Chapter 4: The Descent

The party quickly learned an important thing about throats in general, and this one in particular: they could squeeze real tight despite how big they were. The four of them weren’t able to just walk sideways through the esophagus like they planned.

Even as Veezla laid down in slumber, her throat still worked. Peristalsis functioned perfectly fine, which meant a formidable and looming well of self-squeezing throat-flesh barreled down at the party. Try as they might, they had no chance of outrunning it. The slimy throat flesh came behind them and pushed them right through the fleshy ringed gate to Veezla’s stomach.

Well, one of her stomachs, at least.

The party fell many dozens of feet down the slimy stomach wall before they tumbled off. All of them screamed till Laddleplug finally managed to get his slow fall incantation out. At that point, they hovered more gently towards the churning, undulating floor. A powerful heartbeat thumped in the distance.

“Yuck, bleck.”, said Thistle. She started shaking herself of the slime, but Arafiel waggled her finger and cleaned everyone off with a cantrip. Then she flexed her wrist and her hovering orb of now-white light grew bigger and glowed brighter. They could see about half the stomach this way.

“Big tummy huhuh”, said Grome.

“Yes, this place is huge.”, said Thistle.

“It’s only her human gut as well. The city she ate should be in the stomach within her tail.”, said Laddleplug. “Imagine how much she’d have to eat in the olden days, where titans were pretty much the only intelligent beings to walk the surface of Leoria. Err, well slither upon it in Veezla’s case.”

“I think she eats enough as is. Take a look”, spoke Arafiel.

With the light the party had, they could make out numerous skeletons littering the living fleshy cavern. All sorts of creatures, based on the bones. One was a massive, tusked being: a mammoth no doubt. Another had mantis like arms. There was an entire pile of humanoid looking bones in one corner: short and squat by the looks of them. Goblins perhaps.

While the others took in the sights of past meals, Arafiel walked up to one skeleton in particular. She recognized the wing bones on it, and the claw bones and sharp teeth set in an elongated, slime-slick skull.

“Gang, check it out, it’s a dragon skeleton. This one looks pretty big, probably a very aged adult dragon.”, said Arafiel.

The drow took a few steps closer.

“Careful!”, shouted Laddleplug.

“Relax it’s dead, and if these bones are still hard a few might be worth a small fortune to an alchemist-”

Veezla’s stomach had made plenty of noises so far. Gurgles, squelches. The sound of digestive fluids dripping from the walls and pooling in corners of the gut abounded. Her heartbeat thoomed around them.

But, at that moment, the stomach *roared*.

The entire organ churned, causing the walls and floor to shift all around the party. All of them fell over, but Arafiel let out a sharp screeched from the movement. The other members of the party rushed forward to see her impaled just below her shoulder on a sharp rib-bone of the dragon skeleton.

“Fuck.”, she said.

“Oh dear, that’s bad.”, said Laddleplug. “Get her out of there Grome.”

The orc rushed forward and pulled Arafiel’s body off the rib-bone. She gritted her teeth all the while. Once free from the impalement, the wound still oozed blood.

“Dragon bone’s are magic. That’ll be a tough wound to fix. I don’t think I can.” spoke Thistle, who was the only one to know any sort of healing magic.

“Relax.”, grunted Arafiel. “I have something for it.”

The dark elf stepped away from the bones, then fished something out of her backpack. A glass bottle, topped with a perforated cork. In it hovered a naked pixie, blonde in hair with shimmering iridescent glows about her. Her insect wings beat incessantly to keep her aloft.

“Oh, is the pretty fairy gonna heal ya?”, said Grome.

Arafiel studied the tiny, two-inch fae being. She reached for the cork and started prying it off.

“Yes, but not in the way you think.”

The cork came off with a pop, and before the fairy could fly away, Arafiel put the bottle’s top to her mouth, tilted it back, and sucked the fairy into her gob.

“Hey what are you doing?”, said Thistle. Laddleplug was a bit too shocked to speak, having been confused how Arafiel got a fairy in the first place.

Arafiel briefly tasted the fey-being as she worked up the courage to swallow. The pixie floundered in the drow’s spit, beat at her tongue, but the saliva sogged her wings from working. She stopped fluttering in the mouth and before she knew it she was swallowed.

“Hey! That’s not good!” shouted an indignant Grome.

Arafiel sighed. Pounded her throat to help the fairy go down, then punched her tummy region a few times to get the pixie to settle.

“Relax.”, she said. She smirked as she felt the pixie magic start to work once her digestion started kicking in. The wound on her shoulder stopped hurting, and gradually began to heal before the party's very eyes.

“That pixie tried stealing our supplies a night ago. She’s a thief, and probably wouldn’t heal me even if she could.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you caught a pixie?”, said Laddleplug.

“Cause then the druid probably would’ve wanted to her free, or you would’ve, or Grome would’ve thought her pretty and opened the bottle without thinking about it. Then she could’ve polymorphed us into pigs, or shrunk us down to the size of toads or something.”

Faint screams echoed from the drow’s abdomen through that thin black leather. Within the drow’s tummy, she pattered and fluttered and flailed in vain. The fairy was quick to learn digestion was not an easy way to die.

“Eating a fairy is one of the most effective cure-alls. I only had the one though, so I’ll try not to get injured again, and I hope you all do the same. Now c’mon, let’s not stay in here for long.”

She started walking towards the other end of the stomach, and the others reluctantly followed. Along the way, the party noticed their skin begin to itch.

“Is this anti-acid coating of yours wearing off Laddleplug? My skin’s getting red like a berry.”, said Thistle as she scratched at her arm.

“I, hmm, maybe Veezla’s acid is too strong, or we might still get irritation even if we don’t melt.”, spoke Laddleplug.

One of the bone piles to their right collapsed as the base of it pooled to ivory sludge.

“Bleck, melt like those skeletons huh?”, said Grome.

Veezla was big, as was her stomach, but they soon reached another sphincter that could lead to the next destination.

“Alright.”, said Arafiel. “We just need to get this open.”

Grome rushed the ring of tight flesh and tried to pry it open with his strength. It was a hopeless endeavor. Buildings could fit through the organic gateway given how big it was, but only when the titaness’s body willed it. Or at least, that’s what it seemed at first.

“Don’t worry Grome, I got this.”.

Laddleplug shuffled forward and spread his arms wide. The wizard cast another spell.

“Open sesame!”

His voice boomed and the flesh squelched. As though naturally, the sphincter slirked opened for them to pass.

“Good work.”, said Arafiel. She was the one to head in first this time.

The party traversed another esophagus-like tube. Pretty quick into their moment and Veezla’s body sensed them again, pushing them along.

Thistle, not wanting to be squeezed on all angles, turned into a giant anaconda to have a bit more freedom of movement. This ended up being very important, as the party was rapidly approaching a junction. They could see in the light of Arafiel’s orb that there was a split in the path, off to the right. Another fleshy tunnel forked off this one.

“What the Leoria is that?”, said Arafiel.

“I’m not sure, maybe there’s another digestive organ, some intestines, for when her meals are too small to be worth sending to the tail-gut.”

“We don’t want to end up there I take it?”

“Oh no, an intestine could be far more dangerous. We don’t know the kind of fluids that could be produced there. Whatever bile it is might eat through my coating.”

“Well, how do we know that extra path doesn’t lead to the tail gut?”, said Arafiel, her tone getting a tad more upset at the prospect of melting in some titaness’s bile.

“We don’t, but from the way the tube is squeezing us, her body wants to take us on that path, and we’re rather small. I think we need to keep going straight.”

“How, I can’t even move my limbs squeezed like this I-, Thistle, wrap us up in your snake-self and steer us the right way.”, said Arafiel.

Thistle hissed in affirmation. She coiled her tail around the gang and veered left with all her might. Veezla’s body desperately wanted the party to take that detour, but the shapeshifted druid was strong enough, and the party overall small enough, that she managed to keep them on course and straight.

“Wew.”, said Laddleplug.

“Yeah, thanks.”, said Arafiel. Grome chuckled in gratitude himself.

The party had a disorienting, slimy, but otherwise uneventful journey towards the tail gut. They reached another fleshy gate, and this one was kind enough to part on its own for them.

The four adventurers squelched on through. They immediately started slipping down the similarly slimy walls of the tail gut. Another slow fall spelled stopped them from sliding down too fast.

Arafiel had lost track of her light-orb during the journey. She re-summoned it and made it bright as she could before hovering it far above her head for a moment. To her surprise, once again, she didn’t need it.

Everyone’s jaw dropped. Glainberg was in the titaness’s tail stomach all right. The town was a few hundred feet ahead. Nary a building’s plank looked out of place.