Eurystheus looked the giant over. Hera had promised Hercules would not be allowed to hurt him. Still, the power that came of those muscles in waves... and he was just standing there, naked, as if carved in stone. The bloated muscles shadowed each other, rising and sinking in a relief no sculptor could even imagine. Each individual muscle, no matter how small on an ordinary man, twitched with living strength on Hercules, double or triple the natural thickness and so dense that stone spear points shattered in vain attempts to pierce them. It was almost as if he had no skin and each sinew had been distorted for viewing by medical students. Eurystheus, a confirmed womanizer, felt an undefined rage toward this man, toward how this giant made him feel. And he was just standing there.

"You have ten labors to perform for me by order of the Pythia at Delphi," Eurystheus began, his voice cracking. That infuriated him further, this unwonted display of nervousness before a man who was his slave, given him by the Queen of Heaven. "And I shall require a direct accounting immediately afterward. Failure to perform any labor satisfactorily will mean death."

Hercules crossed his arms before his chest. It was as if great trees had come to life and bent themselves across a massive cliff face. His chest gathered in horizontal outcroppings above his gnarled forearms. I wonder, he thought, how he would try to kill me? Despite the fact that I'm half-divine, I'm too strong for anything HE could devise. Well, it's academic anyhow. I have never failed at anything. Nor will I.

It was his pride of course that always tripped him up. This time it would be no different.

Hercules entered the valley of Nemea, where a wild lion had laid waste to the countryside. Nobody could kill it, no matter how large the hunting party, and the lion slew and ate all contestants. The great temple of Zeus, his father, was abandoned and defiled with the carcasses of people the lion had claimed. Herc's task was to bring the lion's skin back to Eurystheus. His weapons: a quiver of the sharpest arrows in Greece and a club two athletes could barely lift from the ground. He had torn a tree out of the earth and stripped it with his bare hands, and it had crushed many a skull. With a bellow he called out to the lion and walked up to the temple. He could hear the cat pacing inside the sanctuary but somehow it sensed it might have met its match. So it sat in the shadows, crouching and watching. Hercules bellowed his challenge again.

"If you won't come out, I'll make you come out." He walked up the steps to the central pillar and observed the construction. The stonework was finely fitted around the tops of the giant columns, each five feet in diameter and solid marble. The frieze around the top depicted the ancient rites of Zeus. "Forgive me, father," he prayed. He grinned.

He'd heard of a so-called strong man in the east who toppled a temple by pulling two columns together with chains. Hercules would show this lad how it was done by a real man.

Spreading his heavy arms, he cracked his back and neck in a volley that sounded as if tree-limbs were snapping. He put his hands around the column. It was so thick he couldn't join his hands, but his grip would be no less for that. His arms stretched three-quarters of the distance. With a sharp intake of breath, he gripped the column. And squeezed.

Muscles leapt like wild animals along his forearms as his gigantic pecs strained to draw them in towards his body. His triceps stood out behind his arms farther, and farther in an obscene peak. His biceps contracted against the cold marble and instantly a tinkling of cracks spread out from beneath them. The fluted edges of the column crumbled under the pressure, his fingers cracking and digging at the stone. Dust sifted down from his chest. He now had the main bole of the column in his grasp.

He took a second breath, and again tried to pull his hands through the stone towards his chest. Deeper clinks rang out of the pillar as stress fractures opened beneath the blast of crushing power. A tremor ran through the structure and the roof timbers whispered. The lion within growled edgily.

Chunks of stone began to chip out around his constricting arms. His pecs ground deeper depressions into the stone. The column segments above him began to tremble as with an earthquake. Hercules grunted. His face grew red and a vein throbbed in his forehead. His arms never released their pressure, but bore down as his back spread out to support them.

The marble split against the grinding force and Hercules poured power into the fault. His knees dug into the pillar as well, pulverizing the stone fluting as his legs lifted. Forcing the broken stone up against the roof, he raised tons of rock off the temple floor. The musical tinkling of marble chips falling joined the deeper groan as the roof teetered. But the broken column held: his arms bound the pieces together more tightly that the marble's own hardness had. With a final thrust upward, he sent the great stone cornice toppling backward. Great logs split and fell with shifting weight. He pulled back to set the column pieces flying away from him and let go. The stone column smashed into pieces as the rest of the temple crashed inward upon it. Other columns swayed and fell amid the clamoring dust and stone shrapnel. Hercules stood amid the raining rubble and batted it away with his forearms. Roaring with triumph he watched the great temple rip open.

The giant cat had sought refuge within the inner sanctuary but that space was too confined for it now, and it boomed with the debris pouring onto it, cracking its stone. With a growl the lion leapt past Hercules at lightning speed, taking a vicious swipe at his head. Hercules dodged that paw and with reflexes faster than any wild animal grabbed the hind leg as it soared past. His biceps bulged as it absorbed the impetus of the catch, stopped it and dealt it right back out. Swinging the half-ton lion around like a toy, his grip cracking the bones of the leg, Hercules flung the cat hundreds of feet through the air to land smack against a hillside. He walked toward the dazed, floundering beast.

The lion got up, wobbly and limping on its broken hind leg. Hercules felt a little winded so he grabbed the bow that only one other man could draw (and he was lost in the Trojan campaign), and shot an arrow with sure accuracy. The arrow hit the lion over its heart... and broke. Hmm, thought Hercules. With dizzying speed he shot a succession of arrows, his hands a blur and the bowstring singing like a harp. All along the sides of the lion the arrows stung and broke. The lion leapt.

Now full of wild panic and hatred, it sprang at Hercules with such force that its over-half-ton weight was multiplied and drove the giant man back as he caught it against his chest. The lion clawed with razor talons that tore at Hercules's skin, though they couldn't saw through his dense, ridged muscle. The great teeth chewed the air near his head. Those jaws might be able to get through his throat. The animal's breath stank of death and decay. Hercules's swift hands rose to close those jaws.

Holding the half-ton cat up in one hand by the scruff of its mane, Herc's other hand clamped down on the jaws, but they wouldn't close. The lion exhibited enormous power, and Herc's forearm bulged and began to tremble with the effort that just now cracked solid marble. The cat writhed, slashed at him, then used Herc's own wide chest as a launching pad to leap off. The mane ripped out in Herc's fist and he barely had time to catch his breath before the cat was on him again, this time gnashing toward his cock. Hercules reached for his club and with one hand raised the great wood into the air. He brought it down on the lion's back with all his force: and two feet of solid ash cracked over the lion's back. The lion leapt at his face again.

The beast should be dead by now but it keeps coming back, Herc thought, his mind racing. My weapons are useless. Well, not all of them. I have these biceps. Herc grinned and fell on the lion.

Hercules didn't weigh a quarter of the lion's weight but his powerhouse thighs drove the cat over onto its back. He clamped his arms around the lion's back and pressed his chest against the lion's rib cage. Herc's thick neck drove his head up against the lion's jaw. The lion struggled and ripped at him with savage claws but Herc's legs quickly moved underneath and around the lion's hind legs. Herc's back flared out, his lats wider than the lion's compressing body. A strangled cry came out of the lion's mouth as Herc's head shoved and shattered teeth. His chin ground down into the lion's throat.

Rolling onto his back he held the cat above him. Clasping his iron fingers together he crunched the giant beast between his biceps, against his thickening pecs. The space containing the lion contracted, grew smaller and tighter with the cracking of vertebrae. The lion's legs sought the ground and tried to press up, its back and shoulders writhing. Again, Herc squeezed. The lion's ribs bowed out. Herc's legs trapped the hind legs of the lion and started pulling them out of joint. The cat fought back but his legs held and widened into a perfect split; The cat screamed, its eyes wide with terror as its leg muscles ripped apart and tendons tore off the bone. Straining to get up, to get away, only made it worse. The bone couldn't stand the upward pressure of the cat's own muscle and the downward clamp of Herc's unforgiving strength, and the front legs snapped in spiral fractures. Paws hung limply in the clawed dirt and Herc breathed in the animal's musk. His cock grew hard and he dug it into the animal's belly as a final humiliation: here was this strong creature struggling for dear life and Herc was using it for pleasure. Getting hard off its death throes. Blood and foam crept out of the animals mouth and its eyes popped out of their sockets with the unyielding pressure. Herc roared in triumph as his biceps tensed and shattered spine and rib cage. Bone splintering out met those growing biceps and shattered again. None of the cracking bone could pierce the animal's tough hide. Internal organs, deprived of the armor of bone and sinew, ruptured in a wash of blood and gore out its ass and mouth, ears and eyes.

Herc stood up, carrying the destroyed lion on his shoulder. Without pausing for rest he began to run, half a ton crushed between deltoid and biceps, toward Eurystheus.

Eurystheus was on his throne when he heard the commotion. His guards ran to the bronze doors sealing the room from the corridor when they rang out with a hollow boom and crashed open. The hinges of one bent under the force and the door twisted off and fell to the floor with a deafening clang. Hercules strode in with the fly-buzzing carcass on his shoulder, having never set it down. He flung the animal at Eurystheus feet, silenced him with a steely look and proceeded to flay the animal with his bare hands. Ripping the tough hide off the macerated muscle and broken bones, he forced Eurystheus to wretch on his royal robes and gilded throne. Then, taking the red wet hide, he wrapped it around his body as the perfect shield and rested the animals horrified head atop his own as a helmet.

He stood before the sickened Eurystheus, his massive body streaked with blood.

"Next?"

A hideous monster had made its nest at the Well of Amymone in Argos. The Hydra, a snake with nine heads, the middle one immortal, crushed in its coils and ate anyone passing by. Eurystheus thought to give himself a good name by ridding the country of this pestilence. Or rather, by having Hercules do it for him.

Hercules had sent for his servant Iolaus, but he had not come. The Nemean lion skin had been cleaned and made field-worthy by the young athletes of the gymnasium at Tiryns, which only exacerbated Eurysthenes' hatred of the hero. Herc watched the Hydra from the swamp and thought through strategy. "What the hell, I'll just kill it."

Having lost his trusty club to the lion, he looked about for something more sturdy. The snake's reach was long and although the skin would protect him from the venomous fangs, he'd rather not get too dirty. He walked up to a tree past the edge of the swamp where the ground was firm and dry. It looked like it had just the right heft, not too long, about half the width of his chest. It was old though, and thick roots dug into the ground like talons. He apologized to the spirit of the tree and set to work.

Bracing his thighs, each as big around as the trunk, he put his hands to the bole and began to push. The wood creaked but stayed firm. Working his shoulders in a rhythmic motion, he increased the pressure. Sharp cracking pops accompanied the rising creak, but the roots held. The upper branches danced as the force expanded up through the tree. Birds flew off from surrounding trees. He pressed harder. Slowly, the feet-thick truck started to bend. Bark snapped and flew off. It wasn't what he wanted. He backed off and the tree sighed, but was too bent to straighten up.

He had a suspicion the roots might come in handy with all those heads to contend with so he got down on his knees and reached around the trunk at ground level. His lats thickened and spread as he started to twist to the right. The heavy roots held and again popping sounds trembled the ground. He twisted to the left, his arms holding but not crushing the tree, manipulating it out of the solid earth. Hard soil shook and broke into huge clods as he forced the root system to slowly agitate. His twists got harder, his abs and intercostals responded by hardening into interlocked iron fingers. His knees sank into the ground and he started to twist with an upward motion, as if unscrewing the tree from the ground. Deep in the earth the lower roots ripped and tore loose from the earth or themselves. He heaved again and again and forced compliance with his will. Finally the tree gave an inch to Hercules' muscle. He doubled his efforts. His back writhed as he tried to straighten up from a crouch without changing his grip on the trunk. Five or six roots as big as a decathlete's leg shivered and wrenched. With the pressure with which tree roots crack rock, but greater and faster, he gave final upward thrust. The tree's rooted resistance buckled and the earth could not hold it against Herc's strength. With a loud rip the tree wrenched out, throwing mounds of dirt off its trembling roots.

Hercules snapped off the branches with ridiculous ease and, carrying the dying tree above his head, ran at the Hydra. The immense weight of the tree sank his feet into the increasingly soggy ground but that didn't slow the giant, he simply kicked a trench open behind him as he charged. The Hydra had three heads turned toward him as he ran. It had never seen anything like this. The tree suddenly swung through the air and knocked those three heads clean off their necks.

His biceps rose in Olympian peaks as they reined in the power of the swinging tons of living wood. His jaw dropped open. To his amazement, two new heads were growing where only one was before. The new heads bulged out of the ragged stumps, covered in blood and swelling into hideous fanged life. Now the hydra had 12 heads. In rage he smashed the tree-club down upon these six new heads, crushing the skulls beneath it.

The other heads flew at him, trying to pierce the lion skin with their teeth. Herc batted them away like flies. Two coiled around him and began to tighten their coil. Herc thought of his earliest memory: when he was two, Hera had sent two snakes to kill him and his twin brother Iphicles. Laughing, he thought they were toys until they tried to bite him. Already his muscles had become hard and tense and the snakes could sink their teeth in but couldn't remove them. As they struggled against his thighs, baby Hercules grabbed them and crushed them in his hands, over and over mashing the bones and reptilian muscles until there was nothing left. They hadn't bitten his brother and his body was already at work conquering the venom. That had set the stage for everything that came after.

The two Hydra heads continued to close around him. He relaxed, to let them get as tight as they could. The snake bodies began to labor as they crushed against his iron body. Suddenly he flexed every huge muscle in his body with such lightning speed the Hydra couldn't withstand or release. His jumping muscles crushed the coiling snakes and sent pulped meat flying. Blood and flesh gushed over his body as the broken snake-necks fell to the ground. "Not again," he said.

He stepped back to survey the remaining heads. The two who had attacked him were broken almost at the main body, but now he saw two new necks growing out of the stumps like monstrous cocks. When he picked up the log the six crushed heads beneath it fell away, and now 12 heads were extruding. There were now 21 heads to contend with, snarling and snapping and spewing a vaporous poison that made him feel dizzy. Hercules grabbed his tree-club and retreated.

Grabbing two hundred-pound boulders of flint, one in each hand, he smashed them together over and over. Sparks flew and lit the roots of the tree on fire. With the blazing torches he again held the tree overhead and charged the monster. The Hydra hissed and screamed as he ground the spreading roots against the heads, burning and cauterizing the wounds so no new heads could grow, his arm muscles writhing like greater, stronger snakes. That left the middle, immortal head to deal with.

Since it couldn't be killed, it had to be stopped at least. He'd seen how helpless the three necks had been underneath the log. That gave him an idea.

There looked to be a sizeable rock poking out of the water nearby. Hercules hurriedly swam out to it while the last head screamed and writhed in pain. Treading water, he tried to uproot the rock-but it was too heavy! The smooth surface might have made a grip difficult for a normal man, but his fingers adhered like death and pulled, his legs churning the water. The rock shifted but the deep mud sucked it back down. He took in huge lungfuls of air and dove.

The rock was bigger than he thought. The water was ten feet deep and judging by the shape of the rock it might extend another twenty feet under. It clearly weighed hundreds of tons, plus the weight of the water and the power of the mud. The swamp bottom was too thick to get a footing on, so Herc closed his eyes and dove under it.

His great thighs powered him through the viscous mud until he had bored to the bottom of the rock. The surface of the swamp boiled with displaced mud and muck as his shredded quads drove his body down. The mud was harder, more compacted, beneath the huge rock so Herc set his shoulders against it. In the thick darkness iron muscle grew, and grew, and impossibly grew as he strained to dislodge the rock from its sunken bed. The glue-like mud slowly lost its hold in thick sucking bloops. But he was running out of air. There was only one thing to do.

Crouching on the swamp bed he sank down into a full squat, the rock upon his shoulders like Atlas. Driving his legs into the hardened bottom he flung the rock up through the water until it catapulted through the air. Herc's thighs, driven deeper into the sedimentary bed, were locked-but not for long. He flexed them again and cracked the hard sediment, and thrusting up he surfaced and watched to see if his calculations were correct. They were dead-on.

The tonnage of stone, driven by power only a volcano might equal, toppled trees and smashed branches. Hundreds of tons ripped out of the earth and propelled by this god-man's muscle straight toward the squirming, terrified head. Faster than the snake's reflexes it crashed into the ground, dragging the immortal snake head forty feet into the solid earth, trapping it. The force blasted the rock so hard it completely buried itself and the Hydra and all Herc had to do was spit on the grave. He gathered up some of the broken heads and brought them back to Eurystheus. As his gift.

Once again Eurystheus was enraged at Hercules' survival and triumph as he tossed those scaly heads into his lap. He felt a maddening tenseness in his cock. Herc could read the distress on the man's face and saw through it: he had seen it many times before. He walked up the steps to the throne without asking permission and stood before it, his own cock budging aside the leather loincloth in gentle, firm rocking spasms. Clear precum glistened on the engorged head and dripped down onto Eurystheus's knee. The king glared, his face twisted with a storm of emotions he couldn't explain or underst and, and as his own penis responded to the irresistible command of Hercules, he screamed out:

"Guards! Get him out of here! Now!"