Chapter 21

Harry held his brand new and just purchased high-end fabric bolts to his chest. Harry was a tailor so he had a certain appreciation for quality and these particular Mythril threaded silks were of exquisite calibre. He could feel the metallic threads patterned throughout the silk under his fingers, today truly was one of the best days of his crafting caree-

A crash made his steps falter to a halt. What was that? He turned his head and found he was standing outside of the adventurers guild in a mostly deserted street. The AG, that vast and looming building, truly the adventures held to much sway in the city to have gotten permission to build such a sprawling grandiose thing. But then they did make good (and wealthy) customers, who didn’t want clothing that reliably held enchantments? When your life was on the line your equipment mattered and adventurers were quite happy to shell out the few extra gold for that kind of confidence.

Whenever he had been around the AG before the place was always always filled with singing, or happy shouting, or loud boasting, it was a generally loud albeit positive place. A place welcoming and warm.

This time however there were wails of abject horror coming from within, as though something had happened to the occupants that defied comprehension, an existential nightmare that scarred minds for a lifetime.

Had something bad happened? There were so many cries of distress, it must have been something truly terrible. He stared at the closed front doors, maybe-

The tinkling sound of breaking glass rent the air and Harry stumbled back, looking up as a white furred pregnant fox girl crashed through a window on the fourth floor and flung herself into the air, flipping end over end. She came down, falling out of control, if she hit like this it would clearly be bad, maybe fatal. Harry in a moment of blind panic stepped forward to catch her, his precious bolts of fabric falling to the ground as he reached out.

He caught a look of fear on the falling fox girls face before she opened her mouth and spoke aloud.

“WUMMY!”

A dozen glossy white tentacles exploded from her shorts in a spray of clear fluid and whipped down to the ground below, slapping down onto the cobble. The tentacles caught the falling fox girl who yelped and shuddered as she was supported in the air entirely on tentacles reaching down from her bulging shorts.

She reached down, desperately clutching at them, trying to hold herself up.

“H-hold m-me p-p-properly!” she mewled as her legs dangled, turning inwards as clear fluid rolled down her inner thighs, down her shins, to drip from her toes onto the ground below.

The tentacles seemed to listen and a pair of them slid around her thighs helping to hold her up in the air.

“G-g-good W-Wummy, n-now l-lower me down...”

The fox girl groaned as the tentacles slowly slid back inside her stretched out shorts, sliding back up inside the cloth as she was gently lowered down to the ground. Her feet pads alighted on the cobble with a pat and immediately her knees nearly gave way as the last of the tentacles disappeared from view up inside her. She trembled for a moment, her legs shaking, before she managed to recover somewhat, rubbing a paw over her face.

Breathing heavily she glanced at Harry who was openly staring at her. She froze up.

“Uh, hey.”

Harry continued to stare.

The vulpine coughed into her fist and then waved a paw at him.

“You didn’t see that. Nothing happened.”

“I- You- tentacle-!”

She put a digit to her lips and shushed frantically.

“Pretend nothing happened if you know what’s best for you buddy. You want to wake up in the middle of the night being dragged out of bed by dozens of angry pussy tentacles?”

“S-slime M-m-monster!” said Harry, not quite processing what was being said.

She let out an exasperated sigh then glanced behind as something large crashed up against the inside of the main double doors of the AG causing them to shudder.

“Ah looks like things are about to get kinda messy. I’m off, best of luck!”

She patted him on the shoulder with a slightly wet paw and jogged off down the street leaving the stunned tailor behind.

The doors boomed and shuddered once more and Harry took a step back unsure what strange thing was about to happen next. He didn’t have to wait long, the doors groaned and then all of a sudden they burst open, whipping outward on their hinges, which was concerning considering they weren’t meant to open outward.

A tide of people caked in some kind of white substance exploded forth, at their front a terrified centaur with a pair of large minotaurs atop her back fighting each other to get at her. As he looked the blonde furred one punched the beige furred one in the eye and she was sent flying from the centaur’s back with a scream. Harry only had a moment to consider that it might have been in his best interest to follow the vulpine before the tide rolled over him and he was knocked off his feet by the panicking fleeing crowd.

People rushed past, shouting and screaming about being cummed on or something like that, Harry wasn’t quite sure and their wild-eyed screams of rage and hysteria were hard to understand. In any case he was somewhat distracted by seeing a half dozen minotaur feet following after the centaur coming into contact with his precious bolts of fabric. A scream of existential horror ripped from his lips not unlike the ones that the strangely white-coated crowd were making. He crawled forward, adventures rushing around him, and reached out for his cloth as one last particularly large minotaur hoof crushed it into the muddy cobble.

Too late. It was all ruined. He placed his palms flat on the ground and bowed his head as the last of the white coated crowd passed by.

“Erm, are you o-okay? I- I collected your fabric thingies if that’s okay?”

He blinked and slowly raised his head. A white sphere about one foot across was floating a little above the ground, a messy line of white drooling from the bottom as it shifted.

“Wha- are you ... a ghost?” he breathed.

“Uhmm, n-no, just an otter girl, at least, I hope I’m not a ghost.”

The bolts of fabric which seemed to be floating a bit above the white sphere moved toward him and not knowing quite what else to do he took them.

“Sorry about that, this is all my fault really, I should have said something about being sleeved on Fey, it was always going to be a mess.”

Harry hugged his bolts of cloth tight, ignoring the hoofprints and spatterings of sticky white substance on them.

“Kayla come now, we have a job to do despite this mess,” said an authoritative voice from behind the floating sphere.

Harry looked up and as though the sun was rising over the horrid darkness a person appeared, an elf, but that term didn’t quite do her justice. Harry had never seen such a mind-bogglingly beautiful person before and words utterly failed him. He could only look up at her from where he knelt on the muddy cobble, his jaw flapping open uselessly, bolts of fabric forgotten, for what were they before this perfection? this goddess of glamour walking amongst mortals. His wonderful fabrics paled and became grey before this stunning elf, she was on a different level to anything he had ever seen and already his tailor’s mind was firing up and imagining how much more stunning she would look if he were to create real clothes for such a woman.

The ‘ghost’ seemed to move and twist toward her, then wobbled slightly.

“Uhm, yes Ellaria! Captain sir! Er- Ma’am!”

Harry watched with a glazed over expression as the ghost followed after the ridiculously attractive elf, then he looked down at his expensive new mythril silk.

He had work to do, his inspiration and new muse demanded it.

“G-get off of me!” cried out Fey as she bucked her horse half, the blonde furred minotaur hanging off her back bouncing and rolling across her as she moved, barely hanging on.

“I- I Just want you! Just become my husband! Marry me! Please!”

“NO! I’m not marrying you, you crazy minotaur!”

The minotaur was large, and strong, that was true, but Fey was large herself, and also very very strong so eventually the inevitable happened and the minotaur was flung from Fey’s back and crashed to the ground in a heap. She glared up at Fey from where she lay, a bit of mud marring her clean blonde fur, and her blouse, which was a shame as it was a nice blouse, low cut on her expansive breasts which were cupped by her stylish corset below.

“It’s only right you become my husband. I beat the others and won you fair and square! We need to get married right now and then you can use that fat heavy horse dick to pound me into our marital bed until I can’t feel my legs!”

Fey flushed at that. “I’m not a husband! And I’m not doing any of that! I’m part of a band anyway, I can’t just go gallivanting off to get m-married!”

“Well obviously you would be quitting your band and joining ours, that would automatically be part of the process, it’s the minotaur thing to do!”

“We both might have ‘taur’ in our species name but that doesn’t mean I’m a damned minotaur!”

“But!”

A flame suddenly blazed to life in front of the minotaur’s muzzle, a sickly green and black flame that radiated a sense of agonizing death, a putrid fearful thing. The minotaur’s eyes widened and she stiffened up as she realised she was inches from a painful burning.

“If you keep bothering my bandmate I will incinerate every hair on your body until you are as pink as a baboon’s bottom, then I will make you drink molten lead until your bowels burn their way out your asshole minotaur. Do not presume to think you can harass my subordinate, or worse try to poach her for your own band.”

“Y-yes, I- I promise to behave!” quavered the minotaur, thoroughly cowed by the deathly magic.

The flame stayed for a moment more before wisping out of existence leaving behind a twisting grey thread of smoke.

“Good. You may stand, and then you may leave.”

The minotaur shuddered then slowly climbed to her hooves seeing the person who had threatened her for the first time, a very very attractive redheaded elf. She blinked. It had been the elf who had originally run off after the white furred vulpine with the rest of her minotaur band in the AG.

She watched surreptitiously as the elf checked Fey over. Her gaze was drawn down to a wobbling white sphere that seemed to be following the elf around. She recognised it of course, it was the same sphere that the centaur had created in the AG except now mostly emptied and apparently mobile.

“Fey can I not leave you for five whole seconds without creating a minor natural disaster in the local area?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean it to happen that way! It was just supposed to be a little sleeving!”

The white sphere bobbed up to the elf’s side and tugged at her leg.

“It was mostly my fault captain, I shouldn’t have let Lily do it, but she’s so addicted to milking Fey that I couldn’t let her suffer!”

“Hmm, perhaps we need to look into finding a preservation type dimensional bag, or at least another regular one if this goes on. In any case we need money for that, and since that’s what we came to the AG for then that is what we should do.”

“You managed to get a job? In all that chaos?”

“Yes, it seems the clerks are quite used to working under duress, it helped that I asked for the job they had most demand for. They positively threw themselves at me once I told them I was willing to do it, it seems that the city is rather desperate for people to deal with this particular job, it pays pretty well too but few seem to be willing to take it for some reason.”

She pulled out a sheet of paper and waved it in the air. Fey caught it and inspected it.

“Cleanse the greater slime infestation. Wait, Ella, this is in the city sewers!”

“Yes, that is where the slimes congregate.”

“The sewers Ella! It’s no wonder no one wanted to take this job!”

The elf furrowed her brow. “Well they hardly seem the type to buckle down and deal with the gritty reality of the adventurer life. If a bit of public sewage is going to bother you then you probably shouldn’t be an adventurer in the first place. A bad smell is nothing compared to having the steaming entrails of a wildebeast splashing across your face as you disembowel it with a longsword.”

Fey looked at the elf with dismay.

“B-but the sewers!”

Ellaria did not look swayed or amused by this answer and Fey’s head sunk forlornly. The band captain had final say, that was being part of a band. She half heartedly wondered if getting married to a randy minotaur girl would have been such a bad option after all.

“Uhm, what happened to Vivi? Did you ah, catch her captain?” came a voice from the white sphere.

Ellaria tapped her lip in thought. “I did not, and she is in deep trouble. Fortunately I have a rather effective way of finding missing in action band mates.” She lifted her hand and pointed at the sky.

Fey followed her finger up and found a small pink haired floating person up above them gliding through the air, a second slightly smaller person floating beside her. It was Flora and Lily and they were both peering across the streets like hawks. As she watched Lily suddenly exclaimed and pointed and the two began to sink groundward.

“Ah, it appears we have found our quarry, much as the proverbial hunter unleashes her hounds on the proverbial fox gone to ground, Vivi never stood a chance. A minor version of hell awaits our comrade, I hope you are up to the task of healing her Fey.”

“Wha- what wait you are joking right Ella? H-how serious is this punishment? W-wait a second!”

Already the elf was striding away and Fey had to hurry to catch up. The small white sphere turned and seemed to look at the minotaur for a moment before turning back and dashing after them, moving up and down as the invisible person around it ran.

The minotaur watched and then followed after.

The group soon found their unfortunate target. A barrel by a stall selling parasols. A white furred buttox and a tail was sticking from the top, a hopelessly stuck fox girl inside making muffled calls for help. Flora and Lily floated above as Ellaria neared.

“Oh Vivi, this is perfect, I can roast you alive in there, cook you like the little slime smuggling plate stealing scoundrel that you are. I’ll start with your tail and turn it into a torch to warm my hands.”

The muffled sounds from inside the barrel became muffled shouts of alarm and the barrel began to wobble around on the spot as Vivi panicked, desperately trying to escape her temporary hiding place become accidental prison.

A dozen small flames bloomed to life around the elf as she advanced. But then the barrel abruptly went still as Vivi froze up and then a different kind of voice could be heard, one that said something like “Wummy nuuuu!”

Ellaria blinked as Vivi’s tail flagged up in the air and the elf had a clear view of the fox girls shorts before they suddenly bulged outward and a dozen tentacles ripped them apart, her abused reddened pussy stretched wide by the huge mass of so many forcing their way out.

She faltered but the tentacles didn’t even hesitate. They whipped out toward every flame, smothering and extinguishing them. Then the tentacles seemed to turn on the elf and glare at her angrily.

“Uhm, d-doesn’t your fire kinda not work on, uh, Wummy?” muttered Fey eyeing the tentacles with concern.

“Don’t name the smuggled slime monster! ... and no it appears that this creature is uniquely fireproof just as its previous incarnation was before it metamorphosed and evolved inside of Flora.”

“Isn’t this kind of a p-problem?”

Ellaria glared at the slime, a strange kind of standoff as it protected its host from harm.

“I- I think you might need to first convince Vivi to give it up Ella. I’m not sure how else to get around it.”

“I could burn the barrel,” said Ellaria, but no sooner had she said it a quad of tentacles dived down the sides where Vivi was stuck and then ripped the barrel apart. Planks and nails were sent clattering across the cobble as a rather flustered and sweaty fox girl slumped on the ground and then scrambled on all fours to get away from Ellaria, taking the dozen tentacles sticking from her cunt with her.

Ellaria furrowed her brow. “It ... actually seems to understand speech...”

“I’m gonna expect payment you know!” said Flora from above, “That’s my slime baby you stole! Hundreds of gold, no, thousands, you’re gonna give me all your earnings from now on Vi!”

“Why meee!” moaned Vivi from below the parasol stall.

The elf looked at the stall which the tentacles were inspecting down to the fox girl trembling beneath it. She sighed and decided to temporarily drop the matter.

“We came to the AG to do a job and by hell or high water I will see that we do it. Slime monster hiding out in bandmate or not.”

Lily whooped in the air above them. “Our first job as adventurer apprentices, heck yes!”

Fey smiled. “At Least it should be an easy one for newbies, hunting slimes is like a new adventurer’s initiation. They say you aren’t a true adventure until you have gone on a slime job.”

“Ugh. Lame. I’ve had enough of slime monsters for one lifetime thanks. You try and be the unwilling mother to one and see how you feel about it.”

“It’s worse than that Flora, the jobs in the city sewers.”

“Oh come on! Why are you so bad at picking good jobs Ella, the sewers? WHY!”

The elf glared up at the gnome. “Because it pays very well and it was the best I could get in the all of thirty seconds I had before the AG descended into utter chaos. Now are you coming or not? This is to save our band mate and friend you remember? You know the one who tried to save your life down in the dungeon.”

Flora let out a long exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes. “Goddamit you are way too good at this controlling captain shit.”

“When I say we are going to do something I mean it, now come.”

She took a few steps and then paused. A large blonde minotaur was standing in her path. The minotaur raised her hand and waved meekly.

“Uh, hi again.”

“I’m still not marrying you!”

“N-no! It’s not that, I uh, might have gotten a little carried away, it’s just imagining such a thick masculine thing stretching me-”

“Get on with it.” growled Ellaria.

The minotaur coughed into her fist, blushing slightly.

“Er, right. I couldn’t help but overhear that you are going to the sewers to hunt slimes, although why one of you has a freaking slime monster inside- nevermind, getting side tracked- this is your first job here in Bine as you are new to the city yes?”

“Uhm, yes, we are in need of money for, uh, some reasons.”

“Well I can make up for what I did a little perhaps, I am quite familiar with the city, and I know much of the sewers. I would be happy to guide you and make things easier?”

The blonde minotaur looked at them hopefully.

“Maybe she can help us avoid the stinkiest parts...” said Flora.

“R-really can you do that?”

The minotaur nodded. “You just need to kill slimes right? Well I can take you to the part of the sewer that’s used more for flood mitigation than sewage, that shouldn’t smell quite as bad I believe.”

“I love her already,” said Flora. “Welcome to the team new vice-captain. Lead the unsmelly way.”

“What’s your name?”

The minotaur shifted on her hooves awkwardly.

“It’s Astrid. You can call me Astrid.”

“That’s a pretty name,” said Lily as she floated down on top of Fey’s back.

“Well, Astrid, you had better show us the best way down.”

“Right, follow me.”

Astrid the minotaur led the band through the city until they came across an old rusty iron door at the back of a deserted alley. After some difficulty opening it, in which Fey had needed to lend her unusual strength, they had forced it free and descended into the dark damp gloomy sewers of the city far away from any natural sunlight.

Ellaria gestured and a dozen flames spluttered to life floating around the band. Astrid and Vivi eyed them nervously. Deeper, then deeper they walked, the slimy greasy walls and path along a river of suspiciously tinted water the only feature of the splitting tunnels they trod.

A rat ran shrieking as Vivi passed by. She wrinkled her nose and nearly gagged. “Oh gods why does this place smell so terrible?”

“It’s a sewer Vivi, and I’m still mad at you. Don’t forget your punishment is inevitable.”

Vivi took a step away from Ellaria out of instinctive caution.

“It’s awful down here,” said Flora. “My poor sense of smell, I’m suffering!”

Vivi shot her an annoyed glance. “You don’t have a sense of smell anywhere near as good as mine! and you float! You don’t even need to touch anything! Whereas I have to walk on the ground, where there’s been- all over the- oh I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Well it’s your choice not to wear shoes foxy. And shorts apparently.”

“Wummy did that, I’m not wearing shorts by choice ... W-wait Wummy!”

The fox girl’s pregnant looking stomach suddenly writhed as though tentacles were shifting below the surface. She bit her lip and shuddered, her thighs clenching together.

“What’s wrong? What is it?”

“It- It’s something is disturbing it! I think s-something is coming!”

“A monster?” said Astrid. She shrugged her shoulders and unholstered a broad-bladed hand axe from her side.

“She’s right, I can hear movement,” said Ellaria, her flames flaring brighter.

The band readied themselves, staring at the nearest tunnel corner, just waiting for the coming attack.

A ball rolled around the corner. A shiny blue ball.

The band stared.

“Oh, it’s just a slime.”

Ellaria flicked her fingers and a normal regular fireball struck the slime and it ignited. The slime made a squeaking noise before it promptly popped and died, a splatter of slimeyness pattering across the stonework.

“Yawn.” said Flora. “Truly you chose the most challenging of jobs El.”

“It pays well, if it’s a good paying job then it doesn’t matter how easy it is.”

“Mhhmm,’’ said the gnome drifting past with her hands behind her head, bouncing one leg over a knee. The band followed after.

Fey glanced to the side, watching Vivi. The fox girl was still having trouble and as she passed by the patch of blue that had been the slime monster a tentacle slipped from her pussy, quickly dropping down and rolling all over the blue on the floor. To Fey’s surprise the blue was quickly slurped up and absorbed by the tentacle, sucking up the fluid and drinking it.

“Uhm, is Wummy a c-cannibal?”

“I think it’s just very territorial,” groaned Vivi as the tentacle slipped back up inside of her.

As the band continued onward the number of slimes increased until they were crossing groups of half a dozen, then a dozen, then more, until all the band had to break out and start crushing them individually. This hardly proved a challenge and the slimes died in droves. Fey even felt a little bad as she brought a hoof down like a black smith’s hammer cracking the stone so hard that sparks flew and causing the slime beneath to explode in a splash of blue.

The one least happy about the slime slaughter was Vivi whose passenger seemed intent on sucking up the remains of every single slime they killed, often with many tentacles at the same time. The result being Vivi stumbling along as a half dozen tentacles reached toward the ground from her bare to the air pussy, dragging and touching along the stone slurping everything up as she walked.

As the number of slimes increased the architecture started to change, changing from simple stone work to more complex brick work and arches, and to the band’s relief so did the smell, changing from the mixed miasma of so many species faeces to a clean almost damp mouldy smell.

They eventually emerged from a tunnel Astrid had led them through and out into a huge dark space that seemed to have no end. Ellaria waved her hands and the floating flames around her rose up and bloomed into minor fireballs casting far more light.

The space was revealed to them, or partly at least, a vast chamber several stories tall and filled with many grand pillars marching away into the darkness. It was truly huge, enough space to fit the entire town they originally come from several times over.

“This is a sewer?!” said Fey looking around at the space in amazement.

“Not quite,” said Astrid, “It’s for flooding, it stops the city from turning into a quagmire in the rainy season, a reservoir, all the water that might normally cause a flood instead flows into here. It was built a long time ago and most people don’t know it exists, it’s not of much interest so people don’t hear of it.”

“Interesting,” said Ellaria tapping her chin. “I suppose that if more people knew of this they would take on this slime job. The most off-putting part of the job is fighting in these sewers but this flood reservoir thing is hardly a sewer, it’s practically clean in here.”

Flora drifted up into the gloom overhead, the arched spaces between the pillars giving the space an almost cathedral like presence that suggested its occupants be respectful.

Flora opened her mouth and shouted into the darkness. “COME AND GET SOME!”

Her voice echoed away and then came back, bouncing over and over into the endless empty space.

“I don’t think slimes understand speech Flora...” said Fey.

“Hey my slime baby seems to, so maybe others do too yeah? Plus if it works it saves us wandering around in the dark for hours on end.”

A slime rolled from the darkness.

“See, it’s already working!”

Then a dozen more slime rolled forth.

“Rather well, surprisingly, although I suspect they were more attracted to the annoying noise than any understanding of what you said.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, it gets the job done so I don’t care,”

The band went to work and the slimes just kept on coming, an endless tide of slimes that poured from the darkness. As they fought some of the slimes that wobbled and slimed their way forward were larger than their kin, one foot across was the norm but these were two or three or even four foot across, these larger slimes started causing significant problems as they couldn’t easily be smashed underfoot or cut apart.

Astrid’s axe swung through the air in an arc and cracked against the stone below as it parted the murky green slime it had just passed through down the middle. The slime seemed to freeze up out of shock, then it slowly oozed back together, the chasm through its body the axe had created simply healing and sealing closed.

Astrid looked down in alarm as the slime monster latched onto her hand from where it engulfed her axe and began slurping up along her arm, quickly gaining ground.

“H-hey, I might need a little help here!”

“I thought you were supposed to be experienced with this stuff!”

They usually don’t get so big! I’m not sure what’s happening!”

She tried shaking her arm but the slime was firmly attached. She tried pushing at it with her free hand but to her dismay found her other arm sinking into the gel-like mass as well. It was nearing her shoulders, and seemed determined to get at her mouth and more importantly its sustenance, her saliva and fluids, despite her strength and frantic movement.

Something touched at her shoulder and she turned her head to find a glossy white tentacle beside her, looking down at the large slime monster making its way up her arms.

“N-not help from that thiiiinnng!”

But it was too late and the white tentacle dived down and stabbed inside the murky green slime monster, its tentacle piercing its surface. The slime immediately reacted, thrashing desperately, and trying to flee, but to no avail, the tentacle wiggled around and the slime quickly began to be sucked up and absorbed, the tentacle draining its mass into itself, shrinking the green slime down as its insides whirlpooled around the tentacles surface.

Soon the slime was gone and Astrid shuddered as the tentacle explored her arms, sucking up the last of the green slime’s remains.

She turned her head to see that the vulpine’s slime monster hadn’t even been fully concentrating on the one attacking her and had been simultaneously attacking and absorbing slime monsters or their fluid remains.

“ ... What is with this band?”

She was stopped from further pondering however by a scream. With a whip crack sound the gnome flew past out of the darkness as though hit with a bat, her arc of motion near straight she was travelling so fast. She hit the ground hard and went rolling.

“Flora!” shouted Fey galloping toward the fallen gnome.

“What was that? What’s happening?” said Lily, the otterkin standing by her invisible sister protectively.

“I don’t know, but it seemed to have attacked from the ceiling judging by her angle of fall...”