Fate Deals the Cards Temperance

  Chapter 10 The King and I

  The human camp was something straight out of a medieval fantasy movie, one that took attention to detail seriously. The place stank to the gleaming stars above, reeked for miles among the already festering and rank swamp reeds. Even in winter, no one came to the marshes for the air… Except maybe these clowns.

  They’d dug a shallow trench for a privy, justa bit upstream from their tents… upstream, and right by the waterside to boot. They dipped drinking water from that same water source, blithely recycling their own output.

  Goblins roamed the perimeter at night, naked, brutish and simple, as all gobb men were, but these seemed different from the wild gobbs I’d encountered so frequently. A dim, feral light of rage burned in their eyes, not the lazy, selfish and debased wickedness of the usual run of gobb men. They seemed eager to do violence and delighted at the prospect of tormenting anything they could catch. Frogs and other small critters littered their filthy nests, torn to shreds and tortured, rather than eaten, as was proper.

  The humans were little better than the gobbs in my estimation. They lounged around, while a few ragged, collared and castrated goblin men hobbled about, serving them and receiving the kind of casual cruelty only very low men are capable of.

  The clearing had been a pleasant little meadow, now it was a trampled mess of mud, slush, filth and refuse, despoiled carelessly by these people...

  At the edge of their camp, away from the fires something odd stood. In the darkened, empty corner of the field something flickered and danced, just at the edge of my vision, like heat haze, on a warm day.

  A circle of bare earth lay under the stars, surrounded by the snow and plants that someone had very carefully removed and piled all around.

  Behind that low wall of mounded stuff, the ground blurred and flickered around something small at the center. Lines and looping figures covered the dark, half frozen soil, drawn in chalk powder, salt and other things, forming a complex artwork of remarkable beauty, around a defiled corpse. A pitiful goblin slave, his collar still dangling from his scrawny neck, lay there broken.

  He had suffered every abuse and humiliation these men could devise in life, and lay there, shredded, peeled and worse, exposed under the sky, as some working of sorcery danced unseen around his remnants.

  My eyes followed the markings, reading their intent and drawing the knowledge of their craft from the signs and sigils scrawled on the poor, battered corpse. With each line and glyph, more vile and wicked insight poured into my brain, revealing some disturbing things, even in the face of the awful atrocity I squatted over.

  This array was designed for extracting power from the suffering of the ragged, tiny shade clinging to his cadaver by a thin thread of twinkling darkness. Someone had spun a thin chain of Will, Mind and something dark, alien and cold, to bind his wretched ghost here, fueling this working of spellcraft.

  Magic came in so many forms, and for me, my intent and my own nature influenced the workings of my arts… I inscribed words, phrases, lyrics in the things I made, inscribing my desire, intent and will into the object, to direct and manipulate the world around me… whether it was my obsidian spear, whose shaft would never break, nor bindings come loose, or my blowpipe, that whispered my desire on the wind, helping my darts fly true.

  My armor was a constantly evolving work of art, the plates and scutes were all easily replaced when broken or if they became worn, on a rayskin harness that retained its stiffness, flex and strength, even when soaking wet, dried to a soft suede texture in a few minutes and never chafed my skin…

  Embroidering thousands of letters, runes, lines of poetry and songs into those thin straps with spider silk and a fishbone needle had been a long labor, but paid off every day.

  Under a cloak of marsh linen, artfully spattered and stained to blend in with the winter barrens, I crept into the clearing, drawn to the ghost, drifting over its shattered, tortured corpse. I could hear his screams, silent and breathless, unending. I reached out slowly and stopped, just short of the line of softly glowing nothing, above the outermost circle of salt, unable to enter that field of dark energy and whirling forces.

  A ward, but unlike what my house created, very unlike my home indeed. My house projected an aura, like a living being, an aura like my own, in almost every way, save its size and potency.

  Skeeters, vermin and pests stayed away, just like they stayed away from me, repelled by my trained and focused aura. Predators and unfriendlies seldom saw me at all, their senses ignoring my presence, as my aura blended me into the shadows, darkness and wild, chaotic energies of nature, all around.

  My house did the same thing, on a much vaster scale and far more powerfully than I could, and did so without any conscious effort on my part. In the same way, it stayed warm and snug, unless I wished it, disposed of our waste, fed us and sheltered us from the rain. Looking down on the wicked thing before me, I wondered… Where did the energies to create, maintain and encircle the house come from…?

  Because this array was a weak, flickering thing, barely a candle’s guttering light, while my home blazed brightly, even from so many miles away, if only in my sight.

  All that torment, wickedness and effort, for this result… I felt even more pity for the poor, tormented goblin that had given so much, for such a small thing.

  And what result? This spell, when struck by dawn’s first light, would break, releasing the tortured shade and indicating the direction of what the caster sought.

  I suspected that the caster was seeking me, so I decided to have a little fun with the assholes. The humans posted no guards, relying on their goblin slave warriors to keep watch… which was stupid. Sharp eyes, keen ears, an absurdly sensitive nose… but operated by a brain that was not equipped for much beyond hunting and rutting.

  These examples seemed different than the usual gobb, in all the worst ways, something wicked and twisted had touched them, igniting the sparks of evil in their tiny, stupid minds. They remained deeply stupid, lazy and selfish to an extreme degree, which made them pretty useless guards.

  I shucked all my gear into my shadow, stripped bare and slathered myself with a bit of silt and swamp muck, dancing in the cold, after the comforting warmth of my cloak, kilt and winter boots. It was going to be worth it, though.

  /

  “Think the captain’s ever gonna give us a go at his cat-girl?” Bryce whispered, huddled near the campfire with Drew and Finley. “My balls are fit to burst!”

  “No chance, bud. He never shares. He’ll toss what’s left of her to the goblins first.” Drew whispered. “Never cared for cats, myself…tail in my face when i’m fucking… A bunnygirl, now that’s a bed toy! They squeal and beg, but pull on their ears and they’ll do anything to stop the pain.”

  “Tail makes a good handle.” Finley suggested. “Grab it by the root and twist, they’ll co-operate. Only easy way to get in a cat-girls asshole. That really makes ‘em yowl.” He said with a wink. “Mmm, now I’m feeling restless too. See ya later.”

  He rose and drifted off into the camp, eyes roving over the slaves with interest. The neutered gobbs were worthless. They had no spark left in them and would just lay there, no matter how he used them… boring. The slave warriors were spicier fun, if strictly against regulations. They would beg, struggle and even try to fight… It reminded him of human kids. So easy to terrorize and use to his heart’s content, but that was how he got posted here. Pillow the wrong brat just once and a career is gone, wasted.

  Hot rage and humiliation surged in him, just as he caught sight of a warrior gobb he hadn’t noticed before. This one was big, muscular and fit looking, with a round firm ass too. The tackle swinging between his legs was very impressive… too impressive to overlook. That face though, a ragged nest of teeth pointed in every direction contorting the thing into a nightmare. Not that the face mattered, not at all.

  “Goblin! Attend me.” Finley barked, waving his hand imperiously. The little brute stopped his aimless wandering and darted over, very obediently. “Follow.” He commanded firmly, as he headed off into the darkness, at the edge of camp.

  In the dark thickets beyond the firelight, Finley lashed out, striking the goblin across the eyes, sending it tumbling across the little bower in a tangle of loose limbs. It rolled to its feet with a nimble turn and spin, which surprised the knight, and made him smile with cruel delight. Rage and bloodlust burned in its big, bulging brown, wicked eyes; a rage that it wrestled down into subservience, as the beast’s training took hold.

  “Yes, animal. You will obey me if you wish to survive tonight. Submit.” Finley purred, as he pulled his raging member out into the cool night air. “Bend over, before my cock takes a chill.” He whispered, fierce exultation in his voice. “I want to watch your balls swing while I plow you, little animal.”

  Eager delight became absolute pleasure, as the beast backed away, begging for all of his favorite pleasures, with its disobedience. “I’ll take your cock for a trophy and leave you your balls, once I’ve split your asshole with my dagger. Your blood will make a fine lube as you writhe, screaming with my shaft up your butt.” He whispered, as he stalked the little, boy sized monster around the darkened thicket.

  “That’s the last game we’ll play, though… First, I’ll break all your arms and legs; then, we’ll pull all those nasty teeth and I’ll have your mouth til your belly’s full to bursting with my seed.” He cooed and purred his words,as he stalked his prey. “When I’m done, I’ll let your goblin friends fuck and eat whatever is left. You know how they are, once they’ve had the drug. They might fuck you to pieces while eating you alive.”

  This was a curious gobb… They always submitted, in hopes of mercy, they never got it, of course. It was the principle of the thing! A disobedient slave earned their promised torments, it would be unfair to withhold his rewards! This one danced and slipped through the close confines of the trees, avoiding his fate temporarily, and earning new and more exciting rewards, once he was caught. Finley laughed with delight as the frightened beast fled through the woods, seeking escape from his justly deserved punishments. The nerve of the little beast, daring to carry a cock like that… Not that Finley was some filthy degenerate boy humper! He only fucked animal boys, like this delicious morsel.

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  With humans, he was strictly girls only, the young ones were so sweetly terrified, every time… With a wet splat, Finley stepped into a reeking mire, sinking to mid calf in freezing mud.

  The filthy thing had fled into the marsh! The absolute nerve of the beast! Now it cowered, trapped by the waterside with nowhere to flee.

  “You will pay for ruining my boots, little boy… I’m going to absolutely wreck you, before I throw you to your fellow dogs as a treat. They’ll eat my jizz for sauce on your torn flesh and suck your bones, like you are going to suck on mine.” He sighed happily, as the tasty goblin boy turned at bay.

  “You talk lots, human piglet. Now we see how you squeal.” It spoke, in actual words, clear, human speech rather than the disgusting pidgin and nattering of the goblin race.

  It dipped in a low bow, a mockery of human manners, graceful and elegant, from a naked beast in the swamp!

  Shall we dance?

  On a bright cloud of music, shall we fly?

  Shall we dance?

  Shall we then say "Goodnight" and mean "Goodbye"?

  He whispered, the words slurred by those awful teeth but clearly a foolish song, sung with mockery and rage at his better!

  Worse, the creature took a graceful twirl across the starlit glade, alighting on a low mound of turf, wearing a strange suit of red, chitinous armor. It made nary a rustle nor clank as he moved across the clearing, a short, flint knife in his paw.

  “You face Ghnash Warrgh, the goblin king, human meat. Dance with me. We shall see whose cock graces those goblin slaves’ refined palates come dawn’s first light.”

  /

  I’d planned to sneak into their camp and draw in a ravenous horde of skeeters to descend on them. I had a few clay jars of stinkroach guts, fermented and extra stinky to lob in as well, which would have been a serious chaos engine, once the roaches hiding all around swarmed in.

  Sadly, this shitbird wanted to torture and rape me for his jollies, so he got priority.

  It felt kinda dirty, wagging my ass and leading him out into the darkness by his pecker, but every word that poured from his mouth only firmed my resolve to feed him to the swamp.

  He was clumsy in the woodlands and wetlands, stomping carelessly and stumbling over roots, bogs, tufts of frozen grass and puddles skimmed with thin sheets of ice. The starlight was bright enough for even human eyes, if barely. Out here, away from the fires, for me, it was just right. Just as the boggy ground accepted my bare feet with good grace and forbearance. Branches and thorny vines slipped by my bare skin, while entangling his thick, woolens and tripping his booted feet.

  I passed with ease, where he struggled to follow and let my round, firm ass guide him on into the deeper woods, alone and armed only with a long steel dagger. His cock was a laughable threat and probably the source of his angst… Men like this were not uncommon in any race or, I suspected, on any world. Small, weak and pathetic inside, projecting that, whatever their actual anatomy might be.

  This guy was packing average tackle for a human… But his inadequacies draped him like a cloak, vile and wretchedly twisting his aura into a projection of what lay inside the man, for those who cared to look with their inner eyes.

  He seethed with a nasty soup of misdirected feelings, twisted urges and something deeply dark and alien, coiled inside his soul. I could feel it peering dimly from his shadow. This man had been touched by something wrong, and twisted by it almost from birth.

  Pity could come after… First, needs must come Justice, for the crimes he had already attempted on my own tender pucker. That thought struck me oddly as I led my prey to his final resting place. Justice, I had personalized her there for a moment. I almost stumbled in my dance, as I once more addressed Justice as a person, a her… as if I had met the personification of that idea, long ago, in another life.

  My mind flashed with a brief glimpse of something starkly beautiful, deeply alien and radiant in the darkness; a tall, dusky skinned woman with the most amazing rack, hardly concealed by ropes of shining beads of gold, lapis and silver. Her lean, elegant shoulders led to a radiant, elegant, beautifully feminine hippopotamus-woman’s face; kind, gentle and smiling at me with genuine love.

  Whoever she was, I felt a pang in my heart, of loss and of anger. Anger that re-fueled my decision to slip this fine fellow into a nice, quiet grave, to consider his actions in life.

  If I was going to dispense Justice… I needed a hook to hang my hat on, authority to administer the law needed a title befitting the moment; I supposed, as we played sly, sexy cat and horny, rape obsessed mouse in the dark. When we reached my chosen spot, it was too easy to goad him into action.

  A bit of song and dance, stolen from the ‘King and I’ got him all in a tizzy, while setting the stage for the next act in our little play. The lyrics were cute, sassy and more than appropriate for the moment and I sang them with care, to keep things moving along.

  My lips and teeth were surprisingly co-operative, so long as I kept to the rhyme and meter, I could spin a little song into the night which felt right, good and seemed to discomfit my foe nicely.

  I led him around the clearing, dancing and singing softly into the night, weaving a tenuous magic of my own. My feet learned the intricacies and subtleties of the land we stood on, the air we breathed taught my lungs exactly what and when to inhale and the starlight soaked into my skin, revealing all hidden things to my senses.

  A witch on his home ground is a fearsome thing, even without claws, fangs and a keen stone blade.

  When I declared myself the goblin king, he found new confidence from somewhere.

  “It’s you, the one we’ve come hunting…” He gasped, suddenly sounding eager. “I’ve come up lucky! I won’t kill you if I can avoid it… But I’ll still yank those teeth and make you slobber my cock until we give you screaming to the blessed Light, on the sacrificial altar.” He jeered, excited and hungry once more.

  “Porking your ass is going to feel so good, little isekai boy. I want to hear you squeal and beg even more, now that I know there’s a real person hiding in there.”

  “If you wish to fuck this king, you must be a queen… You like the boys, do you?” I jeered right back, with a shake of my ass as I twirled around a slim sassafras tree, giving him a show.

  That really set him off. “Degenerate filth! Unclean! To hint at such is to perish in brave new ways! The Light will burn your infidel soul, boy! And as you scream into the Light, I will be there, pissing into your flayed chest cavity, filling up the place where they cut your heart out.” He sputtered, a new, more feral light in his eyes. He gasped in a great breath, ready to tell me all about how he was going to rape and torment me, while I circled him faster than he could follow, with his boots in the mire.

  The knight heaved his feet from the sucking filth and that moment of unbalanced fumbling, as he tried to find footing was all I needed. The brave and righteous templar of the Light promptly fell face first in the muck with my feet planted between his shoulders.

  “Light worshiper you are, but you stand in darkness, with the king.” I sighed, from my perch atop his back. “Here, in the night, I rule. Now go into your beloved light and sin no more.”

  He struggled briefly, but eighty pounds of rock-solid goblin stood on his back, as he slowly drowned in mud and filth. I put his dagger back in its sheath, tucked his now limp pecker back in his trews and slipped away, leaving a tragic wilderness accident behind me.

  Now it was back to plan A, before the sun could rise over that awful circle of unclean sorcery and show my location to these clowns.

  /

  “Finley’s out chasing ass, again.” Drew complained to corporal Davies, when his shift ended and no relief came. “He fucked that last slave almost to death… it would’ve been a real problem if we didn’t need a sacrifice anyway.”

  “Noted, go back to your duties, I will address this.” The corporal droned, waving his subordinate away, along with one of the damned skeeters this place bred. “Light burn these things, even the fires won’t keep them away anymore…” He griped, swatting one into a blaze, roaring hungrily nearby. It sizzled and crisped in an instant, but more came buzzing in, slowly but surely.

  As dawn approached, the swamp’s denizens awoke, hungry and desperate for warmth. Swarms of vile things that flew, crawled or hopped began to appear.

  Swamp lice, chigger-bugs, Papyrus fleas, land-leeches, mud-leeches, tree-leeches, and of course, a sky darkening cloud of skeeters and gnats. Relentless, ravenous and raining down from above in the kind of abundance that sent even armored knights scrambling for shelter.

  The stench that arose, as the fires consumed any bug that got too close and booted feet stomped the crawling roaches that began to emerge was beyond appalling.

  Horses reared and panicked, breaking free of their hobbles somehow, to fly across the moors in desperate flight from the blood sucking horde.

  Of the goblin warrior slaves there was no sign, only the pathetic servant gobbs and all but two of them lay out in the open, covered with jostling skeeters, as they were drained dry.

  Chaos ruled the encampment, chaos and madness, as a horde of hungry insect life devoured their supplies and befouled everything left behind.

  /

  Creeping into the center of the camp was easy. The goblin guards never smelled me, since I smelled like the swamp all around, with no personal scent underneath. To their noses, I was just ‘goblin’ and muck.

  Once near the fires, they were nearly blind and of course, the humans and horses made too much noise. I drifted in the shadows, like all the gobbs did, while the rest of the humans paid me no mind, so long as I stayed out of kicking range.

  Finding a dark place under a tarp, beside some supply crates was easy, as easy as tuning my aura to maximum tasty, on the wavelengths the local vermin couldn’t resist, gently spreading it far and wide. ‘Come and get it’ I whispered into the hungry night.

  The goblin warriors sensed something, but ignored it until too late… They heard the swarm coming and headed for their nests and burrows like rabbits that heard a hawk’s call. The horses sensed me, but like the last few, had no fear of me at all. If anything, they seemed confident that I was going to do what I planned to do… which was weird, and made me feel warm inside. Like an old friend was looking at me, from a great distance, behind their warm, wise eyes.

  Despite the stereotypes, I like horses! So get bent, humans!

  Hobbles, halters, ropes and bridles all vanished into my shadow, once the useless metal junk was cut away. The horseies waited, patient and quiet until I finished stealing all the leather goods, cordage and cloth I could get my greedy, gobbo grubbers on. Some stereotypes are fully legit.

  I had planned to dip away, to plunder the supply tents; leaving one of my insect repelling trinkets with the mare that led the herd. She wore it on a cord of palm fiber braided into her mane, seeming ridiculously proud of my little gift. The whole darn herd insisted that each have a nuzzle and a snuffle of me, before I could slip out into the mess I’d made of the pre-dawn encampment and get back on task.

  Insects and crustaceans were just everywhere… The bounty of scum, slop, spilled bug guts, waste and the completely natural, ravenous fearlessness of the hungry, local vermin had created a storm of claws, needles, pincers and fangs, drawn together and whipped into a frenzy that continued, sustaining itself long after my influence ended.

  Dawn began in the east, as it tends to, just around that time… Slowly, the rosey glow spread, illuminating the swarm as they savaged each other and everything not protected by one of my little inscribed snail shell charms.

  I was long gone of course, daylight hurt my eyes and outside my home, blindness was a serious liability. In a little burrow on a distant hillside, I listened and sniffed as the fire spread,they torched the despoiled supplies, while complaining bitterly at the loss of almost all of their goods.

  Later, voices rose in the wilderness as they searched for their missing comrades and slaves.

  I giggled a little when they found my drowned paramour, a tragic casualty of the perilous nighttime wilderness. I heard them fish him out of the mire, heavily nibbled on and reeking as foully on the outside as he had been defiled on the inside.

  It wasn’t Vengeance for his unknown victims, of which there had to be so many, it was Justice.

  As that thought crossed my mind, I saw that sexy, alluring, motherly and compassionate hippo woman’s face, for the briefest of moments, but before her, I saw a face that was dreadfully familiar, but also, one I had never seen before.

  I was horrified by the certainty that it was MY face, but human and an adult, with features so handsome and perfect, it felt like a mask of superb quality, a living mask of me.

  As creepy as that might be for most people… I had a special problem there. When I was a little over fourteen years old, my left side got completely mangled in a truck crash, smearing the left side of my face into an uncanny, disturbing mess that no one could look at for long… not even me.

  I had never had that face, or anything close to it, nor had I seen much of what I did have, since I avoided mirrors like rich men dodge taxes, instinctively and like it was my full time job.

  Somehow, the face of Vengeance was mine, and deeply alien as well, while absolutely being mine. Even the expression was one of mine. I could feel my face making that same amused and wry grin, like I’d just gotten the joke and was waiting for everyone else to catch on.

  “Ward?” I wondered aloud in my cozy burrow, far from the men who were having a very bad day.

  I caught a scent on the wind as I lay there, something faintly familiar, warm and dusty, it reminded me of sunlight streaming through the window, warming my toes in the morning and springtime in the grass… and of fear, misery and pain.

  /