Obsession



|Prisoner of Opar by rendszeretlen |

Contents

Writer’s notes: 4

Book 1 6

1. Meeting again 6

2. Hunted down 9

3. Bound and captive 11

4. Histories 14

5. Obsessed 16

6. Rivals 19

7. Love under the knife 21

8. Driven by need 23

Book 2 29

9. Return to Opar 29

10. Beaten like a dog 34

11. Gold of Opar 38

12. Powers of persuasion 42

13. Flaming god 45

14. Priesthood 50

Book 3 58

15. Pressurised 58

16. Choices 66

17. Sacrifice 71

18. Betrayal 78

19. Conflicts 87

20 Aftermath 94

End 98

Writer’s notes:

This story is a sequel to ERB’s La of Opar stories. Snippets embedded into the narration refer to two ERB books: Return to Opar & The Jewels of Opar:

For those unfamiliar with the originals, a few details of Tarzan’s comings and goings in Opar might help. This new tale is a sequel, Tarzan’s fourth time in Opar:

His first visit, In Return, Tarzan is drawn there by the curiosity about the Lost City. There he is caught and nearly sacrificed to the sun-god. But La helps him escape. However, he flees Opar, he “deserts” her - as she sees it.

Second visit, Jane has been captured in error and Tarzan has to rescue her from Opar. They are intercepted by La and Tarzan tells La he is committed to another woman.

On his third visit, In Jewels, Tarzan returns to Opar to steal some of the hidden gold he came across when fleeing through a secret entrance and which the Oparians seem to know nothing about. La re-captures Tarzan. There is a reference to her spending the night planning to torture him before sacrificing him. But she can’t bring herself, she is too much in love.

For this new tale, Tarzan’s fourth time in Opar, much of that history from the originals has been preserved. It is important to the way the relationship develops between Tarzan and La. Oddly, though, ERB never got round to narrating what happened when Tarzan and Manu are kidnapped and returned to La against their will. Maybe this is the sequel some of us would have liked him to write.

There are changes, though, a few liberties have been taken with the original texts:

1. ERB makes it clear that women in Opar were perfect – judging by some illustrators salivatingly perfect! But the men were semi ape-like as a result of some genetic mutation.

But I felt it important to give Tarzan and Manu a run-for-their-money. A new clan of priests has been invented. Muscle-bulging hunks totally devoted to the service of the priestess La and who enforce her will. I have the feeling that ERB might not have objected.

2. La in the original stories remains in love with her Tarzan. Even when she has the opportunity to punish him, she relents, she cannot bring herself to torture her love.

This story’s La is a much more modern gal. Jilted militant feminist to-the-core. Don’t-mess-with-me, brother. If you do, you’ll get it - just where it hurts most. Right in the core of your manly pride. This La does have Tarzan tortured to bend to her will.

3. Another change, - La’s been repeatedly foiled in her desires for Tarzan, rejected numerous times. Anger has twisted her mind, she’s turned from the sweet innocent Tarzan first made love to into a semi-deranged fury. She won’t stop until she gets what she wants. She has flipped, become manic, a man-hater. All because of Tarzan’s rejection of her. Your fault, ya gonna pay-for-it, brother!

In her mania for Tarzan she no longer desires him as a lover, she wants him. Full stop! The spoilt brat wants the toy she can’t have. Her object, a thing to play with. For as long as he can continue to please.

Hence the language here is of sexual-obsession of the female misogynist. And the inevitable direction that takes Tarzan.

I apologise unremittingly to ERB purists for making La a twisted fem-dom. This La is not the woman he portrayed. But at least the new La has created a set of protagonists to whom she delegates the tasks. A true strong-minded woman of power, right through to the core, the new La bends her clan of priests, muscle-bound men, to do her dirty work. On Manu, against Tarzan.

Manu:

This character was created by the author for the trilogy, Variations on a theme. A more noble ploy for the vengeful Kwami who first captures Tarzan. But in the course of the trilogy the noble spirit of Manu underwent a transformation in face of Kwami’s rivalry for domination, Manu too grabbed the chance of using Tarzan to further his own ends. Obsession starts with a return of his better nature, - meeting Tarzan to make amends.

Images:

Originally posted to the Yahoo Group captivejunglemen, it was illustrated with numerous artists’ images drawn for various Opar stories. They are freely available on the web. Of course, they belong to their creators. They were used only in tribute. In this blog folder, those images are being deleted to keep down the size of the file.

They have been uploaded in 3 zip files to reflect each Book of the story. They also remain on the Yahoo site, a considerable collection of Tarzan images:



Wrock joined the writer as original illustrator. His distinctive style reflects well on the quirky and perverted world that La inhabits - after Tarzan’s rejection turned her. With regret his efforts too have been deleted here, they can be found in the same location in Yahoo.

Enjoy!

Rendszeretlen

Book 1

1. Meeting again

1a.

Manu could feel himself getting increasingly annoyed. From across the other side of their darkness, he heard the relaxed breathing of a man at peace. After all, that nervous anxiety that Manu had had to put up, his constant stories about the dangers they were in - and look at him now, the apeman was seemingly at peace with the world in his sleep. Manu had seen the source of the apeman’s nervousness. He wouldn’t kick her out of bed. For hours Manu had had to put up with the apeman sounding off and getting exasperated with Manu when he did not see that they were in mortal danger. The apeman was a joke. The answer was simple, the solution lay in his hands. And from what Manu had seen of their host, she’d not have to ask him twice.

And yet there he was now sleeping away and relaxed while Manu sat crouched down in this darkness wide awake. Not resting because he was angry. Did this Tarzan go looking for trouble? And why drag Manu in with him? He glanced upwards at his only exit from this pit. At the fading light above. Bring them back at sunset, she had said. Manu was annoyed. As much with himself as with her men who had captured them and dragged them here. Manu had given as hard as he took but collectively her beefy warriors had beaten him senseless. And they were up there, standing between him and freedom. He wasn’t going to get passed them without a struggle. Coming here, Manu had been slapped around, bound and gagged. And what for? All because of the apeman.

The pair of them had been lowered down into this pit, there was only one way out. The way they’d come in, passed those self-same guards. What on earth had possessed him to go and seek out the apeman? Look what he had got for his bother. Trouble seemed to follow that Tarzan around. And here Manu was, captive again. And what for?

It wasn’t as through the reconciliation had been worth it. The apeman, it seemed, had wanted none of it. Manu had tried his best. But he didn’t really know why he had bothered. Manu had gone and sought him out, maybe still somewhat plagued by the part he had played in Tarzan’s capture. Feeling guilty, wanting to make amends, perhaps. Undoubtedly Manu was also somewhat intrigued by the parallels in the fates they had shared, what had happened to the apeman? After escaping from his own slavers and getting away from their fight club, Manu had returned to his village to find his people leaderless, adrift. Kwami had mysteriously disappeared, it seemed, the white woman too. Rumours were widespread, - especially at the coincidental disappearance of the two of them. Assuming they’d gone off together. But not understanding why. Then Manu had heard what Bannerman had done to the apeman. In front of the whole village, Kwami’s doing. Before selling both of them out, tormentor and victim.

Manu had been lucky in his own escape. After weeks of being forced into brutal fights, his masters had been having him transported him in a truck, to yet another kind of fight tournament where they were putting Manu up to get beaten up, to entertain the mob and make a killing on the betting. Security there had been less than tight, though, and Manu had managed to get away. Back to his village where he was welcomed and soon made chief.

When he heard that Tarzan too had worked himself free and had been seen in the area, a somewhat guilty Manu had gone and found him. OK, maybe Manu was in more than two minds about his motives. Certainly he was more interested in the fate of his friends than the apeman. Bukawa and his brother, had Tarzan heard anything? Any clues where they might be, he’d asked? But there’d also been a bit about expurgating the past, regretting that his action had resulted in Tarzan taken a savage beating from the white man. And it was down to Manu’s actions that Tarzan had also ended up enslaved.

Truth was, though, the meeting had been a waste of breath. He’d put himself out in the hope of finding his two childhood friends, truth-be-told. Manu thought, though, he had shown the right level of contrition at his role in Tarzan’s capture too, he’d grovelled just enough. But the apeman sat there silent, morose. Sulking. Manu was wasting his time, he decided. Little had Manu realised, though, that his friendly gesture to the apeman was going to finish up with himself in so much trouble. Being snatched by those strangely-daubed warriors too. Never thinking that his wish for some kind of bridge-building with the apeman was going to land himself being taken captive too, alongside this Tarzan snoozing away in the darkness, so seemingly relaxed. After all those warnings about the dangers they were in.

Before they were jumped, Tarzan hadn’t seemed in the slightest bit fascinated with any sense of shared experience with Manu. Or in what might have happened to the two brothers. Manu had come across Tarzan resting by a river. But Tarzan had made it obvious from the start that Manu could disappear straight back up his own arse, - back where he belonged. The meeting was awkward, hostile from the first. Manu was having to make all the running, keep Tarzan talking, throwing questions against a sullen wall of unreceptive silence. How had Tarzan got away? Any news of Bannerman? What about Kwami? Any chance he knew anything about the brothers? But the apeman was giving nothing back. Not looking at him, just hostility oozing from every pore.

They’d sat alongside each other on the river bank. Facing the water, no eye contact, as if engrossed by the fascination of a fast-moving river. Tarzan’s answers had been clipped, rude. Manu had kept persistent yet respectful and calm. Manu, though, sensed Tarzan was barely keeping himself in charge, battling with himself to control the urge to fell Manu to the earth. Manu persisted, - for the sake of his friends. Had he heard anything about Bukawa and Mzama? The pair of protagonists had then fallen silent, a hard unyielding silence that jangled aggressively on the nerves. Eventually Tarzan had told Manu to get lost, they had nothing to say to each other. Tarzan was lucky to be alive after Manu had sold him out to Bannerman. Aggressively he told Manu he should be grateful Tarzan was not beating him within an inch of his life. And he would be if Manu didn’t get a move-on. Smashed to pulp. Like Bannerman had done to him. He deserved to have his throat ripped out for what he had done, Tarzan snarled. Now why not leave him in peace? Why not crawl back to the shit among the cockroaches where he belong?

Truth to tell, Tarzan was smarting. Less so at Manu, truth-be-told, more at the fact that Jane had left him. At this moment in time he didn’t need some arsehole making things worse. The unwanted appearance of this man who had played such a painful part in his tortures and Jane’s own fears was just adding to the hurt. The air had been heavy with animosity between the two men but, if he was honest, Tarzan’s hurt over Jane played a bigger part in him being short with Manu. As he watched a disgruntled Manu wade into the river for a refreshing swim before getting lost, Tarzan recalled her tearful departure. Her terrifying adventures alongside him in the jungle had got to her, she wasn’t going to take any more. Her life seemed to be permanently at risk because of him, she lived in constant fear for her life. For hers, for his. OK, she was in love with him but she had not been brought up to cope with such dangers. She’d returned to civilisation.

His eyes absent-mindedly followed Manu stroking strongly away through the waters as Tarzan was gripped by the emptiness at the pit of his stomach. He could not deny that his life had brought Jane into danger more than once, she had suffered and been made to feel afraid numerous times because of him. He felt a bitter sadness scrape deep and raw in his guts. Manu was now far down the river, enjoying the cooling waters as Tarzan felt the heat of the sun on his back and the coldness of lost love in his soul. Not hearing the gathering of strangers in his back. Her fanatical priests, surreal stripes daubed over the faces that took away any appearance of humanity. Tarzan did not hear a sound. Not until they went for him.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++++++++++

1b.

Tarzan had recognised the risk the instant he’d turned around at the noise. A quick sense of panic. That distinctive daubing of thick white stripes over their faces, unmistakeable. As soon as he’d spotted them, Tarzan knew he was in trouble. Deep trouble. She had sent a dozen of them, her fanatical-priests, her devoted men. Sent them for him. All well-built, armed-to-the-teeth, brandishing clubs. All coming for him. Him unarmed except for a single knife. Strong warriors, all dedicated to her. Fearing her wrath if they let her down. They’d not go back without him, these devotees had no choice. Stealthily creeping up on him, clubs lifted. Till he’d turned and caught sight of them. Then they’d charged. Then they went for Tarzan. No holds barred.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Does trouble follow you around”, Manu asked bitterly across the darkness of the pit. “Or do you go looking for it?” Manu was annoyed that the zebra-men had gone for him during their journey, leaving Tarzan largely unscathed.

Go looking for it? This time, Tarzan thought to himself, it was she who had made the first move. Sending those men looking for him.

Tarzan stared across the blackness of their captivity to where the other one sat crouched. Considering why Jane had left him Manu’s sneer smarted. Hurting him deeply. Just the kind of remark a frightened Jane had also thrown at him. Did Tarzan go looking for danger? The pit into which he and Manu had been thrown was deep, there was only one way out, the way they’d come in, with the winch from the top. Guarded by her warriors, inescapable.

“But I suppose there are worse things that can happen to a man”, Manu chuckled ironically. Inappropriately light-hearted, Tarzan thought. Considering the circumstances.

Again Tarzan cast his eyes upward. The only way out, the only escape from her clutches. If only …. The vague dying light high above did not penetrate down to their depths in this vault. Casting the two of them into depressing darkness.

“I can certainly come up with worse ways of spending my days”, Manu scoffed. “She’s quite something!”

Tarzan looked across at where the speaker was crouched, shaking his own head to himself at the ignorance of his one-time captor. Now his only companion in her enforced captivity. He could make almost nothing out, only dimly the whiteness of teeth weakened by the overwhelming depression of blackness.

“You’ve got a woman wanting you to fuck your head off”.

There was a mockery born of ignorance slapping Tarzan in the face from the other side of their darkness.

“And you’re saying no?”

Tarzan heard the scoffing in Manu’s voice. And he shook his head at his companion’s lack of knowledge. If only you knew, Tarzan thought to himself.

“Tell you what. You don’t want the job, apeman? Put a word in for me”.

Tarzan could see in his imagination Manu shaking his head in disbelief at Tarzan’s obstinacy.

“There must be worse ways of spending a life”, he heard Manu snorting in derision in the darkness.

“All she wants is your dick up her! You not want it? Move over, apeman. Let a real man do the job!”

If you only knew the half of it, Tarzan thought to himself.

2. Hunted down

Tarzan knew the risks the instant he turned around at the noise. A quick sense of panic. That distinctive daubing of thick white stripes over their faces, unmistakeable. As soon as he saw them, Tarzan knew he was in trouble. Deep trouble. She had sent a dozen of them, her fanatical priests, her devoted men. All fighters armed-to-the-teeth, brandishing clubs. All coming for him. All dedicated to her. Fearing her wrath if they let her down. They’d come to take him, they’d go back with him, they had no choice. Stealthily creeping up on him, clubs lifted. Till he’d turned and caught sight of them. Then they charged.

They wasted no time, they went for him. With determination, with practised zeal. Clubs raised were met by a crouching Tarzan wielding all he had against them. Armed with a single knife. And his sense of foreboding. Quickly he’d grabbed a rock. They had him surrounded, they had him encircled. Menacing, heavily out-numbering him. Tarzan could not see any way out of this but to fight. She’d planned for that when she sent overwhelming numbers after him. Once her mind was set on something, she got what she wanted. She’d sent a dozen of her best to bring him back.

They rushed him in pairs, they distracted him singly. He lashed out with his knife. The rock caught one with a blow to his head, put him down. Tarzan grabbed for his club. But they kept coming for him, they rushed him, determined. They would not dare go back without him. He was rushed from the front, at the same time grabbed at from the rear. An arm around his throat, yanking him back. A club thumped him in the guts. The force doubled him up, he used the momentum to throw the attacker off.

They were everywhere, they were determined and strong. Arms and hands all over him. Hard blows to his back, deadening thwacks to his legs. A rush from the rear caught him around the waist, threw him forward. Onto his knees, a thump across his shoulders drove him face-down to the earth. Their weight piled on him all at once, pinning him on his front in the dirt. His hips drove up, throwing some off. Punches rained onto his back, thudded towards his skull. Tarzan could not afford to be taken, though, not by these men. Not by her men. His body had learned all too well the penalty, his mind had paid the cost. He bucked, he fought them back. Determined. Desperate.

Eventually, unaccountably, the fighting stopped. They backed off, the warriors rose to their feet. Cautiously, club still in hand, Tarzan raised his head, he looked around, rightly suspicious, he pushed himself to his knees, fight-ready. Only to find his ankles bound. In all that fighting, he had not noticed. In the desperate melee, they’d tied together his feet. A sudden yank on the rope pulled him back on his front.

Suddenly Tarzan’s chances improved, some of the men turned. Towards the shout. Racing out of the river came a stranger, sprinting into attack. Splashing out of the water to Tarzan’s defence, a muscled intruder was racing to steal back their prize. Later Manu would wonder why he’d bothered, Tarzan had been less than welcoming, hardly forthcoming. Coming to his defence had been pure reaction, it was what a warrior did for another fighter out-numbered and under-attack. Half of the attackers peeled off and leapt to defend their prize. Roaring to face a single unarmed stranger threatening what they had to take back.

Suddenly the rope on Tarzan’s feet was yanked. Pulled back and slithering him on his front back into the fray. Again men lunged themselves onto him. The desperate struggle began afresh. But Tarzan was now restrained, held back by his legs. Their fists rained down on him, he fought them back, the consequence of re-capture fuelling his every nerve. But they had him pinned to the dirt on his front, his ankles bound. Suddenly a hand in his hair yanked up his head. In a split second his legs were pulled up, the rope was looped around his neck and then pulled back. Hauled back till his neck was tied to his lifted feet. Choking Tarzan across his throat. Luckily his hands were still free, he got them to the rope struggling to break the stranglehold. But limiting his fight-power. In a moment, hands were throwing Tarzan over on his side. With a grunt he took a foot in the stomach. He winced at a deadening club into his arm. Men were down on him hammering their fists into his side.

Struggling in vain against the chokehold on his throat, Tarzan sensed himself slithering back into her clutches. He’d learned to his costs what that meant. Her fanatics had secured their prize. She had ordered them to bring back Tarzan, they dared not fail. She expected to get what she commanded. And she had. They had her Tarzan.

3. Bound and captive

3a.

They’d got what they had come for. They had her prize bound in the dirt, they had captured what she had commanded. But their prize had come under threat, menaced by some muscled stranger racing out of the river. Their orders were to bring Tarzan back in one piece. Unharmed. But no such constraints covered any intruder rushing to Tarzan’s defence. No threat could be allowed to thwart her will. They’d pay for it on their bodies if it did. She’d commanded Tarzan be brought back, they’d obey. Yet first this stranger had to be settled, rushing up seemingly intent on thwarting her inviolate will. They’d give him ample warning. But if he gave them trouble, it did not matter if they battered him to pulp. No restrictions were imposed to protect intruders. Only Tarzan. If the stranger posed a threat, they’d show him.

He did, they went for him. All restraint thrown to the wind. A fool had to learn. Wrong place, wrong time.

Manu fought them like a wild animal. They responded, six men against one. Bad odds but not impossible for a fighter like him. But they too were warriors, big, strong. Intelligently they attacked him as a team. They were all over him, Manu threw them off. Again, again. They launched themselves relentlessly at him, wave after wave, each time he sweated to beat them back.

They were armed, he was not. And suddenly there were more. More of them deluged his single-minded determination. Manu had no time to realise they had secured their captive, Tarzan. Now all of them were throwing everything they had at him.

Bound hand-and-foot, with only one man left to guard him, Tarzan struggled continuously with his bonds. He knew at the root of his being he had to get free, he could not afford to be taken back to her, not marched back to her in subjugation by these fanatics with their zebra-striped heads. Little frightened Tarzan, he had fought his way free of situations that would have daunted most men. He had struggled out of the toughest of spots. But the prospect of being in her grip again had his guts fluttering. He’d been lucky to escape her that last time. Lucky to escape with his life. Could he hope to be so fortunate again?

It wouldn’t be easy, though. These men were devoted, her fanatics, uncompromisingly given in service to her every breath. He’d suffered in their brutal clutches before. But these bonds forced on him were impossible to move. Tight, choking him. Yet he knew he had to break free. Three times already he’d been her captive. Three times he’d escaped with his life, - just. Each time her behaviour had been getting progressively worse. She’d meant what she has sworn that time. She took what she wanted. If Tarzan would not give up willingly, she’d take it by force. Or have him put to death. Sacrificed to her sun-god. And that last time, she had done her damnedest. His life had been on a knife-edge. Luck and his supreme will to survive had been his only weapons. A hair’s breadth between life and an insufferable end at her command. These fanatics who had been now sent to get him, - ordered to bring him back. It was them who had made him suffer, unendurably Tarzan had struggled in their clutches for endless hours, he had experienced unbearable anguish at their hands for days.

She was not to be refused. Not anything. Not for anything, not by anyone. Not by any man. Tarzan had turned her down, in return she had had these men pile on the pressure. These madmen of hers had done everything to bend him to her will. Tarzan had been lucky to keep his sanity, driven beyond the point of human endurance by her determination to have her way. He had been lucky to get away with his life. Lucky to get away with his sanity. But now she’d sent for him again. He was bound, captured, her prisoner. The thought fired up further struggles against his ropes. She was not to be denied. With Tarzan this mad woman had unfinished business. Tarzan could not see her letting him escape a fourth time. Or be allowed to deny her will.

A shout interrupted Tarzan’s dismal train of thought. He heard a bawl of pain from the fight. His eyes shot to Manu. One warrior was holding the struggling Manu back tight to his own chest, choking him with an arm across Manu’s throat. Others were now grabbing at Manu’s thrashing legs. And another was starting to hammer his club end straight into Manu’s stomach. Again and again.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

3b.

Manu was confident, he was strong there, he could take such punishment better than most, he’d practised that toughness with his friends, getting them to attack him there since young. He was tough in his guts. But the end of a solid club thudded repeatedly into his stomach was more than muscle could bear. Pain was throwing him forward, he was choking himself on the arm across his windpipe. Stabbing agonies burst in his guts with every ruthless blow.

The fighter with the stranglehold digging into Manu’s throat felt the knees beneath weaken. Another two thuds from the club into the reddening guts - and their victim sagged. The stranger was released, he sank groaning to his knees clutching for his guts. But not before the elbow to his skull threw the stranger face-down in the dirt.

Tarzan - bound now foot and hand - watched them throw water in Manu’s face, they were ready to head out. While Tarzan had continued to struggle against the restraints put on him, he had overheard them discussing what to do with this intruder. She had ordered Tarzan brought back in secret, the world was not to know where the jungle lord had disappeared. No witnesses, then. What to do with the stranger? Kill him, dump his body. Or take him with them. Choosing caution, their leader decided to take Manu back.

“He’s built for hard work”, he concluded, gesturing that the others should bring him round.

“Might even be given him for ourselves”, he grinned. Appraising all that packed muscle. Taking in the tightness of an enticing arse.

Tarzan knew from his enforced time in their company that these warriors belonged to her alone. They touched no other woman. On pain of death. Potent young men were left to find other ways of release.

Manu came to with a shout, spluttering at the shock of water in his face. Instantly his guts burst into blazing pain. His head throbbed. Normal reaction tried to roll his body over onto one side and clutch his arms to his battered guts. But the fighter that dominated every fibre of Manu’s body recognised a hindrance instantly. Fighting through the exploding crack of pain in his head, his eyes shot open. He couldn’t move. He was on his back, hands tied in front. A pole across his back thrust his strong chest up in the air, his arms that were crushed under the pole by his weight prickled with painful cramps. Grimacing as he put his battered stomach to work, Manu forced himself upright. But an equally determined foot kicked out at his head and viciously slammed his trussed-up back down onto the earth. A few more stomps into his sides ordered him to lie still. And still a few stinging slaps across his cheek was his reward for trying to evade the noose being slipped around his neck. Caught in a restraining noose just like Tarzan. Like animals being led to slaughter. Manu grunted with pain as he was pulled to his feet by the noose, eyes flashing angrily.

“What the hell is going on here?” Manu blurted out. A fierce punch into his tortured stomach shocked Manu into bending double over a muscled arm. Gasping, leaning into his attacker, heaving in air, he heard the order spat down his ear.

“Shut it! You don’t talk. You don’t speak. See?”

A powerful bicep pushed Manu upwards and delivered another breath-taking punch into pummelled guts to reinforce the order.

“Neither of you!” the leader snapped, pointing threatening at Tarzan. Ignoring the gasping from the interfering stranger, who was bent-up double under the onslaught to his shattered guts, crumpling in shock to his knees.

The leader remembered full well what had happened to his own predecessor because of this apeman and the failure to bring Tarzan to his knees. He did not plan to endure her wrath in the same way. Only a few months ago they had all witnessed their friend slaughtered for the sake of his man. A death she deemed he had earned for failing to break this self-same prisoner and bring him submissive to her will. They are knew not to fail.

“You’ve got nothing to say”, he snapped at the apeman.

Determined not to go the same way as his predecessor. He spat his order snarling into Tarzan’s face. Every one of his men, he knew, prayed she would hand the apeman over to them. To carry on where the unfortunate Otobu had left off. Every one of them had unfinished business with the apeman. To take revenge on this man, starting off from that point when their friend had been cut down. Because of him.

But first Tarzan had to be delivered back to her.

“Not a sound. From either one of you”, the leader snapped nervously.

He knew, if he too failed, he’d too be screeching as his life ebbed agonisingly away. With a yank of the nooses , the prisoners were led off. Manu confused, unsure. Tarzan knowing exactly where he was heading. For a place of doom.

Image:

Wrock took Frazetta’s original image and symbolically stuck Manu battling alongside Tarzan in the fray:

File: Ch.03b wrock Frazetta

4. Histories

“Tarzan, what is going on?” Manu whispered in his ear.

Tarzan shot a look at their captors resting under the tree. But no one seemed to have noticed Manu disobey orders and talk.

“Who are these people?”

All the long hot afternoon these questions had been plaguing Manu as he was jostled and marched along on his noose. Tarzan just had his hands tied in his back. But they got this pole across Manu’s own back, it made his back ache, the tightness across his elbows constricted his blood, his hands had gone dead. Cramped. And constantly the same questions had been going through his head. These men with strangely painted faces, big strong men, good trained fighters. Did they work for slavers? Why had they been taken him and Tarzan prisoner?

And why had he been so stupid as to come to Tarzan’s rescue? After all, the man had made it clear as day there was no forgive-and-forget, the apeman was still bristling with anger at the part Manu had played in Bannerman’s plot. But Manu like a fool had seen him under attack and bravely come running. Sprinting against the current, racing nobly to Tarzan’s help. And straight into a vicious bashing. It was only a few weeks since he’d eventually got himself free of that fight club. He’d got back to the village, people had welcomed him with open arms, astonished at the news that it had been Kwami that had sold him out. Just as he had betrayed Bannerman and sold him off with Tarzan too. Then Kwami had vanished. Manu was now chief, just as he had desired. And now, thanks to this Tarzan, he had finished up someone else’s prisoner again. Trouble seemed to follow that man around. Who had taken them prisoner he did not know. Why? No idea.

“What do they want?” Manu whispered his desperation out of the corner of his mouth.

Tarzan saw the leader of the group turn his head slowly towards them. Just gesturing with his head, he ordered,

“Shut him up!”

They roughly shoved Tarzan out of the way while they dealt with the intruder. Tarzan had known from past experience there’d be no messing with these men, that was why he’d been deliberately keeping his head down. He was in enough trouble without inviting more. He’d suffered under these men for days. Manu still had to learn, though. These men had their orders, they’d carry them out to the letter. Before, they had demanded the same from Tarzan. Total obedience to her word. When he wouldn’t give, there’d been little stopping them. The apeman had to be made to bend, she was not ever to be denied. No point in Tarzan inviting more trouble.

Something Manu was learning as their fists went for him. Tarzan had thought about pleading for Manu, to see if he could get them to let him go free. Maybe Manu would have even have enough sense to follow secretly or come looking for him. Maybe rescue him. But Tarzan knew in his heart-of-hearts there’d be no chance. They’d not risk her wrath, they’d not take the risk that someone could come and track him down. And when they had said no talking they had meant it. As Manu was finding out.

Image: Ch.04 wrock snatched

Manu’s eyes flared at the sight of the gag but he had no arms to defend himself. Only his thrashing legs and his glares. But eventually he had to breathe. They had him down on his back, they slapped him around to force him to accept the restraint. Even at their hard punches to his battered stomach, Manu had managed to contain his cries and keep his lips tight closed. But he knew eventually he’d have to breathe. And when he did open a slit to hiss noisily in air, they went for him. For his stomach. They stomped at his sides. Fingers prised open his jaws, forced in the strip of leather. Angrily Manu thrashed out, he cursed back at them through the gag, he sawed his head from side to side to escape their grip. His eyes nearly popped out of his head, though, when they yanked the gag tight around the back of his neck. Cutting across his tongue and binding it to the floor of his mouth. So tight it was nearly cutting into the sides of his face.

And then they set about showing Manu what they did to a prisoner who messed them about. She wanted Tarzan unharmed. Nothing had been said about this other piece-of-shit.

For another day they were jostled through the forest into the mountains. Time enough for Tarzan to recall in the pit of his stomach that last time. He should have known this might happen. But for weeks his thoughts had been elsewhere. First with Kwami, then Bannerman and then Wilson. And then his problems with Jane. Distracted, taken unawares. And he knew exactly what that lack of vigilance was going to cost him, what awaited him when they arrived. He’d felt it before on his flesh.

For days he endured her “persuasions”. For countless days he’d suffered endless “tricks”. She’d turned, embittered, full of hatred, anger at Tarzan’s refusals. Tarzan had counted himself lucky to escape with his life. And now again he was bound, close-guarded, ill-fated, jostled onwards to meet a dread destiny. He’d got away before. There was little chance she’d let him escape again.

Image:

Ch.04b wrock Under guard

5. Obsessed

5a.

La. Tarzan had no doubt she would be waiting for him. Why else had her warrior-priests come hunting him down? The strange-daubed men whose lives were devoted to her. Fanatics of exceptional physique, condemned to labour in service to her, damned to offer her alone the prize of their loins. To her and no one else.

La. She was obsessed with him. Since that first time when Tarzan offered up on that altar for sacrifice had fought himself free of the sacrifice. But it had been La who had rescued him. Cutting him free from that altar of death when the frenzied melee broke out. She had hidden him away, at risk to herself. Once he had been sentenced to be sacrificed to the Flaming God, not even the high-priestess could stop it, she’d explained. No one escaped the knife. Yet she did save him, she hid him away. As Tarzan found out later, to keep him for herself.

La, she was infatuated. Prepared to go against all she believed in. For him, to keep him. Ready to come up with a lie that the sun-god had decreed that Tarzan was her perfect match. The sacrifice was not to die, the sun-god had destined him to be her own, she’d declare. Only later did Tarzan learn the extent of her scheming ways.

La. She was indeed waiting for him. She was now on the top of the steps outside the temple to see her prisoner arrive. Her face set, her jaw hard. Her eyes engulfed him as he stood there bound before her. Whatever had happened to the young innocent he first had met? This was a woman whose eyes were devouring him. Eating him up, swallowing him whole. The feel of her gaze made Tarzan’s flesh creep. Arms tied, a noose around his neck, forcibly brought here against his will, dragged back on a noose into her ice-cold embrace. Her cruel eyes were like sand scouring at his skin, fingers groping pain into the strength of his chest. Scraping him raw with her look. Times had changed, La had changed. He’d been brought before her, captive against his will. Imprisoned by her infatuation. To be made to bend to her will.

He was placed before La at the bottom of the steps, symbolically below her head-height. Not an equal, not her lover. An escaped sacrifice taken captive again and brought back. He could feel her gaze consuming him. This woman was possessed. Because he had refused her. Repeatedly. He had already endured days of her persuading him to give in to her. Her obsession made worse when La had come face-to-face with the woman Tarzan really loved, Jane. Rejected. Cast aside in favour of another woman. That had turned La, twisted her. As Tarzan had found out to his costs. The innocent girl La had been transformed. Embittered. Fixated. Single-minded. And an enemy of men.

The figure whose eyes now swept coldly over his muscular form was no innocent young woman. She was a fiend possessed. Her avaricious look now had the power to turn his blood cold. She had procured these muscled warrior-priests, she had them to service her bed any time. Yet for months she had taken none of them as permanent mate. She could have, every one of them was as promising physically as Manu or himself, virile to the core. But no, she had nightly bedded every one of them but she wanted none. Because she craved, she hungered for something else. For something that denied her.

She had become fixated, she had demonstrated a total disregard for human life in her efforts to possess him, Tarzan, a frenzied craving that bordered on mania. Because she couldn’t have him. He felt her gaze eat up his marbled abs, drop lower. She had shown him would kill, she would do anything to seize what she demanded, she would murder anything that stood in her way, slaughter if anything failed to give her what she desired. She craved the one thing she could not have. And he was standing bound and helpless at her feet, brought back as prisoner. A pang of anxiety nibbled disconcertingly down Tarzan’s back. Outwardly looking strong, assertive. Inwardly feeling nervous. He knew in his flesh the lengths she’d go to. Now commanded by her to appear, he stood there before her, feeling apprehension knot in his guts.

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5b.

Tarzan remembered his very first sight of that dread place. Snuggled into that wide valley floor, the enormous battlements, the high towers and palaces. A sight of wonderment. Manu looking around as they stood surrounded before the temple, Tarzan could see, was just as impressed. Opar was a magnificent sight. From afar. Better from a distance for sure.

Tarzan had known that as they got closer there would be a feeling of neglect, the dereliction of Opar. As he was being dragged back to this lost city, he again felt menace, this was a place of dread. A civilisation crumbling away, in all places but one. In that dreaded high-walled chamber, open to the overhead sky. Their Chamber of Doom. Where they welcomed the rays of the sun, their Flaming God. A roofless chamber adorned with golden effigies to catch the sun-god’s rays, ringed by pillars of burnished gold. And in the centre that dread altar. Red-stained with others’ blood, shed when the god’s fingers stroked the helpless victim. Where it had been Tarzan’s good fortune that she had not shed his blood, too.

With a dismissive nod of the head, La indicated Manu. Gagged, bound too, a fine-looking male specimen. But she was surrounded by plenty of those.

“This. What is this thing you have dragged here with you?” she asked Tarzan.

Tarzan knew it wise to be in awe of La’s power, cautious about what forces she could unleash. Yet once he had indeed eagerly made love with her, - when she was still that innocent creature. Was that really only months ago? Before mania had taken possession of her mind.

“An innocent by-stander”, Tarzan said. “A stranger I had just met. When your men jumped me”.

Tarzan drew himself up tall, his powerful chest portrayed to her the manly figure she wanted. No submissive slave, no duty-bound priest. A man, all-man. The man she had once desired for her mate.

“Let him go free”, he said. ”He has no place here”, Tarzan commanded.

La’s eyes fell on the man bound and gagged by Tarzan’s side. She took in that strength, the perfection in Manu’s physique. But her gaze dismissed him, she had plenty around her looking that good, her eyes fell back to the man who had denied her for many months. The object she had commanded to be returned. The thing she craved most in the world. The thing that determinedly had refused her.

“You know why I had you brought here”.

Tarzan had no illusions. He tried to suppress the prickle of unease fluttering in his guts.

“You know my demands”, she added.

Tarzan eyed her back. He pulled himself tall, the dignity of his chest thrust forward to emphasise his stature. To dignify his reply. Resolve was written in every hard muscle of his physique.

“Then you know my answer”, he replied firmly. “Nothing has changed”.

Stubborn? Fool-hardy? Tarzan wondered. Deep in his guts, though, Tarzan knew it was right to refuse.

La stood looking at him. At the top of the temple steps looking down on her band of muscled fanatics who had brought HIM back. Symbolically looking down on her captive. Dominating Tarzan. Tarzan felt her gaze sweep over him. He returned hers with an equally strong look. She did not flinch, her look did not waver. She said nothing. But Tarzan sensed a harsh answer in her eyes. Nothing has changed? But it will, apeman. You should know better, human flesh can be forced. It will be forced. La nodded. Slowly, knowingly, as if she had anticipated his response. And knowing what she intended with him. Her look had his gaze crushed helpless in her grip. La was equally resolute, equally resolved. Tarzan felt a flutter in his guts at the cruel power in her look. At the power-struggle between them about to be unleashed. At the strength of her determination to have her way.

“Put them in the pit”. Dismissing them.

Her eyes never left the sight of the man she craved even as Tarzan and Manu were being jostled away.

“Bring them back after sunset,” she ordered.

It was always after sunset when they had had to drag the weakened apeman back into her presence. Remember, Tarzan? Her eyes whiplashed her intentions into Tarzan’s broad departing back. After sunset. When we’ll take off where things were, Tarzan. When we’ll clip your wings, her gaze warned. You and me, we have unfinished business.

Deep into the blackness under the temple, with his teeth he released the tightness, waiting then for Manu to be winched down to him. Tarzan’s guts rumbled as he watched the muscled figure descend down. Neither had been fed, at least Tarzan had been watered. Manu had been made to stumble on, parched with thirst.

“So she’s what this is all about?” Manu blurted out as soon as Tarzan released him from his gag.

“I wouldn’t turn her away”, he scoffed.

He grabbed at the water.

“She can wrap her hips around me any day”, he got out after gulping down the bowlful.

Tarzan remembered those better days when she had. The times when they had been happily coupled together. A lifetime of experience since. Little realising how that lovemaking would bring all this on. And yet he recalled that other time too, later, when she uncaringly had cruelly used him, ruthlessly toyed with his manly pride, just to make a point. To show how little he was worth. Tarzan - her toy, her property.

“What is it with you, apeman?”

Manu wiped his thirsty lips on a sweat-dried arm.

“All she wants is for you to fuck her silly? Give her a good going over. What the big deal?”

If only you knew, Tarzan thought.

6. Rivals

Tarzan despaired at the man. His eyes glared over at Manu warning him to behave.

“Manu, keep your mouth shut!” Tarzan thought to himself. Pleaded in his head with Manu. They’d been summoned back to La, bound to the columns in the Chamber of Doom. Tarzan knew what the high-priestess was capable of, down in the pit he’d tried to put Manu in the picture. But Manu was a walking disaster. His own worst enemy.

“… In the name of everything sacred,” Tarzan’s eyes warned, “ you’re not helping things”.

“Got a problem, apeman?” Manu’s gaze sneered back in return. “Worried about the competition?”

Tarzan’s warning gaze was reminding him, he told Manu was she was about. Manu had better tone it down - or she’d show him. Her order to go for him was just the start.

Tarzan could see what Manu was up to, he was full of himself. The man knew what he looked like, the fool was confident he could turn any woman on. Even tied to this pillar, he still seemed convinced he could turn on the charms, impress La with his looks and physique. Look at him, Tarzan thought, deliberately squirming with his hips to draw her eye down and further. Setting her up to ponder about what could be going for her between Manu’s legs.

If only Manu had taken in the warnings, had only started to believe what she was capable of, Tarzan thought. He’d grown tired of trying to warn him and by his behaviour here Manu was showing he had definitely not been listening.

Down in the pit Manu had persisted in the view that it was all down to sex. Tarzan simply did not want to bed this woman. Manu had simplified the problem, it was all about sex. Tarzan had not got it , the woman was dangerous. Very. Life-threateningly.

This wasn’t about sex, this was more about freedom. Tarzan’s freedom, the freedom of his soul. The freedom to roam, his freedom to choose. The freedom to be himself. La was out to deny him every such right. Freedom of the body, freedom of the mind, freedom of the soul. A bondage-slave to her, that was what she planned for him - until she tired. Manu just did not get it. For him this was all about Tarzan turning down sex. And Manu’s body language tied to that other pillar was making it clear there was too much man-power throbbing at the tops of his legs for him to do any such thing.

The pair of them were led up from their entombed darkness under the temple as the last glows of their savage sun-god were streaking the sky above this chamber. It had always been after sunset that she had summoned Tarzan, as if La knew she could do whatever she wanted with him when her god was no longer watching so close. With Manu Tarzan had been jostled into their Chamber of Doom. In the centre that altar stained with the blood of screaming victims. Where Tarzan too had been stretched out. And around the room the seven columns, covered with gold to burn with the sun, to one of which they had each been bound. Arms held up and tied around the back of the column. Their chests ominously thrust forward, their hearts open for the plunge of her knife.

From the very start, Manu had tried the I’m-your-man stuff on La. Meaning to take advantage of Tarzan’s indifference to her, strutting his stuff to press his point. Making it clear he was in the market if her Tarzan was too shy.

“For your own sake, Manu, stop it”, Tarzan warned with his looks. Manu was only making things worse, he really didn’t know this woman and what she was capable of. Tarzan did. Experienced it. Felt it.

Idiotically Manu was smirking back at him, shaking his head, mocking Tarzan, full of himself. Don’t fancy a bit of competition, apeman?

Yet suddenly when Manu faced her again, he was looking into the fathomless depths of a snake’s cold eyes. Any smile Manu may have imagined had gone. Icy.

“Bind him!” she ordered calmly.

Tarzan distracted himself from her persistent maulings at him, trying to ignore her fingers caressing over his chest, - instead looking at Manu’s futile attempts to evade the man ordered to tie up his crutch. She was insistent, though, she always was. Her soft hand coaxing up the inside of Tarzan’s thighs was hard to ignore. The male body instinctively leapt to respond. Still Tarzan tried to stay focused. Manu’s cries of protestation came to his rescue. But Manu’s hands too were bound overhead. When he fought back by kicking out with his legs, his feet were quickly spread wide and tied back around the temple column. Manu now had little chance to manoeuvre out of the way when a priest started groping at his crutch. His pouch was gone in a couple of sharp tugs. All the resistance left to Manu was a slight wriggle of the hips to evade hands obedient to La’s command. And some bad-tempered cursing that broke from Manu’s mouth at the first loop of dripping leather circling him. Angry sounds that were transformed into a hissing yelp when the rawhide strip was yanked hard. Tying him tightly, circling thin leather in tight biting loops around his root.. Forcing an intake of breath at each tight tug. Each yank followed by bad-tempered cursing. But still the biting was managing to force his powerful frame into a jerk with each tight nip on man-sensitive flesh. Tarzan knew how Manu felt. She had had him too tied up like that. To “persuade” him. And Tarzan remembered how like Manu he had been torn between the indignant anger burning in his blood and the nipping pain when they had tugged on him down there. Plus despairing at the inevitable response of his weak male frame.

“Not a patch on you”, La cooed appreciatively. Suddenly Tarzan was aware of La leaning on him, her eyes burning with obsessive desire. A fingernail tickled playfully with Tarzan’s hardening nipple. Her head nuzzling knowingly against him, her breath hot on Tarzan’s strong chest.

Tarzan strengthened his resolve by averting his gaze from her attentions, forcing his eyes to focus on Manu struggling against the man cruelly wielding the leather and biting him tight. Seeing his face wince every time the loop circled around his root was pulled tight. Hearing his angered curse. Understanding Manu’s sense of frustrated powerlessness. Spotting Manu visibly thickening under the pressure being forced onto him.

“Maybe, you need reminding”, La insinuated meaningfully against Tarzan’s chest. Tarzan didn’t. He remembered too well the lengths to which she would go. Her breath was passionate on his flesh. Hot - yet chilling.

Manu’s face was creasing with anger as he felt himself rise. Forced to rise. As the rawhide nipped at him and had its intended effect. And deep down Manu was beginning to feel some growing trepidation, - some of the warning things Tarzan had said nagging in his inner voice. But no, Manu told himself, he could handle women. If she wanted a preview, she could have it. If she needed to check the goods over, she could go ahead. He knew where his escape route lay and he was displaying it well. If she wanted to get her hands on what was on offer first, he’d play along. Let her see what a hot-blooded man had. Once he had her in her bed, she’d be a kitten in his hands. He could see that Tarzan was staring at him intently, as if warning him. Just because old Tarzan-boy couldn’t pull it off with her, it didn’t mean Manu could not. Just look at him giving Manu that knowing look. As if this Tarzan knew more than he was saying. Get real, apeman, Manu thought. Stand aside. Let a real man at her.

Tarzan did know more than he had said. He had told Manu much but he had not told him the lot. Why Tarzan had held back on his experience of her “persuasions”, he wasn’t sure. Why he had not told Manu of the horrors he had seen, Tarzan did not know. Perhaps because he knew how close she had dragged him to the brink. How close he had been. Whatever, he did know for certain, for Manu it was only going to get worse. This binding was not about Manu. La was reminding Tarzan. Recalling those days he had endured at her hands.

7. Love under the knife

7a.

Tarzan kept telling himself he had done his best. As he watched Manu dig himself deeper and deeper into trouble. Giving her the eye, smiling seductively. Pure provocation to a woman like her, a man too full of himself. Down in the pit, Tarzan had warned Manu. Was it Tarzan’s fault the fool did not want to hear?

“So what gives between you two?” Manu had asked. “I wouldn’t kick her put of bed”.

Encased in a blanket of stifling darkness. Tarzan had felt a sense of dread heavy in the air. The knowledge of their worsening history. Him and La.

You would, Tarzan felt. You wouldn’t get anywhere near her. If you knew what I went through.

Tarzan had explained to Manu he’d been drawn to Opar several times, each visit getting increasingly worse. Each time La getting more deranged. That first time he’d been lured by adventure and excitement, in search of the lost city of legend. He had thought it deserted, it looked decrepit, run-down, not the legendary city of great wealth with gold paving the streets. Wrong. Surprised, attacked by a furious mob of sub-human males, greatly outnumbered he had found himself condemned for desecration and thrown on the blood-stained altar in their temple looking up at the open sky. Waiting for the first rays of the sun to touch his body when their priestess would plunge her knife into him. Filling the cups of these life-craving monsters with his blood.

But the whirling and feverish incantations had got out of hand. A wild frenzy was building in the animal-like mob around - probably driven by their heady potions and narcotic drugs. A surging drive to be the first loathsome monster to drink of the victim’s blood had them by the throat. Wilder and wilder they raved as they saw the sun rising perilously higher in the sky. Its deadly rays creeping like death’s fingers inevitably down the high sides of this chamber. To the point when it would swamp the sacrifice with flaming light. Screaming and shouting raged, stomping and carousing. A bloodlust fuelled by drug-induced incantations.

The mindless frenzy was abruptly escalated, some slobbering sub-male driven out of his mind by blood-lust. He’d snapped, he’d begun slaughtering his rivals, craving to be first to sup at the sacrifice’s blood. Tarzan grabbed his chance. Mysteriously, La’s knife had severed his bonds, he fought his way free. Unaccountably, the priestess La took advantage of the frenzied slaughtering melee and rescued Tarzan from certain death, inexplicably secreting him away into the deepest vaults.

It took some time for Tarzan to realise that was the start of her fixation. Or even to understand why she craved him. Fact was, Tarzan said he was the most perfect male specimen she had ever seen.

“Hadn’t set eyes on me by then”, Manu half-joked from the other side of the darkness.

“You misunderstand. You’ve seen some of those strange half-humans lurking in the courtyard?” Tarzan soberly tried to explain. “Well, by some strange mutation the men here had evolved into these half-man, half-animal creatures. While the women remained unchanged. That was all she had ever known in men. Monsters. Then I turn up”, Tarzan explained.

Manu was curious.

“But what about those types who took us prisoner? Any one of them could put a smile on her face”, he observed.

“Let’s just say they weren’t around, not then”, Tarzan explained. “They are La’s invention”, Tarzan added. “Her fanatics”.

“Well, if men like them can’t keep her satisfied, they can step aside There’s a real man here now who can put stars in her eyes”, Manu bragged. Chuckling away to himself.

Tarzan suddenly wanted to snap into the darkness and tell Manu to grow up. He wasn’t taking their predicament seriously. However, it was the intensity of that reaction that told Tarzan just how nervous he himself was about being dragged back here. And these fanatics of La were no joke either. These priests were dedicated to her slightest whim. They obeyed her command, down to the letter. Manu had better grow up - and fast. Or La was about to show him how.

Tarzan could sense Manu scoffing him through the darkness. He was failing to get Manu to understand. And it wasn’t about sex. It was about power. Personal power.

Then suddenly Tarzan caught himself, why the hell should he care? Wasn’t this the bastard who had sold him for cash to Bannerman? Because of this joker, Tarzan had endured days of inhuman savagery. Because of him, he had been sold out to Wilson. Because of him, Jane had been left to fend for herself in Kwami’s village. Because of him Jane had left Tarzan. This man meant less-than-nothing to Tarzan. All they had in common was this darkness.

But, Tarzan realised, he did indeed care. As a man who had known what it was like as La’s prisoner, Tarzan knew to care. Anyone who had gone through that had to. Manu needed to be warned. Tarzan did not know what was going to happen. But experience promised nothing good. Tarzan felt a hot flush of nervousness as he recalled what she had put him through. What he had endured at the hands of her fanatics.

And probably he was about to encounter that again.

He wouldn’t wish that on any living creature. Not even a man who had sold him into mindless torture. Especially not on a man. Not even on this idiot Manu.

8. Driven by need

8a.

With the glow of the dying sun painting gold this roofless chamber, deep-down Manu was beginning to have some nagging inkling there might be something in what Tarzan had said about this woman. She was certainly a hard-nut, she loved to control. Pinned against this pillar, protesting in angered futility when they had wound his ankles back around the golden column, Manu was beginning to wonder if maybe he had under-estimated this woman a bit. He was supposed to be winning her over. Perhaps he had got her a bit wrong, after all he had always been used to more submissive girls. This one Tarzan had described as mad. Deranged. But she certainly knew how to command men, these warrior-priests were loyal to her down to their very guts. They’d probably die in her service.

And they certainly knew how to turn the wilfulness of the male cock to her advantage. Manu didn’t like being forced into this, he was used to be in control himself. Especially with the girls. But getting a grip on any own self-doubts, Manu told himself, if showing off his virility like this was what it took to tickle her attention, so be it. He had what it took down there. He had briefly looked down at himself while the man was roping him up. What was happening was certainly giving her more than an eyeful. And if that was what it took ….. Sure, Manu was man-for-the-job.

Tarzan had warned him she had turned into a vengeful hater of men determined to have her way. Was the apeman stupid or what? Of course she was pissed with Tarzan, he kept walking out on her, she was gagging for it. And all she wanted was for Tarzan to stick it to her. Tarzan wouldn’t do it, OK Manu was up for it. He would turn Tarzan’s reluctance to his own benefit. The apeman couldn’t prove himself, well Manu would. This playing with him down below, - yeah, Manu had had girls bind him like this. No big deal. Admittedly then it was all-play. And the eyes on this woman told him this was no game, this was a challenge, she was testing him out. And Manu was always up for a challenge. Men challenged him all the time, never women though. But Manu could rise to a woman’s challenge too, - if that was what it took. La was certainly a trickier kind of girl than he was used to. OK, he’d play by her rules for now but the dominant male in Manu knew just what he wanted out of this. Escape. He’d trick her into a good lay, get her all starry-eyed and then he was out of here. If he got a good fucking out of it too, - all well-and-good. He’d get her into bed and then Manu would work the usual magic. He was sure that all he needed was to produce that glow of womanly satisfaction between her legs and that was his way out of here. Never failed him in the past. For now he was having to play it by her rules. She had turned, Tarzan had said. Well, Manu was just the man to turn her back again. Manu would have her the woman again, he’d put a smile on her face. Just give him the chance. he’d have her gagging for more.

It was certainly going to be a challenge, though, he had to admit to himself. The way they had been passing tight coils of thin leather round and round his root was less than a joke. His girls hadn’t had him this tight, he was good and up already. And the pressure was already getting intense. Flushes were already spreading down from his prickling crutch and trembling through his powerful thighs, he could sense sweat starting to bead on his shaved head at the tightness and pressure. Manu had at first tried to resist, indignant that it was a man that was pawing at him. Now if it had been La herself, … well, that would have be a different matter! Yeah, he fancied the idea of her being down on her knees like that. Maybe later ….

At the moment, though, it was beginning to feel as if he might bust a gut in his cock. It was starting to feel he might almost burst the banks. He couldn’t risk that. What kind of man would La think he was then? Couldn’t keep it to himself, dribbling out of control. This was a test after all. Manu’s body was feeling flooded with manly need, he was also bursting with indignant pride. But only because she was having a man work on him with that leather thong. That was all part of her plan to put him down, he recognised. Well, Manu could rise above that. Manu was up for whatever challenge she threw at him when this tying-up was done. She didn’t know what she was taking on challenging his equipment down there!

He hissed at another tight tug of the cord. That man had better watch his step when this was over, he swore! He’d find out the force behind Manu’s fist. Again Manu could feel himself getting more and more indignant, his patience only went so far. He stared down at the powerful back of her man on his knees below. Flaring in anger, inside Manu found himself snarling to the tune of raw sexual energy now coursing wildly through his veins. Slow down, brother, he told himself. Manu forced himself to stay calm. He needed to stay on top.

His emotions did keep swaying violently, though, he realised, from one extreme to another. It wasn’t taking much to make Manu swing to the other extreme. Another tug made him curse. They’d already got his shaft doing more than normal by nipping him with tight leather, forcing him to rise more than usual. Impressive he had to admit. It did get to his manly pride, though, he was used to being in control himself when it came to working down there, he called the shots when it came to sex, women did as they were told. And being forced into this by a man … , a man Manu would willingly have taken on if his hands had been free. This priest was taking power over his manhood, forcibly making it work more than usual, Manu was having the power there wrenched from him. By another man - that was not Manu’s scene. But again trying to clam down on his indignation, he told himself if that’s what it took to prick her interest, - if that was what it took, Manu was going to grit his teeth, he’d go with the flow. Certainly his cock was doing what any virile manhood would do. And a lot more. Impressively. He glanced down at himself, then quickly he glanced at her. His heart lifted, he grinned, he could see where her eyes were. Manu gave her a cheeky wink. She was certainly getting an eye for the goods. Maybe, her hands were all over that that Tarzan’s chest for now. But she couldn’t stop herself looking. You couldn’t blame her. Her eyes were all for Manu. And down there was where it mattered. This La’s got taste!

But then the man below on his knees started finishing him off in a figure-of-eight. Indignation again flared, Manu was being forced into panting out loud into the growing burn. Tight loops bound round-and-round his ball sack, squeezing his sizeable nuts down into their normally blessed home. Annoyed, his anger started rising again, his mind fearing another threatening surge in his cock’s arousal that might spoil his chances. After the first half dozen loops crushing his balls down into their straining sack, it was getting tight, uncomfortable. This was a test, Manu reminded himself. Her challenge to his manliness, testing his strength of mind. It was certainly doing that. The pull on his shaft was hauling back on the skin, the strain under his cock rim was feeling more-than-acute. Sharp, ragingly sensitive.

Secretly Manu had a slight worry much longer he might hold out. Desperate for control over his manly loins, determined to show he was the kind of man who could rise to any kind of test to his manliness like this, - yet fearing he might not be able to hold on to himself. Manu pursed his lips and panted out hard. And his spirits got a manly lift, though, when he caught sight of La lick her tongue on her lips. He could see his own virility reflected in her gaze. This woman did not know who she was messing with. But she knew quality when she saw it. Manu was just the man! This might be getting uncomfortable - but boy, did he look good.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

8b.

Previously, still in the darkness of their pit, Manu had kept asking questions to get Tarzan to go on with his story. Best to know something more about the woman he was going to be up against. Condemned to sacrifice, thanks to La Tarzan explained he had escaped certain death. Bringing him safe to these deep vaults under the temple, she’d anxiously explained no one ever escaped the knife, they’d be looking for him, everywhere. The Flaming God demanded his dues, not even she had the right to change Tarzan’s sentence of death. She’d left him in a lightless room. Imprisoned Tarzan in utter darkness. For his safety’s sake, she explained. For her own sake, as Tarzan discovered. Later.

Left alone, Tarzan suspiciously wondered if she’d return with a horde of half-human guards. Locked in, alone with his uncertainties, trapped. Indeed she did come back. But alone. With offerings of food. And, more, she had offered herself. She was beautiful, as much then as now. Irresistible to a man whose blood still pumped with the excitement of a terrible death he had just escaped. Tarzan took her, he made love. It had been passionate, the love-making had been wild, full of the urges of a man asserting his life-force, rejoicing that he was still alive, he had escaped the knife, his body was celebrating the vibrancy of life that still pulsed through his blood. Tarzan had taken La and filled her with a wild life-asserting passion.

At first she seemed taken-aback, tentative. Then she would not let him go, as if she had been starved for years. Her impassioned moanings only leading him to lunge more deeply inside her. Driven wild by her noisy ravenous responses. Driving La herself wild. Out of her mind. If only he’d known.

She’d never experienced a man in lovemaking. How could Tarzan have known that? She had never gone with a fully-developed man before. Who would have thought that possible? Tarzan learned that later. But she did take a man those nights, many times. She’d arouse him from his sleep wanting more. As if she had made a new discovery. And La had. Sex with a man. Many times she craved it, at her insistent instigation. And those nights changed her, the experience transformed her. She did it again. And again, wildly, insistently. She craved him repeatedly over the next few nights too. What man would refuse?

“With all those muscle-heads who brought us here? None of those bothered to take her on?” blurted Manu into the darkness. “… Oh yes,” he added, “you said they weren’t around”.

Tarzan hesitated before he explained. This was getting to the crux of La’s issue with him.

“I was the first fully-formed man she had ever seen”, Tarzan tried to explain the inexplicable. “She knew only those monsters, those ape-like males”.

He tried to explain.

“It wasn’t me particularly. It was male human versus monster. Any human male”.

The silence in the pit seemed to mock him, not understanding.

“Suddenly there was a choice, you see, she did not have to mate with a monster”, Tarzan added trying to make clear the implications of what happened then. Yet still reluctant to face the history that followed.

Tarzan could almost hear Manu taunting him saying, she should have come to me. She’d have known what it meant to be filled with a full-blooded man.

Tarzan continued needing to get Manu to realise the dangers they faced. Yet somehow reluctant to spit out all the truth.

“And for all she knew, I was the only man that she thought she ever would see”.

Obsession. The initial pricklings of La’s fixation with him. Born of fear. Fear she’d lose this choice.

“And she had no intention of letting me go”.

La meant to imprison Tarzan, he tried to explain to Manu, fate had brought her the ultimate in male perfection, she believed. Desperate not to lose the male ideal she had just discovered. Determined to keep what she could only have dreamed about. It was her destiny to take this male for her mate. She wasn’t going to let Tarzan go.

But Tarzan had indeed escaped, he’d worked out his own way to freedom, no time for pleasant goodbye’s. Luckily he found a secret passage out of those dark vaults. A route taking him to safety out of the clutches of Opar, he had fled her monsters. And he had gone away from La. A huge sigh of relief took him at being back in his forests. Unaccountably he was shaken by overwhelming tremblings, the nervous anxiety of the last days suddenly released in his flesh. Trembling with relief, he’d realised only then how oppressive it had felt trapped with La under the temple. And in a way he couldn’t put his finger on, it was not only about being locked away in the underground darkness. He found himself trembling with relief at being free from Opar’s grip.

Yet still Tarzan had not actually realised how La felt for him. She had spent three nights in the arms of some ideal she could never before have conceived of. And suddenly her perfection was gone. Abandoned. That male hope for a perfect future had deserted her, slapped her in the face by his sudden disappearance, Tarzan had slunk away. Like some perfidious snake. Without saying a word. La wept, copiously, feeling cruelly abandoned, left to the prospect of taking one of those half-humans again for a mate. Her dreams shattered.

La went wild. She sent her monsters to bring him back. Tarzan only realised that later, when they met again, that she was indeed going mad. La was mad with a fixation for him. Increasingly driven mad by the urge to possess that which she couldn’t have. To possess her Tarzan.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

8c.

Even as he was fighting his irritation at this attack on his manhood, Manu was determined to persist with his charm attack. It never failed. He was going to win La over if it was the last thing he did, his every muscle-taut fibre showed that. A sudden tug of the rawhide had him hissing, though, every muscle in his powerful frame going stiff. But almost in the same instant, his face won back control. Knowing he was looking good. He was eyeing her, trying to tell her he could take this. Challenge him if she wanted, he was up to this. Manu was her kind of man.

Tarzan felt frustrated. Bound to a column just like Manu, there was little more he could do for the man. He’d tried his best. But the arrogant fool had not been listening. Too full of himself, too confident in the seductive power of his physique. A man who had not come across a woman like La.

She had sent her hordes after him, searching for Tarzan after he had deserted her that first time. La had found perfection, then that blissful future had deserted her. She had sent her monsters to bring Tarzan back. But Tarzan evaded their noisy crashing through the forest from a far distance. La’s monsters did have had one success, however. Jane, they had inadvertently come across his Jane. The woman Tarzan loved. Frustrated at their inability to track down their prey, they had brought her back to La. As compensation to appease the wrath of the Flaming god.

There was nothing for it, Tarzan had to return. As he explained to Manu, Tarzan had found a secret way out, this now became his secret route back in. He knew the risks. He himself had been under the knife, he’d be back there on the altar again if things went wrong. But he could imagine the woman he loved, also condemned, also stretched out on that blood-stained altar, waiting for the rays of their cruel god to burst on the gold pillars and swamp the Chamber with its violent glare. Only for the knife to kiss Jane’s naked flesh. He imagined the sun flash on the vicious teeth of the blade as La swept it down to plunge into Jane’s heart. Tarzan shivered. The thought of Jane’s precious blood spurting out! Hearing again those surrounding hordes screeching hysterically for his loved one’s blood. Screaming in savage bloodlust for her life-force like they had shrieked for his. Tarzan knew the dangers of returning to Opar, yet he knew what he had to do.

A second visit. It did not make sense, he had just escaped. Tarzan did it for his Jane. Through the tunnels, through the vaults he had cautiously searched in increasing concern. On the way-in, coming across piles of gold evidently unknown to present-day Oparians, evidence of their former wealth forgotten. Yet ignoring the temptations, with only one mission in mind, through the murkiness under this temple he had stumbled. His heart pounding with increasing anxiety of arriving too late, finding his Jane stretched out on the alter, surrounded by the seething mass of half-monsters going wild for her blood. But blissfully he had found the one he loved. Shaking in terror for her life, barely able to stand. But alive, not yet given up for sacrifice.

They fled. Supporting her frailty every step of the way, Tarzan had led her back out through the gloom of the vaults. But their flight had not gone undetected. By La, coming across Tarzan by chance. Her face had illuminated on sight of him. Her destiny of a perfect mate, he had joyously come back to her. Her rescue from being mated with one of these half-human monsters - Tarzan was mysteriously there before her. Her blissful destiny had returned to her.

But Tarzan then reached into the shadows and protectively embraced another female. The woman condemned for the sun-god’s sacrifice. Tarzan had come back, he was stealing her away, he had risked all to save a female sacrifice.

“Who is this woman?” La demanded. Fearing the answer.

Tarzan hesitated. Knowing the impact of his reply. Knowing how his words would hurt.

“And? She is ….who?” La demanded. Knowing the answer. Fearing the truth.

There was nothing for it. Tarzan had to get his Jane away.

“She is the woman I love”.

He said it proudly. He said it with a firm voice. Because he meant it. He announced it proudly. Whatever the consequences.

Time stood still. He saw in his mind the distance between him and La lengthen. His life belonged elsewhere. His feelings were committed.

“This is the woman I love”, Tarzan affirmed.

Tarzan knew when he saw crippling pain. Physical and mental. La was paralysed. La could not move. Tarzan left her. He left her alone with the stab wound of his rejection to her heart. Crippled by his rebuff. Sweeping up in his arms the barely conscious form of the woman he loved. The Flaming God’s sacrifice. Leaving La behind. Abandoned a second time by the man who had opened her eyes. Who had brought her love. Tarzan had awoken the woman in La. Then he had walked away. In the night, without a word. Tarzan had come back. For a reason, for this sacrifice. Again he was doing it, he was deserting La, - for another woman. Abandoning La. Leaving her to mate with a horde of half-human apes.

“From what I saw ….”, down in the pit, Manu had remembered the alluring sight of Jane’s backside trotting in Tarzan’s wake after he had snatched Tarzan away from Kwami, desperate to cover her nakedness from the prying eyes of Manu’s men; or her beauty shining through even her wretchedness after Kwami had had her brutalised on the beach to torment her man.

“… that woman of yours, she certainly looked the part”, Manu had admitted.

“But, come on, one woman is as good as the next”, Manu glibly had added, mocking Tarzan’s weakness in committing to one woman alone.

“You could have done worse than with this La woman”.

Tarzan had held his silence. Even now as he watched Manu being man-handled, even as he felt La’s touch stroking over the taut power in his stomach, Tarzan knew that in one sense, Manu was right, La was beautiful, she was seductive, you could do worse. In another, he was totally wrong. Manu just was not getting it. Even as late as this, even when Tarzan heard La ordering her man to attack Manu’s crutch with rawhide and abuse his sense of manhood, Manu didn’t get that La was not about sex. La had shown she was driven to own. Not any man, she had surrounded herself with these virile men. She had them in her bed every day. She was fixated on him, on Tarzan. Not for sex. For what she could not have. She craved to possess Tarzan, consume him body and soul. But he had gone, he had deserted her. Left with another woman. For another woman Tarzan had cruelly abandoned La. Second-best.

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La snapped. She wanted what she could not have. Because she could not have it. That’s why she had had him captured. But not as a partner any more. Not as a lover coming willingly warming her bed. He and Manu were not tied to these columns in the Chamber of Doom for a welcome party. That joy at seeing him had all changed that last time, at Tarzan’s third time in Opar. She claimed him as a thing she owned. She had been rejected, her wishes had been dashed. Now she insisted, she claimed not his body, she craved now his soul. His very being. And she’d stop at nothing. Tarzan had seen that, he’d felt that - and in the nights since, he had sometimes woken up shuddering at that fearsome memory.

What she was having done to Manu against the other pillar, that was being done for Tarzan. He was sure of that. This attack on his enforced erection and her wilful abuse to put-down Manu’s sense of manly worth - this was a demonstration of power. La’s power over men. And a prelude to much worse, - if Tarzan would not obey. She had had him brought back, brought him back bound and against his will. Tarzan had experienced the consequences of rejecting her before. Painfully so. It pained him to feel so anxious but experience gave him every right. He had tried to put Manu in the picture, to warn him. La had sent her men for him. Captured, Tarzan stood again in her Chamber of Doom. And La was using Manu to show how she was prepared to “persuade” Tarzan again.

Book 2

9. Return to Opar

9a.

The crush on him was getting painful, the pressure against the skin squeezed around his nuts was making him bite on his lip. Manu was going to take this, he was going to prove himself, he kept telling himself that. It was getting hard, though. Bound to this gold pillar, he could feel the sweat was running down Manu’s back. Nervous sweat. In fact, his whole body seemed so alive with prickling nervous energy, it was all he could do not to give in to instinct and bounce up and down to release it from his torso. This was getting near-impossible to take. The pressure down in his precious balls was making him sweat. He was as tight as a drum. Well beyond any comfort level. Almost like the skin might not be able to hold the package within. Sweaty, tight, achingly taut, bulgingly hard. Manu could not help wincing at the tightness. He glance down, he was erect like he could rarely remember. Reaching for the sky. Damned impressive. But an anxiety kept kicking in again, not used to not being fully in control. And was he gonna lose it? He felt painfully over maximum-strain.

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Stick with it, he shouted at himself, look strong, tested but not done-on. He had to impress, he had to pass the test. All part of a strategy to show that he had what it took, he had the goods to stick it to her. But that nagging voice kept on at his self-belief. It was getting tough, very, worryingly so, the physical strain was starting get at his resolve a bit, feeling his strength of purpose threatening to slip beyond his control. Innerly it was getting a struggle to endure. Not just the physical strain, the mental conflict. A gnawing fear he’d not pull this act off. The pull on the skin around his entrapped balls was getting so intense, it was beginning to feel threatening, the drag under his cock-rim had his thighs trembling, it felt like there was no way to take this kind of strain for much longer. And still that niggling anxiety taunted him, that he was going to start dribbling soon.

C’mon, Manu mocked himself. Would that really be so bad? Wake up! That’d get her thoughts going. Seeing a silvery pearl of his manliness winking away at her. A string of pearls for her delectation. Manu might be losing a bit of control but did she see something this impressive every day? Was it every day she got the chance to taste such manseed on her tongue? Manu’s whole body might be feeling acutely tense, trembling, sure, he could feel his legs quivering nervous with the strain. His breath might be coming in short impassioned pants, his torso looked manfully battle-taut fighting for control, trembling with strain as his nerves flared and quivered with needy passion. But man, look where he eyes were. Was she enjoying the sights!

Manu told himself to calm down, he couldn’t risk getting too excited. OK, this woman was no joke, she was a challenge, she was out to challenge him. No submissive girl who was only too happy for any man’s attentions. La knew what she was doing, she was no novice at this kind of thing. Had she sensed Manu was her kind of man? Is that why she was testing him out so hard? Hands all over Tarzan, knee rubbing up against his thigh. Was she trying to provoke Manu? Was she trying him on? C’mon, girl, his senses reeled, try me out. I’ll show you, you’re wasted on the apeman. Manu was man, all-man, he was born to please womankind. Just look at the way he looked! Cast your eyes down here! He just had to last this test out, he kept telling himself to lift his spirits. Granted, Manu was not used to being challenged by women, but he’d repeatedly offered his guts for punching to Bukawa’s fist. His physique just invited challenge, men needed to prove themselves against him. He could certainly take some woman on. She was trying it on him now. Normally he enjoyed anything that was going on between his legs, but this …. It was certainly beginning to test him. OK, this woman seemed to enjoy making Manu feel uncomfortable. OK, this was a trial. But Manu was the man for every challenge. When he had her in bed, …. No contest! Manu stared back at her, determined, fired up. Manu rose to every challenge.

Manu couldn’t believe that Tarzan. She had given him plenty of chances to slide into her bed. Idiot that he was, he was still stupidly resisting, rejecting the offer of the undoubtedly succulent offerings between her legs. Manu wouldn’t make that same mistake. That scented gateway to her world of wonder was his chance for escape. He craved to have his tongue there, to scent her sweet need for him.

Manu wouldn’t be made to pay for snubbing her like that pea-brain Tarzan. Incurring her anger for rebuffing her offers. Just give him a go, just give Manu a chance to mount her, he could convince any woman, La included. Manu would again turn her world upside down. Manu would let her know again what it felt like to be a woman. With him between her legs, at her core. He’d show her what it mean to be with a real man again. Manu would turn her, back into the pleasures of a playful bed-mate. He’d put the smile back on her face.

Maybe, that was what was going on now in her head right now, Manu wondered. She certainly couldn’t get enough of the sight. Sure, her hands were playing over the dome of Tarzan’s muscular chest but her eyes had only one direction. And that was on him, below the waist. Down where Manu was giving her the works. Observing how Manu was manfully standing up to her test. This challenge to him was certainly getting to feel uncomfortable but in the end it was going to be worth it. In the end. Bravely Manu took another tight bite of leather into his balls. Clenching his teeth, setting his jaw. The breaking into a determined look. Proving to her he was the kind of man who could take it. A fighter, a warrior, all-man. Whatever she threw at him, Manu could take it , that was the kind of man he was. It was going to be worth it, he swore to himself.

OK, for sure she might be a tough bird, maybe the apeman was right, she’d gone a bit mad. Or maybe, that apeman just didn’t know how to deal with women like this. Strong women took some handling. And so did strong men, - as Manu would show her when he got her in bed. She wouldn’t find any man stronger.

On the other hand, secretly Manu hoped things would hurry up. The feelings in his crutch were getting a bit much. Another loop was pulled tight, he felt his eyes jerk open wide, he couldn’t stop himself. With a dozen hard pants through pursed lips Manu managed to take control of the eye-watering squeeze. His ballsack was already overfull. No space for his precious balls to go. A grunt escaped as cruelly yet another loop circled him there. Another tight yank squeezed him down. Manu manfully suppressed the grunt, seeing his behaviour was under her close scrutiny. There was, it seemed, only one way out of this. To take it, to prove himself, to show he was worthy of her bed. Look, her eyes were all over him, it was indeed his manliness being tested.

Shit! That one did hurt, another tug forced the wince out of his throat. Suddenly it was beginning to feel like enough-was-enough. Like his skin could no longer contain the pressure forcing out of his sack. Trying to burst free through the over-taut skin. Suddenly Manu was aware of his fingernails digging sharp into the palms of his hands. Pain, tension. Fear. Fear? He was sure that was just what she was testing out. Fear? Just what he must not show. He could control fears. Manu forced himself into releasing the clenching in his hands. Trying to release the innermost anxieties when his most precious asset was feeling strained beyond the limit. To stop himself from worrying whether human skin could take such nerve-racking pressure.

The pull down on the skin of his man-shaft had his body trembling. Hell, what would he do if he started dribbling?. A quick glance down filled him with some concern. So taut he could feel the tool straining, quivering. He didn’t want to believe it. It felt almost like the strain underneath the solidity of his cockhead was on the point of ripping. He couldn’t remember seeing himself so big. Could human skin take the strain? Maybe these men were going too far. Maybe he’d rip, it felt like his skin could tear. Surely she didn’t mean him any harm there, surely the plan was to test him out intact. Just look at what it had to offer.

He gasped. Manu gave a sharp intake of breath. Bit his teeth hard together, eyes popping. Eyes watering. Head pressed back into the pillar, Concentrating, fighting the pain in his over-tortured cock. Dimly Manu was aware that his emotions were all over the place. He was pitching wildly from one sensation to another. He knew that was wrong, he needed to stay on top of things …. Manu suddenly jolted. Another impossible tight loop had crushed down on his balls. Nerves shuddered in his tip, fists clenched Manu fought the threat of his control there letting itself go. His legs shook involuntarily to cope with the nervous strain. His thighs were trembling. Missing the sign in all his struggles to hold on to his strength of mind, - as his whole nerve-shattered physique battled for control over his self-esteem not hearing La’s icy question to Tarzan. “What do you do with a dog that will not obey?”

Was she having him ripped apart? The terror of that thought shivered through his bones. No, he couldn’t afford to think anything like that, Manu anxiously ordered himself. He was being tested, Manu screamed at himself. Sorely tested, he was being minutely watched. Manu forced his flagging self-confidence into believing that. La was pushing him beyond the limit, to see what he was made of. Wasn’t she? She was digging deep to finds the real essence of the man inside him. He’d survive this! He WOULD! He glanced down at himself. Shit! He had to admit it, he looked the part, impressive! All-man. Shit, he would survive this. Then he’d show her what-for. Manu’s spirits lifted. She couldn’t get enough of the sight of him, just look at her, ogling at him. Man, did he look good. She couldn’t see something like this every day! She couldn’t fail to be impressed, Manu told himself proudly. Man, just look at yourself. Manu felt all-sex, his whole body was vibrating with his sex. It was alive with sex - like he was male sex made-flesh. Come on, girl, he shivered with excitement at the thought. Pulsating, vibrant. Throbbing. Get a eyeful of this, girl. Had a better offer recently?

That was the way to think!

…. Wasn’t it?

++++++++++++++++++++++++

9b.

All of Manu’s bravado during their time in the pit - about how he would stick to La, - it was all going horribly wrong on him. Tarzan could see that, Manu must be knowing it by now. He was trying his best but Tarzan could see Manu’s severe discomfort. The beads of sweat on his shaved head had joined up into a steady trickle alongside one eye. But worryingly Manu did still seem to think he had some say in what was developing. The way he kept giving La the eye! Tarzan noticed La’s lips open in a partial smile at Manu’s provocation. That was not some smile tempted to respond to such a come-on. Manu seemed to refuse to see the iciness in her gaze. La was acting to form, about to do what she did best, showing a confident man who was really in charge. Not even showing enjoyment when his face creased at a further sharp tog that squeezed on his ballsack even tighter. Manu was still not catching on. He had no idea of the woman he was messing with. He just kept digging himself in deeper.

“You don’t want her?” Manu had scoffed. “Step aside, apeman. Let a real man in”.

“You’ve got to admit …” Manu had said earlier to Tarzan through the gloominess in the pit, a dismal darkness that Tarzan had felt was crushing down on him like a heavy rock, “ …she’s far from a bad-looker”.

Tarzan could not deny that. He looked from his pillar at La. For any hot-blooded male, La would get the juices going. La knew exactly how she looked, she fully exploited that. What was important about La was not her looks, it was the evil that dwelled in her soul.

Manu shot off another angry hiss from his column at another nipping bite of leather. Tarzan eyed him, trying to tell him to calm down.

“Aren’t you making a lot of fuss about nothing?” Manu’s voice had come across the darkness. “OK, La’s gone and taken you prisoner. Correction, taken us prisoner. So she’s holding us against our will. US”, Manu emphasised. “But there must be worse things in life than mounting a woman looking like that”.

Tarzan unseen in the darkness had shaken his head. Are there, he thought?

“She’s changed”, Tarzan had explained weakly. “Hardened, got bitter”.

He’d hesitated to say more but Manu’s silence had invited Tarzan to carry on.

“I escaped that first time but her monster-hordes got Jane”.

Manu heard a sigh in the darkness.

“So I had to come back. My second time here. Jane and I were escaping when we came across La”.

La’s excitement at seeing him again had rapidly turned to anger when she saw the other woman. For La, that could only mean one thing, she was not good enough for Tarzan.

“If I can’t have you, then no one shall”, she snarled out of slitted eyes. And screamed out for the guards. Tarzan fled from the place carrying a terror-weakened Jane trembling in his arms. But La’s snarling threats pursued them down the dark corridors to freedom . Screaming in her anguish she’d hunt Tarzan down to the ends of the earth. She’d have him torn limb from limb. Her near-prophetic shrieks that pursued Tarzan into the darkness of the vaults.

“That raging hatred can still wake me in the night”, Tarzan said. “I can wake up in sweat seeing the furious jealousy in those eyes”.

La’s face burning with fathomless anger. Endless determination to have her own way.

His statement was met by a silence of disbelief in the darkness.

“She’s only a woman”, Tarzan heard Manu scoff to himself.

Tarzan had heard La’s shrill animal-like threats ringing down through those vaults pursuing him as he bore Jane away.

“If you aren’t mine, you are nobody’s”, she’d snarled.

“So that is all this is all about”, Manu concluded. “This is what you have got me into. You made a woman jealous. You deserted her. So she’s tracked you down. She wants your balls”.

In a manner of speaking …..”, Tarzan started.

“Then give her a good fucking”, Manu called out knowingly into the darkness of their pit. “It never fails”.

Manu was still trying it on. He had recovered his composure at another tug around his all-too-tight ballsack. He was back to pushing his chest up off his column, showing La the man that he was. Ready to take on all-comers, eager for any challenge. Eyeing her, treating her like she was some panting virgin who could wait to get her hand into Manu’s pouch.

“The next encounter told me just how you are wrong …. ”, Tarzan had corrected Manu’s crass remark about La just needed sex.

“Next?” Manu had blurted out astonished.

“Next? The two of you got together again?”

Crazy, Tarzan had to admit. He’d just rescued Jane. They’d just been getting their life back together after her terrifying experience. But circumstances forced him back.

“What’s this - a third time? You can’t get enough of her, can you?”

Tarzan had only half-smiled at the irony. A bitter-edged smile at the jangling memory of that third disastrous time.

“Other way round actually”, he’d added. Then his smile disappeared.

“The next time, that last time. That was no joke”. Not for one single moment, he added to himself.

Tarzan hesitated. Not wanting to go further. Hesitating at spelling out the painful details.

“Not for one single second”, he emphasised.

Tarzan paused. Not wanting to expand. Inexplicably. Not wanting to tell Manu that he had been dragged to within a hair’s breadth of breaking. Keeping to himself La’s insane savagery that he witnessed.

“You’re right, she can’t get enough”, he’d added simply. “She wants everything”, Tarzan had reinforced. “And I mean everything. Body and soul”.

There had a studied silence on Tarzan’s side of the darkness.

“She is obsessed”, Tarzan had added after a long anguished pause. A chill had shuddered across his shoulders.

“La has gone mad”.

Unreliable. Unpredictable. And totally self-obsessed.

It was all about sex for Manu. Tarzan had shaken his head in the blackness. At the crass idiocy of his companion. This was about power. If he carried on like that, La would show Manu what she meant by power. Guaranteed. It might already be too late.

Tarzan’s brow furrowed at the strangeness of her question.

“A beast with a will of its own. What do you do to a dog that will not obey?”

Tarzan’s eyes shot to Manu on the other column. Her eyes were all over Manu too. But something in Tarzan’s guts said the question was about him.

Idiot! Tarzan scowled another warning at the other pillar. Just look at yourself now! Bound opposite, looking down at his aggressor, his eyes full of anger. Manu was visibly seething at what La had had the priest do. Manu was suddenly taken to fighting against the bonds that bound his arms above his head and were wrapped around the column. Determined to show who was boss. With his eyes giving the priest a good bashing as his assailant stood up, the tight binding-job done. Warning with every angered feature in his face, Manu’s fiery gaze gave back, Try anything else like that on again - and you’re done-for, bastard,. Not being the submissive, firing up the will in La to put this fighting animal down. “What do you do with a beast with a will of its own?”, she’d asked enigmatically. Manu showing La he had taken enough. That’s enough, no more!

Don’t you dare, Manu’s looks warned the withdrawing priest. Tarzan knew better, the priest would dare. If she commanded it. The priest would dare anything. Just like when La had ordered them to turn on him. These poor bastards had no choice.

10. Beaten like a dog

10a.

What was this Manu to him, anyway? Tarzan had asked himself the question time-and-again. In the pit. Now tied opposite to him against a column in this Hall of Doom. Nothing, he’d told himself. Repeatedly. Manu meant nothing at all.

Yet the human being in Tarzan could not rest, he knew what Manu did not know and Tarzan could not just dismiss his plight from his mind, Manu’s behaviour was blindly skittering downhill towards disaster. Yet there seemed to be nothing Tarzan could do to make this man realise. He kept glancing over to his enforced companion wondering what he could do to stop this abuse.

On the other hand, he suspected all this treatment was meant really for him, any reaction from himself might only make things worse. He shuddered for Manu’s sheer stupidity. Every look Manu shot over at La betrayed a belief he could still be able to exercise some control. Tarzan had tried, Manu just had not listened, he still refused to accept what he was getting himself into.

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Ch.10a

“What do you do with a dog that does not obey?”

Tarzan jumped at the oddity of the question, his thoughts had been elsewhere. La’s question was directed to the man she obsessed about. Although La stood directly in front of Manu, her hands stroking at chest made even tauter, more etched and pumped-up by the severe tensions commanding his body. Assessing the signs of strain visibly written on Manu’s face. Ignoring the unmissable display down in Manu’s throbbing groin that was being forced on him. Stroking at Manu’s nerve-pumped-up chest but the question was directed somewhere else.

Tarzan did not reply. Though he knew the reference was more about him.

“An obstinate beast? What do you do to bend it to your will?”

It was. Tarzan knew exactly she was talking about him.

Manu’s eyes had turned on her at the question. A slight flagging in his self-confidence was being tickled by the acute discomfort that had hold of his crutch. He knew such weakness had to be overcome. Especially in front of a woman. Particularly with a woman like this who needed to learn her place. That aching hardness was sending prickling shimmers down his legs and trembled in his arms but he fixed a manly gaze that told La he was the man to meet any such challenge. And when he did have her where he wanted, he’d unload all this intolerable tension straight back on her. His torso trembled slightly at the feel of her hands on him, stroking over his muscled form, taking in the impressive power trapped against the pillar. She could not fail to be impressed by what her fingertips told her. All that muscular power, all that vibrant sex in one manly package. Taking himself deliberately in charge, Manu was forcing himself to breathe deep and slow. To keep impressing, to keep in control. To stay in charge of the sexual tension that was vibrating strongly throughout his entire muscled frame. Flooding his own being with a manly strength that she was going to just love. So above all, to try and show he was man enough to manage the achings in his crutch with which she was testing him. Bring it on, girl, I’m your man.

Though deep down he was becoming aware that such overpowering feelings were beginning to undermine his strength of mind. He was rock-hard. And not pleasantly so either. He wasn’t fully in charge of these feelings he realised, he did not carry this kind of manliness with pride. It was being forced on him. But he wasn’t the man to show any doubts. This was her challenge, so be it. The pressure was heavy, its force bore down on his self-esteem, it threatened to wear down his strength of purpose like a heavy crushing stone. But he’d take it - till he had her wrapped around him. He could feel his cum-swollen balls were pulled up uncomfortably hard against the solidity of his cock. He was hard and it hurt. It throbbed - achingly so. But he was Manu, a warrior to his core, it was as a fighter he’d respond.

Down-below he knew himself to be on the edge of exploding but could not afford to. Dared not. Needed to but should not. A whimper of helplessness was dangerously close to tottering on the tip of his tongue. The pain was physical. The need was mental. Manu feared he might be losing things. Losing charge of his manly confidence. Losing control of his manly seed. Deep-down moans of frustrated manful urges had him quivering on the brink of letting go. He was standing nearly upright down below, visibly throbbing. He drew in a deep calming breath down in front of this temptress, for her he threw a brave look to his eyes. Damned if he wasn’t going to bowl her over with the power of manhood that throbbed in him. Knowing also that inside he was fighting hard to suppress the lowly moan of aching need that welled strong in his chest.

He saw La’s eyes dropped to his stomach. Now that was positive, there she could fail to be impressed. He could almost feel the touch of her hands on the etched power pulled in tight there by the burning aching lower down. But somehow that nagging voice of uncertainly whispered in his ear that this was no loving glance of a woman aching with desire. He was on trial. She was challenging him, she was his judge. The fingers of her gaze felt cold, calculating. Despite his determination to see this through and win, Manu felt a shiver tremble down his legs at the dispassionate look on her face. His nerves were fast reaching sexual overload. His body trembled, his frustrations were close to giving vent to a heart-felt yell.

Her eyes slitted. In disdain. For this perfectly formed male. Throwing a boner he had not wished upon himself. On a body he could not himself control. She sensed it all, experience told her all. La turned her head back to Tarzan bound to the other pillar.

“A disobedient dog, what do you do with it? A wilful animal that will not do what is expected of it? What do you do with it?” La continued.

Tarzan knew exactly these questions were about him, not Manu. But it was Manu that was going to pay for all his looks. Her eyes returned to Manu’s chest. Hard and proud, tight with strength, tauter now with straining effort to manage the bursting ache that threatened to break through the skin quivering over his straining balls.

She threw another quick look at Tarzan. No smile for him now. No softness in her eyes. Telling him of the risks he ran, warning of the dangers he faced. Reminding him of the sufferings he had endured.

Then her face returned to Manu, his features barely managing to hide his grimaces straining to keep control. Hers revealing her intent.

“You beat it”, she answered herself. “You beat it till the dog yelps”.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

10b.

Manu eyed her back, his forehead creased into a suspicious furrow.

“You whip it till it yelps”, La repeated. More to the priest standing behind Manu’s pillar than to himself.

Manu’s heart thumped in his tight chest, realised things were not going exactly to plan. Yet determined not to show he felt intimidated. Getting into bed with her was the key to escape, he had to take anything coming to get her there. Yet he was gradually beginning to realise now the extent of Tarzan’s concerns at being captured and brought back here. Maybe Manu might have reason to regret a bit some of his mockery in the darkness of their pit. Yet Manu had to face down this challenge if his plan for escape was to succeed. And maybe this was just a threat. Maybe another part to her challenge. Playing with his mind, toying with his fears

She clicked her fingers out to one side.

“Within an inch of its life. Till it knows to do as it is told”.

Manu’s eyes flashed to the side. Seeing a warrior-priest advance. Handsome, strong like all the men she surrounded herself with. His shoulders bulged strongly, the muscle there deeply striated as bowing reverently he placed his weapon in the high-priestess’s out-stretched hand. A long pliant switch the length of a man’s leg. Strips of leather plaited tight into a flexible whip. Manu suppressed a gulp. This could mean only one thing, he realised. Or was this part of the act? Playing games with his mind.

She approached. Stroking the whip-tip gently across Manu’s hard chest. His eyes stared into hers, looking strong, brave. Breathing deep, breathing slow. Readying himself for another part of this trial. Her eyes, though, were all over his front. Her gaze lashing cruelly at Manu’s ache-taut chest.

Tarzan watched them closely sensing it was not Manu she was imagining there. It was himself. It was his chest that she was tickling with the whip. If his wilfulness continued, it was his torso would know the bite. Manu’s body was being used but it was Tarzan’s wilfulness she had in mind.

“You beat it till it cringes.

She was tapping the whip lightly against the deeply etched power tight in Manu’s stomach.

Her head had turned. Looking Tarzan full in the eyes.

“Till it licks your hand begging you to stop”.

Indifference hardened her gaze. Tarzan and La. Her eyes were searching for his pliant reply. Looking for the expected gesture that would shout back at her, Never. They had a history, the two of them. Now La meant to re-write it.

“Till it obeys”.

She stood back and offered the whip back. The warrior-priest lined himself up, got his eye in. And slashed a hard stinging blow across Manu’s ribs. Manu visibly jerked under the pain. His face creased, a grunt exploded in his throat. In instinct he looked thunderous back at the high-priestess. But quickly he gathered himself as the warrior’s powerful shoulders came out of the twist and unloaded another slash across his chest. Four more braided lashes whistled through the air. Each whistling sound foretelling the smarting pain that ripped through Manu’s torso and pinned him hissing against the column.

Tarzan noticed the shocked shudders in Manu’s body. He averted his gaze from the aching erection that jerked ponderously pained off Manu’s front. Relieved for Manu when the high-priestess simply clicked her fingers to order the warrior to stop. She stood right beside Manu now, her fingers stroking the welts as the heat rose off his smarting chest.

“Till it yelps”, she hissed purposefully.

Her fingernail was flicking at Manu’s nipple. Hard from his trapped blood. Enlarged from the anger pounding through his veins. She looked at the priest once and stepped back. The whistling braiding caught Manu full on his chest. Hard leather slashed biting into his nipple. Pain slamming Manu’s head against the column. Two more crippling blows landed full on him there. Biting, stinging pains. Making his torso shake, head back pressed into the pillar, mouth gaping open in a silent yell.

“Till it begs”. La’s callous voice snapped at the air

The high-priestess said it again, this time as an order.

“Till it yelps!”

Manu saw with horror the warrior line up to the side, saw his eye full of the other nipple. Getting his eye in. Steeling himself, Manu looked down at himself. Saw his nub full and hard, standing solid off the hard ridge of his chest. Prominent, inviting. His dreaded guesses were confirmed when in taunting preparation the end of the whip was stroked against the prominent nipple. Aroused by his blood, hard with this tension, solid with his prickling nerves. He saw in the eyes of his assailant his full intent. Almost seeing the target of his nipple mirrored in those purposeful eyes. Biting on his upper lip, Manu pressed his back hard against the pillar. As if to flee. But there’d be no escape. Only his strength of will could help him now. He braced himself as the priest raised the whip above his head. Eyes centred on the erect and prominent target. Bracing himself for the stinging pain as leather cut across nerve-laden flesh.

The crack of leather bit at bare flesh. With his squirming to avoid the lash, the force sliced across the very tip of his nub. A biting tear like the teat was cut by a sharp knife. He yelped. Pain splattered itself across Manu’s face. Pain like a dagger through his eye plunged into his brain. Manu’s head slammed hard into the pillar behind. A sharp hissing gasp tore into his mouth. He cried out. A fearful eye glanced down at his chest through pain-bleary eyes. He was still there - though it felt his teat had been ripped off by a rat. A fiery welt bloomed across his chest. Red-hot embers scorched at the very pain-hard tip. Pain mounted the button that sizzled off the quivering sharpness of his muscled ridge. Head thrown back by searing pain against the gold of the pillar, in his mind Manu cursed Opar to every forest god. Pinned there motionless by shuddering pain, six stinging lashes tore down onto him, first cutting across one and then biting into the other nipple. Smarting bites threw him up on his toes, pain smacked his back into the column. Manu yelped like a whipped dog. He howled like the beaten cur La desired. Despite himself, Manu yelled. He had little movement to evade the lash. In anger he roared, in pain he yelped. His body was shaking itself up and down to release the savage stings. Cries clawed their way out of his throat like a terrified beast desperate for escape. Bouncing in his legs at the agonies flashing through every bit of his flesh. Unwanted tears had formed and trickled down his face. Unmanly tears, tears that told of his pains. Burning like someone was holding a smouldering stick to his nipple even after the whipping had stopped. Yet still Manu managed to muster the strength to defy. Sweat glistened on his shaven head as his eyes cursed this city. As his face poured out his unspoken anger and hatred. For this woman testing him. Torturing him. And for what?

But La had no eyes for this nothing. She had no ears for his shouts. She had turned to Tarzan. Tarzan had been here before, her cold gaze warned him what to expect, the apeman knew this demonstration was for him. Tarzan diverted his look to Manu, shaking in anger against his column. His eyes ablaze. Indignant, hurting. But Tarzan knew she was capable of much more. In disdain Tarzan ignored the monster’s touch on his chest, the fiend who treated life so cavalierly, with such contempt. It had happened to him, too. More. Much more. All day tested beyond human limits. Every night dragged back to her. No strength to stand, he had no strength left to fume in anger as Manu could now. Only just finding the strength to shake his head.

Unspoken words in her eyes reminded Tarzan of his fate. Her gaze reminded him of what she had had done to him before. He might have escaped her that last time. Did he really believe she’d let him desert her a fourth time? He knew her powers, he had endured her resolve. Look over at that useless whipped cur, her will told him. This is destiny. If the dog dared not to obey.

11. Gold of Opar

11a.

What an idiot to go back! What a stupid thing to do! And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned.

Tarzan had escaped Opar. Twice now. La had saved him from the sacrifice and he had got himself free. And later again he had managed to rescue Jane from Oparian capture. Free again. It was insanity to go back. Risk it a third time.

But Tarzan had to. There was an epidemic. People were dying, tiny children were being left without parents. Needlessly. An antidote was available but money was needed. And Tarzan knew where there was a secret stash of gold. Forgotten deep in the vaults of Opar. Even the people who lived around that city did not seem to know it was there. It was worth the try. He knew a secret way in. Secretly in, just as fast out. He’d get out fast, he promised himself, he did not under-estimate the risk. Tarzan was going back for that gold. To save lives, to build a future for orphaned kids.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been warned, there had been an omen, an evil omen. Even a warning that transparent Tarzan had ignored. For the sake of dying kids. He just gingerly stepped around the skeleton across his tracks, lying there as if placed there by Fate, warning him to go back. But the epidemic was killing lives, unnecessarily. Tarzan chose his duty, fired by a confidence that no harm could befall him. He knew a secret way-in. Quick in, just as quick out. The omen was ignored.

Trouble was, Tarzan was detected. A strange new breed of warrior unexpectedly surrounded him. Everyone of them as strong as himself. Overwhelmed. By sheer force. By overpowering numbers. Not attacked by a mindless sub-human horde close to the ape. Attacked by superbly built strong men. Working together, a team. Pooling their heavy muscled force, pitching it against him. Armed with clubs to back up the strength in their shoulders. Out-numbered, over-powered, beaten into submission.

And there was only one place to drag a sacrifice that had escaped the knife.

Tarzan halted his struggling with the ropes when she entered the Chamber. The effigies around the altar shone with the growing light of the sun and mocked his return. Her men waited patiently, they had snatched her prize, they had done their duty for her. Tarzan had been staring up anxiously at the sky above. The sky visible through the hole in the canopy above was still early. Time would tick by immeasurably slowly as he waited for their sun-god to appear through the hole. When the gold on which he was laid would flash in a blinding light. Unable to see against the glare, he would wait until her knife ripped him open. Heart pounding, blood turned to ice, blind with the dread thought that his death was near.

He had fought their bonds, as much to show the kind of man he was as in any vain hope that their knots were loose. But dignity dictated he showed her his courage when La appeared, he ceased his struggling as she approached. This was a fight - as muscled and resolved as any other. The power of his personal will against La’s perverse determination. Fists did not fly between them but the fight was nonetheless intense. Personal. La approached the altar where Tarzan was bound. Gliding towards him, seductively, like floating on air, it seemed to him. Her eyes only on his. But not a smile of welcome. Her face strong, enveloping him in her gaze, swallowing him. Eating him up. Things had changed.

Her hand touched Tarzan by his ankle, tickled at him there. But her eyes never left his. Not for one moment as her touch gently stroked over his skin, caressed up his leg. Tarzan did likewise, returning her look. Strong, unwavering, returning her gaze with equal resolve. Trying to ignore the effect of her fingers delicately circling over his shin, twirling sensitively in his hair there. Tarzan breathed slowly. Calmly. Yet uncomfortably aware of a tingling starting in his groin. From his nervousness, with a man’s reaction to the gentle touch of a beautiful woman stroking at willing flesh.

Above his knee, the fingers lingered stroking. Longingly, enticingly. Her eyes fully engaged on his as if she was reading his soul. Now a woman who fully knew what she was about, who knew what her body could do to a man. Without wanting this, still Tarzan felt he was responding. Without looking down at himself, keeping his gaze locked on the young girl he had made love to before, Tarzan hoped he was not yet showing. But if this went on, he would. No doubt.

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Ch.11a wrock

She did go on, stroking tenderly up the inside of his thigh. Playing lightly in the sparse ticklish hair. Sending sparks up his leg. Awakening an inevitable prickling under his loincloth. As she knew it would. But she had eyes only for his look. Tarzan took in a deep calming breath as he felt her fingers slip in underneath the leather. Crawling gently, slowly, up his leg under his only covering. His chest rose massively as he heaved in air again to calm his blood. The heat under the loincloth was rushing desperately to welcome her touch. The burgeoning strength there was surely plain for her to see. But La did not look. She had eyes only for his gaze. Her touch stopped at the hairline to his crutch. Resting there for a moment, her eyes full on him. As if she could see through his own eyes just what burned manfully within that hidden bush of his hair. Then the fingertips seemed to stroke at his skin there. Gently, almost imperceptibly. Stoking his fires, starting to close his throat with a passion for her again.

Her eyes never wavered once. Not even when a spare finger tip drifted on air and tickled lightly at his chest. Feather-light sweeps at the very tip of his nipple. Hard, eager, needy. Yet her eyes never faltered. Fully engaged on his, fully intent on reading his soul. She did not have to look, she did not have to see, she knew exactly how far he had gone. Her eager fingertips seemingly quivering on his skin within reach of his heat. But they rested there. Breathing in the nervousness of a man bound on the altar of sacrifice. Feeling with her fingertips the keen heat of a man responding to her womanly touch.

Then suddenly she turned away. Walking from the room. Leaving the sacrifice behind.

Her voice wafted over to him. Gentle but firm.

“The knife is not yet ready for him”, she intoned.

“Keep him safe”. She drifted towards the exit. “Till sunset. He has other tasks first to perform”.

From the heat blazing under his loincloth, Tarzan was left in no doubt where his duties lay.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

11b.

Just the way La had toyed with him and then walked out on him without a backward glance had been enough to set Tarzan’s thoughts racing. He had spent that waiting time under guard struggling to think things through. He’d stumbled back into this place, got caught by La’s new entourage and again she had saved him from the sacrifice. For now. She had saved him for herself. He could sense things had got worse, though. This time there was not a single sign of joy at his return, his third visit in this forgotten city. La came across as different. Visibly different. These men who served her, for example, who the hell were they?. Tarzan tried to put his finger on it, struggling to work out exactly how things had changed. He sensed it, he did not understand it. La was obviously stronger, more confident. In control of her people, in control of herself. In control of these strangely daubed men. Tangibly, totally in charge of her body.

That first time Tarzan had awoken the woman in La. But his return to rescue Jane had been another slap in the face, she was his second-best. So she had got together these men, who were they? Strong virile young warriors, La had surrounded herself with fit fighters who’d had no trouble in taking him prisoner. La had brought these young men into her life. Powerfully built, every one of them good-looking. Strong, impressive. Almost a mirror-image of Tarzan himself. As if his awakening the woman in her had driven La to people her temple with men in Tarzan’s image. Yet, with Tarzan stretched out on the altar, with her own army of virile young warriors standing around, La still had had eyes for only one. For him.

Looking at them, Tarzan could see that La could have strong sex wherever she turned. But she wanted what she could not have. Her gaze when he was helplessly pinned down on the altar had eaten him up. But no warmth, there was no anger either. Tarzan struggled to put into words the ideas swirling in his head. Her look – it had not been one of love, no caring, no human interest, there had been no rejoicing this time at the return of her lost man. Tarzan shivered, without understanding why. It had not been a look of revenge, punishing him for deserting her, for preferring Jane. La’s look had been calculating, the impenetrable stare of the snake, eyes of someone who meant to claim him. Not for his love-making was she possessing him now, she had that by the plenty, that altar room had breathed male virility, she craved more. Tarzan was sure that every one of these young warriors could match his own endeavours between her legs. That look of hers down at him pinned on her altar was as if she planned to take possession of Tarzan’s very being. All of him. Right through to his very core. He shivered at the thought. As if the way she had forced his manhood to rise to her presence was just the first sign of the way she was going to take control of him. Tarzan, the man whose very being was freedom-made-flesh was La’s to possess. Tarzan did not fully understand how things were different. Or what it meant for him. Yet it worried him. Involuntarily he shivered, aroused by a chill sense of foreboding.

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Ch.11b Sun temple

His arms were bound behind him when they brought him back into her presence. Authoritatively, showing a new confidence, La dismissed her men, knowing they would stay on full alert outside. They were attentive to her every whim, these warrior priests. One cry and they’d burst in the room. Tarzan was left inside with only La and her hand-maidens. They’d stripped off for him, deliberately, provocatively, in order to arouse him. Their nakedness thrust seductively against him to provoke his manly passions. To prime his emotions for the ministrations of their mistress. Even bound as he was, Tarzan could have thrown them off. But what was the point? La would only have summoned the men. Better to submit to the roaming hands of her women, taking their seductive hold on the man their mistress claimed.

The charge in the room was intense, it couldn’t be missed. Seduction seemed to weigh heavy in the air making it hard to breathe. Tarzan was bound, in the presence of a beautiful woman to whom he had once felt close. In the grip of more naked women working on his helpless physique to arouse him with their touch. She wanted him, they’d give him her. This was no innocent girl whose eyes were first opened by his love-making. La had grown. From young woman to fully matured woman. A woman in charge of herself. A woman in charge of her world. A woman who knew what she was about.

Every glance La gave him said she was going to take him, not make love to him. Take him. Many times he had made love to her, in those reckless more innocent days when he’d owed her his life. La was indeed beautiful, her presence was bewitching, alluring. Her eyes seemed intent on seducing his very being even from across the room. So why his hesitation? And her hand-maidens were no naïve virgins either. The women who gripped at his arms were beautiful too. And bold. They were naked, consciously so. Uninhibited. They were knowledgeable, they knew what to do with their bodies, they knew exactly where to slide their fingers, how to use their hands. To excite him, how to arouse him. For her. To get his male body ready to give itself up to their priestess. To arouse his manly interest, to engorge his male flesh for their La. So why did he resist?

Tarzan felt his blood beating, a tightness in his breath. Aware of the unwelcome response his male body was being made to give. He could easily have burst free of these women-holding him but there was only one way out, through those male fanatics. The women had their arms wrapped around his own but these women guards seemed to have countless hands. They were everywhere. Seductively stroking across his taut stomach. A tongue flicking at a nipple. Fingertip-light fondling up the inside of his thigh. No sophistication, no demureness. Their job was to get him hard. For La. As she watched. Dispassionately. He was ordered to respond to her command. As she observed intently the progress his feeble male body was making for her. Commanded to get hard for her. His reaction was inevitable, there was no stopping what was happening. After all, it was the male animal in Tarzan that had once inflamed La’s desires.

A male beast whose eyes tried not to stare at the sight of La undressing herself slowly for him. Seductively slowly. Knowingly enticing his eyes. Knowing his eyes would obey as she unrobed herself. And through his eyes she was arousing the rest of the male beast. Her tantalising hands playing at her shoulders, caressing gently at the fabric that still kept her bare beauty secreted from his gaze, playing with the conflict in his beating chest. Eyes only for him, telling him through her gestures she was going to reveal herself, want-it-or-not, his body was going to get what its reluctant desires craved. He’d buy that sight of her naked with the strengthening of his disloyal flesh. Seductively her long-lingering gestures were temptingly inviting his eyes to the prospect when once she chose to slip the garment off her silken shoulders.

There was little chance resisting his body’s response. La was an incredible beauty, even just looking at her face. And this new La had learned new skills, she knew exactly how to use her body. Even fully clothed she knew how portray herself to him as if she was already naked. Like he had seen her, like he remembered her in those heady days of wild lovemaking. Every graceful move of her feline body was now aimed to goad the desire in Tarzan’s loins, every slight move intended to make his knees go weak. Her lips promised him everything, she could see from his weakening resolve just what he desired. He was a man, Tarzan was weak, she could see from the strengthening determination under that minimal covering he could not resist. Tantalising him, playing with his growing desires at the prospect she proffered when more of her beauty was unfolded, the promise sparking in the air was like a crackling charge before the storm. To a man in his prime she was dynamite. To a man in his full prime she was irresistible. Tarzan knew she was appealing to a manly weaknesses, in his mind he knew his body was being mis-used. But still his flesh was rushing onwards, hard to resist.

And when she shrugged her shoulders and found the shroud slipping seductively slowly down her breasts, Tarzan’s reluctant senses nevertheless thought his heart would stop. Inch-by-tiny-inch. Tantalisingly slowly revealing herself. Until seductively she managed to halt its fall. Just at the end of her breasts. Denying him a view of how excited she herself had become. Tarzan’s heart pounded for the tantalising sight, an involuntary tongue licked at a lip. The male in Tarzan’s eyes were centred on the tautness of her breasts. Strongly muscled, tight, yet softly alluring. Making his tongue salivate at the sight. wishing his hands were free. Craving for her approach so that his lips could excite her interest in what he too had to offer. Uninhibited, she was offering him the pleasures for him to take. Unself-conscious, her hands stroked seductively at herself, caressed the firmness of a breast. Allowing his thoughts to sense the promise offered to the tips of his own fingers. Sense their silkiness on his tongue. The hardness of desire in her nipple playing on his lips. Taking pleasure at the sight of her. Visibly ready for her at the tops of his legs.

La touched at the bed. She had lowered herself to offer Tarzan that temptation. And then she had tapped on it to invite Tarzan to join her. The swelling under his loincloth knew exactly what was the right thing to do. But the thinking man in Tarzan was not stupid. His body was massively tempted. But his head knew exactly what was going on here. Entrapment. Enslavement of the soul. His freedom at risk, entrapment for his sorely tempted soul.

12. Powers of persuasion

12.

Tarzan was giving up on the man, he was a walking disaster. For himself. And for Tarzan’s relations with La. He had tried to make clear to Manu the dangers they were dealing with. But even as that muscular torso trembled in stinging pains against the opposite column Tarzan could see the man had too smart an image of himself for his own good. He wasn’t short on leery self-confidence about his way with women. But he’d never met a La. Even after she’d had his tension-pumped nipples lashed, Manu still seemed to think he was in with a chance. He’d throw her a cheeky half-wink. Just seconds before another slash across his pain-erect nipple slammed Manu back gasping into the column. Little did he realise this might just be the start.

Maybe Tarzan should have told him more, maybe he should have frightened Manu more. About how La had brutally mis-treated Tarzan that last time in Opar. In the darkness of the pit, Tarzan had mentioned the “persuasions”. He had alluded to something of what he had endured when he had fallen into Opar’s hands that third time. But Tarzan had not told Manu all. Maybe it was simply unfathomable to make clear to someone else why he had kept rejecting La. Even to himself, even to Tarzan his stubbornness might seem fool-hardy, -- considering what she had made him endure. But gut-instinct had always told him he was right. Repeatedly, stubbornly, rejecting her with determination. Despite knowing the circumstances. Dragged back to her after a day’s brutalisation of his body, after a relentless attack against the strength of Tarzan’s will, he had still managed to tell La, No.. Perhaps not exactly understanding why himself, acting more on animal instinct. His guts told him that was right. Despite knowing the “persuasions” had to continue. Maybe that was why he hadn’t told Manu what had gone on that last time. Maybe there was something too in not wanting to confess to another brave warrior just how close the legend of the jungle had been brought to breaking down.

Tarzan winced at another biting pain that tore off Manu’s nipple and shot with piercing arrows through his trapped torso. Manu was getting his first taste of what La was about, not a pretty sight. Anger flared in Manu’s face, sweat trickled off his head. But in-between each stinging lash, he caught himself, he threw back a challenging glare at La as if to say, bring-it-on! The fool, Tarzan cringed for Manu, if only he knew.

Tarzan’s own resistance towards La’s temptations was not really only because he had found his soulmate in Jane. It was just as much the chilling gut-feeling that Tarzan would never again be free. In sadistic response, La had kept upping the stakes, she craved everything, she aimed to possess him. Tarzan sensed she meant to swallow him whole, there would be no free human being called Tarzan remaining any more. Here today, as she had Manu lashed, Tarzan knew La did not prize Manu, she was using his pains to remind Tarzan of what had gone before. And what was going to happen to him again.

Eventually, that last time, La had lost patience. She had heard enough of Tarzan’s rejections, she handed Tarzan over to her men. And ordered meaningfully that he be made to pay for every single rebuttal. On his flesh, with his pain. Tarzan had then learned the skills of these men. Her daubed warriors. Tarzan had learned their unaccountable devotion to fulfil her every whim. That unbearable last time when she had set out to plumb the depths of Tarzan’s obstinate spirit.

True, Tarzan had not told Manu everything. Not about that. Hardly anything about the depths to which he had been made to sink at all.

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She snarled, eyes slitted. Burning anger into his face as she issued her orders. She had done everything to tempt him. Stripped herself naked for him, seduced him, degraded herself. But he’d defiantly thrown her efforts back in her face.

“Bring him back at sunset. Deal with him. Every day till he agrees”, she had snapped at her priests.

“Let him know what it means to defy my will”.

Tarzan’s rejection of La had been more motivated by instinct. He’d have found it hard to put into words why he was refusing the wiles of a woman this beautiful. On the surface, it seemed all it took was to get into bed with her, to accept the offer of her flesh, win her over like he had before. But instinct told him No. He wanted nothing of it, he wanted out. La’s cravings went further, he sensed. She wanted all. This was no one-off. Not a good tumble in her bed, not a brief night of passion and a short good-bye, the matter over. This was about life, his life, his destiny. She was not taking him as a mate, she was taking a slave. Not even that, she was taking him as something she owned. Her toy, her plaything, her object. As something to use. An animal to bring out of its cage when she felt like tormenting it. This was the end of freedom, the end of free choice. The end of him as a free man. More than his body, in her fixation she craved Tarzan’s soul. For ever.

She had her choice of men. La had created this warrior-clan, men just as impressive as himself. Good-looking, well-built, virile every one. Dedicated to her, forbidden to go with any woman except her. She bedded them, as often as she felt like it, not short of choice. But for months she had craved only one man. And stupidly he had walked back in. Straight into her clutches.

He had refused her temptations, his body had reacted but his mind had won over. She had stripped herself naked for him, still he did not want to know. She was incensed, she had slapped at him, she had scratched at him like a wild cat. She had called back in her priests, she had handed him over to them.

“Let him know the powers of persuasion of the woman he denies”, La ordered as the priests led him away.

“I’ll have you, Tarzan. You will be mine, body and soul”. No longer in the mood for his obstinacy. The now harsh tones of her voice pursued Tarzan as he was jostled out into the sun.

“It is only a matter of time”, her snarls snapped viciously at his heels.

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They went easy on him at first, these men were dedicated to her service. Relatively. More a kind of warning of what more might come. When she ordered Tarzan to be persuaded, they would stop at nothing till she got what she craved. They’d give her that, whatever it took. That was what they lived for, her fanatics. But that first day, they let him off with something like a warning.

If it was his body she desired, they’d give her that. In one piece. Unmarked, unflawed, with no a single blemish. If it was his mind bent to her will that she craved. She’d have that. Submissive, broken, bent willing to her capricious will. If she wanted the fire of his soul, they’d offer her that. And if she’d order his death, that was hers to command.

There were no beatings here like Bannerman. Weeks before the German brute had brutalised Tarzan. It had taken days before Tarzan could move without grimacing at the pain. La’s fanatics would not beat him up. No cudgels, no whips. It was Tarzan’s will she wished to see broken, not his body. She’d expect Tarzan pristine, unmarked. Their assault on him was all about pain. Grinding, gnawing, forceful aching pain. Pain to wear him down. Pain to grind that arrogant defiance out of his mortal being. Pain to leave only the physical husk, the spirit of the man beaten and broken, submissive. Hard-faced pain that would continuously eat away at his soul till it could bear no more. Ground down.

And it was about turning up the heat. Sweat-sweltering, flesh-scorching, will-weakening heat. They invoked the wrath the Flaming God.

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Ch.12a wrock low cross

A crossbar was waiting out in the harshness of the sunlight for him. He offered resistance as they forced his back into the upright, more as a token of his strength of will than a hope to break free. But his arms were quickly out-stretched and roped to the thick crossbar. He yanked against the loops around his wrists. But he knew La by now, he knew these men would hold him there to suffer her displeasure.

They left him. They trapped under the glare of the mid-day sun. They left him to weaken, to dry out, to suffer. They left him under the evil eye of the Flaming God. Left Tarzan to endure a god’s anger at rejecting his priestess. They left him to wither and dry out. His stomach stretching as he weakened. The chest straining as his legs sagged. Skin scorching under the glare of their god. His brain turning to dust as the deity burned him up.

Cruelly when he was parched, when Tarzan could no longer find the strength to stand, they came back to him. Just when his body was drained of strength, they showed him more of what they had in store for him, - if he did not give way to La. They found him hanging off the crossbar, head collapsed to his sweat-encrusted chest. Knees collapsed and strain dragging every last vestige of strength-of-mind out of Tarzan’s shoulders and arms. They lifted him, They hooked up his feet, lifted his legs off the hard scorched earth. They hung his body. Shattered already, drained of strength now, he was suspended off his burning ache-shrieking shoulders. The onset of pain was instant. The grinding aches scrawled their jagged fingers nails through exhausted muscle. Her men watched him struggling to breathe. Tarzan fell faint with pain. Light-headed from lack of air. They saw him try to push on legs emptied of strength by the heat in a vain effort to draw breath. They saw soul-crippling pain grind cruelly at his being. Weakened by hunger, parched with thirst. Tortured by the ferocity of a sun-god.

When the sun was down, they had to drag him. Not a fist had flown, not a punch had landed. Yet his famed strength was broken into total collapse. His tormented body refused to cooperate, Tarzan could not walk. They dragged him, they hauled him back into La’s presence hanging off his tortured arms. He was in no fit state even to lift his head when she demanded his reply. A priest had to do it for him pulling up his face towards her by Tarzan’s exhaustion-caked hair. Tarzan had no words for her. He had no strength. His body was severely drained by the ferocity of their sun-god and the evil stretch off their cross of pain. But Tarzan’s whole being still gave back the answer. No.

La stared back at him dispassionately. His cycle of enduring pain would only start again.

13. Flaming god

13a.

Not for the first time in his life was he being staked out. Under the glare of the sun. And today it was the third time that they had forced his stubborn back to the upright and roped out his arms. Tarzan had respect for nature, he understood its forces. And they did too. And how to capture its powers and turn it on Tarzan’s obdurate will. It was to be expected that they’d call upon that cruel power to punish him. They worshipped the sun, after all. It had been on the altar of the Flaming God from which La had rescued him that first time. And it was to their god that her priests had turned for divine help. Invoked his divine aid to get this prisoner to bend his truculent mind to her single-minded will. And to remind his frail mortal soul of the might he was setting himself against. This day Tarzan was to be forced to face the full wrath of the stern godhead and be made to shudder at the power arraigned against him.

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Ch.13a wrock gods’ heat

Again he had resisted as they bound his arms over the crossbar. He gave them his best “Don’t mess with me look” as they struggled with him across the walled courtyard. But he’d learned by now, these men had now choice. She had given her orders, she had commanded them. It was more than their lives were worth not to obey.

Two days already his body had been put to this ordeal. As always, it was one against a dozen, though. A dozen men equally fit and strong, a dozen men binding him to La’s will. His struggles were a token, more a show of the manner of man they were dealing with than with any hope to resist their collective force. Still, though, he forced his strength into making a move at them, wrenching an arm free, fist flying. Making a warrior flinch away. But rapidly subdued by superior numbers and forced with his back to the upright. Tarzan knew what was coming, he knew what this day would bring. His guts knotted at the thought of what torments the rest of the day would throw at him again, having to steel himself against the dread that threatened to drag down his resolve to see this out.

Bound to the cross, pinned out in front of that fearsome disc of gold. The mere sight of it turned his guts to water remembering its devastating power to suck him dry of his legendary strength. His arms were forced out to the side, his elbows crooked over the back of a thick cross-member and his wrists roped behind the bar. Bravely he stared back at them in defiance when their job was done. Conscious that the lift of his arms emphasised the strength of his chest, pulled in his waist and gave them back the full power in his chiselled stomach. His manly physique backed up determined looks. A powerful spirit of defiance swelled in his chest and gave back the word that he’d not give in. Whatever they did. Yet conscious too of the power from above they had turned against him the previous day.

He had endured this torture twice already. Even his well-tanned skin scorched under the ferocity of the glare. In the bleakness of his cell overnight, his back burned like tossed in the flames. That evil disc of gold caught every fierce ray of the sun and reflected it agonisingly at his captive flesh. At night, Tarzan burned like in a fever, Every move he made in his sleep turned him back to the inferno that was his reality. He was exhausted from the sun draining the life-force out of him. He was already exhausted from lack of sleep and the burning fever of his exhausted nerves. And here he was again. On the cross, the disc still dull, the sun not high enough to be caught and trained on his already stinging flesh. In his heart-of-hearts Tarzan was wondering how much longer this could go on. La was not going to give up. So there seemed to be only one answer for him. Yet he knew that was no choice. He was going to deny La. And yet that could only mean he would be repeatedly roped here like this. Till their Flaming God had burn his resistance into dust at his feet.

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Ch.13a wrock suffering

In protest at some unusual move, Tarzan shook his head. From behind he felt hands fumbling in his long hair. Pulling it back and tying it together in the nape of his neck. Suddenly a hand on his skull pulled back his head and forced his neck backwards over the crossbar making him stare up at the sky. When the hand released Tarzan’s head, it was trapped. Forced to stare upwards by the thong bound in his hair. Forced to stare into the face of the god lined up against his human truculence. Forced to stare into the harsh cruelty that was to beat down on him from above. Forced to contemplate the awesome power of their Flaming God ranged against his mere human force.

13b.

Another day of horror dawned. Even as Tarzan willed his sleep-deprived body to take more rest, he heard their footsteps approaching. Knowing the ordeals that awaited him, knowing she’d not give up till he broke. Wondering himself in his blackest moments when that dread day might come. Day after day they came and “persuaded” him. Appearing in his blackened cell like some fiend, grabbing cruelly at him snatching his struggling being from its sleep of the utterly exhausted. Water only, no food. Days of torture and punishment to his body already. He could not remember when last food had passed his lips. Starved into submission. Yet forced into endless torment enduring their weakening tortures. Suffering under the blistering cruelty of their god all their body-crippling days. They came for him every dawn, finding him exhausted. Hauling him up, over-strained muscles screaming at the sudden movement. Taken out to endure another day of hideous suffering. On the cross. Or staked-out spread-eagled. Given enough water to keep him alive, just. When he passed out, they’d dribble water on his parched lips. Survival instinct would bring him round. The leathery tongue slaking out ponderously slowly. The cracked lips weakly awakened by the promise of water, by the hope of life. And the grinding aches in every abused joint that was being cruelly tortured were yanked back into living agony from the half-life of the near-dead.

They aimed to weaken him, physically. Cripple his strength, turn his famed physique into a husk of its former self. They aimed to torture him, mentally. Recruiting his physical weakness to do battle with his strength of mind. To overcome his mental stubbornness with the creeping feebleness of his body. The head no longer able to think for itself, depleted of all resolve. Till his faltering enfeebled body broke down and gave their La his subjugated Yes.

But day-after-long Tarzan-suffering-day La was losing patience at his stubbornness. She was not used to be kept waiting. Indignant at his continued offence. When she disdainfully dismissed Tarzan after the third day of torment, she ordered her men to up the pain. There was still that one place where all men were vulnerable, she warned Tarzan. Tarzan too was a mere male. She gave instructions to attack him, wherever, whatever it took to remind him of whom he was dealing with. Her priests knew what to do. She expected Tarzan to remain whole, intact, able to perform to her demands. But she wanted his subjugated will. From personal experience her loyal fanatics knew exactly what to do. She had commanded it done against them too.

It had been early morning when again they had bound him there to that cross. The heat built up as the sun rose and glared down into his truculent face. Forced to stare up into the incensed face of their god, Tarzan knew what to expect, he knew what the dreaded day would bring. The temperature, it seemed, was today even more intense. As if the Flaming god too had lost patience. As if he had determined this ordeal today should be the apeman’s last. This was the day the pig-headed mortal would crack. The sweat started in Tarzan’s hair, it pearled on his forehead. Trickles down his back turned to a stream. Stinging at sore flesh. From behind, the disc threw back the light, scorched his back, burned unbearable torments onto already agonised flesh. Trickles beaded around his temples and annoying dribbled around his face. Heat burned fiercely at his shoulders, deep-tanned skin on his strong chest reddened and scorched. A thick sheen of salty sweat clung to pained flesh and stung. Down his strong legs annoying trickles of his life-force tickled as the sun-god drained his manly strength out of him.

By the time the sun glared viciously straight down in his face from overhead, Tarzan had been standing for hours, weakening. Sucked dry by a ferocious heat. No food for days, no water for hours. Strength withering under the ferocity of this heat. Tongue like leather, brain on fire. His breathing was slow and heavy, his legs felt weak, gave in and sagged, stretching muscle, straining his torso. His own creeping weakness further crippling himself. Tarzan drifted in and out of tortured consciousness. Always slapped back to his agonised reality, though, whenever he drifted off. Never allowed to forget the might of the evil force above arraigned again his mortal will.

Tarzan had faced such force before, he’d been weakened, dried out to a shell. He knew he’d recover, given water, allowed food, provided with the chance to rest. This was not to be fatal, La did not want him dead. He’d survived such tortures before, he’d have to survive this day. But La’s will was forceful, this punishing routine was being viciously sustained, driving his body beyond human endurance. Trembling with weakness, shivering as he fought back his anxieties, Tarzan prayed they would never get to him like this, not enough to make him say Yes.

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Ch.13b wrock dragged before La

Yet when they dragged him before her, it was no bodily Tarzan that told her No. His head reeled from exhaustion, there was no conscious thought in the whole of his brain. His near-unconscious body moaned in long tortured suffering as his collapsed frame was hauled up to her chambers. Arms inhumanely abused for hours shrieked, shoulders that could take no more were further tormented as jarring they dragged him up the steps. Sharp cries of a beast driven beyond endurance broke ragged in his chest as his legs jarred up the stone stairs to face La.

Nothing of the famed strength of Tarzan remained in that broken torso that was jerked and jolted into her presence. Nothing penetrated his vision as her men dragged into their priestess standing imperious demanding his reply. A moan of relief broke out when they dropped him to his knees before her, her men having to hold him up as his broken torso threatened to collapse. Tarzan was oblivious to her presence. His chest laboured in exhausted heaving breaths as his sub-conscious being sought to find some means to survive. His head rocked downwards in rhythm to his laboured breath. There was nothing of the conscious Tarzan that told her No. It was the very core of his being that shook his head feebly. It was his forceful inner self that dictated he would rather die.

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13c.

Tarzan knew his strength of mind. He knew the power of manly fortitude that burned in a determined man’s chest. But so did his captors. They were crippling him. Physically - with no food, with inhuman torments against his strength, parching his body, parching his soul. They came regularly to check on his state. Only to increase his pains. To slap him back to attentiveness, to bring him back with a groan to despair at how much of his famed strength their godhead had sucked out from him. Hands swiped at the thick coating of salt that powdered his chest. Mere finger tips that brushed at him. But like sandpaper fingers brushed at sun-scorched flesh and brought a twisted hiss of desolation to his lips, stinging skin that tore a grimace of agony across his tortured features. There was no disguising his pains, there was no hiding his sufferings.

At the height of the day, they came for him again. They found him, breathing heavy, every laboured heave of his chest coming husky-voiced with the torment of his tortured soul. Encouraged, they appealed to their god for more of sacred assistance. Unable to see what they were doing, no strength to resist, Tarzan could offer only groaned protests at the firm hands groping at his ankles. Weakened in a body reeling from never-ending punishment, his head spinning under the harsh treatment by their cruel sun, he’d not been able to fight them off. He suddenly groaned out loudly at the strain that pulled painfully on his arms. He cried out in protest at the tugging pains that tore at his armpits. They had lifted his feet off the ground. They’d suspended his legs off pegs driven into the upright to this cross. Dragging pains of insufferable torment scratched crippling aches across the breadth of his once-powerful chest. Tarzan, at the limits of human suffering, tried gritting his teeth into the wrenching aches that were stretched across his body from elbow to elbow. Adding devastating agonies to an already crippled torso. Impossible to contain his groans as he stared upwards into the smirking face of his merciless tormentor, the evil god in an unremitting sky. Nature’s torturer sneering down at his frail attempts to cope with these fresh attacks on his exhausted mortality.

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Ch.13c wrock suspended

Through the gnawing aches pulling inhuman pains out of his chest, through a thick haze of yellow suffering, even weakened into near-unconsciousness Tarzan slowly became aware of a fearsome straining growing in his stomach. The pull on his arms was heaving his lungs high into his chest. Yet the downward pull of muscled legs stretched his scorched stomach down. His upturned face was twisted into painful grimaces as shattered muscle was drawn in opposite directions. A growing torture that was stretching powerful muscle on the rack of his own weight. Pain was seeping off his skin and eating away through to his very guts. Its panther-like claws tearing at the flesh of his tormented soul.

And a savage sun sneered sadistically at this show of mortal weakness.

Suddenly Tarzan realised he couldn’t breathe. In panic. He was going faint, he was blacking out. Tarzan was choking. Survival instinct screamed for attention. A dying brain shrieked at Tarzan to save himself. Pushing down on his legs, tensing into mighty muscled thighs Tarzan relieved the stretch on his stomach, eased the grip crushing on his lungs and gasped in air. Loud manful gulps of life-restoring air filled his chest. Desperate gulps frantic grabbing for life, desperate gasps scrabbling to survive. The pull on his hair stopped him from lifting himself fully up but straining he could bend himself into a backward twisted bow. Chest thrust forward in a pain-warped arc, Tarzan noisily gulped for deep restoring gasps of life. Grasping at life, burning for air.

But he had been continuously weakened, the strength in the mighty-muscled thighs on was no longer there. He was soon quivering with the strain. Quickly his weakened legs were shuddering with this effort to lift. His backward-bent torso was struggling with the pains of this unaccustomed twist. And the ropes to his ankles were adding to his torment biting viciously into thin flesh like rodents’ teeth. The effort to save himself was unbearable. Slowly Tarzan was forced to lower himself down. The perilous cycle began again. Acutely aware of the mocking laughter from the harsh godhead overhead. Intensely conscious of their Flaming God sneering down at this sign of his human frailty. A mere mortal who thought he could out-trick a vengeful deity.

The ferocity of the sun overhead seemed to increase, staring Tarzan harshly in the face. Mocking him. His flesh was on fire, scorching. His body broke with uncontrollable shudders. His brain swam, no thinking, just surviving. Hours would pass before they released him and took him back to La. He’d cycle like a man out-of-his-mind through endless torment as he passed through continuous rounds of her unremitting torture. Slowly his hold on sanity would waver in the blistering heat. Weakened by the harsh rays of a fierce god. Choked by the cruel hang off his bonds. Wavering but not permitted to pass out. Starved of food. Enfeeble by thirst. Increasingly demoralised by pain. His body was to be saturated with his own agonies, it could never find oblivion. Inhuman anguish had disabled his mind but his physical torments could find no respite.

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Ch.13c wrock twisted

There was only one sane way out of this. He had to accept his fate. His alternative was to be confronted by the daily prospect of enduring a never-ending nightmare under the glare of her god. Whatever thinking power there was left in his brain told him that was what he had to do when they came for him that night. Give in to her. Could he again give her a No? And face this slow agony all over again? Every instinct in his tortured frame knew what was right. There was no way else to survive. But survive he would, she’d order it, her men would make him. Death was the only escape and she’d not order that. Would he dare this night to face her and say No? Would he be able? Would he have the mortal strength to face more of the same?

They’d come for him as the disc was losing its crippling power. He was conscious but only just. Carelessly they had unhooked his feet. The slumped muscled frame of his torso came to agonised life as his feet crashed down to the hard-baked earth. Spontaneous anguish broke in his chest as his legs collapsed and his body jarred on the earth in pained muscular spasms. A knife cut through the head restraint. But he had no strength left, his head still hung in tortured exhaustion over the back of the bar.

The knife sliced through a wrist restraint throwing the pained body down, left hanging by one arm in a pained and twisted arc. Inhuman cries like some fatally wounded beast broke from the parched throat, torn up from the depths of his unbearable suffering. Animal-like groans like a man pleading, begging for mercy spilled from his mouth till the other wrist was freed and crying out he slumped down to the hard dirt. Unmoving, utterly shattered, on his side in the dirt. A mere husk of all that muscled power that still clothed his frame. Groaning like a grievously injured beast in search of a welcome death. But she’d not let this creature die. Not till La had had her way.

14. Priesthood

14a.

The man had balls, he had to admit that. Otobu observed her prisoner closely as he approached through the harsh heat. Reflected off the hard earth below, given back by the surrounding stone walls. Like in front of a furnace, the apeman hung, looking utterly drained. Another long day of persuasion, another unbroken day tortured by the heat. Groaning with every breath. Reeling with undisguisable weakness. Withering into a trace of his former strength. He had suffered for seemingly interminable days. Yet this man was stubborn. This Tarzan had balls to keep up fighting La like this. For days he had endured the Flaming God’s wrath on that cross. And yet when he’d been dragged back that last nightfall to La, barely alive this man had still found the strength to deny her what she demanded to hear. The man might be stubborn but grudgingly Otobu had to admit this Tarzan was hard, exceptionally tough, admirably determined to withstand all these days of torture he had taken. Physically, mentally taken beyond all human boundaries.

This Tarzan was determined not to give in. Yet just that task was Otobu’s duty. He had decided today this was to be the apeman’s worst if he persisted, the priestess was showing she had had enough. The torture of the cross had not been enough. Otobu had determined today would be the day he would break this Tarzan for the priestess, something more intense was needed to break that pig-headed resolve. The man was strong, - in body and in spirit. So be it. But there was only so much human flesh could take. Otobu had tried his best, for days he instructed his men, he had had them starve Tarzan. Only enough water to keep him alive. Tortured him till every sinew ached. Tormented him through every gut-wrenching screeching nerve in his body. Astonishingly the object of La’s desires still had not given in yet.

Enough, La wanted his submission. That was Otobu’s duty, to give La her every last wish. He was determined, today this stubborn Tarzan would break. Today was the day Otobu himself would earn La’s respect.

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Ch.14a wrock staked

Each limb of the apeman was suspended by rope off an upright in the ground. Hanging flat and suspended in the air, his heavy-muscled form was stretched between the four posts and was bearing down straining in every sinew to the earth. Forced to look up at his fiery tormentor in the glare of the sky, challenged to dare and out-stare the harsh deity overhead. Rope dragged him arm-and-leg out-stretched to the poles at his extremes. Hanging, every muscle straining, every sinew tortured.

The sweat had dried on him. A thick covering of white encrusted salt blotched his sun-burned chest. This Tarzan lay head-back exhausted, flat-out, draped over the supporting bar across the back of his shoulders. Seemingly unable through exhaustion to lift his head even as Otobu flicked the dried-on sweat off his straining chest. Aware yet unable to stir himself, hard muscle quivered, tortured into exhaustion under stroking fingers, Otobu thought he could almost feel the tremble of pain that trembled under the surface of the victim’s flesh. This whole torso seemed to shiver with tortured strain.

With his every visit to her, La was increasingly losing her temper with his obstinacy. This Tarzan, Otobu had determined, would not be able to walk at the end of the day. No food, little water, for days now he’d had to be dragged back to her presence. He had to be held up on his knees so he could give back his answer. She glowered imperiously as her men dragged the exhausted muscled strength the length of the hall and had to prop him up. Skin sun-scorched, chest powdered with the weakness of his manly sweat caked on his flesh. Rasping moans of a shattered beast. Yet always the same defiant answer. Always his stubbornness. Always that slap in the insulting face for La. Angry at his obstinacy, forcibly shamed by this continuous rejection of her. She could have forced herself on him, she could have had her warriors hold his recalcitrant torso down. But that was not the point. This Tarzan had to give.

Otobu viewed the man whose own actions had condemned him to La’s enduring tortures. Abandoning her. Preferring another woman. And in recent days his repeated refusals to submit to her will. Visibly powerful, remarkably strong but this apeman was obviously a fool. Human strength could not last for ever. Not under the cruel eye of the Flaming God. Mentally resolved, powerful in spirit. But not against the relentless fortitude of La’s will. Had it been worth it to insult the priestess and abandon her with the female sacrifice in his arms? The apeman was now learning what that defiant act had cost him. The brave fool had again been roasting under the vicious rays of the Flaming god since sunrise. Rope bit at the raw wrists, dug in deep, scored fiery-red burns in his flesh there. Skull slumped backwards, his body had glowed earlier with his sweat. But that had long since dried, the white crusty powder on his chest and face was evidence of the sun-god’s fierce might over Tarzan’s human strength. His body hair and eyebrows caked with salt-encrusted signs of the godhead’s strength-sapping power. A furnace of relentless savagery had roasted his skin on the outside, inside an inferno of pain had cruelly torn weakness through every fibre of his being. The powerfully built body was tight in every pained muscle, insufferable hurt was being stretched through each and every etched sinew. From head-to-toe this apeman was a single aching mass of agonised straining humanity. And yet, if only this stubborn man knew it, today’s ordeal was barely begun. Today this apeman just had to break.

The tongue struggled out slowly, almost as if it had no strength to move, as Otobu dabbed water onto the cracked lips. He trickled slowly liquid onto the mouth, allowing the prisoner chance to wet his lips. Letting this Tarzan feel the sweetness of water on his leathery tongue. Otobu was bringing the apeman back to the agony of the tortured existence he had chosen for himself. Slowly he saw the prisoner’s salt-encrusted eyelids flicker open. A blank look of total exhaustion.

Image:

Ch.14a wrock head to feet

Yet suddenly, astonishingly, this Tarzan was finding some last vestiges of strength to ease the strains out of his agonised body. As if this tortured stretching of his powerful muscle had suddenly got too much. Pressing down on the crossbar under his shoulders, Tarzan was lifting his body, hoping to ease the agony in his tortured chest. Squeezing some of the tightness of crippling cramps out of his out-stretched legs. Yet the discomfort of crushing his aching shoulders into that crossbar could not be disguised. He was paying for his hard-earned efforts. A grimace cut a betrayal of tortured pain across his features. Impressive, though, that this obdurate man could still find any such muscled strength still. Nevertheless, a groan betrayed the effort it cost him to hold himself up. And a pained grunt of pain burst free when muscle failed him and he slumped back down, shaking with an agonised groan shuddered through tortured limbs. The apeman was fatally weakened. Suddenly, unable to maintain the effort, the apeman collapsed groaning and shuddering into a crumpled slump between the four uprights that held his limbs. It was only a matter of agonised time before this pain broke him. Helped by Otobu’s next extra twist of the screw.

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14b.

Otobu could respect a man like this. The man was a fool, his hopes were in vain. But he had the guts to stand up to them. He was strong-minded enough to deny La even though he knew what the next day might bring. A fool. But a fool with guts. When they had re-captured him, he had fought with the heart of the lion. He had battled against overwhelming forces with the strength of a great ape. This man was a fighter. Otobu could admire a man who had the strength of mind to put himself through such pain. To test himself, to find himself, to plump the depths of his inner strength. Otobu too understood such manly challenges to the male identity. He too had been submitted to discovering how far he could take rigours exacted against his own body. He had had his determination and strength tested too. He knew full well that was costing the prisoner. But Otobu could not let respect undermine his duty.

His life was given to La. She demanded this Tarzan bend to her will. What she demanded, it was Otobu’s duty to give. Every night as La heard the steps of priests dragging the man’s will she desired up towards her chambers, still it seemed to Otobu she longingly prayed he’d say Yes. And every night this ape dashed her hopes. Another rejection. The pain of rejection stabbing her will like a sharp knife.

Day-after-day of rejection and offence, La was losing patience at his stubbornness. Indignant at his continued wilfulness. When she had disdainfully dismissed Tarzan after yesterday’s torment, she ordered Otobu to up the pain. There was still that one place where all men were vulnerable, she reminded him. Tarzan too was a mere male. If necessary, they knew what to do, she had snapped. She gave instructions to break his wilfulness whatever it took. Her priests knew, they knew what to do. They also knew what she had neglected to express. She expected Tarzan to remain whole, intact, able to perform to her demands. Woe betide them if any of their actions meant the apeman could not perform for her. But without doubt she had lost patience. She had instructed her men to increase the pressure. There was always that one part on the body of a man that could focus the mind on mind-crippling terror. Otobu knew what she meant. He knew just how, she had had it done to him too. From personal experience all her loyal fanatics knew exactly what she meant. It had happened to all of them at some time.

Otobu knew exactly what this Tarzan was going through. La was a cruel mistress to serve. There was not one man among her priests who had not suffered in her service in some way. For failing to please, the punishment was the cross. For them as well as this apeman. For not meeting everyone of her insatiable desires she had had Otobu stretched out - just like this. Otobu knew just how this punishment felt.

La was a harsh mistress. For disappointing the standard she demanded she tortured the men dedicated to her service. For failing to know those things she had never said. She was unpredictable, demanding. Wilful, capricious. Expected them to satisfy unquestioning the ever-changing precociousness of her whims. Expected them to know what she wanted even without her expressing her whims. Even while slaving to do his best in her bed, driving his manliness to the pinnacle of his ability for her, Otobu trembled. Fearing that even as he was driving every force in his powerful body into pleasing her, she was working up some unjust reward. They never questioned her, her loyal priests. But serving her was a fearful service. Servicing her needs was no manly pleasure. It was their task, an onerous duty, they feared even in performance that their very best might never be enough. And they never knew why.

Otobu himself had hung in this way, he too had endured what this Tarzan was suffering. Each foot stretched out to its upright, tight rope biting at each ankle. Burning pains eating away at tortured flesh as it bore his own strongly-muscled weight. Pain stretched though every sinew, exhaustion alive in every sinew. And for what? Otobu never knew. He’d certainly never thought to ask. Flesh roasting under the vicious sun. Strength deserting him as he groaned through the never-ending hours of torture. Strength of mind abandoning him as agony gnawed away at his soul. Just like her victim here now.

For what crime Otobu had been punished, he had never learned. She had him stretched out on this frame in retribution. She was driven by her whims, she was fickle. Lying between her legs was his duty when she commanded it. But it was never a pleasure, there was always a fear his loins would disappoint. She made that clear, it was their duty. To please. She was exacting, she was capricious. It seemed she was never happier than when making the man suffer whom she had chosen to service her. As if her domination of their loins could never be enough. Yet they never questioned, they faithfully served. Humiliation was their daily fare, it would be the apeman’s too. Turning the delights to be found between a woman’s legs into a source of torment was what gave her life. Otobu sweated in nervous anxiety of her while labouring in her bed, they all did. Wondering if today the lash of her whims would fall. Wondering when he too would regret the flash of anger in her eyes. Dreading being hung out under the harsh glare of the sun-god like this. Yet he never knew when it might happen. Nor why. None of them ever knew what harm they had caused. Yet every one of her priests knew the terrible fact. La tormented men.

Straining arms stretched out to the side, biting rope gnawing at the apeman’s wrist-flesh snaked out to the uprights either side. From wrist to wrist, he ached. Pain was stretched out of every tortured sinew. Otobu knew from his own experience Tarzan’s elbows felt like they were cracking apart. In his armpits, shrieking tortures were squeezing agonies out of his bones, like horses were trying to pull his joints in two. Just like this Tarzan, Otobu too had known La’s displeasure.

Just like this Tarzan, Otobu too had roasted under the vicious eye of the Flaming God. His eyes watched the apeman, a sense of empathy yet tempered by the duty to the woman he served. Body drained of water, torso depleted of strength. Skin caked with his encrusted sweat. Mind and spirit bled of power. Otobu like this had wanted to die, he had thought he would. But like this Tarzan he had got just enough water to keep him alive. Just like this Tarzan, his spirit was not permitted to die. Not even to rest.

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Ch.14b wrock Tarzan staked out

Just like this Tarzan Otobu had felt compelled to assert his strength. Just as acutely painful discomfort ate at Tarzan’s cramped and exhausted muscle, Otobu had felt compelled to stretch out his body to explore if there was any way to escape these all-encompassing agonies. To prove to himself there was still strength in its body to come through. There wasn’t, there was no escape, no let-up to the crippling pains. The agonies were eternal, the taunting of the strength-sapping heat knew no end. Just like Otobu had desperately done, this Tarzan had pushed down on his shoulders. Shoving his powerful back muscle against the crossbar there and straightening his aching torso. Aching screaming in every bit of his body. Desperately trying to ease the gut-wrenching agonies out of cramped and pained muscle. Pressing again tortured flesh across his shoulders onto the crossbar, gritting his teeth into the pains as the cramps found another part of him to torment. And disappointed collapsing back down. Pain still wrenched out of a body that could give no more. Demoralised when his strength had defeated him, groaning in disillusionment when the truth of his weakened reality kicked him in the guts. Otobu remembered those agonies. Just like Tarzan would remember them for ever. Never wishing to return to this place again.

Back to business. Slowly Otobu’s hand had gone to the knife hanging off his belt. The loincloth was gone in two quick slices. Dropped between the outstretched thighs. Falling sweat-damp and dank to the dirt underneath.

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14c.

So lost in his private hell, the apeman did not react till he felt an alien hand pawing on his manly core. Barely aware of any human presence until his mind registered a fresh threat. Momentarily the apeman had found the strength to look at what was happening to him. Otobu had watched as with tortured effort La’s victim had raised his lead-weighted head at a hand groping in his crutch. A moan broke out with the exertions of keeping the head upright and seeing through salt-caked lids the threat of thin cord being looped around the root of his shaft. A moan of despair seeped from the depths of his soul as he realised this torment was not at an end. Only one answer could make that happen - and maybe not even then. La’s horrors could still get worse somehow. This suffering would never been at an end until he surrendered his being to La. She had ordered the apeman to be brought to his knees, that was Otobu’s duty.

For a never-ending eternity, it seemed Tarzan had blundered through the choking heat of a forest ablaze. Not even aware that he had succumbed to semi-consciousness when that blissful state claimed him for a short time. Pain ripping through every sinew of his being. Pain weakening his soul. In his delirium of weakness Tarzan would get lost in a fevered trance about his former life. His skin felt like a thousand fire-ants were crawling an biting at him, torturing his crippled spirit. The freedom to roam, - that had been the vain hope that still tormented his mind, the right to be his own man. To associate with the beasts among which he had been raised, to hunt and to be his own free man. In a crimson-hazy stupor, his tortured soul deep-down still recalled the essence that was Tarzan, re-asserting even in his delirium the core of his inner being. Free, at liberty. Yet brutal reality would reclaim him back. Back to the agonies that dragged him down to the pits of despair. His powerlessness heavy in every fibre, The threat to his weakening resolve evident with every laboured breath.

And here now he was being cruelly wrenched back to this agonised reality by threat of further torture. Man-handled at the core of his manly being. Despairing he felt cord being wound on him, his heart sank at this further indignity to his body, he shuddered at this further twist of inhumanity to bend his free spirit. That was what was at risk here. His freedom, his being. La aimed to own his very essence, his very core.

Trembling uncontrollably with the strain, moaning despite himself at the despair of further horrors, Tarzan’s feverish head reeled, unable to get a grip on what was happening to him below. A figure of eight, tight loops of thin leather biting across the root of his shaft, doubled over and circled tight around the ballsack. Numerous loops that were nipping into man-sensitive flesh, unyielding in their mean-mindedness. Numerous loops that forced his man-nuts into a tightening sack. Squeezed into an impossibly small bag till the skin could scarcely contain the bulging eggs crushed within. Bound tight onto a being that could scarcely take any more.

Otobu’s heart lifted at the moans of despair from the trapped muscled frame, that was what he wanted to hear. He understood, he himself had been here, This man too had plummeted to the depths, this day by nightfall he would break. The man was sensing the further depths of extremity to which Otobu would take him until he gave in. All that visible strength in his chest and shoulders hopelessly disabled, all that enviable power turned to crusty powder on his legs. Moans as more of his power was sucked up into the erection that was being made to stand off his tortured crutch. Vibrant aches had grown into hardened pain. Unbearable torments at the heart of everything he treasured of himself as a man. This, on top of everything else he had suffered. After all he had endlessly endured.

Otobu gripped him there, clutched at the man-power starting to reach for the sky. The apeman could scarcely manage a moan in protest at the grip. But the torso quivered betraying its fears. Otobu squeezed on that manful power bulging hot and clammy within his palm. He understood from his own experience, he knew the strength-sapping despair that filled that body. He felt the man-heat hard within his grasp. He knew the fears that La’s victim was going through, feeling his will-power escaping from him with every heartbeat. He appreciated how this Tarzan was suffering for his rejections. He’d been here himself. He knew, perhaps better than this victim, that she would stop at nothing until he relented, until this man gave himself to her. Then she’d swallow him whole. And disinterested spit out the pips.

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Ch.14c wrock Priest ties off

Full in the realisation of what this prisoner was enduring, Otobu’s eyes took in the pained muscled frame that lay stretched and trembling before him. An element of understanding, a sense of togetherness. Knowing more than this victim, knowing that this suspended torture was just the beginning. Even this added torment of a tight-bound erection would not be enough today. Tarzan would climb to even dizzier heights of suffering later this day. No relief, no reprieve, not until he faced her at sunset. He’d come back later, Otobu would be back when the nervous tension of hours of this erection had sapped strength from the apeman further. When he could scarcely breathe for the heat inside and out. When the powerfully muscled torso could scarcely find the strength to tremble with its exhaustion. And then, crippled, believing there was no further anguish in this world, Otobu would raise his torments beyond even this level of the unbearable throw. Submit him to even more of La’s agonies. He could surrender, he could beg for release now. But his agonies would not stop until she deigned to receive him. Till he fell to his knees in her chamber after sunset and relented. That was La’s deal. Even if he begged to give in to La, he’d hang there till she consent to receive him.

Otobu was here to throw everything at him, this was the day. La’s torments would return when he was at the nadir of his powers. Dragging Tarzan resolutely down to the deepest pits of human despair. So the apeman would never again dare to say No.

His eyes passed to the head. Again thrown exhausted backwards in exhaustion, the face thrust up towards the vicious sneer of the god overhead. Otobu gave La’s victim’s face a pair of stinging slaps across the cheeks. To make sure he had not drifted off. He was answered with a pained grunt, he reacted with a despairing moan. This Tarzan was awake, feeling every miniscule moment of his torment, experiencing every excruciating second of La’s persuasion. Otobu’s other hand was still gripped on the suffering strength of this enforced hard-on. The tightening cord would weaken the apeman beyond belief, torturing him beyond human endurance with his own proud manly strength. Yet for Tarzan this was only another stage down this tortured track of his suffering. He’d come back, Otobu would be back when the stubborn apeman could take no more. Back to offer another twist of the La’s screw for the apeman’s torment.

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14d.

Tarzan yelled out despairing at the added pain. His voice came cracked and agonised. Shuddering, feeling completely incapacitated by his torturers pushing up the torment to even higher insufferable levels. Just when he had plumbed the depths of every anguish in the world, he plunged to deeper desolation. Twisted and ugly, his sudden cry mirrored the dread onslaught of this extra torment. His crutch had taken this further pull. His balls had screeched at the yanking pain. Reeling, his brain, dried-out, delirious from a day of inhuman torture, could still register such threat. His innate being knew it needed the strength of purpose to fight back at the attack. But what reserves did he have left? For hours pain had been sucking away at his life-force. What could he do to protect himself? Brutality and the ugliness of intense pain had sunk into his deepest soul and he felt he had lost himself entirely. And now, off the painfully aching erection he had been throwing at the skies for a seeming eternity, someone had loaded a new merciless pain. A cock beyond-hard tortured beyond-endurance. Fear at his impotence to fight shuddered through his torso. Dread that he was indeed being beaten by La suddenly swamped Tarzan’s being.

Over the hours self-doubts had slithered back again and again. Like the constrictor crushing at the last remaining vestiges of his resolve. It wasn’t his style to admit defeat, yet these endless agonies were getting the better of him. And it seemed there would never be an end. Not till he relented, till he gave in. Nagging voices that whispered hissingly to him that he was a fool. Wheedling into his mind the temptations to give up and give in. Surrender himself to La. Was that so bad? Worse than this? This death by agony was not worth the price. Trick her, betray her, win himself time. Give in to La and await his moment of escape. Await the moment when he could plunge a vengeful knife into her heart.

But reeling with confusion and self-doubt, that moment would never come, he sensed. La would imprison his mind, she would keep his being in chains. His soul enslaved to her every whim. Drug him, ensnare him, keep him bound and guarded even as she made use of him. He was not something she loved. Not any more. He was the toy that she could not have. Once she possessed him, she’d tire of him. She’d seek other ways of getting her thrills.

A thousand such questions insidiously tortured his mind. Questioning his refusal. Mocking his self-will. Could he give in and still bide his time? But questions that were not ever fully formed. Answers that never found a home. A head in turmoil. A brain bubbling in boiling oil. Sentiments that transformed from indignant male pride into gut-wrenching despair without any transition. Stubbornness that shrieked he’d-rather-die drowned out by the mocking laughter of an evil god in the sky. This torture was his future, this was his fate. Now. Now and when this was over.

Today Otobu was determined the apeman would break. From the loop off the prisoner’s crutch, he hung the rock. A rock suspended off La’s captive by a length of cord. Any hard-fought remnants of strength left were torn away from La’s captive as the rock dropped. Resolve torn from him as the cord tore at his tortured manhood. Cord just short enough that the rock did not quite touch the earth. Yanking searing pain into the bound ballsack. Heaving down on erection-taut balls, tugging agonisingly at the hour-long strain-aching hard-on.

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Ch.14d wrock Rock

Otobu registered the victim’s tortured cry. He’d let the rock drop, a determined way to shoot his prisoner back to the pinnacle of his pain. Tarzan’s head shot up. His face cut by a hundred claws from the agonies shooting off his crutch. His body spasmed. Wild uncontrollable spasm as his legs jerked. Despair, agony, torment - all shot him tumbling mindlessly into the pit of desolation. Evidence of the inhuman force that tore at his once-tough inner resolve. Despairing shouts of pain broke out of a tortured chest, cracked moans of disbelief shot cracked from an anguished throat. Head craned to one side, shaking in disbelief at this firestorm of horror. His eyes burning at the sheer inhumanity that had a crushing hold on his physical form.

The groan as fresh torment spiralled La’s apeman down into even lower levels of pain. Every inch of him reeling from the fierce torture of the Flaming God since dawn. Arms agonisingly aching. Chest inhumanely strained in torment. Now his enforced erection under an impossible tug. Now his ballsack being wrenched from his body by the intense weight of the swinging rock.

Unless Tarzan forced his backside downwards to the earth. As his pain-driven writhings cooled, bodily instinct taught his torso to survive. Forcing his whole aching muscled body down, letting his backside strain towards the earth. Till the rock make contact with the dirt underneath, just. Yet the effort to release the agony in his crutch was paid for by more agonising strains hauled into his exhausted arms. Those exertions would only increase the burning pains of the heave on shattered chest muscle. Just when he could take no more, La’s torture pushed the apeman’s shrieking over-the-top. Trapped between the agony of his balls and the unbearable pains dragged through every muscle of his arms and chest, Tarzan hung in bodily conflict. Excruciatingly torn between the crippling pains to his chest and the agonies being wrenched out of his balls.

Otobu watched closely sensing the apeman was at the end of his endurance. The exhausted inner-man was squirming in relentless anguish, trying to find one last place in this mind-breaking torture that did not make worse the inhuman agonies he already endured. And failing. There was nowhere. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hang. Not one place at the centre of his tortured universe where pain was not unbearable.

And that torment would endure until he faced La at sunset. The apeman could scream for mercy. He could shriek out his Yes now. But she’d not receive him. He could beg, he could give up. But there’d be no reprieve till he faced La. Not till after sunset. When she deigned to give him audience. For hours more he’d be roasted into weakness. He could plead, he could give in but this torture would not stop until her appointed hour. For hours more, he’d endure an erection forced on him that now ached and throbbed unbearably. Not a thing he would ever forget. This was not his proud virile manhood being displayed, this was La’s tool of torture turned back on him. Not a moment he would ever want to know again. These hours of insufferable horror would break La’s apeman. Suspended off that insufferably unmanly and bloated crutch, there hung a rock. If he put all of his final reserves of strength, he could force his backside down and let the rock rest on the earth. The effort of saving himself from that mind-breaking ache, though, was depleting him of any last vestige of strength, breaking down his very last fragments of physical resistance through his self-induced pains. Added strains sucking dry the last vestiges of his strength.

Trouble was, Otobu knew what Tarzan yet did not know, the rock was suspended off his ballsack by wet rawhide. As it dried, it would shrink. As it shrunk, it would be impossible to keep it resting on the ground. At the point when this Tarzan was reaching the very last remnant of any human strength in his weakening body, as his mind was breaking fragment-by-fragment under the inhumanity of this punishment, the rock would be swinging free. Total agony assailing a body that had nothing left. Torture of this kind would break any human spirit, no matter how strong. Tonight Otobu would take Tarzan to her, on his knees, broken. Today pain would snap his iron will like a dry twig. Tonight Tarzan would give himself to La.

And if this apeman thought that this was as bad as it got, he did not know the half of it. If he irrationally found the strength of mind to persist in his stubbornness. Otobu remembered that terrible time when one of their priests had incurred La’s wrath. As usual, no one knew why. No one ever knew why. But he had earned her displeasure and finished up roped between these stakes. But the other way round. Face-down. It was the cruellest move any of her followers had ever known. The aches had started from the first instant. As the sun was still rising, the priest had cried out in disbelief as his legs were raised and secured. Positioned stretched out between these stakes but unbelievably looking down at the dirt. Not worthy of the sun-god’s face. The pull of his own weight against his shoulder joints. The tear of searing agony across his chest. The grinding gut-wrenching pains through his bent back.

The man was going insane with the agonies before the sun reached its height. At which time they were ordered to hang the rocks off his crutch. After they had done their duty, men left, they fled. They deserted their friend, too shocked, too torn apart by his pleadings for death.

Pain must have driven him mad. Because two days after his punishment he had fled. With what last reserves of strength he had found, he had run away. But no man ever deserted La. La bought their devotion. She owned their souls, she bought them with her horrors. She demanded it on pain of death.

She sent them to scour the land for him. They brought him back. In terror. To face his end. Sacrifice. If this apeman thought La could not find means of persuasion worse than today, if he did not know the lengths to which she would go when she demanded men submit to her will, he did not understand La.

End of Book 2

Book 3

15. Pressurised

15a.

Despairing that Manu might ever wise-up and take note of his warnings, Tarzan was again glaring across the chamber at him. Locked against a gold pillar in this Chamber of doom like himself. Yet Manu’s crutch was visibly throbbing to the tune of those tight pinching loops of cord. Even after the whipping to his chest, Manu was back at it. Sweat from his writhings off the lash glistening on his front, having got his breath back, Manu was still giving La his all. Telling her he was a man who could take such things. If that was what she was in to, Manu was her man. The fool! As if he thought this was some one-off. Some way she was testing him out, him Manu personally.

In the pit earlier Tarzan had tried to warn Manu about what these people were capable of. Of what she was capable of. He himself had suffered it, Tarzan had endured their tools of “persuasion”. On the cross, suspended between stakes. And worse. Tarzan had fought to hang on to his sanity under the affliction of so much mind-wrenching pain. But it seemed Manu’s over-wheening confidence in the irresistible charms of his manliness could not take Tarzan seriously. Manu had reduced it all down to sex. Manu had never known a woman resist his charms, he bragged, he was used to girls fighting their way to his bed-mat. But, thought Tarzan, Manu had never met a La.

How much had Tarzan told him in the darkness of their pit? Enough? How much had he held back? Tarzan had not told everything, not the worst. Not the full story of that last time when she had lost patience with him. True, he had not warned Manu of the extremes to which she had had her priests assault his manhood. Maybe, that had been wrong, to keep things back. Why he had kept silent about her tortures against him there in his groin, Tarzan did not know. Perhaps because Tarzan knew to his shame how close he had come to breaking. Anyway, it seemed Manu was in danger of finding out for himself.

How much had Manu wanted to hear of his warnings in any case? Arrogance at the power of his good looks and the attraction of his physique seemed to block his ears. Had Manu taken anything seriously?

That last dreadful time each night Tarzan had refused La. Each night they had dumped him back in his pit. No food waiting, only a bowl of water. But exhaustion had claimed him before the water bowl was in his hands. Fallen into the sleep of the dead. Body torn with pain, mind racked with exhaustion. Then waking up in the night. Shivering, shuddering. His whole body like in the grip of a fatal fever. Not from the cold. Exhaustion, a man at the end of his tether. Unable to stop himself, woken by the violence of his shakes. A body exhausted beyond human limits. And visited by the demons of self-doubt. Taunting him in his blackness at the stubbornness of his resolve. Questioning him mockingly for the obduracy of his denial. His mind twisted and tortured by their nagging doubts. Warning there was another day of merciless savagery awaiting him before the next chance came when he could nod his head and end this horror. Was it worth it? What was he about? A body racked with pain. A resolve tortured by self-doubt. Taking every last vestige of his strength of mind to face the terrors of a night that ended with more of the pitiless same.

At least Manu now seemed to be getting the message. He had stopped giving La the eye when she simply ignored him. Though Tarzan suspected it was probably too late to save himself. Pressed against that pillar with his arms strapped above his head, Manu had changed into throwing glares of annoyance at La. For failing to rise to his charms. Not a good idea either, that was bound to goad her into a response. She still stood close by Tarzan, her hands stroking seductively, goading him into arousal. As if sending the message to Manu where her interests lay. With Tarzan, Manu was merely a pawn in her vicious self-centred game. Hands fingering across the muscled tightness of Tarzan’s stomach, feeling the power trapped there at her command. A finger running up the ticklishness of his thigh. As if trying to awaken a sensation for her in his loins. But for Tarzan she was just awakening memories of the perversion of her mind. Whatever had happened to the innocent girl he first met here? The young woman who had saved him from sacrifice when the melee broke out? Now Tarzan had to admit he squirmed in her presence. His skin prickled. Not out of fear. Out of disgust. Being mauled by a woman who would stop at nothing to get what she craved. Murder, sacrifice, torture. Twisted, perverted, cruel. All to get her hands on something she had been denied. A spoilt child.

Her hands were for Tarzan, all over him, but her unwelcome attentions just directed Tarzan to divert himself to Manu. Knowing also that all these actions she was ordering done against Manu were more a warning to Tarzan, a prospect of impending punishment, reminding him of what he had suffered before. Demonstrating how this victim at the other pillar could so easily be forced in throwing a monster of a hard-on. And what she could do with it. Tarzan, too. Remember how it felt, her hands seemed to ask? Tight bound, wincingly nipping him in man-sensitive flesh. Remember how much worse it can get? Rocks dangling off him. Was that really what Tarzan craved? If she only wanted male virility, La seemed to be telling Tarzan, there was ample jutting off this man’s front. No, she could lay her hands on plenty of hard cock. La desired more.

Manu had seemed to think he could beguile her and ease himself into her bed. But there was only one thing she wanted. She had her choice of men, there were plenty of Manu look-alikes around. She was surrounded by these handsome priests who devoted the power of their loins to her and to her alone. It was not men she craved, it was what she could not have. Tarzan. He had denied her many times. He was now even more sure than ever that his rejection had completely turned her mind. She was crazy, deranged. If he gave in, if he thought he could trick her, if he gave in to her in the hope he might manage his escape, - a vain hope, he doubted that would happen. She was driven to possess what she could not have. If she had it, did he thing she’d let it go?

So what happened when she had it? What happened when he had given himself to La? When she had enslaved him to her will? Tarzan sensed she’d be like that female spider. Once her mate had impregnated her …. she’d bite off his head once he had done the job. Tarzan had seen her do it. With his own eyes, he’d known the lengths of La’s resolve.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

15b.

Amazingly the apeman had found the strength of body and mind to utter the word. Otobu would not have thought him capable. After being suspended under the harsh glare of the Flaming God all day, burning up, drying out, his aching erection tortured by a rock hanging off his agonised crutch, when released this man had not managed to find the strength to stand on his own two feet. They’d had to drag him jolting up the stone steps into her presence. Yet Tarzan had indeed managed to throw his insult back in her face.

Otobu had had the apeman taken down from the frame. Blades sliced away at the ropes on his feet. His legs collapsed in a painful slump into the dirt. The cry broke out by itself, unstoppable, the groan at more pain simply irrepressible. The knives slashed at the wrist ropes. Tarzan thudded on to his side onto the earth, pain cried out. The final straw, painfully dropped sprawling in the dirt, every nerve jolting, every fibre enflamed. Fully conscious, conscious of the totality of mind-breaking pain. Inescapable the groans of despair as the apeman lay broken in the dirt. A cry of desperation broke as they rolled him onto his back. Crippled into total exhaustion though he was, still his fearful hands in vain tried to knock away the fingers that fumbled clumsily at the tight loops of cord biting painfully into his tortured crutch. Wincing at more stabbing pains there, like a wounded animal, fearful of more hurt. He hadn’t the strength to fight back, though, when men prised his hands away. La’s defeated victim could only groan and cry out when scrabbling fingers painfully struggled with the tight knots and released his agonisingly aching erection.

They’d thrown his loincloth back on him and had had to haul the broken groaning Tarzan suspended between two warriors off his arms, feet dragging behind, all energy spent. In no fit state to walk, in no fit state to defy her will. Signs of success that they’d done the job of breaking her victim today. Lifeless, crippled, reduced to a weakling, done-in by a day of the Flaming god’s insufferable torment.

But astonishingly in her chamber, the apeman had thrown off his guards. Using them as human crutches to his broken weakness, he had hauled himself to his feet and used them to halt his stumble. Under the glare of her arrogance, he had grimaced painfully at the effort of pulling himself up tall. And, swaying with exhaustion, still he had dared answer her. From the full height of a meaninglessly futile dignity, he had looked down at her, showered her with his disdain. Through lips cracked by the fiery heat, over a leathery tongue burning with thirst, Tarzan had even managed the word. No.

Her fury had been intense. Enough. This man’s persistent defiance inflamed her rage. He was still defying her, no man did that, not any more, La commanded, her will was irresistible. This humiliation! It was she who commanded men, not the other way round. She slapped her hand viciously across his face. So hard the apeman swayed upon his exhausted legs, unbalanced, he had to be held upright. Her fingernails, in her rage, scratched animal-like at his face. Till she caught herself, till she realised she was disfiguring her prize.

Instead she turned on her priests. Accusing them of slacking. She swore revenge against them for not trying. For bringing this recalcitrant to her every night. For subjecting their priestess to this nightly abuse. La’s fury turned on their leader, Otobu, she eyed him with a fiery gaze.

There was no need to say a word. Otobu knew his fate, he knew what was meant to happen to him if this Tarzan did not break. La was whimsical, she was capricious, unpredictable. No one could judge when her vengeance would fall. She was vicious, brutal, she knew no bounds when the mood was on her. Otobu was doomed if he failed. No one knew how much time Otobu had. But he would be next. If this Tarzan did not give. So he must. Tarzan would be forced.

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Ch.15b wrock Otobu warned

La’s rage had been scathing. After the others had dragged the reeling apeman back to his cell, La had given full vent to her fury. Otobu went down on one knee. He bowed his head in submission to her command and spread his arms out, totally accepting whatever her will demanded of him. Including death. He was failing her. He expected the whiplash of her fury, He knew what he was due. His guts turned to water when the full impact of her rage smacked him like a rhino’s head. It was him or the apeman. Either one of them this night would pay the price.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

15c.

Tarzan was easy prey, he knew that. He knew there was a little strength left in him. Days of his physical power dried out of him by the sun. Today, the stakes raised. The rock dragging the last reserves out of his strength of mind out through his tortured groin. Tonight he may have faced La down. But what had he left? When the four priests dropped him over that box, he yelled. Tarzan yelled. With a pain that he had rarely known before. Like a stake had been driven up inside him. Like his crutch had been rammed into the sharpened point of a pole and his weight had driven it punching through his body. Like a sharpened stake had shot through his body, pierced his head and exploded his brain.. A scream was the only response. Tarzan’s only possible pain-driven response.

Preparations completed for the final move to break the apeman down, the two protagonists now stared back at each other. In silence. In respect. Respect by one for what agonies the other could still bestow. Respect by the other for the terrors the other had managed to endure. In other circumstances, Otobu would have found a grudging admiration for the steadfastness of this ape-man. For the way he had stood up to the ordeals. But La’s rant had threatened Otobu, time was running out for him. Tonight Tarzan would break, he had to. Otobu had had him brought from his cell to this vault as soon as things were ready. Only granted a brief chance of a rest. Tarzan had been confined to his cell. Yet only while preparations were made. A cruelly short time later Tarzan was ripped from his sleep of exhaustion.

Dumped in his cell, tiredness had crushed down on Tarzan like a heavy stone. His whole being was operating on instinct, he barely knew he had rejected La only a few moments ago. That had been his innermost self standing up in manly pride to her cruel nature. Now alone in his cell, exhaustion crushed him like a boa constrictor. Tiredness squeezed at his chest, his brain felt like it would burst. His every fibre in a powerfully muscled body yearned for sleep. Yet the squeezing power of oppression kept his spirit fighting, unable to rest, in dread realising how close he was to breaking-point. Even though above all it knew he needed rest, his mind spun in a sickening vortex. His chest screamed for relief, desperate to gasp in live-restoring air yet with only the strength for light pants. Every fibre in his being quivered for to hold on to life. It was not even aware when oblivion had kindly claimed his soul. Falling into a blissful emptiness. All too short. La’s victim was plunged deep into the sleep of the dead when Otobu’s men woke him. Only a short while after rejecting La, the exhaustion still weighed oppressively heavy like boulders on his being. Hauling Tarzan back to his pitiless reality. Preparations had been made. Her men were ready, ready at last to break his recalcitrant spirit. Finally to bend Tarzan to La’s intractable will.

Otobu had his fellow priests grab the half-dead prisoner from his cell. Shocked out of his exhausted oblivion, unable to walk, they carried him, a man to each limb. Like a dead carcase they carried the once-might jungle lord shattered and demoralised here to this dark vault. Pain cut through him like a dozen blades as they fumbled with his agony-torn torso down deeper into the vaults. Shaken by his uncontrolled spasms her men fought back the pain-driven writhings threatening to drop him from their grip. Sharp grunts of pain broke from his every fibre as unstoppable thrashings twisted his body and screwed even more pangs of shock out of his every tortured muscle. At the entrance to the vault, Otobu yanked up on the prisoner’s hair to show him the object of his imminent despair. But the apeman was beyond all reason, he’d been transported beyond being able to show any further alarm. The wooden horse awaited him, the cruel instrument of Tarzan’s final breaking.

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Ch.15c wrock Carried

Tortured beyond human endurance, weakened by their sun god for days, barely able even to think of putting up any resistance, they had no trouble in lifting their victim onto the wedge. His legs dangling down the sides, feet tied in place so he could not escape this seat of horror. Instantly Otobu saw tension jerk up every muscle in his impressive physique. Tension, pain, sudden horror at the onset of pain there carved the apeman’s every muscle into a statue worthy of a wondrous god. His hands were being bound across the red-raw wounds of his burning wrists, he was free to haul down on the rope that dangled down above his head. Pull on it to lift his day-tortured crutch off the brutally cruel edge that dug into his groin. Seated on it, the sharp edge inflaming the agonies of a day that had viciously gnawed at his tortured crutch. Those squashed nuts had been tight-bound with cord all day, bonds that had tortured the painfully aching erection that had throbbed for hours in his loins, the burning skin of his ballsack that had been racked by the weight of the rock. And now that self-same groin was dropped and mounted on this wedge. The sharp top digging into his agonised flesh, torturing his abused bones. Unstoppable grimaces were flashing in twisted contortions over his face. Grimaces of pain Tarzan could never hope to contain. His only hope was to hold himself off the edge by a pull on the rope. And he had just proved to himself what effort that took. An effort he could never manage for long.

This brutal wedge pushed the despair fighting for dominance in Tarzan’s muscled physique to the pinnacle of human suffering. Almost catapulted into insanity by this onslaught, beyond an awareness of light and dark, sub-consciously his body sought escape, cruel delirium rocked his writhing body over the vicious sharpness of the edge. Agonising pain blindly scythed at his flesh till it felt like his crutch was being cut in half. Pain shuddered through his guts, pain sliced open his chest, pain slashed down his thighs. The instinct to escape only made things worse as his every sinew squirmed to escape this crippling monstrosity between his legs. Every fibre in Tarzan’s being shrieked with discordant pain, each muscle in his body was hard-knotted in his uncontainable anguish.

Otobu looked on, with relief at the sight of such unmanageable pain. Relief for himself. By dawn, the apeman would be finished. And the next day there’d still follow another day of insufferable endurance before he was permitted to face La. No sleep this night for the apeman, no let-up for him tomorrow under the sun. Only at sunset tomorrow after another interminable day of harrowing pain, Otobu would be permitted drag him back. To La. Gratefully, the apeman would fall to his knees. Begging, this Tarzan would submit, there was no other choice. And both of them would knew it.

Otobu would have done his duty by La. His success with the apeman safeguarding his own precious life.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

15d.

The others had left. Agony was already watering Tarzan’s eyes. Again he hauled himself upward on exhausted arms to give some relief. But Otobu noticed the effort only served to convince Tarzan how weak he was. The exertion only reinforced the fact that his arms no longer had their legendary strength. As this tormentor knew full well. It was the reason he had had Tarzan mounted astride this wedge.

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Ch.15d wrock wooden horse

Otobu stood alone in this vault with his victim. A deepening gloom surrounded them both. Holding up the torch that was the only remaining source of light. A gloom that threatened both of their lives. Soon that light too would leave with himself and the apeman would be plunged into a torment as bleak as the despair that was engulfing his being. Otobu knew this Tarzan was strong, in body, in mind. He had demonstrated an iron will in resisting everything thrown at him. But tonight he was here to endure torments beyond human suffering. Already he had been weakened by the Flaming God’s torture, undermined by starvation, demoralised by the lack of any way-out of his plight. His victim had shown an admirable strength of mind, demonstrated super-human strength – of mind, of spirit, of body.

But Otobu knew this man was not stupid, either. He could sense the unease flickering in his guts. This Tarzan could feel the unbearable pain already digging into him up between his legs. That vain pull on the rope above his head had told Tarzan he no longer had it in him.

Otobu had registered the shiver of recognition in the powerfully muscled frame struggling to hold up off that edge. Feeling his confidence grow that tonight would be the apeman’s end. The man was brave, the man was tough. But he was made of human flesh. The never-ending night astride that edge would bend even the hardest will. The apeman could not keep that effort in his arms up, not after what he had endured that day. The fear must be eating away at his guts. He was nearly beaten already, this night sitting astride this wooden wedge would send him over the top. Otobu was confident he could leave assured, he’d soon be taking La the apeman’s word, Yes.

Otobu threw his victim one final glance as he stood at the door. The light of the torch caught on the glistening sweat of pain and effort shining out of the darkness. Otobu caught the shiver of exhaustion that shuddered uncontrollably through this strongly muscled frame. This Tarzan was powerfully built. But human flesh could only take so much. The human spirit had its limits and Tarzan this night would plunge screaming to its depths, Otobu thought to himself as he turned and left with his torch. Plunging the apeman into a nightmare of pain. Left to the anguished blackness of his mind. Abandoned to the screeching horrors in his soul.

The moment it was left alone in its darkness, Tarzan’s body let go its anguish. There was no stopping it. For hours it had been suppressed, in front of La’s monsters who had pushed his spirit beyond the heights of human endurance, it had held back as best it could. Now, alone and pitched into darkness, Tarzan’s body found voice. The pitiless groans seeped out of every pore. The moans of physical despair drooled over his chest like burning vomit.

Tarzan’s fighting spirit was taken by the need to hurt. In recoil at everything he had endured. The urge to punish, to take revenge. This tormentor who had just left would do. Anyone of these warriors subservient to La’s will would do. The urge to hurt – in the most painful way – it was like the need to breathe. A burning craving. To hurt, to maim, to take revenge. And the longer Tarzan was denied any chance, the more intense became the screeching drive to hurt these beasts. It did not matter if it was the last thing he did. The need to hurt had become physical. To wrap his hands around a throat and squeeze. Maybe then this agony would evaporate. Maybe then this drive for vengeance would ease.

But such thoughts could not take away the crippling agonies underneath him that flooded tears of pain to his eyes. His body shook. Tremors of anguish filled every bit of his muscled frame. Powerful legs shook, his knees tapping uncontrollably against the sides of this cruel wedge. Like shaken in a monstrous fever. Head thrown back over his trembling shoulders, his neck rocking to the discordant agonies that overwhelmed his spirit. The pain in his groin shrieked through tortured flesh and burned like red-hot embers up into his guts. In that pitch-blackness, he was on fire from the tortures in his crutch. His spirit could no longer contain the multiple screams for relief coming from every pain-centre in his tortured frame. His balls screamed, his balls were consumed by the fires of millions of screeching aches.

The smell of his own stench hung heavy in his nose. His upraised arms had no more sweat left in them, caked dry. Burned out like himself. His hair lay matted with pain hanging over his slumped face in the darkness. Unaccountably, he struggled to wipe non-existent tears from his eyes on a uselessly weak bicep. A shiver broke out. Not of the cold, of sheer nervous exhaustion. Tarzan’s strength of will plummeted to the depths. Tarzan was burning up, drowning in a viscous sea of fiery pains that welled up from his groin. Despair engulfed his nerves, dread of this nightmarish night overwhelmed his spirit. He hit rock-bottom in the torment of this insufferable torture. No escape, no reprieve. Some hope might lay in his mind collapsing in on itself under the intensity of this pain. But not for long, the burning agonies that gripped at his groin would drag him back to this discordant nightmare of disbelief.

Disorientated by pain, barely knowing he was alive, yet all too conscious of the agonies that proved he was not dead. Desperation pulled on the rope, desperation for a few moments of relief. But his once-powerful arms trembled with the effort, he could feel his hands in their bonds shaking on the rope. For a few moments he’d lift himself. But the torment screeched mocking in his head.

And later? What was all this suffering worth? Later in this endless night of torture, what happened then? When all his reserves were gone? When the famed strength of Tarzan was gone, blown out like a candle in the wind? What hope then of pulling himself up? Left only with a hopeless, unremitting, hateful grind of that edge digging into his suffering groin. Digging into tortured genital flesh. Grinding insufferable agonises into his inflamed flesh. A sob broke out. A shameful sob, yet one wrenched from the depths of his guts. A sob that mirrored the despair gripping crushingly at his soul.

Had Tarzan let La win?

+++++++++++++++++++++++

15e.

The sound of that sob bounced cruelly off the walls. It echoed around his head, mocking him. Mocking the jungle lord. Laughing at the once-famed muscled strength that thought it could vanquish all. Taunting him with his own feebleness.

Tarzan swore back in anger. Deep-down, though, he feared losing touch with reality. He was withdrawing deep inside himself into a place where he had never been before. Never wanted to be. And from which he feared he might never return. Pain was driving him mad. An inferno of white heat and screaming terrors. He sensed his body was so overloaded with messages of his suffering. Pain on the inside of him, agonies on the outside. His mind drifting irrevocably to the depths of a pit of bubbling mud into which his sanity would slowly inevitably sink.

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Ch.15e wrock hallucinating

They were all there, his foes of the past. Those he had defeated. The evil he had crushed. The sick-in-mind and pernicious whose life-force he had crushed in the strength of his hands. Come to this house of blackened horrors to mock. Come to rail at the downfall of this mortal, this epitome of muscled arrogance. The jungle-lord! The righter-of-wrongs! Crushed by his own weight. Crushed into sobbing subjugation by the pressure jarred agonisingly into his own balls. Fiends, all of them. Turned into monsters, fangs bared in celebration of the apeman’s defeat. Humiliated by a woman. Brought low by a feeble woman. The cynical mockery whipped at his back like sharp leather.

He cursed that mocking voices filling this black hell where he suffered in inhuman anguish. A snarl of anger creased his mouth in the darkness. An animal growl that could intimidate any predator. This was Tarzan. He defeated these spectres, he’d do it again. Match for any warrior-priest. Equal to any hateful woman. More than enough for a bitch intent on dominating him. Fresh strength pumped at his shoulders. Renewed power pumped up his arms as he struggled to lift his tortured groin off that wedge. The image of La’s sneering face filled his mind, fuelled his arms. Powered his resolve. He’d suffer this night. Tarzan would wish for death. He would feed off the bottom of this pit of humanity and eat shit. His arms were already shaking in weakness. Pain rang in every cell in his body. Shrill, savage ear-piercing cries of his anguish. Overloaded with the rhythms of this torture. Deep inside, on the surface of his skin. Gnawing at his very flesh.

In a few moments, his strength would give in, he’d slump down and be overwhelmed by the agonies centred between his legs. It was only a matter of a few moments in time before the weight of his own body would torture himself again. Digging down in that sharp wedge. There’d be no end to the nightmares he’d face that night. How much longer could he grant himself the brief respite of seconds of relief? Until his legendary strength gave in? Until his iron-hard resolve cringed in dread? Until he stood face-to-face with his agonised weakness? And shuddered at these crippling never-ending pains?

But – Tarzan swore to himself - La would not possess his mind. This was not about giving in to sex. This was about his very essence, about preserving the right to be his manly self. His freedom, his soul. Free to explore the forests, free to scale the heights of experience. That cruel image of her in his mind fuelled his burgeoning strength, gave fresh vigour to his arms. She meant to enslave his soul. This battle was not over. She was trying to break him down by his own suffering, demanding his own body torture himself. Abandoned to the intense of this pain. Left, alone, nothing to focus on but the agonies in his groin, the torment slowly overwhelming his spirit. Only the demons of his mind to keep him company in this everlasting darkness. No, he desperately swore. He’d survive her tortures. Tarzan screamed back at his weakening resolve. Fresh defiance pounded through his veins, fresh determination fuelled his spirit. New courage to see him through to the end of this nightmare. For a moment hate and rage eclipsed the crushing pain between his legs. No, La would never conquer his will.

The blackness was filled with a cry. A sharp shout at the fall of agonised human flesh onto sharp pointed wood. A long sustained cry that erupted ragged and pained from the depths of a human soul. A sob broke out. A muscled sob that shook in every cell of a human frame. Over and over that night, horrific pain clawed its vicious path into the insanity of pain. Again and again its victim shook in the paroxysms of agony and torment. Drifting agonisingly briefly into oblivion only to surface through crippling pain into a consciousness that screeched through clenched teeth. Every vein in his body bulging at the skin. Every nerve sizzling in his pains. Tears streamed off Tarzan’s face and dribbled down his chest.

16. Choices

16a.

Tarzan was full of tension, watching Manu struggling on the other pillar in this Chamber of doom. She was monstrous, this La. The weightiness off his front was plain for all to see, even Manu in his inflated sense of manliness was visibly suffering from the strain. She had no feelings, she was incapable of showing any emotions but cruelty. Maybe this was what Tarzan’s rejections had turned her into. She hated men, every fibre in her body seemed to turn on the desire to dominate and torture the men around her. Even these trusty priests were not to be let off her hate, Tarzan had seen that for himself. That last time when she’d had him in her clutches, she’d stopped at nothing to bend him to her will. She had crucified him, he had endured that nightmarish night of sheer horror. The animal in her craved to have whatever she had set her heart on, thrusting all human feeling aside in her drive to get what she wanted. Men in pain men in subjugation. She had sought to crush him physically - and just about had.

That last time he had fallen into her hands, her priests’ efforts had gone for him every way - emotionally, physically, mentally. Increasing his horror at the onset of further pain till Tarzan could barely stop himself from giving in. Till he feared he’d go insane with the pains. Yet face-to-face with her, Tarzan’s sixth sense had screamed at him not to give in. Through a red-yellow haze of pain, drowning under the floods of exhaustion, Tarzan had found the words, he had struggled to make the gesture. It had taken every bit of his strength to pull himself to his full height. To look her determined in the eye. To fight the demons at the heart of his soul telling him to take the easy way out. NO! Maybe the word had come out cracked and broken. He had said it like some beaten man. But he had defied La. He had told her NO!

And when her men could not break him, La showed them too. They witnessed the extent of her insanity, turned against one of their own. An object lesson none would be able to forget. Neither had Tarzan. The sight that above all filled him with horror now she had had him dragged back to her.

Vengeful she had sent men looking for him. They had found him again. Relaxed with Manu by the river. They had dragged them back like animals. A noose around the neck to prevent escape - like some captured beast. This was the monster he had escaped, three times already he had fled this place and escaped her demands.

And now he was watching Manu against that other pillar on the receiving end of her savagery. But Tarzan knew in his heart-of-hearts this treatment was not for Manu, all this bestial treatment was directed at him. A reminder for Tarzan, a warning of what she was capable of. As if he could ever forget. The woman who stopped at nothing. Tarzan had tried, he had warned Manu in the pit. Yet in his preening arrogance, Manu had wanted to believe he could win her over. He was so used to being pursued by women, he’d taken no notice. He could win time for himself, he had thought, wheedle himself into her bed, charm her there and plan for his escape. But Tarzan knew better, he had tried to warn Manu. And it wasn’t Manu she wanted performing for her, it was him. Dancing to her tune, playing to her every whim. Too late, Tarzan could see Manu was finally getting the message. Tied to the other pillar, an aroused cock tied in tight cord, throwing an over-weighty and aching erection.

The sensitive spots of Manu’s chest had been brutally whipped to show him. But La was not interested in Manu. There would never be a place for him between her legs. Only one man for now was destined to that space. Not for love-making. For service, for possession, for humiliation, for punishment. To be owned and know his free spirit was crushed between those thighs. And once bettered by her, what then? Once she had what she desired, what would she do with her new beast then?

Tarzan had no idea what next she planned for Manu. Yet he feared for him, La had no qualms, Tarzan had seen the most horrifying brutality carried out at her command. Yes, even for the man who had sold him out to Bannerman’s brutality, Tarzan was anxious. Experience said it would be nothing good. Tarzan’s former captor had taken numerous slappings across his face until Manu had eventually been beaten into ending his verbal protests, blood trickling over a cut lip. Tarzan had watched helpless as a leather loop was slipped over the end of Manu’s enforced solid shaft and laced in place under the raging purple-black cockhead. Manu’s silence again had to be won by a salvo of slaps. Inadvisably Manu still gazed in fury at the woman who had commanded his manhood bound flat against his impressively hard stomach. Too late, Manu was getting the message that Tarzan had tried to convey. This woman knew no bounds. Neither Tarzan nor Manu knew what they were up against at this very moment, poor Manu did not have the first idea what was to happen next. But he wouldn’t like it. Angry at the loop around his man-rigid cock-rim that had been tied in place. Tied so his shaft was trapped tight against Manu’s etched flat stomach by a rope around his waist. A man-solid arousal painfully stretched even more and imprisoned against the solid strength below Manu’s waist. With a sense of impending dread Tarzan noticed how that exposed Manu’s balls. It pulled them forward, the roping almost had them bursting out of their cord-tightened sack. Tarzan could see what Manu could not. How horribly exposed his balls had been placed.

Coincidence? No such thing with La. A painfully tight package of exposed man-nuts had been pulled forward and was throbbing hard under the hardness of an imprisoned upright cock. Vulnerable to attack, not by chance, not with La. Tarzan could see what Manu could not. Manu was looking ominously vulnerable and tempting to La’s perverted mind.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

16b.

Manu looked down at himself. He saw from above his manhood erect and proud. Standing hard and flat against his stomach. It hurt even more, this was certainly one hell-of-a test of his resolve. The slit open and gaping wide winked back at him. Taunting his determination to win this La over. The head engorged and solid with his virility, a prize for any woman here. Yet his balls were so tightly bound, burningly, achingly so. The weightiness of this enforced erection was something he could barely understand. It was hard to realise how much a hard-on could hurt. Something he was usually so proud of, something he more than happily displayed. How could it pain to throw a hard-on? His solid manhood was trapped upright and hard against his stomach, held painfully captive there against his stomach by the ring of leather under his raging cockhead. And the whipping on his chest still hurt, burning, inflaming the sensations down below. He’d have hoped that when the leather stopped stinging, the pain might ease. But he still hurt there, the pain smouldering off his punished nipples and spreading into his knotted guts. This woman was pushing the boundaries, she was testing him to the limits. And not just his cock. His temper too. Manu felt still sure she was testing him. If she was the kind of woman who got off on sex with pain, Manu could play her along. Anything to get her into bed and turn on the magic. That was his way out of here, he’d show her then what-for.

Still the woman who had commanded these offences against him was standing by that Tarzan . Pawing at him, stroking at him. All his fault! It was all Tarzan’s fault that Manu had got caught up in all this. Resentful he watched Tarzan being stroked while his own manhood felt unpleasantly odd. While Manu coped with the burning welts eating into his hard chest. And all he had wanted to do, before his capture, was to make peace with that Tarzan.

Suddenly Manu saw La turn her head. Towards the man who had earlier wielded that whip. Manu could feel his blood beginning to race. Was there more? Was his chest due for more? Was she that insatiable? He tried to control the anxiety shivering in his legs. Remembering she had commanded that attack against his chest, he’d coped with that once, he’d cope again. Just to get her into bed. Suddenly, though, oddly feeling afresh the sting raging off his burning nipples. As if her gaze could whip the pain back into life. Her eyes back again full on him, her gaze filled with Manu erect and helplessly caught against the pillar like this. Her eyes, though, eerily unfeeling, cold. Manu wasn’t giving up, he wasn’t going to give up the belief he could get one over on her. OK, her hands were all for Tarzan, fingers stroking at his muscled stomach, her head nestling longingly against his bare chest. Manu had been told by Tarzan she wanted only one man. But she hadn’t tried Manu out yet. Or so he told himself. Yet at the back of his awareness some slight chill fluttered. He was trussed up like this for some reason he didn’t understand. A cold finger icily stroked at his balls. Was there more to this trussing up than he had thought, was there something more to this enforced straining of his groin? More than just some joke to test him out? Did she have some other reason for doing this to him? Unaccountably his instinct fluttered with a slight tremor of fear. Despite himself, he felt a shudder when he saw her eyes drop cold to the manful excellence imprisoned flat against his stomach.

Tarzan gave it one more try.

“Release him, La”, he nodded to Manu. Tarzan could see Manu was putting on a brave face but he suspected his brain was nervously racing, trying to work out what happened to him next.

“He is a nothing, a stranger to me”, he explained, nodding at the man who had sold him out. Who had ransomed him for Bannerman to torture.

Her head was leaning longingly against his chest. Tarzan could feel her breath hot against his skin. Her fingers were straying downwards and fingering at his waist inside the entrance to his loincloth. But she gave no reply, Tarzan saw her head still turned at Manu. Naked against the column, a throbbing hard-on tied flat to his stomach. Manful balls horribly exposed. Set up for some evil design she had planned. Only what neither of them knew.

“He was just caught up in this when your men found me. He had just stopped to beg some food,” Tarzan persuaded. “Let him go”.

Her hand was up by her own face on his chest. Gently stroking with a long well-manicured fingernail Tarzan’s nipple into life. As if intent on showing to him that she already had command over his body. And she did. She could see she did. He was her captive. And the slightest flicker of her fingernail was able to arouse the now-hard nub on his chest. And that playing with him there would be bringing him to life elsewhere too. But she didn’t bother looking. She knew men, she knew what they could and could not do, she knew what they could not resist. No need for her hand to slide down to his loincloth for proof, she knew her caresses were doing the trick. Her breath on his skin was slow and relaxed. In charge. Taking her pleasure after this long time from the heat of Tarzan’s bare chest against her cheek. Captive again. But not submissive yet. But he would, he’d submit. After what he might see with his own eyes. Then, even a reluctant Tarzan knew he’d have to give.

“A nothing?” she repeated. And then a pause.

“Then …”, she continued, “.. he is of no consequence to me either”.

La released her head from Tarzan’s chest and looked up. One strong lingering gaze into his eyes. Eyes cold and calculating. A gaze that shone with no warmth. And all the more intimidating for that.

“Except as a reminder”, she added enigmatically into his face.

She turned to the warrior-priest with the braided whip. And nodded.

Without any warning, he lashed out. His arm swung out sideways, his cane whooshed forward with a piercing whistle. Manu howled. Manu shrieked. He yelped like a stuck pig when the leather slashed across his massive hard-on.

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Ch.16b wrock Manu lashed

La had returned to her throne. All eyes on Tarzan, ignoring another shock shrieking off the other pillar. Letting him appreciate this man’s suffering. Suffering for him. Deaf to the ear-piercing curses that shot off the other column. Her ears uninterested in the furious sobs that coloured Manu’s agonies cursing her to death. The cries of a confused and wounded animal.

“A reminder of my powers to persuade”, she spoke coolly to Tarzan. And nodded again.

Manu’s yell stabbed Tarzan in the ear. A piercing cry that tore straight from Manu’s heart.

“Enough, La”, he shouted. Angry. “That is enough”.

Her eyes flashed icy.

“It is La who commands here”, she retorted. And vindictively La nodded again.

Manu was already calling out in terror when he saw the corded whip disappear behind the priest’s back. Disbelief froze him to the gold in his back. Horror that anyone could ever contemplate such a thing jammed up his mind. His eyes turned white with terror when the menacing whistle tore towards his front. Pressed back against the pillar as if he could break it through. Defensively lifting his knee in protection. Horror piercing his heart when he realised his feet were bound. And erupting in a bawl of horror when the knotted cord bit against his all-too-solid flesh. Slashed into his proud yet trapped manhood. Head back, mouth gaping, bellowing in a soundless howl that erupted from the core of his being. Pain so intense no cry could erupt.

“The choice is yours, Tarzan”, La’s hiss overlaid Manu’s howls of despair.

“Submit or you watch him. You’ll see him shredded”.

Tarzan’s horror-struck eyes were all on Manu. Pressed shuddering in disbelief against his column of burnished gold, heat hotter than the fiercest blaze firing up his crutch, pain lancing at his own sense of manly worth, terror cutting him in two in dread of the damage the whipping might do.

“Harder”, La ordered.

The very object of Manu’s manly pride that was meant to charm La was the object of his torture. Tarzan knew she would do as threatened, shred Manu’s manhood to pieces, he had every reason to know. Another blood-curdling scream slashed through the dying light. Manu’s bravery torn to shreds by the thought of the place where she was laying her vicious cruelty.

“I’ll hear him sing”, La snapped.

Tarzan didn’t want to look, he wanted to stop his ears against the unspoken pleadings that coloured Manu’s terrorised cries. But horror for his companion glued Tarzan’s eyes to the writhing muscle vainly fighting to escape his bonds. His ears flooded with Manu’s scream.

Tarzan could not miss the stark contrast. The priest, strong across manful pain-wielding shoulders, moving with the grace of a powerful dancer. Holding himself like a carved statue awaiting the timing for his next slash across a pitifully captive target. Strength oozing from every pore. Grace gleaming on his flesh like a second skin. The embodiment of La’s sadistic temperament in a human form carved to masculine perfection. And Manu. Writhing, squirming. Pain sizzling in every fibre. Terror for his manly pride ripping through his soul. Eyes white with his torments. Face twisted by his fears. Twisting off his bonds to escape. Shuddering off the pillar to shake himself free of his pains. Manu was no coward, Manu was tough. But nothing had prepared his pride for La.

Tarzan had hesitated. La nodded again. Manu felt like his groin was bathed in lava. He was alive their with rivers of fire. Agony sizzled there. Disbelief fried. Another terrifying cut ordered by La’s nod slashed across his life’s pride. Explosive torment burst him apart. The howl of horror burst free. Mindlessly. Horror burned every thought of defiance from his mind. Agonies incinerated every sense from his body. Except that of pain. A red-fiery curtain of pain dropped before his eyes. Fuelled from a firestorm of shock that engulfed his groin.

She’d have Manu’s proud manhood slashed, Tarzan knew, lashed until it hung in limp shredded lumps off his front. Manu’s every muscle was pumped up solid with horror. Twisting terrified flesh. In his crutch stiff with pain, solid with disbelief. Yet slashed, lashed, stinging, biting. Criss-crossed with red lines of trembling pain. Manu’s torso again shot forward with an ear-piercing shriek. Another searing lash across his cock, maddening Manu with her brutal pain. He yanked at his ropes, he gulped noisily at the air as if that could douse his agonies. Every muscle in that packed physique throbbed with an indescribable message of pain. Pain and dread.

“Remember. He suffers because of you”,. La reminded Tarzan. Eyes full on him, accusing.

Her words stabbed to the core. This was a woman who got intoxicated with pain of men, drunk on the smell of male agonies. Because of you, Tarzan wanted to snap back. But La nodded again. Tarzan dreaded the touch of Manu’s eyes falling on him , he dreaded the accusation in Manu’s tormented gaze blaming him for the same. Yet Manu was lost in a tortured universe of his own horror. Another blur of the lash cut across the air at Manu’s manhood. This time lower. Knotted cord biting into Manu’s tight exposed balls. The air tore fiery-red with Manu’s shriek. Pain jerked him off the column. His whole torso shook uncontrollably. He could not speak, there was no space to curse. Manu could only scream. In agony. Shuddering, broken with his body’s inability to cope. His mind swamped with the smarting pains. A chilling howl of despair broke free from his guts.

Another unbelieving cry. Sweat spraying off his shaved head as he jerked and twisted in desperation. His voice ragged, his cries frenzied in the wild agonies that no body could contain. Sweat drenched his terror-stiffened chest.

“Take the apeman away”, La ordered. “Sling him back in his hole”, her eyes snarled at Tarzan like a she-cat defending her young. Her pride.

Unable to think what to do, even as they released him from his pillar, Tarzan looked in disbelief towards the monster who could perpetrate such unthinkable crimes.

“Bring him back at dawn”, she ordered. Staring coldly at Tarzan, - yet not addressing him.

“Bring him back with his reply”, La snapped.

“He submits. Or the nothing is shredded. His choice”.

La stared at Tarzan. Warning him. Reminding him of what she dared.

“Sacrificed before his eyes. Just like before”.

A shudder trembled down Tarzan’s back. His eyes shot to Manu. A picture of pain fighting with agonised fury. A shuddering pillar of human flesh, abused and tortured. Eyes ablaze with anger and terror. Yet kept silenced by the upraised whip awaiting a further sign. Sweat-drenched down his front. On fire in his imprisoned crutch. Burning up with anger and pain. Tarzan evaded Manu’s eyes as the priests led him away. Unwilling to be accused, unwilling to read the pleadings in Manu’s looks. Another victim of torture. Another threatened with sacrifice. Torture and sacrifice. Condemned by Tarzan’s refusal to give in.

“Tortured because of your obstinacy”, La accused him. “Suffering because of you”.

La’s threats pursued Tarzan out of the door.

“You submit”.

La condemned Manu with a stab of her finger. The knotted whistled viciously through the air again. Manu’s cry lashed across Tarzan’s broad back.

“Or you watch this nothing shredded”

17. Sacrifice

17a.

Tarzan knew better than not to take La at her word. What she had promised for Manu, she would do. Confined alone in his cell, Tarzan’s stomach churned at what the woman in her deranged state was capable of. Tarzan had been re-captured, Manu was just a by-stander. But for La that was an irrelevance, Manu was a convenient item to use in order to press her point. She had become a monster, a fiend whose heart was set on only one thing. His subjugation. History was repeating itself. Another innocent by-stander was about to be slaughtered. Just so that La could make her point. Tarzan had seen the extent of her cruelty with his own eyes. He had felt it on his own body. He had been forced before to witness at close-hand how far La was prepared to go. In the blackness of his vault, Tarzan’s heart was heavy. For Manu, for himself. She’d ordered her men to bring him back. And she would heartlessly use Manu to prove her point. For once, Tarzan could see no way out. Manu was doomed. Unless Tarzan accepted the unacceptable. And once La had Tarzan, what then? When she had sucked him dry, when La had drained his spirit of everything that made Tarzan what he was. Of exactly that which La craved, his strength of will, his manly pride, his essence. What then? Tarzan was trapped. He was to be enslaved, there was no escape, no way out. He was prey to La’s single-minded resolve. For as long as he managed to please.

And in that blackness suddenly his vision was lit with the blinding glare of previous inhuman memories. Of that savagery that had turned his stomach when last he had fallen into La’s clutches. His heart sank at the memory. A bitter taste of vicious recollection burned in his throat. Tortured by days in the sun. That interminable night of torture in the darkness with agonies digging into his crutch and robbing him of every last vestige of his strength. His eyes watered like back then. At the inhumane sight La had forced him to witness when she had sought to “persuade” him.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

The last time Tarzan had set eyes on him was when he had given Tarzan that knowing nod and left Tarzan alone with his misery in his own black nightmare. Astride that wedge. His tormentor, the leader of her warrior-priests. Who had supervised Tarzan’s torture in the sun. Abandoning Tarzan seated on that wedge of torment. Leaving him, sure in the full knowledge that one more day of inhumanity waged against his resolve would break Tarzan down. Leaving Tarzan to face that night peopled with his horrors, alone suffering his unbearable agonies. A sleepless endless night. Alone in the blackness with his demons. That was the last time Tarzan had set eyes on Otobu.

Now unaccountably Tarzan found that same warrior-priest stretched out on the altar in the temple. Maybe it was only hours later but for Tarzan it was after an eternity of anguish on that wedge, Tarzan was brought halting and limping to the Chamber of Doom. Expecting to discover she had lost patience and his time had come. Anticipating to find himself forced onto La’s altar and her knife plunged into his guts. But Tarzan was instead shocked to be faced with this sight, his own tormentor stretched out on the altar, Otobu. Torturer turned sacrificial victim. Arms raised above his head, legs pinned out. In full muscular nakedness. The overhead sun was already creeping its way down the steep sides of the roofless chamber. Sneaking like an insatiable serpent towards its intended victim. Suddenly Tarzan felt his guts tie up. In fear for himself. Unaccountably, in fear for his own accursed torturer. Anxious for this priest who was about to be butchered. About to take the knife of sacrifice plunged into his torso.

Otobu stared down along his own prostrate body towards the apeman who was being jostled in place by his feet. Starved for days now, a day suspended from the stakes, his manhood tortured to the extreme, his whole being sizzling with spent nervous energy. That last night this self-same Otobu had submitted to Tarzan to the most insufferable of tortures. He had endured an eternity sitting on that cruel wedge. The apeman, Otobu observed, could barely stand. But it was himself about to be slaughtered. Because of this man’s strength of will, Otobu was facing butchery. He had failed, the apeman had proven himself the stronger. Pig-headed, stubborn. Otobu had not broken him. It would be for those who took over who would be tasked to bring Tarzan’s subjugation to La.

Two priests had Tarzan tight by the arms, less to prevent escape, more to keep him on his feet. Tortured beyond human endurance, weakened by starvation, crippled by mind-numbing agonies, yet it was Tarzan about to watch his own torturer Otobu slaughtered on the altar because of him. Because of Otobu’s failures. Because of Tarzan’s obduracy. Because this Tarzan still refused to submit to La’s will. Otobu felt the resentment rising. He had dedicated himself to La. Yet she was going to slaughter him. Stubborn, unaccountably pig-headed, this apeman. Each and every one of these warrior-priests had dedicated their bodies to her. Each and every one had learned the capriciousness of her ways, they had known her terrible punishments. Yet they remained loyal. Captive to her power to give re-birth to the sun every day. Despite the injustices. Despite the uncaring abuse in her bed. Their sense of being knew their kind needed La. Without her, the sun would not rise. Without her, crops would not thrive. La was their all.

Not so, this Tarzan. He thought himself better, he thought himself more worthy. Anger against him continued to burn. Because of him Otobu was about to lose his life. In a savagery which had set blood racing. Naked, forced onto this altar by his own fellow priests, Otobu had first felt a sense of panic. But there was no escape, he knew. There was no hope. He could have railed against his companions for deserting him, his words could have abused this capricious high-priestess. But there was no chance. There was only one way out. Slaughter, agony, death. The best and only answer was to faced death with some dignity. This ignominious Tarzan had condemned Otobu to the most agonising of deaths by his wilful stubbornness.

Otobu would die. He might wish for his end to come soon. But he knew better. He had seen enough sacrifices. He knew there’d be an eternity of horror before Otobu could meet his agonised end. He could only pray that the apeman enjoyed the same fate.

Tarzan stood held up by a pair of priests at the foot of the altar. Aware of the victim’s eyes burning into his. Accusing him. Blaming Tarzan that he was to be slaughtered here. Then suddenly Tarzan was aware of a full salvo of anger targeted at him. Circled around the walls of the chamber stood the other warrior-priests, their glares shooting like poisoned arrows at him. Knowing why their leader was to be murdered like this. Tarzan felt their looks like stabbing daggers. Because of him, because of Tarzan, their friend was to die. Because he was pig-headed. Because he would not do what every one of them had done. Submit to La. Their glares were blaming him for the slaughter of their leader. Condemning him, not La. Tarzan had thrust their leader onto this altar to face the plunge of the knife into his guts. Because Tarzan still refused.

And tomorrow would bring another day. Tarzan would be handed over to these men. Handed over to men who had witnessed their friend murdered. Because of him. When he encountered them again tomorrow, suspended between those stakes, on the cross, -- tomorrow there would be no stopping them. Revenge would motivate their every breath.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

17b.

He did not rail in anger, he did not seem to flinch. Transfixed. Bravery or terror, it was hard to say. He watched in morbid fascination the slow descent of the knife to his stomach. With brave stoicism, Tarzan decided. With grudging admiration Tarzan watched this display for courage, his own eyes on the knife, his senses targeting La’s helpless victim below. Yet the gleam on the sacrifice’s torso was betraying his fears. The sun was already descending into the chamber with its dreaded light. The sacrifice’s body glistened under the growing glittering glare, light sparkling off the nervous sweat on his chest. His eyes riveted on the blade that La held two-handed and lowered with dramatic slowness towards his stomach. Taut in every hard muscle, tense in every fear-etched sinew. Hardly breathing as the blade gave a vicious flash in the light of the Flaming God. Lowered towards the hopeless strength in his muscle-solid stomach.

Before she plunged the knife into her sacrifice, La hesitated. Careless of the dread anticipation staring up at her blade from the victim below. Her head turned to Tarzan. Supported on his feet by a pair of priests near the victim’s feet, trapped by his destiny, held in place to watch this brutality.

La’s eyes held him long. Cold accusing eyes. Her stare making Tarzan responsible for the death of this man.

“He dies because of you”, La’s eyes seemed to declare. Tarzan felt accusing eyes slam onto his head. From every priest around the edges of the chamber. From the condemned victim on the stone. From La.

“You can save him”, her look tempted. “Just one word from you. Just a nod of the head”.

Tarzan breathed in deep. The responsibility for human life burned in his guts. A man innocently slaughtered because of him.

Tarzan held her look. He held his breath. He held his counsel.

This victim on the stone had tortured him. For days, for hours. For her. Unjustly. For days this man on the stone had determinedly taken Tarzan’s spirit apart, shred-by-shred. Doing La’s will, without a shred of concern for Tarzan’s fate. Tarzan held his counsel.

The light was rapidly building up. The light of the sun had been slicking down the outer walls of the Chamber. The intensity of light growing, intensifying, glaring off the columns, blinding off the gold. To a point when human eyes could barely take the strain. Tarzan’s ears were full of the pounding of the incantations around, the thud-thump of animal-like snarls as the light burned against his eyelids. The frenzy of starving animals, the half-males craving blood as earlier they had howled for his. Growing wilder and louder, their cries of savagery barely held back. All in anticipation of the first plunge of the knife. A menacing snarling of hellish fiends. Suddenly a single cry broke into the frenzy. Despite the pain of light, Tarzan’s eyes slitted open into the unbearable glare. Tears streaming from his eyes, nothing to be seen, only the white-hot intensity of light thrown off the golden altar from above. Yet mysteriously, implanted on Tarzan’s sight, he saw a streak of red. Another. And another agonised yelp. Accompanied by the victim’s cry of human pain. Streaks of red that seared painfully into Tarzan’s brain.

La’s knife cut a slice down the length of the powerfully etched stomach, from ribs to crutch. Her act cut a look of horror across the victim’s face. The cry breaking out as pain sliced open his guts. A cry of shock. A victim’s despairing cry that recognised there was no escape. And another sideways cut was taken slowly across the waist. Opening La’s servant up from side to side. The sacrifice’s cry of despair unleashed a salacious uproar from around, sub-humans’ bloodlust filled the chamber. A fierce cheering flooded the chamber and echoed off the walls. Drowning out the despair of the victim. But a look of horror on his face tortured Tarzan. Even with his eyes half-closed, head back, barely able to see against the overwhelming glare off the gold, Tarzan saw it all. In his imagination, clear as day, hearing only sound, seeing in disbelief, watching in his mind’s eye in morbid fascination as the blade cut the victim open from ribs to groin. Not plunged in deep, cutting through flesh, cutting open muscle, letting his lifeblood flow. No damage to his vitals inside. La was slicing her victim open, she was bleeding the sacrifice to death. Slowly. An agonisingly slow sacrifice. Keeping him alive. Letting La’s victim slowly bleed. Bleed and weaken. Eyes white, wide open, shedding his precious life-blood on the world. Mouth gaping in soundless cries drowned out by the sub-human bloodlust screeching all around. Beasts screaming for his blood in wild drug-induced howls. A look of horror filled the victim’s face, a silent scream of terror torn from his mouth. As the knife scored its path from one side of his waist to the other. Flesh folded back. His blood gushing. Over his stomach, dripping down his flanks, trickling through channels carved in the altar top.

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Ch.17b wrock Otobu sacrificed

Tarzan felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He had witnessed death, he had seen it in many forms. But this was inhumane. Callous, sadistic. Human meat being sliced open with a studied intent. Dozens of incisions across his stomach, slicing open his waist.

The scene was full of bitter ironies. The very man who had tried his best and had nearly broken Tarzan was himself stretched out on that altar. La’s most devoted servant had become victim to her knife. La’s manly perfection was made object of the half-beasts’ derisive howls. And all the worse, this was done for him, for Tarzan. For the one lust that La craved and could not have. La’s most loyal priest was being carved open by her in order to demonstrate Tarzan’s future fate if he continued to resist. This wretch crying out in pain and despair under the uproar of blood-crazed sub-humans was being tortured for him, to show to Tarzan what was in store for him.

Into the blistering light in abject horror and disgust, Tarzan squinted. Making out the crime of dozens of deep knife marks scored into human flesh. Cut into the man who had been for days Tarzan’s fiendish torturer. The length of his thigh was split open, cutting deep into flesh as if it was dead meat. But this was vibrant living human flesh. Across the power of his solid proud chest, rippling muscle was sliced open into malicious bleeding wounds. The blood oozing down off his sides, his muscled strength trickling away.

La stood back, a signal. With a burst of howls, they rushed forward, those sub-human males. Screaming at the offer of the sacrifice’s blood, licking at the victim’s open stomach wounds. A pack of wild animals starved for days. Their fingers gripping at his cuts, licking his blood off their fingers. His lifeblood trickling down their chins, splattering over their animal chests. Jostling with each other with position, fighting over his lacerated body. Bestial snarls, animals fighting with each other, talons clawing over writhing tortured flesh in the glaring light. Howls of the frenzied hyena burst on their air. Screams of the predator echoed up those walls. Tarzan, eyes watering through the unreal glare, witnessed this all. Disgust filled his guts, vomit burned in his throat. He shivered at the animalistic growls, shuddered at the victim’s shrieks. Tarzan cringed, he trembled. Through an unreal veil of blistering glare and agonised imagination, Tarzan sensed as much as saw the victim writhing in agony as these animals mauled and sucked at his tortured flesh. Tarzan heard him scream at frenzied tongues licking into open seeping wounds.

And suddenly, at the other side of this seething inhumanity, Tarzan saw her. Her eyes on him. On him alone. Unconcerned by the bloodlust bursting in mindless frenzy around her. Accusing him, blaming him. Her eyes were solely for Tarzan. Telling him, warning him. This too was his fate. Unless …..

++++++++++++++++++++++++

17c.

It was not over. Was there no end to the horrors she planned?. Tarzan had been jostled out of the chamber away from the bloodlust that still shrieked shrill in his ears. Willingly led away as howls flooded chamber with the victim’s doom. Relieved to be hustled out from the sight of the sacrifice sliced apart and animals clawing at his wounds. He was jostled outside and tied to a stake in the courtyard. Tarzan had not the strength to resist, weakened by never-ending tortures, starved so that his stomach gripped viciously at his backbone. Sickened to disgust at the callous scene he had just been witness to. Struggling in his repulsion to stand on his own two feet, he was being bound to a stake in the yard outside, ironically in that self-same place where this sacrificial victim had tortured him.

Nearby, a funeral pyre. A pile of bone-hard twigs where they would lay out a victim’s corpse and burn it. Only a few paces away. Tarzan given place of honour, witness to the incineration of his own torturer’s corpse.

He gulped down the sense of nausea that churned in his throat. Shaking his head to clear the shock and clear his head of the horror of La’s inhumanity. A few brief moments of repose. Too short, however. Within minutes, the horde of sub-humans noisily exited the chamber and joined Tarzan around this funeral pyre. Blood dripping off their chins, the victim’s life blotched on hairy chests. Wild-eyed, greedy at the death of the corpse.

But Otobu wasn’t dead. Borne out of the temple by four half-human salivating males, the tormentor who had failed to break Tarzan was tossed unceremoniously onto the wood. Eyes open, still alive. Crying out in his agonies at being cast onto the pyre like some dead beast. But he was not dead. La had not allowed him the luxury of death. To be burned on the funeral pyre. To be burned alive. Weak from loss of blood, he lay back, his eyes rolled in on themselves. Crippled by the pain of hundreds of tongues licking through his bleeding wounds, unable to help himself, he lay helpless on the pyre of dry twigs and branches. With shock Tarzan watched that once-powerful body that had tortured him to near-breaking point slump half-dead on the tinder-dry wood. But not dead. The strength of his chest sliced open in dozens of brutal open wounds. The power of his manly heart fluttering weakly under lacerated muscle. His head swayed uselessly with the pains, his spirit plummeted to the depths. Dumped on the funeral pyre by the monsters who had slavered at his wounds. Not bound, dumped there, no strength of escape, no will to resist.

Suddenly, though, his eyes caught sight of Tarzan roped by his feet. Only a few paces away. Exhausted, weakened by pain, crippled by despair yet still the victim’s eyes turned to daggers of steel. Stabbed at the man responsible for his excruciating death. Alive, watching, witnessing. Watching him being burned alive.

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Ch.17c wrock funeral pyre

Tarzan winced at the reproach from that gaze. He averted his eyes at the whiplash that this victim slashed across his face. This man who had tortured Tarzan in the service of La. This man who had done everything in his power to inflict physical pain on Tarzan. This man who had come within a hair’s breadth of crushing Tarzan’s indomitable will. He was himself about to be put to the flames. Alive. Because Tarzan would not give.

Tarzan smelled smoke. Despite himself, tormented with shame, blame and curiosity, Tarzan turned his head. Again the ironies cut sharply through his mind. The man-beasts had angled the disc of gold at the funeral pyre. That disc that this self-same man had targeted at Tarzan’s flesh. Burning him up, weakening him with every never-ending hour with the ferocity of the sun. Now that instrument of Tarzan’s torture was targeted at the torturer himself. That burnished disc of gold had caught the light. Directed at the dry twigs surrounding the victim. A fearful silence had fallen over that place. All eyes targeted on the sharp blue beam of light that shivered at the twigs. Waiting for it to catch, to burst into fateful flames. Even the victim managed to find the strength to gaze at the tiny column of smoke rising from the pyre on which he had been dumped in his pains. Tarzan too eyed with dread the growing smoke of doom arising from the brushwood. A snap of wood nearly made him jump as heat crackled at tinder-dry twigs. Tarzan was responsible for this, destruction followed in Tarzan’s stubborn footsteps. He had condemned this man to an indescribable death by his pig-headedness. And Tarzan had been roped to this stake in order to witness it. The smoke of doom drifted over and choked his senses. He could almost feel himself trembling with dreaded anticipation. A flash of light. A crackle of twigs. The snap of tension. Like the breaking of human bones. A single flame caught life. Crackling and snapping into a disjointed rhythm of impending doom. Smoking, blackening, the harbinger of a merciless death. With a whoosh of light, the wood caught. With a rush of sound the beasts around roared. With a stabbing glare the victim turned his eyes on the man who had condemned him to death. Whose resilience had condemned him to this most horrible of deaths.

Tarzan shuddered as the flames grew. His guts turned to water at the insane cheering from the half-humans. Their God had accepted their gift. He had used the strength of his power to set light to the victim and accept his screams. The screaming howls of animals burst around. The warrior-priests stood back wide-eyed at the horror perpetrated against one of their own. La standing imperious, staring at Tarzan. Blaming him, accusing im. Warning him. The world had gone mad, this was all insane. Nerves and exhaustion shivered in Tarzan’s bones. Damned to stand and watch. Condemned to listen and hear. To hear his torturer scream. To see the accusation in his eyes. No escape from that reproach. No getting-away from the inhuman screams as the flames roasted human flesh. As heat slowly consumed this man’s living body. No getting away from the smell of human flesh choking his lungs. A man being burned alive because of him.

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17d.

Tarzan could not account for it. How he had found the strength. He would never know how he had plumbed the depth of his reserves to find the final vestiges of self-will. But he had.

Those screams would live with him for the rest of his life. The dried-out wood under the victim was barely adequate. Kept small to reduce the flames and to burn the victim slowly. Puckering at the skin, slowly searing at flesh. Barely enough fire, just enough to roast human flesh. To sear skin, burn into flesh. Otobu was roasted slowly. Heat slowly consuming living human flesh. Burning the shrieking victim alive. Agonisingly slowly. Burning him up. Living. Screamingly alive. Muscled warrior reduced to sizzle-scorched flesh. Like tough animal meat basted slowly over fire. But live meat. Otobu was live human flesh. Screeching. Shrieking. Like a beast in torture.

Tarzan’s fate too. If he did not submit. La had stared at Tarzan across the screaming victim. Cold, unmoved by the horror happening between their looks. Forewarning him through the shrieks of this tortured victim. Tarzan’s fate. Unless he learned to submit.

They left Tarzan at the stake. To witness his torturer’s death. To feel at the pit of his guts horrified sympathy for this self-same man who had relentlessly tortured him. Yet nothing warranted this. Choking on the smell of human burning flesh. His guts churning from the revulsion he felt. His throat burning with the nausea that threatened to erupt. Feeling guilty and blame burning him up. Guilt at condemning to such a death even the man who would have tortured Tarzan to death if La had ordered it so.

Once his agonising end had come, once Otobu’s spirit could take no more inhumanity, his fellow-priests had been permitted to pile on the wood. Wood had crackled, flames had leapt. The victim’s flesh had burned, the sickening smell had filled Tarzan’s lungs. His brothers’ accusing looks had threatened his soul, his fellow-priests glared in seething anger at the man who had condemned their friend. Their hatred burned as fierce as the crackling flames. As the violence of heat incinerated the brother, their looks promised Tarzan much the same in reprisal. Sending their brother’s soul into the heavens to be tortured for eternity by the Flaming God. For failing to break the apeman. In hatred his brothers banded together, burning with a lust to punish the man who had committed their friend to an eternity of torment.

How could they possibly blame him? It was incomprehensible. They blamed Tarzan. Not La. They had watched her destroy their brother in the most callous way, yet their glares of fury blamed Tarzan. Was there nothing that could shake their faith in this fiend from hell? Her hold over their spirits was so mind-numbing and tight-clenched that they still could address their hatred at Tarzan. He was a victim as much as Otobu. But they saw it as Tarzan’s fault. Despite what they had seen. Despite all the evil that they had witnessed under their own noses, they blamed Tarzan. They had witnessed the change when Otobu’s bravery gave way to pain. They had shuddered when insanity seized his mind and his body shrieked. They had heard the halflings’ animal howls applauding their own brother’s agonies and celebrating his eternity of torment. Yet Otobu’s brothers could still blame Tarzan.

The pair of priests who had released Tarzan from his stake and returned him to his cell let loose on him their anger. Weakened by starvation, debilitated by hours of torture, he was helpless against their attacks. Unable to fend off their beatings. Hatred burned in their guts for this murderer. Because of his stubbornness their friend had been sacrificed in La’s most callous way. Their fists lashed out. Unimaginable such a death. Unimaginable that this beast stumbling under their punches should still be living after what he had happened to Otobu. They took out on him their fury at the murder of their brother. Their fists were powered by their friend’s every scream that had turned viciously in their guts like the sacrificial knife. Blows into the back of his skull, slammed face-first into a wall, Tarzan was jostled through the gloomy vaults and cruelly beaten, the two priests taking out on him their anger. Not even able to defend himself against their fists, just giving up helpless grunts at their pain. The ferocity of their hatred burned. And there would be other days, they promised themselves, many more. The brothers would ensure this Tarzan would never forget this black night, the priests would make sure of it.

Where the strength came from, Tarzan had no idea. How his enfeebled brain saw his chance, who knew? They had abused him in fury, his guards had beaten him as they jostled him down through the dark corridors deep into the vaults. As one of them turned to release the bolt on the door, the other was forced to hold their weakened prisoner upright. Chest to chest, arms around Tarzan, their beaten prisoner too weak to stand on his own two feet, he watched his companion fumbling with the bolt to the door of the apeman’s cell. Looking forward to lashing out at their brother’s murderer in the cell, anger not yet dissipated. It could never be dissipated.

Suddenly the priest cried out. Suddenly his knees crumbled. Tarzan twisted his wrist. He twisted the knife deep into the priest’s guts. The knife Tarzan had snatched off his captor’s waist. A vicious slash tore across the priest’s stomach and opened the warrior up. A brutal-minded stab that was not meant for this priest, Tarzan knew it was for La. When the other turned, Tarzan took him in the neck. Survival instinct stabbed the dagger brutally deep into his throat. Tarzan seeing the evil image of La flashing before his eyes as life-blood gushed over his arm and spurted in his face. Both victim and assailant sank groaning to the dark earth. One in death, the other in exhaustion.

He was gone. Tarzan fled. Stumbling like a fatally wounded animal through these vaults. But ablaze with the desperate knowledge he just had to escape. Alive with the terror of what would happen if he was caught. Burning at the sight of the horrors he had witnessed that day, Tarzan stole lurching in his weakness into the shadows towards that secret passage. If caught, his fate would be unimaginable, he just had to find that way out. He was covered with blood, the life of more dead warrior-priests on his hands. Their accusing eyes had warned him. The looks as their friend shrieked in his death throes had been a promise. Tarzan could expect nothing but the worst at their hands. And he had just slaughtered two more of their number. If he was taken now, he could expect no mercy. Death would be much too easy. He knew that one secret way out of this place but could he find it before his strength gave way? And if he met any one of them, it would be fatal.

In fact, if ever Tarzan encountered La’s warrior-priests again, Tarzan could count on only one thing.

18. Betrayal

18a.

In the blackness of his cell, they rushed him. Blinded by the glare of their torches, he lashed out wildly to fight them back. Caught in the depths of his nightmare, he was taken unawares. His heart pounding, his head full of the vision of Otobu’s horrific death, he was unprepared. The horror of that death many weeks ago just as fresh as if it had been happening just then, Overcome by superior numbers, he was on his front, his arms being bound across his back. He struggled as they jostled him through the dark vaults. Convinced they had snapped. They had come for him. In revenge for the brother they had lost.

Before, he had being tossing and turning, sleep eluding him. His conscience heavy with the thought of Manu’s fate gripped in his hands. Tarzan had found no rest, left to ponder his decision, alone in his cell. Plagued by that last sight of Manu writhing from the savage brutality of his erection being lashed. The warning of the fate to which Tarzan could condemn him. Unknowingly falling asleep but his mind got no rest. In his feverish sleep Tarzan’s vision had filled with the image of Otobu’s sacrifice. The evil brutality to which his decision might condemn Manu too. The companion whose actions had surrendered him to Bannerman and condemned Tarzan to Wilson’s slavery. Now Tarzan was left alone to decide his answer, to choose this self-same man’s fate. His guts were churning with the responsibility. The memory of that chilling sacrifice still burning in his eyes. To choose: his own freedom to act or to have Manu shredded to pieces and then - like Otobu - burnt alive. Tarzan had been alone with his guilt in the pitch blackness. Worrying for himself, worrying too that another man was going to meet a gruesome end and end up in the flames - because of him. Maybe, Manu should mean nothing to him. But their fates were curiously entwined.

When La’s men abruptly hauled him out of his nightmare, Tarzan assumed their patience had finally run out. They had come for him, in revenge he had thought, still burning with resentment for Otobu’s death. His mind whirring, confused by the responsibility for Manu, indecision weighed heavy in his fitful rest. Tarzan was convinced Otobu’s friends had set their hearts on him as their victim for the night. After all, it was within each priest’s living memory what had happened on that not-too-distant night when their brother had been burned. Savagely slaughtered because of Tarzan’s pig-headedness.

And since then, Tarzan had repeatedly insulted their revered priestess, covered her with his disdain. A price for which they themselves had had to pay with her bad temper and abuse. They had had enough, La’s men. They meant to make this Tarzan pay. He would learn with his arse the price that his stubbornness had cost. Maybe La too reasoned Tarzan should get a dose of his future life and had ordered them to take it out on his stubborn arse.

Tarzan never heard the sounds burst through his door. When they rushed in, torches blazing, Tarzan was blinded in the glare. A dozen of them threw themselves on him. In the tight confines of space, his blind punches flew wildly, some made contact. More of theirs did, though. They got him down, on his front. Bucking, fighting, twisting. Hands were yanking his arms up behind, loops of rope were binding forearm to forearm across the middle of his back. He cursed, he thrashed out with his legs. But they had him overwhelmed by force of numbers, had him eventually helplessly bound. And were roughly yanking him by his hair to his feet and dragging him out into the darkness of the vaults.

Still, Tarzan fought them, sure he knew what this was about. They’d had enough. Using his shoulders he slammed one bodily into the wall. His knee came up and jammed another in the thigh. These men were denied their women, they served only La, he knew. They had to get their kicks somewhere else. Tonight it was going to be Tarzan. He took their slaps across the back of the head. Thumps in the back of his neck. Tarzan’s arms were disabled bound across his back, hand to opposite elbow. But they weren’t taking him without a fight.

The room they threw him into was bare, starkly furnished. This was no sumptuous chamber like the one where La had stripped herself to incite his desires. Nothing but a wooden platform in the middle, made up of planks. No need for furnishings, this was the kind of place where a man ruthlessly took what he wanted and seized it without a care. Tossed onto the bare hard wood on his back, Tarzan’s legs came into action. Kicking out at them, his arms now tied underneath. Powered by anger, fuelled with fury at what they planned as restraining hands grabbed at his ankles. Expecting any second for his legs to be lifted to let one of them get at him from underneath, cursing. Tarzan was throwing his hips in the air, anything to make hard their attempt at rape.

Others threw themselves on his waist, weighted down his writhing torso. Arched his back over his arms down to the bed. Suddenly a coarse thick cord was across his throat. Tight, pinning his neck to the planks, his head hanging off the back of the platform. A quick flash of panic rushed at Tarzan’s chest.

The priests started peeling off him, their job seemingly done. Released, a furious Tarzan lashed out again with his legs. Only to find that in the meantime his ankles too had been bound. Stretched outwards and tied with cord to each corner of this platform. Tarzan was trapped, he was their prisoner. One good thing, though, he realised through his panting and exertions, he was on his back, his legs tied down and stretched out. How were they going to go for his backside?

Their final task. They forced a gag on him. Gagging him just like the time they had captured Manu. He fought them back as best he could, his head hanging off the back of the platform seeing only a ceiling. But they were determined, forcing a leather strip across Tarzan’s mouth. Tight across his face, creasing his cheeks. Flattening his tongue onto the floor of his mouth. Silencing him. One further burning humiliation.

And then mysteriously they left him. Alone on the platform, sweating, panting. Abandoned with his eyes seeing only the ceiling above. Leaving Tarzan’s reeling head to work out what the hell was going on. Alone with his chilling questions. If they weren’t about to rape him, what then? Alone wondering what happened next.

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18b.

How long he’d been left bound on this platform, Tarzan had no idea. A long lonely time of uncertainty. Listening out, ears pricked for the rush of feet, coming back for him. But silence echoed down these vaults. Far from his body being snatched by the priests as he had feared, he had been abandoned. He had repeatedly struggled with his bonds. The rope going across his neck burned at his skin but kept his back pinned to the planks. There was no moving his arms caught underneath him. Fingers now tingling painfully by the over-tightness of the ropes. Because his head was hanging off the back of the platform, he couldn’t even see his feet. But after lots of struggling to put them free, all he’d managed was some raw scuffing to his ankles. He was prisoner here, in a bare room, stretched out helpless on inhospitable wooden planks. Waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting a long lonely time. The room was ablaze with light. Nut he saw nothing, only the ceiling above. He heard nothing. Nothing was happening. These warrior-priests had brought him here, for a reason. They had dragged him from his cell heavy with his fears for Manu for some purpose. To exact their revenge he had assumed. To get him back for the death of their friend that last time he was here. Yet they had left, nothing was happening. Had they gone off to prepare something for him? Were they loosening their inhibitions by getting themselves drunk? Or alerting those sub-human Oparian males to come and do the dirty work for them? Leaving Tarzan to stew, alone with tension and anxieties of the unknown, leaving him alone with his nerves. Tarzan had tried to break free. But that was not going to be. Nothing happened. But why? They could have left him in his cell. But no, they had fetched him and imprisoned him here. But what for? Still nothing was happening.

When the door opened, a rush of revenge-crazed priests did not break in as he had feared. It was not a horde of sub-human Oparian males crazy for his blood that broke through the door. Quietly, with a rustle of cloth, without any fuss, La entered. Tarzan sensed more than saw her arrive, he glimpsed just a brief glance with his head thrust backward off the platform. His sight full only of the bare ceiling above. For a brief moment, he recalled that first time when La had rescued him from the blood-lust of the sacrifice. But then that vain hope faded, La had changed, this being was something else.

Maybe it was obvious she would do something like this. Alone with him, caught helpless like this. She was going to force him into making love to her. A sparsely furnished room, a near-naked man crushed on a platform by his bonds, yet in an odd way Tarzan sensed he was not here, it felt like La was oblivious of Tarzan’s presence. Tarzan’s every senses were pricked on full alert to her every move, trying to work it out, sensing her intently. Yet it was all stillness, almost like La wasn’t there. Oddly sensing too that he was not here for her either. In some strange way he could not put his finger on. What the hell was happening here? Tarzan forced himself to relax, aware he was over-tense with curiosity, unhelpfully brimming over with suspicion.

Yet still La hovered unseen. As if she wasn’t there, as if they were not within touching distance of each other. As if a handsome and strongly built male that she craved was not helplessly pinned out there for her taking. Tarzan was sure he had been brought here at her command. The priests had been obeying orders when they had tied him helpless to this platform like this. For this woman to take him. But she was not responding, she was doing nothing. Unable to see, his skin was alive with prickles of uncertainty, yet he forced himself to stay calm, stay in charge. Gagged, he couldn’t speak. Yet he was determined he was not about to be forced into anything. Though the tantalising anticipation of what La was up to was almost worse than being forced.

Her hand touched his ankle, Tarzan twitched in surprise at the coldness of her fingers on his skin. She stroked up the inside of his legs. But he could not see her, only fill the chillness of his hand. Hard like talons. Fingernails lightly tickling him up to his knee. And then back down again. But no eye contact possible, Tarzan seeing only the ceiling above. It felt weird, Tarzan sensed almost that La was turned in on herself. As if she was telling him this near-naked male who had awoken her senses as a woman and was stretched out for her to take - telling him he didn’t matter, Tarzan was a nothing, this was all about her.

The feeling was eerie. Tarzan did not understand what this was about, why he felt like this. He knew full well what she would have wanted from him before. A repeat of those first heady nights alone together. And she couldn’t do that unless he was here, Tarzan told himself. The La he had known and that he had understood would have wanted to make passionate love. Wild snarling sex, done with abandonment. But this felt different. Or was he just fooling himself?

Tarzan was tempted to speak out, to call out to her, engage her in talk. But he had that leather thing crushing down his tongue. Whatever he uttered would be reduced to an undignified gurgle, he’d make himself a joke. And instinctively he knew he could not risk that. There was something going on here about power, he could not afford to make himself into a joke. He sensed a power struggle here between him and La. A power struggle where the battlefield was going to home-in on his loins. Spluttering incoherently into a gag would undermine the strength of his position. Tarzan held his counsel, he held his captive tongue. Watching and waiting, brimful with uncertainties and doubts. Hanging on till he could understand this better. Till she showed her hand and he found some way to foil her plan. Till she needed him for what only the man in Tarzan could give.

Somewhere in her trance La sensed a prickling from the light fingering up the inside of his leg. Yet La’s being was somewhere else. She wasn’t even looking at the strongly muscled calf she was toying with, her eyes were all within herself. Her fingers unconsciously circled with hair on deeply tanned skin, releasing tingling sensations at the tip of her breasts. Her chest lifted in delicious response to a self-induced arousal, her head dropped slightly back. Almost like her fingers were playing with herself. Breathing lusciously deep as if inhaling at sensuous delights. The heady fragrance of a flower, the heady scent of musk. Her breasts lifted. Moved, she massaged her own finger tips gently into the hardness on her breasts jutting lush against the coarse material she wore. La, unconcerned for any unseeing listener, gave a light growl that broke sensuously in her throat. As if fired deep-down at the touch of human skin, throbbing at the feel of male flesh. The feel of her fingers on trapped vulnerable muscle became concentrated, more probing, fervently groping, absorbing into her loins the manliness that radiated out of the vulnerable pores of this captive flesh. Yet without once him once seeing her. Without herself once observing the male meat staked out for her desires. It was all in her senses, it was all in her blood.

Tarzan started to guess at what was going on, La was behaving like he was not there, he did not exist. Tarzan gave another twitch. Despite his endeavours to keep on top of this situation, his body gave a slight leap when exploring fingers move to tickle at the inside of his thigh. Jumping in reaction at her touch that was toying with sensitive spots above his knee. He sucked in air for strength, it came in hissing over his gag. Drawing in breath to hold onto control, cursing himself for betraying his reactions. He could not deny, though, the unwanted shift growing in his body. Responding to her artful touch. Now being lightly massaged up the length of his inner thigh, now being skilfully stimulated by a squeeze at hard muscled flesh. Sending tingling sensations up the inside of his thigh. And awakening irksome signals that prickled at the tops of his legs. Tarzan’s body was responding, however he desperately ordered himself to hold back. The male-beast in him failing to obey the dictates of the thinking man. This was going to be a battle, it seemed, Tarzan was at war, taking on a wily foe. He steeled his resolve, he commanded his mind. Whatever La was up to, she would learn she was battling with the lord of the jungle. Tarzan’s will would be no easy prize.

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18c.

Tarzan was determined his strength of will was not going to be easily won. Giving in to La would be disastrous, his mind knew that, it steeled his resolve. But staying in charge of his body was a different matter, pickings for a practised tormentor like La. Whatever his thinking being intended, even a body as strongly muscled as his was less easily controlled. Tarzan’s fears were growing in response to La’s seductive touch, - however he wanted otherwise. Whatever the thinking man in Tarzan determined, the male animal in him was responding another way.

And the artful skills of La knew exactly what she was doing, Tarzan knew that, she was an indomitable foe. She’d played with men’s needs, - a thousand times. Nightly she’d had her loyal priests subject themselves to her. Strongly built proud warriors. Young men bursting with virility and a thrusting pride raging in their loins. Without a care she’d practised her humiliation on them. Bent their proud manliness to her evil will, tinkered with their self-esteem. La had learned how to toy with male susceptibilities. All for this chance when she’d have the man who had repeatedly snubbed her trapped in her clutches. All for this eventuality. For weeks playing with willing and needy young men struggling to please. Yet condemned to disappoint, destined to suffer under her will, doomed to endure her experiments until this one moment came when she could exact revenge. After months of torturing her loyal servants’ burgeoning desires, La knew every male frailty, she’d mastered every one. Now she turned them on her ultimate target. Tarzan crushed under her thumb.

Tarzan’s groin was letting him down, treacherously growing in response. His perfidious manhood crept in slavish gratitude for her stroking up his thigh. Just like every other man had. Just like all these tormented warrior-priests that she inveigled into bending to her needs. Night after night. Not to pleasure her. To feed her cravings, calculated, planned, indifferent to the tormented male desires that she doomed to failure between her thighs. Irrelevant, each-and-every-one of them a nothing. All for just this one eventuality. Alone with the man who had dared to snub her. Who had rubbed her face in the shit of his rejection. The man she had had helplessly pinned down in order to submit him to her will. Against his own will. Battling, fighting her still, determined not to give in. But La was experienced, she had conquered all. This man’s wretched crutch would be hers. The rest would follow. Before she deigned to crush his soul to her command.

La kept herself fully clothed, no need to stimulate this male beast’s senses, La had other means to force his reluctant body bend to her. Already she felt Tarzan betraying manly weakness as her fumbled with the cord at his waist.

He might wish it otherwise but Tarzan was showing already what her ministrations could do to him. Tarzan was aware he was now fully hard, this evil woman knew what she was doing. This woman exuded passion, every breath she took moved with lust. The frailty of his hungry body was leaping at the chance to feed. Starved of gentle touch. Rushing to respond as if this chance might be its last. But strangely it felt like he wasn’t there for her. He could not look at her, the rope across his neck kept his gaze forced above his head seeing only a bare ceiling, yet his other quivering senses were on full alert. Her tight hand closing on his hard response to her only confirmed the awful fact, a tremble of regret passed throughout his torso despairing that his male frailty had indeed given itself to her. Willingly hard, needfully hard. Tarzan winced in unpleasant shock when her tight grip on him there suddenly pumped down hard on his erectness. Without warning, his hot solidness was caught in the squeeze of her hot palm and was torn down jerkingly to the root. Making Tarzan grunt into his gag, his torso jolted slightly. He almost cried out in shock as another sharp yank seemed to tear at him just below his solid cockhead. A painful tug on the rim of his straining flesh. This bitch La knew exactly what she was doing. This was not sex, this was pain-induced arousal, this was La’s studied payback.

Prompted by his unwanted show of weakness, La’s clutch on Tarzan yanked again. She heard his grunted pain leapt to his throat. Surprise made his torso shoot against the constraining cord that cut across his throat, his heat flashed hard within her palm. La sensed the signals of his pains, no eyes for him, only for herself. Feeling a pleasurable glow through her hand at knowing him begin to suffer. And knowing his shame at being forced by her to react. A glow so rewarding that the claws that she had clenched around Tarzan’s inflamed man-shaft yanked down on him again. Ripping pain into his rim, making him wince. Again and again. Rhythmically slow hard pumping yanks. Timed for his burning hurt to flare wildly and then letting the embers smoulder between each biting tug. Bites that scored his throat into that cord. Unstoppable shudders as her vindictive talons pumped Tarzan towards his unwanted eruption. Harder, tighter, more painful. Sensing him tremble in pained anticipation between each tug. Making his eyes pop when she tugged at him. Making his seed churn. Driving Tarzan closer and closer to the unwanted point of shedding his precious man-seed. Forced by her. Forced on him. Despite himself. Making his cockhead prickle. Making his shaft burn. Being driven by her to cum.

Angry Tarzan sensed all his resolve was racing to a point beyond his charge. When Tarzan’s trembling body reluctantly would bend to the inevitable. He panted as he felt the unstoppable surges in his cockhead were giving in to the irresistible powers of nature.

Then La let Tarzan go. La released her grip on him. Then her tight-clenched palm found another home. Herself. La’s fingers abandoned Tarzan’s hardness to a quivering unspent release. With an involuntary groan his hips thrust for her, helplessly reached upwards for her. His body craving touch. His needy cockhead craving friction, demanding her torturing grip. Hopelessly. Helplessly.

Tarzan’s groaning need cast his eyes upwards at the ceiling seeing La in his mind’s eye. Hearing her moan. Kneeling around his legs, so close yet so far away. Her fingers pre-occupied. Not with him, with herself. Up under her shift. In between her legs. Rolling salaciously above his trembling thighs. In eager lustfulness moaning, playing with herself. Pleasurably arousing herself, the needy man-beast beneath ignored, the male unneeded, her Tarzan-slave an insignificant thing. Not even a worthwhile cock. Up under her shift that was where her universe was happening, her womanhood had found a superior source of delight, in her own fingers. Head back, breasts lifted, the other hand scraping her nipples greedily against her coarse shift. Arousing herself to lascivious eruption, taking strength by the frustrated moanings from the man-beast beneath, growling to herself as her hips greedily lifted under the ministrations of her hand. Masturbating noisily over his trembling torso, mocking the uselessness of the man-beast. Scorning Tarzan’s throbbing manliness. La’s fingers were just as good.

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18d.

He was a toy being played with. A beetle to have his legs pulled off. Tarzan swung between anger and rational thought. But she held all the cards, pulling his strings. One moment he felt angrily pissed off at her, the next he seethed with anger at himself for losing self-control, He had to stay on top, yet he feared it would be so easy for his legendary self-control to keep leeching away.

Tarzan had a sneaking suspicion that this was part of La’s game. Having him struggle, fighting desperately with his own inner conflicts, it all made sweeter his final capitulation when it came. As surely come it must in her mind. He hated having control wrenched from him like this, being used like this was a denial of everything that was his true self. But La knew that, she understood Tarzan full well, she understood men all-too-well.

Bravely he had been willing himself not to respond to her tricks. But it had been getting increasingly hard. Four times already she had mounted him. Straddling him, playing with the very essence of himself as a male. Giving his erectness some glimmer of hope, toying with his mind. And then denying him every move. Goaded by pure evil lust and her desire to conquer - while Tarzan battled to preserve some sense of self-worth. Tarzan understood full well the point of her tricks. To show him she did not need him. At best a hard dick for her to ride. A cock she herself could make hard, she had no need of his willingness, she could do it by herself.

She worked him, she rode on him, edging him to a climax. And then slackening the pace, pulling away, taking refuge in her own fingertips.

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Ch.18d wrock used by La

She was sinking down deep on Tarzan again. Filled with loathing Tarzan felt himself again forced into filling her. In his head he fought her back, as if in combat with a male-muscled adversary he grappled with her designs on him to win. But again he had no choice but to allow for her to plunge him deep inside herself.

Frustrated with aching need now, four times brought to the brink and left tremblingly unfulfilled. Fearing spinning almost delirious out of control, reeling with a heady mixture of need and anger. For himself, despite himself. Rejecting her, needing her. Fighting to resist her temptations, fighting to beat his own. The animal in him clawing to let itself go. Temptingly she rolled on him deep inside, beguilingly she squeezed on him, inevitably she toyed him back to arousal. Tarzan’s manliness knew no muscular strength against such a wily attack. His loins were just her pawn. No feast of her nakedness to please his eyes. No touch of her silken skin for his needy fingers. No sparkle in her gaze firing his desires. A dildo, Tarzan was La’s tool on which she rode to arouse herself. Not once had she bothered to speak with him, not even to taunt him in his gag. Not once had she acknowledged the human being that she had poked up her insides. She was riding a thing. Tarzan was an object. Solid meat. A dildo. A tool La used to arouse herself.

Whatever resistance Tarzan pumped into his head, a million stars were exploding in his groin. His blood tumbled mindlessly through a torrent of animal urges. The beast in him ached like crazy to unload his seed. The male animal in Tarzan seethed to seize the wilful female and dominate. Scornful laughter in his head mocked the frailty of a human wanting to resist. There was nothing he could do against such powerful manly urges, this was nature. The urge for friction was inescapable.

There was only so much his animal body could take and La had dragged him way past that limit. For the thinking Tarzan it hurt like crazy that she knew just what to do to defeat him, this she-cat knew exactly how to turn on him. All his strength of will was ebbing away, all the power of manly muscle could do nothing for him. A toy, his proud manhood was La’s toy, his body was some handy tool. The essence of him as a man was her plaything. But not once had she got hold of him, she wasn’t even touching him, for now her hand was nowhere near. Her fingers were at herself again insulting his sense of male self-worth, swaying noisily in her lusts above his thighs and arousing her with intense moanings as she gyrated astride him. He was meaningless. She no longer needed him for this, she had her men sacrificing their virility for her day and night. And she had her hand. Higher on the list,, above the scorned offer of his throbbing loins, came the pleasure that came from her own fingertips. A dildo, a tool, a nothing.

It was like he was fighting a skilled warrior, matched in strength. In hand-to-hand combat. Battling with her, sweating in combat with this creature intent on bringing him down. But she was armed, he was not. Again he gasped out loud in surprise. She had pulled back on him. Just the rim of his cockhead screeching with need inside. Tickling him there against her hot lips. Slowly lowering on him again, just inside. Squeezing salaciously around him. Leaning back and pulling back on his solid cockhead till it massaged her spot inside. Tarzan’s palms were clenched into clawed fists in his back. Trying not to give in to tortured arousal as again she rolled around on his screeching tip, squeezing every tiny bit of humiliation out of his cockhead. Using his firmness to send sparks of exhilaration crackling up her insides. Her gasped breath, her deep moanings as growling in her lusts she massaged his helpless solidness against that magic trigger-spot of hers. Flashes of unstoppable man-lust were also crackling like sparks down Tarzan’s splayed thighs. But uselessly.

Tarzan was trying to resist by diverting himself into anger. This was no love-making, no pleasure, he told himself, this was not even raw meaningless sex. This was abuse, torture. Pure and simple. Twisting the pleasures of lovemaking into self-willed torture. Deliberate misuse of his proud body.

Then La slid down on him, making him tremble. A slow slide down on his raging manhood taking him to the hilt. Tarzan shuddered, moaned. Squeezing on him as she lowered. Squeezing every prickling sensation out of his tortured hardness, as she made him fill her to the core. Tarzan could not help the trembling. He could not stop the shivering as his trapped body lay crushed on the bare planks feeling her tight wrapped around him.

Gratitude. Shamefully he recognised the sensation. Tarzan had felt a sense of gratitude, grateful she had stopped torturing his cockhead. He had uttered a moan of gratitude to his tormentor, grateful for a titbit of relief as La slid down on him and let him fill her out. He felt shame at that. The ignominy of feeling grateful to La! His emotions in disarray. He should feel anger by the had heard his shameful moan of gratitude, grateful for being abused. Grateful for being her victim. A hateful sound of shame had soaked into his gag as Tarzan moaned in gratitude to a torturer called La.

He was losing it, his sensations were getting carried away. Fleeing chaotically from his control. Fingernails dug into his palms in a final fight as Tarzan’s head struggled not to follow the dictates of his aching loins poked up inside her. Continuously and seductively being squeezed by her. His rational thinking battling with his voracious animal desires. Needs which the thinking man knew she would inevitably deny. Yet cravings which the beast in him needed like crazy to fulfil. He had tried to distract bodily need into intense hate. Fighting with an intense hatred for this monster, he had struggled to re-assert self-control. But he was tottering over the brink into failure. Being forced into giving up his seed did not matter, he told himself. Betraying to this monster how much she could make him need to - that did. That was what mattered, then La had won.

A sudden loud shout from La penetrated the flailing confusion of his spirit, a sign that La thought she was winning. Alerting him to the danger this battle was done. But this was a battle he could not afford to lose, this was a fight for supremacy, Tarzan was at war. La in her evil was dangerously close to proving to Tarzan that she exercised full power over him. Whenever she wanted. Whatever she wanted, she could take over him like this. That was what this rape was all about. Conquering his body, dominating his mind. That loathsome shout of joy betrayed her thoughts. She had control of his body, she thought, all that was missing was to take over his soul. Tarzan would not let that be, he couldn’t afford to. He’d die in the effort first.

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18e.

The thinking man in Tarzan knew not to give in. But the beast in the man knew better. It crunched the rational being between foaming jaws like a predator cracking bones and, snarling, it fought back at La with the ferocity of an alpha male. Born to dominate, destined to win. His stiffness throbbed, taut, hard, purple with burning need, ready to take the bitch. Hands balled into tight fighting fists, the animal within Tarzan’s breast snarled to show it was king. Fire rushed through his veins, a fearsome storm pounded through his loins. His hips lifted, his thighs kicked. Seeking entry, fighting for its proper place. He cursed, the animal-male thrashed, determined to fill the female with its seed, it burned to win. The thrust of his hips took on a life of their own, insistent, under their own control. The fangs of a beast that would have its way snarled, fighting to force itself onto some wearisome female. Grunts of determination broke from its throat, gyrating with a raging manhood to show it was boss.

But the female was wily, it wanted nothing of it. Staying tauntingly just out of reach, scoffing at his arrogance. Unabashed by the angry fire of male pride. Feeling heated need bursting futile on the sweat-drenched chest. And wilfully ignoring the writhing of the male beast subjugated to her will. Mocking its determination to battle back, animal-like in its anger, its goal to take the female frustrated, withheld from its grasp. Gradually hearing under the tone of male aggression a whine seeping from the flailing beast as it knew frustration in being denied its will.

Not bothering the beast with a single interested look. Toying with its helpless male rage that a mere female could thwart its determination. Aware of the male shaking of its head wildly from side-to-side, part in anger, more in frustration, breaking down slowly into a pitiful whine as its plans to plant its seed were artfully foiled. Broken by a slip of a female. Hopeless and helpless, bested, its raging hard-on finding no release. Sweating, burning up with aching urges to release its load. But denied. Denied by a female. Beaten by a woman who had no need of such a gift.

Beast-like moans broke unwanted in his throat. The beast in his loins still snarled and throbbed. That outburst of aggression had won him nothing. But a scheming male had learned many deceitful tricks. It remained convinced it could still out-trick her. Five times already she had denied him. Five times she had burst out in frenetic groanings as the female climaxed alone and leaving him unreleased. Each time seeking her own liberation with the help of her fingers. Belittling the proud male. Taunting it in its uselessness. Her thighs rocking astride his, her hips grinding into her hand, sensuously gyrating onto her fingers, in noisy lust massaging herself up inside her shift. Asserting this male-beast had nothing worthwhile to offer. Five times already the sounds of her impassioned moans had angered his blood as his own manhood ached for touch. Belittling manful pride, scorning manly urges, rejecting the solid weapon that beat in his groin. The beast in Tarzan was left shaking. Taken by a mixture of anger, sexual need and crippling frustration. Humiliated, she had indeed got to him. His animal body trembled with the irresistible need to set free these urges, - now taken beyond any fear that that would mean La had won.

That last fifth time, the male-beast had schemed for its release, playing her back, playing dumb. His loins throbbing, his burning cockhead aching for freedom, he had conspired to slump groaning back onto the planks, - as if broken. As if he had given up, submissive. Yet eyes shut, his mind was fully concentrated on the surge building irresistibly towards the tip of his screeching manhood. Every inch of his muscled strength of will was brought into service, forcing his urges to keep still, seemingly given up, seemingly subjugated. Letting her think she had him beaten. Disguising any signal of the state of his readiness. Suppressing any signs on his face that he was about to blow. Holding himself controlled yet inert until that very last second. Forcing control over his achingly needy body. Using every last bit of his reserves to fight the instinct to thrust up and finish the deed. Till every last tingle in his body recognised that his eruption was imminent. Till he knew one thrust and he was done. It took all his fighting energy to lay there inert, battling against nature, at war with every male instinct in his animal being. Struggling against his very male self. Yet it would be worth it. When he burst inside her. When her fury at being out-tricked burst like a thunderclap in her black heart. Her final defeat all the sweeter for the success of this trick. Tarzan lay back panting slow and hard, seemingly broken, at the same time struggling with his instincts to stay slumped and inert, looking dominated, exhausted, as if he’d given in. As if Tarzan was unable to fight her any more.

But then La had lifted off him. The bitch withdrew. As if she knew. La shot her hips up. As if her body could read his mind. She slicked herself rapidly up his raging manhood throbbing with her sensual juices. As if her womanhood sensed the readiness of every nerve bursting in his raging manhood. As if her womanhood could read its enemy’s thoughts. She slipped off him, barely making him any contact. He lost her, his trick foiled, his plans thwarted. His manhood left aching with a burning that was deeply physical. His loins thrust up for her. In vain. Reaching in desperation for her. Shivering, shuddering with his needs. Groaning unstoppably, cursing at that fiery ache that burst into flames his loins. Frustration broke in his head, swaying wildly from side-to-side, the rope burning at his throat. Cursing loud, need flushed in bursts of sweat on his chest. A firestorm thundered from out of his loins and mocked him with her escape.

La slipped off him.

Without a word, without a look, La left the room.

La left him alone.

Suddenly the fury of the male-beast burst out in fury. Fury and frustration. Snarling in a rage at the female that had out-witted him. In a flush of heat so intense, Tarzan’s whole being was shaken by overwhelming waves of anger. Raging urges crashed through him in overpowering beast-like surges. The whole body was trembling, a firestorm of need thudding into the deepest crevices of his being. The snarling animal in Tarzan’s loins fought like a trapped animal to break free. To burst free of these bonds and kill that female.

She’d beaten him, she’d gone, discarded him. The thinking male capitulated, it gave up the struggle to get a grip, he let the animal-male burst free. She had gone, she’d won, Tarzan had lost. Like a man losing the fight for his sanity Tarzan’s frustration rage, the snarling beast within took charge. His raging animal-urges burst out in frenzied writhings on hard wooden planks. Body and head in a futile noisy turmoil. Abandoned in blistering need, left with crippling urges. Futile, wasted, unreleased.

There was no fooling this woman, Tarzan had been forced to learn that this night. Artful, practised, aware, this was what La did for her kicks. She knew every male foible, exploited his every weakness. For her own sadistic delight. She had her men, her handsome devoted priests, she worked them like this. At best Tarzan was destined to join them. And at worst?

What had she turned into? On this platform she had had what she most desired, Tarzan between her thighs. Yet she left it, discarded it. She had walked out on him. A nothing, he had nothing to give. What she wanted, she could take, - she would, she had. Every day, that was all he would mean for her. Tarzan was her dildo. The chances she’d offered that first time they had met had long-since gone. To live with her, to share her bed. He was not to be an equal partner. Tarzan was not to be her mate. He was there to be used. For as long as she wished. La had left him, alone on the platform. Squirming with his burning frustrations. His future. He had tasted his sickening future.

For as long as she was moved to exact revenge on him, she’d do this. Take pleasure in this. Get hot on tormenting him. Pull off the beetle’s legs, leaving him spiritually maimed. And when she was finished with him, what then? When there was no more evil pleasure in extracting pain from his manly pride, what happened to Tarzan then?

19. Conflicts

19a.

It wasn’t cold in this vault. Directly underneath the sacrificial chamber which was flooded by the rays of the Flaming God, the heat never left this cell. Yet Tarzan felt himself shuddering. Not with the cold. With indecision, with the responsibility he bore. He was free of any bonds. Yet he was bound in the shackles of being responsible for the life of another man. Manu.

Alone tortured by his thoughts. Dragged back here to his cell by her warrior-priests. After La had taught Tarzan his future on that platform, she had walked out on him. Leaving him sweating with need. Aching with anger. Burning with shame. Aching like fury in his loins. An ache that hurt right through to his innermost being. Treated worse than dirt. Deserted. Just as she would have left a dildo streaked with her juices abandoned on the floor. Tarzan had never felt so small. But that was just the idea, La was empty of humanity. Tarzan had lain discarded on that platform, her used dildo. Not even worth sweeping aside with the rubbish. And shown the future. Just a solid dick useable to arouse her excitement. If she felt like it.

And alone on those bare planks tortured by his thoughts, Tarzan could not drown out that nagging voice, insidiously telling him the inevitable, he had brought this on himself. He had first come across a La that was sweetness and charm, he had been her first man. And look at the freak that had just been torturing his loins. Tarzan had played no small part in that change. He had had a role in turning La from innocence to a sadistic monster. He could not escape the accusation, he was being tortured by a monster he had created.

It was hours it seemed before the priests had come and released him. Exchanging knowing glances with each other. Knowing what Tarzan had been put. Knowing the burning that had been eating up his loins. They knew all-too-well his need to release his unspent urges, they’d all been there themselves. But here was no shared understanding, not like men who had endured the same fate. They gave themselves to La, - and still she treated them unkindly. How much more did this Tarzan deserve for being pig-headed? The apeman who had been responsible for the death of their brother Otobu, he deserved what he was getting. Still burning with anger at the sacrifice of their brother, they welcomed the chance when La handed this murderer over to them. The stakes stood ready for him out in the sun. The torture cross awaited. Other devices too. The Flaming God stood in readiness to burn up his stubborn soul.

Manu was not in the cell when Tarzan was returned. Tarzan had left him grimacing in that Chamber of Doom, tied to a column of gold. And groaning from his whipped manhood on fire. Where they were keeping Manu imprisoned, Tarzan did not know. Yet suddenly it seemed so incredibly important for them to be together. They were forced into sharing the same fate, prisoners to La, their futures bound together. Oddly, Tarzan wished like crazy for Manu’s company, yet the two of them were being kept apart. Maybe so that Tarzan could torture himself with the weight of his decision. Torn between Tarzan’s own freedom to choose or to sacrifice Manu’s life. And what a way to end a life! Sacrificed like Otobu.

Knowingly those priests had first left him standing his back against the wall with his arms roped behind. He’d get no rest that night, pinned upright by his neck to the wall. They knew too what was raging in Tarzan’s loins, after a night of denial with La. They left him, knowingly, fully aware of his craving for release. They left Tarzan to struggle with his burning urges. Unable to set free the beast snarling in his blood.

Tarzan had tasted his future. Pinned on that platform while La raped him. His future tasted sour, like acid in his guts, that seemingly inevitable future. That increasingly unavoidable future. Tomorrow, Tarzan would be returned to La for his decision. Life or death for Manu? Torture or enslavement for himself.

Was Manu anything to Tarzan? “Rescued” by Manu from Kwami’s tortures on the beach. Then , unthinkingly sold on to Bannerman. Because of this man Tarzan had been beaten within an inch of his life. Because of Manu’s actions too, Tarzan had finished up in Wilson’s hands. It was only luck that Tarzan had not finished up in a lifetime of slavery because of this man.

And this was the man whose life he held in the palms of his hands, Tarzan was expected to save the life of such a man?

Oddly, though, in many ways their two lives were a mirror-image. Betrayed, enslaved, escaped, taken captive by La. Difference was, Tarzan had never meant Manu any harm. Now Tarzan was being made responsible for his life. In his hands he had power of life and death over Manu. What a monstrous death if Tarzan said No!

And what a monstrous prospect if Tarzan said Yes. A life of cruel subjugation. As La’s dildo that she could abandon in the dirt.

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19b.

La’s tricks had become clear. He had escaped last time, after Otobu’s murder, escaped from La’s tortures. This time it was not his body she first attacked, it was his mind. Undermining his psyche and self-worth as a man. Now burdening him with the weight of another man’s life. Mental torture. And if La’s blackmail failed, the former instruments of torture still waited outside.

In the darkness of this cell, bitter thoughts had assailed Tarzan’s mind and kept him awake. Tomorrow they would come for him. The footsteps he had dreaded all night would stop his heart beating. Decision-time. Saving Manu and abandoning himself. The essence of freedom that had always pounded vibrant in his veins was to be forced into becoming a slave to La. The free spirit of Tarzan was to be killed off. His will subjugated to a cruel being to use as she saw fit. That Otobu had also submitted to La’s will - Tarzan shuddered again at the consequences of his devotion. The sound of determined footsteps coming to this cell would echo like a death knell. Sounding to fetch him to La. Summoned for his fateful decision.

He can’t escape it, Tarzan’s inner eye is re-living the horror of Otobu’s murder. Only this time when Tarzan is taken into the Chamber of Doom, it is Manu stretched out on the altar. Naked, spread-eagled, still fighting his bonds even as Tarzan is brought into the room. Tarzan free, close-guarded but no restraints, his wrists unbound. It is not Tarzan who will seek to escape a fearsome death. It is Manu. Pinned down on his back by rope at the ankles, the impressive strength of etched muscle subdued by more bonds to his overhead arms.

The tension is written deep into his face as Manu turns to see Tarzan enter, eyes slitted as if ordering Tarzan what to say, hardened muscles glistening in his sweat under the growing light. Knowing his fate lies in the apeman’s hands. Ironically, the apeman whose life earlier he had held cheap when he had made his deal with Bannerman. And yet Tarzan is the solution to avert Manu’s horrendous descent into unthinkable torture. His agonisingly slow path to a pitiless end. And Manu does not know the half of it. Not the flames. He only trembles at the shredding that has been threatened. But Tarzan has witnessed for himself what eventually happens to any sacrifice staked out on this altar stone, he knows what Manu does not. He has felt the flames, inhaled the fumes, choked on the smell of burning human flesh. All night Tarzan has shuddered at that memory. And at the responsibility he bears.

Lying on the altar, Manu stands erect. Biting rawhide bound around his crutch. Its sickeningly tight grip has rendered his manhood pain-purple with pulsating aches. Forcing him erect and vulnerable. A crippling tightness clenches at his ballsack crunching his manly nuts into an all-too-uncomfortable trap. Tarzan sees the powerful etched physique on the altar give a nervous tremble. Manu’s once-handsome face is carved with grinding aches, nervy from the strain from his cruel bondage. All the power of that muscled frame is tortured in the grip of body-crippling aches centred on his groin. Tarzan wants to take the burden of pain away, he wants to help out. To help this man who had sold him out, handed him over to Bannerman’s savagery. This man who is La’s hostage-to-fortune - his role to force Tarzan into changing his mind.

Tarzan feels tension go rigid in every hardened muscle of his own chest. It feels like he is wading in a quagmire of his own uncertainty. Cloying mud that threatens to hold down even the rippling muscles of his powerful legs. Sucked into the quicksand of his indecision. The leather loop is already tied in place under the rim of Manu’s cock. Another loop of rope encircles his waist. For now Manu’s tortured manliness reaches for the liberation of the skies. All that remains to prepare him for the most unmanly of abuse is to join the cock-loop to the waist-rope. And pull him flat. Flatten his manhood’s pride down to Manu’s powerful stomach. Vulnerably exposing his entrapped balls to the threat of the flail. So that on her signal the whistle of that braided switch would carve his manhood to pieces. Everything is depending on Tarzan’s answer. Tarzan’s single word can save Manu, can save his manly pride, save Manu’s existence as a man. A buzzing fills Tarzan’s brain, a wriggling sensation crushes the breath out of his sculpted chest. Like a pair of boas wrapped around his heart. Making it hard to breathe. Everything hangs on Tarzan’s word.

“No” will commit Manu to an inhuman death. Even as Tarzan’s imagination sees Manu struggling on that golden altar, Tarzan trembles at the weight of that decision. Alone in the darkness of his cell, he has shuddered at the thought, the screams he had heard at Otobu’s sacrifice still ring shrill in his ears. Knowing that this woman is capable of anything.

Tarzan trembles at what he sees on that dread altar, Manu struggling against his bonds, muscles like knotted rope fighting in the growing heat. A complex play of iron rippling under the ebony skin of his bare hard shoulders. Strength that will dance to avoid the lash. His muscled torso buckle, writhe, twist, turn. Every trick he is capable of will try to evade the cut of leather, the biting slash of the whip. But in vain. Shredding him, those had been La’s own brutal words. Manu will dance to her evil tune - even as the glare of the sun from above glistens off his fear-sweated skin. Bravely this specimen of physical perfection will relentlessly struggle to free himself. But it is not his choice. Even as the crystal clarity of his fate crackles like a starburst before his eyes, he is doomed. Howling in anger and despair. Even as the very essence of Manu as a man is ripped to pieces, hostage to La’s implacable will.

And then what? What becomes of Tarzan himself when he gives La his No? What happens to Tarzan after Manu’s death? Surely it will only mean the same for himself. “If I can’t have you, Tarzan”, La had warned, “.. no woman shall”.

And if he says “Yes”, Manu will live. Kept as a slave, probably claimed by the warrior-priests.

And Tarzan? What becomes of him? How will he himself survive? As La’s possession? Her dildo to be used? How long before his innate reluctance fails to please? Otobu had been devoted to her, fulfilling her every whim. Tarzan’s choices? Faced with a choice between freedom and continued torture or subjugation and enslavement to La’s capricious will. Otobu had chosen subjugation. Giving himself totally to La. Yet still La had turned on her devoted servant. When Otobu had failed to please, she’d had no compunction. She had cast aside his devotion and sentenced him to a savage death. La had surrounded herself with male perfection, she had gathered these devoted studs around her. And yet she had not a single qualm about sending them to the fires. Committing Otobu’s muscled frame screeching to the flames.

Tarzan had tasted his future, it tasted sour.

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19c.

Shivering in his cell with the responsibility for another man’s horrendous death, Tarzan keeps returning to the futility of either decision. So if Tarzan sacrifices Manu, if again he chooses freedom rather than subjugation to La, what then? Handed over to her warrior-priests. Still bristling with the memory of their brother’s death. Eager to be let loose on the man whose actions saw their brother burned alive before their trembling eyes. How long too before La’s patience runs out? How long before it is Tarzan there stretched out on that altar like Manu?

The shredding of that manhood. The leather splitting apart over-straining balls. The animal-like shrieks as he, like Manu, is ripped apart. Slashed to pieces down there.

Yes or No, the situation is impossible. And yet all hangs on a nod of his head.

Tarzan has grudgingly come to respect the warrior in Manu, he would always acquit himself well. Yet no matter how he might dig deep for the courage, fists clenched not to shame himself, yet Manu’s courage would be cut to shreds as that inhuman horde fell on his brutalised body. The scene Tarzan never wanted to see in his imagination keeps pursuing him into his deepest hell. A blood-lust is foaming the lips of all these half-human beasts, salivating around Manu on the altar. Long strings of cravings drooling from their jaws for the victim’s cries. Wishing for Tarzan to utter the single word, No. Aching for the blood-letting to begin. For the dome to flood with light and the whistle of the leather to cut. For the screams of a man driven out of his mind by pain to enflame their lusts. For their cups to catch Manu’s manly blood. For the chance to fall on his writhing body, their tongues licking at Manu’s shredded manhood even as he shrieks in his pain, his precious blood trickling down their lust-streaked chins.

Everything depends on Tarzan’s word.

Then the final horrifying moment of the sacrifice. Tarzan had consciously driven the thought of the flames from his thoughts, casting it wilfully from his mind. Yet he had woken up with a start, in the darkness drenched in his sweat. Seeing those horrors in his sleep. Manu still alive but impossibly weak, already ablaze from the inferno in his shredded groin, carried out. The panic on his face when he recognises his funeral pyre. The anger on Manu’s face when he faces the apeman who has denied him life. Worse, condemned him to a death beyond belief. The burning accusation in Manu’s eyes spits out the simple truth. Simply because Tarzan will not sleep with some woman, for that pig-headedness Manu is to endure an unimaginable death. Because Tarzan can’t bring himself to bed a woman, Manu is to be roasted alive.

A unwelcome voice is nagging away at Tarzan in the darkness of his cell. Tonight he is being brought face-to-face with the cruelty of La. Threatening to subject Manu to a man’s greatest nightmare. Manu, Tarzan’s only soul-mate in this hell called Opar. And for what? To make a point. This La is evil, evil made woman. The La Tarzan himself created. The La he met first was sweet, innocent, girl-like, full of laughter.

Then her first fully-formed male had arrived. Tarzan had made love to her. After the threat of the sacrificial knife plunged into his guts, Tarzan’s drive for life had exploded in his loins, he had given his all. In the excitement, Tarzan had not only made love. He had celebrated that he was still alive. La had experienced a vibrancy of love-making she had never known, she had unwittingly been enjoined as partner in Tarzan’s celebration of life. That exultation for life she had mistaken for love. She had given her all. To a fully-formed male. For Tarzan she had risked everything. Her beliefs, her integrity as priestess, she had risked the wrath of her God. Holding only to the simple hope of a blissful future, La had risked her all to be with Tarzan.

And unaccountably that saviour had deserted her, Tarzan had dashed every deeply held hope she cherished. La’s perfect mate had disappeared. Then later, worse, Tarzan had returned to rescue Jane, he had thrown La’s affections back in her face. He had rubbed her nose in the shit of rejection. He had left La behind, telling her this woman Jane was for him. La could only be second-best.

There was no avoiding the accusation, it was Tarzan’s own behaviour that had turned her. The beast who had callously raped him this night was a monster of Tarzan’s own creation. He was responsible for the bitterness that had had him tortured into submission that last time here, she was a monster he himself had brought into being. This was his monster who was threatening the most evil blackmail against Manu, this was Tarzan’s own creation. He had brought this all on himself. Tarzan was inescapably caught between a rock and a hard place. To say Yes or to say No. With dire outcomes for both himself and another man, whatever he decided. And there was no escaping the inevitable irony. Tarzan had brought this on himself, on both of them.  Maybe Manu had sold Tarzan out  -  to Bannerman and to the desolation of slavery.  But they were quits.   Manu too was a victim of Tarzan’s design.

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19d.

Tarzan faced the object of his bad conscience as it struggled towards him across the hot courtyard. Manu was still bound in that harness to his crutch. Just like he had been when Tarzan had last seen him tied to the column in the Chamber of Doom. The way he walked they must have left him like that overnight, bound and inflamed from the whipping he took. The burning heaviness off his groin was his constant reminder of La’s threat. The strain of bearing that ache was obvious as he approached, telling on his face as Manu carefully stepped over the hot earth. Moved gingerly towards Tarzan who was standing waiting under the frame, the man whose word could set him free.

Wrong place, wrong time. Manu had found Tarzan by that river. Simply wanting to build bridges. After his actions finished up with Tarzan in Bannerman’s hands. And then sold into slavery. Manu just wanted some kind of reconciliation. Then La’s men had arrived. Reluctantly the pair of them were thrown together, victims of La. They stared at each other drawn together in silence as the overhead rope was also tied to Manu’s wrists. Hauled up so that the two of them were pulled tight together, chest-to-chest. Manu winced as his enforced torture was pushed up against Tarzan’s loincloth and squeezed in-between. It was not comfortable either for Tarzan to feel another man’s erection pushed against his stomach. Forced on Manu, La’s threat to his manhood, La’s blackmail against Tarzan. It branded almost like a hot iron. Physically hot. A physical reminder of what might be. Yet also mentally, burning like a cattle-iron the weight of guilt into Tarzan’s own flesh. With a final tug on ropes, the pair of them were lifted off the earth, pressed by their weight inescapably close together. Suspended together to contemplate a weighty future.

And no sooner had they been left alone than Manu gasped out loud and squirmed for release. Their arms were tied by a pair of ropes above their heads. The end around Tarzan’s wrist snaked up over the overhead bar and finished tied around Manu’s wrist. The ropes had been pulled tight, lifting them, stretching them. Chests lifted and pushed against each other defiantly. Stomachs pulled in tight.

Manu grabbed at the chance. Uncaring for the pain it gave him, unconcerned about using his companion, he thrust his hips into Tarzan. His first chance to be rid of this aching weightiness he rubbed his enforced torment against Tarzan’s stomach, grunting in desperation to shed the strain he’d borne all night. Every touch made him painfully hiss. Every rub had him gasping. Every twitch was agony. But he needed release, he’d waited all night for this chance. Like a man gone crazy he needed to rid himself of this merciless pressure that had been his tormentor throughout an endless night. More than anything in the world. More than all the pains that with his every move sliced agonies through his guts. With every deliberate push, Manu tortured himself. But the need to rid himself of La’s torment was greater than any moment’s agonies.

Image:

Ch.19c wrock bound to Manu

Tarzan should have protested at being used like this. He would have reacted angrily, it was almost like the abusive way La had uncaringly used him. But wasn’t it Tarzan’s fault that Manu had been made to suffer? Guilt that Manu was being held hostage because of Tarzan made him tolerate such desperation. There was no escape from Manu, anyway. Their feet were bound together. The rope over the bar overhead kept them tight-pressed into each other. Manu’s scrabblings sought friction whether Tarzan allowed it or not.

For Manu, though, there could be no release. The rawhide bonds around him were so tight, they would never let him release his urges. But the despair of a man insane with need conquered reason, his desperation fought against the physical reality. Manu was all need, all burning aching need. But there would be no reprieve. La was no fool, she had studied long to know how to best male flesh.

But still Manu would not let himself give up, he was driven, made crazy by the inhuman need to break free of this bodily torture. He squirmed, he writhed, he thrust, he yanked. In ever-increasing desperation. Sweat glued the pair of them together, trickles dribbled off his head as he thrust increasingly wildly. Each pull on his arms yanked at Tarzan. Manu’s desperation was pounding his chest into Tarzan’s, his hips ground into Tarzan’s guts. Ever more wildly, ever more aggressively, ever more in futility for a release that La would not permit.

Exhaustion eventually defeated him. Frustration and despair thrust Manu’s head with a few unmanly gasps onto Tarzan’s shoulder. Sobs born out utter desolation shook Manu against his companion-in-pain, deep depressive pain that welled up from his guts. His powerful frame shuddered against Tarzan’s chest as the cruel realisation squeezed the last hope from Manu’s muscular body. La had his strength in her grip, La had his powerful physique crushed in her clutches and there would be no escape. Not till La decided to let him go.

In dismay, Manu hung collapsed against Tarzan’s chest. His spirit had given in as he slumped. His heavy-muscled weight weighed downwards and pulled at Tarzan’s shoulders. Tearing aches gnawed through Tarzan’s elbows, enduring pains ground through his armpits. But Tarzan chose to suffer in silence. He suffered for the man slumped inert against his chest. The man who had suffered because he was simply there when La’s men came for Tarzan. For the man whose life he still held in his hands. Power over life and death.

This was the day of that terrible choice. The freedom of his soul or this man’s horrific slaughter. Manu would put on a brave face at any beating, he’d faced down any enemy. But what man would not break down in horror at the thought of himself being ripped to shreds.

And soon Tarzan might have to face Manu as he underwent such brutality. To hear Manu’s raging accusations and curses. Cutting him right through the core.

And Tarzan’s alternative? To subjugate himself to La. A denial of every thing that went to make up Tarzan’s soul. The freedom of his body denied. The fires that fuelled the spirit that was Tarzan put out for ever.

And - as if that inhuman whipping was not enough - there was what Manu did not yet know was. When Manu was put to the fire. Tarzan’s obstinacy had condemned a man to that once. Could Tarzan let that happen again? Ironically Otobu’s screams could waken him in the night. Sympathy for his own torturer drenching Tarzan in sweat in his sleep, making Tarzan shiver cold. And now he was to condemn Manu? What choice did Tarzan have?

Tarzan was woken by a shoving against him. Manu was back with him, banging with his arms against Tarzan’s to awaken him. The heat was now strong, the Flaming God’s cruel countenance was creeping up high overhead. It would soon be the hour when they came for the two of them. When the clawed hand of the sun-god would come creeping down the walls of the Chamber of Doom. When Manu’s out-stretched body was dowsed with the god’s fierce light. And the hour arrived for Tarzan to give La his answer.

“So what happens now?”

Manu looked exhausted already. It was not the lack of sleep, Tarzan was sure. But his nervous energy had been worn-down by that grinding torment that was still pressed against Tarzan’s stomach. Debilitating Manu, weakening him overnight and long into this day.

Tarzan looked him in the eye. The two former protagonists now joined together by fate. Now soul-mates against La. Their lives hanging by a thread. A thread which Tarzan held.

“How much longer before you tell her?”

Tarzan looked away. The weight of his indecision turned his look away, though acutely aware of the spinelessness in that single move of his head. Conscious that Manu knew nothing about the altar and the sacrifice. He knew nothing of the flames. And acutely aware of the fact that Manu was absolutely convinced of what Tarzan was going to say to La.

Tarzan felt a sudden tension in the body pressed hard against his. A tremble as doubt passed through Manu’s torso. A fearful thought taken form in Manu’s human flesh. His head turned away still, Tarzan could feel Manu’s eyes boring into his face.

“Look at me”.

Manu’s voice was imperious, a chief, a leader again, not a prisoner to La. Tarzan’s head did not move but his eyes flicked over to Manu’s glare. Then conscious of his decision, Tarzan glanced away again.

The jab of Manu’s elbows against Tarzan’s arms jolted Tarzan into turning back. Shocked back into facing up to his decision, his face whipped round to face Manu’s burning glare. Tarzan’s wincing eyes met a face fuming with rage.

“My eye! Look me in the eye!” Manu’s eyes were ablaze. On fire with anger.

“You are going to tell her Yes”.

Tarzan stared back.

“Aren’t you?”

Tarzan’s gaze was filled with Manu’s fury. Like a raging forest fire. And yet behind Manu’s anger Tarzan could detect a spark of fear.

The pair of them stared into each other’s uncomprehending eyes. A silent eternity passed in that moment. Worlds-apart separated their minds.

The thud of a hard skull against Tarzan’s head suddenly knocked him back crying out. Pain burst in his head. Lightning flashed before his eyes. Another head-butt filled Tarzan’s ears with a burst of thunder. But not enough to drown out Manu’s deafening roar.

“You ARE going to tell her Yes”, Manu’s eyes fumed.

Again he lashed out in desperation, A knee jabbed at Tarzan’s leg.

“YOU ARE!” Manu bellowed. A roar powered by anger, a command laced with fear.

“YOU ARE!”

20 Aftermath

20a.

He may have hoped for it. But he had nearly given up believing in it. The chance for escape arrived. At last. So long in his mind-controlled state he almost missed the chance, he had got so used to being down-trodden and subjugated to her will. Days-on-end La had had him brought to her. For weeks La had had Tarzan brought down, belittled, abused. Every trick and turn to undermine his sense of self-will. Whenever the whim took her. And when the whim took her she certainly took her time, sometimes several times a day. To shame. To pain. She had Tarzan put through it. Endlessly. Painfully. Gradually convincing him of a growing sense of hopelessness, worthlessness, her chattel. Uncaringly. To amuse herself with his growing sense of helplessness. Her thing, her object, no longer a man. Not the legendary jungle-lord whose name immediately inspired respect. Exacting on this muscular frame and his strength of will retribution for all the degradations he had wrought on her. Under her foot, under her thumb. Squeezing his soul dry of self-worth with a fathomless vigour for his subjugation.

Tarzan had managed to flee, he got away. Luck, pure luck. There’d never be a second chance, he had had to seize it, no matter the consequences. There was no great sense of pride in the way he got away, he had run for it. No dignity in the way he had scrabbled out through that secret passage and sprinted like a coward away from Opar. Here there’d been no heroic battle fighting for his life. No manly struggle as he won against overwhelming odds. Crushing a horde of muscled priests with the power of his superior might. No way, Tarzan had run for it, scattered for his life to save his skin, to hang on to his sanity. Like some young lion-male seen off by the father of the pride, he’d run for cover with his tail between his legs to lick his wounds. He’d disappeared like a craven rat to save his wretched hide. He ran, he’d saved his skin.

But he was alive, today he again was free. Free to live another day. Not like if he had stayed. Within the confines of La’s city Tarzan saw no hope, he become a nothing. La’s toy. The beetle she played with like some child. Until she chose to snap off its legs. And he had been that close to having the back of his self-belief broken for ever.

Manu? Tarzan had no idea where he was. He could not afford to care. To save Manu’s life that once, Tarzan had given in to La. He had nodded, - a nod was the best he had managed to do. The word Yes would not pass his lips. To save Manu from brutalisation. To save him from the flames. To save another man’s life from La’s evil, Tarzan had subjected himself to La.

For those reasons, to save another man’s life. And also because Tarzan knew he had to build his strength. Out-numbered by La’s men who hated him, there was no way he could have fought his way free. If he had rejected La, they would have tortured every last bit of strength out of his body. His Yes to La had been a ploy, it gave him the chance to play for time, to await the chance. To have the strength when that moment came. So he had nodded to La. He had given La the victory, he had made it seem she had won.

But that plan had back-fired on him. For weeks, he had thought it had. The price La exacted for that one small nod had been devastating. Tarzan had suffered for it, with his body, with his mind. He had been made to pay dearly for that one little word. For days. For weeks. Tarzan had lost count amid the narcotic pain that often befuddled his mind. Through the horrors of humiliation to which she had her priests subject him. Bide his time, that had been the plan, simple really. But that chance of escape seemed it was never coming. There was barely a moment when he was not bound or in chains. Or locked in some windowless blackened cell overnight. Close-guarded when free of restraint by La’s priests. Men just aching for him to put a foot wrong, men just yearning to get vengeful hands on him and pay him back for the death of their friend. Tarzan lost sight of Manu. After rescuing him, days ago, weeks ago, painful aeons ago, Tarzan had never seen Manu again. Condemned to hard labour? Condemned into nightly service with her priests more likely. Yes, probably Manu had become the priests’ over-used whore. Tarzan did not know, Tarzan could not afford to care. He had saved the man’s life once. At his own cost. Now Manu would have to take care of himself, he was big enough, Tarzan had done everything for the man? T When his one-and-only chance came, Tarzan had fled. Manu> The man was on his own. Like Tarzan had been, abandoned by fate to sort himself out. Waiting for that elusive chance. And the more elusive it seemed, the more the frustrations of his captivity got to him. His head had nodded to save Manu. But his spirit had never said Yes. He was going to escape, that he planned. But the longer escape seemed to be impossible, the more his spirit suffered. He ached, he hurt, inside. Frustration grew, loss of hope threatened, dismay raised its ugly head. Anger boiled in his blood. But that anger was turning sour, the seething that before had sizzled in frustration in his guts was turning to hopelessness.

But it had happened at last, at long last Tarzan had fled Opar. Using the secret entrance through which he had before entered. With scarce a thought for what he was leaving behind. Certainly not concerned for what might happen to Manu. His former protagonist. The man who had handed him to Bannerman’s brutality. Manu was part of the past which had cost him Jane, so frightened by the risks of living in this jungle Jane too had left him. Yet ironically it had been out of jealousy for Jane that La had turned on him. That was what Manu had cost him too, Tarzan was free but his frightened Jane was long since gone. Tarzan was free of La’s clutches. But the life he was returning to was missing the woman he really loved, the woman he had chosen instead of La. Tarzan was free and alive. La was not. Whatever might happen to Manu in the chaos that would ensue when they found her dead - Tarzan just ran for his life, he saved his skin, he could not afford to give more than a single thought for the catastrophe he was leaving behind. He’d paid for Manu‘s hide once. Now it was up-to-him.

Tarzan and La had had history, for her he’d been made to settle debts. Debts he had for slavish weeks been forced to pay for with his subjugation to her every whim. Since their first meeting her feelings had turned sour. Lies and deceit were his crimes, fury and festering resentment was her hurt. Sudden or protracted violence was her response, on a whim. Mind games, power struggles against her slave. Since submitting it had been one endlessly shaming torture of his mind and body after the next. For weeks, his spirit had suffered at La’s triumph over him. For the sake of Manu. Sacrificing himself in order to save a man who had had no compunction in handing him to Bannerman leaving Jane behind to fend for herself.

Tarzan’s humanity had saved Manu’s life. And under La’s thumb Tarzan had more than paid for it. With daily humiliations, crushed under her foot. Through seemingly never-ending abuse that took away his sense of self-worth. La was celebrating the living death of the jungle-lord.

At first he may have reasoned to himself that he had had to perform this act to save Manu but it was all a ploy. But it took little time before he was becoming aware it was not a risk that was paying off. Not a single sign of a chance to make a break, for weeks. Endlessly bound, mindlessly abused. Just an eternal squeeze on his hopes. An everlasting squeeze on his heart to crush to pieces any hope that this imprisonment to La’s will might ever be ended. Feeling himself slowly spiralling down into a dark vortex at the bottom of which lay no hope.

Often La had him stretched out on that same platform. In that same bare room where she had raped his mind. Regularly she had toyed with him in the same way. That first time she had left him feeling so small, so used, so helpless. It didn’t get better by repeating. Again she played with his manhood for her pleasure yet allowing him none. Getting through to his sense of himself as a human being of worth, seeing he had none. A thing, her toy. If he was lucky, if he bust a gut in his efforts to please her, she’d let him cum. Once maybe. Like a tit-bit thrown to an appreciative pet.

But only when the whim took her. Using him continuously till his whole body trembled with overpowering need. Till his soul had passed from anger and spiralled down into self-hate and despair. And then if she felt kind, she might deign to let him find some release. Once she pressed a stick across his throat, as if to throttle him. Proving she could end his life if she felt so inclined. Going red in the face, sending him light-headed. Gagging for life. While kindly she rocked on him inside her, choking him, putting him in fear of his life while she carried on masturbating herself on him. And, because that time she was so disposed, graciously La granted the once-proud jungle-lord the right to cum. But not inside her, this slave was not worthy of that.

He was her pet, she kept him in chains, a dog denied food and kept chained on a leash. She released him from his chains when she wanted to play. Keeping him starved for days till he had to scrabble thankfully in the dirt for the bones she threw.

Or she had had her men milk him. Needlessly chained-up, iron fetters symbolic of his servitude, treated like some beast, forced to submit to their painful ministrations to his manhood while La watched. His strength locked in the unbreakable chains of his submission to her will. Any sign of protest or resistance only earning him more of her wrath.

Her priests would enslave his erection, pumping at it harshly, squeezing pain out of every move. Scuffing soreness into his tender flesh, smirking at the grimaces that cut across his face. His manhood continuously brought back to hardness, always too early, constantly worked hard and painfully till he was standing again. Watched by Tarzan’s cruel mistress while her men shamefully worked him up. Again and again, seeking to please La, wastefully forcing his seed out of him for no reasons other than the pain, the shame and the waste. To please her, because she commanded it. Without rest, with barely a break to regain his strength there or to catch his breath, their hands were quickly grabbing at him, working him over. The soreness of his skin turning into burning embers. Rubbed and flayed pain-raw till their every slightest move on him came filled with dread. Till a pump down on red-raw flesh made him hiss. While uncaring she looked on. While she watched closely for the slightest murmur of protest from him. As if she craved some sign of resistance. For any excuse to punish. And when he lost control and anger flared, a smile illuminated her lips. A smile of pleasure. She ordered more. Punishing the insolent beast for disobedience to her implacable will. An evil smile that told how she was enjoying playing with her favourite toy. And that she’d play with it continuously - till she had broken the thing.

She’d not handed Tarzan over to her men, not yet. For their night-time amusement. But she would, he had no doubt that moment would come. When it no longer amused her enough just to trifle with his dignity. When she had tired of toying with her butterfly, she would have her men pull off its wings. Tarzan would find himself surrounded by vengeful zebra-striped fiends. Exacting punishment for Otobu’s hideous screaming as the searing heat took him. Dozens of men knowing only fear-ridden beds with La, denied fulfilling lives with other women. Now the apeman had been handed over for their night-time sport, feeding their craving to take it out on the murderer of their friend.

Not yet but that would happen, Tarzan was sure. For now, though, it still pleased La to squeeze every last drop of indignity out of Tarzan’s pride. But that time would come. He was not her bondage-slave, he was far less. Her pet, her toy, a mere beast. Power of life-and-death over this carcase, the power to use-and-abuse. When she tired of him, he’d have no choice, no freedom. Some time she would hand the once-mighty jungle-lord over to her men.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

20b.

He couldn’t believe it was happening, he didn’t believe his luck. Escape. He nearly let slip the chance, fearing this was some new trick of La’s. To lure him into making some fateful mistake, be caught in the act of disobedience and be subjected to some further punishment from her men. But Tarzan had seized his chance, it had paid off. Now he was free again. Free in his precious jungle again, no longer Opar’s prisoner. Free to scuttle away into the undergrowth of his precious jungle to lick his wounds. Like some wounded animal. Time for his aching body to recover from weeks of their physical punishment. But more, to lick at the seeping wounds that these weeks subjugated to La had cut deep into the aching soreness of his soul.

Depression had threatened to dig deep into his soul. Pain burned on his skin, torture had control of his flesh. But worse these doubts at ever believing he’d manage some escape had begun seditiously to gnaw away at his spirit. And there had lain the greatest danger. Dragging him down to the depths of a weakening despair, a loss of hope. An evil poison that would crawl through his every sinew. Convincing him he was for ever trapped, there’d never ever be an escape from La’s evil will. Not till she’d had enough. And then it was the end. When she would order him stretched out on her altar in the Chamber of Doom.

Day-after-day, Tarzan was abused. Treated less than the animals, often forced to live with the pigs. Scrabbling for food with the beasts. To show how much he was worth, nothing, his life was worth nothing under La’s foot. Abused, caged, belittled. It was only his gratitude to La’s treatment that gave his life meaning. And if he dared show the slightest sign of hesitation, if his body betrayed the smallest flick of annoyance at this never-ending abuse, he knew it was back out under the glare of the sun, hanging off the cross. Or suspended between the poles. The sun-god snarling down into his face and teaching the arrogant mortal respect.

Subjected to a seemingly never-ending cycle of punishments that she had devised to pay back Tarzan for his offences. These tortures La had tested out over the months, she had submitted her own loyal warrior-priests to the same degradations. All in anticipation of Tarzan’s return. The mis-use of her devoted men had been a mere trial for just the moment when her Tarzan would be back. And live the life of one who endured submission to her will.

It didn’t get better by the day. There was no gradual getting used to his lifetime as her torture-beast. As time went on, shame gnawed away at him, shame that he let them do this, shame that he could do nothing to prevent this. Shame that threatened to drag him down into a state of self-hate. Maybe it had been a noble decision to sacrifice himself for another human being. But the cost was to his own self, wearing him down. At first slowly, then the attacks on his free-spirit seemed to cut deep like daggers, an unstoppable battle of attrition against his free will. With every move against him, another bit of his spirit broke off, another piece of his soul withered and died.

Again Tarzan had been brought back to face ritual humiliation in that room, taken back to that platform of bare boards. Even as the priests brought him down the corridors, the sense of dismay grew with every step, knowing what he faced. Approaching the scene of his first ritual rape. A place he had visited more times that he cared. Arms pinned out on that bare platform so that La could abuse his self-worth for her selfish pleasure. Before he even entered the room, it was already hard to face up to the growing sense of his own downfall.

But for the first time Tarzan noticed something somewhat amiss, something different. An excitement tingled that he did not dare to show, something had changed. She had not had his feet secured. Had she just forgotten? Or was this some other twist of her depraved mind? Or did she maybe think her toy was no longer a threat? That he was broken and was now given over to this life of despair? That he had accepted he was just an object she played with? Like some butterfly whose wings she could pull off?

He wanted to believe this was a mistake, that La had not realised. Or was it a trick? Experience had taught him otherwise. Or did she really think him now so worthless, so submissive, under her thumb, down-trodden? Or more likely this was the start of some new trap? She had done it before, surprised him with new twists. She had cycled through numerous rituals of making Tarzan feel small. Binding his nuts. Gagging him, reducing him to something that could not even talk. Throttling him till be could barely breathe. Was this some other new method she had thought up? Probably. But he kept a whisper of hope alive, perhaps not. He fought against showing any sign of that tingle of excitement, just having his legs free might offer up that long-elusive chance. He could barely control himself yet he feared any sign he might give would alert her to the mistake. If indeed it was her mistake. And all the time, that intriguing thought was prickling away in Tarzan’s mind, an opportunity. His legs were free, he was not fully bound. He could not afford to ignore such an chance. He could afford to show his glimmer of hope either.

He didn’t wait, just in case. Out of the blue he attacked, more in hope that planned. Tarzan could not afford to hesitate. Suddenly, her neck was between his calves. Faster than thought, Tarzan grabbed his chance. Legs up, athletically he twisted himself into position, he had his calf across La’s windpipe before she knew. Her neck was twisted between the powerful muscled calves of a desperate man. Ankles crossed and locked in a power-hold, Tarzan squeezed. With a vengeance. With the desperation of a man enslaved against his will, Tarzan squeezed. With the flush of a man who feared he had one chance-and-one-chance-only to save his hide, he flattened her windpipe between determined muscled legs. Shock and surprise filled her face. She struggled, she squirmed, legs flailed for release. Her hands gripped at the rock-hard muscle of Tarzan’s calves. The fingernails of a she-cat clawed at the solid power of his legs, she scratched cat-nails into the power-lock force of his mighty legs. Claws tearing at his flesh with the ferocity of a mother defending her young. But feeling her fighting him back only steeled Tarzan’s strength, human flesh turned to iron as Tarzan squeezed her throat harder still. Crushing the life out of her, crushing her windpipe between his rock-hard strength of mind. Pain was being scratched in deep into muscled legs, like panther-claws tearing up his flesh. But, teeth gritted, a long grunt of effort breaking from his chest, Tarzan resolved to crush the evil life out of La, he grunted into the effort, he squeezed. Her windpipe was clenched inescapably tight in his life-desperate grip. He squeezed his legs. He clenched his jaw. Tarzan crushed the life out of her. Desperation wrenched open her mouth to call out for her guards. But nothing came out. Her sounds crushed in-between Tarzan’s desperation to survive.

In her last few seconds - maybe when La knew there was no hope, she was going to die - Tarzan thought he saw a calmness sweep over her face. She was doomed. She was being murdered by the man she once had loved. Her life was being taken by the man who had opened her eyes with his love-making, the man who had revealed to her the gift of life. Tarzan felt that softness, let himself be beguiled by this sight, this re-birth of the La from before. A softness in her gaze like that first time. Revelling again in the mesmerising joy for life which his love-making had aroused. Was she reverting? Or was this a trick? A final trick from one who had explored a man’s every frailty. Who knew too well a woman’s power to beguile. Tarzan couldn’t look, he couldn’t afford to.

Tarzan dared not look into the eyes of the once-sweet girl to whom he had given life. Now in the last seconds of her doomed existence, in an odd way maybe La was reverting to the innocence he had first known. And maybe this was just another La trick! In fear of his own weakness, Tarzan averted his eyes. Averted his eyes as the power-muscles of his legs were crushing the life out of the woman he had aroused into womanhood. Whom he had turned from sweet girl into woman. His own callous actions taking her from woman into murderous monster. Murdering her. Killing her between the legs of the self-same man who had shown her life.

In fear of his own weakness, he squeezed his ankles tighter together. With a twist of a leg his shin bone crushed across La’s windpipe. With grunts of desperation, he repeatedly jarred his bone hard into her gagging throat. Not daring to look as he murdered her. The man who had once opened her eyes. Crushing between powerful legs the monster he had given life. The woman he himself had turned. Made her into a hellish fiend. The monster who had turned and fought to conquer his will.

The indomitable force that was the lord of the jungle did not dare look into a woman’s eyes. In case all the strength of his physique was no match against her soft look. Ankles crossed, he clenched her throat between his powerful legs. In the desperate hope to live another day, Tarzan crushed the life out of La.

His victim. The monster Tarzan had created.

Tarzan fled. Free again. Free for ever from La’s tight grip on his soul. Free to lick his wounds and ponder what he had become. Could he go on? Could he continue living a kind of life that driven away his Jane? The mighty jungle lord crawled into the undergrowth and licked at his wounds. Considering what had become of his life since meeting with La.

And Manu? Tarzan had fled for his life. Leaving Manu behind. The man would have to fend for himself.

End

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| |Obsession |

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