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Sharyenna's Penance

A Stranded AU Story

For Phealgud

By Shalion

The she-wolf lay on the damp, soggy ground of the 'shelter' turned prison bound and muzzled with crude jungle vines. Sharyenna, former Alpha Female of the remaining non-manna-crazed canines who had survived being shipwrecked on this godless island, listened as she was given an ultimatum by the ruiner in front of her.

The fat German Shepherd dog sitting and looking down at her prone form was more than just obese. A clear manna-addict almost from the first day the accursed, tempting foodstuff had appeared, the dog's body showed his weakness of will through his padded sides and a belly so large it forced his thighs to splay against the ground and even overflowed them to rest on the ground to either side. On the edge of even being able to walk anymore, this dog had been at her mercy just the other day, begging her to help him with his addiction. Then she had to go and ruin everything.

"After the things you've done since we landed on this island, you really ought to be put down." He shook his head, wobbling the massive, folded sacks of neck fat that hung low underneath his chin. "Killing and leaving behind your fellow lab animals... As if being shipwrecked gives you the right to do whatever the hell you want." He sniffed, and even the slight motion made the surface of his soft body quiver. The she-wolf couldn't respond naturally, her muzzle was closed tight, but he clearly wasn't interested in anything she had to say anyways.

Now he leaned closer, lowering his voice. "But honestly, I don't really care about any of that. You should die for what you did to my... to my..." he drew a sharp breath darting his head away from her. The she-wolf's ear twitched. Had they really been so close? "...to my very dear friend." He drew another deep breath, but was still unable to hide the audible rasp at the back of his throat, the fat thickening and partially obstructing his upper airway. "But fortunately for you, I'm not the killing sort, so here's what's going to happen: You'll be free to go, everyone knows about your secret fishing spot now anyways, so they don't need you anymore." The shepherd dog could not help but sneer down at her in his triumph over her machinations. "Yeah, you'll be able to go, just as soon as you finish these..." Then he placed a bundle in front of her tied-up nose made of the large waxy leaves that grew in the jungle. A smell emerged from the bundle, a familiar, enticing smell and the she-wolf blanched.

"No." Thought the she-wolf as she wiggled a little in her bonds, "Not after everything that's happened!"

"The punishment shall fit the crime..." Tutted the morbidly obese dog. "Isn't that what you said? What you told everyone when you forced Betsy to eat manna, not just her own, but everyone's?" He growled sharply and leaned down, teeth close to the she-wolf's face. "Isn't that what you said?!"

The she-wolf hunched her shoulder's submissively. She may have been Alpha only a day ago, but she knew when she was beaten. Never mind that she had only done what was necessary, to ensure the survival of those worthy of doing so. Her wolfish instincts allowed her to accede to, if not actually accept, her new role as omega, outcast. But in her secret heart, she felt a bitter glee. It was not as though such a designation meant much anymore. Even from inside her damp prison, she could tell things were dissolving out there, her hard work in banding together the strongest survivors undone by the mere prospect of a meal that would not fatten the eater to obscene proportions and corrupt her mind. The she-wolf hugged her own burgeoning belly with her knees. At least she among all the others had a real reason to hunger.

The she-wolf did not know what the would-be scientist wanted from her, but he did not seem to see it in her expression, for he spat in her face, not that it really mattered with her wet, stinking, mud-covered body. He turned away and the she-wolf could smell the fatigue from him. For all his hard treatment of her, he did not have a killer's heart. He did not truly have the will to make the hard decisions. How the she-wolf hated him for that above all the rest.

When he turned back around, he said, "I'm taking the rope off now. I'm going to watch you eat the manna from everyone this morning, as well as what Betsy didn't finish yesterday."

He chewed through the tough vines on her face, and the she-wolf said, "Go to hell."

She expected him to bit her, scratch her or step on her with that awful weight he carried, but the shepherd dog seemed unusually cool about her defiance, lacking the ferocity of an actual wolf. As if expecting her to refuse, he got up slowly, laboriously and his weight was such that the mere effort of getting up made him start breathing harder.

"Pathetic dog. Human-lover. Manna addict." The she-wolf thought bitterly as he moved to stand over her, his mouth open to pull air into that ridiculous overloaded body of his. Looking under his sagging chest, she could see the dark skin of the shepherd's sparsely furred belly hanging all the way down to ankle level on his digitigrade feet. The bloated soft flesh was still quivering, still rocking back and forth even after he planted his legs and locked his knees to take the weight even for a minute or so. The effort it took to do even this was plain on the shepherd's strained face, and the she-wolf felt a new pang of regret and self-pity that she had been beaten by such a... a loser like the pampered faux-scientist in front of her.

As he gathered enough air to speak, the she-wolf spat. "What? Are you going to kill me if I don't?" She lashed him cruelly with her eyes, "I'd rather die than become like you."

But the shepherd's eyes, when she looked at them were curiously dull, as if he had experienced a deep trauma which had broken him. That dead look frightened her more than when the mob of former subordinates had set on her the previous day. He shook his head, ears and the sides of his face pressing into the oppressive fat rolls surrounding his whole head. "No, I won't kill you... But others definitely will end if I'm not satisfied right now." And his eyes drifted from her face to the wolf's enlarged belly which was rounded out with more than just fat.

"No!" The she-wolf snarled and lurched forward, but with her legs bound, just sort of hobbled onto her belly, her chin sinking into the mud that filled the poorly constructed shelter. The hated, weak shepherd rolled her back over with effort, it was hard for him to even lift a paw enough to place on her shoulder, then moved a heavy paw onto her belly, too heavy! The shepherd's hard breathing grew harder as he shifted his massive weight. Something slipped under his foot that wasn't fat or muscle and the she-wolf yelped. "No!" She cried again, but knew it was pointless to plead with him. "Why is he willing to go this far?!" She howled in her mind, "Was that collie bitch his mate or something?"

There was pain deep in her thick abdomen as the shepherd let more of his massive weight on her, and he did not even seem to be trying to hurt her, rather he was trying to keep from putting his whole weight down. The she-wolf whimpered and threw her head down on the soggy floor. She couldn't, couldn't let him do this, not after everything she'd done. "Stop it! I'll do it!"

The pressure didn't let up immediately, the shepherd struggling to rebalance his incredible girth, and then the pain did not fully stop either after the weight was removed, something in her uterus bruised or even slipped out of place. Still, the she-wolf did not wait for the shepherd to grow impatient, to do more damage to her fragile little ones. She scooted over to the pile of manna, the little white crisps redolent of the most delicious things she had ever eaten in life, seared steak, butter, raw, bloody venison and goat. It was all there in that pile just as it had been the first day, before anyone had known the side effects of being fed by this idilic, yet strangely silent island.

This was the root cause of all evil here, she knew, the destroyer of will, of minds. But she had no choice, not when the dead-eyed dog had been hurt enough to do the unthinkable. Her tongue stretched forward, catching a pale crisp, flakey on the outside, moist and spongy towards the center, a super-dense package of calories to transmute itself and water into half a pound or more of body fat on her. So much damage had been done in the time it had taken to realize even that much.

She bit down and flavor exploded into her mouth, ran down her throat. Such relief! After starving for days, the manna was a balm on her psyche, the taste of not just food, but the best food, fit to put shame to the few raw fish she had managed to get for herself from the freshwater pools at the base of the island's central mountain. She exhaled in deep appreciation even as her eyes watered in a mixture of physical pleasure and mental anguish. "This... this is what those useless dogs I left behind on the beach craved, and what he craves." She thought, thinking of the shepherd still looming over her, knees trembling with the effort of holding up his own fat bulk. "What they were unwilling to give up even to save their own lives." The she-wolf had known all too well the pleasure now expanding down her throat to rest in her empty stomach. It had been so hard to give it up the first time, after she had only eaten a few dozen of the things. Now there was a pile of over two-hundred in front of her.

"Keep going." Said the shepherd, finally letting his awesome bulk down onto the mud with a squelch. And the she-wolf did, not bothering to stretch this out. "After this... After, he and his girlfriend will wish they were never... never..." the she-wolf began to think as she set into her forced meal, but it was hard to formulate revenge with utter culinary pleasure streaming down her mouth and gullet. Two or three crisps at a time, she ate greedily and not just because she was hungry. Just a few pieces in and all she could think about was the sheer pleasure of eating the best food there was in this world and after a while the manna began to lose its shapeshifting scent and taste, taking on a quality all its own that seemed to turn on every dopamine receptor she had in her skull. The manna was simply that, manna. Soon the she-wolf was no longer even looking at the shepherd as she crunched her way messily through the big pile. "So good, so good, SOOO GOOOOD!" And even two-hundred pieces were not enough as she lay there, licking at the tasteless leaf for mushy crumbs. Meanwhile, the manna already began to unfold and dissolve inside of her, a warm, exothermic mass. She licked her foamy lips, so thirsty all of a sudden. She looked up at the shepherd with barely recognizable, dulled eyes.

He was already leaning down to chew through her restraints. "It's done." He intoned without emotion. "No one will listen to you again, and you've got a ticking time-bomb in your stomach. I doesn't really matter what you do now." And he turned his fattened rump on her, as if she could not get up and tear his throat out even now... But there were dogs outside the makeshift shelter also, dogs and wolves who she'd betrayed. Meekly, she got to her aching legs and followed him out, rubbing the circulation back into them. "The forest... just get out of sight and stick your claws down your throat...!" She started to think, the afterglow of her massive meal still clouding her thoughts. But the scent and sound of running water diverted her attention. It had only been a minute, but she was foaming more now. So thirsty!

The manna was pulling water out of her body to fuel the coming expansion. Dogs had died of this already. The she-wolf wobbled unsteadily down to the water's edge and fell in head first, gulping and gulping until her stomach ached. Even that was not enough to slake her thirst, though, as the manna entered her system. Already, it might be too late to purge herself, but the she-wolf could not fight the irresistible need to drink, so she sat there in the water for a long time gulping water as fast as her body would take it in. By the time she felt even a little like herself again, she knew it was far too late to avoid the fate she knew was coming.

And it happened just as predictably as it was unavoidable, the massive surge in weight overnight, the sprouting morning manna and the terrible hunger pangs. It was impossible to control herself, to fight the addiction which she had managed to foist off in its early stages but had been redoubled by a massive overdose. Previous exposure had done nothing to help her resist the second time, if anything, it had only predisposed her to a deeper addiction now. The first day, she had already grown to nearly equal the shepherd dog in size and fattness. The following day, she was far fatter, fatter even than the false mate, the Golden Lab, who that tigress had forced her to accept and who she had then later murdered for his arrogance. But hardly able to walk twenty paces before her legs gave out, it seemed he had the final laugh after all. The day after that, the she-wolf found she was unable to lift her massive body anymore. "At the very least..." she thought with her seared nerves, "I won't be able to get anymore manna..." The fourth day, however, was when the ants came.

The wolf formerly known as 'Sharyenna' or even 'Mother Sharyenna,' though nobody called her that anymore, noticed as the dwindling remains of the camp began to surge into a frenzy of dogs of various states of corpulence and obesity. Nobody paused to let her know what was going on, but she gathered that something seemed to be going very wrong at the beach camp where the immobile dogs had been left, not that the designation meant much anymore. There were two immobile dogs here at this camp as well, the she-wolf and her one time enemy and scapegoat. The 350 pound border collie rested comfortably a short distance away, on a small rise above the stream. She was able to be there because her friends were willing to bring water to her, carried on the wide waxy leaves they shaped into cups. The she-wolf had no such help and had to suffer with her chest and soggy forepaws constantly in the cold water.

The she-wolf could not understand why everyone was in such a panic over immobile dogs dying. After all, by this point, they most likely to a one would be starting to get crushed to death by their own weight. But then she began to feel them, the things that had been crawling over her wide body for a while now, the curious ants of this island, black with a mohawk-like red stripe down their back. The ugly things were crawling over her paws and brisket, but seeing them, just noticed the way their tiny feet were disturbing the hairs all over her engorged body. "Filthy bugs...!" The she-wolf grunted and struggled to splash water on herself. Then she proceeded to roll over a few times, crushing ants by the hundred, but still they came, more and more, endlessly, gradually forming a visible mass on the ground like a living carpet.

There were fewer dogs around anymore and after an hour of moving as best as she was able, the she-wolf was utterly exhausted and had no choice but to let the insects move upon her in growing numbers. At the very least, their tiny mandibles seemed incapable of cutting through even her soft fur and flesh. But as her body became more and more covered, the feel of the living blanket became more and more disgusting. The she-wolf considered herself to be a strong predator, but there were some things that even a strong wolf should not be asked to endure. "No, no, no!" She thought helplessly as she squeezed her mouth and eyes tightly closed. Then a thought came to her. "The water!" So close salvation was, in fact, she was already partly in the water, but her belly and sides still left her stranded on the shore. She scurried forward, crawling on her belly, forcing silt and rocks aside with her sheer, mammoth belly. She splashed water on her face and over her back and the ants clearly did not like it, but it was hard to wash them off now that they were using each other to keep from being washed away. The she-wolf plunged her head under water and held her breath long enough to force the ants to let go. When she came up, the ants floating on the surface covered her ears and the many neck rolls behind her skull, already creeping back down. She opened her eyes long enough to see the bloated border collie and her friends on the other side of the stream. They were working together to roll the immobile canine to safety. The she-wolf did not even bother to call after them and plunged her head back down.

For the longest time, the she-wolf held onto hopes of floating down the stream, perhaps all the way to the ocean. And she did manage to make it out into the middle of the stream, however it was not deep enough here to actually swim. But with the water providing buoyancy, it was possible for her to move even her engorged frame.

The she-wolf had avoided thinking too deeply on the matter, but she was now just as obese as the other addict dogs she had derided since her rise to power and she had not yet felt this so profoundly as when her ridiculous bulk was allowed to wobble all around her in the water. Well exceeding four times her regular weight, the added blubber felt less a part of herself than a loosely and uncomfortably connected appendage even as her immense belly swelled so much she was not able to get her thickened thighs anywhere close together as she ambled along, the water supporting nearly all of her weight. But still she was forced to move awkwardly, the morbidly obese wolf unfamiliar to say he least with the relatively new dimensions of her body. And still she huffed and puffed, still trying to splash water upon her relatively broad, dry back to rid herself of the thick pile of ants clinging there. Despite the water doing 80% of the work for her, her thickened flesh made her heavy waddle that much more difficult, the stream itself not particularly deep.

Night came and she walked slowly down stream, learning to ignore the stamping insect legs on her back, neck and the sides of her face. She could not really sleep, but she rested her belly on a large rock. Even if the current had been twice as strong, it could not have dislodged her and there was barely a current at all in this part of the stream. She slept and daydreamed of her foes covered by ants and screaming, managing something of a smile, but always having to dunk her head under the water regularly to keep the ants at bay.

In the morning, she awoke to a nightmare, the morning light revealing not the familiar jungle scene but a terrain made of living chitin and waving antennae. The actual ground could not be seen at all and worse, the ants were already spreading liberally over the still, low surface of the stream.

"What the-" The she-wolf started as she rose to her feet, or at least tried. She quickly found that she was beached high and dry in the middle of the shrunken stream, the water too low to allow her to support her own massive weight. The ants clinging to her back seemed to dance in joy as the living rafts of ants spread towards their mountain of wolf-flesh. "They couldn't have dammed up the stream could they?" She stammered, nearly hysterical as the ants approached her helpless form. She tried and tried to get off of the big rock, into the puddle that remained of the still-falling body of water, but she was too damned heavy!

After nearly a quarter of an hour, she finally managed to roll partially over, a heroic feat given her lack of purchase on the smooth rock, and flopped bonelessly over into the few inches of remaining water. She landed directly on a raft of the hairy, disgusting ants, crushing and drowning a few thousand of them, but that meant nothing as they continued to swarm and there was nothing to keep them from covering her prone figure now. The she-wolf closed her eyes and ears, thrusting her snout into the mud that was her only remaining defense.

A day she rested there, maybe more, the hunger pangs swelling and receding as she lay buried under a thickening pile of ants. She tried not to move a muscle, as if she might agitate them, but to the she-wolf's surprise, it was actually not terribly uncomfortable under the heavy pile of insect bodies. They continued not to bite her and that was the largest element. Unexpectedly, however, there was an unusual kind of ventilation formed by the flexing of their legs and bodies that kept the she-wolf from feeling either too hot or too cold, even as she lay partially buried in mud, mud that eventually began to dry and crust and flake off. The she-wolf did not know what happened to the stream or if the ants were somehow absorbing the moisture away from the area around her like a sponge, but after a time, it was clear that the ants were no longer encumbered by the water and could move freely. They would have their way with her and they did not hesitate with their work.

Hours passed as Sharyenna lay trapped and helpless, more by her own weight than the ants smothering her. She could no longer keep the ants from her mouth or nostrils, though she kept her eyes tightly closed at all times. It was also to her great surprised that they did not actively obstruct her breathing, instead forming an ever lengthening channel clear for her to breath musty, chitin-smelling air. But honestly, this existence, though horrifying was becoming more tedious than anything as the she-wolf lay trapped and forced to keep her eyes shut, losing awareness of anything outside her new prison of ants which seemed to settle on her body like a living cocoon. It took another full day, another day of agonizing hunger pangs that blotted out the she-wolf's mind of everything but the need for manna, before she realized that the ground was eroding below her, crumbling away like sand in surf. Shortly after that, the least expected thing yet happened, she began to move.

Obviously, the wolf could not tell where she was being taken. But the ants handled her heedless of her spacial orientation inside the dense cocoon of living bodies, like a many-legged orb of living feet. At times, she went head over heels as the ants encountered some obstacle of the terrain. They did not go at speed, but moved tirelessly at a steady rate. It still was not fast enough, however, for the she-wolf now was getting very thirsty and it had nothing to do with making meals of manna.

The she-wolf had only the vaguest sense of entering a new place. Past the thick insect-musk, there were scents of stagnant water and slow decay as well as a change in the overall humidity. "Am I underground?" She wondered vaguely and also wondered why she was even still alive. As if her universe consisted only of ants, the she-wolf felt her body being slowly manipulated by the tiny bodies before settling again into a semisolid shell, almost like an exoskeleton surrounding her huge, soft body. She was oriented onto her wide belly, her paws suspended uselessly into gloves made of ants, but still almost close enough to brush against a firm floor.

She just sat there a while longer, and began to think that she would simply die of thirst after all. After the horror of being suffocated by millions of ants for at least a couple days now, it seemed strangely peaceful, if still painful. After all, several animals had already died that way on this forsaken island. But then, a miracle happened.

For no reason the she-wolf could fathom, the ants began to move away from her snout, allowing her first breaths of 'fresh' subterranean air, though the whole place remained mired in the musky insect-odor. More than that, however, the ants moved away from her face and even reduced in density across her whole body though she still remained covered in a heavy latticework of black and red-striped insects. But she felt as they moved out from under her immense belly, letting it drop onto the loamy soil of the pitch dark chamber for a chamber it was and not only that, she was not alone. She could hear the heavy breathing of other animals close by.

"H-hello?" She croaked, her throat dry and disused.

Her simple question rose a chorus of badly frightened, maddened animals, but mostly other canines as far as the she-wolf could tell. "Oh, God, where are we?" Said a voice.

"Ants... ants, get them off...!"

"I can't stand this, I cant!"

"Help me!"

And on and on it went, weeping, miserable creatures, but it did not go on as long as it could have, the she-wolf realized quickly as there was the tell-tale heavy breathing from each and every one of the other nearby animals. Even their feeble struggles tired them out. Resigned to death already, the she-wolf did not engage in such pointless and undignified behavior and conserved her energy. She did not tell anyone to quiet down either though, like as not they were all bound for the same fate regardless.

Eventually the other dogs quieted down, the only sounds the endless heavy panting and quiet moaning. A large form stirred across from the she-wolf, she could tell it was big by the soundscape inside the confined space and also a very dim light that her eyes slowly adjusted to. It was a massive dog, possibly as much as 200 pounds heavier than herself. His breath was heavy with the lingering traces of manna like so many of the other ones here. "Who're you?" He asked, head resting on his engorged chest and the rest of him covered with ants like herself and the others.

The she-wolf was perfectly aware of her ruined reputation. "Probably no one you care about." She replied.

The dog across from her grunted, barely shifting his head, but the movement rippled over his soft body all the same. "Probably." He huffed and then a moment later added, "But is now really the time to be playing coy?"

The she-wolf thought about it as the ants continued roving over her body. "Maybe, but maybe you would rather not spend your last hours next to someone you hate."

The massive dog tossed his head a little, forcing the ants to adjust their dense matrix. "Hate?" Asked the super-obese dog. "I don't hate anyone on this island more than I hate myself for doing this to me..." he nosed at the fat bulging heavily beside his face. "I just thought I'd end up eating myself to death peacefully rather than ending up inside the middle of a termite mound."

"Ant mound." Said another voice.

"Whatever." Said the huge dog. "Anyways, Whoever-you-are, I'm sorry you ended up here too. My name's Roger by the way."

Roger. The she-wolf realized she knew this dog. He was one of the addicts she had left behind on the beach, but more than that, she had heard his name a couple of times since then. Hard to believe as it was, Roger had taken a kind of leadership position among the group of immobile dogs left stranded by their own weight around a few freshwater pools. The she-wolf took a deep breath, but felt better about coming clean to another leader, however feeble, given the current situation. "I... I, was, Alpha-female for a time..."

The revelation did result in another uproar, though feebler this time, from the tired-out seal-dogs. Seeing as they were all trapped underground by countless insects and utterly helpless, old passions had a way of giving way to more immediate concerns and this was definitely one of those times.

"So... ended up in the drink with the rest of us, eh?" Roger chuckled weakly. The she-wolf did not bother to respond, but he went on regardless. "I guess it doesn't matter, whatever's going to happen now is going to happen regardless..." There was a grim sort of gallows humor in his tone that the she-wolf found just a tiny bit appreciative. Then, of course, something did begin to happen.

It was still very hard to see in the dark tunnel, and the darkness did seem to stretch further along the rows of immobile canines than across the she-wolf's or Roger's backs, but she did notice when something began to dangle in front of her snout, dangle and smell strongly of moisture. It began to drip. The she-wolf reached for it with her snout, ignoring the ants that moved up and down the dangling length as they covered every surface in the close passageway. But rather than something disgusting, her lips found a familiar object, it was a simple rubber hose. No longer caring, she tried sucking on it and lo and behold a small stream of water fell into her mouth, wetting the Sahara her throat had become. She sucked harder and received more water, more warm, silt-tasting water, but it quenched her nonetheless. She did not stop for a long time, eventually filling her belly until it groaned. When she let go, it fell to dangle between her and Roger, who had been watching her silently the entire time.

"It's water!" She said excitedly, forgetting herself.

"Water?" Came a voice from beside the she-wolf, but just as Roger was reaching for the tube, another fell before another pair of immobile canines and then later another. As far as the she-wolf could tell, everyone down here received access to fresh water within a day or so, though some complained that theirs tasted of machine oil; they drank it nonetheless.

"What... is this?" The she-wolf could not help but ask in the interminably long silence that filled the near-darkness. She was actually more comfortable now than she had been above ground back in camp. The climate in the tunnel was cool despite all the large bodies nearby. The ants had mastered some kind of superior ventilation system and again, the blanket covering her kept her neither cold nor warm. In fact, it was all beginning to feel rather benign, especially since she could not really see the ants themselves anymore and once they were situated in place over her body, they did not move around excessively either.

"I don't know, to be frank." Said Roger as he finished slurping water from the rubber tube. "I honestly didn't think we'd be alive this long..." As comfortable as things became, however, no one dared mention the fact aloud or reflect on how things could be worse.

And despite how terrifying her ordeal had been, after having been kept awake on pure adrenaline for over a day already, it was really only minutes before the she-wolf slipped into an easy, irresistible sleep. She dreamed, but could not remember any upon awakening.

It was still dark when the she-wolf opened her eyes, but she was well aware of what had awoke her. She knew it as well as she knew the empty yearning in her belly, that enhanced hunger caused by eating manna. And there was the answer to sating that burning hunger right in front of her snout. She could smell it, smell the fresh sliced stacks of meat. Her tongue lashed out, sticking to the crisp in front of her and pulling it to the back of her throat where it quickly dissolved almost before she could even swallow. She hardly noticed the bitter note of the ants which had come along for the ride, crunching like silt between her teeth.

"Manna! Sweet manna!" Someone cried and there was a general rejoicing from the other manna addicts. The she-wolf did not participate though. She was aware of her addiction, her need, but she still hated that part of herself with a passion. A few of these other dogs, on the other hand, seemed to almost worship the stuff.

The she-wolf heard Roger crunching across from her. Then he said, "Manna, down here? I wouldn't have thought it possible..."

"Isn't it obvious...?" Said the she-wolf, but was interrupted as another disk floated by in front of her nose, almost on her bloated chest as it was carried on the backs of enterprising ants. She snatched it, again eating a couple ignorant clinging ants who came along for the ride, still waving their feet stupidly as they went into her mouth.

"What is?" Asked Roger, who had not had the benefit of consulting the best scientific minds that dogs or wolves had access to on the island, unlike the she-wolf.

The she-wolf swallowed and barely managed to speak as her nose already began moving towards another disk, they were coming along the central aisle faster now. "The manna comes from the ants."

This turned out not to be a popular opinion at all in the darkness of the ant tunnel. Some dogs flatly refused to believe it in favor of the 'it's a miracle' theory. Roger, at least, was more level headed for all his waistline proved his willpower was close to zero; but then none of them seemed to display any hesitation at all in taking the proffered foodstuff, no matter how it would only further complicate their situation.

But there was little discussion to be had for a long while, for many hours that first real day, actually. The system proved to be startlingly simple, even for the most manna-crazed and addled canine. The discs flowed up and down the slender aisle separating the dogs from both sides of the tunnel continuously, the ants never seeming to run out of the delicious little crisps no matter how greedily they ate. True, there was not a whole pile to gorge on, and some dogs had to wait a little longer depending on how hungry her neighbors were, but then there was very little anyone could do but sit there and eat and eat and eat. Eventually one got thirsty and took to sucking on the available water hose and, for periods of time, one was too full to nibble at the crisscrossing disks. One took occasional naps as well, only to awaken to still greater hunger, barely noticing the rapid growth of one's body and the dim shapes of one's neighbors.

The she-wolf did not know how long this went on really before she was inured enough by being fed and watered properly to speak again. Or rather, it was Roger who spoke first.

His snuffling caught her attention in the dark and the she-wolf was surprised to find that she could see much better than before, almost a full monochrome in the near darkness. But the thing she noticed first with her dim vision was that Roger was already much bigger than she recalled. "Ooh, umphrf..." he snuffled and then inhaled sharply before taking several deep, raspy breaths. "Ugh, I'm... eating way more... manna than... I ought... to." He licked his oozing chops, unaware that several ants were stuck in the gooey saliva at the sides of his heavy jowls.

"What?" The she-wolf scoffed, though she was starting to feel a little more weight on her diagram than was completely comfortable now. "Isn't this basically how you all were living back on the beach?"

Roger snorted heavily, "No." He took a few more deep breaths. "You really have no idea, do you? When you left us for dead?" The she-wolf was beginning to regret letting them all know who was down here with them, even if there was almost nothing their immobile hulks could do about it. Without the threat of imminent death, there was more opportunity to think about the past, something the she-wolf would have preferred to avoid.

But seeing as there seemed to be no possibility of escape from here, the she-wolf decided there was no real reason not to be true to herself anymore. "Oh, please enlighten me to the way a bunch of lame seal-dogs were managing to survive after we left." Her tone was harsher than she meant it to be, but Roger must have had a thick emotional hide to match the feet of blubber coating his generous sides because he answered levelly.

"Survival is the key word there, or did you not know that more than half of us you left there died within a few days after you left?"

"No doubt." Said the she-wolf, who did know about the deaths. She made it her job to know things, after all. "So did you have anything to do with coordinating the survivors, Roger?" She asked, already knowing the general answer.

The big Labrador grunted assent. "Not that you would care, Ex-Alpha, but the day after you left with nearly all the able-bodied canines, there was a panic at the beach." He paused for more raspy breathing and to clear his throat. "As soon as everyone had finished their morning manna and could think properly, most of us realized we'd been left behind. Already a lot of us couldn't move anymore and for the rest of us, we'd already eaten enough manna to make that a near certainty by the next morning." It was the most she had heard the super-obese dog talk at once and she could tell it was taxing his overburdened system, his own weight growing to slowly crush him faster than either diabetes or cardiovascular disease could hope to claim him. Indeed, the gap between the fat padding rising over the mounds of neck fat flowing up to the crown of his skull and the ceiling of the tunnel was looking very narrow now. As well, the gap between his burgeoning flank and his nearest neighbor would shortly be gone entirely.

"But you know what?" Said the obese Labrador in a winded voice as he continued his tale. "If it hadn't been for those extra glutenous dogs, me and the rest of us," he gestured with his nose down the tunnel, "Wouldn't be alive right now."

"And that's a good thing?" The she-wolf questioned.

The Labrador shrugged massive shoulders, disturbing the ants coating him. "It's something."

When Roger failed to continue right away, the sounds of his labored breathing drowning out the other quiet noises of eating and slurping in the tunnel, the she-wolf prompted, "So how did the fatter dogs help?"

Roger took a deeper breath. "Oh, well, they told the rest of us what was in store for us." Roger let his mouth hang open and licked his chops. Despite his earlier words, he blithely reached down over his mass of protruding chest fat towards a passing disc, swallowing it without effort, though it was clearly already getting hard for him to reach properly. He went on without acknowledging the pause. "All of them were crying out for water. It did not take me long to realize that I needed to get to water myself while I still could, and mind you, I was already weighing like four times as much as when we washed up. I really didn't want to move, but I forced myself to look for water in the jungle."

"You didn't know already where to go?" Asked the she-wolf before nuzzling the hanging tube for another sip of water. Her own growing figure made her want to shift the way she lay in the soil, but already that minor movement was tangibly harder and reminded her that she was getting bigger, closer to how Roger looked the first time she saw him down here.

Roger snorted. "It wasn't like we were organized or anything. And most of us were too scared to leave the beach anyways because of that awful tigress." The mention of the tigress sent a shudder of silence through the whole chamber, as if he had spoken the name of a demon. Roger coughed and went on. "Lucky for me, I did find water and I sat my fat ass down there, spent a few hours trying to think about how far in I needed to be, what I'd look like in a couple days... But I couldn't leave things at that. When I heard other dogs getting up, stumbling into the jungle, barely able to walk, I knew I had to do something. I called to them, I even got up, though my back couldn't take the weight anymore, forced myself to help as many as I was able."

"How heroic." Said the she-wolf sarcastically, vaguely amused at imagining the sight of sausage dogs waddling towards the pools that would keep them alive as they became little more than bloated sacks of lard.

Roger shook his head in the dark, his neck fat was so extensive now, the majority of the mass sagged to rest its mass on his protruding brisket which flowed to mostly cover his forepaws now; the hanging sheet of thick skin and fat wobbled and billowed like a curtain up to the point of his chin. "You still don't get it, wolf-bitch." He said without enmity. "But it doesn't matter now. You're here with the rest of us, and I guess we'll just finish what we started on the beach."

For a reason the she-wolf did not fully know, this sent her into a rage. "Don't lump me in with the rest of you, you pig! All of you, worthless hogs! Food-beasts!" She growled low though it made her heart yammer loudly in her throat and she needed to pause for breath. "I'm... not like the rest... of you! I was... forced!" There was too much weight on her back, pushing down on her diaphragm. She gulped air, "That... that shepherd... he made me... made me eat manna... the fucking manna!" She was ranting, her cheeks feeling moist and barely feeling the ants moving over her fleshy face now. "He thought he... was sparing my... life, but... he was just... killing me by... another means." She gasped for air, her head feeling hot. She was too worked up, her overtaxed body wouldn't take it.

Despite her wrath, however, the she-wolf's speech was not met with anger or resentment. Instead she heard a far worse sound than aggressive barks and growls. The tunnel filled with laughter. The collection of super-obese dogs, the ones she had derided from the start and left for dead, they were all laughing at her, even the enormous 700 pound bitch down the line who had to pause again and again to catch her breath, only to resume chuckling each time.

Roger laughed perhaps the loudest, a deep belly laugh right in her face. "Is that so, Ex-Alpha?" He asked her after he had recovered enough to speak. "You're not like the rest of us?" He lifted his head, his crown of ants dancing on his fat-covered ears and raised a paw to scratch some of the ants off of the side of his immense brisket and lower neck, that was all he could reach anymore. "Well, by all means, you're free to go. I believe this tunnel is meant for manna-addicts only."

The she-wolf snarled, twitching a couple ants off the end of her nose. If only the fat slob knew how much more she detested this place, not just for the horrifying nature of it, but because she was forced to share it with those she had hated most back in the world of fresh air and sunlight. She didn't give him the dignity of a response. But he didn't need one, her presence alone was an answer and he made that clear the next time she helplessly stretched her neck towards a wandering disc of manna.

"Yeah, you belong here." Roger sighed and stretched his fat neck for more manna skating slowly in front of his nose.

The constant exposure to manna made all of the occupants of the tunnel fatten far faster than they were accustomed to seeing up above, at least in most cases for the she-wolf had seen what happened to a dog when forced to eat several hundred pieces of manna all at once. She wondered if perhaps she had been too hard on that shepherd's little girlfriend as she sat forgotten in the ant-filled tunnel which grew slowly louder with the canines' increasingly labored breathing. The she-wolf had little concept of how fat she herself was getting, not until she felt her distant side brush against something soft which, over the hours, grew to press against a solid wall of fat and fur.

"Welcome to the club!" Said a voice from the she-wolf's side.

The she-wolf turned her head with effort, the fleshy ruff around her head felt big, unfamiliar, and cumbersome. She almost could not see the dog she was laying next to anymore, but she seemed to another Labrador mutt; so many of the dogs down here were of the breed known for their appetites and propensity to put on weight! "What?" She asked distantly. There was so little to do here and she could not move her body much anymore. She could feel her mind turning to putty in the endless dark.

The other bitch jostled her immense form, the shockwave transferring easily to the she-wolf's own extra-soft frame. "The club!" She said with incongruous brightness. "You're one of the last, but I knew we'd get there eventually."

"Club..." said the she-wolf, still struggling with what the female dog was talking about.

Roger butted in, her voice sounding noticeably different from the last time he'd spoken. Yet more fat was crowding his hazy features as the she-wolf examined him in the near darkness. "The... skin club." He wheezed, sounding terrible, like he was breathing through a kazoo. And because it was obviously difficult for the immense dog to breathe anymore let along speak, Roger gestured to the dog next to him with his nose, the black lab's abundant flesh seemingly caught in a war of growth with his partner; a war Roger was apparently winning as his massive, jutting flank was piling over the top of the similar sized, but 'leaner' dog's.

The she-wolf sighed raggedly and actually spent a few minutes trying to shift her immense bulk even an inch away from her neighbor, but to little use. She was so engorged now, she had to extend her paws fully just to reach the floor and most of the time, they just hung now as she rested fully on her mattress of belly and chest fat. But the seemingly timeless nature of this place made it easy to resume conversations even after extended pauses. Exhausted, and having nothing better to do as she caught her breath, the she-wolf asked the fattened bitch next to her, "Whose idea was it to start calling... this," she pointed her nose to their now permanently touching flanks, "a club?"

The female lab cocked her head, "I dunno really, he told me about it." She threw her head to her far side with effort, fat crowding her face worse than the she-wolf's.

"And she told me about the skin club!" Came a more distant voice which then was met with a still farther voice. And so it went, quickly becoming a game, a desperately needed game in the boring stillness of the prison tunnel, though of course, the real prisons were the lard-smothered bodies of each individual canine. The she-wolf ultimately was tempted to join in the fun once it became clear that each dog was now making up more and more elaborate lies to explain the origin of the skin club. But she only sagged into her own flesh and thought about herself, her separation from these domestic canines that had almost nothing to do with their ancestry. She was so lonely, even with warm flesh now piling up against her own.

Another day passed underground, or maybe two or three, it was hard to tell. The she-wolf continued to nap on and off, her fat supporting her own body in relative comfort save for the fact that she could not even roll over to relieve the pressure from her belly; yet the ground under her felt remarkably smooth even as she imagined she must develop pressure sores eventually as her weight escalated without end. Occasionally she did feel bits of the earth shift under her, almost conforming to her excessive mass and she was reminded that there were far more ants here than could be detected even on all the walls of the tunnel and the bodies of the dogs which were slathered with them. But things had to be coming to a head now, at least for the fattest dogs here, including the immense, now half-ton bitch down the line and Roger as well.

Despite his ongoing and noisy regrets about how much he continued to eat, the she-wolf noticed that his appetite only seemed to increase over time. As well, as she watched Roger becoming a mountain of a dog, her own corpulence keeping pace disturbingly close behind, the behavior of the ants changed noticeably.

As the dogs' capacity for even minor movement became increasingly null, the ants began to take a more active role in their feeding schedule. For Roger now, there was no more reaching down for passing crisps, the ants carried the manna right up his extensive front which now completely covered his front paws and deposited the disks into his cooperative mouth. "Mmph..." breathed Roger as he chewed lazily on two discs of manna while the ants gently pressed three more against his slobbering lips. The area around his jowls was now constantly moist, the fat folds trapping the dipping saliva as well as sandwiching dead ants into the areas of new growth. "Demanding... little... buggers..." he wheezed and even as he opened his mouth to speak, the disks were thrown onto Roger's tongue where they struggled to dissolve in the saturated, crumb-filled confines. He swallowed without chewing to speak and to keep his mouth from filling up as more disks made their way up the front of his explosive chest fat in a long chain extending into the dark. "Can... barely... keep up... with... them."

The she-wolf was in a better state, but not by much, already fatter than Roger had been when she had first seen him. She was close to needing similar assistance herself and could barely remember the last time she had seen her forepaws. "Why don't you just spit them out?" She asked and heard the tired wheeze in the back of her own throat.

It took a while for Roger to eat enough of a gap into his personal food line to answer. "And why... would I... do that?" He coughed and spat chunky manna-saturated phlegm ahead of himself. The she-wolf was sure he meant it to go into the now nearly single file central aisle separating them, but it just landed on a lower roll of his brisket, seemingly without notice. A few more disks in and he managed to finish his thought. "I'm... hungry."

For Roger and the half-ton bitch, water became an increasing concern as they could no longer reach their heads up even the inch or two needed to grab at the hanging tubes with their tongues. With the pace he was devouring manna, the little time bombs set to immeasurably increase his already incredible growth in mere hours, it only took an hour or two for Roger to become dangerously dehydrated.

"Could you... push it... just a... little...?" Roger begged the she-wolf as he told her how his head ached and how his lips and throat were cracking and bleeding.

The she-wolf did not know how much to trust Roger anymore, seeing as his once orderly mind was clearly unraveling as his addiction became a larger part of his overall personality. Still, she did as he asked, though she did not know whether she was prolonging or shortening his life at this point. The water might keep Roger from dying of dehydration, but it would also increase the mass pressing down on his lungs and the rest of his anatomy. But the she-wolf was at the limit of her own ability to help now as well, her whole self barely recognizable as it was buried under hundreds of new pounds of hastily grown meat. She tilted her head up and stuck out her tongue, reaching for the rubber tube. She stood up on her toes, but quickly realized that it was not the ground her forepaws were digging into, nor even a mass of quivering ants. Instead it was her own soft flab, her body grown thick enough to get under her paws and the sharp pain as she stood on herself struck the she-wolf from her stupor like a slap in the face. She yelped, sagged and leg her legs just hang for a moment, mind blank.

"What... happened?" Wheezed Roger and his throat really did sound very dry, as if he had been days in the desert rather than a couple hours since he had last had a sip.

"St-stepped on myself..." admitted the she-wolf reluctantly before she gathered herself to try again.

"Oh, I've been there before, Sister!" Laughed the female Lab next to the wolfess, and the she-wolf stifled a growl as the Lab bitch jostled the side of her body, the wave moving easily through both of their fat bodies and even reflecting the motion back down the whole line of prone, wheezing dogs.

"It's alright." Said Roger patiently, perhaps more patiently than the she-wolf could have been if she had been dying of thirst.

"Here. I'll... try to send it over." Said the she-wolf simply, ignoring the banter. Rather than try to work the bottoms of her paws past her own swelling fat, she decided to simply stand on herself again, to work through the sharp pinch on the soft flab of her chest. She'd been bitten enough times to know how to prepare for pain and, in fact, the few inches of her own pudge gave her that much more leverage in reaching up with her snout which helped account for her own lowered neck mobility. She took hold of the tube with her tongue, lifted it slightly and then threw her chin down and forward, smacking easily into her own neck pudge on the downswing after she sent the tube swinging across towards Roger.

The immense Labrador clearly reached for it, turning his nose and sticking out his tongue... but his head barely moved an inch, one eye already pressed shut by the oppressive fat swelling at the sides of his face, forming deep wrinkles that had not been there just days ago. Roger tried and failed to move the inch or so that would have been all that was needed to get the desperately needed water. The tube actually hit his outstretched tongue, but he couldn't wrap it around and it just bounced off, swinging between them again and dripping water mostly onto their nearly touching chest meat. He was still left breathless for the effort and he sagged again, though the movement of his massive body barely noticeable.

The she-wolf was also abnormally tired, her body seemed to weigh a ton and every moment was like a dead lift she had not been trained for. After a minute or so though, she said, "I'll try again..."

But Roger wheezed back, taking almost half a minute to form coherent words. "'Nother... minute..." he gasped and the she-wolf gave him his time before pinching herself again.

They tried a dozen times, it was not as though there was much else to do down here in the dark, weighted down by the iron blocks of their mountainous bodies. Roger even managed to catch the tube once and kept it lodged in his teeth even as he used the other side of his mouth to accept manna the ants kept delivering with their gentle insistence. Roger held onto the water tube for a long time, an hour, three hours, six? It was hard to tell, but then the she-wolf started to become very thirsty herself, her own steady diet of manna pulling the water out of her body even as it had Roger's. To her credit, she tried to hide it for a while, but could not hide her parched tone the next time she spoke. The humongous edifice of lard that Roger had become sucked down water until he literally coughed up a stream down the front of himself now teeming unheeded with ants who quickly whisked away the excess moisture. Then he let go.

As the tube fell in front of the she-wolf's face, she said, "Roger-" Because at the rate the lab had been devouring manna for goodness only knew how long, he was getting almost visibly more obese hour by hour; and so was she, to be perfectly honest.

Roger pulled in a labored breath and coughed yet more chunky phlegm to clear his congested airway. But he gave a weak smile nonetheless. "Can't hog... all the water now... Ex-Alpha. I'm... not that... greedy... heh." He chuckled softly and the she-wolf wondered how he was getting by with his enormous frame and clearly limited air supply. The water had seemed to make him soggier and perhaps he had breathed some of it in by accident from trying to eat and drink simultaneously even though he didn't have to (it was not as though the ants were actually forcing him to eat anything, the she-wolf saw the entire conveyor belt of disks pause elegantly each time he closed his mouth to chew) but honestly, it was hard to tell. He had not been breathing all that much better when he had been dry.

The she-wolf smiled sadly, hated watching Roger devolve in front of her eyes even as the state of her own mind was in shambles. Still, she took the tube, sated the burning, cracking feeling in her throat and filled her belly with what it needed to grow and increase her excessive abundance of mass. The latticework of ants covering her body grew into a more complex web as the hours passed. And though they tried again to pass the tube, Roger was clearly being held down even more firmly, his efforts increasingly feeble in doing anything other than wobbling his excessive fat, eliciting complaints from his neighbor whose own fat flank Roger was now crushing with his own titanic abundance.

It turned out not to matter in the slightest. A time later, when Roger was even dryer than when he had been begging the she-wolf the first time yet she was too exhausted to try any longer to swing the blasted tube across to the inert canine, something new happened. Something disturbing.

Roger had long since lost the ability to speak for his dryness, though he continued on with a ceaseless dry wheeze which was at the very least not plagued by excessive phlegm. The she-wolf was reaching with increasing difficulty towards the narrow path between her and Roger's protruding briskets to snatch at a passing disk when her eye happened to catch a sign of movement in the dark overhead. She looked up to see a new tendril descending. She thought at first it might have been a new water tube, it certainly smelled moist, and it might have been, but the shape was more like a tentacle, and it undulated. In her hazy state of mind, the questing appendage was already stretching towards Roger's snout before she realized that it was a mass of writhing ants.

"Ungh...!" Was all Roger managed before the ropey insectile tentacle made contact with the tip of his nose and immediately spread to completely cover his snout and mouth.

"Roger!" The she-wolf moaned miserably, helpless save to observe the insects invading the dog's mouth and throat, actually forcing it open somehow by the sheer mass of bugs. There was no open space anywhere naturally, but disgust welled anew inside the she-wolf's belly because she had not been exposed to the true nature of their enemy, their caretakers, for such a long time since she had been deposited here with the rest.

Roger was clearly struggling to breathe and he opened his mouth wider, made gagging noises, and the she-wolf could only imagine the horror as the fuzzy, itching things dived down the back of his throat. But the procedure was over in less than a minute. All at once, the iron-strong structure of ant bodies gave way and the whole mass stampeded away from Roger's mouth over his face and down his uncounted neck rolls. The Labrador gasped for air, but the she-wolf noticed an addition, a slender plastic tube hanging from the side of his mouth.

"Fuckin'... bugs..." Roger wheezed, heedless even as the scent of water escaped the back of his throat.

"Are you okay?" The she-wolf asked trepidatiously, still terrified at the visage she had been forced to witness.

"Of course... I'm not... okay!" Roger spat, still struggling struggling to get air into his massive body; the top of his great padded back had finally touched the ceiling some time ago, well over the tops of his folded ears. "They... they... crawled down... all the way... down." His voice was haunted and he shivered, or at least the surface of his gelatinous body quivered. Heavy folds were developing with greater rapidity around the lab's face as there was no more room around his head for more fat. It gave him a perpetual squint and the she-wolf wondered how well or if he even could see her anymore.

The she-wolf did not ask for more details, hesitant because she knew that the same was likely in store for her... yet, at least for now, she was still in control of managing her water and manna intake; if one could call being terminally addicted to the food that was slowly killing her 'in control.'

A while later, when Roger seemed at least more comfortable, the tube still hanging out the side of his mouth, she asked, "It is water, isn't it?"

He did not have to ask what she was talking about. "Yeah..." he murmured distantly. "I can... feel it... dripping." Then he surprised her with another wheezing chuckle. "Like I'm a... goddamn... plant!"

This received a chortle from both his and the she-wolf's neighbors. "More like a potato," said the bitch next to the she-wolf who could actually see Roger more easily now than his partially smothered partner.

"We're all potatoes..." said the dog next to Roger sagely and the she-wolf could not disagree.

She was about to add more, it'd been a while since they had talked even this much, but then familiar gasping and choking sounds came from down the line. The she-wolf struggled to turn her head and could just make out a form even fatter and rounder than Roger undergoing a now familiar, horrific procedure. But the she-wolf was already growing numb, twitching an ear and feeling two or three ants lose their balance and fall off to land somewhere where there was undoubtedly more of her.

"I wonder how she lasted so long..." the she-wolf commented wearily in her escalating emotional ennui.

The dog to Roger's side answered. "I think she stole the water hose from her opposite. She's been off of water and manna for a couple days now..."

The she-wolf craned her neck, only stopping when the fat shut her eye for her. But she could not see over the backs of the round, packed-in dogs (rather like a pack of hot dogs now actually) anymore either. But she did hear the sounds of lustful drinking and slurping from somewhere nearby. "She's... not eaten manna...?" Asked the she-wolf uncomprehendingly.

Roger's mate (though the she-wolf did not even know if they were really friends), shrugged massive heavy shoulders; he was not small himself, looking rather like Roger had two or three days ago. "Guess so... she's been complaining non-stop and..." the other dog rested for perhaps a minute to recover his breath from talking so much. "...and she'd be dead by now... from eating with no water..."

The she-wolf was glad then that she had not wound up opposite the massive, inconsiderate bitch there whose corpulence and greed were obvious even in a room filled to the ceiling with it. The she-wolf was sure she could not have resisted the temptation so long, not even to save her life or the lives of... others? "Now that was a queer thought..." The she-wolf thought to herself even as she continued to speculate, to nurture a dim hatred for the incredibly obese bitch over there. She knew for a fact that she would not have been able to last as long without water because she had extra needs, demands on her body... But... what were those needs again? The she-wolf's collapsing mind drifted off without finding an answer.

The she-wolf's mounting weight problem finally forced her to require Roger's method of feeding, the ants uncannily adept at sensing her limitation as soon as it emerged. The she-wolf soon learned about the gentle insistence of the ants first hand, as discs were pressed lightly against her whiskers. But again, she was struck by the voluntary nature of this fattening madhouse. The ants never crammed anything into her. There was only ever the singular question, "One more?" As the carriers brushed their burdens against the sides of her mouth and nose, never more than two or three at a time. Most of the dogs were eating like this and indeed, the central avenue which had once separated the dogs was now mostly real estate for for lumpy, ant-covered dog-flesh. The air was warmer and more humid as the walls and floor of the tunnel were host to unnatural quantities of warm dog-lard. The she-wolf grew to be grateful for the little friends covering her entire body, whisking away excess body heat, shed fur and dead skin, and for conforming the very soil under her to perfectly distribute her massive weight. So very... helpful, they were, these little friends. The she-wolf was certain that she would be miserable, maybe even sweltering and close to death in these circumstances otherwise, no matter her own constant need for water and... and fresh food. She was... so hungry after all. A big appetite to match a big girl such as herself...

The she-wolf realized she was slipping in and out of lucidity now, the periods when the scattered fragments of her personality pulled themselves together felt like a wash of cold water on her brain. It hurt to be sane in these circumstances. "Friends?!" She thought in disgust, these things that were at once killing her and keeping her alive? For the she-wolf knew now that she and all the rest of them would not last a day without the constant slavery of the tireless ants maintaining the air temperature in the now close tunnel packed with canine meat.

The she-wolf lifted her head, it was hard to do so, even an inch, and sucked some water from the dangling hose. She was lucky, she knew, she was one of the last not to have one installed down her esophagus, but that was on the horizon now. In fact, she was still only able to drink because the same hose had been shifted ever so slightly towards her face, lowered an inch or two. The she-wolf knew that as soon as she lost the ability to get water from it herself, the 'friendly ants' would ram it down her throat and then, she supposed, she would not have to worry about drinking anymore, or even have the possibility of committing suicide by dehydration any longer.

The she-wolf took the time to twitch the muscles of her obscene, immobile body. The movement helped stabilize her shattered thoughts, to maintain lucidity for longer before drifting off again. Despite her own prejudice towards the immobile, it was easy to feel that she was not atrophied, there had not been enough time for that yet. The unnatural pace of the growth manna provided meant that the she-wolf and her unasked-for companions had only been underground for several weeks at the most, though it already felt like a lifetime. And despite the length of time, her paws were nevertheless gloved now less in ants than in her own blubber. She tried to reach down, to feel the soil floor with her paw pads, but she only scratched at her soft chest fat wherever she reached with either paw, even while trying to lean to one side. It was impossible to tell how deep her own fat was at this point even as, frantically, she drew a trickle of blood from her soft meat with overlong claws.

The blood attracted the ants somewhere below the rising tide of fat that rested between her and Roger. She could feel them forcing open the thick, clotted fat folds, invading the tomb of her left foreleg and holding it open with the lattice of their strangely sturdy chitinous bodies. The ants dove into the stinging, self-inflicted scratch, wicking away blood, forming a bandage with their own drowning bodies. How selfless, and how disgusting, the she-wolf thought with conflicting, chaotic thoughts. "How did they even know?" Wondered the she-wolf, thinking perhaps that the blood leaking out of her fat folds had done it, but then, she had not even been bleeding that badly. The thick blanket of ants covering her entire body stirred, readjusted, pulling across her soft form snuggly like a net for a brief instant before settling in line with her increasingly difficult breathing. They covered her ears, her cheeks, most of her face and more sensitive areas now. The she-wolf had grown numb to it, even as the bristly hairs sometimes tickled her vulva and mopped up the very small amount of waste water she produced; and it was very fortunate indeed that the manna-addicted produced no solid waste whatsoever. "So intimate..." thought the she-wolf vaguely. She could tell a lot about another dog's personal health from sniffing their bottom. How much more could the ants know about her by covering every inch of her, day and night?

She drew a wheezy breath, inaudible in the din of rasping and coughing that filled the cramped tunnel. Her own back was pressing against the ceiling now, her flank struggling to keep up with the bitch next to her as her warm flesh pressed now with a less than gentle firmness, hundreds of pounds of pressure mounting between them now.

"S'gettin'... tight... in here."

The voice shocked the she-wolf from her growing stupor. She lifted her chin slightly from the now firm-feeling mass of fat which supported the underside of her jaw. It was Roger of course, but it was stunning to hear his voice, the she-wolf having come to believe that he'd gone completely addled, but then, it was impossible to know how long she spent out of it herself these days (hours? months?). She did not realize how much she had missed his tired, wheezing, sardonic voice. "Roger!" She said, though the effort took her breath away.

It was difficult to tell even how obese Roger was now. But his chest was rolling copiously over hers in the quickly vanishing valley between them. His lumpy dark fur extended to either side of his wrinkled face nearly as far as the she-wolf could see in either direction now that she was very nearly unable to move her head. Roger's own fat was now bulging impossibly around his own head, even over the crown of his skull and sagging heavily onto his forehead. His neck was entirely absent now, the skin and fat that had once composed it now indistinguishable from the rest of his torso, though the she-wolf could see very little of that now. The fat rose in a smooth plane directly from the top of his head to the ceiling. The fat crowded his face in the extreme, erasing even his old abundant features. Fat bulged heavily around either side of his snout and even the bridge of his nose looked fat now as it bulged in a convex surface. Even more striking, however was the appearance of his squinting eyes, so heavy... Was he, in fact, even squinting anymore? The she-wolf thought she caught some fluttering movement from the moist undersides of his fat brows and eyelids.

The obscenely obese dog across from her rumbled an assent that was easier than talking.

Ignoring his first comment, the she-wolf asked, "How are you... doing, Roger?" And she struggled to catch her breath from the time it took to form the words. When had it gotten so difficult just to breathe?

Roger himself was long in reply, but at least he did not try to talk and eat at the same time. He nosed aside the gentle ants with a twitch of his broad snout and they surprisingly let him be for a moment, apparently satisfied with his overall performance. He seemed almost to have trouble getting enough air into his compressed, fat-filled chest to form words. He coughed heavily, shoving out thick mucus from deep inside his collapsing airway; the ants covering his first, massive chin and the fat welling around either side of his resting jaw carried the mess diligently away. Taking a clear breath finally, he said, "How's it look... like I'm... doin'?"

"You look like... an elephant..." the she-wolf wheezed, "...ate a... bigger elephant." A ghost of a smile creased the she-wolf's fat face, soon to be followed on the mask of fat Roger wore.

"Sounds... about... right..." wheezed Roger laboriously and licked at his perpetually moist jowls; the ants had finally gotten around to clearing their dead out of the deep folds.

The silence stretched between them then, unbearable to the she-wolf who was afraid that this might be the last time they were even capable of talking even somewhat normally. "Roger..." she said at length, "Try to hang in there... maybe... eat fewer crisps...? That other dog did... for two days..."

Ever since the tube had been installed down Roger's throat, his own pace of eating had slackened a little due to the obstruction. But due to the sheer excess of manna he had previously devoured, his flesh continued to grow explosively regardless. Still though, he continued to nurse himself on manna, slowly, lazily despite how he had mentioned it was uncomfortable each time he swallowed.

The phlegm built up in Roger's constricted air passage and had to be expelled again, just as voluminously; ants hurried to clean the edges of his mouth and even the deep folds flowing over his excessive jowls on either side of his now partially buried snout. Clearing ignoring what she had just said, he spoke. "Jus' wanted to... say it's... good'ta see... ya comin' outta... it... Ex-Alpha."

The she-wolf understood what he meant, wishing she knew how long she had been wrapped up in insanity. But it sickened her to admit that she was losing her mind in this place. "Thanks..." she said vaguely. then, because she could not stand the silence, she said, "Hmph... you can still see me...? lard-dog?" She meant the last as a playful tease, but it came out in an almost affectionate tone.

It was honestly hard to tell how Roger reacted. His face did not move so much anymore, at least in any coordinated fashion or in any way detectable through the shield of ants covering it. "A little..." he admitted at length. He breathed in as deep as he could and added, "Probably not so much... tomorrow."

For a while, after the initial horror, with things being so comfortable, it had been easy to be listless and even bored with their situation, but now, when the tunnel was more than three quarters filled with fatty dog-flesh and her sole companion was clearly at the terminal end of his tolerance for the weight literally crushing him as she had always imagined it would, the world was taking on a new kind of horror that had nothing at all to do with the insects. "Roger..." she muttered breathlessly as she felt her heart labor inside her chest to feed her excess hundreds of pounds... and something else? But the thought drifted away on the storm of her mind.

Roger didn't answer at once. He seemed so tired, but the she-wolf could not even say how she knew that other than the melting edifice of his face always looked tired. It took so long for him to speak again that the she-wolf was already drifting away again. But consciousness slammed back down at his words. "Alpha..." he swallowed and the she-wolf noticed that Roger didn't open his mouth much to talk or even for his continuous heavy breathing anymore. 'Is it hard for him to open his jaw now for his neck?' He went on. "It's... gettin'... hard fer... fer me ta... breathe."

"I... know." Said the she-wolf taking his meaning. She could not even see his eyes really, but did not need to. All that could be heard in the close space that was not filled with fatty canine flesh was the sound of wheezing, whistling breath.

Roger wheezed some more, wanted to express... something, but it seemed impossible with his entire head now held fast by the growth of his own body. An ant lightly touched his whiskers with a disk and he ignored it. "I'm..." he started, voice gone high like a pup's, "I'm... scared."

"Me... too." Wheezed the she-wolf and she was, at least when she was coherent. The tug of madness was there at the back of her mind, just like the steady insistence of the ants. After a while, the she-wolf admitted, "I'm... losing my mind." It was less a plea for help than a statement of fact.

Roger huffed acknowledgement, not even telling her to resist or to hold on. "I... haven't." He wheezed as if he too wished he could go mad to escape the reality of being cared for by 'helpful' ants until his body literally crushed him.

The she-wolf, in staggered, exhausting conversation, eventually got out that Roger hadn't lapsed into complete passive addiction. He just slept a lot. She would have never known now if he hadn't told her, not with his fat slathered face erasing the last of his expressions. But as much as the she-wolf wanted to draw this out, Roger lacked the stamina. He docilely began to eat again, starting up his train of discs at his own pace. He admitted that there did not seem to be much of a point in holding back now. The she-wolf had to agree. Even if Roger started a starvation diet now, he was far fatter than she had ever imagined a dog being capable of without dying. His heart alone would not be able to support the excess flesh for more than a few months, maybe a year, let alone all his other overstressed organs. Letting the weight kill him first was perhaps the fastest way to go out at this point. To see release.

One of the last things Roger managed to say was, "We are... potatoes... you know. Urmph... we... ARE... potatoes." He emphasized the last part, actually managing to wobble his heavy mask of fat a little.

The she-wolf took his meaning, Roger's words cutting through the paralysis of her mental gears. It probably should have been obvious at this point, but it still felt like a realization. "The ants... are farming... us." She managed and Roger grunted, resting finally. The she-wolf agreed completely, after all, their situation both figuratively and very nearly literally was exactly that. They were being grown, living, mammalian vegetables, becoming increasingly ripe with lard. "When will we be harvested?" The she-wolf wondered and it was frightful to consider it coming both soon and not soon enough.

Roger continued to grow rapidly as he consumed manna nearly twice as face as the she-wolf and she was not petite with her intake. Before long, it was impossible for her to even see his partner for his oppressive flesh filling the middle of the tunnel. Roger began to caress her more heavily as well, or at least his extensive chest and neck met reached gradually out to fondle her with its weight. The she-wolf could not even see her own chest or lower neck anymore, Roger's soft, heavy meat flowed up to just a few inches below her chin. The tunnel now had shrunk drastically to an intimate space, the fat on the crown of her head curving up to press against the low ceiling. Was she higher up than when she started? Closer to Roger as well? Impossible to tell. Obviously, their bodies were now much larger than the original tunnel could have possibly contained, so it was 'fortunate' that the ants continued steady excavation in the soil that cupped all of their massive frames, providing all of the personal expansion they could need. In the near space, and despite the fact that Roger was even more unrecognizable and obviously blind as well, looking at him, the sole remaining dog she could still see, the she-wolf felt a certain longing, an appreciation for how close together they were now, their flesh pressing so firmly against each other. Even in the dim darkness, she could see where his dark fur met her own white tufts just below her chin. "So near, so far..." she thought in nonsensical rhymes.

But then there was a disturbance, somewhere down the tunnel, but with the fat smothering her ears, it was difficult to hear anymore. The she-wolf turned to look, but found it impossible. Eventually the sounds died away and the whole matter simply washed away from her mind. She continued her secret pining for the dog across from her, sometimes even reaching with her forepaws through the folds ensnaring them, but all she ever felt was herself, skin that used to cover her forelegs now smothering the pads of her paws in labyrinthian creases.

But shortly after, or so it seemed to her, the disturbance came again and she knew what it was because it was happening right in front of her face.

The area in front of her was filled mostly with Roger's abundant fat, but his face, or at least his snout, was still recognizable among the folds, though now his swelling fat was competing with the tip of his nose for space and he could barely open his jaws wide enough to admit a single disk at a time, amid the terrible breathing which had itself drastically slowed his intake simply to keep from choking. He had already had several obvious asthma attacks and the she-wolf had taken them for a prelude to the end of her companion. But, it seemed the ants would not let him go that easily as they staged another intervention.

The did not need to descend in such a dramatic fashion as last time, the low tide of constantly present ants simply rose, crowding Roger's mask of fat until he could no longer be seen anymore. When the tide washed away, now he had yet another tube sticking down his throat, this one wider. It had an aluminum bracket tied around it, seemingly pointlessly, but the she-wolf recognized it nonetheless. It definitely looked like a broad rubber hose one would find in an engine. Wherever it had come from, it too extended up into the ceiling, the narrow strip of soil was all that was left to be seen in the fat-filled tunnel that was not fur and skin.

Though it was more than a little hard to tell, Roger looked uncomfortable with his new addition, however, the sound of his breathing had quieted drastically. Instead, there was the hollow whooshing of air up and down the tube and a mysterious low rumbling coming from higher above... or perhaps below. The she-wolf could not tell.

It hurt her to see this happen to Roger, but the purpose of the rubber hose seemed clear enough. Though she could not see even the smallest part of his obviously enormous sides any longer, the flesh in front of Roger's chin still rose and fell very slightly with his breathing, and with the tube, the movement was far more exaggerated. In the close space between their heads, Roger took deeper breaths than he had in days. It was terrible to look at, however, twin tubes sticking into a smothered face that barely resembled a face any longer let alone a dog. She knew they were keeping him alive, but that was part of the problem at this point really, even if she did not want Roger to die either in her hazy, confused state.

"Roger..." she wheezed, not caring, never having cared, about the other dog's heavy fat lying on her even as his body heat made her feel too warm at times and did nothing to help her own breathing difficulty. "Hang in... there..." She didn't know why she said that. Roger seemed like he wanted to die, why else would he devour the manna so greedily even with it was obviously uncomfortable for him? Regardless, he could not answer anymore, could not even eat anymore with the thick tubes stuck in his mouth, though that did not stop the ants from trying.

And that itself was a curious observation, the first time the ants had seemed at odds with themselves rather than acting in concert like a well oiled machine. The question answered itself hours later as Roger was smothered once again, only to have the tubes removed and new ones implanted forcefully down his soft, fat-choked throat.

"Experimenting... on us?" The she-wolf had the hazy thought, but really, what good were her observations now? It took almost all of her remaining power to concentrate to keep her own airway from collapsing under her weight and pressure from Roger's heavy fat pressing against her, over the fatty lump of her fore-chest and against her thick throat.

She found herself mumbling before she even knew she was talking aloud, words that took on a greater power as she repeated them over and over. "If there is a god... please save us...!"

When her chant was loud enough to overcome the constant wheezing, it produced an unexpected response from a dog she had nearly forgotten save in the feel of the dense wall of fat at her side. "There's only... one god on... this island..." the fat bitch next to the she-wolf said, though it was impossible to see even how fat she had gotten in this time. She quickly grew tired of chuckling softly and only ended with, "You know her..."

And the she-wolf did know the god. After all, how could she not? She came every day, every night when she closed her eyes...

The dreams had begun shortly after arriving, though the she-wolf found it hard initially to remember them. And for the longest time, she did not pay any special significance to them, even as her mind unraveled. The dreams mutated like the taste of manna, different characters, places, situations, but inevitably, they all shared the same theme: desire, indulgence. The she-wolf was characteristically suspicious from the start, and almost immediately recognized the ham-fisted way in which the god of the dreams sought both to tempt her and identify that with which she could be tempted. Her less-than-rational state of mind actually made it easier to identify a connection between the dreams and the ants. There was no obvious physical link, but there was a clear synchronization of intent between her caretakers and her dreams, though the mind-puzzles she was presented with did grow more elaborate over time. But she remembered how it had started, tempting her with food and then sex in the most base manner possible. She let herself be played at first, taking the dreams for the pleasure they offered, but it was not long before the dream-god showed her hand, what she really wanted. "Eat. Bigger. Grow." That was all this entity had to offer her.

That was all it still had to offer, the she-wolf knew as she slipped off again after another binge of manna, still somehow managing to nurse water from the low-hanging tube in front of her face. The place she found herself in next reflected the thoughts she'd had falling asleep.

It was midnight in the dream-forest, a sky filled with more stars than the she-wolf had ever seen in her life of captivity. She stood upon a stone precipice, her surroundings shadowy and unreal. The god was not even pretending this time that this was a real place. And she stood next to her, guised in the visage of a white wolf. The she-wolf took a moment to stretch her dream body, remembering the feel of having actual moving limbs and not being surrounded by her own, hot meat. She appreciated the gift, the dream-god usually maintained her unimaginable real bulk or made her somehow still larger. But she would not let herself be so easily bought.

Walking over easily before the larger, male wolf, she said, "So... I hear you're a god." Speaking, she realized that her mind felt clearer than usual, almost like her remembered self... almost.

The white wolf shrugged. "I don't care if you think of me like that."

"The others do." She pressed and leaned forward. She let her tongue loll out the side of her mouth, even in this place, she could still feel the too-rapid beating of her overworked heart. She tried to ignore it and instead breathed in a scent that smelled like a combination of all the male wolves she had ever known.

"Since when have you ever cared about what others thought?" Sneered the dream-god and even this was a trick. The wolf was far too handsome, too charismatic to be real and spoke to her too knowingly. She could almost feel the entity inside her own mind, spreading groping feelers.

Sighing, the she-wolf said sharply, "Let's cut the crap, finally. You are the little friends," she shook her head, why did she say that?! "The ants right? Or you control them? They're part of you?"

The white wolf stood up, looming over her. The sky darkened. Normally, when she pressed or challenged the entity, or made it clear she would not be cooperative, the dream would end or else devolve into her own personal delusions, but not this time. When the wolf looked up, his eyes were black, solid black, like marbles. "I suppose..." he started languidly, "There is no harm now in being truthful. You all have come along so nicely..."

"I'm a living blob thanks to you!" The she-wolf shouted and even as the words left her, her body exploded out in all directions, her belly falling to the ground with a heavy thud that knocked her feet out from under her and then lifted her up. She felt the skin of her sides flow out over the ground, wider and wider. Her tail head grew like a glacial mound, flowing over the entire length of her tail to pile up on the ground behind her. Her head and neck were swallowed up by a rising tide of soft, dense flab until she was struggling to keep her head above her own 'waters.'

"The key word here is 'living' blob." Said the white wolf with a chuckle and he stepped forward to place a paw on the she-wolf's descending pile of chest fat which ended in a massive, solid brisket the size of a large pumpkin well ahead of her, which supported the softer rolls above. "Sometimes, I don't think you mammals appreciate all the work it takes to keep you alive..."

The she-wolf gasped as her dream-self realigned with the familiar feel of her waking fatness. The only difference now was that she was allowed to ooze openly over the ground, rather than being so compressed by Roger and her other neighbor. "I never... wanted... this..." she wheezed, breathless again as her heart raced to keep up with her 2,000 extra pounds.

"Want..." said the wolf with a titter as he began to fondle her flab more aggressively. "We all have wants." He moved to her side, hopped up to caress her fat flank with both paws. Even half of her was more than he could take in at once. "I want you, for example."

"You want me... like this." Wheezed the she-wolf, as helpless now as she was when she was awake.

He walked past where she could see, but could still feel him nudging, and even playfully biting at her many folds and gobs of boneless meat. "Of course I want you this way." He said, voice ever more husky with obvious desire. "You are so much more handsome like this... and don't worry!" He added brightly as her limp tail head lifted up over her bottom in a way that ought to have been impossible for even a wolf his size to manage, "This really is exactly as big as you are for real. I know you're interested in how big you've gotten and it is so hard to tell in your cramped little space, isn't it?"

The she-wolf had been wondering if she were really this huge and if it were true, it was worse than she had been imagining. Her paws were nowhere close to the ground anymore and she could barely even flex her digits for the weight bearing down on them as they lay ensconced in heavy, furry tombs. She was so wide, she more properly resembled a mattress than anything else and the knowledge that she wasn't made to be so big weighted down on her as heavily as her own corpulence. "I'm... gonna die... being this... big..." she coughed and the wolf answered from behind her even as he licked and massaged her sex until she was excited despite herself.

"Not if I can help it... not for a while yet, anyways..." said the white wolf and he slapped her titanic rear with a lustful paw. "You have a while yet to go before I can pluck you, my lovely little potato..." The entity used the word she had been using to think about herself more and more recently. "Now, how about a reward for being such a good pup..." said the god as he forcefully sunk his paws into the fat crowding around her tail. He forcefully sunk something else in as well and though the she-wolf did not really feel anything for this wolf, this thing invading her personal space, she could not help the hot rush of pleasure that filled her head as he took her.

"Yes, so pretty, so desirable..." he whispered seductively into her ear, suddenly there next to her after she came for the second time, resting impossibly on the broad surface of her globular shoulder and cascading neck meat. "So close to perfection..."

"No... such thing..." wheezed the she-wolf and the male cocked his head until she elaborated. "You... will never... be... satisfied. Nothing will be... perfect... for you."

The white wolf grinned at that. "You are too clever by half, little mammal. I can hardly believe I haven't been able to ensnare you after all this time, even when you're half mad as it is."

And the she-wolf felt herself losing coherence at that. Something the dream-god had been doing had kept the worst of it at bay, but now, her thoughts were scattering as she lay there, panting. There was practically no difference between this world and the real now. The sky was darkening, everything was darkening. The white wolf was just a voice in her mind which was filled with sharp things.

"Oh well..." said the god before leaving to other matters.

"Wait!" Cried the she-wolf from the darkness that was herself. She did want something. Her want drew the thing back to her, and she felt it putting her back together.

"What is it, little potato?" Asked the dream-god briskly. "You vegetables do grow so much better when you're content..."

The she-wolf struggled to put together the reason why she wanted to do this to begin with, shaking her head though she was barely even aware of her body at this junction, a formless void around her, filling her. "You intend to eat me? Eat everyone?" She asked to buy time.

The thing in the dark chuckled. "You already know the answer to that, little potato." And the she-wolf did. There could be no other answer, after all. And though the entity did not speak, the word seemed to impress itself on her fractured mind out of the void. "MEAT."

The she-wolf shuddered at the feel of it and the savage, primal urge that accompanied it. The dream-god, for all its pretensions, was little more than a slave to its urges, just like her. That thought, more than anything else blossomed in her fraying mind, gathering the loose strands. "I have something you want." She said to the empty craving around her.

"Yes you do, round thing, but not yet, not yet... you are not ripe enough yet." Said the slavering thing whose hunger was billions and billions of empty stomachs.

"No." Said the she-wolf simply and her heart sank as she realized what her own intention was, what the memory was that she had forced herself to ignore, to forget if only to keep it away from the thing which invaded her very mind. She had made herself go insane to protect them from its clutches... but more importantly it seemed, to protect them from herself. Yet, the pain she felt now, the pain deep, deep inside tolled like a bell and they could not be hidden any longer, they had never been able to.

Sacrifice. Sin. Unnatural. She couldn't. This is not what she had woke up do to...

...but she did not want to die.

"I have something... more meat..." the very thoughts disgusted her, but she could not help it nor could she change her mind. They could not be kept inside any longer. Either she gave them to it or they died and took her with them even sooner than the thing could manage on its own. "What kind of life could they know in its hands?" Thought the she-wolf and then she thought about the dream world where she had had so many pleasurable experiences, far more than she had ever known in real life. Was that experience worth anything at all? And she could not save them regardless.

"Yes..." said the slavering thing as she revealed her long-hidden thoughts. "I will love and cherish them. They will know no pain... You know this..."

The she-wolf did know, she knew enough about the thing to know that was not how it operated, if anything, it was the anti-killer, the opposite of a wolf. Something endlessly craving yes, but also endlessly productive, innovative, even creative. A short life of dreams and endless abundance or death before beginning... yes, things seemed simpler that way.

The dark's hunger only grew more intense with its excitement. "Yes... so sweet, so tender... I will teach them to love me, I will cradle their forming minds..." The dream-god seemed even more interested than the she-wolf had imagined. Was it possible that in all its existence, the colony had never had a mind to nurture and interact with from the very start? Did it really love them in some bizarre, cruel way?

The she-wolf had no answer, but the slavering thoughts turned to her again, barely able to contain themselves as they probed like feelers into her mind. "You want something." It said, and seemed almost shocked, as if she could want for nothing.

"Let me go." She said simply, her impending loss already sharp in her clotted breast.

"Let you go!" Scoffed the white wolf for they were suddenly back upon the stone precipice, midnight all around. He stalked around the lean body that was how the she-wolf still saw herself. "How absurd! As if you could go anywhere!"

"You can take me back above ground." She said firmly. "And stop shoving manna down my throat."

"No one forced you!" Cried the wolf, uncharacteristically agitated. "You accepted my gift freely, accepted my miracle!" He shook his head, stared at her, "You have nowhere to go!"

He showed his teeth to her, but the she-wolf was resolute. "I don't know if that's true, maybe it is, but it is my choice!" She growled right back, forcing the larger wolf back a pace. "If I'm already beyond saving, I'll die on my own terms."

The other wolf's hackles rose. "Foolish, prideful wolf!" He lifted his head and they were somewhere else, a familiar place. It was hot and muggy, the jungle above. He sat down and pointed his nose directly at something in front of them, something big.

The she-wolf was looking at a doppelgänger of herself, her real self, as painful as that was to realize. The other wolf was massive on this scale, her head supported over the she-wolf's ears by the mattress of fat under her. Her face was unrecognizable already, just like Roger's, her eyes gone squinty with thickened brow and eyelids. Her head was mostly absorbed into her torso and she was so wide, her fat flanks were being pinched by two spaced saplings. She wheezed uncomfortably in the muggy heat of the jungle, what could be seen of her eyes already rolling as she moaned low. Even the soft fat of her front barely rippled or quivered, she seemed to be beyond even trying to move. Her flesh piled up inertly over the ground, an immovable edifice. The least part of the super-obese wolf's fore-chest sat like a keystone holding up countless rolls and it clearly weighed more than the she-wolf's entire dream-body.

"Can you see the magnitude of the stupidity of what you ask?" Said the white wolf, breaking the silence, well, it would have been silent save for the obese wolf's wheezing. "Up here, you are utterly helpless. No food, no water, no shelter." His elegant tail wavered behind him, speaking slowly so the she-wolf could absorb more of the distressing scene. "You would be dead in a day or two without my care, Love..." he turned to her, placed a gentle paw on her neck. "You're far better off with me."

It was tempting, especially with the bloated canine clearly dying right in front of her, but she only needed to recall the sight of Roger having the salvaged engine hose shoved down his windpipe in order to regain her resolve. "No. I'm not yours, I never have been." She said, brushing his paw aside.

"You'd choose death over me?" Asked the white wolf, truly sounding hurt. He hunched his muscular neck, seeming to actually grow smaller. "Am I so terrible to you?"

The she-wolf was not expecting that. She looked at the smaller wolf, shrunken now to a scrawny omega even shorter than her. A part of her, a large part, wanted to spit right into his face that he was indeed terrible, terrible in nature and for what he had done to her, to them all. But she didn't.

Pleasure. Desire. Hunger. This thing, whatever he or she truly was, he encapsulated these things. The ultimate purpose may have been base, yet... yet he could have gone about things in such a worse way. Instead he seemed honestly to want to preserve life, in however a perverse sort of way that met his own ends. He fought death daily and surely they were all profitable enough already to have been worth the trouble. Maybe it was not just their meat he was harvesting, after all.

"Yes..." he sighed and when the she-wolf reached out, instead of a wolf, she was touching a very large ant, a queen with magnificent iridescent wings. She was still not very large, but really in this place such things mattered little. When she spoke, the voice was a thousand voices. "We... I... am many but so much time, I'm alone. Many bodies, yes, but one mind. Your lives flash by so."

"Because you shorten them." The she-wolf harrumphed.

The queen ant shrugged... somehow. "It is my nature, my hunger, my gift." These concepts pressed themselves on the she-wolf's mind like heavy weights. "It is who I am."

The she-wolf understood at least that much. She had been tampered with by humans, elements of her mind expanded into the conscious imitation of the humans' ape-mind, but at her core, she felt the wolf inside of her. That was the part that understood Alpha and Omega, enabled her to stalk and to kill. But she did not want to live by another's will because that was also her nature. It did not even matter if it was not the sensible thing to do. "That may be, but I won't accept it, not for me. My freedom is the only thing I desire."

The ant collapsed still further, hunching in on herself at the rejection. The she-wolf stared down the the hairy, chitinous bundle, jumping back when it suddenly leaped forward, becoming the white wolf again. He snarled at her. "Your desire doesn't matter! I would have given you everything, but it does not matter!" To the side, the massive wolf began to huff and cry out in a characteristic manner, wobbling her entire massive form. "You are coming into labor. I will have your young no matter what!"

"No." Said the she-wolf simply, turning her head aside from the wolf's furor. "You won't." She snapped her head back, "You won't because of what you've done to me in your endless greed!"

The snarl disappeared from the white wolf's face, replaced by confusion. "What?" And his eyes already began to dart around as if looking for something.

The she-wolf felt him digging around inside her skull, even as the contractions began to unsettle her stomach. "I'm too fat!" She said with manic glee. "If I don't try, nothing will happen on its own. They will die and then I'll die. Salvaged human junk won't stop that." She shrugged, and took another glance at the wobbling, massive canine that was her more than this conjured, lean fantasy. "Even if I do try, they might not come out... But you need me." The wolf opposite her blanched and the hidden longing on his face was clear as his mouth salivated. "And to get me, you must give me what I want!"

The white wolf sat down heavily as if he had been struck a blow. He lowered his head. "All I ever do is give people what they want..." he said quietly.

"Then do it." Said the she-wolf, her will hardening to greater contrast with her massive soft body.

The scene vanished, leaving the she-wolf floating bodiless in the void of the ant-mind. "Alright." It said. "But you'll regret it."

"I'll be the judge of that." Said the she-wolf and at last, the mind let her go and she awakened to pain filling her gigantic belly.

The labor was long and hard, the contractions rolling intensely over her underworked muscles. Just as she knew from her reproductive preparation classes back in the laboratory, the fat did nothing to help the process and a lot to hinder and constrict the passages, making the work even harder. It lasted twenty-two hours. The she-wolf did not know how she endured or even really how many lives she was able to bring forth immediately into the 'loving' embrace of the ants clearing the space under her sagging tail head, holding up a hundred pounds of limp fat just to make the process possible. She never saw them, any of them, but she did know that she got them all out, however bloody and drawn out the process was (at least she had blood to spare inside her titanic body!), she knew because she would have died of infection otherwise.

Sore and cramping, the she-wolf did not know it was truly over until the tide of ants rose all around her, caressing her entire fattened form, separating her flesh from that of Roger and her neighbor for the first time since they had been pressed together. Roger was left behind, the she-wolf realized belatedly, perhaps ignorant of the very fact that she was leaving despite being right in front of him. The she-wolf felt herself rising from the fat-filled tunnel, as if ascending from the underworld. Sunlight warmed her back even through the layering of ants but it was a while longer before she was able to see again.

Eventually she was left in the same place she started, beside even the same stream, the ruins of their primitive camp now so decomposed it was barely recognizable. The ants placed her with her chest flowing well out into the stream, but it was a half-hearted attempt. The she-wolf was so marvelously obese she could not even reach forward the inches needed to take a drink past the abundant fat filling her field of view before her. She panted and wheezed in the warm, muggy air and was not confused that this was her new reality... however long it lasted.

The ants let her be, but not before constructing the damp ground under her to conform to the shape of her belly, removing small rocks and pebbles which would in time cause skin sores and worse from the incredible weight of her. When they were gone, the world felt somehow emptier, her naked flesh and fur exposed and helpless indeed. And of course, it was hot.

She sat there a long while because how could she do anything else? Able to move her limbs and head only a negligible amount, that was the fate she had in store for her, the cost of her greed. Still, the air was clear and sweet in her nose and she was not hungry yet nor thirsty. She had had time during her labor to clear out the worst of her manna backlog at least...

Then she began to sob, hard, as it finally dawned on her what she had given in exchange for this taste of freedom, of the surface world. If only her body were not so ruined already! And she cried even harder, releasing the pent up horror of her experience and of what had happened to her, what would now happen to her children. She regretted to her bones every disk of manna she had eaten willingly while under the earth; the extent to which they had ravaged her body, to which she had ravaged herself, was now made plain.

"Too... hot..." she muttered to herself as she panted, unable to catch her breath as the monstrous load of fat on top of her pressed down with irresistible weight. The heat built inside and around her like a miasmic fug. She missed her ventilating blanket of ants despite herself.

Night brought relief from the heat, but not from the pressure constantly on the verge of overwhelming her. She did not sleep well. She could not breathe or see well for that matter, the fat on her brow constantly getting in the way and pressing down on her eyelids. Her heart hurt. It had already been beating far too fast for too long. Even the muscles in her legs were beginning to cramp from underuse, early stages of the atrophy to come. Had the ants somehow been doing something to distract her from these myriad pains of her overloaded body? There was no answer, but she did have at least one dream, that long, restless night.

It was only the black, the dream itself hazy as the she-wolf remained well aware of the pain in her body and lack of air which made it impossible to rest properly. "You can come back and finish this whenever you like." Said the ant-mind.

"I'll let you know..." said the she-wolf who really did not have any plan beyond this point. In fact, it still seemed incredible to her that she had really done it. The connection was tenuous, but with nothing to look forward to but a long day by herself, she asked, "Is Roger there?"

"Your crush?" Sneered the ant-mind.

"My friend." Huffed the she-wolf. "Can I talk to him?"

"Such a demanding little potato..." the ant-mind complained, but the she-wolf could already feel it reaching out and a presence was suddenly with her, a large one.

"Who, what?" Questioned the voice in the void.

"Roger, it's me." She whispered, sending him the shape of her face, or at least how she thought of it. She sensed the recognition in him regardless. "I made it out!"

"H-how?" He asked, almost too befuddled for words, even his thoughts felt fatigued.

"I... I had something to trade." She said guardedly.

At least the dog knew better than to press her. "Well, lucky you."

The sense of mutual sympathy, regret and jealousy passed between the two of them wordlessly. Finally the she-wolf said. "I would have asked for you too, but I don't think it would have let us both go and..."

"I can't go." Said Roger in a resigned tone. "I know they're keeping me alive, Ex-Alpha." He sighed heavily. "But you..."

She intercepted him, "I'm probably still going to die up here, Roger. But I wanted you to know I won, I beat it."

The Labrador chuckled softly. "A win is a win, sweet-hart."

The silence between them lengthened. "I..." the she-wolf paused, this was almost harder than convincing the ant-mind to release her. "I... I regret leaving you behind, all of you."

Roger gave a half-smile in her mind, "You don't, but that's alright. Enjoy as many sunrises as you can for me, alright?"

The she-wolf sighed, sending him a pained smile. "I will." The dream collapsed soon after, the she-wolf returning to the uncomfortable little pains of her massive body. Sometime, early in the morning, it began to rain.

The rain was the only thing that kept the she-wolf from dying right away. It cooled the environment, but more importantly, it was her only source of water. By pressing her chin into her swollen neck meat, the she-wolf could form a surprisingly wide collection cup in her overabundant chub, her mouth in the center. She sipped as much as she could and avoided letting her waste water go, though this largely became moot as she quickly grew dehydrated over the course of the first days.

The water of the stream she was chest deep in was always tantalizingly close, even as her mouth and throat dried. She even worked her legs into her flab countless times, despite how useless the effort, barely managing to avoid scratching the daylights out of her soft pudge with her overgrown claws. The stream did rise and fall with the rain, but the she-wolf was well aware that even if the water did get high enough to spill into her mouth, it would simultaneously be high enough to drown her and she did not care for that to happen, even as a few times, the water got unnervingly close...

Despite being in a one-wolf survival situation, she was never completely alone, the ant-mind seemed fascinated with her and continued filling her dreams, continued trying to persuade her, making offers of endless accommodations. It was truly hard to keep shooting it down. Yet, the she-wolf had to wonder. There was absolutely nothing stopping the ant-mind from simply taking her again, yet it refused. It desired her cooperation, for whatever elusive purpose of its own. It wanted her willing, for her to love it. And It was not entirely inconceivable, not after all she'd been through. It even offered her Roger, but still the she-wolf held fast despite her growing thirst signaling her eventual fate. Roger was smart and kind and she had come to care for him, but also he had sealed his fate just as she had, as all of them had. He had to live with his choices, as she had to live with hers... She healed slowly from the strain the delivery had placed on her. She was not so good at healing anymore, she found.

One morning, she found a single ant in front of her snout where it rested on the mountain that had grown out of her neck fat. It waved a petite disk of manna in front of her, barely the size of a quarter. It was not even touching her whiskers, but she blew it away before she could think about how much she really wanted something to eat. It tumbled down the steep flow of chins and fat, landing in the water. She watched it float away.

It rained twice that day, then not at all the next. The following day, it rained and again the day after that. After that, it did not rain for two days straight. The she-wolf found herself nearly dead at the 48 hour mark, her head aching with dehydration and the demands of her mammoth body. The whims of nature were killing her and it did not matter that her forepaws and chest were soaking wet, uncomfortably wrinkled in fact. She still could not move any part of herself better than she was able to the first day. This flesh, so massive, so overgrown and in such a short time was a permanent fixture of her body now. The lean wolf of her dreams was fading rapidly from sight, more often replaced by her true self, this enormous blob of a wolf even in her mind.

The she-wolf became hungrier than she ever imagined it was possible to be while lingering in the lagoon among the reeds and tall grass, her belly itching with infected cuts and sores there. The larger part of it was withdrawal from manna which gave her intense shakes and body pains that had nothing to do with the sometimes chilly water she was trapped in. What she would have given for even that quarter-sized wafer of manna! Yet the horror of being trapped underground with millions of ants was still strong. Still, if the ant-mind had had an easier avenue of tempting her, the she-wolf doubted she could have resisted long. As it was, however, it would take the work of hundreds of thousands of ants to reach her across the surface of the water. The hunger and the burning emptiness inside of her became like a companion, an awful rider overwhelming many of her days so that the she-wolf wondered if the heavy diet of manna had altered the biochemistry of her brain for good. Still, as the days melted into weeks, the overwhelmingness of the sensation did lessen, even if she could never truly ignore how deeply hungry she was. The irony of the amount of food, of nourishment she held inside of her was not lost on her, she had plenty to eat, she was swimming in enough food to feed her for the rest of her life! Her heart raced to feed the needy flesh. If only she had water...

Her nose twitched as the droplets fell, her salvation! She even bent her neck very slightly up, until the fat pressed tight against her ears and the top of her head, the weight of many bowling balls pulling the skin under her jaw. She stretched her dry tongue out as the rain continued to fall... and fall, and fall.

It was a monsoon and the stream she was set beside suddenly did not seem so peaceful and idyllic as its muddy waters churned in a froth. The she-wolf was as helpless as ever as the water rose around her stranded form. She kicked her legs weakly, her paws only feeling wet a while after her cavernous fat folds had been submerged. Water sprayed her face, coming up over her first massive chin that extended beyond her natural one. She sneezed and spat water, her stomach already groaning with as much as it would hold. She had to struggle to keep herself from vomiting as something gave under her heavy, fatty chest. Her own flesh began to pull at her as it was caught in the current.

It actually felt rather nice to have some of her soft fat float freely at first, until the side of her massive chest was bashed by a fallen tree branch. More soil eroded from under her heavy self in the torrent. "After all that, death by drowning?" Thought the she-wolf, only mildly surprised after all. It was unexpected, but there was nothing to be done now. Not even the ant-mind could save her from this.

Her own brisket pulled her forward and to the side in the rush of water. The pebbles and sand supporting her king-sized belly loosening bit by bit from under the massive weight of her. The she-wolf neither helped nor hindered it, wondering which would eventually win, friction or the rain?

The rain won.

How she managed not to die was beyond the she-wolf. She had almost no control at all in the water as her enormous belly was dragged along the stream bed at times, getting scratched by passing rocks and debris. She could have easily flipped over or just fetched up against something in a way that left her head under water. But fortunately for her, her fat-flushed body floated like a pontoon with no effort needed from her. Her head even sat at a slightly comfortable, but still frightening level above the frothing water. Her straining belly lurched inside of her as she was rocked back and forth, occasionally hitting things and turning completely around. She did go under the water once or twice, only to bob up again just in time. She ended up vomiting heavily, burning her throat, but, heedless of the pain and discomfort, she sucked down the splashing, dirty water as fast as she could to fill herself, knowing she would need it. The rush of water seemed to go on forever, and of course, the she-wolf had no idea where she was headed.

She seemed to enter some kind of eddy and spent a long time traveling around and around in a slow circle, fetching up eventually against a large tree root. Only then did the rush of water seem to calm, the monsoon passing. Eventually, the water stopped frothing and settled, the current dissipating and allowing her body to float freely, gently bobbing in the middle of a small lagoon of some kind. It turned out to be a boon for the she-wolf as, with a lot of effort, she found that she could wobble her flab around in a way that let her nose bob down momentarily, but still enough to drink from the water supporting her. The water was brackish, disgusting, but it was all she had and it kept her alive a while longer.

The ant-mind continued with its pursuit of her, but since she was not dying of thirst anytime soon, (maybe saltwater poisoning or her own obesity related health complaints...) its words held less appeal than ever. She spent a month in the lagoon, becoming dirtier and soggier than she ever would have imagined, but she also lost a tremendous amount of weight as well, enough that she could even wave her flabby limbs around a little, to actually maneuver her gigantic body, though she lacked even a seal's ability to climb out onto land.

In that time, the ant-mind did change its demeanor somewhat. It mocked her at times, showing images of what she would look like a hundred pounds lighter, or half her weight, full of stretched out, dragging skin. "I won't actually let you wander around my island." It began to tell her. "It'd be better for you to come back now and stop damaging your body."

The she-wolf refused to respond to either its requests or threats, even when it claimed that her children 'wanted to see her.' That was low, even for an alien mind.

It turned out not to matter. Another monsoon came and swept the she-wolf right out of her "comfortable" lagoon. The brackish water should have been a hint at her nearness to the sea for quite suddenly, she was passing over white sands in her flash flood and spitting out much saltier water. She was swept out maybe a mile, maybe more, only managing to swim back to the only land in sight with the mobility her month of losing weight had granted. Eventually, her chest plowed into soft sand with the force of a lover's kiss and she floated there gently, largely at the mercy of the waves still. This was as far as she could go. Then, she realized as the day wore on, she was in no better condition than she was the very first day, worse now that her body was floating in salt water, not fresh. "Dehydration after all..." thought the she-wolf wearying of the constant bait and switch.

As the enormous fattened wolf lay there helplessly, she knew both that her only hope was continued rain, not an unfeasible hope in a rain forest, but still so uncertain, and that the next storm would likely sweep her fully out to sea. "Did not see shark-food coming up on the list..." muttered the she-wolf wearily to herself, but closed her mouth quickly lest it dry out faster.

She did think about the ant-mind then, as hope fled her finally, and its offer of comfort and obviously endless succor. It'd cost her life and freedom of course, but here and now... well, there definitely seemed to be more life its way and she knew what to expect at the very least. The hive mind had even offered to set things up as comfortably as could be arranged, above ground and no hoses for as long as she could possibly manage without them and Roger and her children with her, all growing together... So tempting in its own right.

That the ants could still even reach her, the she-wolf had no doubt. True, even the mild surf would present an enormous challenge in the effort of moving her massive form, but she was sure the ant-mind could still do it, even if it had to sacrifice millions of itself.

But the greater part of herself still held out, not for the hope of more life, but because some things were more important than life. The she-wolf had decided that being a prized pig, no, not even a pig, a prized vegetable, was too much for her dignity to suffer as an individual. It did not matter how much she was pampered or cherished or even loved. Robbing her of her everything that made her a wolf, in addition to setting her destiny upon the supper table, could never be part of any worthwhile life, if such an existence could even be called a life. No, she would end here on this beach, or, she supposed adrift at the endless sea, whichever came first. It could be even that the ant-mind lost its patience and decided to abduct her, a minority part of her mind actually hoped for that, having lost the battle of will to beg to be taken care of again. But whatever happened, she had done the impossible. She'd won. But winning did not make her any less thirsty...

Four days later, she had nearly dried out completely before they found her. The sound of crunching sand alerted the she-wolf to new comers. The she-wolf looked up wearily, able to move her head a little a bit more now, and assumed she was delirious.

"It can't be..." said a voice in English and the she-wolf was thinking the exact same thing.

A very round shape waddled next to the people, slowly coming up to her, planting a heavy paw on her thickened flesh. "You?" Asked a familiar, fat face.

"Yeah, me." Said the she-wolf and quite unbidden, her tail began to wiggle back and forth under the heavy sagging tail head smothering it. "You've lost weight, Einstein."

"You can't be alive! What are you doing here?!" Began the morbidly obese German Shepherd dog before he could help himself, and those were far from the only questions or comments he had as the man following him brought out his canteen.

"Our research is going to have to wait until we get this one on board..." said the man, as the she-wolf guzzled happily. "Is she truly one of the test animals? After all this time?"

The German Shepherd nodded, waving his heavy neck in the process. "Yeah. Impossible as it sounds, I know her."

"It's a miracle then!" Said the man standing above both of them jovially.

"Or something like that..." muttered the shepherd dog as the she-wolf drank and drank...