Careful Suggestions
This is my first hypnosis story, and was written as an entry for ZsisronDarkwater's fall/winter of 2011 contest. All characters are originals and belong to me, and if there are any similarities with other characters or people, it is unintended and freaky odd.
There is some "off-screen" death and cannibalism involved, but I have done my best to keep it as gentle as possible without lessening the fear it causes the narrator. The acts are not detailed, and take up just a couple of sentences in this thirteen page story, so shouldn't be a problem. But if you have the slightest worry it will be, by all means, please don't read.
This story also contains some M/M oral interaction between adults. If this offends you, please find something else to do. If reading such things is illegal for you because of age or location, again, there's plenty of other things to do online. No, really. Somewhere. I'm sure of it.
Thanks to those who do read. Comments and votes are always appreciated.
Careful Suggestions
by Reserved Rodent
Death lurked six days in my future.
I refused to admit defeat before the last minute, if I would even accept it then. But both my mentor and a fellow student had already been sacrificed to the god of my lizard captors, so I had difficulty remaining positive. My only hope lay in my own natural ability with magical suggestion, which sadly paled next to the abilities that had failed the two who have already died here.
Nine days ago, the three of us were exploring the Fallen Stone Swamp for clues about the civilization believed to have thrived in the land over a hundred generations ago. Elrin hoped to find clues about the origin of the Order of the Mind - the organization to which all three of us belong. The Order is a self regulating guild of sorts, designed to ensure mages with powerful mind controlling abilities never abuse them to the point there is another Null Thought Empire.
I miss Elrin.
The elephant wizard had always treated me with respect where others in the guild saw me as unworthy of attention. He often chastised anyone - including myself - who underestimated me because they only saw an uneducated vermin with an untrained, minor wild talent. Almost everyone in the guild has an impressive record of years filled with education and research to train their minds in how to finely craft magic into powerful spells.
I don't have that. All I have is the ability to nudge folks with a simple suggestion that they will - usually - try and follow. But it's clumsy and easily noticed compared to the works of magic most of the guild can perform. And sadly, while I can be trained to think of better suggestions to make, the magic will always be the most basic of magical tools.
Those trained in magic will always be able to tell I'm trying to make them follow my suggestion, which will help them resist. Even to the untrained, once the suggestion trance runs it's course, if a person dwells on what they did, they will likely realize I made up their mind in the situation.
Sadly, suggesting they forget what I have done has yet to work, perhaps because I don't believe it will any more, though it may have to do with any other number of reasons.
In any case, Elrin had hoped to find remnants of a society that had set groundwork for the creation of a guild dedicated to the magics of mind control. He had brought myself and Harris along to continue our lessons in the responsible use of our abilities - which usually ended up in examples of when not to use them even when it might make things easier. I also suspected having two others carrying most of the camping gear and writing supplies had something to do with our being brought along.
Instead of the elephant locating something from the old society, though, the tribal lizards that were descendants of that long lost empire found us.
I'm not sure how we were captured, as it happened during the night. I had gone to sleep already. Elrin had secured our camp with magical alarms and animal deterrents, so there had been no need for guards, we had thought.
Evidently, we were wrong, because when I woke up, the three of us were naked, trapped in a cage. While most of the swamp looks the same to my city-born eyes, I could tell that we were in a different area of the wetlands.
In the distance, set up throughout a stand of moss covered trees, I could see several huts made from leather. Several lizards wearing - at most - loincloths of similar material walked among the trees and huts, but several were just outside the thick wooden bars of our cage.
Harris, the rabbit who was my fellow student, had his long ears twitching as he paced back and forth at the back of the cage.
Elrin's large gray form was up near the door and he was talking animatedly with the closest of the scaly tribe. I could tell he was speaking in their language, yet could understand it so assumed he had been up long enough to cast at least a few spells to teach us their language so we could all communicate.
As I stood up from where I had lain while asleep, I got the gist from my master's words that we had been captured for trespassing through and disrupting the tribe's hunting grounds. The elephant was trying to get the sandy scaled lizard just outside the cage to understand we meant no harm, but the response was always that we must repay the Hunger.
I'm not sure what brought about Elrin's choice to use his power. Maybe he had been arguing without effect for long enough to try his patience. Maybe there was some threat or deadline hanging over him. Whatever the reason, I remember being surprised when he resorted to using a spell of command. It's use seemed to fly in the face of what he had been trying to teach Harris and myself about using such magic responsibly during this trip.
And worst of all, as it turned out, it also ended up being an example of how wrong it is to underestimate another or overestimate your own ability.
To be fair, his spell certainly caught the nearest guards firmly in hand. Both Harris and I could see the dazed look come over them.
In his deep, confident voice, Elrin had commanded, "You shall release this rabbit," he gestured to Harris, "rat," he pointed over at me, "and myself immediately and allow us safe passage to the western side of your territory."
The instructions were clear and simple. I had seen my pachyderm mentor successfully give much more complicated instructions to entire classrooms of students trained to resist such mind controlling magics. There should have been no problem.
Yet the reptilian guards snapped out of the trance immediately, the closest one growling, "No! You have trespassed and must pay the price. Trespassers must feed Rognar the Hungry. You have just volunteered to be the first sacrifice."
Having his powerful spell broken so abruptly had left Elrin unable to put up more than a token resistance against the pack of scalie warriors who rushed into the cage at the guard's call to drag him out of the pen they had placed us in.
They quickly pulled him to the nearby trees, and out of sight.
Then, the cries, growls, and worse noises started.
His screams along with wet tearing sounds and gruesome cracks echoed to the pen for near half an hour before his weakening voice stopped suddenly. Still the wet, sloppy sounds and occasional crack could be heard amid the random snarls from one of the lizards.
I don't know how Harris managed to sleep that night, though he certainly curled into a ball in the back of the pen. For three days and four nights, I kept hearing Elrin begging for mercy every time my eyes threatened to close.
All during this time, we were both fed decent meals and not molested or hurt by the guards. They didn't speak to us or even give a hint of any kindness either, but then, neither of us tried to speak with the lizards.
Harris and I didn't talk much either. I'm not sure why. Sure, we both looked and tested for any way out without having to rely on magic, but we didn't actually talk between ourselves.
I've only got that rough, natural power of suggestion, weaker than the spell that had so completely failed our teacher, so I knew my magic would prove worthless.
Harris could speed himself up, and locate food and shelter in addition to a focused, memory altering suggestion spell. He also knew a spell to make him completely unseen, but only if he remained completely still, which would not get him away from these watchful lizards.
I could tell he was growing more and more agitated every day we failed to find a means out of the cage. If he could get free, he'd be able to survive and probably make it out of the swamp rapidly. It was just that first step that was causing trouble.
Five days after Elrin was taken from us, I could tell Harris was getting itchy to try and make an escape. So I figured we had to talk about some sort of plan. We had to come up with something, mostly because the longer we sat in our pen, the more hopeless our situation seemed. I also didn't want Harris to do something stupid and ruin both our chances.
But the rabbit refused to actually discuss a plan with me. He only twitched his large ears and said if we planned something, it would fail. Planning wasn't the answer, he claimed. Taking advantage of a situation and acting quickly rather than trying to make up some scheme was the only way he was going to get out of the lizard's lands alive.
The way he worded it, I could tell he only cared about saving himself. He likely assumed I would not be helpful to him with my one wild spell, and he couldn't speed my own pace up when it came time to run. I didn't have the heart to argue with him, especially since he was likely right, so I just did what rats in general are good at doing - I settled back and didn't draw attention to myself.
Despite knowing he didn't feel the same for my chances of escape, I had hoped he would succeed. Maybe in doing so, he would create an opportunity for me to take advantage of as well. And if not, maybe I could learn from how he failed and try to make use of that information to develop a better chance for myself.
I'm not sure if Harris was as ready as he thought he would be when the olive scaled guard who brought our evening meal last night. The reptile spoke to us for the first time, which certainly caught me off guard. He said that seven days had passed since the last sacrifice to the Hunger. The time had come for us to make another in payment for our trespass on his tribe's land.
From the way he said the term, I assumed the Hunger was more than just an empty stomach. It sounded much more like an actual being. I remembered it having been named when they took Elrin.
With the gate open for one guard to bring us our food, though, the rabbit had made his attempt.
Harris cast his memory altering spell. The guard's eyes glazed over slightly, signifying he had entered a trance.
"You will forget I have trespassed here," Harris had declared with magic backing up his command.
The rabbit then focused on starting up his speed inducing spell, so I doubt he had seen the trance snap from the scalie's eyes, but I had been watching him, so I saw it clearly. The memory altering spell had not needed to be maintained magically, like the more powerful command on Elrin had used, so there was no backlash like the one that crippled my mentor, but the attention required for casting his second spell meant he too was caught by surprise when that magic failed.
As the lizard snapped free of the spell and grabbed Harris by his neck, he snarled, "Just as Hunger can never be forgotten, Hunger never forgets."
My fellow student was then taken, like Elrin before him, past the nearby trees and huts and out of sight. Yet not out of hearing.
Harris screamed a lot more specifics last night than Elrin had when he was taken.
At first he begged them not to eat him. Then later - and for longer than I care to remember - he begged them to kill him rather than continue eating him alive.
I don't want to die like he and my mentor did, but all I have is a milder version of the same kind of magic that failed them both.
Well, that's not entirely true. I also think I know why Harris's spell failed, and possibly Elrin's too. It wasn't the trance itself. Both times, the lizards seemed to slide into the correct state of mind more easily than imaginable. The trouble was in what happened after getting them there. The guard today had not broken out of the trance though some form of natural resistance. I had seen the reason in his eyes as they had snapped clear - the command given had been completely against what he would do.
I wasn't entirely sure why, but I hoped I could find out today.
Unfortunately, the guards were coming in pairs again. I imagined it was because of what Harris tried, but whatever the reason, it made my magic more dangerous to use. My magic only hits one individual at a time, but this was a weakness I have become used to working around. Still, having an unaffected witness brought extra danger that what I was trying would be stopped. I hoped that because I wasn't trying to escape today, no alarms would be raised. I was just hoping to gather some helpful information.
As a forest green scaled guard approached with my lunch, having had the door opened for him by the second, similarly colored warrior on today's duty, I calmly let my magic slip over him. My heart beat rapid and hard as the glazed look came over my captor's eyes.
"Understand, I am hungry to learn more about your beliefs," I suggested, then stopped supporting the trance. If my suggestion worked, it would be a quick, minor change in how I was viewed, and maintaining the lizard in a suggestive state would accomplish nothing.
I was pleased that my words had not caused an immediate snap out of the trance, so I had not commanded something he was against. Now I just had to wait and see if the suggestion had taken hold enough to open up some dialog.
Admittedly, it was a risk having used the spell to try and facilitate such a talk. Since neither Harris or I had tried talking with them before his death, there was no telling if my magic had been needed. But I hoped to, before it became time for another sacrifice, determine if gentler, less pushy nudges could be used or if there was just no means to turn the scaly tribe members' minds with magic.
The green scaled lizard handed my bowl of stew to me and tilted his head, looking into my dark eyes with his golden ones.
"What do you wish to know of the Hunger?" he asked.
Again, to my ears, when he said the word "Hunger," there was a tone that suggested it was much more than a simple thing to him.
I let out a sigh of relief that I hoped he didn't take as odd and started what I hoped would be a productive talk. "While in my past, I have know hunger on the edge of starvation, living on the streets with little or no food for more than a week at times, I have never heard it referred to as your tribe members have. Is it more than just a condition to your people?"
"Indeed," the reptile said, sitting down before me. I could see the guard by the door to my pen nod and close that door, leaving me alone with the one green scaled tribesman. "We so seldom see outsiders, and it is rare that they recognize this difference."
My captor flashed me a smile filled with sharp teeth and continued calmly, "Rognar the Hungry is the name of our tribe's guardian spirit. He is the hunger that drives us to work together to survive, even when times are good. The Hunger is always with us. It can be fed, it can be sated, but it can never be removed. Thus, even in good times, we must remember to make sure the hunger can be managed. Tribes have disappeared, devoured by the Hunger when they have forgotten to respect him."
"Is that why," I paused, having trouble swallowing in my sudden realization I might be asking insulting questions to get the answers I needed if I were to survive, "you kill trespassers? You think they have forgotten Hunger?"
The lizard shook his head, "No. Trespassers must sacrifice to feed the Hunger because by entering our land, they partake of our resources. Thus, they must repay the tribe by giving of themselves to feed us. In your case, the sacrifice must be large, for your camp in our hunting ground greatly disturbed the prey."
I must have had a horrified look on my face as I set my half eaten bowl of food down, or perhaps the lizard simply knew what an outsider would think after hearing those words. In any event, he said, "Do not worry about eating our food. We would not have you go hungry before the time for your sacrifice comes. A hungry sacrifice is a poor gift to Hunger."
And with that simple truth, the guard stood and left me staring at my half eaten meal.
I did finish the food after realizing that while disturbing, it was true that I was better off fed than hungry for my own reasons as well as being a sacrifice.
While a different guard brought me supper, he paused and asked if I had any more questions while handing me the evening bowl of stew.
My response of, "No, I'm still digesting the answers I got during lunch," got a smile from him. At least, that's what I hope the flash of sharp teeth was.
Still, it was nice to have him say that any time I had new questions, any guard would be willing to speak.
While it may not have required my magical suggestion to begin speaking with the guard, at least I did know that it had not been the magic itself that had failed Elrin or Harris. While I had not used magic to hold the guard under trance past my opening suggestion, he had remained in a trance until I released him. Furthermore, there had been no alarm raised about having been in one, which allowed me to believe that they it was possible to use my suggestions to nudge tribe members, if only very lightly.
Unfortunately, I still had no idea what kind of suggestion I could use to keep from being eaten alive. Sure, I had more information now than before, and it looked promising that I could get more. Now, I just needed to figure out what the right questions to ask were.
"Would it be possible for me to feed my debt to the Hunger of the tribe by helping find other food?" I asked a lightly tranced guard with mottled brown scales during my first meal of the next day.
The reptile tilted his head slightly, "Only if it were food we would not have been able to obtain without your assistance. We are a strong tribe, though, and can catch anything within our territory, as you and those you traveled with should know."
A chill ran down my back as I pondered the implications of this new fact. "So magically summoning food from nothing would pay my debt to your Hunger, but helping one of your hunting parties would not?"
Nodding, the guard stated, "Exactly. Creating food we could not normally get would be a wonderful sacrifice to the Hunger of the tribe. Is this something you can do?"
I shook my head with a sigh, barely managing to hold in the tears that suddenly threatened me, "No, that talent is beyond my abilities."
But Elrin could have done that. His magic was why we had not needed to carry any rations, just tents, blankets, and items to help with his research.
"Thank you," I managed to say, releasing the guard from the trance I had put him in. I didn't think I was up for any more questions this meal.
I shivered as the reptile I had been speaking with placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. None of the guards had touched me before. The only time I had seen the others get touched had been when they were carried away for sacrifice.
"It is no burden to feed your hunger for knowledge," the guard said, before leaving.
That guard's parting words eventually gave me an idea of a new approach, though it would take two days before they managed to sink in that deeply.
Sure, I kept hypnotizing and asking questions of the guards each meal, but I didn't make any headway in figuring out how to generate food that was not my own body.
The guards also seemed to have grown more friendly overall, clasping my shoulder or patting me on the arm before they left now. One even used his scaled tail to brush against my leg as he turned to leave. I wasn't sure what had changed their behavior this way, yet also was afraid to ask, as I didn't want to accidentally insult them or make them examine their actions closely enough to realize I was giving them mild suggestions to be more open with information.
With my questions, I discovered that the tribe was very fanatical to serving Rognar the Hungry. Where my companions had failed to keep the tribe members under compulsion was in trying to make them act against their religion. My questions and suggestions never worked against this strong foundation to their actions, so I had been able to use my weaker talent with such magic. Unfortunately, even that would not save me if I couldn't figure out a way around being eaten alive to pay for having entered their lands.
With four days left, the green scaled lizard guard I first put in a trance was on duty during my breakfast. He sat right next to me as I tried following up on what the mottled brown reptile told me yesterday.
"You have all been very kind in feeding my hunger for knowledge," I began, pausing as the guard lightly patted my leg.
"We are happy to share our knowledge to feed this hunger in you."
"You have my thanks, but I was wondering..." The hand on my thigh was very distracting. "Would it be possible for me to share some of my knowledge to satisfy the Hunger I must feed to pay for my trespassing on your land?"
Lightly squeezing my thigh, the lizard shook his head, "No. Sharing knowledge can feed Hunger, but it is not a sacrifice. You will have to give yourself over to feed the tribe."
With my ears drooping, I had to make sure, "But I could share my personal experiences, things I have done, places I have been. That would be sharing the things that shaped me into who I am. Wouldn't that be giving myself to the tribe?"
My breath caught in my throat as the guard put one arm across the back of my shoulders and lifted my chin with his other scaled hand to look into his clear eyes. I had pushed too far and broke him out of the trance rather than releasing him.
"We would value you sharing yourself like that, but the sacrifice must be physical," the reptile said softly.
I couldn't come up with anything else to say for the rest of the day.
It was supper the next day before I said anything, or even used my magical talent on any of the guards.
It was actually the sandy colored reptile who forced me out of my self inflicted attitude of defeat. Rather than handing me a bowl of food that evening, he grabbed me by both of my shoulders, forced me to face him, and asked, "Have you lost your hunger?"
I looked up into his eyes to watch them fade from brightly alert to lightly dazed as my magic wrapped around his mind. Even without a command form me, it helped calm those I used it on, made them more ready to treat me like a friend.
Several seconds turned into minutes as I tried to figure out what kind of an answer I should give. I had been eating each meal. Did he mean my lack of questions recently? With the grip he had on my shoulders, this issue had to hold great importance to him. Why?
In the end, figuring out exactly what hunger he meant seemed to be vital. I didn't want to say something wrong like the Elrin or Harris had. Even if I just had a little more than two days left to live, I wanted every second of that time.
"What hunger do you mean?"
The guard adjusted his grip, stepping up and wrapping his arms around me to give me a surprising hug. "You stopped talking to everyone who came," he whispered next to my flattened ear. "You stopped seeming so open and interested in our ways. You stopped offering us comfort with your gentle magic. We worry we have done something to upset you."
Pulling back from his warm hug, I stumbled and almost fell. All of the fear and loss I'd been repressing since being captured rushed through my mind and overwhelmed my common sense and caution. "I have been trying to figure out some way to pay the debt your tribe believes I owe to the Hunger that doesn't have you all killing me slowly as you eat me alive. I don't want to die like the two I traveled with. I don't want to die at all! But I can't find it. If my sacrifice has to be physical, and all I have is my body, I'm just not seeing how I can make things right between me and your people and not be torn into bite sized pieces. So yes, I'm upset!"
I panted heavily and wiped at my wet eyes. I realized I needed to control myself better or I'd end up saying something wrong while the guard was in a trance and he'd snap out and I'd be swarmed and - why couldn't I stop crying?
Tilting his head, vacant gaze locked on me, the sandy scaled guard let out a sigh, "We do not mean for you to suffer this worry. With the peace you grant us, we have assumed you held such as well."
He reached out, running the scales of his thumb under my eye, rubbing away the worst of my tears. How could someone who ate my mentor alive be so gentle?
From the door to the cage, the olive scaled guard spoke up. "Before you and the other two came, all we knew of what you have so freely shared, was legend - stories passed down from elder to egg since the destruction of the last world."
The closer guard, still in a trance, wrapped his arms around me in a hug again. I didn't have the strength to pull away as I listened to the other reptile continue.
"Myths speak of our race once being slaves to individuals with the power to make a lizard sharpen the spear he will drive into his own heart. It was this obedience despite the cost to oneself that destroyed that world. We pass on stories of this death by the hands of mindless obedience as a warning against letting it happen again."
Another set of tears rolled down my furry cheeks to dapple the shoulder scales of the guard holding me and rubbing my back. This was the kind of information Elrin was hoping to find.
"Even our most sacred of stories did not prepare us for when the power was used against us," the guard at the door continued. "Thankfully, our faithful obedience to Rognar kept us from losing ourselves to the large gray one's attempt to steal away our true selves. His disregard for the teachings of the Hunger - the very essence of what has allowed us to survive the destruction of the last world and everything this one has thrown against us - is why he was treated as he was. His may not have been a willing sacrifice, but it was the only one that could be accepted."
I wanted to scream that being eaten alive was never an acceptable punishment, but couldn't manage to get the words out. I missed my mentor and owed him for pulling me off the streets before I became a soulless criminal, using what little power I had to serve my every desire, but I couldn't help but remember the level of shock even I had at how quickly he had resorted to his command magic.
And that was what hurt the most, I realized. My mentor had died because - for whatever his reason - he acted in a way that he had been teaching me _ not _ to act.
"The one with long ears may not have reminded us of the same stories," the olive scaled lizard explained, "but there are plenty of cautionary tales about those in the last world who allowed what happened to our people to occur, doing nothing to stop it. It is said that they did this not because they wished to see our folks so enslaved, but rather because allowing our ancestor's suffering meant that they would be left alone. They too wielded power like those that would destroy everything, but used it to shift the attention of others away from themselves rather than using it to combat or even heal the damage done by those that would bring about the end of the world."
I shuddered, a chill running down my spine. Both avoiding attention and allowing things to occur were sins I had practiced. The latter had even been part of why Harris had died. I should have kept him from acting as he did, but I just let him be the next sacrifice. I let him dig his own grave, so to speak.
The guard under the effect of my trance hugged me a little closer, still rubbing my back with his hands.
Before I could blurt out my sins against Harris, the olive scaled guard spoke to the topic himself, "Allowing things to occur, is a part of life. Even the Hunger accepts this. There is a part of that in every trap a hunter lies on a game trail. Where the long eared one - as well as those in the legends - became unforgivably wrong, is when they forced a decision against what would have been chosen freely. Forcing us to forget the debt was no better than simply refusing to pay it."
The speaking lizard stepped into the cage and walked towards where I was held by the guard I still had in a trance. I wondered if I had held the sandy scaled male under for too long. He seemed intent on holding me here and I had no idea if he were, in fact, still being affected by my magic. My lower power level had already proven to not stun me when broken like Elrin's powerful spell had been.
"You have used a similar magic. We may not have realized its true nature if not for the previous two abuses made against tribe members."
I shook again, fearing the speaker was getting ready to tell me I too would be devoured alive. The guard holding me made a soft hiss in my ear, then ran his tongue over it, whispering, "Relax."
Of course, that did nothing to help me relax.
"Where they attempted to bury our true will with the power, yours wraps around us and lets us release the worries we know we should not have, yet manage to hold onto anyway," the olive scaled reptile grinned as he explained. "They had demanded we act against our nature, but you ask us for help and understanding. They did not care about us. You have shown a desire to learn who we are."
"Yet, I'm no closer to seeing the solution than when I started," I admitted. I don't think it sounded like a whine, but then, I hadn't meant to be crying earlier either and the sandy colored guard hugging me had a wet shoulder. "I don't know how to keep from being eaten alive in two days."
Both of my scaled guards shook their heads, the one hugging me ending up leaning his against mine after he finished. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with how much touching was going on. Though it felt nice, I wasn't sure where it was coming from or where - if anywhere - it was meant to be heading.
"Just pick some other means to pay back the tribe. There are several. We would only devour your flesh if that was your wish, and it would not have to be alive," the clear eyed guard said.
"I haven't figured any other way out yet," I admitted, slumping against the reptile holding me. "I keep stumbling over the fact that I have to provide food you wouldn't have been able to get without my help."
The olive scaled guard clicked his tongue a few times, "Not entirely correct. Food is misleading at best, and wrong in some possibilities. There are many aspects of Hunger you can feed, not just an empty belly."
I almost lost it and blurted out what might have been a poorly worded command at this revelation. My long hairless tail wrapped around my right leg as well as the sandy scaled reptiles left one since he was standing so close. I concentrated on slowing my breathing down as it did so to calm myself down. It would be horrible to have come so far and then lose myself with answers so close.
"My understanding," I was finally able to begin, "is that my sacrifice to feed the Hunger has to be something physical and of myself. I don't have the magic to create food from nothing... I've never created anything. I've always been just me. I don't even know what questions are safe to ask."
The scales of the guard who had been doing most of the talking darkened along his crest. "Well, amongst our tribe, talking about most of the solutions we hope you'll pick just isn't done. Asking someone to share that part of themselves is considered taboo as well as rude."
"Can you show me then?" I slipped up and asked in frustration.
While I realized I had given what might be considered an order that could break the trance of the one holding me as he jolted a little in reaction to my words, I was unable to get out an apology before the lizard reacted.
"I would be happy to do so," he said as he pulled his head back from where it rested on my shoulder. His eyes were still glazed over as he leaned in and kissed me passionately.
I froze, unsure how to react at first. Not because I'd never been kissed, or even because of the fact that it was another male kissing me, but rather because the activity simply caught me completely off guard.
His scaled lips lightly massaged mine for several seconds before he turned his head and spread gentle nibbles down my lower jaw to my neck. My body finally reacted, greatly enjoying the sensation against the side of my neck, raising my chin to give him better access.
"Um..." my brain said trying to catch up as chills ran up and down my spine as sharp teeth gently gripped the flesh of my shoulder briefly, not breaking the skin, but hard enough to feel each tooth. "Wait."
I could feel the sandy guard pull against that last, one word order, but not hard enough to break the trance.
"I didn't mean to order you to do something you don't want to," I whispered to the guard as he held me with arms and maw.
"You have done nothing of the sort," the other guard said, taking the few remaining steps up to stand beside us. "He wants to do this. If you are uncomfortable, though, there is no shame in asking him to stop. The reason we do not talk about this is because we do not want you to feel like you must choose this form of sacrifice if it makes you uncomfortable."
His actions themselves were actually turning me on, as he had hit on enough sensitive spots to have me hardening in my sheath.
"If he really wants to do this, we're good to continue," I said, again realizing my poor choice of words as my shoulder was released and the sandy scaled male lowered his maw to lap at my chest and down my stomach, his hands sliding down my back to grip my hips.
"Damn," I moaned as his tongue flicked across the top of my sheath. I had to grip his shoulders as he knelt before me or I would have fallen as the tip of his tongue slid against my emerging member.
I looked over at the olive guard beside us. He was licking his own lips and watching his fellow reptile intently.
"If he wants," I started asking, interrupted with a moan and shudder as my growing cock was nuzzled upon lightly. When I caught my breath again, I did my best to continue my question, "wants this, should I stop trance?"
"No," the olive scaled one responded, looking horrified.
Scaled fingers rubbed my balls and brought one into the hot wet maw of the lizard servicing me.
"This trance, if it is when your magic touches us and takes away our worry over what all choices must be made, that is what makes being with you so great. One can let go of all the stress when you use your magic on us. You only ever touch us one at a time, so we know the others will remain vigilant while we have a true, relaxing break from the responsibilities of feeding the Hunger."
I managed a nod as my shaft was drawn fully into the maw of my sandy scaled companion. His hands gripped my ass and pulled, my belly fur rubbing the scales at the tip of his snout. The head of my fully engorged seven inch shaft gripped by his throat felt amazing.
My tail swung happily back and forth struggling to help keep me balanced as the lizard started bobbing his muzzle on my member. My balls grew even hotter, sperm churning as my orbs bounced off his chin.
Growing up on the streets, it had been rare to receive a blow job, as usually the folks who were willing to pay a young rat for sex wanted to receive such activities rather than give them. It amazed me that somehow, this activity was going to pay my debt to Hunger.
But such thoughts - most thoughts - were very fleeting. I did my best to concentrate on not shouting out bad orders in my passion. But then, my moans and keeping standing while rocking my hips into the hot, wet confines of the guard's muzzle, trying to get the head of my shaft into the tight confines of his throat as often as possible took most of what little brain power I had left.
Luckily, in the heat of sex, my vocabulary changed to squeaks, grunts and groan more than words.
The reptile was amazing, suction changing , tongue rubbing at different speeds and from new angles with each thrust into his maw. The teeth never scraped hard against my tender, pulsing flesh as it slid by. There was occasional bursts of added friction from the side of a few of the sharp fangs, but never painfully.
And all too soon, I gripped the back of my guard's head and rammed fully against him, my large balls emptying with hard, long shots of my cum directly into his throat the first few times, then the back of his tongue and maw as my hold loosened and he pulled back enough to get a taste.
Not a drop escaped his sucking, licking, hot muzzle. He ate everything I had to give him and then gently sucked on my still mostly hard shaft as if hoping for more.
I pulled back and sat dawn on the ground, unable to keep standing after such an intense orgasm.
"Thank you," I said, unable to maintain the trance so letting it slip off.
The sandy scaled reptile grunted happily and gave me a passionate, if brief kiss. "No, thank you. I accept your sacrifice today."
"Sacrifice?" I panted, my mind still not returned completely from my climax.
The olive one sat down beside us and gave me a nod, "You gave your seed to feed his spirit and body. It is a great sacrifice, for it carries both your own strength and any you might grow in the future."
"So," I mumbled, still reeling to put together what that meant, "with two and half days left, I've paid my debt to the tribe?"
Both of the reptiles let out deep chuckles.
"Not entirely," the olive scaled guard said, once he stopped his amused, rumbling laugh. "You have paid back just one of the tribe. There are almost two hundred members of our tribe and all of us will want our own taste."
At least - as I would find out after a bit of panic - the week deadline reset after every "sacrifice."
Perhaps it goes without saying, but I never had to worry about missing my deadline again.