Epoch of Empires

[thunderwing]

My first attempt. Enjoy.

...

A golden-tressed warrior goddess stood on a wind-swept crag, overlooking a massive army of ancient warriors. She gestured dramatically, her ample breasts barely kept in check by her cleavage-baring armor.

“I am Athena, goddess of wisdom. Only you can save me in Epoch of Empires! On sale now at the – “

“Could you please change the channel?” asked Karen, as she shifted under the hotel sheets.

The commercial brought back vivid memories. Cold set. Mean horses. Uncomfortable metal bustier.

Beside her in bed, Jason grinned. “Aw, I like it. Keeps me company on those road trips. You know they dub them in French in Montreal? She does a real good impression of you.” His voice rose into a falsetto. “Je suis Athena, de – “

She hit him with a pillow. He fended off a second hit with his curveball-honed forearm, then pulled her voluptuous body in for a kiss, her generous breasts pressing against his muscular torso. He could get on her nerves, sure, but she wouldn’t trade this for anything. The baseball season was long, and coincided with the warm summer months when bikini models were in high demand – so when he had a rest day in the same city where she’d been doing a shoot, they’d taken advantage of it. She’d lost count of how many times they’d made love today, but judging by the moistness of the sheets, it was an awful lot. Nevertheless, she felt his hardness brush against her abdomen, signalling his readiness to go again – good lord, what was his team feeding him?

She broke away from his embrace, still distracted by the ad. “Anyway, it was good money, but I’d like to find steadier work – maybe a TV series, or – “

“Permanent employment can be arranged.”

They were no longer alone in the hotel room. At the foot of the bed stood Athena. The real Athena.

She looked different on TV. Instead of Karen’s all-American blue-eyed, flaxen-haired beauty, this woman had piercing gray eyes, dark hair, and an angular face, with high cheekbones and a strong chin. Her armor was far less revealing, and gleamed with an unearthly shine. She was still beautiful, but in a different way. A frightening way. Karen and Jason both knew, as if from some millennia-old ancestral memory, that this was a real goddess, standing in front of their hotel flatscreen.

“I am angry, mortals. My power lies within my image – in the age when humans worshipped me, my image graced statues and coins and amphorae across the known world. Even now, when they look upon those artifacts, they feel my power. But now, my image is corrupted, and transmitted to millions, to sell trivial ephemera. The time has come for you and your consort to suffer my wrath.”

Karen stammered. “I…I can ask them to stop running the ads on TV?”

“They have spread across the globe, translated into a dozen tongues. You cannot call them back any more than you could reclaim a glass of wine poured into the sea.”

Jason remained silent, his limited life experience leaving him totally unprepared for this. Karen was a little worldlier – plus, unlike her companion, some of her blood was still in her brain. She knew she had to say something before she was incinerated. “I’m so sorry, my…my goddess. What can I do to make it up to you?”

The goddess smiled, slightly. “I forgive you. Mortals are inherently foolish, and it is our responsibility to teach them. Still, I cannot have the other pantheons thinking that my stance on blasphemy has slackened – and I have a labyrinth that needs guarding. I am sure you will serve me well.”

She gestured casually, and the room was suddenly empty. The bedsheets slowly fell down, filling the void left by their vanished inhabitants. The ad came on the TV again.

…

Karen woke up on a sandy stone floor, as naked as she had been under the sheets. She was in a long hallway, dimly lit by torches mounted on the wall. It smelled earthy, like they were underground. She saw Jason farther down the hall, still unconscious. She shakily rose to her feet to run to him, but immediately fell flat on her face.

Her first thought was that her legs had been tied up. She had no such luck.

Starting with her feet, her legs had begun to fuse together. Her toes were already gone, as the featureless lumps that were her feet melded into each other. She could feel everything, but there was no pain – it was like having dental work done with gums full of novocaine. Her calves were next to pull together, lengthening as her bones reformed and her knees disappeared. Her womanly thighs soon joined them, losing all their definition as they became a solid cylindrical mass; much to her dismay, her still-moist slit was buried between them when they fused. Everything smoothed and stretched out until her lower half was nothing but a long tapering tube, like a snake covered in soft, peachy skin. She felt a sharp sting in what used to be her big toes, and something dark began to overtake her flesh, starting at the tip of what she now realized was a tail – her tail. It crawled up her strange new appendage, catching the flickering torchlight on its smooth, shiny surface. As the darkness reached her waist, she could see and feel it clearly – it reminded her of a purse she owned.

Scales. Emerald-green and as glossy as her manicured fingernails.

She hoped it would stop there – leaving her half-human, at least – but to no avail. The scales continued to march up her torso, wrapping around every luscious curve and contour of her spectacular body. Apart from the tail, her figure, famous to magazine readers and lingerie catalog masturbators the world over, remained unchanged. Her flaring hips, her slim waist, her toned midsection – all remained as they were, with a form-fitting coating of smooth, cold scales.

Karen desperately clutched at her breasts, the feature she was proudest of, as they were forever sealed in snakeskin. The scales proceeded up her back, conquered her shoulders, and began traveling down her arms before consuming the soft skin of her delicate hands. Making a fist, she realized that the scales protected her from her own nails, which had hardened and sharpened into claws.

She stole a glimpse at Jason, halfway-hoping that he was undergoing a similar transformation, so at least they’d be together. He was changing, certainly – but not in the same way at all. He was awake now, and doubled over in pain. He still had his legs, but his feet were gone, replaced with what looked like giant hooves. He was moaning and grunting, but even his voice was different – deeper, like the bellowing of her uncle’s cows.

Her face burned as the scales raced up it, bringing with them more changes and drawing her attention back to her own warping body. Her canines thinned and lengthened, becoming hollow fangs. The room suddenly brightened – unbeknownst to her, the whites of her eyes had turned a poison yellow as her pupil and iris narrowed into a black slit, ideal for seeing in the darkened labyrinth. She could feel her blonde locks becoming heavy as they clumped together, the knots of hair melding together to form fleshy tendrils that wrapped themselves in scales and blossomed into hissing snake heads. She cried out, feeling the alien sensation of her snake hair writhing on her scaly scalp. Dozens of tiny eyes opened, and Karen could feel their primitive minds awaken.

She had no mirror, but as she ran her hands over her face, she could feel the features she was familiar with – the button nose, the pouting lips, the delicate chin – but with the cold, scaly texture of a serpent. Her ears were gone, replaced by small pits concealed behind her slithering hair. As she explored, her snake-hair gently coiled around her wrist, and she jerked her hand away, disgusted.

The sensations of change ended – her new body was complete. She was a monster, a nightmare out of Greek mythology. She was never again to be the subject of a magazine cover, a photo shoot, or a teenage fantasy. She recalled Athena’s words, and realized her destiny now was to slither through this horrible maze forever; the only saving grace was that nobody could see her. She wanted to cry, or scream, but she no longer had tear ducts, and her breathy voice had become a venomous hiss.

Her spirits were soon to rise. Her tongue, now thin and forked, involuntarily flicked out of her mouth. She could taste the air, and sensed a powerful, masculine musk. It was familiar but different, the flavor of a favorite dish seasoned with new spices.

Jason.

She could feel the need in her abdomen, where her legs had once met. She felt around the area and found her womanhood was still there, as a concealed slit in her scales. She experimentally inserted a taloned finger into it, and found it slick with strange fluids. She knew nothing she could do with her hands would fulfil her – she needed more.

She could see Jason much more clearly now with her new eyes, and he was something to behold now that his changes were finished. He had to be seven feet tall now, his frame bursting with muscle. He was covered in a thin layer of brown hair, with thicker patches on his chest, wrists, ankles, and crotch. Two curved horns and two flat, pointed ears poked out of the shaggy mane his once-short hair had become. His handsome face was still recognizable, but his broad nose had merged with his upper lip, forming a short bovine muzzle. A tufted tail wafted lazily from his backside.

The source of the heady musk that so intoxicated her, however, hung between his legs. It still looked like the manhood she was intimately familiar with, but with an animal roughness – and it had to be at least a foot long now. It throbbed with need; he grappled with it with his blunt, hoof-fingered hands, but he was clearly incapable of fulfilling that need on his own. Just as she was. They had been remade for each other.

Karen’s future and her humanity had been callously taken from her, but there was nothing she could do about that. There was something she could do about her most pressing, immediate desire.

After a little trial and error, she gained control over her serpentine tail. She slithered over to him, keeping her torso upright as her tail slid through the sand. In his dark eyes, she saw recognition – he was still Jason, just as she was still Karen. She kissed him; his massive slab of a tongue, no longer capable of forming any human speech, intertwined with her delicate forked one.

She elevated her torso, coiling her muscular tail below her, and gently lowered herself onto his pulsating manhood, taking its entire length into her changed body. She ran her clawed fingers through his thick mane and down his massive chest, all the while bobbing up and down his colossal erection, hissing in pleasure as it stimulated her strange new depths. As single-minded as ever, he roughly kneaded her breasts with his meaty hoof-hands – luckily, their durable, scaly exterior made his brutish ministrations ecstasy, rather than agony, for her. Karen even gloried in the sensation of her snake-hair coiling itself around his bony horns.

Their thrusts sped up, and she felt her climax building; she wrapped her tail around his beefy thigh to steady herself. His muscles tensed, and she clenched his bovine dick from within, taking both of them to the point of no return. He roared, and erupted inside her, just as her own orgasm shot through her body, from the tip of her tail to the snake-locks spasming on her skull. They stayed locked in an embrace for some time, as he slowly softened and withdrew from her reptilian folds.

Her lust slaked, Karen felt a new compulsion. She turned and slithered off down the hallway, as Jason lumbered away in the opposite direction. She knew, somehow, that she would be wandering the maze for some time, days perhaps, before she met Jason again. She smiled, and tasted the air again – it was still rich with their inter-mingled fluids. The memory of that encounter would sustain her until they met again.

…

From the shadows, Athena looked on. It was an acceptable resolution to their dispute. The guilty had been punished, and their accuser had been gifted with their service; however, the penitents were clearly very happy with the terms of their punishment. Why, even the chaste goddess of wisdom had felt the strange stirrings of desire, watching their coupling. She suspected she might need to find more blasphemers…

[Expansionist]

Amazing! I love it. So well written and so hot! There's a distinct lack of mutually consensual "monstrous" sex, for lack of a better term, and this piece is great. I especially love the description of her living hair.

Thank you for sharing this work!

[JMS]

That was actually ... pretty good?

Nice work, you've got a talent for this.

[thunderwing]

Thanks for the comments! I'm happy people enjoyed it. I'll definitely be posting more in the future.