The Demon Lord's Secret Desires

Gob was, somewhat unsurprisingly, a goblin. By goblin standards, he wasn’t much of one. His nose was too short, his grin was not unnervingly wide and his body was soft as opposed to lean muscle. By the standard of pretty much all other races, he was considered cute. Under normal circumstances, he would have quickly been killed off as a runt of the litter but fortunately yet also tragically, Gob was the last goblin.

Over a thousand years previously, the former demon lord had purged all goblins from the demon lands. Nobody could remember why. Towards the end of his reign, the previous Maou (the official title for the demon lord) had grown weary of life and had become dull and forgetful before finally taking his own life. This was how demon lords died. Immortal and unfathomably powerful, they were almost impossible to kill but immortality was a curse that drove many of them to take their own lives once their will to live was gone.

The previous Maou had decided to sire an heir well towards the end of his desire to keep living. The current Maou was a meagre two hundred years old, barely fifty years into adulthood. What little sense the previous Maou had left was spent preparing his son to rule so many smaller details, such as the goblin genocide, weren’t considered important enough to pass on. After all, there had been no goblins around for a thousand years so what did it matter?

Then Gob turned up. He had been found, the victim of a petrification spell, in what must have been a nest of goblin children. All of his brothers were crumbled and damaged but Gob had been perfectly preserved. The demon who had discovered it had kept Gob as a statue for a few decades before presenting it to the young Maou as a gift.

The current demon lord was a curious young man and he had become obsessed with unwinding the spell that had turned Gob to stone. Challenges are rare for such exceptionally powerful beings and restoring Gob became an intriguing task that kept the Maou amused for several days. Once restored he lost interest and the palace had a new pet. Goblin was his name as one might just call a cat, cat or a dog, dog and he was allowed to wander the palace.

He grew quickly. He had reached maturity after only a few weeks but still only came to just below the crotch height of the more human-shaped races. Knowing nothing of his own race, he wondered how old he was. He had lived at the palace for nearly twenty years but, for all he knew, he could be old and almost dead. He didn’t feel that way. He felt no different to how he had at the age of one and he looked no different as well so he chose not to think about it too much.

Goblin was too much effort for most people so they took to calling him Gob. He was put to work by the palace staff and he was often used to performing duties that were too unpleasant for others to be bothered with. He had no room but there was a blanket in the corner of the kitchens that came to be accepted as his.

Most of the time Gob was left to his own devices. He would spend his time creeping around the palace and trying to spy on the maids. The Maou had great taste as far as maids were concerned and there was a selection of almost all the races of the demon lands and of almost every body type you could desire. They were as much his concubines as his servants and he would move between which one he would bless with the honour of sharing his bed. Gob just enjoyed watching them as they reached up high to dust shelves. Then he would get to peek up their skirts. Sometimes he would risk trying to watch them in the baths but he had been beaten close to a few times after getting caught.

Like all creatures, he had a level but Gob’s had never gone above one. He had never fought a creature or achieved anything of note that gave him enough experience to increase his level. This meant, in a world of supernatural creatures that even the feeblest of the maids were more than capable of beating him silly. Thankfully he healed fast and everyone knew that the Maou would be annoyed if Gob was killed and nobody wanted to risk annoying the Maou.