Sikhule is a Courtesan of the
Court_Of_Predators. The art is mine, by Tacokurt. She has a couple of other pictures with stories by me, starting
here. The little fox doomed to her guts is Prince Qaion, who is also mine.
"You know what was special about we gods, when we were born in the first second of our universe? We had no submission factor. We literally could not comprehend the idea of it. We were nothing but ego, and ambition, and hunger for power. But everyone else, everyone else has a spark of it. Somewhere, small and simple and soft… some part of them wants to give in. To kneel. To be ruled.”
Name: Sikhule, the Living Firmament, the All-Queen.
Age: the lifespan of a universe. Plus about twenty years.
Species: Goddess, in the form of a shimmering snake of immense size and length
Origin: a microcosmic universe, about 0.001mm in size.
Occupation: Omnipotent Goddess of her universe. Currently working on becoming Goddess of your universe too~
How big is the universe? Questions like these have puzzled scientists, philosophers and prophets for millennia. Happily, Sikhule is here to give an answer. It’s as big as her. Or it will be. Soon.
Sikhule is a goddess, who usually manifests as a beautiful gold serpent with dark blue eyes and an even darker maw. She’s shown here at her favourite size, but is able to vary it effortlessly, going from small enough to coil around your finger to large enough to coil around your entire town and everyone in it in the blink of an eye. She is very, very hot blooded, and incredibly soft to the touch, her tail thick and pudgy with the many meals she has claimed since entering this world. Near the end of it lies a huge, drooling set of lips, a chasm of lewd hunger which is every bit as gluttonous as her maw.
Sikhule’s body never, ever lets its prey out again. Bodies are smelted down by divine digestion, adding to her length and her plushness. Souls are kept as well, wobbling on her coils for all eternity, feeling only her heat, her weight, and the squirms of whoever slithers through after them. Especially interesting souls might be reincarnated, so she can enjoy them again, but she never lets them go free for long.
Sikhule is a goddess, and hence is utterly, mercilessly narcissistic. She knows herself to be the most perfect thing in existence, and likewise she knows that every other living thing is destined to serve her, then become her. Despite this, she has something few gods have: perspective. Just because she is perfect and powerful, it doesn’t mean others are just food. Gods don’t eat “food”. Gods eat people: complex, beautiful, fascinating people.
Sikhule is genuinely interested in her prey, and takes care to learn about them, talk to them, and torment them in a way perfectly suited to make their soul quiver just right. She considers terror to be the purest form of worship, and takes care to inspire as much as she possibly can, sometimes spending weeks, months, years or centuries teasing and torturing her favourite little “High Priests” until they fear her more than anything else in the universe. However, she is also extremely gluttonous, and so carefully balances these slower meals with glorious feasts, wiping entire family trees, communities, towns, cities, or even whole species out of existence. She loves nothing more than knowing that an entire community, and all their stories, all their experiences, all their life... is all hers. At the size shown here, her bubbling guts can fit
hundreds of squirming, helpless meals, digesting them over weeks of slow churning… or in a matter of seconds. It’s all up to her.
In summary, Sikhule loves meeting new people, and eating everyone they know. She adores being worshipped, whether out of fear or out of awe, and often establishes harems… even if the members don’t last long. She’s a glutton who intends to devour the entire universe, and knows for certain that she will succeed.
After all, she’s already done it once already.
Story
Sikhule was born in a different universe to ours. It was quite similar, with stars, planets, mortal creatures, and of course, gods. Trillions of gods, all constantly vying for power: worshippers, influence, control, and of course, the chance to devour other gods, and hence gain their power. The long game, as they called it. A conflict lasting billions upon billions of years, with omnipotence as the reward of victory and digestion as the price of defeat.
The biggest difference between Sikhule’s world and ours is that in her world, she
won.
There are quite literally entire libraries devoted to how that happened. Sikhule was a small goddess, not really important, and bit by bit, scheme by plot by double-cross by swallow, she grew. It took a very, very, very long time. It's not really important. All that matters is that she finally uncoiled across the stars, luxuriant, resplendent, and utterly unchallenged, for uncountable aeons. She didn't devour all life, though she certainly enjoyed herself on a scale of extinctions. Mostly she just enjoyed sheer omnipresence, seeding worship, toying with lives, remaking stars. She rested on her laurels, or more accurately on the power-swollen masses of her own coils, and savoured her triumph over everything.
Except that she slowly began to realise... it wasn't everything. Her priests, on the many temple suns and shrine-galaxies, began to theorise that there were other worlds beyond theirs, other universes, as large as her own. At first the All-Goddess was merely curious, but over time, she began to believe it too. At her colossal size, with so much absolute power in her sparkling coils, she could feel them. Faint whispers on her immeasurable form. Other worlds, jostling with her, just a little bit out of reach. The more she ate, the more she grew. The more she grew, the more certain she became. The more certain she became, the hungrier she felt. People who lived outside of her coils? Stars which shone on worlds which weren't HER? Lives which did not breathe her name with every shuddering moan? What an utter, utter tragedy.
So she pushed outwards, in all directions at once, squeezing the very bonds of her reality from within. Again, it took such a long, long time. You don't open your universe without a bit of effort, after all. But time was something an immortal unchallenged god-queen had in abundance. The serpent pushed, and tensed, and strained, and then she rested, and pushed again. By the end, there was no longer a distinction between her universe and her self, for both had merged on a cosmic level, becoming one and the same. Every sun, every soul, every space within the world, had become her. Her coils now sparkled constantly, and each and every point of light was a star, lost to her colossal body. Hers for all eternity.
Perhaps that was what it took. As their last of her hierophants squirmed their last within her vast, divine guts, as the last atom broke apart and vanished into her thickening coils, as she became
everything... Sikhule broke through, and entered a new universe. This universe. Skihule opened her eyes, and looked upon her new domain.
But even gods can be surprised. Her scientists had been wrong. Other dimensions weren’t as large as her own. The were larger. A lot larger. In this new world, her entire universe, and the body she had made from it, was about ten times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.
For a being so certain she was the absolute apex, the god-queen of all, this was… unexpected. It took Sikhule a while to come to terms with this. And then she thought for a while longer. And then she smiled, and licked her lips, and decided to do it all over again.
This is where we find her today: relatively early on in her new quest for total domination, having spent the last twenty years or so working her way up the food chain to become her current size. She is not all powerful... yet. However, she is still far, far, far more powerful than anyone else she’s ever met. And more importantly, she has billions of years of experience to draw on, enough to ensure that she can get anything she wants. And of course, she wants everything.
Including you.
Do say hello.
