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Deep underground, three ten-foot-long monstrosities curled through the stalagmites of an underground cavern, barely visible in the pale light provided by patches of spongy, luminous fungi. The creatures resembled worms, though each massive body segment was covered with dirty red chitinous plates; or perhaps some kind of snake, though no snake had ever displayed a slobbering, tendriled mouth such as the ones that the creatures were utilizing to gobble down the rapidly-decomposing remains of a band of unfortunate Grunge Elf warriors who were scattered about the area. There was no mercy for those who fell to the unfathomable terrors of the Netherdeep.
You'd have to be a half-mad, overconfident glory hound to even think of setting foot down here.
"Hoody Hoo!"
With a well-practiced war whoop, a scale-armored whirlwind of death leaped from a shadowed passage opening high on one craggy wall, landing lithely next to one of the giant worms' center segments and proceeding to tear through its thick hardened scales with a gleaming ice-blue sword, scattering chunks of worm chitin and gore like they were salsa. Closer examination would reveal this figure to be an Elf, with a svelte body, long, luxurious dark hair, deep green eyes, and finely-chiseled facial features currently set in a joyous grimace.
Equally enthusiastic, albeit less vocal, was a ruddy, plate-mailed dwarf who barreled down a steep slope like an avalanche to crash into a second worm. He brought a pick down on its writhing head segment with such force that it could have shattered a stone wall. It sent blood spraying, painting the nearby spires of rock with dark, viscous ichor.
That worm pulled back, rearing, and was immediately struck by a bolt of acid that engulfed its wounded face and began reducing its exposed mesodermal tissue to porridge. The magical substance had been launched from the hands of a statuesque, sepia-skinned woman in fitted battle robes, standing on a ledge overhead.
Dwarfed beside her robed partner was a pale young woman with short black hair and an iron-shod staff in one hand, staring down at the battle below with a look of intense concentration. Despite this focus, she still shifted uncomfortably and adjusted her outfit with her other hand. She was wearing what could generously be called "chain mail," assuming the only parts of her body in need of protection were the lower areas of her small high breasts and the upper parts of her equally-tight ass.
The first worm, enraged, attempted to squash the elf that was offending it, but the warrior woman barely threw herself backward out of range of its flailing tail. An instant later, a tiny skewer flew through the air and embedded itself deeply in the creature. It roared with pain out of proportion to the size of the attack, creating an opening for the elf to dive back in and continue butchering it. High up near the roof of the cavern, a foot-tall bombshell with tattoos and shimmering dragonfly wings pumped her fist before reloading her pea-shooter crossbow.
"YEAH!" she cheered, her delicate antennae twitching up excitedly out of her blonde, pixie-cut (if you'll pardon the expression) hair. "Direct hit with that Bolt of Hellacious Pain!"
"Save the help fer someone who needs it, Sugarleaf! Yer makin' it too easy!" the elf, Qitara Eneromas, grinned as she finished off the giant worm. The pixie-fairy stuck out her tongue cutely in return, but it went unnoticed in the melee.
Up on the ledge above, the battlemage Bahareh Manesh let loose her prepped cerulean Chromatic Orb at the second worm, while closely watching the third worm in the rear of the cavern, which was starting to make odd retching motions with the tip of its body, as if it was about to cough up a hairball. "Looks like it's ready to belch, Lei. You ready?" As she watched, she fingered the compartments of her spell component pouch hanging by her side, taking a mental inventory that she had everything she needed.
"Yes, Baha. Just like you told me," the cleric Lei Shei answered. Unlike a battlemage, she couldn't prep a spell and hold it half-cast, ready to release it at a moment's notice, so timing was crucial.
"Start casting... now," Bahreh directed. Drawing a breath, Lei began the process of calling on the power of Navinger, the mortal-turned-gawd of Love (and Hunting).
Just as the creature below disgorged a quickly-expanding cloud of foul vapors from its slimy maw, Lei finished her spell. The creature must have been thirty yards away, but like one of Navinger's mildly-famous arrows, the magical effect crossed the distance in a flash.
There was no visible effect, but confident in their comrades' abilities, the combatants below lunged into the cloud to converge on the remaining creature and slaughter it. "Smells minty fresh!" the pixie-fairy commented, as she let loose a new close-range volley of crossbow bolts.
Up on the ledge, Baha give her friend a hearty slap on the back that almost sent her tumbling down onto a sharp spike of stone fifteen feet below. "Looks like the sage al-Qazwini was right. A Purify Food and Drink spell WILL nullify the gas of a Belch Worm."
"Good," Lei mumbled towards the ground, fidgeting with one of the sharp metal spikes protruding from her chainmail brassiere. She tried to avoid looking at Baha. Unlike herself, Baha was dressed in robes, but the way those robes hung over her chest left no question that there was a lot of woman underneath. And that portion was, incidentally, directly at the petite Lei's eye level.
Luckily a distraction was soon in coming, as the olfactorily-neutralized remaining Belch Worm was quickly piled on and dispatched by the vicious trio of warriors below.
"Alright, looks like it's all clear," concluded Qitara, wiping her ichor-soaked blade off on a small cloth and then sheathing it. "Time to call in the hirelings. C'MON DOWN, YOU FRICKIN' FREELOADERS! GET A MOVE ON!"
Slowly and systematically, a group of a dozen bedraggled packbearers, torchbearers, scroll caddies, and all-purpose lackeys emerged from the dark passageway overhead. Attaching a system of ropes to secure outcroppings of rock overhead, they began the process of lowering first the spellcasters, then the party's goods, and finally themselves safely to the cavern floor below.
Despite Qitara glaring at them impatiently, the hirelings were visibly relieved. With all of the adventurers' hands needed on deck to fight the Belch Worms, they had been completely unprotected in the rear, vulnerable to sneak attacks by any number of subterranean skulks. Luckily, that was a risk that their employers were willing to take. After all, they probably would have been alerted by the screams of pain if anything HAD happened.
"What's the yield on these things, Baha?" Qitara questioned, as the two spell-lobbers rejoined their comrades below.
Baha furrowed her brow as she mentally pored back over long-ago read bestiaries. "Their hide can be used to make armor that protects against poison and gas attacks. Probably worth hauling along to sell off."
"You heard the spell-jockey, folks!" Qitara repeated at higher volume towards the hirelings, somehow looming over them despite standing at least half a head shorter than most. "Start skinning these suckers. You think we're paying you one gold a month to stand around?"
The hirelings eyed the bloody corpses of the hideous monsters with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. The foul gasses that fermented in their intestines were now slowly leaking out of various ruptured bladders within the corpses, filling the air around them with an almost palpable miasma.
"Yes, ma'am!" piped up the one ray of perkiness among the crowd: a curvy, dark-skinned half-elf, her thick, curly black hair tied back in poofy twin pigtails. Despite appearing as grimy and bedraggled as her peers, she pulled a skinning knife out of one of the many pouches hanging from her leather girdle, worked it under the nearest worm's scales next to one of its sword-inflicted lacerations, and got to work. Wearily, the others took deep breaths and followed.
Qitara smiled maternally at the half-elf - Mele. There was a hireling for you. She was worth twice as much gold as the others. Except that actually, you could probably cut Mele's wages and she'd still stay on, just for the love of the game. Now that was a thought...
The imperious party leader's train of thought was interrupted by Sugarleaf, fluttering down to her eye level, her short blonde hair waving slightly. She was even more lightly armored than your average thief, the better to expose the intricate tribal tattoos that stretched across her face, arms, and legs.
"I think we can set up camp here. Only two main exits," the pixie-fairy reported. "Should be easy enough to stand guard. There are a few little vents and cracks around, but not much could get at us through those."
"Slimes could," the dwarf Kromdan Hammerpride countered, striding up to join the conversation, hooking his magical Pickaxe of Breaching back on his belt.
"Or oozes," Baha put in.
"Phase Spiders."
"Whooping Cave Crickets."
"Shadow Schnauzers."
"You mean Shadow Mastiffs?"
"Same thing."
"We'll take our chances," Qitara cut them off. "Besides, we've got Sugarleaf here." The pixie-fairy grinned and tapped the Emphkrin tattoo on her forehead: a symbol that, through closely-guarded fairykin magic, gave her a telepathic aura that would keep any of them from being caught completely by surprise by any sentient threats.
"Now I, for one, am ready for a rest," Qitara declared. "Camp protocols, folks!"
Lei began, circling between the other adventurers and assessing the severity of their wounds. Then she lay her hand on each of them and, invoking the power of Navinger, sent cleansing healing magic coursing through them, sealing wounds, eliminating infection, and clearing minor fungal infections between their toes. Such was the mighty power of the gawds.
Last, Lei approached Baha. She hesitated. "Baha, do you need a little healing?"
"Aw, no need. I'm barely scratched up," the robust mage responded.
"That's okay," Lei insisted. "It's just a minor one. It's spare."
"Well okay, then. Lay it on me."
Lei briefly contemplated 'accidentally' pressing her hand against Baha's soft, inviting, and distractingly large bosom, but decided at the last minute that she was not ready to literally die of shame. She settled for Baha's waist, which was equally voluptuous but more hidden by the cut of her battle robes.
"Ahh, that feels great," Baha moaned, stretching out her arms above her head and shuddering with pleasure. Certain parts of her anatomy took a moment to settle back down afterward.
Lei's whole body flushed beet red. "Okay, um... everyone's all patched up," she managed to announce, at a level that was loud for her and barely conversational for anyone else.
"Baha's turn!" Sugarleaf added eagerly.
As her party gathered around her expectantly, Baha sighed and began the well-practiced sounds and gestures of the cantrips she had prepared for this occasion. On this occasion, those mystic gestures looked a lot like scratching her armpits, for she directed the spell of Dispel Body Odor at her party leader.
Qitara immediately sighed in relief as the sweat, grime, and lingering particles of a full day of hacking were whisked away. "Gawds, that's better. Can't rest smelling like a frickin' Burple Worm."
Baha then repeated the process four more times. Sugarleaf gave a happy twirl at the feeling of magic washing over her tattoo-covered skin. Lei smiled shyly at her. Even the laconic Kromdan grunted appreciatively - just because he was a Berserker who sometimes fell into unstoppable slaughter-filled rages didn't mean he liked being smelly.
Casting the last Dispel Body Odor on herself, Baha felt immediately dry and clean, the perspiration of adventuring vanishing. On a body as full-figured as hers, the sweat could really build up in certain folds.
She followed up the process with a Clean spell tailored to cloth, which removed most of the grime from the assembled group's clothes, both over- and under-. Then, to cap it off, the most difficult spell by far of their camping ritual: Gandle's Humble Hut. Fingering the small crystal bead that was the material component for the spell, she furrowed her brow and concentrated on the ritual. At the conclusion, the bead shattered and a 15-foot-wide opaque sphere sprang into being around the group, which would easily last through the morning. Within it, the chill damp of the underground caverns immediately became a pleasant twenty-odd degrees, and at Baha's mental command, a pleasant light spread through it. This would be the party's space to rest pleasantly, with a measure of privacy from the hired help, to boot.
Not for the first time, Baha wondered if it was wise to devote so much of her spell repertoire to what were essentially luxuries. Instead of preparing those cantrips, she could have more Chromatic Sphere or Sleep spells to lob in a pinch. And as a native of the deserts of Dijishy, she was no stranger to environmental extremes in temperature - there were ways to stay healthy without giving up a spell slot that might have been a Lightning Bolt or Fireball.
Regardless, she'd memorized the cantrips, so she might as well use them. And next was Baha's favorite. Setting aside enough iron rations for the four demihuman adventurers (and an assortment of carefully-preserved, magically potent herbs for Sugarleaf's unique digestive system), Baha cast Flavor on them, concentrating hard on the particular flavors of lamb, rice, and spices that she wanted to instill them with. Her life had led her down the path of a Battlemage, but she took more pleasure in passing along the flavors of her childhood than in incinerating bulettes with lightning bolts. Well. ALMOST as much pleasure, anyway.
The party enjoyed their meal, with many compliments to the more-or-less-chef, while the hirelings finished their grueling skinning, unpacking, and cooking tasks. At which point it was time for their group's final daily ritual.
"ALRIGHT, LINE UP!" Qitara bellowed at the hirelings. "Time to announce the Hireling of the Day! As always, winner gets the Last Dispel Body Odor."
After they had duly lined up, she announced "Drumroll, please!" The bedraggled hirelings did not respond until Qitara glared at them, forcing a listless slap of hands on legs. "For excellence in skinning and noticing that medicinal fungus earlier this morning, the Hireling of the Day is... Mele!"
"Oh my gosh!" Mele exclaimed with a squeal, slapping her hands to her cheeks in excitement. "I can't believe I've won again!"
Judging from the expressions on her peers' faces, they had no trouble believing it.
"Keep up the good work, kid," Qitara grinned at her. It was a good thing Mele was so consistently exceptional, because hell if she could remember the names of any of the others.
As Baha transformed Mele from a filthy hireling into a clean, fresh-smelling hireling, Qitara took a moment to appreciate the woman's body - hard muscle, topped with padding in the appropriate places. And she might be a half-breed, but the human softening of her angular elven features made her dark face attractive in an exotic way. Perhaps they should think about instituting another Hireling of the Day bonus. Such as getting to sleep inside the Humble Hut dome. Of course, that would leave less room, so they might have to sleep a bit close together...
But time enough for that later. Right now it was time to rest and prepare for another day of hacking.
-----
The next morning, Baha was up bright and early... a figure of speech in the Netherdeep, of course. But her well-honed internal clock had told her that it was time for her morning studies - studies that could spell the difference between life and death for a battlemage. Mentally commanding a low light to rise within the sphere, she propped one of her battered, heavy tomes propped up against a rock, hunched her tall, toned body over, and muttered to herself as she inscribed the rituals within to her mind, priming them as potential magical energy to be released violently at a later time.
Finishing her first Munz's Bolt of Acid, Baha took a moment to stretch her body. Her neck cracked twice as she rotated it in both directions.
"Hi, Baha," piped Sugarleaf, fluttering down to Baha after a pass around the cavern to check that all was well. "Memorizing spells?"
"Yep," Baha answered absently. She flipped through the pages of her spellbook to find her next task. Polymorph to Amphibian, or a Sidewinder Fireball? She didn't need the range underground, but being able to throw a fireball around a corner could come in handy in the Netherdeep...
"Looks pretty hard to focus," Sugarleaf commented.
"I'm used to it," Baha responded, resigned.
"It would be a lot easier at a desk, though, wouldn't it? Didn't someone say you have a spell that creates, like, a whole HOUSE, with beds, and a study desk, and all that?"
"Yes..." Baha answered, focusing suspiciously on her pixie-fairy friend's innocent-looking face. "It's called Zargosa's Lodge of Protection, it's an even more difficult spell than the Hut, and Qitara's been trying to get me to memorize it for weeks just so she can sleep in a bed at night. Not happening. No way in hell."
"Okay, but hear me out..."
"It's too complicated for me to spell-jack. I'd have to pass up Fireball Volley for it."
"Okay, but you see..."
"My Battlemagic mentor Sapphire Lotus would start rolling over in his dwarven tomb."
"Okay, but the THING IS," Sugarleaf began gesticulating in excitement, "If I hear it right, that spell makes a whole-ass STRUCTURE, right? And it would last for almost half a day if you wanted? And it's even stronger than stone?"
"Maybe slightly stronger," Baha conceded. "The spell uses the materials in the environment at hand but they're magically hardened. So what?"
"So I'm in charge of camp security, and I think it'd REALLY help us if you had one of these prepared each day. Think about it - in a cavern like this, you could drop the whole structure up against one of the exit passages, and point the door towards the inside. Nothing short of a Swak-Iron Dragon would be able to break through. Then, with only one point of entry, we'd only have one exit to keep watch at, and we'd be able to do a better job at it, to boot!"
"But..." Baha paused. "Damn, Sugarleaf, that's good spell tactics."
"Pixie-fairies are magical creatures. We have INSIGHT."
"I guess we haven't needed Fireball Volley in a while... the fighters have been doing a good job clearing out monsters with minimal support. Hmm. Fine. We'll try it for one day, but no promises after that, okay?"
"Fair enough!" Sugarleaf chirped. To be honest, she had grown up sleeping in the trees and glades of Periwinkle Isle, and beds didn't mean much to her. But now Qitara owed her a hundred gold.
-----
Once spells had been prepared and the camp loaded back onto the hirelings' backs, the party set off again, headed, as ever, downward. Their theoretical destination was the Lost City of Thar'kol, said to have been cast deep beneath the earth during the War of the Tablet of Ages, and supposedly full of ancient relics. Honestly, their lead... a heavily-notated map won from a drunken Gnomeling over a round of bones in a tavern... did not seem reliable, but it had successfully led them to an entrance to the Netherdeep, at least, and the plunder had been decent so far.
The new day was quiet for a while - a few cave denizens fleeing from their path, a cavern of glowing quartz crystals that ultimately proved not valuable enough to bother carrying. But then they came upon a tunnel that was clearly hewn. Kromdan quickly announced that the workmanship was ancient, and too half-assed to be dwarves or elves. Not Drow, Duergar, or Derro, then - which meant it could be Thar'kol.
The excitement lasted until the path led to a bridge. It was a flat-topped stone arch, weathered by time but still apparently sturdy. It spanned a huge cleft in the earth, which extended far out of sight both above and below them. A diffuse luminescence from far below created just enough ambient light to dimly see. The bridge must have been twenty feet wide - a pretty impressive feat of engineering, but still a chokehold, and any guardrails that might have existed had long since been lost.
"Well, that's an ambush waiting to happen," Qitara muttered.
"Want me to scout ahead?" Sugarleaf offered.
"Do it."
The stealthy pixie-fairy flew out into the darkness of the cavern and returned quickly.
"Sure enough, we've got like a dozen re-gens lurking on the other side," she announced quietly. "And they look ready to throw down."
"Trolls? What kind?" Baha demanded.
"I dunno, butt-ugly? Warty skin, black eyes, crested fins on their heads?"
"Do they have weapons?"
"Yeah, like spears and some kind of hide armor."
"Crested Gutter Trolls," Baha concluded. "We should be able to take 'em with Operation Spitfire. Can't be too many more hidden away, they only live in tribes of a dozen or so. Two dozen, max, but even that's unlikely."
"Copy that."
Soon, Qitara was charging across the bridge like a total maniac, sword drawn, letting loose her Angawa Battle Cry. Operation Spitfire was just her kind of plan.
A gaggle of trolls, lying in wait for the loud, bumbling adventuring group, came charging out of the darkness on the far end to meet her head-on. They were heedless of the danger of getting knocked off the bridge - a fall of any height couldn't kill a troll, each of which was endowed with crazy regenerative powers, but it would turn any other opponent into pulverized meat, which could presumably then be looted and devoured.
They were not expecting the simul-cast pair of fireballs that Baha lobbed skillfully across the bridge, centered on Qitara herself. The fighter gritted her teeth as the intense magical heat burst around her, but the aura emanating from her gleaming Frost Brand sword protected her from almost all harm.
The trolls weren't so lucky. Caught off-guard and seared by one of the only things that could truly hurt them, several of them stumbled off the bridge and let out long wails as they fell to their doom below - the fall below would finish off their flame-seared bodies. The others were quickly overwhelmed by the skillful fighter, who set about her with vicious thrusts, sweeps, and a Round House Groin Kick that sent another troll plummeting to its death (and made its last moments particularly unpleasant).
Then another figure loomed out of the darkness of the opposite passage - a hulking, muscular troll, gaudily decorated with skulls hanging off its body from strips of leather, the crest on its head oiled and gleaming in the dim light. Another troll led it forward, chattering excitedly in trollkin gibberish and pointing toward the intruders. And behind those two, the passage bulged with more warty, muscled humanoid bodies...
Almost simultaneously, they all felt the presence of more hostiles approaching, through the faery-kin magic of Sugarleaf's tattoos. "We got trolls on our six!" boomed the voice of Kromdan, who had been bringing up the rear to protect the lootbearers.
"Hold 'em off, we'll support you ASAP!" yelled Baha. "Fireball incoming!" She let loose a Sidewinder Fireball that swung around and exploded at the entrance to the passage at the far end of the bridge. Most of the trolls fell back in the face of the blaze, but the leader seemed to shrug it off, apparently unburned. It charged forward to clash with Qitara, wielding an intricately carved staff that fizzed with power as it impacted the elf's blade.
That troll must have its own fire resistant magics in place. Pretty well-prepared for trolls. Wait a minute... something clicked in Baha's mind.
"Uh, Qitara?" Baha shouted across the bridge.
"What? I'm a little busy here!" Qitara was trading blows with the troll leader, her sword spraying thick blood off the bridge in wide arcs.
"I think I made a mistake! Gutter Trolls live in groups of a dozen or so. Crested-Gutter Trolls live in tribes of up to two hundred and usually have spellcasters."
"Dammit, Baha!"
But there was little time to rethink their tacticals. A cry of alarm went up in the passage behind the party. The hirelings started pouring out of the passageway, jostling up against Baha and pushing her forward onto the bridge.
"Kromdan's out of position!" Lei reported, as she was carried forward by the crowd. "He's got Hack Lust!" One of the banes of a Berserker (along with its close relative, Hack Frenzy) - it was anyone's guess as to when his thirst for violence would be sated. But he must have been drawn away from his chokepoint, because a veritable horde of trolls was spilling forth from the groups rear, dragging away the hirelings as they grabbed their hapless legs, arms, or backpacks with strong, wiry arms, straps breaking and small articles being thrown every which way.
Not a combat specialist, Lei was in a panic. She scrabbled backward, further onto the bridge, as a troll burst its way through the melee to lunge towards her with leering eyes. "Eyesup'ere!" she gasped out, activating the enchantment of her Chain Mail Bikini of Remote Eye-Gouging. The troll stumbled as invisible force jabbed it in both of its eyes, and before it could recover Baha melted its face off with an acid bolt.
In the meantime, the dauntless Qitara had finished off the troll priest (through an excellent execution of the Who's-Yer-Mamma Ankle Wrench technique, an elegant decapitation when the hulking troll fell to its knees, and then kicking the twitching head off the bridge). She fell back to protect the spell-lobbers.
"Baha, bring Fireball Volley on-line and start lobbing them down the passage ahead. We'll push our way though."
"I don't have a Fireball Volley! I memorized the Lodge spell instead, like you and Sugarleaf have been asking!"
"Well, why the hell did you listen to us?" Qitara shouted. "And where the frick is Sugarleaf, anyway?"
Sugarleaf had been participating in the battle from her favorite position: many yards away, fluttering in midair in the dark, where absolutely nobody could reach her or even knew she was there. She only had to share her space with a few cave bats, who were flying here and there in a panic but who were not in the practice of hassling humanoids, even ones with beautiful butterfly wings. Well-placed bolts from Sugarleaf's pea-shooter crossbow were, at the very least, delaying the rate at which the besieged hirelings were being dragged off.
She was therefore in an excellent position to see one more Troll emerge from the shadows across the bridge - a short slouching specimen mostly obscured by robes. Reaching into the depths of its robes, it began to mutter something and pointed at the unsuspecting heroes. A spellcaster! The perfect target for her last Bolt of Hellacious Pain. There was nobody nearby to say a badass one-liner to, so as she notched the magical projectile into her weapon, she muttered one to herself: "You must be the garbage, because I'm about to waste you with my crossbow." Maybe that wordplay was too subtle. She would workshop it later.
Alas, the shot went wide, the dark, distance, and strange subterranean air currents combining to ruin her badass moment. "Firk ding blast!" Sugarleaf swore.
The troll's spell went off, and innumerable ten-foot-long rubbery black tentacles burst forth from the bridge, grabbing at hero, hireling, and Troll alike, seeking purchase and grips to suck out their life force. Baha shouted with pain as one tentacle grabbed her arm, and another slid up underneath her battle robes and wrapped itself around her left tit. Many a man had mentally weighed their potential as handholds, but none had ever crushed one with such extreme force. She attempted to struggle free, but it was like trying to out-muscle a python. Another tentacle slid around Lei's lithe body, sliding under the thin chains that held her chainmail bikini to her perfect, smooth, flesh, then starting to probe at her delicate mouth as she cried and attempted to turn her head away. Meanwhile, Qitara was savagely chopping at the tentacles honing in on her, but it appeared to be only a matter of time until she was overwhelmed.
Things were not looking good, but maybe this was one of those spells where you could disrupt the spellcaster's concentration. Sugarleaf adjusted her angle, ready to put a sharp bolt straight through his frickin' ear hole.
Suddenly she cried out, her scalp afire with pain as a clawed hand gripped it, another scaly red arm whipping around to claw at the arm holding the crossbow. Trying to twist free, Sugarleaf caught mere glimpses of a hideous horned demon crushing her delicate wings as it pulled her toward its chest. A high-pitched voice hissed into her ear, "Naughty little pixie plaything, bothering the master like that!"
Sugarleaf struggled, but the creature was two feet tall (a full half a foot taller than her!) and supernaturally strong, and she could feel poison burn at the scratches it had left on her arm... If only she'd seen him coming, her training in Fairie Kind Martial Arts would have let her open a can of whoop-ass all over it, but somehow it had evaded her trained thieves' senses. As if sensing her thoughts, the thing tittered. "Pretty toy didn't suspect a few wee batsies, but one was a quasit, it was!"
Back down at the bridge, Qitara hacked off Lei's tentacle at the base, and it immediately dissolved into a long puff of darkness that disappeared into the general gloom. The cleric fell to the ground, coughing. "Time to regroup and hack another day!" Qitara announced. "Baha, Feather Fall!"
Baha barked out the spell, a short incantation that did not require the use of her hands or any material components from her pouch. Only her intense Battlemage training, however, allowed her to maintain her concentration in the face of the tentacle's crushing constriction of her breast.
Just as Qitara was about to free Baha, however, her body froze, sword still raised in the air. A Hold spell? That was bad news...
Lei was right next to Baha, looking stricken and frozen with fear. With no time to think, Baha lifted her legs, (leaving her held aloft only by the two tentacles gripping her upper body, much of her body weight pulling down on her much-abused tit), and delivered a powerful two-legged kick to the cleric, sending her lightweight body careening off the side of the stony bridge.
"Baha!" Lei shouted, as she floated down the deep chasm at the rate of about two feet a second. From up above, all she heard from her friend was swearing. Then even that ceased.
-----
Baha awoke groggy and disoriented. She couldn't remember whether the life-sucking tentacles had put her under, or whether more spells had come at them; and she was quite surprised that she was alive. She groaned, becoming alive to the cold, and the pain in her bruised arm and left breast - the latter of which was red and swollen to an even more prodigious size, like a large, angry grapefruit.
She had a good view of her body because she was naked - lying on a cracked stone floor with something around her neck. It was some kind of jougs - a thick, crude metal collar, attaching her by an equally crude but manifestly sturdy chain to an eye-bolt on the adjoining wall.
Battlemagic took a great toll on one's body, and to even hope to become a practitioner, you had to be stronger and hardier than your average wizard. (You didn't necessarily have to be a large person overall, though the hard-drinking, epicurean lifestyle enjoyed by many of her colleagues did tend to give them a little more heft around the gut.)
Baha did not have a beer belly. She was merely Amazonian. Six feet tall, strong, Junoqesque, her deep reddish-brown skin glowed with health. And since she was young, her mind had been equally well-honed: she'd been a bright, inquisitive, and fearless child.
Her Hasheri family attributed her many gifts to the genetic legacy of her great-grandmother, supposedly an equally formidable woman. Although her parents had been proud, however, there was one obvious issue: it would be a challenge to find her a prospective husband in Dijishy who she did not intimidate the hell out of. After much discussion involving every corner of the extended family, she had been sent off to the illustrious Academy of the Flaming Sword, famous across Garweeze Wurld for their courage, sound judgment, and ability to blow shit up.
"You're awake," said a voice in rough, low Common.
The Troll picking its ear on a crude stone seat nearby was not a strapping specimen: it stood somewhere in height in between Baha and the ten-foot-tall crested specimens she'd been battling, or it would be if it had better posture. It was particularly ugly, and skinny, with a goofy overbite and an expression of disdain, and dirty black robes. In short: a troll nerd.
They were the only two living things present in a large smooth stone room, which could have been a castle suite that had seen better days - much better days. The area was sufficiently lit by mage-lights to reveal that it was filthy, and cluttered with bones, knick-knacks, and discarded robes... other than the chain-length semicircle around Baha, which had been fastidiously cleared of anything that she might be able to reach. Several parts of the wall seemed to have been filled in with some kind of disgusting-looking wattle and daub, leaving only two exits that looked a little small, but manageable, for a troll.
Baha took this in and faced the troll as defiantly as she could with her tits out. "You're a Spell Monger. A Troll Mage."
The highly-intelligent troll spellcaster examined the contents of its nose, with no reply.
"Where are my friends!?"
"Well," it considered, "Most of the men are probably in the stew pot, and the female ones are probably getting stuffed to the gills with troll dick right now."
Baha found herself at a loss for words. The troll continued placidly.
"This tribe is a major exporter of Trollkin, you see. Plenty of your squishy kings want them for their armies, and they need to come from somewhere. Sometimes they come from dumb adventurer cunts like you."
Baha had seen Trollkin Auxillaries in action on the battlefield - generally poorly trained and equipped, but able to sustain incredible damage with minimal casualties thanks to their regenerative heritage. It had never occurred to her to inquire about their provenance.
"As for you, I lay claim to you myself," the Troll continued. "Troll Mages like myself are cross-breeds as well. I'm in need of an apprentice, and you're going to squeeze one out of your magically-talented cunt for me."
Baha took a breath to steady herself, taking all this in. She had to try to keep calm, not act irrationally, try to think of a way out of this. "You're certainly being forthcoming with this information," she commented.
The slouching troll performed something resembling a shrug. "Professional courtesy to another magical practitioner, before I Charm you."
Aaaaand now it was time to act suddenly and irrationally. With a cry, Baha desperately lunged toward her captor, hoping to catch him off-guard, turn the tables somehow. But he simply took a step back, out of her chained reach, and began to laconically perform the spell of Charm Person.
Baha bent her entire force of will to fighting off the friendly, seductive feelings that flooded her mind. She was mentally strong and well-trained; she forced herself to think of this smarmy frickin' re-gen as an enemy, shrugging off the spell. And the next one. And the next one.
By this point, the absurdity of the situation struck her. "All right," she laughed. "Stop it! We've established that a Charm spell isn't going to work on me."
"Guess not," the troll commented.
"How about we just talk this out like reasonable people, okay?" Baha held up her hands in a peace offering.
"Sure. I WILL need to knock up your whorish cow body, of course - that part is non-negotiable."
Baha laughed amicably. Her tits were pretty big, she couldn't deny it. This guy was so funny.
"However, I certainly wouldn't want to rape the shit out of you if I don't have to. Why don't you help get me hard with your ridiculous udders, and then we'll let you milk a troll baby out of my balls nice and peacefully."
"That's very gracious of you," Baha said, touched by her friend's thoughtfulness. "Come over here and let's see what I can do."
The troll rose. Although short for a troll, it still loomed over her, and as it pulled aside its robes she saw its warty dick was of a considerable size even when flaccid. Or mostly flaccid - it was starting to twitch even as she hefted one of her massive brown mammaries in each of her hands and mashed them around the member. It hurt, especially on her bruised side, and it took a little experimentation of squeezing and stroking, but once it started leaking a steady stream of thick trollish precum she was able to get a good titfuck going, the throbbing cock pointing up at an angle between her boobs so that she could lick at it when it came near her mouth. She was glad she wasn't trying to swallow it - it must have been almost three inches thick, and breathing would have been a major issue.
"Good," the wizard eventually grunted, after his member had hardened into a rod comparable to Baha's own forearm. "Now bend over so I can fuck you."
Baha obligingly did so, bracing herself on her forearms, the end of her tits hanging down so far that they squished out against the cold stone ground. Knowing that her new friend was very tall, and wanting to make herself as accessible as possible for him, she raised her big brown ass high in the air. She imagined that her rather conservative family back home would have things to say about her bending over to be fucked like a dog by a troll, but then again they were pretty prejudiced people.
She felt huge clawed hands gripping the sides of her hips, and a fist-sized, warm phallus trying to pry open her pussy lips. She bit her lip to brace herself as it slowly found purchase, then...
"Frik!" she exclaimed despite herself, as the precum-slick troll cock suddenly rammed home deep into her fucktunnel. Then again. And again. Tears came to her eyes as her body was set afire with pain; the scraping of her tits against the stone was a distant signal now. It felt like stories she'd heard of giving childbirth; just weathering one all-encompassing shock of pain after another. "Gawd! Firk!"
At some point the troll had reached out and grabbed her as-yet-less-abused right breast, mauling with its ogrish grip as it lifted her whole body in the air and began slamming into her at a jackhammer pace. All thoughts fled Baha's mind. At some point her body orgasmed, shuddering wildly around its monstrous assailant, and she supposed she should find that embarrassing, but she didn't have thoughts any more.
When she came to, she was lying on the floor. She felt wet and warm liquid pouring out of her cunt, pooling out, getting on her legs. The troll was talking. "What?" Baha mumbled.
"I said we'll be doing that a lot more times. It's not easy for a troll to knock up an inferior species. But Troll cum is a mild healing poultice, so your pathetic human cunt should hold up."
Baha nodded weakly. Then it occurred to her that she was hungry. She voiced that thought to the mage.
"Lick up the spooge that you let fall out of your worthless rape-hole," he suggested. "Troll jizz is also the most nutritious in the world. And you'll get plenty of it."
"Oh, great, thank you," she said gratefully.
Baha painfully repositioned herself on the group, trying not to scape her colorfully-bruised breasts too much, and attempted to get her tongue down to the glistening spills. It was thick, and pungent.
She counted her blessings. This adventure had certainly gone south, but at least she was safe and among friends.
-------
Qitara was not among friends.
She woke up with a scream to the sharp pain of the lash on her naked, bare back. "Firk!" she swore. She opened her eyes, her swimming vision coalescing into the sight of a tall, muscular troll festooned with decorative skulls. He looked familiar.
She was hanging from her wrists from the ceiling of a large domed room, dozens and dozens of trolls lining the outside of the area while this troll dude and a couple of groveling attendants faced her in the middle. Presumably, there was also some asshole with a whip behind her. The ceiling was high, and the chain she was hanging off of was very long. She was still swinging slightly from the force of the blow.
A troll attendant at the side of the big guy spoke in guttural Common. "Hail Rarkeg, high priest of Vaprak the Destroyer, lord of the..."
"I thought Kuchooloo was 'the Destroyer,'" Qitara interrupted.
The attendant stopped. "Vaprak is the true Destroyer."
"Kuchooloo is literally the Gawd of Wanton Destruction."
The attendant scowled. "Vaprak is currently pursuing litigation in the courts of the Gawds concerning his exclusive right to the use of the title 'the Destroyer.' In any case, hail Rarkeg, lord of the Great Finned..."
"Is Rarkeg the same dude whose head I hacked off and kicked down a chasm? Because I think you put it back on the wrong way 'round - that's clearly his ass up on his neck."
A strained silence fell.
"What, you got wax in yer ears? I said your boss's face. Looks like. A butt."
Most people, in similar circumstances, might have considered this unwise. Qitara Eneromas was not most people. As far as Qitara was concerned, she had never made a mistake in her life. It was this pathological lack of self-doubt that made her the perfect Knight Errant, questing freely across Garweeze Wurld for the good of all (whether or not 'all' were smart enough to realize it). Growing up, she had heard plenty about the physical, moral, and cultural superiority of High Elven civilization over all other races. In her opinion, since High Elves were so great, they should be out in the world more, kicking ass and taking names.
But for now, the only names she was taking were those on a mental checklist titled "To Hack Later." Things went south pretty quickly after her second interruption. Lots of whipping, lots of pain. She got to see the troll torturer, as he circled her to hit other angles. Very crude and sophomoric, honestly. A High Elf torturer would have gotten her on the clit, nipple, or arch of the foot every time - this yahoo was just all over the place. On the other hand, he was compensating with an amateur's enthusiasm.
Eventually they stopped - the troll leader appeared to be animatedly directing his minions to prepare something new. Qitara's head lolled forward - she barely had strength left to lift it. With an effort, she shook her head and spat out some of her long black hair that had ended up in her mouth, and observed the visible damage. Deep, bloody cuts all over her front, covering her slim, muscular elven legs and pert breasts... but not as much as she'd expect. And was one... scabbing over and closing up right before her eyes?
The attendant, who was keeping a close eye on her, noticed her surprise. "Oh, we don't want you dying as fast as you puny elves normally do. We gave you a ring, a trinket to ensure that you have some Trollish toughness."
Qitara's hands were high above her head, both through some kind of one-piece cuffs which kept them apart. But moving the fingers on her left hand together, she felt something unfamiliar.
A Ring of Regeneration? Sweet! These things granted wicked regenerative powers to whoever wore one - only fire or acid really had to worry you. A fighter-type with one of these would be the envy of hack-jockeys the world over. Only a frickin' troll, who had that naturally, would ever think of it as a 'trinket.'
Her attention was brought back to reality as she noticed her chain lowering, and some trolls grabbing her to line up her tightly-puckered elven asshole with a long, sharpened wooden stake that had been positioned underneath her.
It seemed that there were going to be some trade-offs involved here.
-------
The kobold tribe who lived beneath the troll city had an understanding with their upstairs neighbors. The trolls were prosperous enough that they sometimes threw refuse down the chasm, which the kobolds scavenged for food or supplies; and since the trolls above used the bridge as an ambush point, the kobolds helped out by gathering any fallen trolls, reattaching any spare limbs, and so on. (In leaner times, the trolls would also descend the catacomb of Netherdeep tunnels to eat some kobolds, but that was rare, because kobolds and their eggs tasted terrible.)
So when the sounds of battle and bits of troll started raining from above, small reptilian humanoids started gathering in large numbers, ready to scuffle for first dibs on anything good. Flame-cooked trolls - good eating. Uncooked trolls - move 'em to the side. Torches and rations falling out of the packs of panicked hirelings - finders' keepers! Troll head - put it on that troll body without a head, hope it's the right one.
What would come next? Dozens of kobolds squinted up into the darkness, waiting to see if Kurtulmak the Gawd of Looting (and mining, and ambushing) was smiling on them today.
Their infravision picked up a source of heat. A human! Falling... slowly... downward.
Lei was twisting around in midair, trying to see what was coming. This midair squirming was very effectively showing off her supple, chainmail-bikini-clad body. Because, for gawds-knew-what reason, pretty much every humanoid race shared a great admiration for nubile human females, the kobolds were gathering with great interest.
Panicking about falling into a veritable horde of kobolds with an ominous gleam in their reptilian eyes, Lei's mind raced. Surely there was some way out of this. She was an experienced adventurer, and they were just kobolds.
Definitely, she could come up with a great plan. She just had to think of something in the next six seconds, while gently drifting into the hands of a bunch of skeezy demon-dog-person-looking guys. No pressure. She had this. She would just...
A particularly athletic kobold leaped up and grabbed Lei's foot, pulling her down with a yelp into the gang of excitedly yapping humanoids. The cleric's chainmail was stripped off from her, and her staff and pack thrown aside, exposing her supple, virginal young body.
As a child, the third son of a relatively successful rice farmer, Lei had always felt uncomfortable with her body. Perhaps that was what drew her to the worship of Navinger, who was not particularly popular in her corner of the world. His gospel of love (and hunting) spoke to a more cerebral type of living, a romantic striving for purpose beyond one's crude and worldly physical needs.
Or maybe it was just that, ever since an ill-fated affair with Hera that Zeus had gotten wind of, Navinger was also gawd of eunuchs, and Lei really wanted to ditch her penis. Luckily, during her interview to join the all-eunuch ranks of the gawd's Navaros zealots, a kindly priest had recognized the nature of her dilemma and proposed an alternative solution.
And so she'd started a career as an adventuring cleric for one reason only: to seek out a rare but well-documented magic item. A debateably-cursed piece of jewelry that made macho hero types shudder in horror and cross their legs: an Ankle Bracelet of Gender Bending. It hadn't been easy, but by the grace of Navinger, eventually she'd found one, in the "starter horde" of a young adult Blue Dragon who had just left the nest (but clearly hadn't been gifted with the really good magic items).
Of course, right now, that ankle bracelet was being pulled from her foot by one of the innumerable kobolds whose hands were roaming over her body. That was fine - it was just decorative now, having already worked its nigh-irreversible magics and given her a body that she could be at ease with.
But the kobolds seemed to be making themselves quite at ease with it as well. Rough scaly hands pinched and pulled at her modest breasts, twisting her dark nipples. Her limbs were grabbed by several kobolds each, pulling her taut and thoroughly exposed.
A spirited yipping debate took place - if Lei had understood Kobold, which she did not, she would have known that the topic was whether to stick around to loot more thoroughly, or to abscond with the captive before the first trolls stood back up and took her from them. It was not much of a contest.
Lei was dragged through low, dark tunnels, tears streaming down her face from her situation, her worry over her friends, and the small sharp claws digging into her more tender spots.
But soon they'd arrived... somewhere. A more secluded, quiet subterranean chamber. It was so dark that Lei, a mere human, could hardly see a thing, but that didn't stop the cave-dwelling kobolds.
As soon as they were safe, a scuffle broke out over choice positions at her head and between her legs, but it wasn't long before a hard kobold dick slammed home into her virgin pussy, making her cry out in pain and opening the way for another to explore her warm mouth. (And mouth was as far as it went; no kobold was hung enough for their member to reach a human's throat.)
The kobold fucking her mouth yipped angrily at her and brandished its claws at her neck. Fearfully, Lei began clumsily sucking on its short, angry trouser snake, to its apparent satisfaction. Meanwhile, the pain between her legs lessened slightly, replaced by a warm gush down her ass, as the kobold there apparently spent itself and pulled out. But before Lei could even catch her breath, another kobold had took its place, continuing to stretch out the exciting, unexplored horizons of her no-longer-virgin womanhood.
Lei squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see the sea of panting kobold heads leering down at her, but that left nothing to distract her from her ordeal. Kobold cocks, one after another. Sickly-tasting spunk in her mouth, spilling out to cover her face as the creatures pulled out and she tried to spit it out. More flooding her womb. And just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, one kobold, by accident or design, missed her womb and started frantically humping his rough dick into her tight little ass.
Lei's precious female body was swiftly turned into a whimpering, crying, kobold rape toy.
------
Sugarleaf had gotten thrown into a rusty iron cage. The bases of her delicate wings were tied tightly and together with rope - it ached horribly, but it was right at the spot of her back that was impossible to reach herself. The cage was put in some kind of storeroom where they kept assorted loot and trophies, which must be how they categorized Sugarleaf. There weren't piles of gold or anything like young dragons might keep (older dragons, as a rule, kept a significant portion of their cash tied up in investments), but there were a significant number of knickknacks, quality jewelry, and weapons and armor too small for troll use (including Qitara's Frost Brand sword, newly hooked up on a wall).
And then they mostly forgot about her for a while.
Oh, there were a few exceptions. The robed troll came around a couple times to harvest the small quantities of pixie dust that accumulated in and around the cage (it was always the frickin' pixie dust; Sugarleaf sometimes wished that Storm Giants came down to capture smaller humanoids for their dandruff, see how they liked it). The quasit brought her some magical fungi occasionally - nasty stuff but it kept her going. And the leader priest guy came around occasionally with other trolls, to show her off to his leering sycophants. Because she was quite a sight.
Most pixie fairies were what humans and folks would consider androgynous, but this varied by tribe. Sugarleaf's people, the Aeval Clan of Fernwickle Isle, were what scholars called "highly sexually dimorphic" and what everyone else called "smokin' hot."
Sugarleaf had grown up among towering two-foot pixie fairy boys with tight butts and v-cut abs, and she herself was gifted with pouty lips, a bubble butt, tiny waist, and sizable, bouncy chest. Combined with the fairykin tattoos adorning her forehead and limbs, it made her look both exotic and fuckable, which these horny-ass trolls had not failed to notice.
Except that she was one and a half feet tall, and the trolls were six or seven times that. At one point the leader and a few lackeys HAD pried off the heavy lock on the cage and tried to stick their cocks in her. Nothing doing. It was like a human trying to fuck a drinking straw. Sugarleaf, who'd had plenty of sex with bigger folk before, could have suggested any number of creative ways to pleasure each other besides penis-in-vagina, but she was not inclined to do so, and besides nobody was asking her. Instead, she started vamping a little for the trolls, just to tease them: licking her lips, leaning forward to emphasize her tits, that kind of thing. It was in no way helping the situation, but it was something to amuse herself, at least.
The quasit also came by sometimes to taunt her. Luckily for Sugarleaf, although it was her size, the tiny demon lacked not only imagination but also genitals. The wages of sin were sexual frustration in your afterlife, it seemed.
After some days of this routine, Sugarleaf considered trying to kill herself. This was not, as it would be for most races, a desperate act of despair, but rather an option worth considering. At the last Pixie Meet, Sugarleaf had made arrangements with a new birth mother who was willing to bring her back into this world when she reincarnated (in return for a fair compensation, which she'd already paid in full). That was just a basic precaution before venturing out into the world. But gestating, being born, growing up to maturity... that could take months and months! She couldn't abandon her friends here if there was any chance that they were still alive and she could help them escape.
She would come to regret that decision soon.
-------
Qitara didn't know how long her torture continued. It could have been hours, days, or even a week - elves sometimes had trouble discerning between such piddling units of time. Her body ached from a thousand pains: she had been whipped, used as a punching bag, and impaled in every hole. The delicate nipples at the end of her pointed elven breasts had been brutally pierced with metal rings, which the trolls had hung her by. Demeaning words had been painted onto her body in thick paint - she was just lucky trolls didn't use brands, as they avoided anything involving intense heat.
Qitara had borne up stoically through it all. Well, stoically-ish. There had been a lot of swearing, but that hardly counted. And soon her throat had gotten too horse and dry, even after the trolls took turns aiming heavy streams of dark piss down her throat to revive her.
But eventually the troll priest's interest in revenge must have waned. They pulled Qitara down from where she was displayed. As a troll dragged her naked body by the hair, her tender ass scraping against rough stone floors, Qitara attempted to ignore her rapidly-healing aches and observe her surroundings. It was indeed some kind of underground city, in a cavern so large that when she looked up, she saw only pitch darkness like a starless black sky. The buildings, like the bridge they had seen, were too sturdy to be elven, too inornate to be dwarven, and too... structural... to be trollish.
The troll dragged her to a long building with an open front entrance flanked by pillars - perhaps some sort of longhouse or feasting hall. Originally, that is. Right now both long sides of the hall were lined with rows of chained, nude women. Some of them crying as they were reamed by massive troll cocks. Some of them were visibly, rudely, pregnant - Qitara saw a broken, blank-eyed young woman whose undoubtedly once-lean body was swollen with an unborn trollkin, her swollen breasts somehow already leaking milk onto the slime-coated floor. The smell was terrible - dank and pervasive, the accumulated miasma of countless troll rapes and badly-cleaned bodily functions.
The reality of what was in store for Qitara hit home. This was horrible. Demeaning. It made her sick just contemplating it.
The trolls were lumping her in with the unimportant people.
"Hey!" she shouted, struggling futilely as her crested troll captor attached her wrist bindings to a thick iron chain. "What are you doing? I cut yer leader's head off in single combat, remember? If yer gonna rape me, at least bring me back in the big hall and make a frickin' show of it!"
Speaking of making a show of it, Qitara noticed that there was one woman who was not chained up, but was in the center of the hall, energetically riding a massive erect troll prick. Her hands were behind her head, pushing forward her firm dark-skinned breasts, which the bemused troll, on its back, was occasionally delivering a vicious slap to for want of anything else to do.
"Oh gawds yes," she moaned loudly, her voluminous (though now rather matted) black hair shaking as she rode her captor, showing glimpses of her mildly-pointed half-elven ears. "Fuck me with your big troll cock! Ruin me, I'm your little fuck slave!"
"Mele, you shameless frickin' suck up!" Qitara shouted across to her, disgusted. Mele had been her hireling, perhaps someday to be something more: like, say, a henchman. If an arm-sized phallic object was going to savagely plumb Mele's innards and make her scream with pleasure, by all rights it should be Qitara's arm.
But she had little time to dwell on this, as the troll who had chained her to the wall punched her in her pale elven stomach and knocked the wind out of her. By the time she gasped in some air, it was already forcing itself into her incredibly tight, tiny smooth slit. Qitara labored to breathe more deeply, gritting her teeth at the searing, tearing pain at her entrance. But just as she though she could handle that, the troll pulled back and slammed so deeply into her that it felt like her womb was getting smashed. Lubricated by her own blood, her assailant pounded her with vigor, her hundred-year elven memories falling away, her existence reduced to an unending moment of agony as a sexy cocksleeve for a brutal humanoid rapist.
It was the first troll to take her, but not the last. And because of her new magic ring, she was just as tight the fiftieth time as the first.
-----
Lei might have expected the kobolds to lose their enthusiasm for raping her at some point, but she seemed to be a source of endless entertainment. Mostly of the simple, fuck-her-holes variety, though at one point they had brought in some kind of monstrous giant weasel, bigger than she was, to fuck her for their entertainment. That's what broke Lei, as her much-abused, aching naked body was pressed to the rough stone floor and her ass raised for the massive mammal to mount her from behind with its enormous baculum-stiffened dick. She'd fought monsters, traveled the world, put her life on the line, all to become on the outside what she'd always been on the inside. And apparently, that was a weasel's cocksheath.
The kobolds were not too concerned with her long-term survival. She was fucked half to death, covered with grime, cum, and her own filth, slipping in and out of her senses.
She was only vaguely aware of a large number of kobold screams... of a higher, more desperate pitch than their usual coital ones... and of a stampede of kobold feet away from where she lay in the dark. She just took advantage of the sudden quiet to drift off into unconsciousness. She didn't notice being carried, and when a hand shook her awake she just moaned and twitched, chasing that blissful sleep.
"Have a drink and heal yourself up," said a voice, as she felt a wineskin at her lips. She still couldn't see anything - light aside, her face was crusted over with multiple layers of dried kobold sperm - but the voice was familiar.
"...Kromdan?"
"Yep."
"Are the others...?"
"Dunno. Captured by trolls. Might still be alive."
The thought was energizing. As soon as she could, Lei summoned her strength to cast a Cure Nasty Wounds on herself, which didn't make her feel 100% better but banished the aches and pains from her body and made her feel like she could move.
They were in a small, claustrophobic cave. There was even a little light in here, provided by some of the luminescent mosses she'd seen around.
Looming stoutly before her was Kromdan, their party's quiet, unassuming ball of death and destruction. He was coated with blood to much the same extent that Lei was with piss and cum, but as a berserker that wasn't uncommon. Given their close quarters, it was a good thing that Lei's olfactory nerves had already given up and died from overstimulation.
"Here's your armor," Kromdan said, tossing her her chainmail bikini. "Found it at the bottom of the chasm after the trolls had gone. Tracked you down and killed some kobolds for you."
"T... thank you. You didn't go into HackLust?"
Kromdan replied with an insulted silence that meant 'From fighting kobolds? Please.' This continued until Lei finished healing them both up with her divine prayers, at which point he stood, and hiked up his adventurer's backpack.
"Welp, let's go. Kobolds will track us down soon."
Lei rose as well, hooking on her armor, such as it was. "Are we going to go save the others?"
Kromdan looked at her like she was crazy. "No. Back to the surface."
"What?"
"Too many trolls."
"But, no!" Lei almost shouted, panicked. "We have to go save them! I'm... I'm not going back up without them!"
Kromdan gave her a long, hard look.
"Okay," he finally spoke. "Tell you what. I'll take to you an underground river I found. Get the stink off. We find some back tunnels, rest up, you suck me off. Then we scout out the situation, see if..."
"Wait, what?"
"I was saying, we scout out the troll city, see if we can find an opening."
"No, before that!"
"You take my dwarven cock deep in your your sweet little throat," he clarified. Sensing that she required more elaboration, he continued, "Kid, I'm chaotic. Troll city is risky. Gonna need a little extra incentive."
"And if I refuse?" Lei asked defiantly, dredging up a year's supply of backbone.
The dwarf shrugged. "Then have fun. Can probably make it back up myself." He turned and started to walk away, inviting Lei to call his bluff.
"Wait!" she interjected, then hesitated. Surely she couldn't agree to that! Even after getting gangbanged six ways from Sunday by pathetic kobolds, she was a heroic adventurer, not just a set of holes and tits, right? Surely she had some dignity left, right?
Right?
-----
It took ten days for the Charm Person spell to wear off of Baha. She was busy helping her new friend get clean by leisurely and systematically cleaning troll spooge backspill off of his balls and softening prick. She was only slightly distracted by the deep ache in her sore, cum-drenched pussy, where the arm-length troll cock had just recently been plunging. She wished he could take it a bit easier on her, but she knew it was hard for men, probably especially Troll men, to hold themselves back when they developed a fuck rhythm. And the mild healing properties of troll cum DID seem to be stopping any permanent damage she might have suffered from such violent sexual use.
All at once, slurping the bitter baby batter off of him seemed like a MUCH less reasonable action. He was, after all, an evil troll rapist who had magically forced her to be a cheerful whore while the rest of her friends were likely suffering as troll rape toys. Somehow that hadn't occurred to her until now.
But Baha was too sharp to hesitate for more than a moment. She forced herself to keep up her tender ministrations. No matter how much she might want to bite off one of his dangling testicles, she was still chained up and at his mercy, and besides, he was a Troll - it wouldn't help. Her best weapon right now was that he didn't know that she wasn't still charmed.
Only once she was laying on the floor, pretending to sleep, did she let her mind race with half-formed, then quickly-abandoned plans. Overpower the troll? Impossible. Befriend the quasit familiar that flitted here and there, always keeping an eye on an area where the troll mage was not? Ridiculous.
Use magic? Well, she did have her hands free, and she still had spells memorized. But almost all of them required material components, and her material components pouch, along with her spellbook and most of the party's other magic items (which the mage apparently had first dibs on, since they were too small or complicated for Troll use) were scattered around the mage's room far, far out of her reach. He might be a slob, but he wasn't stupid.
Regardless: mental spell checklist. Magic Missile? Only one shot, and it simply wasn't enough damage. Her last Fireball? Needed sulfur and bat guano, and even if she got lucky with a wayward bat shitting on her, the sulfur was an issue. Did she have anything else useful?
Well... Maybe...
The beginnings of a brilliant plan started to germinate in Baha's mind.
-------
Trolls did not have a reputation for brilliance. But unfortunately for Sugarleaf, occasionally a good idea DID worm its way into their minds, as well.
Sugarleaf was in the midst of mentally appraising the market value of the big pile of treasure staring her in the face, when the troll priest made one of his periodic appearances, accompanied by a greater-than-usual number of mooks and also the robed wizard troll.
"What's up?" Sugarleaf quipped as a rando troll pulled her out of the cage again. "You want to show me your tiny dicks again and I can pretend to be impressed?"
The troll mage, one of the few around here who spoke Common as well as trollkin gibberish, shook its head. "You've been such a little cocktease that our illustrious leader here has been pestering me to find a way to give you what you're begging for."
"The way I see it," he continued, as the troll pinned her to the floor with one meaty, sweaty hand, "the problem is that our dicks aren't small enough."
And he cast a spell. Sugarleaf braced herself to resist whatever enchantment was coming her way.
But she wasn't the target. Instead, the mage sprinkled some kind of powder over his smug potentate. Almost instantly, the hulking giant shrank down in size to just a couple feet tall. Suglarleaf froze as the leering, skull-adorned troll strode up to her.
"Well, fucknuggets," she commented.
The troll lord pulled aside its rather minimal loincloth to reveal a flaccid monster of a penis, hanging down like an elephant's trunk. The troll gripping her in its warty paw pushed her face right up next to it. Sugarleaf didn't know if the Reduce spell had somehow also concentrated the thing's stench, but she would have believed it in a heartbeat. She almost retched just from proximity.
Her giant troll captor pinched one of her beautiful, fragile butterfly wings meaningfully. Sugarleaf took the hint and opened her mouth.
Even at proportional size, she had trouble handling the prick. Its head was enough to fill her mouth handily. But a few more tugs at her wings motivated her to open her throat and try to swallow more of it. It was slimy somehow, which was helpful but also unbelievably disgusting. There was some sort of strange lump or cyst on the underside of the troll's cockhead, and Sugarleaf seemed to get appreciative grunts when she rolled it around with her tongue.
Getting him more excited just made things worse, though. At a breathy instruction from the priest, the troll who was gripping her straightened out her whole body, gently angled her head forward, and started forcing her deeper onto the savage troll member. Suddenly unable to breathe, Sugarleaf squirmed desperately, but the enormous fingers crushing her body left little leeway. She was so close that she could feel her antennae brushing the troll lord's coarse black pubic hair.
For a time, as her head began to swim, she was jerked back and forth on the shrunken king's cock like a literal sex toy. Her tiny eyes rolled back in her head. Were they really going to kill her like this - death by being used by one troll to masturbate a much smaller one? She could never let this get out, or she'd be the laughingstock of next Pixie Meet.
But it didn't come to that. To the encouraging cheers of his followers, the troll king shot his load deep into Sugarleaf's throat, filling her stomach with spurt after spurt of his sperm like it was a contraceptive pig intestine. When she was finally pulled free, she was coughing like heck and felt like she wanted to throw up, but for good or ill, she was still alive.
Then the troll king pushed her down to the ground herself and started to fuck her again.
What the frik, Sugarleaf thought as it yanked her legs open with its muscular (if tiny) troll arms and positioned its cockhead at her hairless fairy cooch. Didn't this asshole have a refractory period?
Maybe it has to do with their regeneration, she mused, trying to distract herself from the pain as the troll's sexual weapon pushed past her rounded hips up towards her tiny (both proportionately and quantitatively) waist, deforming her innards, creating a visible bulge on her delicate, tattooed belly.
I wonder if you could make some kind of men's sex drug from troll bits, she wondered, as her (relatively) large shapely udders bounced energetically around her chest from the troll king's savage thrusts.
Would probably be super profitable, she figured, her jaw slack and drooling and her eyes blank from overstimulation as the troll king picked her up off the stone floor by each arm, positioning her vertically on his straining cock before continuing to destroy her body with rapid rabbit-like thrusts.
"Brace yourself, little pixie whore," the mage commented.
Brace herself? For what? As if anything could be worse than...
Then the Reduce spell wore off.
The troll began swiftly returning to his regular size - including his cock. If Sugarleaf had thought she was getting stuffed before, it was nothing compared to the unbelievable fullness of her cunt and screaming complaints from her pussy lips as the troll king swiftly doubled, tripled, quadrupled in both length and width.
Simultaneously, the cum that Sugarleaf had already swallowed returned to its normal volume: about 125 times as great a volume, in fact. Immediately filling her stomach full to bursting, a wave of acrid troll cum flooded back up Sugarleaf's much-abused throat, pouring out in waves of thick white syrup to splash onto her face and wash over her busty sylvan body.
Suddenly squeezed unbelievably tightly by the pixie's doll-sized snatch, the troll king grunted and came again as he grew - producing only a small amount of semen compared to the first time, but still more than enough to flood her tiny womb many times over.
Something in Sugarleaf's body seemed to break, and she began to writhe in an overwhelming, full-body orgasm as she squirted off of the massively-growing troll cock like a bar of soap, and fell twitching into the cold hard ground. The fact that she had come this hard while in immense pain, humiliated, and drowning in troll cum was a memory that even death wouldn't wash away.
"And just think, it's only a first-level spell," the troll mage commented, as the rest of the audience roared approvingly. "We should be able to fit this in once a day, don't you think?"
Sugarleaf began to reconsider the suicide option.
-------
"Excuse me, Mr... demon guy?"
The quasit, who had been puttering around the troll mage's room keeping guard and picking its nose, fluttered over to Baha with a sneer. "What? What does the cow-whore want? The master will feed you later, let it not worry!"
"Oh, no," Baha dismissed, although her stomach ached just at the mention of the protein-shake meals that she'd been consisting on for who knew how many days. Her one Flavor cantrip had been used long ago. "Actually, I want to thank your master for taking such good care of me, and I hoped you could help!"
The quasit laughed manically. "Yes! Master takes such good care, indeed! Such a friend to such a worthless cumdump such as you!"
"Yeah..." Baha forced a queasy grin and hoped that minor demons weren't practiced at reading mortals' facial expressions. "So here's what I was thinking..."
When the troll mage returned to its lab, it was greeted with the sight of his voluptuous dark-skinned slave standing to greet him, her iron collar supplemented by a makeshift veil of thin fabric, jangly bracelets, and small silver bells clipped painfully to the nipples of her massive chest with bent pieces of metal wire. All scrounged by the quasit. She'd deployed her last Dispel Body Odor to top it off.
She probably looked nothing like an actual Dijishyian harem girl. Baha was the daughter of a wealthy merchant family - what the frick did she know about harems? The important thing was that the troll mage didn't ask too many questions and let her keep the outfit.
"Sir, can I interest you in a dance?" she asked playfully, as the troll raised its massive scraggly eyebrows.
Another thing Baha knew nothing about: erotic dance. Luckily she was blessed with a body that looked intensely erotic when she so much as stood up, leaned over, or breathed. Bells on her tits only added to this effect. By the time she had exhausted her limited repertoire of basic oscillation and coy, teasing looks, the mage already had her on her knees gagging on his huge slimy prick until it was rock-hard, then proceeded to brutally batter her womb into aching, cum-drenched submission.
So that was Step One down. Next, Baha had to wait until both the mage and the quasit were out. This took a day or two. They didn't keep her informed about their comings and goings, but it seemed like they only both left the room rarely, perhaps to contribute their services to an ambush like the one that had caught her party. Baha said goodbye pleasantly.
Then, as soon as she was sure they were gone for a while, she cast Zargosa's Lodge of Protection.
She didn't know whether it would work. The spell called for material components: a chip of stone, some grains of sand, a drop of water, splinters of wood. Stone was no problem. And sand was nothing but even tinier tiny bits of stone, right? She'd spit into her hand before casting, so that was water, more or less. And she was just skipping the wood. This was a calculated gamble. The spell made a house out of the materials in the environment, which in a forest might very well be wood. Her hope was that in this case, surrounded by stone and stone only, the spell didn't actually require it.
Zargosa's Lodge of Protection was a janky-ass spell, and it took forever to cast. Baha was sweating with fear that the mage or his quasit would come in at any moment, but half an hour in, she was nearing the end. So far her luck, and her concentration, had held.
She gripped the bell hanging from her nipple. There were two lesser spells folded wholesale into the Lodge, which could be added in if you had the right components. One was Alarm, which was useless to her now. A small bell was the material component for the other one: Unseen Servant.
She completed the spell, miraculously without mishap. She suddenly found herself inside a whole-ass stone hut, fireplace set, somewhat cramped as it scraped across the ceiling of the mage's den. Baha made sure that the walls encompassed all the magic items she could see - both her party's and ones that had been here before. And when she sensed an invisible, friendly presence, ready to make her stay in this lodge a pleasant one...
"Hey, grab some things for me, would you?"
-----
Sugarleaf was back in her cage, curled in a ball and shuddering over her recent experiences, when a hole suddenly broke open in the side of the treasure room.
That was weird, but what was weirder was that it was done in complete silence. When the dust cleared... also silently... there stood Kromdan, Lei peeking her head out from his stout armored body.
"Guys!" Sugarleaf cried out in surprise, but then her voice died away as the two hurried over. In the supernatural hush, Kromdan carefully braced the cage and knocked one of the metal bars with the top of his pick, hard enough to bend it heavily. Sugarleaf, an experienced rogue, had no trouble wriggling free after that.
Suddenly sound returned to her world, and she could hear the shuffling of clothes, the klink of Lei's cute chainmail outfit, and everything.
"You two are okay!" Sugarleaf exclaimed. "Lei, how did you escape!?"
"Um, I don't know how much you saw, but Baha pushed me down the chasm to help me escape, and then..." Shame won out over honesty. "...Kromdan found me and we... joined back up," she finished weakly.
"Been lying low," Kromdan explained. Except for his cock, which had been pointing up, warmed by the cute lesbian healslut's mouth, several times a day. Hopefully he could bully her into remaining his unwilling fellatrix even after they rescued the rest of their cockteasing party members.
"Yeah... we've been mining tunnels with Kromdan's Pickaxe of Breaching, under Silence spells," Lei continued, relieved to be changing the subject. "I've also been using Auguries and Locate spells to know what direction to aim for. Navinger's always happy to help with a good hunt. And the latest Augury said today was the day to strike. It looks like most of the trolls are out on some kind of raid or something."
"Gotta keep moving, though," Kromdan said. "Come on."
"Wait!" Sugarleaf interjected. "I want to loot this treasure room first!"
"Fine. Just for a minute," said Kromdan.
The pixie fairy's eyes gleamed. "Dude, I've been staring at this loot for who knows how many days, I know where ALL the expensive, easy-to-carry stuff is. A minute is all we'll NEED."
------
But actually, a troll guard walked in on them while they were still shoveling jewelry into Kromdan's bag. And then things got a little crazy.
"Graah!?"
"Kromdan, get'im!"
Blood. Troll guts.
"Where next!?"
"We think we know where Qitara is... this way!"
Running. City center. Surprised trolls.
"Graah! Graah!"
"They're chasing us!"
Fire. Explosion. Troll panic.
"Baha! You're okay!"
"I've got our stuff! Sugarleaf, catch!"
"Nice, my crossbow! Come to mama!"
"Follow Kromdan!"
Hall of sex slaves. Trolls mid-rut.
"About frickin' time, you assholes!"
"Good to see you too, Qitara!"
"Oh, are we escaping now? Okay!"
Severed troll cock. Blood everywhere. One very unhappy crying troll.
"Mele... where did you get that dagger!?"
"I've been hiding it in my hair!"
"Mele, I'm officially promoting you from hireling... to crony."
"Yay!"
Back outside. Swarm of angry trolls.
"Hey, re-gens! Take a look at this sexy whore! okaydoitnow"
"Eyesup'ere!"
Remote eye-gouging. A crowd of Crested Gutter Trolls staggering around clutching their faces.
"Time to move, people!"
-----
And that's how they ended up strategically retreating back across the bridge they'd first been captured on, followed by their surviving female hirelings and a bunch of other captives who they'd saved in the process because they were big frickin' heroes who didn't only care about treasure and also they needed more hirelings now anyway. A gaggle of trolls was still chasing them, howling, but as soon as they reached the other end of the bridge Kromdan took a few whacks at it with his Pickaxe of Breaching, sending both the bravest trolls and enormous hunks of masonry onto the anxiously-waiting kobolds far below. Lei thought she could hear their distant screams, and it cheered her.
Only once they were back in the former Belch Worm chamber (and dispatched the Whooping Cave Crickets who had moved in during their absence) did they allow themselves to catch their breath.
"Man, I wish we could have looted ALL the treasure on our way out," Sugarleaf said, sadly.
"Don't worry, Sugarleaf," Qitara spat. "These trolls are on The List. We're coming back here. Bet. And next time we're packing that Fireball Volley."
"I dunno, I might keep memorizing the Lodge," Baha mused. "It's kind of grown on me. But with the treasure we did grab, I think I know someone who can hook us up with a Wand of Fireballs."
"Frickin' a."
"Well," Mele chirped, "at least everyone made it out okay in the end. Except for the severe trauma, and everyone probably being pregnant with trollkin babies, and all the guys who were devoured."
"Got to know each other better," Kromdan grunted, and slapped Lei's barely-covered ass, hard. She turned red as a beet.
"Aww, are you two together now?" asked Baha, clocking it. "That's great, Lei! I'm so happy for you!"
"Um, well..." Lei began, before Baha came in for a big hug that pressed Lei's face directly into her chest and Lei lost the ability to speak.
"And let's not forget the most important thing," Qitara announced, feeling that as the leader, she should have the last inspiring word.
"What's that?"
"I got myself a Ring of Regeneration, bay-bee!"