Jamen knelt on the altar, open-mouthed to receive the goddess.

The silver top bruised hard against his bare knees while the room suffocated, hot and damp; too many bodies, too many torches throwing the acolytes’ shadows against the walls in rough, dramatic strokes.

"Mahreth!" One of the priests invoked the goddess. It was the only word Jamen understood among their chanting in the gods’ tongue.

"Vessel," a priestess addressed him, raising the dark wooden staff she carried. She used it to tip his head back, exposing his throat, straining the muscles in his neck. She smirked at his discomfort.

Alena, he remembered her name at last.

Her fingertips lingered on his skin longer than necessary as she checked his bindings. It was pointless. Jamen had struggled against them in vain for an hour before exhaustion and acceptance finally set in.

"You’re so pretty," Alena breathed. "Our Mistress will be pleased."

He felt his cheeks sting, the blush burning bright with shame. He was naked, hands bound at the small of his back, chained tight to the altar. Knees loosely parted, cock dangling limp and cold with his terror, the priests had forced him to kneel in supplication to welcome her.

An offering. A vessel.

Alena let her gaze sweep deliberately over him before forcing his head back with her hand through his hair. "Don’t make me hold you here." Her voice dripped honey-dark.

"Alena," another priestess scolded. "He isn’t for you."

Jamen swallowed, sweat dripping down his throat as he considered who he was for. Mahreth, he heard the priests and priestesses chant the name. Goddess of all magic. The one behind all power in the world, who fueled their tools and cities. Among a pantheon that aided humanity in a myriad of ways, Mahreth was the one they relied on the most.

The priestess, Alena, turned away from him and walked to a low table beside the altar, where a black glass chalice sat beside a silver pitcher.

The acolytes had been starving him to keep him weak, his only meals dark goblets of too-sweet wine that left him woozy, disoriented, and finally brought him to the altar, trussed up like a Winter’s Eve ham, his mouth open for the candied apple.

Now, chanting growing louder and faster as Alena approached him, they brought him more wine in the same dark goblet.

He closed his mouth, a feeble resistance, and the priestess made good on her threat, fingers tight in his hair, wrenching him back until his lips parted and she could pour the liquid between his teeth.

Jamen resisted but she only poured more, until he choked with the effort of not swallowing, not giving in. It overflowed his mouth and spilled down his body, rivulets as dark as day-old blood trailing down his chest, his thighs as he opened his throat to swallow.

The wine pooled hot in his hollow gut. Alena released him.

The chanting grew to fever pitch. Jamen’s skin was hot, sticky with sweat and wine as the too-familiar syrupy brightness of the drink’s influence settled over him. Every jeweled tone of the silk draperies burned his eyes. The chanting voices tasted like cherries in his mind. The metal at his knees pulsed with rhythm and he felt himself falling, falling, tumbling forward into the brazier of fire before the altar, but he didn’t move. The chains held him fast.

Dark eyes tracing the shape of him in the firelight, Alena raised the staff she carried. The jagged stone at its head bathed him in blue-white godlight as she began to speak.

"Mistress!" She shouted over the chants. "Mahreth," Alena named her, voice rich with adoration. "We present to you this vessel."

The light from the staff washed over him. Everywhere it touched, pleasure burst across his skin. Sensation rode along his arms, his sides, his stomach, and lower. Jamen moaned deep in his throat, head falling forward. Through the soft veil of his hair, he saw lines of godlight on his body – each path the wine had taken as it ran down his chest was now as brilliant as the staff, thrumming his nerves with feeling.

A smoky voice resonated in the chamber, somehow closer than the chanting, as if the woman speaking had her lips at his ear. "Let me put my tongue in your mouth, my voice in your lungs, my words in your breath."

The pleasure folding along his body grew steadily more and he breathed harder, pulse pounding, an ache rising between his parted legs. All of him burned.

"Let me burn you from the inside out."

Jamen’s veins glowed softly like the staff, like the wine. He could see the shadows of his bones, each rib a bar of the cell around his heart, lit up like the Nearda, the winter star – just as bright, and just as eerily blue.

"My rage and your strength; you will be my vengeance, my justice. My death."

Without his permission, and with strength he knew he did not have, his hands broke free of their bindings.

Muscles reveling in their freedom, Jamen tried to stretch his arms, pop his shoulders, but they moved against his will, ripping away the chains until he stood flat-footed on the altar, a body ripe with feeling, a man made of godlight.

With his own mouth, the voice he’d heard addressed the crowd. "I am Mahreth. This is my vessel." The goddess slid his hands over his chest, his stomach, drifting down to take him in hand. She curved Jamen’s lips in a smile as she gave him a slow, gentle stroke, then let go.

Had he control of his own body, he would have groaned, but he was powerless to control what the goddess did with him.

She stepped from the altar, held out his hand for the staff, and walked among the now-silent priests and acolytes.

"Feed him. Give him a chamber befitting his status." She spoke with his voice. "He will need rest after this. Take care of him."

Alena licked her lips and nodded. "Yes, your worship."

"And give him some clothes." Jamen’s voice lilted with amusement. "Something soft."

Before Alena could agree again, the light was gone from Jamen’s body and he staggered, leaning hard on the staff as he regained immediate control of his body.

What, his thoughts fought for purchase in his mind. What have they done to me?

The voice - Mahreth’s voice – echoed back inside his head. They did not do anything. I did. You’re mine now, Jamen.

The priests helped hold him up, guided him back into the living areas of the temple, unaware and unable to hear their goddess in his head.

Together, you and I are going to reshape this world.