The Stag God Chronicles: The Archon, Chapter One

Hey, everyone.

This marks the beginning of a new series, a continuation of the Stag God Chronicles in the form of a new trilogy I'm calling "Light in the
Forest."

Come and chat with us about the new storyline, won't you? We've got some great guys on there, and I'd love to hear from anyone who's read
the series, old or new (hopefully both!).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stag-god-cycle/

As usual, involves adult situations, with all that entails. You've been warned.

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This story is copyright The Oaken Satyr, 2008.

The Archon

- Part One of "Light in the Forest," a continuation of the Stag God Chronicles

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Chapter One: Initiation

The moon was dark overhead, its light long since expended for the month. Now, it was only a tiny silver sliver in the sky, like an eye drooping off to sleep. Likewise, eyes all through the small fishing community of Marushford closed and found slumber. The day came early this time of year, and the fish did not wait for laze-abouts to catch them.

But not everyone found sleep. The Pikewood nearby seemed to glow in the dim light, and occasionally an errant wind carried the sound of a drumbeat, or the smell of sweet burning pine resin to the people of the town. They weren't fools. Everyone knew what went on in those woods these days.

No one talked about it, of course. It was hardly a topic of conversation for good, wholesome folk. But the whispers were plain. Dark men gathered in the hidden places these days, and it is said they wore antlers strapped to their heads in emulation of the god they worshipped: a terrible demon-god, a creature of shame and perversion and filth.

Only the Church spoke openly of them, warning everyone about their influence. It is said they called men away from their proper roles under the eye of heaven. This orc-demon lured men away from their homes, wives and families, tempted them into wicked congress with one another so that they would not raise strong sons.

The wise in the Church and town knew enough to warn others that it was clearly intended to weaken the population of Mankind, that the savage and piggish orcfolk — who called themselves the Tribes of the Great Sow — might overrun them entirely, butchering babes, raping women and those men too weak and fearful to fight to the death.

Of course, that was the sort of thing that "those people" did. No one in town claimed to know anyone involved in the Cults of the Stag-God — it was scandalous to even suggest it.

And so it was that here and there, a small number of the menfolk of Marushford slipped away. The widower who'd lost his wife to
disease and simply sought solace in someone's arms. The husband who resented his family arranging his marriage, stolen away from hunting
trips and expeditions with his best friends as a youth, desiring memories of carefree adolescence before sex became something he had to
plead for, to be doled out to him as a reward, and withheld on a whim. The middle son who snuck out of the attic bedroom he shared with his
snoring brothers, seeking those who would not only welcome his shy overtures, but return them with confidence.

To all of these, came the call of the Stag-God.

Beneath the pine trees, in a clearing thick with the scent of pine resin, burnt in chunks from brass braziers hung from the strongest boughs, they came. Quietly, and clad in dark clothing, wearing blankets like cloaks and moving cautiously.

One of their number arrived with another in tow, a young man wearing a blindfold and led from behind. As they gathered in the grove, they encircled the young man, speaking lowly from lips to ear, in a circle, until they all knew who he was and why he was here.

"My brother's new helper around the mill," said Strenham, the miller's brother, a man whose ill-manners were wielded carefully to keep at arm's length the women whose touch he didn't desire. "He approached me last week, claiming that his sleeping pallet was too
hard and too cold. He is one of us. His name is Mathis."

The young man was thickly built, with broad shoulders and thick thighs. He was clearly on the verge of full adulthood, with the slight touch of baby fat to his face and soft, rounded buttocks, but the ample groin and dusting of light fur on his cheeks and chin. His lips were full and lush, his hair a reddish-copper mess atop his head and his blue eyes hidden by the blindfold.

Hands reached out to touch Mathis, to grope him, to caress him and pat him reassuringly. First one hand touched his shoulder, and slid down his back, over the slimming of his hips and the curve of his buttocks. Mathis breathed raggedly in little fearful, excited gasps, and another hand cupped his crotch, where the young man's cock strained against his breeches. Suddenly, there were hands all over him, touching, smoothing, mauling by turns. The first to touch his skin slid up from his ass and under his tunic, hot callused skin on the sweet, smooth skin of his side.

A man pressed up behind him, and suddenly Mathis was in someone's arms, his back against a broad chest, his ass shoved up against the hot length of someone's erection. Hands slid under his tunic, and kept traveling upward. The man behind him guided his arms
up over his head, and then he was bare-chested in the cold night air.

The breath of men — how many of them? They seemed to be everywhere — breathed on him, warming him, and someone's lips found his nipple, strong lips pushing into the flesh there, teeth clenching the nub there, tongue flicking that trapped nipple.

Mathis groaned and leaned back against the strong, tall figure behind him.

Hands continued to roam his body. He could hear their breathing, more and more urgent. The touch became stronger, too, more insistent. What began as simple caresses became clutching at his hips, his shoulders, his belly. Several hands strayed past the simple rope that held his breeches up, and another fumbled for a moment at the knot. Someone chuckled and whispered something teasingly — not to him, but to the one working at his belt, and in panting frustration Mathis slapped the hand away and untied it himself.

With a hissed intake of air through clenched teeth, his pants dropped. He didn't have time to notice the cold air on his naked flesh now before that flesh was covered, mauled by hands. Now it wasn't just hands — bodies pressed against him. He knew, on some level, that these were a multitude of bodies here: thin and lithe, densely muscled, barrel-chested and round-bellied. But they all felt like one moving being to him, a being of heat and sweat and lust.

"Gently, now," the deep voice said in his ear and he gasped. The lips beside his ear parted and a tongue ran lightly over the curve of his ear, and a whiskered face brushed up against his own as teeth captured his earlobe. The hands of the man behind him — the man whispering to him now — tightened around his body and began to pull him downward. His knees buckled, and he realized that this man had practically been holding him up.

His bare knees found contact with mounds of soft heather and clover covering the hardness of the forest floor beneath him. The man behind him knelt with him. Mathis whimpered, reaching up to remove the mask, but the man stopped him.

"Not yet. It is not time for that yet."

A hand on the back of his head pushed him forward as clothing rustled around him, and when he stopped, the thick head of some man's cock — pulsing in the heat and already drooling a slight smudge of precum — came to rest against his left cheek. Mathis turned, opening his mouth, and the cock bobbed away. Another cock, this one dramatically thick and meaty, slapped him in his opposite shoulder, and he turned to face that one while a third one...or was it the first one again?...played its stubby, hot head over his ear, down his neck and then rested in the hollow of his throat for a moment.

It was maddening, being surrounded by them like this!

Suddenly, strong arms grasped him from behind again, and Mathis whimpered. The man behind him had disrobed, and now pulled him up against his naked, hard body, skin to hot skin. Mathis sighed a ragged sigh and leaned fully against the man.

"Now is the time," he said, and tickled Mathis' ear again with his whiskers. "You have found your way to us, but you are not of us. Will you take the oath, and become one of the Stag-born?"

Mathis' heart leapt to his throat and he trembled. He could feel the stillness and closeness around him, as they all waited to hear his response.

"I will."

Suddenly the man behind him grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head back, while hands in front of him invaded his lips. The fingers wormed their way into his mouth, and once he opened his jaw, they were replaced by a fat, hot cockhead, which stretched his mouth further.

All was heat and passion as the man behind him trapped him, grasping him in a tight bearhug, pulling him up against his body, and the man in front of his fed him cock. Mathis choked first, and the cock with drew and then immediately invaded his mouth again. This time, however, the young man was ready for it.

"That's it, boy," a whispered voice from off to his right said huskily. "Open your mouth wide."

The man in front of him shoved his cock into Mathis' mouth, and Mathis yawned wide to take it. The member wasn't too thick, but it was very hard and quite long, with a slender head on it. Mathis closed his mouth around its width and slid his head up and down as the man stepped forward with a sigh.

Mathis' hands reached up and cupped the buttocks of the man in front of him. They were thin and muscled, slightly furry. He ran his hands up and down, from lower back to the man's calves, reveling in the heat the man put off while deepthroating the man's cock as best he could. The man had a slender but muscled build.

Suddenly, the cock withdrew, trailing a thick line of spittle over Mathis' lips and down his chin. The man behind him pulled him tight and reached around, wiping his hand across the new initiate's mouth. He came away with the saliva, and the man whispered in his ear:

"Consecrated in spittle, you are."

The man's hand wrote a symbol of some kind, simple and curving on his chest in his own saliva.

Then, all the men were pressing close, each demanding his cock sucked with only strident slaps of their cocks against his jaw and face. Mathis quickly surged forward, swallowed one thick member to the hilt, opening his jaws `til they ached, before being pulled away and force-fed another fat member faster than he could keep track of. Their grunt, sighs and moans sounded like a chorus of animals.

This was unlike anything he'd ever known, and his breathing was ragged and desperate. Fingers touched him, hands pressed at him and thick, warm bodies pressed close in the cold night.

Then it happened —the man behind him, who'd held him close this whole time, reached down, his fingers coated with some sort of unguent. Slick and teasing, they touched the crack of his ass with the backs of knuckles, and then slid neatly and perfectly into the hollow between
the globes of his buttocks and found his hole.

Mathis very nearly screamed his urgency; only the thick, meaty cock in his mouth prevented it. Even so, he moaned around the member in pleasure, and the man he serviced groaned his appreciation at the sudden sensation around his cock. The fingers teased and prodded at his hole, and Mathis leaned forward to give the man behind him better access to his nethers. The men around him accepted his forward movement gratefully, taking him into their arms with kisses, licks, nibbles and sucking bites.

"This is the gate," the man behind him said, his voice equal parts teasing passion and pure reverence. "By this gate comes Ashlan into our lives, and through this gate we learn what passion truly is. To be owned by Him, to be claimed by Him as the hunter claims his prey — these are good, holy things, and through this gate we claim others and allow others to claim us in return. In His name."

"In his name," the men around them intoned and Mathis gave himself over to their caresses as the speaker's fingers invaded his hole, silken smooth and warm. Mathis glanced to his left and found Strenham's smiling face. The two of them had been intimate, but Mathis had never surrendered himself this way to the millhand. Yes, Mathis had come begging for a place in the older man's bed, but it was his randy cock that was sucked, and Strenham who received the young man's thick cock in his ass during the cold nights.

Strenham surged forward as Mathis pulled his face away from yet another cock, and caught the young man's jaw. The two men kissed, then, and Strenham straightened, presenting his stubby but thickly swollen cock to the younger man. With a smile, Mathis first kissed the
head of his thick, blunt prick, smearing his lips with the precum there, and then swallowed his lover and sponsor to the cult of the
Stag-God to the root.

The first finger in Mathis' ass had been joined by a second at some point, and Mathis felt a tingling in his hole. The man behind him slipped a third finger in and pushed all of them as far in as he could, splaying his thumb and little finger against the young man's muscled buttocks with the effort. Mathis groaned and pulled his mouth off of Strenham's piton-like cock.

"What...what is that...unguent?"

"A cult secret, seeker," the man behind him said, and rendered his buttocks a firm slap with his free hand. "You'll learn of it soon enough."

Mathis started to reach for Strenham's cock again when the others pushed him upright, back into the arms of the man behind him, who kept his fingers lodged in his nethers, pistoning them in and out rapidly, widening and slicking his hole. Mathis looked up and saw one of them
hand Strenham a thin blade. Without missing a beat, Strenham etched a tiny little cut just above his groin, and the blood concentrated there
pooled out thickly in a small, red bead.

The older man smiled, and handed the blade away into the darkness and then reached down and gathered the droplet of blood with his thumb. Then, with the blood, he marked Mathis' chest with the same sigil earlier marked in the boy's own spittle.

"Consecrated in blood, you are," the man behind him whispered menacingly as he widened the young man's hole further. Mathis gasped as the man slid a fourth finger in, and then suddenly fell forward, released by those holding him up. The motion put him on his hands and knees, and then everyone was kneeling.

Strong arms held him down, and a slight panic started to rise in him. He struggled a little, to no avail. They were too strong, and he was
in too awkward of a position to fight himself free, and then he felt it.

The thick head of what felt like a massive cock pushing at the slick entry of his asshole. His breathing sped up and he whimpered, and
fought the arms some more.

"Calm yourself," the man behind him said, and Mathis felt cooling calm settle in over his head. He leaned forward, resting his head on his
forearms, his shapely ass angled upward in the air. "You knew this was coming. You've known this was coming for the whole of your life, boy,
even if you could never admit it to yourself."

Mathis whimpered and nodded. Taking his cock in hand, the man behind him began to press against Mathis' hole, edging it slowly in by making circles, smaller and smaller, against the slick skin of his asshole. Then, it popped it and Mathis' head shot up, hissing in pain.

Suddenly his head was in Strenham's arms, and he nearly collapsed, leaning into the older millhand.

"Oh, it hurts, Stren," the young man gasped. "It hurts so damned much."

"Shhhhh," the older, gruff man said, with a tenderness in his voice that was strange to hear for those who knew him. "It always does, Mathis. It is growth of a kind, and a little like dying."

"Yes, ahhh!" Mathis nearly howled as the man behind him began to work his cock in a little deeper. The young man felt nearly split in half,
but his assailant showed no sign of being fully within him yet. "Oh, god. He's killing me."

"Hush, there, hush," Stren crooned to him, and kissed him. "He's not. It just feels that way. He's the Stag to your doe, Mathis, and there
is always a little violence in His love, just as there is always a little love to His violence. To Him there is no difference between prey and beloved: they are the same. They are you, sweet boy. Give yourself to Him without reservation."

Mathis raised his head and kissed Strenham and settled his head down into the older man's lap. He took a deep breath, and relaxed. Immediately, the pain lessened, and the burning of the pain transubstantiated into a more urgent burning: one of need. The boy writhed, impaled on the thick cock, until finally he pushed himself back, ever so slightly.

Sweet pleasure exploded behind his eyes, and he nearly lost his breath from the intensity. He gasped, and buried his face in Strenham's crotch.

"There, you see?" the man behind him said, and Mathis could hear the smile in his voice. "To fight your urges brings only pain and
suffering in this world. Surrender to them — surrender to the gifts of the Stag-God — and your pain will become holy pleasure."

Mathis pushed back further, and took Strenham's cock in his mouth, sucking ferociously. Strong hands grasped the young man's hips, and
with a blissful shove forward, the man buried himself to the hilt in the new initiate.

Around them, the others fell into one anothers' arms, all touching, pressing up against and in contact with Mathis, Strenham and the initiator, but they sought their own pleasures now. Blissful sighs filled the forest clearing, and the sounds of sex between men echoed in Mathis' ears and mind.

Slowly, the man behind him sped his pace, slamming his cock in and out of Mathis' hole, which burned with a slow pleasurable heat that the
young man wanted to never end. The man was stoking a fire in his nethers that he was sure would never go out, no matter how many lovers
he took afterwards. Mathis knew instinctively that every lover after this one that he took would build the fire only hotter and higher within him.

Finally, the sounds of passion around them grew and grew, as the man behind Mathis pummeled his ass mercilessly, pulling his fat, long cock
nearly completely out, stretching wide the young man's terribly stretched hole, only to slam it home again, causing Mathis to shudder
in ecstasy each time.

"Ah, Horned One," someone uttered, and then groaned, and the smell of semen assaulted all their nostrils. The groans became a chorus, and
Mathis opened his eyes to see groups of men reaching climax: one man pulled his cock from another's lips and shot thick rope after rope of
jism on the other's face, while another pulled his slick and quiveringly hard cock from another's ass and spewed his seed all over the man's belly.

The last of them to cum was the man behind him — his initiator, Mathis knew — and when the time came, the man yanked his already-spasming cock from Mathis sore, heated, sloppy hole while Strenham flipped the boy over to lay on his back on the ground.

The man behind him was an incredible specimen of masculine beauty, with thick muscled shoulders, tawny fur covering his pectorals that
trickled slowly down to the perfectly cut V-shape at his groin. He clutched in his rough hand a massive cudgel of a cock, so thick he couldn't even truly wrap his formidable grip around it.

Mathis adjudged that it had to be at least as long as his forearm, and possibly longer, and it quivered a deep, angry purple-red and then showered him with thick white strands of the man's seed, ropes of which reached as high as Mathis' face, coating his brow and lips with
the viscous strands of seed. Jet after jet of the stuff burst from the man's impressive cock, and Mathis glanced upward to see the man's face
— attractive, with the weathered skin of an outdoorsman and a coppery beard — twisted in exquisite pleasure as he emptied his large balls
again and again all over Mathis.

The man collapsed over Mathis, breathily heavily, and held himself up over the young man by his strong arms. He reached down and kissed the younger millhand and then straightened. With one finger he reached out and scooped up some of the seed he'd just sprayed Mathis with, and etched the symbol from before on the young man's chest, this time in semen.

"Consecrated in seed, you are."

Mathis watched as the others around them did likewise, each taking a thumbful of their ejaculate and tracing over the sigil on his chest,
echoing the words their leader spoke and then kissing the young man. Finally, when the last of them had done so, the big-cocked leader
reached down and helped Mathis to rise to his knees, and kissed him again.

"Welcome to the Brotherhood, my friend," he said and kissed him again.

* * *

A short time later, they all sat, in various states of undress, reclining against one another around a small crackling fire. Simple food and good rich ale and wine passed around the circle, from hand to hand, the simple camaraderie palpable. Mathis leaned against Strenham as they shared a small heel of good dark bread and a rich cheese to go with it, occasionally taking sips of sweet pale wine from the skin nearby.

The leader of the cult, a grizzled woodsman named Olusku reclined nearby, occasionally reaching out to caress the newest initiate. Mathis smiled at him and offered him a bit of wine, and the huntsman accepted, without taking his eyes off Mathis.

"Why do you stare at me that way?" the young man said teasingly, reaching out with his foot to shove slightly at Olusku's
still-naked thigh. Olusku caught the young man's leg, and planted a kiss on the top of his foot, his ankle, his calf, his knee and then
his thigh, slowly moving up nearer, crawling up Mathis' leg until he could rest his head on the young man's muscled thigh.

"You remind me of someone dear," he said simply, and reached out to fondle Mathis' cock and balls familiarly, playfully. The older man glanced up at Mathis. "My former apprentice, actually, though he was fair where you are dark."

"Your apprentice in...worship of the Stag God?" Mathis said. His throat still caught even saying it, though Olusku didn't
seem to notice. The huntsman chuckled.

"No, no," Olusku chuckled. "As a woodsman, nothing more, in a small town leagues from here along the border. On the other side of the Ultannah Hills, actually. It was through my own experience with the Stag God that he found the Stag God, mind you, but he — like I —
was brought to His worship directly."

Mathis stared at the huntsman, staring at him intently.

He took another sip of wine, and then looked away, glancing back once or twice as though something bothered him.

"Go ahead. Ask," Strenham whispered to him, knowing what he was thinking. Mathis looked at him and smiled, and then looked at Olusku again.

"Is it true what they say about the Stag God?"

"They say many things about Him, Mathis. So many things, in fact, that it is impossible for all of it to be true; so much of it is contradictory."

"Is he terrifying?" Mathis' eyes gleamed with too much alcohol, and what was clearly fear. Olusku smiled.

"Oh, like little other I've ever encountered. He is terribly tall, and His antlers pierce the sky above Him. He has the air of a predator about Him, and He is always on the hunt. He is more thickly muscled than any man I've seen and his endowment...obscene, it is, in its length and girth."

Mathis furrowed his brow at that.

"Bigger...bigger than yours?"

Olusku chuckled and pushed the bit of blanket currently covering his groin aside. His cock had already begun to swell at talk of the Stag
God, and he hefted it with one hand, raising it to slap against his furry, muscled belly.

"Oh, yes. Unhesitatingly." The older man grinned at Mathis' doubting look. "In truth, though, my cock wasn't always this size. It used to be...well, smaller."

"Really?"

"Yes. It's apparently one of the side effects of taking the seed of the Stag God directly."

"Truly?" Mathis grinned wickedly. "Amazing."

"It's not just the Stag God's seed that does it," Strenham grinned, shifting so he could lay hands on Olusku's huge fistful of cock. He leaned against the huntsman and smiled back at Mathis, who fondled his own cock watching the two. "Aye, those who take the seed of those who've taken His seed see growth as well."

"Indeed," Olusku smiled, and gently played with Strenham's hair as the big man opened his mouth and lapped at the bulbous tip of the huntsman's cock before swallowing half of it. Olusku smiled and leaned back, enjoying it. There was none of the immediacy that often accompanied such oral ministrations — this was comfort and affection, rather than the need to climax.

"So, those who have been...touched by the Stag God..." Mathis began, hesitantly. Olusku opened his eyes and smiled at him.

"Fucked," he corrected, bluntly. "Those who have been fucked by Him, Mathis. Let's not mince words — there is no shame in it among us."

"Fucked, then. Those who've been fucked by Him — are you the only ones who run the cults?"

"Not run the cults, no. That happens among you all. We are simply the initiators. We tend to travel from place to place, overseeing the growth of His worship, and bringing new men to the fold." He groaned then, and laid his head back, before looking down playfully at Strenham. "My gods, man, you do that well. I might just have to take you with me on the road."

Strenham chuckled and renewed his oral assault on Olusku's fat cock.

"There are many of them, then?" Mathis asked, smiling as the huntsman lapped at his cock once, twice and on the third time took the whole of his member into his mouth. Mathis groaned and smiled, running his hands through the older man's copper hair, which was frosted with the occasional bit of grey-white now that he could see it closer.

"More than a dozen I am responsible for," the huntsman smiled, lifting his head from the young man's lap, trailing a thin gleaming line of spittle from his suck-swollen lips. "There are at least a score of us, and most of them are responsible for at least as many small groups as that. None of them are very large...indeed, this is the largest among them."

Mathis hesitated.

"And...the Church?" he asked. He hadn't meant for his question to be such a fearful whisper, but it was. Olusku looked up at the young man, sudden realization in his face.

"No, no," Olusku whispered to him, and took the young man in his arms. "I won't tell you that you have nothing to worry about. The Church despises us as demonolaters and heretics, yes. But word of Ashlan's power grows in the city of men, and the Church is impotent to do anything about it. We are strong, and our numbers growing, and we never abandon one another. Those who feel His call in their veins are
answering it, and there is nothing they can do."

"You see?" Strenham smiled, and moved up to embrace Mathis as well. Mathis couldn't help but feel safe and secure, embraced as tightly as he was by these two strong men. "I know you have to leave soon, to return to your family for a while. That's why I wanted you to be initiated here; it's why I sent word for Olusku. I don't want you to feel you're alone, ever. We're all around you, Mathis, and we're all brethren."

"He's right," Olusku said, kissing the young man on the cheek reassuringly, an almost paternal gesture rather than the action of a lover. "We'll teach you the signs before the night is out. They are only the most basic ones; you have to be among us for a while before you learn the advanced ones, but they'll be enough to tell others who belong to other cults that you're one of us. Wherever you find yourself, simply find the inn or tavern where huntsman, woodsmen and other outdoor-folk congregate. We'll find you."

Mathis smiled, and kissed Olusku back.