Sitting up against the wall, Donglion stared at the strange woman in black, who looked down at him hungrily. "Get up, pet," she said finally, grabbing him by the hand (which he offered limply), pulling him to his feet.

"Where are we going?" he asked between deep breaths, noticing how this dress seemed to force him to slump slightly.

"You must understand the gravity of your situation. Then, you must decide whether or not you wish to rededicate yourself to the Most Highly Exalted." She walked off towards the door.

He raised an eyebrow. "I have a choice in the matter?"

She scoffed, "Of course! One must always take the first step oneself, to allow the Most Highly Exalted to take them into His mighty bosom."

He followed her to the door. She opened it gingerly, revealing a long hallway of dark red doors lit by flickery yellow lanterns. "Of course, if you do not allow yourself to become one with His Love, you will be fed to the dogs."

"Oh."

"You will see it is a mercy. In time, you will see. His Love does not permit us to suffer you, positing yourself as self-sufficient in yourself. Nor does it permit us to suffer you suffering from it, your painfully being torn apart from the whole. We must return you to Him, by whatever means necessary."

This stunned Donglion, who knew of no higher power besides the Emperorex and those talked about in secret books. It was as if he found himself in a real American military base, all ready to wage total war with reality in the name of a nonexistent divinity, as if nothing had changed in the past ten thousand years! That such people existed and that his parents, who were far more pious than he, would willingly send him to them to be "trained," was so shocking he could hardly breathe.

The strange woman, who had called herself one of the Sisters, saw him bubbling over with anxiety and fear. She touched him on the shoulders, steadying him physically. Her own dress, he saw, was by no means as restrictive as his own and with him having to slump and her wearing riding shoes they were almost equal in height. She flicked him on the chin, which stung him slightly, and he raised his head to meet her gaze.

"You are blind," she explained, softly but firmly, like a schoolmarm talking to a dull student, "He will let you see. But, only if you let Him in. I am his vessel. Will you let Him in through me or will you die?"

He shook his head violently, tried to push her away but ineffectually–she stood firm. She was obviously stronger than him. Was it not the natural order of things, for the strong to submit to the weak? And if she was stronger than him and she submitted to Him, did that not mean that He was stronger than her and so, by the transitive property, He was stronger than him? And so, was it not the natural order of things, that he should submit to Him, through her if that was truly the only way?

He nodded. He wasn’t sure what he was nodding to, because he had just been carrying on an inner monologue with himself, but that simple act of affirmation or acceptance (it was acceptance, for he had posited nothing and so was unable to affirm anything) seemed to make the world stop spinning. He was not in an indeterminate somewhere, he was in His house. He was not with an indeterminate someone, he was with His faithful servant. Faith. That was a new concept for him. One could not have faith in the Emperorex, since They demonstrably existed, but Him, He was someone who one could know only through faith, if at all.

"Now," she continued, and he became aware of the violins having grown louder in their quieting back down again, felt buzzy and warm and empty, "You have accepted the facts, which show that you must accept His Love. In time, you must learn to accept it without the facts, without anything else besides the Love itself. For now, you must do what logic dictates."

"Logic?" That was a funny word that meant math without numbers.

"Yes. You have reasoned that you must submit to Him through me. So, submit to me."

"Okay." He fell to his knees, feeling the metal straps of his dress dig into his knees.

"Pathetic." She punched him in the face. It was not a slap, but a punch, the force of her devotion translated into physical power, and his nose cracked and his face stung and he was surprised that he did not bleed. "You play at submission. You think to submit by doing something. But to choose to submit is to choose to do nothing. Submitting is not an action one can perform."

This stunned him, but still buzzy and now dazed, his pain formed a barrier which only her words could penetrate, showing her mastery to be both mental and physical, since he himself could generate no idea that could get past the dread sensation. "Yes."

"Good." She dragged him back to his feet, briefly holding him up in the air, one-armed. "As long as you accept that by saying ‘yes’ you do not affirm a thought, the same as mine or otherwise, but simply accept. That saying ‘yes’ is not something you do, but rather something I do through you, insofar as I command you, with words or otherwise."

"Yes."

She pointed to a door. On it was a black sigil, visible only because it was slightly reflective, a pillar inside a circle. He followed her inside.

The room was dark, lit by candles. In the center was a stone slab. Above it, on the wall, was another symbol like the one in the main room, likewise silver. Below it was a shelf filled with spiritual implements.

"Disrobe," the Sister snapped, already in the process of taking off her shoes, "This is His place and it is not allowed to occlude yourself before Him."

Donglion nodded. He slipped off the shoes easily enough, but struggled with the straps on his dress. Some part of him wondered if he had tied them himself, in his trance, or if someone else had put him in it while he simply hallucinated. And that raised the question of the leather bound book…

He heard the sound of a fist smacking and shivered. Gently, he maneuvered out of his straps, stepping out of the dress and towards the slab. Someone pushed him, smacking his penis (which had been erect this whole time, but previously restrained by the straps) against it. He fell over on it, shutting his eyes as he knew what was coming, recognizing the significance of some of his false visions in preparing him for this torment, which he would endure stoically, as a man must. Not whining and screaming like…

He yelped as she entered him. 

Rubbing, panting, sweating. The vigorous pumps, like a hyena rutting. He felt himself moaning, perhaps in pleasure, perhaps in pain. He tried to catch a hint of her reflection in the silver symbol, but found himself just staring at it. He had an intuition of it as two perpendicular lines, whenever she was in him and his brain was bursting with feeling, though he recalled the lines, somehow, as slightly curved and at an angle from each other. Like a deep image coming through, whenever he…

He clawed on the slab, finding the indentations where a million others, it seemed, had been in this same position. She tore through him, harder and faster than any of his boyhood playmates. The only lubricant was whatever squirted out of her implement and the chafing made him think of his sins, which for the first time he felt to be real, because he felt them as the chafing of his dry asshole. He felt himself leaking something, down the side of the slab, which perhaps was also sin (or pride?) as he was purified, but he lost the metaphor at this point and just enjoyed the sensation of being rammed by a higher power. There was no shame in this. Even if it was through His servant (who, though more powerful than him, was still a woman), it was the natural order for the strong to take pleasure in the weak. And there was no doubt that, as strong as he was, He was stronger.

She grew harder and more erratic in her thrusts. His penis was pushed roughly against the slab and was soon covered in his juices, causing the various small scrapes to burn, and this burning was his repentance. She rubbed his taint softly while grabbing his neck, making sure he kept his eyes on His symbol, which he could not help seeing as straight at this point.

She began to sputter and disengaged from him at last, but not before filling him with a hot liquid which stung but also healed and which was his absolution. And it was this thought, that her cum (he knew it was cum in the moment, though he would doubt it a moment later) was the absolution of sins (whatever those were), which made him start to shutter, finally feeling the tension in his crotch relax as goo dripped from his stem, making a smacking noise when it landed on the hard floor.

Being thus absolved of his sins, such absolution being his post-orgasmic glow, granted a lightness to Donglion’s being which he hadn’t had since he first woke up in this strange place and perhaps had never had. He sighed contentedly, but he had to get to work. Turning around, he was shocked to see her the Sister’s still semi-hard penis in the candle light, having assumed somehow that what he felt was simply a very sophisticated simulacrum, one of the "spiritual implements" on the wall, having known a weak, cowardly man who had things like that done to him by his lovers (and, later, his wife).

Donglion knew he was not like that man. He had not been taken by a woman with a strap-on, but by Him, through His servant, who just happened to be a woman with a penis. And a not unimpressive one at that.

"Get back," she moaned, "Onto the slab."

He nodded, clambering backwards. She followed him, moving slowly and deliberately, her penis gently swaying as she walked. Both of them bit their lips simultaneously and he let out a giggle.

"You think this is funny?" she sneered.

"Yes," he muttered, "The joy of… His Love."

"Oh, of course." She leaped on top of him. Over her head, he caught a glimpse of the door.

"You are progressing faster than I expected, young one," she said softly. As she crawled, his head gradually lowered down to her power dangling in front of him. He was getting hard again.

"Thank you." Consciousness of her power, her approval, her closeness to Him and his own hardness blended together until they were all one thing. He felt tears forming.

She played with her hair. "It is really no surprise, if you think about it. You are volatile and dramatic. You live a life of grand, sweeping emotion and intense physical sensation. It is easy for you to accept new things."

He nodded. Normally, he would consider this an insult, to suppose him so fickle and indeterminate, so soft in his convictions, but coming from her he had no choice but to accept it. And, thinking back on his life, he supposed he had always known this in his heart.

"But the trouble will be making it stick. You cannot accept Him in the depths of your being, because you have no depths. Or, rather, if He can penetrate your depths so easily, it is because your depths would be shallows in another woman, much less a man. And so the seed of His Love will struggle to take root, being always at risk of being washed away by the oncoming tides."

He blinked. "You mean, if another man cums in my asshole?"

She punched him again, just as hard as before. This time, he did bleed. She looked down, as if embarrassed. Her penis even started to soften. "It was a mistake to think that you had progressed so quickly, being such an ignorant and self-absorbed youth." She rose awkwardly to her feet, grabbing onto his chest for support. "You only play games to receive pleasure, to stroke your own ego, which is nothing. Stupid girl!" She turned her fist on herself, repeating the expression of self-abasement as she did so. She managed to bash herself three times in the mouth in quick succession until finally she fell, landing in darkness as the candles she knocked over extinguished themselves.

He shot up, startled out of any semblance of trance. Looking down, he could barely make out her shape writhing in the dark. "Um, no, wait, I’m totally devoted to, um, him." 

"Him!" she cried, then whimpered, "I hear the lack of convinction in your voice… I know when you are just fibbing out of pitiful human desire." She spat. "You disgust me… I disgust myself… I disgust Him…"

"Oh, yes, Him," Donglion muttered nervously. He looked back at the door, thinking of making a run for it. Most of His Love had leaked out of his asshole at this point and the million different currents in his mind had started flowing again, leaving him unsure of how to continue. This situation, it seemed, would destroy him. Leave him like her, most likely. Writhing on the floor in supplication to a nonexistent deity.

But where would he go? Where was he in the first place? Plainly, he had been transported in his isotube, and he could perhaps get a sense of how far he had gone by looking at its biometric records. And that leather bound book. Perhaps a log book? If it had to do with deliveries, it might tell him when the next ship of supplies would arrive (he had decided this had to be a rogue space station, as no planet in the Empire would tolerate such barbarism) and hitch a ride on it.

His rivers having run together, he slid off the slab, ignoring the subtle pull in the back of his mind which reminded him how good it felt to be fucked in the ass by that crazy woman. Leaving her crying in the corner, he approached the door. Before he could reach it, the door swung open, barely missing his still bloody face. He jumped back, crashing into the slab and falling to the floor in pain.

"Fuck!" he screamed, but it came out like a moan, and in an instant Donglion felt his scratches and bruises as blessings. They were… They showed him… They were nothing. They did not show him anything. But, they were blessings. He loved them.

So bleeding from his nose and his back and loving it, Donglion looked up to see who had opened the door. She was easy to see. A young woman, dressed much like the one who had first greeted him but with nearly white hair tied in two places and with her face more heavily painted. But, out of the corner of his eye, he caught another woman, in front of her. Though the eye did not want to focus on her, he was fascinated and pushed it to see. She wore all black, he thought, a skintight suit like one wore for team sports but without a face opening and dotted with zippers and buttons, ribbons and belts, a few dangling sigils (including the one on the wall, which he knew now was His primary symbol, and which, in this thought, was perfectly perpendicular) and other insignificant little bits of detailing. She stood perfectly still. He could hardly imagine her having walked into the room.

"Jez," the blond Sister muttered dreamily, eyes fluttering slightly (she did not clip her eyelashes), "Mother…"

"Mother!" was shouted from the back of the room. The Sister, who Donglion now knew was called Jezlam (not that he cared), leapt to her feet only to fall again into a heap in front of her, who Donglion now knew was called Mother, though he did not care about this either, as he also knew that this was not her true name, that she lacked a true name, that to speak about her would always be to speak falsely, her being so close to Him as to be outside language and thought.

A few seconds or hours passed. The blond Sister collapsed as well, which seemed right. The room fell out of existence and became inaccessible to language and thought. One could say, on a new moon the sky is organized around something that does not exist. But, the sky itself does not exist either. Though, ultimately, they were annihilated not by the moon, which simply organized them in their non-being, but by the city below, by its light which made the night sky into empty blackness, and so it was ultimately the light which created the darkness and not the nothingness that was itself in the darkness. But, the city itself also does not exist, not really, though if one could say of anything that it exists, one could say it of the city. And there’s a hidden secret in that, meaning it’s not the right metaphor, because nothing should be hidden, because nothing should be there at all. Black. Blank. Empty.

All inadequate metaphors. But not really, because there is no reality in relation to which they could be adequate or not. Formal poetry, without reference. This is all that could be offered in logical good faith.