It had been two days and Lappy had to admit at last that she was finally hungry enough to degrade herself and her palate by going to the slop trough and scraping enough of the brown-black goop up off its stony surface to survive on. She was still the lowest one on the totem pole, below even Palla, the scrawny runt whose identification Lappy wore on her own chastity belt, so by the time she was allowed her turn there was only the barest residue on the bottom of the stone trough. The goblins here knew to get their share when they could.
She'd hoped at least that there would be enough left to ball it up in her hands and swallow it down like a bitter pill, but the only amount she could scrape off the surface stuck fast under her claws and had to be dug out into her mouth one by one with a sharp tooth. It wasn't enough, so she ended up hanging overtop the rim of the trough, her ass hanging out in midair to no shortage of snickers, licking up what nourishment she could from the bottom.
What she'd found out in the remains of her first day in The Hole and the early hours of her second was the Dwarfs hardly needed metal bars to keep these girls in line. The Puggies, or as Leigh called them 'Mallow goblins', policed one another's behavior with an undercurrent of threat that passed back and forth like lightning from one leader to the next. Mary, the queen, was the most popular goblin among the customers, the most voluptuous one present with long, flowing hair; she was the most frequently asked-for when the Dwarfs came with their lists. But rather than gossip behind her back when she was gone or try to shore up another faction, the others regarded her popularity as proof of her status. Thus, she received the most food from the trough alongside what gifts she could wheedle out of customers, maintaining her voluptuousness that was apparently so prized.
It had taken hours of subtly prodding Palla before Lappy knew why popularity was so highly-regarded. What came was a tale of how one other goblin had gotten into a fight with Mary and nearly scratched her eye out; the Dwarfs came and protected their prize whore. Palla refused to say what happened to the other.
So, Lappy thought, it was a borrowed authority, and one she could do nothing about. She'd thought before that she could, as the one among them who had ever needed to work for her meals in the wild, simply beat Mary and her lieutenants into submission, but more likely she would be taken and never seen again if she even tried it; pigs needed feeding too. Really, she hoped not to be there long enough for it to become an issue, go back to her gentle lover's arms and forget about this cruelty... she'd thought she'd already have been rescued. She trusted that Leigh had come up against some obstacle she couldn't simply wave away, but even that assertion put the woman's power on a much lower level than Lappy had always believed.
At least looking around and theorizing made it a little easier to stomach the sickening pate they were fed as Lappy went back to Palla in the corner and began grooming the girl's hair for something to do. The other girls did it a lot as well, combing one another's hair, teasing themselves with half-remembered techniques used on them by their customers; they couldn't get through the chastity belts except to push a finger through the hole in the back, or a tongue, but they lazily went through the motions of eroticism for lack of anything better to do. Lappy was content raking her fingers through Palla's matted locks, thankful that Palla herself was also content to keep their contact at that level.
The girl was frightened, unsuited for the life the rest of them led around her, unpopular with the customers. She'd shied away from touch for some time before relenting and letting Lappy do as she liked. They both were on the bottom of the pole, so some small trust could be created between them, enough that they had slept by one another the night before. Lappy had taken the girl's tag on a whim, to spare her the effort of fucking strangers with the threat of the sheer-sided pit in the corner as punishment, but after the paladin the day before, it seemed nobody was willing to buy the girl's time.
Why wasn't that hard to figure out. She had been on the bottom for who knew how long, and her body was covered in the signs of fights long past and lost. While the rest of them were plump and jolly, more than Lappy imagined a goblin should be when her own sisters in the warren had looked nearly identical to her brothers, Palla was thin and bony. But, behind the unkempt hair and the ugly faces she made, she had the same kind of pretty face that had been bred into the rest of the Mallow goblins.
It would be shameful to admit, but Lappy was living out a dream she'd had before. The only thing missing was the undying affection and devotion of the beautiful women around her; given the looks she was receiving now, that would not be coming true any time soon. She had to resist the urge to touch Palla with more familiarity, to draw the girl up into some smooching, but the thought that she would soon again be with her love on the surface gave her the strength she needed to push her urges back into the corner of her mind.
Some time after the meal, an unknowable time when the lights were only ever on or off, a Dwarf came in with a clipboard and called out into the Mallows, "Palla, get your ass up here!"
The girl in question cowered behind Lappy. It was questionable whether she actually knew Lappy was taking her place, and she definitely didn't know how to keep a low profile. But Lappy wasn't about to leave her self-appointed guardianship behind and presented herself before the beady-eyed, bulbous-nosed Dwarf.
So, Lappy was surprised at the jolt of movement behind her as Mary came around from behind and Hauled Palla, the real one, by her hair so as not to get bitten and threw Palla to her knees before the Dwarf. "This Palla," she spat, and returned to being lavished with attention by her lackeys.
Palla was shaking as the Dwarf looked them over. But Lappy knew more about Dwarfs now than she had before, she knew that bored look in his beady eyes, that he was thinking he didn't get paid enough to think past the tip of his nose; she presented the tag she'd taken off Palla's chastity belt as proof of her assumed identity.
He laughed shortly, "Heh, might as well get rid of the scrawny ones all in one go, I guess."
There was no time to process what he meant by it before the Dwarf clipped Lappy and Palla's wrists together with metal rings attached to a chain that ran to his belt. Protest would do nothing but make what lay on the other side of this even that much worse, so Lappy shut up and kept her ears wide in search for whatever information she might glean, whatever the Dwarfs might say, thinking their captives were too idiotic to understand. She wanted to calm Palla as they were pulled along down the corridor, but she'd already let slip that she could speak the day before as a short-sighted solution to her problem at the time and could only hope that the fact hadn't gone farther than the one Dwarf she'd spoken to. At a time like this, Lappy thought, Palla would have to seethe alone in order for the two of them to maintain their advantage.
They went to the dressing room where their chastity belts were removed: an assurance that they would be used by the end of the day for their holes. Although a dress already existed for Palla, one she had to be gagged for the Dwarf tailor to put on her without being assaulted, one was readily adjusted for Lappy as well. The tailor had no issue with clothing double the amount he'd expected, he had a wall full of different costumes which could be easily modified for almost any of the girls to match their customer's tastes, using a clever arrangement of strings to be tightened and loosened for each one's specific curves.
Whatever the case, Lappy was simply happy to be clothed once more after wearing only metal underwear for a whole day and night. More importantly, "get rid of the scrawny ones" surely didn't mean being fed to the hogs anymore... Lappy hadn't wanted to think about it until after the possibility was gone, they wouldn't waste the cloth if that were the plan. She even smiled a little as the tailor patted her head for being so much more docile while he tightened her corset. It felt almost wrong to place blame on these simple people for their part in her peoples' enslavement and prostitution, when they themselves didn't seem to see beyond the moments in the practice of their crafts.
They were once again chained and Palla in particular was kept gagged with a wad of cloth. She made as much of a racket behind the gag as she could as they were led up and up, through tunnels which wouldn't have been visible by any of the Mallows going about their business. Like most of the tunnels down here, the ones who were allowed to use these ones would be ferried to their ultimate destination without thought or effort; it seemed intentionally confusing, so that anyone not going to where they'd been sent would be found huddled in a corner after becoming lost. Whatever little comfort it provided the prisoners, the sense that they weren't tightly penned in, Lappy hoped she would be long gone before she became accustomed to it.
