The Goblin Husbandry Project

(contains no actual goblin sex in this part, thought the next will)

Almine gently pushed through the back gate to her home, where she had paid one of the guards a bribe to not be standing for the next half hour, and very quietly made her way up the wall and into the lit window to her own room. The rigging for the decorative ivy wouldn't have held anyone other than an elf, or a halfblood as was the case who knew how to brace herself just right for her weight not even to creak the thin wood. She was almost too nervous to do it this time, knowing what was waiting for her tonight.

Inside already, sorting through little, filled rubbers of cum, was a woman wearing Almie's own face until she came through the window and allowed the glamour to fade, showing off dull, brown curls and the slender frame of Leigh the mage. She'd come in the normal way, as Almine herself did when she was out late, through a hall of lesser prostitutes who couldn't be asked to care after their own long nights. Almine came up and knelt by the table, trying not to shake from the stress of the night.

"Where's Lappy?" Leigh asked.

"Ah, you see, there's a funny story about that."

Leigh cleared her throat and slowly looked over at the elf, leaving her notes and the pearly little bulbs of goblin cum on the table. "I like to laugh. Well?"

"Well, you see, she was watching you down in the pit, right? And so she was getting really horny, and because I'm such a good friend, I went ahead and fingered her a bit in my lap... And see, I thought she was actually pretty cute, so I let the glamour go for a little bit, so I could enjoy it too. Anyway, when the show ended, one of the puggies thought she worked there and now she's..." Almine prepared to get slapped, but it didn't come while she waited. "Sorry?"

"Yes, you are," Leigh said with a sigh. "You'll be coming with me to get her back, I hope you're aware." With a snap, the mage's magic activated and the table was cleared, the mage herself was changed back out of Almie's borrowed clothes and into her own while Almine was left newly bare, as the mage couldn't be bothered to dress her again within stopped time. "Now."

"I'm not sure I ca-" Almine said, then the world clicked around her and not only was she now clothed in nothing but a cloak, but she was in the street with Leigh outside the brewery which lay above the goblin sex club: The Hole, "-n sneak out again... What?"

"Not a problem," Leigh said, taking Almie's wrist and pushing past the door of the brewery for the second time that night. "Didn't want to storm the castle just yet, but I suppose subtlety can be thrown out the window if it means saving a friend, can't it? And if they put up a fuss, I can always trade them a pound of your flesh."

"Hey, wait!" Almine whispered, pulling her arm taut against the mage's grip before they turned the internal corner into the brewery proper where they would be immediately discovered by the Dwarfs working all night making the beer which hid the sex club. "Get killed on your own, don't drag me into it! She's just a goblin for fuck's sake!"

Leigh said with a smirk, "Get killed? Why would that happen?" She turned the corner and Almine waited for the shouting to start, and the carnage in potentia that this magic-user might have been capable of, but after some tense seconds nothing had happened and Almie's curiosity overtook caution, she peeked around to see Leigh poking a Dwarf worker in the forehead. "See?" She said. "I'm not here to kill anyone, except maybe you. Haven't decided yet, depends on whether Lappy's been hurt."

"Ah..." Almine said, following Leigh through the brewery and into the back where it opened up, down in this case, through a trapdoor into The Hole. "Say, you look like you have things well enough handled here, so what say I get going back home before anyone misses me?"

"That's what you don't seem to understand at the moment." Leigh was fiddling with the trapdoor's lock: a Dwarf design often sold for being incredibly loud and difficult to solve so the homeowner would have plenty of time to catch the would-be thief in the act. It didn't make as much sense when the thief in question could effectively freeze time.

"What's that?"

The lock seemed to frustrate the mage, who produced a tiny brush and painted some runes on its surface; moments after a flare of light, the lock was reduced to a puddle of blackened slag which broke off with some stomping and allowed the hatch to open.

Leigh said, as she descended with the hem of Almie's cloak in hand, "You shouldn't worry about being missed by anyone else. You're coming along so that I won't miss you."

There could be no rebuttal. They went down the hole, soon arriving back at the pit Leigh had performed in earlier that very night with some dozen goblin males. But all was quiet in this large room. Almine chastized herself for the thought, of course it was quiet when time was stopped in its tracks, but it would have been quiet regardless since the customers had gone into the private rooms to satisfy their night's perversions out of sight and out of mind from the others. The churlish ones who had been shameless enough to jack themselves off to a woman getting the shit fucked out of her had already blow their loads and dispersed.

But Leigh was a woman with a mission and she wasn't about to remain in this place longer than she needed to. She dropped back into the pit and hooked a fierce glance up at Almine when the elf remained up at the rim for an extra moment. Once Almine joined her in the pit, the fine soil underfoot that she knew so well from her own time as a goblin plaything, the mage had already gone to the gate leading back into the service tunnels, from which goblins were emitted into the showroom, and she was again reducing the latch to a blackened, smoking puddle. Beyond that was a cage where a dozen of the green monsters could be held in wait for the show, once more the lock was defeated in spectacular fashion and Leigh led the way into the service tunnels, where they had to hunch slightly to get by in an area meant for Dwarfs and goblins.

Thankfully, an elf-blooded woman and a slightly-built human wouldn't be breaking their backs with this posture over the short time they meant to stay.

Then, abruptly, Leigh stopped and Almine nearly pushed the woman over with her next step.

"What now!?" Almine half-whispered and felt stupid for the caution when there was nobody to hear.

"This." Leigh forced her finger forward and it seemed to connect with a sort of shimmering sheet in the air. "You didn't say this Simon was a mage! It's a damn ward, no way to get through without permissions."

"So what? Aren't you good enough to just sweep your hand through it and take it out? I know I've heard of mages who can do stuff like that, or is the time thing the only one you're good at?"

"Oh, yes, let me simply overload this circuit so that the shape of the initialized impetus is so warped that it can't restabilize!"

"Um, yeah?"

Leigh nearly hit her head on the ceiling turning around sharply and she rubbed her forehead with frustration. "Everything I said would take time, actual time, and it's not something that I could do within this stasis spell without dropping it. Gods damn it all, you should have told me this bastard was also a mage and I would have thought of this!" There was murder in her eyes, and she proceeded to push Almine back through the tunnel the way they came, jabbing a finger into the elf's chest. "Now I want to know how you're going to get my friend back without tearing this place up stone by molten stone and leaving your smoldering corpse at the bottom of the resulting pit!"

"Calm down missy, I got something..." Almine was bowled onto her back and Leigh came up over her with a knee landing on her chest. "I didn't know, seriously, honestly! Look, I haven't seen the guy, somebody else came and recruited me, okay? But look, I got an idea, somebody's gotta have seen him, down the line. So what if you ask the guy who hired me, who hired him?"

The heat of wrath dulled in Leigh's expression, but it was only barely in hiding anymore, around the next corner. She helped Almine up and led the elf out by a pinched collar. "Show me, now, fast."

It must have been some kind of sight: two small women carrying a Dwarf frozen like a statue on their shoulders out of the bar. They wouldn't know, nobody was looking in the instant of frozen time.

-o-

Laurenz, the human, would have been surprised to know that it was surprising for someone else to find out he was a human. In fact, he was surprised for several reasons, but he wouldn't have known that he was merely the latest aquisition in a long line of, until that point, Dwarfs.

Right now, what he knew was that he had been getting ready to head off to sleep in the early morning after a long night of professionally minding his own business on the matter of where wares were sourced from, and now he was in a shed somewhere with a mining lantern pointed directly into his face by two shadowy figures.

His surprise lasted for a moment on his face before professional pride demanded he regain his composure and he asked, "Alright, so what is it? Someone say I have your grandma's old ring? Want it back, you can have it. Not in my nature to catch a beating."

One of the two spoke, a woman. "I think you'll find that it doesn't take much practice to be good at. We're going to be asking questions and you will answer them, or..."

"Or what?"

"Else."

The other one spoke, another woman with a bit of airy inflection, probably elf-kin. "No reason we can't be pleasant about it, though. I've got some water here, if you're parched at all?"

Hmm, he was tied to the rough chair they'd put him in, but too loosely to matter, and the door to the outside was only past two women. Even if there was some hired muscle outside, coming through with a hard kick would give him some time to turn on his heel and run. That was the important part, not

where

he was going, but

that

he was going; he'd get to the where eventually. But why not humor them until something incriminating came up?

"Sure, sure," he said. "You want the dirt, I gots it. Lay it on me, what are you looking for? Actually, I came into these paintings a week or so ago, faces move on their own, think they're haunted or something, probably worth a pretty penny."

The first one snapped, "Why the hell would I care about some crummy painting!?"

The second one said, "Hey, calm down already, can't you see he's just scared and trying to help out however he can? Look, buddy, we're looking for someone, and we hear, from several people, that you might have some connection. All we want to know is how to get a meeting with Simon, from The Hole."

"Is that all? I'd have an easier time sending you to meet god!" Laurenz laughed in his chair and spat sideways into bare dirt. "Yeah, I've met him, least that's what my notes say. He comes into town, uses a proxy, me, to buy some property underneath this there brewery and staff it with some of my friends temporarily while he gets set up, and I'm sure I've seen him, but the picture's just not there. No luck, try again."

"Where did you meet him?" the first one said.

"Somewhere, can only remember that it seemed bright. Must be a guy who likes his candles, prissy or something? But me, I know better than to get into the business of my betters, right, so it's not like I'd be trying to find this rich git on my own. Probably for the best that I can't remember that much, means I'm not tempted to try and squeeze some more money outta him and get strung up myself. But you wanna pass a message on up to him, you're going to want to leave it with The Hole after all, since somebody's gotta know how to contact the guy."

"Yeah, no, they didn't," the second voice said. "It's really too bad, after all that, none of them would admit to knowing anything about him. This chick has some weird toys, too, let me tell you. This one guy... damn, I'm a woman and even I felt it when that thing popped..."

Laurenz felt an involuntary twinge of empathy in his testicles. "I'm telling the truth, you gotta believe me! There's no reason to get violent or anything."

The first shadow slammed their hands on the table between them and him, coming just close enough that through the mining lantern's light Laurenz could see the shine of her glare from inside the shadows. "I might believe you... I've had a long night, longer than you know, and at this point, I'm thinking about just leaving a trail of mangled corpses leading up to this bastard's door until he gets the picture and either meets with me or skips town... Which is your favorite finger? I'll let you keep it, since I'm feeling nice."

"Hey, woah," the second one said, "we aren't taking any more fingers tonight, you promised. He already said he'd tell us what we want to know, so cool your heels for a second and let's see what he has to say."

"Fine, speak."

Laurenz nearly rocked himself onto the ground, but achieved a look behind him at a bare wooden wall... "Alright, so I did lie... promise you won't lop anything off and I'll give you what you need to find him."

"Speak."

"Not until I get an oath that I'll leave here alive and in one piece!"

The first of them snuffed the mining lantern and lit a candle on the table between them. The two figures turned out to be two women, as he'd guessed, a human and an elf.

The human woman had furious, red eyes as though she'd spent hours and hours in a state of abject fury, and the wand in her hand marked her as one of those one should tread lightly around. One could never tell just how horribly a mage could rip them apart, and that was on the milder end either way.

She sat across from him and stared into his eyes, contemplating what she was to do with him, whether she would have to deal with disposing of his corpse this night, and she said, "I promise that if you do not give me all of the information you have right now, I'll find something to feed you to over the next year."

He looked over to the elf, who had taken a leisurely place against the far wall, but she just shrugged. 'You're on your own,' it seemed to say. But she actually said, "You might want to just start talking; more lives than yours hang in the balance, weird as it is to say."

"I-" he started, then looked back into the eyes of the mage and saw a flash of all of the ways she could painfully end him here and now, and he hurried. "I have this trick, you know, where I take a splinter and break it in two, then I leave one half in the floorboards. See, it's not the first time I've been taken somewhere with a bag over my head, and who even notices a tiny piece of wood on the floor? Oh yeah, they all think they're so smart, taking me in confusing ways so I can't count steps or turns, bringing me far away from where they took me so there isn't a frame of reference. Everyone forgets that you mages can follow tracks like this, match one end of a splinter to another."

"Insurance?" the mage asked.

"Scary people want to know who other scary people are, just a part of the business. Here, untie my hands."

A raised eyebrow answered him.

"Never mind, I'll do it myself." He let the rope fall to the floor after having fiddled with it up to then. "Protip: when you're tying someone's hands, make sure it's right up against the base of the wrist so they can't shimmy it up their arm and bend their fingers to untie it. Now then." It was painful, sure, but also the best place to store a splinter. Nobody would guess that this tiny piece of wood was important in the first place, and fewer than nobody would second-guess a splinter being lodged in the dead skin of a forefinger. "Good enough for you?"

Laurenz awoke inside his place of business set into the side of an alleyway. He had the vague feeling that he'd been gone somewhere for the last hour or so, but figured he must have dozed off while waiting for a customer.

-o-

"He's here!?" Leigh growled. Almine had tried holding her back as a dowsing pointed them toward the discarded half of the Fence's splinter, but the outrage of it all was driving her on almost past the ability of the elf to keep her from going on a war path. "Here? Right the hell where we started!? The man hired you and you can't even tell that he's operating out of your own goddamn home!?"

The bordello was in the midmorning rush of checking out guests who had stayed the night before, and so a hooded Almine out back, holding onto the waist of a disgruntled human wasn't enough to have anyone stray from their own duties. Oh, Leigh could easily stop time just a little bit more for the night, that particular spell didn't cost nearly as much as it should for its utility, but the small comfort of making the bitch of an elf scramble not to be found out was bittersweet. When they were in serious danger of being spotted, the elf spread a glamour over them both but there was no reason for Leigh to stay herself about her duty to Lappy; she would have continued into enemy territory either way.

The elf's own room became the base of operations until such a time as they could marshal a response.

"Don't start that with me, you saw tonight just how many of his own guys don't know where or who he really is." Almine had settled in, dressed herself in the robe that she'd met Leigh and Lappy in the day before and began preparing a pot of tea. "For all you know, he was just using one of our rooms as a place to do business for the day without exposing himself the way you were thinking he did in the first place. That happens more than you think, and they pay extra for us to be quiet about it. Even have the king in here, once in a while, to sample the new girls and inevitably go back to my mother in the end when they can't satisfy him"

"What you're saying is we'll have to end up interrogating whichever girl works in the room where we find the other end of this splinter?" Holding up the pendulum they had been following, Leigh was directed further toward the inside of the building. A leisurely walk around the perimeter had proven already that this was in fact the building and further, that the room they were looking for was above ground level. A more precise divination from three points would have discerned the exact spot, but there wasn't enough time to perform that kind of magic and Leigh wasn't good enough at it to make it work with fewer than ten from only meters away. "They do keep tabs on how many of you girls there are every night, correct? And where you work?"

Almine further settled onto her couch with a cup of steaming tea, the bottom of her robe draped lazily over an uplifted knee without care to what would be seen. True to form, even after a full night of being dragged here and there, performing labor, a girl with even a drop of elf blood was far more composed and lovely than she had any right to be. A little jealousy was engendered in Leigh, who was feeling the effort in strained eyes and creaking joints; it hadn't been so long ago that she'd adventured out in the wilderness for weeks at a time with only a pad between her and the forest floor, so how had she lost all of her grit so quickly? Never mind that-

"Why the hell do you think I'm done with you?" Leigh asked. "Get your shoes back on, you'll have one more person to carry at least today."

The lazy elf yawned. "Slow down. Yes, they take a count of all the human girls we have every night to make sure none of them have run off. Mother feels that elfs, halfbreeds, shouldn't be subjected to that disgrace, or else us two would already be having problems." She slunk out of her seat and caught Leigh about the neck, pushed her down to sit at the tea table. "Let's say you do find them right now; are you going to be any use fighting another mage without resting a bit first?"