The Goblin Husbandry Project Pt. 10

The demon roared and stood as tall as it could, brought its foot down on Pelk's former location. Another perk of fighting with something that can't see past its own muscles.

Even as the tiles were cracking under the demon's weight, Pelk swept his foot back and twisted his hips to chop at the demon's exposed tendon. A shallow cut nevertheless drew another spurt of black blood and bone-shakingly loud curses against him and his family.

The demon fell to his knee, blinding pain if not total enfeeblement surging up his leg. His tail pulled back and loosely swung into Pelk, its barbs briefly piercing his pauldron and throwing him again into a tumble on the floor.

He came to his feet, spat, and rolled his shoulder to ensure it wasn't knocked out its socket by the impact. "What's wrong?" he asked the demon as it managed to balance itself on its knee, flaming poison dripping from its jowls. "Don't think I've forgotten all of your boasting, hellspawn. Are you going to reveal your true strength soon, or do you insist on handing me the victory? I'd like to say I want a fair fight, but in fact today I'd be more than willing to stomp a cockroach like you under my heel."

Stewart smiled. It was unnerving to see a maw like his spread and contort to cause the expression. "Boy, don't you know that a predator oftentimes plays with its food?" The black scales flowed together, slipping between one another into a fine mesh as the demon's form shrank again into essentially the form of a distinguished servant, save the skin like onyx and the coiled horns. A somewhat human mouth full of needles grinned and Stewart raised his open hand, twisting his tail around his arm until the lengthened black tip shone like grease as a kind of sword. "Such a shame, the underworld will need to rush preparations for thy punishment. I suggested the hooked chains, if anyone cares to ask, and there is a break in the screaming to make mention of it." Then he tapped his foot, uninjured heel made apparent. "Good."

-

Ophelia tore at the door, the blood of eunuchs on her lips and the cheers of her fellow wives, freed from the myriad infernal compulsions that would have stopped them from fleeing, at her back. Vampiric claws made quick work of sheet rock but it took much more work to get through the inset steel bars; whoever had been contracted to build this place had known that an escape attempt was a possibility. The bars weaved here and there, keeping her from simply tearing a hole through without individually pulling one bar and then another from their foundations.

And then the main door opened.

A greenskin came inside, one whose cock everyone in attendance had felt. Lappy, the hopeful idiot, ran up and threw herself up to hug his waist, plainly ignoring his state of undress. "Grog! It's really happening, isn't it?"

Grog scooped her up and deposited her on his shoulder to sit pretty, then called out to the room, "Anyone who can't fight, scatter!"

The women filtered out, guided by the very monstrous men who had been used to torment them for years, but Ophelia sauntered to the doorway last of all. "Not me, the sun," she said, plopping herself at the border of the doorway's shadow. "Lappy, dear, if you would tell them not to, say, burn down the building?"

The goblin girl nodded vigorously. "Grog, I need to go where they're fighting."

"No can do." He clamped his hand over her legs, pinning her to him. "They said to get you the hell out of here, first thing."

"What!? No! Leigh will be there for me, I know she will be!"

"And she would want you to be safe." The man put up with the girl's beating on his head as he bounded away.

Ophelia sighed and laid back for a nap until it would be safe to go about her day with newfound freedom. This had been a refreshing dalliance anyway.

-

For all of his experience, Pelk wasn't that much of a duelist, certainly not against a foe twice as strong as he should be for his size. Stewart lunged with weight and sharpness behind his attack that required Pelk to answer by beating aside the tip of the demon's tail-cum-sword and an attack in answer to the arm would do nothing, his blade skipped off the tight scales of the demon's tail, wrapped tightly around his attacking arm. He'd thrown his shield to the side, lest he try to block and have his arm speared through, made useless by the raking barbs of the demon's blade.

But Stewart cackled with the joy of one-sided battle, keeping out of the range of Pelk's attacks with masterful footwork, leaving only his defended arm open to attack. His actual body wouldn't take damage easily anyway, would require proper guidance and power to split the fine scale, neither of which the demon would be giving Pelk the ability to gain. Even when Pelk regressed to his furthest history on the battlefield against other armored knights, trying to grab and haul the demon into a vulnerable position, the damn thing merely took a calculated step out of the way and withdrew the point of contact.

Pelk was becoming exhausted just keeping himself alive, having to put so much more effort into dodging his opponent's persistent flow of jabs. The holy power he would at one time have utilized to chop through, healing his own wounds without care, was denied him by the very god who suffered slavery and the abuse of prisoners, rape and murder, and he hated himself for the desire deep below to have that power once more.

Disgusting. He would never allow himself to go into the service of a monster again.

At this point, there might not be much of a choice.

He felt the first glances of scale on steel as his arm became sluggish, and the demon's blade thrust, coming to rest embedded in Pelk's gorget, the cold feeling of his own blood soaking into his shirt as the demon blade's tip tickled his trachea. Stewart lurched forward, putting his other hand on the back of Pelk's neck so there would be no escape.

"See how easily man falls under his own strength," Stewart whispered through a rasp of needly teeth. "A life wasted in the service of others, of your own volition no less. Tell me, in the end; were you addicted to the power He gave you? You can be honest, if not now, then when?"

Pelk grabbed the demon's sword arm in both hands, his own blade clattering on the broken tiles. He growled with the effort of keeping the tip of the demon's blade from piercing his neck through. "Be-hind-"

"Such strange last words. Fear not, I will inform the engraver for your tombstone."

Behind the demon, Almine crashed through the nearest window and in one swift motion drew her dagger, stabbed it deeply into the base of the demon's skull.

Stewart went limp, dead or close enough by the time his body hit the floor. For good measure, and because Almine was appropriately distrusting, she took the time to hack away the creature's head.

Pelk said, taking up his sword again, "The next one is mine."

She shrugged, slapping black blood off of her hands before it had the time to congeal. "Seemed like you could use the help. Was I wrong?"

"No, but the priest is mine."

"Got it, no more saving your life."

It was a joke, and he knew it, but he put a sincere hand on her shoulder and spoke firmly. "Yes, thank you."

"The rest is done, we could cut and run if we wanted, come back with more guys?"

"Do you want to?"

Her thin fingers tightened around her dagger and the two continued inward.

-

"Turn around!" Lappy shouted, hurting her fists banging against Grog's thick skull. "She's here for me, I know it!"

Impassive, the orc continued jogging through the trees, his long legs taking her further from the action faster than she would be able to make up. He raised his off-hand to protect her from whipping branches, crossing rough land with ease. And when they were too far away for the sounds of combat to reach them, he slowed.

"What are you going to do, whether you meet her there now or after the battle?" Grog said. "Be reasonable, you're too tiny to be any help, and you'll just get in the way. These aren't the bad old days when we're just willing to throw away goblins to get some of our enemies bitten or scratched. Isn't that the whole reason the two of us, the rest of them are being rescued in the first place? I'm not about to let you get hurt, I've let too many people hurt as it is."

Her heart hurt, yearning to see her love after a long absence, to feel her gentle touch now that she knew how good she'd had it. Her eyes were burning as her blows slowed and she clamped onto the orc's head with her head bowed. "I'm sorry," she said.

"As long as you understand."

"No, for this." Lappy took his earlobe between her lips, bit, and wrenched her head back.

She hit the ground and went off into the brush at a dead run.

-

The fat bastard was in his bedroom when Pelk opened the door, he was nude and drawing on his trousers in front of blood-soaked sheets.

He sneered at Pelk and Almine, finished dressing dismissively before walking out a second door.

Pelk rushed after the man. "Stop right there, bastard!" he shouted as they all entered the internal courtyard, the priest sitting on a bench and sniffing the flower bush behind him.

"So, you were the cause of all this commotion," the priest said. "I always thought you were a milksop, but it seems I must reassess you. Treason against god, after such a long and distinguished career... be thankful I have not called on his angels to sort this all out already. It is nothing to replace fodder, we can even summon up a new demon to restrain with relative ease, but I wouldn't want to lose a knight of the church without giving him the chance to make his case. There would be questions, you understand, and paperwork, though nothing that would implicate me as such."

"You're a slave-driver and a rapist," Pelk accused, keeping his sword at the ready, watching for any of the hundred tricks a holy man of this rank had at his disposal, the sort Pelk himself once utilized.

"The lesser races exist as a blight upon this world, and I have shown them considerable mercy in sparing their insignificant lives. Do you not believe that god is merciful anymore? You, who ate of his food and drank of his water in the church's care. There is no cruelty too harsh to apply to a monster, yet I have still attempted to shepherd them into the light of god's perfect civilization. This beauteous abomination beside you, is she not a gift to the manor?" The priest licked his lips as Almine stepped back, pulling the shade of her hood further over her elfin loveliness. "You too may bask in the glory of god at my feet. It seems my wives have taken to fleeing, but a gift mends many things."

Pelk stood firm. "Forget it. It was my loyalty to the house of god itself that caused so much misery in the first place; don't think that appealing to that place and its rotten mercy will stay my blade. You claim the orphanage was a place of mercy, but it was a training ground for the very kind of fodder that you have been abusing all along. My mistake was surviving, learning, becoming competent as a warrior and useful to your goals. If I had died in that first holy war, when a twelve-year-old boy had been given a spear and was told to stand at the front of the line to protect the proper soldiers, would you have said that god was merciful to have me killed?"

The priest was scowling, already blessed light glowing beneath his skin as he silently prayed, gathering himself for combat. The fickle eye saw his flabby body replaced with a form proper to a servant of Heaven, his clothes seeming like impenetrable armor. "I would have said that your sacrifice was honorable, and that you rested in god's arms forevermore. This filthy world lies between paradise and torment, it is blighted with creatures and peoples who are agents of the netherworld, fleshy forms stretched over sinful spirits. I would have every right to slay them one by one until this world became an annex of Heaven itself, perfect in all ways. But no, I took it upon myself to make use of the sinners, to give them a place on the floor at the end of Heaven's table, and this disloyalty is the thanks I receive? I should have expected your treachery sooner, I suppose, as you came from the filth of the street. Human refuse, raised to holiness beyond its station. Why bother asking why it fell from its pedestal when you find it shattered on the floor? Your destiny should have been obvious."

-

Lappy made it to the manor, slipped through the bashed-open gate and went inside. The battle raged around the main building, giving way to a liminal space behind the gate where there was a deathly quiet excepting the moans of the not quite deceased. She thought she should be happy, with her captors lying in the blood-soaked dirt, but she tiptoed around them feeling sorry that her very existence had led to so much loss of life...

She went through the main building, past terrified servants cowering in the corners, past broken windows, past the still body of some pitch-black creature that seemed to smolder from within.

She made it to the courtyard, where two friends but not Leigh confronted the house's master.

The fat bastard was obviously behind the angelic shape he occupied; there was no hiding that sort of soul. Lappy had known evil, she'd grown up around the kind of lazy evil that goes around as it always has gone, and the eyes of that angel were the eyes of a goblin.

He turned to her, smiled. There was a flash of light and she was yanked up with his hand around her throat.

"Lappy!?" Almine took a step forward with killing intent, but faltered as the master squeezed a squeak out of Lappy.

The master sniffed her. "You gave it a name, how cute. Though there was no chance that the two of you could overpower an agent of god himself. I don't have to use a hostage, do I? But I do, it is the only way for this frothing madness to stop for a moment and let cooler heads prevail." He knelt to let Lappy down onto the balls of her feet, allowing her to take a bite of air, but her head was already pounding. "It is the will of god that the lesser races be exterminated or subjugated, that they serve the interests of humanity. A man should be able to walk naked into the forest without worry, secure in the knowledge that not only will he not be accosted by beasts, but that he may slake his thirst with milk and honey, sate his hunger with the fruits of the land with no concern paid to poison. Paradise on Earth may well be within our grasp, the grasp of our descendants; peace between beast and man, monsters put out of there miserable existence. A stay of execution warranted so long as they serve their purpose."

Pelk and Almine shuffled, trying for an angle of attack on this inhumanly quick and powerful adversary which would allow them to scoop Lappy out of danger. Nothing presented itself, they were already too far to reach her in one step and they would then have to contend with this man, burning with empowering faith.

"So," the master said, "Pelk, out of respect for your service, I'll offer you a deal: execute this one here and I will allow the others to continue running. Their ends will come one day either way, but I would have your final act be one of a paladin." He pushed Lappy and Pelk snapped her up.

Even though her head rested against the cold, hard steel of his breastplate, she could feel the warmth of his embrace.

Lappy looked up into the knight's solemn eyes; he'd already made his decision.

"Do you trust him?" she asked.

Pelk grit his teeth. "The man's god condones rape, murder, slavery, but not dishonesty. I won't do it."

It's okay... she couldn't bear to really say it. "Thank you for coming back... that's enough."

The master raised his palm to the sky and an orb of iridescent destruction formed, swirling with potency. "Too bad. I hope you understand how much I despise killing humans."

He hurled the orb.

It stopped in midair, vanished as though it had never existed at all, and in its place was a figure in fine, flowing white cloth, lit with a coruscent ring floating above its head. The figure came to Lappy's side, gently placed a kiss on her forehead, and faced the master.

"What is this!?" he shouted, lifting his palm skyward again, trembling with fury as his power failed again to manifest. "Who are you to stand in my way!?"

"Leigh Theophagoi," the figure said. "It is surprising, I think, that the court of heaven hadn't yet seen a challenge to your activities on the mortal plane with legal standing. Your proclivities were well known, and mocked, by the pantheon; how lucky you were to worship the head of the table, one as disgusting as yourself."

"Blasphemer!"

"Quiet," she said, and it seemed that all sound from the rustle of leaves to the clink of weaponry on the other side of the walls for an instant ceased. "It was a minor one, the god of a fountain that had been reduced to a trickle, but a god nonetheless, that I once ate in my time as an adventurer. It did come in handy only once before, I believe it made the difference in slaying the previous demon lord. But since then there hasn't been much use for the seal of divinity."

Leigh swept her fingers over her forehead, a glowing seal appearing briefly.

"As it turns out, gaining the seal of even a minor god such as that gave me the right to appeal for a redress of grievances in the court of heaven." She snapped and the master's powers vanished immediately, revealing his true form as a gluttonous sore on the ass of the world. Leigh couldn't help but mar her deific performance with a wide, sadistic smile. "For enslaving one of my followers, defiling her-"

"Defiling her!?" the piggish man shrieked. "There is nothing one can do to defile a goblin!!! They are born filth and they die filth!!!!!"

"For defiling her, your own god offered your life as payment." She looked to Pelk. "I believe you wanted this?"

Lappy was passed over to Leigh, was cradled in her lover's arms after their long separation and her vision blurred with relieved tears. She averted her gaze as Pelk went to collect the master's head.

-o-

On the way home, Lappy sat in the back of the cart with Leigh, the mage's holy glow fading until the woman herself was revealed, exhausted to the point that it amazed herself that she could keep hold of Lappy the whole way. Dwarfs cheered their victory and soon enough other voices joined them, female voices found down the road and picked up. Palla had been bandaged up until it was hard to see any of her green skin and she dozed in the corner, stirring only a moment when Pelk arrived to sit with her, resting her head against his leg.

People gradually fell off, returning to their homes and their jobs. Lappy tried her hardest to watch out the back of the cart until her eyelids became too heavy to continue. In only a few hours they were out of the forest, through the fields of grain with the Dwarf city looming in the background, a plume of smoke rising which made Almine grin as it came into view. After all that had happened in the last few days, Lappy could hardly believe she'd never gone more than a day's walk from the place she was born.

If it weren't for the woman currently rocking her gently, she thought that she might never have gone farther than the forested lands immediately surrounding the warren. She would never have seen just how her people were seen by the outside world... and she never would have understood Leigh's plans...

There had never been an urge to understand; Lappy had been more than content in the woman's care, in lavish accommodations. Looking at Palla, who twitched despite her bandages in the throes of nightmare, there were thoughts like frayed threads in Lappy's memory that were only now knotting together.

When they had passed the barrier of slowed time and returned to Leigh's tower in the woods, the only remaining members of the group were Almine, Pelk, and Palla. They were shown to guest rooms and Leigh naturally carried Lappy all the way up to her own bedroom with a kind of warm desire in her eyes that Lappy had seen so very many times before.