And with that she was running. Running from the audience hall of the baron to the small temple of stone wherein she’d been married; the temple wherein she’d lost her virginity. It was there she would pray and seek the direct intervention of Zuranos himself.
For if indeed the gods were the highest moral law as the new priestess said, then couldn’t they remake it as they willed? Especially if they had a good reason. And in Zuranos’ case that reason could and would be sex.
Bolting the door behind her, removing her shoes, she faced the altar. She must steel herself, step by step in her approach, and with each press of her bare feet upon the marble she uttered a fresh prayer.
‘Hear me, great lord. Accept me. Do not turn me away, for I am yours and yours alone.’
Reaching the great stone slab she fell to her knees. For a long time she felt and heard nothing. It had always been this way for her. She had often wondered at temple services, watching others, if they had real experiences or if they merely pretended for the sake of being pious. She was wasting her time, surely, just as she had as a child when she’d come to pray for some particular thing or other she wanted.
‘I never ignored your prayers. It is simply that they were unworthy. You prayed for no one but yourself and you’d already given more than you needed.’
Allura gasped. ‘Who said that?’
‘Who do you think?’
She leaped to her feet and looked about. She saw no one. ‘Is it one of the priests?’
The voice laughed. ‘I have no need of those old fools to speak for me. I prefer my priestesses. Ever so much more delicious to possess, don’t you think?’
She knew now who this was, though it did not seem possible, not in reality. ‘Father Zuranos, you are real.’
‘Am I?’ The god sounded amused. ‘It is good to know this. I’m ever so grateful to hear it from the lips of such a fair maiden.’
‘I meant no disrespect.’
‘Actually it was blasphemy, but don’t worry. I rather enjoy hearing my name in vain, contrary to what the priests say about me. Makes me feel all the more alive. You know really, your baron was more a man after my own heart than any of my so-called holy men.’
‘Lord, I do not seek to understand your ways, only to make my entreaty. My cause is just.’
‘By the blade of Sythos,’ he boomed, his voice suddenly taking on the timbre of a thunderstorm. ‘And what do you know of justice, you whelp of a girl?’
Allura fell instinctively to her knees, cowering. The room was filled with light and there appeared before her a silver-bearded man in a loincloth, his body robust and strong, like a squire of fifty who is accustomed to hard labor. He wore about his head a laurel wreath, one of his traditional symbols of power. Allura was overwhelmed at the sight of him; he was so beautiful and utterly desirable as a man. At the same time she was filled with terror, for this was the king of the gods, the spinner of planets. In his eyes she could see it all, the depthless blue of the sea, the faraway light of the bluest star.
‘Now this is a fine form.’ He flexed his biceps as though the body were a mere suit he was trying on. ‘Rather too long since I’ve used it, I think.’
Zuranos took a step forward, relishing every little motion, and as he approached Allura she shuffled back on her knees.
‘Child,’ he chided, ‘why do you fear me? Am I not the father of you and all your kind? Do I not love you all?’
Allura thought of what the priestess had said about him taking the form of a bull-man, or a snake with a three-foot tongue for whipping. ‘Yes, Lord Zuranos, we are grateful to you and we praise your holy name.’
‘Nonsense,’ he scoffed. ‘You are a race of hypocrites and opportunists. I made you in my own image, I should know. And don’t think for a minute I’m pleased by flattery. It bores me to tears.’
‘It seems that the priests have misled us,’ Allura noted.
‘That’s their job. Without a bit of guilt and fear all would do as they pleased and there’d be no end to the messes I’d have to fix.’ He lifted her chin between thumb and forefinger, his touch warming her belly and tickling her nipples instantly. ‘My, but you are a little beauty, aren’t you? It never fails to amaze me how you creatures are put together, so sweetly, and so differently from your male counterparts.’
His aura was more than she could bear, and her original purpose now mixed with new needs; complicated, female needs. ‘I seek to please you, Lord Zuranos.’
He arched a brow, sending a dark chill down her spine. ‘Indeed? Brave words, don’t you think?’
It was true. Allura had no idea what she was saying, and her only hope was to plead for mercy. ‘Lord Zuranos, I come on behalf of my kingdom… the priestess has decreed to us that—’
‘I know all about that.’ He put a finger to her lips. ‘You have been ordained to sire a child by Fortragian, to take him as husband, yet you refuse, thereby defying my will.’
The finger stilled her lips. It was as an instrument of discipline which, well wielded, seemed capable of bringing her much agony. Desperately she beheld him, continuing her plea with eyes alone.
‘Fear not, little one, I care not if you thwart me, or hate me even. The question is what will you bargain with?’ The divine finger circled her lips, making her draw short breaths. The tingle and the heat were making her limbs heavy with desire, and at his merest utterance she would open herself to him fully.
‘My lord I offer myself,’ she rasped, the words pouring from her like wine into a glass.
He toyed with her golden locks. ‘If you mean your body, it is not yours to give. I am your creator. I possess you as I will.’
He brushed the rim of her ear, sending spasms all the way down to the lips of her sex. ‘Yes…’ she shuddered, ‘you possess.’
‘You know, my beauty, that if I enter you, you will be changed.’
‘I understand,’ she breathed.
‘No you do not, but you will learn.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘It is not only your body but your mind I will take.’
She did not doubt it. She did not doubt he would delve deep into her subconscious, even into her dreams.
‘Close your eyes, sweet Allura. Close them tight.’ With both hands clasping hers, the god drew her to her feet. His size dwarfed her, as did his bodily power. Beckoning her onto tiptoes he bestowed a kiss, hot as a brand, full and deep, reworking already her identity to his mold.
She did not dare open her eyes against his will. As she stood, encircled in his embrace – a grip strong enough to hold the earth together or shatter a mountain – she felt the overwhelming tenderness of a flower petal, beckoning her into deepest sleep. Waking sleep, standing sleep, something ever so much deeper than anything manageable by mortals on their own.
The kiss seemed to last a thousand years. She was flying, watching her own body below as she soared overhead. The god was a bird, holding her in its clutches, ferrying her across the river dividing the land of men and that of gods. It was a sky river as well as a watery one, and they climbed and climbed and climbed until at last they were at the top of creation.
It was there that the bird let go of her and sent her crashing down through the miles of sky, down through the layers of reality. Down to her death.
Chapter Ten
‘Careful, don’t damage it; that’d be the fourth today,’ grumbled an accented voice, something worthy of a lower class miner or ditch digger.
‘Well there wouldn’t be that many damaged if you’d leave me to my business,’ complained a second voice.
Allura realized what these men were doing was extracting souls from a river, and hers was the one they were discussing. A net of some kind bore up underneath her – though she had no physical form – and she was lifted to the surface. The water was brackish, and even without a nose she knew it stank.
‘Well, have you gotten it yet?’ called a new voice, impatiently, and Allura’s bare soul cringed to recognize it as Baron Montreico.
‘Yes, master, we’ve got it right here.’
‘Fetch it, then, and we’ll fit it with a body.’
She didn’t exactly feel it when they moved her, although she was aware of being on dry land.
‘We’ve got some nice ones today, guv’nor,’ quipped yet another new voice. ‘Nice and newly patched together.’
‘I want a prostitute,’ he said. ‘A big breasted slut with a slack cunt; we’ll humiliate her from the get go.’
‘I’ve just the ticket,’ he chortled. ‘Right this way.’
The voices grew a bit garbled, but she heard the baron say, ‘No, don’t bother with the stitching, just stuff it in.’
And right away Allura could open eyes again and grip her chest, which was indeed mammoth, with huge breasts, the nipples pierced with gold rings. She had a slight swell to her belly and her pussy was much looser, no doubt due to all the men who’d been inside her. Licking her lips she felt heavy paint upon them. Whoever this was, she’d died with her make-up on.
‘How fetching you look, my bride.’
Allura turned her new head and saw the baron. He was much himself, save for the burns across his face and chest from his deathly encounter with the goddess.
‘We saw you vaporized,’ she said, though the point seemed moot under the circumstances.
‘Bodies are preserved here from the exact moment of death, notwithstanding subsequent decay or destruction. Ordinarily people take back their own, but I thought it would be amusing to offer you a little change.’
Allura looked into the mirror he was holding. She was looking at a prematurely aged tramp, a well fucked young bitch who had likely died in some back alley of what looked to be asphyxiation, judging by the circles around her throat. ‘I am not supposed to be here.’ She touched her throat, feeling the deep red grooves.
‘Nobody ever is, sweetheart, but you get used to it. And cheer up, at least now we’ll have each other.’ He handed her a collar, affixed to a leash. ‘Put this on and we’ll get you acquainted with your new home.’
She put the leather circle around her throat, the situation still strangely surreal. ‘Am I dreaming?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Only if you want to consider the whole of your life a dream.’ Montreico yanked the leash. ‘Come, bitch, let’s take you for a walk.’
Allura stumbled behind, along the raised wooden dock on which stood many naked people, or rather unoccupied bodies. At the bottom of the steps was a thin layer of warm mud.
She took a second to look up. The air was reddish brown and had a distinct odor of sulfur. The sun hung low in the sky, but it was black in color and gave off no light. Whatever it was illuminating this strange landscape of distant craggy mountains, blood-red clouds and greeny-blue mud, it was coming from somewhere else.
He continued pulling her along. It was foggy now and soon the mud opened into a road with grass on either side, thick and purple. The trenched roadway, barely a yard wide, was ankle deep with a disgusting black substance and Allura had no idea why anyone would use it as opposed to the grass.
‘You’ll go on all fours from this point on.’ The baron yanked down on the leash and Allura collapsed on hands and knees. The mud squished between her fingers and toes. From down here it was more green than black, and she could detect no odor.
‘How does it feel, princess, being led like a dog in hell? That’s what you are, you know, a slut dog for all eternity. And I get to watch over you. Once a day I’ll fuck you and make you rue the day you were ever conceived – alive or dead.’
‘Baron, I did nothing to deserve hell,’ she lamented, scurrying as best she could.
‘Not true. You defied the god. Anyway, what does it matter? We all come here. The lot of us humans. It’s a closely guarded secret, as you can imagine.’
The road led them through a town, simple wooden homes on either side, the unusual thing being that the occupants were being attacked, each within their own walls by horned, goat-like creatures with sharp teeth.
The baron stopped them in front of a barn-like structure. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘This is where it will happen every day, for all eternity. To begin with you must try to escape.’
‘Montreico,’ she implored, ‘I’ve no wish to play your games.’
The baron pulled a leather riding crop from his belt. ‘You’ve no choice, my dear. Now escape, damn you.’
He lashed out with the whip, slicing her back. Allura cowered but he kept closing in, so at last she did as he’d told her and rose to her feet, and she was halfway down the street when the large dog-like animal downed her. It pinned her to her back and continued to stare down at her, large globs of drool dribbling onto her face and breasts.
‘This is a tessral, its body is wolf and its soul is that of a madman. Mostly when we play this game it will catch you. Sometimes it will fuck you, other times I will kill it and fuck you myself – such as now, for example.’
The baron drew his sword and ran the beast through, whereupon it yelped and ran away, presumably to die.
‘On your belly, my little slut. Back to the barn with you, and you’ll receive an extra heavy thrashing for trying to escape.’
Allura choked on the mud. Now it stank and its color was red from the rabid wolf-creature’s blood. The same creature she would encounter every day for the rest of eternity, sometimes merely to be gored, other times to be violated.
There was a crowd around the barn when they arrived; pot-bellied men, holding their severed cocks in their hands, old woman with four or five breasts apiece and various human legged creatures with the heads of other beings.
‘This one isn’t for you.’ The baron shooed them away. ‘Not today.’
Once inside he opened his breeches, and out spilled a penis at least a foot long. ‘Like it?’ he grinned. ‘One of the fringe benefits of afterlife.’
Allura watched as he took down the saddle, bridle and bit, placing them on the hay-covered floor.
‘That’s for after. For now, stick out your tits and we’ll start with them.’ He wielded the whip and Allura instinctively covered her large breasts, an action that only served to make the baron angry. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. Now I’ll have to use the rats.’
He whistled, calling a pair of snow-white rodents with pink noses and long white teeth. They were smaller than she’d expected, more like mice.
‘The beautiful thing about this,’ said the baron, pulling Allura by the hair and tying it to a rope hanging from the ceiling, ‘is that whatever damage they do is erased by sundown.’
Allura was on tiptoes, feeling like a human bell as she hung from her own hair. ‘Hands down,’ he warned, ‘or I’ll cut them off.’ She couldn’t avoid flailing as he raised the rats to her vulnerable breasts.
‘Oh, for hell’s sake,’ he muttered. ‘You’re making this so complicated.’ He uttered some sort of incantation and at once a spider appeared behind her, one large enough to pin back her arms using a pair of its legs.
‘Now for a little narcotic,’ he encouraged the terrible spider, and it sunk huge teeth into her neck and she felt a hot liquid being injected.
‘That’s a poison. A special one. It will paralyze you and lock you into a state of perpetual orgasm. Unfortunately, it also amplifies pain.’
The giant spider made a hissing noise as it finished its business, while the baron attached the rats to her nipples, and quite efficiently they clamped on as he let them dangle.
‘Don’t look down,’ said the baron, introducing yet another element of terror, but Allura did and now there was no barn floor beneath her, only a cascading pit, a cradle of fire, the cauldron of the universe. From various cliffs and crags on the way down hung human souls, shadows of gray with clawed
fingers slipping, clinging for life.
‘One minute here can feel like a million years, Allura.’ He stroked her forehead. ‘How long has it been already? Your body looked the same when they brought it here, but I swear I’ve been away from you long enough for you to have aged a hundred years.’
There was sadness in his eyes and self-pity, an emotion she now understood to be the lifeblood of this place. ‘You will never keep me, baron,’ she vowed.
His lips curled into an arrogant smile. ‘Oh, won’t I?’
Once, twice she blinked in her excruciating pain, and now it was he who was the tessral, the madman cloaked as a dog. With a snarl in place of intelligible speech it leaped upon her, thrusting her back against the wall. Teeth, cock and claws sunk in and it fucked her, the sexual death clutch, designed to kill a victim in seconds.
Allura screamed and then she was a scream herself. Then again she rose within the sound and felt herself lifted aloft on some kind of wind – a wind that should not be.
A reprieve that should not be.
‘Why should I let you past me?’ said the sentinel at the gate, and Allura beheld the creature of black obsidian, half bird, and half lion, winged and clawed, its eyes plucked from an ancient king and dipped in liquid emerald.
Where was she? Was she alive again, or could it be the baron had lied to her about there being only one place for the souls of the dead?
‘Because,’ said the fleeing Allura, back in her own body, golden hair streaming behind her, ‘I can pay my passage.’
She did not know how she knew to say that. It was like in a dream, when speech comes to you of its own accord, knitted by laws of reason that do not hold when awake.
She also knew her time was short. At her heels nipped and snarled the tessral. She’d been given this opportunity, one time only and she must not waste it.
The sentinel held the creature at bay with an ominous point of its claws. ‘With what coinage will you pay?’
‘The universal coin,’ she replied, ‘of female to male.’
She floated to him, hands at her sides. The penis of the sentinel was enormous and as she approached it grew and grew, bigger than her own body, and instead of ingesting it as she’d intended, she found herself absorbed into the hole at the end. The sentinel sighed with the sensation. It must have been a very long time for him. Luxuriating herself in the soft pink expanse of his tube, she did the miraculous work of pleasuring him from within.
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