Disclaimers: This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people are coincidental. If you are under the legal age in your area to read erotic literature, please stop reading this and go somewhere age appropriate. If you are offended by homosexual material, please stop reading this and go somewhere your bigoted little mind can handle. If you're looking for pure sex, and plot/character development only get in your way, this story is definitely not for you. The rest of you, please enjoy chapter eleven of this tale.
Author's note: This chapter is dedicated to Lou, who gave me the inspiration and insight into O'onerut's character that it was previously lacking.
----------------------- Godsend Chapter 11: The Outsider's Palace
The massive space was dimly lit; the architecture, geometric and blocky. It looked like the entire room was made up of slabs of polished black stone with red veins. "You said you wouldn't hurt them if I came to you," I protested, hitting him ineffectively in the stomach. "You lied." We were currently standing in the throne room, with a throne that looked like it had been grown from the floor, and had no cushioning. The torches placed around the room weren't enough to adequately light the place.
"I said they would not kill those people," O'onerut replied. "I never said they would leave without doing their jobs. They collect fighters for me to add to my army. The six of them will take six humans and leave." Knowing that he hadn't issued a real attack gave me a small amount of relief, but it was very small.
I felt him in my head. That tingling feeling I had had before were his mental fingers, flipping through the files in my brain. I knew that now. I was being violated in a way I had never thought possible. I felt like a was being covered in filth from the inside out, and I couldn't stop it. Shivering, I took a few steps away.
"Why do you object so strongly to my mental touch?" O'onerut asked from behind me.
"My thoughts are private," I told him. "They are mine and mine alone. They're what make me who I am. When you invade them, you're accessing my private self and taking it from me."
"You are still Stef," he said. "I have taken nothing from you."
"Even the most social people have a part of them that they don't show other people," I argued. "And when a person loses everything, their inner thoughts are the only thing they can always own. You're taking ownership of the one thing that's supposed to be completely mine."
"Yes," he said, stepping up to me and gently turning me around, placing his hand on the center of my torso. I tensed. When his other hand began tracing a line from my shoulder to my neck, he began getting closer to me. "I own you now," he said, "mind and body. But it can be very pleasurable for you if you let go." The last part was whispered in my ear. He nibbled lightly on it as the hand on my chest began stroking my abdomen. He had been through my head and now knew all of my erogenous zones. I understood, at that moment, that he could take me to heights of pleasure no one on earth had ever reached. All I had to do was give in.
"Yes. Give in to me and let me rule you. Release your body and mind to me.
Release your cares of the world you left behind."
I pushed him back as forcefully as I could and backed against a pillar. The world I was leaving behind was my family, whom O'onerut wanted to slaughter.
It was my friends, whom O'onerut wanted to enslave. No amount of pleasure was worth that.
"I have a way to save your family, in a sense," O'onerut said. "Could you be with me if they were still with you?" O'onerut paused and smiled. "Vehement denial at first, and then curiosity. You may be tempted to submit to me just to save them."
"If you let my friends live also, I'll give myself to you willingly."
"You will be mine regardless of what I do," he snapped at me, anger rising in his voice. Then he thought for a moment and calmed down. He waved his hand in dismissal. "However, a few concessions in exchange for the convenience of an early surrender does have merit. I think you will be pleased to know that the humans I take are not harmed. All are still alive, and are being improved."
"Improved in what way?" I asked.
"They are becoming Vaneel," he said. "Perfect and indestructible warriors, each one of them. They are also completely obedient to me."
"Is that your plan for me?"
"No!" he exclaimed immediately, an odd fear in his eyes. "No," he repeated in his normal tone. "I have no attraction to the Vaneel, and they are not sexual beings. I do not wish you to be one of them."
He looked as if he was going to continue, but a vacant expression crossed his face briefly. "Odd," he said. "One of your gods seeks a private audience with me. This may prove interesting. Come along."
He grabbed my arm and the world shifted. Suddenly, we were on a showy outcropping in the mountains. Before us were three stone slabs together with a man bound on them. This god I knew immediately. Loki, Norse god of trickery, bound until the end of the world for his betrayal and murder of Baldur. Above him, on a limb of a gnarled and bare tree, a snake coiled and dripped venom, which was caught in a wooden bowl by the only other person there, Loki's wife, who took it upon herself to attend to her husband until the end of the world. She couldn't free him, nor could she remover the snake, but she could collect the venom and keep it from hurting him, save for the few moments when she had to dump the venom out. I knew, as soon as I recognized him, that he was going to offer a deal to get free, and that he would then betray O'onerut to try and get back into the good graces of the other gods.
"So you already know of this Loki," O'onerut said calmly to me, but loud enough for Loki and his wife to hear. "And your thoughts on him are correct. He does intend to attempt to convince me to free him and then betray me. It seems, Loki," he continued, but talking to the chained god, "that your reputation precedes you. Your ways are well known, and even could I not read your thoughts, I would know your plans."
"Then I will join you against my brothers," Loki said confidently.
"You are lying to me, Loki," O'onerut said. "I know your thoughts. Even if you were to leave me alone, and go rejoin your brethren, I would still win. Your mind is only working with thoughts of me losing in the end, which cannot be the case. I have killed Thor, and the twin Greek hunters. I have bested all of your warriors at once. None of these tasks were challenging to me. I could have destroyed all of the gods at the meeting without expending energy, and yet you think I will lose."
Loki stopped and stared at O'onerut. He was obviously trying to think of another ploy. "Now you see," O'onerut stated. "You understand what you face and you are willing to accept me as your master."
"Yes, O'onerut," Loki said.
I was shocked. Loki was willingly going to have his people and his family slaughtered so he could be free. "You're pathetic, Loki," I growled. "Your pantheon was right to bind you here until Ragnarok. All you do is lie and scheme to get ahead, and you don't care about anyone or anything. How can you betray your people like this? How can you kill off your whole family, just for your own comfort? It's no wonder trickster gods are so weak and insignificant. You have no real power. You just feed off of everyone else's power like a parasite. You disgust me."
Loki glowered at me. "Shut your mouth, godling. You know nothing about what it takes to live for an eternity. O'onerut is like me. He knows."
There was a howl next to me. O'onerut was red in the face as he rushed the slab. Fists clenched, he began pounding on the prone god. He was screaming and crying at the same time. As he hit, he yelled. "I! Am! Nothing! Like! You!" over and over again. The sobs took over and the words started turning into, "I'm not you. I'm not you. I'm not you." Eventually, the hitting softened and O'onerut sunk to the ground sobbing.
"Better now?" Loki consoled. He was bruised and cut, but a god couldn't really be harmed by punches. "Because I can tell you as a trickster god, that the other gods won't expect me to show up, and you can destroy them all by surprise. They won't know what hit them."
"Obliterate," O'onerut whispered as he pointed his hand up at the bound god behind him. I looked away so I wouldn't have to see Loki get dissolved before my eyes, but his screams joined those of Artemis and Apollo in my head.
O'onerut stood and grabbed my arm. With a jolt, we were back in his palace.
He stalked off without a word, leaving me alone. I paused, not knowing what to do. As scared as I was of the unknown here, finding that unknown terrified me.
I sat on the edge of the throne. It felt like polished marble - beautiful, but cold and unyielding. The whole place gave off a sense of power, but nothing else. There was no life, no personality. Was this all there was to O'onerut? There had to be a room somewhere that was private and personal to him. No one could live without a safe haven of some sort. It was probably where he had run off to mope.
"Ok, he is out of earshot now," a voice said in a loud whisper. One of the walls slid open, revealing a Vaneel, which approached as soon as it saw me. It walked upright and purposefully, not hunched over running like the others had done. Nonetheless, it was Vaneel, so I jumped up and began retreating.
"Calm yourself," it said to me in a light male voice. "I am not here to harm you."
"You things can talk?" I asked, still stepping back for every movement it made toward me.
"No," it said. "Vaneel cannot speak. I am not Vaneel. This is a disguise."
I stopped dead in my tracks. They found me already and were taking me home.
"Which one are you?" I asked.
Now it was my rescuer's turn to pause. "Which what?"
"You're one of my family, come to rescue me, right?" I asked, suddenly cautious.
"Cease joking now, godling," the person ordered. "You will transport us out of here and to your gods so we may report."
"Who are you?" I asked.
The man grabbed me by the arm firmly and looked into my eyes. He was only slightly taller than I was, and his eyes were very dark, but they looked human. He shook me a bit as he spoke. "There is no time! The destroyer can return at any moment. I have been awaiting the arrival of another god for some time, and now we must leave."
The rudeness was bothering me, so I grabbed his arm and squeezed it. "Look, whoever you are," I told him. "I don't know how long you were waiting for me, but it won't do you any good. I don't have any useful powers, or I'd have left a while ago. I'm as good for your escape plans as a human."
He released my arm, so I let go of his. It was odd watching a Vaneel stop and ponder the situation. "I'm sorry," I told him. "I'd like to escape, too, if it helps."
"This doesn't surprise me," he said, almost to himself. "O'onerut has taken a male hostage before because of attraction. The male has since escaped O'onerut's control, but that did not save his pantheon."
"O'onerut said he would save my family if I cooperated," I said, panicked.
"Yes yes," the man disguised as a Vaneel said dismissively, waving a hand. He walked over to the throne and place his right hand on one of the flat surfaces and a drawer slid out. He reached in and pulled out a hand mirror.
"His method," the man said as he handed me the ornate gold and glass mirror, "is to confine the god inside a mirror permanently. The god then spends eternity inside and loses all ability to use their powers. It is not a fate I would wish on anyone, and most gods would prefer obliteration. But keep it, just in case."
"Couldn't you trap O'onerut inside this?" I asked, turning it over. It was beautiful. The gold frame was made into a lattice with rose vines wound through.
"The god must volunteer to enter the mirror. It is no trap, but as I said, it is irreversible. You may wish to use it on yourself when your family is destroyed."
"If he reads my mind, he'll know I have it," I said. "Unless we escape before he comes back."
"Which we must do as quickly as possible. Now that you know of me, he will know of me, and I will be exterminated." He took my arm, more gently this time, and led me to the secret door he had come through. "If we keep moving, he can't read your mind. He has a very limited range. It is enough to find you within a few rooms, but no further."
"But he read Loki's mind on earth from here," I pointed out.
"Loki broadcasted; the fool. He sent a call out for O'onerut. If he hadn't wanted to be found, he could have hidden." The panel finally slid open and he led me into a dark and narrow passage. "If you go somewhere no one would look for you, and you don't tell anyone, you will be safe from O'onerut. However, if anyone knows where you are or are likely to be, and he has access to that person, he can be at your side in seconds. When you can instantly take information without asking for it, you can find what you want very quickly."
"So he uses brains like the internet," I said.
The man stopped and looked at me, confused. "It's an earth technology," I told him as he led us through dark tunnels. "It is like a library of all of the information mankind wishes to share, and all one needs to access the library is a device called a computer."
We started moving again. "I know much of libraries, but I have never heard of computers. However, you say that they are devices. I shall have to see one to understand it. What mechanics does it use?"
"It's electrical, not mechanical," I said.
"Humans on Earth were given the knowledge to harness electricity?" the man asked. I could just barely make out him shaking his head as he walked in front of me. "Was it that damn fool Prometheus who gave man the ability, or did Hephaestus have a lapse in good judgement?"
"You know our gods?" I asked.
"Quite well," he said. "Mine were the gods of Egypt. I am, or was, Min."
"We saw O'onerut wearing the feathers of Isis," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Yes," Min said softly. "Isis was first to fall, and her feathers were worn to dishearten us. It worked. My brethren fell one by one. O'onerut claimed me as his own, much like he has claimed you. Ra is imprisoned in a mirror, and I am here, Vaneel in body, if not in mind. No others remain."
"Min," I breathed. "Please help us. I know I have no right to ask this of you, but..."
We stopped again and Min placed his hand on my cheek. It felt like leather.
"I will do all I can. I seek revenge for my people, and saving yours will bring me a small amount of peace." His hand left my face. "We are here," he said.
"I thought we were running," I said.
"We are," Min told me, "but O'onerut avoids this room. Therefore, this is where I hide most." I could just barely hear a noise coming from the other side of the wall, but I couldn't identify it. Something felt wrong about it, sorrowful. "This may not be a pleasant place for you."
He placed his hand on the wall and it slid open. The sound assaulted my ears immediately. Men and women were screaming, groaning, weeping, whimpering. An amber glow filled the passage and my eyes adjusted to the ambient lighting. Everything was in amber and sepia shades, even myself and Min. Lines of chairs, swiveled to face random directions, had people strapped to them. All of them were deep into fear, or pain, or had snapped completely from reality. Those who were terrified were either dressed or being undressed by Vaneel. They were the whimpering ones. The screamers were the ones being coated with a glowing yellow goop by Vaneel. The remaining rows, the ones with the weeping and groaning, and sometimes mad giggling, were coated up to the top of their necks with the yellow stuff. They had Vaneel bodies.
"I went through this to escape O'onerut," Min said. "My body is like theirs, now. May the highest one grant you a different fate."
"Shouldn't we save them?" I asked.
"Until we find a way out of here, there is nothing we can do for them."
That was unacceptable to me. "We can stop them from being turned into Vaneel," I snarled. The very idea of letting them go through such obvious pain was appalling to me. "I'm going to free them."
Min grabbed my arm and held me firmly in place. His Vaneel body had more strength than ten of me. "Don't be a fool," he said. "The Vaneel in there will kill you or capture you and strap you into one of those chairs. They will, however, leave you alone if you leave their charges alone. They have very specific instructions that all of the humans strapped to the chairs are to be turned into Vaneel, nothing else matters. I've tried to free a human before, but even this body's strength cannot win when overpowered by sheer numbers."
I was starting to get choked up. Sighing, I began to ask, "there's nothing we can do for them...Jacob!" Seeing him, I ran down the aisle to reach him. His head was shaved completely, and he was Vaneel to the top of his neck. He was drooling. I knelt by him and picked up his leathery yellow hand. "No..."
"Let's go, child," Min said. "Jacob is gone. The parasite that clamps onto the skulls of the Vaneel will clean out what's left of his brain. It will be a blessing for him at this point."
"What do you mean?" I asked. I looked up to Min with tears flowing down my cheeks.
"The black insect you see covering the heads of the Vaneel is what controls them. The humans who once inhabited those bodies have been destroyed. Only their shells remain to be moved like puppets by those creatures."
I heard more screaming. "Why not clear out their minds before hurting them like that?" I asked.
"The creatures would then feel the pain and go insane, just as the humans are doing now. It is better to damage the mind about to be destroyed than the one that is to be retained," Min said.
"So these people are being subjected to unfathomable pain, then having their minds destroyed, and then having their bodies used like puppets?" I asked. "And you don't seem to have a problem with it?"
He spun on his heel and turned to glare in my face. "Just because I can finally talk about it without emotion doesn't mean I don't care," he growled. "I watched humankind grow from primal creatures and flourish like no other species. What O'onerut is doing to them is a perversion of the true course. He is wiping out an intelligent species to create an army of lesser beings to use as slaves. Every time I have to walk by one of them screaming in pain or begging to be set free, part of me dies."
"I...I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't realize you cared for these people."
"It is alright, child," he told me, softening. "You are experiencing shock and stress right now. Your words come from that hurt."
"You can call me Stefan if you want," I told him, trying to smile, but only being able to form a weak imitation of one.
"I would like that, Stefan," he said, giving me a warm smile.
"Min?" I asked. "Why didn't the bug on your head destroy your mind?"
"Privilege of godhood," Min replied. "A god's mind is too powerful to be destroyed without destroying the entire being of the god. If you were to subject yourself to becoming Vaneel, you would become like me. Ironically, the `bug', as you call it, does protect my mind from being read by O'onerut, though."
"Maybe I should do it, then, and save myself," I speculated.
"This skin the Vaneel has," Min told me, "is impenetrable by most physical force, and it cannot feel pain. Yet, it cannot take hold until the old skin is gone. Would you like to experience having all of the skin on your body eaten while you're awake? Would you like having all of your pain receptors overloaded until they cease functioning? Having lived through it, I don`t recommend it."
Jacob whimpered a bit next to me, tears running down his cheeks. I couldn't save him, only end his suffering. "Where are the bugs?" I asked. "I want to put Jacob out of his misery."
"I am sorry," Min told me, slumping his shoulders. "They will put the insects on when the body no longer reacts to the pain it has been through."
"When they're ok again and their minds might come back to normal, then the Vaneel put the bug on?" I asked. Min nodded, sadly.
"Min," I whispered, "I hate this place, and I want to go home."
"So do I, Stefan, so do I."
Author's Note: Wow, that took a long time. Most of it was written a week after the last chapter went out, but it wasn't right, somehow. I didn't feel like writing after that, and didn't do much more than work, sleep, and being a vegetable for almost two months. I think I'm at the tail end of the slump, though. To prove it, I'm giving myself a 2 week deadline for the next chapter. Yes, November 8th, 2006, the next Chapter will be sent to Nifty.
In the meantime, you, the reader(s), can have a hand in shaping the story. Min and Stef are on O'onerut's space vessel. They should get off of it in the next chapter, but how? Send any suggestions you have to me with the title ESCAPE SUGGESTION to academygm@hotmail.com. The deadline is Wednesday, November 1st, 2006, a week from today.