The people in the village below -- and those for many miles beyond -- had tried to dissuade him from this trek, calling it folly, stupidity, even certain suicide. But for Breen such considerations had ceased to matter.
After the life he'd led, with its passions and punishments, ecstasies and excesses, death was just another challenge -- one to be feared, perhaps, but not shirked. And this desolate range held secrets behind its cruel peaks that even death seemed a fair price to pay to uncover.
Now these were tall tales, to be sure, eagerly embellished by the ignorant. Yet like most tall tales, they undoubtedly had a bit of truth at the core, a gritty particle of reality hidden like a grain of sand inside a pearl. Breen meant to discover that truth, and if dying was what it took, then so be it. But first he would find the Hesiods.
Of the many storied wonders of this place, it was the Hesiods who called to him. Their tale drew him ever onward, past armies and kings, deserts and rivers, through dark forests where few now dared to tread. Teasing him with its promise, forever haunting his steps, it robbed his endless conquests of their savor.
For how could a man be satisfied with women, when such surpassing pleasures were said to exist? Breen had seen it all, done it all, and finally even the most outrageous and excessive orgies of sensation failed to titillate him. The time had come to search out these Hesiods, to risk what was left of his meager life in pursuit of a satiation that only such fearsome and wondrous creatures could provide. That search had led here, to the Great Eastern Mountains now looming above.
According to the tales, told around fires and over mugs of strong ale, the Hesiods were beings of the high ice and snows, evil succubi whose feral and deadly passions arose from the cold sterility of that merciless bourne.
From their lonely homes high in the peaks, they would descend at times to prey upon the men of the valleys below. Pouncing on the unwary or luring them away with beguiling visions, they drew their victims into a fiercely erotic embrace that ultimately drained away their lives.
That was the story, at least, told to explain the frozen corpses that periodically turned up, and Breen supposed it was logical enough. Given the torn clothes, and the faces clenched in a dying rictus of agony or ecstasy ... yet there was no one around to confirm this tale, and so reasonable men had a right to be skeptical.
Of course, it was possible that this was simply because no one had survived to tell it. Yet that didn't concern Breen. The Hesiods either existed for they didn't. He would either find them or he wouldn't. And he would either live or he would die. It was that simple. Leaving such worries behind, he continued up the mountainside until he gained a wide shelf of rock, where he paused to catch his breath. Unseen behind him, the slope tumbled and sprawled its way down to the valley, opening a panoramic vista of hills and plains that would have awed a more competitive soul. But Breen's attention was focused on the path ahead, and the obstacles before him. They were as formidable as he had been led to expect.
No known pass led through this range. As far as the people below knew, it was the end of the world. To Breen, looking up at an endless succession of saw-toothed peaks, that seemed only too likely. It was no wonder the imagination held free rein here. Faced with such harsh, forbidding grandeur, who wouldn't prefer myth to the cold reality? Ahead lay one perilous ascent after another, and dangers thronged the heights even without the monsters of legend.
Storms, rockfalls, and avalanche were all acute possibilities. Cave bears and mountain lions haunted the lower slopes, jealously pacing out their territory. Great eagles circled constantly overhead, seeming to measure their hunger against the risk of tackling such large prey.
Of course, Breen's skill as a hunter and warrior was legend in its own right, but he knew such predators could have him if he let down his guard. Still these dangers were explicable to him, and he was prepared. After refreshing himself with a few swallows of ale, he resumed picking his way upward, following a trail he'd marked out from below. It traced a seam in the rock face, a crack which gradually widened into a ledge and then a crevice, with walls of stone shielding a long cut up the mountainside.
This offered a fortuitous and largely unobstructed route over the looming shoulder of the Great Mountains' first real peak, and Breen took it gladly. At the top he would be forced to stop and search out a way forward, but that was all right. He really had no plan but to push on ahead, as deep into the mountains as possible, until fate finally took a hand. At the worst he would come to a cold and lonely death when his strength and food ran out.
Breen continued to climb throughout the afternoon, and evening found him high up the rift, near the cleft at the top and directly in the path of a keen wind blowing down from above. After pausing a moment to consider the sun, sinking slowly behind him and painting the rumpled foothills in red and gold, he turned himself to the suddenly urgent task of finding shelter. Night was rapidly coming on.
After spending a short time considering his options, Breen settled himself back within a niche formed by a group of heavy, sharp-edged boulders not far from the crest of the pass. These cut most of the wind, and once he stirred his firepot to life the rocks began to hold and reflect back heat as well. Hot food and ale further softened his discomfort, and he was able to bed down in this covert as if it was no different than a thousand other camps.
He hadn’t slept long when the night was suddenly split by the screams of hunting cats. For hours they rang eerily among the rock walls, competing with the wind and occasional rapid clatter of stone, and Breen was forced to cover his firepot and crouch in darkness, clutching his weapons and blankets close. Several times he sensed the approach of large animals -- the stealthy pad of feet, heavy rasp of breath -- and he drew an old, intricately carved whistle from inside his shirt. Placing it to his lips, he blew a blast that sent the unseen beasts snarling and scrambling away.
While beyond the range of human hearing, its piercing tone was unendurable to dogs, wolves, and most species of marauding wildcats. Breen could only hope its high-pitched sound wouldn't attract the attention of other, less primitive predators. If something supernatural came to investigate, it wouldn't be so easily discouraged. But after a few trials the cats left him alone, and he was able to sleep in snatches until dawn.
After rising and making a frugal breakfast from his store of provisions, Breen packed up his gear and resumed his track eastward into the Great Mountains. Soon he topped the rise ahead and stood in the cut looking down.
The mountain loomed on his right, sheer, unscalable, and then ran off in broken ridgelines to the Northeast, where it joined other great peaks in a line that marched to the horizon. Before him lay a deep, unexpected valley, cut by the thrashing river at its bottom and sporting an improbable green fringe of vegetation.
Inviting as that looked, Breen turned away from it and began picking his way along the crest of the ridge. His business was with the mountains, with ice and snow, and the river would just deliver him to the plains again. But if he followed it upstream... that was as good a path as any, and springs were often sacred places. Perhaps there he would find what he sought.
All that day he worked his way along the tumbled skirt of the mountains, following the ridge along the line of the river without descending into the valley itself for several leagues. His path was not easy, for the broken spine of the ridge was littered with shale and scree, and the loose stone shifted often underfoot, threatening to spill him down the slope. In addition cracks and crevices lurked everywhere, the homes of cunning predators, and twice he barely escaped the strike of swift, snake-like creatures whose bright colors announced the poison in their bites only as they flashed into view. Breen was trained to evade such threats, and did, but the tension of constant vigilance began to wear on him. As a result, he was taken completely off guard when the attack came from above.
The shadow of the ridge was dark on Breen as he worked his way wearily past another series of treacherous cracks and splits and toward a likely camping spot. Evening was arriving with its accustomed chill, and his mind wandered as he thought of the welcome rest ahead. Thus it was that the great eagle caught him unawares, slamming into him from behind, knocking him over and sending his burdens flying. Wickedly sharp talons pierced deep into the meat of his shoulders, and he was dragged helplessly skyward. Stunned, unable to marshal his resources, he would have been lost then except for a freakish twist of fate.
Such eagles typically quickly carry their struggling prey to a great height, so that even if they break free they are still killed by the crushing fall. The bird can then descend and feed at leisure. But Breen was spared this fate when his foot lodged into one of those troublesome crevices, driven there by the sudden force of the bird's strike.
As the eagle rose flapping into the air, that stone crack held his foot in an uncompromising grip, halting his ascent and turning the great bird's triumphant cry into a piercing scream of frustration. It pulled harder, lunging repeatedly upward until Breen's foot finally ripped free with an excruciating bolt of agony. It felt like his entire foot had been left behind in the crack, and his sharp nose caught the scent of blood. That and the intense pain dashed him quickly to his senses, and as he rose into the air he grabbed for the weapons belted at his waist.
A long knife flashed in his hand and swept upward, sinking deep into the underbelly of the bird. His shoulders protested shrilly, pierced and bleeding in the eagle's grip, but nevertheless he desperately twisted the razor-sharp blade and jerked open a long cut, spilling the eagle's guts and sending them crashing back to the ground below.
They hit the mountainside with jarring force, sending another monstrous bolt of agony through Breen's ankle, and then tumbled inextricably down the steep slope. The ridge was lost behind them, and together they fell and rolled helplessly toward the rushing river far below. Finally they fetched up against a protruding ledge, crashing into it with stunning force and coming to rest against a few stunted bushes that clung precariously to the edge.
Those bushes, and the stiff, hardy grass struggling across the ledge showed Breen just how far they'd managed to fall, and he was battered and bloody and barely conscious when he at last came to rest. For a time he only lay there, recovering, but at last he groaned over onto his side to take stock of his situation.
Immediately his shoulders and ankle screamed at him, and he almost blacked out with the pain. Somehow he managed to disentangle himself from the dead eagle and push its body -- larger than his but considerably lighter -- off to the side. Then he slowly shifted himself into a sitting position and began to explore the damage to his ankle.
Full night had fallen, and in the dark he could barely see, but he didn't need eyes to tell him that the joint was shattered. His foot hung crookedly off to the side, and his gently probing fingers could feel shards and splinters of bone poking through the mangled flesh.
Seeing the extent of the injury, Breen knew at once that he was finished, that he would surely die there on the ledge. With such a serious break, he would never walk again, much less climb over mountains. He would starve there, or fall prey to some predator. The rotting sickness would get into the wound, and thirst and fevers would waste him. He was alone and crippled in the vast mountain wilderness and there was nothing he could do about it but wait to die. Yet Breen was at heart a practical man, despite the irrational quest that had brought him to this end, and he wasted little time on despair. He stifled the bitterness of his failure, the ignominious end of his dream of the Hesiods, and did what he could to preserve his life to the last.
He drew the great eagle close and began ripping out its feathers, packing them into his clothes to take the place of his lost blankets and firepot. Tomorrow he would amputate his foot, in hopes of stopping the sickness, but for that he would need more strength than he now possessed. So once the bird's carcass was clean he began to cut away chunks of it and eat them, mastering his gorge for the sake of the energy provided. Then he eased himself back into the bushes. Lying there on the ledge, hiding in the scant cover of those hardy bushes, Breen passed the cold and lonely night alternately dozing and gnawing on pieces of his vanquished foe. Somehow the predators of the night missed him, although once he heard the roar of fighting cave bears, and the hours gradually passed. Finally he sank into a deeper sleep, despite the intense pain of his injuries, until just before dawn some powerful instinct jolted him suddenly awake.
Battle-trained senses snapped sharply alert, and he located the threat almost instantly. There was noise on the slope above him, a rattling of stones and a slithering hiss unlike anything he'd ever heard. Something was working its way down to him, something that was large and far stranger than any predator in his experience.
Breen tensed, drawing the long knife. Blind and helpless, he could only wait, preparing to sell his life dearly. But then, as the first light of dawn began washing the slopes of darkness, the approaching shape of the creature grew apparent.
At first there was only a swiftly moving whiteness, picked out against the dull gray of the stone, and Breen got the impression of a tightly controlled avalanche, sliding off the peak and barreling toward him with some malign kind of sentience. But then the rising sun cleared the opposite peaks, flooding the valley with light and revealing the approaching monster in hideous detail.
And monster it was -- for Breen they were tales no longer. Whatever was descending the slope above him was no natural creature of the earth. He felt that suddenly, knew it in his marrow, and he wondered how he ever could have sought out such a thing. It was utterly alien, so far beyond his comprehension that its very existence revolted him, deeply offending on some primitive, instinctual level.
It was as white as the snow of the peaks, smooth and pearly, yet it bristled irregularly with thousands of short, fleshy spines. Its skin seemed strangely elastic, stretching and flexing as it moved, constantly re-configuring itself to meet the demands of the terrain. And as its bulbous yet eerily sinuous body slithered confidently down the slope, it was supported and pulled along by an impressive array of clinging tentacles.
Then the head, if head it was, lifted above the approaching body and fixed on Breen remorselessly. Featureless except for a rhythmically pursing, sucker-lipped orifice, it nonetheless seemed to radiate the being's hungry, feral intent.
Breen shrank back, quailing involuntarily before finally mastering himself. Willing himself to calmness, he was even able to set the useless knife aside as it slithered and dropped the last distance to his ledge.
Then his chosen fate was upon him. Long, whip-like tentacles lashed out, snaring Breen’s arms and legs and dragging him from under the bushes. His clothes were quickly torn from him, scattering feathers everywhere, and he was drawn helplessly forward, under the creature’s looming bulk.
In the seconds before it squashed down on him, Breen caught a momentary glimpse of its underside -- pearly white, with those short fleshy spines thickening below into a forest of small, waving tentacles. Surrounded by those tentacles, bordered by thinly fluttering lobes of delicate, wattled flesh, was another pulsing orifice, this one more of a wide, hungry slit with an unmistakably vaginal look.
Then the creature's powerful tentacles enfolded Breen, pressing him tightly to the cold, slick body, and its strange skin began to quiver and ripple against him.
Fleshy spines writhed against his body, generating a deliciously arousing friction, and that otherworldly sensation quickly dispelled any doubts. This was indeed one of the widely story Hesiods.
Gripped by a momentary panic, Breen tried to struggle away, shirking the experience he'd come so far to find. This being was just too strange, too alien for mortal kind to grasp, and he suddenly wished the great eagle had finished him. But of course his arms and legs were coiled tightly in the Hesiod's tentacles, and even the barest movement was beyond him. Nevertheless he continued to struggle, writhing in desperate terror, until a pair of lighter, more delicate appendages lifted and began to caress his temples, filling his head with sudden vision.
The cold mountainside disappeared, and Breen found himself lying on fragrant, silken pillows in a long-forgotten bordello. Trina, his first real love, was crouched just above him, reaching eagerly for his manhood. Swept away by memory, Breen felt once again that first wonderfully educated touch of a woman’s fingers and lips, and his twitching length began to swell accordingly.
But then a warning instinct crept over him, reminding him that Trina was long since dead, and that something about this set-up just wasn't right.
Breen wrenched himself out of the vision, finding that the touch teasing him expertly erect wasn't Trina's at all, and that his swollen manhood was enmeshed in a writhing coil of cold tentacles. Nevertheless, he was helpless to control his response, and monster or no, that weirdly erotic touch quickly brought him to a painful rigidity far harder than he'd ever experienced.
Gasping at the incredible sensations, Breen fought the visions that again tried to fill his head, determined to experience this creature for what it was.
Its coils tightened around him demandingly, gripping and tugging on his urgently throbbing erection, pulling it downward almost painfully. Then suddenly his hips were wrenched brutally upwards, and Breen felt himself slip smoothly up through those wattled lobes of flesh, drawn balls and all deep inside the strange body of the creature.
He heard a long, wailing cry of ecstasy, only dimly realizing that it was his own. In contrast to its cold outer skin, the Hesiod's interior was burning hot, and it pulsed in undulating waves that traveled ceaselessly back and forth along the rigid length of his member.
Pinned under the creature’s bulk, immobilized by the iron grip of its tentacles, terrified and yet consumed by an artificially induced arousal that went far beyond mere physiology, Breen forced himself to look up at the creature's head hanging just above his own. It's blank white stare was fixed on him, and the sucker-shaped mouth continued to purse open and closed in an accelerating rhythm that seemed to match the squeezing and sucking contractions working on his sex organs.
Seeing that pulsing orifice only inches from his face, feeling the merciless intensity of its blind regard, Breen's fear and horror again overcame him, weakening his resolve, and he fled into vision once again.
This time Trina had mounted him, and was plunging and bucking her hips wildly, using him with the possessed energy and mindless disregard that she had brought to the act only in their first glorious days together. With the exquisite joy of a man recapturing his fondest dream, Breen fell gladly into those familiar silken rhythms, letting Trina carry him deliriously to the brink of orgasm.
But then, just as the fire in his loins finally erupted, pumping out the measure of thick, primal fluid that is man's only link to eternity, Trina suddenly fell forward and clamped her lips over his in a voraciously insistent kiss. Helpless to do otherwise, Breen gave himself up to it, feeling an incredible swooning rush as he emptied himself, exhaling his breath into his lover's demanding mouth.
It was the most exquisite pleasure of his long life. Breen’s climax seemed to go on and on, an endless wave of throbbing, shuddering spasms. His mind went blank, and he felt an unbearably orgasmic draining sensation as his sexual organs continued to work, pumping and pumping away, long after his meager store of seed should have been spent. In addition Trina was still greedily sucking in his breath, and with her strangely insistent mouth fastened upon his, he seemed to go on exhaling it forever.
Breen was so lost in this ecstasy that he hardly noticed his dim, intimate awareness of himself as a person beginning to fray and drift, seeming to leak from his body along with his seed and breath.
Escaping somehow through his slowly collapsing lungs and frantically convulsing penis, his very identity seemed to be leaving him. The sensation was so odd, and his instinct for self-preservation so acute, that he suddenly realized his danger. A surge of panic raced through him, giving him the momentary strength to wrench out of the Hesiod's seductive visions and back to reality.
The creature's sucker-shaped orifice, now tinted a rich pink and working frantically, had extended the last few inches between them and was sealed tightly over his mouth and nose. Firmly entwined in the Hesiod's tentacles, his entire lower body was spasming and convulsing, his genitals still buried deep inside it, pulled painfully erect and continuing to pump mindlessly away under that relentless, pulsating suction.
Realizing that this alien being was indeed somehow draining his being, Breen continued struggling with a far-off sense of desperation, fighting for his life as though he hadn't come here to cast it away in the first place. His efforts were useless of course, and soon his last tenuous grasp on reality began to slip away. Slowly the last remnant of his consciousness became one with the urgent throbbing in his groin. Then it was sucked out forever, and the lifeless husk of the man called Breen fell from the Hesiod’s embrace.
Sated, the strange being reversed itself and began to ascend the rocky slope, heading back to its home on the peak. As it did so, a light snow began to fall, shrouding the sprawled, naked corpse with a quiet dignity. Before long it was covered over completely.