The seven snake-like automatons, each as massive as Atlas Khron when coiled, as long as a mark when stretched lose, slithered with metallic sinuousness, arching into a semi-circle, beaming down with human female faces and empty eyes four ells from their half-coiled height. This circle of dread machinery joined with the arch at the base of the great Ankh, so tall that it was topped in snow above the surrounding mountains, to make a ring of contest.
Out from under the plush velvet covers that dressed pale Madam Hate against the wicked Sun of Sirius, slunk three hideous figures: a perfectly formed robed orator with two confused heads, constantly bobbing at each other [1], a blank-faced, pale, naked runner [2] with a lean tireless body, and a wolf-snouted Titan of long legs and razor backed torso [3]. These three fiendish Titans of malformed sort whined up to Madam Hate like children being set to an unwlecome chore by their mother, and thence formed an opposite semi circle from the giant, rearing automaton snakes.
Madam Hate, whose beautiful form continued to hold Jack’s attention as he ignored his foe stalking into the ring between the seventh snake and the two-headed Titan, sang out in tones that sounded as if steel caressed brass among a windblown chamber hung with beads of glass:
“You, Men, are my champion one and my lover other. You shall preserve your eyes for my beauty to reflect, your lips for my lips to press, and your penis and cods for upon my altar to bless.”
Saying this she indicated with her pale, purple-nailed, long-fingered-hand, a small brass brazier under which a fire of coal had been kindled of a sudden by some magic. This brazier was before her couch to the left, next to which the faceless pale runner stood, making the motions of sniffing with a noseless face.
‘You are beautiful!’ he thought, and whether or not she heard the cast thought she gave no sign, but raised her two long-fingered hands from under her velvet throw to expose purple-nippled breasts, one hand indicating Jack and another his opponent to his left, and fanned her fingers together, whispering in a trumpet of steely brass, “Fight without death—your death is mine to drink as breath!”
The spell she seemed to have over him—or was it just his thickening lust—was broken by the roar of a big, big man pounding towards him on bare, titan feet.
He turned in a half step of that lumbering attack, ‘Look at this big booger—big as Atlas Khron, he is!’
Jack bounded to the left and leaped by the charging hulk, reaching up with his right hand as he sprung under that extended titan arm, and tore off that big flapping ear.
He turned, tossing the ear to the two-headed titan, which began arguing over what to do with it as the ear was tossed between both hands, like neither hand wanted it.
The hulking half-titan hound spun quickly for its girth, as nimble as Pan Khron, which was impressive, and dove, arms forward, reaching for Jack’s neck to in those big hands wring.
Jack skipped lightly aside, turned back in again, and swung up to the prone titan’s back, grabbed a tuft of back hair in his right hand, and ripped off the other big waggly ear with his left. On impulse he tossed the ear to the wolf-snouted titan, which gobbled it greedily.
‘It would be so nice to make of wolves a kind of hound for we hounds…’
Jack was thrown clear of the bison-like back, his right hand full of hair, a great foot sweeping around to kick him, which it did, sending him crashing into clay dust, the vibrations of the charging brute warning him that he was about to be squashed like a rat under the heel of a titanic boot.
Rolling under the stomping heel, Jack crouched up and seized the cods—which were as great as a bulls balls—and the penis, like that of a stallion of the kind that the titans loved to hunt with thrown rocks, and, with a snarling yank, tore the half-titan hound’s genitalia from their thickly muscled anchor.
A howl of sorrow, forever more lonely than the gape of death among the temporary, rang out. Jack spun out from under the foe collapsing to his knees and strode towards Madam Hate reclining in her ghastly beauty in wide-eyed wonder.
The Sons of Brawn howled in indignation, crying “foul,” “blasphemy,” “an affront to Eternity!”
In his mind came the groan of Pan Khron, ‘Jack, what have you done!’
‘Won.’
Jack, over-brimming with confidence, an aspect of his breeding over these six thousands of years, had an ego that the Ageless could scarce comprehend, though Phoenix Khron certainly did, alone among his kind. He swaggered to Madam Hate, balls in one hand, penis in the other, and placed them on the yellow hot brazier, saying, “Deathless Beauty, for your altar,” and placed the genitals to sizzle and smoke upon that altar.
The foe behind him, ‘not a bad looking brute,’ Jack decided as he turned to regard the source of the whimpering cry, pleaded, “Madam Hate—Justice!”
Silence reigned for a long moment, as the whining brute’s balls and penis sizzled on the brazen altar. Madam Hate then decreed, “War Sons Three, render my meat!”
With that the two-headed orator walked over to stand above the emasculated brute and began debating what cuts of meat his mother would like to eat; the snout-headed titan ripped out the Brawn hound’s throat and set to lapping up blood; the blank-faced titan displayed razor like fingernails and began blindly butchering the now dead combatant with unerring precision.
An irresistible force then reached into his chest and turned him magnetically about and there she reclined, her naked body of deathless pallor exposed before the sun from the belly up, her eyes whispering into his mind, as her naval—in actuality a gray eye, blinked, ‘My womb is not for you, man. Before you take your titaness, I would have my kiss.’
Jack walked up to where she reclined on her right forearm at the head of the velvet clothed coach of ivory and gave Her breathless kiss:
Her thoughts, in that brief shared breath, rushed into his mind, many of her deathless musings diving deep past where he might retrieve them, far quicker than his ability to hear them, only her bluntest thoughts ringing within his head, which would evermore ring like the very bells of Automatonry, “Man of Mine, heed my thoughts when they rise from your blood well to your foremind—you are so blessed.”
With a crack of brazen thunder Jack was cast back, some five ells, to skid upon his burning back, his eyes unable to depart from the lovely vision of Madam Hate even as she snarled great-toothed among her malformed sons and like a she-wolf ate. He was dragged further over to the skiff of Pan Khron in the coils of one maiden-headed, snake-like automaton. There a black-haired titaness draped in a shroud of mourning was chained by Phoenix Khron who crowed to the skies like a mountain if it could fly, “The House Khron, First Course, First House Ageless!”
As the grisly bone-snapping feast was joined by the metallic snakes, the even more terrible sounds of Titans crying a hymn of doom rose like a storm all about, a storm whose winds served to power the flight of The Sons of The House Khron towards the Temple of Sirius, the palace that swung along the vault of heaven around Sirius Three like a near star, passing once daily and once nightly overhead.
Pan Khron spoke low, with a cold respect, “Bethal Brawn, you are my honored sister. You will choose your mate, and not be bred like a bitch temporary to this brute blessed by Hate.”
Jack did muse within, meaning no disrespect, ‘She is kind of tall for me to bed with dignity.’
Pan Khron smiled, making Jack wonder if he had cast a thought. Shrugging off the notion, Jack helped the Titaness stand in her brazen chains so she would not seem stolen, but won, and addressed her as he had been trained, “Madam Khron, Temporary Jack, at your service.”
Pan Khron thought, ‘Thank you Jack, for behaving above your nature. Ahead we set course on a task more suited for that true and rude nature.’
Notes
-1. Discord, bobbing his two addled heads,
-2. Panic his blank face having no lips or eye lids,
-3. Rout, whose half-human face narrowed to a wolfish snout.
