…
Zac blinked, squinting against an impossibly bright sun. It was a harsh, white-gold light, a stark contrast to the eternal crimson twilight of the Pit. He was on his back, the dry, gritty earth digging into him. Above him, a wall of sun-bleached stone rose to an impossible height, its parapets touching the brilliant blue sky. Banners, emblazoned with unfamiliar symbols, snapped in a hot, dusty wind.
He looked down at himself. He was clad in armor of gleaming bronze, intricately worked with scenes of roaring lions and snarling boars. A heavy round shield lay beside him, its face a swirling cosmos of silver and gold stars. The leather greaves on his legs were supple, and the plumed helmet that had rolled a few feet away was impossibly ornate. He was holding a heavy bronze sword, its hilt cool against his palm. He wondered why he had just fallen from the battlements.
"God has forsaken you," a deep, beautiful voice boomed. "Trying to scale the walls, and then this sneak attack? It is exactly what a heathen would do."
A war chariot, its wheels kicking up a plume of ochre dust, thundered to a halt nearby. A man dismounted, and Zac's breath hitched. He was a vision of sculpted, sun-bronzed muscle and dark, flowing hair, and his body was glistening. He was beautiful, a perfect specimen of classical masculinity, and he held a long spear with terrifying grace.
"Oh, uh, hey," Zac said, his voice cracking. "Oiled up and hairy. I like your style."
The man spat on the ground in disgust. "I've heard of you, Patroclus. Look at how the gods have cast you down from the walls so that I may finish you off."
"Wait, that's not my name," Zac squeaked as the man raised his spear, its bronze tip glinting in the sun, ready to deliver a death blow right into Zac's gut.
"HECTOR YOU BITCH! HANDS OFF MY MAN!"
A deep, raspy voice ripped through the air from above. An explosion of dirt and stone erupted next to Zac as a figure slammed into the ground with the force of a meteor, forcing the attacking Hector to stumble back.
"Wait, Achilles, you were supposed to be abstaining from the fight!" the spear-wielding man sputtered.
Zac's heart fluttered. His savior was wearing nothing but a very revealing white towel wrapped low around his waist… a perizoma… and the simple fabric was straining heroically against a physique carved from divine marble. It was Halphas. As Achilles.
Halphas, although he didn't look that much different since he was already a muscle-bound stud, was looking, ironically enough, a bit blond. His dark feathers had taken on a sun-bleached, golden hue. The big spear and round shield the eagle demon was wielding were also a new sight, much different than the pistols and crossbow he normally used. I guess those muscles are big for a reason other than just making my blood pressure spike, Zac thought. I bet his shaft handling is top notch.
"Did you not see how he was smote by the gods?!" Hector yelled, raising his spear.
"And now the gods will have to watch as I kick your ass, you scrawny Trojan," Halphas replied.
Zac wanted to ask what was happening, but once he realized it was a dream, and once he heard the word "Trojan" and the bad guy call Halphas "Achilles," he put two and two together pretty quickly. Of course the nerdy vending machine eagle brought him to a historical battle. It was totally on brand for the Earl of Violence. What Zac didn't expect was a reimagining of one of history's most tragic gay love stories… and being cast as the twinkish lover of one of the most badass warriors in mythology.
Zac had not just been a fan of Twilight in his younger years; the Greek myths had also caught his attention. Zeus turning into a bull and fucking someone, Zeus turning into a swan and fucking someone, Zeus turning into an ant and fucking someone... the ant thing was a bit odd, but Zac wasn't judging. He just wished Zeus wasn't a weird therian and took the form of anthro animals. But the classics are the classics.
Zac had begun to realize that the Trojan War probably played out a bit differently from what he had read since, as he now knew, God from the Abrahamic canon was a bit more real than the gods of Greek myth.
The CLANG of metal on metal pulled Zac from his memories of famous historical fiction. He looked over at the brutal fight happening only yards away.
The spear fight between Halphas (Achilles) and Hector was a whirlwind of bronze and dust. Both of the extremely buff and well-fed men were really going at it, circling each other, dodging and weaving, their spears nearly audible with how fast they pistoned out towards each other.
However, it seemed like Halphas had the upper hand, both figuratively and literally. Where Hector held his own spear underhanded, basically tucked between his bicep and torso, Halphas had an overhanded grip on his own, using his height as an advantage to rain down blows directly onto the Trojan prince.
Halphas suddenly parried a thrust with his shield, the bronze ringing like a bell. Instead of following up with his spear, he threw what could only be called a punch with the massive shield itself. The heavy, reinforced rim connected squarely with Hector's chest.
Zac winced. He could hear bones cracking from ten feet away as he watched Hector crumple over, the air driven from his lungs in a pained gasp. Zac then winced again as Halphas delivered one final, brutal blow into the wheezing man, who had brought his own shield down to grasp at his shattered ribs. The eagle's spearhead punched clean through Hector's bronze armor with a sickening shunk.
"Die! Die!" the eagle shouted as he stabbed the now very dead man a few more times. "For my part, I will accept my fate whensoever God sees fit to send it!" he yelled as he yanked the spear back with a spray of blood, then added a "Hoorah!" in for good measure.
Zac gave a little clap. "Oh wow. I didn't think you'd actually quote the Iliad. For some reason, I thought it would be illegal for you guys to get into other mythologies."
Halphas turned around and grinned, wiping a streak of gore from his beak. "Ha! As if God could stop a demon from enjoying the magnificent creations of man." He walked forward and lifted Zac's chin with a taloned finger.
Zac's heart beat faster as he looked into the strong, but also somehow very well-read, eagle-man's eyes. "Oh, Achilles," he recited breathlessly, "may the same urn hold our bones." He paused, then added, "Because I want nothing more right now than your eagle bone."
Halphas's grin widened. "Oh, Patroclus," he rumbled, "I shall never bury my bone apart from yours."
Zac's mind, swaddled like the infant son of the man who Halphas just turned into a pincushion, got thrown off the very walls of Troy. So fucking romantic, he thought. Maybe Nock is a scary-hot romancer. Maybe Skarg is a cuddly himbo. Even Andras is a dashing pirate asshole. But none of them were book-sexy like Halphas.
Zac suddenly felt himself being tossed into the air. He was caught easily in Halphas's massive, muscular arms. He was a bit disappointed that he didn't get that dropping feeling in his stomach from the fear of suddenly being manhandled, but that was okay. He was still lost in the eagle's eyes.
"So, are you going to carry me back to our tent so I can help remove your battle armor?" Zac wanted to say, but Halphas was already spreading his wings and carrying Zac up into the sky. I guess I didn't even need to ask, Zac thought for a moment, but then he frowned as he saw Halphas carrying him over the massive stone wall surrounding Troy instead of back towards the Greek camps.
"Just a sec," Halphas said as he readjusted Zac into one arm and seemed to swirl his other hand in front of himself.
The scene changed from day to night with the same effect as a VCR tape being fast-forwarded. The sun streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of orange and purple, before plunging below the horizon. The moon and stars blurred into place. The sensation made Zac a bit queasy, but it was over just as quickly as it began.
"We just getting some mood lighting?" Zac asked, his voice muffled against the eagle's chest. "I like how you think."
"Mood lighting?" Halphas questioned, his wings beating a steady rhythm that carried them over the city. "The city didn't get sacked until the night."
Zac looked down as they flew over Troy. Below, the orderly streets had devolved into chaos. There were indeed lots of screaming and fires being lit, casting a flickering, hellish glow on the stone buildings.
Halphas began to point out the various soldiers and the different war crimes being committed as the Greeks slaughtered and raped the Trojans. "See that?" he'd squawk, pointing a talon. "That's Ajax the Lesser defiling Cassandra at the altar of Athena. Classic hubris. He gets a nasty surprise from God on the voyage home for that one."
He banked, giving Zac a better view of a group of Myrmidons setting a granary ablaze. "Standard scorched-earth tactics. Cutting off food supplies to demoralize any remaining resistance. Brutal, but effective."
Zac got bored of the realities of war pretty quickly. The screaming and burning was a bit of a mood-killer. Instead, he just enjoyed being held tight by the macho demon who was nerding out so hard over the historical battle unfolding below them. He rested his head on Halphas's shoulder, feeling the powerful beat of the eagle's heart against his cheek, and let the sounds of massacre fade into a distant, unimportant hum.
After a few loops around the burning city, an idea sparked in Zac's mind. He needed to get Halphas alone. The eagle seemed like he could endlessly talk about the systematic murder of the Trojan bloodlines and the grueling logistics of transporting hundreds of enslaved people across the wine-dark sea to Greece.
Zac needed somewhere private, somewhere intimate, but also somewhere that would keep the huge history nerd excited enough to stay in the dream. And Zac knew exactly the place.
"Oh, Halphas," Zac said sweetly, nuzzling into the curve of the eagle's neck. "There's still one place you haven't shown me that I'd really like to see."
"Lay it on me, Zachary," Halphas rumbled, his voice vibrating pleasantly against Zac's ear. "Or should I say, my little Patroclus?"
Zac grinned. The eagle hadn't forgotten the totally gay-positive roles they were playing. "Can you bring me down toward the main gate entrance?"
"Sure thing," Halphas said. He banked sharply, the wind whistling through his golden-hued feathers as they dove back toward the Scaean Gate. "What do you want to see? How the soldiers are cutting down the stragglers who try to escape through the side posterns?"
"No," Zac said, pointing toward a massive, looming silhouette that stood alone in the plaza, cast in the flickering orange light of the nearby infernos. "I want to see what it's like inside of that."
"Ohhh," Halphas said, his golden eyes widening with genuine appreciation. "That's not a bad idea. That old thing has been the genesis for so many human tricks. It's the granddaddy of the tactical gambit."
Halphas flared his wings, slowing their descent with practiced ease. He landed softly on the dusty earth, his powerful legs absorbing the impact, and gently set Zac down.
They both looked up, and Zac felt a genuine sense of scale.
The Trojan Horse was a leviathan of timber and deceit. Built from massive planks of silver fir and pine, it stood nearly thirty feet tall, its neck arched in a hollow, silent neigh. Up close, it didn't look like a masterwork of art; it looked like a desperate, hurried construction, rough-hewn and held together by massive iron bolts.
In the moonlight, the wood looked ancient and weathered, its hollow eyes staring blankly at the ruined city it had helped destroy.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Halphas asked, stepping up beside Zac. The eagle was still wearing nothing but that agonizingly small white towel, and in the heat of the Troy fires, a fine sheen of sweat made his bronzed, feathered muscles glisten.
Zac looked from the massive wooden shaft of the horse's leg to the equally impressive view right next to him.
"Very impressive," Zac whispered, his eyes lingering on Halphas's thighs. "So... how do we get into the cockpit?"
Halphas took Zac's hands, his own talons surprisingly gentle, and gave a powerful, singular flap of his wings. They rose slowly, drifting upward through the rectangular trapdoor in the horse's underbelly.
The interior was a dark, oppressive cavern of silver fir. The air was thick and stagnant, smelling of resin, ancient dust, and the sharp, salty musk of forty phantom Greek soldiers. It was cramped and hot, the wooden walls vibrating with the distant, muffled screams of the city's sack. To Zac, the atmosphere didn't feel like a war zone, it felt like a back-room… dirty, private, and ripe with the scent of "manly exertion."
Halphas moved through the gloom, his bronzed muscles catching the thin slivers of moonlight that leaked through the cracks in the planks. He ran a large hand over the internal scaffolding. "I think they even had someone crammed all the way up in the neck," the eagle murmured, his voice echoing in the wooden ribcage. "The sheer discipline required to stay silent for..."
He trailed off as he realized Zac wasn't looking at the architecture. Zac was staring at him with an intensity that could have set the silver fir on fire.
Zac stepped forward, his boots silent on the timber floor. He reached out, his small palms pressing against the hard, feathery expanse of Halphas's pectorals. "It's just so amazing, isn't it?" Zac whispered, his voice dropping into a sultry, low register. "How a big, sexy soldier like you can cram himself into such... tight little things."
Halphas's golden eyes dilated until they were nearly black. A strange, sharp click came from his beak. "Well, uh... it's a matter of tactical necessity, Zachary."
"This big structure is basically like me, right?" Zac purred, his hands beginning a slow, deliberate descent down the eagle's chest, tracing the line of his six-pack. "I'm going to be the one sent into the Holy City. A gift they won't refuse. No one will expect that I'm not a holy virgin, but a secret demonic weapon hidden inside a pretty package."
Halphas let out a nervous, high-pitched noise. "Yes... that's right... coo... you're our cheeky little decoy."
Zac's fingers hooked into the top of the white perizoma. "Do you think any of those Greeks fornicated in here while they waited? It seems like a great way to get rid of... stress."
"It's... it's... coo... it's possible," the eagle stuttered, his knees looking a bit wobbly.
"I've been getting a bit nervous about the mission myself," Zac whispered, leaning in until his lips brushed the eagle's neck, too lost in his own lust to notice the bird-man's increasingly avian stutters. "Maybe you could help me get rid of a bit of my own stress."
Zac gripped the fabric of the Greek undies with a determined grin. "I... I... coo... it's not... the Captain said..." Halphas stammered, looking around the dark belly as if a commanding officer might leap out of the timber.
"Shh now," Zac breathed, his heart hammering against his ribs. "It's just a dream, remember? I know you want me. You called shotgun, after all. Or were you just acting all tough in front of the other demons?"
"NO! Coooo! I'm not an actor!" the eagle squawked, his feathers ruffling violently.
"Then let's see that eagle dick!" Zac yelled, and with a triumphant heave, he ripped away the loincloth.
Zac stepped back, squinting in the dim light. He had been waiting days for this. He expected a legendary display of demonic anatomy, something that would make a marble statue weep with envy. As the light shifted through the cracks in the horse's flank, illuminating the space where the towel had been, Zac leaned in, his eyes wide with anticipation.
"WAIT I… I NEED A MINUTE!" the eagle demon screamed, but the fabric was already fluttering to the floor. "Oh fuck... coo... don't look... coo coo cooo!"
Before Zac's eyes could register a single inch of skin, Halphas's shadowy figure began to bulge and ripple as if he were made of liquid. There was a sudden, violent sound of rushing wind and the deafening thrum of a thousand beating wings.
POOF.
A feathery explosion rocked the interior of the Trojan Horse.
Zac didn't even have time to gasp before he was hit by a tidal wave of grey and white down. He was knocked backward, his arms and legs suddenly immobilized as he was buried in a sea of soft, flapping bodies.
His ears were filled with a cacophony of hundreds of high-pitched, frantic voices.
"I told you he'd rip it!"
"It's your fault! You were too slow with the illusion!"
"Now he knows! He's going to tell the others!"
"Shut up and help me hide the bits!"
"Coo! Coo! Embarrassing! Coo!"
Zac blinked his eyes open, spitting a grey feather out of his mouth.
He was still in the belly of the horse, but "Achilles" was gone. Instead, Zac was pinned against the wooden hull by a literal wall of hundreds of small, bickering pigeons. And right in front of his face, pressed against him by the weight of the flock, was a single, man-sized, anthropomorphic pigeon man wearing nothing but a look of absolute, soul-crushing mortification.
The big pigeon blinked its round, orange eyes at Zac.
"...coo?" it whispered.
Zac's eyes snapped open, his breath coming in sharp, ragged hitches. The sound of the pigeons, hundreds of them, bickering and cooing in a panicked, feathery heap, was still ringing in his ears, so loud he almost expected to find a stray grey feather stuck to his lip.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
A loud, insistent knocking was ripping through the silence of his small, single-occupancy bedroom, vibrating the very stone of the walls.
Zac didn't move. He just lay there, staring at the ceiling, and slowly brought both hands up to cover his face. His palms were clammy, and his mind was a chaotic static of Greek armor, wooden planks, and the image of a man-sized pigeon looking at him with the eyes of a disgraced accountant.
"Holy shit," Zac whispered into his hands, his voice a strangled, traumatized rasp. "What the fuck was that?"