Vashti Valant: Slave of the Goblin

Something gagged her scream. The soap—he had freed one hand from her breast to push the soap into her mouth. He held the string on either side and jerked it up as one would bridle a horse. She now had a bit in her mouth, a handle up her cunt, bristles on her clit, and his cock in her ass. The soap freed her. When she climaxed she held nothing back, though the sound emerged now as more of a whinny than a scream. Since he gave her no respite, after her first orgasm, she came again almost immediately, and then, in an agony of overstimulation, a third and forth time in unbelievably quick succession.

He rode her to a gallop and his own climax. This he did not deposit in her ass. After a decisive withdrawal, his final act was to spank her with his rod in a frenzy of slaps that culminated in a spew of cum all over her buttocks and back.

They both collapsed into the water. Laya floated in a dream of satiation, too weak to even remove the scrub brush, though she did spit out the soap. It was left to Akraz to slip the brush from her cunt. He massaged her cleft, and pressed his thumb into her clit. She came again in his hand. Cooing, she cuddled up against him. He sat against the step and rocked her.

“By the Thirteen Hells, Laya,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “I did not mean to turn this sanctuary of innocence and light into a fetish chamber for rites of the Dark God.”

“Is that what you think?” she asked in surprise. “That what we do together is a rite of the Dark God?”

“What else? It is a dark, mindless lust that drives me to take you like that.”

It stung.

“I didn’t know you saw it that way,” she said. “It isn’t that way for me. On the contrary. Because it was you, because I knew you acted from—” she paused; she had almost said “love” and yet she knew no such thing. ”Because I knew you acted from a desire to protect me or pleasure me, or both, I knew that what we had enveloped us in the Light, even when we had to perform in the darkest of places for the darkest of men.

“You keep saying you are a creature of the darkness,” she went on, passionately, “but I have seen no evidence of that. I have seen in you a creature of the Light, raised in darkness, shackled in it, even, yet not subdued by it, not subsumed.”

He hugged her and kissed her hair. He sighed. “I wish I saw what you saw, Laya. But there is so much you still don’t know about me. One day, I will disappoint you and then you will see the truth about me. You said it yourself. The Deep Fire of the Dark God has tainted me, and there is no magic we mere mortals can wield that can overpower the magic crafted by the hand of one of the gods.”

With this despairing speech, he stood, dried himself with a cloth draped over the wooden screen, and dressed himself quickly. He looked heartbreakingly handsome in his scarlet and gold tunic and armor.

“Akraz!” Laya clutched the drying cloth around her torso. She raced to his side. “Be careful. You must come back to me.”

“No, Laya,” he said quietly. “Whether I fall in this battle or no, I do know this. You shall never see me again.”

He bent to press his lips like a prayer against hers. He smiled a sad little smile. “I love you. I have loved you from the start. I will love you beyond the day the Dark God consumes my soul in hell.”

And then the Goblin General, Akraz the Terrible, marched away to war.

Laya did not expect trouble—all her fears centered on Akraz and the others at the site of the trap set for the wizard’s army—but she donned her leaf-link chain mail and took up her bow to keep vigil with the other two dozen elves of the home defense garrison. They were all the force left to defend Sylvindell. They worked in pairs, stationed high in the trees, upon special platforms built to survey the surrounding forest.

Out of habit, Laya scanned the horizon. A glint caught her eye. Only metal reflected back sunlight like that. She touched her companion’s shoulder and pointed.

“I don’t see anything,” he began. Then more glints sparkled through the tree cover and it was obvious to both of them what it must be. His face turned ashen. “Gods of Light! How many are there?”

“An army’s worth,” Laya said grimly. Even as she spoke, she notched an arrow into her bow. “Zathstragomal did not direct his goblins to the decoy point. He sent them straight here. He knew exactly where to find our city. We have been betrayed.”

I have been betrayed .

Only Akraz could have informed his master of the location of Sylvindell. And then, to rub fat into the fire, he had lured the bulk of the citadel’s defenses away on a wild goose chase. No wonder he had warned her that he would soon disappoint her. No wonder he had promised he would never see her again.

You bastard. You bastard . How long had he planned this betrayal? How deep did his plotting go? That melodrama with Strathgora—had they staged it together, the wizard’s general and the wizard’s daughter, to provide a plausible means to let the dupe elf maid seemingly escape? In Zathstragomal’s dungeon, when he’d begged her to trust him with the city’s secrets, had he even then served only his master’s will?

When he had made love to her in his den, had he already been laughing secretly at her gullibility?

You love-blind fool. You made yourself his willing slave, though he warned you of his true loyalties again and again. Fool, fool, fool! All of Chavana will pay the price for your lovesick naivety!

Laya’s first act was to order the walls raised about the city. These were no ordinary walls, of stone or wood, but living walls, magic vines that sprang out of the ground in a protective circle around the city. The vines grew in mere minutes, thickening to the size of tree trunks, and each one bristled with spear-long and sword-sharp thorns.

The goblins rode upon giant wolves. Both the beasts and the beast-men yowled as they loped toward the citadel. The rearing thorn barrier gave them pause. They milled in front of it, gnashing their teeth, growling, and in the case of the goblins, cursing. A few enterprising spirits tried to set the vines on fire, to no effect.

The leader of the army pulled out in front of the others. Laya knew him. It was not Akraz, but one of his sub-chiefs, one of the goblins who had come to help move Akraz when he was sick. Zathstragomal must have instructed the goblin leader what to do, for the goblin spoke a word of power.

The thorn vines trembled and curled away large enough to form a gate through which several horsed men could pass abreast. That was all, but it was enough. The goblins had a breach through the barrier into the city.

Laya and the other elves had their work cut out for them. With arrow after arrow, they defended the breach. Goblins pierced with arrows fell like pincushions, but the elf defenders numbered too few to hold back the horde forever.

Smoke choked her and blinded her. The goblins had failed to set the thorn barrier on fire, but they succeeded in setting the trees ablaze. Now the magnificent, ancient wood billowed orange flame and black smoke. The elves still held the breach, but their numbers were dwindling. Laya herself had suffered several injuries and barely stood on her feet.

A horse charged through the goblin ranks from behind.

“Let him through!” shouted Laya. “It’s Hunter!”

Hunter slid off his horse and stood side by side with Laya. He had a bow in his hand in place of his favored weapon, the sword.

“Did I miss all the fun?” he asked with a lopsided grin.

“How did you know?”

“Lathaniel arrived. He warned us that Zathstragomal knew the real location of Sylvindell and also that the ‘elf’ Acariel was really a goblin. We would have seized the goblin at once, but he had already disappeared. The army turned around, but I fear they may arrive too late to prevent the goblins from taking the city.” Hunter put one hand on Laya’s shoulder. “Nemesis, I’m sorry. I know you had feelings for Acariel, but—”