Her goblins herd the peasants of Meadowbrook into the town square — the hamlet, small and insignificant as it is, doesn’t even have a decent stage for public addresses, so Kara has her soldiers build a makeshift one from the surviving rubble of four burned houses.
They’re not exactly gifted craftsmen, but it only adds to the intimidation factor, the orange eyed dictator atop the spikey, ramshackle stage.
“Now then,” she begins, hands on her hips, husky voice projected out over the crowd. “When I met you at the gates, I promised you your lives. Most of you still have them — only those who opposed me lie dead. Let that be a lesson. I also promised that those of you who wished to leave could do so.” She nods at Maynier, who conjures a long sabre and draws a line in the dirt before the crowd. “Those of you who wish to pack up and leave, cross the line.”
Most of the peasants have the sense, at least, to realise that little awaits them outside Meadowbrook. Bandits might pick them apart, and for what? A new start in a new town means building a new home, planting new fields, competing for work with the village’s existing craftsmen — even worse, in the cities. No doubt if Elsa were here she would be whipping them into a frenzy, telling them they must abandon this place to the goblins and seek shelter in some city temple — but that’s precisely why Kara’s keeping her locked up in the chapel’s basement.
Still, about a dozen of them step over. “Alright, you lot. I’ve memorised your faces. So have Maynier, Jaika, and the hundred other goblins all around you. Think on that before you try to leave.” Kara silences the murmur of dissent with a raised hand and a steely stare. “Enough. Things have changed. I made you my promise before you barricaded yourselves in the church and thought you could oppose me. Had you surrendered, it would be different. But now, you’ll work. You’ll work until that wall’s nice and high, my granaries are full to bursting, and my soldiers are armed with steel.
“Hear me, and hear me well. Your priestess is convinced that Lord Eagleclaw will come down with an army to put this town to the torch. You will help me defend it. If you do, you will be richly rewarded. For when I am done here, Meadowbrook will not be some agricultural backwater — it will be the heart of the greatest kingdom this world has ever seen. Rise high from the rewards of service — or rise high on the gallows as traitors deserve.” Kara stomps her foot and stands straight — she’s underinvested in charisma, but it hardly matters when she has an army ready to enforce her dictates at the tip of a sword. “Maynier will distribute your work assignments. Dismissed.”
From Meadowbrook, the clang of hammers and scratchy sawing of knobbly-teethed handsaws echoes across the plains like drums of war. The sleepy hamlet is well awake, now, roused from slumber by the tickling fire of nascent industry, some monstrous dragon hatching from its malformed egg, ready to rain destruction upon all who oppose it.
There’s just one bit of unfinished business, as Maynier was quick to tell Kara — it’s clear her orcish lieutenant has been levelling with her, investing in strategy, tactics, logistics (like a good general) — the militia. The orc raises a fine point: when the militia returns, though they will be enormously outnumbered by the goblins inside the walls, the townsfolk will be desperate to sabotage the defence, and that’s a recipe for would-be-heroes to try something stupid. The goblins could crush the rebellion, but everyone who dies rising up against her is one who cannot work to feed her incipient war machine.
And so, from the top of the stone chapel’s bell tower, Kara surveys the surrounds, keen feline eyes caressing every inch of tawny soil, every stalk of bright grass, every swaying tree.
Everything’s moved very fast. As far as the militia know, they’re looking for two heathen women hiding in the forest. They might still be out there, combing it in pairs. Could be up the road north, too, if they think we fled for the city.
The sun’s going down, a bloom of red-orange diffusing the clouds on the horizon, and Kara won’t get a good night’s sleep unless she knows the militia isn’t a threat.
Possessed by a sudden bolt of inspiration, Kara swings down the tower hatch and clambers through the chapel until she’s in the musty cellar, where Elsa sits chained in the dark. “You know where the militia went,” she says, to the wretched figure huddled in the makeshift dungeon, hunched like an ashamed scavenger. “They’d have told you.”
“I will tell you nothing.” Kara had Elsa stripped of her robes, left in nothing but sparse underclothes that put her supple curves on full display. “No matter how many humiliations I must endure.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Kara crouches in front of her, running a finger along her jaw. “You’re longing for humiliations.”
“No, heathen! Never.”
Kara cups either side of the priestess’s face, leans forward so their foreheads are touching, and breathes deeply. Elsa freezes up, bewildered. “I need your help,” Kara whispers. “If the militia returns…”
“They will defeat-”
“No. You know they cannot. They are undermanned and underarmed. They cannot hope to contest my army.”
Elsa can’t refute Kara’s words, so she keeps her lips closed, trying to ignore the heathen heat so close to her naked, cold body. Kara pushes Elsa’s knees apart and fills the space with herself, pressed up as close as she can be without being inside her. Sharp claws massage the back of Elsa’s head, tingling through her body. She squeezes her eyes closed, forces herself to ignore the sensation. “I don’t want to kill them, Sister. If I go to them and convince them to surrender, nobody else has to die.”
“You are trying to trick me.”
“No. If that’s how I wanted to do it, you’d already be on your back or your knees. We both know you can’t resist me, then.” Even just the talk of it, and being so close to the delightfully chubby priestess, stirs Kara’s cock — it’s honestly unmanageably easy to stir her cock. Beneath her breeches, it brushes Elsa’s thigh, and the priestess sucks in breath. “I want you to help the flock. Spare them an untimely death, just like you helped with the rest of the townsfolk. Please, Sister, let no more blood be spilled today.”
Elsa, maddeningly warm, tries to shift away, but the wall’s right there, and the overwhelming scent of Kara fills her senses, weakens her resolve. This woman might just slaughter all of them, she really might. Perhaps there is mercy in the truth; if the militia tries to regather in Meadowbrook, they’ll find themselves dying a horrible death outside her walls, boiling oil dumped over their heads. In their own stronghold, they may even have a chance. “There is a fort to the west,” she says at last, “on the edge of the forest. The militia station there when they must search the woods.”
Kara lifts Elsa to her feet, runs a tender finger across her chin, then surges forward and locks her divinely perfect lips to the older woman’s plump ones, moaning into it. Her paw gropes Elsa’s breast, other hand on the small of her back to hold her close, hips grinding into her thigh. “Good girl,” she whispers, “good girl.” Elsa knows this is a moment of temptation that her goddess has prepared her for — a lifetime of denial and temperance has equipped her for this, for the purely physical effect this heathen has on her, and in fact she’s so certain she can overcome it that she makes no effort to push Kara off her, just remains motionless.
“You’re distracting me,” Kara says, breaking the kiss with a grin. “If I had my way, it’d just be me and you, in here, until the dawn comes. Hours of bliss,” she gropes Elsa’s ass, “until you realise the rightness of my Goddess. But I have no time.” She reaches into her pocket and produces a small, iron key, slots it into the shackles and frees Elsa with a twist. “I do have time, though, to find you some clothes.”
The priestess is utterly dumbstruck. “You- you would let me go?”
“No, Sister, I’m afraid I can’t. But I can find a nice house to confine you in. One with a bed, and a fire — because I can’t always be there to warm you.”
“I- I thank you, for your mercy.”
“Oh, Sister, I know exactly how you’ll thank me. Just as soon as I’m back.” Kara, ever esurient, flips Elsa around by the hips and forces her hands against the wall, takes in the curve of her ass, groans when she pulls her gaze away. “It’s so hard to leave you, when you look like that.”
Elsa isn’t sure what to make of all this. On the one hand, this is a vile humiliation and a total affront to her religion, and she could never consent to the warlord’s attentions, not without betraying everything she’s ever believed. On the other, were this a more traditional goblin warlord, instead of a gentle touch and firm kiss, she’d have taken a knife to the throat long ago.
And, like that, the path is clear to her — Thala has placed her here because no army can stand against Kara, that she knows, the realisation settling over her like a heavy blanket tucked in by a loving mother. No, even the strongest would fall before her, because within Kara is the strength of demons. There is but one way to save the world from her inexorable march, and that task falls to Elsa: she must convert her.