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Finn stepped down off the wagon and stretched, leaning forward and pointing his furry tail out behind. He was a fine, handsome figure of a foxman and he knew it. Two of the women in the caravan had recently confirmed his opinion of himself in pleasant, consequence-free ways. A volpa foxman can't knock up a human woman no matter how hard he tries, so the caravan master didn't need to know that his wife was one of the women Finn tried with, did he?

He buttoned up his velvet vest and smiled a pointy-toothed smile. It had been a good little trip down down the road, yes it had.

Now it was a new stretch of road and a new city gate in front of him. A few wagons were waiting and the usual collection of guardsmen were poking through the cargo and questioning travelers.

"Name?" Said the guard when it was Finn's turn.

"Finn," said the foxman. "Just passing through," he said to answer the next question ahead of time. "On my way to Greyhawk to visit relatives."

The guard nodded and waved him through. Though he was the only person in sight with fur, volpa are common enough outside the Maker's lands that he wasn't questioned the way a more unusual creature would be.

A few steps into the city, Finn saw a creature who would provoke more questions, were it not already in town.

Just inside the city gates was a guard house. It was on the left, with stone walls and a narrow doorway sealed with a thick bronze door. Next to the steps that led to the door was a chest-high wall a couple of feet thick and on the wall was a sleeping badger.

It was stretched out along the wall with its paws dangling down on either side. As Finn came in the gate he gave it a glance, shrugged, and kept going. It was a very big badger, at least seven feet long from nose to rump, not counting the furry tail stretched out behind it, but giant or "dire" animals are common enough.

He chalked it down to it being the guard house's mascot, but he turned out of idle interest as someone came out of the guard house door, to see how they reacted to the beast. It was a hestan catman in guard livery and he paused to scratch the badger behind the ears. That made the badger's paws twitch and that's when Finn realized the thing had an extra set of legs.

That was very unusual. He'd heard of something called an aurumvorax, but they were supposedly the size of a normal badger and had eight legs. Also, they were gold or bronze colored, and extremely heavy for their size. One this big would weigh tons. This was more like a dire badger that just had extra legs.

As he studied the sleeping beast that he saw a glint of gold in the nearer ear. The badger was wearing a golden earring.

Well now, that changed things, didn't it? Gold is a rare and precious metal, less used than the more common copper and silver and correspondingly more valuable. Finn pretended to go through a small notebook and in his distraction let himself be pushed to the side of the road by passers-by. A woman with graying hair stoked his tail and smiled, but Finn had other things on his mind besides bedding his third human woman in as many days.

The seemingly random movement caused by sharp elbows and hip-bumps eventually brought Finn up against a wall. He looked up from his notebook and put on a well-practiced expression of surprise. His tall furry ears swiveled forward and his whiskers bristled as he found himself only six feet away from the badger.

"Goodness," he murmured, and the hestan guard put a finger in front of his lips. Don't bother the badger, was the unspoken message.

From this close Finn saw the leather harness the beast wore. It was invisible beneath its long gray flank fur but he could see it sunk into the cream-colored fur of its underside. The gray leather straps showed on top as well, but were the same color as its fur so he missed seeing them until now. Its four front legs were each armored with a long metal bracer the same color as the dark fur, and the harness had D-shaped metal rings, almost certainly for the attachment of armor. It was a guard animal then, not just a mascot. Trained and loyal and most importantly safe to be around, unless it identified you as an enemy.

He made a "May I pet the badger" stroking gesture and the catman sitting on the steps nodded. Finn reached out and gave the badger a good behind-the-ears scritching, using his carefully manicured and painted claws. He smiled a friendly, foxy smile as he attentions made it grumble happily in its sleep.

Finn gave the hestan guard a little half-bow and went to turn away. That was when the badger reached out and a huge paw wrapped around his wrist.

"Ouch," whined Finn, as the decorative silver plates on his leather bracer ground together. If it gripped down any harder it would crush the bones in his wrist and he saw that the innermost toe on its paw acted like a thumb to lock the other toes around his arm. He wouldn't be running unless he left his arm behind.

The beast growled and the catman shot to his feet as though scalded. Finn protested his innocence right up until the cat reached for his hand. The badger was squeezing his wrist so hard that his fingers opened on their own and the hestan took the badger's gold earring from his grasp.

"Oh, how did that happen," Finn said. "Must have come off when I was petting him." The hestan flicked an ear, probably lied to on a daily basis by travelers and not buying for an instant. Just then Finn slapped his other hand against the stone wall. The badger was pulling him closer and its one foreleg was stronger than his entire body.

The badger's middle leg went around him, pinning him to the stones and trapping his other arm before he could reach for his dagger. "It was a mistake," Finn said as the badger ducked his muzzle toward him, and suddenly his head was in its mouth.

"Wait," Finn said, his chin on the badger's tongue and its canine fangs locked behind his ears. There was no pulling out and it could break his neck with one twist of its head.

"It was just an earring!" He cried, just as the badger's tongue bunched up beneath his chin. He knew what was about to happen, and even though it made no sense, he was right. The badger swallowed and Finn slid muzzle-first into its throat.

"Just an earring!" He shrieked, as the badger walked its jaws over his shoulders with a side to side wriggle of its muzzle. One set of badger forepaws gripped his elbows and the other raked its claws over him, tearing away his vest and catching in his belt. The good news was its finger-length claws weren't especially sharp, the bad was the thing was so strong that one tug snapped his belt and peeled his trousers off. Fifty silver Lunars worth of carefully selected foxy clothing was ripped from his body in shreds and he felt smaller hands on his wrists.

The badger tensed, swallowed, and the set of hands barely had time to pull off his silver-and-red-leather bracers before his hands followed his hips and tail-root into the badger's maw.

Slick gullet slid by on all sides as Finn went nose first down the badger's throat. The scrape of claws and careful work of smaller hands had stripped him naked and even the bundle of lockpicks tied to the spine inside his tailfur was found. His fur was slicked down with gullet slime, rendering him all too easy to swallow, and when his face squeezed through a muscular valve into the badger's stomach Finn smelled the fate waiting for him. The smell of bile smote his nostrils and he knew that he was no longer Finn, foxman extraordinare and wandering thief-gigolo-man-about-town. He was Finn, whose orange fur would show up in a badger's droppings tomorrow.

His shoulders followed him into the badger's stomach and the only reason he didn't disappear down its gullet in one long slide was it closing his jaws around his ankles. The same set of smaller hands undid the laces on his beaded-and-strapped sandal-shoes and took them off. The badger snapped up his feet, swallowed, and Finn slid heavily into its stomach, naked as the day he was born.

He felt the stone wall through the flesh and fur and the badger grunted, rolling its hindquarters to the side so the bulge of swallowed-whole foxman didn't rest uncomfortably beneath it. From inside he he heard a rustling sigh and felt it lay its muzzle back on its forepaws. Now it could resume its nap. It didn't need to worry about what would happen now. Its stomach could digest him all on its own. A calm, measured pulse throbbed through the fleshy walls. The badger had eaten him so casually it hadn't even exerted itself.

"Gods DAMN it, why?!" Wrapped in a pocket of slimy flesh and with only a trip through its bowels as what used to be a foxman to look forward to, Finn dug his claws into the belly wall. His claws weren't especially sharp, but maybe he could do a little damage before he died.

The instant he changed position one of the badger's legs, probably a midleg by the feel of it, wrapped around the bulge in its middle. Flesh came crushing in against him and Finn whimpered as the badger let out a long belch. It knew exactly how to deal with reluctant prey.

The strength squeezed out of him, Finn relaxed. Almost all the air had left with the burp and soon he'd breathe his last breath. Then the acid would come trickling in and the process of digestion would begin.

Surprisingly, when through reflex rather than hope he sucked in another breath of air, there was plenty to be had. As his strength returned he experimentally scraped one foot's claws along the belly wall. This time the pressure exerted by the annoyed badger almost made him pass out. Yet afterwards, after another long burp caused by the pressure of the paw, air returned.

"Oh, you sadistic thing, you." The badger was swallowing air as fast as it burped it up!

There was nothing he could do. They had taken every scrap of clothing, both his daggers, even the little eating knife he kept on his belt. Any attempt to scratch the badger was punished by crushing pressure. The only reason he wasn't already a softening lump of food was it swallowing air to keep him alive. Who knows how long the torture would go on before the acids finally killed him?

That was when he realized that despite the smell of acid, there was no sting. Not on his nose, not on his pawpads, not even on the tip of his sheath where a pink tip often showed amongst the white fur. He was coated with a thick layer of slime, some from the gullet and some from the stomach wall, but it wasn't burning him at all. This wasn't a stomach. It was a wet, fleshy prison cell.

"Damn it," Finn muttered. He wasn't being digested, but he was still trapped. The sodden heat of the stomach soaked into his fur and he began to pant. With no way to shed the sweltering heat, the stomach might not need to dissolve him to kill him.

There he lay, curled in a ball and covered in slime. Every minute or two the badger would belch, then swallow more air. He tried not to think about the heat, or what would happen when or if the acid finally showed up. A prisoner in a solitary fleshy cell, with no way to know from which end of the badger he'd eventually escape. From its mouth, good; via its bowels, not so good.

After Gods knew how long, sweltering in the soggy furnace of the badger's guts, he felt it lift its head. Through the muscle and fur and slime, over the thumping heart and whisper of breath he heard the tiniest vibration. Someone was talking to the badger. Giving it orders?

Apparently so. The badger gagged and the stomach heaved around him. It was trying to throw him back up!

Finn felt around blindly until he felt the muscular valve through which he arrived. He hoped it was the right one, anyway. As the belly tensed and heaved like a ship in a storm he pushed his nose against the fleshy valve and hoped for the best.

Sure enough, the badger retched and his face was in its gullet again. His shoulders squeezed in after and flesh slid by in the correct direction this time. Sudden light smote his eyes as the convulsing gut pushed his legs up its throat. With a pained gagging sound the badger lowered its muzzle and a wet, slimy fox hit the ground.

He couldn't see anything, eyes squeezed shut against the stabbing light. All he could do was gasp in blessedly cool air and press himself against the wall the badger lay on.

There was a lapping noise from overhead and he opened his eyes to see the catman holding a bowl of water. The badger drank, then plunged in its muzzle and shook the water off. It didn't like having a mouthful of belly slime any more than he liked having his fur matted down with it.

"All right then," said a guardsman who hadn't been there when the badger ate him. This one was armored like the others and had the same green-tree-on-yellow surcoat. The only difference was a white braid around his helmet, which seemed to mean he was in charge. "That worked. Corporal?"

He gestured at another guard who wasn't around before and the man shoved a ball of cloth into Finn's hands. It looked to be the shredded remains of his clothing. Finn dropped it into his lap and rooted through it. Everything was there, even his daggers, coin pouch and other valuables.

His clothes were too mangled to wear but he strapped on his sandals, managed to tie together enough bits of cloth to at least cover up his balls and other unmentionables, and used a strip of used-to-be-expensive trouser material to make his belt somewhat functional. No one lifted a finger to help. The hestan was still hovering over the badger, though the beast was looking around and seemed fully recovered from heaving Finn back up.

"What was that all about?" Finn stood back up and confronted the guard with the braid. "Your beast ate me! All I did was -"

"Steal Bart's earring," snapped the catman, but the guard in charge waved him to silence. Finn noted that the gold earring was back on the furry badger ear and that the opposite ear had one too, albeit of a different design.

"Bart sometimes disposes of criminals for us," the man with the helmet braid said. "Someone had the idea that he could hold them inside himself for a while instead, and we had a potion made that temporarily turned off his stomach acids. We were testing it this morning and are grateful that you stopped by to help."

He gave Finn a wide, insincere smile. "It all worked out swimmingly. Most people who go down his throat come out his other end looking rather different. You're just a bit damp."

"A bit," Finn snapped. "What about my clothes? Your beast tore them to bits. They were expensive!"

The guard raised a finger. It was not the middle one, but Finn saw he was tempted.

"You would be in a cell right now if we hadn't needed someone to test the potion. Count yourself lucky that you only spent," he looked at another guard.

"Half an hour, cap'n," the guard said. Finn saw he had a sand glass and a scrap of paper.

"Half an hour in Bart's stomach. That's not a long sentence at all."

"Fine," Finn hissed. The captain waved to two other guards and headed back into the gatehouse, leaving just the catman and the badger. The beast was lapping up water from the bowl and ignored him.

Finn was filthy, slicked down with belly slime from head to foot, and all but naked. He would need to find a public bath, groom himself, and buy a whole new set of clothes. That was a lot of time and coin wasted that he'd have to earn back by seducing local ladies and picking pockets. On top of everything else, now city guard eyes would be on him. It was just as well he hadn't found anything to pilfer on the road. They no doubt went through his things before returning the bundle of shredded cloth.

Finn was in a foul mood, and with good cause. And so, keeping his voice calm and level so not to alarm the guard beast, he spoke to the hestan.

"So," he said, carefully keeping even his body language neutral, as he would when playing cards, "Have you fucked the thing yet?"

"What," said the hestan's posture, his ears, his tail, if not his voice. Finn knew his hestans. He'd swindled plenty, and fucked just as many.

"Come now," he said with a smile. "I know my cats. You want to suck its cock, or maybe take it in below your tail." He gestured peaceably at the giant badger, which was licking its black-furred forepaw.

When he'd opened his eyes after being regurgitated, one of the first things he saw was the long sheath running along its belly. If he hadn't known from the smell by then, he'd have seen that it was male. So was the hestan, and something about the way the cat acted around the beast made him think the hestan wanted more than a professional relationship with the guard-beast.

"I'm just wondering if you have yet, or not," he said. All smiles, friendly, watching the cat squirm.

That was when the badger reached out again, deceptively quickly for such a large beast, and grabbed him by the tail.

"Go ahead," the badger growled, a subterranean rumble bubbling up out of the chest he'd slid through on his way to the stomach. "Reach for it."

Finn's fingers twitched, for he'd reflexively gone for his dagger when his tail was seized. Thankfully, he didn't complete the motion. The beast was easily three times his size and a mass of muscle, claws and teeth. Not to mention, it talked. That, he hadn't expected. There was no telling what it was capable of, past the fact it could overpower and swallow him on a whim.

When he was silent, the badger tugged at his tail, just to remind him how strong it was. Out of the corner of his eye Finn saw the hestan put his hand on the spear leaning against the wall. Not to save him from the beast, oh no. It was on the microscopic chance that the badger needed help fighting him.

"I can let go your tail and you can leave," the badger growled. "Or you can keep talking to Azra, here. Then we'll see how long the potion I drank lasts. Maybe this time you won't get out of me the way you go in."

"I will leave," Finn said stiffly. The badger nodded and let go his tail. Finn gathered up his things and headed down the road, mostly naked, sticky with badger slime, but happy it had given him a choice.

As he headed toward a street corner, hoping to get directions to a bath and a tailor, he glanced back over his shoulder. The badger and hestan were talking. He'd been too angry to think straight, but he'd been right. The hestan wanted the badger to fuck him something fierce.

He'd like to think he created a rift between the two guards, but he didn't fool himself. Now that he'd spoken to the beast, he could read its expressions a bit better. Whether or not it wanted the hestan under it and its fangs in the cat's scruff, his words hadn't surprised the badger at all.