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Temple of the Exiled God - Part Two

Salgrus knelt in the darkness. All he could hear was his own heart pounding in his ears, and all he could smell was the dusty, stale air of this ancient temple around him. The leopard patterned hyena was tired. Fatigued not simply because of his lack of sleep that night so far, but because of what his body had been through less than thirty minutes ago. The fur of his hands and crotch, not to mention the fabric on the inside of his shorts, were still stained with the drying, matted result of his recent loss of control. His cheeks still red, unable to let go of the feelings that had surged so violently through him, yet utterly unable to recall just how unimaginably good it had felt.

He knew that he had to act. The vast stone door against which he had been beating his hands for the last thirty minutes wasn't budging anytime soon, and shaken, humiliated as he was by his masturbatory eruption, the hyena wasn't just going to sit here and let himself wither away. He had spent his adult life exploring ruins and caverns just like this. An archaeologist lived for the chance to delve, uninhibited into some ancient, uncharted temple; so much the better if it seemed to be trapped or otherwise_cursed_. All that meant was that within, there lay something worth risking your life for.

Pulling himself to his feet, Salgrus dusted off his shorts and tugged at the crotch with a wince, peeling the sticky fabric away from his stained, matted crotch one last time. He gave his flashlight a halfhearted shake, not truly expecting it to suddenly spring back to life, and steadied himself mentally. No, he couldn't see in the pitch black chamber, but that was only one of the hyena's senses. He could feel the air around him, a little cooler and fresher towards the depths of the temple. He could feel the dusty ground beneath his feet, the accumulated sand and gravel of thousands of years the tiniest bit deeper as he proceeded away from the entrance. And of course he could hear. His ears twitching nervously as the temple sighed and groaned from far away. Not just the sounds that any ancient structure made, but an almost organic murmur. Like distant voices.

No... not voices.

Voice.

A single, ancient voice. Calling out to him in a way that terrified Salgrus, but also gave him the courage he needed to advance, blind, into the darkness.

For a long time he walked in silence, the whispering of the temple itself his only companion. The darkness was absolute, but Salgrus didn't need to hold his hands out in front of him, nor was he worried about losing his footing. He walked almost in a trance, dazed and overwhelmed by the hum of the building's ancient voice all around him.

It was only light; such an unexpected and impossible thing so deep within this ancient, abandoned structure, which tore Salgrus free from his dazed wandering. A torch, flaming and flickering upon a wall bracket as the hyena turned yet another corner he couldn't possibly have known was coming. He shook his head, frowning in confusion like someone awaking from a dream when they couldn't actually remember having fallen asleep.

"T-the fuck?"

The strangeness of the situation began to dawn upon the hyena once more as he stared into those glowing flames. He looked back, over his shoulder, and groaned in horror. The stone hallway behind him was not in fact a simple, single corridor; but rather a labyrinthine mass of seven... no, eight thin, snaking paths emerging out into this one curving continuation. Hurriedly the hyena grabbed the torch from the wall, carrying it back and studying the ground. His eyes widened, his face flooded with relief. Footprints. His own paws marking a trail from the direction he had come.

Cruelly, a deep rumble of air billowed up from deeper in the temple just a moment or two later. It swept through the corridor all around Salgrus, threatening to extinguish his torch and knock the hyena clean off his feet. He reached out and grabbed at the rough stone of one wall, steadying himself as the gust passed.

By the time his gaze returned to the ground, the dust, and his footprints within it, were gone.

"Dammit..."

That wasn't all Salgrus said. Over the next few minutes, a string of curses in every tongue the hyena spoke issued from his muzzle. With crazed urgency he darted back and forth between the various entrances, convinced that there had to be some remnant, some clue to the direction from which he had arrived. A hair. A flake of skin. Anything.

All the while, the temple mocked him. At least, that was what the new, breathy bursts of air from deeper in the complex felt like to Salgrus. Like wheezing laughter, taunting him and delighting in his failure.

The way the hyena saw it, he had eight options. The eight paths, seven of which led to realms unknown and one of which led back to the entrance; the location he should never have left in the first place. The one thing which Salgrus utterly refused to consider was pressing onward. He didn't know what had possessed him, quite literally it seemed, to come this far. It was stupid, irrational and quite possibly a fatal mistake. How arrogant he had been to believe that he could navigate this ancient ruin alone and without any way of marking his path astounded Salgrus. His cheeks burned, and the hyena felt hot, angry tears boiling up near the corners of his eyes as he thought of what his companion would think if he saw him now.

What an amateur. What a disgrace to the profession. Not even a tenth of the man Shakal was... nor even a half of the man his own potential would permit.

Salgrus was so angry at himself, he didn't even realize that he wasn't standing still any longer. Once more his emotion was driving him beyond the limits of his conscious mind, and with the temple continuing to whisper its suggestive impulses all around him, the hyena held his torch aloft and strode down one of the eight forking paths. Was it the right one, who knew? To be perfectly frank, even though he had been able to see each and every potential path in the glow of his flaming torch, even Salgrus couldn't recall which of the lean, snaking corridors he had taken.

With bitter tears rolling down his face, muttering and cursing into the flickering light held out before him, the hyena stumbled on. If anything his dazed state now was even more pervasive than the first, anger and self-loathing overriding every sane, sapient impulse which should have told Salgrus that the only thing worse than making a bad choice, was allowing that bad choice to define your_next_choice. He stared straight ahead, no attention paid to any of the archaeological wonders which could have given him years' worth of study. The intricate pictograms upon the walls. The stories they told. The legends. The warnings.

It was only when the corridor ended that Salgrus ground to a halt. Pausing, bleary eyed and shaking from exhaustion even though he had absolutely no concept of how long or how far he had been walking. The hyena stared out into the darkness opening up before him, a wide, high roofed chamber whose dimensions were lost well beyond the glow of his torch.

Slower now, his actions more controlled than instinctual once again, Salgrus advanced into the room. His eyes remained fixed on the floor, darting upward only occasionally as he took note of every carved flagstone upon which his weight settled. Pressure traps were one of the most common in all ancient ruins, and it was a wonder that the hyena hadn't been skewered or otherwise incapacitated by one already.

Exactly seventy eight steps into the chamber, the hyena froze. He felt his clawed feet settle onto the latest flagstone, and waited for its integrity to give way and send him tumbling into some dark, spiked pit. For a split-second he was overcome with vertigo, convinced he was falling. But no, there was seemingly no danger here. At least, not danger of that sort.

There was, however, reason to be afraid. Afraid, confused, and ever more frustrated at this place and himself for having become so hopelessly lost within its depths.

Standing before Salgrus, perhaps five or six meters away, was a mirror. Not the polished copper circles set into an ornate wire frame which Salgrus had encountered at other ancient sites... albeit none of them on this continent. Not any kind of mirror that should have existed at the time when the research that he and Shakal had done said this temple had been built, but a flawless, almost brand new looking glass mirror. It stood easily eight feet high and half as wide, set in a sturdy frame of wrought precious metal. All around the glass itself patterns were carved into the golden metalwork, figures twisted and contorted around one another. At first, Salgrus thought they were grotesques; gargoyle like designs set in positions of terror and torture. But as he looked closer, at the detailed expressions upon the figures' faces, he realized that they weren't in pain at all. Far from it.

The mirror's frame depicted hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies, all intertwined in one vast, glorious orgy of debauched sex.

Stunned by what he was seeing; a relic so impossible that it had to be forged, but the type of elaborate forgery which could still make headlines, the hyena took another step forward. And another, and another. Soon he stood directly in front of the mirror, so close he could reach out and touch it.

He didn't, of course. His mind may have been rendered hazy and filled with all manner of helpless emotions, but Salgrus wasn't foolish enough to reach out and touch some vast, golden artifact in the middle of an ancient temple. Not yet, anyway.

Instead, he just stared. Looking deep into the reflective surface of the mirror at himself, at the flickering torch in his hand, and at the chamber illuminated behind him. The mirror's glass was so flawless, so unblemished by time or natural imperfections that the reflection almost appeared clearer than the room itself. Salgrus couldn't see the walls of the chamber, lost in darkness, as he looked over his shoulder, but he could see them within the mirror. Indeed they appeared to grow clearer with every passing second, the light from his torch seeming to flow into the mirror and illuminate everything caught by its reflection.

Salgrus watched as beyond the mirror, the chamber revealed itself in its entirety. A vast and beautiful room with ceilings at least thirty feet high, and walls plastered with the same ornate carvings and ancient writing that he had passed by so thoughtlessly on his way here. The room was almost totally empty, except for a ring of torches upon wrought iron stands set around the mirror at a distance of around ten meters. Torches which stood cold and dead one second, but flared into life as the light from Salgrus' torch hit them.

No sooner had they burst into flame within the mirror, so too did they begin to burn and crackle on Salgrus' side of the glass; lighting spontaneously and drawing a nervous yelp of shock from the hyena.

"T-that's... quite an illusion."

Salgrus didn't know who he thought he was talking to. The temple itself? The mirror, maybe? Or perhaps just trying to convince himself that there was a rational explanation for this seemingly magical act of pyrokinesis. After just a few moments spent glancing at the torches now burning brightly all around him however, the hyena's attention was drawn helplessly back to the mirror itself. He looked into its perfectly smooth surface,beyond the glass and into the reflected room on the other side. At himself. His thin, rather unassuming form. His bare chest, lean but totally undefined in figure, and his shorts... the front still stained darker from the drying dampness of his earlier incident.

A sigh escaped the hyena's muzzle, and he rubbed at his forehead with his free hand.

"Look at you..."

He shook his head, almost dismissive, certainly disapprovingly at himself.

"...look at where you've gotten yourself. Lost and alone."

Perfectly on cue, a figure stepped out of the darkness from behind the hyena's reflection. Taller, stronger than Salgrus in practically every respect. Its eyes glowed with a pale violet hue, and in the flickering torchlight, its white teeth twinkled red.

Salgrus tensed, eyes widening sharply. He let slip a stunned, joyous whimper.

"S-Shakal..."

The panther's burly arms reached out, around Salgrus' body, and embraced the hyena from behind. Pulling the smaller male's arms in tight against his sides, forcing him to drop his torch or risk singeing his own fur. The flaming stick toppled to the ground, and instantly extinguished itself without so much as a puff of lingering smoke.

Leaning down slightly over the much shorter man, Shakal growled in Salgrus' reflection's ear. He whispered something so delicate that it made the hyena's cheeks burn, and so simultaneously filthy that his toes curled. A moment later Salgrus watched as Shakal buried his teeth tenderly into the flesh of his reflection's neck, and tossed his head back with a joyous cry as he felt the intense pressure of the love bite rush through him.

Standing bolt upright before the mirror, eyes fixed upon the glass and one hand gently rubbing at his own chest while the other began to fumble with the waistline of his shorts, Salgrus watched his mirror image tremble and quiver in the panther's arms. It was Shakal's hand upon his chest, rubbing at his soft, leopard-patterned fur and tweaking his nipples, just as it was the feline male's paw stroking at the front of his already tented shorts. A nervous, bashful whimper escaped the hyena as he felt Shakal groping him. He knew he wasn't the most impressive of men, far from it in fact. Why should he, of all people, deserve to be with such a fine specimen of manhood? Why him, rather than... frankly, rather than_anyone_ else?

A breathy, formless voice seemed to whisper into Salgrus' ear just seconds later, offering him not just_an_ answer, but the answer which the hyena had longed to hear.

"Because, you're special."

Salgrus stared into the mirror's depths, groaning happily as Shakal hooked his thumbs around the hyena's shorts and tugged them down. The smaller male's cock did little to hinder the motion of his clothing, its less than five inches of swollen manhood easily set loose, and swiftly caught up in Shakal's firm fingers. The panther squeezed at Salgrus, and a frantic yelp escaped his maw. A cry of such desperate joy that for a few seconds, Salgrus was deafened by the echoes of his own pleasure.

"P-please..."

Whimpering and gasping as the panther began to jerk him off, Salgrus begged for more. He could feel Shakal's body pressed up against him from behind. The panther's own manhood rock hard, exposed, and pressing against the now bare cheeks of his rear end. No matter how desperately the hyena pleaded, however, no matter how loud he cried out or how violently he bucked and squirmed within his companion's strong grasp, Shakal barely seemed to acknowledge his own desires. The panther was wholly, totally focused on what he was doing to Salgrus. On holding him, pleasing him. On making the hyena buck, and yelp, and_ cum _.

Salgrus' eyes bulged, straining to drink in every last moment without blinking as his cock began to pulse and spurt with the fevered urgency of orgasm. Hot trickles of his cum poured out over the panther's clutching paw, and dripped down onto the dusty temple floor between his feet. The hyena whined and grunted happily, a gleeful, almost disturbingly carefree grin planted upon his face as at long last his fantasies came true. Wrapped up in the arms of the man he worshiped and adored, lost in pleasure, yes, but far more lost in rapturous affection for Shakal.

That same stunned, giddy grin was set upon both Salgrus' reflection, and the hyena's face itself. The only difference was that while the reflection was smiling from within the arms of a strong, handsome panther, reality left Salgrus standing alone; hand wrapped around his throbbing, straining cock as it twitched with wild orgasmic release.

"Oh g-god..."

A desperately joyous groan escaped the hyena's lips as he watched Shakal continue to hold him tight, still kissing and nipping at his neck, still grinding his rampant arousal up against Salgrus' cheeks. In the wake of his orgasm the smaller male waited for Shakal to release him, to let his cock slip free from his grasp and recover from what it had just endured. Instead, he felt the already firm grip upon his erection tighten. He felt the panther's paw squeezing him again, and his companion's other hand dropping from his chest to fondle the hyena's balls, seemingly intent on drawing yet another load from him without delay.

Once more Salgrus heard that soft, whispering voice inside his head. Speaking such simple words, chosen so perfectly it was almost as if they'd been lifted right out of the hyena's heart.

"My little hero."

The words were spoken with such reverence and pride, just as Salgrus had always dreamed. He threw his head back, pressing it against the panther's strong shoulder, and wailed once again as his already over-sensitive, over-stimulated shaft began to twitch and pulse with a second consecutive volley of cum.

With his eyes fixed upon the mirror, Salgrus watched himself and heard himself be cherished, adored and generally worshiped by the man which_he_had worshiped for as long as he could remember. He stood there like a zombie, dazed and drooling out of one corner of his goofily grinning muzzle. He squeezed and rubbed at his own cock and balls ceaselessly, driving himself to climax after climax for the second time in... in however long he'd spent in this place. His pleasurable cries, ever more frantic and frenzied, echoed out around the vast chamber and rang deafeningly in his ears.

He could have stayed there forever. Watching. Dreaming. Practically living out his fantasies until they consumed him, swallowed up into the space where reality met dreams, and living met with death. He could have so easily lost himself entirely to his longings, except... except the more he became fixated on the mirror, the more he thought of Shakal and nothing else. Recalling every moment he'd spent with the panther. Every detail about the man he adored; physical, mental, down to the smallest little detail.

Up to, and including the last moments they had spent together. Him, stumbling out of his tent in search of masturbatory relief, leaving Shakal asleep and alone.

Alone... all alone in the night, trapped outside the temple by the vast stone door that had locked Salgrus_into_ this strange, impossible place.

But, if Shakal was locked out, then he couldn't possibly be inside. And if he was inside, then... who was standing behind the hyena's reflection, holding him and pleasuring him so diligently?

"W-wait..."

Salgrus grunted, shaking his head in confusion.

"Stop. D-don't."

He wasn't sure who he was talking to. The figure pleasuring him, or appearing to do so at least, or perhaps himself. Begging his own mind not to talk itself out of this heaven into which it was currently locked.

Either way, the hyena's loss of focus was all it took to shatter the illusion. He tore his eyes away from the mirror, and span around to face who, if anyone, was standing behind him.

In the flickering torchlight, Salgrus thought he saw a figure. A pale, wispy shadow; lean and vaguely canid in appearance, all black with glowing purple eyes. It lingered for a moment, locking its gaze onto his own with fevered intensity, then faded swiftly into nothingness.

Salgrus, alone once more, whimpered in mournful embarrassment. He looked at his hands, plastered with his own cum for the second time that day, and down around his ankles; his shorts coated in streaks and dribbles of even more spent seed. With a grunt of discomfort, the hyena stepped out of his ruined garments and kicked them away angrily, into the darkness. He stood, naked, wringing his hands and wincing as his excess cum flew off his fingertips and down to the stone floor. Anything to buy himself a few extra seconds before he had to decide what to do next. Before he had to figure out a way to escape from this insane, maze-like temple.

A way to get back to Shakal, the_real_ Shakal... wherever he may have been.

***************

"Dammit, Sal..."

Shakal growled as he found himself staring at yet another solid wall. No gaps. No holes. No discernible way into the temple now that the main entrance had been sealed.

For the best part of a day, the panther had been circling the outer edge of the temple complex. It was bigger than he'd expected,_much_bigger. Under normal circumstances this would have thrilled Shakal, temples this ancient weren't built big unless they were either in major population centers, or built in the service of an extremely powerful and loved, or possibly feared, god. This was an archaeologist's dream, but right now he couldn't enjoy it. Couldn't take a single moment to appreciate the beauty or historical significance of this place, because he was caught up in the middle of a race to potentially safe his friend's life.

Of course, the sad truth was that for all Shakal knew, Salgrus was already dead. Crushed by the vast stone which had sealed the temple off. After all, why else would it have fallen unless someone had been present to make it fall. Someone more actively interested in the ruins than wild animals seeking to make a home here. No matter the likelihood of that morbid eventuality, however, the panther wouldn't stop searching until he was sure. He would not abandon his friend, wouldn't abandon anyone to being trapped within those walls for all eternity.

Up ahead, the black furred male could hear running water. He drew away from the latest bare patch of wall to receive his scrutiny, and pressed onward; hefting his rucksack full of supplies up on one shoulder as he quickened his pace. Turning yet another corner, the panther's eyes widened slightly. He saw a stream; a tributary of the much larger river close by, running down a small gulley and what appeared to be directly into the temple wall.

Hurriedly, Shakal followed the trickling trail of water, and soon let loose a growl of relieved satisfaction. There, right in front of him, was an inlet. A small tunnel designed for providing irrigation and natural water to what was normally a well deep in the interior of a large building. Carefully the panther approached the semicircular hole in the stonework, moving towards it from the side, very much aware of the potential not only for booby-traps, but also for snakes, spiders and other such beasts to be dwelling within the damp, moist environment. A small stick, about half a meter long, lay close by. The panther picked it up, and gently prodded its tip into the darkened hole.

Silence. Still. No reaction from within, from neither beast nor trap.

The panther relaxed, though only slightly, and drew away from the temple wall. He scrambled down into the gulley, and shone his large, wide beamed flashlight upon the inlet. It was empty. Unremarkable. No visible traps. No signs of life. Not even any crumbled or broken stonework. Just like the rest of the temple, though overgrown with plants it appeared entirely un-weathered by the passage of time.

Shakal grinned. However dire the situation, he wasn't going to pass up on an opportunity to revel in some good luck.

"Well... here we go..."

Dropping down to his hands and knees, strapping his rucksack on backwards across his chest, the panther crawled into the water inlet. The flow of the water around his knees and wrists was gentle, so gentle it was barely noticeable, but its constant flow had made the stonework beneath immensely slippery. As such it took several minutes for Shakal to safely navigate the twenty meters or so of tunnel which led to what must have been a feed point for the well. A dark hole in the ground; perfectly square, about a meter each side. In other words, big enough.

Shining his flashlight down the hole, Shakal could see water only ten or fifteen meters below. It looked deep. Again, deep enough. More encouraging still was the fact that when Shakal turned off his flashlight, the well didn't remain completely dark. There was a faint glow from one side of the well, perhaps indicating another inlet on a subterranean level, or better yet, an_outlet_ into a storage tank within the interior of the building.

Briefly, the panther rummaged through his bag. Checking its contents and ensuring that they were all in their sealed, waterproof bags. It was a necessary precaution when traveling through rainforest areas; moisture being the enemy of so much technology, and humidity making it even worse. In actual fact the weather had been kind to them for most of their journey, and so the bags probably hadn't been that necessary overall so far. Now, on the other hand, they were about to earn their place on the trip for sure.

Drawing in a series of deep, regular breaths as he cast off his heavy walking boots and set them to one side within the inlet, Shakal slid his legs over the edge of the hole and down into the darkness beyond. He re-tightened the straps of his rucksack, fiddled briefly with the lens of the flashlight; itself guaranteed as waterproof, and smiled.

He pushed himself forward, and with his tail flailing uncontrollably behind him, fell down into the well.

The panther landed with a surprisingly small splash, tucking in his arms and legs to minimize any pain, trusting in the water being deep enough to break his fall. It was, and with a gasp of effort as he broke the surface Shakal was soon treading water towards the dim source of natural light. He shone his flashlight, still functional, towards the light source, and let slip a gratified growl.

About forty centimeters above the current water level, there was a hole in the wall. Not a purpose built drainage outlet, but a missing section of stonework; cracked and chipped at the edges. By the patternation of the chips upon the stone, Shakal could instantly tell that the damage had been done from within, and that if he swam down to the base of the well he would doubtlessly find the ruined remains of the wall. It also told him something else, however. That someone, at some point in history, had been so desperate to escape from that portion of the temple, they had broken through solid rock to try and escape.

He briefly wondered whether it would only be stone he might find at the bottom of the well, or perhaps bone too. A body, and maybe personal possessions belonging to one of the temple's builders, or at the very least an earlier visitor to this supposedly long lost site. Again, it took a decent amount of effort on the panther's part to remind him that this wasn't the time for archaeological exploration. That this was a search and rescue above all else, and he had a job to do as quickly and efficiently as possible.

With relative ease Shakal dragged himself out of the water, not taking any time to let himself drip dry before moving away from the hole in the stonework to a more secure, secluded corner of this first chamber. The panther extinguished his flashlight, allowing his eyes to acclimatise to the dim light that appeared to be emanating from the next room over, whatever that may have been. He knew that room was his next target, but before making any moves, Shakal reached into his rucksack and pulled from its bag a small lump of chalk-stone. He returned to the broken segment of wall, and scored three large X's upon the stone; followed by his initials.

Moving on towards the next room, the panther marked the doorway with a single X and his initials once more, along with an arrow pointing back. Only then did he pass through the door, and into the relatively bright light beyond.

The chamber into which Shakal stepped was an archaeologist's dream. The walls were covered from top to bottom in pictograms. Not only that, but ones which Shakal recognized as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Upon stone plinths, small, ornate vases lined the walls. Canopic jars, the kind of containers used to preserve the organs of the most important dead. In the center of the chamber however were the most important of all the finds. Sarcophagi. No less than twelve ornately carved, stone sarcophagi.

"Oh fuck...fuck."

In any other instant, in any other lifetime, Shakal would have wept with joy. He had found it. This confirmed it beyond almost any doubt. The Temple of the Exiled God.

But... there was no time to celebrate. No time to study. No time to record a single one of the priceless artifacts and historical data. He had no choice but to leave. To proceed onward to the next room, and to forget about all that he had seen until he knew that Salgrus was safe and sound.

Marking the next door in the same manner as the last, Shakal proceeded onward. Through another burial chamber, this one filled with at least thirty sarcophagi; all less ornate than those in the previous chamber, but still of exceptional quality and in condition that once again brought the panther close to tears. The following three rooms were all similarly stocked, jammed full of such archaeological bounty that Shakal actually began to feel a little scared. A little overwhelmed by the enormity of what he and Salgrus had found.

In the next burial room, however, there was one big difference. Almost all of the sarcophagi were closed and sealed. The one at the far end of the chamber, however, had its lid resting shattered beside it, upon the floor.

Unable to resist his curiosity, Shakal crept forward and peered into the void of the sarcophagus.

Empty.

The panther frowned. If this body had been looted by grave robbers, why just this one? Why not take them all? The dust lying within the sarcophagus suggested it had been a very long time indeed since the body was removed, so it couldn't be that this was a recent theft, and that the thieves might simply have not returned for the rest yet. So... where had the body gone?

With this question playing on his mind almost as much, to the panther's shame, as Salgrus' whereabouts, Shakal pressed on. Once more he marked the chamber's exit with a cross and his initials, and passed into the following chamber.

A brief instant of dizziness hit the panther like a truck, sending him reeling sideways and very nearly knocking his head into the wall. He dropped his flashlight, which hit the ground lens first, shattering against the solid stone. For a single moment, everything went dark; both the flashlight and the natural illumination of the chambers' torches extinguishing all at once.

Then, light.

Not just the dim, regular glow of torches lining the walls, but a vast and singular source of light illuminating the chamber in which Shakal now stood. A huge room, its roof three times as high as the last few chambers and its length and breadth many more times greater. At its center, a blazing bonfire; crackling and flaring brightly, sending up plumes of bluish black smoke that did not fill the upper air of the room, but simply faded to nothingness like steam. A fire emerging from a great pit that did not appear to be filled with coal or wood, but some sort of bubbling, deep blue liquid.

And all around the pit... people. Of a sort.

Shakal didn't know_how_ exactly he knew this, but as soon as he saw the individuals grouped around the fire, he knew that they were, or should have been, the occupants of the sarcophagi. They weren't mummies. They weren't corpses. They looked and moved like any living, breathing people. Except of course for their eyes. Until that moment, Shakal had never truly understood why the eyes were called the windows to the soul.

Every eye in the room aside from the panther's own glowed with a purple radiance, unblinking and fierce. They stared at one another with mindless hunger, all engaged in the same single-minded, furious action.

Over a hundred people. A hundred ancient bodies, ancient minds and ancient hearts. Beautiful, sleek white cats. Thick maned lions. Lithe opossums. Powerful maned wolves. A mixture of the African and the South American, some nude and some wearing the same ancient garb that their families would have hundreds or thousands of years before. All conjoined in one vast, delirious orgy. Fucking and roaring and wailing and cumming around that vast fire...

...until one of them looked up, tossing their head in a scream of pleasure, and saw Shakal.

Instantly, the room fell silent. Even the crackle of the fire died down to a muted whisper.

All eyes rose from the bodies of their neighbors surrounding them, and fixed upon the panther.

They stared through him. Into him.

They pulled at him, urging him forward with their single minded, violet-eyed focus. And he responded, stumbling and mewling like a needy kitten, towards them.

The first figures Shakal reached were a pair of zebra; powerful, heavyset and exceptionally well hung. Dropping to his knees, the panther's paws instantly moved towards their cocks. The two shafts were already glistening, slick not only with pre-cum but with the saliva left over from the intimacy the zebra had been sharing in prior to Shakal's arrival. They were worked up to the extreme, and the panther loved it. He purred deeply, overwhelmed with satisfaction as he held the two shafts close to his face, rubbing up against them and feeling their pre dripping down his dark fur.

A frantic bellow of pleasure escaped one of the two zebra less than thirty seconds after Shakal's first contact, its body already primed for orgasm even before the panther had added his paws and hungry muzzle to the mix. Hot ribbons of cum lashed the length of the black furred male's face, landing upon his ears and the top of his head, not to mention his shoulders as the vast cock erupted in a volatile climax. It took another few minutes for the second zebra to join his companion; minutes filled with slurping and suckling while Shakal wrapped his lips around the vast equine shaft, gulping down as much as he could handle not only of the zebra's cock, but his pre-cum, too. Eventually he too let loose, and with a gurgle of pleasure as his muzzle overflowed with cum, Shakal was passed onto the next group; a mass of others having encircled the panther and his first pair of lovers.

What followed was something between a banquet and torture for Shakal. The panther had always been blessed with a rather active libido, but now more so than ever it was put to the test. With every cock he sucked, stroked or rode to rapture, there were five more to take its place. He tore the clothes off lithe bodies to get at the swollen bulges beneath, and they in turn tore off his garments, casting his pack to one side and leaving the panther wearing nothing more than his watch. He roared and snarled in pleasure as his body was streaked and marked with cum from countless members of a dozen different species, even his own cum staining his fur on a couple of occasions.

The more Shakal came, the more he pleasured and_was_pleasured by the throng of orgiastic, violet-eyed lovers congregating around the vast fire pit, the more desperate he became for the next orgasm. The next fuck. The next cock inside him, the next load of cum flowing down his throat or over his whimpering, reddened face. He stopped wondering how he was still going, how he possibly had any cum left. Only the next orgasm, his or another's, mattered.

It was quite possible that Shakal could have remained in that chamber, with those creatures and their insatiable needs, forever. Forever in the truest sense, for while the lovers that Shakal met that day had feelings and desires of their own, the glowing in their eyes betrayed the fact that they were something other than mortal. Bound by their lust, driven to fuck, to touch, to pleasure and to cum with every breath and every second of the eternity which stretched out before them. Shakal could well have been rendered into a being just like them, consumed by his own urges and lost forever amongst them. Were it not for one man amongst the throng. One sex crazed beast whose urges outstripped even Shakal's own, that might well have been the case.

The panther yowled and grunted as he felt a heavy weight fall down upon him, where he was kneeling upon all fours. He looked up, but couldn't see the species of the man looming over him. The thick coat of shaggy brown fur could have belonged to a bear, but it could just as easily have been a vast, long haired dog. Of course, it didn't really matter to Shakal_what_ or who the man was, just that he take whatever he had between his legs, and slide it into the panther's already well worked, cum-filled tailhole at the earliest possible opportunity.

And therein lay the problem.

"A-ahh..."

Grunting softly, Shakal closed his eyes.God, this man was big. Bigger than perhaps any other man here... so thick that he wasn't just having trouble taking all of him, he was having trouble taking any of him.

"Ahhhh!"

A louder, more urgent cry of discomfort escaped the panther as the beast of a lover astride him began to grunt with impatience, seeming not to understand, or at least not to care that the size differential between him and Shakal was simply too great to overcome.

"N-nnh... no!"

Finally, the panther couldn't handle it any longer. He felt that in another few seconds the beast would actually be inside him, and it wouldn't be because he'd somehow managed to fit, but rather because he'd made himself a bigger hole. No matter how desperate Shakal may have been. No matter how possessed with the unnatural urge to fuck, it couldn't overcome his most primal instincts. Couldn't override his need for self preservation.

Dropping from his hand and kneels, Shakal pressed himself flat against the ground and dragged himself urgently forward; out from under the grunting, huffing male's embrace. A frantic howl of frustration escaped the beast, and as it tried to grab at Shakal with one powerful paw, the panther rolled over onto his side and launched a sharp kick directly at its face. The vast creature reared back, howling in agony and clutching at its nose. It thrashed and flailed in anguish, and its cock, rock hard and flowing with pre-cum like a waterfall just seconds before, rapidly began to soften.

All around the chamber, the rest of the sex-mad acolytes froze in the midst of their coital lust. They stared in horror at the howling, flailing buffalo; the largest and strongest of their number. They saw his cock, an erection that had stood proud and hard for millennia under the fury of its owner's enduring lust, flagging with pain... and let loose a collective wail of mournful horror.

As Shakal dragged himself to the far end of the room, he barely had time to snatch up his pack from where it lay close by. He stayed low both to avoid detection and because he wasn't sure how well he'd do standing up given how tired he'd become, and how sore his rear end suddenly felt.

Out of the corner of his eye, the panther watched as countless individuals flung themselves at the buffalo. He must have had ten different muzzles licking and kissing at his cock. Another three tending to his balls, and countless others stroking and trying their very best to soothe him and coax him back to a state of arousal. It seemed that they didn't just crave pleasure, they_needed_ it. They all needed it, and if even one of their number was denied that pleasure... it harmed each and every one of them.

Thus, the panther made his escape. From that one room, that one chamber in this vast temple, at least.

He heaved his rucksack onto his back and dragged his naked, cum-stained body into the next chamber. A small, empty annex with very little remarkable about it, beyond of course Shakal's presence. By then his body was beginning to realize precisely what it had been through. Fatigued to the extreme by what hadn't just been hours of non-stop sex, but_days_ according to the date upon his watch's readout.

Days.

Days?!

Shakal sat bolt upright, stunned out of the doze he had been falling into so swiftly and sensibly.

He had been caught up in that room, in that_trap_, for days. And in the meantime... what about Salgrus? What had become of his companion, his fellow archaeologist, while he was getting fucked silly?

"Oh god..."

Unable to believe what he was forcing himself to do, Shakal dragged himself to his feet. He staggered across the room, to the next doorway, and through.

Empty.

Again he repeated the process. And again and again. Desperately searching in spite of his fatigue. In spite of his ass still leaking liberal volumes of cum, and in spite of knowing deep down that after what he had been through in that chamber, he'd never again feel truly satisfied; truly spent. He searched on through all that discomfort and desire and the need to rest, until his body simply would not permit him to go on any longer.

In another nameless, formless, hopelessly unimportant chamber, Shakal collapsed before he could even look around to see if it was safe. Unconscious not through pain or injury, but from simple exhaustion.

Naked, cum-stained and alone, the panther slept.

Upon waking up, many hours later, however... only two of those facts remained true.

Shakal was still naked.

He was still covered in now dried, unpleasantly crisp cum; matting his fur from top to tail.

But no longer was he alone, awaking to find his head resting upon a warm thigh, and an affectionate paw stroking at his forehead.

"H-hey..."

The panther turned his head. The first thing he saw was an erect cock. Resting close to where his head was laid, inoffensively meek but unavoidably notable at that close range. He turned it the other way, upward, and murmured in wondrous relief.

"S-Sal?"

Gazing down at the panther lying across his lap, Salgrus nodded. The leopard furred hyena smiled, a genuine, joyful smile, and stroked his fingertips along the tops of Shakal's ears.

"Yeah, it's me. I... I can't believe I found you. What... w-what are you doing here? How did you get in?"

Still dazed and tired, the panther purred; closing his eyes and straining his neck, pushing his head up against the affectionate rubbing which Salgrus was delivering.

"Looking for you. I... I found a well. An inlet. A-and then... o-oh god, Sal. This is it. We're here. We've found it. The temple of the Exiled God. And... Sal... t-the stories. The legends. They're true. I... the... the army of the unbound... I saw it. I f-faced them."

Again, still stroking Shakal's ears and the top of the panther's head, Salgrus smiled down at his weary companion.

"I know. These last few days, I've seen it all. Apparitions. Darts that induce hour long orgasms. Even the Portal of Lost Desires. You were right about it all along, Shakal. It_was_ a mirror. A gold framed mirror, thousands of years before glass like that should have existed! It's amazing, it's..."

His voice trailed off as he looked back down at the panther. Once again, Shakal's eyes were closed. Once more, the panther was purring, his breath growing slower and heavier as he sank into a fitful, much needed slumber.

Salgrus chuckled, leaning back against the pedestal beside which he had found Shakal.

"That's fine, you rest. We have time."

Glancing up at the pedestal, lit by a trio of torches which Salgrus had salvaged from adjoining rooms, the hyena admired the statue upon it. The obsidian carved jackal, like those he'd seen in other rooms, this one with his hand wrapped around his cock and an urgent, desperate expression of lust set upon his face; obviously a mere instant or so away from orgasm.

"We have all the time in the world now. Because if you're right, whatever's at the center of this place is going to be the discovery of our lives."

By Jeeves