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Ratbat at the Ziggurat By Strega

For the average person, being eaten by a tiger was something that only happened once. You ended up inside it in many little pieces, it digested you, and that was the end of your story. You would soon be in the "fertilizer" portion of your existence that pretty much all living things go through at the end.

The average tiger isn't a two-ton genetically engineered supercat perfectly capable of swallowing a man whole, though, and the average person it might eat isn't a were-rat for whom being digested is just a momentary inconvenience. This rat might end up as fertilizer but he didn't stay that way for long.

There was also the point that wererat in question found nothing in the world more arousing than sliding down the tiger's throat. He had thus gone into Savage the tiger's gullet not only willingly but with the greatest enthusiasm, masturbating all the while. The tiger got a meal out of it and so tolerated its friend's eccentricities; ratman semen has the same number of calories outside the rat as inside, after all.

As a result of this odd arrangement the rat had been down the big cat's throat fifty-plus times now and fully expected to regenerate back from a pile of tiger droppings in the usual place.

Instead of growing back into healthy wererat-ness in the weedy courtyard behind the once abandoned but now renovated auto repair station they lived in, though, he found himself in a clean room with a white tile floor. Savage had emptied his bowels into a large brass chamber pot set low to the floor, convenient for a tiger six feet tall at the shoulder. Elsewhere in the room was a raised area into which was recessed a padded sleeping basket large enough even for Savage and a broad nook with floor drains and shower heads on walls and ceiling. Next to that was a second niche with a European-style floor toilet, again, sized and placed for someone of Savage's build and size.

Savage himself was gorged, the striped skin showing through his equally stripey pelt, and the shape of the massive bulge implied he had swallowed a humanoid almost as large as himself.

"What," Ratbat said, but Savage pointed a paw firmly toward the shower. The rat spent the next fifteen minutes giving himself a thorough scrubbing. Regenerating out of a pile of crap was not a tidy business and it took a lot of washing to get the stink off.

When he was reasonably presentable he found a folded pair of shorts, a plain white T-shirt and some sandals on the raised section of floor. Naturally he'd gone into Savage naked. It was a waste of perfectly good clothing otherwise.

"All right," Ratbat said when he was dressed, "Explain." He had not missed the other touches, like the permanently emplaced stone bowl of water with a faucet over it, that showed this room was made from the outset to house a non-humanoid like Savage. Nor was it a prison, judging by the door, which was broad and solid but not nearly enough so to keep the tiger here if he chose to leave.

"You missed a lot," the tiger rumbled, and pushed a pamphlet over to him. "Coming to this place, me fighting in an arena and swallowing -"

"Janus," Ratbat said, for he had not missed the bulge of two heads pushing out of Savage's gut. From the look of things the giant was already partially digested. Janus was making the same trip through the tiger's guts as he had, only without the regeneration part at the end. He turned his attention to the pamphlet.

"Welcome to the Ziggurat," Ratbat said out loud, and flipped through the pages with increasing interest. "We're not on Earth!" He said eventually.

"It's an extra-dimensional bar, sports arena...it's a lot of things," Savage rumbled. "Sledgehammer told me about the bar, you'll recall, but until i came here I had no idea it was more than that. I swallowed Janus hoping to smuggle him home alive, but got caught. I can't leave until they are satisfied he is digested. He works here now and employees come back to life if killed - not the way you do, but just reappearing in some rooms set aside for it. And until he reappears, which takes two or three days they say, they're not letting me go."

"Huh," Ratbat said, and re-read some of the more interesting pages. "Bar, sports areas, gladiatorial matches, casino, even a place you can go to eat or be eaten! I like it."

"Don't get too excited," Savage rumbled. "I was told that if a shat you out into a toilet here and flushed it, the place would absorb you. There may be other rules. So don't get in over your head."

The great cat yawned a jaw-cracking yawn and Ratbat repressed preyish urges as he got a look into Savage's maw. "I suggest you just stick to be bar while I sleep off my meal. Here," he rumbled, and slid a clinking bag over to Ratbat. "Don't blow it all at once."

Soon Savage was curled up in the sleeping basket and there was no one to talk to, so Ratbat straighted his new, cheap clothing as much as possible and ventured forth into the Ziggurat.

They turned out to be in the "Nonhumanoid Wing" (judging by the wall plaque that changed scripts until he could read it) of the rooms-for-rent on the first floor. Ratbat followed the hallway past doors low and tall, narrow and wide, until he turned a corner and stared wide-eyed into the great expanse of the bar.

It must have been a hundred yards in each direction, with dozens of groups of tables separated by walkways. Here and there were drink kiosks and food sellers, and around the border of the huge high-ceilinged area were signs for bars, restaurants, dance halls and who knew what else. An enormous tree grew in one corner, its massive branches supporting a restaurant, large wooden decks and smaller treehouses.

Everywhere there were people. Ratbat had been in places this busy before, if rarely, but unlike any mall or parade or town fair the population here was a bewildering variety of shapes, colors and species. Only about a third of them were human or close to it and a good fraction of those had odd skin tones, scales or fur. From the most humanoid the species present ran a gamut of shapes and sizes all the way to the completely inhuman. He'd emerged next to a cluster of tables with no seats at all and here were some of the least manlike creatures yet.

There was a large six legged weasel-thing with yellow fur broken by curlicues of white that was engaged in conversation with something like a small mythological sphinx, complete down to the woman's face and breasts. Next to that was a group of multicolored crab creatures playing an elaborate game with cups and oddly shaped dice. A silver-scaled serpent with blood-red eyes coiled around one table, turning the pages of a great book with a horn that protruded from its nose. On second glance he realized the horn was a prosthesis, presumably used so it wouldn't get paper cuts on its prehensile tongue. A third glance showed that the prominent scales along the thing's flanks were actually a multitude of small, folded limbs. Snake-millipede? Snakipede?

Tearing his eyes away from the human-shaped bulge in the silver serpent's middle, Ratbat glanced around at other nearby tables.

A little further into the room was a group of centaurs, save that only one was the horse-and-man combo. The others ranged from lion-and-lionman to something he could only call a dragontaur. Then there were the quadrupeds with wings, long-legged things so confusing in build he wasn't even sure how many limbs they had, and blobby creatures with no obvious permanent shape at all. There were plainly magical creatures like the "man" in elaborately embroidered clothing with a floating book for a head, and half-mechanical creatures both primitive looking - steam valves, built in furnaces - and more advanced than he'd ever seen. Then there were the actual robots.

There was no standard, no single dominant body plan or appearance, and one paid him the least attention as he made his way into the more humanlike crowds. Apparently a six-foot ratman was very low on the weirdness scale here. It was refreshing.

He paused as a series of huge screens flickered to life on the walls and highlights from what must be sporting competitions and even gladiatorial matches were shown. There was a thirty-second segment featuring Savage and the fast disappearing legs of what must be Janus. Savage looked bruised and battered but he was a very tough tiger and his injuries weren't stopping him from swallowing the struggling giant whole.

Uncomfortably aware of his sudden erection Ratbat dropped into a booth sized for a small group and made a show of looking at the tabletop. There was a menu under the glassy surface, along with advertisements for various bars and services. He wasn't sure if he was looking at the product of technology or magic, since clearly both worked here, but at least it was a distraction.

A dark-furred hand smaller than his own came down lightly onto the table and he looked up to see a raccoon-woman dressed as a waitress sit down across from him. She moved her ringed tail to the side with an unconscious motion as she sat so she wouldn't trap it beneath her rump and looked him brightly.

"I'm Hazel," she said without preamble. "You must be the ratman who came here inside Savage. Not the usual way to enter the Ziggurat, but not unheard-of. He tried to sneak someone out the same way, you know."

"I know," he said, then realized he should introduce himself. "I'm Ratbat. Back home I'm sort of a super hero. Vigilante, that sort of thing."

She nodded. "We get those here from time to time. The Ziggurat takes some of the power from the stronger ones, because some of them are terrifyingly powerful, but since you're here smelling of tiger shit I guess it let you keep your regeneration powers. Or you just reappeared and coincidentally like being shit on."

Ratbat grimaced. "It not easy to get the smell off when you grow back out of a pile of the stuff. I'm a wererat you see. Dying is just temporary unless I get killed by something made of silver."

"Temporary for you," Hazel said. "I ate a wererat back home and he stayed digested. Different worlds, different rules."

Ratbat blinked at her. "You? He must have been small." He doubted she was much, if any more than four feet tall, and surely no more than a hundred pounds. A diminutive, distaff version of his were-raccoon friend Technocoon.

"Smaller than you, but not much. You'd be a challenge to get down, but I could manage."

"You're joking, right?" But she wasn't. She stood up at the table, reaching forward to put her hands atop his own. As her muzzle approached he told himself she couldn't possibly mean to eat him right then and there. Then suddenly her mouth opened impossibly wide and wrapped around Ratbat's face.

He could have pushed her away. As a Were he was five times as strong as a man his size. He did nothing as her tongue gathered itself beneath his chin, and with a wet gulp he found himself sliding nose-first down her throat. There was the creak of ligaments from all around him as her jaws unhinged and she shifted her grip to his upper arms as she began to work her maw wider in preparation for taking in his shoulders. Her muzzle slipped down between his shoulder blades as his neck followed his snout into her gullet.

It was really happening. The little raccoon lady was going to swallow him whole, right here in front of everyone. Conscious of his overwhelming arousal Ratbat leaned forward, wanting nothing more in the entire world than to be wrapped in tight-stretched raccoon fur and to hear her burp as she settled down to digest him.

Her throat slipped and slithered around him as she somehow worked her way over his shoulders, and he knew she could do it. He could still extricate himself unless she was much stronger and tougher than she looked, but he leaned forward. If she needed help, if he had to wriggle his way down her gullet, then that was what he would do. He shuddered as his arousal reached its peak and then relaxed, letting her have her meal without resistance.

His progress down her throat stopped. He could smell her stomach, that hungry cavity he wanted to occupy and which loomed so close ahead that he could feel the tightness of the sphincter against his nose. Then the wet flesh around his head shifted and Ratbat whined as she disgorged him.

It had taken her perhaps a minute to swallow him to the shoulders but only a few seconds to reverse the process and he sat blinking at the sudden light as she let him back out. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling the wet fur around them, and saw the big tiger-man who had joined them in the booth.

Tiger-man was a simplification, though. The stripes on his face were yellow, not black-brown like Savage's, and his three-fingered hands were furless and leathery with slits for the retracted claws. Pink ears like membranous bat wings, or perhaps half-umbrellas protruded from the fur on each side of his head. Armor covered most of the rest of him, with a tunic atop it that featured a Ziggurat symbol, and a hairless tail like Ratbat's own twitched behind him. Not a tiger, then, but some sort of alien, and a security guard or bouncer from the looks of his outfit. Behind the tiger several people at nearby tables shook their heads in obvious disappointment that they hadn't gotten to see him eaten and went back to their own business.

"Ratbat, this is Yellowstripe, one of my lovers," Hazel said with no sign of shyness. Ratbat looked from one to the other; the raccoon was two feet shorter than he was, the 'tiger' two feet taller. How did that work exactly? Not that it was any of his business, but-

"Pleased to meet you," Ratbat said. He was still shivering from his experience in Hazel's throat.

"Usually when Hazel kisses someone on the nose like that," the tiger growled. "It ends with a burp, not a conversation."

"I was just being nice," the raccoon said with a smile. "I could tell he really wanted to be eaten."

"Accurate," Yellowstripe growled, "judging by the smell."

Ratbat winced. He didn't usually wear clothing when he was eaten so it'd never been a problem before. Even he could smell the musty stink of fresh rat semen. He hadn't even touched himself and he'd still come.

"Thank you for the kiss," he said to change the subject. "But why did you stop? I wasn't going to resist."

"Well of course you weren't," she giggled, "But there are a bunch of reasons. I don't usually eat people anywhere near your size and Yellowstripe would have to carry me to my room, it'd take days to digest you and I don't want to just disappear from my jobs without warning. But most importantly," she leaned forward and gave his damp nose a sudden lick, "You regenerate back from the poop after a predator eats you, right?"

"That's right," Ratbat said, glancing at the tiger. Yellowstripe shrugged.

"And you've always been eaten by big predators, right? What happens if it takes the pred a dozen trips to the chamber pot to squeeze you out?"

"I don't know," Ratbat admitted. "It's always just been Savage. I only know one other Were who was eaten and he was eaten by a big pred too."

"There are probably twenty people in this room who would happily eat you," Yellowstripe growled. "More if you'd let them tear you apart. But you need to think ahead. And you need to trust them. If someone shat you out into a toilet the Ziggurat might absorb you. We don't know what happens to waste here, it just disappears."

"To be safe," Hazel said, "It should be one of the staff, or someone we trust. Someone else might eat you and then go back to their world, where your regeneration might not work. Or you could end up a slave somewhere."

She glanced at Yellowstripe, who said "I have matches the next two nights. I can't fight with a man-sized rat in my guts."

"Reida is picky," Hazel mused, and Yellowstripe snorted.

"Reida is a wolverine-woman and also a weretiger," Hazel said. "She doesn't take just anyone as a lover, or a meal."

"I know a few snake types," Yellowstripe growled. "But it takes a week, ten days for them to digest a man.". Ratbat shook his head at the unspoken question.

The raccoon and tiger suddenly looked each other, then both turned to him at the same time. "Just what would you do to be eaten?" Hazel said with a smile.

When his answer was "Just about anything" they smiled (toothily, in Yellowstripe's case) and said they'd get back to him the next day. Ratbat headed back to his room, where Savage was still asleep, and washed his pants before returning to the bar. He whiled away the time watching the big screens, doing a little low stakes gambling, having a meal or at the bar and circulating around the enormous room, taking naps in his room when the mood struck him. There was no day or night here, just constant casino-like activity.

Somehow word had gotten around that he had arrived here inside Savage and that he'd been willing to let Hazel eat him. He had more than one conversation about why he liked it and was somewhat taken aback when another of the six legged weasel aliens, this one with green fur, offered to take him back to her room "For dinner." When she admitted she'd have to tear him apart to get him down he considered her mouthful of dagger-sharp teeth, thanked her and said no. This provoked no more than a sinuous shrug of her long weaselly body.

He was watching an odd game resembling chess with miniature, living pieces that the players ate as they were taken when Yellowstripe, who he'd learned was of a species called 'kzinti', appeared and gestured for him to follow.

"Hazel called in a favor from a predatory friend of ours," the tiger growled. "Bloodfeather is a famous gladiator. He has his pick of lovers, and almost as many voluntary meals. He agreed to swallow you whole and not use a toilet until you reappear, but only if he gets to play with you first." The tiger looked at him. "You're a fighter? Feel free to fight back. It'll be more fun for everyone."

They went up a long ramp to the next floor of the Ziggurat, the one devoted to sports and combat. Ratbat wasn't particularly surprised when in the second of two locked rooms Hazel was waiting in front of a wall covered with weapons. She waved at the assortment of swords, spears, axes and more exotic cutlery. There was armor too, but he ignored it. It would just get in the way.

"Good luck," the little raccoon chirped as Ratbat selected a hand-and-a-half sword about as tall as she was. "If you kill him I'll take the time off and eat you, so you'll win either way."

That was accurate enough. "He'll reform if I do, right?" Yellowstripe nodded.

"Good luck," the tiger alien repeated, and Ratbat wondered just what he was getting himself into. He could take care of himself in a fight.

The door closed behind him and he squinted into a sunlight-like glare and felt sand shift beneath his sandals. Dozens of people of various species and shapes chattered as they stared down from the stands atop the high stone walls. Of course he'd ended up in an arena. They hadn't promised him privacy, after all.

A rustle of feathers caught his attention as a half bird, half cat creature stalked regally into view through a gate. Black feathers with reddened tips surrounded a wickedly hooked beak yellow as old bone. Sharply curved black talons longer than his hand hooked from birdlike front legs while the back half of the creature resembled an oversized lion's, the retracted claws of those padded feet sliding into view. The wings that spread as it saw him must have spanned thirty and more feet and sand gusted into the air as it let out an inhuman shriek and pounced.

The griffon was perhaps half as large as Savage, but that still made it ten times his size. It was slimmer than the big tiger, nimble on its feet and terrifyingly fast. He met its charge with a horizontal swipe of the bastard sword but it shifted its weight and stayed just out of reach, a taloned foreleg perfectly mirroring the arc of the sword so one long black claw traced a line of red down his forearm. Ratbat leapt back to give his regeneration a moment to work on the minor wound.

It stalked closer on long legs, measuring the distance in a way he instantly recognized as that of a skilled fighter. It knew exactly what it was doing and despite the theatrical shrieks and the frightful glare from wide-open bird eyes it took no chances. When it seemingly overextended itself for a swipe and he slashed at its foreleg its black-feathered wings pumped once and pulled it back out of reach.

It's going to eat me, Ratbat thought as they circled, each looking for an opening. I'm going to make a mistake sooner or later, that beak is going to open, and it'll bolt me down like an owl swallowing a mouse. Clothes and all, maybe even sword and all. Will I be a hacked-up pellet of fur, clothing and bone or is this griffon like Savage, digesting nearly anything? How much will come back up and how much will be griffon shit?

He should have known better than to let his mind wander. The griffon feinted with a foreclaw, snapped its beak to get his attention and then thumped him with a powerful wingstroke as his guard wavered. The bony joint of its wing slammed into his side with stunning force and the sword flew from his nerveless fingers.

"Distracted," the griffon hissed, and even on a bird face its leer was obvious. "Now I get to play." Its wings snapped wide and with a shriek it pounced once again.

Ratbat was strong, stronger than any normal man, and fast, and skilled, but the griffon was bigger and stronger and had a lot more practice fighting humanoids than he did fighting griffons. It pranced forward, keeping between him and his sword and driving him back with swipes of its razor-sharp talons. Rustling snaps of its wings kept him from moving to the side. It was just toying with him, certain it could have him at will.

It was right. Ratbat had fought nastier enemies but not unarmed or by himself and the griffon had all the advantages. When it came at him the second time with a flurry of clawed swipes he lost his footing in the sand and a taloned forefoot pinned him to the arena floor.

"What have we here," the griffon hissed. "Rat for dinner." It trapped him beneath its foreclaws, looking him over. From above came shouts from the crowd that he couldn't make out over the rustle of wings, but the griffon's long feathery ears swiveled back to pick it up.

"Ah, my fans have a request," the griffon chuckled. "Mustn't disappoint." Without moving its foreclaws it stepped its hindpaws up until a ponderous swell of sheath loomed in from of Ratbat's face. How had he missed that Bloodfeather was male? That furry scrotum was almost as big as his own torso!

The griffon's long leonine tail lashed from side to side as the big feline hindpaws came down on either side of Ratbat's face. He could see and smell the black shaft beginning to unsheathe, easily as large as his lower leg. The griffon's belly fur stank of its own drippings and Ratbat tried to pull away as the huge organ drew near.

"I'm not swallowing your cock, bird," Ratbat said, and tried to wriggle out from under the griffon's claws. It just shifted them to keep him pinned and grinned.

"You have it backwards, rat," it chuckled, and arched its back. Ratbat went wide-eyed as the huge cock sliding toward his face suddenly flared open at the end. The was a moment's glimpse of the pink throatlike interior before the fleshy thing slid over his muzzle and eyes. With one enthusiastic hump the griffon drove its cock over him all the way to the shoulders and Ratbat began to squirm in earnest as the walls of the 'throat' began to ripple. It was lined with rings of little inward-pointing barbs that dug into his fur as the next ring pushed forward. The griffon's cock was swallowing him whole!

He hadn't signed up to be eaten this way and Ratbat put all his strength into wriggling free, but the griffon was having none of that. Powerful claws wrapped around his torso, trapping his arms to his sides as the griffon rolled onto its back, showing off for the audience as it shoved him deeper into its cock. The slippery walls alternately let him slide deeper as the strange organ stretched itself over him then dug in their little barbs as it swallowed, and all too quickly he was to the waist in rubbery gryphon schlong.

Ratbat had never been eaten against his will and despite the horror of sliding ever deeper into a cock he was suddenly overpoweringly aroused. He hadn't thought to strip before going into the arena and the tickle of cheap cloth against his own unsheathing shaft was unbearable. The griffon sensed it, cackled, and tore away his pants, and with his arms pinned to his sides by the all-consuming griffon cock he had nothing better to do than grab himself and start pumping. No doubt the audience saw it all but Ratbat didn't care.

The griffon humped him deeper, holding his hips between its claws as its hungry shaft consumed him, and Ratbat's mouth emerged into what could only be the lion-bird's scrotum. He was somehow not surprised to find not a complex reproductive structure but instead a roiling mass of salty fluid. The griffon's huge balls were entirely full of semen.

Ratbat came for the first time as the griffon's cock swallowed his hips, its snakelike undulations pulling him deeper. He shuddered and kicked, mouth and eyes full of hot semen that slicked his fur down and soaked his clothing. A moment later the griffon shuddered as well, its cock pulsating, and he felt thick fluid spurt over his legs and surge all around him as the griffon came. But it didn't squirt him out, oh no. Its cock gripped down to hold him still, then went right back to swallowing him as the lion-bird's lust ebbed.

There was little left of him but his feet as the griffon stretched out, its claws falling away to let the audience watch the end. Ratbat squirmed its cock engulfed his feet, the bulge making its way down into the creature's balls. His tail slithered in after and he was forced to curl up, wrapped in stretched griffon scrotum and soaking in its spunk.

He could feel his fur softening, dissolving. What was left of his clothing was already gone and the exposed parts of his skin were disintegrating. No, not disintegrating. He was soaked in cum and cum was what he was becoming. Somehow the griffon could digest people into more griffon spunk. Its balls didn't need to manufacture the stuff the usual way, it just stuffed someone in and sat back as twenty more gallons of griffon semen were made ready for action!

It didn't hurt, unlike Savage's digestive juices. That was just as well. Even had he wanted to, it was too late to resist. His regenerative powers were no match for flesh-melting griffon cum. He could have turned human, or into a normal-sized rat, or even into his large rat form, twice the size of a man. But his claws were gone already. It would just mean more or less juice in the griffon's balls in the end.

He would later wonder why he hadn't been terrified. This had to be magic, and magic could kill him. Instead he gripped his melting cock in melting hands and pumped toward a second orgasm, dimly hearing the griffon belch even as he melted away. The belch, he noted in a last moment of clarity, had not come from the griffon's beak. Then there was nothing but spurting rat cum, mixing indiscriminately with the churning mass of semen that used to be a ratman.

Over the last few years Ratbat's awareness of the digestive process had improved. The first time Savage ate him there was a long blank in his memories between the sting of stomach acid and the slithery feel of regenerating out of a pile of tiger shit. Over time that blank grew shorter and shorter until he was dimly aware of the entire process. He could tell Savage things about the tiger's guts that even the Veterinarian didn't know. So it was that he was aware, even as a glutenous mass of griffon cum, of the lion-bird shrieking a victory cry and stalking out of the arena, pausing only to sneer at the sword half buried in the sand.

He was aware when Bloodfeather entered a private place, sat back on his haunches, reached down his powerful foreclaws and stroked himself erect. The great black shaft slipped out to play once again and the griffon grinned and pumped himself. It took little more than a minute to reach full arousal and the griffon let out a shriek as gallons of converted rat spurted forth, splattering the floor and hanging in lazy dripping loops from the ceiling.

Bloodfeather watched with great interest as the puddles of goo flowed together. Soon a shape began to develop, and like wax melting in reverse a ratman's face, white and fluid, rose from the pool. By the time the neck and shoulders appeared the cum-rat's face had grown texture and fur, but it was not until a damp and naked ratman sat in the middle of the last puddles of cum that Ratbat opened his eyes. The entire process had taken less than two minutes.

"How did you know?" were the first words out of Ratbat's mouth. "How did you know I could regenerate even from that?"

"You are not the first with powers like yours to end up in my balls," the griffon squawked. "And I could have done more. I could have absorbed the cum, turned you into calories, shit you out later. I could have mounted one of my admirers. I had volunteers to receive a liquid rat in their throat or pussy or ass. Then it would have been their turn to digest you. That would not be a first, either."

"It seems so impossible," Ratbat marveled, and suddenly he was on his back, pinned once more beneath the taloned forepaws. Above him grinned the wicked beak.

"Would you like to see, once again, how possible it is?"

Bloodfeather waited until Ratbat finally muttered "Yes." Then the griffon laughed and let him go.

"Maybe if we meet again in the arena. As for how I do it, the Ziggurat works in mysterious ways. When I first came here I'd have had to just swallow you...after fucking you, if I were in the mood. You'd be a tight one but I bet I could shove in with a little work. Afterward you'd need to regenerate but by then you'd be in my stomach, anyway."

The griffon was different than Savage. Different, dominant and, to him at least, very sexy. His dreams of Savage mounting him and even that half-forgotten ones of being consumed by a hungry tiger cock had very nearly come true.

Bloodfeather twitched an ear and pointed a claw at yet another pile of cheap clothing. "I will put in a word for you with the arena master. You are skillful and strong and you put up a good fight even though you wanted to be eaten. Others who had no such interest put up less of a struggle before they went into my gullet, or my ass, or my balls. You could do well here."

Ratbat put away the seductive thought of being eaten by a griffon's ass for later consideration, dressed, and left. He soon found his way back to the first floor, showered, and went back to the bar to look for Savage.

A big cat lying down can be surprisingly hard to spot, but after wandering through the bar Ratbat decided Savage just wasn't there. His regeneration was magical, so he wasn't starving after reforming as Savage was after healing heavy wounds, but he was still hungry. He plopped down at a small table and flicked through the menus under the glass until he found something that resembled a burger. And who should show up to deliver it but a little raccoon lady in a waitress outfit.

"You smell better now," Hazel said with a smile. "Our griffon's rinse cycle is thorough."

Ratbat nodded and took a bite from the burger. It was large and savory and he was very hungry. "Bloodfeather is...unusual. I expected him to just swallow me."

"You have to be pretty special to be as popular as he is, for as long as he has," she chirped as she sat down across from him. "He's a terrific fighter and he has the 'no hole is safe' thing going, too. But you can be interesting in other ways," she said, and slid him a slip of paper.

"Names and room numbers for a couple of people I trust," she said. "Your arena fight was private, mostly, but word gets around and people saw your reaction to me swallowing your head. A few are...interested."

"People who'll eat me," he said, and she nodded.

"Bloodfeather said he'd put a word in for me if I wanted to fight in the arena again," he said. "He thought I had potential."

"Most people who fight him alone don't last as long as you did," she chirped. "He's very fast and has all those ways to attack. You got eaten because you dodged a beak snap and walked into a wing buffet. Once you lost your sword it was just a question of which hole you'd go in. The audience voted for cock."

Ratbat stirred, wondering if he was going to spend his entire time here in a continual state of arousal. Luckily she went on so he didn't have to change the subject.

"I have some room numbers for your tiger friend too, when you see him. I told them he probably wouldn't be interested in eating them, but I think most just want some sexy giant tiger time."

"Do you know where he is? He wasn't in the room."

"Off fucking Shrilka, most likely. Green weasel lady, ten feet long or so, six legs, maybe seven hundred pounds -"

Ratbat waved at her to stop as he desperately tried to cough up a bite of burger that'd gone down the wrong way. Eventually he could speak. "Are you kidding? Savage hasn't had a girlfriend in years. It's not safe to have one in our profession and he's the only giant tiger around. I don't think he's interested."

"I saw her lead him off and I saw the way they were looking at each other," she chirped. "Four legs versus six and the male being five times the size of the female is at the low end of the 'weird couple' scale around here. Tell you what...."

Her smile reminded him that small and innocent-looking Hazel was a predator who would be digesting him right now if it hadn't been inconvenient for her to be so full.

"If I'm wrong I'll take the time off to eat you. But trust me, and mind that they've only been gone a couple of hours, but I bet that by now he's been on top of her half a dozen times. Probably more. She's got to be the closest he's had to a tigress in ages and the quiet ones are often the most pent-up."

"Well, good for him," Ratbat said, despite an internal pang of jealousy. "What if I lose?"

There was that smile again. "I'll think of something fun," the little raccoon chirped.

Two days later Savage and Ratbat left the Ziggurat, both more cheerful than when they arrived and in agreement that it wouldn't be their last visit. Ratbat knew just from the smell of his tiger friend that Hazel had been right, but Savage didn't ask any awkward questions about what he'd been doing and Ratbat did not volunteer what, if any prize the she-raccoon collected for winning the bet.