And then finally, with a click, a squelch and a slurp, it was quiet.

Charlie huddled in the furthest corner of the room, hugging himself, shaking. He didn't cry. He had run out of tears a day and a half ago. Even so, his breath came in raw, ragged gasps, and he felt his shoulders heaving.

The little tiger knew there was no-one left. He knew he was the last. Even so, he raised his head, looking around the towering room, flickering his gaze over the balcony, the looming plants in their enormous pots, the arching walls of the Imperial Palace of Seraphia's all-powerful ruler. No-one was there, although the occasional sticky, belched up collar (he fingered the collar around his own neck, and moaned softly) and the dribbled pools of saliva reminded him of where they had been. And where they were now.

It drew his eyes, even as he tried to tear them away. There was a magnetic horror to it, a sense of gravity. He could swear he almost felt his body being pulled towards it. So he looked, and found the strength to summon another sob of fear.

Emperor Goldeneye the First and Only, the Resplendent, the Eternal, the Light of the Eastern Sun, the Silver Summer, and the worst monster to have ever lived... moaned. It was a deep, pulsing sound, echoing within Charlie's very bones, not a groan of effort but of sheer indulgent pleasure. The god-gryphon's throat still bulged, stained with saliva and swollen with the writhing, trembling form of his penultimate prey: Victoria Ramsey, a cute, dainty little koi carp. Faintly Charlie could see her pretty head, but her screams made no sound at all, only the soft, slow squelches as unnatural muscles and gallons of saliva - Charlie might be out of tears, but the monster himself had not run dry yet - squeezed her down towards her fate. Goldeneye's swallows rippled steadily around her, rhythmic and rippling, almost as if he was drinking her. The bulge sank, each gluttonous gulp oozing it at a slow, stately pace past the ruffled, down-soft mass of his throat and into the powerful cage of his chest. Once again, Charlie found he couldn't look away.

For a moment, the koi within the gryphon was nothing at all, lost to the immense beast, nestled between his lungs and heart. And then... there she was. The enormous, bloated, engorged mass of Goldeneye's stomach rippled, gave another slow, wet gurgle, and sagged another few inches lower.

The Emperor stood more than twelve and a half feet tall on all four legs, towering over every one of his subjects, and yet when he had last stood up, his stomach had nearly brushed the floor.

That had been three people ago.

He was seated now, lying down on his flank, his legs stretched out to accommodate the sheer mass of it. It sagged outwards, stretching around its cargo, still producing slow, thick sloshes as the latest arrival was nestled away properly.The monster’s body was heavy and powerful, all slabs of muscle sheathed in soft, horribly enticing curves, but right now they looked barely strong enough to hold him up.

The gryphon breathed in, relishing an empty throat, reaching out and caressing the soft bulge. His claw sank in half a foot without slowing, and another bubbling squelch sounded forth. Faintly, Charlie thought he could hear the cries, lost amidst the sounds of their squirming, each writhing form making Goldeneye’s belly ripple and squish around the strange deformed lumps their bodies made. He couldn’t pick out paws or faces, they were far too deep inside for that. Goldeneye’s body was far too gluttonous.

Charlie tried to look away, and after a moment of quivering effort, found himself looking at the monster’s cruel, dripping beak instead. Goldeneye’s eyes were closed, his expression placid, almost lazy, his breathing heavy and deep, but not laboured. The only sign of his pleasure, or his effort in swallowing every single person the tiger had ever called a friend in one meal, was that slow, stroking claw.

“Do you know,” the god-beast said, suddenly, “the greatest advantage of being a creature like me?”

Charlie flinched, cowering away from his voice. The deep, devastating rumble seemed to cleave his ears in two.

“N… no?”

“Try.”

It was an order. Charlie gulped, wiping his eyes. His mind felt like it had seized up, repeating the same pattern of dread, terror and misery over and over again. Feebly, he coaxed it into obeying.

“Um… greatest… g-greatest.” He tried to pull his gaze away from the life-glutted gut. “You… you’re… really… really powerful.”

“That’s not very specific, kitten.” Goldeneye adjusted his posture with a soft, tender moan, slowly kneading at a specific part of himself with one great claw. “And it’s not… mmm... something integral to what I am, either. Most Shards are as weak and tiny as the mind of an insect.” He smiled coyly. “Even I was, once. Now, try again.”

Keep him talking. They had learned that several hours in. For a creature someone totally, ravenously obsessed with other people, Goldeneye certainly seemed to like the sound of his own voice. Ask him questions and he would reply with patient pleasure. Direct the conversation and he would follow along - not unwittingly, for he smiled with every word, his eyes taunting you as you began to run out of things to say, ways to stave off the inevitable. But he would talk, and Charlie and his friends could stay outside of that dripping, pillowy maw for a few minutes more.

“O-okay,” he said, feebly, wracking his mind. “You… your mind-reading. T-t… t-t-telepathic… t-things…”

Closer, cleverer. That’s useful. The voice came straight into his head, punctuated with what felt like a lick across the very fabric of his soul. It is wonderful, to be able to see everything I do to you. And them, too. He patted his bloated gut, letting the grumbling groan dribble out for several seconds before speaking again. You should know, they’re still squirming. It’s just hard to see it when there’s… so… many… and I’ve packed them in so tight, and it’s churning them so firmly that it’s like my gut is chewing on its treats... His tongue slipped out, steadily lapping over his beak, and he closed his eyes again. So being able to experience their souls is so, so gratifying. I can taste every twist in the turmoil in them, feel them panic and squirm around their own skulls, listen to their pleas and cries even when they’re utterly smothered inside me.

Charlie whimpered, and the Emperor smiled as he listened to it, speaking orally again. “Well, you’ll find that out soon enough. But while this is incredibly, unbelievably, gloriously useful, it’s not the greatest advantage. Try again.”

They lapsed back into silence again, broken only by the deep, bubbling marsh-sounds of that appalling belly, bulging and rippling in slow waves. The tiger trembled. Chewing on its treats…

For the hundredth time, his eyes wandered around the room, looking for something - anything - that could help him. There was a sort of science which existed amongst the legions of slaves who mantained and staffed the Emperor’s colossal Palace, based around which areas were the most dangerous. Some people even made maps, colour-coding rooms, depending on how likely the area was to be visited by him, and strangely, the practise didn’t seem to be discouraged at all. The walled garden, observatory, and slave quarters were fairly low-risk. The council chambers and the balconies were occasionally dangerous. The receiving hall, throne chambers, and family levels were high risk. These rooms, however, were Goldeneye’s personal quarters, high-ceilinged, well furnished, utterly private. On every map Charlie had seen since he began his new life as a slave to a god, they had been coloured pure black. Even cleaning them was a terrifying sentence. And if you were called to them by the Silver Summer himself… you would not come back.

But they had been. All of them, all his friends, all of the innocent people who the Emperor had taken from Charlie’s home town of Pine Falls, only a few short months ago. Although most of his servants came from his own empire, Goldeneye had explained to the confused, frightened crowd, he enjoyed taking people from other universes perhaps even more. They were less prepared for it. And a group like them? So many friends, so interlinked, so connected? Really, he’d intoned, caressing the words, they were practically begging to be taken. So he had done just that. All of them together, like plucking a bunch of grapes from a vine.

And yet, after that first encounter, so full of taunts and teases and smotherings, he’d then left them alone for four months. The Pine Falls gang had adapted to their new lives, with fear and despair, but without any casualties. They had cleaned, ran errands, and stayed alive. Some had occasionally been called to attend to the Emperor, but managed to survive the experience - Goldeneye had only wanted his belly worshipped, his paws massaged, some other part of him attended to, or simply someone to toy with. Charlie himself had spent three separate days waiting personally on the gryphon, each one horrific and fascinating, but not fatal. A few of the group had tried to escape - Spencer Hamilton and several others had even managed to get outside the palace for a few hours before being caught - but they hadn’t been punished. Apparently it was considered part of the learning experience for new slaves, to discover how impossible it was to run from the living god of this world.

Perhaps they had started to grow used to it, or perhaps he had always planned this. But one day, the Emperor had called all of them to his chambers, locked the doors behind him, and then… this. He had just not stopped, swallowing them one by one, each preything toyed with for hours before being gulped down while the others watched hopelessly and his gut grew and grew .

Until finally, only one was left. Charlie Campbell, the tiger, trying to prolong his terrified life a few moments more.

He tried several other answers - Goldeneye’s physical strength, his ability to feed off emotions, his shapechanging - each one incorrect, and the god-beast continued his slow strokes, watching him know with those terrible, bejeweled eyes. The pauses were getting dangerously long. Desperately, Charlie tried a new tactic.

“Okay.” He swallowed. “C-can you... give me a h-hint?”

Goldeneye raised a feathery eyebrow, looking at him. This was risky. Admitting failure always resulted in some form of forfeit. He just had to hope it wasn’t a fatal one. A few seconds passed, full of tension and terror.

The gryphon smiled, his beak still a little wet. “Very well,” he said. “And in return… come here. I think Ewan and Thomas are having trouble stewing.”

Charlie felt himself growing very pale. Thomas was his younger brother, and Ewan a ram who had been a very close friend of theirs for years. They had gone down one after another, more than twenty four hours ago. He didn’t even know what part of the great sagging bulge was them, let alone if they were still alive or not.

“They are,” Goldeneye said, softly. “They all are. You’ll stew for a long, long time. But they keep trying to crawl back up my gullet, and while it feels lovely, it will be even more fun to make you push them away.”

Charlie stared at him. “Y-you- they- they’re trying t- oh, g-gods, no! I won’t! I w-won’t help you l-like that!”

“Or I can dislodge them by sending you down on top of them.” The gryphon licked his beak, looking steadily at him.

“B-but- god, you utter, evil, maniacal-”

“Your choice, kitten. Remember the bargain you made, after all.”

Charlie stood up, slowly, feeling the burning weight of that awful gaze upon him, and began to trudge forwards. He had to, he told himself. To survive, he had to. That had been the bargain, made on the night they’d started their new lives. They had promised each other that they would do what they had to to survive. If it had been him inside, he would have wanted Thomas to rub. The agreement, they thought, might help them to avoid blaming each other.

And of course, Goldeneye had abused it relentlessly. He preferred it when they blamed him anyway. And of course, Charlie hated himself for it all the same.

Your choice, kitten...

Goldeneye watched him every step of the way. He was salivating again. “Good kitten. Your hint is this: stop thinking about what I can do, and start thinking about what I am.”

Charlie paused, still a few feet from the colossal swollen mountain of belly. “What you… are? You’re… some kind of… soul… god… thing, right?”

“Nearly, kitten. Why have you stopped?”

The tiger flinched. He could feel the heat emanating from the fat, churning mass even here. That was his friends. That was Thomas, and Ewan, and Victoria, and Clay and Erin and Nadeem and all the rest of them, now just a feathered bulge. He couldn’t hear their voices over the liquid bubbling, or see their shapes through the pudge and rippling muscle, but they were there.

Trembling, on the brink of yet more tears, he stepped forward and began to rub it.

Oh, god. They were so… soft. He’d expected to feel the firmness of bodies pressed together, but instead he sank in up to the forearms before he even managed to stop himself. It was akin to touching quicksand.

“W-where are they?” he whispered, not daring to push further, but afraid to pull back. Goldeneye growled softly.

“You’re feeling them. I said they were all still alive, kitten. I didn’t say they were unharmed. They’re softening up very nicely. Now, don’t stop, and see if you can find the answer.”

The tears began to come, spilling down the tiger’s cheeks, and he obeyed, rolling his hands in slow, deep circles across the sloshing mass. Sure enough, he began to notice other textures beneath his fingers. Some were firmer and more flesh-like. Others were barely more than liquid. Each ripple of the churning mass moved them, squeezing them inwards, tighter, crushing any gaps and filling all the crevices with thick, oozing digestive fluids. Goldeneye purred, watching him, his breathing slow and heavy again.

“Harder. That’s Gabriela’s face you’re stroking right now. I want it smothered in the walls of my gut.”

Charlie felt his knees threatening to give out. Silently, he pressed the faint bulge, pushing it back into the bubbling mire of gutslime.

“So, any answers?” Goldeneye relaxed against a cushion, stretching out one massive thigh to let his belly sag further. “To remind you: I’m a Shard, a creature made up of bits of other peoples’ minds, which has managed to make itself into a sentient soul. I built my own personality, and then I built a body for myself, and then I started to have fun with it. What do you think is the greatest advantage of that?”

Charlie could tell he was beginning to lose interest in the game. He had to play very, very carefully. He swallowed, keeping up the rubbing, tearing his brain apart to try and find an answer. And then:

Why am I thinking like this will actually matter?

Because he’d seen all of them do it. Because he’d chosen to play along with the god-gryphon’s whims for months, in the desperate, hopeless desire that it would somehow save him or his friends. And it had just meant he spent longer being frightened and abused, before ending up in the same place. Here. Soon to be in there.

“I g-give up,” he mumbled. “You win.”

It didn’t make him feel much better. Goldeneye watched him impassively. The tiger shrugged, with a bravado which managed to just about mask his terror.”

“I’m n-not doing this any more. I’m n-not hurting my friends for n-nothing b-but a few seconds. And I’m not hurting m-myself either. You… you disgusting, g-gluttonous beast… you don’t d-deserve anything f-from me, s-so why s-should I give you it?”

The gryphon smiled, this one smaller and more tender. He almost seemed impressed.

“Well done, kitten. As the expression goes, when I choose you… the only winning move, or rather the only move that doesn’t make your losing worse and more painful... is not to play.”

Charlie nodded, quietly resting his hands on the soft, gurgling hill of fat and feathers. It made sense.

Something hit him from behind like a train, smashing him right into the bloated, gelid mass of the beast’s gravid paunch. He opened his mouth to scream and found it filled with squishing feathery belly, squelching its way between his open lips. He felt Goldeneye’s claw on his back, grinding him.

“Unfortunately,” Goldeneye said, his voice just to soft and purring with desire, “you don’t get to choose that. You’re playing. If you choose not to act on it, well… I’ll just enjoy making it worse without any resistance at all.” Charlie could barely hear him. His face was pressed deeper and deeper, the beast’s voice becoming muffled through layers of fat and other things. Other sounds started to be heard. Gurgles and groans, sloshes and slurps of flesh on flesh, and… oh, god…

Pine Falls was here alright. Charlie could hear the roar of them, crying, yelling, screaming, begging: so, so many voices. Most were barely able to speak at normal level, but somehow, Goldeneye was letting them stay conscious and awake and able to be heard. He could even discern a few individual voices here and there:

“-c-c-can’t b-breathe, it h-hurts- p-please, p-please j-just let me-”

“-swear, y-you g-goddamn f-fatass bird, I’m going to give you the w-worst indigestion you ever-”

“-Ew-Ewan, get your d-damn hoof out of-”

“-help me- p-please, nnnnghhh, s-someone, help-”

“-ing hell, it hurts, sir... p-please, it h-hurts, oh god-”

Charlie wailed with despair, and Goldeneye began to move his own claw, using the tiger’s entire body as a flexing, squirming toy to rub his belly with. He ground the tiger across his paunch, one finger on the back of his head, pressing his face deeper in than any other. More cries sounded out from within.

It lasted for hours. At some point, the gryphon told him to start kissing to apologise to the gut he’d spent so long outside of, and Charlie didn’t even pause. He licked and slurped over it, leaving little trails of his own saliva. He suckled the faces and clawing fingers of his friends, moistened with his tears. He worshipped it like he would the sun, out of fear and despair and broken misery.

There was never a choice, because the Emperor could always make the alternative so, so much worse.

Eventually, the claw released him. The tiger slumped on top of the stomach, barely able to move. The tears had dried up again, as had his aching tongue. And then Goldeneye spoke again.

“So. What is the greatest advantage of being a creature like me?”

Charlie began to cry. The gryphon stroked his bare body, so gentle, so tender. Beneath him, his friends churned slowly.

“I don’t k-know,” he mumbled, terrified of worse punishment. “You… you don’t… it all works, d-doesn’t it? It all works for you. You always w-win, you always get us… is t-that what it is? Everything at once?”

Goldeneye gave a slow, soft moan of delight. “Oh, that was beautiful. Exquisite. You’re right, everything at once is enough to nearly overwhelm me. Because I want it to. Come on, kitten. You’re so close.”

Charlie shrugged, trying to feebly push away the claw as it ran along his hips. Because he wanted it to. Always, always because he wanted it to.

That was it.

“You want,” he said, slowly. The gryphon’s caresses paused. He closed his eyes, finally out of tears.

“You want. But… b-because you... because you made yourself… you can choose what you want. You can choose how you want.” He raised his head, slowly. “You f-fucking… m-monster. You… you built yourself, and you… you chose… to enjoy this.”

The gryphon grinned at him, his beak parting to show the hellish, glistening abyss beyond. “Well done. There we go, little kitten. I can readjust my own body so that everything I do, at every moment, at every second, is perfect. I adapt my mind so that everything I do is just what I want.”

He tapped Charlie’s nose, coyly.

“So. What do you think is the greatest disadvantage of being a creature like me?”

Charlie froze, mid whimper.

“W-what?”

“It was always a two part question, kitten. You just took a while.”

“Disadvantage? Of you?” He shook his head, fearful. “I- I’m not saying that.”

Goldeneye smiled. “Why not?”

“Because I’m n-not going to be the one saying t-that you’re not p-perfect!” He hefted himself to sit up, balanced on top of the churning mass, sinking even further into it now. He tried not to think about that. “Th-this… what if I g-get it wrong? You’ll… you’ll punish me f-for implying some, some imperfection!”

The gryphon nodded. “Well done, kitten. I will. And if you give up, I’ll punish you too. So guess carefully.”

Charlie tried, harder than he ever had before. He wracked his brain, tore his grey matter apart. He was so, so tired.

To a beast like Goldeneye, what was perfect? Power and control. So what was imperfect? Weakness and helplessness. But in an omnipotent creature which could mould its own mind, what weakness was there? How could Goldeneye ever be helpless? When everything was perfect, when anything could be perfect...

And once again, it clicked. Of course. The gryphon did enjoy perfect symmetry.

“It’s the same thing.”

Goldeneye perked his ears up.

“It’s the s-same thing as before: you can make yourself. You can choose what you want and how you feel. And that means… and that means choice is meaningless, because, anything can be wonderful. Anything can be ecstasy.” He sat up straighter, staring with a horrible fascination into the endlessly deep eyes. “So how? You could be anything, s-so- so how did you end up being… this?”

Goldeneye was silent for a moment, one claw reaching up to stroke his face. “ You’re absolutely right,” he purred. “When anything can be perfect, how can I choose anything? I could make the sensation of breathing utterly orgasmic, or make water taste like ambrosia. And I change my mind, too. I could choose to create a personality which feeds only on happiness and delight, which wants to make utopias and has the power to do it. I could choose to be a god of kindness and warmth, and love it so much that I would never stop. For I am a truly self-made creature, and so I consciously, decisively choose… to be the worst possible monster that I can. I reroute nerves so that I feel every twitch and quiver inside my guts, and I prune my personality until every motion I make drowns me in sadistic lusts, until every relationship has that fear at the heart and the soul of it. I could be anything, little kitten. Anything. And I choose - I choose - to be me.” He stroked Charlie’s face, eyes alight with glee.

“B-but… b-but w-why? Why? Why?” The desperation poured out of him.

Goldeneye patted his cheek. “Technically, the reason is because I feed on emotions and thoughts, and terror is a lot stronger and more long-lasting. But honestly… it wouldn’t change anything if it wasn’t. I want power. That’s how I became a living thing. And power - true power - is never exercised with consent. And so I decided to make myself in such a way that what I want, little kitten, is for you, and all your friends, to wriggle underneath the fat, squishing, smothering weight of mine.”

He nodded, and squeezed his prey into the squelching bulges below. This time, Charlie felt something snap, deep, deep inside.

“But credit to you, you managed to guess.”

Charlie sagged with relief, for just one wonderful moment. The gryphon caressed his ears.

“Can you guess what happens next?”

Charlie could.

“W-wait,” he stammered, shuffling backwards across the rippling mound. “P-please. H-hang on. There- there’s more we could talk about, isn’t there?”

“There is,” Goldeneye said, lightly resting a single finger on his shoulder. “But there’s more I could fill my belly with, and I’m looking right at him. And right now, I choose to be hungry.”

With a gentle shove, he pushed the tiger off balance. Charlie mewled with alarm as he tipped over, tumbling off the enormous mountain of the god-gryphon’s stomach and landing painfully on the luxurious rug below. Even before he’d hit the ground, he heard a bubbling groan from right behind him, signifying that the beast was rolling over and dislodging the tonnes and tonnes of peopleweight in his bowels. It was the same as it had been for many of the others: Goldeneye could tease you for eternity, stretching every second out to make you suffer… but once he decided to condemn you, things began to happen so swiftly that you couldn’t even catch your breath before a slurping tongue sealed over your face.

His muscles responded sluggishly, and he stumbled as he tried to climb up, slipping back down, and in desperation he began to scramble forwards on his hands and knees, hearing already the ground-quaking WHAMS of two feline paws the size of car tyres smashing into the floor behind. Goldeneye laughed, and hot breath poured over the scurrying little tiger.

“No,” the Emperor said softly. No other god’s commandment had ever carried such weight.

And suddenly Charlie’s feet were engulfed. He didn’t actually feel the beak spread open and take him inside. It happened too quickly. One moment they were clawing at the rich rugs below, the next they were… submerged. The flesh of the gryphon’s beak spread around them, the most intimate embrace imaginable, squishing over every inch. It was so hot, and so soft, and just so stickily wet. He felt something soft and powerful curl around his calf, lapping tenderly at it, its tip double back to tease and tickle his paws. He squirmed desperately forwards, trying to find something to grab onto. “PLEASE! P-PLEASE!”

Like I said, kitten. No. The gryphon gulped, slurping his knees and thighs inside. Now his feet were in that throat, wrapped in bands of pillowy muscle which gripped every inch of him at once, vacuum-sealing around him. He grabbed onto handfuls of the rug, bending it backwards as another swallow slowly pulled him further. Goldeneye groaned.

Oh, do you know how hard it is to make myself hungry? My body still has to follow some biological conventions, and it’s been screaming at me to stop for the past ten hours. Too much meat weighing me down, too many people pressing against my innards. But for you, little one, I’ll break my own mind in half to make sure it works right and lets me crave you properly. He groaned again, swallowing, saliva spilling stickily past Charlie’s hips with every ripple of his dripping maw. Slaves were only permitted loincloths in the desert heat, and Charlie flushed, whimpering as every part of him was exposed to the soaking heat.

“P-please…” he whimpered again, knowing that it was the same hopeless pleading as everyone else had devolved to once the gryphon had began his terrible work. “P-please, d-don’t- don’t- I don’t want-” His tears spilled free, coming endlessly now. “D-don’t! DON’T!”

The monster lapped over every part of him, teasing him, suckling on his plush, plump hips like an oversized lollipop, and then swallowed them entirely. Now his belly was in the maw, his arms scraping uselessly on the sun-warmed stone. It began to fall away as the gryphon’s powerful neck lifted up, his throat rippling and bulging around his catch. Oh, you’re just too good. I’m rebuilding myself second by fucking second, just to make sure I can appreciate you properly. So soft, so tender, so breakable, so MINE. The beast growled, his beak clenching, and the tiger was slurped inside a few inches more. The swallows were wet, bubbling explosions of saliva and fleshy muscles. It was starting to reach his chest.

Charlie howled, kicking and flailing and making the beast moan. “I WON’T G-GIVE YOU THAT, Y-YOU, you UTTER- GOD- NO, no, no, NO!”

It’s not something you’re giving, kitten. It’s something I’m taking. And even if you gave me something else, I’d just make myself want that instead. The gryphon lapped under his chin, a patronising tease, and his belly growled and bubbled below. Stuffed as it was, it was still eager for its meal. The tiger panted, trying furiously to reach out and grab onto one of the hanging leaves of a plant nearby. He couldn’t move an inch in the rippling embrace of Goldeneye’s throat, but it was so close. He just… had… to...

And if you get hold of it? Goldeneye squeezed over the small of his back with his gullet, an awful, horrible massage of steaming flesh and drooling fluids. What then?

“I- I j-just- I’ll-”

There was no reason for it, he knew. It wouldn’t save him. But he was panicking, and he was about to be devoured to spend days, even weeks, digesting, crammed in next to his friends. So he strained further. Anything he could do, he chose to do. He was the opposite of the gryphon: every choice he made was meaningless because it would never save him. And that just made him try harder.

“P-please…” he wailed, fingertips a mere few millimetres from it. His muscles ached, his body simmered, his last life was being slurped and suckled away. “J-just- just let me-”

Goldeneye leaned his head forwards, a fraction of an inch, and the tiger just - faintly - brushed the soft tip of the leaf. He gasped with hope, straining further, trying to grab an inch of the-

The Emperor gulped, hard, crushing him back a foot and a half. The soft muscle around him gripped like iron chains and dragged his body down the long gullet. Suddenly his head was inside that dripping cavern of a beak. Charlie screamed with panic, the light suddenly dwindling, and Goldeneye’s gullet rippled again, rising up like a snake or a tidal wave, and swallowed him whole.

“YOU BASTARD,” he screamed, bellowing even as it wrapped smotheringly around his face. “YOU SICK, SADISTIC, F-FUCKING BASTARD!” It was a mistake, because when he tried to breathe in again, he got a mouthful of soft, squeezing flesh and dripping saliva. He screamed again anyway, until his lungs ran out, writhing and squirming with all his might and gaining nothing. Nothing at all. He knew by now what he’d look like from outside - a fat, rippling swell, barely anthromorphic in shape, moving so slightly, so faintly, even as he squirmed and kicked. The feathers, stained and sticky from all that gushing drool, would barely be disturbed as he oozed past.

With the loss of oxygen came exhaustion, though not unconsciousness. Charlie slumped in the gullet, feeling it push him slowly down. It had happened. He was inside. He stared blindly out at the darkness before him, knowing that less than a foot away from him was the outside world, full of life and light and air. And it might as well have been a billion miles. He was in a new universe, one which began and ended in the tight, squeezing, crushing confines of the god-gryphon’s body.

“P-please…” he managed to whisper. “M-make- make it quick, a-at least. You’ve had e-enough, haven’t you? P-please. Please…”

His paws breached a thick, rippling set of internal lips, and immediately met resistance, a kind of squeezing, slimey mass. Goldeneye’s body hummed around him as it squeezed him out, inch by inch.

No, kitten. I haven’t.

Charlie moaned with dread. “But you could,” he mumbled. “You could decide this is enough, and, and make yourself happy with it. Couldn’t you? P-please? J-just f-for us? For the s-sake of w-what you’ve taken?”


I could. And yet… could I? And still be me? This is my greatest victory, kitten, for a creature like me: to overcome my weakness of self-indulgent perfection-chasing, and create personality. I can consistently choose to do the same thing, to want the same thing, to be the same thing. I have made myself a person. The worst person who can possibly be. A claw squeezed that immense gut, and Charlie’s feet felt the pressure even several feet in.

So you’re going to give me more, little kitten. All of you. A whole community of friends and lovers and family, churning away all at once. This I choose to do, and this I choose to lust for. And oh, it’s worth it.

With a slow, gurgling belch of inward fluids, Charlie was squeezed out. He didn’t even have space to get out completely before he was being slid between gelid, soft shapes. People, he realised. Squeeze by squeeze, he was being deposited, packed amongst them like a tetris shape. It was so, unbearably tight, and the heat was a physical weight on his soul. He squirmed feebly, managing to end up somewhere near the centre of the mass, surrounded on all sides by squirming, writhing bodies. A tail brushed his face, a foot pressed against his thigh, his belly rubbed against someone’s rump. They were all there, and through the sticky, bubbling fluids, he heard them.

“Charlie…” that was Thomas, several feet away, the sound carrying across the gurgling, bubbling mass of devoured prey. “Got y-you too… I’m… s-sorry, bro…”

“Is that… all of us?” Erin mumbled from somewhere to his left. She might have been the tail in his face

“H-he- he wa-was… h-he was the l-last…” Victoria sobbed from below. Somehow she’d ended up near the bottom, despite being the last to go. “I’m s-sorry, C-charlie…”

“I’m s-sorry too,” he stammered, trying to adjust his position. “So t-tight…”

Not tight enough, kitten, Goldeneye spoke to them all, punctuating it with a harsh, bone-crushing squeeze. I had to let you soften a bit so that you’d squeeze close to each other properly, but I haven’t started the real digestion yet. But, since you’re all here… enjoy, former citizens of Pine Falls. I’ve been wanting to start doing this ever since I first laid eyes on you. And that was a want I let happen deliberately, because it would make this all the better.

His guts groaned, bubbling and gurgling, and began to squeeze harder. All around Charlie, the others cried and screamed, kicking and moving as best they could in the unbearable confines. Already, his skin was beginning to tingle. He coughed, spluttering on the fluids, and felt the terror returning.

Once again, he had enough tears even when he thought he had ran out. The acids began to simmer him, and soon he was squealing and crying with everyone else, bruising himself as he twisted and turned and burned, skin alight, flesh liquefying, melting slowly into the mush of his friends in the pit of Goldeneye’s gluttonous, monstrous guts. And once again, nothing he did could change it. His choices led only to pain.

The god-beast’s stomach churned for a week solid. For the first three days it was deafening, a riot of bubbling gurgling groans and cries and wails from within, so loud that they could actually be heard from outside. After that, the Pine Falls gang began to grow quiet, sobs and burbling squishes overtaking them. Goldeneye’s stomach turned from a mass of shifting, soft bulges to a liquid mass, sagging lower with the added weight of hundreds of gallons of caustic digestive juices. Sometimes it even brushed the floor, and of course he had formed a nerve cluster at the perfect spot to ensure he moaned every time it did so. They were still alive, of course, weak, soft little swells inside him, twitching and crying, their minds endlessly pleading in exactly the way his own desires wanted them to. By the fifth day, however, he had began to belch up final breaths. One by one his prey went dark inside him, each one treasured and taunted mercilessly in the last moments. And of course it was just as he wanted.

Til, on the seventh day, Charlie expired, and Goldeneye’s paunch quivered, clenched - to smother him completely, claiming the kill itself - and settled. Nothing was left by mulching, churning chyme, soon to be siphoned away and added to the Emperor’s potent body. Goldeneye would have to do it consciously, of course, but that was worth it. Their last sign of existence would be padding his belly, just as their last thoughts had been fearing him.

For a moment, he retreated from his personality, tweaking it, pruning its delight, channeling its pleasure, tasting its satiation and satisfaction, killing a few sub-personalities which dared to steal too much of his mind and his enjoyment. Then he returned to it, slipping inside like putting on a coat, already with another goal, another thing to want more than anything else.

After all, his belly was still huge and soft and oh-so-sensitive, and he’d been monitoring a few very cute people who would need a proper introduction to the new life they were about to start.

And that day, Goldeneye got exactly what he wanted. And he wanted exactly what he got.

Thank you to Lemondeer from FA for making this magnificent work of art. I love it. Goldie's power, his elegance, his sheer obscene fucking greed, are all captured so well. And thank you to  Aeznon for making it all happen. This was actually the other half of a trade with him in return for that time Goldeneye ate YOU (and you were delicious so it’s great to have it all done.

Charlie is  lolno , who I think is my oldest friend in this entire community. And yet we’ve never had something properly together. Such a tragedy, kitten, wouldn’t you say? I thought we could rectify it, and in the process ensure that all your other characters are... equally familiarised. They were delicious.

Hope it’s all enjoyed. Goldeneye is always seeking more to get a little too close to him while watching that magnificent feathered form. That’s why he made it, after all.

Contains: gryphon griffon griffin tiger m/m oral vore male size difference multiple prey digestion fatality unwilling gluttony saliva swallowing feet first psychological torture taunting teasing feral anthro belly bulge

Please login to post a comment.