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The Hierarch strolled through the market streets, ruminating in anger. He saw the way the others looked at him, muttering under their breaths and sizing him up even as they shunted aside. Loxodons like him—towering elephant-folk, a good seven feet tall with hundreds of pounds of muscle—were often held in suspicion by others. Even the gentlest of giants could still inspire fear in those smaller than them.
Of course, it didn’t help that today, the Hierarch was perhaps more forceful than usual. Anger spurred his heavy feet to slam down onto the cobbled streets, a thud heard a good half-mile away, and his trunk thrashed with every breath, broadcasting his pique. The temple of his people was close now, in a square on the far end of the market. It was their sacred site, the holiest place they had—a lone refuge where loxodons could move with the assurance of kindness and acceptance of others of their kin.
And it had been the site of a crime most heinous.
The market thinned as the stalls and hawkers gave way to the religious quarter. The humans’ grand temple dominated the square, of course, but what the loxodons lacked in space, they made up for in artisanry. Their temple boasted austere marble pillars and a series of stone steps scaled for their massive size. Modest statues of saints and heroes flanked the entryway. The stone steps, built to withstand a weight such as his, didn’t so much as budge even as the Hierarch stomped up them. He barely thought to nod to the temple guards as he passed.
A priest waited for him inside, grey hands folded inside pristine robes, tusks polished and pure. “Take me to her,” the Hierarch growled. His voice was a basso to set the heavens quaking. The priest nodded and led him deep into their sanctuary.
They traveled underground, the chambers spacious and lit with bright-colored torches; the flames had been blessed to burn forever and give off no smoke. The Hierarch was led down to a sub-basement, and then another, and another—until finally, they reached the place where the ne’er-do-well was being held captive.
The temple had no cells, per se, so they’d appropriated a room used for housing acolytes and guarded it well. As the priest opened the door, the occupant—a human female a few years into her twenties; she had a messy pile of wavy red hair and was short even by the standards of her diminutive species—bolted for the door. Her impetuousness angered the Hierarch. It was bad enough that she had disrespected his people already, but she didn’t even have the temerity to face her consequences?
His great trunk wrapped around her as she tried to squeeze past him and he flung her unceremoniously back into the chamber. As he stepped in, the priest followed and then locked the door behind them.
The thief spat in defiance, staring up at him. “What, another one of you big lugs? Am I supposed to be afraid?” She snorted. “Hey, nice gold. Wasted on a brute like you. Hand it over and we’ll call it square for imprisoning me.”
The Hierarch’s hand gripped even tighter around the gilded scepter he carried, a badge of his office. For a moment he felt like exploding at her.
Instead, when he spoke, it was with deadly calm. “Do you know, precisely, what it is you have done?”
She jeered at him and crossed her arms. She was an archetypal thief—dingy clothes, shifty eyes, wiry frame. The Hierarch almost felt bad for her. Likely she’d been born into a poor situation. But then, the loxodons were mistreated by society just as the human poor were—and they didn’t engage in sacrilege towards others.
“You have trespassed into our temple,” he said, folding his arms. “The most sacred place of our people. You have assaulted our priests and acolytes, gentle souls merely wishing to spread kindness and good feelings.” He felt his anger stoking and his voice grew even more level, more iron-like. The frigid tone visibly gave her pause. “But as if that wasn’t enough, you tried to steal one of our sacred relics—a vial said to contain the tears of our goddess herself. Those tears were to give our people a new future.”
“Yeah?” she sneered, bravado returned. “Fat fucking good it did you, huh! Didn’t exactly stop me from smashing the damn thing when I was caught.”
Ahhhhhhh, there it was. She admitted it. The fury in the Hierarch threatened to consume him. Such greed, such pettiness, that when she was cornered with the artifact, she would rather destroy it than return it. If she couldn’t have it, no one could.
“Guess that means your so-called faith is bunk, huh?” the human continued. She stared at him in challenge. “Big fucking surprise coming from a bunch of dumb, fat, stupid anim—”
He lost control. The Hierarch lunged forward, trunk coiling about the thief’s neck. Breath rushed out of her with a squeal as he hoisted her up to his eye-level and stared her down. Her eyes bugged out in alarm; her feet kicked helplessly in the air and her hands scrabbled at his trunk.
“You have no idea of the injustice you have done to us,” the Hierarch said. “That vial was a symbol of our faith, and more than that, it was hope to us. Hope. You sought to steal one of our most sacred treasures, and then would rather destroy the symbol of a people’s belief than surrender it to its rightful owners.” His trunk tightened; her face flushed as blood and oxygen stalled. “And because we are loxodons, your own government will just let you go with a slap on the wrist. A few nights in jail for failed theft, a few more for injuring elephant-folk that no one else cares about. A crime beyond all reason and you won’t even face punishment. You—”
He paused, suddenly realizing something. From its position near her body, his sensitive trunk was picking up an unexpected undercurrent of scent. The loxodon loosened his grip and the thief heaved desperately for air as soon as she could, trying to squirm away as his trunk snout probed experimentally at her.
Yes… the note was subtle, so subtle that even a loxodon could barely detect it. But it was definitely there. The human thief was giving off a pheromone… a pheromone that usually indicated a female loxodon was fertile and in heat.
What sort of divine prank was this?
The Hierarch commanded the priest to approach. “Smell her,” he commanded. “Tell me what you pick up.”
The priest’s trunk danced across the still-struggling human, and then his eyes suddenly widened and he met the Hierarch’s eyes. “But—that can’t—”
“Have any of our women handled her?” the Hierarch asked quietly.
The holy man shook his head. “No. Only males, and a small handful at that.”
The Hierarch nodded. It was as he thought. The pheromone was coming from the human herself. She had the smell of a fertile loxodon female.
“What does it mean?” the priest asked.
Thoughts tumbled over in the Hierarch’s head. It seemed strange and wrong that the tears had been destroyed without doing anything. They had been prophesied to lead his people down a new path. But what if they hadn’t failed at all?
“When she destroyed the tears,” he replied, “did some splash onto her?”
The priest nodded. “Oh, naturally. They went everywhere. She was drenched.”
Of course. So that was it.
“I believe,” he said to the holy man, “that this woman is a gift from our goddess. She unwittingly transformed herself into a vessel for our people’s future.”
The priest’s eyes widened. “You can’t mean…”
Instead of answering him, the Hierarch finally let the human drop. She collapsed to her hands and knees, massaging her throat with one hand while glaring daggers at him with watered eyes.
“You fucker,” she snarled. Her voice was hoarse and rough from the pressure he’d applied; an angry red welt circled her neck. “Thief or not, when the guards find out what you did to a human…”
The Hierarch didn’t dignify her with a response. Instead, he strode over to her. The human flinched—and then squawked with shock as his hand grabbed her hip. She was so petite, and he so large, that he could have fit her entire ass inside his hand if he wanted.
“H-hey—what—” she began. Her eyes widened as the Hierarch used his effortless strength to rip her clothing in one tug, leaving loose tatters about her upper body and completely exposing her lower one.
Including her pussy.
Without clothes to mask the scent, the musk of her womanhood was easier to pick up on, and the smell was clear—she was fertile for loxodons. The smell never lied.
“What are you doing?” she asked, shrill, and tried to rise—but one other hand effortlessly kept her pinned. She craned her head back and gasped when the Hierarch dropped his robes.
He had a stout yet muscular body, his skin grey like any elephant-folk’s. But her attention was focused on the thing between his legs. Even only half-erect, it was well over a foot long, and girthier than the most ambitious human.
“You can’t!” she screamed. “You’re not—you’re too—no! No!” She once again tried fruitlessly to crawl away. “I’m human, damn you! You can’t do this to me!”
“Hierarch…” the priest’s voice was uncertain. “Are you sure?”
“You can smell it the same as me,” the loxodon replied. “You know what she is. To ignore this would be to turn aside our goddess’s gift.” By now the smell of her had gotten him fully hard, and he lined up his cock with her outer lips. She was screaming incoherently, trying desperately to get away. “Besides, even if that wasn’t the case, she forfeited her sanctity when she spat on our faith, didn’t she?”
And with that, he slammed in.
Gods, she was tight. Far, far tighter than any hole had any business being. She was so small that her tightness almost hurt.
Almost.
Instead, it was the most incredible, pleasing, dulcet vise that the Hierarch had ever been blessed to have around his cock. He held in her, panting, nearly overcome by the raw pleasure of having something so tight about him. Then he bucked out and rammed home again.
Her stomach bulged obscenely, the shape of his massive cock visible as it distended her belly. “You’re gonna tear me apart!” she pleaded, tears streaming down her face. She’d stopped trying to escape; she didn’t have the energy, any hint of stamina fucked right out of her. “You’re too big, please, stop! You can’t!”
The Hierarch just bucked into her again; her wail shook her whole body, the tremulous sensation visible around his cock. His goddess wouldn’t lead them astray. Her body would hold. It had to.
Still, it never backfired to be careful. “Come over here and cast a healing spell,” he ordered the priest. “Just in case.”
The priest, who had been staring open-mouthed at the unfolding scene, gulped and came over. With divine light playing around his hands, he laid them to the thief’s bare back. She shook and moaned as his energy revitalized her and rejuvenated any lingering damage the Hierarch’s thrusts might have caused, only to sob incoherently as he rammed into her again.
“Please,” she moaned, her voice almost broken. “I’m sorry, please, please…”
“Keep healing her,” the Hierarch instructed, and he kept fucking her, his pace raw and merciless.
She passed out halfway through, her body going limp and her eyes rolling into the back of her head. The Hierarch almost felt bad for her. She was going to miss out on the best part… well, it didn’t matter. Her job wasn’t to orgasm.
But his was, though.
A few minutes after, he grunted and slammed into her and absolutely flooded her with cum, the liquid splashing out with such force that it made her body flop underneath him. As he pulled out, gush after gush of cum seeped out of her.
“Keep her here,” the Hierarch said as he re-dressed himself. “I will visit her tomorrow, and again after. These will be her quarters from now on.”
“Sir? Permanently?”
Glancing sideways at the passed-out woman absolutely soaked in elephant cum, the Hierarch smiled. “Indeed. She’s been blessed by the goddess, so her place is in our temple, is it not?” And he took his leave.
---
When he returned the following morning, she was ignoring the cot the priests had moved into her chambers, instead slumping against the wall. She had gathered the cum-soaked tatters of her clothes and was clutching them to herself like a protective shield.
When the Hierarch walked in, her face grew as pale as a ghost. She rose as if to run but winced when she was halfway up, staggering sideways. The Hierarch caught her as she fell.
“Please,” she groaned. “I won’t tell anyone what you did, just… no more…”
“No, I’m afraid there will be much more,” the Hierarch replied, and she whimpered to herself. He summoned one of the temple guards—to monopolize the goddess’s gift would be greedy.
He took her while she was half-standing, her torso bent almost horizontal, her arms back with her wrists firmly grasped in his hands. She quaked with every thrust he slammed into her. She wasn’t quite so tight as yesterday, but only comparatively. She was human. She would always be tight compared to him.
Her voice was muffled and desperate. The temple guard was fucking her throat, her lips straining to contain his hugeness. She had no choice but to take what both of them gave her. The guard’s grey-skinned hand threaded through her hair, yanking her forward to force her to deepthroat him when he felt she wasn’t doing enough. Tears streamed down her cheeks; they had been for some time.
The Hierarch came in her again, the flood filling her up. After the two of them slid out, the thief slumped low, trembling, her eyelids fluttering. The Hierarch was vaguely impressed that she didn’t pass out like last time.
“Treat yourselves,” the Hierarch instructed, and the guard smirked and summoned his cohort. As the two loxodons arranged her on her back, kneeling at either end (the first guard was going to take her pussy this time) she mouthed something. Her voice was too faint to hear, but the Hierarch could read her lips:
“I’m so sorry, please just let me go...”
---
He was busy the next day, but the day after he claimed her again. This time he bounced her on his lap, smirking as she beat her fists helplessly against his chest. When she opened her mouth to scream, he plunged his trunk into it, and she gulped and gurgled as he used his trunk to throat-fuck her in tempo with the way he bounced her on his cock. After he slid out, she curled in the corner, buried her face in her hands, and wept. The Hierarch felt just as much sympathy for those tears as she had felt towards the ones in the vial.
The day after, when he entered the temple, the head priest took him aside.
“We’ve been sending our healers to her twice a day,” he told him. “To ensure she doesn’t break from… accommodating so many larger men.”
The Hierarch nodded. This he knew.
“Well,” the priest continued, “we’ve also had the midwives test her… and this morning, they came and said…” he trailed off, his voice unable to finish for wonder, but the Hierarch knew. The unthinkable had happened:
A human had been impregnated by loxodons.
He came down to visit her. She had clothes by now, simple acolyte robes. They were made for elephant-folk and absolutely dwarfed her. She was sitting on her cot, knees up to her chest, her eyes wide and haunted. The smell of the room told the Hierarch that more loxodons than just him had visited her recently. He didn’t mind. She wasn’t his property; she belonged to his people, replacing the relic she had smashed. They could use her as they liked.
One look at her told him that she knew her condition. Whether it was some intrinsic maternal instinct or whether the midwives had exclaimed it in her presence didn’t matter. She knew. And she wore the gaunt, desperate mask of someone terrified to confront the unthinkable.
She flinched as he approached, but he only sat down next to her and rested his hand comfortingly on her tummy after prying her legs from her chest. Her stomach was still flat, but that would change soon enough.
“This can’t be happening to me,” she whispered. She was staring everywhere except at him. “Humans and loxodons can’t—we, we c-can’t—”
“With divinity, anything is possible,” the Hierarch said, and she swallowed. “When you splashed yourself with holy tears, you marked yourself as the future of my race.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” she whispered, her voice so soft that even the Hierarch had to strain to hear. “Please, just let me go.”
“Why would we let go our future?” The Hierarch reached over and brushed the thief’s shift off of her trembling shoulders. She tensed, and her hands clutched the blanket on her cot before he angled her the way he wanted.
He took her slow and gentle, rocking together with her while murmuring about what a blessing this was for her, and she said nothing. Only sniffled after he finished and took his leave.
---
It didn’t take long for her to start to swell. The Hierarch wasn’t that familiar with human pregnancies, all things considered, but he knew that they weren’t supposed to grow that fast. Within mere weeks, she was already noticeably round. By the time forty days had passed she needed to cradle it as she waddled, and the midwives told him she complained of back pains.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” she protested once while the healers were looking her over. “It’s going so—so fast—”
As she spoke, the Hierarch reached over and gently tapped her stomach. Even now, it was already tight as a drum, and she winced from the touch. “It’s so tender,” she complained. “It—it hurts so much—and it stretches me so much. I… I can’t…”
She looked at one of the midwives, as if hoping a fellow woman would stand up for her. “I’m not made for this, please, this will—I’ll die carrying this thing! It’ll rip me apart!”
“Our goddess would not allow it,” the Hierarch told her as she midwife dutifully ignored her pleas. “Whatever pain and discomfort you endure, perhaps consider it due punishment for past transgressions—but know that you will carry our offspring and then live to breed again.”
The human choked. “Breed again?” she said, horrified. She reached her hand around her stomach; the pale skin was already burning an angry pinkish red in places, testament to how far the little one inside of her was stretching her. “You… you can’t mean…”
“You’re a human who can carry loxodon offspring,” the Hierarch said, amused. “A gift from the divine. Surely you didn’t think this was all that was going to happen? We plan to make the most of you.” He reached out to cup and cradle her swollen, strained tummy, and she whimpered painfully from the touch. “This?” he said, sweeping his hand over her vastness. “This is your life now, girl.”
She broke down, but the Hierarch didn’t mind. She’d come around to it.
---
The midwives told him when she was four months along that she was already the size a human woman would be at the end of her pregnancy. “And that’s a normal human woman,” they cautioned. “She’s barely five foot. A pregnancy that would encumber a woman far bigger than her will weigh her down even more.” The Hierarch didn’t mind. The goddess would see them through.
(Though it wouldn’t hurt to have the healers visit more regularly. The goddess helped those who helped themselves, after all. And besides, the healers could reward themselves with her if they liked. The Hierarch had actually walked in on such a scene the other day, the woman splayed on her back, a healer passionately taking her, steadying himself with both hands on her belly. She had looked in thorough despair.)
When he entered that morning, he found her ravenously gulping down everything she could. The priests brought her meals, and at her desperate plea, they’d increased the amount of food they’d brought—more and more and more. It never seemed to be enough. She was always left hungry and spent nearly as much time complaining about food as she did about her captivity. But then, it made sense. She was eating for two, and the second one was growing fast.
---
A small while later, when she was at the seven month mark, she was well past what the midwives told him that a human woman would be at with quintuplets. It was a miracle she could even walk. When the Hierarch came in to visit her, he’d found her slumped on her cot, curled against herself and shivering, sweat beading her head. For a moment he’d thought her sick, but then she’d explained:
“It’s just been so active, I…”
Indeed, when he looked closer, the Hierarch could see ripples of movement within her stomach. Her belly was a massive pregnant globe, fiercely red and seeming scarcely able to contain the baby elephant within, and every tumble and push from the occupant was visible as a bump-like distortion, making her groan and tremble.
“I’m… so tired, but I can’t sleep,” she said, arching her head up to him. “Please…”
The Hierarch chuffed. ‘Please’? What did she expect him to do? He couldn’t exactly calm the tyke down, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Being active is healthy for a baby,” he said.
She cried out at a particularly fierce twist from the infant inside of her and began to weep. “It hurts,” she said. “Please…
Again, what was he supposed to do? Well, perhaps the one thing he could. Throwing off his robes, the loxodon angled himself right and treated himself to a luscious bout of lovemaking. The thief’s voice left her in a haggard, woeful slash, but her opinion hardly mattered at that point.
---
At nine months, she was left immobile. A round-the-clock assortment of healers and midwives were there to ensure health of both mother and child. When the Hierarch saw her, he found himself astonished. It was amazing that her stomach was even remotely capable of containing the creature within; it was so massive, so strained, that it looked like the slightest touch would pop her. Her whole body was flushed with exertion and she struggled to force out even one or two words. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she moaned with absolute, abject misery every time her offspring so much as twitched.
“Least… it’ll come out… soon…” she said.
The Hierarch twitched one massive, sail-like ear. “Soon?” he asked.
She met his eyes, panic sparking inside her gaze. “Nine…months…?” she wheezed.
Ah, that explained it. Human pregnancies were nine months. He shook his head in amusement. “Oh, you poor fool,” he said. “Loxodons are pregnant for fourteen.”
Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth in refusal, though no sound came out. Finally, she managed to repeat just one word: “No… no…”
Further protest was cut off by a spate of moment from within her womb, and she writhed and moaned inarticulately. The Hierarch shook his head, smiling to himself. How ignorant humans could be.
---
For her, the following five months were the most miserable experience of her entire life. Unable to move, barely able to sleep, unable to sate her ravenous hunger despite the outrageous amounts of food the elephants shoved down at her… and the burning, angry low note of perpetual pain from the strain of being stretched so far was punctuated by sharp bouts of grotesque discomfort whenever the parasite inside of her stirred. Each day crawled on like a century, and it seemed never-ending. Amazingly, even now, the libido of those elephants could not be slaked. Once every few days, one came by to use her. And oh, it ached… but that was an old pain. The results of her past fuckings were far more immediate, far more troubling.
Sometimes, alone at night, she prayed. She’d never been a faithful woman, but she prayed to the elephant goddess for forgiveness, begging to be woken from the nightmare, promising to devote her life to steering others from her criminal path, to serve the loxodons, to do anything if she could just end it. Nothing happened, of course, and she was left dousing herself in her own tears, just as she had unwittingly doused herself with a goddess’s tears over a year ago, changing her life’s course forever.
The delivery day came and she thought she was going to die. The baby was especially active in the three days leading up to it, and she remained incapable of sleep thanks to its ministrations. They gave her a caesarean, numbing but not sedating her, and even as she screamed wordlessly, she saw them pull something huge and lumpy and grey from inside of her. It was a baby… her baby. A baby elephant that had grown inside her.
She passed out and woke in the midwives’ ward. She was bedridden for several weeks as her body slowly recovered. They brought her baby to her, a son. He was not a normal loxodon after all; his ears were smaller, his eyes humanlike, his hands more dexterous. The inhabitants of the temple were all abuzz. They talked about the will of the goddess and of introducing new qualities to their race.
Her child’s father, the hulking brute who called himself the Hierarch, visited her partway through her second week. He waxed grandiloquent about the same tripe as always, the future of his race, her penance, a gift from the goddess. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter why he was doing it, the fact remained that her desire to nick something shiny and a moment’s pique when captured had consigned her to a life as a brood slave.
“I have good news,” he told her, and she eyed him. She found it difficult to think that any news from him would be good. “The healers tell me you’re fully recovered,” he said.
It was true. Her body was still weary, but other than some scarring, she’d bounced back marvelously from the delivery. The healers’ powers had helped, but even they couldn’t account for it all. As if the fact that she had borne nonhuman children wasn’t already proof enough, it seemed that dousing herself in that holy liquid had changed her in some way.
“Even better,” he said, “they think that just as your womb has become suited for bearing our offspring, your body is adjusting itself to our lifespan.”
She blinked. Blinked again. It… couldn’t be.
“But loxodons live for four-hundred-and-fifty years,” she whispered, horrified. And they didn’t age like humans. They remained healthy, and fertile, for almost that entire period.
“Indeed,” the Hierarch crowed. “Just think of how many offspring you will have in that time. You’ll have four centuries to serve as our holy mother.”
Her throat was dry. No… no. Four centuries of this? She couldn’t imagine a hell more cruel.
“It can’t be,” she whispered. “It can’t.”
But it was. And as the years crawled on, she gave them child after child after child—and slowly, gradually, laboriously, she forgot what it was to be anything other than this, anything other than a perpetually-pregnant, swollen, immobile, whimpering, gravid mess, squeezing out elephant babies and taking elephant dick.
She never really came to like it, per se. But after a decade or so, she came to accept it. And perhaps that was enough.
Or perhaps not. But then, what she thought had stopped mattering a long, long time ago.