| Well, time to repost everything all over again... Oh well, at least it's a good chance to read through my entire story again... (I've just started fixing the BBCode of all the original chapters! Unfortunately, since I can't exactly remember the precise colors that I used for each character, so there might be a few differences here and there...) Day 1 My eyes slowly fluttered open, as tiny droplets of morning dew gently fell from tall trees upon the green carpet of grass that now surrounded me. As I slowly tilted my head to the right, I could make out the shapes of tiny little insects and spiders slowly scuttle through the damp undergrowth. I'd always known that the neighborhood convenience store was always a bit on the shabby side, but I'd never thought that the owner's neglect towards basic hygiene would end up reaching these levels. As I slowly picked myself up, vague recollections about a powerful storm of some kind, accompanied by the strange feeling that I'd forgotten about something extremely important. It was exactly at that moment that I realized that I was as naked as a newborn baby, and the only reason as to why I managed to not suddenly scream like one was because I'd just noticed the small figure beneath me that I had just crashed down upon and on top of which I was standing right now. The small creature let out a loud groan, as it easily shook me off its back and staggered up to its feet. The girlish scream that I'd managed to barely suppress moments ago rose once again to my lips. This time, I didn't even bother trying to stop it. "Shaddup..." groaned the monster, before it finally let go of her powerful hold around my throat. As I coughed violently at the sudden rush of air that was once again flowing inside my lungs, I eyed at her suspiciously; although she had successfully managed to strangle my cowardly scream, my fear towards her was still present, and the... thing's massive strength definitely wasn't helping me get over it. "Hmm...?" she muttered sleepily (apparently, she still hadn't fully recovered from the blow she'd received a while ago at the back of her head), as she started to rub her temples. For a second, she just quietly stared at me, as if she was trying to make sense of what had just happened to her. Then, with the look of a fourth grader that had just solved a difficult math problem on her face, she spun around to face me. "Mmm~ So you're a human, right?" "Uh, I guess so..." "And a male, right? A human male, right?" she asked again. By the looks of it, she could hardly hold in her excitement; was being a man that good a thing in this world? Speaking of which, there was something weird about this monster; although she clearly wasn't a human, as evidenced by her small pair of horns and the ability to probably be able to punch a hole straight through a large boulder, she looked an awful lot like a scantily-clad young schoolgirl. The end result had rather disconcerting effect on me... "L-looks like it..." I answered, still not completely sure about what was going on. The monster-girl let out a small squeal of joy at my last statement, before quickly pushing me violently down on my back. A surprised "Wha-?" was my only reaction to the sudden assault. "In that case..." announced proudly the monster, a wide victorious grin splayed across her face, as she let herself drop on top of my stomach "... I can safely assure you that you're gonna get raped~♥!" Still not exactly comprehending the position I was in, I tried to get back up on my feet, but to no avail; the little girl before me, despite barely even reaching my shoulder height-wise, was easily able to keep me pinned to the ground and block almost all of my movements with a simple hold. "Don't struggle," whispered softly the monster girl, "It's just going to get you hurt..." She showed off once again her slightly fanged set of teeth with that cheerful grin of hers, "It's been a while since I've managed to get my hands on a human, and I have no intention of letting you go until I've milked you dry~!" With a small child-like giggle, she slowly ran her finger down my chest. By the time that she had finally finished squirming down towards my pelvic area, my breath had already started to become ragged. "Here I go~♥!" she exclaimed triumphantly. I clenched my teeth, readying my body to the uncountable pleasures that awaited me... ... The monster-girl looked down, then back at me, then back down again. A long moment of silence followed. She looked back up again, the excited expression that was on her face just a minute ago now completely gone. "You know," she commented, as she begun to get off me "I heard that shark fin soup does miracles to people like you... Or maybe it was clam?" And, with that, the near-magical atmosphere from before was now completely gone. "I-it's just the cold!" I stammered. I also threw in some weak coughs for a good measure in a desperate attempt to make my blatant lie a slight bit more believable. "Whatever..." said the short monster-girl with a mournful sigh "I guess it was too good to be true, anyway..." "Oh come on! Just give it a chance! Also, whatever happened to that 'Not letting you go until I milk you dry' from before?" "Sorry, I don't rape children; even I have some standards..." I suddenly felt the urge to turn into a tiny cockroach and crawl into a hole. "Hey!" I exclaimed, as I slowly got back up to my feet and desperately collected the tattered remains of what little was left of my dignity, "Don't think I'm gonna let you off the hook that easily! If you're going to humiliate me, don't just half-ass it! I'm not letting you take a step from here until you've properly finished raping me!" "Hah!" she chortled "Make me!" "I think I will!" I exclaimed, my wounded pride making me blind to the clear difference of fighting skill between the two of us, while taking a single, brave step towards her. An instant later, I found myself sailing through the air, before violently crashing into a nearby tree trunk. A tiny groan escaped my lips as I fell down to my knees... "Still," she muttered to herself, as she crouched down to meet my eye-level, her playful grin from before now back on her face (she didn't seem like the kind of person who was able to be sad for long, anyway...) "I think you might still be useful to me in some way..." "G-great..." I moaned, moments before everything around me went pitch black. |
chimechuNov 26, 2014 9:23 AM
| Day 2 - Early Morning: I gave a sharp knock at the door of the farmhouse that now stood before me. There was no answer from the inside. I tried knocking again at the door, this time a bit more energetically, as my gaze swept across the surrounding flat countryside, lingering for a second on the menacing shape of a colossal mountain in the distance. I shivered a bit, perhaps because of the cold gust of wind that had suddenly just rushed over me. I tried giving a door one last, strong knock. *Flop* Slightly surprised that the last knock sounded less like a fist banging against a wooden plank and more like a stone falling into a mound of pillows, I slowly looked up. A gigantic pair of breasts were almost immediately shoved into my face. "Muh?" muttered thoughtfully a gentle voice from somewhere beyond the thick wall of meat that was currently obstructing my view "I thought I'd heard someone at the door..." "Um... Down here, miss!" I muttered timidly at the pair of knockers. "M-Muh?!" she replied, taking a surprised step back into the house. Although I still found it hard to detach my gaze from her massive pair of gazongas ("L-like a pair of moons..." I muttered quietly to myself in awe), I could finally decently see who the owner of the small farm finally was; despite having a quite human face and frame (as long as you didn't count the massive amount of sweater-meat...), she was perhaps even more distant from the Homo Sapiens race than the Goblin-girl... Noticing my sudden interest in what she thought was the cow-bell that she wore around her neck, she politely asked "Um, sir? I-is there something you want from me?" Suddenly coming back to my senses with a start, I hastily looked back up. The plan, follow the plan! whispered the part of my brain that wasn't too busy wondering how she could even fit inside that small tank-top of hers. -A few hours earlier- I woke up with a small groan, slightly recollecting the horrible nightmare I'd had last night (something about waking up naked in the middle of a forest and then having my manhood belittled by a goblin girl, if I recalled correctly...) I let out a sigh of relief. "Hey, Lacking Boy, get up! You've been out all day, you know?" I let out another groan. So it really hadn't been a dream... "Actually, my name is-" "Shaddup, Lacking Boy!" she quickly interrupted "I've been waiting for you to wake up for a whole day, and I'm don't feel like waiting for another instant!" "You waited for me all night...?" I asked. "Well, yeah! What did you expect?" she answered, as if waiting for the guy she had just knocked out to wake up for an entire night in the middle of a cold forest was the only sensible thing to do. For a second, I just stared at her, eyes wide open. She tilted her head quizzically. "You got a problem with that or something?" she bluntly asked. With a slightly relieved sigh, I slowly got back up on my feet. "Don't worry," I said, a small smile on my face "I guess it's not really that much of a problem..." For a while, the two of us slowly made our way through the forest in complete silence, the sound of our footsteps echoing between the trees. "Anyway, Lacking Boy, the only reason as to why I didn't shatter every bone in your body is mostly because I still need you to do something for me." (Mostly? I thought, but decided that it would be better for the sake of my still unshattered bones to keep this comment to myself) "You see," she continued "there's this farmer who lives outside of these woods who has something that I really need. I need you to ask her if she can give it to you." "Can't you just do it yourself?" "Idiot!" she grumbled, giving me a gentle jab with her elbow that could have blown a pro-wrestler off his feet (So much for promising not to break all of my bones...) "A goblin like me is too smart to do something as trivial as asking someone to give me what I want!" "Then why are you telling me to do it for you?" "But that's because you're a human! Unlike us goblins (and especially in your case), you have no dignity to uphold!" "W-what?! *Sigh* Look, just give me some clothes and maybe I'll consider helping you..." "Wha-! T-that's blackmail!" she exclaimed, suddenly childishly stomping her foot angrily on the ground "It doesn't work that way! You can't make me do something for you: I'm stronger!" "In that case," I said, suddenly turning around and making as if I was about to leave her "You can just solve that problem of yours yourself..." "Ngh! O-okay, I'll show you!" she yelled, before quickly storming off the way we'd just come from. Fifteen minutes later, she came back, triumphantly carrying in her hands a length of string and a single oak leaf. "Your clothes!" she exclaimed, cheerfully smirking, as she dumped the two items on my lap. "Y-you've gotta be kidding me! Why such a small leaf? How on earth am I supposed to ask anything from someone with nothing but a single leaf and a bit of string covering my d-!" "Oh, stop being such a baby! You asked me for some clothes and I got them for you! Now just quit your yappin' and go fulfill your part of the deal!" "Ugh, whatever..." I muttered, as I slowly did my best to tie the string around my waist. "Look, I'll go, but tell me only one thing; just what is your name? If your farmer asks me who sent me, the only thing I can tell him is something like 'that damn red-haired ruffia-'... Owowowowow! It wasn't even that bad of an ins- AUGH! Can it even bend that far?! Oh god nononono! I'm sorry! I'll shut up!" "Much better, ya smartass..." she said, letting go of my arm "Now just keep walking straight in that direction; soon you'll reach this wide plain. Just follow the nearby river and you'll soon reach the farmhouse I was talking about. I'll just wait for you here..." "Ugh... All right." "Anyway, it's Kina." "What?" "Kina. You asked me for my name. It's Kina..." she replied. "It's a nice one" I said, a faint smile now back on my lips. "Tch... Say whatever you want, Lacking Boy..." she quietly muttered, her sudden surge of bashfulness feeling oddly out of character. I gave a quick shrug, before turning around and starting to get on my way to the farm. ... "S-sir?" asked the cow-girl, now even more worried by my sudden silence "Is there something wrong with my shirt?" "Mmm?" I said, looking back up at her, before quickly getting my act together. "Oh, yes! Umm... Do you think you could give me your... Your..." "My?" asked encouragingly the cow-girl. "Err... Your..." Dammit! The goblin-girl had completely forgotten to tell me what I was supposed to ask for! "What he means is," said suddenly a childish voice from behind me "Could you please give him some of your milk?" "Goblin..." muttered the farmer, a sudden look of worry now darkening her face. "Her m-milk?!" I exclaimed (All right, she did sorta look like a cow but... Her milk?!). "Hmph... Looks like you have something against my race, cow, and I wish I could uppercut you into the ceiling just for that. But I won't. If you give me the milk, that is..." "And might I ask you as to why you need it?" replied the cow-girl, still keeping her cool despite Kina's threats. "Err... Well, you see... Umm... Well, just see for yourself!" answered the Goblin in a curious mixture between embarrassment and anger. She quickly took a step towards me and ripped off what little I had for clothing with a single, almost theatrical, movement. There was a moment of silence. The wind blew around us, as small black crows cawed in the distance. I began to tremble, barely able to contain my rage; even to a lowlife such as me there was a limit to just how much humiliation I could handle. "Y-you bastard!" I cried, suddenly stepping forward and grabbing Kina by the horns. "Just how many more times must you make fun of it!" I went on, violently shaking the small Goblin-girl back and forth. "F-fueh!" Kina let out a cute little exclamation, but I was too enraged to honestly care. "Oh yes, go on! First you cock-tease me back in the woods, and now you even have to humiliate me in front of someone else that I just met? Did the thought that having the diminutive size of my stick exposed to the entire world could be something that I don't like?!" By now I had already managed to lift Kina from off the ground. "J-just like those other people; you think they love you for who you are one minute, but then they suddenly treat you like a worm the instant they pull off your pants! Why don't y-" I stopped mid-sentence as I felt the cow-girl's hand suddenly grasped gently but firmly my arm. Her previous simple-minded but cheerful expression had now been replaced by a completely cold and serious gaze. "Let her go." she gently ordered, her hand clenching tighter around my arm. I complied, letting the Goblin-girl drop back down to the ground. In the midst of my rage I'd barely noticed that she'd suddenly tensed up unnaturally the instant that I'd grabbed hold of her, and now was panting heavily, as if she had just run a couple of marathons. "You should know better than grabbing a Goblin's horns..." explained the Cow-girl in all seriousness. It was at that moment that it suddenly struck me. "W-wait... Don't tell me; are they erogenous zon-?" "Lacking Bo~y?" I slowly turned around, already knowing the outcome of what my reckless actions had led me to. A small fist quickly collided with the bottom of my chin. |
| Day 2 - Early Night "So... Is he your husband?" Kina nearly choked on the spoonful of soup that she had been busy shoveling in her mouth for the past five minutes. "H-husband?!" she replied, as the end of the spoon that she'd accidentally bitten off in surprise was finally spat back onto the table, where it landed with a silvery tink. "Mu-huh! You know, your loved one?" "W-why should I l-like someone like him! I-I mean, look, he's basically no more than a boy down th-" "Mmm? Really now? I don't really mind that kind of thing so, what do you say if I... borrowed him for the night?" "Guh! But he's mi-..." The cow-girl suddenly made an evil smirk at this, letting out a soft chuckle. "Uh... I mean, sure; g-go ahead..." muttered Kina, correcting herself. "Muh~♥? Really now? Yay~!" exclaimed cheerfully the cow-girl "But I wonder if anal should be tight enough for him? Mmmuh... Maybe one of my specials would be more suited for the task?" she wondered aloud, a fake look of worry clouding over her face. By now, Kina was already looking down at her empty bowl, at times looking up as if she were about to say something, before looking back down again, her jaw and small fists clenched tight. "You know, not to be a party pooper and spoil my chances of getting any action tonight or anything, but if you're gonna talk about raping me, could you please not do it over the dinner table? I swear that this potato soup is starting to look more lewd by the second..." "Aaaw... It was just about to get good!" grumbled jokingly (just how much of that she had meant as a joke, I had no idea...) the cow-girl, pouting at me from the other side of the table. "Besides, it's not like we could exactly move you away from this room. Not while you're like that..." she added, referring to the state of my legs ever since I'd plummeted back to the ground after Kina's mighty uppercut (although, due to some miraculous coincidence, my jaw had curiously managed to still stay intact...) "If you're that worried about his legs, why don't you just give him your milk already?" muttered Kina, without lifting her gaze from the little specks of potato that still sat at the bottom of her bowl. "Oh, but I did... Just that you stole it for yourself; not a very original move from your part, Goblin~... Besides, I'm not really much in the mood to make some myself tonight; not when there's a human male sleeping only a few feet down the corridor..." as she said this, she turned around again to face me, a mischievous smirk on her face. "Tch... Do it and die..." muttered simply the goblin in response, before getting out of her chair and heading towards the entrance. Before walking out of the farmhouse, however, she quickly spun around to face me and yelled "S-see if I care if you'd rather fondle cow-lady's tits! Gh- Gah!" And, with this last frustrated exclamation, she quickly stomped off outside, slamming the door behind her. A short moment of silence followed this outburst. "You know," I commented "she sure is stuttering a lot tonight..." "Mu-huh..." answered the Holstaurus in agreement, a sad smile suddenly on her face. -A few hours later- I tossed and turned as best as I could, my legs feeling as if boiling lead was being poured on them, nodding regularly in and out of a state of consciousness (even despite the soft mattress-like blanket that the farmer had somehow managed to offer me for the night). There had been something unsettling about that cow-girl's last smile; it felt somehow as if, for a second, she had seemed to look older, as if she had been straining under the weight of dozens of memories, many of which were certainly less than comfortable ones. I tried as best as I could to get in a comfortable position, but to no avail; it felt as if the potatoes were currently weighing down on my stomach, clenching around my sides and- HEY! Suddenly realizing that not even the potatoes that I had at dinner could possibly have the average grip strength of a King Crab, I quickly tore the blanket off me. "Mmm..." groaned softly in her sleep Kina, as she wrapped her arms around my waist even tighter than before. For a minute, I considered trying to wake her up or maybe even (Heavens forbid) grabbing her by the horns again in an attempt to get her off me. Just as I was about to try and unlatch her fingers without tearing off too much of my skin, however, there was a sudden whimper. I felt Kina's small body latching itself tighter than ever to mine. I let out a small sigh, which slowly gave way to a small smile; I guess that even those who can tear down trees with their bare hands have nightmares too. Slowly, careful so as not to wake her up, I slipped back into the blanket. The warmth seemed to have a positive effect on the Goblin, whose body slowly relaxed once again as soon as it was back under the covers. Now sure that I probably wasn't going to get any more decent sleep that night, I looked out of the small window that sat at one of the corners of the room in which I was sleeping in, my gaze lazily skipping from star to star. There was a sudden creak, as the door to my room slowly opened. Moments later, I felt the cow-girl's heavy and warm breath already on my neck. "It's been a long time already, and you still haven't tried to lay a hand on me yet. I've let you stay here for the night because you were hurt; don't you think you should repay the favor...~♥?" she whispered softly. "How do you think I could possibly get out of the bed in this state?!" I whispered back angrily "Besides, I've meant to ask this to you all night, but I was afraid that I'd sound a rude but, anyway, what's with you?! I thought that cows weren't this... forceful." And there was that haunting sad smile again... The Holstaurus chuckled quietly, before answering my question. "Normally, we aren't. But it is pretty well known that we get rather... antsy when our needs aren't seen to that often..." She'd by now gotten underneath the covers as well, and I could feel her two prosperous breasts already pressing against my side. "Umm... Interesting but, err, could we continue this conversation tomorrow morning? My legs are really hurting..." I hurriedly whispered, worrying about what the small time-bomb that was currently strapped across my stomach would do if she woke up sometime around now. "Aaaaw..." said the farmer, playfully pouting again "But my milk will surely make you feel all better...!" She slowly inched a bit closer to me, a soft "Moo" escaping her lips as her breasts pressed even more against me... "Ah... Um... Thanksbutnothanks!!" I quickly whispered, my sense of reason unexpectedly prevailing over my penis... "Are *Yawn* you... sur-Zzzzz?" Surprisingly (conveniently?) enough, however, the Holstaurus quickly fell into a deep sleep, only moments before she could proceed to move on to her more forceful tactics... I let out a sigh of relief: never before had I been so happy to not lose my virginity just yet... "Problem is," I quietly muttered to myself "Just what am I gonna say tomorrow morning..." |
| Day 3 - Morning "There; that should be tight enough..." commented the Cow-Girl, taking a step back to gaze upon the mechanical marvel she had just finished building. "You comfortable enough up there?" "Like a lord..." I muttered back sarcastically "Anyway, I still think that it's a stupid idea..." "Mph... You really are quite the pooper..." she reproached, letting out a short chuckle "But shouldn't you rather be thanking me for the chair, ropes and blanket?" She was right; there was quite an improvement between wearing only a string equipped with nothing but a single oak leaf and a warm blanket when it came to clothes, not to mention that it had been mostly thanks to her that such a ludicrous mean of transportation such as the one on top of which I was tied on to could ever see the light of day, but I still honestly felt too embarrassed of my current position to be in the mood of thanking her. "How about you, Goblin? You sure it isn't too heavy for you...?" "Kah! Only to a weakling like you could this load be heavy, Cow!" snapped back Kina, slowly puffing her chest out in satisfaction at her last remark. "Anyway, unless you have any more food to give us, we'll be going..." "Ah, I guess you're out of luck, then! I barely have anything left for you..." replied maliciously the Holstaurus, a mischievous smirk now appearing at the corner of her mouth. "However, for the charming man here, I have one last parting gift..." she whispered to me. With a quick movement, she gently placed on my lap a large cowbell. "Since you seemed so interested in it yesterday~♥..." Ignoring this last comment, I picked the bell up in my hand and turned it carefully around, as if it could break if I just breathed on it too heavily. "A-are you sure you want to give this to me? It looks as if it could be something important to you... Why give it to some stranger like me?" It took a while for the farmer to answer my question (Gah! Not that smile again!) "Well, for the same reason as to why I offered you food and shelter for the night; I guess it's because you remind me of a certain someone..." This time, it was I who fell silent. "Hey, are you done talking with watermelon-boobs back there, Lacking Boy? I don't think I could stand for another second a whiff of Cow-lady's stench..." interrupted Kina abruptly, impatiently shifting the weight of the chair that had been strapped on her back with a few ropes (not to mention with me tied on top of the chair as well...) from one leg to the other. "Ring it loud and clear twice, and I'll come running to you, no matter how distant from my farm you may be..." whispered again the Holstaurus, her playful smirk from earlier on now back on her face. I tried to open my mouth at this, but I was quickly cut off. "Sure, I think you two are all ready to go!" With a relieved sigh, Kina began to speedily trot away from the farm. "Have a safe journey!" called out the farmer, waving at the two of us as we went. In all response, the goblin-girl quickly spun around and stuck out her tongue at the Holstaurus, before turning around again and breaking off into a quick dash. I waved back, as the cow-girl's figure started to become a small dot in the distance. I lazily gazed at the grass rushing beneath me as the two of us sped across the plains, tied so ridiculously together, still pondering about the meaning of those last words the Cow-girl had whispered to me; "'... Ring the bell and I shall come to your side, wherever you may be?' The heck?! Was that supposed to be a proposal or something?!" I muttered to myself, turning again the cowbell slowly around in my hands. "Hmm... You said something~?" called out Kina from behind me (I swear, is it just me, or is she already this happy from just from being away from that 'watermelon-boobs?) "Ah? No, don't worry..." I replied absentmindedly, my interest now directed towards some rough scratches incised on the bell's surface. "Wait; actually, I do have something I need to ask you. Just what kind of a name is Almair?" "Almair...? Dunno, but I'm pretty sure that it's a male name..." I froze, now recollecting the events of the previous night. M-male?! No, wait, those breasts felt too soft and real to be fake ones... (Whew; still straight...) But wait, if the name isn't referring to her, then who...? The wind merely replied to the sudden number of questions that were now popping up like mushrooms in my head by howling savagely in my ears. In the end, I merely I decided to end that whole enigma with a simple shrug. Like it's my business anyway... I thought, as I carefully tied the bell around my neck, where it softly jingled with every bound the goblin-girl took across the countryside. I turned my gaze towards my red-haired and ill-mannered trusty steed, who, ridiculousness aside, was truly something; although her speed wasn't exactly top-notch, her endurance was something out of this world, slowing down from her usual jog only to quickly take a few cautious leaps across small brooks or to hop over the occasional rotting log that sat in the way. As I lazily took note of these characteristics of my companion, a sudden noise, mingled amidst the low hum of the wind, that shook my body like a sudden jolt of electricity. Caught by the whole exhilarating effect that the run had on her at the moment, Kina had softly begun to sing. I'll admit that I would have never expected that a member of a race whose main occupation in life was pillaging and raping the occasional unfortunate adventurer to be able to sing such an unexpectedly profound and sad tune. By the sound of it, the goblin language wasn't one of the most melodious (mostly due to the fact that its words sounded more like an unusual mix between "Kekekekeh" and a vast array of tongue clicks...), yet it had an oddly calming effect when sung the way Kina was doing right now. I made myself a bit more comfortable in my chair, realizing just how tired my sleepless night had left me. Where was I headed to? Like I even cared about such details. As long as I could hear more of that soft song, I guess anywhere was fine... |
| Day 3 - Noon I sneezed myself awake, as a light and soft substance tickled my nose. Dumbfounded, I started to observe my surroundings, lazily attempting to blink the sleep that still tried to force my eyelids to close again off. At first, I reckoned that it must be snowing; at least that would explain the curious soft, white tufts that gradually floated down upon me and my companion. Then I noticed the blazing sun and the cloudless sky overhead. "Kina..." I muttered sleepily, twisting my body around to see what the Goblin-girl was doing "Do you mind telling me where we a-" "How is it?" she interrupted, quickly shutting me up by stuffing down my throat something that tasted vaguely like chicken (Then again, even roast alligator tasted like chicken, so that wasn't exactly saying much...) I tried to let out a yelp of protest, but succeeded only in nearly choking on the chunk of meat in the process. "So, what does it taste like?" asked Kina again impatiently. Obediently (also, not wanting to kill myself again in an attempt to eat lunch) I begun chewing on the mysterious piece of meat, concentrating on the taste. My eyes opened wide; it tasted like... like... "Coal. You let it cook for too long and it got burnt..." I icily replied. "Wha-?!" Kina's body suddenly twitched, my negative verdict striking her like a jolt of lightning. "Anyway, care to explain to me what happened here?" I asked, nervously trying to avoid the sight of a tree that seemed to have been uprooted by a single blow on its side. "*Sniffle* M-my dream of being the b-best chef of the continent... Gone like dust in the wind..." whined mournfully the goblin-girl. "Hey, are you even listening to me?" I angrily asked again, unceremoniously ignoring the life-long dream that I'd just trampled over with my previous critique. "But I guess that was to be expected... Whenever I had to cook for my fellow tribesmen, they always told me that I got carried off too easily and ended up overdoing things... Someone like that could never become a good cook..." she continued, ignoring me again. "Kina!" I snapped at the goblin. "*Sniff* W-what is it?" "I think that, although you may have messed up a bit this time, your food is wonderful and that you have the skill, no, the right to become the world's best chef!" "Y-you really think so...?" she blushed (apparently forgetting that, up to this moment, she hadn't cooked me anything else). "Yesyesyes! Now will you please tell me what you did here?" I hastily replied, noting with increasing alarm that one of the nearby trees had begun to catch fire. "Well, if you must know, I was only trotting around these parts, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this flock of harpies suddenly appears out of nowhere and attacks me, all while chanting: 'Eat us, Kina! Ea~t u-!'" "BULLSHIT!" I cried out, as the burnt meat that I'd just had slowly begun its climb up the esophagus. "I swear, they did!" replied Kina defensively "And then I tried to run away from them, but I tripped over that tree you see there, which just happened to fall down on their village..." I pinched the bridge of my nose, letting out a mighty sigh. "Look, just tell me that nobody got hurt, and I'll let you off this one..." "Oh, sure! Everybody got out of here just fine. They just got a scare, that's all..." "Well, at least that's a small relie-" "Of course, I wouldn't go as far as saying that nobody got hurt... But I can assure you that everyone survived!" The ropes that bound me tight to the chair were the only things that prevented me from giving the goblin's horns a powerful tug. -15 minutes later- "Anyway, where are we going...?"I muttered, my rage at the sudden (accidental, as Kina put it) razing of an innocent village finally beginning to cool off. "To kill the Dark Prince!" answered cheerfully the goblin-girl as she trotted at a brisk pace through the woods. "Oh? That's nice..." I replied unenthusiastically. "I know, right?" continued the goblin "Remember my fellow tribesmen that I mentioned earlier?" "M-Hmm..." That was right; she had mentioned something like that when she had been taking a ride on the self-pity train a while ago... Wait; but if there was such a thing as "Kina's fellow tribesmen", then why was she on her own right now? "He killed them..." She mentioned this in the same tone that you'd normally use when telling somebody that you broke the eggs when walking back from the supermarket. ... "Oh." Another moment of silence followed. "Well, you sure seem to have gotten over that easily..." "That's because our chief once told me that we shouldn't be sad when someone leaves us! Drusmilla (that's our chief's name, by the way...), she said that when someone you love dies, he gets turned into a worm! She said that it's the circle of life... I think... Something like that!" "Really? Then what happens when the worm dies...?" Kina thought for a while about this unexpected consequence of her belief regarding the afterlife. "It gets turned into a beetle?" she answered tentatively. What's with all the insects?!. "So," I went on, trying to change the subject "If the death of your companions doesn't weigh too much on you, then why are you trying to kill this Dark Prince guy?" "Tch. You humans sure don't know a thing about honor, do you? It's usually considered common courtesy here to kill the guy that killed your friends! Also, I heard that they say that he's the strongest person on the continent when it comes to brute strength, and the thought that someone like him, a guy who thinks he's hot stuff just 'cause he walks around always completely clad in his colossal armor, is the strongest around makes my blood boil. So, if I surpass him, I'll be able to both avenge my friends and become the strongest living being on the continent!"she finished saying this last statement with a wide, childish grin on her face, as if images of blowing up the Moon with a single roundhouse kick had just started to creep into her mind. "Seems like an awfully straightforward plan..." I commented. "And that's why we're headed towards the Dark Prince's castle here in the West!" continued Kina, ignoring my comment and suddenly producing a small, rough map of the continent. "And, to get there, we're going to take this road here." she went on, pointing at the mountains that had been drawn below the colossal mountain that stood at the center of the continent "The person who gave me the map told me that it's way safer and quicker than any other way!" I carefully observed the map, an eyebrow shooting almost immediately up. "Say, Kina. You said we're taking the road at the South of the big mountain..." "That's right." "And did the person who gave you the map tell you anything about the road on the North?" "Heh, she sure did! Told me to steer clear from there; 'full of every kind of unpleasant monsters', she said!" "Oh... Is that so? Because I clearly don't see the woods that we're standing in right now anywhere on the South road..." "Eh?!" There was yet another awkward moment of silence... I let out a groan. Apparently, it had been a very big mistake to not worry too much about where I was headed to. "Look, there's not much point in turning back now, is there... So let's just keep on going this way..." I finally said, giving in to the thought that my life was just about to get a whole lot more difficult and, possibly, shorter Also, I'm in no mood to pass by that village again... "Y-yes; let's..." said Kina, still embarrassed by her mistake. In almost an instant, however, she seemed to brighten up again; "Indeed, where's the fun in taking the easy way to get to the Dark Prince?" "Well, not dying generally sounds like a good incentive..." |
| Day 4 "My, how smart of you, Miss! Neither I would have ever even dreamed to catch a human male then put him up for sale! Why, I bet a quarter of my wares that you must be the richest youkai of the North by now! How much do you charge a night?" "Yo-what now?" asked Kina, quizzically tilting her head to the left. She'd been called many things, but 'smart' was definitely new to her... "Youkai. It means monster..." I whispered from behind. "Oh, you know Zipangu dialect? Or are you perhaps a native from there?" asked politely the Racoon (Racoon Dog, corrected my inner weaboo, rearing its ugly head, Otherwise known as Tanuki... You're welcome.), overhearing my quick explanation. Zipangu? Sounds an awful lot like Japanese... "Well, let's say that I just know a few words... Nothing much..." By the time that I'd finished muttering this sentence, the Tanuki had already lost interest and had gone back discussing with the now extremely confused Goblin. "So, as I said earlier, please name your price!" "Err... N-nice pan?" mumbled back Kina, still not really sure as to what all this 'Youkai' business was about... "Mmm?" The Tanuki, honestly befuddled by the awfully simple request, reached for the simple metal frying pan that hung from the large box she was carrying on her back "You mean this one?" "Yes. It's a nice pan..." said Kina as she nodded vigorously, probably thinking that she might be onto something here... "Oh... In that case, please let me throw something extra in there as well..." said the Tanuki, suddenly producing a small sphere from out of seemingly nowhere "... As a token of gratitude~" Kina carefully picked up the metal sphere in her hands, now even more confused about what was going on. "Um... What does this do?" she inquired. "You use it like this..." explained kindly the merchant, gently blowing over the palm of her hand onto the sphere. With a sudden gust, the sphere was now gone, and only a few swirling leaves now remained. "Wha-?" muttered Kina sleepily, staggering forward a few steps, before clumsily falling face first into the dirt beneath her, bringing me down with her. With a few quick movements, the Tanuki quickly untied the chair to which I was still bound to from Kina's body. Hoisting me up on her shoulder, the so-called "merchant" quickly made a dash for the nearby mountain ranges that bordered the large forest through which me and my currently unconscious companion had been traveling for the last day, a wide victorious grin splayed over her face. Although she scrabbled up the side of the nearby mountain with the skill of a mountain goat, the difference in strength between Kina and the Tanuki was pretty obvious; the weight of both the box of wares that she was carrying on her back combined to my own was already beginning to be a heavy burden to her, and had already left her panting after barely 20 minutes. Soon enough, in fact, my captor's rush finally came to a halt, accompanied by a tired groan... "I guess this will be enough..." panted the Tanuki, as she gently let me down on the still-humid surface of a dry river-bed that ran across the side of the mountain. "It's no palace, but I'm not exactly in the position to worry about that right now, am I?" She begun untying the ropes that kept my body glued to the chair. "After all, I'd like my first time to be a little more wild~♥!" Her fluffy tail now waving in excitement, my captor alluringly edged towards me, her right hand already beginning to gently take off the blanket that I wore around my waist. "Oh? How cute! Your body seems to have already tensed up...! Maybe I should even consider taking you away with me... But for now, just relax and enjoy the ride~..." Slowly, she removed the blanket. ... "I-I've been had?!" yelped the merchant, almost instantly getting off me (B-but she said it was her first time...) She suddenly went red in embarrassment. "A Tanuki being tricked? And by a Goblin, most of all? U-unheard of! I-I'll be the laughing stock of the village if anyone back home gets wind of this..." She fell to her knees, letting out a small sob "And I'll never be able to get married now..." "Oh come on! Not this crap again... I didn't do anything to you yet!" I protested. "Y-yes you did! Waving that tiny t-" she looked back down at my waist area, shuddering, "t-twig of yours as if it was something to be proud about at an innocent virgin mamono like m-!" The Tanuki was suddenly interrupted by an incredibly loud scrunch somewhere not too distant from where the two of us where hiding right now. She stood up for a second, almost instantly freezing at the sight of the large pine tree that now protruded awkwardly from a nearby boulder. I swore that I heard a faint "Found you!" somewhere in the distance. The Tanuki began shaking slightly in fear, the "twig" with which she'd been "assaulted" a few instants ago now forgotten. Unfortunately for her, however, I hadn't. As soon as I put my hand on her shoulder, the merchant almost instantly jumped. "Oh, how cute...!" I muttered sarcastically, giving the length of rope that I now held tight in my hands a quick tug "Maybe I should consider taking you away with me..." "W-Wuh?" Well, I was no sailor, but the knots didn't look too shabby... "Y-you'll pay for this, human!" exclaimed angrily the Tanuki, almost completely red now in embarrassment. "H-how dare you do this to someone lik-FUEH♥!" With a short tug, I tightened the last knot a bit more than the rest. Kina raised an eyebrow at the spectacle. "Hey, Lacking Boy?" she asked, nudging me in the elbow "Are you sure you aren't going a bit overboard with this? I mean, according to her, she didn't do anything to you..." "Mmm~? Oh, I think that I've been more than kind already! Look, can't you see that I've even left the naughty bits a bit more covered than the rest? Also, I wouldn't call being belittled twice in less than a week 'anything'..." I said, smirking evilly in satisfaction. "And, as for your clothes... Do you people from Zipangu wear fundoshi?" I continued, my sadistic smile growing a little wider, as I showed off my new makeshift pair of underwear that I'd quickly made with what little was left of the Tanuki's clothing. They were received by a collective EEEEW... Me and Kina stood at the edge of the riverbed, lazily following the almost completely naked Gyoubu Danuki scamper off with our gazes. "Maybe I did overdo it a bit; after all, she did mention that it was her first time... I think I may have just scarred a monster-girl for life..." I grimly commented. "Oh, well... At least you got that pan out of the whole ordeal..." "Mm-hmm..." replied absent-mindedly the Goblin, more worried about the fact that the Tanuki had now tripped over a small stone and was beginning to roll down the rest of the way. There was another brief moment of awkward silence. "Remind me to never make fun of your peepee again, Lacking Boy..." I let out a loud sigh. |
| Day 5 - Late Afternoon "Oh! A human village hidden here amongst the mountains! How lucky~!" exclaimed cheerfully the Goblin. "Oh... A threateningly dark manor not too far away from the village... Just my luck..." I groaned back. As I'd foolishly wasted most of our rope the day before, using the chair was now out of the question, making the past two days of travel murder to my still not completely healed legs, which would creak and groan in protest at almost every step I took. Also, the fact that Kina had been constantly scolding me all the way with words such as "Get a move on!" "I'm tired of waiting!" "I've seen maggots crawl faster than you!" certainly didn't help. However, despite my constant state of pessimism, I was actually looking forward to finally being able to sleep in a real bed tonight, evil manor or not... As the two of us walked through the village's wide main street, I noticed uncomfortably the large number of sidelong glances that me and my companion where attracting. I tried to not take any notice of them by nervously keeping my eyes glued to Kina's back. Despite the general aura of adversity that seemed to be forming around the two of us, my companion seemed to be oddly at peace, as if she had suddenly come back home after having been away from it for the past 10 years; a few steps ahead of me, she lightly broke into a small skip, humming a little tune, like a little girl in a candy shop. Come to think of it, I have the horrible feeling that that simile may be awfully appropriate to her current situation... "Okay, listen up Lacking Boy; I'm now going to be waiting in the alley just in front of the inn. You just wait for the right guy to step out of this place, follow him and push him into the alley. I'll take it from there..." I almost chocked on the horrible beer that I'd forced Kina to buy me. The innkeeper looked up from the counter for a second, an expression that looked somewhere between worry and boredom on his face, before going back to washing the few empty mugs that still sat in front of him. "W-what?! Why?" "Tch. You seem to have misunderstood our current situation, Lacking Boy... We're not good guys. Far from it, actually... I'm a Goblin, a mamono that needs to occasionally have some semen squirted inside of her if she wants to stay at top shape. And you're a human that couldn't pleasure a Fairy, not even if you tried giving it your best shot... And that's precisely why we need to do this." I felt the urge to protest, but there was something about her awfully serious tone of voice that put me off. "Anyway, as I said, you just wait here until you see someone promising enough leave." She noisily got up, heading towards the door, before briefly turning around. "Oh, and don't make me wait too long, you got it?" she said, flashing a cheerful grin that somehow felt more awfully out of place than a streaker in a convent. "Wai-!" I tried calling out. In all response, the door shut with a satisfied clunk. Too late... I sighed, sadly looking at the contents of my mug. Questions begun to crowd up in my mind; firstly, how the hell was I supposed to know who the so-called "right guy" was? Did she want me to stare at people's crotch for the next 30 minutes? But, more importantly, what was this feeling that had suddenly come over me? My guts felt as if they had slowly begun to twist themselves in a horrid knot; somehow, the image of some stranger's dick being deep within my companion's insides felt oddly unappealing. Was this... Envy? Jealousy? Love? I shook head. Pfft! Love?! What am I, a five-year-old who falls in love with someone he basically just met? I quickly got up, dropping the few coins that Kina had left me on the table. Screw this. I don't care what that feeling was, but I'm not gonna go on with this stupid plan of h-... I accidentally bumped into a large man that was just about to leave the inn. "Uh- Sorry!" I mumbled frantically. "Hmph..." replied the colossal mountain of muscles that stood before me, quickly lifting me up by the scruff of the neck "I heard you came here with a mamono..." he muttered through gritted teeth. "E-eh?" I replied in almost complete terror. "Rah!" he exclaimed angrily "So you spineless twerps are now willing to even sell your fellow man to those creatures just to have your disgusting lust satisfied? Well, you know what?" Still carrying me, the mountain of a man stepped outside of the inn. "Giant Jim ain't gonna take this sort of shit while sitting down! I'll make you bastards learn once and for all!" He was heading towards the alley right in front of the inn now...(Not good! Not good!) "How about I show you the way to hell?" he yelled in my ear. We were already deep within the alley now. "How about I show you the way to heaven~?" said a chillingly cheerful voice right behind us. The colossal man turned around, messily dropping me back down to the ground. "W-wha-? Who are you? Show yourself!" yelled back the villager apparently known as Giant Jim "I-I'm not afraid of you! Come at me!" "With pleasure~" With a quick whooshing noise, a small figure quickly pounced from the shadows. With a crash, Giant Jim fell down like a bowling pin with surprising ease. Kina, now victoriously sitting on the man's stomach, drool already beginning to drip from her mouth, began to slowly wriggle down towards the man's pelvic area. "You're mine now, human...~♥" Now sitting upright on the villager's crotch, the Goblin tore the man's pants, belt and all, off with one quick movement, revealing the man's cock. Giant Jim let out a single, barely audible little "Eeek..." Ah. There was that feeling again. My gastric juices seemed to suddenly rise high up my throat. I clenched my fists to the point that my knuckles went white, my whole body trembling. Why all the anger? Why should I even care about what the short twerp did? It wasn't my problem! Wasn't this her species' way of life, whether I liked it or not? Wasn't this what she was after all? A vision suddenly filled my mind; Kina proudly announcing to me that she wanted to become the world's greatest chef. No... Kina softly singing while trotting through the plains No. Kina blushing red in embarrassment when discussing with the Holstaurus if I was her husband. No, no, no. Kina hugging me tightly three nights ago while having a bad dream. No! I took a step forward. Her species' way or not, this isn't Kina. Not the one that I've been with for the past 5 days... The goblin begun to gently take off her pants, trembling in anticipation. Call me selfish, but I don't care if a healthy mamono has to rape men once a week. I don't want her to be something like that! I took another step forward. "Huh. I guess I really am a stupid five-year-old, after all..." I muttered, a sad smile briefly coming across my face. "St-!" "STOP RIGHT THERE!" I spun around in surprise. A tall, blond-haired girl, complete with a sword in her hand, was now standing right beside me. Almost as surprised as me, Kina turned around to face whoever had dared to intervene. Meanwhile, beneath her, Big Jim took hold of this opportunity to quickly wriggle out of Kina's powerful grasp, making a run for it. "So you're the monster everyone here's been talking about today... Aren't we a little too fired up, attacking the first man you come cross without even thinking that these villagers might be under someone's protection?" Kina slowly pulled her pants back up. "Oh, was that meant to be a challenge?" She took a step towards the mysterious newcomer, a savage grin now on her face " 'Cause being interrupted when I'm about to rape somebody re~ally gets my fighting spirit going!" To be continued... |
| Day 6 - Early Dinnertime The self-proclaimed "Protector of the village" slowly lifted her sword, moving into a guard stance. "Oh, so you're really serious about facing the strongest being on the continent?" Well, technically speaking, you're not the strongest yet... The swordswoman simply grinned tauntingly back. "If that's the case," said Kina, cracking her knuckles "I'll take that as a yes!" With a quick dash, the Goblin charged at the stranger, a mad smile on her face. For a brief second, her now outstretched fist seemed to be about to sink deep within the swordswoman's belly. Instead, however, her punch merely brushed a few inches past its intended target. "Huh...?" With a quick step forward, the swordswoman quickly slashed at the Goblin's now open back. With a miserable stumble, Kina tripped down to the ground. Quickly picking herself up, she attempted the same straightforward tactic again. "Why you-!" Once again the stranger gracefully hopped to the side an instant before the Goblin's blow reached her, before quickly slashing the attacker's back once more. Kina, on the other hand, only succeeded in falling unceremoniously forward. "So what if you're the strongest? If you can't hit me, all of that strength of yours is useless..." sneered the stranger, quickly stepping back into a guard stance. Kina kicked herself back up on her feet, spitting out the dirt that she'd accidentally swallowed during her last fall. Once again, she begun charging her opponent at full speed. "You're far too predictable and direct in your attacks, goblin..." reprimanded the swordsman, dodging the punch with a quick sidestep. In a matter of instants, however, Kina had twisted her body around, now facing the girl's unguarded flank. With a surprised "Erk!", the swordswoman was lifted off the ground by the scruff of her neck, before being promptly slammed back down. "Really now~?" said Kina, quickly letting herself drop on the mysterious girl's stomach, a victorious smile on her face "I think that the only one being predictable here is you..." "What was that you said earlier? That it's useless if my punches can't hit you?" In an instant, her smile turned into a savage grin "In that case, try not getting hit by this~" The Goblin's fist had now clenched tight; one could almost feel the entire strength in her concentrating within the coming blow. The swordswoman, her previous cool-headed facade now completely gone, closed her eyes tightly, preparing for the punch that would most certainly crush her skull into a messy pulp. "That's enough..." I said, gently taking a hold of Kina's arm (not that it was of much use; I'm pretty sure that, if she was serious, she could have just as easily torn my arm out of its socket) "I'm pretty sure that she's understood who's the strongest here..." A look of confusion came briefly across Kina's face, as if she wasn't really sure as to what she should do now. In the end, however, she complied, cautiously getting off the stranger's stomach. "See, what did I tell ya! The strongest!" she chirped victoriously, quickly pointing at herself. I let out a relieved sigh; I guess this really is the personality that fits her the best... "Mmm? What's with that stupid smile of yours, Lacking Boy? Did the catfight excite you or what?" "Nothing Kina, nothing~..." I cheerfully muttered, slowly leading the short Goblin out of the alley. "W-wait!" I turned around. The swordswoman was already bowing down, her knees and hands now deep in the street's dirt "Please... I am begging you; please help our village!" "No." I automatically answered. The sooner we left the place, the better... "Tch. First she gets beaten, then asks us for help? Do you even think that you're in a position to make demands?" muttered Kina, crouching down at the girl's eye level. The village's defeated Protector looked up into Kina's eyes, her gaze burning with determination. "I don't care about dignity or the such; I have just experienced your strength firsthand, and I think that only someone like you is capable to save the villagers..." Confused by the fact that someone that she had just defeated was acknowledging her fighting skills, Kina looked back at me with a desperate look that said "What now?" I merely shrugged back. "Yes, I believe that not even they could survive a single blow of your fists!" went on the mysterious girl. "H-huh?" "The strength behind those punches... It was something out of this world!" "I guess s-..." "Indeed, only someone like you could possibly be the strongest being on the continent!" "I-I know, right...? Hahaha..." As Kina laughed awkwardly, she looked again back at me with an even more desperate expression. "Not even the Vampires living in the mansion could even stand a chance against you!" "Oh? Is that so...?" "Mm-hmm!" the girl begun nodding her head vigorously, her long blond hair getting more stained in dirt by the nod "But I doubt that anyone but the strongest could win against those terrible monsters..." "Err... In that case, I guess I could help you..." muttered Kina, blushing a little at the long stream of flattery that the swordswoman was spewing. "Excellent." The girl got back up on her feet, regaining her composure now that the Goblin had finally complied "Come; it's almost night already, and we don't have much time. I'll have to explain the details to you two on the way..." As we quickly walked out of the alleyway, following the girl who had instantly taken on the role of our group's leader, Kina merrily turned around towards me, her grin wider than the one of a child on Christmas Eve "See? Even she said that I was the strongest!" You do realize that you just got tricked into doing something for her...? |
| Day 6 - Early Night "Hey, think could you at least tell us your name? I'm pretty tired of having to constantly refer to you as the 'Mysterious Swordswoman' or 'Stranger'..." I panted, as we speedily walked up the path that led towards the looming manor that loomed not too far away from the village. "Oh, sure! How about calling me Leader from now on sound to you? Or maybe you'd prefer something more along the lines of Chief? How about Boss? Maybe even Captain?" she answered with a playful grin, adjusting her wide Cavalier hat. Our speedy trot slowed down to a cautious walk as we approached the manor's massive front door. I noticed, with ever-increasing discouragement, that not even a faint flicker of light shone from within the house; by the looks of it, the only light that we'd probably be having that night was the faint glow of a grin-like Moon that had now slowly begun to rise above us. The Swordswoman (Actually, I think I'll just stick with Captain, stupid as it may sound...) slowly walked up the manor's steps, constantly looking over her shoulder as if a creature could lunge out from the shadows at any given moment (Considering the location we were in, though, I could easily relate to her...) Finally, she gave the door a bold knock. I held my breath, as the knock's ring rushed through the still night, before finally being swept away by a sudden gust of wind. There was a faint sound of shoes clacking against a marble floor echoed from the other side of the thick wooden doors, followed by the multiple screeches of keys going through an abnormal number of locks. Finally, the entrance slowly opened a little. From the darkness beyond the door, I could barely make out the cat-like glint of the pair of eyes that were now fixed on me and my companions. It blinked a few times, before quickly trying to slam the door closed. The Captain quickly wedged her foot in, forcing the door open again. The Eyes slowly retreated further back within the darkness as she did so. "Masters aren't here right now! Go away!" they squeaked in fright. Signalling us to step inside, the Captain quickly grabbed a dark patch located somewhere beneath the glistening eyes and lifted it up in the air. As my sight begun adjusting to the oppressive darkness of my surroundings, however, the shape and appearance of the owner of the pair of bright eyes started to become clearer; the now terrified creature seemed to be pretty much no more than a simple girl in a maid uniform, the glistening eyes giving away her tanned skin and a few locks of her short-cut grey hair. "Don't give me that kind of crap, liar! I know perfectly well that both of them are still here and that you are just trying to hide them, okay?" barked the Captain in the girl's face, as she clenched tightly her victim by the throat The maid nodded her head vigorously, and the Captain finally let go of her hold. "Now quit playing dumb and just show us where they are!" With a heart-wrenching "Eep...!", the girl slowly scrambled up to her feet and quickly pointed to a small flight of stairs, slightly concealed in one of the corners of the dark room. With a quick nod of approval, the Captain begun hurrying towards it, signalling us to follow. I took a quick step forward, not wanting to be left behind by the other two (Especially not in a place like this!), who had already begun rushing up the staircase. However, for some strange reason, the air in front of me had suddenly become a whole lot more dense and awkwardly soft. The maid giggled softly, as she gently pressed my head against her chest. "Wha-!" "Fufufu~! A human! At first I thought it was only going to be the Goblin and that stupid Sef there, but it looks like tonight's gonna be a lucky one after all!" Who the hell's Sef now?! Before I even had the time to ask this question, however, the rough texture of a tongue quickly ran against my cheek. It all happened in a instant; every single muscle in my body almost immediately went rigid, as if I had just been hit by a jolt of lightning, as an feeling of absolute, almost paralyzing, bliss came over me. "Ah, it's been ever since I left behind that sentimental idiot back at the ruins that I've ever even glanced upon a man's body, but you must certainly be the freshest snack that I've had in decades!" she mused, before quickly redirecting her attention back at me. "Now, please don't move; it is particularly hard to digest when your food is struggling..." The maid's mouth had now begun to open unnaturally wide, the paralysis allowing me to only gape in horror at the foul black walls that was now about to close in on me. I hope you choke on me! exclaimed defiantly the tiny portion of my brain that wasn't busy trying to figure out a way to soil my pants, now that my muscles didn't respond anymore. "Noms~♥!" Reteza. A bright silvery ray of light slashed through the darkness. I felt myself being violently yanked out of the monster's mouth. The maid's mouth shut with a satisfied clump, as her glistening eyes slowly rolled upwards in their sockets, before finally crashing down to the ground like a string-less puppet. "Really? Calling out your attacks now? Just how unimaginative can you get?" commented a voice at my side. I glanced down at Kina's bright grin, my brain acting particularly sluggish after my near-death experience. "Tch. Can't you even be left alone for a minute without being abducted by someone? Really, if you hadn't teamed up with the me from the start, you'd probably be spending the week in some creature's digestive tract..." I let out a barely audible "Huh?" Having now sheathed back her sword, the Captain stepped forward and, without saying a word, quickly picked me up, despite Kina's embarrassed protests. Oh, great. First the belittling, now a Princess Carry. My manliness stands a snowball's chance in Hell to make it out of here intact... |
| Day 6 - 11:37 PM The wet sound of lapping echoed within the moon-lit room that the three of us had just stepped in. "Are we interrupting something...?" asked icily the Captain. "Oh, not at all, dear! I don't mind!" replied the figure sitting in the chair that lay at the opposite end of the wide salon, her cheerful courtesy thinly veiling the malice behind her words "And just for what reason do I have the pleasure of seeing you here tonight, my dear?" she said, her flaming red eyes examining me with the care and precision of an experienced wine connoisseur. "You know very well for what reason I'm here tonight!" thundered the Captain. The woman in the chair looked lazily down at the figure that was grovelling at her feet. "Next one, dear..." she said softly, gently sticking her right foot in front of the figure's nose. The sickening lapping sound from earlier resumed, as the woman directed her attention back at the Swordswoman. "Oh, whatever do you mean?" she asked innocently "As far as we know, we are perfectly abiding to the rules that the Lord of these territories told us to follow..." "It's not that! What about the agreement that we had?" The Captain gently let me down, trembling in an attempt to contain her rage "I thought that we had said that there would be no slaves!" "Oh, you mean Mayor Hopkins here?" said the woman, pointing down at the man in question "But he came here on his own accord~!" The Captain looked down at the figure that stood on all fours before the chair, a look of utter disgust painted on face. "I don't think that a man could possibly go to such lengths at humiliating himself..." In all response, the red-eyed woman simply directed her attention at the man wearing a blanket and a cowbell that the Captain had been carrying in her arms up to now. "Anyway," went on the woman in the chair, suddenly producing a small fan (Isn't it a bit too cold for that kind of thing right now?) from the folds of her dress "Why would noble vampires like us have to come down to an agreement with a half-blood like you in the first place~?" The metallic ring of a blade being unsheathed that came was almost instantly followed by the loud snap of the fan. The Mayor quickly rushed to a corner of the room with a squeal of terror. "Close..." grinned the vampire at the point of the sword, now inches away from her neck, that she'd barely been able to parry with her fan. "Don't even dare associating me to the likes of you...!" replied the Captain from the other side of the fan through gritted teeth. "Oh, yes, how shortsighted of me..." grinned on the vampire "I should have expected you to come rushing to the aid of this delicious little snack here, Sef... Honestly, why would you want mingle with the likes of them if you're not even willing to take a few up as servants?" "Well for instance, Auntie, not all of them have this family's habit to look down on anyone who's different from them..." The two of them uttered these sentences as if they were spewing poison from their mouths. The two of them quickly disengaged by leaping back. They stared at each other for a second, the vampire's fanged grin faintly glistening under the moonlight. "My, how smart of you to bring your friends along too!" she chortled, snapping theatrically her fingers "I'm sure that they'll make excellent sparring partners...!" "Huh-?" "Kill her." In an instant, a short figure materialized itself at the Captain's side. With a quick maneuver, the swordswoman was flung against the wall that stood behind me. With a crunch, Sef crumpled down to the floor into a broken heap, as Kina quickly rushed in for the finishing blow. I moved without thinking, perhaps due to some curious spasm of my still slightly paralyzed muscles; somehow, I had managed to grab the dire situation by the horns. And now, as a result, it was about to crush me into a wall like a fly. My bare feet skidded against the marble floor, desperately looking for some way to oppose the Goblin's god-like strength, until they finally bumped against the rough surface of the wall. No way out of this anymore... Was this how I was going to end up? As a stain on the wall that was probably gonna be scrubbed off by next Monday? Somehow, that sounded even less appealing than being reincarnated into a worm... Beneath me, Sef meekly groaned in pain. Rounding up every tiny speck of strength and instinct of self-preservation that I still had in my body, I pushed one last time with all my might against Kina's unstoppable force. As my knuckles began to go white, while my hold tightened as hard as ever around her horns, I silently waited for the moment when her strength would cause my spine to sickeningly snap in two. And then, it stopped. I slowly opened my eyes again, and found myself staring straight into Kina's. The blank, empty stare that had come over her when the vampire had given the order had now been replaced by a look of absolute ecstasy. She begun to pant, causing her relatively small tongue to slowly roll out of her mouth. I almost let go of my hold in surprise when I felt the Captain leaning on my shoulder as she hoisted herself up. "Good work there..." she wheezed, giving me a quick pat on the back. "Y-you think that you'll still be able to fight? I'm pretty sure that I heard a few of your bones snap when you hit the wall." Sef turned around to flash a small smile back at me. "Oh, they'll last... I'm more worried about yours, when your partner comes to..." I looked back down at Kina, who'd seemed to have now messily slumped down on the floor, her body still occasionally twitching. I felt a chill come down my still unbroken spine. "Now, let's finish this, shall we?" |
| Day 6 - 11:42 PM "Tch! S-stay away!" Sef gracefully dodged the vampire's sharp punches, responding to every single one of her enemy's missed blows with a quick and precise slash; it was only a matter of time until Sef's unmerciful rain of blows managed to force her opponent in a corner. "Humph. Her reflexes and footwork may be excellent," grumbled a voice at my side "but she's not quick enough at reacting when she has to deliver the counter-attack..." "Since when did you become an expert in sword-fighting, Ki-?" I slowly looked down in horror. Kina grinned happily back up at me. An elbow quickly collided with my stomach. The vampire stared down, panting, at the tip of the blade that was pointed straight at her throat. She grinned again, this time out of desperation. Sef smiled back. "Tăiaţi ani dusmanului meu." Sef's blade began to glow brightly in the surrounding darkness. "This technique," explained the Captain "was taught to me by one of those men that you look down upon so much. How does it feel to be defeated by a 'half-blood' and a human sealing technique?" "Oh, horrible..." answered with fake nonchalance the vampire, still grinning back defiantly "It's probably gonna take years until I'll be able to scrub the stench off my clothes..." The sword cut through the vampire body, accompanied by the sickening sound of steel cutting through flesh. For an instant, the blade's glow grew almost blinding, before finally disappearing altogether. When my eyes finally re-adjusted again to the darkness that had fallen down once again upon us, all that remained of the previous skirmish was a small pile of clothes, their owner owner to be seen. With a tired stagger, the Captain let herself drop down onto the overturned chair that still sat in the middle of the room, panting. "Well, that certainly didn't take long..." commented Kina "I was honestly hoping that these vampires would turn out to be a little stronger..." Says the idiot that got herself brain-washed... The Captain sighed. "Didn't you even consider the possibility that maybe it wasn't the vampire that was weak but instead it was I who was too strong for her?" "Nope." "Nu-uh." The Captain let out a mournful groan. "Anyway, my aunt Mirina was definitely more skilled at mind-control than hand-to-hand combat, so the outcome of that fight was already fairly predictable ever since the Goblin was KO'd..." As Kina shouted back in protest, I pondered on this fact for a while; there was still something that didn't make much sense in all of this... "Wait, if this aunt of yours (Mirina or whatever she's called) was so good at controlling people like Kina, then why couldn't she just do the same to you in the first place?" Sef's red eyes peered up at me, as she shuffled uncomfortably in the chair. "Come to think of it, does this have anything to do with that whole mess about you not being a half-vampire or something?" The Captain's gaze shifted down to the floor. For a minute, the entire mansion fell in an eerie silence. "Let's not kid ourselves," muttered silently Sef from beneath her hat "there's no such thing as a half-vampire; Mirina was just teasing me back there." "Then..." "A Dhampir. I'm just little more than a mutation of your average vampire..." she sighed, slowly getting up from the chair "100% monster, just like almost everyone else on this continent. Apparently, my mere presence is enough to quickly drain any vampire of her powers, so it was only a matter of time until my mother and her sisters kicked me out of the mansion... If I'm able to get close enough to them, their powers soon become close to useless." Though she mentioned these facts in an almost nonchalant way, even I could feel the awful weight of long years spent in solitude that each of those words carried with them. I felt at loss regarding what to say. "So, if you were basically born to defeat vampires, why did you even need our help in the first place?" asked Kina, the girl who thought that a sense of tact was something that your fingers felt on cold days. "Well, that's because I'll probably be needing your help when we face my moth-" *Thunk* Sef slowly looked down at the bolt that was now sticking out of her stomach, before messily crashing down on the floor, writhing in pain. The shape of the woman that now stood at the top of the stairs that lead to the salon, gently dropped the large crossbow that she had been holding. "How barbaric..." she commented, wiping her hands in a handkerchief that had apparently materialized from out of nowhere. "But at least that should get rid of that foolish child and her troublesome ability." |
| Day 6 - Midnight “As for you two…” said the Vampire, turning to face us “The diminutive one can go, if she wishes to. The man there, however…” In the blink of an eye, she suddenly materialized herself right in front of me. “You get to stay here…” She edged a little closer, her prosperous chest slightly pressing against me “I’m sure that you’ll make an excellent desser-” The Vampire’s jaw was quickly shut tight by a sudden uppercut. “Oh, it’s no good for a lady of your age to snack so much…!” commented Kina, giving her left arm a little stretch “As your personal chef tonight, in fact, the only thing that I can recommend for a hag like you is a good knuckle sandwich…” “Ungh…” The Vampire slowly rose to her feet, rubbing her jaw. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? We haven’t even started fighting ye-” The dull clang of a metal surface colliding with a vampire’s face echoed throughout the salon. “You blab too much, hag. If you want to speak, do it like me and say it with your fists!” That’s a pan you’re using, Kina… “It looks like there’s no need for politeness then...” Barely able to react, Kina was lifted off the ground by a powerful punch to the stomach. Before the goblin was even given the time to fall back down again, she was sent soaring by an equally strong roundhouse kick. “Unfortunately for you, short one, I don’t waste time with my sister’s useless mind tricks; I specialize in combat!” Kina kicked herself back up into a sitting position, a childish grin on her face. “Whatever do you mean by ‘unfortunately’? I’ll have you know that you’re talking to the most powerful being (not to mention future best cook) of the continent! Those blows of yours hurt less than a ballerina’s pun-” A well-aimed kick sent Kina sprawling again. “Ah, did I interrupt something? It looked as if you were having fun…” jeered the Vampire. “Y-you bitch!” The Captain’s half-dead corpse let out a weak groan, bringing me suddenly back down to Earth. “…Have to… Stop her…” she muttered, as she carefully heaved herself up, leaning on her scabbard. I quickly rushed over to her side, grabbing a hold of her shoulder. “Whoa! The hell do you think you’re gonna achieve with a bolt through your stomach?” “L-let go!” she barked, wrenching herself as best as she could out of my hold. “I-it’s my duty as her daughter to protect the villagers and put an end to h-…” A jolt of pain shot through her, interrupting her in mid-sentence. She begun hobbling forward towards where Kina and the vampire were fighting, promptly ignoring my calls. “M-mother…!!” She lifted her blade, ready to strike at the vampire. “Out of my way, child…” Sef was yanked out of the trajectory of the incoming kick only instants before it snapped her neck in half. I quickly pinned the Captain down to the floor until her struggling finally ceased. “Just what do you think you're doing?! Do you really wish to die so badly?” Sef’s red eyes gazed back up at me with the desperate look of a trapped animal that thinks that it’s going to die. It was only now that I noticed the rhythmical rising and falling of her chest, accompanied by her heavy breathing, along with the red flush that had suddenly risen to her ears. I blushed at the sudden realization of what I’d just said and of the compromising position the two of us found ourselves in right now. I’ll just remind you that there’s a goddamn projectile buried in her stomach right now and that your other companion is currently just a few steps away, fighting for her life against a vampire. I cannot stress enough how bad a time this is to be getting a hard-on and being embarrassed about it, buddy… “A… it’s a lie…” she whispered, twitching in pain. “Tell me about it; I’d love to tell you that a stick just happened to get caught in my pants…” I answered, getting off her to examine the crossbow bolt better; I was no doctor, but at least I had enough sense to not attempt to remove the projectile and cause any further unnecessary bleeding. “Not that-!” she did her best to snap back at me, but was quickly cut short by a sudden spasm. “Not… That…” she repeated, this time more carefully (Is that blushing of hers pain or embarrassment?). She pointed as best as she could towards her mother; “She’s not that good a-… at fighting; it’s a front. It’s just all a matter of p-… paralysis…” “Huh?” “…All in the eyes…” she muttered, pointing at her own. “... Gotcha.” I gave her a knowing nod, as I begun to get back up on my feet. By now, Kina’s blood had already begun to dot the white marble floor. Although the goblin still managed to always pick herself back up after every punch, she seemed to be at the mercy of the vampire’s blows, apparently unable to react. “Quite durable, are we?” “Told ya; you’re dealing with the strongest here!” answered Kina happily, despite the fact that she’d already begun to cough up blood. “Oh, we’ll see about that…” the vampire smiled, her eyes flashing red. There was a dull crunch, as the leg of the by now almost completely pulverized chair was swung straight into her face. The Captain was right when she said that her being good at fighting was all a front; her reflexes sucked… Tossing my now-unusable makeshift club behind my back, I quickly rushed to Kina’s side to help her back up. “A paralyzing gaze, you say?” “Looks like it…” I looked back at the vampire. Of course, my weak human blow had barely done anything to her, and it looked as if she was already getting back up again. “Any plans of getting rid of it?” “Plans? Tch! Do you think that my people have ever needed any of those?” replied Kina, cracking her knuckles. Well, I guess that the lack of them would at least explain as to why all of your friends got slaughtered… “It’s all just a matter of knocking her out before she gets the chance to use it again…” The savage grin from earlier appeared again. |
| Day 7 Kina rushed towards the vampire, her whole body apparently concentrating its ungodly strength in the following punch. "...Eh?" The Goblin's blow suddenly came to halt in mid-punch. All of the muscles of her body began tensing up, as if she was fighting against some invisible force field. "How foolish of you..." muttered the vampire, as she rose back up to her feet, her eyes ominously glowing in the darkness "You were given the perfect opportunity to finish me off, and yet you wasted it with a purposeless charge..." "T-tch..." spat back Kina, as she struggled against the invisible force that kept her bound to the spot. "Still trying?" said the Vampire letting out a brief chuckle "I guess you must really be on your last legs now... In that case, I think I'll just have to do you a favor and make you disappear..." The plodding sound of my bare feet tapping against the marble floor echoed across the room as the vampire readied herself for the finishing blow. The demon's outstretched arm entered my body with a satisfied flop. As I was painfully lifted up to the Vampire's eye-level, I caught with a passing glance Kina's blankly staring at my pitiful condition from where I'd just pushed her out of the way, her eyes wide in disbelief. "Ah... I just ruined my dinner..." groaned mournfully to herself the Vampire. In all response, a rose-tinted gob of saliva had slowly begun to make its way out of my mouth. "Oh well, I'm not that fond of wasting food..." The Vampire drew me closer to her face as she revealed her sharp pair canines. "Let's see if there's something that can still be salvaged~" There was a sickening crunch. The Vampire's arm that was hoisting me up only seconds ago had now been replaced by a bleeding stump. "H-huh?" As I unceremoniously crashed back down to the floor, the vampire was almost instantly propelled towards one of the sides the room. Barely being given enough time to to crash into the wall behind her, though, she was almost instantly lifted into the air by an uppercut, followed by an equally fast kick to the face. And another. And another. And another... By the time that the Vampire finally touched the ground again, she was already being pinned down by the Goblin. Once again, Kina's fist clenched tight to the point that the knuckles went almost completely white. This time, I doubted that I would have been able to stop her even if I had wanted to. The floor shook a bit as the last crunch echoed across the mansion, before everything around us finally fell almost completely still. Kina clumsily stumbled towards me, her sudden burst of power having probably drained excessive amounts of stamina from her small body. As she knelt down by my side, she feverishly searched through her clothes before finally producing a small white-ish bottle. "Take it... The increase in strength it should give you will hopefully be enough to let you survive." I looked uncertainly up at the contents of the bottle that she was holding "Are you sur-*Hack*... That you want to give me that? Didn't you say tha-... That you really needed that milk...?" "Yes bu-" "Then keep it..." "But-!" "Look, you're probably need all the strength you can find to win ag*Cough*ainst that Dark Prince of yours, right? So don't bother wasting all of that on me..." As my vision begun to darken, I slowly looked down at the arm that still protruded from my insides. I could already feel my muscles begin to relax, as the pain began to melt away. Can't say that I'm much of a role model, but at least I managed to look cool those last few seconds. Can't say that I'm particularly dissatisfied... "I... I understand..." whispered Kina softly from somewhere that sounded unnaturally far away. "Good..." As my (painfully short) life began flashing before my eyes (Great. Now I get to look at the time when Kina knocked me out for the first time in super slo-mo...), a sudden thought stealthily crept into my mind: I was probably going to die as a virgin. Maybe I'd been a little too hasty at refusing that milk... Just then, I felt my nose being pinched closed, followed by a warm liquid being slowly poured into my mouth. The world rushed back into my view as a burning sensation began to fill my chest, my eyes flashing wide open once again. The limb that was stuck inside of me almost completely forgotten now, I looked first at Kina, then at the empty bottle that she was holding. "I- I thought I'd told you not to use it on me!" I protested, feeling as if the only moment in my life that I'd been able to actually look cool was being robbed from me. "Tch. Don't start thinking so highly of yourself now, Lacking Boy. Did you really expect a Goblin to listen to what a Human like you tells me to do?" she replied, a relieved grin on her face. |
| Day 9 - Late Morning I barely remembered anything about what happened after that, although I suspect that I'd somehow managed to drag my feet back to the village before passing out in some gutter. Ever since then, I'd been floating in and out of what seemed to be a particularly vivid wet dream, troubled only by my occasional (and thankfully, extremely brief) lapses back into consciousness... "I-it hu~rts!!" "Heh Hah~♥... Who would have thought tha-Hah~♥ you'd be so sensitive down there m-Hah~♥ mother!" "I-I-It's not that Sef...! I j-just didn't know that it would be so bi-Hiiih!" "T-that's it... Jus-Hah~♥just give in to the feeli-A-anh~♥!ng..." ... "Dyuhuhu~..." "Hey, Doc! You'd better take a look at him! He just started grinning to himself again!" shouted a tiny voice from the other side of the Universe. "Deheheh-... Heh?" My heavy eyelids slowly fluttered open. In a definitely more dreamlike state than the one in which I'd found myself just a few seconds ago, I slowly turned first towards the young man dressed in white that seemed to be hunched over me to my left, then towards the short pair of horns that seemed to sprout from the mattress of the bed on top of which I lay motionless. I shut my eyes again. If I hold my breath for just long enough to make me pass out again, I can probably get back to that drea- "Hey, Lacking Boy! Don't go back to sleep again! You can't leave me for two more days here doing absolutely nothing!" protested the horns, shaking me vigorously. With a groan, I groggily began rising up to a sitting position, before a sharp jolt of pain forced me back down again. "Whoa! Take it easy there, now. Here, just chew on this..." A pair of thin yet strong fingers forced my jaw open, placing two algae-like leaves within my mouth. As I obediently did as I was told, the pain slowly began to seep away from my body. "You looked pretty bad when you first got here, what with your damaged intestines and all... Anyway, the next time that you feel that pain when you're on the road again, just take one of these." The man who I assumed had been the one that had healed me this past couple of days tossed a small bundle of the "pain-killing leaves" from earlier on my lap. "As for the stitches," he continued, pointing at those that now covered the bottom part of my stomach "You can probably safely remove them on your own a couple of days after you stop shitting blood (for which I recommend a sip of this every morning...)" I stared down at the suspiciously large flask that the man had just dumped on top of the leaves, sleepily trying to figure out what exactly was all about that whole business about shitting bloo-OHDEARGOD! "... Do I really have take all of this stuff with me?" I asked weakly, trying to direct my attention away from the horrific images that had begun to take form in my head. "Oh, if you want, there's even the arm for you to keep as a souvenir..." commented drily the doctor, producing the limb from seemingly out of nowhere. I nearly bit my tongue in half. "Anyway," Kina asked the Doctor a few hours later, once that I'd finally gained a slight bit more of control over my body. "Mind if I ask you why you helped me and Lacking Boy here out, even though we have nothing to pay you with? I thought that people in this village hated mamono..." The doctor nervously scratched the back of his head. "Well, that is true but... Let's just say that I'm paying back my debt with a very important member of this place... 'Sides, the trouble that you've caused me is barely comparable to the one that awaits your friend..." He eyed Kina for a second (who had soon grown bored of the doctor's answer and was now checking out the lazy stream of villagers that went by her, looking very much like a coyote in a butcher shop), before quickly taking me aside. "Look, you don't expect that an arm through the gut to just disappear forever with a bit of medicine and time, right?" I nodded. Somehow, I get the feeling that I'm not going to like what he's going to tell me... "So you'll really have to be extra-careful when it comes to physical strains in the future. Do you smoke? Good... Anyway, that includes; no excessive brawling, no running that exceeds a 15-minute mark, no heavy-weight lifting and, most of all, no intercourse." Bingo. Damn... "W-what?!" "Well, that is, unless you think that you're fully in control of the situation and know where your limits stand. Being forced is out of the question, as the prolonged strain could easily tear your digestive tract in two..." "What?! Do you even realize that just about everything that I have met so far has actively tried to rape the living juices out of me?!" "Exactly. Which is why, judging by my estimates regarding for about just how long you can avoid meeting a lustful mamono, I can assure you that you probably won't make it to see your 30th birthday..." "F***." I nervously glanced from over the Doctor's shoulder at the short girl that could not only turn me into a bloody mush whenever she was feeling a bit on the angry side, but that could now even rip my internal organs to shreds when she was feeling a bit too excited as well... I gulped. Hey, look on the bright side! I'm sure that dying while having sex with a beautiful woman is definitely a fate enviable by many fellow men! You're not helping... |
| Day 9 - Noon "Say, Lacking Boy... Are you also getting the feeling that we're forgetting about something pretty important?" asked the Goblin, as we finally begun to leave the small mountain village behind us. "If you're referring to my chances to ever survive the mere act of getting laid, I'm pretty sure that we left most of them back there at the mansion..." I commented mournfully. "Sheesh... You're still on about that?" she commented, absentmindedly opening a path through the bushes that occasionally stood in our way with the deceased vampire's arm (she'd insisted that we kept it; something about using it as a trophy one day...) I turned around to give the village one last look; as I remembered the unfortunate event that happened ever since we first got there, an unpleasant memory wafted across my mind. Kina's excited face in the alleyway. The time had come to make my mind up about that whole matter. "Kina!" "Hmm?" she replied cheerfully, hopping with surprising grace over a fallen tree trunk. Forgive me, intestines... "What would you say if I asked you not to do what you did back there at the village again?" "Do what?" "You know... Raping people... I mean, I don't... Err, how to put this... I don't really like the idea of someone being inside of..." Embarrassed, my sentence trailed off. Silence. Kina halted almost immediately, before turning around to face me. Her stare was filled with a seriousness that I'd never even dreamed that it could ever show up on her face. "In that case, I'd say that you're being awfully unrealistic and self-centered." she replied coldly "Do you really think that you can just tell me what I can and what I can't do, just because you say that you 'don't like them', and then expect me to comply? Learn your place, human..." The words hit me with more strength than a blow to the stomach: it wasn't that I hadn't been expecting something of the sort but, still, I'd held on to that frail tiny flicker of hope even to the last second. Kina turned around and began walking again, without saying a word. Hope. Hope for what? "Still," she added, stopping in her tracks. "I can't really say that you getting jealous over someone like me doesn't make me..." She turned around again, her face almost completely red in embarrassment, despite the wide smile on her face. Her voice quivered, as if she was on the verge of bursting into tears. "Extremely happy..." "K-Kina?" "Running off already, you lovebirds?" commented a familiar voice not too far up ahead "And before I can even repay you for your work, at that? Not very goblin-like of you..." Kina let out a suffering groan, the moment completely ruined. "Get over here, stupid swordswoman..." Sef stepped put from behind the boulder where she'd been waiting for us. "I'm glad that you made it out of there in one piece, mister!" she told me with a warm smile, ignoring the goblin's comment. "Oh, I wouldn't go as far as say-" Before I was even given the chance to finish my sentence, my mouth was almost instantly taken over by a strong sensation. The unique smell of Sef's hair filled my nostrils, as her tongue began exploring the depths of my mouth with surprising expertise. She finally stepped back a bit, licking off a bit of drool from her lips. "A small reward for saving me twice" she explained, a playfully sly look on her face. Despite being still surprised (if not a little ecstatic) from the sudden experience, I felt a sudden chill run down my spine, as if my whole body was trying to warn me about something. Kina stared up at me with a completely blank look on her face... She opened her mouth to say something. "Oh, quit hogging him all to yourself...!" interrupted almost instantly the Captain "Besides, aren't you interested in your own reward at all?" Torn for a second between feeling the need to protest and her gnawing itch to find out what was inside the large bag that the Dhampir had just shoved towards her, Kina finally gave in to the curiosity. Much to her surprise, however, the "reward" turned out to be nothing but a small 6-year old girl. "Huh?" The girl snarled back at her, trying to squirm out of the goblin's grip. Hmm... Paying us in lolis? I wonder if that's the national currency... "My aunt." explained Sef "I sealed her physical strength and supernatural powers already back there at the mansion. That form that she's got right now is pretty much just a side effect..." A vampire that gets her powers sealed and is turned into a little girl as a consequence. Hooow original... commented sarcastically my otaku side. My inner weeabo nodded in agreement. "So, wait... You're giving us the sister of the vampire that we killed with our very own hands... As a reward?!" "Pretty much!" "And you're gonna promise me that this isn't just some plot to get rid of your aunt without having to worry any more about her again?" "Cross my heart!" I frowned. Something about the nervous look on her face told me that I was absolutely right. "Come on, Lacking Boy! Can we keep it?" pleaded Kina, the fact that she'd been able to find someone that, despite being technically older, was still shorter than her filling her with motherly love. The tiny vampire that the goblin was squeezing tightly between her arms menacingly bared her fangs at me. "Kina, you killed the thing's sister only a couple of days ago! The little bastard will probably murder both us in our sleep!" "But I promise that I'll be extra careful!" My instinct of self-preservation was the only thing that allowed me to resist Kina's pleading doe eyes. "Out of the question." "Plea~se?" "Hey, stop treating me like a stray puppy that you just found on the side of the road!" squeaked angrily the vampire. I almost instantly fell silent. What is... this feeling? It's as if... As if I must suddenly protect her... "Wha-? W-why are you looking at me like that all of a sudden? Pervert..." "A-all right, I changed my mind... We'll keep your stupid aunt for you..." I announced, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. Sef grinned victoriously. "I'm so happy that you we could finally reach an agreement..." Kina happily trotted on ahead of me, the unhappy vampire still clamped tight between her arms, as the Captain's cheerful "See you soon!" still echoed across the valley. |
| Day 9 - Night The faint sound of crackling firewood nearby, the cute girl that I had apparently started to fall in love with peacefully snoring on my chest and, heck, even the smooth carvings of altar on top of which the two of us were lying seemed to be doing wonders on my back. For once, things were finally going my way (something that hadn't happened ever since I'd first set foot in this strange world...) At least, things would have been going my way if not for the fact that the altar was more freezing than a lump of ice, the crackling firewood was burning bright at the corners of the arcane circle within which I was currently laying at the center of and my brutish companion was keeping me pinned firmly in place in a sleepy moment of pleasure. "Kina, I'm pretty sure that she's planning on sacrificing us as a part of an ancient ritual of some kind... How about we simply step out of the circle now...?" "Nope..." she moaned sleepily, without even bothering to open her eyes "...Too comfy..." "... We'll be reunited once more, Sister!" gloated the Vampire, hugging tightly the dismembered arm like a teddy bear. I tried to get up, but to no avail. It felt as if someone had just dropped a mountain on me. And that the mountain was wrestling me back into submission. "The victims and your limb will be more than enough as catalysts. Also, with the amount of energy imbued within these ruins, I won't even need to use my own sealed powers to complete the transmutation!" went on the Vampire, placing the treasured arm before her at the top of the circle. "Kina! How can you be so calm when someone's gonna use us to revive the corpse of their deceased sibling?!" In all response, the Goblin let out a particularly loud snore, shifting into a slightly more comfortable position. The Vampire looked at me with a pitying look. "Come to think of it, is it really fair of me to settle my entire revenge like this, when victory is handed over to me on a silver platter...?" she wondered aloud. "No!" She shrugged, before beginning to slowly chant. I tried once again to push the Goblin off of me, only for my intestines to gurgle back in protest. By now, the lines that the Captain's aunt had traced in the soil had begun to glow ominously. I tried every possible way to get the Goblin off me, and each of them had resulted in the Goblin remaining anchored in the same position. I looked left and right, to see if there was anything that could help me in any way, but to no avail. I was quickly running out of options that wouldn't result in my almost immediate maiming. In a last-ditch effort that fell somewhere between desperation and insanity, I quickly drew the last card that I could think of. "BEAR!" "Gaasaseedssdsas- Huh?" The instant that the diminutive Vampire stopped chanting, the glow that had begun to appear in the surrounding tracings almost instantly faded away. I let out a absurdly loud sigh of relief. Works every time... "Wha-?! Oh... Sssgrennamagsdwa... Come on, this can't be happening! Sssgrennamagsdwa!" "Better luck next time!" I jeered. Seeing that her desperate efforts to complete the ritual weren't having any effect, she looked up at me, her entire 6-year-old body radiating killing intent. She took a step towards me. The instant the vampire's foot landed within the circle, the entire symbol almost instantly lit up again. "Uh-oh." Me and my big mouth... "A recoil?!" Before we even knew it, a blinding light enveloped the three of us. We had entered a portal. |
| Day 10 - Morning I slowly opened my eyes again. "I... I'm still alive?" Something beneath me let out a weak whimper. Can't really say the same for whoever is down there right now... "Oh... Sorry there..." I grunted, as I heaved myself up. The tiny vampire crawled out from beneath me, letting out a sigh of relief the instant that she was back on her feet. "You oka-?" The vampire snarled menacingly at me the instant I opened my mouth. Seeing me still alive and all in one piece had probably been enough to put her in a foul mood... Her threatening gaze, however, almost instantly turned into a look of horror, as if she had suddenly realized that something very important was missing. "Where is it?!" "Huh?" The vampire began to frantically scan the new surroundings. By the looks of it, it seemed as if we were now standing in the middle of a forest (Woods? Jungle, even?) Feeling a pang of pity at the sight of the once-powerful monster-girl panicking over some missing thing of hers, I crouched down by her side. "Look, if you just tell me what it is that you're searching for, maybe I can help y-" "Shut up!" snapped back almost instantly the vampire "And learn some respect, while you're at it! I'm not your kid, you know!" With an angry snort, she tore off into the woods. Not really sure as to how to react with the amount of abuse that I seemed to be receiving in dangerously increasing amounts lately, I merely shrugged the situation off. If she really wants to get mauled by some mysterious creature so badly, well, good for her... As I turned around, my eyes almost instantly fell on my companion's sleeping (although, at this point, I was pretty sure that it counted more as a coma than an actual snooze...) shape, as she lay unceremoniously splayed over the forest grass. After a good number of prods in the side, I finally managed to stir the sleeping Goblin. "Morning already...?" whined Kina, letting out a mighty yawn. I opened my mouth, ready to deliver a sharp reply, but was interrupted by a sudden yelp of surprise, not too far away from where the two of us were standing. Before I even knew it, Kina was already on her feet, her motherly instinct almost instantly turned up to eleven. "It's Fifi" "Fifi?" "The vampire" explained Kina hurriedly. "Fifi?!" |
| Day 10 - Late Morning "Wait, turn left!" I cried, as Kina carried me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes (Dignity? What's that?). "Huh...? Why?" "I think I just saw something run past us!" I explained. "Hmm... Can't say that I can really see anything with all this dust..." she commented, craning her neck around to the left to see if she could catch a glimpse of what I claimed to have noticed. "Kina, ahead of you!" "Wha-?" "Someone's right in front of u-!" With a loud thump, Kina crashed at full speed straight into the female silhouette that had suddenly appeared before us. With a a surprised grunt, I was almost instantly propelled off the Goblin's shoulder. A soft feeling began to take over my senses, as a gentle scent filled my nostrils. Suddenly, my worries began to drift off into the deep pit of oblivion; the creepy forest, the missing vampire... Heck, even my shredded intestines seemed to be but a mere illusion of the past now. I was in marshmallow heaven. As I was smack in the middle of savoring the moment, however, I felt the cowbell that I still wore around my neck being suddenly yanked backwards, and me along with it. "Come on, get out of there already!" protested the Goblin. No! Just give me another five minutes! Only now, as I was fished out of the magnificent chest into which I'd plummeted into, I was able to notice of its owner. "Oh? Fancy meeting you again, maid..." "Uh, Kina, I'm pretty sure that the maid from the vampire's mansion had shorter hair..." "It could just be a wig..." muttered the Goblin, desperately trying to support her theory. "Why would she even need to wear one?" "Ah, Lacking Boy, Lacking Boy... You're far too trusting and naive for this harsh world..." Look who's talking... "You see, she's just trying to lure us into a false sense of security, then... BAM! We find ourselves with a pair of knives in the back!" "Do I really need to mention that the main reason as to why we're lost in these woods right now is because you suddenly decided to keep a vengeful vampire as a pet...?" The Ghoul observer us with a strange look on her face, like she had no idea what we were talking about. “Not to interrupt you or anything but what are you two talking about?” She inspect us for a moment. “A human and something short that looks like it crawled out from under a rock…” For a second, Kina just stared at the Ghoul, a blank expression on her face. "You know, Lacking Boy, our tribe's chieftain Drusmilla always used to tell me that, when you're lost in the woods, finding a source of food ought to be one of your top priorities..." she commented in a suspiciously monotone voice. "Lower that fist, Kina..." The ghoul seems to have ignored Kina’s remark and look around with a concerned face. "Hmm? Don't tell me that you're lost too?" I asked, noticing the Ghoul's sudden concern regarding her surroundings. "Damn this dust, why did I have to land on that tree?" She mumbles to herself. “What? Yeah, I need to find soulmate before anything happens to him.” Soulmate? Sounds awfully heavy... Who the hell even uses that sort of word to describe someone nowadays? As I thought this, however, a sentence drifted through my head. "Could she be... The "sentimental idiot back at the ruins" that the maid mentioned?" As the words accidentally left my mouth, the more rational part of my brain almost instantly reprimanded me: Impossible. Out of all the Ghouls that could possibly live in this island, do you really think that the second one that you meet could be the one that that maid was referring to just because she used the word 'Soulmate'...? “Sentimental idiot? Who? What?” She tilts her head a bit with a stupid look on her face. "Ah? No, nothing... Don't think too much about it..." I hurriedly replied. Before either of us had the time to say anything else, however, a cry echoed through the woods. “HELP ME!! THIS CRAZY CHILD IS TRYING TO RAPE ME!!!” "... Crazy child trying to rape someone? Sounds an awful lot like Fifi..." I drily commented, in the midst of all the drama. Suddenly the ghoul sprinted off as if her life depended on it towards the voice. I barely had the time to let out a small "Huh?" before quickly going back to being a sack of potatoes, as Kina almost immediately charged after the Ghoul into the dust cloud. As soon as the two of us finally managed to catch up with the Ghoul, an unexpected sight opened itself before us. Kina skidded to a halt before the still body of the vampire that now lay on the dusty ground. She then looked up at the Ghoul that now stood only a few feet away from the two of us. Even from the top of her shoulder I could feel her muscles almost immediately tensing up. I slid off the Goblin's back and crouched down by Fifi's side. "Looks like she's still breathing..." "Good." she muttered, not even the relief of knowing that her beloved pet would live being able to contain her rage "Keep an eye on her while I go get our lunch ready..." It was just about now that I noticed the figure that was standing behind the dark-skinned mamono. Human. And, by the looks of that sword that he's wielding, probably not one who'd rather sort things out around a fire and a few cups of tea... I gulped, worry and guilt for not being able to aid Kina in a two on one fight in any way making an awful cocktail within my stomach. "Don't die..." Christ, was that really the best that I could do? When did I become the useless damsel in distress? "Not counting on it..." replied simply the Goblin as she took a step towards the Ghoul, cracking her knuckles. |
| Day 10 - Late(r) Morning Kina stared up at the Ghoul that now towered above her. "You better bite down on something..." she growled. ”I don’t think that will be necessary~” she grins. Without any warning, Kina dropped almost immediately down to the ground, striking with a well-aimed kick at the Ghoul's kneecaps. As the Ghoul bent slightly forward in pain, Kina rose again to hit her now exposed chin with an uppercut. Although the blow still managed to send the Ghoul flying into a nearby tree, however, a look of surprise came across Kina's face. She looked at her fist, as if things hadn't exactly gone the way she'd expected them to. "Not bad..." she commented with sincere admiration, letting out a short whistle "That last punch ought to have shattered your skull like an eggshell..." She slowly unstrapped the Tanuki's rusty old pan that she still kept by her side. "But you'll need a whole lot more than those sort of tricks to get out of this fight in one piece!" Kina's muscles tensed up as she readied her entire body for her upcoming charge, her gaze hardening with concentration. "That hurt like hell you know!" shouted back the Ghoul as she crawled back up to her feet from the splintered remains of a tree. She put her jaw back into place with a sickening crack. Kina simply snorted back, slightly disappointed by the fact that her punch hadn't apparently fazed her opponent. With a sudden sprint, Kina suddenly charged towards the Ghoul, ready to rain down fiery vengeance with her slightly bent cooking utensil. There was a wooden scrunch as what little still remained of the tree was permanently turned into a rain of toothpicks. However, she had barely the chance to look behind her when the Ghoul suddenly materialized by her side (apparently having easily dodged Kina's blind rush) and forced the small Goblin down on the ground. "You know... Charging head-on is quite stupid." commented the Ghoul, a sinister smile beginning to form on her face. "So is trying to force the strongest creature on the continent in a hold!" grinned Kina back, over-confidence in her physical prowess dripping from her every word, as she slowly begun to force herself back up. For an instant, a look of surprise came over the Ghoul's face as Kina began overpowering her. “Well, let’s see if you can move after this...”, an evil smile suddenly back on her face as she started to lean closer to the short Goblin. “I hope you don’t taste awful~” whispers the Ghoul in a seductive voice before licking Kina on her shoulder. The short Goblin let out a little yelp of surprise (along with a slight tinge of pleasure...), as the stranger's rough tongue came into contact with her skin. Her body almost instantly went limp, causing her to crash back down on the ground. The Ghoul grinned and then let go of her, backing back to the other Human's side. Despite being instructed to not leave Fifi's side, I quickly rushed towards the Goblin's still twitching body "What did you two do to her?!" I called out at the strangers, as I firmly began to clutch the Tanuki's pan. Like wielding it did a lot for Kina... The Ghoul looks at me for a few seconds before answering. “Relax, she is just having a good time right now…” she changed her voice tone “So might you soon if you’re lucky~” I tilted my head quizzically. "A... Good time?" "Lacking Bo~y?" I spun around; Kina had somehow feverishly risen back to her feet, her cheeks flushed almost completely red. For a second, I was afraid that she might try and attack the two strangers again. A disturbingly wide grin broke across Kina's face. Honestly, I'd be more worried about your intestines... "...Eh?" With an ecstatic lunge, the short Goblin almost instantly latched herself around my shoulders. "Sa~y... Are you really sure that those fragile innards of yours couldn't last for a quick 15-minute ride?" "Yes?" I answered nervously, as I noticed with increasing worry that she was starting to stare at me with the look of a mad scientist that had just found some new way to mess about in God's domain. "Besides, weren't you the one that kept whining about me not being able to satisfy a fairy?" She thought about this matter for a second, before giving me a drunken, euphoric grin. "For every small stick, there's always a smaller hole to jam it into..." "Wise words... Now will you please care to explain?!" "Well, I'm pretty sure that the nose, for instance should work fine in our case!" Eew... "Oh, there's also anal too, if you wish... How does that sound~?" she whispered alluringly into my ear, before proceeding to not-so-alluringly nip it. Throw in a few "Onii-chan" and maybe I'll consider it... "W-wait! Just gimme a second to think this th-!" "Enough yappin' already. On with the screwin'!" she happily chirped, not even giving me the time to negotiate her terms. I could already feel her body beginning to rub against my back, barely able to contain her lust. Tell me that that damp feeling that I'm getting right now is only sweat... With a quick maneuver, the two of us messily crashed down onto the ground beneath us. "Kina, do you even realize that you're probably going to kill me if you keep going on with this?" I loudly protested, as I desperately tried to choke her with my tights (to no avail...) "Mgff!" replied Kina, her face in the process of trying to bury itself deep into my nether regions. At this point, it was pretty safe to say that she was alread in the middle of the process of dry-humping my kneecap. Somewhere between the Goblin's lustful panting, I barely managed to hear a weak voice. “Um… not to interrupt you or anything but, could you please mate somewhere else? Or at least not in front of us?” said the Human. DO I EVEN LOOK LIKE I'M HAVING ANY FUN HERE?! “Hey... Don’t ruin their fun time.” replied the Ghoul with a smile. You stay out of this! "Don't just stand there! Help me get her off me!" I angrily pleaded at the two onlookers. Luckily for me, the two strangers were kind enough to save me from a messy end by finally separating me from my oversexed companion. As the Ghoul held tightly onto the struggling Kina ("Hey, if you don’t stop struggling I’m going make you feel so much pleasure that you'll faint.” "Do your wors-! Fueh!"), the Human helped me back up on my feet. "This may sound... *Pant* extremely stupid, but you probably just saved my life back there..." I gasped, as I slowly began to catch my breath again. “You’re welcome I guess?” An awkward moment of silence followed, as the Human nervously eyed at my stripper-like attire. "Well, I guess that you can call me "Lacking Boy" too, since that's pretty much how everyone I've met ever since I've been here has called me..." I sadly muttered, shaking the stranger's hand. “I see... Well I’m Philip and that’s Kelly.” He pointed at the Ghoul. “Aries our other companion should be around here somewhere too, but I or rather we haven’t found her yet.” "Hopefully she's dead." commented Kelly with a happy voice. "Don't say stuff like that." "Oh, I was forgetting about my own pair of irresponsible companions... That overprotective Goblin you see there is Kina. And this little half-squat-" I continued, walking towards and lifting up the tiny Vampire by the scruff of her neck "-is called... Well, I guess that Kina just calls her Fifi..." The 'half-squat' in question let out a weak groan. |
| Day 10 - Noon "*Sigh* So you're telling me that both of you are lost too?" "Yeah." Now that the dust cloud had finally begun to settle, the five of us had finally begun making our way through the woods, albeit at a relatively leisurely pace. "Huh... So what are you two doing in these woods anyway?" I continued, hoping to break the silence that had fallen over the two groups ever since we'd begun our aimless wandering through the forest. Come to think of it, multiple rape attempts do tend to have the awful habit of being particularly bad mood-killers... “We ended up here by chance, after finding an strange altar.” At hearing this, I almost immediately shot a glance at Fifi who, in turn, instantly looked away. "Kina, do you still have that map?" I asked through gritted teeth. The Goblin, who had been doing nothing but staring morosely at her shoes for the past 30 minutes ever since she'd calmed down, silently passed me the battered item in question. Hoisting the vampire up at my eye level by the scruff of her shirt, I quickly stuck the map under Fifi's nose. "All right, you got us into this mess... The least you could do is tell us where the hell are we right now!" "... Probably somewhere with a strong concentration of magic..." she obediently muttered, Kelly's kick from before probably having made her begin to accept the fact that, as long as she remained in this current form, her role within the party would strictly stick to the one of the team butt-monkey. "... So I'd say about... Here..." I looked at three large clumps of trees in the North-Western side of the continent that Fifi had pointed to, then down at the small symbol Kina had etched out on the surface of the map. "Well, great... That ought to put us at least a good three more days away from the Dark Prince's village than before..." I groaned. “Um… you mind sharing some info? Because a Dark Prince doesn't sound too pleasant.” “And where the hell are we? The altar we found was no too far away from Alnor, which we were heading for.” "Oh... That's right. Kina here's on some quest to defeat this Dark Prince in order to avenge her dead friends..." I roughly gesticulated towards the aforementioned avenger in question's general direction. "Anyway, the guy has a castle somewhere around here..." I went on, handing the map over to Philip and pointing at a forest that lay within the territory that had been colored purple. "As for us, we ought to be about here-" I pointed at the distant point in the far-left corner of the map. "-Which puts you two at roughly about over half-a-continent away from Alnor. I can only strongly suggest you find yourselves a different vacation plan..." Kelly, having suddenly materialized behind me, flashed a satisfied smile at the distraught Philip. “Guess you won’t find a way home for a while.” "Guess so..." he sighed. “Well, maybe the Dark Prince can give me some info.” he went on, trying to see the positive side of the whole matter. "Doubt it... By the sound of it, I don't think that he's exactly the kind of guy that will listen to a bunch of humans' requests." I almost immediately replied, dashing Philip's efforts. “We beat him up first ofc, then ask.” I couldn't help but smile. "Looks like you and Kina are probably more similar than it looks, then, am I right?" I chuckled, handing the map back to the Goblin, who simply placed it back where she kept it without saying a word or even looking up, for that matter. I frowned a bit. I quickly spun around towards Kelly and Philip. "What's that you say Kina? You need use the bathroom?" I theatrically exclaimed, cupping my hand around my ear. "H-huh?" "Pretty weak for an excuse there, human..." muttered Fifi. "And you want me to escort you through these dangerous woods that are probably teeming with dangerous creatures? Well, why didn't you say so sooner!" I continued, glaring at the Vampire. Philip and Kelly just stared at me with the looks of someone who had just seen a man streaking through a chapel and was awfully trying to not pay any attention to him. Can't blame them for that... "Anyway, be back in five!" I hurriedly added, sweeping the Goblin off her feet and dragging her into the forest Having distanced ourselves enough from the rest of the group, I finally let go of the Goblin. "All right. Now, tell me what's going on with you." "Nothing." she simply muttered, gazing at the dirt that she'd begun to absentmindedly kick up with the tip of her foot. "Well, nothing really doesn't tend to make people like this..." I replied, lifting my hand for added emphasis. The instant my arm rose, Kina almost immediately shut her eyes tight, as if she was expecting me to hit her. One of my eyebrows shot up in surprise at this sudden overreaction. "Uh... Do I really look like someone that low...?" I sighed. Still not opening her eyes, Kina nodded vigorously. Good point I gently placed my hand on her head. "So, don't tell me that you're still on about the fact that you lost to someone...?" Kina nodded even more vigorously. I sighed again, before giving her hair a small tussle. At first, she shied a bit away from my hand, but it was a matter of moments before her tense body relaxed again. "Look, right now I could patronize you for the next hour about how losing may feel bad at first but how one must endure it and pick himself back up again-" I crouched down to meet Kina's eye level. "-But I'm pretty sure that the strongest being on the continent doesn't need to hear that sort of advice from a lowly human such as yours truly, right...?" Kina swallowed, before looking at me from beneath my hand, a small smile on her face "Yes!" The misty-eyed-like look in her eyes gave away the actual frustration she felt about her loss. "Also, don't even think that I'd hit you for something that stupid again..." I smiled encouragingly. Kina's smile almost instantly broadened into a grin. "You really shouldn't smile that much, Lacking Boy. It makes you look like a rapist..." Blushing in embarrassment, I almost instantly turned away. "L-look who's talking!" Kina snickered at my sudden overreaction, brushing away the tears that had been previously welling up. "Oh, don't worry... In my people's culture, calling a human "rapist" is considered a compliment!" "Liar..." We began to slowly march back to where we'd left Philip and the others, Kina trotting ahead at a brisk pace. I smiled a bit. I guess that means that even someone like you can make a girl happy every once in a while... As soon a we reached again where we'd last left the rest of the group, the first thing I noticed was the Arachne that lay in the middle of the clearing. Then I saw the furious-looking Fifi standing on top of her. "Wow... What did we miss? And where's Philip?" "Up here!" called out the unfortunate man from a cocoon hanging overhead. My eyebrows almost instantly shot up in surprise. "Shit, you're gonna have to give us a really good excuse for your current situation!" I call back, trying not to laugh. "That damn arachne tried taking me away." I looked again down at the (probably) unconscious Arachne again. Nearby, Kina was busy trying to cheer up the still angry vampire. ("She used me as a projectile!" "Don't worry. Mommy here will see to giving that meanie a proper punishment!" "Mommy?! I'm at least 400 years older than you!" "Shh... There, there." "No! I refuse to be subjected to this kin-...d... of... treatm-... *Sniffle*" “But you asked me to throw you and so I did~” "*Snarl*") I looked back up at Philip. "Well, I think it's high time that someone got you down from up there... Kina!" "Hmm~?" The Goblin stood up, still holding the Vampire. "See if you can get him back with his feet on the ground..." She gave the tree a short kick. This was almost instantly followed by a loud cacophony of snaps, as a large number of branches began raining down below. Philip came crashing down onto the ground. He let out a little groan as he crawled back up on his feet and removed the web from his foot. “Thanks… Someone could have caught me though.” he muttered, rubbing his chest to ease the pain. "Don't worry. It builds character..." I replied with a smile, enjoying my first chance in the past week to torment a member of my race again. "Is that so?" He glares at me. I chuckle, a strange sense of relief coming over me, as if a heavy load had been lifted off my back. "Anyway, how about finally finding ourselves a way out of this wretched forest?" "You sound awfully happy, considering the fact that we may never leave these woods alive..." grumbled Fifi, having gotten a bit of a hold over herself. "Oh, do I~?" Philip sighs. “Yeah let’s get moving. Need to find that damn Weresheep of ours...” |
| Day 10 - Early Afternoon "MABEL!" I called out into the thick mass of trees that surrounded us "WHERE ARE YOU?" "Hey, are you sure that she's called like that?" "I'm pretty positive... I guess..." It had already been about two hours already since we'd split up with Philip and Kelly to search for their lost companion. Unfortunately, there was just as much luck on our side as the amount of food that was currently in my stomach (which would occasionally tie itself into a knot, letting out with a bear-like growl from time to time). "I was certain that she was called Mary. Or was it Terry? Terries? Eh, something like that..." went on pensively the Goblin, thinking aloud. "TERRY!" I tried again "ARE YOU OUT TH-?" With an audible thump, I crashed straight into what appeared to be the the thin trunk of a small tree, causing me to take a few drunk-like staggers back. I would have probably ended up turning Fifi into red paste if Kina hadn't been quick enough to hoist me back up on my feet by my cowbell. Just as I was slowly trying to get the world that was currently spinning wildly in front of me under control, a loud growl that could have made mountains tremble echoed amongst the trees. "Hold it right there!" I slowly looked up towards the source of the voice, as the suspicious tree that I'd just bumped into was effortlessly lifted into the air. "And where do you people think you're going?" asked the horned woman that now looked down at us from above the tree-tops, resting the colossal ax that she'd just picked up with fearful ease from the ground on her shoulder. "Move it, giantess!" yelled Kina back up at her, her eyes glowing at the thought of a worthy fight to make up for her previous loss. I, on the other hand, merely let out a meager "Eeep!" "Oh ho-ho! Brawlers now, are we?" simply exclaimed cheerfully the colossal figure, amused by Kina's challenge, as she bent over to get a closer look at the three (two-and-a-half?) of us. Well, I'm afraid that not every part of her body can be giant... I sighed mournfully, staring deep into her cleavage. "Anyway, little children like you shouldn't be wandering in these parts of the woods!" continued the giantess. "Hey, no more than two people here count as kids... I'm pretty sure that the rest of us are full-grown and mature adults..." I replied, slowly beginning to gather back my courage to face the colossus that stood before us. ("No need to be so harsh on yourself, Lacking Boy..." "Precisely...") "Full grown?" The giantess let out a rumbling chuckle, as she stared at our relatively diminutive statures. "Just how old are you?" she asked, her large face inching closer towards mine with a playful smirk. "Err... About twenty-ish?" "Ho! I guess that makes you my 'Big Bro', then!" she replied with surprisingly sudden cheerfulness, letting out a deep laugh that sounded like a rock-slide. I simply stared back up at her. Being called "big brother" by someone who was probably capable of stepping over small buildings had a fairly jarring effect. "Wait-" I was getting beginning to get an awful feeling about this... "How old are you?" "Eight!" she exclaimed cheerfully, showing us only six fingers as further evidence to her mental age. L-loli?! I gulped. My previous worries about her chest size not being particularly satisfying had just found a way to become extremely uncomfortable. ("Why don't you take a seat over there?" Not now, Chris...) As I was still busy trying to get my accidental pedophile instincts under control, the Giant, having just noticed her, quickly directed her attention towards the tiny vampire. "Oh? Haven't we met before?" she asked, tilting her head quizzically. "... I don't recall doing anything of the sort." muttered back Fifi, who had begun acting suspiciously silent ever since we'd come across the giant. "Hmm... Is that so? I'm really sure that I saw you back at... the castle?" went on the Giantess, as she began to speak half to herself, leaning closer towards Fifi. But before the vampire even had the time to answer, though, the Giantess almost instantly stood back up, taking a quick step back. "The castle!" Behind me, Fifi let out a frustrated snort. "Looks like our little lady found out..." Trying to gain back her composure again, the Giant let out a small cough. "It is my duty as Lady Kioko's vasel... Vass... Vassal-" She beamed cheerfully down at me, smiling in satisfaction at the fact that she'd been able to complete the word correctly. "To bring any sort of evil-doers before her!" "Make me!" snarled back the Vampire, before being effortlessly lifted off her feet and into the air. Kina, still trying to figure out what was going on all of a sudden, almost instantly assumed a combat position, but all too late; without having anything else left to do with us, she'd already begun marching away, the ground shaking a bit at her every footstep. It all happened so quickly that we just stared for a good minute at the massive set of tracks the Giantess had left in its wake. "Alas, poor Fifi. She was a good pe- I mean, friend, to us... Rest assured, your sacrifice won't have been in vain!" I gave a little clap, as if to emphasize this last point. "Come on, let's go find ourselves something to eat before it gets dark..." Kina scowled. "Oh, come on; don't look at me like that! Did you even see the size of that thing?!" "You're just a coward!" "Cowardice is the main ingredient for a long and healthy life!" Kina shrugged, before quickly spinning around. "Suit yourself. Enjoy your long, lonely life, then... I'm going to get Fifi back from that oversized baby." Without even tossing one last glance back at me, she began to follow the Giantess' crater-like footprints, before quickly disappearing into the forest. I simply stared at the spot where she'd disappeared. Me? Lonely? Look who's talking. For just how long have you been wandering across the continent without any...one-? It hit me. My shoulders slowly relaxed, as I heaved out a mighty sigh. Sorry Philip... I guess that I can only wish you luck in finding that friend of yours, after all... Without saying a word, I began to hurry in the direction where Kina and the other Loli had disappeared earlier. |
| "Kina!" I called out, as I hurried as fast as I could through the woods. The more I stopped to catch my breath to call her name, the more an oppressive knot seemed to wrap itself tight around my intestines. Soon enough, my short run turned into a miserable hobble from the support of one tree to the other. By the time that I stopped again to call her name again, the sound of the Giantess' footsteps had already begun to grow faint. For the first time since we'd left Sef's mountain village, I could clearly feel the weight of my wound, the doctor's stitches stinging like scalding needles within my guts. Coughing out the small drops of blood that had somehow found their way up into my mouth, I tried crying out once again. "Kin-Oof!" "So... I reckon that by all that blood that you're losing right now, you must have already grown bored of that long and healthy life of yours?" jeered playfully the assailant that was currently sitting on my back. To unwittingly drive her point even further, I spat out yet another small gob of pinkish saliva as I got up again and turned around to face the grinning Goblin. "How the hell did you manage to get behind me, anyway?" "How should I know?" she shrugged, a happy smirk still on her face. "You must have probably been so excited at the prospect of going into a dangerous situation that you ran faster than me!" Liar... "Is that so? Then I take it that you're admitting that you were beaten by a worthless human like me~..." For a minute, Kina just kept smirking back at me. Then it finally hit her. "Wha-?! W-wait! No fair! I was just waiting for you to come, anyway! I want a remat-" Bingo. Suddenly noticing that she'd mentioned out more than she'd wished to, she quickly covered her mouth, as if to prevent any further compromising facts from being divulged. I sighed, letting my hand rest on her head. It felt almost as if Kina had stopped breathing beneath it, her (my?) racing heartbeat somehow echoing throughout the clearing. There had always been something so refreshing about Kina; she always seemed to be so full of life (along with a surprising amount of muscle to back that life up...) Yet there were some moments when she just seemed to become exactly what she looked like; nothing more than a small child, her happiness feeling so unnaturally fragile... Goddammit Fifi, you cockblock... Giving her hair a quick tussle, I started walking (sorry, wobbling...) past her. "Come on; maybe we can still catch up with that Giantess..." "H-hey!" she cried, suddenly tumbling back down to Earth "Where's my rematch?!" "Another time... Maybe when I don't feel as if I'm about to barf the shredded remains of my intestines out" "Nngh!" My win~ Day 10 - Late afternoon "See her anywhere?" I squinted into the distance from the four feet that separated Kina's shoulder from the ground. I let out a small snort. "Only grassland as far as I can see... Oh, and another forest not too far away to the left... I say we just keep following her tracks." I pointed at the massive foot-shaped crater next to which we were standing. Just as the Goblin took a step forwards, a sudden rumbling noise began to rise from the bowels of the Earth. "Oh, maybe she's decided to turn around and come back..." I muttered hopefully. "Don't count on it!" replied Kina, breaking into a dash. As the rumbling began to grow louder, Kina's path became increasingly more erratic, as she zigzagged between invisible obstacles. "Whoa whoa whoa! What's going o-?" "Sandworm!" interrupted Kina, skidding to a halt. Suddenly, a few feet away from where we were now standing, the earth very literally erupted into a cascade of slightly soggy mud. As Kina quickly began running again, I was only able to catch a glimpse of a glistening maw and three glowing pairs of eyes. Now, Kina's constant changing of direction was pretty much the only thing that kept us from becoming a first course; with every sharp turn she took, the Sandworm's hulking shape would emerge just inches away from us. "Sandworm? Then what the hell is it doing here?!" "Hunting and mating season-" panted Kina, hopping over a clump of grass, seconds before it was propelled into the sky by the emerging monster "I heard that sometimes they tend to migrate North at this time of the year if the desert..." Kina quickly swerved left again just in time to avoid the colossal Monster, as it came crashing down deep into the soil beneath it. It wasn't long before the constant sprinting began showing its effects on Kina; even I could hear her heavy panting, as she gulped down large mouthfuls of air, over the loud crashes. Finally, it happened; a small humid patch of grass and one single misstep were enough to send the Goblin's left foot shooting right up. As Kina tried to regain her footing, the rumbling sound now seemed to be getting unbearably louder at every second. A moment later, silence. I slowly opened my eyes. The wind howled as I soared through the sky with the grace of a cardboard paper-airplane. I whipped my head around, scanning my surroundings as they shot past me, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of either the Sandworm or my companion. Unfortunately, the only thing that I was able to grimly notice was how the ground that rushed beneath me had slowly begun to draw closer. Not exactly a preferable situation to before. And then, with a wet, slapping sound (like the one of a fish being tossed against a wall), I crashed straight into... Something. Something surprisingly soft, judging by how the blow to the spine that I'd just received hadn't apparently been enough to snap it entirely in half. I tried to open my mouth to ask someone to turn off that horrible ringing sound that was blaring into my ears, but a sharp jolt of pain forced my jaw shut again. As my consciousness began to slowly fade away, however, I could clearly feel two strong pairs of arms lift me back off the ground. Before everything turned completely to black, I tried to let out a weak "Thank... You..." Unfortunately, the only thing that I was able to scrape from the bottom of my lungs was a small gob of saliva, which was promptly sprayed on one of my saviors' face. It would have to do. |
| Day 11 - Noon My eyes slowly fluttered open. I lazily lay my gaze on the wooden ceiling that was currently wobbling above me. Earthquake? I proceeded to curl up into a ball, trying to snuggle deeper into the warm blankets in which I was currently wrapped into. Like some natural disaster was going to get me out of bed right now that I'd finally been able to get some decent sleep ever since I'd first landed in this weird place. ... Wait, where am I? In all response, the room trembled a bit again. I immediately sprang out of the bed (which revealed itself to be little more than a small mound of straw and a battered leather coat), only to smash my head on the low ceiling above me. Swearing heavily, I took another step forward, but my foot simply sank into the air. My face was just about to smash itself against the Earth that was now rushing beneath me, when a strong hand took hold of the cowbell around my neck and yanked me back. "Woah! Easy there, fella!" rumbled a deep voice behind me, letting go of its hold. Although I still had almost no idea about where I was right now, there was something about the blue eyes into which I was now staring that had a surprisingly calming effect. The dangerously thick blond beard that was instead being shoved into my face, on the other hand, was only adding "profound annoyance" to the long list of emotions that I was experiencing at the moment. "A second too late and you might've been killed!" he went on, letting out an equally deep chuckle "Oh, that reminds me... HEY! THE LAD'S FINALLY AWAKE!!" As if summoned out of nowhere by his loud call, three more equally bearded faces materialized out of a large sliding door at the opposite side of the "room". "Hey there!" cheerfully exclaimed the first one, happily hitting me square in between my shoulder blades with something that could have been known as a pat only in the loosest sense of the term. "You really ought to count your lucky stars!" added the next, getting his turn at the public beating. If you let me get out of this alive, I sure wi-Oh God no, not ag-! "No need to thank us, really!" laughed the third, going straight for the kill. "D-do you think the boy's okay?" "I told you not to push it that far..." "I wasn't trying to kill him, I swear! We were just congratulating ourselves with him!" With a groan, I coughed myself back to my senses. There was a collective sigh of relief within the room. As the four masses of beard began to come crashing down on me to see if I was still all in one piece, I quickly held up my hand, signalling them to stop exactly where they were. "W... Where am I?" "On a wagon." simply replied the four. "No, I mean... Where are we?" "On a wagon." replied again the three, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Look-" I stopped myself. Continuing with this conversation was only going to turn the few neurons that I still had left into tiny little puffs of smoke. "Okay... Who are you?" "People?" they looked at themselves, scratching their heads a bit. "At least, I think we are..." They let out a mighty collective laugh. "People as in humans?" "Do we look like any of those monsters to you?" replied Slightly Blond-beard (Right now, that was all I could call the thick columns of hair that I was addressing...), letting out a frustrated snort. "And you're not gonna try and rape me?" I went on. After all, there was no denying that humans were horny little bastards too... "Well, we weren't really planning to..." admitted Brown-beard. This time, it was my turn to sigh in relief. Looks like I perhaps have a tiny chance of getting out of here alive... "That'll have to do..." I muttered, as I picked myself up off the floor. "Anyway, who are you?" My index finger immediately shot up, to prevent my sanity from finally snapping. "I mean as in names, profession or the what. Seriously, I've been referring to you people as Red-Beard and Friends up to now...!" The four of them looked at each other, before Slightly Blond-Beard reached into his pants (Well, so much for hoping that I'd make it out of here without my guts dangling out of my stomach...) and took out a small piece of parchment. As he cleared his throat, the rest of the rabble fell suddenly quiet. I was getting the horrible feeling that they had been waiting for a long time for a victim to finally arrive. "We live in a dark age. One where man has long lost the war against the monsters, and has never been able to successfully fight back ever since. One where the cowardly man simply gives in to his natural urges at the first aberration that catches him, spreading his seed wherever he goes without even being given the chance to gulp a single breath. One where the traitorous man sides with the villainous monsters saying stuff like "It's not that bad, really...", or "You get used to it after a while..." Bah! We once ruled over parts of these lands. What can we rule over now? Not even our right to procreate, that's what! Well, it's long past the time that we stood up for ourselves! Now, we Stand! Now, we Fight! Now, we Rise! No mercy for the monsters! Let our horny overlords know the pain we've suffered! Let the four of us fight rape with rape! And let them shout our name in between their sorry tears... TRAPPERS! HUAH!" There was a small round of applause as soon as Slightly Blond-Beard (Goddammit! They haven't even told me their names yet! finished his insane ramblings. "So... I'm guessing that you guys are trappers... As in the guys that hunt animals?" The madmen nodded. "And there's only four of you, right?" They nodded again. "In that case, who's driving this thing?!" "Well-" Brown-Beard walked towards the door and swung it open. "Miriam of course..." At first, I couldn't really see well who this mysterious 'Miriam' was, causing me to edge closer to the front of the wagon. When I finally managed to catch a glimpse of her, my heart skipped a beat. "Oh, hello there! Are you the newcomer?" exclaimed cheerfully the fully harnessed dark-skinned cow-girl that was busy pushing the whole wagon forward, alongside with a surprisingly out-of-place normal ox. Still pushing, she turned around to flash a smile, revealing the wide leather strap she wore over her eyes. I spun around towards the trappers "You caught this girl and are now using her as a slave, correct?" "Miriam? Nah... She just works full time with us." explained Red-Beard. "Speaking about that, I caught the man as you asked me to. Where's my raise?" "I said, we'll talk about that later!" "That's just what you said earlier!" whined back Miriam. The world began to spin. There was only so much I could take after risking my life three times in a row... "You mean you're paying her?! What did you do to that "no mercy to monsters!" you mentioned earlier?" "Well, we can't just rape her or anything. After all, she's literally what keeps us moving..." "Aye. Besides, she's a pretty nice person after all... Friends don't do that kind of stuff to friends!" Hearing that come out from a member of the Rape Crusade such as yourself isn't really helping this, you know... Also, if you admit that she's a nice person, why even bother being racists at all, at this point?! "Anyway, how are those footprints looking?" Footprints? "Still fresh, by the looks of it! We should hopefully be able to catch up with her before she reaches the fortress..." I took a quick pause from my wallowing in anger at the sheer amounts of hypocrisy with which I had been overloaded in the past five minutes and looked up at Brown Beard. "Wait... You don't happen to be hunting down a Giantess, by any chance?" "Sure are, laddie! And, judging by our current speed, we should reach her by tomorrow or the next day! Why, would you like to have a turn too?" I let out a weak groan. On one side, I was probably going to reach Fifi sooner than I expected. On the other, though, that probably meant that I'd be spending another couple of days with this band of oversexed maniacs... Wheeeeeeee... |
| Day 11 - Afternoon "*Humph*..." "Something bugging ya, newcomer? You've been sulking up there for the past two hours now..." The Minotaur was right. Because of the lack of a need for someone else to make sure that the wagon (although calling it a wooden crate on wheels that had somehow found a way to achieve motion was perhaps more appropriate) was going the right way, I'd been able to turn the driver's seat into my very own little ledge of sanity, and I'd spent the past couple of hours sulking and letting out the occasional frustrated grunt at the sound of the madmen laughing merrily behind the wooden door that separated the rational world over here from the chaotic dimension that lay on the other side. "How can someone as normal-" Relatively speaking... "-as you even think of working for people like them?" "Hmm? They're pretty nice people, and they pay me well. Aren't those good enough reasons to work for just about anyone?" "Did you even hear their hate speech?! How can you even keep up with their constant racism?" "Oh, I wouldn't go as far as calling it 'racism'. They're just frustrated, that's all..." "Frustrated?! Normal people don't really tend go on a crusade against basically the entire population of this world because they're frustrated!" Then again, referring to Red-Beard and Friends as normal people is perhaps too much of a stretch... "I wonder about that..." replied Miriam while turning around to give me a small smile, her eyes somehow glinting beneath the leather strap that ran over them. I leaned back once again into the driver's seat. Although I didn't get the meaning of that last sentence, she did have a point; if they were 'nice' as she said they were, and as long as they didn't really bring any real harm to anyone, was it really that much of a deal? Besides, why was I getting so angry over such a relatively simple matter? As far as I knew about this world, rape was so common that it might have been the national currency of the place. The fact that even humans could partake in the act shouldn't have been that strange, after a- "I'm telling you! This harpoon will open us a completely new path to Dragon hunting!" "But doesn't it look a bit too heavy? I mean, we don't really want to kill 'er..." "Well, I guess that a corpse is fine too, every once in a while..." On second thoughts, perhaps it was better to forget what I'd just said... Day 11 - Night The eerie glow of the lantern that sat in the middle of the wagon's floor cast shadows over everyone's face. Occasionally, the wagon would tremble a bit, causing the shadows to dance wildly on the wooden walls of the so-called vehicle. "So, does anyone know a song?" asked Red-beard, trying to break the awkward silence that had fallen ever since I'd stumbled back into the inside of the wagon. The rest of us merely shook our heads. For some strange reason, the four beards had suddenly lost their usual characterizing hammy-ness, leaving in its place a sudden dreadful sense of general embarrassment. I, on the other hand, preferred to not point out this fact, in fear of them getting their energy (and, therefore, their insanity) back. "U-um... Ya look cold laddie, wearing only that cloth... Here, I can lend you this..." Gold-beard gently (almost too gently...) placed the battered leather coat from earlier on my shoulders. "Oh. Thanks!" "Really, t-there's no need to thank me..." replied Gold-beard, suddenly going beet red in the face. G-gross! "I mean, I only did it because I thought you were cold and all, so I thought that I ought to give you that old coat and that's what I did... I mean, you must really be an idiot to tell me thank you for something so simple, you idiot..." he went on, his voice trailing off into a weird mumbled whisper. The cart finally creaked to a halt. When Miriam finally stepped back into the wagon, trying to balance five small wooden bowls without being able to see where she was going, we all let out a sigh of relief. "Just let the bread soak in there for a while before eating it..." advised Slightly Blond-Beard, handing me over one of the bowls along with a fairly small chunk of bread. After doing as I'd just been instructed, I took a little cautious nibble out of the bread. My mouth was almost immediately filled by the sweetest taste that I'd felt ever since I'd landed on this mysterious continent (the last fact mostly because of Kina. Apparently there wasn't a single organic substance that the future Best Cook of the Continent couldn't burn...) Remember; if you get out of here alive, your chances of not having to eat charcoal for dinner are going to be extremely limited, so savor the taste! I immediately began to slowly chew, letting the warm white liquid in which I'd soaked the bread trickle down my th-Wait, was this milk? I looked down into my bowl again. Indeed, a lukewarm mass of milk stared back up at me. Just how can a bunch of trappers even afford to take something that goes bad as quickly as milk with them...? I turned around to stare first at Miriam, then back into my bowl. C-could it be? No, wait, she's a Minotau- "Holstaurus." "Huh?" "For your information, I'm a holstaurus. The fact that I can produce milk shouldn't be that strange..." I merely stared at her, my jaw refusing to shut itself closed (causing the milk to slowly dribble back into the bowl). "H-how did you-?" "I could tell from the face you were making..." she replied, smiling. "You're easier to read than an open book~!" Before I even had the chance to try and spit out what still remained in my mouth of the substance, Red-Beard's mighty laugh made the entire wagon shake. "So, newcomer..." he boomed, as soon as he he calmed down a bit. "What's someone you doing way out here, in the middle of nowhere?" "Well... Let's just say that I was separated by my companion." "Hmm? Did I just hear the word 'companion'?" asked Brown-Beard, almost instantly perking up. "Hehe... I wonder if he rather means 'Romantic Interest'?" snickered Slightly Blond-Beard. "Fufufu~ These adventurers, always trying to get into their friends' pants..." There was a mighty roar of laughter. I, on the other hand, was not particularly amused. "So... Mind telling us more about this comp-*snicker*-Companion of yours?" asked Red-Beard With a sigh, I begun telling them about Kina starting from the beginning, slowly getting carried away as I begun telling them them almost everything about my absurd life of the past week and a half. Meeting up with Kina, spending the night with the Holstaurus Farmer, traveling through the mountains, meeting Sef and the vampire sisters, getting teleported across half the continent, meeting (and dumping) Philip, the encounter with the Sandworm... Everything. (Except perhaps for the parts that would have given away that Kina wasn't exactly a human...) I don't know why, but it just felt good to finally get the load off my chest, even if my audience was just a group of clinically horny humans and an only literally horny Holstaurus... ... "So... You're telling us that you abandoned that other human back in the forest?" asked Slightly Blond-Beard as soon as I finished. I nodded. "What an an asshole..." The others nodded in agreement. "Anyway, getting on to the more important stuff-" interrupted Brown-Beard "You're telling me that... Wait, what did you say her name was again?" Crap! I guess they've already started to suspect that she's a Monster Girl... Quick, come up with a normal name! "Susan?" The five of them gave each other a knowing look. "Goblin..." whispered Gold-Beard. "Definitely a Goblin" whispered back Miriam. Dammit! "Yeah, sure... Anyway, I can safely say that neither of you is in love with each other." The room fell suddenly quiet. I couldn't really understand why this statement had suddenly come out of the blue. "H-huh? What do you mean? I'm sure that-!" "Sure? How can you possibly be certain about it?" went on Brown-Beard, more serious than I could have ever dreamed of seeing him before. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Brown-Beard let out a snort, before continuing. "At least, I can't be precisely sure about her feelings, but what you've got going on is more of a weird form of pity than actual love..." "Huh-?" "Face it. You never really felt attracted to her neither romantically nor sexually. What probably really sparked this was when she told you that her "family" had been killed. All that worry, that need to protect that suddenly bloomed out of nowhere... Just simple pity. Easy as that. Eventually, it looks like you ended up trying to become something like a 'father figure' to her..." Brown-Beard took a pause to light up the pipe that had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere into his hand and before exhaling a single puff of foul-smelling smoke within the wagon. The hell is he talking about? "Of course, she let you have your way, probably because she felt that she needed that support. But I'm sure that you'll start to feel purposeless; after all, by what you told us, she's probably one of the strongest beings on this continent, and you'll start wondering just how a weak human like you can continue support her." went on Brown-Beard, a surprisingly calm yet serious look on his face. "Well, let me break you the truth: you can't. Get over it. Not a single serious romantic relationship is ever born from pity." "W-what are you even saying? How can you be so cert-!" "I'm not. But I am familiar with this sort of thing... Just take it from an expert..." Expert...? "Oh, don't get me wrong... You are genuinely worried about her, and that's all good (for now...) But when it comes to real love... Let's just say that you're pretty... Lacking." Having given this final verdict, Brown-Beard took another long puff from his pipe. I simply looked at him; what was all of that about? Why all the concern over how I felt towards K-. "Lacking!" snickered childishly Slightly Blond-Beard, clumsily smashing the atmosphere to bits. "I'll bet you anything that he's just like that under there!" I almost immediately froze in place. "What are you even talking ab-?" "I'll bet tomorrow's ration that he's not!" hollered Gold-Beard from the other side of the wagon. "Yeah right..." "I'm sure of it!" "QUIET!" shouted Red-Beard. Oh thank Go- "There is clearly only one way to settle this..." he continued, taking a few steps towards me. Oh dear God... "Don't worry..." he reassured me with a smile "We're all men here, aren't we?" That's exactly what I'm worried about! "*A-hem*..." "Ah! And a Monster Girl... But enough talk! Here... We... Nnnng-Go!" ... Don't look! "Oh." "Ah..." Come on! Is that all you could come up with?!" "..." And don't you blush like that! It's creepy! "You promised, pay up!" "H-he's young! There's still time!" "A bet is a bet!" "Come on, act your age..." sighed Miriam, feeling around my crotch for my dick. |
| Day 12 - Early Morning The entire wagon suddenly lurched forward, as if it had been stung by a bee. With a loud snort, I soon found myself sitting in an upright position, blinking the sleep off my eyelids and staring dumbfounded at the glorious dawn that was now glistening on the horizon. It was 6 o' clock in the morning, and manliness was in the air. Loud clangs and cracks of metal grinding against wood coming from above the wagon's ceiling had already begun to fill the room, to the point that the place sounded more like a sawmill on wheels than a vehicle of any sort. Slowly getting up, wrapping myself as best as I could with the now old blanket and the tattered coat Gold-Beard had given me, I began to edge closer to the driver's seat at the front of the wagon, only to have my eyes filled by the vision of an almost completely sweat-soaked Miriam. I tried to get her attention, but my calls were almost instantly drowned within the roar of the wagon's wheels. The cart was now rushing along at a sickening speed (at least, for something that looked more like a large crate than something capable of motion...) Clambering further up to investigate on the source of all the noise, I was almost instantly greeted by the ludicrous sight of the last contraption that I expected to see on this vehicle. "Is that-?" "What? Can't hear you, laddie!" yelled back Red-Beard, the only one of the four that were busy with the machine to notice me. "I said, is that a giant ballista?" I yelled back. "The heck is a ballista?" "Well, that oversized crossbow that you're trying to use..." "Oh. This? We just call her "Margareth"... Or "Margie", for short..." Behind him, Gold-Beard was busy loading something that looked like a small anchor, secured to the base of the machine by a long length of robust chain, onto the ballista, as Brown-Beard and Slightly Blond-Beard began to draw back the machine's long string by slowly turning a large winch. "We generally keep her up here most of the time, using her only every now and then." explained Red-Beard. I was getting the feeling that this was one of those "now"s... "Whenever we feel like taking a little detour from what we usually hu-" "HERE IT COMES!" shouted Gold-Beard. "Already here?" Red-Beard swore under his breath. "Wait. What's 'here'?" Red-Beard gave me a wide grin. "A Dragon." I opened my mouth to say something, but was immediately interrupted by an ear-shattering roar. Spinning around towards the source of the noise, I began to feel the blood freeze inside my veins. In my whole two weeks of travel, I don't think that I'd ever come across something more intimidating than the colossal chunk of scale and muscle that was tailing us: even its sheer wing-beat made deep whooshing noises that would have probably been capable of sweeping someone right off their feet. It let out another roar. before slowly shortening the distance that separated us with a couple of flaps. "That's a dragon?! It's more like a giant lizard than anything else! Are you sure you even want to be inside ofthat thing?" Without even bothering to reply, Red-Beard immediately turned around towards Slightly Blond-Beard. "Is it all ready to go?" "Ready to fire at your call!" Brown-Beard immediately grabbed a handle that was sticking out on the side of the ballista and began to take aim. As the wing-beats kept growing louder, the Four Beards began to fall silent one by one. Eventually, only the howling wind and the constant growl of the dragon could be heard. ... "STOP!" Below us, Miriam immediately bore her feet into the soft ground beneath, much to her "co-worker's" general frustration. The entire wagon behind her slowly lurched into a sudden halt. As the Dragon began zooming past it, the loud guitar-like twang of the ballista seemed to echo for an instant across the grassy plains. The anchor traced an arch just above the monster's neck, before plummeting back down towards the ground. Thanks to its weight, however, it quickly rose up again from beneath the dragon's neck, wrapping the creature with the chains to which it was attached. The Dragon let out a frustrated, head-splitting roar, before trying to fly back into the clouds from which it had so suddenly appeared, only to be yanked back down to the ground. "We got her!" cheered Slightly Blond-Beard. The wood beneath us began to creek ominously. "Eh...?" Suddenly, with a hollow snapping sound, a good portion of the roof was violently ripped out. "Son of a...!" Still trying to realize what was going on, I barely managed to notice the short figure of Gold-Beard being dragged over the edge of the wagon by the chain that he was still clenching tightly. Almost uncannily, I was able to grab a hold of his legs All right! Now it's only a matter of reeling him back- hmm? Unfortunately, try as I might, my chances to win a tug-of-war against a dragon with nothing but the feeble human muscles of a twenty-something year-old where starting to become clearer. "Y-you're pulling my pants off!" "DOES THIS EVEN SOUND LIKE THE RIGHT TIME TO BE WHINING ABOUT THAT?! Anyway, just let go already; we're not that high up!" Gold-Beard gave me a weird look. "I-I mean, I promise that I'll still hold on to you!" "Urgh..." The chains rattled loudly before shooting off into the sky as Gold-Beard let go of his hold. A moment later, I felt as if someone had just punched me straight in my wounded guts. "*Pant* Thanks laddie..." You're welcome, but please just get off my stomach! I could only bring myself to let out a weak "Blaargh..." "Damn! We lost her..." "Don't count on it... Dragons are too proud to scamper off before such a challenge." As if to drive Brown-Beard's point further home, another angry roar echoed down from above the clouds. Red-Beard turned around towards the rest of the trappers. "What are you waiting for? Get back to your positions!" he ordered "She'll be for another round soon..." "How's Margareth?" "Looks like she took some damage, but we should still be good for another couple of shots..." "You keep an eye to the sky and give us a shout when she begins to swoop down!" "Awright!" Once again, the four trappers began running from one side to the other of the wagon, picking up the heaviest items without letting out more than the occasional grunt. It was almost as if this was just another normal day in the lives of these so-called monster hunters. As if reeling in Dragons as if they were tuna was something like a special meal you got every day on Tuesdays. "Dragon in sight, coming straight at us from the front!" Indeed, the Dragon had already begun swoop down on us, aiming right for the wagon. "Damn. Which projectile do we use?" "Load me the BackSnapper I showed you yesterday. I'll handle this shot..." Slightly Blond-Beard smirked "A chance to test it right away... Do you think I could let something like this pass...?" "What?! You kidding?! She's coming straight for us! Even if you do pull it off, she'll still crush you with her weight!" protested Brown-Beard. "Well, what do you suggest? Would you rather try using another pair of Chained Anchors and watch them bounce off her back?" Brown-Beard stared angrily at his fellow Trapper, before giving a small shrug. "Tch. Whatever... Just make sure you don't mess up" "It's settled! Help me load up Margie again!" The dragon was already approaching fast, it's belly barely hovering a dozen of feet away from the ground. Once the other three had loaded the ballista with a small metal sphere, Slightly Blond-Beard began to take aim. There it was again, the powerful wing-beat of the colossal monstrosity. Just as for the previous shot, everyone on the wagon held their collective breaths as the dragon swooped down towards us at a breakneck speed. Time seemed to slow down as the creature edged closer and closer to us. The ballista twanged again, and the small sphere was propelled towards the dragon. There was a strange mechanical noise as the sphere's metal casing erupted in all directions, leaving in its place... A dark blanket. The Dragon reacted by reflex at this sudden apparition, trying to slow down and dodge the sheet that was being thrown in its face. That's the BackBreaker?! "It's not over yet!" A yellowish figure rushed past me, charging at full speed into the dragon. There was a dull snapping sound. Oh. There it is... Slightly Blond-Beard gracefully landed before the groaning heap that had been a mass of pure muscle and teeth until about a couple of seconds ago. "Come on, you've still got some fight in ya... Get up!" he commanded, resting on his shoulder one of those large projectiles from earlier ("Chained Anchors" or something like that... Only that this one doesn't seem to have any chains on it... Then does that make it an Anchor or what? Anyway, how is he even able to wield something like that?!) When the Dragon finally managed to pick itself up again, it had changed its form back to a more humanoid one. "*Wheeze* Tch... You shouldn't push that luck of yours that much, human..." The Dragon spat on the ground, as if the word human had burned her tongue "*Wheeze* You might get hurt sooner than you think..." The dragon smirked. "I normally don't harm men, but you smell pretty funny... *Wheeze* I guess that counts as an exception!" In a flash, the dragon opened its mouth, as an ominous spark began to glow wi- "Hmm? I smell funny? Oh, that's odd. I was sure that I'd washed my hand last night..." Please tell me that what you're referring to isn't what I think it is... "...!" With a quick sprint, Slightly Blond-Beard had somehow managed to get behind the Dragon. The Dragon tried turning around, but was quickly immobilized by a blow to the back. She tried picking herself back up again, but Slightly Blond-Beard's boot that came crashing down on the back of her head kept her pinned down. "Oh and by the way, the only one of us who's going to get hurt here is the one who has a good couple of broken ribs and hasn't flown off while she was still in time..." Slightly Blond-Beard looked up at us and flashed a warm smile. "What are you waiting for? She's all good to go!" As the rest of us approached her, the dragon let out a vicious snarl, before having her face pushed deeper into the mud. "I say the laddie gets the first shot!" proposed Red-Beard, pushing me a bit forward. There was a cheer of approval. "Whelp, you heard 'em! Go on! Just make sure to get out of there before you kill yourself..." Easy for you to say... "Don't worry, we'll hold her still for you! Also, feel free to use anything you like: fingers, arms, sticks, an anchor... Anything!" said Red-Beard with chilling cheerfulness, as he and the other two quickly grabbed hold of her legs. "Should we spread it out a bit?" "Eh, why not..." The snarl from earlier had now turned into something that sounded more like the yelp of a wet puppy. I took a shy step forward, letting my finger run on her surprisingly soft scales. It's... warm. I wasn't able to think about anything else. Further up, the Dragon let out a pitiful little moan. Was I... Aroused by this? I looked down. Looks like it... Well the doctor had said something that I'd still be able to do it if I knew my limit... And, besides, it was only fair that I'd be able to do this. I mean weren't all of these things also constantly trying to rape me too? ... I took a quick step back. An image had entered my head. It wasn't only because of the fact that I could very easily lose my life in such a thoughtless way. There was something else in there too... All of them...? Suddenly, I felt nothing but dirty. I took another step back. "Hmm? Something wrong, laddie?" "L-look..." I stammered "Can't we just let her go for this time?" I could feel their four stares burn into me. "Please?" "H-?" "What?!" boomed furiously Slightly Blond-Beard, the faint traces of a mad glint beginning to glow in his eyes. "I mean-" "WHAT?!" repeated Slightly Blond-Beard, as he began to lift the Anchor from the Dragon's back. I gulped loudly. I knew it. Everyone on this wagon is insane... I should have just shut up and do as I was to-... A shadow was suddenly cast over me. Gold-Beard had stepped forward. What followed was the third, perhaps most intense moment of silence that I had to go through. Suddenly, all of us where merely floating into the depths of space. It wasn't like we were holding our breaths this time: it was as if we didn't even know that there was any air to begin with. It was Slightly Blond-Beard who first broke the silence, spatting loudly on the grass as he lifted his foot off the Dragon's head and stepped off her back. "Whatever. Let's just go... You spoiled the mood..." As he bumped past me, he leaned in a bit and whispered "Feel free to screw as many Goblins as you like, but try pulling off that crap and getting between me and a Dragon again and I swear that it will be you that we'll start spreading out on the mud..." Having said that, Slightly Blond-Beard slowly trudged towards the wagon. I gulped again, but the knot that had just tied itself in my throat refused to undo itself. When I felt someone touch my shoulder a few moments later, I could have sworn that I jumped at least three feet in the air. I looked up. Gold-Beard simply smiled back reassuringly. "I didn't hear much... How did it go?" inquired Miriam, as she begun to push the wagon forward again. I let out a long sigh as I slid back into the driver's seat. "I wonder..." We were quiet for the rest of the day. |
| Still trying to catch up... *Groan* Day 12 - Night What followed was the most awkward dinner I had ever attended. Of course, rape threats had always the bad habit of turning even the most cheerful event into a collective awkward silence filled only by the quick stealthy glances of the people who are currently weighing their chances of being able to leave the place under the pretext of "stepping out for a quick smoke". "Mmmm? What's with the heavy atmosphere in here?" asked Miriam, hopping inside. "It's almost as if someone needs to go to the bathroom!" Seizing this chance, Gold-Beard almost immediately stood up and scrambled out of the wagon. "Thought so..." "Let's just say that something happened..." muttered hurriedly Brown-Beard, lighting up his pipe for the fourth time in the past half-hour. Red-Beard stole a worried glance at both me and Slightly Blond-Beard. Miriam tilted her head a bit, unsure about what was exactly going on, before quickly lightening up again. "All right! Who's up for some dinner?" she exclaimed cheerfully, lifting up a couple of half-filled bowls of milk. The awkward silence persisted. "Oh, I just ate..." Since when does "just" mean twelve hours ago? "I'm on a diet..." What?! "Tch" "..." "Oh, I'm fi-" I could feel Miriam glaring at me from beneath the leather strap, as she pushed the bowl closer to my face. "Well... I guess I could force myself to have a bite..." Miriam immediately brightened up, dumping the bowl in my hands. As everyone slowly began to nibble the little chunks of hardened bread that had been handed out, I glanced down at the almost lewd-looking whitish substance. Now, how do I get rid of this...? I glanced about the room, searching for a valid excuse to leave the company of the madmen. No such luck. I tried giggling the liquid a bit inside the bowl. Maybe if I think of it as normal cow milk it will go down easier... I took a cautious, quick sip out of it, and my appetite suddenly took a turn for the worst. Without even bothering with excuses, I immediately dashed outside of the wagon, where I happily sputtered out what little was still left of the substance in my mouth. No use. One thing was drinking fresh milk, but drinking "freshly squeezed" milk in the company of the owner and source of that milk was a completely different matter... I looked up. On the bright side, though, I've somehow managed to make it out of there... The sound of sloshing water that resounded from the other side of the wagon being a clear indication that Gold-Beard hadn't really been lying that much when he'd managed to get out, I quickly opted to steer as clear as possible from that side of the wagon. As I leaned against the cart's wooden planks, finally taking in one of the few moments of peace that I'd had in these past two days. As I lazily looked up at the moonless sky, a sharp, surprised yelp on the other side of the cart brought me almost too soon back to my senses. Cautiously, I edged closer towards the source of the noise, covering my eyes; as far as I knew, I was on an island filled with sex-craving girls of every shape and size, and seeing someone else's manhood was really nowhere on my to-do list at the moment... Turning the corner, my eyes shut tight, I warily called out the trapper's name. "G-Gold-Beard? You okay there?" ... I took another careful step forward. *Slosh* As the tingling warm feeling that had now enveloped my foot began creeping up the length of my length, I was only able to stop myself from letting out a scream of disgust by covering my mouth. Unfortunately, this also meant that my eyes were now opened wider than ever. ... I'll admit that the first thing that popped into my mind was "Where's Gold-Beard?", followed shortly by "Whew... Still straight." Despite the fact that the only source of light within miles came from the few lanterns that hanged at the outside of the wagon, the girl dressed in baggy clothing that now stood before me was red enough in the face that I was starting to get the feeling that she might start glowing at any second now... She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Removing as quickly as possible my foot from the bucket that I'd let it crash down into, I bent forward. "Err... You dropped this..." I muttered uncomfortably, handing over the beard that I'd just picked off the ground. "A-... Ri-... Th-... I-..." she stammered, taking the golden mass of fur from my hands. Suddenly worried by the fact that she seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilating, I almost immediately grabbed her by the shoulders. Bad move... The change was almost immediate. As soon as I touched her, the girl's body almost instantly went as rigid as a wooden board. Slightly shocked by this sudden reaction, I almost immediately let go of her. "S-sorry Gol-..." I quickly scanned her body for another recognizable physical trait that might replace the Beard. "-I mean, Flat-Chest..." At this point, I'm pretty sure that her face shot straight from red to deep crimson. Flat-Chest ran for it. When I made it up to the wagon's roof, Brown-Beard (Sort of rich-Chest? Or is that just normal fat...? I have no idea how I'm supposed to refer to these people anymore...!) was already sitting there, legs crossed. "So you've finally met the real Ida, right?" "Who, Flat Chest?" Brown-Beard gave me a strange look. "I mean, y-yes..." "She's a nice girl..." remarked Brown-Beard, letting out a puff of smoke and following it with her gaze as it rose into the starry sky "If it weren't for her friend, I doubt that she'd be even here doing this sort of stuff to begin with..." I sat down by Brown-Beard's side. "So, fill me in... Are all of you on this wagon women?" "Sure thing... The beards generally do a pretty good job at attracting most monsters, and having them tight around our necks also helps a bit with keeping the tone in check..." "But, why?! Why go through all of this?" Brown-Beard shrugged. "You know, the days when men were more common around these parts are pretty much gone now. Not to mention that the competition is pretty stiff when over 95% of the continent's population is made basically of creatures that seem to have been created for the specific purpose satisfying any possible fetish a man may possibly even dream about... It's quite surprising how any of us are still around to begin with, really..." She took a pause to take another puff from her pipe. "All of the girls here on this wagon have their own little grudge. You know Elysande, the one who you got into a fight with?" I nodded, a faint trace of the uncomfortable feeling from earlier at dinner suddenly rising up again... "She once used to be the descendant of a long line of Crusaders of the human cause, before her husband got raped a few years ago. She left her family shortly after that... Ida, one of her servants, is here with her because she also feels partly responsible for causing that incident..." "As for the girl whom you refer to as Red-Beard," went on Brown-Beard, smiling "-I'm pretty sure that she's just here because of the lifestyle..." So what you're pretty much telling me is that only one of you four actually has a grudge... "So... What about you?" Brown-Beard stared up at the night sky. "It's a long story. You probably wouldn't want to hear it..." "Oh. All right then..." Brown Beard turned around to look at me. "I mean, it's a really long story..." "I get it... Moving o-" "Seriously, I'm so certain that you wouldn't want to listen to it that-" "All right! Let's just talk about something else, then!" "Oh." Brown-Beard looked slightly taken aback. ... "Are you sure you don't want-?" "Positive." I cut short. Brown-Beard let out a long, smoky groan. "Brown-Beard?" "Hmmm?" "Are you good guys?" "Depends on what you mean by guys..." she chuckled. "*Sigh* Let me rephrase that... Are you actually good people?" Brown-Beard though about this for a moment, scratching her head. "Well, we hunt, hurt and rape creatures that otherwise wouldn't probably even think about harming us if we weren't disguised as men, we chant about how humans are meant to be the superior race while hypocritically relying on a Holstaurus to get around and we do all of this mostly for simple petty reasons. So, no, I feel safe in saying that we're pretty bad people..." "Good." I muttered as I began picking myself up, a small smile on my face. "I was starting to worry that I'd have to apologize to that Elysande of yours..." Brown-Beard grinned back, letting out yet another puff of smoke through her nostrils. Silence fell once again between the two of us, as I began to slowly dust myself off. "How much time has it been since you've last cleaned your strap-on?" hissed angrily Red-Beard from beneath the roof's wooden planks, just loud enough for us to hear her. "You know that these things go cleaned once every two days!" "Can it, pipsqueak..." growled back the woman supposedly called Elysande. "..." Brown-Beard snickered at my dumbfounded expression. "Well, what did you expect? You still gotta have something to churn the butter, if you know what I mean..." |
| Day 13 - Afternoon "Looks like we didn't make it in time..." sighed Brown-Beard, gazing wistfully at the small wooden fort perched at the top of the small hill that now stood before us. "Aaaaw... I was already looking forward to see how many of these could really fit inside of her ass..." muttered a very disappointed Red-Beard, tying the suspiciously large bag that she had been holding back to her belt. Huh... One day you find yourself surrounded by dangerous bearded rapists, the next day they magically turn into merely "lusty" and "sexually aggressive" women. Oh how I love the double standard... "What are you talking about?" "The Giantess." snorted Elysande "Looks like she's already made it home..." The other three began to mournfully hop back up into the wagon. "Whelp. I guess that's the end of that adventure." "Where to, then?" "Let's just head back to town..." "Ooh! How about we try pulling off some good ol' "Rape Switcheroos" at the tavern again?" "The tavern it is, then!" "..." "Wait! Are you just going to give up on the Giant just like that?" I called out, scrambling into the cart On bright side, I'd finally reached my destination. On the downside, though, I just didn't have enough meat-shields if I was to take a Giantess head-on right now... "Look, laddie... Taking on a Giant on the move is no easy business, but having to face one that has just settled down inside its very own fort is damn near to impossible." explained sternly Brown-Beard "Sad but true." My heart sank. Indeed, even with the cover of the madmen, even getting to Fifi without being accidentally smushed into a crimson puddle was probably going to be a miracle without a solid plan. "I'm sure your friend will be fine..." tried cheering me up Flat-Chest (after seeing her without a beard, it was pretty hard to call her anything else...) "Friend?" "Well, pet." "Oh. Right..." Come to think of it, why was I even bothering to try and rescue the little brat to begin with? Sure, I had initially felt a desire to protect her, but in my case that had almost instantly vanished the moment she tried to murder me and Kina about roughly seven hours after we'd spared her life... Because it's the last thing the two of us were doing together... A little question squirming inside of my mind as soon as I realized this. Supposing I even managed to rescue the Vampire? What would I do then? Just wander about aimlessly across the continent until something finally raped me until my organs were mashed into a pulp? Before the full strength of this continent, I was pretty much as defenseless as a newborn baby... Hell if I know... The soft touch of the fabric that I was now suddenly clenching tightly between my hands brought me back down to Earth. I stared down at the skirt that was now sitting on my lap. "Huh?" "If you want to get crushed there, be my guest." grunted the slightly blond-ish beard that was being thrust in my face. "But this should at least help you get inside those walls..." I looked around. The other beards, suddenly comprehending the direction that this conversation was taking, slowly got up and began to inch towards me. "Hold on, wha-?" Soon enough, all that I was able to see was four sadistic grins embedded deep within a thick mass of facial hair. .... "I-I feel violated..." "Oh, don't be such a wuss! It's just an impression." snickered Red-Beard. "What's is the meaning of this?!" I angrily pointed at the short dark-green skirt that I was now wearing. "That's mine! Treat it with care!" pointed out Brown-Beard, as she did her best to keep a straight face. "And, more importantly, what's up with these?" I went on, furiously groping the two large bits of bread that had been safely tucked and secured beneath my coat. "Aroof!" barked jokingly Red-Beard. "Keep those puppies down, ma'am!" At this point, not even Elysande was able to stop herself from giggling awkwardly. Never before had I felt more the urge to crawl into a hole... "Why am I getting the feeling that this won't fool anybody...?" I muttered, examining with increasing worry the dark shades of a stubble that still lingered on my chin in the reflection of the razor Brown-Beard had just used on me. Let's just hope that bearded ladies are fairly popular around these parts... "Oh, don't worry... Many monsters in these areas prefer to treat human breasts like the plague and tend to steer clear... Just keep away from the undead, merfolk, slimes, doppelgangers, dullahans or anyone else who might have a different sexual preference and you should be fine..." Okay, this is really starting to sound like a bad plan... "They won't do you much good against a Giant, but they should at least make it easier to get through the front door..." I awkwardly thanked them, not really sure if I was supposed to be grateful or furious about the whole matter, before slowly leaving the wagon. Just as I was about to leave the cursed band of Trappers, I felt a light tap on the shoulder. "T-take this... You may need it..." whispered Flat-Chest, gently handing over one of the strap-ons. I looked down at it, as a sticky reminder of the vast number of monster-girls that had been violated by the tool slowly dribbled into my hand. I was at loss of words. "I-I..." "You can thank me later..." smiled back Flat-chest with unexpected warmth, as she hopped back onto the wagon. No, I'm pretty sure that thanking you was one of the least of my worries right now... I desperately tried to rub off the damp patch that had begun to form itself in my cupped hands, but to no avail... As I began making my way up the hill, I swore that I heard in the distance a faint "I hate to see her go, but I love watching her leave...", followed by a general round of giggling. ... Despite its rather colossal size, the fort was awfully quiet; sure the ground occasionally shook when the hulking figure of the 8-year old giant rose from behind the sturdy palisades but, apart from that, the place sounded almost completely empty. As I cautiously approached what I supposed was the front gate, judging by its massive size, a short, whitish figure peeped out from behind the colossal iron portcullis. Guards? Well, I guess that sneaking in without being seen is not going to be an option now... "Hello? Anyone he-?" In an instant, a very literally bony arm immediately lashed from behind the sturdy iron bars, groping my newly acquired chest. "Mmm. Rock-hard, I see..." echoed a monotonous voice that seemed to rise from the depths of an ancient cavern. *Gulp* With a loud metallic creaking noise, the portcullis rose just high enough for a full-sized human to walk beneath. Soon enough, the whitish figure of the bony arm's owner stepped from out of the shadows into my view. "Can't exactly say that you're just what I was looking for-" echoed the voice that seemed to be coming from behind the bony skull that I was staring at "-but I guess that you'll have to do..." "W-who are you?" The skeleton crouched down beneath the portcullis before rising right in front of me, its grinning face merely inches away from me. "Oh, just the guard of Mistress' Rear Gate (which I soon, after protecting it from nasty mischief-doers such as yourself, will proceed to carefully yet persistently engage with...)" echoed the spectral voice. So you're pretty much just another pervert... "Oh, don't get me wrong: there used to be way more of us around here long time ago... Well, our work-force was sort of halved when that Orc ran off with her lover half a decade ago..." the abyssal echo went on with a tone of voice that sounded like a weird mix between emotionless and absent-minded cheerfulness. "N-neat..." I muttered, literally smacking the skeleton's arm off as it tried to unbutton the top of my coat. "You know, you sound awfully... lively for someone..." "-Someone who's supposed to be dead?" interrupted the skeleton, crouching down to pick back up her shattered arm. "I get that a lot..." "Err... Yeah." "It's quite simple, actually... As long as I'm able to keep my levels of demonic energy high-" She (at least, I assumed it was a she... Her monotonous voice made it pretty hard to tell and, thanks to my extended period with the Trappers, I doubted that I'd ever be able to recognize between the two genders ever again...) quickly produced a small phial filled with a suspiciously familiar whitish goo, before chugging it down like some weird cocktail "-I'm still able to retain some of my rationality..." I'm starting to get the feeling that "rationality" may not be the right term here... "You know, there used to be a time when I used to be quite the successful dungeon guard, but that got old pretty soon... When you've been around for as long as I have, dicks just don't seem to cut it anymore... You perform a few hundreds of weird positions and then, BAM! The appeal is just all gone..." the Skeleton calmly went on, quickly pushing me against the wall. What the-? "So I've recently decided taking up experimenting with the other gender." Her rigid arm slowly began lifting up my skirt. "Just for a bit of variety, you see..." Frankly, the idea of being raped by a lesbian Skeleton wasn't bothering me as much as the fact that it was perhaps the most talkative corpse that I'd ever seen in my entire life. That is, until she finally grabbed hold of my family jewels. The Skeleton looked up at me, before opening her jaw to let out a chilling, moan-like sigh. "Male..." "Come on, let's get this over with already..." groaned the skeleton, a faint trace of disappointment in her monotonous drone, suddenly getting down on her knees and producing another one of the strange phials from earlier. Although I was happy that the guard was finally starting to groan more like the living dead should, my current situation hadn't exactly improved. "And stop struggling! Come on, do you really think that I want to go through with this too?!" "Well, yes..." I protested, ceasing temporarily my attempts to free myself from her grasp. "Only for a living..." she admitted, stripping me of my skirt. |
| Day 13 - 4:42 pm With the precisely timed accuracy and emotional involvement of a mechanical engine, the skeleton's hand began jerking my cock at an almost perfectly steady rhythm. As her bony knuckles began clenching tighter to my dick, a cold chill ran down my spine. It felt like... like... Like boning a frozen Christmas turkey... Seriously, who would have thought that a hand-job from a corpse could feel so unappealing? "Hold still, will you? Come on, it's already gonna be a miracle if I even manage to fill up this container within the next half-hour, so don't make my job even more difficult... Just because I've been around for a couple of thousand years than you doesn't mean I have time to waste..." Come to think of it, there was something curious about the entire situation; although the skeleton was clearly holding me pinned to the wall with her free hand, it certainly didn't feel like I was being pinned down. If being held in place by Kina was like having an entire mountain placed on your stomach, the Skeleton's hold felt more like being buried in a shallow pit of sand at the nearby playground... I'm starting to get the feeling that the reason as to why that Orc from earlier managed to find a husband so quickly compared to an apparently millenarian skeleton has something to do with the latter's physical and sexual prowess... "Come on... Just a bit more... Ha! No, wait... *Groan* Still nothing..." Well, she looks pretty absorbed in her activity right now... Maybe I really have a chance at pulling this off... "Hua!" With a satisfying crack, I quickly batted the skeleton's head clean off her shoulders. As the skull landed with a crunch on the dust-ridden ground, the rest of the skeleton's body went almost completely limp, letting go of its hold around my manhood. I quickly pulled back up my skirt (Hey, it beat waving my dong around in the freezing afternoon wind...), disentangling myself from the bony mess that had tumbled over me and slipping silently underneath the portcullis. I had just finished dusting myself off when an ominous dull clutter brought my attention back to the opponent that I had somehow miraculously defeated a few minutes ago. I found myself staring back into the empty gaze of the creature's skull. She opened her toothy maw, letting out a disappointed, hollow "Ah." "Err... Look, it's been nice knowing you and all, but I really think I should be on my way now..." I apologized, trying to figure out a way to lower the portcullis while she was still distracted. "Aah..." she groaned on, slowly beginning to slip beneath the gates, edging closer towards me With every slow, uncertain step that the Skeleton took towards me, I quickly accompanied it with a cautious step backwards on my part. Why am I getting the feeling that a couple of decades of her developing an actual personality have just been tossed out of the window...? My mind raced as I tried to decide as to whether it would be better to fight or flee. For one, she hadn't proven herself to be a particularly fearsome opponent earlier, seeing as I'd been able to defeat her with my puny human smack minutes ago... Maybe I really did have a chance at- "BIG BRO!" rumbled a thunder-like voice high above me. On the other hand, running as if my pants (or, in this case, skirt...) had been lit on fire seemed like a perfectly valid plan of action at the moment... Scrambling as fast as my bare feet would allow me, I scurried from beneath the relative safety that the gates offered and into the dusty center of the small fort. Despite my various attempts at finding some sort of construction that might offer some form of shelter from the towering mass of meat that was stomping wildly within the fort's walls, my Luck seemed to be off on some vacation at a nearby beach resort that day. "Wait up!" squealed excitedly the Giantess, bringing her colossal foot down with a mighty crash almost literally inches away from me. "What are you doing here, big bro?" I tried to ignore the waterfall of cold sweat that had just begun running down my butt-crack. "Err... Well, I just sorta came to look around...?" What was that supposed to be, a question?!" "Oh!" I could already tell by the way that she'd started trying to kill me by hopping from one foot to the other that she was starting to get excited. "Do you like it? I made it all myself!" I whistled, genuinely impressed (despite the fact that my chances of being turned into a sticky red paste were starting to get increasingly higher with every second that I spent close to the Giant...) "Really?" "Well," she admitted, pointing at a large, wobbly-looking structure in the middle of the clearing "Just a bit of it..." Oh. "Well, it's been nice to see you... I think I'll be leaving now..." "Aaaaw... Already leaving? Are you sure you don't wanna play?" sighed loudly the Giant, gently poking me in the stomach. "Umm, I really-" "How about some tag?" she interrupted "Winner gets to do what she wants with the loser!" "Hey, what's with that "what she wants"? I'm a guy!" The Giant simply replied by displaying a cheeky grin filled with razor sharp teeth. Oh. I'm guessing that this is the time to run, then? "I'm gonna getcha, big bro!" I sure hope not! I thought as I scurried as best as I could across the clearing, a mountain of muscles and very little brain that could very easily crush me with a single misstep close on my heels. Despite possessing the impressive slightly-below-average running speed of a normal human being (which was somehow still enough to avoid being smashed for now), I had learned to never expect much for long from my scrawny pair of legs; if I was gonna make it out of here alive, I would have to find a decent hiding space. My gaze wondered back to the unsafe-looking building. A decent spot! Not one that could fall apart if someone accidentally leaned on it! The oppressive crash of the giant's feet reminded me that now wasn't the time to be picky... Putting my soul into this final sprint, I turned the corner and into the building as quick as I could. Outside, the ground trembled as the Giant skidded to a halt. There was a moment of silence, as the confused loli looked around for her prey. "Aaaaw... Come on, don't be such a spoil-sport... Come on out from wherever you're hiding, already!" Forget it, kiddo... Looking around the badly constructed building's single room, there was pretty much nothing of interest; granted, it wasn't easy taking care of the interiors of a room when you were pretty much taller than a tree, but that only made the single trapdoor sitting in the smack middle of the floor even more suspicious... The little door opened with a loud creak, revealing the rough set of stairs barely scraped into the rock beneath. A chilling gust of air rushed out from the catacombs. "A secret passage." I muttered to myself. "What are the odds?" |
| Day 13 - 4:54 pm The wet splat of my bare feet as I walked down the crude stone staircase echoed through the thick darkness; the sunlight from above had long stopped feebly filtering through the trapdoor, and the only way that I could possibly proceed now was by keeping my hand pressed against the freezing stone walls that I assumed were surrounding me. That's strange... I've been walking down this secret passage for the past five minutes, and yet I still haven't seen a single ancient conveniently lit torch anywhere... I didn't notice the cell that I'd accidentally stumbled into until I found myself smashing face-first into the wall. Despite the heavy swearing that followed, I was still able to hear the ominous metallic screech of metal grinding against stone behind me. Still holding my bleeding nose I spun around, but the loud clang that followed told me that I was already too late. "Hello?" I called, squinting into the shadows. The only reply that I got was the steady groan, followed by a satisfied click, of old keys turning inside of a lock. I tried calling out into the darkness again out into the darkness again, ignoring the chill that had begun running down my spine. "Hello?" ... "Oh? Look who came to visit poor little 'Fifi'..." The meager remains of what little I had eaten those past few days began to bubble in my stomach. There was something off about those words that had suddenly echoed from the the darkness before me, as if the speaker was doing her best at trying to restrain herself from tearing my leg off with her teeth. I didn't dare to open my mouth. A soft patter, just a couple of feet away from where I was standing. "You know, I was really-" A sudden powerful blow to the back of my leg forced me down on my knees. "-hoping that you and that Goblin would show up to 'save me' or whatnot, but this is more than I could have possibly asked for..." Any trace of the vampire's collected demeanor from barely four days ago was now completely absent in the eerily happy tone of voice that I was hearing just now. "Oh? What's with all that silence? Surely you did not think that a colossal infant and a senile skeleton could properly restrain me down here?" Another quick blow to the stomach almost instantly sent me down on my side, gasping for the musty air that lingered within the cell. "You know," whispered the voice, her warm breath running down my neck "We used to have much more than that miserable little mansion hidden inside that tiny valley, my sister and I. We used to wander the Northern villages, stealing the spirit of every man we encountered or sought out; it mattered not if they were already the property of another... Their natural weakness always made them an easy prey, and our natural power always aided us whenever the owner proved herself to be particularly... adamant about the matter." I swore that she had begun to grin. "People feared our mere presences, our lack of care for the number and nature of our victims and enemies. All that was enough to us, though, was each other..." As I lay there wheezing, tiny little hands began to slowly unbutton my large coat "But that didn't last, of course." The hands stopped. "Almost literally drunk on our own hubris, we tried to target one of the four "untouchable" men of the time... Lady Kioko's husband." "Do you know that both Vampires and victims have a surge of lust when their spirits are being drained?" whispered the voice, now inches away from my nose. I wheezed back into her face. The blows hadn't been strong as much as treacherously well-aimed, as evidenced by my the stitches that seemed to be scalding my flesh away. "Of course not... How silly of me to expect so much from a man..." The hands began slowly unbuttoning my shirt again. "That night, things just suddenly slipped beyond our grasp." went on the voice. "The man had more spirit in him than we could have ever imagined and, that time, the idea of controlling our instinctive urges just seemed so out of the question..." "When the Lord of those lands finally stepped into her husband's room, only to find him lost deep within my sister, what did you think was her reaction?" Not even bothering about listening to the pipsqueak's drone-like monologue, I slowly started rising back up on my feet. Another blow. Sharp jolts of pain ran through my innards, as if someone had begun wedging and twisting a knife between my guts. The voice giggled. "You'd be foolish to think that she'd even dream of punishing the two of us. No, Kioko's kindness is far too great for such pointless punishments... The Lord instead decided to gift us with her blessing..." She spat out the last word, as if it had been burning her tongue. "How many vampires do you think would be willing to aid a member of their family that brought into this world one of the few things that could easily kill them?" Another blow. The metal-like taste of blood had already started to fill my mouth again. "How many of them would have cared at that point?" "Once mighty and renowned, we were now living like refugees and in fear of our own child, a creature less than a quarter of a single century old... The only thing that was remained from those old days of glory was each other. And yet you still had the mere gall to take her away from me?!" She struck me once more, this time knocking out what little air I was still trying to gulp down. "What where you even hoping to achieve by breaking into these dungeons, fool? You and your little friend murdered my sister!" Another blow. I desperately began to cough out the blood that had begun to run inside my lungs, only have my breath once again cut off by yet another kick. My lower abdomen had already begun to grow numb (Not a good sign... Definitely not a good sign...) when I slowly felt the Vampire's fingers gently run along the stitch marks that kept my guts from spilling out. "Sister did this, right?" she asked, her previous rage now strangely followed by an equally ominous dreamy tone. "Going straight to hand-to-hand combat is so typical of her... Why, I'm sure that this wound must have almost reached the spine." Trying to rack up as many of my wits as possible, I slowly struggled as best as I could. Unfortunately, the only part of my body that seemed to react to the brain's panicky commands to fight back was little Lieutenant Johnson, who proudly reared his head up in one of the worst cases of bad timing that I'd experienced in a good half of my short life. Even the Vampire sounded surprised, judging by the sudden silence that now filled the room. Good, I've caught her off guard. Now, if only I could just force my arm to move a good dozen of inches forward, I still might be able to break her nose... There was an amused giggle. "How disgusting! Does this punishment arouse you, human? Pitiful!" Don't give yourself that much credit, babe... Just thank the Rigor Mortis... I smiled sadly at my own stupid joke. If this was going to be the end, I might as well die with some style. And, in this case, by "with some style" probably meant "with a badly placed dick joke on my lips"... "Well, if you enjoy that treatment so much, I think that we might share some common ground after all..." I slowly felt her straddle herself on my now almost completely erect penis. "Both of us want you dead, after all... So I'll make sure I'll give it to you in the most painful way possible~" |
| Day 13 - 4:49 pm This is the part when something or someone unexpectedly comes to my rescue, right? All of my nerves began buzzing frantically in alarm and excitement as the tip of my penis gently prodded the vampire's surprisingly small labia. Right...? Suddenly grabbing tightly to the sides of my open coat, the Vampire brought her whole body down on my dick. The initial surge of almost ecstasy-inducing pleasure gave way to an almost immediate blast of sheer pain. The vampire clumsily lifted her pelvis again leaning heavily against my chest; it felt as if someone had just dipped a spoon inside of me and was slowly scooping out my intestines. Feverishly fumbling to grab a hold of my cock again, the vampire prepared herself for another blow. Even I could now hear the loud thumping of her heart race furiously, accompanied by her loud dog-like panting and pained whines. "I-it hurts sister..." she sniffled, rubbing off with a snort the tears. "It hurts but... For you..." Her fingernails now tearing into my flesh, as she grabbed hold of my belly with renewed strength. "For you, sister!" Her pelvis came crashing down. She lifted it again, this time without letting my dick slip out of it, and brought herself back down upon me again before I even had time to catch my breath. "This is hardly comparable to what you went though! So why...?!" As she came down again, her nails raked straight across my stomach, but not even those sharp stings could compare to the raging inferno that was currently burning through my guts. "Why does being tainted by this tiny scrap of a man hurt so much!" She brought herself down against me once more with increased strength. Her movements had now become little more than a single chaotic movement any form of rhythm; sometimes she would do her best to regularly thrust my penis within her, others she would simply savagely squirm up and down until she would run out of breath and take a brief pause. "WHY?!" My hips could barely move at this point, aside from the occasional agonizing spasm... The vampire stopped once again, gulping down greedy mouthfuls of air. "We... We end this now..." Fzop The sound of something tugging at my skin, followed by an almost scalding jolt of pain. S-stop... The sound of flesh tearing, as my still not completely healed wound began to be forcibly reopened again, began to fill the room. Stop...! Her fingertips had already begun to slash me, in an attempt to widen the gap that was now slowly being opened across my stomach. Stop! A snapping sound. Stop it! A loud crunch filled the room, like the sound a very large moth makes when it's stepped on. The vampire's body went limp for a second, before being unceremoniously tossed against the cell's iron bars. Rescue came. Not even my loud panting was able to completely conceal the steady, eerie dripping noise at the edge of the cell. How stupid of me. This is a dungeon after all... Right now, there's someone else inside this cell. Someone who has just killed Fifi. I wonder how long it will take for it to be my turn. I don't know for how long I lay there, completely still. How many times did I black out already? Too many to count... I knew that the killer was still in there; although barely audible, I could hear it breathing softly in one of the corners of that tiny space. What would come first? Would it eventually get tired of waiting and finish me off or would I die of blood loss before she could get at me? Choices, choices... I began to pant, desperately trying to hold onto what little was left of my consciousness without attracting too much attention. Suddenly, the sound of cautious footsteps began to fill the air. In a split-second, I ceased my hopeless panting and simply held my breath for the longest instants of my life. The footsteps stopped. There it was again; the creaking groan of the cell's door being slowly swung open. That signal was enough to send my oxygen-less body immediately into motion; ignoring the searing pain and the trail of guts that I mat have been leaving behind me, I simply picked myself up and ran. A simple shove was enough to move the killer out of my way. The thought that she might still follow me out of those dungeons and catch up with me didn't even cross my mind as I rushed at breakneck speed towards the light. It was only when I finally emerged from the trapdoor and back onto the surface that I realized that I had been holding my breath for the entire length of my run. With my final boost of adrenaline gone now, the world suddenly began to start spinning around me, as both the pitiless rays of sunlight and tears inside of my intestines began stinging like a swarm of enraged hornets. I did as best as I could to step as far away as possible from the hidden depths that lay behind the trapdoor behind me, but my drunken stumble could only carry me for so far... A final clumsy step and pitiful "Ooof!" later, I found myself staring straight into the blue sky above. In the distance, I swore that I heard a faint "... Bro!" but, at that moment, I could have hardly cared anymore. So what, I'm gonna be stepped on by accident before being angrily scraped off the sole of a Giant's foot... Big deal... At least it's a fitting way to go for a turd like me... Now just let me sleep... As my eyelids slowly began to grow heavier, I lazily stared at the clouds going by above, blissfully ignoring the fact that the ground on which I was lying on had begun to shake. The irritating stings from earlier had already begun to be replaced by a comfortable feeling of numbness. My eyelids slowly began to flutter closed. ... "Come on, get up!" I opened my eyes again, looking up at the image created by my oxygen-starved brain. "Too tired. Carry me..." I groaned, slowly extending my arms forward. One of Kina's eyebrows shot up. "Aren't you a little too old for that?" "I think you of all people should be the most aware of the fact that growing up is optional..." An uncomfortable feeling began to coil itself around my chest, as if someone had begun to gradually squeeze my lungs That's right... I'm not going to see her again... The illusion sighed, before looking down at me with a cheerful smile. "Point taken... Heave-!" A sudden force quickly grabbed hold of my arms and heaved me back up on my feet with one mighty pull. "-Ho!" I would have taken this chance to whine yet again about how much my intestines hurt, but honestly I was too surprised to even think at that moment. I turned around gave her a bewildered stare. The awfully real hallucination simply grinned back up at me. "Can you walk?" she asked. I shook my head, while still doing my best to figure out a way to shut my jaw closed again. "Well, can't say that that ain't gonna be a-" She looked up for a second, before quickly pushing me back down to the ground. "-Problem!" Instants later, a colossal foot came crashing down inches away from where the two of us lay. "Ah! Big bro, are you okay?!" Oh. Her again... ... "You know, this may sound pretty obvious," grunted Kina, as she did her best to drag me away from the living embodiment of a natural disaster without finishing me off herself. "But it looks like you got yourself wrapped up in some pretty big trouble right now..." As I was slowly dragged across the gravel, the Giantess' heavy steps ominously rumbling not too far away from us, Brown-Beard's words slowly came back to me. "Sorry..." I whispered amidst my various painful spasms, ignoring the Goblin's previous comment. "Big Bro!" "Hmm?" "I... I'm holding you back, right?" "Hey, wait for me!" Silence. "Hold up!" "I mean, I have no doubts that normally you'd be the strongest being on the continent... But now you always have to keep an extra eye out for me, you have to make sure that I don't accidentally get in your way, you can't go anywhere without carrying me around like an old sack of potatoes... There's no way that a measly human like me could ever support you in any-" The Goblin suddenly stopped in her tracks, her body beginning to shake. "Whew, thank yo-" "K-Kina?!" "Pfffffft...! BWAHAHAHAHA!" "Ah?!" The Goblin was laughing so hard that I barely even managed to notice from the corner of my eye the colossal figure of the tripping Giantess. "True... Under normal circumstances, I'd be without doubt the strongest creature on this continent." she replied, finally managing to get a hold of herself. Kina turned around, taking no interest in the colossal shadow that had begun looming over us. "But when I'm with you..." A sudden rush of wind foreshadowed the fate that was very literally about to befall us. I closed my eyes and fell down to my knees. ... Huh, that's funny... Why haven't my bones been ground to fine dust yet? I slowly opened my eyes. Kina grinned down at me, holding up the Giant's body with the side of her arm. "I'm invincible." |
| Day 13 - ??? (AKA: The chapter that must not be mentioned...) With a little grunt, Kina tossed with jaw-dropping ease the Giantess' massive body into the smack middle of the dusty clearing. A sad wooden scrunch announced the untimely end of the small building that had until now only managed to survive the occasional gusts of wind thanks to some miracle... "Come on, we're getting out of here!" Kina yanked me back up to my feet and began dragging me as quickly as possible towards the fort's entrance. An uncomfortable sensation began to fill my lungs, as if the weight of my ribcage was becoming too heavy for my weak muscles to bear any longer. For just long could I keep straining the stitches? Or was that grotesque gash already wide open beneath my coat, with my intestines slowly beginning to dangle further down until I would finally trip over them? Kina squeezed my hand tighter, bringing me momentarily back to my senses. "Come on. We're almost there..." she reassured me, before slowly beginning to lift the heavy portcullis. I drunkenly nodded. My vision had already begun to grow blurry, and it was only too late when I noticed the hand resting on my shoulders. "Ah." It happened quickly, almost instantly: the boney hand suddenly gripped my shoulder tightly and spun my almost completely limp body around. I meekly stared into the skeleton's empty orbits, half-expecting some drool to begin dripping from the corner of my mouth. I couldn't fight back; at least, not with the reaction times of a stoned baby that I found myself with at the moment. "Aah..." Her free hand began almost instantly to reach down towards my crotch area. What, no build-up? You're just gonna go straight for the goods? No won- *Scrunch* Looks like I was spot on about those reaction times... Without even giving me enough time to think up a witty comment, the skeleton's body (or the messy pile of bones, to be more precise) was suddenly propelled into the air. "You all right?" muttered the figure that had suddenly materialized by my side, resting the large, anchor-like weapon on her shoulder. "...Y-?" "Right you are! Brothers before Monsters! That's Trappers' way!" cheered Red-Beard, quickly slinging me over her shoulders. "Come on; your little friend ain't gonna keep those portcullis up forever, you know?" "Are you sure that we should be able to outrun a Giantess?" asked Elysande, the dubious tone of her voice making her thoughts on the matter already pretty clear. "Oh, sure... I mean, we just need to make it to the bottom of this hill-" A small misstep caused the Trapper to totter dangerously in the middle of her breakneck run towards the small wagon that sat at the bottom of the slope, but she managed to regain her footing at the last moment "- before she does. And besides, we have a good ten-second head-start..." Behind us, the tall shape of the Giantess began rearing itself up against the sky. "Why does she even bother having a gate when she can simply clamber over those walls like that?" My thoughts exactly.... "Less talk, more running..." snapped Elysande, sprinting off in front of us. "Oh, don't be so grim... Anyway, we're almost th-" *Stomp* *Stomp* *STOMP* "-ere" With a mere three bounds, the colossal loli had already managed to clear the distance between us. A simple flick of a finger was all that she needed to put a stop to Red-Beard's run. The Giantess loomed over me. "Nowhere left to run~♥!" I did my best to clench my jaw, preparing for the worst. A gentle prod to my side. I slowly opened one of my eyes. "Tag." Tag? The Giantess began to grin cheekily. Wait, tag? Uh-oh... It dawned on me: "Winner gets to do whatever she wants..." Nope. Looks like I'm still screwed... The Giantess began to slowly unwrap the skirt-like long strip of cloth that covered her nether-regions. "Lacking Boy!" In the split of a second, Kina was already by my side, snarling furiously. Too late. *Whoooosh* My weak body moved on its own. I shielded Kina's eyes from the spectacle. Red-Beard came back to her senses. She groggily got back up to her feet again, picked up her beard and began walking towards me. Her gaze slowly followed mine. I never dreamed I would ever see a human's pupils grow so wide. Or Red-Beard being at loss of words, for that matter... "G-glorious." she whispered. "Huh?" "I've heard tales of such things when I was a child. I'd never imagine that I'd see one of them with my own eyes in these times, though..." muttered solemnly Elysande, emerging from behind me. "Lacking Boy, what's going on?" Trust me, you don't want to know... "How do you think she fits it all in there?" Wrong question! Wrong question!! "Oh, I always make sure to carefully tuck it all in!" replied the Giantess, rubbing the back of her head in embarrassment at all the sudden attention she was getting. "Although it is always a hassle in the morning..." I was like a deer in the headlights; thanks to an awkward mixture of fear, pain and envy, I almost felt myself glued to the ground, unable to move. Chances were that the thought of escaping wouldn't have even crossed my mind if I hadn't suddenly been yanked straight back into the wagon by the remaining half of the Trappers that wasn't completely entranced. In the end, it was the final blow to my spine against the wagon's sturdy wooden boards was what finally managed to do me in; with a wimpy little groan, I finally blacked out completely. [spoiler] What's this? A severe lack of tasteless humor in PantsMan's last chapter? My chaotic eight paragraphs full of dick jokes ought to put a stop to that! Because every awesome installment deserves a weird follow-up... "So, wait, does that mean that your parents used to tell you stories about massive c***s when you were a kid?!" "What, did you seriously expect me to live my days with a pack of oversexed maniacs if my parents weren't completely off their rockers?" |
| Day 14 - Late Afternoon I blinked a little at the sight of my stomach slit wide open. Apparently I'd just emerged out of my dark, nightmare-filled sleep only to find myself waking up in one. "Oh, you awake? I guess I'll have to wrap this up quicker than I hoped, then..." commented casually Brown-Beard, as she sunk a needle as long as my middle finger into the slightly writhing mass that were my innards. By the time my head hit the floorboards again, I was already riding a massive pink dolphin back in Dreamland. ... I woke up again, only to find myself staring straight into Brown-Beard's tired, icy-grey eyes, as they hovered almost inches away from my face. She let out a sigh of relief, quickly moving back into a normal sitting position. "Whew... Looks like the pain only made you pass out..." What do you mean, only?! Actually, what did you even think had happened to me...? I glanced down at the lower parts of my torso. A new fresh set of blood-soaked stitches glistened under the last of the sun's lazy rays, stretching wide from one side of my stomach to the other. "I had to remove your old ones and replace them with a new set of them while you were out..." she explained, stifling a little yawn. "Since when do you know how to slit up a human's stomach and sow it back closed without turning me into a steak?" I weakly groaned, both confused and impressed at the same time. "Well, if you'd even bothered listening to my backstory," she muttered, a sharp note of annoyance in her voice, "-you would have probably known that I-" "Laddie!" interrupted Red-Beard. "So you're finally awake again?" Elysande and Ida's faces popped from behind Red-Beard's wide frame. "Well, aren't you lucky to still be alive..." "..." I groggily tried to get back up to my feet, only to have the entire world suddenly start wobbling around me. "Woah! Easy there!" exclaimed Brown-Beard, managing to grab a hold of me seconds before I crashed back down to the floor again "You've been out cold for a day now! Give yourself a second before even thinking about walking about again!" As the universe slowly stopped its maddening merry-go-round-like spinning, I began to scan the inside of the wagon. "Where's Kina?" I weakly inquired. Was it just me, or had Ida's face sunk a bit? Brown-Beard gave me a weird look, before heaving out a mighty sigh. "The Goblin's on the roof." I somehow managed to drag my worn-out wreck of a body up to the top of the wagon. Kina didn't bother turning around. Letting out a relieved grunt, I sat down by her side, letting my feet dangle over the edge of the cart. We sat in silence for a while, staring mindlessly at the sinking Sun on the horizon, as the hollow clunking noise of Kina's heels regularly bumping against the side of the wagon filled the early evening air. "Sorry. I wasn't able to save her..." Kina stopped for a minute, letting out a soft sigh. "What's with all the apologies now, Lacking Boy?" She began to bump her feet against the wooden planks again. "If there's anyone who should be saying sorry, that would be me... After all, it's my fault that you got hur-" I quickly smacked her at the back of her head before she could finish her sentence. Kina finally turned around towards me, a child-like look of almost confused anger on her face. "What was that for?!" "Just checking to see if you were really Kina..." The Goblin's eyebrow shot up instantly at this response. She opened her mouth to protest, but shut it closed again as the real meaning behind my sudden act of treachery became clear to her. The angry look on her face slowly began to soften up into a small smile. "Whatever... Jerk." A sudden weight suddenly began to bury itself into my side. "Hey! I'll have you know that people with slit intestines don't exactly make for durable napping spots. If you want a pillow, go get some rags from downstairs instead..." "Endure it..." growled the muffled voice from within the depths of my coat. "Lifting Giants isn't exactly something that you can recover from within the space of a single day..." I gave up, letting out a loud groan. By now, the sun had already made its way behind the small hills on the horizon as strange stars began to shine into the night's creeping darkness above us. "I spoke with the driver. We're only a couple of days away from the Dark Prince's territory..." Kina looked up at me with half-closed eyes, the old coat almost completely wrapped around her. "You know, you don't have to stick through with this way to the end..." I let out a chuckle. "If you wanted to get rid of me that badly, I'll just have you know that you're a bit late..." She smiled back up at me, before burying her nose even deeper into my tattered jacket. "I just don't want to lose anyone close to me anymore..." she whispered. This time, even I wasn't sure if her voice sounded muffled just because of the coat. As if to prove my point, this was followed by a short, soft sniffle. I sighed, resting my arm on her head. Just because you're the strongest doesn't mean that you can't show yourself cry... |
| Day 16 - Early Morning My final good-byes with the rag-tag squad of horny madmen that had ended up saving my hide twice in the past five days was more somber than anything that I would have otherwise expected from them; it was almost as if a general gloom had silently begun to hover in the cool morning air ever since I'd first lay foot on the dry, rocky ground beneath us. "So... I guess this is where we part ways, then... Soon, the sand is gonna make it close to impossible for me to haul all of us through." "Afraid so..." commented simply Red-Beard, staring morosely at her feet. Kina yawned loudly, her mouth opening so wide that she might as well have been trying to eat someone's head off. I quickly elbowed the Goblin in the stomach, causing her to almost choke on the mass of air that she had been busy swallowing. "Hey, it's not my fault that they insisted that we wake up minutes after sunrise!" she angrily muttered as soon as she finished sputtering. "Maybe you should try using that speck of a brain of yours a bit more and realize that, despite the somewhat short distance that separates you from your destination, we don't call it 'The Great Desert' as a joke..." Ida snorted, thinly veiling her general disdain towards the Goblin. Despite the events of a couple of days ago on the roof of the wagon (I still hadn't been able to completely get all the snot out of my coat, as the still slightly moist patch on the inside proved...), Kina had somehow still managed to begin a seemingly bitter yet pointless rivalry with the ex-Gold-Beard (although I did my best at trying not to refer to her as "Flat-Chest" anymore, so as to avoid any further misty eyes and disappointed sidelong glances anymore, I still had trouble with it...), causing the shy and reserved Trapper's hidden snark to start going off the charts. "At least I haven't wasted my growth spurt on something like brains! All of your femininity was wasted on trying to grow your missing wiener!" retorted the Goblin, flaunting her minuscule rack with the pride of a loser who has just found for the first time someone more pitiful than them. The now rich-crimson Gold-Beard opened her mouth again, but was quickly interrupted by a long stream of smoke emerging from within the wagon, announcing Brown-Beard's arrival. She gracefully hopped off the wagon, still clenching her pipe tightly between her teeth, walking straight up to me. "Well laddie, this is as deep as the Trappers can go into Lady Charisse's territory. However-" she smiled, placing her hand on my shoulder. "-don't think that I'd be as heartless as to let you two scamper off without a few words of advice!" The Trapper let out a particularly thick cloud of smoke from her nostrils and into her beard, where it slowly began trickling out like water from a drenched sponge. "Word on the streets says-" "I thought that people like you wouldn't be allowed to get within a ten-mile radius of any town..." I promptly interrupted. "Fifteen, to be precise. Not that that has ever stopped us before... But that's beside the point here! What I'm saying here is that there's been word that trouble's been brewing in this region for a while now. And I don't mean something like the usual sort of trouble that goes on around these parts, oh no... I mean big trouble! Something big enough to get even the apathetic Lord Charisse on the move... So listen up and listen well; keep away at all costs from anything that looks abandoned or mysterious; ruins, old cities, phallic-shaped rocks... You name it. Chances are that they're probably about to burst with magic." ("Even the phallic rocks?" "Especially the phallic rocks..." chuckled Slightly Blonde-Beard, giving me a nasty grin that seemed to blur the fine line between being serious and not.) "Whenever this sort of tense atmosphere is in the air, magic somehow always finds its way to spark the ensuing chaos, and you don't want to be found anywhere even close to a large source of it when that happens. Trust me." Brown-Beard concluded by taking a final absent-minded puff of smoke from her pipe. We all fell silent for a second. "Well, that sure managed to cast a certain gloom over my day..." I admitted, shuffling awkwardly in place a bit. Brown-Beard shrugged. "Suit yourself. When it comes to goodbyes, I generally prefer a gloomy warning over a cheerful funeral service..." "Besides," added Red-Beard, nudging me in the chest "your friend is here with you know, isn't she?" Judging by Red-Beard's current expression, she was doing her best not to snicker... Thank you for reminding me that I probably won't miss you... The wagon soon became a small dot sitting on top of the vast sea of sand that now spread wide around us, the five waving figures of the Trappers and their driver now becoming indistinguishable from each other. The slow marching through the still-cool sand had already begun to take its toll on my scar and sore muscles; it was probably only a matter of time until I found myself in my typical "Sack-of-potatoes" position once more. As I tried not to focus on the pain, wobbling as best as I could through the desert sands, something struck me. "By the way, how did you know that Gold-Beard was a woman?" Kina gave me the look of a kid that had just been caught with his hand in a cookie jar. I stopped right in my tracks. Oh God; don't tell me... "But you promised, back in the mountains!" "Well, what was I supposed to do?!" she yelped defensively "I'd been running for three days straight and here I'd suddenly come across a wagon-load of burly men! I only tried to do what was natural!" I groaned. "Well, at least I guess that explains why it took you so long to find me..." "The experience was quite shocking..." agreed Kina. |
| If you take too long to re-upload the story I might be tempted to post some massive spoilers. Get to work!!! |
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KamikadzeTM said: If you take too long to re-upload the story I might be tempted to post some massive spoilers. Get to work!!! Oof... Time to get off my ass, then... :p Day 16 - Noon Surprisingly enough, crossing the desert turned out to be an easier feat than I would have otherwise expected; the two of us had been able to cover an impressive distance without even having to resort to Kina ungracefully hoisting me over her shoulder, given the occasional breaks to catch my breath again. And then, the Sun came out. It was a sheer matter of minutes before our fairly hasty march turned into a whimpering crawl; wading across an endless sea of sand was one thing, but trying to do the same when the aforementioned sea was starting to turn into a boiling broth was a completely different matter. Soon enough, the skin-peeling blisters that had begun to form on my bare feet had managed to become more unbearable than the grains of sand that had somehow found their way onto my nutsack. "Hey, how about taking a short rest there by those old rocks?" panted Kina, her tongue lolling out like the one of a dog, as she adjusted me a bit more comfortably on her shoulder "You mean those ancient ruins, probably silently guarding secrets that were best to be forgotten? The ones that Brown-Beard specifically told us to stay away from?" I rasped, my leathery tongue scratching the roof of my dry mouth. "Sure..." "Really?" "No." And, thus, a chance to embark on another thrilling adventure was promptly avoided. Half an hour later, as my copious amount of sweat was slowly making me more slippery than a wet fish, I began to realize that paying attention to the warnings of a sex-crazed lunatic wasn't perhaps the best course of action... "Don't think that don't think that I'd be as heartless as to let you two scamper off without a few words of advice! Oh, sure... By all means, don't let your unworldly kindness be troubled by pesky stuff like giving us some damn water to bring with us! I mean, it's just crossing the "Great Desert"; what's the worse that could happen?!" "We're here!" announced happily Kina, interrupting my delirious ramblings only to add more fuel to the fire. "For the last time, that's not a city: it's that same slightly-larger dune from ten minutes ago!" "Are you sure...?" asked the not-too-convinced Goblin, squinting a bit in the dune's general direction. "Of course! Unless every possible source of food that we haven't seen in the past three hours is sitting right behind that blasted dune, the chances that that wall of sand could actually be a city are roughly about one out of a thousand!" Kina shrugged, probably too busy trying to get away from the unforgiving sunlight to bother arguing any further on this point. Four minutes later, we unceremoniously crashed into a suspiciously dune-looking set of decrepit walls. The contents of the walls weren't in any better shape, either; the sides of the road (otherwise known as the slightly long strip of sand that didn't have any particular form of obstacle in its way) the two of us were currently walking down were filled with the remains of once-mighty buildings, as they slowly sank deeper into the desert sands. Occasionally, a few of these ruins would have a small tent set up within them, from under which the hunched-over figure of a being wrapped from head to toe in cloth would occasionally steal a peek at us, before quickly scurrying out of sight. Eventually, with a weak grunt, Kina finally let me off her shoulders beneath the shade of the tall walls. The Goblin stretched a little, before letting herself drop down on her back by my side. She wriggled a little deeper into the cool patch of sand, letting out a satisfied sigh; it would have been close to impossible for one not to feel slightly more relaxed themselves at the sight of the overworked Goblin's happy expression as she lay sprawled out over the ground... It was just then that I remembered how parched I was. "I'll go see if I can find ourselves some water..." Within seconds, Kina had already sprung back to her feet, as if those twelve seconds of rest had been exactly enough to recharge her strengths completely (an improbable scenario, given the Goblin's seemingly endless amount of energy...) "I'll help you out!" Despite the brown-reddish tinge of the well-water we'd stumbled across amongst the various ruins and tents, the two of us weren't exactly in the position to complain about its unsurprisingly disgusting taste. Her thirst now quenched, Kina almost immediately lost track of previous priorities to direct her complete attention towards the bug as large as her hand a few feet away from where she was currently standing, her pupils almost widening in excitement. Sighing at this sudden outburst of childish behavior on my companion's part, I let my gaze wander back towards the so-called "well": to tell the truth, it was more like a fairly wide, water-filled pit dug into a slightly damper section of the ground. Occasionally, I'd recognize out of the corner of my eye the figure of one of the ruins' mysterious inhabitants as they came to draw water until they'd notice me and scuttle back from where they'd come from. Well, at least their cowardice will hopefully keep them from raping the living lights out of me... I sighed wearily, trying to ignore the uncomfortable implication that nearly every dilapidated stone in these ruins probably had at least a couple of those sentient bundles of towels hiding behind it. My unpleasant stream of thought was however interrupted by a shrill, surprised squeak, followed by a loud splash behind me. Spinning around towards the source of the noise, my gaze immediately fell on the small figure that had just dropped into the pool. The creature flayed wildly, struggling to stay afloat as its water-drenched rags slowly dragged it deeper into the water. "Ki-!" I exclaimed, turning around. The Goblin was nowhere to be found. Cursing her horrible timing under my breath and out of time or any remaining sensible ideas, I counted my lucky stars and dove into the pool. My severe incompetence at rescuing people, however, finally had its time to shine: I'd barely managed to grab a hold around the creature's waist that I received a direct kick to the stomach from my terrified rescuee, causing me to almost let go of my hold... My mind feverishly tried to come up with a decent plan to get the two of us out of there, but decent plans always tended to have the bad habit of never showing up while at the mercy of a hail of desperate kicks Eventually I decided to drop Rational Thought in favor of her half-demented sister Instinct. Mustering up what little strength I had left, I tossed the squirming bundle of rags back onto the sand. Coughing and sputtering foul water, I somehow managed to drag myself back onto solid ground as well. "You okay there, little buddy?" I panted, letting myself drop onto the warm sand. The little figure slowly unwrapped itself from its water-drenched rags, revealing a cream-colored pair of particularly large fox-like ears, followed shortly by its frightened little face. The tiny girl gave me quick, nervous nod, before shaking off the last remaining droplets that still lingered on her hair. A moment later, she'd already scurried off back into the ruins. What? Is that all the thanks I'm getting? Not even a proud pat on the back? Being nice sucks... "Up to scaring off little children now, Lacking Boy? How much lower are you planning to sink?" joked Kina, materializing once again just in time to deliver an inappropriate comment. I slowly picked myself back up to my feet, shuddering slightly at the idea of how long it would take to remove every single grain of sand once more. And then I noticed what the Goblin was holding. "What?" Kina followed my gaze, looking down at the half-chewed insect in her hand. She squeezed it a bit tighter. "I'm not sharing..." |
PantsManJul 3, 2014 10:26 AM
Day 16 - Early Afternoon "Lunch is ready!" announced Kina, proudly shoving the blackened frying pan under my nose. "Take your pick; grilled roots, grilled cacti flowers or grilled locust?" I cautiously looked down at the charred lumps that had been sitting under the boiling sun for the past forty minutes. "Which is which?" I asked, giving them a cautious sniff. Kina looked down into the pan and shrugged. We ate our miserable meal quietly under the shade of a slightly less-inhabited building (as evidenced by the constant pitter-patter coming from the other side of the wall that we were currently leaning our on). "Look, I'm sorry that I lied by saying that it wasn't all locust, but keeping a grouch isn't gonna do you any better..." admitted guiltily the Goblin, slightly off-put by the uncommon silence that had suddenly fallen between us. "No, don't worry, it's got nothing to do with that..." (although I had done my best to quickly give the blackened lump that I had been chewing on a speedy burial...) Kina let out a sigh of relief, before digging back into her own darkened lumps of "food" (as I was pretty sure that the things lacked nutrients even on the molecular level...) "Ish it about tchat little girl you shcared off earlier, then?!" she asked again. "Don't talk with your mouth full..." I muttered, quickly changing the topic. "Besides, weren't you the one who believed that deceased loved ones turned into worms, who then turned into beetles when they died? In that case, couldn't locusts that you're eating right now be what those beetles/worms/loved ones turn into when their time comes as well?" Kina stopped chewing for a second to give me a pitying glance. "No, Lacking Boy. That would be stupid..." Look who's talking! "Besides," she continued, wiping off her mouth with the back of her hand as she began to stand back up again. "Confronting the man that slaughtered my tribe with an empty stomach might not be very fair, now would it? The hunger might make it easier for me to chew his arms off!" Kina showed off her sharp canines with a grin, as if to admit that there was still quite a good chance that such a scenario might indeed occur. "So, how about we go find out more about this Prince by asking the people around here?" "Why even bother learning more about him when you're gonna beat his living lights out regardless?" I pointed out. "Well, to learn about his weak points, for one? Villagers always seem to have their own little way of finding out about that sort of stuff..." Ah... ... By the time we stopped again, the sun had already begun sink behind the ruined village's old walls. "Look, can we just forget about it? I'm pretty sure that we've gone by this way a couple of times already..." I grumbled, wiping the sole of my foot as best as I could against my other leg. Also, it's at least the third time that I step on that same locust that I buried around here.... "Not until we try my next plan; this time, we strip you naked and tie you up to a rock. Believe me, someone's bound to come by and try to have their way with you and, when they do... We pounce! It's flawless!" exclaimed weakly Kina, trying to gather as much cheerfulness from her overworked body as she could. That's what you said last time... Besides, have I just been demoted to mere "bait" now?! "Whatever..." I sighed. "Go get the rope, if you want to... I'll wait for you here. Just make sure you're back here in five minutes, okay?" Also, be certain you get the one that we never even had to begin with... "Sure thing! Trust me, those mamono aren't gonna stand a chance against this!" As the Goblin quickly ran off deeper into the settlement on her wild goose-chase, I made myself a bit more comfortable against the stone wall behind me, rubbing my soles to ever so slightly soothe the pain. In barely three minutes, however, my attention had to be quickly shifted from the scalding pain at the bottom of my feet to the short, insistent tugging at the side of my coat. The short little figure that had just materialized by my side looked up at me. Judging by the general dampness of her clothing, something fairly uncommon when you found yourselves in the smack middle of a desert, I assumed that she was the same fox that I had fished out of the village's well earlier. At first, I tried a gentle but firm "Shoo..." but, as most reasonable people react when they are given the same treatment reserved for a particularly hairy spider sitting on your pillow, the little monster-girl ignored the wimpy nudge and only clutched tighter to the corner of my coat. Ooh boy... Kina might have been right about me being a rape magnet after all... "Come to think of it," muttered the Goblin to herself, as she came running back upon realizing her mistake. "I don't think we even had any other luggage apart from what we're wearing right now..." Speak of the Devil... "Kina! Help me get her off!" I called, as I did my insufficient best at trying to pry the little fingers from my jacket. "See?" chuckled Kina as she hurried to my side and lifted the fox-girl off the ground with ease. "What did I tell you; sit out there for a couple of seconds and rapists will come flocking towards-" With a sudden, frustrated wriggle, the fox-girl squirmed out of Kina's hold and latched herself back onto the old coat, where she began tugging again. "Hmm... That's interesting... Maybe she just wants you to follow her?" suggested Kina. Not too convinced by this explanation, I turned back to the wrapped-up figure. She gave me a little nod. ... "You know, I really don't think that following someone into a long winding set of ancient alleys will have anything even resembling desirable consequences..." I grumbled. "Lacking Boy, you really need to quit whining and start trusting people more often..." replied curtly Kina, following the fox-girl's short figure as it trotted briskly a few steps ahead of us. "Nobody this cute can be all that bad..." I beg to differ... However, the fox-girl's presence seemed to have an almost calming effect on the rest of the ruins' inhabitants. Although still clearly wary of us, the villagers had now begun to follow us with their gazes from the safety of the top of ancient piles of rubble or behind small tent-like structures instead of scattering in all directions at the sight of us; some of the bolder ones had even occasionally tried to follow us, perhaps in the hopes of plucking me from the group, only to be sent scurrying as soon as the Goblin noticed their presence. One sudden swerve to the left later, the three of us found ourselves in the smack middle of one of the many tents that had been pitched throughout the area. Half a dozen of monster-girls of different shapes and sizes, all equally mummified in thick layers of dark cloth, immediately looked up at us from the crackling campfire they were sitting around. A few immediately rose up to their feet at the sight of me, but were quickly put back in place by our new-found guide's reproachful growl. The Fox-girl tugged my jacket once again, urging us to sit closer to the fire. Despite the occasional sidelong, perhaps even hopeful glances, the conversation resumed once again as if it had never been interrupted to begin with. "Anyway, as I was saying, what do you think the Queen is going to do for this Moon Bazaar?" asked a horned figure that, even while sitting down, seemed to tower high above all of the other cloth-covered villagers that sat around the fire. "Are you implying something there? She's probably just gonna offer the few guards she can spare for that week and some of those usual empty words of praise she always sends over every New Year..." replied her neighbor, her rough, scaly tail wriggling irritably in the sand. "Enough to keep our presence known to the occasional merchant that wanders our way once every couple of seasons..." added a shorter figure at the other side of the fire. "I'm not implying anything..." shrugged the large one. "I was just wondering if the Queen was going to bother siding once again with Amarante this year, though... I mean, I'm sure you've heard about what happened at the Lost Ruins recently..." "You are implying something, aren't you?" snorted the snake-like one. "Well, I mean...-" "So, who's this Queen you're talking about anyway?" I quickly interrupted, not wanting to get dragged into the direction the conversation was headed towards. Politics were already obnoxious enough when I knew what people were talking about... The large figure gave me a short, thankful nod. "The one who rules over this place. We call her the Broken Queen. Simply put, she's just the strongest thug leader in this part of the desert." "There you go, implying things again..." "It's the truth! All she does nowadays is loaf around while forcing us to bring her and her men food and water, along with occasionally beating to a pulp the poor sod who accidentally gets in her way!" "Well, what are you gonna do about it? Try and claim that title for yourself? Best to stay low for now, I say... The Dark Prince might not be here at the moment, but I've heard stories that the queen has wrestled Sandworms into-" "Wait!" Interrupted abruptly Kina. "You mean the Dark Prince isn't here right now?!" "Hasn't been around for almost a month now, actually." pointed out a short, squeaky-voiced figure. "Not that he ever really bothered showing up outside of the palace to begin with..." By now, the little Fox-girl had lost all interest in the conversation, and had begun making herself more comfortable on my lap (much to Kina's silent-yet-very-palpable disapproval...) "It was always their right-hand man, the Horned Stalker, who did most of the dirty work, anyway..." Dark Prince, Broken Queen, Horned Stalker... They sure like their nicknames around these parts... "I thought she was exiled a year ago, though..." muttered the snake-like one. "That's what she wants you to think... So she can strike when you least suspect it!" "So... Are you still gonna "storm the castle", then?" I asked Kina absentmindedly, gently stroking the fox-girl's hair. The Goblin sighed. "Well, I guess that this Queen of theirs might still know something about his whereabouts..." muttered Kina morosely, as if she didn't really believe it herself. "Might as well try and beat the location out of her!" she added, a bit more cheerfully. "Remember when Marjane cursed about the Queen yesterday, and how she suddenly disappeared soon after that?" "I'm still here, you know..." grunted the stout-looking figure in question. "Try not to get hurt, then..." I advised, giving the fox girl's ears a short little rub. The latter growled approvingly. |
| Day 17 - Late Morning "There... Victory is mine once again~!" The second "guard" (although they were technically more like armed thugs that just so happened to prefer spending their inadequately long amount of free-time under the shade of a small tent that had been just outside of their hide-out instead of licking their leader's boots or scaring off villagers), squinted from the height of her large horse-like body down at their game's crude board. "Are you sure...?" she asked suspiciously. "Sure thing. And that puts us at a good nine wins for me and one for you, by the way!" smirked the first guard, adjusting (or, rather, bending) the single rusty breastplate that she wore as clothing around the particularly pronounced curve of her chest. "I thought that Orcs were supposed to be stupid..." pouted the Centaur, as she began rearranging the small multicolored beads once again across the board. "Oh, that's more of a myth than anything, really..." mentioned casually her companion, as she moved a modest stack of small coins across the table towards the more impressive pile that had begun to grow on her side. "The typical mental deficiency of Orcs isn't actually in any way innate as much as a trait intrinsic to orcish society, and vital for it to function. As a consequence, it tends to be particularly encouraged and praised for by other tribesm-... You're not listening, are you...?" "You talk too much..." whined the Centaur, unceremoniously sticking a finger straight up her nostril. "And I still haven't won back any of my money yet..." "What can I say..." shrugged her companion. "You win some, you lose-"*Klong* Kina's pan collided against the Orc's skull with a dull ring, like a bell marking the beginning of a particularly bloody wrestling match. "Hoo... What do you think about that perfect shot, Lacking Boy?" asked the Goblin, slightly surprised herself at the fact that she'd been able to land a hit from that distance. "Impressive," I called from the safety of the wall that I was hiding behind. "-But I really think that you should keep an eye on the other one too..." The thug in question had already managed to grab hold of her weapon (an old spear, its tip slightly notched by the countless sandstorms it had probably endured through) and had begun charging at us, moving with surprising ease across the sand. "Paying actual attention to them? But that would be giving me an unfair advantage..." objected Kina, barely bothering to give the enemy a second look. Just as enraged Centaur was about to lunge through the last couple of feet that still separated the tip of her weapon from the Goblin's stomach, Kina rushed straight towards the incoming spear, grabbing hold of its shaft and pushing the blade aside. Before the surprised thug had time to react and let go of the weapon, Kina had already managed to reel her opponent down to her own short height, sinking her fist straight into the charging Centaur's gut. "Besides," added the Goblin, the rush of adrenaline making her grin from ear to ear. "It's always more exciting when they actually have a chance of winning...!" I gave the wheezing Centaur a cautious peek, instants before she came crashing down onto the scalding sand. That's one meager chance you're giving them, by the looks of it... I ducked once again behind the wall, the sudden thunk of a dark arrow embedding itself within my current hiding spot warning me that this fight was still far from over. "Ooh! You mean that there's more of them? Lucky~!" Soon enough, the dull sound of projectiles missing their mark was followed by the loud crack of a bow being snapped in half. I managed to muster enough courage to look over the wall again just in time to see my companion gleefully sending one of the archers careening through the air with a swift kick to the chin. By the time that the unfortunate stream of thugs began to die down, the ground before the entrance was strewn with the, for the most part unconscious, bodies of a wide-enough variety to fill in at least quite a few entries of an encyclopedia. Kina was already beginning to grow impatient. "Come on, I know there's still some of you in there! Either you come out and get your own serving of clobbering just like everyone else, or you bring me your so-called Queen out here!" she called. "Kina, we're starting to sound like bad guys now..." "We are the bad guys, Lacking Boy..." Nothing stirred from the dark shadows beyond the building's wide entrance. Then, as if she had been summoned by Kina's blunt call, a figure emerged into the scorching sunlight, followed by a pair of Minotaurs cowering behind her. I could slowly feel the blood freeze inside my veins. While she might have perhaps had a very vague resemblance to yesterday's affectionate "guide", there was little of her that was similar to the quietly cheerful fox-girl. Instead of the crude leather armors that most of the other thugs seemed to have, she wore the same dark rags that most of the local inhabitants of the area seemed to wear, with the addition of a pair iron leggings and a single heavy-looking gauntlet around her left hand. However, unlike the villagers, her entire scar-covered face was completely uncovered, revealing a pair of particularly large furry ears, a long and unkempt mat of dark-gold hair and, most of all, a sick-looking pair of emerald-green eyes, each pupil reduced to a tiny, almost reptilian slit. Occasionally, a miserable stump would briefly come into view from behind her, before being quickly swept back out of sight. I felt myself being slowly swallowed by the blank stare, unable to hide behind my only barricade from the fox's terrifyingly expressionless stare. Chances were that she would have probably noticed me, had it not been for a sudden force suddenly dragging me back down once again I spun around to face my new assailant, only to nearly crash right into what looked like another one of the villagers. She lifted her index right up to where I assumed her mouth must have been. Obediently, I complied: despite the fact that I was positive that I'd never seen her anywhere before, there was a strange aura that seemed to surround her, as if a feeling of familiarity that was at the same time friendly and intimidating radiated from beneath the heavy rags that covered her from head to toe. "An Inari, of all people?" wondered Kina aloud, directing my attention once again back to the upcoming fight. "You don't happen to be the Broken Queen, now, are you?" She tilted her head quizzically. The scraggly girl before us didn't reply. She merely kept looking at the Goblin with an almost pitying glance. "Tch. Well, aren't you a bundle of fun..." Kina commented drily, stretching her arms a little bit. "Oh well, doesn't matter..." She grinned. "I guess I'll just have to take that as a yes!" Without any warning, Kina had begun to rush towards the creature that she'd referred to as an Inari, charging her fist backward as she began to concentrate most of her strength at the tip of her knuckles as she ran. For an instant, the Inari merely kept staring blankly at the charging Goblin, as if she'd suddenly frozen in place, the apparently few muscles in her spindly legs tensing up. A moment later, she materialized almost inches away from Kina's nose. "You're too open when you attack." muttered simply the being known as the Broken Queen. Just as her general appearance suggested, her voice appeared to be almost quivering. Kina's split-second of surprise proved to be fatal. In an instant, the fox-girl's right hand had already grabbed hold of the back of Kina's head, driving her armor-clad fist into the Kina's solar plexus. As the Goblin staggered backwards, the Inari was already once again upon her. Kina seemed to almost bend in half as the fox's kneecap collided repeatedly against her ribcage. Before Kina even had the time to gulp down one last breath of air, she was already having her head driven into the sand beneath. My mind feverishly tried to formulate a plan: stand up and fight? Might as well skip the middleman and drown myself in the well... Try and attract their attention? Impossible; putting myself at risk wasn't gonna help any of us... Besides, she was probably gonna choke to death before I grabbed any of their attention significantly... Besides, I have no intention of getting a foot closer to her... A light tap on the back. "Oh." I found myself staring straight into one of the Minotaurs' face. By the looks of it, my clearly more sensible savior from earlier had already packed her bags and ditched me. Attempting to strike up a conversation to buy myself enough time to scamper quietly off appeared to be my only remaining option now... "Say... Has anybody ever told you that you have a beautiful pair of-?" "A human!" squealed gleefully my soon-to-be captor. Oh well... It was worth a try... "Hmm...? Is that so?" said the being known as the Broken Queen, without even bothering to turn around. She picked herself back up again, letting go of her hold on Kina. Nearly choking on the desperate gasps of oxygen that were now rushing into her lungs, the latter finally gave in, crumpling into a nearly-motionless heap. "Her husband, I presume... Be sure to bring in the Goblin too, in that case..." "Huh? Aren't we gonna finish her off now?" asked one of the still conscious thugs. "Too easy... She needs to learn her lesson properly first before we can bother putting her out of her misery..." The minotaur turned around towards me once again, snickering horribly at this. |
| Day 17 - Early Afternoon The thugs' headquarters were far from being an uninteresting place. From the outside, the entire two-story building was completely submerged by a fairly thick hill of sand, as if the (very bored, I assumed...) desert sands had decided one day to get creative. Small grains of sand here and there would occasional drop down the ceiling, covering the floor with a thin veil of white. Not like I've got anything to complain about the insides either... I thought, quickly wrapping up my brief contemplation on the building's architecture and going back to lazily watching the ancient yet unsurprisingly suggestive bas-reliefs on the far side of my cell's walls. Unfortunately, my current situation wasn't exactly the type that one could temporarily escape from through mild arousal. Despite my best attempts at trying to shut the outside world out, my jailer's hungry gaze kept boring into my back. Occasionally, I'd turn around in the hopes that she'd perhaps already left to run an errand of some kind, but I was always met every time with a chilling smile, as she proudly exhibited her various missing teeth. Besides, there was even all that matter about her... How long would it take before she would finally take notice of me? Not long, that's for sure... When the time comes, though, it will be the end of it all... I needed a plan to escape, but what could possibly help me now? Gulping, I hugged my legs even tighter. ... The rusty hinges of the cell's door screamed open. For how long had I been sitting there, drawing blanks? Maybe even years... Still, I got nothing... I thought bitterly, without even bothering to turn around and face the newcomer. "The Queen wants to see you." announced curtly a voice that I recognized as the one of the Minotaur that I'd bumped into previously. Huh. I guess even her underlings call her like that... I slowly got up and stepped out of the cell, the two thugs close to my sides. "She says she has something in store for your little friend!" snickered the one with the hockey-player's smile, as we made our way deeper into the belly of the building, small clumps of sand pouring down from above at our every footstep. "Really now?" I muttered back, trying my best to hide my ever-increasing panic behind a mask of nonchalance. The thug smiled again, barely able to contain her excitement. The room wasn't particularly impressive, if not for its size; unlike the rest of the building, it lacked any of the bas-reliefs or columns typical of the smaller rooms, not to mention completely devoid of any furniture, with the sole exception of a single, crude stool that had been placed at the end of the room. Thugs (at least, the few that had managed to regain consciousness by that time) were already crowding at the sides, cutting off any way of escape. Five of them were holding down the beaten figure of my companion. They had not gone easy on her; seizing the chance offered to them by the Goblin's temporary defeat, they had probably gleefully tried to pay her back in twofold for the wounds she had given them earlier, as her bruised face and a half-closed eye showed. Nonetheless, as soon as she caught sight of me, a quick look of relief came across her clouded face, the sight of me still in one piece lifting a heavy weight off her back. She quickly broke her arm free from her captors' hold to give me a thumbs up and a glowing smile, as if things couldn't have been going any better. I would have happily begged to differ. Nodding slightly, pleased at the fact that all was in place, the fox-girl known as the Broken Queen got off the stool and approached the Goblin. "I heard you want to fight... him?" The Queen's body quivered, as if waves of pleasure were running through her body at the mere thought of the man. With a simple movement, Kina shook off the few underlings that still kept her pinned down and stood up, glaring up at the Inari. "And what if I am?" she snorted. The Queen shrugged, her face contorting itself into an almost painful smile. "Well, he-" Another quiver. "-is here." Kina's furious glare quickly left her face, replaced by an almost blank, tense stare. She cautiously edged towards were I was standing, keeping her eyes fixed on the fox-girl. "The Dark Prince? When...? Where?!" she spun around, her gaze sweeping across the line of thugs. "Where is he!" she roared. The Broken Queen laughed. Not a laugh of joy, nor one of contempt. It was the laugh of an awkward little kid as he squishes ants with a small twig. "He has just arrived." Confused, Kina looked around her once more. "Tch. Hiding, is he? Come on, I know you're there. Show yourself!" She looked behind her. "Come on Lacking Boy, I can't see him if you're in the w-..." The man known as Lacking Boy sighed, burying his hand into his palm. When he removed it, he was smiling. The Goblin stopped dead in her tracks. "Lacking Boy...?" *Thud* A kneecap buried itself once more into her stomach. Kina fell down on her back, her eyes open wide. She tried getting back up again. "La- *Huck*" She fell was quickly sent back down once more. This time, she did not stand up. Although she had been hit twice in the same spot that the Queen had stricken at previously, a human blow wouldn't have probably done much to her. Nonetheless, she remained motionless, as if paralyzed. "You shouldn't trust people so often, Kina..." he muttered sadly. The Inari rushed immediately to his side, unable to contain her joy no longer. "Girls! Give your due respects to the Dark Prince! Almair, the man of the well!" The thugs looked around at each other for a second, confused and chattering amongst themselves. "Who's Almair?" "The Dark Prince, you idiot! Didn't you listen?" "Who, him? The one who always used to wear that armor?" "He looks scrawnier than I'd imagined..." "Goblin diet, I tell ya!" "Quiet!" bellowed furiously the Fox. "Idiots..." she muttered to herself, clutching the man's arm even tighter. "It's hopeless to get them to understand nowadays..." She gave an apologetic look at the man, truly sorry for him to have to view such a sorry spectacle. "I've had my fun now... Just finish the job and get rid of that Goblin. Me and Almair-" she looked up lovingly at the man, her face bright red in anticipation. "-will retire to my room in the meantime. Do not dare to disturb us..." The thugs mumbled a few sheepish "Yes..." here and there, for the most part disappointed at the fact that their newest toy had turned out to be their leader's husband. The man and the Inari were about to leave the room. "Wait!" Kina called desperately. "Is- Is this true Lacking-" she stopped, not even she herself sure about how to refer to him anymore. "-Lacking Boy?" The Goblin's voice had begun to quiver, ever so slightly. For an instant, the man stopped. The Inari looked up at him, tilting her head quizzically. Silence. Without even turning around one last time, the man disappeared into the darkness of the next room. Soon enough, even the dull patter of his naked feet scraping against the sand beneath was drowned by the excited din of the Goblin's surroundings. Suddenly, the thugs began to fall quiet. It was in the air, palpable. A strange, terrifying feeling. Kina stood up. "So, this is how it's gonna be again?" she mumbled, a shattered tone of cheerfulness in her voice. Her nose had suddenly begun to become runny, but she frustratedly wiped it off with the back of her hand. "No worries... I'm used to it... I'm used to losing them... I'm used to being..." Tentatively, a single Lizard Girl tried to approach her. In an instant, the poor thing's skull was immediately smashed into the nearby wall with an unceremonious crack. None of her companions dared to lift a finger. "All... Al-... Alo..." She choked a bit, unable to finish her sentence. She tried to wipe her nose again, but her vision had already begun to grow cloudy. She wiped her eyes, smearing blood over her face. She didn't want to be seen like this. She wanted the man that had been Lacking Boy, and to hide in his coat again. And so, Kina wept. |
| Day 17 - Afternoon The Inari slammed the door impatiently behind her, tugging the man towards a garishly colored queen bed. The man, trying to do as best as he could to slow down the fox-girl without looking too reluctant, noted with particular distaste that the small chamber seemed to be more out-of place than a clown in a prison camp; western-styled furniture of the gaudiest of purples (probably the old property of an unfortunate merchant before one of the thugs' more successful ambushes) had been chaotically scattered across the room without a second though, along with a set of equally unsuitable items (among which a lapis lazuli-encrusted plate, the head of an old obsidian statue and, oddest of all, a perfectly conserved tea set, complete with tea tray). Apparently, it had managed to get even more out of hand since he'd last been there... A finger ran gently from the corner of his mouth down to his collarbone, causing him to freeze. With a single, graceful movement, the fox let herself drop onto the bed, embracing tightly the man. She giggled playfully as she looked up at his slightly blushing face. She'd already slipped out of her clothes with unnatural ease, as if she'd merely shed a second skin. "So, are we gonna do it the easy way...?" asked the Inari. She rolled again, inverting their position. "Or would you rather celebrate with something more... traditional?" She licked her lips. An unsettling twinkle in her eyes hinted that, in the long run, the answer wouldn't really matter. He looked away. The Queen was far from being unattractive; despite the countless scars that streaked her body, her skin was surprisingly clear, contrasting nicely with the rich brown of her tanned face, and even that disorganized mass of long hair was now starting to look somewhat endearing. Nonetheless, there was something in her gaze that unsettled him. It went far beyond the usual spark of lustful insanity, resembling more like a full-blown dark cloud of madness that festered behind those beautiful gemstone-green irises. "Hmm... Or could it be that abandoning one of your companions again-" For a split second, her pupils widened from the usual snake-like slit to the point that her entire iris seemed to have turned completely black, before reverting back to her previous, almost gentle expression. "- has put you out of the mood?" He looked away. The fox smiled triumphantly. "I'm right, aren't I?" she smiled, wagging her finger in his face in a mock-disappointment "Ooh, that wicked little Almair, breaking little girls' hearts to save himself from harm. Doesn't he know that making girls cry is a big no-no?" "... Surprising how one could still consider you a girl..." he hissed through gritted teeth, still refusing to look straight up at her. "How bold for someone such as yourself to say such cruel words!" she laughed, opening the man's large coat and resting her right hand on his chest. "But I forgive you anyway... " Her left hand began to slither gently down, slowly removing the man's ridiculous skirt. "You still owe me a lot for those cold nights, after all!" Suddenly, as if she could contain herself no longer, she reared up, tearing the man's skirt off as she did so. Her pupils widened once more, as a crazy grin broke across her face. She pounced down hungrily towards his crotch, grabbing the man's rod. ... The Inari looked down at her hands, then back up, then back down again. Her eyebrows began tying themselves into a knot, as if she was trying hard to not remember something. "Let's just stop with this farce already..." I sighed, gently prying the woman's fingers off my manhood and squirming out from beneath her. The Broken Queen tilted her head while smiling blankly, as if she was actually genuinely confused by this development. "F-farce?" I sat a bit more upright on the bed. "Yes. This whole big delusion of yours... I think it's time we put an end to it." It was her turn to look away. "Wh-?" There was a crash, as porcelain shattered onto the cold floor. She barely even had the time to open her mouth that she was almost immediately sent sprawling off my body. I tossed the tea-tray back onto the floor where I'd picked it up, doing my best to shove the Inari as far away as possible from me. "Time to run..." I hissed to myself, scrambling off the bed. Finding yet another pair of pants could wait for now. But where? I stopped, the image of the beaten Goblin appearing once again inside my mind. Shaking my head, I dispelled the thought. She wouldn't even stand a chance against the Queen, anyway... Anywhere, as long as its far away from this place... |
| 3 days prior to encounter with Kina - Afternoon Living alone has a lot of perks. On the flip-side, you never really know how to react when you wake up in the morning only to find someone looking down on you. Especially if that someone happens to be completely completely clad in a massive suit of medieval armor. "Uh... I'd like to remind you that the Renaissance Festival doesn't start until mid-October, and that it's at least a few blocks down the avenue from here..." Maybe if I broke the ice a little, the madman would make going through the whole "killing me"-issue a bit quicker... The suit of armor twitched a little, before letting out a booming, almost metallic laugh. Did I make him laugh? I wonder if I should I laugh too... Damn, I can't remember if that story about nut-cases not being able to recognize the difference between "laughing with" and "laughing at" was actually true... "Sorry..." apologized the suit of armor, removing its helmet. "It's just that I can't help but laugh when seeing someone with my face talk in such a weird voice." I stared at myself for a minute, taken aback. Or, rather, I stared up at the man who seemed to be wearing my exact same face with such a corny cavalier expression. Granted, perhaps his voice was about half a tone lower than mine, was a few inches shorter in stature and his smile didn't look like the one of an overzealous flasher but, apart from those fairly minor differences, he looked like a long-lost twin of some kind. "Err... Not to move on to a more touchy subject on purpose, but what are you doing in my apartment?" I asked cautiously, ready to spring out of the way at the first sign of aggression. Raising an almost completely identical eyebrow, the man shrugged. "Dunno. I always though that I lived here..." I'm pretty sure that my skin was now only a few shades of white away from the one of a corpse. If this ends up being like one of those Twilight Zone episodes and it turns out that I was the burglar all along at the end, I'm gonna jump out of the window... Speaking of the window, why was it so dark in here? I was pretty sure that I never put on any sort of blinds on them, so why-...? Come to think of it, where were the windows? I looked at the massive, purple bed that I was sleeping in, before instantly leaping out of it, as if I had been stung by a bee. "W-where am I? No, stay away! If it's my kidneys that you want, I'll tell you that I'm all out of them!" At this point, I had no idea whether to lie, beg for mercy or try to figure out more about my surroundings, so I simply tried to do all three at the same time... "Whoa! Take it easy! Nobody here wants your kidneys...!" The man's reassuring yet firm voice was barely enough to prevent me from lunging at him out of sheer desperation. He outstretched a heavily-armored hand. "Name's John, and chances are that I will probably be the only human from your own world that you'll see from now on." He chuckled. I shook his hand, despite the creeping sensation that those last, ominous words were creating in me. "What do you mean by that?" I asked suspiciously. "Well..." He rubbed his hands, as if trying to find the right words to break the news to me. "... Let's just say that people here are a bit, err... Different?" I frowned a bit. "Was that supposed to be a question? I was shopping at a convenience store barely ten minutes ago, and now I find myself in the same room as someone who's wearing an armor; you tell me how they're different!" John rolled his eyes. He told me. 2 days prior to encounter with Kina - Morning I was sitting on the bed, hugging my legs with my arms and slowly rocking myself back and forth as I meditated on my current situation. Somehow, we'd managed to scrounge up enough rags to make some basic clothing for me. Well, turns out that John had found me bobbing up and down inside a well and had, through what he described simply as "a miracle", managed to sneak me inside this building that was apparently teeming with monsters. On the bright side, these so-called monsters seemed to be more of the lustful, fairly humanoid and "gorgeous even by human standards" variety, by the sound of it. On the dark side, almost all of them appeared to have the nasty habit of satisfying their unending lust by continuously raping any man that they came across, and I appeared to be stuck in a world that was apparently populated almost solely by them. Come to think of it, those last two points sounded an awful lot worse when he'd mentioned them... Besides, I had no need to doubt the truthfulness of his words. What I'd gathered by listening to the occasional conversation amongst who I could only guess where the guards of the place, as their odd feet clacked, pattered or clopped against the surface of the sandy floor, had been enough to confirm John's words. The sound of a key turning into an old door's slightly rusty lock. I turned around to see "myself" quickly step inside the room, cautiously locking the door behind him. "Got something for me?" I asked, greeting him with a small wave. John tossed over a small chunk of dark bread, placing a small bucket of murky water down by the door as he did so. I was still digging into my tiny loaf when he placed a large, leather-bound book in front of me. "You're lucky; turns out the girls found one of these old Encyclopedias during one of their raids recently." Raids? ... Something tells me it may be best not to delve too deep into the subject... "If I were really lucky, I wouldn't have to be eating bread that is heavier on the stomach than a bag of rocks..." "Don't count on it... It's been at least fourteen years since I've last had a truly full meal." chuckled John. I stopped. "Are you trying to tell me that you've been on this continent for over a decade?" "Pretty much." he answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "... How old are you, anyway?" He couldn't possibly have been older than me, but that would have probably meant that he'd been stuck here ever since he was eleven... John thought about it for a second. "About thirty-three this year, I guess?" He shrugged at my agitated expression. "What can I tell you? Looks like our aging processes are drastically stunted around these parts... Besides, if you're actually trying to find a way to go back, I can't exactly recommend any methods that would work..." I sighed a bit. There wasn't really anybody that was still waiting for me back home, and my daily life had hardly been good enough to give up an entirely new world on. Come to think of it, I hadn't exactly been very "lucky" in the previous world either. Maybe this time I actually stood a chance... "What's up with the drawings...?" I muttered, changing the subject and pointing at the little stick figure with wings that had been apparently classified as Harpy "The artistically inclined don't exactly tend to last very long around these parts..." explained eerily John. "... Oh." 1 day prior to encounter with Kina - Noon "So you're married to the leader of a group of desert bandits? Must be fun..." I muttered as best as I could with my mouth full of stone-hard bread. Being locked inside a room with a single book and getting to see only one person for three entire days had helped making the entire situation a whole lot more colloquial. John sighed, moving to a slightly more comfortable position against the stone wall that he was leaning on. "We're not exactly married... As a matter fact, I don't think I'm even particularly attracted to her." I shrugged, swallowing down my lunch. "A one-sided relationship, then. So you're just sticking around her for the benefits, I take?" "What? No..." John looked down at his feet, furrowing his eyebrows. "Not at first, at least..." "So you did love her once..." He let out a frustrated snort, as if I had brought up uncomfortable memories. "Not her..." I quickly decided to let the conversation die there. There's only so much that I can abuse of my host's patience. The illustrations might suck but, if that encyclopedia's to be believed, I stand a snowball's chance in Hell of making it out of this room for more than a couple of days... It was John who broke the awkward silence once more. "While we're on the topic, we'll probably have to find a new accommodation for you by tomorrow. We can't have her find out about you..." "Huh...? Why bother? I hardly think that someone like her could complain at the possibility of having two men to play around with..." I wouldn't forget the pale look that John gave me then. "Just trust me on this..." Dy 0 - Early Evening "All right, chances are that she might be coming back at any second now, so we'd best get you to that empty room as soon as possible..." "Sure, sure..." I yawned. Frankly, I was finding John's sudden worry to be little more than an overreaction. Despite what he might have said, the Encyclopedia described most of these so-called mamono as rarely coming to the point of actually killing humans, and I still highly doubted that whatever might have happened could possibly be as bad as he was making it. Maybe it had just been a brief moment of wishful thinking, but it was probably almost solely because of this horribly wrong estimation that the events that were about to occur unfolded as they did. There was a sharp knock at the door. "Who is it?" I replied, out of instinct. John spun around, a white look of horror on his face. It struck me. "Who do you think it is?" laughed a voice on the other side. I froze almost immediately, unable to answer; even I could tell that there was something dangerously wrong with that voice. An innocent, yet masterfully out of place note of cheerfulness. "Play along!" he hissed. "She's gonna notice if I start talking now! " "C-coming!" I answered out loud, throwing a worried look at John. "Take off your clothes, too! It's gonna make things easier for you..." he added again with a final, hurried whisper. Obeying this last order, I slowly approached the door, barely hearing John's attempt at hiding within in the shadows of one of the room's corners behind me. I was a few steps away from the door now, and cold sweat had already begun to run down my bare back. There was a clacking sound, as a key turned inside the lock. The wooden door swung open, revealing the beautiful naked body of the woman that John had spoken so warily of. "I thought that you'd be more excited to see me so soon, darling..." she pouted, flicking the pair of massive fox-like ears that sprouted from the top of her head irritably. Her gaze, however, softened up considerably as soon as she noticed that I too wasn't wearing anything. A stump of a tail suddenly wagging excitedly behind her, the woman seized this chance by almost immediately pouncing me, causing us to topple back onto the bed. "I'll forgive your impoliteness, just for this once..." she whispered, nibbling the lobe of my ear affectionately. For a brief, wonderful moment, my mind went blank. Suddenly, she was all around me; her knotted, unkempt hair tickling gently my face, her rough little tongue that seemed to be stroking my skin so passionately, the pleasant warmth of her naked breasts pressing against my chest that could have so easily melted me to a puddle, her simple yet rich smell filling my nostrils... I wanted more of it. But you can't... Of course I could. You're not who she wants. What will you do when she realizes that? I awoke from the dream, freezing sweat running down my brow once more. The fox-girl's ears immediately perked up at the sound of my now-rushed breathing. "What's the matter...?" she asked, her face now hovering almost inches away from my own. "Oh, nothing..." I weakly stammered, trying to dismiss my sudden worry and regain my composure. The mamono however, wasn't fooled; following my gaze, her eyes fell on the old rags that were still lying on the floor. Pupils widening, her eyes almost immediately turned completely black. It was all over in a couple of minutes. A sudden, unsheathing sound and a jagged knife had already disappeared from the leg onto which it had been previously secured, materializing into her hand in a matter of instants. The tip of the knife gleamed, drawing a semi-circle into the air as the fox-girl spun around to attack her hardly-visible opponent. John didn't stand a chance: despite the uneven edge of the blade, the sheer force of the swing had been enough to slice precisely through his jugular, tearing his throat open with one, clean strike. He crashed down onto the far end of the bed, his (My?) eyes and mouth wide open in a faintly surprised expression. Blood had already begun to pour copiously from beneath his chin, pinkish foam spurting out of his mouth as he made one last desperate attempt to communicate. Eventually, his shoulders slumped as his eyes slowly began to grow dim. He barely managed to outstretch one arm, like a drowning man floundering through the ocean, before he finally gave in. For one last instant, I found myself staring at my dying face. My hand immediately went for my neck, rubbing the same area that had just been severed, as if to soothe the non-existent pain that was now scalding through my own throat. The mamono stared down at her husband's corpse, her completely immobile body preventing any emotion from being revealed. Then, with an almost unnatural care, she slowly sheathed back the bloody knife. She brought her hands to the sides of her cheeks, covering her eyes with her fingers, and began rocking gently her head back and forth. Despite the darkness of the room, there was still no way that she could not have noticed her mistake during those last few seconds. It took me a second to realize that she was looking at me now, her green eyes almost glowing. She licked a few stray dots of blood off the back of her hand, before giving me a terrifying, sickle-like grin. A feeling of dread began to slowly pour throughout my body, as if lead was being filled inside my bones. I could hardly breathe anymore, let alone move. "I thought I'd already warned you about bringing any of your friends in here." she sighed in a chilling mock-disapproval. "It's gonna take forever to take those stains off the bed now..." Suddenly leaning towards me, her lips met mine, filling my mouth with an uncomfortable tinge of blood. "I'll be right back..." she whispered softly, before effortlessly hoisting the corpse on her shoulders and sweeping out of the room. I waited on the bed for a second as the echo of her footsteps finally died away, paralyzed in fear. I have to run. ... Was this one of the miracles that John had mentioned a few days ago? Despite the fact that I was little more than a completely naked human male walking at a regular pace out in the complete open, I was somehow able to leave the building and the surrounding settlement unnoticed. Perhaps the sheer idea of something so convenient actually happening was so improbable that most monsters didn't even bother registering my presence at the far back of their subconscious. Or maybe I had already died and was merely little more than a ghost now... Whatever the reason, dark, unfamiliar desert sands were now stretching wide before me. I could bear the sheer pressure of it all no longer, and began to run. I had no idea for how long I stumbled down the freezing cavern; it hadn't taken long before my aimless run through the freezing desert sand led me to a massive wall of mountains. I didn't stop, clambering instead as quick as I could up the steep, rocky surfaces. By the time that I found the cave, my hands and feet were already covered in nasty, shallow cuts. Nonetheless, I still kept trying to run away, barely able to think anymore. My awkward stumble soon turned to an unsure, tired pace, as my mad run began taking its toll on me. Eventually, my legs finally gave in, causing me to unceremoniously tumble upon a smooth slab of stone. I let out a long sigh. Why bother? John already said that there's no way of leaving here, anyway... Might as well just take it easy from here. As if recognizing the small drops human blood that were currently oozing onto its surface, the altar onto which I'd fallen down on began to glow faintly, but I took no notice. In a few seconds, I'd probably wake up again and see the slightly worried face of the convenience store's underpaid cashier as he asked me if I was all right. Far away from all the psychotic beings that inhabited this desert. What the hell. A man can dream, can't he? I smiled weakly at the thought, my eyes slowly closing once more. |
| Day 17 - 3:28 pm Just as I was to take a step forward, a set of cold, claw-like fingers had already latched themselves around my ankle. "Run...?" With a quick, seemingly effortless tug, the hand had already managed to make me topple over on the stone floor. "Run, you say? Where to, I wonder~?" The Broken Queen picked herself back up again, latching her still armored hand around my throat and hoisting my entire body up against the wall. A lopsided grin broke wide across her face, her eyes glistening once more with that mad twinkle of hers. "Of course you're not Almair, stupid...! Someone like him-" (*Twitch*) "-wouldn't have been so cowardly as to try and run away before even coming up with so much as a decent plan!" Snickering, she teasingly ran the blunt side of the same saw-toothed knife against the skin on my neck. The color that still lingered on my cheeks faded almost immediately, as images of that night once again began to flash across my mind. What little coolness I had managed to gather only moments ago had now been completely substituted by nothing more than sheer panic, as I clawed desperately at the gauntlet that firmly kept me in place. Laughing mockingly at my instinctive attempt to latch on as tightly as possible to my miserable life, the fox literally strangled what little hope I still had of freeing myself from her grasp by simply tightening her hold. Despite the fact that the supply of oxygen in my lungs had already begun to steadily decrease, causing my sight to slowly grow dimmer and dimmer, my mind had suddenly reverted from mindless panic to a chillingly rational acceptance, as if my entire body had agreed on a general "Whelp, we gave it our best shot..." state of mind. A single image floated once more through my head. Damn. It was the beaten Goblin again. What had the betrayal of my sole companion and my last-ditch effort at running again once more amounted to, in the end...? My heavy eyelids fluttered closed, blackening completely my vision. Guess I really deserve to come back as a worm, after all... A silvery tinkle was enough me up with a final wheeze from my nearly-catatonic state. Seizing this improbable yet last chance at life with all of the instinct of self-preservation that was still left in me, I tore off the bell that was still tied around my neck. *Clang* A small look of confusion clouded for an instant the fox's victorious grin. Barely enough to gasp down the oxygen necessary to ring it a second time. *Clang* The entire room fell silent. We both looked about, expecting something dangerously improbable to happen. The fox-girl turned around (albeit while still retaining some caution) once more, a jeering smile once more on her face. "Looks like your tr-" *Klong* The bell made a decidedly duller noise as it collided with the Broken Queen's jaw. Unfazed, she looked straight into my eyes, a furious scowl on her face. Licking her lips, as if already tasting the blood that was about to be sprayed once more across the room, she lifted the knife. ... With a dull wooden scrunching noise, the door was mowed down to little more than a cloud of splinters. Instants later, the fox was propelled straight across the room as a sudden force smashed at full speed into her flank, causing her to let go of her hold with a pained yelp. I slid back down to the floor, the sudden rush of air almost making me faint on the spot. "Get up..." urged gently the figure completely clad in dark rags that was know looming above me. The mere sound of those words was almost enough to freeze the blood in my veins all over again. I remembered that voice and, worse still, I remember the ominous aura that seemed to surround them right now. That same oppressive feeling that I'd gotten way back within the dungeons of that old fort, when I'd been so improbably rescued from the grasp of the vampire known as Fifi. I looked up at the woman that had already saved my life twice. The sheer power of her previous charge had been enough to unfasten the fabric, uncharacteristic even for the villagers that inhabited the area, that she had wrapped around her head, revealing a pair of smooth, white horns. "You weren't kidding about running immediately to my side..." I joked nonchalantly, picking myself back up again with the aid of my savior's outstretched hand. The more I hid the fact that the stream of sweat that was running down my back was probably starting to turn into a river now, the better... "How rude!" replied sweetly the Holstaurus farmer, masking any emotion or motive apart from an unreal, smooth kindness with a small smile. "I'll have you know that I always keep my promises..." |
| Day 17 - 3:33 pm "Well, look who decided to show herself again! I've already been expecting you for the past two years... Stalker." The Broken Queen grinned while picking herself up once more, completely unfazed by the fact that she'd just been blown right across the room. "You know each other?" I asked, surprised by this sudden turn of events. "Not at all!" smiled reassuringly the Holstaurus back at me. A faint hiss, followed by the metallic clang of the knife digging deep into a section of the wall only a few inches away from my neck. In the span of a second, the farmer had barely managed to grab hold of her assailant's arm and deflect the blade's original trajectory, saving me from being skewered and putting an abrupt end to the fox-girl's lighting-fast charge. The latter let out a frustrated snort, twisting her arm free once again and taking a step back. "So you're not even going to bother introducing me properly, then?" sighed the Broken Queen with genuine displeasure. "I can't help but feel a bit cheated..." She suddenly pounced forward, slicing wildly at the Holstaurus without even bothering to check if any of her blows were landing or not. "Then again, one can only expect such an attitude from someone as cruel as you!" she giggled malevolently. Weaponless and with her back to the wall, there wasn't anything that the Holstaurus could do other than shoving the lunatic out of the way, just enough to keep the latter from getting close enough to any of her vitals, and hope for an opening of some sort. However, before the fox's relentless crazed flaying, there was little hope of such a thing happening; disarming her without having one's hand sliced off was out of the question, while continuing to shove her away meant moving into the knife's range, which also meant risking to have your throat opened once every four seconds, but still wasn't enough to buy us enough time to make a run for the exit. Also, there was just so much time before the only thing that stood between me and the rain of blows messed up. As predicted, a single step too late was enough for the blade to bite deep into the Holstaurus' wrist. An instinctive step back from the latter's part later and the result of the fight was decided. The Holstaurus could only stare at the tip of the knife that was now about to be plunged straight into her stomach, not a single trace of her previous cool-headed attitude remaining on her face. "Kuh-" ... It took less than a moment for the Holstaurus' worried expression to turn into a nasty, victorious grin. "-Kidding!" she jeered, suddenly spinning out of the knife's course. The fox's eyes widened with sheer surprise as the Holstaurus took hold of the nape of her neck, before being smashed with the force of her own momentum against the wall. "Come on now! We've lingered around these parts for more than enough..." ordered simply the Holstaurus, having already reverted back to her more cheerful demeanor. "Are you sure that you're a farmer...?" I asked suspiciously. Although I'm pretty sure that I already know the answer... "Certainly! Don't you know that dry blood and ground-up bones are excellent fertilizers?" she chuckled, urging me towards the door. Nope. Definitely not the answer that I was expecting... "Intentionally allowing yourself to be hit in order to get me to lower my guard... It was never hard to figure out which one of the two of us was the real fox..." muttered the Queen, placing herself in the way between us and our only path of escape. For a brief second, a shade of melancholy and regret clouded the maddened twinkle in her eyes. "Muh? Are you implying that you're a cow, then?" replied innocently the Holstaurus, trying to hide her frustration at the fact that we hadn't been quick enough to leave the room while we still had the chance. "Wouldn't be so far off from the truth anyway, what with that hard head of yours and all..." It lasted no more than a second, but I was still able to catch sight of it. The farmer's hand twitched with a genuine jolt of pain, as blood slowly continued to drip out of her deep wound. If facing the blows had already been enough of a challenge as it was, there was no way that she going to be able to keep up with them in this state. The Queen's stump of a tail twitched irritably. "You think that those weak little blows of yours will be enough to stop me from spilling those dirty guts of yours? You should at least be able to rip my limbs apart one by one before you can even consider running away..." "Don't give me any ideas..." growled a voice behind her. A second later and the Queen was violently tossed aside like a discarded doll. ... Her? I froze completely. "Outta my way, cow-tits..." she ordered. With a mere smile, the Holstaurus conceded. The Goblin looked up at me, smiling. Her face had almost gone completely blue in bruises now. She staggered slightly whenever she took another step forward, as blood dripped without from her palms and knuckles onto the stony floor. Dammit! Don't come any closer, you idiot! She stopped right in front of me. "Ha! I knew you wouldn't just betray me like that!" laughed Kina, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Stop staring at me like that! Is it that you're so used to me patronizing you and making you feel better that you're willing to come running back to my side even after I hurt you so much? "I knew you wouldn't do that..." she repeated, still laughing. Of course I would! And I did! I'm not some overpowered creature like you guys! Look! I'm a wreck of a human being; I grin smugly when I think I have the upper hand, but I will probably sell out the people I love even if it means that I get to live ten minutes longer! And yet you still try and come back to get me? Just because I act cool in front of you? Use those couple of brain cells, you stupid Goblin! "I knew... you..." She bit her lower lip. My train of thought completely stopped, dead in its tracks. Guilt began to burn deep within my stomach, seething out from between my stitches. I fell to my knees, right before her. I'd made a girl, probably the only one who had ever trusted someone like me so much, cry. Twice, to be exact. There was no need for me to die to make me feel like a worm... I hugged her. It wasn't one of those almost condescending hugs that you give to cheer someone up. It was more like the hand that a drowning man reaches out as he sinks down to the bottom of the ocean. Kina's eyes opened wide in surprise, her tiny heart beating so fast against my own that I was afraid that it might burst. "I knew you would..." I whispered back, trying not to choke up on my words. It was the truth. For a second, I was afraid that she might push me away. That she might reject the fact that the man that she'd literally looked up to as a pillar of moral support up to this point was now standing down at her own height, depending on her, of all people, for something other than simple physical protection. Instead, the Goblin simply hugged me back, bringing me closer to herself than I could have ever imagined. For the first time in the past two weeks, our embrace was finally truly mutual. |
| ((The following flashback focuses only on three characters that are not part the main duo. Since it does not influence either of the main characters' way of thinking in any way, please regard it as an Extra Chapter.)) Fourteen years ago... Amira couldn't feel her tail. A sharp, stinging pain ran down her spine again, making her entire body jerk, but the thought still lingered on her mind. Where's my tail? Judging by where the somewhat familiar figure of the werewolf in front of her was standing, along with the old buildings of the small desert village that she'd reluctantly called "home" for the past three years behind it, the little Inari could only suppose that the entire world had apparently decided to spin itself upside down while she wasn't looking. "Can we go now?" grumbled a particularly sun-burnt Elf, stepping into Amira's distorted field of vision. "I can't say that I don't like the way all these villagers are looking at us..." The werewolf let out a mighty sigh, carefully securing the blood-spattered jagged knife that she was still holding back onto her belt. "Relax... None of them will bother lifting a finger against us, anyway..." "How can you be so sure?" asked the Elf, adjusting slightly one of the knots of the large bow that she was carrying. "Her clothes..." grunted the Werewolf, nodding at Amira. "Probably just the orphan of some merchants from the South, or something... As if anyone would bother risking an arm for a nobody like her..." "That so...?" muttered back the Elf, too busy fiddling nervously with her weapon to actually pay any close attention to what her companion was saying. "Will you quit messing around! I told you, there's nothing to worry about! Besides, easy catches like this one are one in a million nowadays, and there's always some unbalanced witch of some sort who'd be willing to even sell her own husband just to get her hands on a Kitsune's tail..." By now the pain was strong enough to make Amira's eyes water. Nonetheless, even she was able to see the round, fluffy-looking item that the Werewolf held up at that moment. She wondered what it was doing way over there, and why small, scarlet clumps had formed in some parts of its soft surface. It took less than a second for her to remember the blazing pain, and how the cold blade had screeched as it dug deeper into her bones. She tried to struggle, kicking helplessly at the air above her, as a weak whimper escaped her throat. The Werewolf directed her attention back at the little Inari. "You poor thing..." she sighed with genuine compassion, extending the arm that was still clenched tightly around Amira's stump outwards. "Weak, alone and with no hope of developing any of your race's arcane powers anymore..." Amira gaze fell upon the reddish surface of the waters stretched beneath her. "Guess life just wasn't that kind to you, kiddo..." The Werewolf let go. Amira sank like a rock. Having lived in a desert for as long as she could remember, the entire idea of drowning was completely alien to her. She struggled, but the constant pain that rushed across her entire body seemed to have an almost paralyzing effect on her. It didn't take long before all of her strengths were completely drained. Bumping gently against the freezing bottom of the well, her vision slowly began to grow dimmer. Why was this happening to her? She was pretty certain that she hadn't really done anything wrong in these last six years. So why was she being punished right now, at the end of a deep, cold hole? Maybe the reason that I'm down here right now is the same for which I was abandoned... Yes, that sounded about right. She opened her mouth, letting out the last air bubbles that were still left in her lungs in a long, watery sigh. ... Something tugged at her leg. Amira's eyes flashed open, as the boiling desert sun above her rushed to meet her. She felt herself being lifted out of the water and back onto the solid sand once again. Still coughing out water, she looked up, trying to figure out what had just happened. Someone tall (and, by the looks of it, almost as confused about the whole situation as Amira herself...), different from anything that the fox had ever seen in her entire, short life, looked back down at her. Suddenly, her missing tail, the unbearable desert heat, the loneliness, the Werewolf and the uncomfortable stickiness of her wet clothes clinging to her skin didn't seem to matter all that much to the little Inari anymore. "Umm... Are you all right?" asked tentatively the man that stood before her, not quite sure about what was going on around him or why he was all of a sudden in the middle of a desert town. "AMIRA!" A sudden, joy-filled cry brought the fox-girl back to reality once more. "Mircelle...?" she weakly replied, before being almost literally blown off her feet. "AmiraAmiraAmiraAmiraAmira! What did they do to you?" bawled the girl that was now squeezing the Inari tightly, burying the latter's face deep into her surprisingly precocious chest. Suddenly noticing the presence of the human, the Holstaurus known as Mircelle instantly let go of her hold, placing herself instead firmly between the stranger and her friend. "I don't care about who you are or what you are doing here, but if you even dare laying a hand on Amira, not even being a man is going to save you from what I'll have you go through..." she snarled fiercely, her eyes were burning with determination despite the fact that she barely even reached his bellybutton. "O-kay...?" answered the man, glancing around in the hopes of finding out why a weird-looking kid seemed to be so angry with him all of a sudden. Mircelle let out an angry snort, before quickly dragging her friend off towards a small building and out of sight. The man just stood there for a second, scratching the back of his head and wondering just what the hell was going on. He looked down, only to find out that he was butt-naked. "One of those dreams, huh?" * * * * * The Inari let out a surprised squeak as Mircelle tightened as gently as she could the few strips of cloth that she'd been able to scrounge around around the still bleeding stump. "Sorry..." she mumbled, securing the makeshift bandages in place with a small knot. "There! See if it works now." Amira gently wagged her tail as best as she could. The wound still scalded her flesh like a burning lump of coal, but the strips held nonetheless. Mircelle let out a sigh of relief. It wasn't long, however, before her expression hardened once more. "Did that human do it?" growled the Holstaurus, bristling in anger. Amira simply shook her head. "Are you sure...?" asked again the Holstaurus suspiciously, as if she couldn't really picture that human as being a nice person. Amira nodded. She wondered if the man that had saved her was still waiting by the well. Suddenly, her large ears perking straight up, the Inari scrambled to her feet. Her tiny body went completely rigid, as if she had just heard something in the distance. "M-muh? Is something the matt- Hey, wait! Where are you going?!" ... Amira skidded to a halt by the side of the one of the many walls that protruded from the desert sands around that area, her large ears alert and rigid as a pair of antennae. She could clearly hear the ragged breathing on the other side, and even someone like her could easily realize just what kind of fate awaited a naked human male in the smack middle of the village. "Haa... Haa... Ahaa... Heh...! You really seem to have gotten into this... Haven't you?" jeered the assailant amidst her occasional moans of pleasure. The Inari didn't even need to look to recognize the odious voice of the Werewolf. She dug her nails into the palm of her hands, almost to the point of drawing blood. Filled with resolve, she cautiously turned the corner. The first thing she noticed was the horrid, rhythmic squelching sound. To the fox-girl's luck, the werewolf had straddled the man while facing the opposite direction, and was probably too intent in viciously pounding his rod within her to notice Amira's tiny figure. The completely immobile corpse of the unfortunate Elf lay not too far back from where the two where currently positioned, a saw-toothed blade driven deep into her skull hinting at how the entire issue about splitting the loot had been settled. Her bare feet not making a sound as she carefully crossed the sandy clearing, Amira slowly moved closer to the body, wrapping her fingers around the hilt of the knife. Taking a deep breath, she wrenched it out. The blade slid out with a sickening scrunching sound, cranial liquids messily spilling over the Inari's still-damp clothing. She spun around, clutching clumsily the knife's hilt, in fear that her previous assailant might have heard the din. The Werewolf, on the other hand, seemed to have completely lost herself in her deed, as her moans slowly turned into almost dog-like yelps and squeaks of pain and pleasure as the rhythmical grinding of her hips against his grew faster and faster. Had this been any other situation, Amira would have let out a sigh of relief. Instead, she slowly slithered closer and closer towards the Werewolf's unguarded back. As she finally reached her climax, the Werewolf let out a final, beast-like howl, slamming her entire waist down against the man's cock. What was supposed to be a prideful assessment of her victory, however, was quickly choked back down her throat, distorted into a curious squeal of pain and surprise. Amira, boring her feet into the Werewolf's back while jerking the latter's head back by it's thick, black hair, lifted her weapon. It was a matter of instants before the blade found the soft skin of the Werewolf's exposed throat. The latter began to flail wildly, trying to shake off her opponent while grasping wildly for the knife that was digging into her throat, but Amira's assault didn't falter. The blade pierced through its neck three more times before finally, exhaling one last broken whimper, the Werewolf's body went limp, sliding down to the side. By now completely stained from head to toe in blood, Amira wriggled out from beneath her enemy's corpse and approached the ragged figure of the man. He looked up at her, wheezing desperately for air as he tried to bring himself up to a sitting position. "Almair !" she smiled, pressing a bloody hand gently against the man's bare chest. For a second, the man didn't reply, still mighty confused by everything that had happened around him in the past fifteen minutes. "... M-me? No... Jon!" he weakly corrected, pointing at himself. "Almair!" she continued, happily ignoring him. Her little stump was twitching furiously out of sheer excitement now. "That's quite enough there, Amira... Give him some space to breathe, at least!" Reluctantly, the Inari took a step back from her beloved. "I'm afraid that I might have been too harsh with you back there..." apologized the Holstaurus, helping Jon back up to his feet. "I am Mircelle, but the girl to whom you owe your current freedom is called Amira. Be sure you don't forget it..." "Thanks..." replied simply the man, still trying to catch his breath. "Anyway, my name's Jo-" "Almair!" squeaked joyfully Amira, suddenly clambering up his shoulders like an overexcited kitten. "Ow... Ow! What's the big idea! Besides, I told you that my name is not Almair!" Mircelle simply giggled, a great sense of relief trickling down her spine. Despite having taken care of the little Inari for the past three years, she'd never really seen her so happy and truly at ease around someone. Seeing her friend finally being able to smile filled the Holstaurus with a warm, satisfying feeling. "Come on Almair! We'll show you where we live!" announced suddenly the Holstaurus, grabbing Jon by the hand and dragging him away from the clearing. "House!" squeaked happily the fox-girl, who had in the meantime perched herself at the top of the man's head. "Fine... But can you at least try to call me by my real name?" he pleaded weakly. "No~pe!" "Muhuhuh~! Denied~♥!" "*Groan*" Mircelle preferred to not spoil the cheerful atmosphere by pointing out that Amira was still clutching tightly to her blood-covered knife. Deep down, however, a certain, ominous feeling of dread had begun to fill her heart... |
| :( those last couple chapters still make me sad |
|
| Five years ago... Mircelle stormed through the dark corridors of dune-covered building. Despite having called those labyrinthine passages her home for as long as she could remember, they had never felt so alien to her like in that moment. Unfamiliar torches now hung from the walls, casting long shadows behind the strange shapes of the rugged armor-clad bandits and mercenaries that had now begun to infest the place. Bumping straight past a small band of thugs (More of them?! she thought, scowling), Mircelle swerved straight into the central room. The first thing she noticed, much to her profound distaste, was the muscular figure of a particularly dense-looking Minotaur that had just stepped in her way. "Nobody gets through here without the Queen's or my permission, little cow..." A toothless grin spread wide across the Minotaur's face, accompanied by a powerful whiff of the stench of her rotting gums. "Unless, of course, you might find yourself willing to share some of that milk of yours with me and my girls. Your pick." "Just who I was looking for..." muttered simply the Holstaurus, clicking her tongue in irritation. "That's not an ans-" Grabbing very literally the bull by the horns, Mircelle unceremoniously broke the Minotaur's nose with a well placed head-butt. The latter barely had enough time to screech in pain that the Holstaurus was already ramming her face into the sand-covered floor. "Let me go!" barked the Minotaur from the helpless position in which she was now finding herself. "Muh? But yesterday you were bellowing so happily with your friends about your escapades with the futas in the South District..." replied Mircelle with fake surprise, tugging jeeringly at her captive's tail while still holding her head down. "I just assumed that you must have already plenty of experience with these sort of positions..." "You'll hear about this!" whined the Minotaur, blushing a little. "You'll see what happens to you after beating up a member of the Queen's Guard!" "Queen's Guard?!" Mircelle could barely contain her laughter now. "Is that how you flea-ridden rats call yourselves now? I'm pretty sure that even the stupidest of vassals would know exactly at what end of a sword they'd rather have you and your friends at... " "It's true!" squealed angrily back the Minotaur, sounding progressively less and less intimidating. "Mircelle. Let her go." Her blood freezing at the sound of the voice, the Holstaurus let go of her hold on the Minotaur and spun around to face her old friend. "Amira, why is this drooling imbecile here saying that she's supposed to be guarding you?" "Because it's the truth..." replied simply the Inari, looking away. Mircelle stood up, shocked. In the end, it was just as she'd feared... "...Why?" The Holstaurus took a step towards the fox-girl. "Amira, you need to tell me precisely what's going on around here! Why has the worst scum of the desert been lurking around here for the past two days now? Lords, and you've even started to call yourself a queen now?! What's happened to you?!" Sensing the Holstaurus' approach, Amira shoved her friend away. "What happened, you ask? This happened!" she snarled, pointing at the miserable remains of her tail. "How can I protect you and... him-" *Twitch* "-with this powerless body of mine!" Mircelle sighed loudly, burying her face in the palm of her hand. So was it just once again another deal regarding Amira's unhealthy obsession with Almair? "Is that what you're worried about? I'm sure that the two of us already are enough to keep away-" "You're lying!" howled suddenly the Inari, pacing restlessly back and forth before Mircelle. "I can't think of a single person on this continent that wouldn't want his seed inside of them! If I am too weak to stand up against even a couple of Ogres, can't you see the only thing that I can do to keep him safe is to have more people guarding this place?!" "Lords' sake, Amira! They're nothing but bandits! The same people that put you in that state to begin with! Hasn't the thought that those very same guards of yours might try to rape Almair themselves even crossed your mind?! " The fox-girl's eyes widened, as if the idea had only hit her just now. She began to shake, twiddling her fingers nervously. "You're right... I hadn't thought about that possibility... I'll have to go and make sure that none of the guards lay a finger on him" she muttered, turning around to probably go and check on her beloved that very same instant. "Wait!" called Mircelle, grabbing her friend by the shoulder out of sheer exasperation. I all happened in a moment. Without any warning, the Inari spun her entire body around, violently twisting the Holstaurus' arm backwards. Mircelle swore that she could hear her bones creaking more painfully with every second that went by. W-when did she get so strong...? "Do. Not. Touch me..." growled the fox-girl. Mircelle could only stare deep into the dilated pupils of her friend as, for a brief second, an ominous twinkle danced wildly within them. A blink later and they were gone, leaving behind only the child-like, surprised expression of that same little Inari that she'd known so many years ago. Suddenly flustered by her actions, Amira immediately let go. She opened her mouth to apologize, but only a tiny, quivering whine came out. Mircelle moved towards to the fox-girl, bringing her close to her large chest. "It's all right, Amira... I'm fine, see...!" "N-no... I hurt...!" "Hush... We'll talk about this later..." "Ngh... A-all right..." ... Mircelle stopped in front of the small wooden door, so out of place with the general style of the rest of the building. Despite the fact that not many thugs wandered this deep into the labyrinth of dark tunnels, she could still hear their voices echo in the distance. A feeling of slight irritation began to fill her once more: why had she given in so easily to her gentler instincts back there with Amira, promising that she’d bring the whole matter up another time? No matter how weak the Inari might have been in that precise moment, by being kind she had still taken no action against her friend’s madness. Frustrated, Mircelle let out a loud sigh, before giving the door a soft rap. “Mircelle, is that you?” The mere sound of his voice was enough to dispel all of Mircelle’s previous worries, her cheeks flushing immediately red. The door slowly creaked open, revealing Almair’s usual rugged face. “Mircelle…? Is something wr-Oof!” Driven by a sudden surge in her sexual drive, the Holstaurus immediately pushed Almair back onto the rough floor of his room. She hovered above him for a second, her hips grinding roughly against his crotch, as if she was still a young calf in heat. As if even the entire desert wanted to see them do it, a faint breeze gently swung the door shut behind her. Almair simply smiled back up at her, years of being on the receiving end of these rough shows of affection having gained a certain familiarity in him towards them. “Woah, it can’t be milking time again! It’s only been barely two days since we last did it!” “Oh, hush…” moaned back the Holstaurus with an interesting mix of mock irritation and mind-numbing desire, increasing the regularity of her grinding. His face turned suddenly a bit graver, despite the fact that the massive bulge in his pants seemed to have other, very distinct plans. “So something is troubling you, isn’t it…” he sighed, grabbing the Mircelle’s shoulders and gently pushing her off him. The Holstaurus showed close to no intention of fighting back. Demonstrating a force of self-control over his bodily functions superior to the one of most men, he brought himself back up to a sitting position in front of the Holstaurus. “Look, I don’t think that I have ever had anything to say about your prowess or doing it with you. However, if you’re just planning on screwing me just to get your mind off what you’re worried about for a short while, I’m afraid that I will have to categorically refuse until you at least give me a good reason as to why I shouldn’t worry…” Mircelle didn’t reply, instead reaching out tentatively for Almair’s pants, only to receive an admonishing light smack on the hand. She sighed, slowly gaining control once again over her lust, and looked up into the human’s eyes. If someone had told her years ago that she would somehow end up falling head-over-heels for the mangy-looking human that she and Amira had rescued, she would have laughed. Also, even assuming that she might have begun to show feelings towards him, there was still no way that she could have possibly matched up to the Inari’s selfless devotion: despite coming from what was usually reputed as a gentle race of mamono, Mircelle’s brusque and at times even violent ways were common knowledge to the villagers (at least, to the few that ever bothered to learn about the personality of someone like her.) Her innate talent (stranger still, for someone that hailed from a long, proud line of sentient cows) to easily blend into the background of most given situations only made matters worse… And yet, despite the Inari’s maddening possessiveness, they had inevitably ended up being attracted to one another; it had been a short matter of time before occasional weekly milkings soon turned into nights of burning passion. “Mircelle?” His voice seemed to echo in the distance. She didn’t want to lose him. Not to the horrible ilk that was now wandering through the corridors, ready to seize any favorable opportunity that might present itself to them. “Mir-?” She softly placed her index on his lips, causing him to fall suddenly quiet. “I’ll be gone for a while, Almair…” A look of surprise came across his face. He tried to open his mouth again, ready to argue, to ask the reason for it. She moved in, quickly locking her lips with his. Despite the even more surprised look on his face, he didn’t struggle. After what seemed like an eternity to her, they finally parted. “Anyway, how many times did I tell you that my name is Jon?” he grumbled, wiping off a strand of saliva off the corner of his mouth. The Holstaurus giggled playfully, before falling quiet once again. … “When will you be back?” “Who knows?” she replied simply, standing up. He got up with her. “I love you, Mircelle.” It was cheesy, he knew, if not even to the point of being cliché. Still… “I love you too…” … “Where are you going…?” asked tentatively Amira. “… When you began recruiting those bandits, was there anyone who refused?” muttered back Mircelle from beneath the thick layer of dark rags that now covered her from head to toe, not even bothering to reply to her friend’s question. Amira thought about this for a second, as the sharp wind of the freezing desert night stung her skin. “A few did… Meryl’s group from the south, for one, replied that they’d much rather take orders from a horned lizard than from some wet-behind-the ears pup like me when it comes to banditry. Sounds like they’ll probably try their luck with us soon enough… Oh, and the girl that I sent up the mountains to the left to speak with the raiders over there never came back, so I’m guessing that their answer must have been a negative one… Why do you ask?” “I’ll go deal with both of them…” She began to trudge towards the large entrance of the sand-covered building, a small spear in her hand. It was really no more than a staff with a sharp bronze tip on one end, but it could easily slide in between the plates of most armors, along with the ribcages beneath them, with a well aimed blow. More than enough for her. The Inari sighed in relief. “I cannot say how glad I am that you were finally able to understand my deci-” "But not for you, Queen..." she sneered, stepping outside into the moonlight. Mircelle knew that, at this point, there was nothing she could do about Amira’s irrational decision without having an entire building full of cut-throats against her or even keep them at bay from Almair for long; the whole situation had somehow managed to escalate almost completely out of her control. Almost. All that was left for her to do now was a gamble; if she couldn’t make them leave Amira, she could still try and make them fear her and her “husband”. She would have to become the most ruthless right hand-man in the whole North of Charisse. She clutched the small spear tightly. Would her skills be enough? Improbable. But there was no way that she could turn back now… |
PantsManJul 4, 2014 6:17 AM
| ((Thanks for all your support so far, people! Now, time to end all of this with a bang!)) Day 17 - 3:38 pm "Hmph..." A dark silhouette rose right behind the Goblin. I should have done something: moving Kina out of the way, protecting her or, heck, maybe even something as simple as warning her would have at least given her a tiny chance to counterattack. But I was too slow, and the fight was settled in an instant. With a sudden, violent yank by the scruff of her neck, Kina was ripped away from me. The Queen, the side of her face now almost completely blue in bruises, grinned widely. "As I was saying," giggled the Inari, addressing nobody in particular. "If you really wish to stop me, you'll have to rip my limbs apart-" her smile began to widen savagely, as she twisted the Goblin's arm far behind the latter's back in a wristlock. "-one-" The Inari didn't stop, forcing Kina's entire arm back even more. "-by-" Her grin now wider than ever, she drove her foot straight between the Goblin's shoulder blades to maintain her overpowering hold. "-one!" A single, almost wood-like crunch filled the room. Kina's eyes widened in horror, before the sudden rush of pain that was now flowing throughout her entire body caused her to wince and tremble in pain. She spun around nonetheless, ignoring the alien, unnatural shape of her arm and focusing only on fighting back against her opponent. Unfazed, the fox-girl merely lifted the short Goblin by her hand up in the air. Kina still flayed around wildly, desperately trying to land even a single punch with her still-intact, short arm. A sudden tightening of the Broken Queen's iron-clad hold around her hand, accompanied by a shorter chorus of cringe-inducing snaps, was enough to finally subdue the Goblin. "You came back?! You ran back into the arms of that stinking sack of shit? " snickered the Inari, casually reaching for her knife once more. "I can't believe you! He ran away from you and lied like a little coward, just to save his own skin, in the end! I'm guessing that what they say about Goblins is true, then; you must be the stupidest individual that I have ever met, to come back to him so willingly!" "I'm not... I..." Kina tried to reply, too weak to even protest anymore. "You? You?" jeered back the Queen "... I trust him..." Her boisterous voice sounded so distant and weak now. Even I could clearly see the white tip of her broken bone jutting grotesquely, like a branch, from out of her arm. "Trust?!" echoed the Inari, hooting wildly in laughter. "Trust?!" "Want me to show you what good trust really does?" The Inari's hold tightened even further, her furiously wagging stump betraying her mad excitement "I used to trust people too you know, little idiot! I had a man I loved... And a friend, too!" Her gaze briefly turned towards the Holstaurus, still smiling. "I trusted each of them as I trusted that the Sun and the Moon would rise every day. And they stabbed me in the back when I needed them the most..." She made a short, absent-minded stabbing motion with her knife. "Isn't it nice how similar our stories are?" she cheerfully concluded, smiling at the Goblin with mock-kindness. "No... Lacking Boy-... Wouldn't... He didn't! He's not... I... I-I still trust him!!" "Oh...? Poor little one... You're still going to believe in him?" "Of course!" Kina's sudden roar was loud enough to make most of us jump. "Of course I believe in him! I will believe in him! If I can't trust in the only person that has ever been willing to stay by my side, the only person who ever took a blow for the strongest... Then who should I trust!?" "And yet, despite all that, he still ran away from you in the end..." giggled back the fox. Kina tried to open her mouth again, but all of that final burst of strength seemed to have suddenly dissolved within her throat. That last burning glimmer of hope had disappeared from her eye, causing her head to slowly begin to hang low in resignation. She didn't know what to say. "Oh? Was that all you had to say, in the end? How boring..." With a sigh, the Broken Queen lifted her knife. Tea-Tray Attack!! A loud, metallic clang filled the small room. It took but a second for the Broken Queen to deflect my clumsy blow, but a second was all I needed to swing wildly my weapon once again. The knife, unfit with time and rust, creaked dangerously beneath the bludgeoning blows. The third, final strike of my weapon was all that was needed to crush the small blade into a useless collection of splintered metal. "Thank you for trusting in me, Kina..." Come to think of it, it was the first time that I had actually ever stood up against someone stronger than me head-on, without resorting on any tricks or underhanded plans. I was frightened, that was sure; my stitched-up flesh seemed to almost scream in protest from all of my wild movements, and I was starting to get the impression that my trembling knees were only an inch away from knocking repeatedly against each other like some curious percussion instrument, but I didn't back down. I might be scared, but I'm not going to run! I looked back up at the Inari, lifting up my improbable Excalibur in challenge. I could do this. I'd been able to disarm her, after all, so how hard could knocking her out be? I could do this. I could win! I-! Unfazed, the Inari took a single step towards me, still not letting go of her grip around Kina's wrist. Grabbing hold of one extremity of the metal tray, she bended it in half with the ease a human being might reserve to a piece of paper. I have absolutely no chance of making it. A single kick to the stomach was enough to send me staggering backwards onto the floor, wheezing for air. "Pitiful." chortled the Inari. "Was this really what you were counting on, little Goblin?" "Yes." I looked up at my companion, my eyes immediately widening in horror. I tried to scramble back up on my feet, hoping through some miracle to stop her, but all that my weak body allowed for me to conjure at this point was a mere grimace. "Kina! Don't-!" Kina buried what little was left of the Broken Queen's blade deep into her elbow. She twisted violently the hilt of the knife, digging the steel deeper and deeper into her wound, as the audible cracks of her tearing ligaments sent chills down my own spine. As she dug the blade deeper and deeper, Kina only bit down harder: there were moments when I couldn't tell Kina's teeth grinding against one another and the sound of her broken bones being slowly pushed out of their sockets apart. Finally, with one last jerk, the Goblin's arm quite simply popped out, like the one of a grotesque doll. Despite the thick fountain of blood that was now streaming out of her stump, however, Kina was already poised by the time she hit the ground. The Inari stood before her, still clutching onto the Goblin's missing arm, far too surprised to react. It had been a ludicrous gamble and a senseless sacrifice, and yet the Goblin had somehow managed to create for herself the perfect opening... Kina lunged forward, putting all of her quickly fading strength into this decisive punch. She missed. Her movements far too sluggish to have any effect now, Kina's knuckles had barely been able to brush against the fox's stomach before the latter had hastily been able to hop back and out of danger. Wobbling drunkenly, as she tried to block the now thick flow of blood that was pouring out of her missing forearm, Kina eventually lost her balance, causing her to tumble backwards. I caught her before she hit the ground. Her chest managed to heave out a long sigh, as her eyelids slowly began to close. "... It's still too early... I've hardly managed to give her the full course yet..." She looked straight up into my eyes. "Lacking Boy... You came to rescue me..." "Don't act all surprised, now. You knew I would..." Freezing beads of sweat had begun to run down her pale forehead. Nonetheless, her smile was still as warm as ever. "Indeed I did..." |
| Day 17 - 3:44 It all felt so distant, as if I was dreaming. I could hardly feel the weight of the bundle of strips of dark cloth that the Holstaurus had placed in my palm, instants before intercepting and pushing back the Broken Queen's sudden assault. Despite the fact that the two of them were now viciously scrabbling wildly just a few paces away from my current position, their movements had begun to look slow and sluggish to me, as if they were actually struggling within a large mass of viscous honey. My gaze wandered lazily back into my palms, smeared with the sticky substance that had begun to drip into them. Blood... Blood... Gotta stop the blood... As my brain still slowly tried to get a grasp on the current situation, I feverishly began to bandage Kina's still bleeding stump. Her whole had by now gone completely limp, but I could still tell by her faint heartbeat that she was still alive. Not stopping... Dammit! It's still not stopping My amateurish attempts at playing the part of the doctor were proving unsuccessful: no matter how many times I feebly managed to secure a few strips at the end of her stump, it was only a matter of seconds before the sticky blood soaked right though them, rendering them useless. Nonetheless, I still continued, cursing loudly at each failed attempt. I knew very well that it was of no use, seeing how my medical knowledge barely covered what was necessary to heal a paper cut, but I couldn't give up. Kina had believed in me enough to forgive and grant me a second chance, even in the face of how much I'd hurt her; I wasn't going betray the only person that had ever placed so much trust in me again by letting her die in my arms. Not if, even by some fluke, I could help it. Nonetheless, I was running out of bandages and, more importantly, running out of time. I reached for the last strips of cloth, frustration stinging my eyes. Instead of the usual rough fabric, however, my fingers latched themselves around a small, surprisingly smooth item. A small, delicate glass bottle, filled to the rim with rich-white liquid, sat in the middle of what still remained of the pile of bandages. There was a crash on the other side of the room. "What's that, Mircelle? Could it be that not even the best executioner of the North-Eastern sands is able to lift a finger against her Queen?" laughed gleefully the Inari, kicking repeatedly the crumpled figure of the Holstaurus in the stomach. "Or is it just that the shame of being exiled has bent you completely out of shape?" I gulped. The farmer had been able to keep at bay the insane fox-girl for only so long, and it was probably going to be a matter of seconds until she would direct her attention to the last "traitor" that was still standing... And yet I still couldn't stop my hand, clenched tightly around the only thing that could possibly save my companion now, from trembling. What if I spilled it? What if the milk wouldn't work properly? What if it was already too- I shook my head. No. I couldn't think something like that. I looked back down at Kina's pale body, as her heartbeat growing fainter as every single instant went by. Impossible.The white sheet of death looked so unsuitable for someone so full of life. I refused to accept such a thing. I clenched the tiny little bottle so tightly that for a second I feared I might crush it. It was now or never. With a quick motion, I emptied the bottle's contents. Bringing her tiny little figure closer to my own, our lips finally locked for the first time. I'd never noticed before the ocean-blue tinge of Kina's eyes. I would have happily drowned in them. The Goblin broke away almost reluctantly from the kiss, gently pushing me aside as she stood up once more. "Kina..." "Hmm...?" Her previous, weak tone of voice was completely gone. In its place now there was only the calm sense of confidence of an old archer, who knows that his next arrow will not miss its target. "Blow her away...!" She turned around, grinning. "Who do you take me for?" The Broken Queen gave the Holstaurus one last, violent kick, before turning around to face the advancing Kina. The fact that her opponent had stood up once again didn't faze her in the slightest; after all, the only thing she needed to do was how she'd gone about things for most of her life, anyhow; simply crush any opponent who dared standing before her. "Oh, do you want me to break your other arm too, little Goblin?" Kina didn't reply, taking another step towards the Inari. "Or perhaps you simply came back for the knife again? It wouldn't surprise me that an idiot like you would try and slice another one of her limbs off..." A brief click of the tongue, followed by another, calm step forward. "You could barely land a blow on me when you were at your full strength; what do you think you're going to do with only one arm, anyway?" The fox-girl's tone of voice had begun to grow irritated, as her own stumped tail began to twitch irritably. "So, little idiot? Or perhaps you bit your tongue off too-?" "One arm's enough..." Kina simply stated, stopping dead in her tracks. "Huh?" "Tell me, for how long have you been fighting?" A simple question. The Inari tilted her head, genuinely confused by the Goblin's current attitude. Maybe it was just her, but there was something so... Different in it. Something that hadn't been there before. She couldn't comprehend it. Was she... Scared? "W-well..." she stammered, unsure about how to proceed . "I became Queen five years ago, and have subjugated all of the bandit clans and tribes in the area th-!" Kina let out a mocking snort. "Five...?" She took a step forward. "I have been fighting on my own for the past thirty-two years." Silence. "I participated in two Blood Tournaments - won one, lost the other - and have survived a single one of Mistress Lodmalia's Grand Slaughters." she continued, taking a step forward. "Without considering those that I have defeated in those last four tournaments, you may also count amongst the many that have fallen beneath my fists Theamoria Brownscale, Meryl the Mountain, the Blood Sisters, the other Blood Sisters, Su'ner and Rachel of the Bladetail Legion, Jiofu of Glacier's Landing, Tremalko Ganbarion, Tramill the Young, the Brass Gauntlet,-" She took another step forward. "- Ethel the Brown, the Old Snake of the Mountain, Anothiel, Barathiel and Sabrathiel, Magda the Eldest, along with most of the 48th Dwarven Troop-" Another step forward. "- the Dawn Creeper, Tristania, captain of the pirate ship known as the Drowned Gargoyle, a good ninth of Alnor's guard force and Sef the Dhampir..." Another step forward. "These are all of those who have fought long and well enough for me to learn their names. I'll let you guess just how many names I can't remember or don't know..." Kina came to a halt right in front of the almost recoiling figure of the Broken Queen, looking down at the Inari from above the massive mountain of bodies that lay beneath her feet. "You said that I wasn't able to lay a finger on you at my full strength?" Had the fox-girl always looked that small, or frightened, for that matter? I couldn't tell... "I say that one arm's more than enough." concluded the Goblin. And with that, it was all over. Drawing a full circle with her clenched fist, Kina's punch sunk deep within the Broken Queen's ribcage. The whole world seemed to suddenly slow down to a grinding halt; the fox-girl now seemed to almost magically float slowly up towards the ceiling, bumping almost gently against it. Then, the massive sandstone blocks above her quite simply gave away, propelled upwards - along with the thick layer of sand that covered it - by the unreal strength of Kina's blow. ... A welcome gust of wind howled through the room and into the corridors behind us. Kina, her silhouette dark against the boiling desert Sun that was now shining brightly behind her, turned around and began walking back towards me again. Blood occasionally dripped from between her crude bandages onto the sandy ground. "Lacking Boy, scoot over a bit, will you...?" Letting herself drop down by my side, Kina slithered gently under my coat, wrapping herself into it. I leaned gently against her shoulder. "You did it..." She grinned up at me from beneath the rim of the tattered old coat. "Was there ever any doubt?" I let out a long sigh, my fake disappointment betrayed by the small smile on my lips. This was neither the weak, defeated girl that had been tormented by the Broken Queen, nor the confident, mature brawler that had just blown a hole into the entire building with a single punch. It was simply Kina, the Goblin. And, most of all, my trusted companion. "Of course not... You're the strongest!" "Heh! Aren't I...?" --------------------------------------- The little, rag-clad fox-girl eyed suspiciously at the crimson waters of the old well. Despite the fact that she'd nearly drowned in them barely a day ago, there was something else that was even more unsettling about them than usual; long streaks of blood seemed to draw a small path from a scarlet patch in the sand, just a few feet away from where she was standing, to the edge of the well. The Broken Queen finished what had been started fourteen years ago herself. |
| Day 17 - Evening The desert sun had already begun to sink beneath the horizon. I did my best to awkwardly waddle (the price I had to pay for pushing my stitched up intestines to the limit...) up to the side of the large dune-covered building, as freezing gusts of wind occasionally reminded me just how inappropriately dressed I still was. The Holstaurus was sitting almost at the top, perched just a few feet away from the gaping hole that Kina had left. I noticed that she was keeping the rags around her head unfastened, causing her short hair to sway gently in the evening breeze. She acknowledged my presence with a small nod, before going back to gazing at the village beneath her. It took a while for me to finally lurch to her side, where I plodded down with a desperate wheeze (doing my best to ignore the uncomfortable feeling of lukewarm sand rubbing against my bare ass-cheeks.) "How's the Goblin?" asked the Holstaurus with a tone of voice that suggested that she probably didn't really care to hear the answer. "Sleeping. The girl who's been taking care of her said it's probably gonna be a long while before Kina should be able to move it again without risking to reopen the wound, but that she should be up again by tomorrow evening..." We'd been lucky enough that the first person we stumbled across after leaving the wretched structure had been the extremely distressed figure of our little guide, thanks to whom we were able to locate someone that could help. I'd been somewhat hesitant, however, when I found out that the so-called "someone that could help" was the massive horned villager with whom we'd spent the afternoon with just a day ago; frankly, the idea that a seven-foot-tall being who would have frankly looked out of place holding anything less imposing than a battleaxe - let alone a needle or a pouch filled with ointments - didn't exactly fit with my mental image of someone who might've been a doctor. Nonetheless, she'd been quick to demonstrate her prowess by quickly being able to stop the blood and dress the wound shortly before both the milk's rush and what little my crude bandaging had been doing finally stopped being of any use. Either that or the alcohol that clung to her breath and clothing had somehow allowed her to gain a couple of degrees in medicine while I had been too distressed at the sight of my companion finally passing out to notice... "That so?" replied almost automatically the Holstaurus, gazing at the occasional glints of the campfires that had begun to flicker all around us. A long, awkward silence followed. "I've heard that someone spoiled the water in the well..." she finally spoke, still looking down at the village. "They say a body somehow got stuck at the bottom..." She let out a sigh. "The water's not going to get any better on its own, and nobody will want to risk removing the corpse as it is. Chances are that everyone will probably leave the village by tomorrow morning..." "That sounds very impractical..." "Muh-huh! Doesn't it?" she chuckled. "But they will find somewhere else to live. As long as they have some shade, a way to fill their pockets and a place to drink from, most of these people don't mind where they are." The Holstaurus kept looking forward, a smile filled with sadness on her face. "No shrine maiden will ever come by these parts and put that corpse's soul to rest. In a couple of days, this entire place will be completely uninhabited, and in a few months, it will be nothing more than just another pair of dunes. Everything she did will be buried deep within the sands..." She finally turned around to look at me, her every emotion sealed behind that sad smile of hers. "I can't believe she's dead..." She said it. I wasn't able to hold her stare, and looked down at my feet. "So you did know her..." was the only thing I could bring myself to mutter. "Knew her?" She covered her mouth, letting out another small chuckle. "I guess you could say so... I was her friend." I shifted uncomfortably in my sand-covered seat. "The Horned Stalker, I presume." "Muh? You know that name? Looks like I am still popular after all these years..." She leaned further back against the slope of the dune. "Still, it's a well-deserved title. After all, I was able to follow you all the way here... Oh, don't make that face...! It's not that hard for me to follow someone who leaves behind her such a path of destruction undetected!" That might be true, but... "Granted," she continued "Following you even into that Vampire's magic circle without even knowing what it would do was probably more shortsighted of me than I ever intend to be again, but I was lucky..." I pinched the bridge of my nose, unable to process rationally what the person that I had assumed to be little more than a country farmer up to a short while ago was saying... It wasn't just the fact that she'd somehow been able follow us across a good chunk of the continent that was too hard to believe; honestly If I was to trust the countless wild stories that I'd heard yesterday, the one holding the title of Horned Stalker had supposedly become renown around those parts as a merciless executioner that would literally stalk bandit groups that opposed the one of her master, slowly picking off their members one by one over even a period of weeks. The idea that a professional killer of that skill had been able to trail behind the (blissfully unaware) two of us was definitely improbable, but frankly didn't sound all too far-fetched... "Look," I sighed "Even assuming that you really are able to sneak around undetected for such a long time as both you and the villagers down there claim you can... Why?" She tilted her head slightly, not understanding my question. "What I mean is... Why even bother following someone that you'd just met like me so zealously in the first place? You even abandoned your home and risked getting hurt or being found out on countless occasions!" For a second, she looked almost surprised. Picking herself up from her reclined position she moved closer to me, leaning down so our eyes would meet. Her mysterious smile returned. "I already told you, didn't I? You remind me of someone..." She moved even closer to me, pushing her prosperous chest against my own. "Someone that I'd gladly give my life for just to see again..." A second later, I found myself rolling down the side of the sandy dune, warm sand pouring in from beneath my coat. By the time that my mind, too tired from all the excessive worries of the past day, feverishly did its best to react and tell me what was going on, I had already skidded to a halt at the bottom, the first evening stars spinning madly above me as if on some strange galactic merry-go-round. A sudden pressure on my abdomen, followed almost immediately by a nasty sting from my old wound, jerked me back to life. The Holstaurus began pulling up what little of the old coat I was using to cover my genitals. "Sorry... Sorry..." she apologized feverishly as she began to mount me. "It... It's just that..." How foolish of me. Despite having been violently raped only days ago, enough to tear my guts open once more, even briefly assuming that reason-defying lust was a trait typical only of the most insane mamono of this continent like the Broken Queen had been a fatal mistake. And yet, wrapped safe in my apparent bundle of security and a laughably provocative one-piece that probably exposed my goods with every step I took, I'd still approached the Holstaurus without a single shred of caution. Not like my body really seemed to bother fighting back; my manhood had already shamefully stood up at the mere touch of our skins despite the presence of freezing gusts that should have otherwise made it shrink to the size of a garbanzo. My tired muscles and mind were hardly in the state to refuse such a generous treatment... And yet, I still weakly outstretched my arms, as if to try and push her away. Was this perhaps a desperate sign of loyalty towards Kina? Doubtful. As far as I knew, on any other occasion I would have happily indulged myself in the act if I thought that I'd be able to get away with it, and I honestly doubted that the Goblin's impure thoughts on the matter would have hardly found any ground to object. It could have been a mere muscle-spasm, as far as I knew. Still, just a few hours ago I had done things that I would have never dreamed of doing... Whatever the reason, this halfhearted opposition cast a single, tiny shade of doubt over the Holstaurus' face. It was more than enough. With a long sigh, the rhythmical grinding of her crotch against my own came to a halt. The one that had been known and feared as the Horned Stalker peered down at me, running her hand tenderly along the side of my face. She bit her lower lip. "... It's just not the same. I'd be no better than her..." A sharp little growl, coming from right behind us, filled the chilling night air. "Don't worry, little one..." reassured the Holstaurus, picking herself off me. "... I was just about to leave." She turned around and crouched before the little fox guide who had crept up on us, smiling sadly as usual. "You really do look like her..." remarked the Holstaurus, patting her on the head. The Inari tried unsuccessfully to nip at the Holstaurus' fingers, before scrambling protectively in front of me. The Holstaurus chuckled, turning around to disappear once more into the shadows as she'd always done before. "Wait!" She turned around again, surprised. "Why did you massacre Kina's tribe?" The Holstaurus gave me a pitying glance. "Muh? Is that all? So it really is all about the Goblin to you in the end..." she snorted, a surprising tinge of bitterness in her voice. "Answer the question. Kina believes that it was the Dark Prince that slaughtered her tribesmen but, judging from what I've heard, I presume that only you could have done something like that..." "Goblins? I've had to kill a few when I was still the Stalker, but I don't recollect ever having to eliminate a whole tribe of them..." she replied with a shrug. Then, as if the memory had suddenly struck her, she snapped her fingers. "Ah! Actually, I might have. Although I'd argue that the word slaughter might be a bit too harsh for what happened..." "Go on..." "It was really nothing too special or extravagant. Nothing more than a simple ambush on their part; I can't fathom what they thought they'd get out from attacking me all together out of the blue... Unfortunately for them, they thought that the craggy and tunnel-filled mountains would work to their advantage. I had a spear with me, so I simply defended myself. I disappeared right there in front of them, and when they scattered around to search for me, I simply did what I did best..." The Holstaurus went on, her sad smile as unmovable as ever. "I hunted each and every one of them down, one by one. Didn't take too long to finish off... Have you ever seen a Goblin when she realizes that she can't win against an opponent who isn't fighting her head on? At first they struggle, refusing to believe it. But then, for one last moment, it comes crashing down on them. All of their naive way of living, how they hope that their sole strength and direct ways will be enough to overcome any obstacle... Gone. And, a second later, so is her life." Looking down at my clenched fists, I noticed with slight surprise just how uncharacteristically angry I was. Was she provoking me out of sheer spite for rejecting her? "So you did murder them..." I tried hard not to grit my teeth. "It was self-defense." She calmly objected. "These things happen. Now, if we are finished, I'll be taking my leave..." I placed my hand on my shoulder, causing her to turn around for the last time. "What is it now?" she asked, deeply annoyed. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. "You forgot this..." Deep down, something told me that I couldn't forgive her. An almost inexplicable side of me, one that had only reared its head on a few occasions today, knew that I would never forgive the one that had condemned Kina to live in solitude for the past thirty years... But Kina hadn't centered her entire life on exacting revenge for her tribesmen, regardless of how much she still missed them and was afraid to lose someone else close to her. She had merely wanted to fight the Dark Prince because, well, she thought he was the strongest. She didn't need me to pity her tribesmen and put the Horned Stalker to justice; Kina was simply too strong for that sort of thing. For those reasons, I gave the Holstaurus her bell back. The Holstaurus looked down at its slightly bent shape, her smile suddenly gone. Her fingers ran delicately over the words Almair that she had lovingly carved in its side so long ago. She gently shook my arm off her shoulder and took a step into the moonless night. She stopped for a second, but she didn't turn around. "Thank you." And with that, she was gone. Although I later visited her farm on multiple occasions, I never saw her again. ... My guide's curious stare brought me back to reality. Come to think of it, after that whole deal with the dragon, this was probably the second time that my soft-spoken conscience had gotten the better over the tyrannical rule of my dick on such a once-in-a-lifetime matter. Frankly, I wasn't really all that sure if that was supposed to be a good thing... I looked down at the little Inari. She displayed her sharp fangs with a pleased smile, demanding praise with a gentle nudge. I surrendered with a sigh, ruffling her surprisingly soft hair. |
| Day 18 - Late Afternoon I looked down at the desert that I was finally leaving behind, despite all the odds. It hadn't been an easy journey to reach the mountains; the very same distance that, almost three weeks ago, I had so heedlessly rushed through while trying to get away from the Broken Queen had turned into a merciless, slow day-long march under a scalding Sun, where missing one of the few shadows that the occasional ancient monolith cast over the sand could easily prove fatal. And then, there had also been the matter of Kina... The Goblin had yet to show any sign of awakening from her deep sleep. As waiting with her back in the abandoned village would have been little more than a death sentence, I'd found myself carrying her on my back through the entire journey (much to the general dismay of my already worn-out stitches). I looked back up at the craggy shape of the mountain, wondering if any of the many boulders that covered its face would offer anything even resembling a good shelter for the freezing night that awaited us. Guess I'm still in for quite a climb... I let out a long, tired groan, adjusting Kina's unconscious shape as comfortably as I could on my back, and resumed my exhausting march once again. - Earlier that morning - "... I've also added a short length of additional bandages in there in case if she starts bleeding again, along with a couple of needles to secure them." finished explaining the suspiciously unprofessional-looking doctor, before taking a small swig from a flask she kept hidden deep within the folds of her rag-like clothing. I looked down at the contents of the bag that she'd just handed over to me. Bandages and a few shriveled-up specimens of those kelp-like painkillers, along with a generous portion of some thin, hard-crusted bread and enough water to last us through the day. I almost found myself at loss of words, embarrassed by this unexpected act of kindness. "Uh... Thank you, but... Not to sound rude but, why?" The massive doctor simply shrugged, removing her lips from the flask only to simply mutter "Meya would never forgive me..." I looked down at the little fox-girl that still adamantly refused to unlatch herself from my leg. The doctor nodded, validating my deduction. "So I'm guessing that makes you little Meya, then?" She nodded vigorously with a smile, pleased at the fact that I'd learned her name. I let out a small sigh. Although I was guessing that it was probably only thanks to her that I'd even been offered with all those supplies in the first place, not to mention avoiding any discussion regarding "payment" (something that I feared would be a bit more different from a standard cash payment), I still wondered just how much power the tenacious little pipsqueak had over the other members of the small group. The doctor leaned down, effortlessly lifting Meya into the air by the back of her clothing (an action that caused quite a few large clumps of my leg hair to be brutally torn off...) "*Sigh* And I even had to pass over a chance to get to know better one of the few males that we ever came across..." she mused sadly, leaning against my shoulder. Bingo. "Of course," she added slily, giving me a knowing glance from beneath the thick layers of cloth. "I don't think that even Meya would have anything to say if you're just as willing~" Frankly, what little whiffs of her alcohol-tainted breath I was still able to smell were doing an awfully good job at excluding that possibility... I tried to peer into flask that she was still clutching, wondering just how strong its contents were. Mistaking my worried glance for interest, she lifted the flask up in front of my face. "Hmm? Want some? I'm sure it will help you get into the mood...!" Before I even had the time to refuse, Meya quickly parted the two of us with a growl of warning, probably sensing the direction the conversation was taking. "Hey, the Sun's already starting to rise! Or are you slimes just going to sit around here doing nothing?" The sudden appearance of the grouchy snake-like figure of their companion reminded reminded the two villagers of their more pressing task and march that awaited them, as they quickly began to hurry towards the Lamia. Just before she disappeared behind the corner like the other two, Meya turned around to face me. She tilted her head uncertainly, as if she considering the possibility of staying behind with me. She took an uncertain step forward. "Meya! Are you coming or not?" The little fox-girl looked up at me one last time, nervously kneading a loose strip of her clothing. I smiled back encouragingly, giving her a short wave. Meya smiled warmly back, before dashing off to rejoin her friends. Once that the small band of villagers had left, my gaze involuntarily drifted down to the still-unconscious body of my companion. Come to think of it, it was probably best that I started to get moving before the heat became too unbearable. I gave my arms a quick stretch, half-wondering if my fairly unfit body would be up to the task. "Not like I have much of a choice..." I sighed. ... Making my way up the side of the mountain, my thoughts drifted back to the owner of the small body that I was carrying. She'd traveled all the way to this desert to become the strongest, only to find out that the Dark Prince that she'd so fervently wanted to challenge no longer existed and to be permanently wounded in the process. What had been the point of all this, in the end? And more importantly, what was the Goblin who only knew how to fight going to do now? As if to reply, I felt a gentle kick bump against my back, as Kina began to stir once more. "K-Kin-!" "Shaddup..." she groaned back weakly. "Give me five more minutes..." And, with that, she promptly fell asleep again. I stood still, unsure whether it would be best to just keep going as if nothing had happened or to simply take a rest on some nearby boulder and wait for the Goblin to wake up again. My tired body took almost immediate advantage of this moment of indecision, seizing the opportunity to take a well-deserved rest. Thirty minutes later, Kina's eyes flashed open once again. "No good. Looks I can't get back to sleep anymore..." she sighed, lifting her head from off my lap. You just did. And for the past half-hour, if I may add... "Mmm...? Lacking Boy, where are we?" She looked around, finally aware of her new surroundings. "Probably somewhere along a mountain range about a five-hour march to the east of the village, unless I took a wrong turn somewhere..." I replied with a shrug. Kina made a strange face. "You carried me all the way here...?" I noticed the faint hints of a blush on her cheeks. "Well, yeah! What did you expect?" I replied, mocking her voice. Ignoring my obvious jab at her, the Goblin looked down at the overly large, tattered old coat that covered her completely from head to toe. She looked up at me, eyebrows raised skeptically. "Lacking Boy... Why are you naked?" I casually looked down at my bare body. Dry skin had already begun to peel off from whichever parts of my body that weren't already blistered with sunburns. The more I looked at it, the more I wondered just how the hell I'd managed to make it through that desert alive... I must look like a wreck... Not like I'd actually had much of a choice. If I was going to carry Kina's frail body with what little clothing she used to normally wear beneath the murderous sun-rays, I might as well have been carrying a charred corpse. "Don't take it off." I advised, pointing at her new clothing. "It's best if we keep that wound of yours as far from harm's way as possible..." Kina shrugged, sitting up in a more upright position next to me. I gave my sunburns one last, worried look. Something told me that I was probably going to be spending the most painful night of my life... Not like Kina was that well off herself either; The doctor had mentioned that it would probably take more than a day for her to finally wake up, and at least five times longer for her to finally regain her full strength. Her full strength... I found my gaze unintentionally drifting back to her stump. I wonder just how much of that previous strength she'll still be able to retain... A brawler that couldn't brawl as well as before anymore. I thought again about what the Holstaurus had told me the day before: what did a Goblin look like when she realized that she couldn't simply tackle her obstacles directly with sheer strength? I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "Lacking Boy, stop frowning so much. You look untrustworthy enough as it is..." "Says the rapist..." I replied, trying to hide my discomfort behind a few cheap jokes. "I'm not a rapist!" she protested, puffing out her cheeks. "I'm simply a proud mamono! There's quite a difference!" "Is there?" Besides, I thought that your people believed that being called a rapist was a compliment... If you're going to lie, at least remember to be consistent about it... "Mm-hmm! A huge one!" she replied, nodding vigorously. I conceded this with a shrug. Bored by the short-lived debate, Kina changed the subject. "I slept here, exactly in this same spot..." she said, gesturing vaguely at the various crags that sprouted along the side of the mountain. "Once... A long time ago." She sighed softly, gazing at the vast desert that we were leaving behind. "Oh..." So Kina's tribe used to come here. Despite having been by her side for quite some time now and having to deal with all of her various mood-swings (Not to mention that you've even been able to make her cry, you monster...), the slight tinge of melancholy in the Goblin's voice still felt unnatural and distant from her usual self... One of Kina's eyebrows shot up. "Lacking Boy... You're making one of those stupid serious faces of yours again." "Well, what's wrong with being serious about this?!" I protested. "I just found it a bit touching to see you returning to your old home..." "Home?" Kina's second eyebrow shot up, turning her previous skeptical look into a mocking smirk. "Lacking Boy, my tribe was nomadic... We didn't have a set home." I stared back at her blankly. "Oh." So was that "I slept here once" meant in a "I've slept here a single, flipping time" sort of way...? I looked away, trying to hide my general embarrassment. "Ah, no need to take these things so seriously, Lacking Boy!" giggled Kina, giving me a nudge that could have easily blurred the line between a friendly jab and a bone-shattering punch. At least, that had been the Goblin's intention. Instead, her stump awkwardly bumped against my side, causing her to wince in pain. Noticing the sudden spark of concern in my eyes, Kina smiled to show that everything was still all right. "No need to worry, no need to worry... I've dealt with wounds worse than this little one before, Lacking Boy..." she tried to casually remark, doing her best to reassure me in the midst of her pained twitches. I let out a weak sigh, unconvinced by the Goblin's hurried attempt at putting my mind at ease. Still, simply making my apprehension visible wasn't going to do any of us any good... Kina took a few deep breaths, gradually regaining control once again over her weak body. She chuckled sadly, looking down at the missing half of her arm. "Guess I really am not the strongest anymore..." Just as I'd feared. Kina slowly got up on her feet once again. I followed her example, crouching down a bit to allow for her to hop up on my back once more. "... What?" I asked, slightly annoyed by the pitying expression on the Goblin's face. "I know that I just said that I probably will never be the strongest again, but I hope that you aren't assuming that such a thing also implies that I've turned into some frail little elf overnight..." "Wha-?! Tch... Remind me to never so much as show you a sliver of kindness from now on, you ungrateful Goblin..." I pouted, taking a few steps ahead up the tiny little mountain path. "Aaaaw~ Don't be such a pooper, Lacking Boy!" Kina smirked, every hint of that previous sadness gone from her voice. Still laughing, she quickly trotted up to my side. For a while we walked together in peaceful silence. Occasionally, I would steal a few glances back at the sandy landscape behind us. The idea that both of us had nonetheless managed to make it out of there, after all that had happened, seemed almost baffling. As if I was going to wake up at any minute now back on top of that gaudy purple bed once again, the Broken Queen's breath warm against my neck. An uncomfortable chill ran down my spine. It wasn't long before I felt a gentle prod against my side. "Err..." "Hmm?" I asked, looking down at the small figure of my companion. "Umm... Do you mind if we switch sides?" I looked at Kina's stump, then at the uncharacteristic blush once again on her face. I complied without saying a word, taking Kina's hand into my own. We kept on walking. "Ah well... If I can't be the strongest, I guess the only thing that's left for us to do is to try and reach the top of some other field..." she suddenly stated out of the blue. "Huh... Where did that epiphany of yours come from?" "Doesn't matter..." she grinned, quickly dismissing my question and the fact that she probably had no idea what the word "epiphany" even meant. "So, how does being the smartest sound like?" "Well, judging by everyone that we met so far, I don't think that the competition should be too much of a problem... Still, I'm pretty sure that you don't exactly figure in the top-tier of that category..." Kina thought about this for a moment. Then it hit her. "Wait! You were making fun of me there, weren't you?" "Perhaps..." I replied with a satisfied smirk. I was quickly punished for my impudence with a sharp kick to my shins. "Anyway," she continued. "How about the healthiest?" "A one-armed Goblin and a gutless Human? We'd have to break a few bones out of every living being on the continent to even stand a chance at winning that title..." "..." "By the way, I meant that as a joke..." I hastily added, noticing that Kina had begun to actually take that last plan of action into consideration. We plodded on, the Goblin falling silent once again as she thought over her absurd projects for the future once more. "Lacking Boy?" "Hmm?" "Let's open a food stand!" she happily chirped. I sighed at my companion's sudden change of plans, a faint smile on my face. "What am I going to do with my life now?" What a stupid question. So had been worrying about what the Goblin was going to do now, for that matter. She had never seemed to really care all that much about those sort of things... Armless or not, I doubted that there was really anything on this continent that could keep her from moving on; life just seemed to quite simply trickle out of every pore of Kina's body. The sheer thought of her being held back by such matters was laughable... Given the proven state of both of our bodies, our climb up the mountain path was little more than a slow, tired trudge. And yet, there was enough strength in our mutual grip to crush a mountain... As if I could ever let go of that small, strong hand of yours... "Let's...!" I grinned back |
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