God Conqueror 2

by Logan Jacobs

  “I guess I can enjoy the desert when it’s like this,” Lizzy said as she sipped her mead. “Hey, how much you wanna bet these camels have never seen a wolf? Any kinda wolf at all?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said. The last thing we needed was to terrify our guides’ beasts of burden that they depended on for their livelihood into bolting into the desert and leaving all the humans stranded without critical supplies. “You’re staying human tonight, all right?”

  “Oh yeah, any particular reason you want me that way?” the she-wolf purred.

  I grinned. “Could be. We’ll see.”

  “Do you prefer human mates, the way that Willobee will only mate with gnomes?” Ilandere asked nonchalantly.

  “And the way that centaurs only mate with centaurs?” Elodette asked her through gritted teeth. “Except the kind that resort to fucking horses when other centaurs won’t have them…”

  “Er, well, I prefer Lizzy in her human form,” I answered cautiously. “I mean, I love Lizzy in her wolf form, she’s a badass. But I’m not… you know… attracted to canines that way.”

  “Hmmm,” Ilandere said. “Because of the fur? Or the four legs? Or just more generally because they’re… not quite human?”

  “Uh. I guess because they’re not human at all?” I said. “It’s not something I ever thought about much. The idea just feels… wrong.”

  “But you don’t mind that Lizzy’s a little non-human,” Ilandere pointed out. “Her ears and tail and her paws, I mean.”

  “No, of course not,” I said.

  “Most men think they’re a plus,” Lizzy purred. “Secretly anyway. Even if it ain’t respectable to say.”

  “The perverse sexual preferences of human men are none of our concern, Princess,” Elodette said sternly.

  “Hey, Lizzy doesn’t have to look exactly like me for me to think she’s beautiful,” I told the little centaur, “and neither do you.”

  “Do you really think I’m beautiful, or do you just say that because you’re so kind?” Ilandere asked. “Even though to you, I probably just look like a horse?”

  “I don’t think you look like a horse,” I said. “You’re one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, but she still does look like a horse,” Lizzy said unhelpfully.

  “Okay, there are certain traits that centaurs might have in common… I mean just like how Lizzy has certain canine traits… but that doesn’t mean… it’s not the same as… ” I struggled to find the right words to convince Ilandere that I really did find her beautiful and desirable, without making her feel uncomfortable, or making any unwarranted assumptions about why she was pursuing this line of questioning.

  Whether luckily or unluckily, circumstances interrupted the conversation just then in the form of the caravan starting to arrange itself around the largest of the canopies in a wide circle. A set of large drums was arranged along one edge, and five merchants were beating out a dazzlingly intricate rhythm that got under your skin and intertwined itself with your heartbeat and made you want to get up and dance, or fight, or something. Then half a dozen men brought out flaming torches and started leaping wildly around the circle with them. This seemed like a precarious activity that carried a high risk of sending the entire canopy and everyone under it up in flames, but after a few minutes of watching, I decided to trust in their skill and precision, and that their movements were not as haphazard as they appeared.

  They wove back and forth faster and faster and even more erratically, and leapt higher and higher, as the drums urged them on and the audience watched spellbound. Then, one of the men’s foot seemed to slip on the carpet. He fell flat on his back as his flaming torch flew into the air. Everyone gasped, some people screamed, and a few lunged forward to try in vain to catch the torch even though none of them were close enough to reach it before it hit the carpet.

  The torch hurtled down, flaming head first, and then the dancer opened his mouth and swallowed it whole. That produced more screams from the audience. I thought we were about to witness a man burned alive from the inside out. Then, he calmly opened his mouth and pulled out the torch which was now extinguished. The rest of the caravan exploded into ecstatic cheering.

  “Uh, is this a standard entertainment around here?” I asked Kiki, since the merchants were reacting to the spectacle with just as much raw horror and then relief and delight as my friends were, even though the fire dancers were part of their caravan and had presumably performed for them before.

  “Yeah, we’ve seen this a thousand times before,” she yelled back cheerfully over the clamor of the crowd. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I agreed.

  Now, the circle was slowing down, and the rest of the dancers were swallowing their torches too. A few of them exhaled billows of flame straight at the shrieking crowd, but the fire always stopped short just before it actually touched anyone or anything else. Within minutes, all the torches had been extinguished, and the dancers were taking their bows, to thunderous applause.

  The next act after that was from the eldest member of the caravan, a wizened old man named Han who didn’t speak a word of the common tongue. He sat cross-legged on the carpet in the center of the canopy with his eyes closed and a beatific smile on his toothless mouth. Other caravan members carried out a woven basket and set it before him, removed the lid, and hastily backed away. Without opening his eyes, Han pulled out a pipe from the folds of his robe, placed it in his mouth, and began to play.

  The trilling sounds that he produced on that pipe were just as haunting and unearthly as Willobee’s chanting had been, but instead of resonating deep within your bones and making you feel drawn to the earth, they spiraled high and made you feel like you were floating up into the sky. As the pipe’s mesmerizing song continued, a thin black snake unfurled itself from within the basket and focused its beady reddish eyes upon the pipe. It flicked its forked tongue menacingly a few times. Then, instead of striking, the snake started to undulate its body back and forth in sync with the melody of the music. Once Han played the last few gentle notes of his song, the snake coiled itself back up and disappeared from sight into the basket. Other caravan members came forward, replaced the lid on the basket, and carried it away.

  I heard Willobee exclaim something to the surrounding merchants that sounded like, “Gaharna kalu nuseni!”

  “Oh, you have seen nothing yet, my friend,” replied Zembo. “The real show is just about to begin.”

  From the corner of one of my sets of eyes, I noticed the nursemaids ushering all the children of the caravan, not just Danazar’s, together beneath one of the canopies. Then, they unfurled the sides of the canopy so that they fell down and created an enclosed tent.

  Han on his pipe and the drummers who had accompanied the fire dancers assembled along one edge of the canopy where all these performances were taking place. They were joined by a few women with jingling tambourines and castanets. This band struck up a heavy, pounding, animalistic beat complemented by the bright shimmer of the tambourines and castanets and woven through with the lively thread of Han’s pipe.

  And then, caravan members carried over the six litters and set them down. The tambourines and castanets had been showering down a light rain of sound, but upon the arrival of the litters, their players stopped, then shook and clicked their instruments all in unison, which created a single authoritative chime.

  The curtains of the first litter parted, and one of Danazar’s wives stepped out.

  She wasn’t the same petulant, hysterical woman I had caught glimpses of throughout the day. The night turned her dark and mysterious, and a slight smile curved her red painted lips. Her eyes were rimmed in charcoal. She wasn’t wearing a single stitch of clothing, unless you counted the delicate network of chains draped over the curves of her body, which held coins in place over her nipples and suspended a beaded fringe no larger than the palm of a hand over her pubic area.

  As she sashayed across the
carpet with all eyes fixed on her, a second chime rang out, and the curtains of that litter parted again as the second wife emerged. She was dressed in the same manner as the first. The two of them glided around the canopy in a circular pattern similar to the one the fire dancers had followed although their movements were nothing alike. Whereas the men had bounded energetically, the women slunk languidly.

  Each sharp chime of the instruments, while the pounding drums continued in the background all the while like a heartbeat writ large, summoned another wife, until all twelve of them were pacing the carpet in a circle like proud lionesses.

  The rest of the audience was sitting, standing, or kneeling in whatever position allowed them to view the entertainments, but Danazar was reclined in a wicker chair at one side of the canopy in a place of honor. He surveyed his wives proudly, caught one of my selves’ eye, and winked.

  The music gained momentum, and the women’s walk turned into a dance. They raised their arms, twirled their hands, shimmied their hips, stomped their feet, and spun in circles until they turned into a lively forest of golden limbs and curves. Their figures were appealing enough, although not as stunning as Lizzy’s and Florenia’s, but it was the way they moved that oozed pure unabashed sensuality, drove everything else out of your mind, and reduced it to its most basic instincts.

  After a few minutes of this, as the tension mounted among the audience, a few of the caravan members started tossing shiny curved scimitars to Danazar’s wives. They caught them without missing a beat and incorporated the blades into their dance. They whirled, clashed twelve scimitars together in the middle like some kind of elaborate flower of metal and flesh, and stepped in and out, which created a harsh scraping sound as the blades dragged along one another and made the flower expand and contract. Then they fell into kneeling positions, leaned back until their shoulder blades touched the carpet, and shimmied their bodies in a way that made their unsecured breasts bounce on their chests while they traced the scimitars lightly across their torsos and legs, which seemed precarious given the amount of movement they were doing, but somehow they managed never to cut themselves. The audience stared in a mixture of admiration, lust, and trepidation.

  Then one by one the women rose. Some of them continued dancing with the scimitars while others tossed theirs back to the audience members who had provided them until all twelve were empty-handed. Then, the caravan members provided them with golden rods instead.

  The music turned ecstatic as the dancers abandoned their synchronized choreography altogether and started to toy with the rods. Some of them remained on their feet and shimmied and whirled while holding the rods in their teeth. Others returned to that leaning back while kneeling position and gripped the rods in their teeth too while they gyrated on the floor, or used their stomach muscles and hip movements to roll the rods up and down their torsos without using their hands.

  The audience cheered them on with flushed faces and shining eyes. I myself was finally beginning to get a sense for why the caravan put up with these women and lugged them around as dead weight in those litters all the time, in lethally hot temperatures.

  Then things really escalated.

  A few of the women who were on their backs brushed aside their fringed loin coverings to insert the rods deep between their legs and continued to gyrate rhythmically to the music with the metal inside their bodies.

  I heard Ilandere, who was right beside one of my selves, gasp in shock. I looked over at her and saw that she was flushed pink and covered her rosebud mouth with both of her hands, but she wasn’t looking away from the performance.

  Lizzy and Florenia were each pressing up against one of my other two selves in a way that indicated it was having an effect on them too. And I thought it was unlikely that any of the men of the caravan lacked an erection by this point.

  Then, two of Danazar’s wives impaled themselves on opposite ends of the same rod, braced themselves with their hands on each other’s shoulders and waists, and thrust back and forth so that the audience could see their backs arch, their mouths open, and the rod slide in and out of them. When one of the women climaxed with a cry, the music stopped.

  Danazar rose from his chair, walked to the center of the carpet among his wives sprawled out in various positions, and executed deep bows in every direction as if he had been the one who just performed. The caravan chanted, whooped, stomped, and clapped its approval as the sides of the canopy fell and enclosed their leader and his harem in their own private tent.

  The rest of the caravan scattered to separate canopies-turned-tents as well. Well, I mean that there were multiple tents, quite a few of them. But not nearly as many tents as there were couples. I managed to get a small one for just Ilandere, Elodette, and one of my selves, because Elodette and I both felt the need to protect the princess and ensure that she would be given her own space and privacy, and none of the merchants really wanted to tangle with us. When the giant black centaur glared at them threateningly and waved them away, they just shrugged and stumbled off to the next nearest tent.

  I didn’t know exactly where Willobee was, but I was confident that the gnome was perfectly safe in a crowd of his new best friends and had either found some to strike up a game of Sandmaster with, or had already passed out in a pile of carpets somewhere and would snore through till morning no matter what activities took place around him.

  As for Lizzy and Florenia, they chose not to join me with the centaurs in the only private tent that our group could reasonably reserve for ourselves. Instead, they each dragged one of my selves off to one of the larger tents already filled with caravan members in various states of undress and entanglement. The caravan didn’t really seem to have much of a notion of privacy at all under the circumstances, and my two consorts quickly adapted to the general attitude. Florenia was soon riding one of me while my other self fucked Lizzy from behind. Other couples and various groups were enjoying themselves similarly all around us, which normalized the shared space and allowed us to just focus on each other without any concern for what the tents’ other occupants thought.

  The only tent in the entire collection that was quiet and respectable on the inside was the one I shared with Ilandere and Elodette.

  Elodette looked even sterner than usual. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she was thinking judgmental thoughts about our hosts and their lifestyle. I thought it was an interesting combination of extremes. They endured the desert’s harsh conditions and daily perils by day and indulged themselves without restraint by night.

  Ilandere looked flustered and agitated. Both of the centaurs had folded their legs beneath them in their usual position of nighttime repose, but instead of laying her head down the princess held her torso upright and kept fidgeting with her long silvery blonde hair.

  Finally she asked me, “Vander? You know what the women did during that… dance? Is that what you and Lizzy and Florenia do at night?”

  “Er, not exactly,” I said awkwardly, “but in a certain sense, yes, depending on what you mean by that.”

  “Well, I know there are only two of them, not twelve, and that when you’re involved, you don’t have to use those… rod things,” she said with uncertainty, “but it’s kind of like that, except with your… bodies?”

  “Um, yes, a little bit,” I agreed. “I uhhh, penetrate them with my penis and then move it back and forth like they did with their rods.”

  “Well, I’d never seen anything like that before, but it was very… interesting,” the princess remarked after a pause.

  “The sexual habits of humans are extravagant and vulgar,” Elodette stated.

  “With centaurs, it’s more just… matter-of-fact?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Elodette replied. “It’s for breeding purposes. Nothing more.”

  “Well, I don’t know, some of my other handmaidens said they enjoyed it,” Ilandere confided.

  “That is very ill-bred of them to say,” Elodette sniffed. “And to talk about it in your royal
presence, too.”

  “I don’t know, though,” Ilandere sighed. “It doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me if it was for both reasons, maybe? For breeding when it’s the right time, but also just… for fun?”

  “Maybe the vulgar masses can afford to have that attitude, and so can humans, but for you, preserving your royal lineage must take utmost precedence,” Elodette told her.

  “Hmmm,” Ilandere replied. “So you mean, it would be bad for me to get impregnated by anyone who wasn’t a royal stallion?”

  “Yes, such impure offspring would constitute a corruption of your bloodlines and be a stain upon the honor of your stock,” Elodette confirmed.

  “Different species can’t impregnate each other, usually, though, right?” Ilandere asked.

  “Of course not,” Elodette exclaimed. Then she scowled. “There are exceptions, like Lizzy, of course, but that’s not… normal. Certainly not to be expected. That’s why there is no point in even considering members of other species as viable, or acceptable, mates.”

  “Ah. Then a cross-species affair would not jeopardize the genetic purity of the herd in any way,” Ilandere concluded triumphantly.

  By this point it was hard for me to ignore where this was leading. “Er, Ilandere,” I asked, “any particular reason you were wondering? Did you… have something in mind?”