3rd of Sunsfall, 3418, Somewhere in North Yaavy, Markus' Journal

It seems that I could pass for an Oracle if only my ears were a bit pointier, because many things did change after that night. We'd become famous for ending the threat posed by the bandit fortress, and the fact that we were content to be compensated in just the loot of the act meant that the Guild had been receiving even more requests for our team specifically to visit and dislodge a stubborn criminal infestation. Of course, we were well in our rights to turn down these offers since most of them were charities and the loot was unlikely to be anywhere near as lucrative as the crime syndicate citystate that started the trend. But the jobs were easy, and high elves are nothing if not magnanimous and helpful towards those who desperately need it.

I personally would have at least liked to at least stopped in a few Guild outposts to upgrade my lab equipment with our now sizable fame discount, but as usual I was outvoted on the matter. The only time my vote ever matters is when my teammates are split 2 to 2, and usually they prefer to settle the matter with a game instead. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything, that's just elves being elves and I know they mean well. High elves in particular tend to think that even their smaller kin don't quite know what's best for themselves and need high elf guidance.

Of course, the greatest change was to our party dynamic. Not only did my companions insist on taking every opportunity to feast on bandits even at a loss, they also had collectively decided that I would tide their appetites over in the interim periods. Where before I earned my keep by spending three-quarters of my waking hours foraging for reagents, now I rarely had more than half that spent safely outside an elven mouth. If we weren't almost exclusively taking all these easy jobs, it would have seriously endangered the party's supply of potions.

And the verbal teasing that followed wasn't any better. I was both quietly terrified and also somehow flattered when Teale confided in me that I was her new 'favorite flavor'. The introverted elf hastened to declare that she had no intention of swallowing me right then, and that she meant it as a complement of my health. But that talk had cemented the precariousness of the situation I now found myself in.

It boiled down to a few hard facts and the logical connections that an educated folk could make of it. Elves enjoy eating humans. Elves claim that they only eat humans who have refused the protection of elves and thus become uncivilized. Humans at large are unaware that elves eat humans at all. My employment contract states that I will be paid an equal share of the party's profits and be protected from harm so long as I keep the potion supply per elf reasonably high. Logically, if I decided to leave or otherwise fail to uphold my part of my employment contract, then I could be construed as “refusing the protection” of the party according to the contract. If I left the party, I could conceivably tell other humans that elves enjoy eating us, as could any other human in my position. This has apparently never happened, because humans at large are not aware that elves enjoy eating humans. Therefore if I- If-

My mouth went dry at the thought and I had to resist the urge to drink from my waterskin. My hands were still covered in stinging nettles, it was very uncomfortable but I had a magic charm for that. The charm wouldn't help me if I contaminated an object that I frequently raise to my lips and drink from. Rather I decided to refocus on the present while I diced the nettles for storage.

I had woken that morning much the same as I always did, wrapped in blankets at the bottom of a pocket. Being so small in comparison, it was actually no trouble at all for me to sleep on real mattress on a bedframe every night, my “bedroom” was just one of Aure's backpack pockets and it was frankly one of the coziest and most spacious dwellings I'd had since my older brothers moved out of my parents' home when I was still a boy. Everything I owned save for my laboratory equipment was in that pouch, and the only reason the lab wasn't there was because of ventilation concerns, rather than floorspace.

So as usual I climbed the ladder embroidered into the side of the pocket, and then started climbing back down on the outside ladder before I was snatched up by the closest elf who noticed that I was finally awake. I broke my arm once a few years back from falling off of the outside ladder, as the whole surface had been slick with freezing rain, so they very rarely let me fully climb down on my own power anymore, just in case. Today I had been snatched up by Mere, who had without fanfare deposited me near a human-sized platter of breakfast foods before going back to reading her morning prayerbook.

As I ate I listened to the elves as they began discussing their activities for the day. The team had nothing on the agenda save for traveling onward to the next waypoint, but that generally meant nothing as elves were always playing some sort of sport or gamble with one another. I didn't used to pay their talks much attention before, but as of the 'Paradigm Shift', these talks were often the only indication of how much time I had to complete my duties to the satisfaction of my employment contract before my work was abruptly interrupted to begin my second, new role within the party.

Some days I had several hours, others I only had until I was done eating. But no matter what game the elves had decided on that day during breakfast, I was unanimously declared to be the perfect victory prize for the winner of their gamble. As soon as they finished their game I'd be snatched up and stripped, before spending the rest of the day being sucked on until I lost consciousness and waking up to find myself ensconced in elf breasts until the party stopped to make camp.

The worst part was perversely that they always asked first, and I couldn't honestly say that I didn't want to be treated in such a way. If I said yes I was intentionally sabotaging myself and had to live with that, and if I said no their keen senses would know that I was lying and they'd argue me out of my paper-thin excuses into agreeing to go along with it afterall. It was simultaneously a no-win and a no-lose situation.

I truly enjoyed my new place as the team prize, even in spite of the fact that the lack of work on my part was increasing the risk that one day I would wake up trapped in a very different part of whoever had tasted me that day. On some level I was absolutely thrilled to be subject to the whims of folk who made meals out of dozens of humans. The prospect of vanishing down a throat to fatten a bosom wasn't any less terrifying, but the idea that it could happen without any warning made every encounter of that nature far more intense and pleasurable when it didn't happen than that simple fellatio I'd enjoyed with Elya seemingly ages ago.

Damn it all. I was thinking about being eaten again. Worse, I was thinking about being eaten and it had made me hard in addition to being anxious. Being hard before being made into a prize wouldn't have any effect on how long I was tasted, but it did generally mean I was teased before and afterward. Elves can't really help themselves on that sort of thing, I was beginning to recognize that and many of their other peculiarities as specifically predatory behaviors. Like a cat playing with a vole, except the cat had a keen understanding of how much playing the vole could tolerate before it died and was careful not to overdo the game.