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The Noble and the Beasts

Chapter 4: Domestic Disturbances

By Gideon Kalve Jarvis

Commissioned by Kalenidus

Minotaurs were the masters of mazes. Everyone knew that. But even minotaurs as old and experienced as Heraclitus needed time and resources and occasionally outside assistance to keep their lairs in proper working order.

This was one of those instances.

“Disgraceful,” remarked Dame Nywen, her remark not dissimilar from previous comments she’d been making ever since she’d arrived, one of a rapidly dispatched band of protector knights, members of one of the maiden orders that had formed when so many human menfolk had been dying in the Chaos Wars. Unlike the other three dame knights who’d come with her, however, or the adorably shy princess, Leonila, who’d been in their immediate care (an excuse, Heraclitus strongly suspected, for the human realms to plant a few more of their armed agents among the marriageable youngsters roaming the estate, all the better to keeps tabs on events as they unfolded), Nywen had…opinions about the species she referred to as the sub-humans. Strong opinions. Heraclitus, doing his best under trying circumstances to retain his demeanor as Eaglardian’s majordomo, remained with his head focused forward as he ascended the stairs to the guest wing of the Eaglardian estate, a massive gilt-and-porcelain washtub resting squarely on his back, his expression neutral. “Are you absolutely certain that no quarters can be found to station me closer to my charges?”

“None with the appropriate amenities,” Heraclitus replied calmly, consciously breathing slowly and evenly, not allowing his muscles to tense beneath the servant’s uniform he wore: if he let his pectorals and back flex the way he wanted, his cummerbund would likely snap up like rolling blinds! (Comical, certainly, but hardly conducive to presenting a professional demeanor during this stressful period.) And that was nothing compared to what would happen if he were to really draw on the old, primal powers; the job would be easily done, but such a state was anything but acceptable in civilized company! “At present, the majority of the serving staff have been given leave of their duties, as no guests were expected here until after the diplomatic concordance concluded. This has left only a few of our rooms in a properly presentable state, ready for use by unscheduled guests.”

Of course, the dapper-dressed black minotaur neglected to mention that a great deal of the present confusion among the staff was the result of certain…rites taking place in the bowels of the earth beneath their feet. That had taken place. That would take place in the far too near future (though not so many underground now; no, there was too much free power released, and only an open-air ritual in the deep forests bounding the estate’s more tame lands could safely channel such energy into productive – and safe – lines).

“This entire estate is your responsibility, is it not?” snapped Dame Nywen, giving her beautiful, curling chestnut locks a contemptuous toss as she studious ensured that she was not in the least appraising the incredible musculature of the disgusting, subhuman beast-man just above her on the stairs, brutish muscles that threatened at every moment to rip every stitch of his fine servant’s clothes – such as his trousers! – at the seams. “There is simply no excuse, even for a wretched creature like yourself, to be unprepared for every eventuality!”

As a minotaur, Heraclitus was naturally aware of everything that took place within his “labyrinth,” or the bounds of enclosed space that marked off his territory. For Heraclitus, this meant the entire Eaglardian estate, bounded by the road circling to the south and the west, the hills to the north, after the fields and verdant orchards, and the river to the east, just beyond the deep forests, left deliberately unspoiled to allow them to serve as a preserve for game and a safe haven for the various shrines to the Old Religions that Master Eaglardian had allowed to remain on his land in spite of all the opposition such a decision would have drawn from the overwhelming majority of his fellow elves if this fact had ever been made common knowledge. And, of course, for the habitation of the many creatures that had chosen to serve Lord Eaglardian when Heraclitus had chosen to submit himself to the great elven lord so many years ago. Though he didn’t allow himself to think too closely about the subject, Heraclitus strongly suspected that his actions, and those of Lord Eaglardian in reciprocation, had likely saved the lives of tens of thousands of the more monstrous-seeming creatures of the world, who would otherwise have been slaughtered in the wake of the war between Civilization and Evil.

Just because he could sense everything within the bounds of his labyrinth, however, didn’t mean that he could observe everything in detail all at once: he was hardly omniscient, and even less so omnipotent! That latter lack was all-too-apparent to him as he struggled desperately to keep up with supplying the needs of both guests and entourage, quartering them, feeding them, providing them with suitable refreshments and diversions after their swift journeys, and then ensuring they had appropriate places available for sleep, with laundered linens and made beds.

“And what about the plumbing?” continued Nywen, unabated by Heraclitus’ momentary contemplative silence. “Surely you can’t expect princesses of the Realms to wash themselves clean of travel dust in some chill mountain stream. That might serve for beasts like you and your ilk, but for those of royal blood, and for their servants, the agents of Order in the coming new age, such a state is simply not to be borne!”

All of this, though, Heraclitus could handle with only minimal strain. What made his present situation nearly unendurable was that the overwhelming majority of the unexpected arrivals were beautiful human females. Attractive human males, like the arrogant Prince Tapan, were bad enough, but human females? Coupled (no, better not to use that word), or, that is, combined with the raw, primal energies now radiating outward from the hidden shrine of the Old God beneath the estate, in spite of many years of practice in self-restraint, Heraclitus was starting to feel an uncomfortable, almost overwhelming resurgence of the desire to partake in old habits, and dark, terrible instincts he’d thought he’d left behind him in the dust of the past.

Instincts such as fully asserting his dominance over this exceedingly irritating chestnut-haired female who insisted on hounding him up and down stairs while he worked to get the indoor plumbing working properly!

(Something his instincts firmly believed, and the long-disused parts of his conscious mind strongly suspected, she might actually be hoping for. He had, after all, encountered similar sorts on numerous occasions: proud, brave warriors of both sexes who would wield insults with far greater efficacy than their weapons, and who, when they finally were bested, submitted so very, very nicely indeed to all the pleasures an ancient minotaur could provide.)

“When Master Valdaglerion and Mistress Adlanniel return from their various errands of diplomatic necessity,” he quietly slipped into a momentary lull in the very nearly constant stream of complaints and objections being raised by the exceedingly troublesome female just behind him, sorely tempting him to relax his grip on the very heavy bathtub he was lugging along, “I wholeheartedly encourage you to lodge your complaints in a formal setting, so that they may be more appropriately addressed and redressed.”

Ah, the top of the stairs. At last! Now, just a short distance more…

“In the meantime,” the towering, black-furred male continued, keeping his eyes faced forward, forcing himself not to take in the scent on the air of that floor’s present occupants – the scent of five young, healthy, human females; virgin females, no less – “would you be so kind as to open the doors ahead of us and to the right? As our primary baths are presently unavailable due to unexpected circumstances, I am afraid that chamber is the only one which has pipework fitted and ready for service.”

Heraclitus of course failed to provide any mention of what had now occupied the rat goblins and most of the kobold population on the estate, when it was usually their job to keep the plumbing operating efficiently. To say nothing of the mess they’d made in the baths! Fortunately, Heraclitus had indeed prepared for a great many eventualities, and though he’d had to heft a tub from Master Valdaglerion’s private quarters (the elder Eaglardian heir did so love his comforts: that tub was large enough for Heraclitus to settle down quite comfortably if he’d been of a mind, with ample sitting room for Vyrran, the Bronze Bull, besides!), and would soon have to get to work on the numerous secondary valves that would redirect water into the necessary pipes, soon enough the princesses would indeed have cold water for freshening up, and hot water for a relaxing soak.

“I’m not going to take demands from one of your kind,” sniffed Dame Nywen, finally turning to descend the stairs once more. “Besides, I expect Queen Fynn and Princess Anara within the hour, and will need to ensure that my fellow knights and defenders are prepared to greet them properly. What is the point of an advance guard if we aren’t actually guarding, I ask you?”

Blinking, Heraclitus could just barely manage to turn himself enough to watch the woman in the dwarfmake articulated platemail vanish from his view down the wide staircase. Fortunately, he’d hefted greater weights than the porcelain-and-gild covered marble bathtub in his years, and over longer distances. Unfortunately, he’d seldom been made to do so with such precision: there was little room for maneuvering in the upper halls of the mansion, and the bathtub was as delicate as it was heavy!

Ah well, he thought to himself, drawing his focus on the rest of the estate back into himself as he set himself to finagling the tub into the large chamber abutting the primary bedroom housing all the princesses who were presently gathered on the estate, hopefully before two more were added to their number. At least now I can work in peace and quiet.

A pity, really: those two ninjas that had arrived with the two Eastern princesses were each heading straight into situations that Heraclitus deemed to be…tricksome, to say the least. Not that he was too terribly bothered by their impending troubles: while they were technically a part of the bodyguard entourage, in typical ninja fashion they’d failed to properly announce their presence, which also technically meant that they weren’t official guests, and hence would be considered intruders by most of the guardians of the Eaglardian estate, just as he wasn’t bound by any official laws of hospitality regarding them. But “ah well” once again: he would just have to extricate them from their difficulties when a lull in his present duties allowed. It would be terribly impolite to not at least offer invading ninjas a hot meal, a bath, and a place to sleep after they’d run afoul of your defenses.

Perhaps they will learn a lesson from their hardships, the minotaur mused as he carefully wedged the bathtub against the wall and the banister, easing enough weight from one of his arms so that he could reach one of the knobs of the double doors to the soon-to-be secondary baths. Overall, a refreshing education for all involved, I think…

His thoughts were quite suddenly cut off as he felt a sudden obstruction to the heavy tub, before his heightened minotaurish senses kicked in, and he realized that he was no longer alone.

“This big thing looks pretty heavy,” chuckled the burly, bearish man now standing opposite Heraclitus, gripping the other half of the immense porcelain nightmare with astonishing ease for a human, however large and obviously well-built. “Care for a hand?”

“That would be most appreciated, Sir Groff,” the dapper-dressed minotaur affirmed with a slight inclination of his head; at least somebody seemed to have some manners around-…

Wait…was this man…?

He was!

Oh dear…this was most vexing.

Not that being visibly ogled by a muscular, swarthy, and quite visibly hairy human male was unpleasant, per se (quite the opposite: Heraclitus was one who liked variety in his partners), but Heraclitus was presently doing his best simply to keep up with the various demands being placed upon him at that time. Having to diplomatically discourage sexual advances at the same time – at least while he was still working – was going to add another layer of trouble to what was already a nearly overwhelming situation.

“Just Groff,” laughed the rough-cut man as he helped Heraclitus guide the tub to the large double doors of the soon-to-be bathroom, before releasing his grip so as to open them wide. “I’m just a hireling, after all, here to babysit His Highness Tapan.” Heraclitus felt the human male’s eyes on him as the big black bull made his way past, all his concentration needed to keep the tub angled correctly, which of course left him completely unable to prevent Groff from reaching out and giving his rump an appraising squeeze. “Of course,” he continued with feigned nonchalance as Heraclitus continued, stiff-legged, past him, “that doesn’t mean I don’t have some leisure time for a bit of fun. I understand that you lumpskulls get around quite a lot.” He chuckled as he followed Heraclitus into the immense, tiled room usually intended for use as a storage closet for the various cleaning equipment and utensils (which, thankfully, Heraclitus had already moved before the arrival of Princess Leonila and her knightly entourage), its fixtures, normally useful for filling mop buckets and draining dripping rags equally serviceable in filling bathtubs and wash basins. “Must be pretty frustrating for you, just like for me: surrounded by all these gorgeous people, and not allowed to touch any of them. Though we could help each other to relieve…”

“I am still on duty,” said Heraclitus more curtly than he’d intended, but then he was under quite a load of strain at that moment (and though he was loathe to admit it, since it would indicate weakness on his part when he was supposed to be the rock-solid pillar on which House Eaglardian’s smooth management rested, this dark-haired lout was absolutely correct about frustration). “Considering the present situation, I am unlikely to be off-duty for the foreseeable future.”

Closing his eyes, he heaved a long sigh, smelling the disappointment of the man standing behind him in the doorway, and then turned to look at him, his expression softening from its usual formal stiffness.

“Under other circumstances,” the minotaur explained, his tone not unkind, “I might accept: you are not an unattractive male, and in spite of my veneer of civility, I am not a prude. But at this time, and in these circumstances, I am afraid that I cannot see any proper way for me to assist you in relieving your tensions.”

“Or in relieving yours?” Groff challenged, then relented, rolling his eyes at the expression this got from the big bull. “All right, sorry. You’re almost as bad as that redheaded barbarian woman I’m sharing a wing with: she’s always on duty, too, and she’s one of those oathsworn, the ones who won’t sleep with anybody who can’t take ‘em in a fair right!”

“Ah, a maiden of the Pact,” Heraclitus nodded approvingly. “That explains her virgin status, in spite of her obvious charms.”

Groff blinked, then rolled his eyes again.

“Of course the lumpskull would know that sort of thing,” he growled. “How can you tell? Smell, or one of those special senses you’ve got? I’ve encountered a few of your kind, mostly while I was plundering ruins, and I know how keen those senses of yours can be.”

“A little of all of the above,” admitted Heraclitus, pointedly not asking how those encounters with other minotaurs ended. “The sense is,” he frowned, considering, “I suppose that it is similar to the way that you can size up a potential opponent opposite you in the pancratium ring, detecting their strengths, their weaknesses, their level of experience, and so forth.”

“How did you know I was a wrestler?” Groff asked with a snort of surprise, then frowned, his stormy brows furrowing. “You’re not like any minotaur I’ve ever met. Or any other beastman, for that matter. You know way too much.”

“I am…old,” Heraclitus admitted with a slight shrug, then noticed Groff’s arched eyebrow, making it clear that this was simply not enough of an explanation. “Very old,” he finally amended. “Though if you have not met folk like me among the theriomorphs, it is probably because you have not spent enough time in conversation. I can recommend a bar in Am’akhret, if you have an interest: while they are not so inviting to human visitors, if I send one of the kobolds along with you to make introductions, I think you should be just fine. You might also find similar-minded partners,” he added with the faintest of smirks, “to assist in relieving some of your present tensions.”

“Am’akhret?” Groff murmured, rubbing his fuzzy chin. “That’s the elven word for ‘sewer,’ isn’t it?” Then he blinked, the metaphorical candle snapping into flame above his head. “Ah, that’s the beastmen shanty-town, isn’t it? That big place outside the walls of the big elven city?” At Heraclitus’ nod, the burly man scratched his chest through the slightly too-short and too-tight tunic that seemed to be his only article of clothing. “That sounds like exactly what I need right about now, with Tapan off messing around with those elfboys he met, and no time for me,” he admitted. “Elves won’t give me the time of day, but beastmen? Or beast_women_? Sign me up!”

“As it pleases you,” Heraclitus answered as phlegmatically as ever. “Soon I will be calling for some of the few kobolds still on-duty at this time to assist me in attaching all the pipes necessary to make this chamber fully functional; I think any one of them would be more than happy to provide you with the assistance you require.”

“A kobold is fine too,” answered Groff after only a moment’s thought, a sly smirk spreading on his square-jawed face. “I’ve heard some things about those scaly little sneaks. Is it true that they…?”

“Most rumors about kobolds are true,” Heraclitus cut off the carnal-minded man before he could start causing the overworked minotaur’s mind to travel down less-productive channels – hardly what he needed when he was already holding back a tsunami of primitive lust, along with his own more usual load of pent-up (but no less primal) needs! “As long as you are open about your requirements, I expect you will find somebody – or, more likely, several somebodies – perfectly willing to help you satisfy them. So long as you are willing to reciprocate, of course.”

This, of course, Heraclitus had personally verified on several occasions. Not that he was likely to share details of such amorous adventures in these circumstances!

“Hey,” Groff spread his broad, thick-fingered hands, “trading cums is only fair. A bit harder to tell with the ladies unless they’re squirters or screamers, I admit, but I’m game to try most anything at least once.”

“As it pleases you, Si- Groff,” Heraclitus responded, stifling his usual addition of an honorific only with some effort; the big man was uncouth, certainly, but he was hardly much different from most of the orcs and gnolls of the minotaur’s acquaintance, and Heraclitus felt that he might make a good friend under the right circumstances. “In the meantime, perhaps you could make the appearance of earning your pay and go downstairs to the courtyard: I understand that we will be receiving more royal guests in the near future, and I expect that the maiden knights could use your strong back for some of the accepted protocols in meeting such dignitaries.”

“You mean the Frost Queen and her cute little sister?” laughed the swarthy wrestler, straightening his gold-trimmed, cream-colored tunic. “Yeah, I heard that bit from Lady Ice, and you’re probably right. You’ll let me know when you’ve got a free kobbie handy, right?”

“As soon as I can spare one,” Heraclitus answered, frowning as he concentrated on positioning the tub just so, before he would find one of the nearby servant bells to summon the sewer staff. “In this, you have my promise, provided events will not cause you or our various guests any…embarrassment.”

“Good on you,” Groff exclaimed, walking over to give Heraclitus a final slap on the back (and a final groping of his groin, at which the big man paused rather longer than necessary, his eyebrows riding almost up into his hairline: apparently he was impressed at what he discovered!). “I knew you were a good sort when I first met you: the kind who can really get things done.”

“But never as much as I would like,” Heraclitus sighed when he sensed Groff was out of earshot, before he straightened and exited by one of the smaller side doors. The other, untaken, led directly into the large bedroom where he’d stationed the five princesses presently occupying the Eaglardian’s upper floor. That one he would use later, when it was appropriate to announce that the young lovelies could properly refresh themselves, before he made his graceful (and prompt!) exit from the premises before any further temptations could present themselves.

Right now, he had some kobolds to round up. Considering what they were almost certainly getting up to down below, they were not going to be pleased with the interruption!

*

“Well,” admitted Adia as she looked around the chamber, “I must admit: it’s not quite what I expected from the most powerful family of the Elven Nation.”

Which wasn’t to say that the place was bad, per se, nor that it was small. Truthfully, the chamber was quite spacious, and it was also well-appointed. The chiefmost problem, however, was that it was obviously unprepared for actual, immediate use. The bed was large enough to have allowed the coupling – in comfort! – of an especially vigorous pair of centaurs, with room enough for a third or even fourth addition of a more humanoid persuasion. But the room hadn’t been properly fitted with all the usual – and perishable – amenities for inhabitants: perfumes, soaps, towels, fresh candles, and all the other countless little necessities expected by visitors of importance, such as the five young princesses presently there; all of these were simply absent. Normally they’d be the finishing touches put in by expert staff, but they weren’t there, and their lack was painfully obvious.

So was the lack of a place to wash off the dust of their rapid travel to the Eaglardian estate.

So was the lack of food, as none of the princesses had been able to spare the time for lunch while on the road, and it was now well into the mid-afternoon.

“Do you think we’ll all be expected to share the same bed?” asked Chenguang with a lightly mischievous smile on her face as she discarded decorum and bounced her tush on the plush mattress, smiling brightly when she discovered that it was delightfully bouncy in spite of her fashionable – and somewhat encumbering – silk robes. “While I don’t mind too terribly, and expect that my dear Princess Sakshi would feel lonely without someone nearby to cuddle, from what I’ve heard about the harem culture of her homeland, I feel I must warn you: I’ve grown rather accustomed to sleeping…what is the phrase…ah, ‘in the buff.’” The dark-haired Eastern princess raised her hand to cover her titter of amusement at the lightly scandalized expressions on her fellow princesses’ faces. “A bad habit, I know, but it’s so deliciously warm in this land, not at all like the mountain passes where my father kept me, to preserve our family from the horrors of war, or so he said.” Her expression, though, made it quite clear that she wasn’t at all convinced of the validity of that argument.

“We’re not accustomed to wearing much in the harem, it’s true,” admitted the copper-skinned Princess Sakshi. “Actually, we’re taught early to become comfortable in our bodies, at least in our ‘private places,’ away from the prying eyes of menfolk.” She shrugged, then, her veil sufficiently translucent to allow her expression to be read, and it was obviously not far from that of the Princess Chenguang. “But here, in this strange land, I rather doubt that most of our old customs apply any longer. My father couldn’t even spare one of the eunuch harem guards for my protection, instead trusting my care to,” she sniffed lightly, “adventurers.”

“Oh, please,” began Princess Leonila, glancing about nervously, the first time the mousy, brown-haired girl had spoken thus far since her arrival with the maiden knights almost two hours past, besides to introduce herself, “they might hear.”

“Brynne wouldn’t care even if she did,” laughed Everlynn, which made her pleasant-sized endowment do interesting things beneath the strapless dress she was presently wearing, its soft pink going well with her golden blonde braids, as well as nicely matching the similar soft blue of her dark-skinned best friend’s dress; but then, Princess Adia regularly borrowed from Everlynn’s wardrobe when they were together, since they were of a similar build, and Adia’s family saw little point in excessively clothing someone they intended to marry off at the first opportunity, for the greatest possible gain; let their personal wealth and standing do the advertising, was their attitude, rather than the clothing of their daughter. “You know Brynne,” she added, grinning at her shorter-haired friend, who chuckled as she nodded in agreement, “she doesn’t care what anybody thinks.”

“Well,” Adia amended, “she’d care if you called her a coward, or a weakling. Those sorts of things are important to her, after all. Or if you otherwise challenged her honor somehow.”

“Very true,” agreed Princess Everlynn, patting her friend on her naked shoulder, the difference between the soft pink and equally soft chocolate shades of their skins making an interesting contrast, though not one that clashed by any means. “She’s one of the warrior women of the Wild North, and they’re…well, they’re probably at least as into their sort of honor as the protectors who came with you,” she finished, including Chenguang, Sakshi, and Leonila in the light motion of her hand.

“We’re really supposed to pretend that the protectors who came with me aren’t there,” Chenguang giggled, rolling her eyes. “They are ninjas, after all. Hmm, and isn’t there another protector about the place?” she continued, eyes alight with the potential for gossip. “A rough, muscular, hairy sort. I think I saw your fire-haired protectress speaking with him not long ago.”

“Oh, the minotaur?” Everlynn laughed. “Well, he’s certainly interesting, and I admit he’s not hard on the eyes, bull-head notwithstanding, but I’m not really sure…”

“Groff,” Sakshi supplied, her cheeks flushing, as did Everlynn’s as she realized her error. “I believe the man’s name is Groff. He’s supposed to be protecting my brother, Prince Tapan, as well as acting the part of chaperone to ensure no traffic between our side of the estate and theirs.”

“So, no boys on this side of the invisible line,” sighed Chenguang in mock disappointment. “Well, at least no human boys. But I must admit, I wouldn’t mind meeting some of the elves that are supposed to be about.”

“Yeah,” agreed Everlynn, frowning as she looked around the chamber once again, its notable lack of expected little amenities once more coming to her attention. “Do you think they’ve forgotten about us out here?”

“Sorry, sorry!” came the sudden exclamation of a high-pitched voice, its point of origin somewhere around the waist region of the tallest of the girls (that being a tie between Everlynn and Adia). “Plump is hurrying as fast as Plump can go without breaking things!”

As all five of the princesses turned, they blinked at the sight of a green-scaled kobold pushing open the heavy wooden door of the room. Held aloft, resting on his hands and his blunt-tipped horns, was an absolutely immense platter covered by a wide, high-ended cloche, ensuring plenty of room for whatever lay beneath. Actually, the whole affair looked more than a little oversized for the scaly little guy, and he was obviously straining a bit, working hard to keep from tipping the dish. Wordlessly, Everylynn and Adia, still standing (while Chunguang was still on the bed, Sakshi on one of the chairs, and Leonila hiding out near a corner of the room) and closest to the door, rushed to the kobbie’s aid, catching the sides of the dish and hefting it between them to one of the big circular tables.

“Phew!” exclaimed Everlynn, shaking her head in disbelief. “That thing was heavy! I’m surprised a little guy like you managed to lift it at all.”

“How far did you have to come with that dish?” asked Chenguang, while all the girls blinked, and then blushed as the plump little kobold bustled past them, apparently not noticing how his too-loose trousers slipped down as he clambered up onto a chair, showing off quite a bit of green-scaled cheek before he got to his feet again, then ended up showing off quite a bit more as he bent forward to grab the cloche’s handle, giving a soft, slightly squeaky grunt as he hefted it up and off.

“From the kitchen,” Plump explained happily, not seeming to notice that his sacking pants were somewhere around his knees as he proudly held his hands over the still-steaming collection of goodies on the tray: he was just too proud of himself to notice anything else! “Here! Is good! Eat, eat!”

All five girls traded a look: they’d all passed the kitchen on the way up, and it was a long way from where their shared chamber was. A distance that had to be multiplied for someone as small as the little kobold. This little guy was surprisingly tough, for all his adorable chubby cheeks, and the dimples that showed so clearly when he was smiling, like right then.

Then Plump blinked, looking around in confusion at the five human girls, then back at the food, then back up, head tilted slightly to the side.

“You not hungry? Cooks be sad if you not like food: very sensitive.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” exclaimed Leonila, moved from her hiding place by the corner of the room with pity for the heartfelt expression on the half-naked kobold’s face. “We, um…we were just a little surprised at seeing you, that’s all.”

“Yes,” Chenguang agreed, backed up by the nods of Everlynn, Adia, and Saskshi, all of them trying (with highly variable degrees of success) not to ogle the surprisingly sizable green ‘bits’ (the same slightly lighter shade of his “underbelly” region, some of the more curious among the five princesses would note, in contrast to the darker green of his back and sides) that he seemed completely unaware he was displaying so openly to them all. “Just a bit surprised; we were expecting a knock, or perhaps a ring on the servant’s bell.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Plump, smacking his forehead. “Plump is sorry! Plump will go out and do it again!”

Instantly he hopped down from the chair, casually tugging up his roughspun hemp trousers (which promptly began sagging again the moment he wasn’t holding onto them), raced to the door, and closed it behind him. Moments later, the girls heard a slow triple-rap low on the door.

“Room service!” came the kobbie’s bright, cheerful voice, carrying surprisingly well in spite of its higher pitch.

“Come in,” said Leonila, a wry look on her bespectacled face as she traded glances with the others. Plump promptly entered, now walking with a more dignified stance, standing up straight (and thrusting out his cute pot belly a bit more than his chest in the process), and approached the table on which he’d set the platter of food.

“Would your highnesses be so kind as to honor our household by savoring this humble repast?” asked the green kobold as he bowed low, his forehead almost touching the floor, his voice somber and astonishingly court-appropriate, in spite of its higher pitch. Actually, he would have equaled or even excelled all but the finest courtiers that any of the princesses had seen…if only his pants didn’t immediately drop once more as he started to straighten up, this time all the way to his ankles, once again without his seeming to notice.

“Well, um,” Leonila stammered for a few moments, before she seated herself on the floor by the table, “I suppose I’ll have my late lunch here. That will make it easier for our friend Plump to serve us,” she explained to the others.

Trading a quick glance between them, all five of the girls also sharing a glint in their eyes (once again, to varying degrees), the other four young princesses seated themselves near Leonila. Instantly, obviously overjoyed at the chance to be of service, Plump scampered back over to the table – completely forgetting his trousers on the floor in the process – clambered up onto the chair once more, and got to work piling several smaller plates high with a variety of foods. In spite of his speed, however, and the obvious distractions of the bouncy bits between his legs (“plump” indeed!), the girls couldn’t help but notice that Plump had a lot of manual dexterity, and more than a bit of finesse to guide it, for when he was finished with each plate, they looked as perfect as any arrangement they’d seen from master chefs.

“Certainly a unique experience,” Chenguang commented as she leaned back on her hands, not bothering to conceal her appraisal of the pleasantly-sized male parts so openly on display before her and the others. “I’ve heard that certain, um, scenery can negatively affect one’s appetite. In this case, though, I actually feel quite ravenous.”

“I concur,” agreed Sakshi with a perfectly deadpan face, while the other three girls nodded their solemn agreement.

“Elven hospitality is certainly not how I read it would be,” Leonila sighed. The sigh was shared by the others, before they traded a look…then broke into a fit of giggles.

Plump, oblivious as always, looked over his shoulder at the girls he was serving, then shrugged and got back to his work: they were princesses, after all, and they weren’t supposed to be easy to understand.

*

Jaw set, Hotaru caught the jaw of one of the many gargoyles scattered around the rooftops of the Eaglardian estate’s many interconnected buildings and hauled herself up and over the lip of the central building, the tallest of them all and the location of the biggest ballrooms, dining halls, and the living quarters of the Lady Eaglardian and her sons and daughter. Or at least so Hotaru had been informed by her jonin when she and her friend Yoshi been given the assignment to follow along and protect Princess Chenguang…and, incidentally, to see what they could find out about the various juicy tidbits of intelligence that the most powerful elven family surely had lying about for whichever clever agent had wit enough to find them. Just a detailed map of elven lands alone would be worth the weight of the finder in black pearls, and such things could often be found on the walls of rooms on an estate such as this, in plain view for anyone with an eye to see. Best of all, in the case of intelligence, “theft” was hardly even the proper word: all that would be required was some swift scribe-work with invisible ink onto one of the various scrolls of blank paper Hotaru and Yoshi always carried about their persons, tightly rolled and packed into slender ivory tubes that could act as blowguns or breathing reeds in a pinch. Done right, and nobody would know that the valuable intelligence was no longer a secret until it was far too late to do anything about it.

Though her upper body strength wasn’t as great as that of her friend Yoshi (who she also strongly suspected was her brother, though her clan tended to keep such information secret among its trainees, the better to discourage individual loyalties in favor of those to the clan as a whole), the young ninja girl nevertheless made good time up the highest square-cut, flat-topped tower, and soon seated herself on its parapet between two especially ghastly gargoyles, pulling out her paper-tube binoculars from yet another of her many concealed pouches of lightweight equipment: a perfect position with the perfect tool to scout out the Eaglardian estate as a whole before she proceeded to more thorough spywork.

Had anyone taken the time to glance upward, they would have seen the small, slim figure of a girl from the Far East, dressed in plain gray-green garb, loose trousers and snug-fitting halter top with a loose gi jacket bound at the waist with a rope belt, that seemed well-suited for blending into stone and shadow. Or rather, it would have been excellent for blending in if a long stretch of cloth hadn’t been cut out of the sides of the pants, exposing a very significant view of smooth, supple thigh almost down to the knee and just barely shy of each trim, tightly muscled buttock. This was practical in one sense, since it meant that Hotaru had swift access to the razor-edged kunai and other tools of her trade held in concealed sheaths on the insides of her baggy trousers. In other senses, she’d been trained to make use of the momentary distraction that exposing so much skin – including the obviously implied fact that she wasn’t wearing anything under her trousers – could bring when facing most male opponents, and a decent number of female ones as well. Her light pink hair, the result of some coupling with Fair Folk somewhere in her family’s ancestry, was bound into a simply ponytail and then covered up by a cloth head-napkin of the sort not uncommonly used by peasants wanting some protection from the sun, but who lacked a rain hat. Even so, her hair was stiff and almost supernaturally spiky, another leftover of her fey ancestor, and so she was cursed with the occasional ahoge poking out from any and all head coverings she might wear, like it or not.

As Hotaru settled into a crouch, seating her haunches on her heels, she did her best not to pay overmuch attention to the gargoyles to either side of her, though she couldn’t stifle the inner complaint: why did the elves have to make their statuary so distracting? On her left, one of the gargoyles was much like a dragon, especially in the head with its long, straight horns and the reptilian cast to its body as well as its long, prehensile-looking tail, though it lacked a dragon’s stereotypical wings. Its body was thick with corded stone muscles, sculpted with exquisite detail, and as it was in a low crouch not unlike her own, a simple glance was all it took for Hotaru to confirm that the big beast was definitely male, and proudly so! Why, she couldn’t help but wonder with a deep flush to her cheeks beneath the handkerchief mask covering her face, would a sculptor have bothered to add such a lewd detail? Surely anything, well, pointing like that would weather off more quickly, concealed between stone thighs or not?

On her right, the other gargoyle was leaner of build, its head more like that of a gryphon, complete with a fleshy looking beak, an impression made more apparent from the feathery quality to its wings; obviously this was a beast made for flight, rather unlike the heavier brute next to it in the sentry position. Unable to help herself, Hotaru did a little compare-and-contrast at what was between this other beast’s legs, marveling at the surprising artistry of the little (all right, so not that little) details, of the perfect proportions of every part of the massive brutes: they were big all over, but nothing looked out of place or unnatural. Well, aside from the creatures themselves, of course: there was no possible way creatures like that could exist outside of erotic nightmares or the spawn of the more sensual Hells, certainly!

For some reason, Hotaru felt a slight prickle on the back of her neck, and turned to discover a third gargoyle behind her, squatting on the far parapet, its back to her. This one had batlike wings, in contrast to the birdlike ones of the gryphon-headed gargoyle, and had the head and legs of a curl-horned ram. Actually, Hotaru reflected, this wasn’t such a bad thing, since the short, sheepish tail of this final stony guardian allowed her to more thoroughly inspect his rather cute, muscular rump and the clearly defined double eggs contained in his stony sac. While she’d felt far too embarrassed for more than a quick peek – strictly for art appreciation, of course! – between the legs of the gargoyles to either side of her, without the stony gaze of the third to accuse her, she felt far more comfortable fully appraising everything that she could see of this hunky stone satyr.

As a ninja, of course, Hotaru’s time was spent in some of the most intense training possible, occupying almost all her waking hours to turn her into a specimen of physical perfection, dedicated to the art of stealth and the service of her clan and their masters. But she was also a young and healthy girl blooming at last into her full womanhood, and ever since she’d arrived on the Eaglardian estate she’d been feeling the lack of physical and emotional connections in her life ever more keenly. All her life she’d been a tool of the clan, honed and dedicated to only one purpose. One day she knew that she would be paired with a male of her clan, or perhaps of an allied clan, a joyless union of convenience as well as cover story for additional clandestine activities, besides the eventual production of more children to be taken and trained from as soon after birth as was possible without endangering their lives, usually shortly after weaning. Any children she might have would never know their mother, and she was unlikely to know her children even should she meet them later. This was supposed to cause all the young of the clan to regard their elders as parents as well as mentors, and the older clan members to see all those younger than themselves as equal to their own offspring…but the more Hotaru thought about this situation, the less satisfying it felt to her. The more she felt a strange, longing ache deep within herself.

No, she chided herself, turning away from her inspection of elven statuary and raising the binoculars to her eyes. She had a job to perform, a duty to clan and country. That was enough. That had to be enough!

After all, what other choices did she have?

Letting her eyes scan the estate, each of the buildings built to form part of a broken square around the central complex on which she was perched, and that central building itself forming a complete square around a lush garden compound, complete with fruit-heavy trees and sparkling fountains, similar trees, fountains, and statuary scattered around the estate as a whole, along with covered walkways between the various buildings making the whole feel natural and surprisingly organic. Unfortunately for Hotaru, all these decorative touches also made peeking on the estate from above significantly difficult. A sweep down low allowed her to catch sight of a carriage pulling through the ornate front gates, likely the young queen and her younger sister from the Far North, there to test the diplomatic waters through the possibility of marrying into the Eaglardians or one of their close cousins – while Queen Fynn had no intention of marriage herself, her sister Anara was quite amenable to the idea from all accounts, perhaps even eager if rumors were to be believed, and not surprisingly, considering how hot elven boys were. Hardly much use to Hotaru for intelligence gathering, however, even though she drew some heart from the glimpse she caught of her blue-haired brother as he slipped in through the window of one of the many outlying buildings, likely the kitchens judging from the many chimneys and the astonishingly delicious smells that wafted up from them. At least she wasn’t alone in this strange land, whatever else might happen.

In one point, however, Hotaru was in luck: the elves made sure their glass windows were crystal clear, all the better to allow natural light inside. Perfect for peeping into rooms! Most of the rooms were vacant and lightless, but one…

Frowning, Hotaru lowered the binoculars for a moment and glanced around. Had she felt a presence? Her mentors had worked hard to teach her in the fine art of knowing when she was being watched, something that was especially important when you were watching others – that was when you were most vulnerable. But no, there was nothing else on the rooftop with her. Nothing except the gargoyles of course.

Frowning, Hotaru looked first to one side, then the other. Hadn’t the pair flanking her been facing fully outward before? She could have sworn that they were, the rather significant graven endowments between their legs concealed from view unless she took the effort needed for deliberate appreciation. Now, however, Hotaru found with yet another flush to her cheeks that she only needed to tilt her head very slightly in order to see exactly what each of the bestial male creatures had on offer. Not that she could really blame them: a look around revealed that there weren’t any gar-girls around, after all, so it was hardly any wonder that the poor things were – ahem – “hard up.”

Deciding that she simply hadn’t been paying sufficient attention – after all, statues didn’t move – and silently chiding herself for missing such potentially critical details about her surroundings, the young kunoichi lifted binoculars once more to eyes, and trained them on the well-lit interior of the one occupied room she could see from her present vantage point.

Yes, there were the five royal representatives she’d been told to expect in her briefing: the princesses Everlynn from the Northwest, Adia from the South, Chenguang from the Far East, Sakshi from the Southeast, and of course Leonila from the forested lands just barely south and east of elven country. Leonila’s people had the most immediate and pressing reason to marry off their shy little darling to forge an alliance with the elves, since they were after all next door neighbors, and her country made a perfect corridor of transport between the lands of elves, humans, and dwarves. The other four each had almost as good reasons, though, to tie themselves to the nation that had suddenly found itself the most politically influential and militarily powerful after the end of the Chaos Wars had left the armies of the manifold human nations in tatters. No wonder that the Angels that had come to counter the demonic entities on the opposite side of the Chaos Wars had taken to spending their time in elfland after war’s end, all the better to make plain their approval of the unifying, civilizing force that the elves could now be.

Hmm, well now: this was certainly an interesting little tidbit. What, Hotaru couldn’t help but wonder, would the leaders of nations think if word got out that their daughters, the hopes of their bright futures, were apparently not actively engaged in the business of making a good impression on their elven hosts? What, indeed, would anyone make of the revelation that these five well-bred young ladies were instead seated around a tablecloth on the carpet, enjoying an indoor picnic late lunch, or possibly early dinner…and they were being served by a half-naked, green-scaled kobold?! A kobold so very well-endowed, in fact, that even at her present distance, Hotaru could quite easily make out the details of his uncircumcised green penis, looking like an especially plump and juicy sausage in its present state of very modest interest, above a scaly sac that looked like a slightly wrinkly purse stuffed with a pair of hen’s eggs. From what Hotaru could see, as the kobold moved around, providing service to each of the princesses seated akimbo on the floor, their dresses billowed out like full-bodied blossoms, he was speaking, answering questions from the girls, though he seemed to be doing the majority of the talking, most likely telling them some sort of story or anecdote judging from the rapt expressions on the faces of the five princesses. A somewhat saucy story, if their flushed cheeks and slightly parted lips were any indication!

…was that a shadow? Long minutes had passed, maybe an hour or more, and Hotaru had lost track of the time. Lowering the binoculars, Hotaru turned her head to either side, blinking in some surprise: the gargoyles had to be closer now. After all, there was far less room on her perch than there had been. But…but that just couldn’t be possible…could it?

Glancing behind her, Hotaru saw the back and muscled rump of the satyr-footed statue, its wings tucked close to the line of its spine…but hadn’t they been spread wide before? And hadn’t that broad-shouldered statue been positioned on the opposite parapet, while now it was squatting right in the middle of the tower top?

Her memory was hazy now, and Hotaru shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She’d been told by some of the older kunoichi that she’d have episodes like this as she passed through puberty, times when her mind would have trouble focusing, while her body would place powerful and very immediate demands upon her. Of course, she’d certainly had such times, and quite frequently, but to be missing such vital details of the placement of her surroundings…!

Unable to help herself, moving as though in a trance, feeling a strange heat washing over her, coursing through her, Hotaru lifted the binoculars back to her eyes. What she saw made her gasp involuntarily, forgetting completely all the hard-taught lessons of stealth that her teachers had so painstakingly drilled into her. The princesses were all standing now, but one of them, blonde and braided Everlynn, stood with her back to the little green kobold, who was on his tip-toes on a stool. As Hotaru’s eyes zeroed in, the kobold’s deft little claws got busily to work on the laces on the back of the blonde princess’ dress. Not a single seam was cut, in spite of the sharpness of those claws, and yet in next to no time at all, the strapless gown was sliding down the sun-kissed pink skin of the northwestern princess, helped along its way as she bent forward at the waist, pushing the dress straight down even as at the same time she pushed her bottom straight back…right toward the now rigidly erect kobold cock right behind her!

Focusing her binoculars in even closer, right up to their maximum magnification, Hotaru saw how puffy and moist Everlynn’s pussy lips were, saw with a slight shift of her head the startled “O” she made with her mouth, the dilation of her eyes with excitement as well as trepidation, before the kunoichi flicked back her attention just in time to see the swollen, dark green head of the kobold’s juicy sausage-cock bump against those swollen folds, parting them slightly…before the plump little kobold arched his hips upward – he must have done it deliberately! – so that instead of pushing forward through whatever virgin membrane might have awaited past Everlynn’s outer gates, his shaft slid up to rest briefly between the flawlessly smooth heart-shape of the lovely young blonde’s bottom, plump cock-cap still glistening where it had been kissed by her cunny, before he took a slight step back, to the edge of the stool. Clasping his little claws to his chest as Everlynn stood up and turned to face him, the look of utter apology on the adorable little kobold’s face was a stark contrast to his immense erection, which was certainly not at all sorry for anything except its encounter being only a near miss!

Laughing, a laugh sweet and full of forgiveness, without a trace of mockery or spite (was Hotaru actually hearing that laugh, or just imagining it? Her thoughts, her perceptions…they were all starting to blur with a pinkish haze), Everlynn rubbed the top of the little green kobold’s head, while all around them the other princesses smiled sweetly: he’d just proven that he could be trusted completely. And they did trust him completely, their expressions even at that distance making this plain. As though to drive this home, in fact, Everlynn’s best friend Adia stepped forward to stand in the same place, letting the kobold unlace her dress just like he’d done for the blonde girl, and soon the ebony skinned girl was bending forward as well, giving the little kobbie get what must have been a perfect view of the most precious commodity a young princess had: her pristine, virgin cunny. By common laws in all human nations, the male who claimed a princess’ virginity also claimed half her kingdom while the present ruler still lived and actively reigned – or an appropriate fraction thereof in the case of more than one princess and no other available male heirs – and then the whole of it after the retirement or demise of the monarch.

As each of the other three princesses stepped forward for their turn, soon the green-scaled kobold was surrounded by five of the most lovely specimens of nubile girlish humanity wearing nothing more than a few prized pieces of jewelry, hairpins and so forth, each shamelessly displayed for his obvious – and adorably bashful! – viewing pleasure, Hotaru reflected that they must have felt a sense of absolute trust in this little demihuman creature. After all, everyone knew that kobolds never traveled alone, and in their obviously aroused states, puffy nipples and puffy pussies far more honest than words could ever be, the five princesses would have been easy prey to a band of the sneaky little scale-kin, who according to the veterans from the Chaos Wars that Hotaru had overheard, never engaged directly unless they outnumbered their opponents by at least three-to-one.

Instantly, unbidden, Hotaru’s imagination was flooded with memories of erotic etchings she’d once seen in the collection of a noble whose fortress she’d infiltrated, right alongside important documents she’d been sent to copy without revealing her presence, so nobody would know that their secrecy was compromised. The etchings had depicted a rape fantasy, bandits seizing a fine noble lady and her handmaiden and binding them for their pleasures. Except now, instead of only two women, Hotaru replaced them in her mind’s eye with the five princesses before her in exquisite full display, every little detail almost as visible to her as they certainly were to the little green kobold as the girls walked around the room, bending over to rummage in their luggage for various little items, the richly mocha-skinned Princess Sakshi even shamelessly getting down on all-fours to do some more thorough rummaging in her trunk, heedlessly wiggling her buns in the poor, overheated kobbie’s direction, while he clutched his nimble little hands in front of his chest and helplessly shuffled his feet, obviously trying desperately not to think about the raging erection standing straight out from his groin, its tip dripping rather copiously on the floor.

Imagination running wild, Hotaru pictured kobolds leaping out in a multicolored horde, red and blue and purple and green and black and white, easily overpowering the beauteous young nubiles before her – but they weren’t much younger than her, were they? The young kunoichi could almost hear their squeals as the kobold raiders lashed their bodies tightly in stout cords, which bit into tender, delicate royal flesh. Helpless, the poor little princesses could only beg for mercy and wriggle enticingly as their ripe bodies were pawed and groped by dexterous little hands, all of which seemed to know just the right places to touch them, stroking stomachs, caressing breasts, squeezing perky, swollen nipples, gripping trim young thighs…

Muzzles plunging between those thighs, and the squeals of the doomed little victims growing louder and more desperate, the room filling with obscene slurping sounds as those wicked little animals feasted! And that’s how they’d take their little virgin pussies: on all-fours like animals, flipping the five girls over, climbing up behind them, wild and almost innocently happy expressions on their strangely draconic faces as they lined up their obscenely swollen cocks, easily as big or bigger than the one that cute green kobbie was sporting, rubbing them up and down the gushing cunny lips of the poor little princesses, letting the girls know exactly what was about to go into them…before cute scaly bottoms would tense, tails lifting, before slim scaly hips would thrust forward and down…

“Ah!”

The cry caught Hotaru off-guard, and it wasn’t until several seconds had passed that she realized that she was the one who’d cried out. She’d only been holding her binoculars with one hand, not really paying attention to them, instead focused on the images in her head and the movements of her own fingers. As it turned out, there was a significant disadvantage to wearing pants with such large sections cut out of the sides: there was plenty of room for an idle hand to wander.

Leaning back against the gargoyle right behind her, breathing hard, grateful for its solid presence to support her when her legs were so wobbly, the pink-haired kunoichi forced her mind back into the present, and peered through the binoculars once more, resting her free arm on the gargoyle to her immediate right, all the better to steady herself and keep a clear image.

Sure enough, as she looked on, Hotaru saw the door to the room opening, each of the princesses starting in surprise, some of them even moving their hands to cover themselves up. But it wasn’t any horde of kobolds: it was the towering black bull minotaur that served as the Eaglardian majordomo, immaculately dressed in the formal attire of his office. He seemed momentarily taken aback by the sight of so much nubile girlflesh so freely exposed, but this was only noted by the slight arching of his eye-ridges before his expression instantly became pleasantly neutral once more. Actually, he was a handsome creature, for a sub-human beast, and Hotaru found it hard not to focus on him as he motioned with a hand, stepping to the side of the door. While it was harder to read a bovine-esque muzzle than human lips, Hotaru thought she made out the word “bath,” and realized why the princesses had been getting undressed in the first place: they must have received word that a bath was being made ready for them in one of the intervals when Hotaru’s attention was diverted from the binoculars, and since indoor plumbing was such a rarity even among the most wealthy of human royalty, they had made the natural assumption that they would be bathing together. Also naturally, they’d decided to simply treat the servants available to them in the way they usually would, namely by partially ignoring them, partially treating them like part of the furniture. Except, of course, the servants in question were male rather than the more usual maidservants who would have been assigned to this task, and the princesses had decided to do a little shameless teasing, since they were far from home and were unlikely to have any scandal result from their harmless fun.

The door to the room closing behind the little green kobold, the last to leave as he tugged it shut with his tail, leaving the well-dressed minotaur behind to clean up the remnants of the picnic meal, Hotaru finally lowered the binoculars – forced herself to do so, actually. What was wrong with her? Not only had she let her mind wander, she’d broken the law of ninja silence! Worse still, when no immediate objects for her continuing youthful lust had presented itself, she’d been…she’d been checking out that hot mino-hunk’s butt through his neatly pressed trousers!

Heaving a long, frustrated sigh – made even more frustrated by how little that brief orgasm had actually calmed the raging fires in her belly – Hotaru set down her binoculars into the handy waiting claw by her right arm, and began looking around for a place where she could find a new vantage point for more spying, or perhaps a point of ingress to do some snooping around on the inside.

“Thanks,” she casually told the owner of the claw that was holding her binoculars for her.

“’on’t ‘ention it,” came the soft reply with a voice as deep and grating as tectonic plates.

How long she just sat there, letting the pregnant pause linger in the air, Hotaru couldn’t have guessed. She didn’t turn her head. Didn’t budge in the least from her squatting crouch, eyes fixed straight ahead, even though she wasn’t actually looking at anything right then.

“Statues don’t talk,” was what she finally said, still keeping her eyes forward. “And they don’t move.”

“And ninjas don’t masturbate on the job,” came the slightly nasal voice from her left. “And if they do, they don’t make any noise. So I guess we’re all learning lots of new things about reality today.”

“If I just climb down this wall,” the pink-haired kunoichi inquired tentatively, “what would you do?”

“Gra’ you,” said the deep voice on her right. “You’re an intruder.” The speaker paused a moment, and a glimpse out of the corner of her eye let her see the dragonlike gargoyle’s head tilted, obviously thinking as hard as the rocks in his braincase allowed, his speech impediment’s source apparent from his inability to completely close his fang-filled mouth. “’robably a s’y, too,” he finally added. “So we’d hafe to ‘ake you sorry. ‘ake all se oser s’ies learn a lesson when we let you go. Efentually.”

“After a few months, I think,” came the surprisingly cultured voice from directly behind her, even as a pair of massively strong – but not at all ungentle – hands rested on Hotaru’s shoulders, their grip not quite painful, but obviously not something she’d be breaking with strength alone. “Nothing sends quite so clear a message, I think, as sending one of an organization’s beautiful lady spies back with a six month baby bump, don’t you agree?”

Snapping out of her momentary freeze, Hotaru slid a leg back, right between the broad hooflike feet of the muscular, ram-headed male behind her, her hands clamping down on one of his hands even as she thrust her center of gravity back and down, right underneath his. Gritting her teeth, exerting all the control she’d been taught, she smoothly thrust her hip into the gargoyle’s center of gravity, intending to roll him off and around in a perfect throw, one that would have sent the bat-winged beast tumbling right over the edge of the tower. A fine way to find out if those wings were just for show!

Except…except it didn’t work. Instead of lifting off the stony rooftop, the ram-headed gargoyle’s body seemed to merge with it, becoming utterly immovable. So instead of rolling him off her hip, Hotaru ended up throwing herself right into the middle of the broad-shouldered male’s well-muscled chest, his arms wrapping around her, easily lifting her up, leaving her legs kicking frantically in the air as the other two gargoyles closed in, grinning wickedly.

“Look!” exclaimed the eagle-headed living statue, grabbing her legs as she tried to land her feet in hard kicks to his head, then deftly hooking his talons into the cut-outs around her hips, smoothly shucking them right down to her ankles, before yanking them off and tossing them over the side of the tower. “Her pussy’s as smooth as those elfbabes who keep teasing us!”

This was quite true of course: Hotaru, like all ninjas, male as well as female, made sure to treat her body with special alchemical potions which left her skin exquisitely smooth, leaving fewer points on her body that would catch on clothes or equipment at inconvenient moments. There was always a debate among the higher-ups over whether to do the same to the head hair, but the prevailing belief was that wigs for disguises had too many things that could go wrong, while it was far easier to simply make a few minor adjustments to headgear or hairstyle for making a disguise, or to wear a hood or headkerchief when on the job to keep hair out of the way.

“’retty ‘ace,” added the dragonlike gargoyle, ignoring the grip of her hand as she tried to seize his wrist, to somehow stop him as he so very casually tugged off her mask, and then just as casually flicked his claws down her shirt, sending it tumbling to the rofftop in tatters without leaving a single red line on her supple skin. “Mmm: ‘hese are nice too!”

“Oh boy!” the gryphon-goyle cried out eagerly, cupping one of Hotaru’s breasts in a talon, while the dragon groped the other in his thick paw. “Itty bitty ninja titties! Cute!”

“Hey, they’re not that…ah!” Hotaru started to object, before her words were interrupted by her own sharp moan-cry as the brutish stone-skinned males began to greedily slurp and suck on her young flesh, paying special attention to her puffy brown nipples with their broad aureoles. Ram-head behind her easily pulled her wrists behind her back while she squirmed under the combined attentions of the greedy gargoyles making her whole body tingle with their attentions to such a small space, then pinned them there in one huge hand, the other slipping around to rest on her flat, toned belly.

“They are right now,” he almost purred in her ear in his strangely cultured baritone, ignoring all her wriggling as he oh-so-easily slid that hand down…down…and then in…and then up… “But they’ll fill out nicely, I think. Soon. Very soon.”

“NYAH!” she wailed as his fingers found her clitoris, rubbing with firm insistence over the unprotected lower portion of her girlish pearl, but only for a few brief seconds, stopping just shy of stimulating her to the point of pain, instead retreating to the slightly less sensitive hooded nub, then spreading out before closing over the folds of her sex, squeezing them together with firm but not-ungentle pressure before the stony male beast began rubbing them up and down.

For all their insistence, their unwillingness to stop in spite of her resistance or protests, the strange creatures of living stone didn’t seem at all interested in causing Hotaru injury or even real discomfort. In fact, the less she fought, the more eager they seemed to try and bring her pleasure, the tongues and malformed hands of the dragon and gryphon running up and down her sides, her breasts, her belly. The dragon’s heavy paw cupped her chin, and though at first she tried to twist her face out of the way, he held her with irresistible firmness until she relented, his long, sinuous tongue as smooth and solid as polished marble as it slid between her lips to rub against her own far smaller and less prehensile human tongue. As soon as he withdrew, leaving her gasping for breath – he’d been teasing her tonsils with that astonishingly skilled oral organ! – the gryphon leaned in with his flexible beak, his tongue built more like a thrusting spear that lashed and then clashed with hers, her resistance turning slowly into something far more hazy, and far less unwilling.

“What,” she got out, shaking her head to try – in vain – to clear it off the nearly euphoric haze that had settled over her, the edges of her vision blurry with a slightly pinkish hue. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with me?”

“Raw Chaos-passion,” answered Ram-head, letting his hands simply hold her arms by her sides now as his companions began licking their way down Hotaru’s belly, over her hips, and then slowly, tenderly down the swell and indentation of her pubis. “Lord Eaglardian was kind enough to let an old god stay here, safe from the corruption of Evil and the destruction of Law. Now that the wars are all over and done, the horny old goat-god has decided to repay the favor by letting his powers spread over this whole estate.”

“A fertility cult!” Hotaru gasped in an attempt at horror – if only her mind wasn’t in such a fog of lust! “I…I need to get back…to warn everyone…to let them know…”

“The goat-god isn’t that kind of deity,” chuckled Ram-head, nibbling the pink-haired kunoichi’s ear, right before the gryphon made her whole body arch as he thrust his tongue forward, penetrating her shallowly but very firmly, the conical shape of his tongue letting him achieve some incredible stimulation of her inner places, centering his focus right on the most sensitive pleasure-points until she was writhing in the grip of Ram-head, squirming this way and that and making all sorts of the most obscene sorts of noises instead of words – her ability to form those was suddenly robbed from her! “Not some blood-stained death-and-seasons godling. He’s an embodiment of the male principle of Earth and Rejuvenation, the same way a male is hard and recovers, again and again, to provide the gift of virility to many receptive wombs. A counterpoint to the more feminine aspects of the elven civilization that’s risen to power in recent times. There was a time of great war and killing, and now all nations are weak even in their triumph. Everyone except for the angels, but they’re determined to force cold, unfeeling Law on everybody, whether they like it or not, floating around all holier-than-thou like they always do. So the goat-god’s waking up to empower this place, make it a handy…axis mundi, world tree, center-pole, uniting point. A place where the two sides of nature and civilization can meet and mingle in peace.”

“You’re,” Hotaru forced out, gritting her teeth, trying not to look down at the eager eyes of the dragon as it took over from the gryphon, his gaze smoldering into her own with blistering lustful heat that made her tremble all over…almost as much as his tongue when the long, sinuous thing slid smoothly into her drenched young cunny, making her hips gyrate with every serpentine wriggle of the dexterous tentacle-like appendage, “you’re going to disrupt the peace talks! You’re going to stop everyone from-mmm!”

“No,” murmured Ram-head as he slowly, reluctantly broke the kiss that had ended Hotaru’s attempt at building herself up to a state of proper resistance to these wicked males engulfing her in pleasure. “We’re going to bring about a real peace. A real balance. And if that means we have to keep you from letting on until it’s far too late to make a difference, well,” he shrugged slightly, a smile spreading across his bestial muzzle before he leaned forward once more, “that’s not the worst thing that could happen, is it?”

Moaning into the satyr-statue’s skilled kiss, Hotaru’s whole body shuddered in…how many orgasms had she had so far? She’d lost track, her mind reeling, her will to even try resisting fading fast, faster than she had any hope of recovering it. Tabi-sandals dropping from her feet as she felt the other two males lifting her, her toes curling in sinfully luxuriant pleasure, the young kunoichi could only lean back against their powerful arms as she was carried, then positioned…

Positioned right over the upthrust, carven-circumcised cock of Ram-head!

“No!” she cried out, struggling and jerking from side to side, her legs kicking in feeble, vain effort even as her thighs and buttocks clenched with futile exertions in the overwhelming grip of the stony males holding her firmly over the ram-headed gargoyle now seated on the parapet she’d so recently been using as a perch. “No, you can’t do this! I’ve got to go report! I’ve got to…”

“No,” said Ram-head, wrapping his own heavy hands around her waist as the folds of Hotaru’s cunny squished down and slightly parted around the plump, meaty head of his astonishingly thick male organ. “You don’t have to worry about anything now except enjoying yourself.”

“NOOOOO!” wailed Hotaru as powerful hands on her hips, her shoulders, her waist all worked together, pushing her, pulling her, drawing her irresistibly down even as she wriggled and bucked and tried to press her feet firmly on the parapet to either side of the powerful male beneath her. The powerful, potent, virile, savagely handsome male smiling up at her even as he…no! No, she couldn’t give in! Couldn’t let them…couldn’t…shouldn’t…not…

“AAAAAIIIIIEEEE!” she screamed, unable to hold it back as her legs finally gave out with an orgasm so powerful, it forced tears out from the corners of her eyes. Her belly rippled in waves as her bottom slapped against the heavy balls of the satyr-statue, her hands coming down on his literally sculpted washboard belly as she fought for breath, for some scrap of self control.

She never got the chance.

“Wha-? No!” she exclaimed in shock, feeling a pair of heavy paws seizing hold of her toned bare bottom, spreading her cheeks, letting her next feel something thick and very girthy indeed nudging at a hole never intended for entry. “No! Stop, you can’t! It’s too much! It’s too-OOOH!”

Slick with strange slime, the moisture of ages spent letting dew and precipitation alike run down his naked silicate flesh in all manner of weather, the dragon’s penis stuffed poor Hotaru like a goose, the tight-clenched gate of her anal sphincter no match against such bestial power as the brute’s muscled haunches moved in time with those of his ram-headed friend, balls slapping against frail human flesh. “Oh!” was all Hotaru could get out, a loud and desperate cry of ultimate violation as orgasm after truly dirty orgasm rocked through her like a series of electric jolts. “Oh! Oh! O-mmmph!”

“Yeah!” exulted the gryphon-gargoyle as his talons closed on Hotaru’s head, his own scimitar-curved cock filling up her mouth in an instant, making a counterpoint to the bobbing of her breasts as he began humping her face with a will, fat stone-furred balls slapping her chin with a staccato rhythm. “Suck it down, ninja-girl! Suck it all!”

Shuddering, throat spasming with strange pleasures she’d never even realized could be possible, a small part of Hotaru’s mind stayed slightly detached, almost fully rational. Almost. This part of her mind thanked whatever gods watched over young kunoichi that she’d broken her hymen by mistake as part of training to do splits, a pain she didn’t have to endure here and now…though she somehow got the impression that even as savage as these bestial brutes were mounting her now, they’d been gentle before, and perhaps they’d have stayed gentle if they’d found physical evidence of her virginity besides her obvious tightness.

The thought of pain made Hotaru suddenly realize: she wasn’t feeling, well, any pain. At all. Only pleasure. So, so, so much pleasure! Enough that even that single little rational voice was starting to fade out. How was that even possible, though, it insisted on asking. She was soft flesh, and they were hard stone – surely even if the two cock-cramming her pussy and bung were being careful not to break her, those swinging gryphon balls should have mashed her teeth as though she’d been hit with a pair of marble eggs! But they didn’t, and even though neither the dragon nor Ram-head were being especially careful, they weren’t leaving any marks on her skin.

On her smooth skin.

On her smooth, slowly graying skin.

“MMMMM!” she tried to wail, beating her fists against the gryphon’s hips, only for the dragon to casually catch them up in one meaty fist, pulling them behind her, holding her securely in place as he continued to drive down into her good and hard, drilling her against Ram-head with a will. “Mmm, mmm, mmm!” she sobbed, pleading frantically in a strange mixture of panic and pleasure as orgasm after orgasm ripped through her body. And with each orgasm, just that much more of her body turned from supple flesh…to solid – rock solid – stone. Stone that spread out from where her body was being filled with the bodies of the male beasts pinning her between them in a three-way split, spreading each of her orifices to an extent that should have been agony, but instead brought only bliss. Bliss…and petrification.

They were turning her into a statue!

No, worse: they were turning her into one-fourth of a statue, the center-point of a smooth-polished erotic masterwork!

Don’t cum in me! She pled silently, desperately, hoping against hope that they could hear her…and that they’d actually pay her any heed if they could. Please, don’t cum in me! Don’t make me into…into…OH!

“GRAH!” snarled the dragon.

“RAWK!” squawked the gryphon.

“AH!” gasped the satyr.

These were the last sounds any of them made as their hips bucked, right in time with Hotaru’s, all four of them freezing right at that moment of ultimate ecstasy. A tableau of twisted art, three monsters mounted upon and thrust deep within a lovely human girl, all of them caught right at the moment of orgasm. Right at the moment…of conception.

Statue or not, Hotaru was now pregnant with a gargoyle’s child. Slowly, over the course of days, weeks, and months, her smooth-polished belly would grow pleasantly rounded, a clear promise of the life hidden within her petrified exterior. The rest of her body, however, would remain as it was, frozen right at the peak of health, youth, and vitality. Right at the moment when she could be made pregnant again!

For as long as the gargoyles decided to keep her.

*

Since the wars, one Dark Lord or Great Evil after another faced and overcome, there weren’t many true heroes left. This was a great loss lamented by everyone. Lord Eaglardian himself, probably the greatest and most respected of all the heroes of the elves, hadn’t survived the final battles, not even with the aid of his companions, mentioned in the songs and stories, but never named or described explicitly. As for the various clans of covert operatives, the ninjas and spies and assassins who’d worked behind the scenes, they hadn’t fared much better. Worse, actually, if the accounts trickled down to Yoshi’s clan could be believed (though, naturally, with their sort of people it was a chancy thing believing anything that you might hear).

What that meant was that the majority of those left in the present day were the very old, who played the games of politics, and the very young, who served as the pieces in those games. For this reason, Yoshi and his sister Hotaru had been selected for such a vital mission: to infiltrate the Eaglardian estate, protect the Princesses Chenguang and Sakshi from behind the scenes, and gather whatever intelligence they could that might provide some advantage to their own lords in the world outside the land of smoke and mirrors. They were young, certainly, but they were also incredibly skilled, deeply dedicated, and already known for successes on prior important missions during the closing phases of the last battles that had defined the present boundaries of the human lands. Boundaries that were still in flux, however, and which might change at any moment and in any direction based on the least shift in power. Even an accurate map taken from the elves, or their dwarven allies, or a scrap of overheard conversation or copied letter discussing future plans for trade or alliances, any or all of these little things could mean the triumph or total collapse of merchant houses, minor nobility, and dignitaries and officials at every level as fortunes were made and lost on such speculation.

That only they had made it as far as the Eaglardian estate in the first place, let alone infiltrated it, was itself a clear indication of their skills: many others had been sent out with them, but most had been waylaid, apprehended, or otherwise derailed from their mission: the place was astonishingly hard to reach, with angels, elves, and rival human nations all watching closely, though at least none of them were inclined toward lethal measures toward discovered spies. Those who’d been lucky had changed their focus from the possible treasures of knowledge to be found around the Eaglardian, instead blending in with the companies attending the great diplomatic conference at the primary elven court. Surprisingly, such a place wasn’t much use to spies, since few sensitive documents were bandied about in such an obviously exposed area, and there certainly wasn’t any use for assassins in such surroundings; the meeting was a place for merchants and diplomats and world leaders, not ninjas.

So it was that only the ninja siblings, Yoshi and Hotaru, had slipped from their place of concealment on the undersides of the many carriages entering the Eaglardian estate, splitting up to dare its unknown dangers. The place looked civilized, certainly, but Lord Eaglardian had been known to employ monsters who’d defected from the side of Evil. Why, it was even public knowledge that his majordomo was a minotaur, one that was rumored to be quite a bit more than the common labyrinth dweller. Aside from being apparently literate and well-spoken, a true gentleman’s gentleman to all outer appearances, however, this strange and likely ancient being’s history (for minotaurs were known to be especially long-lived, practically immortal as long as they stayed within a labyrinth they’d claimed as their own, and weren’t slain by the many adventurers who regularly invaded such troves of myth-shrouded treasures and lore) was just one of the many mysteries that could be worth a fortune to the someone who could figure out a way to properly exploit it.

As all ninjas knew, there were two methods for infiltrating any location that were always the least well-guarded. The first was the approach from above, and Hotaru had taken that route, being slightly better at the art of climbing, and having slightly better eyes than her blue-haired brother. The other, naturally, was the most cliché. After all, the way to any man’s heart was through his stomach. Similarly, the least-protected path into an otherwise secure area was through its kitchens.

Sure enough, Yoshi couldn’t resist a light smirk of smug superiority: the rear entrance to the large kitchen complex wasn’t even locked. The door was reached through a little garden area that abutted chicken coops, a duck pond, and some pens for various animals, pigs and such – the common sort of creatures to be expected around any farmyard within easy access-reach of the farmhouse itself. While elves didn’t tend to eat much meat, and what they did tended to be wild game taken from places like the forests that took up the majority of the Eaglardian estates, all the same, Lady Adlanniel and her eldest, Valdaglerion, were known to entertain guests from all lands, far and near, and to attempt to accommodate the accustomed diets of those guests whenever it was possible. That and, of course, the various monsters around the place. Yoshi concluded that there had to be some elf magic at work around the enclosures for the animals, since he didn’t notice any of the usual smells expected from the typical residues of domesticated animal life. Not surprising: elves weren’t likely to allow anything around that would offend their refined sensibilities unless there was no other choice.

Inside the kitchens, Yoshi was actually astonished at the sheer size of the whole complex: it was large enough, all its many rooms taken together, to feed several armies! Of course, if the stories of the wars were to be believed, that was exactly what they’d been used to do, providing all the necessary stores and provisions as the staging grounds for each garrison of the elven armies before they’d set out toward the front. What struck the ninja boy as odd, however, wasn’t the size of the place, but rather how little of it seemed to be in active use at that moment. The place was functionally deserted! There was a fully stocked room for the dressing of game, but though a cold room beyond revealed hanging venison (preserved through magic, of course, so there was no telling how long the prepared carcasses had been hanging there, since they would remain as fresh as the day they’d first been hung for potentially centuries), nobody was there to cut off any hunks for serving. In the butcher’s chambers, nobody was there to take down and store the dwarf-style sausages dangling from the rafters in their casings. The rooms dedicated to the baking and presentation of the finest pastries, candies, cakes, and cookies, fitted with all the best accoutrements that could be obtained from gnomish lands – the true masters of sweets! – had many goodies preserved under glass, but nobody in the process of making any more, nor in preparing those already made for presentation to the guests that were surely even then quite peckish within the guest suites of the estate, especially after their long travels to reach the place.

In fact, it wasn’t until he heard voices, far off toward the central kitchen area, where food was prepared for the more common meals of the daily fare for both servants and family, and other dishes prepared in the rest of the complex were gathered in preparation for transport and presentation at more formal affairs, that Yoshi could find any evidence that he wasn’t walking through some sort of enchanted castle, one of those fabled places where a spell had cut a place off from the usual flow of time, leaving work cut off right in the middle of its completion, while the ones who’d been working at those tasks simply vanished into the ethers until their fairy tale enchantment was eventually broken by the story’s protagonist.

“It’s not fair!” growled a voice like the burble of thick, sticky lava forced up from some ancient flow. “Maidens! Youths! Even that big hairy beefcake!”

The voice that replied was a lazy lowing drawl, laced with deep currents of good humor in spite of having endured many trials in days now past.

“Did y’all mean the redheaded maidensworn?” it asked in a tone that had to have been calculated to be aggravating in its reasonableness. “Or the swarthy fellah with the perpetual halfmast? From what I could see while I helped ‘em get situated in their quarters, they were both very much the unshaven sort of person.” There was a long, deliberative pause. “Though I admit in pretty different places.”

“Whoever!” groused the first voice. “Whatever! It doesn’t matter! I’m surrounded by all the most delicious dishes I’ve been lusting after ever since I left the Dark Hordes, and I’m not allowed to touch any of them!”

Peeking around a corner, Yoshi had to stifle a gasp by placing a hand over his masked face as he saw who that first speaker was: it was a troll! As thick as it was tall, the beast was covered in thick, shaggy hair. Even this, however, and the slightly flour-stained apron the creature was wearing, and even its short, donkeylike tail wasn’t anywhere close to enough to conceal the absolutely obscene length of brutally thick male meat dangling down almost to its knees, the grotesquely vein-covered length and the heavy backsack behind the same barknut brown as the skin visible on its knot-knuckled hands and its grotesque, bulbous facial features. That face was a strange sight, framed by a shock of mud-colored eyebrows and head hair only barely contained beneath a somewhat battered toque, with a long, fat nose that had somehow grown all out of proportion until now it was more like the muzzle of a rhinoceros, except instead of a horn on the end, he had a pair of scimitar-like tusks thrust out to either side, each a formidable-looking weapon in their own right, even if those immense, three-fingered hands weren’t dangerous enough. Dangerous as the grip of a troll might be, however, those hands were presently busily engaged in the business of kneading down then rolling out dough, apparently intended for making a pie crust, judging from the pie-shaped baking dish sitting on the other end of the sturdy, flour-dusted counter where he was working.

Leaning forward just a little bit more, then darting behind a nearby rack of dishes, its back a meshwork of artfully woven elven silver, allowing him to look through without being easily seen in turn, Yoshi was equally shocked to see who the other speaker was: it was a minotaur! Not the immense black beast that ran the household, and who was never seen outside of full formal dress, but a long, lean, literal “cow-boy,” complete with a slightly floppy felt hat that looked quite out of place alongside the troll’s toque, an apron of his own that was damp down the front from the water that had splashed out of the massive sink where the longhorned red-and-cream creature was washing dishes…and not one stitch more. Since the calm-faced bull with the slightly smiling face was mostly turned away from Yoshi at that moment, his attention divided between the troll and the dishes he was washing, the blue-haired boy got a perfect view of the tall, lean male’s flawlessly muscled back, his shoulderblades rippling with each motion of his surprisingly deft hands, his rump firm, artfully rounded like the hindquarters of a horse. In sharp contrast to the only barely humanoid male animal that was the hunched-over troll, the longhorn minotaur was a work of art, something that would have looked perfectly suitable posed next to ancient marble statuary…except the ancients seldom portrayed their sculptures nearly so well-endowed!

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a sweet, tender, juicy piece of young, healthy human meat!” bewailed the troll even as he expertly laid the bottom crust of the pie into place, then got to work on the top layer. “And don’t think I don’t know that you’re thinking about it, too!” he added, shooting his kitchen companion a surly glare. “Everyone accuses us trolls of gobbling up virgins, but that’s just not true, and I know you taurocephs are the same way: a wriggly little youth or a squealing little maiden just bursts with flavor right after they’ve been deflowered! Especially if they enjoyed it!”

“Well,” drawled the longhorn, drying off his hands on a nearby towel as he completed his work, “I was never much for the whole eating youths and maidens thing. Not the way you’re thinking of, anyway. Though I will admit, I was always mighty fond of the times when bands of adventurers would come barging into my lair back in the day. Usually youngsters, usually boys, out to make a name by plundering the local ruin. Mine was typically the second or maybe third quest they’d’ve done, and they were successful enough to get all overconfident. Made ‘em right easy to sneak up on and overpower then drag off to my lair in the middle, one by one, until I had ‘em all, and got ‘em all trussed up so they couldn’t do much except sit there and let me do as I pleased. Then I’d take my time, shuck ‘em out of their clothes and armor and whatever, make sure not to be too rough about it: bein’ gentle always messed with ‘em somethin’ fierce, especially when they realized I was bare naked while doin’ it. The ones who didn’t pop a boner while I was stripping ‘em down popped one right after as soon as they saw their friends as much in the buff as they were.” The big red-and-cream bull chuckled. “Lotta unresolved tensions in parties of youngsters like that, especially the all-boy parties. A few blowjobs, a little light fingering in all the right places, and they were ready to let me do pretty much whatever I wanted with ‘em. A few properly popped boy cherries after that, and they’d do pretty much whatever I wanted, all ready an’ eager to be trained. Startin’ by showin’ ‘em how to do to each other what I’d just done to them.” Reaching behind him as he turned to face the burly, block-shaped troll-beast, the longhorn started untying his apron. “By the time I let ‘em loose in a couple months, those little troops of three to six were a lot closer, all those tensions thoroughly resolved. Downright surprisin’, really, how many of life’s social problems can be solved with an old-fashioned orgy.”

What…what was wrong with him? Yoshi blinked, exerting his full willpower to force his wide open mouth closed, his eyes squeezing shut. Certainly he’d peeked at his fellow cadets in the communal showers, the boys as well as the girls. He’d been curious, and what was wrong with that? But as those big, burly, bestial males had been talking, he’d been picturing…he’d been thinking back to his fellow cadets, remembering the supple curves and firm lines of their bodies…and picturing…what would they have looked like, what they would have sounded like, squirming and writing in the clutches of those immense three-fingered, knot-knuckled hands as they were caressed, groped, molested in all the most obscene ways…and then penetrated, thick fingers stretching out achingly tight holes in preparation for the imminent and far more overwhelming penetration to come…with a length of bloated, grotesque, disgustingly obscene troll sausage, thicker and meatier than anything an untried teenager’s body was ever intended to…

“You’re all tense there, Grumbletusk,” the long, tall longhorn murmured in his softly accented drawl, and despite himself Yoshi’s eyes opened once more, peering through the meshwork of the shelves in fixed fascination as the bull’s fingers unlaced the back of the troll’s own apron, then carefully hung it nearby – a proper place for everything, and everything in its proper place – the troll’s whole body trembling slightly at the touch of the other male, but not resisting, showing a strange vulnerability for something so obviously made for brute force and unstoppable destructive power – trolls had been the shock troops of the armies of Evil for good reason. “Those girls up in the guest wing’ve got plenty of nice things brought up to ‘em by good ol’ Plump, so I don’t think they’ll need anything else for a good long while. Might as well take some of the edge off, don’tcha think? Make it easier for us to act all civilized and proper like we’re supposed to while there’s respectable folks around.”

“It’s a lie, Ranthrak,” growled Grumbletusk, his eyes narrowing as he watched the lean bull kneel in front of him, his back mostly to the hidden ninja boy, obscuring his view of what the troll’s penis looked like when erect. “It’s all a lie, and I can’t help but realize it now, with all this fertility magic and Chaos energy in the air, in the soil, in the stone under our feet. We’re not civilized, and we never will be.” His huge three-fingered hands settled onto the natural handlebars of the longhorn’s eponymous feature, his upper lip curling back from teeth like sharp-edged chisels as the bull’s muzzle disappeared from sight around the blocky outthrusting of the troll’s shaggy hip, though Yoshi could see his gentle brown eyes looking up at the other male’s ugly face, his felt hat tilted right to the back of his skull, out of the way, the very edge of his muzzle curled up in a calm, happy little smile. “And I don’t want to be civilized anymore, Ranthrak! I want the goat god to win this whole crazy gambit, and I don’t care what price we all have to pay to make it happen!”

Those words were just starting to register in Yoshi’s brain, thoughts clicking as he started to realize that he’d just heard what must be genuinely vital intelligence to any number of people, information that could mean the financial prosperity of his and Hotaru’s clan for years to come when, before he had a chance to do anything else – physical action was completely beyond him in such an impossibly short amount of time – a powerful blow slammed into the backs of his knees, right before an irresistible force seized on his shoulder and jerked him down to his knees. A rough hand then closed on his head, fingers wrapping around the ultramarine roots, aquamarine tips sticking up between each thick, gnarled green digit, and then he was shoved roughly forward, a knee sinking into his upper back, his cheek meeting the smooth, cool stone of the kitchen floor.

“Don’t move,” said a soft, deadly voice, the higher-pitched voice of someone small of stature who’d put in countless years at the school of hard knocks to overcome natural weaknesses and turn them into irresistible strengths, and when Yoshi caught sight of the speaker, he did just as he’d been told, knee against his upper back, one hand pressing a thick billyclub warningly to the side of his neck.

It was a goblin! Not a far darrig, or rat goblin, not a keshi, or horse goblin, or a kawauso – otter goblin – or itachi – weasel goblin – or nekomata – cat goblin – but the classic sort who’d been the foot soldiers of the armies of Evil, their cannon fodder and advance scouts, with green skin, a hatchetlike hooked nose, glowing yellow eyes with a glare so intense, Yoshi didn’t think for a moment of questioning if this creature was bluffing, bald head hidden in the shadow of a hood, cord-muscled chest naked save for bandoliers of tools and weapons, legs clad in worn breeches made for their ease of movement, knobby feet thickly calloused and completely bare, all the better to allow the goblin to move in complete silence.

This was no mere cannon fodder creature, Yoshi realized as the goblin’s other hand methodically frisked him, finding and discarding the ninja boy’s tools and weapons with unerring efficiency and accuracy. No, this creature was like him, scout and spy and assassin. More, he was older than Yoshi, and the touch of the smaller but vastly more muscular creature’s body against his own through his tight-fitting night-blue shinobi shozoku was all he needed to immediately know that the goblin night-warrior was a lot more experienced than the youthful ninja boy, as much in the ways of the warrior as in the ways of the shadow. If he wanted to get out of this encounter alive, he would do well to obey the brutal green-skinned man’s orders to the letter.

“Smart,” murmured the goblin, and though the press of his billy club didn’t lessen, it didn’t grow any more forceful either. “Need a bit of help here,” he said again, and though he didn’t raise the volume of his voice in the least, the two huge males responded as though he’d raised a full watchman’s alarum with bells and whistles and clackers. “Can’t trust these ninjas: I want a full strip search.” There was the faintest ghost of a smirk on that scarred, craggy green face. “And then a body cavity probe. Just to be sure.”

“Hah!” chortled the troll, and before he had any chance to react – the massive beast was fast! – Yoshi felt one three-fingered hand seize the belt of his night blue breeches – not a hard target, with his head forced down and bottom forced up as it was – before he was yanked bodily into the air then plunked down on all-fours on the long marble preparation table where the brick-bodied Grumbletusk had been preparing pie crusts just a short few minutes ago, snapping Yoshi’s facemask with a casual jerk of finger-and-thumb. “Why bother with all the niceties? He’s not a guest: he’s a spy! We don’t have to be civilized with a spy!”

“Ah!” Yoshi couldn’t hold back the cry of shock as the snapping of his belt and shredding of cloth filled his ears, a moment before he felt the warm air of the kitchen on his suddenly bare bottom as the troll easily ripped his pants right down his supple legs. An instant later, there was another ripping sound, and Yoshi felt himself jerked forward as the troll just as easily wrenched the human boy’s tight-fitting shirt up and off, tossing it carelessly into a nearby waste bin. Most of Yoshi’s firm, lithe-muscled body was a deep tan, the result of countless hours spent training out of doors, often in nothing but a fundoshi in all sorts of weather. However, that also meant that his bottom was almost luminously pale – an easy and most inviting target.

“AH!” he suddenly cried out again as a heavy hand came down with a loud SMACK on his trim boyish butt, before squeezing first one toned buttock and then the other, then spreading them apart. “Stop that, you-OH!”

“Mmm,” rumbled the eager trollbeast, nodding in approval as he easily jerked the bare naked boy’s arms behind his back and lashed the wrists together with butcher’s twine, his movements quick, efficient, and utterly irresistible. “This is a good piece of meat. The haunches are solid, full-fleshed, without giving way to the toughness in an adult.”

While one hand gripped a shoulder, keeping Yoshi’s body bent at a right angle, bottom thrust out, chest and belly parallel with the counter, the other stroked along his chest, making the boy wince, sucking in breath through his teeth as those thick, rough fingers pinched one nipple, then gave the other a twist that stopped just barely shy of being painful – which was somehow even worse!

“Nicely defined musculature on the chest,” the troll continued, and with ever-rising horror Yoshi realized that this monstrous gourmand must have had hundreds of boys in this position to be so supremely skilled in his appraisal as well as in his ability to so easily prevent all of the blue-haired boy’s efforts to somehow escape that far too familiar touch as it slid down his belly. “Not much meat there, though the shoulders and back have some good development, probably from all the climbing expected of this profession. The belly and flanks are just fine, lean meat, not a bit of fat to them at all. Lots of running and jumping and climbing, in other words. Not a lot of weight training to make all that lean muscle too tough, but also not making it very big: he’s not much more’n a snack to share.”

“Oooooh!” moaned Yoshi under that skilled touch, wishing he could somehow get enough control of his body to keep his hips from thrusting, his spine from arching…or his precum from splashing against the marble tabletop in a strong, clear jet as the troll’s palm engulfed his penis and gave it too good, firm pumps.

“No sexual training at all,” the troll concluded with an amused snort. “Probably brought up with that old saw about masturbating draining your strength, too,” a comment that made Yoshi’s cheeks burn with its accuracy.

“It’s all right,” came the calm drawl of the minotaur, a big and very gentle hand patting Yoshi’s trim, tightly muscled bottom reassuringly. “Masturbating can make you use up a bit of male hormones, so it really can slow your growth a bit.” The minotaur’s words turned to a chuckle as gentle as his touch, then. “Not really enough to call for the self-torture of doing without, I think, but you weren’t really lied to, so try not to hold it against your teachers.”

“I-AAAAIIIIEEEEE!” Yoshi started to reply, before the hand that had been fondling the plump grape-sized goodies in his smooth sac slid up his perineum and plunged right into his defenseless bung. “Stop! Pull it out! Pull it ou-mmm!”

The hand on his shoulder slid forward, and an instant later another equally thick, rough finger filled his mouth, followed moments later by two others, stretching Yoshi’s lips to their limits. His wriggling became more frantic, and then turned into desperate thrashing as he felt a second finger starting to join the first stretching his rear, but it was all in vain, his muffled squeal loud and embarrassingly girlish as he was thoroughly stuffed…and then stuffed again as the third of the troll’s fingers spread the poor boy’s body right to its limits.

“Yes,” said Grumbletusk with a speculative nod as he began thrusting his hands forward and back, digits plunging in and out of quivering boyflesh, not seeming to notice or care about the way the poor doomed teenager wailed and writhed, his penis throbbing and bouncing as it spat jets of precum in spatters all over the marble countertop, tears of shame – and his much-abused gag reflex! – streaming down his cheeks. “I think he’ll be supple enough to stretch rather than break when we put our cocks in him. Not as sturdy as dwarf-flesh, and certainly not as resilient as elf-flesh, but he’s young and healthy, so he should last until I pop him in the oven.” The troll’s mouth split in a craggy grin as Yoshi looked up at him with desperately pleading eyes, shaking his head in feeble denial of his fate at the mercy of these merciless male monsters. “Might as well put that spare pie crust to use! I’m thinking…baked boy bridie!”

“No!” cried Yoshi as the fingers were pulled from his mouth with an audible “pop,” the fingers in his butt pulled out only moments later before the troll gripped his shoulder and easily flipped the boy onto his back, his other meaty fist gathering up Yoshi’s kicking ankles and hauling them up to the wriggling ninja boy’s shoulders, before lashing another loop of butcher’s twine around them, binding them behind his head. “Don’t cook me! Don’t eat me! Please!”

“Let’s not be too hasty here,” said the goblin, climbing up onto the countertop, agile as an ape, his thick forearms flexing, their copious veins standing out clearly with every movement. “Besides, I caught him, so I’m the one who gets to decide what we do with him.”

“One who gets to pop his boy cherry, too,” agreed Ranthrak, reaching over to gently pat the goblin’s back (to which the goblin’s scarred green skin visibly twitched like a cat’s ruffled fur, the smaller male obviously uncomfortable with friendly contact), while the bark-brown troll reluctantly nodded his own agreement. “Though to be fair to Grumbletusk’s point of view, Hardscrabble, you’ve gotta admit that the human cutie looks absolutely delicious. Easy to imagine him coated in a cum glaze, his butt all cored out, his face all flushed while he gasps for breath in that pie plate while we fill it up with all the proper fixings, fit the top crust into place, and slide him into the oven.”

“Vore’s all fun in theory,” huffed the muscular greenskin, casually peeling down his trousers and handing them off to the bullish beefcake, revealing an uncut green and thickly veined penis that was only so-so in the length department, but brutally thick in girth…well, in human terms, anyway: compared to the circumcised tubesteak the red-and-cream Ranthrak was sporting, and the hefty troll sausage with its unretracted foreskin jutting from between Grumbletusk’s shaggy legs, the most notable feature of Hardscabble’s penis was its astonishingly red glans peeking out from his folded-back foreskin. “Problem is, it’s a trick you can only do once, ‘less you’re playing around with one of those immortal species, like all those phoenix dishes Grumbletusk made for a month before we let the bird fly the coop. Me, I’m thinking I could use a handy boy toy around the place. Somebody to clean the pipes, you get me? Wouldn’t mind sharing, either, come to that. But not with the kobolds: those greedy eggbastards don’t know how to clean up after themselves. Except Plump, of course. So what do you say, kid?” the goblin named Hardscrabble addressed Yoshi directly, extending the billy club still in his hands to deftly nudge the boy’s balls, then slip it beneath them, lifting first one plump ovoid and then the other, making Yoshi moan, his inner thighs twitching, as did his almost perfectly smooth, average-dimension penis. “You do what we say, we let you stick around. Can’t let you go free, of course, but that’s better’n bein’ made into boy pie. You bite down or try too hard to escape,” he shrugged. “Well, at least you can take comfort in knowing that Grumbletusk’s a good enough chef to actually satisfy the elves, and the point-ears are picky.”

“So you’ll definitely be pretty tasty even if you do end up cooked in flaky, buttery pastry,” confirmed Ranthrak with a friendly smile, placing one massive hand on Yoshi’s chest, stroking the boy’s smooth skin from washboard belly to trim pectorals with surprisingly soothing familiarity, while Grumbletusk visibly beamed at this praise, thrusting out his barrel chest in pride. “I mean, if you’ve just gotta check out, you might as well do it in a way that’s memorable, and even ends up doing some good at that: being made into good food’s one way to make sure you’re not wasted pointlessly.”

How could these monsters talk so casually about…about him being cooked alive?! There wasn’t a trace of guilt in any of their expressions, either, not even a shred of remorse. They didn’t even display any hate for him, either, wanting to kill him because he was an enemy or anything like that. Yoshi had just had the bad luck to fall into their clutches, without any of the protections afforded to guests. (Though, naturally, he couldn’t have known that he was indeed being monitored from afar by the master of the labyrinth that was the entire Eaglardian estate, though only passively – as long as he wasn’t in real mortal peril, there would be no intervention on his behalf.) If he’d caught them in similar circumstances, he got the very real impression that none of the three monster males would have had any hard feelings about any measures he might have taken to remove them as threats to security. That he would have simply cut them down with his ninja-to (the first thing taken by that goblin, followed right after by his pouches of shuriken and every single one of his hidden blades!) while they intended to do the deed by cooking and eating him, as he started to think about the matter, did indeed make a certain degree of sense. Twisted sense, certainly, but sense all the same.

Lowering his head in defeat, Yoshi nodded: he’d been bested by superior opponents. And to the victor would go the justly earned spoils. In this case, his virgin body and his freedom. He would serve out the rest of his life in chains, locked into cruel bondage to these monstrous males, a literal slave to their perverted whims.

Yoshi just wished, his cheeks flushing deeply, that the thought didn’t make him dribble that much more precum down his throbbing, painfully erect penis.

“That’s that, then,” said the goblin with a wry quirk to one corner of his mouth – about as much of a smile as a creature as hardened as this battlescarred veteran could manage, Yoshi realized – even as he reached over to a nearby shelf and poured out a dollop of cooking oil onto his hands, slowly rubbing them together to warm it up. “You’ve still got that slave brand, Ranthrak?” He waited for the minotaur’s grunt and nod of affirmation. “Perfect for what we need. You do that, I’ll let you suck the kid off: I know how much you love fresh-squeezed boy cream.”

“Girl juice too, come to that,” chuckled the red-and-cream bull as he started from the room, returning only a few minutes later, right as Hardscrabble was running his oil-slick hands along Yoshi’s wide-splayed inner thighs, then down into the creases at the base of each buttock, making the poor, overwrought ninja boy’s whole body jerk and arch with each near miss as the goblin took his time centering in on Yoshi’s tightly clenched pucker. “Vyrran’s the one with the dragonbrand, mind,” Ranthrak apologized as he laid the implement of smooth, gold-colored metal on top of the baking oven, letting them get a good view of it, before he slid the front half into the glowing embers and left it there to heat. “’course, that’s pretty powerful stuff, so he doesn’t use it much, just for special occasions, or when his fate-sense kicks in. Takes a bit of life energy to make it work properly, too, as I understand it. A standard Old Empire slave brand isn’t as strong as that, but it’ll make a not-unwilling human youngster into a completely willing slave.” The longhorn shrugged as he circled to the side of the counter opposite Grumbletusk and leaned over Yoshi’s bare naked bound body, licking his lips in anticipation. “It’s why all us original minotaurs keep ‘em around, I guess.”

Wait, original minotaurs? A memory started to percolate in Yoshi’s brain at this revelation, of legends and myths and ancient curses from the gods themselves to cast down mortals afflicted with terminal hubris and what became literal bull-headed refusal to accept the natural balance that was needed to keep the world in harmony. This half-memory of old history lessons, however, was instantly washed away as Hardscrabble’s oilslick finger finally found Yoshi’s tense teenage tush, and slid smoothly inside, arching upward and back to expertly stimulate his prostate, which naturally put a very immediate end to all of Yoshi’s thoughts for the foreseeable future.

“Been a while since I’ve been allowed to do this,” Hardscrabble nearly whispered as he leaned over Yoshi’s helpless body, slowly pumping two fingers in and out of the boy’s backside, making poor Yoshi’s back arch, embarrassingly slutty moans forced from his wide open mouth, moans that only grew that much louder when the goblin used his other hand to start giving the ninja boy’s cock a good, slow stroking until its shaft glistened with the pale yellow vegetable oil. “At the height of the Chaos Wars, I’d bring down three or four elven forest guardians, halfling padfoots, or gnomish sneaks a night while on counter-intelligence duty, or maybe I’d haul a hot guard off into the shadows while I was doing the sneak-stuff myself around one of the fortifications of the elves, dwarves, or humans. A good raping was perfect for breaking ‘em down so they couldn’t resist much when I tied ‘em up, and making sure they didn’t raise any alarms for a good, long time, especially if I made ‘em cum so hard they passed out. Good way to avoid a bodycount – I never did like killing when I could avoid it, not when people were just doing their jobs, nothing personal involved.” The goblin’s scarred-up face looked thoughtful for a moment. “Pretty sure I left some of the women with green-skinned babies in their bellies, though, especially the gnomes: they don’t like to talk about it, but we’re close cousins.”

“Not a worry with this one,” chuckled Ranthrak, leaning down to casually suck on one of Yoshi’s nipples, making the helpless ninja boy gasp. “You mind if I suck him off while you plow his tight little ninja butt?” He winked up at Yoshi. “Figure I might as well show the kid how to do the job right before the brand’s hot enough to turn him into our slave forever.”

“Wait until he sees it go in,” answered the green-skinned scout, gripping the backs of Yoshi’s thighs, letting his thick shaft slap down on the human boy’s smooth balls, rubbing it right against the crease between the testicles as he thrust his hips slowly forward and back, making sure to draw out the moment to better make the boy beneath him squirm. “I love watching the faces of the hotshots, the talented amateurs who’ve never been up against real professionals before, right at that moment when they realize that it’s for real.” He leaned forward, close enough that his hatchet-nose was almost touching Yoshi’s delicate human one. “’cause it’s for real, hotshot: you’re gonna get raped, first by us three, then by all the kitchen staff, the orcs and the rats…well, not the kobolds,” he added hastily.

“Except Plump,” Grumbletusk and Ranthrak reminded him at the same time.

“Except Plump,” agreed the goblin. “And nobody’s gonna know you’re here. Yeah, I know you’re thinking that pink-haired ninja girl you came in with is gonna come and save you somehow, but you’re wrong.” A cold bolt of horror shot through Yoshi at the mention of Hotaru: how had he even known she was there?! “Last I saw her, through one of the outer windows before I followed you into the main kitchen, the gargoyles on the central roof got her. She won’t be much good for anything except being a lawn ornament when they finish with her. So you’re out of luck, hotshot: nobody’s gonna come save you, and after you’re marked with that slave brand, you won’t ever be able to escape. You’re all ours, slaveboy: your rising star just crashed like a meteor. Now,” he sneered, and Yoshi’s eyes widened, his mouth dropping open as the goblin deliberately tilted his lower body upward, so that he could clearly see the goblin’s red-capped head catch in the tight pucker of his well-slicked anal rosebud, “time to pop some virgin boy cherry.”

“No!” Yoshi cried out, finally breaking as the realization of his fate finally fully sank in, even as Hardscrabble’s cockhead began to do the same, about half of the bright cherry red domed cap parting his virgin pucker. “You can’t do this! You can’t…”

“Sure we can,” declared the troll, hooking two fingers into Yoshi’s mouth, instantly silencing the boy, even as the blue-haired human’s eyes began to fill with tears. “Aw, don’t be like that,” Grumbletusk said soothingly, rubbing Yoshi’s ultramarine “feathers” of hair soothingly. “It won’t be as bad as you think…,” before gripping them roughly, jerking the boy’s head back as a wicked grin spread across his ghastly face. “It’s going to be much worse!” The large-nosed monster glanced down Yoshi’s body at Hardscrabble. “Mind if I rape his mouth after you break him in? Trollcock is as hard and nasty as old boot leather: perfect for making little boy jaws start to seize up.”

“Perfect way to use up that youthful energy,” agreed Hardscrabble, before he heaved himself up until his hips were almost right over Yoshi ‘s upturned bottom, and he was thrusting almost straight down, making sure to take his time as he did so, making sure his prisoner realized fully just how absolutely helpless he was to stop what was about to happen. How completely he was in the power of these overwhelmingly powerful, vastly older and more experienced males.

“No,” he sobbed, shaking his head as the troll’s fingers left his mouth, giving him full opportunity to voice his desperate final pleas for mercy that would not come, his legs kicking feebly in their position bound behind his head. “Oh no! Please! Please, I’m begging you! I don’t want to be a slave!”

“Heh,” grunted the wicked goblin, gritting his teeth, the veins on his neck standing out as his bottom tensed, preparing for a final plunge, the shaft of his stubby green cock bending with the resistance being put up by the boy’s tight buns. “First life lesson, kid: you need to get used to not getting what you want.”

“NOOOOOO!” wailed poor Yoshi as the thick goblincock suddenly straightened out, then sank, nice and slow and deep, right into his depths until Hardscrabble’s balls nestled firmly against the backs of his buttocks. “Take it out! Please, take it out! Pl-mmmm!”

“Shut up, boymeat,” snorted the troll derisively, easily hauling Yoshi’s head back by his hair and plugging his mouth with the bloated, throbbing length of his cock – which was, as he’d said, as tough as old boot leather, about tasted about the same. “Even if it is your first cock, you’re not hurting, not even a little. Hardscrabble’s too professional for a mistake like that.”

This, of course, was the real reason Yoshi had been begging for the goblin to stop, for the males now chuckling wickedly around him to spare him, even as he felt his mouth instinctively forming an “O” around the heavy shaft now thrusting slowly forward and back, making him gag every third thrust as the burly, shaggy troll grunted with pleasured exertion. This was his great fear: that he would love what was being done to him. That he would become addicted to it, to the affections, forced or otherwise, of these savage, monstrous males. That the magic of the slave brand, once it was applied, would only be an excuse; that the real reason he’d serve, and serve both willingly and well, for all the rest of his life…was because it felt good.

“Oh yeah,” grunted Hardscrabble in his soft, intense voice, his balls starting to slap against Yoshi’s swiftly reddening flesh as he worked his hips, picking up speed. “Oh yeah. Nothing like tight, fresh virgin boy cherry.”

“Unless it’s well-trained slaveboy bottom,” countered Ranthrak, caressing Yoshi’s chest and then his belly with one big mitt, before its calloused fingers surrounded his penis, standing it up straight from where it had jetted what had been a very close near-miss orgasm across the boy’s naked skin. “You’ve never owned a slave of your own, but I have, and while nothing’s as intense as that first time, there’s an even better sort of pleasure that comes once you and your slave’ve both gotten accustomed to each other, know how to anticipate each others’ needs…and how to surprise each other in all the best ways.” Yoshi felt the minotaur’s hot breath on his aching penis, and was grateful that the trollcock thrusting in his mouth, bumping the back of his throat, prevented him from begging the other male to complete his pleasure as he’d promised. “It’s supposed to be like that for old married couples, too, from what I hear. Kinda sorry being made into a minotaur took the chance for that experience from me, but it’s not all bad.” Yoshi could see the big red bull’s grin out of the corner of his eye. “After all, there’s plenty of chances to get my fill of fresh-squeezed boycream.”

As the minotaur’s muzzle engulfed his cock, Yoshi’s eyes rolled back into his head, his whole world turning to white as an explosion went off behind his eyes, his cock feeling like a fountainburst as his tip began to spurt.

“MMMMM!” he wailed around the penis plugging his mouth, actually starting to bob his head harder, faster, willing his gag reflex into quiescence as Grumbletusk thrust downward, almost half his thick, nutbrown length glistening with the boy’s saliva at such a prodigious undertaking.

“Ngh!” grunted Hardscrabble, his own hips starting to thrust harder now, faster. “He’s…gah! – he’s clenching…tighter’n…that halfling padfoot I…I…rah!”

The last a feral snarl, the goblin’s hips became almost a blur, his balls slapping hard and fast against Yoshi’s smooth pink buns. This made Yoshi’s boyish balls bounce at a similar pace, smacking lightly against Ranthrak’s muzzle until the big red-and-cream minotaur engulfed them in one gentle hand, handling them with such care, such skill, that Yoshi could only cry out again, this time at full volume as Grumbletusk jerked his heavy, plum-sized pricktip out of the boy’s mouth. Wailing loudly in orgasmic ecstasy, Yoshi’s hips bucked upward, his back curving almost double, and as he felt the goblin’s burst of cum splashing against his inner depths, his own second orgasm jetted upward into the greedily sucking mouth of the cum-hungry minotaur.

Jerking out his still-throbbing green shaft at just the right moment to send a final jet of goblinspunk slashing across the boy’s chest and belly, Hardscrabble reached over to the kitchen knife rack with the hand not jerking out the last dregs of his orgasm, selected a blade with the ease of practice so long it had become instinct, and slashed upward at the very moment when Ranthrak had just barely lifted his head up and out of the way, smacking his lips in obvious enjoyment at his tasty twin treat. Rather than flesh being touched, however, instantly the tough twine holding Yoshi’s wrists and ankles bound fell away, letting the much-abused ninja boy flop and twitch on the kitchen counter.

Before poor Yoshi had a chance to do anything else, Hardscrabble’s rough hand seized his hip, flipping him over onto his belly, before he pressed his knee onto the blue-haired boy’s upper back, pinning him to the countertop. At a motion of the goblin’s head, Grumbletusk, his rigid cock still glistening from the boy’s mouth, stepped up, his massive, rough hands seizing the boy’s bottom, hauling it up, then starting to knead and maul its supple flesh.

“Time to brand my new slaveboy,” chuckled Hardscrabble, cruelly smacking Yoshi’s buns before letting Grumbletusk step to the side, gripping the feebly wriggling teenager’s hips quite firmly as Ranthrak walked to the oven and pulled out the glowing slave iron. “Then while I’m getting worked up for my own round two, I’m gonna watch this human hottie get his butt crammed full of trollcock, while he shows Ranthrak how much he was paying attention to his cocksucking lessons.”

“Spitroasted human boy!” Grumbletusk exclaimed with approval. “A house specialty!”

“No, please,” whimpered Yoshi, but without hope or conviction, too thoroughly pleasured to do more than squirm just a little in the massive hands holding him in place as the big red minotaur approached with his red-glowing branding iron. “Don’t brand me. Don’t make me a slave. Please don’t…don’t…Oh!”

That last was an almost girlish squeak as the branding iron hissed for a moment, and then was withdrawn, leaving a red-glowing rune seared into the pale flesh of his untanned bottom. The mark, however, had vanished from sight almost before Hardscrabble and Grumbletusk had released their hold on the boy’s bare body, as had the first shock of its searing touch. All the same, Yoshi felt it there, a constant presence that he knew in his deepest heart of hearts that he would never escape. That, perhaps, he would never want to escape…

“Up on all-fours,” instructed Ranthrak, and Yoshi’s final treacherous thought was driven deep into his psyche at the shuddering pleasure that ran through his body the moment he complied. “That’s right,” the minotaur continued in his casual drawl, stroking Yoshi’s back as he held himself presented to the troll right behind him, looking up into the face of the bull who stepped around to the other side of the counter. “Obeying your masters brings pleasure, the good sort. Being a bad slave and disobeying brings…well, it’s not exactly pain,” he said with a slightly puzzled expression as he tried to put thoughts into words. “It’s bad pleasure, I guess, the kind that leaves you all weak ‘n helpless ‘n begging for mercy. Seen especially rebellious boys end up almost going crazy from it, their whole bodies on-edge from the feeling, not even able to crawl anymore, but also not able to cum: orgasms are only for good slaves.”

Resting one gentle hand on Yoshi’s blue-haired head, Ranthrak guided his cock to the boy’s lips. Without prompting, Yoshi immediately opened wide and let the big bull slowly fill up his mouth.

“And I can tell you’ll be a very good slave,” chuckled the minotaur as Yoshi trembled with the pleasure of that praise, even as the other male stroked his back like he might a cat. “Hardscrabble, me, and Grumbletusk are all your masters now,” he added. “And what Hardscrabble just told you before, that’s your present set of orders. Maybe we’ll add more later, after we’ve seen how everything plays out socially around here. But not Plump.”

“No,” agreed Grumbletusk as he sank his butcher-thick fingers into the supple flesh of Yoshi’s presented bottom, squeezing his unretracted cockhead against the boy’s still-tight rear hole.

“Plump just wouldn’t understand,” agreed Hardscrabble as he smirked, slowly stroking his erection back to life as he crouched nearby, watching the massive males start to slowly, gently fill up his new slaveboy from both ends, even as the trollcock cramming his buns began to make his belly bulge. “Soft-hearted little guy’d end up just letting the kid go, probably. And that isn’t happening,” he concluded, to the affirming nods of his compatriots. “Not for a long, long time.”

Looking up into the face of the master in front of him, watching Ranthrak’s expression for approval or disapproval and adjusting his technique accordingly, Yoshi found that he…he actually was looking forward to his new life. Shuddering as he felt the pleasures of his masters right along with his own, the multiplicative effect instantly restoring his once-spent erection – for though he didn’t know it yet, the magic of the slave brand also caused him to heal, including recovering his refractory period, with incredible speed – Yoshi felt a slight smile touch the edges of his mouth, before he threw himself wholeheartedly into his new place in the world.

*

Sighing to himself in satisfaction, Heraclitus felt the pleasure of a job well done: while it hadn’t been a full team, he’d had a kobold crew hook up the pipes, so the princesses would have plenty of running water for their baths (for he certainly didn’t realize that they were apparently planning to bathe together, not knowing that there would be plenty of water for them all). He’d gotten them fed as well, thanks to Plump and the efforts of Grumbletusk and his kitchen assistants. And now he was just putting the finishing touches on their bedchambers, turning them from just another room for sleeping into a genuinely pleasant experience, for savoring the dreams that the night would bring.

Overall, Heraclitus was actually feeling halfway pleased. Of course, there was still a great deal of work yet to be done, and many social situations to be navigated – especially with that vexing maiden knight, and the two royal newcomers – to say nothing of the awkwardness he knew would ensue from sorting out the whole “situation” with those two ninja infiltrators. Still, nobody had been killed or even too badly mauled, and what issues had arisen were solvable. Even with Master Beinion still adrift on the waves of fertility and pleasure magic inundating the estate – to say nothing of all the other effects that magic was having, and would be certain to have in the not at all distant future – the majordomo of the Eaglardian family and estate was cautiously optimistic of what that future might hold.

The good feelings ended rather abruptly, however, when Heraclitus felt a presence behind him, followed moments later by the not-unexpected radiant glow that typically attended the presence in question.

“Good afternoon, Your Eminence,” he addressed the Ascended that had appeared behind him, using the window Heraclitus had opened to let in the fresh early evening air as his point of ingress. “How may I be of service?”

“I’m on to your tricks, monster!” snapped the brown-haired Ascended known as Denariel (and often known as an “angel” among mortals who didn’t know any better). “You might think that your powers over this property can obscure you from the Eye of Heaven, but I assure you that all your works in darkness will soon be revealed.”

Though he hadn’t bothered to let Denariel know, Heraclitus was perfectly well aware that this was a bluff: Ascended, or members of the Ascended Court of Most Glorious Axiomaticism, couldn’t access anywhere that wasn’t somehow “free” or open to access from anyone, or where they weren’t invited. This was made especially so when they were attempting to penetrate the power that a being like Heraclitus had over his own labyrinth, granted to him by Lord Eaglardian himself before the great man’s death in the final battles of the Chaos Wars, and which only Lord Eaglardian himself could retract, something obviously now impossible since he was beyond all mortal cares. Fortunately for all the members of his family and household, Heraclitus had sworn to Lord Eaglardian, without any compulsion save his own honor and their friendship, to act in their best interests as he understood them, and he had every intention of keeping to that promise in spirit as well as in word.

He also intended to not allow Denariel one iota more of influence in his labyrinth than was absolutely necessary. Not difficult, since the young Ascended was one of the far less experienced of his kind, who had suffered a similar attrition to their experienced membership as most other races during the Chaos Wars, but nevertheless, a mild annoyance, made possible at all only because Mistress Adlanniel had given Denariel, like all the Ascended, a standing invitation as guests to the estate. Of course, that meant they were only able to act as far as the proper guest-rites allowed, but all the same, it was a minor vexation, especially with so much rather…”sensitive” events taking place on the estate at that time.

How in the world do you explain to someone that letting them get their way is, in fact, not in their best interests? This was a truth that Heraclitus knew, that the Ascended would become as miserable as they would make everybody else if they were allowed to become the dominant faction, just like the elves if that people were allowed a similar free reign. Actually getting them to willingness give up some of that power to share with others…no, he really could not fault the god beneath the estate one bit in his secretive and subtle acts.

That rush of Chaos magic, though…even with all his powers of self-control, honed through many centuries spent repenting of the ancient sins that had caused him to justly merit his minotaur’s curse at the end of the Old Empire, Heraclitus felt its influence quite keenly.

If he wasn’t determined to fulfill Mistress Adlanniel’s wishes, and to continue to play his role as head servant of the Eaglardians, and also to maintain his personal sense of honor, what Heraclitus would have liked most to do at right that moment was to tear off the thigh-length toga the brown-haired youth was wearing, bend him over the windowsill, grab tight hold of his glowing white wings, and let the tasty little angel boy sing while he…

Oh, he was still talking. Stifling a sigh, Heraclitus forced himself to work his mind back into the track of the “conversation.”

“…very important diplomatic situation here, and there are reports of strange stirrings beneath these lands. If you can’t provide proper service to all the guests here – far too many of whom I can’t help but notice seem to be consorting with that disgusting little beast that I saw in here earlier through the window – and ensure the protection of their immortal souls, then I shall certainly be forced to bring in adventurers. After all, they’re the ones best suited to dealing with your kind.”

“That,” Heraclitus finally slipped in edgewise, “will likely not be necessary. Plump is a gentle soul, and has never knowingly hurt anyone in his life. He was Mistress Adlanniel’s special friend and a comfort to her during her captivity in the lair of Tephra, and she cares about him deeply. As does everyone who knows him,” he added with a meaningful look at the young immortal floating just high enough off the floor to look down his nose at the towering black-furred, cummerbund-clad minotaur. “He is more trustworthy than I am. And I will suffer torture and death rather than ever do anything against the interests of the Eaglardians, their guests, or any of their friends and servants.”

“As you interpret those interests,” snorted the hovering angel boy, turning away from the minotaur with an artful swish of his loose white robes. “In your far-too-flexible fashion. Just remember, monster, we of the Ascended Court are watching you closely!”

“As Your Eminence declares,” Heraclitus ended, bowing his head slightly as the youthful Axiomite slipped out of the window in the same way he’d come, fading into motes of light as soon as he was back in the open air. A moment later, the minotaur shut that window, only just barely resisting the urge to slam it, even as he exerted a momentary portion of his Will, which just as firmly closed out the supernatural perceptions of all unwanted watchers from the entirety of his labyrinth, the whole Eaglardian estate, from compound to extensive forests.

Ah well. At least nothing else could possibly go wrong.

For all his many centuries of age and experience, of course, Heraclitus should have realized that even silently thinking such a thing was simply asking for what was to come next.