In the dark elf kingdom ruled by Lolth, the priestesses were getting ready for their weakly prayer when something unexpected happened. From the shadows, a ghostly spider walked toward them.
All the priestesses bowed down immediately; that was a Yochlol. "I have words from the dark queen. Mortals, I need a holy sacrifice. The more, the better."
The ghostly spider morphed into a drow woman in beautiful white attire. From her hand. Ten tiny spiders emerged, "Choose on your own."
Lolth wants sacrifices from her priestesses, and those spiders are the ones who will kill.
"Do we have the right to choose?" One of the priestesses asked with a scared face.
"A consenting sacrifice is far better than a non-consenting one. The first spider will give you a painless death, and the last will send you in agony." The Yochlol disappeared, and the priestesses stared at each other.
Each one of them gets to choose whether to sacrifice herself or not, and on top of that. They get to pick whether to go in agony or not.
"What do we do?" one of them asked, looking at the tiny spiders.
"This is a test. We must succeed." Another one replied.
"A Yochlol delivered it. Could this be an initiation?"
"An initiation to reincarnate as a Yochlol? Could this be a reward for our services?" Another one spoke.
"No, Lolth tests, Lolth watches, Lolth punishes." Another priestess walked toward the tiny spiders, extending her finger to them. "Send me to her. Who of you has the worst poison?"
"Hold up, right here and now?" Another priestess gasped, and even the tiny spiders looked surprised as they glared with their glowing, big eyes.
One of the spiders approached the priestess and climbed her finger, looking up and down at her.
"The more time we waste, the more we hesitate. Go for it, little one." The priestess said the spider hesitated for a bit and then bit her.
Lolth smiled as she felt the divine energy surging to her. Under the dark web, she stood smiling, "I can finally control him."
KAN! From the web, the priestess started appearing one after one. With lolth being a god, she knew what they were thinking about before dying, and she will use it to get more of them.
She looked behind her. Cain was getting out of control.
His entire body has morphed into a gigantic, grotesque mass of tentacles, an ineffable mass of horrid crimes against the beauty of existence. Glaring at it was enough to turn the stomach and send most people crying.
Lolth is a god, and even she can barely fathom the existence ahead of her. This thing is far more than what the myths told, even though it was unconscious and incomplete in its manifestation. Lolth alone understood the danger of waking him up. Cthulhu must never open his eyes.
"A priest, they said. An ancient race, they said. This thing is different," Lolth gasped.
"What is this?" One of the priestesses cried in fear upon seeing Cain's countless tentacles.
"[Death] some call it, but not in the way that you know," Lolth said, walking toward the tentacles and touching them.
They were limp with no strength in them yet. "For that is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons, even death may die."
Lolth used her threads to start moving the tentacles, controlling them like puppets.
"This is the simple premise of evanescence. Nothing belongs to man, not this world, not the homes they build, not the godhood they attained, not even the mind."
The priestess started crawling away, terrified, "Where are you going?" Lolth stared at them. Her webs quickly entangled them.
After just a few minutes, she collected over thirty priestesses. "Inside him, you go. To be a Yochlol, you must pass the test." She started throwing them into Cain's mass of tentacles.
She didn't intend to turn them into Yochlol. She only wanted to delay Cain's awakening by using their souls.
Lolth's power was slowly increasing, and so was Cain's. Even though he had no mana, his will alone slowly consumed Lolth's demon web. Bringing him to her divine domain was a grave mistake.
"We got the message to everyone. How is it going?" A Yochlol appeared behind Lolth.
"I reached divine rank 17 and still going up, but he is, getting stronger." Lolth stared at Cain with a scared face, "Divine energy, he's getting prayers from millions of souls."
The Yochlol's single eye twisted, his body wiggling, "Impossible, he only had three believers."
"The divine energy is coming from hell." Lolth growled, "Avernus, Dis, Minauros, and even Phlegethos. All the devils are praying and sacrificing blood in Cthulhu's name," Lolth kicked the ground.
"Damn that bitch. Her name was Marina Ourals. How did she get the devils of hell to do that?" Lolth glared back, "Get the avatar fixed as quickly as possible and kill her. Both she and him are gaining power like crazy."
Lolth didn't expect that. The only priestess that Cain had, she managed to get him so much attention in a short time. In reality, Marina asked Alice and Sofia to go to hell and ask the devils there to pray to Cthulhu.
The plane was simple, while Eilistraee and the others are getting the explosive, Sofia and Alice will go back to hell and tell the devils that Cuthulu, who wreaked havoc before, is ordering them to pray.
The first complication they faced was that devils aren't that religious; getting them to pray, even for the look, is almost impossible. But to their luck, Fierna, the woman ruling Phlegethos with her father, had a different view.
After having Cain beat her continuously. And now, hearing that he, Cthulhu, is ordering her to pray, she started doing it. After her, all the weaker layers (Avernus, Dis, Minauros) followed her example. Of course, Jorm scared the chain devils to pray, Inanna spared the sinners who prayed her flames, and Abornazine got the devils of the first layer to pray. The devils of Dis started praying without trouble when Sofia threatened them.
...
In Eilistraee's castle, Marina leaped into the water, "AH! this feels better."
"My lady, are you alright?" One of the twins yelled.
"I'm fine, hurry and bring me the staff. I can't handle the flow on my own." Marina replied.
Eilistraee's priestess approached her, "I never seen a great priest or a pope who knew nothing about her job." The drow woman stared down the water.
"When people pray, the prayers go through the high priest before passing to the god. That is to make collecting them more efficient and the reason why powerful gods have multiple high priestesses." She said, "A single person can't handle high stress."
Marina stared up, catching the staff the maid threw her. "What should I do." The maid looked at her, "This is the most expensive magic staff we could find. It belonged to a priestess of Umberlee that died long ago." The maid told the origin of the staff she heard from Eilistraee's treasure master.
The priestess looked at her, "Just sit there and relax, it might get agonizing at some point, but you have to endure it." She took a deep breath, "You can try thinking about something to distract yourself, but that usually angers your god."
Marina smiled, "Cain wouldn't mind my sloppy priestess job. I will try focusing on it at least." Marina's body morphed, and tentacles grew from her back and ears. The more moisture her body absorbed, the more she got intuned to water, turning her hair into a shade of blue. In her eyes, a pink eldritch flare glowed. "I hope this will do it."
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