#god!ghost

The people of your village were a faithful, religious bunch.

You supposed that was a given; most people of the land you were born upon believed heavily in the gods. Deities that reigned the celestial firmament above, benevolent, malevolent, and indifferent all occupying the same space and playing with the lives of mortals like the cloth and straw doll your mother had passed down to you from her mother. Rituals for good harvest and rainy seasons, for prophecies and favor, anything you could think of, there was a ritual dedicated to it and its patron god.

You did not believe in the gods.

There wasn’t a particular event or reason that led to your faith dwindling. In fact, you weren’t sure you ever believed in them to begin with. You went to the same temples, performed the same rituals, but that’s all they ever seemed to be for you. Performance.

Acts in a stage play and the sacrifice of expensive wine and cheese to a god that might simply take them and leave your fields to waste under the unforgiving sun occupied the same region in your brain. People pretending for the sake of entertaining others, attributing weather- and season-tracking and coincidence to the divine mercy of a bodiless entity.

Instead of looking to the clouds, testing the strength of the wind, your father would sit your family down, share your meager portions with the one you grew up knowing as Ghez to bless your home, and then leave it out while you slept. By morning, one of your brothers would have licked the bowls and plates clean. It was the one time they found the respect within themselves to also wash the dishes and leave them out to dry.

At least the food didn’t go to waste, even if Vaso never thanked your mother for the second portion he stole, or Silas goaded about how Ghez loved his ‘delicious’ creation of over-oiled fish slathered on burnt bread. You saw them for who they were: greedy little cretins taking advantage of your parents’ piety.

You silently celebrated when Vaso married and moved out to live with his wife’s parents. One less mouth to feed, even if it meant one less hand to aid the fields.

Silas, of course, picked up the slack of stealing the offerings that came with Vaso’s leaving. It was tolerable, though, given you had more food to go around now. Once-a-week sacrifices could be handled.

At least, until your parents’ fields burned down.

It happened in the night, long after the moon — Kaith — had risen to take her wife’s place in the sky. You weren’t the first to wake, but the acrid stench of smoke eventually reached you. By the time you’d gotten out of bed, bleary-eyed and confused, your parents, brother, and neighbors were already running around frantically, carrying wooden pails full to spilling with water. They threw them uselessly onto the fires, desperate to extinguish what the flames had already scorched to the ground.

All you could do was stand and watch, a rock lodged in your throat, disbelief and shock keeping you locked in place.

When Kaith began giving way to Emisa, your mother collapsed to her knees, weeping into her blistered and splinter-pricked palms. Your father tilted his head back and asked the gods why, but you knew the answer.

Looking upon the land that was once fertile, once swaying with golden stalks of wheat, only you acknowledged the truth.

It had nothing to do with the gods. There were no gods, no higher divinity that deigned your family a humorous target for their whims. It was merely nature, its cruel design. Wheat was dry, easy to ignite, especially in the height of summer and its harsh heat. All it took was a small spark, an ember jumping off a wanderer’s torch, and gone was your livelihood.

Vaso came as quickly as he could, a day’s travel by foot. When he saw what was left, the soot that clung to the facade of your abode, you witnessed him break for the first time in your life. Not fully, a crack in his bulwark-heart, but it was enough. Enough for him to insist your family move in with his, claiming his home had more than enough space, that the gods would take mercy upon them after going through such a hardship.

But there were no gods. Not here.

You’d never say that aloud — your mother had suffered enough heartbreak as is — but it was one of the few truths this world had to offer to you.

Your family opposed your decision when you said you’d be moving to another village to find work, but they couldn’t stop you, much as they wished to. There was the undeniable fact that you’d be a burden, and while Vaso objected, you saw the relief in his eyes. You didn’t blame him, knowing the weight that lifted when there wasn’t need for another plate at the table.

Very little was ever given to you in life.

So, you learned to take.

𓍝

The next man that stumbled into your den reeked of cheap liquor and sick, forehead sticky with sweat, old and new, and teeth yellowed on the blood of spoilt meat.

He dropped to his knees a few feet from the kline you lounged upon, mere inches from the flowing amorgina of your palla that poured over the edge of your uncomfortable bed like the golden blood that filled the veins of the blessed. You cringed internally, resisting the urge to yank the cloth away, lest he spit up something unholy onto it. No, a goddess in the mortal realm was to act with grace and poise, never to look down upon her subjects.

Even if said subjects made your stomach churn with disgust.

“O’, divines!” He lamented, far too loudly for the small area you occupied. “Bless me! I seek your boon!”

Aloof, you feathered your fingers along the silk drape that hung over your kline, swept across the headboard to stay out of your way whenever you wished to entertain patrons. Incense smoke wafted in white trails from the thymiaterion you had situated in the corner of the room, saturating the wood and plush fabrics with mandrake and myrrh. Candles sat in small insets in the walls and littered across the room, their wax slowly dripping down the stalks in rivers of liquid bone.

Pristine and proper, every bit enchanting as the stories claimed a god’s residence should be, simple or not. There were rules to follow, traditions to adhere to.

It all gave you a massive headache, pulse pounding against the inside of your skull by the end of the day. Unfortunately, the common folk tended to need an image to believe in, something tangible for proof of magnificence, even if they found it in such mundane things as candles. Those who wished to believe would find their faith in anything.

“Boon?” You repeated lazily. “What boon?”

“My wife, Merope,” he sneered as he said her name, the taste of ash soiling his intention, revealing his desires before he said them aloud. “She sleeps with another.”

Ah, yes. A scorned lover, come to seek the aid of their local goddess. Only the nth one you’d seen today alone. You supposed it made sense, but you wanted something interesting for once, someone who wanted more than petty revenge or riches or sex.

Still, you grit your teeth and smiled amiably. “You wish for her to speak honestly, admit to her sin?”

His head lifted, as your smile faltered. “No,” he rasped. “I want her dead.”

Oh, there’s something new; ask and ye shall receive. 

“Death, eh?” You echoed, twirling a dangling thread of beads around your pointer finger. “I fear you’ve come to the wrong god, little one.”

He shook his head vehemently. “I care not who I come to, only that you grant me this one wish. I’ll never ask for another thing again, never, I swear on it. Not a word of complaint, I’ll become your eternal disciple. Please, I bid you, please.”

Lies, lies, lies, you thought, resting your cheek upon your arm. No matter how he swears, you know he’ll crave more as soon as he gains a hint of power, the flagrant belief that he could control the gods if only he screams his demands loud enough. The gods bend at the knee to one pitiful mortal, because he opened his rank jowls and commanded it of them, some King of Sanctity.

But, it was something new, something unique. A welcome change.

If he could afford it.

You swept a hand towards the bronze bowl residing on the floor in front of your kline, wearing a look of purposeful disinterest. “The tithe.”

He paused, and the ruddy, drunken stain on his cheeks paled some. “I– I haven’t anything to give. I spent my last coin on– on wine.”

You sighed and pouted, brows furrowing with plastered-on sympathy. “Then, I cannot help you. Without your mulct, I fear there’s not much I can do.”

“There has to be something,” he pleaded, the alcohol clouding his mind further. “Other than coin. Anything, I’ll give you anything. I– I’ll save up, if I have to. I just– I just– hic, I just want her gone a-as soon as possible.”

Mournful, sorrowful soul. Who would you be, if not someone who sought to aid her people in any way possible? “Coin is not the only offering I accept.”

His blabbering stopped, and he looked up at you with wide, bloodshot eyes. “It’s not? I– I have… I have the– hic– the leftover wine? It’s… it’s not much, but–”

Gods, your head hurt. Listening to him drone on and on, the dense malodour of the mildly hallucinogenic incense you infused the walls with, it only made the confounded throbbing in your scalp worsen. “Yes, yes, that’ll do,” you quickly agreed to shut him up. “It won’t be enough to kill her, don’t misunderstand, dear one. But, I can… frighten her a bit. Set her right. When you have the coin, you can always return.”

The man hesitated, clearly mulling it over. You waited patiently, as patient as you could be, when you knew that you were the only god he could go to, as far as he was concerned. None of the others roamed the land. They kept to their realms, their own territories, bearing little interest in the critters that crawled over their toes like lowly ants, ticklish but never truly worrisome, unless they unintentionally left sugary honey to rot upon the marble of their opulent floors.

Assuming the gods were even real to begin with, that is.

He seemed to realize it, too.

“Y-Yes, okay, yes. I accept.”

A wolfish grin spread across your lips, delighted for more reasons than one. Yes yes yes, finally, you could get rid of him and guzzle some wine to forget your woes. Besides, scaring someone into compliance wasn’t the worst thing you’d done.

You knew what it took to survive.

“By week’s end, your troubles will be solved, o’ zealot of mine,” you promised. “Go, now. Rest under Her moon.”

“Thank you, thank you, oh, thank you!” He proclaimed, stumbling forth to take your hand and smatter wet kisses along the valleys and hills of your knuckles. Repulsion surged inside your gut, but you ground your molars and held back the sneer that threatened to mar your countenance. “You have but a loyal, devoted follower for the rest of my life.”

You damn near grimaced, yanking your hand from his sweaty mitts. “Yes, of course. Your goddess thanks you for your patronage.”

Finally, he seemed to get the fucking hint. He continued to lay down the gratitude nice and thick, leaving behind his half-drank bottle of wine on his way out. As soon as he was gone, you groaned and melted into the kline, throwing an arm over your eyes.

Fuck, you were so tired. You came far too close to snapping at… whoever it was that left mere moments ago, risking the carefully crafted image you spent too much time and energy curating to be risking like this over a headache of all things. Day in and day out, you sat here, making your hips and back ache from remaining so stagnant in one position for hours on end. You listened to people bitch and moan about the most mundane of things, non-issues that they blew out of proportion in their minds and came wailing to you.

You weren’t a damn therapist, for fuck’s sake, but try telling that to people who saw no difference between gods and philosophers. Whatever. Day was over, you could relax and try to forget everything, drown yourself in shitty wine and pretend you weren’t the scammer that the voice in the back of your head asserted you were.

No. You were doing this to survive. To keep the burden off your family.

It was the only way.

Exhaling heavily from your nose, you sat up and reached for the bottle, glaring at the rim of it. As tempting as it was to chug it straight, you weren’t keen on tasting that man’s spit and who knows what else, especially after he slobbered all over your hand, which you wiped absentmindedly on the lap of your dress. Instead, you reached for the goblet you had tucked away under your seat, pouring yourself a healthy, healthy serving of the violet liquid.

It went down like acid, acrid and acerbic, stinging the entire way, but you gulped greedily regardless. It was fucking rancid, but it was something you could put into your stomach. You dared not touch the scant few coins you accrued since morning, knowing they belonged in the satchel looped to your belt.

Cheapskate that you were, you had no intentions on using the lucre. It’d be going into the chest you had tucked away at home, shrouded under a floorboard that needed a special touch to come loose. The imaginary sound of metal chiming as the coins fell into the box rang through your mind, and the mental tally of your wealth ticked up, encouraging your departure from this crypt.

Despite how you presented yourself — modest, comfortable, clean — you weren’t rolling in as much capital as you desired.

You did well to hide it from the people of your village, though. It wasn’t any of their business how much you earned, all that mattered was the image you put forth. A goddess in her prime, bored of the celestial and coming down to earth to share her benevolence with the people that worshiped her. Pristine clothes, an encouraging, but not desperate need for donations. Favoring those that give. Tit-for-tat, balance, that sort of thing.

As far as you were concerned, it worked. You had the people of the hamlet fooled, hook, line, and sinker. You had regular patrons, folks who came to pray at your foot, mouthing their desires to you, lighting incense, sprinkling the little money they had into your bronze collection dish.

You thanked them, kissed the foreheads of weans, and of course, provided services.

Most were benign, standard. Wishing for fertile lands (you stole cow manure from a neighboring farm and scattered it across the designated habitué’s lands), begging for a close love’s good health after they fall ill (you broke into the medicine woman’s shop in the most dire of cases to snatch a bottle of tonic to provide, making sure to replace the bottle and decorate the neck of the glass you stole with seashells and the bone fragments of small animals tied to a cord).

If you had to fall to unsavory ways to get what you needed, then you would, reasoning that you were doing good on the promises you made. You weren’t a bad person, not in your opinion. It’s not like you took people’s money and ran for the hills.

Anytime you heard of another thief having been caught and punished, you never worried, because you weren’t a thief. In your mind, your setup was a business. They paid for labor, and you delivered, merely using the guise of divinity to make your occupation more enticing to potential customers. It wasn’t your fault that the people had blind faith in your supposed mythos, you didn’t tell them what to believe and what not to believe. You merely found benefit in their confident trust in the gods.

Scammers, swindlers, raiders, robbers — you were nothing like them. You gave back to the community, and in return, you reaped the rewards for your work.

So, this wine? It was rightfully yours.

Avoiding sniffing it, you poured the rest of it, lifted it, and threw it back, swallowing through the cheap liquid quickly. A full-body shudder rippled through you afterwards, your tastebuds flaring. You’d eaten rotting fruits that tasted better than this.

You set down the empty goblet and bottle on the kline, smacking your lips at the vaguely moldy aftertaste. It made you feel sick, but you kept it down, beating your sternum to ensure it stayed there. It wasn’t a goddess’ place to ‘waste’ the ‘gifts’ of her people, sour or not.

Hopefully, the walk home would settle your stomach enough for you to scarf down a decent dinner. Last time you went to bed on nothing but booze, you had the townsfolk fearing for their lives, careful with their words to avoid their patron goddess’ wrath.

Stripping off the clothing you wore, you hid it behind the kline and changed it for a simple tunic, something distinctly… cheaper, that didn’t resemble your the costume you donned day in and day out. You ruffled your appearance as a precaution, breathed deep, grabbed the pouch of coins you’d collected from the day, and exited the small den you’d claimed as your temple.

The curtain swayed shut behind you and the coins jingled quietly on your hip, interrupting the otherwise serene night. As you walked, you pulled out the various pins and barrettes you’d carefully styled into your hair that morning, groaning at the release of tension on your scalp. Now that your hair wasn’t being torn out and you had fresh air to clear your lungs, your headache had lessened.

A timid, tepid breeze ruffled your skirt and combed through your mussed locks, cooling the thin layer of sweat that’d been clinging to your lower back since noon. Compared to the stifling, minuscule structure you occupied every damned day, this was a blessing.

Summer was quickly approaching its peak. You wondered how your folks’ new farm was coming along, if it’d survive the blistering heat this year. You hoped it would.

The shade of the forest eclipsed the moon as you entered it, your well-worn path fitting your feet perfectly. You preferred going between the trees to get to your abode, feeling less stressed that anyone could spot you and call you out as a fraud. No real goddess lived on the mortal plane, that was beneath any deity.

But you were no deity, not now, under Kaith’s night, her seeking eye. You were just a woman, tired from her day’s work, yearning for warm food and a cozy bed.

Your walk was calming, serene. Your own company, free from the stress of waiting for your next patron, for the next pitiful soul to beg for your assistance. Maybe Kaith was watching you, too, lending her mellow light to illuminate the dirt of your road most taken. The thought amused you. The moon was simply the moon, hovering in the sky, cold and dead.

As you walked, you tried to plan out how exactly you were going to make good on your promise to… whatever your last patron’s name was. You needed some sort of warning message, some subtle yet clear way to scare her into being loyal — or, preferably, into leaving her wretch of a husband. You never promised you’d spook her into falling back into his lap, meek and faithful, just that you’d ‘set her right’.

Maybe you’d leave a bird’s skeleton surrounded with wilted flowers on her nightstand. Rotted love; an omen to either replant the seeds of her heart in the putrid garden she’d spent her years managing, or tear the weeds up by the root and find a better place to sprout new buds.

Hopefully, it’d suffice. There wasn’t much you could do as a mortal, so you had to improvise.

Your sandals crunched leaves underfoot, dried and brittle after having fallen from their branches long ago. Whatever wind managed to make it through the tangle of trees had nudged them into your way, a satisfying sound to spend some effort creating, a mindless count to see how many you could crush before you reached home.

Perhaps, you paid too much attention to them.

Minutes too late, you discerned that something was wrong. Extremely wrong.

The sounds of the forest — the buzz of nocturnal insects and chirps of crepuscular critters awakening for the night — had all gone silent. Not a breath, not a cheep, nothing.

The hair on the back of your neck rose as you stopped, cautiously glancing around you. Beyond the dulled yellow of your path and a ring of maybe ten feet around you, you could see nothing. The wooded beasts that dug their roots into soft soil darkened what hid behind them too much to pry out any details.

Branches transformed into clawed, mangled fingers before your eyes; shadows grew into monsters with wet teeth and starving stomachs.

It’s not real, you attempted to convince yourself. Just my imagination.

Then, you saw it.

A face, narrowly breaching the line between what you could see and what you couldn’t, the space between planes.

A wolf.

Its jowls were drawn back into a snarl, muscles twitching and brows knitted as it stared you down with unwavering, unblinking focus. Its eyes were darker than a moonless, starless night, pitch black voids that sank deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit. A skull-like pattern marked its face, an omen of death that anybody could understand.

You’d never seen a wolf in person — they didn’t inhabit the areas you lived in, preferring the colder north regions. You knew they were described as being large, much bigger than the standard hunting dog kept by many, but the wolf in front of you put those descriptions to shame.

The creature towered over the domain it occupied, formidable and unearthly, unnatural. Were you to guess, you’d estimate that its shoulders came to your chest, maybe more. Likely more.

Which meant that it could very, very easily glut itself upon you in just a few bites.

One cautious, slow step back from you was matched by one step forward by it. Strutting into the light, you could see the patterns on its face — the pitch black of its fur, contrasted by the startlingly skull-like markings around its eyes and snout. You tried to swallow, but your dry throat only stuck to itself, leaving your breath shaky and struggling to get through. Your ribs threatened to break under the pressure of your suffocating lungs, cave in under the fear that sat on your chest like a crushing, bruising weight.

You didn’t know what to do. You’d never been taught how to handle a wolf, because they’d never been a threat to you, your land, your home. Not until now.

Heart pounding in your chest, you dared not look away from it, dared not blink. You knew that if you did, if you took your trembling eyes off it for a second, you were dead, gone.

Don’t run, don’t react. Don’t give it a reason to lunge and attack.

Fuck, what were you supposed to do?

“Shh,” you tried, shaking hands raising in a placating motion. “I-It’s okay.”

You didn’t know if you were trying to soothe it or yourself.

You just— you just had to stay calm. Stay calm.

As it stalked forward, a low rumble rattled in its chest. You swore you could feel it travel through the ground and vibrate up your legs through your heels, the noise deep and threatening. It made your heart skip a frantic beat, the muscle straining to keep up with the tsunami of cortisol consuming you like a flame.

You weren’t far from home; if you could make it there, you could run for it and (hopefully) get inside before the wolf caught you, slamming and locking the door in its face. Then, you’d be safe.

But you had to make it there first.

Pulse racing, you continued to slowly back up, inch by painful inch, breath barely gracing your lungs before it was rushed back out. It followed, always maintained the same distance, teeth wet and eager to sink into your feeble existence.

Fine, this was fine, you were alright. One step at a time, and you’d be—

It barked, and panic won over logic.

You spun on your heel and darted in a random direction, any direction, feet numb as they thudded against the ground, carrying you as fast as they could. Branches and bushes snapped past you, latching onto the short sleeves of your tunic, the skirt that now only hindered your movements, any fragment of exposed skin. They tore into them, but you could hardly feel the sting, unable to mind the sharp bite of thorns in the dense undergrowth that you’d never explored before, never cleared.

All your strength was focused on sprinting, breaking through low-hanging branches and silky shadows. They, too, fled from the beast tracking you, tracing the footsteps you left in your terrified haste.

Spindly hands clawed at your form, hindering your frenzied escape. Even when their arms snapped from the force of you pushing through them, the trees they belonged to cackled, leaves rustling like deafening applause in a colosseum. Hundreds of spectators hungry to witness the beast chasing you down finally catch you, latch its salivating maw around your throat and squeeze until the bone snapped.

Your lungs hurt, ice scorching down your esophagus, the very air you depended on turning against you. Your legs ached, muscles unused to the effort, the strain, you were putting them through. You played at being goddess, not athlete.

And that would be your downfall; a fool who believed herself above the rest, never realizing the fire that kept her afloat had already extinguished.

Your foot caught on an upraised root, and you went down hard, yelping as you hit the ground at an awkward angle. You barely processed the pain, adrenaline forcing you to wriggle your foot loose and get back up to keep running.

Except, when you tried to place weight on your left foot, white-hot agony raced up your leg.

Tumbling, you let out a withered sob as you clutched your calf, bringing it closer to your body. Your ankle was swollen, undoubtedly sprained, if not broken. Useless for running.

You jumped when you heard the sound of a growl, and looked up to see the wolf lazily stepping over the same root that had taken you down.

Tears welled in your eyes, and you knew the truth.

You’d reached the end of your line.

Still, you begged. You were only human, after all. Was it not in a mortal’s nature to plead to higher beings to spare their lives?

“Please,” you wept. “Please, don’t, please.”

The wolf did not listen, inching closer to your broken form. Unable to run from it any longer.

You tried to push yourself back with your hands and good leg, fighting to put that much more space between you, but it was futile. Your back bumped into the trunk of a tree, and immovable wall, and your time had come.

The wolf closed the distance, slow and steady, coming to hover over you. Its maw opened, razor sharp teeth ready to tear you to pieces as you stared death in the face and whimpered pathetically.

You were no goddess, after all. Nothing but a girl who’d gotten too full of herself, succumbing to her own hubris.

It came close, hot breath coasting across your cheeks, and you squeezed your eyes shut, awaiting the woe of being devoured.

But—

No pain came.

You pried an eye open when you didn’t feel the anticipated pain, and a different kind of horror dawned upon you.

The wolf’s face was morphing, changing. Golden light shone through the ruptures that formed in its fur, withering away the countenance it donned in favor of what you realized was its true appearance. The skull painted onto its face stretched and began to protrude, expanding as it grew off its head. It mutated, its resemblance to a wolf’s being ditched in exchange for some other creature’s. The canines extended into long, sharp points, while the other teeth drew back, flattening into a smooth curve along the maxilla.

From its forehead, antlers sprouted, rising and branching out, a tree bathed in sunlight reaching for the ephemeral star. They surged upwards and out, impossibly big, the bones pining to blanket the expanse of the sky behind them. Arrowheads and feathers hung by twine drooped from them, beads that clicked together like teeth snapping shut. By the time they ceased forming, they stood strong and regal, their shape revealing exactly what the skull belonged to.

Who it belonged to.

The elk king, master of the forests and mountains, the dominion over wildlife.

You, who thought yourself at the top of the food chain. You grazed too much on refined grasses and meat and wine and saw yourself as invulnerable, untouchable, when no huntsman came to feast upon your meat and use your fur for a blanket. A delusion, a fantasy brought down by the true king that arrived to claim his quarry.

Sion himself.

Breathless, you whispered in revelation, “The Hunt…”

He huffed a laugh, the rest of his body still morphing, disfiguring to redraw itself in the shape of a man. A god, larger than life, than people, than you. “Rec’gnize me now, do ya, godling?”

His voice seemed like both a whisper and a booming echo, bouncing off the woods and spoken directly inside of your head.

Your lower lip trembled as you stared past the empty eye sockets of the elk skull he wore, an inky numbra peering right back at you. In the night, it was too difficult to see the true hue of his gaze, but perhaps there was none; perhaps it had always been an abyss, designed to drown the misbehaving, the cruel, in their worst nightmare.

“Li’l treat,” he rasped, growled, the words reverberating through your very bones, turning your heart’s stutter into a broken pulse. “Can’ wait t’ eat ya.”

“Ye’re scarin’ the wee thing, Si,” another spoke, causing you to jolt.

Footsteps crunched to your left, signaling an arrival. You wanted to turn and look, but you couldn’t take your eyes off the predator in front of you.

“Should be ‘fraid, ‘f she knows whot’s good f’ ‘er.”

A man — tall, impossibly so — stepped behind the Hunt, filling your peripheral. Like his counter, he donned a skull for a mask, though his was that of a stag’s. His antlers were covered in flora; flowers and tiny, creeping ivy and herbs that filled the air with their fragrance. Freshly wetted soil, growth blooming, then decaying.

Basil, rosemary, a spice you couldn’t place. Something otherworldly.

If the man hovering over your trembling, battered body was the Hunt…

Then, the other must be—

“Aye,” he confirmed, glowing cerulean hues drowning you in their delight from the depths of the skull’s eye sockets. “Iain, a’ yer service. But ye can jus’ call me Johnny.”

Sion snorted. You, meanwhile, were frozen by shock.

The Hunt and the Harvest.

They were the gods that maintained balance over nature, over flora and fauna. Sion kept the ecosystem thriving, fed the creatures and took their lives to keep the cycle stable, the wheel of life, ever rotating. If humans overhunted, glutted themselves too much on meat and sinew and bones, he guided the game to untouched, unreachable lands to recover their numbers. When an overabundance of prey grazed the grass to soil, he brought in predators to wean their numbers.

Iain was to thank for keeping said soil healthy and plantlife blooming. He aided farmers when it came to growing crop — or hindered them, if they displeased the god in some way. He sprouted forests wherever he deemed best, and showed fire where to burn the old so the new could flourish.

They were real. Gods were real. The Hunt, the Harvest, the others, they had always been there the whole time, and you were a fool to deny it.

And now, they’d come to claim their prize.

Apologies and pleas spilled from your wobbling lip sooner than you could begin to think them over.

“Please,” you lamented, hysterical and beyond incoherent. “I never— it was— I’m sorry.”

It all came out in a muddled sob, your vision blurred with tears that hung heavy on your lashes, then fell like dropped stones. They splattered on the back of your hands, fingers curled in the fabric of your dress. You weren’t sure yourself what you were beseeching, it’d be unreasonable to think they could understand whatever nonsense poured from you.

What were you supposed to say? What could you say to excuse your blasphemy? The certainty you clung to that there was no higher being to catch and punish you collapsed, imploding under its own falsity.

Though you didn’t believe the stories as a child, you grew up with tales of how merciless they were. They didn’t take kindly to sacrilege, to their names being scratched out from history and rewritten under fantasy. The penalty for irreverence depended on which god was slighted, but forgiveness was never on the list, never a possibility.

You were nothing more than a foolish mortal whose arrogance would be her downfall. For all the pride you had, you still ended up here, sat beneath the angered deities you’d denounced. They were here to make an example of you. The little fraud that claimed the same godhood you so insisted did not exist to swindle the desperate of their coin for your own benefit.

A pathetic rat, you wept and begged, no better than those you’d turned your nose up at before.

Iain crouched before you, shushing you as if you were a babe. Warm, rough hands cupped your cheeks, encouraging you to lift your chin and gaze into his bottomless blues.

“Och, none o’ tha’ noo’, lassie,” he crooned, swiping his big thumbs over your face to catch the droplets that had stained them, though more only rushed forth to replace them. “We’re no’ gonnae hurt ye, hen.”

“Y-You’re not?” You stammered, sucking in shaky, choppy breaths.

He grinned at you, brighter than the sun at Her peak, and shook his head. “’Course no’. Would ne’er hurt our wee doe.”

At that, your brows drew together “What?”

“Dinnae have ta worry ‘boot anythin’, doe,” he murmured sweetly, and a different kind of sinking feeling told hold of your insides.

Unlike the dread of death, this was heavier, unsettling. You couldn’t place it, couldn’t understand why your stomach twisted over itself, tying knots in your intestines. Iain assured they weren’t going to harm you, you should have been elated, kissing their feet and thanking them for their mercy.

But he looked at you with a hunger not unlike that of a starving beast’s. Saliva dripped off sharp fangs, each lapped at by a tongue ‘til sparkling white, gleaming under Kaith’s moonlight.

When you glanced towards the Hunt, you found a similar famishment there. They were parched, and looked at you as if your very blood was the lifesaving water they needed to survive. They’d drink you dry, suck every cell from your veins until the thin tubes stuck together, sapped flat. Wrists raised in supplication to the very gods you forsake, at last giving after all your years of taking and taking and taking.

Balance had to be maintained. Your hubris tipped the scales too far towards entropy, urging chaos and destruction sooner than it was due.

The scales must be fixed.

A condescending pat to your cheek startled you out of your sightless stare, and you watched in confusion as the Harvest squatted at your side.

Iain — Johnny — slipped his arms under your knees and around your back, the man lifting you from the damp earth without so much as a grunt.

Your heart leapt to your throat. On instinct, you threw your arms around his shoulders, hands interlocking into a knuckle-thinning grip; you’d never been fond of not having your feet on solid ground.

“What are you—”

“Cannae very well walk oan tha’ hurt leg o’ yers, can ye?”

You supposed not, but— “Where are you taking me?”

Sion tsked. “Chatty one, ain’ ya?”

Your teeth clacked loudly as you snapped your jaw shut. Ia— Johnny scolded Sion, telling him off for spooking you. ‘Jus’ a wee fawn, Si, ye need ta be gentle wi’ ‘er.’

Their conversation sounded jumbled to your ears, shorthand and inside jokes exchanged with an ease you could never dream of keeping track of.

Had you not known better, you would have assumed they were… normal men. They bantered like you’d seen your brothers do, or your father and his best friend. They laughed, and it sounded simultaneously human and seraphic, a harp’s strings plucked.

Were it not for their size, the subtle inhumanness that hovered at the edges of their immense selves, the little signs that screamed wrong wrong wrong, you’d have never guessed. At least, not quickly.

You wondered how long it would have taken you, if you’d met them in the cobbled streets of the market in the next village over, if you’d struck up a conversation, unknowing of their status. Would you treat them as you had any other? Ask them where they came from? Hint at the small temple on the edge of the town nearby that gave blessings for the right price?

There was a saying for those who overestimated their own cleverness, you were sure. Philosophers who thought themselves smarter than mathematicians. The doctor that dismissed a woman’s plights. The emperor unaware of the edge of his most loyal soldier’s blade hanging over his head.

You understood, now, how they couldn’t see their own conceit. How you hadn’t seen your own.

The forest thinned, trees spreading, shrinking into saplings, sprouts, and shrubs. Bit by bit, the space grew recognizable to you, until you connected the dots.

Your home? Why take you here? How did they know where it was?

“Wh—“ your voice cracked, forcing you to start over. “Why are you taking me here, J-Johnny?”

It felt so wicked to refer to him by anything other than Iain, or the Harvest. The familiarity was unearned, improper. He didn’t answer you. You turned to his other half, doubtful he’d provide a response.

“Sion?”

“Pr’fer Simon, whelp.”

Simon.

Such a human name for a being as far from humanity as could be. Johnny and Simon, both so… normal.

Nothing about this was normal.

Like you suspected, he, too, remained mute on their intentions with your domicile. Your mouth twitched. A frustration trickled in the pit of your stomach, yet you would never dare voice it to them, let alone blame them for it.

You were an observer, trapped in your own bones.

The walking stones you’d placed oh-so long ago leading to your home clicked under their feet as they meticulously stepped on each one, as if it were a rite of some kind, a requirement. Not even you did that, not after you’d grown used to the rocks that’d been worn down by your own sandals over the years.

“Recommend ye close yer eyes, doe,” Johnny warned you.

Panic flared. Never take your eyes off of a predator. “Why?”

You could hear the grin in his voice. “’S no’ a pleasant trip fer ye mortals.”

Trip? What trip? What was he talking about?

Simon pushed open your front door, opening the egress into the pitch black interior of your home, a yawning abyss. Johnny stepped forward, approaching it with confidence. Despite his warning, you kept your eyes wide open, confused and frightened by what he said.

You tried, at least.

His foot crossed the threshold, and a blinding flash of light forced you to bury your face into the crook of his neck with a strangled croak.

A suffocating wave of dizziness and nausea overwhelmed you, leaving you heaving and digging your nails into his nape. He cooed at you teasingly, his hand smoothing up and down your side. When you spun the other way suddenly, he merely leaned over a smidge so you could unload the meager contents of your stomach, putrid wine burning with acid far worse coming up than it had been going down.

“Warned ye, doe,” he chided smugly, more amused by your misery than concerned.

You groaned, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wet with excessive spit and the foul aftertaste of bile and spoiled, fermented grapes.

Unperturbed, Johnny stepped over the mess you made and continued toward… somewhere, wherever the two gods were taking you. You were too busy stewing in your regret of not heeding his warning to pay it much mind, afraid of reaping the same consequence again.

The whole way there, he spoke to you, words that fizzled in your brain like the bubbles in a stone pine drink that’d been forgotten and left to brew for too long.

In this hollow void they traversed, there was nothing but them. There was no sound of their footsteps, no smell, only stagnant air that led you to believe that they’d taken you into a pocket of emptiness, a hallowed ground that all life avoided. No wind swept through to brush against your skin, there was no warmth and no cold.

Nothing but them. That was all you had here in this accursed place.

Then, as quickly as you were subjected to the abyssal torment of nullity, you were slammed with a heat unlike any other, followed by an explosion of everything.

You gasped for air, and tasted sweet florals on the fresh current, so different to the stifling threat of fading away you’d been traipsed through. You smelled herbs and plants and a faint musk, like spices and leather in the process of being tanned and flora clinging to walls.

Your lashes fluttered open, and you saw exactly that.

Vines grew upon marbled, colossal walls — colossal to you, anyway — decorated with blooming sprouts and buds. They twisted and flourished, thriving under the touch of the Harvest himself, unsurprisingly.

In fact, dozens of growths littered the area; you noticed more and more as you blinked away the murk of ill that had faded at last, spotting countless planted flowers and foliage everywhere. Huge, clay pots on the floor, a basket on a low table, leaves that hung over shelves attached to walls. More than you could count in a single room alone. Dozens of species than you’d ever seen in you life, more than the forest you called home could provide nourishment for.

Two large windows allowed a bright, white light to bleed in and illuminate it all in an ephemeral glow, utterly mesmerizing, enough to have you hypnotized. From where Johnny held you in his arms, you couldn’t see anything through the windows other than the light, though some instinctual part of you knew that whatever lied beyond their sparkling glass would put the greatest poets to shame.

You didn’t see the source of the leather-like scent, but you knew it was nearby, enough to identify the bark, the tannins, the Hunt used to tan it, if you knew the names.

A sitting room, the main area where they’d reside and spend their time, given they weren’t performing their duties as gods.

It struck you quite hard that this was their house.

They brought you to a sacred territory, one that belonged to them.

To gods.

Oh, gods.

You were in their realm; the land of the deities. As a mortal.

So far from home that it was on an entirely separate plane, one you could not reach on your own.

You were well and truly ensnared, limbs wrapped in rope made of the softest material and terror. A prisoner, an insect at their mercy.

Delicately, Johnny lowered you to the floor, hands on your waist to keep you steady as you found your footing on the beautifully dyed and woven rug laid out on the marble stone below. He made no comment on the way you continued to grasp onto to his shoulders for support and avoided putting weight on your left leg, hands shaking harshly, just smirked knowingly at you. It was better than him teasing you for it.

It took much effort to loosen the joints in your fingers and release him, a task more difficult than you were willing to admit to them or yourself. Still, his big, rough palms remained on your hips, squeezing the plush skin hidden by your clothing.

“Welcome home, lass,” he said, and your heart dropped to your heels.

The blood in your veins ran cold, rushing away from your head to weigh heavily in your gut, pinning you to the floor; a fragile butterfly’s wings nailed to wood to display the colors you survived by hiding. Your ears rang and fingertips tingled, nerves misfiring as you replayed his words over and over in your head.

Welcome home.

Welcome home.

Welcome home.

“What?” You asked, unable to lift your voice above a whisper.

His digits massaged your body, shamelessly feeling you up while you were frozen in disbelief.

“Welcome home,” he repeated. “Where ye’ll be livin’, now.”

It didn’t make sense. What was he talking about? You didn’t live— you couldn’t live here, in the realm of the gods, in their home. You were mortal, this was wrong.

“No,” you choked out. Then, more firmly, “No! No, no no no, you— you can’t— I can’t stay here, take me back! You can’t keep me here!”

“Can do anythin’ we wan’ with ya, pet,” Simon growled out, dipping so far forward that his mask nearly knocked with your forehead.

You jerked backwards into Johnny, then tried to writhe out of his hold, clawing to get his pawing hands off you.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” you wheezed, mind fraying under the knowledge of where you were. If you spent too long in the realm of the gods, it’d shred you to pieces, rend you apart from tip to toe. Mortals could not safely exist in this realm, not for long, and those that tried?

They never returned in one piece.

“Please,” you pleaded, sharp gasps making you stumble over your words, lungs hardly drawing in air. “Please, take me back, please! I can’t— I can’t stay h—“

A deathly strong grip grasped your nape, and you went stock still, a little fallow deer caught in a hunter’s sight.

Simon had his hand wrapped around the back of your neck, the entire appendage nearly capable of enclosing your throat, thumb and middle finger a couple inches short of touching.

“Not goin’ anywhere, pigeon,” he snarled, his voice dropping to scrape a bottomless depth. It was gruff and commanding, in your ribs, clattering loose cartilage. He squeezed the sides of your neck, causing you to whimper at the pinch of pain it elicited. “Y’re stayin’ righ’ ‘ere.”

“No,” you begged. “Please, no, no.”

Lips pressed to your temple. You turned, and saw Johnny had removed his mask, revealing his face to you — he was showing you his face.

The Hunt and the Harvest were known as skull-headed men that never bared themselves to others. Many of the mythos implied they lacked faces at all, or that their heads were merged with the skulls, unable to be removed. It was sin to cast your gaze upon their true forms, if the masks could be pulled free.

Yet, here Johnny stood, the corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement at the shock overtaking your expression.

He was rugged, undeniably handsome in the way a moth was drawn to the flame that would reduce it to soot. Stubble coated his chin and jaw, his brows were bushy, and his eyes.

They were blue, more blue than you could believe, brighter than the sky, a frost that would burn you, char your flesh. Mesmerized, you stayed in place, unblinking as you stared at him. To tear your attention away from his face would take a will you didn’t possess, not as the nobody you were.

Simon’s hand released your nape, and you slumped into Johnny’s awaiting hold, sucking in heaving breaths.

“Go clean ‘er up,” Simon ordered Johnny, who grunted in acknowledgment and took you into his hold again. He walked confidently, taking you away from Simon, who watched until you vanished from his sight.

It was the smell that eventually got you to look away from Johnny.

Painfully, strikingly familiar. Your thoughts staggered, catching on each other as you inhaled, trying to place the fragrance.

Earthy, sweet, citrus and rime. Rich and heady, stronger than you were used to. It infected the hallway, growing in power the further Johnny guided you.

Like a hit to the gut, it struck you.

Mandrake incense, the same you used in your temple, your den, to daze your patrons and make them more susceptible to belief.

No, it wasn’t mandrake alone, there was more to it. Hints of sharp florals, vaguely spicy, a bite of woodiness…

Silphium. It was silphium.

Your mother wasn’t exceptionally familiar with various herbs and plants, but she taught you what she knew, explained which temples used what kinds of incense and for what purpose. It was because of her that you knew how valuable, how incredibly rare, silphium was, used in everything from dishes for royalty, to perfume, to…

Aphrodisiacs.

A chuckle rumbled against your back.

“The scent ye love so much, aye?” He mumbled against the shell of your ear. “Can have as much o’ it as ye want.”

He brought you into a room, where you spotted the tray holding the smoking herbal mix sat on a niche in the wall, surrounded by exotic flowers, vegetation that grew outside the geography you knew.

A bathing room, fitted with anything and everything somebody could possibly need to cleanse themselves with. The last thing on your mind.

You tried not to breathe in the hazy smoke that swirled from the censer, but there was nothing else to fill your lungs with, and you needed air. Johnny was patient, waiting for you to tire yourself out from holding your throat closed. The scorching need for oxygen arrived quick, forcing you to gasp, though you slammed a hand against your mouth and nose in an attempt to prevent the inevitable.

Too little, too late.

The incense seeped deep into your brain, traveling up your sinuses to infiltrate your very senses. At the edges of your vision, objects began to fracture and separate, multiplying into multicolored layers until they became undefinable. Your head swam, eyes feeling as though they were spinning every time you turned your head. The decorations they kept in their home all merged together, turning into swooping waves and curling spirals.

You gulped thickly, again and again, struggling with the bizarre sensation of a numb tongue, like it was too big for your mouth. You pulled your hand away and parted your lips, but you couldn’t feel them, only distantly aware they were there.

You tried to shift your weight, and the world tilted. Were it not for Johnny’s resolute grip, you would have dropped to the floor. It scared you that you didn’t know if you’d be able to catch yourself if you did fall.

“There she is,” Johnny cooed, ocean eyes glimmering, seafoam catching the sun’s shine. “Easy, lass, ‘ve go’ ye.”

“Johnny,” you slurred, trying to raise your hand to your head. It swayed before your eyes — or seemed to, you couldn’t tell. “Johnny.”

“Shh, ye’re alreight, doe,” he soothed.

You flexed your fingers, curling and uncurling them, confused that you couldn’t feel them. Not really, not the way you should have been able to. They didn’t feel like your own. “Wha…”

“Jus’ somethin’ ta calm ye,” he answered vaguely. You struggled to process it, looking up at him with furrowed brows. Every thought of yours faded out, leaving you to think of one thing at a time, and slowly at that. He only grinned, delighted by your reactions. “Come, let’s get ye undressed.”

A frown tugged your lips down. “I don’ wanna.”

He carefully lowered you to the ground, an arm extended for you to hold onto for balance. “Och, but how else are we s’pposed ta get ye clean?”

It took so much effort and focus to be able to both stand steady and speak. “Clean?”

“Aye, we need ta bathe ye, lass. Ye’re filthy.”

Your woozy gaze dropped to your body, head tilting this way and that, out of your control. You tried your best to examine yourself, but your feet seemed miles away, stretching further and further with every second. “No, ‘m not.”

He laughed. The sound was so full, so sweet.

Something ached in your chest.

“Dinnae fash, it’ll feel nice, promise,” he assured you. “Wa’er’s nice ‘n’ hot, jus’ fer ye.”

At the mention, you raised your head, and spotted a large tub situated in the center of the room.

Large was an understatement, actually. The thing was massive, partially recessed and surrounded with a wide rim, making it easy to step in and out of. Various jars of soaps, oils, lotions, and other things you couldn’t recognize or identify littered the marble step, ready to be used.

The liquid inside the tub itself was a milky color, causing you to think the basin was empty initially before you spotted how light reflected off of it.

“Big,” you muttered, and he laughed heartily.

“Aye, can fi’ us all, nae problem. Another time.”

Another time for what?

The question fled, forgotten, as he made you face him and knelt down, setting your hands onto his shoulders for stability. Then, he was reaching for your clothing.

You could do nothing but hold onto him, desperate to remain upright and limit the dizziness infecting you. You had no wherewithal to combat him as he released the tie of your tunic from around your waist, the string falling limply to the marble floor.

It took feeling the cool air grazing your skin for you to fully process that your tunic was gone, gooseflesh rippling across your figure in response. It raised the hair on your arms and legs, the back of your neck, prickling unpleasantly. It overpowered the shame you knew you should have felt. You knew, but it all floated out of your reach.

Especially when Johnny’s rough, blisteringly warm palms skated up your thighs to settle on your waist, thumbs pressing into and rubbing the plump skin of your stomach, fingers tensing and relaxing like he was fighting the urge to squeeze you. His eyes traced over your now-exposed physique, enchanted by the view — the scars and blemishes and stretch marks littering your body, the way your nipples hardened and scrunched, and the thatch of hair at the apex of your thighs.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, and you weren’t sure if you truly heard him say so, or if you imagined it. “Divine. Such a bonnie lass, ye are.”

“No,” you fumbled, guards lowered, insecurities shining through the facade of confidence you wore while donning your persona.

He huffed fondly and leaned forward to plant a surprisingly delicate kiss on your sternum, right where the bottom arch of your ribs was. “Ye are. Bonniest wee creature ah’ve ever seen.”

He stood upright and lifted you by your waist, unbothered by your weight and the squeal of indignation you gave. Walking forward, he stepped onto the tub’s rim and lowered you into the steaming bath water.

You hissed as it touched your toes, unprepared for the heat, but melted into the milky water the moment it passed your calves, groaning unwittingly. Hot baths were a luxury; you’d had only two in your young life, and used the river near your house every few days, seeing as the village’s communal bath house wasn’t exactly an option if you wanted to keep your identity known strictly as their local goddess.

He was happy to aid you in settling into the water, your eyes fluttering shut in pleasure. The hot water and incense worked together to soothe and loosen your muscles, your pains fading away.

“Aye,” Johnny lilted at your sigh. “Said ye’d like it.”

You blinked to look at him, watching as he retrieved a cloth and poured something onto it. Leaning forward, he brought it to your neck, filling your nose with the waxy smell of soap. The cloth was softer than anything you’d felt before as it pressed into the tender skin of your neck, finely woven to clean you, not scrub you raw.

He lathered your skin in expensive soaps, gentle but firm, sweet and violent as his tender caress passed across your shoulders. His palm pressed, urging you to lean forward. You did, pliant to his whims. He chuckled, pleased by your unwilling obedience, susurring words of praise into your ear. He fed you his unbridled thoughts, replacing the reality you knew with his own supplemented one bit by deliberate bit.

Rich perfumes seeped into and beneath your flesh, their sharp sweetness eating away at your natural scent until you smelled faintly of the products he used on you. Mellow, calm, comforting. It made your skin crawl, but your wretched heart slowed in response, betraying your anguish by lulling you into a pacified state.

You giggled at the bubbles that floated on the surface of the water, popping and combining. Dirt, sweat, oil, and grime all came loose with each passing swipe of Johnny’s diligent work, dead skin cells breaking off and rolling down your arms until they got swept away into the milky water. He lifted one arm to clean you down to your fingers, each digit attentively cleansed, the undersides of your nails scraped to perfection.

The same was repeated to your other side, then your upper back. He took his time resolute in washing every speck of dirt and each of your sins from your mortal form.

Of course, he wasn’t one to leave a spot untouched, including your chest. If anything, he paid extra attention to it, slowing to thumb your nipples through the cloth. A breathy noise left you, and you arched into the touch, your head falling back onto the ledge of the tub.

“Feel good?” He asked. You hummed and nodded mindlessly.

The silphium was already affecting you, making your skin prickle at his touch, your nipples hurting from how tightly they were peaked. His fondling and rubbing helped, the massaging circles he rolled into the buds easing the twinging into a delightful buzz. Subconsciously, you pressed your legs together, oblivious to how the way he plucked at your nipples caused the spot between your thighs to come to life.

The restraints in your mind had slackened, and while there was a part of you screaming to not let him grope and paw at you like this, that part was buried beneath layers of skittering pleasure that sparkled along your nerves in sporadic intervals, bursts of light in the pitch black night behind your eyelids.

His fingers pulled the buds of your breasts one more time, then left them alone, ignoring your petulant whine.

“Shh, ah’ve go’ ye,” Johnny crooned, nuzzling your cheek, his nostrils flaring as he breathed you in.

He took the cloth that’d drifted away, got it bubbly with fresh soap, and ran it down your front under the opaque water. Your tummy, navel, sides, and hips were all given plenty of regard, impatience growing at his snail-like pace. You wanted something, anything to sate the roiling fire that popped and fed on your insides, spreading from your core down your limbs.

But, instead of slipping his hand where you wanted him most, he passed over it, choosing to scrub your legs clean next. You whined, and he laughed at you.

“Dinnae fash, wee godlin’, ah’ll take care o’ ye.”

No amount of insistent chirps changed his mind. Giving up, you leaned back, peering through half-lidded eyes as he lifted one leg above the bath water to wipe it down, and repeated the motions on the other limb, not forgetting your wounded ankle. You were lax, loose under the incense’s influence, your body easily manhandled as he saw fit.

For a god, he was very willing to perform a task seen as beneath him. If anything, you should have been the one bathing him, attentive and cloying. Yet, you weren’t allowed to lift a finger, ordered to stay still and appreciate a god performing a menial task for you.

Hell, he had more care for it than you did, some areas gone over multiple times to get them spotless and pristine, your toes separated to get the cloth between them, and your soles rubbed and massaged.

At one point, he removed the cloth and laid it on the side of the basin, busying himself with scooping some sort of cream from a jar. He spread it evenly on his palms, took up your leg again, and rubbed the scratchy paste into your calf. Washing you with a luxury like soap and soft washcloths wasn’t enough, he was exfoliating your skin, working to soften it and shed off excess dead skin.

You were used to using a strigil to scrape off filth, the metal tool at times leaving behind scratches or spots that it wasn’t as effective in. You worked hard to maintain your facade as goddess, to earn your tithe, payment for services; but the village folk were not rich, and wealth was not afforded to you, not enough to splurge on things that would not last forever, like soap and exfoliating creams.

You were being spoiled, but why? Of anyone, you believed yourself undeserving of such tenderness and care.

What did the Harvest himself stand to gain from coddling a pesky human? One that didn’t even believe in him until he and his other half quite literally scooped you up and whisked you away.

Johnny broke your foggy stream of thoughts. “Ye think tae much, doe. Incense no’ ‘nough for ye? Need more?”

“Mm-mm,” you shook your head, concern departing. You’d drifted off for what you thought was a few seconds, but Johnny was already done scrubbing down both legs and arms, rendering them soft and smooth, if a bit sensitive and itchy. Your hair, too, had been washed, scalp scratched just the way you liked.

He hummed, head tilting, capri orbs peeling you apart. A click of his tongue, then he was reaching into the tub, a hand scooting under your bottom.

“Need ye ta turn ov’r, doe,” he told you. “Oan yer knees.”

It took a lot of effort and help from him for you to flip around, your knees sliding a bit on the stone before he aided in stabilizing you, setting your hands on the tub’s rim. Like this, your back and rear were out of the water, water cascading off your curves in rivulets.

You laid your head on the rim, sighing as the cool material allayed your feverish warmth.

Fingers nudged against your vulva, and you yipped in surprise.

Johnny snorted and patted your bum lightly. “Need ta ge’ ye clean eve’rywhere, lass.”

“Oh,” you responded, finding no argument. How kind of him, to help you, since your slack limbs prevented you from doing it yourself.

“Good girl,” he cooed, not the least bit shy in spreading your folds to expose you to him. You saw him pick up a nearby pitcher full of clear, clean water, and he used it to safely wash the sensitive organ.

Isn’t he thoughtful, to not use the dirtied bath water?

The musing fluttered in innocently, an incognizant suggestion.

He’s so good at taking care of you.

He was, wasn’t he? Sedulous and calm, patient, not once cutting corners or defaulting to languor. A man, no less.

The pitcher clicked as he set it down, but his touch lingered, idly pushing apart your folds and petting through the curls of your mons.

“Pretty lass,” he complimented. “Pretty cunt.”

As if to emphasize his point, the tips of his fingers trailed to your clit, bumping the hood of it up to expose the tingling bud. A featherlight graze was all it took to have you mewling and swaying your hips, silently begging for more.

Blessedly, he indulged you, applying more pressure to the nub. Euphoria shot up your spine, lashes shuddering at the intense sensation. Having the nerves there stimulated felt incredible, a pleasure you’d been unable to achieve yourself. It was different to have someone else doing it to you, circling your clit, the calluses on his fingertips adding to the decadent indulgence.

Cupping your cunt, he allowed you to ride and grind against his palm as you saw fit, chasing the pleasure at your pace. Your lack of coordination made it tricky, but he spurred you on with encouragements, ticklish lips leaving fleeting kisses on your damp shoulder blades and nape.

Your heart pounded against your ribs, faster than a bird’s wings and loud in your ears. It chanted at you, demanding you hump his arm faster, use your weight to really amp up the action on your clit.

Not enough, not enough, not enough—

“Need more?” He mocked sweetly. You nodded. “Beg.”

Had it not been for the mandrake and silphium, you would have bristled, maybe spat at him for the audacity, god or not. Demanded he release you, threw a fit, bit him.

Right now?

Right now, screeching at him to stop was the last thing on your mind. You were in too deep to care about the way his gravelly order made the fine hairs on your body prickle, seeking the fulfillment he could give you.

Pride muffled to an inaudible droning in the back of your mind, you begged, “Please, more, more, need more.”

“More what?” He asked, a smirk curling his words.

Your brain stuttered, hips following suit. “More…”

“Tell me wh’t ye need.”

You hesitated, a spark of resistance catching in the dark emptiness that encompassed your rational thinking. What were you doing, using a god for your own pleasure? Had you any shame? Any self-preservation?

It extinguished as suddenly as it showed itself.

“…Inside,” you said reedily.

The god feigned confusion. “Inside? wh't dae ye need inside where?”

You gnawed on your lip, the pain dampened by the smoky haze coating your senses, painting your view in an ethereal glow. “Your fingers… inside me.”

He hummed, cocking a brow. “Where?” He prodded, goaded. His hand drew back, drenched in sick, so he could tap at your entrance. “Here? Yer pussy?”

You nodded frantically, but he did the opposite, shaking his head.

“Nae, need ye ta tell me proper. How can ah ken wh't ye want if ye dinnae tell me, mm?”

Fuck, fuck, you didn’t want to, but you swore you’d burn alive if he didn’t tamp the fire blazing hotter and hotter in your core, if he didn’t fix it. What other choice did you have?

“Johnny, J-Johnny, need your fingers inside my… my p-pussy, please.”

You were rewarded with him beaming at you, pearly-white teeth shining, canines glistening dangerously, and a finger plunging into your cunt in one easy motion. It was helped by the sheer amount of dripping wetness you were producing, and you gasped at the rapid penetration.

Unabashed, you moaned, back arching to press further onto him, down to the knuckle. His hands were bigger than yours, immensely so, his godly blood allowing him to loom over any mortal with ease — over you. One of his digits equated at least two of yours, and the stretch was divine, exactly what you were missing.

“Yes, yes, yes,” you babbled, hopelessly caught in the hedonism of it all.

“Tha’s it,” he praised. “Wasnae sae hard, was it?”

You lacked the capacity to reply, distracted by him curling his finger down and petting at that spongy spot inside you. Your mouth had a mind of its own, incoherent pleas and praises spilling free, mixed in between cries of there, there, there! and oh, gods, yes!

You truly believed he’d learned your body in seconds, his earlier groping letting him know everything he needed to. Heaven, it was pure heaven, an elation you’d not known existed before. You ran after it, desperate to catch it and clutch it to your chest, bury it beneath your ribs, where it’d stay forever.

Then, he pulled back, and added a second finger.

Colors exploded behind your eyes, glowing and twinkling brilliantly. Nothing like this existed on the mortal plane, this holy rapture, this pure and unfiltered bliss. It poured into you from all sides, all your nerves alive and alight, drawn to your core, the center of your ecstasy.

If he commanded you to tell him what to do, you’d burst into tears, the ability to string together a sentence lost on you. Luckily, he didn’t make you, likely aware you’d be unable to.

He experimented, thrusting and curling his digits slower and faster, looking for the perfect tempo. He knew he found it when you squealed and lifted your ass higher, swinging forward and back to meet him halfway.

“Och, good lass, tha’s it,” he empowered you, eager to see you unravel for him.

Your orgasm sprung up faster than you anticipated, the coil in your gut winding tighter and tighter. Sensing this, he pressed harder on your sweet spot, and brought his thumb to your clit, circling it hastily, harshly.

Breath hitching, you squirmed, whined, and panted, warring with wanting, needing, to cum, and the unfamiliar, palpable pressure that was building further in.

“Zhhhohnny,” you garbled, teeth stuck together. “’M— ‘m gonna— oh!”

“Let it happen,” he growled, nipping your shoulder. “Give it ta me. C’mon.”

He’ll catch you if you fall.

You stiffened, a spasm rippling through your body, the calm before the storm, the moment before a star imploded.

Then, you were cumming. Hard.

Your orgasm erupted in a wet spray that coated his hand and forearm, bursting forth out of your control. Your entire body trembled violently, legs kicking slightly as the walls of your pussy clenched down on his fingers unforgivingly, refusing to let them go. He kept rubbing your throbbing bundle of nerves, helping you through your intense climax, coaxing you down from the high.

You slumped, chest heaving and ears ringing deafeningly. Your heart pumped blood through your veins as hard as it could, head dizzy with it.

There was something stroking down the length of your spine, words spoken that you could barely make out past the drumming in your brain.

“Sweet lass, did sae good fer me, aye, wh't a beauty ye are. Jus’ like tha’, easy, doe, easy.”

It took you several minutes to recover, for your lungs to draw in air evenly, for your frantic pulse to slow down. Johnny was there the whole way, patiently waiting for you to ease back into the present, here and now, with him.

You picked up on temperature first, the hot bath a scalding contrast to the icy tub rim. Next was sound, and lastly was sight, your vision blurry as you blinked automatically at the man that’d just brought you to the highest peak, higher than the tallest mountain.

“Back wi’ me, lass?” He asked sweetly.

Dumbly, you bobbed your head, closing your mouth when you realized you’d been drooling, spit pooling under your cheek.

He snickered at you, and you glanced away, embarrassed.

It was a fleeting emotion, one still outweighed by the drifting incense that you continued to inhale.

That didn’t last long.

Johnny pulled out his slippery fingers, and moved them where you never expected. Sobriety rushed in like a deluge, drowning the lovely afterglow you were lazily suspended in. Your body tensed, choking out a noise of objection as he pet his fingers over your untouched hole.

“No,” you slurred. “Not— not there.”

“Yes, here,” he asserted, clicking his tongue. He pressed against the tight whorl of your ass, smearing your slick around it in a thick coat. You whimpered, high-pitched and panicked, distressed, as he pressed harder, clearly not taking no for an answer.

“No, no, no, please…”

You resisted as long as you could, but you were no match against him, against the drugs continuing to weigh you down.

All great walls were meant to come crumbling down, eventually.

His digit popped in, breaking past your meek defenses, and you nigh sobbed.

“Jus’ helpin’ ye, li’l godlin’,” he insisted, sounding none-too concerned for your welfare, what you wanted.

“I don’t need— oh, gods,” you groaned as he slipped his finger deeper past the twitching muscle of your asshole. Your head dropped onto your forearms, hands clutching the edge of the basin in a frenzied grip. “D-Don’t need your h-help.”

He snickered at your struggle. “‘Course, ye do. Need ya ta relax. Yer poor wee fingers cannae do much oan their own, can they? Cannae ev’n reach inside yer neglected cunt, nevermind yer sweet arse.”

You breathed harshly, trying to suck in greedy breaths to calm yourself. “Not there, please.”

Your pleading fell on deaf ears. If anything, it only egged him on, urging him to double his efforts. Every inch of you jumped when you felt him poke at your rim with a second finger. He slid it down to your pussy in a teasing motion, gathering your slick to aid in its intrusion. It helped, if only just; the pad of the digit settled firmly beside the first, and forced its way in.

You yowled, the skin over your knuckles thinning from the sheer strength of your hold. Were you the goddess you claimed to be, you’re sure the stone would have cracked by now, the perpetually heated waters spilling free through the fissures.

He kept at it, drawing back and pushing further in each time, again and again, until he had his fingers sunk in to the base. He let them rest for a second, then curled them downwards to rub at the sweet spot of your cunt through the thin wall separating it from your other hole. You cried out, hips jolting, subconsciously trying to run away from the sharp spike of pleasure that pierced your belly.

He planned this, you knew, giving you nowhere to run, no way to run. Making you cum so hard that you witnessed the beginning and end of the cosmos, all to weaken you, turn your body against you.

Johnny abused the spot relentlessly, your nervous system overwhelmed with the conflicting sensations; the foreign stretch of a place you’d never thought to venture into before added with the pleasure dancing in your pussy made your neurons go haywire, misfiring every which way.

You came again, like that, torn between paradise and hell. It wasn’t as powerful as your previous one, but it was different, stranger, new. A completely unique experience that rewired synapses and sanity. Where you expected him to stop, to let you rest, he did anything but.

By the time Simon arrived to check on you, Johnny was three fingers deep and close to wringing another orgasm out of you, your trembling knees straining to hold you up while he abused nerves you didn’t know existed. He was murmuring things to you in a language you did not understand, his sharp tongue wrapping deliciously around the letters. Much to your dismay, they fueled the fire in your belly, driving you closer to an edge you no longer knew if you wanted to avoid or leap off of.

Simon circled the tub to drop into a crouch in front of you, onyx irises examining your flushed features and the galaxy of tears sparkling on your lashes through his elk mask. You panted heavily, your mind entirely blank, too muddled by mixed emotions. Looking through him, seeing and unseeing.

A hand grasped your chin, tilting your head up to properly meet his gaze. Your pupils were blown wide, drowning your irises whole and leaving only a thin line between pupil and limbal ring.

Johnny twisted his hand, and you groaned, eyes fluttering.

“Poor thing,” Simon muttered sarcastically. “Ruinin’ ya, ain’ ‘e?”

Stupid and dreamy, you nodded.

He hummed, curious.

“Open,” he commanded. Long past resisting, you obeyed, your lips parting to grant him access. He took his time sliding his fingers into your mouth, probing, inspecting your teeth and petting over your tongue. He set them to rest on the muscle, and you wrapped your lips around them, instinctively suckling for comfort. “Tha’s a good girl.”

“Wouldnae believe how tight she is, Si,” Johnny smirked at him. “Took a long time ta loosen ‘er up”

“Tha’ so?”

“Aye. She’s a good doe, though. Takin’ it like a champ, eh, lass?”

“Mhmm,” you responded, not quite hearing their words, not quite paying attention. All you could focus on was the slow strokes against your walls, digits massaging until you were nice and relaxed, coaxed into softening for them.

“Sweet, dumb thing,” Simon agreed, lightly shaking your head with the fingers in your mouth. You sucked harder on them and whinged low, unwilling to let go, needing them to stay. “C’mon, Johnny. Needa get some food in ‘er.”

Johnny sighed, forlorn, having his toy taken from him, but he complied. You shuddered visibly as he retreated, leaving your poor hole clenching around nothing, softened by his persistence. Similarly, Simon plucked himself free from your paw, and patted your cheek, leaving a wet patch.

He rose up, and hooked big paws under your arms, hoisting you up from the bath. The water draining off your body had you shivering, rapidly chilled by the air.

He set you on your feet — not letting go of you, yet — and a massive, warm towel was wrapped around your form. You clutched at its edges to tug them tighter around yourself, hunching to hide from the cold. Simon kept you upright on fawn legs and Johnny thoroughly dried you off, not the least bit subtle in his pauses to fondle and feel you up.

It took Simon warningly saying his name to get the other god to leave you be, albeit with great reluctance. He grumbled, but let the towel go, the fabric too heavy for you to hold up on your own, your fingers sore and weakened after your exhaustive bath.

He took advantage of your inability to keep yourself covered, various oils applied to your exposed body methodically. Their lush aromas mixed with the lingering incense, soft and sweet; juicy peaches, milk, and honey seeped into you, melding and becoming part of you. The oils settled you, tempering your tender skin after the hot, complete scrubbing you received. It was nice. Admittedly, you quite liked the smell of them, relishing in how they stayed on you. He finished his work with a slap to your ass, both of them snickering at your startled yip.

Laid across a chair in the corner of the room was a long section of a fine textile, undoubtedly immensely expensive, something that put the dress you wore in your goddess persona to utter shame. He brought the stola to you, showing off the its pale purple shade, and the dainty, elegant lace banding all over it, the thread shimmering like pure gold.

The two gods moved in perfect sync, two sides of the same coin, as they worked together to drape the silky material over you. Notably, they forewent giving you under garments, as well as the standard tunica that went under the stola, allowing your naked curves to be seen through the sheer weave. Not nude, technically, but you were keenly aware of how visible your areolas were, and the nest of hair at the crest of your pelvis.

Once dressed, they sat you on the chair, and Johnny passed bottles of oils and products to Simon at his silent behest, verbal communication between them unneeded. It made you nervous, not knowing what they were saying, thinking.

Using an ivory comb, Simon worked the tangles out of your hair, his care unexpectedly mild and considerate. There was no pain of him tugging hard to break apart knots, no needless hair loss. Gentler than you would have been to yourself.

The lavish products were applied to your scalp, your hair, individual strands sectioned out to create an even dispersal. It resulted in your hair being softer than the tufts you had at birth, locks brushing against your cheeks like whispers of feathers. You had no idea as to why they’d use such luxurious products on you.

Unbefitting sinner, liar, impersonator.

The incense was wearing off, its smoke dispelling and allowing conscious thought to return to you. Basic coordination also revived itself, and you were able to limp somewhat.

It didn’t matter to either man. Simon hooked his arms around and under you, anyway, swinging you into his hold, high off the ground. He waltzed you out of the bathing room, following Johnny through the domus, including the atrium.

It was just as grand and opulent as the rest of the house, pristine cerulean water bubbling and trickling in the fountain at its center, glinting in the dying sunlight that trickled in from the open ceiling above. Johnny’s plants were everywhere, including here, climbing the magnificent walls and towering pillars edging the space. They lined the halls and escaped through the doorways of a truly imposing, glorious courtyard.

“’Noth’r time, pet,” Simon murmured into your ear, breaking your stare away from the garden outside.

There it was again, an imitation of Johnny’s earlier assurance. Another time.

How…

How long were they planning to keep you here?

It’s a fear that consumed you, the idea that they had no plans of letting you go.

Was this to be your punishment? A captive, kept in the realm of gods, your very being rejected until it withered away to nothingness?

…Perhaps, it was a kinder fate than you deserved.

Simon had been busy.

The table of the dining room was full of various dishes, plates piled high, all of them savory and mouth-watering. Fresh poultry, properly seasoned and roasted to an ideal golden-brown hue, slathered in glistening honey. Red meat, too, sliced to expose soft, pink innards.

Grapes, peeled oranges, and pears sat decoratively in a circle around a yellow-orange fruit you had no name for. There was bread, hot from the oven, olives, and a dozen cheeses on a beautifully made wooden board, ready to be devoured.

Right on cue, your stomach roiled loudly, announcing itself. Heat rose to your cheeks, and you felt more than heard Simon’s snicker, vibrating from his barrel chest into your side and arm. He lowered himself down into a large, plush bench, the seat cushioned by a thick pillow that sank under his weight.

You were placed on his lap, cradled like a prized pup, made to sit and be pretty.

You wanted to argue, saying, “I can sit—“

“Hush,” he interrupted, brokering no room for discussion. It was decided.

You bit your tongue to silence yourself. Maybe you were stupid, but you didn’t have a death wish, and would not quarrel with the Hunt. Not on this matter. To further crush your hope of autonomy, Johnny took the spot on the bench beside Simon, blocking you in.

Simon plucked up a piece of red meat from a nearby plate, the slice dripping with fat, seared to rare. He brought it to your lips and said, “Open.”

Hand feeding. You’d been reduced to hand feeding. Truly the pet he claimed you to be.

Laconic, you parted your lips, biting down on the meat. Your teeth cut through it, and flavor burst across your tongue, succulent and ambrosial. Hunger reared its ugly head, and your initial sluggish chewing was thrown out in favor of practically inhaling the food, the Hunt forcefully pacing you to keep you from choking.

“Easy, no’ g’na take it fr’m ya,” he promised, running a thumb on your chin to wipe away the juices from the meat there. “Can have s’much s’ya want.”

“Havenae eaten all day, have ye, doe?” Johnny questioned, digging into the food himself, messy and mannerless. Spit and sap smeared his lips, cheeks stuffed to the brim, neither caring too much about his uncouthness.

You shook your head and readily ate the next piece Simon held up for you, chasing after the ambrosial taste.

Periodically, he switched it up, pressing bread and fruit to your teeth for you to gnaw into.

Thirsty, you searched the table for a pitcher of water, but there was none. No, amidst vegetables and fried herbs, there was wine, and your nose wrinkled at the glass that Simon poured for you and offered. Your insides churned, recalling the rancid offering your last patron had given you.

He snorted, aware. “’S none o’ tha’ cheap shite ya go’,” he grumbled, the edge of the glass pushing your lip down. “Go on.”

Wine wasn’t your favorite, never had been, but this one went down smooth and candied, dulcet. You ventured another sip, and hummed in approval, licking your lips as the glass was pulled away. It paired well with the spread, flavors fusing exquisitely.

But you were caught up on something.

Your client. Your job. The service you promised, would it go unfulfilled? Tarnish your name? If you left this place and were unable to complete the task, what would become of you?

“Speak,” Simon crowed.

You cleared your throat, your tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth. “M-My patron… what am I do to?”

Johnny nuzzled your shoulder, trailing up to the crook of your neck. “Dinnae worry. We’ll handle it.”

“Won’ make a liar ou’ o’ ya,” Simon confirmed.

Your hands closed into fists, nails digging into your palms. “How?”

You felt Johnny smile wide into your neck, kissing into the hollow of it.

“Death, ‘o course.”

You didn’t ask for whom. Maybe it was all of you; the man that came to you, seeking benefaction. His unfaithful and unknowing wife.

You, the person you used to be, the liar that existed amongst other humans, wearing a costume and pretending to be above them. You truly believed it, towards the end, viewed yourself as righteous and pious, deserving of praise and worship and sacrifice.

Your appetite wilted, and your eating slowed. It took half a pomegranate and two glasses of wine before you found the courage to reject the food, turning your head away.

The wine left you tipsy and fictile, hands comfortably clasping behind Simon’s neck as he lifted you to carry you from the dining room. Your head lolled onto his shoulder, fighting the spinning sensation his long strides induced. They ended a few seconds later. Or minutes. You weren’t sure.

He laid you upon a soft, cushy bed, your back resting on plentiful layers of blankets and furs, likely made by the Hunt himself. They reminded you of the tanning racks you’d seen hours earlier.

Weary and listless, you watched as he undid the wrappings of his own clothes, letting strips of fabric, cords, and belts drift to the floor. Scars littered his pale body, criss-crossing each other, painting him in streaks of aged silver and newly-healed tyrian purple. Shoulders, chest, ribs, back, nothing was excluded, nothing too sacred, divine or not.

His stomach was soft, muscles padded with fat that bulked him up. His waist was wide, the man built like the temples dedicated to him, packaged with bulging arms and legs bigger than your head.

The skull mask remained, antlers branching high, their accessories clinking quietly.

Naturally, as he bared himself, your gaze tracked down his front, taking in the details. Ashen hair, catching the glow of candles — candles you’d been too distracted by Simon to notice being lit by Johnny to illuminate their chambers now that night had risen. A broad hand slid down his abdomen, knuckles rough and scarred, your eyes tracking it to its destination.

His cock hung hard between his bulky, solid thighs, too heavy to stand upright on its own. He wrapped his palm around the monstrosity, stroking it to coax a shiny droplet of precum from the red mushroom tip.

It’d yet to process, what he intended to do with it.

He prowled towards you, and you mused about how apt his title was. A hunter through and through, his feet made no sound, and his muscles rippled with finely-tuned control, each movement intentional as he crawled over you, where you lay supine, suspended in the swooning influence of the alcohol.

A thumb stroked your cheekbone, your jaw, his hand wandering to wrap around your throat. He didn’t apply any pressure, simply held it there, a demonstration of the power and command he held over you. If he wanted, it’d take nothing for him to crush your windpipe, snap your vertebrae, snatch the light from your eyes for himself.

Your heartbeat thrashed under his digits, breath stuttering in your lungs. A lamb caught in the jowls of a starving beast, not daring to shift lest he sink those fangs into your fragile neck.

At the foot of the bed, Johnny took to stripping as well, swifter than Simon had been, more eager. He clambered onto the bed, lacking the grace and fluidity the Hunt had.

“Move,” he ordered.

Simon tsked, leveling Johnny with an unamused glare.

“Impatient mutt,” he chided, but did as requested regardless, adjusting himself to sit against the headboard. “C’mere.”

You blinked twice, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.

It dawned on you. He was talking to you, both of them curious about what you’d do next.

Comply like a good pet, listen and earn a reward.

Or defy them, and risk an unimaginable punishment.

Unfortunately, you feared the unknown.

You were awkward and clumsy as you rolled yourself onto your stomach, then pushed yourself onto your hands and knees, wobbling on the unsteady surface. The stola getting caught under your knees didn’t help, the weave slippery and refusing to work with you.

You made it as far as getting within reach before Simon nabbed you by the pits and dragged you onto his lap, slinging one of your legs over both of his to have you straddling him. The angle was uncomfortable, his body too large for you to accommodate well. His size caused the joints in your hips to twinge, inner thighs displeased at the sudden occupancy forcing them apart.

Your stola had ridden up to your pelvis, its loose fabrics bunched up on your thighs, pinched where your legs connected with your hips. His cock pressed against your belly, blistering hot and twitching, seemingly even bigger now that it was compared to you.

“Go ‘head,” he said, kneading your hips.

Unsure of what has come over you, you reached for his dick, grazing it. Where it looked big on him already, it was absolutely beastly to you, the idea of it somehow fitting inside you implausible.

“S’not gonna fit,” you mumbled. It was purely fantasy, but saying it aloud cut that fantasy in half. It wasn’t going to fit. There was no way.

“’Course, it will,” he huffed. “We’ll make it fit.”

A second pair of hands grabbed your waist, raising you up so Simon could position the head of his cock right at your slit. Together, they ground you against it, listening to you hiccup every time it bumped against your clit or caught on your entrance. In no time at all, you were slippery and wet with slick, the velvety underside of his length shiny with it.

They stopped so Simon could lodge the tip against it against your entrance, precum mixing with slick. You were breathing frantically, squirming, but the option was never really yours. Fighting back was pointless.

You threw your head back in a silent scream when he sprang into you, breaking past your struggles to accept him, reject him, something to make the unbearable strain to go away. As you suspected, it was considerably too big for you, but that didn’t bother them. Unaffected by your claws digging into his shoulders, Simon added more stress, more burden, to you, coercing you to inch further onto him.

“T’much, too much,” you pleaded, hysterical.

Stubble scraped your jaw and lips pecked the corner of your mouth. “Shh, halfway there, lass.”

“No, no,” you bawled, leaning into Simon, hanging onto the first lifeline you could find.

You expected Simon to smell of death and decay, rotting corpses left to the crows to pluck at; you found nothing of the sort. He smelled of warmth, hints of musk and satin fur, the faintest traces of the lands he prowled remaining upon him. Salt from exertion. Against his pulse, you swore you could make out a shadow of something sweet.

“Tha’s it,” he said gruffly. “Like tha’. Good girl.”

Your stomach tightened, a wave of arousal thrumming in your core. His throaty reverence tripped twisted thread in your brain, triggering a response. Excess slick oozed down his length, abating the rest of the journey.

Relief swarmed you as his base came to rest flush against the puffy lips of your pussy, your poor, quivering hole stretched to its limits to harbor his colossal prick.

You collapsed into him, wheezing. You swore he was in your diaphragm, punching into your lungs, rearranging your cunt to ruin you for anyone else, ensuring he and he alone would fit.

One of them was rubbing your back, urging you to relax, praising you. Told ya it’d fit and wha’ a bonnie thing, doin’ sae good fer us. Meaningless to you when you were crammed full and overcrowded.

Merciful for once, you were permitted rest, given a chance to calm yourself and grow accustomed to the invasive, oversized berth intruding on a place not designed to handle it.

Simon entertained himself with your ass, caressing and squeezing and parting your cheeks for his amusement. A nudge to the center of your spine encouraged you to lay further atop him, and you went unthinkingly, grateful for the respite, the responsibility of holding yourself up taken away.

You should have known it would end sooner, rather than later.

Johnny was shuffling, repositioning, preparing. There was a wet schlick, followed by his cock prodding at the hole he’d loosened up in the bath.

You felt it as he nudged into you, pressing, grinding, making room where there was none. A fit beyond tight, your body trembled at each inch that pierced deeper. Words were crooned into your ear, your skin, teeth and tongue skimming your tender, human flesh, longing to latch.

Broken whines and trills spilled from your parted lips, your will to swallow down your sounds dead and gone. There was too much for you to focus on, too many sensations and nerves being brushed to life. Moaning like a whore into Simon’s ear was the least of your worries.

“Noisy li’l whelp, ain’ ya?” Simon husked, his tone missing any real heat.

“Fuck, fuck,” you replied, instinctively shaving your head as Johnny worked. “Oh, gods!”

“Reigh’ ‘ere,” Johnny consoled you. “Yer gods are reigh’ ‘ere.”

You’d tear in two, you were certain of it, positive they’d crack open your shell to mangle your vulnerable viscera.

You bleated pathetically as Johnny settled against your rear, the hair on his chest matted down with sweat and sticking to your stola as he curved over you, molding to you. Three pieces forced to fit together, beaten and reshaped into the perfect vessel for them to take and feed and fuck.

Johnny went first. His slow and steady thrusts naturally rocked you onto Simon. The pleasure vastly outweighed what was done to you in the bath, eons above it. You sank your teeth into Simon’s shoulder to cope, and he cupped the back of your neck, confining you.

“Harder, pet,” he snarled. “Y’call tha’ a bite?”

Provoked, you gnawed harder, dug your dull, useless fangs as far as they would go.

It was like trying to maul a statue. His muscles were too hard, his flesh unbreakable. You tried and tried until your jaw cramped, and you gave up with a pitiful mewl, self-soothing by sucking on the indents you left.

“S’olright, whelp. Soon.”

You wanted to ask what he meant, but he planted his feet on the bed and jutted his hips upwards harshly, driving into you ruthlessly. You wailed, scratching his biceps, his shoulders, his back. They picked up speed, thrusting faster, using you as they pleased. It knocked what remained in your head loose, replacing it all with them, them, them.

Assuaged that you wouldn’t shatter to pieces, they turned into brutes, alternating their pistoning to never leave you empty. Simon in, Johnny out. Johnny in, Simon out. Over and over and over again, precise and damning.

It was overwhelming, awful and wonderful and indescribable. You weren’t trekking up a mountain, you were hauled up it, carted to its peak in a fiery chariot. Pleasure pooled in your center, a kiln that seared everything surrounding it. Its heat rose higher, amplified by the animalistic noises the men fucking you made, heady grunts and howls and barks. You felt it in your limbs, from your scalp to your toes, infecting all of you.

You knew it was coming, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Waves receded, shore bared, the deceitful calm.

Then, it snapped, and came flooding forward. You cried out as you came hard, squirting onto Simon’s lap. Your walls spasmed around their cocks, tightening to the point where it became difficult for them for continue.

Of course, gods could not be stopped so easily.

They just worked harder, fucking you faster, ignoring how your holes refused to let them go. They kept going, driving you through your orgasm. It went on forever, a constant release that blinded you with multicolored flashes of light. You saw stars exploding, flinging their light and fire in every direction.

The come-down was abrupt and jolting. All your strength fled, and you sagged into Simon, shuddering and twitching. Your ears were stuffed with cotton, muting the world into a distant, dull drone. Your lungs labored, and you thought you’d never breathe correctly again.

Now that’d you’d come, the boys let loose, chasing their own ends. They fell out of sync, every man for himself. Johnny pumped fast and shallow, hardly pulling back before he was buried inside your ass again. Simon was the opposite, retreating to the tip, then pounding back into you, bruising a soft spot that had your eyes rolling.

They came together, though.

Both of them slammed into you to the hilt, and a sweltering heat painted your walls in thick, powerful ropes. Arms were wrapped around you, sandwiching you between two ardent, sweaty bodies.

For a while, there was nothing but your shared panting, chests swelling and deflating in rapid bursts.

There was no way you were moving. You had no energy left, no vigor to control your muscles. You were content to stay as you were, lying on Simon like he was your personal kline.

You grumbled in displeasure as Johnny separated from you, hissing as he cautiously drew his cock out of your ass. It slipped free with an audible pop!, and you trembled as his spend trickled out. Simon copied him, scooping you up under your thighs to lift you off him.

Their cum merged with yours, creating a vast mess that coated you, Simon, and the pelt he sat on quite thoroughly.

Johnny kissed your temple, then vanished somewhere.

You pawed at Simon’s chest, utterly exhausted and wanting nothing more than to lay back down on him and unceremoniously pass out.

He snickered, a hushed heh heh heh that vibrated under your touch. “Soon, lovie. Need t’ clean ya up.”

You sighed dejectedly through your nose, but obeyed, too sleepy to do elsewise.

Johnny startled you by putting a damp, lukewarm towel on your inner thighs, stroking them down to wipe off the mess they’d made of you. He was quick, but gentle, particularly when it came to scooping away the cum that dripped from your gaping, throbbing holes.

“Tha’s a girl,” he whispered, going for a second pass to ensure he got everything.

Afterwards, Simon laid you on your side on the bed, the adrenaline and fear and events of the day catching up to you. You curled into yourself, drawing your knees up as high as they would go, and snuggled into the comfort of the multitude of pelts littering the bed.

Johnny draped one on top of you and leaned down to kiss your crown, an act so painfully intimate and affectionate, meant for more than you were. For lovers.

As he did so, Simon scooted off the cushions, arms stretching above his head as he groaned. It reminded you of a bear, growling in the plains of its territory.

“Sleep, wee doe,” Johnny whispered. “We’ll be ‘ere when ye wake.”

You closed your eyes, and succumbed to fatigue.

𓍝

You awoke to low voices.

It was a slow march. You didn’t want to wake up, but sunlight bled through your eyelids, and more and more things made themselves apparent to your conscious self. The impossibly downy bedding, the soreness in your thighs and between your legs, the hefty arm slung over your middle, the fingers toying with your hair.

Begrudgingly, you pried your sticky lashes apart, squinting against the harsh morning blaze. The first thing you saw was a man, attractive in a rough and untamed sort of way. His irises sparkled, drenched in infinite blue. Pink lips pulled into a smile as he noticed you stirring, and he propped his head up on a fist.

“Mornin’, lovie,” he greeted you.

“Johnny,” you croaked back.

“Sleep well?”

You grunted in response, casting a bleary scan across the room. A glance over your shoulder revealed that the owner of the arm splayed over your stomach was Simon, who stared at you lazily. He carried on with his observation, uncaring that you’d caught him in the act.

“Go’ a surprise fer ye,” Johnny drew your attention to him again. “A present.”

“A present?” You asked, brows furrowing. “What is it?”

He beamed at you. “Ach, it’d ruin the surprise ta tell ye.”

They urged you to your feet, Johnny linking his arm with your so he could escort you to the destination of their choice. He had to lean down a bit to do so, his transcendental size a minor curse. Neither appeared to mind your limping, delayed pace.

You traveled long, tall hallways, stunning sculptures and paintings decorating them, tasteful and suiting them. You tried to remember the path you took, but the various twists and turns dizzied you, your rights and lefts switched at random. You wondered where they were taking you, perplexed when you arrived at a balcony that looked over the boundless, untold expanse of land below their domus.

It was beautiful.

There weren’t enough words to describe how resplendent it was. Pure green stretched as far as you could see, the territory prosperous and halcyon. Trees grew to monumental heights, and fields of blooming verdure painted strokes of varying colors, an artist’s expert touch.

You could look at it eternally and not grow sick of its beauty.

But that wasn’t what they had brought you here for.

You spotted the wide pedestal positioned in the center of the balcony, lined with a cushion. Unsure of what it was for, you went willingly as they aided you in climbing onto it and lying down. It was cozy, nice, the padding supporting your back. You wouldn’t have minded staying here, relaxing in the fresh air and sweet smell of thriving vegetation.

But why would you ever be granted peace?

The men used their godly speed to grab one arm each, shackling them to the pedestal at the wrist and bicep before you could react and put up a fight, make it a more difficult task than necessary. It alarmed you, and attempts to adjust the positions they were in proved futile. You couldn’t move them.

“Wh— what are you— mm!”

A cloth was pushed into your mouth, silencing your panicked fussing. Simon knotted it in place at the base of your skull, awkward but not enough to cause any harm.

“Can’ have ya movin’ ‘round f’r this, whelp,” he said. “Migh’ risk hur’in’ y’rself.”

You whined in confusion, tugging and struggling to look between them and understand.

Johnny was at your side, examining the inside of your arm attentively, seeking. For what? Why? Why would he—

He must have found what he was looking for, because he took a thin, metal tool from a case that Simon held out to him and showed you.

A needle.

Its tip was sharp, finely crafted by an expert with a sole purpose.

“Might hurt a wee bit, lass,” he cautioned, angling the pointed tip at the weak point of your inner forearm.

You flailed wildly, strained against your binds, but it was no use. Even as your legs squirmed and kicked, your arms were completely pinned down, immobilized.

“Deep breath, noo.”

It was your only warning.

You screamed against the makeshift gag as the metal punctured your inner elbow, embedded into a vein. It was agony, torture, like a nail hammered into a wrist. Tears welled along your lashline and spilled down the sides of your face, wounded both physically and spiritually. Blood beaded at the end of the hollow tube, pulsing in time with your heart before it broke off and fell to the floor in a tiny splatter, replaced by another droplet.

The pain served a well distraction as Simon stuck another needle, a thinner one, into your other arm. It hurt less, significantly so, but you wept regardless, not wanting to feel pain at all.

“All done,” Johnny soothed, brushing his callused hand across your forehead. “Hardest part’s ov’r.”

They let you sob and squall, stroking away the endless tears that burned you, as if carving canyons into you. It took long, dragging minutes for you to calm down, baying cries reduced to wet sniffles. You blinked up at them, flicking between Johnny and Simon, misery painting your scleras red.

“Nae need fer tha’, doe,” Johnny admonished halfheartedly. “S’all gonnae be alreight.”

You couldn’t understand how. They were bloodletting you, having jabbed a tool into a vein to drain you, leave you a husk, dead and gone. Slowly, too, as the device released a droplet at steady intervals, a harrowingly languid pace.

This was your punishment for your crimes, for pretending, for taking the names of beings you hadn’t believed them and using them for your own selfish greed. And they would make sure it’d take ages, give you plenty of time to think about your actions, the damage they caused, before you went to meet Lady Death at the crossroads.

You were so distraught about this method of killing that you hadn’t noticed the boys doing something arguably more frightening. It took Simon tapping your cheek for you to see their true intentions.

Long, transparent catheters were attached to one of each of their arms, inserted into them and held in place by tightly wound bandages.

You froze in terror, realization dawning like volcanic ash, submerging you in it.

They—

They were going to rend you apart with their own blood.

It was a well-known fact that mortals could not handle divine cruor. Whether they drank it or injected into themselves, the stories all ended the same; in the human burning away and crumbling into a pile of cinders and the stench of scorched pig. None survived, none ascended.

There was only one way this could end.

So you thought, anyhow.

Horrified, you watched as the golden, glowing ichor began to inch its way through the ducts, two lines merging into one. Simon’s leaked in first, followed by Johnny’s, the two combining. The closer the fluid got to your arm, the vein they forced open, the more you began to strain against your bindings, whimpering around the cloth stuffed in your mouth.

“Shh, lass,” Johnny attempted to soothe you, petting over your head with his free hand, cupping your cheek in his rough palm. “Willnae hurt, ah promise ye, sweet thing. We’ll be here fer a while, though. Ye can sleep, if ye wanna.”

Your head shook, frantic, abdomen clenching in anticipation, fear. Closer, closer, fire existing mere millimeters away from direct access to your circulatory system.

The golden blood of the gods scorches mortal flesh. It’ll sear into your skin, melt the muscle off your bone, cremate your skeleton in seconds. A brazen bull would be more merciful. To be flayed, have your ribs spread. Anything but this. Anything, anything, no, no, no, nononono—!

You sucked in a deep breath — as deep as you could through the gag — right as their divinity made contact with your very apparent lack of such, cleansing flames to your filth, and—

…Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Besides a faint warmth, there was no sensation, no torrid hell, no anguish nor suffering. There was simply no indication that anything had happened at all. Their bodies ran hotter than yours, this you knew too intimately for your own liking, and it transferred into this forced blood transfusion. But…

That was it.

Confused, you raised your head, glancing between your arm and the gods.

“Whot?” Simon asked sardonically. “Though’ it w’s g’na ‘urt? Turn ya int’ charred pork, burnt t’ a crisp?”

The visual made you cringe into yourself. Seeing this, Johnny trilled at you, leaning forward to plant a kiss on your forehead, thumbing at your temple.

“Wouldnae let anythin’ hurt ye, doe. No’ that cruel,” he reassured.

You drew in a slow, hesitant breath. Made a questioning noise.

He waved away your concern nonchalantly. “Shite like tha’ only happens ta greedy mortals, or ov’rzealous, impatient gods that cannae wait ta have their prize, ken?”

Was that… really the case?

As if reading your mind, Simon answered. “S’how we became gods.”

What?

The mythos of the Hunt and the Harvest had stretched back to before written history, oral stories exchanged of the core deities that came into being from the ether, gods from the day they arrived. Fully grown, fully knowing; they always were and always had been. That’s how history told it, how your mother lulled you and your brothers to sleep, reciting the lore that she knew by heart.

Was history wrong?

“W’s Jon tha’ did it. Saved our sorry arses,” Simon taught, rewriting what you knew and grew up on. “Found us dyin’ on a ba’lefield. Decided we were worth more than rot, fer’ilizer f’r dead grounds.”

“Aye,” Johnny confirmed. “We’ll introduce ye ta ‘im later.”

What else could you do? It was pointless to tire yourself out, fighting against restraints that wouldn’t budge.

This is where the life you knew would end, and the one you didn’t know would begin.

You closed your eyes, ignoring the lone tear that escaped, and settled in as best you could. You were never a very strongly-willed person, in the end.

In all honesty, the process was lengthier than you were expecting.

Being drained of your blood and filled with a replacement, something far too strong for your mortal form, was really quite… well, draining.

Your eyes drooped, lashes growing heavy. The time between each blink grew longer, minutes blurring into hours, hours into days. You knew that Johnny said it was a slow process, but you didn’t realize exactly how slow he meant. This was nothing to them, a drop in the bucket, but you? Heavens, it felt like you’d been laying here for years, absently watching the needle stuck in your right arm occasionally allow another droplet of your life to slip away from you, splattering onto the growing, coagulated puddle on the marble tiles beneath your altar.

Slow, of course. Slow. If they went too fast, their divinity would eviscerate you from the inside out, your mortality too weak to handle it. You needed to adjust bit by bit, one fucking drop at a goddamn time.

But, fuck, it was boring.

Your panic had subsided ages ago, the punch of adrenaline that was delivered to your gut earlier now leaving you weak and drowsy in its absence. After you’d relaxed, they’d kindly removed the gag, too. Simon and Johnny had busied themselves with communicating in that odd, silent way of theirs, exchanging looks and touches that left you none the wiser to their intentions and implications.

You figured you’d feel something different by now, some indication that your humanity was beginning to rupture and rend, your mortality stripped away by blest, corrosive ichor, but that wasn’t the case. Your spirit persisted, no different now than it had been several hours ago.

Maybe something was happening. A sweat had broken out on your brow, and swallowing was challenging, often making your throat stick together. Your nose felt stuffy, whistling when you inhaled through it.

No, there was a change. More symptoms popped up as you detected them, things that made you feel awful.

Your stomach hurt, and your head thumped aggressively, unbearable pressure pushing on the backs of your eyes. You were feverish, disconcertingly hot. Nausea sat high in your gut, your mouth salivating to protect your teeth, in case you retched.

It was worse than the pain of the needles invading your arms, your condition rapidly deteriorating now that the blood transfusion was taking effect.

You crumbled, whining and groaning, agitated, upset.

“Johnny,” you rasped, yearning for any familiar form of comfort. Your throat was full of thick mucus that refused to go down. Your esophagus ached, as though you’d guzzled sharp glass shards, and every breath felt like lit charcoal in your lungs. The blood that dripped from the needle shimmered, still crimson, but mixed with glitter. “Johnny, what’s happening to me?”

The man approached as if summoned by you, as if he’d always come at your call. He pushed strands of hair from your forehead, where they stuck to the damp surface. Compared to how unbearably hot your entire body was, his palm felt blissfully cool, and you leaned into it.

“Jus’ yer humanity dyin’, hen,” he murmured to you, careful to keep his voice low, non-grating, easy on your drumming headache and sensitive hearing. Had it always been so sensitive? Able to pick up the far off chirping of birds and near-inaudible squeaking of moths that fluttered about a nearby lantern? “Nae need ta worry. It’ll be ov’r soon.”

It’ll be over soon.

It’ll be over soon.

It’ll be over soon.

It played on loop, a lifeline, a hope to cling to. You needed it, desperate to grip and pull yourself out of this hell, shake off the shell of torment that attempted to harden on you, trap you in this torture forever.

You were restless, head tossing back and forth, sweat soaking you to your sinew. Your hands clenched and unclenched, fingers curled into stiff claws. Johnny encompassed your palm in his, and you squeezed hard enough to break bone, were it not for his divinity protecting him.

You didn’t know when it ended. It felt like you’d never escape it, dying a horrible death, your heart unable to handle the involuntary change forced upon it.

Lashes fluttered open, greeted by timid, tranquil daylight.

You were laid on the bed in their chambers, dressed in an airy, breathable stola. You’d been bathed again, the sweat and grime of your transformation rinsed off, purified.

It came like a gentle breeze, the knowledge that you were no longer human, and never would be again. A dulcet acceptance, going down easy.

Sighing, you rolled onto your side, sat up, and rose off the bed.

There was a thread in your chest, coiled around your soul, that pulled you towards them. The ones that did this to you, forever altered you. It drew you forward, and though you didn’t know the layout of their domus, you would find them. You always would.

They were waiting for you in the courtyard.

Stood side by side, they mumbled to each other, sentiments and thoughts barely catching on the wind to be carried to you.

You stepped outside, and their gazes snapped to you, conversation dying off. Your approach was slow, idling, as you took in the scenery, the beauty of the garden. Undoubtedly cultivated by the sole person who could encourage each plant to bloom at its best.

The grass was soft beneath your feet, tickling your ankles as you waded through it. A creek bubbled and trickled peacefully, a source of life so pure that you could see straight through to its bottom, where rocks and pebbles and shells reflected the sunlight and decorated the stream’s bed.

Trees provided ample shade, and from them sprouted various fruits, ripe and ready to be eaten. It must have taken Johnny an inconceivable amount of time and love to grow his garden to this state of perfection, of vibrancy.

You reached your spot before him, and Johnny held out an object to you, which you wordlessly took.

A deer skull.

You peered down at it, thumbs stroking over the smooth texture. Forget-me-not flowers, lilies, and bristol fairies bloomed from her empty eye sockets and the cracks in her cheekbone that had been painted golden; a wreath of fennel, myrtle, verbena, and rosemary adorned her crown, nestled amongst laurel leaves cast in gold. The fragrant flora clung to her marrow, a scent unique entirely to her. To… you. A way to identify you, no matter where you went. Should your curious eyes be drawn to the beauty of the glimmering sunrise, your other halves will always know to follow your scent to find you.

The skull was a gift from your gods, your mates. The men who you’d be tied to for the rest of eternity, death no longer a concern, for the mistress of the world beyond would never dare lay her spindly hooks upon you now. It represented life, what you claimed to stand for so long ago.

It represented you, the same way Simon’s elk skull stood for him and the responsibilities that sat upon his shoulders. The same way Johnny’s endless gardens and stag’s antlers portrayed him, the way all realms, both mortal and deific, depended on the fruits he alone could provide.

When the time would come for you to wear it and join them on their prowls, make your presence as a new god be known to all, it would solidify your place in this trio. A puzzle piece to complete the picture, the missing link that bound you all together, veins connected through your wrists so your blood may all flow as one. The realms would all come together to celebrate the birth of an idol, the old coming to raise the new.

In the end, the truth was unbreakable, undeniable. From the very beginning, you belonged to them, whether you liked it or not. You were always fated to be the Soul, where Johnny was the Heart, and Simon was the Mind. Gravity, space, and time. It would never matter how hard you fought to deny it, because your place was here, both men flanking your sides, the harmony of your powers strumming a tune only you three could hear. Loneliness was a forgotten concept, shunted in favor of a unity unthinkable to the simple-minded.

In your hands, you held the pillars of life, the reason the Earth spun, the reason flowers sprouted and deer laid down to decay.

The Hunt. The Harvest.

The Feast.

For, without the three of you, life would not exist, nor thrive, as it does now. Because you must feast, so too shall all else.

You raised the skull to your head, and let the darkness within it swallow you whole.

dividers by saradika-graphics ♥

Apollo!Ghost has an arrow through his chest. It is golden from point to feather tip, gleaming like shiny, polished metal. It is the arrow of Eros, God of Love. A clean impalement, one that sends Eros into hysterics. For it—the arrow—is pure and bright with love. Not even Ghost can withstand it, ambushed as he is, struck dumb at the nude nymph bathing by the riverbank, face turned upward toward the sun.

That is Daphne, giggles Eros, twittering about Ghost’s head.

Daphne. Daphne with an arrow made of lead sticking from her chest. An arrow of hate. An arrow of lies.

With tremor and the will of a thousand suns, Ghost emerges from the forest, surprising Daphne in her leisure. Frightened and unsure, she backs away. What is it that you want? And Ghost’s answer is to pursue. Every step he gains, Daphne hurls curses, spews hate. I hate you. I loathe you. I will remain untouched by man.

Hunted. Until she cannot run further. In his arms, she calls out to Peneus. Begs to be freed as Ghost brings her to the ground to be with her as he ought. She sprouts under him, and to his horror becomes a tree. Eros giggles with delight, and the arrow snaps, severing the connection. Ghost places his hand against the bark, speaks to the roots, blesses the leaves.