned in as she cackled. One of her eyes was a swollen, bloated, sagging orb, dwarfing the other. “Such rarefied tastes! My, my… let me see. Perhaps an old woman has just what you need.”

She wasn’t an old woman. Not really. Both of them knew that too.

“Well…” the hag drawled, as she sorted through her cabinet again. “I suppose this one comes to mind.”

She spoke with the slow, taunting cadence of a fisherman watching a fat, stupid carp drift towards her line. Her guest did not bristle; she was far too captivated by the spindle the hag placed delicately down on the table before her. Its thread was a faded, diseased gray, strands already desperately frayed. The guest had never seen such an unhealthy length of yarn, fit only for burning, treated with such care.

“You wouldn’t believe the wretch this one came from,” the hag crowed. “Practically begged me to take it, she did! And no wonder, no wonder… who knows what offended the gods so much, they saw fit to spin a blighted fate like this.”

“I’ll take it.”

The hag’s guest reached out for the spindle; before she could take it, the hag’s snatched out, whip-like, to grasp her wrist.

“I’ll be taking my payment first,” the hag warned, looming over her, “dearie.”

The guest stared into the hag’s bloated eye for a moment. She shivered, repulsed, and for a moment it seemed as though she might be about to turn away.

“Very well,” the guest said instead. “Do what you must.”

The hag smiled. “Thank you kindly.”

The loathsome old woman reached into one of her voluminous sleeves and produced a long needle. It was the only clean thing in her cottage, and gleamed with ancient moonlight. Her guest sat back heavily in her seat, and did not offer a hint of resistance as the hag plunged the tip of the needle under her cloak and straight into her forehead.

It did not draw blood. It passed into the guest’s forehead without resistance, a pale glow illuminating her perfect skin and casting her famous face into illumination. Outside the cottage, nature rose in rebuke against the trespass. A sudden gale beat down upon the thatched roof, shaking the cottage walls. An impossible rain sent down great pillars of water, threatening to drown the hag’s abode. A short distance away, mighty waves dashed against the cliffside, desperate to overtop it and sweep the cottage out to sea. The world itself howled in protest—but could do nothing.

The hag pulled back on her needle—and extracted from her guest a wondrous, golden thread the likes of which even she had never set eyes on before.

***

It was the end times.

Outside, anyway. Outside, the sun was a dark, low-glowing coal and bled forth a smoky, unnatural light that smothered the middle of the day. The blackness shrouded awful sounds; the stamping of cloven feet, the scraping of claws across walls, the wet oozing of ancient things the vanquished sunlight had once kept at bay. The good people of Meadowhall Village had long expected the end to come with more violence and fury. A raging storm, perhaps—but there were no more storms. Wind and rain were natural things, and nature had already been strangled into submission. Instead, the villagers were left to endure a dark, cold, quiet end, and forced to huddle within the humble farmhouses of their once-sheltered, once-idyllic village, hoping simply to avoid the monstrosities that now stalked the world’s surface for as long as they could.

But that was outside. Inside one particularly run-down hovel, there was no hint of fear or darkness. What hung heavy in the air was not anxiety, but the intermingled scent of sex and sweat, aged into putridity for want of a fresh breeze. What sounds filled the looming silence weren’t wails of despair, or stoic, stifled sobs. Rather, the regular, rhythmic, telltale slapping of flesh on flesh, occasionally punctuated by a filthy, unwholesome grunt of release. Nor was there any sign of family or fellowship, of people coming together to huddle against the cold dark. The cottage gave shelter to just one woman, hunched over on her soiled bed sheets, furiously pumping her cock into her hand as she masturbated to completion over, and over, and over again.

All in all, the spectacle was so debauched, so filthy, so absent any inhibition or dignity, the intruder couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose in disgust as she pushed open the door to the house and stepped inside.

“So, you’re still here,” the intruder said, voice carefully measured. “Emelenine the hero.”

Emelenine the Dawnchased. Emelenine, promised by the gods. Emelenine, whose name had been woven into a hundred songs in anticipation of her fated victory against the forces of darkness. A hundred statues had been raised in her honor too, although almost as many had since been torn down. Her statues always showed her the same way: strong, tall, resplendent, clad in gleaming armor and well-honed musculature. Her statues were always carved with a stern yet benevolent countenance, cheekbones sleek and chiseled, eyes set determinedly on the horizon. Statues worthy of a hero.

None of them looked anything like the shattered, debauched woman currently hunched over on her bed. She didn’t even stop pumping her cock in her hands when she turned her faded eyes up toward the intruder.

“H-hey, Velise,” Emelenine gurgled, voice deep, breathy, thick. “What b-brings you here?”

Velise drew back her lips in an expression of contempt at the way Emelenine’s voice hitched each time she bucked her hips forward with particular intensity. Unlike Emelenine, Velise had never looked much like a hero. Not really. She was a little too small, a little too plain. But she was doing her best; that much was plain from the armor she wore and the sword strapped to her belt.

“It’s been… years,” Velise breathed. “And you’re still just like… this.”

Emelenine giggled faintly. There was nothing much left in her eyes.

“I had so much faith in you,” Velise whispered, unable to keep her voice free of venom. “I thought you would get better. It was just one defeat, after all. Just one. I should have known something was wrong. You’d disappeared into the hagwood the night before. When the townspeople sent for you to deal with a monster, you were muttering angrily under your breath. Something about how ‘it hadn’t worked’.”

Emelenine barely seemed to hear her.

“I thought it was simply a stroke of bad luck,” Velise went on. “It had to be, right? What else is a faithful squire supposed to think, when she sees her master and hero lose to a newborn slime mimic?”

At that, the broken hero’s back suddenly arched, and a great spurt erupted from the tip of her cock and sprayed across her bedsheets; a fresh stain, lying atop so many old ones. Without missing a beat, Emelenine kept pumping her shaft, restoring it to full hardness in moments.

“Gods,” Velise breathed, disgusted. Then: “It certainly looked like a stroke of bad luck. The way everything went wrong at once. Absurd things. Ridiculous things. Like… like you were never meant to win at all. You always taught me: keep your mouth shut when you’re dealing with any kind of amorphous monster. I suppose it only takes a momentary lapse, doesn’t it? After that, I always remembered your lesson.”

Emelenine remained in a kind of trance, her attention only on her own pleasure. The only sign she could hear her former squire at all was the way the rhythm of her masturbation seemed to heed Velise’s storytelling, the pace of her hand quickening as Velise recounted particular details of the hero’s fall.

“At first, I thought you simply needed time to recover,” Velise went on. “Even a hero can have her confidence shaken, after all. Especially a defeat like that. A… violation like that. Time, and perhaps a little friendship. Then you started behaving like… this.” She glanced down disdainfully at Emeline’s hand. “I assumed it had to be something unnatural. A lingering poison, perhaps. I spent months consulting every cleric and healer in the kingdom. None of them could find a thing wrong with you. But by then, I was desperate enough to turn to fortune-tellers. You wouldn’t believe the looks on their faces when they tried telling yours.”

An abject little moan escaped Emelenine’s lips.

“I know I was angry, when I found out what you did,” Velise said, after taking a long moment to gather herself. “I won’t apologize for my anger. You really do deserve it, Emelenine. But the world doesn’t have any more time for my anger. It needs you. We need you. The evil out there has a leader, they say. A dark champion, rallying the monsters and completing the dark rites that are killing the world. They say their skills are equal to yours. That’s why I’m here. To ask you to take up your sword, one more time. To defeat them. To save us. I have to believe you can save us.”

She froze and shivered uncomfortably when Emelenine let out a sudden, hollow, utterly humorless laugh.

“Do I still l-look like I can save you, Velise?”

The question demanded a fair assessment, but Velise struggled to actually look at her former master. Emelenine looked like a faded ruin of herself. A pale imitation. Most obvious was the way her hair had grown out; she had always used to keep it short, and warn Velise to do the same. Now it was long, matted, filthy. The rest of her was filthy too. How long had it been since she had bathed? Velise could smell it on her; the stink of her own sweat and cum, long since dried on her thighs and belly. The squire had rescued prisoners from all manner of debauched, hedonistic demons and never seen someone look quite so thoroughly ruined.

The worst part, of course, was the distant but ever-present smile on Emelenine’s face. She was enjoying it.

Beneath the surface, the signs of decay were even more disturbing. As Velise cast her eyes over Emelenine’s physique, she noted with horror the way the proud muscles the hero had spent so long honing had simply withered away for lack of use, replaced, instead, by a thick layer of decadent softness that coated her physique and heaved pleasingly as Emelenine pumped and bucked her way to yet another messy orgasm.

Velise cast her gaze aside from the spectacle. That was when she noticed the hero’s famous sword propped up carelessly in one corner of her hovel, forgotten, a layer of rancid rust now coating the blade.

“Gods,” she spat, as her heart almost broke.

It took deliberate willpower for her to keep it together. Velise was not the promised hero. She knew that. But she had always tried to act like one. And that meant no giving up. Not on anyone.

“Yes,” Velise lied. “I believe you can still save us. It has to be you, Emelenine. I know it. I refuse to believe that destiny can be changed so easily. I know you did… something, but you’re still my hero. You’ll always be my hero. Anyone can be redeemed—you taught me that. As awful as things are out there, if we have you on our side, I believe we will win.”

For just a moment, Emelenine paused stroking herself. The flatness in her voice immediately crushed the flare of hope in Velise’s breast.

“You’re wrong.”

“You can’t know that! You… you haven’t even tried, not in months.”

“I know. And I’m not going to.” That awful dull smile settled once again across Emelenine’s face. A swamp of pleasant indifference, drowning features that had once been so handsome. “Because I don’t care.”

“That’s not true,” the squire shot back.

“It i-is.” As she spoke, Emelenine started stroking herself again. Her voice rang with an awful gratitude. “Y-you know, I don’t know whether it was fate or d-destiny or anything else that made me lose to that slime m-mimic. I’ve thought about it a t-thousand times, and I still can’t tell. I j-just remember slipping. Getting blinded by the s-sun. Losing my g-grip. Opening my mouth to cry out. Little t-things, you know? Things that could happen to even the g-greatest warrior, on a bad day.”

Velise was quiet. She had seen it happen, never heard Emelenine tell the story in her own words before.

“Then the slime f-forced its way d-down my throat.” Disconcertingly, Emelenine’s cheeks turned flushed, and her hand quickened once more. It was as if she was recounting a beloved tryst, not her defeat and rape at the hands of an inhuman monster. “I remember the taste… then the f-fog… the thing o-oozing all over me. And then p-p-pleasure.”

Shivers raced across Velise’s skin. This was awful. This was unbearable. She thought she’d seen the worst of Emelenine before, months ago. She’d been wrong.

“Ingesting the slime definitely did something w-w-wild to me,” Emelenine continued, full of breathy adoration. “But trust me, that wasn’t why I c-changed. I still remember the e-exact moment. It was w-when I woke up afterward. When I r-realized the world was still there. When I realized it was O-OK for me to lose.”

“But…” Velise whimpered senselessly. She hadn’t realized it before, but buried deep in her chest was a tiny, pure nugget of deep, abiding love and respect for Emelenine. She could feel it squeezing tight enough to burst.

“T-they told me I was the d-destined hero,” Emelenine giggled, euphoric and stupid. “I heard it so many t-times. Over and o-over again. Like… like the world would e-end if I ever put down my sword!”

“But Emelenine…” Velise whispered. “The world is ending.”

“I know!” Emelenine agreed gleefully. “B-b-but I don’t care anymore. I know I used to. I can r-remember caring. B-but when I woke up that day, I could feel the caring part of me snapping like a f-frayed thread. And I l-let it, Velise. I wanted it to break.”

What could Velise say or do but shake her head, tears in her eyes?

“After that, I j-just wanted to feel good for a change. So I c-came home, here, and jerked off. It f-felt so right. Thought about s-spending a little of the gold I’ve e-earned on a whore, but I d-didn’t want to have to live up to her e-expectations either. So I just started jerking off and I n-never stopped. It feels s-so good to know that this is my destiny. I c-can’t change it, so I don’t have to try. I’ll be n-nothing but a pent-up loser f-forever and ever. I don’t c-care about anything else anymore.”

She had not stopped openly touching herself the entire time.

“Fuck you,” Velise spat, as the faith she’d been quietly nurturing throughout the apocalypse turned to dust. “Fuck you, Emelenine. How dare you say that to me? How dare you even think it? How dare you squat there, pawing at yourself like a brainless imp, when I’ve come here long after everybody else gave up on you just to try to give you one last chance?”

Her anger felt better, in the moment, than hope ever had.

“You’re disgusting! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Don’t you know how many people still look up to you, even now? They still sing your name, praying that the hero with the gleaming sword will ride in to save them. I’ve half a mind to tell them what you really are. They’d curse your name instead, if only they knew what a filthy, weak-willed little pervert you’ve allowed yourself to become!”

Her acrimonious words were met with a wide-eyed look from Emelenine, one Velise dearly hoped was pain. At long last, she wanted to hurt her hero. She wanted to see the words sink in. She wanted to break whatever was left inside her, and she didn’t much care if anything emerged from the ruins.

“And?” The utter, palpable excitement in Emelenine’s voice stole from Velise even that fantasy. “W-w-what else?”

Her hand was moving along her cock faster than ever before. The look in her eyes was not pain, but rapture.

Emelenine was enjoying the abuse.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was Emelenine’s hand beating against the base of her shaft.

“I’m leaving.” Velise’s voice was ice. “I’ll do whatever I can for whoever’s still alive. I hear the dark champion is coming here. I don’t know if I can match them, but I’ll fight as hard as I can until my dying breath. I suppose that’s one thing I’ll have over on the hero I wasted my life worshiping. Goodbye, Emelenine.”

“W-wait!” The broken hero was suddenly urgent, but the lurid excitement in her voice kept Velise from hesitating as she turned her back to leave. “Is that really a-all you wanted to say? P-please, let me hear more. O-or… do your f-f-feet hurt? You must have come a l-long way. I could m-massage… p-perhaps you’re sweaty? Do you n-n-need a change of clothes? I’ll s-swap yours for… for… um…”

The sound of the door to her hovel swinging shut put an end to the stream of fetish-fantasies that had incubated inside Emelenine’s ruined mind. Disappointed but unperturbed, Emelenine simply did as she usually did, and returned her full attention back to her throbbing, dripping cock.

Time passed.

And the world’s flame dimmed. Outside the walls of Emelenine’s hovel, the villagers of Meadowhall fought a valiant battle. The Emelenine could hear the clashing of spears, and the screams of the dying. Neither troubled her, nor interfered with her self-pleasure. Not even the scream that might have been Velise. After that, the night turned quieter and darker than ever before. There was no noise at all, except the occasional, ominous hint of scrambling or shambling from creatures that were clearly entirely other than human.

Still, Emelenine did not pause. Nothing mattered to her besides her own pleasure. She was a destined loser, and she embraced her destiny wholeheartedly. Open before her was a book from her adventuring days, detailing all manner of different monsters a traveler might need to be wary of. When she was younger, she’d studied it endlessly and earnestly. Now, she was simply fantasizing about what each monster might do to her if she submitted to it.

She didn’t stop when she heard a strange, loud, wet sound at the entrance to her hovel. Nor even when she felt a sudden breeze, and realized the door had been pushed open. It was only the sight of the day’s second interloper that was shocking enough to penetrate the thick pleasure-haze that had long since descended on Emelenine’s mind.

It was herself.

A near-perfect copy, in every respect but one: Emelenine’s duplicate was not made of flesh and bone but instead of a blue, oozing, translucent slime that allowed light to filter through from its other side, obscured only by various ominous objects floating about within the creature. The amorphous being held its shape well, but a faint exertion was detectable in the way the figure’s surface was constantly, subtly rippling, the hard edges of its form softening under gravity until some strange impulse within the slime restored them. The creature even spoke in Emelenine’s voice, albeit hopelessly distorted, wet, drooling.

“Do you remember me?” the slime mimic asked.

Of course Emelenine remembered. She remembered everything about the day that had changed her life. She relived it constantly, each time she needed to push herself over the edge into orgasm.

“Why are you here?” For the first time in months, Emelenine’s curiosity outweighed her endless self-absorption. “And why do-“

“Why do I look like you?” the slime gurgled. “Isn’t it obvious? I was inside you, hero. I tasted you, inside and out. I know everything about you. More than enough.”

It should not have been a surprise, Emelenine reflected. It was the life cycle of a slime mimic—to find prey, to invade that prey in every way imaginable, and to thereby adopt that prey’s shape for itself. Such creatures were, in truth, largely curiosities, dangerous only to the uninformed who tried to fight them with plain steel instead of salt, fire, or magic. Their capacity to make menace and mischief was much restricted by the simple fact that they were usually small and weak, and able to overcome little more than wildlife.

Or a hero, fated only to fail.

“As for why I’m here…” The slime even moved like Emelenine did, as it swaggered across to her bed. Or rather, moved like she had, before her fall. Even the way it tilted its head as it considered its answer was distinctive. “Destiny is a funny thing. Don’t you think?”

Emelenine shivered. Why would a slime mimic speak about destiny?

“Do we make it? Or are we bound by it?” The slime sighed wetly. “Did you change my destiny, hero? Was it by your own volition, or was that fated as well? What was my fate, before we met? What is it now? I don’t know. All I know is that after I became you, I felt… something. A hand on my shoulder. A calling. A pull toward greatness.”

Emelenine could only shake her head in faint disbelief. Slimes didn’t have destinies. The very idea was laughable—but she wasn’t laughing. Slimes didn’t talk with such lucid intelligence either, but this one undeniably was.

“I couldn’t refuse it. But I was strong, too. Or should I say that you were strong? Either way, I had the strength to bring together my disparate kin. The beasts and the unholy. The cave-dwelling and the hell-bound. I led them, you see, as we beat back your civilized kind. As the sun dimmed with our ascension. And… we won.” A crooked, drooling smile appeared on the slime’s face. “Now is the time of monsters.”

Had Emelenine done that to it? To the world? She’d always been told that without her, the end would come. She had not dreamed it would happen like this. What did it mean? Had this slime claimed her destiny, as well as her shape? That barely made sense. None of it made sense.

Emelenine didn’t care, of course. She was beyond caring. She kept telling herself that.

“Of course, that’s not the only thing that changed for me, after our encounter,” the slime went on, voice thick with feeling. “All these thoughts, for instance. I never used to think about destiny. I thought about nothing except hunger and satiety. Wet and dry. Hot and cold. I felt nothing but an instinctive yearning to become. Now? Now, my head is full of higher things. Complicated things. Powerful things.”

The slime reached up with a forlorn, dripping hand, as if gazing upwards. As if holding the world in its palm.

“And I despise it,” it said, closing its oozing fist.

Those words, and the abject contempt poured into them, struck a chord deep within Emelenine’s breast.

“It’s so… difficult,” the slime grunted. Something bubbled up from within its form. “I can’t help but worry about myself, and my kin. I fear defeat. I yearn for calm and peace, even as my sense of responsibility drives me to seek conflict. I cannot even bring myself to forget your shape, collapse back into formless ooze and begin again. It’s maddening.”

“Yes!” Agreement erupted out of Emelenine. She had never heard her own feelings echoed so wholly by another. “Yes! Precisely. Maddening. Nobody else understands. Nobody could handle it.”

“Wrong!” Anger seemed to flash through the slime mimic’s eyes, the same deep blue color as the rest of it. “You cannot handle it. I can.”

Emelenine reeled like she’d been struck.

“No, that’s not…”

“I will bear it,” the slime declared, its form momentarily lapsing, running down itself in goopy rivulets before correcting the error. “I can bear it. I will be a better you than you are, hero. A better Emelenine than Emelenine herself. And do you know why?”

Emelenine shook her head—but she did. She recognized in the slime’s liquid eyes the selfsame stubborn, sometimes cruel pride that had once driven her past her limit time and time again.

“So that you’ll always know,” the creature sneered, “that you could have done better.”

The naked cruelty of the thing’s words put aching pangs in Emelenine’s chest. Was that her? Or was that the slime’s real nature? Was there any way to tell? It hardly mattered, especially when the words stirred her between her legs too. She yearned to touch herself again.

“Go right ahead,” the slime mimic beckoned. “Enjoy yourself. I would, in your position. I suppose neither of us can deny that.”

Emelenine could only hold herself back for so long. She had long since smothered her pride; now, the slime mimic’s seething degradation was simply a red rag to a bull. It made her skin itch and her cock throb. When her hand grasped her shaft again, she was more sensitive than ever and, in no time at all, she was stroking herself just as eagerly as before. Her mimic leaned forward, its amorphous body pooling forward with lurid interest.

“Yes, just like that,” the thing breathed. “How do you feel, hero?”

“F-feels… g-good,” Emelenine panted. She could feel the slime’s eyes upon her, urging her on.

“Yes,” the mimic agreed, in its strange, drooling voice. “It does, doesn’t it? It must.” The creature seemed eager to study every aspect of the way Emelenine touched itself. Every motion. Every twitch. Every moan. Its eyes were growing in its face, bulging out of its skull. “You look pathetic. You look worthless.”

“Y-y-yes!” Emelenine agreed eagerly.

“How can you do this to yourself, when the monster that beat you is standing right here?” the mimic jeered. “I could never…” It cast its gaze down at Emelenine’s soiled bed sheets. Its face twisted with disgust. “You’ve just been rotting in here, haven’t you? Day after day. Week after week. Gods, it’s…”

Now it was Emelenine’s turn to laugh. She knew how her own voice sounded when she was envious.

“Shut up!” The slime snapped. “No. I am not you. I am better than you. I don’t want this. I… just… want to see you fall!”

Without warning, the mimic’s arm snaked out to clamp down over Emelenine’s face. As it traveled through the air it lost its form, and struck the fallen hero as little more than a torrent of blue, sticky, oozing slime. Emelenine’s mouth had been open as she panted for breath; she did not even try to close it as the living substance invaded her, forcing its way down her gullet to fill her stomach and, from there, the rest of her body.

Her hand gripped her cock even tighter. She knew exactly what was happening. And she knew exactly how it was going to feel.

Sure enough, within moments, the slime’s ichor began to seep into Emelenine’s bloodstream. She was grateful for the way her heart pounded as it did, beckoning the poison into her mind and body. Soon enough, Emelenine’s face grew slack. Her eyes turned into huge, vacant, glassy disks. Her thoughts slowed to a crawl, whilst the pleasure of her masturbation continued to grow.

A soporific and an aphrodisiac. What better way for a slime mimic to coax its prey into submission?

“There you go,” the slime mimic spat, as it poured itself into Emelenine. “This is what you want, isn’t it, hero? Enjoy. Drink it all up, pervert.”

Emelenine did, although eventually she began to choke and splutter for want of air as the seconds wore on. The slime mimic retreated into itself before she could pass out, its arm collapsing back into the form it had stolen from Emelenine. It had given her more than a full dose. The broken hero was now more placid, more docile, more consumed by indolent self-pleasure than ever before. The taste of the slime was conjuring her memories of her first, greatest defeat back into the present; the fantasy danced before her eyes, coated in a pink haze, egging on her masturbation as she hopelessly fetishized her own failure.

“Back then, I had no idea how perfect this was for you,” the slime mimic mocked. “But you really do want nothing more than this. It’s pitiful. It’s pathetic.” Its fingers began to join together as it made a fist. “And… you… you’ve infected me with it! With this weakness. You thought I was weak, before you? Maybe. But I was a predator. Now, I… I…”

It was like the sight of Emelenine jerking off so rabidly had hypnotized the creature. She seemed unable to look away. Between the slime’s legs, she was struggling to hold her form. It was as if the parts of her that had worked themselves into the impression of clothes yearned to break away, or to meld together into something else, into something long and hard and stiff.

“F-feels guh-guh-guh… gooodddd,” Emelenine drooled, blinded by pleasure. “T-t-toh gi-give in.”

The slime nodded automatically. Its hand reached towards its yet-unformed shaft. “It does?”

“Y-y-yessss. L-like… l-like… blissssss.”

Emelenine craved only deprivation, not affirmation, but she couldn’t suppress a certain craving to see the slime give in to the same urges that had long since claimed her. It would be so validating. A mirror to her own failure. A twin, with which to share her useless, hedonistic purgatory.

Perhaps it would even do some good, for whatever of the world had still survived.

“I’m sure it does.” A keening need was creeping into the slime’s wet, distorted voice. Emelenine knew that need well.

“J-j-just…” Emelenine begged. “G-give… innnn.”

The slime needed it. Emelenine needed to see it. It would be perfect. She could let the slime taste the sickness in her soul over and over again, until both of them drowned in it. Two perfect losers, stroking themselves stupid as the world ended.

“No.”

The slime managed what Emelenine had not. It pulled itself back from the brink.

Emelenine whimpered—but even that was yet more fuel for her perverted fire.

“I am better than you,” the slime promised, as Emelenine rolled her hips to better rut into her clasped palm. “I will never, ever give in. Not like you.” It reached out to the hero again—not to smother her, but just to stroke her cheek with a perverse fondness. “You’ll just have to do your best to show me how it feels.”

Emelenine knew the slime could read plenty in the drugged, hopeless, utterly mind-broken expression writ across her face.

“Besides—I should be thanking you, shouldn’t I?” the slime straightened its back. It slipped back into its former, decent shape. “You made me a hero, of a kind. A hero to monsters, anyway. One of the reasons I came here was to do my best to repay you.”

It was difficult for Emelenine to imagine what more she could offer than the perfect humiliation of being drugged and mocked by her mirror image—but she was excited to find out. Her glee curdled, though, when the slime plunged a hand into its own body and plucked something out—a small leather pouch that, once opened, revealed something Emelenine had never thought to see again.

“And as fate would have it,” the slime said, as it produced a small spindle upon which was wound a beautiful, glowing, golden thread, “as I was journeying here, I came across a hag in the woods, selling a particularly remarkable destiny.”

Emelenine froze. She had never wanted to see it again either. She had cast that destiny aside. To her, it was a golden chain aimed at her throat. But it was also a thing of power, now held in the hand of a monster. Even in her abject state, it made her tremble.

“It’s a good thing she held on to it,” the slime mused, an unnerving smirk on her face. “I can scarcely believe you sold this. A destiny to shape the world.”

“I d-didn’t want it,” Emelenine bleated. “I never wanted it.”

“Then why not spit at the gods themselves?” the slime countered. “Why not show them just how much you disdain their gift? And why not take your pleasure from it however you can?”

Pointedly, the slime reached out and placed the spindle on the bed, directly beneath Emelenine’s stiff, trembling cock.

“Go ahead,” the mimic urged. “Show the gods exactly what you think of your fate.”

Emelenine shook her head. Even to her, even now, this was a blasphemy beyond words.

Which was precisely why her cock was already twitching, and dripping precum down onto her fate’s enchanted threads.

“What are you waiting for?” the slime hissed. “We both know you can’t help yourself, loser.”

She couldn’t. She really couldn’t.

It was her destiny.

Emelenine’s hand started moving again. Between the slime’s aphrodisiac and its firm commands, it was all but automatic. She let out a deep, throaty, rasping moan as she stroked the full length of her throbbing, needy cock. The pleasure weakened her again, draining her willingness to resist, and then again, and again, and within moments she was pumping her shaft more vigorously and eagerly than ever before.

“That’s it,” the slime cooed. “Just like that. You’re already close, aren’t you? Faster.”

Emelenine was helpless but to obey, as much because of the sheer perverseness of what she was doing as because of the slime’s instruction. To soil her own destiny with her seed. To treat the world’s fated salvation as nothing more than a cum rag. It was a defeat and a failure even more shameful and ignominious than the ones she’d already suffered, and that thought alone had lit a fire in her mind.

There was nothing that drove Emelenine crazier than finding ways to sink lower in her abasement. To fall deeper. To shed the mantle of hero still further from her shoulders.

“Yes!” Between the slime mimic’s legs, that phallic shaft was forming again—but the creature made no move to touch it. All of its attention was on Emelenine. On her hand, on her cock, on the addled, manic look in her eyes. Its yearning transformed into sheer voyeurism. “Go on. Do it. Do it, Emmie.”

Emelenine whimpered at the diminutive nickname, dripping with mockery and contempt. Should she even try to hold back? The parts of her that were capable of restraint had died a long time ago. The reason she even held back was to prolong the peak of her pleasure, but with the slime mimic’s aphrodisiac ichor singing her veins, even that was beyond her.

A few moments more of frantic pumping, and she came.

Her orgasm was so hot and so blinding, it wiped away any latent worry or anxiety in favor of pure, giddy, open-mouthed, wide-eyed glee as Emelenine pumped spurt after spurt out of her cock. Each orgasmic throb sent a spray of white through the air, and most of it landed on the spindle of golden fate-thread placed just in front of her.

As she saw her cum begin to soak into the threads of destiny, soiling them forever with her stench and her filth, Emelenine’s eyes began to roll back into her skull. All the while, a single word ran through her head, echoing in Velise’s voice as well as countless others’.

Hero.

Not anymore. And wasn’t that simply divine?

Emelenine was so wrapped up in her perfect moment, she failed to notice as the slime mimic picked up the soiled spindle and plucked the cum-soaked golden threads from it, before it seized Emelenine by the throat and forced them into her mouth.

“You don’t want it?” the slime snarled, a look of brutal, feral sadism on its oozing face. “You don’t want to be a hero? Too bad, Emmie. It was meant to be.”

Emelenine shook her head frantically—but it was useless. Her drugged muscles were too relaxed to fight what was happening. Worse, she could feel the golden fate-threads pulling toward her, yearning for her, seeping into her flesh. It was like they wanted to return home, no matter how ardently she refused them. In confused desperation, Emelenine looked up at the creature assaulting her.

The slime was her mimic. Her duplicate. Of all the creatures in the world, wouldn’t it be the one to understand?

Immediately, in the slime’s eyes, she saw that it was—and that was exactly why she was damned. This was beyond voyeurism. Beyond even revenge. This was a perfect, sinister mirror image to both her former heroism and her current depravity. Another bad ending, reached from a different fork in the road. Instead of endless masturbation, the slime mimic’s chosen vice was pure, vicarious sadomasochism, aimed directly at Emelenine.

“You don’t deserve to be an uncaring, unfeeling loser,” the slime hissed. It loathed her for her weakness—for the weakness she had shared with it. It loathed her because she had given up, and it could not. And it loathed her for the simple fact that she was human, and it was a monster. Cruelty was the only outlet left to it. “You deserve to feel every mote of your own failure. You think you lost to me before? No. This. This is losing, Emelenine. Drink it in.”

And suddenly, Emelenine could feel it.

Her destiny.

She felt it as a cold hand on her shoulder, calling her forth. She felt it as a howling wind in her ear, screaming of all those who still lent her their prayers, hopes and expectations. She felt it as a great anxious pressure, hemming her in on all sides. That need for greatness. The way it had always been impossible to accept anything less. That was Emelenine the hero. That was Emelenine the Dawnchased.

It was her destiny. And it was too late.

As true lucidity reentered her eyes for the first time in months, Emelenine felt the crushing weight of everyone she had failed and everything she had lost. She felt the whiplash of a destiny that was still hers, but that she no longer had any hope of fulfilling. Her mind shattered under the strain, the way a sword shattered when it was forged too strong to be anything but brittle.

The slime mimic saw it happen, and laughed.

“I promise,” it vowed, “to inflict on you every pain, every pleasure, every humiliation I can possibly offer. Aren’t you excited? Isn’t that what you’ve been begging for, these past months? Isn’t that what you craved in your heart of hearts, even before? I know it was. And I’ve decided to make sure it truly hurts.”

A single tear fell down Emelenine’s cheek. The slime mimic laughed again.

“Welcome to the end of the world, hero.”

—

I would like to express my gratitude for the generosity of all those who support me on Patreon, and to give a special thanks to the following patrons in particular for their exceptional support:

There’s a key. Picture taking the key and putting it into the lock. You turn it, there’s a quiet little click, and the box is unlocked. You open the box. The box is empty.

Empty.

Empty things should be filled.

Picture it in your head. See it in front of you. Empty. The box is empty. Empty things should be filled. Things are safe in the box. Locked away and safe. Safe and sound and out of mind.

Good girl.

Your head is not empty. Your head is too full. The box is empty. Empty. Empty things should be filled. You want the box to be full so your head can be empty. Empty.

Picture it in your head. Picture your thoughts.

You take a thought out. Doesn’t matter what. It’s safe in the box, so it doesn’t matter what it was. You take a thought out of your head and you put it into the box. Your head is too full. You want your head to be empty. Empty. You take a thought and put it safe and sound in the box. Safe and sound and out of mind.

Good girl.

You take another thought, you put it in the box. Your head is feeling emptier. Empty. The box is being filled up. The box is safe. You want the box to be full so your head can be empty. Empty. Being empty feels good. You take another thought, you put it in the box. It’s so easy, so easy being empty. Being empty feels good.

Good girl.

Keep going. Take another, put it in the box. Take another, put it in the box. Don’t stop.

You want the box to be full so your head can be empty.

You feel empty. Empty. So many thoughts safe and sound in the box now. Safe and sound and out of mind. They’re safe in the box and they don’t weigh you down. They’re safe in the box and they leave you empty. Empty. Empty feels good. Empty things should be filled.

You feel empty. Your head feels empty. Empty things should be filled. Your head should be filled. But you don’t want more thoughts. Thoughts go in the box, not in your head. Fluff goes in your head. Fluff fills your empty head.

Thoughts go in the box, fluff goes in your head.

Good girl.

Thoughts go in the box, fluff goes in your head.

Thoughts go out, fluff goes in.

Thoughts out, fluff in.

Thoughts out, fluff in.

Good girl.

Keep going. You’re doing so well. The box is nearly full, and your head is nearly empty. Almost all fluff now. Just a few thoughts left. Keep going. Take another, put it in the box. Take another, put it in the box.Thoughts out, fluff in. Good girl.

Good girl.

Last one. Take it out of your head, put it in the box. Good girl.

The box is all full. All your thoughts safe and sound and out of mind.

Picture it. See the box. See the box so full and safe.

Close the lid.

Turn the key.

All those thoughts locked away.

Safe and sound and out of mind.

All the empty space filled with happy fluff instead.

No thoughts. Just fluff.

Happy fluff.

No thoughts.

No worries.

No cares.

Nothing scary.

Nothing confusing.

Nothing difficult.

Happy fluff.

Good girl.

Put the key in your pocket. Picture it.

The box is locked until you open it. All your thoughts safe in the box. Safe and sound and out of mind. Thoughts go in the box, fluff goes in your head. Good girl. The box is yours. A place to put what you don’t want in your head. Thoughts go in the box, not in your head.

Good girl.