maybeElse

content warnings: 2nd person perspective, an enormous spider, corruption, minds being overwritten with higher purposes, oviposition, body horror(?), extremely horny, smut.

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A looming spider, a horrid beast! Its chelicerae drip with purple-gold venom; it picks its way through the world on claws as sharp as needles! With each step its swollen abdomen dips to touch the ground; the air shivers before its mass.

What a fate, to encounter such a monster!

And yet—

Its pedipalps hang thick with bells, each of a different size, each carefully tied to the rough hairs that coat those waving appendages; more bells adorn its legs. Some dangle from silken thread and some are held by rings which pierce through the beast's chitin.

It doesn't make a sound as it moves; what skill it must possess, what care it must take, to refuse to permit even one of its bells to chime! How beautifully they shine in your lantern's dim light, copper and silver and gold all so bright against its mottled chitin; how odd that not one has begun to tarnish.

And its eyes, its eyes! The central pair staring vast and dark, seeming almost too large for its head, and the layers of ever-smaller eyes which ring them—it drinks up the whole world, its focus impossible to see—

Yet it seems like it's looking at you, doesn't it?

You've certainly been doing your best to get its attention, tugging on its web, struggling against all those sticky strands that hold you fast. Drawing it closer.

Its bells chime for the very first time as it extends one of its pedipalps towards you; it's sharp and soft against your cheek, cold where a tiny bell nudges you, pleasantly warm otherwise. It lingers there for a second, taking in your scent and tasting your skin, then runs down your neck, along your chest and stomach and—

You squeak and it pulls back in one abrupt motion, the cave suddenly full of a jangling cacophony. Every bell rings, and only slowly falls silent. Its eyes seem …

Well, they seem just as they did before. Nothing about its look has changed; just a slight shift in its stance, open curiosity giving way to … something. You can't quite tell, and isn't that a pity?

It regards you its new position, its eyes drinking up your futile struggles for freedom; the web seems to cling tighter to you with every moment, and part of you wishes that you hadn't taken your clothes off before throwing yourself in—at least then you'd have some insulation from it. Maybe even been able to slip out of your clothes to find freedom in a way that your skin would never willingly permit.

Why did you do this, again?

Why willingly throw yourself into a web and draw its mistress's attention?

It seemed like a good idea at the time, as all such things do, as all regrets try to justify themselves. It seemed like it might be fun—and if this body is ruined, well, you'll just wake up back in your proper one, right? It will all be fine.

… right?

The spider stares, and then it shakes itself in a way wholly unlike a dog might. Its pedipalps shake and shiver and sway, its bells chime first rhythmically and then in strange harmonies—

It's almost like it's trying to sign something at you, or cast a spell; but no meaning emerges from its motions and no telltale glow betrays its gathering magic. It just jangles and signs and slowly, slowly its bells cohere into something like a song, a rhythm dripping with intent.

A voice.

“… a lovely prey, but why have you come here?” it asks. “Why have you tugged at my web and drawn me out?”

“Uh,” you say with unbridled cleverness, “I tripped.”

The spider's bells twitch in something very much like a laugh.

“A prey-thing which takes off its clothes in the pit before tripping into a web! How polite!”

“Yes, well—”

“But you are still prey, and with not a trace of an ambush in sight …”

Its voice dissolves into dissonant chimes as it steps back towards you; you can practically smell your own fear, shot through with that traitorous pang of arousal (that voice that led you here, that will surely end up costing you this body, that laughs in the back of your mind), so how much must the spider's senses be able to pick out?

Its pedipalps twitch just inches away from your bare skin. Soaking up that hot spicy smell, the tang of sweat and—

Venom drips freely from its chelicerae, more now than before: thick and multicolored, a brilliant purple shot through with golden veins. Its fangs, now slowly extending towards you, flow just as freely—and surely that shouldn't be! Surely such a waste of venom must mean something, some overproduction or … it's abdomen is so very swollen. Perhaps …

But wondering doesn't slow the spider down one bit, and neither does your halfhearted pleading for freedom; its fangs press against your stomach's soft flesh, then slip inside.

They're only inside you for a moment, hardly any time at all. A second of pain gives way to seeping warmth, to something starting to spread through your blood and tissue; just that, and thezn they're gone, carefully folded away once again.

“W-what did you do?”

The spider doesn't answer; not a single one of its bells chimes. It just watches.

Heat curls in the pit of your stomach and drifts out through you in little twinges of sensation; the warmth of the venom starting to saturate you, sapping the strength from your limbs and pooling like hot honey all through your body. It burns in the pit of your stomach, tugs at your tightening nipples and drips down towards your crotch; it plucks strings that thrum through your mind.

And all that warmth, all that heat—

It's a fire begging to be fed, something hungry and needy gently taking over as your mind dissolves into purple clouds. You couldn't say whether it's you or your body or something else trying to press your thighs together, trying to get even the slightest bit of sensation; but the web holds you unbearably tight and there's nothing but your own fading struggles and the cool cavern air against your too-hot skin.

And through it all the spider just sits and waits and watches, as your voice spills out like blood from an unstaunched wound and your body squirms and the need burning inside you grows and grows—

The wait is unbearable, but that's the problem with being taken like this: monsters run on their own time.

---

It's hard to say how long the spider makes you wait before its next move. Time slips away from you as quickly as hot humid air flees your lungs, each panting breath carrying you into the next pounding heartbeat, and through it all the spider's venom burns brighter through your restrained body—so small, so insignificant, next to its silent majesty! A little mammalian thing, finally learning that it is nothing more than prey for those who stalk through the shadows and weave their webs through places where only those prey who have forgotten what they are would dare to go—

It feels so fucking nice to be prey.

To feel the spider's attention resting upon you; that vast mind, that thing so much larger than a little prey-thing like you could ever understand, focused upon you. Watching as its venom runs through you, changes you—

These aren't your thoughts.

Surely they're not.

They blaze in your mind with all the unbearable needy heat that the spider's venom has filled your body with, and surely that must mean something, right? But that thought drips and melts beneath the heat, and it feels so good to think about the spider, to let your mind blaze with the knowledge of how good its attention feels—

You know that it's all you need in a way that you've never known anything before. That all a prey can hope for, can want, can dream of is to be taken and used and devoured by something so far beyond it that it might as well be a god, something that warps the world within its web just as your mind warps around the thought of it—

It feels better than any orgasm ever has. It burns in your mind like a lover's touch, like finally realizing who and what you are, like every ounce of delight you have ever felt.

You hardly notice the spider starting to move, to approach you once again, but you certainly hear its voice. It calls you its prey and you shudder and moan; it says you're delicious and you beg it to have a taste. Its words dissolve as its cool body presses against yours and you whimper heartfelt prayers, desperately hoping that it won't pull back again—if it did you would break, you would shatter, you would despair as you never have before—

Thankfully it doesn't.

Something cold and slick runs across your body, such a contrast to the heat burning in every millimeter of your skin! You half-feel your body fall away from the sticky web, lifted by something smooth and cool; the spider's legs, perhaps? It hardly matters. All you know is that this fresh attention being paid to you feels so good—your goddess finally deigning to touch your skin, to lift you up—your limbs are too limp and floppy for you to properly show your affection, but your tongue slips so eagerly out of your mouth to lavish its chitinous underbelly with all the worshipful licks and kisses you can possibly muster—

It probably can't feel a thing; chitin doesn't usually have nerves, does it? That doesn't matter. Worship isn't about that.

Your skin squishes oddly beneath its legs as it carefully positions you beneath it; your entire body is too soft, too stretchy, and far, far too sensitive. It's like the hot need burning in your core is melting you, and the feeling of your body shifting and adjusting with every touch is almost indescribable. Pleasure beyond pain, beyond thought, beyond sensation—

And then you're finally in position.

And you feel something nudging against your thighs, something long and thick and burning with almost as much heat as you are, hotter than any part of your goddess's body that you've felt so far—

Your goddess's voice chimes in praise above you as it presses you down, as your body stretches around it; even with whatever its venom has done to you it's almost too much, pleasure and pain blending into something greater than either—the joy of being taken, of being used the way all prey are meant to be used, of your goddess's certainty that you're ready for whatever it has to give you—

It presses you down and you're so unbearably full. You'd be broken so many times over if your body was still anything resembling human, if the borrowed doll-self you'd slipped your mind into didn't take to the venom so well.

Even as stretchy and gooey as you are—as it has made you—the first egg almost breaks you.

Your goddess's ovipositor distends inside you, swelling obscenely, bulging and stretching and forcing your body to stretch with it, to open in a way you have never been opened before—you hear your scream as if from a very long distance away, an agonized howl bubbling out of whatever is left of your mind.

You scream as it passes into you, and you scream as its size settles into you, and only then are you rewarded—not with mercy, not by your goddess pulling out of you and letting you collapse into a ruined pile on the floor, for goddesses have little truck with mercy.

It shifts around you and suddenly its chelicerae are right in front of your face, fangs shining with flowing venom. It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, a glass of ice-cold water offered after days spent wandering a parched desert, and all you can do is lock your lips around the nearest one and drink as deeply and desperately as you can. You hardly even feel the other one slide into your neck, just your body heating up, burning with a need as bright as the sun—to feel your goddess's eggs sliding into you, to feel their warmth inside you, for it to use you as a perfect little incubator for its brood—

And it obliges.

---

Your goddess breaks you.

For such a long time there is nothing inside your head but worship and sensation; hardly even pleasure, just the flow of moment into moment, the pressure of egg after egg, your body clenching and relaxing and opening more and more, being remade into the perfect vessel—

It's a long time after it pulls out of you before you're able to think anything at all, much less coherent thoughts; it wraps you in silk and carefully suspends you from the center of its web, the place where it waited before your struggles called it out; it feels like you're floating, like you're a cloud drifting through the cavern, like you're a soft pillow wrapped in insulating warmth and full of its divine brood.

It's paradise.

It's all you ever wanted.

It's over far too soon.

For this isn't really your body, no matter how you might pretend. It's a borrowed doll-form, a vessel for your mind just as much as for your goddess: a thing of witchwork and woven flesh. Your true body sleeps back in the city's towering spires, impossibly far above the cavernous depths where you found your goddess—

And no matter how full of divine venom you are, certain processes continue.

A timer runs out; a counter increments. Failsafes click into action.

And you wake up back in your own body.

Your true body.

A form which has never known the touch of your goddess's venom, which has never felt its touch—it feels so empty! So wrong! This can't be you, can it? This thing of constricting bone and unyielding skin, this horrid thing that you've found yourself confined to once again—

It's not hard to sneak back into the caverns.

It's really not hard at all.

There's a token guard on the gates, a boorish old thing who's supposed to make sure that only doll-bodies pass through; they don't take it too seriously, beyond a token second spent peering at your drawn-on barcode through a magnifying glass that seen better days. They hardly seem to care—after all, what sort of person would risk their own body like this?

No one would.

No one at all.

That part is so very easy.

The rest of the journey is harder.

Doll-bodies enjoy so many advantages that your true self does not, so many little enhancements; the journey hardly felt like anything the first time around, but now it leaves you weak and winded, skin scraped and muscles aching. It's a little miracle that you don't fall to your death, that you make it through safely—your goddess must be watching over you with its many eyes.

Still, you're sad and bedraggled by the time you stumble back into its nest and kneel before it, staring up with desperate longing—it's so beautiful! Those shining bells, that elegantly hued chitin, those wonderful eyes—and next to it your warped doll-body, distended, half-translucent, wrapped in shining silk; its brood growing within.

You hope it has more to give.

It must have more to give.

A drop of its venom falls to the floor and you feel your crotch twitch; it's really all you can do to resist the urge to lap it up, and the only reason you do resist is the curious look which your goddess has fixed on you.

“You look familiar, little prey-thing.”

Its voice is just as wonderful as you remembered.

“Y-yes, goddess. I was, uh,” you gesture at its incubator, “that was me.”

It tilts its head, and something deep inside its eyes seems to shift; there's a telltale glimmer of spell-light, of something Changing. You feel its web stretching out around you, and you so caught in it, pinned and picked apart by something that is more than you can ever hope to be—

And then its bells chime once more.

“A prey who escapes without escaping and then comes back to me. Just as odd as when you drew me out!”

You blush; you can't help it.

“I just … I just want to serve you more, goddess. To be properly yours, not just in a doll-body …”

It somehow manages to make its ringing voice sound like a grin; the skill which which is pedipalps move is mesmerizing even now.

“Then bring me more prey, little prey-thing.”

“M-more?”

“I will give you a gift, prey, and you will use it to draw in all the prey-things that fear to tread so deep, and my brood will flourish. Here—”

It moves so quickly: one moment it's crouched in the center of its web and the next it's right in front of you, a single fang pressing against your forehead. The core of your body flushes with heat at its proximity, at the feeling of its touch, at the venom seeping into you through that tiny cut and dripping down your face and into your eyes and nose and mouth, soaking into you—

Her venom is inside you, just as it was before and yet somehow so unlike it was before: a purple haze shot through with gold settling across your mind, beautiful fog filling your senses—

And suddenly you understand.

You understand exactly what your goddess means for you to do, and how it means for you to do it; and you feel the weight of its will drawing you onwards, its mind selecting the path you will take. You feel its Purpose fill you just as thoroughly as its eggs filled your doll-body, and it feels better than you could have ever expected—

Of course it does.

You are chosen.

Your goddess trusts you.

It has given you the power to write its will into the world.

All you have to do is obey.