The Crownsguard Cometh

“You! You! Stay where you are!”

Nott remained crouched in the sawdust, her breathing ragged, her crossbow pressed tight against her cheek, Caleb’s dagger slick with sweat in her off hand.

Yasha, Beau, Molly, and Fjord were all armed, tense, and covered in gore. A jittery guard flanked her left, spear shaking in his grip as his eyes darted over the butchered corpses. Terrified men with legal authority were infinitely worse than monsters, because monsters just bit you while guards asked questions before they hung you. The main exit was by more guards. Fjord was too well-lit to hide behind, Beau was right in the middle of it, and Caleb was exactly where he needed to be: two benches back, hands raised, playing small and harmless.

Nott’s muscles coiled. The overwhelming urge to bolt, to scramble under the bleachers and vanish into the damp Trostenwald night, screamed in her blood. She shifted her weight, the leather bindings across her belly biting cruelly into her skin. The massive, cursed weight strapped to her front pulsed; a dull, heavy throb of trapped heat and half-spilled lust, thoroughly jostled by her frantic tumbling.

She tightened her grip on the crossbow, ready to run.

Then Caleb caught her eye.

He just gave a minute, deliberate shake of his head. It was the same grounding, heavy look he gave her when the paranoia started chewing through her leash. Stay. Nott swallowed the copper taste of fear. Slowly, agonizingly, she lowered the crossbow.

"Drop your weapons! All of you! Stand up!" the lead guard bellowed, his voice cracking by the second syllable.

Standing was hell. The moment Nott straightened her legs, the makeshift sling holding her swollen, overfull balls pulled taut, dragging at her hips. Her erection had subsided, leaving behind a thick, heavy coil of semi-flaccid flesh. But that only made things worse. During her frantic tumbling, the leather bindings pinning it to her stomach had shifted and partially come undone. Now, the massive cock rested awkwardly beneath her tunic, a coiled, heavy lump that was still plenty noticeable beneath her heavy wool cloak. If she stood perfectly straight, the sheer bulk of it would be impossible to hide. So she hunched, curling her shoulders and bending her knees, playing the part of the terrified, pathetic wretch. It wasn't entirely an act.

As the guards advanced, spears leveled, Nott’s eyes flicked to the bodies on the ground.

The dead woman. Two minutes ago, she had smelled of cheap perfume, sweat, and the warm, lived-in scent of a living cunt. Now she smelled of ruptured bowels, copper, and dark, rotting magic. The old man nearby was just a twisted heap of blackened bone and shredded skin.

They had been changed without permission. Their bodies had been hijacked, twisted into something monstrous, and then butchered for it.

Nott shuddered, a cold sweat breaking over her green skin. Just like me. Her own body had been ripped away, rewritten into this lewd, cursed shape by a hag’s cruelty. She knew exactly what it felt like to be a prisoner in your own flesh. And looking at the terrified, sweating guards, Nott knew something else: when people were scared, they looked for the ugliest thing in the room to blame. If they looked too closely at her, beneath the cloak and the porcelain mask, they wouldn't see a victim. They'd see a goblin monster with a giant disgusting goblin cock.

The next ten minutes were chaos, arguing and spitting insults.

The Crownsguard shoved the remaining civilians out into the night, barking contradictory orders while frantically trying to piece together how a carnival show had turned into a slaughterhouse.
Jester, bless her sweet, oblivious heart, immediately tried to explain everything and only made it worse.

“There was an old man,” she said, hands fluttering, voice racing ahead of sense. “And he stood up during the song, and then his arms got all horrible and his skin went rrkkk, and then he turned into one of those things, and then he hit the lady, and then she turned into one too, so we killed them. But only after they were already dead. Or undead. Or mostly dead and very rude.”

The nearest guard just stared at her.

Fjord stepped in before Jester could help any harder, pitching his deep voice into a soothing, reasonable cadence as he tried to drag the temperature of the room down by main ****. Beau, bleeding from the lip and vibrating with leftover adrenaline, mouthed off to a guard who got too close, proving that near-**** experiences did absolutely nothing to improve her respect for authority. Gustav stood by the center pole, looking so pale he might actually vomit. Beside him, the massive, mustached half-orc, Bo, flexed his arms, looking like a man desperately trying not to break a guard in half because he knew it would doom them all.

Yasha simply stood like a stone pillar, her mismatched eyes quietly tracking the exits. A woman after Nott’s own heart…

"Let me look at that," a soft voice cooed.

Nott glanced over. Jester had sidled right up into Beau’s personal space. The tiefling’s hands glowed with a soft, silvery light as she gently cupped the monk’s bruised jaw, her thumbs stroking the blood away with a bright, touchy-feely tenderness that made Nott’s teeth grind.

"I'm fine," Beau muttered, trying to sound tough, but she didn't pull away. Instead, her blue-gray eyes tracked the curve of Jester’s plush lips, her breath hitching slightly as the healing magic washed over her.

Nott glared at them from the shadows of her hood, a hot, ugly spike of jealousy warring with the heavy throb in her groin. She was annoyed that Jester was feeling up the monk instead of her. She was furiously annoyed that Beau managed to look so ruggedly sexy even when covered in monster gore. But more than anything, she was paralyzed by the sudden, completely unreasonable lust surging through her traitorous body at the sight of them together. Her cursed mind instantly painted the picture: the two of them leaning in, their lips brushing, sharing breath and blood right there in the sawdust. Or better yet, both of those frighteningly pretty women dropping to their knees, their soft mouths sliding and kissing all over the filthy, swollen length of Nott's cock until they forgot about the corpses entirely.

This was exactly why people needed rules. Without rules, two gorgeous lunatics started engaging in soft-core foreplay in a slaughterhouse, and a horribly cursed, desperately horny goblin had absolutely no safe place to put her eyes.

"We were just defending ourselves, and your citizens!" Molly’s voice rang out, theatrical and sharp. The flamboyant tiefling had sheathed his swords, his hands raised in a placating gesture, performing innocence terribly but executing charm beautifully.

Nott watched him, her jaw tight. When that second creature had charged, Molly hadn't backed away. He had stepped directly into its path, pulling its claws away from Nott and the crowd. He had taken the line of danger and bent it aside.

It bothered Nott immensely. It created a debt. She liked debts when other people owed her; it made them easy to manipulate. She hated owing anyone else. And now, watching Molly run his mouth to defend the carnival master instead of just slipping away, she realized that stupidity and loyalty were apparently neighbors.

"The girl sang them into beasts!" one of the guards shouted, pointing a shaking spear toward the empty platform. "I saw it! The dwarf girl sang, and they turned!"

"Toya has sung that song a hundred times in a hundred towns!" Molly fired back, his tail lashing. "She's innocent!"

"The timing is certainly... suspect," Caleb pointed out quietly from the back, his analytical mind refusing to let a coincidence go unexamined.

"Yeah, well, 'suspect' doesn't mean she's a necromancer," Beau snapped, wiping a smear of blood from her chin. "People don't just magically turn into inside-out meat monsters because a kid hits a high note. That is not how bodies work."

Nott almost laughed. She choked it down because bodies very much did work that badly sometimes. Bodies betrayed you. Bodies bloomed in the wrong shape. Bodies grew teeth, claws, cocks, hunger, shame. Bodies made strangers point and made husbands vanish from memory if you drank hard enough.

"Maybe someone cursed the song?" Jester offered helpfully.

"Let's stick to the facts we know," Fjord interjected, holding up his hands.

Nott said very little, clutching her cloak tighter around her aching groin. Inside, a darker thought gnawed at her. Toya might be innocent in the worst possible way: a child carrying a dangerous, corrupting curse without even knowing it, infecting everyone she touched. It landed far too close to home.

"Where is the girl, then?" a guard demanded. "And where is the toad-beast?"

"Kylre took her out the back when the screaming started," Gustav admitted, his voice hollow. "To keep her safe."

The guards exchanged uneasy, terrified looks. A "devil-toad" running loose in Trostenwald with a potential witch was the last thing they wanted to hear.

Before the panic could escalate, the tent flaps parted again, and the Watchmaster arrived.

He was a stern, weathered man who moved with the decisive, exhausted gait of someone who was thoroughly sick of this town's bullshit. He took one look at the butchered citizens, the sweating carnival folk, the armed strangers, and made a quick decision.

"The carnival is responsible until proven otherwise," the Watchmaster declared. He pointed to Gustav, Bo, and Molly. "Arrest the heads of this operation. Put them in irons."

"Oh well, will you look at that! We've been found out," Molly drawled, thrusting his wrists forward toward an advancing guard with theatrical, deadpan despair. "Whatever will we do now that we've been discovered for our brilliant plot to make a zombie ruin our circus. My god."

The Watchmaster’s jaw tightened, utterly unamused by the flamboyant disrespect. "Gag him if he keeps talking."

As the guards moved in, rough hands grabbing the tiefling, Nott’s survival math kicked into overdrive.

Molly was colorful, loud, and useful in a fight. Now he was being removed. Yasha was incredibly dangerous, surprisingly gentle, and currently backing slowly toward the shadows. Beau was damaged goods but still standing. Jester was a fountain of magic wrapped in terrible judgment. Fjord could actually talk to guards without sounding like he wanted to bite their faces off. And Caleb was still Caleb.

Against all reason and logic, this chaotic group of strangers was starting to look like a tool kit. A terrible, reckless tool kit. One full of dangerous, unstable people who could draw attention away from one wee goblin lass.

"Watchmaster," Yasha’s voice rumbled, low and flat, cutting through the din.

The tall woman stepped forward, her greatsword resting casually against her shoulder. The guards instinctively shrank back from her sheer size.

"I'll go get the girl. And Kylre. I can bring them back."

The Watchmaster narrowed his eyes at the towering barbarian, assessing the threat and the utility in one glance. "Fine. But you don't go alone. Flynn!" He barked at a younger guard. "Go with the big one. Don't let her out of your sight."

Nott watched Yasha turn and head for the performer’s exit, the nervous guard trailing in her massive wake. The goblin felt three distinct, warring emotions collide in her chest.

Relief, because the most terrifyingly competent killer in the room was walking toward danger instead of looking at Nott.

Concern, because the biggest, most intimidating meat-shield they had was walking out the flap, leaving the rest of them terribly exposed.

And a heavy, pulse-pounding surge of arousal, because watching the flex of Yasha’s broad shoulders and the sway of her hips made the heavy coil in Nott's trousers twitch and begin to swell all over again, a dull throb that brought tears to her eyes. Her body was a traitorous, unrepentant little war criminal.