Jaynin
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2003
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I always seem to end up with one good idea and one 'meh' idea for Jalaya...
---
About the only consolation Jalaya could think of in her current state was that Goblins were far more interested in money than anything else, and so while she had spent the past three days confined to a pair of stocks while naked in their engine room, the little green beings hadn't really shown much interest in trying to paw at her. And that was actually a very big consolation indeed, because Jalaya was stark naked and with her feet securely locked in a pair of heavy wooden stocks, each of her two big toes tied back and securely held in place by eyebolts that were set into the frame of the stocks. Her large, sensitive feet were almost frightfully vulnerable in this position, but to her great relief, the Goblins - who, to be fair, actually had to reach upwards if they wanted to touch her at all, since she was a good two and a half feet off the deck of the ship - hadn't even "accidentally" pawed at her or touched her feet. One came by at mealtime to give her some meal that was usually burned or undercooked, but aside from that their primary concern seemed to be with how they were going to find out if she could pay the "fee" they had demanded for her resurrection. For the most part she was left alone, and while it was hot and often steamy, it was better than it could have been. About the only real annoyance she suffered involved the fact that there was a good deal of machinery on the far wall, including a pipe that would start vibrating erratically from time to time. Usually this was accompanied by a Goblin some time later who would grumble something about samophlanges and inductors and fiddle with something and the vibration would cease.
In short, even from this dim room somewhere near the engines (trust the Goblins to put something as untrustworthy as an engine on a ship) Jalaya could tell that everything about the ship was stereotypically Goblin. For three days they sailed, and though she could not determine where they were going, steadily increasing heat and humidity made it seem pretty certain that she was going south. It was in the middle of the fourth day, when Jalaya was contemplating the narrow bit of ocean she could make out through her porthole, that the whole ship suddenly gave a shudder and immediately thereafter very loud and very annoying horns started blaring. At the same time another shudder shook the ship and Jalaya felt a curious wrenching beneath her, a voice started booming from above, loud enough to carry down to the hold: "BLOODSAIL SHIP OFF THE PORT SIDE! BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS! MAN THOSE GUNS!!!" The Goblin voice seemed female, which seemed a bit surprising to Jalaya, but from her limited experience male or female seemed to make curiously little difference in a Goblin's explosive tendencies and lack of scruples.
Now, Jalaya knew that being tied up in the hold of a ship going to battle was far from the best place to be, and she began to grow anxious as the ship shuddered again, this time accompanied by the sound of cannons firing somewhere above her, and to her surprise she began to move. It was just a little bit, she realized, and a glance down showed that the vibrations had caused the bolts holding the pair of stocks to the deck to snap. No doubt the reason for that was rust and age and lack of maintenance. Wondering if this was her chance to escape, the Troll priestess started working at the cords which had been wrapped around her wrists - and around her forearms and up to the elbows, since there had been a lot of spare length and the Goblins hadn't been sure what to do with it. It wasn't the world's strongest material, but the fact that it was wrapped so far up her arms made it difficult to work loose. Still, she set about her task with a grim determination, aided by the fact that the vibrations were causing the whole contraption to loosen in ways that allowed her to move a little bit in a way she hadn't before. The vibrating deck caused her stocks set to rumble its way closer to the far wall and its machinery, a little bit at a time.
The slickness of her body helped now, as she was covered in sweat from the heat and humidity, her red-gold hair plastered to her back. The Goblin voice shouted commands from above from time to time, but Jalaya wasn't paying attention. That was, until the entire ship seemed to leap for a moment and settle with a resounding crash, a crash that caused whatever was wrong with that thick length of pipe to go wrong again, and set off its vibration. Jalaya was quite close to the far wall now, and feeling the cords start to slowly give way under her ceaseless working at them. Her thick-fingered hands were definitely not suited for this operation, and she took a breather to rest her arms, which were starting to ache from the constant strain. And then she felt a cold chill run through her body despite the heat.
Her completely vulnerable feet were just an inch or so away from that vibrating pipe on the wall.
Without even stopping to cry out in dismay Jalaya resumed her work on the binding cords, but it was too late - the next jolt caused her feet to come into contact with that vibrating pipe. In an instant she went from frantic but cool to completely out of control: "NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH STOP DAAHHAHAAHAHAT STOP STHAHAHAAHAHAAAAAA!!!" Jalaya screamed hysterically, raising her voice in a desperate attempt to call for help. "DEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHEHE DE PIPE BEHEHEHAHAHAEHEHEHEHAHAHAAHAH LOOSE AGAIAHHAAAAAAIN!!" But, since her only response was the sudden crash of water splashing over the ship and a moment later the return fire of Goblin cannons, Jalaya realized she didn't have a chance of being heard over the din. Worse still, had she even realized it, was that her feet had stabilized the pipe enough so that the Goblins would probably not notice anything amiss in the heat of battle, except for the fact that it was going to drive their prisoner insane.
Jalaya screamed with laughter as the vibrating pipe tortured her sensitive soles, fitting almost perfectly into the big curve of her arches, and rolling up and down along her skin with the pitch and roll of the ship during battle. Her hurried but guided struggling at the binding ropes suddenly became a frantic, aimless pulling that hindered her cause, tugging the bindings tight. She squirmed back and forth in the hard wooden seat, trying to kick her legs or pull her feet back, but those cords and the heavy wooden frame defeated her efforts to pull her feet away from the vibration, which was sending ticklish thrills throughout her entire body and causing the priestess to howl incoherently. It wasn't like it had been before; the helplessness was the same, but no matter how much Jalaya pleaded with the machine, it would just keep on vibrating and tickling her sensitive soles until she couldn't take it anymore!
The ship shuddered again, and now along with the vibration that stimulated every nerve in her sensitive feet there was a distinctly unpleasant-sounding mechanical whine coming from somewhere. She couldn't pinpoint its source, much less identify what the problem was, but the pitch of the vibration slowly started to change from a thrumming that constantly pulsed throughout her soles to a higher-pitched, rapid humming that just tickled even worse. Jalaya pounded her hands on the side of the stocks helplessly, concentration far too scattered now to effectively try and pull herself free of her restraints, and she laughed desperately, even her frustration at her ticklish soles betraying her yet again doing nothing to quell the ticklish torment. "FIHIHEHEHEHEEHEHHAHAHHEHEHEHEEEEEEX DE PIIIIIIPE!!!" Jalaya screamed once again, but another particularly violent lurch drowned out her frantic peals of laughter.
Perhaps the only real saving grace was the pipe's imprecision, but it more than made up for that fact because of how much of her sensitive feet it could cover. Her blue soles were pressed up snugly against that vibrating pipe, transferring all of that rapid humming to her ticklish feet, and Jalaya couldn't even summon the energy to panic over the fact that she might wind up on a sinking ship while restrained. Fervently she prayed that the Goblins would be able to drive off their attackers and bring this ship of theirs to shore. And then her frantic wiggling in her hard wooden chair and hysterical laughter was interrupted for a moment as her butt touched against one of the cold metal supports that had been holding the contraption together. Risking a look, trying to keep her sanity together enough to assess the situation, Jalaya peeked behind her and saw that the stocks themselves were starting to disintegrate under the vibration.
On one hand, this was very good news; the exposed edge of the rusty iron bar was just sharp enough for Jalaya to work in between her cords and begin to frantically saw at them, at least during the brief periods when she could stop laughing for long enough to think. On the other hand, it was only the chair that was falling apart; the stocks were basically just a solid bit of wood attached by hinges, and seemed quite sturdy so far. Jalaya struggled to hold onto her sanity as she laughed insanely, tears forming in the corners of her eyes from the nonstop tickling torment. She had no desire to have to find out what it'd be like to retrieve her body when it was on a ship. The tickling was not as focused as the old shaman's had been nor as comprehensive as the warlock's minions had made it, but it just would not stop. Gasping with relief when she felt the cords begin to part under the edge of the rusty iron bar beneath her, Jalaya freed her hands and tore away the remainders of the cords, immediately reaching forward and scrabbling at the stocks.
And in just that instant her hope was snatched away; the stocks were sealed by a lock. "NOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!!! YAHAHAHAEHHEHAhahaAHAHHHAAAAA YA GOTTA COME HEHEHEHEHEHELP MEHEHEHEEHEEE!" she cried out to no one in particular, so absorbed in her own ticklish torture that she failed to notice the very unsettling whine of the engines behind and beneath her. But she did notice the sudden hole that burst in the planking near the door as something sprang loose from the engine and shot off into the ship... The whole thing was shaking, Jalaya howling with helpless laughter, and only through some miracle of willpower was she able to erect a shield around herself to protect from random flying projectiles. It of course did nothing to protect her helpless feet, but Jalaya knew that if someone didn't let her out soon, it might be a moot point anyway.
Then the engines exploded.
A second before it happened a cannonball crunched through the hull just above Jalaya, tearing away a huge chunk of the deck and flooding the room with bright light, as the sunlight from above poured into that dim little room. Narrowly missing the Troll girl, it instead punched into the floor behind her and struck the already unbalanced engine. With a massive groan, the engines exploded... and Jalaya's shield saved her from being engulfed in that burst of steam and volatile gasses, instead finding herself riding the wave of pressure as the blast flung her suddenly high into the sky. "AHaahhahahaa... ahahaha... hahahaha... ohhh thank de heavens --!" The sudden clarity of the offending pipe being blown away by the explosion - Jalaya's seat had finished disintegrating when the engine blew, but those stubbornly solid stocks were still locked around her ankles, although not actually holding her to anything anymore, and she was sailing high above the ocean, high enough to see the Goblin ship start coming apart completely.
In a remarkable moment of clarity, Jalaya cast Levitate upon herself, and as she reached the height of her explosion-induced arc, her falling speed slowed to a mere fraction of what it had been. Coupled with the angle of the blast, she now found herself floating rather rapidly in a particular direction, and a quick look around revealed that she was within sight of land and heading towards it at a rather rapid clip. Jalaya sighed with relief. The coast of Stranglethorn Vale quickly passed beneath her, and she realized she must make quite an odd sight, a completely naked Troll in a pair of stocks sailing through the air. With the frantic tickle-torture of the vibrating pipe past, Jalaya was now free to turn her attention to other concerns, such as the fact that she definitely seemed to be set to come down somewhere in the Stranglethorn jungle. It would definitely not be good to get tangled up in tree branches or run full-on into a trunk, but the awkward angle of her floating gave her little recourse over where she was floating, and so she was by and large a spectator, just hoping and praying she'd land somewhere safe.
She had enough momentum to clear most of the trees, and realized as she kept going that she was coming up on the stone-walled ruins of Zul'Gurub. It would probably not be a good idea to land in there, either, especially since she had heard rumors of the Zandalari trying to reunite some of the old Troll empires and were recruiting other tribes into the fold. Zul'Gurub was full of ancient spirits and loads of magical power, and so it was fairly certain they'd at least want to see what they could salvage... and it also seemed fairly certain that Jalaya was going to end up somewhere inside the ruin. She'd just barely cleared the yellow stone walls, and she was headed directly towards the altar in the very center of the ruin. Or, well, not exactly... more like she was coming into its side, and Jalaya shielded herself again and braced for impact as she started to crash through the --
She was brought to an abrupt halt, dangling upside down above a rope-and-log bridge strung along the side of the altar. "At least I be landin' safely," Jalaya muttered, trying to bend upwards to look at her situation. Then she winced. While she wasn't that far above the ground, the big, heavy stocks had gotten caught in a tangle of vines and branches. Jalaya was not athletic enough to curl her upper body up to her feet and work at removing the lock. Perhaps more ignominiously, she realized that when she tried that she could barely lift the weight of her breasts in this position. "AH!!! No! Who be up dere? Get away from mah feet!" she yelled, but as far as she could tell there wasn't anyone up there... so who was responsible for the touch on her feet? It felt... soft, somehow, but guided. This definitely wasn't just some random movements from the wind or insects...! "Leehheheehahaheheheeheheeaahahaha leave mehehehe alone!" Jalaya shrieked, hardly able to believe her bad luck. Her hands were free, unlike before, but now completely useless as the Troll priestess started to get a little dizzy, clapping her hands to the sides of her head and twisting helplessly.
But where it mattered, her ability to move was precisely zero; her big, soft feet were stuck facing upwards in those heavy wooden stocks, and though Jalaya could not see them, living vines had taken a curious interest in her feet. Thick, ridged vines with firm tips were exploring the soft blue expanse with slow but inexorable precision, rubbing against her feet in a way that drove the upside-down priestess to new heights of screaming laughter. It might have occurred to her if she'd been able to think more clearly that her hysterical laughter should have drawn some kind of attention, some kind of response from the trolls in the area. The fact that no one seemed to care about the naked priestess shrieking with laughter up in a tree branch should have been puzzling... except for the fact that Jalaya's world currently revolved around the tip of the vine that was scratching in the middle of her sole. With the way the vine had come in precisely between her two toes and was rubbing at the spot in between while its tip scratched at her sensitive arch, it was no wonder the insanely ticklish priestess failed to notice the lack of reaction.
However, that was not to say that a busty, upside-down, hysterically shrieking and naked Troll escaped attention entirely. The reason for the lack of a respose from the denizens of Zul'Gurub was due to the fact that there was a team of Horde adventurers crunching their way through groups of determined but disorganized defenders, and while the Gurubashi Trolls failed to pay much heed to the screeching Darkspear up in the trees, the others noticed. Yet from where they were it would take them some time to reach Jalaya and free her; the priestess had landed squarely above the central ziggurat, which was located on an island in the middle of the compound, and both bridges to the center island were heavily guarded and inaccessible. In short, Jalaya was going to spend quite a while longer guiding her would-be rescuers to her with howls of laughter.
Not that Jalaya noticed this intrepid team. The vines on her soles were multiplying, the rough barklike skin of their stems scraping across her feet in a way that was particularly torturous. It wasn't malicious in and of itself, as for whatever reason it seemed that the plant was exploring her feet inch by inch, with the tactile sensors in the tip of the vine its only true sensory organ. Curious but not hostile to the being which had suddenly made its way into the tree in which this vine lived, Jalaya's feet were soon playing host to more and more vines, each crawling and slithering their way over the sensitive spots in her feet. The ticklish Troll was beside herself with hysteria, screaming useless pleas to the vines up above which tormented her so. The heavy wooden stocks which were still locked about her ankles kept her struggles to a minimum, and eventually one of the intrepid vines explored far enough down to find the small space between her feet and the wood, leading the way for the others to follow.
Gradually, the vines began to creep down over her legs, but there were always some still exploring every last inch of her feet, because those pinpoint tips covered ground very very slowly, and had barely charted out the spaces just beneath her toes. It was, in short, going to be a very long exploration of her ticklish soles, and as Jalaya felt the vines start to creep down her legs, over her buttocks and hips, and start making their way down to her head, she tried desperately to fend them off while laughing hysterically. But it was no good; the vines inexorably made their way over her wrists, and effectively tied her up, forcing her to stretch out so those rough vines could scrape against her skin to their hearts' content. Worse still, Jalaya found she wasn't getting dizzy, as the gravity-defying effects of the Levitate spell kept the blood from rushing to her head, and the ticklish Troll screamed and struggled... if someone didn't help her soon, she was going to expire from tickle torture!
Jalaya laughed until her throat felt raw when the ticklish tips stroked against the centers of her soles. Gasping for air in the midst of all that laughter, unable to even struggle vainly to reach those devilish instruments because of the vines holding her in place, she knew that she had to do something, but there was nothing to be done. The sound of her own laughter filled her ears, loud enough that the telltale sounds of metal on metal and the whooshing distortion of magic flying through the air failed to register with her. This despite the fact that the small band was valiantly pressing on towards her location, numbering only four instead of the usual five. And while they had certainly noticed her, the Troll whose ticklish laughter was ringing out throughout the entire complex, Jalaya still hadn't seen them, reduced to begging mindlessly with the uncomprehending vines that tickled her body into helpless submission. It wasn't until they were right beneath her that she finally noticed them: "HEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHEHE HELP MEHEHEHEHE!! I GONNA DIEHHEEHEHAHAEHEHEHEHEEE!!!"
"What class are you?" called up the overly-urbane voice of a male Blood Elf, who seemed as usual to have no place on the battlefield, dressed in flowing mage's robes. "We do need a healer, actually... the last one we had left after a misunderstanding..."
"I BEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEH A PRIEHEEHHEEHEHEEEEST! PLEEEHEHEHEHEH PLEEEHEHEHEHE PLEASE LEMME GOHOHOOO AN DEN WHEHEHEHEEEE CAN TALK!" Jalaya cried, ticklish tears dripping in reverse down her face and landing on the ground below her.
"Wait just a minute," an Orc warlock said, shouting to be heard over her hysteria. "We can't take her for the next fight. Look at her gear." The large brown bear shimmered and became a Tauren Druid, and the Goblin male carrying a gun looked upwards to follow his companion's pointing finger. And he continued pointing his finger even as they all lapsed into silence, as if noticing for the first time that Jalaya was stark naked. "Her, uh, her gear..." the Orc said, trying to collect his thoughts --
"Is just perfect," the big, cowlike Tauren rumbled. Then he smiled.
---
Jalaya floated a bit awkwardly at the same time she crouched down and tried to cover herself. "There," the druid said quietly, "Jin'do. I've heard that he has powerful allies and magic in the spirit realm, so be ready for him to try and drag us into it if he can't win in a straight up fight." And without even waiting for her to acknowledge, or even really paying any attention to her at all, the druid shapeshifted into the form of a large bear, charged up the stone steps to the top of the Gurubashi ziggurat in the middle of the jungly fortress, and roared at the suspicious-looking Troll who was adorned with skulls and charms and robes that looked like they hadn't been repaired in quite a long time. With roars equally devoid of thought, his companions broke out from where they'd been hiding, and the battle atop the altar commenced.
For Jalaya, her job was relatively simple, but required a lot of focus and quick reactions. She floated at a relatively safe distance away from Jin'do, the leader of the resurgent faction within Zul'Gurub, and kept an eye on the bear that was currently fighting with him. It was her job to keep the bear and all the rest of her party healthy, and banishing the distracting thoughts and doubts about her companions' intelligence, she set to work casting her healing and defensive spells to shield her allies from the mad shaman's onslaught. At first, this was not too difficult; the bear was quicker than one would assume a bear might be, and prevented the Troll's staff from landing critical blows, twisting and dodging so that the staff mostly thumped down on the bear's thick flanks or back. The tip of the skull-and-feather adorned staff Jin'do held was capped with a sharp point, however, so already half a dozen score marks were evident on the bear's hide. It was Jalaya's job to seal the gashes up and stop them from bleeding.
Eventually, in an attempt to even the odds, the Troll shrieked an incantation and a green-and-black dome formed about his body, encompassing both him and the druid. Jalaya immediately noticed that magic was degraded significantly within that dome, hampering the mage's frequent fireballs, the warlock's evil-looking green ray, and her own healing magic. But before she could shout a warning to the bear, he lowered his head and, with a mighty growl, butted the shaman backwards and out of the magic-suppressing dome; the dome stayed where it had been, and the bear put himself between Jin'do and the safety of that spot. At least her tank was perceptive, Jalaya thought with a relieved sigh. With nothing else to focus on besides the single shaman in front of them, her three other companions were doing quite fine as well.
Jin'do realized this after he was bleeding from a dozen claw marks and bullet wounds, but the power of the magic that was so deeply infused within his body kept him both upright and in fighting condition. Still, he wasn't stupid enough to think that he could win this fight straight up, and so with a sudden twist to the side, he dodged the bear's swipe, darted past him to the opposite end of the altar, and leapt into the air, seeming to freeze in mid-leap as a milky white cocoon formed itself around him. "Ha ha ha! Ya not be touchin' me now!" he said triumphantly, and it was true, neither sword nor spell penetrated that barrier. "Ya all gonna go to da spirit realm now. Da shadows gonna drag you down!"
The air around her grew hazy. "Watch out!" the Orc barked, as out of the shimmering air an enormous, muscle-bound Troll appeared, but the druid was in time, crashing into that huge form and starting to wrestle with it while standing on his hind legs. In the meantime, as the real world around them faded and went grey, three enormous chains appeared, binding the barrier of Jin'do together. "There! That's it! Destroy those chains and we'll bring the barrier down!" the Orc snapped, but even as he did so, out of the looming grey fog something black appeared...
It was a shade, an incorporeal being with a lower half that tapered down to a point, a muscular-looking human torso and arms that ended in three pointed fingers, red eyes and no mouth to go with its angular face. It was also entirely black, and with a surprised yell the warlock enveloped the shade in flame, causing it to wither and collapse into dust. But more were coming, and trying to leech the life force out of her allies as they struggled in combat... "One of you worry about de chain!" Jalaya yelled, employing her magic to keep the fell touch of the shades at bay. "De rest of you kill dese apparitions! Else we all gonna die!"
It was as if they had not heard; each of them, remembering the Orc's command to destroy the barrier, ran and dodged away from the shades, who continued to multiply, and... "HYEEeEEEEEeeeeeheheeeeek!!!" The shriek of laughter startled even Jalaya, but the others were too busy to notice that a pair of shade's hands had grown from the stones beneath her feet, and were casually tickling along her soles. "NYhahhaahahahahahaahah stop dat! SThahahaahahahahahahahaa!!!" she squealed, dancing away from the ticklish touch. The hands retracted, and Jalaya shook her head to clear it, trying to regain the focus that she needed to keep her companions from succumbing to the shades... "KYEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHEEHEEEEEE!!!" Another pair beneath her floating feet, this time stroking at the soft instep with hands that should have been cold and dry but instead tickled like hell.
Jalaya barely managed to finish her cast before attempting to backpedal away from the tickling hands and fell down on her ass. Because of her Levitate spell, she didn't actually fall to the stone, but instead was suspended a good foot or so off the ground. Still the ticklish black fingers caressed her soles, and she backed away from them, giggling all the while, and as she tried to regain her footing she cast healing spells indiscriminately, ones that required just a snap thought and a target, but were far too exhausting to do many times in sequence. "Heheheheheheheheheheelp meheheheehe!!!" she squealed as, crawling away on hands and knees, another finger managed to drill deep into the soft flesh of her feet and cause her to jerk away and curl up into a ball for a brief second, squealing with laughter. Trying desperately to keep herself together, Jalaya rolled to the side and managed to get back upright, but she dared not stop moving and as a result her concentration was frayed, straining her mental resources as she tried to help out her companions, running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
"Healer!" the mage barked, looking around for her. "Come on, heals, we're getting clobbered out here! Keep up!"
"Why don't ya tink about ya own job and not be botherin' - MEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHEEHEEEE!!!!" Her heated retort was cut off as a pair of those black, shadowy hands grabbed her ankles, allowing a second set to rise out of the stone and trace its fingers torturously along her big, vulnerable foot, and then do it again and again, making Jalaya's breasts bobble as the laughter welled up inside of her and then gushed out. The distraction caused her spell to fizzle, and try as she might, as long as she was being tickled she couldn't muster the concentration necessary to cast any sort of spell. "STHAhAAHAH AHAHAHAHAH AAHAHAHAHA EHEHEHEHEHEHEEEEE!!!" However, instead of the quick, drilling tickles of before, now that the hands had leave to explore her feet at leisure, they did so, and Jalaya's howls quickly rose to a crescendo as the number of shades slowly increased, her allies unable to keep up with the rate at which they were spawning.
Jalaya had fallen forward, and one enterprising pair of hands was teasing her breasts and nipples, but it was the feet that were the real prize. Shades began to experimentally tickle her feet, clustering around the helpless girl as their dark bodies pressed together and seemed to wax and wane. The disembodied hands from the stone ziggurat were gone, replaced by the carefully guided strokes of the massing shades upon her ticklish soles. Methodically they divided her feet up, fingers searching every nook and cranny within their designated zones: of course there was one hand devoted to each toe, and they shared the responsibility of tickling in between, the fingers feeling like a spider's legs as they carefully walked upon every inch of those helpless digits. She had expected the shades' claws to be cold, painful, unpleasant, something besides being absolutely suited to tickle her to death.
By now her allies had seen that they were going to be overwhelmed, and that there was no chance of victory. In the blink of an eye they turned from fighting to retreating; the mage shimmered and vanished, having gone invisible; the Orc warlock's body suddenly disappeared in a flash of green fire, reappearing down at the base of the ziggurat where he'd summoned his dreadsteed; the hunter pressed a button on his belt, and out of nowhere rocket thrusters flared to life to support him in jumping off the top of the ziggurat, while a parachute deployed from his backpack to keep him safe from the fall. And last of all, the bear's form shimmered and became sleeker, a cheetah that slipped through the huge clumsy Troll's grasp, ran up his arm and jumped off the top of his head before shimmering again into the form of a hawk and flying away. Jalaya was left alone with the ticklish shades.
With the sense of urgency now gone, the shades were free to tickle torture Jalaya's soles to their hearts' content, if they even had any hearts. Jalaya couldn't really spend too much time thinking about that because of the massive group tickle torture that was afflicting her soles at the moment; Jalaya knew that she'd be unable to avoid the inevitable result this time. Her life force was being laughed away through the shades' relentless tickling, exhausting her willpower and her energy as the soft Troll feet were exploited to the fullest. Some of the shades' fingers proved to be more than just fingers - their digits transformed into scratchers, or feathers, or even just started to vibrate. That was particularly bad when it was guided by some form of intelligence; the vibrating pipe had been bad enough, but the vibrating rods that roamed around her feet were torture of the most unbearable degree.
Jin'do seemed to be particularly uninterested in her fate, or even the fact that the shades had chosen to tickle her instead of draining her life force in a more standard fashion. Once the intruders had been dealt with, he retracted his shield and went back to the ritual he had been performing atop the ziggurat. "NEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH MAKEHEHEHAHEEH MAKE IT STOP, MON! IHEHEHEAHAHAHAHAH IGIHEHEHAEAHEHEHE GIVE hEAHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEH UP!" Jalaya begged, trying to get the shaman's attention, but he ignored her completely. The shades' fingers had all become long, flexible, vibrating rods with tips just sharp enough to tickle, and Jalaya's tears streamed down her face in a never-ending waterfall. Again, she was in the clutches of a foe who seemed particularly uninterested in her nakedness; Jalaya was well aware of the fact that her gigantic tits caught the eyes of many, male and female both, and so not having to worry about that seemed... odd. But that just allowed her to focus her worrying entirely on the fact that she was being tickled to death.
The problem with that only became evident some time later, as Jalaya lay helpless in the grasp of shades that tickled her with singleminded determination. She had long since abandoned the will to struggle or fight back, simply waiting for the end so she could run back to her body and get on with escaping from Zul'Gurub. But she hadn't considered the fact that Jin'do had thrown them all into the spirit realm during the battle... and so, technically, her spirit couldn't separate from her body and travel through the spirit realm, because she was already there. It took her quite a bit of time to reach that conclusion herself. By the time she did, however, Jalaya was in no condition to do anything about it whatsoever.
Those shadowy hands tickled precisely with their vibrating clawtips at the spots in the middle of her feet that made her scream; only she was far too exhausted to scream. It was a curious disconnect, as Jalaya could feel the frantic ticklish response from her soles demanding that she get free, but her body simply had nothing in the way of such a reaction to give. The ticklish spot in between her two toes was stimulated nonstop by fingers that took on a form much like the ridged vines that had tortured her upon her arrival within the ruins. Every single time they moved, the ridges made her nerves scream with titillation, but in the general cacophony of ticklish feelings that flooded her mind they too mixed in with everything else. The line just above her heels that the warlock's succubi had found so interesting had its own very fine clawtip devoted to exploring that tiniest of creases.
The tireless ticklings of the shades never seemed to get duller in Jalaya's mind, or more bearable. It seemed as if she should be getting used to it, or something. Or her feet would get sore from the constant stimulation. But neither seemed to happen, and she felt vaguely detached from herself; still quite aware of her tickle torture, of course, and feeling every last agonizingly ticklish jolt. Some part of her had fled, however, a defense mechanism to keep her from going completely insane, and while she was aware of what her body was feeling her mind had done its best to shut down the part of her that responded to it. She was exhausted, barely able to think coherently, and even now she had the floating, disorienting feeling of being in a dream at best. Why they continued to tickle her was a mystery... the gaggle of shapes floating around her feet never ceased, and other images moved in and out of the fog. Memories. The huge troll that the bear had been fighting... chains... a milky white cocoon.
Jalaya knew she must look a fright, nonstop crying turning her usually soft blue skin into a reddish puffy mess from too much crying and laughing and blushing. Dim shapes seemed to weave in and out of her vision now, the allies that had forsaken her and left her here to suffer ticklishly forever... was she dreaming? It was so hard to tell anymore. The shapes shifted at random in the fog, more shades, some not, ticklishness ruling her world as the hazy white of the spirit world made any kind of logic train difficult to follow. Jalaya wasn't even aware of it as the tickling stopped, at first; what she did become aware of was the fact that the birds were chirping and the sun shining warmly down upon her naked body. Yet she didn't react to this change of stimulation at first, and didn't really realize she wasn't being tickled anymore.
"That was simple," a voice was saying. "This Troll was distracting the shades the whole time, so when Jin'do summoned them, they ignored us and went straight for her. Made the whole thing a cinch." A voice that wasn't her own. Jalaya blinked, consciously, and tried to sit up, but a hand pushed her back down onto her back - still floating - and through her tear-blurred eyes Jalaya could see another blue face looking down into hers, but with glowing eyes and horns. "Well, what should we do with the Troll? Seems like she's in a bad way..."
"Take her. We'll figure out exactly what to do later."
---
About the only consolation Jalaya could think of in her current state was that Goblins were far more interested in money than anything else, and so while she had spent the past three days confined to a pair of stocks while naked in their engine room, the little green beings hadn't really shown much interest in trying to paw at her. And that was actually a very big consolation indeed, because Jalaya was stark naked and with her feet securely locked in a pair of heavy wooden stocks, each of her two big toes tied back and securely held in place by eyebolts that were set into the frame of the stocks. Her large, sensitive feet were almost frightfully vulnerable in this position, but to her great relief, the Goblins - who, to be fair, actually had to reach upwards if they wanted to touch her at all, since she was a good two and a half feet off the deck of the ship - hadn't even "accidentally" pawed at her or touched her feet. One came by at mealtime to give her some meal that was usually burned or undercooked, but aside from that their primary concern seemed to be with how they were going to find out if she could pay the "fee" they had demanded for her resurrection. For the most part she was left alone, and while it was hot and often steamy, it was better than it could have been. About the only real annoyance she suffered involved the fact that there was a good deal of machinery on the far wall, including a pipe that would start vibrating erratically from time to time. Usually this was accompanied by a Goblin some time later who would grumble something about samophlanges and inductors and fiddle with something and the vibration would cease.
In short, even from this dim room somewhere near the engines (trust the Goblins to put something as untrustworthy as an engine on a ship) Jalaya could tell that everything about the ship was stereotypically Goblin. For three days they sailed, and though she could not determine where they were going, steadily increasing heat and humidity made it seem pretty certain that she was going south. It was in the middle of the fourth day, when Jalaya was contemplating the narrow bit of ocean she could make out through her porthole, that the whole ship suddenly gave a shudder and immediately thereafter very loud and very annoying horns started blaring. At the same time another shudder shook the ship and Jalaya felt a curious wrenching beneath her, a voice started booming from above, loud enough to carry down to the hold: "BLOODSAIL SHIP OFF THE PORT SIDE! BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS! MAN THOSE GUNS!!!" The Goblin voice seemed female, which seemed a bit surprising to Jalaya, but from her limited experience male or female seemed to make curiously little difference in a Goblin's explosive tendencies and lack of scruples.
Now, Jalaya knew that being tied up in the hold of a ship going to battle was far from the best place to be, and she began to grow anxious as the ship shuddered again, this time accompanied by the sound of cannons firing somewhere above her, and to her surprise she began to move. It was just a little bit, she realized, and a glance down showed that the vibrations had caused the bolts holding the pair of stocks to the deck to snap. No doubt the reason for that was rust and age and lack of maintenance. Wondering if this was her chance to escape, the Troll priestess started working at the cords which had been wrapped around her wrists - and around her forearms and up to the elbows, since there had been a lot of spare length and the Goblins hadn't been sure what to do with it. It wasn't the world's strongest material, but the fact that it was wrapped so far up her arms made it difficult to work loose. Still, she set about her task with a grim determination, aided by the fact that the vibrations were causing the whole contraption to loosen in ways that allowed her to move a little bit in a way she hadn't before. The vibrating deck caused her stocks set to rumble its way closer to the far wall and its machinery, a little bit at a time.
The slickness of her body helped now, as she was covered in sweat from the heat and humidity, her red-gold hair plastered to her back. The Goblin voice shouted commands from above from time to time, but Jalaya wasn't paying attention. That was, until the entire ship seemed to leap for a moment and settle with a resounding crash, a crash that caused whatever was wrong with that thick length of pipe to go wrong again, and set off its vibration. Jalaya was quite close to the far wall now, and feeling the cords start to slowly give way under her ceaseless working at them. Her thick-fingered hands were definitely not suited for this operation, and she took a breather to rest her arms, which were starting to ache from the constant strain. And then she felt a cold chill run through her body despite the heat.
Her completely vulnerable feet were just an inch or so away from that vibrating pipe on the wall.
Without even stopping to cry out in dismay Jalaya resumed her work on the binding cords, but it was too late - the next jolt caused her feet to come into contact with that vibrating pipe. In an instant she went from frantic but cool to completely out of control: "NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH STOP DAAHHAHAAHAHAT STOP STHAHAHAAHAHAAAAAA!!!" Jalaya screamed hysterically, raising her voice in a desperate attempt to call for help. "DEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHEHE DE PIPE BEHEHEHAHAHAEHEHEHEHAHAHAAHAH LOOSE AGAIAHHAAAAAAIN!!" But, since her only response was the sudden crash of water splashing over the ship and a moment later the return fire of Goblin cannons, Jalaya realized she didn't have a chance of being heard over the din. Worse still, had she even realized it, was that her feet had stabilized the pipe enough so that the Goblins would probably not notice anything amiss in the heat of battle, except for the fact that it was going to drive their prisoner insane.
Jalaya screamed with laughter as the vibrating pipe tortured her sensitive soles, fitting almost perfectly into the big curve of her arches, and rolling up and down along her skin with the pitch and roll of the ship during battle. Her hurried but guided struggling at the binding ropes suddenly became a frantic, aimless pulling that hindered her cause, tugging the bindings tight. She squirmed back and forth in the hard wooden seat, trying to kick her legs or pull her feet back, but those cords and the heavy wooden frame defeated her efforts to pull her feet away from the vibration, which was sending ticklish thrills throughout her entire body and causing the priestess to howl incoherently. It wasn't like it had been before; the helplessness was the same, but no matter how much Jalaya pleaded with the machine, it would just keep on vibrating and tickling her sensitive soles until she couldn't take it anymore!
The ship shuddered again, and now along with the vibration that stimulated every nerve in her sensitive feet there was a distinctly unpleasant-sounding mechanical whine coming from somewhere. She couldn't pinpoint its source, much less identify what the problem was, but the pitch of the vibration slowly started to change from a thrumming that constantly pulsed throughout her soles to a higher-pitched, rapid humming that just tickled even worse. Jalaya pounded her hands on the side of the stocks helplessly, concentration far too scattered now to effectively try and pull herself free of her restraints, and she laughed desperately, even her frustration at her ticklish soles betraying her yet again doing nothing to quell the ticklish torment. "FIHIHEHEHEHEEHEHHAHAHHEHEHEHEEEEEEX DE PIIIIIIPE!!!" Jalaya screamed once again, but another particularly violent lurch drowned out her frantic peals of laughter.
Perhaps the only real saving grace was the pipe's imprecision, but it more than made up for that fact because of how much of her sensitive feet it could cover. Her blue soles were pressed up snugly against that vibrating pipe, transferring all of that rapid humming to her ticklish feet, and Jalaya couldn't even summon the energy to panic over the fact that she might wind up on a sinking ship while restrained. Fervently she prayed that the Goblins would be able to drive off their attackers and bring this ship of theirs to shore. And then her frantic wiggling in her hard wooden chair and hysterical laughter was interrupted for a moment as her butt touched against one of the cold metal supports that had been holding the contraption together. Risking a look, trying to keep her sanity together enough to assess the situation, Jalaya peeked behind her and saw that the stocks themselves were starting to disintegrate under the vibration.
On one hand, this was very good news; the exposed edge of the rusty iron bar was just sharp enough for Jalaya to work in between her cords and begin to frantically saw at them, at least during the brief periods when she could stop laughing for long enough to think. On the other hand, it was only the chair that was falling apart; the stocks were basically just a solid bit of wood attached by hinges, and seemed quite sturdy so far. Jalaya struggled to hold onto her sanity as she laughed insanely, tears forming in the corners of her eyes from the nonstop tickling torment. She had no desire to have to find out what it'd be like to retrieve her body when it was on a ship. The tickling was not as focused as the old shaman's had been nor as comprehensive as the warlock's minions had made it, but it just would not stop. Gasping with relief when she felt the cords begin to part under the edge of the rusty iron bar beneath her, Jalaya freed her hands and tore away the remainders of the cords, immediately reaching forward and scrabbling at the stocks.
And in just that instant her hope was snatched away; the stocks were sealed by a lock. "NOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!!! YAHAHAHAEHHEHAhahaAHAHHHAAAAA YA GOTTA COME HEHEHEHEHEHELP MEHEHEHEEHEEE!" she cried out to no one in particular, so absorbed in her own ticklish torture that she failed to notice the very unsettling whine of the engines behind and beneath her. But she did notice the sudden hole that burst in the planking near the door as something sprang loose from the engine and shot off into the ship... The whole thing was shaking, Jalaya howling with helpless laughter, and only through some miracle of willpower was she able to erect a shield around herself to protect from random flying projectiles. It of course did nothing to protect her helpless feet, but Jalaya knew that if someone didn't let her out soon, it might be a moot point anyway.
Then the engines exploded.
A second before it happened a cannonball crunched through the hull just above Jalaya, tearing away a huge chunk of the deck and flooding the room with bright light, as the sunlight from above poured into that dim little room. Narrowly missing the Troll girl, it instead punched into the floor behind her and struck the already unbalanced engine. With a massive groan, the engines exploded... and Jalaya's shield saved her from being engulfed in that burst of steam and volatile gasses, instead finding herself riding the wave of pressure as the blast flung her suddenly high into the sky. "AHaahhahahaa... ahahaha... hahahaha... ohhh thank de heavens --!" The sudden clarity of the offending pipe being blown away by the explosion - Jalaya's seat had finished disintegrating when the engine blew, but those stubbornly solid stocks were still locked around her ankles, although not actually holding her to anything anymore, and she was sailing high above the ocean, high enough to see the Goblin ship start coming apart completely.
In a remarkable moment of clarity, Jalaya cast Levitate upon herself, and as she reached the height of her explosion-induced arc, her falling speed slowed to a mere fraction of what it had been. Coupled with the angle of the blast, she now found herself floating rather rapidly in a particular direction, and a quick look around revealed that she was within sight of land and heading towards it at a rather rapid clip. Jalaya sighed with relief. The coast of Stranglethorn Vale quickly passed beneath her, and she realized she must make quite an odd sight, a completely naked Troll in a pair of stocks sailing through the air. With the frantic tickle-torture of the vibrating pipe past, Jalaya was now free to turn her attention to other concerns, such as the fact that she definitely seemed to be set to come down somewhere in the Stranglethorn jungle. It would definitely not be good to get tangled up in tree branches or run full-on into a trunk, but the awkward angle of her floating gave her little recourse over where she was floating, and so she was by and large a spectator, just hoping and praying she'd land somewhere safe.
She had enough momentum to clear most of the trees, and realized as she kept going that she was coming up on the stone-walled ruins of Zul'Gurub. It would probably not be a good idea to land in there, either, especially since she had heard rumors of the Zandalari trying to reunite some of the old Troll empires and were recruiting other tribes into the fold. Zul'Gurub was full of ancient spirits and loads of magical power, and so it was fairly certain they'd at least want to see what they could salvage... and it also seemed fairly certain that Jalaya was going to end up somewhere inside the ruin. She'd just barely cleared the yellow stone walls, and she was headed directly towards the altar in the very center of the ruin. Or, well, not exactly... more like she was coming into its side, and Jalaya shielded herself again and braced for impact as she started to crash through the --
She was brought to an abrupt halt, dangling upside down above a rope-and-log bridge strung along the side of the altar. "At least I be landin' safely," Jalaya muttered, trying to bend upwards to look at her situation. Then she winced. While she wasn't that far above the ground, the big, heavy stocks had gotten caught in a tangle of vines and branches. Jalaya was not athletic enough to curl her upper body up to her feet and work at removing the lock. Perhaps more ignominiously, she realized that when she tried that she could barely lift the weight of her breasts in this position. "AH!!! No! Who be up dere? Get away from mah feet!" she yelled, but as far as she could tell there wasn't anyone up there... so who was responsible for the touch on her feet? It felt... soft, somehow, but guided. This definitely wasn't just some random movements from the wind or insects...! "Leehheheehahaheheheeheheeaahahaha leave mehehehe alone!" Jalaya shrieked, hardly able to believe her bad luck. Her hands were free, unlike before, but now completely useless as the Troll priestess started to get a little dizzy, clapping her hands to the sides of her head and twisting helplessly.
But where it mattered, her ability to move was precisely zero; her big, soft feet were stuck facing upwards in those heavy wooden stocks, and though Jalaya could not see them, living vines had taken a curious interest in her feet. Thick, ridged vines with firm tips were exploring the soft blue expanse with slow but inexorable precision, rubbing against her feet in a way that drove the upside-down priestess to new heights of screaming laughter. It might have occurred to her if she'd been able to think more clearly that her hysterical laughter should have drawn some kind of attention, some kind of response from the trolls in the area. The fact that no one seemed to care about the naked priestess shrieking with laughter up in a tree branch should have been puzzling... except for the fact that Jalaya's world currently revolved around the tip of the vine that was scratching in the middle of her sole. With the way the vine had come in precisely between her two toes and was rubbing at the spot in between while its tip scratched at her sensitive arch, it was no wonder the insanely ticklish priestess failed to notice the lack of reaction.
However, that was not to say that a busty, upside-down, hysterically shrieking and naked Troll escaped attention entirely. The reason for the lack of a respose from the denizens of Zul'Gurub was due to the fact that there was a team of Horde adventurers crunching their way through groups of determined but disorganized defenders, and while the Gurubashi Trolls failed to pay much heed to the screeching Darkspear up in the trees, the others noticed. Yet from where they were it would take them some time to reach Jalaya and free her; the priestess had landed squarely above the central ziggurat, which was located on an island in the middle of the compound, and both bridges to the center island were heavily guarded and inaccessible. In short, Jalaya was going to spend quite a while longer guiding her would-be rescuers to her with howls of laughter.
Not that Jalaya noticed this intrepid team. The vines on her soles were multiplying, the rough barklike skin of their stems scraping across her feet in a way that was particularly torturous. It wasn't malicious in and of itself, as for whatever reason it seemed that the plant was exploring her feet inch by inch, with the tactile sensors in the tip of the vine its only true sensory organ. Curious but not hostile to the being which had suddenly made its way into the tree in which this vine lived, Jalaya's feet were soon playing host to more and more vines, each crawling and slithering their way over the sensitive spots in her feet. The ticklish Troll was beside herself with hysteria, screaming useless pleas to the vines up above which tormented her so. The heavy wooden stocks which were still locked about her ankles kept her struggles to a minimum, and eventually one of the intrepid vines explored far enough down to find the small space between her feet and the wood, leading the way for the others to follow.
Gradually, the vines began to creep down over her legs, but there were always some still exploring every last inch of her feet, because those pinpoint tips covered ground very very slowly, and had barely charted out the spaces just beneath her toes. It was, in short, going to be a very long exploration of her ticklish soles, and as Jalaya felt the vines start to creep down her legs, over her buttocks and hips, and start making their way down to her head, she tried desperately to fend them off while laughing hysterically. But it was no good; the vines inexorably made their way over her wrists, and effectively tied her up, forcing her to stretch out so those rough vines could scrape against her skin to their hearts' content. Worse still, Jalaya found she wasn't getting dizzy, as the gravity-defying effects of the Levitate spell kept the blood from rushing to her head, and the ticklish Troll screamed and struggled... if someone didn't help her soon, she was going to expire from tickle torture!
Jalaya laughed until her throat felt raw when the ticklish tips stroked against the centers of her soles. Gasping for air in the midst of all that laughter, unable to even struggle vainly to reach those devilish instruments because of the vines holding her in place, she knew that she had to do something, but there was nothing to be done. The sound of her own laughter filled her ears, loud enough that the telltale sounds of metal on metal and the whooshing distortion of magic flying through the air failed to register with her. This despite the fact that the small band was valiantly pressing on towards her location, numbering only four instead of the usual five. And while they had certainly noticed her, the Troll whose ticklish laughter was ringing out throughout the entire complex, Jalaya still hadn't seen them, reduced to begging mindlessly with the uncomprehending vines that tickled her body into helpless submission. It wasn't until they were right beneath her that she finally noticed them: "HEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHEHE HELP MEHEHEHEHE!! I GONNA DIEHHEEHEHAHAEHEHEHEHEEE!!!"
"What class are you?" called up the overly-urbane voice of a male Blood Elf, who seemed as usual to have no place on the battlefield, dressed in flowing mage's robes. "We do need a healer, actually... the last one we had left after a misunderstanding..."
"I BEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEH A PRIEHEEHHEEHEHEEEEST! PLEEEHEHEHEHEH PLEEEHEHEHEHE PLEASE LEMME GOHOHOOO AN DEN WHEHEHEHEEEE CAN TALK!" Jalaya cried, ticklish tears dripping in reverse down her face and landing on the ground below her.
"Wait just a minute," an Orc warlock said, shouting to be heard over her hysteria. "We can't take her for the next fight. Look at her gear." The large brown bear shimmered and became a Tauren Druid, and the Goblin male carrying a gun looked upwards to follow his companion's pointing finger. And he continued pointing his finger even as they all lapsed into silence, as if noticing for the first time that Jalaya was stark naked. "Her, uh, her gear..." the Orc said, trying to collect his thoughts --
"Is just perfect," the big, cowlike Tauren rumbled. Then he smiled.
---
Jalaya floated a bit awkwardly at the same time she crouched down and tried to cover herself. "There," the druid said quietly, "Jin'do. I've heard that he has powerful allies and magic in the spirit realm, so be ready for him to try and drag us into it if he can't win in a straight up fight." And without even waiting for her to acknowledge, or even really paying any attention to her at all, the druid shapeshifted into the form of a large bear, charged up the stone steps to the top of the Gurubashi ziggurat in the middle of the jungly fortress, and roared at the suspicious-looking Troll who was adorned with skulls and charms and robes that looked like they hadn't been repaired in quite a long time. With roars equally devoid of thought, his companions broke out from where they'd been hiding, and the battle atop the altar commenced.
For Jalaya, her job was relatively simple, but required a lot of focus and quick reactions. She floated at a relatively safe distance away from Jin'do, the leader of the resurgent faction within Zul'Gurub, and kept an eye on the bear that was currently fighting with him. It was her job to keep the bear and all the rest of her party healthy, and banishing the distracting thoughts and doubts about her companions' intelligence, she set to work casting her healing and defensive spells to shield her allies from the mad shaman's onslaught. At first, this was not too difficult; the bear was quicker than one would assume a bear might be, and prevented the Troll's staff from landing critical blows, twisting and dodging so that the staff mostly thumped down on the bear's thick flanks or back. The tip of the skull-and-feather adorned staff Jin'do held was capped with a sharp point, however, so already half a dozen score marks were evident on the bear's hide. It was Jalaya's job to seal the gashes up and stop them from bleeding.
Eventually, in an attempt to even the odds, the Troll shrieked an incantation and a green-and-black dome formed about his body, encompassing both him and the druid. Jalaya immediately noticed that magic was degraded significantly within that dome, hampering the mage's frequent fireballs, the warlock's evil-looking green ray, and her own healing magic. But before she could shout a warning to the bear, he lowered his head and, with a mighty growl, butted the shaman backwards and out of the magic-suppressing dome; the dome stayed where it had been, and the bear put himself between Jin'do and the safety of that spot. At least her tank was perceptive, Jalaya thought with a relieved sigh. With nothing else to focus on besides the single shaman in front of them, her three other companions were doing quite fine as well.
Jin'do realized this after he was bleeding from a dozen claw marks and bullet wounds, but the power of the magic that was so deeply infused within his body kept him both upright and in fighting condition. Still, he wasn't stupid enough to think that he could win this fight straight up, and so with a sudden twist to the side, he dodged the bear's swipe, darted past him to the opposite end of the altar, and leapt into the air, seeming to freeze in mid-leap as a milky white cocoon formed itself around him. "Ha ha ha! Ya not be touchin' me now!" he said triumphantly, and it was true, neither sword nor spell penetrated that barrier. "Ya all gonna go to da spirit realm now. Da shadows gonna drag you down!"
The air around her grew hazy. "Watch out!" the Orc barked, as out of the shimmering air an enormous, muscle-bound Troll appeared, but the druid was in time, crashing into that huge form and starting to wrestle with it while standing on his hind legs. In the meantime, as the real world around them faded and went grey, three enormous chains appeared, binding the barrier of Jin'do together. "There! That's it! Destroy those chains and we'll bring the barrier down!" the Orc snapped, but even as he did so, out of the looming grey fog something black appeared...
It was a shade, an incorporeal being with a lower half that tapered down to a point, a muscular-looking human torso and arms that ended in three pointed fingers, red eyes and no mouth to go with its angular face. It was also entirely black, and with a surprised yell the warlock enveloped the shade in flame, causing it to wither and collapse into dust. But more were coming, and trying to leech the life force out of her allies as they struggled in combat... "One of you worry about de chain!" Jalaya yelled, employing her magic to keep the fell touch of the shades at bay. "De rest of you kill dese apparitions! Else we all gonna die!"
It was as if they had not heard; each of them, remembering the Orc's command to destroy the barrier, ran and dodged away from the shades, who continued to multiply, and... "HYEEeEEEEEeeeeeheheeeeek!!!" The shriek of laughter startled even Jalaya, but the others were too busy to notice that a pair of shade's hands had grown from the stones beneath her feet, and were casually tickling along her soles. "NYhahhaahahahahahaahah stop dat! SThahahaahahahahahahahaa!!!" she squealed, dancing away from the ticklish touch. The hands retracted, and Jalaya shook her head to clear it, trying to regain the focus that she needed to keep her companions from succumbing to the shades... "KYEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHEEHEEEEEE!!!" Another pair beneath her floating feet, this time stroking at the soft instep with hands that should have been cold and dry but instead tickled like hell.
Jalaya barely managed to finish her cast before attempting to backpedal away from the tickling hands and fell down on her ass. Because of her Levitate spell, she didn't actually fall to the stone, but instead was suspended a good foot or so off the ground. Still the ticklish black fingers caressed her soles, and she backed away from them, giggling all the while, and as she tried to regain her footing she cast healing spells indiscriminately, ones that required just a snap thought and a target, but were far too exhausting to do many times in sequence. "Heheheheheheheheheheelp meheheheehe!!!" she squealed as, crawling away on hands and knees, another finger managed to drill deep into the soft flesh of her feet and cause her to jerk away and curl up into a ball for a brief second, squealing with laughter. Trying desperately to keep herself together, Jalaya rolled to the side and managed to get back upright, but she dared not stop moving and as a result her concentration was frayed, straining her mental resources as she tried to help out her companions, running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
"Healer!" the mage barked, looking around for her. "Come on, heals, we're getting clobbered out here! Keep up!"
"Why don't ya tink about ya own job and not be botherin' - MEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHEEHEEEE!!!!" Her heated retort was cut off as a pair of those black, shadowy hands grabbed her ankles, allowing a second set to rise out of the stone and trace its fingers torturously along her big, vulnerable foot, and then do it again and again, making Jalaya's breasts bobble as the laughter welled up inside of her and then gushed out. The distraction caused her spell to fizzle, and try as she might, as long as she was being tickled she couldn't muster the concentration necessary to cast any sort of spell. "STHAhAAHAH AHAHAHAHAH AAHAHAHAHA EHEHEHEHEHEHEEEEE!!!" However, instead of the quick, drilling tickles of before, now that the hands had leave to explore her feet at leisure, they did so, and Jalaya's howls quickly rose to a crescendo as the number of shades slowly increased, her allies unable to keep up with the rate at which they were spawning.
Jalaya had fallen forward, and one enterprising pair of hands was teasing her breasts and nipples, but it was the feet that were the real prize. Shades began to experimentally tickle her feet, clustering around the helpless girl as their dark bodies pressed together and seemed to wax and wane. The disembodied hands from the stone ziggurat were gone, replaced by the carefully guided strokes of the massing shades upon her ticklish soles. Methodically they divided her feet up, fingers searching every nook and cranny within their designated zones: of course there was one hand devoted to each toe, and they shared the responsibility of tickling in between, the fingers feeling like a spider's legs as they carefully walked upon every inch of those helpless digits. She had expected the shades' claws to be cold, painful, unpleasant, something besides being absolutely suited to tickle her to death.
By now her allies had seen that they were going to be overwhelmed, and that there was no chance of victory. In the blink of an eye they turned from fighting to retreating; the mage shimmered and vanished, having gone invisible; the Orc warlock's body suddenly disappeared in a flash of green fire, reappearing down at the base of the ziggurat where he'd summoned his dreadsteed; the hunter pressed a button on his belt, and out of nowhere rocket thrusters flared to life to support him in jumping off the top of the ziggurat, while a parachute deployed from his backpack to keep him safe from the fall. And last of all, the bear's form shimmered and became sleeker, a cheetah that slipped through the huge clumsy Troll's grasp, ran up his arm and jumped off the top of his head before shimmering again into the form of a hawk and flying away. Jalaya was left alone with the ticklish shades.
With the sense of urgency now gone, the shades were free to tickle torture Jalaya's soles to their hearts' content, if they even had any hearts. Jalaya couldn't really spend too much time thinking about that because of the massive group tickle torture that was afflicting her soles at the moment; Jalaya knew that she'd be unable to avoid the inevitable result this time. Her life force was being laughed away through the shades' relentless tickling, exhausting her willpower and her energy as the soft Troll feet were exploited to the fullest. Some of the shades' fingers proved to be more than just fingers - their digits transformed into scratchers, or feathers, or even just started to vibrate. That was particularly bad when it was guided by some form of intelligence; the vibrating pipe had been bad enough, but the vibrating rods that roamed around her feet were torture of the most unbearable degree.
Jin'do seemed to be particularly uninterested in her fate, or even the fact that the shades had chosen to tickle her instead of draining her life force in a more standard fashion. Once the intruders had been dealt with, he retracted his shield and went back to the ritual he had been performing atop the ziggurat. "NEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH MAKEHEHEHAHEEH MAKE IT STOP, MON! IHEHEHEAHAHAHAHAH IGIHEHEHAEAHEHEHE GIVE hEAHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEH UP!" Jalaya begged, trying to get the shaman's attention, but he ignored her completely. The shades' fingers had all become long, flexible, vibrating rods with tips just sharp enough to tickle, and Jalaya's tears streamed down her face in a never-ending waterfall. Again, she was in the clutches of a foe who seemed particularly uninterested in her nakedness; Jalaya was well aware of the fact that her gigantic tits caught the eyes of many, male and female both, and so not having to worry about that seemed... odd. But that just allowed her to focus her worrying entirely on the fact that she was being tickled to death.
The problem with that only became evident some time later, as Jalaya lay helpless in the grasp of shades that tickled her with singleminded determination. She had long since abandoned the will to struggle or fight back, simply waiting for the end so she could run back to her body and get on with escaping from Zul'Gurub. But she hadn't considered the fact that Jin'do had thrown them all into the spirit realm during the battle... and so, technically, her spirit couldn't separate from her body and travel through the spirit realm, because she was already there. It took her quite a bit of time to reach that conclusion herself. By the time she did, however, Jalaya was in no condition to do anything about it whatsoever.
Those shadowy hands tickled precisely with their vibrating clawtips at the spots in the middle of her feet that made her scream; only she was far too exhausted to scream. It was a curious disconnect, as Jalaya could feel the frantic ticklish response from her soles demanding that she get free, but her body simply had nothing in the way of such a reaction to give. The ticklish spot in between her two toes was stimulated nonstop by fingers that took on a form much like the ridged vines that had tortured her upon her arrival within the ruins. Every single time they moved, the ridges made her nerves scream with titillation, but in the general cacophony of ticklish feelings that flooded her mind they too mixed in with everything else. The line just above her heels that the warlock's succubi had found so interesting had its own very fine clawtip devoted to exploring that tiniest of creases.
The tireless ticklings of the shades never seemed to get duller in Jalaya's mind, or more bearable. It seemed as if she should be getting used to it, or something. Or her feet would get sore from the constant stimulation. But neither seemed to happen, and she felt vaguely detached from herself; still quite aware of her tickle torture, of course, and feeling every last agonizingly ticklish jolt. Some part of her had fled, however, a defense mechanism to keep her from going completely insane, and while she was aware of what her body was feeling her mind had done its best to shut down the part of her that responded to it. She was exhausted, barely able to think coherently, and even now she had the floating, disorienting feeling of being in a dream at best. Why they continued to tickle her was a mystery... the gaggle of shapes floating around her feet never ceased, and other images moved in and out of the fog. Memories. The huge troll that the bear had been fighting... chains... a milky white cocoon.
Jalaya knew she must look a fright, nonstop crying turning her usually soft blue skin into a reddish puffy mess from too much crying and laughing and blushing. Dim shapes seemed to weave in and out of her vision now, the allies that had forsaken her and left her here to suffer ticklishly forever... was she dreaming? It was so hard to tell anymore. The shapes shifted at random in the fog, more shades, some not, ticklishness ruling her world as the hazy white of the spirit world made any kind of logic train difficult to follow. Jalaya wasn't even aware of it as the tickling stopped, at first; what she did become aware of was the fact that the birds were chirping and the sun shining warmly down upon her naked body. Yet she didn't react to this change of stimulation at first, and didn't really realize she wasn't being tickled anymore.
"That was simple," a voice was saying. "This Troll was distracting the shades the whole time, so when Jin'do summoned them, they ignored us and went straight for her. Made the whole thing a cinch." A voice that wasn't her own. Jalaya blinked, consciously, and tried to sit up, but a hand pushed her back down onto her back - still floating - and through her tear-blurred eyes Jalaya could see another blue face looking down into hers, but with glowing eyes and horns. "Well, what should we do with the Troll? Seems like she's in a bad way..."
"Take her. We'll figure out exactly what to do later."
