The bumps in the road were the worst of the trip. Fighter clutched the thick brown blanket around her body. It itched. ‘Cheap wool.’ A part of her told herself. But the bumps were worse than the itching. Each jostle side to side or up and down reminded her of the feel of her body being rocked back and forth with the push and pull of a goblin’s hips.
‘You can do it!’ She heard her father’s voice whisper to her, in those moments as one goblin finished and was replaced by another, she thought back to her father’s lessons.
Sweat. The sweat ran down her body while she screamed at the feel of their sharp nails blooding her hips. The red tips of every set of green fingers haunted her still. Each red tip of each goblin fingernail told her which ones had tried out her flesh and laughed at her as she wailed underneath them.
Until there had been no strength left.
But still there had been her father’s voice. ‘I swear I will use my strength to help others…’ She said to her father as he lay dying not one year ago.
“I’m going to join the adventurer’s guild, and go use what lessons you taught me, in order to save people, father.” She’d said standing in front of his headstone. ‘How long ago was that?’ She wondered as she felt another one enter her body, and watched another set of blood tipped fingers close over her arm and take his turn holding her down.
She lost all sense of everything, the many had become but one, a long series of events became like one long nightmare until her senses were deprived, and all she was reduced to was rocking flesh, and even the pain and humiliation were gone, along with the pride she’d felt.
‘You can do it!’ Her father’s voice echoed in Fighter’s ear as she retreated into her memories, recalling the way he’d held up the board. His big, swarthy, tanned face split by pearl white teeth exposed in a proud smile as she took position and her fist went out. The warm wind and bright sun cast her shadow on the green grass, she could see herself in action.
‘I’m amazing! Just like father!’ She told herself as her little fist came out, she felt the wood against her knuckles, and the moment of it’s surrender when she pushed through and the board split.
His hands snapped away and he held up the two pieces in triumph, showing off her progress. Her long dark hair hung freely that day, and wafted in the breeze, the smell of sweat came off both their bodies long before the triumph came… she never hated the smell of sweat because of it. ‘It was always victory…’
The distant part of her mind said, though in her hour in the cave, just that hour, sweat meant something else… shame… and pain. The cool darkness was made even colder by the dripping water, and the cold stone underneath her naked flesh had warmed up under the friction of her constant rocking, with the heat of goblin bodies one after another ‘helping’ it along.
It was not until the hob took its turn that she let out another sound, and the goblins laughter resumed. She began to cry, and heard the voice of the dead on the training grounds again.
‘You can do it!’ She heard him say, but she couldn’t, they were too many and too strong… ‘Now I’m just another one of the ones who needs to be rescued… but at least Priestess and Wizard might make it… might make it… While this happens to me, they may escape…’
It was the only thought she had that she didn’t hate as the darkness of the cave was made darker by her squeezing her eyes shut as she heard the hob grunt to satisfaction.
He was the last, no one held her down, she fell in a heap and was ignored as the used up plaything that she had become.
Now in the wagon… not two hours from that last abuse… the bumps in the crude dirt road were stirring hateful memories.
Other women sat around her, the victims the goblins captured. ‘We were only told about three… but there have to be at least nine other women in this cart… no wonder there were so many goblins… why didn’t anyone tell us? No wonder there were so many… so many… too many…’
Tears began to run down her cheeks and she lowered her head into her hands. Priestess wasn’t with her, Wizard wasn’t with her, though she’d seen Priestess and the strange armored man that fought like a demon possessed of demons, Wizard was a no-show. ‘Dead. Warrior… warrior dead. Father dead. Wizard dead. And all I can be is…’
She stared at nothing and clutched the crude blanket tighter, some of the women were crying the way she was, others, catatonic. Empty shells from being captive for days. ‘Were some held longer, was that why nobody told us about them? Did nobody know? Were other villages raided? Or did they know and just didn’t want to risk being turned down…?’
No clear answer came to Fighter’s mind, she shut her eyes, the smell of wet grass sickened her. The light hurt, her entire body a mass of pain. ‘Why did I ever think they were weak…?’ She wondered and spat, the glob landed on her foot in the wagon and trickled slowly down to the rough wood, she didn’t care.
She brought her head to the space between her knees when she brought them as close to her chest as she could, lowered her face so that her forehead rested against the bone, and tried to sleep. ‘Please… please Abadar… no nightmares… even if for the rest of my life… not today, I beg you… wasn’t I punished enough for whatever I did to anger you? Just one sleep before…’ She began to drift off before she could finish her prayer and speak of the ones who never slept well again.
The ones she’d once pitied, and whose ranks she had now joined.
She slept, but laughter haunted her, goblin laughter, and her father’s voice, ‘You can do it!’ Again, and again, and again.
It was a hateful sleep that she endured until she awoke in time to see the heavy bronze doors of a great convent.
The doors were ornate, massive things in which two giant human forms had been carved, shield bearing knights, one of man, one of woman, both powerful and imposing. They cracked open and it was as if the two guardians were stepping aside for their charges. Fighter looked at them as long as she could, and when they passed the great gate of bronze that was framed by large stone walls, she looked back. The inside of the walls were covered with murals, forests, bright grassy fields, streams and waterfalls, even villages and towns. She saw a group of young women working steadily on an unpainted portion, bright colors, yellow sun, green grass, were slowly covering up brown rough cut stone.
She turned her head further, the sound of the massive gates closing reached her ears, and the sanctity of the convent, the sense of safety it was supposed to bring, hit home. But it hit like a drumstick on a great big wardrum. Loud… but hollow.
‘Those carved figures can’t move, can’t fight… can’t do anything…’ She hung her head and simply waited like passive cargo until the cart jostled to a stop. The slight jerking motion caused some, including Fighter, to cry out briefly.
An elderly woman in white and blue flowing robes approached, she held a scepter with a bronze tip that curled in small circles that represented the flow of magic given by the gods. She was wrinkled in the face, but had kind, blue eyes, and long white hair that hung down behind the white ribbon atop her hair. It gave her the ‘at a glance’ appearance of having cat ears.
“Here you are…” She said as she went to the back and popped open the latch that let the opening fall free. It swung below, swaying like a horse's tail, “You’re safe now. I promise you.” She said and held out a trembling, wrinkled and graying hand.
Fighter alone responded, she threw her head back and laughed a long and bitter laugh, a near cackle. “Safe!” She shrieked, and fell to sobbing.
“Come on now…” The grandmotherly looking woman whispered, “I’ll show you to your rooms… I’m Grandmother of this place, and I tell you there are no goblins here, and except for the handful of warriors that patrol the grounds beyond the walls, there are no men either. “This is my Convent, welcome to White Swan… now come with me… it will be… more comfortable in your rooms. There will be food and water brought to you. You don’t have to come out of your rooms if you don’t want to, but when you do… I want to show you something…”
The first tentative hand, a girl whose slight bump said that the goblins had not spared her their desires, reached out and slipped into the elderly woman’s palm.
“Don’t worry… you won’t have to give life to their spawn… we have a way of taking care of that… they will not hurt you that way again…” The woman’s voice was gentle, soft, like water flowing through a babbling brook, and just as unceasingly resolute as the stubborn downhill flow of water.
‘Oh Abbadar… no…. They couldn’t have…’ Fighter wanted to scream, but her tongue was bound and her lips trembled, she touched her belly to search for signs of the stirring of another goblin’s life inside of her. She felt nothing but the trembling of terror stricken, sweat smelling flesh. ‘They could… they did it enough… they could oh god no they could have?!’ She started to wail again and hugged her belly tight enough that her nails dug into her flesh.
One by one the women were helped down from the cart, but Fighter remained, the last of them to be taken, she was the last in the cart as well. Except for shaking and tearing at her skin beneath the cheap blanket, she did nothing and made no move to join the others.
Another woman, younger by many years, emerged from a single thick wooden door in the large stone building nearby, she had long black hair and a scar that ran from her cheek, down her neck, and ran beneath clothing toward her breast. “Grandmother… take the others… I will help this one.”
“As you like, Swan Mother.” Grandmother replied, and led the ones who had come down, in slow, trudging steps, to the building.
Swan Mother climbed up into the cart and simply sat across from Fighter.
She waited patiently while Fighter hugged at her skin, until finally Fighter spoke to her. “Dig it out… tear it out of my womb… please… please… I can feel it inside me… I know it’s there… I can’t bear it there a whole day, let alone bear to look at it as it grows… please… help me…” She whimpered. ‘You can do it!’ Her father’s voice echoed in her mind, and she whimpered sadly while the Swan mother reached out a tentative and delicate hand to touch the upright left knee of the quietly whimpering ‘Fighter’.
“Don’t worry… you won’t have to wait, we have a way to get rid of it… you can kill that goblin… it will die and that will be the last you ever need to see of them…” Swan Mother whispered.
Fighter couldn’t speak, but she looked at the one she heard called Swan Mother with shimmering, wondering wide eyes.
As if reading her mind through divine miracle, Swan Mother spoke to her. “I am Swan Mother, the right hand of Grandmother of the White Swan convent… our temple here, we house all the victims of the goblins for miles and miles around.”
Fighter stared at the jagged scar, but said nothing.
Sensing the look, Swan Mother touched it and traced it from the place on her head where it began, down to the white fabric where it disappeared. “Yes, goblins. I was… lucky. I got most of them before the rest overpowered me. So it was… it didn’t last long. They hit me with a stolen ax when they were done, and I fell into a chasm. A river lay at the bottom, I doubt they knew it was even there… it carried me near here, and Grandmother fished me out and patched me up. I’ve been here ever since…”
“It’s not over for you… your life, that is.” Swan Mother said softly. “Just please…” She leaned a little closer and took Fighter’s hand, “Just please come with me, let me give you a room, a bed, you can lock yourself in for as long as you want, we’ll bring you food and water, you can come out when you want, and see what you want after that. OK? Please… I promise… nobody will hurt you here…” Swan Mother’s voice cracked with emotion, her lip trembling, and Fighter began to rise, until she fell into Swan Mother’s arms and embraced her, a desperate wail tore through her previously voiceless throat.
Swan Mother felt the salty tears soak through her blue and white clothing to run down her skin, but didn’t care, she held the woman who embraced her, ignoring the itchy blanket and the sweat and the stink of goblin musk and lust that still hung over the last of the goblin’s conquests before their demise.
The faint memory of her own horror came through her from the stench coming off of Fighter, but Swan Mother ignored it, pressing through it all to hold the woman who had nothing left of herself to hold on to.
Fighter buried her face in the bosom of the woman like it belonged to her own mother, drool ran down her open mouth and dripped to the wagon beneath her knees, and she did not move from there for more than an hour.
Swan Mother waited patiently, even lovingly, her gentle embrace becoming a constant caress that ran up and down the back of the broken woman. “There there. There there. There there.” She said it softly on a loop, “Swan Mother has you, and won’t let them touch you, nobody will touch you, no goblin can hurt you… you lived, you got away, they couldn’t kill you…”
Fighter whimpered on until the slender, tender hands of Swan Mother traced their way from the embrace align the lengths of the powerful muscles of the newest resident, and into Fighter’s own palms.
She tugged gently on Fighter’s limbs, gently but insistently, cooing soft and meaningless noises until Fighter came close to the edge of the cart. She helped the woman down at last, and the pain hit Fighter’s thighs.
She started sobbing again at the meaning of the pain, it hurt to walk, her muscles cramped, aching, torn, Swan Mother put herself under Fighter’s arm, and without a word, stood for them both, holding the arm draped over her shoulder, she walked the former adventurer into the building.
Within, a faint echo carried, the sound of running water. Fighter didn’t speak, but looked around for the source.
“There is a babbling brook… you’ll see it, Grandmother had this place built around it, so that the sound carries, it is a… a good sound. A good noise.” Swan Mother whispered, and walked fighter to the left down a hall. The stone was white, or painted that way, but on most of the walls were more murals like what Fighter had seen outside. Peaceful scenes, nature scenes. A few people, but nothing ‘heroic’ nothing warrior based. No weapons, no warriors… Fighter closed her eyes to keep from seeing, the sound of her feet scraping over the stone was like the sound of a knife over leather, but she couldn’t raise her foot any higher, even though it was sending her skin to tingling and trembling.
It did not last long, they came to a door, simple enough and made of multiple thick wooden boards nailed to two that ran across. A small lock and a simple iron handle found her gaze when she followed the actions of the free hand of the Swan Mother.
Fighter heard the faint ‘click’ of the lock, and the door creaked open. There were candles abound on many parts of the room, as well as no fewer than three torch sconces with freshly set torches in place.
Fighter looked at her questioningly as Swan Mother helped her to a simple one person bed and gently eased her down onto her back. “Yes, we were expecting you… no, not you exactly… but whenever a quest like that comes out, we prepare rooms… there are always… people who need them.” Swan Mother lowered her eyes and shook her head slowly.
“Rest.” She said, and set the key down on a small end table. “I will light a torch for you so you don’t endure the dark. Come out when you are ready, and then…” Swan Mother swallowed hard and Fighter felt her eyes getting heavy again in spite of herself.
Swan mother turned away and struck two stones together, a spark lept out and caught the fuel in the torch, it flared to life in an instant.
“Then you can… start to take yourself back from them.” She finished her sentence as eyelids that bore the weight of the world began to close under the pressure.
‘If you are one of those who can…’ Swan Mother thought sorrowfully as she looked at the dark haired woman adventurer.
As Fighter’s awareness began to fade… she heard the voice one more time, ‘You can do it!’
And then she heard no more.
