Chapter 11: Singing at Slugs and Scoffing at Goblins
The darkness beyond the North Gate was not empty. It was a physical presence, thick and cold, pressing against their faces like wet velvet. The only light came from Tulip’s palm, where a small, glowing orb of moss-green bioluminescence hovered, casting shifting shadows that made the tunnel walls seem to breathe. The air smelled of millennia of damp, of fungi both benign and poisonous, of things that had died without light.
Their footsteps echoed, a clumsy human rhythm against the eternal drip-drip of water. The squeak of Minnie’s tea trolley was a ludicrous, comforting soundtrack to the abyss.
For the first hour, Dravion maintained his tragic facade, speaking in low, reverent tones about the ‘sublime desolation’ of the deep ways. He complimented Tulip’s light, sympathized with Brutehilde’s burden, and cast sorrowful, lingering looks at Honeymuff, who took to hiding in Brutehilde’s apron pocket.
Then, as the tunnel branched into a wider, jagged cavern, he cleared his throat. “These passages, for all their grandeur, are not without peril. Bandits, degenerate troglodytes… I could not live with myself if harm befell you under my guidance. Fortunately, I took the liberty of arranging an additional precaution.”
He gave a soft, two-note whistle. From behind a natural pillar of flowstone, four figures materialized. They were typical Underworld thugs: sinewy, clad in mismatched leather and rusting mail, faces hard and eyes greedy. They carried notched swords and held themselves with the alert tension of hired blades.
“My personal guards,” Dravion announced, spreading his hands with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “They will ensure our passage is uncontested. Consider it a final apology from my house for your… unfortunate treatment in the city.”
The group stopped. The thugs fanned out, not behind Dravion, but in a loose semicircle around the party. The message was clear.
Ulrika, who had been a silent shadow at the rear, stepped forward. The sound of her boots on the stone was deliberate, final. “There is no need.”
Dravion’s smile tightened. “My dear Colonel, I insist. The dangers are real.”
“The danger is misjudging the tools at our disposal,” Ulrika said, her voice devoid of all inflection. She didn’t look at the thugs. She looked at Tanna. “We have the knight.”
Tanna had not spoken since they entered the tunnels. She had walked, her hand resting on her sword hilt, the new silver ring in her ass a constant, aching focus. The emptiness where her plug had been was a void waiting to be filled with purpose. Now, at Ulrika’s words, she stepped forward. Her movement was not aggressive. It was fluid, almost casual, as if she were stepping up to examine an interesting rock.
The lead thug, an Orcish brute with a scarred scalp and a sneer, chuckled. “This pretty thing? She gonna negotiate our tolls?”
Tanna’s clear blue eyes met his. There was no anger there, no bluster. Only a terrifying, absolute clarity. She drew her sword. The sound was a single, pure note in the damp air.
She moved.
It was not a fighting lunge. It was an artist’s stroke. Her body became a blur of silver and black. The sword, an extension of her will, whistled in a horizontal arc at head level. The thug flinched, too late, squeezing his eyes shut.
He felt a breeze. A gentle scraping sensation across the crown of his skull. A whisper of cold metal against his very skin.
He stumbled back, his hand flying to his head. His fingers met bare, smooth scalp. A perfect, six-inch wide swath of his hair, from his forehead back, was gone, shaved clean as a baby’s bottom. Not a scratch on the skin beneath. The surrounding hair fell in ragged clumps around the new bald stripe.
He stared, dumbfounded, at the clump of his own dirty hair now settling on the cavern floor.
Tanna already had her sword sheathed. She hadn’t broken her stride, simply returning to her place beside Polly, her expression one of mild inquiry, as if waiting for the next order.
For three heartbeats, there was silence. Then the lead thug let out a shrill, undignified yelp. He turned and fled back into the darkness, his comrades tripping over themselves to follow, their boots slapping a frantic retreat into the tunnel’s gullet.
The sound died away.
Dravion stood perfectly still. The dark colour had drained from his face, leaving him the shade of old parchment. His Adam’s apple bobbed once, twice, as he swallowed hard. He looked from Tanna’s serene face to Ulrika’s impassive one, to Brutehilde’s massive, crossed arms. The fiction of his control had been sheared away as cleanly as the thug’s hair.
He was alone with them now. Truly alone.
“Well,” Minnie chirped into the ringing quiet, the squeak of her trolley wheel abnormally loud. “That’s sorted. Anyone for tea? Seems a wee bit chilly now.”
Seems a wee bit chilly now.”
The invitation was a return to normalcy, a reassertion of Minnie’s unshakeable worldview. They moved a few hundred yards further into a side cavern where the floor was relatively flat and dry. Brutehilde nodded, and they began to unpack minimal gear. The silence was no longer charged with immediate violence, but with a watchful, heavy awareness. Dravion hovered at the edge of their circle, his mournful elegance now looking brittle and sharp, like a shard of glass.
“Aye, come on then, yer lordship,” Minnie said, her tone deceptively warm as she fired up her small, enchanted kettle. It hissed to life with a blue flame. “You look peaky. Tea’ll settle yer nerves after that wee scuffle.”
He accepted a carved wooden mug, his fingers trembling slightly around the warmth. Minnie poured a dark, steaming brew from a special pot, not the communal one. She made a show of adding three lumps of fungus-sugar, stirring with a clink that sounded abnormally loud. “Sweet, just how ye like it.”
Dravion drank deeply, eager for the comfort, for the familiar ritual. He didn’t notice the slightly chalky aftertaste beneath the sweetness. Minnie watched him over the rim of her own cup, her cheerful eyes missing nothing. The massive dose of bromide dissolved into his system, a chemical lockdown.
On the other side of the fire, Elophelia stretched, her bones popping. She licked her lips, looking at Scruffulus, who was nervously adjusting his robes. “Fuck, that was tense. I need to unwind. Come here, Scruffy dear. Let’s make some noise to scare off the shadows.”
Scruffulus’s bony face went paler. He leaned close, his whisper a dry rustle. “I dare not, my fiery plum! Not here. Not… not with it out in the open. What if some passing degenerate recognizes the… the donor material? The shape, the distinctive vein pattern… it could be traced back to Willy the Dick’s unfortunate dismemberment!”
Elophelia rolled her eyes, but a sly smile played on her lips. “Fine. Prude. But my cunt’s throbbing. You’ve got a tongue, don’t you?” Her command was quiet but absolute. “Lie down.”
With a resigned sigh that was mostly theatrical, Scruffulus lay back on a spread cloak. Elopelia straddled his face, her knees framing his ears, her red dress rucked up around her waist. She didn’t lower herself gently; she ground herself down onto his mouth, a soft, wet smothering of flesh on bone.
“Eat,” she sighed, her head falling back. “Eat until I’m empty.”
Polly, sharpening her knife nearby, watched. Her hands stilled. She saw the delicious, full curve of Elophelia’s ass rising and falling, the dimples at the base of her spine flexing with each circular writhe. Scruffulus’s hands fluttered, then gripped her thighs, his feeble attempts to guide her rhythm utterly overridden. Polly’s mouth went dry. Elophelia’s skin was like cream in the moss-light, smooth and unmarked.
Polly imagined a tiny silver ring, glinting right beside that pink, clenched hole currently hovering over Scruffulus’s nose. She pictured her own tongue finding it, teasing it, feeling the metal grow warm from Elophelia’s heat. The thought was a bright, sharp ache in her gut. She wondered if the vivacious minx would arch and scream for it, if she’d beg for the permanent weight of ownership. Polly kept the fantasy to herself, her gaze hungry and private.
Scruffulus gurgled beneath the relentless feast, his beard becoming a sopping, dark mat. Elophelia’s juices dripped down his chin, onto his neck. She rode his face with single-minded focus, her breath hitching, her hips developing a frantic, grinding stutter. “Yes, just there, you handsome bony fuck, lick it,” she hissed, her hands gripping her own knees.
Her climax was a silent, shuddering convulsion that pressed her down hard, sealing Scruffulus’s face completely for a long, ten-second count. When she finally rolled off, gasping, he lay sputtering and glistening, a look of dazed triumph on his wet features.
Meanwhile, behind a jagged spear of rock twenty paces away, Lord Dravion fumbled with the laces of his trousers. Frustration, a hot and humiliated itch, had coiled in his groin. The sight of the women, their casual power, their obscene health, always stirred a dark hunger in him. He needed the release, the affirmation. His mind replayed Honeymuff’s tiny, perfect form, the swell of Brutehilde’s arms, the defiant curve of Polly’s ass in her plaid skirt.
He spat into his palm and wrapped his fingers around his soft, cool flesh. He stroked. He thought of the relic he’d stolen, of the wealth it would bring, of the power. He squeezed, willing blood to flow, for the familiar stiffness to rise. Nothing. His cock lay inert, a useless, wrinkling tuber in his hand. A cold panic, different from the fear of Tanna’s blade, slithered through his gut. He pumped harder, twisting, his breath coming in short, angry gasps behind the rock.
His thoughts turned lurid, desperate. He imagined crude, violent scenarios. Still, his body refused to cooperate. It was a profound, silencing impotence, a mute betrayal from his own flesh. A sweat broke out on his brow, unrelated to exertion. He stuffed himself back into his trousers, his hands shaking now for a new reason, a deep, unnameable dread settling in his bones where desire had been.
He returned to the firelight, his face a careful mask of calm over a simmering panic. No one looked at him. Minnie hummed as she poured another round. Brutehilde checked a map against Ulrika’s directions. Tanna polished her sword, the rhythmic shush-shush of cloth on steel a soothing sound. The normalcy was a wall he could not scale.
“Right,” Brutehilde said, standing and stamping her clogs. “Enough respite. We’ve miles of this shite to cover before we hit the Gloomspan. Look alive.”
The tunnel began to change. The walls, once roughly parallel, began to lean inwards, and the solid rock beneath their feet gradually became a treacherous, sloping shale. It was no longer a walk. It was a controlled stumble, then a careful shuffle. Soon, they were using hands as much as feet, finding purchase on jagged outcrops as the path dropped away into blackness below.
“Steady now,” Brutehilde grunted, her wooden clogs scraping for grip as she half-slid, sending a cascade of pebbles into the void. Minnie’s trolley became an anchor, its squeak replaced by the gritty shriek of metal on stone as she braced against its weight.
“The North routes descend to the sunless coasts,” Ulrika called from ahead, her voice echoing strangely in the steep chute. “We are still miles above that sea. It will be downhill until your knees beg for flat land.” The truth of it was in their burning thighs, in the constant strain against gravity’s insistent pull.
They climbed down a particularly sharp drop, a near-vertical face of wet, moss-slick rock. Polly went first, finding fingerholds with a gutter-rat’s instinct, her combat boots braced. “Come on, knight,” she snapped up at Tanna. “Don’t think about the fall. Think about the landing.” Tanna followed, her silver armour scraping loudly, the new ring in her ass sending a bright, distracting spike of sensation through her with every tense, stretching movement.
At the bottom, the tunnel opened into a wider cavern where the air was thick and humid. A shallow, murky pond filled a depression in the floor, fed by a constant drip from stalactites above. The water was alive with sound. Not with drips, but with a wet, rhythmic slapping, a chorus of deep, guttural croaks that pulsed with obscene urgency.
Honeymuff zipped from Brutehilde’s pocket, her tiny wings a frantic blur. “Ooh! What’s that marvellous noise?” She hovered at the pond’s edge, peering into the gloom.
The scene was unmistakable. Dozens of large, pallid frogs, their skin glistening like mucus in Tulip’s green light, were locked in amphibious copulation. They clung to each other in twos and threes, their bulbous bodies shuddering, their long hind legs kicking at the water in a blur of primal motion. The slapping was the sound of their damp bellies meeting, over and over. The croaks were songs of raw, mindless need.
“It’s a fuck-puddle,” Polly said, her nose wrinkling. “A whole pond of horny, slippery bastards.”
“They’re magnificent!” Honeymuff breathed, her tiny face alight with scientific and erotic fascination. “The synergy! The multiplicative potential! I could learn so much!” She darted forward, her small form heading towards a particularly energetic trio near the shore.
“The fuck you will!” Polly’s hand shot out, snatching the pixie from the air. Honeymuff squirmed in her fist. “Let me go! I just want to observe the clutch mechanics! Maybe facilitate a little cross-species—”
“You are not getting knotted by a frog,” Polly snarled, holding her tight. “Your cunt is not a community pond. End of discussion.”
From behind them came a choked, watery sound. They turned. Lord Dravion stood frozen, one hand pressed to his heart, the other clutching his forehead. His eyes, wide with a profound, theatrical horror, were fixed on Honeymuff’s struggling form and the heaving pond beyond. A single, perfect tear traced a path through the dust on his cheek.
Then another. A sob wracked his thin frame. He sank to his knees on the cavern floor, utterly heedless of the damp filth. “The innocence!” he wailed, his voice breaking. “The pure, curious spirit, drawn to the base, slimy carnality! And I… I am powerless to shield her! A guardian unmanned, a sentinel without a sword!”
He tore a small, leather-bound journal and a charcoal pencil from his pack. Through his weeping, he began to scribble furiously, his words punctuated by gasps. “The Slimy Sex-Fiends, the Perverted Pixie and the Crying Cuck,” he intoned to the cavern, as if dictating to an unseen scribe. “A lament in three parts. Oh, the tragedy of witnessed depravity! The exquisite pain of chaste observation!”
Brutehilde stared at him, then at the frogs, then back at his quivering form. “Is he for real?”
“The bromide’s working a treat,” Minnie whispered, looking pleased. “All that feelin’ and nae way to do anythin’ about it. It’s got to go somewhere.”
“It’s going into terrible poetry,” Tulip murmured, watching a strand of frogspooge drift past her boot.
Polly, still clutching Honeymuff, shook her head in disgust. She leaned close to the pixie’s ear. “See what you caused? Now we have to listen to this shite.”
“I still think it’d be interesting,” Honeymuff pouted, crossing her tiny arms.
They left Dravion to his verse and the frogs to their orgy, pushing further into the descending gloom. The slope became less severe, widening into a tunnel tall enough to stand in, but the downward angle remained relentless, a constant pressure on their calves and the balls of their feet. The air grew warmer, carrying new, organic smells: rot, fungus, and the sharp, acrid scent of unwashed bodies.
Wherever they were going, one thing was for certain: it was not uninhabited.
As they descended, the air grew noticeably hotter, heavier, as if they were stumbling down into the world’s own breath. The rock underfoot became slippery with constant, warm condensation. The walls lost their hard edges, taking on a strange, yielding quality.
“Everything’s… soft,” Tanna observed, pressing a gauntleted hand against the wall. It gave slightly, like pressed moss or firm sponge, springing back slowly when she removed the pressure.
“Aye,” Brutehilde grunted, wiping sweat from her brow. “We’re in the lee of something big and slimy. Better than rockfalls. But it feels like the cavern’s throat, doesn’t it?”
The spongy texture absorbed sound, creating a muffled, oppressive silence broken only by their laboured breathing and the squelch of their boots. The heat was a stifling blanket. Even Minnie stopped humming. The air was thick enough to drink.
“We stop here,” Brutehilde declared, her milkmaid blouse sticking to her muscular back. “We can’t march in this soup all night. This’ll do.”
The area was a pocket in the sponge-wall, a slightly wider alcove with a floor that felt like damp, firm foam. They shrugged off packs, the relief immediate. Tulip conjured her soft moss-light, which glowed faintly in the thick, hot air. They broke out rations—tough journey-bread, hard cheese, strips of dried mushroom. Dravion took his portion and retreated to the edge of the light, picking at it disconsolately.
The exhaustion was a physical weight, but for Polly, it was a simmering restlessness. The heat, the closeness, and the memory of the frog pond had stirred a filthy, impatient energy in her gut. She needed to burn it off. Her eyes fell on Honeymuff, who was fanning herself with a crumb of cheese.
“C’mere, mite,” Polly said, her voice a low crackle in the quiet.
Honeymuff zipped over, landing on Polly’s knee. “Yes, oh terrifying but amazingly sexy one?”
Polly didn’t answer with words. She leaned her head back against the spongy wall, opened her mouth, and stuck out her tongue. It was a clear, crude invitation. Honeymuff’s tiny wings fluttered with instant understanding and delight. She skipped up Polly’s sweat-sodden vest, stood on her collarbone, and then, with a mischievous grin aimed directly across the alcove at Dravion, she laid her tiny body down on the broad, wet surface of Polly’s tongue.
She was six inches of perfect, fey curvature. Polly closed her lips gently around the pixie’s lower half, leaving Honeymuff’s head, shoulders, and pert little breasts exposed. Her tiny, pearl-like nipples hardened against the roof of Polly’s mouth. Then Polly began to move her tongue.
It was a slow, deliberate, undulating massage. She rolled the tiny body from side to side, the wet muscle stroking along Honeymuff’s back, her wings, the cleft of her miniature ass. Honeymuff wriggled, not to escape, but to grind herself against the pressure. A tiny, breathy sigh escaped her. She arched her back, pressing her small cunt down against the rough texture of Polly’s taste buds.
Polly’s eyes, heavy-lidded and dark, were locked on Dravion. She sucked gently, the wet sound obscenely loud in the muffled space. Honeymuff, playing her part perfectly, let out a tiny, theatrical moan. “Oh, yes… your tongue is so big… it’s touching everything…”
Dravion watched. The heat, the raw display, the pixie’s taunting cries—they should have sent blood rushing south. He felt a vague, ghostly itch of arousal in his mind, a memory of desire. But below his belt, there was nothing. No stir, no thickening, no response at all.
He glanced down furtively, his heart pounding with a new kind of terror. He willed himself to feel something, anything. He recalled the stolen relic, its cool gemstones. He imagined the wealth, the power, the respect. He visualized Honeymuff, not on a tongue, but under him, begging. His mind conjured the image, vivid and lewd.
His cock lay limp against his thigh. It was as if the connection had been severed. He could see it, he could touch it, but it was just a lump of unfeeling meat, a numb, fleshy appendage with all the erotic significance of a toenail. A cold sweat, separate from the cavern’s heat, broke out across his skin. This was beyond frustration. This was obliteration.
“Here we are, yer lordship,” Minnie’s voice chirped, impossibly cheerful. She was beside him, holding out another steaming mug. “Special blend. For the humidity. Puts the vigour right back in ye.”
He took it numbly. The scent was the same. The taste was the same. He drank it all, a dutiful, doomed man swallowing his own sentence. As the warm liquid hit his stomach, he fancied he felt a final, internal click, a door shutting permanently in some deep, neural vault. The last ghostly itch in his groin vanished. Complete nullity.
He looked back at Polly. She had opened her mouth wider, using the tip of her tongue to lap directly at Honeymuff’s dripping slit, flicking the tiny, swollen nub of her clit. The pixie was shrieking now, minuscule convulsions wracking her frame. The sound was piercing, ecstatic.
Dravion felt nothing. He just felt hollow. He stared at his own useless, nerveless flesh, and a profound, silent despair colder than the deepest tunnel settled into his bones. The game was still afoot, but a fundamental piece of his ability to play it had just been quietly, surgically removed. He was a poet with no passion, a thief with no thrill. He was, in the most intimate sense, a man no longer.