The Temple Hunter Who Ended Up on the Altar

As the sun went down, the temple’s shadow stretched farther and farther along the road. Not long now until the sacrifice, Drevan thought, whipping the reins of his cart as it labored up the steep path. The sanctuary loomed before him, carved into the mountain, cut against the gray sky of that barren land. Impregnable.

The emblem of the silver crescent gleamed on the hunter’s cloak, as he returned just in time with the offering demanded by the priestesses. In the back of the cart, the boy barely moved. He had tried to flee when the elders of his village chose him as tribute to that moon, but Drevan was fast. And smarter, he thought with satisfaction. He had not been one of the most resistant; some of those boys knew how to fight, but none were a match for him.

Many would have found that trade disgusting. Drevan took it as a mere means to an end, and it was certainly worth it. He had been born in one of Nemorath’s most miserable villages, gray and stony, never knowing who his father was. He drifted from town to town making a living however he could, spending what little he earned on sour wine and sad women—old whores with sagging tits who let him fuck them for a few coins in little rooms that reeked of sweat and another man’s cum—until, at the end of his youth, he decided to enter as a low-ranking acolyte in the great temple of Nemora the Great. It was that or keep starving to death on the roads. There he had a bed and food; in return they demanded absolute obedience and devotion.

Every full moon he attended, along with the rest of the initiates, the great offering. And there he could see the priestesses. Young, pale, beautiful, wrapped in very fine silks that barely concealed their firm tits and the dark triangle of their cunts. The last thing Drevan thought about during those macabre rites was the goddess. He never managed to control the heat that rose through his belly and swelled his cock against the rough acolyte’s robe when Velmira, the high priestess, appeared. That woman with the terrible gaze froze anyone’s blood, and yet he desired her with a stubbornness that verged on madness. He had jerked himself off a thousand times alone in his cell, biting his lip so as not to shout her name, imagining the taste of her nipples, the weight of her tits in his mouth, the way that priestess’s cunt—one no ordinary man had ever known—would clamp down on his cock.

***

For years he dug in the tunnels that stretched beneath the temple like an endless labyrinth, until his chance came. The old hunter who had held the post for decades was elevated to High Acolyte, the highest rank a man could aspire to, just below the priestesses. Drevan took his place without the slightest remorse.

He knew the price of failure well. His immediate predecessor, a man named Doran, had made the worst possible mistake: showing up on the eve of a sacrifice empty-handed, after the offering had escaped almost at the temple gates. The law laid down by the priestesses was merciless. On the appointed night, the offering was Doran himself. So he became part of the sad legion of eunuchs who served the priestesses, the lowest rung in the hierarchy: ghosts without will, wholly subdued through fumes and draughts, pitiful reflections of the men they might have been. But the goddess demands sacrifices.

The gates of the walled compound opened and the cart entered the main courtyard. That mass of rock housed almost an entire city. The lower acolytes busied themselves with their tasks; the intermediates acted as administrators; and the High Acolytes, most of them elderly, watched from the windows like perfumed kings. They were the only ones who lay with the priestesses and sired the next generation of the chosen. Someday I’ll be like them, Drevan repeated to himself. Someday I’ll ride those sacred bitches until I blow out their cunts and fill their bellies with new acolytes.

A group of eunuchs approached the cart to unload the boy. At their head was Calén, the high priestess’s personal servant. Pale, slender, with delicate, almost feminine features and sad, resigned eyes. Drevan remembered perfectly the night he had brought him there, barely a year ago. Behind him came Doran, his predecessor, and when the hunter saw him he swallowed, as always: that face still held a cold rage that was a permanent reminder of how he himself could end if he ever failed.

He felt no guilt. You all had your chance to save your manhood, boys, and you lost it, he thought with a shrug. He would become a High Acolyte even if he had to hunt hundreds of those sweet boys. And then, at last, he could lie with Velmira, spread her legs, and fuck her until that icy gaze melted into moans.

***

A dim light cast dancing shadows on the walls of the great vaulted chamber. Velmira felt reverential respect for that place that served as her quarters, through which every high priestess who had preceded her over a thousand generations had passed.

She let the exceedingly fine ceremonial dress fall and allowed the faithful Calén to gather it up in servile fashion. Slowly she descended the steps into the wide rectangular pool at the center of the room, set directly beneath the circular opening in the vault where moonlight filtered in. Those waters prolonged the priestesses’ lives and kept them young. Velmira did not know for certain how old she was—she had always lived in the temple—but she did not look much older than thirty. From childhood it had been clear that her connection to the divine mother was special.

The ritual that night had gone perfectly. One more month, and the goddess had received what she demanded: the virility of a beautiful young man, burning in the sacred fire at the foot of her effigy. Nemora asks for fertility in order to return it amplified; she makes the fields grow while reaping the flower of boys. The city-states beyond the region, rich and proud, feared her and never dared declare war on her.

Velmira carried out the rite gladly. Depriving those youths of their pride was a paltry price to pay for sustaining the cycle of the world. It offended her to see them beg and kick, blind to the honor granted them. But they would learn; in the end everyone learned. Once subdued, the priestesses molded them with their arts into docile, will-less creatures.

From the water she looked at Calén, standing there with her dress, waiting. In his case the taming had been particularly easy; his submission was total. He wore only a small white garment and a thick gold chain around his neck bearing the high priestess’s personal emblem, so that neither he nor anyone else would ever forget he was her property. Velmira liked making him undress in her presence while she bathed, seeing that his empty gaze did not change a scrap as he watched her swim, and claiming pleasure from him with her tongue when she pleased.

—Come here —she murmured from the edge of the pool.

Calén dropped the white garment onto the stone floor. His naked body was almost hairless, pale as milk, and between his legs hung only a small fold of skin: the pathetic appendage the priestesses had left him after cutting away everything else. He descended the steps in silence and knelt by the edge. Velmira floated up to him, clutched the marble, and spread her thighs, showing him her pale, shaved cunt right at the waterline.

—Work —she ordered.

The eunuch lowered his head without a trace of emotion in his gaze and buried his mouth between his mistress’s legs. His tongue, trained to perfection over months, traced a slow circle over the priestess’s swollen clit, then began to lick with a steady, practiced, obedient rhythm. Velmira let out a sigh and buried her fingers in his blond hair, forcing his mouth harder against her cunt. Calén’s tongue slipped between her wet lips, sucking and lapping with infinite patience, never tiring, never complaining, desiring nothing more than to serve. That was the only function left to him in the world, and he performed it like great masters perform their art.

Velmira arched her back against the edge. Her nipples hardened above the surface of the water. The eunuch’s tongue did not relent; it went in and out, the agile tip finding its way to the damp depths of her cunt, then rising again to lick the clit sweetly and make her shiver. The high priestess moaned softly, through her teeth, and pulled his hair harder. Calén quickened the pace. He sucked, licked, buried his nose in the silky hair, swallowed the ever-increasing flow that spilled from his mistress. Velmira felt pleasure rise through her belly, gather in her hips, and make her clamp her thighs around the servant’s head. She closed her eyes, held her breath for a moment, and came into the eunuch’s mouth with a long tremor, pressing his face against her cunt until she nearly drowned him.

When she finally pushed him away, Calén’s mouth and chin shone wetly. He ran his tongue over his lips in one last submissive bow, his expression unchanged, and withdrew a few steps, letting the priestess float back to the center of the pool. He had certainly done a good job: castration was not only of the body, but of the mind.

Floating beneath the opening in the vault, she contemplated the moon and smiled. A few nights earlier, the goddess’s will had been revealed to her. The sacrifice the following month would be exceptional, something seen only every several generations: the Golden Blood Moon. She emerged from the pool dripping, let Calén dress her, and in a whisper ordered the hunter, who was waiting in the antechamber, to be brought in.

***

Drevan entered with his usual insolence. Velmira sensed desire flare in him when he saw her in the wet dress clinging to her body, outlining her tits and erect nipples, and she amused herself by noticing in Calén’s eyes a timid spark of hatred: only in the presence of the man who had led him to his fate did something like feeling emerge in that eunuch.

The priestess took her seat on the throne and dropped the words like knives.

—Golden Blood Moon —she said.

A chill ran through the hunter. Everyone in Nemorath knew the stories. Once every several generations, the goddess was not content with monthly tributes: she demanded something greater. The attributes that had to burn on her altar had to belong to a young man of royal blood.

—And will I be raised in rank if I bring such a prize? —he asked, recovering his composure.

—You will do nothing but obey —she replied coldly—. If you fail and come back empty-handed, you know the price. Your own attributes will burn.

Drevan instinctively reached for his groin, squeezing his cock beneath the robe as if to make sure it was still there. Velmira told him where to find the prize: Veronte, the largest and most powerful of the cities on the other side of the region. Its heir was Prince Kaelen, a vigorous young man who usually rode and hunted alone each morning in the forest surrounding the city. That would be the moment.

***

The hunter headed for Veronte disguised as a peddler, camped in a clearing beside a small lake, and spent several days spying on the prince. Kaelen always repeated the same route. He was an exceptional prey: taller than Drevan, much stronger, in admirable shape. For the first time in his trade, Drevan hesitated. If the prince beat him, he had better die there and then than end up in Veronte’s dungeons. And if the prince escaped, showing up at the temple without him was not an option either.

One morning, Kaelen arrived much earlier than usual. He was not there just to drink: he intended to bathe. He began to undress, and the hunter watched, crouched among the bushes, a body that seemed carved from marble. When the last garment fell to the ground, Drevan swallowed: between the young man’s thighs hung a thick, long cock, even at rest, crowned by a pair of balls heavy as a stallion’s. He felt a dull, masculine envy, the kind that drives a rough man to despise what he does not have. He decided that this would be the moment, while the prey was naked and unsuspecting.

He took the rope and stepped out of hiding. Kaelen heard the footsteps and turned just in time to have a fist smashed into his face. Drevan staggered back, dazed, but he knew enough dirty tricks from the taverns of his youth. He knew that against a much taller man, short stature is an advantage: you can reach his weakest point. He stretched out his hand and grabbed hard at the bulge hanging between the young man’s legs, then squeezed. Kaelen’s face twisted with pain, folding him in half. The harder the hunter squeezed, digging his fingers into the balls and twisting them, the less force his opponent could muster. Under other circumstances he would have smashed that with no hesitation—he had already done it as a child, in a tavern brawl—but now he had to be careful: any damage to the prince’s precious attributes would be paid for with his own. When the giant dropped to his knees, gasping and red-faced, Drevan let go and tied him hand and foot.

***

Kaelen woke to the jolting of the cart and unbearable pain in his groin. It took little time to understand. Among the bundles, curled up, he saw a dark cloak with a silver moon emblem, and had to stifle a cry of horror. He had heard all his life about that vile cult that captured boys to sate their goddess’s thirst. And he knew that once every several generations, they also chose a prince.

The young man was proud, but not stupid. He studied the hunter and understood that that rough, vulgar man was not acting out of faith, but ambition.

—Wait —he said when the other approached to gag him—. Today you could have everything you want. Take me to Veronte and I’ll reward you. We’ve spent generations dreaming of razing that temple, but its reputation for being impregnable has held us back. You worked in the tunnels; you know every access point. Draw a map for my father and we’ll name you a general.

Drevan stopped the cart. Greed lit up his eyes.

—And how do I know you won’t hang me as soon as we get there?

—That will depend on how valuable your information is —Kaelen replied shrewdly.

The hunter seemed to think it over at length.

—There’s only one thing I want —he said at last—. Velmira. The high priestess.

The prince smiled.

—She’ll be yours. My father and the other kings will want to judge her, but I’ll defend your right. You can do whatever you want with her. Fuck her in every hole until your cock gets tired, if that pleases you.

Lust filled Drevan’s gaze. He slowly took out his knife and cut the prince’s bonds. Then he took the reins again, but changed direction, back the way they had come.

—Not a single day goes by without me thinking of her —he murmured—. I dream about tearing that dress off her, shoving it all the way in, hearing her beg while I blow my load inside her. But even in my best dreams I never imagined her as mine alone.

Kaelen wrapped himself in the black cloak, satisfied. He bit like the fool he is, he thought. When he asked to stop at the lake clearing to collect his clothes, the hunter agreed. The prince bent down to dress himself, and then felt a shove in his back.

***

He fell to the ground and, in an instant, nearly a dozen pale, lean boys surrounded him. They were skinny, none of them would have been a match for him alone, but they outnumbered him. In the distance, as many more knocked Drevan from the cart. One of them, with effeminate features and vacant eyes, brought a flask to the hunter’s nose and knocked him unconscious.

Calén had carried out his mistress’s order perfectly. Velmira had distrusted that man for some time, and so she had sent him under the command of the most loyal servants, to follow him like shadows. Her suspicions were justified. Now the goddess would have a double harvest: not just a prince of blood, but also a traitor beside him. The Golden Blood Moon would be unforgettable.

For Calén there existed nothing but selfless service to his mistress. It was all he had left since he ceased to be a man. Velmira had made him with her knife on that full-moon night; what he had been before no longer mattered, it had burned on the altar. Now he was an extension of his mistress’s will. And yet, on rare occasions, he still remembered what it was to feel something: one of them was the helpless hatred that boiled in him whenever the hunter was near.

He looked down at the unconscious prince’s groin, still naked. That thick, heavy cock, with its generous balls, made for pleasure and procreation, had nothing in common with the pathetic appendage left to him. He felt rage. He reached out and stroked the heavy sack of flesh, first with his fingertips, then gripping it whole. He would have liked to twist it until it burst. He weighed it slowly, squeezing the balls until the prince, even unconscious, let out a moan of pain. Then he ran his fingers up the flaccid cock and wrapped it in his whole hand, feeling its thickness, its weight, everything he would never have again. He closed his fist with silent cruelty. But it would not be necessary: very soon that marble giant would be exactly like him. The eunuch’s expressionless face twisted into the faintest smile.

***

The full moon rose powerful when the two captives were prepared in their cells. It took nearly ten eunuchs to subdue the prince while they washed and anointed him with the same perfumed oil used on the castrated servants. Cold hands ran over every inch of his body, lifted his balls, soaped his cock with mocking slowness, lingered between his buttocks as if they were already preparing him for what would come after that night: a thing, not a man. Drevan, by contrast, did not resist.

The great hall was ready. Hundreds of eunuchs and adherents crowded beneath the immense vault. On the honor dais, the High Acolytes in their solemn robes. In the center, on a platform, the altar of Nemora: the cold image of the goddess lit by the fire burning at her feet, and before it a circular stone table with shackles. Around it, all the priestesses, ethereal and young. And in the middle, Velmira.

They secured the prince to the table with his limbs forming an X. Kaelen howled and pulled at the chains with colossal strength, but it was useless. Velmira advanced slowly until she stood between his legs, received the knife from a sister’s hands, and asked him, according to tradition, if he desired one last moment of pleasure. The wretch did not even seem to hear her; he was sobbing, no longer in despair, but in pure resignation. The operation was quick and precise—open, extract, cut—the high priestess had learned it as a child and was always amazed by its simplicity. Everyone watched in rapture as the flames flared when the prince’s virility was thrown into the fire. Generations of proud sovereigns, cut down in one stroke.

As they dragged the newly castrated man toward his new quarters, all eyes turned to the second offering. Drevan climbed the steps with insolent calm and even smiled at the confusion on the priestesses’ faces: a defiant erection, thick and veined, stood between his legs, brazenly pointing toward the vault. Calén pulled the cord tied around his genitals, marking him as a traitor, with a look of hatred at that improper display.

The hunter lay down on the table and stretched out his hands for the shackles. Velmira asked the same question as always. And, perhaps for the first time in generations, the answer was yes.

***

The entire room held its breath. Velmira had never seen anything like it. She hesitated for an instant, severe, before stripping off the ceremonial dress and letting it fall to the stone floor. Her white body shone in the firelight: high, round tits crowned by two dark nipples, a flat stomach, wide hips, and between her thighs that silky triangle concealing the most desired and forbidden cunt in all Nemorath. The whole room saw its high priestess naked for the first time in her life.

She climbed the stone steps in silence, went around the table, and stopped for a moment at the hunter’s feet. Drevan’s cock throbbed erect, pointing at her like a spear. Velmira reached out and wrapped it in cold fingers, squeezing it as though weighing an offering before throwing it to the fire. He let out a rough groan through clenched teeth. The priestess slid her fist from root to tip slowly, savoring the captive’s helplessness, then bent and ran her tongue over the glans in one long, wet, deliberate lick. Drevan jerked against the shackles with a roar. She smiled faintly and licked again, this time running the whole length, from the swollen balls to the tip already beading with a thick drop. She took the glans into her mouth and sucked it with the calm of one savoring a sacred fruit, taking it deep into her throat and drawing it out slowly, soaked in saliva.

A murmur ran through the room. No priestess remembered ever seeing Velmira kneel before a man. But this was not reverence: it was the final ritual, the mocking tribute the goddess granted to the condemned man’s last erection. When the cock was wet, swollen, and purple, Velmira stood, climbed onto the table, and straddled the captive.

She grabbed the cock in her hand, rubbed it against the lips of her cunt, opening them slowly, letting the glans slide up and down over her clit. Drevan moaned and strained in the chains, desperate to bury himself inside her. Velmira held his gaze, implacable, and at last lowered her hips and took him inside with a slow, deliberate motion, never once breaking eye contact with those terrible eyes. The priestess’s cunt, warm and very tight, swallowed the hunter’s cock to the root. Drevan let out a hoarse shout. He had spent years jerking off imagining this moment, and reality was a thousand times more brutal.

Velmira began to move. At first slowly, rising and falling in a ritual cadence, letting the cock sink all the way in and then come almost all the way out before swallowing it again. Her tits swayed with each thrust, the nipples hard as stones. Drevan was euphoric. For years he had dreamed of lying with the high priestess, first imagining himself as a respectable High Acolyte and then even as a victorious general who would take her as spoils. Things had ended up very differently, tied to a sacrifice table, but there she was, riding him with relentless rhythm, her mouth tightening with every thrust, gripping his cock with her cunt like an invisible hand that would not let him escape.

—Priestess —he panted through clenched teeth—, faster, you bitch, faster...

Velmira answered with a cruel smile and quickened the pace. She drove her hips down violently, hammering herself against his pelvis, and the wet sound of her cunt swallowing his cock echoed through the whole vault along with the captive’s gasps. She dug her nails into his hairy chest until blood came. She pinched his nipples and twisted them while she rode him. She leaned forward to bring one tit closer to his mouth; Drevan bit it desperately, sucking it with all the rage and desire accumulated over years in his cell. She let out the first genuine moan of the night, guttural, and yanked his hair until she tore it out in handfuls.

She straightened again and kept riding him. Now her soaked cunt gleamed in the firelight, and each time she rose the hunter’s cock could be seen shining with juices, thick and red, before disappearing into her again. Velmira brought a hand to her clit and began rubbing it with two fingers, setting her own rhythm. Her whole body trembled. She locked her eyes on his and reveled in her coldness, in the way the priestess controlled every movement while the heat rose and sweat beaded on both their skins. Calén, off to one side, looked more powerless than ever, watching the woman he served with his tongue open herself to the very end for the man he hated most in the world, and that made him feel even better.

—Come inside me, hunter —Velmira hissed, leaning over him with her tits brushing his chest—. Empty yourself. Let the goddess receive your seed before she receives your flesh.

Drevan howled. He pulled at the chains until the shackles split the skin on his wrists. The priestess was riding him now in fury, rising and falling with all the force of her hips, pounding his cock against the wet depths of her belly. He felt his balls contract, felt pleasure surge in waves from his groin to his throat, and he exploded. He came inside her in violent spurts, arching his back, roaring like an animal. Velmira kept moving over him, milking him to the last drop, squeezing his cock with slow contractions of her cunt. Drevan felt her trembling over him, and for one glorious instant he understood that the high priestess was coming too, pinching her own clit while the seed of a traitor filled her from within. Velmira’s muffled moans, dry and guttural, were the night’s most precious trophy.

When she finally went still, she remained impaled on him a few seconds longer, her cunt throbbing around his still-swollen cock, the hunter’s semen overflowing and sliding down the priestess’s thighs. Then, unhurriedly, she sat up. The cock slipped out of her with a wet sound and a thick amount of white fluid spilled onto Drevan’s belly. Velmira looked down at him, majestic, sweaty, crowned by the moon entering through the vault opening, and held his gaze with renewed coldness. The private rite was over. Now the other one began.

He knew what would come next. He had no idea what dark arts the priestesses would pour over him to subdue his will forever, but he knew they would succeed and that nothing could stop it. He did not care. He let pleasure wash over him completely, one last time, beneath the impassive gaze of the stone goddess. Even then, as he felt her stepping down from the table with her cunt still dripping his semen, as he heard the sisters sharpening the consecrated knife and knew it was the last time he would be a man, Drevan thought he would keep thinking about Velmira every day of the submission awaiting him. He would strive to be the best of her servants. The most docile of all. The one she chose, whenever she felt like it, to kneel by the pool and lick her cunt with the same mouth that still held the indelible memory of the taste of his cock.