Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 11:07:04 +0100 From: 0-0 0-0 Subject: The Noble Mercenaries - Prologue This is the first book of a series called The Rise of the Titans, that will eventually include four books : Book One: The Noble Mercenaries Book Two: The Blacksmith's Apprentice Book Three: A Slave on the Run Book Four: The Dragon Master Here is the Prologue. I hope that you have as much pleasure reading the story as I have writing it. Don't hesitate to contact me for feedback and (positive) criticism ! :) Copyright 2020 Hector Jones. All Rights Reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Rise of the Titans Book One: The Noble Mercenaries Prologue There it was. The famous tower. The Curving Shaft. Erected at the end of the valley, it stood where two ridges met above a shallow gash. At the base, where the Shaft was thickest, lay two round boulders bigger than a house. They were covered in a brown curly moss that curdled near the ground and turned into bushes heavy with flowers and berries. Their vine-like branches made for a ruffled and tawny thicket that rimmed the stocky base of the tower. Out of it, as out of a bush of tangled hair, rose the Shaft itself. Sturdy at the base, then stooping as it went up into an impossible curving shape. Yet it looked as rigid and stark as the mountains around. In truth, it was hard to tell if the Shaft was man-made or if it was an out-thrust pushed out and up by a convulsion of the ground. Like a smooth and rotund organ. Somehow alive. It must have been a hundred meters tall. It was one of the biggest buildings Dhani had ever seen, more than twenty meters wide at the base. But as it grew and bent backward, it got slender. Half way up though, there was a bulge, a swelling, giving once again to Dhani the impression that the Tower was an organ full of fluids. This widened girth made the slanting even more improbable. The young man had to rub his eyes. Did it appear like that at the beginning of Time or did it stoop little by little over the centuries since? The legends didn't tell. But rigid the long Shaft stood, hard and impervious to time and weather that had polished its surface until it shone like skin. And then near the top, the Shaft widened again, the roof almost as wide as the base and ending with a round and pointy top. Behind the building (but was it a building?), the bushes turned into woods. The trees didn't grow straight but seemed like larger versions of the shrubbery, their brown branches more entangled still, with growing moss and creepers. There, the trunks shimmer, wet from some kind of transparent oozing. Could trees sweat? Dhani wondered. Aphids and butterflies flew amidst the vines. Out of the triangular thicket of trees rose a slope that closed the valley, a slope made of a series of low hillocks softening the mountain side. The trees climbed over the first knolls only then turned into bushes, the bushes into grass and grass into moss until there was nothing but a wall of smooth rock. Near the top of the slope, where the high peaks rose, grew another wood, taller, thicker and wilder. It gathered and closed in over granite edges cut by a waterfall. In the twilight, details merged in the distance. But even from where he was standing, Dhani could hear the low rumble of water. But it was the tower that caught his eyes. The Curving Shaft. A well-earned name as if there were any. The last rays of sunlight shone on its top. From afar, it looked wet but there had been no rain. - Enough sightseeing, the young man said to himself. I didn't travel this far to stay on the threshold! He walked on a path winding its way over one of the ridges that led to the tower. The air was still warm. The young man realized he was sweating. He opened the collar of his linen shirt and took a deep breath. The heavy pendant he wore weighted on his necklace. He didn't touch it, no matter how strong the urge to brush it with the tip of his fingers. This jewel had been the cause of all his trouble and the reason why he was here. Turning his face to the wind, he focused on the smells the air carried. They came from the trees and tasted of sap and spices. But there were other fragrances as well, unknown to him and wild. The whole valley exuded a mineral yet organic air, salty as sweat, as if the valley was alive and barely asleep. Dhani knelt and touched the stones: they were warm, warmer than he'd expect. True enough, around him summer was enduring when outside the valley, fall was already at hand. Stars came into sight and Dhani moved faster. He didn't want to be caught out here in the open. There were no trees, no shelter. He had to reach the tower and ask to be taken in. His heart jumped. Legends said that wizards dwelled in the Shaft but no one had even been able to tell if the stories were true. The path to the valley was known to be a one-way into oblivion. Dhani brushed away these dark thoughts. There was no hesitating now. He looked up at the Shaft. He could see windows. Lights appeared. The tower was inhabited. Finally, the young man came close to the base of the tower, sweating in the warm air that was now almost pulsating. Maybe it was his fear. Maybe the stones were indeed radiating. He touched them. Warm and soft, like the belly of a huge but gentle animal. Dhani found the door of the Shaft. It was bolted for the night. The young man mustered his courage and raised his fist to knock. * No family, no friends, alone for all Dhani could remember. The only thing he owned was a necklace adorned with a ponderous star-like pendant that always attracted thieves and robbers. But the jewel could not be taken away from him. Accidents, brutal deaths, terrible punishments awaited anyone daring to touch it. His oldest memory dated from four years ago. Before that, nothing. His first image was both erotic and terrible. He was lying on the forest ground, naked, horny as hell with his dick pointing up hard. A powerful urge to feel flesh consumed him. He was not alone. There was a man with him, a man obviously as excited as he was. Dhani felt his erection through his pants. As they kissed in passion, Dhani opened all there was to open and ripped the man out of his clothes to touch his dick, take it in his hands and squeeze. A thick and throbbing piece that he wanted to feel inside his every hole. The stranger obliged. They fucked for what seemed like hours. Dhani tasted cock on his tongue and cum in his mouth as he sucked the man dry. That didn't put an end to it. They kept on having sex, Dhani experimenting every position that came to his mind: on his back, butt up; on his hands and knees; on his side, with the silent stranger huffing and puffing and shoving his dick inside Dhani with a wild look on his face. In truth, both seemed lost in lust, not knowing what was happening. The man jizzed several times but always came back for more. Dhani went inside him too, feeling the warm soft flesh closing around his dick and suckling him in. All the stranger did to him, he did to the stranger in return, holding his butt up, pushing his shoulders down, grabbing at his hips and then getting out to fall and suck his hard cock again and again. As the sun set down, after they lost count of how many times they came, they finally found peace and fell into each other's arms, in a pond of sweat and semen. Only then did the stranger bat his eyes, gathering his senses. Dhani kissed him but he felt the lips turn less and less responsive. Then the man's eyes fell on the star-shaped pendant on Dhani's chest. Another kind of fire lit up behind the pupils. A darkness came and the man tried to snatch the jewel. The rope around Dhani's neck broke and the thief stood up, naked, still a bit hard from all the fucking, and he started to run away. That was when it happened: the man turned into a blazing flame. In an instant, it was over and there was nothing left of him but ashes around the pendant that was left unmarked by the fire. Speechless and exhausted, Dhani got his jewel back and looked around him, realizing for the first time that he had no memory of coming to this place, of who he was, really, or of anything before having sex with that man. There was clothing on the ground but only the stranger's. Had Dhani come here naked? He couldn't tell but the night was falling so he dressed up with what was there. Out of the clearing, he found a path. Nearby waited a horse packed with goods to sell. The stranger had been a merchant. Dhani formed an image in his mind: a young merchant traveling in the forest stopped to have a pee. When he was done and pulled his dick back in, he saw a naked body not far from the path and came to investigate, only to meet his own doom. Dhani shook his head and jumped on the horse. From that moment on, two feelings never left him: an urge and a dread. First and foremost, the urge took the shape of a burning desire for sex that kept his ass aching for cock. This desire drove him to bustling places, farms and villages and towns. There, knowing no trade, he was hired as a farm hand. Living the laborers' life, sleeping with them, sharing the moments when they washed and cleaned up, he always found a way to achieve relief. He lived surrounded by men and their cocks and more often than not, found a way to touch them, taste them and give men pleasure with all he could. Just as with the stranger in the forest, his own desire took in his fellow workers, either peasants he napped with in barns, sturdy lumberjacks on the way to the forest or gentle fishermen who took him across rivers. His own orgasms and his lovers' always were a relief yet Dhani never could stay long at the same place. People who saw his necklace became first curious, then greedy. The jewel was too precious for someone his condition. It didn't take long for Dhani to learn how to hide it. The punishment for the robbers was too painful to witness. This strange jewel was at the origin of the second feeling that never left Dhani: in spite of his fear of it, he had to know more about it, discover its origins, its reason, its powers if it had any besides causing so many troubles. Maybe then he would learn the truth about himself. Dhani had to admit his necklace might have been the reason why partners were so easy to find. Even hidden, the pendant surely weaved its magic around the young man, making him somehow irresistible. Without it, he would already have been quite a catch with his brown hair and clever eyes, body slim yet muscular, the fragrant bush of short, curly hair and the nice member that Nature was generous enough to offer him. Yet when Dhani had set his choice on someone, it was quite impossible for that person to resist him. But Dhani had to hide his necklace or else the darkness he had seen in the forest merchant's eyes would come back. One night out of despair, Dhani tried to get rid of the necklace. The pendant came back to him the next morning, creeping around his neck during the night. He would never get rid of it so he made the best of it anyways. He found out that he could remove it and keep it in his pocket. That way, he could work shirtless without attracting attention. At the most, the pendant could be hidden at the bottom of his rucksack but only when he had it on his back. There could be no distance between him and the mysterious piece of jewelry. Now that he could hide the pendant, Dhani could stay longer in a place he liked. That was a relief. So that when he met with a young guy he particularly fancied, he lingered around with him. It happened first with a nice and amorous farmer's son who totally fell in love with him named Galin. He stayed with him two months until Galin's parents organized the young farmer's wedding to a pretty girl. Then he was befriended by two chestnut-haired carpenters called Geum and Molin. They sported big arms used to wielding hammers all day long and heavy ball-sacks they shaved for each other. With them Dhani experiment new things, like the stirring of feelings inside his chest, what intimacy meant or how to manage double fucking. Geum and Molin were particularly skilled with that. Dhani spent winter and spring following them on construction sites until eventually, Geum began to fall in love with Dhani. More and more often did they indeed have sex in secret or right next to Molin when he slept. After dinner, they all went to bed and had sex but then Geum began to stay up after relief and wait for Molin to fall alseep, exhausted by yet another day of cutting wood and fitting cathedral frames. Then he'd wake Dhani up and they would have a private session, just the two of them. Dhani had to admit he liked the urgency and secrecy of their love-making but eventually, Molin figured out things were changing. He got jealous and stopped double-fucking Dhani with his lover only to shove his dick inside Geum in a rather brutal manner. At last, Dhani decided to leave them be and hoped they'd work things out and patch up their relationship. Later that year, he met Aster, a beautiful angler with the biggest cock Dhani had ever seen. He would always remember the nights inside Aster's hut, as the man fucked him stupid over and over again. Aster could be as delicate as wild, changing rhythm, driving him to the edge of ecstasy, poking at his fig in the most gentle way before ramming his whole cock inside him savagely and endlessly as if he would never come. With Aster, Dhani came close to feeling absolute relief, wrapped in his lover's arms, cheek on his chest, lapping at his nipples, nose buried in his armpits. They stayed together fishing and fucking all over summer, fall and winter. But on the shortest night of the year, as Dhani slept naked under the fur after Aster had once again made love to him, the angler stumbled upon the necklace Dhani had not concealed well enough. His heart in disarray, Dhani had no choice but to leave silently in the cold winter mist before something terrible happened to Aster. On his path, from hut to city and from bedding to pallet of hay, Dhani found out he liked the common folk. There was one of their habits Dhani particularly enjoyed: they loved stories. Around the fire before going to bed, the men told stories and tales in low rumbling voices. Dhani, who knew no story at all, loved to hear them: legends of gods and heroes of old, but must of all that of Titans who fought and fucked, shaping the earth, its mountains, its valleys as their gigantic bodies rolled and crushed in the struggle for sex and dominion. They were long gone -- some said asleep -- when Man was born. Dhani also heard stories of naked giants with dicks as big as trunks or magnificent centaurs ruling over prairies and forests, tales of sand countries and ruined cities with temples filled with gold, treasures that long-dead gods no longer protected. And many tales of wise men and women, strange folk with such a deep knowledge that they had to leave the known world for their secrets could become weapons. Dhani craved the stories about wizards and magicians. He made sure to follow the men telling them as long as possible. If they were sailors, he'd come aboard and shared their hanging beds. At night, he fondled their hairy balls while they whispered and kissed his ears. If they were merchants, he'd take the road with them, going from fair to fair under the summer sky. With him, the road was never dull. He'd wank them or suck them while they drove and fuck them at night, leaving them dry of sperm and stories. If they were trappers, Dhani would trade fur coats and boots to keep up with them until they reached their mountain cabin. Two years on, he had learned much about legends and more about sex; yet there was always new things to discover, new skins to taste, new lips to kiss. And new stories to hear. From inn to river harbor, from sailors to lumberjacks and woodsmen to field hands with tanned faces and white bodies, he finally heard about an order of wizards so powerful almost no one talked about them. The Keepers of the Curving Shaft. The ones who knew about them seemed to fear them most but to Dhani, the name lit up a deep desire to meet with them. Powerful and learned as they seemed to be, they might be the ones to help him with his questions. He had to find their dwelling. It took him another year of wandering and dead-ends and new acquaintances. Then, a group of rangers took him in. As Dhani quickly found out, the rangers were very at ease with each other. As hunters and explorers of the wild, the eight men lived mostly naked as soon as civilization was left behind. Then they only wore boots and a belt of weapons and traps, sometimes a short cape covering their back. Nothing else. Dhani also loved to get naked every chance he got. As he now had many skills and was a fast learner, he was a perfect addition to the group. They took a great liking to the new recruit. And by his mere presence, Dhani took the eight naked rangers to the next level. All they needed was a nudge in the right direction. Dhani was happy to give it. As days went by, their casual nudity turned somehow erotic to one another. Thus the end-of-day rub-down that was their habit went from rough and manly to leisurely and sensual. It lasted longer, venturing away from legs, back and shoulders and explored thighs, butts, nipples, in truth all their intimate parts. Dhani massaged and taught them his ways. Already before the young man's arrival, boners were very common among the men. Also, the rangers had always wanked before, as every man does, and even shared the same prostitutes at times. Now, as the mood changed delicately, boners popped up often and not only out of bed as before: during the day when they went for a pee in pairs, the men came back with lasting erections; while they massaged each other, in pairs or small groups, all involved got quickly hard, silent and intent on the kneading, their arms and wrists brushing along the hardened shafts; even during the day when rangers sat and chatted, there was always at least one stiffy in the group. Without effort, Dhani got them to kiss. First on cheeks and brow, which they had done before; then on chest and belly and inside their thighs where the skin was soft, which they had not. But it all seemed fine to them, playful and easy as they were. They hugged all the time and laughed a lot. At night, they slept closer to one another, wrapping their legs, rubbing their groins. Now they were kissing each other goodnight on the lips. It started as a joke, almost a mockery, but it kept up. After a while, they could not think of going to sleep without brushing their coarse beards and suckling each other's tongue; in the morning, they rolled over in each other's arms and kissed again, grabbing butts and rubbing their pulsating cocks against one another. And the rangers now found themselves wanking together almost every day. When dawn woke them up, hugging, kissing and hard, they made room under the blanket for the night-watcher and warmed him up with caresses. When all men were hard and reddening, someone pushed the blanket off and the jerk-off session lasted until all had come, grunting and growling. Then they kissed and joked and hugged before getting on with the day. At night again, the men going to sleep huddled and wanked next to the fire. Dhani slept among them, naked and wanking and kissing them on their lips and bellies. One evening as four of them sat by the fire and jerked off, they began touching each other on the arms and shoulders. The others joined in. So did Dhani. No one was talking anymore, they all just sat close to one another and masturbated. Then Dhani stopped playing with his dick and took hold of his neighbors'. They let him caress them and with their hands now free, they touched other rangers' dicks. There was no going back. Hands found cocks, lips found lips. Someone started to moan. Dhani led them into wild sex. During the course of the night, he taught them the ways of group intercourse and all the things nine men could do to each other. Daily orgies became the new habit, evening pleasure after dinner and midnight fuck on moon hunting. Sometimes only two or three rangers had their pleasure. Sometimes all join in. Then it came to the point where actually Dhani didn't even have to be involved for sex to happen between the friends of old. Along the course of his summer with the rangers, Dhani finally heard about the valley and the Curving Shaft. One of the men had actually seen with his eyes -- or so he said while gently shoving his dick inside Dhani. At the end of summer, as their path came near the said valley, Dhani decided it was time for him to part with his lovers. It was not an easy decision to make. But in spite of a pang of longing at seeing the eight tan butts leaving him (it had been a lovely three-months adventure), the young man knew he had to go into the Valley and continue on with his search for answers. He found the valley. He found the Shaft. And now he was about to enter and meet its Keepers. All the life he had known led him to this moment and this door. It was time to knock. * Two months later, Dhani came out of the tower. Questions were still spinning in his mind but now he had a few answers to dance with them. He had the name of a place and that of a man. Find the city of Aenor. Meet Serpan the blacksmith. Dhani smiled and set up to go. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be continued on Chapter 1: Last moment of peace Don't forget to send feedback to gaco200608@gmail.com! Feedback is rare in the world, and yet it's very pleasant to hear from you, readers! This work is also published on wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/247689879-the-rise-of-the-titans-book-one-the-noble It would be great for you to have a look over there and help me with my numbers! Finally, please donate to Nifty! We all love to read the good stuff posted here. Please help keep this service available and make a donation at: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html.