New user here. I finally got my first story uploaded to my gallery without the formatting breaking, so I've decided to put it here as well and see if I can get some feedback. As I write more, I'll post those stories in this thread. If I've done something wrong with formatting or protocol or other use-of-site things, please let me know.
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Battle in the Basin (note: long)
Potentially disagreeable content warning: Death, Hard Vore, Graphic Digestion, Disposal
Tags: Anthro Pred, Belly bulge, Burp, Bones, Burping up bones, Bones in belly, Blood, Dragoness, Dragon Girl, Dragon girl pred, Dragon Girl Prey, dragon humanoid, Disposal, Digestion, Eaten Alive, eating alive, fattening, F/F, Female Pred, Female Prey, Fatal, fatal digestion, fighting, fight, Giantess, Giantess Vore, Gore, Gulp, guts, Graphic digestion, Hard Vore, Hard Digestion, headscissors, Tongue, Inside stomach, intestines, Kicking Legs, Licking, Long Tongue, limb swallowing, Nudity, Naked Female, naked prey, Oral Vore, Original Characters, Red Head, Same Size, Swallowing, Struggling, Story, suffering, Throat bulge, Tail, Third Person, tight fit, Unwilling Prey, Vore story.
"But what is it,” asked Aster as she crested the ridge and found Amelie kneeling before the print. It was like nothing she’d ever seen. The imprint left in the milky white silica deposits reflected the foot of a quadractyl creature, with three toes splayed out to the front in the manner of a bird and a slightly smaller digit on the inside of each foot. Each was tipped with a formidable talon, and both the toes and what she assumed was the sole bore small, oval scales. The creature's size must have been immense; the chalky white ground of the geyser field had been compressed several inches, and from the heel to the tips of the talons, the print was four, possibly four and a half feet long.
“Is it a har-“
“Shhhh!”
Amelie pulled her quickly to the ground. From her pack, Amelie withdrew a grey tarp and spread it over Aster’s prone form. She quickly gathered handfuls of the crumbling whitish grey silica from the lip of a now empty hotspring, slathering the powdery substance over the outside of the tarp and weighing down the edges with small rocks and a few of the firmer chunks. As she busied herself with securing the tarp, Aster fumbled in her bag for the glass. Eventually, her fingers closed about its smooth haft and she withdrew it, setting it against her eye and surveying their surroundings in an effort to find whatever had so frightened a woman who had passed through the Halystryx Desert and stared down a 20-foot lamia no more than a fortnight ago.
Aster swept the glass in a half circle around the geyser field in vain. She saw nothing save for the white, crusty plain, punctuated by the occasional mound of a geyser or the prismatic bubbling of a hotspring. The colors were really quite marvelous, ranging from vivid oranges to deep greens and finally a pure sapphire blue in the hottest of the pools. Steam curled from the springs, upwelling to form a thick mist that blanketed the ground and reduced visibility to perhaps fifty feet in any direction.
Amelie finished camouflaging the tarp and crawled in beside Aster, who lowered the glass with a frown.
“I can’t see anything with all this vapor in the air,” she whispered. “What is it?”
“Dragoness. A green, and a pretty young one at that.”
“A green? Aren’t they supposed to be forest dwellers?”
Amelie shrugged. “Generally, yes. I don’t know what’s inspired this one to come all the way out here; perhaps she’s starving or injured. Or maybe just traveling. Hand me that glass, would you?”
Aster passed the glass over and stuck her head out from beneath the tarp. She checked behind it and, satisfied that nothing was creeping up on them, settled her gaze back on the plain in front of them. Under the baking heat of the late morning sun and a gentle easterly breeze, the blanketing fog was beginning to thin. Amelie shifted uneasily, then extended the glass to Aster.
“I see nothing. You?”
Aster took it it, and for the next half hour they took turns keeping watch over the plain. While Amelie was using the glass, Aster worked to reproduce the print in her notebook. The mist had thinned perceptibly by the time Aster took her fourth turn, and there was still no sign of any living thing save for the two of them. Midway through her fifth round, Aster paused, lowering the glass and smiling hopefully at Amelie.
“Maybe she’s flown off?”
Amelie shrugged. “Maybe. That print was pretty fresh, though. I wouldn’t count on her being out of sight yet, even if she’s taken to the air.”
Aster nodded and went back to looking through the glass. The mist was rapidly disappearing, though pockets remained in places, and she began focusing in on those areas still obscured. Still, there was nothing. Aster sighed, peering down the barrel of the glass. She was about to lower it when she saw movement. A pan shaped spring about forty yards ahead of them sustained a patch of fog, and a great, dark shadow was gliding through it. Before Aster had time to alert Amelie, the dragoness stepped out into the sunlight.
She was beautiful, with pale blond hair reaching to her shoulders and a rather slim build. Small oval scales in every shade of green ran along her spine, extending from there to the middle of her sides and varying in their darkness to create a dappled pattern that resembled overlapping leaves. The backs and outer sides of her upper arms and legs were scaled, while the natural mail formed unbroken gauntlets and greaves along her lower legs and arms, extending to fully cover the hands and saurian feet as well. Her digits were tipped with claws, ridged along the inside edge, and a triple line of scales encircled the middle of her throat like a necklace. From the sides of her temples, olive colored horns like a ram's stretched back behind her ears and curved down to her jaws before rising again to come level with her cheekbones. Her face was thin and angular, with exceedingly pale skin, narrow lips, and hazel eyes set above high cheekbones. Under a slender nose sat a mouth that stretched nearly back to the base of her jaw, and as she opened it slightly in the process of taking a deep breath, Aster saw that her teeth were long, slender spikes of gleaming white.
As she came out of the mist and stepped lightly around the hotspring, she flared her broad, short wings for balance. Behind her, a long tail lashed and curled as if seeking a grip. Aster fumbled for her sketchbook, setting the glass down beside her and reaching for the charcoal. As she fumbled for the rod, she turned and breathlessly whispered a question to Amelie.
"How...how big do you think she is?"
Amelie finished loading her repeating crossbow and took up the discarded glass. She peered across the plain at the dragoness, who had stopped to peer into an orange hotspring that was giving off clouds with a strange, bluish tint. Turning back to Aster, she frowned.
"Hard to say, with no good landmarks or features to scale from. I'd guess twenty five, thirty feet high, with a wingspan maybe a third again that?"
"Do you think she'll see us?"
Amelie shrugged. "Depends on how close she gets, I think. Greens see well in dim light and are amazing at picking up movement, but their general visual acuity isn't anything exceptional. The wind's coming from the side, so she won't smell us, and the bubbling and hissing of all these pools is probably sufficient to drown out any small noises we might make."
"And if she does?"
Amelie resumed looking through the glass. "Most likely, she runs us down and eats us. If she sees us, we start by trying to bargain. I've got some holdings down in Virrigo, you've your family holdings and riches, and we have that diadem you found with us. I think that if she accepts anything, though, it's likely to be information. Everything else is too far away to be a good investment, and I'm certain everyone she's talked to in the past suddenly owned a pot of gold that they'd gladly fetch for her if she'd let them out of her sight."
Aster nodded, tracing the edge of a furled wing in her sketchbook.
"If talking doesn't work, we put a volley into her and run in opposite directions. Aim for the face; if we can take out an eye, she might decide we're more trouble than we're worth. If she gets hold of you, do the same with your knife." Amelie looked critically at Aster. "Yours loaded?"
Aster started and set the brush aside.
"Oh, yeah. Hold on a second." She pulled her hand crossbow from its belt holster and slipped the base of a bolt into its pocket.
"Hurry up. She's coming this way."
Aster drew back the string and locked the bolt in place. She looked up-and froze. The dragoness had closed the gap between them to a mere seventy feet and was still coming, delicately picking her way through the pools and geyser-made hillocks of the sulphurous field. She was looking over the pair at the moment, sweeping her great horned head about to scan the plain, but Aster knew it was only a matter of time before she got close enough to recognise the unnatural folds and seams of the tarp. Her fingers tightened around the stock of the crossbow, but Amelie reached over and set a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"Steady. She may yet pass us by."
But as the seconds wore on and the dragoness held to her course, it became obvious that discovery and confrontation were inevitable. Stepping onto and following the drier and less perforated ridge that Amelie and Aster had hidden on, the dragoness's massive strides ate up the distance between them. As she drew within fifty feet of the tarp, Aster began to feel the titanic vibrations of her footfalls. Half paralysed by fear and acting on instinct, she flattened herself against the ground and slowed her breathing. Beside her, she heard the low whistle of Amelie breathing through clenched teeth, and saw her holding the repeating crossbow in a white-knuckle grip. The dragoness stopped about forty feet from the tarp and looked about, scanning across the plain and up into the sky before casting a cursory glance across the ground, her gaze eventually crossing over their tarp.
Aster saw the hazel eyes widen, and heard a muffled "shit!" that told her Amelie had seen it too.
"No point in sitting here; she's seen us," Amelie said as she levered herself onto her knees. Aster pushed up off the chalky ground, struggling to free herself from the sagging weight of the tarp without taking her eyes off the approaching dragoness. The green stopped about twenty feet from them and eyed them curiously. She opened her mouth to speak, but before a syllable could pass her lips, she stumbled back with a surprised yelp. Aster saw her brace against the ground and raise her arms, as if to defend herself against some assailant, before a crushing blast of air from above threw the two humans face first to the ground. A moment later, Aster felt a titanic impact shake the earth, and heard growls and hissing from the direction of the dragoness.
Coughing from the storm of dust and chalk-laden droplets the sudden gust had kicked up, Aster rose to her knees to see a writhing tangle of limbs and tails and wings rolling about the ridge. The green was grappling with another dragoness, a red scaled behemoth with a double set of spiral horns. As Aster watched, the red cuffed her opponent across the face and rolled to straddle her stomach, leaning in to bring her formidable jaws to bear against the green's vulnerable chest and neck. The green screamed as the red tore a strip of flesh free from her collarbone, got a leg up under the red, and kicked. The huge dragoness was briefly airborne, wings flared out for balance, before she tumbled over the mound of a geyser and fell prone. As she twisted to right herself, her lashing tail whipped out and passed inches above Aster's head. Aster stared at it as it sailed past her, noting the armoured scutes on the dorsal surface, the immense muscles along the lumbar vertebrae that provided the power to move the massive appendage. She absentmindedly began to reproduce it next to her current sketch, and started as someone roughly grabbed her shoulder and shook her.
"Come on, move! If we stay here, they'll crush us!"
Amelie dragged Aster backwards until she turned and ran alongside her. They skidded down the side of the ridge, Aster stumbling over rocks and ledges as she looked over her shoulder. The red had gotten back onto her feet and the green was skirmishing with her, darting into her reach to slash at her and disengaging before the red could retaliate. Her razored claws left cuts along the red's arm, her shoulder, then flashed back out to tear at the red's stomach. The dense abdominal muscle snagged the green's ridged claws. As the green tried to extricate herself, the red caught her by the wrist and pulled her in, reaching out with her other arm in an attempt to draw the green within reach of her snapping jaws. As the green writhed in her grip, Aster saw just how large the red was. She stood a head and a half taller than the green and was more heavily built to boot, with larger breasts and sinuous muscles coiling beneath her sun bronzed skin.
As they reached the peak of a dead geyser about fifty feet from the ridge, Amelie stopped, glowering as Aster ran into her. By unspoken agreement, they stopped and rested a moment, looking back towards the battle on the ridge in amazement. The red had grabbed hold of the green's shoulders and pulled her in close, leaning in and trying to bite at her neck. She snapped and snarled, shaking the green with such force that her claws left crimson furrows in the scales of her shoulders, but she could not get in on the throat. The smaller dragoness stubbornly kept her chin down and wound her prehensile tail around the red's neck, pulling her away and preventing her from finding purchase with her teeth. And all the while, she was clawing the red across the ribs and stomach, leaving russet trenches in her unprotected flesh.
Hissing at the pain, the red broke off her assault. Still holding onto the green's shoulders, she leaned back. The green surged towards her, fangs bared, and then the red slammed her head forwards, turning it slightly so that she struck the green on the temple with the base of her curling horns. The green reeled, bending backwards as she attempted to both keep her head down and get away from her adversary. Her arms unfastened from the gouges they had dug in the red's stomach, flying up to claw feebly at the talons still sunk into her shoulders, and her tail lashed about uncertainly, paralyzed by indecision and pain.
The red wasted no time in taking advantage of the opening. She released the green's shoulders, ducking under her flailing arms to dig fistfuls of daggers into her ribs. As the green grasped blindly above her at an opponent who was no longer there, the red stepped forward and snapped her jaws shut around her right breast.
The green let out a piercing shriek and brought her arms down, hammering uselessly at the red. The double set of vermillion horns protected her head from blunt force trauma and claws alike, and each strike merely forced the sawing teeth deeper into the green's tender flesh. As she flailed uselessly, the red adjusted her position, drawing her arms in and stepping forward to set a leg between the green's. She paused a moment, steadying herself, and then pushed forwards, knocking the green off balance. Holding the green at the base of her ribs, the red bent her backwards at the waist, removing the green's leverage and placing much of her weight on the claws sunk between her ribs and the breast caught between her adversary's jaws. Flesh ripped as the claws slid through her sides, and as the red pushed her cruelly backwards, Aster saw the ivory teeth sink out of sight beneath the sagging breast. At once, the green left off her battering, grabbing at the red's horns and wrapping her tail around the red's leg in an attempt to lift herself up and off those claws. She wriggled side to side, hoping to slide one of the hands out of her, but she was hampered by the grip of the teeth, which sank deeper as she sawed her own flesh against them. And as she writhed, the red brought the tremendous musculature of her neck to bear, shaking her head side to side as she tore through tendons and ripped flesh from bone with broad, serrated teeth. The green keened, braced herself with her tail to avoid being pitched entirely over onto her back, and gripped the red's shoulders in an attempt to push her away, blind pain-fueled instinct at last overcoming her conscious strategizing
There was a wet ripping as the red pulled her head away, a crimson pulp shining from between her teeth. She tipped her head back and swallowed the mass, pausing only to free a strand of muscle caught on an incisor with a determined yanking of her forked tongue. The green thrashed, trying to pull away from the red as she worked at the flesh caught between her teeth, wrapping her tail about the red's left arm and tugging at the claws still stuck in her blood-slicked torso in a desperate attempt to free herself before the terrible jaws could be brought to bear again. They hung there for long moments before the red finally worked the irritating gristle out from between her teeth, lifting it delicately back to vanish within the cavernous blackness of her throat.
Grinning, the red licked her lips, sunlight flashing on her scarlet teeth. Blood covered her face, trickling down her neck and breasts in ruby streamlets to join with the weeping trails issuing from the cuts the green had left in her own abdomen. The wounds were ragged and long, but she seemed not to notice them as she went to drag the green back towards her, smiling in the grip of sanguine reverie and a lust for more of the warm, soft flesh that had so recently graced her tongue.
And yet, her reach exceeded her grasp. She yanked forwards so suddenly, and with such strength, that her claws shore through flesh instead of grasping it. They scraped along the green's ribs, unhooking themselves from abdominal muscle as they cut through sinew and fat on their way to the skin. Before she could secure her grip once more, the green acted. She seized hold of the red's left arm with both of her own, and with the aid of her tail, at last overcame the ironlike grip, dislodging the deadly hooks from her side. Immediately they were coming back in, leaving gashes in front of the previous deep set of clawmarks as the red scrabbled for a grip, but before they could find purchase the green unfurled her wings, snapping them forwards and battering at the red's face. The delicate bones and small, oval scales did little real harm, but it surprised and discomforted the dragoness. Unthinkingly, she took a step back, and the green got a leg up into the increased space between them to kick off her stomach. The claws loosened further. At last, the green spread her wings and leapt backwards, ripping herself free from the red's talons. Backwinging hard, she lifted herself away mid jump and cleared some forty feet before all but collapsing to the chalky ground. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she looked down numbly at the ragged hole in her chest where a breast should have been, ran her hands mechanically over the weeping gashes in her sides.
"She's going into shock. This isn't going to last much longer; we need to get out of here before she finishes the green and comes for us."
Amelie's words startled Aster out of her slack-jawed observations.
"What, now? I haven't even started sketching! I need at least one of-"
Amelie cut her off.
"You'll have to do them from memory. We've stayed too long as is."
"Come on! How many people have seen a red this close-"
"And lived to tell of it? Only two that I know of. It's too risky; we leave now."
Aster folded her arms across her chest.
"I'm not leaving without a sketch."
Amelie opened her mouth to argue, decided against it, and grabbed the pack and tarp. She threw the former over her shoulder, rolled the latter up and clipped it to the side.
"Fine. Get yourself killed, you pampered city girl shit. I don't give a damn what your father's paying me, I'm not getting killed 'cause little miss priss wanted to play artist. If you somehow walk out of this, meet me at Karon's Fist. I'll wait two days, no more."
Aster scowled at the rapidly retreating back, setting her pack down so she could hold both her sketchbook and charcoal rod. She flipped to a blank page, turned back to start viewing for the sketch, and threw herself to the ground. The green passed inches overhead, the gale-force wake of her passage threatening to rip Aster from the ground and draw her screaming into the sky. Moments later the red swooped over her in pursuit, flying higher as she angled for an advantage. The green made no attempt to answer it, instead soaring forwards as fast as her wings could carry her. And yet, the red was gaining on her. The great vermillion wings of the pursuer beat rhythmically, their broad surface and powerful muscles driving her on at an implacable place which the green's shorter, more gracile wings could not sustain. She drew up over the green, shot out grasping talons-and came away with air. At the last moment, the green banked and twisted back and up, rolling away from the catching claws and sending the red tumbling forwards as she flapped frantically to correct her course.
Now the green went up, rising towards the sky with labored wingbeats. Below her came the red, jaws opened wide and arms outstretched, eating up the lead her daring evasion had bought. Aster watched the green dodge again, flaring her wings to come to an abrupt stop that sent the red hurtling past her. Her many spined, short wings gave her an edge in maneuverability which had so far kept her from the red's grip, but Aster saw how her arms hung listlessly, saw the blood running down her chest and stomach. She was succumbing to exhaustion, her movement slowing, her reactions becoming less precise. When the red caught her for a third time, the green rolled over and away from her a hairsbreadth too close. The red shot past once more, but as she did she lashed out with her taloned leg. The armoured top of her foot struck the delicate join of the green's left wing and crumpled it. Immediately the green dropped, flying in a short, tight spiral as she attempted to control her descent. Her injured wing beat sporadically, the leading edge all but collapsed beyond the joint, barely enough to keep her from an uncontrolled fall.
And above her, the red was rising. She lifted herself higher and higher, passing before the sun so that she was nothing more than a winged shadow engulfed by a brilliant radiance. She reached the zenith of her ascent and snapped her wings out, scooping them down with great, ravenous sweeps. Falling like a star loosed from the firmament, she plunged through the sky towards the weakening dragoness below her. The green saw her coming, twisted to meet her with claws outstretched. They had all the effect of arrows shot into a raging flood.
The red struck the green at the chest, pitching her over to fall upside down and sinking claws into the gaping hole in her chest. The green slashed at her neck in return and they fell, a tangle of shredding talons and battering wings. They gyrated in the sky, twisting to the horizontal before rolling up and around one another. When they came back around with the red on top, Aster saw that she had her teeth buried in the green's neck. She sawed back and forth, trying to crack through the tough scales that formed a natural gorget over the vulnerable flesh of the throat. She had let go of the green's stomach to grab her arms and hold them away, and the response was desperate. The green left off trying to fly, trying to escape, and simply tore at the red in a thrashing, bucking rage. Her talons sank between the robust scales of the red's forearms, her feet gouged channels in the red's unprotected thighs. And up top, she wrapped her tail around the red's neck. The red bit down and hung on, but between her bucking and the tail she had wrapped about the red's throat, the green stopped her from tightening her grip. They fell, locked together, each tearing at the other, as the great jewel-spotted disc of the plain rose up to meet them. They fought even as they plunged through the rising vapour of a hotspring, but at last the red, seeing just how close they had come to the earth, relinquished her hold on the green and pushed away. She cupped her wings, frantically flapping to slow her descent, still coming in too fast. She struck hard, pitching forward onto the chalky ground and curling into a ball to protect her unscaled underside as she rolled and skipped along the plain. Demolishing a geyser mound in her path, she splashed through the shallows of a green pool without ill effect, and finally fetched up against the side of a ridge.
The green did not fare so well. Dazed as she was, her wings were slow to open, and when they did, the feeble flapping of the injured one sent her into a spiral. She slammed into the earth and skidded as she rolled, leaving irregular red blotches where her vulnerable flesh had been exposed to the coarse chalk.
Aster walked to the very lip of the dead geyser in order to see the red more clearly. As her charcoal continued the graceful sweep of a thigh, she watched the dragoness stir. Slowly, gingerly, she levered herself up into a sitting position. There were scrapes and tender areas which were already beginning to bruise, but nothing appeared to have been broken. Cradling her head in her hands, she flared her wings out as she unsteadily rose to her feet. She swayed there for a few moments, finding her balance, then shook her horned head and started towards the still prone green.
The smaller dragoness was stirring, pulling her arms up and under her body even as the red stalked towards her along the gouge her landing had scraped in the ground. The green got a knee under her, tried to rise as the red approached her. Any hope of that was crushed along with the green as the red came up behind her and set a heavy foot between her wings. Leveraging her immense weight, the red flattened the green to the ground, slowly pressing the breath out of her. Once the green had collapsed entirely, the red reached down with her immense talons. As the huge hooks neared her neck, the green dropped her shoulder and rolled halfway onto her back. The red staggered as her foot slipped off the smooth scaling of the green's back and sides, sliding off to slam heavily into the plain.
Without a thought for positioning or tactics, the green struggled to her feet, gasping for air. She grabbed the back of the red's knee and hauled herself up, but was stopped short when her neck smacked into something soft and fleshy. Turning her head to get a look at the obstruction, the green was surprised to see a pillar of soft, light bronze flesh to her right, red scales creeping around from the edges to frame the supple skin. A glance to the left revealed an identical structure. Gulping, the green pressed her neck against the warm, soft obstruction as she craned her head upwards. Grinning down at her from between two massive breasts was the red's face.
She had no time to regret her choices before the red crossed her legs, sweeping her right thigh across her left and dragging the green's head with it. The little dragoness suddenly found herself trapped in a sort of headscissor, her curled horns and terrified face poking out from under the red's crotch. She wriggled, trying to pull back through the encircling thighs, but her horns were too wide to fit. Then the red began squeezing in earnest, narrowing the gap between her legs and forcing the back of the green's head up against her now drooling sex. All thoughts of escape turned to the simple necessity of air. Gasping for that precious commodity, the green scrabbled at the red's thighs, trying without effect to pry them apart. The red giggled, crossing her arms behind her head and playfully swaying her hips. Stumbling, half dragged by her captor's shapely legs, the green moved with her, slowly and haltingly circumscribing a semicircle about the plain. Her eyes bulged and her long tongue hung listlessly, flapping about and slapping against the red's thighs as she swung her immense backside to and fro. As she hauled her captive around once more, the green's legs gave out. A slight, strangled squawk escaped the green's gasping mouth as all of her weight was transferred to her neck. Her torment increased momentarily, as the red threw her hips to the left. The green was dragged along as well, momentarily lifted from the ground and extending
like a second, far more massive tail of the red's before the momentum ran out and she collapsed, hanging limply once more. The red tossed her about a few more times before settling in to squeeze, chuckling as the groping claws of the green grew feebler and feebler, until at last they fell motionless, dangling. Bending down, the red stared into the gasping face of the green. Dribbles of foam spilled from the corners of her mouth, and small red patches began appearing in her eyes as she starved for air, but there was still enough consciousness left in her for the eyes to roll and focus on the red. Motionless save for her popping eyes, the green could only watch as the red set a clawed finger on her face. Rumbling deep in her throat, she stoked the green's face as tears rolled down it, her claw tip tracing lazy circles across the asphyxiating visage. It trailed down to the green's cheek, and suddenly, she moved. Drawing on some last reserve of desperate strength, the green turned her head and bit down on the questing claw.
Yelping, the red pulled back and shook her hand. Her legs loosened momentarily, and the green drew in a heaving lungful of air before the thighs slammed back together with redoubled force. Once more, her legs took her weight as she began to fight back. Her second attempt was both more intelligent and more successful. Reaching between the red's immense legs, she dug her claws into the unscaled insides of the thighs, shredding skin and flesh alike. The red grit her teeth and endured momentarily, squeezing harder and reaching down to try and grab the rending talons, but the green eluded her grip. Blood ran down her legs as the green sawed deeper and deeper, and at last the red realized she must do something or risk serious injury. Accordingly, she thrust her hips forwards. The green stumbled as she was yanked with them, lengthening her stance and losing her balance. Then, before the green could step forwards and properly brace herself, the red kicked her legs up and dropped to the ground. The green let out a hoarse scream, pushing ineffectively at the massive thighs still wrapped around her neck, but could do nothing as the red rode her to the ground.
The ground shook under the force of the impact. The green's panicked shriek cut off and gave way to a series of ugly cracks and pops as the red's ample ass landed on her neck. The big dragoness bounced slightly once, twice as the green's whole body spasmed, then came to a rest sitting atop the prone form of her opponent. She wiggled her posterior side to side, making herself comfortable as the green's fingers twitched spasmodically. Reclining atop her newfound seat, the red watched the tremors work their way back up the green's limbs, the arms flopping awkwardly in an attempt to lift the green off the ground. Trunk mobility returned momentarily, at which point the green heaved forward, trying to shake her off. Laughing, the red simply squeezed her thighs more tightly. The green heaved herself about, choking as the red sat on her neck. Once more her claws groped forwards, but this time the red was prepared. She set her hands on the ground for balance, then lifted her legs off the ground, pulling the green's head with them. Her neck arched unnaturally even as the weight on it increased. The green's fumbling claws slid harmlessly off the outer scaling of the red's thighs, unable to reach vulnerable skin, and the red settled in for the long haul. The green's head, nestled between her voluminous thighs, adopted a bluish tinge as she gasped for air. Her tongue began to loll about even as her ineffective struggles began to die. Claws slipped on the brittle earth, shredded wings smacked uselessly against the red's armored back. Her head twitched as she tried to turn and bite, but the pressure was so great as to render her neck completely immobile. All she could do was thrash impotently as she stared up into the grinning face of the red. Tightening her grip, she lifted a hand from the ground to cup the green's cheek, softly stroking her face as she crushed the life from her. The green's eyes bulged and grew veiny, but remained focused, focused and burning with fear and rage. The red frowned, bending forwards before a long, green lash struck her across the face.
The red yelped and fell to the side, releasing her vice grip on the green and rising to her feet, one massive hand cupped over her left eye. She cradled it for a few moments, then slowly lowered her hand. Blinking profusely, she alternated between having the right and left eye opened with a finger held up before her face. She blinked several more times, then straightened. Aster guessed that the damage wasn't permanent. In a moment, the red validated her theory. Growling, she advanced on the green once more. The green was on hands and knees, heaving as purple-blue bruises began to spread across her throat like ligature marks. Seeing the red drawing near, the green raised a feeble arm to ward off the oncoming blow. It never came. Instead of lunging for her, the red reached down and grabbed the green by the tail. Aster saw her hazel eyes open in confusion for a moment before she was lifted bodily into the air. She screamed, choking off to a cry of pain as the red slammed her back into the ground. As she shook her head and got an arm under herself, the red yanked her up once more. This time she twisted, taking the smaller green over her shoulder. The motion threw droplets of blood in a wide arc to fall on the already mottled plain, and the force of her impact created a new puddle. Again and again, the red beat her against the ground. Aster counted three, four, five more strikes before the red let her lacerated form hang free. The green was in poor shape, with blood flowing freely from the immense gouges in her chest and large patches of skin on her legs and stomach abraded away by her impact after their flight. Her wings had been shredded near to uselessness by the same, and even the scaling on her arms had suffered from the ground's merciless touch. Her once brilliant green was obscured by the blood which by now covered much of her body, and she hung limply in the red's grip, gasping for breath.
Satisfied that her opponent was unlikely to struggle, the red adjusted her grip on the tail. She held it near the base with her hands set close together, then bent in. Her jaws opened wide, and Aster saw the broad, serrated teeth therein strike the small oval scales as the red bit down, trying to load the morsel onto her back teeth. The green howled, scrabbling for purchase as the red chewed and ripped at her tail. She bit down again and again, using her hands to force the tail up against her palate and upper teeth, then yanking it down to impact on the lower. The green's scales were tough, but not invulnerable. At last, Aster saw the red's lower teeth crush through the hard exterior. The green gave vent to a scream that could have deafened men. Her clawing grew more insistent, the end of her tail rolling back to pry at the red's wrist. She paid it no mind. Swiftly, she capitalised on the gap she had made. She rolled the tail like an ear of corn, rolling and biting to enlarge the rent. Slowly, she worked her teeth down and into the tough flesh. Bone and cartilage appeared, and with a final crack, the tail fell limp as the red sank a long canine between vertebrae. Heedless of the green's wailing, she gnawed further, using her arms to pull the tail apart and bending it to better rip through the tough musculature and ligaments. At last, she twisted the tail at a right angle along the left side of her jaw and snapped though the last of the scales holding it to the green. She let go of the smaller dragoness, pitching her forwards to land in a sobbing heap on the ground. Her tail rippled and twitched spasmodically, the base of its severed length still held in the red's jaws. As Aster and the green looked on, her long, forked tongue reached out and wrapped around the nub of exposed bone at the end to help turn it. The red worked her jaw, rotating the tail from its sideways position and pulling the end into her mouth. She drew it back further, swallowing it inch by inch with rapid jerks of her horned head. Her scarlet hair hung loose about the tail, disturbed here and there by its random convulsions, and a bulge could be seen as it worked its way down her throat. The base of the tail passed under her collarbone, beneath her sternum, then the ribcage. At last it struck the floor of her stomach and turned, the rest of its length coiling in a thrashing knot above it. More and more of the emerald length vanished between her alabaster teeth, till at last only the merest tip of the tail remained, wriggling like some overlarge and scaled tongue. The red grinned, then opened her jaws and tilted her head up. The tip vanished into her throat, and she returned her head to its normal position, her jaws closing with an audible click of enamel. Her formerly smooth stomach was alive with ropy bulges that shifted, pushing outwards against her skin from the stomach beneath. She raised a scaled hand and massaged her belly, tossing the ropy coils about and grinning as the tail reacted, thrashing about as it mindlessly sought nonexistent purchase.
Shaking, the green rose to her feet. She blinked away tears and spread what was left of her tattered wings in a feeble attempt to appear larger. A shrill hiss caused the red to look up from her churning stomach. The green was approaching slowly, claws raised. Aster saw her face contorted into an expression of apoplectic fury and loss. The red, for her part, seemed unconcerned. She flared out her own massive wings and held her arms out to the side, inviting the green to come within reach of her bloodsoaked talons.
And, to Aster's amazement and the red's evident prediction, she did. The green stumbled over a cresting ridge, leapt a yellow-orange hot spring. She landed heavily, just outside of the red's reach. The larger dragoness stepped in, talons flashing like burnished steel under the blazing afternoon sun, but the green made no move to avoid her. Instead, she drew herself up and took a long, deep breath. She closed her eyes as a tremor ran the length of her body, chest still swelling with her prodigious inhalation. The red broke off her assault, stepping cautiously backwards to assess this new behavior. She braced herself as the green's chest swelled still larger. Her skin was now stretched tight as the head of a drum, the massive wound where her breast had been ripping slightly along the edges as the pressure mounted. At last, Aster saw her sternum part, ribs swinging outwards slightly to accommodate an even greater volume. But there was a limit to how far it could be stretched. Gradually, or seemingly gradually, for in truth the whole process happened in the span of seconds, her torso's expansion slowed, then finally stopped. And when it did, the green's eyes snapped open, gleaming like dark, pure emeralds. She took a single step forwards and thrust her head towards the red, opening her mouth as she did so. Death billowed out of it, a milky white or light grey mist that rolled forwards in a cloud. As the green spewed the noxious substance, her chest began to retract, the sternum meeting once more. The skin over her bones, stretched taught, relaxed, and still the cloud came. It slid onwards like a wave, with the red directly in its path.
The red stepped back once, twice, then realised the cloud would overtake her before she could turn to run. As it rushed towards her, she instead dropped to the ground, holding her vulnerable underside close to the chalky substrate and tightly furling her wings. And then, like some colossal lizard, she crawled forwards, vanishing from sight behind the cloud with the exception of her tail. Momentarily, even that disappeared into the corroding grey, and all that could be seen were huge, shifting shadows. Aster heard the green trumpet and the red roar, saw great black shapes writhing beyond the already dispersing fog.
Quickly, the mist receded, leaving behind a soupy grey patchwork puddle where it had eaten into the chalk of the plain. Beyond it, the red and green were grappling. The red had managed to get behind the green, and had pinned her in place with an armbar. Her other hand was clutching the green's shoulder, holding her still as the red tried to bite through the back and side of her neck. The green hissed and made to strike at her with the curving horns on the side of her head, but missed. The red pulled her up and back in response, still working her teeth side to side. A canine slipped between the scales, eliciting a yelp in response. The green spasmed, slamming back against the red. Surprised, she stumbled backwards. Her foot came down heavily on the rim of the yellow-orange hot spring the green had leapt, and the brittle chalk gave way. She scrabbled for purchase, huge taloned feet gouging channels into the side of the pool, before pitching backwards into it with the struggling green atop her.
Immediately, the pool was a churning maelstrom of spray and scales. The red, with the green's weight on top of her and unprepared for her sudden fall, sank out of sight beneath the scalding water. The green went in only up to her waist, immediately kicking away and sliding backwards off the red. Once she was free of her opponent, she stood, thigh deep in the already crimson water as she braced herself for the coming assault.
It never came. The red broke the surface moments later, rising only to a crouch as she cradled her head. One of the horns on her left side had broken off close to the base, and the skin of her temple on that side had been thoroughly abraded by the rough bottom of the pool. She staggered forwards a step, reaching out for something to steady herself with and blinking away the water obstructing her vision. Behind her, the green paused, confused for a moment. Then, she surged forwards.
The red started as strong hands clamped down on her shoulders. Dazed, she looked up. Aster caught a glimpse of her infuriated snarl receding into a look of wide eyed terror before the green engulfed it within her gaping maw.
Aster began a new sketch, amazed. The green's jaw unhinged, delicate bones pulling apart at previously imperceptible joints as she worked her mouth down over the red's horns and face. Her small, needle like teeth rode down over the red's brow, her eyes, then took her nose. As she worked her way further down the red's head, her jaw bent further. The front of her lower jaw split apart, the two sides held together only by a ligamentous band as they worked down the red's cheeks, clutching and grasping independently of one another. The red screamed, and the green slid down further. She hooked the needle teeth of her top jaw into the red's open mouth and used the newfound leverage to push her lower jaw all the way down to the base of the red's skull. She unfastened her teeth and rolled down over the red's own mouth, muffling the still echoing scream. Reaching the chin, she slipped her upper jaw over it and yanked upwards, pulling the red backwards and off balance. The halves of her lower jaw snapped back together and she devoured the length of the red's spined neck, slipping effortlessly over her necklace of scales and returning her mouth to a semblance of normalcy as she rested for a moment at the top of the red's shoulders.
The red, disoriented and enraged, swiped wildly at the green. Her flailing claws deflected off the scales on the back of the green's arms and neck before inflicting a nasty scratch down the side of her face. In response, the green stepped backwards, pulling the red up and further back, then twisting to the side to drag her up and out of the pool. The red reeled, overbalancing, and spread her arms for stability. It was only too easy for the green to reach out and grab her wrists. With her arms pinioned, her mouth covered, and her feet almost off the ground, the red could do little more than thrash impotently. The green's throat bulged as her horns shifted, and from time to time the outline of her face would stretch the taught skin before she turned once more, fighting desperately within the grip of the green's esophagus.
Beginning again to move, the green set a heavy foot on the red's lashing tail. Slowly, she began to inch down over the red's bronzed shoulders, uncaring of the red hair flowing between her conical teeth. Her jaw split apart once more, reaching out hungrily to engulf the tops of the shoulders and bending at their midpoints as they did so. As they disappeared, she pushed herself down farther, leaning forwards for better leverage as she swallowed the red's clavicle.
Curiously, the red had ceased to struggle. Instead, she crouched, muscles taught, even as the green's long, ropy tongue slipped out from behind her and ran slowly across her breasts. It lazily encircled the left orb and squeezed, the forked tip flicking at the nipple as the green leaned further forwards, engulfing the top of the sternum and starting to work her way down the top of her victim's arms. Her gaping maw slid down to the red's ample bosom, teeth creeping over the soft flesh of her breasts as the long tongue darted in and out of them. Her progress, however, grew slower. Her jaw was stretched so wide that the skin of her cheeks and between the portions of her lower jaw had become nearly translucent, and she struggled to widen her gape enough to take in the red's immense chest. As she inched farther down, she began to draw herself up and then slam down, forcing the red inch by inch up into her throat. Her own chest was widening, the sternum parting to accommodate the red's still calm head and massive horns, her throat distending enormously to take in the red's shoulders, and still she came. Confident that the red lacked the ability to hinder her now, the green released her wrists and scooped her hands under the immense breasts, pulling them up to help lever her jaw down the immense rack. Even with the aid of her arms, however, the green's progress continued to slow. Her mouth moved less and less with each impact, her lower jaw bending almost backwards as it began to buckle under the stress. She strained mightily, yanking cruelly and rising onto her toes to load more weight into her jaw, but as she reached the areoles, she found she could go no further. She ineffectually jammed herself down a few more times, then paused, sinking back onto her heels and pondering what the best course of action might be.
The red, very kindly, helped put an end to her indecision. As the green rested and tried to figure out what to do, she suddenly yanked her tail out from under the green's foot. The smaller dragoness stumbled, and the red dropped to the ground and rolled. The green tried to hold her up, but the long horns dug painfully into her gullet. Coughing and spluttering, she went down and wound up on her back.
Rising to her knees, the red extended her arms outward, further stressing the already overtaxed jaw of the green. With a keening sound, she retracted, leaving the red's saliva soaked breasts and shoulders to glisten in the sun. Before she could reorient herself, the red reached up and slammed an armoured fist into the joint at the midpoint of the left side of her jaw. The green howled and released her hold, awkwardly pulling back off of the curling horns and now furious face of her intended victim. The red rose to her feet, stooping to catch at the green with outstretched talons.
The green evaded her, ducking down and crawling between her legs. She scrambled away and tried to stand up as the red whirled to meet her. Aster, detached, saw it coming before the green. The red's huge, plated tail swept around and caught the green across the side of her head like the boom of a sailing ship. The impact sent her sprawling, one curling horn spinning through the air to land on the white, rugged plain. Dazed, the green was rising to her feet as strong arms caught hold of her from behind. The red hauled her around and struck her across the face, the jaw. She brought her arms up to protect her face and the red hit her in the stomach, ducked a wild return swipe and popped her on the now unprotected side of the head. The green reeled, leaning away from the painful blows, and the red tackled her. They fell in a thrashing pile with the red on top, holding the green at her ribs and leaning in to tear at her with her razor teeth. Stuck and tired, the green had nowhere to go. As the teeth rushed towards her throat, she threw her forearm up to catch them.
The red bit down, cracking scale. She shook her head side to side, trying to yank the arm out of her way, but the green kept it between them, gripping her wrist with her other hand to support the deterrent. Growling in frustration, the red abruptly pulled up, arm still clutched in her jaws. With both the green's pressure and her own muscles, she extended the limb and slammed a palm into the elbow. The joint broke with a wet crack, but the red didn't release the limb. Setting a heavy foot on the ground, she levered herself up and bit down again on the broken appendage, snapping her jaws around the upper arm just behind the shattered joint. Ignoring the green's feeble clawing, she sawed her lower teeth through the unarmored underside of the arm, shredding muscle and sending a cascade of blood down the green's prone form. Soon, bone gleamed within the ruin she had torn. Placing her hands on either side of her jaw, the red bent the arm down against her lower teeth. With the muscles of her jaw in high relief, she bent the bone once, twice more before it snapped. Her teeth made quick work of the thin strip of flesh and scale that connected the arm to the green, and she lifted her head away, gory prize clutched between her teeth.
Tossing the severed arm aside, the red reared up, wings unfurling behind her. She sucked in a deep breath, her chest swelling...and something more. A cherry red glow was mounting in her breast, gradually brightening to a deep orange, and then a blazing yellow. The ruddy phosphorescence crept up her chest to the throat, and even at at a distance Aster's ears caught something: a crackling hiss she had heard once before. It was the sound a naval firecaster made, right before the pressure was released and a stream of burning pitch hurled against an opposing vessel or aggressive creature.
The green cowered on the ground as the red stood over her, luminous and terrible. Her irises were whirling rings of molten gold, fired by the same terrible flame that burned within her breast. Bending forwards, the red opened her mouth. It was like looking into the opening of a blast furnace. Motes of light danced within the brightening tunnel as the red came to the peak of her inhalation-and then vanished. Slowly, her fires died away, the blazing glow retreating deeper within her until it was scarcely the shadow of an ember. Her molten eyes stilled, the gold draining out of them, and her lips parted in a malevolent grin.
The green slowly opened her eyes, lowering her hand in disbelief and astonishment. She sat, stupefied, as the red strode over to where she had tossed the arm and retrieved it. Turning back towards her, the red tossed the mangled limb into the air. Aster watched it spin, fingers limply extended, before the red snapped her head out and caught it at the forearm in her jaws. The hand and shattered elbow hung down on either side of her gleaming teeth, and her jaw muscles bulged as she bit down. The limb shivered, then buckled, flesh rippling as she cracked first the ulna, then the radius. It folded inwards, elbow and wrist sliding into the red's expanding gullet as the twitching fingers sank down behind her serrated teeth. She swallowed the whole limb at once, tracing the path of the broken mass as it slid down her throat with the tip of a claw. As it vanished behind her ribs, she looked up towards the green and grinned.
The smaller dragoness wobbled to her feet, shaking her head in numb horror and recognition, arm outstretched to ward off the coming doom. She shivered as the red strode towards her, swiping and hissing when her adversary closed the last twenty feet. The scarlet dragoness batted aside her feeble efforts and seized the green in a powerful embrace, pinning her arm to her side and crushing her against her ample chest. Hissing and spitting, the green was drawn upwards to stare into the malevolent smile of the red. She flinched as the red leaned in and slid a long, ropy tongue over her face. The wormlike tendril ran across her cheek, slid across her eye, and then traced a languid path down to her lips. It caressed the cracked and bloodied crescents, then dove between them, starting to force its way into the green's maw. In response, she snapped at it, needle teeth flashing as the intruding tongue was reeled back to peep out at her from behind razored enamel.
Held in the red's embrace, staring up into her face, the green's trembling subsided. Her feeble scratching and writhing stilled, and she set her jaw. A shade of the hauteur and grace she had carried herself with before she had been maimed and beaten stole back into her, and for the first time in their encounter her lips parted to issue articulate sounds.
"You haven't won anything here. My death will not buy you a future. You shall live a pariah, childless, desolate and alone. Wherever you go, you will be hunted, relentlessly and without pity, never to know the warmth of a lover's touch or the soft delight of companionship. You will trudge through life, and when you fall, your picked over bones will have some desolate moor or lonely fen for their roofless grave. The killer moon take you, abomination!"
The red stiffened, rumbling deep in her throat. Her face contorted into a mask of rage, and she crushed the green even tighter.
"You should worry about your own grave before speculating on mine. And what fine words you have for someone who skulks about in the shadows, looking for an easy kill! Coward! Assassin! Claws in the dark! You were so brave then, when you had your talons around my neck! I'm not frightened of you, or your allies, or anyone else for that matter. I've burned cities and routed armies, slain an angel and journeyed beyond the reach of the sun. Let them come, and I'll have them all between my jaws. Starting, I think, with you!
At this, the red opened her mouth and leaned in. The green peered up through the crescents of her teeth, watching the eager pulsing of her throat carrying up and back out of sight into the stygian abyss of the red's gullet. And she smiled, ignoring the rippling muscle and eagerly coiling tongue to meet the red's eyes.
"Slay me, then. My pain comes to an end. Yours is merely beginning."
The red needed no invitation. She snapped her head forwards and clamped her jaws down over the green's temple. Instantly, her composure evaporated, eyes widening in terror and a shriek of despair escaping her throat. Her neck spasmed futilely as she tried to bring her teeth to bear, her massive talons scrabbling weakly and without leverage against the natural armor of the red's calves. The red began working her way down the head, a red sheet of ligament appearing at the join of her lips as she began to unhinge her jaw. It slid slowly down over the green's blond hair, her remaining horn. She ignored the wailing and tears as she ran slowly over her fear dilated eyes, lower jaw already parting as she prepared to take the chin. Aster snapped out of her fascinated drawing for a moment as the red slid down over the green's mouth, relieved that the irritating and distracting howling had been muffled. As she watched, the bulge of the green's head entered the red's gullet, distorting her bronzed flesh and writhing in a hideous outline as she struggled against her captor's grip.
The red continued pulling her up inch by inch, readjusting her grip each time until the green's feet kicked helplessly above the barren plain. She brought her jaws together and swallowed the green's neck, advancing along the spine one spike at a time, slowly drawing her up and into her mouth. When she ran out of neck, she split her jaw and began to work her way down the green's chest without hesitation, the slender shoulders vanishing behind her ruby lips as she hauled the green ever upwards.
The green kicked and howled, muffled by the confining esophagus. Her writhing face slipped behind the red's collarbone, vanishing from sight as the red reached the top of her sternum. With several powerful gulps, she swallowed the green's remaining breast, her long tongue encircling the orb and giving it a playful squeeze as she pulled it up and into her mouth. The green started, the red's sternum parting momentarily to reveal her screaming face, but then she swallowed once more and it disappeared, undoubtedly pulled deeper within the body as she neared the stomach. As her jaws began to slip down the green's ribs, the red released her crushing hug and instead grabbed hold of the green's hips. Her huge, broad claws slid between the green's scales and dug into the flesh beneath, consolidating her grip. She bent over, crouching down as her muscles grew taught in preparation. The green's kicking feet touched ground again, weakly digging heel-claw first into the plain in an attempt to pull the dragoness back out of her captor.
Then, in one explosive movement, the red lifted the green from the ground to hang vertically in the sky, feet kicking feebly as she began to slide rapidly down the red's throat. Her sternum split and her ribs swung outwards, the flesh stretching taught and thin so that the shoulders and waist of the green could be seen passing through it. She was doubling up and bucking at the sudden movement, and the red's stomach and chest flexed and bulged as she folded over herself, her neck bent uncomfortably backwards and her chest pressed against the outside curve of the red's gut.
Her stomach and lower ribs slipped down the red's throat without much resistance. Her backside, and the immense hump of muscle that had powered her tail above it, slowed the red's progress substantially. The now limp legs of the green flopped about, twitching weakly, as the red tried to inch her way over the obstruction. She threw her head back, bringing the green vertical for a few moments at a time in order to let gravity help do the work for her. Her bulging throat worked, powerful spasms traveling its length. And inch by inch, she swallowed the rest of the green. At last, she worked her way over the stub of the tail, and from there swallowed the remaining portion of the green's shapely ass without incident. Her stomach bulged, an arm and hand straining against the distended flesh from within, but the red paid them no mind. She stood up straighter, letting the green's legs hang freely. Slowly, leisurely, she swallowed them, the partial scaling of the thighs transitioning to the full covering of the calves, and at last her jaws rolled over the still kicking feet of the green. Desperately, the toes flexed down, digging their ridged claws between or hooking onto the red's serrated teeth. The red reached up an armoured hand and plucked off the rightmost talon. She moved onto the next, and the one beyond that, smiling as she lifted away the green's precarious grip one claw at a time. When the last claw was detached, the feet shot suddenly down into the black recesses of the red's throat. She swallowed once, twice, finally working the bulge of the feet down and out of her throat. Gingerly, she brought her jaw back together, stretching it side to side to loosen her sore muscles.
The green's feet dropped into her already distended stomach, and the red staggered under the sudden shifting weight. Her ribcage closed once more as she dropped to a knee, her stomach thrashing. Aster saw the imprint of knees, a hand, the sharp folds raised by her spiny back as the green fought to raise her head above the swirling gastric juices of her captor's stomach. As she struggled, the red panted. Setting a heavy hand atop her bulging belly, she rested after the ordeal of swallowing something almost as large as she was.
After a few minutes, the red began the laborious process of standing up. She squatted, resting her stomach on the ground, then slowly and unsteadily rose to her feet. She held her arms out for balance as the green kicked in displeasure, her massive feet sliding around on the bottom of the red's stomach. With her tail held out as a counterweight, she staggered to a nearby hotspring and all but fell into it. She came up moments later, wading through the warm water as she scrubbed the blood and saliva from her face and shoulders. Ducking her head beneath the surface once more, she began to untangle and wash her matted and clumped hair. Her stomach thrashed and gurgled, sending wavelets to lap at the edges of the milky pool, but the red ignored her meal's struggles.
Soon, the red's hair gleamed like a pennant of living fire under the afternoon sun. Her skin had returned to a burnished bronze, save for the still weeping gashes the green had left along her ribs. The red seemed not to feel them as she yawned and stretched, slowly wading along the floor of the spring over to the edge. Her gait had worsened, and she stumbled as she tried to climb from the pool. The outline of a howling face appeared in her stomach as she fell forwards, crushing the green under her weight as she sprawled half in and out of the pool. Within the crushed gut, the green set her remaining hand on the ground. She tried to lift her head up and out of the reeking stomach acid, tenting the red's pliable stomach momentarily as she rose out of the chyme and took in a heaving lungful of air.
The red looked down and smiled at the face straining at her stomach. Leaning forward, she dropped her impressive chest atop the green's head, plunging her back into the roiling acids. She crossed her arms and lay there a moment, enjoying the vibrations the green made in trying to rise. Surging waves rocked the red's stomach as the green flopped, lashing frantically with her whole body in an attempt to pull her head out of the chyme. The red sat, unmoved, laughing softly as her breasts jiggled rhythmically with the green's lunges. Suddenly, she fell forwards. A vanishing bulge revealed that the green's remaining arm had given out entirely. She lay unmoving, curled up and face down within the stomach
Begrudgingly, the red lifted herself up and hooked a leg over the edge of the pool. She hauled herself up out of the water, and flopped onto her side. The green was lying against the side of her distended belly, her face and upper body sagging outwards against the walls of their fleshy prison. Seeing that her meal had ceased moving, the red hissed in annoyance. She slapped the green across the face, and was rewarded by a frenzied thrashing. The green woke, struggling up to her knees as she pulled in heaving lungfuls of air. Lumps appeared in the red's stomach as she pounded and tore at the fleshy walls surrounding her, but the slippery mucous and thick muscle layer were all but impervious. The green kicked, clawed, bit, punched, and stretched, all of which produced only a halfhearted belch from the red. She persisted, worrying at the walls of the stomach with her ridged talons, but injury and exertion had taken their toll. Her struggles faded quickly. The churning stomach stilled, the writhing distensions that had marred its surface subsiding to weak pushes that could barely be made out. Soon, even those ceased as the green collapsed, utterly exhausted.
Aster drew as the red grew disinterested with the lack of movement. An hour, perhaps two passed as she amended and outlined sketches. She finished an outline of the red laying over the edge of the pool, then reached for the glass to begin the detail. Her fingers closed about nothing but air.
Aster checked every pocket twice over and pulled everything out of the pack before realising that Amelie had the glass. She kicked a canteen and sat down by the pack to regard the dragoness. The red was laying on her side, eyes half closed and breathing deeply. Her stomach had stilled, and as Aster watched, she flicked her tail and yawned. Torpor was setting in, and would likely be of both abnormal intensity and extreme length. Stupefied by the heat and a full stomach, she doubted if the red could even rise to her feet.
Aster took a step towards the red, stopped. When there was no reaction, she took another, then another. Slowly, she advanced towards the prone dragoness, charcoal and sketchbook in hand. As she crested a dead geyser, the red's eyes snapped open. She propped herself up onto an elbow and stared at Aster. A deep, rumbling growl echoed across the plain.
Aster's heart caught in her throat. She held up her crossbow, tossed it aside. Fumbling at her belt, she unsheathed a dagger, then set it down by her crossbow. Then, she unclipped the silver band from her right wrist, revealing a ring of pale flesh in her tanned skin. Pulling the chain that extended from it up from under her sleeve, she withdrew her holdout knife. It was fine craftsmanship, the sheath and blade ground from the tooth of a naga and adorned with floral patterns. She held it before her, trembling, then set it down on the pile. Slowly, she resumed walking towards the dragoness.
The red eyed her, blinked wearily at the small pile of arms she had left, then rolled back over and set her head down once more. Under her sleepy gaze, Aster cautiously walked to the opposite edge of the pool. She stared at the dragoness across the billowing steam, making minor additions and corrections to a drawing of the red in flight. She added the ridge of spines along the back, amended the scale pattern of a leg. Her charcoal swept over the hands, added a spine to the wings, and came to rest on the crudely drawn head.
Aster squinted through the mists, trying to capture the proportions of the red's face. She lengthened the nose, moved the eyes down, scrubbed it all out in disgust. The vapour made it impossible to place features in relation to one another, leaving the drawing a disconnected jumble. Aster scowled, tapping the metallic cover with her charcoal. She paced indecisively, watching for any sign of movement from the red. When none was forthcoming, Aster began to circle the spring. She walked to the left, nervously rubbing her wrist as she reached for a knife that wasn't there.
Eventually, the red's immense head emerged from behind the roiling steam. It was followed shortly by her shoulders and arms, one resting atop her now still stomach. Her eyes were almost closed, thin slits staring vacantly out across the hot spring. Aster circled out and away from the water's edge, bringing the whole body into view. This close, the sheer size of the dragoness was readily apparent and almost overwhelming. The deep rumble of her breath was a constant reminder of her presence. Curled up, with her knees and arm cradling her bloated stomach and the long tail lying in a semicircle before her, she was almost like a hill made of flesh and blood.
Aster finished her sketches, her hand trembling as she rushed to complete them. Once she had finished, she prepared a record of the encounter on a separate page. As she wrote, she glanced from time to time at the red. The dragoness was torpid almost to the point of unconsciousness, unresponsive to the scratching of the pen or the movement of her arm.
At last, Aster penned the red's rise from the pool and closed the book. She rubbed the tan line where her bracelet had been, crouching on the mound she had sat on. Around her was only the desolate plain. There was no birdsong, no rustle of leaves, none of the chatter and bustle she had grown up amidst. And looking around, she realised that for the first time in her life she was alone, truly alone, without a guard or a guide or a teacher or anyone at all. She thought that should have been frightening, but all she felt was dim relief. Some slight discomfort, endured until it had faded from conscious memory, had departed.
Rising, Aster withdrew a coil of twine marked with bands of varying size from her pack. Carrying it, her sketchbook, and the diminished charcoal rod, she strode towards the sleeping dragoness. Stopping just out of reach, she tentatively waved at the red. When that elicited no response, she picked up a chunk of rock and rolled it along the ground to fetch up against her outstretched arm. The fingers twitched, but no more.
Satisfied that the red was too sluggish to pose a threat, Aster walked up to her. Apprehensively, she stretched out her arm and laid a cautious hand on the dragoness's armoured shoulder. The heat was surprising; it was like touching steel that had been left in the sun. Yanking her hand back, Aster was more wary as she reached out for the dragoness's unarmored chest. This time, the heat was not so intense as to be discomforting, though the red was warmer than would have been expected for mere flesh and blood. She stirred at the touch, reaching out sluggishly with the hand not resting on her stomach, and Aster lurched back to avoid the questing talons.
Once the red had calmed, she stepped forwards once more, twine in hand. She started her measurements at the shoulders, fearing that a touch on the face or neck might provoke a reaction. Slowly, she worked her way down the front of the massive body, meticulously taking down the proportions of limbs and positions of bones. The red was slightly wider in the shoulders and ribs than a human, undoubtedly to support the massive muscles and anchoring tissues of the wings.
Aster paused upon reaching the stomach. The soft groans and slopping of digestion were audible over the red's deep breathing, but the smooth skin hid any evidence of the green's presence, or lack thereof. Aster leaned forwards, setting a questing hand on the stomach. The red raised no objection as she felt across the surface, looking for some sign of the smaller dragoness's continued existence. Finding nothing, Aster pressed her hand more firmly into the distended skin. The soft, warm flesh enveloped her fingers as she ran her hand through the soupy chyme. As she felt around for something solid, the red stirred. Her deep breathing gave way to a soft, rapid, and sustained rumble or growl, and she smiled in her blissful delirium. Aster continued her sweep, starting as high as she could reach and then working her way down. As she descended through the soupy mess, Aster's questing hand fetched up against something decidedly solid. It had small, hard plates covering it, some of which pulled free of the underlying structure when she went to feel it. Once more, she reached out to grab the object. It was smooth, fairly soft beneath the plating, in shape something like an eroded rectangle. As she felt around it, something surged up from the bottom of the stomach. Slipping from Aster's grasp, the rectangular object traveled to the base of the stomach and imprinted there as a foot. A huge body sagged out against the confining walls, and Aster found herself staring into a face. The green was still alive, after a fashion.
And the face stared back at her, stared blindly with empty sockets. As the green struggled and feebly flopped against the walls of the stomach, Aster saw the toll her confinement had exacted. Her lower body had suffered the greatest damage. The rectangular object had been a foot, though it now lacked any digits. Great swathes of her skin and flesh were peeling away, leaving bone exposed in her knees and ankles, as well as on the left thigh. The flesh was soft and sagging, and the scaled sections were sloughing off to float about in the bloody soup. Her shoulders, chest, and face had been less horribly disfigured, but the dripping acids had not been kind even there. Her eyes and nose were gone, her remaining horn reduced to a crumbling stump. As she feebly gnawed at the stomach lining, Aster saw that her lips had vanished, and the hand that thumped pitifully alongside it had only two claws remaining. The acids had eaten the hole in her chest down to the ribs, and dripping rivulets had carved channels and splotches out of her flesh.
In response to the green's abrupt floundering, the red started, rising up onto her elbow. Still half asleep, she belched, tossing green scales like confetti across the milky ground. The eroded remains of a claw clattered out to land among them, and the red sleepily flicked it away. Her eyes were still nearly shut, but as the green's struggles continued, she blearily began to rise to wakefulness.
Aster looked around, wild eyed. If the red came to her senses with a stranger standing over her, there would be no time for bargaining or escape. She would break her in half without thinking.
Frantically, irrationally, Aster pushed at the struggling green, hoping somehow to put an end to her thrashing and the red's discomfort. Her palms scraped handfuls of scales and flesh off the green's thighs, doing little real damage but attracting her intention in the process. The green knelt and strained against the stomach wall, reaching out towards Aster. Her fingers bent and tore free as she tried to reach her through the intervening layers of muscle and fat, falling into the burning slop with soft plops, but the green persisted in her efforts. She pressed herself completely against the walls of her tomb, leaning forward so her weight could do what acid-eaten muscles could not. With the stomach stretched so tightly, it became almost translucent. Aster saw clearly for the first time her skin, sagging and greyish white from acid immersion, pocked by weeping reddish channels and holes where chunks of flesh had torn free. Her remaining arm was little more than a bloody club, as were her lower legs. Her strangely unblemished scales had fallen out in huge patches on her thighs and upper arm, but where it was still present it hung loosely and disconnected, the skin beneath it eaten away. Strips of flesh and scale trailed her like tattered funerary wraps, fluttering in brownish-red chyme as she blindly groped about for Aster. Unsuccessfully, Aster continued to shove at her, flinching as the thing which had been a hand reached out and found her own. Immediately, the green stopped her mindless groping and slid down into the chyme, desperately holding her stump against Aster's outstretched palm as a drowning man clings to a piece of flotsam. Her huge, eyeless face sank down nearly level to Aster's own, and despite the lack of cheeks, lips, and nose, the skinless jaw moved. Aster leaned in to catch the barely audible gurgle, and at last heard the green's pitiful and garbled request.
"Pleathe...h...health me. I cann feel ahnthing...iths..ssso dark..."
Aster stared into the hideous face, utterly overwhelmed. For several seconds, she simply stood there, gripping the stub of an arm and looking at the mewling wreck that had hours ago been among the most feared creatures of the earth. Then, the red moved, galvanizing her into action. The scarlet dragoness partially rolled, turning towards her stomach to begin getting her legs under her, and the motion dropped the green lower to the ground. There was a sickening crunch as the red rolled over the green's feet, and she thrashed feebly, screaming. The movement dislodged her arm from Aster's grip, and she renewed her frantic struggles, trying desperately to rise against the rubbery walls. Without thinking, Aster shoved her, throwing all of her strength into a desperate push. Her open hands struck the green's acid riddled stomach...and kept going. She sank halfway to her elbows in the soft, yielding flesh. Beneath her palms, she felt the firm, pulsing coils of as yet unsoftened viscera. Panicking, Aster tried to pull her hands free, tearing them free of the spongy skin and releasing a coiling flood of intestines as she did so. Reeling, the green laid her arm across her bisected stomach, futilely trying to scoop her innards back into the gaping hole Aster had torn in her gut. Her fingerless club only became entangled in the entrails, spreading them like the coils of some obscenely huge worm or leech as they bobbed in the soupy acids. Dumbly, she dropped her hand, staring out over Aster at something only she could see.
"Ih...ih burns! My thumach! Sire...helth me! Pleathe, I ca..nn..n....no...more..."
Scrabbling forwards, arm outstretched, the green slipped, fell, rose again. Her amputated calf came down over a loop of her intestines, and her mindless treading quickly wrapped the coil tightly about her leg. She kicked at it, trying to pull free, but only managed to entangle herself further. Bound tightly by the slimy ropes, she swayed and rolled momentarily along the stomach, thrashing ineffectively. A high, thin wail of despair echoed in the hellish gut, loud enough to shake several teeth loose from their acid eaten sockets. Choking on the sharp cylinders, the green stumbled. An eaten away mass that might have once been her tail rolled under her stump. She tripped and fell backwards into the stomach, disappearing beneath the bloody surface of the accumulated digestive juices. Her long wail choked off to a quiet burbling, the only evidence of her existence the faint tremors her last struggles sent rippling along the smooth curve of the red's stomach.
Aster stumbled back, breathing heavily. Though the green's struggles had been stilled, it had come too late. Peering blearily down at Aster, the red propped herself up and belched once more. A soft rain of clattering green scales flew from her gaping maw and pinged off Aster's terrified face as she stood, rooted to the ground in pure terror. The red closed her mouth, curiously blinking down at Aster, then reached out lazily with one enormous hand.
The sight of the oncoming talons broke the spell. Aster leapt backwards, but the outer edges of the claws struck her heavily across the chest. The impact knocked her flat on her back and the wind out of her lungs. As she lay still for a second, gasping for breath, the huge scaled hand reached back out and settled over her. The weight was immense, and the effort to breathe robbed Aster of her ability to resist as the huge claws slid beneath her. Before she could scream, she was dragged into the sky. Before her the dragoness's face loomed, immense in proportion and curious despite her torpor. She strained against the fingers that held her, but found them immovable as steel beams. Despite the futility, she continued to test her bonds, trying vainly to lift a claw from her chest or wriggle out of the grip. Pushing and pulling, working every fiber of her being against the implacable talons, she at last collapsed, panting limply in the unbroken grip. The red just continued to stare at her, head cocked as she regarded the small creature caught in her grasp.
Belatedly, Aster realised that the red had not simply reacted and torn her to pieces. The restraint and generosity confused her-and then she remembered the green's fate. Despite the heat of the afternoon, Aster felt a chill creep through her flesh. Fumbling at her breast pocket, Aster withdrew a small cake of yellow leaves, pressed together and then dried to keep for long journeys. As the red opened her mouth, Aster wiggled an arm up and took a bite. Immediately, the red's grip tightened. Involuntarily, Aster drew in a sharp breath. The cake slammed back into her mouth and she spluttered, instinctively trying to spit it out. A small piece caught on her incisors, but most of the dry square broke away, falling uselessly to the ground. Swallowing the acrid bite remaining, Aster hoped it would be enough. The effects set in nearly immediately. A tingling numbness began in her skin, spreading deeper with such rapidity that Aster couldn't tell if the red had relaxed her grip. The massive horned head swam before her eyes as a fuzzy darkness seeped in from the corners of her vision. As Aster sank into a deep, dark well, she thought she saw the red's lips moving, but she couldn't be certain. She felt tired, very tired, and warm in a pleasant way. The scarlet eyes gazing down at her receded, becoming twin stars amidst a whirling ocean of night, vanishing into the distance until at last only the blackness remained.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Aster awoke beneath a crimson sky. Milky veins and blotches hung like frozen lightning in the dome of the heavens, spread between huge, darker lines like the bars of a cage. The air was warm, almost uncomfortably so, and as Aster began to stretch aching muscles, she found that she was lying on her back, nestled against something soft and warm. She thought that, all things considered, being dead was not so unpleasant as she had imagined it would be.
Then, the heavens moved. The great cage bars shifted, stretching and folding the leathery red sky between them. Alarmed, Aster lifted her head to get a better view of what was going on, saw a glimmer of blue mixed with blinding light emerge as the red pulled up and away from the horizon for a moment. It descended again swiftly, plunging
Aster back into a scarlet twilight, but now she saw other bright points of light on the horizon, chinks of radiance where the sweep of the sky did not properly align with the earth.
Sweeping her gaze across the horizon, Aster was shocked to see a pair of immense, scaled legs. Their owner was lying down, and as Aster lifted herself up to get a better look, she felt a pressure on her chest. Looking down at herself, Aster discovered that she was cradled in the grip of an immense, scaly, and clawed hand. Blinking, she rose further out of sleep's receding grasp. The sky rippled again, and she realised that it was no sky at all, but rather the broad sweep of the red's wing. Looking around more critically, she saw that she was lying against the red's breasts, held in place by her taloned hand as the dragoness slept on her side, head inside the dome formed by an outstretched wing resting atop her curled body.
Shrugging off her heat induced stupor, Aster braced her hands under the red's index finger and pushed as hard as she could. Her grip had grown lax in sleep; the finger quickly slipped up and away. Aster grabbed hold of it and pulled, wriggling out of the red's hand and sliding down her breast to land unsteadily on the chalky ground. Her wrists and ankles throbbed, accompanied by a splitting headache Aster guessed was courtesy of the salamandrake leaf cake she'd had a bit of.
As she took an unsteady step forwards, Aster tripped over something. She stumbled, cursing under her breath. Only the thing's identity saved it from a retributive kicking; it was her sketchbook, dirtied from its fall but otherwise unharmed. Her charcoal lay nearby, miraculously unshattered by the struggle and subsequent fall.
Looking back at the red, Aster saw that her stomach had decreased in size substantially. Where it had been an orb rivaling the red in size, it was now merely an oblong jumble of protruding bones, crushed and fused together by the churning gut. Aster recognised a femur poking out near the bottom, a jumble of other long bones above it, a fused mass of bone and scale which might have been the ribcage sticking up from the skin like a charnel hill, and surmounting the macabre collection was a skull, caved in along the right half and missing most of its teeth.
Besides the shrinking of the stomach, Aster felt some other change had taken place. There was a subtle shifting of proportion in the red's arms and legs, while her breasts seemed noticeably larger than they had been the previous day. Aster impulsively stepped forwards to verify-then remembered the events of the previous day. Reaching up, she instead ran her hand over the outstretched wing. Her nervous glances showed the red still slumbering deeply, but she continued her test for a while longer just to be sure. This close, she could see the marks of previous battles along the leathery expanse. Jagged white lines and spots marked old punctures and tears, while several of the long supportive bones had knobs or calluses from badly healed breaks.
Satisfied that the red was sleeping too deeply to pose a threat (and hoping that the red wouldn't be hungry if that were not the case), Aster followed the curve of the wing back towards her body. Comparing the proportions of the red to the figures she had noted yesterday, Aster verified her initial assumptions. There had been a slight thickening of the arms, the chest, accomplished by the deposition of new subcutaneous fat. The effect was slight; an inch or two of difference at most, on a thirty five foot frame, but across such a large area the difference in mass must have been prodigious. No similar demurement could be made regarding the breasts. After taking the twine to them, Aster found that they had increased in length by two feet, and in width scarcely less than that. In the hands, she found that the added circumference had slightly displaced scales, revealing a lighter hued reddish underskin between them. A similar, though not as pronounced, effect had occurred in the scaling of her sides, and Aster walked down the body to check the legs and tail. She stopped at the stomach, morbidly curious, and tentatively poked at a protruding bone. It crumbled under her touch and broke. There was a slight churning and sagging as the mass of ribs and scale it had supported sank further into the gut. Aster pushed her hand deeper, running it over a length of eroded vertebrae still held together by cartilage and ligament. The piece had broken free of the spine, but as she tested various areas, Aster found that such chunks were fairly common. What she did not find was limbs. She snapped through a long bone once or twice, and dislodged the pelvis from where it had lodged against the skull, but eventually concluded that they must have been totally disarticulated by the powerful contractions and concentrated acids.
Leaving the stomach, she found a similar transformation had taken place in the legs, though to a greater extent. The thighs had swelled, displacing the scales to a point where Aster was able to slide the tip of her finger between them to touch the underskin. It was warm to the touch, very warm, and surprisingly supple. Wriggling out from under the wing and into the blinding sunlight, Aster was surprised to see that the tail was also substantially altered. New layers of fat had been laid down beneath the scutes, displacing them and altering the deep V of the underside.
Walking around to the red's back, Aster whistled low upon coming to the base of her wings. The red had fairly extensive scarring across nearly her whole body. There were long claw marks on the chest and arms, a malformed irregularity in the scales where her tail had been broken once, a strange series of regularly spaced blotches running down the limbs and stomach, and a great deal of nicks and ridges spaced out relatively randomly. But nothing compared to the huge, puckered scars at the base of her wings. Around them the skin was stretched and warped, hanging loose in places where Aster assumed the flesh had swollen in response to damage or infection. Suspecting trauma-induced bone growth beneath, Aster reached out and ran a light finger over the swollen flesh. She felt the red jerk to wakefulness a second before the huge wing snapped backwards and knocked her sprawling.
With a sound somewhere between a yelp and a roar, the dragoness rolled, swept her tail around and used the momentum to throw herself to her feet. There was a momentary hissing, and then Aster threw herself back to the ground as a pennant of flame rolled out overhead. She heard the dry crackle of the fire sweeping about, and curled into a ball to protect herself from the tremendous heat. For long, agonising seconds, the roar of the flame drowned out the world. Searing warmth rolled over her back, and sweat trickled down down her face. Just as she was beginning to fear that the red meant to boil her alive, the fire vanished. Aster lay there, panting, until she felt something sharp smack her in the back.
"Are you alright?"
Groaning, she looked up and over her shoulder. The kneeling dragoness poked her again, and Aster at last uncurled and sat up.
"I feel like a baked potato, but otherwise, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, um, startle you..."
Satisfied, the dragoness rocked back onto her heels. Her stomach hung low, the jumbled bones of her previous meal shifting and rattling as she stretched.
"No harm done. You can relax; I'm not going to hurt you."
Aster blinked quizzically,
"You are...not what I was expecting."
"How so?"
"Well, you're like, not violently insane, for one."
"Did you think I was going to kidnap you, too? Stick you in a high castle tower? Sleep on a pile of gold while I'm at it?
Aster flushed with embarrassment. "I didn't...I mean...
"It's ok. I get pretty similar reactions a lot."
"Oh. So. Um. Why are you here?"
The red rested a hand on the green's half collapsed skull.
"I was chasing her, finally caught up here."
"Why? Were you, like, hungry?"
Laughing, the red shook her head.
"No, of course not! I don't go around fighting the handful of creatures who pose a credible threat to my continued existence because I'm hungry. I came after her because of these."
Parting her long red locks, the red lowered her head to reveal half-healed rents torn into the back and sides of her neck.
"I was warned that the old customs held more sway in Miscobar, but I never thought it would be this bad. This is the third attack in as many months. I thought it was a territory thing at first; you've got a lot more dragons here than on the other side of the Spires. And that I would have understood, if not agreed with. But this, this is just unfounded hate. So I've sent a message here, that I'll retaliate in kind if they come after me.
Aster nodded. "So there's no truth in it? What she said, I mean?"
The red shook her head, almost begrudging the answer.
"Yes and no. The basic physical assessment is correct; I am a mutant, and sterile for it. And she's also right in saying that reds are widely feared and distrusted because of their reputation for wanton cruelty and destruction. But we aren't all pariahs, and honestly, it strikes me as a strange insult in the first place. If you kill or abandon us at birth, and then shun the survivors, of course they'll grow up to be socially stunted and mentally unstable individuals. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, and it boggles my mind that they don't see that."
Aster looked up again, curious.
"Did your parents do that?
The red nodded. "They tried. My progenitor wanted to kill me outright once the scales brightened and it became clear what I was. But my sire was weak willed and soft hearted. She couldn't bear to do the job herself, so she took me out into the woods and..."
The red shivered, unconsciously reaching back to rub the scars at the base of her wings before continuing.
"She left me to die, confident that I'd be easy pickings for something if I couldn't fly. For half a year I lived in the shadows, living off the little creeping things I could catch or food I could steal while I waited for my wings to knit back together."
Aster winced. "Oh. I'm sorry."
"You've nothing to apologise for. Those that do have since paid for their mistakes."
Aster's eyes widened in shock.
"You killed your own-"
"Oh, no, of course not. I'd have stood no chance whatsoever against the two of them. But I had been fighting the Akkavians for a while. I had joined up with Analeth's forces, see, on the condition that their mages try and fix some of the residual damage to my wings, so I'd had experience facing them. They've been clearing out monsters as their empire pushes east; lamias, harpies, centaurs and their kin, anything that doesn't bow down to second class citizenship. But dragons they hate more than any other, because they're so dangerous and hard to pin down. All it took was a forged recruiting scroll with their location, "accidentally" dropped by a courier wyvern, and three companies of the Knights of the Rose trooped out the next morning.
The red nodded grimly as she recalled the scene.
"They set up in front of the cave mouth that night, concealed their siege engines under tarps. When their quarry was sleeping, they tossed in vials of some kind of airborne toxin to flush them out. My sire came out first; they put two harpoons in her and then doused her with firecasters. Then, they hit my progenitor with fouling chains as she tried to fly out. Once she was on the ground, they came in at her with their great hewing axes."
Aster gaped up at her. "That's barbaric! You killed them for petty revenge!"
The red cut her off with a wave of her hand.
"They were abusive assholes who maimed me and left me for dead. I don't feel sorry in the slightest, and I don't particularly care what you think of me for it. What I do care about is figuring out why a human disarmed themselves and then came up to cuddle with a gigantic, fire spitting monster they believed to be violently insane.
Aster glowered. "I wasn't trying to cuddle you. I was taking measurements!"
The red laughed. "Ok, but seriously. Why? Iook, I'm not going to turn you into a smear if you explain yourself."
Aster opened her sketchbook. "No, I'm serious. Look here."
The red leaned in as Aster turned the book about. Her breath was warm.
"Arm length, claw length, scale size...horn length...huh. My bad. Say, is this me?"
Aster looked over the cover at the sketch the red was pointing at.
"Yeah, it's you getting out of the hot spring."
"It's well drawn. Why was it so important for you to get these measurements?"
"I had to beg and wheedle my father for half a year just for this trip, and when I get back it'll just be the same endless procession of balls and and feasts and empty headed suitors. I thought that maybe I could make a name for myself, publish something that would make them talk to me about stuff and not just because I'm the heiress to Rorrik's Keep. There's not been a red in this part of the country for half a century, so I'd have been the de facto expert. And you were so far out of it, so I thought...well, why not have a look?"
The red nodded. "I was pretty far out of it. I haven't eaten to excess like this in months, forgot just how fast torpor sets in."
"Is it anything like being drunk? Being torpid, I mean."
The red shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I've had alcohol only once, a small jug so I could recognise the taste when somebody was trying to get me secondhand drunk. It's like...hm."
The red paused, thinking a moment.
"It's like the last stages of waking, the moment when you know you're dreaming but allow the story to carry you along. There's very little sense of self; you're a character moving through the world, your actions just as much of a surprise to you as they are to everyone else. But unlike a dream, you feel. It's warm, the kind of warmth and weakness you feel deep in your flesh on waking from a deep sleep or laying down after hard physical labor. It's a very...euphoric experience."
"I see. What are you going to do now?"
The red shrugged. "I'm not sure. I think going to wait a while to see if this is enough to intimidate them, but I somewhat doubt that'll happen. I might just end up leaving entirely, go to the western shores or the near south. I'll hate to lose my friends in the caravans and at Segerost, and I'll not be able to bring my library, but I don't really see many other options. I'm strong, experienced, large and naturally advantaged, but eventually one of them will get lucky. I cannot fight every dragon in the country."
The red sighed, wrapping her tail around her knees.
"And honestly? I'm tired. Tired of sleeping with one eye open, always watching for an ambush, just waiting for someone to have a go at me. It's exhausting to live like that. I thought I left it behind, walked away from the crawling night fires and the racks and the traps, but it's been almost as bad over here. Fighting is fine, enjoyable even, but I can't stand the waiting."
"Why don't you ask a lady or lord for asylum? They'd ask for your help of course, but I can't think of any who'd not leap at the chance to have that kind of martial advantage."
"I tried that. Nobody would have me. They said the populace would never stand for it, that they had no reason to trust me, that I'd bring the wrath of the sea down on them for sheltering an abomination."
Aster waited for an inordinately long time before she continued.
"Are you a man eater?"
"When there's nothing easier to come by, yes."
"So, like, if there was something else in the area, you'd go for that first?"
"Not what I said, but it works out that way most of the time."
"Rorrik's Keep was built to stand guard over a profitable silver lode. It's all been mined out by now, of course, but the excavations left extensive cavern systems on the grounds. We could house you there, if you can be content with not eating our subjects."
"And in return?"
"We'd have to work out the particulars later, but in general, play courier and scout with your wings. Solve problem cases of banditry or monsters too tough or hard to pin down otherwise. Burn out armies brought to bear against us. And I know you want to get away from that. But realise that your presence is going to count for more than you seem to think. Around here, killing two dragons with minimal losses is legend, not Tuesday. There's not a keep or city in the country who'd think it worth engaging you to get an exhausted mine and some second rate trade routes."
The red rose to her feet, stretching her legs as she did so.
"I'll wait a while and see if this kind of warning puts them off. If not, perhaps I'll stop by and see if your father and I can work out an agreement. You've offered reasonably enough, but..."
The scarlet gaze bore down on Aster as the red frowned.
"I've been wrong before. If this is a trap, tell me. I'll not kill you, your family, anyone. Do they have something, someone, important to you? I'll help you rectify that. If it's a favor for someone, I'll hold up their end. I'll help you if you keep me from walking into it. But if you lie to me, and I win, I'll get some rope and thread the skulls of your family and friends into a cock ring. And as for you..."
"I get it. Um...are you leaving?"
A nod from the red.
"Yeah. I'll head back to my cave. Where are you going?"
Aster consulted her compass, pointed to the east.
"I'm meeting someone at Karon's Fist."
"That's the big basalt rock pile, yes?"
Aster nodded. The red thought for a moment, then shrugged.
"I'm going the same way. Want me to fly you there?"
"Oh! Um...sure. Thank you."
The red laughed, then rubbed her stomach. Compacted chunks of bone and scale rolled under the skin, grinding against one another and bulging weirdly against the tightened flesh. "No worries. Just hold on a few minutes while I get all this out of my system."
"You can't digest it?"
"Oh, I can. But it would take a couple days, and I hate flying with bones in my gut. It sways and rattles and weighs me down. Now, hold on a sec."
The red wrapped her arms around the shriveled oval of her stomach, squeezing. Bones cracked and crunched under the force of her grip, accompanied by an ominous gurgle as the dragoness began regurgitating the remnants of her meal. She belched, tossing a rain of untouched green scales across the plain, before working the first compacted lump up her throat. Hacking like an owl, she slowly brought up and then disgorged a chunk of bone and scale. A jumbled mess of snapped arm bones surrounding a length of spine fell to splat wetly on the ground. The bone was rough and yellowed, eaten and stained by the red's powerful stomach acids, speckled by contrasting scales. Soon, it was joined by the lumbar vertebrae and broken pelvis, with a toothless lower jaw lodged in the latter. Before spitting up a third mass, the red burped again, hurling a spatter of fingerbones and other small pieces in a wide arc over the plain. Aster winced as a spinning metacarpal bounced off her head, then returned her gaze to the red. She shook her head, then hacked up the crushed ribcage. It had become a malformed ball, folded in around the sternum and with the clavicle broken in half near the top. A particularly heavily eaten length of vertebrae which might have been the green's tail followed, landing on and shattering the pelvis. The red's stomach was by now nearly flat. A few bones floated about in the bottom, but as she ran her hand up it and spit up a disarticulated jumble of fragments, leg bones, and scales, even this subsided beneath her bronzed skin. All that remained of the green lay as wetly gleaming heaps of bone and scale, with odd bits and pieces scattered between the largest lumps. Much of the vertebral column had held together by virtue of its many ligaments and cartilaginous connections, some of which still remained as thin, bleached strips along the sides of the bone. The rest of the skeleton was not so fortunate. Nearly all of the most distal elements were gone, reduced to isolated fragments. Even the the upper limbs had been mostly disarticulated and broken. There was no sign of the delicate wing bones, or of the keratin claws and horn sheaths. Try though she might, Aster was likewise unable to locate the skull, and eventually concluded that it must have been totally destroyed, crushed by the powerful churning of the red's stomach and her more recent rough handling.
The red kicked over a pile of long bones, laughing as she strode back towards Aster.
"Well, that'll certainly send a message. Ready to go?"
Aster caught herself mid nod, then pointed sheepishly to the red's chest.
"You, um, got some stuff on you."
The red looked down, then chuckled again. Green scales dotted her exposed skin, stuck tightly to it by their dampness. She ran a huge hand over her breasts, dislodging most and flicking the stubborn remainder away with her claws. While she cleaned herself off, Aster packed. Sketchbook, charcoal, compass, twine, all of it went back into the travel worn backpack. Finishing, she turned and waited for the dragoness to clean the last of the scales from her skin. It took a few minutes, but eventually she extended a vermillion hand, and Aster cautiously stepped forward between the waiting fingers. They closed behind her, holding her without discomfort but possessed of an easy, implacable strength. The talons formed a cage about her from the neck down, and her head was still lolling about as the red spread her enormous wings and leapt awkwardly into the sky. Aster yelped, felt her stomach try to turn inside out as the ground dropped away from her, but calmed quickly. The red brought her arm in and held Aster against her stomach, with her limbs held close to her body as she shot through the sky like an arrow in flight. Aster relaxed soon, thankful for the natural windbreak of the red's breasts and the warmth of her stomach in the sparse, frigid air. Wriggling to dislodge a leftover vertebra poking her in the stomach, Aster rested, listening to the rhythmical beating of her wings and the pounding of her immense heart. It was calming, a deep, constant pattern that had been heard down the immemorial ages in the womb, and before she knew it, Aster had fallen asleep in the red's arms.
HeinousSaurus's Stories
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Read the rules in detail here
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Please open only one thread per person. Detail here.
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HeinousSaurus's Stories
by HeinousSaurus » Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:25 pm
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HeinousSaurus - Been posting for a bit
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Re: HeinousSaurus's Stories
by unicorn » Sat Oct 10, 2020 2:30 pm
This is quite nicely written, the part with the red swallowing the green especially stands out, it's a lot more detailed than the usual, made it seem like it was a task that had to be worked for! I found that pretty enjoyable!
I'm sorry no one else has said anything, hopefully that's not too disheartening. ;_;
I'm sorry no one else has said anything, hopefully that's not too disheartening. ;_;
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unicorn - Intermediate Vorarephile
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Re: HeinousSaurus's Stories
by HeinousSaurus » Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:07 pm
unicorn wrote:This is quite nicely written, the part with the red swallowing the green especially stands out, it's a lot more detailed than the usual, made it seem like it was a task that had to be worked for! I found that pretty enjoyable!
I'm sorry no one else has said anything, hopefully that's not too disheartening. ;_;
I'm glad having an actual struggle appealed to you, and I appreciate your feedback. When I read or view vore, I prefer that there's at least some doubt as to the outcome-the prey is fighting back or trying to escape as best they're able, and then the pred reacts to that, and so on. I just find situations where the pred has all the agency rather boring because you know exactly what's going to happen, and moreover that such works can often kind of run together. So I tried to avoid that.
As for the few comments, I'm not super bothered. This is a really long story, and from a new writer at that. It's a pretty significant time investment, and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to make that kind of commitment. It also has a couple themes a lot of people avoid (graphic digestion, disposal, death being the big ones), so it might just be in a ton of blacklists.
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HeinousSaurus - Been posting for a bit
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Re: HeinousSaurus's Stories
by Indighost » Thu Oct 15, 2020 1:21 am
This is a great story! While the content is rather straight forward, the excellent descriptions and suspense held me to the end. I really wanted to know what would happen and kept guessing all the way! Nice work.
Indighost's Library: Stories of Vore, Sex, Stuffing, Digestion, Drama.
Try my text RPG vore game!
And my Tabletop RPG Site!
Try my text RPG vore game!
And my Tabletop RPG Site!
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Indighost - ---
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Re: HeinousSaurus's Stories
by HeinousSaurus » Fri Oct 16, 2020 8:28 pm
Indighost wrote:This is a great story! While the content is rather straight forward, the excellent descriptions and suspense held me to the end. I really wanted to know what would happen and kept guessing all the way! Nice work.
Glad you enjoyed it, and that it managed to remain exciting despite the length. Thank you for the feedback!
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HeinousSaurus - Been posting for a bit
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Re: HeinousSaurus's Stories
by HeinousSaurus » Sun Jan 31, 2021 2:02 am
Finally finished my second story after about a billion rewrites. It's very long, and contains graphic digestion and sex, so don't proceed if that's not your thing. I focused on trying to improve my dialogue over that of my previous story, though I fear that the work ended up dragging quite a bit despite cuts and rewrites. If you have any advice or comments, I would love to hear them, esp. anything relating to how you plan your stories. Text begins below:
Ambush in the Woods:
Rain knocked harshly on the slipshod shacks and shanteys that lined the unpaved streets of Errasti's poor quarter. Old houses of rotted timber leaned out drunkenly into the street, tarps and primitive tents crowding like mildewed ducklings under their protective overhangs. Under these inadequete shelters, women sat, brought together by the mutual friend of misfortune. The lamed, the blind, the crippled and maimed shared bottles of cheap, watery liquor as lepers and paupers diced for crusts of bread beside them. Addicts shivered under piles of blankets, groaning when the battering of the rain grew too audible over the sordid general din. quacks and cutpurses trudged through the muddy collection of the city's filth the street had become, wrapped in whatever they could scrounge up to keep out the grime and the wet. All the nameless refuse of the city gathered here in sordid companionship.
Then, a sound sharper than the rain cut through the muggy air. Metal boots rang on cobblestones, and armor clacked as its owners turned off the main road. As the squelching and clanking grew nearer, the human detritus oozed out of sight. People scuttled away singly or in small groups, leaving their bottles and dice sitting on crates and pallets. Doors were shuttered, windows barred, lamps extinguished by furtive hands. A lone figure bundled up in an overlarge coat slipped down a side alley.
So it was that the street was deserted when three armored forms trooped down it in single file. They wore shields on their left arms and kept their iron studded clubs free and ready, the middle individual glancing up at the eyes peering from every chink in the houses with mutual fear.
"Eyes down here, Karina. Mind the...no, don't pull at it. You'll have to cut it off. Gretta, hold up a moment, would you? She's gotten stuck again."
The middle knight growled, tugging at the waving tarp that had gotten stuck on one of the many blades protruding from her gauntlet. As the rearmost knight stepped up and drew a knife from her belt, she smacked the offending cloth with her shield in frusteration.
"Remind me agian why we've got to wear the whole scorching kettles to walk the streets of our own gods damned city? I can't take two steps without getting snagged on some thrice-"
"Just shut the fuck up and get that off so we can keep moving." The leading knight continued to speak in a tired monotone as she swept her spined helm about to keep watch over the street. "We've still got the South Plaza and and the Narrows yet, and the sun's already going down. I want to get back to the priory before the kitchens close and I have to spend four hours washing mud out of the batting on hardtack and cold beer."
The third knight cut the cloth free at last and the procession resumed. As they continued their watchful trudge through the slums, she too began to upbraid Karina.
"Be thankful that they somehow let your clumsy ass into that suit, or you'd be emptying the privies right now. And you absolutely want it on. The people here are like...animals. There were lynchings here last week when the tax hikes were posted, and...hold up."
Gretta turned back, exasperated.
"Again?"
But the knight hadn't stopped because of another snag. She was looking down into a filthy pile of blankets, dripping with empty leather pouches stained yellow-gold by their former cargo. A pale, disheveled face peeped back up at her, then a groping hand appeared.
"Sunsugar! Please, please, just a taste! The last caravan didn't make it, see, and my sire's jewels are all gone."
Gretta strode back to join her compatriots as the third knight knelt down before the huddled figure.
"Hello, sweety. What's your name?"
Two watery blue eyes peered blearily out from the blankets, then focused in on the kneeling knight. The whole bundle of rags scuttled back to press into the corner, its occupant shivering.
"I-I'm Sophia. Miss, I don't want no trouble, honest."
"Nor do we. Do you have any family here?"
The beggar looked down, refusing to meet Anna's intense stare.
"I don't wanna to talk to you. Ava said not to talk to you flower knights. 'Sophia, they'll take you off to that great stone keep and we'll see nary a trace of you again, so you stay well clear of them now,' she said, and I mean to stick to that."
Anna laughed. "Oh, come now. We were just wondering if you might like to come sleep in a warm bed and have a hot meal for once.
Sophia said nothing, still avoiding eye contact. Anna went on, unperturbed.
"We have hot baths and solid roofs if you don't mind scrubbing floors."
Sophia looked up for a moment, then buried her face once more in her blanket.
"I don't wanna talk to you. Leave me alone!"
"Come now, at least hear us out."
Gretta stepped forwards and bent down next to Anna as she spoke. "How 'bout you come back with us, have a look around the priory, see what kind of work you'd have to do. If it doesn't suit you, you'd be free to come right back here."
Sophia shook her head
"I dunno. Ava said..."
Anna shrugged. "That's fine, too. If you want to stay in this stinking shithole, all out of whatever was in those pouches and without money to buy it, that's your prerogative." Rising and turning away slowly, theatrically flicking a glob of mud from her breastplate, she turned towards her companions before a wavering cry brought her back around.
"W-wait! Would you...I mean, would I get paid?"
Anna nodded. "Absolutely."
Sophia hesitated still, crouching uncertainly in her rat's nest of blankets. Anna strode back to her, reaching into one of the many pouches at her waist. Gold gleamed between her fingers, even in the darkness and filth of the alley, drawing Sophia's eyes. She reached for it tentatively, and Anna leaned in with a confidential whisper.
"I know it's not much, but I've more at the barracks."
Sophia took the coin, rolling it between her fingers, then looked up warily.
"But...but why? Why are you-"
Anna set the palm of her hand on Sophia's shoulder. Peering out from behind the emotionless grey of her visor, she spoke softly once more.
"You remind me of my sister. Will you come? It won't be a glorious or an easy life, but you'll have food in your belly and a bed to sleep on."
At last, though reluctantly, Sophia took the outstretched hand, careful to avoid the blades and spikes on the vambrace and upper greaves. Anna heaved her to her feet, then caught the spindly woman before she could fall backwards.The beggar clutched her head and groaned, transitioning to spate of dry heaving when Anna tugged at her arm. She was brown haired, pale, and small breasted, her skin clammy and soft like oyster flesh.
Karina stood, confused.
"Wait, we're, like...doing this? Right now?"
Gretta turned and fixed her with an exasperated stare. "This your first time recruiting? And you've been on active duty for six months now?"
She thought a moment, then shook her head.
"Well, I suppose it was never a common practice in the first place. First time for everything and all that. She fits the description the captain asked for, and the instructions were to come right back if we found somebody like that. Come along, now, and try to keep off the tarps this time."
Karina indignantly hopped forwards to take up the rearmost position as Anna prodded Sophia to a stumbling walk.Together, the four trudged through the slimy street towards the cobbles of the main road. Once their feet were once again on solid ground, the knights relaxed. Shields dooped, clubs fell to their sides (or belt, in Anna's case), and their pace slowed a trifle
Anna had moved to the middle of the pack, half carrying and half dragging the shivering form of Sophia forwards. They walked in silence past shuttered storefronts and the sparse street lanterns, occasional lights in the windows and the rare pair of leather clad city guards the only sign of human life. Once, they saw a figure in a voluminous coat idling outside an old home, but they disappeared down an alley as soon as they caught sight of the procession. Gretta groaned.
"Great. Now we gotta file a curfew violation report. Whaddya think, Anna? Human or non?"
Anna slackened her pace a bit to allow the panting Sophia to catch up to her.
"I'm thinking monster. Who else'd have reason to be out now?"
"Uh, thieves? Spies? Travelers? My drunk aunt Maxine?," cut in Karina. "Come on. We saw them for like two seconds. There's just no way to tell."
Gretta nodded. "The light was bad. Perhaps we just didn't see anything at all."
Anna scoffed. "Come now. We're sworn to uphold the law. Are you just going to let something trample all over it, to prowl through the streets and prey on people? Maybe even your own family?
Gretta flicked a splotch of mud off her vambrace and shook her head. "Take that stick out of your ass and think for a second. We submit a report and, maybe, if they have the manpower, the guard sends two blokes down that street for five minutes once. It doesn't matter."
Gretta paused as they rounded a corner onto a wider thoroughfare, then continued.
"Besides, for all your proclamations of loving justice and upholding the law, I think you don't care all that much about it. I read your transfer letter, you know."
Anna stopped abruptly. Sophia stumbled, nearly faceplanting into her razor covered back as she drew herself up.
"You WHAT? That's strictly against protocal! If Emmerson hears a word of this-"
"If she does, someone might suddenly have some issues with wearing captain patches six months after their demotion. And besides, who would they believe? The bashar who's been serving for six years, or the reckless disgrace who was a razorwire's width from a dishonorable discharge?" Gretta smiled as Anna stepped forwards and raised a threatening arm. "Oh, by all means, go ahead. Give me an excuse for all those girls you threw into the grinder. I've been waiting for this since you showed up, you sick fuck."
"Uh, little help, gals?"
Karina's words snapped Gretta out of it. The younger knight was tentatively holding Sophia's wrist, awkwardly trying to keep her from collapsing without also turning her into swiss cheese with her spiked armor. As the beggar collapsed entirely, Gretta bounded over and slipped a supporting hand under her other shoulder. Together, the two half carried, half dragged Sophia up to a shuttered tavern door and set her down gently. Immedietly, she began dry heaving again, the tattered remains of a brown shirt or vest fluttering like a leaf in the wind. Gretta sat down next to her. Leaning forwards to prevent her spiny armor from getting stuck in the door, she laid a comforting hand on Sophia's shoulder.
"Take your time and let it pass. Focus on your breathing, and let me know when you feel up to moving."
Karina joined the two under the protective overhang of the roof, standing next to Gretta as she helped their charge. Anna stood on the other side of the street, arms folded across her chest.
Soon, Sophia's hacking subsided. When she tried to lever herself off the ground, Gretta took her by the arm. Once they were on their feet, Karina stepped over and took the other arm. Together, the three stepped out into the street once more. Anna stiffly took up the rear, and once more the sodden group began to trudge down the street. They turned right, heading towards the city's curtain wall, and after a few minutes came out into a large square or plaza. On the north side, a massive steel-doored gate pierced the curtain wall. Behind it lay even higher battlements, curving out and away in a self contained ring which enclosed a number of tall stone towers and the top of a large, circular building. Mill towers protruded from the wall at regular intervals, bristling with balistae of varying types. Between them, armored silhoettes patrolled the walls, illuminated by laterns clipped to their waists and armed with heavy crossbows.
Gretta slowed for a moment and guided Sophia's gaze up to the distant towers and external walls. "That's the priory. We can see the tops of the watchtower and armory from here, plus the upper stories of the main building. The servant's wing is lower than the walls, so we won't get a good look at it until we're inside, but that's where you'll be staying. Ready to go in?"
Sophia blinked up at the warm, soft lanternlight, then nodded.
"Then let's go. Hey, Anna. Anna! You see a gorgon or what?"
Anna shook her head and yanked her gaze away from the grisly sight on the central dias. Four wooden bars stood on it, and between them hung a brown scaled lamia. Metal wires ran from post to post, passing through her stomach and jaw. Raised ridges of flesh showed where the thin wires were slowly cutting through her as the lamia's weight pulled her down against them; several of the lines closer to her tail had sliced entirely out of her body. Deep cuts remained to show their passing, and from them thin streams of liquid dripped into a dark puddle, almost oily under the faint glow of the street lanterns. She lay motionless on the wires, arms and tail hanging, but the faint rise and fall of her chest revealed that she still clung to life.
Karina shivered as they approached the gate. "I liked the spiked crossbars better. Why'd they change it?"
"This is a more fitting punishment. The wires run through the mouth and stomach to symbolize the suffering she caused her victim."
"It's cheaper because it doesn't require as much metal."
Gretta and Anna looked at each other. The former shrugged.
"Well, if that's what you think, I'll defer to your superior experience in this arena."
Anna stiffened. "If one loves justice, one must study all of its aspects."
Gretta waved her off. "Oh, come on. We all know you just like watching them squirm. Rachel! It's us, open up. Pass is three-five-ninety."
A bobbing light vanished from the gatehouse window, and momentarily the huge door swung inwards on well oiled hinges. The group stepped into the low tunnel connecting the priory to the city. Arrow slits and sealed trapdoors crawled by overhead, breaking up the general monotony of the speckled grey stone. Small metal cages holding luminous glass speres were spaced along the inside of the wall, casting a harsh, white glow over the area. As they approached a second door at the far end of the tunnel, Gretta ran her hand over the rock wall beside her and turned to Sophia.
"The priory wasn't actually built by us. The original structure was, well, an actual priory or monastary built about three hundred years ago. When Avrael took the throne, she had the druidic circle that originally inhabited the place evicted and set up a chapter here. We originally kept only a small garrison in the main building, but over time both the chapter's strength and the extent of our holdings increased until we finally gained enough strategic importance to justify putting up these curtain walls and some of the towers four years ago. You'll be able to see some of this once we get inside."
The four stopped before the inner gate while Gretta repeated the password. Slowly, it opened. Behind it was a massive courtyard occupied by a great number of buildings. Three high towers stood on the grounds, with a huge circular building between them. The latter was high, with narrow windows and the remains of delicate carvings on some exposed blocks, and constructed primarily of sandstone. Huge, squat, and rectangular wings of granite had been added onto it, and it was towards one of these that Gretta led the group. They walked towards it along a dirt path, crossing over gutters on miniature bridges and weaving their way between a bewildering variety of outbuildings. Twice they passed lantern bearing sentries, both women garbed in the same smoky black, spike covered armor the three knights wore.
At last, they reached the ugly grey edifice. Gretta pounded on a small door set in the side, and a small panel slid to the side. Two green eyes peered wearily out, and then the door swung inwards to reveal a small woman in grey plainclothes. The party filed past her into a long, narrow corridor lit by the same steady glow as the globelit tunnel. Doors on the inside wall, all shut, gave the impression of a barracks or apartment, occasionally broken by a common area or larger rooms with more specialized functions. All of them ran by Sophia in a colorful blur. The harsh, intense light worsened her balance and drove iron spikes into her already pounding skull. Twice, the group stopped as she collapsed against a wall, dry heaving as the world spun about her. More women in the same grey attire walked past them occasionally, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs, but none seemed to pay much mind to the armored forms. Sophia initially tried to keep up with their progress, deciding that the group was moving towards the central building, but soon gave up and merely focused on placing one foot in front of the other. The walking seemed to last for an eternity, but at last Gretta came to a stop in front of a large, richly ornamented oaken door. As she knocked and called for someone named Emmerson, Sophia slid to the floor, utterly spent. She heard the door open, caught snatches of a conversation about some mission. Anna was somehow part of it, and Sophia caught the phrase "...too, to toughen him up," in the mix, but most of it flew by her as she tried to recover.
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Sophia started as someone laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Looking up, she recoiled from a strange, alien face. It was human, undoubtedly so, but the proportions were ever so slightly off. The brow and jaw were too pronounced, the eyes and cheeks too sunken, and the nose was slightly outsized. She shrunk away, and the figure shrunk back, their strange features morphing into an expression of apology and concern.
"Sorry, sorry! Didn't mean to startle you!"
The voice was odd, too, far too deep to be normal. As they pulled away, Sophia got a better look at the strange individual. They were very large, and heavily built on top of that, with an extraordinarily broad chest and surprisingly narrow hips. They were very poorly endowed, but well muscled. It was hard to tell under the opressive white lighting, but she thought their skin and hair were pale.
The figure reached out a tentative hand. "I'm Lukas. Anna sent me to take you to the washroom. Once you're cleaned up, we'll get you into something warmer and see about food."
The name snapped Sophia out of her confusion.
"You're...I mean, are you a...man?"
Lukas nodded, looking down the hallway. "Yeah. Where'd Karina go? She was supposed to be watching you."
Sophia blinked, looked about. The hallway was empty save for the two of them.
"I don't know. I...I must have dozed off, maybe? Gosh, I've never seen a man before. Is it really true that you grow hair on your faces?"
Lukas chuckled. "I haven't gotten a reaction like that since I visited some of the outlying towns. Yeah, we do. I shave it, but you can kinda see it if you look closely. Here, see?"
He knelt down and tilted his chin up. Under the intense light, Sophia saw small, light brown stubs sticking out of the skin of his cheeks and jaw. She stretched out a curious hand, then paused.
"Can I...touch it?"
Lukas nodded. "If you'd like. Just don't pull at it."
Sophia ran the side of her hand over his jaw. It was rough, surprisingly rough, almost like pumice. He grinned at her bewildred expression, then offered his hand once more.
"Can you walk?"
Sophia flexed her legs, found that she could. With Lukas's help, she managed to make it down the hallway to another door. Lukas slipped her arm off his shoulder and took hold of the knob. Grunting, he yanked the door once, twice before it swung outwards to realease a warm, humid flood of air.
"I can't believe they built in wood here. Whole bloody thing's swollen nearly shut. Anyway, this is the washroom."
Sophia cautiously stepped forwards and took a look at the room. Like the building, it was long and rectangular. The floor was solid stone, and in the centre lay a bubbling pool of clear water. Along the walls were tubs, some wooden and others carved from stone, and below all of them ran two channels that emptied into holes in the walls. Shelves held soaps, pumice, and various brushes and towels. The room was empty, save for the two of them.
Lukas closed the door, then turned back to Sophia. He listened a moment, then stepped forwards, his face suddenly devoid of its previous levity. Rolling up his right sleeve to reveal a metal bracelet, he pulled on the attached chain until a broad bladed knife emerged from beneath the cloth. It was double edged, shallowly serrated along one side and made of the same smoky-black metal as the armor the three knights had worn. He took another step forwards, then held his other hand out.
"We don't have much time. I'm really sorry about this; I'd get you out if I could, but I'd never manage to smuggle you out. I'll be quick, I promise. I'll tell them you attacked me or something. They'll be angry, but it'll look like an accident."
Sophia stumbled backwards as he snatched at her, narrowly avoiding his questing hand.
"Lukas, what are you doing!? Lukas! Stop!"
Lukas cringed at the noise, then moved towards her.
"Shhh! You scream, and this entire fort will come down on us!"
He shot out an arm and pinned Sophia's wrist in a vicelike grip. She struggled, slapping weakly at his arm and landing ineffectual punches on his chest and stomach as he pulled her close. When she reached up to claw at his face, he let go of her wrist and, quick as a striking snake, caught her by the throat. The knive glimmered as he prepared to strike.
"The more you move, the more painful this is going to be. Listen to me! If I don't kill you here, they're going to-"
Quick footsteps sounded in the hallway, then the door creaked as someone tugged at the handle. Lukas paused, knife hand wavering as he vacilated between driving it home and dropping his captive. In another moment, the door swung outwards, and a woman stepped into the room. Short, dark haired, and with an olive complexion, she saw Lukas and stopped dead in her tracks.
Lukas dropped Sophia, who crawled away as fast as she could. He raised his hands in an appeasing gesture as he faced the figure in the doorway, the knife falling to dangle from its chain.
"Jocelyn! This isn't...I mean...I was-"
The woman shut the door and strode forwards, shaking her head.
"Lukas, this is exactly what it looks like, and we both know it. I came running as soon as I heard that dumbass left you alone with her. What the hell were you thinking!"
"It's not right. You know it-"
"We talked about this, Lukas. You told me you weren't going to do anything stupid."
"Then why'd you come running?"
Jocelyn gestured towareds the figure cowering in the corner. "Perhaps because of this? Come on, I know you better than that. You took one look at her and broke. And what if you'd succeded? They'd just have thrown you behind bars and grabbed another. You're smart, you know all this. So what the hell were you thinking!?"
Lukas sat down on the edge of a tub, nearly pitching it forwards under his weight. He bent forwards, buried his head in his hands, sighed deeply. Momentarily, he looked back up.
"They're sending me on this one, you know."
"I know. I'm going, too. Anna's leading."
"Just what we needed."
Lukas looked up at the sniveling woman curled in the corner. Under his scrutiny, she whimpered and curled up tighter, trying futily to inch under a tub. He slumped forwards again with a groan. Jocelyn stepped over and set a hand on his shoulder.
"Why don't you go to our room? I'll take care of her from here."
"Thanks. I'm sorry. I just...I...."
Lukas rose, dejected.
"I'll leave now. Gods, I try to help and just always end up making it worse."
As the heavy door slammed shut, Jocelyn approached Sophia.
"Hey, there. Are you hurt?"
Sophia sat against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees.
"Miss, what's going on? Where's Anna? Why'd he try to kill me?"
Jocelyn shrugged noncommitally. "He's a bit confused. We do, however, have a job for you. Before I tell you about it, though, I think I should get you something to steady your nerves."
She turned around and started for the door, but Sophia rose unsteadily to her feet and called after her.
"Miss, I don't like this place. I...I want to go home. I don't want to work here."
Sophia half turned. "That's fine, we'll take you home in the morning. Hold on a second, now."
She stepped out of the room for a moment and returned with a pitcher and cup. An orange-gold liquid sloshed around in it with a curiously sticky sound. At the sight of it, Sophia stirred.
"Is that Sunsugar?"
Jocelyn nodded, handed her the cup. "Drink up; it'll help settle your nerves."
Sophia brought the cup to her lips with shaking hands, tilted it up. The fluid splashed back onto her tongue. It was warm, sugary, almost fruity. She swallowed; the aftertaste was smooth and pleasant. As the fluid coursed down her throat, she felt the long anticipated release of tension. By the time she had finished the cup, her arms no longer shook.
Jocelyn held the pitcher out.
"More?"
Sophia let her pour another cup. And then another. And another. By her fourth, the harsh, white light had softened, as had the tiles beneath her feet. She felt warm, pleasantly warm like the effect gained by sitting in sunlight or warm water. The cool tiles were smooth and creamy. The confusion and worry Sophia had felt since meeting the knights melted away beneath the summer heat of the drug.
She sucked air in between clenched teeth as Jocelyn set a hand on the exposed skin of her shoulder. Her touch was warm and deliciously soft, almost like a towel or sheet put on straight after being left to dry. Sophia leaned back into the pressure.
"Any better?"
"Much."
"Good. Let's get you washed up, then."
Sophia allowed Jocelyn to help her up and into a tub. The hot water enveloped her like a heated blanket, and she rested blissfully as Jocelyn scrubbed months worth of grime from her hair and skin. Her euphoria was both interruped and heightened when she felt something brush her penis. Stirring, she gasped as Jocelyn scrubbed her nether regions before moving on to her legs. She looked up at the woman, saw for the first time how soft her face was, what a deep, dark emerald her eyes were. She raised a jerky hand and tugged at Jocelyn's wrist.
"You wanna...get in?"
Jocelyn slipped her hand free.
"No. Hold still; I'm almost done." She sighed as her panting charge leaned over to grab her ass. "Godsdamnit, Lukas. This is awkward enough without having to deal with them while drugged. Come on, you."
Jocelyn finished scrubbing and hauled her out of the now brown water. She wrapped a towel about her charge, ignoring the increasingly clumsy attempts to grope her, then began to guide her down the hallway. Sophia dimly experienced the meal she was fed and being laid down into a silksoft bed before she blacked out.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Sophia awoke in a bed much softer than its straw mattress would reasonably suggest. Rising to a sitting position, she was surprised to discover that she was fully clothed in traveling gear. A leather coat rested over a weatherworn shirt, complementing a set of brown trousers and low quality leather boots. On the nightstand nearby lay a hat, and beside it a tall glass of Sunsugar. Sophia blinked critically at the latter, still muddled from the previous night's dose, before reaching out for the cup. She was polishing it off when she heard Anna's voice in the hallway outside.
"...long drag marks, probably a lamia or centipede. She's a R.O. on her fourth victim. Seems crepuscular, though one was an afternoon grab. Relatively simple job; let her loose, wait for our mystery monster to get herself high as a kite, then move in with the crosses. And speaking of sleeping beauty, I think this is her room."
The door flew open and Anna stepped into the room, Jocelyn and a sour faced Lukas behind her. All three wore leather armor made out of something with green scales and carried a heavy crossbow. A belt with numerous pouches and a wicked looking spiked mace completed their attire.
Anna stepped forwards to help Sophia out of bed. Without the black, spiny armor of the previous day, Sophia could at last see her face. She was short haired, brunette, and brown eyed. A massive scar, pocked like an acid burn, ran from her left temple to the corner of her jaw.
Sophia reached out and ran a hand over the coarse patch before Anna could react. She smiled up into the infuriated face.
"Girl, you...you look fierce! Hop in!"
Anna hauled Sophia out of bed and all but threw her out the door. Lukas caught her as she stumbled, then raised his hands in surprised indescision as she wrapped her arms around his waist. Jocelyn pried her off and took her hands, falling in between Anna and Lukas as they headed deeper into the building. Grey clad figures, mostly women, ran two and fro, and from outside Sophia heard the sound of metal ringing on metal. Sunlight filtered through those windows not bricked up, and the delicious smell of cooking pork wafted towards the group from ahead.
The trio half carried, half dragged Sophia into a large, high cielinged dining hall and set her down at an empty table. Lukas wandered off for a moment, then came back with another glass of Sunsugar. He set it down in front of Sophia, then addressed her, staring down at the floor and nervously fidgeting with his feet.
"Here. Um, I'll go get you some breakfast, and after that we'll take you home, ok?"
With that, he stalked off, leaving his two companions to fend off Sophia's questing hands. He returned momentarily, and Sophia quickly realised that no food was coming, only more and more glasses of Sunsugar. She minded it less and less as time wore on, and by the time they were ready to leave Jocelyn had to help her use the privy.
Sophia recalled little of the trip. They left through a different gate, and crossed what seemed like miles of lush meadowland. Whenever they stopped, Anna gave her more Sunsugar from a flask. She vaugely recalled Lukas carrying her much of the way.
And so it was that she found herself suddenly alone in a lush, dense forest. She could not quite recall how she had become separated from the group. She pondered this as she stumbled about in the woods, tripping over rocks and roots and giggling like a girl at the feel of the springy moss beneath her feet. The air felt warm, the ground soft. The world was ethereal in the dusky rays of the evening sun, and Sophia laughed as she half ran through a scene from her father's fairytail stories.
As she walked under a particularly large oak, Sophia heard something. Perhaps it was the creak of a branch, the slight rustle of shifting leaves. Whatever the source, she turned around just as strong hands siezed her beneath her arms and lifted her from the ground. Sophia gave a giddy whoop as she swung through the air to land on a moss covered branch, a warm, heavy weight sliding over her legs and chest. As she lay there, a face slid into view against the speckled backdrop of the tree's canopy. Sophia lay back, content to look at it for the moment.
It was human in appearance, though slightly larger than what would be expected for a woman.There were delicate features and long, elfin ears framed by wavy chestnut hair. As she looked, the weight atop Sophia shifted, wrapping about her and the branch and pinning her to it. Confused, she levered her head up and looked past the alluring face. Beyond it was a lean, dusky body, well endowed and fairly muscled. And beyond that was a long tail, perhaps a little more than twice as long as she was tall. She tried to lever herself up and get a better look at the shifting brown scaled coils, but a thrilling touch on her right hand drew her attention away. The lamia had lifted up and held her right arm at the wrist, and was staring critically at the pale band of flesh under her hand.
"Well, that's unusual, but not unwelcome."
Sophia, too, stared at the band of pale flesh in confusion, barely hearing the whispery voice. She didn't remember taking off her holdout knife. Thinking about it made her head swim, so she focused back in on her captor. The lamia was pouting down at her. She reached forwards and laid a delicate hand on Sophia's jaw, tilting her face up.
"Oh, don't freeze up just yet. It's so much nicer when you're warm and wriggling. Come on, s-"
"You're a great blanket."
The lamia stiffened, all the shifting and sliding of her coils momentarily ceasing as she paused.
"I...what?"
Sophia kicked her legs up against the heavy tail covering them, then responded.
"You're warm, and heavy, and smooth. Or is that a quilt? No, that's a what quilt is. My bad. I'm sorry to bother you!"
The lamia's eyes grew wide, and a dry rattling filled the air. Sophia sqeaked as the muslces in her tail tensed, crushing her against the branch. Ignoring Sophia's protests, the lamia lifted her forebody off her victim and reached back towards the base of the branch. She swayed back into view moments later, a small knife with a blue crystaline blade clutched in her hand. Slowly, careful not to touch skin to skin, she reached out and gently tapped Sophia on the cheek with the flat of the blade.
Only the long tail tying her to the branch below saved Sophia from falling as she twitched. A shock passed through her from the blade, quickly dissipating and leaving a strange, almost burnt, smell in the air. Coughing, she felt the coiling tail relax and the rattling cease before the lamia lay back down over her. Long fingers reached out and brushed the electricity-frazzled hair off of her face, and the lamia grinned down at her.
"You gave me quite the scare there, missy. Damn good acting, I give you that. But your luck's run out, so it's time to say goodbye."
Having said this, she lowered herself down fully, winding her long arms around under Sophia and hugging her to her ample bosom. Sophia pressed up against her firm breasts and warm flesh, reaching across her back and reveling in the feel of the muscles moving beneath her fingers. The lamia leaned in, silhouetted against the light of the setting sun, ruby lips parting to reveal long, sharp teeth and a forked tongue. Sophia pulled herself up to catch those lips in a passionate kiss, hugging her close as she ground her crotch against the lamia's midriff.
The lamia spluttered, reeling back in confusion. As she looked down at her captive, Sophia opened her eyes once more before raising a tentative hand.
"You ok? Is something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No, just a little...surprised, I guess."
Staring at Sophia's slightly concerned expression, she cocked her head.
"You're really not afraid, then?"
Sophia thought for a moment, then shook her head.
"I guess not. Won't you lay down again? You felt so nice."
"Why? Did you come here to die?"
"Of course not! I came here to...to..."
Sophia grimaced, trying to recall why and how she'd gotten there. Her memory was covered in a viscous gold-orange fog; scenes and people slipped between her fingers to leave her with nothing more than she'd brought. Clutching at them, she came away with nothing.
"Hey, still there?"
Sophia snapped out of her reverie. The lamia was playing with the buttons of her jacket.
"I can't remember."
"Well, that's enlightening."
"Sorry, I just..."
"Oh, it's alright. I was just curious."
She rocked back, shrugging.
"Well I'm going to get started, if you don't care one way or the other."
"Um, would you..."
The lamia paused, her jaw popping back into its proper sockets.
"Yes?"
"Do you mind fucking me first?"
She considered the offer, biting on her lip absentmindely as she thought. Slowly, she nodded.
"Uh...Ok? I suppose we have time..."
Gesturing to Sophia's jacket, she asked: "You mind if I help you out of that? I love those little round things, the ones with the-"
"The buttons?"
"Yeah, the buttons."
"Go ahead."
Sophia giggled as the lamia leaned down and fumbled at the buttons with her overlarge hands. Instead of sliping the button back through the hole, she tried to pull at them. When the wood discs would not give, she simply pulled harder, at last breaking the string. The button flew up and ricoched off her face, spinning away towards the forest floor as she scowled.
"Blasted thing! The cloth's on the wrong side! How do you do this kind?"
Sophia reached down and unbuttoned the next hole.
"Like this, see? You turn it sideways, like so, and then push it through."
The lamia nodded, eagerly attacking button after button. Sophia's breath caught in her throat as the strong hands massaged her breasts, her stomach. At last the jacket gave way beneath her excited fingers, and Sophia shrugged out of it. As she did so, the lamia latched onto the collar of her undershirt, straining momentarily before the cloth tore open and away. Sophia's shaking hands finally undid her belt buckle as it fell to the forest floor, and a rippling wave of the tail pulled her pants down and away to reveal her erect member. For Sophia, the sensation was overwhelming. Without the dampening of her clothes, the world was too close, too soft, too bright. There was moss under her back, soft and mixed with the ridges of the branch. Every scale on the shifting tail tying her to the branch was an individual impression, softly whispering over her skin. She stared up into the spinning, speckled dome of the canopy and made out the face of her hesistating lover. She reached a hand up and ran it along the fine cheekbone, spoke quickly and urgently.
"No, it's fine. I'm ready. W-Where?"
Laying chest to chest, lower back arching to hold the base of her tail up, the lamia slid a large arm under Sophia's pale thighs. Gently, she pulled her further under herself. Slightly below the point where her tawny skin transitioned to brown scales, a pulsing slit had opened. The strong arm under her legs lifted Sophia's lower body up, carefully guiding her up towards the gaping slit. Unwilling to wait, Sophia hooked a leg over the lamia's tail and thrust herself up into the eager flesh. It swallowed her up, strangely tight despite its comparatively large size. She bucked in ecstasy, legs wrapping around the base of the tail as she began to rapidly thrust in and out of her lover.
Sophia heard a sharp inhalation as the lamia jerked in surprise, then squeaked herself as the big predator dropped heavily to the branch. The light vanished as her breasts flattened Sophia's head back against the wood. Skin slid over skin as the lamia's heavy torso lay over her, all but immobilizing Sophia in combination with the weight of her tail. Under the soft flesh she braced against the wood, trying to pump her hips to no avail. Frustrated and thinking through a honeyed haze of pleasure, she reached up and had half levered the lamia off of her before she felt something shift against her penis. Rippling and featherlike, it slid down the length of her shaft before stiffening over her stomach. Panting, Sophia lifted a breast from her face and stared down the length of her body to see what had felt so delightful.
Initially, she thought a flower had somehow fallen between them. Two red-pink tubes or rods slid out of the lamia's vagina, parting about the base of Sophia's member and stretching up to lie close to her belly button. They were slick, covered near their tips with petallike folds or fleshy barbs that tickled her belly. Curious, she reached out and grabbed hold of the right one.
"Gah!"
The lamia jerked up and away from Sophia, one huge hand snapping down to grab her wrist. The tubes rose with her, petallike ends whispering over Sophia's penis. Inhaling sharply, she released her hold and bit her lip, confusion warring with desire in her drug hazed brain. The tube snapped back up to join its fellow, both extending out of the bottom of the lamia's drooling slit. She felt the admonishing grip on her hand tighten.
"Can you be a bit more gentle?"
Sophia nodded and gasped, too far gone to articulate proper words. Instead, she reached out with both hands and once more took hold of the tubes. She ran her hands down them, marveling at the soft tickling of their fleshy barbed ends, before she felt something sway the branch. Once more, she was plunged into the soft, warm bosom as the lamia gripped the branch beneath her and at last began to fuck her in earnest. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, she raised the base of her tail up and dropped it back down onto Sophia's throbbing member. Her panting barely registered on her partner. Sophia was washed away, drowning in the thrill of sex and the softness of flesh all about her. Her trembling hands siezed the base of the lamia's hemipenes as she used her only leverage to blindly tug her lover down further, harder with each impact. Pleasure radiated down into her at every point of contact, but she felt rather than experienced it. The rational part of her mind, unmoored by the drug and overloaded by sexual contact, all but shut down. She existed without memory, a single point of pleasure with the feeling of soft breasts and whispering skin sliding over and through her. Mechanically, she thrust back up against the lamia and toyed with her flowerlike genitals even as the huge scaled body rippled against her own. The cool breeze and crisp autumn air had long since melted away under the intense heat of the two writhing bodies. Sweat trickled down them, smoothing the branch below and lubricating them as skin slid over skin. Still the lamia bounced on, tail rising and falling as she drove herself up and down Sophia's rigid member. Sliding with it were her hemipenes, fleshy barbs planting ticklish kisses up and down her partner's penis as she drove herself down over and over again. Her warmth was surprising; Sophia was burning up, a line of living fire wriggling under her torso. The lamia moaned, shaking her chest side to side and reveling in the return feeling of her partner's face jiggling about between her breasts. The slick, warm hands caressed her shafts as she did so, each finger stroking lines of pleasure along the red-pink lengths. Swiftly, they dragged her on towards climax, building along with the rhythem of her stroke until at last she could withstand it no longer. Waves of pleasure radiated out from her crotch as she crushed herself against Sophia's bucking form. Her bust descended from a soft pillow into a crushing mass as she gripped the branch in a frenzy, Sophia's penis pushed as far up into her as she could get it and her own members delightfully sandwitched between their bellies. Her tail, wrapped about Sophia's legs, tightened powerfully and inexortiably as tremors ran the length of her body and her hemipenes poking up into her own stomach as she spent her seed. She shook, her entire body clenching as the orgasm washed over her. Sophia kept hammering away, totally oblivious even as a sudden snapping sound startled the lamia. Spent, she collapsed onto the human, arms hanging limply off the branch and tail slowly unwinding. As she recovered, she felt her partner stiffen beneath her before a warm sunburst of liquid exploded against the walls of her sex. Fearful of smothering her companion, the lamia rolled onto her back, pulling Sophia with her. Sophia's dark brown hair was utterly soaked, plastered across her face and the lamia's breasts. As she recovered, the lamia amused herself by gently picking away the errant strands and returning them to a semblance of their natural positioning. Once her breathing had slowed, Sophia lifted her head and hooked her chin over the lamia's collarbone. They smiled at one another, enjoying their afterglow in the fading rays of the twilight. Sophia ran a lazy hand up and played with one of the lamia's long ears.
"I...you never told me your name, did you?"
The lamia nodded. "I didn't, did I? I'm Emilia. You?"
"Sophia."
"Mhm. Has anybody ever told you that you're really warm?"
Sophia gigled, reaching a hand down to run her nails over the lamia's scaled hide.
"You aren't so cold blooded yourself."
"No, I mean, even when you were walking around on the ground you were really warm."
"You could tell?"
"Yeah. I can...hm. How to describe it?" The coils holding Sophia shifted back and forth as Emilia bit her lip.
"It's like...well, not quite seeing, I guess, though I use my eyes. It's, I mean, I can tell if there's heat or not, but I can't see really what's making it, or what the background looks like. You're just kinda this really intense...blob, maybe?"
Sophia waved her arm in front of Emilia's face. "So you can, like, see how warm this is?"
The lamia shrugged. "All I really see is a blur, with you so close. I've heard pit vipers, some of my distant relatives from the deserts are better with it. I think some big constrictors also do it, too, though I'm not sure how effective they are at it."
"I should ask one, maybe."
Emilia chuckled. "Well, you're about to get a chance, though I don't suppose she'll have much to say in return."
Sophia nodded, then wiggled her hips.
"Ready to go again?"
Emilia winced. "No. Actually, you mind pulling out? I'm feeling a little sore."
Sophia frowned. "What, already? Pleeeeease?"
Firm hands grabbed her by the hips and lifted her up, pulling her cock free of the lamia. The flowerlike hemipenes, now unengorged and resembling limp ropes, slithered back inside before the whole thing sealed back up.
"No. I couldn't even if I wanted to. Hold still, now."
Emilia levered herself up, coils sliding off Sophia's legs. When the loop covering her calves fell away, the lamia gasped.
"Holy shit!"
Sophia's lower legs were bent unnaturally, buckling between the knee and ankle. When Emilia poked at it, the leg rolled bonelessly around the break.
"I...I must have squeezed you too tight at the end there. How the fuck didn't you notice this?"
Sophia shrugged. "I dunno. Hey, you've got a rattle!"
Emilia stared, bewildered, as Sophia sat up and shook the end of her tail, laughing at the dry clatter that filled the forest.
"Let me get this straight. You didn't notice that I...broke both of your legs? Like, doesn't that hurt?"
"It...tickles a little, I guess?" She wiggled her legs experimentally, the broken ends flopping about.
"You are human, right?"
"Uh huh. Hey, are you sure you don't want to go again?"
Emilia nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure. It's just kinda strange. You guys usually scream when your bones break. Is there something wrong with you?"
"I don't...wait, no." Sophia thought a moment, then shook her head.
"I think I...had something to drink?"
"Huh. Maybe this is what alcohol does to humans? I've heard that it's got some odd properties."
Sophia nodded. "Yeah, I bet that's it."
Emilia wrapped the end of her tail about Sophia's waist, looping lazily about her to bring Sophia's limply dangling legs up to her maw.
"Well, thank you for the lay and the entertainment, but it's time to say goodbye. Wriggle for me, will you?"
With that, she opened her mouth and bent towards Sophia's feet. Her teeth were sharp, the fanglike upper canines folded back against the palate, gleaming white under the last rays of the dying sun. Sophia shivered, wriggling her toes as the lamia's lips slid over her feet and moaning as the sharp teeth whispered over her sensitive skin. The slippery, clinging heat of the throat wrapped her comfortably, inching up over the break as Emilia advanced. As she passed it and began to slide Sophia's calves into her throat, her jaw split. Each half streched outwards, independantly grabbing and working over her shins to pull her down into the waiting gullet. The skin between them stretched to become translucent in the fading light, and as she hooked her upper jaw over a knee her cheeks began to undergo the same process.
Sophia hung resistlessly in Emilia's grip, enraptured by the feeling of soft, warm flesh sliding over her own and staring under herself in wonder at the tongue that flicked ahead of the jaws to plant delicate kisses on her exposed skin. Long, forked, purplish-red, it slithered on like a miniature serpent all its own, exploring the front of her body as the lamia started inching up her thighs. Her jaws rotated, teeth angling outwards and pressing into soft flesh as she widened her gape to accomodate more flesh. The outlines of Sophia's legs distended her throat, her feet already passing down behind the breastbone and vanishing into the torso. She amused herself by kicking her legs, delighting in the soft squish of flesh and the sight of the writhing bulges in Emilia's throat.
A feather-soft touch between her legs interrupted Sophia. The lamia had worked her jaws over the tops of Sophia's thighs and was still advancing. Her long tongue flicked out, sliding up Sophia's thigh and tickling her balls. She shivered, panting as the warm lips slithered up to the base of her butt. Then, she felt the jaws widen further before she was tilted diagonally into the air. With a soft gluck her hips slid back into the waiting maw, slamming into the still unprepared throat as the lamia momentarily lost her grip.
"Mrgmph! Grddnt!"
Ignoring Emilia's atempts to curse through a mouthful of food, Sophia bucked wildly, slamming her hips forwards to rub her dick against the soft, stretchy skin between the lamia's lower jawbones. The flesh bulged strangely, the rigid outline of her member creating a curving bulge as it streched agianst the maleable flesh, poking curiously out under Emilia's jaw. Once more, Sophia slipped beyond concious reasoning. She simply thrust herself forward over and over, delightining in the feel of the slippery, warm flesh wrapped around her penis.
Emilia swallowed again, momentarily stuck, scrambling to pull her meal in after the unexpected drop. She tried to work her jaws further open, working desperatly to get any leverage to help her haul Sophia's hindquarters into her throat.
Sophia spasmed as the long tongue wrapped about her member and pulled her down into the throat. Pulsing muscle wrapped tightly around her body from the waist down, rhythmically pulling her deeper into the fleshy tunnel. Emilia paused a moment, trying to breathe past her mouthful, but Sophia continued humping. Holding the lamia's lower jaws, she slammed her hips forwards and disconnectedly took in the odd sight of a bulge rhythimcally distending Emilia's throat. As the long rod streched the skin of her neck, Emilia gagged, hacking past the choking, wriggling obstruction.
"Ah mh GD, ald you HAP THT!?"
Reeling, she swung her upper body around, tail wrapped around the branch. Sophia whooped, raising her hands to swing freely in the wind, and Emilia opened her jaws wide and snapped forwards like a striking snake. Sophia slipped backwards, pointed teeth slamming into her breasts. Her body was by now slick with saliva, and Emilia had little trouble working her way over her meal's modest bust. Wrapping her tongue around Emilia's neck, she worked her jaws around the outside of her chest, each side cupping one fleshy orb before she pulled Emilia in up to her shoulders. She was by now almost totally enveloped in a slick, fleshy tube of powerful muscle. It held her tighly, restricing her movement and pinning her legs together. Curious, she kicked against the muscular walls, saw slight bulges rise and then subside back into Emilia's stomach. She both felt and heard the lamia giggle, her prison vibrating in rapid succession, then lost her view as the jaws slithered up her neck and restricted its motion. They stopped at the base of her skull, the lower jaw recombining momentarily. Sophia could see nothing beyond her own outstretched arms and the vibrant forest canopy, golden and green under the dying rays of the sunset. And then the teeth came creeping up once more, riding over her head and quietly cutting off the golden vista of the twilight woods.
Emilia swallowed, winced, rolled her jaw to sweep out the ache from holding it open for so long. She watched the outline of Sophia's head and chest slide down her stomach and subside into a series of slight lumps in the length of her tail. Within her, Sophia ricoched back and forth, wrapped in a slick, musclular tube. It held her tightly, too tightly even to bring her arms down to her sides or pull her knees up, though such considerations had not reached her. The world flipped upside down and back again, twisiting and turning in a kaleidescope of perspectives until reality became only the soft squish of the unseen flesh about her and the omnipresant pressure of the walls. She worked her hands along them, delighting in the form fitting springiness of them, swung her body for the joy of it. The muscles of the stomach wall pushed back, kneading her in random, swirling patterns as it began the automatic process of mechanical digestion. Rippling surges lapped over her body, rocking her head, massaging her back. One surged up and pressed against her groin and she pressed back, drivign herself rhythmically against the dampening flesh as she lost herself to euphoria once more.
Emilia stirred at the motion. The lamia was curled up in the fork between two branches, back against the knothole where she kept her few posessions. A chill wind was blowing through the forest, heightening her awareness of the knot of warmth pulsing in the centre of her body. Half rising, she swept over her tail, curling tighter about herself. Lumps slid under her skin; a face, a torso, part of a hip softened and rounded under a layer of muscle and scale, all rocking back and forth against the supple flesh of her gut. A deep warmth was spreading through her, working its way into her muscles and dragging her down to sleep with a vicelike grip. As the world grew dim, Emilia lay her forebody down over the bulging outline in her gut. It swayed under her, writhing and shifting, and she rested contendedly as it gently rocked her to sleep.
In her stomach, Sophia was rocking for entirely different reasons. She thrust against the now sopping muscular walls again and again until she was utterly spent. Lying limp in the grip of the powerful muscle, she enjoyed the caressing touch of the stomach. It swirled and churned, clamping down and rubbing against her or flipping her over entirely before flopping back to its original position. And as it did so, it worked powerful acids into her skin. Sophia, still under the effects of the sunsugar, felt little more than a tingle as the caustic liquid soaked into and bleached her flesh. The rippling walls kneaded the sagging outer layers, pushing and scraping until great pale gobs of skin and fat and muscle peeled away from their underlying support. As the hours wore on, Sophia found herself floating in a gel or soup of her own degrading tissue. Her eyes had long since gone, along with her breasts, lips, and much of her skin. Such a lack of sight would have been a mercy had there been any light to see by, lest the victim catch a glimpse of the lengths of skin peeling away from their back, the exposed muscles in their abdomen writhing under a bloody soup, or perhaps the grinning, cheekless, hairless contours of the face. To the disintegrating woman, it felt as if she was drifting on some vast body of water, nudged now and then by a particularly strong current. Any sense of touch had long since been stripped away, leaving only a faint impression of pressure. As more and more of her faculties followed it, Sophia thought the walls receded, the clinging, crushing muscles falling away. Sound went, too, and she was left momentarily alone, borne on the waves of some great, dark sea. And then, the moment ended. Lying as they were towards the raised torso of the lamia, Sophia’s head and neck had been spared the worst of the acid, but her chest was not so lucky. The relentless squeezing of the stomach and the acid-flesh slurry had peeled away her muscle and flesh before breaching the thoracic cavity and attacking her lungs. As the caustic fluid ruptured the delicate pink sacs and poured in like a smothering flood, Sophia gagged, reflexively trying to breathe. Alone in her ebony ocean, she felt a great hand clamp down on her chest. Quickly, her lungs filled with a frothy pink slurry as the acid ate between her ribs and poured down into the gaping cavity. Sophia thrashed as best she could, confused and uncomfortable. Her right foot slammed into the fleshy wall of the stomach, snapped off at the heel as frayed tendons and ligaments finally gave way, but the walls withstood her feeble efforts. At last, she stilled. A thick fog settled over her mind, and suddenly she found thinking a terrible effort. She surrendered herself to it, sinking down into the night-black well of sleep. Her mind narrowed to a tangle of memories, random thoughts and faces bouncing around in her dying brain. She saw her sire standing before a crackling fire, a childhood friend, heard a lover’s sigh and felt Emilia’s smooth scales under her palm. It all rushed by her, falling away, and at the last she thought she heard a sound, far off but growing louder. She floundered towards it, disintegrating consciousness slopping onwards to feebly grasp at it, and realized for a moment that it was the deep roar or baying of some enormous dog. But she had no time to think further. Free at last of the pressure, she slipped away from life.
Around her, the powerful churning of the stomach continued, gumming off the softened flesh and working the acid ever deeper. It soaked down her body, eating her from the inside out as it sizzled through the bottoms of her lungs and slopped noisily into her digestive tract. It left behind little more than a fluid filled shell of ligament and tendon wrapped about the bones. Muscles rippled, and a particularly strong spasm rolled through the lamia’s gut. The walls pressed inwards, squeezing, and with a blorp and a crunch Sophia’s chest imploded. Ribs cracked and bent inwards, compacting into a solid mass as the stomach crushed them together. Her head and neck bent backwards and then tore free to bob in the hellish soup, the last of the skin and meat sloughing away to reveal acid pitted bone.
But as her chest collapsed, the acidic chyme that had pooled in it needed someplace to go. Fluid, even fluid saturated with bits of flesh, is virtually incompressible. All around it was the remaining bone and flesh of the torso backed by the impermeable walls of the lamia’s gut. Like an open ended tube, it forced the acid out either end. Much rushed out of the gaping hole where Sophia’s neck had been, harmlessly spilling out into the stomach. But some was pumped deeper into her body, a pressurized wave of acid that slammed into the already weakened abdominal cavity. The failing muscle and gut lining collapsed, unable to withstand such an onslaught. As the walls pressed in, Sophia’s guts burst out, intestines and the remains of various organs slopping free of her stomach and over her pelvis. The chyme poured into the vacancy left by it, working to free stubborn ligamentous sheets and bits of flesh from the bone, and the stomach growled. The contractions grew faster, more violent as the lamia’s gut picked up speed.
From the outside, little could be seen beyond the slow shifting of the scaly sides, but the churning muscles within continued to prep Emilia’s meal for the intestines. Her back was broken, hips and pelvis migrating upwards and into the remains of her chest, while what was left of her arms and lower legs further disassociated. Bit by bit, the blood and flesh rich chyme was pumped into the intestines, replaced by a steady introduction of new acid. The flesh melted away from the bolus of bone accumulating in the center of the stomach, the hard elements packing tighter as their meaty wrapping was stripped away. In the intestine, the absorptive walls greedily took up Sophia’s body. Muscle, lining, connective tissue, blood…and the sunsugar that had permeated it, all of it was sucked up and pumped back into Emilia’s bloodstream as she slept.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Emilia’s first thought on waking was danger. She was lying on something deliciously soft and warm. She leapt, half asleep, coils lashing with whipcord speed as she flung herself away from the slime. A heavy branch slammed into the back of her head at the arc of her clumsy jump, hurting surprisingly little but knocking her prone. Emilia landed in her nest, furiously churning coils scattering her few possessions as she righted herself, rising up and baring her fangs to face…only the warm, moss covered branch she had been sleeping on.
Blinking, Emilia tentatively reached out, ran a hand over the bark and moss. She blinked again, confirmed that she wasn’t touching soft mud or silt when she felt the resistance of the bark tugging at her fingers. Something, some dim part of her mind, was screaming that something is wrong, wood shouldn’t feel this soft, but it was buried under a new and unfamiliar exhilaration. Giggling, she flopped forwards and rubbed her sensitive skin across the branch. It was heavenly, warm and soft and yet somehow rough enough to scratch pleasantly. She flipped over and shimmied back and forth as she worked the itches out of her back, pausing only when a strange crunching disturbed her. Curious, she rose back up to find a slight bulge in the midsection of her tail. Creaking and groaning as she moved, it resolved itself into a jumble of bones as she bent down closer to it. She could make out the rounded dome of a skull, the end of a long bone, the curved arch of a spinal chunk underlying both. Her questing hands ran over the bulges, jostling the bones and sending electrifying warmth down her sides. She could feel the hard, brittle chunks shifting and rattling inside her, massaging her oversensitive gut. Her stroking grew faster, harder as she chased the pleasant sensation. Bones cracked and shattered under her fevered touch as she flailed about, coiling into and around herself as she sought to rub every inch of her body. Panting, she bucked, reaching for her waist where the spined ends of her hemipenes were already slithering free of her sex. She got hold of one-and then the world dropped out from under her.
Emilia flew for one brief, glorious moment before the ground hit her like a catapult stone. Her body was sluggish, unresponsive, all the air gone from her lungs as she lay gasping on the ground. It was dissipating, the painless but unpleasant pressure falling away bit by bit, when something hit her in the chest.
At last able to suck in a breath, Emilia rolled upright, looking down at herself. A stick, feathered at one end, was sticking out of her chest just below her right breast. Curious, she reached out and flicked the end of it. She giggled as the stick bounced up and down, but looked up when another one landed in her stomach.
A little more than a hundred feet away were three people. They wore some kind of scale-leather armor, and two carried crossbows. The third stood behind them with a barbed cross-spear. As they began to reload, Emilia swept her tail out behind her and began to slither towards them. It was slow going; she felt unaccountably short of breath, and the feel of the ground was all wrong, all soft. Slipping, skidding, genitals flopping about, she made her way forwards accompanied by a friendly wave. A third of the way there, one of the crossbow wielders, the smaller one, fired again. The bolt went high, punching entirely through her shoulder as she continued her haphazard advance. The fullness in her chest had increased, streams of warm liquid gushing down her belly and turning the ground beneath her tail into a veritable mire. Focused on her balance, Emilia barely noticed a fifth bolt burrow into her stomach. A dull roar sounded in her ears, and a fuzzy numbness was creeping over her mind, but she could still make out her objective. They were closer now, close enough that she could see the eyes behind the slits in their helms. Lurching forwards in great, uneven waves, she saw the large one reach into a compartment on their belt and withdraw a small glass vial. It sparkled in the sunlight as they drew their arm back to throw, and arced towards Emilia along with a single sharply spoken word:
“Sonic!”
Uncaring, Emilia plowed forwards. The vial struck her on the temple, shattered with the sharp ting of breaking glass. And then there was noise. Emilia fell as if struck by a bolt of lightning, all senses wiped to black by a monstrous thunderclap. The wave of sound and pressure rolled through her; muscles spasmed, nerves shut down or fired randomly, her stomach tried to invert itself as the blast played havok with her insides. She tried to gasp but all of her lungs and muscles were disjointed, spasming randomly and without unison. Managing to roll herself onto her back, she lay there, wheezing, before something hard and very cold slid into her chest. The chill, unpleasant touch reoriented her, and with a gasp she opened her eyes and tried to rise. A spear was buried in her side, sliding under the ribs and held at the opposite end by one of the smaller humans. Emilia looked at her assailant, saw the swell of her chest beneath the breastplate and the cold watery blue eyes staring out at her from under the helmet. Unnatural lust warred with a desire to get off the cold spike, won, drove Emilia up from the ground. She rose into the air, forebody lifted several feet from the ground, and flopped forwards to grab her assailant. As she fell, the woman slammed the butt of the spear into the ground and set a heavy foot on it. Emilia slid the length of the blade before she slammed into the crossbar. Confused and weak, she simply lay there. As the other two humans rushed forwards, she groped feebly at the haft of the spear, reaching down singlemindedly towards her foe. The woman abruptly lifted her end of the weapon and dropped Emilia, who fell like a sack of bricks with the barbed blade twisting uncomfortably in her chest. As she tried to rise, somebody set a heavy boot between her shoulders. Hissing in displeasure and arousal, she whipped her tail up and forwards just as something slammed into the back of her neck. All at once, her body fell limp. Her arms, her tail, the muscles of her back, none of it worked. Her world had shrunk to the oddly soft, silty ground beneath her face…and a new pressure, a boot set sideways on her neck. Hissing, on the verge of tears, Emilia tried to lift her head before something smashed into the back of her skull and cut her discomfort mercifully short.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
“That was a good throw, with the sonic. Dropped her like she’d been hit by a shot from a Hammerhead.”
Lukas grunted, worked on prying his mace out of the pulpy mess it had turned the back of the lamia’s head into. He finally pulled it free with a wet sucking sound, took a moment to wipe away the blood and gristle with a cloth retrieved from a pouch on his belt. Anna laughed, punched him in the shoulder
“Oh come on, are you still hung up over her?”
He unfastened a broad bladed knife, serrated on one side, from his belt and bent over the lamia’s head as he responded.
“We could have shot her as she slept, cut her out. Nobody had to die.”
“Oh come on, this again? Or she’d have woken and slithered out of sight before we could take another shot. We’re at war here; you’ve got to break a few eggs if you want an omelet worth eating.”
Lukas jerked their quarry's head back as the spine finally gave. "Then should we all just bow down and let them feed on us because we might lose? Because our armies and our castles and our engines of war might not be enough and the safer thing for the queendom is to just give in? Because that's what we're here for, right? To espouse the safe and the status quo?" Anna winced as Lukas rose suddenly, snapping the thin cord of skin and muscle still connecting the lamia's head to her body as he spread his arms in frustration. Jocelyn stepped languidly forwards, abandoning her surveilance of the woods as Anna stood as well to face Lukas
"Grow the fuck up. She was nothing more than a back alley wretch. Ought to be thankful we gave her the opportunity to do more with her life than die in the gutter."
Lukas stepped forward and raised his hand, open palmed. He swung, hesitated, corrected to an awakward pointing as Anna flinched backwards.
"We share a country, species, language, and profession, and you make me fucking sad about it. What the fuck is wrong with you!? 'Oh, she ought to be thankful we damned her to a hellishly painful and slow dea-'"
Anna shoved him, spluttering furiously as he simply stepped into her in response and sent her sprawling with a push. Steel flashed as she came up with knife, but before the situation could escalate further Jocelyn was between them.
"Enough. Anna, we need to check her nest and start heading back. You want Lukas to search her for valuables?"
Anna snarled, tossed the knife to Lukas.
"A fine plan. You fish through her bones if you love her so much, then. Maybe you can bring them back, hang 'em over the mantle too."
A stiff nod was her only reply, and the two women left him to the grisly task as they began to make their way towards the large tree that had served as Emilia's nest. Anna launched immedietly into a tirade of abuse directed at Lukas, though Jocelyn paid her little mind. Only when Anna finally stopped to examine a small dagger with a blade of blue crystal did she show any intrest.
"It's a dagger."
Anna adopted an expresion of mock awe and surprise.
"No, I thought it was a broadsword, you fucking brick."
Jocelyn ignored the barb. Carefully, she picked up the blade in one guantleted hand, turning it about and hefting it to get a sense of the weight and balance.
"I mean...it's honestly a lot like one. Look here; It's got a broad double edged blade, sharply tapered tip with rounded point, extended guard, even has a little pommel and a tang completely surrounded by the grip. The blade's a little thicker than the standard and more sharply angled for it, but this is clearly a slashing weapon with considerable weight for the length, and one that borrows heavily and to the point of impracticality from sword designs as well."
Anna burst into a fit of laughter as Jocelyn finished.
"I didn't realize you found arms so entertaining."
It took Anna a few moments to collect herself and respond. At last, wiping her eyes and laying a hand on Jocelyn's shoulder, she made a hiccuping attempt to explain herself.
"No, I, It's...I had a quartermaster who used to do that same damn thing all the time. Like, down to the tone and shit." Anna threatened to slip back into another bout of mirth as she stared off into the distance, reminiscing.
"Finest officer I ever got, kept everything in perfect order, but about as social as a red and half as situationally aware. We used to joke that she-"
"Was going to marry her axe?"
Anna started out of her memories.
"You two knew each other?"
"We met once, very briefly. Come on, let's check around the back and get on our way."
Anna nodded her assent, and the pair slipped behind the knotted bulk of Emilia's tree. Anna led, absentmindedly picking her way over the great upthrust roots. For a short while, they searched in silence. Then, Anna turned back to Jocelyn once more.
"Did anybody ever tell you what happened to her?"
"Mhm?"
"Lucy. I just...figured you might want to know..."
"Not that I can recall."
"We were fording the Tammin, a couple miles upstream from the site of the first big battle. We were to search for any survivors; some of the wounded managed to haul out but hadn't the strength to go far. We all thought that it'd be simple, easy, in and out. The enemy was broken, we'd swept the area with chariots once already, and we had a mage with us. Well, we made pretty good time. By the late afternoon, we'd flushed a scipii out of the underbrush and put out of the way a group of rattlers hiding in a shallow cave. Back there, it's all hilly forest, y'know. We were passing through a clearing, just about to turn back, when the trees grew legs. I've no idea how they managed to blend in so well, but the air was suddenly full of arrows."
"Driders?"
"Yup, some kind of orb weaver. Rachel went down with a lucky shaft in her visor before we could start exchanging bolts, and by then they were on top of us. It got bad, fast. We didn't have enough axes or hammers for the carapace, and they got in too close for the spears before we really had a chance to form up. I think the only thing that saved us was the battle dress; they couldn't web us up through the blades and spikes."
"And the mage."
Anna nodded. "Oh, yeah, her too. She threw up a wall of flame around us and wiped out a good third of them before they swarmed over our party and forced her to defend herself up close."
"I thought driders didn't burn?"
"They don't, but that doesn't mean heat has no effect on them. Teresa boiled them in their own hides till they were bursting like overfilled waterskins. But even so, it was ticklish work. I thought we weren't going to make it until suddenly they were pulling back. A fourth of us were dead or missing, and almost all the rest were wounded."
"And then something happened?"
"We were all still recovering from the fight with the driders. I didn't even see it till it poured over a hill and leapt into our midst. We weren't...you can't even fight something like that."
"What was it, a slime?"
Anna shivered as she slowed, lowering her voice and speaking at last with reticence and a genuine fear hitherto totally absent. "It...well, it was a chimera. Know anything about them?"
"Some, but I'm always trying to find out more. What was it like?"
Seated now on a gnarled root, Anna continued her tale. "Horrible. They're like...'flesh slime' is probably the best description. Nothing to pierce or cut or crush, just this amorphous mass of skin colored flesh. It rolled over the frontline and threw tendrils into those behind before anyone moved. I saw Ellie melt out of her armor and into that...thing before Teresa opened a gate for us. Twenty four women went into the woods."
Anna lifted and spread her hand. "Five. Five of us came out. Teresa died of her wounds before the medics could get to her. I thought that was the end of it, but then Monica vanished. Heather followed, both on patrol. By the time we found out it was chewing its way up our ranks Gisela was gone. They're shapeshifters, too, we learned. Just slipped into some poor fuck's skin and snatched them."
Jocelyn sat down next to Anna. "Why was it targeting your group?"
Anna threw up her hands. The timbre of her voice grew shriller as she answered.
"I don't know! Who knows why those fuckers do anything!? They just kill and kill and kill some more and you know what the worst part is? You can't even fight the damn things! There's no enemy, nothing to work at, nothing you can do but wait until it finds you!"
A tittering cloud of birds leapt from the trees as Anna's hysterical shrieking died away. She was crying now, knees pulled up to her chest as she blubbered onwards.
"I'm sorry, I just I, I...gods, I just, I needed to, to tell someone. I can't go on like this! I'm just so tired of always watching and, and watching and I just...I just want it to end somehow and..."
Jocelyn unbuckled her guantlet and laid a conforting hand over Anna's back.
"Sh, sh. It's okay, It's okay, you can stop. You don't need to worry anymore."
But she did worry, reaching up to sieze Jocelyn's shoulders in an ironlike grip as she stammered on.
"And what after? It's going to get me and drag me into it and that will be the end! And then there will be nothing! No Lorelei, no fields, no hero's welcome, nothing! I'll-"
"And what, exactly, is so bad about that?"
Anna stopped mid sentance, gaping like a fish at the hardness of the tone as Jocelyn rose to her feet.
"You all and your fables. This world is broken and cursed, a land of pain and hunger and depravity. Why should the afterlife be any different? Who has seen your marvelous sunset city and returned? How do you know you will step over the threshold and find yourself in Lorelei rather than some hellish gulf between the far stars, or under the crushing weight of the fathomless deeps of the sea, or a million other places of pain and horror? The fact of the matter is that you don't know, not really, but you've collectively decieved yourselves into thinking otherwise because you cannot live with that uncertainty at the end gnawing forever at the back of your minds. Compared to the truth, what is the oblivion a chimera brings but mercy?"
Anna loooked up, blinking through her tears. Slowly, numbly, she began to shake.
"Anna? Is..oh! godsdamnit, hold still."
Faster than thought, Jocelyn's arm snapped out and siezed on the seam of Anna's gorget as the latter rose to run. The terrified woman spun to the touch and cracked Jocelyn across the face with a desperate backhanded blow. Instantly, pain shot down her fingers; it was like striking cold, hard clay or frozen earth. Unphased by the slight depressions the slap had made in her cheek, Jocelyn stepped forwards and struck hard enough to bounce Anna's head off the tree behind her. Stumbling forwards, she gasped as fingers like bars of iron curled around her throat. The vicelike grip choked off her terrified scream before it could begin. Twisting, clubbing, prying availed nothing; the arm that held her was so unyielding as to be almost like polished marble painted over with subtle skill till the flesh seemed almost to breathe with life. Anna could only stare with bulging eyes as Jocelyn raised her uncovered arm and reached towards her face.
"It won't hurt, I swear to you. On my existence, I swear it. Now, quit wriggling..."
It was only out of habit that Anna moved. As the pallid arm stretched out towards her upturned face, she swept her right hand up as she had so many times before in training. The small blade of blue crystal sank deep into her captor's exposed wrist, almost disapearing from sight before a crackling shock shot through the limb. The result was spectacular, in a gruesome fashion. The whole limb convulsed. Armor cracked and tore as her joints melted away and the whole appendage whipped like the tentacle of a Kraken, lengthening and contracting randomly as it did. Jocelyn howled, dropping Anna as she snatched at the knife still stuck in the end of what was now little more than an uncontrolably lashing tendril of tan flesh. Hacking, speeding forwards in a stumbling run, Anna at last gave voice to the full throated cry of inarticulate horror which she had for so long contained.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Lukas flicked his hands in a futile attempt to clear them of the cold, congealed blood that had long since seeped through his guantlets. Next to him sat two lumpish piles almost as saturated with blood and gore as he himself was. On his left was a mass of bones and fragments of bones, cloth, and the tattered remains of wings bleached white and papery by long acid immersion, hard scales and horns, all of the refuse the long digestive tract had accumulated in its years of hard use. To the right was a small pile of coins, knives, chains, and other objects of value that he felt were wholly inadequete compensation for the trouble and the stench of working through nearly twelve feet of slippery gut. The lamia lay chest up in front of him, stomach split open almost to the end of her tail. Sighing, he picked up the knife and began once more to saw at the last little bit of stubborn flesh, lamenting the durable scales and thick, fibrous muscles that had long since dulled the serrated edge. A little longer, perhaps five minutes more he thought, and he could-
"AAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHH!"
Lukas shot to his feet as a horrible cry split the air. He turned just in time to see Anna come stumbling out from around the bulk of the great tree. In motion at once, he paused as a long tendril wrapped around the trunk and swung a half-formed abomination into sight. It was Jocelyn, or something that had once been Jocelyn, but that resemblance was rapidly diminishing. Its flesh flowed like taffy or pudding, armor buckling as the legs lengthened. The torso telescoped forwards, a lashing tail tore free of the confining curiass, and it threw its arm forwards into a coiling rope that flashed towards Anna. Even as he leapt into a sprint once more, Lukas saw he wouldn't reach her in time. One stride, two, and the tendril had caught Anna about the throat and yanked her back into the grip of the pulsating blasphemy. The amorphous and terrible thing bent low, holding Anna's jaw open to pry out a tooth before it leaned in and kissed her on the brow. Anna shivered, looked up just as the thing reached out and cupped her cheek tenderly in one outsized hand. The flesh was cool, smooth. By comparison, her own skin was hot, grimy, covered in fine hairs and slick with sweat. She tried to pull her hand away-and realized in a moment of dawning horor that it was not her own hand that was fastened about her cheek. She was feeling the touch from both sides...and the sensation was spreading. Already the chimera's fingers had lost all definition; its arm ended in Anna's face with a connection of smooth, unbroken skin. And bit by bit, her flesh was crawling up to meet it. She felt she moved her arm, and then wrapped it around something warm and soft just as the huge thing's warping paw closed on her side. Rifts formed in her stomach and chest as the flesh migrated away and slid smoothly up the fastened loops of her unnatural captor. There was no blood, no ruin or rending, just her own body rapidly spooling out into the same tan puttylike stuff that was looping itself-or she was looping-around her body. More and more she felt the motions of that powerful and plastic thing, until at last she realized with a frightened glibber that she was looking at herself, already small and melting away, from the eyes of her softly smiling killer. She tried to scream, shook. The whole conjoined mess swayed, limbs and loops and pooling flesh quivering as she kicked and thrashed in their mind. But slowly, her terrror abated. Other thoughts rose unbidden to compete for her attention and drove her mind from the horrible abyss of fear that she had felt herself being sucked down into. She was impatient, struggling to balance as her weight shifted. There was a little worry, a need to get to Lukas. He would kill himself, or else call for reinforcements, and she must get finished with her current victim before he did either. And she was vauguely proud of herself for telling the truth about the pain, because the truth was good for some reason. But mostly there was an anticipation, a hunger for knowledge. She thought back, trying hard to remember something...something Teresa had said to her. A palace, half sunk and crumbling away beneath the sands of the Halystryx Desert...something...something...she couldn't recall. It wasn't there!
Angry, frustrated, Anna turned and kicked a log hard enough to splinter it. She felt the bitter dissapointment of long months wasted, so much effort sunk into so little payoff. The warm thing in her grip was all but gone now, hands already refo-
Shrieking, Anna screamed into her mind, lost in a sea of emotions and thoughts that for a moment she knew were not her own. But then she was amused, laughing at herself a little for her own stupid fear. "I am safe," she thought to herself, "safe and strong and finally ready for a well deserved rest." The exhaustion, all the months of fear and sleepless nights and the drain of her constant suspicion, rolled back to the surface. "Come on. You can let go," she told herself, still a little afraid. "But it'll get me-" and then she laughed, because it had already gotten her and she must have the memory of a goldfish. "See? Nothing to worry about anymore." She was vaugely aware that she was moving, but honestly, it felt good to just stop for a moment. She had done this before; it was nothing to worry about. Perhaps she was dreaming a lucid dream, but it really didn't matter and she was content to lie there like a passenger on a ship, calmly watching the world roll by besides them. Her fears receded, replaced by the strange emotions that come to us in dreams, the irrational flickers of feeling that we have no explanation or understanding of rising till her thoughts were utterly devoid of all else.
The chimera rose back to its feet, shuddering as it shook out of the dream-paralysis bleeding away as the little mind unraveled at last. It had lived another life, a sea of strange thoughts and emotions and habits that would surface over time, but right now it needed to-
"Sonic!"
A little glass vial smacked into the blasphemous thing and exploded in a blast of sound and force, scattering the puttylike plasticity of its body and dropping it to the earth. Lukas threw another as it tried to rise, then turned and ran as fast as he could. He vaulted a fallen tree before swinging wide and crouching behind the bulk of an old oak. Fumblingly, he withdrew a slender tool from a belt pocket. A long handle ended in a loop of metal, with dozens of thin wires extending from the rim and wrapping around a coin shaped disk of green beryl, which he began to speak quickly into.
"Captain Emmerson, this is Lukas. Jocelyn's...Jocelyn's dead, Anna's dead, I need a capture team with shockpoles and a mage right now! I'm-"
"-out of range?"
Lukas looked up towards the voice, confused for a moment to see Jocelyn standing stark naked besides him. His shock lasted just a moment, but it was enough for the thing to take a step forwards and catch hold of him. Implacable fingers pried at his jaw, levering open his mouth and reaching back to the left side of his lower jaw. Held in the unbreakable embrace, he winced as it yanked out his premolar and flung it off into the woods. That done, the chimera released him and stepped back. Lukas mirrored the motion, turning to run. He had no idea how it had known of the false tooth, the hollow toxin-filled shell that could be crushed to take one to a swift and painless death, but he didn't intend to stick around and find out.
Lukas made it all of three steps before a powerful tendril wrapped about his waist and hoisted him unceremoniously into the air. The chimera reeled him in like a fish flopping on a line. Bound by the preternatural flesh, he could do nothing as it drew him in, unnatural body roiling as it...dropped him in an unceremonious heap on the floor.
"Listen to me now. I need you alive to assist me. At present, you lack arms capable of inflicting any significant injury to me. You are slower, less mobile, and your senses are less acute; your only option is to cooperate."
Lukas crawled backwards in blind terror. Once more he reached into his belt, this time withdrawing a small waxen lump of a glossy black substance. A blow from the handle of his mace along a small paper stuck to its side set the thing alight. Great clouds of choking, acrid smoke poured forwards, enveloping monster and man alike. Lukas leapt backwards, tearing away through the noisome cloud. On he ran, tripping over roots and wincing as unseen branches slapped at his face. After a few seconds of gasping in the foul air, he burst from the noxious fumes and barreled forwards, only for a strong hand to clamp down upon his shoulder. The chimera had simply lengthened its legs, striding above the concealing cloud and dropping down again once he had emerged. Frantic, Lukas swept his mace up and into the face that so resembled that of his recently departed lover. There was a squelching, as of a heavy object sinking into sticky mud, and the spiked head made a crater above its cheek, but the chimera did not retaliate. Siezed by fury, and lacking now any tools to escape, Lukas yanked the mace free with an anguished cry before bringing it back around in a savage blow that crushed the thing's jaw back into its skull. Again and again he brought the steel ball down on the chimera, his terror and shock giving way to a frenzied hatred and desire for revenge as the malleable thing continued to stand there. He hammered its chest until it resembled the hoof-pocked surface of a busy road, beat the head into a cauliflower, turned the arms into little more than the gnarled branches of a crooked tree, and yet the thing made no move to stop him. It just stood there, arms crossed over its chest and the whole thing twisted by his feverish strikes. Where he had laid into it the tan flesh was deformed and whirled like stretched putty. It seemed to feel no pain at all, and as the minutes wore on, Lukas's blows came with less and less force. At last, he staggered backwards, overbalancing as he raised the mace for an overhead swing, and fell heavily to the ground. As he lay gasping for air, the amorphous blasphemy strode forward to stand over him. It waited impassively as he swore at it, kicked it. All it did was stand there, silently watching as the anger burned out to a sobbing grief and came at last to an exhausted emptiness.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Slowly, Lukas sat up against a tree and at last regarded his assailant with the calm resignation of a man who has exhausted all other options. Seeing this, the chimera slid once more into motion. The impact-riddled body flowed and twisted as it effaced Lukas's efforts, pulling together at last into that of a small woman with pale skin and close cut brown hair. When all was in place, it spoke once more in a soft, slightly patronizing tone.
"Are you finished?"
"Fuck you."
"I see. Allow me to make things very plain. I know that you have a sister and progenitor in Avarai, what they look like, and where they live. And if you refuse me here, I will find them and make you watch."
Lukas started. "How the hell do you-"
"You spoke of them to Jocelyn."
He paled, slumped back against the tree. They stared at one another for several moments before Lukas met its eyes again. Softly, defeated, he spoke once more.
"What do you want, blight?"
The chimera smiled.
"You will help me develop and execute a plan to infiltrate the Razor Keep in Avarai, recover a prisoner from the dungeons beneath it, and escape before any overwhelming force can be brought to bear against us."
"You and what army?"
"Myself."
Lukas shrugged.
"Look, there are easier and certainly less painful ways to commit suicide. I can, uh, build like, a fire for you to jump in?"
"The keep is not impenetrable. There was an escape four months ago affected by an individual far less-"
Lukas cut her off with a wave of his hand.
"The red? She didn't escape from the keep itself. They'd brought her up and put her on a crossbar outside, which she somehow ripped herself off and then flew away from. They switched to wires for the executions over that, I think. But regardless, you just don't have the manpower to get in there."
"You are being unhelpful."
Lukas sat up straighter and shook his head.
"No, what you want to do just...isn't going to work. Look here."
Grabbing hold of a stick, Lukas scratched a crude circle and a box around it in the loamy soil of the forest floor.
"This is the keep, and that's the main entrance to the dungeons. It's a vertical shaft with absolutely no cover that can be sealed at each level to impede your progress."
Swiftly, growing more energetic, Lukas added a series of sqiggly lines radiating from the circle.
"These are the only other ways through the facility. The dungeons are a maze of rooms connected by small corridors lit with the same intense lights you saw in the priory. There is nowhere to hide, and in tight confines like that you'd be vulnerable to magic, corrosives, anything that could be thrown at you."
"And if I impersonate one of the humans who works there?"
Lukas faltered a moment, but then rose to contest the point. "You...well, you might get in, I guess, but it wouldn't help you come back out. Maybe you'd get to whatever you wanted to find, if you picked somebody with the appropriate position and then didn't get caught by behavioral issues or any checks that've been put in place specifically to stop things like you. But, like, then what? You'd have no authority to get them moved, and any attempt to take them by force is going to turn the place from a prison into a deathtrap."
"No authority to get them moved? And if I did have that?"
He thought a moment, shook his head.
"If you had it, maybe. But to get it you'd not only have to nab some higher up, you'd have to fabricate a paper trail and impersonate them for a while while it went through. Though, say, who is it you want?"
Lukas leaned forwards once more.
"Honestly, they might just give them up if you asked."
The chimera blinked.
"They would...give it up to me if I asked?"
Lukas's voice grew in intensity. "Well, maybe, I dunno. It depends on how useful they are, but we obviously don't want to waste any more women fighting you than we have to. Might just be cheaper to hand her over and get you out of our hair.."
"They hate me, fear me beyond that given any other creature. I have been in your heads; they will not g-."
"But you don't know that, not for certain. Please." Lukas stretched out his arm and proffered his guantleted hand to the baffled creature. "Please try. I can get my sister to pull some strings, arrange a meeting or something. Just give it a chance."
The chimera stared for a moment, regarding the outstreched hand as one does a snake poised to strike. For several long seconds it did nothing but stare...but then, slowly, it extended its own arm and hauled Lukas up to his feet.
"The social convention in this situation is to shake, yes?"
"Uh, sure?"
The chimera grinned just a little too wide, pumping his hand experimentally before letting it fall once more.
"Excelent. We should head southwards; we can take the old forest road till we pick up the Queensroad at the opal dells. From there I think we can ride it all the way to Avarai, if Hannah's memory's accurate. Hold still; I'm going to pick you up."
Lukas flinched backwards as it reached for him, raising a hand in feeble protest.
"The hell're you doing!? If we run into someone-"
"Then I'll put you down and we walk for a while. There'll be no trouble so long as I don't take too grotesque a form, and we can cover that distance in two, three days compared to the two weeks it'd take if we walked. Be still."
Shivering as the arms of unnatural flesh wrapped around him, Lukas nevertheless offered no resistance as the chimera hoisted him up bridal style. It carried him easily, though he must have weighed a full three hundred pounds with all the gear accounted for. As it gathered itself to run, Lukas set his head in his hands.
"Oh gods, how am I ever going to explain this?"
Ambush in the Woods:
Rain knocked harshly on the slipshod shacks and shanteys that lined the unpaved streets of Errasti's poor quarter. Old houses of rotted timber leaned out drunkenly into the street, tarps and primitive tents crowding like mildewed ducklings under their protective overhangs. Under these inadequete shelters, women sat, brought together by the mutual friend of misfortune. The lamed, the blind, the crippled and maimed shared bottles of cheap, watery liquor as lepers and paupers diced for crusts of bread beside them. Addicts shivered under piles of blankets, groaning when the battering of the rain grew too audible over the sordid general din. quacks and cutpurses trudged through the muddy collection of the city's filth the street had become, wrapped in whatever they could scrounge up to keep out the grime and the wet. All the nameless refuse of the city gathered here in sordid companionship.
Then, a sound sharper than the rain cut through the muggy air. Metal boots rang on cobblestones, and armor clacked as its owners turned off the main road. As the squelching and clanking grew nearer, the human detritus oozed out of sight. People scuttled away singly or in small groups, leaving their bottles and dice sitting on crates and pallets. Doors were shuttered, windows barred, lamps extinguished by furtive hands. A lone figure bundled up in an overlarge coat slipped down a side alley.
So it was that the street was deserted when three armored forms trooped down it in single file. They wore shields on their left arms and kept their iron studded clubs free and ready, the middle individual glancing up at the eyes peering from every chink in the houses with mutual fear.
"Eyes down here, Karina. Mind the...no, don't pull at it. You'll have to cut it off. Gretta, hold up a moment, would you? She's gotten stuck again."
The middle knight growled, tugging at the waving tarp that had gotten stuck on one of the many blades protruding from her gauntlet. As the rearmost knight stepped up and drew a knife from her belt, she smacked the offending cloth with her shield in frusteration.
"Remind me agian why we've got to wear the whole scorching kettles to walk the streets of our own gods damned city? I can't take two steps without getting snagged on some thrice-"
"Just shut the fuck up and get that off so we can keep moving." The leading knight continued to speak in a tired monotone as she swept her spined helm about to keep watch over the street. "We've still got the South Plaza and and the Narrows yet, and the sun's already going down. I want to get back to the priory before the kitchens close and I have to spend four hours washing mud out of the batting on hardtack and cold beer."
The third knight cut the cloth free at last and the procession resumed. As they continued their watchful trudge through the slums, she too began to upbraid Karina.
"Be thankful that they somehow let your clumsy ass into that suit, or you'd be emptying the privies right now. And you absolutely want it on. The people here are like...animals. There were lynchings here last week when the tax hikes were posted, and...hold up."
Gretta turned back, exasperated.
"Again?"
But the knight hadn't stopped because of another snag. She was looking down into a filthy pile of blankets, dripping with empty leather pouches stained yellow-gold by their former cargo. A pale, disheveled face peeped back up at her, then a groping hand appeared.
"Sunsugar! Please, please, just a taste! The last caravan didn't make it, see, and my sire's jewels are all gone."
Gretta strode back to join her compatriots as the third knight knelt down before the huddled figure.
"Hello, sweety. What's your name?"
Two watery blue eyes peered blearily out from the blankets, then focused in on the kneeling knight. The whole bundle of rags scuttled back to press into the corner, its occupant shivering.
"I-I'm Sophia. Miss, I don't want no trouble, honest."
"Nor do we. Do you have any family here?"
The beggar looked down, refusing to meet Anna's intense stare.
"I don't wanna to talk to you. Ava said not to talk to you flower knights. 'Sophia, they'll take you off to that great stone keep and we'll see nary a trace of you again, so you stay well clear of them now,' she said, and I mean to stick to that."
Anna laughed. "Oh, come now. We were just wondering if you might like to come sleep in a warm bed and have a hot meal for once.
Sophia said nothing, still avoiding eye contact. Anna went on, unperturbed.
"We have hot baths and solid roofs if you don't mind scrubbing floors."
Sophia looked up for a moment, then buried her face once more in her blanket.
"I don't wanna talk to you. Leave me alone!"
"Come now, at least hear us out."
Gretta stepped forwards and bent down next to Anna as she spoke. "How 'bout you come back with us, have a look around the priory, see what kind of work you'd have to do. If it doesn't suit you, you'd be free to come right back here."
Sophia shook her head
"I dunno. Ava said..."
Anna shrugged. "That's fine, too. If you want to stay in this stinking shithole, all out of whatever was in those pouches and without money to buy it, that's your prerogative." Rising and turning away slowly, theatrically flicking a glob of mud from her breastplate, she turned towards her companions before a wavering cry brought her back around.
"W-wait! Would you...I mean, would I get paid?"
Anna nodded. "Absolutely."
Sophia hesitated still, crouching uncertainly in her rat's nest of blankets. Anna strode back to her, reaching into one of the many pouches at her waist. Gold gleamed between her fingers, even in the darkness and filth of the alley, drawing Sophia's eyes. She reached for it tentatively, and Anna leaned in with a confidential whisper.
"I know it's not much, but I've more at the barracks."
Sophia took the coin, rolling it between her fingers, then looked up warily.
"But...but why? Why are you-"
Anna set the palm of her hand on Sophia's shoulder. Peering out from behind the emotionless grey of her visor, she spoke softly once more.
"You remind me of my sister. Will you come? It won't be a glorious or an easy life, but you'll have food in your belly and a bed to sleep on."
At last, though reluctantly, Sophia took the outstretched hand, careful to avoid the blades and spikes on the vambrace and upper greaves. Anna heaved her to her feet, then caught the spindly woman before she could fall backwards.The beggar clutched her head and groaned, transitioning to spate of dry heaving when Anna tugged at her arm. She was brown haired, pale, and small breasted, her skin clammy and soft like oyster flesh.
Karina stood, confused.
"Wait, we're, like...doing this? Right now?"
Gretta turned and fixed her with an exasperated stare. "This your first time recruiting? And you've been on active duty for six months now?"
She thought a moment, then shook her head.
"Well, I suppose it was never a common practice in the first place. First time for everything and all that. She fits the description the captain asked for, and the instructions were to come right back if we found somebody like that. Come along, now, and try to keep off the tarps this time."
Karina indignantly hopped forwards to take up the rearmost position as Anna prodded Sophia to a stumbling walk.Together, the four trudged through the slimy street towards the cobbles of the main road. Once their feet were once again on solid ground, the knights relaxed. Shields dooped, clubs fell to their sides (or belt, in Anna's case), and their pace slowed a trifle
Anna had moved to the middle of the pack, half carrying and half dragging the shivering form of Sophia forwards. They walked in silence past shuttered storefronts and the sparse street lanterns, occasional lights in the windows and the rare pair of leather clad city guards the only sign of human life. Once, they saw a figure in a voluminous coat idling outside an old home, but they disappeared down an alley as soon as they caught sight of the procession. Gretta groaned.
"Great. Now we gotta file a curfew violation report. Whaddya think, Anna? Human or non?"
Anna slackened her pace a bit to allow the panting Sophia to catch up to her.
"I'm thinking monster. Who else'd have reason to be out now?"
"Uh, thieves? Spies? Travelers? My drunk aunt Maxine?," cut in Karina. "Come on. We saw them for like two seconds. There's just no way to tell."
Gretta nodded. "The light was bad. Perhaps we just didn't see anything at all."
Anna scoffed. "Come now. We're sworn to uphold the law. Are you just going to let something trample all over it, to prowl through the streets and prey on people? Maybe even your own family?
Gretta flicked a splotch of mud off her vambrace and shook her head. "Take that stick out of your ass and think for a second. We submit a report and, maybe, if they have the manpower, the guard sends two blokes down that street for five minutes once. It doesn't matter."
Gretta paused as they rounded a corner onto a wider thoroughfare, then continued.
"Besides, for all your proclamations of loving justice and upholding the law, I think you don't care all that much about it. I read your transfer letter, you know."
Anna stopped abruptly. Sophia stumbled, nearly faceplanting into her razor covered back as she drew herself up.
"You WHAT? That's strictly against protocal! If Emmerson hears a word of this-"
"If she does, someone might suddenly have some issues with wearing captain patches six months after their demotion. And besides, who would they believe? The bashar who's been serving for six years, or the reckless disgrace who was a razorwire's width from a dishonorable discharge?" Gretta smiled as Anna stepped forwards and raised a threatening arm. "Oh, by all means, go ahead. Give me an excuse for all those girls you threw into the grinder. I've been waiting for this since you showed up, you sick fuck."
"Uh, little help, gals?"
Karina's words snapped Gretta out of it. The younger knight was tentatively holding Sophia's wrist, awkwardly trying to keep her from collapsing without also turning her into swiss cheese with her spiked armor. As the beggar collapsed entirely, Gretta bounded over and slipped a supporting hand under her other shoulder. Together, the two half carried, half dragged Sophia up to a shuttered tavern door and set her down gently. Immedietly, she began dry heaving again, the tattered remains of a brown shirt or vest fluttering like a leaf in the wind. Gretta sat down next to her. Leaning forwards to prevent her spiny armor from getting stuck in the door, she laid a comforting hand on Sophia's shoulder.
"Take your time and let it pass. Focus on your breathing, and let me know when you feel up to moving."
Karina joined the two under the protective overhang of the roof, standing next to Gretta as she helped their charge. Anna stood on the other side of the street, arms folded across her chest.
Soon, Sophia's hacking subsided. When she tried to lever herself off the ground, Gretta took her by the arm. Once they were on their feet, Karina stepped over and took the other arm. Together, the three stepped out into the street once more. Anna stiffly took up the rear, and once more the sodden group began to trudge down the street. They turned right, heading towards the city's curtain wall, and after a few minutes came out into a large square or plaza. On the north side, a massive steel-doored gate pierced the curtain wall. Behind it lay even higher battlements, curving out and away in a self contained ring which enclosed a number of tall stone towers and the top of a large, circular building. Mill towers protruded from the wall at regular intervals, bristling with balistae of varying types. Between them, armored silhoettes patrolled the walls, illuminated by laterns clipped to their waists and armed with heavy crossbows.
Gretta slowed for a moment and guided Sophia's gaze up to the distant towers and external walls. "That's the priory. We can see the tops of the watchtower and armory from here, plus the upper stories of the main building. The servant's wing is lower than the walls, so we won't get a good look at it until we're inside, but that's where you'll be staying. Ready to go in?"
Sophia blinked up at the warm, soft lanternlight, then nodded.
"Then let's go. Hey, Anna. Anna! You see a gorgon or what?"
Anna shook her head and yanked her gaze away from the grisly sight on the central dias. Four wooden bars stood on it, and between them hung a brown scaled lamia. Metal wires ran from post to post, passing through her stomach and jaw. Raised ridges of flesh showed where the thin wires were slowly cutting through her as the lamia's weight pulled her down against them; several of the lines closer to her tail had sliced entirely out of her body. Deep cuts remained to show their passing, and from them thin streams of liquid dripped into a dark puddle, almost oily under the faint glow of the street lanterns. She lay motionless on the wires, arms and tail hanging, but the faint rise and fall of her chest revealed that she still clung to life.
Karina shivered as they approached the gate. "I liked the spiked crossbars better. Why'd they change it?"
"This is a more fitting punishment. The wires run through the mouth and stomach to symbolize the suffering she caused her victim."
"It's cheaper because it doesn't require as much metal."
Gretta and Anna looked at each other. The former shrugged.
"Well, if that's what you think, I'll defer to your superior experience in this arena."
Anna stiffened. "If one loves justice, one must study all of its aspects."
Gretta waved her off. "Oh, come on. We all know you just like watching them squirm. Rachel! It's us, open up. Pass is three-five-ninety."
A bobbing light vanished from the gatehouse window, and momentarily the huge door swung inwards on well oiled hinges. The group stepped into the low tunnel connecting the priory to the city. Arrow slits and sealed trapdoors crawled by overhead, breaking up the general monotony of the speckled grey stone. Small metal cages holding luminous glass speres were spaced along the inside of the wall, casting a harsh, white glow over the area. As they approached a second door at the far end of the tunnel, Gretta ran her hand over the rock wall beside her and turned to Sophia.
"The priory wasn't actually built by us. The original structure was, well, an actual priory or monastary built about three hundred years ago. When Avrael took the throne, she had the druidic circle that originally inhabited the place evicted and set up a chapter here. We originally kept only a small garrison in the main building, but over time both the chapter's strength and the extent of our holdings increased until we finally gained enough strategic importance to justify putting up these curtain walls and some of the towers four years ago. You'll be able to see some of this once we get inside."
The four stopped before the inner gate while Gretta repeated the password. Slowly, it opened. Behind it was a massive courtyard occupied by a great number of buildings. Three high towers stood on the grounds, with a huge circular building between them. The latter was high, with narrow windows and the remains of delicate carvings on some exposed blocks, and constructed primarily of sandstone. Huge, squat, and rectangular wings of granite had been added onto it, and it was towards one of these that Gretta led the group. They walked towards it along a dirt path, crossing over gutters on miniature bridges and weaving their way between a bewildering variety of outbuildings. Twice they passed lantern bearing sentries, both women garbed in the same smoky black, spike covered armor the three knights wore.
At last, they reached the ugly grey edifice. Gretta pounded on a small door set in the side, and a small panel slid to the side. Two green eyes peered wearily out, and then the door swung inwards to reveal a small woman in grey plainclothes. The party filed past her into a long, narrow corridor lit by the same steady glow as the globelit tunnel. Doors on the inside wall, all shut, gave the impression of a barracks or apartment, occasionally broken by a common area or larger rooms with more specialized functions. All of them ran by Sophia in a colorful blur. The harsh, intense light worsened her balance and drove iron spikes into her already pounding skull. Twice, the group stopped as she collapsed against a wall, dry heaving as the world spun about her. More women in the same grey attire walked past them occasionally, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs, but none seemed to pay much mind to the armored forms. Sophia initially tried to keep up with their progress, deciding that the group was moving towards the central building, but soon gave up and merely focused on placing one foot in front of the other. The walking seemed to last for an eternity, but at last Gretta came to a stop in front of a large, richly ornamented oaken door. As she knocked and called for someone named Emmerson, Sophia slid to the floor, utterly spent. She heard the door open, caught snatches of a conversation about some mission. Anna was somehow part of it, and Sophia caught the phrase "...too, to toughen him up," in the mix, but most of it flew by her as she tried to recover.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sophia started as someone laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Looking up, she recoiled from a strange, alien face. It was human, undoubtedly so, but the proportions were ever so slightly off. The brow and jaw were too pronounced, the eyes and cheeks too sunken, and the nose was slightly outsized. She shrunk away, and the figure shrunk back, their strange features morphing into an expression of apology and concern.
"Sorry, sorry! Didn't mean to startle you!"
The voice was odd, too, far too deep to be normal. As they pulled away, Sophia got a better look at the strange individual. They were very large, and heavily built on top of that, with an extraordinarily broad chest and surprisingly narrow hips. They were very poorly endowed, but well muscled. It was hard to tell under the opressive white lighting, but she thought their skin and hair were pale.
The figure reached out a tentative hand. "I'm Lukas. Anna sent me to take you to the washroom. Once you're cleaned up, we'll get you into something warmer and see about food."
The name snapped Sophia out of her confusion.
"You're...I mean, are you a...man?"
Lukas nodded, looking down the hallway. "Yeah. Where'd Karina go? She was supposed to be watching you."
Sophia blinked, looked about. The hallway was empty save for the two of them.
"I don't know. I...I must have dozed off, maybe? Gosh, I've never seen a man before. Is it really true that you grow hair on your faces?"
Lukas chuckled. "I haven't gotten a reaction like that since I visited some of the outlying towns. Yeah, we do. I shave it, but you can kinda see it if you look closely. Here, see?"
He knelt down and tilted his chin up. Under the intense light, Sophia saw small, light brown stubs sticking out of the skin of his cheeks and jaw. She stretched out a curious hand, then paused.
"Can I...touch it?"
Lukas nodded. "If you'd like. Just don't pull at it."
Sophia ran the side of her hand over his jaw. It was rough, surprisingly rough, almost like pumice. He grinned at her bewildred expression, then offered his hand once more.
"Can you walk?"
Sophia flexed her legs, found that she could. With Lukas's help, she managed to make it down the hallway to another door. Lukas slipped her arm off his shoulder and took hold of the knob. Grunting, he yanked the door once, twice before it swung outwards to realease a warm, humid flood of air.
"I can't believe they built in wood here. Whole bloody thing's swollen nearly shut. Anyway, this is the washroom."
Sophia cautiously stepped forwards and took a look at the room. Like the building, it was long and rectangular. The floor was solid stone, and in the centre lay a bubbling pool of clear water. Along the walls were tubs, some wooden and others carved from stone, and below all of them ran two channels that emptied into holes in the walls. Shelves held soaps, pumice, and various brushes and towels. The room was empty, save for the two of them.
Lukas closed the door, then turned back to Sophia. He listened a moment, then stepped forwards, his face suddenly devoid of its previous levity. Rolling up his right sleeve to reveal a metal bracelet, he pulled on the attached chain until a broad bladed knife emerged from beneath the cloth. It was double edged, shallowly serrated along one side and made of the same smoky-black metal as the armor the three knights had worn. He took another step forwards, then held his other hand out.
"We don't have much time. I'm really sorry about this; I'd get you out if I could, but I'd never manage to smuggle you out. I'll be quick, I promise. I'll tell them you attacked me or something. They'll be angry, but it'll look like an accident."
Sophia stumbled backwards as he snatched at her, narrowly avoiding his questing hand.
"Lukas, what are you doing!? Lukas! Stop!"
Lukas cringed at the noise, then moved towards her.
"Shhh! You scream, and this entire fort will come down on us!"
He shot out an arm and pinned Sophia's wrist in a vicelike grip. She struggled, slapping weakly at his arm and landing ineffectual punches on his chest and stomach as he pulled her close. When she reached up to claw at his face, he let go of her wrist and, quick as a striking snake, caught her by the throat. The knive glimmered as he prepared to strike.
"The more you move, the more painful this is going to be. Listen to me! If I don't kill you here, they're going to-"
Quick footsteps sounded in the hallway, then the door creaked as someone tugged at the handle. Lukas paused, knife hand wavering as he vacilated between driving it home and dropping his captive. In another moment, the door swung outwards, and a woman stepped into the room. Short, dark haired, and with an olive complexion, she saw Lukas and stopped dead in her tracks.
Lukas dropped Sophia, who crawled away as fast as she could. He raised his hands in an appeasing gesture as he faced the figure in the doorway, the knife falling to dangle from its chain.
"Jocelyn! This isn't...I mean...I was-"
The woman shut the door and strode forwards, shaking her head.
"Lukas, this is exactly what it looks like, and we both know it. I came running as soon as I heard that dumbass left you alone with her. What the hell were you thinking!"
"It's not right. You know it-"
"We talked about this, Lukas. You told me you weren't going to do anything stupid."
"Then why'd you come running?"
Jocelyn gestured towareds the figure cowering in the corner. "Perhaps because of this? Come on, I know you better than that. You took one look at her and broke. And what if you'd succeded? They'd just have thrown you behind bars and grabbed another. You're smart, you know all this. So what the hell were you thinking!?"
Lukas sat down on the edge of a tub, nearly pitching it forwards under his weight. He bent forwards, buried his head in his hands, sighed deeply. Momentarily, he looked back up.
"They're sending me on this one, you know."
"I know. I'm going, too. Anna's leading."
"Just what we needed."
Lukas looked up at the sniveling woman curled in the corner. Under his scrutiny, she whimpered and curled up tighter, trying futily to inch under a tub. He slumped forwards again with a groan. Jocelyn stepped over and set a hand on his shoulder.
"Why don't you go to our room? I'll take care of her from here."
"Thanks. I'm sorry. I just...I...."
Lukas rose, dejected.
"I'll leave now. Gods, I try to help and just always end up making it worse."
As the heavy door slammed shut, Jocelyn approached Sophia.
"Hey, there. Are you hurt?"
Sophia sat against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees.
"Miss, what's going on? Where's Anna? Why'd he try to kill me?"
Jocelyn shrugged noncommitally. "He's a bit confused. We do, however, have a job for you. Before I tell you about it, though, I think I should get you something to steady your nerves."
She turned around and started for the door, but Sophia rose unsteadily to her feet and called after her.
"Miss, I don't like this place. I...I want to go home. I don't want to work here."
Sophia half turned. "That's fine, we'll take you home in the morning. Hold on a second, now."
She stepped out of the room for a moment and returned with a pitcher and cup. An orange-gold liquid sloshed around in it with a curiously sticky sound. At the sight of it, Sophia stirred.
"Is that Sunsugar?"
Jocelyn nodded, handed her the cup. "Drink up; it'll help settle your nerves."
Sophia brought the cup to her lips with shaking hands, tilted it up. The fluid splashed back onto her tongue. It was warm, sugary, almost fruity. She swallowed; the aftertaste was smooth and pleasant. As the fluid coursed down her throat, she felt the long anticipated release of tension. By the time she had finished the cup, her arms no longer shook.
Jocelyn held the pitcher out.
"More?"
Sophia let her pour another cup. And then another. And another. By her fourth, the harsh, white light had softened, as had the tiles beneath her feet. She felt warm, pleasantly warm like the effect gained by sitting in sunlight or warm water. The cool tiles were smooth and creamy. The confusion and worry Sophia had felt since meeting the knights melted away beneath the summer heat of the drug.
She sucked air in between clenched teeth as Jocelyn set a hand on the exposed skin of her shoulder. Her touch was warm and deliciously soft, almost like a towel or sheet put on straight after being left to dry. Sophia leaned back into the pressure.
"Any better?"
"Much."
"Good. Let's get you washed up, then."
Sophia allowed Jocelyn to help her up and into a tub. The hot water enveloped her like a heated blanket, and she rested blissfully as Jocelyn scrubbed months worth of grime from her hair and skin. Her euphoria was both interruped and heightened when she felt something brush her penis. Stirring, she gasped as Jocelyn scrubbed her nether regions before moving on to her legs. She looked up at the woman, saw for the first time how soft her face was, what a deep, dark emerald her eyes were. She raised a jerky hand and tugged at Jocelyn's wrist.
"You wanna...get in?"
Jocelyn slipped her hand free.
"No. Hold still; I'm almost done." She sighed as her panting charge leaned over to grab her ass. "Godsdamnit, Lukas. This is awkward enough without having to deal with them while drugged. Come on, you."
Jocelyn finished scrubbing and hauled her out of the now brown water. She wrapped a towel about her charge, ignoring the increasingly clumsy attempts to grope her, then began to guide her down the hallway. Sophia dimly experienced the meal she was fed and being laid down into a silksoft bed before she blacked out.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Sophia awoke in a bed much softer than its straw mattress would reasonably suggest. Rising to a sitting position, she was surprised to discover that she was fully clothed in traveling gear. A leather coat rested over a weatherworn shirt, complementing a set of brown trousers and low quality leather boots. On the nightstand nearby lay a hat, and beside it a tall glass of Sunsugar. Sophia blinked critically at the latter, still muddled from the previous night's dose, before reaching out for the cup. She was polishing it off when she heard Anna's voice in the hallway outside.
"...long drag marks, probably a lamia or centipede. She's a R.O. on her fourth victim. Seems crepuscular, though one was an afternoon grab. Relatively simple job; let her loose, wait for our mystery monster to get herself high as a kite, then move in with the crosses. And speaking of sleeping beauty, I think this is her room."
The door flew open and Anna stepped into the room, Jocelyn and a sour faced Lukas behind her. All three wore leather armor made out of something with green scales and carried a heavy crossbow. A belt with numerous pouches and a wicked looking spiked mace completed their attire.
Anna stepped forwards to help Sophia out of bed. Without the black, spiny armor of the previous day, Sophia could at last see her face. She was short haired, brunette, and brown eyed. A massive scar, pocked like an acid burn, ran from her left temple to the corner of her jaw.
Sophia reached out and ran a hand over the coarse patch before Anna could react. She smiled up into the infuriated face.
"Girl, you...you look fierce! Hop in!"
Anna hauled Sophia out of bed and all but threw her out the door. Lukas caught her as she stumbled, then raised his hands in surprised indescision as she wrapped her arms around his waist. Jocelyn pried her off and took her hands, falling in between Anna and Lukas as they headed deeper into the building. Grey clad figures, mostly women, ran two and fro, and from outside Sophia heard the sound of metal ringing on metal. Sunlight filtered through those windows not bricked up, and the delicious smell of cooking pork wafted towards the group from ahead.
The trio half carried, half dragged Sophia into a large, high cielinged dining hall and set her down at an empty table. Lukas wandered off for a moment, then came back with another glass of Sunsugar. He set it down in front of Sophia, then addressed her, staring down at the floor and nervously fidgeting with his feet.
"Here. Um, I'll go get you some breakfast, and after that we'll take you home, ok?"
With that, he stalked off, leaving his two companions to fend off Sophia's questing hands. He returned momentarily, and Sophia quickly realised that no food was coming, only more and more glasses of Sunsugar. She minded it less and less as time wore on, and by the time they were ready to leave Jocelyn had to help her use the privy.
Sophia recalled little of the trip. They left through a different gate, and crossed what seemed like miles of lush meadowland. Whenever they stopped, Anna gave her more Sunsugar from a flask. She vaugely recalled Lukas carrying her much of the way.
And so it was that she found herself suddenly alone in a lush, dense forest. She could not quite recall how she had become separated from the group. She pondered this as she stumbled about in the woods, tripping over rocks and roots and giggling like a girl at the feel of the springy moss beneath her feet. The air felt warm, the ground soft. The world was ethereal in the dusky rays of the evening sun, and Sophia laughed as she half ran through a scene from her father's fairytail stories.
As she walked under a particularly large oak, Sophia heard something. Perhaps it was the creak of a branch, the slight rustle of shifting leaves. Whatever the source, she turned around just as strong hands siezed her beneath her arms and lifted her from the ground. Sophia gave a giddy whoop as she swung through the air to land on a moss covered branch, a warm, heavy weight sliding over her legs and chest. As she lay there, a face slid into view against the speckled backdrop of the tree's canopy. Sophia lay back, content to look at it for the moment.
It was human in appearance, though slightly larger than what would be expected for a woman.There were delicate features and long, elfin ears framed by wavy chestnut hair. As she looked, the weight atop Sophia shifted, wrapping about her and the branch and pinning her to it. Confused, she levered her head up and looked past the alluring face. Beyond it was a lean, dusky body, well endowed and fairly muscled. And beyond that was a long tail, perhaps a little more than twice as long as she was tall. She tried to lever herself up and get a better look at the shifting brown scaled coils, but a thrilling touch on her right hand drew her attention away. The lamia had lifted up and held her right arm at the wrist, and was staring critically at the pale band of flesh under her hand.
"Well, that's unusual, but not unwelcome."
Sophia, too, stared at the band of pale flesh in confusion, barely hearing the whispery voice. She didn't remember taking off her holdout knife. Thinking about it made her head swim, so she focused back in on her captor. The lamia was pouting down at her. She reached forwards and laid a delicate hand on Sophia's jaw, tilting her face up.
"Oh, don't freeze up just yet. It's so much nicer when you're warm and wriggling. Come on, s-"
"You're a great blanket."
The lamia stiffened, all the shifting and sliding of her coils momentarily ceasing as she paused.
"I...what?"
Sophia kicked her legs up against the heavy tail covering them, then responded.
"You're warm, and heavy, and smooth. Or is that a quilt? No, that's a what quilt is. My bad. I'm sorry to bother you!"
The lamia's eyes grew wide, and a dry rattling filled the air. Sophia sqeaked as the muslces in her tail tensed, crushing her against the branch. Ignoring Sophia's protests, the lamia lifted her forebody off her victim and reached back towards the base of the branch. She swayed back into view moments later, a small knife with a blue crystaline blade clutched in her hand. Slowly, careful not to touch skin to skin, she reached out and gently tapped Sophia on the cheek with the flat of the blade.
Only the long tail tying her to the branch below saved Sophia from falling as she twitched. A shock passed through her from the blade, quickly dissipating and leaving a strange, almost burnt, smell in the air. Coughing, she felt the coiling tail relax and the rattling cease before the lamia lay back down over her. Long fingers reached out and brushed the electricity-frazzled hair off of her face, and the lamia grinned down at her.
"You gave me quite the scare there, missy. Damn good acting, I give you that. But your luck's run out, so it's time to say goodbye."
Having said this, she lowered herself down fully, winding her long arms around under Sophia and hugging her to her ample bosom. Sophia pressed up against her firm breasts and warm flesh, reaching across her back and reveling in the feel of the muscles moving beneath her fingers. The lamia leaned in, silhouetted against the light of the setting sun, ruby lips parting to reveal long, sharp teeth and a forked tongue. Sophia pulled herself up to catch those lips in a passionate kiss, hugging her close as she ground her crotch against the lamia's midriff.
The lamia spluttered, reeling back in confusion. As she looked down at her captive, Sophia opened her eyes once more before raising a tentative hand.
"You ok? Is something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No, just a little...surprised, I guess."
Staring at Sophia's slightly concerned expression, she cocked her head.
"You're really not afraid, then?"
Sophia thought for a moment, then shook her head.
"I guess not. Won't you lay down again? You felt so nice."
"Why? Did you come here to die?"
"Of course not! I came here to...to..."
Sophia grimaced, trying to recall why and how she'd gotten there. Her memory was covered in a viscous gold-orange fog; scenes and people slipped between her fingers to leave her with nothing more than she'd brought. Clutching at them, she came away with nothing.
"Hey, still there?"
Sophia snapped out of her reverie. The lamia was playing with the buttons of her jacket.
"I can't remember."
"Well, that's enlightening."
"Sorry, I just..."
"Oh, it's alright. I was just curious."
She rocked back, shrugging.
"Well I'm going to get started, if you don't care one way or the other."
"Um, would you..."
The lamia paused, her jaw popping back into its proper sockets.
"Yes?"
"Do you mind fucking me first?"
She considered the offer, biting on her lip absentmindely as she thought. Slowly, she nodded.
"Uh...Ok? I suppose we have time..."
Gesturing to Sophia's jacket, she asked: "You mind if I help you out of that? I love those little round things, the ones with the-"
"The buttons?"
"Yeah, the buttons."
"Go ahead."
Sophia giggled as the lamia leaned down and fumbled at the buttons with her overlarge hands. Instead of sliping the button back through the hole, she tried to pull at them. When the wood discs would not give, she simply pulled harder, at last breaking the string. The button flew up and ricoched off her face, spinning away towards the forest floor as she scowled.
"Blasted thing! The cloth's on the wrong side! How do you do this kind?"
Sophia reached down and unbuttoned the next hole.
"Like this, see? You turn it sideways, like so, and then push it through."
The lamia nodded, eagerly attacking button after button. Sophia's breath caught in her throat as the strong hands massaged her breasts, her stomach. At last the jacket gave way beneath her excited fingers, and Sophia shrugged out of it. As she did so, the lamia latched onto the collar of her undershirt, straining momentarily before the cloth tore open and away. Sophia's shaking hands finally undid her belt buckle as it fell to the forest floor, and a rippling wave of the tail pulled her pants down and away to reveal her erect member. For Sophia, the sensation was overwhelming. Without the dampening of her clothes, the world was too close, too soft, too bright. There was moss under her back, soft and mixed with the ridges of the branch. Every scale on the shifting tail tying her to the branch was an individual impression, softly whispering over her skin. She stared up into the spinning, speckled dome of the canopy and made out the face of her hesistating lover. She reached a hand up and ran it along the fine cheekbone, spoke quickly and urgently.
"No, it's fine. I'm ready. W-Where?"
Laying chest to chest, lower back arching to hold the base of her tail up, the lamia slid a large arm under Sophia's pale thighs. Gently, she pulled her further under herself. Slightly below the point where her tawny skin transitioned to brown scales, a pulsing slit had opened. The strong arm under her legs lifted Sophia's lower body up, carefully guiding her up towards the gaping slit. Unwilling to wait, Sophia hooked a leg over the lamia's tail and thrust herself up into the eager flesh. It swallowed her up, strangely tight despite its comparatively large size. She bucked in ecstasy, legs wrapping around the base of the tail as she began to rapidly thrust in and out of her lover.
Sophia heard a sharp inhalation as the lamia jerked in surprise, then squeaked herself as the big predator dropped heavily to the branch. The light vanished as her breasts flattened Sophia's head back against the wood. Skin slid over skin as the lamia's heavy torso lay over her, all but immobilizing Sophia in combination with the weight of her tail. Under the soft flesh she braced against the wood, trying to pump her hips to no avail. Frustrated and thinking through a honeyed haze of pleasure, she reached up and had half levered the lamia off of her before she felt something shift against her penis. Rippling and featherlike, it slid down the length of her shaft before stiffening over her stomach. Panting, Sophia lifted a breast from her face and stared down the length of her body to see what had felt so delightful.
Initially, she thought a flower had somehow fallen between them. Two red-pink tubes or rods slid out of the lamia's vagina, parting about the base of Sophia's member and stretching up to lie close to her belly button. They were slick, covered near their tips with petallike folds or fleshy barbs that tickled her belly. Curious, she reached out and grabbed hold of the right one.
"Gah!"
The lamia jerked up and away from Sophia, one huge hand snapping down to grab her wrist. The tubes rose with her, petallike ends whispering over Sophia's penis. Inhaling sharply, she released her hold and bit her lip, confusion warring with desire in her drug hazed brain. The tube snapped back up to join its fellow, both extending out of the bottom of the lamia's drooling slit. She felt the admonishing grip on her hand tighten.
"Can you be a bit more gentle?"
Sophia nodded and gasped, too far gone to articulate proper words. Instead, she reached out with both hands and once more took hold of the tubes. She ran her hands down them, marveling at the soft tickling of their fleshy barbed ends, before she felt something sway the branch. Once more, she was plunged into the soft, warm bosom as the lamia gripped the branch beneath her and at last began to fuck her in earnest. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, she raised the base of her tail up and dropped it back down onto Sophia's throbbing member. Her panting barely registered on her partner. Sophia was washed away, drowning in the thrill of sex and the softness of flesh all about her. Her trembling hands siezed the base of the lamia's hemipenes as she used her only leverage to blindly tug her lover down further, harder with each impact. Pleasure radiated down into her at every point of contact, but she felt rather than experienced it. The rational part of her mind, unmoored by the drug and overloaded by sexual contact, all but shut down. She existed without memory, a single point of pleasure with the feeling of soft breasts and whispering skin sliding over and through her. Mechanically, she thrust back up against the lamia and toyed with her flowerlike genitals even as the huge scaled body rippled against her own. The cool breeze and crisp autumn air had long since melted away under the intense heat of the two writhing bodies. Sweat trickled down them, smoothing the branch below and lubricating them as skin slid over skin. Still the lamia bounced on, tail rising and falling as she drove herself up and down Sophia's rigid member. Sliding with it were her hemipenes, fleshy barbs planting ticklish kisses up and down her partner's penis as she drove herself down over and over again. Her warmth was surprising; Sophia was burning up, a line of living fire wriggling under her torso. The lamia moaned, shaking her chest side to side and reveling in the return feeling of her partner's face jiggling about between her breasts. The slick, warm hands caressed her shafts as she did so, each finger stroking lines of pleasure along the red-pink lengths. Swiftly, they dragged her on towards climax, building along with the rhythem of her stroke until at last she could withstand it no longer. Waves of pleasure radiated out from her crotch as she crushed herself against Sophia's bucking form. Her bust descended from a soft pillow into a crushing mass as she gripped the branch in a frenzy, Sophia's penis pushed as far up into her as she could get it and her own members delightfully sandwitched between their bellies. Her tail, wrapped about Sophia's legs, tightened powerfully and inexortiably as tremors ran the length of her body and her hemipenes poking up into her own stomach as she spent her seed. She shook, her entire body clenching as the orgasm washed over her. Sophia kept hammering away, totally oblivious even as a sudden snapping sound startled the lamia. Spent, she collapsed onto the human, arms hanging limply off the branch and tail slowly unwinding. As she recovered, she felt her partner stiffen beneath her before a warm sunburst of liquid exploded against the walls of her sex. Fearful of smothering her companion, the lamia rolled onto her back, pulling Sophia with her. Sophia's dark brown hair was utterly soaked, plastered across her face and the lamia's breasts. As she recovered, the lamia amused herself by gently picking away the errant strands and returning them to a semblance of their natural positioning. Once her breathing had slowed, Sophia lifted her head and hooked her chin over the lamia's collarbone. They smiled at one another, enjoying their afterglow in the fading rays of the twilight. Sophia ran a lazy hand up and played with one of the lamia's long ears.
"I...you never told me your name, did you?"
The lamia nodded. "I didn't, did I? I'm Emilia. You?"
"Sophia."
"Mhm. Has anybody ever told you that you're really warm?"
Sophia gigled, reaching a hand down to run her nails over the lamia's scaled hide.
"You aren't so cold blooded yourself."
"No, I mean, even when you were walking around on the ground you were really warm."
"You could tell?"
"Yeah. I can...hm. How to describe it?" The coils holding Sophia shifted back and forth as Emilia bit her lip.
"It's like...well, not quite seeing, I guess, though I use my eyes. It's, I mean, I can tell if there's heat or not, but I can't see really what's making it, or what the background looks like. You're just kinda this really intense...blob, maybe?"
Sophia waved her arm in front of Emilia's face. "So you can, like, see how warm this is?"
The lamia shrugged. "All I really see is a blur, with you so close. I've heard pit vipers, some of my distant relatives from the deserts are better with it. I think some big constrictors also do it, too, though I'm not sure how effective they are at it."
"I should ask one, maybe."
Emilia chuckled. "Well, you're about to get a chance, though I don't suppose she'll have much to say in return."
Sophia nodded, then wiggled her hips.
"Ready to go again?"
Emilia winced. "No. Actually, you mind pulling out? I'm feeling a little sore."
Sophia frowned. "What, already? Pleeeeease?"
Firm hands grabbed her by the hips and lifted her up, pulling her cock free of the lamia. The flowerlike hemipenes, now unengorged and resembling limp ropes, slithered back inside before the whole thing sealed back up.
"No. I couldn't even if I wanted to. Hold still, now."
Emilia levered herself up, coils sliding off Sophia's legs. When the loop covering her calves fell away, the lamia gasped.
"Holy shit!"
Sophia's lower legs were bent unnaturally, buckling between the knee and ankle. When Emilia poked at it, the leg rolled bonelessly around the break.
"I...I must have squeezed you too tight at the end there. How the fuck didn't you notice this?"
Sophia shrugged. "I dunno. Hey, you've got a rattle!"
Emilia stared, bewildered, as Sophia sat up and shook the end of her tail, laughing at the dry clatter that filled the forest.
"Let me get this straight. You didn't notice that I...broke both of your legs? Like, doesn't that hurt?"
"It...tickles a little, I guess?" She wiggled her legs experimentally, the broken ends flopping about.
"You are human, right?"
"Uh huh. Hey, are you sure you don't want to go again?"
Emilia nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure. It's just kinda strange. You guys usually scream when your bones break. Is there something wrong with you?"
"I don't...wait, no." Sophia thought a moment, then shook her head.
"I think I...had something to drink?"
"Huh. Maybe this is what alcohol does to humans? I've heard that it's got some odd properties."
Sophia nodded. "Yeah, I bet that's it."
Emilia wrapped the end of her tail about Sophia's waist, looping lazily about her to bring Sophia's limply dangling legs up to her maw.
"Well, thank you for the lay and the entertainment, but it's time to say goodbye. Wriggle for me, will you?"
With that, she opened her mouth and bent towards Sophia's feet. Her teeth were sharp, the fanglike upper canines folded back against the palate, gleaming white under the last rays of the dying sun. Sophia shivered, wriggling her toes as the lamia's lips slid over her feet and moaning as the sharp teeth whispered over her sensitive skin. The slippery, clinging heat of the throat wrapped her comfortably, inching up over the break as Emilia advanced. As she passed it and began to slide Sophia's calves into her throat, her jaw split. Each half streched outwards, independantly grabbing and working over her shins to pull her down into the waiting gullet. The skin between them stretched to become translucent in the fading light, and as she hooked her upper jaw over a knee her cheeks began to undergo the same process.
Sophia hung resistlessly in Emilia's grip, enraptured by the feeling of soft, warm flesh sliding over her own and staring under herself in wonder at the tongue that flicked ahead of the jaws to plant delicate kisses on her exposed skin. Long, forked, purplish-red, it slithered on like a miniature serpent all its own, exploring the front of her body as the lamia started inching up her thighs. Her jaws rotated, teeth angling outwards and pressing into soft flesh as she widened her gape to accomodate more flesh. The outlines of Sophia's legs distended her throat, her feet already passing down behind the breastbone and vanishing into the torso. She amused herself by kicking her legs, delighting in the soft squish of flesh and the sight of the writhing bulges in Emilia's throat.
A feather-soft touch between her legs interrupted Sophia. The lamia had worked her jaws over the tops of Sophia's thighs and was still advancing. Her long tongue flicked out, sliding up Sophia's thigh and tickling her balls. She shivered, panting as the warm lips slithered up to the base of her butt. Then, she felt the jaws widen further before she was tilted diagonally into the air. With a soft gluck her hips slid back into the waiting maw, slamming into the still unprepared throat as the lamia momentarily lost her grip.
"Mrgmph! Grddnt!"
Ignoring Emilia's atempts to curse through a mouthful of food, Sophia bucked wildly, slamming her hips forwards to rub her dick against the soft, stretchy skin between the lamia's lower jawbones. The flesh bulged strangely, the rigid outline of her member creating a curving bulge as it streched agianst the maleable flesh, poking curiously out under Emilia's jaw. Once more, Sophia slipped beyond concious reasoning. She simply thrust herself forward over and over, delightining in the feel of the slippery, warm flesh wrapped around her penis.
Emilia swallowed again, momentarily stuck, scrambling to pull her meal in after the unexpected drop. She tried to work her jaws further open, working desperatly to get any leverage to help her haul Sophia's hindquarters into her throat.
Sophia spasmed as the long tongue wrapped about her member and pulled her down into the throat. Pulsing muscle wrapped tightly around her body from the waist down, rhythmically pulling her deeper into the fleshy tunnel. Emilia paused a moment, trying to breathe past her mouthful, but Sophia continued humping. Holding the lamia's lower jaws, she slammed her hips forwards and disconnectedly took in the odd sight of a bulge rhythimcally distending Emilia's throat. As the long rod streched the skin of her neck, Emilia gagged, hacking past the choking, wriggling obstruction.
"Ah mh GD, ald you HAP THT!?"
Reeling, she swung her upper body around, tail wrapped around the branch. Sophia whooped, raising her hands to swing freely in the wind, and Emilia opened her jaws wide and snapped forwards like a striking snake. Sophia slipped backwards, pointed teeth slamming into her breasts. Her body was by now slick with saliva, and Emilia had little trouble working her way over her meal's modest bust. Wrapping her tongue around Emilia's neck, she worked her jaws around the outside of her chest, each side cupping one fleshy orb before she pulled Emilia in up to her shoulders. She was by now almost totally enveloped in a slick, fleshy tube of powerful muscle. It held her tighly, restricing her movement and pinning her legs together. Curious, she kicked against the muscular walls, saw slight bulges rise and then subside back into Emilia's stomach. She both felt and heard the lamia giggle, her prison vibrating in rapid succession, then lost her view as the jaws slithered up her neck and restricted its motion. They stopped at the base of her skull, the lower jaw recombining momentarily. Sophia could see nothing beyond her own outstretched arms and the vibrant forest canopy, golden and green under the dying rays of the sunset. And then the teeth came creeping up once more, riding over her head and quietly cutting off the golden vista of the twilight woods.
Emilia swallowed, winced, rolled her jaw to sweep out the ache from holding it open for so long. She watched the outline of Sophia's head and chest slide down her stomach and subside into a series of slight lumps in the length of her tail. Within her, Sophia ricoched back and forth, wrapped in a slick, musclular tube. It held her tightly, too tightly even to bring her arms down to her sides or pull her knees up, though such considerations had not reached her. The world flipped upside down and back again, twisiting and turning in a kaleidescope of perspectives until reality became only the soft squish of the unseen flesh about her and the omnipresant pressure of the walls. She worked her hands along them, delighting in the form fitting springiness of them, swung her body for the joy of it. The muscles of the stomach wall pushed back, kneading her in random, swirling patterns as it began the automatic process of mechanical digestion. Rippling surges lapped over her body, rocking her head, massaging her back. One surged up and pressed against her groin and she pressed back, drivign herself rhythmically against the dampening flesh as she lost herself to euphoria once more.
Emilia stirred at the motion. The lamia was curled up in the fork between two branches, back against the knothole where she kept her few posessions. A chill wind was blowing through the forest, heightening her awareness of the knot of warmth pulsing in the centre of her body. Half rising, she swept over her tail, curling tighter about herself. Lumps slid under her skin; a face, a torso, part of a hip softened and rounded under a layer of muscle and scale, all rocking back and forth against the supple flesh of her gut. A deep warmth was spreading through her, working its way into her muscles and dragging her down to sleep with a vicelike grip. As the world grew dim, Emilia lay her forebody down over the bulging outline in her gut. It swayed under her, writhing and shifting, and she rested contendedly as it gently rocked her to sleep.
In her stomach, Sophia was rocking for entirely different reasons. She thrust against the now sopping muscular walls again and again until she was utterly spent. Lying limp in the grip of the powerful muscle, she enjoyed the caressing touch of the stomach. It swirled and churned, clamping down and rubbing against her or flipping her over entirely before flopping back to its original position. And as it did so, it worked powerful acids into her skin. Sophia, still under the effects of the sunsugar, felt little more than a tingle as the caustic liquid soaked into and bleached her flesh. The rippling walls kneaded the sagging outer layers, pushing and scraping until great pale gobs of skin and fat and muscle peeled away from their underlying support. As the hours wore on, Sophia found herself floating in a gel or soup of her own degrading tissue. Her eyes had long since gone, along with her breasts, lips, and much of her skin. Such a lack of sight would have been a mercy had there been any light to see by, lest the victim catch a glimpse of the lengths of skin peeling away from their back, the exposed muscles in their abdomen writhing under a bloody soup, or perhaps the grinning, cheekless, hairless contours of the face. To the disintegrating woman, it felt as if she was drifting on some vast body of water, nudged now and then by a particularly strong current. Any sense of touch had long since been stripped away, leaving only a faint impression of pressure. As more and more of her faculties followed it, Sophia thought the walls receded, the clinging, crushing muscles falling away. Sound went, too, and she was left momentarily alone, borne on the waves of some great, dark sea. And then, the moment ended. Lying as they were towards the raised torso of the lamia, Sophia’s head and neck had been spared the worst of the acid, but her chest was not so lucky. The relentless squeezing of the stomach and the acid-flesh slurry had peeled away her muscle and flesh before breaching the thoracic cavity and attacking her lungs. As the caustic fluid ruptured the delicate pink sacs and poured in like a smothering flood, Sophia gagged, reflexively trying to breathe. Alone in her ebony ocean, she felt a great hand clamp down on her chest. Quickly, her lungs filled with a frothy pink slurry as the acid ate between her ribs and poured down into the gaping cavity. Sophia thrashed as best she could, confused and uncomfortable. Her right foot slammed into the fleshy wall of the stomach, snapped off at the heel as frayed tendons and ligaments finally gave way, but the walls withstood her feeble efforts. At last, she stilled. A thick fog settled over her mind, and suddenly she found thinking a terrible effort. She surrendered herself to it, sinking down into the night-black well of sleep. Her mind narrowed to a tangle of memories, random thoughts and faces bouncing around in her dying brain. She saw her sire standing before a crackling fire, a childhood friend, heard a lover’s sigh and felt Emilia’s smooth scales under her palm. It all rushed by her, falling away, and at the last she thought she heard a sound, far off but growing louder. She floundered towards it, disintegrating consciousness slopping onwards to feebly grasp at it, and realized for a moment that it was the deep roar or baying of some enormous dog. But she had no time to think further. Free at last of the pressure, she slipped away from life.
Around her, the powerful churning of the stomach continued, gumming off the softened flesh and working the acid ever deeper. It soaked down her body, eating her from the inside out as it sizzled through the bottoms of her lungs and slopped noisily into her digestive tract. It left behind little more than a fluid filled shell of ligament and tendon wrapped about the bones. Muscles rippled, and a particularly strong spasm rolled through the lamia’s gut. The walls pressed inwards, squeezing, and with a blorp and a crunch Sophia’s chest imploded. Ribs cracked and bent inwards, compacting into a solid mass as the stomach crushed them together. Her head and neck bent backwards and then tore free to bob in the hellish soup, the last of the skin and meat sloughing away to reveal acid pitted bone.
But as her chest collapsed, the acidic chyme that had pooled in it needed someplace to go. Fluid, even fluid saturated with bits of flesh, is virtually incompressible. All around it was the remaining bone and flesh of the torso backed by the impermeable walls of the lamia’s gut. Like an open ended tube, it forced the acid out either end. Much rushed out of the gaping hole where Sophia’s neck had been, harmlessly spilling out into the stomach. But some was pumped deeper into her body, a pressurized wave of acid that slammed into the already weakened abdominal cavity. The failing muscle and gut lining collapsed, unable to withstand such an onslaught. As the walls pressed in, Sophia’s guts burst out, intestines and the remains of various organs slopping free of her stomach and over her pelvis. The chyme poured into the vacancy left by it, working to free stubborn ligamentous sheets and bits of flesh from the bone, and the stomach growled. The contractions grew faster, more violent as the lamia’s gut picked up speed.
From the outside, little could be seen beyond the slow shifting of the scaly sides, but the churning muscles within continued to prep Emilia’s meal for the intestines. Her back was broken, hips and pelvis migrating upwards and into the remains of her chest, while what was left of her arms and lower legs further disassociated. Bit by bit, the blood and flesh rich chyme was pumped into the intestines, replaced by a steady introduction of new acid. The flesh melted away from the bolus of bone accumulating in the center of the stomach, the hard elements packing tighter as their meaty wrapping was stripped away. In the intestine, the absorptive walls greedily took up Sophia’s body. Muscle, lining, connective tissue, blood…and the sunsugar that had permeated it, all of it was sucked up and pumped back into Emilia’s bloodstream as she slept.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Emilia’s first thought on waking was danger. She was lying on something deliciously soft and warm. She leapt, half asleep, coils lashing with whipcord speed as she flung herself away from the slime. A heavy branch slammed into the back of her head at the arc of her clumsy jump, hurting surprisingly little but knocking her prone. Emilia landed in her nest, furiously churning coils scattering her few possessions as she righted herself, rising up and baring her fangs to face…only the warm, moss covered branch she had been sleeping on.
Blinking, Emilia tentatively reached out, ran a hand over the bark and moss. She blinked again, confirmed that she wasn’t touching soft mud or silt when she felt the resistance of the bark tugging at her fingers. Something, some dim part of her mind, was screaming that something is wrong, wood shouldn’t feel this soft, but it was buried under a new and unfamiliar exhilaration. Giggling, she flopped forwards and rubbed her sensitive skin across the branch. It was heavenly, warm and soft and yet somehow rough enough to scratch pleasantly. She flipped over and shimmied back and forth as she worked the itches out of her back, pausing only when a strange crunching disturbed her. Curious, she rose back up to find a slight bulge in the midsection of her tail. Creaking and groaning as she moved, it resolved itself into a jumble of bones as she bent down closer to it. She could make out the rounded dome of a skull, the end of a long bone, the curved arch of a spinal chunk underlying both. Her questing hands ran over the bulges, jostling the bones and sending electrifying warmth down her sides. She could feel the hard, brittle chunks shifting and rattling inside her, massaging her oversensitive gut. Her stroking grew faster, harder as she chased the pleasant sensation. Bones cracked and shattered under her fevered touch as she flailed about, coiling into and around herself as she sought to rub every inch of her body. Panting, she bucked, reaching for her waist where the spined ends of her hemipenes were already slithering free of her sex. She got hold of one-and then the world dropped out from under her.
Emilia flew for one brief, glorious moment before the ground hit her like a catapult stone. Her body was sluggish, unresponsive, all the air gone from her lungs as she lay gasping on the ground. It was dissipating, the painless but unpleasant pressure falling away bit by bit, when something hit her in the chest.
At last able to suck in a breath, Emilia rolled upright, looking down at herself. A stick, feathered at one end, was sticking out of her chest just below her right breast. Curious, she reached out and flicked the end of it. She giggled as the stick bounced up and down, but looked up when another one landed in her stomach.
A little more than a hundred feet away were three people. They wore some kind of scale-leather armor, and two carried crossbows. The third stood behind them with a barbed cross-spear. As they began to reload, Emilia swept her tail out behind her and began to slither towards them. It was slow going; she felt unaccountably short of breath, and the feel of the ground was all wrong, all soft. Slipping, skidding, genitals flopping about, she made her way forwards accompanied by a friendly wave. A third of the way there, one of the crossbow wielders, the smaller one, fired again. The bolt went high, punching entirely through her shoulder as she continued her haphazard advance. The fullness in her chest had increased, streams of warm liquid gushing down her belly and turning the ground beneath her tail into a veritable mire. Focused on her balance, Emilia barely noticed a fifth bolt burrow into her stomach. A dull roar sounded in her ears, and a fuzzy numbness was creeping over her mind, but she could still make out her objective. They were closer now, close enough that she could see the eyes behind the slits in their helms. Lurching forwards in great, uneven waves, she saw the large one reach into a compartment on their belt and withdraw a small glass vial. It sparkled in the sunlight as they drew their arm back to throw, and arced towards Emilia along with a single sharply spoken word:
“Sonic!”
Uncaring, Emilia plowed forwards. The vial struck her on the temple, shattered with the sharp ting of breaking glass. And then there was noise. Emilia fell as if struck by a bolt of lightning, all senses wiped to black by a monstrous thunderclap. The wave of sound and pressure rolled through her; muscles spasmed, nerves shut down or fired randomly, her stomach tried to invert itself as the blast played havok with her insides. She tried to gasp but all of her lungs and muscles were disjointed, spasming randomly and without unison. Managing to roll herself onto her back, she lay there, wheezing, before something hard and very cold slid into her chest. The chill, unpleasant touch reoriented her, and with a gasp she opened her eyes and tried to rise. A spear was buried in her side, sliding under the ribs and held at the opposite end by one of the smaller humans. Emilia looked at her assailant, saw the swell of her chest beneath the breastplate and the cold watery blue eyes staring out at her from under the helmet. Unnatural lust warred with a desire to get off the cold spike, won, drove Emilia up from the ground. She rose into the air, forebody lifted several feet from the ground, and flopped forwards to grab her assailant. As she fell, the woman slammed the butt of the spear into the ground and set a heavy foot on it. Emilia slid the length of the blade before she slammed into the crossbar. Confused and weak, she simply lay there. As the other two humans rushed forwards, she groped feebly at the haft of the spear, reaching down singlemindedly towards her foe. The woman abruptly lifted her end of the weapon and dropped Emilia, who fell like a sack of bricks with the barbed blade twisting uncomfortably in her chest. As she tried to rise, somebody set a heavy boot between her shoulders. Hissing in displeasure and arousal, she whipped her tail up and forwards just as something slammed into the back of her neck. All at once, her body fell limp. Her arms, her tail, the muscles of her back, none of it worked. Her world had shrunk to the oddly soft, silty ground beneath her face…and a new pressure, a boot set sideways on her neck. Hissing, on the verge of tears, Emilia tried to lift her head before something smashed into the back of her skull and cut her discomfort mercifully short.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
“That was a good throw, with the sonic. Dropped her like she’d been hit by a shot from a Hammerhead.”
Lukas grunted, worked on prying his mace out of the pulpy mess it had turned the back of the lamia’s head into. He finally pulled it free with a wet sucking sound, took a moment to wipe away the blood and gristle with a cloth retrieved from a pouch on his belt. Anna laughed, punched him in the shoulder
“Oh come on, are you still hung up over her?”
He unfastened a broad bladed knife, serrated on one side, from his belt and bent over the lamia’s head as he responded.
“We could have shot her as she slept, cut her out. Nobody had to die.”
“Oh come on, this again? Or she’d have woken and slithered out of sight before we could take another shot. We’re at war here; you’ve got to break a few eggs if you want an omelet worth eating.”
Lukas jerked their quarry's head back as the spine finally gave. "Then should we all just bow down and let them feed on us because we might lose? Because our armies and our castles and our engines of war might not be enough and the safer thing for the queendom is to just give in? Because that's what we're here for, right? To espouse the safe and the status quo?" Anna winced as Lukas rose suddenly, snapping the thin cord of skin and muscle still connecting the lamia's head to her body as he spread his arms in frustration. Jocelyn stepped languidly forwards, abandoning her surveilance of the woods as Anna stood as well to face Lukas
"Grow the fuck up. She was nothing more than a back alley wretch. Ought to be thankful we gave her the opportunity to do more with her life than die in the gutter."
Lukas stepped forward and raised his hand, open palmed. He swung, hesitated, corrected to an awakward pointing as Anna flinched backwards.
"We share a country, species, language, and profession, and you make me fucking sad about it. What the fuck is wrong with you!? 'Oh, she ought to be thankful we damned her to a hellishly painful and slow dea-'"
Anna shoved him, spluttering furiously as he simply stepped into her in response and sent her sprawling with a push. Steel flashed as she came up with knife, but before the situation could escalate further Jocelyn was between them.
"Enough. Anna, we need to check her nest and start heading back. You want Lukas to search her for valuables?"
Anna snarled, tossed the knife to Lukas.
"A fine plan. You fish through her bones if you love her so much, then. Maybe you can bring them back, hang 'em over the mantle too."
A stiff nod was her only reply, and the two women left him to the grisly task as they began to make their way towards the large tree that had served as Emilia's nest. Anna launched immedietly into a tirade of abuse directed at Lukas, though Jocelyn paid her little mind. Only when Anna finally stopped to examine a small dagger with a blade of blue crystal did she show any intrest.
"It's a dagger."
Anna adopted an expresion of mock awe and surprise.
"No, I thought it was a broadsword, you fucking brick."
Jocelyn ignored the barb. Carefully, she picked up the blade in one guantleted hand, turning it about and hefting it to get a sense of the weight and balance.
"I mean...it's honestly a lot like one. Look here; It's got a broad double edged blade, sharply tapered tip with rounded point, extended guard, even has a little pommel and a tang completely surrounded by the grip. The blade's a little thicker than the standard and more sharply angled for it, but this is clearly a slashing weapon with considerable weight for the length, and one that borrows heavily and to the point of impracticality from sword designs as well."
Anna burst into a fit of laughter as Jocelyn finished.
"I didn't realize you found arms so entertaining."
It took Anna a few moments to collect herself and respond. At last, wiping her eyes and laying a hand on Jocelyn's shoulder, she made a hiccuping attempt to explain herself.
"No, I, It's...I had a quartermaster who used to do that same damn thing all the time. Like, down to the tone and shit." Anna threatened to slip back into another bout of mirth as she stared off into the distance, reminiscing.
"Finest officer I ever got, kept everything in perfect order, but about as social as a red and half as situationally aware. We used to joke that she-"
"Was going to marry her axe?"
Anna started out of her memories.
"You two knew each other?"
"We met once, very briefly. Come on, let's check around the back and get on our way."
Anna nodded her assent, and the pair slipped behind the knotted bulk of Emilia's tree. Anna led, absentmindedly picking her way over the great upthrust roots. For a short while, they searched in silence. Then, Anna turned back to Jocelyn once more.
"Did anybody ever tell you what happened to her?"
"Mhm?"
"Lucy. I just...figured you might want to know..."
"Not that I can recall."
"We were fording the Tammin, a couple miles upstream from the site of the first big battle. We were to search for any survivors; some of the wounded managed to haul out but hadn't the strength to go far. We all thought that it'd be simple, easy, in and out. The enemy was broken, we'd swept the area with chariots once already, and we had a mage with us. Well, we made pretty good time. By the late afternoon, we'd flushed a scipii out of the underbrush and put out of the way a group of rattlers hiding in a shallow cave. Back there, it's all hilly forest, y'know. We were passing through a clearing, just about to turn back, when the trees grew legs. I've no idea how they managed to blend in so well, but the air was suddenly full of arrows."
"Driders?"
"Yup, some kind of orb weaver. Rachel went down with a lucky shaft in her visor before we could start exchanging bolts, and by then they were on top of us. It got bad, fast. We didn't have enough axes or hammers for the carapace, and they got in too close for the spears before we really had a chance to form up. I think the only thing that saved us was the battle dress; they couldn't web us up through the blades and spikes."
"And the mage."
Anna nodded. "Oh, yeah, her too. She threw up a wall of flame around us and wiped out a good third of them before they swarmed over our party and forced her to defend herself up close."
"I thought driders didn't burn?"
"They don't, but that doesn't mean heat has no effect on them. Teresa boiled them in their own hides till they were bursting like overfilled waterskins. But even so, it was ticklish work. I thought we weren't going to make it until suddenly they were pulling back. A fourth of us were dead or missing, and almost all the rest were wounded."
"And then something happened?"
"We were all still recovering from the fight with the driders. I didn't even see it till it poured over a hill and leapt into our midst. We weren't...you can't even fight something like that."
"What was it, a slime?"
Anna shivered as she slowed, lowering her voice and speaking at last with reticence and a genuine fear hitherto totally absent. "It...well, it was a chimera. Know anything about them?"
"Some, but I'm always trying to find out more. What was it like?"
Seated now on a gnarled root, Anna continued her tale. "Horrible. They're like...'flesh slime' is probably the best description. Nothing to pierce or cut or crush, just this amorphous mass of skin colored flesh. It rolled over the frontline and threw tendrils into those behind before anyone moved. I saw Ellie melt out of her armor and into that...thing before Teresa opened a gate for us. Twenty four women went into the woods."
Anna lifted and spread her hand. "Five. Five of us came out. Teresa died of her wounds before the medics could get to her. I thought that was the end of it, but then Monica vanished. Heather followed, both on patrol. By the time we found out it was chewing its way up our ranks Gisela was gone. They're shapeshifters, too, we learned. Just slipped into some poor fuck's skin and snatched them."
Jocelyn sat down next to Anna. "Why was it targeting your group?"
Anna threw up her hands. The timbre of her voice grew shriller as she answered.
"I don't know! Who knows why those fuckers do anything!? They just kill and kill and kill some more and you know what the worst part is? You can't even fight the damn things! There's no enemy, nothing to work at, nothing you can do but wait until it finds you!"
A tittering cloud of birds leapt from the trees as Anna's hysterical shrieking died away. She was crying now, knees pulled up to her chest as she blubbered onwards.
"I'm sorry, I just I, I...gods, I just, I needed to, to tell someone. I can't go on like this! I'm just so tired of always watching and, and watching and I just...I just want it to end somehow and..."
Jocelyn unbuckled her guantlet and laid a conforting hand over Anna's back.
"Sh, sh. It's okay, It's okay, you can stop. You don't need to worry anymore."
But she did worry, reaching up to sieze Jocelyn's shoulders in an ironlike grip as she stammered on.
"And what after? It's going to get me and drag me into it and that will be the end! And then there will be nothing! No Lorelei, no fields, no hero's welcome, nothing! I'll-"
"And what, exactly, is so bad about that?"
Anna stopped mid sentance, gaping like a fish at the hardness of the tone as Jocelyn rose to her feet.
"You all and your fables. This world is broken and cursed, a land of pain and hunger and depravity. Why should the afterlife be any different? Who has seen your marvelous sunset city and returned? How do you know you will step over the threshold and find yourself in Lorelei rather than some hellish gulf between the far stars, or under the crushing weight of the fathomless deeps of the sea, or a million other places of pain and horror? The fact of the matter is that you don't know, not really, but you've collectively decieved yourselves into thinking otherwise because you cannot live with that uncertainty at the end gnawing forever at the back of your minds. Compared to the truth, what is the oblivion a chimera brings but mercy?"
Anna loooked up, blinking through her tears. Slowly, numbly, she began to shake.
"Anna? Is..oh! godsdamnit, hold still."
Faster than thought, Jocelyn's arm snapped out and siezed on the seam of Anna's gorget as the latter rose to run. The terrified woman spun to the touch and cracked Jocelyn across the face with a desperate backhanded blow. Instantly, pain shot down her fingers; it was like striking cold, hard clay or frozen earth. Unphased by the slight depressions the slap had made in her cheek, Jocelyn stepped forwards and struck hard enough to bounce Anna's head off the tree behind her. Stumbling forwards, she gasped as fingers like bars of iron curled around her throat. The vicelike grip choked off her terrified scream before it could begin. Twisting, clubbing, prying availed nothing; the arm that held her was so unyielding as to be almost like polished marble painted over with subtle skill till the flesh seemed almost to breathe with life. Anna could only stare with bulging eyes as Jocelyn raised her uncovered arm and reached towards her face.
"It won't hurt, I swear to you. On my existence, I swear it. Now, quit wriggling..."
It was only out of habit that Anna moved. As the pallid arm stretched out towards her upturned face, she swept her right hand up as she had so many times before in training. The small blade of blue crystal sank deep into her captor's exposed wrist, almost disapearing from sight before a crackling shock shot through the limb. The result was spectacular, in a gruesome fashion. The whole limb convulsed. Armor cracked and tore as her joints melted away and the whole appendage whipped like the tentacle of a Kraken, lengthening and contracting randomly as it did. Jocelyn howled, dropping Anna as she snatched at the knife still stuck in the end of what was now little more than an uncontrolably lashing tendril of tan flesh. Hacking, speeding forwards in a stumbling run, Anna at last gave voice to the full throated cry of inarticulate horror which she had for so long contained.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Lukas flicked his hands in a futile attempt to clear them of the cold, congealed blood that had long since seeped through his guantlets. Next to him sat two lumpish piles almost as saturated with blood and gore as he himself was. On his left was a mass of bones and fragments of bones, cloth, and the tattered remains of wings bleached white and papery by long acid immersion, hard scales and horns, all of the refuse the long digestive tract had accumulated in its years of hard use. To the right was a small pile of coins, knives, chains, and other objects of value that he felt were wholly inadequete compensation for the trouble and the stench of working through nearly twelve feet of slippery gut. The lamia lay chest up in front of him, stomach split open almost to the end of her tail. Sighing, he picked up the knife and began once more to saw at the last little bit of stubborn flesh, lamenting the durable scales and thick, fibrous muscles that had long since dulled the serrated edge. A little longer, perhaps five minutes more he thought, and he could-
"AAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHH!"
Lukas shot to his feet as a horrible cry split the air. He turned just in time to see Anna come stumbling out from around the bulk of the great tree. In motion at once, he paused as a long tendril wrapped around the trunk and swung a half-formed abomination into sight. It was Jocelyn, or something that had once been Jocelyn, but that resemblance was rapidly diminishing. Its flesh flowed like taffy or pudding, armor buckling as the legs lengthened. The torso telescoped forwards, a lashing tail tore free of the confining curiass, and it threw its arm forwards into a coiling rope that flashed towards Anna. Even as he leapt into a sprint once more, Lukas saw he wouldn't reach her in time. One stride, two, and the tendril had caught Anna about the throat and yanked her back into the grip of the pulsating blasphemy. The amorphous and terrible thing bent low, holding Anna's jaw open to pry out a tooth before it leaned in and kissed her on the brow. Anna shivered, looked up just as the thing reached out and cupped her cheek tenderly in one outsized hand. The flesh was cool, smooth. By comparison, her own skin was hot, grimy, covered in fine hairs and slick with sweat. She tried to pull her hand away-and realized in a moment of dawning horor that it was not her own hand that was fastened about her cheek. She was feeling the touch from both sides...and the sensation was spreading. Already the chimera's fingers had lost all definition; its arm ended in Anna's face with a connection of smooth, unbroken skin. And bit by bit, her flesh was crawling up to meet it. She felt she moved her arm, and then wrapped it around something warm and soft just as the huge thing's warping paw closed on her side. Rifts formed in her stomach and chest as the flesh migrated away and slid smoothly up the fastened loops of her unnatural captor. There was no blood, no ruin or rending, just her own body rapidly spooling out into the same tan puttylike stuff that was looping itself-or she was looping-around her body. More and more she felt the motions of that powerful and plastic thing, until at last she realized with a frightened glibber that she was looking at herself, already small and melting away, from the eyes of her softly smiling killer. She tried to scream, shook. The whole conjoined mess swayed, limbs and loops and pooling flesh quivering as she kicked and thrashed in their mind. But slowly, her terrror abated. Other thoughts rose unbidden to compete for her attention and drove her mind from the horrible abyss of fear that she had felt herself being sucked down into. She was impatient, struggling to balance as her weight shifted. There was a little worry, a need to get to Lukas. He would kill himself, or else call for reinforcements, and she must get finished with her current victim before he did either. And she was vauguely proud of herself for telling the truth about the pain, because the truth was good for some reason. But mostly there was an anticipation, a hunger for knowledge. She thought back, trying hard to remember something...something Teresa had said to her. A palace, half sunk and crumbling away beneath the sands of the Halystryx Desert...something...something...she couldn't recall. It wasn't there!
Angry, frustrated, Anna turned and kicked a log hard enough to splinter it. She felt the bitter dissapointment of long months wasted, so much effort sunk into so little payoff. The warm thing in her grip was all but gone now, hands already refo-
Shrieking, Anna screamed into her mind, lost in a sea of emotions and thoughts that for a moment she knew were not her own. But then she was amused, laughing at herself a little for her own stupid fear. "I am safe," she thought to herself, "safe and strong and finally ready for a well deserved rest." The exhaustion, all the months of fear and sleepless nights and the drain of her constant suspicion, rolled back to the surface. "Come on. You can let go," she told herself, still a little afraid. "But it'll get me-" and then she laughed, because it had already gotten her and she must have the memory of a goldfish. "See? Nothing to worry about anymore." She was vaugely aware that she was moving, but honestly, it felt good to just stop for a moment. She had done this before; it was nothing to worry about. Perhaps she was dreaming a lucid dream, but it really didn't matter and she was content to lie there like a passenger on a ship, calmly watching the world roll by besides them. Her fears receded, replaced by the strange emotions that come to us in dreams, the irrational flickers of feeling that we have no explanation or understanding of rising till her thoughts were utterly devoid of all else.
The chimera rose back to its feet, shuddering as it shook out of the dream-paralysis bleeding away as the little mind unraveled at last. It had lived another life, a sea of strange thoughts and emotions and habits that would surface over time, but right now it needed to-
"Sonic!"
A little glass vial smacked into the blasphemous thing and exploded in a blast of sound and force, scattering the puttylike plasticity of its body and dropping it to the earth. Lukas threw another as it tried to rise, then turned and ran as fast as he could. He vaulted a fallen tree before swinging wide and crouching behind the bulk of an old oak. Fumblingly, he withdrew a slender tool from a belt pocket. A long handle ended in a loop of metal, with dozens of thin wires extending from the rim and wrapping around a coin shaped disk of green beryl, which he began to speak quickly into.
"Captain Emmerson, this is Lukas. Jocelyn's...Jocelyn's dead, Anna's dead, I need a capture team with shockpoles and a mage right now! I'm-"
"-out of range?"
Lukas looked up towards the voice, confused for a moment to see Jocelyn standing stark naked besides him. His shock lasted just a moment, but it was enough for the thing to take a step forwards and catch hold of him. Implacable fingers pried at his jaw, levering open his mouth and reaching back to the left side of his lower jaw. Held in the unbreakable embrace, he winced as it yanked out his premolar and flung it off into the woods. That done, the chimera released him and stepped back. Lukas mirrored the motion, turning to run. He had no idea how it had known of the false tooth, the hollow toxin-filled shell that could be crushed to take one to a swift and painless death, but he didn't intend to stick around and find out.
Lukas made it all of three steps before a powerful tendril wrapped about his waist and hoisted him unceremoniously into the air. The chimera reeled him in like a fish flopping on a line. Bound by the preternatural flesh, he could do nothing as it drew him in, unnatural body roiling as it...dropped him in an unceremonious heap on the floor.
"Listen to me now. I need you alive to assist me. At present, you lack arms capable of inflicting any significant injury to me. You are slower, less mobile, and your senses are less acute; your only option is to cooperate."
Lukas crawled backwards in blind terror. Once more he reached into his belt, this time withdrawing a small waxen lump of a glossy black substance. A blow from the handle of his mace along a small paper stuck to its side set the thing alight. Great clouds of choking, acrid smoke poured forwards, enveloping monster and man alike. Lukas leapt backwards, tearing away through the noisome cloud. On he ran, tripping over roots and wincing as unseen branches slapped at his face. After a few seconds of gasping in the foul air, he burst from the noxious fumes and barreled forwards, only for a strong hand to clamp down upon his shoulder. The chimera had simply lengthened its legs, striding above the concealing cloud and dropping down again once he had emerged. Frantic, Lukas swept his mace up and into the face that so resembled that of his recently departed lover. There was a squelching, as of a heavy object sinking into sticky mud, and the spiked head made a crater above its cheek, but the chimera did not retaliate. Siezed by fury, and lacking now any tools to escape, Lukas yanked the mace free with an anguished cry before bringing it back around in a savage blow that crushed the thing's jaw back into its skull. Again and again he brought the steel ball down on the chimera, his terror and shock giving way to a frenzied hatred and desire for revenge as the malleable thing continued to stand there. He hammered its chest until it resembled the hoof-pocked surface of a busy road, beat the head into a cauliflower, turned the arms into little more than the gnarled branches of a crooked tree, and yet the thing made no move to stop him. It just stood there, arms crossed over its chest and the whole thing twisted by his feverish strikes. Where he had laid into it the tan flesh was deformed and whirled like stretched putty. It seemed to feel no pain at all, and as the minutes wore on, Lukas's blows came with less and less force. At last, he staggered backwards, overbalancing as he raised the mace for an overhead swing, and fell heavily to the ground. As he lay gasping for air, the amorphous blasphemy strode forward to stand over him. It waited impassively as he swore at it, kicked it. All it did was stand there, silently watching as the anger burned out to a sobbing grief and came at last to an exhausted emptiness.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Slowly, Lukas sat up against a tree and at last regarded his assailant with the calm resignation of a man who has exhausted all other options. Seeing this, the chimera slid once more into motion. The impact-riddled body flowed and twisted as it effaced Lukas's efforts, pulling together at last into that of a small woman with pale skin and close cut brown hair. When all was in place, it spoke once more in a soft, slightly patronizing tone.
"Are you finished?"
"Fuck you."
"I see. Allow me to make things very plain. I know that you have a sister and progenitor in Avarai, what they look like, and where they live. And if you refuse me here, I will find them and make you watch."
Lukas started. "How the hell do you-"
"You spoke of them to Jocelyn."
He paled, slumped back against the tree. They stared at one another for several moments before Lukas met its eyes again. Softly, defeated, he spoke once more.
"What do you want, blight?"
The chimera smiled.
"You will help me develop and execute a plan to infiltrate the Razor Keep in Avarai, recover a prisoner from the dungeons beneath it, and escape before any overwhelming force can be brought to bear against us."
"You and what army?"
"Myself."
Lukas shrugged.
"Look, there are easier and certainly less painful ways to commit suicide. I can, uh, build like, a fire for you to jump in?"
"The keep is not impenetrable. There was an escape four months ago affected by an individual far less-"
Lukas cut her off with a wave of his hand.
"The red? She didn't escape from the keep itself. They'd brought her up and put her on a crossbar outside, which she somehow ripped herself off and then flew away from. They switched to wires for the executions over that, I think. But regardless, you just don't have the manpower to get in there."
"You are being unhelpful."
Lukas sat up straighter and shook his head.
"No, what you want to do just...isn't going to work. Look here."
Grabbing hold of a stick, Lukas scratched a crude circle and a box around it in the loamy soil of the forest floor.
"This is the keep, and that's the main entrance to the dungeons. It's a vertical shaft with absolutely no cover that can be sealed at each level to impede your progress."
Swiftly, growing more energetic, Lukas added a series of sqiggly lines radiating from the circle.
"These are the only other ways through the facility. The dungeons are a maze of rooms connected by small corridors lit with the same intense lights you saw in the priory. There is nowhere to hide, and in tight confines like that you'd be vulnerable to magic, corrosives, anything that could be thrown at you."
"And if I impersonate one of the humans who works there?"
Lukas faltered a moment, but then rose to contest the point. "You...well, you might get in, I guess, but it wouldn't help you come back out. Maybe you'd get to whatever you wanted to find, if you picked somebody with the appropriate position and then didn't get caught by behavioral issues or any checks that've been put in place specifically to stop things like you. But, like, then what? You'd have no authority to get them moved, and any attempt to take them by force is going to turn the place from a prison into a deathtrap."
"No authority to get them moved? And if I did have that?"
He thought a moment, shook his head.
"If you had it, maybe. But to get it you'd not only have to nab some higher up, you'd have to fabricate a paper trail and impersonate them for a while while it went through. Though, say, who is it you want?"
Lukas leaned forwards once more.
"Honestly, they might just give them up if you asked."
The chimera blinked.
"They would...give it up to me if I asked?"
Lukas's voice grew in intensity. "Well, maybe, I dunno. It depends on how useful they are, but we obviously don't want to waste any more women fighting you than we have to. Might just be cheaper to hand her over and get you out of our hair.."
"They hate me, fear me beyond that given any other creature. I have been in your heads; they will not g-."
"But you don't know that, not for certain. Please." Lukas stretched out his arm and proffered his guantleted hand to the baffled creature. "Please try. I can get my sister to pull some strings, arrange a meeting or something. Just give it a chance."
The chimera stared for a moment, regarding the outstreched hand as one does a snake poised to strike. For several long seconds it did nothing but stare...but then, slowly, it extended its own arm and hauled Lukas up to his feet.
"The social convention in this situation is to shake, yes?"
"Uh, sure?"
The chimera grinned just a little too wide, pumping his hand experimentally before letting it fall once more.
"Excelent. We should head southwards; we can take the old forest road till we pick up the Queensroad at the opal dells. From there I think we can ride it all the way to Avarai, if Hannah's memory's accurate. Hold still; I'm going to pick you up."
Lukas flinched backwards as it reached for him, raising a hand in feeble protest.
"The hell're you doing!? If we run into someone-"
"Then I'll put you down and we walk for a while. There'll be no trouble so long as I don't take too grotesque a form, and we can cover that distance in two, three days compared to the two weeks it'd take if we walked. Be still."
Shivering as the arms of unnatural flesh wrapped around him, Lukas nevertheless offered no resistance as the chimera hoisted him up bridal style. It carried him easily, though he must have weighed a full three hundred pounds with all the gear accounted for. As it gathered itself to run, Lukas set his head in his hands.
"Oh gods, how am I ever going to explain this?"
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HeinousSaurus - Been posting for a bit
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