How to Ride a Tikbalang Ch. 12

Kidlat watched as Jinx propped an open ledger on some large, eye-level knots on the tree trunk to his right. His diwata looked magnificent in the moonlight. Her short black hair was shot through with molten streaks now, and her eyes had lightened from the warm amber of fine single malt to ash-gray ringed with silver spangles about the iris. He watched her profile with a hungry gaze, clenching and unclenching his hands.

He knew the manacles wouldn't give way—in fact, they'd adjust to his body's changes if he shifted forms. Cocoy had learned the incantations for making the black metal impervious to his otherworldly strength from Kidlat's mother, after all. The First Priestess knew all about taming tikbalangs. That was how he and his siblings got made.

Kidlat's body was fraught with tension, the stress making him restless and insecure. He looked to Cocoy, who stood on his left, laying out an assortment of implements on a fallen log that had been worn smooth by time and erosion: A wisp of cloud that became a riding crop buzzing with electricity. Stimulation vines that writhed and budded along their squirmy lengths. A tail feather from Ibong Adarna that changed hues along its rachis, vane and calamus. The ritual jar. Leather straps held together by o-rings and carabiners.

Cocoy took the straps and carabiners and, with an agility born of years of doing his own stunts onstage and in films, climbed one, then the other mango tree. He attached the longest leather straps to the branches, fashioning a harness with leather cuffs for wrists and ankles that hung in front of Kidlat. The harness had a small seat, and more straps with buckles and holes hanging from them.

The bayot was dressed as befit his role: He was barefoot and wore a tapis of raw silk, its geometric lizard and tree patterns woven in green and gold. Cocoy's tanned pectoral muscles held up a chestplate of semiprecious beads in the shape of a dragon swallowing the moon, the Bakunawa of old above flat, dark male nipples that stood erect in the cool evening air breezing softly through the glade. The bayot was painting his face with something from the ritual jar, gold and metallic green paint on his cheekbones, dark kohl around his eyes, the makeup only highlighting the gorgeous masculinity of his face.

***

Translation of the ledger of Fray Domenico Juan, on the sexual perversions of the natives, with annotations, by Dr. Isabelo Reyes, professor of anthropology, University of Sto. Tomas (July 14, 1963):

Translation, Ledger 8

"... the people here revere their priests and priestesses almost as deities. These strange individuals hold much power, much more than a priest of the Holy Mother Church. They are believed to have the power to influence the weather, the favor of the various gods and goddesses of these people, even control over the bodies of those who prostrate themselves before these clerics.

"The priests dress as women, mostly because the divinity of the feminine form—they seem to believe that fecundity and the instinct to nurture are strongest in the female forms of their priestesses. The gods are benevolent in their male aspect, as well as muscular and physically strong, but the people of these islands revere more than strength and benevolence, or skill in battle. They revere the ability of the female to carry life, deliver it at risk to the female's own life, to change lives with kindness and with power—that is the realm of the female to them, and, thus, more powerful. So the male must subsume that, and meld it to the masculine strengths to make a perfect balance of power. In this community, and in many others, the Bayot is more than a mere force of nature. He is nature in totality.

"It is this blend of masculine physicality and skill that the bayot blends with the divinity of the feminine when he dresses as the priestesses dress. Thus, the people here believe, does the bayot come out as more powerful than the babaylan, in the rare cases that a man displays the power and nature of the cleric of this strange religion."

Jinx had copied some parts of the translation of those ledgers of Fray Domenico into her own ledger before this trip to Mt. Makiling. She'd made good use of the entries, down to planning Cocoy's wardrobe.

She'd also glued some printouts of photos accompanying some scholarly works of Philippine anthropology she'd found online from museum websites to create composites of what babaylans, and, by extension, bayots, would wear, and how they would enhance their appearances with cosmetics and accessories so she could guide Cocoy accordingly.

***

When Cocoy finished his incantations and his face painting, he turned to Jinx. He and the diwata seemed to be communicating wordlessly, Kidlat noted with a cocked eyebrow, feeling very left out at this point. The ache of his upraised arms was nothing compared to the ache in his heart right now, but he had to trust them. It fucking sucked, but that's what this was all about: Trusting each other. With their lives.

Love is easy when you're not putting your life in another person's hands, to do with as they will. Love is easy when life doesn't dish out problems left right center and left and right of center. Tikbalangs don't seem to have it easy. Nor do bayots and diwatas.

At least I got to eat that barbecued chicken with java rice before I got trussed up like this. And have them both fucking me. Death isn't such a bad thing now—and even if this all goes wrong and I wind up crazy, I'll never forget just how glorious their bodies feel around me and in me. Game.

Kidlat raised his chin and sent one look past the leaves and up to the Skyworld. Bathala and Poon, bless us, or we're fucked in a very bad way. Praying never was his strong suit.

"Prepare yourself, Kid," Cocoy said across the many breaths of space between them. "This is going to hurt. But it will hurt all of us, not just you." The bayot's face was grave, his eyes dark with both determination and regret as he picked up the feather and began writing his name in Baybayin across Kidlat's chest, just below his collarbones.

The electric burning sank beneath Kidlat's skin, settling so deep he could feel Cocoy's name across his very soul. The characters glowed, bright gold flares limned in black over the hardening points of his nipples. A channel opened across those symbols, driving home the bayot's burning want and need, his lust, and his faith in Kidlat's resilience and strength.

"I have branded you, and so will our diwata," Cocoy's mouth was so close to Kidlat's ear that his words felt like soothing touches, counterpoints to the ebbing pain across the tikbalang's heaving, sweaty chest. Sweat and all, though, the Baybayin characters painted across his chest only glowed brighter, the gold changing to silver and black, then back again.

Jinx approached, her molten glow seeming to crack through her skin as she took the feather from Cocoy. The bayot held Jinx's waist above her tapis of black and gold. She, too, was in the ancient garb of skirt and beads.

The feather's path burned Jinx's name across Kidlat's chest, just above the top of his eight-pack, and the tikbalang drew in a pained breath and closed his eyes. As quickly as the shock and awe hit him, it dispersed into warmth and a new channel: He could feel his diwata's heartbeat along with his. Along with Cocoy's.

The desire running through his body like the lightning bolts that were his namesake struck everywhere beneath his skin and he jolted against his restraints. His tarugo rose, harder than it had ever been in his life, and wept his readiness through its slit. He was unbearably aroused and they had yet to touch him.

Kidlat's eyes fell closed again, just as he saw his bayot sinking to his knees on the forest floor, chanting arcane words. He felt the budded stimulation vines wrapping themselves about his hard cock, securing his balls in a living cage that crept swiftly up his shaft to hold it in a close, throbbing grip that at once aroused Kidlat, and restrained that arousal in the bayot's iron will.

Cocoy swept his tongue across the head of Kidlat's caged ari and looked up, a hot glint in his dark eyes as he sucked gently, too gently, on the throbbing red tip of the tikbalang's cockhead. For the love of the Three Worlds, Kidlat wanted, needed more. His legs shook, rattling the shackles on his ankles.

"You belong to us, Kidlat." Cocoy swept another slow lick across Kidlat's sensitive glans, making the tikbalang jerk his hips forward in involuntary pleasure. "I am taking the last hair now."

The vines began to vibrate, their buds rubbing along Kidlat's shaft as one tendril slipped through the wetness leaking from the slit in his glans and into the tiny hole, drawing a string of curses from Kidlat's mouth as he jerked backward and forward in his bonds at the pleasure and the pain of being kept from orgasm by the tightening coils about his tightly-drawn balls.

Then he felt Cocoy pluck out that golden hair out from the center of his ball sac, right along with the stubborn root that sat deeper than any hair follicle had the right to sit beneath anyone's skin.

"Motherfuckinghellonwheels! That hurts like a sonofabitch! Gods of War!" Kidlat's bellow shook the leaves around the trio and he truly the bayot'struggled to break free, redoubling the effort when he saw Cocoy had picked up the cloud thing that was a riding crop.

"Time for a long-overdue spanking, brat." Cocoy's grin was evil, and his face cast in shadows that did not cover the way the bayot's own shaft was hard and peeking out through the folds of his tapis. "You will take a dozen strikes and Jinx will count them out for you."

Each strike sizzled with energy, lighting and cold that would shock a human unconscious. Jinx's voice was warm like melting wax dripping hotly on Kidlat's skin, burning the numbers into his brain. Every time Kidlat thought he would pass out, his lovers would stop the punishment to lick his body—his nipples, his aching tumescence, the sensitive skin on his neck, the backs of his knees, his balls, taint and his twitching asshole.

Gods, I need to get fucked. Or fuck. Gods, the pain is going to kill me. But I refuse to die without coming. No. Fucking. Way. Kidlat could barely hold on to his snarled curses and they burst out in a blue streak for the books.

The crop changed into a cane, and the vines sent tendrils up to his nipples and out back to rim the small muscles where the light don't shine. This time it was Jinx who struck him with the cane: across his buttocks and upper thighs, across the breadth of his shoulders and the insides of his thighs, dangerously close to the family jewels.

Kidlat's throat was ragged from the shouting, from the impact and electrical sizzling of the cane strikes and from the warm wetness of his lovers' mouths that alternated with each blow, raising him to the edge of release before dropping him back into the pain.

***

Jinx's ledger was stirred by the wind to another segment copied from the translation of Fray Domenico's ledger as she approached her trussed up tikbalang and the bayot who was beckoning her with slow curls of his right index finger and a positively lustful smile.

She took up her place facing Kidlat, while Cocoy shifted to stand behind him.

Translation of the ledger of Fray Domenico Juan, on the sexual perversions of the natives, with annotations, by Dr. Isabelo Reyes, professor of anthropology, University of Sto. Tomas (July 14, 1963):

Translation, Ledger 9

"... there are numerous meanings for the tattoos of these people on these painted isles, I found. The geometric symbols are painstaikingly applied by tapping large thorns from one of the plants here, the ink made of burnt bamboo charcoal. Those symbols applied to arms and torsos of men and women alike signify their coming of age with protective symbols for local flora and fauna, most notably lizards, whose armor of scales they particularly admire.

"Other tattoos are curving symbols, the written syllabary of their spoken language, which chronicle the accomplishments of each person, as well as their names and the names of their loved ones when they join together, or form family groups. The more tattoos a person bears, the more that person has done for the community, it seems.

"The babaylan and the bayot have special tattoos, according to the townsfolk here in the community where I am living. If I understand them correctly, the tattoos of their clerics are talismans of some sort, invoking power for these clerics, or amplifying the power they already hold."

***

"Do you trust us?"

Kidlat's lovers spoke simultaneously as their hands touched his welted ass and heavy, throbbing balls. If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought that his heart had dropped into his scrotum and was pounding like a snare drum at a military parade.

"Fuck off. You're hurting me."

"Do" suck "you" lick "trust us?"

"Fuck, yes. If I didn't would I be... Ow!!"

Cocoy tweaked both Kidlat's nipples sharply in a purple nurple maneuver, then pulling the tikbalang forward with them. "Don't you dis me. Do you trust us?"

"Yes." Kidlat's answer was an agonized groan that morphed into pleasure as Jinx stroked his balls and took his tarugo down her throat as the vines gave way to her mouth's descent. Then she swallowed and Kidlat's exclaimed "YES" was probably not in answer to Cocoy's question as his first affirmative had been.

The tikbalang was pumping his hips as far as his bonds allowed, to no avail. The diwata removed her mouth and the vine tendrils and buds wrapped around it again, vibrating harder and clenching more tightly now.

"I hate seeing a grown tikbalang cry," Cocoy said. "But we're almost there. Now we need to use a whip." The bayot brought out a dried stingray tail and swept it through the air in front of Kidlat's face.

"Just trust us a little more, Kidlat," Jinx's hand was tender as it stroked down one of Kidlat's cheeks. "Just a little more."

"Easy for you to say. You aren't the one getting whipped." Kidlat's last word came out on a scream as the stingray tail whistled through the air and made contact with his right trapezius. "MOTHERFUCKING WHORE, ARAY! Puta."

The bayot and diwata followed a sadistic pattern of striking, then pleasuring Kidlat until all the tikbalang could utter were incoherent strings of sound. He hung off the restraints limply, all fight gone. He'd shifted to his tikbalang form on instinct: The thicker hide and pelt would prevent the worst cuts from the stingray tail. He was already bleeding from the cuts to his trapezius and across both his buttocks.

Cocoy released Kidlat from the manacles with a command word and the tikbalang dropped to his knees on the soft humus underfoot, changing back to his handsome, if battered, humanoid self as he did.

Jinx undid her tapis, lay down on it and spread herself out before her two lovers. Cocoy knelt beside her, cupping her breasts in his hands and rolling her rosy nipples between his fingers.

"Spread your legs, Jinx," Cocoy's voice was gentle, though his tone brooked no argument. "Open yourself to our tikbalang. Show him how much you want him." She complied, her gaze going molten gold as she shifted her wanton stare from Cocoy to Kidlat.

"Do you want your pleasure, Kidlat? Look at our Jinx, she's wrapping her legs around you. Go on, give her what she wants."

Kidlat took Jinx's hips in a bruising hard grip and thrust his aching tarugo in to the balls deep, the twisting vines around his balls and his fiery welts and wounds making him even more desperate for the fucking he craved.

Cocoy stood, his own tapis discarded, and took himself in hand, jerking his cock slowly as the precum slipped out of his slit. He gripped Kidlat's hair at the nape and brought his cock to his lover's eager mouth.

Jinx was shaking from the pleasure of being filled almost to the point of breaking with hot, hard tarugo, her legs twining even more tightly around Kidlat's waist as the tikbalang ground against her clit.

Watching Kidlat deep-throat Cocoy, make the bayot groan so all his muscles bulged like living sculpture, added another dimension to their carnal communion. She couldn't have stopped all the orgasms that ripped through her if the fate of the Three Worlds depended on it. Good thing it didn't.

Because Cocoy and Kidlat both coming while she did beat all the porn she'd ever seen, hands down, and she came again and again all over Kidlat's throbbing member, sucking every drop of come he had to give—just as he swallowed everything Cocoy gave him.

***

Jinx's notes included another passage from the ledger, which she'd annotated. These were for later reference and she'd hoped there was something worth applying to the taming of one Kidlat Batumbakal, and how that would work in a three-being scenario.

Translation of the ledger of Fray Domenico Juan, on the sexual perversions of the natives, with annotations, by Dr. Isabelo Reyes, professor of anthropology, University of Sto. Tomas (July 14, 1963):

Translation, Ledger 9

"These people believe in supernatural creatures with such staunchness that walking through the woods nearby involves much paying of obeisances. They ask for permission to pass with practically every footstep. It is something that would irritate the most tolerant of Christians, I tell you.

"They are particularly superstitious about beings called 'diwata' and 'tikbalang,' both of which, they say, will mislead people who displease them. Their displeasure, it seems, is easy to earn: A bad look, smelling bad, speaking too loudly, stepping on certain plants or rocks, for example, will displease them. So will picking leaves or scarring trees or shrubs. Their religion seems to be bounded by fear, as well as an attempt to supernaturally explain perfectly ordinary things.

"The tikbalang are believed to be pathfinders and message carriers, as well as mischief-causing spirits, though they cannot explain how these spirits look. Suffice it to say they don't make physical appearances very often and, when they do, well, it isn't good for the people who see them.

"The diwata, on the other hand, is described with much detail. They say diwata live in the mountains, and are the guardians of these mountains, very protective guardians who appear as women of unearthly beauty.

"Diwatas have been known to take human lovers, usually males, but that isn't always the case, and they don't necessarily just have intercourse with one person at a time—orgies can happen with these diwatas. The diwata's lusts must always be sated, the townsfolk told me. This would ensure bountiful harvests and fertile lands for them to till. Diwatas have also been known to heal the sick, and keep the villagers healthy by walking among them and blessing them, working with the bayot and the diwata to procure any needed herbs, or cool the air in the hot months.

"These heathens' proclivity for sexual acts and configurations on the sexual act is positively perverted, if we were to use our religious beliefs as a measure. Perhaps I should put mine aside for now. This will make converting them to our morality and, thus, saving them, easier because we will understand where we must begin our soul-saving work.

"The people here sometimes build family groups around not two, but three or more people, all of whom seem to be sexually involved with one another, whether or not they are of the same gender. This, they said, is how the diwatas love, and they are merely reflecting what they've learnt. Parental groups of three, not two, they believe, are best protected, since three is a powerful number, as one sees in the shape of a triangle, their most-often repeated tattoo symbol for the three worlds they claim exist."