Gods and Ancients - 6. Birth and Death

“Uh, Papa,” Bernie said to Karhu with a nervous quaver to his voice. Karhu was standing behind his Cub scratching his lower back itches and now looked up at the back of Bernie’s head. His ears had changed into the distinctive round shape of a bear’s and had sprouted fur. Red fur.

“It’s time, bears!” Karhu announced to the crowd who were temporarily distracted by the lunch buffet that had just arrived with a small army of kitchen staff. Forty wolves wheeling twenty ten-foot rolling tables, each table bearing two ten-foot-long sub sandwiches cut into foot-long sections.

All heads whipped around to see Bernie spitting teeth out onto the floor, and they dropped their sandwiches in mid-bite and rushed back over to the stage in front of the fountain. The long wait was over. It was finally time!

Karhu and Bill helped pull Bernie’s shorts and jockstrap off, and then quickly shed their own clothing. Gary and Matthias were at the front of the crowd at the edge of the stage, and they began removing their own clothing as well. Soon all two hundred bears filling the atrium of the NALC headquarters were disrobing in front of the forty startled and confused wolves of the kitchen crew.

Axel and Adam stood near the edge of the crowd along with Chad, and the Kodiaks began undressing along with the rest of their bear brothers.

“If you’re planning to stay and watch,” Axel said to Chad, “There’s a dress code for today’s main feature.”

Chad nodded and began removing his own clothing as well, when the cell phone in the pocket of the pants he had just dropped around his ankles began to ring in an unusual tone.

“Shit,” Chad said, stepping the rest of the way out of his pants and digging the phone out of the pocket, “That’s the Supreme Alpha’s emergency ring tone.”

“Can we get through this one change without an emergency, please?” Adam asked, now fully nude and wrapping his arm around his Papa’s shoulders while watching Bernie on the stage spit out the last of his human teeth.

Chad answered the call but did nothing but listen to his Supreme Alpha’s frenzied voice for ten full seconds.

“I understand, sir,” Chad replied. “I will find the Councilmembers in the crowd and let them know the situation. I’ll evict all wolves from the atrium, and we will be on guard.”

“That didn’t sound good,” Axel said, looking at the Beta wolf with concern, “Spill it, pup.”

“There’s a wolf on the NALC support or maintenance staff who is a spy for a foreign lycan power. That foreign power apparently isn’t happy with you werebears having the tactical advantage of a demigod in your ranks.

“The spy has a bomb, and he’s going to blow Bernie and all the rest of us sky-high.”

Chad spun on his heel toward the forty kitchen wolves who were frozen in place staring at the crowd of two hundred naked bears and the Cub on stage beginning the painful throes of his first change and barked the order for all of them to leave.

“Get out of here. Now,” Chad growled, “Or I’ll personally rip your throats out with my own teeth.”

****

On the stage, Bernie’s fingernails suddenly fell out and the bones in his hands began to crack and re-form into paws. His skull split into pieces with a loud grating sound and his furry ears shifted to the top of his head which was rapidly reshaping itself.

“Ah, Papa!” Bernie cried, falling onto the floor in agony, “It hurts!”

“Yes, Cub,” Karhu said, holding one of Bernie’s paws in his hand and smiling at him, “But the pain is fleeting. You’re nearly there!”

Bernie’s face pushed out into a muzzle, and his nose became black and leathery. Sharp teeth descended from his empty gums and filled his new, powerful jaws.

He rolled over onto his hands and knees just in time for his arm and leg bones to crack and shift, reforming into the legs of his bear along with his modified hips and shoulder blades.

Fur sprouted from every inch of his body, and he screamed as his vertebrae and ribcage expanded and swelled to an enormous size.

Finally, the scream changed into a deep baritone roar as his testicles bulged, and the baculum formed in his mighty bear cock, causing him to spontaneously ejaculate onto the stage floor, expelling the last of his human sperm from his new ursine body.

Bernie’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but when he opened them, he looked out at the crowd and saw a sea of transformed bears staring back at him. Brown, black, and polar bears, one diminutive sun bear and two orange and black striped tigers were looking at him with awed silence.

He turned to the side and saw his Papa, Karhu, changed into his massive dark-brown grizzly form, alongside his best friend Bill, in his muscular bear form and light-colored fur.

The bears themselves had never seen the likes of Bernie in his new bear body. He was a colossal specimen. He was definitely a grizzly, but easily equal in size to the polar bears gathered in the atrium. What really caused him to stand apart was his bright red fur, shining like crimson fire. Grizzlies had shown a wide range of coloring before, from darkest brown, to lightest blond, but none had exhibited the pure coppery-red hue of Berhnard Odinson, and they suspected none would ever again.

“Cub?” Karhu said in the bear-language, stepping forward and speaking directly to him. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes, Papa,” Bernie replied growling in the bear-language in return. “Is it over? The pain is gone, and I feel so good now. I feel almost as good as the moment when you first bred me.”

“It’s over, Cub,” Karhu said, licking Bernie gently on his muzzle. “You look magnificent. There has never been a bear as handsome or inspiring as you.”

Bernie raised a paw to look at himself.

“Red fur! Papa, I have red fur!”

“You sure do,” Karhu said with a hearty bear-laugh, “The reddest fur I’ve ever seen! You’re something special all right.”

“Ahem,” Gary interrupted from the side of the stage where his bear stood next to the great grizzly Matthias. "Now that we’ve seen Bernie in his bear form, red fur and all, you know what the next part of the tradition calls for, right?”

“Yes, I remember,” Karhu said with another bear-laugh, “It’s time for Papa bear to claim his first fuck. And I suppose the anxious crowd here is waiting for us to begin so they can all have a little tension-breaker, no?”

The atrium erupted in a roar of cheers, whoops and growls in the bear and tiger-languages, and Karhu turned back to his Cub.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “Ready to finally take me in my bear form for the first time?”

“I’m ready, Papa,” Bernie replied with a furry grin. He was not embarrassed to be literally on-stage for this intimate moment between Papa and Cub, since he had already shared special playtimes with over half of the bears in the room over the course of the previous week anyway. He lowered himself into a crouch and raised his rump, and Karhu moved into position behind him, mounting him in the traditional bear-style.

As Karhu’s meaty cock pressed into his Cub’s tight entrance, Bernie let out a roar of pleasure which was the unofficial signal to the other bears that playtime had begun. Karhu humped his Cub’s rear with a gusto and fervor that the pair had not yet experienced, and the crowd in the atrium followed suit in small groups of two, three and four, fucking and sucking each other with the pure joy and enthusiasm that came with the release of the anticipation and the happiness over the birth of their newest brother.

However, a small handful of bears were not participating in the largest and grandest group playtime session that the world had ever seen. Axel and Adam, Gunnar and Mike, Thomas and Sam, Joel and Jacob, Chad and Ezekiel prowled the atrium in their bear and wolf forms, peering into the corners with sharp bear eyes, and sniffing with sensitive bear noses for a rogue wolf bearing a deadly surprise, hoping to find him before he could complete his lethal mission.

****

In a corner of the mezzanine, Curtis crouched in the shadows, peering through the bars of the railing, and clutching the package against his chest. He had entered the atrium unseen, mingling among the forty members of the kitchen staff, the gift from the lions hidden underneath one of the tables. When the Supreme Alpha’s Beta wolf, Chad had turned on the staff and forced them all out, he quickly grabbed the package and hurried up a set of stairs where he could watch the proceedings until the moment he had been told to make himself known and present the gift.

He watched from his hiding place as the new Cub had gone through the agonizingly slow process of his first change, watching as bit-by-bit his human anatomy transformed into that of a massive, red-furred grizzly bear. Now, he continued to stare with horrified fascination as all two hundred bears below joined in a massive orgy as the new Cub and his Papa fornicated upon the stage for all to see.

What strange, crude creatures these bears are!

Curtis hoped that the orgy part of the first change ceremony would be over soon, and the Cub would change into his demigod form so that he could fulfill his obligation and collect his reward from the lions. The sooner he could leave the NALC headquarters behind him and start a new life as a wealthy wolf, the better.

****

With a mighty thrust of his hips, Karhu let out a bellow and ejaculated deep within his Cub’s ass, feeling Bernie’s own rhythmic contractions as he enjoyed an orgasm of his own.

Slowly, the hundreds of bears throughout the atrium reached their own releases as well, and the clamor and excitement of the first fuck began to dwindle.

“Now,” Karhu said moving in front of Bernie once again and speaking loudly enough for the room to hear. “It is time for the all-important next step.”

Bill moved next to Karhu and they both stood facing Bernie.

“Bill and I are going to begin to change back into our human forms. Slowly. You must watch us and copy our actions, all while picturing in your mind what a human shape looks like. Do you understand?”

“I understand Papa, I’m ready.”

“Once you have completed your reverse transformation, we will finally see what your new human form looks like, eh?”

“If it’s anything like your bear,” Bill chimed in, grinning a furry grin, “I’m sure you’ll be magnificent.”

“Let’s start with our fur,” Karhu said, nodding to Bill. “Think about the fur receding back into your body.”

Karhu and Bill both sat in front of Bernie and allowed their fur to recede, looking comically bald while still in their bear forms.

Bernie closed his eyes and concentrated, and soon his red fur was receding back into his body as well.

“Good! Good!” Karhu exclaimed. “Now your body. Think about a human-shaped torso, and human arms and legs.”

Karhu and Bill’s bodies shifted back into their muscular human shapes, and Bernie followed suit, his transformation coming a little easier now.

“Excellent!” Karhu said. “Now your hands and feet. Think about human hands with thumbs.”

As the two elder bears’ extremities shifted, the cub shifted right along with them.

“Last is your head,” Karhu said. “You’re almost there. Imagine a human skull and you’ll be done!”

As Karhu and Bill’s heads shrank into their handsome, bearded faces, Bernie’s muzzle shrank, and his ears moved around to their human position once again. The bears reached out to help the Cub stand on his two human legs once again, and the crowd in the atrium, who had all shifted back to their human forms as well, stared in awed silence for the second time that day.

The boy they all loved and adored was now a man, appearing to be about forty human years of age and a specimen in his physical prime. The red fur he had sprouted as a bear remained in his human form, covering him in a thick beard and head of long ginger hair, and a pelt of red on his chest, shoulders, arms, legs, and groin. He stood nearly seven feet tall, taller than both his Papa and his best friend Bill, with shoulders as wide as the sky. His thickly muscled chest heaved with excitement, and he lifted his arms to gaze at his bulging biceps.

There could be no doubt that this was the descendant and heir of Thor himself, and a Viking as mighty as he had not been seen on Earth in over a thousand years.

“I feel so strong, Papa,” Bernie’s voice boomed over the crowd, and the assembled bears laughed a bit as his eyes grew wide with surprise at the sound of his own new deep voice.

“You look strong, Cub,” Karhu said. “You have made all of us very proud of the noble werebear clan today.”

“But,” Matthias interjected, “The time of first transformation is not yet over for this one. When he was still a mere human boy, he could call upon the hammer of Thor and become a demigod not unlike the man he is today. What will he become when he calls upon Mjolnir now?”

“That,” Gary said, standing next to Matthias, “Is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Karhu, and Bernie, are you ready to find out?”

“More than ready!” Bernie replied, raising his muscular right arm in the air.

****

“This is it,” Curtis whispered to himself, and raised himself up slightly to get a better look. The big. red-headed, bearded bear cub was about to change into a demigod. This was Curtis’s moment in the spotlight just as much as it was that smelly bear’s.

****

“Mjolnir!” Bernie voice boomed across the atrium, and he was immediately struck by a bolt of lightning accompanied by a deafening crack of thunder. When the bears regained their senses, they looked eagerly back up on the stage, and for the third time that day, were left awed and speechless.

Upon the stage was a red-furred bear, standing upright on two legs, with furry paws that retained their opposable thumbs. Ten feet tall he stood, clutching the hammer of legend in one paw and a mighty battle-axe in the other. His feet were clad in boots of leather and iron, and his colossal chest and shoulders were crisscrossed with armor plating etched in Norse runes. A brown leather loincloth was fastened about his waist and a bulging steel codpiece covered and protected his maleness.

His head was that of the bear he was in his ursine form, but the fur beneath his chin remained long just like his human beard and was bound into two tightly woven braids hanging down to his chest.

He was the perfect combination of man and bear in one massive body, and many of the assembled bears took note that he represented the fulfillment of both form and function that the Dababbi could have been had they been born demigods instead of monsters.

The great bear demigod’s eyes glowed with a blue fire and electricity crackled around his fingertips as he adjusted his grip on the hammer.

“Today I have reached the maturity that was foretold to me by my many-times great grandfather Odin,” Bernie’s voice rumbled over the crowd. He spoke in human English but with the tone and timbre of the bear-language. “I vow this day to be the protector of the protectors, the hero of the heroes, and the champion of the champions. Call upon me whenever were-kind needs the guiding hand of Odin upon the Earth.

“A warrior is nothing without his clan. Today, I appoint three bears to be my earthly brothers-in-arms as they each embody a piece of my being.

“Representing my body, my strength, and my warrior skill, I declare Bill my Berserker brother.

“Representing my mind, my intellect, and my cunning, I declare Adam my Berserker brother.

“And finally, representing my heart, my compassion, and my conscience, I declare Mike my Berserker brother.

“Will the three bears I have named please join me on the dais?”

Bill was already at Bernie’s side as his loyal best friend, but Mike and Adam were each caught a bit off-guard. They glanced at each other from across the crowd and then Gunnar gave Mike a hug and a kiss before whispering in his ear to go. Axel gave Adam a stern nod and with a firm hand on his shoulder pushed him in the direction of the demigod bear who had called upon him.

None but Chad the wolf noticed the tear slipping from the big Kodiak bear’s eye and rolling down his cheek as he watched his Mate approach the dais.

“Bill, Adam, Mike,” the bear demigod said. “I claim you as my brothers for as long as we may live. Please place your paws upon Mjolnir.”

Bernie extended the hammer towards the three men, and they placed their hands on the cold metal.

The bear demigod’s eyes glowed brighter and a flash of blue light extended down his arm to the hammer. The three bears’ hands glowed with the blue light for an instant and then in a blink of an eye, the hammer was gone, and Bernie was transformed back into his new red-haired human form.

“Thank you for standing up with me, guys,” Bernie said with a lopsided grin. “I know this must have been a lot for you to process in such a short time.”

“What exactly just happened?” Mike asked.

“Odin has put his mark on you three as well,” Bernie replied. “Look at your hands.”

The three held up the hands that they had placed on the hammer and found the mark of the Triple Horn of Odin tattooed on their palms.

“Three is a divine number,” Bernie said. “As soon as I changed into the bear demigod, I knew that the three of you would be my kin and clan in this life. If I am to be the protector of the protectors, I’m going to need some backup once in a while. Are you guys okay with this?”

“Are we okay being the personal entourage of the living heir of Odin and Thor on Earth?” Adam asked, raising his palm to show his mark, “Yeah, I’m pretty fucking okay with that.”

“Me too,” Mike added, throwing his arms around Adam and Bill, “Sam will still always be my best friend, and Gunnar my Mate, but the bond between the three of us from this moment is unbreakable.”

“In this life and the next,” Bill added, grabbing Bernie by the shoulder and pulling him into their group-hug.

With all the attention paid to the demigod and his trio of Viking bodyguards, no one was still searching for the rogue wolf, which was the perfect time for Curtis to descend unnoticed from the mezzanine stairs and approach the edge of the stage.

“Excuse me, Bear Lord?” Curtis said nervously. He had removed the plain brown wrapping from the package as instructed and now held a box covered with brightly colored party paper in his hands.

“The lions of the African Lycan Council extend their greetings to you and all werebears of North America. Please accept this token as a symbol of their respect for the Heir of Odin on Earth.”

Curtis stepped on the dais and began to walk towards Bernie with the package extended in front of him.

“Bomb!”

The word was shouted by Chad, Axel, and Gunnar from varying locations within the crowd, and Adam and Mike instantly transformed into their bear forms roaring at the approaching wolf and blocking his access to Bernie.

Bill sprang into action and took the big ginger Viking down in a tackle, covering him protectively, using his body as a shield.

Curtis stopped in his tracks in confusion, still not understanding the real situation or his part in it.

“Ah fuck it all,” a voice grumbled from the crowd at the front of the stage just before the voice’s owner leapt upon the dais and dashed directly toward Curtis, grabbing him by the waist and plunging the both of them off of the back edge of the platform into the deep pool of water surrounding the grand fountain.

“Papa, no!” Axel shouted as he watched Matthias sink beneath the surface with a splash, dragging the rogue wolf and the deadly package with him.

An instant later, the fountain and pool erupted in a massive explosion, sending water, blood and marble debris flying in all directions around the atrium.

****

Randall sat in a chair in the Councilmember’s conference room, facing the five bears of the Council and their Cubs, Supreme Alpha Taylor and his Beta, Chad.

Thanks to the quick thinking of the ancient bear Matthias, the deep water of the pool dampened most of the explosive force of the bomb. Although the pool and fountain statue were both destroyed, the resulting shrapnel was mostly harmless to the gathered bears, resulting only in minor injuries that quickly healed.

Only two deaths were reported. Matthias the Ancient, and Curtis the would-be assassin and unwitting suicide bomber.

The rogue wolf’s identity was quickly established following the incident, and a few hours later, his departmental supervisor was called upon the carpet to answer for his underling’s actions.

“I’ve had time to hack into the laptop we found in that asshole’s locker,” Adam said, tapping the computer sitting on the conference table and staring with fury at the wolf sitting with his head hanging down to his chest. “Every day for the last two years, he has been logging in and downloading recordings from the bugs hidden in offices all over the headquarters. We even found a bug in this very conference room!”

“How the fuck was he able to keep these bugs hidden for two goddamn years?” Axel raged. He was still emotionally shaken over the death of his Papa, and he was on the edge of losing his temper at any moment.

“I’ve seen the list of offices and rooms that were bugged,” Randall replied dejectedly. “They were all rooms that Curtis cleaned himself. He must have been the one who planted them, and he made sure that none of the other cleaning staff ever had a chance to discover them.”

“We’ve also gone through his communications,” Mike said sternly, “According to the logs and timestamps, he was communicating with both the Benefactors and the Emperor of the African Lycan Council from this very building before his work shift every day. You never noticed this?”

“I knew he was locking himself in the utility closet with that computer every day,” Randall replied, staring at his feet nervously, “I just thought he was in there watching porn and… and masturbating.”

“I guess you should have offered to lend him a hand with that, you fucking clueless bastard,” Axel snapped, slamming his hand down upon the conference table and Randall broke down in tears, covering his face with his hands to hide his shame and remorse.

“Dammit, Axel,” Gunnar muttered, shooting the Kodiak a glare. “Security, please take Randall here to an empty suite in the guest wing. He isn’t under arrest at this time, but he is being held for further questioning at our discretion, so post a guard outside his room.”

As the guards led a sobbing Randall away, the bears and wolves looked around at each other nervously.

“There are two parties that I’m holding responsible for this incident,” Supreme Alpha Taylor said once the guards were out of earshot, “But that poor bastard isn’t one of them.”

“The African Lycan Council would be one,” Ezekiel replied, “Emperor Kintu in particular. Who else is responsible?”

“The Benefactors,” Taylor answered. “They are the ones who have been using Curtis as their spy for the last two years, not Kintu, and it was obviously their espionage that resulted in the leak of information about Bernie to the African Lycans in the first place.”

“Then tell me where I can find these so-called Benefactors,” Axel growled, “So I can go and crush their skulls under the heel of my fucking boot.”

“I’m not going to officially sanction any mission to murder the Benefactors, Councilmember,” Taylor commented glancing at Axel, “But when they called today to warn me about the bomb, we were able to have better success at running a trace on their location than any of the previous times they’ve called in secret to provide me with covert intelligence they wished to share. We couldn’t pin their exact location, but we do know that they are located somewhere in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.”

“Well then,” Ezekiel said, “I think an expedition to Morocco would be in order, and while we’re in the neighborhood, we should pay our Lycan brothers in the ALC a visit as well to let them know that the werebears are not so easily eradicated.”