(5)

The forest began to thin out not long after that, and the loose trees made way for rolling hills. However, though Cecil was glad for the change of scenery, she already knew she wasn’t safe, merely about to encounter different dangers. The wolves and bears may not leave the forest, but other creatures were always out there, and of course, any other people were by no means likely to be friendly.

She could see a river meandering through the hills from a distant mountain, and with no particular destination, decided to make her way towards it. Even though she seemed fine without eating or drinking for a few days, she was still getting thirsty as she kept walking for hours. Evidently, if she wasn’t going to die, she would still need to drink to keep moving.

Of course, if she was willing to kill herself, that could be circumvented, but Cecil wasn’t sure if she had the means to reliably finish herself off. The worst thing she could do to herself would be to leave herself crippled from a failed attempt, suffering yet unable to end her life to save herself.

Unfortunately for Cecil, she immediately realized that would not be an issue today, as she saw a small creature crest the hill just fifty meters ahead of her. A tiny thing, the size of a toddler, with dark green skin, commonly called a goblin.

It saw her just as she saw it, and it let out a screech. Then there were two, then twenty, then fifty. She turned and began running. They were not smart creatures, and even a child could strangle one to death but they were persistent, numerous, and a girl getting caught by them met a fate described as ‘worse than death’. Whether or not that was an exaggeration, she would still prefer not to experience it.

However, the excited screeching was steadily growing closer, not further away no matter how much she ran. Cecil glanced backwards just in time to see a creature bounding across the ground like a rabbit to leap at her neck. Its thin claws dug into her side as it clung onto her, almost knocking her off balance, until she drove her own borrowed claw through its head, and the tiny thing fell away with a dying scream.

Despite that, where there was one, there were a dozen more just seconds begin, and the vile creatures began to mob her, pulling her off her feet, clinging onto her as she rolled down the hill like a sack of potatoes. She was covered in wounds, stabbing what she could, but the goblins were far too numerous, and dozens pressed down her arms. Before she noticed, her only weapon left her hand. With every move she tried to make, claws lacerated her skin, leaving her mostly immobile.

Cecil could no longer hear anything but screeching as the creatures pulled her legs apart against her best efforts to keep them closed. Indeed, the species looked vaguely like animals, but behaved more like parasitic wasps, using human hosts to breed.

The creature stuck its tiny prick inside her, and sprayed its seed only a second later. There was no pleasure to be found even if she wanted it, she could hardly feel the penetration, if she could even count this as sex. One by one, they poured foul-smelling seed into her, until her belly was swollen like a girl already halfway through pregnancy, when they were finally spent.

Still, the swelling did not stop even as the semen slowly flowed out of her, but kept growing as she watched. Just as she feared her belly might burst from its contents, one of the goblins stepped on her, and the contents poured out onto the floor. Like tadpoles, they squirmed out of her vagina, numbering in the hundreds, swimming in a pool of whatever fluids had been mixing inside her.

Nobody understood how the bizarre biology of these creatures’ reproduction worked, only the broken girls left after their breeding remained. Contrary to popular belief, they were not man-eaters, nor even carnivorous. In fact, they didn’t even finish off Cecil as she lay bleeding in the grass, collecting what young they could carry and running off as fast as they came, perhaps off to find more victims.

Deciding there was no time like the present, Cecil felt around on the ground until she found the lost wolf’s claw, still in a goblin’s corpse. Her arms felt weak from the blood loss, but the claw was still impressively sharp in spite of all the use it had just seen. So she held it above her own neck, and began stabbing, until she found her escape through blacking out.