King of the Goblins 2—Chapter 6

I closed the door and ran back into the room, pausing for a moment to look longingly at my wives. They were in a tangle of flesh, mostly centered around pleasing Leena.

“You had better not be leaving,” Leena said. Zia’s face was still buried in her ass.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “Something important came up. I’ll be back in around an hour.” 

I watched them for another moment, my heart pounding. Ugh, having to leave that was pure torture. Instead, I ran to my wardrobe and fetched some clothes. Pulling on my pants was difficult due to my boner, which refused to go down because I kept looking over at the orgy happening on my bed.

Taking a deep breath, I focused on getting dressed. After pulling a shirt on over my head, I fastened my sword belt around my waist. I decided to grab a cloak as well, remembering how Zia told me I dressed like a commoner all too often. 

I turned back to the door but looked over at my wives again. Finally unable to resist, I ran over to Leena and knelt behind her. I gently pushed Zia aside and ran my tongue up Leena’s backside, from her soaking-wet pussy up to her asshole and back. After that I placed a kiss on each of her cheeks, then hurried away.

“I’ll be back!” I said as I ran to the door. They answered me with moans. 

Wow, I felt like I could run a mile in five minutes flat at that moment. Anything to get back to the bedroom and pick up where we left off.

“I apologize if I interrupted anything, Your Majesty,” the guard said when I stepped into the hallway. He pointedly looked away from the door.

“You’re fine,” I told him. “You’re just doing your job. No reason to apologize. Now, take me to this gnoll that apparently wants to talk to me.”

“Right away, Your Majesty,” he said, and started off down the hall. 

For being only five feet tall, he walked quickly. I had to hurry to keep pace. Well, that was exactly what I wanted at that moment. I was half-tempted to ask him to start jogging.

Two royal guards flanked the entrance to the tunnel that left the Royal District. They saluted me, fist to chest, as I approached. I returned the salute and hurried down the long tunnel. 

As I walked down the tunnel, I found myself thinking about just how long it was. Now that I was in a hurry, it seemed to take forever to walk down the long, sloping floor. About six months ago when I had been going in the other direction on my way to kill Ralcor, the tunnel seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye.

Funny how things work that way.

After thinking that, I found myself grateful that the soldiers accepted me. I mean, I had killed their previous king, after all. Well, Althidon and the ghost of Silvy’s son did, but Althidon told me to just tell everyone I had done it. They’d take me more seriously that way.

Of course, Ralcor had been a giant prick. So, once the soldiers got over the fact that I was a usurper, they calmed down quite a lot. And without Ralcor’s influence, they became happier, less stressed, and did their jobs better, too. Now, they were glad to have me as king. They liked working for a guy that appreciated them.

With all that was going through my mind, I managed to avoid staring when we passed the hot springs. The guard walking in front of me definitely got an eyeful, but I couldn’t blame him. It was a busy time of day and the springs were filled with people cleaning off the sweat of the day, many of them women.

We passed through the short tunnel that led us to the Tunnel District, then made an almost immediate right turn into the long tunnel that took us outside. I smiled as we passed the old, worn trail that went to Silvy’s old house. 

I couldn’t walk down the long entrance tunnel without my mind being flooded with memories as well. Memories of trying to sneak by the guards, of walking behind Zia and Tressi and watching their butts undulate up and down with each step. 

“Right up here a bit,” the guard said as we exited the tunnel. 

We crossed the strip of dirt and grass that separated the edge of the mountain with the forest, and then we found ourselves among the towering trees and thick bushes. A bit to our left I saw the nearest great tree.

Now that my people spent a lot less time foraging, the forest had started to recover. Anything near the mouth of the tunnel had long since been picked bare, but as we walked I saw more than one bush covered in berries. As there were more berries and fruit, there were more birds. And, I imagine where there were more birds, there were more predators. It was the cycle of life, and it was growing.

“Over this way,” the guard said, and we hurried through the trees. 

It took us perhaps twenty minutes to walk to the site of the attack—I noticed the guard had broken small branches and torn up patches of grass to mark the path. That was good thinking on his part.

When we finally reached the area, we found four more guards standing alert. Lying on the ground further away were nearly a dozen gnoll corpses. Finally, my first look at a gnoll.

They were about as tall as a goblin woman, with ruddy brown skin. They were hairy little guys, with protruding faces that looked like snouts. They all had dense beards and bushy eyebrows, with little black eyes beneath them. Most of the corpses had their hair in braids, with bones and beads threaded on them. That made sense, as they had been described as tribal.

In short, they were about as ugly as a creature could be.

One of them was away from the group of corpses, leaning his back against a tree. His breath came in labored gasps, and he clutched at a bleeding wound in his stomach. Two goblin guards flanked him, each with a spear held ready, although the gnoll was in no shape to make a run for it.

“You can relax a bit,” I said to the guards. I knelt in front of the gnoll and examined him. I had no clue how they aged, but I saw some gray in his whiskers and beard.

He grunted at me, then opened his mouth to talk. All that came out was a wet cough. “Ah, that hurts,” he muttered.

“If you help me, I can heal you,” I told him, trying to make my voice gentle.

Even in his dying state, his head snapped up. “How do you speak our tongue?” he asked. He barely had the strength to speak. His voice was little more than a whisper.

“Kind of a long story,” I said. “But it involves magic.”

“He speaks the gnoll language?” one of the guards asked the other.

“Amazing,” came the reply.

“You are…a strange creature,” the gnoll said. He closed his eyes and took a deep, rattling breath, then continued. “They’re coming.” His breath wheezed, and he tried again. “Coming for you.”

I reached out with blood magic and felt through his body. He was covered in cuts and bruises, but the one doing him in was the gaping hole in his upper stomach. I had never healed anything that serious with blood magic before, but I gave it a try.

He gasped in pain as his flesh began to move and crawl on its own. His bleeding stopped, and I forced his body to start making more blood. It wouldn’t be enough, but perhaps it could keep him alive for a bit longer. The wound didn’t close all the way, but it looked like it had been healing for half a week after my efforts.

“How…” he trailed off, too weak to talk.

“Who is coming for us?” I asked.

“Not too many…. He’s overconfident. Have to…be careful though. Huge bastards. Hard to kill.” He stopped and took a few breaths. His eyes drifted closed.

“Hey, stay with me now,” I said. 

“So tired,” he whispered. “Fucking stomach hurts. Asshole stabbed me. We were trying to warn…..”

“Who, us? You were trying to warn goblins?”

“Tasty flesh,” he said. “Such tasty flesh. But we don’t want the…. The….”

“Hey, wake up,” I said, snapping my fingers. With a frown, I felt through his body with blood magic. He was still alive, but only just.

His eyes opened a fraction, then closed again. “We were trying to…warn you,” he whispered.

“Take him back to our city so he can heal. Keep him guarded at all times, but put him on a bed and give him food and water,” I told the nearby guards. “And be careful with him. I know he’s a gnoll and they’re our enemies, but we might be able to make an ally out of this guy. If we can do that, he can tell us a lot of things we can use.”

The guards frowned, but reached down and grabbed onto the gnoll.

“Gently,” I said firmly.

“What did he say, Your Majesty?” one of the soldiers asked me after saluting.

I returned his salute as I watched the soldiers carry the gnoll away. “He said something is coming. Something big, and hard to kill. They came here to warn us, but were attacked.” I gave the soldier a sharp look at that and he held up both hands.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. They usually attack on site. We see a group that big, we know it’s a problem. Didn’t know one of them spoke a bit of our language until everything was done.”

I watched the soldiers carrying the gnoll away. “I just hope he has information for us. Something we can use. I have a feeling once he heals and gets some food in him, he’ll be ready to cooperate.”

“So, something is coming for us, and it’s big.” The soldier frowned. “What do you think it is?”

“Huge bastards that are hard to kill.” I turned to the soldier. “What does that sound like?”

His face paled. “Trolls.”

I nodded and turned back to the soldiers carrying him away. “Trolls are coming for us.”