A Serpent's Will
by Bluesaph
Written for Day 3 of HypNovember 2023, Prompt: Coils
Decided to post this as its own fic because it ended up going waaaay longer than I originally planned XD. Hope you all enjoy~
Keeping her noble head held up high, Nayrina rose from her flower throne and took several elegant strides forward as she prepared to meet her unwelcome guest. Flanking her on either side, the legendary elven warrior Mayelle and the thrice-honored fae heroine Anthina tightly gripped their millenniawood blades, ready to strike down the intruder at a moment’s command. The two were Nayrina’s most stalwart champions, having devotedly served the immemorial nature goddess in countless battles and quests. It had pained them to not join their battle sisters in the fight outside, but they had both long ago decided that their loyalty to their goddess must always outweigh their personal feelings, and she had wanted them here.
On the other side of the tree bark door to the goddess’ private sanctuary, the three could hear shouts of anger, screams of pain, and, most unsettlingly, what sounded like moans of ecstasy, all muffled by the ancient wood, but all slowly getting louder. Closer and louder. Ever the picture of beauty and strength, even now Nayrina’s face did not betray any sense of concern. She did not know what her rival was thinking with this attack, but she did know that it would fail, just as every previous attempt to usurp her power had.
In the time before time, the universal forces of chaos and order had breathed the laws of the world into being and created the gods to oversee them. Each law had been assigned two gods, each deity emphasizing a different major aspect of that law. Most deities quickly learned to coexist with their counterparts, as was the case with Gede, goddess of Time and Dawn, and Zyra, god of Time and Dusk, but for others this system of balance was merely the prelude to a millennia-long war for dominance. Such was the case for Nayrina, goddess of Nature and Harmony, and Ferana, goddess of Nature and Wilderness.
Nayrina had long anticipated the possibility of her rival one day breaching her sanctum, but admittedly the timing had taken her completely off guard. The past several centuries had seen Ferana’s divine strength weaken as humanity expanded its territory across the world, razing jungles, bending rivers to their will with aqueducts and dams, and turning forests to factories. Each day, the wild goddess’ beloved domain shrunk more and more, despite how ferociously she and her followers had resisted the encroachment of civilization with blood and blade.
Nayrina too had suffered initially from this expansion, her power linked to Nature just as surely as her rival’s was, but unlike her counterpart she had quickly found ways to live in peace with the humans. Domesticated animals gave her strength just as well as wild ones did, the bounty of farms was far greater than the bounty of untended fields, and civilized humans were just as much part of Nature as their unwashed ape ancestors. True to her aspect, Nayrina lived in harmony with humanity, gifting them plentiful harvests and useful knowledge of the natural world, as well as protecting them from Ferana’s attacks. As a result, her divine will waxed while Ferana’s waned, and Nature bent to it in response, increasingly reflecting her feelings and desires rather than those of her rival. In the current day, she was more powerful than she had ever been, so an attack now seemed nearly unthinkable.
Yet here she was, under attack. Ferana and her followers had launched an incursion into her domain so swift and so furious that Nayrina had barely had time to prepare the defenses of her palatial grove before Ferana’s warriors were upon them. She had called for aid from her allies in the human domains, who vastly outnumbered Ferana’s host, but they would take time to arrive, even with her will guiding them safely and quickly through the forests. Regardless, martial might wasn’t everything. Whether she penetrated the sanctum or not, Ferana was fighting an unwinnable battle.
The sounds outside reached a fever pitch before beginning to die down, quieter and quieter until eventually growing silent. The goddess and her champions stood completely still through the seconds of silence, before a massive impact suddenly SLAMMED into the door, ripping and splintering the tree bark as it erupted inwards, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. With a smug, hungry grin, Ferana stepped through the opening and walked up to her counterpart..
“Nayrina, dearest, I have to say I’m not a fan of what you’ve done with the place. I mean, really, hedge sculptures? That’s just tacky.” The wild goddess made a little tut-tut noise as if scolding a child. While they equalled each other in height and status, the two goddesses could not look more different. The neatly brushed back waves of Nayrina’s shimmering blonde hair looked nothing like the messy, unkempt ginger mane that cascaded over the wild goddess’ face and shoulders. Nayrina’s flowery, intricate silken dress, statuesque build, and delicate, well-manicured hands looked nothing like Ferana’s nearly nude, muscular, warrior-like frame, which was covered only by a tight, revealing tunic and a short skirt of animal hide. Still, both deities radiated the same unmistakably godly auras, the physical manifestations of their connections to Nature, although everyone in the room could plainly see that Nayrina’s was unmistakably stronger. Nayrina gave a short shake of the head to her champions, who lowered their weapons and took a few steps back.
“You are a fool, Ferana, you know as well as I that it matters not if you can best my worshippers in battle. Our power is measured in divine will, in our connection to Nature,” Nayrina spoke with authority, somehow seeming like she was looking down at Ferana in spite of their even heights, ”You cannot best me in a contest of wills, and even if you destroy my physical form here, I will simply reconstitute elsewhere, and Nature will still answer to me.”
Ferana rolled her eyes and sighed, “Annoyingly right as usual. Lucky for me, I don’t need to beat you in a fight or have a stronger will anymore. I’ve found a third way. And I think you’re gonna like it~” She spoke the last sentence in a cloying singsong tone, triggering an annoyed scoff from the other goddess.
“I tire of your games, Ferana, you know the way of the laws as well as I. Go ahead, try whatever feckless scheme you will try, and then: Go. Home.” Her command boomed with the will of Nature, and the flowers and leaves throughout the sanctum all blew back in unison as if suddenly hit by some unseen gale. Ferana’s smile faltered for a second as she herself was pushed back a few inches, her bare feet scraping against the wooden floor as she struggled to stay upright.
“Fine, fine, I’ll cut to the chase. You see, I’ve got-” Ferana flung her arm out at the other goddess, tossing a small spherical vial at her at an unnatural speed. Nayrina didn’t even flinch as vines erupted from the floor and intercepted the projectile, stopping it dead inches from her face. She gave a brief, haughty chuckle, bemused by the bluntness of the wild goddess’ gambit, and spared a glance at the contents of the vial, a curious, spiraling mixture of a cloudy purple smoke and a viscous green- *CRACK*
Too late, Nayrina realized her hubris in taking her eyes off her opponent. In that split second, Ferana had raised her other hand and, with a delicate wave of her fingers, commanded the tiny green slime inside the vial to grow. It was a simple spell that even a novice mortal Nature witch could cast, requiring so little magic that Nayrina hadn’t detected it, but it was more than enough to expand the slime past the cramped confines of the vial, shattering the glass and allowing the dense purple smoke to spread into a massive cloud that quickly enveloped the dumbstruck goddess.
Nayrina coughed and wheezed as she felt an unfamiliar magic seeping into her skin. She tried to command the cloud away, but it did not obey. She tried to run, but quickly found the strength leaving her legs completely, causing her to collapse to the floor in another fit of coughs. She tried to hold her breath, but the coughs were uncontrollable, and with each inhale she found herself feeling a strange impulse to breathe more and more, deeper and deeper. Desperately, the once-proud goddess tried to crawl away from her rival, but the cloud seemed to follow her, and each breath of the haze only made her movements slower and clumsier.
The nature goddess could sense the magical smoke suffusing her lungs and permeating through her body, and as it did, she felt her nerve endings light up in an intoxicating dance of a thousand feelings all at once, coursing up and down her entire physical being. She twitched in ecstasy and shivered in cold, and finally, in a moment of horrified lucidity, Nayrina realized that what she was feeling was her physical form itself starting to shift and alter inside and out.
Ferana took a deep, mocking breath, “Mmmm~ That’s right, take it all in. You’re right that I can’t beat you with brawn or with will, not normally, but what would happen if I just pointed that oh so mighty ‘divine will’ of yours somewhere…more useful?”
Nayrina panted on the floor, a feral, panicked look in her eyes as she searched fruitlessly for the words to respond. A burst of pain and pleasure shot through her mouth and down her spine as two of her teeth suddenly lengthened into needle-sharp fangs. She screamed, although even she couldn’t tell whether it was from the pain or the pleasure.
“You see, for all our godly power, we’ve still got physical forms. Physical skin, physical brains, physical needs.”
She swore in forgotten tongues. She spasmed. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it to never end. She wanted to smite the wild goddess where she stood. She reached out to Nature, ready to give the command. She wanted to- she wanted to- her shuddering hand inched closer to her nethers as she felt her legs bind together and melt into a new combination of skin and scales, radiating a wave of tingly numbness through all her lower nerve endings.
“You remember the twin goddesses of Change? Lovely girls, great fashion sense, love a good regime change. They were more than happy to gift me that little smoke cloud. In exchange for a couple favors, of course. Really, it’s nothing special. It just changes whoever inhales it into a creature of my choice. And of course, when the body changes, so does the brain.”
The cloud had dissipated by now, but its effects had not. She still could feel the scales, the fangs, the tail, the tingling, the pleasure…and worse she could feel a sudden new connection to Wilderness. A gnawing impulse to throw her inhibitions aside and follow her most base, animalistic desires. To eat, to kill, to fuck. Despite herself, Nayrina’s fingers started to tease the outside of her lower lips.
“Among all the beastkin that serve me, lamias really are my favorites. Beautiful, cunning, incredibly deadly, absurdly horny…but the best part about them is that they’re oh…so…loyal…“
Snakeskin rubbed on snakeskin as a fresh wave of pleasure interrupted Nayrina’s latest attempt to refocus herself. She kept reaching out to Nature, but her every command came out as a dozen contradicting thoughts. The vines of the sanctum stretched chaotically, and the wooden structure warped and quaked with the sound of splintering wood as jagged branches poked out through the neatly carved walls.
“Embrace it, dear. Think of the pleasure of wrapping a cute girl up in your coils, the joy of sinking your ravishing fangs into some pompous human windbag, how freeing it will be to finally go out and have some real fun…”
Nayrina bit her lip hard as she plunged her fingers into her sex, primal urges beckoning her forward as she near-instantly hit climax. The part of her that was still a goddess had hoped this would at least bring some relief, but her hunger only grew stronger. She could no longer tell where the goddess of Harmony ended and the lamia began, and it was getting harder and harder to remember why she should care.
Leaning down, Ferana put a finger under her rival’s chin and inched her head up until their eyes met. In sharp contrast to the noble gaze of the deity who had stood there moments ago, Nayrina’s eyes now looked lost and confused, yearning for direction. With perverse glee, Ferana imbued her next words with the will of Nature: “Give in to your wild side.”
As if a switch was thrown, Nayrina’s eyes instantly went blank and her body slackened, her head only held up by Ferana’s finger. Then, after a long pause, she gave a slow blink, her eyes regained focus, and she rose to her full height, her torso balanced on a coil of golden brown scales that shimmered with the same radiance as her hair, which now fell messily over her shoulders. She moaned ecstatically as she stretched her new muscles and flexed her serpentine body, before lowering herself back down and bowing her head to Ferana. The wild goddess smirked as she extended her hand, which Nayrina reverently grabbed and adoringly kissed, like a knight showing obeisance to her queen.
“Absolutely delightful. I like you a lot better this way, Nayrina, and in a minute I think those little ladies of yours will agree.” Following her mistress’ gaze, Nayrina saw Anthina and Mayelle behind her, mouths agape at the horror they had just witnessed. Their mighty queen, their goddess, submitting to her most hated enemy in under a minute. For the first time in their ages of service, the two were at a loss for words and a loss for actions, their vengeful anger and their loyalty to their goddess in conflict with their shock and with Nayrina’s new will pounding at their minds. It told them to give in to the Wilderness, to obey Ferana, to turn their anger towards those who truly deserve it, the humans who would be the death of Nature itself.
Given a few seconds, the two champions would likely regain their composure and move to attack, intent on subduing both goddesses and forcing Ferana to turn Nayrina back to her normal self. But a few seconds was more than they had. With a blink and a smile, Nayrina’s eyes shifted into ethereal spirals of deepest green and boundless blue, swirling into themselves over and over, shifting shade and tint and shape and speed in a disorienting array of colors. The champions were helpless to avoid the gaze, their eyes slowly shifting to matching colors and their heads started to bob in time with the side to side movements of Nayrina’s.
Anthina fell near-instantly, her resistance washed away completely by the ease of obedience to her goddess and the pull of the spiraling eyes. Mayelle tried to close one eye, then the other, to no avail, before finally trying to turn her whole body away. Too late she realized, to her dimming horror, that her feet had been bound together in the slowly swirling coil of Nayrina’s massive snake tail.
“It isss okay,” cooed the former goddess as she slowly slithered her torso up to Mayelle, all while moving her coil further up the elf’s paralyzed form, “I wasss a fool all thesse yearsss, misstresss was right all along.”
“N…no, my goddess, this is not y- you…Ferana…she-” The lamia kissed her champion softly on the lips, and the elf’s train of thought derailed completely.
“It feelsss ssso good to give in, my beloved champion. Think of how much more fun we will have, together like thisss. All you have to do is jussst follow my eyes…and obey~”
“It feels…good...no…I…wha-...”
“Ssso beautiful like thisss, ssso weak for me, ssso pliable, ssso good…”
Mayelle continued to squirm and struggle, letting out rebellious whines and soft no’s in between pleasure-filled moans and babbled half-words, but no matter how hard she fought she could feel herself slipping further and further away. In a final act of defiance, Mayelle pulled her head away from the gaze in a single burst of all her willpower…only to melt and relax the second her face came into contact with the soft caress of the tip of Nayrina’s tail, which had worked itself up to her head and was now lightly rubbing itself against her cheek. The tail moved to cup her chin and gently guided it back toward Nayrina’s gaze, allowing the warrior to finally fall with a calm, happy sigh.
Satisfied with the display of Nayrina’s new abilities, Ferana let out a delighted cackle as she sauntered out of the room. “Have fun, dear. I’ll come back later to discuss some changes to your…policies…towards the humans. I think they've had the run of this world for long enough, don't you?”