Author's Note: Sorry about the long wait and the relatively shorter chapter, but I've been busy with work and a thesis. Anyways hope y'all enjoy the chapter, the next one should be out sometime next month and should be equal to if not longer than the previous chapters. As always thanks for reading and as always comments are welcome.
XOXO
Prologue
The night hung like a cloak over Ludwig's path. The meandering well-trodden road was lined by ancient, gnarled trees with skeletal branches that reached out like grasping hands. The muddied road connected the aptly and unoriginally named Ludwig's Tower to the rest of the kingdom of Tyre. The place was a backwater by most accounts given its remote location and the fact that most of the outlying lands were either infested with monsters or barely profitable hamlets with nothing to their worth but their uninspired names. Though that was debatable.
A small procession of baroque and filigreed carriages, adorned with lanterns rode down the route, drawn by equally garishly decorated white horses, and flanked by a cadre of similarly garbed horse-riding guards with expressions caught somewhere between boredom and annoyance. Night travel was utterly ridiculous, but they had a job to do, and the master and the mistress always got what they wanted, so it was either deal with the job or find themselves begging on the streets of Tyre.
In the middle of the procession and within the most opulent of the carriages resided three people. A man, a girl, and a woman, though that might have been putting it lightly.
The man was a whale in all but name and species. He was beady-eyed, jowly-faced, and naked, save for a pair of gold-buckled boots, a silken tunic straining against his ponderous gut, an open blue gold-trimmed overcoat with more buttons and pockets than were strictly necessary, and a vault's worth of rings adorning his sausage-like fingers. He lounged like a basking lizard with his eyes closed and his expression reveling in bliss as the girl worked her mouth up and down his engorged prick. It was a mercy he needed after the farce of a ball he'd just left.
The girl, barely of age was slender, fair-skinned, fair-haired, and nude as well, save for the gold-inlayed leather cuffs adorning her wrists, ankles, and neck. A pair of golden rings pierced her nipples and clitoris, leaving her in a state of constant arousal. It wasn't too bad all things considered. She had a roof over her head, daily meals, and a demanding if not loving master and mistress, besides, it was a far better predicament than where she'd once been and far better than where she'd have ended up if not for them. Also, she didn't mind sucking the master's cock on a daily basis, his cum was delicious and his caress was practically tender when compared to her last master. And, with his pre steadily coating her tongue and throat, and his finger circling the tender pucker of her arse she wanted nothing more than to continue serving him.
The woman aren't like the luxuriating pair was fully clothed in a cream-colored gown worth more than most people saw in a year's worth of work. She too was fair-skinned and fair-haired, but where the girl was slender and youthful, the woman was voluptuous and wore the air of one who'd gotten too old to suffer fools, more so given the day she'd just had.
She held a book in her hands and scowled at her husband with the sour expression of someone who'd just smelled something particularly foul.
"I will not stand for this Dimitri," The Countess Jessabelle said," that woman is nothing but an upstart, who's entire fortune is based on whichever man she can whore herself out to. I will not stand for her to take the contract from us, Dimitri."
"Uh hum," Dimitri hummed," just like that," he added, guiding the girl's head further down his throbbing tool. Her throat was a rolling massage upon his throbbing phallus, and he wanted nothing more than to stuff her full of his seed.
Jessabelle scowled," are you even listening to me Dimitri?"
"Yes, yes," he replied groggily, as the waif's throat undulated around his length and he felt her nose press into his hairy crotch," something, something about the Lady Lina," he added, waving a dismissive hand.
"Ester," she snapped.
The girl froze and Dimitri sighed.
"Fine," Dimitri grumbled, letting go of Ester's head and opening his eyes.
Jessabelle glared, her cerulean eyes gleaming with the promise of a storm he wasn't in the mood to weather, even though the angry sex afterwards was usually amazing.
"The woman is a nothing," Dimitri shrugged before returning his hand back to the girl's head," she's nouveau riche and has nothing on us. What is there to be concerned about?"
"It is about the principal, Dimitri," she said, reclining, legs crossed," an upstart like her does not deserve the former Castillo contract. It should have been ours."
"Jessa," he sighed, feeling the girl once more begin her oral ministration," that contract is for nothing more than a hole in the ground on a continent an ocean away. It would have been more trouble than it would have been worth, besides, we have Aster and Lindal."
She replied with a flat stare.
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose," fine... I'll do it."
"Good," she replied, returning her attention back to her book.
Dimitri quirked a bushy eyebrow.
She returned it.
He nodded.
She shook her head," that's what you have her for."
"Come now," he added, reclining deeper into the carriage's couch," I'm craving something with a little bit more meat," he finished, patting Ester's perky behind.
She rolled her eyes, returning her gaze to her book.
"Come now," he started only for his words to be cut off by a shrill scream and the commanding bellows of his guards.
"What is..."
"Stop them!"
Protect the..."
Whomp! And everything tumbled into chaos.
Dimitri's head throbbed; his vision blurry as he came to. The carriage was a mess and something soft and pointy prodded against his back.
"Get off me," a shrill voice demanded.
He blinked, recognizing it, and shifted.
Jessabelle glared, blood running down her face and her right leg was twisted at an unnatural angle.
"Are you alright?"
"I am fine," she spat," go and see what is going on out there."
He frowned, his gaze hardening.
She returned it," go Dimitri," she said," it is barely a flesh wound, besides what is the point of having a lightlin if we cannot use it," she added, quickly glancing at the girl as she groaned sitting up, the knicks and scratches on her skin knitting close.
He shook his head, closed his eyes, sighed, and nodded.
Feeling every muscle in his body rebel as he scrambled out of their upturned carriage, he came to a sight he never thought possible. Of course, it was a plausibility, but it was such a remote possibility it may as well have been an impossibility.
A small army of goblins had swarmed his caravan, tearing into his supposedly well-trained guards with reckless abandon. The gangly, grey, and green-skinned creatures were like a swarm of hornets. Guards and horses lay crumpled, gutted, and bleeding. The servant and trunk carriages were overturned, and the monsters were ripping through them, dragging out the frightened maids and rummaging through their supplies.
An anger bubbled up in Dimitri's overtaxed gut and he dragged himself out of the carriage, his booted and aching feet meeting the muddy ground a moment later. He looked and felt like a mess, but it wasn't going to stop him. He was a count and a friar after all, even if the latter was mostly in name alone.
Taking in his surroundings and the ensuing chaos, he breathed, spat, and raised a hand. Power swelled, rising to his command, and the rings adorning his fingers began to glow, filling his ears with a hymn of the word. It was a chaotic symphony, that spoke of much and whispered of much more. It was a temptation and a liberation, but he was only interested in one thing. So, he took it, plucking the string and letting his chosen verse sing.
In that moment he could sense the flickering light that were the souls around him, from his wife's, to the girl, to his servants, and to the blood-lusted goblins. Each was unique in its own way and it would take nothing but a breeze to snuff them out.
He exhaled, lashing out with his magic as the hymn reached its crescendo. The power struck true, piercing the souls of every one of the filthy creatures that were nearby, as it attempted to bind them to his will. It coiled, wrapping around the flames that represented the goblins' souls, but instead of wrapping them into bound servants, his magics strained, bucked, and tore.
He collapsed to his knees a moment later, sweat dripping from his brow with the yellowed gaze of every goblin in the vicinity upon him.
It was... There was no possible way... Unless...
"Dimitri," a gravelly voice intoned.
He froze, his heart racing at a horse's gallop.
He looked up and wished he hadn't.
A figure loomed over him, though loomed, might have been an overstatement given he'd have towered over them if he were standing. But, given the situation, the word was more than appropriate. The subject of his terror was yellow-eyed, black-haired, green-skinned, and heavily scarred, but there was no mistaking who it was... more so, given its gravid belly and the rings adorning its gnarly fingers.
He gulped, dreading what was to come...
Chapters
~Eliza/Lisa
"Five in ten," Tug boasted, slamming his half-empty mug of frothing ginseng ale onto the tavern table's worn surface. A grin crossing the bulbous-nosed and grey-bearded hunter's face.
"Ten in five," Eliza replied, smirking behind her recently refilled mug. It'd been a few days since their return from the interior and arguably their first free day since then. Between lugging around the corpse of a vine-lasher, selling off its parts, and the laundry-list of other tasks Lisa wanted to get done in quick succession, they'd barely had any free time. But with the last of their hunt sold off, Eliza was ready to relax, and a good drink was as good as any way to do so... despite the sour look Lisa was giving as the brunette sat next to her. They were flushed with money and things were looking up, so she didn't much care.
"Bah," Tug huffed, waving a meaty calloused hand," I'd be a goose's mother if ya can do that."
Another sip and a smirk," wanna bet?" Eliza goaded, quirking an eyebrow, and completely ignoring Lisa's milk-curdling scowl.
"How much?" The old hunter replied, his jovial voice suddenly becoming harder. Money did always get him riled up.
