[OOC: Gmode permission given by Silverstein for Katerina.]
As most tales of horror do go, our lofty heroine, Katerina, futilely attempted to save the bounty hunter from the monster before it escaped. She struck out with her summoned sword, but, also like those same fables, missed her one chance to wound the beast. The elf, who had been the most sensible of the two parties up until now, was taken without interruption, and not even the wolf could keep up with Nami's hasty retreat. Her blade getting stuck in the wood of the central tree gave the darkness too much of a head start, and so the chase ended after it had just begun.
By that point, Nami was already back at the cavern entrance that marked the location of her nest. Sylvia, the elvish bounty hunter, had been gagged half-way through the trip from the village, and was just now being allowed to speak. Her immediate reaction once the tentacle was removed from her mouth was to scream and thrash about, but these actions were not nearly enough to free her from her slimy prison.
"Get off me! Let me go!" she cried, but Nami didn't listen. The same tendril that had been lodged in Sylvia's mouth now hovered in front of her. It split into multiple, miniscule copies of itself: long, muscular filaments that twitched with life. Sylvia's formerly defiant expression turned to fear when she saw this. She had no way of knowing what was going to happen, but her instincts clearly inflicted the fear of death. "Get away! That's disgusting!" The boldness in the elf's voice crumbled into meek terror now that she realized the futility of her resistance. The larger tendrils still around her bodice tightened, some even beginning to strip her clothing from her. When she was half nude, the tiny tendrils from before snaked into every orifice on her face. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth: it made no difference where they were located. If there was a hole large enough for the tendrils to fit on Sylvia's face, the filaments found their way in and began injecting their viscous liquid.
This entire ritual was a common occurrence for Nami and was also a crucial part of her existence. As I explained earlier, her primary driving force is to breed, but her female victims are not always willing to acquiesce to her desires. In cases like Sylvia's, the shadow demon had to make her prey more pliable.
The liquid that was injected into the elf was Nami's means of pacifying her victims. Inside her body, several chemical factories manufactured the neurotoxin that she used on a daily basis. They mixed together components of mind rot magic, love potion, and charm magic in order to create an extremely potent aphrodisiac that could break the resolve of almost any mortal. In the more obstinate cases, the biotoxin producers would also add lust magic to their concoction in order to give that extra umph. Either way, the toxin was manufactured in mass every single day, and then pumped close to a victim's brain until they succumbed to its effects.
Sylvia didn't take long to reach that stage. Her vigor was strong, at first, but the struggles and screams gradually weakened until she went completely limp. Now nude and tear stricken, the elf drooled over the tentacle nearest her chin. "It feels so good," she whispered, her will now completely broken from the neurotoxin in her head.
Katerina walked into the cavern at that moment, having just departed the gnomes outside. Her appearance startled Nami, causing her to flee further into the tunnels beyond. The wolf demon gave chase anew, as expected, but at a cost. She had no way of knowing that the gnomes she met were actually bringing sacrifices to Nami just so she wouldn't eat them instead. They sealed the door behind Katerina with earth magic once she was far enough inside, and would refuse to open it for her even if she asked.
Meanwhile, deeper in the cavern, an interloper had come ahead of the three newest arrivals. He was the sole surviving man from the village: a teenage boy who just come back from visiting a neighboring village. He had ventured into Nami's lair in hopes of rescuing his sister, having still believed she was alive despite his lack of proof. His path was treacherous, but, somehow, he managed to find the fleshy interior of Nami's nest through sheer perseverance.
The walls in that domain he arrived in were covered in fleshy pads, constructs that were incredibly bouncy unlike the hard stone upon which they sat. Mucous lined their surfaces, keeping them moist and healthy; and, for the most part, they were the only oddity to distinguish the nest from the rest of the caverns.
Only once the young man was half-way down a long corridor did more anomalies finally show themselves. At that point, tendrils that drooped down from the ceiling began appearing: miniscule filaments that retracted from the slightest touch. They were tied directly into the fleshy pads, almost like the whole nest was one giant organism. Their numbers also grew thicker the further in one got, until they finally formed a doorway over a narrow passage leading further. Beyond that gate lay the heart of the hive: a large cavern filled to the brim with translucent, fleshy sacks.
Every wall in that place was lined with the sacks, most containing women that could be clearly seen from the outside. These women were the ones that had been kidnapped by Nami, and they were all heavily pregnant with tendrils surrounding them inside the sack's fluids. Every one of them was tied to a giant, green blob that clung to the ceiling, the only one of its kind in the room. This was the first thing the boy saw when entering.
"Gods have mercy," he proclaimed, noticing the exchange of milk and excrement that was going on between the women and the giant sack attached to them. It was clearly an ecosystem of some kind, but one straight out of a horror story. Steeling his nerves took everything he had, especially given the smell of rotting flesh that suspiciously drifted down from the green sack overhead. The most unsettling thing he noticed was the lack of men, and, while he found his sister still alive, he couldn't help but notice that his father was suspiciously missing.
The boy had little time to ponder why that was, however, for Nami could already be heard in the caverns overhead. There was no leeway for him anymore, so he quickly navigated to his sister's pod, cut it open and then removed the tentacles from her. Her abdomen was swollen like a woman who was in her ninth month of pregnancy, and her eyes were closed until her brother spoke up.
"Lydia? Come on, Lydia; wake up!" Stirring, the teenage girl looked at her brother.
"Thomas, " she asked meekly?
"Oh thank the goddess. You're alive!" The boy was clearly inundated with joy that his sister was alive, even if it would have been smarter to feel fear. The girl in front of him, while still his biological sister, held no such euphoria at being removed from her slumber. In fact, rather than being excited, she simply responded to her brother with visible anger.
"Why did you take me out," she asked loudly?
"What," was all Thomas could say before Lydia took his own dagger and stabbed him in the gut? She punctured his body multiple times afterward, as if she were nothing more than a psychopathic murderer. This was no longer the girl from the village, but a monster just like her captor.
"I don't want to go back to being a normal person! I'm happy here, and you're trying to ruin that!" Stopping her tirade, the pregnant woman then stabbed her brother in the groin, and left the knife there before moving away. "You can't satisfy me anymore!"
So ended the unfortunate tale of a brother that loved his sister a little too much. Thomas bled out in seconds, dying just after Nami arrived with her newest acquisition. The sister from before was trying to get back into her pod in the aftermath, but with little progress until Nami moved to aid her. She voicelessly turned around when she heard the monstrosity enter, and looked up at her captor with a type of euphoria that was customarily associated with drug addicts.
Such were the long-term effects of the neurotoxin. After a while, the liquid that Nami pumped into her victims became addictive, and Lydia was one of many that had already reached the stage of no return. For women like her, the pods that served as breeding chambers in Nami's nest were like an all you can eat buffet is to a bulimic, but without the normal side-effects of their addiction. It was an endless bath of pleasure for them, and Nami obliged the addiction she had created in them. She helped Lydia back into a new, intact pod, and then sealed her inside before setting Sylvia down on the floor.
Afterward, the shadow demoness turned to the limp body of Thomas. Katerina was lurking just outside the door, observing everything while believing herself hidden. Nami allowed her to stay there for a time, but only because she wanted to keep her food fresh. She grabbed Thomas's body, and then, with the fullest extent of her tendrils, placed it next to the green sack on the ceiling. As if reacting to the smell of meat, that organism quickly latched onto the corpse and pulled it inside the outer membrane.
Thus, it was revealed that the blob-like creature on the ceiling was a digestive one. Male victims of Nami's were killed and then fed to it. Excrement from the women was also given, in exchange for milk that would sustain children and female victims alike. Sylvia and Katerina were destined to join this cycle if the latter could not defeat Nami; and, unfortunately for the ice wolf, her opponent's gaze was already upon her. Nami would charge at the gate very soon, even before the wolf's first attack came.
