STAW Vol 1. pt. 12

Every evil overlord needs henchmen.

She may be more humanoid than I would like her to be, but if I am going to be living here, I need a pet. As long as she retains all of the qualities dogs have that make them so great in the first place, I do not mind having to deal with a more humanoid appearance.

All she needs to do is provide stress relief, alert me if anybody tries breaking into the manor, and bark at anybody who tries to talk to me while I am out.

Everybody always told me that my old dog was horribly trained for how aggressive he was to strangers and other animals, but that aggression was what made me love him as much as I did. Of course, that aggression is also what led to him chasing some frilly little poodle into the road and getting hit by a truck.

I have never been religious, but I hope that Gandalf is in a better place now where he can terrorize all of the poodles and cats that he wants to. He deserves that much.

“Can you speak?” I ask the girl standing before me.

She looks me over and sniffs. Those claws for fingers look sharper than my ability to always be on time.

Alright, I’m not going to try to make another joke like that again. I clearly have no right to try and amuse myself.

My dreadfully boring life is clearly affecting my ability to make jokes. Who makes a joke about their ability to be punctual?

Rather than answer me, she growls at me. Though, I suppose that for a dog, a growl could be seen as an answer. It is a rude and aggressive answer, but an answer nonetheless.

“Can you speak Engli—Common?” I ask.

Her tail stands still behind her as she looks ready to charge at me. Those fiery eyes of her are locked onto me and she looks like she’s wanting nothing more than to turn me into a quick snack.

“I assure you that I do not have much meat on me. I may be tall, but I am thin. You will mostly just have bone and lean muscle,” I explain to her.

I noticed something when I said the word “bone.”

Her eyes lit up and her ears twitched. There is even a slight wag to her tail now as she starts salivating.

Now, if I were some regular dark lord wanting to acquire a pet, I would either beat it into submission, stare it down and assert my dominance, or have somebody capture it for me and then keep it locked away in a cage until it is relevant. Then, I would either feed prisoners to it, or it would get freed by a hero and used against me for the sake of poetic justice.

Instead, I am going to offer her a job.

“I will ensure that you are fed daily, taken on walks, given a comfortable bed to sleep on, kept flea free, and you will have a steady supply of treats and bones if you come with me,” I offer her.

Her aggressive demeanor changes in an instant.

“Treats? Bones? Walks? Really?” she asks, her tone suspicious but her tail rapidly wagging behind her.

“Yes. I am looking for a pet, and according to my assistant, this is where the dogs are,” I explain.

“Pets? Hellhounds as pets?”

“Yes, you’ve never heard of a dog being a pet before?”

“Others have tried to become our alpha to make us fight for them?”

I sigh and somehow manage to resist the temptation to place my face into my palm. “Idiots. My assistant already told me about that. Do people not know that the whole ‘dominant alpha’ training method doesn’t really work? It may have results, but it does far more harm than good.”

“You’re not here to force us to serve you?”

“No, I am here for companionship – for a pet. I may need to train you to perform some tasks and to make sure that you do not go to the bathroom inside of the manor, but that is all. I will provide for you, you can do whatever you want most of the time, and all I ask for is a head to pet and belly to rub whenever I need to destress.”

Her tail is completely still now as she stares at me with wide eyes. “Head – head petting? Belly rubbing?” she asks.

“Yes, head petting and belly rubbing.”

“What are those? I don’t know why… but they sound really nice.”

“I would doubt your legitimacy as a real canine if you did not think they sound nice. Shall I demonstrate what they are?”

“How can I trust you?” she asks as her tail starts wagging again.

“You can tear my throat out with those claws if you would prefer. I honestly would not mind dying. While I do not want to give my body to some basement-dwelling, hairy monster, at least if you kill me then I know my body would be going to sustaining a dog.”

Her eyes narrow in on me for a few moments before relaxing. “Show me what head petting and belly rubbing is,” she says.

I start walking toward her which causes her to immediately throw her guard back up. “I need to touch you in order to show you. It will feel nice, I promise. If it does not then you are not a real dog.”

She is conflicted judging by how she keeps raising and lowering her clawed hands, looking around as if waiting for a trap, and going between glaring at me ready to kill me and looking at me with curious eyes. However, she finally gives in to her canid desires and calms down.

Despite how deadly she looks, now that I’m standing in front of her, the height difference is clear. She hardly reaches up to my chest. This actually works out perfectly for petting her head. “I am going to touch you now,” I tell her as I raise my right hand.

I place it down between her ears on the top of her head.

Her tail turns still as does the rest of her body. The only reaction I can see from her anymore is the twitching of her ears.

Slowly, I slide my hand back and forth atop her head. My fingers push through her fluffy hair to massage her scalp as my palm gently rubs down against her.

“This is head petting,” I explain. “It feels good, does it not?”

I go to take my hand away from her, but she grabs onto it the moment it leaves her head. “More,” she says, refusing to look up at me as she forces my hand back down against her.

“I told you.”

The head petting continues for a few minutes until she gets curious about the other pleasurable sensation I offered.

“Belly rubbing?” she asks.

“Lie down on your back if you want me to rub your belly,” I explain.

“Are you trying to trick me into submitting?”

“No, I’m trying to give you a belly rub.”

She places one of her hands on her belly to rub it herself. “It doesn’t feel special.”

“Somebody else has to do it. Now, if you want to feel something even better than having your head petted, lie down on your back.”

With a huff, she gets onto the ground and lies down on her back.

I kneel down next to her and place a hand on her stomach. She freezes again the moment my hand touches her skin, but now I can actually see her face. She looks like she is desperately trying to hold back a smile and her eyes are full of excitement.

Just as I did with her head, I allow my hand to run all over her bare stomach. It slides across her from side to side, up and down, and I vary the speeds by doing it teasingly slowly and then quickly enough that it forces her to react by shaking her legs and panting.

Her legs and arms in the air with her wrists bent by the end of it.

“And that is belly rubbing. Do you understand now?” I ask her.

She gulps and looks at me with eyes telling me that she wants more but is too proud to ask for it.

I raise my head and notice a dozen others in the distance watching us. They all look similar to her as far as their color schemes and canid parts go, but they look varied in face and age.

Some of them look jealous, others look curious, and a couple look hungry.

“I will become your ‘pet,’ but only if you give my sisters head pettings and belly rubs too!” she tells me.

It sounds like she doesn’t even care about everything else that I offered her.

“You and your sisters will be taken care of, fed, walked, and given pettings and belly rubs daily. However, you must do as I say. This includes protecting me and the manor as well as, of course, never betraying me. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal!” she’s quick to shout.

“Now, do you have a name?”

“Name? No.”

I am going to have to think of a good name for her and the others. Since they are all sisters, I feel that I should think of something thematic that could be applied to them all. “Your name will be Eowyn from now on,” I tell her.

She may not look anything like an Eowyn, but it’s not like Gandalf looked like Gandalf.

“Am I supposed to call you something?” Eowyn asks.

“Seeing as how you are my pet now, ‘Master’ would be the most appropriate thing to call me,” I explain.

“Master? Hmm. Okay. Master!”

“Good girl.”

She freezes again.

Alright. Let’s get one thing straight here: clichés, tropes – whatever you want to call them, they are bad. However, seeing as how dogs are superior to the vast majority of human beings and they are not creatives, they are allowed to be cliché as I doubt the concept even applies to them. A dog liking head pets, belly rubs, bones, and being called good is extremely cliché, of course, but could you really imagine a dog that does not like those? If one wishes to try and complain about how cliché dogs are, they may as well complain about how cliché breathing is.