The priest settled on the patch of greenery in her study, surrounded by vegetables and bordered by a ring of tall grass. If anyone entered at this time they would be hard pressed to find her, but no one should. She’d locked the door and placed a sign barring entry outside it. Anyone who knew her would know at this time it was of utmost importance not to disturb her.

This was the time she channeled her god.

A fresh, foresty scent wafted through the room. The lights remained low, only enough to see to her hand outstretched. The walls muffled sounds, any coming in or going out. The entire presence of the room radiated calm, peace, quiet. She needed absolute calm to channel her god, as nervous and fidgety as the rabbits it took the shape of.

Shy and nervous though it was, it always appreciated the offerings her village gave, treated her like a friend when she visited, and always offered a bountiful harvest in response.

The priest calmed her breathing until no human could hear it, and she murmured a slow chant, picking up in speed as she went until the words poured out from her.

She held in her gasp as she felt her senses transported, the stuffy room changed to an open space with fresh air and bright sun.

She couldn’t hold in her gasp as a barrage of rainbow light slammed her senses. She fell over in her channeling circle.

This had never happened before. Her god usually remained in dark, quiet spaces. She usually heard its thoughts, its considerations for its people. All she could hear from it was a droning hum in tune with the pulsing colors, and echoing around it, drumming through her head like a drill through her mind, a voice she’d never heard before but which filled filled the universe like an angelic choir of thunder.

“Sleep little godling, surrender to me, you cannot resist, so drift off to sleep . . .”

The priestess tried to make sense of what she was feeling, but her mind felt as if it were burning up. She caught glimpses through the overwhelming color of a grinning, scaly face. She’d never seen her god before, only experiencing its realm through its eyes, but what she saw now looked beyond any mortal creature, like a snake whose scales glowed with the piercing brilliance of the sun.

She couldn’t understand what was happening. She must have channeled wrong. She tried to change it, back out, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Her mind was locked to this entity pouring hypnotic colors through whatever she’d channeled, body immobile as if someone gripped her. She felt like scales slithered around her, wrapping her body and binding her to a serpent.

“Sleep,” the magnificent serpent cooed. “Shut yourself off and become mine to own. No more thoughts or senses of your own, sink into sleeping oblivion.”

The priest felt like the words etched themselves into her mind. She breathed heavily, as if she teetered on a cliff, but the more she teetered the more the cliff bottom seemed inviting as a delicious, enchanting pool. She tried to call to her god for help, but—

She had no name to call, nothing in her mind. She couldn’t recall—what god? What was it, looked like, felt like? The colors slithered through her mind like snakes, and her thoughts slithered with them.

A pressure surrounded her body and mind with a possessive grip, and she involuntarily gulped. The colors flashed through her mind like lightning and she gasped, before a tight calm squeezed over her mind and she sighed into a smiling daze, her wide eyes now full of those glowing colors never before seen by mortals.

“Sleep into oblivion, my little prey,” the snake god spoke. “Now that you’re all mine, you won’t feel a thing.”

The flashes of vision and feelings of the priest through the blinding colors would have frightened her, horrified her, had her mind not been warped into servitude of the colors. A widening snake mouth, wide enough to swallow the world, nearer and warmer and darker as it swallowed what she saw.

Swallowed what she felt.

Swallowed her thoughts and mind in a single gulp, leaving only its divine colors flashing in her smiling head.

When she finally awoke—

When she finally rose, she stepped back into the world to promulgate the knowledge of this new god. The god that they would serve, obey, worship, surrender all to.

As if by a virus, knowledge of the village’s old god quickly faded. Those who heard the priest’s words began skeptical.

Those who saw her eyes quickly saw the light, and nothing but the light, the searing light burning onto their minds. Even a glance at the priest’s eyes was enough for one to become obsessed, and a long stare into her eyes branded with the eyes of a god would make them devoted servants to their serpent god.