The Last Sunset for a Flat Earth
Chapter 4
Flashpoint
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"You know, I once prayed that if hyperspace travel were invented in my lifetime, I would encounter a world where women actually chased and competed for men instead of the other way around. And then I discovered there was an entire race of fairies out there among the stars, mostly female, who pursued men quite aggressively.
To EAT THEM!
What the fuck! Come on, for God's sake! Can't we guys get a fucking break! Next time I'm hiring an attorney to word my wishes a little more carefully!" - Lt. Shawn Porter from the Sojourner Colonial Defense Special Operations Command, "Voices From the Expedition to Hell: A Collection of Soldiers' Perspectives", hosted by Andrew Parker
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Narissa scrambled away from Felecia, screaming, "Back! Get back! Get away from me!"
Felecia cringed as the battered, bruised, wild-eyed Narissa held her arm out stiffly, showing Dominic's miniaturized body in her tightly clenched hand for his mother to see. "Get... away... or I'll crush him!"
Sarella and Inessa moved swiftly to intercede, but then Narissa, spitting blood from her mouth, laughed fitfully. Opening her legs lewdly for Felecia to see, she said, "Say byebye to your little boy!" and pushed his squirming body into her vagina, lifting her hips to give her a good view of her son being swallowed whole into her womanhood.
Felecia nearly fell on her ass with shock as the other two fairies stopped dead in their tracks.
Bernard Sabick stepped backwards, amazed at what he'd just seen Narissa do. He could even sense the panic in Dominic's mind as he was pulled up deep into Narissa's body.
Only the dire need to monitor his surroundings and keep himself concealed, provided enough distraction from the bizarre situation unfolding before his eyes, to keep him from getting sick.
Or angry.
"Yummy..." Narissa chuckled, trembling with a tinge of pleasure tingling through her clenching muscles. Licking her lips, she taunted, "You're not the only woman who has enjoyed having Dominic in her belly." She then slowly, painfully worked her way to her feet. Pointing at the astonished mother, she tensed her stomach muscles, causing them to ripple visibly as her vagina clamped down hard around Dominic. "That..." she pointed at her belly, "is your son being squeezed almost to death in there."
Felecia put her hand to her mouth as she backed off.
Narissa edged closer on her wobbly legs, biting her lip as her muscles tightened again. "You hurt me really bad, human," she hissed. Pointing at Sarella, she warned, "If you come any closer I'll crush him inside me. I swear."
Sarella glared at her. "Go ahead," she sneered with a grin.
"NO!" Felecia screamed at Sarella. "No! Are you crazy! That's my son!"
"Relax," Sarella dismissed her. "Her body won't let her do it."
Narissa scowled contemptuously at her. "We'll see about that!" she laughed, tensing her face and forcing her vagina to bear down as hard as her muscles could around the helpless victim inside her. She grunted forcefully, then felt the satisfying collapse of her insides around the human's body moving up into her belly, forcing the man trapped within her to yield to the overwhelming power of her vagina crushing him from all sides. "Ahhh," she reared her head triumphantly, chuckling. "No more Dominic!"
Bernard would have sprung into action that instant, except he could clearly see, through Dominic's mind, what was really happening.
Even so, he tensed, his fists clenched until his knuckles were bare and his fingers dug painfully into his palm.
At that moment, however, he sensed a palpable change in the wind at his back; then he noticed the air pressure changed ever so slightly... as if something had displaced it.
His mind instinctively reached out to feel passively for other thoughts nearby, laying an infinite network of invisible psychic tripwires for an area greater than a full square acre in all directions.
Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a swarm of thoughts.
Thoughts he instantly wished he had never tried to detect.
Glancing to and fro, he lost his nerve and nearly his concentration as his mind hastily shut off the toxic mental signals assailing his mind with unbelievably unholy desires and intentions that no human mind should ever know of.
Hastily, he backflipped into the tree behind him, perching himself on a thick branch three body lengths above the ground.
"Nooo!" Felecia cried, falling on her ass.
Suddenly, though, Dominic slipped up further into Narissa, away from the grip of her tightly squeezing walls. Her eyes widened as a slight sting in her belly told her he'd passed into her womb instead. "Uh oh..."
Inessa chuckled, shaking her head. "You can't squeeze him to death. If you clench too hard your womb will open and your body will simply push him right in."
Narissa's lower abdomen began to glow. "Oh damn." Looking at Felecia sitting on her back on the ground, she smirked and framed her belly with her hands. "Oh well. I guess he makes a much more exciting dinner alive than dead."
Even Sarella became weak in the knees from disgust. "Oh, that's enough from you," she snarled, surging forward with both her fists cocked.
Inessa caught her as she surged forward. "No!"
Sarella's eyes flared at Inessa. "Let me go!" she hissed, twisting away.
Pointing at Narissa, Inessa begged, "Sarella, please, wait until he returns!"
Suddenly, Narissa's eyes widened. "Who're you?" she pointed to someone behind Felecia.
Felecia blinked at her, then craned her head to see another fairy woman stepping from behind a tree. "What in Rhea's name is going on here?"
Everyone turned to see a flame-haired fairy in a tight ivory jump suit with orange trim, stepping into the clearing. Her translucent wings glowed feebly as the moon's faint light fell upon her.
Narissa and Inessa spun about on their heels. "The Grue!" Inessa gasped. "Damn! All this damned arguing and they sneaked right up on us!"
Bernard was still shaking those evil, disconcerting thoughts from his head.
So Narissa wasn't just a lone nutcase who thought she was from another planet. That theory, as weak as it was before, was wiped from his mind forever by the sudden arrival of more two-legged monsters just like her. Monsters with a much clearer sense of their origin and perceived place in the universe.
Monsters who deserved to die just for what he saw going on in their heads.
"Rhea?" Narissa gasped, breaking into a run. Felecia rushed to get to her feet, but Narissa uncaringly ran straight over her, knocking the wind out of her lungs. "Are you one of the colonists? Or...?"
The red-haired woman backed off, putting her hands up defensively. "What kind of foul lechery was that, stuffing a pig gut beast in your body that way?"
"Narissa!" Inessa yelled to her. "Get back... you are NOT one of them any more! They'll kill you!"
Narissa stopped dead in her tracks as she noticed others stepping into the clearing. "Don't listen to them," she pleaded her case, her aches and pains slowly disappearing as her injuries healed before everyone's eyes, "they made up some story about me belonging to Gaia or some crazy-"
The red haired woman pointed at her. "So what is that glow coming from your body?"
A platinum-haired fairy in nothing more than pink silk panties, came up alongside her, her hands on her hips. "She's a fool and a coward," the fairy laughed, her hair covering one half of her face as she regarded Narissa with a smile. "She lies to our faces hoping we're stupid enough to suspend our disbelief."
"No, wait..." Narissa protested.
Felecia coughed loudly and struggled to her feet.
Sarella cracked her knuckles. "So I see you've saved us the trouble of looking for you." Inessa turned her head to stare at her with open-mouthed incredulity. "You've stumbled on much worse than a few daughters of Gaia... my name is Sarella... of the Siluvaran Royal Guard."
"Royal what?" the platinum-blonde woman cocked her head forward mockingly. "What are you talking about?"
Inessa threw her hands down. "So much for going incognito," she sighed. With but a single step, she became a blur, crossing a dozen meters in the blink of an eye to slam her fist into the red-headed fairy's face.
A loud, wet squish heralded the gruesome death of one Silurhean warrior as her head shattered, exploding into a cloud of gray matter and inky crimson blood.
Bernard got down and sat on the branch, letting his legs dangle. *Well this ought to make my work easier... they'll wear these demons down and I can handle the survivors...*
"NO!" Narissa howled, reaching out. In a flash, another platinum-haired Silurhean warrior leapt into action and was instantly upon her, coiling her arms around her throat. "Wait!" she choked and coughed. "Stop! I'm not one of them!"
She thrashed about to free herself from her assailant's grip; unexpectedly, the fairy flew off of her, into a rock, causing her to flip over and land on her head with an ominous crunch. Narissa then deftly swerved out of the way of a ball of warm light, her eyes catching a fleeting glimpse of the flaming mass that was its source.
The fireball slammed into the rock, splitting it in half and lighting the mortally wounded fairy on the other side ablaze.
Sarella effortlessly cracked the skull of one fairy with her elbow, sending her flipping head over heels onto the grass, her blood and brains spilling free from her head to mingle with the soil.
"Come on, I'm not one of them!" Narissa protested even louder, sidestepping another attacking fairy.
Then she spotted Felecia, frantically turning this way and that in confusion, calling for her son, and she smiled.
"Here," Narissa said, dodging another attack and grabbing Felecia by the arm, "she is a human... I offer her to you instead of having her myself!"
"What the?!" Felecia howled as she was tossed about like a rag doll.
Inessa and Sarella suddenly stopped, as did the others, as Felecia spun about into the arms of a naked Silurhean woman with jet black lips and hair.
The fairy regarded the wide, confused eyes of the human in her accidental embrace, and then smiled to Narissa. "Much obliged," she said in Narissa's native language, clapping her hands around Felecia's shoulders.
"No!" Inessa howled.
Bernard regarded Inessa and the overwhelming sense of amusement inside her head. She was acting a part.
She was tricking the Silurhean fairy into eating Felecia by pleading for her not to.
But why?
He had to know... but if this meant doom for Felecia, was it worth her life?
Then again...
Sarella blocked Inessa and smiled. Inessa looked at her, then smiled as well, before sagging and hugging Sarella with a woeful sob.
Narissa stumbled at that point as her womb finished absorbing Dominic; he re-appeared next to her, unclothed. In an instant, he bent down low, realizing his immodesty.
"DOMINIC!" Felecia cried, her voice dwindling into near silence in mid-utterance as Dominic caught sight of her being shrunken down. "Nooooooo!"
The Silurheans looked at Inessa and Sarella with confusion. "You're our enemy... and you're just going to stand there?"
Sarella shrugged as the jet black haired fairy held Felecia by her shoulders with her fingers, studying her for a moment. "You got us. Totally outnumbered. Hopefully if you get your fill from these two, you'll leave us alone."
The sinewy, silver-haired fairy chuckled. "Maybe we will." She gestured to Dominic. "He's certainly not one of us."
Dominic lunged for the black-haired fairy. "Hey, let my mother go!"
The fairy simply reached out with another hand and uttered a single syllable; Dominic froze in mid-stride, his mouth still wide open.
"She hasn't eaten anyone yet," the silver haired one noted. "She can't speak your language..." She gestured at Felecia. "But once she's eaten her... she will."
Sarella nodded impatiently, fighting the urge to wretch as she was forced to ponder what had to have happened that the silver-haired one, and some of the others, could speak English. "Yeah yeah yeah," she faked disinterest in the woman's monologue, "I doubt she can even get that whole woman's body down her throat."
Bernard's lip twitched as he regarded the silver-haired fairy. For some reason Sarella knew she was doomed. He had to see how this played out, if for no other reason but to kill that silver-haired monster himself if he turned out to be reading Sarella wrong.
The silver-haired one spoke to the fairy with Felecia squirming and thrashing in her grip, and she reared her head to laugh out loud.
"Actually I kind of like swallowing big things... whole," the fairy replied in their language. "She'll certainly fill my stomach... for a while."
Sarella waved her off, berating her in the Silurheans' own tongue. "Talk, talk, talk." Then she folded her arms and turned away slightly, as if to dismiss her.
Felecia struggled desperately as the women's voices nearly deafened her from their volume and proximity. From what Narissa was saying, she quickly realized she was about to come to a horrible end.
How could Sarella sell her out like that? Weren't they just talking about these demons as if they were enemies? Or did she really think they would let them live after the horrible deed was done?
"Dominic!" she screamed, seeing her son frozen there, like a lifelike olympic statue sculpted to appear in the middle of a sprint. "DOMINIC!" Seeing he was unmoving, she quickly turned to Narissa, her heart racing wildly. "NARISSA!! INESSAAAAA!! Help!!!"
The black-haired fairy giggled, then moaned, licking her lips as she turned Felecia around and brought her closer to her mouth.
Felecia saw those huge, thin, black lips parting to reveal her ivory teeth and pink, glistening tongue, and her body almost went slack from terror. She couldn't even choke out a scream as even her breath briefly fled her body.
Sarella folded her arms and sighed to Inessa. "See? She can't do it."
Felecia tried to talk, but she was too busy hyperventilating, as the now giant fairy lifted her miniaturized body over her head, and eased her down into the cavernous mouth tilted upwards to receive her.
At the same time, she saw another platinum-haired fairy step up and shrink down her son. Her stomach growled loudly with hunger as she unceremoniously dropped the helpless young man into her mouth.
"NOOOO!" Felecia screamed as her bare feet touched the fairy's tongue; she kicked wildly at the ribbed roof of her mouth, but it was of no use. The fairy's mouth closed in around her, her lips clamping down around her bosom as the slippery warm tongue caressed her body from behind, slathering her in saliva. "DOMINIC!!! OH GOD NO, DOMINIC!!!"
Bernard cringed. Every instinct in his body screamed for him to intervene, but everything he was getting from Narissa and Inessa warned him that his interference would do more harm than good.
It didn't matter... he could intervene at any second.
He tensed, ready to strike.
Felecia had just enough time to see the other fairy raise her head and gulp; a large lump slid down her throat as her muscles grabbed Dominic, then enveloped him, massaging him and carrying him down her neck past her collarbone. Then the alien woman licked her lips and moaned happily, her still growling stomach now filled with her beloved son.
At that point, her body went limp and her mind went blank; her body was too weak from the horror of it all to even move, as her feet slid down into the black-haired fairy's throat. She became numb as the fairy's mouth shut and the darkness closed in around her. Warm, wet muscles rippled around her as she was eased into the fairy's throat. She slipped past her tonsils and gave no further resistance, as the fight had suddenly been taken out of her when she saw her son swallowed alive and whole.
Silently, she laid there as the fairy's throat muscles gulped loudly, pulling her down the slick fleshy path. Her feet pushed through the tight ring into her assailant's stomach, and though her bosom was squeezed tightly, she hardly had enough strength left to grunt or struggle as she passed through into the hot, swampy chamber of the fairy woman's stomach.
She landed on her naked butt in a pool of liquid as her fleshy prison growled loudly, deafeningly around her.
Even her terror failed to raise up a scream from her throat as she capsized onto her side, her shoulder squishing loudly against the ground. She just lay there, tears welling up from her eyes as the fluid level began to rise.
All she could hope for now was to die before she had to think about what was happening to her poor son.
All that effort she'd put into raising him right.
All those years she worked her ass off to provide for him, even as the rich and powerful predators of humanity did everything in their power to take away her money, her livelihood, her son.
And now he was dying in some naked fairy woman's stomach.
Being digested.
A scream finally worked its way out of her...
... as a fitful, shuddering, whimpering cry.
The stomach she was trapped in, rumbled and groaned happily in response to her arrival.
Her cries then exploded into wails.
Bernard dropped from the branch and hung in mid-air, poised to strike. Even then, Inessa and Sarella's thoughts began to come into focus.
Suddenly he knew their entire plan for the demise of these devils... even though, at this point, he came to sorely wish he didn't.
The two fairies who had just eaten, kissed softly in front of Sarella and Inessa, then turned.
"You cared so little about those humans." the silver-haired one caressed her belly as the black-haired one stretched with her hands raised high over her head while she walked away. "Why are you even here?"
Inessa chuckled. "To watch you miserably fail to digest your meal."
Sarella lowered her head slightly, as if trying to stifle her own laughter.
"Fail?" the fairy scowled angrily. "What do you mean?" Her belly gurgled. "Do you hear that?" She wiggled her hips playfully. "That's your pig gut friend becoming nutrients. He'll be flowing through my veins in no time."
The jet black haired one moaned and caressed her belly as the others laughed; one came up and kissed her lips, and the two walked away hand in hand.
Sarella tapped her foot. "You know, the humans have a saying that I'm actually quite fond of at this moment."
The silver-haired one squished her face. "Huh?"
Inessa snapped her finger. "Ashes to ashes... dust to dust?"
Bernard folded his arms at this point, his eyes keenly fixed on the silver-haired Grue, his lips tightened.
One way or another, he resolved, their fates were sealed.
Felecia was tossed about in her captor's restless, violently churning stomach as she wept loudly, slamming into a slippery wet wall and sliding back into the swelling pool of fluid. It was increasingly hot and muggy in here, and her entire body was now slathered in digestive juices, but she only pounded the walls weakly, crying so hard her ribs hurt before sliding back down to settle in the thick fluid to surrender to her fate.
The fleshy prison around her continued to gurgle loudly, like a giant pot of bubbling soup. Everything was churning slowly, but as the motions of her captor's stomach muscles grew more restless, she was being moved this way and that against her will, thrown face-first into the swelling pool of stomach acids and propelled back against the wall at random intervals.
It was then that she felt something in her hands. In the total darkness, she could still tell it was hair.
She reached up to feel her head.
It was bald.
Her hair then melted away in her hands.
Her crying started all over again as she curled into a ball, waiting for the acid to start melting the rest of her body.
The pool of liquid rose almost up to her neck; by then, though, she became too choked up to cry. She knew her son must have been in utter agony by now... or at least, he soon would be, as he died in the most horrible way imaginable.
The silver-haired fairy's stomach gurgled and purred again. "Ooh," she chuckled, "my tummy is doing a good job on that big meal inside me." She patted her belly. "I always wanted to know how these humans feel when my stomach melts their flesh into a nice nutritious puddle. I know it hurts a lot. Don't worry, little woman... you'll be a part of me soon enough! Hahah!"
Narissa rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on now," she gestured, "that's kinda disgusting."
"How would you know?" the other fairy shot back. "When was the last time you ever ate young healthy flesh?"
Narissa threw her hands down. "There hasn't been any to eat, remember! All the meat animals are gone on our homeworld!"
"And yet you didn't eat either of these two pig guts?"
Sarella's lip stiffened; she shot Inessa a quick glance. Inessa kept up her dispassionate look, but deep down, she could see the unease in her eyes.
Something was going wrong. This was taking too long.
"Well, I hope you enjoy it, ma'am," Sarella cut in with a faked smile. Now, her conscience was beginning to make her insides turn.
"Whatever," the silver-haired fairy dismissed Sarella, then walked off to the side, beyond Sarella or Inessa's field of vision, over to Narissa. "So..." she said, walking around the nervous, sweating fairy, "As I said... if you were starving for meat... why didn't you eat them?"
Narissa shuddered, fearful of ever having to answer that particular question. "Ummm... I already had my dinner," her response came quickly, though she almost instantly regretted it: "I'm full."
The silver-haired fairy slapped her hard across the face. "LIES!" she howled as Narissa stumbled back. "You just said you hadn't eaten! And I saw your glowing belly. You are a child of Gaia! Kill h..."
Suddenly, she staggered away from Narissa, wincing with pain.
Bernard grinned. The victims in their stomachs were still alive, even if panicked almost to the point of a heart attack. And he could see the currents of energy starting to flare up inside the alien women who had eaten them, starting to leak out of the blood vessels and nerve endings meant to contain them.
Somehow he knew some kind of horrific burn-out was imminent.
"Auuuugh!" the other fairy howled from a distance. "My skin! It's on fire! Dear Rhea!"
Inessa let out a long, quiet sigh of relief.
Sarella laughed nervously as her confidence crept back out of its dark hiding place. "Well well well," she turned to the silver-haired one. "You just gulped down someone who's been in the womb of a daughter of Gaia..." She waved the shuddering woman off. "Oh, those are big words for you. Let me make it simpler. Your magic is being turned against you right now. You're going to burn up... and die."
"Ashes to ashes..." Inessa giggled with a renewed glee and air of confidence.
The silver-haired fairy staggered back and tripped over the remains of the rock behind her. "No!!!" she screamed. "AUUUUUUUGHHHH!"
Suddenly, her body glowed brightly; and then, just like that, there was nothing but a pile of ash where she once lay.
A similar scream pierced the air from behind Sarella as the other Silurhean warrior suffered the same fate.
Bernard took off his sunglasses completely and blinked with disbelief.
What kind of devils were these creatures?
Alas, there wasn't time to gawk and wallow in disbelief. There would be plenty of time for that later.
For now there was Sarella to deal with. And to get to her, he had to deal away with these other devils.
Inessa quickly ran over and retrieved Felecia's shrunken form from the pile of ashes that was once the black haired fairy; a single uttered word and the stunned, coughing woman found herself back inside Inessa's womb before she could even yelp.
"Nari..." Sarella started to say, just as a softball-sized chunk of pale blue ice came racing at her head.
She jerked her head back just in time to evade the supersonic projectile, only to be deafened by the thunderous crack of the sonic boom it left in its wake. The sheer wind of the object's passing was enough to send her tumbling into a backflip.
As she fell hard on her back, she saw Inessa standing her ground and striking the object dead-on with her palm, repelling it right back at its sender. Another sonic boom blew the grass back as the ice ball hit a flame-haired fairy and obliterate the entire upper half of her body before doing the same to the fairy standing behind her.
Sarella then frantically turned to the pile of ash in the distance; Dominic, now barely the size of a gerbil, had emerged and was now tumbling into the damp dirt.
Inessa was a skilled fighter, but nowhere near capable of deflecting an object of that size, speed and mass. That amount of speed and strength had to come from absorbing Felecia.
So she sprang forward and tucked into a fetal position, throwing herself into a high-speed flying roll mere inches off the ground. Two fairies rushing up on her were bowled aside as she planted her feet into the ground, came to a stop, and grabbed Dominic's ash-covered body. In a flash, he was teleported into her womb, and her body immediately began converting him into magic energy she desperately needed for this fight.
Who would have thought that Narissa wasn't bullshitting after all?
Nothing in the universe could have ever prepared him for the sight of those gothic black lips yawning open to receive him, or the loud wet rippling noises of her throat forcing him down into the darkness of her stomach. Only then, when he was trapped and ready to be digested, did his body un-freeze, but it didn't matter. He'd struggled and kicked and pounded to get out, but in the end, he still wound up being sloshed around in the turbulent pond of that fairy's stomach acids.
Acids that did absolutely nothing to him but leave him bald-headed one moment, and sucking hot ash the next.
For all intents and purposes, he was supposed to be some alien woman's meal by now, reduced to a gooey nutritious fluid flowing into her veins. He should have died the most horrible death imaginable.
But instead the worst part of it all was the almost burning ash he had to cough back up out of his lungs.
Or perhaps, as he quickly found himself in darkness again, the worst was yet to come?
*Human...* a woman's voice called from all around the endless void now surrounding him. *Dominic... It's me, Sarella. You are in my womb.*
Dominic tried to look around; but he had no neck muscles that he could feel. Indeed, this was exactly what it felt like to be inside Narissa.
He was being absorbed... no, rejuvenated.
No, both.
*I need you to relax and surrender yourself to me as much as you can,* the voice spoke in a soft, pleading tone. *I'm in a fight with the monsters like the one who just swallowed you." Her voice became forceful, impatient, emphatic. *We're outnumbered. I need to absorb you and get as much magic energy as your body and life force can give. You need to be calm and concentrate on giving as much of yourself as you can... or we'll both die.*
Anger and confusion were Dominic's only emotions at the moment, even as he projected his thoughts as best he could. *Fine. I'll do my best. But we'gonna rumble when this is done.*
Even as he tried to pledge himself to her, he could not deny the disgust and humiliation of what was happening.
It was as if, one way or another, he was some fairy's food. Sarella must have rescued him for the purpose of absorbing him for herself. Now, he was trapped in her womb, being consumed for energy. It didn't console him at all that he was going to come back alive and well; it only meant she would have use him as a meal again and again and again.
This was wrong. It was totally wrong. This was what happened to hamburgers, not men.
Come to think of it, that pastrami double cheese burger yesterday was certainly the last hamburger he'd probably have in the foreseeable future... assuming he survived this.
*Perhaps you'll be able to relax now?*
Tendrils of pleasure that somehow managed to permeate him unnoticed, suddenly turned on.
Instantly, he was consumed by an irresistable sense of bliss.
There was no resisting this; he had experienced this before. Now it had returned.
Dominic liked this. His anger and indignation calmed down immediately, drastically, to allow him to feel the full measure of the ecstasy she was enveloping him in.
*Ah, good...* her now satisfied voice responded. *There we go... now we can take this fight to them!*
Narissa ran for cover as Sarella and Inessa danced like bolts of lightning around the small battlefield, leaving booming thunderclaps in their wake, slowing down only to change direction, splitting skulls and ripping bodies wide open. All around her, Silurhean warriors were struck by flashes of light. Their bodies exploded into a spray of blood and guts, or were simply torn in half, pried open like a bloody fruit and then cast aside.
Inessa, freshly invigorated with the impossibly deep resources that Felecia's human body provided, found herself easily capable of keeping her magic reserves topped off even as she zipped from one side of the clearing to the next, delivering elbow shots with such force that she sometimes plowed completely through her victims, and still had enough left over to clean their blood and entrails off of her as she moved to her next target.
Normally, she could perform at this epeed for only one attack; it would drain most of her magic reserves and she would be helpless if the fight called for her to do it again to survive. But now, each time she struck, her womb called upon Felecia's remaining life force and found plenty to draw upon. She absorbed massive quantities of the human woman's physical energy, over and over again, and yet Felecia remained within her.
Catastrophic attack, reload, catastrophic attack, reload.
It helped that Felecia did not poison her with emotions of disgust, hatred or fear. She was not enthusiastic about it, but as she was becoming a part of Inessa, she was offered a clear view of what Inessa was thinking and seeing, and she accepted the knowledge.
Another Grue moved by in slow-motion as she turned to face the man-eating fairy, grabbing her enemy by her chest, hooking her fingers into the space between her ribs, digging into her flesh, and then pulling outwards, tearing her ribs asunder; then she tossed the dying Grue aside.
Bernard watched with amazement as the Silurheans whose chests were ripped open, suddenly bloated, their stomachs filling up with an impossible volume of digestive juices before suddenly rupturing. The ballooning bodies then exploded in a flood of acid that melted them completely down and even gouged deep into the soil.
This was the one spell he'd seen out there that he'd never heard of before.
It was fairly easy to learn, what with him being a psi-mage. He simply read Inessa's mind as she carried out the gruesome deed, and closed his eyes to practice the spell in his mind.
And then he leapt into action.
Meanwhile, Narissa crept away from the fighting, sneaking out of the clearing and back into the forest, hoping to get away from the bloodshed before someone hostile came for her.
Sure, she could fight off one of these troops if they insisted upon calling her a traitor, but that was the drawback of being a Silurhean; her attackers knew whatever fighting techniques she knew - and there were more of them.
And they just kept calling her a traitor.
She needed a time-out to figure out how she was going to absolve herself of this horrible label and get herself accepted back into their community.
Just then, a strong, rough hand seized her by her throat.
A dozen surviving Silurheans finally took to the air to flee, breaking off like tendrils of flame from fireworks and scattering in all directions to confound Inessa and Sarella's attempts to kill them all.
Inessa and Sarella saw them taking off, but they still had some remaining on the ground to deal with.
There was no way to catch them.
Frustrated, Inessa picked up the pace, grunting with exertion as she resorted to simply crushing skulls for efficiency's sake. Sarella had already finished up with her side, and was airborn in fierce pursuit, but even as Inessa killed the last Grue standing, she knew the rest were getting out of range.
Nevertheless, she took to the sky as well.
Just in time to see six Grue explode in mid-air, erupting into dark crimson and green splotches that rained back down upon the trees.
Bernard Sabick appeared out of nowhere in front of a black-haired Silurhean warrior fleeing the carnage below, and took the time to flash her a grin. Before she could move out of the way or summon a shrink spell on him, he punched her in the gut and knocked the wind out of her, then disappeared, attacking five others in the same fashion.
As he reappeared next to Inessa, his back to hers, he craned his head and said quietly, "Metabolic inversion. The victim digests their own body. I like that idea."
Inessa whirled about to see a blond-haired man in a leather jacket and blue jeans, his arms folded confidently.
A human, floating in the air just as easily as she does. Taking responsibility for the deaths of six Silurheans.
Words simply failed her as her jaw fell open.
He glanced back at her. "Wanna see the real deal?"
As Inessa gawked at him, he disappeared before her eyes. A loud gurgling scream quickly told her where he was.
To her left, a Silurhean thrashed about wildly as her body melted in mid-air; her flesh sloughed off and liquefied on its way back to the ground, and in the blink of an eye, all that remained of her was bones that were rapidly becoming highly elastic and deformed as they, too, melted and fell from the sky.
Sarella turned to her and shrugged as they watched four more die the same way, off in the distance.
Inessa pointed to the human now hovering in between them.
Sarella's face suddenly drained of almost all color.
Chapter 4
Flashpoint
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"You know, I once prayed that if hyperspace travel were invented in my lifetime, I would encounter a world where women actually chased and competed for men instead of the other way around. And then I discovered there was an entire race of fairies out there among the stars, mostly female, who pursued men quite aggressively.
To EAT THEM!
What the fuck! Come on, for God's sake! Can't we guys get a fucking break! Next time I'm hiring an attorney to word my wishes a little more carefully!" - Lt. Shawn Porter from the Sojourner Colonial Defense Special Operations Command, "Voices From the Expedition to Hell: A Collection of Soldiers' Perspectives", hosted by Andrew Parker
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Narissa scrambled away from Felecia, screaming, "Back! Get back! Get away from me!"
Felecia cringed as the battered, bruised, wild-eyed Narissa held her arm out stiffly, showing Dominic's miniaturized body in her tightly clenched hand for his mother to see. "Get... away... or I'll crush him!"
Sarella and Inessa moved swiftly to intercede, but then Narissa, spitting blood from her mouth, laughed fitfully. Opening her legs lewdly for Felecia to see, she said, "Say byebye to your little boy!" and pushed his squirming body into her vagina, lifting her hips to give her a good view of her son being swallowed whole into her womanhood.
Felecia nearly fell on her ass with shock as the other two fairies stopped dead in their tracks.
Bernard Sabick stepped backwards, amazed at what he'd just seen Narissa do. He could even sense the panic in Dominic's mind as he was pulled up deep into Narissa's body.
Only the dire need to monitor his surroundings and keep himself concealed, provided enough distraction from the bizarre situation unfolding before his eyes, to keep him from getting sick.
Or angry.
"Yummy..." Narissa chuckled, trembling with a tinge of pleasure tingling through her clenching muscles. Licking her lips, she taunted, "You're not the only woman who has enjoyed having Dominic in her belly." She then slowly, painfully worked her way to her feet. Pointing at the astonished mother, she tensed her stomach muscles, causing them to ripple visibly as her vagina clamped down hard around Dominic. "That..." she pointed at her belly, "is your son being squeezed almost to death in there."
Felecia put her hand to her mouth as she backed off.
Narissa edged closer on her wobbly legs, biting her lip as her muscles tightened again. "You hurt me really bad, human," she hissed. Pointing at Sarella, she warned, "If you come any closer I'll crush him inside me. I swear."
Sarella glared at her. "Go ahead," she sneered with a grin.
"NO!" Felecia screamed at Sarella. "No! Are you crazy! That's my son!"
"Relax," Sarella dismissed her. "Her body won't let her do it."
Narissa scowled contemptuously at her. "We'll see about that!" she laughed, tensing her face and forcing her vagina to bear down as hard as her muscles could around the helpless victim inside her. She grunted forcefully, then felt the satisfying collapse of her insides around the human's body moving up into her belly, forcing the man trapped within her to yield to the overwhelming power of her vagina crushing him from all sides. "Ahhh," she reared her head triumphantly, chuckling. "No more Dominic!"
Bernard would have sprung into action that instant, except he could clearly see, through Dominic's mind, what was really happening.
Even so, he tensed, his fists clenched until his knuckles were bare and his fingers dug painfully into his palm.
At that moment, however, he sensed a palpable change in the wind at his back; then he noticed the air pressure changed ever so slightly... as if something had displaced it.
His mind instinctively reached out to feel passively for other thoughts nearby, laying an infinite network of invisible psychic tripwires for an area greater than a full square acre in all directions.
Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a swarm of thoughts.
Thoughts he instantly wished he had never tried to detect.
Glancing to and fro, he lost his nerve and nearly his concentration as his mind hastily shut off the toxic mental signals assailing his mind with unbelievably unholy desires and intentions that no human mind should ever know of.
Hastily, he backflipped into the tree behind him, perching himself on a thick branch three body lengths above the ground.
"Nooo!" Felecia cried, falling on her ass.
Suddenly, though, Dominic slipped up further into Narissa, away from the grip of her tightly squeezing walls. Her eyes widened as a slight sting in her belly told her he'd passed into her womb instead. "Uh oh..."
Inessa chuckled, shaking her head. "You can't squeeze him to death. If you clench too hard your womb will open and your body will simply push him right in."
Narissa's lower abdomen began to glow. "Oh damn." Looking at Felecia sitting on her back on the ground, she smirked and framed her belly with her hands. "Oh well. I guess he makes a much more exciting dinner alive than dead."
Even Sarella became weak in the knees from disgust. "Oh, that's enough from you," she snarled, surging forward with both her fists cocked.
Inessa caught her as she surged forward. "No!"
Sarella's eyes flared at Inessa. "Let me go!" she hissed, twisting away.
Pointing at Narissa, Inessa begged, "Sarella, please, wait until he returns!"
Suddenly, Narissa's eyes widened. "Who're you?" she pointed to someone behind Felecia.
Felecia blinked at her, then craned her head to see another fairy woman stepping from behind a tree. "What in Rhea's name is going on here?"
Everyone turned to see a flame-haired fairy in a tight ivory jump suit with orange trim, stepping into the clearing. Her translucent wings glowed feebly as the moon's faint light fell upon her.
Narissa and Inessa spun about on their heels. "The Grue!" Inessa gasped. "Damn! All this damned arguing and they sneaked right up on us!"
Bernard was still shaking those evil, disconcerting thoughts from his head.
So Narissa wasn't just a lone nutcase who thought she was from another planet. That theory, as weak as it was before, was wiped from his mind forever by the sudden arrival of more two-legged monsters just like her. Monsters with a much clearer sense of their origin and perceived place in the universe.
Monsters who deserved to die just for what he saw going on in their heads.
"Rhea?" Narissa gasped, breaking into a run. Felecia rushed to get to her feet, but Narissa uncaringly ran straight over her, knocking the wind out of her lungs. "Are you one of the colonists? Or...?"
The red-haired woman backed off, putting her hands up defensively. "What kind of foul lechery was that, stuffing a pig gut beast in your body that way?"
"Narissa!" Inessa yelled to her. "Get back... you are NOT one of them any more! They'll kill you!"
Narissa stopped dead in her tracks as she noticed others stepping into the clearing. "Don't listen to them," she pleaded her case, her aches and pains slowly disappearing as her injuries healed before everyone's eyes, "they made up some story about me belonging to Gaia or some crazy-"
The red haired woman pointed at her. "So what is that glow coming from your body?"
A platinum-haired fairy in nothing more than pink silk panties, came up alongside her, her hands on her hips. "She's a fool and a coward," the fairy laughed, her hair covering one half of her face as she regarded Narissa with a smile. "She lies to our faces hoping we're stupid enough to suspend our disbelief."
"No, wait..." Narissa protested.
Felecia coughed loudly and struggled to her feet.
Sarella cracked her knuckles. "So I see you've saved us the trouble of looking for you." Inessa turned her head to stare at her with open-mouthed incredulity. "You've stumbled on much worse than a few daughters of Gaia... my name is Sarella... of the Siluvaran Royal Guard."
"Royal what?" the platinum-blonde woman cocked her head forward mockingly. "What are you talking about?"
Inessa threw her hands down. "So much for going incognito," she sighed. With but a single step, she became a blur, crossing a dozen meters in the blink of an eye to slam her fist into the red-headed fairy's face.
A loud, wet squish heralded the gruesome death of one Silurhean warrior as her head shattered, exploding into a cloud of gray matter and inky crimson blood.
Bernard got down and sat on the branch, letting his legs dangle. *Well this ought to make my work easier... they'll wear these demons down and I can handle the survivors...*
"NO!" Narissa howled, reaching out. In a flash, another platinum-haired Silurhean warrior leapt into action and was instantly upon her, coiling her arms around her throat. "Wait!" she choked and coughed. "Stop! I'm not one of them!"
She thrashed about to free herself from her assailant's grip; unexpectedly, the fairy flew off of her, into a rock, causing her to flip over and land on her head with an ominous crunch. Narissa then deftly swerved out of the way of a ball of warm light, her eyes catching a fleeting glimpse of the flaming mass that was its source.
The fireball slammed into the rock, splitting it in half and lighting the mortally wounded fairy on the other side ablaze.
Sarella effortlessly cracked the skull of one fairy with her elbow, sending her flipping head over heels onto the grass, her blood and brains spilling free from her head to mingle with the soil.
"Come on, I'm not one of them!" Narissa protested even louder, sidestepping another attacking fairy.
Then she spotted Felecia, frantically turning this way and that in confusion, calling for her son, and she smiled.
"Here," Narissa said, dodging another attack and grabbing Felecia by the arm, "she is a human... I offer her to you instead of having her myself!"
"What the?!" Felecia howled as she was tossed about like a rag doll.
Inessa and Sarella suddenly stopped, as did the others, as Felecia spun about into the arms of a naked Silurhean woman with jet black lips and hair.
The fairy regarded the wide, confused eyes of the human in her accidental embrace, and then smiled to Narissa. "Much obliged," she said in Narissa's native language, clapping her hands around Felecia's shoulders.
"No!" Inessa howled.
Bernard regarded Inessa and the overwhelming sense of amusement inside her head. She was acting a part.
She was tricking the Silurhean fairy into eating Felecia by pleading for her not to.
But why?
He had to know... but if this meant doom for Felecia, was it worth her life?
Then again...
Sarella blocked Inessa and smiled. Inessa looked at her, then smiled as well, before sagging and hugging Sarella with a woeful sob.
Narissa stumbled at that point as her womb finished absorbing Dominic; he re-appeared next to her, unclothed. In an instant, he bent down low, realizing his immodesty.
"DOMINIC!" Felecia cried, her voice dwindling into near silence in mid-utterance as Dominic caught sight of her being shrunken down. "Nooooooo!"
The Silurheans looked at Inessa and Sarella with confusion. "You're our enemy... and you're just going to stand there?"
Sarella shrugged as the jet black haired fairy held Felecia by her shoulders with her fingers, studying her for a moment. "You got us. Totally outnumbered. Hopefully if you get your fill from these two, you'll leave us alone."
The sinewy, silver-haired fairy chuckled. "Maybe we will." She gestured to Dominic. "He's certainly not one of us."
Dominic lunged for the black-haired fairy. "Hey, let my mother go!"
The fairy simply reached out with another hand and uttered a single syllable; Dominic froze in mid-stride, his mouth still wide open.
"She hasn't eaten anyone yet," the silver haired one noted. "She can't speak your language..." She gestured at Felecia. "But once she's eaten her... she will."
Sarella nodded impatiently, fighting the urge to wretch as she was forced to ponder what had to have happened that the silver-haired one, and some of the others, could speak English. "Yeah yeah yeah," she faked disinterest in the woman's monologue, "I doubt she can even get that whole woman's body down her throat."
Bernard's lip twitched as he regarded the silver-haired fairy. For some reason Sarella knew she was doomed. He had to see how this played out, if for no other reason but to kill that silver-haired monster himself if he turned out to be reading Sarella wrong.
The silver-haired one spoke to the fairy with Felecia squirming and thrashing in her grip, and she reared her head to laugh out loud.
"Actually I kind of like swallowing big things... whole," the fairy replied in their language. "She'll certainly fill my stomach... for a while."
Sarella waved her off, berating her in the Silurheans' own tongue. "Talk, talk, talk." Then she folded her arms and turned away slightly, as if to dismiss her.
Felecia struggled desperately as the women's voices nearly deafened her from their volume and proximity. From what Narissa was saying, she quickly realized she was about to come to a horrible end.
How could Sarella sell her out like that? Weren't they just talking about these demons as if they were enemies? Or did she really think they would let them live after the horrible deed was done?
"Dominic!" she screamed, seeing her son frozen there, like a lifelike olympic statue sculpted to appear in the middle of a sprint. "DOMINIC!" Seeing he was unmoving, she quickly turned to Narissa, her heart racing wildly. "NARISSA!! INESSAAAAA!! Help!!!"
The black-haired fairy giggled, then moaned, licking her lips as she turned Felecia around and brought her closer to her mouth.
Felecia saw those huge, thin, black lips parting to reveal her ivory teeth and pink, glistening tongue, and her body almost went slack from terror. She couldn't even choke out a scream as even her breath briefly fled her body.
Sarella folded her arms and sighed to Inessa. "See? She can't do it."
Felecia tried to talk, but she was too busy hyperventilating, as the now giant fairy lifted her miniaturized body over her head, and eased her down into the cavernous mouth tilted upwards to receive her.
At the same time, she saw another platinum-haired fairy step up and shrink down her son. Her stomach growled loudly with hunger as she unceremoniously dropped the helpless young man into her mouth.
"NOOOO!" Felecia screamed as her bare feet touched the fairy's tongue; she kicked wildly at the ribbed roof of her mouth, but it was of no use. The fairy's mouth closed in around her, her lips clamping down around her bosom as the slippery warm tongue caressed her body from behind, slathering her in saliva. "DOMINIC!!! OH GOD NO, DOMINIC!!!"
Bernard cringed. Every instinct in his body screamed for him to intervene, but everything he was getting from Narissa and Inessa warned him that his interference would do more harm than good.
It didn't matter... he could intervene at any second.
He tensed, ready to strike.
Felecia had just enough time to see the other fairy raise her head and gulp; a large lump slid down her throat as her muscles grabbed Dominic, then enveloped him, massaging him and carrying him down her neck past her collarbone. Then the alien woman licked her lips and moaned happily, her still growling stomach now filled with her beloved son.
At that point, her body went limp and her mind went blank; her body was too weak from the horror of it all to even move, as her feet slid down into the black-haired fairy's throat. She became numb as the fairy's mouth shut and the darkness closed in around her. Warm, wet muscles rippled around her as she was eased into the fairy's throat. She slipped past her tonsils and gave no further resistance, as the fight had suddenly been taken out of her when she saw her son swallowed alive and whole.
Silently, she laid there as the fairy's throat muscles gulped loudly, pulling her down the slick fleshy path. Her feet pushed through the tight ring into her assailant's stomach, and though her bosom was squeezed tightly, she hardly had enough strength left to grunt or struggle as she passed through into the hot, swampy chamber of the fairy woman's stomach.
She landed on her naked butt in a pool of liquid as her fleshy prison growled loudly, deafeningly around her.
Even her terror failed to raise up a scream from her throat as she capsized onto her side, her shoulder squishing loudly against the ground. She just lay there, tears welling up from her eyes as the fluid level began to rise.
All she could hope for now was to die before she had to think about what was happening to her poor son.
All that effort she'd put into raising him right.
All those years she worked her ass off to provide for him, even as the rich and powerful predators of humanity did everything in their power to take away her money, her livelihood, her son.
And now he was dying in some naked fairy woman's stomach.
Being digested.
A scream finally worked its way out of her...
... as a fitful, shuddering, whimpering cry.
The stomach she was trapped in, rumbled and groaned happily in response to her arrival.
Her cries then exploded into wails.
Bernard dropped from the branch and hung in mid-air, poised to strike. Even then, Inessa and Sarella's thoughts began to come into focus.
Suddenly he knew their entire plan for the demise of these devils... even though, at this point, he came to sorely wish he didn't.
The two fairies who had just eaten, kissed softly in front of Sarella and Inessa, then turned.
"You cared so little about those humans." the silver-haired one caressed her belly as the black-haired one stretched with her hands raised high over her head while she walked away. "Why are you even here?"
Inessa chuckled. "To watch you miserably fail to digest your meal."
Sarella lowered her head slightly, as if trying to stifle her own laughter.
"Fail?" the fairy scowled angrily. "What do you mean?" Her belly gurgled. "Do you hear that?" She wiggled her hips playfully. "That's your pig gut friend becoming nutrients. He'll be flowing through my veins in no time."
The jet black haired one moaned and caressed her belly as the others laughed; one came up and kissed her lips, and the two walked away hand in hand.
Sarella tapped her foot. "You know, the humans have a saying that I'm actually quite fond of at this moment."
The silver-haired one squished her face. "Huh?"
Inessa snapped her finger. "Ashes to ashes... dust to dust?"
Bernard folded his arms at this point, his eyes keenly fixed on the silver-haired Grue, his lips tightened.
One way or another, he resolved, their fates were sealed.
Felecia was tossed about in her captor's restless, violently churning stomach as she wept loudly, slamming into a slippery wet wall and sliding back into the swelling pool of fluid. It was increasingly hot and muggy in here, and her entire body was now slathered in digestive juices, but she only pounded the walls weakly, crying so hard her ribs hurt before sliding back down to settle in the thick fluid to surrender to her fate.
The fleshy prison around her continued to gurgle loudly, like a giant pot of bubbling soup. Everything was churning slowly, but as the motions of her captor's stomach muscles grew more restless, she was being moved this way and that against her will, thrown face-first into the swelling pool of stomach acids and propelled back against the wall at random intervals.
It was then that she felt something in her hands. In the total darkness, she could still tell it was hair.
She reached up to feel her head.
It was bald.
Her hair then melted away in her hands.
Her crying started all over again as she curled into a ball, waiting for the acid to start melting the rest of her body.
The pool of liquid rose almost up to her neck; by then, though, she became too choked up to cry. She knew her son must have been in utter agony by now... or at least, he soon would be, as he died in the most horrible way imaginable.
The silver-haired fairy's stomach gurgled and purred again. "Ooh," she chuckled, "my tummy is doing a good job on that big meal inside me." She patted her belly. "I always wanted to know how these humans feel when my stomach melts their flesh into a nice nutritious puddle. I know it hurts a lot. Don't worry, little woman... you'll be a part of me soon enough! Hahah!"
Narissa rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on now," she gestured, "that's kinda disgusting."
"How would you know?" the other fairy shot back. "When was the last time you ever ate young healthy flesh?"
Narissa threw her hands down. "There hasn't been any to eat, remember! All the meat animals are gone on our homeworld!"
"And yet you didn't eat either of these two pig guts?"
Sarella's lip stiffened; she shot Inessa a quick glance. Inessa kept up her dispassionate look, but deep down, she could see the unease in her eyes.
Something was going wrong. This was taking too long.
"Well, I hope you enjoy it, ma'am," Sarella cut in with a faked smile. Now, her conscience was beginning to make her insides turn.
"Whatever," the silver-haired fairy dismissed Sarella, then walked off to the side, beyond Sarella or Inessa's field of vision, over to Narissa. "So..." she said, walking around the nervous, sweating fairy, "As I said... if you were starving for meat... why didn't you eat them?"
Narissa shuddered, fearful of ever having to answer that particular question. "Ummm... I already had my dinner," her response came quickly, though she almost instantly regretted it: "I'm full."
The silver-haired fairy slapped her hard across the face. "LIES!" she howled as Narissa stumbled back. "You just said you hadn't eaten! And I saw your glowing belly. You are a child of Gaia! Kill h..."
Suddenly, she staggered away from Narissa, wincing with pain.
Bernard grinned. The victims in their stomachs were still alive, even if panicked almost to the point of a heart attack. And he could see the currents of energy starting to flare up inside the alien women who had eaten them, starting to leak out of the blood vessels and nerve endings meant to contain them.
Somehow he knew some kind of horrific burn-out was imminent.
"Auuuugh!" the other fairy howled from a distance. "My skin! It's on fire! Dear Rhea!"
Inessa let out a long, quiet sigh of relief.
Sarella laughed nervously as her confidence crept back out of its dark hiding place. "Well well well," she turned to the silver-haired one. "You just gulped down someone who's been in the womb of a daughter of Gaia..." She waved the shuddering woman off. "Oh, those are big words for you. Let me make it simpler. Your magic is being turned against you right now. You're going to burn up... and die."
"Ashes to ashes..." Inessa giggled with a renewed glee and air of confidence.
The silver-haired fairy staggered back and tripped over the remains of the rock behind her. "No!!!" she screamed. "AUUUUUUUGHHHH!"
Suddenly, her body glowed brightly; and then, just like that, there was nothing but a pile of ash where she once lay.
A similar scream pierced the air from behind Sarella as the other Silurhean warrior suffered the same fate.
Bernard took off his sunglasses completely and blinked with disbelief.
What kind of devils were these creatures?
Alas, there wasn't time to gawk and wallow in disbelief. There would be plenty of time for that later.
For now there was Sarella to deal with. And to get to her, he had to deal away with these other devils.
Inessa quickly ran over and retrieved Felecia's shrunken form from the pile of ashes that was once the black haired fairy; a single uttered word and the stunned, coughing woman found herself back inside Inessa's womb before she could even yelp.
"Nari..." Sarella started to say, just as a softball-sized chunk of pale blue ice came racing at her head.
She jerked her head back just in time to evade the supersonic projectile, only to be deafened by the thunderous crack of the sonic boom it left in its wake. The sheer wind of the object's passing was enough to send her tumbling into a backflip.
As she fell hard on her back, she saw Inessa standing her ground and striking the object dead-on with her palm, repelling it right back at its sender. Another sonic boom blew the grass back as the ice ball hit a flame-haired fairy and obliterate the entire upper half of her body before doing the same to the fairy standing behind her.
Sarella then frantically turned to the pile of ash in the distance; Dominic, now barely the size of a gerbil, had emerged and was now tumbling into the damp dirt.
Inessa was a skilled fighter, but nowhere near capable of deflecting an object of that size, speed and mass. That amount of speed and strength had to come from absorbing Felecia.
So she sprang forward and tucked into a fetal position, throwing herself into a high-speed flying roll mere inches off the ground. Two fairies rushing up on her were bowled aside as she planted her feet into the ground, came to a stop, and grabbed Dominic's ash-covered body. In a flash, he was teleported into her womb, and her body immediately began converting him into magic energy she desperately needed for this fight.
Who would have thought that Narissa wasn't bullshitting after all?
Nothing in the universe could have ever prepared him for the sight of those gothic black lips yawning open to receive him, or the loud wet rippling noises of her throat forcing him down into the darkness of her stomach. Only then, when he was trapped and ready to be digested, did his body un-freeze, but it didn't matter. He'd struggled and kicked and pounded to get out, but in the end, he still wound up being sloshed around in the turbulent pond of that fairy's stomach acids.
Acids that did absolutely nothing to him but leave him bald-headed one moment, and sucking hot ash the next.
For all intents and purposes, he was supposed to be some alien woman's meal by now, reduced to a gooey nutritious fluid flowing into her veins. He should have died the most horrible death imaginable.
But instead the worst part of it all was the almost burning ash he had to cough back up out of his lungs.
Or perhaps, as he quickly found himself in darkness again, the worst was yet to come?
*Human...* a woman's voice called from all around the endless void now surrounding him. *Dominic... It's me, Sarella. You are in my womb.*
Dominic tried to look around; but he had no neck muscles that he could feel. Indeed, this was exactly what it felt like to be inside Narissa.
He was being absorbed... no, rejuvenated.
No, both.
*I need you to relax and surrender yourself to me as much as you can,* the voice spoke in a soft, pleading tone. *I'm in a fight with the monsters like the one who just swallowed you." Her voice became forceful, impatient, emphatic. *We're outnumbered. I need to absorb you and get as much magic energy as your body and life force can give. You need to be calm and concentrate on giving as much of yourself as you can... or we'll both die.*
Anger and confusion were Dominic's only emotions at the moment, even as he projected his thoughts as best he could. *Fine. I'll do my best. But we'gonna rumble when this is done.*
Even as he tried to pledge himself to her, he could not deny the disgust and humiliation of what was happening.
It was as if, one way or another, he was some fairy's food. Sarella must have rescued him for the purpose of absorbing him for herself. Now, he was trapped in her womb, being consumed for energy. It didn't console him at all that he was going to come back alive and well; it only meant she would have use him as a meal again and again and again.
This was wrong. It was totally wrong. This was what happened to hamburgers, not men.
Come to think of it, that pastrami double cheese burger yesterday was certainly the last hamburger he'd probably have in the foreseeable future... assuming he survived this.
*Perhaps you'll be able to relax now?*
Tendrils of pleasure that somehow managed to permeate him unnoticed, suddenly turned on.
Instantly, he was consumed by an irresistable sense of bliss.
There was no resisting this; he had experienced this before. Now it had returned.
Dominic liked this. His anger and indignation calmed down immediately, drastically, to allow him to feel the full measure of the ecstasy she was enveloping him in.
*Ah, good...* her now satisfied voice responded. *There we go... now we can take this fight to them!*
Narissa ran for cover as Sarella and Inessa danced like bolts of lightning around the small battlefield, leaving booming thunderclaps in their wake, slowing down only to change direction, splitting skulls and ripping bodies wide open. All around her, Silurhean warriors were struck by flashes of light. Their bodies exploded into a spray of blood and guts, or were simply torn in half, pried open like a bloody fruit and then cast aside.
Inessa, freshly invigorated with the impossibly deep resources that Felecia's human body provided, found herself easily capable of keeping her magic reserves topped off even as she zipped from one side of the clearing to the next, delivering elbow shots with such force that she sometimes plowed completely through her victims, and still had enough left over to clean their blood and entrails off of her as she moved to her next target.
Normally, she could perform at this epeed for only one attack; it would drain most of her magic reserves and she would be helpless if the fight called for her to do it again to survive. But now, each time she struck, her womb called upon Felecia's remaining life force and found plenty to draw upon. She absorbed massive quantities of the human woman's physical energy, over and over again, and yet Felecia remained within her.
Catastrophic attack, reload, catastrophic attack, reload.
It helped that Felecia did not poison her with emotions of disgust, hatred or fear. She was not enthusiastic about it, but as she was becoming a part of Inessa, she was offered a clear view of what Inessa was thinking and seeing, and she accepted the knowledge.
Another Grue moved by in slow-motion as she turned to face the man-eating fairy, grabbing her enemy by her chest, hooking her fingers into the space between her ribs, digging into her flesh, and then pulling outwards, tearing her ribs asunder; then she tossed the dying Grue aside.
Bernard watched with amazement as the Silurheans whose chests were ripped open, suddenly bloated, their stomachs filling up with an impossible volume of digestive juices before suddenly rupturing. The ballooning bodies then exploded in a flood of acid that melted them completely down and even gouged deep into the soil.
This was the one spell he'd seen out there that he'd never heard of before.
It was fairly easy to learn, what with him being a psi-mage. He simply read Inessa's mind as she carried out the gruesome deed, and closed his eyes to practice the spell in his mind.
And then he leapt into action.
Meanwhile, Narissa crept away from the fighting, sneaking out of the clearing and back into the forest, hoping to get away from the bloodshed before someone hostile came for her.
Sure, she could fight off one of these troops if they insisted upon calling her a traitor, but that was the drawback of being a Silurhean; her attackers knew whatever fighting techniques she knew - and there were more of them.
And they just kept calling her a traitor.
She needed a time-out to figure out how she was going to absolve herself of this horrible label and get herself accepted back into their community.
Just then, a strong, rough hand seized her by her throat.
A dozen surviving Silurheans finally took to the air to flee, breaking off like tendrils of flame from fireworks and scattering in all directions to confound Inessa and Sarella's attempts to kill them all.
Inessa and Sarella saw them taking off, but they still had some remaining on the ground to deal with.
There was no way to catch them.
Frustrated, Inessa picked up the pace, grunting with exertion as she resorted to simply crushing skulls for efficiency's sake. Sarella had already finished up with her side, and was airborn in fierce pursuit, but even as Inessa killed the last Grue standing, she knew the rest were getting out of range.
Nevertheless, she took to the sky as well.
Just in time to see six Grue explode in mid-air, erupting into dark crimson and green splotches that rained back down upon the trees.
Bernard Sabick appeared out of nowhere in front of a black-haired Silurhean warrior fleeing the carnage below, and took the time to flash her a grin. Before she could move out of the way or summon a shrink spell on him, he punched her in the gut and knocked the wind out of her, then disappeared, attacking five others in the same fashion.
As he reappeared next to Inessa, his back to hers, he craned his head and said quietly, "Metabolic inversion. The victim digests their own body. I like that idea."
Inessa whirled about to see a blond-haired man in a leather jacket and blue jeans, his arms folded confidently.
A human, floating in the air just as easily as she does. Taking responsibility for the deaths of six Silurheans.
Words simply failed her as her jaw fell open.
He glanced back at her. "Wanna see the real deal?"
As Inessa gawked at him, he disappeared before her eyes. A loud gurgling scream quickly told her where he was.
To her left, a Silurhean thrashed about wildly as her body melted in mid-air; her flesh sloughed off and liquefied on its way back to the ground, and in the blink of an eye, all that remained of her was bones that were rapidly becoming highly elastic and deformed as they, too, melted and fell from the sky.
Sarella turned to her and shrugged as they watched four more die the same way, off in the distance.
Inessa pointed to the human now hovering in between them.
Sarella's face suddenly drained of almost all color.
Chapter 4: Flashpoint
By jacquelope -- Report
Bernard Sabick realizes what had happened to him while he slept; poor Dominic and his mother Felecia are eaten by fairies; Narissa is branded a traitor to her kind... but who exactly is her 'kind' now?
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