Shagala's Story [pt. II]

The pack stared, breath steaming, the last echoes of the Hunger still clinging to their muzzles. And one by one, they lowered their heads, submitting to her certainty.

They loped back toward the Brokenveil Marsh with a strange, unfamiliar clarity.

The journey across the Ashkeepers took weeks. Those mountains were not gentle country. They were the great stony spine of central Wildemount, gray-backed and wind-scoured, dividing the Dwendalian west from the wastes and badlands of Xhorhas beyond. Shagala Heart-Claw had crossed them once in frenzy, driven with the rest of the Ridge-Reed by Ragza One-Horn’s promises of Marrow Valley meat and Brekik Bone-Tongue’s poisoned sermons. Now she crossed them awake.

The miracle of the goblin’s incredible cum had long since been absorbed, but the change it triggered was absolute. The gnawing madness of the Hunger was gone. They had not stopped being gnolls. They still possessed their teeth, their claws, their feral edge, the old Ridge-Reed instinct to count the shape of every trail and test every wind. But they could stop eating when they were full, completely free from any lingering cursed ache. It was a shocking normalcy, simply the way other races lived.

Thrum Nine-Scars was the first to push away meat before the haunch was stripped to bone. Dragg Mud-Tusk stared at him as if he had watched a corpse sit up and recite poetry. Kwezz Toad-Cracker poked the remaining venison with one claw and whispered, “Enough,” like the word itself might bite him.

Yet they were guided by something else. Though she did not yet know the name Kikanuti, the Bountiful Fang was awake within Shagala. The spark of goblin life taking root in her womb acted as a beacon, yet another divine node of the goddess’s power anchoring her to Exandria planted by her chosen Avatar. Through that tiny life, Kikanuti sifted through Shagala’s memories, found the neighboring goblin tribe of the Brokenveil, and pulled. Shagala moved with the blind, unerring certainty of a lodestone drawn to iron, driven eastward by a quiet, absolute instinct.

When the pack skirted old Xhorhasian patrol stones, Shagala felt no urge to raid. When they smelled a Crownsguard road camp far below on the western slopes, she did not imagine the soldiers’ flesh. When they found a dead aurochs half-buried in scree, they ate, rested, and left the rest for crows. Each ordinary restraint became a revelation.

By the time the air turned heavy with swamp-gas and the croak of bog-horners signaled the edge of the Brokenveil, the pack moved with a calm they had not known since before the famine. The female gnolls were not feral with need. The Hunger had been permanently drowned, leaving their minds clear and their bodies sated. The male gnolls walked with them as guards, their own seed thinned and soured by the strange purging that had followed Shagala’s first feeding. They marched toward the greenfolk simply because Shagala had made the decision, and where the Champion led, the pack followed.

They found the goblin village hidden deep in a cypress grove where black water curled around stilts and reed-walls. Shagala remembered this place from before the collapse. The Ridge-Reed had called it Reed-Under, half insult and half map. A goblin place. A thieving place. A place of fish traps, hidden plankways, ugly jokes, and knives in the dark.

It was a crude, nasty settlement, but it was no beast-den. Huts were lashed unevenly to stilts above the black water, roofed with marsh grass and patched hides. Fish guts hung in baskets over the channels. Clay jars of sour eel broth were tied beneath walkways. Smoke drifted from crooked stone chimneys. Pebble trays sat beside doorways, counting food, debts, children, stolen goods, grudges, and little household victories too petty to explain to outsiders. Goblin order was not pretty, but it was real.

When the gnolls broke the tree line, the village erupted.

Goblins scattered like flushed quail. Harsh, rattling alarms went up. Hunters scrambled onto the walkways, drawing jagged bows and hefting rusted spears. Children vanished through trapdoors. Old women snatched up knives. Somewhere, a voice shouted, “Dogs! Dogs in the reeds!”

They were a bizarre, unsettling sight. The Brokenveil goblins wore almost nothing, their lithe green bodies slick with swamp sweat, clad only in frayed scraps of hide for loincloths that barely contained their genitals. But their faces were entirely hidden. Every single goblin, from the smallest child to the oldest hunter, wore an elaborately decorated mask.

Carved cedar moorbounder muzzles with lidless yellow eyes. Red-bellied giant-toad faces with bulging cheeks and painted warts. Long white heron skulls. Viper hoods striped in black swamp-ink. Spider-eyed bog masks with clusters of little amber beads. Stranger things too: bog-horn skulls, reed-devil faces, and grinning muck-spirits that might have been real beasts once or only goblin nightmares given wood and paint.

Bane’s Curse of Strife had made paranoia into village custom. Flesh could be shown, but faces were hidden. Names were traded carefully, guarded like knives. Every neighbor was a possible rival, every rival a possible tyrant, every kindness a possible trap. The curse did not make them stupid. It made them hard, suspicious, quick to feud, and slow to trust. It made them goblins who survived by never fully allowing themselves to be known.

Shagala did not draw a weapon. She did not bare her fangs. She stepped out of the reeds, a terrifying human-hyena hybrid towering over seven feet tall. Her powerful humanoid torso was corded with muscle, leading down to thick, digitigrade legs built for running down prey. A heavy tawny mane bristled along her spine. She dropped heavily to her knees in the sucking mud.

A collective gasp echoed from behind a hundred wooden faces.

The gnoll Champion planted her hands in the muck, lowered her heavy chest, and stuck her massive, furred rear high into the air. With a low, rumbling whine, she spread her thick thighs wide. The scent of musky heat and fertile dampness rolled into the clearing.

Behind her, Sekka, Varka, Ila, and Kesh did the same. Five gigantic apex predators, their hyena muzzles lowered, offering their wide, dripping cunts in absolute, shameless submission. Thrum, Dragg, and Kwezz hung back and watched, ready to defend their females if the goblins attacked.

Survival in the Brokenveil meant treating every anomaly as an ambush. A sudden offering of flesh from their greatest predators did not inspire awe. It triggered their survival instincts. The heavy, musky scent rolling off the gnolls dragged at their bellies, hot and confusing, but the masked hunters on the walkways kept their spears leveled and their bows drawn. They stared down at the massive, furred thighs and gaping, weeping holes of the monsters below, waiting for the jaws to snap shut.

An older female shamaness climbed down one of the central ladders. She was known among her people as Mizka, though no outsider had heard the name and lived long enough to spend it. Her body was wiry, scarred, and sharp-hipped, her breasts low and lean, her thighs smeared with blue-black swamp paint. She was draped in bog-heron feathers and rattling bone charms. Her face and much of her torso was entirely concealed behind a massive, bleached snapping-turtle shell, its surface carved with eye-holes and a wide, jagged mouth-slit.

She barked an order, and four wiry hunters dropped into the mud beside her, spears leveled warily at Shagala’s exposed spine and massive flanks. Rikk in a red giant-toad mask, Vok in a snarling moorbounder face, Pem wearing a cracked heron skull, and Ruttik beneath a viper-hood marked with white ash.

The masked shamaness stomped forward. She meant to interrogate them. She meant to ask what kind of sick, debased trick the gnolls were playing. She meant to call Shagala carrion-bitch, marsh-eater, pup-killer, every name the goblins had for their gnoll enemies. She meant to cast a spell that would see them sickened and weakened and easy prey for her warriors.

She marched within three feet of Shagala’s spread, dripping thighs, opening her hidden mouth to spit a curse.

And then she inhaled.

The heavy, weeping musk of Shagala’s cunt filled Mizka’s nostrils. It bypassed her fear, bypassed her hatred, and struck a divine, primal chord buried deep in her marrow. It was not Nott’s seed anymore. Weeks had passed since that goblin had filled Shagala in the alien wood. That flood had been absorbed into womb, blood, and spirit. What leaked from her now was her own, transformed by the life taking root inside her: gnoll heat carrying a goblin answer.

Mizka froze.

Her pupils dilated behind the eye-holes of the turtle shell until they were almost black, glazing over with an unstoppable heat. Her bone staff slipped from her fingers and splashed into the muck. With a ragged, **** gasp, she clawed at the thick leather straps at the back of her head and tore the sacred turtle-shell mask away.

The entire village shrieked.

Underneath, her face was mean and green, a sharp pointed nose above a wide, shark-toothed mouth that panted in the humid air. Her bare face, hidden from her own people for decades, gleamed with sweat and sudden hunger. She dropped to all fours, scrambled directly beneath the gnoll Champion’s towering legs, and shoved her mouth into Shagala’s crotch.

Shagala groaned, her hips bucking backward as Mizka’s rough tongue dragged through her swollen folds. The shamaness lapped greedily, her jagged teeth lightly grazing the gnoll’s sensitive lips, sucking the sweet juices from the pussy as if she had been dying of thirst.

The four goblin guards stared in shock at the unbelievable sight of their leader casting aside her mask to bury her shark-toothed mouth in a monster’s dripping cunt.

Then Mizka screamed into Shagala’s sex.

The sound was not pain. Not fear.

Release.

Something black and old cracked inside her. The Curse of Strife had taught her blood that every face was a challenge, every neighbor a rival, every child a future weapon, every kindness a leash. It split under the taste of Shagala’s transformed pussy. Mizka’s thighs shook. Her claws dug into the mud. She came so hard her whole body snapped rigid beneath Shagala’s spread legs, juices pouring down her own green thighs while she kept lapping like she meant to chew salvation out of the gnoll’s cunt.

The four goblin guards trembled.

Goblins were lusty, opportunistic gremlins by nature, and the sheer, absurd novelty of these giant, muscular bitches offering themselves on a silver platter was too much to ignore. Their spears slipped from their shaking hands. Their meager loincloths tented aggressively, barely containing the stiffening meat beneath, their wiry bodies seizing with a sudden, agonizing need to breed.

Rikk broke first. He tore his cloth away, revealing his thick eight-inch goblin cock, frankly large for his size, and a massive upgrade from the typical four-to-five-inch knots of gnoll males. He let out a feral grunt and lunged toward the Champion.

Mizka pulled back with a ragged gasp, her shark-toothed mouth shining with thick, sweet musk, her own thighs trembling as she made way for the seed. Rikk gripped Shagala’s heavily muscled hips from behind and buried his length into her dripping slit.

Shagala let out a guttural, pleading roar, her hyena-snout thrown back to the canopy as her massive pussy swallowed him to the root with a loud, wet schlick. She slammed her hips back against his wiry groin, pinning him deep, her internal muscles clamping down on his meat.

“Inside,” she snarled, the first law of her new world clawing itself out of her throat. “Do not waste it.”

Rikk yelped, fucked harder, and obeyed.

The other three guards broke immediately after. Vok mounted Varka, his mask bobbing madly as she snarled and shoved back against him. Pem scrambled behind Ila while she laughed and sang broken notes into the mud. Ruttik sank into Sekka, who sobbed with relief the moment goblin flesh entered her. Kesh Lantern-Jaw watched them for three long breaths before grabbing a goblin male by the throat and dragging him wordlessly under her raised tail.

Seeing the guards and shamaness utterly consumed by the monsters, the rest of the male goblins did not need any divine push. The prospect of fucking a seven-foot gnoll was a once-in-a-lifetime novelty. They threw their bows aside, whooping and hollering as they scrambled down the ladders, a chaotic swarm of green bodies tearing away their loincloths but keeping their masks firmly in place. They descended like starving animals, an army of naked green meat exactly as the Mother ordered, though none of them yet knew the Mother’s name.

The goblin females initially hung back, creeping down the stilts out of pure, morbid curiosity. They crowded the edge of the clearing to watch the nasty, sloppy spectacle. But as they gathered around the churning mud, getting closer to the writhing bodies, the heavy, weeping musk of the gnolls finally hit them.

Curiosity melted into frantic obsession. They dropped to their bare knees and crawled toward the massive gnolls, **** to drink.

It was a nasty, feral, muddy orgy.

It was a sea of entirely naked, slick green bodies rutting blindly in and around the massive furred forms of the gnolls.

All around the clearing, the mud churned. Dozens of goblins swarmed the gnoll females in a tangle of limbs, tongues, cocks, discarded loincloths, and masks thrown aside whenever a mouth needed flesh. The male goblins climbed over the giant bitches like eager green vermin at a feast, laughing and grunting as they found whatever place could take them, while the female goblins tore away their carved faces and shoved in bare-mouthed, **** to drink the transformed wetness straight from gnoll cunts and trembling thighs. And above them, beneath them, inside the stink and steam and slap of bodies, Kikanuti woke wider. The Bountiful Fang did not descend in light or song. She rose like a grin in the mud, like a pulse in every womb, like a greedy little goddess clapping her hands as this so-called god, Bane, had his influence over her goblins wiped away under the weight of rut and seed and need.

Varka was rolled onto her back with a snarl of pleasure, her huge legs spread wide as Vok clambered between them and drove his thick green cock into her, his moorbounder mask bobbing against her lower belly with every thrust. Another goblin scrambled up onto her chest, planted his knees beside her heavy breasts, and fed his cock into her open jaws while she sucked with shameless, hungry concentration, **** for goblin seed from either end. A third wedged himself beneath her raised hips and worked his shaft into her asshole, making the massive gnoll bitch buck and howl until her claws tore trenches through the mud. Around her flanks, goblin women with bare green faces and shining mouths lapped at the cream spilling down her fur, then turned on each other in the overflow, kissing, grinding, fingering, and riding any goblin male waiting his turn at Varka’s body.

Ila was on all fours, still singing her strange, broken notes, her heavy breasts swinging beneath her as Pem mounted her from behind. He clung to fistfuls of fur at her hips and let her do half the work. Ila slammed herself backward onto his cock with wet, eager ****, her song breaking into panting yips every time his balls slapped her. Another goblin scrambled to stand on a half-sunk root in front of her, both hands gripping her muzzle and she swallowed him down, her throat working around his shaft while her song became a gagging, humming moan. Beneath her belly, a bare-faced goblin woman pressed her mouth to Ila’s dripping cunt whenever Pem pulled back, licking up mingled goblin spend and gnoll juices before the next thrust drove him home again.

Sekka sobbed with joy, taking Ruttik deep in her pussy while another greenfolk worked her ass from behind, the two males grunting in alternating rhythm as her massive body shuddered between them. Her long muzzle was stretched around a third goblin’s cock, her eyes wet and reverent as she drank him down, every spurt making her moan through her nose. Kikanuti curled through Sekka’s belly like warm smoke, pleased and possessive, turning the old curse into a shrine built from breath, cunt, seed, and submission. Around Sekka’s legs, goblins who could not fit onto the gnoll herself simply fucked each other in the mud, males rutting females from behind, females grinding on cocks, everyone wet with swamp water, gnoll musk, and the contagious heat pouring from the transformed bitches.

Kesh, silent and night-eyed, had dragged one goblin male beneath her and rode him into the mud, her broad hips pinning him nearly flat while his cock disappeared into her with each heavy drop of her weight. At the same time, she held another male’s face against her cunt, forcing him to lap and breathe her in until his mask slipped away and vanished under the churn. Nearby, goblin women fought to get close enough to taste her, mouths shining, hands between their own thighs as they drank the wetness running down Kesh’s fur. Around all five gnoll females, the clearing had become a filthy battlefield of rutting bodies, with goblins fucking goblins in the spaces between, waiting for their turn at the towering cunts of their old enemies.

Kikanuti grew stronger with every thrust. Every goblin cock emptied inside a gnoll womb drove one more nail through Bane’s curse. Every goblin woman who drank from a gnoll’s cunt carried a little more of the Bountiful Fang in her throat, belly, and blood. Every gnoll female who spread herself and took the goblin seed became less a victim of Hunger and more a vessel of something rude, holy, and alive. The goddess laughed through their moans, not soft, not clean, not civilized. This was her altar now: Brokenveil mud, naked green bodies, giant panting hyena-women, masks drowning underfoot, and the first ugly miracle of a people being remade by sex.

When Rikk finished, dumping a scorching load of thick goblin jizz deep against Shagala’s cervix, she clamped her cunt tight, milking him dry. The moment he slipped out, another masked face stepped into his place. They fucked her in the mud. They fucked her against the stilts of their huts. She demanded the seed inside, her feral voice cracking.

“Inside! Give it to me! Breed us!”

The mud churned until the sun began to filter through the cypress canopy. The feral orgy burned through the night, a relentless, sloppy communion of flesh, musk, masks, and cum. By dawn, the fever broke into a new, stable reality, but Shagala did not linger to rest.

Her pack was cured, and the goblin village was bound to them in a blood-and-semen pact, but she knew there were others. Deeper in the Marsh were the remnants of the Ridge-Reed tribe: the weak, the old, and the starving who had been left behind when Ragza One-Horn took the main horde over the mountains toward Alfield and the Amber Road. Harra-of-the-Shallows, if she yet lived, would be holding the old smokehouses with teeth and ration-songs. The last Feast-Songs would be fraying. Every day lost meant another gnoll consumed by the Hunger.

Before the morning mist had even burned off, Shagala dragged herself from the mud, her thighs slick and her belly already feeling the heavy, accelerated swell of the blessing. With Mizka beside her, turtle-shell mask hanging at her hip instead of hiding her face, and a dozen wiry, naked goblin hunters still wearing their terrifying masks flanking her as an eager honor guard, Shagala led her gnolls straight back into the swamp.