“Wouldn’t it be better to travel at night, out of this accursed sun?” Astrid snarled as she settled the last of the wine casks into the wagon, having no trouble hefting them given her brutish nature. She stepped back and wiped sweat from her face, flung it off her hands onto the packed stones at her feet, just off the dock.
Galvaera, beyond fed up with her situation as it was, had little patience left for the barbaric human. “That would be folly, outlander. Nights in the desert beyond the river bring their own dangers. One must travel between water sources along known paths, paths that can be difficult to see in the dark, especially for humans, and doubly so on nights without a moon such as tonight. Did you not notice that the moon was nearly gone last night?” Galvaera’s hands were upon her hips, and she spoke down her nose at the human almost without realizing it, even though the barbarian towered over her. “You would be lucky to only break your ankles in a crevasse, or stumble into quicksand. Perhaps you’re dumb enough to wander off into the sands and die from the heat? Do we need to run a rope through your nose ring?”
“Why you filthy elf!” Astrid spat, snatching her large axe from the cart and stomping toward Galvaera.
Laughing, hardly scared of such a clumsy fool, Galvaera brought magical flames to her hands. “Test not my mettle, oaf!”
The kerryn was suddenly between them, knife held toward Galvaera’s throat, her longer, curved khopesh to Astrid’s. “Test not my mettle, either of you,” she hissed. “I will slay you both and offer your hearts to Anubis for judgement in the name of Mafdet without hesitation, and seek my due punishment from the Imperator himself.”
“This is just frakkin’ great…how’d I get mixed up in this mess?” said the blood-haired goblin from where she sat atop the wine casks, sighing heavily as she ran a finger around her neck beneath her collar. “Can we not kill each other, please? At least not until we’ve made it further than the dock?”
Galvaera shifted her eyes from Samira to Astrid, then back to the kerryn. She released the magical essence she had called forth, the flames vanishing with a faint whoosh, and stepped backward, raising her hands. She hadn’t been veiled anyway. “Very well. I shall leave this brute be.”
“And you, warrior?” Samira asked, lowering her dagger.
Astrid growled and slowly lowered her axe, but raised a meaty fist toward Galvaera, one large finger pointing at her. “Don’t test me again. I’ll not suffer insult from the likes of you.” She turned and stalked back toward the wagon, then angrily threw her axe behind the driver’s seat.
“It won’t be me that makes you suffer,” Galvaera replied softly, rubbing at her nose, and the annoying ring hanging from it. Damn the mazoku and everything they’d brought into these lands! She twirled on her heel and leaped toward her mount for this journey, a smelly camel, and settled atop the high saddle, snatching the reigns with her toes before she transferred them to her hands. She quickly wound her veil around her and settled her light robes over her legs in preparation for the trip into the sands.
Samira had sheathed her blades by this time, and mounted her own camel, then pulled her hood over her head, while the brute had taken the driver’s seat of the wagon and its pair of mules. Certainly more appropriate for one of her capacity. The giant was already taking a gulp from her waterskin, too. Absolutely pathetic.
“Better wear this, warrior,” said the kerryn as she guided the camel to the cart, taking a bundle of cloth from one of the camel’s saddlebags and tossing it to Astrid. “Your fair skin burns already. And you should remove that armor; you will lose too much water to sweat and overheat.”
The oafish warrior scoffed, fumbling with the headscarf. “I’m tougher than you believe, cat-woman! I shall not be caught dead without my armor in savage lands such as this.”
“Yeah, you’ll be caught dead inside it, like a baked goat,” mumbled the goblin from the back of the cart, hiding amongst the wine casks, beneath the tarp covering them, well out of the direct sun. The oaf must not have heard her, because she didn’t blow up over the slight to her honor, whatever that was composed of.
Outlanders had strange, brutish ways.
Galvaera rolled her eyes at the disgusting little goblin and gave the camel a tap with the crop, guiding it toward the kerryn; for all of her talk of dead gods, she was at least halfway sane otherwise. “I am unfamiliar with this region; do you know what direction we must go?”
Samira nodded, turning her head toward the rocky hills outside of the small farming settlement. “I spoke to the guardsman when we arrived. It should be two days travel to the city of Baraza, and I have traversed this path before, long ago. It is an easy trip, though…perhaps there are dangers we are unaware of,” she said, glancing toward Astrid as she continued to struggle with the headscarf. “Be cautious, for there are likely hunters of prey upon the roads.”
As if Galvaera needed to be told that. Frowning, she turned her camel and spoke to the kerryn while staring at the road ahead as it led from the small village. “It is not out of the question that a sudden sandstorm could occur, and some of us become separated,” Galvaera said, too low for the women on the cart to hear. She could certainly whip a whirlwind they could disappear into; she had done it enough times for her people before her disgraceful capture.
Samira frowned, but only momentarily. “Let us not discount any option, though perhaps that is a bit much for our fellow slaves.” She turned her camel around. “We must get moving! We must leave now if we are to make tonight’s shelter before dark! I shall scout ahead, but do not fall behind; one road looks like any other out there. May the great mother Bastest bless our journey!”
Another dead god? How many did this woman have? Galvaera hung back as the kerryn started out of riverside village at a quick pace. She turned her head toward the wagon and sighed, feeling the weight of years she did not possess upon her shoulders.
“Goblin, help the mighty warrior with her scarf before we waste a day here.”
* * *
“What’s the matter, warrior? Have you died? I haven’t heard your complaints in over an hour,” Galvaera called over her shoulder, bringing her camel to a stop atop a long, sloping rise, a hot wind blowing in from the deeper desert as the sun neared the far horizon. She turned, saw that the wagon was still plodding up the hard-packed road. “Well, are you dead?”
“Would I answer if I were?” snapped Astrid, raising her hand in a rude gesture. “How much further must we go?” The warrior snatched up her nearly empty waterskin and took a pull, grimaced, and dropped it on the seat beside her.
She was still alive.
How disappointing.
Behind the brute, the goblin poked her head out from beneath the tarps, looked back in the direction they had come, then disappeared again. Nasty little creature.
Without answering, Galvaera turned her camel and started it along the downward path. In the distance,deep in the narrow valley before them, she saw the tiny figure of the kerryn, nearing the ancient temple that was to be their resting place for the night. Was this how she had learned of the ancient gods? How could she read those symbols and pictographs to learn, though? Even the elders among Galvaera’s own people didn’t know how to read the strange language carved into the stonework, for it was dead long before they had first found their way into the sands.
Perhaps the kerryn was simply insane and making it all up. It would certainly fit with her run of bad luck lately.
“It would be my fate, wouldn’t it? Enslaved to a mazoku and forced to menial labor with an insane feline from the depths of who knows where, a filthy goblin whore, and an ox-headed human who thinks herself tougher than the desert…” she muttered in her native elvish tongue, fingering the collar around her neck, feeling the points of the spikes. Her other hand felt between her thighs, tracing over the demon mark that was set upon the flesh over her pubic mound.
She felt it pulsing, ever so slightly, felt the magic it held, however faint. What terrible things could it do? Would it grow stronger the longer it was upon her?
Her thoughts growing dark, Galvaera focused instead on the road ahead, and reaching the ancient temple.
The valley floor was fully in the shadow cast by the surrounding canyon walls when she reached the ruins, Samira sitting in wait at the base of the cracked and broken steps leading up to the collapsed main concourse of the ancient temple. She didn’t look up when she spoke, intent on studying the ground. “There is still water within, and no other travelers have reached this place in some time, nor did we encounter more than a handful upon the path on the way here. Do you find that odd, sorceress?”
“Who knows?” she said, easing her camel down and hopping gracefully down from its back, giving herself a stretch. She turned to look down the valley, back toward the wagon, which was about halfway down to them, moving steadily, if infuriatingly slow. “I’ve never been in this region until I was brought here by the mazoku. Though if this is a larger settlement we venture to, with a well-traveled road such as this, then yes, perhaps it is unusual.”
“We must be cautious during the night; the greatest dangers oft come when the eyes of Khonsu are absent.”
“If you say so,” Galvaera said, sighing. She looked around, and up the stairs, noting the worn ramp running along one side. “Where is the water?”
“Inside. Once within the temple’s center, you will see the traveler’s camp, and a dug out route to the lower level. You will know where the water is as you approach.”
Not interested in conversation, Galvaera took the reins and guided her camel up and inside, finding Samira’s camel already eating some of its feed and drinking water from an old clay pot. She led her mount over and tended to its needs before she rounded the toppled sandstone columns, forming a half circle around the central area of the main temple floor. Nestled within the half circle was the traveler’s camp, the the remnants of an old fire and a few clay jugs and cups resting atop a smaller plinth that looked to have once held a statue. Samira’s packs were placed off to one side, near the columns furthest from the entrance.
Galvaera looked deeper inside, beyond the fallen columns, and saw that a section of the floor had been broken through. As she approached, her long, keen ears heard the faint sound of water dripping from below. She eased up to the edge and saw countless years of accrued sand and small rock forming a makeshift stairwell leading down into darkness. She sighed, then started down.
Upon the walls of the tunnel were carvings from the ancient times, the strange symbol-based language the kerryn seemed to be able to understand. Shards of broken pottery, mostly ground to dust, littered the floor. Glancing down the side passages, she saw little space, whatever rooms that had been there mostly collapsed. After perhaps a hundred feet, she saw a more natural-looking tunnel leading down and to her right, the sound of dripping water much stronger here. Descending another twenty feet over the smooth stones, she found the source, a natural spring, perhaps a foot deep, perhaps two in diameter, slowly filling from dripping overhead.
She pressed her hand to the moist rock and closed her eyes, sensing the nearly imperceptible vibration that indicated a larger water source beyond, perhaps an underground river? It was distant, whatever it was. Curiosity sated, she knelt by the accumulated water and gathered some in her hands, careful to waste none as she drank. Sated, she gathered her waterskin and refilled it, then turned and made her way back to the surface.
“I’ve never been so far away from Kifu’Nemhat,” the goblin said as Galvaera neared the surface, her high voice echoing down the tunnel. “Just the outlying farms, and once as far as those pyramids we saw this morning. Is there…anything dangerous here?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Samira said. “The darkness tonight will reveal much, to those with eyes to see.”
“And what…is that…supposed to…mean?” wheezed the human, the sound of metal clanging on stone echoing louder than the goblin’s voice had.
Reaching the top, Galvaera frowned at the panting human, sprawled on the floor, flat upon her back. Already her nose curled at the strong odor coming from the beast. It was more repulsive than the camels. She looked beyond, to the entrance of the temple, saw the wagon and the mules. At least the idiot hadn’t left them at the road. The goblin had already spread a bedroll on the stone floor, and worked at preparing a fire.
“Whatever you do, human, and as much as I detest the thought of sleeping next to your vulgar odor, do not debase the water thinking to clean yourself. It is a great gift that shall not be squandered!” Galvaera said sharply. “And when you take that oven off, do not put it near where we sleep!”
Astrid groaned, muttered something Galvaera didn’t understand, her own rough, barbaric tongue, and raised her hand in that rude gesture again.
“You must not continue to do this,” Samira said, eyeing Astrid. “You will suffer heat sickness, and perhaps your heart will burst. You should dress properly when we set out on the morrow. The metal in that armor would trade for much to the right person, perhaps a smith who could make something more useful out of it.”
“To the Hells with that,” Astrid said, her speech less breathy. “I won’t be left defenseless.”
“Maybe just not get hit?” said Bekksie. “Guess that’s hard at your size, though.”
“Adapt or die. It is the way of the desert,” Samira said, shrugging her shoulders. “Let us eat something before we settle down for the night. We will alternate watch, beginning with Bekksie, then myself, followed by the sorceress. Astrid will be last, for she needs the most time to recover.”
For once the human didn’t argue the point.
“How come I have to go first?” asked the goblin as she struck her flint to her dagger blade, setting the kindling atop the dry dung alight.
“I thought it would be obvious,” Galvaera replied, finally approaching the circle. “You slept practically the whole way here. Your journey may as well have been that of a king!”
“Tell that to my backside. You have any idea how much that wagon bounces around?”
“Try riding a camel,” Samira and Galvaera replied in unison. Their eyes met, and each raised an eyebrow. Galvaera motioned with her fingers, a fluttering to indicate a strong wind, and the kerryn gave a subtle shake of her head.
Perhaps a miserable night next to the reek of the human would convince her to go along with the sandstorm idea the next day. If not the human’s stink, then perhaps that of the goblin’s boots; surely the cat-priestess’s nose was more sensitive than Galvaera’s own.
It was so very easy to misplace things in the desert.
* * * * *
This story features the following themes from this year’s Kinktober list.
Tangle/Trap
Stretch/Grope
Sadistic/Imaginary
Strip/Encase
Squeeze/Secret
Quicksand/Harem
Clean/Dirty
Dramatic/Punish
Balance/Hood
Wax/Mummification
Magic/Fantasy
Natural/Camouflage
Hostage/Doll
Vintage/Ancient
Revenge/Mischief
Candy/Potion
This story contains the adventuring party experiencing: Multiple males dominating multiple females, bondage, capture, ropes, leather, heavy BDSM, suspension, being bound together, bit gags, ring gags, stuff gags, whipping, nipple rings, nose rings, clit rings, slave collars, orcs, kerryns (catgirls), goblins, humans, elves, mazoku (tieflings), swords & sorcery, pulp adventure, blood, sacrifice, bound sex, orgy, group sex, footjobs, handjobs, blowjobs, vaginal sex, anal sex and maybe more I’ve forgotten to include here.
This is a story written as a call back to the old pulp style sword & sorcery adventurers, so some themes are dark and a bit graphic, but that’s kind of the name of the game with this setting. If Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was too much for you, this might not be the story for you (but that’s not until Chapter 6)!
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