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Pathfinding: An Adult Choose Your Own Adventure

Eighteenth Entry

By Gideon Kalve Jarvis

Vote Tallies

A - 0

B - 5

C (B) - 17

C (D) - 1

D - 0

Take Praxis Alive - 14

* Use Praxis and the slavers as a bargaining tool with Carver - 5

* Breed Ryg - 9

* More information from the High Alpha about current events - 7

* Have Leta stay with the Blue Feather as a liason - 1

* Information on the state of the North - 7

* More opportunities for non-consensual sex (especially for Rufus) - 4

* Bring Rael with us - 3

* Another Warlord cutscene - 3

* Another cutscene to the girls back at camp - 2

* Turn Hanaro to our side - 3

* Turn Dinah, the green-haired catgirl, to our side - 7

* Have Spark breed Kaia - 5

* Species to meet and mate - sheep, sheep-dogs, bunnies, cats, horses, cows, chickens, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Humans, Felines, Hounds, Badgers, Otters, Ferrets, Hares, Mice, Moles, Shrews, satyrs, skunks, squirrels

Author Notes

It all comes down to the dice now...

Pathfinding Eighteenth Entry

The hooded figure crouched low near the fire, making sure to thoroughly douse it and then to bury the ashes. The darkling one in the hood and cloak, who was surely Praxis Venator, one of the most notorious slaving lords on every continent of Therafim, had carefully supervised his guards, ensuring that each and every one of them did as he said, covering up every trace of the camp, until none remained, leaving no evidence that they had passed that way.

Suddenly, the hooded figure jerked his head toward the wooded hills, as a small armed band approached. Green eyes blazed with an unnatural light as they fixed on the two figures in front, wrists bound before them, bodies exposed to the chill of the morning air: a gorgeous, full-figured, and nicely-muscled Cho-Lini girl with dark hair that teased about her buttocks; and a slender, adorable foxboy with bright red fur and a snowy white underbelly. Both the slaves in front seemed to be doing their best to cover themselves despite their bound hands, both of them blushing deeply as the humans gave crude jeers and taunts, while the ogres, being creatures with words to match their brain cells, simply stared and drooled.

"Hail, slaver," called out a tall, grey-furred wolfen at the front of the little band, flanked by four gnolls that prodded the two slaves along. "We'd just come on these travelers a day past, and figured we might try our luck trading with you." The wolfen shrugged, grinning. "Saves us transporting them ourselves, that's for sure."

"Lucky that you found us," said the hooded figure, those unnaturally bright green eyes boring into Rufus' soul, then turning slightly, making first the fox and then the human girl shudder as they played across the two slaves' naked bodies like a physical caress. "Lucky indeed...I offer a hundred gelders of recent mint for each, two hundred total."

The sum was the bare minimum fetched for a young and healthy slave of breeding age, when sold on the black market, where prices tended to be higher, but the slaves far more available, and the demand greater. Still, even to someone like Rufus, who had only an outsider's working knowledge of the slaving market, knew that he was being cheated by such a price.

"Eight hundred each," he growled in return, and the haggling was on.

Up in the wooded hills, Urta grinned as she watched Rufus' gesticulations. Normally Rufus didn't use a great deal of hand movements when he talked, but now he was hamming them up. This wasn't just so he could play a different role, though: it was also to give his watching comrades the signal to attack without giving any clue to the slavers. She glanced to the side, where her brother crouched in a nearby bush, a bow in his hands as he took slow, steady, careful aim. Cassidy was somewhere else in the woods, as silent and unseen as ever, waiting for the moment the signal came to strike, their throwing spears in their hands, ready for use, whereupon they would pull their fighting spears, lock shields, and press the attack. Even then, Urta could see her gnolls edging slowly backward, knowing that the shamaness, Ryg, would be using her magic anywhere past where Rufus was standing, her aim guided by little Dinah, who had been persuaded by the blind she-wolf to help her, though it had taken quite a bit of coaxing, and even more gentle petting and some sharing of the party's meager stores of smoked herring. It was the fish that had won the little catgirl over completely, as she seemed to be irrationally enamored of the stuff, and her former party hadn't carried anything besides elven waybread and other long-lasting vegetable and fruit things; typical elven fare.

There it was! The signal!

In a flash, Urta loosed an arrow, then another, her bow of crude gnollish make, but enough to send her shafts into the neck and chest of the ogre nearest to Rufus, sending the brute tumbling to the ground, gurgling out his last. Jerking forward, Rufus tugged the ropes around Spark's wrists, and immediately the foxboy was freed, grabbing his shortbow from off his back, clothes immediately appearing on his body, concealed before by a clever illusion he'd formerly only used as a naughty prank. The lithe tod grabbed Hanaro's guide rope and tucked it into his belt while falling back through the ranks of the gnolls, firing as he went.

One-Eye snarled out orders to his comrades as they picked targets and flung their spears and then pressed forward, shields together, all while shafts from strong-armed Urtan's tall bow landed in the midst of the confused, beleaguered enemy as they fell in droves, clutching wood buried in their chests, necks, heads, and more. Cassidy's arrows especially seemed to come from all sides as he moved like a lethal shadow in the brush. Rufus stepped forward with his new longsword in one hand cleaving through the downfalling club of an especially dangerous-looking ogre, likely the leader of this mercenary band hired by Praxis, before he thrust forward, piercing the ogre's metal breastplate with a single powerful blow. At the same time he snatched forward, grabbing Praxis by the face and shoving the dark-furred hellcat to the ground.

Then Rufus blinked as he looked down at his hand, almost casually disemboweling one of the human guards that charged toward him as he did so: he was still holding Praxis' face. Dawning, horrified realization coming to him too late, Rufus looked down at the hooded figure, watching as the features of the devil-eyed panther faded away with the removal of the ensorcelled mask, soon replaced by the features of a tightly-muscled, compact-bodied raccoon, whose face might have been cute if he wasn't smirking so smugly at that moment.

"Gotcha, wolfie," jeered the coon, before Rufus blinked, feeling a painful jab in his back, followed by a numbness spreading through his body.

"Nothing personal, boss," growled One-Eye in Rufus' ear. "If you gotta know the truth, you were the best leader we ever had. This is Urta's deal, though, and she said Praxis paid better'n you."

"What I actually said," Urta cried out as she strode down from the hills, "was that Praxis offered me a better future than you, Rufus." She seized the back of Rufus' head, and forced him to his knees, even as the muscled wolfen male struggled to make sense of everything, his entire world reeling. "You're the one who got me pregnant, Rufus," Urta growled softly in his ear, her expression sad. "But all you wanted to do was start a fight you can't possibly win. You can't beat the Warlord; nobody can. All we gnolls can hope to do is live like we always have, living on the fringes, and working for whoever's strongest. There's no other chance for us." Her hand was a caress on Rufus' face, before Urta kissed his cheek. "For what it's worth...I'm sorry." She rose, then, letting Rufus slump slowly to the ground, and faced toward where Praxis himself truly was, walking over the edge of the hills on the far side of the camp. She reached beneath One-Eye's eyepatch, pulling out a small, smooth gem, and tossed it to the darkling panthercat as he approached. Praxis caught the gem easily, then smiled.

It was not a pleasant smile.

"I didn't do it for you," growled Urta, looking away from those searing green eyes. "It's just about survival. There's some slaves trussed up in the woods over there," she added with a nod toward where Rufus' party had bound up the Sisters of Glory, all except for Hanaro, who had agreed to risk herself as bait after some well-reasoned talking with Rufus. Now she and Spark were both in the clutches of the gnolls, Spark's ears down, looking every inch the miserable little foxling. If anything, this made him even more adorable, but it was unlikely to earn him any mercy from a wicked creature like Praxis and his band of slavers, who skirted around the field of slaughter toward where she'd indicated.

[Required roll for bluff: 70% - rolled 92]

"You know," laughed the raccoon as he got to his feet, nudging the fallen Rufus with his foot, "you mighta beaten us if you'd hit us good'n hard like this. I mean, ol' alpha here took down that boss ogre like he was nothing. 'course, you're right about taking on the Warlord - you made the right choice, cutting your losses while you could. Lucky for you, you kept that little spygem Praxis gave you back when he first hired you." The raccoon then smirked again. "Bet the info on the Blue Feather pack getting together'll be worth a pretty penny to the Warlord, as I think about it. Maybe even more'n these slaves."

*

Urtan knew better than to refuse his sister's mercy when it was offered. After their tribe had been decimated by human raiders, leaving Urta as the chief female of those who remained, they'd been approached in the wilderness by Praxis. Hungry and with hardly any of their numbers left, the slaver could probably have wiped the gnolls out if he'd chosen, or taken them for sale as spear fodder in some border war. Instead, he'd decided to hire them on. Or, rather, most of them. After the first raid, Urtan had found himself sickened by the act of taking slaves, something his own tribe had only done in minimal amounts (more from their isolation and lack of power, admittedly, but it had left Urtan sheltered from its realities all the same). After a heated argument with his older sister, Urta, Urtan had stormed off into the night, taking only his shield and spear with him. Urta could have pursued him, could have given him to Praxis (who had a liking for strong males), or could have gutted him and thrown the rebellious male into the stewpot. She didn't; all she did was let him go. All the same, Urtan would likely have perished in the wilderness if he hadn't been found and tended by Adel, who'd shown herself to have a tender heart, and earned his total devotion since then.

Just before she'd stepped out into the open, Urta had given Urtan one of those looks. Even with several years separating them, he still knew his sister, and knew in an instant what she'd done. He'd thought at first, when he'd met his sister's much-diminished tribe in the woods, that perhaps she'd set off on her own. But no, she was still Praxis' beast, still in thrall to the slaver that had offered her an opportunity to continue living as a gnoll. And she was still a gnoll, all the same, still a slave to avarice and greed and base survival at all costs...and a slave to Praxis as well, to come down to the heart of things.

Knowing what was about to come as his sister turned her back on him, Urtan motioned to where he thought Cassidy might be, then turned and fled into the woods, catching Ryg's arm as he ran.

"What's going on?" Dinah asked, scampering after the broad-chested gnoll, looking up at him with her large, inquiring eyes.

Ryg started a moment, feeling Urtan's mood through his touch, and then reached down, resting a hand on Dinah's head.

"We've been betrayed," said the she-wolfen, shaking her head in horror. "The net is closing at this moment. There's not a moment to lose." As she spoke, Ryg reached into the pouch at her side, and drew out some thick grey dust, casting it out onto the ground behind them. "There, that should cover our retreat, provided Urta doesn't betray us again." A slight squeeze from Urtan made Ryg relax a little, feeling his belief that his sister wouldn't - despite the distance between them, she still loved her brother too much...and he her. "Listen, Dinah, can you find us a place to hide? I know you were scurrying around a lot on the way out here, working off some of that nervous energy of yours. Did you see...oh, say a cave, or perhaps a scrape in the side of one of the hills, or a big hollow log, or anything like that?"

Dinah's smooth brow furrowed as she catgirl put a visible effort into thinking. It wasn't something she'd had to do often with Kaia and the other Sisters of Glory, since, after all, she was just a catgirl. But this was important! Ryg was really nice! And she'd given her fish! And there were terrible, awful people out there who were going to do terrible, awful things to her and her new friends if they were caught!

"Dinah saw a place," she said finally, pointing a moment before dashing off, slowing only just enough for Urtan to guide Ryg along. "In here!"

Grabbing some loose vines, Dinah showed her two friends into a small hollow beneath a tree on a hill, that must have been made when some beast had carved it out with massive claws in years long past, long enough for creepers and vines and dangling roots to grow over the entry. It was the perfect sort of place for a den, as Dinah had thought when she'd come across it in her playful darting around the path of the party, and so it had stuck in her mind even as she'd been forced to rejoin them for fear of being left behind.

"Earth, hide us well," whispered Ryg as they all stepped into the short cave, probably some bulette's scrape before running afoul of some adventuring band. At the shamaness' words, Dinah gave a startled squeak, even as the roots of the grass and trees above suddenly started to writhe like serpents, wrapping over the entry, until it was as though it had never been.

Path Choices

Oh no! Everything's gone so wrong, and all in one roll of the dice! But wait - maybe not all is lost. After all, there's still some of our party free, and Urta is actually feeling guilty for what she's done, something she's never really felt before. So now we pick up our story next time from the perspective of one of our disparate groups. But...which one?

Urta - She's in the middle of the action now, and certainly has a good view of whatever's going on in the slaver's camp.

Spark - Poor Spark. The fate of a foxboy among a band of wicked and lusty males is seldom terribly pleasant...though it can be quite arousing.

Ryg, Urtan, and Dinah - Will they be overlooked by the slavers? Will Urta give them away? What are they going to do next?

Sisters of Glory - They're soon to be in the clutches of the slavers, and their fate isn't likely to be much better than Spark's, if not worse. After all, there was a reason why the gnolls didn't make any objections to Rufus ordering them to press on without having any more fun.

Praxis - Step into the mind of darkness, and see what the evil slaver is up to. Actually (spoiler), that one is easy: he's up to his balls in Spark.

Rufus? - Wait...didn't he just die?