The Maze Ch. 05: Into the West

"How I envy you! And yet, how curious too, because Lord Uxur looked out at us from the temple steps and in a voice that seemed to resonate the air he said, 'I promised to slay the monster and I will, but I need help in this dangerous and heroic deed. Are there any witches here who would dare its coiling embrace?'"

"Hah! There are many fools who imagine themselves to be witches, but none so foolish as that."

"But there you are wrong. Two young women who stood by Minarwe's temple raised their hands, and one cried, 'We are the witches you seek, Lord Uxur!' And the crowd parted to allow them and two others to approach the steps."

"By Minarwe's temple, you say? I think I know who you mean! Two blonde strangers I saw there the other day, one tall and proud like a queen, the other fair indeed, and both carried swords with them."

"You're half right, and half again. The tall one wasn't a witch, but she was a queen. 'Lord Uxur,' she called out. 'I am Hanwe of Lliria, once called the Black Queen of Benatek. I fear no monster of the deep!' And you should have heard the cries of terror from all who were near her."

"The Black Queen! Who once wore the silver cock herself... I can well believe she used it to command armies, for I merely glimpsed it myself and would have gladly knelt before it, such a longing it filled me with."

"What times we live in, when gods walk among us. It's no wonder the king is hiding up in the hills. But I haven't finished yet! The fourth woman - you'll know her, of course - said, 'I am Mia of the Maze, Priestess of Minarwe, and will join this expedition if I may.'"

"Yes, I know who you mean. Always trying to hide her legs, that one. The Maze? How extraordinary!"

"Indeed! Indeed! Then Lord Uxur raised his arms in a gesture of welcome, and said, 'Come, my friends. Together we will drive the monster to his doom,' and he turned and led them into his temple."

*

"What are you?" Lia demanded, the moment we were alone. "You're not a god, and you're not a man either."

Katarra laughed, his voice echoing within the domed and stone-walled temple. Depictions of the god and his sungold cock graced every wall and column, a hundred faces that seemed to echo that laughter back at us. "But I was a god," Katarra said, "and before that I was not. I was not born human, no, but I have chosen to become so. I cannot, as I once could, command storms and banish monsters to the deep, but I am not without power."

That he was not without power was painfully obvious. He was standing in front of me, quite naked, his golden cock erect. It took all my strength of will not to kneel before that magic-infused cock and worship it.

"It's magnificent," Dala whispered.

"Your robe, my lord," Princess Kait said, wrapping an elegant robe of lustrous yellow silk about the wizard, concealing the sungold cock that had demanded so much attention.

Abruptly, I could see him for what he was: a man, not a god, whatever he had been before. I yearned still to see again that wondrous cock, but the urge to kneel and worship this mere man was snuffed out like a candle. "What a brutal magic that is," I whispered.

Fresh laughter filled the temple - feminine laughter. Dala and Lia gasped in chorus, and Hanwe, ever the calm warrior, flinched and peered about anxiously.

Katarra smiled. "Show yourself, Sister."

"I answer to no mortal man," the goddess said, but appeared before him, as naked as he had just been, her astonishing cock as proudly erect as his still was beneath his robe. Ulaxr was beautiful and undeniably a goddess, and unquestionably a woman despite the cock she proudly sported. She was tall with shimmering grey skin, and with long, straight, aetherially white hair like a cascade of moonlight.

Her moonsilver cock was as commanding of desire as the sungold had been, and I would have fallen to my knees in helpless adoration of its divine beauty had Hanwe not tugged roughly on my hair. On Dala's too. "Don't stare at it!" she hissed.

"No wonder you stole it from her," Lia said as I tried desperately to ignore its divine lure.

"Yes," Lady Ulaxr said, turning to look sternly at Hanwe, "though taking it with my cock still within was a cruel twist."

"Apologies, Goddess," Hanwe said, her expression as guilty as naughty child's.

The goddess laughed. "Seeing you confined in silver these many years has been entertainment enough for me to forgive you."

Turning back to Katarra, she said, "I brought you the ship you asked for, but the witches are far ahead. You waste time here with these mischiefs."

Katarra shrugged. "Minarwe believes otherwise."

"I do believe otherwise," Minarwe said, my goddess appearing beside me as a woman crafted out of blue flame. "Your sword may be thirsty for the blood of witches, but we were not brought to this world to play such games."

Ulaxr sighed. "So you say, little sister, and I am weary of the argument. I will grant you fair winds to Atlantis, and I pray that you have not doomed us all."

*

The ship weighed anchor and wind filled its sails. There was no crew. Lord Derushil, the Divine Smith, had built the ship and it needed none. Magic and mechanisms did the work, while Hanwe stood at the wheel that turned the rudder.

Behind us, the people of Alba crowded the waterfront and lined the clifftop, and I wondered if that Rathwiri wizard watched us now as we had once watched him.

I stood at the bow, the waves breaking beneath my misshapen feet. The blue sea stretched out all the way to the horizon and beyond. I had never been on a boat before, and never a ship, and the constant shifting of balance made me dizzy. I was a creature of the earth, not the sea. There was nowhere now to sink my roots into, only dry wood and deep, salty water.

Lia sat near me, holding her head in her hands. "I feel sick," she moaned.

Somewhere in front of us, perhaps even beneath us, was Ketos. We had watched it destroy so many ships, and here we were sailing into its embrace. Armed against its many tentacles with little but hope and magic.

"There!" Hanwe cried, pointing ahead, and I caught a glimpse of a thick, terrifying tentacle.

Princess Kait had remained in Port Alba. Lady Ulaxr had tasked her with building a second temple, twinned with the first. A temple to Lady Ulaxr to stand beside that of her brother Lord Uxur. Aboard the ship were only a wizard who was once a god, two talented young witches, a warrior who had once been a cruel tyrant, and me.

Me. A girl from the Farm. A priestess of Minarwe, yes, and with mutated legs and an acute sense of smell, but hardly of much use on such a grand adventure.

I stood and readied my bow with its single arrow. On the deck between us and Hanwe, Dala sat astride Katarra, his golden cock penetrating her deep - but unmoving. I could see the blaze of lust in her eyes, and the wind swept her golden hair with wild excitement, but only her hands and lips moved, and Katarra's hands moved in careful counterpart.

I screamed as great tentacles soared into the air around the ship as if the monster were preparing to drag us to the depths. "Not real," Lia said, but forced herself to her feet. She studied the illusion for a moment, then dismissed it from her attention. "Straight up in the air, Mia," she said, pointing.

I shot my arrow vertically up, and as it flew high above the sails, it blazed with a blinding light. The illusory tentacles recoiled in squirming fear and retreated beneath the waves. Through it all, there had only been the sound of the wind in the sails and the waves beneath us, and now the distinctive moans of Dala's pleasure drifted across the deck. "I need it," she murmured. "I need it like I've never needed anything before."

Katarra chuckled, and with a coiling motion of his arms summoned clouds from the blue sky, clouds that thickened and darkened, until lightning crackled and thunder rumbled.

Again the great tentacles swarmed about us. "Again, Mia!" cried Lia, and my next arrow seemed to summon a great bolt of lightning from the sky as it descended into the heart of the monster.

"There!" Hanwe shouted, and adjusted the rudder to keep the ship between the people of Alba and the distant monster.

"Dala's spells are working," Lia said. "I can see what she's doing, but I wouldn't have had the imagination to do it myself. Ready, Mia?"

Again and again, tentacles attacked us harmlessly and my arrows burned the sky as we sailed steadily away from Alba. And Ketos himself swam before us, driven by Dala's ecstatic cries as she and Katarra fucked, their fingers a passionate dance of mystical meaning, Uxur's sungold cock a proud and tireless ram pounding mercilessly into Dala's gushing centre.