Chapter 2: Cave

Trees toppled from the kicks of my toes and against the front of my ankles. Step after step I left my mark, but soon I saw foot prints from yesterday. Beyond them loomed a decent sized mountain with a large hole set into it. My cave.

The height of the entranceway was a taller than me: about half as so. The subtly-blue glow from the fungus on the sleek dark-gray stone walls greets me. I stuck my finger in my mouth, wet it, then scraped up a finger-full of the light-blue glowshrooms.

Into my mouth they went. One chomp and I gulped them down. I try not to eat too much of the ones that grow on the walls; wouldn’t want to run out of light in the dark when it suits me. Instead, I looked down to the ground and all the boulders lining it. I reached down and hefted one up, admiring the glow from its bottom. Glowshrooms clung over the rock’s bottom there, and their fluffy tops puffed out once uncompressed.

Course, they wouldn’t get much fresh cave air before going down to my belly. I lapped my tongue against the stone and took in all but the fungus at the very edge. With my saliva still glistening on the rock, I set it back on the ground.

Again, hardly enough to fill me up, so I repeated the gesture with a few more boulders: lifting them up, licking up some glowshrooms, and placing them back down. After 6 or so boulders I had my fill for now. I wanted to save a bit of room in the hopes a little “friend” of mine did her job. If she didn’t, well, she was little enough I didn’t need much room, I supposed.

My hair had gotten long: enough to bug me as it kept falling over my arms as I moved them. I made my way to the back of the cave--was heading there anyways. I was thoughtful enough to have the ground boulders to the sides of the cave, so that I had a thin bit of path to walk to the back of the hollow. The stone was smooth and a bit chill beneath my steps: refreshing.

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Ampadia heard the guttural sounds of eating. In particular, she heard the sound of the troll’s teeth mashing something up once or twice before gulping it down. That familiar sound of the throat squelching something down hit her wide ears again, and she shivered with the freshness of her memory of being gulped down.

A bit of light filled the stomach from above. With a mix of hope and confusion, Ampadia looked up just in time to see the glowing mushroom mash heading her way. The soaked gunk fell on her and she cried out in disgust.

She felt a soggy, albeit more intact, piece of the swallowed mash on her palm. Taking a closer, Ampadia noticed it was a mushroom of some kind. The light it emitted was white, but the semi-transparent, lightly-blue flesh of the fungus gave the light the barest bit of blue in hue.

Ampadia quickly cast the shroom aside and did her best to shake the mash from her body. Her eyes were adjusting to the new light when the stomach quickly tumbled. Bula was leaning down, then back up again and the cervitaur bounced along the shifting chamber with the motions. Another loud gulp rang out and more of the mushrooms rained down, less chewed this time. They fell on her, light enough not to hurt, but still sopping with saliva and throat slime.

Before Ampadia could even try to adjust, Bula repeated the gesture, then again and again, taking a few disjointing steps in the process. The blonde deer-taur bounced to and fro as the foodstuff rained down. Undulating slimy walls zipped past her as she did her best to dodge the raining piles of fungal mush. The troll was hardly consistent with whether or not she chewed, and Ampadia was bonked on the head by woofed down full shrooms just as much as she was drenched in slimy, chewed mushroom mash.

At last Bula stopped eating and the cervitaur stood up. She had a few moments to regret her wish for some light in the stomach. She had previously thought that if she could use her vision, she might find a weak spot of the stomach walls to kick, or a way out. Instead, with the light of the glow shrooms illuminating the gut, Ampadia could only see just how hopeless and horrifying the situation was.

The fleshy walls were towering, and every bit as repulsive as their texture entailed. Red rippling flesh, lined with layers of juices surrounded her and rippled under her feet. Ampadia looked up to see the entry sphincter into the stomach looming far out of reach. She looked behind herself to see a similar fleshy ‘gate’ out of the stomach.

Desperate, Ampadia rush over towards it. She tripped a couple times form the shifting stomach and her own panic--one time failing right into a pile of the soggy glowshrooms. Still, she managed to reach the sphincter and tried with all her might to pry it open. No luck.

In the process, the cervitaur got a look at her stinging skin and saw it was a bright red. Bits of it were peeling. Her eyes stung from the air still. She turned and saw some of her fur was already dissolved away. It occurred to Ampadia that she wasn’t leaving this gut as anything other than soup, and even then she’d just be absorbed later on in this giant being’s oppressive innards.

Ampadia didn’t even know the nature of the being she was inside. She had never seen a giant troll before, and her kind never saw a need for caves, so the strange shrooms were unknown to her too. It was a nightmare with a hint of the unknown to her to face the prospect of dying here. She rushed to a stomach wall and started pounding again, screaming, but Bula’s movements quickly had her falling over.

The stomach churned as the giant started moving again. Several times the cervitaur’s weight in glowshrooms had been devoured, and it all bounced around the chamber with her. Ampadia was hit with a big bolus of the stuff. The light of them so close as to hurt her already irritated eyes. A quake rung out on the stomach walls, rhythmic.

Was the devouring giant woman mocking her? Ampadia pounded a few more times against the walls. The giant muttered something, then a snort from the horrible giant reached her ears alongside another thundering, squelching churn. She got buried under piles of the digesting glowshrooms, and lacked the strength to crawl out.

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I neared the back of my cave, pausing to snort away an itch in my nose. Then, I idly drummed my fingers against my stomach once in range of the cave’s end. The back of my cave had “shelves” of a sort: a word for surfaces to set things, often inlaid into a wall or the like. I had learnt it from the same settlement of little people that carved these into the cave.

“Ah, there.” I said aloud. I grabbed up the curious tool, which had grips on either end of two sharp blades. Pressing the grips together, the blades glided against one another to snip. I was told by that same group of little people that the design was based, least partially, off of sheep sheers. They often used littler versions of the one in my hand to trim their beards--something they did very reluctantly, only when the beards got too long or unwieldy for battle.

There were all sorts of pretty runes on the tool, but I looked at them enough times already, and just went right into cutting my hair. I grabbed my dark green locks to a bundle and cut so that my hair would rest just past my shoulders now. If I cut it just at my shoulders, it’d tickle the bare skin there and distract me. Shorter was an option, but I liked it a tad long usually.

Thankfully, my head hair was far slower to regrow than the other parts of my body. I set the trimmed locks on one of the shelves as I finished trimming up my hair.

The same people that made that device and my shelves also taught me more about the glowshrooms. I’m no dummy, and probably would’ve figured out how to grow something like them eventually, but those dwarves said they had them as a staple in their diet for centuries.

They needed darkness to grow, and moisture. That was all, but pressure helped. Made for a good staple for me too, since the saliva I left under the boulders had the shrooms grow back in time. That type of compression apparently helped them grow as well, pressure I guess. Strange sort of fungus.

Fast growing, filling, and nutritious they were definitely a real nice crop. That they illuminated my insides for my more delicious, more wiggling meals was a nice bonus.

That particular small city of dwarves was probably the best settlement of little people I ever had working for me. Shame they turned against me. They developed some new weapon gizmo to hit me with: big iron arrows from a giant crossbow. It emboldened them to break their promises and snide me on my offerings. Once they fired the thing and it failed as I expected, I smashed their homes and gulped most of them down. The one silver lining of it was how delicious they all were.

There’s more dwarves out there somewhere in the forest I thought, but the woods were big enough that I’m not sure even I explored it fully. Then again, I hadn’t really tried to yet. I hoped I’d find more someday, but it was time to check up on another lead for a settlement.

The dwarves made me more than just that clipper after all. They also made my belly ring: mostly gold and certainly special. I felt a bit of fussing there again and moved my fingers to the big gold hoop just above my navel. I slid the ring around and admired the object.

Per my demands, those dwarves had made it with the ability to cage someone inside. This way, I could have a prisoner or, if they were small enough, two without needing to carry them in my hands. With the ring rotated, the part that used to be in my flesh was exposed to air. Rather than solid gold, this part of the metal was grated like a cage--which it certainly was.

Inside was a squat green fellow. Squinting, I noticed he wasn’t too happy to see me as his eyes adjusted to the shroom-gifted light of the cave.

I unhooked the ring, so that one of the ‘walls’ for him would part and lead out to the open. Not very useful, as he was still hundreds of feet off the ground. I moved my other hand over. My palm hung beneath the opening. I twisted the ring and noticed him clinging to the bars to try and hold on. I was surprised he’d want more time in the ring, but he wouldn’t get it regardless.

“Out”, I said sternly. Be it from fear or just shock from my voice’s tone, he let go and plopped onto my palm.