A Word Out of Place - Part 9

[tekuno]

This story is now complete. Content warnings and description for this story accompany part 1. Each part has a link to the next part at the end for your convenience.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten

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There's really no reason not to post this now. It's not like I'm writing it as I go, at least on this story.

As for the plot, well, I tried to warn you...

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A Word Out of Place
Part 9

"Andrew, love?"

"Hmmm, yes Simon?"

"My apologies for waking you, but your arm is over me, and I could not move it without waking you. There is so little space left in the bed that I didn't want to knock your arms to the floor." Andrew's massive back and broad shoulders overhung the bed on both sides. His arms, thicker than the other man's waist, hung from shoulders larger than his head. His tremendous hairy chest had similarity in shape to the bed's twin pillows, but with a solidity which almost went beyond flesh. Simon slept reclined over the mass, and straddling the prince's enormous endowment. Andrew's body stretched from one end of the bed to the other, nearly a foot taller than he had been when he first arrived.

"Oh, dear. I'm sorry, Simon."

"Do not apologize. I love you as you are, and I look forward to seeing you even larger."

"Well, then, not as an apology, but as cupidity. I dream of you becoming magnified, I would be glad for any increase, even if you could not reach my size."

"I'm sorry, Andrew, but the spell--"

"There you are again, apologizing for what is not your fault. You are truly adorable." The massive prince stood up, and lifted Simon to his lips. "Mmm. Well, let's start our training."

"Would you like to start with me in midair, this time?"

"Why not? It might give me an advantage this time."

The action of the next few minutes was confused, but in the end, Andrew lay prone, Simon kneeling on his broad back and holding the prince's arms together behind his back.

"All right, I give. I give." Simon released Andrew, and the two men go to their feet. "There's something humiliating in constantly being beaten by a man a fraction of my weight, and with a disadvantage in height to boot. Now, for your reward..."

"Mmmm. Think of it as good practice. Andrew, I guarantee that, with your enhanced size and strength, you would be a difficult opponent for even an ordinary bodyguard."

"Nevertheless, the sensation persists. You may be impressive to others, but now I tower over you. Look how my arms enclose you when we embrace!"

"Not all goals can be achieved, Andrew."

"If I could, I would say 'Simon, I order you to surpass me in every measure' and--" the flow of Andrew's speech was arrested by a thump from behind him. He turned, and found that Simon had fallen to the floor, his face stricken and his limbs twitching.

"AAaaghk! Gh-gh-gh-aaaaaaa!"

"Simon! What's wrong?"

Andrew crouched and picked up the spasming bodyguard, and laid him back on the bed, where he continued to thrash and groan.

"Simon! Oh, no. No, Simon! What can I do? You've never been ill before. I... I... Oh. Ha ha ha!"

As Andrew watched, Simon's form expanded. His shoulders pushed outward further and further, pectoral muscles bulging out between them like sacks of water inflating. Simon's arms thickened like trees, while his already tree-like thighs burgeoned still further, pushing his lengthening manhood away. His back took on the aspect of a cobra's hood, but impossibly thick, and his head was swallowed in by the muscles around his neck. The bed creaked and groaned under the suddenly-increased weight.

Finally, the process was over. Simon, now a giant, head and shoulders taller than the average man, lay gasping.

"Simon, I seem to have given you an order without meaning to do so. Are you all right?"

"Y-yes, Andrew."

"Oh, your voice has become deeper."

"Really? I suppose you are correct."

"I apologize, Simon. I had no idea my amulet could do that to you. I had assumed that such an order would be impossible."

"No need for apologies, Andrew. The sensation was somewhat unpleasant, but it ended quickly, and I know you didn't mean it."

"But now, I'm afraid our schedule for the day must be rearranged."

"How so?"

"We must make a stop at the smithy to order you new armor, since there is no chance that you will be able to wear your old size again. You will be able to borrow tunics and trousers from me for now. But we cannot even begin on that until later."

"Why not?"

"We shall not leave this room for hours, Simon. Now that you look and sound as you do, I cannot possibly wait until evening." Andrew threw himself on top of Simon, and the two men were locked in an embrace. As Simon began to grind against Andrew's body, there was a loud CRACK! and the bed collapsed.

"And a stop at the carpenter for a larger, sturdier bed. But we'll make do for now. Now flex your arms, I want to feel them now that they're so big."

-----

In the library, Simon sat at a table in the sun as Andrew dabbed paint at a tiny miniature. Simon's deep voice boomed out. "Ah, Andrew, here is something interesting and highly relevant for your history lesson for today. The Seer of the Dandt Rune."

"Hold still, I'm painting in your hair. What about him? I seem to recognize the name."

"Yes, that compound you've been taking is named after him. 'Essential Salts of Dandt', if you recall."

"Ah. Well, tell me about this interesting wizard."

"'The Seer of the Dandt Rune was born in the year of the fall of the city of Triven Lare.' Quickly, Andrew, how long ago was that? You should know. I taught this to you six months ago."

"That would be... 830 years or so."

"828, to be precise. Correct. 'The wizard Dandt grew up amid war and catastrophe, and so taught himself to predict the future, but found his results to be insufficiently precise to prevent ill fortune. In order to improve his accuracy, he sought to increase his wisdom by means of magic, and invented many spells and contrivances to that end. Between his attempts to aid the wounded and his attempts to amplify his own mental capacity, he invented most of the physical magic still in use today.'

"'At the age of 57, he succeeded in creating a potion of ultimate knowledge, which he used on himself without delay. To his dismay, the side effects of the potion acted as though a curse. A red mark in the shape of the Eborscu rune of wisdom appeared on his face, and he found himself unable to avoid knowing, instantly, everything about any subject which could be named. Furthermore, he found that his knowledge of the future was effectively useless, because any prediction he made already contained an assumption of his own interference. After the death of his wife at the hands of thieves, he hung himself from his tower in an access of frustration.'"

"That's very sad. The poor fellow only wanted to help people, after all."

"Wait, there's more. 'Upon the wizard's death, it was found that the knowledge of the potion did not die with him, but merely sought out a new host, whose face became similarly marked. Through the ages the continuity has held, with one hapless victim chosen seemingly at random replacing another; the recipients of the rune have included farmers and seamstresses and beggars as well as wizards. Few of these hapless victims survive more than a year before the pressure of knowledge becomes too great. The current holder of the knowledge at any given time has become generally known as the Seer of the Dandt Rune.

"'In an effort to reduce the difficulty of leading such a life, the 74th seer adopted a policy which all his successors have largely retained, of answering questions only when substantial sums of money are paid over to the relief of the poor. Later Seers, relenting somewhat, also adopted the course of living in inaccessible locations, and answering the questions of those who made the journey in person for free.'"

"That sounds to me like a recipe for fraud."

"Oh, yes. 'Due to the difficulty of determining the true identity of the Seer of the Dandt Rune, in any given year there are to be found several counterfeit "Seer"s. For this reason, most countries have enacted harsh laws against itinerant prophets, but the temptation to fraud is such that even a long string of executions has not yet ended the stream of fakery.'"

"Hmph. Well, there's nothing we want to know, so at least we are safe."

"More than that. Did you know that it is thanks to one of the previous seers that we are here, instead of in the capital?"

"By what means?"

"Your father dispatched a query to the Seer approximately one year before you arrived here to live. The guards know all about it. The question was 'will the succession be safe from attacks by the rebels if my younger son remains at the fortress in the mountains' and the answer was 'yes'."

"That explains why he suddenly abandoned his plans to force me into society. Ah, well, I am content to be the guarantor of Alfred's safety if it means being here with you. Now please keep quiet for a bit; I have moved on to your jawline."

Simon smiled, and spoke no more. But his eyes wandered down the page, and read 'More information about the influence of the Seer of Dandt may be found under the headings for the Ten Years' Famine of South Soveraun, the Destruction of Ten Gibrelle, the Defeat of King Brigon XI, the War of North and South Paumed, the Schism of the Church of Tidus Pity, the Lost Kingdom of El Discmap, the Ten Martyrs of West Mackhre Jam, the Creation of the Waste of True Bound, the Lost City of Great Deshece, the Great Cemetery of Soepock Pyre, the Dead Islands, or, indeed, much of the sections on assassination, famine, plague, and war. Legend has it that the curse of Dandt Rune will only be dispelled when the Seer is actually able to prevent a catastrophe.'

-----

Prince Andrew and Simon were together in a newer, larger bed.

It was nearly six months since Simon's sudden growth, and his muscles bulged and strained each night as he and Andrew took turns seeking release of their enormous, throbbing manhoods. He and Andrew moaned and growled as they made love repeatedly. Unlike Simon, however, Andrew had continued to grow, under the continuing influence of the salts. He was now nearly 8 feet in height, his body a cluster of massive, vein-covered muscles, any one of which contained more power than ten ordinary men. His shoulders were so broad that he had to twist through even the wide stone doors of the castle. At each meal, he consumed more than ten times as much food as he had eaten on his entire first day at the castle.

The bed was no longer used for lovemaking. Such was the incredible vigor of the two that, with the proper grip, either one could have manhandled the colossal bulk of the other while standing upright, using their vast strength to produce the necessary rubbing motions. Andrew would support Simon with his colossal hands on his waist, or Simon would support Andrew, and the motions were like a new and erotic exercise all by themselves. They had adopted this style in order to save time when cleaning up; so copious were their ejaculations that at the end of each night's session they ended up in a wide and spreading puddle.

After nearly three hours, the two titans were both satiated. They lay, cradling each other's massive, hairy forms, kissing in the afterglow of their exertions.

"Mmmm, Simon."

"Andrew."

Suddenly the door flew open with a crash. "Andrew! What's this?"

"Father?"

"Silence! You -- bodyguard -- I order you to leave this room immediately! And stay away from my son!"

"Father, no! Simon is--"

"Did We not ask for silence? Andrew, you are a disgrace! Not only do We find you in bed with a man, but that man is a mere commoner, a servant without a name! That any son of Ours should be so unnatural as to seek the embrace of a mere guard! We would disown you this minute, were you not Our heir!"

"Your heir, Father? What about Alfred?"

"Alfred was thrown from his horse three days ago while hunting. With his death, you are now the Crown Prince. And what do We find you have been doing, all this while? You have become a freak! You have developed your body like a common laborer! You have thrown away every advantage with which you have been blessed as Our son, and become some sort of beast! Enough! You will leave this castle immediately, and take Alfred's bodyguards with you in place of that scoundrel. You will... ah, yes, you will seek the Seer of Dandt Rune and ask him how to return to your normal size. While you are there, you will also ask him when We will finish killing these damned rebels. And then you will return here immediately. If you are not gone from this fortress within an hour, We will order you executed, succession be damned, and seek a new heir. Go!"

Part Ten

[muscl4life]

WHOA! Talk about being caught huh? Well I hope this Seer doesn't turn out to be a faked one like the Wizard of Oz

Let's just brace ourselves for the conclusion.

[martinp13]

I kept wondering when Daddy would get home. Enjoying the story!

[nnnrg]

Hm. Well, wisdom has never been one of this king's attributes.

"the succession (will) be safe from attacks by the rebels if (his) younger son remains at the fortress in the mountains" has just been broken by his direct command.

Therefore, it's not safe any longer.

[tekuno]

Actually, he asked the wrong question in the first place. The right question would have been "what can I do to make certain that my line continues to hold the throne". By asking specifically about rebels, he failed to guard against accidents and disease.

Or, better yet, he could have asked "if I had asked the best-phrased question possible which would do the most possible to further my interests of any question which I could ask, what would the question and the answer be?"

(Just like the wish to make, should you ever get a wish, is "I wish for whatever I would wish for if I were able to accurately foresee the consequences of any wish I chose to make, had the wisdom and imagination necessary to consider the widest possible range of wishes, and made the best possible wish to further my desires without violating my ethical standards".)

But, as noted many times in fiction of all sorts, (A) oracles can essentially never be used to prevent disaster, because if they can see the disaster then it's in the future already, and (B) nobody with access to an accurate oracle ever thinks their questions through properly. Although in the hands of a merciful author -- which I was not, this time around -- sometimes things don't turn out too badly. (You must appoint as Wizard Guide to the last tour the second person you see on leaving here.)

[Hanugumo]

Oh how I hope this will have a happy ending with Simon & Andrew together on that throne and the a-hole dad dead. And I hope Andrew will be able to get his lover out before he goes. It's after all not safe to travel alone.

Ummmm, I was wondering though: wasn't the seer dead already? By hanging. <=S

[Rarity]

It's amazing that nobody has tried to kill the king outside of the guards. Like, even a tree that had to spend 1 minute with the guy would try its hardest to murder him.

[darkluster4]

Originally Posted by Rarity

It's amazing that nobody has tried to kill the king outside of the guards. Like, even a tree that had to spend 1 minute with the guy would try its hardest to murder him.

I certainly agree. While trees have unfathomable patience, even they would find the king annoying. The only reason I can see them leaving him unharmed is that the amount of fertilizer spewing from his mouth could feed the entire forest.
Rocks on the other hand, while slightly more patient, are less concerned about food of any source. So I doubt they would hesitate.

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by Hanugumo

Oh how I hope this will have a happy ending with Simon & Andrew together on that throne and the a-hole dad dead. And I hope Andrew will be able to get his lover out before he goes. It's after all not safe to travel alone.

?When one kicks over a tea table and smashes everything but the sugar bowl, one may as well pick that up and drop it on the bricks, don?t you think??

--Margery Allingham, Dancers in Mourning

Ummmm, I was wondering though: wasn't the seer dead already? By hanging. <=S

That was explained in this section, where Simon was reading aloud. "Seer of Dandt Rune" is more a title than a name, and nobody wants to be the next one.

To be honest, this is one of the minor plot holes. Originally, I was going to have the king try to punish the seer -- except that I had already specified that being the current seer is guaranteed to end in suicide (or, you know, a course of events which is effectively suicide), so there isn't much you could do to make things worse. Killing the current incumbent would actually be doing him a favor. On the other hand, the King is definitely not bright enough to realize that. So I just left it unresolved and hoped nobody would notice.

As for the king being unpleasant: well, I'm not so sure anyone from my country can cast the first stone. His crime is that he has decided, on imaginary or even nonexistent evidence, that certain people are dangerous and has had them killed, destroying the lives of countless people in the process.

Well, the government of my country, the U.S.A., has done precisely that, repeatedly, over a course of decades, and usually with the approval of a majority of the citizen body. (In fact, most of the countries which are currently the declared enemies of our established political parties -- like Iran and Venezuela -- or else which are nominally our allies but cause more trouble than benefit -- such as Saudi Arabia, the main exporter of terrorism-supporting fundamentalist Islam -- are countries whose current political situations were basically created by U.S. interference in the previous century. Either we tried to install a puppet government and failed -- the Shah of Iran or the coup led by businessmen with U.S. backing in Venezuela -- or we succeeded in installing a puppet government which turned out to be massively corrupt and disloyal, like the Saudi royals.)

The most recent, and to my mind most egregious, example is our drone warfare program: we send remote-controlled airplanes into other countries -- frequently other countries against which we have not declared any sort of hostility, and exclusively other countries which are incapable of any sort of significant military response -- and drop bombs on people. The people in charge of this program have admitted that we essentially know nothing about the people on whom we are dropping bombs -- not even their identities. Our pilots are basically targeting people at random. Our government then issues a statement that everyone killed was a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer, often even before the names of those killed are known, and then the media repeats this blatant lie. Any suggestion that this is less than helpful is met with a claim that drone bombing is better than sending in the military. This is a bit like hiring someone to paint your house, and they spread feces all over the walls, and when you object they tell you not to complain because spreading feces on the walls is better than burning the house down. Our international problems would be better managed by diplomacy than by military force, but most Americans apparently can't even imagine what diplomacy would look like.

The drone bombing program, despite being almost entirely immoral and unethical, is highly popular. It is one of the few things about which a majority of both major national parties agree: Republicans like it because it's a military solution to a perceived problem, and quite frankly the more immoral and unethical the military is the more the Republican Party Line approves of it; Democrats don't necessarily like it but they accept Obama's promise that it is necessary and polls specifically about the program reveal that a majority of Democrats support Obama's use of drones to kill foreigners who are claimed to be terrorists. The fact that the program does not actually target terrorists and kills random innocent people is ignored in favor of party loyalty.

The fact that our callous employment of this program is precisely the best possible way to cause more terrorism targeted at ourselves -- and, in fact, the "experts" speaking for our intelligence services have admitted this, on a few occasions -- is basically never discussed, even though even a moment's thought shows that this is totally obvious. (But then, Americans have a long history of being too stupid to say "wait, if some other country did to us what we're about to do, we'd be absolutely desperate to get revenge at any cost". If China sent even a single drone bomber into the U.S., dropped bombs on random people, and declared anyone killed to have been a terrorist, we would already have nuked them. Several times over. It wouldn't even be a question.)

And yes, information about the drone bombing program, which is essentially Obama's creation, was available long before the election. I remember reading a in 2011 about the way we were sending the drones back to bomb the emergency workers who came to deal with the initial bombings, a situation which is absolutely horrifying, and should be met with war crimes trials. The fact that both parties, and the complicit media, and most voters, chose to totally ignore this issue during the last election speaks volumes.

Now, in a democracy, the actions of the government are, for better or for worse, the responsibility of the people. I posit that the only difference between the actions of the king in this story and the actions of the government of my country is that the king is falsely and arbitrarily labeling nearby people "rebels" and having them killed, whereas my government -- and therefore, in a sense, everyone in my country -- is falsely and arbitrarily labeling far-away people "terrorists" and having them killed. I don't know of any respectable ethical system which draws a distinction between the two.

And on that pleasant note, I bid you all goodnight.

[muscl4life]

Well, in my opinion the king represents the antagonism to the main character, so it is only natural that we feel so strongly about his opinions and behavior. I don't know if I was capable to grasp this highly detailed analysis on US government's politics from the King's character, but then again I wasn't tuning on warfare discussion when Simon grew as big as Andrew to fuck him, but in any case, if politicians often mix sex and politics, why can't we do the same?