Jaynin
4th Level Red Feather
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- Jul 12, 2003
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This idea has been tumbling around in my head for a while now, and it's finally down as a story. So, let's see how it goes.
For those of you unfamiliar with Warcraft, "death" consists of having to run your ghost back to the spot where you died. Keep this rather more lenient and somewhat humorous interpretation in mind as you read this story.
---
The top ponytail of Jalaya's fire-red hair brushed the roof of the small cave she was entering, and the tall Troll priestess grimaced slightly, hunched over a little bit so that she did not whack her head on any protruding stalactites or anything of the sort, and proceeded deeper into the cave, which provided shelter from Durotar's typically blazing sun and the hot, rocky ground. It did not, however, provide anything in the way of clearer air, because almost as soon as she had made it into the shade of the cave, which was not all that dark anyway because a small fire was burning within, the scent of thick, cloying herbs filled the air, making the priestess wrinkle her nose and cough slightly. It seemed as if one was not an authentic shaman unless one's abode was full of suspicious substances and obscure objects that seemed to have no other use than to make the owner look learned. But, Jalaya knew she had to keep such thoughts to herself; for one, the shaman were looked highly upon by Troll society, and two, if there was anyone who possibly knew a cure for her unique problem, it would be a shaman. Jalaya had no choice but to talk to every single shaman she knew of, and hope that one of them had an answer. She smoothed the front of her white priestess' robes a bit nervously, the snowy-white fabric adorned with silver and gold scrollwork and generally making Jalaya look the part of an experienced and powerful priestess, which she was. If one didn't count the reason she was here in the first place, that is.
Jalaya's aforementioned issue with the cave roof was not due to the cave being unusually small or Jalaya being abnormally tall. The reason the top of her fiery red hair was brushing along the stone roof before falling down past her shoulders in a thick cascade was that Jalaya herself was floating a good foot or so off the ground, thanks to her ever-present Levitate spell. When she had gone far enough into the cave to catch the attention of the squatting, venerable-looking old male Troll, adorned with animal skins and some bracelets and other trinkets of bone, clutching a gnarled staff decorated with inscriptions of all sorts, he looked up at her, and made his first observation: "Ya be floatin' there, sistah. Be careful of de roof, yeah?" He didn't straighten up, merely remaining in that easy crouch that most male Trolls adopted as a sort of halfway point between sitting and standing that they could maintain for hours with little effort. "What brings ya to de cave of dis old shaman waitin' to live out his days? Seat yaself, sistah, an' talk to me."
When Jalaya neither stopped floating nor took a seat as he asked, the old male Troll raised an eyebrow, but the priestess spoke up: "It has t'do with the reason I've come here to see ya today, venerated one. Ya see... well, dis be kind o' embarrassin'..."
The response to that was a sort of dry, sandpapery cackle. "I seen lots more moons den you, sistah. I seen da people come to me wit' dere problems for a long time now. I been dere since we was livin' in stick huts on a land dat wasn't ours, since we took back de home islands for our ancestors, and I still been here since dat crazy dragon Deathwing broke de world. So nothin' dat ya could say to me would be shockin'. Sit, child, an' tell me of what ails ya." He tapped a pile of animal furs that formed a sort of carpet in front of him with the tip of his staff, and looked at Jalaya expectantly. What transpired then caused him to raise an eyebrow, wondering what in the world this young priestess could have come to him about...
Jalaya, a look of grim determination on her face, slowly but surely lowered herself down to the carpet. As he watched her, she took a deep breath just before her feet contacted the soft fur of the animal skins, and the moment her feet touched the skins, the priestess drew in a hissed breath between her teeth and became a fast flurry of movement. Rather than sit with her legs folded beneath her as most Troll females did, she instead sat with both of her legs extended straight out, leaning back on the palms of her hands, so that the shaman could see the bottoms of her feet. Almost immediately the shaman noticed that something was indeed different. Instead of the roughened soles and somewhat cracked and leathery skin that was often characteristic of Trolls, both the tops and bottoms of these feet were smooth and curved perfectly. They were quite big by his estimation, too; of course, Trolls had big feet normally. Getting the impression that this was the source of the young priestess' embarrassing problem, he didn't ask her to describe the problem but instead ran one of his thick fingers experimentally against the smoothness of the bottom of her foot, noticing right away how soft it was.
Trolls are not very dexterous. They can be many things; wise, strong, agile, crafty, witty, but one thing they definitely do not tend towards is dexterity. The reason for this is that Trolls have thick-fingered hands and fewer fingers than most races save Tauren, so it's not a question of inability as it is physiology. As such, the Troll shaman's touch was hardly the most precise or accurate test, but even so it told the shaman a great deal. "Dnhhhh...! Haahhh...! He... haa.... hnnhnhhnnhn..." Jalaya buried her face in her hands and put a great deal of effort towards sitting still, but the way that her body shook and giggles escaped from around her hands told the tale. "Nhh... hee... hah... hehe... haah... heheh... hhehehehee... heee...! Nh..." Jalaya finally stopped giggling and breathed a sigh of relief as he withdrew his finger, and then made the rather banal pronouncement she had been expecting:
"Ya seem to be awful ticklish, sistah."
"I been dis way since I was a child," Jalaya said, trying to maintain some dignity. "Any time my mother would try an' make me run around outside wit de other children, I would start cryin' and wailin' because it hurt mah feet so much t'run around on de hot rock an' sand of Durotar. So she went to de priestess nearby and had her teach me de Levitate spell, so dat I could go outside. But ever since den I've been dis... sensitive on mah feet. I been Levitatin' for years now and tryin' to find some way to cure dis problem of mine. I tried alchemists an' I tried mages an' I tried even dem crazy Goblin machines and I been seekin' every honorable shaman I could hear of in de hopes dat one o' dem would know the cure. But I been lookin' an awful long time, venerated one." After spilling out her rather truncated life history, leaving out the embarrassing incidents where distractions on her feet had imperiled spellcasting, or the times that a drunk group of males had discovered her ticklish secret, Jalaya coughed again, looking to the side in embarrassment and waiting for the old Troll to finish his examination of her smooth soles.
"Flex ya toes," he commanded, and Jalaya did so, curious but long past the point of questioning, so desperate was she for a cure. The old shaman noticed that only the top third of her foot or so became wrinkled as she flexed her two big toes. The rest of her foot was just about as smooth as it ever was, and he thought on this for a moment before finally rising and shuffling over to a shelf full of odds and ends, selecting a gnarled branch about a foot long and carved with shamanic symbols, before squatting before her feet again. The spot he selected was about at the center of her foot, and the slightly rough remaining bark of the gnarled branch was perfect for providing a bit of friction against skin. Too effective, it appeared: "Stay still," he admonished, after Jalaya had squealed loudly and jumped back about six inches on the carpet, pulling her feet out of reach of that branch. "I only need yah t'stay still for about ten seconds or so."
Ten seconds proved to be about nine seconds too much for Jalaya: "STHEHEHEHEHEHEEHE!! Choose somethin' else! Dere be no way I can stay still wit' dat torture device ticklin' me!" she complained, after the third failed attempt. Then it was decided to perhaps try a different approach; Jalaya faced away from him, in a curled-up position, and braced her two toes on the carpet, bending her upper body forward and curling up her fists. This way, it was hoped, she'd be able to satisfy her ticklish impulses to move while not disrupting the sounding rod. Or, that's what he would say if she asked... Jalaya nodded to signal that she was ready, and almost immediately started to quiver with ticklish sensations as the gnarled branch began to stroke across her feet once again. The old shaman was loudly counting to ten as he moved the branch around.
"Seven... Eight... Ni - ah, ya almost had it... Ya can't move. Let's try dat again." No one's fool, the old shaman had already realized there were a few spots he could provoke an instantaneous reaction from, and as the rough bark of the gnarled stick stroked across her impossibly smooth soles, he made sure to touch one as the count neared its end. "Almost," he said in an encouraging voice, giving her a second to calm down after another failure. "Dis be workin' better. Just try ta focus that inner will ya got an' we'll get ya through dis." He started this time from just below the butter-soft heel, and rolled it like a massage stone halfway down the expanse of her long blue foot. Then he touched the scratchy tip to the skin, and stroked it in a gentle arc along her instep, terminating just above the left-side toe for her foot. An expert stroke at a certain nearby point caused her to squeal and break the contact, leaping forward with a groan of frustration.
Jalaya found it difficult to keep gathering her will. The stroke of that slightly rough branch against her soles was driving her completely crazy; it seemed as if the bark was just soft enough not to irritate, yet full of spurs and gnarls that caught her off guard and made the ticklish branch set off an explosion of nerves in her feet that simply demanded a response. In truth, Jalaya's ticklishness was simply too severe for her to sit still, no matter how gentle the touch, and after about a dozen more failures the old shaman seemed to realize this, and set the branch down, humming gently to himself as he pondered this odd problem. "D-did ya... find anythin'?" Jalaya asked, hoping against hope that she wouldn't have to endure any more of that Light-blasted tickling torture, but as she had expected the old shaman shook his head and rose up on his feet, rummaging around in his racks of suspicious-looking compounds, until he apparently found what he was looking for, placed a brazier on the floor near to Jalaya's head, and sprinkled a dash of something over the coals before lighting them. Only then did he reply:
"No, but I tink dat maybe you could be usin' somethin' to help ya keep still. This will relax ya, so den I can be properly divinin' ya feet. Turn ya head and breathe in deep..." Jalaya did so, finding that the sweet, pleasant, cloying scent entered her nostrils with ease, breathing in deeply again, and again, and again... then, she started to laugh, even without being touched. It started off slight at first, and then started to grow into deeper belly laughs, the Troll girl closing her eyes as she started to laugh uncontrollably. Worse, she found herself unable to move her head away from the cloying scent of the brazier - in fact, she was completely unable to move at all, and the old shaman stood up and went back to his shelves, found a second branch almost identical to the first, and then squatted by her feet once more and took up the branch he had set down before. "Now den, I should be able to get a proper divinin', so just sit tight an' don't be gettin' too panicked."
Jalaya wanted to scream with laughter, but it seemed as if the heavy scent had made her body too lethargic to do anything, and though the volume of her laughter rose, it never really changed pitch. Worse, she was completely unable to move at all, and she'd been laughing already as a result of that powder he'd put into the brazier. "HaaaaaAHAHAHAHAhAHAhhahaha... ahhahaa...! HAHAHAHAHA! Nahahah-hahaha--hahahaha-nahahaha no-n-anahahahahahahah! HAHAAHAHA! Nee-hehehehe-heheheh ca-hahaah-hahahaa-HAHAHAAHAHAHAH-ahahahahaaaa!!!" Her laughter was interrupted only by small gasps for breath and pauses as she tried to gather herself to beg, plead, inquire, demand, or just in general communicate with the old Troll whose gnarled branches were scratching relentlessly all over her enormous, sensitive feet, paralyzed by the fumes from the brazier that had permeated her body and had her now in the state of a paralyzed, laughing wreck.
It just never stopped. The stroking roughness of the tree branches on her ultra-sensitive soles made Jalaya laugh so hard she couldn't speak; tears dribbled out of her closed eyelids as her body jerked spasmodically back and forth, the motion of her chest heaving with laughter the only movement she was able to make. Her hands laid limp and useless near her ankles, feet paralyzed in perfect vulnerability, and in some perverse way her inability to truly scream with the torturous tickling sensation made the invading titillation even more difficult - nay, impossible - to bear. She just couldn't stop laughing, not even to speak and increasingly not even to breathe, as she kept getting full whiffs of that sweet scent that kept her in a motionless state of hysteria. He wasn't stopping, not moving the brazier away from her face so she could breathe properly, not letting her take a break from being tickled. It was just like it always was.
Describing the intensity of the ticklish sensations within her own head was difficult, even, much less to put it into the words she couldn't form. How best to describe a tickling torture that felt like every single nerve in your feet was lit up with tickling sensation? And not just lit up but positively screaming with impulses to move away and stop the torture? That it felt as if there was so much tickling that she'd not only faint but flat out die of laughter - the proverbial tickling to death? Her mind was a haze, a shattered fog of thoughts where the lightning of tickling flashed constantly between insubstantial clouds of meaningless thoughts. There was so much tickling it felt like it was overloading and causing her to feel like she was actually being tickled where he wasn't even touching her - in the crack of her ass, along the sides of her truly massive breasts, inside of her navel, between her legs and along her sides...
Jalaya's eyes were squeezed shut tight as nonstop laughter forced her mouth open and caused every last bit of air she breathed in to be expelled instantaneously. What she did manage to breathe in was laced with that heavy, thick aroma invading her body and tickling those spots of hers that the shaman wasn't bothering with. She didn't know if he was actually even slowing down, just that her perception alternately shifted between everywhere else, where the volume of tickling sensations drove her mad with laughter, and her feet, where they were so strong as to make her cry with nonstop hysterics. Every stroke of his gnarled, scratchy branches seemed to cause more nerve endings to bloom in its wake, because Jalaya never got less ticklish over time. No matter how long it went on. The nonstop tickling tormented her soles without pause, those soft, large blue feet that never experienced any sensation aside from tickling. Jalaya never walked on those soles. Ever.
Darkness closed in on the edges of her thought. It hovered there, offering the promise of blessed relief from this hell of tickling. She didn't even have the presence of mind to realize that this particular episode was far less intense than many others she experienced, because even this relatively 'minor' tickle torture was enough to completely shatter her mind and her willpower. It would continue this way for some time, as Jalaya's body was robbed of the ability to fight back, and her mind was crumbling once again before the debilitating tickle torture assault. How much worse it would be if her tormentors actually made up real plans for tickling! Even this impromptu torment was enough to --
The old shaman grunted as he realized that Jalaya had stopped laughing. Finally stretching out his back a little bit, he returned his sticks and brazier both to their original places on his shelf, took an old pipe of his own, and puffed on it slightly. The girl's body remained unmoving for a minute or so, and then the shaman, with his ability to see past the material plane into the world beyond, became aware of a presence at his cave entrance: a ghostly, washed-out figure of the Troll girl that was even now laying unmoving on his floor, wearing a decidedly grumpy look on her features, and in another moment that spiritual form had approached the unmoving body, and seemed to be sucked into it. Then Jalaya opened her eyes and rolled onto her back with a groan as the old Troll puffed complacently on his pipe.
"I tink I have a solution for ya, sistah."
---
Jalaya huffed with irritation and stepped out over the waves, as usual Levitating a foot or so above the water's surface, her destination being an island some ways off in the distance. Durotar's coast was dotted with a few small islands of this sort, and there were often old and abandoned temples overgrown with jungle on them. Sometimes there were remnants of spirits there; sometimes those spirits were angry at the fact that Trolls or Orcs or anyone at all had abandoned them. Sometimes those spirits left and other creatures moved in. In short, they were the kinds of places where just about anything could happen and often did. However, that was also cause for hope, because the reason many different beings found themselves drawn to those islands was that there often were objects of power or altars still remaining within those crumbling temples.
One of those altars was Jalaya's destination. The old shaman had told her that one nearby temple was supposed to have contained the essence of the messenger of the spirits, and in the olden times had been the spirit that the runners of the Darkspear Tribe had prayed to, so that their passage through dangerous places might be swift and safe. As was often the case with the spiritual Trolls, there was more than just legend behind those stories, and it appeared that this particular altar or spirit or whatnot did indeed confer upon its supplicants a greater ability to walk or run. Jalaya figured she had nothing to lose, as she had tried out solutions with far less going for them. It wasn't long before she crossed the shimmering sea between the mainland and the island, and observed the standard affair of some overgrown jungle cliffs with an old crumbling yellow stone temple atop, with an ancient, barely-noticeable footpath leading to the top.
Jalaya hated walking around in jungles. There were always vines, leaves, stems, branches, or whatever else that were growing everywhere, and these inevitably managed to brush across her sensitive soles. Fortunately, today's path seemed to be mostly dirt and very little in the way of plants, and it was maybe ten minutes' walk up the cliff path and into the dark maw of the crumbling temple. To her pleased surprise, the altar she had come to find was right there in the first wide room, saving her the necessity of fumbling around in potentially dangerous and lightless back rooms. To her very mild annoyance, there were two minor imps prancing around the altar and jabbering pointlessly, as imps tended to do. but Jalaya was unconcerned. In fact, it was even a little heartening to see them there, because it meant that there was still something worth having here.
A shimmering, faintly yellow shield erected itself in front of her, and Jalaya wasted no time in gathering Holy magics into her hands, focusing it not towards an ally for the purpose of healing but concentrating it to Smite her foes. The first imp screamed in irritation and pain as the searing light lashed it across the back, and it turned, green skin smoking faintly, felfire crackling in its hands as it jabbered to its companion, which also began to cast the imps' small but bothersome signature fel fireball. A blast of Holy energy that consumed the first, injured imp caused it to scream and crackle and burn lifelessly, but before Jalaya could turn her attention to the second imp it had launched its small fireball at her... which disappeared with barely a twitch in the powerful shield she had cast on herself ahead of time. Jabbering with dismay, but too stupid or unable to break off its attack and flee - lesser demons such as these imps rarely if ever had free will - it began to try again, and a second fireball didn't even faze Jalaya, who ended the quick encounter with another Smite spell.
Now the altar was before her, and Jalaya walked over to it, settling herself directly over top the slab of smooth white marble which was inlaid into the floor in front of her. With a slight wince, and taking a deep breath, Jalaya canceled her Levitate spell, gently setting her feet down on that slab of marble. Almost immediately she began to shiver - the stone was smooth, so it didn't hurt to stand on at least, but her ultra-sensitive feet magnified the cool feeling of the stone ten times over and made her feel cold despite the typically hot, dry air of Durotar. Trying to keep her teeth from chattering, the Troll priestess made her simple incantation: "O great spirit o' dose who seek t'carry de words of de gods to da believers, lend me your swiftness! Lend me de soles of de spiritwalkers so dat I may proceed on my journey in swiftness and haste!" It was, Jalaya had worked out ahead of time, all true. Some spirits did not take kindly to those who misled them in their supplications. Jalaya, however, slowly felt her feet start to tingle a bit, and as they did so, the coldness gradually began to fade...
"Ah... so THAT'S why my imps both fell over dead all of the sudden." Jalaya turned swiftly to see, framed in the sunlight of the opening, a human female, with pale white skin and purplish designs painted on her face, short black hair and dark purple robes and a staff of the same black-and-purple motif regarding her with minor amusement. "I didn't think anyone would care about a run-down old temple like this, but it seems as if I was wrong." She glanced down at Jalaya's feet, bemused by the fact that they had started to become slightly hazy, as if not quite there, then her mouth twisted into a curious expression. "And why would a priestess of all people want the gods' blessing of spirit feet?"
"Dat not be any concern of yours!" Jalaya spat. The arrogance with which this human warlock carried herself - she must be a warlock, to know of her familiar demons' demise - coupled with the distinctive colors of her robes... "What ya should be worryin' about is what de Darkspear will do when dey find out dere's been a Twilight's Hammer sneakin' about one of de ancient temples!" Already Jalaya was mentally preparing herself for a battle; against a warlock, she knew, the fight would be long, and slow, a battle of attrition and wills as the warlock attempted to use her foul magics to injure and impair the priestess, who would in turn focus on countering and dispelling her enchantments, keeping herself healthy, and attacking whenever possible. To her annoyance, however, the warlock wasn't even really listening to her, or looking at her. She was instead wearing a thoughtful expression as she considered the Troll's ethereal feet. Then she looked into space, as if communicating with someone unseen. Jalaya felt a minor poke at her sole, and twitched slightly - well, more than slightly - but when the sensation faded, she put it down to a side-effect of the sudden change. "Well? I hope you be prepared!"
"Aha," she said instead. "Oh, I get it..." Jalaya felt suddenly nervous when the human female leered at her. "Interesting. Very interesting. And quite clever, if you hadn't overlooked one simple fact in your prayer." The warlock looked far too confident for Jalaya's liking, and so she renewed her shield and cast some spells on herself to remain healthy, wary of a surprise attack from somewhere. "Oh, but it was clever. That's a pretty innovative solution to an unconventional problem." Jalaya was getting the feeling that something very bad was going to happen, a feeling that was reinforced by the sudden sensation of what felt like a slender female finger stroking down the length of her sole. She just barely managed not to jump out of her skin. But somehow, the warlock had known to watch for even the slightest hint of a response and grinned with excitement when she saw it. "Let me guess. You wanted to get rid of your feet because they were too ticklish, right? That must be why I saw you Levitating when you went up the cliffside path earlier."
Jalaya wondered how she could know that, but admitting weakness in front of this smirking little human was the last thing she wanted to do. She drew herself up to her full height, which in this case was almost ten inches greater than the warlock's, and crossed her arms firmly under her breasts, as if to emphasize that each one was nearly the size of the human girl's head. "And what if dat be true? As ya yourself said, I received da blessing of de gods. Even if I was ticklish like ya say, dat not be da case anymore." Her attempt at a strong statement fell woefully short as the warlock laughed openly and pointed the twisted, writhing staff she carried in a menacing way towards Jalaya. A sudden prick of worry overcame Jalaya at that moment - what if the warlock knew some curse to tickle her through her spiritually enhanced feet? That worry was only heightened as both of her feet were treated to the brief sensation of fingernails skittering down the sides of each foot.
"Like I said, you overlooked one particular problem," the warlock sneered. "You have those spirit feet on a 'loan'. They aren't yours, and so it follows that you'll get your own feet back at some point. Therefore, your real feet have to be somewhere, don't they?" She paused for effect, smirking with anticipation as the import of what she was saying began to dawn on Jalaya. "Do you have any idea where your real feet are right now?" Another stroke, stronger this time, made the Troll priestess gasp and twist around, as if trying to spot an invisible attacker. "Because I sure do."
Jalaya's attempt at a response dissolved into laughter as the barely-there teasing quickly morphed into real tickling. It wasn't particularly intense tickling, really. But it was enough to send the Troll priestess into a spasm of laughter, and to keep her laughing as a bemused warlock watched her shield fade into nothingness. In a back room in the temple somewhere, two motionless and very soft blue feet were attached by means of a magical aura to a slab of stone that was simply hung up against the wall, and crowded into that room were numerous demons, primarily succubi and felhounds. Naturally, Jalaya was still well able to feel everything that happened to her feet, but completely unable to move them, and two succubi giggled to each other as their fingernails danced along the sides of those motionless feet. Through their bond to their mistress they could see and hear Jalaya's reactions, reinforcing their efforts and prompting a third to join in, tickling just beneath the toes of both feet as her two companions tickled both sides of either foot.
A very amused warlock saw Jalaya go to her knees, trying to hug her feet closer to her body, before realizing that was useless and curling up on her side, rolling back and forth across the stone while the human girl began to realize just how helpless this Troll became when tickled. Her succubi were having a lot of fun with the girl's feet, and she maintained the link she had with them, showing them in full detail the effect their efforts were having. Jalaya screamed with full-throated laughter, pounding her fists on the floor as she laid down on her stomach, face buried in the crook of one elbow while they focused their collective efforts on the upper halves of her feet, searching in between those big toes of hers, all along the ball of the foot and in every nook and cranny they could find. Then one of them, caught up in a moment of creativity, spoke to the other two, and they all stopped tickling for a moment... but not before inducing the felhounds, with their long, rough tongues, to take their places, and the three of them left the small back room somewhere in the temple.
The tongues were no better. Lacking the intelligence of the succubi, the felhounds were simply spurred on to continue by virtue of the fact that their mistress was pleased. Jalaya had managed to stretch a hand out to the warlock as if in supplication, before it fell limp to the floor and she went into another full throated laughter cycle: "NHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!! HAHAHAHEHEHEH M-MAKE 'EM SHTHAHAHAHEEHEHEHEHEHEHEEH STOOOHAHAHEHEHEHS STOOOP DAAAAAAHAHAAAT! NEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEEHEHE!!! NOOO!! PLEHEHEEHEeeheEeEEeeeeeEEEEEZE!!!" Jalaya rolled onto her back, then onto her front again, then desperately tried to stand, swaying and wobbling because she was laughing so hard that there was no strength in her legs. She ended up using the long stone slab of the altar to support herself, then collapsed atop it, laughing so hard her sides were shaking. Naturally she didn't see it coming when the warlock lightly ran her fingertips up Jalaya's sides, and even through her robe this prompted a squeal and a jerk forward, then she swayed backwards - improbably, into the smaller woman's arms.
"Ooof! Mm... this isn't going to work as a permanent arrangement, but it's doable for now," she said, discarding her staff and simply holding the hysterical Troll woman, screaming so hard that tears were coming from her eyes again. In the back room, the warlock realized, the succubi had somehow found a collection of backscratchers and smooth stones, and after rolling the smooth stones a few times across those soft feet, got to work with the backscratchers, tickling in random and unpredictable locations, nearly all focusing on her soft fleshy soles. Their motions drove Jalaya wild, and the felhounds' tongues were trying to squirm in and around wherever they could, finding spots on her heels and the sides of her feet to happily lick at. The warlock realized that this priestess was almost completely powerless, and didn't even really need to be cursed into helplessness; to test that theory, she gathered up the hem of the Troll woman's robe and gently started to pull it up over her head. Jalaya didn't even resist her, the only obstacle being caused by her uselessly limp arms, but when the warlock had managed to position those properly she whisked the robe off and casually unwrapped the several feet of cloth that kept the cannonball-size breasts in check. "My my, what a gifted girl you are," she giggled.
Now naked, Jalaya was guided to lie down on the stone altar, upon her back, and even though she tried sometimes to curl up or kick her feet in a useless protest against the ticklish torture, she was beyond too weak to resist by this point. The mischievous warlock tickled all sorts of miscellaneous other places, dipping a finger into her navel, exploring her underarms and skating around the circumference of those enormous breasts. But it was hard to tell if it had any effect at all just because Jalaya was screaming too loudly with laughter. "EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHE!! IHCHAHEHEEH I CAN'T BRE-EHEHHEE-HHAHAHAA! I cahahAHAHAEHEHEHEh can't BREHAHAHAHAAHEHEEHEHAAHAHTHE!!!! PLEHEHEHEEHEE! HEHEHEHE! HEHEEHEEEEEE!!!! Stehehehehe-hehehe-hahahah stoooop stop stophAHAHAHEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHE YA HAHEHEEHAHAHAH YA GOHAHAHEH GONNA KILL MEEHheheEHEEEHEEE!!!" Her thick fingers curled into useless fists and relaxed, hands flopping around in pathetic attempts to fend off what were increasingly becoming lusty gropes by the warlock.
"I doubt it," she replied cavalierly. Alternating between their fingers and the scratchers and even a brush one had found somewhere, the three succubi tormented Jalaya's feet while the felhounds' tongues covered any location they weren't actively tickling at the time. A small, fine-toothed backscratcher stroked the area right in the center of that huge sole with devastatingly ticklish precision; the same succubus, wielding another one, tickled very near to the first and focused the ticklish devastation on a very small area. Another was using her hand and a bristly brush to stroke the ball of that same foot, employing her hand for random tickling tasks while the brush bristles rubbed back and forth, occasionally sneaking into the sensitive gap between the two big toes and causing much ticklish torment. She wondered if someone could be TOO ticklish; it was almost difficult to tell what had an effect upon her because she just wouldn't stop her insane shrieking laughter.
"I don't think the spirits intended their gift to be used in this way," the warlock remarked casually to the hysterically laughing, tear-streaked Troll who was looking increasingly panicked with laughter. She was tracing her fingertips idly about on Jalaya's torso while she spoke. "Nor had I thought of it, for that matter. But I guess it was just lucky for me that you happened to beseech the spirits for help just as my minions were exploring the right place." This was largely a monologue, as Jalaya was far too gone to respond to her, or even really to pay much attention to the warlock's words. Jalaya's vulnerable feet were powerless to defend themselves in even the slightest way... One felhound had his tongue focused mainly on the heel of one foot, that which the two succubi were focusing on, and even this spot that was usually rough was smooth and ticklish and helpless. The nice soft curve of flesh above the heel seemed to be a good spot, and the long black tongue tormented the ever-sensitive blue skin. Jalaya was in truth too ticklish to tell the sensations apart anymore; these kinds of intense gang-ticklings shattered her mind in remarkably short periods of time...
The other foot was being attended to by the other succubus and felhound. She had her hands wrapped around the big foot from either side, tickling up and down the sides with her fingertips while employing her warm tongue to the center, flicking it up and down teasingly before taking nice long licks. Then she would giggle and back away, to let the long felhound tongue completely have its way with that helpless foot, licking long all the way up to the gap between the toes, letting the broad surface area of its tongue drive Jalaya into ticklish hysterics. The Troll's nerves were on overload and had been that way for some time; the complete and total helplessness of the situation made fighting the warlock into a bad joke. Instead of fighting, here she was naked and getting groped by her! But the notion of so much as even casting a spell was a pipe dream; all Jalaya could do was attempt to plead through her strained laughter, the tear-streaked eyes that marked the truly hysterical. In fact, that laughter was starting to wane as Jalaya found her physical reserves becoming exhausted.
The warlock only regretted that she wouldn't be able to tickle those magnificent feet herself. But it was better to see this priestess suffer through her ticklish hell and be totally helpless to stop it. Idly, she stopped to consider if there were any other ways in which she could prolong this torment, running her finger lightly back and forth from Jalaya's navel to her chin and back again as she stared off into space and thought through the various things she could do, and how they might be applied to this situation. She was oblivious to Jalaya's now-silent laughter, the fact that her enormous breasts jiggled nonstop as her chest heaved with desperate attempts to breathe; tickling Jalaya personally wasn't even high on her list of priorities at the moment, and it was really just something she was doing to keep her hands occupied while the Troll girl laughed the very last bit of her strength away. As such, when the warlock suddenly hit upon her idea... "Ah, I've got it!" she said, smacking her fist into her palm and then looking down at Jalaya, the better to see that delicious face contorted into hysterical laughter, but to her disappointment the Troll's eyes were closed and she was not responding to anything. With some amount of resignation her minions stopped tickling those soles, and as the warlock watched Jalaya's spiritual feet slowly phased back into solid form.
"Well, next time then. I've got an idea which I think you'll find lots of fun," the warlock said out loud, unable to see but suspecting strongly that the priestess' spirit was nearby, simply waiting for her to vacate the premises before re-entering her body and making a run for it. The human girl had no intention of stopping her, not just yet. But Jalaya didn't have to know that. "Until then, dear. I'll be thinking of you." However, she wasn't going to just let her off the hook that easily. She rose from her sitting position on the side of the altar, retrieved her staff, and then also found where she'd tossed the priestess' robe and bundled it up under her arm, before grinning wickedly at the unmoving body upon the altar and blowing it an air kiss.
---
Jalaya was fuming as she watched the warlock from just outside the temple entrance, and glared firebolts at her while she descended the winding cliff path and then vanished in a flash of fire. The world was washed-out and mostly blue and white, but she could still see things fairly clearly enough. And she could think clearly enough now to suspect a trap, so she settled down just inside of the temple, keeping an eye on her body as it lay unmoving, and decided to wait for a while longer, just to make sure. So it was a surprise when she suddenly felt a strong pull - very strong - to her body and found herself getting sucked in against her will...
Jalaya opened her eyes as the burst of resurrection magic around her body faded, having completed its task of rejoining body with spirit, and almost forgot to cast her levitation spell before trying to stand up. It took her another moment to realize that there was a green creature standing just past knee-height at the foot of the altar, dressed in priest's robes fit to its diminutive size, holding a similarly small staff in one hand, and holding its other hand with palm raised up towards the naked Troll. "Tanks for de revive, Goblin," Jalaya managed to get out, but didn't make it any further before the Goblin priest strained to reach higher with its upturned palm. She didn't quite understand what he was trying to get at, and the look of confusion on her face made it clear to him. The Goblin sighed:
"Thousand big ones for the rez, pal."
Jalaya felt her face grow warm with indignation. "A tousand gold for dat?! You must be jokin', brotha," she said, crossing her arms beneath those titanic breasts. "What kind o' priest be askin' fer..." she began, and then stopped midway through that sentence as she saw several more Goblins crowd into the temple entrance, aflame with curiosity. Jalaya sighed; it was no secret that five Goblins would be hard-pressed to come up with a single scruple between the lot of them. So she tried a different tack: "Look at me, mon. Does it look ta you like I be havin' one tousand gold on me right now?" The Goblin appraised her, looked back to his cohorts, then looked over her again.
"I guess not. All right, boys, help me take her back to the ship..."
For those of you unfamiliar with Warcraft, "death" consists of having to run your ghost back to the spot where you died. Keep this rather more lenient and somewhat humorous interpretation in mind as you read this story.
---
The top ponytail of Jalaya's fire-red hair brushed the roof of the small cave she was entering, and the tall Troll priestess grimaced slightly, hunched over a little bit so that she did not whack her head on any protruding stalactites or anything of the sort, and proceeded deeper into the cave, which provided shelter from Durotar's typically blazing sun and the hot, rocky ground. It did not, however, provide anything in the way of clearer air, because almost as soon as she had made it into the shade of the cave, which was not all that dark anyway because a small fire was burning within, the scent of thick, cloying herbs filled the air, making the priestess wrinkle her nose and cough slightly. It seemed as if one was not an authentic shaman unless one's abode was full of suspicious substances and obscure objects that seemed to have no other use than to make the owner look learned. But, Jalaya knew she had to keep such thoughts to herself; for one, the shaman were looked highly upon by Troll society, and two, if there was anyone who possibly knew a cure for her unique problem, it would be a shaman. Jalaya had no choice but to talk to every single shaman she knew of, and hope that one of them had an answer. She smoothed the front of her white priestess' robes a bit nervously, the snowy-white fabric adorned with silver and gold scrollwork and generally making Jalaya look the part of an experienced and powerful priestess, which she was. If one didn't count the reason she was here in the first place, that is.
Jalaya's aforementioned issue with the cave roof was not due to the cave being unusually small or Jalaya being abnormally tall. The reason the top of her fiery red hair was brushing along the stone roof before falling down past her shoulders in a thick cascade was that Jalaya herself was floating a good foot or so off the ground, thanks to her ever-present Levitate spell. When she had gone far enough into the cave to catch the attention of the squatting, venerable-looking old male Troll, adorned with animal skins and some bracelets and other trinkets of bone, clutching a gnarled staff decorated with inscriptions of all sorts, he looked up at her, and made his first observation: "Ya be floatin' there, sistah. Be careful of de roof, yeah?" He didn't straighten up, merely remaining in that easy crouch that most male Trolls adopted as a sort of halfway point between sitting and standing that they could maintain for hours with little effort. "What brings ya to de cave of dis old shaman waitin' to live out his days? Seat yaself, sistah, an' talk to me."
When Jalaya neither stopped floating nor took a seat as he asked, the old male Troll raised an eyebrow, but the priestess spoke up: "It has t'do with the reason I've come here to see ya today, venerated one. Ya see... well, dis be kind o' embarrassin'..."
The response to that was a sort of dry, sandpapery cackle. "I seen lots more moons den you, sistah. I seen da people come to me wit' dere problems for a long time now. I been dere since we was livin' in stick huts on a land dat wasn't ours, since we took back de home islands for our ancestors, and I still been here since dat crazy dragon Deathwing broke de world. So nothin' dat ya could say to me would be shockin'. Sit, child, an' tell me of what ails ya." He tapped a pile of animal furs that formed a sort of carpet in front of him with the tip of his staff, and looked at Jalaya expectantly. What transpired then caused him to raise an eyebrow, wondering what in the world this young priestess could have come to him about...
Jalaya, a look of grim determination on her face, slowly but surely lowered herself down to the carpet. As he watched her, she took a deep breath just before her feet contacted the soft fur of the animal skins, and the moment her feet touched the skins, the priestess drew in a hissed breath between her teeth and became a fast flurry of movement. Rather than sit with her legs folded beneath her as most Troll females did, she instead sat with both of her legs extended straight out, leaning back on the palms of her hands, so that the shaman could see the bottoms of her feet. Almost immediately the shaman noticed that something was indeed different. Instead of the roughened soles and somewhat cracked and leathery skin that was often characteristic of Trolls, both the tops and bottoms of these feet were smooth and curved perfectly. They were quite big by his estimation, too; of course, Trolls had big feet normally. Getting the impression that this was the source of the young priestess' embarrassing problem, he didn't ask her to describe the problem but instead ran one of his thick fingers experimentally against the smoothness of the bottom of her foot, noticing right away how soft it was.
Trolls are not very dexterous. They can be many things; wise, strong, agile, crafty, witty, but one thing they definitely do not tend towards is dexterity. The reason for this is that Trolls have thick-fingered hands and fewer fingers than most races save Tauren, so it's not a question of inability as it is physiology. As such, the Troll shaman's touch was hardly the most precise or accurate test, but even so it told the shaman a great deal. "Dnhhhh...! Haahhh...! He... haa.... hnnhnhhnnhn..." Jalaya buried her face in her hands and put a great deal of effort towards sitting still, but the way that her body shook and giggles escaped from around her hands told the tale. "Nhh... hee... hah... hehe... haah... heheh... hhehehehee... heee...! Nh..." Jalaya finally stopped giggling and breathed a sigh of relief as he withdrew his finger, and then made the rather banal pronouncement she had been expecting:
"Ya seem to be awful ticklish, sistah."
"I been dis way since I was a child," Jalaya said, trying to maintain some dignity. "Any time my mother would try an' make me run around outside wit de other children, I would start cryin' and wailin' because it hurt mah feet so much t'run around on de hot rock an' sand of Durotar. So she went to de priestess nearby and had her teach me de Levitate spell, so dat I could go outside. But ever since den I've been dis... sensitive on mah feet. I been Levitatin' for years now and tryin' to find some way to cure dis problem of mine. I tried alchemists an' I tried mages an' I tried even dem crazy Goblin machines and I been seekin' every honorable shaman I could hear of in de hopes dat one o' dem would know the cure. But I been lookin' an awful long time, venerated one." After spilling out her rather truncated life history, leaving out the embarrassing incidents where distractions on her feet had imperiled spellcasting, or the times that a drunk group of males had discovered her ticklish secret, Jalaya coughed again, looking to the side in embarrassment and waiting for the old Troll to finish his examination of her smooth soles.
"Flex ya toes," he commanded, and Jalaya did so, curious but long past the point of questioning, so desperate was she for a cure. The old shaman noticed that only the top third of her foot or so became wrinkled as she flexed her two big toes. The rest of her foot was just about as smooth as it ever was, and he thought on this for a moment before finally rising and shuffling over to a shelf full of odds and ends, selecting a gnarled branch about a foot long and carved with shamanic symbols, before squatting before her feet again. The spot he selected was about at the center of her foot, and the slightly rough remaining bark of the gnarled branch was perfect for providing a bit of friction against skin. Too effective, it appeared: "Stay still," he admonished, after Jalaya had squealed loudly and jumped back about six inches on the carpet, pulling her feet out of reach of that branch. "I only need yah t'stay still for about ten seconds or so."
Ten seconds proved to be about nine seconds too much for Jalaya: "STHEHEHEHEHEHEEHE!! Choose somethin' else! Dere be no way I can stay still wit' dat torture device ticklin' me!" she complained, after the third failed attempt. Then it was decided to perhaps try a different approach; Jalaya faced away from him, in a curled-up position, and braced her two toes on the carpet, bending her upper body forward and curling up her fists. This way, it was hoped, she'd be able to satisfy her ticklish impulses to move while not disrupting the sounding rod. Or, that's what he would say if she asked... Jalaya nodded to signal that she was ready, and almost immediately started to quiver with ticklish sensations as the gnarled branch began to stroke across her feet once again. The old shaman was loudly counting to ten as he moved the branch around.
"Seven... Eight... Ni - ah, ya almost had it... Ya can't move. Let's try dat again." No one's fool, the old shaman had already realized there were a few spots he could provoke an instantaneous reaction from, and as the rough bark of the gnarled stick stroked across her impossibly smooth soles, he made sure to touch one as the count neared its end. "Almost," he said in an encouraging voice, giving her a second to calm down after another failure. "Dis be workin' better. Just try ta focus that inner will ya got an' we'll get ya through dis." He started this time from just below the butter-soft heel, and rolled it like a massage stone halfway down the expanse of her long blue foot. Then he touched the scratchy tip to the skin, and stroked it in a gentle arc along her instep, terminating just above the left-side toe for her foot. An expert stroke at a certain nearby point caused her to squeal and break the contact, leaping forward with a groan of frustration.
Jalaya found it difficult to keep gathering her will. The stroke of that slightly rough branch against her soles was driving her completely crazy; it seemed as if the bark was just soft enough not to irritate, yet full of spurs and gnarls that caught her off guard and made the ticklish branch set off an explosion of nerves in her feet that simply demanded a response. In truth, Jalaya's ticklishness was simply too severe for her to sit still, no matter how gentle the touch, and after about a dozen more failures the old shaman seemed to realize this, and set the branch down, humming gently to himself as he pondered this odd problem. "D-did ya... find anythin'?" Jalaya asked, hoping against hope that she wouldn't have to endure any more of that Light-blasted tickling torture, but as she had expected the old shaman shook his head and rose up on his feet, rummaging around in his racks of suspicious-looking compounds, until he apparently found what he was looking for, placed a brazier on the floor near to Jalaya's head, and sprinkled a dash of something over the coals before lighting them. Only then did he reply:
"No, but I tink dat maybe you could be usin' somethin' to help ya keep still. This will relax ya, so den I can be properly divinin' ya feet. Turn ya head and breathe in deep..." Jalaya did so, finding that the sweet, pleasant, cloying scent entered her nostrils with ease, breathing in deeply again, and again, and again... then, she started to laugh, even without being touched. It started off slight at first, and then started to grow into deeper belly laughs, the Troll girl closing her eyes as she started to laugh uncontrollably. Worse, she found herself unable to move her head away from the cloying scent of the brazier - in fact, she was completely unable to move at all, and the old shaman stood up and went back to his shelves, found a second branch almost identical to the first, and then squatted by her feet once more and took up the branch he had set down before. "Now den, I should be able to get a proper divinin', so just sit tight an' don't be gettin' too panicked."
Jalaya wanted to scream with laughter, but it seemed as if the heavy scent had made her body too lethargic to do anything, and though the volume of her laughter rose, it never really changed pitch. Worse, she was completely unable to move at all, and she'd been laughing already as a result of that powder he'd put into the brazier. "HaaaaaAHAHAHAHAhAHAhhahaha... ahhahaa...! HAHAHAHAHA! Nahahah-hahaha--hahahaha-nahahaha no-n-anahahahahahahah! HAHAAHAHA! Nee-hehehehe-heheheh ca-hahaah-hahahaa-HAHAHAAHAHAHAH-ahahahahaaaa!!!" Her laughter was interrupted only by small gasps for breath and pauses as she tried to gather herself to beg, plead, inquire, demand, or just in general communicate with the old Troll whose gnarled branches were scratching relentlessly all over her enormous, sensitive feet, paralyzed by the fumes from the brazier that had permeated her body and had her now in the state of a paralyzed, laughing wreck.
It just never stopped. The stroking roughness of the tree branches on her ultra-sensitive soles made Jalaya laugh so hard she couldn't speak; tears dribbled out of her closed eyelids as her body jerked spasmodically back and forth, the motion of her chest heaving with laughter the only movement she was able to make. Her hands laid limp and useless near her ankles, feet paralyzed in perfect vulnerability, and in some perverse way her inability to truly scream with the torturous tickling sensation made the invading titillation even more difficult - nay, impossible - to bear. She just couldn't stop laughing, not even to speak and increasingly not even to breathe, as she kept getting full whiffs of that sweet scent that kept her in a motionless state of hysteria. He wasn't stopping, not moving the brazier away from her face so she could breathe properly, not letting her take a break from being tickled. It was just like it always was.
Describing the intensity of the ticklish sensations within her own head was difficult, even, much less to put it into the words she couldn't form. How best to describe a tickling torture that felt like every single nerve in your feet was lit up with tickling sensation? And not just lit up but positively screaming with impulses to move away and stop the torture? That it felt as if there was so much tickling that she'd not only faint but flat out die of laughter - the proverbial tickling to death? Her mind was a haze, a shattered fog of thoughts where the lightning of tickling flashed constantly between insubstantial clouds of meaningless thoughts. There was so much tickling it felt like it was overloading and causing her to feel like she was actually being tickled where he wasn't even touching her - in the crack of her ass, along the sides of her truly massive breasts, inside of her navel, between her legs and along her sides...
Jalaya's eyes were squeezed shut tight as nonstop laughter forced her mouth open and caused every last bit of air she breathed in to be expelled instantaneously. What she did manage to breathe in was laced with that heavy, thick aroma invading her body and tickling those spots of hers that the shaman wasn't bothering with. She didn't know if he was actually even slowing down, just that her perception alternately shifted between everywhere else, where the volume of tickling sensations drove her mad with laughter, and her feet, where they were so strong as to make her cry with nonstop hysterics. Every stroke of his gnarled, scratchy branches seemed to cause more nerve endings to bloom in its wake, because Jalaya never got less ticklish over time. No matter how long it went on. The nonstop tickling tormented her soles without pause, those soft, large blue feet that never experienced any sensation aside from tickling. Jalaya never walked on those soles. Ever.
Darkness closed in on the edges of her thought. It hovered there, offering the promise of blessed relief from this hell of tickling. She didn't even have the presence of mind to realize that this particular episode was far less intense than many others she experienced, because even this relatively 'minor' tickle torture was enough to completely shatter her mind and her willpower. It would continue this way for some time, as Jalaya's body was robbed of the ability to fight back, and her mind was crumbling once again before the debilitating tickle torture assault. How much worse it would be if her tormentors actually made up real plans for tickling! Even this impromptu torment was enough to --
The old shaman grunted as he realized that Jalaya had stopped laughing. Finally stretching out his back a little bit, he returned his sticks and brazier both to their original places on his shelf, took an old pipe of his own, and puffed on it slightly. The girl's body remained unmoving for a minute or so, and then the shaman, with his ability to see past the material plane into the world beyond, became aware of a presence at his cave entrance: a ghostly, washed-out figure of the Troll girl that was even now laying unmoving on his floor, wearing a decidedly grumpy look on her features, and in another moment that spiritual form had approached the unmoving body, and seemed to be sucked into it. Then Jalaya opened her eyes and rolled onto her back with a groan as the old Troll puffed complacently on his pipe.
"I tink I have a solution for ya, sistah."
---
Jalaya huffed with irritation and stepped out over the waves, as usual Levitating a foot or so above the water's surface, her destination being an island some ways off in the distance. Durotar's coast was dotted with a few small islands of this sort, and there were often old and abandoned temples overgrown with jungle on them. Sometimes there were remnants of spirits there; sometimes those spirits were angry at the fact that Trolls or Orcs or anyone at all had abandoned them. Sometimes those spirits left and other creatures moved in. In short, they were the kinds of places where just about anything could happen and often did. However, that was also cause for hope, because the reason many different beings found themselves drawn to those islands was that there often were objects of power or altars still remaining within those crumbling temples.
One of those altars was Jalaya's destination. The old shaman had told her that one nearby temple was supposed to have contained the essence of the messenger of the spirits, and in the olden times had been the spirit that the runners of the Darkspear Tribe had prayed to, so that their passage through dangerous places might be swift and safe. As was often the case with the spiritual Trolls, there was more than just legend behind those stories, and it appeared that this particular altar or spirit or whatnot did indeed confer upon its supplicants a greater ability to walk or run. Jalaya figured she had nothing to lose, as she had tried out solutions with far less going for them. It wasn't long before she crossed the shimmering sea between the mainland and the island, and observed the standard affair of some overgrown jungle cliffs with an old crumbling yellow stone temple atop, with an ancient, barely-noticeable footpath leading to the top.
Jalaya hated walking around in jungles. There were always vines, leaves, stems, branches, or whatever else that were growing everywhere, and these inevitably managed to brush across her sensitive soles. Fortunately, today's path seemed to be mostly dirt and very little in the way of plants, and it was maybe ten minutes' walk up the cliff path and into the dark maw of the crumbling temple. To her pleased surprise, the altar she had come to find was right there in the first wide room, saving her the necessity of fumbling around in potentially dangerous and lightless back rooms. To her very mild annoyance, there were two minor imps prancing around the altar and jabbering pointlessly, as imps tended to do. but Jalaya was unconcerned. In fact, it was even a little heartening to see them there, because it meant that there was still something worth having here.
A shimmering, faintly yellow shield erected itself in front of her, and Jalaya wasted no time in gathering Holy magics into her hands, focusing it not towards an ally for the purpose of healing but concentrating it to Smite her foes. The first imp screamed in irritation and pain as the searing light lashed it across the back, and it turned, green skin smoking faintly, felfire crackling in its hands as it jabbered to its companion, which also began to cast the imps' small but bothersome signature fel fireball. A blast of Holy energy that consumed the first, injured imp caused it to scream and crackle and burn lifelessly, but before Jalaya could turn her attention to the second imp it had launched its small fireball at her... which disappeared with barely a twitch in the powerful shield she had cast on herself ahead of time. Jabbering with dismay, but too stupid or unable to break off its attack and flee - lesser demons such as these imps rarely if ever had free will - it began to try again, and a second fireball didn't even faze Jalaya, who ended the quick encounter with another Smite spell.
Now the altar was before her, and Jalaya walked over to it, settling herself directly over top the slab of smooth white marble which was inlaid into the floor in front of her. With a slight wince, and taking a deep breath, Jalaya canceled her Levitate spell, gently setting her feet down on that slab of marble. Almost immediately she began to shiver - the stone was smooth, so it didn't hurt to stand on at least, but her ultra-sensitive feet magnified the cool feeling of the stone ten times over and made her feel cold despite the typically hot, dry air of Durotar. Trying to keep her teeth from chattering, the Troll priestess made her simple incantation: "O great spirit o' dose who seek t'carry de words of de gods to da believers, lend me your swiftness! Lend me de soles of de spiritwalkers so dat I may proceed on my journey in swiftness and haste!" It was, Jalaya had worked out ahead of time, all true. Some spirits did not take kindly to those who misled them in their supplications. Jalaya, however, slowly felt her feet start to tingle a bit, and as they did so, the coldness gradually began to fade...
"Ah... so THAT'S why my imps both fell over dead all of the sudden." Jalaya turned swiftly to see, framed in the sunlight of the opening, a human female, with pale white skin and purplish designs painted on her face, short black hair and dark purple robes and a staff of the same black-and-purple motif regarding her with minor amusement. "I didn't think anyone would care about a run-down old temple like this, but it seems as if I was wrong." She glanced down at Jalaya's feet, bemused by the fact that they had started to become slightly hazy, as if not quite there, then her mouth twisted into a curious expression. "And why would a priestess of all people want the gods' blessing of spirit feet?"
"Dat not be any concern of yours!" Jalaya spat. The arrogance with which this human warlock carried herself - she must be a warlock, to know of her familiar demons' demise - coupled with the distinctive colors of her robes... "What ya should be worryin' about is what de Darkspear will do when dey find out dere's been a Twilight's Hammer sneakin' about one of de ancient temples!" Already Jalaya was mentally preparing herself for a battle; against a warlock, she knew, the fight would be long, and slow, a battle of attrition and wills as the warlock attempted to use her foul magics to injure and impair the priestess, who would in turn focus on countering and dispelling her enchantments, keeping herself healthy, and attacking whenever possible. To her annoyance, however, the warlock wasn't even really listening to her, or looking at her. She was instead wearing a thoughtful expression as she considered the Troll's ethereal feet. Then she looked into space, as if communicating with someone unseen. Jalaya felt a minor poke at her sole, and twitched slightly - well, more than slightly - but when the sensation faded, she put it down to a side-effect of the sudden change. "Well? I hope you be prepared!"
"Aha," she said instead. "Oh, I get it..." Jalaya felt suddenly nervous when the human female leered at her. "Interesting. Very interesting. And quite clever, if you hadn't overlooked one simple fact in your prayer." The warlock looked far too confident for Jalaya's liking, and so she renewed her shield and cast some spells on herself to remain healthy, wary of a surprise attack from somewhere. "Oh, but it was clever. That's a pretty innovative solution to an unconventional problem." Jalaya was getting the feeling that something very bad was going to happen, a feeling that was reinforced by the sudden sensation of what felt like a slender female finger stroking down the length of her sole. She just barely managed not to jump out of her skin. But somehow, the warlock had known to watch for even the slightest hint of a response and grinned with excitement when she saw it. "Let me guess. You wanted to get rid of your feet because they were too ticklish, right? That must be why I saw you Levitating when you went up the cliffside path earlier."
Jalaya wondered how she could know that, but admitting weakness in front of this smirking little human was the last thing she wanted to do. She drew herself up to her full height, which in this case was almost ten inches greater than the warlock's, and crossed her arms firmly under her breasts, as if to emphasize that each one was nearly the size of the human girl's head. "And what if dat be true? As ya yourself said, I received da blessing of de gods. Even if I was ticklish like ya say, dat not be da case anymore." Her attempt at a strong statement fell woefully short as the warlock laughed openly and pointed the twisted, writhing staff she carried in a menacing way towards Jalaya. A sudden prick of worry overcame Jalaya at that moment - what if the warlock knew some curse to tickle her through her spiritually enhanced feet? That worry was only heightened as both of her feet were treated to the brief sensation of fingernails skittering down the sides of each foot.
"Like I said, you overlooked one particular problem," the warlock sneered. "You have those spirit feet on a 'loan'. They aren't yours, and so it follows that you'll get your own feet back at some point. Therefore, your real feet have to be somewhere, don't they?" She paused for effect, smirking with anticipation as the import of what she was saying began to dawn on Jalaya. "Do you have any idea where your real feet are right now?" Another stroke, stronger this time, made the Troll priestess gasp and twist around, as if trying to spot an invisible attacker. "Because I sure do."
Jalaya's attempt at a response dissolved into laughter as the barely-there teasing quickly morphed into real tickling. It wasn't particularly intense tickling, really. But it was enough to send the Troll priestess into a spasm of laughter, and to keep her laughing as a bemused warlock watched her shield fade into nothingness. In a back room in the temple somewhere, two motionless and very soft blue feet were attached by means of a magical aura to a slab of stone that was simply hung up against the wall, and crowded into that room were numerous demons, primarily succubi and felhounds. Naturally, Jalaya was still well able to feel everything that happened to her feet, but completely unable to move them, and two succubi giggled to each other as their fingernails danced along the sides of those motionless feet. Through their bond to their mistress they could see and hear Jalaya's reactions, reinforcing their efforts and prompting a third to join in, tickling just beneath the toes of both feet as her two companions tickled both sides of either foot.
A very amused warlock saw Jalaya go to her knees, trying to hug her feet closer to her body, before realizing that was useless and curling up on her side, rolling back and forth across the stone while the human girl began to realize just how helpless this Troll became when tickled. Her succubi were having a lot of fun with the girl's feet, and she maintained the link she had with them, showing them in full detail the effect their efforts were having. Jalaya screamed with full-throated laughter, pounding her fists on the floor as she laid down on her stomach, face buried in the crook of one elbow while they focused their collective efforts on the upper halves of her feet, searching in between those big toes of hers, all along the ball of the foot and in every nook and cranny they could find. Then one of them, caught up in a moment of creativity, spoke to the other two, and they all stopped tickling for a moment... but not before inducing the felhounds, with their long, rough tongues, to take their places, and the three of them left the small back room somewhere in the temple.
The tongues were no better. Lacking the intelligence of the succubi, the felhounds were simply spurred on to continue by virtue of the fact that their mistress was pleased. Jalaya had managed to stretch a hand out to the warlock as if in supplication, before it fell limp to the floor and she went into another full throated laughter cycle: "NHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!! HAHAHAHEHEHEH M-MAKE 'EM SHTHAHAHAHEEHEHEHEHEHEHEEH STOOOHAHAHEHEHEHS STOOOP DAAAAAAHAHAAAT! NEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEEHEHE!!! NOOO!! PLEHEHEEHEeeheEeEEeeeeeEEEEEZE!!!" Jalaya rolled onto her back, then onto her front again, then desperately tried to stand, swaying and wobbling because she was laughing so hard that there was no strength in her legs. She ended up using the long stone slab of the altar to support herself, then collapsed atop it, laughing so hard her sides were shaking. Naturally she didn't see it coming when the warlock lightly ran her fingertips up Jalaya's sides, and even through her robe this prompted a squeal and a jerk forward, then she swayed backwards - improbably, into the smaller woman's arms.
"Ooof! Mm... this isn't going to work as a permanent arrangement, but it's doable for now," she said, discarding her staff and simply holding the hysterical Troll woman, screaming so hard that tears were coming from her eyes again. In the back room, the warlock realized, the succubi had somehow found a collection of backscratchers and smooth stones, and after rolling the smooth stones a few times across those soft feet, got to work with the backscratchers, tickling in random and unpredictable locations, nearly all focusing on her soft fleshy soles. Their motions drove Jalaya wild, and the felhounds' tongues were trying to squirm in and around wherever they could, finding spots on her heels and the sides of her feet to happily lick at. The warlock realized that this priestess was almost completely powerless, and didn't even really need to be cursed into helplessness; to test that theory, she gathered up the hem of the Troll woman's robe and gently started to pull it up over her head. Jalaya didn't even resist her, the only obstacle being caused by her uselessly limp arms, but when the warlock had managed to position those properly she whisked the robe off and casually unwrapped the several feet of cloth that kept the cannonball-size breasts in check. "My my, what a gifted girl you are," she giggled.
Now naked, Jalaya was guided to lie down on the stone altar, upon her back, and even though she tried sometimes to curl up or kick her feet in a useless protest against the ticklish torture, she was beyond too weak to resist by this point. The mischievous warlock tickled all sorts of miscellaneous other places, dipping a finger into her navel, exploring her underarms and skating around the circumference of those enormous breasts. But it was hard to tell if it had any effect at all just because Jalaya was screaming too loudly with laughter. "EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHE!! IHCHAHEHEEH I CAN'T BRE-EHEHHEE-HHAHAHAA! I cahahAHAHAEHEHEHEh can't BREHAHAHAHAAHEHEEHEHAAHAHTHE!!!! PLEHEHEHEEHEE! HEHEHEHE! HEHEEHEEEEEE!!!! Stehehehehe-hehehe-hahahah stoooop stop stophAHAHAHEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHE YA HAHEHEEHAHAHAH YA GOHAHAHEH GONNA KILL MEEHheheEHEEEHEEE!!!" Her thick fingers curled into useless fists and relaxed, hands flopping around in pathetic attempts to fend off what were increasingly becoming lusty gropes by the warlock.
"I doubt it," she replied cavalierly. Alternating between their fingers and the scratchers and even a brush one had found somewhere, the three succubi tormented Jalaya's feet while the felhounds' tongues covered any location they weren't actively tickling at the time. A small, fine-toothed backscratcher stroked the area right in the center of that huge sole with devastatingly ticklish precision; the same succubus, wielding another one, tickled very near to the first and focused the ticklish devastation on a very small area. Another was using her hand and a bristly brush to stroke the ball of that same foot, employing her hand for random tickling tasks while the brush bristles rubbed back and forth, occasionally sneaking into the sensitive gap between the two big toes and causing much ticklish torment. She wondered if someone could be TOO ticklish; it was almost difficult to tell what had an effect upon her because she just wouldn't stop her insane shrieking laughter.
"I don't think the spirits intended their gift to be used in this way," the warlock remarked casually to the hysterically laughing, tear-streaked Troll who was looking increasingly panicked with laughter. She was tracing her fingertips idly about on Jalaya's torso while she spoke. "Nor had I thought of it, for that matter. But I guess it was just lucky for me that you happened to beseech the spirits for help just as my minions were exploring the right place." This was largely a monologue, as Jalaya was far too gone to respond to her, or even really to pay much attention to the warlock's words. Jalaya's vulnerable feet were powerless to defend themselves in even the slightest way... One felhound had his tongue focused mainly on the heel of one foot, that which the two succubi were focusing on, and even this spot that was usually rough was smooth and ticklish and helpless. The nice soft curve of flesh above the heel seemed to be a good spot, and the long black tongue tormented the ever-sensitive blue skin. Jalaya was in truth too ticklish to tell the sensations apart anymore; these kinds of intense gang-ticklings shattered her mind in remarkably short periods of time...
The other foot was being attended to by the other succubus and felhound. She had her hands wrapped around the big foot from either side, tickling up and down the sides with her fingertips while employing her warm tongue to the center, flicking it up and down teasingly before taking nice long licks. Then she would giggle and back away, to let the long felhound tongue completely have its way with that helpless foot, licking long all the way up to the gap between the toes, letting the broad surface area of its tongue drive Jalaya into ticklish hysterics. The Troll's nerves were on overload and had been that way for some time; the complete and total helplessness of the situation made fighting the warlock into a bad joke. Instead of fighting, here she was naked and getting groped by her! But the notion of so much as even casting a spell was a pipe dream; all Jalaya could do was attempt to plead through her strained laughter, the tear-streaked eyes that marked the truly hysterical. In fact, that laughter was starting to wane as Jalaya found her physical reserves becoming exhausted.
The warlock only regretted that she wouldn't be able to tickle those magnificent feet herself. But it was better to see this priestess suffer through her ticklish hell and be totally helpless to stop it. Idly, she stopped to consider if there were any other ways in which she could prolong this torment, running her finger lightly back and forth from Jalaya's navel to her chin and back again as she stared off into space and thought through the various things she could do, and how they might be applied to this situation. She was oblivious to Jalaya's now-silent laughter, the fact that her enormous breasts jiggled nonstop as her chest heaved with desperate attempts to breathe; tickling Jalaya personally wasn't even high on her list of priorities at the moment, and it was really just something she was doing to keep her hands occupied while the Troll girl laughed the very last bit of her strength away. As such, when the warlock suddenly hit upon her idea... "Ah, I've got it!" she said, smacking her fist into her palm and then looking down at Jalaya, the better to see that delicious face contorted into hysterical laughter, but to her disappointment the Troll's eyes were closed and she was not responding to anything. With some amount of resignation her minions stopped tickling those soles, and as the warlock watched Jalaya's spiritual feet slowly phased back into solid form.
"Well, next time then. I've got an idea which I think you'll find lots of fun," the warlock said out loud, unable to see but suspecting strongly that the priestess' spirit was nearby, simply waiting for her to vacate the premises before re-entering her body and making a run for it. The human girl had no intention of stopping her, not just yet. But Jalaya didn't have to know that. "Until then, dear. I'll be thinking of you." However, she wasn't going to just let her off the hook that easily. She rose from her sitting position on the side of the altar, retrieved her staff, and then also found where she'd tossed the priestess' robe and bundled it up under her arm, before grinning wickedly at the unmoving body upon the altar and blowing it an air kiss.
---
Jalaya was fuming as she watched the warlock from just outside the temple entrance, and glared firebolts at her while she descended the winding cliff path and then vanished in a flash of fire. The world was washed-out and mostly blue and white, but she could still see things fairly clearly enough. And she could think clearly enough now to suspect a trap, so she settled down just inside of the temple, keeping an eye on her body as it lay unmoving, and decided to wait for a while longer, just to make sure. So it was a surprise when she suddenly felt a strong pull - very strong - to her body and found herself getting sucked in against her will...
Jalaya opened her eyes as the burst of resurrection magic around her body faded, having completed its task of rejoining body with spirit, and almost forgot to cast her levitation spell before trying to stand up. It took her another moment to realize that there was a green creature standing just past knee-height at the foot of the altar, dressed in priest's robes fit to its diminutive size, holding a similarly small staff in one hand, and holding its other hand with palm raised up towards the naked Troll. "Tanks for de revive, Goblin," Jalaya managed to get out, but didn't make it any further before the Goblin priest strained to reach higher with its upturned palm. She didn't quite understand what he was trying to get at, and the look of confusion on her face made it clear to him. The Goblin sighed:
"Thousand big ones for the rez, pal."
Jalaya felt her face grow warm with indignation. "A tousand gold for dat?! You must be jokin', brotha," she said, crossing her arms beneath those titanic breasts. "What kind o' priest be askin' fer..." she began, and then stopped midway through that sentence as she saw several more Goblins crowd into the temple entrance, aflame with curiosity. Jalaya sighed; it was no secret that five Goblins would be hard-pressed to come up with a single scruple between the lot of them. So she tried a different tack: "Look at me, mon. Does it look ta you like I be havin' one tousand gold on me right now?" The Goblin appraised her, looked back to his cohorts, then looked over her again.
"I guess not. All right, boys, help me take her back to the ship..."
