I melted into the shadows, hardly daring to breathe, lungs clenched tight as if the world itself might shatter at the faintest whisper. The pig goblin I'd snared before was in no shape for heroics now, his thick wrists bound fast by the black sphere I'd conjured, the inky cords weaving around his arms until escape was little more than a dying dream.
Along the trek to this place, the pig's mouth ran wild, never short on bluster, he'd even spat out a name, "Crokard," with a puffed-up pride that made my knuckles itch. But I wouldn't stoop to calling him by anything but what he was: pig. No reason to fuel his arrogance or grant him an inch of honor he hadn't earned.
"It's…" My voice snagged in my throat, disbelief blooming cold and raw. Before me sat Gelemia, crowned with a tangled circlet of leaves and antlers, perched high on an ancient throne hewn rough from old wood, her hands shackled to either arm as if she were a queen captured mid-coronation.
"That's right," the pig sneered, eyes glinting with terrible joy. "That's the seat we carved for the queen. Ceremony's about to start."
In that instant, danger pressed in, all teeth and shadow, as if the air itself was thick with enemy eyes. My body ached to spring forward, to shatter those bonds and snatch Gelemia away, but before I could act, Erin's voice wormed its way through the tension, soft but sharp: "Don't be reckless."
The pig goblin village unfurled around us like a nightmare painted in muddy strokes. A cramped, crooked square lay bare in the center. Shabby huts huddled close, thrown together from splintered logs, river stones black with grime, their seams patched with broad, leathery leaves hung to dry from the bone-thin branches overhead. The rooftops arched low, like the shells of monstrous gourds, and everywhere I looked, bones and antlers bristled from doorways.
The village path was no straight line. It wound and dipped, a strip of earth hardened by the pounding footfalls of goblins trotting back and forth for generations. The stench of raw blood and damp earth bit deep, clawing all the way to the marrow.
At the edge of the clearing, beside the makeshift altar where Gelemia's throne loomed, stood the chieftain's hut, its steep, tiered roof bristling with glossy forest feathers, each plume shimmering with an oily sheen. The whole structure exuded arrogant authority, as if the entire village bowed before this single, brooding monument.
"What is this ceremony?" I murmured, words brittle with a mix of outrage and unease.
The pig goblin licked its lips, eyes glittering, a smile flashing just as sharp as its tusks. "Told you already, humans who find their way here is a breeding stock. Your friend will be seeded right here, in front of all of them. A spectacle. A sacrifice."
A cold, sour wave rolled through my gut, nausea clawing up my spine. "With their chief?"
He shook his head, smile curling slower, more sinister. "Not the chief," he breathed, voice dropping to a thread. "With the god."
And when the god finishes with her, the whole tribe will descend into chaos—a delirium of celebration, every pig goblin swept up in their own savage orgy. Your friend will be right at the center.
My teeth ground so hard my jaw ached. Calluses split on my palms, I wanted to lunge, to rip loose, to batter through every last one of them, but again, Erin's hand cut through the tempest of my thoughts, squeezing my resolve tight, coiled and unspent, like a serpent around my skull.
"Hold. The ceremony hasn't started," he murmured, his voice thin as moonlight and twice as cold, snapping me back to sense. "Rush in now and you'll only break yourself."
My gaze swept the field, wild as a trapped animal. Not dozens, hundreds of pig goblins crammed into the clearing, packed tight enough to make the ground tremble beneath their eagerness. Charging in would mean flinging myself headlong into a screaming abyss; I wouldn't last a breath.
Just as reason began to quench the wildfire in my chest, the door of the chieftain's triangular hut swung wide, and out strode an elder, towering above his kin. His bulk dwarfed every goblin in the tribe, dusky greenish skin stretched over a barrel chest left bare to the wind, slick and gleaming with sweat.
A heavy grey cloak draped from his broad shoulders, dragging streaks of mud with every step. Crudely carved wooden staff clenched firm in his left fist, he radiated an old, feral authority. One look, and you knew this was power made flesh.
I watched, frozen, as the elder lumbered onto the altar beside Gelemia. His eyes roamed hungrily over her slack face, then a thick, calloused palm traced the curve of her cheek, rough fingers gliding down to cradle her chin, a slick tongue darting out to taste the salt of her skin. The sight scalded my nerves raw, disgust clawing in my gut, but Gelemia hung limp as a rag doll, unconscious, immune to the horror, while I burned inwardly, helpless and incandescent with rage.
All at once, the elder's hand shot up, clutching a strange, fan-shaped leaf. Its twin-hued surface shone pink and lurid, a pure white heart pulsing at the center. His lips parted, breathing out a low chant in some guttural dialect that rippled through the gathering. Instantly, the pig goblin horde erupted: scattered cheers, more bowing low, faces pressed into the earth, crawling in delirious devotion.
"What are they doing now?" My question raspy, a snarl smothered inside me.
"The ceremony's begun," the pig goblin replied, words brimming with sly acid. "This is the first stage. The elder's taken out the Hibakujumoku, a sacred plant, root of their aphrodisiac potion. When the dancers start, they'll brew the potion. That's what the queen will be made to drink."
No sooner had the fear finished shivering through my chest than a cartload of the lurid pink plants was wheeled into the square. The stench, sharp, heady, almost rancid, curled in my nose, threatening to turn my stomach inside out.
"Once the potion is ready, the queen drinks it," he went on, a shadow-dark glint in his eyes. "Then they'll summon the god with smoke from sacred branches. When the god arrives, the breeding begins. The rest of the potion gets shared with the whole village, young, old, every pig goblin a guest at this unholy feast. After that, the real revelry starts."
Each moment dragged heavy as lead, terror thickening in my chest, rotting down to the spine. The urge to leap, to tear through the crowd, wound itself tighter with every breath, my legs half-trembling, half-tensed like coiled springs, craving action, refusing my mind's desperate hold.
"Don't get smart. Don't charge in. That's a death only fools earn." There was something sly at the corner of his mouth, but for just an instant, his dark little eyes flickered with a spark of icy sincerity.
Doubt whirled like vultures overhead. Erin's warning echoed faint behind my pounding pulse.
"Why?" I whispered, voice nearly whisked away on the wind.
He snorted, bitterness cutting every word. "Why do you think you weren't taken with her that night? This ceremony" his mouth twisted, "only requires women. Males like you? Worthless to the ours tribe. You can't change a thing here. Your presence, your absence, it makes no difference to us."
His words chilled the blood in my veins, sentence by sentence.
"So, I'm to be set loose? Left to watch it all unfold, from the shadows?"
He grinned, lips peeling back to reveal his teeth lined up neat as a hunter's snare. "Storm that stage, and they'll nab you for sure. But don't flatter yourself, you won't be part of the ceremony. You'll be nothing but back-alley entertainment, a toy for their drunken sport, nothing more."
I swallowed, a chill scrambling up my spine.
"Played with… by the female pig goblins?" My voice barely made it past my throat.
His laughter started low, bubbling up and sour, then stretching into something downright monstrous. He shook his head, slow, solemn, every hair on the back of my neck prickling with the weight of it.
"No. Not the females." His voice grated, dry and ragged as a broken branch.
"It's the males who'll take you apart."