“Hear me, lass. You don’t want to be going to the Gyre. And if you do, be careful whose loyalty you buy. I’ll say this only once: you’re a lady on her own. Not all these men can be trusted.”
You swallow hard, your lashes fluttering. You nod that you understand him and he releases his hold on your hand. Grel gives you a last, hard look before turning away to serve a customer.
You decide that you at least need to meet all three of these captains to feel them out. You start with Erel Benolio, the well-dressed man drinking tiny shots of liqueur from a silver-trimmed glass. He eyes you with annoyance as you approach.
“Not interested in company,” he says.
“Um, my name is Penelope Helsdottir. I am interested in hiring a ship.”
His lips pull back from tiny teeth and large gums, creating an unpleasant, sneering smile.
“You are dressed like a peasant. You do not even smell perfumed.” He shakes his head, but says. “Let me hear it. Where do you want me to take you?”
“The Pitiless Gyre,” you say. “There is an isle—“
“How much coin do you have?” he interjects.
You hand him your purse stuffed with every zek you have. He gazes up into your eyes, never even looking at your coins.
“Not enough,” he says. “You may take it back. The Glorious Rapier is one of the finest ships in the known world and my crew is experienced in sailing the most treacherous seas. But you, my dear, are far short of a reasonable fee.”
“I might be able to—“
He holds up a hand to silence you, his attention already turning back to his drink. “Do not vex me further, girl. I have half a bottle of Iborean Brandy and I intend to drink it alone. Go find some other captain foolish enough to accept your meager offer.”
You feel far from confident after being rebuffed by Erel Benolio. You turn your efforts to Stormono. The hunched captain with the almost childlike grin watches you approach his table. He slides a cup of ale across to you.
“Come, sit down,” he says. “Not many women visiting us in this tavern. Certainly not ones so pretty as you.”
“Ah, um, thank you. I am looking to hire a ship. Before I sit down, I suppose I should say my destination is in the Pitiless Gyre.”
“A dangerous place,” says Stormono. “Sit, please. I’ll hear you out.”
“I should also say that I do not have a great deal of coin to offer.”
“Prices can be negotiated. Bargains can be struck. Sit and drink with me, please.”
So you sit and drink Stormono’s bitter ale with him. It warms your belly. He asks where you are from and you tell him Akrane. He asks why you want to go to the Gyre and you tell him it is a family matter. When he asks if anyone is waiting your arrival, you are not so sure how to answer.
“My mother and sister are on an island in the Gyre. It is called Ctharne.”
Stormono betrays no reaction. Perhaps the myth of that place has faded even among the captains sailing here in the Ilwent.
“My ship is the Dark Heart. Don’t mind the name, I inherited her from a previous captain. She can carry you safely through the Gyre. I avoid those seas whenever possible, but I know my way around them.” He takes your hand gently in his and says, “I see goodness in you, Penelope. A goodness I see in the pilgrims I sometimes carry to Ishabbaria. I am sure whatever coin you have will help, but we can leave tonight if you’d like. A difficult journey, but I will see to it you get exactly where you need to go.”
You almost agree to go with him in that moment. But you notice a curious tattoo on Stormono’s wrist. The writing that circles his wrist is small and not many can read it, but you recognize it. That is a trade tattoo for the markets of Ishabbaria. The slave markets. Could Stormono really be a slaver?
You jerk your hand form his grasp. “Um, I will need to interview another man first. Just to be sure.”
“Of course, of course,” say Stormono, his smile friendly and his eyes seemingly kind. “Take your time, my dear.”
You have to prod Orsen Castillo to wake him up. He looks at you with brown eyes rimmed with red.
“Sister?” He asks and puts his hand on your hip. “Have I already paid for your—“
“I am not a whore!” You say, pushing his hand away from your hip. “You are a captain?”
He swallows, looks in his empty cup, and slurs, “Who wants to know?”
“I need to hire a captain,” you say.
That straightens him up on his stool. He tries to fix the buttons of his tunic and look you in the eye. A lock of dark hair falls in his face and he blows it out of the way with a puff of breath. He is actually quite handsome in a rakish way, but in your predicament his drunken antics are far from charming.
“I am a captain,” he says. “The Zephyr is a small ship, but fast. Oh, yes, the fastest ship in all of Estermar. Run any blockade, smuggle you to any location. Where did you want to go?”
You unroll your chart that your sister gave you and point to Ctharne. “There.”
He blinks a few time and leans close to the map as if the writing is too small to be read.
“This is… I think this is a very old chart. There is no island there.” He scoffs. “This is foolish. You are making a joke of me? Orsen Castillo, greatest seaman in all of Estermar, does not like…”
His words trail off as a pair of hulking brutes push their way into the tavern. They scowl and stare out from beneath heavy brows. They scan the patrons with their dark eyes and find Orsen Castillo. They start towards him.
“Actually, I think I am available. But we must go now.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he says, offering you his hand as the two thugs approach with purpose. “Come, now, and we sail immediately. You want to go to the Gyre, to this silly place that does not exist, I will take you there, just to prove there is no island.”
You glance back at Stormono. The hunched captain is watching the thugs with faint amusement. You have two offers you could accept. Maybe taking your chances with this drunk in a hurry to escape his debts is not the best of ideas.
What do you do?
Hire Orsen Castillo
Hire Stormono
Offer to pleasure the gertling leader
The gertlings have made their desires clear to you. It is just as clear to you that you cannot hope to defeat all four of the little beasties in combat. You need to settle this the way your mother would, but you’re not prepared to pleasure four gertlings any more than you are ready to fight them.
“What is decision?” The impatient leader demands.
“You are my decision. I will pleasure you with my mouth and these luscious breasts.” You squeeze your breasts so that the creamy flesh of your mounds almost overflows your bodice. “Only you and not the others.”
“Mmmmmm.” The gertling leader purses his thin lips and flicks his black tongue between them. “They not like this.”
“Aw, but you’re the boss, aren’t you?” You pout out your lower lip and make sure the creature can see your fat nipples straining beneath your top as you run your fingers over your mounds. “Don’t you want these biiiig, soft tits wrapped around your, um, willy?”
It takes every bit of your acting ability to put on such a lewd performance to entice the gertling leader. You hope it works, because you are sure you cannot handle all four of the little buggers at once. You pluck at your nipples and you see the expression change in the leader’s grotesque face.
“Yes, I tell others,” he yips and turns to the others. He begins explaining things to them in their language and an argument obviously breaks out, with the big gertling waving his fists and snarling angrily. The leader seems unmoved by the display of spitting and cursing and waves his claws dismissively. He walks back over to you. “They not agree. I make them agree. Garvem is name. You agree with Garvem?”
“I agree with Garvem,” you say. He thrusts out his long-fingered hand that feels slimy as you shake it.
“Bargain!” He d
eclares. He takes your hand, shouts a parting comment in his language over his shoulder, and he leads you away from the others.
Standing among the scorched timbers of what might have been a small church, you get down on your knees so that your face is almost even with Garvem’s. He smiles, his eyes bulging as he watches you untie your blouse. Your breasts spill free of confinement and into your hands. Your heart pounds and your face burns with shame as you squeeze and fondle your plump tits, playing with pink buds of your nipples.
“Give!” Shouts Garvem. He buries his face eagerly in your cleavage. He kisses and slurps at your breasts, spreading his foul-smelling saliva as his long fingers pluck at your nipples. His comparatively big mouth opens wide and he sucks at your left breast, his teeth hard against the edges of your suckled flesh. His tongue rolls like a serpent around your nipple and you gasp with shameful pleasure. He lifts your breast with suction until it pops free of his mouth, jiggling back into place and now ringed with a faint, irregular circle of red. He sucks at your right breast just as roughly, play with your glistening nipple with his fingers.
Having your breasts fondled and sucked by a lowly creature like a gertling is incredibly shameful, but not as shameful as what you know you must do next. Your face is flushed and you can hardly look at Garvem as he hops onto the wreckage of a pew and takes off his loincloth. He beckons you closer and you shuffle on your knees until you are kneeling before him. His hard cock is the size of your ring finger, jutting up from his dark blue balls. The wee prick is blue at the base, but becomes pink towards the tip and is flecked with red capillaries. It reminds you of a dog’s penis, which does not make any of this easier for you.
“Mouth first,” he says. “Get wet. Then udders squeeze out cream.”
“Oh, gods,” you moan at his humiliating commands.
“Bargain!” He snaps with irritation.
You close your eyes and lean your face down towards his cock. You inhale the rank scent of his loins as he rests his hands atop your head, gripping your hair by your tightly-wound bun. He rubs the tip of his cock against your lips, smearing some sort of musky liquid that you unintentionally taste with your tongue. It is sweet and slightly sour, not really pleasant, but not revolting. His cock presses more insistently and with a gasp of defeat you open your mouth to him.
Garvem prods the rigid finger-length of his cock between your lips, sliding it over your tongue and gagging you on the first stroke. You pull back, sputtering. He pulls your head down again and thrusts between your lips once more. He is more measured this time, stroking over your tongue and just lightly grazing the back of your throat. You resist the urge to gag and he begins to hunch his body over your head and thrust his cock in and out of your mouth. Your spit drips down his shaft and soaks his acorn-sized bollocks. He pants and yips and uses your mouth as his pleasure toy.
Despite your best intentions, lust surges within you. The more he uses your mouth, the dirtier and more aroused you feel, until you begin to suckle at his cock and bob your head against him. When he pulls his hardness from between your lips, you are almost disappointed.
“Now tits,” he moans, smacking his hands against your dangling breasts.
Your lift your breasts in your hands and wrap them around his cock. The hard, finger-length fuckmeat disappears completely in the squeeze between your soft mounds. You press them tightly and he gasps. You begin to wank your tits around them and he jerks his hips, fucking his cock into your cleavage. He thrusts faster and faster, his precum slicking his cock as much as your spit, his hips slapping against your breasts. He squeals with delight, “Yes! Yes! Feel so good!”
“Cum for me,” you pant, your lusty voice surprising you. “Cum between my breasts.”
“Yessss!” Garvem shrieks and fucks wildly between your tits. You feel sudden warmth and thick, milky liquid bubbles up out of your cleavage like water form a hidden spring. He strokes between your tits a few more times, spreading his spurting cum into your cleavage as you squeeze his cock tightly. He pulls out and opens his mouth to say something just as a shadow falls over him.
The cudgel hits Garvem on the head with a sound like a knock on a wooden door. The skinny gertling pitches over, his eyes showing white as he falls unconscious.
Standing over you, shoulders rising and falling with furious breathing, is the brutish gertling. He snarls at you and speaks in the gertling language. You don’t understand what he is saying, but you understand his rage and the fact that he has shed his loincloth and his thumb-sized cock is jutting from beneath his waist.
“No,” you gasp, trying to scramble away. “Please. I had a bargain with Garvem!”
Your words only seem to enrage the hulking gertling further. You try to scramble away from him, through the rubble of the temple, and he grabs you by your ankles. With surprising strength, he spreads your shapely legs wide as he roughly raises your skirt. He is on you before you can think, tearing your underwear beneath his clawed fingers. You cry out, but there is no one there to hear you.
The gertling’s tongue thrusts into your mouth, silencing your pleas for help as his hard cock thrusts at your steamy cunt. A shock of pleasure rolls through your body as the gertling sheaths his hardness in your tight channel. You beat at his shoulders until he grabs your wrists and pins your hands to the ground. He grips his hips against you and thrusts deep into your pussy, his cum-heavy balls pressing against the divot of your asshole.
“Mmmmmmmm!” You cry against his foul kiss, unsure of whether you are feeling pleasure or anger. Your body quakes with each thrust, your plump breasts swaying as he claims your cunt with his beastly cock. You feel his hardness twitching inside you, a hot spurt deep into your womanhood, and a sudden euphoria surges inside you.
You have just enough time to realize the curse of fertility has claimed your womb as the gertling spurts his seed into your fertile cove. You are bred by the beast and a certain warm contentment comes over you.
“Yes,” you gasp beneath him. “Oh, gods, it’s so good.”
You orgasm ripples outward from that creamy clutching against his hard cock. His rigid member retreats and he lets go of your wrists, allowing you to strum your clit and moan with the shocks of your ecstasy.
The gertling leader appears beside the brute. Gavrem smacks the bulkier gertling on the head and they snarl and snap at each other. The brute who just fucked you points to the cream oozing from your blushing cunt. You smile dreamily at them, still massaging your hard clit.
“We take you village,” says Gavrem. “Not bargain, but you are breeder now. Belong to whole tribe.”
You’re not really sure what any of that means, but it sounds nice coming from the gertling. You coo submissively as they get you to your feet and lead you away from the burned village.
CONTINUE >
The black temple of the goat
The trees close in around the path, branches forming an archway so tight that it seems as if you are in a tunnel. The path emerges into a dark, silent clearing and you stand before a huge gabled temple made from mossy black wood. Your heart beats faster at the sight of this magnificent and yet decrepit structure. You can feel a great evil emanating from its lightless windows.
A crumbling stone staircase leads up to black double doors. You climb the stairs tentatively, each step up bringing you closer to this throbbing heart of ancient evil. The doors are ornately carved with strange letters and lurid scenes of perversion and violence. Staring for more than a few seconds at any one carving makes you feel nauseas.
The doors swing open on as you draw closer and a menacing darkness yawns ahead of you. An unpleasant bestial scent invades your nostrils. You can hear soft moaning and somewhere, deep within the temple, a baby is crying.
“Come to me.”
You jolt with fear and look around for the beckoning voice, barely louder than a whisper.
“Come to me,” the voice repeats and you realize it is inside your head. The sensual force of the command is so powerful that you ta
ke a stumbling step into the temple before you realize you are moving. You stop yourself and steel your will against the goat’s voice. Your family’s codex is full of examples of monsters that use pheromones or telepathy to control or deceive their prey.
You draw your sword and one of your pistols, relying on the tactile familiarity of the objects to center your mind. You use a breathing exercise your mother taught you long ago to calm yourself further.
You continue into the temple, your boots thumping against the wet planks of the floor. A figure emerges from the darkness; a nude woman with the generous proportions of a fertility idol stands before you. She has a smile on her face, but a blank look in her eyes. Her pendulous breasts rest atop her gravid belly.
The blank-eyed woman only moves to remain facing you as you walk warily past her. She has a small symbol tattooed on her left buttock that emits a faint red glow. It must be some sort of magical brand. You wonder if this woman could be the wife or daughter of one of those grizzled men you met in the town. She does not seem to pose an immediate threat and you can’t do much to help her now.
You enter the temple’s great hall, towering beneath the temple’s collapsing, arched roof. Light streams through the holes in the roof, illuminating the rank chamber with shafts of golden light.
The goat sits atop a crude wooden throne draped in velvet and decorated with antlers and human bones. Your family’s codex contains references to “goat men” and “beast men” who seem to be animal-human hybrids. This goat is similar, but much larger than any you have ever read about. Even seated, you can tell he must be at least twice your height. His body is muscular and covered in gray and black fur. His face resembles a goat’s, but with a shorter snout. A strange golden crown is perched atop his head, resting between two curved horns. He possesses giant, human-like arms and hands, while his legs are furry and end in huge cloven hooves.
Between his legs is an enormous pink cock as long as your arm from your shoulder to your fingertips. It is comparatively slender and droops flaccidly over the seat of the chair so that the tip is aimed at the floor and dripping bestial gleet that stains the velvet covering the throne. You feel a sudden urge to lick the dripping fluid, like the temple wine at a purification festival. You shudder and resist such a perverse impulse.
Escape the Island of Eldritch Lust Page 104
