Chapter 45 - "I won't forget this."

Rivia stood in the middle of that small room upstairs with only two lanterns lighting the small quarters. It felt claustrophobic, having such little space and so many bodies in there all at once.

There was an old feather bed, weathered and worn down from frequent use over the years. Dark stains covered the old comforter, and the pillow was in even worse shape with a couple tears along the fringes.

Other than there, there was only a single wooden chest along the side of a wall next to an old and dirty window that rattled with occasional gusts of wind.

And then there were the four human men, ogling her greedily as she tried to avoid their gazes. She held her black silk robes tightly against her body as if to ward them off, but knew that this couldn’t be avoided. A knot in her throat was growing, and she was trying her hardest not to cry as the skinny drunken farmer – the packrat leader of their group – groped her rear end as he literally drooled with lust.

“Oh you got a fine ass donchya lassy!” the farmer crowed as he cackled and gave her a grin to show off a missing tooth – only a couple inches away from her face.

She recoiled at his touch and stepped back, feeling sick to her stomach under his touch – an act that only caused him to laugh as he aggressively groped her more tightly to the laughter and cheers of his friends.

The door shut behind them and Atharost stepped in, ignoring her completely as she gazed his way with wide teary eyes as if to say – ‘help me.’

An aggressive shove flung Rivia onto the bed, and her head hit the backboard with a thunk.

“Demon bitch…” the farmer said in a low growl as he began to take off his pants. Pulling out his erect cock and stumbling over his own clothes, he actually fell over and clocked his head on the near wall.

One of his friends, a brawny redheaded man with a beard, went over to pick him up. “Get up Landry! You’re takin your sweet time and holdin the rest of us up!”

Landry, the skinny guy, shrugged his friend off and fumbled over to the bed where Rivia lay like a deer in the headlights and breathing fast. “Just give me a minute Jarga, I’m working here!”

Landry wrapped a claw-like hand around Rivia’s right ankle and yanked her down towards him, flinging up her silk bottom to get a good view of everything below her belly button. Landry’s eyes went wide and some of the other guys cheered or whistled at the site of her long, perfect legs.

She recoiled, yanking her leg back and scooting across the bed with her lip beginning to tremble. [Human Dialect] “Please stop.”

Landry and the other four men roared with laughter, and he took her by the ankle and pulled her down a little more roughly this time. Then, yanking her to the left, he flipped her onto her stomach and groped her two toned ass-cheeks. “Hope you like anal lass! I’m an ass man!”

“Please!” Rivia said, now openly crying as her legs shook and she buried her forehead in the bed. “Please stop!”

One of the other men yelled out to Landry: “Just fuck the bitch so we can go next!”

Landry cackled and was about to put it in when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning around, still in a drunken haze, he looked up at the ifrit that stood a good two feet taller than he was. “You want somethin, demon boy?”

The complete lack of respect was evident in the drunkard’s words, and it made Atharost’s eyes burst with flames. “Watch your tone with me, little man.”

The farmer stepped back, with a scowl, but liquor’s bravery kept his fight-or-flight initiatives a little skewed. “I paid your fuckin summoner! Now fuckin tell me what you want or let me get to fuckin!”

Atharost frowned, folded his arms, and head bobbed at Rivia who was still quivering and crying on the bed in a bent-over prone position. “I should inspect her first for teeth.”

“Teeth?” repeated the farmer with a drawl.

Atharost nodded promptly. “Teeth. Culn women have teeth growing around their orifices… ALL of their orifices… You have to remove them before mating, or they’ll bite off the parts of you that you hold most dear.”

It was utter bullshit and Atharost knew it, but he had absolute faith these dimwitted drunken humans wouldn’t know any better.

And he was absolutely right. The farmers all gasped and Landry even took another step back. “Then remove the fuckin teeth! I want to get rompin!”

Atharost chuckled to himself at the stupidity of these men, and then bent over to ‘check.’ He sighed loudly, and pretended to investigate as the girl flinched under his touch. He didn’t know why Trey’d asked him to stall, but he really didn’t care either. He just did as he was told and waited for Trey to get up here. Maybe Trey was wanting in on the fun? Who knew.

Thirty seconds later and the farmers were beginning to complain and huff about how Atharost was taking too long.

Landry in particular was outspoken about his discontentment – being the first in line with the living sex-symbol on the bed. “Geeetttt ON with it demon boy! Or I’ll go tell your master that you two aren’t holdin the end of the bargain! We paid-”

The door opened and the next moment Trey stepped in. Landry and the other farmers paused what they were doing, and Trey took in the scene. He saw Rivia bent over the bed, crying into the covers. He saw Atharost doing whatever the hell he was doing… and he saw Landry with his cock out a couple feet away.

Then Trey held up a single finger, and caught Landry’s attention by making eye contact. “One question. Were you really going to report me to the guards if I didn’t follow through with this?”

Landry’s jaw slowly dropped, and his face began to grow red with rage. “BOY! If you don’t get on the fuck outa here I’ma do that right now! Get goin so we can have the fun we paid ya for!”

Napoleon, who was perched on Trey’s shoulder gave Trey a curious look. “I right you left left?”

Trey’s eyes narrowed. “Do it.”

Napoleon shot off Trey’s shoulder like a cannon ball – right into Landry’s neck. Blood sprayed across the room and plastered onto the wall as the farmer fell back, croaking as he gurgled blood.

The other three farmers would’ve been in a state of shock, if they weren’t also also in deep shit.

Trey flung Talsh’Noc’Un into the furthest man from him – the greatsword slamming into the man’s face and impaling him completely as Trey shadowstepped directly inbetween the other two. As he materialized inbetween the drunks, who were far to slow to react beyond gasps of horror, he summoned his claws and tore out both of their necks in a gruesome display of garnage.

The attack had lasted less then three seconds, with one man dead and the other three quickly dying from extreme blood loss. None of them were able to call out for help or make a sound other than flop about on the floor, and with a malicious grin – Trey turned back to the scrawny farmer who’d threatened him.

Landry was literally being eaten alive by Napoleon as the imp ripped off pieces of the man’s body – in particular the fingers as they played a game of cat and mouse as Landry tried to desperately swat the imp away. However, Napoleon was far stronger than he was even though the imp was many times smaller – and the venom from Napoleon’s teeth was causing Landry’s nerves to light up with pain.

He began to involuntarily spasm. Horrified, wide eyed and gasping for breath as his lungs filled up with blood, Landry watched Napoleon rip off his fingers and eat them one by one like a child at a candy shop.

Trey took three slow steps over to where the convulsing farmer lay on the floorboards, and with a grin… watched as the light left his eyes. A minute later, and Landry had become completely still.

“You have gained XP.”

Trey spat disrespectfully on the corpse. “Bitch.”

Then he stood up, brushed himself off and turned around to find Rivia staring at him with an expression he’d never seen her make before. There were still the remnants of tears on her beautiful features, but the waterworks had stopped coming. Her jaw was hung loose and her eyebrows were both raised and scrunched together – it really had him wonder what the hell she was doing.

“What?” Trey asked with a grin and a shrug. “Did you really think I was going to let them fuck you?”

He shook his head with a low chuckle, sighed, and came over to sit next to her. Pulling her robes back down to cover her legs, he lowered his eyes to Landry’s corpse with a saddening smile. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Rivia’s expression flattened slightly, and she slowly nodded her head – speechless.

Trey was beginning to grow uncomfortable, but he cleared his throat and glanced over at Atharost who was now leaning against the closed door a few feet away. “Rivia… I want to say sorry.”

Rivia just stared blankly back.

His postured shifted, a little hesitantly, and he turned to face her full-on. “Sorry I made you go through that. It’s just that… if the guards were really called, we could have gotten a lot of people killed in the fighting. I needed this to be a secluded incident, one that was out of the public eye. So… I lured them up here. With you as bait. I know that we don’t really like each other much… we both have reasons to hate each other. But… for what it’s worth, you’ve been a very valuable asset to the team I’m building. I wouldn’t do something like that to you. So…”

Trey paused what he was saying and raised his eyes from the bed when he saw another tear fall. Two more tears fell in rapid succession, and then even more as he met her gaze again. She was weeping, with her hands over her mouth and her face scrunched up in a mixture of extreme emotion as she began to silently sob.

He felt guilty. REALLY guilty, and a knot in his stomach formed as he lowered his eyes in shame again. He really didn’t like her, but she also hadn’t deserved this. She’d almost been gang raped, at least in her mind…

He probably should have outright told her what the plan was before going through with it. Honestly, he hadn’t because he had wanted her to feel fear… to feel the same fear that she’d caused those people back in Oblivion with her kin. The fear that those people had felt when they’d been sacrificed or fed to monsters. But now… seeing her like this… she hadn’t deserved it one bit.

Trey slowly stood up, and lowered his head. Taking two steps forward, he paused and glanced back. Rivia was still giving him that look… and was still silently sobbing into her hands as they cupped over her mouth and nose. “Uhm… the people downstairs think I’m gone on a piss break, but they think these dead men will be preoccupied with you all night long. They did rent the room out for the night… so just stay here for a little while until I come get you. Then we’ll leave and get lost before anyone knows what happened.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned to leave again – but as he did, Rivia called out.

“Trey…”

He turned, head swiveling to watch as she jumped up off the bed and ran over to him. Flinging her arms around him and sobbing into his shoulder, he flinched a little bit when her small horns poked into his neck unintentionally.

Awkwardly standing there and not knowing what to do, he gingerly reciprocated the hug. He really didn’t know how he felt about this, but she was emotionally wrecked, sobbing, and quivering as she held onto him. This had been his fault, so at the very least he could comfort her when she literally had no one else in the world to turn to.

“T-Trey…” She said again between sobs, still burying her face into his neck while she shook. Her grip tightened and she squeezed up against him with renewed force. “I-I won’t f-forget this. Th-Th-Thank you…”

“Your minion Rivia has increased its opinion of you from ‘Loathed’ to ‘Wary but Thankful.’ Your minion gains a 15% experience increase due to it entering the positive category.”

Trey just stood there, holding her, and let her cry. Perhaps… perhaps he needed to treat her better. Perhaps she wasn’t the monster he’d made her out to be… and perhaps she had a little bit more humanity than she had initially let on.

At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to try. Who knew, maybe things would turn out for the better if they weren’t always so hostile to one another.