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Yet his second-in-command, Ferris Goreclaw, feels that something is amiss. \n\nA continuation of Heavy Lifting! \n\n-----\n\n[i]\nClad in polished steel plate, so well-shined for the occasion that it reflected the evening torchlights, Ferris Goreclaw led the the rest of the Gore Warband into the Daybreak Encampment command tent. As he held the entry curtain aside for the others, he couldn't help admiring how bustling and active the camp's underlings appeared, with many of them still exerting themselves eagerly in the tasks of setting up an aggressive base of operations here on the edge of the brand, even in these normally more relaxed after-dinner hours.\n\nFerris Goreclaw was a Charr well-versed in history and in cultural tradition. Even his first name was a sign of the times: a name that had sifted its way into Charr culture through centuries-past contact with two groups of now-lost humans: the Ascalonian warrior-monks and the the Elonian paragons. Fittingly, those same lost cultures had inspired the Guardian way of life in the era after the dragons came, and a Guardian was precisely what Ferris Goreclaw was.\n\nIn terms of appearance, he was about as lion-like as Charr came: golden eyed and tawny furred, with a fiery orange mane. His four, darker-brown horns formed a neatly arranged crown along the backs of his cheeks and atop his temples, fitting through his helmet in such a smooth way that it wasn't immediately clear whether they were part of his head or part of his gear.\n\nAs the Gore Warband's second in command - and as someone who was happy to be in that station, neither ambitious to become the legionnaire nor eager for the simplicity of life as a more common soldier - Ferris deeply respected the importance of social structure and etiquette... such etiquette as Citadel Charr culture was prone to, anyway. He appreciated the formality of calling the whole warband together for this meeting to explain their reassignment. He did not expect to have many questions, as he trusted that Duronius had the important bits covered already, but he liked the ideal that everyone would have the chance to leave the meeting on the same page.\n\nA long, rectangular war-council table stood as the centerpiece of the command tent's front room. Centurion Pyresplitter sat at the far head of the table, while Legionnaire Goreaxe sat opposite him near the entrance. A gray curtain behind Pyresplitter cordoned off what Ferris could only suppose were the Centurion's private office and quarters. Several chairs on either side of the table offered more than enough room for the remaining four members of Gore to sit down, and they did so after their usual fashion, with Ferris at Duronius's right hand and the others fanning out freely around that setup. Together they made for a varied but still decidedly Blood Legion crew: the warrior and guardian pair of Duronius and Ferris, plus a muscular and somewhat duller-looking second warrior, a lithe female ranger whose animal companion had already been let into the kennels for feeding, and a muscular and broad-shouldered engineer.\n\nYet something seemed immediately unusual as Ferris stepped in and closed the exit curtain: Duronius wasn't wearing his chainmail, and indeed seemed to have stripped down to his loincloth. That wasn't unheard of for off-duty Charr, even within a military camp, but it seemed rather unlike Duronius for a war meeting.\n\nStill, he figured, there must be some reason.\n\nFerris looked his legionnaire in the eyes as he sat down and offered a handshake and a greeting: \"Commander! So good to see you again!\"\n\nDuronius shook the hand with habitual strength but no readable emotion - though this in itself wasn't far from the warrior's norm. \"Pleased to see you here, Ferris,\" said the big, white-and-black-furred warrior. Then, very quietly: \"You're looking radiant as always.\"\n\nFerris swallowed hard at the compliment and felt unsure how to take it because Duronius wasn't doing his usual disarming, fraternal laugh immediately after he said it.\n\nThe guardian had little time to process the awkwardness or respond to it, because Duronius immediately turned his attention to exchanging ordinary greetings and salutes to the other band members - and then Pyresplitter stood from his chair to call the meeting to order.\n\n\"Greetings, members of Gore Warband,\" said the Centurion in a hearty and inviting voice, nodding to each of them and looking each in the eyes as he spoke. \"I fear you'll have to forgive my brevity, but there will be some late-arising business that I need to attend to in the back during portions of our meeting. I've instructed your legionnaire to fill you in on most of the details, but I knew it would be unfair not to at least greet you personally.\" With a light tone of humor in his voice, he added, \"I think I've each of you before, but for anyone who may not recall, I'm Centurion Petronius Pyresplitter, the biggest and baddest Charr this side of the brand. The summary is that you'll all be reporting to me during the coming months and helping me make this camp as great as it can be, as well as attending to some... [b]personal[/b] errands that I may need performed by competent troops I can trust. Your legionnaire has already proved himself more than capable, and I trust you'll all strive to do him one better still!\"\n\n\"They will, sir!\" agreed Duronius.\n\n\"Aye, Gore Warband will perform to expectations,\" agreed Ferris\n\n\"Splendid,\" said Pyresplitter. \"Before I step away, I should ensure I recall each of your names. Duronius Goreaxe of course.\" He gestured at the unarmored warrior and got a pliant nod in reply - and continued gesturing around as he named each person in his quite-commanding and inspirational voice: \"Sita Goreripper!\"\n\nThe ranger nodded, made eye contact, and saluted across her chest. \"Yes, Centurion!\"\n\n\"Aluttarat Goretooth.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir!\" said the engineer, following Sita's reaction.\n\n\"Ventor Gorestrike.\"\n\n\"That's me!\" growled the big and passionate second warrior, and flexed a chain-clad bicep.\n\n\"Excellent,\" concluded Pyresplitter. \"I'll leave the rest to you, Duronius.\"\n\nFerris spoke up - and frankly wasn't sure why. He felt... very insecure at having been missed in the naming pass. \"Err - Centurion Pyresplitter, sir?\"\n\n\"Yes? Oh, right! You're, ah... Felix Goreclaw, yes?\"\n\n\"Ferris, sir,\" said the guardian without missing a beat.\n\n\"Yes, of course. Ferris Goreclaw. The Legionnaire's second, yes? How could I forget!\"\n\n\"Aye, sir. Thank you.\"\n\n\"No problem! Now, you talk among yourselves and I'll be back as soon as I get signed off on some wearying things back here. Duronius Goreaxe has the floor!\" Without a word further, and already turning away as he finished his sentence, Pyresplitter slipped out through the curtain.\n\nFerris could feel pent-up tension and malaise slipping peacefully away from his mind as Pyresplitter left them. What was even going on? Ferris was a well-trained Guardian, and his mind didn't normally crack upon its own insecurities like that, even under extreme pressure... either Pyresplitter just had that kind of presence, or some sort of magical foul play was being attempted here...\n\nFor the moment Ferris relaxed into his chair and looked to his grinning, happy-faced legionnaire, who for all of his tactical brilliance he knew couldn't sense a magical threat to save his life. Still, maybe Duronius would be able to give him some clues.\n\n\"Well, commander?\" asked Ferris pointedly, turning his eyes upon their warrior leader.\n\n\"It's good to have you here, everyone,\" said Duronius - confidently, although in a voice that sounded more tired than Ferris would have expected. \"Daybreak is set on the edge of the branded lands and will get built up into a proper assault-staging fort soon. Broadly speaking, our job in the meantime will be to inspire confidence in the greener troops stationed here. Already I've done my part in that for today, and I've no doubt there'll be plenty for all of us to do as the days unfold.\"\n\nVentor, the other warrior, growled a little from across the table. \"All due respect, Commander - that sounds like drudge work. Where's your armor? Did they have you hauling things around like some common cub?\"\n\nDuronius nodded happily and waved a hand in a jerky, dismissive way. \"Relax, friend. I've relished the chance to get out of my chain for a day. Centurion Pyresplitter has the right ideas, and you can certainly trust his judgment on such matters. I do.\"\n\nFerris nodded to his commander. That much seemed fully sensible. \"It is a noble cause for a veteran warrior to lead newer ones by example. You should know that as well, Ventor.\"\n\nAlutarrat the engineer looked uninterested in the ranking politics of the current discussion, and glanced toward Sita to read her own body language, which was low and hunched in introspection, even as she kept her focus on Duronius.\n\n\"So you really were doing some heavy lifting today?\" inquired Sita.\n\nDuronius laughed: \"Of course!\"\n\nHis mirth seemed to satisfy her, and she shrugged.\n\n\"Big deal,\" said Alutarrat. \"What needs done needs done. You privileged meathead types seem to forget the work that goes into maintaining a fort. We can't depend on Iron Legion to baby us for everything in construction.\"\n\nVentor growled and sat firm: \"I won't do anything menial. I've outlived those days! If I come here, I come to kill branded. That is all!\"\n\n[b]Leave it to Ventor to be the blindly aggressive and uppity one[/b], Ferris thought. Frankly, it was a nuisance - a distraction from the real issues he was trying to sense here.\n\n\"Settle yourself down,\" said Duronius to his fellow warrior, evenly, and Ventor looked at him in an oddly transfixed fashion, not knowing quite what to say. Usually in a case like this Duronius would have been on his side!\n\n\"...Fine. I trust you,\" said Ventor, folding his arms over his chest and turning to look to Ferris for further closure.\n\nThe guardian soon found more eyes wandering his way, and even Duronius was soon fully focusing on him, mouth parted in a silly, almost drunken fashion.\n\nFerris sighed and grasped for an 'out' to this situation. His eyes lit on the ranger, and he ran with the first idea that came to mind: \"Sita, I suppose you don't mind hunting game to help feed the camp?\"\n\n\"Not a bit,\" she replied, \"though [b]finding[/b] it could be the bigger problem. This close to the brand we'll be depending heavily on supplies from the Citadel. I get it though - I'll do whatever I can to help out until the real work of the assault comes.\" She paused, looked harder at Ferris, and saw the anxiety in his expression. \"What's got you worried?\"\n\nThe guardian shook his head and put his nose between his own hands, closing his eyes a moment and trying to push out a strange... [b]weight[/b] that seemed to be building up in his thoughts. \"I... don't know.\" Then he shook his head harder. \"No, I do know. The reassignment doesn't make much sense in the first place. We'd been all the way on expedition down in Maguuma seeking ways to kill dragons. We were on the cutting edge of the greater war, and that cutting edge is still badly needed! When I heard the commander was being called in for a meeting with the Centurion that was no big deal... but not all of us moving to this... frankly, this tiny [b]promise[/b] of a fort!\"\n\nBy the end of his speech, Ferris was standing up and glaring in Duronius's direction, barely holding back anger that had been rising inside of him, every bit as unbidden as the other stormy emotions he'd been trying to hold in check over the course of his time in this command tent.\n\n\"It will be [b]glorious[/b],\" assured Duronius, pooh-poohing the urgency of the guardian's tone with another gentle motion of his hand.\n\nAlutarrat nodded proudly in agreement. \"[b]I[/b] can make this place more than a promise. I was tired of sticky Maguuma anyway.\"\n\nFerris shook his head and then swept his gaze around the room, looking each of his companions momentarily in the eyes before speaking in a hushed voice and leaning over the table. \"That isn't what I'm trying to say! I'm saying there's no way we can do anything truly important here, and Centurion Pyresplitter always struck me as the sort of man who would be well aware of that! He's the one who deployed us to Maguuma in the first place!\"\n\n\"And?\" asked Duronius.\n\nFerris looked him dead on: \"So. What. Changed?\"\n\nDuronius stared at him with no immediate response. His jaw dropped open and let out a slight guttural utterance that didn't quite form a word, and then he just licked his own nose and kept grinning.\n\nIt would have looked like Ferris had gut-punched him with a good question, had Duronius's body language in any way indicated that he even understood the words Ferris had said. As thing stood, the Legionnaire's reaction was more akin to that of someone hard of hearing who hadn't quite heard the words but was trying to pretend he was still seamlessly engaged in the conversation.\n\n\"What changed?\" Ferris repeated.\n\n\"My perspective changed beautifully when I arrived here,\" said Duronius with a happy nod.\n\nFerris's arms folded. \"Uh huh. You didn't want to do it either, but somehow Pyresplitter convinced you. I understand that; I believe it. What I want to know is what he told you that convinced you.\"\n\nSita glared at Ferris: \"It might be classified!\"\n\nFerris waved her away. \"We have no secrets here. We are family. None of us would breathe a word to another of any secret thing the Legionnaire knows.\"\n\nAll eyes were upon Duronius, and he performed... bizarrely. Standing up from the table, he stretched both arms out in front of himself, only half-aiming their welcoming gesture toward Ferris, and said, \"I want to show it to you. I want to prove to you this camp is every bit as great as Pyresplitter and I both think it is. It is so much an improvement in every way! Our lives will change for...\"\n\n\"Relax, Duronius, it's only temporary,\" said Pyresplitter flatly as he returned through the curtain from the back room.\n\nDuronius looked at Pyresplitter with wide, googly eyes, and sat back down and resumed a somewhat sleepier posture. \"It's true. I'm just too excited from all the work today.\"\n\n\"More like worn out!\" grunted the Centurion, and glared at him. \"You can't keep working yourself like you used to. Go in the back; I insist. We'll have a good drink together before you go back to rejoin your companions. On me!\"\n\nDuronius looked up at him uncertainly.\n\n\"Go on!\" insisted Pyresplitter. \"I'll take it from here.\"\n\nDuronius obeyed, standing and leaving, all swishy-tailed, into the back room.\n\n\"Well, I do apologize for having your Legionnaire in such an exhausted state,\" said Pyresplitter, now addressing Ferris directly.\n\nThe guardian looked him in the eyes and felt considerably relaxed by Pyresplitter's attention. It was all a misunderstanding, and Duronius was out of sort because, because... heavy lifting. Yes.\n\nNo. That made no sense. Not for Duronius. The man could practically carry a dolyak around. But...\n\n\"Will you explain what's going on, sir?\" asked Ferris politely.\n\n\"Certainly. The change in your assignment was quite simple, really, and I do apologize for any confusion. The expedition to Maguuma is actually being [b]redirected[/b]. Apparently another team found some very juicy information - and artifacts - that are setting us up for a nice invasion of the brand. We're going to clean the place out, and your warband will spearhead the charge! It'll be [b]glorious[/b]!\"\n\nGlorious. That damn word again. Part of Ferris wanted to say outright that he suspected foul play despite the questionable external evidence; part of him wanted to sit down, tuck his tail neatly, and say he had no further questions.\n\nHe didn't get time to decide.\n\n\"Anyway, go on, all of you!\" said Pyresplitter in his charismatic way, shooing them toward the exit. \"I'll speak a little longer with Duronius over drinks. You all should get settled in. I'll send Duronius back to you later with tasks for the coming days. Thank you all again for being here!\"\n\nThen Pyresplitter left the room, and the Gore Warband members save for Ferris stood obediently and left the tent.\n\nFerris stared at the curtain for a moment, and temporarily forgot why he had been worried in the first place. Wracking his brain for fear he had forgotten something important, and quite sure he'd find the information eventually, he left the tent deep in thought.\n\n...After the other members of Gore Warband had cleared out, Duronius remained in the commander's private chamber, sitting on a chair reserved for guests, tail swishing anxiously as his breaths quickened. He gazed pleadingly up at Pyresplitter for encouragement, not daring to ask \"Did I do well, Master?\" - but held every sinew and tuft of fur in alignment to ask that question with a loud, raw wordlessness that none but the most oblivious of Charr would have been able to miss.\n\nPyresplitter beckoned him closer while approaching. Duronius's eyes sparked wide with excitement, and he leapt from his chair and romped forward on all fours - not in a warlike hunting posture, but in one like a giddy, servile pet excited to see his master home at last.\n\nThe Centurion led Duronius aside to the curtained alcove that was his bedchamber, and began to unbuckle his loin armor, pressing the excited Charr's face up against his bulging loincloth to smell the musk. \"Good pet,\" he said simply, and lifted the cloth for his servant's reward.\n\n* * *\n\nIt took hours of lying around the warband's barracks-tent in frustration before Ferris Goreclaw got up the nerve to barge back into the command tent and check on what was happening. The fact Duronius hadn't come back yet and it was already past the first changing of the evening guard did not help his confidence in the slightest.\n\nWere there possible explanations - even likely ones? Of course. But his gut was [b]screaming[/b] at him, and he had learned long ago that if he ignored it, he did so at his own peril and that of his warband. He had seen signs like these before, on the battlefield. The strange behavior of Duronius, the dampening of his own mind and the rousing of his pettier insecurities out of nowhere - all of this could be the result of mesmeric magic cleverly and subtly applied. It took a genius of magical precision to know exactly how much to apply and when, and how to supplement the magic with more commonplace social manipulation... but...\n\n...But he had to do this. He had to oppose it. He was the righteous guardian, and he would save his warband from whatever evil man was doing this.\n\nIt was most unfortunate for Ferris that some of the mesmeric magic he was up against had been lost to Tyria's history centuries ago, and only lately rediscovered by a few. Likewise, it was unlucky for him that most of the purer divine, hex-breaking magic he might otherwise have called upon to counteract it more fully had also evaporated into the annals of time. He had no realization of just what a liminal place his mind was in right now - assailed by the magics of his world before its apocalypse, and imperfectly defended by those of the new world since that time, and ever drifting close to an edge of losing self-control.\n\nIncreasingly, he could only envision a haze of evil in front of him, and was rushing forth into the night to smite it. He would flick open the command tent, charge through to the back room, and with the light of an evening torch in his hand illuminate the truth... yes, even now, as he ran through that first curtain and barreled across to the far side - flung it open...\n\nWhat he saw was not what he expected to see.\n\nPyresplitter stood tall in his usual half-plate armor, directly in front of him in an office well-lit by two large braziers at the back. On their knees in upright, attentive postures next to him were Duronius - now in his full chainmail again - and another Charr covered head to toe in what looked like tournament plate, with a guarded helm that obscured his identity.\n\nBoth flanking Charr were facing directly forward toward the tent's wall, with narry an eye nor a neck-twitch in the guardian's direction as he entered.\n\n\"So good that you have arrived,\" said Pyresplitter amiably. \"It is fitting that a guardian be prompt to his inspection.\"\n\nThe final word of the sentenced punched through his mental guard, as if an arrow were piercing a stretched-out sheet of parchment. Memories flooded his thoughts - hours, days, literal [b]decades[/b] of repetition in maintaining his equipment, showing it to his superior officers, and holding proper posture and reciting the various oaths and writings of his profession. A good guardian was always ready for inspection - always ready for any test... for there was no telling when a real threat would arise, and habitually readying oneself for the real threat was of utmost importance...\n\nThe mesmer's grip was already strong - yet, a flicker of lucidity still pierced the chaos: [b]Dammit, no! He's trying to...[/b]\n\nNot having any other recourse, and already unable to find the words he would need for much of an argument, Ferris did the only thing he knew to do in a time like this: he violently and unelegantly drew his sword and ran it straight for Pyresplitter's heart.\n\nIt surprised the \"Centurion.\" Really, it did - \"Pyresplitter\" hadn't thought the guardian had it in him. But it wasn't a threat against which he had no recourses either.\n\nA flickering image of Pyresplitter hummed before Ferris's eyes where the sword was heading - and dispersed into a cloud of pink and purple lights as the \"real\" alleged Centurion stepped forward toward him again from across the room.\n\n\"Such good form,\" said Pyresplitter. \"Now everyone else - thrust! Show your swordarms, your forms! Make your thrusts gallant and perfect.\"\n\nFerris looked around to see that the office was much larger than he remembered. Dozens of Charr fighting men were there in ranks and files, thrusting swords as Pyresplitter walked around to correct their forms. Ferris realized he wasn't continuing to thrust, and began to do so.\n\n\"Excellent! Now, scabbard, and attend!\"\n\nAll stood at attention with weapons put away.\n\n\"It is time for the more thorough inspection of your gear and your bodies! I shall personally guide you.\"\n\nMetaphorically speaking, Ferris's mind was by this point submerged yet treading water. Everything seemed normal, yet intense. He didn't know what he was doing; he felt nervous about this inspection that he had the strange sense he had not prepared adequately for. Yet he knew his armor was polished and well-kept, so there shouldn't be any problems... but... their [b]bodies[/b]? What about their bodies...?\n\n\"Leggear... off!\" came the command from Pyresplitter.\n\nWell, that wasn't anything out of the ordinary, although it was a little differently ordered than usual. Normally they'd take off their helmets first, but there was no arguing with the commander! All of the Charr around Ferris set themselves into a rapid display of dexterity, unclasping and tugging and liberating - first the right footpaw, and then the left one, and all the way up the legs. Ferris heard the clattering of legplates and Charr-fitted ankle guards - realized he was falling behind in his odd hesitation, and quickened to catch up.\n\n\"Keep the pace, Soldier!\" Pyresplitter warned, noisily smacking a recently removed leather glove against one of Ferris's spaulders as he passed.\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" agreed the guardian.\n\nAnd so the various Charr settled into a posture of attention again, now with all of their equipment removed up to their loins.\n\n\"Codpieces!\" declared Pyresplitter.\n\nFerris gulped. This wasn't the normal order at all! Typically they didn't get out of the codpiece until...\n\n...No time to think about it. The other Charr were all unhinging them, working the heavy groin-guards off of their bodies and leaving nothing but their loincloths dangling there. All of their tails were swaying with an uncharacteristic frisky eagerness at at the Centurion's command. Even Duronius up near the head of the ranks was taking off his chain skirt in response to the same command... yes, everyone was undressing, just as Pyresplitter had declared...\n\nFerris felt his breath seize in his chest as his own codpiece his the ground between his thick legs. A flushing, hot pulse was thrumming through his arteries, the blood pooling in his groin and forcing certain assets to swell a little. He saw with some embarrassment the way his own loincloth was developing its modest but perceptible bulge, and tried to keep his mind off of how much he secretly wished everyone would see him like that. Yes, his armor was beautiful and polished, but it was what was beneath that he wanted [b]everyone[/b] to see...\n\n\"Helmets!\"\n\nThe guardian shuddered, breathing heavier as he fumbled to get out of his helmet. He was getting an erection now - plain and simple, and soon there'd be no hiding it even with the cleverest of postures. He was not small-endowed in the slightest. He tried to focus on stopping it, yet he found his attention unable to grasp the idea. No... not stop it... [b]grow[/b] it, yes...\n\nAll of the other Charr around him seemed to be in agreement. A few were casting grinning, knowing glances at him when Pyresplitter's back was to them. Others were developing their own bulges. It felt so naughty, yet so terribly right...\n\nHe freed his mane and tossed his helmet aside, letting his body slacken into a more relaxed stance for just a moment, showing off his powerful thighs and bulging loincloth. Pyresplitter immediately whirled around - and to Ferris's surprise, didn't punish this, but encouraged it all the more.\n\n\"Armplates off and stand there flexing. Pose like you're having a statue made in your honor! Fierce, menacing... powerful!\"\n\nAll of the Charr did as commanded, the passion in their loins and the growls in their throats both rising to a monstrous intensity as their freed their arms and flexed their strong upper bodies. Most dropped into predatory, forward-hunched stances with maws open, but Ferris felt a strange need to do something a little different. Instead, he squatted slightly at his hips and thrust his groin slightly forward, folding his hands behind his head and growling in a haze of delight.\n\n\"Soldier, that is not standard!\" declared Pyresplitter - and loudly whapped Ferris's breastplate with the glove.\n\n\"What shall I do, Sir?\" asked Ferris pleadingly, genuinely terrified of his superior officer yet unable to hold back his now overwhelming arousal.\n\n\"You stand right there while the others finish taking off their breastplates!\" decreed Pyresplitter, and it was so. The other charr all removed their chest armors, a process taking considerable care and some time, with some helping each other in a buddy system. Ferris was stuck there with his bulging groin in front of him and his back muscles flexed and straining, his erection throbbing harder and harder inside his loincloth as he watched his drill-mates reveal the rest of their supple bodies - mighty, rippling torsos so well-suited for pouncing, ripping, killing, [b]mating[/b]... Numerous images of an all-male Charr orgy came to his mind, and try as he might he found them all but impossible to push away for more than an instant. He could almost see the Charr around him now groping each other, touching one another's loincloths and pulling them back to reveal that every part of them knew how to stand attentively. For the briefest moment he began quite literally to see this, his heart quickening and eyes going wide as he saw two of the hunkiest soldiers exchange gropes and a deep kiss. But then...\n\n\"Goreclaw!\" roared Pyresplitter, and suddenly he saw clearly again. Yes, so clearly - all of the charr around him nude down to their loincloths, yet at perfect attention, bulges all perfectly and purely ignored.\n\n\"Yes sir!\" said Ferris, his voice cracking a little as he found his throat going dry from all the embarrassment.\n\nPyresplitter frowned and smacked him on the groin with the glove. It felt... way too good. His cock throbbed all the harder from it.\n\n\"Wandering-eyes here needs help getting out of his breastplate!\" said the Centurion. \"You there, come handle it!\"\n\nAnother nude-to-the-loincloth Charr - one who could have been Pyresplitter's twin - stepped out from the throng. He marched obediently over and helped to ease Ferris's studly torso out of the remaining piece of plate. Ferris didn't know why, but he found himself panting openly from this interaction. The hands removing the armor felt very special to him, and so familiar... yet in a more normal way, and not in the forbidden, nearly sexual way he was thinking about them now.\n\n\"Look at that,\" said Duronius with a laugh. \"Big tough Ferris can't handle being touched!\"\n\nThere was a grain of truth to this. Even totally awake, Ferris was a bit picky and weird about his body. Most guardians were, for reasons ranging from actual personal cleanliness codes to bad memories of being hit by particularly traumatic types of attacks. Yet those hands getting that breastplate off of him - and then caressing smoothly up his side while everyone watched him...\n\nThat did it. Ferris's erection was now so throbbingly, leakingly swollen that it had managed to curve its way up and push aside his loincloth, with only a small bit of help from his squirming, flexing hips.\n\n\"Ferris Goreclaw, may be incompetent with his armor,\" said Pyresplitter, after motioning for the nude Charr who resembled him to return to the usual position in the ranks, \"but he certainly demonstrates a real fighting spirit, and strong understanding of standing at attention!!\" He lightly whacked Ferris's protruding member with the glove, sending a wave of pure pleasure surging through it - so intensely that Ferris's jaws parted into a roar. \"You should all learn from him. Strip! \n\nA lingering thread of the guardian's usual sanity made a gallant effort to rise up and do something at this point. But it was an effort on the level of a one-man last stand on a battlefield, and had the same inevitable result.\n\nSomething inside of Ferris knew it was all \"wrong,\" that the big, meaty cocks coming at last free of their loincloths all around him \"shouldn't\" be doing so. That they shouldn't be throbbing upright at perfect penile attention, while Pyresplitter made his way around and touched and caressed each, inspecting the girth and the firmness and the tightness of the balls and making little comments - sometimes telling a soldier to \"perk up\" even when the cock in question was already seemingly rock hard.\n\nWhen the Centurion reached Ferris again, the guardian's eyes were alight with some desperate, horrified \"something,\" as though those windows into his soul were showing the briefest glimpse of the more composed, rational man that had been sent to live in the same mental depths where his lust, primal, and exhibitionistic abandon normally dwelt.\n\nPyresplitter's firm, dark hands reached down to grip his balls, his shaft - moving them and rubbing them, causing him to throb and leak while all around him the other Charr were looking, admiring, pulsating just like him... they were just a roomful of men, full of so much pent-up seed...\n\n\"Yes, you're looking quite good from down here,\" Pyresplitter affirmed as he continued to stroke the sensitive organs - petted the balls and prodded the taint - made the scrotum rise and wiggle and lower. \"Keep that spine straight... flex those arms. Show the rest of your fellows what a fine specimen of Charr you are.\"\n\nHe did so. It was wrong, yet it was [b]so right[/b] there seemed to be no way he couldn't. He put his delightful beef on display, showing off his traps and his pecs in particular with his stance. He held his arms wrist-to-wrist behind his head, almost feeling bound, tied... at his Centurion's sexual mercy...\n\nHe leaked profusely, the pre-seed getting all over Pyresplitter's right hand and only encouraging him to stroke the cock more. The motions slickened, quickened - an order went out for each Charr to stroke another in just this same fashion. Duronius paired with the nameless Charr who resembled Pyresplitter, and the others also paired up in like fashion. All around him there were so many cocks, all of his fighting-man brethren feeling their pleasure increase... and Ferris's increased too. He glowed inside, burned with the kind of passion only concealable by one so ordinarily calm and collected as himself.\n\nSuddenly the Centurion's shaft-stroking stopped, and the hand moved to press in firmly on Ferris's sturdy abs. The guardian felt the weight of the hand... felt the pressure tickling its way through his fluid-filled, terribly aroused system. The hand patted against him, pressing deeper, harder each time, while the other ministering hand rocked and kneaded his swollen balls. He began to moan - louder and more pathetically he let himself cry out, the feelings inside of him growing more and more intense as his mind descended to a level of pure, utter servitude and plateaued there - waiting, desperately and eagerly seeking for any commanding word his Centurion might utter.\n\nThe wait was intense. For ten more seconds the Centurion kept doing what he was doing - and looked up to gaze into Ferris's golden eyes. Then, gradually, Pyresplitter's lips parted, and he spoke a single, unmistakable word.\n\n\"Cum.\"\n\nAn avalanche of spasms and relief rolled through Ferris Goreclaw's body. His hips bucked uncontrollably; his inner groin muscles flexed and tugged and milked, forcing every drop forth from his prostate much as if he had been getting it directly massaged. His wide tip bobbed up - and the heavy load of his semen at last pulsed out, rolled out like a majestic fountain, gurgling and flowing and dripping with all the displayed virility his body could muster.\n\nAll around him the other Charr were doing the same. Even the ones mostly doing the rubbing rather than being rubbed themselves also came. Ferris could feel it - smell it - the warmth and musk of so many Charr bodies giving up their seed at once. He saw Duronius cumming too, all around him a sea of bliss and sexual chaos, yet utterly contained within the orderly commands of their wonderful Centurion... their Centurion who gave them nice relief like this, even as he made sure they could keep their gear in order and their fighting maneuvers correct...\n\nThe bottom dropped out of Ferris's mesmerized mind. He fell backward, passing out from the overwhelming energy of it all, his cock still eking out the last dregs of his semen as he did so.\n\nThree Charr stood over Ferris as his thoughts faded away. Only three, for that had been all that had ever actually been there anyway. The mess of obedient soldiers vanished into a purple, ethereal haze - forever real in Ferris's memory, yet much easier to clean up after than ones who were real in fact.\n\n\"Well done, my servants,\" affirmed Pyresplitter - and petted the nude Duronius and the other accompanying Charr on the head.\n[/i]\n\n[b] To be continued… [/b] \n\n-----\n\nStill playing Guild Wars 2 a bit more! <: I've missed the beefiness of the Charr in comparison to the lithe-bodies of the miquo'tes! \n\nArtwork done for me by my lovely werewolf, Forge!\n\nStory done by the ever talented Dolphin Sanity\n\nHope ya enjoyed! Picture itself came from inspiration via Bluedude and Vishie!", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Duronius’ summons the other members of his warband to join him camp near the Dragonbrand. Yet his second-in-command, Ferris Goreclaw, feels that something is amiss.

A continuation of Heavy Lifting!

-----


Clad in polished steel plate, so well-shined for the occasion that it reflected the evening torchlights, Ferris Goreclaw led the the rest of the Gore Warband into the Daybreak Encampment command tent.  As he held the entry curtain aside for the others, he couldn't help admiring how bustling and active the camp's underlings appeared, with many of them still exerting themselves eagerly in the tasks of setting up an aggressive base of operations here on the edge of the brand, even in these normally more relaxed after-dinner hours.

Ferris Goreclaw was a Charr well-versed in history and in cultural tradition.  Even his first name was a sign of the times: a name that had sifted its way into Charr culture through centuries-past contact with two groups of now-lost humans: the Ascalonian warrior-monks and the the Elonian paragons.  Fittingly, those same lost cultures had inspired the Guardian way of life in the era after the dragons came, and a Guardian was precisely what Ferris Goreclaw was.

In terms of appearance, he was about as lion-like as Charr came: golden eyed and tawny furred, with a fiery orange mane.  His four, darker-brown horns formed a neatly arranged crown along the backs of his cheeks and atop his temples, fitting through his helmet in such a smooth way that it wasn't immediately clear whether they were part of his head or part of his gear.

As the Gore Warband's second in command - and as someone who was happy to be in that station, neither ambitious to become the legionnaire nor eager for the simplicity of life as a more common soldier - Ferris deeply respected the importance of social structure and etiquette... such etiquette as Citadel Charr culture was prone to, anyway.  He appreciated the formality of calling the whole warband together for this meeting to explain their reassignment.  He did not expect to have many questions, as he trusted that Duronius had the important bits covered already, but he liked the ideal that everyone would have the chance to leave the meeting on the same page.

A long, rectangular war-council table stood as the centerpiece of the command tent's front room.  Centurion Pyresplitter sat at the far head of the table, while Legionnaire Goreaxe sat opposite him near the entrance.  A gray curtain behind Pyresplitter cordoned off what Ferris could only suppose were the Centurion's private office and quarters.  Several chairs on either side of the table offered more than enough room for the remaining four members of Gore to sit down, and they did so after their usual fashion, with Ferris at Duronius's right hand and the others fanning out freely around that setup.  Together they made for a varied but still decidedly Blood Legion crew: the warrior and guardian pair of Duronius and Ferris, plus a muscular and somewhat duller-looking second warrior, a lithe female ranger whose animal companion had already been let into the kennels for feeding, and a muscular and broad-shouldered engineer.

Yet something seemed immediately unusual as Ferris stepped in and closed the exit curtain: Duronius wasn't wearing his chainmail, and indeed seemed to have stripped down to his loincloth.  That wasn't unheard of for off-duty Charr, even within a military camp, but it seemed rather unlike Duronius for a war meeting.

Still, he figured, there must be some reason.

Ferris looked his legionnaire in the eyes as he sat down and offered a handshake and a greeting: "Commander! So good to see you again!"

Duronius shook the hand with habitual strength but no readable emotion - though this in itself wasn't far from the warrior's norm.  "Pleased to see you here, Ferris," said the big, white-and-black-furred warrior.  Then, very quietly: "You're looking radiant as always."

Ferris swallowed hard at the compliment and felt unsure how to take it because Duronius wasn't doing his usual disarming, fraternal laugh immediately after he said it.

The guardian had little time to process the awkwardness or respond to it, because Duronius immediately turned his attention to exchanging ordinary greetings and salutes to the other band members - and then Pyresplitter stood from his chair to call the meeting to order.

"Greetings, members of Gore Warband," said the Centurion in a hearty and inviting voice, nodding to each of them and looking each in the eyes as he spoke.  "I fear you'll have to forgive my brevity, but there will be some late-arising business that I need to attend to in the back during portions of our meeting.  I've instructed your legionnaire to fill you in on most of the details, but I knew it would be unfair not to at least greet you personally."  With a light tone of humor in his voice, he added, "I think I've each of you before, but for anyone who may not recall, I'm Centurion Petronius Pyresplitter, the biggest and baddest Charr this side of the brand.  The summary is that you'll all be reporting to me during the coming months and helping me make this camp as great as it can be, as well as attending to some... personal errands that I may need performed by competent troops I can trust.  Your legionnaire has already proved himself more than capable, and I trust you'll all strive to do him one better still!"

"They will, sir!" agreed Duronius.

"Aye, Gore Warband will perform to expectations," agreed Ferris

"Splendid," said Pyresplitter.  "Before I step away, I should ensure I recall each of your names.  Duronius Goreaxe of course." He gestured at the unarmored warrior and got a pliant nod in reply - and continued gesturing around as he named each person in his quite-commanding and inspirational voice: "Sita Goreripper!"

The ranger nodded, made eye contact, and saluted across her chest.  "Yes, Centurion!"

"Aluttarat Goretooth."

"Aye, sir!" said the engineer, following Sita's reaction.

"Ventor Gorestrike."

"That's me!" growled the big and passionate second warrior, and flexed a chain-clad bicep.

"Excellent," concluded Pyresplitter.  "I'll leave the rest to you, Duronius."

Ferris spoke up - and frankly wasn't sure why.  He felt... very insecure at having been missed in the naming pass.  "Err - Centurion Pyresplitter, sir?"

"Yes?  Oh, right!  You're, ah... Felix Goreclaw, yes?"

"Ferris, sir," said the guardian without missing a beat.

"Yes, of course.  Ferris Goreclaw.  The Legionnaire's second, yes?  How could I forget!"

"Aye, sir.  Thank you."

"No problem!  Now, you talk among yourselves and I'll be back as soon as I get signed off on some wearying things back here.  Duronius Goreaxe has the floor!"  Without a word further, and already turning away as he finished his sentence, Pyresplitter slipped out through the curtain.

Ferris could feel pent-up tension and malaise slipping peacefully away from his mind as Pyresplitter left them.  What was even going on?  Ferris was a well-trained Guardian, and his mind didn't normally crack upon its own insecurities like that, even under extreme pressure... either Pyresplitter just had that kind of presence, or some sort of magical foul play was being attempted here...

For the moment Ferris relaxed into his chair and looked to his grinning, happy-faced legionnaire, who for all of his tactical brilliance he knew couldn't sense a magical threat to save his life.  Still, maybe Duronius would be able to give him some clues.

"Well, commander?" asked Ferris pointedly, turning his eyes upon their warrior leader.

"It's good to have you here, everyone," said Duronius - confidently, although in a voice that sounded more tired than Ferris would have expected.  "Daybreak is set on the edge of the branded lands and will get built up into a proper assault-staging fort soon.  Broadly speaking, our job in the meantime will be to inspire confidence in the greener troops stationed here.  Already I've done my part in that for today, and I've no doubt there'll be plenty for all of us to do as the days unfold."

Ventor, the other warrior, growled a little from across the table.  "All due respect, Commander - that sounds like drudge work.  Where's your armor?  Did they have you hauling things around like some common cub?"

Duronius nodded happily and waved a hand in a jerky, dismissive way.  "Relax, friend.  I've relished the chance to get out of my chain for a day.  Centurion Pyresplitter has the right ideas, and you can certainly trust his judgment on such matters.  I do."

Ferris nodded to his commander.  That much seemed fully sensible.  "It is a noble cause for a veteran warrior to lead newer ones by example.  You should know that as well, Ventor."

Alutarrat the engineer looked uninterested in the ranking politics of the current discussion, and glanced toward Sita to read her own body language, which was low and hunched in introspection, even as she kept her focus on Duronius.

"So you really were doing some heavy lifting today?" inquired Sita.

Duronius laughed: "Of course!"

His mirth seemed to satisfy her, and she shrugged.

"Big deal," said Alutarrat.  "What needs done needs done.  You privileged meathead types seem to forget the work that goes into maintaining a fort.  We can't depend on Iron Legion to baby us for everything in construction."

Ventor growled and sat firm: "I won't do anything menial.  I've outlived those days!  If I come here, I come to kill branded.  That is all!"

Leave it to Ventor to be the blindly aggressive and uppity one, Ferris thought.  Frankly, it was a nuisance - a distraction from the real issues he was trying to sense here.

"Settle yourself down," said Duronius to his fellow warrior, evenly, and Ventor looked at him in an oddly transfixed fashion, not knowing quite what to say.  Usually in a case like this Duronius would have been on his side!

"...Fine.  I trust you," said Ventor, folding his arms over his chest and turning to look to Ferris for further closure.

The guardian soon found more eyes wandering his way, and even Duronius was soon fully focusing on him, mouth parted in a silly, almost drunken fashion.

Ferris sighed and grasped for an 'out' to this situation.  His eyes lit on the ranger, and he ran with the first idea that came to mind:  "Sita, I suppose you don't mind hunting game to help feed the camp?"

"Not a bit," she replied, "though finding it could be the bigger problem.  This close to the brand we'll be depending heavily on supplies from the Citadel.  I get it though - I'll do whatever I can to help out until the real work of the assault comes."  She paused, looked harder at Ferris, and saw the anxiety in his expression.  "What's got you worried?"

The guardian shook his head and put his nose between his own hands, closing his eyes a moment and trying to push out a strange... weight that seemed to be building up in his thoughts.  "I... don't know."  Then he shook his head harder.  "No, I do know.  The reassignment doesn't make much sense in the first place.  We'd been all the way on expedition down in Maguuma seeking ways to kill dragons.  We were on the cutting edge of the greater war, and that cutting edge is still badly needed!  When I heard the commander was being called in for a meeting with the Centurion that was no big deal... but not all of us moving to this... frankly, this tiny promise of a fort!"

By the end of his speech, Ferris was standing up and glaring in Duronius's direction, barely holding back anger that had been rising inside of him, every bit as unbidden as the other stormy emotions he'd been trying to hold in check over the course of his time in this command tent.

"It will be glorious," assured Duronius, pooh-poohing the urgency of the guardian's tone with another gentle motion of his hand.

Alutarrat nodded proudly in agreement.  "I can make this place more than a promise.  I was tired of sticky Maguuma anyway."

Ferris shook his head and then swept his gaze around the room, looking each of his companions momentarily in the eyes before speaking in a hushed voice and leaning over the table.  "That isn't what I'm trying to say!  I'm saying there's no way we can do anything truly important here, and Centurion Pyresplitter always struck me as the sort of man who would be well aware of that!  He's the one who deployed us to Maguuma in the first place!"

"And?" asked Duronius.

Ferris looked him dead on: "So.  What.  Changed?"

Duronius stared at him with no immediate response.  His jaw dropped open and let out a slight guttural utterance that didn't quite form a word, and then he just licked his own nose and kept grinning.

It would have looked like Ferris had gut-punched him with a good question, had Duronius's body language in any way indicated that he even understood the words Ferris had said.  As thing stood, the Legionnaire's reaction was more akin to that of someone hard of hearing who hadn't quite heard the words but was trying to pretend he was still seamlessly engaged in the conversation.

"What changed?" Ferris repeated.

"My perspective changed beautifully when I arrived here," said Duronius with a happy nod.

Ferris's arms folded.  "Uh huh.  You didn't want to do it either, but somehow Pyresplitter convinced you.  I understand that; I believe it.  What I want to know is what he told you that convinced you."

Sita glared at Ferris: "It might be classified!"

Ferris waved her away.  "We have no secrets here.  We are family.  None of us would breathe a word to another of any secret thing the Legionnaire knows."

All eyes were upon Duronius, and he performed... bizarrely.  Standing up from the table, he stretched both arms out in front of himself, only half-aiming their welcoming gesture toward Ferris, and said, "I want to show it to you.  I want to prove to you this camp is every bit as great as Pyresplitter and I both think it is.  It is so much an improvement in every way!  Our lives will change for..."

"Relax, Duronius, it's only temporary," said Pyresplitter flatly as he returned through the curtain from the back room.

Duronius looked at Pyresplitter with wide, googly eyes, and sat back down and resumed a somewhat sleepier posture.  "It's true.  I'm just too excited from all the work today."

"More like worn out!" grunted the Centurion, and glared at him.  "You can't keep working yourself like you used to.  Go in the back; I insist.  We'll have a good drink together before you go back to rejoin your companions.  On me!"

Duronius looked up at him uncertainly.

"Go on!" insisted Pyresplitter.  "I'll take it from here."

Duronius obeyed, standing and leaving, all swishy-tailed, into the back room.

"Well, I do apologize for having your Legionnaire in such an exhausted state," said Pyresplitter, now addressing Ferris directly.

The guardian looked him in the eyes and felt considerably relaxed by Pyresplitter's attention.  It was all a misunderstanding, and Duronius was out of sort because, because... heavy lifting.  Yes.

No.  That made no sense.  Not for Duronius.  The man could practically carry a dolyak around.  But...

"Will you explain what's going on, sir?" asked Ferris politely.

"Certainly.  The change in your assignment was quite simple, really, and I do apologize for any confusion.  The expedition to Maguuma is actually being redirected.  Apparently another team found some very juicy information - and artifacts - that are setting us up for a nice invasion of the brand.  We're going to clean the place out, and your warband will spearhead the charge!  It'll be glorious!"

Glorious.  That damn word again.  Part of Ferris wanted to say outright that he suspected foul play despite the questionable external evidence; part of him wanted to sit down, tuck his tail neatly, and say he had no further questions.

He didn't get time to decide.

"Anyway, go on, all of you!" said Pyresplitter in his charismatic way, shooing them toward the exit.  "I'll speak a little longer with Duronius over drinks.  You all should get settled in.  I'll send Duronius back to you later with tasks for the coming days.  Thank you all again for being here!"

Then Pyresplitter left the room, and the Gore Warband members save for Ferris stood obediently and left the tent.

Ferris stared at the curtain for a moment, and temporarily forgot why he had been worried in the first place.  Wracking his brain for fear he had forgotten something important, and quite sure he'd find the information eventually, he left the tent deep in thought.

...After the other members of Gore Warband had cleared out, Duronius remained in the commander's private chamber, sitting on a chair reserved for guests, tail swishing anxiously as his breaths quickened.  He gazed pleadingly up at Pyresplitter for encouragement, not daring to ask "Did I do well, Master?" - but held every sinew and tuft of fur in alignment to ask that question with a loud, raw wordlessness that none but the most oblivious of Charr would have been able to miss.

Pyresplitter beckoned him closer while approaching.  Duronius's eyes sparked wide with excitement, and he leapt from his chair and romped forward on all fours - not in a warlike hunting posture, but in one like a giddy, servile pet excited to see his master home at last.

The Centurion led Duronius aside to the curtained alcove that was his bedchamber, and began to unbuckle his loin armor, pressing the excited Charr's face up against his bulging loincloth to smell the musk.  "Good pet," he said simply, and lifted the cloth for his servant's reward.

* * *

It took hours of lying around the warband's barracks-tent in frustration before Ferris Goreclaw got up the nerve to barge back into the command tent and check on what was happening.  The fact Duronius hadn't come back yet and it was already past the first changing of the evening guard did not help his confidence in the slightest.

Were there possible explanations - even likely ones?  Of course.  But his gut was screaming at him, and he had learned long ago that if he ignored it, he did so at his own peril and that of his warband.  He had seen signs like these before, on the battlefield.  The strange behavior of Duronius, the dampening of his own mind and the rousing of his pettier insecurities out of nowhere - all of this could be the result of mesmeric magic cleverly and subtly applied.  It took a genius of magical precision to know exactly how much to apply and when, and how to supplement the magic with more commonplace social manipulation... but...

...But he had to do this.  He had to oppose it.  He was the righteous guardian, and he would save his warband from whatever evil man was doing this.

It was most unfortunate for Ferris that some of the mesmeric magic he was up against had been lost to Tyria's history centuries ago, and only lately rediscovered by a few.  Likewise, it was unlucky for him that most of the purer divine, hex-breaking magic he might otherwise have called upon to counteract it more fully had also evaporated into the annals of time.  He had no realization of just what a liminal place his mind was in right now - assailed by the magics of his world before its apocalypse, and imperfectly defended by those of the new world since that time, and ever drifting close to an edge of losing self-control.

Increasingly, he could only envision a haze of evil in front of him, and was rushing forth into the night to smite it.  He would flick open the command tent, charge through to the back room, and with the light of an evening torch in his hand illuminate the truth... yes, even now, as he ran through that first curtain and barreled across to the far side - flung it open...

What he saw was not what he expected to see.

Pyresplitter stood tall in his usual half-plate armor, directly in front of him in an office well-lit by two large braziers at the back.  On their knees in upright, attentive postures next to him were Duronius - now in his full chainmail again - and another Charr covered head to toe in what looked like tournament plate, with a guarded helm that obscured his identity.

Both flanking Charr were facing directly forward toward the tent's wall, with narry an eye nor a neck-twitch in the guardian's direction as he entered.

"So good that you have arrived," said Pyresplitter amiably.  "It is fitting that a guardian be prompt to his inspection."

The final word of the sentenced punched through his mental guard, as if an arrow were piercing a stretched-out sheet of parchment.  Memories flooded his thoughts - hours, days, literal decades of repetition in maintaining his equipment, showing it to his superior officers, and holding proper posture and reciting the various oaths and writings of his profession.  A good guardian was always ready for inspection - always ready for any test... for there was no telling when a real threat would arise, and habitually readying oneself for the real threat was of utmost importance...

The mesmer's grip was already strong - yet, a flicker of lucidity still pierced the chaos: Dammit, no!  He's trying to...

Not having any other recourse, and already unable to find the words he would need for much of an argument, Ferris did the only thing he knew to do in a time like this: he violently and unelegantly drew his sword and ran it straight for Pyresplitter's heart.

It surprised the "Centurion."  Really, it did - "Pyresplitter" hadn't thought the guardian had it in him.  But it wasn't a threat against which he had no recourses either.

A flickering image of Pyresplitter hummed before Ferris's eyes where the sword was heading - and dispersed into a cloud of pink and purple lights as the "real" alleged Centurion stepped forward toward him again from across the room.

"Such good form," said Pyresplitter.  "Now everyone else - thrust!  Show your swordarms, your forms!  Make your thrusts gallant and perfect."

Ferris looked around to see that the office was much larger than he remembered.  Dozens of Charr fighting men were there in ranks and files, thrusting swords as Pyresplitter walked around to correct their forms.  Ferris realized he wasn't continuing to thrust, and began to do so.

"Excellent!  Now, scabbard, and attend!"

All stood at attention with weapons put away.

"It is time for the more thorough inspection of your gear and your bodies!  I shall personally guide you."

Metaphorically speaking, Ferris's mind was by this point submerged yet treading water.  Everything seemed normal, yet intense.  He didn't know what he was doing; he felt nervous about this inspection that he had the strange sense he had not prepared adequately for.  Yet he knew his armor was polished and well-kept, so there shouldn't be any problems... but... their bodies?  What about their bodies...?

"Leggear... off!" came the command from Pyresplitter.

Well, that wasn't anything out of the ordinary, although it was a little differently ordered than usual.  Normally they'd take off their helmets first, but there was no arguing with the commander!  All of the Charr around Ferris set themselves into a rapid display of dexterity, unclasping and tugging and liberating - first the right footpaw, and then the left one, and all the way up the legs.  Ferris heard the clattering of legplates and Charr-fitted ankle guards - realized he was falling behind in his odd hesitation, and quickened to catch up.

"Keep the pace, Soldier!" Pyresplitter warned, noisily smacking a recently removed leather glove against one of Ferris's spaulders as he passed.

"Yes, sir!" agreed the guardian.

And so the various Charr settled into a posture of attention again, now with all of their equipment removed up to their loins.

"Codpieces!" declared Pyresplitter.

Ferris gulped.  This wasn't the normal order at all!  Typically they didn't get out of the codpiece until...

...No time to think about it.  The other Charr were all unhinging them, working the heavy groin-guards off of their bodies and leaving nothing but their loincloths dangling there.  All of their tails were swaying with an uncharacteristic frisky eagerness at at the Centurion's command.  Even Duronius up near the head of the ranks was taking off his chain skirt in response to the same command... yes, everyone was undressing, just as Pyresplitter had declared...

Ferris felt his breath seize in his chest as his own codpiece his the ground between his thick legs.  A flushing, hot pulse was thrumming through his arteries, the blood pooling in his groin and forcing certain assets to swell a little.  He saw with some embarrassment the way his own loincloth was developing its modest but perceptible bulge, and tried to keep his mind off of how much he secretly wished everyone would see him like that.  Yes, his armor was beautiful and polished, but it was what was beneath that he wanted everyone to see...

"Helmets!"

The guardian shuddered, breathing heavier as he fumbled to get out of his helmet.  He was getting an erection now - plain and simple, and soon there'd be no hiding it even with the cleverest of postures.  He was not small-endowed in the slightest.  He tried to focus on stopping it, yet he found his attention unable to grasp the idea.  No... not stop it... grow it, yes...

All of the other Charr around him seemed to be in agreement.  A few were casting grinning, knowing glances at him when Pyresplitter's back was to them.  Others were developing their own bulges.  It felt so naughty, yet so terribly right...

He freed his mane and tossed his helmet aside, letting his body slacken into a more relaxed stance for just a moment, showing off his powerful thighs and bulging loincloth.  Pyresplitter immediately whirled around - and to Ferris's surprise, didn't punish this, but encouraged it all the more.

"Armplates off and stand there flexing.  Pose like you're having a statue made in your honor!  Fierce, menacing... powerful!"

All of the Charr did as commanded, the passion in their loins and the growls in their throats both rising to a monstrous intensity as their freed their arms and flexed their strong upper bodies.  Most dropped into predatory, forward-hunched stances with maws open, but Ferris felt a strange need to do something a little different.  Instead, he squatted slightly at his hips and thrust his groin slightly forward, folding his hands behind his head and  growling in a haze of delight.

"Soldier, that is not standard!" declared Pyresplitter - and loudly whapped Ferris's breastplate with the glove.

"What shall I do, Sir?" asked Ferris pleadingly, genuinely terrified of his superior officer yet unable to hold back his now overwhelming arousal.

"You stand right there while the others finish taking off their breastplates!" decreed Pyresplitter, and it was so.  The other charr all removed their chest armors, a process taking considerable care and some time, with some helping each other in a buddy system.  Ferris was stuck there with his bulging groin in front of him and his back muscles flexed and straining, his erection throbbing harder and harder inside his loincloth as he watched his drill-mates reveal the rest of their supple bodies - mighty, rippling torsos so well-suited for pouncing, ripping, killing, mating...  Numerous images of an all-male Charr orgy came to his mind, and try as he might he found them all but impossible to push away for more than an instant.  He could almost see the Charr around him now groping each other, touching one another's loincloths and pulling them back to reveal that every part of them knew how to stand attentively.  For the briefest moment he began quite literally to see this, his heart quickening and eyes going wide as he saw two of the hunkiest soldiers exchange gropes and a deep kiss.  But then...

"Goreclaw!" roared Pyresplitter, and suddenly he saw clearly again.  Yes, so clearly - all of the charr around him nude down to their loincloths, yet at perfect attention, bulges all perfectly and purely ignored.

"Yes sir!" said Ferris, his voice cracking a little as he found his throat going dry from all the embarrassment.

Pyresplitter frowned and smacked him on the groin with the glove.  It felt... way too good.  His cock throbbed all the harder from it.

"Wandering-eyes here needs help getting out of his breastplate!" said the Centurion.  "You there, come handle it!"

Another nude-to-the-loincloth Charr - one who could have been Pyresplitter's twin - stepped out from the throng.  He marched obediently over and helped to ease Ferris's studly torso out of the remaining piece of plate.  Ferris didn't know why, but he found himself panting openly from this interaction.  The hands removing the armor felt very special to him, and so familiar... yet in a more normal way, and not in the forbidden, nearly sexual way he was thinking about them now.

"Look at that," said Duronius with a laugh.  "Big tough Ferris can't handle being touched!"

There was a grain of truth to this.  Even totally awake, Ferris was a bit picky and weird about his body.  Most guardians were, for reasons ranging from actual personal cleanliness codes to bad memories of being hit by particularly traumatic types of attacks.  Yet those hands getting that breastplate off of him - and then caressing smoothly up his side while everyone watched him...

That did it.  Ferris's erection was now so throbbingly, leakingly swollen that it had managed to curve its way up and push aside his loincloth, with only a small bit of help from his squirming, flexing hips.

"Ferris Goreclaw, may be incompetent with his armor," said Pyresplitter, after motioning for the nude Charr who resembled him to return to the usual position in the ranks, "but he certainly demonstrates a real fighting spirit, and strong understanding of standing at attention!!"  He lightly whacked Ferris's protruding member with the glove, sending a wave of pure pleasure surging through it - so intensely that Ferris's jaws parted into a roar.  "You should all learn from him.  Strip!  

A lingering thread of the guardian's usual sanity made a gallant effort to rise up and do something at this point.  But it was an effort on the level of a one-man last stand on a battlefield, and had the same inevitable result.

Something inside of Ferris knew it was all "wrong," that the big, meaty cocks coming at last free of their loincloths all around him "shouldn't" be doing so.  That they shouldn't be throbbing upright at perfect penile attention, while Pyresplitter made his way around and touched and caressed each, inspecting the girth and the firmness and the tightness of the balls and making little comments - sometimes telling a soldier to "perk up" even when the cock in question was already seemingly rock hard.

When the Centurion reached Ferris again, the guardian's eyes were alight with some desperate, horrified "something," as though those windows into his soul were showing the briefest glimpse of the more composed, rational man that had been sent to live in the same mental depths where his lust, primal, and exhibitionistic abandon normally dwelt.

Pyresplitter's firm, dark hands reached down to grip his balls, his shaft - moving them and rubbing them, causing him to throb and leak while all around him the other Charr were looking, admiring, pulsating just like him... they were just a roomful of men, full of so much pent-up seed...

"Yes, you're looking quite good from down here," Pyresplitter affirmed as he continued to stroke the sensitive organs - petted the balls and prodded the taint - made the scrotum rise and wiggle and lower.  "Keep that spine straight... flex those arms.  Show the rest of your fellows what a fine specimen of Charr you are."

He did so.  It was wrong, yet it was so right there seemed to be no way he couldn't.  He put his delightful beef on display, showing off his traps and his pecs in particular with his stance.  He held his arms wrist-to-wrist behind his head, almost feeling bound, tied... at his Centurion's sexual mercy...

He leaked profusely, the pre-seed getting all over Pyresplitter's right hand and only encouraging him to stroke the cock more.  The motions slickened, quickened - an order went out for each Charr to stroke another in just this same fashion.  Duronius paired with the nameless Charr who resembled Pyresplitter, and the others also paired up in like fashion.  All around him there were so many cocks, all of his fighting-man brethren feeling their pleasure increase... and Ferris's increased too.  He glowed inside, burned with the kind of passion only concealable by one so ordinarily calm and collected as himself.

Suddenly the Centurion's shaft-stroking stopped, and the hand moved to press in firmly on Ferris's sturdy abs.  The guardian felt the weight of the hand... felt the pressure tickling its way through his fluid-filled, terribly aroused system.  The hand patted against him, pressing deeper, harder each time, while the other ministering hand rocked and kneaded his swollen balls.  He began to moan - louder and more pathetically he let himself cry out, the feelings inside of him growing more and more intense as his mind descended to a level of pure, utter servitude and plateaued there - waiting, desperately and eagerly seeking for any commanding word his Centurion might utter.

The wait was intense.  For ten more seconds the Centurion kept doing what he was doing - and looked up to gaze into Ferris's golden eyes.  Then, gradually, Pyresplitter's lips parted, and he spoke a single, unmistakable word.

"Cum."

An avalanche of spasms and relief rolled through Ferris Goreclaw's body.  His hips bucked uncontrollably; his inner groin muscles flexed and tugged and milked, forcing every drop forth from his prostate much as if he had been getting it directly massaged.  His wide tip bobbed up - and the heavy load of his semen at last pulsed out, rolled out like a majestic fountain, gurgling and flowing and dripping with all the displayed virility his body could muster.

All around him the other Charr were doing the same.  Even the ones mostly doing the rubbing rather than being rubbed themselves also came.  Ferris could feel it - smell it - the warmth and musk of so many Charr bodies giving up their seed at once.  He saw Duronius cumming too, all around him a sea of bliss and sexual chaos, yet utterly contained within the orderly commands of their wonderful Centurion... their Centurion who gave them nice relief like this, even as he made sure they could keep their gear in order and their fighting maneuvers correct...

The bottom dropped out of Ferris's mesmerized mind.  He fell backward, passing out from the overwhelming energy of it all, his cock still eking out the last dregs of his semen as he did so.

Three Charr stood over Ferris as his thoughts faded away.  Only three, for that had been all that had ever actually been there anyway.  The mess of obedient soldiers vanished into a purple, ethereal haze - forever real in Ferris's memory, yet much easier to clean up after than ones who were real in fact.

"Well done, my servants," affirmed Pyresplitter - and petted the nude Duronius and the other accompanying Charr on the head.


To be continued…

-----

Still playing Guild Wars 2 a bit more! &lt;: I've missed the beefiness of the Charr in comparison to the lithe-bodies of the miquo'tes!

Artwork done for me by my lovely werewolf, Forge!

Story done by the ever talented Dolphin Sanity

Hope ya enjoyed! Picture itself came from inspiration via Bluedude and Vishie!", "writing": "", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "", "pools_count": 1, "title": "Charrming Reassignment - Inspection!", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "image/png", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "2", "rating_name": "Adult", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "4", "name": "Sexual Themes", "description": "Erotic imagery, sexual activity or arousal", "rating_id": "2" } ], "submission_type_id": "1", "type_name": "Picture/Pinup", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "3", "views": "2299" }