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"Now, my lady," said the priestess. "You will come to no harm. You will suffer no pain. But please, only do not offend him."

The words were probably not as comforting as the priestess meant them to be. She could only imagine what the bride was going through, so suddenly brought to the temple, bathed, anointed with scented oils, prayed over for nearly three hours, and now escorted to the chamber of her husband, the Lord. The priestess had never even been alone with him, much less touched him, but she had faith in the benevolence of the Lord all the same.

One could only imagine that such faith wouldn't be of much comfort to an outsider.

The Lord dwelled in the top of the tower, alone, as always. That would change soon, as would he. They stopped before the grand white doors, where the priestesses all said one more prayer together, then opened the door and ushered Ardan inside.

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Ardan had known of the Shadow Lord's tower for a long time: its existence had always hovered somewhere in the back of her mind, unregarded and without context, like a distant mountain that had been on the horizon for so long that she no longer noticed it. It was one of several such towers, temples to gods and demons scattered sparsely over spots of power in the land. Often they nestled in the shadow of a range of hills or mountains, or skulked on riverbanks carved deeply into the steppe; they rarely stood as a lone landmark on the endless horizon. The clans did not use them for navigation, nor did they stop to rest near them while travelling or moving camp. It was considered dangerous to approach them unless it was to deliver the seasonal offering of food to their priests. Visitors who stayed near a tower too long, and especially the priests themselves, were treated with suspicion: the temples were uncanny, imbued with the power of spirits not of this world - and those who dwelt within them were host to that power as well.

And now, at the temple of the Shadow Lord, Ardan was to become one of them.

Mistress Izun had said that the priests and priestesses of the many spirits of the Earth were not so different from them, the Wise Women of their clan. They worshiped their gods and knew the history and lore of the land, as they did. They performed magic as they did - not healing magic for their clan, for as temple priests they were clanless and had no community to minister to, except one another - but magic that benefited all of the people of the great steppe. If not for them and their diligent care of their gods, no clan would be safe from their power.

Ardan knew this was so, in a way. In some sense, she would be doing the same duty as she had done as apprentice to Mistress Izun. Except - she would be doing it alone. She would be clanless like the priests, cut off from her people, cut off from her own family who would mistrust her once she had entered the Shadow Lord's temple and never come across the great plans to visit her. And except that she would be doing more than worshiping her new god, her monster in the tower: she was to be his wife.

His wife. Had she not been told that she would never marry, if she entered into the role of Wise Woman under the tutelage of Mistress Izun? Had her father not warned her that Wise Women were to remain virgins their whole lives, forgoing the honor of marriage and the privilege of children to minister instead to the whole clan like a great, many-sided family? (But Mistress Izun had said that the necessity to remain virginal was nonsense really, that she could love as she pleased as long as she never became pregnant, and as long as she chose people from outside of the clan, for it didn't do to show one's people that one was vulnerable to such human vices as lust.) She had entered her apprenticeship gladly at the age of thirteen, unworried by the prospect of living without a man to cook and clean and rear children for. Nine years later she had never broken her vow of chastity, had never lain with another from any clan, and had not yet felt lesser for it. And then one day Mistress Izun had woken up in the night and called to her from her palette in a voice that Ardan had never heard before, a whisper that had sounded small and afraid. Ardan had awoken at once and stumbled up and around the dying fire toward her mentor, fearing that the old women had suffered a stroke of the brain or was dying. And in the near-complete shadow of the tent Izun had pulled her down onto the palette next to her and held her hand in her own strong, gnarled grip and told her that she had been given a vision by the great Sky God, that the Sky God had told her to send her mentor to the tower of the Shadow Lord, for there lay the one who needed her most. She had been shocked, confused: she had not slept the rest of the night and had asked Mistress Izun first thing in the morning if she had misunderstood. But Mistress Izun had looked old and weary that morning, and had said that there was no misunderstanding, that Ardan must leave at once to become the wife of the Shadow Lord and that she must take on another protege to become a Wise Woman when she died.

Ardan thought that the pronouncement must have killed something inside of her, that some part of her spirit had shattered like a thin pane of lake ice dashed against the frozen ground: she hadn't been able to feel anything, not really, since that night. Rationally she knew that what she was experiencing must be shock, not the physical shock that she had often treated in the wounded or ill but a shock of the mind. But even with that knowledge nothing seemed real, her heart seemed separated and insulated from the world as if she had buried it in the ground and left her former life without it. She had not cried as she had bidden farewell to her father and his wives, to her siblings and cousins and to Mistress Izun herself; she had not been heartbroken at the way the men assigned to act as her chaperones - two cousins and two brothers - had refused to look at her, speak to her or even touch her few belongings as they had traveled toward the tower across the hills and plains; she had not been able to smile at the six priestesses who had greeted her at the entrance to the tower as if they had known that she was arriving. Her guards had turned away and gone before she had even entered the tower and she had known with nothing but a leaden feeling in her chest that she would never see them again.

She had been brought into the temple and conducted to a hot bath. The bath was made of porcelain like the bowls that her mother had received as her wedding gift from her father, patterned with delicate red and orange decoration and fastened directly into the stone floor. She had not been able to marvel at its beauty, nor at the size of the room it was in, which alone was as large as any tent she had ever lived in. The priestesses had washed her with soaps and oils and scrubbed her with a cake of sand until her skin had felt raw; they had washed her hair until it shown and braided it in one long tail down her back; one of them had even shaved her with a small, keenly-edged blade until she had rid her of all body hair. They hadn't given her back her riding clothes and shoes when she had come out of the tub, skin tingling in the steam - she felt vaguely that this was a shame, because they were the only clothes that she had come with. Instead she had been given a red robe, soft as foal's hair but not at all padded for the chill. She had felt goosebumps shiver up her arms as they had conducted her out of the room and into a stone hall large enough to fit the tents of her entire family - her bare feet had been soundless on the stone floor but she felt that their steps might have echoed off the high ceilings if she had been in her boots. In that grand hall they had lit fires in a wide circle and made her kneel in the middle on a round rug on her knees as they prayed over her, a low, arrhythmic chant that seemed to go on interminably. Her dead heart seemed to rouse slightly during that time, as she'd become warm once again among the fires and watched the play of light and shadow flickering across her knees. She had known what was to happen next, but been unable to react to it: now, amid the chanting and this huge room and the shadow gathering as the fires began to sink low and smolder and finally go out, she began to feel what was about to happen as well. Soon she would be sent up to her new home, to her lord, to her husband who was neither man nor beast but something from a world beyond the Earth itself. As the chanting began to slow and soften with the darkening of the fires, her heart began to speed up.

And now it was dark inside the great tower, and she was being led up a massive, sweeping staircase - the first time she had ever seen a staircase indoors. It was made of some sort of pale, polished stone that she could not fully see in the gloom, frigid against her bare feet again. It was only visible in its entirety for a short time as the priestesses lit lanterns at the bottom of it and clustered around her to lead her up. Her heart began to beat faster as they began to climb, a beat that warmed the blood in her torso and made her fingertips feel like they were pulsing. The priestesses' lanterns bobbed in front of them and made their white robes look like drops of gold - but ahead of her and behind, the darkness was becoming impenetrable. They seemed to climb for a long time: her feet were numb by the time they came to a stop, although the beat of her heart's growing fear seemed to be keeping the rest of her too warm. She felt herself shaking now, a lump was forming in her throat and a heavy weight was resting in her stomach. Ahead of them were a pair of doors, visible like enormous shrouds against the darkness only because their white surface reflected the lantern light. With a dizzy feeling she realized that these must be his quarters. The priestesses once again knelt in prayer; she felt her knees grow weak, and she hoped that the prayer would be short or she might fall down in the middle of it.

And then the prayer was over and the priestesses were getting to their feet around her - she realized with a thrill of panic that she did not want the prayer to be over, that she wanted to stave off this moment for as long as she could. But it was too late, too late, because one of the priestesses was pulling on a long, thick rope and the doors were gliding soundlessly open into utter darkness...

One priestess laid a hand on her shoulder, making her jump. With a gentle push, she urged her forward, through the doors and into the unknown. She stepped forward - it was nearly a stumble - and realized that the priestesses were not moving with her. They were sending her in entirely alone. She stood frozen for a moment, feeling like she might faint. But - no, she must not faint, she must... she must do what she had been commanded to do. She took a deep, steadying breath, filling her lungs - and then stepped into the chamber. Behind her, the doors silently closed. Her world was eclipsed; the darkness was absolute.

Slowly, her heart pounding in her ears, she sank to her knees, then bowed forward until her forehead touched the floor. She had never kowtowed before; a Wise Woman did not bow to anyone. But she was no longer a Wise Woman. She was the wife to the entity hidden in the room before her.

"My Lord husband," she whispered, her voice bouncing off the tiled floor beneath her lips. "I have come to serve you as your wife."

"Don't be foolish," the high priest had said. "Our Lord cannot be moody. He is beyond such base things."

But the other priests and priestesses had all looked at one another and exchanged eyerolls. Whatever the equivalent to moody was in a god of unspeakable power, he was definitely it as the wedding day approached. He hid in the corners and refused to look at any more books, watch any more demonstrations, or listen to one more lengthy prayer about it. They had been preparing him for the inevitability of his Vessel-Bride since he had memory, which made it several centuries now. The past few weeks, the preparations increased to near-frantic levels. But now, at last, the day was here. The Bride was arrived. The God spent his last few moments of solitude huddled in the back of the room, trying to recall it all.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be married. He only wanted to do it right. The Vessel-Bride was Important, the most important subject he would ever have, and he only had one chance to perform as he was supposed to. His Duty and Responsibility were tied to her, and everyone was Depending on him. (The priests told him what all those words meant, but he only had a fleeting grasp on their definitions. A priestess tried to make it easier for him: he must do those things because they are Good. He wanted to be Good.)

As she entered, though, he found all the teachings and lessons easily escaping him. It was one thing to have everything shown to him by his priests and priestesses, his trusted servants. But when he saw her, her, it was suddenly hard to put everything together.

In the depths of the room, he was little more than two glowing orange eyes in the dark, floating head-high in the shadows. He recognized the bow. A sign of respect, as the priests did. But unlike the priests, he was meant to get closer to her. He could touch her. He'd never touched anyone before, and now the first and only person he could was there in the threshold.

The eyes rose up, taller, taller, to a monstrous height, as the shadows themselves came slinking out of the darkness. His body was little more than a formless mass of shadows, occasionally mimicking something constant but only for a moment. He moved completely silently, slowly easing towards the door.

His orange eyes floated in the dark mass of his body, somewhere near the top that could generously be called a head. His body engulfed a stone altar in the center of the room, lit with candles. But he went no closer, only "perching" on the altar and watching her.

For a long moment all Ardan could see was darkness, all she could hear was her own breathing, loud and close around her ears as her forehead pressed against the cold floor. She felt naked already, exposed, with her neck and back free for the entity who was her husband to grab, wherever he was in this room, if he even had hands with which to grab her. The seconds lengthened as she listened to the shaky breathing: in, and out, and in, and out.

And then something in the quality of the darkness changed. Surprised, she lifted her head. Above her was a stone altar, made of the same shiny, pale and polished stone that comprised the stairway up to this tower. She could tell because on top of the altar, casting just enough light to reflect off the stone, were many little candles. Their wax was dyed red, the same rich, dark red as the soft robe they had given her, the red, she knew, that symbolized a new wife's blood -

Something moved in the deep shadow beyond the altar. Ardan's gaze shot upward towards it - and then she stifled a gasp. Eyes, two eyes alone in the darkness, eyes the color of sunset, the color of the heart of an ember. They seemed far too bright to be lit only by the meager light of the candles - it was as if they were lit from within. They looked like the eyes of a wildcat reflected in moonlight: she imagined with another sick jolt of her stomach that they might be stalking toward her, closing in to kill.

And now they were moving, floating upwards - she realized in horror that the deep shadow around them was growing taller with them, that the shadow was not what her husband was lurking in: the shadow was her husband himself. She was frozen, utterly paralyzed halfway up from her kowtow, her knees still folded under her and one hand braced against the floor. Her heart was beating so wildly that she could feel it in her arms, in her wrists, in her legs, in her neck. It thrummed loudly in her ears as the shadows coalesced, grew taller, taller, she was being deafened by the sound of her own fear as it built toward a crescendo. The Shadow Lord was towering now, billowing miles above her like a nimbus with eyes like a steppe predator, was engulfing the altar in his mass without stopping, was bearing down on her...

And then he was no longer moving. It took Ardan several stuttering heartbeats to realize this. He had stopped. He was just a roiling cloud of shadows roiling like a tangle of ribbons around the altar. Why had he stopped? The ember-bright eyes were still staring down at her, unblinking and expressionless, seeming to float on a core of liquid darkness within the mass of shadows. What was he waiting for? What was he going to do?

She sat up straight with an effort, pulling her body out of its terrified paralysis. A joint in her back cracked; it sounded far too loud and she realized that outside of her own heartbeat the chamber was utterly silent. Her husband, this entity of darkness that seemed no more solid than smoke, was also making no noise whatsoever. She let out a breath in a big gust; she half expected the outer reaches of shadow to be blown away with it. And still the Shadow Lord was not moving. Setting her jaw, pressing her teeth together so that they would not chatter, she raised her gaze upwards, far up toward those orange eyes. She felt herself bracing, her muscles ready to fight or flee if he sprang at her - but even when her eyes met his he did not move. He just... hung there, weightless but contained, around the altar. The candles, despite being bright enough to light the altar, seemed unable to shed any light on the depths of that mass of shadow. The inhuman eyes betrayed nothing - they did not narrow in anger nor move their focus as if to look her over. He was unresponsive, his whole form strangely still for something that looked like it could be pushed around by a breeze. As if he was waiting - waiting for her to make the first move.

Slowly, slowly, she raised herself off her knees and stood. Her body was still as tense as a new bowstring, muscles aching with readiness to react to the smallest threat. Slowly, carefully, she straightened. She was not a tall woman, even upright: her husband dwarfed her in width and height by several feet. Still no reaction. Her gaze traveled up and down and across him - in the low light the ribbons of ethereal shadow could occasionally look for a moment like something solid: a hard curve caught the light like a ram's horn here, a smoky tendril thickened into something that could almost be a three-fingered hand there. But as hard as she looked she could make out no constant shape anywhere within him. But - she was to be this spirit's wife. She had no illusions about what that meant: nine years of assisting Mistress Izun as the sole Wise Woman for two hundred people had taught her exactly what the duties of a new husband and wife should be. But how was she to lie with her new husband if he had no form to lie with? How was she to touch an entity who as not solid, carry the children of one who had no seed, care for one who had all of the needs of a cloud of smoke? And she was not learning any answers like this. Still her husband had not made a move.

"Please, Lord," she murmured, looking into those eyes that betrayed no hint of emotion she could understand. "What would you have me do?"

He remained on his altar perch as she stood, as she straightened, as she looked him over. For an agonizingly long time, he did nothing to acknowledge her at all beyond continuing to stare at her with those bright, unblinking eyes.

It wasn't until after her question that he gave any response. Abruptly, his eyes shifted slightly to the side, tilting. A generous imagination could picture a dog tilting its head in curiosity. But still, he remained atop the altar and made no movements toward her. Every so often, a tendril of smoky shadow would slide out from his mass and wrap itself around the altar, as though trying to keep a grip.

At last, a near-agonizing wait later, he moved, sliding forward a few feet. His "head" lowered, but only a little, his mass still looming tall over her.

What would he have her do? The ritual, of course. But now that she stood before him, and he can see her, his all-important Vessel-Bride, the ritual seemed like a fleeting thing that he learned and forgot long ago. He was to bed this woman? He was to enact that... thing they showed him upon her? She was supposed to touch him?

A tendril suddenly emerged from the mass, a thing that looked very briefly like a deformed, grasping hand. It came within five yards of touching her, then drew back and hovered in what might be described as an awkward manner.

Even as she was speaking, it occurred to Ardan that her new husband might not understand what she was saying, or indeed even be able to hear her. And for several moments afterwards it seemed that her fears were correct: he made no response whatsoever. She was not certain how to proceed next - when, quite suddenly, the glowing orange eyes tilted like a person cocking his head. Ardan stared back, her fear now tinged with surprise: she had not expected her husband to do anything so human. She bit her lip, waiting for him to do something else, for him to examine her or tell her to come closer. But he seemed in no hurry: for long moments he simply stayed where he was, dark and enormous and otherworldly - but benign.

As the seconds lengthened she felt her muscles begin to relax, the straining in her arms and her legs and her abdomen to react giving way by degrees. She had not yet followed her instinct to run; her body was growing tired of waiting. Slowly she felt her stomach begin to relax, her shoulders to loosen, her jaw to unclench. Her heart still beat fast with anxiety, but her weary body was allowing her to let her guard down. She took deep, slow breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, to settle her skittish nerves.

And then the mass of shadow moved forward: she nearly jumped backwards in fright. She clamped her teeth together to stifle a gasp; her heart was hammering against her ribs like a bird caught in a trap. Another ribbon of black shadow extended outward and she stumbled backwards with a muffled cry. The shadow thickened and darkened, its blackness now looking almost solid, like a clawing hand. Her back hit the enormous door behind her. Her stomach flipped in panic: she was trapped with the attacking...

But - no. Her husband was not attacking, she realized. The long limb, while solid and lithe as a snake, was no longer moving toward her. It was immobile, hovering in the air between them, outstretched like a friend's hand. A strange, unpredictable friend made of shadow and unknowable power, she reminded herself. And yet, it was not moving to attack her. It was clear what it wanted.

With a shaking breath, with her heart in her throat, she took a step forward. Then another. Would the shadowy tendril before her touch her? Would it be insubstantial as smoke? Or would it be solid, like the wet skin of a frog or the smooth, dry skin of a snake? Would it feel like the skin of a human, or be icy cold? She took another step, watching the bright orange eyes. She raised a hand, stretched out her fingers - touched the preferred arm of her husband, wherever he may lead her.

The outstretched limb was seen to flinch at her fear-- fear was something he recognized in humans for certain. The new priests always wore it, the first few times they came to him. He was quite good at fear. But it was a Bad thing. Especially now, when he was meant to be making a good impression on his bride. As good an impression as he could hope to make being... him.

The tendril pulled back, as did he, several feet when she recoiled from him. For a moment he looked a bit like a bird with ruffled feathers, half perched on high on the altar, briefly even bigger than before, the tendril shaky in its shape and nearly fading altogether. But when she took the first tentative step closer, he shank again, back down to his original, massive size. Still and calm, orange eyes watching endlessly. His outstretched limb firming up once more.

The air around him was cold, cold as ice, seemingly emanating from within his body itself. But strangely, when the touch occurred, it was warm. Very warm, soft, carrying a bit of a tingling sensation beneath its surface. He was the one to briefly flinch at the first touch, but only briefly, and only an inch or so. When the contact was made, he reached further, wrapping slightly around her wrist and hand.

Touch. That was what touch felt like. Were all humans so soft? Were all hands like hers? He wanted to touch more, but the priestesses' lectures still echoed in what constituted his memory. He must be Careful. He must be Patient. And above all else, he must be Gentle.

Gentle he was, tugging so gradually it felt like another human pulling her closer to the altar. His body slithered away from the stone and the candles, clearing a path for her to walk at her own pace, gentle, gentle, gentle.

Ardan's outstretched hand froze at the tendril's momentary flinch. Was her husband perhaps frightened as well, just as uncertain as she was? But - she had no time to think on the question because now he was settling, the ethereal tendril floating closer once again, growing somehow more opaque and solid as it did so. She breathed in, breathed out, a deep and steadying breath, and reached her fingers out to meet him.

And then, then they were touching. The shadowy tendril was quite solid, real under her fingers. Yielding and supple like real skin, filled out and defined as if under the skin was real muscle. A smooth and unbroken expanse broken neither by the roughness of hair nor the edges of scales. And - and warm, strangely warm, like touching a swaddled baby. With a start she realized that the air around them had grown frigid, that she had goosebumps running up her arms and legs... she hadn't even noticed. As if her husband's presence exuded cold, but he himself was warm as a living thing. Warm and tingling, sparking faintly from inside like the surface of water about to boil over a fire, alive with energy. This tendril, which she had just witnessed coalescing from insubstantial smoke, felt like a living thing.

She did not resist as the tendril took hold and wrapped itself around her wrist. It did not feel threatening, somehow, although her instincts should have been telling her to move away from such an unknown entity. It felt... it felt safe, gentle, like the easy grip of a friend holding her hand. Her heart was still beating too quickly, her stomach unsettled with anxiety that had built up over the last hours - but she no longer felt blank with panic. As the tendril began to pull at her, as the enigmatic, silent mass of shadow retreated into the pitch darkness before her, she followed.

He led her further into the room, closer to the altar, just as the priests showed him in so many demonstrations. By the hand, he should guide her to the altar. Then he should see her comfortably atop it. It seems a bit tall for her, from his rather high-up perspective, so as she drew near he provided another tendril for her to step up with. It was always Good to be helpful.

His mass more or less surrounded the altar around her, only a few feet making the difference between him looming over her or not. He was used to looming, being unable to touch any of his worshipers for his entire existence so far. It needs not be so with his bride... but something still told him it wouldn't do to simply engulf her, no matter how interested he was in this touching sensation.

With a few more tendrils he tried again. One remained clutching her hand, while another found her other hand and experimentally slid up her arm. A third hesitantly rested on her shoulder, giving the very slightest of squeezes. It may or may not have been very reassuring.

She was so warm. Warm, and soft, not at all like the stone in the room around him. Humans looked like stone, so rigid and concrete in form, but it was surprising to find they felt nothing alike at all.

They hadn't traveled far at all when her new husband drew to a stop. Ardan gazed around into the darkness in confusion: they'd stopped in front of the altar, with its gracefully carved base, nearly as tall as she herself was, and its smooth, flat top, lit brightly with candles. She looked up at her husband's enormous, shadowy form - but just then another tendril reached out from the shadow, low to the ground. She could see from the reflection of candlelight that this tendril too had become solid, like the one holding her hand. But this one did not reach out to touch her: it simply stopped in front of her at knee-height. For a moment she remained confused; she looked at the tendril, looked at the altar for - oh. Oh.

It was to be on the altar, then. On the hard, cold surface, surrounded by frigid air and the looming, unknowable smoky shadows of the entity to whom she was wed.

It was not ideal. Not at all what she had imagined for herself when she had pictured her future even a few weeks ago. But it could not be helped: this was her duty, her purpose, and she must fulfill it, whatever the hardship.

She took a deep breath - the dry, frigid air seemed sharp in her lungs - and stepped forward. The tendril under her bare foot was not yielding and soft, as she'd feared, but strong and hard as bone or horn. Her foot rested on it for only a moment before she'd pulled herself up onto the altar. She sat down quickly on it, drawing her red robe under her so as not to reveal herself indecently - for all that it mattered by now. The altar really was quite wide: she could have stretched her arms straight out on either side of her and not come near the ring of candles around the edge. But it was just as cold as it had looked from below, cold enough to make her legs break out in yet more goosebumps. It was made of fine marble, she could see now, white stone shot through with thick veins of black, polished so that it shown even in the dim light and sanded so that it was perfectly flat. Around her, all around their marriage bed, the shadows that were her husband billowed and shifted. Slowly, her body barely shaking, she lay down on the altar.

The solid tendril that had been grasping her hand lay quiet by her side, still strangely warm amid the chill air. She was braced for it to move from her hand and start pulling away her robe - but instead another tendril folded out above her, its movement almost hesitant, almost shy. It did not start touching her robes either; it went for her arm. This tendril too had solidified into something warm and supple, stronger than the arm of any human but working hard to be gentle. And it was the tenderest of touches, trailing along her inner arm and leaving that sparking, tingling sensation in its wake. She suppressed a shiver; she was squeezing the first tendril like a comforting hand. On the inside of her wrist her husband would be able to feel her pounding pulse, the tension twanging in her muscles - but he would also see her taking deep breaths, her chest expanding and contracting, working to stay calm. She did not flinch when she felt a third tendril resting on her shoulder, did not squirm as it squeezed her. It was not meant to be an uncomfortable squeeze, she knew now - she was the wife of a gentle husband. But she did not know how long he could continue to be gentle, could keep holding himself in check to suit his fragile human wife. Hesitantly, she lifted her chin and looked up into the glowing orange eyes far above her.

He seemed mostly fascinated in touching her, in as much as something faceless and inexpressive as he was could seem any particular way at all. He left one tendril to her grasp as others formed, still careful as could be as they slid over her body. There were so many things to touch on a human. The hands, the arms, the soft hair haloed around her head, her legs, her robe...

Two smaller, more precise tendrils prodded at her robe, seeking how it functioned to cover her. Her skin was warm and soft and unlike anything he'd ever felt-- fire was warm, but it burned to touch it. Her warmth felt good, tempted him to enjoy more.

Even in his haste to pull her robe apart and place his first tendrils against the bare skin of her stomach, he took it slow. He must be slow, the priestesses all told him, slow and delicate. It would not do to harm his Bride, no matter how eager he may feel to pour himself within her, to change for her, to form his unsculpted essence into something inspired by her.

With some fiddling, he pulled away the fabric of her robe and set to tracing the shape of her body, its resemblance to what they taught him.

It was a word they used sometimes, and one of the priests had used it with regards to her earlier. He did not know what it meant, but he remembered it, and he connected it with the sight of her lying beneath him. She was beautiful.

Lying flat on her back against the altar, the backs of her legs and arms quickly growing numb from the stone's cold, Ardan could see nothing at all above or around her but her husband's dark and shapeless form. It was like waking up in Mistress Izun's yurt in the depths of the night after the fire had gone out: the darkness was so thick that it was almost tangible, like you would feel cloth or leather if you reached out into it, like your whole body was wrapped in a sheet of darkness that separated you from your surroundings as physically as a shroud. She had once heard a young wife describe her first night with her husband by saying that he had loomed over her, that he had become her sky and horizon like her own enclosed world, but she doubted that that young wife had meant it so literally as what she was experiencing now. The Shadow Lord was her world, was a shroud like the dome of the sky over and around her, separating her with his unknowable mass from the rest of the room. Above her - perhaps a foot or perhaps five feet above, it was impossible to judge the distance - were his round, sunset-orange eyes. They were as expressionless as twin suns, too, perfectly round and unchanging, not blinking like the eyes of a human nor shifting and narrowing in curiosity and thought. She did not see how she could judge what her new husband was thinking through them.

But she did think she could gauge something of his thoughts through his limbs. There were many of them - were they legs, or arms, or tentacles like those of the dead and dried sea creatures that had been given to her father as curiosities by a trader who had been to the far-off coast? They were growing more adventurous now as the seconds lengthened, they were sliding up her arms and across her legs, prodding delicately between her fingers and across the edges of her fingernails, pressing against the bones of her ankles and knees and elbows. She could even feel one wafting gently over her hair. She strained her eyes, trying not to move her head and disturb him but hoping to see something of how those many limbs were moving. They were no longer as hesitant, as - as fearful as the first one had been when she had taken it like a proffered hand. But was it accurate to think of them as fearful or shy in the first place? Was it accurate to imagine that they were growing more confident, more curious and less hesitant now? She knew from her years under Mistress Izun's tutelage that it was unwise to imagine that gods possessed the same emotions as humans or animals. There was no reason for her to assume that the Shadow Lord's first flinch away from her had been shyness: it could have been a spasm of muscle newly created from the nothingness of his shadows. It might be folly to imagine that his sudden expanding when she had recoiled from him was the product of being startled: he might just as easily have been threatening her not to leave. And now it was wrong to believe that these longer touches of his limbs were signs of confidence. No one had said that her husband would want to treat her as human husbands treat their wives. What if he was preparing to strangle her and eat her dead body? She felt her heart, still thudding frantically in her chest, stutter with terror at the thought. She did not want to die here, she did not want her body and soul to be consumed by this otherworldly entity far away from the Great Sky. She did not...

A tugging at her sides and shoulders told her that her new husband was pulling on the ties of her robe. Another thrill of fear shuddered through her: he was going to take off her robe and she was going to be naked before him. This at least was to be expected even by the wives of human husbands. She'd often thought how lucky she was that she would never have to appear naked before a man she did not know or trust. She'd have laughed at the cruel irony of the situation if she could find enough breath inside her lungs. She could hear her quick, unsteady breaths in her ears, the sound bouncing off of the shadowy mass that enclosed her, as the ties around her hips slackened and fabric of the robe slid down across her skin. The frigid air around her husband struck her midline like a lash when the robe parted, then settled across a quickly broadening swath of her front. Her throat, her breastbone, her stomach and abdomen, her newly hairless pubic mound and her thighs - then her collarbones and shoulders, her breasts, her ribs and her hips and legs. Goosebumps ran down her like waves across the grass of the steppe before the wind, prickling her arms and legs and pebbling her nipples until they were hard. She wanted to roll over and hide herself, to pull the robe securely around herself again and veil the shame of her body reacting outside her control, to put on the mask of a Wise Woman again and pretend to be almost as inhuman and sexless as her husband. But she could not, she could not hide - and now the long, lithe limbs had slid the robe off of her arms and revealed her completely, and the wide, expressionless eyes stared down at her without shame or pity or fondness. Now one, now two and three limbs were touching her abdomen: she gasped aloud before she could muffle herself to feel the sudden living heat of them against her freezing skin. She had never been touched like this before, never lain still for another to touch her for the sole purpose of feeling. The priestesses had bathed her less than two hours ago and Mistress Izun had given her her own harsh, ritual baths after each menstruation cycle and her own mother had washed and clothed her when she had been very small - but none of it, nothing had ever felt like this. There was no purpose to the dark limbs' movements, no goal except to touch and feel and explore. One skittered across the flat plane of her belly, dipping for a fraction of a second into the shallow depression of her navel; one slid horizontally down the curve of a rib and one played across the vertical line of her entire ribcage like someone playing a stringed instrument. One pressed gently against her stomach, making her breathe in sharply to meet the pressure; one tickled underneath and around the soft curves of her breasts, raising even more sensitive goosebumps. One reached downwards and ghosted across her legs and made her toes curl. Her hand was squeezing the limb that still lay quietly under it, her short nails starting to dig into its shadowy flesh out of the need of her twanging nerves. Her other hand lay by her side against the cold stone altar, her half-numb hand balled into a fist. Her pulse hammered in her wrists, she saw ghostly spots in the darkness that she knew had nothing to do with the amorphous mass of her husband's body. She was terrified and overly-sensitized and not at all certain how to react. Her husband was continuing to be gentle, slow, almost loving - but she was braced for the moment when that would all end.

As far back as he could remember, his world has been nothing but this room, cold, hard stone. But she was soft and warm and unlike anything he's ever come into contact with. He could very easily amuse himself with fascinated touches all day. But there was a task to be done, and the priestesses told him not to tarry too long. Though he did not understand the idea of fear, they told him his bride might have it, and the sooner he could allay such a thing, the better.

A tendril around her leg pulled itself free from her thigh and he chose it to begin the more intimate ritual. Now that her robe was off, she better resembled the diagrams they'd schooled him with. Between her thighs, he recognized the anatomy of a human woman, as they'd showed him, and he recalled what he was meant to do.

The tendril was slow and tentative as it settled against her pubic mound, as they warned him it was a sensitive place. He must be even more delicate with her here. With a few wriggles, he felt out the lay of things, the entrance to her body. Gently, gently, gently. He thinned the tendril a bit and as carefully as a virginal man might test a finger, he pressed only an inch or so inside her.

Such warmth. Such softness. He could already feel the energy within her, stirred up by the ritual thus far. In joining with her, her holy transformation into the Vessel would be complete, and he could begin his own transformation. He moved slowly, pressing a little deeper inside before sliding back out again, his immense strength held back to little more than a thread as he eased her into the claiming.

Whatever happened, she told herself, she had to stay calm. Whatever was going on around her, whatever the entity to whom she was married was about to do to her, she had to lie still and remain compliant. she repeated the thought, the command as a litany in her mind. Be calm, do not fight, be calm, do not cry out, be calm, do not run, be calm, be calm, be calm...

But it was a battle against her instincts. Every inch of her, every tiny cell in her body that had evolved from those of the primitive proto-humans who had fled from wild animals and survived the cruelties of nature was commanding her to get up and run. To escape this gigantic predator that had sunk down on top of her and was prodding at her vulnerable body. Her legs were shaking with the compulsion, her fingers twitched convulsively, her stomach seemed to writhe within her like its own trapped creature. She was breathing in deep, silent gasps like one who was running, exhausting herself just from the effort of staying still. Her back and the backs of her arms and legs were quite numb from the frigid stone but her front felt overheated, steamed as if she had been leaning over a boiling cooking pot for too long. She could feel sweat on her forehead that made her body shiver all the more with cold.

But the effort of controlling her own body was as nothing compared to the concentration with which she was spending on him. She was so blinded by his ethereal shroud of darkness hovering just above her face that she could hardly tell that her eyes were open; but her other senses were sharpened to keenest needles in her desperation to decipher what he was doing. The sensations she was feeling against her skin were truly bizarre: there were more long limbs smoothing across her arms and legs and whispering over her torso and caressing her sides than any man had; she had lost count of how many there were among the tapered tips and heavy, lithe sections that she could only call his "arms" in her head. They did not feel like a man's arms, either: for all that she had never been touched like this before she knew that no human's body felt like this. They were covered in skin much like hers, it was true - the flesh was smooth and supple and yielding like that of a man in his prime, and it was hairless like a man's underarms or palms; and underneath the skin was the unmistakable definition of muscle, tougher than flesh or fat but much more pliant and elastic than bone; and all of it was warm, alive and solid. But that was where the similarities to the human body ended. There was no shape to the appendages that writhed and curled around her, no defined wrists or arms or thighs or fingers. They were just - long, muscular tubes, thicker and stronger toward one end and tapered off in a single tip toward the other. There was no joint or bone within them: they were uniformly, infinitely flexible strands of flesh. Even a serpent has a backbone, a head and a jaw, some definable features to give it a beginning and an end; her new husband had none of that. Above her was the mass of shadow that seemed to make up the better part of his body, so close and dark that she could not even see it move; on top of her torso was the weight of those indefinable coils of muscle, pressing down just lightly enough to allow her to breathe; at her limbs and the outlines of her body were the softly tickling tips, busily and unendingly moving against her. His body did not smell like that of a human, even when one limb brushed past the side of her face; there was no sweat or musk or even the unnatural scent of oils that men sometimes used to improve their appearance at their weddings. She could smell only the faint whiff of wax from the candles around the circumference of the altar, although those were entirely outside her sight now that her world was comprised only of the space beneath the shroud of his shadows. And as absent as the smell of him was the sound of him, for she could hear neither the sound of his breath nor the creaking of joints as he shifted his weight to touch her. There was only the sound of her own quick breaths and the smell of the soaps and oils used to prepare her as a bride. Nothing at all but her own body and a few alien pieces of her husband.

Suddenly there was a movement among the random, languorous movements of his limbs. She could not see it, but she could feel in the heat and weight removed from her leg that one of the long tentacles was moving. She braced herself to feel it settle again, perhaps against her face or across her chest, though her body was already so tightly braced that she could hardly become any stiffer -only to jump with a muffled gasp when it settled low on her abdomen, its tip touching against the mound of skin where her legs met. Her heart picked up speed from its already frenetic pace, beating so quickly that her chest ached and the black world before her eyes seemed to swim.

Slowly, methodically, the tip of the limb slithered down her pubic mound, slipping easily into the tight space between her clenched thighs. She could feel its progress as a thin trail of heat, like dripping hot water from the bath down her dry body. It insinuated itself into that space and stroked the silken, vulnerable flesh, sketched out the shape of her, smoothing down the press of her thighs and then curving back up to touch her sex. Her hands clenched hard at the strange tickling sensation; her teeth ground together but she did not dare move. It was caressing the cleft of her now, finding where she could be opened and pushing gently but irresistibly inward, forcing her thighs apart to accommodate its narrow shape. It parted her carefully, its movements slow and delicate. It stroked the smooth, still dry walls of her outer labia, a minute line of tickles further inward. She swallowed hard, battling hard against the urge to jerk away. It found the closed shell of her inner labia, ghosted its thin, exploring tip against the heated flesh - her fingernails bit hard into her own palms - and then pushed on, ever in toward her center. It caressed her here, too, on the soft inside of her final defenses, trailing random patterns of sensation across hot, living tissue. And then it was at the core of her, the tight ring of muscle that already convulsed minutely from the stimulation. A languid, gentle last push, a bizarre sensation as the limb seemed to narrow and shrink against her - and then the limb was penetrating inside of her body.

Ardan's eyes were wide above the moving tentacles, staring into the nothingness above and around her, her body as unmoving and immovable as a stone. She had sucked in a gasp of frigid air and had not let it out; her sides and chest were quite still and her legs were pressed hard together. She could feel her husband touching her all over, on every part of her body, inside her body, an invasion for all that it was not brutal or bloody. Her thighs were squeezing against the length of tentacle pressing down between them, her knees were slightly raised and her feet were planted against the smooth stone altar. She could feel more keenly than she had felt anything in her life the narrow tentacle sliding its way inside her, pushing her open so that its heat mingled and sparked with her heat and the tight muscles inside of her pulsed against it. She could feel it as it pushed in, withdrew... pushed in again, inevitable. Her hips pressed flat against the altar, the muscles of her belly stretched taut. Unbidden, she let out a soft, keening moan.

The motion began tentatively, gentle pumping in and out of her as they both got used to the sensation. He found it more fascinating than arousing, at this point, though it stirred something in him that he'd never encountered before-- some warmth he could not give a name to, some blooming thing in the depths of his being that he couldn't identify, but that he wanted to understand. And she did not seem to be in pain (the priestesses explained to him the signs.) Tense and still, yes, resembling the stone even in her softness and warmth, but the noise she made... they did not tell him about that noise.

He pulled her knees apart, only slightly, so that he could witness it. The sight of his limb thrusting inside of her. It got easier, little by little, her body making way for him, to where he experimented with widening the tendril, though only a little at a time. She could not feel what he could, the essence within her that he could now sense, as though he'd uncovered it buried inside her. It would feel no different than the air leaving her lungs after a yawn as he sampled it, taking it within himself as he continued to pleasure her, and restored nearly as quickly as a breath. His first taste of his Vessel-Bride's purest nature, that which would transform him from the morass of darkness into... into...

He must finish the ritual first. Excited as he was, it would do no good to hurry into the process, lest he lose his concentration and come out like some... well. He could not get any less formed. He would contemplate on it as he watched his pretty wife reacting to his ministrations.

It felt so strange, this thing her husband was doing to her, unbelievably, unspeakably strange. Ardan had imagined what it might feel like to make love with another person: she knew the mechanics of it from her work with Mistress Izun and felt no shame in experimenting with it herself. But her brief forays into sex had been nothing like this, like coupling with another. This was submitting her body to another being, another entity whose thoughts she could not know and whose actions she could not predict. She lay still and stiff on the altar, on this forced bed of rituals she could not understand to a being that she could not trust, and felt her most vulnerable parts bared to him.

She tensed as husband thrust in, the muscle of her straining against unaccustomed pressures. There was a weight on top of her, it pushed her against the stone of the altar; her entrance clenched around him. As he pulled out the pressure was released, her muscles relaxed - only for him to thrust in again. It did not hurt, exactly, not enough to make her gasp or cry out. It ached, a vague, flat pain inside of her as she stretched around the intrusion. It felt strange, felt wrong, like a seal had been broken, like the boundaries of her body had been invaded. Her hips rocked slowly against the polished stone beneath her; the nails of one hand bit hard into the tentacle it was still unconsciously gripping. She took deep breaths against the rhythm - expand her chest and inhale as he entered her, exhale as he pulled away. Inhale - and exhale, inhale - and exhale.

And then a new sensation was growing inside of her, a gentle deflating that had nothing to do with her breathing. It was as if something was trickling out of her body, not air, but -

- But then it was back again. Some reserve inside of her had been topped up again, something indescribable had been put back together. The invasion of her body had not stopped, but something else...

Another rush of pressure, a strain, an ache. He was pushing in farther, her body was yielding to more of him. A withdrawl, a contracting. Another thrust -

"A-ah!"

Her hips jumped; her heart stuttered in its beating from the pain as her hymen broke. She shut her eyes, though this did not change the quality of the utter darkness around him. She must relax, relax and breathe through it. Her husband would not want her to cry out.

Pain. That was pain. He slowed suddenly, orange eyes shifting in the mass as though tilting his head at her. They said it might hurt her a bit, but he had no hope of telling if it was the correct kind of pain or not.

Still, though he slowed, he did not stop, continuing to move in and out of her while his other tendrils touched her. Something was stirring within him. Her essence, mingling with his own, already doing things to him. He'd never known sensations like this. Never known any sensations at all, really, but it felt as though some new thing was forming within him, like a pearl forms within an oyster (a metaphor he would not understand at all.) He was gaining things. After an existence marked by nothing but absorbing what he was told, things were happening inside him on their own.

The ritual was nearly finished. He need only... well. They said there would come a point when her body would "climax," though he had no idea what that meant. Only that it would provide him more of her essence and seal their bond as husband and wife, that he might begin to change. But he was already changing. How would he know when he was through?

One new change rumbled from deep within the mass, suddenly. It started as low as a cat's purr, then grew into an almost moaning roar. The utter silence of the Lord shattered as his new voice erupted from within, grew to nearly ear-piercing volume, then broke away. He looked almost startled by it, slowing his thrusts again for a moment. The orange eyes blinked for the first time. Then his tendrils lifted her hips, tilting her body for an easier entrance to continue taking her.

She was breathing in gasps, quick and arrhythmic, no longer able to hold on to the beat that she had forced herself into. Her breath was being forced out of her by his thrusts, as the weight of his tentacles moving on her abdomen and chest pinned her down with each stroke into her. She could not get enough air to fill her lungs, she knew she was going to start hyperventilating and the muscles inside of her were raw and sore from the broken seal of her hymen. She could feel the stickiness of blood mixing with the strained slickness inside of her, the wetness he had forced forth when he had touched and caressed her. It hurt and...

...And suddenly he was slowing. The limb still pushed itself inside of her, still stretched her in ways that made her ache, but - he was slower, gentler once again. Her eyes slid open. Above her, within the dome of his shadows that made up her entire world, she could see the big, emotionless orange circles of his eyes. They were at an angle, cocked the way one might cock one's head out of curiosity. She'd seen him do this before, but she had not been sure then if he really had been feeling any emotion so human as curiosity then. She gulped in a breath of air gratefully as he slid out of her, let her hips and thighs relax slightly toward the altar beneath her while his tentacle was not forcing them upward at an angle. She breathed deeply, staring up at the eyes that really did look like they were curious about something. What was he wondering about? What had made him look this way at her? What had made him slow down? Was it that she had cried out - that she was in pain?

She gasped through her teeth again as he thrust inward, renewing the pressure. Her hips canted upwards, her toes and fingers curled as the girth of his limb passed through the raw muscle of her entrance and sank in, rubbing against the sore remains of her hymen and opening her more and more deeply. She latched her fingers around the tentacle that still lay under her hand. She was not certain if it was meant to be comforting her, or even if she'd hurt him by digging her fingernails into its smooth, black flesh. She was not certain if he would take kindly to her moving it, or if he would take her direction as an affront and start hurting her again for it. But he might be curious about her, and so she had to try. She let her knees close briefly as he slid out of her once more, the lithe shadow-flesh and muscle more easily out past her inner labia. She moved her hand to try and lift the tentacle -

When the rumbling started. Out of nowhere, out of everywhere at once, all around her tiny world made up of his shadows, a low, thrumming sound. It reverberated through the stone altar, reverberated through her flesh, made her already hard nipples pebble and her throat work to swallow. It vibrated against her back, her legs, through her hips, made her pelvis thrum as he began the long thrust back inside of her. His tentacle was humming with the reverberation, her body was moving in counterpoint, her muscles pulsed and vibrated minutely against him as he penetrated her. She was pinned down under his weight, the rumbling was getting louder, louder, it was hurting her ears; his limb was pushing into her until her muscles stretched and screamed against him, her entrance fluttered around him and she was helpless against the wrench of pain it caused inside. She lifted her hand from the tentacle that she had been holding and was about to strike it hard with the palm of her hand to make him stop -

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the noise stopped. She stared up at the orange eyes above her, frightened of the sheer size of her husband, the fact that a mere noise from him could have hurt her. Her hips flattened briefly against the altar again as he pulled out of her but her heart continued to pound, her breathing was still uneven and her body remained taut. Had he been rebuking her for trying to move him? Had he wanted her to continue to lie still until he was finished with her?

But then the huge orange eyes blinked. She would have assumed she was imagining it, had her senses not been sharpened to a needlepoint on his every movement: just for a fraction of a second the eyes had gone dark against his shadow, then in the next fraction of a second they had popped into existence again, sunset orange. He had blinked his eyes, like a living human. She tensed again he gave another thrust inwards, rocking her hips back with momentum, opening her for him by another tiny, aching measure. Then she gasped aloud as two other tentacles wrapped their smooth muscle around her hips and tilted them up, canting her back at a sharper angle, lifting her legs so that they were spread wide and her feet hung in the air. She could see where their bodies connected now over the plane of her body; the tentacle shone with her wetness as it slipped halfway out. When it thrust in again it moved faster, deeper: she threw her head back against the altar with a soft cry as the soreness inside of her flared from the friction. She wanted him to stop, wanted to tell him he was hurting her in words he would understand.

Breathing hard, she lay her hand back on the tentacle that she had been gripping. Gently, carefully, she wrapped her fingers around it; if he would let her, she would begin to lift it and move it down her body. She stared up into his eyes, biting her lip as another thrust rocked through her. She spoke in a breathless whisper.]

Ah- Please...?

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A month late. But HELLO

OHAI. Not to worry, I'm happy to tag whenever we get the chance!

should be back to a more consistent schedule here now!

Aaand now it's my turn to be a bit late! Apologies, the end of term slowed me down a bit.

No problem!

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