The Longest Road, Part 7


After thinking for a while, you arrive at your decision. "I think I'll buy passage with a caravan," you say. "My employer would appreciate a faster delivery... but he's more concerned with it getting there at all, and going with a bigger group seems safest."

Then you smile at Khaytala. "I meant what I said about putting in a good word for you, though. I know I'd feel a lot safer knowing you were there watching out for us." The half-orc woman smiles back at the compliment.

Not wanting to push too hard, too fast, you finish out the rest of the meal making pleasant small talk. Eventually you part ways, whereupon you exit the tavern. Your mind is already racing ahead, planning out your next move. You need to pick a caravan. And all things considered, you decide the best choice is the one where you already have an ally inside.

Asking around, you quickly learn the location of the Rothach caravan, and upon going there manage to secure a meeting with its leader, Arne Rothach. He's a short, bald and muscular human, enough so that you almost wonder whether he has a tint of dwarfish ancestry somewhere far back in his lineage. Clearly, Greta takes more after her mother, who you can also see nearby.

In fact, the woman is practically an older version of her daughter, looking to be in her late thirties to early forties, with the fuller, more matronly figure that comes with having given birth to a child. She gives you a warm smile, though you can detect a weariness in her eyes as well. Thankfully, Greta herself is not anywhere in sight, no doubt still recovering from the experience you gave her.

Even without that, Arne Rothach eyes your demonic features with suspicion. Still, while he may not like the look of you, he certainly likes the look of your money, and you pretend to be gullible enough about the going rate that he thinks he can gouge you. He doesn't even blink when you ramble on about how you were hoping to be under the protection of the legendary Khaytala, assuring you that—by astounding coincidence—he's already signed her on for this leg of the journey.

That's bullshit, of course, but you expect that he'll go out and recruit her as soon as the conversation is over. He does need guards anyway, and Khaytala is the best in the business. Not to mention that the absurd amount he overcharged you was more than enough to pay for the half-orc's usual rates in and of itself. By the time your talk is done, he's having trouble hiding the smug glee in his eyes at how badly he thinks he's duped you.

It's a bit irritating... but you just remind yourself that you'll be pumping his daughter full of your cum soon enough.

Once you've signed your contract, you leave and purchase accommodations at an inn while you wait a for the departure of the caravan. Rather than risk hunting again, you elect to conserve your strength as much as possible. Snacking on Greta in the alley took most of the edge off your hunger, but it wasn't as big a meal as you might have liked, and you had been starving. Still, without exerting yourself you're able to make it the couple of days until it's time to leave.

You emerge from the inn and make your way to join the caravan as it leaves the city, everyone following the wide, stone-paved road as it winds outward. Resurgent hunger gnaws at you with every step, and you decide that arranging for its abatement is your first priority. You wind your way through the milling group of travelers until you see Greta up ahead, but you hang back until you finally see a chance to speak to her in relative privacy.

She jumps a little when you come up behind her and lay your hand on her shoulder, but her face lights up when she recognizes you. "You're here!" she exclaims. "Did you—?"

You lay a quick finger across your lips, making a silencing gesture. "Tonight," you murmur. "Sneak away from the camp to somewhere secluded. The direction doesn't matter. I'll find you. Until then... try to be circumspect."

The girl clamps her mouth shut, then nods earnestly. Giving her a toothy smile, one that hints at what pleasures you're soon to inflict on her defenseless body, you slip back away, vanishing into the crowd once more.

Your hunger begs to be released, but you keep it ruthlessly in check. Avoiding any female caravan members as best you can, you continue to shift through the crowd... until you hear a familiar voice call out to you. "Hey! Talavar!"

Turning, you see Khaytala coming up along the outside of the caravan's edge, riding on a horse. Your already-dangerous hunger nearly rips you apart at the sight. She is breathtaking in a way none of the other women around her are. Not the beauty of finely braided hair or provocative clothes... but the beauty of coiled strength and power. The beauty of a fearsome predator.

And yet, she is a predator who has turned her deadly strength entirely toward protecting this motley little flock.

She seems to be making a circuit on horseback to check on the caravan, but she slows to come alongside you as you walk. "I guess your recommendation must have been pretty convincing," she says, smiling. "The caravan master contacted me that same day."

You shrug, gritting your teeth as you fight to keep yourself under control. "I only told him the truth," you manage to say. Well, that, and you offered him a huge bribe that he didn't even realize was a bribe. But you keep that part to yourself.

"Well, I'm grateful," Khaytala says. "Always important to have the next job lined up, after all." She looks up ahead, her gaze sweeping across the route ahead of you with a look whose depths even you can't decipher, though you can detect traces of both nostalgia and wry resignation.

You look as well, in an attempt to keep yourself distracted. "So... this road goes all the way to the capitol of Nelin?" you ask, searching your memories of all the cramming you did under Iskro's supervision, as part of your study of the heroines.

"Even farther, if you follow it," says Khaytala, one corner of her mouth quirking up. "Runs up all the way to the Kuihel Mountains ahead of us, and to Averoq behind us. All in all, it's the longest road on the continent. And I've been up and down every mile."

"Impressive."

Khaytala shrugs. "It's been my life, ever since the war," she says. After that simple statement, the two of you continue to walk in silence. She seems to be lost in thought, while you're too preoccupied by your hunger to think of something clever to say. You probably ought to be avoiding her until you're in better shape... but that very hunger makes it all the more difficult to pull away from such a delicious mortal.

Eventually, you hear her chuckle. "Looks like you've got yourself an admirer, Talavar."

You glance to your right, and resist the urge to curse under your breath. While following Khaytala, you ended up drifting near to Greta again while you were distracted. And though she is trying to be circumspect as you asked... she's not any better at it than you'd expected. She can't resist stealing fairly obvious glances at you every now and then, and she looks absolutely smitten every time she does it.

Nor is Khaytala the only one who has noticed. You can see several of the regular caravan workers shooting you death glares, wearing protective expressions that suggest they think of the young girl as some kind of surrogate little sister to the group as a whole. Which means they don't react well to the notion that she might be developing even an innocent crush on some rakish demon-spawn.

If only they knew.

You sigh. "The price of being so devilishly handsome, I suppose," you say philosophically, earning another chuckle from Khaytala at the bad joke.

Somehow, you make it through the rest of the day. You realize that you're going to need to get better at estimating how long your reserves of strength can actually last to avoid mistakes like this. It just hasn't been something you've had to worry about much before; it's not as though there was any shortage of mortal souls to fuck in the Second Circle, and even the couple of summonings you'd had before this had been trivially easy in comparison.

When night finally falls you melt into the shadows, away from the islands of light provided by the campfires. Waiting. Eventually, you see Greta slip away from the group, just as you had instructed. She fumbles through the dark, as the distant light from the fires grows increasingly faint, until she's gone so far that her human eyes are nearly blind. Her progress slows, but she keeps creeping nervously forward until you lay your hands on her shoulders, holding her in place.

She lets out a tiny gasp, but otherwise makes no sound. The girl is scared, unable to even see you in the pitch darkness, completely vulnerable to anything you decide to do to her. And yet she came here of her own accord. Not lured into an alley and ravished this time, but deliberately offering herself up to be used by a demon.

The question is, what will you do with her now that you have more time alone? The simplest approach would be to exercise restraint. You could try to keep her emotional entanglement as minimal as possible, making it purely about the sex. Or, in a similar vein, you could invest a little more into her, giving her some pointers and instruction, while still keeping it clear that this is mainly for her use with a future partner.

However... if you wanted to risk bringing her into your efforts more fully—and the much greater emotional entanglement on her part that would entail—you feel like you could entice her to be an active agent in service of spreading lust and furthering your agenda. Doing so would allow you to use her to accomplish much more as an ally, rather than just a food source. But might also increase the likelihood of things getting... messier... along the way.