by Eric Vall
“Maybe she should ride with me,” I worried as I eyed my elven lover’s cute little belly bump.
“I’ll keep her safe, Mason, don’t worry,” Aurora said as she squeezed my hand. “I can create a wall of fire around us if necessary.”
I nodded reluctantly as Deya left a kiss on my cheek, and then she mounted the white mare beside her. Aurora hoisted herself up in front of the beautiful elf while I held the other reins steady so my women could get situated, and Shoshanne gently patted her chestnut mare as she murmured some praise to the old girl.
Cayla chuckled from her place on the back of a young black stallion when I got a bite to the shoulder, though, and I turned in time for the gray horse to snort right in my face.
I managed to dodge his next bite and mount up with only a few irritated neighs from the stallion, and once I was set, Haragh let out another heavy sigh and turned his horse toward the northern trees.
“This way,” the half-ogre mumbled.
“We’ll be back soon,” I told Kurna as the troops moved out. “Keep a tight patrol, and no matter what, don’t let anyone make off with my train. Taru’s inside.”
“Yes, sir,” the general said as he saluted, and I kicked my horse into a trot to catch up with the others.
Then I passed the long line of Defenders to bring my mount in step with Haragh’s, and the half-ogre had a scowl plastered to his face while the muscles in his jaw continued to twitch. He kept his gaze straight ahead as he took a winding path through the pines, and it was clear Haragh knew how to get to Fraling, but he definitely didn’t want to go there.
My four women looked as curious as I was while they rode behind us, and after five minutes had passed like this, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
“So … ” I led. “Have you ever been to Fraling? I haven’t.”
“Me neither,” Aurora chimed in.
“Better pick up the pace if we’re gonna get back to Bagneera in time,” Haragh grunted.
Then the half-ogre kicked his horse into a gallop, and as we all followed, I kept my eyes narrowed on Haragh’s broad back. It was obvious he was keeping something to himself with regards to Fraling, and even though he had every right to keep his secrets … I wasn’t gonna let him.
He was my best friend, and if I could tell him I was from another realm, he could damn sure tell me why I’d just locked a vicious ogre up in a train car over some religious nut jobs.
So, when we slowed to a walk again, I was right at his side and ready to pry into his personal business.
“Why don’t you want to go to Fraling?” I asked him point blank.
Haragh shrugged. “No one wants to go to Fraling.”
“Yes, but you reaaally don’t want to,” Aurora tossed out.
Haragh didn’t respond, and I sent him a stubborn grin.
“I’m gonna keep bugging you until you tell me,” I informed him. “Come on, I told you I was sent here by a goddess to defend the realm. This can’t be a bigger deal than that.”
This got a smirk out of the guy, and he let out a last sigh before he finally relented.
“You’ll all take this to yer graves, alright?” Haragh said as he looked over at me and the women behind us. “Not a word to anyone.”
We all agreed, and I was leaning forward in my saddle from the anticipation as I grinned even more.
“Fine,” Haragh muttered. “The warlord of Fraling is a woman named Chonna. She’s my mother.”
“What?” I blurted, but Haragh shushed me as he quickly looked around to make sure the troops weren’t too close. “Sorry! You’re a Zaelik?”
“No, I’m not a fuckin’ Zaelik,” Haragh growled. “I just happen to be related to one is all, and that’s all there is to it.”
I nodded as I glanced over my shoulder, and my women were gaping like they had twenty questions they were dying to ask. Then Aurora sent me a desperate look, and I decided to feel out the situation for her because I was just as curious.
“That’s cool,” I said with a shrug. “Are you and your mother close?”
“Not really,” Haragh muttered.
I nodded. “Right.”
As much as I wanted to push the subject, I could tell by his twitching jaw that he was determined to hold out on me, so I let him brood while we came to the edge of the forest. Then Haragh pointed the way to the stables, and we led the troops over to a rickety wooden structure.
“The huts on the other side of the stables are reserved for Defenders,” Haragh told the mages as they dismounted. “Keep your weapons close at night, and I recommend ye’ store your provisions under the beds if ye’ don’t want to end up eating like the locals.”
“What do the locals eat?” Deya asked with a sweet smile.
“Their victims,” Haragh said, and all the Defenders stared. “Go on, get yourselves settled. We’ll make sure the warlord understands the arrangement. Mason, best to stay on the horse for this, just in case.”
I nodded as I finished helping the Defenders unload their ammo, and once I assured everyone I wouldn’t leave them here unless I knew they’d be safe, I rejoined my women by their horses.
“Hey, Haragh,” I said under my breath as we followed a path of trampled grass toward the village. “How ironclad is this agreement with Temin?”
“Set in stone,” Haragh assured me.
“Yeah, but say I didn’t leave our troops here,” I continued. “No one’s gonna be too pissed, right? Temin would understand.”
“He might,” the half-ogre allowed, “but if ye’ leave the Zaeliks without any authority around to remind ‘em what kingdom they’re in, what’s to stop them from taking the Master’s side? I don’t want to fight these bastards as they are, but I don’t think anyone wants to find out what they’re like with a rune on them, either.”
“You said they eat humans?” I checked.
“Ritualistically,” Haragh clarified. “Every five days.”
I shook my head as we turned between two rustic huts with grass roofs and mud walls, but when we came to the entrance of Fraling’s market, I reined in my horse.
“What is that?” I asked flatly, and I didn’t need to specify what I was looking at.
At the entrance of the market, there was a hand-carved, wooden statue as big as Bobbie if she were upright, and whoever it was meant to be had two heads and blades for fingers. One of the heads had a demented grin with a long tongue hanging out like Gene Simmons, and the other’s face was pinched into what appeared to be an epic war cry.
The thing was, the statue was smattered with years of reddish-black stains that could only be blood, and there were decomposing heads mounted on each of the ten bladed fingers. At the creature’s feet, ravens were picking over the rotting corpses of ten decapitated bodies, and just to the right, a little boy was playing in the dirt with an old bone.
“That’s the shrine of Siraos,” Haragh explained with no enthusiasm. “I could tell ye’ about the symbolism, but I don’t think ye’ need to hear it.”
“Yeah, no thanks,” I muttered. “Should we maybe tell the kid not to play so close to the corpses, or … ?”
“No, when the kids perform their first ritualistic slaughter, they get to play there as a reward,” Haragh said. “We should keep movin’.”
“Fucking hell,” I snorted. “Okay.”
I glanced over my shoulder while we steered around the creepy sacrificial statue, and I could tell my women did not want to leave the little boy with the decomposing bodies. I sent them a reassuring nod even though I knew this couldn’t possibly make up for it, but when we got to the center of Fraling, there was enough going on to distract all of us.
The first thing I noticed was that the Zaeliks, from the littlest children to the oldest residents, all wore bones like the elves of House Cerise had. They had bone necklaces, bone hairpieces, and bone embellishments sewn into their leather clothing, and there were even a few people who were just carrying bones for no apparent reason.
What
I initially thought were white rocks lining the streets so neatly turned out to be sun-bleached piles of bones, too, and as I looked more closely at the Zaeliks, I realized the bones they wore weren’t animal ones like House Cerise. They were human bones.
All of them.
The Zaeliks seemed peaceful enough, though, as they chatted and strolled from one shop to the next, and laughter filled the air while children in bone skirts played chase and stole each other’s bone toys. They waved when we passed as if it was nothing to see two elves or Defenders in their midst, and the sun-worn faces I saw were deeply creased with years of smile lines. When an old man tripped, six people ran over to help him back up, and they gathered the pieces of his bone-riddled staff so they could repair it for him as well.
Once I got past the bone thing, though, I was stuck on how many half-ogres there were.
Haragh had been the first and only half-ogre I’d met in this realm, and he’d been the only half-ogre I saw in Jagruel. Here in Fraling, though, halflings lumbered around by the dozens with most of them wearing more bones than anyone, and several of the half-ogres carried baskets of goods for the humans they shopped with.
At first, it kind of warmed my heart to see how accepting these Zaeliks were compared to many others, but with so many hulking half-ogres around, the size discrepancy between them and the humans inevitably brought a somewhat disturbing thought to mind.
“Hey, um, I was just thinking,” I said as I led my horse closer to Haragh’s. “Those ogres in Jagruel are pretty brutal. And huge. Scary huge.”
“Yeah, they are,” Haragh chuckled with pride. “Puts this lot to shame, that’s for sure.”
“Your mom, though,” I mused, “she’s just a human, right?”
“That’s one way to describe her,” the half-ogre allowed.
I nodded. “It’s just … I mean, there wasn’t anything uncouth about your parents getting together, right? Like … ”
I sent Haragh a pointed look rather than say anything that might upset my women, and he furrowed his brow for a second.
“What? Like … ” he replied with an equally pointed look.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Haragh assured me. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, but she’s a devious bitch. Really tore my da up when she double crossed him. He was heartbroken, but ye’ know how he is. Fell in love with her right away, same as me and Taru. He’s just a big softy like that.”
“Wait,” Cayla mused. “Your mother took advantage of him?”
“Yeah, I told ye’ she really tore him up,” Haragh said with a shrug. “You know those venomous spiders that murder their mates when the deed’s done? It was kinda like that. Why do you think he’s only got one eye?”
“Your dad has one eye?” I asked in shock.
“You met him,” Aurora hissed.
“I was so drunk,” I hissed back.
“Oh, yeah,” the half-elf chuckled. “I forgot.”
“Anyway, my mom came up to Jagruel like these Zaeliks always do,” Haragh continued. “Lookin’ for a brutal mate to make brutal babies in the name of Siraos. She caught my da out on the hunt and roped him in. He don’t like to talk about it much, but he really thought they’d have a good life together. She could kill a wyvern twice as fast as him, and she liked her meat raw off the bone, just the same. Then she started talkin’ about Siraos, and my old man should’ve known what he was getting himself into. That’s us, though. When we fall, we fall hard, ye’ know?”
“Yeah,” I said with a smirk.
“That sounds kind of romantic,” Shoshanne admitted while she eyed a stand advertising bottled blood.
“Up until the part where she tried to murder him afterwards,” Haragh snorted. “He fought her off, even though it broke his heart to do it. When I was born here in Fraling, my mom sent him word and let him know she’d raise me up to be a natural born killer for the great Siraos. That’s when Grot got involved. They smuggled me back to Jagruel, but I lived in Fraling in the summer just so my mother wouldn’t send her whole flock after us. I hated every second I spent here. It’s nowhere to raise a child. They only care about gore and rearin’ savages.”
“You’re not a savage,” Deya countered, and her eyes glistened sadly. “Don’t say that, Haragh. You’re a very good man.”
“Thanks,” Haragh mumbled as he sent the elf a small smile. “I take after my da.”
“Damn, dude, I didn’t realize,” I said as I studied him more carefully. “You know, you didn’t have to come out here if it’s too much for you.”
“Yes, I did,” the half-ogre sighed. “Couldn’t send you in here without some sort of protection. My mother can smell a man like you from a mile away, and she’d probably rope ye’ in the same as my poor da.”
I smirked over my shoulder at my women.
“I don’t think that’d be an issue,” Cayla chuckled.
Haragh just snorted and shook his head, though, and I furrowed my brow as we slowly continued through the market. Haragh’s whole history sent my mind reeling as I looked out across the bone-laden crowd, but I’d heard crazier things before, so it didn’t seem impossibly strange. Still, when I thought back to my time in Jagruel, I couldn’t imagine how any human would just waltz up to a full-fledged, eleven-foot ogre male and think, “That’s an ideal mate.”
Then I saw a half-ogre who was as huge as Taru walking behind an old woman who couldn’t have been over five feet tall. The old woman had children’s bones dangling from her waist, and she bossed the half-ogre around as she used a sword to point out the things they needed to buy.
The half-ogre nodded as he gathered up vials of chicken blood and a large cooking pot, but when he called the woman mother, I couldn’t help staring in bewilderment.
“I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this,” I finally admitted. “Devious bitch or not, your mother is still just a human, and you’re telling me she somehow--”
“Lemme help ye’ out,” Haragh sighed as he reined in his mount. Then he pointed through the crowd up ahead. “See the woman with the skulls? That’s my mother.”
I scanned the dusty clearing for a second, but then I saw a woman with two human skulls fused to the shoulder pads of her leather pauldrons, and when she turned in our direction, my eyes went straight to her tits.
“Hoooly shit,” I managed.
“Gods, her breasts are bigger than my head,” Deya gasped, and I would’ve laughed, but this wasn’t a joke.
They actually were.
Haragh’s warlord mother was like no woman I’d ever seen, and to say she was ripped would have been an understatement. With just a leather bikini, boots, and pauldrons on, I could see every muscle in her body, and they were so chiseled, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could cut glass.
The human woman was easily over eight feet tall, too, and she had the same brown eyes as Haragh, but with a face angular and beautiful like a Swedish supermodel. Her dreaded brown hair was tied up with rib bones to hold it in place, and two raven beaks stuck out in the front like devil horns. Her necklace was made of rotted teeth, and the bloody spear she held in one hand had finger bones dangling from the stock that rattled with every step.
Haragh’s mom towered above the others with a hint of a sneer as she strolled through the market, but with all of this to take in, my eyes kept dropping straight to her chest.
Suddenly, everything Haragh had told me about his mother and her people didn’t matter. I still felt my blood heating up as I trailed my eyes from her tiny bikini bottoms, up her rippling abs, and to her enormous--
“Ow!” I yelped as Haragh punched me in the arm.
“Don’t look at my mother like that!” Haragh growled.
“You told me to look at her,” I reminded him.
“Look away!”
“I’m done!” I quickly replied and looked down at my horse’s mane, but I couldn’t help sneaking another peek when Haragh wasn’t watching me.
“
Let’s get this over with,” Haragh muttered, and I nodded while I dragged my mind out of his mother’s cleavage.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We have to get back to Bagneera.”
“I’ll do all the talking,” the half-ogre said. “That’s an order for your own safety, alright? Don’t say a word no matter how she baits ye’, but above all else, no one mention Taru.”
“We won’t,” Cayla assured him, but her tone was hazier than usual, and when I looked back at my women, all of them were openly ogling Haragh’s hot barbarian mom.
Deya’s lips were puckered in an O shape while she craned her neck around Aurora’s shoulder to get a look, and my half-elf wore a slight grin that betrayed how much she admired the woman already. Shoshanne was locked in a staring contest with the warlord’s nipples, but Cayla’s cheeks were bright red while she eyed the older woman from her leather boots all the way to the raven beaks sticking out of her head.
Then someone called Haragh’s name, and when I risked another look, the crowd was parting to let the warlord of the Zaeliks pass. That’s how I finally noticed Haragh’s mom had three men roped by their wrists, and she was pulling them behind her.
They had the exact same build as me, too, except these guys had their faces and chests painted with blood, and instead of pants, they wore assless leather loincloths and nothing else.
“Holy shit,” I croaked as I looked down to hide my grin, but several snorts slipped out while I tried to compose myself again.
“Shut up,” Haragh growled out of the corner of his mouth. “Just make sure you stay on the damn horse.”
I could only snicker silently in response, but by the time Haragh’s mom reached us, I managed a forced sober expression. The woman came right to me, though, and my body temperature skyrocketed as she pressed her enormous breasts against my leg.
Up close they were even more glorious than I’d initially thought, and they were glistening with sweat while the woman stroked my thigh like a cat.
“Haragh, my child,” the warlord said in a deep and sultry voice, “why did you not tell me you had such virile friends?”
