Kinverse: Volume One

PATH OF THE EMERALD MAIDEN

A naive young monster’s tale by Moros, aka KinverseWriter

Legal Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise herein mentioned. No copyright infringement is intended. All characters and events in this story are entirely fictional. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental. This work of fiction contains disturbing content.

Reader discretion is advised.

Description:

A young woman from a pre-neolithic society is accidentally whisked away to another world entirely during a raid on a research lab run by alien invaders. Stranded with no friends, badly injured, and no idea where home even is, she’s forced to live off the land and learn how to survive in this strange and hostile world.

There’s only one slight problem, though.

She’s not trapped in this world with them. They’re trapped in this world with her.

Categories:

Adventure, Coming-of-Age, Isekai, Erotica.

Disclaimers:

This story contains sexual elements and disturbing themes. The contents aren’t purely intended to be pornographic, but some scenes objectively are. This is about a giant monster that eats people, so reader discretion is advised. This story contains vorarephilic themes.

This story will have a very slow and intermittent pace to begin with. True stakes don’t really show up until halfway through, though the build-up is always there in the background. This is ultimately not a story of grand adventure and defeating one’s enemies to rise to the top, it is the tale of a lost and naive young woman growing as a person and learning new things. It is a personal one concerning her, and thus this story will be told in present-tense first-person.

Chapter 48: Hunger’s Pique

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Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down.

“Again.”

Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down.

“Good. Again.”

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.

“Come on girl. Keep going.”

Up... Down... Up... Down... Up...

“Uwagh!”

She goes tumbling off me and is forced to clamber away as I roll over panting, my ankles finally having given out after trying for my twenty-seventh. In my peripheral vision I can see my Carey rising to her feet.

“Well, okay then. I’m honestly not sure whether to be impressed or not. Twenty-six push-ups, and most of them were with me on your back. Considering it was your first time and you’re uh, not particularly built for this sort of exercise, you did great. Out-of-shape humans have trouble doing even one full push-up, so you haven’t been as lazy as I thought. Running around on your arms does wonders for holding yourself up I guess.”

The fool approaches too close so I make another idle grab for her waist but she throws herself back in time with a smirk.

“I think that’s enough for today. It’s your arms that are spent so we’re going to finish our walk. Take as much time as you need but don’t fall asleep in the middle of the path.”

The idea of walking after that ordeal does not excite me whatsoever...

“Wait, right, you walk on your hands too-”

...but still unwilling to be outdone and despite the ache in my ankles I roll, rise, and rear up to walk upright, towering among the trees well above the diminutive human.

“-oooh... kay. I keep forgetting just how tall you are when you want to be. Wow.”

In her surprised stupor I bend down carefully and wrap an arm around her in time for her to start struggling and spitting to get free.

“Hey! This defeats the point of the exercise!”

“Then explain,” I urge her.

“Fine,” she sighs. “I’ll continue... I forgot that I was making a point there and got carried away.”

She glances around from her position held against my front.

“...Literally, actually.”

“Speak.”

“Right, okay. So I covered nutrition, and I showed you exercise. Uh, where was I... oh, okay, so: when you strain your muscles you tear them a little bit. The point of exercise is to keep them strong by keeping them strained just enough to need to ‘heal,’ without actually injuring yourself.”

I stop and look to her with worry. I’m no stranger to getting hurt in the pursuit of strength, but I’ve had a bad history with tearing.

“Don’t give me that look, it’s fine. The point of resting between sets is so that you don’t strain them too much and really get hurt, which does the opposite and weakens the muscle. So if you’re exercising and start to feel more pain than you should, it’s time to stop for the day. When you do it right the muscle grows larger and stronger.”

She balls up a hand in a fist and pushes the sleeve of its arm nearly to her shoulder, revealing a bulging mound of muscle. Yes yes, very impressive, for a human. Who also hasn’t yet noticed my twisting and turning back towards the way we came as I had grabbed her.

“And that’s why I’ve got these and Sam doesn’t.” She palms her chin and stares down the trail ahead of us. “Hmm... I wonder if I can finally get her to do more than just eat properly... and if I get her exercising I could probably force Frank back too...”

This entire hypothesis would certainly also explain why I get so hungry when I’m injured. My body needs ‘carbs’ and ‘proteins’ to rebuild itself and ‘calories’ to fuel the process, else the regeneration starts starving out the rest of my body. Regenerative hunger tends to prompt over-eating so that would also explain growing larger and stronger, too. There’s sense to this but there’s still something missing between it and taking the strength of one’s prey to grow.

“Exercise,” I prompt her. “And eating parts.” My Sam doesn’t go off on tangents nearly as much... I wonder if my Carey is broken or something?

She thankfully just breaks from her daze and gets right back into it. “Well, there is actually something to that now that I think of it. Since a heart has what a heart needs in it because it’s a heart, then eating one should be good for your own because it provides the right nutrients. Since most of the body that isn’t an organ is made up of muscle or fat, pretty much any flesh is going to be fine for your muscles.”

There it is; the missing link. Mother and my people are right about the taking of strength.

“But,” she continues as if sensing my thoughts, “it doesn’t work the way you were talking about. The food you eat gets torn up and destroyed then melted down in your stomach. After that the nutrients get taken out and whatever isn’t useful is, uh, ‘gotten rid of.’ Think of it like how we build our houses out of trees, but our houses aren’t trees even though they’re made of wood.”

I contemplate that for a moment. So some of their strength isn’t able to be used; this I and everyone else since they were old enough to dig and bury their own refuse would know. This still largely makes sense but lacks a critically important bit which I still need to know; namely, not chewing.

“To actually get strong and stay healthy, you need to provide what your body needs, and provide a bit extra along with giving it a reason to use it. That is the point of exercise: to give your body a reason to use it.”

“So...” I begin. “Eat, exercise, stronger?”

She balls her fist again but this time leaves her thumb pointed straight out and holds it up to me. “Yep! There are some people who exercise then eat, but the concept is the same. So when you go out hunting your legs aren’t getting stronger because you’re gnawing on some poor elk’s legs, it’s because you’re running around and then gnawing on the legs.”

This goes entirely contrary to the hunt. Kill, eat, get stronger. But with this exercise you wouldn’t even necessarily need to hunt to get stronger, you could just... eat food, and exercise. It explains how she’s so much stronger than Sam despite eating only a little bit more than her, and mostly the same as her.

“That exercise. What it called?” I ask down to her.

“A push-up!” she answers. “There’s lots of different exercises for lots of different muscles, but that’s one of the most basic ones there are.”

“Why?” I quiz her. “Why so many?”

“Because you can’t just do one exercise; your muscles will become imbalanced,” she frowns. “Some people spend all day lifting heavy things but they can’t run for very long and they aren’t very fast. Most people just go for walks or jogs to keep their lungs and heart healthy, because the lungs have a muscle that needs to be exercised, and the heart is a muscle. By breathing more and harder, and getting your heart beating faster, you’re exercising them.”

The strongest of Kin go on long and difficult hunts, exerting themselves greatly under pain of failure or even death. These feats would require many different movements... lots of walking, usually lots of climbing and jumping, and then the fight to the death itself. Brawling would also exercise the muscles used for brawling, so not only would one become better at fighting due to experience, their muscles would in a way get that experience as well.

But... if she’s right, then when a muscle is broken down... that experience is lost too. Gone, lost, and buried. It was always the experience of the hunt, not the reward.

I don’t like where this is going.

“Oh, and before I forget, I did just remember something else. I mentioned some other nutrients that your body needs and how it’s why I give you fruits and vegetables--there is actually a vegetable that people used to think magically made you better.”

I perk up with hope. “Which?”

“The carrot!” she beams. “Supposedly eating them is good for your eyes, but that was just a lie made up to confuse an enemy. And rather than make you stronger, not having these nutrients would make you weaker. Hundreds of years ago people sailing across the ocean would lose their teeth because they were living off of bad diets. So, they started bringing along oranges and some similar fruits called lemons and limes, and it fixed the problem because they had what they needed!”

That... actually explains a lot. Like why Carey was lying to me and telling me that the carrots would make me see better because I was fussing over them. I now know better that they’re actually quite nice both raw and cooked--especially with butter, whatever it’s made of--but also that I don’t need to actually keep eating them to try and see better with my night eyes.

“There’s no magic to it, it’s just food,” she continues. “While some foods have special chemicals that get processed differently by the body, like alcohol, poisons, and medicine, it’s really just still food. A heart is just muscle, and a brain is just a lump of funny-looking meat once it’s dead.”

‘...And a brain is just a lump of funny-looking meat once it’s dead.’

Once more, there it is. She has to be wrong and she doesn’t truly know what she’s talking about. Why else would the veterans have gotten smarter from clashing with the invaders? Why else would I be smarter in the ways of humans after eating them?

“Alcohol is basically a poison that we drink for fun, and it...”

She’s still prattling on but I’m not really paying attention any more. She must be wrong, even if humans have studied food to a depth further than I could have conceived possible, and might have discovered exactly how a body uses the food it eats. But still, she has to be wrong otherwise Mother is wrong, and she’s never wrong.

“...so the liver processes bad things we eat and makes stuff that we need...”

If she’s right then that would mean that just like a heart no longer pumping, the brain loses its thoughts. Kin who suffer head injuries lose parts of themselves, especially if they literally do lose parts of their brains.

“...the liver is a delicacy but some animals in the frozen north have poisonous livers because they have too much of a nutrient so eating them kills you...”

So the moment the brain dies, all of that experience would just be gone. No memories, no thoughts, no person, just death. Nothing passes on to the consumer, no strength or wisdom to the devourer, it’s just death for the sake of death; perhaps death for a meal, death for fun, but always still death.

“...and medicines are types of poison that do stuff we want to the body, like put people to sleep so they don’t hurt, or trick the body into making more of something, or...”

We eat our dead because it makes us stronger, but really it’s just because the meat is there. That’s why it goes to the broodlings and mothers first; because they need it most. But... I knew that humans were bad food since they’re stringy and small, but, but... if there’s nothing if they die, and my stomach truly can’t seize them in their entirety...

If that’s the case, why eat the humans at all?!

“...and that’s why drugs are bad, so if you ever find what looks like candy instead of eating it like you do with everything else bring it to me first.”

Suddenly, a horrible truth comes crawling back to me. The Skywar was not always about repelling the invaders and retaking our lands. It wasn’t even always about vengeance for the Burnt Brood, and to prevent it from happening to any others ever again.

It was about eating them and taking their strength. Mother started the Skywar. WE started the Skywar...

But after so many long years, what have we made? Yes, those who return are cleverer for it, but could that simply be because they were already clever enough to survive?

“Hey, that’s weird. I thought the trail looped around for another half hour, I remember that tree. We’re back already? Weird.”

I continue walking in silent thought.

“Hey, I wonder if getting you exercising would slow down your growth? Maybe that’s why we noticed you getting bigger; you were sitting around all day.”

Hmmm. yeah, maybe. We could also probably eat more without actually gaining size and still gaining strength.

Every half-year, the Kin who had been dormant and sedentary needed to spar with each other to shake off the dust and finish waking themselves. It was building muscle back up, and it must be why those who didn’t go dormant were always the strongest fighters and the best hunters.

We’re not like the humans, or other animals. We heal faster. That would mean we could get stronger faster too. Every half-year, they lost that muscle mass, but then, they regained it just as quickly.

It all lines up and it all makes sense...

...much as I’d really rather it didn’t...

...because it means that Mother was wrong.

It was never to become stronger or smarter. It was always just for fun. Deep down I and everyone else knew it. The thrill of the hunt. We weren’t the most dangerous thing in the jungle any more, and... we knew it. We feared it. So to bring our would-be rivals low, to torture them, and eat them whole...

...it was always just for fun.

To hunt something so smart that it could be more intelligent than you. To know deep in your belly that you were still better. To win. That was why we really did it all. The screaming with far more emotion to it than simple animal calls, the struggles of a creature that has so much more to lose, that is why we did it. The visceral hate and jealousy cured by the satisfaction of bringing a creature thinking itself so high down to the gut.

Not so long ago I looked up to that as being the peak of my life: to capture a tall intruder and toy with it as its weapons could make toys of us. I watched in awe and envy as victorious aunts and uncles partook, and listened intently to Mother’s stories.

I badly need to consider this more. Mother... wasn’t necessarily wrong if she knew this. Which means that we were all just lying to ourselves and each other about it until we believed it, because we were so stupid and didn’t know about all of these human things. We didn’t know, because we aren’t the humans. We couldn’t have known because we never thought to try and find out; sure, there have been some attempts in the past to create rather than kill and take, but these islands in treacherous lakes were always begun by weak and malformed aberrants. Their creations would never be strong enough to earn them a mate nor protect them from the bellies of stronger itinerants or predators.

I recall a story from Mother, from the first days of the war. She had been part of a group investigating what had crashed into the lake when she and my older sisters she took with her encountered a group of the invaders. Yes, they had attacked first and slew one of my family, but it didn’t stop there. Mother and the rest gained a taste, and an addiction. Because they were fun to hunt, not because they would ‘make us smarter.’ It was always just a rationalization that came later, born of ignorance.

I brought that here. I took that out on the humans I’ve encountered, leaving a trail of death and offhandedly buried remains.

The elk make for good food; the cows as well wherever they are; I never needed the humans. It was unnecessary if I was to become strong. If anything, I just needed to sit down and listen like I have with my Carey--which I never would have done if I hadn’t been injured by my would-be captive. I’d have just eaten her after her respectable showing.

“Hey, Emeral? Hellooo? You there? Because we’re here,” the nagging voice in my arms complains.

I come back to my senses at the gate to the yard. For a moment I’m amazed I didn’t trip over anything while lost in thought, but I can’t get what I’ve done out of my head.

“Can you let me down now?”

I release her and she drops to the ground in a crouch.

“Wow, okay. What’s gotten into you, huh? Too tired from all the push-ups and carrying me to put me down nicely?”

I just push past her through the unlocked gate and drop to all fours, making for the hatch.

I didn’t need to eat anyone this time to take in quite a bit I need to digest.

---

Dinner consisted of a truly amazing beef roast. But, the next morning I’m pulled from my half-awake stupor by a shout from above. Carey’s wake-shouting is back.

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A/N:

So. Yeah.

Emeral and Carey had a lot to talk about and this was a really important chapter for Emeral because it’s shaken her to her core by targeting some of her most deeply held beliefs, along with forcing her to face the fact that her mother can be wrong about things...

...which ultimately led to everything built on these false foundations crumbling down. The repercussions of this will be felt, and soon.

One issue any fiction writer will inevitably run into is trying to write about something they don’t know about. This is a problem when you need to write a character who is something which you aren’t; you lack the education, context, and experience to do it justice. This requires study and interviewing actual individuals or relying on the ideas and concepts of established works (tropes).

Carey isn’t necessarily a nutritionist but she is someone who would know basic nutritional information as far as it pertains to staying healthy and maintaining a balanced diet as a fitness nut. I am not a fitness nut. I thankfully didn’t need to do much research because there wasn’t cause to go into a bunch of detail since Emeral wouldn’t understand that detail and doesn’t need to know it.

Due to their fantastical natures, fantasy (both medieval and future) rely extensively on tropes and plausibility. When that fails, research to make educated guesses becomes necessary. I had to do a bunch of biology and anatomy study to plan out the intricacies of how Emeral’s body works and any problems that might come about as a result--which can then be included in the story as plot mechanics because problems breed conflict breeds plot. The whole ‘able to eat ridiculously large objects in one piece’ bit is the big example; I had to consider how her jaws would work, how her neck would work, how her collarbone would complicate matters, how her internal organs could end up smushed, yadda yadda yadda.

I ultimately settled on: her jaw dislocates to a degree which hampers bite force, the plates on her neck aren’t as strong as a complication (made worse by its length and need to move around), the jaw doesn’t dislocate enough to accept objects large enough to not fit past her collarbone, and her organs are arranged in such a way that most of that space is displaced by her deflated lungs.

The same goes for the rest of her gastrointestinal tract; everything below the chest is stomach, intestines, or womb. Her liver, kidneys, and pancreas are all located before the stomach rather than after or beside it like in a human, and her bladder is the only organ beyond it aside from the womb which is situated between her stomach (on her front) and intestines (in the back). All three of these organs make use of the expanding space allowed by the folds of her stomach as needed.

For example, as has been depicted before, if she gorges herself she stays that way for days instead of the weight magically disappearing into nothingness. Since it’s such an absurd amount of food, then if anything it gets used to make her larger. This also means that a heavily pregnant Kin wouldn’t be able to gorge themselves, so once the eggs are formed they’re birthed to be safeguarded outside until they hatch.

Another bit of problem-derived plot mechanics is that an actual method for Emeral to do a push-up would be to do so against a wall. Aspects of her body are simply not built for the human exercise so it still wouldn’t work well, but it would be better than how it went for her here.