Monster Sex Stories (6 page)

From
a distance the village wore a sleepy prosperous look. Fat sheep
dotted the green hills that sloped gently to the river and the houses
were all well built from stone. There was a baker, miller and tailor
as well as a blacksmith. The stalls of the open air market were not
crudely leaning things, they were built of timber and river rock and
while the market was closed the alleys in and out of it were clean
and bright.

Up
close things began to take on a new perspective. Many of the houses
had their doors and windows closed tightly, many had a large X on the
doors, painted there with river mud. The cows in the pens were
skinny, their ribs sticking out, and the shops were all tightly
shuttered.

No
people walked the streets despite it being close to noon. A sweetly
stinking cloud of incense that couldn’t mask the odor of
illness and death hung over everything. The tavern sat empty but the
town square was populated. Roughly a hundred people, most of them
pale and haggard, stood about in frightened clumps. A man in robes of
colorful purple material climbed onto the tiny platform and faced the
crowd. His round face did not bear the stamp of illness but held a
feverish expression nonetheless.

“
This
plague has been brought down upon us because we have angered the
gods!”

A
murmur went through the crowd. They had all suspected as much, to
hear it from their head priest was to have their suspicions
vindicated. They looked at each other, each wondering what his
neighbor could have done to bring such a terrifying consequence down
upon their heads.

“
We
have to appease them!”

More
murmurs. The faces of those in the crowd took on slightly sly
expressions as they began to count in their heads how many sheep, how
much grain they had hidden in their homes. Each one began to wonder
how they could make a large showing without actually sacrificing more
than they could afford.

The
priest waved his arms over his head as he began to invoke prayers and
praises to the gods. The crowd followed along and soon the sunlit air
was split by wails of remorse and cries of piety. People shed their
clothes and danced furiously, their feet kicking tiny clods of grass
aside, leaving muddy places behind.

The
lamentations and praises shot upward, startling a flock of black
birds, the birds raced off with raucous cries, their jet colored
bodies a blot against the blue sky.

“
Look
there!” the priest screeched, “See how evil flies away in
the face of our faith!”

Yells
of assent followed. Sweat ran off of the dwellers of the tiny and
isolated town and the priest raised his large hands once more to the
sky and began to sing a prayer in the ancient language. Silence fell.
Nobody moved, few dared to breathe. To invoke the ancient prayers was
to speak to the gods themselves. Their eyes watched the sky, scanned
the hills, looking for an omen of either good or ill to let them know
what the gods thought they should do.

Lania
was exhausted. Her small kingdom sat by the sea and it had been
overtaken by enemies who had swarmed onto the shore in long boats,
wearing strange garments and slaughtering all that they saw. She and
three others had fled but after many weeks on the road she alone
survived. The enemy swarm had not been content to ransack just her
kingdom and had taken on the other small outlying villages as well.
It seemed everywhere she turned there was only death and destruction.
She feared that the small town she could see topping the distant rise
had been taken as well but she was too tired to go any further and
too starved to do anything more than stagger wearily toward the
place.

She
could smell the incense and took that as a good sign. The first thing
the raiders had done was to steal all of the incense from the temples
of her kingdom. She didn’t know why, incense was not expensive
nor was it difficult to make. But they seemed incredibly excited by
it and they killed all of the priests who protested at their taking
things away from the gods.

If
they still have incense the raiders have not come yet, or they have
tired of it. Either way I need food and rest and shelter. She tugged
her white robes, stained with grass and dirt, more tightly around
herself. Her jeweled belt and girdle denoted her status as royalty,
as did the carved dinner knife in her girdle. She held her head high,
determined to do her bloodline credit as she entered the town.

It
was mostly silent. A frown creased her brow as she walked past houses
that sat there sullenly shuttered and silent. The shops were closed
and a dead chicken lay in the gutter. Disgust crossed her face and a
sliver of unease tightened her chest.

She
heard voices and walked toward them, hope and fear warring within
her. She stopped short, stunned by the sight of the people of the
village all writhing and swaying to the hypnotic chants coming from
the man who stood on the raised platform.

“
Show
us a sign!” The priest screamed.

I
should run.
The thought came before action did. She had just turned to flee when
the crowd opened and a long appreciative murmur swept through the
people there. Fear turned her feet to lead but self-preservation
forced her to try. She was no match for them; she had been left weak
from the deprivations of her long trek. Faces crowded in, hands
tugged and pulled at her clothes, her hair and the foreign language
they used buzzed in her ears like

She
was carried to the platform and deposited rudely on the wooden
planks. Her ass hit so hard a jolt went through her spine and she
lost her breath. They crowded in again and she fought to breathe,
many of them were unbathed and their reek was nearly overpowering.

Suddenly
the meaning of the X’s on the houses came clear. The enemy
would not have come here if they had seen those marks as they were
the universal sign of plague. She had heard of that symbol but had
never seen it before. The villagers stench made more sense to, the
smell was out of keeping with the cleanliness of the village so they
had not bathed because they feared the plague would touch them if
they did. She had heard that too, that bathing could take away the
protective oils of the skin.

Terror
tingled down her spine. Always fastidious she had bathed in a small
streambed just that morning, enjoying the water and the crushed
violets and roses she had used to help perfume her body. She had
washed her robes as well and allowed them to dry, they had not come
clean but at least they did not smell offensive to her nose. Now she
wished she hadn’t taken the time to cleanse herself.

“
I’ve
come all this way to die of the plague?”

The
question went unanswered. Nobody seemed to speak her language, Lania
switched to a more common language and a few people listened
carefully and then spoke back, their dialect a bit different but
their words still decipherable.

What
they said made her heart sink. Here the plague had decimated the
place: thirty of the two hundred dwellers were dead, a large number
for such a small village. They had not seen the enemy she spoke of
but there had been evidence of riders to the west when they went in
search of a cure at a neighboring village. They had seen the dead
there but had not stopped to check if they had died of plague or
other causes, they were too afraid.

Lania
didn’t like the way they all kept eyeing her. There was a sort
of assessing greedy look on their faces that made her skin crawl.

“
This
is the sign we have been waiting for!”

She
didn’t understand the words but she understood the sudden
relief that appeared on their faces. Whatever was going on, she was
about to be a part of it. A woman with a pale face and bulged out
brown eyes pressed a hand to her belly, then to her breasts. Lania
stared at her, offended and shocked at the same time, when the crone
reached for the bottom of her robes Lania punched her dead in the
eye. Rather than angering the crone it pleased her, her cracked lips
broke into agrin that displayed her broken teeth and pale gums and
she said something that made the crowd nod in understanding. The
priest grabbed her by her hair and hauled her to her feet. Her scalp
tingled and ached and she fought, flailing out blindly at his strong
arm. His words boomed out over the crowd and there was a round of
applause that froze her blood.

Lania
didn’t have time to think, she was dragged through the streets,
the villagers running alongside her singing and throwing things at
her. She managed to catch a turnip, cradling it in the crook of one
arm she tried to use her other hand to protect her face from the
refuse they tossed at her.

She
was taken to a dim cellar at the foot of the mill. Golden grain lay
in plump piles and she laughed a trifle hysterically at that fact as
the door locked behind her. She fell to her knees, her hand bringing
the turnip to her mouth. Her mind remained a perfect blank while her
teeth bit into the starchy vegetable. Her belly let out a low rumble
and she crawled over to the grain, trying to figure out how to eat it
uncooked.

A
small heel of bread, a wedge of creamy boat cheese and bowl of water
was shoved into the cell as well as a small pitcher of wine. The wine
was darkly red, soured and too warm but she drank it all. She ate the
bread so fast she choked several times but hid the cheese, thinking
she may not be given anything else.

She
curled up on the cold floor, resting her head on her hands. She was
long past tears; she was enveloped in a sort of numbness that kept
her from wondering too much about what was going to happen to her.
Her eyes closed and she drifted off to sleep.

***

Lania
woke up, confused and with the bitter taste of the wine still on her
tongue. Her face was cold and her body was stiff from lying on the
floor, she made it to her feet with a low graon and staggered to the
door. It was still locked; she had heard the bolt slam home when she
had been shoved inside. She got on her knees and studied the narrow
aperture through which her scanty meal had been delivered. It
provided no solution though it did show her a dusty bar of dying
sunlight touching on the enormous grinding wheels of the mill.

The
walls of her cell were damp and she shivered. The grain was kept in
piles away from the wall, she assumed that was so it didn’t
spoil before it could be winnowed and bagged. She went to the far end
of the small room, it had grown dark and she had to feel her way with
her hands. Every wall ended precisely where another one started,
there was no outside door.

Depressed
and fearful she ate her cheese and drank the water remaining in the
bowl. Eventually her youthful spirits revived. She had a full belly
and had slept much better, despite the circumstances, than she had in
weeks. She began to pace the narrow confines, her mind grappling with
the question of how best to escape.

The
door opened and a rough looking man with a black cloak pulled her
arm. She balked at his touch.

“
Who
are you?” Lania demanded but he didn’t answer.

The
streets were dark but not quiet. The villagers were lined along them,
torches guttering in the soft breeze. A pale sliver of moon hung
overhead, stars pricked the ebony sky and she stared upward, a prayer
forming on her lips as she understood what was taking place.

This
was a ritual and she was about to be sacrificed to the gods. Her
blood froze in her veins and her feet dragged, she fought back,
kicking and shrieking but they pulled her inexorably onward. By the
time they came to the river she was screaming curses. Her throat was
raw and her feet were sore, there was more than one of the men that
dragged her who had a limp and she felt some satisfaction in knowing
their testicles and shins would throb painfully for at least the
night.

Anger
overcame her fear as they bound her to the tree. Her wrists were
pulled behind her and tied tightly, her feet were left bare. The
priest moved closer, chanting and flicking oil at her hair. It
glittered there, like fat little stars hung in the ebony tresses that
hung to her back.

Pan
saw the proceedings taking place. Normally the exploits of humans
bored him, they had so little imagination really. The woman tied to
the tree, however, was gorgeous enough to rival the wood nymph he had
been chasing the night before. He peered at her from the reeds where
he was searching for that nymph and was pleased at the sight: long
black hair hanging in a silky cloud, unblemished white skin and dark
eyes that turned up slightly at the corners. Her mouth was as red as
passion berries and her body was ripe and lean all at once. Her
breasts were heavy and full, they strained against the fabric of her
robes. Her hips swelled out below a tiny waist and flat belly and her
bare feet were highly arched and slender.