Okay, here we are with the goblin girl story!
Chapter I is below.
Chapter I & II are here for 1$/month.
More chapters will be posted here for my 3$/month Patrons.
Enjoy!
Lucas was just beginning to hunt for a place to make camp for the night when he heard the scream.
It was high-pitched, almost certainly coming from a woman, and was the kind of short scream that conveyed immense, and unpleasant, surprise.
He was just cresting a small hill when it came to him, and though he could not see the person who’d screamed, he saw the chipped dark brickwork of a ruin peeking at him through the trees off to the southeast. Though he had never seen the dark masonry with his own eyes until just that moment, he knew what he was looking at.
Lucas sprinted down the hill, making for the treeline.
He’d like to say that he did it for the sole reason of wanting to save someone from a potentially dangerous situation, but the truth of the matter was that he was feeling impulsive. Perhaps dangerously impulsive.
Hitting the base of the hill, he ran on, booted feet pounding the grass, trampling flowers and breaking through small bushes as he tried to get an idea of what he might be facing. He had a vague sense of motion somewhere in front of the dark structure, and when he hit the forest, he saw the sparks of clashing metal.
Someone was definitely fighting.
“Incoming!” he shouted as he drew his blade.
Both figures seemed to be rather short but that didn’t really matter. What did matter was that one of them was noticeably bonier than the other. He burst through the treeline and into a small clearing in front of the crumbling ruin.
He was greeted with the sight of a goblin woman in a traveling dress fighting a losing battle against what seemed to be a fully armed and armored dwarven undead. She shrieked and ducked under a huge battleaxe as it came for her face.
Lucas considered the situation for about two seconds before he began running forward as fast as he could once more. He screamed an inarticulate battlecry, which caused the dwarven zombie to twist in his direction.
He launched himself feet first directly into the creature.
The goblin woman shrieked again, this time in what he swore sounded like delight, as his boots made contact, dented and then broke the old rusted armor, kept going, and smashed the skeletal thing into its base components.
Lucas landed with a heavy grunt on his back, then groaned as a bone hit him on the forehead. He rolled, twisted, and scrambled back up onto his feet. Where there was one undead, there were almost certainly more.
But as the bones and old armor finished scattering across the clearing, a few clattering against the front of the old structure, he saw and heard nothing.
“That was amazing!” the goblin woman cried, shattering the silence.
Lucas turned to face her and was struck by two things: her lack of armor and her incredible beauty.
The third thing he noticed was the way she was looking at him. Her eyes were wide and she had a massive smile on her face.
“Thanks,” he replied, brushing at his blade before sheathing it. “You...look very out of place here.”
“Because I’m a goblin?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, because you’re wearing a...dress,” he murmured, trailing off as she shifted and one of the straps came loose and he saw most of her chest.
“Oops,” she said, smirking and putting it back in place. Then she sighed in real frustration as she realized that it was cut through. “How in the three hells did he even do that!?” she snarled, trying fruitlessly to get it back in some semblance of working order.
“That was a really close call,” Lucas replied, feeling a lot of very specific things as he watched her work.
Whoever she was, this goblin girl was very...blessed, in certain areas of her body.
With another sigh, she abruptly regained her smile as she snapped her eyes back to him. She twisted so that her shoulder was closer, presenting it.
“Can you help?”
“I can definitely help,” Lucas replied, coming over and leaning forward. She had to be over a foot shorter than him, but that made sense given her race. “Who are you?”
“My name is Izzy,” she replied.
“Izzy…” Ellasandra had told him of a best friend named Izzy, but how many goblin girls had the name of Izzy? Probably a lot. “Good to meet you,” he said as he finished tying the torn strap back together and putting in place. He straightened up. “I am Lucas Mead-Slayer.”
“That sounds familiar,” she muttered.
“My name has...gotten around,” Lucas replied.
“No, I don’t really know any famous humans,” she said, frowning in concentration. “I don’t actually know any humans, but I know of a few humans. And–” Her brilliantly pink eyes widened. “Are you Ellasandra’s human!?”
Lucas chuckled. “Yeah, you could say that...I can’t believe you’re that Izzy. I’m looking for Ellasandra. What in the gods’ names are you doing here? My map tells me Blackstone Forest is still a day or so away.”
“It is,” Izzy replied, eyeing him much more closely, with a great interest, now. “I’m coming back from a journey. A failed one, I might add. And that’s actually why I’m here.” She turned to glare at the dark stone structure. “I was hoping to recover something useful from this old pile of stone.”
“You have to know these old dwarven ruins are almost always guarded or infested by undead, right?” Lucas replied.
She heaved an annoyed sigh. “Yes, Lucas, I know that. Not all goblins are stupid.”
“I didn’t say–”
“I’m good at sneaking,” she continued, and he could see a very specific smile creeping slowly onto her beautiful green face. “And I thought maybe I could get in, grab something, and get out before any of the creepy bastards were the wiser. Only this one was right past the door.”
“Uh-huh,” Lucas replied.
A moment passed. A wind gusted through the trees, making them dance and sway. Somewhere, a bird called loudly, and another answered.
A mating call.
“So…?” Izzy asked, and he saw that she had not only leaned forward, exposing her already well-shown cleavage even more, but now she was swaying slowly back and forth.
“So what?” he replied.
“You gonna help me?”
“You don’t even know me,” he said.
“Hmm. I guess that’s a good point. You could just be lying about knowing Ellasandra...oh! All right, pull down your pants.”
“What?”
“Let me see your left hip,” she said.
That resonated in his head for a moment and abruptly he latched onto why. “Ah...she told you about that.”
“About your thigh scar? Yes. Lemme see and I’ll know it’s you,” she replied, smirking now.
He sighed, undoing his belt. “All right.”
Izzy stepped much closer as he pulled the left side of his pants down. She knelt down and studied his thigh. He waited. She kept studying. He could feel her breath against his bare skin.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” she murmured. He heard her shift and suddenly felt her hands digging in between his pants and his leg.
“Izzy!”
“What!? I need to be sure!” she replied, tugging on his pants, then she laughed.
He sighed and, with a tremendous amount of restraint, he pulled up his pants and belted them again. “You sure now?”
“Yeah,” she murmured, still on her knees.
She looked up at him, and expectant smile on her face, then she looked disappointed when he asked, “What now?”
Izzy sighed and got to her feet. “Well, Lucas, Slayer of Mead, would you be so good as to accompany an innocent, defenseless goblin girl into the big scary ruin so that I don’t come back completely empty-handed?”
“You are not innocent,” he muttered.
“What was that?” Izzy asked immediately, trying, and failing, to stare him down.
He stared back at her, then smiled. He couldn’t help it. There was something about her, something that Ellasandra had complained about many, many times, that brought out what some might call the worst in him.
“You aren’t innocent, Izzy. Not after all I heard about you.”
“What absolute nonsense did you hear from Ella about me!?” she snapped.
“All the tricks you played on her. The pranks and the goofs. And all the time you spent ensuring that Kora was clean,” he replied. Ellasandra had told him that a lot too.
Izzy immediately stiffened and then reddened in the face. “Yeah, well, I won’t apologize for any of it,” she fired off eventually.
“I wasn’t looking for an apology. That being said, I believe you about the defenseless part,” he said.
Her expression immediately changed into one of excited challenge. “I could kick your ass. Any time, any day, human!”
He almost, almost, challenged her then and there. He knew she’d take it, she wanted it, and that he wanted it, too. But he felt certain he knew what it would lead to before too long of them rolling around in the dirt together.
And this was an unsafe place.
“Don’t tempt me,” he said finally.
“Oh please, please be tempted,” Izzy shot back, grinning more broadly than ever as she leaned forward again.
He actually felt himself tremble. How long had it been? He knew exactly how long it had been. Nine months and almost one day.
Way past way too long.
“I am,” he said as he got control of himself, “but this isn’t the place for it.” Izzy stared at him for a moment longer, then something inside of her actually seemed to agree with him, and she lost her lusty look. It was replaced by an annoyed and vaguely angry one.
“You’re right,” she muttered glumly.
“Are you serious about going in there?” he asked, looking again to the stone structure.
Now that he was closer, he saw that it was built fairly deeply into a hillside. The earth crept up along its side and over its roof, and where it ended, vines crawled along the brickwork and clung like lifeless snakes. Though the structure still seemed sound, cracks and decay were obvious all over its face.
He’d still never heard a sure answer about the true age of these places.
“I am serious,” she said. “I don’t want to disappoint Ella more than I’m already going to.”
“Well, all right. I know I can handle zombies, especially if they’re this far gone,” Lucas said, nudging the nearest bone with his boot.
“Perfect! Let’s go find some treasure!” Izzy declared.
“Wait, you should probably stay out here.”
“No! I want to go inside!” she replied, surprisingly petulant. Although Lucas had to admit, he was hearing exactly what he’d heard from Ellasandra on her worse days, when what she called her ‘inner goblin’ escaped more easily.
“Izzy–”
“You don’t take me seriously! I can defend myself!” she snapped.
“I’m not saying that you can’t, Izzy. I fought alongside Ellasandra for a year, I know what goblins can do. I’m saying you have no armor.” He paused. “You also appear to have no traveling pack. And no weapon.”
“Oh. Um. Yeah,” she murmured sheepishly. “I...lost my travel pack yesterday.”
“How?” he asked, genuinely curious. That was a fairly big deal for a traveler.
She giggled awkwardly. “I was climbing a tree. For...reasons. That aren’t important. And one strap on my pack had already broken, so it was laying awkwardly, and then, well, it fell off me. Into a ravine. With a river.”
“Uh-huh. And how about you weapon?”
Here she stopped meeting his eyes, blushing again. Though, he imagined, for a different reason. “I got angry and threw it...down another ravine.”
“...all right, wow,” he muttered.
“Shut up!” she growled, crossing her arms.
“Fine, fine. I won’t say anything. I guess I’ve done some pretty stupid shit when I was pissed before. I am suggesting it for your safety, though. I will go inside and investigate.”
Izzy gave him a calculating look. He waited. His experience with Ellasandra, and a few others, had taught him that goblin trust was hard won. Though they were often quick to trust each other, too often in his opinion, the opposite was typically true for outsiders. And humans most certainly counted as outsiders.
Which was why he was honestly shocked that Izzy was talking to him in such a familiar, open manner.
Ellasandra must have told her a lot about their time together and really imprinted a sense of trustworthiness on his image.
“I still want to go inside, but not because I think you’ll rip me off, but because I...have reasons,” she said, not quite looking at him again.
“Reasons, huh?” he asked.
“Yes! Reasons! Lucas! Can I have my reasons!?” she snapped.
He chuckled. “Yes, Izzy, you can have your reasons. All right. Just...stay behind me, run if there’s real trouble, and do as I say.”
“Make me,” she replied. He began to sigh and she quickly cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m, uh-that just slipped out. I’m listening, I’ll do as I’m told.”
“Thank you. Now let’s do this.”