Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The dining hall beneath the guards’ tower felt louder than usual. Vic sat alone. He had finished eating a while ago, but he figured he could hide out in the crowd here for a while and avoid the training yard.

Adventuring hadn’t really worked out for Vic. After he woke up at the edge of that forest with his pants still halfway down, he had developed a sort of trauma towards the whole idea. When he got back home, he elected to join the town guardsmen at an early age. That hadn’t turned out to be such a good idea. The big city’s guard was happy to take any recruit, but their training didn’t quite suit a thirteen year old boy. Years passed and his progress was painfully slow. People his age started to come in able to lift more and hit harder than he could. He was alright with a sword, always had been, but was nothing special.

Vic kept mostly to himself as a result. Nobody expected greatness from him in the town guard, anyways. He’d do his job and get paid without ever really running into trouble. If it looked like trouble, they sent someone else. Four years of lonely, mundane assignments hadn’t been a dream job, but as long as the guard could afford to feed everyone he was safe there. Kept his mother off his back, too, even though the pay wasn’t much at all.

Lunch passed, training passed, and Vic spent the rest of the day moving armor and weapons around the tower. Night fell and the higher-ups long ago ran out of worthwhile tasks for him, so he followed the rest of the guard to the sleeping quarters. He found some comfort in the monotony here, if only because he couldn’t think of anything better to do with himself in this city. His father hadn’t been there to teach him any trade. He kept telling himself that someday he’d learn to write or paint well, but he never could find the time.

Ed, the guard’s head office worker, was waiting for the regimen in their bedchambers. Ed was a smart guy and the city didn’t want to throw him out of the guard, but he had just kept getting fatter and fatter as the years passed. Cutting his rations had apparently been ineffective, and it got to the point where he couldn’t keep up with his former peers in almost any physical activity. He didn’t much like being relegated to a pencil pusher, but seemed to accept his fate. The only time any of the actual guardsmen ever dealt with him anymore was now, when he brought the day’s mail for them back with him to the bunks.

Vic rarely got mail, but tonight as Ed waddled his way around the room he left a sheet on Vic’s nightstand. Trying not to look overeager, Vic took his time changing into his sleeping clothes. After that he promptly scurried over to the message, greedily breaking its seal without bothering to check if it said who it was from.

“Vic,

There’s someone who wants to meet you. Come with Grunja tomorrow morning after you’ve eaten. She’ll be the one asking after you; it shouldn’t be too hard to pick her out. You’ll be walking a ways, so pack light. Don’t worry, you’re in no trouble so long as you cooperate. She’ll deal with your supervisors, of course.”

The message bore no signature, and the outside simply had his name printed. The handwriting was quite fine, but he didn’t recognize it. Vic wasn’t quite sure what to make of his new situation, assuming someone did in fact come to collect him tomorrow. While he told himself over and over again that the guard was the life for him and had forced himself to stay, he had truthfully grown restless.

Especially at night, he reflected as he crawled into bed, paper still in his hand. He folded it back as neat as he could and put it in his pocket, thinking about what that fairy had told him years back. Time had spoiled his mental image of everything that had happened between them, but he remembered her claim that his need for more of it would grow more than most. During the days it was usually manageable, but at night his dreams and sheets were tortured by such ideas. Vic had convinced himself that loneliness was just a necessary cost of the comfort he sought from his occupation, but the clockwork stirring inside himself as the sun set brought him great agony.

He dreamed that night of the caresses of fairies, ones who talked sweetly to him about how much he needed what they could give him. He couldn’t help it, they said, that a part of him was so much more active than it was for everyone else. And it was that he awoke with a start to the familiar sensation of the crotch of his pants being soiled that convinced him to go away with whoever sent that letter, should anyone actually come looking. Vic changed into his lighter clothes rather than armor, hastily enough that he hoped nobody noticed the stain on his garment.

Nobody in the dining hall even paid him enough mind to point out that he wasn’t in his armor. His sword was across his back as usual, and he had had his messenger bag filled with a few things for the road. He figured that if nobody did come, he could slip away and change without drawing too much attention anyways.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. The usual rumble of conversation in the hall died down a bit, and Vic’s attention was drawn to the main entrance. In the doorway stood what looked to be a tall half-orc, towering over most of the human guards. She appeared to be unarmed, though her armor was gleaming and thick. She carried her helm in her hand, so her voice was unobstructed and loud when she called Vic’s name out to the whole chamber.

He hesitated in getting up. This wasn’t quite the escort he had expected. Perhaps he should have looked at the name the letter mentioned a little more closely, he considered.

“Get your ass up here!” Grunja added, “Else I’ll be dragging you all the way up the road!” Some of the guards had already started to snicker, and Vic figured it’d be better to go along before she got any angrier. They walked out of the dining hall and past the office, towards the main entrance. Ed looked up and gave Vic a nod, saying nothing to stop them.

Once outside, they were joined by another woman before Vic could ask Grunja about what was going on. This one was an elf, made obvious by the long ears parting her straight, silvery hair. She stood a few inches shorter than Vic, and unlike the half-orc wore a white tunic rather than armor.

“So, how much’d you manage to keep?” Her voice was smooth and sweet, but sounded somehow teasing. Grunja responded with a ‘hmph’ before grabbing Vic’s collar and continuing to walk.  The elf rolled her eyes and followed them. “Told you you should have let me come. Oh, let go of him! He can walk.” Grunja glowered. “I can talk to people, too,” she mumbled as she released her grip on him.

“Oh please, you couldn’t even talk your way through buying this armor.” She rapped the steel of Grunja’s gauntlet, then turned to Vic. “You must be Vic. I’m Fianna, and I guess you’ve met Grunja. We’re supposed to be taking you to meet with our boss, Esthea.” Grunja muttered something under her breath that Vic couldn’t hear, but Fianna apparently understood. “Grunja isn’t very fond of her.” They walked away from the town for a while in silence.

“Well she makes me… do things,” Grunja finally spat back. “It’s weird. I wouldn’t be with her if it wasn’t for you.” Fianna chuckled, and said matter-of-factly “you’re with me though, and I say we’re staying.”

Without warning, Grunja pulled Fianna roughly against her. There was a yelp of surprise, but Grunja covered her mouth before she could say anything else. The orc sat down, bringing the squirming elf into her lap. She held her arms and chest still with her other hand. There were a few muffled shouts, but it was obvious Fianna wouldn’t break free. “Hey kid,” Grunja said, talking over Fianna’s noises. “Ever played with an elf’s ears before?” The orc chuckled as the yells got louder and angrier. “Get over here and rub them.”

There was a certain insistence in her voice that suggested if he didn’t cooperate, Vic would be in a worse position than the elf. Grunja didn’t seem like the kind of person he wanted to get on the bad side of, so he reached out to the elf’s head. She fell silent, glaring at him. Fianna said something like ‘you better not,’ but Grunja’s gaze was more convincing.

Vic’s fingers grazed over one of the sharply pointed ears. Fianna’s ear twitched, and her eyebrows shot up. He stroked it a little more confidently this time, and a high-pitched ‘nonnonono’ came through just sharp enough to be audible. Grunja looked like she found this hilarious, and even though Vic didn’t like doing it he had to admit that it was amusing. As he kept rubbing, her squirming grew more and more frantic. She kicked over and over at the ground, a furious blush filling her face. Her whole body started to move with a rhythm, and her protesting got quieter.

Suddenly, her eyes shot wide with a worried look in them. She rolled her eyes towards Vic, as though trying to plead with him. “Try both at the same time,” Grunja said between her deep laughs. “I think she… she really likes you.” Just as Vic’s other hand started to raise, Fianna squeezed her eyes shut. A swirl of colorful light started to dance in the air above her, just in front of Grunja. It took Vic a few seconds to notice, but Grunja’s laughter slowly faded. Her eyes were fixed to the sparkling cloud, and her grip on the elf went loose as she stared blankly into it. Before he knew what was going on, Fianna reached up and grabbed his wrist. A painful shock coursed through his arm and body, and he stumbled away.

She sprang up and away from the half-orc, moving towards Vic and shouting angrily. “You mother fucker! Do you even know what you were DOING?” She punctuated her question by slapping the still-staggered Vic, sending another jolt into him. He collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain. Fianna knelt down and grabbed his hair, yanking his face up to meet her. “YOU do not EVER get to touch those!” With that, she slammed his face back into the dirt, and his ears rang and everything went dark.

A few moments later, he was able to blink back awake. Fianna was no longer over him, he noticed, but he was still in too much pain to push himself up off the ground. He looked over to where Grunja was still sitting, apparently enthralled by the dazzling swirl. Fianna was standing in front of her, the cloud the only thing between them. The elf quickly pulled the front of her pants down with one hand, and put the other gently behind Grunja’s head. Her expression remained blank, eyes still trained on the colors as Fianna pulled her head between her legs and into the cloud.

Fianna’s thumb pulled on the half-orc’s bottom lip as her mouth came up against her crotch. She whispered something, and though Vic couldn’t hear her words he could see Grunja start to slowly move her head up and down, obviously licking Fianna. The elf’s eyes shut, and she let her head roll back and her mouth part open. Vic forgot his pain for a moment as he absorbed everything that was happening. He thought it pretty obvious why she had been that upset, now. Fianna’s hand trembled in Grunja’s hair as she obviously struggled to keep from pulling hard and breaking the spell.

It wasn’t long before Fianna whimpered and shuddered. Her chin dropped to her chest, and her hand slid out of Grunja’s hair. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she looked towards Vic. He tried to close his eyes and turn away, but it was obviously no use. “Were you fucking WATCHING?” Her hand clenched her waistband angrily, and she shook for a moment before realizing she still had her pants down. With a sigh, she let them come back up to cover her, dropping her hands to the side. “I guess… I probably shouldn’t blame you for that. Look, I’m going to trance out for a moment before I drop a ball of fucking fire on you.” Fianna stepped off to the side of the path, and sat down against a tree.

“Try not to get stepped on by a horse or something,” she added. “And watch out when she wakes up; she hates that sort of magic and’ll probably start throwing you around if she gets angry.” She crossed her arms over her with that, and her eyes closed.Vic tried to say something, but hurt too much to speak any more than a wince of pain. He stopped trying to get up and collapsed to the ground, squeezing his hands to see if he could feel his fingers yet.