Theo, Prequel Ch. 03: Forgiveness...

"Mmm...Green goblin butt..."

A warm bed, a lover (no matter how non-human) at his side, and the heat of the hearth. A thick curvy goblin girl in his arms as a pillow, food in his belly, and freedom in his heart.

What else could Theo want?

They the craziest celebration, combined with the kinks of the goblin girl and some enchanted wine, the human boy had gone from a scared escapee into a male bull-minotaur on full moon. Still, as the drug wore off, his loins ached after banging the squat green fucktoy for days...On the couch, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, and everywhere possible, they fucked, rutted, had sex and did all the things a man fresh out of puberty and into the harsh life could dream of! Now the goblin shortstack was bundled on his lap. Sighing, he hugged her, feeling the soft texture of generous monster girl ass. Her green curvy goblin body felt like the ultimate pillow, sex toy, and lover.

A sigh echoed; a waft of feminine smell and soft cheek rubbed his chin, a pointy, elastic ear tickling his nose.

"Is it morning already?" Gilly the goblin sighed, her legs rubbing on his, when Theo spooned her in sleep. Turning her head, she already saw his face changing from the comfortable, easy life for a few days.

His face looked brighter, more alive; bags under his eyes had disappeared. Already his eyes were brighter, his movements and actions less awkward. Last night he had shed virtually every last of his awkwardness, and even before their usual nightly sexual adventures, had become much less...deranged.

His face had become a mask of serenity, finally finding a village full of monster girls to love and settle down. A village with monster girls that would not look down on him, or attack him or enslave him.

The humans in the village named Nidavellir was just as kind as the monsters: He, a blood mage, was not hated or cast out.

They took her in, let him eat, make love, meet, have sex and mingle without a whiplash of the Reik's slavers, or Lescatie's beatings.

Would he have peace?

Well reader, if you were hoping for Theo's peaceful ending, you haven't been paying attention. We all know what happened a year later that triggered *another* world war.

**

"I'll take a walk." Theo smiled, finishing his toast. Gilly smiled wordlessly, kissing his lips one last time before setting off for work.

"Ok! I'll be in my workshop!"

Kissing Gilly one last time, he left her house to wander freely, talk to other monster girls and men, and to mingle. It was a bright morning with many people outside. A stall with a centaur lady selling fruits mingled with a goblin's trinket store, the green, squat goblin lady heckling potential buyers about her recipes and amulets.

The voices of monster girls, some thick, some sweet and some shrill, was music to Theo's ears. After all the abuse he went through, he saw all races as equals here, only their merit separating them. Some greeted him warmly, some warily. Here he saw his merits judged by eyes and ears, his opinion counted, his words listened to.

It was so beautiful, a monster girl town dug inside the earth, illuminated by witch fires and magical lanterns. Near the Dark Elf district, a celebration was afoot: Theo approached with a light stride, eating a sausage sandwich; Hellhound girls named them Hot Dogs in honor of their trade.

A circle of elf, goblin and Faun girls was dancing and singing around a fire. The Dark Elf, a young girl dressed in thick, brown robes reminiscent of Druids of old, sang in an ancient language:

Wack fol'a day diddle dee dye doe

Je le len 'o je le la le len 'o

Fiddle daddle day diddle dee dye doe

Ho de fee ra huri!

Wack fol'a day diddle dee dye doe

Je le len 'o je le la le len 'o

Fiddle daddle day diddle dee dye doe

Ho de fee ra huri!

Theo clapped to the music as men and monster, woman and monster danced around a circle, clapping and twirling. A werewolf girl danced with his lover, tail wagging like mad as they danced, kissed and twirled to the music.

Someone whistled with all his might, and the music took a new frenzy, the people dancing and twirling with the tune with wild shouts.

**

To the south, a small human warband was resting amongst the trees. A scout dashed inside the Inquisitor Aurelia Arzama's tent.

"Inquisitor Arzama. We picked up trails of foraging. Apparently, there is a hidden settlement up north, four days, five tops."

The armored woman was pleased with the report, polishing her sword with gusto. Her blonde hair was tied in a thick braid behind her head, blue eyes flashing in a dark, hateful glare to whatever she was doing.

Her beauty was murdered by hate, by circumstances, she could not choose.

"You have done well, Janus."

She did not look up, dismissing him.

"Tell the camp we move at first light. The Warlock must suffer.

It felt like an unfinished business. And it would be good.

**

The monster districts were lovely, separate homesteads underground.

A network of caverns was dug by Ant-Girl clans, fashioned into beautiful homes of basalt and rock. Theo felt like wandering at east, exploring the beautiful streets of witch fire and magical lanterns.

When the music changed, Theo decided to walk further, exploring the homes of the race he was ravaged by.

It felt strangely serene: He half expected to hate them, kill them for what they did to his kin.

But these were not the race he fought, killed and slaughtered. These were the libertarians, the ones who forsook all tyranny, espoused no government but local, individualist ones and freedom for all, slavery abolished in their commune.

He felt strangely empty.

"I can't kill these. I don't want to."

He looked down, sighing.

"Good day!"

A young, gentle-looking dark elf female with a strange hat passed him by. He found himself greeting her back, even shaking her hand. Her hand felt soft, tender to his own. She simply went her own way, leaving him confused.

He was weaker now, feeling empty after a revenge long taken...What now?

Of course, being Fate's toy, he would find a renewed fire in his heart when he passed a small house.

"Kha'yun! We are buying groceries. Can you stoke the oven?

Kha'yun.

Did he hear that correctly? Peeking through the window, he saw him.

Kha'yun. One of the last male Dark Elves. Guard of the slave mines. Could this be true? Could it?

He saw him, his face with the blue eyes, his trademark hair cut.

It was him.

**

Ten years ago, back in Illyrian Slave Mines.

The Dark Elf guards were carrying a human corpse to the dumping pit, a human boy screaming and crying until his voice was hoarse.

"What's this hullabaloo?" One of the dark elf guards asked in annoyed confusion, holding her nose in a headache. Kha'yun shrugged, drinking his stolen whiskey, humans' best vintage.

"One of the human pup's father croaked. Cobalt dust I guess..."

"Just beat him till he is quiet then! I'm having a headache here." The dark elf female left the cells, sighing, to have another drink. "Fucking human swine. We should have exterminated these vermin."

Kha'yun looked at the slave cell, the human kid glaring back in murderous hate. His eyes were red from crying, only to receive a shrug, turning away.

Theo screamed until his throat bled, losing his father to mine dust.

"PAPA! PAPA!"

**

Kha'yun heard knocking on the door, just when the stove was lit.

"Hold your horses. I'm coming for Gods' sake!" Hearing the repeated knocking on the door, he eventually came and opened it with a frown. It was a human boy, with an anxious stare. He looked familiar, Kha'yun could not put his finger on it.

"Can I help you human? Trying to get the fire going on."

"Kha'yun?"

He blinked in surprise, not used to being addressed with his name for a long time except his wife.

"Who asks?" He squinted, trying to recognize the boy.

Then he realized his face hardening, and his wrists and ankles wreathed in red-blue eldritch fires. Theo's face had become an unrestricted glare of sheer hate.

"OH SHI-"

Two hands grabbed his throat, Theo leaping on him and closing the door with a kick. Grunting in fury, he leaped on him again with feet enchanted by dark magic, strangling the dark elf. He felt an immense satisfaction in his face going blue, eyes nearly bugging out of his sockets.

"Hrrgg..." Kha'yun's eyes were wide in horror, tongue out of his mouth as he tried to get his bearings in panic.

Strangling his first tormentor felt good.

He saw his father going silent in his arms when he was young, his rage inflamed again. Kha'yun had shrugged, told him to shut up and closed the cell door, kicking him inside when he clung to his leg screaming.

"You son of a bitch!" He kept squeezing in savage pleasure, not noticing the dark elf's hand lighting in a magical bolt, slamming to his side. "Thought you could get away from me-Ack!"

He rolled aside as Kha'yun coughed, grasping his throat. Both to their feet scrambling, Theo recollected thimself to leap at his throat again. He desperately held his own throat, trying to avoid fists and even Theo's own teeth as he snarled, enraged, would doubtlessly tear out his throat like a rabid animal.

"You scumfuck..." He avoided in desperation Theo's fingers to gouge out his eyes, almost biting a finger.

"Wait!"

"You son of a bitch! Dark elf knife-ear shitskin, you fucking DIE! DIE! FUCKING DIE!" Theo snarled, his mouth dripping saliva on his face with teeth looking unnaturally sharp.

"Human, wait! My wife will be back!" That only made Theo madder, roaring in a strange red haze in his vision:

"FUCK YOUR WIFE! I'LL KILL HER TOO! I'LL KILL YOUR KIND, I'LL KILL EVERYONE IN THIS VILLAGE!"

He screamed in his face. "YOU DUMPED MY FATHER'S CORPSE TO A HOLE! YOU KILLED HIM!"

"I...didn't...he...died from...urkkk..." Kha'yun desperately pulled his head back and gained some air, starting to bargain. "I didn't! Wasn't me!.."

"DOES IT MATTER? YOU WERE THERE! YOU WORKED THERE! KNIFE EARED DARKLING CUNT!"

Kha'yun realized everything in his desperation to hold off the enraged human whaling on him. Who he was flashed in his terrified mind.

Theophilos.

"You..." He looked at him with a terrified glare...He mumbled in a terrified, resigned voice even as he held his throat...His voice was almost resigned to his death, the horror of a man that saw his Grim Reaper staring at him.

"Have you come all the way to kill me?"

"Oh, I will now, you son of a whore!"

Theo would if it was not for the voices outside.

"Kha'yun?"

...

"PAPA! PAPA!" It was the same cry he gave when his father no longer breathed.

Theo's glare froze, and his heart skipped a beat.

**

"Hey, Kraelis!" Kha'yun stepped outside, hiding his throat and looking unusually strung.

His wife, Kraelis stood with a dark elf babe in her arms, her back with groceries. Her eyes squinted, realizing a strange human man behind him.

"You have a guest, Kha'yun? Neighbors said they heard shouting..."

Theo looked at his husband, blinking. Kha'yun nodded, looking cheerful.

"Yeah! Uh, come in!"

They let his wife and kid inside. Both men looked strung, strangely active and cheerful.

"Welcome!" Kraelis chimed, shushing the dark elf babe in her arms. "Are you Kha'yun's old friend or something?"

"Y-yeah!" Theo replied. "Uh, we are old associates."

"Old." Kraelis mused. "Really? You don't look that old..." Her eyes squinted, already feeling something amiss. The dark elf woman slowly pulled her babe to her chest in a feeling of protectiveness.

"Well, old for my kind, not for you, I guess..." Theo laughed with exaggerated clumsiness. "Well, I have found my old friend, and now well...I should be going! I'm sure we'll meet again!" That last part had a double meaning.

Kraelis smiled politely as he left.

When the door closed, she slowly turned around, her eyes in an accusing, serious gaze.

"Kha'yun."

Her husband shrugged. "Yeah?"

...

"What happened?" She looked at his throat. Dark elf skin was not good for showing bruises, yet...

"Nothing! I, uh... I'll get the pancakes." He turned, stopping when he heard her voice.

"Kha'yun."

"Yes, Kraelis." He sighed, looking back, his middle-aged dark elf skin looking suddenly wearier than before.

"Something happened." She spoke as if it was a fact. Seeing he didn't speak, she tapped her feet angrily.

"Someone from your old job? Kha'yun..." She glared. "WHAT was your last job, specifically? The one you NEVER told me?" She was unpacking her groceries with a weary glare at her husband, their only baby girl sniffling, realizing something went wrong with mommy and daddy.

"Nothing! I was a mercenary, I told you. Y'know, someone who just protected merchant caravans from bandits..." He smiled, nervously flipping the pancakes that could only heat up so much in the haphazard kitchen fire... With a flick of his hand, Kha'yun quickly rearranged the dislodged logs into the fire, wiping some ashes from the struggle earlier.

"And Reik had merchant caravans? Surely you don't mean slaver runs from the poor human villages that dickhead Maou's lackeys ravaged? Gods, Kha'yun, I figured our kind had a hand in this trade but THIS?"

He felt his heart wrench as she kept berating.

"I heard what happened in Ilyria...He is one of them kids, isn't he?" Kraelis angrily set down a net full of apples with a "thud". "What if he...Lily...my lily..." She sniffled, hugging her baby, glaring at her husband.

"Kha'yun. Is our baby girl safe? Promise me."

Her husband sighed, setting down the pancakes, and sitting on a chair. He looked up at Kraelis and slowly nodded.

"He was going to kill me."

The dark elf woman's eyes went wide, gasping and holding her baby close.

"He stopped when he heard Lily's cries."

Sniffling, Kraelis stepped forward, setting Lily on a baby chair and getting to work in cleaning fruits. Her lips quivering, she accused Kha'yun in an angry voice.

"So he is more man than you!" That flipped a switch.

Kha'yun's face cracked in anger, his fist slamming on the table. "GODSDAMNIT! I DIDN'T QUESTION ORDERS. WE HAD A THING GOING ON, DO YOU REALIZE HOW MANY DOKKALVAR CLANS HUMANS RENDERED EXTINCT? SLAUGHTERED THEM?"

Lily started crying. Kraelis' eyes flashed in anger, tossing her coat to a nail and shushing her baby girl.

"Because we plundered them for 300 years! Took their people as slaves, did not even care for them! We separated mother and child!" She started a shouting match even as she calmed her baby. "Don't you even remember the Blood Monument your Maou erected? GLORIFYING the engraving of a monster tearing a mother from her child, father's head on a pike? Admit it, Kha'yun!" She shouted angrily, her heart aflame at the admission of truth.

"WE DESERVED THE CRUSADES!"

He pursed his lips, shaking his head as he angrily ranted back:

"Can't believe you are a race-traitor, woman! I am Dokkalf! You are Dokkalf! My Lily is one! Now you are saying we should roll over and die? What the hell!"

"No! But we did horrific atrocities, my own grandmother dissected humans to find out weak parts and develop plagues!" Her hands were shaking with rage. "Can you believe it? Of course I left her to die when the humans launched the fourth Crusade and stormed Valdheim!"

Kha'yun blanched at her brazen declaration: Valdheim was the biggest city of Dark Elves before it was annihilated in the Fourth Crusade when Lescatian Alliance stormed it overnight. Discovery of human experiments for hormonal and plague weapons in the lower segments resulted in eternal hatred against her and his kind, and triggered horrific reprisals. The Dokkalvar who were prolific in the West were endangered as a result

A century later, hatred didn't cease.

"You let your own mother die?" Kha'yun was aghast.

Kraelis lit a cigarette, taking a deep breath. "When I saw human captures being experimented upon in the cells, what do you think I'd do? I let the crusaders free them, and let them impale her on a pike." She glared at Kha'yun.

"Believe me, I didn't mind seeing her die." Her voice was shaking. "They let me go afterward, saying a kinslayer's blood would curse them if they killed me."

"Damn, woman. You are saltier than I am..." Kha'yun was now speechless. Kraelis nodded.

"That's why I will not let him hurt our baby. I'll talk to him."

"WHAT?" Kha'yun's eyes snapped open.

"Yes. We have to make peace with him. Or you'd rather let him be killed by the Inquisition when he cacks up a spell and blows up the village? Maybe lets the fascist humans run us over?"

That gave Kha'yun a desperate idea.

"Alright love. You...talk. I better go outside, I need a breather."

"Fine." Kraelis exclaimed, extinguishing the cigarette and hugging her baby.

Kha'yun left quietly, intending to meet someone who might promise a solution. After all, it was for the family.

He had to gamble.

**

Passing lovey-dovey human and monster couples, Kha'yun kept walking brusquely towards the hill where he could overlook the southern valley. It was as he expected:

Humans. They came for the boy and his friends. Who were they? Tobias and Eva...Right...names to remember.

These three humans would either kill him, kill the village by accident (given that blood magic would corrode their souls and sanity over time), or the Inquisition would burn the village.

For the first time in his life, Kha'yun faltered and felt sorry for the human refugees. Poor fucks.

He had to betray Theo after he had forgiven him just now. He had to betray him and his friends so that they could survive.

And that was the worst crime in his culture.

And that made him feel like an asshole even as a Dokkalf bitter-ender supremacist. For the first time in his life, Kha'yun felt sorrow for those three humans.

Betraying his political beliefs, he had to do the unthinkable before he or his daughter, or wife died. Betraying someone that just had forgiven him was low, even a human according to his beliefs. He felt sick, deciding to consult and ask for help from the Oldest Gods. Dark Elves never begged or served.

Until they had to.

"Thou Oldest Gods, I beg you to listen..." Kha'yun mumbled, passing by a stall of vegetables, a blonde centaur happily selling carrots. "But I am praying for once in my life, whoever is listening..." He sighed, exiting the village and starting to run towards the valley, over the hill with a long, determined march. He remembered the special tree where he could ask for help. The Oldest Gods always favored the oldest, dying articles of nature for communing. Given the chaotic nature of theirs, he had started praying the moment he felt the need.

Half an hour later, he stood before the ash-colored tree.

"Make sure my Lily lives...Make sure I get to see her grow up." Standing in front of it, he cut his palm, offering his lifeblood to the dry, grey husk. He let his hand bleed until he felt the dry bark crackle, the tree absorbing the small tribute to life.

"Take all you need of my life, Oldest Gods of the World. Maybe you are right...Maybe the humans are right, and I am the evil one." He bandaged his hands, looking skywards.

"Take my life if you need, for I must ask for a favor."

He looked at the ground, then to the sky, and spread his arms to the skies.

"I must betray someone who forgave me and trusted me which is *the greatest crime amongst my kind*; absolve me of this betrayal. I must protect my family; let me protect my baby daughter. I offer you everything, Old Gods, nameless and faceless..." He intoned, spitting towards the west wind. "I might die doing this. Oldest Gods..." He finished his simplistic ritual, continuing on his way.

"Let Lily live a full, happy life. And if you still can, let me live to see her. Everything else you can take away from me, EVERYTHING, but my family."