“I-I-I…” I stammered, more frightened than I had been of the others thus far, for this time I truly felt like prey. “I-I am merely… surprised, my lord Geb! To see scales and feathers both.”
“You know me,” he said with a pleased rumble. He really was handsome, despite the feral, beast-like appearance. Even that held an odd appeal, much like Anubis had. “I am pleased you recognize your gods even when presented in forms not depicted on your walls or scrolls.”
As he reached the edge of the pool nearer to me, though I remained several strides back, he braced his hands on the rocks, lifting himself from the water with ease.
“Would it surprise you, Nakht,” he asked, “to learn that some of the first creatures formed upon this earth were quite like me?”
I stumbled backward, not intentionally, but so startled that I couldn’t not, as he lifted andlifted, not to reveal legs that climbed out of the pool, but a thick singular base truly like a snake that slithered him toward me across the rocks. Closer and closer he came, but even so, what remained of his tail dangled in the water. His lower half was five times the length of his torso.
“That,” Geb says, his deep voice echoing against the cavern walls and tall ceiling, “is why I am both Father of Snakes and often depicted with geese and birds of prey. Because in theprimordial beginning, great beasts like me roamed the lands, forgotten now but part of the earth’s foundation, before mortals with thought or empathy joined their beastly brethren.”
He rose taller above me, held up like a cobra about to strike with his tail coiling beneath him until, finally, the last of it left the water.
How Ptah had proven to look, like a moving map of the earth and rivers, would have made more sense than how we portrayed Geb in pictures. He was usually just a man with a goose on his head. Maybe a goose for a head, or with the head of a snake, or a being made of rocks. But not this!
“Do not fret, mortal.” Geb smiled at me again, purposely, I thought, to show off his fangs again. “Should you survive, all will be returned to you.”
He reached toward me with both hands, and in the wrenching motion he made with them, I envisioned myself torn asunder as easily as earthquakes fissured the land.
No such fate befell me, but all of my clothing and adornments fell from me like tinkling, glittering raindrops upon the ground, with the red fabric last of all to flutter upon the rest.
I stood bare before the god of the Earth, as close to my own primordial beginning as a mere mortal could be. But not as primordial as him.
A long, forked tongue slithered out from between Geb’s lips, licking them hungrily as he looked me over. In my astonishment of his form, I had forgotten what was promised that each of the gods would do to me besides tempt.
I stumbled back again, half a step before I could steady myself with a shaky breath. I looked—unable not to—at where Geb’s manhood should be beneath the usual length of torso, but I saw nothing save the smoothness of his scales.
Or rather, there was something, almost like a scar, but too perfectly centered and straight, nestled between a noticeablelack of scales. As I stared at it, I thought I saw it quiver in want to part.
Geb lunged so swiftly to snatch me from the ground that he had me in his arms before I could even look up. I was being swept away by the beast of all beasts, too weak in comparison to struggle against him. Icouldn’tstruggle, for giving myself to the gods was part of my tests. But what would he do to me, I wondered, as he laid me down upon the coil of his tail?
And was that quivering line upon his flesh starting to open?
“Attentionhere, Nakht.” Geb lifted my chin with his very human fingers in stark contrast to so much of the rest of him. The scales he had laid me upon were softer than I expected, or perhaps lined with some of that downy fluff. He was magnificent in a way, beautiful, but as in awe of him as I was, it was equally as impossible to keep my fear from overpowering me.
Geb looked down upon my quivering body and ran his hand slowly down the length of it.
“You tremble?” he asked. “You fear me?”
“Y-you undressed me, my lord, with a warning that I might not survive this encounter.”
“Mm…” he rumbled, “but by that I meant whether your worth will be proven. You can handle the rest of me, can’t you?”
I honestly couldn’t answer.
As he had been with Anubis, Ptah, and all the other gods to come, I reminded myself that Meryt, somewhere, was watching. I could do this for him and give him a performance like no other with such a partner.
“Should your devotion to the lover you seek not prove worthy, however, perhaps I will not send you to Ammit to devour your soul as punishment, but will devour you myself.” He snapped his teeth, fangs glinting dangerously, as his upper half hovered over me closer. “And not in the fun way.” He rolled back upright,his movements so very much like a snake’s. “But until that is decided, Icanin the fun way. And will.”
His forked tongue flicked out again, long and alluring. The stir of excitement from deep within me made me wonder if my time with the gods had made me mad—or the loss of Meryt had. But stir I did, my cock twitching to attention even before the narrower tip of Geb’s tail grazed my thigh. Its presence distracted me as Geb lunged down again until his fangs pierced my neck.
But they didn’t pierce so much as prick just on the edge of puncturing and lightly dragged downward, like the teasing promise of where they might prick me elsewhere. Geb’s tongue slithered up along the cuts with so little sting in its wake that I could imagine them no deeper than scratches, much like the ones left by Anubis’s claws.
“But first,” Geb said in a hissing whisper near my ear, “choose a feather from me to pluck.” Then he lifted enough to put his shoulders and arms, which held the majority of his feathers, within easy reach.
“W-will that not harm you, my lord?” I asked, still fighting to calm my quaking.
“Few things can. Go on.”
