Chapter Text
Kalia dropped into her seat, scanning the screen in front of her as she cracked the seal on her can. The bar on one screen had just crested 80%, and that had taken half an hour already. This was a big one. The other screen displayed a wall of text that would get most people’s eyes glazed over in moments.
For her, this was part of the ritual though. Getting a cold one, slumping into her chair as she watched the last bits of the download finish and the compilation and clean-up afterwards. Reading the patch notes, absorbing all the little nuggets of information the developers fed their players while they waited for the big moment when the gates opened and they were welcomed back into the world.
For just over a year, Etherwilds had been her obsession. A fantasy game she’d fallen in love with after a two week vacation had the flights cancelled on her, leaving her with nothing but time at home by herself when everyone else was out doing the rat race thing. Not that she was an especially social creature even during the hours people normally hung out. Forced to adapt, she’d checked the game out on a recommendation from a friend and been reminded of why she’d sworn off her last major multiplayer obsession some five years earlier – when Kalia got into a game, she got into it hard.
Already max level, she spent her days with a small guild of friends she’d fallen in with while pushing to clear the then-newly released endgame boss, grinding out money-making schemes to stay on top and going back through any of the game’s other major bosses from the days before she started playing in order to acquire more cosmetic gear.
The thing about Kalia was, once she had satisfied herself that she was not just good, but very good at a game (at least in her own mind) it quickly became important that everyone else she came across knew this as well.
The group chat her guild shared pinged, and she glanced over. A few of them had already read the patch notes and were discussing the content. Ashur seemed to have locked onto something about random spawns getting a huge update, but Val was trying to steer the conversation back to the changes some of the endgame fights had made to their loot systems. Ghoul was a little ahead of Kalia, providing a running commentary that ignored the other two as he went through each new section.
Kalia set herself as busy and got to reading, trying to ignore the steadily rising number of notifications as the chat continued without her. Reading through was always an enlightening experience. The obvious pieces of information about what she could look forward to when she logged back in were welcome, but for Kalia the game was always finding where to read between the lines. The carefully constructed sentences that hid little flaws or exploits that had been patched up. The absences of information where something that needed tuning hadn’t received it, or where the developers had intentionally omitted information in anticipation of the players stumbling across it.
For her, the dissection of the patch notes was just another part of the patch day ritual, and she indulged in it every time, sliding deeper into her chair and taking another sip from the can.
As she neared the end, a glance at the bar told her she’d managed to eat 15% of her wait just reading. Only a scant 5 – no, 4% remained before her game would configure itself and welcome her back.
The chat was still lively when she jumped in, but Ashur had won the battle, steering conversation into speculation over the new NPC changes.
It seemed that they were implementing a keyword system that allowed spawns to generate with special abilities. It wasn’t a new concept by any means, plenty of games had done it in the past, but Etherwilds had never boasted that level of randomness in its trash mobs. Potentially, at least. The patch notes talked up the feature a lot, but from what she could read about it Kalia assumed it was probably just going to involve seeing the occasional fire elemental yeti on the Necrotic Tundra or a fishman with a manticore skillset out in the Rust Ocean. Interesting, but not like it would transform the game.
Ashur wasn’t convinced, spouting plenty of technobabble about advances that had been made in other games recently, but Kalia had already dismissed him as getting his hopes up. Instead she focused on something Val had said about the loot – rather, a dig made at Kalia’s competitive nature resulting in occasionally trying to hog a bit more of the loot than she was strictly due.
It wasn’t the first time they’d butted heads, and Kalia had just as much of an issue with Valkyrie constantly trying to act like she ran the guild because nobody else was competent enough to do it – even though Ghoul had founded it and had been running it for longer than Valkyrie had been playing the game.
Strange as it was to say, this too felt like part of the ritual, though a less predictable one. Kalia and Valkyrie got along well enough when it was required of them, but both of them had personality types that clashed as often as they didn’t - Kalia prided herself on being independent, and Valkyrie ever tried to be the coordinator, doling out commands both on and off the battlefield.
Kalia huffed, taking another swig. Her other screen lit up, the game data beginning to compile. Ghoul was stepping in to mediate, but it was clear the two girls were frustrated with one-another. Ashur had backed off entirely, long-since giving up when they got like this.
The play button lit up, and the purple Etherwilds text appeared on her other screen again as Kalia sent another message. Grinning, knowing her connection was better and she was the first to get in, she decided to follow up with one more.
Oh, my game just finished loading. Feel free to send me some more advice. I probably won’t see it though, I’ll be busy enjoying the game. Have fun watching the bar fill!
Normally she didn’t resort to such sneering behaviour, but Val was rubbing her the wrong way today, and even if they butted heads everyone understood that there was still an underlying respect amongst the group that kept them from outright disbanding. It just required certain parties to take breaks away from the team and cool off on some days.
Today seemed to be one of those days.
Suited Kalia just fine, she thought, leaning over and flicking the switch. Light flashed across her vision and for a moment it felt like she was floating.
Then the Etherwilds text rushed forward to meet her, and she dove through the screen, tumbling into the strange digital highway behind it, a single beam of light amongst millions surging through a network that spread out into the stars like eldritch constellations.
Etherwilds was a ‘living game’, a term that over the many long years had applied to a variety of games, often not at all similar. The term had been appropriated for Etherwilds and its ilk because they did something few could boast – it allowed a person to truly travel into a pseudo-digital alternate dimension, where the sights, sounds and sensations of the world could truly come alive.
Better than VR, making use of declassified military experiments the developers of the original pioneer in the genre (simply titled ‘Other World’) had shown people a whole new way to game.
Now, over a decade later, Etherwilds had exemplified what was possible, a vast fantasy world that reacted to the players and offered endless frontiers to explore beyond even what the developers themselves could be certain of or insert themselves. Kalia didn’t understand it all, but she didn’t care. She knew everything she needed to.
She knew Etherwilds was awesome, and she knew she was good at it.
***
Kalia had left her avatar awaiting her return in her private room at the guild hall, the empty vessel able to carry out basic tasks while she was gone but only truly alive when her mind appeared to inhabit it.
Standing up, she began stretching out all the stiffness that inevitably came with needing to disconnect for a day. New players often experienced a bit of a mental disconnect whenever they returned to their player character, but over time the mind learned to adapt, and for Kalia her avatar was as much a part of herself as her human body back in reality now.
With the realism of Etherwilds, characters even experienced a slow but constant growth of hair – though this was something they could choose to halt at any time if they willed it – and so Kalia often found that her long blonde locks became rather unruly. It suited her to let them grow wild though, restyling it was easy from her personal room, and she’d always enjoyed how she looked with her hair flowing and golden, a little bit of feral to the look. It contrasted sharply to the trim and practical hairstyles she forced herself to wear back in the real world. A dash of wish fulfilment, owing to the ease of styling it within the virtual world.
Slipping into the studded leathers she typically wore for going out, she gave herself a quick once-over to appraise her gear – patch day sometimes meant a rebalance on some of the good stuff. Pleasingly, no changes in the stats of her gear, which meant all she really accomplished was getting a nice look at her character – not something she was particularly against either.
The character creation process in Etherwilds was robust, owing to the detail of the world it took place in, and as a result people had often used it and games like it to create idealised versions of themselves, or even to experience life in a body completely at odds with their own.
For Kalia it had been more about the former than the latter. Her face was pleasingly angular where in reality it was rounder than she’d like, with some extra curves added to her lithe form to make her fit more of the seductress image she wanted – full hips and a more generous helping to her chest, all rounded out by a much more muscular physique to help carry herself. Her average height in reality was scaled up, transformed into a tall woman who stood at height with most average men – not towering, but enough to look dangerous at a glance. Her character was an amalgam of personal goals and wish fulfilment.
The last piece of the puzzle was both again, taking the grey-blue ocean eyes of her real self and changing them in the name of a more striking appearance. A bright, icy blue gaze that commanded attention, based on who she was taken to heights she couldn’t in reality.
Pleased with herself, Kalia spared one more moment to turn and admire her rear in the tight leather pants she'd squeezed into, before grinning and making for the door. Lastly, she reached out to grab the longsword in its scabbard she’d left hanging at the entrance, fastening it to her belt.
A proud warrior stepped out into the top floor of the guild hall, taking in just how quiet it was with her being the first to log in today. Along the hall the other rooms her friends kept stood closed, small lock icons hovering over the doorknobs to indicate they were locked and inaccessible to her, but she had no interest in snooping.
Making her way down the hall quickly, Kalia knew her plan was to be long gone by the time anyone else logged in, already off on her own making the most of the new content before her friends could so much as check their own gear.
The guild hall was situated out in one of the better parts of the regional capital, Dargossa, but travel was easy thanks to the large, sparkling spire that stood in their courtyard. A ‘travel shard’ as they were called in the game’s lexicon, they were large focusing devices that allowed teleportation between any linked in a network. One of the first things most guilds invested in, the smaller ones could attach to the city network and make getting around a cinch, but the larger ones like these allowed connection to the larger world network, ever-growing as new regions were discovered and players in the frontiers did the hard work of expanding outwards. Etherwilds still hadn’t been fully charted, and somehow the developers had managed to continue adding to the game while also expanding these insane borders.
Placing her palm against it, Kalia concentrated. The menu opened in her mind’s eye, layered over her own sight – by closing her eyes she could shut out all distractions and appraise the map, zooming out of Dargossa and scrolling all the way to the borders of the known world.
Normally the borders beyond the known were procedurally generated, methods far more complicated than she understood at work crafting a living, breathing world using tech that had finally reached the point people over a century ago had been claiming it would. But the developers weren’t resting on their laurels – their additions to the code that dictated this universe helped shape certain regions and update them, adding bespoke settings to challenge the players while they continued the endless journey of mapping an entire planet even bigger than Earth.
For Kalia, she’d already chosen her first destination when the patch had been announced. Focusing in on the node at the very southern edge of the map she felt the air around her hum as the shards identified each other and prepared the transfer.
A single flash of light illuminated her world, and then Kalia found herself standing in the ruins of a ramshackle camp. The palisade walls, hastily erected, had been splintered and torn apart, and the bodies of the few mercenary NPCs who had been left to guard the place in the absence of the player characters who had been maintaining it littered the ground.
Sighing, Kalia drew her blade. Frontier camps being attacked while the players who staffed them were logged out wasn’t uncommon – indeed, that was why most of the dedicated sorts hired NPCs to guard them while they were away – but it was rare that the monsters doing it were intelligent enough to leave the travel shard standing when they overran one. Most orcs and goblins treated destroying the big shiny stick in the middle of camp like it was some kind of win condition.
“I was beginning to think they’d gotten wise!” crowed a sneering voice from the top of the camp’s south-facing gate. The heavy doors, reinforced with metal, were still intact and closed, a section of the wall beside it instead caved in where something large had smashed through.
Kalia glanced up at the goblin perched on high, eyes darting around the rest of the camp’s ruins as she waited.
This one looked a little different to the ones she usually saw, and she realised it was because for once this goblin was female. She didn’t even realise they weren’t a single sex species, but this one proved that they must have been. A stout little thing, barely reaching Kalia’s waist as most of her diminutive kind did, she nevertheless stood out amongst the ones she’d fought before, wild black hair trimmed short and almost tomboyish, a prominent silver stud on her lower lip glinting as she sneered down at the human who’d delivered herself straight into an ambush.
“Camp fell apart in minutes! Headless chickens, these ones!” she said, one sinewy arm rising to point down at one of the fallen guards. For a goblin she looked like she was quite strong, though at her size Kalia doubted that meant much. “The way my brethren had talked about this invasion, I’d thought we needed to worry!” the jeering continued, yellow eyes focused entirely on the human.
Goblins were small and cunning, but even this one didn’t have the kind of muscle needed to take down a camp, even one uncrewed by players. Something bigger had gotten through that wall, and that was her real threat – the little one mouthing off was just a distraction. Kalia swept her eyes around the camp, waiting for the sign of something larger attacking, but the camp remained quiet.
Another glance back up at the chatty goblin. There was something different about her, but Kalia couldn’t figure out what. Keeping her blade raised, she narrowed her eyes and summoned her information overlay once more. Sure enough, the small, green-skinned woman was indicated as a ‘mutation’. This was what the patch notes had mentioned – this NPC had been given ability modifiers and access to some player skills to try and keep things interesting. With over 40 levels difference between them though, it was hardly a cause for concern.
Curiosity nearly cost her, though. With a roar something burst out of one of the collapsed tents nearby, a larger beast with heavy-set jaws and eyes burning like coals. A rudimentary spear was in his hand as the orc charged, and Kalia let out a grunt of effort as she stumbled back before finding her feet and parrying the spear aside.
Twirling, she exchanged blows with her foe, making short work of him, but the assault had broken the seal on the camp’s silence, and the rest of them emerged from their hiding places now.
From the top of the gate, Nissa watched the human woman dance and strike, her blade a whorl of blue-grey light as it swung effortlessly between her comrades. These humans had invaded her homeland, digging in like burrs with these camps, but she had recognised the crystal spires that allowed them to come and go, studied them, and now this human had proven her right – they were transport devices.
This human was strong, though. Stronger than the ones who had been at the camp previously. Among the humans there seemed to be two castes, the ‘Players’ and the ‘Enpeasies’, with the latter largely subservient to the former.
Self-centred beasts, these Players, but powerful enough that they could afford to be. As this one cut down another of Nissa’s brothers though, she felt the unease creeping into her. This was but one, caught unaware and able to travel from who knew how far away to be here without any need for provisions or days of journey. A lone human, and she didn’t even seem worried that a warband had ambushed her.
As Kalia kicked the third orc back, she glanced back up at the goblin on the walls again, saw the way her eyes glinted as she watched the blade do its grim work. She grinned. This cocky little thing had expected an easy ambush, probably the opportunity for some loot. She definitely hadn’t expected a max level player like Kalia to rain down upon her little plans like a meteor.
“What’s the matter?” she taunted, twirling her blade in hand. “Just gonna let your boys do all the work while you cower up there?”
Nissa grimaced. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. She’d worked hard to be trusted with a warband. They’d captured the camp without any casualties on her side – she'd been proud. It had given her hope that the invaders might be driven out. It was becoming clear that what she’d accomplished barely registered to this superior species of human though. The enpeesies were expendable fodder. It made her think of how some orcs considered goblins – a lesser species, their comparative cunning useless in the face of their physical inferiority.
“D-destroy the spire!” she yelled, realising that this human might only be the first. “Destroy the damn spire before more arrive! C-cut off her retreat!”
This wasn’t the plan. The plan had been to let them come. Ambush them. Take their weapons and gear as the humans fed them a steady stream. This one player-caste had smashed all of it.
“Oh please, you’re all gonna be dead long before you even dent that thing,” the human sneered, her blade singing through the air as she intercepted another of the orcs who had moved to follow Nissa’s orders.
Heart beating rapidly in her chest, Nissa saw the path she’d walked to be here. The years working to earn respect from the chieftain, the strategies she’d proposed that had been shrugged off. The ones that were sound but that had failed because of this uncompromising power the humans wielded. Only last night she’d dreamed of the gods themselves offering her a power to help carve her path. None of it mattered to this single human.
“Enough! Stop!” the goblin yelled, jumping down from the gate and finding shame waiting for her down here in the mud and dirt where she landed. “Please. We will retreat. Have... h-have mercy.”
Kalia cocked an eyebrow as the orcs backed off. Most of the time they stubbornly fought to the death, but this was new. She grinned. Recognition of her strength, even from weaklings like these, always felt good. To watch them retreat in awe of the one-woman army... but no. Today she wanted to vent her frustrations on these monsters.
“I’m not in a mercy kinda mood,” she said simply, lunging and cutting down the orc that had been backing away. “I think your little ambush is gonna cost you big for pissing me off.”
For Nissa, it was like the blade had already pierced her. This human was out for blood, and that was that. As outclassed as they were, even retreat was probably death.
Heart hammering in her chest, fists clenching and unclenching, Nissa sought for something to save them. The gods had promised her power. Was it a lie? Just a dream of what she wished for?
Yet there was something there in her mind, something that wasn’t there before. Something she didn’t understand, as if it had been placed there by a higher being. Looking up again, she found strange symbols filling her eyes, and was even more surprised to realise she understood them.
The human had something above her head as she stalked towards her next target – Nissa herself. “Kalia,” the goblin read aloud, blinking with wonder. Was this some kind of vision before her end? Her mind’s frustrations and terror outpouring to create this?
The human furrowed her brow, an almost imperceptible moment of confusion as she raised her sword. “How do you know my name?” she asked, planting one foot in preparation for a lunge.
For Nissa, the most galling thing of all wasn’t that the human questioned it, or that she’d continued her murderous approach. It was that the tone she’d asked it with already said she didn’t really care what the answer was. Like nothing Nissa could know would be interesting or new to Kalia.
An anger flushed through her, and Nissa found herself wishing to all the gods above and below that she could put this human in her place. Put all the humans in their place, and teach them some fucking humility. One hand reached forward, and she felt the knowledge of her dream returning.
The symbols fluttered across her vision, and once again she understood them innately. ‘Tame’.
Nissa’s body glowed, and Kalia took a step back, remembering that this goblin was listed as a mutation. She was about to use a player skill. Her heads-up display flashed again to tell her, but the sudden stiffness in her body meant whatever it was she wasn’t able to simply dodge out of the way.
‘Tame’ the words said, and she started laughing.
Taming creatures was easy when you were a higher level – some players enjoyed doing it with all sorts of creatures, using behemoths as beasts of burden or having sphinx guard-dogs. There was even a popular subculture that involved finding and taming especially fetching specimens amongst the more feminine and sexy creatures like dryads and succubi. After all, the sensations of the player characters were very nearly 1:1, with some exceptions around pain inhibition.
A creature that was designated as owned by a player could not disobey the word of their owner, and felt compelled to protect them against any other threats that might strike at them. Some players even preferred taming a small collection of beasts and keeping them as their party over the company other players and humanoid NPCs.
The thing was though, taming was only easy when you were a higher level. If the player wasn’t at least one level above the creature they were trying to tame it was essentially impossible on even the simplest and most basic foes.
Unless you were a unique goblin with a trait that removed the restrictions on level ranges for your skills.
A collar suddenly appeared around Kalia’s neck, a tag at the front identifying Nissa as her new owner as the roll was successful. The woman stopped laughing, total shock overtaking her.
Kalia’s whole body stopped in fact. She wanted nothing more than to lunge and cleave the goblin’s head clean off her shoulders, but her body refused to act on that, even if she knew she could. It wasn’t just a mental wall around the idea, it was physical inability.
“How?” she breathed.
Nissa’s eyes lit up, her vision filling with more strange glyphs and runes. Information about this ‘Kalia’ human. Some kind of indication of her strengths. A clan she belonged to. And above her name, two simple words that made the goblin quake with a sense of power. ‘Owner: Nissa’.
“What is this?” Nissa said, taking a tentative step closer, awestruck by what had happened.
One of the remaining orcs from her warband stepped towards Kalia, club raised, thinking to take her unawares now that whatever had happened had left her still.
Kalia’s eyes flicked to the side, sensing the approach with that human third eye of hers, and her sword whirled around, ready to separate the opportunistic orc’s hand from his arm for daring to come at her while her guard was down.
Nissa watched him approach, shaking her head and trying to get his attention, but it was too late. He thought he had her, poor fool. “Stop!” Nissa called finally, trying to prevent him from taking the swing.
Kalia felt her arm seize up, her swing halted. Her eyes widened in fear as the crude wooden club continued on its arc – despite being her subordinate, the orc hadn’t processed Nissa’s command as quickly as Kalia had. It crashed into her and sent her sprawling, her body limply collapsing into the mud from the shock of the blow.
Etherwilds had a few important precautions around pain feedback for player characters, an obvious necessity given the intensity of battles they often found themselves in. Because of that, the blow to her head didn’t register as more than a dull tap, the same one might playfully give another with their knuckles. Kalia’s body still processed it like a real impact though, disorientation and a ringing in the ears as she struggled to figure out which way was up.
“You stopped,” the goblin said, approaching her, one hand up to stop her subordinate from pressing the attack, though clearly the human’s attack on his friends had angered him close to the point of ignoring Nissa and continuing anyway. “Why did you stop when I told you to?”
Through the spinning of her head, something seized her throat, the words she wanted to reply with left buried as she was forced instead to elaborate. “I cannot disobey my owner,” she stated. “You commanded me to stop.”
Nissa looked at the collar around the woman’s neck. The information her new mind’s eye told her. A nascent understanding of the power the gods had given her began to dawn. “You can’t disobey me...” she growled, a dark delight blooming within her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kalia growled from down in the mud. “Someone else will be along to kill you soon enough.”
“How many?” Nissa demanded. The human didn’t seem able to lie right now. Best to make the most of it.
“Etherwilds has over ten million active players,” Kalia groaned. “A quarter of them are max level like me. This shard is the furthest south. Anyone who wants to expand the edge of the map will pick this one.”
The crystal tower. This quiet would end soon, and they would be overwhelmed by more of the player caste. “Why is it only you here now then? Why come alone?”
“Valkyrie pissed me off, I wanted to be alone. Nothing out here poses a threat to me. You're just some shitty trash mob, shouldn’t have been a problem if you didn’t get an OP ability combo.”
Not all of the words she used made sense. The cultural divide between goblins and humans hadn’t done much to narrow since the two species had met. Nissa could ask for elaboration, but if they were coming...
“How long does this... ‘tame’ thing on you last?” Nissa asked.
Kalia’s eyes widened, her mind not having considered it until just now. A creature that was tamed could only be released if the owner consented to it, or their account was deactivated. Would she even be free if Nissa died, then? What was the rule around this?
She felt the tensing of her throat, the words rising unbidden, and panic gripped her. She couldn’t answer, she couldn’t let this goblin know just how much power she had. She had to escape somehow, she had to...
[Log off?]
Nissa’s eyes lit up as she waited for the answer, blinking as the symbols took a few moments to process. “Pet attempting to log out...” she read aloud. “Permission given?”
A timer had begun ticking, but Nissa still didn’t understand. Pet must have meant Kalia, the human girl, but logging out... sounded like she was attempting to escape. “No,” Nissa said firmly, and watched as Kalia’s eyes widened in fear.
Logging out was opposed by her owner. That turned it into a roll. A simple dice roll for the opportunity to escape. The numbers flashed across the screen, a random number generator in place of the roll itself. She needed a 10 or higher.
The number that appeared was a 6.
The window flashed red, and a cooldown for an hour appeared. Kalia began to shake. An hour before she could escape this little monster’s grasp. No, an hour before she could try again.
“Taming lasts until the owner consents to the release of the tamed creature, or the owner’s account is deactivated.”
The words were like razors pouring out of her throat, the held question answered simply because it was impossible that it not be. Kalia felt her face flush red with fury. This indignity was beyond anything she’d ever been subjected to.
“Destroy the crystal spire,” Nissa commanded. “We need to understand what’s just happened before more arrive.”
The command had been given to the remaining orcs, but Kalia’s head was still spinning, the panic at the situation making it hard to think clearly. She interpreted the command as being given to her too, and rose to her feet unsteadily. Picking up her sword, she turned, feeling her body putting its full strength into an act she gave no consent to.
Her firebird lunge slammed into the travel shard, sword burying deep as the flames wreathing her superheated it. Cracks fissured up the shard, a feeble, flickering pulse as the delicate internal mechanisms began to fail in a cascade, before in a burst of fire and destruction Kalia backflipped, landing back on the ground with her still smouldering sword in hand, the travel shard beginning to collapse as its upper and lower halves were blown apart.
Nissa stared at her, this player caste human that wielded so much power, the delicate little collar around her neck preventing her from doing anything to the goblin that wasn’t directly commanded. She didn’t quite understand the full scope of what she’d said about how long the effect lasted, but the implication was that Nissa would have to want to release her, or die. Otherwise it was... permanent?
That meant she owned a human now. A human player, capable of immense feats of strength. Incapable of lying to her. Incapable of disobeying at all.
A symbol of everything humanity had done to Nissa’s kind. Her eyes glinted, as Kalia stood and turned towards her, clear anger in her eyes at her situation. At being made to destroy her retreat, and her hope for immediate reinforcements.
Nissa felt that anger. She felt it and more. Her own fury at what Kalia and her people had done. But she wanted this human to understand that the tables had turned, if not on her people then at least on her. She wanted this human to look at her with some humility.
“Drop your sword,” she commanded, and Kalia did so without hesitation.
“Get down on your knees.” No questions or comment.
Stepping closer, the human still taller than her despite her kneeling, the anger boiled over into something more bitter. “Rub your face in the mud,” she said coldly.
Kalia continued to glare as she leaned down and pressed her face into the ground, rubbing it back and forth. Nissa took another step forward, raising her foot and planting it on Kalia’s head. “Keep doing that,” she said, a dark thrill at how immediate the response was.
When finally she let her look back up, Kalia’s face was caked in muck, the dishevelled appearance far from the composed warrior who had appeared so suddenly at the ‘travel shard’. But her eyes were still filled with defiance. Hatred.
It made Nissa grin. This would take some time, but this human wasn’t going anywhere. Couldn’t go anywhere, now that she belonged to her goblin owner. That meant she had plenty of time to get information out of her.
But there was something else she wanted now. Something that awoke in her, seeing those eyes bright with fury and rebellion.
Nissa wanted to break this human. To think back to the monster that had slaughtered half her warband while laughing and barely sweating and wonder if it was the same as the creature that stared at her with obedience and deference.
“Take off your clothes. Every last scrap,” she commanded.
Kalia’s eyes widened, but her body was already moving to comply. “What do you think you’re going to do-” she began, but Nissa understood her control now.
“Do it quietly,” she commanded, and Kalia abruptly shut up.
There it was. The spike of fear under the anger. Nissa had never known such command of another being... but she quickly realised she was enjoying it. A lot.
The leather jacket was tossed aside, then the loose shirt beneath. The human hesitated, reaching for the bra and then trailing down to her pants, slowly easing them over her firm backside, trying to take it as slow as she could.
Nissa watched, her grin widening. She didn’t mind if Kalia drew it out. She couldn’t stop it happening, after all. As more and more of the soft, supple skin came into view she found herself breathing a little heavier. Now that the threat of this human was gone and she was increasingly bared, it was much easier to... appreciate her form.
Pale, soft skin, smooth thighs teased into view by the slowly descending leather pants. The slightly lacey underwear beneath, black but playful.
The pants stopped as Kalia realised she’d neglected her boots, delicately removing them one after another with some difficulty as she realised how uncomfortable she’d made things for herself. Nissa could pity her if she didn’t feel the arrogant human deserved all this and more.
Finally, Kalia stood before her goblin owner in just her underwear. Her hands hovered at her waist, shaking as she tried to decide which direction to go first. Nissa simply grinned, revelling in the sight. The remaining orcs had circled around her, watching the human bare herself. Even with their anger towards her, it was hard to deny the beauty of her form, an exoticism to humans despite their similarity of shape to orcs, and even goblins too, to an extent.
Nissa was surprised at how much she was enjoying the show too, a new kind of enjoyment in her as she watched the human humiliated, her fear and anger at being put on display like this. “Go on, pet,” she insisted, the word like a twist of the knife. “Show us those titties.”
No longer able to hide in her hesitation, Kalia unhooked the bra, her breasts spilling free as she let the garment fall into the dirt uselessly. Gasping, heart beating hard in her chest, she felt a strange creep of shame. Her avatar’s body was based on her own. Exaggerated, true, but this was still like getting naked for someone. In some ways she felt more exposed, even. This wasn’t just her body as it was, this was her body as she wished it could be. Now here it was, put on display for monsters.
But the worst part was the tingling sensation underneath it. The quiet memories of the things she’d experienced late in the evening after logging out of Etherwilds and deciding to wander the darker corners of the internet. The videos of women slowly sliding their clothing off for cameras. Of being bent over in public, sometimes feigning a lack of consent. Of having collars slipped around their necks and barking until they were rewarded with even dirtier things.
Her fantasies were coming to life, and she hated every moment.
Without even thinking, her hands drifted lower, ready to remove the last vestige of her modesty whether she willed it or not, but the goblin strode towards her. “Stop,” she said softly, and Kalia’s eyes flicked up, trying not to linger on the orcs around her and the way they devoured her ample tits with their eyes.
Kalia wasn’t so naive as to expect mercy. Not at this point. But as Nissa approached, she at least had curiosity. Something in the goblin’s eyes as they looked into hers...
Both had the same moment of recognition, and completely opposite reactions.
Nissa’s grin widened, a cruel glint of understanding as she figured out just how she was going to break this human.
Kalia’s pupils dilated, an animal fear response as she realised Nissa knew. Not just knew, but felt the same way.
The goblin’s hand reached up and tore the fabric aside, Kalia wincing as her underwear wasn’t just removed but was shredded until only scraps of it still clung in place. Then a slow, knowing finger traced up her inner thigh, an agonising path with a destination both knew. Both understood what Nissa would find there.
The orcs around them didn’t seem to fully understand, but the implication was more than enough to get a few of them going, obvious erections at the squirming human girl their leader was toying with. One had even reached down and begun touching at himself through the ragged pants he wore, and it didn’t seem like it would be long before more joined in.
Her fingers finished their journey, sliding up to where Kalia’s thighs met. Up into what lay between them. The goblin’s grin was seared into the young woman’s mind as she stared down at her.
The finger continued up a little further, pressing in, and Kalia stifled the sound that threatened to escape in response. Nissa licked her lips, almost surprised at how her own body had begun to react the same way as Kalia’s was. But she was in control, and she was going to enjoy this.
“You’re wet, Kalia,” Nissa growled, sliding her finger inside.