Your Featherlands CYOA Journey ~ Chapter 7

Your eyes narrow back at the towering troll's domineering expression. It's snide and gritty. His hand starts to grip more tightly onto you, his eyes staring down at you with a look as honest as it is spiteful. You jerk away from the beast, stumbling backward. You brace your wand-wielding arm. You try to focus on the spells that you had learned, but the surrounding ambush bares down on your conscious mind. Gradually, more of the trolls begin circling you, closing in around you.

"Think carefully now," Flauntroy says. "Don't do anything you might regret now, human." You peer around carefully, watching all of the surrounding trolls creeping in closer. They snicker among themselves. Their fingers squirm with eager intent. You swallow and steady yourself, all while Tia's squealing laughter in the distance keeps you jarred with a potent sense of urgency.

"HEEEEEHAHAHAHAHAHEEELP!!!" Tia’s voice breaks through the trees. You look to the direction of her laughter. You find a break in the cluster between Flauntroy and another leering troll. You plant your feet. You eye your path. You raise your hand toward the beast, your eyes glaring into his.

"No!" you shout. "I'm not going to let you use my friend that way!" You shoot out your arm. With a mighty thrust, you center your focus on the Manic Spark spell from before. You see it in your mind. You feel it coming to your fingertips, coursing from the wand attached to your arm. And yet, as you point the spell at the oncoming snatchers, nothing happens. You wait and watch for the sparks to surface, but all that courses through you is an acute, chilling void of helplessness. The trolls stand by as well, bracing themselves for whatever spell you may summon. Upon seeing your horrid expression, a rousing chorus of cackling laughter bursts through them all.

"Gaahaha, you really had me there for a second, human!" Flauntroy's voice booms over the others. The trolls reel with deep, belly guffaws. They bend over and hold onto one another, pointing at your efforts.

"I... I don't... understand."

"Here we thought that you might actually do something!" Flauntroy cackles, encouraging the others with taunting jeers. "It's alright, human. We'll have plenty of use for you here. Just come nicely and we'll–"

A crackling bolt fires from the tip of the wand. It collides with Flauntroy’s center, ending his taunting and forcing him to stumble back. The bolts quickly cover his body. His shocked expression almost instantly melts into one of uncontrollable hysteria.

“Whaaahahahaaaat’s thissshahhhahahhaa?!” the beast shouts as he clenches at his sides. The sparking tickles shoot throughout his body, attacking the senses at every inch they travel. You keep the spell flowing steady, gritting your teeth and narrowing your eyes for focus. The spell tickles even you as it travels through the wand, but your channeling determination keeps it from hindering your focus.

“Hey, Flaunt,” one of the other trolls says, coming closer. “You okay?” He puts a hand on Flautroy’s shoulder. The arcing, ticklish currents shoot into him as well. The other troll stands frozen in place for a moment before stumbling over in his own deep, ticklish laughter. The bolts travel through each of their bodies, rending them both caught in an immobilizing assault of tickles flowing through their bodies.

“Gaaahahahhahahhhaa!!” the troll’s laughter bellows over the path. He and Faluntroy fall back, tripping over their own feet and hitting the ground. The other trolls stand by and watch in shock. A snarling grimace comes over their faces, their eyes narrowing back at you.

“Aye, we’ll teach you to make fools of us, human!” another troll shouts. He storms closer with a long, thundering gait. You turn with your hand still aimed. Still unsure of how to control the magic flowing through your arm, you manage to fire off another bolt of Manic Spark. It hits the troll’s center, leaving him collapsing into ticklish rage like the others. The spark proceeds to branch off of the troll’s towering body and arches to two others close by. A booming cacophony of laughter begins to surround you as the trolls topple over, clutching at their sides.

“Gaaaaahhhhhhahahaaaa!” the trolls chuckle teary-eyed. “Geeheheheeet the humaahahahan!” The call to action is more than enough to get more trolls approaching from the surrounding woodlands. You fire off spell after spell of Manic Spark. Some of the lightning hits several targets at once while others merely fall upon a single ticklish troll, pushing them back and knocking them to the ground. As the laughter explodes around you, you figure the spell won’t have much of a lasting effect. You dash off out of the cluster and into the woods, racing past Flauntroy, still writhing on the ground.

“Aaaahahahaaafter the humaahahahahan!” you hear Flauntroy’s voice call out. You don’t bother looking back. You listen for Tia’s crying laughter in the distance and run in the direction where it begins to get louder. You hurdle over logs and bushes. You duck beneath low-hanging branches, swiftly moving through the forest like a creature of the brush. You huff and panic as you look around at where the trolls could be keeping Tiamalla. Sweat trickles down your skin. You know you don’t have much time before the trolls recover and come after you. Still, you know you must keep looking for Tia, to save her from whatever torments the trolls are putting her through.

After many long, wheezing minutes of running, you come up on the troll camp. It hosts minimal effects and supplies, nothing like the elaborate grandeur of the elven commune. A few tents sit erected about the site. Tools and weaponry lean against wooden crates and woven baskets, much larger than anything you have seen so far. Small plots of crops stretch along the outskirts of the camp perimeter. Cloths and articles of clothing dangle upon lines reaching high above your head. These passive observations pale compared to your focus on Tia’s manic laughter. Your evasive efforts have put quite a bit of distance between you and the trolls, but you know it won’t last and you fear relying on the magic to come through for you again. You search around the camp, following the girl’s panicked shrieks.

“AAAHHAHHAHAAA!!! HEHEHEHELP!! PLEAAAAHAHHAHASE!!!” You can hear tears and desperation in her voice. You track down the constant flow of laughter over to what the trolls had called ‘force farms’. There, you see four intricate contraptions for inflicting tickles and harvesting laughter. They each have a captive inside, enduring endless tickles through automatic means.

In one, a captive is bound in a pair of seated stocks. All of the unfortunate victims appear to be of races that you have not encountered yet while in the Featherlands, at first glance. The one before you appears to be male, boasting marginally canine features. His body structure is bipedal and human-like, including his feet trapped in the stocks. Yet his arms and legs are slightly more accentuated with a rich, orange shade of fur. Fox-like ears sit atop his head with a matching tail frantically shifting about beneath his seat. A small snout and a shallow layer of soft, white fur cover his face. His eyes are large and watery, clenched shut through a constant fit of laughter.

“GAAAHHAHHAHAHAHAAAAA!! MAAAHAHAHAAKE IT STAHAHAHAHAP!!!” the fox-boy shouts. His arms are bound up above his head. At his feet, two large wheels guide several feathers each up and down both of the boy’s bound, bare soles. His toes are tied back, quivering with strain. The wheels themselves are turned by racing creatures walled off inside and propelled by the scent of food in front of them. The creatures continue to run, rotating the wheel beneath them and keeping the feathers stroking the boy’s helpless soles.

At his sides, two strange plants are potted and stationed. They each extend familiar looking vines out toward the boy’s exposed pits, caressing and stroking each with the devilish intent to further his ticklish torment. His laughter escapes his mouth in crying waves. With them, jars kept in locked cages beside him sparkle and glimmer, collecting the boy’s laughter in the form of magical sustenance. The boy thrashes in his seat. He cries out and pleads, his state clearly the result of several hours worth of the troll’s insidious ‘harvesting’.

Your stomach drops. You feel sick at what you witness sitting before you. Yet, who you found is still not Tia. You break from your frozen stance and move over to the next subject for inspection.

“FAAAHAHHAHAHHAAAHAAA!!! I CAAHAHAHAHAN’T TAHAHHAAKE IT!!! STAHAHAHAP!!!” You witness what you conclude to be an orc girl in front of you. Her skin is tinted a light gray-sh green shade. Her hair is long and black and appears to have been tied up at one point, now just a frayed entanglement. She appears strong and large in stature. You observe her in a completely different contraption, one that has her kneeling up on a hard, wooden bench. A pair of boots sit discarded next to her feet pointed behind her. Two caged creatures, much larger than the ones toiling within the wheels, lick endlessly at her soles. Their tongues are long with tendril features that seem to snake and slither between her toes.

“GEEEHHEHEEEEHAHAHAEET THEM AAHAAAHAHAHAFF!!” the orc girl shouts angrily. Her face is contorted with frustration, even through her own helpless, ticklish laughter. Her arms too are hoisted up above her head. Around her torso, covering from her shoulders down to her hips, is a cylindrical glass. Within it, hundreds of buzzing bugs and beetles scurry about her skin. They feast on the girl’s hyper-ticklish nerves with their scribbling legs, kept in constant motion as they feed off of her ticklish energy. They focus on certain areas in clumps of dozens. Many surround both of her armpits while others traverse up and down her sides. A large concentration dances around the girls’ slender, sturdy stomach, even burying their ticklish scribbling down into her navel. The girl screams with laughter, grunting and thrashing about. The constant tickling keeps her body heated and sweating, the sweat appearing to be condensing within the case and channeled to the bottom where the salty substance is then funneled to two spouts above her soles.

By her side is another cage with a jar siphoning the magic from her ticklish reactions. You contemplate trying to smash the cages so that the trolls could stop these torments, but you hate the idea of making their suffering for nothing if you have not the power to save them. You’re reluctant to leave either of the ticklish victims to their unfortunate fates, but a distant voice calling out invokes the urgency to remind you who you’re looking for.

“They went this way!” one of the trolls calls out. You turn to the voice before hurrying to the next station. Another display of frightening ingenuity stops you yet again.

What you see before you is an individual completely submerged in water. It’s a smaller, female figure, similar to that of Tia. She is kept inside a large glass tube filled to the top with water. She appears to be breathing just fine, save for the obvious hysteria that plagues her expressions. Her arms are bound behind her back and her legs are tied together. Both feature slightly webbed digits and small fins on the outer portions of her humanoid calves and forearms. Her hair is a striking shade of blue and floats freely in the water. The girl writhes in an apparent ticklish agony to the feasting of many eel-like creatures circling around her. They nibble on her skin, yet break none of it. Their long, tendril tongues act like arms to reach into the girl’s pits, stroke her bare belly, and even lap at her soles down below.

You examine her closer to see that her ankles are tied together and weighed by a stone at the bottom of the tank. She flails and tries to swim, but cannot challenge the stone, the tank, or its many hungry occupants. Though you see the exhausted hysteria on her face, you can hear only a faint laughter through the gurgling bubbles breaking at the surface.

“Aaaaahhhahahahaaaa! Nohhoho mahahahaaore!!” What you hear is faint, yet strikingly musical and no less desperate than any of the others. She too has a cage with a jar in it next to her, harvesting her suffering.

“There!” you hear from the brush behind you. “They went to the camp!” The voices are distant, yet getting louder by the second. You have to pull yourself away from any hope of saving the girl in the tank. You groan and rush to the next station in line.

“NAAAHAHHAHAHAAAA!! PLEEAEAHAHASE!!” Tia begs, locked in her own devilish contraption. The small elf girl is suspended up in the air by a harness with her arms and legs splayed out. A series of cogs turn swiftly around her, powered by a rushing stream of water. The cogs interlock at several others stationed around Tia’s body, connected to wheels with many vibrant feathers pointed out like spokes. The feather wheels turn over endlessly at her bound, stretched feet. The plumes glide, one right after the other, swiping up her soles and flicking off at her bound-back toes. More wheels turn to the same effect at her sides and right beneath her underarms. Two smaller wheels target even the pointed tips of the girl’s ears.

“PLEAAAHAHHASE!!! IT TICKLES SAAHAHAHAA MAHHAHACH!!” Tia continues to squeal. Her face is deeply reddened, her cheeks shimmering with sweat and tears. You know it hasn’t been long since the trolls had her attached, but she already seems spent from the endless tickles coursing through her body. Like the others, Tia too had a small caged jar next to her, collecting her ticklish energy.

“Tia, hang on!” you say, trying not to be heard by the approaching troll force. Their heavy footsteps crunch through the brush surrounding you. You approach Tia’s device, looking for a way to release her. As the trolls steadily close in, your bank of options begins to thin. You groan and reach up to the harness holding her. Her arms and legs are bound by belts in several spots to keep them effectively splayed. One by one, you tear the belts from the wooden contraption, breaking it in lieu of figuring out how it works. Steadily, you release Tia from her binds and pull her out of the ticklish madness at the first chance that you’re able to safely.

Breaking Tia out of the contraption, you hold her close and bring her down to the ground. She huffs. She’s tired already, but not completely exhausted of energy. You stabilize the girl until she can stand on her own, supporting her with a single arm. She reaches up to rub her head and to swipe her hair out of her sweaty face.

“We… we have to… tell the others…” Tia says. You know she’s right. You look back into the surrounding forest before glancing at the others locked in their own manufactured ticklish torments. A sickness stirs within you. You huff along with Tia, your heart pounding just as much as hers.

“We can save them,” you say. “We have to.”

“There’s no time,” Tia says, almost angrily. She slips from your arm and starts off in the direction away from the oncoming trolls. “We have to… get out of here.” You groan. You look back at the ticklish torture happening around you, at the three souls begging to also be set free. The crunching footsteps of the trolls get louder and louder by the second, their scouts still searching for you.

“But… we can still save one,” you say. “There’s time, I swear!”

“There isn’t!” Tia yells. “We have to go! Now!” You don’t want to hear it. You know you’ll never be able to live with yourself if you leave them all to their grueling devices. You look over each one more time, knowing that your window for setting any of them free shorts more and more with each passing moment.

“There!” a troll calls out. “There they are!”

It’s now or never. There’s no telling what will happen to the victims once you and Tia flee to tell the commune. They could be moved, hidden, or worse. The best way to get intel on the trolls is to save and talk to one of the captives. But you only have the time to save one, made all too clear by the storming voices of the trolls drawing near.