The Overture to Hell
Did the Goddess truly exist?
Not once had that noble voice ever deigned to speak to her. Not a word of small comfort for a woman sunk into such an abyss — not even one rotting line telling her to endure for the greater good. Nothing had ever come.
And so the doubt only grew. Was all of this nothing but smoke and mirrors, a screen to cage her inside the mold they called Saintess?
Nurturing that doubt, she lay in his arms — while her womb was filled, again and again, with the seed he spilled into her.
The truly serious trouble began the day after she clawed free of the illusion's shock. For her, it might as well have been the raising of hell's curtain.
First came the shock of the rape; then the hollow devastation left by the child who had been so mercilessly slain. But when she opened her eyes the next morning, nothing of it remained. The terror born of that unreal shock had evaporated entirely in a single night.
It was a moment that reminded her, anew, that humankind is a creature of forgetting.
She had, quite literally, been out of her mind. And so, the moment the fear dulled, she began repeating the same mistake.
The only path left to her was denial — to refuse the miserable reality of being taken by a man all over again.
"N-No! Stay away from me!"
"F-fucking—get off me!"
"Don't... t-touch... aaagh!"
This time, violence with pure intent behind it was carried out. He slapped her across the cheek and drove a heel down into her belly. When she fled the blows in a desperate scramble, her hair was seized at once and she was hauled back onto the bed. A kick to the chest sent her sprawling, and then he trampled her underfoot, stomping her down without rhythm or mercy.
After that he climbed atop her and hammered her cheek with his palm. When one side of her face swelled tight, he rolled her over and worked on the other. The inside of her mouth split and spattered blood, and the beating went on until the flesh beneath her eye hung in ribbons.
And then, a miracle occurred.
Lean drew up Serina's right hand and pressed her open palm against one swollen cheek — and light flickered to life beneath it.
"Why, it seems I can simply strike you down moderately each time you rebel, can't I? Even the light we possess agrees with you so well that a wound like this heals on the spot."
It was just as he said. The swelling sank away, and the taste of blood that had flooded her mouth vanished without a trace.
That was the beginning of hell.
The violence went on all morning. Every time the healing came, Lean smiled; every time, Serina screamed herself hoarse.
Her resentment deepened. At herself, who could do nothing even here. At her frail body, gasping under pain that felt as though every bone would crumble from one blow slightly too hard. And at the Goddess, who watched over her not at all.
Everything, everything was so bitterly hateful.
"Ah... nn... hck... hck..."
The emotion festering inside her burst.
"St... stop... h-hitting... me... hnn... I'm... sorry..."
Lean shook his head and reached out toward the sobbing woman — and her own hands flew up in a flash, covering her face. Her body had learned to react to a raised hand before her mind could.
"Yes. Just like that."
Lean's fingers drew her hands back down.
"Saintess. You understand by now, don't you? Mend your words and your conduct, and you may yet become a woman who is loved."
She had spent a full five hours being beaten by him.
"But you know, Saintess — do you imagine I would care for that expression? It isn't as if anyone is going to devour you. Enough of that frightened look; give me a different one. Ah — yes, that would be better. That face of a bitch in heat you wore yesterday. Show me that, just once, won't you?"
And through the whole of those five hours, she was violated as well.
When it was blows, the light that rode in with the healing made them at least bearable. But once he began driving into her, everything changed. Nothing came to soothe her, and the man crushing her down babbled his madness — that the clench of a weeping woman's body was the sweetest thing he knew.
Astonishingly, that was only the beginning.
"I truly cannot fathom why you despise me, Saintess. Every waking moment, I wear myself out devoting this body to the people. And this time, I even taught you — you, who struggled so long in chastity — the pleasure a woman's body can know. What on earth have I done to deserve this?"
Creak.
"Think it over. Help the Hero, and you can feel this good."
Creak.
"Help the Hero, and you may flounder in pleasure like this all you like."
Creak. Creak.
"Help the Hero, and there will be no trouble at all."
Creak. Creak.
"Well, Saintess? How is it? Feels good, doesn't it? All those years swaddled up in those big tits of yours — how stifling it must have been. I'm telling you, you're free to use this dripping cunt as much as you please."
Lean poured his venom into her ear without pause. She, who until moments before had been laid wholly bare to his violence, was already sunk deep in despair over her own condition — and so her mind gave way first.
The pleasure that fell upon her then, utterly defenseless as she was, was denser than anything before it. Dense enough to hollow her out into something like an idiot.
"Huaaang...! Ahn... haaang..."
"There. That's it — make pretty sounds like the shameless body you are. What a lovely sight you are. Weeping and coming apart in a man's arms. Truly beautiful, isn't it?"
After that she let herself go almost entirely, drifting through cycles of fainting and waking. Every time her eyes opened, all that greeted them was the bedsheets, or Lean's face. While she was out, he had been shifting positions however he pleased — once with her laid on her back, then flipped over for another round.
Only then did Serina truly understand. She was nothing more than a thing that spread its legs whenever he wished. Nothing above that, and nothing beneath it.
Had it not been for that, he would surely have gone on to pry her jaws apart and violate her very throat as well — his way of having his cock "cleaned."
The long rape ended only when her sex was painted over with semen. And at that ending, she surrendered every last shred of resistance.
The words Lean offered when he returned, washed clean and spotless, were the killing stroke.
"All of this — every bit of it — was something I simply could not help doing, out of my longing to see you free of the shock sooner, Saintess. Please. Forgive me graciously."
So that was it.
Lean wanted the Saintess back. Her usual self — the one who never flinched before violence, who discharged her duties with perfect devotion. He had simply wanted to hold, in his arms, the woman who was all mercy to everyone. That was the whole of it. That was why he had done such hideous things.
No matter what unwanted circumstances she fell into. Even if it was rape. Even faced with the decree that all she need do was take his cock into her day after day and service his lust — the message never changed: never lose the face of a Saintess.
Serina accepted the demand.
This time, too, the reasoning held. For the present, there was no escaping him. If she rebelled wildly again out of loathing for the penetration, she would become a madwoman long before she ever became his conquered female — of that much she was certain. So if she must receive his seed regardless, it was wiser to feign meek obedience and play the demure Saintess.
And once she showed him that docility, Lean's manner toward her changed. The instant she so much as stood, his hand was upon her as if conjured — stroking her plump rear through her panties, slipping into her clothes to knead her breasts. It grew worst when she was made to take her meals seated on his lap: fingers burrowed into her panties and stirred her sex while his other hand pinched and rolled her nipple. Already ill at ease at the table, now forced to swallow pleasure along with her food, she had to keep eating with trembling hands — and on the days a morsel dropped from her fingers to the floor, the thunderbolt fell.
He would peel her panties off, toss her onto the bed, and set about tormenting her sex with terrible patience. His slick tongue pressed against her walls and drew away, again and again, and when he took her folds between his lips and sucked, she could no longer bar the climax from arriving.
Lean was a fast study, and he wasted none of the weaknesses her body had surrendered to him. What little defiance remained was erased by just two climaxes — because with her naked vulnerabilities under direct assault and release crashing over her at merciless intervals, she could no longer guess how many more times she would have to accept such pleasure before it would end.
The dread drove her, in the end, to weeping and begging — and Lean did not deign to so much as glance at her. If anything, the sight only seemed to feed his cruelty; he would merely lay his fingers on her clit and her nipples now and then, bending her to his will by degrees.
"Ha. Saintess. If you needed the privy, you had only to say so. You're hardly a child — what am I to make of this?"
It ended with her wetting herself.
Even as she wiped her own urine from the floor, he took her from behind. And once the wretched cleaning was done at last, she was left bent forward with only her hips raised, her face pressed against the boards until he was satisfied.
Once, twice, she might have borne it. But Lean was a beast, plain and simple. He indulged in it at every hour of the day; from where she knelt, it was enough to turn her stomach inside out.
Even so, she did not resist. No — she could not. The shock of those enormous hands still lived in her flesh, raw and undimmed. And besides, he so plainly savored that submissive posture of hers that the choice had never really been hers to make.
"Saintess. You've been waiting a long while, haven't you? There are hardly any buildings left standing, so I was late — I had to go round from place to place."
And so she set herself, thoroughly and without reserve, to fitting herself around him.