Games at Gotterdammerung
Not all gods have followers, these days, and how else to pass the time? Coyote loses a bet to a kitsune who claims that she can find them worshippers again, and turns to the Internet to try her luck...
Not all gods have followers, these days, and how else to pass the time? Coyote loses a bet to a kitsune who claims that she can find them worshippers again, and turns to the Internet to try her luck...
Taking a quick break from my novel to write some simple smut, which is good for the soul. This is a short story that is not terribly serious, although it is somewhat blasphemous. No offense is really intended; I just thought it would be interesting to muse on what the gods might get up to, in their retirement. As always, read, critique, and offer feedback. That is what I live on as food ;_;
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
"Games at Gotterdammerung," by Rob Baird
"You're playing a dangerous game." Thor's voice was gruff; they all knew what was afoot.
But Tsukiko, the white fox, simply shrugged -- tails waving lazily behind her -- and collected the trick. "There are," she said. "Dangerous games, and then there are dangerous games. Does anybody have any diamonds they could spare me?" She dropped the ten innocently.
Demeter played the eight; Thor grimaced, and tossed in the ten of hearts. Coyote looked at his hand, about which there was nothing to be done, and played his lowest diamond.
"Oh, dear." Shaking her head sadly, the fox scooped up the cards and set them in a neat stack. "I don't know what I'm going to do with that heart, Thor."
What I'm going to do turned out to be the queen of diamonds, which netted her another heart from Thor and, now, one from Demeter; Coyote, proving to be the only one with anything left in the suit, underplayed with the jack.
"Lot of points you're taking there," he growled. "Think the queen of spades is waiting for you?"
The kitsune smiled sweetly, and played the two of diamonds. "Actually, I believe you'll be taking it." She was right, of course; he had nothing but diamonds left. Twenty-three points.
"I believe that puts me over the top," Coyote said, and leaned back in his chair. "You bitch," he added, sotto voce, although there was no real malice behind it.
"Who wants cookies?" A new figure bent over the table, offering a plate. "Fresh from the oven -- not for the puppies, though, because chocolate is poisonous and I wouldn't want anything bad to happen."
"You made chocolate chip cookies?" Thor asked.
Loki shrugged. "I got bored."
Thor grabbed one, so warm the steam was still curling from it, and took a bite. "Maybe you've almost redeemed your..." His eyes flashed, and he roared angrily. "Oatmeal raisin? Oatmeal raisin?" His fist smashed into the table heavily. "You honorless cur!"
Loki laughed uproariously, and ducked away from the punch that followed. Then he sprinted off, still cackling, leaving the plate behind. Demeter reached across the table, pulling it closer. "My favorite," she explained, with a slightly guilty look.
"That dog," Thor spat, and then caught himself, looking between the two canines. "No offense."
"None taken," Coyote said. "I'm not a dog, anyway. I'm a god -- the letters are similar; I see how it could be confusing. Dogs are carnal, and they eat disgusting things, and chase other animals, and lick themselves."
"Don't you do that?"
Coyote frowned. "It's... different when it's a hobby," he offered. "That's all I'm saying. Another game?"
"No more hearts," Thor glared across the table at the fox, who had won both of their previous games as well. "Anyone for Settlers?"
"I'm not allowed to play Settlers," Coyote grumbled, and averted his eyes. "Remember?"
"What?"
Demeter spoke up around a mouthful of cookie. "Lmsthm -- sorry." She swallowed, starting again. "Last time, he brought the sheep to life."
Thor looked impressed. "He did?"
"Then he ate them," she added. "Flipped them into his... his maw... like popcorn. The screams..." the goddess trailed off in a horrified whisper.
Thor glanced between Coyote and Demeter a few times, and let the silence hang until it was clear neither would break it. "Right. Hazard?"
"A game of chance with a pair of tricksters?" Tsukiko asked. "You're braver than I thought."
"That's a good point," Thor grunted. "Need someone to keep you honest. Joshua!" he called across the room. "You in for some hazard?"
The man -- young, handsome, with piercing eyes -- crossed over. "Hazard? No, I've got some things to attend to in a bit. My flock, you know..." He raised a finger, waggling it at Coyote. "Don't get any ideas; it's not that kind."
"What about your dad?"
He shook his head. "Nah. Sorry, guys. Dad doesn't play dice."
They weren't able to come to any clear agreement, and after a minute of fruitless discussion Coyote gave up and allowed that he should retire for the evening, anyway.
Laying on his back, he peered for a time into the darkness above him. Closed spaces made him uncomfortable; he waved a paw to paint a starfield across his vision. Yes, that was better.
Sometimes he missed the days in which he had followers like Joshua and his father, who always seemed to have things to do. But they had been so troublesome -- so demanding, so keen to trip him up in some way... it was best not to look on the past with rose-colored glasses. Particularly, Coyote admitted to himself, when he could not see in color anyway.
As it turned out, this didn't matter. There was a knock at his door; he snapped his fingers, bidding it to open, and discovered Tsukiko. Pure white, with a gold-colored kimono, the kitsune looked the same to him as to anyone else.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm here," she said, "to collect on a bet."
Coyote's ears flicked back. "Bet? I don't remember a bet. What was it over?"
"You said that you were bored, and wanted followers again."
Frowning, the desert dog chewed on his lip. "I might have done, but..."
"And I said I could get us some. I said, I can get us ten thousand worshippers. And you said, I bet you can't."
"I don't... recall that..."
Tsukiko glared at him, and padded closer. She spread her paws apart; between them, a glowing white ball appeared, with two figures inside. "I can get us ten thousand worshippers," one said to the other -- who appeared, now that Coyote peered closely at it, to bear a striking resemblance to himself.
"I bet you can't," the tiny coyote scoffed. Tsukiko clapped her paws together, and the apparition vanished.
She stared at him intently, until at last he was so uncomfortable that he broke. "Alright, so maybe I did. What of it?"
"Where's your computer? Go on the Internet."
Coyote sighed, and sat up in his bed, pulling his laptop from the nightstand and opening it up. Manipulating it took some effort, but he started up a browser and, claws resting on the keys, looked at the kitsune expectantly. "Yes?"
"Okay. Go to furaffinity dot net. Fur, as in what you and I have, and affinity, as in liking something. Fur affinity dot net. Fur -- what? No, no, there's no space. It's all one word." He tried again, pecking out the letters one at a time, until she seized the computer and finished the task herself. "There."
"What am I looking at? 'Recent artwork.'"
"Recent artwork that people have drawn. Of us! Or... well. Sort of," Tsukiko corrected. "Here, look at this." She was more adept with the keyboard than he was; a minute later a meticulously detailed image of a kitsune like herself was painted across the screen. "That could be me! I mean, it doesn't have enough tails, but... a younger me, say."
He took the computer back, and looked at it closely. "They certainly seem devoted to... certain parts. These were drawn by worshippers?"
"Y..." Tsukiko's brow furrowed, and she clicked her tongue. "Let's go with 'fans' instead, for now. But it's just a matter of time. This website here? Millions of hits, every single day." The fox-spirit rubbed her paws together gleefully. "And there's more! This isn't the only website." Coyote turned the keyboard back to her, but she shook her head. "No, gramps, this one's only four letters. I think even you can manage that. E, as in the letter 'e', and then six hundred and twenty-one. Dot net."
He typed, slowly, and waited for the page to load. "Alright. Now what?"
"Search for something. Search for... uh. 'Coyote.' Search for that."
Vanity piqued, he typed in his name carefully, and hit the 'enter' key. Then he blinked, and his ears went back. "Oh my. I certainly seem open in my choice of partners, don't I?"
"Your followers believe that you're friends with most of the animal kingdom, yes."
He tapped the screen, raising an eyebrow to the kitsune. "Well, I don't think I've ever done that. Not with two at once, and certainly not with... is that a plant? Are those tentacles? Does that plant have tentacles, Tsuki?"
"Vines, yeah -- but look on the bright side. At least you're --"
"What? Flexible?" Coyote stretched out his long arms, splaying bony fingers. "For what it's worth, I guess. Alright, I suppose you have managed to stoke some interest, although they don't seem interested in... well, not in prayer, judging by those images. You know, when some gods get fan art drawn of them, it's the Sistine Chapel."
The kitsune grinned. "One step at a time. We're on the road back, now."
"Maybe." He didn't say anything else, staring at the tiles of images -- depicting him, if lovingly, in increasingly provocative situations.
"So..."
"So what?"
Tsukiko tossed up her paws. "Did you lose the bet, or what?"
Rolling amber eyes, the old god sighed heavily. "Maybe," he said again. "What do you want?"
"Take off your clothes."
Coyote blinked. "What? Why?"
She growled, and tugged at his jacket. "Because I said so. Now off with 'em, or I'll --" she tilted her muzzle towards the screen "-- start printing up posters. Come on, dog."
With another sigh, the coyote slowly undid the buckskin garment, unbuttoning it carefully and shrugging it off his lean torso. He was not, he had to admit to himself, in terribly poor shape for his centuries of retirement. This seemed to please Tsukiko, whose eyes wandered over his bare chest approvingly.
"Pants too."
Coyote glowered at the kitsune, but when she didn't show any signs of backing down he unfastened his heavy denim trousers, pulling his legs from them petulantly, one by one. He had to stand up to accomplish this, and when it was done he faced Tsukiko with his hands on his hips. "Are you happy now?"
"Sort of." Tsukiko crossed her arms over her chest, her lips pursing as she examined him, staring between his legs with a slight frown. "Huh."
"'Huh'?" he echoed, eyes narrowing.
The kitsune leaned over to grab his laptop, and held it up, comparing an image on the screen to what stood before her. "So that's it? Really?"
His ears drooped, and he blinked at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Setting the computer down on the bed, she waved a cotton-white paw at his crotch. "Don't you ever wish you could make it... you know, bigger?"
He huffed. "I can. I... think about pretty lady-coyotes for a bit, and..."
Tsukiko smirked. "Just coyotes?" She untied her kimono, and the silk garment fell easily away as she slid from it, getting to her feet. The kitsune's pelt was a creamy white, broken only in brief intervals -- by a pendant that hung from her neck, and the soft pink of her nipples poking through the thick fur of her breasts.
"Well..." Coyote had the sneaking suspicion that playing hard to get was working in his favor; he tried to keep his scowl in place. "They're less prone to insulting my manhood."
"Aw..." Tsukiko's ears wavered, and as she stepped closer to him she put on an innocent frown. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," she teased, and he felt the kitsune's paw caress his side. "C'mon, Coyote..." this was said in a purr, and he felt her soft fingers stroking his sheath gently. "You're not curious about a bit of, uh... re-enactment? For your faithful followers, of course..."
Coyote grunted. "I'm not sure. Do the ficus have to get involved?" He looked over at the plants that dominated the space before his windowsill, and used the unpleasant notion to keep himself in control as the kitsune gripped him in a firm squeeze.
"Not yet," she grinned, and then dropped to her knees before him. A moment later Coyote felt warm breath ruffling the fur of his crotch, and then the soft strokes of Tsukiko's velvet tongue. His willpower ebbed rapidly. "Oh, see? There, that's better..."
He was starting to stiffen with each heartbeat -- the bare, slick flesh of the coyote's cock slipping from his sheath -- and Tsukiko growled approvingly. She suckled on the tip of his shaft, and Coyote groaned. His paws gripped at the kitsune's ears, pulling her against him.
Her soft, wet tongue flicked and darted over his rigid length -- now at full size; when she took him all the way inside, her cold nose nudged into the fur of his crotch. Coyote started to buck a little, and she moaned obligingly, hot breath rushing over him with the sound.
He wasn't certain how long it had been. Months? Years, maybe. He panted like a dog, his tongue lolling as Tsukiko sucked at him hungrily. His eyes were starting to go unfocused; her tails were becoming a blur as they wagged with her eagerness. For his part Coyote was setting progressively lower bars. Don't come too fast became unless she's really good at it, but I mean, hold out for a couple minutes and finally well, fine, but at least don't whimper.
This, at least, he managed to keep; with a snarl of pleasure, his legs tensed, and he arched his hips up, feeling the tip of his shaft gliding over the roof of the kitsune's mouth. She closed her lips around him and suckled firmly as he came hard in her warm muzzle, spurting his pent-up release in strong pulses that it took her a few swallows to manage.
His hips humped a little, short, hitching jerks as the waves of his climax ebbed; Tsukiko put her paws at his rear and held him, until the spurts had stopped. Then she let him slip from her, his chest working as he fought to catch his breath again.
The kitsune licked her chops noisily, cleaning her tongue. "Did you plan that?"
"Plan what?" he mumbled, hazarding a glance downwards to make sure that, in the throes of passion, her skilled muzzle had not managed to suck his member clean off.
The white fox growled accusingly, an effect that was not particularly well-served by the drops of coyote still dappling her whiskers. "I was maybe just going to take a compromising picture of you. But then you kind of... goaded me into... that."
In reality, Coyote was not particularly good at thinking more than a step or two ahead -- but he was more than willing to take credit. "Well, never try to trick a trickster."
"Damn it!"
He shrugged nonchalantly, keeping his voice dry. "So are we done now? The bet's settled?" He stretched out one of his legs, seizing his trousers in his toes.
Tsukiko swatted them away roughly. "Not a chance in anybody's negatively constructed afterlife. Not until you pay me back."
"Pay you back?" He shoved her gently with his foot, trying to get at his pants. "For what? I thought the terms of the bet were --"
She snapped her muzzle near his ankle and stood, pouncing onto the bed. "C'mon, play nice, puppy."
He sighed wearily, shaking his head slowly as though burdened by the sight of the shapely kitsune, reclining on his bed with her legs parted and her tails between them like a fuzzy cloak. "Just this once," he cautioned, joining her. And he took his time, anyway, giving the fox's breast a lingering squeeze that pressed his tawny fingers through soft white fur to the yielding flesh beneath.
His fingers brushed her nipple; Tsukiko's face lost a little of its composure, and when he did it again -- kneading her gently, circling the stiff flesh with the pads of his fingers, she let out a soft half-moan. So he kept it up, leaving his paw there as he swung himself carefully over the fox-woman's long legs and settled between them.
Finding the bed between her tails proved difficult, and she whined as he pinched the fur once or twice, but finally he managed and found himself facing the soft, pink lips of her sex -- already slightly damp. He worked his tongue over them gently, tracing from the bottom all the way up, and Tsukiko moaned again. He repeated this a second time, and a third, picking up the pace until he was lapping at her, for all intents and purposes, like the dog he generally pretended not to be.
Squirming with delight, she rested a paw on the coyote's head, and then seized him by the ears. It was not particularly delicate; he barked in surprise, and nosed into her crotch, slowing down to add a bit of pressure behind the strokes of his tongue. Her hips bucked, and when he put a paw up to steady her she answered with a wavering, distracted growl.
He drove his tongue deep inside her, sliding it along her folds eagerly, and she called out his name, adding an exhortation that might've been blasphemous were he not the god in question. He kept going, working within her in quicker movements until the kitsune cried out sharply. Her high-pitched howl filled the room -- for the second that he was able to hear it before her thighs clamped to either side of his head and he found himself trapped against her spasming body.
His nose was pressed firmly against her clit, and as he struggled to get free he heard, dimly, Tsukiko wailing again, her back arching. There were dark spots in his vision by the time she relaxed and he pulled away, gasping for breath so deeply he nearly swallowed his long tongue.
"Oh, sorry," she managed, still trembling. "Are you okay?"
"That's not," he finally said, "as pleasant a way to die as you might have thought."
Tsukiko propped herself up on an elbow. "Maybe not for you it wasn't..." She giggled softly. "Me, on the other hand, I'm..."
"About to get what's coming to you," Coyote muttered, casting a quick spell and getting to his knees. "I believe."
"'About to get what' -- what's that? When did that happen?" Her wide eyes were fixed on his shaft, which had swelled to full size -- and then some. Being a god, Coyote thought, had to have some privileges, and the brush with asphyxiation had left him less than charitable. "Are you going to find, like, a horse or something?"
It was not that large, of course; even Coyote respected some limits of decency. But it was larger than he had been before, to be sure; he nudged her hip roughly with his paw. "Actually," he growled, and gave her a devilish smirk, "I believe you'll be taking it. Get on your paws, Tsuki."
"I don't quite... know about this..."
"Did you hear a question mark?" He seized her hips firmly and flipped her over, drawing her up on her knees; she didn't protest, although she waved her tails like a fan in front of his muzzle. The soft fur tickled his nose, and he decided that he was not in the mood for being teased. He swept the tails away with one paw, using the other to guide himself into place. Then, with a quiet groan, he pushed smoothly into her.
"Oh, fuck!" Tsukiko gasped like the word had been forced from her as the coyote's shaft slid deep inside her quivering body. She panted shallowly, clinging so tightly to him that Coyote could feel her quiet moans. He pulled back a few inches and then bucked sharply, drawing another yelping oath from the kitsune.
Coyote gripped at her haunches roughly, rutting her with quick, powerful thrusts. She groaned deeply each time he filled her, stretching around the canine's hot, pulsing cock -- not so thick as to be painful, but pressing her to very limits. He'd calculated well -- he was, after all, a pro. Just slightly out of practice, that was all; he squeezed her more urgently as his hips clashed to hers, pulling her back to meet him, fucking the kitsune with all the subtlety of their wild kin.
She was so warm and wet around him, squeezing him so snugly, that it was hard to hold himself back. Precum spilled liberally from the tip of his shaft -- then dripped down with the fox-woman's own juices to soak into the fur of her thighs as each following thrust forced it from around her lips, and the swelling knot that took more and more effort to push past the resistance of her body.
His muzzle was drawn back in a bubbling snarl, and he leaned into the kitsune's hips, keeping himself hilted in her, testing each withdrawal until he found his knot wedged so tightly that there was no chance it might slip from her. His claws dug into her rump as he humped her, feeling the pleasure starting to spread inexorably through him.
Coyote went tense and rigid behind her; he groaned headily with the first strong spurt of his cum, grinding his hips forward in time to each following pulse. Tsuki shuddered as he gushed into her, filling her with warm coyote seed; trapped by his knot, building up as it tested the seal of her womb. Then the pressure released, suddenly, and as the sticky heat of the god's essence flooded deeper into her the kitsune let out a howl, the walls of her pussy spasming and gripping at him, milking him for every drop.
He grunted, still bucking with the weakening spurts as he pumped his cum deep into the fertile body of the shivering goddess, until it had finally tapered off to nothing, a few gentle twitches of his buried cock. He hugged her hips closely and she gave an uncharacteristically feral whimper.
"I... I planned for you to do that," she told him weakly.
Coyote licked her muzzle. "Yeah. I planned for you to plan for... me to do that."
Tsukiko giggled, panting for breath. "No. I... I planned for you to plan for you... me... I... I planned for you to plan to --"
"At what point in the plan were either of you going to close the door?"
Coyote turned, awkwardly -- pulling Tsuki down with him as he spun around to face the entrance to his apartment. A massive figure blocked most of it -- even without the armor, he was muscled and imposing. "Oh. Hi Huitzilopochtli. Were we... bothering you?"
"Do you know what a fox's screams sound like? You two... what the fuck? Some of us are trying to get a little eternal sleep before the climactic battle that ends the age of Man, here."
"Sorry," Tsukiko coughed.
"Can you close the door?" The tall man shook his head disgustedly, and slammed it shut. Coyote settled down into the bed, and Tsukiko wrapped her tails around him like a comforter. "So tell me. Was I the only person you made that bet with?"
"Who else would I have gone to? You think I'm gonna run the risk of sleeping with Anubis?"
Coyote lifted an eyebrow. "What's wrong with Anubis?"
"He's got a knot, too, you know." She wiggled her hips a bit, to demonstrate that Coyote's had not, in the intervening minutes, disappeared.
"So?"
Tsuki snorted, and leaned back into the coyote's chest. "You think I want to spend twenty minutes listening to that emo fuck stroke his ankh and recite poems about how 'we are all homeless in the land of the dead' and 'I will weigh your soul like everyone has weighed mine'?" She read the mock poetry in a baleful, dark monotone.
"He's actually not all that bad in bed, really."
She twisted her upper body around sharply to stare at him, eyebrows raised. "And you'd know because...?"
Coyote coughed, shrugging. "The sixties were a crazy time for everyone, kits. Also the fourteenth century. But I'm telling you, he's okay, you just have to make sure that you do it either at your place, or at his -- but far enough away from his acoustic guitar that he can't reach it when you're tied. His songs are worse than his poems. I swear he makes 'Nights in White Satin' look like 'Stayin' Alive.'"
"Well," Tsuki snickered. "Soon enough it won't matter. We'll be too busy to deal with anything like that."
Wrapping his long arms around the kitsune and giving her a hug, Coyote nibbled at her perked ear. "Right. So about these followers. What are you going to do about communicating our gospel to them?"
"Already thought of that. I've been reaching out to the dreams of certain receptive people. Artists, writers, sculptors... They don't know it yet, but they'll be our vanguard..."
"They'll be surprised, I'm sure."
The kitsune giggled. "Ah, well. Lots of people are going to be surprised. Maybe even you, fellow-trickster. Just give it time."
"Yeah?" He hugged her tightly. Something about her phrasing bothered him, as though he had, perhaps, missed some element of her gambit. "How long?"
"Oh," she said innocently, and slid his paws lower, until they rested at her belly. "I'd say nine months is a good start."