Mark One: My father, what about him?

Interviewer: How do you feel about the insatiable need to consume goblins that Garth embedded in the very core of your species? Do you resent it?

Mark One: Resent it? How do you feel about sex, Tom? Do you like it? could you live without it if you had to? Do you curse the gods for being born that way? To my people, it’s the same. We hunt goblins to reproduce, because it’s fun, and it doesn’t hurt anybody.

Interviewer: What about-

Mark One: Anybody who matters.

Interviewer: I see.

Mark One: I and others of my generation have grown, found our own passions. Much like your human teenagers spend most of their time playing with their newfound favorite toy, eventually the older ones get tired of it and find something meaningful to devote their lives to.

Mark one: (Scratches his protruding nose) I will admit that every couple years I’ll visit one of the reservations, go out on safari and hunt a few gobs for sport, even if the old baby-gizzard is all dried up. (Pats his chest)

Interviewer: Interesting. One other question I had before the break. How exactly did the word for love, bait, human female, disaster, forbidden, and Queen all stem from the same characters in your people’s language. Jelaybein?

Mark One: (Chuckles) that’s a bit of a long story.

****

“So, who was that?” Alicia asked, standing beside him as the land slid by underneath them, the subtropical forest thinning out as they pressed eastward at great speeds.

“That was Mark One.”

“Any why did he call you father?”

“I made him.”

“When!?”

“like, two months ago,” Garth said. “He was a little side project.”

“Are you…” she glanced off to the side, bit her lip and went silent.

“Am I what?” Garth asked as the quiet stretched out uncomfortably.

“Are you human?”

“Nope.”

Alicia went pale.

“But I used to be.”

“Why are you bothering with me?” she murmured.

“Huh?” Garth grunted, seeking clarification.

“Why are you bothering with me!?” She screamed, a foot away from him. “You’re obviously some kind of…fucking…Earthshattering, inhuman, interdimensional Wizard whose only purpose in life is to bring ruin and destruction to the planet. How is tormenting me high on your priority list? What the hell do you even see in me?”

“Huh.” Garth grunted.

That seems like it’s been simmering for awhile now. He glanced at the nearest goblinoid of the forty-eight they’d grabbed from the nearest tribes to seed other planets, a hooknosed green little man with a placid stare.

The little man glanced between him and Alicia and shrugged, as if to say, I don’t know either, man.

“You obviously could have forced me and my family to dance to your mad tune at any moment, so why are you doing this to me?”

“What, specifically, am I doing?” Garth asked, glancing over his shoulder at Alicia, whose cheeks were coloring.

“Treating me like a toy! Teaching me magic when you don’t have to. Carrying me with you on trips that I serve no purpose on! Smelling amazing all the time!”

“Oh.” That last one was a little weird. Thanks Beladia.

Garth scratched his chin.

“Do you want the political answer or the pragmatic one?”

“Pragmatic.”

“For me, violence and beautiful women mix like chocolate and peanut butter. When I saw you kill those goons in that alley where we first met, you can bet your irresistible ass that I was interested. Later I realized that to keep myself stable I needed some kind of emotional attachment, like a pet. So I decided you would be a decent choice.”

That sounded better in my head.

“Pet!?” she demanded. “Pet!?”

That’s probably not good.

“Emotional attachment, I don’t actually think of you as – “

“You’re going to bring about another Fall, and you want me on a chain in a slinky bikini beside your throne of skulls, is that it?”

Garth pictured it for a moment. Sounds pretty hot, although it’s odd that’s still a trope in this day and age.

“I’m down for it if you are, I guess.”

Alicia’s eye twitched before she pushed away from him, bursting out of the quiet bubble into the wind and flying down to the forest floor.

Garth brought the bubble of air to a halt and watched Alicia fly away, her horizontal posture revealing the arch of her back just beyond her exaggerated buns.

“Hmm…” Garth said as he watched her fly away. Critical fail.

“What should I do?” he murmured. She seemed pretty miffed...about something. Seems it might be internal conflict causing her to lash out.

There was a tugging on his sleeve, and Garth turned to see the hooknosed goblin staring up at him, along with the other forty-seven little green monster-slayers.

“When Jellibeen mad at hunter for badness, fix by nice-grab jellibeen soft-parts and give shinies. Make better.”

Garth processed that nearly nonsensical advice for a couple seconds.

“Nice-grab…hug? You’re talking about hugs and presents, right?”

Garth’s goblin lookalike opened its mouth, frowned for a moment in solemn contemplation, then nodded vigorously. Like bobbleheads, the rest of the troop nodded their heads as well, until Garth was staring over a field of nodding goblins heads. Maybe it was Beladia’s influence that made them such amicable folk.

“I think…this may be more…nuanced than a hug and some shinies can fix, but I’ll take that under advisement. Could help. Can you fellas hang out in one spot for an hour or two?”

Garth knew they didn’t actually need to eat, so that probably wouldn’t be too hard on them, unless they got the urge to wander off and go hunting.

The goblin gave him a black-nailed thumbs up and a toothy grin.

“Thanks Crixis,” Garth said. “Your name is Crixis now.”

Crixis clapped his hands together in glee as they descended.

Garth left the hunters to mind their own business and used Scry to locate Alicia in a matter of minutes, gliding through the brush until he got to her.

Alicia was, uncharacteristically, moping. Garth had fully expected her to be thrashing the underbrush with her rapier and snarling. Moping was harder to deal with in Garth’s opinion.

Garth walked up to her and sat down.

“It occurs to me that what you’ve been told about me might be coloring your perception. We need to have the talk.”

Alicia stared at the ground.

Garth took a deep breath and started with his tale.

“Eight hundred and forty five years and twelve days ago, I was about two thousand miles to your left, standing up to my knees in raw sewage. As a handyman, you get called in for plumbing occasionally, even if you’re not qualified. Especially if you’re not qualified, sometimes.”

Alicia glanced up at him, her brows furrowed, plump crimson lips frowning.

“This particular job was a result of some idiot flushing an entire beach towel down the hotel’s toilet. The sheer amount of time and effort required to do that boggles the mind. Anyway, after hours and hours kneeling, with my cheek pressed up against the sewage pipe and my arm buried in shit up to the shoulder, I finally got it free, unplugging the system, whereupon a blast of pressurized sewage caught my foot and sent me sprawling face first into the giant puddle of shit at the bottom of the hole. I got paid two hundred dollars.”

“Is that a lot?” she asked.

“No. So I spent five dollars to drive back to my apartment, threw my fifty dollars worth of unsalvageable clothes in the trash, and took a shower to wash all the shit off me. Once that was done, I sat down to watch the news, only the usual newscaster was different…”

Alicia listened to Garth’s story, her eyes beginning to regain some of their life as he regaled her with his tales of moral dubiousness. It took the better part of two hours before Garth reached the end of his story, when the old Corio showed up and caught him in a beam of light that blocked teleports.

Garth described a riot of half-formed soul-memories, and then dropping to the ground in the center of a ritual full of naked Garthspawn trying to resurrect him.

“And that’s the tale of the most evil man in recorded history.” Garth said, kicking his heels against the tree stump.

“Oh.” Alicia said, processing. She had gradually closed the distance between them until her luscious hips and thighs were pressing into him. Garth wasn’t sure if it was conscious or not, but any closer and she’d be sitting in his lap.

Which he wouldn’t mind. The girl was small enough to fit, nowadays. Garth had stopped his growth just two inches taller than Jim. There was no logical reason for it, he just wanted his brother to look up at him before he died.

Garth felt like a giant among men, and the formerly formidable Denton looking rather petite in contrast was an interesting phenomenon. It afforded him a bird’s eye view of the girl’s neck, leading down into her collarbone, when he looked at her face beside him.

They sat there, silently watching the grass grow, unsure of what to say to each other. It was pretty obvious to Garth that she found him attractive. She wanted him, but she had hang-ups, which mostly consisted of some ingrained need to profit from sex, and come out on top, and some deep-rooted fear he wasn’t sure of.

Ah, fuck it. We ain’t getting any younger.

“S’cuse me.” Garth murmured and nice-grabbed Alicia’s waist. She let out a little squeak as she was lifted up and onto his lap, her magnificent bottom settling on his legs. It wasn’t the first time he’d had her on his lap, but it was the first time she’d been so much smaller than him.

“Alicia, I want to show you something.”

“What’s that?”

Garth leaned, gently turned her head to the side with his left hand. He took in her blushed cheeks, bright blue eyes and crimson lips, inches away from his own. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, breath held in her throat.

He kissed her. The girl stiffened at first, then relaxed, allowing her lips to soften against his own. Once her mouth was fully invested, Garth slid his left hand down from her cheek to her shoulder, then down to her modest breasts.

Alicia moaned into Garth’s mouth as he began to massage the gradually hardening nipples pressing against her shirt. His right hand drifted down her stomach, tickling the edge of her inner thighs as he stoked her practice leathers.

Alicia’s thighs drifted apart, inviting him to explore the warmth between her legs. Garth kept the molesting professional, gently stroking her mound through her pants until her hips began to rock back and forth in time to his movements, unconsciously rubbing her rounded bottom against the very edge of Garth’s cock.

Garth opened her mouth with his own and lured her tongue out, feeling the delicate bumps sliding against his lips.

After maybe three minutes of the heart-pounding kiss, Garth pulled away, inspecting his pet/apprentice/toy. Her eyes were dazed, half lidded, jaw relaxed, allowing her lips to spread. She was panting with arousal, and the spot he was rubbing was getting warmer under his touch.

“Take off your pants.” Garth said.

Alicia’s eyes sharpened.

“What’s in it for me?” she asked, a mischievous smile crossing her lips.

Garth chuckled.

“Still the same girl,” he said as Alicia rose to her feet in front of him, languidly swaying her glorious hips back and forth in front of him, making it difficult to think.

Difficult, but not impossible. This was a battle of wills, and Garth wasn’t going to give her an inch.

Garth shook his head. “Seems like a dangerous precedent. I can’t very well offer you a spell every time.”

“Besides,” Garth said, sliding his hand up her inner thigh until the side of his hand met soft flesh barely contained by leather.

Alicia moaned and began sliding herself against him, making her juicy booty shake and flex in time with her movements.

“Something tells me you want to.”

“What I want,” Alicia panted, “and what you get, aren’t always going to be the same.”

“Alright. I’ll tell you what’s in it for you,” Garth said. “If you take off your pants, you’ll get a spanking. Otherwise, we’ll stop here and get back on our way.”

Alicia glanced at him over her shoulder, biting her lip as she thought about it. Her face turned red and she looked away from him as she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her pants.

She slowly drew the brown leather practice pants down along with her black silk panties – more than Garth had expected – The waistband seemed to have trouble making its way down her plump cheeks, dimpling them as it slid along her smooth skin, revealing her ass in its entirety. The black underwear peeled soggily away from her crotch as she bent forward.

“That’s far enough,” Garth said once the pants were halfway down.

He took her hand and guided her to fold herself over his knees.

Garth took a moment to study her pale skin, rounded cheeks, and the obvious arousal between them.

Then he brought his hand down on her soft flesh, sending a resounding clap through the forest, accompanied by the girl’s barely constrained groan.

*******

Crixis, your advice was good, you’re gonna do great.” Garth said, patting the remorseless goblin killer on the head before sending him through Linda’s Gate.

Garth realigned the gate to another planet, sending pair after pair of goblin hunters to premarked abandoned Gates scattered across the multiverse that Itet and Linda used to avoid official attention.

Garth couldn’t just send two goblins into the center of a city and expect them not to get murdered immediately, regardless of how docile they were.

Alicia was standing off to the side, gawking at the Tzetin army bustling about the chamber buried beneath her city. She was standing because she couldn’t sit down without making strange noises.

“So, how many ‘apprentices’ do you have?” Linda asked, cocking an eyebrow as she leaned against the Gate, her green eye peering into his soul.

“Just the two.” Garth gave her a wink.

“And how soon do you plan on dealing with the orb in the church?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it.”