Judgment of the Plains (2)
“Um…, Chief? Or is it Elder? Ah, whatever! I’ll confess!! I…, I really did trespass on the sacred grounds……!!”
…I cry out in desperation, but the old ogre has already put considerable distance between us with that surprisingly swift gait that belies his massive frame. He glances back once, then simply opens the barn door to let us out.
“So there’s no need for this kind of trial!! I did wrong, I really did! Any punishment is fine, just please don’t—!”
The door slams shut. Inside the sturdy wooden enclosure built high enough that even the giant body of the Rockbent Ram cannot escape, I am left alone with the enormous beast in the middle of the plain, where nothing but blue sky can be seen.
And the Rockbent Ram—the creature favored by the ‘Earth Mother’—seems displeased by my earlier screaming while calling for the chief. It presses its hoof down on me with added force.
“Eghk……!!”
Even the scream that tries to burst out is cut off into a ridiculous sound. My stomach, my ribs—nothing moves when I try to breathe. To this creature, it is probably only a moderate amount of restraint, but to me it is anything but.
‘Hah, my waist…, it’s going to break…, no, my body is going to burst…….’
Overwhelmed by the terror that I might become nothing more than crushed bone and mangled flesh, like an ant beneath a human finger, I cannot even struggle. I simply stiffen.
Perhaps sensing no resistance from my body as consciousness begins to fade from suffocation and crushing, the weight of the hoof pressing down on me lightens slightly.
“Hah…… ugh…, ah…, ugh……”
I manage to exhale and draw in air. The barn’s distinctive scent of hay mixed with dung floods my nostrils, but I have no luxury to care. I have to force air back into lungs that had been on the verge of suffocation.
…Perhaps because it is herbivore dung, the smell is still bearable even inside the enclosure.
The Rockbent Ram’s hoof finally lifts completely from my body. Though freed from the crushing foreleg, I have no desire to anger the ram and be reduced to pulp. I simply remain prone, glancing nervously at the giant sheep’s unreadable eyes.
While I lie there, the ram’s long tongue licks me. The rough, saliva-slick tongue reeks as it drags from my hair down to the soles of my feet. It is unpleasant, but I have no choice. If I want to live, I must stay still.
‘Is this thing smelling something edible on me…? Hay, or porridge, maybe.’
Even as I tremble, the ram’s long tongue slips beneath my body. It slides under my belly and begins to lift me.
‘W-what……’
It seems to want me upright, so I obediently follow the movement of its tongue. On hands and knees, I turn my head and anxiously watch the ram’s eyes.
The ram appears satisfied with the posture. It lets out a low, resonant bleat that sounds like a normal sheep’s “meeh—” sampled at an enormous volume, vibrating through my bones. Then…, something lightly touches the back of my body—my rear.
“Hngh?!”
Hot, pointed, hard, and slightly wet… I do not need to look to know what it is. The fully aroused member of the male ram. I swallow dryly and steel myself not to be startled no matter what happens, then turn my head slightly.
The resolve crumbles instantly.
“A-ah…, ugh……”
A terrified whimper escapes me. My jaw chatters despite my wishes; my teeth click together. My limbs tremble so violently they can barely support my light weight.
Like the horn of a narwhal, a spiraling pink mass of flesh slowly strokes my tailbone. The size of that grotesque lump… is nearly as long as I am tall.
The tip is as thick as my finger, widening toward the base until the thickest part matches the girth of my thigh. Compared to the ram’s enormous body it is slender, yet…
‘W-with that shape…, it can even penetrate females of other species……’
If it were a blunt organ that could only crush its victim without ever penetrating, I might still cling to hope. But this… even if it misses my genitals, it looks capable of simply tearing straight through flesh.
Staking my life on the chance, I speak to the ram in a trembling voice. It does not matter whether the animal understands language. I have heard that sheep are intelligent. They can read expressions and atmosphere.
“Um…, listen…”
The ram’s horizontally slit eyes turn toward me, perhaps intrigued by my faint, guttering voice. While repeatedly sniffing the scent of my back with its nose, it waits.
“C-can’t we…, not do this……? Please……?”
The ram’s eyes, head, and body remain as motionless as mountains. Does it understand? Does it grasp that mounting a tiny human female like me will kill me?
“If that thing… goes inside, I…, something like me… will really die, you know? So instead of this, let’s do something else—”
Even my desperate plea, spoken so that even a mute animal might understand, is cut short. With a dull crack, an unfamiliar yet utterly wrong sensation pierces straight through my body.
“―――? ――!! ―― ……. ……? Huh…? ……. Ugh……. ……. Ugh, ugh……. O-ugh……”
After one violent convulsion like a freshly caught shrimp, I collapse limply onto the floor. My arms and legs hang useless like a puppet with cut strings, yet my hips remain raised in an obscene posture, impaled on something.
‘What…? What, what is this…? Am I…, am I still… alive……?’
Something that feels like my body is being crushed from the inside—an indescribable sensation I have never felt before—twists my spine vertebra by vertebra.
“Augh…, eh. Egh…, u-ugh……”
I want to scream, but the pain that feels as though my insides are being pulverized prevents my lungs and throat from functioning. The only sounds I can make resemble the cries of a beast, audible only from very close by.
‘U-ugh……. My legs? My legs…, won’t…, move……’
No. They are not merely immobile. It feels as though my legs have vanished, severed below the waist as if by scissors.
Denying it over and over in my mind, I force my fear-stiffened head to turn. Even knowing I will see something I should never witness, I cannot suppress the morbid curiosity.
“Egh……? Ugh…, u-ugh……. He……?”
My lower body—hips and thighs—are spread at an angle they were never meant to achieve.
“Augh…, a-ugh…, ugh……”
I had suspected as much. The cracking sensation had been my pelvis splitting, and the loss of feeling in my legs came from severed nerves below the spine. I simply had not wanted to admit it. That in this place, I am fated to be crushed to death by the reproductive organ of a beast larger than my own torso—an organ belonging to a creature that cannot even understand speech.
Blood drips steadily between my broken, torn legs. Though sensation in my lower body has vanished, I somehow know the bleeding comes from a completely ruptured vagina.
It is not that the ram forced entry where there was no opening, nor that it mistakenly penetrated my anus. Because it prefers females of other species, it apparently possesses the ability to locate the correct orifice without sight—perhaps by detecting the pheromones rising from a female’s reproductive organ.
Most of the pain is absent because the nerves in my lower body have been severed, yet a dull ache gradually rises. The impacts of the member pounding against my uterus and tearing beneath the peritoneum are spreading to my upper body, where the nerves remain intact.
‘W-what do I do……? Even with just these injuries I’ll clearly die soon from blood loss or infection. Somehow—’
But a sudden surge of nausea cuts off any rational attempt to find a solution.
“Ugh…, urp! Uurk……”
There is no time to even try holding back the retching. Vomit pours out as though someone has squeezed my stomach. With nothing in my belly, only a small amount of thick, sour gastric fluid comes up, yet the burning in my esophagus forces me to gasp for breath for a long while.
‘My…, stomach……? What on earth…, what……’
I do not need to think. My insides are being stirred. The tip of the Rockbent Ram’s massive organ has ruptured the muscles above my vagina and is now churning deep inside my abdominal cavity instead of my uterus.
A completely different agony from before—my organs being crushed into pulp, the contents of my bowels bursting forth—makes my consciousness grow distant.
“Agh…, ugh, grk……. Gk……. Hngh……. U-ugh, ugh……”
My vision blurs with pain and tears. Even when violated by humans, even when my insides were stirred by deer or insects, it had hurt—but there had always been an unwanted pleasure mixed in. Now there is none. Only pain… an agony so intense it feels as though my consciousness will be torn away. The fact that I can still think at all is miraculous.
‘……?’
“U-ugh……?”
For a moment just now, my consciousness cut out. I cannot last much longer like this. I have to find a way. Turn back time, or……
‘Th-that’s right……. The pain-suppression spell…, the one they used at the hospital……’
A spell formula I had not used in nearly ten years flashes through my mind—the one cast on people whose limbs had been severed or organs exposed, to ease their final moments. The image of myself from that purer time, when I was still an ordinary healing mage, rises like a lantern in my dying mind.
‘Pe…, Pepin’s…, Delayed…, Pain……. Please…, let it work……’
Clinging desperately to my flickering consciousness, I complete the calculations and finish the incantation in the quietest voice possible so as not to agitate the giant beast violating me. The moment the flow of mana gently envelops me, the pain…
…does not disappear.
‘A-ah, it hurts……!!’
…Of course it does not. The spell does not completely sever pain. It merely spreads out what would have been ten units of agony at once into one unit every six seconds over the course of a minute. Overwhelming pain like having one’s organs crushed and burst still hurts just as much.
Even the patients who received this spell in the hospital had groaned under the dull, heavy ache. It only helped them keep hold of consciousness a little longer, preventing them from fainting. Perhaps keeping them awake was itself a curse.
But for me right now, it is different. I cannot afford to lose consciousness. Fainting might lessen the pain, but in this situation it would mean death. I cannot turn back time while unconscious.
I cannot survive long with my organs completely destroyed. Whether by infection, shock, or blood loss, my life will not last. A few minutes… perhaps only seconds. I have to turn back time immediately. My upper body can still move; I still have the strength to touch my own body.
I have no idea what will happen if I rewind time while this thigh-thick member is crushing my insides, but it is still better than dying. Survival comes first.
Since the Rockbent Ram is a living creature, rewinding time should either kill it or reduce it to a harmless infant. Dealing with the enraged ogres afterward will be another problem, but it is still better than dying here.
Then I will erase the ram and heal my body afterward. That way, I can at least survive until the ogres bring food in half a day, or until morning. With that thought, I gather strength into my fingertips.
‘Rewind……’
“Ugh…, u-erk……. Urk!! Cough, cough…, grk, ugh…, u-erk……!!!”
But the agony of having my stomach crushed, the repeated dry heaves even though there is nothing left to vomit, scatters the temporal mana I have gathered at my fingertips.
Even though this power has become nearly instinctive after proper training at the magic academy, it fails. In literal agony as flesh and bone are ground apart, I cannot even gather the minimum concentration required.
‘No, no…, no, like this……. I, I can’t die……. I have to focus…, somehow…, I have to focus……’
It is hopeless. Even with the pain-suppression spell active, my consciousness is fading. It is not because of the pain. My limbs tremble violently because blood no longer reaches my fingertips. Perhaps it is the blood continuously leaking from my torn lower body, soaking the hay beneath me. At this rate I will die of blood loss long before any infection can claim me.
I do not want to die. I do not want to burst and die like a trampled insect……
‘Th-that’s right……. I…, I am…, even if I am an evil…, otherworldly…, existence…, I am…, the vessel of a god……. I was chosen…, as an angel…, wasn’t I……? So……. Save me, save…, me…, please, save me……!!’
…Thus, in my desperation, my fading reason commits the one thought it must never entertain,
and the power of the outer god that answers that prayer begins to bloom, riding upon my tiny body.