Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:41:36 -0800 From: The Satyr Subject: The Stag and the Bear, Chap Six Hey, all. I've gotten some fantastic feedback from this series, which I greatly appreciate. Some of you have asked some questions about the background of this setting, which I have shared with one or two folks. But, in order to do so, as well as to update you when a new chapter of this Cycle is available, I have created a group at the following address: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stag-god-cycle/ Join for updates, as well as the occasional short essay on parts of the world, as well as a place to discuss the Cycle. I'd love to hear from all of you, and perhaps get some ideas where you might like to see these cycles go. Any good mythology is built to the needs of the people it serves, and you are the people this Cycle is written for. As usual, involves adult situations, with all that entails. You've been warned. +++++++++++++++++++ This story is (c) The Oaken Satyr, 2005 The Stag & the Bear - A Continuation of the Cycle of Ashlan ++++++++++++++++++++ Chapter Six: Master and Apprentice Ashlan lay comfortably upon the bed of soft furs, wrapped in the embrace of the massive orc. He shuddered and sighed as the mighty bear-god, yet half-asleep himself, poked at his rounded ass with his rampant cock. Ashlan smiled and shifted slightly, raising the leg that the orc had already begun to stroke with one rough paw. The bear-god -- his master in the Godly Ways -- grasped Ashlan's meaty thigh and lifted it as his fat cock found the entrace to his ass. Both of them sighed as the bear-god's cock slid smoothly into Ashlan's hole, stretching it as always, driving forward until it was nestled to its full length within him. This was familiar, thought the stag-god. This was right. Over one full year had passed since Ashlan had come to the den of the bear-god, more boy than man, more mortal than god. As his master began to hunch into his ass, driving the fat divine cock deep into him, then sliding it out with an exquisite heat, Ashlan whispered words in the Foundling Tongue. The bear-god gasped in surprise as the words did something to his cock, shooting it up and down with a tingling, shocking sensation, driving it to greater hardness. He even halted in his fucking as the sensations shook him, while the young stag-god shared in the sensation, smirking at his mentor's reaction. "Whelp," the orc snarled in his ear, nipping at the lobe. He drove forward again, harder this time, and faster. It took Ashlan's breath away, and a knot clutched his throat, and his chest. Ashlan's breathing grew more and more ragged as the bear-god fucked him, ravaging the hole of his much younger student, splitting the boy-god's ass obscenely, stretching it around the fat, incredibly hard length of the godly cock. In a short time, the bear-god slowed his fucking, pulling his cock out to the head, and then drove it home, causing Ashlan to gasp. The bear-god chuckled and shifted his weight, rolling them over, until Ashlan lay pinned beneath the great orc-god's bulk. "Do you remember this, young one?" the bear-god whispered to him. The raspy beard of the orc-god tickled the back of his neck, and Ashlan felt his mentor lick the small scars where the great fangs of his master's bear-form had wounded him in their first few hours together. "Do you remember the feel of the bear within you, taking you, mastering you?" Ashlan could only nod and hunch his ass upwards, whimpering as the bear-god withdrew his cock almost entirely free -- Ashlan could feel the tightness of his asshole squeezing the middle of the bear-god's cockhead, threatening to expel the cock entirely. "Do you?" "God...my god...my master..." Ashlan panted, pressing his ass further back, until the bear-god lay a hand on his flank and shoved him back to the floor, popping the cock in him free. "Answer me," he said in response to Ashlan's gasp and whimper at the loss of the cock in him. He reached down then between them, grasping the fat, slick length of his member, and rubbed it in sunwise -- always sunwise, with the gods, it seemed -- circles around the heat of the stag-god's hole. "I do," Ashlan finally moaned. "You mastered me, and punished me for my ignorance and stupidity, and showed me mercy. Please, please..." The bear-god smiled as he drove the cock home again, the sweaty flesh of his hard belly making a loud sound as it slapped into Ashlan's belly. The stag-god groaned aloud and the bear-god began his fucking again. Soon, the bear-god began speaking in the Foundling Tongue, his words of lust spoken in the very tongue that birthed all the world, the very words of creation. The bear-god spoke words of holy perversion, manipulating the very flesh of his apprentice beneath him, exciting it and driving it to heights of passion. Finally, as he came, he barked a word, growled a phrase, and Ashlan's body collapsed, his balls emptying themselves. As the bear-god filled the stag-god's ass, Ashlan's cock spat ropes of thick semen beneath him, coating the space between his belly and the ground with his divine seed. As he came, the knot in his throat and chest broke, and Ashlan began to sob. The bear-god's embrace eased and gentled as he emerged from his orgasm. He wrapped his huge arms around the stag-god -- still so young, despite it all -- and held him, murmuring his name and words of love in his ear, comforting him. Ashlan cried then, until he was as spent from grief as he was from lovemaking. He turned until he was facing the gruff but loving face of the bear-god, and kissed his mentor. His teacher. His god. His enemy. "You know, don't you?" the bear-god asked him. "I...I do..." Ashlan looked away. "It is the way of our kind, Ashlan. You have learned what I can teach you. I cannot teach you all of the things I know, for they are unique to my own path in the Godly Ways. But I have set your feet upon your path, and given you the weapons, the armor, the tools that will let you walk that path." "I...I kept thinking that you hadn't taught me everything you knew yet," Ashlan whispered, stroking the strong jaw of the orc-god. "There is still so much you can do that I cannot. I...I assumed that we wouldn't be parted until then." "That is not the way," the bear-god whispered painfully, regret furrowing his brow as he looked away. "Would that we were other creatures. I hear that the gods of other lands take lovers for eternity from among their own kind." Ashlan had often heard him speak of the gods of other lands, but never with such...envy. The bear-god looked down at him, the moment gone, resolve firming his features once more. "This is our way, Ashlan," he said again. "We teach one another these ways, and we walk these paths alone. Take what comfort you can in your tribe, in your worshippers, in the spirits of the forest." "What...what will happen when we meet again." "It will not happen by chance, god of the Split Hooves," the orc growled slightly, but without true anger. "You will grow in power, and your tribe with you. Then, the day will come when you have conquered all the tribes that lie between your territory and that of the Thunderous Paws, and our people will come into conflict. "There shall be raids between our braves, and our shamans shall curse one another, calling upon forest demons to make the women of our tribes infertile, or the men weak, or the children sickly. And then will come the day when we are called to battle by the cries of the shamans. "And on that day, we shall both stride to the battlefield, and on the way, we will see the Great Sow Goddess of the orc tribes. She has many forms, and appears to each of us differently, and we shall know that this is the day when we kill, or die. We shall meet one another on the field of battle, and our war shall shake heaven and earth. "Our tribes will flee, fearing for their lives, for the devastation we unleash. They shall run and cower from our battlefield, forgetting their wars and dreams of domination for another generation. But the Goddess' work will have been done -- the weak of the tribes shall be slain, that the orcish people shall grow yet stronger. "And we shall fight, we two. If I kill you, I shall go to Her then, and join with her, and our union shall make the mountains strong, and the storms mighty, and the bears of the forest shall prosper and grow. I shall then return to my tribe victorious, and they shall worship me, as they must. Then, another of the beast-gods shall come to my den in the next generation, or the next, and I shall teach him as I have taught you. "But if you kill me, then you shall join with Her, and the forests shall become dense and dark, all of the land shall be greatly fertile, and the stags shall have mighty antlers and large herds. And then you shall return to the Split Hoofs and be worshipped, and eventually a young beast-god shall come to you, and you must teach him the Godly Ways. As the tribes must fight and grow strong, so too must the beast-gods, Ashlan -- it is the way of things." They lay there, then, each imagining the pain of killing the one they'd grown to know over this past year. "Did...did you do that?" Ashlan asked, knowing full well that the bear-god had, but unable to ask how he'd borne it, how he'd endured. If they'd loved one another the way Ashlan loved the bear-god. "I did. He was called Flamehoof, the bull-god of the Searing Horns tribe. My apprenticeship with him was not like ours. We did not rut as you and I did, and I was still a young orc, new to the bear-skin. I wanted to fight all the time, and I made the mistake of attacking him often, and he beat me near to death each time. "And every time, he nursed me back to health, whispering to me in the Foundling Tongue, singing my wounds closed. It was he who taught me to be still, and it was because of him that I found the mountain within me, when all I had before was the storm. "He taught me that what I had -- what you have, Ashlan -- is an ancient legacy of strength and power that we must embrace, not fight. We are ruled by passions when we are taken by the beast-god, but we do not become strong by giving in to that. We become strong by mastering it." By this time, Ashlan's face was buried in the bear-god's chest, as he finished weeping. The mighty orc held him there, a veritable mountain of steadiness that the terrified boy-god could lean upon. The future seemed to hold only terror and pain, solitude and the murder of what he loved. Ashlan stared up at the face of his master and mentor. "I don't even know your name," he said with a tremor, as though the thought was unbearable. The bear-god chuckled then, and smiled down at his apprentice. "I am very old, Ashlan. Very old. We never take new names when we become the beast-gods, for they are a link to the tribe that we come from. But I was once called Argal." "Argal," Ashlan whispered as he kissed the black lips of the bear-god. "That is a good name." When Ashlan awoke much later, the bear-god was gone. Ashlan sniffed the air, catching his mentor's scent. A year ago, he could not have done this, he thought, as he detected that he'd not left with the need to relieve himself. Indeed, his master's scent nearest the exit was heavy with grief. He was gone. Ashlan immediately understood that he didn't intend to return for many months, likely. And when he did, he didn't intend to find Ashlan there. Ashlan stood then, looking about the cave where he'd lived for more than a year, learning the Foundling Tongue and the Godly Ways. His master had been loving, stern and sometimes cruel, but he'd taught him well. He'd taught him to love, in fact. There was only one other that had ever come so close to his affection for Argal, the bear-god. Artemi. His uncle. Ashlan's mind wandered his memories as he departed from the cave, leaving behind the ruined remnants of his bag and breeches. They were no more a part of him than his old life, but it seemed that he couldn't leave his old memories unvisited, as he thought of the sacrifice his uncle's orc slave had made to allow him to flee his uncle Artemi's clutches. Then, suddenly, Ashlan knew. It was business unfinished, and Ashlan had a debt of honor to repay. He'd told Imbru that he'd be back for him. A smile crept to the lips of Ashlan as his plan formed. He looked to the night sky and spoke the words of the Foundling Tongue, speaking words of white feathers, and terrible talons, singing the night-eyes song, the hunter-song. The owl-song. In the span of a few heartbeats, he was a mighty white owl, winging its way to the far, far east, where lay the edges of the human kingdoms, far over the mountains, beyond the strength of the orc tribes.