Jonathan awoke to the sweet aroma of cooking meat. His mouth salivated, as his mind wandered to thoughts of steak or roast pork. If there was one thing he missed from his old life, it was the easily accessible sources of warm, tasty, fat-filled food. Everything in Adearath just felt too healthy for his liking, not bad, just lacking in decadence. The best things he had tasted here were still the frostdews he purchased back at the Cliffside market, and he had long since eaten them all. Jonathan could really go for a burger.
"Daddy, wake up. I prepared you something to eat." Talitha coaxed with a smile.
Jonathan sat up from his bedroll and looked around the campsite they had set up the night before. It was surprisingly animated, the dozen or so forrin they had stolen from Zigarete's hunting party stood in a group pecking at the ground for bugs and seeds. Stew seemed to have befriended the other two newly-acquired cren and was cosying up to them. To show affection, cren tended to brush their shaggy fur past one another in a mutual act of grooming. Jonathan thought it rather cute.
Jonathan rubbed the sleep away from his eyes and looked over to Talitha. Her expression was of feline-like joy. Her lips had a slight bow when smiling, it was subtle but it was a part of what made Jonathan think of her as a house cat. Talitha held a skewer of meat in each hand, each chunk of meat had the profile of a small rodent creature. A rat? Jonathan's stomach turned at the thought.
"I thought we could have something nice today so I got up early and went hunting. Do you like tem?" Talitha asked, pushing one of the skewers towards Jonathan. Jonathan raised both hands.
"Uh, I appreciate the effort, Tali, but I am not sure I am a big fan of… tem." Jonathan tried to reject the food as politely as he could.
"Nonsense! Here try it, as chieftain, you need to eat meat to stay strong." Talitha shoved the skewer of tem into Jonathan's face. He didn't want to disappoint her. Her eyes were wide and expectant.
"Alright… Here I go." Jonathan took the daintiest bite of the tem that he could. To his astonishment, it actually tasted quite nice. He took another bite, this time larger. It tasted similar to tender veal but a bit spicier. Talitha carefully watched her chieftain gulp down the food she had prepared him. She was delighted that he seemed to like it. Jonathan found himself asking for seconds and then thirds. Tem were naturally delicious, or perhaps it was just that Talitha knew how to prepare them well. Either way worked for Jonathan. By the end of breakfast he was feeling stuffed.
"Hey, have you seen Saikhi this morning?" Jonathan asked Talitha as he laid back down on his bedroll, one hand on his stomach.
"Yes, she said she was getting something prepared for the next stage of our journey. She found a map on one of the pack-cren that had some updated Empire patrol routes." Talitha pouted as she continued. "I am still uncertain how going to Rainfell will save the forest though." Whatever her chieftain's grand plan was, she could not imagine it.
"Well it is rather hard to save anything if you're dead. So step one is to not die. We will work the rest out later." Jonathan stood up from his bedroll, they wouldn't be heading back down south anytime soon. He hoped Talitha would understand once they were in relative safety.
"So I have some… Good news, and some... bad news." Saikhi emerged, holding a large golden-trimmed scroll with a red Empire sigil on it: two crossed polehammers. She approached the pair and unravelled the scroll. Inside was an intricate map of the Adearathian Empire, complete with towns, castles, military garrisons and perhaps most importantly, Empire patrol routes.
"Bad news first." Jonathan always preferred to get the bad news out of the way first. To him, it made the good news that followed sound a bit good-er.
"Well." Saikhi pointed at various points on the map. "The original path that we were going to take will lead us right into a recently built Imperial checkpoint. I don't think we are going to be able to go that way. The maps in Cliffside that we had to work with were surprisingly outdated."
Jonathan peered closer at the map. It didn't look good. The only other reliable way to reach Rainfell required them to do some backtracking towards Sidim. There was no way he was going back there. It looked like they were boxed in by Imperial forces. Jonathan hoped the good news was indeed good-er.
"The good news is that there is one way we can sneak past the checkpoint." Saikhi hesitated for a moment. She then traced a long line between their current location and a faint, almost transparent line that continued north past, and around, the new checkpoint. "We would have to take the Traders-end Highway."
That didn't sound good. They might have well called the path the "Get-mugged Way" or "Lose-your-stuff Lane".
"That doesn't sound ideal." Jonathan said. "Are you sure there is no other way?"
"I am sorry Master. There is not, unless we are willing to go back towards Sidim." Saikhi sounded defeated. It pained her to disappoint her master.
"Well, Traders-end Highway couldn't be that bad, what is it known for?" Jonathan asked, hoping the name was ironic, like how you might call a really tall person "shorty" or how you might call a whole beautiful country "Iceland" to keep people from visiting it. Perhaps Traders-end Highway was a peaceful place full of happiness, joy, and more delicious tem.
"It's known for its goblins and bandits. As the name suggests, many traders, mostly smugglers, have met their end there. I had hoped we could avoid it." Saikhi thought the name was obviously bad and was confused about why her master was trying to downplay it.
"Mmm yes, lines." Talitha nodded. "I understand some of these pictures."
Jonathan peered over to Talitha, then back at the map that she could clearly not read. 'Wait, did Saikhi just say goblins?'
"Goblins? Like little green dudes with anger management issues?" Jonathan asked cautiously.
"Oh, they come in all sorts of colours, green, blue, red, yellow, you can even find purple ones in the east." Saikhi started to list off various other habitats and colours of goblin before Jonathan stopped her.
"Are they dangerous?"
"Oh yes, quite. There are a relatively small number of females in their society, I think I remember reading once that for every one hundred males that were born, only one female was. This makes goblins quite… pent-up." Saikhi blushed.
'Ah yes, horny goblins, a staple of all grim-dark fantasy worlds.' Jonathan thought to himself. 'Just great.'
"Surprisingly this encourages them to be a matriarchal society. The females hold all the power." Saikhi continued nerding-out about goblin society. "It wasn't always like that though, some years back the Empire, whilst it was still young and much smaller, unleashed a magical curse on the whole goblin race that lowered the ratio of males to females born. This was in an effort to try and cull the goblin population. The former ashborn Hierarchy, spoke out against the curse at the time but they were ignored by the Empire. In the end, it led to many frustrated goblins capturing females of other species. They are not a very picky bunch." Saikhi realised how long she had been going on for and started to feel self conscious. "That's the short story, sorry."
'That was the short story?' Jonathan thought. Although it was nice to see Saikhi get enthusiastic over something. Even if it was the history of goblin mating.
"Well I guess we'll just have to risk it." Jonathan shrugged. He wasn't comfortable wading through lawless, goblin infested territory but it was better than potentially running into Zigarete again.
"If we do, we will need to get rid of most of these animals." Talitha motioned to the group's forrin and Cren. "It is best to stay agile. At most, we should take a forrin each and a single Cren to carry our equipment."
Jonathan looked over to Stew, he felt bad that he would have to separate him from his new buddies. Saikhi informed Jonathan that there was a trading post a mile away from the beginning of Traders-end Highway. They might be able to sell some of their extra stock there. Hopefully the merchants were not the question asking type.
"You know daddy, we still have a bit of time before we need to leave." Talitha purred as they began to pack up the campsite. "How about we take some time to enjoy ourselves. It feels like it has been ages."
It really hadn't, less than 24 hours. Jonathan was having trouble keeping up with his two companions. Sadly, his power didn't come with any sort of supernatural sexual endurance. The mind was willing but the flesh was starting to wear out from constant pounding. Jonathan imagined that just like a lot of manpower shortages, outsourcing could be the solution. That thought was all it took for Jonathan to be ready to go again.
"I guess we could." Jonathan smirked as he pulled Talitha close, it felt weird being so forward with his initiation but repeated sexual intercourse did wonders for his confidence. A flush of heat flowed through Talitha's body as she ran her hand down to Jonathan's bulge and began to rub it over his pants. Jonathan pulled down the small piece of fur fabric that 'covered' her chest and groped one of her firm breasts. Talitha arched her back at his touch. She moved her face close and placed her soft lips against Jonathan's. Another hand reached for Jonathan's manhood, this one red and obviously not Talitha's.
"Master, you started without me?" Saikhi looked at Jonathan with big doe-eyes. It wasn't long before Jonathan's cock was wrangled from it's bindings. The feeling of both girl's hands sliding up and down his shaft didn't get old, no matter how many times it happened.
Talitha pulled away from Jonathan and lifted Saikhi up from behind, raising Saikhi's shapely thighs up as her feet dangled above her head. She then lowered Saikhi's now exposed pussy onto Jonathan's cock, using Saikhi's body to please her daddy's cock. Saikhi's body was being used like a sex toy as Talitha gazed deeply into Jonathan's eyes. Jonathan grabbed hold of both of Saikhi's ample breasts as the girl was worked along his shaft.
Jonathan spent the next few minutes taking in both of his companion's bodies. He was sure to not leave either one's entrances unattended for a long period of time as to avoid jealousy. Jealousy was also the reason he often avoided finishing inside either of them. He had to be fair, or else he would be hearing about it for the rest of the day. Instead, he opted to spill his love over their faces or breasts, it was much easier for them to share that way.
A few minutes later, and with a loud grunt, Jonathan unloaded over Saikhi and Talitha's faces, the strands of cum covering both of them. The girls cleaned each other up, their tongues expertly lapping up every plastered strand before passing out. Jonathan felt kind of bad at how his ability had been affecting his companions, but right now he was too horny to dwell on it.