Chapter 3: Weakness as a sin

As Regar thrust his sword, the squirrel girl twisted to the side far quicker than any human could and took out her daggers in one swift motion and took a battle stance. Regar swung his blade towards the human woman and managed to force her to block with her wrist guards, digging deep into the thick leather but not quite making it through. He succeeded in pushing her off balance and bringing her to to floor and tried to go for a thrust while she was prone, but was forced to back off as the squirrel girl lunged at him to protect her mate. While this was happening, Lyria jumped out at the leader, swinging her sword down with immense force but sadly only meeting wood as the wolf girl rolled out of the way, also drawing her sword and getting ready to retaliate. The wooden log she was sitting on was split clean in two sending some splinter shards flying. Lyria lifted the sword and thrust it in one consecutive action, but was parried out of the way as the leader tilted her own sword to let the thrust slide off harmlessly to her right. The two traded some blows but eventually backed off each other to assess each other's weaknesses.

Regar in the meantime was struggling to handle his two opponents, he was managing as well as he could but he wasn't skilled enough to take on two opponents at the same time. He dodged the squirrel girl's rapid strikes by using the wooden stumps as barriers between him and his opponents, but with the two of them slowly surrounding him, he started to lose ground. The squirrel girl jumped over the log and kicked him in his stomach, which he prepared for by bracing and tensing his abs to soften the blow. The kick sent him stumbling back, but he managed to find some support from a nearby tree and just in time as the human woman rushed him down with an arrow in her hand attempting to stab him. The arrow pierced the tree bark with a thunk, and then the end snapped off as the force was too much for the wood to handle. Regar swung his blade, hitting the trafficker in her stomach, digging the blade as deep as he could causing the trafficker to stumble back clutching her left side as blood began pouring out of the wound, staining her clothes and hand a dark sanguine red. Unfortunately the angle from which Regar swung his blade wasn't optimal, so he wasn't able to finish her off in a single blow. He cursed his lack of luck under his breath and he braced for another onslaught from the squirrel demi, but just before she began rushing him down a loud scream distracted her, her partner and Regar.

Lyria managed to break the stalemate by stabbing her blade directly into the wolf demi's foot paw, and punched her square in the jaw eliciting a howl from the large trafficker. She quickly takes her blade out and watches the wolf stumble back for a moment before stepping in with a large overhead swing. Lyria counters her by stepping in as well and jabbing her sword into the trafficker's wrist with pinpoint precision on the downswing. The demi held her claymore with an iron grip and tried to grab the edge with her left hand to use her strength to throw Lyria to the ground, but Lyria's blade was quicker and slid out as easily as it went in. Lyria quickly raised her sword and brought it down, cutting the wolf's hand clean off, causing the demi to howl in main and stumble back in pain. She wanted to say something to Lyria, but before any words could come out Lyria cut her head clean off without hesitation.

The body drops to the floor, lifeless, coating the ground below with a fresh coat of blood. The squirrel demi shouts some curses at Lyria and tries to rush her down, but is easily sidestepped and tripped causing her to smack her head off the edge of a stump causing her to also fall to the floor like a ragdoll. The remaining trafficker took stock of her situation and immediately tried to run away, but Regar slashed at her leg, burying the blade deep and causing the human woman to fall over with a scream of pain. She clutched at her leg, staining her hands with blood and began to panic as Regar put his sword to her throat:

“W-who the fuck are you two.” She asked while groaning in pain.

“Someone who can't stand trafficking shitstains like you three.” Lyria said as she picked up the squirrel girl, who was still unconscious.

“Fuck fuck fuuuuuuuuuck. God dammit.” The trafficker screamed before falling quiet and sobbing softly.

“What do you want to do Lyria.” Regar asked. Lyria turned around still holding the squirrel girl and thought for a moment.

“Bind her wrists and legs...i'll think about what happens afterwards later.” She reaches into her satchel and throws him some rope, then turns back to the squirrel girl and licks her lips. Regar sighs and begins binding the trafficker's wrists and ankles together to prevent escape.

Lyria meanwhile decided to make quick work of her meal, stuffing the squirrel girl into her maw head first, her fuzzy skin tickling Lyria's lips as she worked more of her inside. Gllllrk! The squirrel girl wasn't particularly large or well endowed, so Lyria had no trouble getting over her chest and shoulders, slowly gulping her down without stopping. Gulp, gulp, gulp. She eventually finished her off, taking her boots off as she did so as she didn't feel like trying to digest more leather on top of what she was already wearing. Her belly ballooned out and she let out a small burp as the squirrel settled in her new prison:

“Buorp, aaaah. A meal always hits the spot after a bit of fighting.” She said contently, stroking her gut. Her gut responded with a affirmative gurgle and glorp as it got to work processing its new meal.

Regar got up and left the trafficker to wallow in her own frustrations, walking up to Lyria as he sheathed his blade: “So what's the plan for her. Do we turn back and turn her in or what?” Regar asked trying not to look at her massive gut.

“She's not going to be much of a danger to anyone anymore...” She said walking over to the cage full of scared and shaking captives. She lifted her sword and smashed the lock easily, opening the door with a rusty creak: “It's safe now.” She said as gently as she could extending her hand towards one of the terrified girls inside.

The girl lifted her hand, still trembling and took Lyria's, and walked out of the cage looking a bit bewildered. She looked at Regar, then at the headless corpse on the ground, before her eyes settled on the enormous round belly in front of her. She looked up and saw Lyria's face, showing a gentle smile to the girl, and wiped her tears: “T-t-thank you...thank you so much.” She said sobbing softly.

“If you all head back south west you will make it to Forestria within an hour or two. The roads should be safe once you exit the forest, so don't worry about that ok?” She said to the remaining former captives as they left their cage.

The group looked at her a bit bewildered, but after looking around for a moment, nodded and thanked her before going in the direction Lyria pointed them towards:

“So...do we press on?” Regar asked a bit unsure how to proceed.

“I would say so. We've still got a bit of daylight and we're not hurt so we should be able to make it to Okhoma before nightfall.” Lyria said sheathing her blade.

“Alright, works for me. Are you sure they're going to be ok?” Regar asked gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb.

“Yeah, there's not really much danger outside of the forest around Forestria, and since we're not too far inside they should be able to make it out safely. They're also a large group, I doubt a single trafficker or bandit will try to assault them on the way. Besides, should the worst happen they could-” Lyria was interrupted by a wet swallowing noise and a muffled scream. The two turned around and saw one of the bear girls stuffing her face with the tied up woman, who tried to resist with feeble kicks and struggles, but didn't really manage to do much before being fully consumed by the vengeful bear demi.

As soon as she finished swallowing her she sat on the ground with her arms supporting her upper body looking satisfied. She then grimaced as her stomach distended in different directions as the trafficker tried to escape her binds and gastric cage. Unfortunately for her, this action would only irritate the bear girl as she wrapped her arms and legs around her bulbous midsection and squeezed, causing a faint snap to be heard. After she loosened her grip her belly bulged out again, more silent as the figure inside only responded with weak kicks that were barely visible on the taught skin: “And that's what you deserve you kidnapping bitch.” She said with venom before standing up and following the rest of the group past the bushes and away from Lyria and Regar. Regar could only sigh as he wondered why everyone feels the need to put everyone that has wronged them to a gastric death, though he doesn't mourn the trafficker and instead thinks that that's what she deserves for doing such horrible things to others. Lyria also sighs and shrugs before turning around and making her way back to the path they were on.

Regar picked up his backpack and he two of them walked for a couple of hours without much happening, the silence being broken up by the gastric gurgles that Lyria's stomach made as it broke down the squirrel girl inside her. Though, compared to before, Lyria's pace was drastically slowed as she seemed to be struggling to process her meal. They continued walking, the stomach making more and more sounds as if it was trying to speak to the two of them, but Lyria's discomfort grew stronger as they made their way forward. At one point she suddenly stood still and took a deep breath before continuing onwards. Regar tried to offer her some digestive aid herbs and water, but she turned him down claiming that her stomach won't lose to some stupid squirrel. About and hour later they finally made it to the ruins of Okhoma. The sun was starting to set, covering the white stone ruins in a golden orange glow, and the wind started to become colder making Regar think that they should probably set up camp in a bit. Lyria unfortunately wasn't thinking about much else than the immense pain her stomach was in though. She was sweating and breathing heavily, as it felt like her stomach was doing flips inside of her, sloshing wetly with every movement she made. She wandered over to one of the ruin walls and leaned against it with her hands, head down and mouth open taking deep breaths. A bit of saliva dripped onto the ground as she struggled to keep her meal inside. Regar noticed her and was about to ask if she needed any help, but before he could do so, her stomach visibly lurched as a loud blorb resounded from within her and Lyria groaned. She coughed a bit and then began hacking, all the while a large lump moves its way up her body and she begins to retch:

“Hack, agh, burrrrp, bleeeerrgh.” In one quick motion, a cascade of vomit flows from her mouth along with a large lump of still digesting meat, clearly the squirrel girl's torso, picked clean of her fur and eaten through exposing the dense muscle fibres below. She continued coughing and retching, bringing up things such as bones and more bits of meat: “Hurp, blargh.” She vomits up some fatty bits which land on the sizzling piles with a wet splat, and then coughs up some red jelly like substance. She takes a deep breath, panting and heaving at this point before her eyes widen and she starts to vomit up more of the partially digested squirrel girl: “Huuuuurgh, bleeeeergh. Ack, hack, ghuck.” This time a whole arm comes up, landing on the pile before sliding off of it, and then a large amount of half eaten through leather and cloth clothing comes up, covered in the reddish-green soup that was Lyria's digestive juice. She breathes heavily for another moment: “Haaaah...haaaah...oooooh god....haaaah...hrk.” She feels another round coming up and braces herself, tears flowing from her eyes as one final lump works it's way up her body, distending her chest and throat before being spat out with some more chyme. It lands on the rest of the pile with a splat and Lyria looks down at what it was that she puked up: the partially digested skull of the squirrel girl, her stomach bile having penetrated through the eyes and seeping out slowly between her non-existent nose and teeth, the hair and skin mostly gone. Lyria stares at the mountain of gore she just expelled from herself before coughing up a couple more small bones and leather laces. She pushes herself off the wall and stumbles back a moment before taking a deep breath. Regar looks at this unfold and is barely able to contain his own stomach contents before he looks away trying not to focus on the gory scene in front of him. The wet sounds don't really make him feel much better, and the smell isn't helping either. After Lyria is done, he turns around and walks up to her and tries to offer her some water:

“Here...please, drink this.” He stretches his hand out holding a waterskin and Lyria grabs it before she begins gulping it down with a ravenous need: “Do you uhhhh, need anything else?” He asks unsure of what to do in this situation.

Lyria finishes the water and glares at him before grabbing him by the cuff of his shirt: “If you tell anyone, and I mean anyone, about what happened here, i'm going to stuff you halfway down my throat legs first and make you feel how they melt away before shoving you up my god damn ass, sending you in through my intestines in reverse and digesting your scrawny ass are we clear!” Her eyes staring daggers into him with a barely contained rage.

“Y-yes ma'am, crystal!” Regar says a bit terrified at the mental image that Lyria instilled into his head.

“Good...now i'm going to get some rest, you do whatever you want.” She practically threw him back and stomped away further into the ruins, leaving Regar alone with the sizzling sounds of acids working their way through meat and the awful smell of the gastric concoction to keep him company. Regar looks at the gore and quickly looks away in horror. He could understand what happened to Lyria though, the squirrel girl probably had herself coated in myrwood essence which is a herb that forces the stomach to eject its contents. Usually used in a medical environment to force people who have ingested poisons or something toxic to help them expel the malicious contents, travellers, merchants and bandits use a crushed version mixed with oil to ward off predators and beasts from eating them. It has a fairly high success rate at forcing predators to regurgitate their victims, only failing when the predator has very fast acting acids or are very stubborn, which unfortunately for the squirrel girl, Lyria was.

Regar went further into the ruins and found Lyria sitting on a broken stone taking care of her inventory, assessing the vials and making mental notes of what's still available while her tails swished gently behind her, nearly touching the ground. Regar proceeded to start setting up a tent and get a fire going, which was quite easy since the ruins had plenty of dry sticks around. The sun had set completely by the time he was done, and he would have been done quicker if Lyria would have helped him, but she was still avoiding Regar. He figured that seeing her in a moment of weakness like that really didn't sit well with her so she snapped at him as a reaction, not that it made him feel any better knowing this, but he still decided that rather than antagonizing the kitsune he should probably try and make her feel a bit better so he cooked a basic dinner with some of the food he had packed away, some baked beans, sausages and potatoes. He plated the food up and brought one to Lyria, who was now busy cleaning her sword with a wipe. As he approached, one of her fox-like ears twitched and she turned a bit to look at what he was doing with a bit of a glare. She eyed the food as Regar set it down and muttered a thanks before resuming her task. Regar walked back to the fire and dug in. The meal was simple, but tasty. The beans were nice and sweet with a bit of acidity, pairing perfectly with the meaty pork and apple sausages. The potatoes were cooked through nicely, and although some mash would have probably worked better, but he didn't have any milk on hand so he settled for some baked potatoes instead. After finishing the meal, he put his bowl aside and decided he'll wash it in the morning. He walked over to the tent and figured that now would probably be the best moment to go get some sleep. He glanced over towards where Lyria was sitting, slowly eating her meal, and wished her a good night as he turned in for the night.

When morning came, Lyria struggled to get up due to the cold and the fact that she went to bed quite late while cleaning her weapon and armor, but eventually she relented and forced herself to roll out from under the covers. She stretched with a large yawn, extending her claws out slightly as her muscles tensed up a bit to wake up. She took a comb from her satchel and gently brushed her tails before making her way to the entrance to the tent. She stepped out of the tent and shielded her eyes from the bright sun. Once her eyes adjusted to the bright light, she looked around and couldn't find Regar anywhere. She was a bit confused and wondered if he might have gone to cook breakfast, or maybe take a leak or something, before she found a notebook on a nearby broken pillar with his name on it. She looked at the small book which was lying on the cold stone wide open, with multiple things written and drawn inside of it. She then noticed how at the end of the page the ink trails off and one of the pages was torn out, almost as if his hand slipped while writing and someone stole the page. In a sudden moment of panic, she thought that perhaps someone had managed to kidnap him and maybe even killed him:

“Regar!” She shouted out loud, hoping that she was wrong. She moved quickly through the ruins occasionally calling out, but got no response. Fearing the worst she upped the pace until she made it to the center of the ruins, which was where the vomitorium used to be. She looked around and was about to call out for him again when she spotted a figure sitting in the middle of the open space, tinkering about with some sort of giant stone tablet. Breathing a silent sigh of relief she makes her way down and walks up to Regar. Regar hears the footsteps approaching and stands up turning to face Lyria:

“Ah, Lyria. Good morning, how'd you sleep?” He asked dusting himself off from the dirt on his pants.

“Fine.” She said: “I'd prefer if you didn't run off first thing in the morning though.” She said a tad bit annoyed at him.

“Sorry, sorry! I just wanted to get a head start on opening the way into the tomb and ended up getting a lot more engrossed in it than I expected.” He said bowing in an apologetic pose: “But, on the plus side I think I managed to figure out how to get in.” He said turning to the stone tablet. It had a couple of things that looked like dials and grooves which connected them, as well as a couple of gems embedded into the stone. He knelt down and picked up a sheet of paper, which Lyria assumed was torn out of his notebook, and a pen and began scribbling something down. Somewhat intrigued, Lyria walked a bit closer and peered over his shoulder to look at what he was doing. She saw a lot of different symbols drawn on the paper, and some arrows pointing in different directions, some going in and out of the symbols and some going around them. She didn't really understand any of it but luckily for her Regar was there to clear things up for her:

“So the residents of the city of Okhoma used a lot of different magical tools in their day to day life, including intricate arcane locks for some of the more...important things.” Regar explained pointing at the stone tablet: “One of these locks is known as a seven point water lock. Since the Lunifrians put a lot of emphasis on the way that arcane energies flow through areas and through bodies, the seven point water lock also required an understanding of how the arcane energy slows in order to unlock it.. Usually the lock would be fairly easy to crack, but now that the city is in ruins and the arcane energies are all over the place, it's suddenly become a lot more difficult to open it.” Regar sighed and tapped the pen against his lips as he pondered the issue at hand. He made a couple of scribbles and then let out a frustrated grunt as he scribbled it out:

“Soooooo...what's the deal with the drawings?” Lyria asked.

“I'm trying to map which way the energy is flowing based on the old city layout. I remember a couple of things from the books i've read at the college, but i've also spent a good part of this morning trying to understand the layout in person. These might be ruins, but the general structure is still there, so it isn't too difficult to do...but figuring out which way the energy is flowing now that it has no streamlined direction to go in is a much more complex task. I wish I had paid attention in arcane class.” He groaned. Lyria looked around and tried to think of how she could help, but she was unfortunately the worst person to ask when it came to magic. She held a sword and swung it at things, and that was good enough for her. She decided that she wasn't going to be much help so she walked away and sat down on a nearby stone. An hour went by and Regar made little to no progress. Lyria was getting a bit bored by this point and figured she might as well head back to camp and do something else, like make lunch. She spun around on the rock and pushed herself off to get up, but the moment her feet touched the ground she heard a loud crack. She lifted her right food and saw a handful of glittering stones amongst the grassy ground:

“Hey Regar!” She shouts: “I think I found something!”

Regar looks up and walks over. Lyria points at the stones and Regar's eyes light up: “Oh! This is a good find Lyria!” He says excitedly: “These stones were used to house and store arcane energies, usually embedded into larger stones and effectively functioning as massive batteries for the area.” He pointed at the stone Lyria was sitting on: “So basically...I think now the layout makes sense! It was definitely confusing, but I think I can figure things out now. Give me a moment.” He says as he runs back to the seven point water lock. He knelt down and began fiddling about with the dials. Another fifteen minutes later, and a couple of curses born of frustration, Regar managed to get the stone tablet to light up and in a nearby patch of ground, a door opened leading down into darkness. Regar fell back on the ground and breathed a large sigh of relief. After resting for a moment, he got up and together with Lyria they went back to camp, had some lunch, and packed up. They headed back to the tomb entrance and prepared themselves:

“Know what we can expect down there?” Lyria asked as she made a makeshift torch by wrapping some bandages around a thick piece of wood, and soaked it in some alcohol.

“Well, there's other things that have been explored in the area and usually the research groups ran into slimes, goblins, the occasional bandit and in one case, a kobald.” Regar listed off the possible hostile encounters they might have.

“Nothing too bad then...” Lyria shrugged and stepped towards the entrance.

“There are also the usual traps such as pressure plates, rigged chests and i'm pretty sure a researcher once set off a wire trap which caused a pendulum to activate and killed two of the adventurers accompanying them.” He added.

“Ah...anything else?” Lyria asked, thinking to herself that so far nothing he's mentioned is super worrying or abnormal.

“Ehhh...” Regar thinks for a moment and then adds: “Yeah there's a potential for ghosts and vengeful spirits to attack us if we break anything religious of ritualistic...I know some basic warding but if we piss something really powerful off...we might need to make a run for it.” Regar said as he passed Lyria and looked at the stairs leading down into the depths.

Lyria's ears perked up and twitched a little at the mention of ghosts and the hairs on her tails also stood up: “Ghosts...” She muttered under her breath.

“I'm sure it'll be fine, as long as we don't start smashing things up willy nilly inside.” Regar said with a reassuring smile.

“Yeah, probably.” Lyria sighed and lit the torch with some flint as she entered the tomb. Regar followed closely behind.

They made it down a couple of steps before there was a loud rumble, and the plate behind them that was covering the entrance slid back into position to close them off from the world above. The two looked behind them as the last bits of sunlight disappeared and then looked at each other:

“I guess we're stuck down here until we find another way out.” Regar said slightly apologetically.

“It happens...” Lyria replied calmly. Regar was expecting to be on the receiving end of another threat, but Lyria's calmness was a bit unexpected. He saw how she looked at him, and seemed very unbothered by the situation before turning away and continuing down the stairs.

The stairs went on for a bit, but luckily for the both of them the passage itself was only slightly cold. The area around them was also quite dry, which meant that rainfall and other forms of humidity didn't penetrate down through the structure, meaning that the stairs had little risk of slipping. The further down they went, cleaner the walls around them became and eventually there were a couple of torches along the walls that were lit up, covering the stairs in a dim light:

“How are these things still lit? Is there someone else down here?” Lyria asked a bit perplexed.

“Probably an overabundance of energy in the area is keeping these torches lit.” Regar explained as they reached the bottom of the stairs and made his way down the corridor: “We're definitely not the first people to visit this area, so whoever it was that visited before us probably fueled the torches.”

“So we're not here alone? I thought you said that these tombs were unexplored?” Lyria asked as she walked next to him.

“Not necessarily. This area was probably explored in the past in some way shape or form. It's not too difficult to get in if you know what you're doing as this was probably a place the public could access in the past to visit the graves of their loved ones.” Regar explained as he ducked under a particularly large spider web: “There's two ways that an area can become a hotspot of arcane enegry.”

“Well, one of them is probably having something like a large deposit of arcane rich ore right?” Lyria asked: “I did a couple of jobs for miners and archaeologists in the past so i've heard it being mentioned before.” She added.

“Yeah, that's one. The other...” Regar confirmed Lyria's understanding and wanted to continue explaining, but they approached a large set of doors halting his thoughts. Lyria walked approached them and with a strong push, she opened the door. Inside there was a large rectangular room with eight pathways leading out of it on either side. There were several coffins on the ground, laid out in an organized manner giving the room a grid like layout. There was also a couple of cobwebs and strands of dust connecting the coffins together, and in the corners of the rooms and entryways. The torches shone a bit dimly, but just bright enough to make sure that things were visible. There were also some markings on the walls, as well as a couple of strange pedestals located in randomized areas in the room. Regar and Lyria went inside and took a look around to see if they could find the way forward. As they stepped forward there was a soft crunch as Lyria stepped on an old bone, clearly not a recent death with the way it crumbled into dust:

“And that's the other way.” Regar said continuing the conversation from earlier: “Every living thing has some level of arcane energy. Depending on various factors like talent, genetics and effort different people can raise their capacity for the arcane...and when they die, their bodies eventually start leaking energy.” He explained.

“So what, are graveyards and sites of battle full of energy or something?” Lyria asked as she walked around the room.

“Pretty much. Why do you think cultists and the like always try to do their business in those kinds of areas.” Regar said with a slight chuckle. Lyria shrugged as if to say: “Fair enough.” As they walked around the room they examined a couple of the signs that were on the walls to understand where the different rooms led to. Unfortunately, nothing they found seems to have led them to a way forward. As the two pondered on what to do, Lyria's sixth sense made her aware of something around them, something watching them, but as she couldn't see anything she decided to simply keep alert and stick close to Regar just in case.

Meanwhile, somewhere in between the cracks in the walls, a pair of serpentine eyes followed the pair as they explored the room and with a low hiss disappeared into the darkness...