Lair of the Cryptmother Ch. 5 [Dark Fantasy][Body Horror][Light Gore][Noncon][Breeding][Preg]

**”The Temple of the Unclean Sire”**

Althea held her staff out ahead and stood as straight as possible. Sucking in her stomach, she began the squeeze through the mysterious crevice. She wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or disgusted by the fact that the smelly, slippery slime lubricated her body just enough to pop through the narrow stone gap. Althea shuddered at the foul essence that coated her body. Blinking a few times, she quickly recognized her new location as some sort of storage room.

The stone walls appeared hand-worked, but the numerous cracks that ran along the surfaces stood out in dark contrast. She held up her glowing stick for a closer look, only to confirm her suspicions. Black mold filled the cracks, though clearly far tamer than the stuff that killed… Fabian and Lorna.

“Goddess forgive me… how could I have forgotten?” she said softly, a tear forming in her eye. Due to the trauma suffered at the hands of the two zombies, she nearly forgot all about her fallen comrades. She briefly bowed her head and closed her eyes in silent prayer.

Returning to her current predicament, Althea assessed the storage room, panning her broomstick side-to-side like a torch. Within the moderately-sized room she discovered crates of iron tools, blankets, a few stacked wooden chairs, and crates of food. A growl rose in the acolyte’s stomach, and she realized she hadn’t eaten in hours. Althea cast a furtive glance toward the lone wooden door leading out of the room before walking over to the food supplies.

She reached out toward the first crate and saw the full extent of her state of filthy wretchedness. This would not do. The young priestess stripped down from her ceremonial robes, their torn fabric stained with the rancid ichor of her violators. At least the room was warm. A good towel-down with one of the blankets cleaned off most of the filth, but a fine residual stench lingered everywhere it had touched.

Perhaps a small helping of food and a change of clothes might prove an appreciated respite from her tortuous journey. While most of it was dried or otherwise preserved meats and fruits, she found one crate that had a number of strangely warm meat pies. Althea sniffed one of the savory pastries warily, but it smelled as fresh as it looked. At the behest of yet another stomach growl, the blonde acolyte sighed and took a big bite out of the nearest meat pie. What exquisite flavor! Almost immediately, she felt a rush of warmth surge throughout her body, gathering most notably in her loins.

Again, the dark corner of her mind pulsed stronger, and she caught herself with one finger slipping inside her naked, ichor-painted pussy. By the goddess, what was happening to her? Althea brought the wet, blackened finger to her nose and gagged. It stank of rotten meat, and she immediately wiped it off on her blanket towel. In spite of the nauseating odor emanating from her abused pussy, Althea finished the meat pie and let out a petite belch. She covered her mouth in shame before remembering she was alone. And naked. On that note, her eyes flicked to the pair of pale-green, hooded robes hanging on a rack in one corner of the dimly-lit room.

Althea’s hips ached, and fatigue was beginning to set in. Nonetheless, she leaned on her broomstick and pulled herself to her feet with a meek grunt. Upon closer inspection, Althea noticed a familiar icon sewn into the back of the robes. If she remembered correctly, the white skull dangling from a black hooked chain was the icon of Nihilipox the Unclean Sire. The demon lord of disease and undeath.

“Why are these here?” she whispered to herself. Though she felt ashamed to wear the emblem of a demon, it would prove an invaluable disguise if this place was indeed controlled by the followers of Nihilipox. She gingerly slipped her arms into the sleeves and wrapped the sickly, green fabric around her body. Disgust filled Althea’s body. Dizziness made her stumble, but she caught herself with a hand on the wall. It felt as if donning the robe sent a gurgle throughout her stomach.

The blonde priestess pressed a hand to her discontented tummy. Did it feel bigger? Surely it must have been gas bloating. From the meat pie. Nothing more. Althea’s hunger felt sated, so it was time to move on and put this miserable nightmare behind her. She made for the door, grasped the knob, and swung it open just as a pair of hooded cultists passed in front. They stopped in their tracks and turned simultaneously toward the wide-eyed priestess. Each had a dagger tucked into the waistcord of their robes and they each had a baffled expression.

“Who in the infinite layers of the Abyss are you?” one of them asked. Though the hood hid most of their features, this one looked and sounded like a male elf judging by his slender physique. The other looked was a gnome woman who stood no taller than Althea’s knees. She wondered if she could take them in a fight, but she was only equipped with a broken broomstick.

“I’m… um…” Althea bumbled over her words before trailing off. To her fortune, or misfortune, the priestess doubled over with a sharp pang of pain in her stomach. “Nnggghhh…” she groaned. She clasped a hand over her mouth and puffed out her cheeks. A cold sweat erupted across her browline.

“Toilet is that way…” the gnome jabbed a thumb over shoulder down the direction from whence they came. Althea fervently nodded her thanks and sprinted down the hall toward the first hole she could find.

She thanked the blessed mother when it was easy to find. Throwing open the door, she barely made it inside before exploding into a frenzy of vomiting. Black ichor spewed from her lips, spattering the lid of the toilet and pooling on the floor around it. Another lurch rose in her guts, and she emptied the contents in another font of the vile serum. It felt like more of it missed the toilet than made it in, and Althea could swear she saw small, pale larvae writhing amidst the black bile. What if the cultists came to check on her? She had no time to dawdle. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she stumbled back into the hallway.

“That’s her!” the male elf shouted from halfway down the hall. Althea gasped and sprinted as quickly as she could. Purging the foulness from her stomach renewed her vigor, and she rounded the corner in a flash. The hallway continued, ahead, but there was also a pair of doors to her left and a third door to her right. If Althea didn’t act quickly, the cultists would catch up to her.

With no clues to go on, Althea decided at random and quickly grabbed the door handle to her right. The priestess dashed inside, quietly shutting the door behind her. She took a moment to catch her breath, resting her head against the heavy, wooden door. When she heard the cultists march past without stopping, she let out a soft, shuddering sigh of relief.

All of that changed when she turned around. The walls curved around into the darkness beyond. Althea guessed it formed a great circle with no definitive corners. Unlike the crude stone floors of the hallway, this chamber had an ornate mosaic of small tiles painted in all manner of pestilent colors. There was pus green, yellow bile, infection scarlet, bubonic black, bleached bone white, and so many more. But this was not even the most captivating nor horrifying adornment to the domed, circular room. At the chamber’s center stood a black and crooked altar carved from the infamous, ever-rotting ebony wood of the Gloomgnarl Oak, a rare tree renowned for its origin in the Abyss. Even from this distance and only by the light of her broomstick, Althea discerned eldritch runes chiseled into the wood.

Yet more frightening still was the twenty-foot statue of Nihilipox looming above the broad, blackwood altar. Hewn from the demonic, burgundy-colored obsidian known commonly as bloodstone, it bore a striking figure. The mold-mottled statue bore the head of a stag skull, the upper body of a hulking, bloated, tumorous humanoid with three tentacles in place of each arm, and the lower body of a lumpy, serpentine worm. Nine spears sat lodged in his stooped back, each decorated with a dangling chain. Every hook at the end of each chain sported a trophy skull.

No doubt about it. This was Nihilipox. Simply standing in the presence of the statue and altar set off a trembling in Althea’s guts. No, no… not again. Sweat sprung from her forehead and neck, coursing down into the folds of her heretical green robes. Then her vision began to blur. Was this the power of the demon lord? Althea averted her gaze, and while the dizziness passed she felt the warmth pooling in her crotch. She needed to get out of here.

“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 forced 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!”

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/kbwsum/lair_of_the_cryptmother_ch_5_dark_fantasybody