The animal weighed three-quarters of a ton and was sacred to Artemis. For its protection she gave it the gift of incredible speed. No other animal alive could run as fast, and its enormous weight bowled over trees and blasted through boulders as it sped along, shattered by its golden horns and brass feet. But then again, it had never raced against Hercules.

From miles away came a soft tinkling sound, like bells. It had to be the hind, walking over rocks. Listening more carefully, he gauged the distance: it must be forty or fifty miles away. Herc moved surely in that direction; whatever stood between them, he should be there in under an hour.

His thighs got tight with the initial run over logs and boulders until blood flowed in, making them swell with supple energy. He nimbly dodged trees and picked up speed. The faster he went he kicked up leaves and soil until his footfalls began to shake the forest. He sprayed dirt and undergrowth behind him in a fan as the wind whistled past him. Now his feet didn't dodge, they crushed. Logs cracked into splinters when his feet drove through them as if they weren't there. He pushed himself faster. Rocks were either propelled downward through the soil or crushed to pebbles as his unstoppable feet turned him into the fasting moving thing the world had ever known, or would know. He came to a stream and made his first leap. Those thighs gathered in his force and released it, shooting him through the air in a blur. On and on he traveled, faster even than he could run, for hundreds of yards before his great weight pulled him down to the earth with a thundering boom. The earth and trees shook with the impact and animals crashed through the woods, frightened.

He kept running, his breath easy in his massive armor-plated chest. He leapt again, sailing faster and farther than the human eye could track, and hit the ground running. He loved the feel of his muscles working together, of his power unleashed on the unsuspecting earth, of his blood flowing through his wide throbbing veins. He leapt again, straight for a tree. Closing his eyes, he reveled in the tingling stings as three feet of solid wood shattered against his pecs. His torso sheared it clear through, and he was hundreds of yards ahead before the top of the tree had smashed straight down into the jagged stump.

The wood dust and splinters tried to dig into his skin with the G forces accumulating but his skin was thick and tough; they lodged between the ridges of his muscles and were ground to microscopic bits. Even their atoms were threatened by the pressure of his working sinews. He leapt again and this time he felt an invisible force press against him. It built and built against him like a solid wall but his speed and power were too great. A shattering BOOOOOOM rocked the forest as he burst through the resistance and flew on, landing at a run that churned the earth into huge furrows.

Only a few miles away now, the great reindeer heard the boom and took off. It nimbly leapt and ran faster than anything-well, almost. It had a head start but terror froze its heart as a louder rocketing blast filled the forest. Rock fragments flew after it and struck its ringing antlers, bringing welts and blood out of its tough hide. Looking behind it saw a blur emerging from where the top of a hill had been. A solid rock face had been smashed apart and the entire hill collapsed in on itself. Hercules landed, sending out earth tremors that almost sent the hind tumbling.

In a panic the beast sped on, smashing its way through the forest in a blind run. It could feel the breath of the giant on its ass; but the terror never came. On and on it ran and still only felt the breath behind it. Maybe it could win, outrun this monster. But after hours of this, its resources began to fade.

Not Herc's: he was born to exert speed and huge strength. He enjoyed running the hind down, watching its terror play with hope, feeling his own muscles match those of the beast and still restrain their full capacity. They ran over fields and through other woods, hundreds of miles tattered and torn by their flying feet. Herc began to run circles around the hind.

As fast as the beast could run, corner, dodge and spring, Herc bested it, was there on one side, then another, leaping over and always one step ahead. Nothing in its experience could ever prepare it for this encounter with Hercules. Its strength began to flag, then fail. It stumbled over its own hooves and spun out of control through leaves and rocks. Herc pulled short in an instant, thighs sweating and bulging and trembling with the extremity of this sudden stop. He looked over the hind and saw its stricken face.

Clearly the animal's heart was giving out. He had to find help; he was enjoined to bring the animal back alive. Its breath came in raspy and out hard. Slinging its enormous weight across his shoulders he took off at a run, almost equaling his pace before. But before he could come across a settlement, a blinding light brought him to a halt.

Before him appeared Artemis and Apollo. "Stop!" cried Artemis. "Where are you taking my sacred hind? I forbid you to remove him from this grove."

"Kind Artemis," Hercules said, "I would do the animal no harm of my own will. But Hera has bound me to Eurystheus, and he has commanded me to bring this golden hind to him alive. It is ill with the hunt and if you would work your power to heal it, I promise I will persuade Eurystheus to let me return it to you sound and healthy."

"Are you kidding me? Put her down, now!" Artemis glared at him. "Who gives the orders around here? I'm the god, you're half a god. Now put her down."

Hercules fixed her with his steely eye. Nobody, not even a god, challenged Hercules directly, much less spurned his respect with unearned contempt. None of this was HIS fault. "Look," he said, "I won't put it down but if you really want to help it, you'd better start now. I think its heart is giving out."

Artemis ran her hand over the animals shivering hide. "I'll pay you back for hunting my hind. I won't let you leave but right now I've got to save her life." Artemis turned her attention to the animal and set to work.

"I'll take that," Apollo said, approaching. Apollo was the youngest of the gods, the most beautiful, the paragon of radiant virile youth. Hercules looked older and more grizzled, but was almost as large as the eight-foot tall deity that shook the earth with each step. With a toss of gold hair, Apollo reach down to grab the animal by the antlers. Still holding the unconscious hind over one shoulder while Artemis healed it, Herc shot out his free hand and grabbed Apollo's forearm. The god's arm froze in the giant man-god's grip and for a moment seemed to match Herc's as his muscles swelled with resistance. Herc tightened his fingers and now his forearm pumped up faster and bigger than Apollo's. The god's eyes widened in disbelief as his divine strength was met-and out manned. The bones of his human shape began to bend together and Apollo winced in impossible pain as they fractured. He grabbed Herc's arm with his other hand but his fingers couldn't dent the huge muscles. He tried to pry even one of Herc's fingers loose and it simply tightened its hold.

Hercules dug his fingers into the god's flesh and ichor began to ooze out of the wounds. Apollo put his mighty back into it and tried to wrest himself free but Herc merely turned his wrist and drew his arm tighter to his side, grinning at the god's unbelieving terror of him. With one tight flex of his biceps he wrenched back and pulled the god's thickly muscled arm out of its socket. For the first time since the beginning of the world Apollo screamed in agony, his beautiful features harrowed with unknown pain. Herc chuckled.

"You can punish but you can't take it, can you?"

Sweat pored off Apollo's stricken face. "I'm a god and you're only half divine! Your mortal strength in superior to my divine powers! Your damned human muscle-"

"Can take on any god, or all of them." Herc twisted his wrist around and wrung a new howl of pain out of the beautiful god. He forced Apollo to his knees. "Suck my big human cock." As if on cue, that arm-shaped monster pressed out from Herc's loincloth and bobbed beneath Apollo's chin.

"Never!" Apollo cried, tears falling from his holy eyes. Herc squeezed and twisted again and Apollo sank onto one hip and writhed in the dirt, the fingers of his trapped hand flailing uselessly at the air.

"Let him go."

Herc turned and saw that Artemis had finished her ministrations and the hind now slept. He looked her in the eye.

"You want your share of this?"

"You cannot talk to gods that way!" And she drew her bow and shot an arrow into Herc's side. The divine arrow easily pierced the lion skin but barely sank into Herc's densely-packed intercostals. With a grunt, Herc squeezed and flexed the spearhead back out. It dropped helplessly to the earth, the iron point flattened and bent. A trickle of blood ran down and got lost in the maze of Herc's muscles

She fell on him with all her fury, tearing at him with her hands but her wouldn't yield. It was like a child playing on a statute. While Apollo sobbed in the giant's horrible grip, Artemis flashed her eyes and revealed her glory. An ordinary man would have been burnt to a crisp but Herc's skin merely drank it in and glowed. She flared and flashed and burned but Hercules laughed at her and shouted, "That's the best you've got?" And with that, he raised Apollo up into the air with his one hand and flung the broken, shrieking god into her blazing light and knocked them both to the ground.

With the hand that had crippled a god, Hercules grabbed hold of his turgid cock and stroked it. The giant member easily took the grasp that defeated Apollo and pulsed out streams of steaming jism over the fallen gods. When his ostrich-egg balls had released about a gallon of come over them, Hercules looked Apollo in the eye. "I'll take this to Eurystheus, as I must. You can deal with him about its release. I guarantee I won't hurt it again." And he walked off, leaving the stunned and humiliated divinities sprawled in the dust.

Eurystheus was beside himself. What was he going to do with this reindeer? He thought Hercules could never catch it, and now he would have to deal with a couple irate gods. Too bowled over to think, all he could think of next was the Erymanthian boar, another beast ravaging a countryside.

Hercules took it as a vacation. It wasn't sacred to anybody, it was just a big wild pig with tusks. One look at Herc's bristling physique and determined eyes and the boar took off, scattering the bones of killed men beneath its hooves. Herc chased it, matching its incredible turns with feints of his own, until he tired of the game and kicked it. The three-hundred pound boar, under its own speed plus the doubling power of Hercules' leg, flew a quarter of a mile before tumbling to earth; and Herc was there almost instantly as it struggled to gather breath. Again, it had to be living, so Herc put it across the lion skin over his shoulders and trotted back to Tiryns. At first it scrambled to get loose but Herc's one hand pressed down and pull a leg out of joint and the animal quivered the entire trip.

While Herc was gone, Eurystheus had time to think of something impossible even for Hercules. King Augeas' stables at Elis housed 3000 oxen, and they hadn't been cleaned out in 30 years. The task would be to clean out all that rotten, compacted, composted shit in a single day, and make the floor clean enough to eat off of. In fact... no, that would be pushing it. When Herc dropped the cowering boar at his feet, Eurystheus was the picture of cool reserve. When he told Hercules his next labor, he thought the giant blanched; but it may only have been the light.

"You just love getting me dirty," Herc replied, stroking his monster cock beneath its leather covering. "Someday you'll know what its like being on the receiving end of this." Before the king could answer in indignation Hercules turned and walked out, his firm high ass flapping the leather loincloth behind him. When he got past the doors and at the passageway, he turned around and flexed his massive right biceps. He licked the huge rock with his tongue (he barely had to turn his head to reach its bulging belly), then rubbed the spit in with his left hand, the fingers scrabbling over the dense striations, his fist pounding on the unmoveable muscle. He looked at Eurystheus, opened his mouth slightly, then turned and walked away. He smiled as the kings' howl of rage (or anguish?) echoed through the palace.

This one would take some thinking through. Fortunately, there was a long boat ride to Elis. He wanted to give his legs a rest. At Piraeus Hercules boarded a trireme bound for Olympia, unaware that a rivalry between captains had reached a murderous pitch. While Hercules staked out a place for himself, the rival captain's henchmen crept on board and slaughtered the captain and crew. Hercules heard the disturbance and rushed below deck.

Seeing the dying slaves chained to their oars and the assassins covered with blood, Hercules sprang. He caught swinging swords in his hand and the tempered steel dulled and bent as his fingers crushed them into poles. One blow of his fist was sufficient to crush the skulls of a dozen lined-up men, and the six murderers hadn't even time to think. Gathering all six men up in his arms and shoulders, he climbed on deck and looked around. Beyond the breakwater another trireme bobbed, its captain watching for his killers. Hercules dropped his load of corpses and picking up two in each hand, reared and back threw them at the boat. The big men flew through the air like dolls and landed on the ship that must have been a quarter mile away. Quickly he threw two more, then the last two, all of them landing on the deck. Then he went below, to the oars.

The other captain, amazed at this display of power and knowing who his assailant must be, wasted no time in cutting the anchor loose and spreading full sails. With the wind behind and three banks of slave-driven oars he should be able to make his escape. Even so, he broke out into a light sweat.

The sails had not been raised on Herc's ship and he didn't bother. Below he found the one man bleeding but not fatally wounded, and set him up to mind the tiller. Choosing a pair of oars at random, he stationed himself between them and reached across with arms many times thicker than the wood.

Hercules had never rowed an oar before in his life. He had only the vaguest idea of the motion and technique a slave would use to conserve energy and still deliver sufficient power. His first stroke was awkward, but he got the feel of the oar in the water. The slaves, still manacled to the oars in his hands, rocked back and forth. He put the oars in the water again, and pulled harder this time. His delts hardened under this new motion and the riot of muscle in his back began to dance. The ship creaked in the water and grudgingly nudged forward. Normally one hundred men would strain to get the huge warship into motion. The battering ram dipped into the still harbor water and nosed back up. Hercules pulled again.

Herc had forgotten to pull anchor, so the ship stopped at the end of the rope, the huge boulder locked into the harbor bottom. He grew angry, and pulled harder. His hands reached out and grabbed as second set of oars, his great palms manipulating them into synch. The four oars pulled at the water, a little faster, and a little harder. The anchor rope went taut, and Herc, sensing no movement and not wanting to waste time as the other ship traveled on, rowed faster, and faster. The water around the oars churned and boiled and the ship began bobbing wildly up and down. Cargo began to jump around the decks and the creaking grew louder and more anxious, with popping strains and groans. The giant boulder pulled up out of the sea bed and dragged a few feet until a low stone caught it for good.

Hercules was coated with a find sheen of sweat, like oil, and his growing muscles split in to visible fibers beneath his skin. Grunting with each stroke he pulled, faster and faster until one of the oars cracked and snapped with the strain. Without missing a beat he grabbed the oar behind him and dug deeply into the water. The trireme groaned and at last the anchor rope began to jitter and fray as it dragged across the deck. Splinters of wood fell into the churning foam and one by one strong hemp fibers snapped until the trireme leapt across the water. Feeling the release, Herc only pulled harder to make up the lost time and distance.

With the wind and a hundred slaves the murderous captain was almost to the horizon. The oarsman at the tiller aimed for a speck and prayed it was the right one. Waves of the turning tide broke against the hull but Hercules drove the creaking ship faster and faster. Even without sails he was starting to catch up. The slaves chained to the four furiously beating oars were starting to come apart, and with the breaking of skin and bone a stipple of blood appeared on Herc's tanned, engorging body. Hating this situation all the more, he narrowed his eyes and began pulling even more fiercely.

His pecs broke into huge mountain ridges and remained six inches deep when his arms were at full backstroke. His cock began to rise with the chase, and with the wild rocking of the flying boat come began to splatter the corpses around him. Calling upon deeper reserves of strength he pulled through the water like it was air and the ship sailed faster than it had ever before.

The murdering captain looked back at the retreating coastline and his face fell in horror. Impossibly he was being chased by a ship with no sails and what? Two sets of oars? Their movement was so blurred they almost appeared to be rowing backwards. And the distance was closing. The ship was now speeding so fast it cut the waves like a knife and the battering ram rose high above the waves. It was only a mile away, and growing nearer. He could hear a buzzing that was the spinning of the oars as they turned the water to mist-or possibly steam.

The captain ordered the slaves to pick up the pace. The drum beat faster and whips cracked through the air as the slaves dug and pushed their bodies to the limit. But Hercules held his head high, his heavy arms throbbing with power. The man above shouted down they were almost there, and Herc poured his power into the groaning craft. The wooden sides were unaccustomed to so much speed and pressure and started to bow inwards as they hit the water. Pitch began to crack and press inward and planks creaked and bent.

The slaves in the chased ship were sweating and straining, but they couldn't out muscle Herc. With a shocking jolt Hercules felt the battering ram crush into the stern of the other ship with such speed that it just kept going. Screams and cries of slaves and crewmen were drowned by the splintering of wood as Herc drove his ship deeper into the hull of the other. Oars before him snapped off and up above a mast of the doomed ship croaked and splintered down upon the deck.

Now the two ships were wedged together, Herc's trireme half the way into the other and driving it forward. With both ships filled with dead and dying men Hercules didn't stop but picked up speed. Hours went by and still Herc exulted in his strength. The steersman veered wildly through the archipelago as islands spun by and Hercules roared out his strength. Passing ships witnessed the incredible sight as one ship butt-fucked the other through the wine dark sea, a propeller spinning out of each side and shooting so much water into the sky that it fell like salty rain on the mainland. They traveled around Greece and arrived at the northwestern Peloponnese in a single day.

At that breathless speed there was no way to stop, the oars simply snapped like twigs and the ships ran up onto the beach-and kept going. Half a mile inland the ships finally ground to a creaking halt and fell over in a field. Herc walked along the side of the hull to the deck which was now almost perpendicular, and with one kick cracked the thick wood. With a second kick his foot went through and cracks spread up and down; after that, he walked through the wood and it gave before him.

His steersman was delirious but still alive. Nobody survived on the other ship except the cowardly captain, who was made to pay for all this destruction he had caused: Hercules put his huge arm around the sailor's neck as his enormous cock reamed the captain's ass. He slowly flexed his biceps against his throat so that this man would know Herc's power as he slowly, painfully expired. Then Hercules carried his wounded steersman to Olympia, entrusting him with a doctor and providing for his freedom. He offered a sacrifice for the dead, ate most of the great ox himself, and strode off to find Augeas.

The land of Elis had a plague land. Monstrous insects filled the foul air and people lived their entire lives with linen hoods over their heads to keep away the bugs and the filthy air. At the heart of it was the obese Augeas and his rotten stables; every step was unbearable as he neared this pestilential site. Hercules was glad he had to perform this feat in one day, he didn't think he could stand staying here any longer. Augeas wallowed on his porch, waiting for him.

"I want to see this! The great hero covered in rotting shit." Augeas laughed and shook the flies off his drumstick. Taking a huge mouthful, he laughed again, spraying meat into the dung. Hercules looked at the vast stockyard, the oxen covered in sores and driven nearly mad with flies. Of course he could move this tonnage of offal, but where to put it? He had an idea.

He sunk into the mud up to his waist. The distraught cattle threw their weight against the invader but his mighty arms pushed back and moved them away. Shit and flies covered him as he waded through the muck. At the far end of the stockyard was a stone wall three feet thick. Herc climbed over and down the other side.

It was a well-constructed wall built to last centuries. Hercules found the largest foundation stone and dug his fingers into the wall and worked his terrible grip into the rock. Flakes of stone chinked out underneath them as his brawny forearms forced them into the cracks. He thought he felt the wall sigh a little at this unaccustomed, new pressure. Taking a deep breath (then regretting it), he stretched his neck with a sharp crackle and began to pull.

A tremor ran through the rock wall, a vibration the cattle picked up and bellowed against. Gritting his teeth, Herc's fingers pried the surrounding stones apart, moving tons of compacted, precisely-cut and joined stones with just his knuckles. The weight of the wall bore down on this one stone and shocks ran through it as it budged under Herc's pull. Sharp gritty scraping sounds, made by hard granite rubbed and cracked, were magnified by the stonework and Herc met them with forceful grunts. His neck turned red and a vein ran down the top of his biceps and forearm, sprouting a network of veins below it that gripped the muscle and pumped blood in. The ton- stone pulled out 3 inches, then four. Herc worked up a rhythm of bursts that pulled the stone out five inches. Six.

But some part of the stone caught on the stone above it. Hercules worked his shoulders up and around and now the whole wall felt his power. The interlocking stones braced their enormous weight against him but he was too much. His abs stood out like ingots as his back and shoulders pulled and twisted. Suddenly with a sharp report the stone in his grip split through, too compressed by his hands to stand it, and he savagely yanked the two halves out. The rest of the wall bulged and broke and fell onto him. He stood there and let the boulders crack and bounce off his chest and arms. When the rumbled died down he could hear Augeas screaming.

"What have you done to my wall? You broke my wall!"

As if on cue the oxen plunged through the gap, dragging fetid shit along with them, and coating Hercules anew with filth. The broken wall that could not withstand Hercules held against the onslaught on rushing beef as it squeezed through; soon the stable was empty as the oxen sought higher ground. Augeas was apoplectic.

"Don't worry, fat man, it'll all be over soon."

But it was already 3pm, and he had little time to finish the stable before dark. There were two rivers that flowed on either side of the stable. The Alpheus rushed through rocky rapids and the Peneus languished across the plain. First he took on the Alpheus.

Using only his grip he descended the steep walls of the chasm at a place where the river bent away from Augeas' land. Bracing himself with his thighs in the bend, the icy water raging against him, he reared back and punched the rock face. Spider web cracks marked the spot his muscle and bone struck the cliff. He hit it again. And again. An ordinary man would break his hand against the unyielding stone but Hercules is the unyielding one and the rock cracked in snaps echoing through the canyon as the splits grew higher, deeper and wider. His fists pounded relentlessly as the swirling white water swept in vain against his thighs and now the crack reached to the top. Water eddied into it below as Hercules put his fingers into the stone and started to pry it open.

His forearms bunched and hardened into iron. His triceps twitched and twisted on his arms and his biceps crushed mercilessly against his pecs. He could feel the mountain tremble and hear the deep rumbles as his triceps ripped apart the solid rock's natural coherence. Peals of cracking and splintering emerged from the widening gap as his back broke into a chaos of strength, muscles cramming against each other. At last the deepening split hit dirt and the immense tonnage of rock behind his right hand pulled out and plunged into the torrent.

Water swept into the riven stone face as it built up against the morass of broken rock in its course. The force of the breaking rock released the power of his left hand and he shoved that tonnage back into the earth a hundred yards behind it, further opening the new path for the water. The soil beyond the cliff face melted into mud as the icy water swirled against it and flowed directly toward the stables.

Herc climbed out over the rubble to watch the river flow in its new bed. With distress he saw it lose power as it ran over and through the fields, so that when at last it reached the stockyard it merely formed a viscous sewage. Now it was after 4pm and he had to work on the other river, fast.

The Peneus flowed broadly over the plain. Hercules scanned the area and noticed a cavern descending beneath it.

The rock was smooth and worn, as if it had once housed the river that now flowed above it. Hercules crawled through the dark cave until he could feel a massive roundness that had to be beneath the center of the river. He could barely squeeze his body into the rock and spread his arms out to either side. With his legs and back, he tried to stand.

At first he was stuck and the solid rock remained solid. But his muscles know no breaking point: and rock does. He pressed his back up, rock against rock, then iron against rock. He felt a tiny tremor flow down toward him and he smiled. And pushed.

The huge weight of rock and water above him vibrated; anyone watching would have seen a ripple form in the middle of the river, like a fish surfacing; except that it continued, and grew in size. Soon the water of the river grew more agitated around it, and the ground all around quaked. Shearing cracks sounded in the earth and then there would be a bulge in the water as if something were surfacing. Small at first, then larger and steadily larger; as if the entire river bed was rising. Water began lapping at the banks and soon was flowing over as a deep grumbling was squeezed out of the ground. The rumbling grew broader and louder and stones danced on the ground, trees swayed and animals spooked and bayed.

Underground Hercules bore the incredible weight. Water seeped into the cavern through the disturbed riverbed but flowed past him, down into the earth. His body now was more solid that the rock he forced up and broke loose. Standing full upright, he began to press the riverbed up with his arms. Biceps bulged against his forearms up nearly to the wrist in distorted peaks of mighty brawn. His shouts now rivaled the plunging and shattering of rock that stressed and cracked loose above him. Mud and water sloshed past his feet but Herc continued to heave until with a rock-splitting cry his arms were straight and trembling over his head.

People stumbled under heavy loads as a full-on earthquake shook the land like a dustrag. The river bulged and eddied and ran off down the plain in a new direction, millions of gallons of water gathering speed and force as the land narrowed and deepened toward the stables. Augeas barely had time to get his fat ass to high ground before this new wall of water poured into the stockyard and swept the putrescent muck before it. Hercules arrived, wet and clean, and watched proudly as the two rivers raged through the stable and swept the manure before it. New rivers he had created with sheer muscle power cleaned the stable for him.

Augeas raged from a nearby hill. "Now I have a river running through my farm. What do you expect me to do?"

Herc's deep voice broke over the rushing water. "Anything else." And laughing, his pulsing body huge and gleaming in the setting sun, he walked off to Olympia to find some boys to fuck.