The Celestine Tiara was named after the princess (and eventual queen, and even more eventual headless corpse) for whom it was made, one hundred and seventy-seven years ago, in anticipation of the girl’s sixteenth birthday. The tiara’s legend suggests that it is an intricate, breathtakingly beautiful creation, resplendent in jewels and precious metals that impressed upon the beholder its unparalleled majesty. In actuality, while the tiara is certainly finely crafted, there isn’t much differentiating it from other crowns or jewelry of its time; many who see it in the flesh (or metal, as it were) find themselves underwhelmed. The reason why the Celestine Tiara is so highly coveted is due to the long and winding path it took from the Palais de Zora to its current location in a wooden box at the side of a bandit caravan leader. The exact sequence of events is subject to endless academic argument, but the generally agreed upon story follows:

Only days before Princess Celeste’s birthday gala, the tiara was stolen by a crafty servant girl, a fox named Katrina who escaped from the palace in the dead of night and rode on horseback to Hypatia, the nearest port. There, she intended to sell the tiara to pirates and board a ship to a new land, never to be seen again. Unfortunately for Katrina, Hypatia was not a safe place for young women, particularly not slim, fair-featured foxes carrying ludicrously expensive pieces of jewelry. One mugging and two dozen stab wounds later, the tiara changed hands.

Its new owner was a pirate known only as Chatham, a member of the infamous Swiftfoot Tom’s crew who took the tiara on board with him as they embarked across the sea. Whatever the plan was, it was dashed when their ship was raided by a fellow pirate ship; while most of the crew survived, they were robbed of their treasure, including the tiara.

Its whereabouts grew fuzzy for a couple of years, but it resurfaced in the hands of one Rhys Holloway, a wealthy gentleman who acquired it to give to his mistress as a gift. It was eventually recognized, not as the missing tiara of Princess (now Queen) Celeste, but as another stolen tiara, this one belonging to Princess Georgina of Silka. There it remained in her vault for decades until it was, once again, stolen, and thought to have been lost.

Which, after more twists and turns and thieves and murders, brings us to the bandit caravan, where the Celestine Tiara was being held. The leader of the thieves, a diminutive yet powerful fox who went by the name of Stratton, did not let the box holding the precious object (made of plain wood to avoid suspicion) go too far from her sight at any given time. As the caravan had settled down for the night, it was also surrounded by at least a dozen other bandits, none of whom would let so much as a single unknown intruder anywhere near it without giving them a sudden-onset case of Truncheon Nose. It was as secure as it could be, kept among the rest of the bounty and blending in as well as it could; it would take a great thief indeed to steal it.

Instead, there was Piko.

Piko was short for a kobold, a species that was never exactly known for their imposing physique in the first place. She had wide hips, mottled reddish-brown skin, and big, yellow reptilian eyes that blinked a lot less often than you’d think they should. With her physical disadvantages, Piko would need a steel-trap mind and an agile, calculating strategy in order to steal the tiara from the caravan and make it out unscathed. It would be difficult, but she could do it.

Or at least, she could if she was anybody but herself, Piko, the Stupidest Thief in the Whole Entire World. There is no way to tactfully describe how few brain cells Piko had to rub together, so the author will instead use several, decidedly non-tactful ways to bring the idea across; the author would like to apologize to Piko for impugning her good name, but there’s a good chance that the kobold would be distracted by a particularly colorful butterfly and forget any offense she had taken to this story.

The most sophisticated strategy Piko had ever conceived was pointing in the other direction and shouting “look, a dragon!” whenever she was caught red-handed (and she was caught red-handed more often than not). Piko tried to pickpocket a statue on more than one occasion. When tasked to tail and rob a woman named Carlotta Kohler, Piko asked the woman sitting next to her at a tavern if they knew where she was; that woman was Carlotta Kohler. Whenever a psychic tried to read Piko’s mind, they would pick up nothing but elevator music; and this is a story, keep in mind, where elevators don’t exist.

There are some benefits that come with having a single bronze coin where one’s brain should be, tenacity chief among them. Piko simply did not give up, no matter how many times she failed; after every humiliating defeat and painful, degrading punishment, she bounced right back, her big, vacant grin as wide as it ever was. Her resilience is inspiring in a weird way; you might try and be so undaunted by challenges as Piko, but in order to do that you would need to get your sense of shame surgically removed.

On this particular occasion, though, Piko was unusually competent. She had managed to fit in to the bandit caravan well enough, posing in the right ways and saying the right things in order to evade suspicion. She wasn’t completely perfect-the kobold, even at her most focused, had an odd, drifty way of talking that made people give her funny looks-but on the whole she was doing well. Well enough, in fact, that she was in striking distance of her ultimate goal. The tiara! It was imprisoned in its plain wooden box, but it was there-she could practically see through the dull cedar wood and marvel at the glimmering treasure hidden within. Her eyes practically turned into gold coins at the thought of it. 

The kobold could sense that there were some eyes on her; she was, after all, halfway in and halfway out of the tent where the treasures were being held. But she had seen enough of the guards’ behavior to know that it was OK to poke your head into the tent every now and then, whether checking to see if anyone had snuck in or just to imagine happily swan-diving into the trove of gold coins and jewelry. As long as she didn’t call attention to herself, she should be able to sneak in and sneak out before anyone noticed.

As Piko disappeared into the tent, moving as swiftly and quietly as her small kobold legs would take her, she felt something brewing in her stomach. This was not, unfortunately, an uncommon experience; her digestive system delighted in rearing its ugly head at the most inconvenient times, popping up as loudly and suddenly as a cuckoo clock with schizophrenia. But things had been going well for her so far, Piko thought to herself, as she approached the box holding the tiara and came tantalizingly close to grabbing her meal ticket. Maybe she could hold it. Maybe-

GllrrrrrrghhhLLRRRRRRRRMMMMBBBBllllllllrrrrsssschhhhhhhhhprrrrrr.

Piko stood there, the box holding the tiara in her hands, looking like she was summoned before the queen of her native kingdom wearing nothing but a g-string. It wasn’t only that this blew her cover, but that it blew it in such a hideously embarrassing way! As easily as she could come back from her many personal, professional, financial and sexual humiliations, it always stung in the moment. And, as the flap of the tent opened and Piko saw three confused, disgusted and angered guards looking at her, she realized that it could be quite a bit more than just a sting.

“Holy fuck,” said the first guard, a big, strapping bull with a diagonal scar on his forehead. “The latrine’s that way, idiot!”

“If I see a single speck of shit on one of those treasures, I’ll tie you in a sack and throw you in the river,” said the second guard, a tall, heavy set skunk whose tail swayed in irritation.

“Hey, what’re you doing with that box?” asked the third guard, a studly ram, as he glared at Piko. The kobold just stood there like a chicken in the rain, holding the box with the tiara inside of it, her ass still making those wretched, gurgling, rasping noises.

“Fucking hell, is she still going?”

“Is she even shitting?”

“No, I think it’s just gas.”

“Who gives a fuck? That’s the tiara!”

As she stood there, caught stealing a priceless piece of jewelry due to her constant, endless gas, Piko realized that she may have ended up in a bit of an awkward situation. And so she reacted the way she always reacted when faced with troublesome times. She dropped whatever she was holding and bolted.

Unfortunately, the guards weren’t content to let her do that. One of them-the bull-reached out and grabbed her by the back of her neck, hoisting her into the air as though she was an unruly toddler and grinning. “And where do you think you’re going?” Piko was about to reach down to her belt and grab her knife to defend herself, but one of the other guards-she couldn’t see since he was behind her, but she guessed the skunk-grabbed her arms, pinning them behind her back.

“You ain’t going nowhere,” the guard growled into her ear. Yup, definitely the skunk.

The skunk turned his head to the ram and grinned. “Hey, Scarbrough! You wanna shut her up?” Piko was confused by that at first, considering that she hadn’t spoken since the guards saw her, but then she realized that the dull rumbling of her rear was what he was referring to. She wondered why they weren’t commenting on the stench; maybe it was because, being bandits, they were used to dirtier conditions.

Whatever it was, the ram-that was Scarbrough-yanked down her belt and pants, leaving her bottomless and exposed. Then, without buildup or pity, he took his club from his own belt-about the length and width of a cardboard tube, although certainly more solid-and shoved it...well…

“YIPE!” This got a reaction out of Piko-she kicked and squirmed in the bull’s grip, wincing as Scarbrough jammed his club up her rear, stretching her hole wide around the knobbly wood of the weapon. At the very least, it plugged up her gas, which, considering the relieved sighs the three guards gave, seemed to be the purpose behind shoving the club up her ass.

“Now…” The bull leered at Piko, still not letting her out of his grasp. “What do we do with a little kobold with sticky fingers?”

Piko swallowed. “Hire her?” she offered, hopefully.

The three guards just laughed at that, one of them giving her a clap on the back that, considering their size and her lack thereof, made Piko swing back and forth like a pendulum in the bull’s grip.

“Naaaaah,” the bull said. “Usually we just kill you.” That made Piko writhe even more, and earned another round of laughter from the guards.

“Or, hell, she’s pretty small,” the skunk said. “Got a lot of fat on her, too. Either of y’all like the taste of kobold?” That made Piko glare at the skunk in alarm, fear and indignation.

The ram shook his head. “Nah, I’m in a good mood today,” he said. “We’ll letcha off easy, but you’re gonna let us have our fun first. How’s that sound?”

It sounded pretty awful, actually. Piko had been in this sort of situation before, and while she shrugged it off after each time like she always had it did sort of take a toll after a while. Still, it was better than the alternative-she could walk off whatever it was these three guards had in mind. She couldn’t walk off being eaten (at least, she was pretty sure).

And so Piko nodded. “OK, fine. But be careful, OK? You’re not the only one who gets to use it, and it’ll be a pain to fix if it gets ripped.”

The three guards looked confused before, once again, bursting into laughter.

“Aaaw, she thinks we’re gonna fuck her!” The skunk grinned and shook his head.

“Nah, we got something else in mind.”

Piko gulped. Well, whatever it was, she hoped it wouldn’t hurt. She was small enough that she couldn’t take much.

---

Piko eventually learned the names of the three guards. She knew that Scarbrough was the ram, but over the course of the time the four of them spent together she found that the bull was named Bruhl, and that the skunk was named Talbot. She didn’t know why she was taking note of their names; what was she going to do, tattle on them? But it felt like something to keep her mind on, rather than the situation she was currently in.

“Damn!” Talbot marvelled, looking at the big bull who was smirking proudly at his compatriots. “How the hell is her skull not crushed right now?”

Bruhl shrugged his broad shoulders. “I dunno. Maybe it’s made of rock.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Talbot answered, with a snort. “How’s it smell under there?”

“Mmmm-mmmmmf.” That was as much as Piko could say while her face was shoved in a bull’s ass crack. Bruhl was sitting on her face, his mighty musclegut form looming over the short, lithe kobold like he was a titan asserting his dominance on a mere mortal. Idly, almost unconsciously, Bruhl swayed his hips back and forth, rocking those fat bull cheeks back and forth and moving poor Piko’s head along with every movement he made.

Of course, Piko didn’t need to answer Talbot’s question. Everybody knew that it would be awful down there; the only air was what could be snuck while Bruhl shifted his weight or lifted up ever so slightly. That air smelled like the inside of a barn, mixed with the sharp, eye-watering musk that only a masculine bull could have, but at least it was oxygen! Piko considered herself lucky every time she got a lungful, no matter how much it felt like she had snorted up a line of fire ants.

Objectively speaking, of course, Bruhl had a magnificent ass. All three of the guards did, really (though Piko needed to wait a while before getting to the other two), each ass different from the others. Bruhl’s was toned and muscular, with enough fat for it to not appear disproportional with the rest of his body. There was only slight wobble when he walked; right now, though, he wasn’t walking.

Piko squirmed underneath the massive bull, the club that had so firmly plugged up her rear uncomfortable and knobbly. As if it wasn’t enough for all that weight to press down on her face, she needed to deal with the big, hole-spreading plug that kept her ass quiet. Much to her horror, however, she discovered that the guards didn’t hold themselves to that policy.

Blrrrrrrap! That rasped out of the bull’s asshole, mere inches away from her nose. The kobold gave a muffled squeal as the gas jetted up her nostrils so sharply and painfully, the methane stink making her eyes squeeze shut as though someone was cutting onions. Her squirming continued anew, much to the delight of the guards.

“Hell, man, looks like she don’t like that!” Scarbrough leered.

Bruhl chuckled, shaking his head. “Can’t say I blame her. But how’s she gonna manage Talbot?”

Piko didn’t want to find out.

---

Piko found out anyway.

“Aaaaaaw yeah!” Talbot said, the big brawny skunk twitching his hips and making his gelatinous buns bounce off of each other like a couple of boulders getting into a fight. The movement made soft little clapping noises, and Piko made a muffled little “mmmf” with every twitch of those shapely buttocks. That massive black-and-white ass had been working her over for the past five minutes, and she couldn’t do much more than lay there and take it.

Of the three guards, Talbot had the fattest ass by far; that is, the ass with the most jiggle, the least firmness. Having the dominant skunk sit on your face was like submerging your head in a giant bowl of jelly, and just about as sticky; the sweat accumulated throughout the day, as well as some other fluids that Piko didn’t even want to think about, oozed onto the kobold’s face and stuck there as Talbot smothered her.

For a moment, Piko convinced herself that Talbot was going to be much like Bruhl. He would smother her, sit on her face and humiliate her, but he would only rip a couple of farts. Embarrassed as she was to say, this was not the first time she was in this situation, and she could take a couple of blasts up the nostrils without too much difficulty.

In this way, then, the fact that Talbot started ripping ass seconds after sitting down on her face and didn’t stop until he stood up ten minutes later came as a relief. There was no worrying about the shoe dropping, no nauseating anticipation of the terrible event; there was just the event itself, constant and loud and unforgiving, for ten whole minutes. “In this way” does a lot of work in this paragraph, since absolutely no other part of this experience was a relief for Piko.

Talbot’s gas smelled like skunk. It was ripe, eggy, and disgustingly potent; if this was what his farts smelled like, Piko shuddered to think of what torture it would be to be sprayed by the sadistic guard. Talbot didn’t seem to be in any hurry to do that, though-mostly, he was happy to feed Piko those overpowering gas bombs, laughing as she wriggled beneath his merciless, smothering weight.

Thhhhrrrrmmmp! Piko froze for a moment as that one rushed into her nostrils, before the guards laughed at her muffled coughing and chokes.

“Don’t sound like she liked that one!” Scarbrough said, laughing.

Talbot smirked. “Maybe she’ll like this one better.” His broad skunk tail curled in the air, he grunted, tensed, and-

Blooooooort! This one was louder, and wetter; Talbot wasn’t sure if it was just a fart, and from the way Piko responded the kobold wasn’t sure, either.

“How about that one?” Talbot asked aloud, the skunk’s voice only barely audible to the kobold beneath him. “Did you like that one?”

Piko made a noise somewhere between a choke and a squeak.

“Guess I’ll take that as a yes,” Talbot said, before spreading those kingly cheeks of his. “How about another one, then?

Before Piko could say otherwise (as much as she could with that fat ass in her face, the skunk ripped another ripe, filthy fart in her face. Spppppssshhhht!

As Piko lay beneath the big, nasty guard, choking on the fumes that roared nigh-constantly out of his hairy asshole, she thought to herself that at least there was no way down from here.

---

There was, in fact, a way down from there.

The good news was that Scarbrough wasn’t sitting on Piko’s face. The bad news was everything else about the situation. The ram lay on his stomach in the tent, forearms folded on the ground in front of him as he looked over his shoulder at Piko.

“Well? What’re you waiting for? You’re hungry, ain’t you?” The ram’s lips curled into a malevolent grin as the kobold stared at the sight before her.

Bruhl had visited a bakery earlier that day, and had picked up a pastry filled with minced beef and diced onions and potatoes. It was intended to be his lunch, but hell, he could always get another, and besides, an opportunity like this didn’t come every day. He had mashed up that pastry into the ram’s ass crack, making it a mess of beef, veggies and crumbly pastry. The guards looked expectantly at Piko.

Piko was hungry; this much was true. But was she hungry enough to shove her face into a sweaty ram’s buttcrack and eat the slurry that had been mashed into there? The kobold was not proud or prissy; the phrase “she would eat shit off a shingle” has, at least one in her life, been literally true. But this was...well, it was a bit much.

The hard, rough wood of her plug reminded her of what could happen if she didn’t listen to these assholes, though, and so Piko got on her knees behind Scarbrough and wrinkled her nose. That hairy, white-furred ass had the muscle of Bruhl’s and the fat of Talbot’s; it was like the metaphorical just-right porridge. But Piko couldn’t think about that right now.

She placed her hands on Scarbrough’s beefy ass cheeks, took a deep breath, and plunged her face right into that morass. All three guards laughed out loud as her mouth got to work, chewing into that mess of meat and veggies and bread.

Piko had occasional attacks of shame, but right now she was trying her best to suppress all of that. She closed her eyes, felt those massive butt cheeks clench around her head, and tasted the meat on her tongue. It wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t good, either-especially not considering where her face was.

She stayed like that for a full minute-hands on the sheep’s cheeks, head almost obscured from view, loud, hungry chewing and lip-smacking coming from in between. The guards got a kick out of that-”sounds like she wants to eat your ass!”, “hungry girl, huh?”-but she tried her best not to pay them any mind.

Finally, she pulled her head free, gasping for air and looking at her tormentors. Her face was sticky with meat juice and sweat, ass hairs sticking out at odd angles from her smooth, reptilian visage. Her tongue stuck out, panting like a dog from being denied air for so long over the course of this session-kobolds didn’t turn blue from a lack of air, but there were plenty of times when she was getting there. There was a brown streak on her tongue, which might have been from the meat and might have been from something else. And her eyes were scratchy and bloodshot, both from the salty sweat and the eye-watering farts they cut in her face.

All things considered, this was not Piko’s finest hour.

---

Piko grunted as she was dumped, unceremoniously, outside of the caravan on the side of the road. She lay there for a moment, going completely still (a rarity for the nimble little thing) and closing her eyes. It was then that she remembered the plug that had been sheathed, almost fully, up her ass. Piko winced; this wasn’t going to be fun.

She reached a hand back, scratching along the outer rim of her asshole before pinching hold of the knobbly wood that stuck out. She grit her teeth, shut her eyes, and counted to three. One, two, three-

BLLLLLRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGH!

Piko’s wince gave way to a look of relief as the pressure that had built up inside of her rushed out, loudly and rudely. Well, at least that was over with!

The kobold walked along with a bounce in her step, humming tunelessly to herself.