The War Goddess

In the beginning, the world was brought forth like an egg cracking open, and from within the shell spilled forth the soil and the seas, the wind and the clouds and the sky as blue as ever you saw it. Life sprouted among the tumultuous churning of the world, and split into all things as we know them; fish and birds and beasts and bees, and plants too numerous to count. And man, of course, born of woman and of himself, perpetuating to even the farthest corners of the continents. Spreading like mold on old bread, mankind spilled forth and laid claim to everything that the sun touched, from the meekest creeks to the mightiest rivers. They built and they produced, and they dreamed, schemed and multiplied like vermin. Because they, of all the living things, were favored by the Gods.

But from whence did the Gods come? From that same egg which hatched mankind and the fowl and critters? No; the Gods were always there, from the Elder Phynaster whose four-pronged sword plows the fields and delivers judgment onto the mortals, to his wife Helena, her daughter Herana, and

her

daughter Eleonora. As multitudinal as the plants and the fish and the dreams of men, so the Gods multiplied as the world coalesced, and they in turn laid with one another and begat more gods, smaller Gods, weaker Gods whose powers extended only to slight and trivial things. But still they multiplied, for when absolute power rests in your hand, what more is there to do than to play games of carnality and chance?

And soon, the sky was filled with the pinpricks of a thousand thousand Gods, with names too numerous to remember without the aid of a book. And they all kept fornicating and churning out more offspring, and poking more holes in the firmament to let the new Gods take their place upon the night sky, and blah, blah, blah...

Eleonora rolled her eyes and dumped the massive Bible of the First Church back onto the altar from which she had taken it. Most houses featured such an altar and such a book, to show proof of the piousness and devotion of its inhabitants to the Gods, and keep them from invoking the attention - and subsequent ire - of the temperamental deities. Of course, the fact that Eleonora herself, Supreme Goddess of the War Unending, was standing in a peasant hovel was testament to the fact that this piece of trivial placating did not, in fact, work.

"Dross," she said and wiped her fingers on her blood-red gown. "All true, of course, but that doesn't make it less loathsome. Tell me, mortal: Do you know why you won't find mention of any of

my

daughters in this book?"

Martyn, whose body was currently cowering on the floor, shook his head. "N-no, m'lady..!"

Eleonora smirked. "Because I don't have any. The only virgin among the Gods, despite their best efforts. Does that seem amusing to you? Paradoxical, maybe? A blood-soaked maiden who yet retains her maidenhead?"

Martyn shook his head again. "No, m'lady. Not amusing at all!"

The Goddess pursed her lips. On her back hung six swords, each with a different name, each famed for conquering one of the six corners of the world and slaying the World Beast that had nestled there. A belt of spun gold, like fairy-hair, hugged her waist. It had come from the scalp of the Sun Nymph who had once tried to usurp the Throne of All Things from Eleonora's Grandfather, and it let the Goddess see all things and hear all things that the sunlight touched.

"Well, no," she said with a moue, "I don't suppose you would. But believe me, it is quite the joke among my kin.

Eleonora the Chaste

, they call me.

The Unspoiled

. As if I were a blushing girl-child hiding behind her mother's skirt."

In two long strides, the tall Goddess crossed over to where Martyn was cowering, and she seized his head and tilted it up so that he could look at her otherworldly eyes, whose irises were the color of burnt honey. She was, unsurprisingly for a Goddess, incredibly beautiful, but Martyn was more concerned about the fact that the harbinger of never-ending calamity had manifested in his home on a perfectly ordinary Midweek evening, and was now discussing her virginal embarrassment with him. There were few things that Martyn treasured in life, but peace was one of them, and having his head remaining on his shoulders was another. He swallowed hard and held the Goddess' gaze, for he dared do nothing else.

"It has become a common sport among the Gods, during our feasts, to try and drink me senseless. A competition to see who can

break

me first. Or, as Phynaster the Younger, He Who Tends the Beasts, put it so succinctly, 'bed the bitch'. Cousin Phyn always had a way with words." Eleonora's eyes flashed with anger, and Martyn felt a very real, and very acute, need to release his bladder. It was to his credit that he did not. Instead, Eleonora simply continued to speak.

"But perhaps you can take a guess, mortal, as to why I have never let any of them near me? Why, despite my zeal and ferocity and strength, no God has ever

bedded this bitch

?"

Martyn shook his head. "No, m'lady. I haven't a clue!"

"Oh, come now." The Goddess looked impatient. "I know for a fact that your kind has something resembling an intellect rattling around in your skulls; go ahead and guess. Humor me."

The idea of 'humoring' a Goddess, let alone the Goddess of War, had never occurred to Martyn. To him, blind and mindless obedience had been his first and last instinct, and it took him several seconds to drag up something halfway resembling an answer. Groveling and trembling, admittedly, but an answer all the same.

"None have been worthy of you, my lady?"

Eleonora snorted. Then she laughed, and flashed the young man a pitying look.

"Unworthy? Do you call Zael of the Thunderous Storm unworthy? Or Brinbog who Delivers Ill Portent? Or Mother Gialu herself? Unworthy, indeed-- you shall be lucky if I am the only God who comes to visit you after this!"

Martyn made a pained sound and sagged, although he still did not dare to let his gaze waver. "Please, m'lady, I only meant--"

"Peace, Martyn Grovesmith." Eleonora was smiling, but it was hard to tell if it was amusement or honeyed cruelty that twisted her lips. "Your transgression shall remain a secret between us. But no;

worth

is not something they lack of among the Gods. Had I the mind to it, I should produce offspring whose strength and cunning would shatter the chains of the world and usher in a new beginning of fire and ash. There's many a potential father who have made such offers plenty of times already. And a tempting offer it is, I do admit."

Taking a small step closer, Eleonora let her hand trace the curve of Martyn's skull as she inched him ever closer to her body. He was perfectly level with the enticing space between her thighs, and it was becoming difficult to maintain eye contact with her due to the swell of her breasts obscuring his view. Still, he tried to ignore the feminine allure that assaulted his brain, and instead kept thinking of how very nice it was to be alive, and how much he definitely wanted to remain alive at the end of this encounter.

"The reason I am still a virgin," Eleonora confessed with a slight frown, "is because every single suitor available to me is a crass, self-absorbed, cocky ass. They croon and they preen and they strut, and they want

me

to bow? To let them smirk and crow as they mate with me like a common beast? Eostre may play the whore to their scandalous orgies, but I will envelop the world in fire before I let them so much as touch me. Filthy degenerates!"

The Goddess' eyes sparked, and Martyn felt the very air around him prickle with static electricity.

So this is how I die

, he thought to himself, and despite his best attempts at bravery he closed his eyes and scrunched up his face. Heat was shimmering around him, and the faint smell of soot and dried blood tugged at his nostrils, set to the echo of the neighing of horses and the screams of children. It lasted for six long, arduous breaths. Then something bumped against Martyn's nose.

He opened his eyes. A pair of thighs, perfectly smooth and softer than they had any right to be, were hovering before him. Above them, Eleonora was standing with her legs slightly spread, and one hand pressing Martyn's face between them. He could no longer smell blood, but instead the intoxicating fragrance of a woman, and as her voice drifted down from on high, he felt his shoulders sag with relief.

"No God could hope to bed me. But you will, Martyn. You will show me the things I have been missing, and you will worship me, body and soul."

The Goddess' legs parted further, and Martyn felt himself being pushed in and up, until his face was nestled deep in the valley of her body. Standing astride him, Eleonora sighed softly as his breath caressed her inner thighs. Her dress was gone, willed into the ether from which it had been spun, and she stood naked before him now, ready to receive his touch. "Pleasure me," she demanded, and he obeyed, sticking out his tongue to run it slowly across her labia, up and then down in a gentle stroke, and then burrowing in to find her center. It was not a foreign thing for Martyn; he had done it before. But never kneeling, like this, and never with a Goddess. Not as far as he knew, anyway, and he was fairly certain he'd have remembered.

She was salty on his tongue, and rich with musk; pushing first down to her entrance and then up to find her pleasure-nub, Martyn felt her grip on his head as she held him fast, intent on extracting every bit of pleasure that she could from him. Working slowly and meticulously, Martyn first allowed the tip of his tongue to draw a series of lazy circles around Eleonora's clit, and once he could feel her arousal swell, he began to treat her to a string of long, grinding strokes with the flat of his tongue, which had the effect of causing the Goddess to gasp and moan softly, and move her hips in syncopated sync with his movements. A virgin though she was, Martyn was surprised at how quickly she took to handling his mouth like an extension of her own pleasure, with her hand tilting and craning his neck to meet her rolling pelvis.

Naturally, Eleonora knew her own body, and how to give it pleasure. Living among the Gods, for whom sex was the most common pastime, it was impossible not to feel urges that needed relieving. But Martyn's tongue darting over her sex was the first time she had experienced pleasure of this kind, and she took to it instantly, cradling his head and riding his lips while crooning soft moans to encourage his tongue to work harder. This was not, strictly speaking, what she had come to him to receive, but there was plenty of time to take care of that before she would be missed in the heavens, and anyway, the idea of stopping him now, while he was doing such a good job of it, seemed preposterous. Eleonora reached down and seized Martyn's head with both hands, and began to buck her hips harder, driving herself onto his tongue with little regard for the man's welfare. She was close, so close that she could taste it. All she needed was a little more...

Martyn felt the Goddess twitch as his tongue ground against her clit, each movement amplified by her wild ride against his face. Breathing was hard, and every bit of air he managed to suck down was tinged with her scent, until he felt dizzy and drunk on her. With her hands crushing him into her pelvis and her thighs clenching around him, Martyn had no choice but to grunt and bear it as Eleonora's moans rose into a high-pitched scream, and she held him there for almost a minute, trembling and shivering as her orgasm flowed through her, until Martyn finally had to drag himself free and gulp down several lungfuls of musk-tinged air.

For the first time in her considerably long existence, Eleonora felt weak. Her knees were trembling, her chest was heaving, and she barely cognizant of the world around her as she grabbed Martyn by the collar and began to drag him bodily towards his bedroom. "Undress," she commanded, and threw herself onto his bed. Sprawled on the floor, the man obeyed - removing his clothes was simple, but he felt a slight tremor of trepidation as he stood and turned to face the woman on his bed, whose supernatural beauty did nothing to assuage the knot of fear in his stomach. Unlike Eleonora, he was no virgin, but there was a hell of a difference between bedding a random wench and trying to please a Goddess. Not that that stopped his cock from standing hard and proud between his legs, spurred on by her taste and the sight of her naked body splayed between his sheets.

"Well?" The War Goddess gave Martyn a curt look, and he obediently climbed into the bed with her, one hand finding her shin and trailing up to her thigh while his knees scrabbled forward to find a good position. When the tip of his cock began to nudge against her mons, Martyn reached down and used his left hand to guide himself, aided by the sheen of spit and arousal that made her practically drip for him. Once, twice he slipped his tip between her folds, gathering the moisture and giving her a chance to get used to the idea, but then he felt her legs nudge him impatiently forward, and he was forced to throw all caution to the wind; he angled himself down, found her opening, and then thrust into her with a slow, steady push.

Eleonora gasped. Pain was, on the whole, a foreign concept to her, but she felt a sting of burning discomfort as she was opened, and then another one as the man drove himself into her again, and then again and again. She had expected to feel in control, to dominate him fully, but she found his hands seizing her legs and pushing them up towards her chest while his hips began to grind. Already the pain was giving way to pleasure, but it was the odd sensation of helplessness, of surrender, that perplexed her and allowed her to simply lean her head back and gasp softly. In moments, Martyn had buried himself to the hilt inside her, every inch of him swelling against her inner walls, and now he was relishing the sensation of her tight, warm sex clenching fitfully against him with every movement he made. He gripped her thighs, squeezed the soft flesh and began to fuck her in earnest.

The sound of two bodies colliding began to fill the room as Martyn let his hands slip from Eleonora's thighs to her hips, and then up to her breasts. Almost on instinct, the Goddess wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him closer, and she gasped as his fingers began to roll and pinch her nipples, coaxing them into hard nubs that radiated pleasure up and down her spine. Harder and harder they crashed, and with every smack of his hips into her, Eleonora could feel a pulse of pleasure that mixed with the sensation of her breasts and made her shiver and moan. When Martyn shifted his body and his hands to lean down onto her, she reached her arms up and wrapped them around him to pull him into a deep, lingering kiss as he rolled his hips against her. He was warm and firm beneath her fingers as she trailed her hands over his back, and his breath smelled of the cold autumn outside, and of her, and this aroused her further, making her clutch him harder as they made love. Entwined, entangled, the Goddess of War felt nothing more than simple, blissful pleasure.

Martyn felt himself melt into the kiss while his hips worked rhythmically to bring them both pleasure. The Goddess was soft and pliable beneath him, from her cherry-red lips to her pale breasts and perfect thighs clutching him closer to her lap with every thrust. He could feel her pleasure, feel it building and churning with every twitch of her muscles, but it was not enough; it was no longer about her being a Goddess and him being human, but about the pride of a job well done, and with a soft grunt, Martin heaved himself back up and took hold of one of Eleonora's legs while his free hand slipped down to find her clit. His pace slowed, he looked down at her with a sly grin, and with his thumb rubbing between her folds he forced her to another orgasm, this one spurred on by the thick length grinding against her G-spot. This time he felt every spasming pulse of her pleasure as she threw her head back and groaned into the sheets and the stale, warm air around them, and even as she was shaking and gasping incoherently, Martyn kept hammering her body with pleasure in as many ways as he could, working hips and thumb and every part of her that his left hand could find, until she was limp and mewling quietly with her eyes closed.

Resting with his length still buried inside her, Martyn felt the burning need to cum stir within him, as well as something else. It was a foolish thought, a literal bit of hubris, but seeing the human embodiment of warfare spread-eagled and whimpering on his bed gave Martyn the unquenchable desire to do more than simply satisfy her. He ran his hands down her flanks, felt her sex as it hugged his cock, watched her eyes flutter as she panted in the aftershocks of orgasm, with her hair like a halo around her head-- and it made him want to claim her, to possess her as she had tried to possess him. After all... when it all came down to it, the Goddess was just another wench, and Martyn knew how to treat a wench with her arse in the air-- literally and figuratively. And with Eleonora still in a stupor, it was the easiest thing in the world for him to pull out, heft her legs with both hands and roll her onto her stomach before mounting her from behind.

If man and women are made in the image of the Gods, then it is no surprise that Martyn felt a pang of awe as he drank in the sight of Eleonora's ass, firm and perfect in shape and size. It only impressed him long enough to savor the sight for a moment, however, before he parted the cheeks with the aid of his thumbs and guided his cock to her slick entrance. The Goddess gave a slight gasp as he slid into her, but if Martyn had been concerned about her pleasure before, now he only sought his own; with his hands on her hips, he pulled her into a semi-kneeling position and thrust roughly forward, causing his hips to smack audibly against her cheeks. Eleonora moaned, and Martyn did it again, gripping her body and plowing forward into her tight, yielding body with firm, demanding thrusts. It was an exquisite sensation, and Eleonora did nothing to complain or to stop him; indeed, the Goddess seemed content to let him hammer himself home inside her as hard as he could, loosing loud smack after loud smack as her cheeks began to turn a delicate shade of pink. Hard, deep, fast, with a grip on her that made her body bounce and jerk like a limp doll, Martyn poured every ounce of unrestrained need into her body until there was nothing left for him to do but give himself over to the sensation of the perfect woman's sex. He clenched his teeth as he came, his cum pumping in warm, thick jets into her, and even when he had emptied every drop that he had into her, he continued to move with her, savoring the last moments of the best fuck he had ever had. Virgin or no, the woman was still a Goddess, and he felt that now, in the last seconds before he collapsed.

When he woke, she was gone. Martyn's body was sore as if he had run a marathon, and his head hurt like after a night of heavy drinking. Only the heady smell of sex remained of her, but Martyn still got dressed and made his observances to the shrine in his house before going out to fetch water for his dehydration. It was a beautiful day, and a crisp autumn wind was blowing from the East. It smelled faintly of ash and blood, but he ignored it. He'd be alright; he was sure of it. One way or the other.