Family reunion
Nyoka pays a visit to her sister Uvuzi, and we meet (albeit from long distance) the pair's mother Walaji. And of course there's vore. 83
*****
Family Reunion
By Strega
It was a fine carriage, all oak and gold leaf, and by all rights it has no business being where it was: in a lonely wood two miles from the caravan trail. The trail it clattered down was little more than a deer path, with a few muddy boot-, foot-, and paw prints. No effort had been made to improve it beyond hacking back the occasional branch - and that only because they irritated someone, for they lay rotting where they had fallen on the trail.
The horses sweated and slipped, weary from too much travel and too little rest. Once it seemed the whole assembly, carriage and horses and guards, might slide off a slick rock slope into a stream. Something shifted massively inside the cabin, though, and it righted itself just in time.
Eyes in the woods studied the carriage as it traveled, for these were dangerous lands. The two coachmen looked competent, though. One was a tall human with gray hair and plate armor, greatsword lying on the driver's bench behind him. The other, driving the wagon, was an obvious rogue in fine, supple leather armor, rapier at his side.
The combination of a skilled fighter and opportunistic rogue is a deadly one, but the eyes watching them did not hold back just for that. No, it was because the carriage was too fine. Too expensive to ruin on a poor trail unless even such a well-made conveyance was of little value to its owner. The ones behind the eyes held back because they wondered who rode in the cab. They smelled a mage...or worse. There was a certain glassiness to the eyes of the guards, as though their wills were not their own. What might be controlling them?
There were those who would have attacked anyway, but none of the watchers were so unwary.
Eventually the carriage reached its limits. The terrain was too rough for such a delicate vehicle, and one wheel was wobbling so badly it must soon fall off. Two of the others had so many broken spokes it was a wonder they lasted this long.
Just as it seemed it might collapse of its own weight, a small figure appeared from the undergrowth. A kobold, those least feared of evil humanoids - somewhat unjustly. They were frail and weak, even more so than most small races, but they were not stupid. Anyone who had actually fought them, or tried to winkle through the network of traps around a kobold den, would tell a different story than one heard from farmers and inn-dwelling 'adventurers'.
The glassy-eyed driver and his fighter companion did not react. The horses trudged forward and the kobold stood its ground. Finally the rogue twitched the reins. There was a mechanical quality to the movement, but still the horses pulled up.
More kobolds appeared and began to unbuckle the horses from their harnesses. The horses flicked their ears nervously, but they were too tired to shy away from the scaly little creatures. The fighter and rogue jumped down from their seats with that same marionette sense to their movements, and waited.
The side door of the carriage opened. Out stepped...no, out slithered something. A great U-shaped cylinder of blue and white fur, like a snake with hair. More and more slid out until it was obvious that the thing must have been squeezed tight into the cab. Eventually two ends appeared. One was the narrow end, where the blue and white furry coil diminished to a mere ankle's thickness. At that end a great plume of fur like an oversized dusting-brush waved, held a few feet off the ground. The other end did not taper so much - indeed, the thickest coil was as thick as a man's shoulders were wide, and the end opposite the tail was still as wide as a woman's waist. That end included a head: huge, wedge-shaped, and serpentine, but with the same blue and white fur and a waterfall of straight, well-brushed white hair. On either side of the pink nose, centered in white patches of fur, were terribly beautiful slit-pupiled eyes, green as emeralds.
The thing shook itself, and arms previously held flat to its sides appeared. A great skunk-serpent it was, with a woman's eyes and arms, all covered in blue and white fur. Gold earrings glittered in its furry ears, and a finely tooled pouch hung from a strap. A forked tongue appeared to taste the air. Then, imperiously, it spoke.
"I am tired from my travel," it hissed to the kobold with the least ragged clothes. "Take me to my sister."
"Yes, mistress," said the kobold, and bowed. Awed, he turned and led the way. Sinuous strokes of the huge snake body propelled the thing along while it held its forward parts and head upright. Even with less than a quarter of its length elevated it was as tall as a big man. At the distant end of its body the furry brush, now recognized as a massive skunk's tail, lost a few hairs to a thorny weed. The thing paused, swiveling its head halfway around without turning, and fixed its emerald eyes on two kobolds. Without a word they grasped the tail, larger than both together, and held it clear of twigs and thorns as they walked. A subtle bulge in the skunk-snake's midsection caused a second delay, as it was too wide to fit between two trees and necessitated a slight detour.
Behind them came the two carriage guards and behind them the two horses, led by kobolds. A half-dozen of the scaly little folk remained behind to dismantle the carriage. More were doing their best to cover the tracks it had made - largely a futile effort. They proved much better at covering the tracks the serpent-skunk and the rest made. Ultimately the heaviest parts of the carriage were abandoned, its main body propped up on boulders as though ruffians had made off with the wheels.
"It is not far, mistress," said the least scruffy kobold without being asked. Indeed the serpent-thing did seem female, on closer inspection. Six pink teats showed through her white chest fur, though there must be only the barest bulge of breast beneath each.
Shortly they arrived at a meadow, with a cliff face beyond. Here the lead kobold took charge. He still cowered whenever the serpent-thing's gaze fell on him, but he led the party on a twisting path across the clearing, counting steps and consulting tattoos on the backs of his hands every few steps. What seemed a typical grassy expanse was apparently not so safe.
When they reached the cliff face it proved to be other than it appeared, as well. What seemed a mere in-turn of the rocks was a narrow cave mouth, visible only from very to the cliff. One by one they entered, finding an antechamber just large enough to hold their little band. There they split, with kobolds leading the horses down one tunnel and the rest of them proceeding along another. Three doors were reached and passed, each opened from the far side after words were exchanged. The furry serpent-thing grew restive while they waited between two of the doors.
"I do not like to be so closed in," she said to the lead kobold. From her perfectly neutral tone of voice it was clear the head kobold, and the rest, meant no more to her than livestock or perhaps, if they were lucky, as pets.
"I am sorry mistress. This is the last door."
She nodded and was silent. Finally the door, a crude wood and metal thing scribed with arcane signs, creaked open. Beyond it was a rich chamber lit by magical lights, and there was the serpent's sister.
She was smaller, this one. Her fore-body was humanoid, though still furry, and came complete with a fine pair of breasts, narrow waist, broad hips that tapered into a furry-serpent lower body, and slender arms ringed with a dozen silver and gold hoops. Her hair was not as long as her sister's, and had more of a natural curl. Her build, much more humanoid than her sister's, included genitals located where a proper human woman's should be. Even with her broad-cheeked furry skunk's head and the great furry-serpent lower body, she might be beautiful. Her eyes were yellow, slit pupiled like her sister's, and her white patches smaller, but they both had the double stripes along their backs.
"Welcome, sister," said the smaller, darker-colored skunkette-lamia, and bobbed her head in greeting.
"Sister," said the larger, and returned the nod. "I have heard from mother, and thought I should see you."
"Mother," said the smaller. "Why do you still care? She does not care about us."
"That was once true, Uvuzi." The larger one paused. Even the name - Uvuzi na wa Nyoka, which means 'Snake with fur', and its diminutive form, Uvuzi, which translates to 'armpit hair', was a sign of their mother's disdain.
The larger one's name was Nyoka, which meant, simply, 'snake'. Their mother had not been kind with names. "Mother...I talk to her sometimes. She is proud of us...especially of you."
"Me? Why?" Uvuzi noticed the two humans, and pointed. "What of them?"
"Oh yes," Nyoka said. "You two...I want you to rub my back. Your armor creaks and clatters when you move, and my fur gets caught in the joints. Take it off before you massage me."
The gray-haired warrior and the rogue began undressing. Kobolds took each bit of armor, each weapon as it was put down. It took two to carry the greatsword.
"Oh, very impressive. Very impressive!" Uvuzi said with genuine wonder. "You can Charm people now!"
"Nonsense," the larger sister said. "They're just good friends." But she smiled, gesturing like a puppeteer.
The two men were down to loincloths and moved in on either side of her, kneading their fingers into her fur. "Ah, yes...farther down."
Uvuzi gestured, and the armor and weapons were taken away. "I thought you liked them bigger, like griffons." She smiled. "That's going to get you in trouble someday."
"I get scratched up some. It happens. And, well, feathers...." She did not have to continue. Feathers, like fur and scales, were indigestible. A sufficiently large avian could give her quite a bellyache as the mass of feathers tried to make its way through her bowels. Often she could cough that mass back up, but sometimes it seemed determined to leave their body via the other route.
"You are lucky you do not have little lamia-griffon chicks. Cubs. Whichever," Uvuzi said.
"You worry too much. I have lain with a hundred males they have yet to fatten me in that way." She did not have to say that they had all fattened her the other way. "Have you lain even with one?"
"Just one." Uvuzi smiled, then continued. "A skunk-man, like father."
"Really! Farther, down you two." The two men moved down her serpentine half, kneading the great constriction muscles. She was half again her sister's mass, at least a thousand pounds of muscle and fur. Things would fit down her throat that her sister could never manage, though part of that was due to Uvuzi's more humanoid build. Nyoka's head was much larger, her neck thicker, and that meant a wider gape. "You had sex? In the usual way? How brave."
Uvuzi twitched her whiskers. "He introduced me to a new thing. Something a male wears on his member, to catch the seed. I was reluctant, but he convinced me."
"It almost sounds as though you liked him. Where is he now? The usual place?"
"The usual place," Uvuzi agreed, meaning, where food went after you ate it. "It was fun, but I still worried. It is also fun when I have them lick me, or use my other hole, or finger me, and then I do not have to worry." Uvuzi was well past twenty feet long lying down, and her coils, though not so massive as Nyoka's, were more than three feet around at their thickest. No human - or skunk-man - struggled for long with a loop or two around him, and then would come the sniffing nose, the testing lick, the yawn.
Just then two kobolds emerged from the shadows, carrying a tray with wine bottles. They passed a little too close to Nyoka's tail, which flicked out - accidentally? - and tripped them. With a crash and tinkle the tray and bottles fell, ruby-red wine splashing on the serpent-skunk's flank.
Nyoka said not a word, but her tail brushed the closer kobold aside. He went down with a pile of fur atop him, squeaking and pushing at the body-thick coil.
The other kobold was behaving most strangely. Instead of running for his life as his companion was pinned, he stared fixedly at Nyoka's face. Then he walked closer, threading between the two humans who massaged her lengthy back. She lowered her head as he approached, and he climbed over the closest coil and reached her face. Little scaly hands reached out, pulling her jaws open - though only because she permitted it - and he climbed in. He kicked and wriggled, pushing himself deeper into her lengthy mouth, until he got his feet against her rows of inward-pointing fangs. That gave him the leverage to push himself into her throat. When all that remained of him was a glimpse of his toes, though, Uvuzi spoke.
"Sister," she said, "Please forgive them."
The kobold was little more than a bulge in Nyoka's neck, and the least gulp would send that bulge downward. There was a pause, though, and then she tilted her head down. He slid from her gullet and off her tongue, trying still to climb into her throat. Nyoka flicked her whiskers and turned her gaze aside, and the little humanoid shivered and helped the other up as the coil moved off him. Both bowed deeply and backed away.
"That really is impressive," Uvuzi said. "I can't do anything like that, but I've been studying." Her fingers wove a pattern in the air, and she purred out the words to a spell. From one moment to the next she changed; her humanoid body remained much the same, but her snakey lower half diminished markedly. Now it was hardly longer than a set of legs, and though she was still half snake, manifestly she was much too small to eat a man. She smiled.
"Shape change?" Nyoka said with a tilt of her head, but Uvuzi shook hers.
"Just illusion. I also cover up the entrance to the case, turn invisible, that sort of thing. Very useful though, a couple of weeks back I met a khardaki looking like this. He thought I was the cutest thing, let me snuggle up nice and close." She glanced at the two humans and didn't continue, but Nyoka knew that the khardaki had discovered she was not nearly as harmless as she looked. Two weeks was more than enough time for her sister to digest even a two-meter-tall lion-man.
Uvuzi gestured again and murmured complex syllables. The room changed: the fine wall hangings, looted from a rich merchant's wagons, disappeared. The polished woodwork of the furniture and even the huge pile of velvet cushions that served as her bed were gone. The cavern was empty, cobwebbed, with a few scattered bones.
The illusion faded as quickly as it appeared. "The other day I convinced a goblin that my mouth was a tunnel to climb into. Too late, he realized it wasn't what he thought. Nothing as impressive as what you did, though."
Nyoka smiled. "Well, the control thing is very nice, but it isn't foolproof. I have to get someone to look into my eyes. Illusions don't give you that sort of control, but there must be many tricks you can play."
"You two," she said to the two men, "See the brushes on that table. Go brush my sister's fur."
When they made their way over and were running brushes through Uvuzi's pelt - a procedure that got her to stretch to expose more of her length to the luxurious treatment - Uvuzi spoke again. "This is just wonderful. Mother could do that and the illusion thing, too. I guess we are finally developing some of what she had."
" There were four of them originally. I was lucky and got three, including an elf mage who I had no desire to fight at all. The fourth was a half-orc who resisted me. He had a great axe, but I got the elf to trap him with a Hold spell before he could use it. It was so nice of him! He didn't want his friends to fight. The elf worried me; they are supposed to be hard to catch with that sort of magic. So I had these two," she waved carelessly at the men brushing her sister, "Go get me some firewood, so I could send their companions away."
Uvuzi had recognized at once the swelling in her sister's midsection as a meal, but had not known what it was. It might have been one of Nyoka's characteristically gluttonous feasts - ogre or griffon or the like -- dissolved down to a shadow of its former self. It seemed instead it had been an elf and a half-orc, perhaps half digested, now just a smooth streamlined lump. They almost had a kobold keep them company on their trip through the lamia.
Uvuzi reasoned from her sister's words that putting the two remaining men in obvious danger could break the hold her sister had established, so she was all smiles when they approached to brush her. Then, subtly, she shifted her body, taking the portion they meant to brush just a little of reach. Compliant to her sister's whims they followed along, only to find that the particular burr or spot of dirt they meant to brush out had moved again. Then there would be a coil under their knees that would shift, and they would have to straddle it.
By the time Nyoka mentioned the firewood the gray-haired man had two loops of Uvuzi around him, one at his thighs and one beneath his armpits. They applied no pressure, and he kept at the brushing. The rogue had accidentally - or so it seemed - entangled himself further down her serpentine half, and had a loop as thick as his thigh that ran beneath his crotch and over his shoulder. Uvuzi gave her sister a testing look, and Nyoka nodded. The slack coils tightened.
The last bit of her tail shy of the skunk-brush at the end went around the rogue's neck, and the thicker coil suddenly squeezed his chest. The gray-haired warrior was worse off, for the two coils pinned one arm firmly to his side and stretched him out. Legs held together and torso cruelly squeezed, he could not even cry out.
First the rogue, then the warrior broke the charm, or else Nyoka released it, for they began to struggle furiously. The warrior's one free fist pounded her flank, and the rogue's hands darted everywhere looking for a weapon. All he had was a brush, and he tried to stab her with the handle. It even hurt a bit, and the coils around him went tighter in reaction. After a few moments the gray-haired man was so pinioned by the coils that he stopped beating on her. Wrapped up like a mummy in her coils, he could only watch as Uvuzi's upper body advanced on the rogue.
Uvuzi was much more humanoid than her sister. Her slender body and graceful neck belied her much more massive furry-serpentine lower body. Surely such a creature could not devour a man.
The rogue tired quickly. When his arm fell, exhausted, her tail released his neck and slipped downward to trap it to his side. That bit of her was only as thick as a man's ankle, just shy of her lush skunk-tail, and perhaps could not have so restrained the warrior. The rogue was not so strong, and though he struggled to free his arms once more he could not keep her face from approaching his own.
Uvuzi looked him over, panting and red-cheeked as he was, then out came a foot of tongue. It was not forked like Nyoka's, and it slid up his nose and brow as she turned to look down from above. Then her narrow skunk-muzzle opened, yawning wide, and took in the top of his head. It seemed she must stop there as her lips strained to stretch around his skull, but the bones of her lower jaw disjointed, stretching both away from the upper and wider as well. The rogue gave a last curse as her maw slipped down over his face, then was silent, struggling but unable to pull away.
Uvuzi already had a formidable bulge in her cheeks. Twisting her head, she lined her nose up with one of his shoulders and her chin with the other, so that as her jaws stretched wide they would slip easily into her gullet. Moments later they did just that. Muscular action in her coils sent them sliding bit by bit down the rogue's chest without ever relaxing their grip, and her pink nose and stretched maw followed. Her mouth was equipped with many, many fangs, all sharp and inward-pointing - two rows in the lower jaw and no less than four in the upper! These sank into the rogue's skin, giving her a grip so she could rest before pushing forward once more. It must have been painful, but the rogue's cries, if any, were smothered by the lamia's throat.
She worked her way over his body, turning her head from side to side. Each movement released the grip of some of her fangs, but not all of them, and allowed one side of her jaws to push forward an inch or two. Then the fangs there would dig in, and she would push the other side forward instead. In a surprisingly short space of time, considering her slender human half, her jaws had taken in the rogue to his hips. A coil still held his legs together, but his hands were finally free. They were held to his thighs now by the grip of her jaws.
All this while the gray-haired man watched silently, but now he let out a great cry. "Foul thing! Release him!" He kicked and struggled, desperate to help his friend. Uvuzi had played out similar dramas many a time, though, and could do two things at once; her coils had never relaxed their grip on him. As soon as he cried out they tightened all the more, and he could only watch as his friend's hands, grasping for some weapon until the very end, disappeared into the skunkette-lamia's gullet.
Uvuzi's humanoid half was distended around her meal. Her breasts and even her hips rode over the rogue as he vanished, swelling her until she was nearly unrecognizable. Surely there could be no heart in that part of her, no lungs. Evidently there were massive swallowing muscles, though, for even through the fur their movements were visible. Ripples formed beneath the fur, rolling over the rogue and pulling him deeper. Toward the last her jaws no longer worked to pull him in; instead she would push herself forward until slack developed in her fur, pause to rest, then swallow. As she did she stretched out her nose and the slack would leave her fur; not an inch but half a foot or more of rogue would be sucked in, and she would continue to push until slack once again formed. It only took four such movements to devour his legs.
Her muzzle finally rose from her coils, where it had gone to reach the last bits of him. Her jaws gaped loosely, and there just at the back were the bare feet of her meal. She stretched herself upward, swallowing once more, and as the great bulge slipped downward she formed an unnatural crook in her neck. The bend in her neck pressed against the bulge his feet made, pushing it onward, and as the bulge made its way through her torso the bend followed. It moved through her torso, which flexed in ways no human woman's could, and all the while it helped ease the rogue toward her stomach.
That, too, was plainly not in her humanoid half. The start of it turned out to be about four feet below her sex, or so it seemed from the rogue's reaction. As the bulge moved into the thickest of her coils the man began to thrash, making her whole body twitch like a fish on dry land. Surely pain, the pain of being digested alive, provoked such a spasm. The progress of the moving bulge slowed; it settled into place in the thickest coil. Trapped beneath the thickness of muscle and hide, the struggles of her meal were barely visible. Uvuzi worked her jaws back into their normal shape and smiled at the man who remained in her grip.
"I will let you wait a little while," she said brightly. Then she looked at Nyoka. Two more kobolds brought her sister a new bottle of wine and a glass. These were less clumsy, because they survived to pour it. It was Nyoka's turn to be impressed.
"You have them well trained."
Uvuzi shrugged. "Their previous masters were cruel. Gnolls. They killed and raped for fun, I only do it when one of them deserves it. I am the mistress, but they help decide when one of them should make the trip this man just took." She reached down to pat the lumpy, faintly twitching bulge, which pressed against the gray-haired man. Her stomach was in her biggest coil, one wrapped tight around his hips, and so he squirmed futilely away from the man-shaped bulge of his friend.
"And I let them watch as I ate their former masters. That was when I first found I could make them see things. Poor gnolls, chasing a kobold into the woods, one after another into my jaws...my little ones loved that."
Nyoka nodded. "Likewise, at first I could only catch one person at a time. I was lucky with these." She gestured at the bulge in her midsection and her sister's. "They showed up when I could catch more than one, and I was hiding, so I was able to look one in the eyes, then another. All except that stupid half orc."
Uvuzi looked at the man in her coils. "Are you sure I can have this one too? That's very generous."
"Think of it as a bribe. Mother wants to talk to you."
"And why would I want to talk to her?" The lump in her belly gave a last kick, and Uvuzi belched. "Pardon."
Nyoka reached into the pouch and took out a crystal ball. "You don't need to talk face to face. Just through this." She gestured at a pair of kobolds, who brought a low table and, after another gesture, a velvet cushion. She rested the crystal carefully on the cushion and flicked it with a claw.
The room seemed to dim as the crystal chimed. Then a glow formed around it, rising and expanding. It changed from milky white to blues, and finally became a face. This face, like those of the two lamias, was snouted and inhuman, but it had no fur. Instead it had scales. Green, slit-pupiled eyes much like Nyoka's and Uvuzi's looked out of a face that would look perfectly at place at the front end of a snake. The image did not show enough of their mother to display her humanoid aspects.
The image turned its head, and Uvuzi sucked in a breath. Their mother had a green leather patch over one eye. A half-healed scar led from the crown of her head, beneath the patch, and on down her cheek and halfway down the visible part of her neck.
"Walaji," Uvuzi said. "What happened?"
The inhuman snake-snout twisted into a smile. "You can call me 'mother', you know. I did give birth to you two."
"Mother," Nyoka said, while Uvuzi muttered it under her breath. "What happened?" Uvuzi repeated.
Walaji shrugged. "I got greedy. I thought I had a young dragon well seduced and wrapped up, ready to eat. Turns out he wasn't any of those things." She moved back from the crystal at her end, letting them see more of her. Her left arm was gone, a mere stump bound in bandages.
"Oh mother," Uvuzi said, unable to keep the concern out of her voice.
Nyoka was less alarmed, having seen her mother's condition before. "That has almost happened to me a time or two. I got greedy with a big, green dragon. Well, big compared to the usual ones I eat. He almost got loose...but not quite." Her forked tongue flickered.
"Trying for dragons is stupid." Uvuzi said. "I don't know why we do it."
Nyoka and her mother shared a look through the crystal. Uvuzi had said 'We'.
"I ate a little red one once," Uvuzi continued. "That was so stupid. And so was he. He just stood there and let me eat him, I didn't understand it, but I couldn't stop myself. I couldn't even get him all down, I had to wait for most of him to digest before I could swallow the tail."
Walaji shook her head. "Eyes bigger than stomach, a flaw we all share. We lamias."
"Three or four men, or man-sized things, that's as good as a griffon," said Uvuzi, looking at Nyoka.
"Then you have to hunt four times, or go to places where many men - or whatever - are. I only need to catch one griffon, or ogre...or small dragon."
"It was this," Walaji said, feeling the patch with her one good hand, "That made me think of you two. I know I was not a good mother. I thought about eating you two, more than once. I never expected to get pregnant when I had that skunk."
"We know, mother," Nyoka said. "I don't know what I will do if one of my dinners makes me fat as the skunk made you fat."
"I do not forgive you, Walaji," Uvuzi said firmly. "Not entirely. But we can talk. Maybe we can help you find a healer...I live sometimes in Grayston, and the healers there will heal anyone. Even monsters."
"That is what we are," the scaly lamia said with a smile. "To our prey."
The crystal dimmed. Kobolds around the edge of the room talked to one another in low tones. They had never heard Uvuzi discuss her mother before.
Uvuzi slithered up on to the pile of cushions, dragging the gray-haired man with her. She leaned down and gave his forehead a lick, and he cursed and tried to pull away, futilely. She did not gape, though, instead looking at her sister.
"Thank you for the gift, sister. And maybe thanks for getting me to talk to mother. I haven't decided about that one yet."
Nyoka was looking around the room. "I think it may be time we begin to work together, the two of us and Mother. Isolated like we are, sooner or later will be get unlucky. Still...this is not such a bad place you have here, Uvuzi. It makes my damp cave look squalid."
"You are welcome to stay until you are ready to leave. I know you are not gorged, not after only two men. Maybe we have something you could eat."
"An elf, a half-orc, not two men." Nyoka stroked the modest swelling in her midsection. "They make the same shape bulge, though. I had thought to leave today, but I am tired. Perhaps...what has become of the horses?"
"The kobolds eat them, but I doubt they have killed them yet. Shi-li, fetch one of the horses."
Shi-li was a kobold in surprisingly fine clothing, most likely looted like the rest of the room's content. There were, Nyoka realized now, upwards of fifty of the little humanoids watching them worshipfully, and some were quite well kitted out with armor or finery suited to their size.
Shi-li He nodded and scampered off. Uvuzi was looking down at the man in her coils again.
"You are the last from your little band, man. Two for my sister's stomach, and two for mine. I hope your equipment was well made, so that I get a decent price."
The man in her coils snarled. "Monsters. Sooner or later, we will get you."
Shi-li came back with a cart-horse, which was so weary it hardly reacted when Nyoka looped herself around its torso. Only then did it whinny and struggle, but its legs were pulled out from under it by another coil. Nyoka's clawed fingers pulled its long head around, and her jaws gaped for its nose.
Nyoka was working her way up the horse's long snout toward its terrified eyes when Uvuzi spoke to the man again. "We all die eventually. Maybe some of your kind will kill me. Maybe I will live in Grayston until I die of old age. Maybe a dragon or a griffon or an ogre or a pack of gnolls will do the deed." She smiled. The horse was making pitiful muffled sounds from within Nyoka's gullet. Her sister's jaws were distended hugely, the horse's head bulging through her throat fur. Onward slipped her maw, easily, unchallenged by even the breadth of the horse's neck. Her feeding would slow when she reacted its body, but it would not stop. It seemed an impossible task now, but Uvuzi had seen Nyoka tackle large meals and knew the horse would soon be just another huge, temporary lump in her greedy sister's middle. The horse kicked, but Nyoka skilfully kept her constricting coils out of the way of the iron-shod hooves. There was no escape from her coils save down her throat.
Uvuzi leaned down and licked the man's face again. "But you won't be the one to kill me."
And she yawned.