Tales of Ithgar
by Rob
Things were not going well in the life of Elariel, princess of the elven kingdom of Khendos. Her parents had found another suitor for her, and she had been unable to drive this one away with even her most shrewish behavior. The fool continued to profess his love for her and would only praise her beauty, grace, voice, poetry, and anything else that came to his mind. Their “courtship” had lasted long enough that King Valerian had decided the time had come for Elariel to wed. This was unacceptable – she had not spent countless days training in both swordplay and spellcraft so that she might one day be a broodmare for the nobility of Khendos. Deep down she knew that Keleb, her dogged suitor, really did admire her and that her father wanted the best for her, but by the Lady of Light, it was not what Elariel wanted. She finished filling her travel pack and hefted it, looking at her image in one of her many mirrors. She knew she was beautiful, by any standards. That was not what she looked for in this reflection.
Elariel stood about six and a half feet tall and was very slender, with well-shaped if not very large breasts and the legs of a trained dancer. Her golden hair was tied back in an elaborate braid that hung down to her waist, showcasing her perfect oval face, upswept elven ears, and luminous, ever-so-slightly slanted green eyes. Her face was a perfect mixture of youth and maturity – though she had lived for almost sixty years so far, she appeared to human eyes no older than twenty or so. Indeed, she had only recently come of age in elven society. No, she was very comfortable with her beauty – she was looking for something else. Did the reflection show an elf warrior-maid ready for anything, or a uncertain youngling running away from home? After experimenting with a few facial expressions, she decided on one that made her look most capable, and fixed that image in her mind. She was Elariel, daughter of Valerian, Second Princess of Khendos, and a trained spellblade, and now she would make her own way in the world.
Elariel uttered a quick incantation and made a quick gesture, and she vanished from sight. Secure in her cloak of invisibility, she stealthily moved through the halls of her family’s home and out into the tree-city of Khendos. She made her way to a little-used bridge and leapt off, speaking more words of magic that allowed her to softly float to the ground instead of plummeting to her death a hundred feet below. Exhilerated, Elariel started to run, figuring that if she kept a steady pace for four or five hours, she would be far enough from home that she could rest and begin to make more specific plans. The news of her betrothal had caught her unprepared and she had been left with little time to prepare for her flight. With the uncanny grace and stamina of her race, Elariel ran as swift as any deer towards her future.
She was deep in thought, instinctively avoiding trees and other obstacles along the way, tirelessly and easily maintaining her rapid pace, when she was rudely made aware of the many dangers that awaited outside her safe, familiar home. A vine that had been lying on the ground suddenly stretched taut at a few feet off the ground, too suddenly for the daydreaming elf maid to stop. She tried a quick leap over it, but her foot caught and she pitched forward to the ground, managing to roll to her feet when she hit.
At first she was annoyed and confused, but then she saw the impetus for the vine’s sudden movement – goblins. The nasty little humanoids had tied the vine to a tree and lurked in ambush along the game trail that she had been following – they were probably after deer, but they had caught her daydreaming. Furious with herself, she drew her sword and quickly spun about, taking stock of the situation. A mild panic arose. Only six, she thought. I should be able to take six easily. Her heart thudded as she watched them chatter excitedly in their own miserable language, obviously not knowing that she could understand them.
“Oooh, looka what we caught. Much betta than deer, much betta.”
“Yah, we can play with elf before we cook her.”
“Elf, deer, usually don’t make no difference to you!” Cackling laughter from all around.
“Shut yer face or I’ll cut it off!”
“All of ya shuddup! OK, get her now!”
Elariel tensed as the goblins rushed her, each of them four feet tall and all wiry muscle. Her nose wrinkled at their smell, and then she was dodging, thrusting, parrying, slashing, dancing aside…and three of them lay dead or dying. A smile came to her face now, and she looked at the goblins coldly, weaving her sword before her, even uttering a single taunt in their crude tongue: “Which of you sheep-lovers is next?”
The goblins stared at each other in confusion, then one yelled “Haallp!” at the top of its lungs. There was another long pause as Elariel weighed her options, then came the sound of many things moving through the brush.
From the sounds, there must be twenty or thirty of them. She started to run, but just then the remaining three of the original hunting party charged her. She batted aside a spear, ran its wielder through, narrowly avoided another spear thrust, kicked that one in the face, and leapt over the last one’s sword slash while taking its head off with a smooth backswing of her sword.
The little time she took was too long, though, because she was surrounded now. She turned slowly in place, looking deliberately at her dripping sword and then at the small bodies around her, but she was bluffing. In time, with more life-or-death combat under her belt, she might be able to handle this many somehow, but now she was resigning herself to a pathetic, useless death at the hands of goblins. She wanted to cry, but dared not.
The goblins edged forward, weapons ready, and Elariel gave a final prayer to the Lady of Light.
Then one of the goblins, larger than the others, croaked one word: “Alive.”
With a howl, the goblins dropped their weapons and rushed her.
Elariel hurriedly chanted words of magic, and a few of the goblins dropped in their tracks, sleeping soundly. She tried to make her escape past those that fell, but another one had her around an ankle. She kicked at it and dislodged it, but now one wrapped itself around her waist, trying to pin her legs together with its short skinny ones. She grabbed at it to pry it loose, but two more seized her legs and held them fast. Even as she hacked at them more were jumping on her back, grabbing her arms, tearing at her clothes.
Finally, she could no longer stand under their weight and they bore her to the ground, two or three tiny, grimy goblins wrestling each of her limbs and three or four more sitting on her stomach and chest. The other ten or twelve danced around in glee, shouting and gibbering at each other.
The larger one hopped over in front of her, a rictus grin on its twisted face. It was over five feet tall, a giant among its kind, and more strongly built than the rest of the goblins.
“We feast on elf tonight!” it roared, and the rest of the goblins howled madly in appreciation.
Terror gave Elariel a desperate surge of strength, and she twisted one arm free and tried to stagger to her feet. The big goblin jumped squarely on her chest, pushing her back to the ground and driving the air from her.
As she gasped for breath, the brute licked her face and said in the common trade language, “I like it when my dinner fights back. We will fight more later, me and you.”
As Elariel squirmed away from its fetid breath, the goblin stood up. More goblins had seized her arm, and she was once more pinned. In the goblin tongue the leader said, “Strip her clothes and tie her with them!”
Just when Elariel thought the nightmare was at its worst, it reached a new low. A dozen goblins ripped and tore at her clothes, grabbing and pinching and clawing at her as they did. After what seemed like minutes of the foul creatures groping her body, she was naked.
The goblins rolled her onto her stomach and pulled her arms behind her back, where they used scraps of her clothing to cruelly lash her wrists together. More goblins held her legs together and soon her ankles were bound just as tightly.
And still there was worse to come, for while she was being stripped the leader had shouted “Fetch a pole” and there had come the sound of axe meeting wood. Now that she lay bound and helpless, she saw a group of goblins hacking branches from a fresh-cut sapling. When they finished, they lifted up her bound arms and passed it between her wrists and back. The goblins wasted no time in using what was left of her clothes to securely fasten her legs to the sapling at ankles and thighs, then used the vine that began her predicament to bind her torso to the small tree, passing several loops above and below her breasts and also around her waist, pinning her hands to the pole as well. Then, to her horror, several goblins gathered at either end of the pole and lifted it up, suspending her just a couple of feet of the ground.
At a sharp word from the leader, the bearers started off at a swift jog, presumably heading back to the goblins’ camp. The vines and cloth binding her to the pole dug deeply into her skin at each bouncing step of the goblins, and she alternately gave fervent prayers that the bonds would hold so that she would not fall face down into the ground or that they would snap so she would be free of their cutting pressure.
Several other goblins paced her bearers’ progress, taking turns ducking in and groping at her round, firm breasts which were all too obviously presented by gravity and by the vines binding her to the sapling. After several minutes Elariel passed out, the pain, humiliation, fear, and hopelessness of her situation having finally overcome her.
Elariel became gradually aware that she was no longer hanging face down from the pole, and for a moment she could believe that it was only a bad dream. However, it only took a moment to realize that her predicament had taken yet another bad turn. Could it have only been hours ago that her worst problem was an unwanted suitor?
Her wrists and ankles were no longer bound together. Instead, Elariel was spreadeagled, each limb bound to a different tree or shrub by long strips of leather. She was in the forest outside a large cave. A fire was blazing near the entrance, and a makeshift spit was being erected over it. She nearly broke down weeping at the sight. She held in her tears because the goblin leader was standing before her, and she would not show her fear before it. She might die and become food for these miserable creatures, but they would not see her weakness.
The brute looked her up and down slowly, and she caught a gleam of intelligence in its eyes, not just the evil cunning that the goblin race used to keep itself alive. Goblins were like rats – they lived however they could and they bred at an incredible rate. But this was no rodent before her, this was a predator. Of course! It was a hobgoblin, a goblin with troll or ogre or even human blood in its veins. Hobgoblins were rare, but the ones that existed usually exerted control over their lesser brethren by virtue of brute strength or superior intellect or both. Apparently this one was of the last, and worst sort – brains and brawn mixed with a rapacious nature. It spoke in the common tongue once more.
“I think that we have some time before things will be ready for dinner, so it is time for us have some fun, elven whore” it said. It knelt beside her and ran its filthy hands over her lithe body, thoroughly exploring every part of her. She screamed and struggled against her bonds.
The hobgoblin laughed a dark, dirty laugh and continued to probe and squeeze and pinch. Then it stood up and began removing its patchwork armor, and Elariel screamed again. A trickle of blood ran from her wrists as she twisted frantically in her bondage. A group of nearby goblins laughed and hooted, and the leader shouted at them to get back to work. One of them ignored their chief and came over to grope the prisoner for itself. The hobgoblin casually stepped over to the insubordinate goblin, grabbed its throat, and began squeezing.
While her molester was entertaining itself with the death of the other goblin, Elariel tried to calm herself. The strips of leather that bound her were too strong to break, and she could not reach the knots. She could not slip her hands free because the leather cut too deeply into her skin. As the goblin gurgled its last breaths nearby, she took mental inventory of her small repertoire of spells.
She did not think the sleep charm would work on the hobgoblin, and that would only delay the inevitable. Invisibility would be pointless, because she would still be tied down.
With a crash of leaves, the dead goblin thudded to the forest floor. The hobgoblin finished removing its armor and deliberately stretched in front of her, and Elariel shuddered at the thought of it inside her. She was desperate now-- all of her offensive spells required components and focuses, and they were in her pack, wherever that was. She was down to one option, but she didn’t know if it would work on a hobgoblin – it wouldn’t work on trolls or ogres. As hastily and as quietly as she could, she spoke a spell of beguiling.
The hobgoblin leered and kneeled between her legs. “What’s that you’re saying? Are you begging for it, elf slut? Maybe I won’t eat you for a few days if you beg like a –“
It stopped in midsentence, and a look of dismay crossed its face.
“Bronk is sorry, elf lady. Sorry for the terrible thing he said.”
Elariel fought an overwhelming wave of relief. It worked!
“That’s alright, Bronk,” she said soothingly. “We all make mistakes, and I forgive you.”
She wanted to carve out his insides and leave them for the vultures. The hobgoblin looked relieved.
“Now, if you don’t mind, these leather straps are hurting me quite a lot, if you cut them I would be very happy with you.” She would be happy to cut off his member and feed it to him. Bronk hastily looked around and grabbed the first sharp thing he found – her sword! – and with four swift strokes she was free. She gasped as feeling started to return to her hands and feet.
“Now Bronk, if you don’t mind too terribly, please hand me the sword and lie down there and pretend like you’re rutting a goat.” It was all she could think of to delay the goblins from noticing she was free – she wanted to kill the loathsome creature, but for a short time her spell would ensure that he would be her best friend in the world and would give his life to protect her. Elariel fervently hoped the goblin tribe would think he had gone crazy and rip his arms and legs off. She didn’t even notice the strange noises the hobgoblin was making as she ran as fast as she could through the forest, naked as the day she was born and her only possession her gleaming sword.
To Be Continued…