Siblings who nearly die together, stay together (cult of the Lamb x reader)

Chapter 8: A Curse Of Hunger

The night was approaching quickly, and the Followers were starting to turn in for the night, you followed Lambert to the entrance of the Cult, "be careful out there, now that Bishop Leshy is gone, you don't know how the others are going to react."

"I keep telling you, I will be alright, now get some sleep". He gave you a reassuring smile as he left to begin his crusade in Anura. Sleep did not come easy to you this night, it could be that the night was colder than usual, or because you had a bad feeling about what was to come.

You and the Followers began to wake up, some complained that last night was cold, you were shamefully glad to hear that, happy that it was the cold keeping you awake and your mind was just playing tricks on you, your brother is strong, now stronger with the red crown, he will be fine, but now you had two things to worry about, making the farm bigger and thinking on how to make the bed rolls warm for the colder nights. Trying to keep the Cult from going pear-shaped was starting to make you want to tear your wool out.

Luckily the Followers helped expand the farm, they even planted seeds and watered the soil, now to tackle the bed problem. The more you think about the problem you begin to remember the one time your family wanted to try camping, that is when the idea hit you, you got extra leaves and some wood, then got to work on making sturdy tents, it took some time but they were finally done, the followers thanked you as they started to claim the tents.

That is when Almer started to look somewhat uneasy, you all went to them to see if everything was alright, as you got closer a black puddle opened underneath them and swallowed them up. Everyone gasped in shock.

"What happened to Almer?"
"Will they be ok?"
"Where are they?"

You try to calm everyone down, "It's back!" said Namar, you see that the black puddle is back and Almer emerges, panic plastered on their face.

"Almer, you're back!", Fey hugged them but suddenly Almer fell to their knees.

"Almer, what happened?" you gently asked, hoping a soft voice would calm the situation, you helped them back up, putting one of their arms around your shoulder, seeing that they were still unstable, Fey did the same.

"The leader...The Bishop... did something to me...I'm so hungry!" From what you can tell it was some curse. Bishop Heket, God of famine, she is truly living up to her title.

"Barbatos, help them up for me" Without asking a question, Barbatos took your place. You went to the cooking station to see what you could do, knowing that Almer was starving you cooked up some meat that Lambert left you, simple berries would not be enough, and meat is hard to come by for now, but because it is filling you wanted to use the meat for emergencies.

You run back with the food "Let them sit" Fey and Barbatos carefully put them on the grass, they took the food and started to scoff it down, "slowly, you're going to make yourself sick eating so fast" they gave you a nod and slowed down. You mentally curse yourself for not trusting your bad feeling from the night before.

Everything calmed down when Lambert got back, "Lambert, what happened out there? Almer suddenly disappeared, and when they came back, they were starving."

"It was Heket" You knew it, you take Lambert away from the Followers to talk in privet.

"What are we going to do? If you go back, there is no doubt that she is going to do it again".

"There is nothing we can do, but try to keep up".

"Are you crazy? What if it's not just one Follower next time, what if it's two or three? I won't be able to keep up if they're starving to death! And I can't make the farm grow faster!"

"I know you can think of something (Y/N), you're smart". You looked at him in disbelief, he went to indoctrinate two new Followers; a Fennec Fox named Arkity and a leafy frog named Gusion, but as he left you heard him say something under his breath but could not hear it.

As Lambert was interacting with his Followers by seeing if they needed anything or just by blessing them, you worked on the farm, it was not producing as much as it used to and the soil did not seem as fertile as before, you looked over to the two new Followers and began to wonder if everyone was able to eat tonight.