Chapter 59: Debasement of the Xoth’s Abbey

After nearly half a day’s slow progress up the gradual incline of the road, Lexi’s adventuring party finally came to the top of a small hill which marked their distinct nearness to their destination. In the noonday sun, from the top of the hill, they could see that the road which they had been following continually for the past three days led onward up into a saddle between two mountains — wherein lay the ruined Abbey of Xoth. However, despite the seeming straightforwardness of the route, something struck Lexi as being more than a little off.

“Doesn’t it seem a little, I don’t know, dangerous to just march straight in?” the paladin asked.

“You’re right,” Gretel said. “As ready as I am to get this quest over and done with, walking up to the front door of greenskin central seems like a bad idea. It’d be like: Hello! We’re four gorgeous female adventurers, would you like to rape us?”

Despite herself, Lexi let out a chortle, covering her mouth with her hand as she met the quick-witted mage’s dancing mischievous eyes. “I really shouldn’t be laughing at that, but you’re totally right. Going straight in without a plan does seem like a recipe for disaster — probably exactly the kind you’re thinking of.”

“I hate to say it,” the mage continued snarkily. “But after two flare-ups of your curse this morning, I think I could happily go at least the rest of the day without any more dick in my mouth.”

An enormous bronzed hand clapped down on Gretel’s shoulder, drawing a squeak from the pink haired girl. “If you ask nicely,” Samantha said in a rare display of her dry humor. “I could be convinced to handle the next…incident.”

Lost for words at the unexpected joke from the normally stoic monk, Gretel simply goggled at Samantha, her mouth opening and closing as her brain struggled — and ultimately failed — to come up with a snappy comeback.

Whatever repartee might have continued between the two adventurers was cut short when the diminutive elven ranger burst out of the forest a dozen yards ahead of the trio. True to her character class as a ranger, Danica had spent most of the morning scouting ahead of the party. And, while the elf’s primary goal had been to sniff out any other potential ambushes or groups of ne’er-do-wells that might cause the party trouble, the smile beaming across the pretty little elf’s face spoke of something altogether different.

“Heya!” the elf called out, waving to the group as she skipped along the road towards them. “I found something pretty cool up ahead. It’s a smaller trail that forks off from the main road. I followed it up about a mile or so, and it looks like it leads up into some switchbacks that go right up the side of this mountain on the right.”

“That’s our ticket!” Lexi said, pumping her fist. “We were literally just talking about how it wouldn’t be the best idea to take the main road straight into the old abbey. If this can lead us up to some kind of an overlook position, that might be exactly the kind of thing we need to stage our attack.”

“Agreed,” Samantha added. “Fine work, Danica.”

“Yeah, squirt,” the mage chimed in, ruffling Danica’s blond bangs — the only part of her long hair that wasn’t currently wrapped into a braided “crown” around the top of her head. “You done good!”

Danica beamed at the trio, and then beckoned them forward, bounding off once again into the woods. “Follow me!”

After several minutes, the elf and the trailing trio of adventurers reached the edge of the foot trail’s gradual slope, and the beginning of the switchbacks Danica had mentioned. True to her word, the trail zigzagged up the side of the mountain, leading to a trail nearly a hundred feet above that closely hugged the mountainside and wrapped its way around above the saddle containing the ruined abbey. Tethering their trusty pack mule Thomas at the base of the switchbacks, the party followed their intrepid ranger up the winding trail.

The way up the switchbacks proved a challenge for even the hardiest of the adventurers, and by the time they reached the overlook which they had spotted from below, nearly an hour had passed, and every one of them was huffing with exertion and doused with sweat. Even the elf, normally so light on her feet, felt her legs dragging by the time the four girls reached the path’s summit. The small outcropping of rock onto which the switchbacks led presented the party with a clear view into the valley-like saddle between the two mountains, as well as a rather direct means of descent from their perch — provided they made use of a few well-placed ropes.

There were two notable features which could be seen from this vantage point. The first, which was physically impossible to miss, given its size and grandeur, was an extraordinarily elaborate looking tower.

Built half-way into the side of the opposite mountain itself, the style at once reminded Lexi of the kind of gothic style she associated with medieval cathedrals, complete with soaring spires, flying buttresses, and high-arched doors and windows. At one point, there may have even been stained glass depictions of the goddess Xoth filling those arched voids. However, in its current ruinous state, there was not a single pane of glass remaining. Moreover, a second glance showed Lexi that the stone architecture itself was — in many places — crumbling into ruin as well.

The second notable feature, which, with their gazes all arrested by the majestic ruins of the abbey, it took the members of Lexi’s party a moment to notice, was what was clearly an open-air slave market operating directly in front of the tower’s enormous doors and spread across the broad plane in the valley’s center. The sheer magnitude of the vile horrors on display were so vast that not a single one of the four girls was able to utter a single word in response for several minutes. In unison, they stared in utter disbelief at the terrible scene below, mouths agape and eyes brimming with tears of the purest rage.

Nearest to the tower’s entrance, there stood two large wooden pens, the same type which would typically be used to corral and contain large animals like cows. However, what these pens held was a mixture of humanoid cattle. The pens were divided by sex, males in one and females in the other, with the differences between the two being obvious even at a great distance owing to the fact that all of the caged men and women were completely nude — their hands uniformly bound in front of them with leather thongs — all of whom appeared to be adults.

Although it was difficult to count with any precision, given the degree to which each pen was overcrowded with slaves, it looked to Lexi that there were roughly thirty in each pen. The captives consisted largely of humans, but with small numbers of elves, and halflings interspersed throughout. Oddly, the paladin noticed as she assayed the situation that there were no dwarves or beastkin contained within the cages. And, though their perch upon the mountainside was far from the market below, the adventurers could clearly read the expressions that marked each face within the pens.

There was no anger or rage in the eyes of those imprisoned men and women — only defeat and pain.

There looked to be about two dozen goblins, perhaps more, milling about the market, inspecting the “goods” and chatting with one another amiably. Very interestingly — to Lexi at least — none of these goblins appeared to be wearing any armor, and the only arms any of them wore openly were the kinds of small utility knives that seemed commonplace in this kind of medieval-inspired game world.

However, overseeing the operation from between the two pens, there stood three hobgoblins and a huge orc — the differentiation between the various greenskin races being easily distinguished by the size differences, with the goblins looking almost like a gaggle of small children, the hobgoblins teens, and the orc being the lone adult. The hobgoblins and orc were all armored in the same kind of patchwork plate and chain mail worn by the scouting party that the adventurers had so recently dispatched. The three hobgoblins all carried large spears, and had either short swords or small axes hanging from their belts, while the orc overseer leaned heavily on an enormous double-bladed battle axe with a haft as long as he was tall.

Based solely on the disparity between the unarmed goblins on the one hand and their larger cousins on the other, Lexi surmised that the goblins were most likely the buyers — while the hobgoblins and orc represented the expeditionary party that captured and subsequently sold the slaves. Also, the fact that the goblins were all here in such large number, and were without any arms to speak of strongly suggested that they were the residents of the area, and that the larger greenskins had come from elsewhere to sell their wares to the goblins inhabiting the ruined abbey.

This analysis of the intra-greenskin relations was all but confirmed when Lexi observed a pair of goblins pass a handful of coins to one of the hobgoblins, after which the latter opened the door to the female pen and grabbed a fistful of green hair belonging to a particularly pert looking human girl, dragging her out of the wooden cage before locking the door again. Money having changed hands, the girl was handed over to the goblins, one of whom grabbed the leather thong binding her hands together and led her away into the large opened doors of the gothic tower.

This casual buying and selling of a human being was hardly the limit of the depravity on display, however.

A dozen yards or so from the female pen, three pillories had been erected, one sized appropriately for each of the main races held in the cage. Locked into each pillory by their neck and wrists was a representative of each race. And, judging from the uses to which they were being put by the goblins, these appeared to serve as “free samples” of the female goods being sold.

In the smallest of the pillories, a tiny halfling girl with a mop of curly brown hair and enormous hazel eyes, her frame no larger than one of the child-sized goblins, was being fucked in the most leisurely fashion by a goblin who knelt behind her. To the halfling’s right, another goblin squatted over the upturned ass of a pink-haired elf girl as he pounded his thick green cock mercilessly into her cunt. On the elf’s opposite side, an extremely busty human woman with a large bottom and a pair of fiery red braids had one goblin laying on her back, thrusting his cock in and out of her asshole, while another tugged roughly on her braids, ramming his cock down her throat from his perch on a small stool set in front of her.

Other goblins milled casually around this spectacle, either waiting their turns, or simply observing the women with the same kind of eye a rancher might give to cattle he was looking to purchase.

What broke Lexi’s heart the most was that, despite the rapes these poor girls were suffering at the hands of these goblins, not one of them cried out. Their eyes were dead inside, each one being resigned to her fate as a cumdump for whatever greenskin decided to buy her. The paladin could only guess at how long the girls had been enduring this, but judging from the degree to which each was currently leaking cum from whatever orifice was not being currently fucked, and the sticky patches of cum which covered their faces, tits, and backs — the goblins presently raping them were far from the first today.

Perhaps even more horrible than the casual rape on display in front of the female pen was the “free sample” being offered on the male’s side.

At first, Lexi almost thought that a large pig was being slow roasted on a spit. A large animal had been trussed up onto a spit, which was being slowly turned over a low fire by a dead-eyed human male whose neck was chained to the crank. The spitted creatures blackened skin had cracked to reveal juicy meat beneath, the smell reminding Lexi of the barbecues that used to happen on the green of her old college campus sometimes during the summer. A moment’s inspection of the “animal” being slow-roasted, however, showed it not to be a pig, but rather an extremely large human man.

The realization that she had, only seconds ago, been involuntarily salivating at the smell of barbecued human made Lexi vomit into her mouth — the paladin swearing a vow then and there to become a vegetarian.

As if to emphasize the barbarism of the entire tableau, a goblin casually approached the spit. And, gesturing to the man turning the crank to halt his motions momentarily, the goblin drew out his small utility knife and sliced off a strip of blackened skin and white “meat” from the corpse’s thigh, and walked off snacking happily like someone at a fair.

“Fuuuck…” Gretel whispered in low stunned tones, breaking the silence as her powers of speech were the first to return in the wake of the team’s collective horror at witnessing the utter depravity on display below.

Danica’s only response was to clamp her hands over her mouth to prevent the hysterical scream rising in her throat, her eyes bulging madly, sweat pouring from her forehead.

“This cannot be allowed to persist,” Samantha growled through gritted teeth.

“Fucking right you are,” Lexi said, her face grim. “And, I think I’ve got a plan.”