FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The last echoes of clattering platemail finally fade, leaving only the collective, heavy breathing of a party of delvers. An antlered dragon pulls her maul free from the crevice in the gray-blue stonework her killing blow had carried the edge to. She wipes viscera-like streaks of ancient oil from its stone-cutting edge before slinging it back over her shoulder, and brushing remnant droplets off the turquoise scales of her face.

"That was the last one, right?" she finally asks, giving the scattered remains of the gilded automaton a kick. "No other surprises tonight?"

"It's all surprises, Rysah," a hooded fennec chuckles, sliding up next to her and taking a knee in the middle of the terraced chamber, beginning to pick through the clockwork innards, quickly retrieving a honey-colored gem and holding it up to the light. "Lest we forget what good the false sense of security did us the last time we went dungeon-crawling this long."

"Yeah, yeah... Anybody need healing?" Rysah offers; she does take her vixen companion's words to heart, but knows better than to stroke her already massive ego.

"Already taken care of!" calls a striped cat, picking up another party member and turning their head the right way around with an unsettling crack.

The recipient of the maneuver, a newly revivified mole, understandably screams at first, patting themself over as they scramble to their feet. "I'm up, I'm up!" they protest, rubbing their sore neck and bumping into the warlock assisting their feline cleric with the resurrection.

"Well you could have fooled me and Oskar," the horse says, giving the mole a teasing smile and crouching to pat them on the head, but his leather-braced hand is swiftly batted away.

"Play nice, you two," the cat urges, his voice truly bereft of authority; it's more of a plea. He places a gentler hand on the mole, delivering a pulse of healing light into their body and clearing their lingering pain. "Sizzle, have you looted everything you care to?"

"Mm, for now," the fennec concedes, tucking away the gem with the others, satisfied enough with its quality. "Onward, then? If these things are gonna keep interrupting our rest, we should just keep moving. We have to be close to the end."

"Then let's not delay," the equine warlock prompts, striding past the others and drawing his cudgel, starting down the gradually descending way forward once more.

"Behind me, Thoreau, I appreciate the eagerness but I can take a hit better than you can," Rysah insists, jaunting past him. "Even though you and Fio have been taking all the hits tonight."

"I can't help it if attention naturally flows toward me," the mole says with a beaming grin. "That's the bard's job, after all." They strike a pose for just a moment, but Oskar's hand comes down to nudge them along.

"Maybe we should leave that job to those of us wearing plate?" he suggests, hurrying Fio along the torchlit passage.

It doesn't take long for the path to level out, and the hanging fog of a large chamber at the end of the tunnel comes into view. The party picks up the pace, as Sizzle steps to the front, quickly scanning the stonework over for stray traps. Eagerness won't get the better of them; in a previous life, the fennec had tried to live up to the mantle of a barbarian, but that came to an end in the deep parts of a stray gelatinous cube. For that reason, she paid especially close attention to the cleanliness of the bricks, taking some comfort in finding they hadn't been scoured unnaturally clean.

"Path's clear, let's move up," she urges, bounding ahead.

"Waaait, we just talked about this!" Oskar objects. Rysah is already on it, sprinting to catch up. As the others quicken their step to stay close to their most durable party member, it leaves the cat to bring up the rear.

A legion of massive pillars fills the basin of the room, almost like the trees of a forest, growing sparser toward the room's center. Between them, rickety walkways form paths, unevenly spaced strands of slabs leading the party over the flat tops of the pillars and across gaps filled by a thick fog. Even then, visibility is limited by the rising clouds of it, hiding the enormous, lounging form in the center until they're right upon it.

Emerald green irises peer down over the shimmering trails of impeccable eyeliner, lighting up with recognition but completely unbothered. It's a sharp contrast compared to the adventurers who immediately erupt into clamor.

"Ahhhh see, I told you it was a self-insert dungeon!" Rysah says, elbowing Thoreau, who takes a small step to the side to preserve his stance.

Perched comfortably if a bit restlessly in a sideways throne meant for reclining upon like a fainting couch, is the towering form of a dark furred jackal, bearing a godly gilding across his face. His stacked earrings click against one another as he cranes his neck down to look them all over.

"Welcome, all, you're a little bit late, but I suppose the thread puzzle did keep you busy longer than I expected it to."

"Hey Anuun, is this gonna be a long monologue?" Sizzle asks impatiently. Her foot taps just to drive the point home, but she's sassing him as she usually does.

He sighs, matching her energy, and lifting himself out of the throne. He stretches, popping his back a few times, and the sound is resonant enough to be felt in the party's chests like resonant bass. "I get the feeling you're not about to take this seriously."

He drops down onto the floor below, rising upright and once again looming over them, much closer now.

"I mean, I've got a few reservations about fighting you," Oskar adds, tail twitching in nervous agitation. "Like everything else has been a construct or something, but this is..."

"Alright, alright," Anuun concedes, raising his palms outwards in a placative gesture, but a mischievous expression takes up residence on his face during the pause. "But what about fighting each other?"

A familiar sense of anticipation surges through the group, it's one they've learned to recognize at the start of every encounter, and instinctively, they know Anuun is about to make the first move. Rysah doesn't even have time to react as he leans in, inhaling deeply, and pulling a blue-white aura from her body. Her stance falters, becoming languid, but she remains standing.

"...Rysah?" Fio asks, taking a tentative step towards her. They're not dumb; they have their shortsword ready, but the sense of inhibition they entered with hasn't quite left yet.

But it's promptly chased out as the dragon turns, bringing her maul through an overhead swing, narrowly missing the sidestepping mole. There comes a collective gasp as they note her expression; a vacant, open-mouthed grin, punctuated by pupiless green eyes.

"Think fast, everybody," the jackal prompts in an uncaring singsong, raising a manacled hand, his fingers positioned to snap.

Before they can make a sound, the party springs into action.

"Fio, positions!" Sizzle shouts, leaping aside and diving into the cloudy chasm.

Fio hurries back across the last walkway just as Anuun snaps, and it explodes beneath their feet, sending them into a leap to bridge the gap. Landing unsteadily, they pull ripcords under their cloak, deploying a complete setup for a one-mole band, the drum mounted on their back beginning to lay down a rousing rhythm from a safe distance.

Anuun only tracks them for a moment, always holding an admiration for his adventurers' ingenuity, but when his eyes return to the others, Sizzle is already gone, leaving Thoreau and Oskar to tag-team their brainwashed ally. The dragon drives them back, forcing them to give up ground to get out of her controller's reach, fearful of simply being subsumed as well, but they quickly run out of space. The striped cat steps forward, roaring as his shield rises to intercept the head of the maul before it can connect with Thoreau's head.

They're plenty preoccupied, the jackal determines, but he still has to worry about Sizzle... who swiftly moves in to make herself a problem. Anuun's ears twitch to attention as he catches the sound of something rushing through the air. He turns his head, genuinely surprised as the fennec comes plummeting from high above, the force of her descent concentrated behind both her daggers, aimed for the spot between his neck and shoulder; she's eager to end this as soon as it began.

The look of fierce determination in her eyes disintegrates in time with her matched blades, rusting on contact with the midnight coat of her quarry and leaving two corroded handles in her twitching grip.

"Not that you'll get a next time, but a silver or enchanted weapon would have actually gotten me pretty good," Anuun points out, his luminous glare focused right on her. "I seem to recall a fancy longsword you sold on account of it being 'not your style?'"

Sizzle's ears bat downwards, her lips purse, and her eyes widen. There had been a very small part of her that said she shouldn't have gotten rid of it; it was as small as she feels right now. But how she wishes she'd listened. Her stomach drops along with Anuun's shoulder, and she tumbles backwards, rolling over one shoulder just in time to find herself at the end of the jackal's muzzle. Her heart skips a beat as she feels the precarious surface of his shoulder slip from underfoot and let gravity take her, but before she can even begin to fall, his golden tongue curls out beneath her.

What remains of her daggers drop into the fog below as she tries to brace herself on his fangs and avoid being reeled in, but the thick tendril of muscle is stronger than she is even without its superior leverage. Abruptly and unceremoniously, she tips into the jackal's maw, which eagerly snaps shut over her. She scrambles for footing, but there's not enough room to position herself defensively; all it accomplishes is rapidly coating her in his saliva. Her traction entirely lost, she can do nothing to stop herself from slipping into Anuun's throat, a modest bulge to be quickly packed down behind his collarbones.

Huffing out a content sigh, he shifts his attention back to the rest of the party, intent on dealing with them. However, Fio and Sizzle played well off each other as they always do, and the mole is gone from view as well.

With the dungeon master backing off with what appears to be caution, the cleric and warlock duo advance with a little more confidence, beginning to weave circles around Rysah.

Oskar steps forward with a snarl, bringing his battleaxe forward, trying to break through her platemail. Any harm he doles out, he's more than equipped to undo, so he fights with all the ferocity he's got, searing through his usually timid air as he fights to protect Thoreau.

She can't keep track of the gray horse, his brightly feathered vestments little more than a brief flicker at the corner of her vision; she can't disengage from the cat in time to avoid Thoreau's hands clamping down on her head. He closes his eyes, letting in a fey influence, flowing through his fingertips and into Rysah to tug at... nothing at all. She's not in there to control or even free.

"Just join me..." her voice creaks out, staggered and drunken. "It's sooooo nice here..."

"We're snapping you out of this, one way or another!" Thoreau insists, gripping tighter so Oskar can move in to knock her out nonlethally.

"Sad..." She effortlessly breaks the warlock's hold and headbutts the cleric before he gets a chance to do the same to her, antlers putting stars in his eyes as they rattle his skull. Her maul twirls in her hands, and she spins on the ball of her foot. In the middle of her upward swing, the head of the weapon ignites with a blazing light, nearly blinding Thoreau before it smashes into his chest anyway, launching him breathless off the edge of the platform

Oskar glances briefly over his shoulder, already feeling the pressure, but he's not distracted enough that he can't duck the next swing. Still crouched, he swivels on a single sole and lunges for the edge, barreling over it and digging his claws into the crumbling stone surface, letting himself drop and repeating the process a couple times to scale down to the floor below. Thoreau may need help, plus it gets him out of Anuun's reach.

Anuun, however, isn't looking for him anyway. He paces through the forest of pillars, trying to find the source of the deafening fusion of Italo disco and freestyle spoken word playing in his head. Freestyle, Fio's entire party could note, is a skill they have never had, but they have weaponized that fact to great effect, to the chagrin of all. Though the instinct to withdraw from the mole's take on Dissonant Whispers is one he's actively fighting against, that requires finding the unseen bard first.

The pillars here are taller, reaching the ceiling, cylindrical sections of alternating widths providing precarious terrain of a sort, which Anuun studies closely. A massive hand crashes irately into the stonework as he crouches, circling it and inspecting the ledges.

Fio, finally cornered but not yet discovered, sprints around the circumference as fast as their short legs will carry them, hoping the butchered rhymes assailing the jackal's auditory cortex will mask the sound of their rattling musical assembly. They draw in a breath as it seems like Anuun will stoop low enough to locate them, but after what feels like far too much time, he withdraws, taking a couple of steps back.

The mole emits a relieved sigh, momentarily closing their eyes, but as they do, the visual of a numeral 1 flashes against the eigengrau of their vision with a fiery, tangibly angry hue. They don't even get to finish being startled by it before Anuun hip-checks the pillar, sending them staggering off the edge.

Halting their fall takes little more than a quarter turn and a lift of his tail, shattering a thousand gold pieces' worth of equipment and sandwiching the mole in place. It's a stimulating feeling for Anuun, and yet he can't help but emit a sigh of relief, the discordant disco poetry in his head combining into a single, muted echo and being quickly forgotten.

"Let's be honest," he says, not disguising the ire in his voice, "after that experience, this is better than you deserve."

"I'd like to debate that, actually!" Fio protests, bracing themself against colossal glutes on either side, but there's a softness to then deep enough to prevent the mole from gaining any meaningful hold, preventing them from being pressed firmly against the jackal's body.

"I'm sure you would. So by all means, run that mouth all you like..."

A quick flex practically collars the mole in the muscular ring they had been fighting against, leaving their hands to fumble and press uselessly; one even slips right in, causing them to lose any resistant advantage their shoulders might have conferred.

"...after you're out of earshot," Anuun finishes. Pulling away from the pillar, he leaves Fio's hindquarters to hang, causing them to instinctively hold closer to the same surface currently swallowing them whole. In moments, that clenching tailhole seals them inside with no trace but the scattered remains of their musical apparatus, quickly trampled underfoot beneath the fog.

Somewhere else beneath the layer, a pale horse stricken even paler flees as far as his legs will take him. They give out sooner than he's used to, poor form sending him to the floor. Frantically trying to get up, he manages only up to all fours, and backs up against a rough stone surface to sit there and catch his quivering breath.

"Elodea, I know you're watching!" Thoreau whisper-shouts, trying to stifle the shake in his hands and overcome the magical fear that clings to him. "I'm not making it out of this without some fey intervention!"

He feels their touch steadying his hands before he sees them, an engraved, wooden form in the shape of a doe, plant and animal in equal measure. Their yellow-green eyes are framed by their smile in an expression of doting pity, but the light touch of kindness in them is sincere. "Alright then," they offer, "here's what's going to happen."

Together, they begin to hatch a plan, Elodea's soothing voice filtering out the sound of metal on metal not so far away.

Oskar snarls as his shield is ripped from his grasp, its straps destroyed by the lifting force of Rysah's strike. Both hands gripping seamlessly tight on his battleaxe, he returns the strike, an upwards arc in mimicry of Rysah's signature, which grazes the dragon's muzzle and sends her helmet careening into the distance.

"Sorry!" he interjects yet again; a reflex every time he lands a clean hit, but the crimson line perforating her snout is the first actual blood he's drawn.

Most of the armor Rysah has shed has served its purpose and beyond, leaving her in a lighter cuirass and making her far more agile, to Oskar's dismay. The trained, wiry form filling out the chainmail layer makes Oskar reevaluate his own figure, ill-suited to rapid movement. Every time she comes at him, he only barely manages to sidestep, block, or otherwise turn himself such that the head of the maul shatters plate instead of bone.

The dragon's back ripples as she swings overhead, intending to bring him low in one go. Gritting his teeth, Oskar holds up the handle of his weapon crosswise, bracing to block it, but his nerves break just as easily as the handle does, snapping cleanly in his steadfast grip.

The cat hits the floor as the off-target blow clips him in the chest instead, concaving his breastplate and making his labored breaths that much shallower. He scrambles to upright himself as the maul cuts air, twirling in Rysah's grip, and pouring all his conviction into a meek whisper, utters a prayer that immediately receives an answer. His apology, whispered to Rysah, is completely overshadowed by the roar of divine flame that carves through the stone of brick and cavern alike to envelop her.

For a moment, it seems like it might stall her, arms flailing wildly to extinguish it as Oskar watches on, relief and horror battling for direction, but horror wins out in the end, as the massive shape of Anuun breaks the fog, and kneeling down, he simply blows out the radiant blaze.

Oskar's fur bristles as the weapon that brought him to his knees hits the bricks, embedding solidly at an angle where Rysah leaves it.

He holds up his hands defensively, but the paladin's knee crashes right through them, leaving a matching crimson mark on his muzzle and bending him backwards.

Holding that uncomfortable position as limply as if he'd been out cold, it's a simple matter for Rysah to reach around him and unbuckle his breastplate, which might have allowed deeper breaths if he had the strength to take them. Her gauntleted hand digs into the scruff of his neck, dragging him to higher ground, the kind of sloping platform one might leave an offering upon.

Slowly looking up, Oskar's gentle green eyes make contact with an intense, saturated shade of the same. He tries to muster some kind of defiant remark, but it comes out as a trembling exclamation instead as a finger and thumb take him from beneath the arms and lift him to proper eye level, stalling there for a moment before taking him higher just to see if he'll do it again. He does, of course.

"I'm impressed, Oskar, I've never seen you scrap like that," Anuun praises. "Well, except for one other time but that was against an ally too, wasn't it? Sizzle, right?"

The cat's eyes flit off to the side and he huffs, recalling the battle in question. She was possessed at the time too, and the restoration spells bounced right off of her until she was unconscious.

"I guess the supporting role builds up a lot of frustration with his fellows that eventually needs to be addressed," the jackal continues, lifting him just a bit higher, overhead. Oskar's legs kick, useless even if he hadn't been so feeble, as he figures out just what he's in for.

"Hey, hey wait, you know how I am with tight spaces!" he protests, wriggling half-heartedly. After all, there's only one way he can fall now.

"Sure, sure. But you get me, right?" The smile Anuun gives him is so gentle and friendly that it's genuinely disarming... and then it splits wide open, and Oskar's embarrassing squeak is cut off by the click of the jackal's jaws before it can even resolve.

Oskar fights against the thick tongue, unable to stop it from pressing him into the ridges above over and over again, squeezing out what little strength he has left before sending him over the gentle incline at the back, golden throat wrapping tightly around him and pulling him down. Every direction squeezes in on him, and Oskar has no reservations about trying to dig his claws in, but they find no purchase over what feels to be a particularly long minute. Swallowing repeatedly, Anuun has to admit he's a fighter, but to his relief, eventually feels the cat settle.

Oskar arrives with a splash, almost missing the startled shout of "Hey, watch it!" from directly nearby. Something round and weighty clonks him on the head. Realizing there's a dim light coming from a few sunrods which have sunk to the pit of Anuun's stomach, he recognizes the object on sight as a flask and moves to catch it to save its contents, but Sizzle's hand shoots out for it first and she takes another deep swig.

"Well fuck," she exhales casually, "party wipe?"

"Thoreau's still out there... I think," Oskar replies, already starting to paw and push at the walls.

"Calm down, gods, you can't be doing your thing when I'm trying to make the best of it."

"How are you so calm anyway?" he asks, still pushing as deep as his arms will go, searching for the valve that dropped him in, but a quick clench knocks him back into the thick bath.

"That's uhhhh..." Sizzle trails off, quickly taking another gulp from the flask. "You know, just coming to terms with it all."

Oskar turns to her, his expression deeply sympathetic at first, but he nearly rolls an ankle on something round. Crouching, he pulls an enzyme-filled glass flask from beneath the surface, noting its identical appearance to the one Sizzle is drinking from, but for the bright green liquid hers still emanates.

"A-acid resistance?" he asks, raising a hand intending to indicate, but his fingers are poised to grab.

"Hold the hells on, big guy, don't you have any spells left for-"

"Just a sip, don't be greedy!" he insists, lunging for her. However, with an agility he really should have expected, she shifts to the side and grabs him by the head, burying it in the wall.

"I prefer to think of it as prepared, thank you very much!"

"Please, Sizzle, you always hoard all the potions anyway!"

"Didn't make much difference, di-"

Their surroundings heave, to their great surprise, and a third figure breaks through the pooling fluids from below.

In that moment, Oskar manages to turn his head enough to take note of them, and is just as astonished as Sizzle to see Fio.

"Well, folks," Fio breathlessly chuckles, wiping their face as dry as they can even get it, "the fresh beats didn't work as well as I thought they would, but I might have ooone more I can try!"

"No the fuck you don't," the other two say in unison, and to the mole's dismay, the duo push them right back under, trying to force them back the way they came.

Meanwhile, Anuun and Rysah stalk through the pillars for their final quarry, but minutes go by with no trace of him.

"Thoreau?" Anuun calls, stopping to lean an elbow on one of the flat tops. "You didn't run away without your teammates, did you? The next random band of adventurers you join up with at the nearest bazaar is going to be very upset with you for some reason!"

Rysah has continued to patrol out, prowling around in full circles around the pillars in hopes of catching sight of the warlock, but to no avail. But once she's good and far away from her master, Thoreau fades out of his invisible state, one glittering particle at a time, his cudgel raised high. He has no inhibitions about being the lone survivor here if that's what it takes.

The sound of the flat edge moving through the air as the ball at the tip descends toward her skull is all the warning she needs to reach up and catch it in a firm grip. Bending forward, she throws Thoreau, flipping the cudgel in her grip and advancing on him.

"Join... me..." she emanates, each word given an entire breath. She drops to a crouch next to the prone horse, locking vacant eyes with his, unable to differentiate the momentary impression of fear from his sudden glare of determination.

"Join us," he insists, invoking his fey protection. The weight of the will exerting itself on his mind inverts, flooding back into her, and riding that momentum is Elodea, the firefly glow of their eyes replacing Anuun's green which had dominated them just a moment before.

"I've only got a minute, Thoreau, make it count!" they urge, helping him back to his feet and handing him his cudgel.

"Crafty!" Anuun interjects, leaning over the stonework and peering from above. He reaches a hand down to grab for them, but they pass through illusory forms, to his genuine alarm. Searching for them, he notes a subtle tickle on his shoulder just in time for Thoreau to fade back into view and slam his pact weapon into the side of his snout, sending the jackal reeling.

Thoreau and the Elodea-inhabited shell of Rysah leap off the staggering giant onto the higher elevation granted by the pillars, hands aglow with magical fury.

"About time one of you got a hit, I knew you'd make this fun," the dungeon master chuckles. His laughter flows into a snarl as he brings down a hand, in less of a slam and more of a forceful press against the ground his opponents claim, and a glow as bright as sunlight spreads through its cracks before erupting with volcanic force.

When Thoreau opens his eyes again, he's high up in the air, the wood chimes affixed to his pelt armor beginning to smolder. Anuun is already parting his jaws below, but as the warlock comes within reach, he vanishes once more.

"How's this for fun?!" Bursting out of his Misty Step with his momentum conserved, he delivers another clean strike to the back of the head with enough force to knock Anuun forward, where the steadfast Rysah waits, unmoved, to follow up with a fiercely glowing Divine Smite to the side of his face, propelling him sideways off the pillar.

Thoreau leaps into the air off of his toppling form, reaching out for Rysah's hand, clasping wrists as she hauls him up to safety and they watch dust billow out, sifting upward through tumbling stones as Anuun crashes through.

But of course it's not that easy. A growl heralds his emergence from the dust, a massive shoulder crashing into Thoreau and Rysah's pillar, knocking it down in one final, momentous fall.

Minutes pass before Thoreau can pull himself from the rubble. He doesn't know exactly how long, but long enough that, for all his urgency in exhuming himself, scrambling between boulders and clearing his lungs, he is unsurprised to find the gemlike green glare in Rysah's eyes once more, his cudgel once again gripped in one of her hands, all while the other extends as if to help him up.

With a resigned sigh, he takes it, yelping as she tosses him down the ruined slope and hitting a mostly flat surface with a grunt. In mid-motion of picking himself up, a failing endeavor anyway, he freezes in place to the two thuds in succession of Anuun kneeling in front of him. After a pause, Thoreau continues to look up, instinctually averting his gaze from the compromising view between Anuun's thighs and pretending to clear his throat some more.

"No need to be shy, Thoreau, we're about to get nice and familiar," Anuun chides, leaning forward and finding a place to brace a hand, his figure now looming primarily overhead. "Part of me really wants to congratulate you for making such an impressive dent in me, but-"

His hips jerk forward, the enormous, pillowy, black sheath centered among them enveloping the horse in one go. "-I really don't want to chance you getting one more action hero quip out."

Thoreau struggles inside, embedded deeper than appearances would indicate, but that's a revelation made quite clear to the lone onlooker as Anuun's massive, golden shaft leaves its home, one pulse at a time. It pivots up and down with every involuntary twitch brought on by Thoreau's weak but frantic movements, which also serves to swallow him that much faster. By the time the jackal achieves a complete erection, knot and all, he's halfway down it, trading places with a clear, dripping rivulet. On its own it would be enough to soak a person throughout, marking them with the jackal's scent for days, but inside, the horse is already soaked through with a sticky coating of pre, lubricating his way down, vanishing into the thick base with little fanfare.

He draws a deep breath as he emerges in the jackal's prostate, which he instantly regrets; the air is thick and tastes just like everything else. Scrambling for purchase against the slippery walls, form-fitting but not particularly tight, only makes them tense up, gradually coaxing him into the deeper parts of the gland. Sputtering on the thick glaze, he doesn't even get out another shout as he's sucked deeper, into the tightest set of tubes, winding up into Anuun's abdomen before being sent into a rapid dive, emerging inside his right ball with enough force to make it bounce.

"Dignity was just too good for you, you always squander it," Anuun teases, gripping his package as his prey kicks from inside, to little effect but building an orgasm he'll resolve long after he can be assured of an entirely liquid load.

Thoreau fights to keep his head above the white bath, pressing into the ceiling just to draw adequate breath, the weight of vascular flesh bearing down and giving him little space at all to work with. "Elodea! I need help again!"

As always, their arrival is sudden, but this time their voice is muffled. "I don't think there's any getting out of this one, darling."

"...Are you in his other testicle?" the horse asks flatly, his panic entirely shelved by the absurdity of it all.

"I am."

"...Why?"

"Tell me honestly there's room in yours."

There is a beat of silence between them, and he huffs in frustration. "You didn't have to come here corporeally."

"And let you have all the fun? I can at least spread out over here and pretend not to enjoy the sauna while you melt."

"Why are you like this?" Thoreau growls, driving a shoulder into the wall and trying to knock into his patron. For a moment he's not even sure if it had any effect, but a return bump hits him in the upper chest with enough force to dunk him.

Closing his thighs to try and not pay his squirming sac any mind, Anuun reclines down on the rubble, unbothered by its rough edges, coming face to face with Rysah. "Well, this probably failed as a bonding exercise. Still..."

He begins exhaling steadily over her, and she falters, dropping to her knees. As she lifts her head again, she's inhabiting her own body once more, free from the dungeon master's influence, but now a subject of her own heavy fatigue.

"...I can't help but be impressed by all of you, really. You make me proud, you know?"

"...Really?" is all Rysah manages, short on stamina and still reeling from the sudden return to her own physical form.

"Of course! It should have been obvious you were seriously underleveled for this and yet you pressed on. You know, for all the good it did you. I hope the experience was worth it all."

He cranes in for the remaining distance, planting a chaste, appreciative kiss on her forehead... before devouring her just as easily as all the others. Rysah doesn't even resist as she slides over the back of his tongue, her fate sealed with an audible gulp, and those powerful throat muscles squeeze out the last of her energy...

Rysah wakes with a start when her chair tips back, windmilling her arms to stabilize herself, claws carving lines into the edge of the table as she grips it. Taking breaths through her mouth as she surveys her surroundings, she notes the cozy mundanity of it all. A long but nice table, chairs with as many cushions as one cares for surrounding it, and in them, her friends, still out cold, still wearing golden circlets inlaid with an angular motif.

With trembling fingers, the dragon reaches up to take hers off, mindful of her antlers, and sets it on the table with the rest of the clutter; character sheets and maps, though their figurines have been swept off to the side, into a little dice tray.

She even chuckles softly at that as she stands up, alarmed at first by how easy it is; over what felt like months, she had grown so used to the weight of full plate. She does get a feel for plainclothes again rather quickly though, welcoming the warm breeze from the balcony over her scales.

Curious, she turns toward it, finding Anuun already standing there, just as much a stranger to modesty here as he was in their game. He turns at her approach, offering a pleasant smile.

"Well, I almost feel like that shouldn't warrant rolling new characters," he says, shuffling aside to give Rysah some room at the railing. "Maybe you'll all be able to compel me, once you're all awake. I'd let them sleep until morning if I were you, though."

"That felt... so real," Rysah states, Anuun's words barely sticking with her. "How long were we in it for?"

"Oh, seven...ish hours," he says, bobbing his head from side to side as he imitates thinking very hard about it. "I did say we'd probably take the entire night, but there's always Saturday."

"We could try again, right?" the dragon asks, still savoring a bit of leftover adrenaline. "When we're higher level, or with different characters, whatever it ends up being?"

The jackal's smile turns into a delighted grin at that. "Rysah, of course you can try again, that dungeon isn't going anywhere. But tell me..."

He turns, taking one step back toward indoors and then stalls again to ask, "What's got you more excited? The prospect of victory? ...Or defeat?"

Rysah fidgets at that, her usual confidence leaving her as she tries to articulate her answer.

"Oh, forget that," Anuun says with a bat of his wrist. "You'll probably have this encounter handled the next time you've got the ambition to try. But... if certain parts of all that stuck with you..."

He pivots on the pad of his foot, taking a step toward her. He's not in her personal space, he is her personal space, and it's bringing back memories in full force.

"...would you explore them for real, if you could?"