Over Their Heads Chapter 2 – The “Noble” Savage

“The wildlife up here is surprisingly silent,” Mayael commented while pricking her pointy ears to the wind. “I don’t hear owls hooting, grasshoppers chirping, nor wolves saluting their patron the moon. I still see the fireflies undulating across the darkness, however… Gently, as if being rocked back and forth by invisible tides. Why is that, I wonder? Why does a nightmare on the world like Archleon allow a thing of beauty to exist in his lair’s vicinity but not their other nocturnal companions? Are they too tiny for him to notice? Or does he see their tiny lights as tiny signs of worship of his greatness?”

“Oh by all the gods, shut up!” Maia groaned in absolute boredom, lying with her head propped against a rock and lazily chewing an acorn shell into smaller and smaller pieces. “Elven druids. Elven druids. Save me.” She tilted her head back. “Obren! Can you please, please “civilize” me? Give me a city to live in so I can escape these endlessly prattling tree huggers, if that’s what it will take to get some quiet!”

Niranya snorted mirthlessly while Serina shot the barbarian a sharp look… one fierce enough to have scared animals into silence. The pair of veteran adventurers still stood by the rock wall, overlooking the spot where Vallista had scaled the fortress and waiting.

Maia met that gaze without wilting before rolling her eyes and looking away. “Don’t worry, oh omnipresent authority figure,” Maia grumbled in reply to the Paladin’s stare. “There’s no minions manning the ruins of this temple, no eyes watching the walls. If there were, I would be able to smell them,” she said while palpitating her big nostrils. “The dragon must keep them all underground, in his pit.”

Mayael turned to face her with a cocksure grin, placing hands on hips. “Oh? I would have expected a wildwoman to have more appreciation of nature. You know; hills, trees, lakes, and mountains as big as that noggin of yours. These things are not valued by your tribe?”

“Shows how little you know,” Maia brusquely responded. “Nature isn’t a friend. It’s an enemy to be vanquished, a foe to be conquered. We don’t live with nature… we live in defiance of it. We just don’t hide from our enemy like you Southern weaklings. I don’t care about the ‘glory of nature…’ I’m just here for the big, taffing loot. Archleon’s fat stash… and his big fat head as my trophy! So why the godsdamned night owls aren’t hollering, why the hell would I care abou-“

Serina cast her sharp eyes up towards the darkened parapet, resolutely ignoring Maia like the woman deserved when she got like this. What was taking Vallista so long? Obviously she had to be careful, but even so… every second that passed without any sign of her made Serina increasingly nervous.

Obren obviously read the emotion upon her highborn visage, and the servant of Helm pursed his already thin-lipped mouth in a grave expression. He had reached the same concern himself much earlier. “Aye Paladin. In Helm’s name, the Watcher might have already judged that demonic scoundrel,” he darkly intoned.

“Speak not of the Watcher nor his judgment if you do not possess his vision, cleric,” Serina countered sternly while still keeping her eyes upon the crumbling monastery wall. “You cannot see what it is in a woman’s heart. Personally, I’m not fain to think Vallista would have betrayed us so wantonly.”

“Are you talking about that damned tiefling?” Maia barked while interlacing fingers behind her neck. “Just because you don’t want to see it doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t known what she’s about since day one. Of course she was going to betray us. Always the act of those with muddled blood.”

“God Maia, you’re as intransigent as a seaborne wind!” the druid spat. “Can’t you give that poor girl a single chance?”

“Have you noticed how I haven’t put my fist through her face yet?” Maia countered. “I am giving her a chance. The only one she deserves.”

“Oh you younglings,” Niranya tittered. “Always as quick to argue as you are to reach your assumptions. Watch and see… it seems our little planetouched thief is about to conclude her task.”

The mechanical noise of unfurling chains began clanking through the darkness. On the wall ahead and to their left the drawbridge blocking their approach started to descend, opening up a pathway. The adventurers all mustered their armaments and equipment, and then ventured onward. The night remained as lonesome and empty as Mayael had described as the bridge set down – nothing moved anywhere they could see it.

“Still don’t trust the little goat-horned one,” Maia mumbled while picking her teeth. “Don’t trust anything with horns really. Never ends well.”

Mayael cast the muscle bound barbarian a hostile look before rolling her eyes. “I don’t know why my sister tolerates you.”

Vallista awaited them on the other side as the drawbridge came down. She greeted her comrades with an elaborate bow like a Calimshan duelist saluting his adversary.

“Wipe that grin off yer face, cut purse. All you managed to do was lower a drawbridge!” Maia barked. “We have ourselves a dragon to slay!”

“Any sign of minions?” Serina asked the rogue.

“Signs of them, yes. They clearly move around up here.” Vallista responded. “There weren’t any present tonight, but there is an entrance leading into a great hollow of the earth. The villains all must be hiding beneath. I took the time to scout out the place before lowering the drawbridge.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Vallista… too dangerous to go alone,” Serina cautioned her. “Even so, good work. Take us there… and everyone! From now on, we are prepared for battle. Keep it quiet!”

It didn’t take much walking after entering the temple for them to reach the mouth of a prodigious grotto leading down. It looked to have been hewed out of the rock and masonry by savage hands, not the diligent engineering of dwarves or gnomes but something far more uncivilized, its walls uneven and oblong. This wound into the Earth had been created right in the temple’s adytum, precisely where its vanquished priesthood had once performed their most sacred rituals. Precisely like Vallista had promised, they encountered no enemies: the tomb-like eeriness kept its silent stranglehold over the moonlit ruins.

“A pit for the serpent,” Serina mumbled, kneeling by the cavern’s edge and peering into its void-like darkness as it disappeared down a steep grade.

“Undoubtedly,” Niranya replied while circling her sorcerous hand over the top-most part of her quarterstaff, preparing a spell. “Dragons are creatures of torpor. Their most frequent activity is slumber. With a bit of luck, we’ll deal with the minions while their master is still asleep.”

“We should move then,” Serina urged, standing up.

“What about the darkness?” Obren quizzed.

“Yeah, no shit!” Maia crassly blurted. “We don’t all have the night-vision that comes with being pointy-eared or our ancestors having slept around,you know?” Maia caressed the hilt of her sword. “It’s not like I have anything against brawling in the black, of course… but I figure you might want to make sure you don’t get in the way of my blade.”

“I’m working on that right now,” Niranya answered, her hand promptly starting to glow with variegated lighting. “Tiny stars to guide our path. Beacons of brilliance even within the wyrm’s lair.”

Serina remained kneeling by the cavern’s edge, braving those borderlands of dangerous darkness, marshaling her chivalric resolve like a true Paladin as Niranya cast her spell with a few more occult gestures and whispered words of power. Tiny motes of light lifted off of the tip of her staff before they started drifting off, coming to circle around the party’s heads and casting them in cones of luminosity. One could almost mistake them for celestials crowned with magnificent halos.

“That’s a neat little trinket,” Maia mumbled, attempting to finger-tap her star. “Not bad for someone who doesn’t want to get their hands dirty.”

Steel rang as Serina drew her longsword and tightened the straps on her shield. “Enough. We advance,” she said firmly. “Weapons ready. Today we strike a blow for Torm, and justice for the villagers.” A moment later, the paladin strode confidently into the darkness.

Mayael couldn’t help but smile at their leader’s valiance. “Wow, she’s so cool,” she whispered to her sister as the Paladin took the lead, following the aasimar down into danger.

Niranya smiled. “Yes… she is.”

Behind them, Vallista had remained characteristically quiet, walking in the back of the group as the adventurers advanced down into the cavern. Had any of the five ahead of her looked back right then however, they would have seen her grin glinting ominously in the darkness.

“By the Watcher! These tunnels descend so deeply we’re liable to end up somewhere in the Underdark,” Obren grimly mumbled.

“He’s not wrong. We’ve already traveled far below the furthest any roots grow no matter how mighty the tree,” Mayael piped while glancing up apprehensively towards their makeshift earthen ceiling. “Somewhere deep in the mountain, I’d wager. That’s not what concerns me the most, though… I don’t favor the fact that there are so many passages. Branching and winding and labyrinthine in their number like an ant’s haystack. How could we truly know if we’re descending towards the Dragon’s lair or if we’re ambling around blind as moles?”

“Nonsense,” Maia blurted, spitting out a nutshell that her teeth had shattered.

“The barbarian is uncouth but she’s not wrong,” Serina interrupted from the front.

Maia snorted. “The path forward is simple. We always follow the widest tunnel. After all, it’s from there that Archleon must have burrowed. He could hardly dwell in a tiny side tunnel, now could he?”

“Just so,” Niranya agreed, her elf-eyes scanning the darkness on all sides. “The other passages are no doubt made by his minions. Dens of various mischievous fiends.” The elf’s wizardry could only brighten so much. Though well-illuminated nearby, the path ahead remained cloaked in an obscuring midnight blackness too thick for even the plane-touched paladin to peer far into. Even so they started occasionally passing the enormous, sublime footprints of the reptilian villain… too large and powerful to miss. Archleon’s three-toed claw marks had sunken into stone like theirs might into mud. Glimpsing the roughhewn earthen walls, the group could also notice multiple claw-marks whose raking stripes proved as long as scimitars, looking at these ghastly etches with growing nerves. At the same time, the cavern stopped being so cold… the heat of his breath starting to hang heavily in the air, the fire within him showing where hardened dirt had been blackened or scorched to ash.

“What a huge monster he must be,” Mayael nervously breathed.

“Bigger than I’d hoped,” Serina agreed softly, trading a glance with Niranya. “Bigger than the villagers said.”

They kept walking through the grotto. Puddles of disgusting liquids – unfathomable in their origin – lay pooled into every crevice and cranny that they passed. Batches of viscid slime and visceral glop clung to the floors. The repulsive muck lay piled here and there like pillows in a messy bedroom.

“What about you, Niranya?” Serina whispered to break the ominous silence. “How fare you in this underworld?”

“Ugh…” Niranya grumbled, divulging plenty of her refined elven temperament. “I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but I’m starting to look back fondly on our visit to Gauntlgrym. Even the habitations of the dwarves are a vast improvement.”

“And I bet they didn’t reek of orcs,” Maia Thaugindottir mirthlessly added, raising her greatsword higher. “A stench that’s only getting stronger by the second.”

“You exaggerate,” Obren replied.

Mayael wrinkled her upheld nose. “N-No she isn’t,” the druid stammered. “I can smell it too. T-They’re coming right towards us. By the elders, Niranya, take guard! We’re about to be attacked!”

The group gathered closer together, weapons up. Seconds later they could hear it… the running footfalls of oncoming foes reaching their ears. The frenzied shrieks of the teeming hordes resonating from on ahead. Everyone peered around them into the shadowy gloom, bracing for combat.

“Miscreants berserk with bloodlust!” Obren exclaimed.

“They’ve been alerted to our intrusion!” Mayael gasped.

“Or they waited for us to get deep enough we couldn’t easily retreat,” Niranya muttered darkly.

“Who cares!” Maia growled, raising her greatsword up to her crooked smile. “Finally! Let them come and die!”

“Torm protects us,” Serina said without fear, standing as the tip of the spear.

The enemy materialized out of the darkness, charging forward. Malachite malefactors of every mongrelized sort stormed their position, screaming and howling and upholding ghastly, ragged weapons above them, ready to hack down. Their fearsome features were like graven masks of fury – eyes bloodshot and bulging with savage infuriation. Wide maws and sharp teeth pointed towards them like weapons of war, every bit as much as the saw-toothed blades and the wicked, double-edged axes. Maces and flails outfitted with harrowing spikes spun overhead as they charged, the swarm of orcs crashing into them like an inexorable tide…

And met death.

Serina dodged, parried, and deflected black-tipped spears as they stabbed torwards her, twisting her blade to push some to the side and sliding the rest off of her shield. Then, in a flurry of strikes she impaled one through the eye before pulling out, taking the arm off of a second, stabbing a third into the heart, and lopping off a head at the neck. Serina moved with effortless ease and skill… an expert duelist, capable of slaying like the wind.

Obren crushed the skull of his first with his heavy-headed mace. The second he bashed aside with his shield like it was a club. The third, having stumbled over his fallen companion during the charge, met his end beneath the cleric’s stomping boot, his skull making a disgusting wet cracking noise.

Niranya remained the most cooly aloof. She kept in a pocket of safety behind her companions and allowed a score of the creatures to get in real close. Then, pointing with the tip of her quarterstaff like a wand, she shouted out a word of command and sent billowing flames pouring over their heads, momentarily brightening the entire passage as if the sun itself had been summoned. The flame crashed back down, completely incinerating the charging fools in front of her into blackened embers… sowing destruction no less than Archleon’s breath would have.

Vallistra’s style of combat wasn’t really meant for something like this, but the rogue still found a way to be useful, cutting weapons from hands as they overextended, sliding in in the wake of one of the other warriors and watching the unfolding fight with daggers in hand as she waited for openings to capitalize on.

Mayael, for her part, was no longer Mayael. Where the elf had stood, unarmored and clutching a stick, there was now a furious bear. The first monsters who reached her, expecting to find a weak and frightened girl, flinched back at the sudden hulk of muscle and fur and fury rising up before them. Then the bear’s mauling paws came down, crushing several into wet bags of paste that died with courteous speed.

Maia, though…

Serina fought like a surgeon, never with more than the minimum amount of force and movement. Obren fought like a brute, smashing his way through what opposed him. Niranya, Vallistra, and Mayael fought in their own ways, taking down their share of the enemies coming to kill them.

Maia Thaugindottir fought like a hurricane.

Maia moved that greatsword around like it weighed no more than a willow switch. She stepped forward into the swing, howling with fury, and cut directly through three orcs in a single slice… their blood flying to mingle together on the floor in a gruesome mess of mangled flesh. The enormous weapon should have been impossible to control. Instead, she made her next swing just a heartbeat later, cutting down another three, and then another. Maia cut down anyone who approached her like the scythe of a farmer reaping the harvest, cutting the monsters down to size beneath her cleaving swings. A few weapons cut at her, impacting her unarmored skin, and yet they seemed to largely scrape off of her… landing with even less impact than they did on the layers of fur, fat, and skin that Mayael’s bearform had protecting her. Whatever pain came with the scratches was easy enough for the woman to ignore.

Maia didn’t fight a battle – she conducted a massacre.

Stunned, Mayael watched, no longer at all uncertain why her sister kept the barbarian around. “Ha!” the Druid shouted out, the words sounding slightly mangled as they emerged from a bear’s maw instead of an elf’s. “These bastards are not so bad!” she exclaimed gladly, noticing the ease with which they were vanquishing their foes. Maia didn’t even notice her words, and certainly offered no thanks. She was too intoxicated with berserker fury to notice a tiny thing like the druid’s words.

Mayael resumed scanning their engagement. Calling their opponents mongrelized had not been an understatement. Among them were hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs, goblins, and more… and everything about these monstrous lackeys seemed off and malformed. If they weren’t stunted and bow-legged, or hunchbacked and stooped, then they were snag-toothed and jut-jawed, puss-ridden and sallow-faced, or ungainly and starved. Mayael found herself unable to accurately tell one species of the monsters from the next… It looked to her like Archleon wasn’t properly taking care of his minions.

Or perhaps there was… something else. Something off about them.

One of the goblins was lopped off at the midriff by Maia’s greatsword. The upper body-part flew sidewards and rebounded off the wall with enough force to propel it onward. Its journey ended right next to Mayael’s paws, well within the glow of her starlight. She looked down and was able to get a good, unobscured view of the severed meat-chunk. At first she thought what she was looking at was some sort of armor, a protection that resembled the scale of fish or the armor from down South in places like Calimshan. After a second look, however, she realized that the strange mutation-like hardened parts covering the goblins skin here and there was not makeshift equipment sloppily adorned but inborn features. They were scales, like those of drakes… Marking this horde of minions as an unholy hybrid of something reptilian.

Questions rushed through Mayael’s mind with startling speeds. How could these monsters be so imbued with the characteristics of dragons? Bewilderment and bafflement gripped her for the briefest of moments before the horrifying truth sunk in… that the dragon had bred his way into all of these bloodlines. The immediacy of battle brought her back to the intensity of the moment, the bear shouldering aside a hobgoblin’s swinging hatchet before she mauled the monster like a common knave… but even so, she couldn’t help notice that he too was partly armored in scales like the goblin torso had been.

“They keep coming!” Niranya declared, eyes scanning, looking for concentrations of charging enemies to burn to focus her magic most precisely.

“Good!” Maia grinned amidst the ichor of greenskin blood, whirling the blade around her, the reaping scythe of her greatsword cutting down three four more monsters who couldn’t get away fast enough. She opened her mouth and let out a wordless roar of triumph that seemed to come from a set of lungs far, far larger than the barbarian could possible have. To Mayael’s gaze, it looked like that battlecry actually knocked some of the enemies back as they flinched away from the barbarian, visibly preferring to try to attack from any other direction than the overwhelming force of slaughter the barbarian represented. “A warm up before the dragon is exactly what I need!” she screamed with a beserk rage, stepping forward, advancing on the horde and pressing forward.

“They’re faltering!” Obren roared, stepping forward alongside Maia. “We’re pushing them backwards! Onward!

“Save your breath for the battle to come!” Serina instructed, her shield shining, her hair glowing with radiant light. “We’ll need it for the serpent himself!”

The blood was pumping through Mayael’s veins. It was red-hot in the way most people didn’t attribute to elves, and she opened her mouth, letting out an ursine roar of fury. Finally, she had her chance to be a hero! She was one of the champions warring in the forces of good now… like her sister had always been. The dragon and his minions, who had terrified the people of this valley for so long, were being vanquished, their wickedness ended. Mayael felt herself enshrouded in a glow of glory, enforcing her courage. The druid’s earlier trepidation for the terrible scars the dragon had left on the tunnel was melting away and being replaced with a pulsing sensation of bravery, and she felt certain Serina was responsible… bolstering their resolve, fortifying the confidence their victory had won. The group began advancing in Maia’s wake as she sliced her way forward. They were coming for him, Archleon the Dreadful. They were going to win. They were going to become known as the Heroes of the Moonsea!

Then Vallistra seemed to step out of the confusing shadows immediately behind Maia.

The red-skinned tiefling reached out and touched Maia’s back, laying her palm flat on the flexing muscles of the barbarian, and there was a bright, crimson flash. The moment Maia was touched she flinched away, trying to escape and attack the assailant who had snuck up on her, but it was too late for instincts to save her – even warrior-honed ones. That crimson flash covered her and the muscular woman jerked, intelligence fading from her suddenly wide eyes as if she had been rendered completely feebleminded, struck upside the head by a heavy rock. With consciousness gone she stayed standing a few heartbeats… then Maia’s mighty body slumped to the ground like a suit of armor with its hanging rack removed. Her sword hit the ground at the same time, bouncing twice as its formidable weight struck the earth.

Every single member of the party stared in horror at what had just occurred, even as they fought. The turncoat remained standing over their blonde-haired companion, viciously grinning like a satisfied prankster who had gotten away with her scheme.

“Vallista!” Mayael exclaimed, the bear’s maw almost slack with shock. “How could you!?”

“Devil-tailed fiend!” Obren hollered in every bit of righteous fury he could muster. “I knew you chaos-spawned creatures could never be trusted!” He had almost been at Maia already as he pressed forward, and now he redoubled his efforts in a frantic effort to reach the traitorous tiefling. “We’ve been double-crossed! She’s an agent of Archelon! Helm will smite you for this!”

“Wait!” Serina hissed.

Next to her, Nayael swallowed, gripping hard on her staff. This treachery could not have happened at a worse time. Maia had been advancing, and had paid the price for her extraordinary competence in slaughter – she had been all but swallowed by the horde, and only her swinging sword had kept her from being overwhelmed as she cut her way forward. Now that she had stopped, the horde washed over her like a tide and directly at Obren now that he didn’t have the martial bastion breaking the tide around him. Further down the tunnel, the elfs could see the horde swelling as reinforcements arrived from somewhere deeper…

Then a dragon’s furious roar shook the tunnels.

Maia’s roar had been ferocious, outraged, and it hit the horde like a thrown rock. This echoing sound, however, hit the party like an avalanche. Chaos and terror exerted its power on them… that roar inspired every ancient instinct they had regarding predators, bypassed all reason and logic and triggered the sheer desire to flee and hide… that they were prey, and being hunted.

Vallista was still smiling, standing among the horde as Obren fought to reach her. “Obren, stop! You’ll never be able to-!” Serina yelled… but it was too late.

“Succubus’s daughter! Damn you to the nine hells!” the cleric hollered as he raised his mace. Vallista simply laughed at him and faded back, the horde flowing around her and towards him. A second later, none of them could even see the red-skinned traitor any longer.

“Obren!” the elder elven sister called in distress.

“Gaaah!” he shouted in pain. Each of the adventurers fought to reach him but they were all too low, too many monsters in the way. The group could do little but watch as he tried to hold off a tide of mutated flesh with his shield raised, looking like a man trying to hold back an avalanche of green snow. The man’s mace was held high ready to strike, but two fiends had already managed to clutch his weapon-arm, tugging him backward. Then he stumbled, overbalanced by a kobold and an orc hanging from his arm behind his back. Obren fell back with an anguished scream, and before anyone – even Niranya – could do anything the entire horde tumbled over him like a landslide.

“Obreeen!” Mayael thundered, the bear’s enormous lungs turning the name into a roar of fury and agony.

With Maia and Obren gone and Vallistra’s support removed by her betrayal, the tide of battle turned dramatically. The group’s forward momentum ended completely and they were put onto the backfoot, their assailants screeching like cannibals ravenous for flesh. “Retreat!” Serina called. “Pull back!”

Niranya unleashed a fan-shaped spray of brilliant colors that blinded and disoriented the charging horde, staggering them and covering their retreat as they backed off… but even blinded and stunned, the zealous horde of monsters kept coming, crawling over the bodies of their slain companions and pressing on. “We can’t leave them behind!” Mayael shouted. The priest and barbarian might be unreachable, and Maia was probably far too large and heavy for any of them to effectively lift and carry, but the idea of abandoning them – even with how little Mayael liked either of them – was intolerable.

Instead of answering the druid, however, Serina merely clasped the bear by her hunched shoulder and pulled. Mayael was strong like this – stronger than the paladin. Even so, she didn’t fight as she was tugged, fleeing down the tunnel in a fighting retreat… leaving Obren Ironsoul and Maia Thaugindottir behind.

---

Maia wasn’t sure how long had passed when she woke, groaning and rubbing the back of her aching skull. The wounded noise she made didn’t sound much like a woman… it sounded more like something a boulder would have made, were it able to speak. Above her, the magical cone of starlight had vanished… either it had been long enough that the magic had run out, or else the elf sorceress had been rendered incapable of focusing on it any longer. Either way, the light was now replaced by a common lantern dangling from the ceiling.

The Barbarian fought to her feet more on instinct than cognition, feeling scattered. “W-What in all the frozen wastelands?” she gasped.

The sight of iron bars blocking her into a tiny jail cell sparked Thaugindottir’s mind back into alertness. On the other side was a tiny room with only the bare essentials of furniture. There were no guards or occupants around to greet her. She looked down and found her musclebound figure neither fettered nor manacled, still dressed in what was left of her scratched and torn clothing from the battle and cuts beneath it. She had been captured?! The very idea was unbelievable… Maia the Firstborn was not capable of being captured!

Next, the memories returned . Slowly at first, like a strenuous crawl up a rocky hill to the peak of one of the holy mountains… but then they broke through her skull like a furious earthquake. Betrayal! She had been betrayed! During the battle, by-

The name flashed through the Northerner’s enraged thoughts like a beacon. One name… alongside a pair of devil-sharp horns, a spade-tipped tail, and a vicious toothy grin that beamed even as she had unleashed the treacherous magic that had caught her unprepared: Vallista! That hell-spawned tiefling turncoat!

Maia’s blood pumped so hot her forehead veins bulged and her muscles swelled. By all the Gods! She had been unstoppable… if her people had seen the way she cut through the enemies like they were cloth then they would have crowned her queen on the spot. Were it not for that little imp-begotten pipsqueak then she would have won! She would have triumphed! She would have severed the dragons head and taken it back home as a trophy just like she was supposed to do! Instead, here she stood – dazed and confused and barely able to stand upright, jailed and beaten. The unfairness of it all made Maia blaze worse than any berserker fury she had ever felt in battle… her head was so hot it felt like her blood was about to boil.

“Uuuh…”

The groan came from behind her. Maia tensed like a tiger in a cage, spinning around with narrow eyes – her expression a mask of unmitigated wrath and malignancy. And there the red-skinned whore was… chained and fettered in an upright position against the wall, bearing only tattered clothing in their little dungeon. Vallista.

“W-Where are we…?” the tiefling gasped, eyes still half-lidded and dazed.

The rogue wasn’t recovering as quickly as the brawny barbarian had. Confusion still dominated her thoughts. She had been beaten, clearly… her hand had a dirty, bloody bandage wrapping it, and even her red skin showed an impressive number of bruises and scrapes. Clearly, her betrayal hadn’t benefited the little slut as much as she hoped it would.

Maia’s own thoughts became sharp as an arrow, and she balled her hands into quaking, trembling fists almost like anvils. “Yooou,” she growled.

“M-Maia?” she groaned. “W-Where are we, w-?”

“So what’s the matter, little whore?” she snarled. “You decided you needed some dragon cock instead of what you could find elsewhere? Your new masters weren’t as benevolent as you’d thought they’d be? Not as generous with his horde of gold and diamonds and cock as your demonic father was, huh? Vallista, you… fucking, worthless little… harlot!”

“Maia? What are you sayi- Gah!” the chained tiefling blurted, cutting off as Maia drove her sword arm fist into her stomach.

“This is better than you deserve you little dirt-blood traitor!” Maia snarled and began feeding her the left and the right and the left, drumming punches into the tiefling’s gut. Each sunk into the planetouched girl’s body deeply enough to create momentary craters in her stomach, and Vallista’s look of bewilderment was shattered with the shock of sudden pain. As Thaugindottir’s fists kept coming, her expression shifted through look after look of astonishment and pain. “What do you say now, huh? Huh, you treacherous slattern?” Maia hissed.

“Guuuuuuuh!” Vallista wailed. The tiefling’s svelte midriffs was being so mercilessly pulverized she couldn’t even bellow a scream – whatever breath she managed to gather was immediately knocked right out of her again. Her stomach, her intestines… all of it was pushed inward by the clobbering blows alongside her ability to breathe. Every blow felt like it was being delivered directly from Moradin’s hammer rather than from the barbarian woman’s fist. Were it not for the chains holding her up she would already have collapsed to the stone floor.

“You thought you could outsmart all of us, huh!? Though you’d make a fool out of all of us!?” Maia bellowed with murder-crazed eyes as she kept up the barrage. She wasn’t looking to kill the woman – probably. However, she also didn’t care much if she died… and she was dedicated to inflicting as much pain as she could. Vallista was being punished more severely than any hay-stuffed training-bag Maia had ever beaten.

Behind them, outside the enclosure of the bars, a door opened and closed. Maia did not hear it on account of her fury, but the intruder paced into the room, watching them.

“I’m going to smash you into pieces!” Maia hollered while shaking Vallista around by the neck so forcefully her head bounced back and forth like an untethered ball. “I’m going to mash you into nothing but devil-damned slop that flows down the rivers into the nine hells!” She started strangling Vallista, digging her thumbs into the hollow of the other woman’s throat so harshly that the lithe planetouched girl gasped without being able to make a sound.

“The prey animals fight. How… amusssing,” the newcomer spoke so distinctly that Maia could practically hear her serpentine tongue flicker as she did.

“Who are you?” Maia snapped, looking over her shoulder while keeping fists enclosed around Vallista’s throat. The woman who had interrupted her was obviously one of the dragonspawn, but something in her draconian lineage was off – the mother wasn’t any common race. Though scales pressed through her pale skin, the woman was perfectly formed for sex, a curvaceous form that invited the eye… even Maia’s eyes, as disgusted with the idea of sex as she was, were drawn seemingly against her will. The bat-like wings and horns, however, told more of a story… her demon blood was at least as strong as this tiefling seductress had. Maia could tell immediately that she was some kind of mage for two reasons. First, the gemstone-topped staff that she carried in one hand. Second, and more importantly, it was the special brand of sneering superiority and imperious arrogance that all those weakling spellchuckers wore like a suit of clothing.

“What kind of devil are you?” Maia cursed, lightening up her grip ever so slightly as she tried to think.

“M-Maia! Look out! She’s-“

Vallista’s words were choked off as Maia resumed choking her. “Shut your whore mouth,” she growled furiously, eyes flicking over to the tiefling. “No one cares what a traitor has to say.”

If anything, the serpentine villainess grinned more widely. “Yandaza,” the dragonspawn sorceress said with the same sibilant hiss as before. “But you’ll only know me as ‘Mistress’.”

“I find that very unlikely,” Maia snarled. “Soon as I get out of here, I’m going to tear you apart.”

“I’m sure that you are,” Yandaza said, her lips split in a seductive smile. “You can’t keep your eyes off of me, can you?”

It was true. Every time the dragonspawn monster spoke she looked over, and each time it was longer and longer before she could pull her eyes away. No matter her disgust, no matter her hatred and personal feeling, it was hard to take her eyes off the other woman. “Shut up,” the barbarian spat.

If anything, the smile grew wider. “What’s the matter?” she murmured, one hand coming up… and hooked beneath the fabric that covered her breasts. With a twist of her wrist she popped it up over them, leaving them bare. “Are you… distressed?”

Maia shook her head, forcibly pulling her gaze away. “Whores, all of you,” she growled. “You people and your obsession with sex.”

Usually, the ‘civilized’ Southerns got defensive when she mocked them like that. This one, however, only smiled wider. “That is what I heard about you,” the demonic dragonspawn said with a chuckle. “That you thought everything carnal was beneath you.”

Maia spat on the ground. “Sex is for breeding,” she hissed. “When I’m Queen, I’ll marry. We’ll produce an heir. Maybe two. What good is something so foul otherwise?”

The smile on the succubus’s face grew even wider. “So you are a virgin. Excellent. That’s the best news I’ve had all day.”

“And why,” Maia laughed, “is that?”

“The tiefling had no innocence to take,” Yandaza said with a smile. “My father had no use for her. You on the other hand… you’re exactly what he’s looking for.”

“Then bring me before him,” the barbarian spat. “I’d be delighted for the opportunity to twist his skull of his scrawny neck!”

The succubus opened her eyes wide, flinching ever so slightly back with a twinge of reflexive surprise from the barbarian’s rage. Then she let out a laugh. “My my my, ssso forwards! You ssscertainly don’t lack confidence, do you?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think that would work out very well for you. But that’s not going to be your concern, either. You see, if my father takes you as his virgin then he might not bother chasing down the others who invaded my home… and that would be a travesty.” She grinned. “So we’ll have to do something about that.” Yandaza raised up one clawed hand. “Maybe instead of Mistress… you should just think of me as that little voice inside your head.”

Maia opened her mouth… to mock, to curse, to laugh at her. Instead, she said nothing as some invisible power struck her mind, lancing from the spellcaster’s clawed hand to the furious barbarian woman. Maia froze for an instant, and then she screamed in pain – the sound more shrill than any Vallista had made. The dragonspawn had entered her mind like she had slid a knife into her, and the pain was overwhelming and all-consuming, like a thousand drums beating simultaneously inside her thoughts. Maia could not withstand the cognitive hurt. She reacted as if struck by lightning, every muscle going perfectly rigid.

“Maia, this woman… she took my shape!” Vallista frightfully exclaimed around the hands on her throat, the shaking barbarian finally giving her some room to breathe. “She ambushed me in the temple when I was to raise the gates! You have to beli-“

Maia screamed again,

Yandaza’s serpentine cackle rang out with coldblooded mirth. “You thought you could take the head of Archleon?” she said, having scanned the contents of Thaugindottir’s thoughts. “My father, fall to one like you? It is always so funny when such baseborn creatures have such unseemly ambitions. Hmmm… but don’t you worry. You can repay us for wanting my fathers head by giving us yours.”

“Gaaaaah!” Maia screamed. It felt like invisible talons had enclosed around her brain inside her skull, squeezing it like some kind of overripe fruit on the spiritual plane. “GET OUT!”

“M-Maia!” Vallista shouted in ever-mounting horror.

Then, the viscous bellowing and reckless vibrations abruptly stopped. Maia’s posture went rigid into the same strangle-ready stance she had held before Yandaza had interrupted their reunion. Her face was once again predatory and enraged — yet somehow in a totally different manner. Peering into the Northerners’ ocean-blue eyes, Vallista could see the ghost of something terrified swirling deep within their orbs, hidden beneath the surface. With nerve-tingling dread she realized that Yandaza had subsumed command of Maia’s thews, muscles, and sinews – and that faint ghost she had seen was Thaugindottir’s will, unmoored from its throne inside her soul. “N-N-N-No,” she peeped, voice stammering and lips quivering.

“How exquisite!” Yandaza purred from beyond the bars. “I’m not sure I’ve ever felt a body with such care taken of it. Such vitality, such athleticism, such tenderness from a prey animal. And with such simpleminded willpower to control it… It’s just what I’ve been looking for!” Her grin was wolflike. “So, shall we take my new puppet for a ride and see what she can do?”

Maia’s eyes – now raging like one of Talon’s most violent thunderstorms – locked onto Vallista as if seeing her for the very first time. Though she was being puppeteered, it didn’t make her some kind of unemotional automaton. With mounting horror, Vallista realized her beating was not only going to continue… it was going to be getting a lot worse.

“First, let us tessst out the prey-animal’s strength!” Yandaza said.

Without another word Maia commenced tearing off what remained of Vallista’s tattered clothing. In one fell swoop, the red skinned tiefling was completely denuded, her torn leathers ripped away. The outfit came off with such force her tits wobbled on her chest, compelling the rogue to cry out in shock.

“Hmmm… nothing I haven’t ssseen before,” the sorceress mused. “But what if we inssspect…”

Yandaza’s beat down of the rogue was going to be a little different than Maia’s had been. Without finishing her sentence, the draconian creature had her slave start slapping Vallista’s perky tits with the palm of her hand. She was strong… Each blow made her breasts flow, the crimson-hued udders made to juggle and bounce around so wildly that it spun her in her chain from the sheer impact against her breasts. “Eeeeeeehhhh!” Vallista screamed with such pain her tail flicked around, whipping against both her splayed legs and the cavern’s uneven walls.

As unsympathetic as a golem, Maia kept wailing at the tiefling’s tits. Her muscular arm swung like a peasant’s sickle thrashing grain and smashed against Vallistra’s vulnerable flesh again and again. Savage backhands and merciless palm-strikes arrived one after the other as she mixed it up… the only constant in the battery was Vallista’s supple scarlet breasts being beaten into constant motion with thudding power.

“Hmhmhmhm…” Yandaza chuckled, “Such power! Oh how invigorating it feels to wield the strength of an ox. But let’s see if we can handle finer mechanics as well…” On cue, Maia switched to seizing Vallista’s nipples. She reacted as if they had been clutched by a blacksmith’s pincers and squeezed. The enormous blonde woman began squeezing, tugging, and twisting on those teats with unmitigated cruelty. The small nubs were almost too tiny for Maia’s meaty, indelicate hands to handle, but guided by the sorceress’s touch and a hearty disregard for Vallistra’s comfort she managed.

The tiefling shrieked so loudly one could think her scream would have penetrated the earth and reached the surface – It felt as if her mammaries were about to be ripped clean from her bust as the barbarian put some real muscle into abusing her, the nipples manhandled so horribly.

“Hmm… not bad. I can learn to make do with that,” Yandaza mused, her ophidian eyes falling on the planetouched rogue’s slender tail. “How about this, I wonder?” With strength and surprising agility, Maia reached out and seized Vallistra’s tail as it lashed back and forth, catching it in mid swing. Holding it by the end like she would a serpent about to bite, the Northerner crouched down and aligned her face with Vallista’s crotch.

The tiefling could intuit what was going to happen. Her face was overtaken by pallid overtones as she begged. “No! Maia! Fight it! Please don’t do- Eeeeeiiigggh!” she screeched as pain ruptured through her loins. The puppeteered Barbarian had stabbed the arrow-shaped tail tip directly into Vallista’s twat, shoving it violently forward.. The spade’s stab struck dead center, entering right between her swollen vaginal lips. Were it not for the broadness of Maia’s fist far more than merely the wedge-shaped tip of the tail would have disappeared into the tiefling’s pit.

Maia wanted to turn her head away. From up close it was impossible not to see that the tiefling’s pussy had been recently fucked, plenty of times. Her cunt was swollen and bruised and white slime that made her shudder dripped out of it as she pushed the tail further in, but she couldn’t make herself look away from the disgusting sight. Some of that vile semen was dripping out on her hand and she wanted to shudder… she might need to cut her right hand off when she got out of here to absolve herself of the humiliation. There was something eerily alien and out-of-body as she commenced pumping that fleshy spear shaft in and out of the red skinned tramp, the tail squirming around behind her fist as she did so. “Giiiaaaahhh!” Vallista cried out above her as her hole was violated, and she instinctively tried to pinch her knees together to block access to between her legs. Maia would have loved to let her. Instead, the dominated barbarian effortlessly kept them parted with just one hand. “Niiiiiiaaaahhh!” Vallista continued screaming as if stabbed. Indeed, her genitalia was being properly daggered with rapid blows, like a body being shived in an alley by one of the rogue’s knives. There was a sickening meaty impact sound to go with the penetrations as her fist clubbed against her, the tiefling’s tail now weaponized against her own crimson pussy.

“Yessss,” Yandaza hissed, her serpentine tongue flickering around in an obvious display of excitement. She was clearly relishing possessing a body as powerful and capable as Maia’s.

The Northerner wanted to look away. She had often decried this foul pit as the basis of Vallista’s whoredom, the temptation between her thighs that distracted her and kept her far from any kind of honor. Now she was stabbing into that very same vulva with a level of fury normally only reserved for battle. Worse still, the barbarian herself was barely a factor in the encounter. The sorceress agent of the very dragon they had sought to kill was in control like an Empress lording over her court, and Maia Thaugindottir was but a voice screaming inside a body she could not control.

“Hmmm… not bleeding, are we?” Yandaza hissed. “Shame. But maybe if we tried another hole?”

Mid-stab, Maia changed targets. Instead of targeting the already brutalized labia and stabbing between it, she aimed the tail tip deeper in between Vallista’s legs. The thief was taken completely unprepared and did not have an opportunity to clench her sphincter – on the first attempt Maia managed to lodge Vallista’s tail so far in that the whole spade-shaped tip stabbed into Vallista’s asshole like a harpoon. Her sphincter enclosed around the tail proper behind the wedge-tip, making it extra painful when Maia immediately yanked it out, making the ring of muscle once again distend and scrape around it anew.

“Eeeeeeeeiiiiihhh!” Vallista hollered in her agony.

“Hmmm… a difficult fit,” the sorceress mused. “But what about the other direction, I wonder?”

Using both hands, the possessed Northerner switched from pulling the tail to shoving it even further into the tiefling’s clenching rear. Instead of stabbing at her rectum over and over the way she had her cunt, Maia never made the shift to pummeling – she merely kept on with the stuffing. This packed that slender tail inside the planetouched rogue’s shitter like a rope being coiled. Eventually it had to bend and curve to align with the cartography of her rectum, winding its way up her body in as labyrinthine a fashion as the cavern they had descended through. This unspeakable act was as painful as it was obscene, and though it was not as large as the cocks that had raped her previously, the fact that it was her own appendage doing it made it an incommensurate disgrace.

“G-G-G,” Thaugindottir clumsily stammered while she continued packing her companions ass full. “G-Get out of my heeeaaad!” she screamed with terror-shining eyes… yet no muscles obeyed her rage. It was merely a momentary lapse of control… Yandaza was still in complete command, and to Maia’s horror she could feel the tendrils in her mind squeezed tighter in the wake of her resistance. She used that flash of rebellion to find where to squeeze down on the would-be Queen’s will and further crush her beneath the unholy magic. This was disgusting. She didn’t want to be touching someone’s privates. She didn’t want to look at it. She didn’t want to have anything to do with sex at all… but she couldn’t stop the succubus from making her do whatever she wished.

Meanwhile Maia kept pushing more of the tail inside, and more and more of its length vanished past her punctured sphincter. This obscene violation of her person caused Vallista to spasm… and most horribly, making her tail shake. It shuddered around inside of her, further lashing and stretching the insides of her asshole like some flailing crop. Vallista screamed and clenched her teeth, doing her best to stymie those motions with sheer willpower, but with her rear impaled and Maia continuing to stuff more inside of her finding any kind of serenity was impossible. The violent thrashing inside her tight rectal grotto only increased… it felt to Vallista as if she were being sodomized by a snake writhing and biting her as it slithered further in.

Interring the last few inches inside of her was an arduous effort. A tiefling’s slender tail wasn’t made to bend in such a dramatic way to be forced practically to the base inside of her. Only Maia’s overwhelming muscle power and Yandaza’s callous, uncaring will allowed it to work at all. Now, one inch at a time, the last bit of her tail vanished into her, Vallista’s appendage now going straight from the rogue’s tailbone down into her ass, leaving only a tiny loop left outside of it. The crammed-full rogue could only throw her head back and caterwaul with the painful humiliation.

“Hmhmhmh! Ssssing for usss prey-animal! Ssssing!” the sorceress chuckled as Vallista’s trumpet-like shriek resounded off the earthen walls.

With the tail completely stuffed up the tiefling’s crimson ass, the puppeteered barbarian let go of her companion and rose upright. Though still rigid in posture, the Northerner’s real emotions had begun displaying themselves ghostly upon her visage. Plenty of disgust… but also horrified and increasingly terrified. Maia had spent her entire life fighting, and had never once met a foe she could not defeat. She had turned her body into a perfect weapon, something to awe her people and terrify her enemies. Now, against her will, that weapon was being wielded by her enemies. Now the barbarian was faced with a foe that not only couldn’t be defeated, it couldn’t even be fought. Maia wasn’t sure what to do about that, how to handle a foe that fought inside her mind rather than against her blade. Her own might now belonged to the perverted sorceress… and served whatever dark ends she wished.

This created a strange juxtaposition, where Maia was simultaneously both a mercilessly strict abuser… and, despite herself, the dragonspawn’s terrified victim.

“Go on!” Yandaza urged. “Repay her a bit more for her treachery! Teach that promiscuousss whore not to mess with a big bad brute…”

“No! Maia nooooo! ” a wide-eyed Vallista managed to exclaim as she stared into Maia’s horrified face… while her fist slowly drew back… and then the Northerner’s thunderous fist came crashing into her tail-stuffed stomach. This not only caved in her belly but sent shockwaves through her entire clogged guts. Having her tail unnaturally stowed inside that space made it seem firmer and harder to her hand than it had before, and it certainly didn’t make the punch any more endurable to absorb for the rogue. Vallista’s distended tail trembled about much worse than before inside her rectum and bowels, adding a horrendous aftereffect to the punch. “Hwwwwuuuuuuhhh!” the tiefling screamed so vehemently her tongue and eyeballs protruded from their hollows.

“Again! Again! Hahahaha!” the draconian laughed as Maia helplessly obeyed her orders. Not long ago Maia would gladly have administered this beatdown but doing it under the command of the dragonspawn sorceress made it clear even to the stubborn barbarian that there was more to this double-cross than she had known. She continued mercilessly punishing Vallista’s midriff until the planetouched girl was unable to stand of her own accord.

“Ahh yessss, this hasss been fun. But letsss finish her off, shall we?” Yandaza said.

At her command, Maia clasped the tiefling by one of her horns. Using this for leverage, she headbutted Vallista like a goat would have. The red-skinned rogue was knocked silly immediately – her eyes crossed, then rolled back, all intelligence vanishing from behind her pained gaze in a moment. Then she slumped completely, utterly unconscious. Any wails of suffering were snuffed out — yet the tail remaining mockingly stuffed up her defiled butthole. Only the fetters and chains kept her upright off the floor.

“She’ssss an exotic little pet, isssn’t she? Not everyday a tiefling ssstalks around in Archleon’s domain,” Yandaza remarked.

“G-Get out of my head you wretched lizard!” Maia demanded, her words slurring as she fought for control of her tongue… overwhelmed with shock and horror at what had happened, what she had done. The angrier and more vicious she could make her words, the easier it was for her to ignore how terrified she was. Violence and bloodshed she was well accustomed to. But the mental domination turned every action into something eerie and unnatural that she could not stand, and that she had no idea how to combat.

“Nonssssense,” the sorceress replied, drawing her lips over her fangs. “You are my possssession. A horse that I ride!”

“NO!” Maia defiantly cried and launched a mental barrage against the dragonspawn, attempting to force the monster from her mind. She strained with everything she was. “I am Maia Thaugindottir! Firstborn of my line! I am the next Queen of my people. I am not your damned horse!” She struggled and pushed and fought with sheer willpower… and yet flexing her cognitive muscles was very different from fighting with her physical ones. In the mortal world, she could have picked Yandaza up and broken her in half were it not for the bars between them. In her mind, however, Yandaza was superior to her as the sun was to the stars.

The draconic succubus’s smile never wavered. “Yesss… fight…” she purred. “The tiefling might be an exotic plaything, but while you might be just another common prey animal you have a marvelousss body… just what I’ve been looking for.” She laughed, her voice a satisfied purr. “This physssical strength, musssscular vigor is much amusssing to me. Precisely the kind of horssse I’ve always wanted.”

The clutch on her brain seemed to further tighten further and her control of herself all but vanished. Maia’s blood chilled with apprehension at realizing the stranglehold Yandaza held her in. “Now… let usss see if we cannot find some entertaining sssecrets inssside that primitive brain of yours. Sssomething to do with you. Sssomething… entertaining…”

The pain of a thousand beating drums thrumming at once returned to Thaugindottir’s skull. She felt like her cranium was going to explode into bloody slabs of bone as the sorceress dug into her thoughts, and she badly wanted to raise her hands to her skull and clutch it against the pain… but she could do nothing but remain as motionless as a statue while the invasive spellcaster was allowed to dig into the furthest reaches of her thoughts. “Letsss see…” she mumbled. “We can’t very well leave you a virgin, now can we?”

“N-NOOOOOOO!!!” Maia howled. Her mouth still worked it seemed. The sorceress wanted her to be able to scream and protest. Thaugindottir’s fury swelled, boiling to the surface. Her nostrils fumed like those of an enraged horse. “I’m a goddamn princess of my people!” she hollered. “That makes me a holy person! I can’t go and hooker with every knave who passes my path like this-” Her words trailed off. She had intended to disparage the unconscious Vallista like usual, but considering recent events… she held her tongue.

“A princessss…” Yandaza growled out with a chuckle deep in her throat. “You hut-dwellers even know what one of those are?”

“ENOUGH!” Maia screamed in indignation, her fury leading to yet another surge of her attempts to buck off the mental control. “I’m sacred to my people! I will be their next leader! Don’t you know th-“

Yandaza’s eyes narrowed with malignancy, cutting Maia off mid-speech. The sorceress’s moment of uncharacteristic humor had ended. Now the dragon’s blood once more flowed through her veins. “Sssacred,” Yandaza replied as if downright tasting the word. “Without your preciousss virginity, no Queen’s crown for you? Well… I guessss we’ll have to do something about that…”

The next few moments progressed to Maia much like the confusion she experienced in dreams. Possessed, she was helpless to do anything as the succubus opened the door to her dungeon, leading he out of her cell and down several unknown, ugly tunnels. Moving like this made her consciousness feel like it was drifting – out of body, it was hard to focus on anything but her struggle for freedom inside her mind. When she returned to full lucidity it was because she felt herself pulling off her clothing, and no amount of straining inside her head could stop her from being made naked at the dragonspawn’s will. Her huge breasts heaved from her bust and her long blonde hair coiled into a single ponytail trailed down chiseled muscles and sculptured thews.

“W-What is going on?” she managed to mumble through scarcely functioning lips. The Barbarian was standing in some chamber with numerous diminutive tunnels leading into its hollow. These tunnels were far too small for humans. Too small for dwarves or gnomes, even. Only a single lightsource hung from above to keep the cavern lit at all… and it revealed that Yandaza was nowhere to be seen.

Which didn’t mean that her mind was free. “I wouldn’t think a Northerner would be ssso easily chilled,” Yandaza spoke inside her head as a breeze wafted against her erect nipples and exposed cunt. “Surely you aren’t afraid, oh great and noble Queen…”

Despite herself, Maia shuddered slightly. She wasn’t sure which explanation would be less honorable. Determined to think about anything else, the barbarian fought as hard as she could to scream and her body couldn’t make the slightest move. “By my ancestors, I will rip you apart for this!” Maia thought back.

Laughter filled her head. “Oh, I think your ancestors will not be so proud of you for much longer,” Yandaza replied. “Not after they learn what sssort of dalliance you lost your honor to.”

Maia strained to move her muscles so hard it caused her mental anguish as she heard chittering sounds emerging from within those diminutive hollows. Maia looked towards those darkened pits as if expecting a swarm of scorpions to come crawling outwards. Her tension peaked far higher than it ever did during the battle earlier… with her sword in hand, Maia felt confident to fight against the entire world. Here though, she was helplessly controlled by Yandaza’s spellcraft, unable to move a single muscle, losing the battle in her head over, and over, and over again as the stench of something foul approaching out of those tunnels grew stronger…

Tiny evil eyes appeared in the darkness. Having beheld Maia’s naked form they began swarming outwards, small hands crawling up the stone. The barbarian was replete with disgust, revulsion, and the general disregard that people held for insects and other lower lifeforms. “K-Kobolds?” she thought with a furious snarl.

“Yesss!” Yandaza hissed, pleased. “And look! Ssso many of them!”

These minuscule malefactors poured out of tunnels and down the walls, pooling at Maia’s legs like water. She could feel their slender tails and scaly flesh stroke against her calves as they scurried and ran around her, looking at her from each angle and forcing her to look at them as well. In character, the two foot tall pests resembled some kind of miniature caimans. Descended – rather distantly – from dragons, they still carried the heritage, even though one was a terrifying engine of wrath and destruction, and the other little but varmints that were a suitable challenge for a child among her people.

“Weaklings!” Maia thought as she fought for control over both her tongue and her body, trying to move and crush these ant-like knaves. Even a normal human positively towered over kobolds. Maia, however, resembled a colossus in their presence, and that was how they approached her… as something more akin to the feature of geography than a person, as something to be scaled and mounted. Maia’s enraged thoughts turned into disgusting, squealing ones as the little critters used sharp claws to climb her body, chittering and chirping all the way. Some creative explorers even climbed up the cavern facade and then jumped through the air to land upon her, landing with some impact onto her body. Others hung off of her sensitive bits. One even swung from her long ponytail, swaying back and forth.

“G-Get…” she managed to choke out before losing control of her mouth again. “Off meeeee!” she screamed – completely impotently in her head – as she was scaled all the way to her head by multiple squirming lizards. Each “handhold” left tiny specs of blood behind from where the skin had been pierced, covering her in hotspots that didn’t so much blaze with pain as they tingled with discomfort from the scrapes. The urge to swat them away like flies was overwhelming, yet Maia had been completely dispossessed of the use of her arms.

“There you go, Princesssss,” Yandaza taunted. “Ssswoon in the arms of your new lovers, hahaha!”

The swarming kobolds all began biting, clawing, and licking at her curvaceous body all at once. They seemed especially eager to do this to her buttocks and breasts. Maia grimaced as rodent-like teeth dug into her mammary-flesh from multiple angles. With her breasts being so enormous it was possible for multiple kobolds to have their fun at once, hanging off of her hanging globes. The Northerner’s nipples were, of course, the tiny delicious buds each of them wanted the most… they practically fought mid climb to get to chew and hang on those delectable teats to a chorus of growls and hissing.

“Nnniiiaaahhh!” Maia managed to scream, marshaling her newest and most massive effort to break the enchantment. She merely managed to wiggle her upper-body about slightly in a futile act of rebellion. It caused a few of the breast-biting kobolds to drop off of her… making them dangle from her by their clutching teeth in her tits, pulling her breasts down towards the ground teeming with their myriad kin. The free-falling weight caused her breast-skin to distend outwards at several points and nearly rip but the toughness of her skin held up, and the strain only made it hurt more.

One intrepid fiend finally managed to assail her womanhood. Posting himself in-between her bulging thighs with all four limbs, he bit and chomped at her labia from beneath. Each bite felt like she was being stabbed by a needle, his thin and worrying teeth poking through the delicate outer parts of her sex. Maia’s heart began racing even faster as he pushed his snout against her lips and pressed the pointed nose of his reptilian head inside of her, she could feel the stress against her maidenhood… yet the membrane was too resilient to break. Thankfully he pulled back, but a moment later she regretted being grateful as his teeth closed around her clitoris, causing such outrageous pain that Thaugindottir would have crashed to the stone ground were it not for Yandaza’s magic keeping her unmoving and upright.

Similar things were happening all over her body. Kobolds were biting her neck, shoulders, buttocks, arms… the most assailed parts of her body were, of course, her ankles and calves. Some of those diminutive malefactors were chewing on her legs practically like beavers trying to fell a tree… Maia wondered if they were trying to worry her down to the bone.

“Hmmm… it ssseems like these devilsss want you on your kneesss,” Yandaza mused.

“Nw–Nwoooooh!” Maia protested silently. Being practically coated in these lesser lifeforms was absolutely disgusting… Especially for a highborn warrior princess like Maia Thaugindottir. They were creatures so debased and worthless that their deaths weren’t even worthy of being mentioned in scaldic annals, let alone being bragged about by anyone who had been through puberty. To be disgraced by them was a slight against both Maia’s sense of honor and her need for cleanliness… She didn’t want to even imagine what that would feel like were she supine and they could more easily reach all of her.

“Hmm… your opinion has been noted, prey-animal. But you really should be presssentable for when they ssstart to fuck you,” Yandaza mocked. Then her body began to move against her will, her knees caving as she sank down onto them, and toppled forward.

“Noooooohh!” she screamed in her head as she dramatically toppled forward. The kobolds chirped and tweeted and caterwauled in their distinctive, high-pitched roars, as if it had been their efforts which felled the herculean female. Because of Yandaza’s ministrations she had landed on her chest and her face, ass up and face down in the dirt… it distinctly accentuated her behind in lecherous angles while her face was made lower than even the kobolds, intimate with the ground. One of those miniature drakes immediately placed his foot upon her temple, as if triumphantly announcing the victory of kobold-kind over her tribe.

Yandaza laughed inside her head. “Koboldsss are the most ingenious of looters. I’ve ssseen them pillage a village so completely you wouldn’t even know it had been there the next day. So… let’sss see if they can be as thorough and ruiniousss with your virginity, shall we?” she concluded with sadistic mirth.

Archelon’s minions swarmed her posterior even more ferociously than they had done during the battle. The victor, the one who managed to push through his companions to mount its impressive hump was practically left standing atop his comrade’s shoulders as he assumed a breeding position. Unlike Thaugindottir, these minions weren’t wielding massive greatswords built for carnage and bloodshed… but they could still do damage well enough, specially when targeting such a vulnerable spot. This male’s hard-on didn’t feel like flesh… while small for a human it was large for a creature of his type, scaled and ridged, sharp and pointy and unyielding as one of their spears as it confronted her sacred pussy. Clutching the superabundance of her chiseled assflesh for leverage, he punched forward with his cock, sliding into her.

To Maia, it felt like she had been stung by a scorpion. “GET HIM OFF OF ME!” she protested… but it never made it out of her mouth. Somehow being jabbed by that scaly-shafted cock was even more painful than their ever-present bites. However, this type of penetration was no deep spelunking. The kobold wasn’t anywhere close to reaching her cervix… it didn’t even fully puncture her hymen. The outer parts of her labia, however, were still plenty sensitive to pain. “S-Stop!” she managed to cry through her mind control. “Don’t ruin me like this!”

The barbarian couldn’t see how her sacred virginity was dealing with the attack upon it but she could plainly feel that she was by no means fully-throttled. On account of the kobold’s smaller shaft her maidenhead didn’t break in one go. The penetration was only a small, partial tear, leaving that membrane clinging on by its sides, and each new thrust made new damage to it. It was like losing her virginity with each thrust, each attack a new tearing. “Congratulasssions, worm!” Yandaza laughed inside her skull. “You’ve been deflowered by a kobold! Add that to your lissst of heroic feats!”

Though his footing was unsteady, the kobold who had despoiled her kept humping like a rabbit into her fresh barbarian pussy. Even his diminutive mind realized that he was ransacking something not only rare but also sacred. This fed his plundering ego, and whatever the kobold lacked in size he made up for in startling speed, hammering as quickly as he could. “There! Your maidenhood snapsss a little more!” Yandaza said.

Maia’s membranous maidenhood was now practically wrapped around the kobold’s pummeling phallus like a handkerchief. The hymen was partly clingy, partly torn, another of those details which the kobold cared for only in how he could ruin it further. Maia’s dismay and dishonor was so extreme she turned dizzy imagining the teeming kobolds spinning all around her head. She felt her dreams, her destiny, die on that tiny cock… The champion who had been destined to be known as a dragon-slayer, now being raped and ruined by its incommensurable less glorious cousin.

Unfortunately, her every thought and emotion was open to Yandaza. The other woman laughed at her suffering, the feeling of her amusement echoing in her mind mid-rape. “Queen?” she sneered. “I sssuppose one of your brothers or sssisters will need to ascend in your place, firssstborn. This isss what you deserve for daring to venture into Lord Archleon’s domain.” She got the sense of a tongue on her face, and she wasn’t clear if it was a phantom sensation from the succubus or one of the kobolds had started licking at her tears. “Don’t you sssee? Compared to him, both you and these repulsive little creatures are of the same rank, so he might as well breed you like cattle!”

The kobold taking Thaugindottir’s virginity was doing his damnedest to completely ransack that hole. He thrust and pummeled and hammered with lurching speed, oftentimes changing his angle and target to strike every side of Maia’s cunt. She could feel the pointy scales of his dick stab against the roof of her vagina before impacting against its velvety walls before then scraping against its floor… Every stab produced a prick so painful to her pride and body both she wanted to jolt away from them but under Yandaza’s domination she simply couldn’t. Not even his fellows practically yanking at him to steal his place could slow down the bestraddling monster’s barrage. “Guuuuuuuhhh!!!” Maia screamed into the earthen ground, stealing back whatever momentary control she could. “Daaaamn you! I’ll kill you al-” Her words faded as her control ended, the weight on her mind increasing once again.

While this was merely the beginning of Maia’s humiliation, it was the conclusion of that first kobold’s fuck – Having broken himself into sacred territory, he was now itching to befoul it with slimy, profaning seeds. Burrowing himself to the hilt, Archleon’s reptilian minion orgasmed, sending not so much a flood as a squirt of hot, disgusting semen into Thaugindottir’s hole.

Spent, he gasped once with pleasure before pulling out, letting his watery semen disgustingly drip down her thighs. It seemed that shuddering in disgust was about the only control over her body she still had. “Maia, Maia, Maia,” Yandaza tittered inside the barbarians skull. “The kobold-fucked Princessss. Oh what sssongs your ssskalds will sssing about you!”

Thaugindottir screamed with a vehement lust for vengeance… but it was mostly within her own head. The barbarian’s inability to fully articulate her wrath physically was driving her insane!

In his wake the kobold had left a trashed and tarnished maidenhood. The hymen was not so much ‘gone’ as it was a tarnished veil barely clinging to its facade. Part of the kobold’s ejaculation had struck what was left of her virginity and now slimy sperm dangled from its edge in an obscene desecration of tribal honor. The one next in line cared not a bit for this untidiness, however… His own dick was more than ready to explode, and as such he merely plugged the Northerner like he would any other breeding-mare and started immediately pumping like mad.

“Kill you! Kill you!” Maia repeated inside her head as this rapscallion too sent dagger-like plunges into her vaginal flesh. “KILL YOU!”

Though most considered her brutish and uncouth, it was only because those uncivilized people were too disgusting and offensive in all they did to understand that she was right and noble in all things. Certainly the former-future-Queen’s womanhood was still immaculate and pristine, her pussyflesh much finer and softer than any of the kobolds would normally get a chance to fuck. This added to their ravenous appetite to conquer her, making hips pummel and rebound with remarkable speeds. Such a blinding barrage hurt the barbarian even further, her vagina stabbed with such a plethora of plunges until it felt like an entire beehive was stinging her vulva. “Kill you! Kill you! Kill you!” she breathed out, getting muddy earth in her mouth with each word and not even seeming to notice as she continued her crazed mantra.

Having been toppled like a tree, Maia’s buxom breasts were initially no longer easily available for the kobolds to torment. They were instead flattened into pancakes against the ground – Yet those not fortunate enough to be able to contend for her pussy soon remembered their availability. Clawed kobold hands soon tugged and pulled on those flattened mounds until they popped out to the sides, revealing salacious globes pockmarked with the wounds of tiny pointed teeth. They promptly set about making more such injuries, sinking their fangs back into her, chomping on her teats like toughened bread.

“Your destiny is no longer to be a champion, prey-animal,” Yandaza intoned. “It’s to be a kobold whore! You’re going to end up wishing you had been raped by my father… at least that would have been a defeat your tribe would have been able to understand.”

Kobolds were still storming out of those small grottos in the cavern walls… it was like an entire tribe of little lizards had come out to fuck her. They now swarmed over the Northerners’ downed person, skipping over and jumping atop her body, celebrating as if this was a communal triumph and they had taken her down. Their knowledge of Yandaza’s involvement or the lack thereof seemed to be completely irrelevant to them.

Another round of doglike humping ended with the kobold ejaculating inside Maia’s once pristine cunt. A third took his place, and the exchange was so seamless Maia could scarcely tell there had been a switch of violators. Maia wasn’t being hollowed out by these thrusts – She was being needled. This third inhuman rapist forsook the handhold of her glutes and instead commenced pinching and pulling upon her vaginal folds as he raped her, viewing her sacred chalice as something that was supposed to be beaten up, defiled. The emissions left from the previous kobolds had already added something akin to a slimy quality to Maia’s twat, leaving it more squelchy and squishy. Soggy noises resounded whenever his dickhead impacted against such a befouling sperm-wad when clobbering her quim.

“All those muscles, and you can’t do a thing to defend your precious tribal honor,” Yandaza spoke inside her head. “It must be so very tortuous for you to lie helpless like a child. I imagine gangbangs like these were more what you had imagined Vallista desiring? No, no, don’t answer… I’m able to read your mind, aren’t I? I don’t need you to answer, I already know that’s what you think!”

Maia could do little but grit her teeth at this humiliation. The ravishment continued on no matter the temperature of her thoughts. Kobolds kept on pumping — not so much outstretching her in painful ways as tarnishing her sacred womanhood with punishing stabs and slimy semen. That genitalia which was supposed to mark her worthiness to lead her people was turning into a well-punished slime-pit no more dignified than that of a sow’s. Thaugindottir’s maidenhood was vanquished into nothingness, mercilessly slaughtered by ferocious kobold cock. “You’ll… pay for this! You’ll… wish this never happened!” Maia couldn’t speak but tears slipped from the barbarian’s once fierce eyes, feeling so stripped of her power and so unable to fight the kobolds, the succubus, or her dishonor that she could no longer even fight back tears.

Then another kobold mounted her… even before the third one finished. And just like that, there was another hard, scaly cock inside of her pussy.

Like a dam had been broken, the kobolds around her went insane with lust. They fought and scrambled and writhed, trying to find purchase and fit against her, trying to find room for their bodies to press against her vulnerable cunt. Maia wished that she could writhe and make it harder for them, but even as they struggled to find who the third cock inside her would be another kobold had another idea unconsidered by his other tribemates. While they fought for the colossal woman’s pussy he crowded her mud-stained face, and holding his dick like a dagger he grabbed a fistful of her ponytail and twisted her head to the side, leaving it at a perfect alignment to be fucked, tantalizingly presenting her limp, open mouth surrounded by soft lips.

The taste of his cock on her tongue as the kobold plugged the Northerner’s mouth was worse than she could have imagined. Dirt and mud was the overwhelming flavor but it was complemented by some kind of saurian sweat, old blood, previous emissions, and as far as the barbarian knew the remnants of whomever he had raped last. Maia could scarcely even scowl in disgust as he begun face-raping her. As her lips were enclosed much tighter than her pussy relative to their sizes, it created a fit snug enough for him to glorify in penetrating. The wonderful experience was very evident in the way the kobold opened his mouth wide and let his tongue hang out in ecstatic bliss, looking to all like he had discovered the keys to paradise in raping her mouth.

The inventive kobold brazenly seized Maia’s skull for leverage as he fucked. Unlike those behind her as a third cock found its way into her pussy, spreading it nearly as wide as her wrist would have, Maia could see this rapist as he violated her… the lizard was completely absorbed in the pleasure of the pumping. His gangly hips swatted back and forth like a whip, looking for a wondrous orgasm. The way his thin legs trembled during the barrage informed the barbarian that he was close to reaching its pleasures… that he was thrilled that he had discovered a new way of violating their captured human.

Fighting for control with everything she had, Maia bit.

She regained autonomy for the briefest of seconds and the brawny barbarian’s teeth slammed shut with all of the power her disgust and rage could both muster. A single, horrified squeak escaped the suddenly cockless kobolds throat in a proxy for a scream as he fell back.

“Crunchy,” she acrimoniously thought to Yandaza. “Like a beetle.”

Around her, some of the kobolds hissed in horror. Others, however, guffawed at their companion’s misfortune. For her part, Yandaza laughed along. “No, no, bad girl,” she teased. “We’re going to have to do sssomething about that…” Maia felt the tightness of the succubus’s control over her amplify again, and to her horror the barbarian realized that she couldn’t move her mouth at all anymore.

It finally registered to her with raw horror that all her resistance was accomplishing was providing Yandaza a map to where she could resist. Each time she did, the succubus adjusted her control, stripping away one more avenue of rebellion for the barbarian princess. Each time she struggled, the bindings on her mind grew tighter as Yandaza adjusted the magic, worming deeper. Maia’s resistance only made her progressively more helpless.

“Yesss… now you sssee. I’m going to have so much fun with you, human,” Yandaza spoke inside her thoughts. “Your friendsss… they have already been ressserved for other torments. But you… great lord Archleon hasss given your powerful body to me to dessstroy.” To her horror, Maia began to chew. “Now make sure you ssswallow it… need to make room for the next one, princesssss.”

The kobolds continued having their way with Thaugindottir’s pussy. Three cocks inside her at once doubled her number of lifetime lovers in an instant, and when they came the three cocks together made a squirt into a messy, ugly dump of slime into her furrow, making it their communal jizzbucket. No member of the tribe would go without a fuck before this savage rape was over. By the time they were done, pinkness would not even be a color to see of Maia’s hole. That previously untouched vagina would be reduced into a swollen, crimson pit coated in sheens of uneven, translucent white. The kobold seminal fluids already clung to every cranny and crevice, and they were adding more with every moment – What had once been sacred was profaned in a way that even the lowest of goblins would sneer at.

Thaugindottir’s dismay knew no bounds. She had been defeated, captured, mind-controlled, and now irreparably defiled. Even if Maia were ever able to escape the Sorceress’s horrendous mental clutches… such a disparagement of her womanhood would ensure she could never become the leader of her tribe.

She would never kill the dragon.

She would never be queen.

Her mouth opened to scream, and another kobold crammed it full of cock. Others took their place inside of her pussy.

And the entire horde swallowed her whole.

---

Enjoyed this story? Want to skip the wait? You can buy the entire story and an exclusive ten-page comic right here!