A prophecy demands a sacrifice.

“I feared you would not arrive,” a hoarse, female voice called from the darkness somewhere behind the statue. Suddenly, a pair of glowing, yellow eyes pierced the shadows, “yet here you are. Chosen by the master, guided by fate.”

“What are you talking about?” Althea furrowed her brow and clutched the stick in both hands like a club. Even though the yellow eyes remained still in the dark, four other humanoid figures emerged from the shadows, each wearing the familiar, green robes of the cult.

“You are a priestess of Helestria, are you not?” the woman’s raspy voice asked. The four hooded cultists fanned out, circling along the walls to fully surround the acolyte. Althea darted her eyes among them, but she couldn’t watch them all at once.

“Let me go! I’m not going to tell you anything!” Althea shouted, swinging the glowing broomstick in as threatening a manner as she could. When they had her fully surrounded, they pounced as one. Hands seized her arms and legs as the combined strength of the four proved too great for her. In an instant, they took her to the ground.

“A saint of golden fleece, devoted to life, shall fall into darkness,” the woman continued. One of the cultists pried the broomstick from her hand and flung it out of reach. Once more the shadows stretched long against the walls from the light on the floor. With Althea’s limbs secured, the hooded figures hoisted her petite frame up off the floor and carried her toward the altar. Oh no. Althea knew nothing good could come of such a pedestal of fiendish worship.

“When the corruption fills her, and she feasts on human flesh, the priestess will swaddle herself in the grace of Nihilipox,” the hoarse woman added with an abrasive cough. She sounded terribly ill. But hope returned to Althea’s heart, if only for a brief moment.

“I am an acolyte of Helestria! I would never eat the flesh of another person,” she shouted, thrashing wildly against her captors. Yet their hold on her appendages held fast. It was then that the yellow eyes at last glided through the shadows. Emerging into the dim light of her toppled stick, Althea beheld the macabre visage of the cult’s leader.

White hair hung limply around her gaunt face. Long, spindly limbs carried her along. Unlike her peers, she wore a moldy, black robe with the middle crudely cut away, exposing her stomach. And what a sight it was to behold. The nearly spherical tummy **** the otherwise waifish woman to stand at an awkward angle, jutting the distended gut upward to maintain her balance. Pale flesh was pulled taut around whatever gestated beneath. The cult fanatic looked to be well past her due date, but like everything Althea had seen on her journey thus far, it was nothing more than a twisted mockery of Heletria’s gifts. This woman bore a wicked aura of toxic fecundity. Black veins, thick and throbbing, marred every inch of her swollen stomach. For a moment Althea swore she saw something squirming beneath the glistening surface of the woman’s malignant womb.

“Haven’t you though?” the raspy woman added. Her voice sounded like it was full of phlegm, and Althea could even see a dribble of black bile at the corner of her shriveled lips. A pair of saggy, deflated breasts drooped to either side of the drum-tight belly. She might have been a beautiful woman at one time, but her body was ill, withered and ripened into a foul farce of fertility. The woman reached out with her bony claws and plucked a crumb from Althea’s cheek. “The cult of Nihilipox only bakes pies from our most deserving sacrifices, and it looks to me like you gobbled one up,” she laughed, coughing a fleck of the black bile onto Althea’s chest.

“No… but I was so hungry...” she muttered, frozen with dread. The horror sunk in. That meat pie was made… of human flesh? Althea’s stomach did somersaults, but the reflex to vomit eluded her. Wailing in anguish, Althea thrashed against her captors again. “Whyyy?!” she shrieked through sobs. Why was Helestria testing her so harshly? Upon learning the truth of her unintentional cannibalism, the light at the end of the broomstick flickered once, twice, and then snuffed out. For the first time since starting her journey, Althea felt truly alone. She ceased her struggles. Gone was the warmth of Helestria, but something else remained.

There in the darkness of the chamber, Althea watched a circle of nine rings flare up with a toxic green light. Its ominous illumination flashed across the underside of the Unclean Sire’s statue. Looking up toward the ceiling as the cultists continued holding onto her limp arms and legs, Althea again felt woozy at the sight of Nihilipox. She turned away, only to finally realize something about the cultists gripping her.

“By the goddess,” she whispered in disgust. Beneath each of their hoods she saw their faces smudged with the stains of corruption. Pustules, boils, and open sores covered their skin in patches. One of them even had the telltale black mold growing from his eyes. Flashbacks of Fabian, Lorna, and the orc flooded her mind. Quaking with a sudden, ecstatic shudder, she felt something hot and wet splash against her inner thighs. Judging by how it tingled, she suspected it was more of the latent ichor seeping from her innermost depths.

“Behold, my brethren, as the ritual commences!” the fanatic rasped, one clawed hand stroking the grotesque expanse of her rounded belly. She approached Althea between the cultists holding her legs. Each shambling step proved just how ponderous and burdensome her belly must have felt. “For nine years,” the woman said in a low tone, “I carried our master’s scion for nine years. Fed it with my very lifeforce.”

“Please just let me go!” Althea sobbed, tears streaming down her face. “I promise to speak nothing of this place if you release me!” She felt the woman’s malevolent aura close in around her, instilling a sense of claustrophobic dread. One bony hand still rubbed the inhumanly bloated belly, but the other now flexed its claws over Althea’s robed midriff.

“I awaited your inevitable arrival. I sought to please the master,” the fanatic continued. With a deft slice, the gaunt spectre of a woman tore a hole in the fabric while leaving Althea’s flesh unharmed beneath. The young captive couldn’t help but notice that her robes reflected the bloated cultist’s with the overtly exposed tummy. This dreadful notion sank deeper in Althea’s heart when the woman splayed her slender fingers over Althea’s navel. She tensed her abdomen at the prickly claws, but no blood was drawn.

“And now I pass the master’s gift onto you,” the fanatic laughed as a baleful, black light glowed around each of her hands. It mixed with the green runes in a twisted and volatile miasma of dark power. A tremble shook the veiny, misshapen belly, and the engorged cultist groaned with pain and pleasure entwined. “Aghhh, the spawn of Nihilipox stirs within me!”