This story and its characters are fiction and based on no one outside my head. If any character resembles you or someone you know, I WANT DETAILS, you lucky fucker, preferably with photos! It is, of course, copyrighted by the author with all rights reserved and very, very negotiable. Do not report without permission Also, keep the cum coming -- Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html! I'm an old guy. I know what it was like when you had to BUY porn. Five miles uphill both ways in the snow just to GET to the XXX store. You whippersnapper don't know how good you've got it.
This involves sex between men; if that is illegal for who/where you may be right now, go away! Also, please note that all my stories exist in a world where STDs are neither common nor deadly. Don't be an idiot; use protection. 'To die for' sex should never lead to your actual death.
Feedback from readers is important to me, but if you get off on flaming people, please know that you will HATE the results. I will read your missive and weave you and your comments into the nasty parts of my next story to the point that you cry like a little girl. Bullies get as bullies give.
First Guardian of Talaa
By Bear Pup
"You are wasting your time," I sneer at the little man across from me. He is a mass of contradictions, seemingly ancient but moving like an athletic youth. His skin is at once a beautiful, healthy tan but overlaid with the colour of the wasting-away. His face is set grimly but his eyes sparkle with mirth. An unlikely torturer to be sure. "I spent three weeks a guest of Tozok. Three weeks, you pathetic old fool. You think you can give me more pain than that?"
"You misunderstand the situation." His voice is strangely beautiful. It is a shouted whisper, soft and inescapable. It rings like a temple bell and the edges of his words... shimmer like the sides of just such a bell after it has been struck. The very air seems to vibrate along. A tremor of true-fear sizzles up my spine. "You will experience no pain at my hands."
I pull against the bonds that hold me fast. I can see neither of my hands. From my forearm outwards, it looks almost as if stone has flowed around to trap them. They are locked around waist height. Oddly, those are nearly my only bindings. I am nude, but that is how torture is done.
I move my legs and back and realise some light strips, probably of leather, run from my ankles to those same stone pillars. I can do anything except pull my legs completely together; I have tremendous range of movement and the nudity helps with that as well. Hope flows through me. Whenever he or a minion approaches, I can do damage. I can count coup even as they carve me apart.
"Go to any hell you prefer. Your hands. Those of your pet torturers. The result will be the same. You will have nothing at all for your efforts. Let me go, kill me, whatever you will, but you have two problems. First, I have no secrets to tell you. I am a foot-soldier with no knowledge of great works! Second, no level of agony can pry open my lips had I a secret worth knowing."
His smile is disconcerting to say the least. He sees me as a child, a kitten to be humoured as I spit defiance. "You of the High Steppe have always misunderstood... everything. You see people as creatures to be conquered and owned. You see our wealth as something to be taken and used. You see pain as a... as a thing that can be created or driven away. You see violence as a lever that you can use to pivot the world to be what you crave it to be. You see armed might--"
"Do not lecture ME old man on violence and might! I have fought in armies that defeated empires! Brought glory and respect and fealty to my king."
He continues as if I'd said nothing, or at least nothing of interest. "We tried to teach you once, long ago. But it never worked. Those pitiful few who learned looked around them and realised the futility of getting the rest to understand. They simply fled to our mountains and deep valleys, the only rational place they could find. So we simply... adapted. Protected ourselves from you in other ways."
"And that protection is at an end, you deranged fool! Can't you see what is about to transpire?" Rage and distain poured through me "Your precious mountains and fertile valleys will be nothing but another province under the Talaa. Even if you destroy me, destroy our generals even, you will fall! You think your feeble, unarmed people can resist the armies we command?"
"Yes."
"...?"
"I'm sorry. I guess you meant that as a rhetorical question. I have such trouble with those. You see, it is so very easy to turn away an enemy that just does not understand the world. For instance, I can tell you are still, after all I've said, steeling yourself against pain."
I'll admit he's right. Pain can be overcome by a mind as strong as mine, but it is never welcome. Worse, I smile to myself, my balls itch something fierce! At least pain will take my mind off the tickle. I laugh at the man loudly, confidently.
"Shut up and get on with it, you pitiful idiot! If you do not mean me pain, why am I trussed here? You BORE me you gasbag! I'm tired of your voice. Do what you will. Do you really think you can break ME?"
"Yes. Oh, sorry, rhetorical again." He sighs. His voice, as ringingly-beautiful as it is, pierces me differently now, and I feel a tiny bit of doubt grow. I also feel a bead of sweat trickle in fits and starts down my nuts, driving me to utter distraction. When he continues, his voice sounds... rehearsed, rote and sad as well.
"You may call me Cindik or any other name or epithet you like. I will not be offended. You will be released, returned to your bed, unmarked and whole." My last memory was of being in my own, sealed bedchamber. I long to know the name of the traitor who drugged me or otherwise compromised my long-proved personal security.
"You will not be harmed in any way. You will only be touched if you ask, in fact. How quickly you return to your warm and comfortable bed is up to you. When you answer quickly and truthfully, you speed your... release." That last word has an edge to it that sends ice down my veins. He means something deeper, more terrible than simply my release from bondage or even from captivity, but I have no idea what. Probably release from life, which would be a good play on words and fit his statements. One can be unmarked and whole, as well as dead.
"The Talaan forces you have arrayed again Toonun have at least five parts that we think we can see. The plan appears to be inspired, perhaps even unique. You will tell us which are the true attacks and which are feints. You will tell us--"
"Shut up! I'm not going to tell you shit, you ignorant old gasbag!"
"-- what preparations exist. You will tell us the number of men and the nature of their equipment. You will tell us who will lead each piece."
"Fuck you!" More sweat has joined the parade down my ball sac and I twist a little. "Get on with it. Get one of your pet torturers over here to start. My nuts itch. Have them start there!"
"Ah, good. You finally noticed. Kicine, please move behind our guest." A small man emerges from the gloom behind where the speaker sits. Well, at least it starts now. The sooner started the sooner finished and I can die knowing they will fall to the plans I created.
As he comes closer, I realise that he is hardly more than a boy. Pretty and delicate with smooth, alabaster skin and tender eyes. Had he been born in Talaa, he would have been in arms for perhaps four years, so he has around eighteen summers. Instead, he seems to have never held anything more dangerous than a spoon! He is weak and soft just like his country. He moves behind me as I watch. I breathe in deeply, over and over, knowing the first pain is always the worst.
"We will start with things that we already know, obvious things. That way you can understand how your time with us will progress. What is your name?"
"My name is Death, you bastard." With the boy behind me, my attention is drawn straight to what will certainly be his first target, my tenders. The prickling of sweat has built even further and I squirm, but have no way to protect myself from his blow or kick. I find myself coming up on my toes, involuntarily pulling away from whatever might come.
I moan deeply, shocking myself, when I feel the delicate hands of the boy gently scratch along the nuts sooooo close to the spot that itches the worst. It just makes the prickle explode in contrast. "Left," I hear myself whisper, voice atremble with the itching. I feel his small, soft hand move right instead. "Left, you fucking bastard, LEFT!"
"No. We know your name is not Death and isn't Left or even Bastard. Care to try again?"
The boy steps back, removing his hand as soon as the man speaks. The tickle has become almost unbearable. I start to actually pray for the kid to kick me, kick me hard. I breathe for a minute and realise that they like me to want that.
"You will get nothing from me. No one has ever broken General Malima and you ohhhhhhhhhhhh yesssssss." That had started as a scream and ended as a purr. The boy's hands are now scratching my nuts so wondrously that I nearly weep.
"Yes, you are General Malima. You see how nice things are when you cooperate?" Fuck the voice! Those hands are magical. "Who is your second in command?"
"B-B-B-Bulcan." I luxuriate in the sensation and feel myself harden rapidly.
"And will Bulcan command the attack if you are absent?" I suck in a breath, kicking myself for giving information away for free. I lock my jaw and feel the boy instantly step away.
"Do you think I'm an infant? That I'll give up Talaa and the whole Isenim Empire to get my nuts scratched?"
"No. Oh. Sorry. I may have mentioned that I have a terrible time with rhetorical questions. I simply answer what people ask. It's a good plan. You should try it." I see the man sigh deeply, a look of distracted concentration taking his features. My chest erupts in pleasure. I gasp and look down to see what the kid is doing now, but he is still behind me. I watch in fascinated awe as my aureoles grow into concentric circles of gooseflesh and I pant heavily as my nipples slowly distend. My breath is coming in short gasps and sighs. Several whores over the years have found how much I enjoyed my tits played with, but none ever came close to setting me on fire like this.
"So, Bulcan will run the show if you aren't able to do so?" I scowl at the man and say nothing. I feel warmth on my back and the boy leans forward, arms around me. I feel his lithe and tender fingers trip gently across my nipples.
"YES!"
"Yes, you like that," the boy has stopped, his fingers hovering, ready to return, "or yes, Bulcan will lead that effort?" The fingers are back, now, but touching everything but my nipples. Hell, everyone knows that Bulcan is my second!
"B-B-B-Both! Yes, yes. Please, yes." The boy is now rubbing and gently rolling my nubbins.
"Don't worry, Kicine will keep that up as long as you keep answering." The sensation is indescribable, setting alight parts of me I'd never thought as sexual before. "And the date is eight days from tomorrow?"
"Uh-huh. No! No! It's not!" I try to suck the words back in to no avail. I will not fall into that again!
"Don't worry, Bala, we've known that for some time. It's why we waited. And the five groups are staged two at Cholok, two at Baran, and one at Urbash, correct?"
"Go. To. Hell." Each word is separated by gasping sigh.
It is just possible that spies noticed the troop movements. From the plains of Talaa, there are only six viable routes into the heart of Toonun. The obvious one is up the Dariya gorge, straight to the great dam brought to the high valley when the goddess Hyderlec spread her power over vast continents. The same dam that holds back the Oroonkol, the lake that is the centre of Toonun. The gorge is the primary trade route with clear, wide roads and easy portages, by relies on the vertical sleds to pull men and goods up and down the great, blank face of the dam. It is unlikely that they'll agree to haul my army!
Along one side of the great gorge runs a long, gradual slope, a rough ramp with a high edge, called (the) Spleewa. It is fortified well and at a number of intervals, but leads upwards to a point next to the dam where an army can rope their way into the valley. Two additional great canyons, Colk and Barankaa, reach upwards to other points on high Oroonkol, one at each side of the Dariya and with tiny dams at the very top. They are rough, slow, and easily-defended even if they are not fortified. Nature himself gave those two routes the parapets from which men could rain arrows down upon a foe. Cholok sits near the entry to the north-east one and Baran at the southern.
The pass of Bash is torturous at best, with a fort sealing the narrowest section. Were it passable, it would put men not just in Toonun but well behind the primary defences and even Oroonkol, with flat, level ground straight into the heart of Asman, the seat of government. Sadly, five guys with an unlimited supply of arrows could hold it for a century. Urbash is the village, little more than a trading post, at its mouth. Lastly is Coku Road, a good choice for, perhaps, a solitary hiker or spy but utterly impossible for a squad, much less an army. Toonun is far more exposed to other neighbours, but had always fended off any attempt to take the country's high redoubt.
"We prefer Heaven, actually. To Hell, that is." The boy has stepped away from me again but I can... feel his fingers teasing as if they were there, touching me like the ghosts of what I'd felt. The sensation nearly drives me to tears of need. I can feel my manhood dripping. "And we have a lot of Heaven... at our fingertips, you might day." I moan as the sensation, all too briefly, flares to a full touch and then back to the ghostly caress.
"Why Urbash? The pass is too narrow and well-defended." The boy comes around in front of me and I look at his truly astonishing beauty in the way I'd look at Death come calling. His features are fine and sharp, with that slight softness that makes the mountain women (and men) so sought-after in marriage. His lips are wide and full, and his bright tongue rolls forward to wet them. He moves closer and sinks down; I cry out when he begins to gently nurse on my left tit. One short moment of joy and he pulls back.
I look at his face. There is no thrill of the torturer, no feral lust of one who lives to torment. He seems... mournful that I am not allowing him to please me. The bell-like voice murmurs, "Urbash?"
"The winds! The winds!" The boy sighs as if his dream is fulfilled and goes back to suckling my left nipple. I groan in need, and the boy switches to the other, making me cry out again in ecstasy. His tongue moves in terrible and wondrous ways, oil upon the raging fire he has already stoked there.
"Can you explain?"
"No! No! I said enough. Begin the torture! I'll give you no more!"
"Ah, poor Bala, but I've told you, there will be no torture. We do not traffic in pain, violence and death; we trade in joy, love and exultation." I feel the boy's mouth move and sigh that the delicious torment is done, but then suck that same breath back in as his fingers return to their work. If anything, they are as insanely-gifted as his tongue in drawing pleasure from my nipples. A tongue that now--
"GOD! GOD! YES!" ...has found my cock and begun a slow and agonising journey down the shaft, licking in wide swirls as he moves downward. He lingers there, right at the base, then proceeds to lick alongside my sac, then deeper still to my Bride of Delights just behind them, making me whimper and throw back my head, keening with pleasure. That starts a long, long, long oral exploration of my nuts. They squirm in their tight sac as I squirm in the embrace of my bonds.
When I am panting so hard I can barely see, he pulls back and stands in front of me. His face is slimed with his spit and my leakage. He leans forward as if to kiss me and I yearn for it, then he kneels again and sucks my cockhead into his mouth, swirling his tongue through my foreskin. I scream but the instant is gone and the boy is sitting back, again mourning clear in his posture and expression. He longs for my completion as much as I!
"The winds?"
"Th-Th-Th-The winds! Those men use s-s-s-s-sailcloth and silk to come o-o-o-ohhhhhhhhh--"the lips are back, locked around my glans and teasing me toward... Heaven, "--over the ridge to f-f-f-f-fall behind your lines!" The boy pulls me further into his mouth, bobbing and twisting as I scream in frustrated need.
"Yes. As you did in Dever. But so high up they can carry little. Armed how?"
"With fire! Fire! Force your t-t-t-troops back to f-f-fight the f-f-flames!"
"How wicked and how clever," he muses as the boy finally takes me into his throat. At the very last minute, the boy pulls back. "Your rediscovery of that art surprised the scholars. And how many men, with fire and flight at Urbash?"
"NO! NO! NO! Don't let him stop! Please! Four eights! Thirty-two only! Please! AAGGHH!" I bellow as the boy plunges deep and takes me fully into his throat. He begins to swallow over and over and over as I howl and rave. I've never had sensations like this, not from whores or slaves or even the greatest pleasure-servants sent to the King and gifted to me in honour of my conquests! It is transcendent and every muscle in my body bunches as one to push my seed into the boy's loving, luscious throat as I erupt, body mind and soul.
Centuries pass. Empires rise and fall. Oceans boil and refill. I slowly awake, Leviathan, rising inexorably from the black depths. I feel rested, drained, satisfied. I don't know what I've dreamed, but it was divine, and very sexual. My brow hangs and sweat drips. I shake my head to fling the droplets out and away, and notice that things are different now -- and 'difference' brings back the memory of what was and what was done. It is almost as if I am on a beheading machine now, arms spread wide and clavicles resting upon warm stone. My belly rests on something equally-warm, but soft and supple.
"Hello, Bala koj Malima, General of Talaa. We let you sleep since we could tell your dreams were lovely. Dreams should be lovely, shouldn't they?" The bell-like voice is soft, tender, even caring. I start to weep as I realise how weak I've been, telling of the plan at Urbash. But then he knew it anyway. He knew that I had used the huge candle-lanterns to overfly the walls of Dever, and even that they could lift little more than a near-naked man in the mountains around Toonun. It was treason, true enough, but not one that could damage the Empire.
"People obsess over the peace and relaxation of dreamless sleep. But peace is overrated, when joy is so much more fulfilling and so plentiful in dreams."
"What do you want?" My voice is a croak and the boy, Kicine, steps forward and puts a waterskin to my mouth. I drink deeply. It has the unique, icy taste of the water deep from Oroonkol, enervating and refreshing.
"To live. To bring joy to others. To be happy in our own lives as well. To not have to waste time on the machinations of bullies and tyrants. But, alas, we can't always get what we want. But if we try, sometimes at least, we find that we get what we need."
I let the scorn come back into my voice, "And what, pray tell, do you need from me?"
"You, Bala, are one of the great minds of our times. It is a pity you, like so many such great minds, have been warped to the obsessive dominance and power-plays of the High Steppe. We've talked of you, over the years, and what you might have become had you been raised properly. We knew you would one day turn toward our peaks and valleys and that we would have to defeat you, but none took pleasure in the thought."
"Defeat me? DEFEAT me? Defeat ME? You don't even fight me! You fight the might of the Isenim Empire! Whether I am there or another, you will be crushed. You and your tiny mountain idyll and your peace and joy and happiness? They are built upon riches you did not earn and that the righteous Army of Talaa will strip from you!"
"Poor Bala, you and your people look up and see 'riches' when we look around and see simplicity. It is no matter, however, since you are not equipped with eyes to see it. So, we must turn from diverting conversation to the protection of our people. We understand now the force at Urbash. Tell us of those at Cholok and Baran."
I scoff, "There is nothing to tell, you ignorant old windbag! They are the Army of Talaa and will march up and destroy you like a nest of wasps in the eaves of the world. You think that you are safe in your high homes? No, you idiot, you are TRAPPED in them!"
He sighs deeply. He either is honestly sad or a very good liar. "And so very many will die."
"Yes, fool! And on YOUR hands you'll find the blood. Submit to us before your youth, like this soft little boy, are split open before your eyes, eaten by crows for your own stubbornness. Is that what you want?"
"No. Oh, rhetorical again. And still with the misunderstandings. I was speaking of the youth of Talaa wasted in this pointless and doomed act of bravado and greed. We will likely lose around a dozen men, perhaps two," he chuckles wryly, "and most of them to silly accidents. Anyway, to work."
I stare at him as he settles back and seems to lazily contemplate me. I am still sweating and feel it trickle down my back. I look down, under, and can see my belly. The warm stone at my clavicles is reed-thin, and my stomach seems supported by what looks like vellum. I can see the thick curls of my hair through it, but it moves as I do. Sweat drips from the head of my cock, even, and I wonder about the whole ball-tickle thing. That doesn't bother me. Now that we are on the subject of Baran and Chokol, I can tell them sooooo very much. And not a word of it will help them.
One bead of sweat finds the valley to the right of my spine and dribbles down. The bastard is just sitting there, eyes dropping a little, and there is nothing in my field of vision to distract me from that bead's slow progress. It reaches the top of my ass crack and, inevitably, goes in instead of around. I feel it pick its way through the hair it finds there, the bead staying oddly coherent as it moves from tickle to prickle to tingle. It reaches my hole and I stifle a gasp.
There is... something dangerous here. Like the magic told in legends. Something dark and sinister. It is the only explanation. Just as the ball-sweat earlier drove me to utter distraction, my twitching hole becomes the centre of my universe. Prickle upon prickle rise and I strain against my bond. Unlike earlier, I cannot even move my legs; my feet are encased in that same flowed-stone! I flex my knees and try to move my hips in a way that will shake off the sweat and... nothing.
"Kicine is a very good -- and very helpful -- boy. Conje..." A huge man steps from the shadows. He has a soft smile and beautiful eyes, but what you see first is his physique. He has the musculature I have tried for decades to perfect in my own men (and my own frame). He is smooth like all the Toonunai, but it is clear he has gone further and cleared away every hair, even to his head and eyebrows. He is also... impressively naked. His balls are a bit small, but his dick is long, even while still flaccid. A very long, thin foreskin drips off the end as if trying to melt and flow to the ground.
"...Conje takes no initiative. If you wish him to... help you, you must ask and be very specific. Conje, please go and stand behind out guest. Pet him as you pass." As he walks past me, the huge man's hand strokes across my shoulder, down my thigh and across my flank, setting me quivering. I can't turn to see him the way I'm bound, but I can feel his presence and sense his... his scent.
I am a soldier. I started as an infantryman. The smell of unwashed men is simply part of the world in which I live. Clean and dirty, sick and healthy, rutting and placid, enraged and delighted -- all those smells have long since failed to impact me. Conje is so utterly different. The smell is power, innocence, virility, purity and... desperate need. The last may be coming from me, though. I shake my head to clear it. The voice has continued and I heard none of it.
"By now, Bala, I expect that you are realising that the tingling is no longer just on the edge of your skin?"
I suck in a shuddering gasp. No, I hadn't fucking noticed, thank you very much! But the bastard is right. The itchy, needy sensation is now a part of my ass as well, like, like, like... I have nothing to which to compare it! It tickles mercilessly but in a place I cannot begin to scratch!
"Now, Bala, let's start with something easy, something known throughout the Steppes and mountains. How many men does Talaa have under arms right now?"
"Uh, uh, um, uh, No! NO! Fuck you."
The voice falls silent as does my world. All that exists now is that itch, that desperate, yearning need to scratch my ass. It builds slowly, inexorably. "AAGGH! Three thousand men! All know that! Please, please scratch my ass!"
"Hmm. Three thousand? Really? Conje, just rest for a minute while I think about what Bala has told me. Three... thousand... men...?"
"Yes! YES! Um, um, um, three thousand two hundred! Fifty eights of eights! GOD! Stop it! Scratch it! Scratch my asshole you fucking bastard!"
"Why, Bala, you 'spent three weeks a guest of Tozok' and we've only started. And such language to the man who will be tasked with helping you. No. I need to think on that. You see, I seem to recall having seen... more than that. By the way, you'll likely notice the itch had moved... deeper?"
Noticed? NOTICED? Of course I fucking noticed! It's driving me insane! "FIVE! Five thousands and, uh something!"
I cry out as I feel the huge, silent man's fingers scrape up and across the screaming itchiness that used to be my most-secret place. But then, like a mirage, it's GONE!
"And... something? A commander does not know his troops?"
"No! No! Five th-th-th-th-thousand, one hundred and t-t-t-twenty! Eighty eights of eights!"
"Hmm..." He sighs and makes no motion at all other than to drum his fingers.
"No! No! Please! It's true!"
"So you, Bala koj Malima, General of all the armies the Isenim Empire, commander of Talaa, conquerer of much of the High Steppe... have no special reserve? No elite? No... anything?"
"AAGGH! Yes. Yesyesyesyes. I have eight-eights of eight. The Malimaokum! The Death from Malima! Eighty-eight eights of eight! Total! PLEASE?!? YAHHHHHHH!" The scratching hand is back, now working with vigour over the lips of my ass. I hang my head and weep. For the first time, I have truly committed high treason. There are perhaps a dozen men in the Isenim Empire that know the true strength of the Army of Talaa. I weep, yes, but I relish the relief of the desperate need of my ass.
But then... it spreads. It deepens. The liquid magic... SEEPS into me. I buck to get the giant's fingers to follow its spread and he does not change a bit. His fingers bear some sort of grease, though, and I can feel it relaxing that most-private place. The feeling is a taste of the divine.
"And how many of those are currently in Cholok and Baran?"
"A-A-A-A-All of them you fucking idiot! Every single man! You will be destrrr-rrr-rrr-rrrr..." That dissolves into a mournful, desperate, needy moan. The huge man has pulled back. Worse, he lets his hands stroke the cheeks of my ass, over and over and over, round and round and round, never coming back near the valley of my need.
"Apparently, more incentive is required. It is sad how you and your people continue to underestimate the power of joy, of love, of pleasure, of delight." Each of those four words comes with an accompanying pulse. 'Joy' at the base of my balls, 'love' at the head of my rampant, leaking prick, 'pleasure' at my nipples and the last -- oh, fuck, the last! -- 'delight' deep inside me. 'Delight' is in the place known as the House of Gods. A place none has touched in me, but that I have plundered in boy-whores and the best male pleasure-servants. The sounds of 'delight' that they had made as I did so, I now vaguely being to understand.
The magic scares me. What is being done is not possible. Magic is false, it is against the Faith and has always been disproved. Yet each component that makes up my sex screams in counterargument as a touch that does not exist thrills and thrums my most-sensitive nerves.
The ringing is gone from the man's tone, now, replaced by desperate weariness. "I need to rest now. I will leave you and Conje for a while." He staggers as he rises and the boy who had worked such wonders on me earlier rushes to assist him.
Conje, the muscled giant of a man, begins to hum atonally as he fondles my ass. In tiny, agonising increments, each of those three pulses becomes a spark. Each spark slowly builds to a flicker, then a tiny flame. I am lost in a kind of pleasure I am unsure I've ever known. I hear myself huff and chuff as my body writhes in the grip of something so much more powerful than any known drug. I've never felt anything, anything like this! Even the atonal melody of the man behind me and his gentle caress play into it. I cease to care what magic brought this and swim in an ocean of bliss.
It builds and I moan. It builds and I whimper. It builds and I make those little sounds of ecstasy that are the hallmark of a maiden freshly taken, feeling for the first time the fulfilment of sexual union. But it is suddenly clear that what I thought was distilled, raw and perfect ecstasy is only penultimate; a prelude to something so much greater.
I feel the crest swell and prepare to ride it to the ultimate completion, as a Surfi Mystic stands upon the sea and rides it to the shore. My breathing becomes short -- huffed out and gasped in -- as the crest approaches. I steel myself; the bliss has invaded every nerve of my body, vibrating. If this is the overture, can I even survive the orgasm that will surely follow? It come. It comes. IT COMES!! I scream in fulfi--
No, I simply scream.
The crest comes, true, but it passes me by. It washes over me, not through me. Something -- everything! -- within me knows how close to the truly divine I just scraped. Conje croons and pets me, now caressing my back and sides as well as the cheeks of my ass. I am weeping at the missed opportunity for bliss, those raging infernos as nipples, balls, cock and ass vanished... no, wait. NOT vanished. I feel that ineffable pulse that came with the old man's words, "joy... love... pleasure... delight."
Cold horror washes my veins. 'You will experience no pain at my hands.' 'You will only be touched if you ask.' 'We do not traffic in pain, violence and death; we trade in joy, love and exultation.' 'You will only be touched IF YOU ASK.'
"Noooooooo," the moan is ripped from me as if by brute force. The cycle of sensation-fire begins again. The spark, the kindling, the flame, the bonfire, the conflagration, the furnace! I sob as I once again find myself floating in that ocean of bliss and pleasure. Somehow, I know that only that ocean can quench these flames. But how? How do I get the waters to the burning fires of desperate need? I feel the swell building behind me and think desperately, frantically. Trying to recall all that the man said. Then a phrase comes. YES!
'Conje takes no initiative. If you wish him to... help you, you must ask and be very specific.'
"C-C-C-C-C-Conje! Conje! T-T-T-Take my cock in your hand. Stroke me, Conje. Stroke meeeeeEEEE!" I howl in delight as he does so. "Yes. Yes! Faster! Yes! The head, Conje, the head! YES!" Some tiny corner of my mind quails at the realisation that I am not only begging, I am instructing this stranger, this enemy on my own humiliating masturbation. The rest of me slams the door on those thoughts, wrapped (and rapt) in the rising crest. My voice rises to shouting, crying out how I want my body stroked and used. I feel it coming, rising. Me rising with it! I am suddenly...
Screaming in frustration and desperation, sobbing as the crest again passes me by.
"You must let the ocean waters in if they are to affect the flames, Bala, not simply let it wash across your skin." I jump when he starts to speak, the bell-like ring back in his voice. "Unless you do so, the fire remains inside, protected from the waves of bliss. Do you want to know how to do that? How to let them in?"
"YES! God, please! This unbearable pleasure without release, without completion! It is the worst..."
"Were you going to say 'torture'? Yes, I suppose that ecstasy withheld -- and I assure you it is ecstasy of the first water, the true essence of pleasure itself -- can be compared to pain applied. The difference, my General, is that one stems from love held back as opposed to hatred pushed forward. In your current... situation, that distinction might seem trivial. But is it the quintessential reason that Talaa will not conquer us."
I lay whimpering as his words sink in, the pulse again becoming a spark, and the spark a flame.
"So, Bala, you say you want to know how to let it in? How to let the ocean of delight meet the fires of passion?"
"Yes! Anything!"
"Let's start with easy things, numbers. How many Talaan troops are currently in Cholok and Baran? We know it is not 'all of them' as you said earlier because you are stretched and challenged on other fronts, as well as facing insurrection in four of your provinces."
"F-F-F-F-Four full divisions in each. Eight eights of eights per division."
He sighs. "Poor Bala. It is okay, we have so much time, so much pleasure yet to experience."
"No! No!" While we talked I have once again reached the ocean and float there. The swell behind me builds and I have but moment to find this secret. "No! Wait! Twice that! Eight divisions in each!"
"Conje, please give our guest a hand." I feel the giant reach into the crack of my ass and I wail with the wondrous sensations. His thick finger begins to twirl around my inviolable place. Suddenly, he pierces me! I scream in exultation as the wave crashes at the same time his finger plucks the bowstring that is my House of Gods. I cry out in pure, unadulterated ecstasy as my cock readies its volleys of long, forceful streams of my seed. I feel the first blast of orgasm as a near-spiritual thing that flashes through me and... stops!
"No! No! No-no-no-no-no-no!"
"Did you enjoy that sip, that taste of paradise? That reward was well-earned, Bala, but there is so much more to discuss. A finger will not break the dam that holds the blissful ocean from the fires of your passion. Something much more... intimate is required. And we cannot allow that until we fully understand the plan. Do you know what I mean by... intimate, Bala?"
"No. Never. Not that. I cannot will not shall not." I simply hang and weep, insensate at the thought of allowing a man to take me, for that is clearly what the evil bastard is implying. No, insensate is what I pray for.
I block the world outside me, but that only intensifies the importance of all that is happening inside my skin. The epochal pleasure for which I had no frame of reference just hours before is building again. Even without an orgasm, it is the kind of pleasure men would happily sell their soul to taste. But with it comes a desperate, gnawing thirst for completion, to obtain the exponential rush that must surely accompany orgasm.
The old man sits, silent, simply waiting. He asks no question as the tidal pull of the euphoria-ocean slips beneath and around me, teasing, hinting, whispering of joys for which no words exist.
"Uh. Uh. UH! The plan? The plan the plan the plan! Yes. Th-Th-Th-Th-They will flow up the Colk and Barankaa in n-n-n-numbers that will overwhelm your garrisons! They carry sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shields! Shields that prevent arrows and stones from c-c-c-crushing them and chasing them back! Now! Please, NOW!"
"Now what, Bala? What is it you want Conje to do?"
"NO! NO! Yes! F-F-F-F-F-Fuck me! Conje, fuck me! Now, Conje, NOW!"
I roar, torn between discomfort -- the bastard was right, there is no pain -- defeat, horror, triumph and the ultimate thirst for the divine pleasure as his smooth iron rod pierces me and finds the House of God deep within my ass. My yowl of grief-ecstasy-humiliation rips the air around me as the wave crests. The world explodes, nerves meant for touch and temperature firing off colours and sounds and scents. The world sounds purple, smells chilly, looks sweet-sour.
The crest passes and I realise... That, too, was a mere taste.
"YOU BASTARD!" I sag, sobbing uncontrollably, Conje still lodged deep in my ass.
"Why, Bala! That was pleasure of a type you've never felt, that few men alive have felt. It was the pleasure of the divine. But yes, you guess correctly, true completion is even greater, more powerful, more rewarding."
Great heaving sobs break between each breath. "But. Then why. Did you. Deny it!? I. Told you. Everything!"
"Oh, dear Bala. You are a great military mind. You attack with no distractions? No feints? No tricks? Bala, poor Bala. We are not children. Bala koj Malima, General of Talaa, Defender of the Faith, guarantor of the Isenim Empire, whose complex and intricate attacks have brought a dozen new 'provinces' under the iron fist of King Akmak IV, you need to be completely honest if you want to be completely pleased."
I spew words and pleas and stratagems as Conje slowly thrusts, quickening with me as I feel the first lapping surf of the bliss-ocean. I give the damnable man details of my brilliant strategy to take Toonun as the wave again approaches crest, and still it is the pseudo-orgasm that takes me. He allows me to babble through yet another complete cycle before he has Conje back away, leaving me empty and so much more than merely unfulfilled.
"Enough play, Bala. Those were the plans you considered and discarded. You know this. We know this. If you want the true Rapture that your body, mind and soul now craves, we need the truth."
"My. My Malimaokum, hand selected and trained. They will raid up the Spleewa." I sob. "Their small and agile force will pierce each of the fortifications in a way an Army cannot. It will f-f-f-force you t-t-to pull troops from the Colk and Barankaa, just enough to defend the final wall, but even that number will ensure our v-v-victory."
"And the cloaks? The thousands of helmets? I'm sorry, Bala. Conje, come away. Bala needs some time to reflect."
"NO!" My lament is terrible in my own ears. I cannot take another crest, another brush with the divine I could almost taste but never reach. "No! Stay." Conje returns behind me as I pour out everything. "Fuck me! Fuck me now! Deeper! Deeper! FUCK ME!" He does. At the next crest, the boy, Kicine, joins and takes me in his mouth as Conje utterly defiles me, finally spilling his seed deep inside just as the crest hits, just as the wave crashes.
And the man is right. I could never have imagined this bliss, this eternal instant of perfection. I cannot describe it now. The words required are those of gods, words no mortal throat my utter. To call it transcendent is to cheapen it. To liken it to any previous orgasm is to call it a gutter whore.
But the man lied. At least by omission. He implied that the ocean of pleasure would quench the fires when all he really said is that a dam that holds the blissful ocean from the fires. He never said what would happen if I let the waters breach me through the cum of Conje and the mouth of Kicine. Quench them? They do no such thing. They spread and smear the fire through me.
The rest of the night is a blur. I scream and beg to be fucked over and over and over, losing my voice at some points, losing words and meaning frequently. I even help with strategies to overcome the very attacks I've built. Throughout, I spill every nuance of what I've created. Not just this attack but all preparations for the defence and glory of Talaa across all fronts. Both my mind and body are empty husks, but my spirit soars on the wings of Gods.
The plan will fail now. All my plans will fail. And I do not care. When I lay, empty and exhausted, the man comes to me and whispers, "The other great truth about pleasure versus pain is the one that ensures our eternal victory. Pain can teach and its memory can last, but pleasure becomes part of you, forever, bringing permanent joy to your life if you let it. Thus shall it be for you, dear Bala koj Malima. Thus shall it be for you. Amen."
I awaken in my bed and try to scream, but my voice is hoarse and weak. I roll to the side and fall to the thick carpets. I can hardly move, but there is no hint of pain, only exhausted pleasure. The night -- week? month? year? -- comes back to me in an orgasmic rush and I feel my balls clench up against my shaft, ready again to fire at the merest hint of such perfection returning.
I crawl to the head of the bed and yank the cord that summons Bulcan. He comes in briskly and begins to salute, but is suddenly at my side. "Malima! General! Malima?" I can't speak so he lifts me and puts me into the bed again and runs off. I waken again when he returns with two others, Asker, the head of my personal guard, and Dariada, the Surgeon of my armies.
"Something has happened to the General. Until we know what, I will take command. Asker, you will determine who entered this chamber and how. Dariada, you will determine if it is poison."
"First," the doctor says slowly, "we will give him water. Look at his skin, how dry?" He lifts a waterskin to my lips and the blessed stuff flows into me like a drug. I moan with need as if it were the waterskin of Kicine, filled with the perfect elixir drawn from the depths of Oroonkol. The merest thought of that room makes my cock leak and my ass twitch with need. I shake myself.
I push the skin away. I croak, "NO! I was t-t-t-t-taken! Taken to..." I moan now in almost-maddening desire as my ass flares with a thirst more powerful than any throat could feel. I can't complete the sentence, only whimper the cause, "The House of Gods! Please. Please! F-F-F-F-F-F--"
"OUT! Both of you! Run from this room and secure it!" Bulcan spins back to me, a look of holy awe on his face. "Can you tell me what you saw? What you felt? What secrets the Gods revealed?"
I throw myself over without thought or volition, driven by a pleasure-memory so intense I cannot defeat it. "Fuck me! Bulcan! Fuck me and hit the House of God! You m-m-m-m-m-m-must!" I have likely given few orders as strange, but Bulcan's training is exquisite. He is the greatest soldier I have ever known. His dick is in my ass before I can beg again.
I can feel the tides washing against him as well, slowly seeping into his manhood as he massages me deeply. The need in me crests and we both reach orgasm together. In the moment after, I find I can speak, after a fashion.
"Must abandon Toonun! Fire and Water! We will be defeeeeeeee-- OH, again, again, again!"
Bulcan fucks me to his own exhaustion, then leaves me. I hear him order Asker to put three trusted guards on every door, window, aperture and grate that enters my headquarters, and two on every such inside as well. Anyone moving inward is to be seized and, if they resist, killed on sight without exception. Only a pass with his seal affixed and with explicit pathways defined is to be allowed. He, Asker, is to be one of four outside the door of my own room.
Bulcan then does something that shocks me to the core. "Dariada, you will be needed but only to return his strength. This infirmity is no illness; it is the aftermath of a true vision of the Gods. I will consult the High Priests and the King and return shortly. You will drink and eat first of every glass and dish, and wait one hour before giving it to Malima. Godspeed in your work. Few survive the Divine."
The next seven days pass in a nightmare with no wakening. Any warning I attempt to voice, even any thought of Toonun, drives me into an inchoate frenzy of desperate, sexual need. The Seers come. The Priests. The King himself. All listen to my post-coital raving and watch as I humiliate myself over and over. Bulcan has assigned four men to my bedchamber, all of them sexual athletes, in an attempt to prolong the periods in which I can relate my 'Holy Vision' and 'Divine Direction'. It is to no avail. "Fire and Water" and "Abandon Toonun" and "We are defeated" are all I have to give.
A sizeable part of the priesthood and the seers warns the King that continuing his conquest is more than ill-advised, it is suicidal. The Gods have given him something that no leader can ignore: direct and specific instruction and warning. King Akmak IV, never really the sharpest sword in the battalion, dismisses them and eventually threatens to have them put down like barking dogs.
"You tell me the Gods speak through this debased and filthy creature, this former man who begs to be ass-fucked by any and all? Those are not Gods I will even listen to, much less obey. They are at best the Gods of unnatural passions and unspeakable acts. If they are whom YOU serve, tell me now so I can rid my court of such blasphemy!" In fact, the King is so enraged by my words and condition that he decides to take the field himself, replacing Bulcan as the leader of the forces. Bulcan's belief in me and co-weakness of slaking my lust consign my second to the fortress.
I writhe in conflicted torment on the eighth night. My king has chosen doom and I am powerless to stop it. The reports come in slowly, then frantically.
The battle begins as planned. The foot troops move as soon as full-dark has fallen. The candle-lantern troops go aloft three hours later on this moonless night, armed with small bundles that burst into flame when dropped.
As they reach the ridgeline, though, they see a long line of massive bonfires just where the cliff-face swoops upward. The Toonunai have set what amounts to a massive hearth, turning the valley into a flue. The fire sucks air down and across the valley then blows a gale above. The candle-lantern men are swept upwards without recourse or salvation. Some of the lanterns crumple and the men fall to their deaths. Others are caught by a cinder or ash and suddenly the man is wrapped in burning silk and sailcloth. Not a single man who launches in a candle-lantern returns to his family, and none make it further than the ridge.
The great trick in this battle, though, is inspired and would certainly have won the day, were it not for my own treachery. From their high redoubt, the Toonunai see what I want them to see. A small diversionary force rushes up the Spleewa taking each fortification by storm. If my Malimaokum realise that there are virtually no defenders and those that man the obstacles run far before they need to, they do so too late to help the cause of Talaa. King Akmak is in the first rank behind them.
Yes, behind them. The overwhelming bulk of the army, roughly 3500 strong, is in velvet cloaks of the darkest grey, following silently and invisible from above on the dark night. Helms and shields glimmer in starlight, so the Malimaokum can be seen, but not the men behind them. The real attack is up the Spleewa; the Colk and Baranka canyons are virtually unmanned.
Not that the defenders would have been able to know that -- without what I told when I broke over and over again. There are roughly three hundred men in each canyon, the strongest if not the most skilled that the army can produce. Each carries a framework on his shoulders. Above him is a fake shield, nothing of metal save for a thin foil over paperwood. Peeking out on all sides are eight helmets, three in front, three behind, and on to each side. Each man, from above, looks like nine men marching in three columns below a shared shield.
The men have trained for a month. They move without stealth, instructed to keep up muttered conversations or monologues at all times. A few are tasked with 'shushing' the rest, adding to the clamour of an army on the move. The wind at night always flows up a canyon, warm air to cold, wafting the sound of the approaching faux-horde to the defenders on the high dams.
The Toonunai will thus see and hear over two thousand men marching up each canyon, and a scant few hundred assaulting the Spleewa. Their defensive strategy is obvious, and wrong. They must leave the actual target, the wall at the head of the Spleewa, lightly-manned so they can defend against the hordes coming up Colk and Baranka.
After the last 'nine' of my fake troops pass the midpoint of each canyon, Toonunai emerge. They have laid long, thick mats of 'driftwood' that the men simply stumbled across as they do every petty obstacle. Some, perhaps, hear something, but their own instructions to make noise makes it unlikely. The men at the back will smell the smoke first as it streams up the valley. Followed, inevitably, by flames. The fires, like they had on the Urbash ridge, create their own weather in the narrow canyon. Most of the six hundred men succumb to smoke, but a few can be heard screaming as they roast. Of those six hundred, 173 return.
The Toonunai wait until they see the Malimaokum pause, confer, become agitated at the ease with which they are taking the Spleewa. The moment they turn, a ghastly noise is heard. A great sound that had not echoed in the Dariya since unimaginable Gods of Power roamed the mountains. It is then that a few, the most-educated and insightful of our scholars, gasp in realisation.
The goddess Hyderlec who build the dam had use for the waters of the Oroonkol. She milked them somehow for the power that made her unstoppable across continents. In those times of legend, the Dariya did not simply flow from the great tunnel at the base of the dam as it does today, but along the Spleewa, and it was there that Hyderlec suckled the great energies. The energies of vast, hard-driving, raging flows of... water.
It is easy to think of water in terms of rain and wells and waterskins. Soft, flowing, simple, refreshing. A wall of water the height of three men crashes into the troops lining the Spleewa. Many are washed to the side where they fall to a crushing death on the valley floor. Others tumble into a roiling mass of bodies, armour and weapons, hacked to death by a foe who doesn't need to know the finer points of spears and swordsmanship. The few, the lucky few, surf along the crest or find a way to snatch a breath as they are flushed like sewage back the way they'd come.
3496 men, including King Akmak IV, go up the Spleewa. 1027 walk, crawl or swim back. My king is not one of them. King Akmak IV is found stabbed to death by dozens of swords... probably, probably driven by the waves. But the story of my 'divine visitation' has spread throughout the Army and my absence, and that of Bulcan, is noted everywhere. Had Akmak lived, he would not have been king.
My ascension occurs quite-literally without my knowledge. The first I hear of it is when Bulcan pulls me from my room and stands me on a balcony to see the banners waving in the colours of my house. One and all are shocked to silence when I use my Great Voice to proclaim. "I am not your King. You have no King. You NEED no King. From this day forth, I serve you, not the other way around. I am Guardian of Talaa and nothing more." The cheers could probably be heard in... that place I don't think of.
Largely, I have made that true. The military has never replaced a single person lost that day. Twelve corps of 100 men secure our borders and enforce tariffs. Civil authority is vested in soldiers who have retired after long service; they make the gentlest policemen. We are at (relative) peace with all neighbours and by law do not grow by force, only by request of others to join the Commonwealth of Talaa. We are now nearly a third larger than on the day the Last King of Isenim was washed to his death after failing to heed the Voice of the Gods. The word Empire is never uttered in my presence.
Bulcan is my second, still, and the children of each of our wives are treated like true brothers. I have hired tutors from... from a place to our north. When I begin to fail, Guardianship will devolve on whichever one of our sons proves best able to protect and least likely to rule.
I still do not think or speak of the high valleys whose people help and trade with us. Words in passing set me atremble but risk so much more. Thoughts of tension with that place, of wars even of words or commerce... When I must consider those, I closet myself with Bulcan and a scribe for a day or more, and the sounds of my Consultations with the House of Gods are becoming legendary. Bulcan, though, has needs as well. It is rare that a week goes by when he does not lean to me and smiles with a whisper of, "Toonun; the Malimaokum; fire and water", knowing that I will leave us both sated by the end of the night.
Just so you know, this is NOT the start of a series. While I have several, this is built and intended as a complete short story.
If you want to get mail notifying you of new postings or give me ANY feedback that could make me a better author, e-mail me at orson.cadell@gmail.com
Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Canvas Hell: 31 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 23 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 24 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Lake Desolation: 16 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/ Shark Reef: 10 chapters .../adult-youth/shark-reef/ Culberhouse Rules: 6 chapters .../incest/culberhouse-rules/ Raven's Claw: 6 chapters .../authoritarian/ravens-claw/ Ashes & Dust: 1 chapter .../rural/ashes-and-dust/