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Tyrus
Chapter 1
Strega crept through the short grass at the outskirts of the town.
Circling around the long way had kept her away from the houses of the nocturnal
Praka, who might have smelled or even seen her. Now she moved silently
through the remains of the cemetary, approaching the bell tower from the
back. The human guard sleepily watching the south side of village
remained ignorant of her presence though she passed with twenty feet of
him; her great soft paws made no noise on low grass. She blended
into the darkness perfectly; the lighter stripes on her back
broke up her outline, making her even harder to see in the night.
She paused at the corner of the tower, her low black-furred body
held barely off the ground by her six legs. Cautiously she slid her weasel-like
face around the corner of the tower, and scanned the corner of the square.
No lights burned in the windows, and no one was visible in the slice of
square. In a moment her nine-foot length had silently slid across
the stones and down the stairs that led to the tower door.
Now below the level of the street, Strega lifted her front third
from the horizontal, freeing her forepaws to work on the door. Using
her claws like chopsticks, she slowly turned the latch, taking fully thirty
seconds to move it through ninety degrees. Only the faintest of squeaks
emerged; a human five feet away (or a falan or praka twenty) would
barely have heard it. Now she pressed her left paw against the door
near the upper hinge, while slowly swinging the door inward. As she
had established the previous day during her visit to the priest, this kept
the old door from creaking as it swung on its hinges.
With the door halfway open, she fell to all sixes again and silently
crept into the room. The hollow core of the tower extended above
her all the way to the belfry above. But even with the door cracked,
there was hardly enough light for a falan to see by, much less a
human. She stopped just inside the doorway and listened. No
breathing was audible, yet she scented the priest …? Ah, a noise
from the stairway above. The priest was in the belfry, then.
A flicker of light from a candle was now visible above. He was coming
down, it appeared.
As quickly and quietly as she could, Strega pushed the door closed.
A thunderous (to her, anyway) creak came from the upper hinge; she froze.
But the priest was still descending, thirty or so feet up; perhaps he had
not heard.
The door closed, she flowed across the floor to the stairway,
and under it. This was the location of the giant rat hole that the
small humanoids used to reach the priest and receive their information.
The hole was some eighteen inches in diameter; a little too narrow
for even a small falan such as she to fit through. It seemed only
fair that the traitor’s doom should come from this spot, though.
Strega smiled in the falan way, showing her many saw-edged teeth.
Tyrus (formerly Father Tyrus before his apostasy) descended to
the floor of the tower. Clad in his nightshirt and underclothes,
he padded past the rows of crates to his cot. Suddenly, he felt a
presence behind him, though he knew he was alone in the belltower.
He turned, shielding the candle flame with his hand, and saw nothing; just
the row of boxes. Shaking he head, he turned toward his cot…and froze.
The feeling was there again. Somehow he knew there was someone in
the room with him.
"Hello?", softly. He peered into the shadows under the
stair. "Is someone there?" There was not scheduled to be a
meeting with the humanoids until tomorrow night, but maybe one had come
in with important news. He padded around the row of boxes, and his
candle lit the area under the stair; empty, except for the small crate
that concealed this end of the tunnel. Setting the saucer on
the highest crate, he shook his head, smiled and turned back.
And ran into a mass of ink-black fur. Strega had crept
out of the niche and was stretched out flat next to the row of crates.
As he turned, she rose to her hind legs with blinding speed, and her upper
four limbs whipped out and pulled him in. Huge paws wrapped around his
waist, torso and legs, the padded paws large as his head.. One of
her handpaws caught the back of his head and pushed his face into her black
chest fur before he could utter a sound. Her muzzle with its cold
nose was instantly pressed into the side of his neck. He could feel
her cold fangs as the falan’s lips drew back….
Strega held the human close, and knew that he had to die.
The others might not agree, but they seldom did, anyway. The traitor
was a danger to the village. She bared her teeth as the human struggled
feebly to pull away, to cry out. As much as she would have liked
to bite into his neck, drink his blood, and sate herself on his bloody
flesh, he had to disappear without a trace. That meant that the Maker’s
gift was to be used once more.
She yawned mightily, straining to stretch her jaws out of alignment.
Her serrated fangs folded against the roof and floor of her mouth with
a creak, leaving only the sharp little inward-pointing side fangs.
As she worked her jaws, she held the human close with a handpaw and midpaws
and pulled his nightclothes off with the other handpaw.
A low pop and twinge of pain announced the dislocation of her
lower jaw. She flexed her jaws, now held together by elastic tendons
and pelt, and gaped wide. Strega pulled the human’s head back by
his hair; he drew breath to scream as he saw her wide-open jaws. She easily
took in his entire head as he voiced the cry, muffling it to a bare squeak.
Side fangs dug into his scalp as he tried to jerk back, and as he froze
in recognition of the pain, she pushed her muzzle downward. Unhinged,
her jaws stretched apart, and his head pushed past what would have been
an impossible narrowness and into the wet slick chute of her throat.
In a moment, her lips were up against his shoulders.
So much for the easy part, Strega thought. She held the
struggling human’s arms with her forepaws, and lowered her midpaws
to the floor. The human kicked and thrashed, but she was much stronger
than he, and he had no leverage. She worked her jaws against his
shoulders until, finally, her lips stretched over first one, then his other
shoulder. The back of her jaws stretched wide enough to let them
slide into her throat, his narrow shoulders slipping between her jaws and
into the muscular tunnel of her gullet. The elastic skin and muscle
of her neck easily accomodated the human’s body as she worked him further
into her throat, his contours bulging heavily through black fur.
She pulled at the priest, her powerful swallowing muscles pulling him farther
in as she forced him further down her throat with her handpaws. The
human’s legs thrashed, but soon they would be gone also.
Tyrus struggled, but he knew he was doomed; he felt the powerful contractions
pull him down into the beast’s throat. She had moved her grip on
his legs when she let go of his arms; she slid him farther into the hot
wet darkness of her gullet with terrifying ease. He tried to find
something to grab, to stop the slide; but even with saliva slickening the
gullet he could barely move, surrounded by the falan’s muscular body.
Perhaps twenty seconds into the swallowing process, the human’s head
slid into the cavity of Strega’s ribcage, and his shoulders stuck in the
gap. Her long neck was swelled to twice its usual thickness, the
feeble struggles of the priest visible under the fur.
This was one reason she seldom swallowed large prey whole; not only
was it uncomfortable, and tasteless (blood being her favorite drink and
food), but large prey were difficult to work past the start of the ribcage.
She had almost died this way once, almost suffocated herself.
But that was long ago. She had spent a year practicing
this skill after leaving the Maker-wizard’s service and returning to Falva,
catching and swallowing Hsha beast-men in the wilds of her clanhome. Of
course, regurgitating masses of Hsha fur was the price of this fun, but
she…enjoyed their final struggles as they slid into her stomach.
With practiced ease, she worked the human farther into her throat,
stretching the elastic cartilage at the front of her ribcage until the
opening was wide enough to admit the human. His struggles grew weaker,
more frantic; they only accelerated his slide. When his upper torso
was within her ribcage, she was able to close her jaws on his feet.
Forming her sinuous length into an "S", she swallowed mightily, arching
her neck to add to the force. She felt her throat work as the human
slid farther down her gullet. Finally, with one last undulation of
her body, the human slid completely into her ribcage and past it into her
stomach.
Tyrus drew breath to scream…somehow, here in the hot wet enveloping
gullet, there was air…and cried out with all his might. But the soft
flesh around him soaked up the noise, and the sound was almost lost amid
the creaks and gurgles of stretching flesh and mysterious organs.
He felt the thing’s jaws close around his feet, a fang scraping cruelly.
And then the final gulp, and the throat grabbed at his hips and shoulders,
and he was pushed smoothly downward. A muscular wall blocked his
progress for an instant, but it stretched open somehow, and in one long
slide he pushed past and into a wetly stretchy space that had to be her
stomach. It seemed loose for a moment, then began to fold in closer,
tighter, the strong muscles beneath the walls gripping down. With
a frantic jerk, he struggled to reach the entrance again, but it was gone,
and the heat, the beast’s double pulse, pressed inward….
Strega took a deep breath…<<UuuuURRrrrrPP!!>>.
She clapped a paw over here muzzle and cursed as the belch slipped out.
Closing her eyes, she focused on the struggle in her belly as the human
went through his last doomed attempt at escape. With a final shudder,
he was still. Strega took an almost orgasmic pleasure in this…she
suddenly regretted the lack of an available male, even the despicable Venya.
Ah, well.
"Goodbye, Tyrus…<<BURP!!>>" The words were slurred
by her dislocated jaw. She worked her jaws back into place,
and with a final painful pop they returned to their normal shape.
She was sore from her teeth back to her stomach, which was more than comfortably
full. Letting a more subdued belch exit her muzzle, she gathered
up the priest’s nightclothes and dropped them in the basket of dirty laundry.
A fourth belch provoked her to a fit of coughing that ended with a saliva-covered
slipper popping out of her mouth.
She examined the slipper with some disgust. She had forgotten
to remove the human’s footwear. She couldn’t leave one slipper lying
around. At least it was mostly leather. She flipped it into
the air with a claw and caught it in her teeth. An easy swallow and
it made the long trip to join its owner, as she leaned down to blow out
the candle.
Slipping out of the tower the same way she entered, she crept
back past the guard in the cemetary and eventually to her underground lair,
where a day’s sleep would see her through the digestion of the troublesome
traitor-priest. Bones and cartilage were not a problem; the Maker’s
gift ensured that they would be dissolved by her potent stomach juices
along with the tender flesh.
By the time the humans (with the help of Praka and the other
Falan) learned that she had been in Tyrus’ quarters and came to question
her, the priest would be digested. She would carefully hide even her droppings
for a time…he was a meal they would never able to prove she had eaten.
Chapter 2
Twelve hours later, Strega was stretched out in the long grass,
dozing. She started awake, catching a scent…Venya was coming.
He was making no attempt to conceal his approach. He could
have circled around, crept silently through the weeds by the river’s edge,
and been on her before she was fully awake. But he hadn’t.
For a moment she considered fleeing, but even with an empty belly
she could never have outrun Venya, and her belly was still bulging with
half-digested priest. So she lay there, listening to him padding
his way through the grass.
His wedge-shaped head suddenly rose into view, his blue-green
fur blending with the grass almost as well as it had with ice back home.
Her black and white mottled coat didn’t offer her the same concealment.
Not that it would have mattered if it had. Not to the foremost hunter
in her clan.
"Strega."
"Venya. How has your day been?" Her hindquarters
were partly concealed by the grass, perhaps he would not notice….
"You ate him, didn’t you?"
So much for that idea. "Who?"
"Brother Tyrus. You crept into the belltower, grabbed him
when he came down the stairs and swallowed him whole. Was he still alive?"
How could he know so much? It was like he had been there!
"Swallowed? Surely you don’t think I could have…"
"Don’t bother. I was Alias-The-Maker’s bodyguard.
He offered the change to me, and he told me when you accepted it.
I saw a Gul swallow a human, and you’re bigger than even a Gul. I
expect you swallowed him easily."
"How?" It burst out of Strega. How could he know?
"Your scent was there. He was gone. His trail led
nowhere but to the base of the stairs. And I thought, if I wanted
to make a human disappear utterly, I would call you. And there was
your scent, right under the stairs where you could lurk and wait for him.
And when you left, your belly dragged the steps. It never does unless
you are gorged. How would you get so full? What might you have
eaten in the tower?"
"Yes. I swallowed him. He was still alive.
Are you satisfied now? Are you going to kill me?"
"Of course not." Strega blinked. "I know why you
killed him. The scent of the enemy was strong on the tunnel entrance
under the strairs. I knew he was meeting with them, and I was considering
what to do about it. I couldn’t tell the humans, they were too protective
of him."
"So you are not angry?"
"No, Strega. When I realized he was dead I knew you done
the right thing. I wish you had talked with me first, and I wanted
you to know I knew. But I appreciate your disgression."
As he turned to glide away, Strega was torn. He trusted
her! No one had ever trusted her before. "Wait, Venya."
"Yes?" He watched as Strega rose to all sixes and padded
forward. He didn’t object when she rubbed her cheek against his,
and pushed back, enjoying it.
"Venya, I…no one has ever given me the benefit of the doubt before.
No one has ever trusted me." She was rubbing her side against him
now, her whole length in contact with his greater length. "Venya,
I…do you want to mate?" The feeling was back upon her, what she had
felt when she swallowed the struggling human. A desire, a lust for
companionship, for more. And Venya was here now.
"Strega, it’s not mating season." And yet he responded,
pressing against her. Her movements became more urgent. She
needed him now.
"Does it matter?" She turned away from him, sinking to
her belly and moving her tail aside, exposing her twin vulvas. She
shivered as he sniffed her, scenting her lust.
"Strega, we shouldn’t…" But he was already stepping forward,
straddling her with first his front paws, then his midpaws. She lifted
her rump as his teeth nipped her nape, and felt him lower his hindquarters
onto hers. His hind legs straddled her haunches, and she felt the
first pressure from his twin penii.
"Shouldn’t…" he breathed, but then he pushed into her,
his back arching as he unsheathed both his members into her. Strega
let out a wail and pushed against him, forcing him into her to the limit.
Venya’s teeth closed hard on the thick skin of her nape, and his back began
to arch. One by one, his paws gripped her, and she reached back,
holding him against her as they rolled to the side.
Curled in a double comma, they writhed together, Strega
moaning from the pressure of his thrusting and the swelling of the half-digested
human in her belly. They were far from the mating season, and they
humped in the weeds for half an hour before Strega let out a chilling cry
and clamped down on him with her inner muscles. Venya, unable to
withdraw, bit down on her nape as he spasmed, following her into climax.
She felt him spurt seed inside her, one side and then the other, before
he snarled and jetted the heavy gout of true seed into her right side vagina.
Finally they relaxed, panting in the grass, and Venya licked
drops of blood from her nape. His sharp fangs had finally driven
through the thick skin as he came. "That was…nice."
"Why didn’t we ever do it before?" Strega was in a mellow
mood, staring at a passing cloud as the ripples of pleasure gradually receded.
"You know why. I could never bring myself to be close to
you, and you didn’t trust me enough to approach."
"And in the end, it was you who trusted me. What do we
do now?"
Venya rolled onto his back, his shrunken penii still partly unsheathed,
and stretched his six paws into the sky. "Without a ‘left’ male,
we cannot have cubs."
"But that doesn’t mean we have to be alone when mating season
comes. Senga is too young; what had you planned to do when it was
your time?"
Would you believe, last mating season it was human females who
saw me through it?"
"You are joking." She looked at him in shock. Humans?
"No, they told me well ahead of time that they would help me,
and they did. But it was nothing like this." He stroked her
side with a paw. "Even without a ‘left’ male, I would be happy to
be your mate."
Strega felt happiness well up from somewhere deep inside, somewhere
she had hidden it for all these years. She nuzzled his ear, and felt
her eyes mist with what humans called tears. "Thank you Venya."
"I love you, Strega. I think I always have."
Curled together, they drifted off to sleep in the morning sun.
The End
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