Tales of a Seductress

TOAD – Chapter 24

Seris unlocked my chains and carefully pulled me from the bed. It had been some time since I had stood up, but I had occasionally put my thigh muscles through a workout, so after a brief period of soreness I was able to catch my balance. At that point, he was already ushering me out of the room. He seemed to have no eyes for the woman next to me. How could I leave this place without my playmate… ahem… I mean my companion?

“What about her?” I asked, pulling against him slightly.

Seris shot me a glare, but he quickly covered it up and took a breath. “I’ll get her.”

He let go of me and then walked over to Beedle. He didn’t seem remotely gentle as he cut her free from her bonds. When she acted despondent toward being rescued, he slapped her face.

“Hey! You’re being rescued. If you want to be a goblin sex toy for the rest of your life, then just lie there like an idiot.”

Beedle blinked a few times, only finally regaining awareness of her surroundings. Her eyes shook wildly as they glanced over at me standing and then back to him. She then threw her arms around him. Seris looked away, a look of pure disgust on his face, but he tolerated her touching him for a moment before walking back to me. She was holding onto him, so she nearly fell out of her bed as he dragged her away.

At the last moment, she let go and then stumbled to her feet. Unlike me, her legs seemed to barely work. As Seris reached me, I shot him a look and walked to her side, helping her stand up. I had spent my time breaking Beedle, so how could I just abandon her now. Being seen as her supportive big sister, the only woman who had been through the same experiences as her, Beedle could become my new Min. She even had a similar body type.

Seris watched stiffly as I helped Beedle along, who was regaining a bit of her strength the more she got used to her legs being under her again. The pair of us passed Seris and left the room. The path I took was the same path we had originally taken to get to this room. It was distinctly in the opposite direction from where Seris’s brother and Rio had perished. That was the location of the goblin king.

After moving down the hallway a bit, Seris shoved past us, taking the lead. We continued to follow in relative silence. Beedle was quiet, her head lowered. Occasionally, she would shake, so I’d tighten my grip on her. This was just the way this world was. It wasn’t my fault. I was a victim just like any other. Beedle had volunteered to be an adventurer. She had been born in this world, and still, she deliberately walked into a goblin’s lair. What happened after could be no one’s fault but her own.

What about me? What about my wants and dreams? I was a college student. I didn’t ask to have any of this happen to me. Yet, I was forced to submit to this brutal world the same as her.

As I was having such thoughts, I still made sure to keep an awareness of my surroundings. I noticed several goblins were lying dead as we walked past. These weren’t goblins that we killed weeks ago. Those would have been rotten corpses, although more likely they were eaten or burned. There was no particular sign of a fight either. These goblins had no cuts or bruises that suggested they had been fighting for their life.

These must have been the goblins that Seris fought on the way in. However, how did he kill them? I even recognized some of them as my own. I wasn’t able to get a closer look though, because Seris kept moving forward, and every time there was a goblin in sight Beedle would grab onto me and then shove her face in my arm. I decided it wasn’t that important. Bradrick was strong, and he was related to Seris, so, Seris had to have his tricks too.

Our group found ourselves nearing the entrance without running into a single goblin. Had Bradrick’s team cleaned them up so well? I didn’t believe that. Rather, based on the number of different goblins that had just been inside me the last month, the numbers had to be much higher than this. We should have run into some patrolling goblins. They should have noticed the ones that were already down. I licked my lips. I guess there was no longer a reason to play this game any longer.

Seris stopped as he approached the exit, turning back to the pair of us. I stopped as well. Only Beedle hadn’t been paying attention and tried to continue onward. When she realized I wasn’t moving, she stumbled slightly, and then looked back and forth between the pair of us.

“There is one more issue we must take care of before I can rescue you.” Seris declared.

Beedle’s mind had already been stretched to the breaking point. She blinked at him in confusion, not sure what he was talking about. He looked down at her stomach.

“That needs to be dealt with.” He pointed.

Beedle’s eyes slowly dropped down to her stomach, where a noticeable bump existed. It had been weeks, plenty of time for the goblins inside us to start growing. In human terms, we were about three months pregnant. It took about six weeks for a goblin to be born. Beedle’s bump was a bit more noticeable than my own because she was a smaller girl with a less shapely body. I had been wondering when he was going to point that out. If we were being technical, it was a bit too late for either of us.

Beedle had been in denial though. She had rejected reality and had pretended that the bulge in her stomach was her imagination. Faced with it directly, it was the final thread left of her sanity.

“N-no… no! No!” She shook her head. “It’s not… I’m not…”

“Shut up!” He hissed. “If you speak any louder, you’ll be alerting the goblins we’re here. You don’t want to go back in there, do you, stupid girl?”

“I can’t! I’m not!” She didn’t listen to him at all.

Her hands had become claws and she was scratching at her stomach desperately letting out long wails. Seris hissed and put his hand over her chest.

“Have it your way.” He responded darkly.

She jerked, her screaming coming to a stop as quickly as it started. Blood leaked from her eyes and the edges of her mouth. She fell to her knees, and then the rest of the way to the ground, dead.

“A special skill?” I asked.

I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even angry. It felt bitter, but it also felt like the way things were heading anyway. Beedle was going to die. Everyone died. That was the way of things. That was the way of this world. Seris shot a look at me, and then started chuckling to himself. His eyes looked nearly as crazy as Beedle’s eyes had.

“Hehe… well, I don’t show such a skill to just anyone.” He responded, looking at me with a dark grin. “She wouldn’t have had to die if you just left her behind. She was already a broken woman.”

“That’s true.”

“But not you…” He chuckled again. “Look at you… two weeks as a goblin breeder, I was hoping that would tame you, but look at you. You’re exactly the same. Whether it’s the smell, your cleanliness, or the look in your eye, you’re unaffected. You are truly remarkable.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m completely unaffected,” I responded, touching my stomach, which was also bloated a bit with my own pregnancy.

“Oh… but you’ve had monster babies before. That kind of thing barely matters to you, doesn’t it?” He asked, taking a step forward. “Even after I killed my brother, I was expecting at least some reaction out of you, but not even that moves your heart.”

It wasn’t so hard to grasp. It was Seris who had engineered the goblin king ending up here. It was him who had lured Bradrick and ultimately caused his death. This little trap of his was set up to destroy his brother so he could be the head of the family. I had already had my suspicions. The thing that had caught me off guard was how long it took him to appear after Bradrick died.

“What do you want with me, Seris?” I asked.

“Ahhh… that’s it… isn’t it?” he asked casually. “I just want you. All of you. I want you to be mine, forever and for all time. If it came to my brother, his death was a convenience to me. However, when it comes to you, you’re all that matters. I thought that once you were made a plaything, you would finally submit yourself to me. You’d cradle in my arms. You’d beg me to help you get rid of those monsters, just like that other monster you unloaded on mother. Then, you’d finally do anything and everything I asked.”

“I see… back to the cage is what you wanted.” I sighed.

“But seeing you now, I realize the truth. You are not going to change. Changing you would be like changing the sunset.”

As he spoke, a feeling of danger sprouted around him. He took a step toward me, and then another. His hand lifted menacingly. It was the same hand he had used to kill Beedle. It was difficult to say exactly what the ability was. Perhaps, it was an ability that stopped someone’s heart. Maybe, it was just a faster version of Black Widow. I couldn’t guess, but I was pretty sure he decided at this moment that my death was the only thing that would make him happy.

“It’s a shame though…” I said out loud.

“What is?” He asked, frowning.

“I had already decided you would die a while ago.”

He blinked and then broke into a burst of laughter. He laughed in a voice filled with insanity. When I had left him for Bradrick, he had probably lost whatever grip he had. Giving me over to a group of goblins, was his attempt to control me. This was what happened when a control freak met someone who couldn’t be contained.

He lunged at me, but a moment later a knife slammed into his outstretched hand, nailing it to the wall. He let out a screech as I took several calm steps back. As he grabbed the handle, he looked at me while baring his teeth. However, that look fell quickly as he noticed the shapes coming out of the darkness. Goblins, there were goblins everywhere.

They ignore me, walking past and toward him. They didn’t just come from behind me. They come from every side, surrounding Seris. Seris ripped the knife out of his hand.

“H-hey! We had a deal!” He shouted. “I went to a lot of trouble to relocate you here! I gave you countless women! I protected you from detection! You’d all be nothing if it wasn’t for me. You owe me!”

He shouted at the goblins. Whether the goblins understood his words or not, it wouldn’t matter. They didn’t work for him. They didn’t work for the goblin king either. The only thing they worked for was me. From the moment he had appeared, I had compelled the goblins to come to me. They had followed us in the dark, never too far away. I had thoughts of killing Seris already.

I wanted to see Beedle’s happiness fall to despair as her escape was thwarted. It would have been delicious. Unfortunately, that bastard had to go ruin it all by killing her with some spell. If he had just attacked her with a knife, I might have stopped him. Instead, my pretty little toy was dead. I turned and walked away as the goblins began to leap on Seris. Maybe he could kill a few with his ability. It didn’t matter. I had goblins to spare. I wouldn’t be put in a cage again.

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