Dak would have been angry, if he wasn’t already terrified.

It wasn’t that he’d been captured.  Nine hells, that was how most of his diplomatic missions started.  No one trusted a kobold, so he’d seen the inside of just about every cell between here and the capital—wherever here was.  It wasn’t even that he’d been captured by gnolls, though that wasn’t part of the mission.  They’d just sort of shown up, and then everything got all awkward and bloody.  One moment it’d been humans and their silly soft-skinned prattle and their pointy soft-skinned swords, and then the next moment the air had been full of arrows that sounded like bees as they flew, then sounded like dropped watermelons when they ‘thunked’ and ‘squished’ home.

No, that wasn’t why Dak was trying to be angry.  Dak was trying to be angry because of the weeks he’d spent learning human just before this latest mission just so he could be a better diplomat, and now everyone around him was cackling in gnollish!  It was enough to make a kobold kick the cage bars in a rage!

So that’s what Dak did.  Then he hobbled back over to the dry pile of hay and sat down to nurse his newly-aching foot.  Dak was bad at being angry.  He always seemed to screw it up.  He did all the things that he thought angry people should do, like punch walls, and kick stones, and shout.  All he ever got was aching hands and feet, and a reputation for having cute squeaks.

Anyway, he was far too terrified to be properly angry.  Dak was a simple kobold, and simple kobolds had trouble holding multiple emotions in place at once.  One at a time, he could do.  He had ‘fear’ pinned down and firmly in claw.  Yup, he had a good handle on feeling afraid.  He could see ‘anger’ dancing right on the edge of his emotional vision, but every time he reached out, his fear patted his hand and said “No, dear.  Now’s the time to be delightfully panicked.  Why don’t we worry about trying for angry tomorrow?”

He jumped as a gnoll rattled the cage.  He tried for angry, but came up with being ‘timidly perturbed’ at the gnoll.  The gnoll barked a laugh at his expression that made Dak cower.  Well, he’d tried.  The gnoll let out a string of guttural syllables, ended with a deep growl that sent ice down Dak’s spine.

At least his meek heart had saved his life so far.  The gnolls had ruthlessly carved down the humans.  It hadn’t even been a contest.  But while they were dismembering the unlucky soft-skins, one of the gnolls had grabbed him by an arm and pulled him aside.  By the cunning plan of doing nothing and curling up into a ball, he’d managed to survive the melee unharmed.  The gnoll had thrown him bodily over the back of his bestial dire hyena, and when he’d arrived back at the gnoll tribe’s cave, he’d managed to avoid a cruel beating and possible disemboweling by making no fuss.  Instead, once he’d seen the cage on the far side of their camp fire, he’d gone directly to it.  There’d been giggling laughter as he pulled the door closed himself.  Well, let them laugh.  At least Dak was alive!  And if he made himself the most well-behaved prisoner ever, maybe he’d live long enough to find an escape!

The gnoll at the door of the cage seemed to reach a conclusion after a few moments of waiting for a response.  His lips pulled up, and with clear distaste, he spoke in the common—human—tongue.  “Food”.  He pointed at the fire.  Then he pointed at Dak.  The gnoll’s poor pronunciation and inflection grated at Dak’s ears—especially since he’d just spent a whole week learning not to make every mistake the gnoll just made.  

Ah.  Right.  He was going to be dinner.  He momentarily mused that there must be something seriously wrong with his instincts if he’d thought about incorrect grammar before he’d noticed that he was about to die screaming in a pot of boiling water.  Oh.  Well.  Fuck.

“Nope!  Dak small!  Scrawny.  No meat!”  He countered.  The gnoll gave him a blank look.  Right.  Too many words.  Instead, Dak walked over to the front of the cage, waving spindly arms in the air.  He pinched one forearm and tried to make his scales sag as pitifully as he could.  “No meat.  Can you say that?  No.  Meat.  Dak no-”

“Dak!”  The gnoll copied.  Then he laughed.  A few answering laughs from the fire echoed back.

“Yes.  Dak.  No meat on Dak.”  He repeated.

“Dak.  Food?”  There was that upwards inflection again.

This wasn’t getting anywhere.  Dak surveyed his options.  Looks like he was going to need to escape a lot faster than he’d hoped.  His rational brain stood there with a scroll and a quill.  ‘Let’s go down the checklist, shall we?’ it said.  Run for it?  Nope.  The dire hyenas were asleep near the entrance.  One bark and they’d be chomping on kobold.  Deeper into the caves?  Probably not a good plan.  The gnolls probably knew their home better than he did, and there’s no guarantee there was a rear escape.  Beg and plead?  They didn’t understand his language, and he was tasty.  Tough to argue against tasty.  Fighting?  How about fighting his way out?  Oh, yes, now there was a plan.  One unarmed kobold against a tribe of demonstrably capable gnoll warriors.  In his head, his brain finished the last check-box on its scroll, then nodded in agreement.  ‘Yup.  You’re fucked.  Time to panic!’

He was halfway into a good cower when some of the teachings Kilik had bludgeoned into his cranium started to surface.  Gnolls.  Slavers, she’d said.  Don’t get captured.  Right.  Check.  What was the next thing?  If you’re going to be captured, find something pointy and throw yourself on it.  Ah.  Double-check.  Well, what if I can’t find something pointy?  The rest of it came back in a rush.  Obligate carnivores.  Cannibals.  Sadists.  Sexual predators.  Perverted servants of an evil god.  Traffickers in skin, fur, and scale.  If they can’t sell you, they’ll fuck you.  And when they’re done with that, they’ll cook you up and eat you.  If you’re lucky, they won’t do both at the same time.

Well, hell.  Why’d these ones have to go and skip the second step?  It wasn’t a great plan, but at least he’d be alive for a little bit longer before the pot!  And every moment sucking down air was another moment for an opportunity.

Dak reached out through the bars of the cage while the gnoll was cackling something off to some other gnollish co-conspirator down towards the fire.  The gnoll jumped when he felt a hand on him, but Dak had a hold on the gnoll’s loincloth.  With disbelieving eyes watching him, Dak ran his hand up beneath the leathers.  The gnoll stood stock-still.  Dammit, you spotty cur, Dak thought.  Can’t you see I’m trying to seduce you to save my own hide?  What does a kobold have to do to get a corruptible jailer these days?  Beneath the leathers, his hand encountered damp fur.  He closed his hand, and a massive testicle rolled around between his fingers, clad in sweaty gnoll fur.

A bark made him flinch, but terror kept his hand extended and his fingers mercifully un-closed.  With every evidence of enthusiasm, the hulking gnoll leaned up against the bars of Dak’s cage.  He let loose another of those warbling giggles, and moments later, answering cackles from the far side of the cave answered.  Dak had made his choice, and even though he was now questioning its wisdom, he kept returning his gaze to the boiling pot just over the simmering flames.

His other hand lifted and joined the first, pushing aside the gnoll’s loincloth and baring his impressive weaponry to the dim light of the cave.  Dak wrapped clever fingers around the massive pouch in front of his face and squeezed.

He only closed his eyes in time to keep from letting the liquid splash into them.  At first, Dak thought the gnoll had just been on a hair trigger.  Hell, the first time that Dak had been with a female, he’d lasted just about that long.  She had not, in retrospect, been impressed.  But if the gnoll had just—well!  Turns out Dak was good at this!  If his hands were that good, he’d be free in no time!  The gnolls surely wouldn’t eat a clever little kobold who, with just one grasp and squeeze, could make a warrior-

Then the bitter scent hit him.  Oh.  He didn’t have much of a sense of smell.  Kobolds generally didn’t.  They spent their time in dank caves with fungus and odd gasses and old volcanoes and dragons.  Sensitive noses were not a good survival trait.  But even through his dim nasal passages, he was able to identify that it was not runny mammalian semen that was being sprayed over his snout.  Well.  What did he expect from gnolls?  Maybe this was normal.  Weren’t mammals well known for marking their property with-

Oh.  Property.  Right.  Dak was immediately of two minds about this as musty gnoll urine dripped down his chest and soiled the leathers he’d been wearing.  On one claw, that made him a slave.  That was not the way he’d wanted the day to go.  But, on the other claw, that meant they’d promoted him!  Specifically, he was no longer dinner!

He felt a hand on his head.  Willingly, he followed its pull.  He opened his eyes again, risking contamination to see the gnoll that was looking down at him with—what emotion was that?  Kindness?  Of course not.  Anger?  Why?  Ownership?  Was that even an emotion?  Then something hot and fleshy touched his nose, still fitfully spraying down under his chin.  Oh.  Right.  Lust.

Obediently, he opened his snout.  The fleshy shaft jumped against his chin, and bitter urine filled his mouth.  He closed his lips around the tip and felt it pulse.  The spray stopped momentarily, then resumed as the gnoll pushed against the bars and filled Dak’s mouth with gnoll.  The hand on his head pulled, and Dak’s face was mashed into the gnoll’s sweaty pelt.  He swallowed to keep up with the deluge that was now being sprayed directly down his throat.

Wiping the piss from his face, he looked up to see the rest of the gnoll’s friends gathered around, watching with cackling glee as the jailer emptied himself down the kobold’s gullet.  ‘Watch this,’ Dak thought to himself, ‘Diplomacy in action.  Who needs to speak their language?  I, the clever and devious Dak, have saved my-oop!’

That last was the mental equivalent of looking down through the thousand-yard-drop at the edge of a cliff, swearing that you’d stopped in time just before you started to fall, as one of the gnolls pulled the cage door open and pulled Dak out into the open.  The cock down his throat was pulled free, with one goodbye-splash across his face before he was aloft, held in one hand by one of the other gnolls.  He heard cackling as he has thrown about.  Then growling. 

Are they fighting over me, he thought?  Another gnoll grabbed him by the midsection, and he heard snarling, intermixed with more sharp-lettered words in their gnollish language.  Vision blurred as they casually threw him around, but moments later, he was face to face with another crotch.  Loincloth pulled aside with one sausage-thick digit, and a differently-colored cock flopped out.  This time, he wasn’t able to close his eyes in time before the acrid liquid bathed him.  Another one of them was laughing.  Then he was unceremoniously dropped.

He glanced back.  Three of the gnolls were fighting, and it wasn’t the timid little kobold squabbles he was used to.  No tail-smacking, or punching, or head-butting.  One of them was biting the other.  Dak could see blood.  Another was clawing.

In an effort not to watch, Dak looked down at his now-ruined leathers.  Damn.  These had been his good clothes—his diplomat clothes!  Well, if gnoll piss washed out, maybe they were salvageable.  He held his tunic out away from his chest, where it hung limp and soaked.  Bleh.  He shrugged out of them, then kicked his under-things off.  If they couldn’t be washed, maybe they should be burned.  His tribe-leader wouldn’t like that.  Stupid gnolls.

Oh.  Right.  Gnolls.  How had he forgotten completely where he was, and what they were doing?  Well, the hand around his midsection lifting him off the ground was a good reminder.  Where were we?

He was faced with another crotch.  Fingers in his mouth pushed his jaws apart and a floppy cock slid against his tongue.  Dak closed his lips again and swallowed as the quickly stiffening shaft blocked off his airway.  Well, that was going to be a problem.  Another hand grabbed his tail and lifted.  A finger pushed rudely between his legs.  Oh, they must not know about kobold anatomy.  He was about to educate them, except the cock that was now thrusting down his throat left him little breath (or tongue) to explain the subtleties between kobold genders.  Ah.  Another problem.

Hot liquid sprayed across his back.  Cackling echoed around him.  Snarling above.  The two gnolls handling him squabbled as one fucked his face and the other pissed over his rump.  A blunt monster prodded under his tail and left his underside dripping.  Definitely a problem.  That will never—

Dak tried to squeak around the cock in his throat as it did.  The gnoll behind him was far too wet and slick to be denied.  The kobold’s scaled slit was spread wide around the invader, and without waiting for Dak’s panicked squeaking to cease, the gnoll pushed forward.  Since his nose was already buried in the gnoll pelt in front of him, Dak was otherwise immobile as long inches of gnoll pushed up inside, still dribbling urine.  The rough thrust only stopped when Dak felt damp fur rubbing between his spread legs.

It seemed like the two squabbling gnolls were determined to fight, and Dak was their battlefield.  They were both thrusting, seemingly intent on meeting their enemy halfway.  The kobold’s body was small enough that only one pair of the massive gnoll’s hands could fit comfortably around him at once, and even those fought for room as the two antagonists struggled for more kobold for themselves and less for their competitor.

Dak was brought back to the here-and-now by a hard throb in his throat.  He coughed, and the gnoll in front of him decided discretion was the better part of valor—especially with those sharp kobold-teeth around his sidearm.  Dak wheezed for breath as the rigid shaft pulled free of his muzzle and started to decorate his head with something significantly less runny.  It dribbled from Dak’s head-horns and dripped in strands from his chin as the gnoll throbbed it out over him.

There was more cackling from the crowd.  Someone tackled the gnoll mid-orgasm, and another took his place.  Seems the one previously in front of him had lost the fight.  Or bet.  Dak didn’t get a good look at the new gnoll before more urine washed the seed from his scales.  He was just past the first gulping mouthful of gnoll piss from the next tribe member when the gnoll behind him gave a similar throb, and hot cum flooded his rump.  He could feel it seeping back and dribbling around the ‘victorious’ male’s shaft.

Then he was gone, and another was behind him.  Hot liquid covered his back, washing evidence of the last gnoll away.  They were thorough, still pissing as the new throbbing shaft slide up into his recently vacated slit.  One by one, the gnolls exerted their dominance, just to be washed away by the next.  Did one of them have a second turn?  Could Dak tell the difference by the way one cock felt against his tongue as it flooded his throat with urine or semen?  Was it just Dak’s imagination that one of them was particularly curved downwards as they thrust into his slit?

How much later was it when he was deposited back in his cage, sore, gasping, and feeling bloated?  He could still hear cackling nearby, but it wasn’t coming closer, and his cage seemed to be safe for the moment.  He was still alive, at least!  Relief coursed through him as he lay back on the ground and tried to relax.

“Ey!  Dak!”

A familiar voice called to him from outside the cage.  Kilik was there, resplendent in her sorceress’ robes and hat.  She was another kobold, beautiful ruby to Dak’s jade.  She stared at him with arms crossed and an annoyed look on her face.  He glared at the vision.  “Are you an illusion, here to torture me in my hour of need?”

The vision of Kilik scowled.  “No.  Doofus.  I’m Kilik.  Kilik not an illusion.”

“Then.”  He groaned.  He tried to sit, but his tail was far too sore.  Instead he just rolled to face her.  “Um.  What?”

“Stupid hatchling.  What you doing with gnolls?  Sent you to humans to make peace!”

Dak mumbled.  “Went to humans.  Gnolls attacked.”

“Ah.”  Kilik seemed to think that over.  “Gnolls said they saved you.  Humans pointing swords at you?”

Dak shrugged.  He assumed that was normal human behavior.

“Stupid gnolls.  Ruined diplomacy.”  She stopped for a moment, then tilted her snout up and away from the disgraceful puddle that was Dak.  “Stupid gnolls.  Ruined my diplomat!  They said they brought you back here, and you demanded to sit in the cage.”

Dak blanked.

“Ally gnolls.  Remember?  Told you before.  Stupid Dak.  Silly hatchling.  Why you want to be in cage?”

He tried to stammer out an excuse, but his throat was too sore, and no voice came out.

“Then offered you dinner while I, busy tribe-leader Kilik, made my way here to take you off their paws.  And what they say?  You wanted sex instead?  You want to die, little kobold?  Suicidal?  Death by gnoll?  What thinking?!”

Kilik’s voice echoed strangely in the cavern, backed by distant gnollish yammering.

“Well.  What Dak have to say for himself?”

Dak spread his arms and tested his throat a few times.  Coughed.  Wiped gnoll semen from his snout.  “Um.  Dak survived?”

Kilik tapped her foot.

“Dak good diplomat?”

Kilik’s scowl deepened.  Then, as dawn breaking over the hills, she smiled.  “Yup!  Dak good diplomat.  Gnolls agreed to hunt bandits from hills and keep trade-route safe just for kobolds.”

Dak tried to sit again, but his bruised tail told him otherwise.  Instead, he raised his arms sideways in a cheer, wobbling a bit in the puddle he’d made.

“Only asked that Dak stay as diplomat.  So, since you enjoy gnolls so much, you get to stay!”

“What?”  Dak asked.

“Not much price to pay.  Was meant to ask humans, but gnolls better at hunting anyway.”

“No.  I-”  Dak ignored his aching tail and sat up.

“Would have paid in gold, but gnolls just wanted you as diplomat.  Good deal, I say!”

“Wait!”

Kilik frowned at him.  “Not like gnolls?  That not gnoll pee all over you?  Smell like you rolled in the hyena warrens.  Said you took them two at a time.  Willingly.”

“I just-” He stumbled as he tried to stand, and instead went over face-first into the puddle of cum and piss he was the epicenter center of.

“No, no need to thank Kilik.  Tribe-leader knows when to let her subjects go.  Understand, too!  Gnolls bigger than kobold.  If that what you want.”  She tossed one hand in the air and turned away.  “Good work, Dak.  Kilik proud!”

“But, I…”  He stammered, then fell into silence.

“Will send supplies and assistant in a fortnight.  In the meantime, Dak on his own.  Should be fine.  Gnolls like you, yes?”  She gave him an evil little smile over her shoulder as she flounced towards the entrance of the cave.  The dire hyenas guarding the front watched her go impassively.

Then there was a giggling from near the door of the cage.  Jailer was there with loincloth pulled to the side.  “Dak?”  He looked pleased that he’d remembered the kobold’s name.

Dak shut his eyes and groaned.