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Srida's tongue flicked out and caught the scent in the air again.

"It's close," she whispered, giving Leo a sidelong look, who was sniffing the air as well.

He nodded in agreement, one of his tentacles pointing slightly off to their right. He'd been moving on all sixes while stalking the naga, prompting Srida to stay low to the ground as well.

"It's moving on the stone otherwise there'd be a trail," he murmured.

Srida raised herself up slowly, hairsnakes allowing her to survey the area all around her at once. If she so much as caught a glimpse of it, she'd drop back down to the ground immediately. Yet when she saw what lay ahead, she sighed and lowered herself with far less urgency than if she'd been seen.

"It'll be amongst the stalagmites," she muttered, pointing slightly further ahead than where Leo had assumed the naga was. "They start over there. Thing probably lives in them."

One of Leo's ears twitched and then they both angled back slightly, giving him an annoyed expression. It was surprising how expressive his ears were. "Okay, let's get this thing then."

He padded forward in near silence, his claws fully retracted and no longer clicking on the stone like they had when he'd found Srida in the cave earlier that day. Their plan was a simple one. Leo being a displacer beast wasn't in any real threat from the naga, so he would draw its attention, and lead it towards Srida, who would petrify it. If anything went wrong, Leo could simply warp out, and the naga couldn't go near Srida without getting petrified.

The only risk is that it would sense Srida somehow and flee, and they'd be unable to stop it. She needed to be able to look into its eyes for the petrification to work, and the creature was likely big enough that there wasn't another way for the two of them to take it down.

The two of them crested the small hill and slipped in amongst the stalagmites, taking their time and ensuring they didn't make much noise.

"We probably should have gone in against the wind," Leo said quietly after they'd been among the stone spikes for a couple minutes.

"Bit too late for that," Srida hissed, annoyed that it hadn't occurred to her.

Raising herself up again, Srida tried to peer over the stalagmites but didn't find much success. They were too closely packed together to see much of anything, and just left her exposing herself like a fool.

Suppressing the urge to hiss in frustration, she lowered herself back down and glanced to Leo. "Can't see anything...we're going to need to navigate this maze the old-fashioned way."

He gave her a curt nod. "I was afraid of that," he muttered in a low voice. "Let's find a bit of a clearing. You stay there and I'll try move outward in a spiral, and if I find it, I'll lead it to you."

Srida nodded in return. "Simple enough. Will you be able to find me in all this?" She kept her voice in a whisper as well. They did want to draw its attention, but on their terms.

"Just make a little bit of noise when I have it chasing me," Leo answered. "My ears are far more sensitive."

"And you don't hear it now?" Srida asked, arching a scaly eyebrow.

"I can't hear it moving or breathing, no," Leo grunted, annoyed. "The thing's probably asleep some ways away."

He sniffed the air again, prompting Srida to flick her tongue out again as well. The look that passed between them was understanding. The naga was definitely close by, with its stale scent still hanging strongly in the air. Thinking about how obvious it was to them that the naga was here, Srida hoped neither of them would have such a strong scent. She didn't think so, as none of the hellions from Stillrock smelled much either--probably because they tended to clean themselves a lot more than their wild counterparts.

Srida found a spot that had a bit more room to move around and pulled the rest of her body in so that she was coiled up in one spot and didn't have her serpentine half trailing far out behind her. After that, there wasn't much she could do other than wait patiently. She strained to listen, flicked her tongue out repetitively, and even lifted herself up several times, but she couldn't get any idea of what was going on, other than the scent that seemed to permeate the air.

It was hard to tell how much time passed, and though it felt like twenty minutes it was probably closer to five, but the sound of a growl and claws on stone off to Srida's left caught her attention. Immediately she whistled--a sound the naga probably wouldn't associate with a large creature like herself, but still shrill enough to easily catch Leo's ear--and faced towards where the sound had come from, readying herself.

There was the sound of claws on stone again, scrambling and a yelp--Leo's yelp--but followed by more movement. Srida's heart was racing. She knew he would be okay--he could warp out if things got bad--but it didn't stop her anxiety from tying knots in her stomach. It felt like there were so many things that could go wrong here, but she wasn't sure what they were. The umbral plain was full of surprises, and neither of them had been down here long enough to know what they might be.

It was only about ten of fifteen seconds of chase, but Leo bounded through the stalagmites towards her with the naga close on his heals, moving just fast enough to stay ahead of it. The moment he saw her, Leo blinked out of existence, probably warping behind her.

The naga didn't have so much as a chance to react as Srida tapped into her gorgon powers and unleashed as strong of a blast of petrification as she could. The magic sent a tingle through her hairsnakes and every single one of her eyes focused on the naga, and the cave around her seemed to darken. Her pupils had contracted completely to razor thin slits, and the green around them glowing fiercely. The magic in the air was palpable, and it actually made one of the stalagmites crack through about ten feet up its length.

There had been so much power in the wave she unleashed at it, the naga had absolutely no right shrugging the attack off the way it did. It just flinched, hissed angrily and came right at her.

Srida was so shocked by its resilience that she hardly reacted to the naga's strike. She was still staring at it expectantly, waiting for the creature to turn to stone that she only just managed to avoid the naga's lunge as it struck at her like a snake. It was only her inhumanly quick reflexes that saved her, twisting to the side and avoiding the impact as the naga missed her torso.

She hadn't avoided it entirely, however. The naga had stretched its arms out its side like it was trying to tackle her, and as it shot past it managed to wrap its left arm around her torso and use that as an anchor point to pivot and grab her in a bear hug. Srida thought she was strong, but the naga that had grabbed her had that same supernatural strength, and it was also male. Its arms were built like Gowris', thicker than any man could naturally achieve, and far stronger than they already looked.

In an instant, Srida found herself in an iron vice.

She howled and twisted, trying to shake the naga off like she had Bendali a couple days earlier, but unlike the displacer beast, this naga weighed even more than she did. Somehow it had wrapped its tail around a Stalagmite and anchored itself to the ground, and when Srida tried to twist out, using her serpentine half for previously unmatched power, the naga just held fast.

Before she knew it, the naga was twisting her instead, somehow spinning the two of them in circles and causing their two serpent halves to become entwined together. Srida was still trying to pry herself out of its arms when she realized what it had done, and the fact that their bodies were twisted together meant that it had control of their lower halves as well. That's when the horror of the situation started to sink it.

She was trapped.

The first thing she did was reach for her power--her astral magic. Caught up in the moment and resisting its attempts to further knot them into a ball where it would undoubtably try and choke her out, twist of horror stabbed at her. She couldn't concentrate enough to cast any spell.

Srida tried to get the focus she needed to create the image of a rune in her mind, but already struggling to breath in the naga's grip, fighting against its attempts to knot them in a ball, and resisting its attempts to put her in a choke hold, she simply didn't have the mental fortitude. Concentrating through struggle and pain was why battle magic was so difficult, and Srida lacked both the willpower and discipline to make it work.

With the struggle against the naga's overwhelming strength becoming a blur, Srida wasn't sure what changed that allowed her to first wriggle out of its arms. In the heat of the moment, it didn't really matter, and she just focused on getting behind it and getting her arms wrapped around its midsection, hiding her face and neck in its lower back. If it got anything around her neck, she died.

It was only then that she dimly registered through her hairsnakes what was happening. Two thick cords were wrapped around the naga's neck, jerking violently and trying to suffocate it.

Leo's tentacles.

Srida scrambled, quickly unknotting herself from the naga--and immediately realizing that was a mistake. She should have kept it pinned.

Untangled from Srida, the naga broke from her grip and lashed out at Leo, desperately trying to grab him so it would kill the displacer quickly. It didn't seem to realize he could vanish at will.

Reaching for her astral magic again, Srida found she couldn't make it work. Not through the pain in her ribs and the fogginess in her head. She could feel the power, but not make the right symbols appear in her mind. With so little time to think, Leo dancing from stalagmite to stalagmite, Srida tried the only option she had left.

The naga was resistant to similar magics that she had it seemed, unable to be petrified and almost certainly resistant to hypnosis as well. But Srida remembered what the succubus had done to her psyche, and how she had been completely enthralled in its power, while not even being attracted to that sex.

Groaning, she forced her power web towards the succubus and let the changes flow through her. Srida didn't have time to let the change occur naturally. She filled her body with the succubus' power, somehow forcing the power to take her more quickly. A change that had taken over a minute the last time happened it probably five seconds. It was so quick and disorienting, it was only catching herself on a stalagmite that prevented her from falling over. In those few precious seconds of the fight her serpentine lower half had shrunk and split into legs, a long and thick tail shot out behind her, two wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, and her hairsnakes turned into actual hair.

On top of that, the change in skin color and bodily proportions seemed almost minuscule compared to the drastic changes in shape her body felt.

But her discomfort didn't matter. She knew what a succubus could do, and how deceptively dangerous they could be. Men in the overworld had been left nearly comatose after encounters with these demons. A flayed soul was nothing to joke about, and was something that took months to recover from.

Still hardly on her feet, Srida tapped the succubus' power and focused the might of it on the naga. It writhed and thrashed, trying to get the tentacles off from its neck, and finally managed to grab Leo.

"Leo, let it go!" Srida shouted, her voice far shriller than she was used to. "Let me deal with it!"

He obviously heard her voice, though whether he knew who it was that had shouted was a different matter. Regardless, he blinked out of existence yet again, disappearing into another dimension as he warped a short distance away.

Whatever the naga had been feeling was completely overwhelmed by the lust Srida projected at it. To her, the feeling of casting the magic wasn't very different from her petrification, but it was definitely more precise and could be directed at a single target.

The effect was immediately obvious. The demon calmed down, looking around eagerly instead of angrily for something--for anything, actually. The magic had caused it to become instantly aroused and essentially denied someone the ability to think about anything else, even if they were intelligent. What it did to something that was little more than an animal was probably much, much greater. Srida winced at what she knew was coming next, but nevertheless was already peeling her top off--the only article of clothing she had. There was only one way to flay its soul after all.

Hopping lightly--and it was weird to have legs again after so long as a gorgon--Srida beat her new wings a couple times, surprised at their strength and coming to rest atop a stalagmite with the top broken off, sitting on it primly. She fully intended to play the part of a succubus and wasn't going to take any chances with this demon. It had already surprised them once, and now her body was far more fragile than it had been as a gorgon.

It only took the naga a couple moments to notice her. She was sitting with her legs somewhat spread and hands planted directly on the flat edge of the stalagmite between them, covering her only slightly. Her upper arms were pressing her breasts together and showing them off, hopefully drawing all of the naga's attention to them so it didn't notice the only half convincing seductive look she had on her face. It would probably look like a pathetic attempt on a normal woman, but the shear beauty of the succubus body she now sported gave her some leeway. She could be sleeping with drool dripping from her mouth and still look cute.

Flicking her tail casually, Srida tossed her hair and made eye contact with the naga. It immediately started towards her, the look of pure desire and primitive lust on its face something that would haunt her for weeks to come.

The naga clearly wasn't intelligent like a hellion, and it was something that reflected in its facial expressions. The feral aggression that had been dominating it before was replaced with a more passive look as well, something that Srida could only describe as a simpleton lusting after her. Mercilessly crushing her revulsion, she kept the smile up and glanced up to see Leo reappear.

She shot him a hard look, quickly shook her head and mouthed no at him, then turned her attention back to the naga. Hopefully this would be over incredibly quickly. She wasn't entirely sure how strong of a succubus she was, but her instincts told her that if she had her wings, she certainly wasn't on the weaker side.

As it was, when the naga drew nearer to her she started to feel its emotions leaking over some kind of mental link she had established. Srida had to suppress a wince again, but fortunately there wasn't really much else there. Just lust and desire. If anything, feeling what it felt gave her a bit of confidence--and least it wasn't duping her to draw close before attacking. There wasn't any aggression in its mind at all.

Regardless, as it drew near Srida licked her lips nervously. This was something she had literally never done on several levels. The height she was sitting at was no detriment for the naga, it rose up ten feet to meet her and reached out with surprising tenderness, its hand light on her side with the other gently groping her breast.

The burst of pleasure that shot through her body was nearly mind-numbing. Srida knew the succubi were sensitive and suffered a near-permanent state of arousal, but this was far stronger than she could have possibly imagined. Her nipples were obviously erogenous zones more so than anything Andreas had ever experienced as a male. It wasn't just pleasureful, it was like a drug. The amount of willpower it took Srida to keep her focus was something she didn't know she could muster until that moment. Perhaps it was the knowledge that something that was effectively an animal was groping her, perhaps it was that deeper personality of Andreas which protested having the body of a woman and a male coming onto her, but regardless, somehow she was able to keep a small part of her mind cold and detached from the situation.

It was hard, but she did it.

Objectively, she knew the best way to end this was to flay its soul--what the succubi and incubi called it when they created a feedback loop of pleasure so intense it seemed to be able to damage the mind and soul. How that worked wasn't really something Srida knew the answer too, but it was fact that any creature that didn't have some succubus or incubus in them was vulnerable to the magic.

So Srida pushed the magic to its limit, trying her hardest not to revel in the sensations flowing through her. Seemingly on its own behalf one of her hands found its genitalia and had wrapped her fingers around it, creating a source of pleasure from the naga as well. What happened afterwards was incredibly hard on the mind.

The naga gained the ability to feel what she felt, as well as Srida being able to fully feel what it did. With the constant stimulation from both their bodies, it created a powerful feedback loop that mortal minds simply weren't built to handle. It was a light that was too bright--a sound that was too loud--it was a pleasure that was too overwhelming. When that happened Srida had closed her eyes breathlessly, almost lost in the sensation herself and only a tiny bit of her holding on to what was around her. That tiny bit of her, wrapped in a cold void and fighting away the wave of pleasure by holding onto her astral magic, it noticed something.

She could feel the naga's power web.

Floating in the void, almost detached from her body, Srida looked at it curiously, then to her own. They were almost like paintings in a way, two renditions of the same thing done by different artists, except hers covered more of the canvas. She was a gorgon, and it a naga, yet they shared things in common. Somehow looking at it, she could tell what each piece was, like looking at a picture.

They both had the serpent tail, the slitted eyes, the forked tongue...but there were also a lot of differences. What was her snake hair stood out as obvious, but also her ability to petrify. Down off to the side was only what she could describe as a link to something else--and when she turned her gaze to it, she saw a second power web--a succubus' power web. Right in the middle of it was a little glowing ball of white light--her soul where she had forced it to initiate the transformation, and the very thing that differentiated her from the demonic naga.

Turning her attention back to the naga's power web she was vaguely aware that things were escalating between the two of them physically. Only a couple seconds had passed since she'd entered this strange state of mind and while time did seem to be passing slower here, she didn't have a lot of it.

Srida quickly sifted through its power web, easily finding the portion that was hypnotic resistance and matching it against her own. The two parts were virtually identical.

Grimacing, Srida thought a small prayer to those above, and ripped it out.

The naga reeled back from her, a primal and horrific scream bursting from its throat as it released her and writhed on the ground, its serpentine body twisting into a knot and convulsing it what could only be bone-wrenching pain.

Fully aware of her physical body again, Srida shot backwards, her wings seemingly taking her into the air on their own accord, safely away from the naga in case it tried to strike at her again. In her mind, she could feel like piece that she'd ripped away floating inside her own power web, not really attached to her in a way she could access it, but still fully her own, much like the imp she had killed and taken for its power. She could also burn this little piece for power if she wanted.

Still, she breathed a sigh of relief upon feeling its presence. Ripping it out in this fashion hadn't been part of her initial plan, but it had worked.

The naga slowly stopped moving on the ground aside from the occasional twitch or convulsion, evidently in a lot of pain. Srida vaguely remembered that as she ripped the part that she'd needed out of the nagas power web, other threads had stretched or snapped as well. The very structure that defined the shape the creature's essence formed into had just been mangled, and as for how that effected it physically...Srida wasn't sure she wanted to find out.

A quick glance around below her found Leo among the stalagmites, so she lessened the strength of her wingbeats to drift down to him. The fact that she knew how to fly instinctively was a bit awesome and frightening at the same time, and Srida got down as quickly as possible in case thinking about it to much made her unable to stay in the air anymore. She was doing it now, but she didn't really know how.

Landing heavily on the ground, Srida looked to Leo who was staring back with wide eyes.

"Srida?" he asked nervously, his eyes flicking down her body and back up to her own again, evidently trying not to stare.

She gave him a small nod. "I got this body a little while ago. I'd hardly even used it, but after the petrification failed..."

He made a reassuring gesture. "No, no, don't worry about it, that worked perfectly!" He glanced past her to the naga still twitching on the ground. "We should probably drop a rock on its head before it recovers though."

Srida just shook her head, feeling suddenly exhausted. "We can just leave, I have what I need."

That drew a quizzical look from Leo, his eyes not struggling to stay locked onto hers this time. A couple weeks in a settlement full of succubi seemed to have helped with that. "How?"

Giving him a small sigh, she explained what had just happened from her perspective, with the sensual feedback, and reaching for the astral magic to keep herself focused.

"I just...felt its power web," she went on. "I guess the astral magic combined with whatever this body does let me touch the naga's soul--except it didn't have one, just a power web. But finding the right part was easy, and I might have been able to delicately remove it, but I just ripped it out." She shuddered at the feeling. It had been extremely visceral and probably something like ripping the guts out of a live creature.

"But you could use that to...give it to me?" Leo said that hesitantly, but Srida's gaze shot back up to his.

"Yes, but not right now," she snapped. The moment she had felt the naga's power web, this side of things had occurred to her as well, and if she had to have sex with Leo to give him the power it was not _something she wanted to think about at this instant. The bit inside her that was Andreas--her core identity--still hated the idea. It just felt _wrong.

"No, that's fine," Leo said blandly, stepping past from her. Getting only as close to the debilitated naga as he needed to, Leo used one of his long tentacles to grab her discarded top from where she had dropped it on the ground in her gambit to seduce the naga.

He passed the scale forged garment back to her and she took it gingerly, then just slung it over her shoulder and started walking back in the direction of Stillrock. As a succubus her breasts were far too large to fit the top properly and it would just be uncomfortable to wear. It also felt good to walk, after slithering for the better part of the last couple weeks.

Leo quickly caught up to her but the two of them walked in silence for quite some time, Leo seemingly too nervous to break it, and Srida not wanting too. In that time, Srida did some introspection that she desperately needed. Ever since transforming into a gorgon in the name of survival, a part inside her--Andreas--had been trying to hold onto his sexuality. The unfortunate part was that despite what Andreas had initially hoped, this wasn't going to be a short stay in the umbral plain.

Initially, he'd been worried about his identity getting twisted by staying as a gorgon for a while, but he was starting to realize that it wasn't really a problem. At this rate, he was already changing as a person simply due to the circumstances. He was being forced to adapt. It was also strange, he mused, that he was thinking of himself as a man in that moment, despite being in the pinnacle of a feminine body.

No, Srida had larger problems then what was between her legs. Andreas liked to think of himself as practical, and it certainly wasn't practical to fight the messages his body was sending him out of spite. Still, Srida was still glad she'd made the encounter with the naga as short as possible, but she was going to need to do it again, and there was no point in dreading it, was there?

She mulled over that thinking for quite some time, trying to come to odds with the idea that there was really no practical reason to resist her instincts while she was down here, and that she would only need to fight whatever was leftover from them when she got back to the overworld--if she ever did. That would be a problem to solve when she got there and shouldn't be worried about at the moment. It was only some strange, misplaced sense of pride that made her do so. Perhaps it was actual resentment at _being _a woman?

Srida found herself frowning. It wasn't exactly that. Perhaps it was less resentment at being a being a woman now and more and no longer being male? She wasn't really ready to tackle the question of why the gender shift seemed to bother her at a fundamental level, but it did, and she had no choice but to get over it.

"Leo," she said suddenly, breaking the silence. "It doesn't bother you how I have to do to give the hypnotic resistance to you, does it?"

It took him a moment to answer. "How bad does the soul flaying have to be? How long am I going to be out for?"

Srida pursed her lips. "I honestly can't answer that. I don't know how hard it's going to be to access your power web, or how inserting something into it is going to affect you."

Another moment of silence hung between them.

"I see," he finally said, nodding slowly. "And it doesn't really bother me. I went into this thinking you'd need to kill me to make the change and let me spawn again."

She gave a slight sniff at that. He was right of course, this was a far better alternative. "I suppose I could pretend to have found you already the victim of a succubus and drag you back to Stillrock. It would be quite a plausible scenario."

His head turned to her a little too quickly to have been a casual glance. "Now?" He sounded a little incredulous when he said that.

"Today at least," she said quietly, not looking at him. She missed the vision her hairsnakes gave her as a gorgon. "No point in putting it off, I know what I need to do."

Leo seemed almost solemn when she said that. Somehow, it was a little comforting to know he wasn't really looking forward to it either. She had gotten the opposite impression when he's inquired earlier, and something about that had rubbed the wrong way on her.

"Well," he said after a moments silence. "Let's find a cave that's relatively close." Then he grinned with a bit too much mirth. "That way you won't need to drag me too far."