scale moving against his inner thigh.
A talon running swiftly down his spine, laying down a line of incandescent pleasure.
The touches and caresses surrounded him now and Silus tried to turn and see the source of this frenetic pleasure, but unseen hands held him firmly in place, carrying him onwards. He didn't fight it though part of him realised that he should be feeling revulsion, horror - even a deep guilt that he was allowing the caresses of these things while Katya was still captive somewhere within the citadel - but he burned with arousal and he let the Chadassa maidens and his lust carry him onwards.
They came to a flight of stone stairs, ascending towards a light. Silus's feet didn't even touch the steps and, as the light rushed towards him, he felt as though he were about to be reborn, as though he were about to come face-to-face with his god.
And, in a sense, he was. For as Silus was raised into the temple, standing before him was the Great Ocean incarnate, this terrible power now clothed in Chadassa and human flesh.
For the briefest of moments Silus was overjoyed to see his son again, but as he saw what had been done to Zac his mind railed against the horror.
The infant fused to the breast of the Chadassa smiled when it saw Silus. The half-formed foetuses that dwelt in the corrupt cavern of the creature's womb chattered in their imbecile language and the misted eyes of the Chadassa host wept a viscous, putrid fluid as it opened its jaws.
As one, the creatures playing host to the ancient and evil mind said, "He is the Great Ocean. He will come again."
Silus couldn't breathe. He tried to shut his eyes but one of the Chadassa maidens forced his head back, while another pried his eyelids open with her claws.
"Say it," she hissed into Silus's face.
Silus didn't know what she meant at first, but as the eyes of the Great Ocean bore into his, he finally understood.
"He is the Great Ocean."
The Chadassa maidens released him and returned below.
Behind the Great Ocean Silus could see that the temple was filled to capacity, the Chadassa's awe at seeing their god made flesh obvious in their humble and prostrate forms.
"What... what have you done to Zac?" Silus said.
"There is only the Great Ocean." The thing said, the congregation repeating its words just a fraction of a second later so that they echoed from the temple walls.
"And Belck?"
"His doubt undid him."
The Great Ocean took Silus's hand and turned him to face the congregation.
"Behold your salvation! The father of a new generation of Chadassa that will lead us all into a brave new era. No longer will we have to share this world with the humans. No longer will we have to remain beneath the waves. Soon all will be as the Great Ocean."
The congregation raised their voices in thanks and praise and, as they looked at him standing there, Silus could sense the weight of their need and the hope that they had placed within him. Despite himself, he felt a surge of pride and anticipation. That just one human could bring about such a transformation was astonishing. But then, he considered, he wasn't really human. The Chadassa were as much his people as they had been Belck's.
When the Great Ocean joined the congregation in the words of an ancient litany Silus closed his eyes, trying to picture his wife and child as they had been at Zac's birth, hoping that the image would shake him free of the creature's thrall. He tried to remember the fierce love that he had felt as he held Zac in his arms for the first time, and the look of happy exhaustion on Katya's face. He asked for their forgiveness.
The voices in the temple fell silent and the great double doors at the far end of the hall swung open. Silus realised that his time had finally come.
Weakly he submitted to the Great Ocean as it handed him to its acolytes. He didn't fight as they raised him up and carried him forth.
As they proceeded from the hall and out into the passage beyond Silus looked at the murals that decorated the walls as they scrolled slowly past. Scenes of conquest and icons of Chadassa leaders had been chiselled into the stone, some with surprising finesse considering the creatures behind the art. One face he saw looked familiar and as they neared the mural Silus realised why this was.