The Gods' Games Volume 1 & 2: Graphic Edition (The Gods' Games Series)

by Quil Carter

  “Harder…” Sweeny begged. “I – I’m going to…” he cried out and closed his eyes. “Don’t stop. Don’t…”

  Sweeny suddenly let out a sharp cry. Erick swore and started laying hard, deep thrusts inside of him. In response Sweeny’s body tightened up, the pleasure reached its peak, the floodgates inside of him released their boiling liquid into his bloodstream which shot through his veins with vigour. Sweeny let gasped, the feeling overwhelming him and only multiplying as Erick slammed himself again and again into him.

  Unaided, a shot of seed burst from Sweeny’s penis. He felt himself get rolled onto his back as it exploded from its prison, more and more released from his body as Erick continued to thrust, both of his knees now being held back as the king pommelled him.

  In the throes of the intense and mind-breaking pleasure, Sweeny heard Erick reach his own summit, but he was too busy drowning in his own orgasm to enjoy it. The thrusts continued to come and the tension continued to roll through him and it didn’t stop, it carried on, quake after quake, Sweeny’s cries now joined with Erick’s deep, growling grunts and moans.

  Then, just when Sweeny thought it was fading. He felt Erick’s hand grab his shaft, seed still spilling from it. He felt him start to rapidly stroke it, with firm hands that rested for nothing.

  “Erick!” Sweeny cried. He felt like his mind was going mad from the intensity. It wouldn’t stop and he knew it should be. Every time he satisfied himself in his bedroom it only lasted seconds, this one felt like minutes. “S-stop!”

  Erick’s red eyes were glassy yet wild, his face drenched in sweat as was his black hair. He looked at Sweeny, his body shaking from both his thrusts and his hand rapidly stroking Sweeny’s penis. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to, his actions told him he wasn’t stopping.

  And the second summit reflected the king’s intensity. Like he had slid down the bottom of a hill after summiting only to see a second sharp slope, Sweeny was thrown into another orgasm. Sweeny cried, cursing Erick and his name and gasped. In the intense, overwhelming pleasure he grabbed onto Erick’s shoulder and dug his claws into it, then he heard Erick himself get launched into his third climax.

  Erick leaned into Sweeny, groaning loudly and breathing heavy, his face between Sweeny’s neck and head. He continued to stroke him, continued to push into him and both of them continued their long, intense orgasm.

  Then finally, just when Sweeny thought for sure he was going to go mad, it faded, and Erick let it. He removed his hand from Sweeny’s penis and stopped thrusting. He stayed in his position, both of them gasping, heaving, sweaty messes, and remained there unmoving.

  It took a long time for Sweeny to get his mind back. It seemed lost in a confused torrent of madness and exhaustion. All he could bare to do was stare forward trying to catch his breath, Erick’s heaving inhales his only indication of time passing.

  Finally, after what Sweeny was sure was an entire hour of them trying to catch their breath, Erick separated their joined bodies. He laid down on the bed beside Sweeny and took in a long inhale.

  Sweeny looked at him, unsure of what to say or what to do. He felt vulnerable in that moment and submissive to the king who had just claimed him in the last way that he could.

  He remained still and laid in the silence until he was unable to take it anymore. He had to say something, in hopes of appeasing the raw emotions that had been left over from their intimacy.

  “Will… will you hold me?” Sweeny whispered to him.

  Erick, whose eyes had been staring up at the ceiling, looked over to him. He nodded and rolled onto his side and opened his arms.

  Sweeny pursed his lips, the emotions overwhelming him. He felt stupid for feeling this way but he… he had never felt so emotionally naked than he did in that moment.

  “What’s wrong?” Erick whispered as he pulled him close. “Did I hurt you?”

  Sweeny shook his head. “I’m just… I think I’m just scared. I…”

  “What?” Erick whispered.

  Sweeny took a deep inhale and closed his eyes tight.

  “I think I’m falling in love with a king.”

  45

  Ben quietly walked behind the rounded boulder. A soft wind blew across his face and over the plains, creating ripples that flashed like the scales on a serpent. In the distance birds were hovering over a tall birch tree, chirping and squawking as a hawk circled overhead.

  Ben looked down at his feet; the air was still wavy around them, telling him the sneaking charm was working. He took another step, feeling his boots softy step on the grass. The ground hugging the rock was a mixture of dried yellow tuffs and loose stone, a slight misstep and he would find him.

  Ben cringed as he heard a rock come loose from an overhang of grass and dirt above him. He pressed his back up against the rocks and listened.

  Everything was silent but the birds… had he lost him? He could only hope he hadn’t heard…

  “GOTCHA!” Jonquil yelled, more loudly than necessary, for the sole purpose of seeing how high Ben would jump.

  And he did jump, like a coiled cat he sprung up several feet into the air, landing with a silent thud. The waves disappeared from around his feet.

  “No fair! You’re not allowed mage tricks!” Ben said. Jonquil laughed, brushing his dark brown hair away from his blue eyes. He quickly ducked a blue fireball that Ben shot out of his palm, still laughing.

  Ben held out his hands, making blue flames shoot up into the sky. He ran to the other side of the rock but it was empty.

  Ben jerked his fingers, making the flames crackle and spit. He looked around the empty plains, but all he could see was the mule continuing to pull Jonquil’s cart, obediently walking towards Birch.

  Suddenly Ben felt a strong force of wind at his back, moments later he was knocked to the ground. He struggled to get to his feet and saw Jonquil standing there with the same mischievous grin he always seemed to have.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” Ben said. He made a fortified stance and balled his fists, the flames extinguished as he felt himself cut off the maegic flow, but as soon as he stopped the flames he raised his hands and pushed them towards Jonquil.

  A small burst of wind shot out of them, but not enough to knock the merchant down. It barely made the elf’s hair move.

  Jonquil blew an unimpressed raspberry at him.

  “Pathetic! What are you trying to do? Cool me from the sun?”

  “I’ve been doing this for only a few days! You can’t expect me to pick it up that quickly!” Ben protested as they started walking back to the cart. “And my maegic is still low.” Ben shook out his hands, his whole body felt drained.

  “You’ll get better, before we get to Birch I bet your stores will be twice as big,” Jonquil said with a wink. He jogged up to the cart and hopped on. Ben didn’t have the energy to run, performing so much magic was incredibly draining. He could use a nap now, he had no idea how mages could perform more than three short tricks before needing a rest, making a few blue fireballs was exhausting enough.

  Ben eventually made it to the cart and hopped on. Jonquil was already laying out the cards for a game they had been playing for the last several days called piknim. He had become a master of that game, even beating the merchant a few times.

  Ben had been recovering well since the merchant had found him. Jonquil had been continuing to fill him full of medicine and the vials of tonic had been doing their job.

  The crackling in his chest was lessening every day and his energy was returning. He was even going to have his stitches out before they arrived in Birch too. The moonsilk was knitting his flesh together well, and the salve Jonquil applied to his wounds each night worked wonders, even if it burned his skin.

  Jonquil was one of the most friendly, personable elves Ben had ever met. He talked to Ben like he had known him forever and was willing to teach him all the silvermagic that he knew. All of this in exchange for Ben cooking the food, and taking care of Gummy, he had been an excellent
teacher and travel companion.

  He did have his odd moments though, moments where Ben suspected he knew more about silvermagic and other magic than he let on. He also seemed a little, well… spastic sometimes. He had woken up a few times to Jonquil talking quietly to himself by the fire, or while he slept in the cart. It was odd but Ben tried not to judge him. The merchant had been alone on his travels for quite a while, perhaps it was his way of not being too lonely. You can’t travel all around Alcove alone and not have picked up some odd mannerisms.

  Still, Ben had been around enough elves in Alcove that, even though he liked his new friend, he still kept himself on guard. He didn’t have a weapon on him but he did have silvermagic now. If there was one thing Alcove had taught him it was that all in all, he should only trust Teal and Malagant.

  Ben couldn’t wait to get to Birch. He missed his friends dearly, and he knew they would be worried sick about him, if they even thought him alive at all. Every night he fell asleep thinking of them and every morning he awoke knowing he dreamed of them.

  He was worried about Teal the most. They never got to truly talk about him revealing himself as Tav. Right after their walk Taugis had ambushed Malagant and then, well… and then he fell into the river.

  Ben was thankful in a way that Jonquil had been keeping him busy teaching him silvermagic. His mind wandered less, and thought about the repercussions of Teal’s reveal less. However he still felt a hollow hole in his heart where that boy had been. It had always been there but there were still hopes of it being filled one day when he brought his little Albanian to Elron. It was still a strange and uncomfortable concept that Tav had always been here.

  Ben still had trouble believing that Teal had been dense enough not to have seen that he’d liked Tav. But as Teal had said by the canyon, he had never had a friend before, he didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t normal for friends. That was easily seen with their sleeping arrangements.

  Teal had known once Ben came to Alcove that he had feelings for Tav, and although it probably ripped him to shreds inside, he had never acted differently around Ben. He hoped nothing would change between them, and he was sure it wouldn’t. They were too busy dodging death and sleeping in trees and mud for anything to change.

  He really could have told me sooner though… Ben felt a pang in him, remembering when he let Tav go from his heart. His last ties to his world had been severed. There was no going back… probably not ever.

  That night the two of them made camp. Jonquil had found a burnt-out tower that served for adequate shelter. The sky had been blue all day, but Jonquil still swore that he smelled rain. He at least had a canvas for the wagon in case it did decide to rain. Ben hoped not, but then again, anything was better than Valewind snows.

  Jonquil made a purple fire that night. He loved the artificial runefires, mostly because you never had to feed them. Though keeping a fire going without draining all his energy was a skill Ben hadn’t mastered yet. If he was to light his own flame it would die once he shut off his maegic flow, or turn the normal colour of fire once you started feeding it.

  Ben nuzzled into his furs, the purple fire glowing against his closed eyelids. Jonquil never seemed to need to sleep; only catching bits on and off. Ben barely ever had to take watch. He didn’t complain. He had told Jonquil many times that he was well-enough to do his share of watches but he always insisted he was fine. Ben didn’t mind, he loved the sleep. He was still hacking up horrible piles of mucus and phlegm but it was nothing compared to how bad it had been before Jonquil had found him.

  “You are looking better,” Jonquil said to him that night, after they had eaten a meal of fried sandwiches, rye crackers, and a paste made with chickpeas and garlic that Jonquil had. They were sitting by the fire, as Jonquil strummed on his mandolin.

  “What is great about a runefire… is that no one is stupid enough to bother a mage.” The merchant winked at him. “I tell you, I have got myself out of many jams with just my wits but when all else fails… burn ‘em alive.”

  Ben laughed; he really did love Jonquil’s stories.

  “When we get to Birch, would you like to stay for a few days? My friend’s father has a house there and I’m sure he would be more than happy to accommodate you as thanks.”

  Jonquil strummed a few notes on the mandolin, in the distance a night hawk cried in response. “Birch has great taverns, they’re willing to feed someone who can sing and play for them. I wouldn’t mind staying for a few days.”

  Perhaps he could teach Teal a few rune tricks, or Ben could. Now wouldn’t that be funny? Seeing the look on Teal’s face when the human starts teaching him magic. Ben smiled at the thought.

  The rest of the evening was filled with good conversation and good music. After taking his line of tonics and a quick change of the bandage on his back, he got into his sleeping furs. He was still tired from all the magic he had performed while they were fooling around on the plains and found himself falling asleep right away.

  Ben felt himself wake some time later. He wasn’t sure what had woken up, so he kept his eyes shut and tried to go back to sleep.

  Then Ben notice something odd; he could still hear the fire quietly crackle, but he could no longer see it through his eyelids. The purple glow was gone, yet his face was still warm.

  Ben opened up his eyes and to his surprise…

  The flames were black.

  It was odd, something that Ben never even knew was possible to exist. The black flames made the darkness around them seem light in comparison. They were a black void that suck light rather than emit it.

  Then Ben’s ears caught something, it was Jonquil. He immediately felt the hair on his neck prickle as he heard his merchant friend mumbling something to himself. He thought he was on the other side of one of the burnt-out shells of the mage tower but he wasn’t sure.

  Ben lay there, covering his face as much as he could with the furs and watched the black flames. They seemed… Ben felt foolish even thinking it, but they seemed almost evil.

  No, he’s turned the flames black to be safe. Maybe he thinks Serpents could be around, or thieves. He’s making them black so they won’t see our fire, Ben convinced himself.

  Still…

  Ben craned his ears trying to catch any of the words that Jonquil was saying. He closed his eyes, hoping they would enhance his senses.

  Then there was a crunching of loose rock. Ben lay still, pretending he was still asleep, though his heart was thumping in his chest, unable to shake the steady trickle of fear that was pooling inside of him.

  “So… fragile,” a soft hollow voice whispered. It came from Jonquil’s lips but the tone was off. Ben knew it wasn’t him – his anxiety sprung up like boils inside of him.

  “He leads me to him, but what am I to do? He is bare, weak, a seed of questionable quality,” the voice murmured. “What to do? It would be so simple to… but no, he would know something was amiss.”

  “Yes… yes, he would know and he cannot know. Not yet… not yet. You’re right, Severin.”

  Severin? Ben wanted to get up and run, and it was taking every inch of will in him to not do that. That wasn’t Jonquil, that wasn’t his happy merchant friend. Where was Jonquil?

  Ben wanted to open his eyes, but the spasms of terror shooting through his body wouldn’t let him. He was too afraid of what he would see.

  He could feel Jonquil beside him, another crunching of stone and a rattling of plates. He knew where he was, he was by the cart. Why wasn’t the stupid mule doing something? Was it still Jonquil? Animals usually go nuts when eerie things like this happen… stupid mule, stupid mule…

  Ben stayed with his eyes closed for over an hour listening to Jonquil. He was pacing around the ruins now, but Ben couldn’t catch any more of the things he was saying. At least in this time he had successfully calmed down his heartbeat, but it still rose whenever he would hear Jonquil come closer to the camp.

  Finally, when Ben wagered it was only a few hours un
til dawn, the flames went back to purple and everything was silent in camp. Only then did Ben trust to open his eyes.

  Jonquil was lying in his furs on the other side of the fire, his mouth slightly open and his eyes closed, looking… normal. Behind him Ben could see Gummy kneeling by a large ironwood, also asleep.

  Ben watched him through the flames. Trying to figure out what to do. He didn’t know how far away he was from Birch, but he did know they were making good time. Though the hills were rigid with jutted rocks in some areas, they were still able to pull the cart through. Jonquil had told them if they kept going northwest they would hit Birch dead on. It seemed the river had taken Ben far off-course but Jonquil knew the area well.

  Ben wasn’t stupid, nor did he worry about hurting his friend’s feelings. He had a prophecy to fulfil and friends to reunite with. However he did feel a pang of guilt, the foreboding, horrible feeling he had gotten when he woke to find the flames black and his friend talking to… someone, was too big to ignore. He was healthy enough now to at least make it to Birch on his own.

  And with that deduction, Ben decided the next evening when Jonquil was asleep, he would sneak out of the camp and head to Birch on his own.

  When the merchant rose him the next morning, he was his normal cheery self, talking about his merchant travels like he loved to do. Ben was tired from not sleeping and being terrified, but he was still sick so any slowness packing camp wasn’t a strange thing.

  They ate a small breakfast of apples and cheese, and Ben fed Gummy some oats and carrots. The hills were rolling and tall in front of him, the landscape holding only endless plains and rock against a steely-grey sky. There was also a certain coolness to the air today, perhaps it would rain like Jonquil had been predicting.

  He sat beside the merchant mage as they carried on, the road getting bumpier with every slope the mule had to climb. Gum was better than any horse Ben had had for climbing the ridges. If they had ridden mules to Birch they might’ve been able to avoid walking altogether.