The Order of the Sacred Orb

She would forever regret going into the market that day. If she hadn't needed a carton of eggs for the quiche she needed this weekend, she wouldn't have gone into the town center at all. Her days were spent in quiet solitude tending to the village's sheep, a position her mother had steered her toward from a young age.

It was the only career option, really, for a young woman who intended to skip her Testing.

It was an ordinary Tuesday under the twin suns of Nedrox 5. Alice rode into town on the g-power bus, the glass orbs strung up in the interior gleaming and crackling with blue-green power that coiled and swirled inside. The god and goddess of this planet, Guenevra and Arax, blessed the priestesses of the Order of the Sacred Orb with the glowing g-power, short for god power, that fueled every system on the planet. All planetary gods and goddesses provided g-power in some unique way, and while most planets were open to the rest of the galaxy about the general mechanism that produced their g-power, Nedrox 5 kept this information a secret from even its own citizens. Alice had no idea how the g-power in those orbs was formed, but she had no doubt it was something awful.

"You won't be Tested," her mother had told her over and over before her passing five years ago. "I won't allow it."

The Order of the Sacred Orb alone knew the holy rites that fueled the entire planetary economy. The members of their order were conscripts, taken from their families after being Tested on their twenty-fifth birthdays. The young woman would be forced to lay a hand on one of the sacred spheres. If it glowed, the Mother or Sister who discovered her would whisk her away. She would be allowed to visit her family, of course, but she would forever reside within the walls of the nearest Goddess Hold, as the abbeys were called.

Alice's twenty-fifth birthday was a week away. She knew that occasionally a young woman would cross paths with a priestess of the order, and she would be Tested immediately if the Mother Glowing was convinced the girl was somehow especially useful to the Order.

But it was a girls' brunch with her closest friends, and she had promised them quiche.

Alice had no trouble procuring the eggs, cheese, green onions, or the flour for the pie crust. At the dairy stand where she haggled over a pound of butter, she felt rather than saw a shadow fall over her.

The clerk fell silent, still holding the butter aloft.

Alice turned. Before her stood a Mother Glowing in the flowing and graceful royal blue robes of the Sacred Orb. Her headdress, layered with dangling, glowing tendrils, not unlike a jellyfish, was incredibly elaborate, signaling that the Mother Glowing was not long from becoming a Mother Radiant.

The staff in her hand, a white, lumpy rod of what appeared to be raw, unworked platinum, was topped with a clear glass orb.

And inside that orb, god-power was whipping into a frenzy.

Alice paled and flinched, afraid of how the powerful priestess might wield the power.

The Mother smiled, her beautiful, mature face alight with joy. "My child, the orb glows from your mere proximity. Lay your hand upon it and share with us your blessing."

Alice's heart thundered in her ears, the words of the Mother sounding as if they came to her through deep water. The Mother wasn't going to hurt her. She was going to Test her. Alice knew she had no choice. Three other members of the Order were standing watch across the street, and a city guardsman was standing just feet away, his eyes watching the interaction and his hand hovering near his nightstick.

Nothing will happen. Just reach out and touch it.

Alice steeled herself with the comforting lie, reached out her shaking hand, and touched the glass orb.

Nothing happened at first, and she gave a sight of relief.

Then the magic in the orb churned and seethed, filling the orb with such intensely vibrant blue it was almost no longer light. Faster and faster, more and more, the filaments of magic seethed and boiled, and the orb shattered.

The breath was

pulled

from Alice's lungs, and she fell into blackness.

She awoke on the softest bed she had ever felt, gentle sunlight warming her face and her closed eyelids. She blinked and tried to push to a sitting position, but was too weak and gave up. She turned her head to survey the room instead.

Everything was gold, white, or cream. Everything was elegant and enormous, much too large. The bed was a huge poster bed with gold and cream tapestry hangings from the sides, and heavy white leather armchairs and sofas dotted the large space. Some of the furniture was oddly shaped and made Alice's stomach clench. She didn't look at them for long.

In one of the chairs, a younger Mother Glowing with a less elaborate headdress sat, beaming at her. The comparison jolted her memory, and with a gasp, Alice finally pushed herself upright and scuttled back on the bed to be farther from the woman.

"Relax, dear," the priestess's motherly voice soothed. "You have been found to be the Dove spoken to us long ago in prophecy. We are all rejoicing, and you will be cared for and safe."

Alice didn't attempt to hide her confusion.

"I am sure you will have many, many questions. Luckily for you, you have nothing to worry about. We will do everything for you, so just lie back and rest."

There was absolutely no chance of Alice doing that. She needed to get out of here. She ransacked her scrambled brains for a useful question. "What does the Order do to the girls?" Alice blurted out instead, then covered her mouth. That was

not

what she had meant to ask.

The smile the Mother gave her wasn't a very nice one. It reached her eyes, but it was too wide, redolent of secret pleasures relished behind closed doors. Alice shuddered. "Not a single one experiences any pain, of that I can assure you."

That sounded like some loophole bullshit.

A knock sounded at the door, and three more priestesses entered, these wearing the simpler robes and headdresses of Sisters. "Ah, just in time. Prepare her for the ceremony."

"Ceremony?" Alice panicked in earnest now, jumping off the bed and fleeing toward the door.

"Less than five minutes for her to try to run," the Mother sighed. "Sister Agnes?"

Sister Agnes reached into her pocket, pulled out a pinch of deep blue dust, and blew it toward Alice.

Alice's mind shut off.

When it came back online, she was clean, smelling of jasmine and honeysuckle, and dressed in a very, very sheer, creamy white robe that was a mockery of the robes worn by the Mothers and Sisters. Her pinkish-brown nipples were plainly visible, as was the dark cleft between her legs, now completely denuded of hair.

And for some reason, it was throbbing and creaming like it never had before.

She was seated in a wooden pew in the chapel of the Order's cathedral in the capital city. She recognized it from the Queen's wedding broadcast a few years ago. The Mother Resplendent, head of the entire Order, was kneeling on a velvet pillow before the altar, a small stick the size of a pencil in her hand.

Alice squinted and realized it was a paintbrush.

Next she held a small pot aloft. It was carved from lapis and gleamed in the sunlight.

As the chanting prayer ended, Alice as brought to her feet by the Sisters on either side. She was too dazed to fight as she was brought to the altar, her cunt throbbing with each step. She whimpered as the Mother Resplendent's gray eyes rested on her soft brown ones. "What is happening to me?" she begged for answers.

"You are being consecrated, Dove," the Mother responded. "Nothing will hurt. You need have no fear."

Alice tried to still her fear, but she felt like a shaken champagne bottle. As her apprehension rose, so did the heat between her legs. She let out a soft whine.

"She is ready," the Mother beamed. She took the paintbrush, dipped it into the pot held for her by a Sister, and drew a rune with tickling, gentle strokes over Alice's full mouth.

"With this rune, I bind your power of speech. You will not speak, nod, or gesture." The rune flashed, and a rush of hot, desperate pleasure seared her lips. She moaned, then realized what had been taken from her, and tried to protest.

All that came from her lips were desperate pants, like an animal in heat. Her cheeks flushed.

"Good girl," the Mother cooed, and stroked her hair. She drew another rune, this one between her eyes. "With this rune, I bind your mind. All thoughts of escape and worry of the outside world is gone. You will obey immediately all commands put to you unless they will cause pain."

Another blinding rush of pleasure, this one into her mind. Alice shuddered.

"With this rune, I bind your body," the Mother continued, drawing matching runes on Alice's hands. "You may not touch any part of your body with any other part. You will stay where positioned until moved again."

The pleasure rocketed over Alice's entire body, and she wailed and threw her head back, orgasm hanging over her like an immanent thunderstorm.

The matron smiled even more widely. She opened the front of Alice's robe, and Alice did nothing to stop her, even though her heart thundered in apprehension. This rune was drawn over Alice's pelvis. "With this rune, I bind your orgasm. You will not come unless given explicit permission by the Goddess Guenevere."

Alice blacked out at the rush of power and pleasure that filled her, filled her to bursting, her clit feeling like it was being inflated by a bicycle pump, her cunt spasming on nothing, slick dripping out of her obscenely. The loss of consciousness was a relief, but then the darkness peeled away and she saw them.

Guenevere and Arax. Guenevere was dressed in iridescent silks, barely visible to the human eye, and her red hair reached her feet. Her full pink mouth was joyous, and her green eyes danced.

Arax's hard body, bare to the waist, was bronzed and gleaming. His dark tousled hair bore a golden crown, and his lush mouth smiled softly at his mate.

Arax spoke first, his purple eyes bearing into Alice's soul. "You have made my mate the happiest a goddess could ever be," he praised Alice. "You, who went your entire life without a cruel word to anyone, or an orgasm to herself. You will be rewarded with pleasures beyond your imagining, but in a way, this will be a punishment."

Alice's pleasure-addled mind barely registered that Arax knew her deepest secret. She had never masturbated to orgasm, always overwhelmed by the intensity of the growing feeling and stopping before that point. As the frustration it caused was unbearable, she rarely masturbated.

"You never took any pleasure for yourself, darling," Guenevere cut in, "So now you will drown in pleasure for eternity. You are now immortal. And these runes," she gestured to the glowing golden runes that appeared in the air beside her, "will ensure you are not neglected even when the most diligent Sisters of the Order need to rest."

Alice's mind filled with the horror of that statement, but before she could protest, the runes shot forward and landed in a line between her hips, golden and gleaming.

Instantly, the feeling of a wet brush teasing her drooling clit, just tracing gentle circles, consumed her attention. She dropped to her knees, her hands attempting to shootto her groin, but stopping before they moved more than a few inches. She could no longer cover herself. Her face heated as a long strand of glistening slick fell to the slate stone of the dreamscape below her with a faint patter. She whimpered.

The brush on her clit was joined by the teasing pressure of two fingers on her g spot, and the gushing from her cunt doubled. She wailed and jerked her hips, her red face getting redder, her nipples tossing in the air as her breasts jiggled and bounced. A teasing brush of feathers over her nipples started, and tears streaked down Alice's face.

Oh, you thrash so prettily," Arax continued, beaming in pride. "I see what Guenevere gets out of all this now. You see, every planet's gods and goddesses get to choose how they harvest g-power. I gave the choice to my mate as a gift, and she chose orgasm denial and edging.

It takes all the Goddess Holds, all filled with a hundred novices, 8 hours a day of teasing and edging, to power this planet. As our blessed Dove, you will provide that same amount of energy, and those poor girls can come once a week instead of once a month."

Guenevere was watching poor Alice dance and jerk and whine and drip and cry. Alice cried prettily, the tears welling up in her big brown eyes and spilling as her lower lip trembled. The spasming of her cunt was visible from across the room. "I think we might make her wait a decade," Guenevere mused.

And with that, Alice was brought back to consciousness.

The horrid runes kept on their teasing, and the Mother Resplendent immediately understood their meaning. "She has been accepted by the god and goddess!"

Cheering broke out in the cathedral. Every orb in the place glowed brighter and brighter, and the enormous globe atop the cathedral where the g-power was stored churned ever more quickly as Alice's exponentially more powerful arousal filled it.

"Our entire planet will have an explosion of prosperity we have never before seen," the Mother Resplendent murmured. "We will have g-power to export if we wish."

And all it takes

, thought Alice as the horrid brushes teased her throbbing clit and the finger pads just rubbed, rubbed, rubbed her g-spot,

Is my eternal torment

.