FSE

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Red crouched down among the brush, waiting for the last apparent evidence of his presence to fade away before daring to make another move. The mouse clutched his cloak close about himself, careful to keep easy access to his various weaponry: asking around the nearby town had given him the impression that this swampy forest held the greatest dangers of the immediate surroundings, but as a seasoned adventurer so too did he know that danger often brought reward to match. So after a quick scribble along the map he always carried with him, resilient through the ceaseless wear and tear of the road, the destruction of traps within the tombs and dungeons he plundered, the tongues of flame from narrowly escaped mages, the occasional soaking when he had to cross a river or fell into a swamp like this one, he passed through the center of town yet again, caught sight of the bounty board, picked one of them up, and then headed on his way.

“Kill six giant wasps. Bring their stingers as proof.”

That was all the request stated, and it pointed him in the same direction that he had initially planned to go. Still, though, when he had reached for the paper and moved to pull it from the board, something far in the back of his mind warned him against it; like that sensation of peering out into the woods at night, like when he pressed his paw atop a fence in preparation to leap into someone else’s property, there was a sudden, squeezing flash of dread and thought holding him back. Maybe I shouldn’t do this first, only to then get wiped away by his own patent determination and self-assurance.

The only thing you can get by not taking any risks, he reminded himself, as always, is barely ten gold and a tarnished copper sword. “Retrieve fifteen mallow stalks,” that old posting had said, in his hometown before the mouse had actually developed the taste for adventure. Simple and easy enough, and no risk whatsoever in wandering the vast, open grasslands surrounding the village - but the task took all day, and the payout wasn’t enough to cover what he had eaten in the course of doing it.

But six giant wasps? Red pressed his way through the bushes and scanned the swamp before him again, wary of the phantom outlines of the things that dwelled in the depths. Those frightened him, whatever they might have been: that feeling of dread redoubled and simmered away in him when he approached, and as such he now gladly kept his distance, limiting himself to the shallow sections of reeds and solid ground weaving through the trees.

Or at least as solid as it could get out here, as his footpaw sucked down into muddy earth once more. His attempts at stealth interrupted, he struggled for control and managed after what felt like far too long to yet again extricate himself, then took a while longer to catch his breath and regain his bearings. Once there, he reached back and took his map out yet again, judging his location from the little points and highlights on the map, and came to the decision that-

“This is the area. Right around here…”

And the mouse lifted his head and looked around again. Small stands of trees protruded from the muck here and there, trunks seeming to have melded into one another for the thick curtains of feather moss hanging down in between. Though it was barely early afternoon, something about the surroundings sucked the light out of the day so that it instead looked like the middle of dusk, this constant greyish-green tinge coating everything around him. Red shaded his eyes with a paw, though knew it wouldn’t help much, and peered around into the distance: another creature lurked beneath the sludge off to the north, then the suggestion at the path wove around nearby, and then further off in the distance he could make out the faded shimmer of insectoid wings flashing.

A sneak attack still seemed like it would serve him best here. Red was not the most skilled with a bow an arrow, but he made sure to involve himself in training for it if he ever both passed through a town with a tutor and had enough to pay for the lessons. Here and there he managed to pay through alternative means, too, which was truly preferable for everyone involved as it usually involved a little bite extra on the dexterity side as well. So with his target finally acquired, he slid the bow off his back, pulled an arrow, and readied it along the string, keeping it at rest as he trudged closer.

When he crouched down like this he felt more in tune with the area around him, and discovered that he had an easier time detecting the various pitfalls and softer sections in the path as though through a sixth sense, allowing him to more reliably work his way around them. Before long he could hear the noise of the giant wasp’s wings, too, a distant, buzzing thmp-thmp-thmp as the great elytra pounded at the air, keeping the fat, chitinous body aloft.

The shape of the thing, all sleek, organic curves interspersed with sharp angles and sharper points, sent a chill down the mouse’s spine the closer he came. He tried as much as he could to loop around to its back - already he had a rich mental image of the arrow punching through that exoskeleton, splashing a hot steam of liquid innards out into the air before the horrid thing lilted to the side, its wings trembled and stopped, and then it fell to the ground and twitched, in that way that the not-quite-fully-dead tended to do… he shuddered, gathered himself once more, and took another few steps forward, knowing that he was not yet within range for his bow.

If anything, he told himself, once more scanning his surroundings, this will be great experience for the future. It was alright to fail a task every now and then: the mouse knew that he couldn’t do everything, and always preferred to know precisely where his limits lay rather than not.

That way, he knew where to poke and prod to push past those limits, since that would always be the best way to improve. As he crept along the boundary of the marshy water there, still careful to both keep himself unnoticed as well as stay out of the water itself, he began to lift his bow and draw back the string, the motion comforting in its familiarity. There was the quick thought of running one of the countless poisons, tonics, or oils he kept in his bag along the arrowhead itself, just for that extra punch, but Red figured he might not need it here.

Just a giant wasp, he thought, finally lining up the shot. Instinct told him that this was well within range of the weapon. Shouldn’t need that extra kick. Maybe if it were something different, something bigger, but… six of these? This’ll be a good trial run. I just have to… hold here, and…

He drew in a breath, held it, squeezed himself down; for a moment he half-closed his eyes, following the instruction of one of his past mentors on the weapon, letting his awareness of the world fizzle into the background so that all that remained was himself, his bow, and his target. The way it hovered there in the air, how it flitted and fluttered around yet never really left that single spot, how it dove this way and that as though looking for something yet always floated back to its initial point, as though held there through some invisible string.

This was one of those things where he knew his limit, and where pushing past it would not serve him. Concentration grew, then wavered, then grew again; the latent power of the string tugged back against his hold, his arm starting to tingle with the maintained focus, his vision starting to fuzz the longer he held it. Good to do this quickly, he reminded himself, strong and certain. Never second-guess yourself. And I see it right there, while I am right here, and so I’ll just-

The arrow loosed with the softest of whispers in the air, the flexible wood and string of the bow thrumming with all of that built-up energy sudden thumping free. Red watched as the arrow pitched through the air, strong and straight and fast: the distance was far enough that he could see the slight dip as it traveled, the gentle spin imparted as it punched through thick, humid swamp steam. Unaware of its impending demise, the giant wasp lurched to one side first and then the other, continuing its repetitive motions of investigating its immediate surroundings, turning this way, turning the other, lowering down a bit, coming back up… right into the path of the arrow.

As expected Red heard the smack of iron against the chitin, the wet crunch of the arrow pounding its way in, the frustrated, infuriated buzz of the afflicted insect. Excited with his kill, with the first step towards claiming his bounty, the mouse shouldered his bow, sprang upright, and leapt over the bush behind which he was hiding, taking a few quick steps forward - and then promptly sinking to the ankle in thick, sticky muck, the disconcertingly warm sludge sucking away at him, painting his white fur in dense greenish-brown.

“Oh, gods-” he grumbled, balance continuing forward while he remained caught. Red pushed against the earth underneath himself in trying to tug free, though it seemed the harder he pulled, the more the swamp swallowed his footpaw. Wet, clammy suction pulled away at him, and as he pressed his paws into the ground he felt the wet earth start to well up around there, too, muddying him further, tugging at his growing fatigue as though it were throwing weights across him.

At least I have nothing to worry about, though, he thought, and I can take as much time here as I need. At least there won’t be a…

A buzzing sound, thick and velvety, the noise of a pair of vicious, insectoid wings beating at the air faster than the eye could track, came steadily towards him. The mouse blinked, paused, looked over his shoulder, then redoubled his attempts to free himself, as the giant wasp he had shot angled itself forward towards its aggressor. A single little arrow protruded from a section near where its abdomen met the next section of its body - Red didn’t know the proper terminology: he was here to kill them, not study them - and the creature itself looked far closer to annoyed than dead.

And here Red was in possible the worst position for such a situation: stuck where he stood, unarmed, with his back towards it. Heart in his throat, he doubled over and put even more effort into tugging himself free, though the extra pressure and motion resulted only in the mud slurping more fully around him. The buzzing continued approaching, and brought with it a low, ponderous hum, perhaps from within the insect itself; it had looked large at a distance, but now as he glanced over his shoulder at it he saw that just that lower portion of its body, just its abdomen, could cleanly match his entire chest.

Now he felt the beat of those wings on the air, strong and fast, tickling at his fur. Figuring he was stuck for good, Red tried to reach down for at least one of his knives, thinking he might be able to swing around and slash at the thing: one good, disabling hit would give him the room to free himself and then take care of it, and then still he would be well on his way to completing the contract. He squirmed, lifted himself up, reached down, bent forward-

-and felt the long, stiff tendrils of its legs protrude out underneath his arms, squeezing in along the sides of his chest as it landed behind and slightly on top of him. Dense, sharp hairs flared out from along the boundaries of the smooth chitin, brushing across the light plates and oiled leather of his minimal armor, running through his fur, scratching across the skin underneath; Red gasped and lurched forward with the sudden shift in momentum, the wasp quite easily pulling him up and out of his predicament.

Still, though, he had no space to maneuver or defend himself, as the horrible insect caught him up in what felt like an inescapable grapple. Back and forth the mouse tossed himself, straining against the grasping limbs, the buzzing wings, the vile shape of the head and mandibles clacking just over his shoulder. The enraged monster dragged him forward across swampy earth, smearing his fur and armor in loose mud and rich moss; Red tried to find a handhold for himself but couldn’t, instead succeeding only in pressing himself further back into its vicious grasp as it started to batter away at him, alternating between pushing his body down into the earth and - hammering its sharp, wicked stinger between his legs, trying to find the rest of the mouse, at first failing to do so.

Instantly his attempts skewed from trying to escape, to trying to stay alive. Again and again the implement swung out between his frantically-spread legs, the deadly point glistening in the dim half-light of the marshy woods around them: it displayed its threat, it made its attempt, it swung back again, and again. Red gritted his teeth each time the creature’s pierced abdomen pounded up against him, the strange, oddly hollow sensation of its body smacking against his own, the width of that vicious stinger slipping down along the base of his tail where his armor dropped fully away for ease of movement.

He felt the smooth chitin, the bristly hairs, the strange, almost slimy sensation of the stinger pushing down underneath his tail, slipping along his rump, just barely missing his truest treasures, and then drawing back to make the same movement again. Each time the wasp made an attempt, though, its grip around the rest of its prey tightened and shifted: sharp, jagged claws along its forelegs dug into Red’s armor and skin both, peeling at straps and buckles, rending through what was supposed to be relatively high-quality leather, bending the plates in between.

Bit by bit the mouse felt his resolve start to falter, strung between the actual strain of maintaining the fight and making no headway whatsoever, and the slow acceptance of thinking just what it would take to repair his gear. That had been one of the skills he hadn’t honed himself, past doing the best he could with what few repair kits fell into his lap along his journeys; often like most other tasks it just took a bit of persuading, but as long as his things didn’t actually break-

Straps snapped; leather shredded; metal rings, studs, plates, buckles jangled, creaked as they pulled, popped. One shoulder-pad lurched to one side, then dropped to the ground; the other followed soon after, taking with it a full half of that side of his chestpiece. Strap of his bag shredded, the rest of his things thumped to the swampy earth, sunk partially in, and then topple over, spilling loose gold, gems, arrows, small daggers, bits of food, potions, and other accoutrement out between the grass. Red felt no lighter than he had before - he had long since honed his skill in wearing this kind of armor to the point where he no longer really noticed or felt its presence restricting him or his movements - but did indeed feel the warm, humid whisper of the breeze through the marsh around him, swirling between the trees, dancing across the thick brush about him… caressing his suddenly, fully naked body.

His skinny tail lashed, tried to swat around the wasp still mounted atop him, slid off. Once again his strength faltered and this time he fell to his knees, for a moment embarrassed by the vulnerable position, then fearful again for what it might bring him this time. Usually it was little more than a sore back and rear, but often the upsides far outweighed the downsides: have trouble walking straight for two or three days in exchange for a place to stay for the week, or feel his stomach bloated out like a balloon but have all of his gear repaired to a condition better than when he first got it.

But no luck today, of course. Briefly he wondered if he might be able to successfully kill and retrieve the targets from the rest of the giant wasps out here while still in the nude, and then like everything else that thought fizzled out as the one currently atop him adjusted its grip, beat its wings against the air to lift itself up, shifted its angle just a little bit, and then came back in… and finally, desperately, pierced its prey.

The sensation vibrated up Red’s spine as though he had received a blow from a smith’s hammer, bringing with it the cold, electric chill of dread. He had had his share of poison, but venom like this directly from the source, knowing how far this single creature trumped him in terms of combat prowess and ability… he shivered, squirmed, gritted his teeth tighter, wrenched his eyes shut… groaned and sighed at the sensation of the stinger, suddenly surprisingly blunt, feeling like it was more of the chitin instead of the sharp, vicious whatever it was made from, running down underneath the base of his tail. It poked and prodded, neither scratching nor tearing, but instead just investigating, it seemed: it circled around, tickled at the sensitive, puckered flesh of his tailhole, poked in at the center, felt the resistance there, discerned the opportunity, poked in again… and then, somewhat forcefully, pressed in, pushing, stretching.

At first the mouse didn’t realize that he had been entered. The times he had found himself in this position before it was usually, again, for some innkeeper, or the town smith, or a shopkeep, or a few times the horse being driven by the carriage he wished to ride. He was accustomed to the sensation of large, thick presences pushing their way inside of him, spreading his legs apart and stretching at his muscles, forcing him to arch his back until he could feel the warm, pulsing girth deep within his belly - but this wasp simply pushed up against him and then dug inside, with what felt like a pair of fingers, almost, prying the sensitive ring of muscle open while the centermost portion slid in, easily slipping its way among soft, wet warmth, inner walls reflexively sucking back around it.

Put simply, it was an unpleasant feeling, like the sensation of a thin needle sinking deep into the flesh of his fingerpad, hot slick meat sliding around the surface with none of the pain. Or, at least, with a vague, distant sense of discomfort, a kind of searing chill that made his toes curl and his legs shudder; already exhausted from the failed struggle, body hanging half limp within the wasp’s grasp, the tired rogue slumped forward, struggled to keep himself up, and then felt the force of another thrust push through him, the center of his mass tossed forward from the movement within his guts.

Then again, and again, and again the giant wasp swung itself against him, the slickened length of this intrusion sliding easily back out of the mouse’s tailhole and then pushing right back in again. Red gasped and groaned with each pulse, able to feel the heat beginning to simmer within his insides: despite himself and his position the movement, the sensation, the repetitive pounding forward into him, spread that same familiar warmth throughout the rest of his body, and before long he fell to his paws and knees again there across the marshy earth, hind end raised up with the wasp mounted atop.

More of its bristly, hairy legs clamped down around bare mouse rump as it continued its assault, the material of whatever it had shoved inside of him beginning to shift and grow out as well, beginning to feel more like stiff, lubricated leather than the chitin of the rest of its body. Red swallowed, gritted his teeth, tried to crawl away again, and succeeded only in altering the angle of its thrusts, until that appendage pushed and poked and prodded at his insides in a way that made him arch his back and curl down into himself, the original task of his quest completely forgotten.

Soon he found himself squirming, squeezing, tightening around the wasp each time it pushed into him, one eye wrenched shut with the other only half open, mouth curled in a smirk halfway between incipient pleasure and then the equally familiar, equally exhausting discomfort. This felt much the same as prolonged combat, with his muscles tensing and then releasing, his breath searing in his throat and chest, his heart thumping in his ears, his body trembling, lurching this way and that, pushing back against the motion, trying at once to free himself while some part of him still wanted to remain in the heat of the moment, adrenaline pouring.

All around the capture mouse simmered the stench of the swamp, the scent of the woods, yet a new, metallic, almost brassy spice had begun to overtake everything else. Mouth dry, he turned his head over his shoulder - shuddered, clenched, felt the wasp vibrate on top of him even between the beating of its wings - and realized that the smell came from this foul insect, a thick, slimy froth dribbling from the base of its abdomen where its appendage was rooted… and there nearby hung the now broken shaft of Red’s arrow, barely far enough in to have pierced the chitin at all.

There’s no way, he thought, once again squeezing down; his hard shaft throbbed underneath him, swinging forward and back through the grass with each thrust, dripping with a mix of his own pre forced out under the rhythm of the wasp’s assault on top of that thick, sticky slime, lubrication for the creature itself. There’s no way I’d be able to handle six of these. But at least - I’ll… I’ll have the - the experience after, and - I’ll-

And something changed again. Above him the wasp seemed to falter in its rhythm, its angular head pitching back, its wings briefly pumping out of rhythm with one another. It swung back, then forward again, and for a moment Red feared it might dig its multiple legs in against his body again, gashing and slashing through his already marred fur; instead, though, it alighted atop his hiked rump, pushed his upper body more firmly down to the soft ground, and slowed its wingbeat to a complete halt, as though in rest.

Then it shuddered, paused, shuddered again, and to the mouse’s sensitive ears, emitted a low, rumbling whine. Seeing his chance to break away approaching, Red dug his fingers into the thick stalks of grasses tickling at his shoulders, turned his head again, bundled up his strength-

-and then felt an immense, powerful presence pushing inside of him, stretching him from within, from inside the wasp. Ovipositor, he realized, perhaps a moment too late: his first thought was something like a chicken’s egg, strong and dense and most importantly hard, but then came the sensation of the thing deforming as it pressed against the interior of his rim, already parted open around where the wasp kept itself buried, and - it slurped on inside of him all at once, like a suckerpunch to the belly but from the inside.

And as such, the small mouse gasped, jerked, and felt every muscle in his body tighten all over again, which in turn just deepened his awareness of the slimy, gelatinous egg now inside of him. Panting, shivering, soon he tried to relax again despite the ongoing presence of the creature’s ovipositor wedged inside of him, the ring of his tailhole tingling from the stretch from inside: the thing seemed to palpably sag down inside of him, pulling his belly forward closer to the ground, rolling wetly back and forth along this section of his innards as he continued to rock in place.

When he clenched again, when he wobbled and slid a paw down across his bared, mussed, matted bellyfur, the distant warm weight of the egg inside of him squished back through soft flesh and skin. It… pulsed inside of him, forcing his muscles to respond in turn, so that each time it throbbed, he did too, tightening back down around it so that he became even more aware of its presence inside of him.

But at least the wasp had stopped at that one. At least there wasn’t another jelly lump far too big for the ovipositor to reasonably handle sliding down the tube again, nudging up against the rim of his tailhole from inside – what a feeling that was – and then pushing up against him, redirecting his focus, making him squeeze fiercely back, then relax in trying to let it slurp easily inside of him, then squeezing again, then relaxing – and then jumping and groaning all over again with the bright, sudden pressure of the second popping in to join the first, its oddly squishy, malleable surface reshaping when it wedged itself in.

This one left a distant, tingling burn there along his abused rim, fizzling out across his rear as the small mouse caught his breath. At this point he could not tell whether the buzzing in his ears was from the wasp itself or the exertion of being its prey; he rested his head against the soft mush of the forest floor, mouth hanging open, drawing in loose, unsteady breaths of foul, stale air. Wet warmth dribbled down the underside of his hard shaft, and neither could he tell if that came from himself or the wasp, either: each time Red clenched and throbbed, that same sweet, sharp pleasure pitched through him all over again, but the movement felt strained.

If only, he thought, now trying to scoop himself back up to all fours, the bounty was to bring back six wasp eggs, I’d be… a third of the way there, and…

And soon to be halfway there, he realized, based on the sound and vibration of the insectoid above him. The wings began to pump again, the body trembled and pulsed, the oddly stretchy material of the thing shoved into his guts shifted, twitched, and swelled, drawing a soft moan out from the captured mouse. Then the horrible legs came down again, creeping in rhythm up along his sides towards his arms; Red gasped and shuddered in revulsion, pushing back, trying to tug himself forward – and then gritted his teeth and groaned as yet another egg slurped on into him, this one facing much less resistance than the ones before it.

It left a cool, rumbling discomfort there along his rim, soon to fizzle away beneath the gradual spreading heat from inside. Three now, each one larger than anything he had taken before, and Red could certainly feel it: it was no longer his shoulders and knees keeping himself upright on the swampy earth, but rather his knees and his swollen, distended belly instead, these thick, hefty, yet still squishy presences wriggling inside of him.

All of them still continued their faint pulsing, their soft, arhythmic squirming and jiggling, but they did not do it in turn. It was all at once and then spread out among the three of them, unpredictable, uneven: each time Red managed to gather himself enough to straighten up a bit, the eggs shuddered inside of him, pushing out against his innards from inside his body, squishing and squeezing down on every other part of him, and forced him back down to the ground.

Overwhelming, almost, all of these feelings and sensations squelching out from inside of his body, distantly rooted far beyond his natural range of awareness, only poking its way into his consciousness as the things pressed out from inside. At once this felt better than most other things he had experienced – even that situation with that sleek, black-furred baron wolf, a hundred miles and two hundred nights ago – yet at the same time worse. More so than the three nights crossing the western mountain pass while both smuggled into a barrel that originally held decade-aged whiskey, and with food poisoning from the inn he had visited just before.

It was a whirlwind of sensations both new and old, and as Red managed to pry his eyes open again, jaw hanging limp with slick, sticky drool oozing into a puddle underneath his cheek just like how his still hard shaft occasionally jetted out across the ground underneath him. Each time Red himself clenched, all of these thick, gelatinous, squishy-firm masses inside of him shifted and slurped together, seeming to suck even deeper into his insides, holding there for a moment, and then settling back down into the bloated sections of his bowels; they rolled back and forth over one another, stretched at his inner walls, sloshed and swirled and simmered.

He felt caught between fainting, pissing himself from the pressure against his bladder from behind and inside, vomiting from the occasional bump up against his stomach from underneath, and then tightening down and cumming across the earth, assuming that he hadn’t already – and, all in all, none of this was an unpleasant sensation. With great effort the caught mouse finally managed to work his paws underneath himself and lift his upper body up away from the ground, just as the insect apparently finished its own work as well: its legs skittered back towards his hoisted rump and briefly dug into his fur there, and then it slurped itself free from inside of him, its distended ovipositor dragging with it a thick, gooey slurry of its frothy lubrication combined with the natural slick wetness of the inside of Red’s bowels.

But then even as it flittered away, the droning buzz of its wings returning to join the background noise of the woods, the mouse found that he couldn’t quite move. Again and again he lifted himself to his knees, but never budged from there: when he swung a leg out from underneath himself and tried to stand, the extra weight from the three – four? Did I lose count? – eggs lodged inside of him sloshed and slumped, holding him firmly in place. Vaguely, a bit dazed, he reached down and ran his paws across the lumpy, misshapen expanse of his belly, fingerpads brushing across where his skin had stretched to mold around the unexpected visitors and where it sagged slack in between.

Another shudder pounded through the mouse’s body then, dropping him forward again. Sweat dripped from his forehead and his wide ears flicked back, paws brushing over the discarded, shredded remnants of his armor where it lay across the ground; his tailhole clenched, flexed, parted naturally open, then clenched again, struggling to remain shut around the stretch the wasp had just put him through, and the constant impending pressure from inside. Try as he might to hold the eggs in, Red felt them squirming and pushing out from inside, pulling through his bowels, pushing his rim apart from inside until he heard it squelch and smack as wet folds of interior flesh released from one another, sticky ropes of natural mucus mixing with the wasp’s frothy slime pulling free and sputtering out.

Red couldn’t help it, then. His entire body tightened up, his paws balled into fists, he gritted his teeth and wrenched his eyes shut, and he pushed – and for a moment felt nothing past the expected tremble of working muscles, walls sucking in against each other and slurping at the gelatinous surface of something too large to push out. But then one of them shifted, and so did another, and then the first slid free from the pile with a sudden lurch and palpable thump inside of him. Then he groaned again, wet warmth dribbling out into a puddle between his knees where he knelt, and arched his back; his little whiplike tail lashed and flicked and hiked at the base, twitching, trembling, then finally curling to make way.

The weight slopped smoothly through him, sputtering and pattering from inside as it went, rolled along against the undulating movements of his inner guts as still he strained. Red paused, let his breath out, drew in another, then tried again, and finally felt its semi-squishy surface mash up against his already opened tailhole. The sensitive, succulent flesh and skin there stretched with the pressure from inside, pulling out away from his body, tugging into a full, firm rim protruding out from underneath his tail. Again he paused, relaxed his straining, felt the somewhat malleable shape of the egg caught there within his rim so that it remained stretched around the diameter, and then pushed again, harder, harder-

-and nearly yelped when it finally spurted free from inside of him, landing across the muddy ground with a thick, dense splop. Chest heaving, head swimming, Red just lay there for a moment afterwards, fully aware that his abused tailhole still hung loosely open. His stomach churned and rumbled, still becoming accustomed to the presence inside of him which… worked their way slowly back down his guts, urged along by the initial strain.

That movement soon made itself known in his lower regions, to the point where he couldn’t help but tighten up all over again. The mouse bit his lip, swallowed, struggled to keep the others from pushing their own way out, and then failed – and found himself pushing all over again, until one after another popped out of him again and again, each one faster, easier, wetter than the one before, as though the outer layers had begun to melt away into the thick, sticky slime which now freely oozed from his gaping tailhole, hanging open even as he tried to clench shut again.

Weight lifted from his shoulders, or rather his guts, the mouse took a few moments longer to catch his breath and then shakily lifted himself up to all fours. He swallowed, paused again, dropped his head down to look underneath himself… and saw there the four separate wasp eggs, lumpy and misshapen but still very much viable, pulsing gently at the edge of the swamp. Red’s naked body bore clear evidence of his struggle with the insect, from scratches to gashes to splotches of mud and other such mess, but then so too did he bear the sticky discoloration of whatever the creature had pumped into him in doing so, tinting his fur where it coated to a dim, foggy grey and covering his sack in a shimmering film. Then between his knees, squirted across the puddle that had begun to soak into the already waterlogged earth, a few fervid, urgent spurts of milky white had sprayed out at some point, with the last of this still hanging from the end of his half-hard shaft in a thick drip.

Slowly, shakily, the beaten rogue managed to lift himself upright, though he tottered back and forth from one footpaw to the other as he did so. Still his entire lower body tingled, and now he felt an odd, distant emptiness after being so thoroughly filled.

Zero wasps killed, he thought, then patted around himself – and remembered he was completely, fully naked, standing among the ruins of his equipment. No progress on the bounty… The mouse looked around himself, sighed, wiped the back of his paw across his forehead, and began to pick up the pieces of his gear.

Then he froze again, frowned, and looked back over to where the eggs pulsed and rolled slowly, oozing their slimy coating out across the ground.

It’s gonna cost more than I have to repair all my things, he thought, and took a shaky step towards them. But I’d bet these are an uncommon treasure. He bent down, felt his legs threaten to give out from underneath him, and gingerly scooped one up into his arms, grimacing at the lukewarm body-heat steaming off of the thing. To his paws it felt like a giant, peeled grape.

And maybe I can come back here to retrieve some more, once these are sold. The wasp with the broken arrow in its abdomen…

This wouldn’t be the first time Red had walked into town completely naked, and ideally it wouldn’t be the last, either.