Chapter 45: Tl'oghk'etnaeyen

I deserve to take her as my woman. I deserve to wet my dick in her again and again, just as I sunder my enemies on my sword. Mmmm. Swords. I miss my sword. I want a good sword. I will have to kill the little man and take his. But that’s a girly sword, and I hate girly swords. I want something with heft, something I can cleave with… Mmmm. Cleave. I can’t wait until my woman comes back so I can cleave her with my cock. It was Odin’s will she would succumb to my strength and submit to my massive member…

Gaia grant me patience not to mindweave him into thinking he’s a toad, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought, listening to the barghest’s inane mental chatter in the back of the chariot-of-steel. It would be an insult to toads. He pressed his hand to his temple, willing the vampire to come back, so at least he had something else to focus on. While her mental weave was similarly small-minded, at least she didn’t seem to be preoccupied with sex, death, and violence.

I’m hungry. I wonder what my woman left for us.

Behind him, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen heard the lid of the cooler get pulled open and the crush of moving ice.

Ugh, this stuff is dead. And cold. Disgusting! But it’s either eat this or the dog…

“You want to eat the meat,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said distractedly.

I want to eat the meat. But she didn’t buy me pork. Why didn’t she buy me pork? At least give me the flesh of an omnivore…

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen then endured the mental torture as the primitive beast critiqued the cold, sticky flesh as he moved it around on his tongue.

So tasteless. Maybe I can get rid of some of this and force her to buy me pork. Then, once my energy is restored, I can fuck her properly.

“Toes of the Titans, just grow. Up.” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen slapped the side of his head against the window in despair.

I should probably grow up. But Odin’s balls, I’d rather be eating pork. At least pigs eat meat, given the chance. I even saw Freyja’s boar eat a man’s dick once, on the battlefield. Tore it off and gulped it down like a noodle. And Hildisvíni tastes good, whenever I get ahold of that hairy bastard long enough to eat him.

“That means you like to eat dicks,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said in idle agony.

But… Does that mean I like to eat dicks?

“Yes. It does.”

Odin’s balls…I’ve eaten thousands of dicks. Just gulped them down with everything else. It’s just meat, right? Am I wrong to eat the whole animal, or should I avoid the dick? Does eating dicks make me gay?

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen groaned and started bashing his face against the car’s front dash.

“You hungry?” The barghest dug one of the disgusting slabs of flesh from the cooler and held it out to him.

“No thank you. You eat it and think you made me eat it.”

Look at that stupid dog, eating that steak. I wonder why dogs usually attack me. From the back, there came sounds of carnal savagery, and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen turned to look.

Several rows of slender white teeth had sprouted from the barghest’s face, his jaws tearing at flesh and gristle as he savaged the steak like an animal.

Making a face, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen turned back to face the window.

Oh look, it wants another one.

“Eat that one too,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said boredly. “Think that I did it.”

The barghest went back to making disgusting sounds in the back of the chariot-of-steel.

“You ate that fast,” the barghest commented, obviously pleased. Perhaps if I can stuff the beast full, it will explode. “Another?”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had to still his mind to keep himself from telling the disgusting animal that it had the sudden urge to start licking his own asshole. “No, eat that as well. In fact, from now on, each time you want to feed me something, you’re going to eat it yourself and think I ate it.” That should keep that ignorant peasant busy for a couple weeks until it wore off.

In the back, the beast started rocking the chariot-of-steel in his contortions to down all the meat he wanted to throw at Tl'oghk'etnaeyen.

I wish I could put my dick in her, just a little, the beast thought as it ate. Maybe bite her a little. Right on the shoulder…virgins like that. I wonder if she knows I can smell she’s a virgin? Then, with alarm, What if she can smell I haven’t gotten laid in years?

“Yes she can,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said.

The barghest’s alarm grew severalfold. Do dicks grow smaller from lack of use?

“Yes they do,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said.

My dick has shrunk!

Please get back here before I undo the slip-knot of this simpleton’s mind, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought, though his thoughts, unlike the barghest’s thoughts, were carefully walled within the confines of his own mind. It was a trick that his uncle had taught him, back when his father had abandoned him in a minor estate with a nursemaid and a pet unicorn.

The same unicorn who, once his father had realized he had grown attached to her—and that Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had showed her his true form—had been pinned to a post by nails of iron while Lord Yazaan Naltsiine dealt with his son.

“What, you don’t think being green is shameful enough?” his father had screamed, his hands still crimson with Khrysilla’s blood. “You want to consort with beasts?” He had never seen his father so enraged, so utterly out of control. “You wish to show your shame to a beast?” He had begun whipping Tl'oghk'etnaeyen at that point, the leather strap whistling through the air as it snapped home. “You repulsive creature. Never will you sire children. You lie to me again—you put your filthy dick in anything with breasts—and I shall chain you in the stable where you belong.”

At the time, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen really hadn’t understood the significance of his father’s words. Back then, he had still thought he would inherit his father’s position, and as such, he would eventually need to provide an heir of his own. Over time, however, it had become clear that his father had meant exactly what he said. Be grateful I don’t take your cock for your transgressions, you animal. This is lenience! His father had screamed it, a thousand times, while whipping Tl'oghk'etnaeyen into unconsciousness.

While Tl'oghk'etnaeyen recovered from his father’s flogging, his father had consigned a metalsmith to create the enchanted chain that even now hung upon his chest. Instead of a badge of shame, as it had been intended, however, the tip of the Horn he carried with him reminded him of the friend he had lost, the friend whose body he had found dumped in a ditch behind the estate, dehorned, whipped bloody, and her throat cut.

The spell binding the silver chain around his neck—and the Horn of Truth dangling from its center—had been a powerful one, one that Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had not been able to remove on his own, despite all his attempts to do so. “There,” his father had said, as he sealed the spell with the power of the Sky Clan. “You want to act like a lusty beast? I give you your wish. Now your potential paramours will see nothing but a filthy animal, humping their leg like the horny dog you are.”

The necklace would also, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen was soon to discover, serve a darker purpose, one of which Tl'oghk'etnaeyen could never have seen coming. Bound by a Horn of Truth, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen could never embellish upon the truth, as was necessary for a proper Story before the Gathering. And, confined to the country villa by his father, cursed to appear to all intelligent creatures in the form of a dog for his transgressions, forbidden from leaving the distant estate for fear that knowledge of their family’s shameful ancestry would spread, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had been in no position to earn a decent Story and become a man. Which, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had come to realize over the decades, had all been part of his father’s plan to eventually name his younger brother Kesani’aan the clan heir and let Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, who bore the proof of his family’s shame in the emerald hue of his skin and hair, fade into obscurity.

The mindless toad behind him tossed another slab of flesh, this time slapping against his back and startling him out of the memory.

I swear to Gaia, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought as he felt the cold, wet hunk of meat slide down the exquisite spidersilk vest, I will exchange his mind with that of a rodent if the vampire doesn’t return within the next candlemark. He gingerly picked up the steak between thumb and forefinger and flicked it back at the barghest. “Eat that and think it was me.”

Yes, eat it, the barghest thought, delighted, as he ate the steak. Eat it and vomit all over her so she’ll stop petting you and let me sit in the front seat.

Such a simple creature, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought with disdain. Then, another wash of sadness hit him as he thought about that. You want to be freed? his father had sneered at dinner the one night Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had dared to request as much.

Yes father, please… Inwardly, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen watched his younger self fist his hands in the silver-and-gold tablecloth as his younger brother watched with a smirk. It’s been ten years.

His father chuckled cruelly. “You want to be free?” He took a thoughtful sip of glimmering sundew from his purple faestone chalice. “It’s simple enough. As it was a beast who took your honor, you may only be freed by a beast. Seems fair to me.” The look in his father’s eyes as he grinned at him over the chalice, tipping it in salute, burned like molten iron in Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s spirit the next two hundred years.

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had spent those centuries silently mulling over that riddle in his head. It was bad form for the firstborn son of a feylord to ask unnecessary questions in serving his penance, after all. But, eventually, after trying everything from physically manipulating the chain with a cat's paws, to stabbing at the chain with a horn of another unicorn, to asking a toad, he had once more gone crawling back to his father to explain, this time alone in the stables, not at the family dinner table.

His father had been brushing sweat from the side of his favorite stallion after running him on a lead. The creature’s blue eyes met the Horn chained around Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s neck and quickly looked away, but not before Tl'oghk'etnaeyen saw bitterness clear on the male unicorn’s face. He had been one of Khrysilla’s playmates, in younger years, before they’d dehorned him and trained him to ride. The unicorns blamed Tl'oghk'etnaeyen for her death, which had only made her loss even harder, his shame that much harder to take.

“Father?” he had asked. “Can I talk to you?”

His father made a face of disgust and didn’t even stop what he was doing. “I’m leaving in an hour.” He began fiddling with tack.

“I know,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had babbled. “It’s just…” He was usually more controlled, but he was so desperate that the words just tumbled out. “Father, the conditions of my release baffle me. I’ve tried everything.”

His father snorted, and there was a twist of derision to the sound as he dropped the saddle onto the stallion’s back. “Not everything.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen was taken aback, because he was pretty sure he had tried everything. He’d used two centuries to do it. “Perhaps the metalsmith made a mistake…,” he began, reviewing it all in his head, “I’ve tried every—”

His father, the lord of the Sky Clan, laughed at him. “You find yourself in your predicament because of your passion for beasts.” He cinched down a strap on his stallion, who flinched. The poor creature probably hadn’t been allowed to take human form since being broken to ride over a century ago. “Thus, I believe the best cure for your sickness would be for you to be ridden by one.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, who had been watching his father saddle the unicorn with commiseration, frowned up at his father as the word finally registered. “…ridden?”

His father’s smile didn’t seem right. “And, since you are a lord’s son, the beast that must ride you shall be none other than a first-tier denizen of the Third Realms, as is befitting your station as my son. Vampire, if you want to be safe. Barghest, if you want to be sure to break the spell.” Then his father smiled, a truly malicious gleam in his eye. “I suppose you could ask Odin or his Valkyrie to do it, but I’ve heard they’re even less gentle than their beasts.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, though he was not a child nor a virgin, still didn’t piece it together until he was back in his own room, his father once again headed back to the city with his mother and younger brother. Once more alone, the villa silent around him, he had sat down on his bed of woven dandelion and touched the Horn tip hanging from his neck. Despite himself, he remembered his final hours with Khrysilla, seeing her smile in pleasure, feeling her warm and welcoming body moving under him as he rode her…

And then, in that horrifying moment, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had understood what his father meant. To be ridden by a beast like the mindless thing now eating raw meat from a cooler in the seat behind him. The ultimate blow to his manhood, if he even survived. His Story, were it ever told before the Gathering, would be one so shameful that he could never claim his place as a man, and, as such, a lord.

He never intended for me to succeed him, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought bitterly.

Then, just twenty-two years ago, his father had seized upon the fact that Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had passed his five hundredth birthday and still had no Story to tell at the upcoming Gathering and had used it as an excuse to banish him from the Second Lands so he could select his younger brother, Kesani'aan, as his heir. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen still vividly remembered the night six of his father’s sworn swords had come for him, viciously subduing him, binding him, and shipping him off to the First Realm to disappear. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen hadn’t even understood what was happening until they had taken the hood off of him in what he now understood to be a massive ‘parking lot’ for the chariots-of-steel ‘sold’ him as a ‘pet.’ Hands locked behind his back, led around by a leash.

And then, when he freed himself and left that family, he had been attacked by other humans thinking he was naught but a big dog. He’d been chased, shooed, yelled at, and, in several cases, shot at before he finally found his first vampire.

Not that he wanted to be ridden by a vampire, of course, but he, like all fey, liked time to weigh the risks and benefits, on the off-chance it was ever feasible. So he’d watched them. For years. Then, when Theo—a true lord of the Nightlands—had crossed his path to knock their pubescent heads together, he’d watched Theo, instead.

But never, not in a thousand years, had Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought he would ever stumble across a queen. It was a proposition both alluring and terrifying. Alluring, because he knew a queen’s magic would free him. Terrifying, because, as he had seen of the jabbering moron after she’d dosed him with her venom, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen also knew the potential was high that it would take from him the one thing he still possessed—his mind.

On cue, the barghest thought, I really want to stab her with my cock. I wonder if she’d let me pin her down and take her from behind if I tell her I won’t make her look at me…

Gaia save me from the minds of morons, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen groaned. “She doesn’t want to have sex with you. You’re an uncouth growth on a titan’s flaccid penis.”

I think there might be a growth on my penis. What is that? Is that orange? Oh, just a Cheeto. Thank Thor’s hammer, my manhood is saved.

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen went back to systematically beating his head through the dash. He was loudly humming himself a lullaby, fingers in his ears, actively trying to ignore the mind-numbing monotony of the barghest’s constant mental chatter when the sleek black SUVs pull into the parking-lot beside their limo and he suddenly caught a new, much more thoroughly-formed thought:

I hope to God this queen doesn’t kill everyone before we put her down.