There were many reasons gods required sacrifices. Souls. Blood. Flesh. Power.

Kht'oth wanted obedience. Subservience. For mortals to remember what was at stake if they did not bend and bow to his every fickle whim. The gods of this world tended to their little flocks of followers, grooming and preening them into their ideal little forms, playing in their little world like it meant something. Kht'oth was beyond that. Older than that. He'd seen realities like this bend and crumble thousands of times over. He had no desire in investing such time into something so meaningless. But if he was going to invest time in it at all, in paying any attention to these pitiful ants, then they best do everything. He. Said.

And he demanded sacrifice. He demanded they turn over their own kind to be mercilessly slaughtered. If they wanted his attention, they had better be certain of it. It would come with its price. 

And these people were willing to pray that price, no matter how much he raised it with each passing year. 

The doors opened to his shrine, and though he had not manifested, he watched from behind the blood-stained altar. The priest and his apprentice dragged the sacrifice in, her feet dragging across the ground with the rattle of the chains that bound her.

A skinny human, with tanned, scarred skin. One that could not have been much older than two and a half decades, if, with ragged hair and sunken cheeks. A slave, no doubt. Another one that looked like it was on the end of its ropes. Another throw away they figured they could pitch to satisfy Kht'oth instead of just tossing her out for the lions.

Maybe he should raise the stakes again. Slave or king it mattered not to him, but he felt the principle of his demands were getting lost if they were feeding him the scraps they were going to dump anyways.

His worshippers were quick, efficient, brutal. They threw her onto the altar, pushing her onto her knees before chaining her arms to and ankles to the stone. Their movements were rough and uncaring, and the slave moved with each brutal movement with the expectation and grace of one who had known almost nothing else. Her pale eyes stared vacantly at the floor, head hung and face partially obscured by the strands of brown hair that fell out of her messy braid. The priest gave his offering, before he and his apprentice hurried away, slamming the doors behind them.

Sacrifices begged. Pleaded. Struggled. Looked wildly for the fate that was about to befall them. Looked for the spoke of elder god to appear in all his glory before them. Tried anything to avoid the bloody end that was about to meet them.

But she didn't. She waited, slouched, kneeling before his statue. Her gaze looked tired, haggard, cast to the floor. She said nothing, not even a peep.

Kht'oth did not announce himself when he manifested his form. And initially, she did not seem to have noticed. Kht'oth waited, with infinite patience, to perhaps savor something out of this pitiful sacrifice. Her soul was meaningless, and if he had wanted anything else well, she wouldn't have had it.

Her head lift, only a little, aware that she was no longer alone. But she did not lift her head to gaze at him. She did not speak. She did not struggle, or plea, or anything. Kht'oth tilted his head, his jewelry gently clicking against his opaline bones. The woman's eyes grew heavy. She understood her fate. Instead of anything else he expected, she simply slouched more, head hanging so he could no longer see her pale eyes.

Hmph. What fun was that? Kht'oth strode over, the only sound the clicking of jewelry. A spindly, boney hand extended from the gossamer, taking her sun-beaten face in his hand, turning her face to look upon his great form.

Her eyes stared at him emptily, seeing nothing, staring through him. But her breath hitched, a weak and pitiful noise, before her eyes closed. And a tear rolled down her cheek, with a look that he had not seen before - relief. Peace. She leaned her cheek into his hand, a bittersweet smile as a few more tears escaped the corners of her eyes, washing the dirt from her face in muddy streaks.

"You feel like sunlight."

Her voice was so weak, so soft. Hoarse, like she hadn't had anything to drink in so long, and hadn't spoken in longer.

And Kht'oth felt the world, the universe, still.

The slave reached up, her calloused hands holding his skeletal one to her face, the saddest look of pained happiness on her face.

Kht'oth brought another hand to the other side of her face, before he found himself kneeling before her, a hand running through matted hair as the last wiped a tear from under her chin.

"Wgehchytʼ le lwʼo mgʼligʼ."

You are not afraid.

He felt as though his own voice came out rough, uncertain - something soft that these horrid halls had never heard before.

She smiled weakly, shaking her head. "E le klir," she whispered, her Weg'olw'chyen shaky. I am ready.

The universe was meaningless. Time had stopped. There was nothing outside of him, and her.

Kht'oth looked her over, scouring over every detail. The exposure of her ribs. The loose, dirty clothing. The scabs of mites. Scars of lashes and shackles. Callouses of hard, manual work. A skin color and nose shape that hailed from a different land, notable even with the indentation of a previous break. A brand of her master in the dip of her left side. No adornment of a personal item - just the remains of whatever they cared about the least. 

His skeletal fingers wandered over everything methodically, a deep curiosity taking hold of him. She did not resist, or attempt to flee, or show fear. If anything, she only leaned into it, another weak sigh escaping her dry, bruised lips.

"This is a better death than I could have ever wished for."

His touch stilled. 

Her empty gaze hung out somewhere past him at the ground, hands still clinging weakly to the one he kept on her cheek. Happy. Hurting. Tired. Ready.

"Phhtʼlash tengʼ, mga htʼla... nǔ ǔhphʼ le mgngi luhsh htʼlǔ klengʼgl lwʼo fillǔou gllu fʼohʼ?"

Tell me, little one... how it is that your end does not fill you with fear?

She gave a hoarse chuckle, fingers caressing absently over the jewelry on his fingers. "I came from a place with lots of sun. At home, it would caress my skin like it does now. I remember it, like it was yesterday. Here, it just feels harsh. It's all been harsh." Her face scrunched, more tears welling. "E ǔ klir mgʼlo phhtʼla oba, phʼrʼlla tihʼ. Please take me to where the sun never hurts again."

I am ready to go now, my lord.

At last, she pleaded. For death. For release. For the lashes to never fall again. For her stomach to never hurt. For home.

Kht'oth did not know what it was that he felt inside of him as he gazed on her pain-stricken face, wet with tears and dirt. How easy it would be, to end it all for her. To crush her into a blood splatter, to extinguish her very existence now and forever, to blot out her very soul. 

"Chytʼatǔ phli, chytʼatǔ phli-"

No more, no more.

He didn't know where the words came from in him - they escaped before he had time to process them. It all did. His arms reached out around her, his form faltering, falling apart, until he had enveloped her. He scoured her of every fleck of dirt, torn the dirty clothes and shackles from her, embraced her in the physical presence of his unchanged form.

But she did not scream. She did not change her mind. She did not see it. She could only feel the embrace of the sunlight. She just went slack, giving into what she thought must have finally been the end. Freedom. Escape from her enslavement, from the terrible things that had happened to her since she'd been stripped from her home.

You feel like sunlight.

Why did it make him... feel?

Her tired, exhausted, defeated form, splayed out before him. Vulnerable. Weak. 
She thought she was dead. Dying. That he must have torn her asunder, and now she was beyond this world, and not wrapped in a mass of writhing, shapeless light, fretting over her with sudden manic meticulousness. She'd fallen asleep long before he felt done, blissfully unaware she was still very much alive in the mortal realm, and that Kht'oth had all but torn up his temple for things in the process.

Mine.

She is mine.

It tasted strange. The feeling of possessiveness for something so... fleeting. He'd never cared before. Something that would be extinguished so quickly... something that had been tossed aside by its own so carelessly. 

He reveled in the fearful cries of his followers as he demanded tribute, his horrid skeletal form possessively poised over her peacefully sleeping body, wrapped in the softest of sunlight, so careful not to disturb her rest.

She was his. This was his. This needed food, and water, and the softest swan down and finest of blankets for when he could not wrap her in light. The altar needed to be scrubbed clean of the blood of before, and it all needed to become the finest of nests for His. 

No more hurting. Just sunlight. 

Something in him snapped. He didn't know what, or why, or how. But it had.

He waited, cradling her body in his arms, infinitely patient, but her sleep stretched on for what felt like forever for even him. His servants had prepared a side room for him to care for her while they scrubbed his altar clean and prepared it for its new purpose. The four-armed skeleton made of opal and bismuth waited, the young woman's body held protectively in his arms.

A soft groan snapped him from his vigil, casting his one-eyed gaze down onto the human in his arms. Her frail form shuddered, pale eyes opening and staring once more into nothingness. For a moment, she lay still, tense. Kht'oth could see her mind working, trying to recall if she was in danger, and when she seemed to remember what had happened before she'd fallen asleep her brow furrowed. A hand shifted to brush her worn fingers against whatever was holding her, finding the smooth and no doubt warm bone-shaped light construct that made up his physical form. Her fingers followed the gentle twist of the ulna to where it connected to the humerus, feeling over the jewelry that hung from where it was bound to the bone. Kht'oth allowed her fingers to wander, over his clavicle and up to the underside of his jaw, over the hoop of gold that  hung there and over his teeth to his cheekbone before she finally stopped.

There was a look of gentle fascination in her blind eyes when she finally pulled her fingers away, trying to process everything.

"...Am I dead?" She whispered, voice still so hoarse.

The Elder God rumbled, a tone that shook her very bones.

"No. You yet live."

His words were harsh, though they were spoken no differently than his 'native' Weg'olw'chyen. They were, after all, not spoken at all - suggestions of thoughts and ideas, formed into known words in the mind of a mortal, but this time he shaped them better to the language she knew more than the one he'd so often spoke.

She considered his words, still comfortably curled up into the blanket of light he'd settled her in. "...Why?"

Kht'oth's giant skull tilted, his jewelry clicking against his bones. "Because I demanded it."

She fell silent. Asking the question had already been far outside of what she normally would be allowed to do - to further question the judgement of anyone above her, let alone a god...

He felt her body tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop. What horrors did he have awaiting her, she must have wondered? Why else would he spare a slave like her?

A skeletal hand came up and stroked her cheek, making her freeze in surprise at the contact before she relaxed into the warmth.

"What is your name?"

Her lips twitched, uncertain. "Ryniai."

Ryniai. Kht'oth shifted, and the young woman nervously sat up. A hand brushed over her own skin, realizing at that moment that she wore nothing, and that she had nothing binding her wrists. More importantly even, she was finding, her wrists didn't even ache. She could still feel the welts of scarring, but it was much better than she remembered it being the day before. A hand darted to her side, and she found the brand to be... not gone, but no longer identifiable - at least, as far as she could feel.

"Ryniai," Kht'oth repeated, making her look vaguely up where she believed him to be speaking from. "You will bow to no one. The men that had once commanded you will now bow to your every desire. You will live, and you will never again know pain."

Ryniai seemed taken aback by this. Her brow furrowed, pulling her knees to her chest. "...Forgive me, my lord. But I don't understand," she whispered.

The skeletal god made a low noise. "What of my words are not clear?"

He did not sound angry as Ryniai would have expected of such a question, but she was still weary. "...All of it, my lord. Why the great and powerful god who rules over others would make a sacrificed slave anything but his meal."

A finger trailed over her cheek again, and she did not shy away from it despite her uncertainty. If anything, she once again leaned into the warmth of his touch.

"...You need not worry about the reasoning of it. I have chosen it, and so it shall be."

His word was law. He care not if it seemed reasonable - especially not to the mortals. They were not here to question him or his choices - they were here to bend to his every whim. And this whim was different, yes, but it was his all the same. They would accept her and serve her without complaint or hesitation, or he would crush them like one might an ant.

Slowly, one of her hands came up to touch his own, looking off into empty space. "...Then I will serve you, my lord, as I have served my masters before."

Trading one master for another. Kht'oth clicked his teeth together. "...I am not demanding of your service, little one," he said, which only made her brow furrow deeper. "My only demand of you is that you live. If this place does not please you, I will bring you somewhere else. If the sun is too harsh here, I will bend it until it kisses you. If you wish for better comforts, it will be granted to you. Anything you wish for will be yours. I ask nothing in return but to see you live, free from pain and suffering."

She didn't understand. Perhaps in fairness, Kht'oth could not fully put to words what in him made him so set on seeing this human thrive. But something had snapped. Oh, had it snapped, when she'd spoken those words.

Kht'oth smudged a tear that had broken free of her eyes away from her cheek, and the motion only made more follow.

"I don't understand," her voice cracked, looking plaintively up to where she thought he could be. 

The Elder God shifted her, and she felt herself press gently against his broad ribcage as he brought her close to his chest. 

"You do not need to understand," Kht'oth spoke, watching as she gripped onto his bones and let out years of pent-up sorrow. "You just need to live."