Isharan Thief Quest (on hold indefinitely)

[Revx_Z]

At some point, she'll eat something with a sword, and we can cut our way out.

Or maybe something with a sword will come and cut its way into her.

Coinflip time again, I guess?

[empatheticapathy]

Coinflip time again, I guess?

Fine by me.

[Revx_Z]

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 8: Spelunking a Spider

Something thrashes weakly in your bulging belly as your greatly superior acids continue to work on your prey. The bland taste of web crosses your tongue again as you burp where you sit. Stewing in a pool of watery acid, enclosed on all sides by darkness and giant stomach, crouched atop another bundle of web holding another victim. You rub your tummy for a while, helping to squeeze and crush whatever's dissolving inside, feeling its squirming get weaker and weaker until it stops entirely. But there are still hard parts, so you continue rubbing, accelerating its progress towards becoming a nothing but a nice meat soup to be gurgled into your guts and added to your ass.

Pleasant as that distraction is, though, you can't ignore the rest of your situation for ever. "Hey giant spider lady? Maybe spit me out?" you shout hopefully. It's probably not going to answer, but asking costs you nothing. "I'm not digesting here, might as well save us both some time!"

Still no response. Fine. You rub your hands all over the other prey trapped in here with you, gumming up your hands with sticky web, perhaps adding the little edge you'll need to climb and fight your way back up the arachne's throat. Struggling to kick and push against the walls of flesh all around you, you make your way to what you think is the esophagus, grab the sphincter there with both hands, and pull open. It resists, but stretches enough for you to pop your head through. So far, so good. You reach up, trying for a handhold, but can get no purchase on the slick insides of the throatflesh. The saliva smeared everywhere defies even your sticky hands, rendering them less glue-y and more goo-ey. You try jumping, shoving your shoulders up past the sphincter, attempting to lodge yourself and maybe stick in the arachne's throat, but only slip right back down again, assisted both by gravity and a muscular contraction pushing you back.

So much for that. Unless someone conveniently comes along and cuts the arachne open soon, there's only one way you're getting out of here... might as well take it sooner rather than later, you suppose. Well, maybe after a little more tummyrubbing. Wouldn't want to get stuck because of a bulge. You put a hand on your stomach and poke gently, where a pleasant softness tells you that your meal is well on its way into mush and soon will be completely liquefied. Pushing past the other victim of the arachne's hungers, you splash through stomach juices and push at stomach walls and stumble around in a slimy mess until finally you stumble upon what you think must be the pyloric sphincter. It's a firm ring of muscle clenched tightly closed. It won't be as easy to drag open as the the cardiac sphincter.

So you don't. Instead you dive into the liquids pooling here, (it stings, but nowhere near as bad as it'll sting if you can't escape) and poke one digit into the hole in the middle of the knot of muscle, as though fingering the anus of an uptight prude who really need to loosen up a bit. With your other hand you gently stroke, stroke, stroke around the outside of the ring, and indeed the sphincter starts to open up a little, just enough for you to get a second digit in. It really is like fingering a prude, you think, gently caressing, pulling out and pushing in again, pleasuring the arachne's exit so that the tension melts away and it starts to unwind enough for you to insert three fingers, then four, then -- jam your fist in!

If it were a woman, it would have squealed. But if the arachne said anything, you can't hear it, and the sphincter merely tenses around your wrist. Now it's all taut again, but it's taut at a much wider position than before, and you feel it tugging at you, trying to pull you through with a reflex intended to keep poop from coming back into the stomach. Once more unto the breach, you stroke and gently caress the pseudo-anus until it relaxes enough to let you push in your arm up to the shoulder, then it opens for your head, and then all the rest is just moving with the contractions.

You've escaped the stomach, and made it into the intestines. The faint, tingling burn of acid swiftly fades, replaced by a faint suction of guts trying to absorb nutrients from your body. "Not today, suckers!" you allow yourself a moment to gloat before returning to struggling and squishing your way through. The arachne's intestines are much, much tighter than its stomach, and longer than those of the kari you'd escaped from the same way. For an unknown amount of time you merely wriggle forwards, or at least head-wards, "forwards" having lost all meaning in the curve and tangle of bowels stretching to encompass your body. Foot-wards lies a belly, head-wards lies the anus that is your goal, and that's all you have to guide you. Squirm. Squirm. Squirm. In this tight flesh-sock of a passage encompassing your body you have very little leverage, but you can tell you're making progress by the gradually increasing stench as you approach the poopier parts.

Pained moans also reveal that the arachne doesn't like this giant intestinal blockage. Well, that makes two of you who'll be happier the faster you get out. Squirm. Wriggle. Crawl. You twist and turn, kicking and swimming through the tight tube enfolding you, until finally your hand bursts through a final sphincter and you feel a breeze blowing on it. The arachne's unhappy cries get much louder now that you can hear it through the open anus rather than muffled by its body, not helped at all by you grabbing and pinching tight on its butt to start pulling yourself out. Your head emerges, and then your shoulders, distending the spider-bitch's asshole, and now you can feel it trying to force you the rest of the way out like a particularly large shit. You happily take the leverage and drop out of its ass, hitting a strand of webbing as you fall, snapping it, falling another fifteen or twenty feet to the ground, landing painfully, but who cares? You're free! You're out! And your predator is still whining in a manner that suggests it has no interest in coming after you again just now.

Clothes in tatters, skin burnt, soaked in acid and web and spit and slime and poop and goodness knows what else, you run.

You run and don't even slow down before the spider-bitch's patch of forest is out of sight, and then you keep jogging across the plains until you hit the coast again, and only then do you stop to breathe heavily. In the distance, you see ships out on the water, and looking a little to the right of them, a large blotch that must be Port Rotwood. So that's where you've ended up. Considering your current condition, you'll be looked at funny, but you think you can handle a few funny looks if it means civilization instead of plodding through the wilderness!

--

What to do (initially) in Port Rotwood? Open-ended vote.
[] Write-in

[rotta287]

[X] Get some clothes and a bath, you frigging stink.

[empatheticapathy]

[X] Clothes and bath