The Goblin King's Elf-Bride

NOTE: This story takes some inspiration from the Tolkien legendarium, but features only original characters, all of whom are consenting adult Elves and Orcs. Includes some heavy kink themes including degradation, BDSM, golden showers, and more. Sorry, Professor.

* * *

"Do you, King Ishbolg of Lime Hollow, take Thanaleth, Marchwarden of the Woodland Realm, to be your wife?

"Will you love and honor her? Will you fight by her side in war, rule by her side in peace?

"Will you raise her up to be your tower of strength, to cast her shadow on you in friendship and power as long as you both shall live?"

"I will," said Ishbolg, his yellow eyes bright and feline in the lamplit hall carved out of the rocky hillside.

Thanaleth drank him in, fixing this moment in her mind. His jutting jaw, asymmetrical but not unhandsome. His gray skin that somehow shined in different colors at different angles, green here, fire-red there, a hint of deep blue in some of the shadows. He wore a magnificent suit of leathers and wool and polished bronze studs, overlaid with bright multicolored jewelry. His taloned toes, clicking bare on the stone floor as he shifted his weight, were painted blood red.

When she had first brought up the idea of marriage, he'd laughed in her face. When she had brought it up a second time, he had patiently explained to her why such a union was beyond imagining. Why no Elf would want to marry the Goblin way.

"And will you defile and dishonor her? Will you sink her into the dirt, to be the wretched and fertile slime of the Earth, to slake the sordid lusts of you and your band as long as you both shall live?"

Ishbolg stared into her eyes for a long moment. He still didn't believe she could really do this, she knew.

"I will," he said, and there was a hungry growl in it that shot through her, from the hot skin of her face to the blood rushing between her thighs.

For four hundred years, Thanaleth had been, as far as anyone knew, nothing but good and pure, serene and maidenly. A spring blossom dancing lightly on the tips of tree branches at her mother's endless recitals. A graceful shadow piercing intruders on the forest domain with unseen arrows.

Her future had been set. She was supposed to eventually fall in love with a handsome, high-born Elf-husband, kind and gentle. They would marry and become serene lovers, frolicking in the trees. Once every millennium or so, they might produce a perfect baby.

Thanaleth was still an Elf, and she did love to frolic in the trees. She was beautiful, she knew well, with a sharp mind and dagger.

Pure and maidenly was more the difficulty.

She had dallied with a dignitary on a visit to Lothlórien. She had even spent a lovely and illuminating afternoon with a Man, many mortal lifetimes ago, a broad-shouldered hunter who had blundered into her woods.

And she had heard the rumors of the depravity of the Goblins. On night patrol, she had heard whispered stories of nightmarish orgies and twisted displays of love.

She was supposed to shudder in fright, and be thankful that she was an Elf, living among Elves. But she knew she was only pretending.

Some hundred years prior, when she led a company of Elf warriors to the aid of a King of Men whose domain was under attack by the Dark Lord, her detachment had stopped for the night near where their allies were camped.

Thanaleth had stolen away to catch a glimpse of these Men. She hadn't admitted it to herself at the time, but she had realized later she had obviously been hoping to meet someone like her long-dead hunter.

She had come upon a knot of what she learned were camp-followers, civilian entrepreneurs who travelled with the army to sell food, laundry services, and entertainment. All kinds of entertainment.

Perched in a tree, Thanaleth had watched in fascinated horror as a plump young Woman came her way with four nervous, gangly soldiers in tow. The Woman had laid out a tattered blanket under the spreading branches, shimmied out of her dress, and had given her hidden watcher a vivid demonstration of cocksucking.

By the time the young Woman departed, a few coins richer and dripping pearly white, Thanaleth's fingers had found their way inside her traveling breeches, and she shook so hard with her release that she almost fell out of the tree.

She had also learned a new word: whore.

In the morning, she strode openly into the Men's camp, and all around her soldiers and camp-followers fell into reverent silence, gazing reverently, awed, she knew, by her beauty and poise and more-than-mortal presence. Most had probably never seen an Elf maiden up close before.

But when she asked the Men to tell her more about whores, some froze, other fled in terror. One fell to his knees and begged her not to destroy him. She saw a deep and powerful shame in them that twisted strangely in her gut, and colored her memories in throbbing hues.

When she had told Ishbolg about this experience, and how many late nights thereafter she had imagined herself in the whore's place, the Goblin King had guffawed even harder than when she first brought up marriage. But after he wiped away the tears of laughter, he had looked at her with a more thoughtful expression.

"Do you, Thanaleth, Marchwarden of the Woodland Realm, take King Ishbolg of Lime Hollow to be your husband?"

She glanced over at the craggy old Goblin priestess in her black robes embroidered with red fangs and coiling dragons.

"Will you love and honor him? Will you fight by his side in war, rule by his side in peace?"

She thought of Hend, Ishbolg's wife, who had died some years back, in the final battle against the Dark Lord. The Goblins of Lime Hollow had turned against the Dark Lord at the end, and had allied with the free peoples of the world.

Thanaleth had fought alongside Lime Hollow in an early skirmish, in which she had made a foolish mistake and gotten herself injured. Ishbolg and Hend had jeered her mercilessly for her ineptitude, but after a few minutes they were feeding her a rich and spicy broth and telling bawdy stories while she waited for her companions.

Thanaleth had only known Hend for a short time, but the Orcish Queen had been proud and strong. She had described in gruesome detail how she had dealt with a Man in the Dark Lord's service who had demanded she and Ishbolg order their band to fight to the death in a useless stand to defend a worthless hill.

Thanaleth hadn't known then just what being Ishbolg's Queen entailed, but the picture of it somehow seemed to rhyme with the brave warrior she remembered, dripping with the blood of her enemies.

As Ishbolg had later explained to her, between the King and Queen, there was always one who led the band in battle, and one who was subordinate. But the one who led had a second, special role.

The Goblins had been dominated by a high and untouchable Dark Lord whom they feared and despised. Perhaps that deep well of resentment was why they had developed a warped form of hierarchy.

An Orcish King or Queen regnant was far from high or untouchable. When they weren't commanding their subjects, they served as a low and compliant figure to be humiliated and debauched for the people's pleasure.

The thought sent lightning surging through Thanaleth's blood.

But could she win the loyalty of the Lime Hollow Goblins the way Hend had? If war came, would they dismiss her and look to her husband for orders?

"Will you rise up to be his tower of strength, to cast your shadow on him in friendship and power as long as you both shall live?"

"I will," she said, looking into her groom's eyes, trying not to show fear.

"And will you defile and dishonor yourself for him? Will you sink into the dirt, to be the wretched and fertile slime of the Earth, to slake the sordid lusts of him and your band as long as you both shall live?"

A warm draft passed through the hall, ruffling her gown. It was an enveloping mass of flowers and leaves, spider-silk and bright river stones, a beautiful garment that she and her maidservants back home had slaved over for weeks. Her hair had been arranged into a high, elaborate nest of foliage and berries. She'd put her foot down over the idea of including an entire apple.

But none of her family were here to see it. Her mother had merely watched, tight-lipped, as Thanaleth had climbed up to sit in front of Ishbolg on his astonishingly fluffy Warg, and turned away in silence as her only daughter rode away to be wed.

The only other Elf here was Emathiol, who had come galloping up on a splendid white stallion just minutes before the ceremony. She was the only one of her own kind that Thanaleth had ever been able to confide in.

Now, Thanaleth's friend was gazing at her from the front row with an expression of dignified concern.

The other guests were all Goblins. Thanaleth's new band. Some of them sneered at her with a skeptical eye, like they didn't think she would really go through with it, or maybe just that they didn't think their King should be marrying an Elf. But many others were grinning joyously. A few, including Ishbolg's mother, had tears streaming down their faces, and one elderly Goblin of unclear gender was loudly blowing their nose.

And then, smattered throughout the crowd of well-wishers was another look, one of undisguised thirst.

"I will," she said firmly, holding her new husband's gaze. He was very tall for a Goblin, which meant he stood nearly eye-to-eye with his Eldar lady, but he was broader of build than an Elf, or even a Man, so that he appeared to loom regardless, as he leaned in to fasten a bronze collar with delicate gold inlays around her throat.

"Then, by the Spirits of Stone and Bog, and by the Sun Demon's Wheel," croaked the priestess, "I pronounce you husband and wife. Hail Queen Thanaleth, sovereign of Lime Hollow!"

"Hail the Queen!" shouted the Goblins. "Thanaleth! Thanaleth! Thanaleth!"

Ishbolg leaned in to kiss her, and as their lips met, the priestess, crooked grin audible in her voice, intoned he closing words, "You may beg your husband to fuck you."

* * *

Ishbolg drew back from the kiss, heart pounding, grinning like an idiot.

He looked into the eyes of his wife, huge and dark, rimmed with celebratory Orcish pigments, black and green and pink and gold that had been dabbed on by a horde of buzzing volunteers.

Wife!

He tasted the word on his tongue. It had been too long. His band had grown restless, going years without a Queen. He had met with many eligible warriors from neighboring Goblin bands, but all he'd been able to see in them was a bad imitation of Hend.

Now, standing before him was Thanaleth, looking like nothing in the world but herself. His wife.

It had been a fun kind of torture, spending the past week with her at the Elves' citadel, hashing out the details for the ceremony in a semi-private nook high in a tree. Thanaleth's mother must have had eyes all around them, watching out for her daughter's safety.

Ishbolg understood that. He had been desperate to touch his bride-to-be, but he was taking the time to ensure Thanaleth's safety in a different way. He wanted her wedding to be everything she dreamed of. But he had been wracked with worry that he would go too far, that his bride would agree to things she would regret.

He'd heard it said that in spite of all their differences, the Goblins and the immortal Elves were once kin. That thousands of years ago, when the world was young, the Dark Lord's old master came among them, and picked out the the outcasts, the creeps, the nasty and cruel and weird, and conscripted them into his service.

So, perhaps for all their stuffy pretense, deep down the Elves had the same dark drives as regular people.

"We may not suffer the careening urgency of you mortals," she had told him tartly, "But consider all the perversions you could come up with if you had four hundred years to think of them."

He thought of all the ages he imagined he could see in her unlined face. Four centuries of pent-up desires. Four centuries of wisdom, dancing in the quirk of a lip amused at all his nervous objections. Four centuries of priggish Elf dignity that he knew they both ached to see broken down.

"Please, my King," she said softly, "Fuck me."

"I dunno if the folks at the back can hear you," he said.

"Please, my King!" she pitched her voice to project to the crowd now, a touch defiant, face reddening. "Fuck me! Give me your cock!"

She'd once had to explain to him what blushing was, in a voice tumbling with melodious, un-Orcish laughter. Ishbolg planned to see a lot more of that blush, and hear a lot more of that laugh.

"Ey! Should I give the Elf whore what she wants?" Ishbolg called out to those assembled.

"No!" came the unanimous shouted response.

"Hmm!" he bellowed, turning back to her. "It sounds like you're gonna hafta earn it."

There was a small portion of the Woodland Realm that the Lime Hollow Goblins were allowed to hunt in, an arrangement dating back to the Dark Lord's War. It was there that he and Thanaleth had arranged their clandestine meetings over the past few years.

When she had blurted out a proposal of marriage to him, with charming awkwardness, at a pompous celebration for the birth of a prince of Men, he had rejected her rather brutally. But by the end of an evening spent cracking up at her impressions of various stuck-up twits in her village, he had been persuaded to meet her in a certain clearing in a month's time.

She had begged him to let her prove that she was no delicate flower, and some wall inside him had cracked, just a tiny bit.

They hadn't done much more than talk in their hidden clearing. For one thing, he had no intention of getting shot by Thanaleth's friends. The arrangement between Goblins and Elves applied to hunting game, not princesses.

He had believed at first that he was merely playing with her. Indulging a lonely, foolish Elf maiden's daydream of being swept away by a debauched Goblin King.

At their second meeting, he told her that Orcs simply had filthy minds, and she would run screaming from his bed if she ever found herself there.

A few minutes later, she'd told him of a time when she was very young, no more than forty, and she had come across a lone Goblin pissing against a tree not far from their meeting place.

"I don't know why, but I was fascinated, and I crept up close, as close as I thought I could without getting caught. I can be very sneaky.

"I got so close that if he had heard me and turned around sharply, I might have gotten smacked in the face by his piss.

"It didn't happen, but I imagined it, and I kept imagining it. I guess I decided that I deserved to get pissed on, for spying on him. And...that excited me."

He had been rock hard at the end of her story, and after that, he began for the first time to consider what he might do with her if he really did take her home.

He began to set her little tasks, embarrassing things she could do to test her desires. He told her to write something shameful on her own skin, something that made her stomach flutter, and go around all day with the words branded on her, underneath her beautiful elf dress.

The next month, she told him that she had danced at the Summer Solstice festival with all the handsomest Elf lords of the forest, spinning to a chorus of flutes and drums, and all the while she had "Goblin Whore" written across her breasts, just out of sight.

When she vividly told him how she had touched herself that night, he realized that he didn't want it to be just a game anymore.

A later task had come with a gift. By this time, he had finally come to his senses and reciprocated her marriage proposal.

He handed her an oblong package, wrapped in gray husks of the rock maize that grew around Lime Hollow.

"It's rather... suggestively-shaped, isn't it?" she laughed, taking it in hand, and clutching it to her chest.

"Crafted to my personal measurements."

"How thoughtful you are!" she was still chortling.

He leaned in closer, closer than he ever had in their previous meetings in the clearing.

"When you are my Queen, I'm going to fuck your whore mouth, and I ain't gonna waste my time with a worthless little Elf who can't go all the way.

"So you're going to practice with this replica, until you can take the whole thing."

"Yes, my King," she said, cheeks aflame.

"One more thing. Mouth only. Your worthless cunt ain't worthy yet to touch even an imitation of my cock."

He recalled how he'd been unable to keep the joy off of his face when she returned, proud of her hard-fought victory. He'd almost swept her into his arms right there.

He was finding it hard not to sweep her into his arms right here, right now, in the grand hall where she had just become his Queen. But there was a little more work to be done.

Instead, he sat on his throne, and stamped one foot.

"Footstool!" he called out.

With only a slight hesitation, his wife knelt in front of him, bending down to rest her elbows on the stone floor, making a platform of herself for him.

Cheers and applause broke out as he kicked up his feet and settled them gently on the small of her back. She was breathing hard. Her long dress, shimmering white and gold and red and green, spread out around her on the ground. One little strand of her long, gray-gold hair had loosed itself and tumbled down past her down-turned eyes.

"You're doing so well, my Queen," he cooed for her ears alone, and he felt drunk on the hot blood rushing joyously up and down his body as he prepared to greet the receiving line.

* * *

From her footstool position, Thanaleth could only see feet, approaching, pausing, shuffling past.

Unseen fingers brushed her cheek, almost tenderly. Another hand caressed her upturned backside.

"Congratulations, my Lord and Lady!" piped a Goblin warrior in the strange, nasally sort of voice some of them had, a charming contrast to their grim appearance. She suppressed a laugh, then had to stifle a moan as a pair of fingers pressed between her thighs, pushing the smooth spider-silk fabric between the folds of her sex, sliding it around easily in her moisture.

"May you reign long and fruitfully together!" called out another Goblin voice she didn't recognize. She would learn who they all were soon, but today, it was mostly strangers passing by to congratulate her.

The fingers left her, but her dress was now noticeably sticky where they had been, and she was sure there was now an undignified wet spot visible to those lining up.

A hand touched her hair — did someone just take one of her decorative berries and eat it? — and another slapped her ass, not hard, but bringing a tiny, surprised yelp from her lips.

"Congratulations on finding such an obedient Elf whore, my Lord!" boomed a deeper voiced Goblin. Thanaleth was pretty sure it was one of her husband's aunts, who had helped her prepare this morning. Fingers rubbed gently at the back of her neck. "When you lead Lime Hollow in battle, my Lady, the memory of your bravery this day will rally us."

"Hear! Hear!" shouted another Goblin, and the hall took up the cheer.

Another smack came down on her rear.

It was mortifying to display herself this way, as a debased thing, and more mortifying still to be horribly aware that she liked it.

Her head was spinning, and her arms had begun to tremble under the weight of Ishbolg's muscular legs on her back, but a wave of determination steadied her. She would not give up, not when she had come so far.

She had another problem, one that had been creeping up on her throughout the ceremony. She really, really had to pee.

It didn't help that a finger was again teasing the embarrassingly growing wet spot where the back of her dress was now sticking to her. This time, the unknown toucher pressed a silk-shrouded digit deep inside her, and she cried out, turning to a whimper of disappointment when it left her.