The fire the Black Church had raised earlier had died down into a low and red bed of coals that emitted more heat than light. Around those embers, over twenty kneeling Followers formed a ring with their hoods bowed and their mouths whispering a catechism that was equal parts prayer and promise.

At the center, the High Priestess was on her knees. In front of her, a kneeling Follower with his forehead against the ground.

Behind her, three Followers lay unconscious. Their bodies had been linked to the Golems, and their souls were currently occupying the Golems' bodies. Those Followers would never wake up again. To take up a Golem's body is to forsake oneself. By being placed inside the Golems, they had accepted that their consciousness would be brought down to bare instincts. They were little more than animals now. And would forever, never be much more than animals.

The High priestess had kept this fact from them. She promised that they would wake up good as new, and they wholeheartedly agreed to it. It is, however, not certain that, had she not kept that fact from them, they would have chosen differently. They were madly in love with their High Priestess, and would do anything to please her. Anything to be blessed with her touch, even just for a moment.

"The others…" She muttered, and her will snapped away.

Darkness crowded her vision for a moment, then her consciousness appeared again inside a second Golem, the many-legged crawler with crystal shards on its hunched back.

It scudded along the forest floor, and hadn't caught up to its prey just yet.

"The village." The High Priestess whispered to herself, and her consciousness dove into the last Golem.

The broad-shouldered creature was quickly moving towards the Goblin Village. She urged it to move faster, and it did.

The trees thinned, and the Golem found it.

"...?"

It was no village, but only ash and dust.

The Golem stepped over a charred log. Where the crude huts had stood, there was only burnt wood.

Even the ground had collapsed in places.

The High Priestess' breath stuttered. The follower under her hand trembled. She felt the heat through the Golem's shins, the smell of ash, burnt wood, and scorched flesh, and then, beyond those lesser smells, something heavier, thicker, like perfume spilled into dirt. The High Priestess couldn't just smell it. She could taste it.

Corruption.

It gathered at the edges of her teeth, a taste sweeter than anything she had ever experienced, sticky and, at once, ice-cold and hot as lava. It threaded the air and poured through the Golem's sockets into her and then down her spine. Her lips parted and,

"Mmmh..." The moan escaped her before she could stop it.

She steadied herself, chin angled, shoulders square. But the scent grew stronger, uncoiling from the ash, from the pits and gullies the blaze had left behind, a lush, low hum of Corruption Magic.

Heat rose under her skin. The blindfold's knot tugge. Her thighs drew nearer together. She willed them apart again. Now wasn't the time to give in. Now, was the time to be strong.

"Azaroth's Heart…" she whispered, as if the Heart itself were the one teasing her. "Finally…."

She pushed the Golem forward. It galloped deeper.

Wherever the Golem went, the scent was there.

"It's here," the High Priestess murmured, the shakiness in her voice couldn't be hidden, just like the quivering of her thighs. "Azaroth's Heart."

She ordered the Golem, and it obeyed.. It lifted logs and earth, looking for what may lie in the debris.

"Faster!" The High Priestess urged.

The violet heart-light in the Golem's chest pulsed faster.

"Faster…!" Her moaning voice ordered.

The Golem tried. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

Suddenly, a tremor crawled across the field. Not from the Golem but through it. The High Priestess stiffened.

Something was standing behind it. Close.

"Turn," she ordered..

The Golem began to pivot, but it hadn't moved quickly enough.

The hit landed like a cart, smashing into the Golem's back. It vaulted forward, rolled on the ground, and fell to the bottom of a pit.

The Follower under her hand screamed. The sound cut sharply, then broke into a bubbling wheeze as his back bent the wrong way. The snap had been sudden and instantaneous. He sagged under her palm.

The other kneeling Followers, hearing the scream, lifted their heads. They saw the red in her cheeks, the way she was breathing so heavily…

"Quickly," she said. "Another."

The Followers scrambled, begging to be next. The faster one slid into place, forehead pressed to the ground, skull presented to her hand. Her palm found him, and the connection was made again. Not as clean as before, slightly jagged due to the damage received by the Golem. Nevertheless, it was the eyes that mattered most. Forcing her sight back into the Golem's body, she could see the pit in which it lay.

A pit full of bodies.

Goblins were stacked inside the pit like firewood. Some were missing an arm, others a leg. Over all of them, however, was a thick layer of hardened, and now cracked too, black liquid of corruption, glossy and chalky like cooled lava.

The hardened corruption shimmered.

"Mmmm…" she inhaled, enjoying the scent a bit too much. A hand remained on the Follower's head, while the other hand moved to grab her tit. Electricity ran down her spine as her palm connected with her erect nipple. "It's… Even better than I expected…!"

The arousal caused her not to notice as the hardened corruption started turning liquid.

She had missed it. Or perhaps, she hadn't. After all, the scent only grew stronger and more vivid as the Corruption went back to liquid form.

"AAAARGHHH!!!" The Follower screamed

His body had been pierced all over. In the chest, belly, thigh, and arm, invisible spikes had torn holes. He arched, hands slamming open and flat against the soil as if he were a door hammered by wind. Blood drooled out around the spikes that weren't there.

As the Follower screamed,

"Aaaaahhhh…!" The High Priestess gasped.

The Follower beneath her palm spasmed as he screamed, completely hiding her loud moan.

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