Chapter 13 The Damned Pt 01

The sky was a blade, burning blazing blue, endless, cutting down in deep shards through the roiling storm clouds. The thick, hot, heavy atmosphere brought the promise of thunder and lightning. Far below the burgeoning storm, the lush humid plains of the high south stretched wide and wet, fed by the steaming breath from where the jungle met the mountain. Cicadas buzzed and whined from the treeline, and the scent of rain-heavy loam and sweat hung thick in the air.

And across that plain of thick swaying grass and perspiring vegetation, they rode.

Utterly naked but for their swirls and streaks of warpaint, the hunters moved like gods given flesh; sun-bronzed bare skin gleaming with oil and sweat, muscles taut and bulging like coiled rope, honed from fighting, hunting, riding and fucking. Their athletic nude bodies, hard and wet and firm and soft in all the right places, swayed in perfect rhythm with the war-steeds they rode bareback. There were seventeen of them, men and women alike, tattooed in ochre and coal, oiled hair adorned with beads, blades strapped to thighs and hips and backs. They wore their weapons like the tight embrace of lovers. They rode like they'd never fallen. The Reavers of the Ash-Kar, the most feared warriors upon all the plains of Tel Mudera, were on the hunt.

At their front rode their champion.

Only twenty winters, but already a titan among his people. Tall, broad and swarthy. A predator in bronzed skin. His bare smooth chest was marked with tribal glyphs and scars. His powerful, youthful body was carved like a statue of war, every oiled muscle honed, every sinewy movement fluid and precise, lethal, erotic. Two long braids of midnight hair swung down his back, weighted with beads carved from bone and obsidian. His cock; mighty, long and thick, completely shaven of pubic hair in the tradition of his people gone back countless generations, throbbed as it slapped against his thick muscular thigh in time with the rhythm of the horse, the oiled purple head gleaming in the stormlight as each bound of the steeds flank made him harder. His blood was up for the hunt. Painted lines traced down his flanks, across his abdomen, hips and thighs and taut muscled buttocks; symbols of rank, conquest, virility, and death.

One hand gripped the leather reins of his warhorse, and in the other, a massive war-spear of intricately carved bloodwood, its haft bound in serpent leather. The black iron tip was smithed to a lethal, jagged point.

The storm overhead darkened the sky, near blotting out the blazing blue slashes. The Ash-Kar Reaver band slowed their ride and fanned out, eyes sharp on the long swaying grass and distant trees, silent as ghosts and as ready to unleash violence as the gathering storm above was. The storm was their God, their master, and they served it with furious piety.

One of the Reavers approached the leader; her skin copper-gold, shining with oil and sweat; swirls of dark ash-paint covering her heavy, pert tits which swayed with each movement of her horse, her thick dark nipples pierced with rings of bronze and bone, stiff with arousal as she took in the sight of her leaders cock, as hard and ready for action as his spear.

"Zoran," came her voice like smoke, low and sultry, bowing on the back of her steed.

He turned to regard her. Her hair was coiled in loops tight to her scalp, her legs long and bare, her cunt shaved to smooth and oiled perfection. Her tits hung heavy and perfect as she bowed, resting firm and perky on her chest, proud and stiff-nippled as she straightened again. She held a long sickle of blackened bronze in one hand, lazily at her side. She was his senior by a few years, and had taken his hard flesh purple-tipped spear inside her in every imaginable way many times; but she addressed him with the honour reserved for Elders when they were upon the Reave

"Sigala," he responded, his eyes drinking in her form, his cock swelling.

"There," she said, her voice a purr of reverence as she pointed her sickle to a distant copse of trees. "See how the trees are dead? Burned. This was no fire, no strike of lightning from the sky. Venom did this. That's where it nests."

Zoran's gaze tore from her breasts and followed her blade until his piercing blue eyes fell on the hill. It was charred at the top; the tall trees blackened, burned out, stripped of bark. Bones scattered around their roots; some animal, some human, some something else entirely.

Sigala was right, as ever. The Chimera had made its den there.

The riders slowed, the grass swallowing the thud of hooves as the Chimera's nest drew near. The breeze shifted, sour and metallic, full of rot and ruin. Vultures circled lazily overhead. The ground was scorched in patches where the beast's horrific venom had seeped into the loam.

Zoran raised his spear and the tribe halted as one, not a sound among them.

He dismounted with a practiced grace, his powerful bare feet sinking quietly into the damp earth. His legs flexed, thighs roped with muscle, sweat, oil and pre-cum trailing down between them in lazy rivulets. The black spear never left his grip. His eyes, as blazing blue as the slashes of sky which still fought to pierce the rolling storm clouds above and rimmed with smudged ash paint, scanned the horizon. Behind him, the others dismounted, naked and silent, one by one, their gleaming bodies dropping into crouches in the long grass. Sigala dropped into a crouch beside him, her breath even, the swell of her breasts rising and falling slowly in time with the swaying grass. Her eyes met his. She nodded.

They began to crawl through mud and grass, through the humid stench of the Chimera's wake. The Reavers moved like one body, fluid and silent; lean, tattooed muscle, breasts and swollen pricks all rippling under their shaved smooth, slick sun-bronze skin, their weapons held low, eyes sharp as razors.

They found the bones first. Jovan, the herdsman from their tribe; or what was left of him. A half-shredded leg. A jawbone. Charred shattered chunks of ribcage picked clean of meat. Nearby, the remains of two smaller bodies, shredded, poisoned and picked apart. Jovan's nieces, taken from the outskirts of the village by the Chimera the night before, who he had foolishly and bravely come after without waiting for the Reaver party. His last mistake.

Sigala made a low sound in her throat. Not grief, but fury. Zoran's fingers flexed on the haft of his spear. He whispered,

"For them, then."

And then it rose. The massive Chimera erupted from the shade of a copse of broken trees like a nightmare. It moved faster than anything that size had a right to, rising on enormous bat-like wings, its disfigured lion head, covered in black soulless arachnid eyes, roaring with monstrous hunger. Its huge, scaled, six-legged reptilian body rippled with muscle, and its long, deadly scorpion tail, as thick as Zorans waist, curled high overhead, the stinger drooling blackish-green venom.

Zoran screamed a battle cry; a prayer of death to their storm god, and the rest joined him. As if in answer to their prayer, the sky opened, a flash of lightning painting the scene in brilliant red-white light as thunder cracked, deafening. The skies opened as Zoran launched himself forward, spear low, mud exploding beneath his feet, rain hammering against his taut body, spurring him on. Sigala was beside him in a blink, naked, shining, her sickle flashing as the Chimera swooped on them.

Its tail lashed, missing Zoran by a whisper as he rolled to the side, but impaled Xichi, the young Reaver at his back, with a vile crunch. The stinger thrust between her small breasts. Venom pulsed into her chest in waves as the tail throbbed like an ejaculating cock; but even as she fell, the young Reaver hurled her obsidian axe with deadly precision. The axe bit into the Chimera's flank with a wet thunk and the monster pulled away, roaring in pain, its stinger leaving Xichi's breast with a sickening tearing sound. The beast's six razor-sharp clawed paws tore into the sodden ground as it landed heavily and turned on the Reavers surrounding it.

Zoran met it head-on. He slid beneath a claw swipe, slicing his spear upward in a brutal arc that caught the Chimera's ribs. Blood sprayed, thick, hot and dark, splattering him across the chest and painting him anew. He roared and stabbed again, this time into the middle shoulder beneath its wing.

Sigala leapt onto its back, her thighs clamping around its scaled spine, and swung her sickle with all her might into the beast's neck. It bucked, screaming. Another Reaver, Chimali, dove forward and hacked at the tail with his axe; but the tail turned midair and the stinger caught him in the stomach, lifting him and flinging him through the pounding rainfall like a rag doll as he screamed, the venom already flooding his taut athletic body as he splashed into the rain soaked earth, blood and blackness oozing from the rend in his abdomen.

Two more Reavers circled wide, flanking as the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed again. Spurred on by the violent encouragement of their god, they both hurled weighted nets of heavy black vine-rope and polished obsidian, trapping the Chimera on the ground. Zoran climbed, fast and brutal, fingers digging into the rope and the beast's mane as it twisted against the nets. He reached the lion's head. Its breath was hot and wet and rancid in his face as he arched his shoulder back, and with fluid grace and sheer force, plunged his spear through the monster's largest left-most arachnid eye.

The Chimera wailed and staggered, trying in vain to flap its wings against the netting covering it. Blood and ichor poured from its skull, and the tail thrashed, wild and half blind. Sigala leapt clear, her naked body drenched in the rain; her hair coils came loose around her breasts and shoulders as she landed with a roll and leapt to her feet gracefully, sickle at the ready. Zoran held on with fierce determination. The beast tried to shake him free, to crush him with its bulk, but he held fast, planting a foot against its scaly breast and driving the spear deeper, deeper, until the black iron tip broke through the other side of the skull with a crack as loud as the thunder.

Then; silence. As quickly as it had begun, the storm subsided. The Chimera collapsed.

Zoran stood over it, chest heaving, its blood spilling down his chest, groin and thighs, his braids thick with gore. The spear was still lodged in the thing's skull.

Xichi and Chimali were down, envenomed, wounded and barely breathing. But the tribe still stood, and the Chimera did not. By the grace of the storm, they had avenged Jovan and his nieces. The Reavers gathered in a loose circle, breathless, their muscular naked bodies shining with sweat and rain and fury, covered in blood and viscera. Sigala reached out, gripped Zoran's arm with blood-slick fingers.

"For them," she said again. Zoran nodded.

"For all of us."

He turned and surveyed the field. It stank of blood and venom. The Chimera's corpse steamed in the heat, flies already thick around the shattered skull. Its tail twitched once, postmortem, curling like a dying question mark before going limp in the tall grass.

Chimali lay in the grass rigid, limbs stiffening, the black trace of venom snaking up his torso to his throat. Xichi gasped wetly, eyes fluttering, foam and bile spilling from her lips, blood leaking from the jagged hole in her sternum. Without urgent aid they would be dead soon.

But Inzara had other plans.

Still in her teens, Sigala's sister Inzara was the youngest priestess of the Thunder God in all of the Ash-Kar. She knelt between the two bodies, her thighs slick with sweat and mud, her skin sun-bronzed and glowing. She wore nothing but a choker of oiled leather and carved, varnished bone which denoted her station. Her supple breasts were full and bare, rising and falling with each sharp breath she took, nipples dark-pink and thick and long, erect in the humid air. Her fingers were stained with crushed herbs, which she chewed and spat back into her hands before pressing them into the wounds with a kind of fierce tenderness, whispering over their broken bodies in a tongue older than the tribe itself. Sweat and rainfall trickled in slow rivulets down her olive skin, pooling between the curve of her tits and in the small of her arched back, trickling down the cheeks of her toned, smooth, peach-like ass. Her chin-length hair, dark red and wild, was damp with sweat and oil and tangled, framing her angular, flushed face in chaotic waves as her intense, violet eyes narrowed in focus.

Zoran stood back and watched her, the weight of his bloodied spear forgotten in his hand; the swelling heft of his own shaft taking precedence as he gazed upon Inzara.

Every line of her body moved with strength and grace. Her slender belly slick with sweat, the curves of her hips flexing as she leaned over the wounded. Her lips, wet and plump and swollen from chewing the acrid herbs she spat into the wounds. Her hands were soaked in blood and venom and dirt; and still he'd never seen anything he desired more. His cock was fully hard, twitching and leaking pre-cum with every breath. He didn't care who saw. It was the way of warriors, of the hunt, of conquest and survival. Desire followed death.

"Don't," came a voice at his shoulder.

Sigala stepped in close and dragged him into a rough, punishing kiss, tongue pushing into his mouth, her hand grabbing the thick slippery shaft of his manhood and squeezing, stroking achingly slow and deliberate as she rasped against his lips. "You did your part, now let my sister do hers."

He growled low in his throat, kissed her back, his hand sliding up to grip one of her breasts. His fingers, strong and calloused, kneaded the soft ample flesh as his tongue slid into Sigala's mouth. She moaned, pushed into him, her hand moving faster on his rigid prick, her pussy already wet for him; but he was already pulling away, breaking the kiss with a snarl. He pushed Sigala away from him as his gaze returned to Inzara.

Sigala glared, lips wet and bitten. But she said nothing as Zoran turned and strode through the long grass, cock still thick and engorged, until he dropped to one knee beside Inzara. Her hands didn't stop moving. Her breath came fast, her brow furrowed in focus. Xichi, her wound closed and no longer angry, lay beneath Inzara, breathing gently, eyes closed as Inzara gently massaged her poultice-smeared hands over her breasts and shoulders.

"You have saved them," Zoran said, voice lower, reverent. Inzara didn't look up.

"I slowed the venom and tended the wounds. That's all."

"Do not underserve your talents so. It's more than any other could've done," he replied, insistent. Still, she didn't meet his eyes. Just pressed her palm to the breast of Xichi and lowered her head, her lips sensuously brushing the unconscious woman's neck as she murmured a final magick word.

"Their bodies will heal. But it is the will of the Thunder Lord whether their souls deserve to return to them."

Zoran watched her. Watched the strength in her body, the control in her fingers, the curve of her back and the way the light clung to the sweat trailing between her breasts, his cock achingly swollen between his legs, his smooth shaved balls tight and heavy.

Then he rose. He knew he would fuck her, of course he would; he had lain the groundwork of their relationship ever since Inzara had begun to blosssom to womanhood, even as he had fucked her sister; knowing words, accidental caresses, whispers of the thrill of the Reave. He was the Reaver-Chief, and what he desired was just a matter of his to take. Not yet; not while she worked. But that promise of union spurred him on. He walked away from the priestess, cock swaying heavily, back to where his stallion waited. At its side, hanging from the reins and the now drenched blanket covering its back, hung a great obsidian sabre. Zoran unsheathed it and approached the Chimera's carcass, raised the great blade with one hand, and brought it down in a single, vicious stroke. His Reavers all cried aloud in frenzied unison as the enormous lion's head hit the earth with a wet thud, jaw slack, tongue spilling loose.

Zoran lifted the blade high above his head, blood still pouring down the curve of his forearm, muscles gleaming, cock heavy, erect and hard as iron.

"Tonight," he roared, voice shaking the air like the voice of the Thunder God itself, "the Ash-Kar feast on the flesh of our enemy!"

And as one, the Reavers responded in a wordless roar.

--

The village throbbed with heat and blazing firelight, and the sound of drums so loud they made the dirt shake.

Tents of stretched hide and sun-bleached bone flanked the central clearing, packed with swaying, writhing bodies and smoldering coals. Smoke curled thick from firepits where haunches of descaled Chimera meat roasted over open flame, skin blackening, fat hissing down into the embers. The air was thick with the perfume of sweaty bodies, meat-smoke, spices, mead, tobacco and sex. Drink-sodden breath on bare skin, oil burning on torches, the blood-warm scent of bodies pressed close together in revelry.

The Ash-Kar were celebrating.

Their dead had been honored with flames. Their wounded were resting, kissed by healing tongues and sacred poultices. The rest; the warriors, the young, the fearless, were feasting. Gorging themselves on the flesh of the Chimera, dancing like they were possessed by the Thunder God itself, fuelling themselves on charred meat and thick, strong mead and sweet hot chocolate wine and fucking openly, brazenly, like wild creatures.

Naked flesh moved everywhere, adorned only in beads, rings, and streaks of oil, sweat and fresh ash. They moved in spirals and waves, some grinding hips and breasts together in time to the drums, others sprawled across woven mats or the grass, mouths locked, fingers buried deep between thighs, inside cunts and anuses, wrapped around engorged cocks, hair fisted in ecstasy. Moans rose between thundering beats, echoing over the percussion like devoted, ecstatic carnal prayer.

One young girl straddled a warrior near the firepit, her cunt slick with sweat and desire, her fingers tangled in the thick braids of his hair. He suckled her breast as she rode him, her cries sharp and unashamed. Beside them, two boys kissed feverishly, their cocks hard and weeping precum in slick stringy rivulets as they stroked each other in time to the pulse of the drums, desperate for the other to cum. A group of four women knelt in a circle on the far edge of the clearing, slick with oil, their dark hair braided, their hands moving over each other with reverence. They took turns licking at one another's thighs, suckling and hungrily lapping at their wet, shaved cunts, heads pushed between legs painted with runes of fertility and fire, faces buried between ass cheeks, tongues tracing symbols until one of them screamed and shook in climax, her pleasure lifting into the night like smoke.

Laughter burst through the noise as someone upturned a jug of mead over their own chest, then was tackled by two lovers who greedily drank and licked it from her tits and belly. More joined. Bodies writhed. Tongues searched crevices and openings. Someone came screaming into the earth, back arched, fingers clawing the dirt.

The drums pounded on in encouragement, fuelling the orgiastic revelry like the thunder god who'd spilled his seed of lightning across the sky and called the sun into being.

Bodies slick with sweat and dripping meat-fat undulated in the orange-dark of the fire circle, no longer separate but a tide of limbs and mouths and pulsing want. Hands groped, mouths searched, hips bucked in wild, ritual rhythm. A pair of muscular male Reavers, smeared head to toe with the blood of the Chimera, fucked in the grass with a need that bordered on violence. One straddled the other, riding his cock with a snarl on his lips, his asshole stretched out and slurping wetly with sweat and Chimera blood and spit as his warrior-kin thrust his thick, turgid cock into him, balls slapping loud and wet against his buttocks. Their muscles straining, fingers digging into sweat-slick skin. Around them, others watched, moaned, joined in, licking, kissing, stroking, biting.