Chapter 2
For several minutes, I walked in agonizing silence alongside the goblin as we pulled the small wagon full of robes down a dirt road. It took me about that long to settle down and notice a little about where we were. The road we were traveling was slightly uphill, headed toward an elevated landscape with sparse forest and small boulders. It was shaded--with brightly colored patches of moss creating a variation of color among the rest of the smaller plants.
Out in the distance, I noticed two similarly sized round peaks. Each looked to have some sort of structure at their summit. Almost like they were a pair of...
"Are you alright, now?" the goblin asked, distracting me from my thoughts.
"Oh, yeah," I said, choking only a little on the words. I opened my mouth to say something else, but nothing came out. Eventually I managed to say, "I'm sorry about... getting in the way and then... freezing too."
"Do not apologize," the goblin replied sternly, but then softened her expression and cleared her throat. "I mean... you don't have anything to apologize for. I saw the effort your actions costed you; it was a meaningful gesture."
I managed to smile a little at her. It was the first time really seeing her face so closely. The goblin also looked to be a little older than me. Had she been human, I would have guessed that she was in her lower thirties--but I had no idea how her kind aged. For all I knew, she was 400 years old. Or maybe that was fictional elves? I wasn't sure. Either way, she seemed just a little older.
Her eyes were large--much more prominent than a human's... or an elf's (since I now knew what elves looked like?). Her nose was long, and it hooked down regally. She wore light wrinkles on her face and had pointed teeth that just barely poked out past her lips. Her numerous ear piercings looked like steel--a mix of hoops, studs, and a couple chains all lined in a row. Her hair was black, shaved on the sides, and braided together into a mohawk that fell to one side.
I looked down from her head and noticed that her hands looked strong--it was no wonder she had so easily been able to pull me along in them. Each of these hands featured three fingers and a thumb--all ending with a claw. I couldn't see her feet under her black hood, but I would have guessed that they featured a similar number of toes. Similarly, I couldn't tell much about her shape, given her occlusive clothing, other than that she had a vaguely feminine figure. Judging my her hands and what little I could see of her forearms, however, my guess was that she was ripped.
It took me a moment, as I worked up my courage to overcome my fear of verbal blunders to speak again. Finally, I said, "Thanks for helping me. I have... a hard time talking sometimes... when things get like that."
The goblin studied me calmly before giving a small nod. She pointed a clawed hand gently to her chest and said, "I'm Daava."
"I'm Lilly," I replied, managing a small smile.
At this, Daava paused and stopped the wagon. She then stretched and pointed back at the temple-looking building we had just left. It was still in sight, maybe a half-mile away. From the outside, it looked about the same as the inside--stone, blocky. The only difference was a series of statues like gargoyles at the top, now too distant to really make out. If I had to guess, I would have said they were most likely naked and doing some deplorable things. Come to think of it, that was pretty common among gargoyles in general.
"Did you read what was written inside?" Daava asked.
I felt my cheeks glow red and I bit my lower lip. "Actually, I uhm, was distracted."
Daava nodded, as if she knew what I was really saying. "I haven't read it either. By Kavtagro's cock, it would be a lot to read even if one were imprisoned in that place for a lifetime. A bunch of self-important exposition, as if someone would care about the legends of a pervy god who goes around kidnapping horny people from other worlds."
"I, uhm," I said, feeling a bit overly targeted by her words as my face burned even more red. Was that why I was taken? For being a masturbating perv in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remembered back to the pictures of lightning etched into the ceiling of the temple. Was it coincidence, or were they connected to the odd summer storm going on when I had been somehow transported here? I had a lot I wanted to ask, so I started with, "Were you brought here too?"
Daava shook her head, inadvertently making me feel even more singled out. "I was born here, as are most people in these lands."
"Oh," I said.
Daava looked at me for a moment before her eyes brightened a bit and she shook her head calmly. "Don't worry, you aren't alone in why you were taken. Though most born here do not share the kidnappee's... exotic tastes, those tastes are still the point of this entire realm. You are in good company... with myself included."
I breathed a sigh of relief. While I enjoyed my... sexual fantasies... it had always been something I had kept hidden. Being raised religiously, my parents never would have understood. And after that, well it just wasn't something I talked to people about. I had though on a few occasions about maybe trying a website to find others like me, but... well... I wasn't the bravest person I knew. It was good to know that I wasn't the only perv being brought here for their dirty and often weird tastes. I asked, "So why were we brought here?"
"Simple," Daava said with an exasperated sigh. "The god of this place, Kavtagro, is a voyeuristic perv who invisibly watches the myriad of shows put on by everyone here."
My eyes widened--probably at the mix of being told that gods were real, that one had brought me here, and that my new travelling companion was so openly heretical. I looked up at the sky, slightly fearful that one of the clouds might turn angry and throw one of the lightning bolts that Kavtagro seemed so fond of.
This nervousness felt a little silly, especially since I'd long been an atheist. However, there were few other ways to explain this blatantly supernatural phenomenon. Which meant that lightning bolts for heresy were suddenly as real a threat as they had been when I was a child.
"Don't worry," Daava said and flipped her hand dismissively. "He doesn't care if we blaspheme; the perv probably gets off to it. No, all he's interested in is stealing away people he might like to watch and setting them loose in a world that rewards one's sense of eroticism with great power."
I felt my jaw go a bit slack. This was quite a bit to absorb in one sitting.
"That's the gist of what you missed out on by not reading the self-indulgent, purple prose on the temple walls," Daava said, and flared a single nostril contemptuously. She then scratched the back of her neck and looked down at the ground... almost like there was something she didn't want to confess. "The rest is a history of the truce that keeps these lands from descending into a bloody civil war, and some choices you were supposed to have made. Choices I guess I shouldn't have dragged you this far from."
"Oh no," I said, looking at the robe I was wearing. My mind was already spinning horrific ideas of what kind of curse I had brought upon myself for my color selection. Was it going to turn me into living bubble-gum? Or make it so that I could only eat strawberries from now on? "What's going to happen to me for picking pink?"
"Do you... not like pink?" Daava said and looked to the back of the cart. "That's not the... choice I was referring to, but there are other colors."
