Honeypipin

Farah & Hadir Karim : 30 & 32 [2022]

Both Farah and Hadir's ages have been confirmed by Taylor Kurosaki who is one of the writers from Modern Warfare 2019. This was confirmed when a fan ask him via twitter/X about how old Farah was during the Barkov invasion.

This means in 1999 when Barkov invaded Farah was 7 and Hadir was 9. In 2009 when they escaped they are 17 and 19 respectively and in 2019 they are 27 and 29. Hadir dies in December of 2022 as discovered in the Atomgrad raids at the age of 32.

John Price : 37 [2022]

Using the information provided from his original operator bio we find that "John Price joined the infantry at the age of sixteen and has served the British Army for 18 years." and that "he was ‘Badged’ a member of SAS in 2005, spending the next ten years in the Middle East, the horn of Africa.".

With this Price's age works out to be about 34 years old, but since it only mentions serving the British army. I added 4 years for him to be able to complete basic training which is roughly 18 weeks basic training.* Followed by Special Air Service (SAS) training with is roughly a couple months, but you must serve at least 18 months in the military to be selected**, and finally his training at the Royal Military Academy to become a Lieutenant and then Captain which is 44 weeks with 2-3 weeks of leave.***

So Price would join the British army at 16 in 2001, be badged a member of SAS at 20 in 2005, become Captain at 25 in 2010. In 2019 he would be 34 and finally 37 in 2022, which to me makes the most sense based on other character's ages.

*[army.mod.uk solider training] **[eliteukforces.info SAS] [eliteukforces.info SBS&SAS] ***[army.mod.uk officer training]

Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick : 32 [2022]

We can do the same process as we did with Price for Gaz, his operator bio says "Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick, enlisted in the British Army in 2008. Within four years, he passed selection for Her Majesty’s elite Special Air Service where he is currently rounding out a decade of service."

Since his bio never mentions what age he joins like with Price and Soap I'm going to assume he finished school and joined the military at 18. So Gaz is 18 in 2008, 29 in 2019 when he meets Price for the first time and 32 in 2022. I am not taking into consideration the archived Activision blog posts, which say he joined in 2014 because of them being archived. I do use it for some other characters but for Gaz it changed the date he joined not just giving extra information.

Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish : 27 [2022]

You can blame Activision for why Soap is so young compared to the others. So according to his updated operator bio, "Soap has spent the last seven years carrying out both covert and overt operations around the world." this with the contents of his old operator bio before MW3 "At 16, too young to sign up, but lying about his age, MacTavish enrolled in the Special Air Service…"

Means that Soap would be 23 in 2022, which doesn't make the most sense especially considering he is a Sergeant in 2019 meaning he would be 20 in the MW3 flashback. So I gave him the same treatment as Price and added 3 years, to make up for basic and SAS training. So he would be 16 in 2012 joining the British Army have to wait 18 months to apply for SAS, be roughly 18 when he starts SAS training and finish it at 19 in 2015.*

So making him now 23 in 2019, 26 in 2022 but since he lied about his age TF 141 would think he's 28 during MW2 or 25 during 2019.

*[jobs.army.mod.uk SAS reserve]

Alex Keller : 35 [2022]

Alex is one of the last characters who have dates or years of service in their information. From his Campaign Biography it says he was a part of, "CIA's Special Activities Division," and also has surrendered "his former rank and history of special ops military service with Army Delta, Alex sacrificed traditional contact and association with family to join the SAD. He has spent the last six years living a series of assumed identities to achieve “sensitive” objectives wherever he is needed."

There's also, "Through 2017, Alex’s units played a key role in ensuring definitive victories against emerging terrorist networks." So we know Alex has been working in the military before 2017, now most SAD members are former Delta operators. There's also some reports of SAD members having Master's and law degrees.* So with that we can add roughly 6 years to his age to complete a master's degree in law.**

Now Delta force has some requirements like being over 21 to join and having two and a half years of service remaining, so if Alex joined the US military at 18 after finishing High School and getting his diploma.*** In a couple years he could join Delta Force, so by 26 he would be able to be apart of CIA's SAD. (If studying part time while in Delta Force) Then adding the another six years which is when he is apart of SAD, which is mention in his biography as the last six years. The bio is published late 2019 so Alex would be 32 years old.

So Alex would join the Military at 18 in 2005, would be 32 in 2019 when he loses the lower half of one of his legs and 35 in 2022.

*[CIA SAD] **[coursera.org law school] ***[Delta Force] [US Military Requirements]

Now for the Characters with little infomation

Alejandro & Rodolfo : both 37

We find out they've known each other for 20 years and signed up together. So they are both younger than 38 but older than 30 since Alejandro is a Colonel. Looking at Wikipedia you can/have to join 18 the Mexican military for at least 3 years, this gives them about maybe two years to get to know each other before joining together.

Ghost : 35 [2022]

Honestly just pick an age between Price and Gaz, I personally like the idea of him being the same age as Alex and having them know each other previously. Maybe even before Ghost starts wearing the skull mask.

Laswell & Nikolai : 52 & 45 [2022]

No older that 52 and 45 if we go based on their actors ages, which personally makes the most sense to me. Laswell's Campaign biography mentions her supervising a SAD program in 2008, and her having studied a Master's degree in strategic intelligence analysis and having a BA in International Affairs. This doesn't help much though with figuring out her age.

AN: Hopefully this very long post is some what helpful or at least has some good resources that people can check out, especially fanfic writers or people making their own OCs.

I'm also going to repeat what I put at the top the end here. But what I've written down is not a definitive answer for their ages (minus Farah & Hadir) it's just what I personally think makes the most sense.

Rope and wood creak when bound together, not loud and wailing like an old door pulled open, rather just a little hum. It’s almost soothing, calming the involuntary spike of fear when you’re pushed onto the tiny raft. Brought to your knees, the boards resilient enough to not push splinters into your flesh.

The water is calm, gentle waves lapping at your raft to pull you deeper still in their blind pursuit to tease at the shore, feathering against the sand with such a gentle sound you think that you may even fall asleep before your journey is through.

Your leader, dreadfully tall with an odd bend to him, the navy, heavy fabric of his hooded cloak shrouding his body in full, reads off words from a weathered page. His voice is hollow and distant, and you would think the words he speaks to be entirely gibberish if not for the way they feel as they creep from your ears to settle into your soul. There’s a dull buzzing in your limbs, that urge a sea-lion must feel before darting away from a starved orca, that desire to roam with water slipping beneath your spread limbs, spurring you onward; only differing by the way that it pulls at you, pleads with you to dive headfirst into the orca’s soaked, hungry maw.

You would never be going home.

One would think, that being a human sacrifice to some old god would be painful.

Instead, the preparations for this have been relatively gentle; as a willing acolyte, you were stripped down and bathed in honey, a crown of dark shells perched on your head, and now a journey to wherever the ocean chooses to swallow you whole. A lit, crimson candle was placed in one hand, the wax dripping down into each thin crevice of your palm, and a ceremonial dagger in the other, ornate depictions of waves and tentacles all etched into the handle. All for him.

Despite the teachings, or lack thereof, you’ve never quite pictured the being known as König to be a beast. Something residing within a bloodied sea so vast and dark could only be lonely; it eases your mind, settles your heart’s ceaseless fluttering as the raft is pushed forward and your leader mutters his continued prayers.

The little makeshift boat rocks gently with each passing wave, the candle burns out just when you can no longer see the shore. You’re left with a palm filled with dried wax and the cold metal of the dagger still in your other. The instructions of the ritual were simple enough: when the candle dies, sink your hand beneath the waves, exhale and wait.

He appears, though not in any shape that you can see. You know it by the way the raft suddenly changes course, as though swept up by some strange current, by the sudden thunder roaring out overhead.

There are things that no one ever speaks of about the ocean, the secrets sailors take to a watery grave. Liquid catastrophe housing a menagerie of unknowns; rough waters, mountains beneath the waves, beasts so large you couldn’t approximate their size until they’re right below your ship lulling you straight into the heart of dread, but it’s not creatures or sharp pillars of rock that sends you hurtling from the meager raft on this night. It starts with the rain, escalates with a current, and ends with a slip that pulls your body from the small sanctuary of wood and straight into the gaping, wet mouth of something you could never hope to understand.

When the wind picks up, so do the waves. A few brutal crashes of water, of sea foam, one involuntary inhale too many from down below and the last thing that you can remember is the sight of your overturned rafting drifting as fast and as far away from you as it could.

Abandonment always feels like the death of hope. You’re reminded briefly of the feeling of love, of loss, as you watch your sanctuary slip away just as your consciousness does, too.

You wake to waves lapping over your ankles, the brightness of a morning sun rising over the horizon fills your vision. Though your head aches and your body feels numbed and sticky with salt and sand, you’re alive. A smile pulls at your lips as you bask against the shore, only willing yourself to sit up as gulls flock further down, screeching their protestations with puffed chest and beating wings.

It’s then that you notice that the wax burns on your palm have been carefully wrapped with thin strips of cloth, dry and clean, a stark contrast to the state of the rest of you. You raise your hand to the sky, marveling at the little bandage as your fingers flex to meet your palm.

You imagine that he must have taken the pretty dagger rather than your life; spared you and set you back on the land to carry on with your humble devotion. A gentle, softer thought, followed with the bubbling of a mirthful giggle as you lower yourself to press a kiss against the quiet, ebbing waves.

“The dagger was much lovelier,” you whisper to the water, allowing your eyes to flutter shut for the briefest moment.

Something curls at your upper back, drifts further to the base of your neck, wet and warm as though a tendril of seaweed was given some semblance of sentience. You do not fret, only tilt your head back with a smile as it curls, so tentative and gentle around your throat.

“It was not.”

Your eyelids flutter for a moment before you stare up at him in full. The sight of a beast does not fill your vision, only something impossibly beautiful, divine; something that you recognize as König only for the incomprehensible nature of his strange, brutish grandeur, rather than the grotesque that you had been warned to both worship and fear.

Your gaze sweeps over the cords of muscle, taut and shimmering with the golden sand pulled up from below, the soft, slick tendrils slipping from below his shroud to roam from your neck down to your bare shoulders, the dark hair curling over his chest and further down. A stark contrast from the vast, drooling horrid thing that crowded your thoughts as your leader loomed over a makeshift altar, spitting tales as horrible and malicious as the storm you braved only the night before.

It’s not terror, but adoration that you feel as you twist to face him, fingers sinking into the soft sand and the sweetest little grin curling over your face.

“There you are…”

The man, god, visibly tenses when you bat your lashes at him, looking just as pretty and peaceful as the calm water just offshore. You’re something unlike anything he’s ever lain those cold eyes of his upon. He’s used to the flinching terror of mortals, their shrill cries, the unveiled disgust on their faces when he presses slithering tentacles to their warm flesh. Yet, you only look at him with the same love you’ve echoed time and time again, whispered upon waves to carry into the deep blue where he sleeps.

“You wanted to be here?”

“Of course.”

When your hand curls over the smooth skin of that dark limb slithering over your bare shoulder, tickling at your clavicle, the rumble that leaves his throat sounds like a purr.

He lacks human graces in other ways too; brazenly, he hauls you over his shoulder, one thick arm curled over your back to keep you in place. It’s not that you struggle, though each time a foreign tendril darts out to flick over your cheek you find yourself giggling and pawing it away.

The cavern you’re brought to is what you would expect, damp with seawater and carpeted with slick sprigs of seaweed. It’s not unpleasant, but it certainly lacks the touch of a proper home.

König carefully sets you by a low crackling fire, blankets you in sealskin to cover your own nudity. You watch in wonder as he draws up the little crown from a small pool at the entrance. It’s placed back atop your head as he kneels at your feet, a calloused hand cradling your cheek, as he mutters words that you can not quite make out, quiet and foreign, so very much like a prayer of his own.

It’s an odd thing that, after finally having the blindfold removed, the first thing you notice are the cobblestones beneath your bleeding palms. Not a single one is in disarray; not cracked or crumbling from being used as any other common footpath. No, each stone is in it’s place, lain complete with not a single splintering crack or a sharpness to it from being broken. All pristine and smooth beneath your stinging scrapes.

Just like the cobbles, the air feels untouched here. There’s no stink of manure or spoiled food from the cramped streets of the inner kingdom. There are no roars of fighting men nor the baying of beasts, a lack of giggling women batting their eyelashes to lure those with jingling pouches of coins into brothels. You can’t even detect a breeze. Twisting onto your side, your eyes catch on the extending limbs of sturdy trees, and oddly… not a single leaf flutters or moves. The air is still.

There is only the absence of everything.

You should think it a blessing after your abduction, after being thrust into the back of a dusty carriage drawn by two massive horses.

You could almost swear you had seen the devil in their dark eyes, hellfire deep in those dark pits and you had known assuredly they would be chauffeuring you straight into the darkest circle of Hell. That was, until a thick, rigid cloth was tied around your head, forcing you into complete darkness. Your assailants had done well to bind you and leave your aching body only capable of wracking with sobs against the hard wood at the bottom. Every jolt of the wagon had caused you to flinch, to scramble as best you could, resulting in an array of bruises and your still bleeding hands from fighting at the ropes.

There had never even been a chance to fight back; you never even saw them. Even now as you raise your throbbing head to glance about, there’s no sign of the men that have left you here, in this silent place. Your heart almost seizes in your chest when you realize you can no longer even hear the cantering and whinnying of those dark, stoic horses.

You know that nothing good comes from silence.

It’s one of the first things that you came to learn as a fledgling witch. Quiet rarely ever bodes well. The prey animals in the wood all scurry to hide amongst fallen leaves and well-packed nests the very moment that a predator draws near, and you, still green with your admittedly lackluster talent in reanimating were little more than a fawn in the eyes of any beast.

A groan leaves your parted lips as you force yourself to your knees, ignoring the incessant sting of bruises and how your vision blots from even the barest of exertion. Your binds must have been cut free when you were abandoned here, you realize, as you twist around to crawl.

That’s when you see it— the glory of what lies before you.

Rather than being dumped into some desolate street for the vultures to find and pick apart like any common carrion, the men with their frightening steeds had left you at the steps leading up to a beautiful castle of sorts. The stone bricks and marbled towers above you, spirals of darkened blue shingles descended into gilded turrets, the rampart casting a shadow over all that settles beneath. There’s a flag there, too, positioned just outside of the wooden door leading into the heart of it all. The rich, blue fabric is torn in places, the tassels frayed, bare white thread visible near the paling center making the crest practically invisible.

Something draws you to it, that singular rotting thing in this bright, sterile void. Your feet move quicker than your thoughts as you pad up toward the flag, eyelids squinting as your palm dances over the canvas. The strangest thing happens as you finally make out what remains of a wolf’s head amongst the rips and splintering threads— the wooden door begins to move. It’s not one of those fancy, well crafted ones with those mechanisms you couldn’t fathom in the King’s keep, this one has to be pulled open from the inside.

You watch, lips pursed as the door continues to slowly creek open until finally, you can make out the small courtyard beyond it. A fountain, long since dried up sits at its center, and even with what you imagine must be little care in such a desolate place, the plants are all in bloom; petals of vivid blues and gentle purples fill your vision.

Amongst them, stands a shadow of the purest black, from the opaque veil shrouding his head to the soles of his boots. The cloak he wears is heavy, finely stitched with that very same blue crest embroidered into its chest, the stitching in equal disarray as the flag adorning the stone wall.

You’ve seen specters before. They haunt the kingdom in every nook, crawling over the tops of buildings, invading your dreams with threats of what will come to you if you don’t reanimate something, give them any body to inhabit and puppet so that they might just have a taste of the pleasures of being human once more. Greedy, malevolent things that make you feel ill from a mere glimpse.

This one is entirely an unknown.

He does not crawl from your gaze with the gait of a wary spider, he stands rigid, daring even as those eyes like sapphire lock onto your form. Not a word is uttered between the two of you, yet you feel a pull, one that curls at the bones tucked into the flesh of your legs, pushing and pulling you past the threshold as though an unseen dog were nipping at your heels. You don’t fight it. Your bare feet cross over smooth stone and your stare remains wistful on the figure until he simply strolls away.

That’s it. That’s all it takes before you’re snapped out of your trance and the wooden door swings heavy and violent behind you, closing and locking without a hand to guide it. Then it’s back to the nothingness, the silence.

You should be very, very afraid. In a panic, even as your hands flatten over the wood and you realize that there are no handles from inside at all. You are entirely trapped here, short of finding a way to carve through it or climb up the rampart and risk snapping every limb on your descent. Thing is— you are not afraid, at least not enough to do anything so rash.

A calm settles here, electric and tickling as it feathers unseen through the cool air.

You stay in that courtyard for a long time, admiring every flower and shrub, some you recognize and others you do not. The empty fountain is not empty at all; you find that the marble ring is filled to the brim with riches— gold coins, shimmering stones, all twinkling beneath the yellow glow of the sun overhead.

Inside of the castle is more or less the same, each corridor bathed in the glow of soft candlelight, highlighting paintings in gilded frames that must have taken months to complete, treasures you have only ever heard of seated on polished wood and fine metals. Like walking through a dream. Though your hands itch to pocket something, anything to take back with you when you find the will to escape, to free yourself from the reality of your little shack at the corner of the market that you share with a dozen other witchlings, you don’t touch anything at all.

Following a branch to your right, vast and equally laden with treasures, eyes darting from one shiny thing to the next until the tightly woven, ornate rugs beneath the soles of your feet wind to an end and you instead find your footing on smooth stone tiles.

You find yourself in the throne room, where the specter sits, lofty yet misplaced upon the soft, rolling velvet. That pull, like a lead drawn too tight, pivots you forward, one foot before the other until you’re kneeling at his feet. The figure remains still, watching you with that somber, unrelenting stare even as you reach up to take his gloved hand into your own, kissing along each knuckle until the hand coated in blackened leather moves to cup your face.

This is no king, you know it in your very bones. The dark veil stained by teardrops tells you everything, of a life trodden by deceit and pain untold.

“I know what you are, hündchen.”

The voice startles you, a rasp, alive only in the way that fire lives, crackling and swaying with each lilt. You must have flinched back, the spell weaved around you broken with all of the subtlety of a lightening strike, your elbows dig almost painfully into the rough tiles below, eyes locked to the veil.

Your own voice doesn’t come for a time. When it does, it comes tight; meek and quivering, almost absent entirely as though your own body refuses to bring a ripple to the quiet that has engulfed you.

“Why have you brought me here?”

The feeling that curls up in the hollow spaces within your chest when this enigma pulls you to your feet with a sudden curl of his hand over your wrist feels familiar. It’s not unlike how you felt when accidentally resurrecting that old mantis found dried beneath your bed. It had attempted to chew through your hand, but being so small it hardly seemed a threat, just offensively waving it’s front legs at you until you scooped the critter up and locked it up tight in an old trunk. Some strange tide of wonder, and it takes a moment for you to push it down enough to realize that… the specter is still stood before you, his grip still tight, not saying a word.

Why it brings a swell of warmth to your face should have you questioning your taste in men rather than what he may or may not have done.

“Sorry, I just—“

“You are hurt, hündchen.” He interrupts, turning your wrist over to inspect the flecks of dried blood littering your palm. It’s not the worst injury you’ve ever had, in fact, you had very nearly forgotten it even existed— just a few scrapes from a rope tied far too tight.

You shake your head, biting back that surge of… something, that furry something that crawls from the fluttering organ behind your ribcage and down into the pits of your stomach. That feeling is also familiar, you felt it the first time you laid eyes on that pompous, boy-man serving as heir to the throne in the castle, at least, until he turned his head to look at you and your ilk with thinly veiled disgust.

If the specter sees scum before him, the veil does well to conceal it.

His eyes seem to only light up the more he appraised you, rubbing his thumb over your scrape with such a gentle touch that a shiver rips down your spine.

“I see…”

He guides your wrist back down to your side, delicately trails his fingertips up to your shoulder and… that’s it before he draws away and steps right past you. That’s all the touch you’re given and you find yourself, humiliatingly yearning for it. There should be nothing but contempt scraping at your skull and yet you feel treacherously endeared by this strange, strange faceless man living in this lonely castle.

The risk of this being some bewildering trap weighs heavy on your mind; you’re far more intelligent than some scrappy undead insect, begging to be tossed into a dusty crate, after all. You had heard of the way other lands treated necromancers: shunning them, chasing them from villages, and in far more dreadful cases— leading them to kneel before a headsman for decapitation.

You center yourself, force your mind to conjure up any evidence of some magical foul play only to be left with the knowledge that these feelings are entirely your own.

This man does not have the sticky aura of one dripping magic from his palms like thick globs of honey. He seems almost vacant, devoid of even anything making him human, while you stand transfixed and lacking even the sensible reaction of fear.

You can only find comfort in his gentle hand, in his stare like an unholy flame.

So, when he guides you to what is to be your dwelling you mouth does not part to argue. You’re led to a room larger than the entirety of the cluttered home you shared with the other witchlings. Everything within is worth more than even you, and something about it stings, sharp and sudden like ant’s venom seeping into skin.

From the canopy bed, draped over with thick velvet curtains to protect from the chill of a winter’s night to the neatly polished wood of varying furniture, it all feels so rich— so foreign.

“You didn’t have to prepare all of this for me… I don’t even… why am I here?” You’re rambling, searching every corner of the room with a flitting gaze as if some small patch of dust will provide you with the answers.

Your specter only laughs as he nudges you towards the bed, now your bed, the motion only sending another question to the forefront of your mind.

Were you bought? Meant to warm some peculiar stranger’s bed without even the grace of having the knowledge to prepare?

Perhaps your concerns should have drifted as to why you were not entirely opposed.

“Sleep.”

The simple command leaves you stifled entirely, all confusion and tentative excitement dispelled in an instant.

He wants nothing from you, only to extend a foreign cup spilling over with generosity to one who would not admit it was ever even needed.

You find yourself nodding your head, unaccustomed to the kindness of a forgotten thing like him. In truth, you’re unused to anything but bickering between the other ladies in the witch’s house, the cobwebs stretching without end caking the ceiling, the scuttle of crawling legs over your flesh as you pulled your threadbare blanket over your body to shield you from the cold. From stark poverty to this… it claws at your eyes, steels your mind— man or ghost, it mattered not; your heart sang while your mouth remains pressed into a stiff line.

When he leaves you, your body cloaked in the softest gown you’ve ever worn, burrowed beneath sheets of the finest silk, that unknown thing in your heart seems to spill over, rushing through your veins like honeyed wine.

You dream through the eyes of someone else that night.

A woman kneels at your feet with tears in her dark eyes. She hasn’t slept, the thick, dark patches just above where her cheeks rise make it evident, and she’s pleading with the you who is not you; this woman tells you that she wishes to go home, that she could never be a part of what you are or are not.

Even in dreaming you feel your jaw tighten, sure that your nails have splintered from the shooting pain in your fingertips as your hands tighten over the hard wood of your seat. The not you speaks for you, his voice coming warbled and distant. You can not make out the words, but seeing how this pleading woman’s face seems to morph into an expression of terror, you’re grateful to not know what’s been said.

Nothing becomes of her. You watch as she strolls away, unharmed. This other you, however, is. It’s the tingling of so many unseen legs parading through your chest; spiders in a downward course to burrow in the shadow of your belly. The discomfort rings out as you feel this body rise from its seat, out to the courtyard with a fountain. The flowing water subsided the clambering of spider limbs inside, just enough for this body to pull a ring from its pocket and cast it down into the clear water.

You watch the ring seat itself at the marble bottom, the gentle flow of water causing small ripples to crest over that tiny band of silver until you wake.

Confusion twists itself into curiosity as you free yourself from the sheets, padding out of your room still only adorned in the thin, white fabric of the gown. Morning light filtering through each window of the castle carves a path where the candles have long since been blown out. The only darkness here is with your captor, all tall and shadowy, and you find yourself considering the fact that perhaps you’ve been sucked down into some strange afterlife, one where you and this specter would remain in a silent stasis for all time. You find that you don’t entirely hate the idea, either.

Most of the rooms in the castle are dull. It’s not that there isn’t plenty to look at, but a cluttering of what’s expected, all gold and ornate, only proves to bore you. There is little mystery to be found in riches.

None of it is of importance, anyway. It’s him you’re seeking out, and oddly enough, you find your specter in the courtyard staring down at the cluttered fountain. He shifts in place as you take to his side, fingers curling into loose fists momentarily before he offers you a small greeting by way of running a hand along the back of your neck, petting you as though you truly were only a puppy.

You shiver beneath that warm touch, seem to melt against him before collecting yourself enough to straighten up.

“I did not sleep well,” he says quietly, the look in his eyes tells you that he dreamt through your own. He had seen the decay and filth of the king’s city, perhaps even those angry, little things that you brought back to bite and sting and pinch.

“I didn’t either.”

You recognize that faint, strange smell when you move just a step closer to him, like dust and forgotten things. Not quite rot, but similar, a comfort for you as it’s all your fate has ever allowed for you to know. Yet, this is not one of your reanimations. Only a man.

A man, only, like you; touched by the rot.

The realization crosses your face by way of a widened glance, a sharp intake of breath. It stings again when he turns away from you, drops his hand back to his side.

“Will you walk with me, hündchen?”

“Sure.”

It’s no less strange pacing along at his side than roaming about the castle with no idea where he is. The specter still feels worlds away, even as your arm brushes over his, your fingers occasionally ghosting over his gloved hand. While the vivid blue of globe thistles and hydrangeas entertains your vision, that patient stare of his remains trained on you, even as the quiet settles over the garden once again.

In a way, you feel as though you’re being courted, even as the questions remain scurried and fluttering in your mind. The ghost, the man, whoever he is, refuses to sate that curiosity of yours even as you bring it up to him again. Why? He only responds in an almost boyish laugh that pulls at your heart, infuriating and delightful all the same.

You share a meal, something you’ve no idea how he managed to scrounge together or had the time to prepare at all. He’s been at your side all morning, yet the fruit pastries and tea are served warm as you seat yourself across from him at some grand, oak table. That sparked tingle of magic does not feather off of him as it does with your sisters, but you know without a doubt that he must have it. You glower at him a bit, lips pursed and brow pinched as he sips at his tea, not beneath but through the fabric of his black veil.

“You will have to explain what’s going on at some point,” you huff, pushing your plate away as if to make a show of it. No more accepting his gifts, even if your stomach growls in protest. “Especially if you’re trying to court me.”

It’s cute how wide his eyes go at that, his cup of tea nearly slipping from his hand. The surprise wears off almost immediately, his eyes narrowing in what you imagine must be amusement as you’re left feeling a bit humiliated. Your gaze flits over to the candles adorning the table as you nervously drum your fingers against the lap of your dress.

“Court you?”

“The gown, the walk, the food… is that not what this is?”

“Nein, hündchen…” He pauses to sigh, setting the cup against the table with a dull thud. “It’s better that I did not.”

You think to question him further, but hold back the words bubbling in your throat, sullenly picking at the food on your plate instead. It feels like courtship, would look like courtship to anyone else, but then again… you’ve never quite experienced it for yourself, either. You’re no noble lady, and it feels a bit silly to imagine yourself roaming a place like this with him as your suitor. For all you know, he could be some king from a neighboring kingdom, only offering you respite out of pity after falling from that wagon.

More likely, all of this is just some strange dreaming.

When your lunch is thoroughly picked apart on your plate, the cup emptied, you shift out of your seat and offer him a curt little bow of your head and move towards the door.

— — —

Your days are filled with him— the drab specter you’ve taken to calling König, King, simple and befitting a name as you can give to one without one. No one else lives here, at least that you can see. Not even the rats or scuttling insects you were used to dare to take up residence within this castle. Yet, you remain taken care of and well-fed. You walk at his side every morning and part ways after minimal conversation in the evening. It’s so simple yet odd it almost makes you feel uneasy.

The dreams remain through the eyes of another. Some are combat, and you don’t care for those, looking down to see blood on steel and settling with the odd sense of guilt that you’ve killed someone, even when the you who is not you does not seem to pause. In fact, he often laughs in those dreams, drinks his wine from a golden goblet while he polishes the thick mace in his lap, trousers stained with blood that is not his own.

Others are dreadfully dull. You watch as knights with long swords and silver plates circle around you, your muffled voice shouting demands of what you can only imagine must be tactics and plans for a war you would only ever be apart of in the late hour with your eyes closed.

Your unease nearly doubles on the fourth night, when you wake with a start, pulled from a dream where you see that same woman from the first wailing over a bloodied corpse to find König looming over where you rest. The curtains of your bed parted with what little moonlight filtering inside bathing him in an unearthly, bluish glow. As usual, he doesn’t breathe a word, only stares as you slowly peel back your sheet to sit up and face him fully.

“Is something wrong?,” you ask in a whisper, rubbing your palms against your eyes as you force yourself to pull through the haze of sleep.

“Du bist schön wenn du schläfst,” he hums. “Even having a nightmare.”

“You said you were not courting me.”

“I’m not, hündchen.”

He offers you a hand that you readily accept, hardly having time to marvel over just how cold his skin feels without his glove before you find your cheek pressed to a broad chest. Your breath catches in your throat, heart hammering with the urgency of a cricket’s song.

“You didn’t sleep well either?”

“Nein.”

“Maybe we could sleep together?,” you offer with a laugh that sounds stiff even to your own ears.

You expect some other quip about the status of your peculiar relationship, not a sigh, not the way König gently lowers you back into bed and climbs in to follow, not at your side, but rested with his head over the swell of your breasts. You’re almost certain your rib cage will bruise by the pounding in your chest this infatuation burdens you with.

He hums contentedly at the contact, props his chin up on the valley between your breasts.

“Warm,” he murmurs.

You reach to pull the blanket over you both without a word, staring up at the velvet curtain as you try to force yourself into a state of calm indifference.

It lasts for all of a single breath; König shifts, stroking over the fabric of your gown, bunching over your hip. His touch makes you shiver, too cold, as though he doesn’t have any body heat at all. Your arm settles over the expanse of his back, pulling him just a tad closer as you relax into the feather-stuffed mattress.

“Ja… I like this.”

“I do too...”

So, you sleep, so intertwined with one another that your body heat melts away the frigid touch of his own flesh with no discernment for where you end and he begins. Your dreams are absent in his presence, replaced by a solace you’ve never known as a comfortable stillness settles over you both.

When morning comes, an unhurried sun casting a dull glow through the arched window in the room, you’re pleasantly surprised to find him still here. You’ve shifted in the lack of dreaming, finding your positions opposite to when sleep had taken its hold; your head rests on König’s chest now, comfortably slow. He doesn’t feel as cold, though…

König does not breathe.

You hurriedly rise, throwing the covers off of you both and shove at him with a panicked urgency, desperately searching for any sort of reaction from him to ensure he hasn’t passed away in his sleep.

It’s not a corpse’s silence that you’re met with but an annoyed huff of breath as he grabs at your wrists and tugs you back down.

“Was..?” Your specter only sounds annoyed as he gazed down at you, keeping your trembling hands steady in his unyielding grip.

“You weren’t breathing! I thought…” You trail off, the words catching in your throat as you realize just how ridiculous that you sound. Of course he wasn’t dead. Even if he were a reanimation, no magic in the entirety of this kingdom would allow him to retain so much of his soul.

König only laughs at that, closes you in an embrace that sets your pulse racing again as he carefully maneuvers you below him. When he had become so familiar mattered not, you wouldn’t dare to complain. It’s achingly comfortable, brings a sigh from your parted lips as you fall back into that perfect, placid state of contentment.

“Hündchen… you worry too much,” he huffs, caging you in as he relaxes with his face pressed back to the divot between your breasts. “So many questions… too many concerns, ja?”

“I would not fret so much if you would just explain a few things.”

“Geduld.”

Though you do pout, make a show of your irritation by exhaling heavily, his tone harbors a calm finality. You’re not so sure that any reasoning for all of this would matter much at all anymore; whether it be a dream or some gentle corner of an afterlife you’ve found yourself tucked within, you only find that you never wish for it to end.

— — —

This dream is worse than any before it.

You feel your vessel’s emotions tenfold; a clamor of disquiet and rage, vicious and searing. The air is still and silent but heavy with the scent of iron. From the blurred view that you’re granted, the shapes of cadavers are easy enough to tell, all lain twisted in glistening pools of their own blood.

Your vessel isn’t moving, though you will your thoughts to encourage him to do so, he remains in place, a pillar destined to topple.

You don’t want to see it, yet waking eludes you.

The sounds of hurried footsteps fill the quiet, a shout to your right that you do not even have the capability to turn towards. Cursed are hissed, warbled and unfamiliar, only recognized by their venom. You know that this is the end, a brutal, grisly one for your counterpart and for these dreams in their entirety.

When wicked steel carves it’s way into your vessel’s middle, you feel how tightly he clenched his jaw to bite back a howl of agony, take the subdued, shooting pain spreading through him as though it were your own. Try as you might, you can not wake; forced to be a voyeur to this stranger that you’ve grown fond of’s gruesome demise.

The vessel’s head is tugged forward, forced to kneel at the feet of the brute who has buried a dagger into his side. A sneer paints the man’s face as your counterpart’s veil is thrown away, and you recognize it— that same shroud of black, stained with imagined tears as it falls to a small heap onto a bloodstained floor.

König.

You wake with a start in a haze of utter confusion, catching your breath as the truth of it all crawls down to settle someplace within you. A cold sweat settles over your skin, bringing with it the rise of slight goose pimples and an incessant tremble.

The specter is just as you had suspected in that brief moment between bonding and sleep, dead and long-forgotten; a corpse made man again. This isn’t some silent kingdom, but a well-preserved crypt.

It hurts.

You wash your face in the water of the small basin at the corner of the room, change from your bed gown into a dress of a drab gray. Even to yourself, mourning a truth that’s been glaring you in the face since your arrival feels misplaced and odd, but that horrible sadness does not subside.

At least, not until you pry your door open to find König waiting just on the other side. He cocks his head at you, gaze softening in a silent understanding as your hand is fitted into his own.

The morning walk is less quiet this morning, a single dove could be heard cooing, hidden beneath the green of some sprawling alder’s leaves. König speaks to, explains some without giving all away. He tells you what he can remember, the details of his failed courting of the foreign princess with dark eyes and a petrified stare, the plot against him that dwindled out into a curse that’s left him here, but never an estimate for how long.

You listen in a perplexed silence, clutching his hand just a bit tighter as each questioning cobweb is swept away with a low voice droning out a story better left untold.

When he finishes, with your free hand sifting it’s fingers through the petals adorning a hydrangea shrub, you think to tell him one simple truth: “I can’t bring you back.”

It startles you when he suddenly pulls you in, resting his chin atop your head and curling those broad arms over your shoulders. The embrace is tight, a certain desperation in his touch as though he almost fears the thought of you pulling away. Strange from a man you now knew had not even feared his own death.

“Nein. I just want to be understood.”

And you do understand, perfectly, as only one also touched by the rot could.

— — —

There’s never a night that you don’t find yourself asleep with König mere centimeters away, if there is any gap between at all, anymore. He feigns his breath until you’re fast asleep, takes to playing human enough to not worry you any further, even after you explain that it doesn’t, not any longer. Always, you wake to his head buried against your chest, listening to the fragile beating of your heart until you stir to wake him. Your hands rove over his veil, but never question what he hides beneath it. You already know without seeing— the wicked, sprawling scar from where his head was once wrenched from his body.

A necromancer and a lich, of all things. If the bards in the King’s city were to ever know, your story would be passed from tavern to tavern until it became little more than the stuff of myth.

The thought occurs to you when you wake, huffing a drowsy little giggle as you repeat your morning ritual, fingertips grazing over the dark fabric obscuring König’s face until heavy eyelids languidly part to focus his attention on that mirthful expression painted across your face.

“I have changed my mind,” he declares some moments later as he nuzzles in the divide between your neck and shoulder, unhurried and gentle as he always seems to be with you.

“Hm?”

“I will court you.” A statement that would make most with a better grasp on the disparity between what’s living and dead flinch back in horror. Though, where most would consider corruption, you only take it as further confirmation to your mutual devotion.

“You already have been.”

He falls silent at that for a moment, trailing a cold path of chaste kisses along your jaw, lazy and soft to a point you can feel the grin beneath his hood.

Finally, he hums in agreement.

“Then I should have you, hm?”

He drags a palm down your thigh to your knee, the pad of his thumb bunching up the fabric of your gown as he presses against you, tracing small circles.

Your mouth feels dry when you part your lips to speak once more. The words falter, engulfed in a far more desperate flame; someplace far off, in the back of your mind you can hear them echo, bouncing from cavern walls.

“Hündchen..,” he rasps quietly. Maybe he’s thought it too, that this should be far more innocent, but the way he furiously tugs your undergarments down to your ankles belies his interest far more than some ideal, ancient telling of courtship would ever allow.

“You want to..?”

König laughs, whether it’s at your words or the surprise on your face, you didn’t know. Despite your nudity, he doesn’t look at you down there, his eyes remain locked on your face. There’s something wild and uncanny about them, something bordering on madness. His breathing is heavier, as if he’s fighting back the urge to bury his head in your cunt and breathe you in, and you’re almost certain that after all of your yearning he could bring you to ruin from a puff of breath alone.

He echoes your question with barely contained amusement, until you breathe out your consent. You sound just uncertain enough to prompt him to pull away briefly, raising up to look you in the eyes as his own narrow in search of any signs of apprehension. Finding none, a heavy palm meets your chest to push you to lie down in full as his head dives between your thighs without hesitation.

The feeling of a wide tongue slipping over your slit prompts an immediate reaction— a sharp cry that has you slamming your palm over your mouth in an effort to not break the peace settled over this place.

Every lick is slow and deliberate, a far cry from enough stimulation to properly get you off. It’s as if he’s doing this to prepare you rather than bring you to ruin. His tongue thrusts into you at a languid pace, fucking you open with heady muscle rather than the cold touch of his fingers. For that you’re grateful, but it just isn’t enough.

König huffs another chuckle against your sex when you whine and buck your hips, desperately searching for a friction that just isn’t being supplied. His hands press against your hips to hold you in place, the pads of his thumbs circling against your abdomen as he tries to set you at ease.

“Be patient,” he mumbles as he raises his head, bottom lip slowly raking over the hood of your aching clit. You find it difficult to comply, but in a way you feel fortunate to even experience this much. Who else could say that they were being fucked by the tongue of a titan and be believed? His lips close around your sensitive bud, tongue languidly circling over it, kissing you there as gently as he can manage. The very moment a moan is pulled from you, breaking the silence of his concentration he tears back to lick far further down than you were prepared for, before climbing over you instead of allowing you a release.

The taste of you lingers on his tongue when your face is pushed beneath the veil, an urgent probing as he thrusts the muscle into your waiting mouth, sampling the mixture of your saliva and slick. A palm is splayed over your thigh, forcing you to open yourself to him despite the strain.

He proves he’s less patient than he pretends to be; that’s all of the preparation that you get.

A breath later you feel yourself speared open, the girth of his tip slipping into you with involuntary resistance. Your gasp is met with a keening groan from his open mouth, quickly stifled as he bites into the side of your neck. Each thrust is shallow, the head of his cock spreading you meticulously until you’re nearly in tears from your own impatience. His body temperature is far cooler than your own, and you feel as if you’re more of a mess than you’ve ever been prior as his own precum mixes with the arousal already freely dribbling past your swollen labia.

You kick your leg out, force your hips in a different angle to push him in deeper only to have his grip tighten and his teeth dig into your flesh. Again and again, until you’re a babbling mess beneath him.

“König… please..,” You manage to choke out, voice small and barely audible over the obscene sounds pulled from the wetness of your cunt.

Immediately, your pleading is answered with a slam of his hips, the thick cock forced to its hilt inside of your pulsing walls. König’s head lolls back, his free hand curling over your hip as he grunts. He isn’t making love to you, but fucking into you like a man possessed. A palm fitted over your mouth wouldn’t silence the obscene sounds of sex, nor the bed creaking beneath your combined weight as he pumps into you; each drag is pure rapture as he fills you entirely.

The repetitive spearing of your sweet spot brings you to a near-painful orgasm, trembling cunt only sucking him in further with each pulsing wave of bliss. The quiet is forgotten entirely as you whine out your praises between wanton moans and breathy cries.

He kisses you, proper and sweet when he comes. The thickness of his seed floods you, spilling out onto the sheets below as he fucks it back into you, his pace never slowing until the throbbing of his cock comes to an abrupt end.

The hand holding your leg in place retreats to gently brush your cheek, his thumb grazing beneath your eye until you reach for his wrist to pull it down to kiss over his palm. He returns your kisses with a breathy laugh before pressing his forehead to your own, kissing from the tip of your nose down to your chin.

“I do understand,” you whisper against cool flesh.

“Ja… because you were made for me.”

You don’t disagree.

The Vikings are here. Your Father never allowed you to meet them before – as an unmarried girl, even if you’re already of age, it would be…scandalous. Not smart. Dumb, really – everyone knows that girls that are messing with the warrior from overseas often end up being taken away. And you couldn’t survive sea travel. The Vikings are here, but it’s not really a problem – you know that there are other countries over the sea, the countries that die and burn every time a ship is sailed in their harbors. You also know that you do not live in a country like that. That sound of Vikings approaching is a good one – that you’ll be protected from the other enemies your country has. You always stole glances, despite what your father has told you – you were a curious thing, always searching for trouble, always interested in everyone outside of your small village. You’re on the border – stuck between sea and great plains, open for any enemy if it weren’t for mercenaries who deemed this place as worthy of their camp. They live here, occupying the territory outside – even build themselves houses, despite every rumor calling them nothing more but overseas barbarians who would tear you down for a flick of a coin. 

Well, you always thought you’d have nothing to worry about – you are not made of coins, after all. The Vikings had a leader, the one that stayed in the long house just outskirts of the village – the one that would always visit the elders, discussing the payments and the spoils of war. Father always punished you if any nosy neighbor would see you sneaking out to look at the warriors – but you couldn’t care less. If you are going to end up in a marriage with a fool, you could at least steal a few looks at the real men. Not the ones from your village – they felt more like brothers than anything else. Some of them were – second, third, fourth, just diluted enough to make the babies a bit less disfigured. 

But, oh, nothing compared to the vikings. You see them when you run for the lake, far from the shore. They are clean – cleaner than sailors from Byzantine who sometimes stumbled upon the small village by the sea. You think you heard them talking about how cleanliness is a sin – and just how silly it sounded. You think you didn’t like people from this place very much – sailors were often drunk, always handsy and never spared a kind word without an insult…not that you knew their language – but you are smart enough to know that if a man is attempting to grasp your breasts while sneering something through his teeth, it won’t be a love poem. 

— What are you doing here? 

Ah. 

You were spotted. Like a fox in a hunter’s trap – you are standing in the tall water grass, looking at the man through the weeping willow branches. Maybe, if you are lucky enough, he’d think you were a mavka, trying to drown him – some men were foolish enough to fall for the act, sparing you the consequences of your curiosity. You aren’t sure if the Vikings have legends of mavkas – if they even have lakes back where they are from. All travelers are mixed in your head – desserts, great plains, barbarians who would steal your sisters if you’d been blessed with some. Sea beasts who will take you on your ship, away from your father and…ah, it doesn’t sound too bad. 

— Can’t you talk? 

His voice is rough, and accented. Younger than you thought he would be with a body like this – a seasoned warrior, ginger hair covering his muscular chest and a small trail falling down his…

Viking knows your language. Shouldn’t be surprising – they are working for the elders and your ruler, after all. They get gold from your village, they get food from your village. They get sons – you heard about at least some of the women falling pregnant to the guests overseas. No one dares to say anything against it – but the rumors are still falling. You wonder if it’s as bad as it sounds. — I can talk. 

This sounds dumb, but there is no use in hiding. Your intentions weren’t innocent – you are curious and curiosity is what leads to the devil. Or god of death. Or goddess – you are not well-versed in matters of spirit and while half of your village is still worshipping old gods while the other preaches about new, stronger ones, you wonder what kind of beliefs Vikings have. You heard their women can wield magic – and can count. And read. You would love to read, you think. — Gut. Thought I spotted a Margygr.

The word is weird. Rough. You don’t know what that is, but you certainly aren’t one. You take a step forward, not caring that your linen dress is getting drenched in water – not caring about what your father might say after. You would just tell him you wanted to go and drown since he was so adamant on marrying you off to some one-eyed half-wit quarter brother of yours. He wouldn’t be surprised – and you probably wouldn’t be missed. A whore to be, as some older women from your village would say. 

— What is that? 

He tilts his head to the side, his blue eyes looking at you. You notice a piece of cloth in his hands – something that must have been covering his face, you think. He is covered in scars and dirt, blood from some battle is getting washed away into the water of the lake. Gods, you say to yourself – you won’t even be drinking from it again. Although you promised it to yourself a few years ago already, when you spotted a dead deer lying in the water – and it’s not like you held to your promise. Better than seawater, after all. — A…drowned creature. Drowning creature. Your people are calling them… — Oh. Mavka. — Others call it mermaid. Selkie. Mermaid sounds harsh too. Rude. Other languages are rude – still, you would like to know more. Still, you would like to do anything to get out of your village. Learn to read. To write. Maybe hold a baby goat close to your chest and not have it ripped away for the nearest dinner. 

— I’m not…that. 

— I can see. 

He laughs and you steal a peak at his manhood. You should be ashamed, really – if your dear mother was alive, she’d beat you up for being so immodest. If your dear mother was alive, you wouldn’t be allowed to sneak out like that – but she isn’t, so you stare at the man who can crush your skull in one hand. You stare at the trail of ginger hair going down his waist. The muscles flexing and the scars on his hips, glossy from cold lake water. 

Hm. 

Is it supposed to be this big? 

He coughs and you peek to look at him again. Coughing isn’t good – he can be sick. Contangenous. There is a sickness coming around from sailor to sailor – you wonder if vikings have it too. You don’t want to get sick – but it would surely keep you out of marriage for a long while. Maybe, if you’re lucky enough, you could be buried like a pretty maiden. White dress and mourning relatives. That would teach them how to send you off to marry some dumb cousin you never knew before. Or knew too well. — You shouldn’t come here, Schatzen. 

— Why? 

— My men won’t be as nice as I am when they see a maiden in the lake. 

You smile, tilting your head to the side. There are rumors – you can’t invite foreign mercenaries into your country without them taking their toll on the locals. Some people like them, some people are scared of them. Some are going out of the ordeal pregnant and some are not returning at all. But, you can run. But, this is your lake. You like it here – the quiet, the tranquility. You think that if your father proceed with calling you an old bride who should be married as soon as possible, you could just run away and live here. Fish is nice and there are berries when it’s not too cold. — Where are your men? 

You never saw Vikings in battle. Never saw a group of them up close – you’d like to, of course. There are warriors in your village, but their best shot is wolves and deer. Not other men – you think you’d like to see war sometimes. Maybe, all the boys of age would die and you won’t have to worry about anything anymore. You would be nice as a local witch – or a local healer. Old hag sounds nice too. — Around. Waiting for the order. — What order? 

You ask so many questions, König thinks. Pretty thing – smart, too. You aren’t afraid of him, even though you have to be. Most women would be screaming and crying if they saw someone like him in the lake next to them. Not Viking women of course – but people from around here are soft. Cherished. Coddled. You also seem soft, too soft, too gentle – a woman living in a small village on the shore without a husband shouldn’t be this careless. König knows you’re just lucky that the ruler of your country is kind enough to pay the overseas mercenaries instead of suffering the pillaging. Not all of people are this lucky. 

If he won’t get a promised weight in gold this village won’t be lucky either. 

König looks at your sweet face, at the way your eyes constantly dart to his crotch. Curious little thing you are – he isn’t sure if he is that happy that the payments have been consistent up to this point. That he can’t just screw this all over and demand a payment in other ways. That pillaging this village and taking all of its women isn’t really an option while they get their gold from here. Your long linen dress clings to your skin - you’re shaking, he notices. From cold, probably, dumb lady who is too curious for her own good. Hm. He has furs not far from here. He can…

— We’re protecting the shore. The border, too. You smile, nodding. And here he thought the locals knew why the foreigners were here – but he can’t expect too much, he guesses. At least it seems like you haven’t heard of most of his accomplishments. The rivers of blood would be enough to fill this whole lake three times. Or, maybe, you heard – and didn’t care, brave and fearless little thing. König likes the sound of that. 

— Are you cold? 

You ask him, to his surprise. Your gaze is switching from his face – he is open, cheeks flushed from the cold and a maiden right next to him, and he can’t even find it in himself to cover his scarred mug – to his cock. It’s standing proudly, heavy, balls hanging low as if asking to be held in your soft palms. König isn’t embarrassed – but he is surprised that your body, showing only a little bit in that dress of yours, is already enough to make him this bothered. This ready to give up the supposed protection of this village and take what’s his. — You can warm me. 

You tilt your head to the side, mimicking his action from earlier. Curious bird – he could keep you at his ship. Tied up to the post, ready for anyone to use you. You’re strong, and resilient. Should survive the long way home – and he is getting quite ready to find someone at last. If the ruler of your little kingdom won’t be as stingy as the previous one, König can walk away with a sack of gold hanging on his shoulder. Enough for him and for him men. Surely enough to sway you. — How? 

— Do you have a husband? 

He knows, you probably don’t. A husband wouldn’t allow his wife to run around and flirt with other men – and if König was yours, he surely would keep you locked in like the treasure you are. There is too many men ready to take what doesn’t belong to them. 

— No. And I won’t.

— Why? — Soon I will be too old to be a bride anyway. Not that I want it. He laughs at that. Surely, little bird, it wouldn’t be your choice. If the luck is on his side, it wouldn’t even be the choice of your father. — Touch me, Schatzen. You want it, ja? 

He says this with more awkwardness than before. Swaying women by his side isn’t his strong suit – and even with his strength, not many of them would just throw themselves at him. Being a mercenary leader might bring him money but with the whole team consisting of equally strong and handsome men, the broody leader usually isn’t the first choice. He gets his fill eventually – but not the one that would make his heart flutter. With you, however… Your hands are traveling down his abs. Caressing every bit of skin you see – sending goosebumps down his navel and straight to his hard and leaking cock. He wonders if you’ve done this before – but your actions are the one of an explorer, not a professional. YOu grab his cock with both hands almost as if strangling him, and König lets go with a choked moan. 

You retrieve your hands, nervous. Good girl. Eager, pretty. Such a shame this village usually pays its tolls. — Are you hurt? 

— Nein, it’s…go on. You proceed to touch him, the softness of your touches is making him groan from pleasure. This is something else – you’re something else. Having the power to bring a seasoned warrior to his knees – god, how much he liked the way you looked at him. Eager and curious, always going down to touch his cock some more. You press your palm together, making s steady rhythm – using the pre-cum from his cockhead like a lube. 

König relishes in the feeling – he might be one of the strongest soldiers, but it was the first time he felt victorious. With your hand pumping his cock up and down, the pleasure settling in his stomach and threatening to burst, he felt like a king. No, the king. Gods, you were beautiful. Worthy of throwing this village into the fire for. Worthy risking the payment. Your mouth is warm on his manhood – he didn’t expect you to be this active, to wrap your lips around the bulging head and bop your head just a bit. Up and down. Tongue swirling, as if tasting him. Making him sweat that you will decide to take a bite out of it, just to satisfy your curiosity. To his peace, you didn’t. He came shortly after you decided to put your mouth on him – when your tongue started to swirl around and collect the bitter taste of his pre-cum. When your curiosity about foreign warriors bathing in your lake finally made you do something about it – and he would feel bad about pressing a hand in your hair and forcing you to choke on his length, your nails digging small red paths in his pale thighs. You choke and squirm and cry and this is the sweetest sound he ever heard – so when he finally drags you away from his cock, smiling as you wipe your mouth and whimper. Squirm again, some more. The light in your faded a little as he pushed one calloused finger into his mouth and pushed your lips apart. Poor thing, he thinks. — You did good, little bird. 

His seed tastes weird on the tongue. You wince, but swallow – it’s what good brides should do, you think. Somehow, looking at this warrior, you don’t feel so bad about being considered a bride. Maybe…no. You stalled here for long enough – you saw the Viking. You touched him. Tasted him. Father is probably looking for you. 

You don’t even bother to say goodbye as you come out of the water – but König stops you right on the edge of the lake, firm hand on your shoulder. Squeezing. Touching. Feeling. 

— I…I apologize, maiden. I lost control. 

His voice is hesitant. You don’t like how unsure he sounds. It made you feel unsure too. Weird. Uncertain and meek. 

— Are you going to leave soon? 

He stops mumbling, looking into your eyes. This is settled – he is not leaving you here. You must return to your family, say your goodbyes. Maybe enjoy a few weeks of peace before his troupe finally gets a clearing on killing whatever enemies grouped at the border – and he will take you no matter the payment your ruler can give him. Nothing will be worth more than you. 

— Yes. Yes, I will. You turn away, almost running. He didn’t stop you this time – you need to get as much freedom in your lungs as you can. He will take you eventually and, well…you best enjoy freedom as much as you could before this. 

When your village will burn along with all the cousins, half-triple brothers, and elders, you’ll find out why most countries fear the Vikings. When you will be hauled to the wooden ship over a giant’s shoulder, with his hand sitting firmly on your ass and his other palm preventing you from screaming, you’d know why taking the attention of overseas mercenaries is a bad idea. When your ruler would refuse to pay the warriors for their service and force them to just take everything by force, you’d know why making payments on time is so important. 

The candle goes out before you reach the surface.

To someone else, it would be the end of the world: to you, it’s only a hindrance, a nuisance, mostly. 

You’re not easily distressed. If you were, you wouldn’t be in the service of the greatest goddess of the Underworld. And you’re not mourning losing the sight of your warmly illuminated beast... You’re only worried about what he will do once the darkness descends. Whether he will forget about his vow, whether the baser instincts take over him once the darkness falls.

And darkness is not capable of making you lost: you can always follow the string in your hand. But without light, it’s difficult to predict the Bull’s moves: whether he decides to maim or fuck you against the wall, you can never tell. He hasn’t lived in the real world among people; he doesn’t know what’s right or wrong and what’s expected of him. Even the best of men can succumb to the demands of the flesh, so what power would a Bull Man have against his animal wants? No one ever taught him to respect the gods, let alone the maidens who serve them...

Then again, if a simple candle was the only thing that kept you alive, then what’s the point of lamenting the loss of it? Your life was already forfeit when you chose to descend here.

So you let it go: as always, the greatest lesson in life is to simply let go. Of control, of judgment, of fear, of hope. 

He doesn’t say a thing when the light flickers, then fades. The candle goes out in silence, and you let it drop before the remaining wax burns your palm.

And it’s not the absence of light, but strength, that forces you on your knees before even an hour has passed. There’s still a long way to go, and the yarn is like a thin string of hope in your hand, but you’re too exhausted, too worn out, too hungry and too tired to go on.

The Bull Man doesn’t object to your suggestion to lay down and sleep for a while. He has walked behind you in silence the whole day. Or night… You can’t tell the difference; you lost count somewhere along the way down here. The air is stale and humid, and there’s no torch, not a single candle anywhere and even if there were, you wouldn’t do anything with them without a flint. 

The horror is kept at bay only through your numerous exercises with the goddess who introduced you to darkness many, many moons ago. You were initiated during the dark Moon, the new Moon, the blood Moon, introduced to the mysteries of the maiden, mother and crone, to the secrets of both the living and the dead. You’re not afraid, but your body still warns you of danger: you just don’t know if it’s a memory from childhood or a reaction to the Bull, panting behind you – out of lust or exertion, you don’t even know. Someone who wasn’t a maiden probably could tell… At times, you curse the fact that there hasn’t been a single phallus inside you because men too possess knowledge. Taking a man into your bed would have initiated you to a different set of mysteries, but now, you are poking blind. 

The Bull Man is an animal, you remind yourself. The longer you stay in his company, the more he starts to resemble a human, even if he is a man of few words. How he even remembers them is another mystery: you thought he was sent down here as a young boy. He speaks oddly but eloquently, a remnant of his noble descent, perhaps. Or perhaps he has listened to the people speaking in the Labyrinth, eavesdropped his victims an hour or two before killing them. Whatever the reason, you have to constantly tie your tongue because there’s simply no point in talking to a beast. The less you know about him and his past, the better.

You ready yourself for sleep, but the cursed cold of the tunnels keeps your body awake. Your flesh is human even if your mind is forged to withstand hunger, thirst and pain. Endurance against cold was never your strong suit, and you miss the heat of the sun, the warmth of it on your skin, even the ample light it gives. You, a lover of the moon, missing the heat of Apollo… It’s a joke, surely.

On the stone floor, it’s even colder, the rough, damp ground making your very bones ache. How on Hecate’s name has the beast survived this place?

“Bull Man,” you speak into the darkness, thick like an impenetrable wall and thin like a virgin’s veil.

“Maiden,” he echoes with a dark, low growl, slightly amused by the name you’ve selected for him.

“Are you cold?” You whisper.

Perhaps he doesn’t quite understand the question or why you asked it. It doesn’t matter: you have to swallow your pride and ask for his help if you’re going to survive this dark prison.

“I don’t get cold,” he finally responds.

“Good. I need your heat.” 

The silence drags on, and you fear he has misunderstood you again, but then he speaks again, with the same slightly amused tone as before.

“Come take it.”

You’re not sure if you’ve completely lost your mind, crawling to him through the uneven floor of the Labyrinth. Who knows what he will do to you once he gets those arms of iron around you? You’re placing your maidenhood, your whole body at his mercy. And you’re not even sure if it’s a he, if this thing is human at all. 

Human or animal, your hand meets the bull’s head on the way to him. He has taken it off, then... It’s not a part of him, just like you suspected. Maybe he is just a giant, daunting man, born from whatever forbidden desire Pasiphae had. Who knows if she only went to a foreign lover’s arms when her husband was at war? Who knows if King Minos has trouble getting his phallus up… These things happen: women get pregnant from their lovers, they do desperate things to pacify their husbands. And you don’t need a bull to get yourself an heir...

You feel his heat before you feel his skin: the Minotaur is verily blazing. He has gotten used to the cold, it seems, his body like a small bonfire in the clammy tunnel. 

“Cold little female,” he comments when you snuggle towards him shyly, thoroughly aware of the uninviting chill of your body. 

You settle next to him, every muscle in your body tight like a bowstring, your breaths shallow when he gives you a welcoming rumble. Goosebumps prickle across your skin and your throat goes dry, the thick swallow in the tunnel echoing around you like a thief.

Arms like iron go around you, and his body is taut, just like yours, but for a whole different reason entirely. He’s not afraid or nervous; he’s just… big. Pure muscle, his whole body thick, the stock and heat of him remind you of the sun. A miniature sun down here in these dark tunnels, but while you start to slowly soften in his arms, a different threat is already emerging. It doesn’t take long before his cock stiffens against you, and with the scarce clothing you both have, you can feel its every excited twitch.

Artemis… Protect me from this beast. Turn him into a dog if he tries to penetrate me. Let him rip my throat instead… 

You’ve never prayed to the Virgin Goddess; you don’t know if she can even hear you from down here. But Hecate would only laugh if this Bull decided to breed you. No mercy would arrive from that direction: she would either send a disease of blisters upon the Minotaur for touching her chosen or then she would cackle like an old woman, thousand times raped.

“Thank you,” you whisper, hoping your kindness will distract him from what’s happening downstairs.

“My pleasure,” he grumbles, mimicking the words he probably heard as a child in his father’s great hall. 

It sends a chill down your spine and butterflies into your heart to hear him speak like a polite man of court. And again, you think of asking him about his childhood... His mother, his father, the things he remembers from the surface. How he survived here without water, if there are underground springs here somewhere. Whether he eats humans like they say... If he ever embraced the dead women he killed. 

“Can you do it again,” he rumbles against you, cutting you away from your grotesque thoughts.

“...Do what again?” 

“Touch me… With your hand.”

His words are blunt now, his speech clumsy. But the way he says it is not an order. It’s an odd beg, more like. Laced with hope and wishes far away from greed. This Bull is never greedy, per se… He’s just lacking. Starved, for so many things that you fear there’s not enough time nor kindness to give him what he needs.

Your pulse flutters when you slowly lift your hand and caress the strong cords of muscle that make his neck. The rumbling returns; it turns into a low purr as the beast relaxes under your touch. Something softens inside you when he sighs from relief. His unbridled happiness tugs at your heart, trying to yank open something forbidden. It’s the softest violation you’ve ever felt: to be held by a giant killer having a roaring erection, while the said killer clearly enjoys your caress like it’s the touch of Aphrodite herself…

You even stroke his face. His jaw, unclenching under your touch; his cheek, covered with what you suppose is simply a wild, overgrown beard. 

“Your hand,” he groans softly, “makes me sleepy and warm…”

The cold, uncaring goddess recedes. The burdens of past, present and future dissolve. Softness takes place in your heart; the iron locks give in like brittle brass. A smile plays on your lips as you continue to pet him softly, lulling you both to sleep with your voice.

“Then sleep, Bull of Crete...”

…

You wake up to his cock pressing against you.

Not against your stomach like when you went to sleep – that you could do with – but against your cunt, barely veiled by the thin linen of your dress.

The panic is soon wrestled down with reason: you tell yourself it’s just a cock. It’s just him. You’re simply in the Minotaur’s arms, and he’s sound asleep still; there’s no reason to buck and jerk and scream. 

The darkness feels like a safe womb now, but with nothing to lock your gaze to, you have to take a moment to ground yourself into reality. And the first thing you ground into is a thick cockhead, pressing fast into your nether lips. He’s practically at the gates, and you’re lucky he’s still asleep.

It’s perhaps your fault this happened in the first place: you notice you’ve dragged your thigh over his hip; as if wanting him to fuck you in your sleep… You embrace him like Helen of Troy, and he holds you through his sleep like a man in love, perfectly content with napping on the cold ground with you.

“Mm…” The beast stirs, probably noticing how the female in his arms is tense as a rod. “You smell like you want to fuck…”

“No I don’t,” you hurry to whisper.

Gods curse this man’s ability to smell everything from miles away. Blood and humans and, apparently, a woman at her most receptive. 

What if he can actually smell the wetness between your legs?

“We need to go,” you slowly remove your leg from on top of his waist, hoping it would go unnoticed that you were clutching him like a lover. You have no such luck: he grabs your thigh and draws it back, sets it safe and snug around his waist while adjusting his grip on you, now hugging you entirely like a lover would.

“I want to mate with you,” he says softly. “You want to mate too. Why go?”

He sounds so adorable when he’s still in the process of waking up to a new day. Drowsy and sweet, voice husky from sleep, body warm as can be, the hard-on between his legs happy and stiff.

“I thought you wanted to kill the king,” you try to point out. 

“This is more important,” he gruffs. “Urgent.”

The cock pushes further up and against you, now spreading your folds under the dress, trying to penetrate into your heat. Your eyes go wide as thick need pools down to meet his greed. His body, his cock makes your head go dull for a moment; you feel like you’re not even capable of thinking actual thoughts.

“No, it’s not. We need to get up.”

You stiffen in his arms, push yourself away, and to your surprise, he actually lets you go. Reluctantly and with a hollow grunt, but he lets you go. 

You rise with a wobble, and adjust your dress, your head spinning from his advances. You swear he becomes more man-like every day, every passing hour, even. Or is it just you who’s changing…? 

The Bull Man is up before you get to ponder on that thought for too long. Your heart and head struggle to find their footing for a moment, your legs are so weak you feel like fainting. He catches you before you fall, the warm, thick arms closing around you with stout affection.

“You need more heat?” He asks softly.

You look up out of habit, even if you can't see his eyes, covered by the carcass again because his voice is muffled.

“No… I’m hungry.”

He’s silent for a moment, probably thinking what he could do to help the situation. You fear he will suggest you go back to visit his “pantry” and eat whatever horrible, half-rotten man-flesh he might have in store there, but he only holds you close to prevent you from sliding back to the ground.

“Hmm. No mice up here,” he ponders. 

“You eat mice…?”

“Sometimes.”

You leave it at that: you don’t want to know what he’s had to do to sustain himself down here. You don’t even have a fire to cook the vermin, even if you would be ready to eat even those after another day or two without food. 

“Not a long way up,” he says. “We will reach the sun soon. Then I’ll find you something to eat.”

“How do you know that…?”

“The air smells different.”

You sigh and search for the string, your lifeline to the outside world. You can’t wait to get out of here, and with both hurry and an odd dread, you hike for what seems like another whole day. Tension, hunger and thirst distort your thoughts, and you’re sure by now that the time flows differently here in the Underworld. With no small amount of pride, you feel accomplished to have survived this place so far. Even gods have had to do some tricks to escape the nether worlds: it is no small feat to charm the Minotaur and then walk out of here unharmed. 

To your knowledge, you’re the only one who has ever escaped the Labyrinth. You haven’t even had time to think about what you will unleash with you… The demon that walks on your heels will take his revenge, not only on the king but on the city who threw him here. 

Well. It’s their problem now. Minos and Pasiphae simply have to deal with their successor. The world will simply have to deal with the Underworld’s wrath. 

And oh, how Hecate would laugh if she saw this monster prince of Crete escape his prison because of you – the feared Minotaur set free, only because he’s mesmerized by a woman. You suspect he would have his cock jumping for any girl, though. It's not because you're an exceptional sorceress that he follows you: it's your cunt he's after. And it shouldn’t make you feel jealous that he probably gets distracted the moment he sees a better offer walk by.

But it does. In your darkest wishes, you would keep the Bull Man all to yourself. Get him a leash, perhaps... Feed him with your own hands and let him grope you in the dark, watch him go wild from lust when you finally give him access to your cunt. 

Many would hardly think you’re a virgin if they took a peek inside your head. But the things you’ve seen and done, the white bulls you’ve slaughtered for the dark Goddess, adorning them with cypress wreaths before slashing their throats open, would turn any woman bleak and twisted like this. For once, you would like to save the bull from slaughter.

When you see the first evidence of light, your body lets out a sigh it has been holding ever since you arrived here. Seeing the sun gives you more strength than any food or meal, and you pick up your pace while the Minotaur behind you begins to hesitate. 

“It’s too bright,” he says before you’ve even walked out of the tunnel, now turning into a vast cave, the entrance to the Labyrinth. 

You turn around to look and stop in your tracks when you see the fear in his eyes is acute. It’s mixed with wonder, the curiosity wrestling away doubt slowly but surely. He only needs a little nudge, a gentle pull, an enticing little smile and eyes that he can trust.

“You’ll get used to it soon,” you extend your hand. 

He takes a step, then another, then another, until he reaches your outstretched fingers, and hand in hand you walk out of the Labyrinth and into the bright morning sun, burning over the kingdom of Crete.

He’s only a breath away from panicking, but covers it well. You wonder if it’s truly the light that’s too bright or if the feeling of being so exposed is what makes him so afraid. Clearly, the vast space opening up before him is intimidating. 

There are grassy plains as far as the eye can see, little hills that dot the horizon, and skies so expansive and bright it must hurt his eyes. Goats are grazing under the sun, trees are bending in the wind, the rustling of leaves and the sound of birds calling him to look in all directions as he tries to make some sense of his surroundings.

“It’s alright,” you give his palm a soft squeeze, and the way he looks there under the sun, so big and powerful and able, and still so utterly lost, is giving you heartache you haven’t known since you were a child.

“There’s… so many colours,” he says, looking at the blue summer sky, the deep olive greens, the dirty whiteness of the goats, the flowers upon the grass. A butterfly, flying past, yellow like the citrus that people harvest from a few miles from here. A big blackbird with an orange beak, swooping down to catch a cricket, the slate grey pigeons flying so close to the sun that he has to shield his eyes even if they’re already safe and sheltered under the bull head.

Seeing his wonder and awe makes you look at the scenery so differently that it burns, it actually hurts: there’s so much beauty in the world, and you have always taken it for granted. Cursed the rain and the storms, cursed the droughts, cursed the gods for sending down another famine, when in truth, the world was filled with abundance, of colours, of life and joy… And all you’ve done is worship darkness. Now the darkness is out: it’s standing next to you, watching the view of your mundane everyday life like it’s nothing short of a miracle.

And when you turn back to look at him again, his eyes are upon you.

“What?” You ask, freshly caught in your moment of weakness.

“You are pretty,” he says, eyes wrinkling with delight under the mask. 

Gods damn him… 

He doesn’t know that human men don’t act like this, talk like this, or if they do, there’s usually something vile involved behind it all. He doesn’t know how to play games, he was never introduced to the lies and deceit of the world.

The Bull of Crete only looks at you with soft fondness in his stare – he doesn’t understand that he should cover that softness as well if he intends to win. Any woman could put a leash on him before another moon has passed, but he doesn’t seem to care. And it’s not even heat or hunger that makes you weak this time... It’s those eyes, looking at you with more and more warmth.

“Nonsense,” you huff without a voice, and turn towards the old road with an adoring bull on your heels.

The cold sigh of the underworld is quickly left behind you as you walk up the old carriage road, nearly grown in with weeds. The Labyrinth is located miles away from civilization, but the people living in these hills are used to the cold cave by now. They trust that the Minotaur will never escape and only turn away their heads and close the doors of their huts when the screaming, crying human sacrifices are delivered to the mouth of the cave. Little do they know that the monster is now looking at their little hills and goats with delight, not bloodlust.

For the Minotaur is fascinated with your world: he has to touch every leaf, every tree, every blade of grass, it seems. The goats are afraid of him, but one small nanny is bold enough to come and sniff his hand. Perhaps it remembers that beings walking on two feet give her apples sometimes, and the giant studies this small white animal with gentle curiosity, allows the goat to smell his hand, only chuckles when the goat gives out a little scoff when she notices there are no treats to be found there.

The vision is more adorable than when you’ve seen children play with kittens, and no matter what you do, you can’t turn your heart into ice anymore. You were taught that the Minotaur is a monster who enjoys torturing his victims, creatures far more helpless than him. Now you see him watching the she-goat with warm curiosity, rumbling softly inside his helm, far from the ravaging beast that approached you in that tunnel what seems like months ago.

You watch him with tender sadness as he marvels at the sky and remembers how he used to sit in the shade of an olive tree when he was a child. He goes to sit there now and examines how the sun filters through the massive branches of the tree as if trying to recall the memory. 

He asks questions like: “How can you humans stand this heat?” or “Why is there only one road?” and listens to your answers carefully.

He says he can smell the sea, even if the salty water is miles and miles away, and gets curious about what’s behind that hill, or that one, what about that one… You wonder if he’s even interested in killing the king anymore and suggest that he could just forget about this cruel place and buy himself a sea voyage with that expensive sword. He could get rid of his helmet and ask if anyone needs a goat herd or an able-bodied man to help at construction sites or stables; he could get work from the docks any day, sail to Athens or some other big city, forge himself a new life. 

But he doesn’t want to.

He says he has to avenge his mother who always cried when he was little.

More wretched tugs pull at your heart as you approach the city. The lovely summer’s day turns into a nightmare once people see who’s on his way to the heart of Crete.

You don’t understand their screams, not anymore, while only a few days ago you knew they preceded death. The Minotaur doesn’t kill anyone, mainly because he doesn’t have to. Everyone flees before his wake, people rush to their homes and bar the doors, even soldiers slip away to be with their loved ones or run to warn the king if they have any loyalty left. 

You’re left to walk through the marketplace in settling dust and tense silence as the Bull Man explores the abundant samples of food on display. He has to have a taste of everything from all stands, but only after he has offered figs, olives, grain, grapes, grilled meat and fish to you first.

“Eat,” he says and shoves a handful of pine seeds your way. “You were hungry?”

“This is not the way to–” you ignore the food only through sheer willpower. “This is not right. People own these things. They sell them at the market, you need to pay for these.”

“Pay? With what?”

He looks at you for a moment, unable to recall what money is and how these things are supposed to work. He probably had his mother’s servants bring him everything he needed as a child anyway, so how could he know? 

“They will take your hands for stealing,” you try to explain with softly building despair.

“I will take their heads before that.”

“The next king will hunt you down and punish you,” you rush after him, and when he won’t listen, you seize his hand and finally get him to halt. He looks down at the weak palm around his wrist, then raises his gaze to you.

“Bulls don’t have kings.”

Your attempts to tame him are futile. The things they’ve taught him to be are now being used as a way to escape responsibility, and while it’s none of your business, you refuse to let him believe that he is nothing more than an animal.

“You are not a bull,” you wail in frustration. “You’re a man.”

He hesitates, only for a moment; the gentle, loving gaze makes your legs weak.

“You’re the first to think that.” 

Then he rips himself away from you, softly but sternly.

He doesn’t need directions to the palace: he knows he has to head for the most prominent building in the city to reach the king. The grandiose heart of Crete, white-chalked and beautiful under the burning midday sun is the pride of every citizen, even if it houses another monster.

You sigh as you watch him go: the Bull Man, the demon of the underworld, the one you thought would rape you bloody before you get to crawl out of the Labyrinth. The fact that he wanted to kill his father more than he wanted to be born again into a new life wasn’t a surprise, but that he chose to bloody his sword rather than his cock is somehow... insulting, almost. 

What actually haunts you is how your insides coil and turn when you rush back to your temple. It’s not like you thought the Minotaur would take you with him. Board some trade ship bound for distant shores, and ravage you ever so softly in the belly of the creaking hull. It’s not like you dreamed of petting him to sleep while you two embark on a new life. But the way your heart twists and wails inside your chest makes it clear that losing him is even more painful than losing Theseus and the life he promised you. 

You never even wanted Theseus; you only wanted him to take you away from here. His affection would have been the result of ample witchcraft at best.

He’s practically already dead, and your heart turns to stone far more slowly than you would prefer. It’s just your luck to first have the golden hero of Greece look down on you in disdain, and then witness even the Bull Man walk away from you like you never meant anything to him. Men killing each other is the oldest story in the world, and you want no part in it, but something in this beast has stirred you awake from a long, cold slumber. It’s infuriating that you can’t dispel a simple animal from your heart. Oldest story in the book, that one, too…

But oh, how you now yearn after some cruel, lowly, dirty beast… The Minotaur already owns you, and he never even had to plunge his sword inside you to prove that. Besides, you would’ve been perfectly willing had he decided to take you on the green grass, under the vast sky, while some noisy goats graze around you. You realize that that’s what you expected to happen, and when it didn’t, you’re left more than disappointed: you're left completely hollow. You always find out these things a little too late, it seems… The Bull is headed for the palace and will likely get killed after he slaughters his cruel father. There’s at least thirty spears in that building, and more will arrive when called.

You arrive at the temple, panting and with your body flushed and weak. The maidens at the entrance share a quick glance with each other before turning their fearful gazes back to you. They’re the youngest arrivals, not even initiates yet; one of them hardly even bleeds. 

“The King is dead,” you announce without bothering to even greet them, and the girls huddle up together like they’re a bunch of slaves about to get slapped.

You realize you must look like an animal with your dirty robes, dishevelled hair and your wild, alive stare. No wonder they look like they’ve seen a ghost... You basically are one, coming back from the dead like this.

“What?” 

A priestess arrives at the threshold like an image of Hecate herself, dressed in robes as black as the midnight sky, but you don’t shy away from her like you used to.

“Or he will be. Soon. The Minotaur is here.” 

“How did you… How did it...”

You’ve never seen the priestess in disarray. She’s always composed, cold and distant, but seeing you like the wraith that you are, freshly escaped from the Labyrinth, spat back from the bowels of the earth like the dark gods didn’t even want you there, makes even the greatest of Hecate’s servants a little uneasy. 

She gathers what’s left of her dignity and finds her most commanding voice. Sadly, it doesn’t have the power to shake the ground anymore.

“Where is Theseus of Athens?”

“Disemboweled… is my best guess,” you say in a listless voice, then turn your head toward the smell of fresh fruit.

Normally, you would walk these halls with dignity, but now, you simply barge in and grab the first piece of food you find. You ought to get whipped for your insolence, but no one dares to raise a hand against you. The maids and priestesses stare in shock as you eat and drink like a starved prisoner. You’re a living Hecate in certain aspects, your arrival the first toll of the bell of doom as the palace guards sound the alarm.

So…

The Minotaur has reached the king.

…

The priestesses deem it only logical that the King finally pays for his sins: the gods have been offended by the number of human sacrifices sent to the Labyrinth, and this is their way of exacting revenge. You were only an instrument of their will.

After a quick wash and some more food, you begin to feel like a human again. The maids bring you a new chiton, flowing and white: your old clothes are burned in a brazier as if that would help you forget.

And this might be the only place you don’t get blamed for unleashing a monster. You were at a crossroads with the Minotaur, and anyone would have done the same: try to talk him out of his killing spree, calm him down, entice him with a gift. No one expected that the beast could even speak, so your approach was unusual, perhaps, but it worked. Hecate guided you through the tunnels, even when the candle went out, she stilled the Bull’s loins until you reached the sunlight where the beast got distracted with other things. You leave out the Minotaur's attraction to birds, bees and butterflies because your story is unbelievable enough as it is.

But the Minotaur will be slain after he has done his deed: Minos is the one who should be punished, not the city of Crete. And it is only just to put down this beast, a mercy.

So when he appears between the pillars of temple, this time wholly covered in blood, people are bound to scream. Even the priestesses who are used to seeing blood, shriek like widows when the Minotaur steps inside the holy shrine of Hecate.

“Where is the maiden of the crossroads?”

He came back for you, after all…

The boom of his voice is familiar, and yet, you cower on the bench when you hear it. The Minotaur sounds like he’s an envoy of Hades himself, and while you’re not among those who scream and yell, it still sends shivers down your spine to hear him speak like that.

Or is it the excitement, a tiny flame of hope that makes you quiver like this?

“We all belong to the goddess,” someone peeps, the Minotaur now descending down the stairs.

The massive head turns, gaze like razor sweeping across the marbled shrine. You’re so far back that he can’t catch you, sitting behind many bodies and faces, and before you can force yourself to rise, the main priestess, the oldest, most crooked of the crones, steps forth to meet this beast.

“This is a House of Hecate,” she speaks. “No man is allowed to enter unless they are Death.”

The black carcass turns, but the priestess doesn’t waver. If anything, her spine turns into unbreakable metal before this man’s gaze.

“I am Death,” he says, far more gently than anyone would expect. Then he walks past the crone like she’s just a harmless elder. No one does a thing, because even the head of your temple is powerless now.

“She had a red string and a candle. Where is she?”

He grabs the first woman he sees, and you rise up before he decides it’s time to thrust his blade into someone to loosen the tongues of these women. 

“Please,” you take a hesitant step towards your Bull. “I’m here... I’m the one you’re looking for.”

The Minotaur lets go of the frightened initiate the instant he sees you. She’s shoved aside with little interest, the blue eyes behind the corpse now solely fixed on you. The way they soften into hazy ice makes your knees weak – that’s the stare of someone who recognizes their loved one among a thick, dull crowd…

“Come with me,” he extends a hand when he reaches you, strong legs swallowing tiles like he’s in a hurry to get back to you. You open your mouth, close it, and look at his hand, the rough, enormous palm held out for you to place your own little hand in.

“You belong to me,” he says with great weight when you don’t speak. It should spark the ire of the goddess for him to dare to talk to you like this… But mostly, your body sings. It tells you to take a step and take his hand: to let him have you, once and for all. 

“My place is here,” you utter, all power gone from your voice. All your dreams, all your fears are offering their hand to you with his, and the maidens, mothers and crones of this hall look upon your exchange with the Bull Man in stupefied silence. 

“You were sent down to me,” he presses on. “You are mine now. You belong to me.”

Your body is singing, singing, singing.

It’s not a request… Or a proposal. 

It’s a god, taking what’s his.

…

You swallow with nothing in your throat and look at the head priestess with helpless misery: she looks back with the eyes of a noxious Medusa, wholly dispassionate to the problems you brought upon yourself. And what could she even do? She’s unarmed against the claims of Hades: Death is now in love with you, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it. 

He doesn’t want to stay in the city, as enchanting as it is, saying that it stinks and that he’s tired of the screams. No one wants him here; he already knows that, and the task he was meant to do is done. He doesn’t seem to be much moved by it either, only asking you if there is a place where he can wash the blood off himself. 

People become more bold when they see you walk out of the city. Not even the sight of a crimson demigod makes them watch their tongues. Insults and slurs follow you through the streets, shouts such as “Kingslayer!” and “Beast!” are accompanied with curses such as “You are an abomination!” and “Go back to your lair!” 

No one treats him as their prince and savior, no one sees him as the man he truly is. And because hatred thickens in crowds, you get your share of the insults as well. 

What kind of a woman would follow a beast like him? Have you sold your soul to the demons of the desert, or has Hades himself forced you to be with this monster? Are you behind the murder of their king?

“Must I remind you?” You turn on your heels, standing tall and proud with the posture of a queen. “According to the old laws, the one who slays the king is the next to rule.” 

“You led him out of the Labyrinth, didn’t you?” the voices ask.

“Gave him your cunt, too,” they sneer.

“You’re worse than the bloody Gorgon,” they mock, but you have a thick skin: if anything, you take it as a compliment to be referred to the mighty slayers of men.

What cuts through your heart is the filth and hate they spit at him, the man who has known nothing but loath since he was born. 

“Hecate’s whore… I should kill you first,” one soldier shouts with spit running down his chin.

The citizens of Crete would never hail the Minotaur as their king, but none can say the deed didn’t prove great strength. Some would even call it justice. He is the queen’s son, after all: he’s more royal than any of these dung-stinking peasants will ever be. He should never have been sent down to those tunnels in the first place.

Before you know it, the Minotaur swoops past you in haste, diving towards the screaming crowd with hunched shoulders and a fiery breath.

“Stop,” you say, and he halts immediately, gaze still directed to the one who called you a whore. The soldiers back away along with the peasants and tradesmen, these poor, humble Cretes who act like they never meant to be so mean.

“Let us go in peace,” you command, voice unwavering and stern. “Or I will curse you all. You and your families, down to the seventh son and seventh daughter.”

That manages to shut them up. The threat of a curse frightens these poor beasts even more than the enraged Minotaur breathing fire through his helm. No one wants rot and puke to follow them wherever they go; no one wants to doom their offspring with illness, death and sorrow. They disperse in all directions and only hiss and whisper as they go.

You spit on the ground as your last gift to these people, leaving the city of Crete with the ever-adoring Bull at your heels.

“You’re even prettier when you’re angry,” he says while walking next to you, voice thick with genuine passion and awe.

You roll your eyes: any man would cower before Hecate’s curse, but this one? This one only gets more horny. 

“Perhaps you are part bull after all,” you retort dryly.

“It takes more than one spear to kill me,” he boasts, but you don’t need more proof of his prowess. Surely, people have tried to kill him in the Labyrinth, but he’s survived every single attempt on his life – for that alone, he should be a decorated hero.

The only thing that makes you annoyed, however, is this childish need to prove he could’ve taken the whole city by himself just because some man happened to call you a slut.

“Mother said I’m a monster instead of a man,” he says, completely unaware that your snap wasn't meant as a compliment. He says it like he’s partly proud of it, and you finally sigh and turn. 

“Your mother was heartless. And wrong.”

The Minotaur only looks at you with a building passion that goes straight to your loins.

“But you’re not.”

“...What?”

“Heartless.”

You feel stripped naked before him, the way his eyes seem to burn away your poor dress. But the fact that he unearths your most guarded secret, just like that, is a catastrophe of a far wider scale.

You’re not sure who’s tied to whom anymore… Or if you’re tied to each other, the gods now laughing in their wine as they look down at you two: a fierce and bloodied giant following the maiden he stole like it’s you who took him and not the other way around.

You reach the roaring waters of a waterfall in silence, the night wrapping the lands inside a dark blue veil. Stars will be visible soon, and with the moon creeping up to the sky, you won’t be needing candles tonight. The silver mistress gives plenty of light for you to admire your beast, and compared to the thick darkness of the tunnels you emerged from this morning, it feels like a generous blessing.

You sit on the banks of the small, clear pond, utterly exquisite at nightfall. The sun’s heat has turned into a warm, caressing breeze, and you submerge your feet into the water, giving out a satisfied sigh as the cool pond embraces your travel worn feet. The Bull sinks to a crouch some distance away from you, curious about your obvious moment of pleasure.

“Did you meet her…? Your mother?” You ask from the cool water lapping at your feet – how can a simple man make you feel so restless and shy?

“Did you… kill her?” 

“She cursed me,” he says, sullen and wholly unsurprised. Time and time again, you are shocked by the hatred his own kin shows him. How can a mother be so cruel?

“How could I kill my own maker?”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “For everything.” 

You swallow before such unwavering love. The same man who cursed the gods yesterday  honours the womb he came from so much that he won’t raise a hand against it, not even when his own mother spits curses at him. You don’t know if it’s his greatest strength or biggest weakness, but sometimes you wonder if he’s more human than humans, this beast.

“I’m not,” he retorts immediately. “The king is dead. Mother is safe. I have you... This is the best day of my life.”

You turn to look at him. Time and again, the lack of lies and deceit in this man catches you off guard. It’s more painful than any wound, to see how the Minotaur has no protective skin against the corrupted human nature, that he is human nature before it was defiled.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” you falter. 

The chiton pools around your ankles, and you wonder if the man even breathes anymore. You know your skin is glowing with the last rays of the setting sun, you’re aware that the water and moonlight play upon your skin and make you look like an illusion, powerful in its own way.

When have you ever faltered…? Back when you were a little girl, you reckon, the notion euphoric and eerie in your bones.

You rise up and undress before him nonchalantly, trying to ignore the fervid stare of your admirer. Unclasping the brooches holding up your white linen dress, you let it fall down and set you free, secretly reveling in the downright carnal stare now glued to your skin. 

Ripe for plucking, you think while stepping out of the pile of cloth and into the thin evening air. His gaze feasts on you: the plump breasts no one ever loved, the vulnerable navel down below, the dark triangle between your legs, the secret power it holds.

Heat pools into your core as you watch him: everything in your body turns warm and soft when you take in the utter heftiness of him. The mean, swelling phallus between his legs, the near inhuman strength those shoulders and chest possess. Your body is the complete opposite of him, ethereal, almost, compared to the absolute brute strength before you. 

His eyes linger there the longest until he rises too, stiff and dreamy, a beast entirely taken by a thrall. The loincloth is practically torn away, as if it’s only a nuisance he must get rid of immediately. His eyes never leave your shape while he bares himself, and the phallus, you notice, belongs to a human. It’s thick and wondrous, fully erect, adorned with dark curls and accompanied by a set of balls you’ve mainly seen on horses. Big, full and round but unlike animals, they’re covered in dark fur, almost black here in the evening light. Thick seed beads through the slit of his cock from simply seeing you, and the way his chest heaves makes it clear that this man is ready to mate as soon as he’s allowed to do so. 

“You need to take off your helm,” you lift your chin, thoroughly aware of your power over him, even if it’s laughable, a miracle that he doesn’t fuck you on the spot like the animal he is. “You’re a man, not a bull.”

His eyes don’t betray any kind of hesitation. He doesn’t seem to be interested in whether he wears his mask or not. He just blinks as if he’s indeed under a spell and nods.

“If you say so.”

The broad muscles flex as he takes it off, and what is revealed to you from underneath the head is both a surprise and a disappointment. There’s not a monster under there, only a man, a stoic, boorish, shaggy male who’s in desperate need of a wash and a comb. He’s somewhat handsome under all that facial hair and knots, actually, not bad at all – if you like your men rugged and wild. 

He lets the head drop to the ground with a thud as if it was never a part of him at all, and follows you into the pool like you’re his mother and he’s your cub about to get scrubbed clean. 

He seems to dwarf you, even when half submerged in the pond, leaning back with a sigh not unlike yours. If you’re afraid, your body has a peculiar way of showing it: even in the clear, glossy water, you can feel yourself get wet. Never have you seen such strength, not in any man: in horror and awe, you realize he could be a descendant of Zeus himself. As if providing proof to these claims, he looks up to the sky, mesmerized by the myriad stars dotting the vast, unattainable blue.

Using this momentary distraction to your advantage, you reach to pluck a handful of moss from the bank. With this soft little sponge in your hand, you hope to make it clear that this is indeed a bath, not foreplay. 

“They’re stars,” you say softly while slinking closer to him. “Have you ever seen them...?”

“Yes,” he rasps with his head lolled back, throat completely exposed. It always hurts your heart to see that he trusts you so fully. You are no threat to him – even if the gods changed the moss in your hand into a weapon of some sort, you wouldn’t pose any kind of challenge. And still, the way he allows you to creep towards him and wipe his rough hide with the makeshift sponge without so much as flinching is heartbreaking. 

“I have forgotten…” his voice drifts off as he examines the night sky, eyes filled with distant, glass-like delight.

“Beautiful, aren’t they...?” 

“Your world is pretty,” he brings his gaze back to earth and to you. “But you’re the loveliest thing I’ve seen so far.”

You almost freeze upon hearing that. His compliments always catch you off guard, but this time, something forbidden and long forgotten comes undone: a lost want, no, a need to hear such simple words of shallow praise.

“You do not scream... You do not run. Why?”

Your eyes are liquid, glass about to break as you set yourself on the task of scrubbing him clean. You refuse to get emotional in front of him: an initiate of the dark goddess, shedding tears when a horny man calls her pretty? What utter nonsense.

But then he grabs your wrist: not to seize back power, but to prevent you from escaping this fragile moment.

“You are different,” he agrees calmly, then releases you, but you reckon it’s mostly because he misses the soft rubs you were giving him. 

“Perhaps I’m crazy,” you breathe while looking at the damp curls on his chest.

Yes… That’s the only explanation for this madness. It has to be.

“Is that why you took me?” 

“I took you because you’re mine. I want you.”

“You can’t just take what you want,” you warn softly.

“Why not?” His head tilts a little to the side as he’s trying to make sense of you and the manners of your world. “Don’t you want to be mine?”

You lift your gaze and risk a look into his eyes, stripped from all facades as always. You even catch a passing wave of worry there: he had counted on you being as fascinated with him as he is with you. The hunger behind that want, the need to be something special to you, is a whole another issue that must wait until your head is more clear. Way more clear…

“Perhaps,” you confess.

“I have nothing to give you,” he shrugs, eyes looking slightly past you this time, out of shame or anxiety. It takes a while for you to understand he’s liking you to the goods at the market and thinks he’s expected to have money to be able to keep you.

“You don’t need to pay for me,” you smile, trying your best to disguise the soft amusement in your voice. His brows only furrow as he tries to calculate and think.

“I don’t understand the rules of this world,” he finally shakes his head. 

“I’ll teach you.”

For a while, he only looks on with fascination how you rub his arms and belly, basically massaging him with the wet moss. His eyes drift closed when you scrub the back of his neck, the stout erection only getting thicker under the cool water. You’re careful with his legs, not because you’re afraid he’s ticklish but because you try to avoid touching the huge cock already jutting up from happiness. It gives a few excited bounces when you wash his inner thighs, hopeful to get its needs satiated soon. 

“I can hunt for you,” he suggests. “Bring you food… Protect you.”

He’s visibly excited when figuring out a way to give you something in return. He wants to provide offerings for your company, your lore, and eventually, your cunt, too. You might be a virgin, but you’re not stupid: of course he wants the soft, wet prize between your legs. A pair of lovely tits to squeeze at night... Ears to groan hushed confessions into, thighs to nibble, bite and suck until you cry... 

“What do you think?” He asks, breath heavy from the bliss you’re already granting him by simply giving him a bath. “I could give you my heat. Please you...”

“You know how to please women?” 

“No. But you could teach me.”

The way he says it is not shy. Only tentative. A bear, walking on ice and hoping it would carry his weight. One wrong step and the ice will swallow him, spitting out his bones only in spring. 

And then…

“Do you know how to fuck?”

The ice holds, mainly because you’re too shocked to even slap or ridicule this man. His eyes bore into you with such unbridled greed that you have trouble keeping your precious pride intact.

“Of course,” you hear yourself whisper like it would be an insult to your intellect if you didn’t.

“Teach me,” he says, ever more greedily.

“I…”

Your jaw is left open, but not a word comes out. A strong palm closes around your wrist again, this time to bring you flush against him. The water laps at your skin, a distant crow cackles somewhere. Your hand is brought to his phallus, but he doesn’t have to wrap your fingers around it: you do it all by yourself, breath locked in your throat as you feel how hard and blazing he is.

“You want my cock,” he says, mouth only an inch from yours. “Don’t you...?”

You wet your lips – a mistake, because his half-lidded gaze darts to your mouth the instant your pink tongue lashes out. You’re in a predicament, but on the other hand, what else did you expect, taking your clothes off in front of a touch-starved bull?

“I’d give it to you happily,” he insists. “No female ever wanted to spread her legs for me.”

Or a leash. 

Your fingers tighten on their own, they mould around him. Like a bond…

“Really?” You breathe. “What fools they were...”

The cock gives a full throb inside your palm, exalted to be yours. But only a moment later, the dreaded Minotaur moves. 

You find yourself under him before you can even gasp for air: the soaked, hot body of a giant now pinning you on the grass and crushing you under it with ease. The weight of your error is fully pressed against you: he was never tamed, and you were a fool to think you could put him in chains.

The raw scent of earth and musk fills your nostrils, making the stars above you spin. His cock is trapped between your bodies, giving another rich pulse against your thigh. Gods, if he were throbbing like that inside you…

“You make my skin burn,” he growls into your ear, the heat of his skin now unbearable, the coarse hair prickling your skin from neck to thigh. “My loins, ache…”

“Are you a witch?” He asks, and you finally allow yourself to breathe.

If he only knew… But hexes and charms are of no use for you now: the only thing you can do is moan, apparently, as he dives for your neck, planting barbarous kisses on your skin.

Down, down, down he goes, pure avarice driving him to feast on every part of you. You’re too weak to stop him when he searches for the source of your intoxicating scent. Discovering it between your thighs, he dives nose-first into your sex, meeting your core with a hungry grunt.

Your back arcs with pleasure, your nails sink into his back: a funny thing to do when he’s already as close as can be. The trail of crude kisses leads him to your breasts, and you try to keep your whimpers in control, but a gasp erupts when he drags a hot tongue across your nipple. Massive palms close around your tits while you squirm in his hold: he doesn’t seem to be driven by the need to please you; rather, he wishes to study you first, examine how your body reacts to his groping. He leaves your breasts aching and sore, every bite and suck managing to make you wetter and wetter, your cunt screaming for attention by now.

“Gods...” you wriggle on the soft earthen bed, not expecting him to take you with his mouth first.

He withdraws, only a little, but his voice is surprisingly soft.

“Do I hurt you...?” 

“No… But this is not mating…”

“Even I know that much,” he says darkly, and grabs you by the waist, moves you around like a doll until you find yourself on your belly. 

He looks at you from between your thighs, demonic and keen. The broad shoulders force your legs wide apart when he’s seated there, waist-deep in the water, with you hauled to the shore like a siren.

Not a moment is wasted as he pulls you back to him by the hips: you’re drawn to all fours, a hot streak of cum dragging on the inside of your thigh from the cock that meets your skin. He grabs and steadies it with an annoyed grunt, and the fat tip is shoved straight into your folds, your nether lips parted with brute force almost. 

“Guide me.”

His voice is demanding, impatient as he drags the fat head up and down the entrance of your hole, coating his cock with your slick in the process. You wonder if it’s instinctual, if he knows that this is where he should poke and that it will hurt you less if he’s well-oiled. He’s about to rut you into oblivion the instant you tell him where to shove his cock, and the prospect only sends more sap flowing down your thigh.

“There…” you stutter when he finds it, the aching spot that’s leaking profusely. He pushes the head in, not by teasing but by bullying, almost forcing it inside from how tight and unreceptive you are.

“Tighter than my fist,” is his only comment, and it makes you shudder. “I will not last long…”

You wince from the burn, but the rest of it glides in like a dream, and suddenly you’re filled, to the capacity, one could say. He grunts just from the way your womanhood is hugging him, not sure what this foreign object inside you is – is it a good thing or a threat?

“Easy then,” you breathe a huff into the sweet night air, filled with fireflies and night birds who know nothing about the fucking you’re about to go through.

He doesn’t move – inside you, that is. Outside, he crawls forward until he moulds around you, heavy body enveloping you completely. The hairs on his thighs tickle the back of your legs, his chest scrapes your back just so as he demonstrates how you belong to him in every way. But when your cunt starts to squeeze him again, he swallows thickly.

“Does this feel good to you too…?”

You catch faint confusion and concern in his voice, astonished that such a soft, frail body like yours can take his cock just like that. Little does he know you’re still adjusting to his size, thanking all the gods that he doesn’t move yet.

“Yes,” you confess because it does feel good: his thickness inside you, stretching you both gently and violently, studying how it feels to be inside a loving, wet heat.

“Then I will fuck you every day,” his lips come to brush your ear. “Many times...”

You hear yourself whimper, more humble now than ever. No man would dare to take you on all fours, but here you are, like a bought bride about to get stuffed…

He withdraws a little, asks, “Like this?” when he returns with a rough, nasty thrust. The balls meet your mound, heavy on the tender nub you’ve flicked when you’re lonely, covering your mouth while you do it. Both your hands are planted on the ground now, your legs spread before this beast, cunt filled to the brim with his cock.

“Not so rough,” you warn, and he heeds your instructions to the letter until he’s moving in and out with a slow, delicious pace that allows you to feel every thick bump of him. Soaked now down to your thighs, the sounds of your mating is utterly sloppy and slick, and of course he’s curious.

“Are you always like this…?”

“Like… what,” you huff in between the slow, torturous thrusts.

“Soft,” he rasps. “Tight… Wet like rain.”

“No. It’s just when…”

“When you want to fuck?”

You whimper for an answer, mostly because he starts to slip from the agreed sluggish pace. His cock invades you with more urgency, chasing the eruption that must be generous from those thick balls that should belong to a horse.

“I knew it…” he says dreamily behind you. “Some women want to mate with bulls...”

He punctuates his newfound pride with a full, deep thrust, and you wince.

“You’re not a–”

“Keep telling yourself that, little maiden.”

He exhales a hot smile next to your ear, and you’re neck deep in love. Your mouth hangs open, your lids half closed and fluttering from the way he pounds into your poor, abused cunt. Heavy balls slap your swollen nub with careless abandon, making you squeeze his thickness every time he hits the end of you. His grunts become more animalistic with every thrust, and your cunt is a wild thing, leaking and weeping and throbbing until you fear there’s something wrong with you – no woman is supposed to be this needy for a beast…

I’m going to come… You realize in horror as the slick sounds of fucking overthrow even the coursing roar of the waterfall. The knowledge shoots your body full of dark, hot ink; it explodes inside your core like a liquid star, throbbing through your cunt currently being ploughed like you’re nothing but a needy, sloppy hole for him. You’re swimming in so much pleasure that it’s almost painful, the revelation some secret of the gods, no doubt. 

He growls when you moan, heavy arm snaking its way around your middle to keep you in place for him. The purr is eager and low, the rumble erupts from his chest like a thick, loving volcano, a statement of how perfect you are. He nuzzles his nose into your neck and rubs his scent all over you while fucking you through it, the divine rapture that leaves your throat dry from moans. 

He doesn’t need to be told what it means when you’re crying like that: he doesn’t need to be explained that his cock is giving you ample pleasure. It’s so desperate, how much he wants to both fuck and please you, just own you and fulfill you, that you start to shake, your frail body not capable of handling the orgasm he just gave you. 

Your strength fails, and you find yourself on your elbows, cunt even more exposed to him now, the cock pistoning into you with a relentless pace. He’s like a titan upon you, taking pleasure from your quivering, weak frame and the tight wet hole that belongs to it. You’re still in rapture when he starts to sound like broken, wounded man.

“You were made for me,” he huffs. “You were made...for me…”

His voice evaporates along with your thin, adoring mewls, just before he fucks himself over the edge. You can feel the hot, thick spurts, filling you as he roars into your hair, balls pressed flush against your sex, thighs meeting yours in a moment frozen in time. 

They can probably hear him all the way to the city, hear what a cunt like yours does to an invincible beast like him… But his cries are only met with silence; the night sky looks back with disinterest, the birds continue their songs when they notice it was only the roar of a mighty beast that filled the land. Before long, he’s groaning above you, using your hole more softly; loving it until the last drop is milked. 

When he stops, his whole body is trembling from release, but you’re not given a moment of reprieve. He forces you to the ground with him on your back, the rough, thick body never leaving yours. Coarse beard chafes your neck, his body trapping you completely under him, he even opens his jaw to take your shoulder between his teeth and bites you while his cock is still pulsing fat inside you. 

“I can’t get enough of you,” he pants into your ear, angry, almost.

“Good,” you breathe a smile, but he’s not satisfied.

“You couldn’t get enough of me too… I noticed.”

“You gave me pleasure,” you agree. “Lots of it.”

“That was a lot of seed… I haven’t spilled in days.”

He huffs into your ear, astonished and proud that he could do such a thing. You feel him shift to take a better look at you, fingers arrive to graze your temple as if to make sure you’re real, as if having his cock inside you wasn’t enough proof of that. They’re a little shaky, a little uncouth, but the touch is gentle enough, and sweet.

He's boasting again perhaps, you don’t know, but you give him a soft laugh, notice how he stops breathing momentarily when hearing the bright sound.

“I am filled to the brim with you, yes… It will take a while before I can take more.”

“...You have other holes in you,” he offers after a while, quite seriously, in fact. 

“Get off me, you beast,” you huff and squirm to get out from under him, but there’s a luscious grin on your face, a smile that tells him you would more than approve of his obscene ideas later. 

“This feels good,” he murmurs into your hair. “This feels right...”

He allows you to leave from under him, only whines when his cock gets exiled from your cunt. He misses the wet heat like a newborn child misses the womb, but you need to recover from the recent invasion. Seed gushes out from your hole, making a mess on the ground as he pulls you against him, wanting to cuddle you next.

You wonder if he even knows what cuddling means as you lie there with a sticky mess between your legs and the heat of an entire sun on your cheeks. You smile into the coarse, sweaty body hair tickling your nose, deciding it doesn’t matter whether he knows or not: the most important thing is that he wants to hold you like this.

“Yes,” you smile. “This feels right…”

Something blooms in your chest. An odd flower, persistent and sweet. 

The stars above are cold but motherly as they look down on you two: born again into a world that doesn’t want either of you. The only things that accept you now are flowers, birds, the wind and the rain, bees and salty sea, but that’s aplenty. That’s more than the whole of Crete could ever give you.

“Are you thinking about your hero,” he asks above you.

“What? No…”

“Good,” he rasps, so softly now that you start to fear he’s about to cry.

You are more than capable of lying, but Theseus hasn’t crossed your mind in hours: the last time it did, the memory was received with loath and disdain. Thinking about Theseus while you’re draped all over your Bull, his seed flowing out of your womb... What a ridiculous idea. 

The reason for his hardly disguised anger is laid out plain before you: he's just jealous like any other man. Somehow, it makes you feel even more glowy inside.You’re my hero, you want to say, but have no courage to spill out the words. He was balls deep inside you mere moments ago, but telling him this intimate truth seems to be too much.

It never occurred to him, then, that you would enjoy copulating with him. He fucked you with the impression that you needed thoughts of another man to make you wet… That perhaps with the help of the image of Theseus in your mind, you were able to come with his cock inside you. 

“My Bull,” you whisper. “Tell me your name. You must have a name…?”

His breath stops only for a moment, the heart in his chest gives an arduous beat before he answers.

“Asterion.”

Starry one…

Of course.

All monsters have names, usually the opposite of what they’re claimed to be. His birth is in heaven, in the stars; he belongs to the company of heroes and gods.

“Asterion,” you whisper it out into the night air while the animal an man both find their new home in your arms. “Your birth is written in the stars. Did you even know…?”

“Does that make me a hero?” He snorts, more old wounds torn open right before your eyes. 

You wriggle yourself out of his hold, but he avoids your stare. You lift a hand to bring those beautiful Olympian eyes back to you.

“It makes you immortal.”

Perhaps you should’ve known he would be enticed with an apple instead of tethers and deals. Or with a palm, held out with no intent to strike… 

It’s lovely, how he blinks every time he’s confused. You’ve yet to see him shy, but if he ever is, this might be the moment… You even catch him swallowing under that wild facial hair, an awkward blob right after that blink when his birthright is acknowledged.

But even more dumbfounded he becomes when he realizes you’re truly and veritably admiring him. When you whisper it to him – you’re my hero – and watch something shatter in him that was supposed to wrench itself free, that’s when he’s truly granted divinity.

A hollow grows within him the moment his gaze meets hers. A chance crossing whilst collecting a rare offering of fruit laid out just for him. Most mortals wouldn’t beckon his attention, and the gods often left him just as well. He knows better than to take insult and become reckless, though… recklessness comes as easily as breathing when his stare settles on her across the glade. She twirls in silent dance, pirouetting carefully as if to avoid crushing the nature that springs up, brushing against her soles. Her voice picks up in a song when she notes the figure watching her from a distance, her cadence no less beautiful than any choir despite the flighty waver in her tone.

When the nymphs rise up from the stream to listen, he stands transfixed for a moment as they pull her in with them for a more elaborate dance, voices all melding until they break into a chorus of giggles and stories.

It should have been left at that.

She walks an earth made for her; flowers blossoming beneath her bare soles, each root extending for just a chance to brush against tender flesh, a breeze that flits gently against her hair. The daughter of Demeter, something unattainable, too precious to be dirtied by the howling abyss below her feet.

He is tethered to darkness and unknowns, an enigma with dried blood beneath his fingernails; the only songs he hears are screams. He’s since stolen flowers from the meadows she dances in. Beautiful peonies and soft green things that smell sweet. Flowers don’t bloom in the dark, they wither and dry.

Days are spent in melancholic longing, nights his roaring grief melds with the wailing of lost souls. Ugly and tainted noises that he dreams will reach her ears, that she will come to him with her lashes wet with tears, wrap him in her arms and quiet all but her own voice as she tells him that he’s more beautiful than her rivers and her blooms.

Yet, she never does.

König takes it upon himself to walk the land of mortals, teemed with life and pleasures more often now. He pulls himself from below with unnatural fire behind his eyes, a horrible, yearning abyss in place of the feathery, clumsy love that he’s watched so many others allow for themselves.

She notices him while he watches her bathe amongst the nymphs, stood upright and imposing beneath the shade of a tree. Each time, while the nymphs shy away with giggles and hands curled over their breasts, she merely keeps her eyes on him; lips-parted and pulse raging. He knows, would swear by it, that his obsession is not entirely one-sided.

Once, she chooses to wave at him, a demure flick of her wrist while his stare remains fixed upon her. The droplets of water from the curve of her neck, down to the swell of her breasts and the pebbled nipples there— down, further into the water that envelopes her and sends his mind to flicker, a roaring flame building from his chest to his groin.

All of his frustrations pale and cower at the fantasy that he just may be able to grant himself the liberty of sinking into something writhing and warm from just one, simple gesture.

He knows he’s fucked, because his first thought after the lullaby of attraction subsides is to poke her just a little; prod her and see what makes her cry the hardest, blanket her in the shadow of himself and pick her apart like a vulture to a cadaver, do things to her that no man ever has or should. It’s not right, and he has to force himself to turn away, the fabric of the veil obscuring his face as he slinks back into the dark where he belongs. Away from the untouchable maiden who seems to haunt him endlessly with her teasing.

The giggles and splashes of the nymphs whisper through the air like the chirping of birds. Though, one voice stands out above the rest of the noise, causes him to halt in his tracks.

“Why does he never speak to us?”

Her voice, so sweet, asking about him when she should be speaking of nothing but the beauty surrounding her, the warmth of the sun and never the cold darkness of the moon.

It’s eating away at him, he realizes, when he can no longer satisfy himself. Nights lain in a haze, staring up at blackened walls with his length in hand. All it takes is the memory of wet lashes and a soft smile, usually. Her beauty is enough to bring even him to his knees, yet, he finds himself instead on the brink of hysteria the first night he finds a vision of her is not sufficient enough to reach the brilliant white haze of a climax.

The thought of stealing her away from her world of beauty to drag her down into the dark with him fills him with both elation and a terrible guilt. Zeus himself is no different; the thought shouldn’t warrant a seeping coldness in his veins, nor should it have caused him to spill his seed into his hand with only a mere flick of the pad of his thumb over his tip, yet it accomplishes both. A waste, when it should be buried deep inside of his beloved.

It takes only two nights for him to plot, to have Gaia choose to favor him, and on the third day the Narcissus flower blooms, pretty and golden. It echoes false promises, softness and beauty beyond even the daughter of Demeter’s imaginations. She will hate him, she will. Her very soul will sour the moment she lays her eyes on him next, but eventually… she will come to understand, return his love with a whisper of her own. Lightly, at best, but it would still be more than he had ever known.

He watches the roots of the plant from below, a pinprick of warm light shining down. The thumps of footsteps overhead, shaking down loose soil like raindrops, giggles like crackling thunder. She’s roaming about with her nymphs again, gentle with her and all of her beauty. After watching her for so very long, he’s more than certain they will be braiding the flowers and falling asleep after fits of laughter with the taste of fruit on their tongues. Only, she’s condemned herself by being so predictable. She will fall, not into soft grasses with a woman’s arms thrown over her, but directly into his own. She won’t eat the fruit of the earth, but drink his wine and allow him to lose himself in her flesh, bedded down against the pelts of beasts and blackened out by shadows.

The wait isn’t long. Her voice breaks through the quiet of the earth below her feet, seems to light up even the space between the two of them as her footfalls halt only several paces away.

“Look at this one!,” she calls out.

Several steps follow after her as one of the ladies of the river comes to join her. He imagines the smile on his beloved’s face, the way her body curves as she kneels down to his trap and his fingers twitch in anticipation of what’s to come.

“Maybe not that one, sweet,” the nymph warns. “There are prettier ones by the bank.”

König can feel his jaw tighten, eyelids pausing to narrow up at the small light as he tries, forces himself to believe that this was fated. She wouldn’t turn away— she couldn’t.

“No... just look at it. We’ve not seen one so lovely since last spring.”

“What if someone else planted it for themselves?”

“But… I want it.”

She sounds so pitiful, so gentle, and he can feel that swell of heat curling inside of him again. The urge to simply love her feels all-consuming with each word that passes from her mouth.

The two above giggle to themselves at her mischief, before finally, the roots begin to move from a gentle tug above. In a matter of seconds, the entire plant has been uprooted. For a daughter of nature to not long for its beauty would be unrealistic, yet he still exhales his relief. The earth riots beneath the women’s feet, splintering cracks and loud discordance echo through the valley. The nymph’s shrieks join the disarray as her featherlight footfalls lead her far, far away from what belongs to him: the dark, the rot, and now her.

With so little time to react, she falls headfirst into the abyss, clutching the narcissus tightly between her soft breasts. Waiting arms are raised to the glimpse of sun and beauty to catch her as he pulls her tightly against his chest, tucks her head against a broad shoulder and grasps at her waist. Whatever he had imagined her flesh to feel like paled in comparison to her warmth, the softness that gives with each press of a digit that makes her tense beneath his touch.

She’s crying, shaking, terrified as she weakly raises her head and offers him a smile. It’s the kind of smile that screams savior, and he can’t bring himself to correct her. No one has ever looked at him with such tenderness.

Everything quiets the moment she looks up to him like that, after condemning herself to him as though she knows nothing of men and gods. She looks at him like he’s an angel, in turn he bites his tongue so hard he can feel the pinpricks of blood and soreness blossom from the wound. He knows he isn’t good, but the heavens have got their filth, too.

“Thank you.” She speaks in a whisper as the world above falls back into place, blanketing them both in shadow and the scent of soil and brimstone. Politeness seems unnecessary, now, though he places her gently onto her feet.

He’s far too mesmerized to stop himself from dropping to his knees in front of her and trailing a hand from her knee to her thigh, squeezing flesh so warm that the very feeling lingers pleasantly against his palm.

If a god couldn’t pluck him from this emptiness and set him on a right path, perhaps a goddess could, as he has always imagined. It’s only confirmed the instant he realizes she isn’t flinching away from his touch.

“I didn’t save you,” he explains calmly.

He’s struck down titans, claimed rulership over the underworld, and yet nothing has made him feel smaller than the fretful look in her eyes as she looks down to him kneeling before her like little more than a common man. As if to provide comfort, selfishly to himself, his massive hands drift higher to rest on her hips still wet with river water and blades of grass clinging to her just as he has longed to do. For what’s felt like an eternity of waiting, of pining, only to have it end with something as simple as a flower.

“I brought you here.”

She’s still beautiful when she cries; a palm is clasped over her mouth, eyes swimming as she trembles in his grip. Of course, she knows what this is about without ever having to ask, yet she still does as if to plead him to tell her that her thoughts are all wrong— that she’s safe and will return to her lovely friends, to her mother that would assuredly be worried sick and furious.

The rise to his feet feels like a mile long stretch, whilst he keeps her caged between the dirty wall and the vast expanse of chest. He shushes her with a gentle tone, wipes her tears away with the ghosting of fingertips before pushing up the veil covering his face to lie claim to her mouth as though his very life depended upon it. Perhaps it did. Though he did not fear Demeter, nor his brothers should she call upon them, he feared not having this ethereal, gentle thing at his side. He feared the creep of loneliness that ravaged his bed each night.

She sighs against his mouth, but does not reciprocate. Everything about her is tense and stressed, a wild mare preparing to kick out for the first time. His tongue lolls out to lap against her soft lips, just twice before he forces himself to part from her.

His beloved brushes away stray tears from her cheeks with the meat of her palms, shivering just a little as she tries to force herself to straighten up, appear braver despite the way she teeters on the edge of falling apart so easily before him. The heavy gaze of obsession fixed upon his face turns further predacious when she apologizes for not being able to help herself in response.

“I didn’t know it was yours,” she explains, holding out the ruined flower to him in one, shaking hand. She protests in her own way, eternally kind, but it all falls on deaf ears as he brushes the petals from her palm and takes her up into his arms again. With an arm beneath the backs of her knees and the other wrapped tightly around her middle, he leads her deeper into the underworld.

A mere taste wouldn’t do.

Her protests are nothing more than soft sniffles when he does take her to his bed of pelts, her arm even thrown over his shoulder as her body presses tightly to him. He thinks for only a moment that he could take his time, stop this all before she truly does grow to loathe him, but the descent into the bed only fortifies his resolve; his belief that this gentle woman of the earth, who smells of magnolia and clear waters belonged entirely to him. For now and forevermore.

“You are to be my wife.”

That quiets her for a moment, her eyes finally meeting his once more as he hovers over her, a palm to either side of her head. She has a mind to shyly curl her hand against her chest then, centered between her breasts which rise and fall with each flighty breath. It’s not panic, but more— curiosity, a misleading thing that he takes to be acceptance until she graces him with a mere murmur of her voice again.

“I don’t belong here.”

König knows that she doesn’t belong in a place like this, for all her grace to be lost to the cold, the rot; his kingdom is nothing but a wasteland riddled with the dead and subjects who take up the mantle of cruelty in his stead. The thought of actually allowing her to go instills rage and melancholy so quickly, he curls his fingers into the fur below to keep himself from flinching.

“You will.”

A digit reaches to trail across her bottom lip, tentative, but the need to touch overwhelms him past the point of caring for much else. To his amazement, she still does not push him away.

“How could that be?”

He doesn’t respond.

More than bedding her, a matter more pressing pushes to the forefront of his mind. Though he knows the likelihood of anyone being aware of her disappearance is nonexistent, a mere whisper from the beaks of crows by this time, he would do well to ensure that she wasn’t leaving. Just as every other soul resigned to dwell here with him, she too would remain.

“You’re famished,” he whispers the suggestion as he splays a palm out over her bare abdomen, only backing away enough to allow her a small length of space between them.

Her concerned stare shoots from his palm to his veil in an instant before she weakly nods her head and props herself up on her elbows.

“Quite… yes.”

She allows herself to be pulled into his lap without a fuss, doesn’t make mention of the hardened cock beneath her. His mind is swimming with the fantasies that kept him tame on so many nights without her as he presses his nose against her temple. A shallow intake of breath, and her lips part readily for him as he pushes the sweet pomegranate seed into her mouth, savoring the brush of her tongue against his fingertip. She eats without thought, never knowing how she’s tethered herself to his plane.

There’s an offering of sweet wine followed by a gathering of honeysuckle for her to sip the nectar from as well before he’s convinced she’s pliant enough. Despite the desire raging within him for all of this time, he would not be cruel to her. The thought of hurting this sweet, little dream doesn’t excite him. It’s her love that he wants, not her anguish.

He lies her back with sweet whispers, gentle caresses as he listens to her murmurs in response. She speaks of the stories only small creatures would know; the way the winds change and the rivers flood, the prettiest places she’s been. No fruit has ever tasted sweeter to her than the pomegranate, and nothing has ever filled him with such emotion as the moment he penetrates her.

He speaks to her through it, tries to, whilst he’s overcome with a pleasure that assuredly no other has ever had the blessing of. She affixes herself perfectly to him, clinging to him as he takes her with gentle thrusts. Gritted teeth and barely contained grunts are met with dulcet mewls as her hands reach for his. His heart aches, truly, at the knowledge that she isn’t meant for this place; his kingdom is nothing but suffering, and she belongs beneath the sun in meadows of flowers. His last thrust is deep, reminds him of the places he dares not tread often, the domains of his brothers, pillow soft clouds and a heaven far above, lost to him.

It’s her consoling him when he fills her to bursting with his seed— delicate arms curling around his head, cradling him against her breasts as she silenced the tears he hadn’t even realized he had shed. He had damned her, yet her soul had not soured; not all flowers withered in the dark.

The endless night is easier on his beloved after the first. She visits with the other souls and comes to him for comfort when the screams and cries in the darkness become too much to bear. She’s less fragile than he had anticipated when she demands he bring her home, and those demands so often end with little else than König taking her into his arms to lead her elsewhere. The underworld can be beautiful too, when seated upon a throne being hand fed by a man that knows little more than to blanket her in as much softness as he can muster. He tells her of the titanomachy, of the white tree, of anything to keep her entertained. His tongue does not shy from telling her that he loves her, too, often met with a shy glance or a soft giggle. Not outright disdain, and for now it feels enough.

She cries often, in longing for her mother and her friends, though never over this love she had never sought herself. Her loneliness only fuels her need for comfort. Selfishly, he believes that he’s saved the night she willingly wraps her arms around him, pulls him close and falls asleep nestled against his chest.

— — —

With the reliance on mortal offerings and Demeter’s anguish having been brought to light with seasons of failed harvests, it was only a matter of time before she was forced away from him. The months without her feel dreadful and empty, but he doesn’t dare disturb her while she walks the earth at her mother’s side. The agreement was beneficial for all of the gods and goddesses, and he knew better than to tread upon it by rushing to her like little more than a pleading dog. When winter took hold, bathing the lands in its icy touch and withering the plants she cherished and freezing over the rivers her nymphs played in, she would return to him as she must.

Each time is different. His beloved is not simply a thoughtless vessel as many of his subordinates. She is the most incredible thing he’s ever had the joy of meeting.

When she returns in tears, calling to him for his comfort he does not hesitate to kiss them all away and remind her that her summers will return and everything above will be just as it was on the day that he brought her below.

Sometimes, she’s angry, jealous even. She asks him often why he doesn’t come to see her while she’s away. He is her husband, after all. Was there anyone else in which he spent his nights with? Someone fairer than even she? The satisfaction of seating her on his cock, satisfying her as she does him on their shared throne far out rivals even ruling the domain itself. He would do anything to prove to her that she was his only; the sole thing he even thought of whilst her mind was filled with new songs and tales from the nymphs she spent her time away with.

Never has she returned with a gift.

Yet, she stumbles back into his realm clutching a small satchel, dripping with the scent of a juice sweet and familiar. A pleasant smile paints her features as she seats herself next to him on the throne. The bench of marble felt far too vast and dreadful to hold someone so delicate, the sight is something he’s grown accustomed to; emptiness is replaced with familiarity seeing her interact with anything here. It may not be home to her, but something in the way she looks to him— as she always had with tenderness, makes him question if a part of her sees him as home.

“I’ve brought something back for you,” she chimes as she pats her thigh.

Each time was different, but it had never been like this before.

He pulls himself to her side before slumping down to rest his head against her, tracing his fingertips along the length of her leg as his gaze drops almost sheepishly.

“Did you?”

She hums in reply, plucking one of the seeds from the satchel before slipping her hand beneath the veil to feed him. His lips part as he takes in the flavor of the aril, the honeyed taste almost akin to the look in her eyes.

“Just like…” She trails off for a moment as she lowers her head to press a kiss to the cheek of his veiled face. The delicate laugh that follows is unlike any he’s heard from her prior, it’s unique, saved solely for him.

“The six that I fed to you?” He asks her quietly, as he pulls himself away from her to meet her eyes directly. The air around them feels thick, loosely charged with a feeling that he can’t quite place; an intensity that he’s never felt before. Any groaning or wailing off in the abyss is silent now, just quiet words spoken.

Things have always felt warmer since her descent, but he’s learned to not expect anything more than she was willing to give. Still, hope cinches his heart tighter than it ever did prior. Even in battle, slaying his father alongside his brothers, he had never felt his heart race the way it does now.

She nods her head, opening up the satchel just wide enough to reveal the other five arils.

“I don’t think that I understand.”

“You should.”

He mulls over that for a moment before the fog finally clears. Any doubt that he had is remedied by a mere two words. He stares at her dumbly, searching her eyes for any hint that this is some horrible, cruel trick; that the implication is something he’s horribly misunderstood.

She couldn’t possibly come to love him… could she?

“To tie you to me,” she says softly.

The smile remains on her face when she closes the distance to kiss him. Not over the veil, but beneath it this time.