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A catgirl's journey: Chapter 1

"You want me to... What now?"

Cragstone looked with disbelief from the shadow of the trees at the beautiful black catgirl who waited respectfully in the edge of his haunted forest, clad in a travel cloak and giving soothing pats to the very nervous brown gelding she was riding. A week ago, a necromancer acquaintance of him, Nelliam the Reviled, had sent him a message asking him to grant audience to an interesting gal he had encountered in a bordello. He had told him that she posed a challenge that one such as him would greatly appreciate. The undead Lich had to acknowledge that, at least, she had managed to do what no mortal had accomplished in centuries: surprise him.

Normally he would have dismissed her answer as the insane ramblings of a madwoman and executed her on the spot - probably using her body as material for a specialized undead - but a careful look at her eyes convinced him that there was more to it than a simple suicide attempt.

"I want you to help me become a goddess" she replied again, without a trace of irony in her voice.

"Ok missus, you might be probably the craziest woman I have ever met. And that's saying a lot, believe me"

"Oh, and you dislike crazy women?" she said, batting her long eyelashes.

"Well, in my line of work a certain amount of crazy is, essentially, required. But what you say you want is toeing the fine line between calculated madness and plain batshit insanity"

"How about you allow me passage and I can explain my situation to you around a nice cup of tea?" she suggested without a trace of fear in her voice. That pesky catgirl seemed to have realized that curiosity was getting the best of the grim undead and was playing that card to her advantage "And, besides, I have no power to speak of, so you could still dispose of me afterwards if what I say doesn't convince you"

That last sentence was certainly true. To an undead master of the arcane like Cragstone, the telltale signature of the practitioner was completely absent from the black furred humanoid, so he was fairly confident on his ability to deal with her if the situation got hairy. He also had to admit that, if she was trying to con him, there were certainly better approaches and excuses that the one she had brandished with so much confidence. Also, being a Lich isolated in a dungeon hidden deep below a haunted forest led to decades-long periods of self-imposed solitude, which wasn't bad per se, but generated a certain fondness for personal interaction from time to time.

"Very well, you have piqued my interest" Cragstone decided "but be warned that my patience for foolishness is thin"

The catgirl nodded thoughtfully and dismounted from her steed. She then slapped the horse in the flanks, making the animal scamper away, probably grateful to run back to the post where she had rented him. It looked as if she was pretty sure that he would listen to her story and accept helping her. It was quite the bold assumption that, looking at her tired, slitted eyes, seemed to be backed by a not insignificant amount of desperation.

Well, nobody looked for help at the home of an infamous Lich if that person wasn't at the end of her ropes. And not even then, if that person kept a shred of sense left. Cragstone wondered how much Nelliam had told that female about his line of study.

"Keep still while I teleport us back to my lair" the skeletal mage said while he placed his bony hand on her shoulder. She didn't flinch at his unnatural coldness, another sign of a warped mind which the Lich filed away for a potential future use.

In a white arcane flash, both persons disappeared from the border of the dark forest.

---

"So, Almina is it, right?"

"Yes, that was the name my parents gave me at birth, and the only thing from them I still keep"

The black robed skeletal Lich and the still-cloaked catgirl were sitting on comfy armchairs in a small homey room warmed and lit by a fireplace. Almina was sipping green tea from a fine porcelain cup inlaid in gold filigree, while her host was simply resting with his bony hands crossed over his lap, far beyond the need for food or drink.

Most people assumed that Liches were universally evil fiends, enemies of all the living that would stop at nothing to turn the world into an undead wasteland. That had been true for some of them in the past, but those tended to be wiped out fairly quickly by adventurers and paladins on a quest to save all that was good and nice. For the three Liches still active in the world - by Cragstone latest estimate - turning into an undead had been motivated mostly from an insatiable hunger for arcane knowledge and the realization that the lifespan of a mortal wasn't nearly enough to sate it.

However, that didn't mean they weren't damned bastards, the lot of them. The process to become a Lich needed the performance of very heinous acts of torture and sacrifice, and the snuffing of dozens of innocents. But, aside from that initial investment and the occasional raid to get 'materials' for experimentation, 'sensible' Liches were mostly content to be left alone to their studies. Throughout time, most people had learned to leave them to their devices and accept their scarce murderous rampages simply as natural disasters that had to be weathered every now and then. Messing with a Lich usually ended with more casualties than potentially saved people. As long as they didn't make too much noise and became an intolerable nuisance, the world would leave them at large.

All of that meant that an old Lich was usually agreeable company, as long as his interests aligned with yours.

To Almina's credit, she hadn't been cowed by Cragstone's display of power and wealth when he, like a good host, had shown her the common areas of his expansive lair, remodeled from an abandoned dwarf settlement. The petite catgirl had politely complimented his basic laboratories and torture chambers and had been suitably awed at the luxury of his living quarters. However, during the whole tour she hadn't shown the smallest iota of fear, not even when she saw the reanimated skeletons and zombies who acted as his servants and guards, an attitude that told Cragstone that she was quite serious about her request and would not become a waste of his valuable time. Also, the Lich was becoming quite curious about the jingling sound that had punctuated her every step and which had seemed to be coming from her nethers.

"When Nelliam contacted me to grant you audience, he was completely silent about the exact details of your background. He said that you would make for a better storyteller than he, something I have to agree with: Nelliam is quite the incompetent entertainer" the Lich said, scratching his lower jaw thoughtfully "However, I can't quite get my head around how a simple prostitute like you could have such ludicrous ambitions"

"It's a long story"

"I have all the time in the world and, one way or another, you are not leaving this lair of mine until I decide it so, by all means, please carry on"

"I should get some things out first" she said rising from her chair and unbuttoning her travel cloak "To begin with, I'm not your run-of-the-mill common whore"

Well, that wasn't an understatement. Cragstone had been quite the sexually active fellow with a hefty dose of sadism back when he had been still alive - a trait shared also by the necromancer Nelliam and which had helped them to connect on a personal level some years ago - and he had frequented whorehouses and bordellos of all types and reputations. Prostitutes, as a rule of thumb, were not the healthiest of people around thanks to a harsh style of life and bastards like him, but what he saw in Almina's body vastly surpassed anything he had ever seen before.

To begin with, under her travel cloak the catgirl wore absolutely nothing except from a used pair of travel boots that she quickly discarded too. Apparently, nakedness didn't make her uncomfortable, which made some sense, given her job. She began to turn around slowly, so he could understand exactly what he was dealing with.

Cragstone had lost his sexual drive centuries ago, but he had to admit that, overall, the kitty made a striking figure, appraising her body as he would have done on his youthful days. Her humanoid body, fit and lean, was four and a half feet tall, small for an adult catperson, but still within acceptable range for her species, with a luxurious and velvety fur that shined blue-black under the light of the fireplace. Her face was a perfect split between human and feline features, something that rarely happened and which would have made even the most specieist human male swoon, with a row of golden rings adorning each of her cat ears as well as on her nose and lower lip, and a luxurious black mane that almost reached her butt. Her torso sported the customary four rows of breasts of her race, on sizes descending from a small A cup at the top row to a flat set of nipples at the bottom one, almost at her waist. Her ass cheeks were firm and round, with the perfect curvature to accept a good spanking every now and then, and a long snaking tail that would serve perfectly as a handle to that end. Finally, her bare cunt sported a pair of shiny moist lips and a very prominent clitoris unencumbered by any kind of clitoral hood.

All in all, a fine specimen of catgirl on her prime, had it not been for the countless mutilations that marred that potential perfection. To begin with, her whole fur was crisscrossed with the long scars of flesh-rending whippings, layered one atop the other and making her hide a veritable roadmap of suffering. Leaning closer to her, he also saw multiple places where the skin had been peeled away in tribalistic patterns and left to scar, as well as many places where a red-hot cattle brand had been used to sear the flesh.

Paying more attention to her hands and feet, he saw that few nails remained, having been savagely torn, probably with pliers of some kind. And when she yawned for a moment, Cragstone could see that her canines as well as many other teeth were missing from her mouth.

The topmost pair of nipples was pierced by heavy looking golden rings that stretched them downwards, and the remaining six weren't intact as well. One of them sported a barbell as thick as a small human penis; another had been quartered and left to heal split open; other was absent, sliced away at some point; other had been burned away by the same cattle brand that marked her skin; and, finally, the lowermost pair was connected to her pierced clitoris by a thread of golden chain, keeping the three sexual organs painfully stretched towards each other.

Her outer labia had been inflated, stretched and stapled to her thighs with nasty looking studs, keeping her cunt always open, and her inner labia were shredded into ribbons and weighted by heavy looking rings, which could very well be the reason why they looked like that in the first place and the source of that jingling sound that had previously piqued his curiosity. The vaginal entrance was obscenely gaping, looking as if it wouldn't completely close ever again, a sign of frequent visits by large intruders, and her ass was a prolapsed rose that bloomed well past an inch from its natural place.

It dawned on Cragstone that one of the reasons why she had so easily accepted the risk of meeting him was because it looked that she had tasted the worst that the world had to offer and did not care much about one more torture, one more mutilation, or even her own demise. Even fully naked before a veritable master of death, Almina's demeanor didn't reflect the kind of mental damage that her body showcased, and she was calmly waiting for him to finish his inspection.

"It seems that you have seen far more than what your apparent age suggest" he said, without even a small hint of compassion on his voice.

"This, you say?" she replied pointing at her mutilated body "This, I strove for almost from the beginning, relished it, basked on it... orgasmed from it even, but it has proven insufficient"

"Pray tell me" Cragstone said reclining on his chair while Almina also re-seated with a musical clinking of her dangling metalwork, not bothering to don her clothes again.

"It all began when I was barely six years old. I lived in a small forest dwelling with others of my species, a fairly normal catpeople community of twenty or so hunter-gatherers that occasionally traded with merchant caravans and neighboring towns with the rare herbs and animal pelts we collected or hunted in the forest. My parents were respected hunters, and I also had a twin sister, Malina, my very other half. We were inseparable and very happy..." she began, with her eyes showcasing the first glimmer of emotion at the mention of her relatives "but then, the cultists came"

"What god?" Cragstone asked, beginning to understand.

"Gorlias"

"Ah, that wouldn't have ended well"

"Indeed it didn't. The cultists were almost a hundred in number, and overwhelmed us when we were celebrating the festival of the new moon, and thus less on guard than usual" she paused a bit to sip from her tea and recall her memories "my parents were among the first to fall, trying to protect us. I still remember the taste of their blood as they were impaled while shielding our bodies" she added, lowering her gaze.

"The sadistic God of Pain. A new moon. A village of hunters. Virginal young kittens" Cragstone enumerated lifting his skeletal fingers "I see where this is going, and I will admit to having thought about performing that ritual at some point in the past"

"Why didn't you do it?" Almina said with the barest hint of acid in her voice.

"Too much of a hassle for the potential benefit, and in the end I got what I wanted from other, easier means. Although I understand how a mere mortal could see the bargain as worthwhile" Cragstone said nonchalantly "But you shouldn't assume that I'm a good kind of undead just because I haven't killed you yet and have offered some refreshment. Keep that always in mind" he finished with a small undertone of menace that didn't go unnoticed by his interlocutor.

"I'm sorry. This is kind of painful for me, I'm sure you understand"

"Sure, sure. Carry on, this is getting interesting" he replied with a polite gesture of his hand, accepting her apology.

"Well, the cultists murdered all the villagers save from me and my sister who, at the time, were the only kittens of the village. I must say that my people killed almost fifty of the bastards before going down" she added defensively.

"I'm aware of the combat prowess of catpeople's hunters, dear"

"That night was, and still is, the most horrible time of my life" she continued, acknowledging Cragstone's previous compliment with a nod "We were dragged to a stone altar that they had brought with them in a carriage. My sister was tied first to it, and the head priest of the cultists used an enchanted dagger to rip her chest open and extract her heart, offering it to the sky with a chant that almost made my own heart stop, so horrible it was." The catgirl paused for a moment and brushed her eyes with the back of her paw "The image of my sister's heart bursting in blue flames will never abandon me. Without her heart, she should have died immediately, but she didn't and she kept screaming the whole time as if her very soul was being torn asunder"

Almina left the cup atop an auxiliary table and leaned closer to the nearby fireplace, idly moving her paw back and forth in front of the merry flames.

"Then, the cultist dropped the burning heart again over her torn, bloodied chest, and her whole body erupted in blue flames too. She kept thrashing and screaming for almost fifteen minutes while she was slowly burning, and only stopped when she was almost reduced to cinders"

"The ritual of the endless agony of the night" Cragstone intoned from memory "A harsh way to curry favor with a harsh God. Although I share some tastes with him, his methods are oftentimes nastier than mine"

The pensive catgirl followed with her story ignoring that last remark "Only when the magical fire had consumed my sister completely it became my turn. A pair of cultists grabbed me and tied me to the altar directly atop the scalding-hot ashes of my dear Malina, and I knew that my sister's fate would soon be mine too"

"Something happened then, or you wouldn't be here now"

"Yes. When the unholy priest raised his dagger, a silver arrow burst forth from his chest, and the sound of brass horns made all the cultists run into a frenzied panic" Almina recalled with some fondness "A detachment of thirty elven paladins of Sunialis had been pursuing the cultists for a while and had finally catch up with them. They raided our ransacked village with their sparkling white horses and, like a dream made true, killed the cultists to the last man, saving me from certain death"

"They are known for such kind of actions, the paladins. I have had the pleasure to slain some of their numbers when their self-righteousness led them to believe that I was not needed on this world anymore" Cragstone said with gleeful malice, daring Almina to voice any kind of objection.

The catgirl had learned her lesson quick and her facial muscles didn't even twitch at the casual mention of the slaughter of her saviors' comrades. Cragstone liked the black catgirl more and more with each passing moment. He behaved always like that with people with perfect clarity of purpose like him, who wouldn't let anything or anyone get in the way of their objectives.

"It was only later, after mourning at the graves of my dead people, that the elves questioned me about the attack and then told me the truth of what had really happened to my sister"

"A horrible destiny" Cragstone nodded, knowing perfectly well the fate of his guest's twin, or at least her soul "but something that can't be helped at this point, unless... Oh, I see where you are coming from!" he exclaimed, the flames at his eye sockets burning brighter after finally tying the first loose ends of her motivations.

"That's true. My sister is beyond the help of anyone, her soul eternally being tortured inside Gorlias' abode. Only a god or goddess would be able to rescue her, but by the ancient pacts of the pantheon, he got her according to the rules, so none of them will ever lift a finger to help my poor Malina"

"Unless a new god, not yet bound by the old pacts, could arise and do the deed himself or, as things goes, herself" he completed her sentence "That's a daring approach, I must add"

"And the only route available for me. I need to become a goddess myself if I want to save my sister"

"I suppose that this answer didn't come to you at first. And the requirements for Apotheosis are quite strict, to say the least, or else everyone would become divine"

"True. Apart from the original creator Gods, only a few mortals have ever reached godhood by themselves, either by being demigods from birth, by being worshiped as such by a large amount of believers, or by perfectly embodying a concept, vice or virtue not claimed before by any preexisting god"

"You know your lessons well, although there are more steps to that journey that you imagine. Nonetheless, I see that you have studied the matter at large"

"Necessity. Although the idea didn't come to me until ten years ago"

"And that ties with the sorry state of your body?"

"Yes"

Cragstone nodded and snapped his bony fingers, instantly refilling the teapot with another batch of fragrant, hot green tea. He would wait for Almina to finish her story, but he already had a pretty good guess of what her plans had been and why they had failed. He had to give props to her will of steel, going that far for a loved one, but he was sure it wouldn't be enough for her purposes. At least she had had the good sense of listening to Nelliam's advice and ask the help of who was, probably, the only creature able and willing to assist her. It was obvious by listening to the catgirl that the necromancer had withheld the details of one of the most crucial ingredients to that recipe. An ingredient that he knew Cragstone incidentally possessed.

Almina served herself another cup and continued her story.

"The paladins were very helpful, and even found me shelter and a foster family in the nearby city of Frasnyc, but the images of that night never really abandoned me, and I became rebellious and violent, behaving like an ungrateful bastard to Camy and Lorry"

"Who?"

"My foster parents, a good and loving human couple. I still owe them a lot, and will repay them somehow before this affair ends, but for now they aren't relevant to the story"

"So, let me guess... the guilt was consuming you. You blamed yourself for being the ultimate cause of the attack, and then not dying alongsideyour sister, right?"

"I now know that, but then... I was just a lost kitten who nobody understood. It was around then when I first discovered my sexuality, and how masturbation and orgasms kept the bad thoughts at bay, at least for a little while" she said, idly scratching her overstretched clit with one of her still intact nails "It didn't last long, though, and I always felt guiltier afterwards. There I was, alive and well, and pleasuring myself while my little sister suffered eternally!"

Cragstone had lived a long life, and he was quite knowledgeable of the mortal mind and its internal workings, conflicts and contradictions.

"Let me guess: You began to hurt yourself while masturbating"

"Exactly that. At first it was a way of punishing myself and getting close to my sister, but soon I discovered that the pain enhanced the pleasure threefold, and it became addictive. I began with clothespins and candle wax, but soon escalated to sewing needles and kitchen knives, turning my flat chest into a pincushion, or cutting my forearms again and again. At first I did it when I was alone, but it wasn't long before I stopped caring. The pain in my body was infinitely better than the pain in my soul."

The beautiful catgirl turned her sight to the ceiling, bringing forth more memories of her troubled youth.

"My foster parents didn't know what to do with me. They didn't understand, and tried to stop me from hurting myself. I'm ashamed to say that I screamed at them a lot of nasty epithets and, like the bratty preteen I had become, I finally run away from their house. To the date, they still don't know what has become of me"

"So, let's recap: A young kitten, away from home, with no means to sustain herself, and a newly developing case of masochistic nymphomania. It looks like your destiny was to become a prostitute after all, am I wrong?"

"You aren't. I quickly found that I could make decent money if I sold my body to complete strangers to do as they pleased. They could have their way with me like they wanted, and I would enjoy it no matter how rough it got. It's a wonder I wasn't killed on those first years..."

"You were lucky, it happens" Yes, lucky indeed. Too lucky, perhaps.

"I suppose. Anyways" she continued "I learned soon to defend myself, and became known in the underworld as 'the whore who would do anything'. Drowning myself in pleasure and pain kept my personal ghosts at bay for a time, a roof over my head and my belly full, so it was a win-win situation for me"

"Those scars are then relics from that time" Cragstone guessed.

"Not all of them, only the mildest ones. The really hardcore stuff came later, when I learned the story of Altaric from the thieves and lowlifes with which I shared the streets, and began to get ideas"

"Altaric, god of thieves. A former mortal thief who rose to divinity after achieving feats of larceny unsurpassed to this date" And managing to get his grubby hands on one of the few items in existence like the one he stored in his vault, Cragstone added mentally.

"The same. Thieves liked to pray to him for success at their robberies, and they also told stories about his exploits. Most of those were exaggerated accounts of his true feats or outright invented tales, of course, but they were interesting nonetheless, and created some intrusive thoughts in my mind. I could be sucking on a cock while a horse fucked my ass until I felt the tip near my heart, and Altaric's shenanigans would pop in my mind, disturbing my mindless debauchery"

"You had youranswer already" More likely she had been given the answer. Oh, the delicious irony.

"Alas, but it took me some months to realize it. When I finally got tired of fantasizing with Altaric while working, I stopped to really think about it and then it dawned on me what I needed to do"

"If mortals had ascended before, why not you? But the catalog of available Ethos is already quite limited, and most of them would require the sincere belief of a large number of followers after your death"

"Impractical and not guaranteed, you are right. But when I thought about my qualities and what kind of divinity I could aspire to be, the answer became clear as day. The very concept of sexual masochism is still unclaimed by any god or goddess, and it was becoming my 'leit-motiv', so to speak"

"And you threw yourself deep in the hands of depravity to reach the peak of that concept, so you could transcend the boundaries of mortal flesh and find a place in the heavens as the Masochist Goddess, right?"

Almina nodded while taking another sip of tea "Exactly that. I used my contacts to find a bordello where clients would be able and willing to really go to town with me. The results you can see for yourself" she added, pointing at her mangled body "and there it was where Nelliam found me just a month ago and told me why my plan was never going to work"

"He was right, of course" and also a scheming bastard, Cragstone thought. "And I can understand why he directed you to me. It certainly is an interesting case. The reason you will never be able to reach divinity by letting mortals beat you within an inch of your life, no matter how much you may be enjoying yourself in the process, is because they are mortals, and thus, limited by definition in what they can do to you" among other, no less important, things.

"That was exactly what Nelliam said: No mortal will ever help you transcend the limits of mortality, by definition. To have even a very small chance of achieving your goal, you'll need an immortal"

"Well, he wasn't completely wrong, and I believe that I can help you. But it's not going to be easy, and there is one important thing you haven't considered yet" Cragstone punctuated by waggling a bony finger.

"And that would be..."

"What do I gain from this?"

"Oh, wouldn't you like the opportunity to abuse this horny little kitten?" she said sultrily, puffing her smallish chest and inserting her fingers through the nipple rings, tugging and twisting her abused teats and purring as only catpeople knew how.

"Tempting" Cragstone said, cackling softly "but it has been a long time since I had some flesh left to titillate, missus. And, while I wouldn't say no to hearing your delightful screams under my instruments of torture, that is a pleasure I can easily obtain anyways"

"How about the eternal gratitude of a nascent deity then? I would be forever on your debt if you did this, always at your beck and call for any miracle you needed performed"

"So a deity would be indebted to me, hmm?" Cragstone said, leaning forward and adopting his business pose. "Fine, I will help you, Almina, but know this: Having a painslut goddess a slave to my wishes - no matter how attractive a deal - is just the icing on the cake. My first and foremost reason for any endeavor is only my self-satisfaction, the chance to investigate and document the process of Apotheosis on a live, willing subject. I do not care about your lost sister, nor do I care about your well-being insofar it doesn't conflict with that objective. I will push you to your limits and then some, and when you think that you can go no further, I will prove you wrong, again and again and again. I do not tire, I do not get bored, I can't be swayed to mercy. I will transform your body and reshape your mind to sublimate your very essence. I won't stop for anything or anyone until you becomea goddess or your soul is annihilatedtrying, and that last possibility is far more likely than the first. If you say yes, there is no turning back, no safe word, nothing. Do you still want to do it?"

"When do we start?"

The laughs of Cragstone the Lich were heard far inside his underground lair, startling the rats and other vermin that dwelt there. The undead, as usual, didn't care.