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"Go away," the big badger growled. "I'm busy."

Bartleby was sprawled out in the space where an inn booth would be, were not one left out to leave room for the occasional feral visitor. His head rested in a lion-woman's lap and she was scratching him behind the ears.

Bartleby liked khardaki lion women quite a lot. They were bigger than human woman, muscular and tough. When you are a five hundred pound, correction, six hundred with the extra legs, feral badger, tough lovers are a treasure. He could be a bit rough and not worry about breaking her.

He liked lions in general, having bedded a wemic she-liontaur or two, and one time, quite drunk, he fucked a very willing lion-man. A hole is a hole if you're horny enough and everyone had a good time, even if the thing in front of the asshole he humped was balls instead of a pussy.

Bartleby surreptitiously rubbed his cheek against the lion-woman's crotch as she petted him and from her scent she was about ready to invite him to her room. It was a couple of days since he last had company in bed and as a healthy male badger he was anxious to not be a two day virgin any more.

And then this jackass showed up.

"Sorry corporal," said the guardsman. "Captain Ransom says to go get you, I go get you."

Bartleby heaved a sigh. "Sorry," he growled to the lioness. "Duty calls."

"Another time," she purred, and while his long flank fur kept anyone else from seeing, she reached beneath him as he stood and found his sheath was swollen stiff as an iron bar. She'd heard he was well endowed and it seemed it was not an exaggeration.

"I hope so," he replied, and trotted out the door.

"West gate?" He said to the guardsman, and upon receiving a grunt of confirmation he set out at a trot. Clickity-click went the big badger's many claws on the wooden sidewalk and the guardsman had to run to keep up. Bartleby was more or less used to his extra legs now and trotted along with what he called the 1-3-2 gait. Front and back legs on one side stepped forward along with the middle one on the opposite side, then repeated the movement with the sides reversed.

Low slung and short legged he was not tremendously fast but he could run for hours and the unfortunate guardsman, weighed down by his armor, sweated as he struggled to keep up. Bartleby was understandably very grumpy about being called away from his intended lover.

They arrived at the gate house and Azra the hestan, one of the few guardsmen Bart outranked, pointed into the squad room. "Captain says get your armor on and meet him outside."

"Fine," Bart grumped, and shrugged into his heavy chainmail byrnie in record time. He wore steel bracers on his front four legs on or off duty and Azra helped him buckle on the helm shaped to fit his narrow-muzzled badgery head. The hestan grabbed his spear and followed Bart back out the door.

It was noon and the daily traffic at the gate was backed up. That was because of the dozen guardsmen stood alertly outside the gate. On the walls above them archers stood ready. Mixed in would be the guard spellcasters, dressed exactly as their fellows to avoid being singled out as priority targets.

Bartleby reached the other guardsmen and came to a sudden halt as he saw the reason for all the excitement. Sat outside the gates was a night-black cat the size of three men, with too many legs and a set of tentacles with sharp thorny tips.

"Is that...?" Bartleby growled.

"Same one," said Captain Ransom. Like the spellcasters he was dressed identically to his soldiers. Only the white braid wrapped around his helm marked him as an officer.

"May I speak now?" purred the cat, startling Bart.

Bart didn't know the things could talk. No one else seemed surprised. It must have spoken to them before he was summoned.

"You may," said the captain.

"I am not here to fight," said the displacer beast. It waved a forepaw, its claws neatly sheathed. "Nor am I trying to sneak into your city. I ask politely to enter, as would any traveler."

Bart peered at the Beast, trying to work out where it really sat. He knew it wasn't quite where it seemed to be and wondered if the dark spot on the grass nearby was its actual shadow.

The guardsmen could have chased it off or killed it, but they waited until he got here for some reason. Bartleby pondered that, then gave a feral shrug. He was just a badger. It wasn't for him to reason why.

"How are you still alive?" said the captain bluntly.

"You have your clerics to return you from the grave. My former master used similar means to bring me back. Your badger's stomach is not the first place I've died."

"Former master?"

"Oh yes," purred the Beast. "I am no longer in Zathras' service. I am my own beast now."

"Hmm." The captain pondered. "Why should we trust you in our city?"

"I attempted to sneak in on my master's business," the cat purred. "For that I think I was adequately punished. Wouldn't you agree?"

Bart looked at Ransom, who shrugged. Being digested was enough of a penalty for most crimes, they silently agreed. Of course, normally people stayed digested. That was the reason the city fed people to him.

"Are you a gulper?"

"Am I a what?" The Beast tilted its head to one side like an oversized housecat.

"Can you swallow people whole like Bart?"

"No," purred the cat. "My task was to steal, or sometimes kill. Being gorged would make it harder to escape afterward. When I ate people, it was in little chunks."

"Azra," said the captain. The hestan stared at him for a moment, then handed his spear to the next guard and stepped forward.

"We need to check," the captain said as the hestan approached the Beast.

"Fine," the beast growled. Azra reached it and felt tentatively around in the air, his hands passing through the image it projected.

"Over here," purred the Beast, and Azra found it with his padded fingers. The beast image yawned broadly as the catman pantomimed pulling its muzzle open, a few feet away. The cat let out a discomfited whine as the hestan struggled to open its jaws still further.

Bart half expected Azra to disappear into the thing, maybe ending up curled up in midair while nearby the Displaced cat image's flanks bulged, but no such thing happened. Eventually the hestan let go and the beast-image snapped its maw shut.

"Little chunks," it hissed at the hestan, but it allowed him to walk away. A squad of armed guardsmen staring at it might have something to do with that.

"Why do you want to enter the city?" The captain said.

"Personal business," the Beast purred. It turned where it sat and Bart saw it wore a harness much like his own. The night-black leather blended into its fur but the saddlebags it pointed a midpaw at were lighter. "I have some items to sell, and I must ask questions of a mage or two."

"Your master is a mage. Why not ask him?"

"We are no longer on speaking terms," the cat purred.

"How long do you plan to spend in town?"

"Are all visitors interrogated like this?"

"Only the unusual ones," Captain Ransom said, and Bart recalled Uragh the feral gul saying he too had his jaws stretched wide before he was allowed in. Monsters weren't barred from the city but they received special attention. Gulpers especially. If someone disappeared, the first thing they'd look for is a bulge in a local gulper's middle. They hadn't interrogated him about it when he arrived but perhaps the policy wasn't in place then.

"A day," the Beast purred. "Two at most. I have been a long while on the road. I will stay at whatever in will take me as I conduct my business, and leave when I am done."

"Bart," the captain said, and the badger felt a sinking sensation. This was why he was summoned. "Escort the Beast on its rounds. Stay with it until it leaves the city."

"But," began Bart, who was supposed to be off guard duty today and tomorrow and beside his bouncer duties at the bar had looked forward to courting some female or another. If this whole mess hadn't developed he would probably be on top of the khardaki woman right now, fangs dug into her scruff as he humped.

Bart the badger sighed as the captain looked at him. Horny or not, he was a Guard. "Yes, sir."

The captain gestured and the line of guardmen parted so they could reach the gate. Bart stepped forward and gestured with a forepaw. "I will accompany you," he growled ill-humouredly.

"So I heard," purred the cat. She glanced at the guards on either side as the two of them paced through the gate. "You didn't have six legs before."

"No, I didn't," Bartleby grumbled. He tried to moderate his tone. The Beast wasn't to blame for ruining his day off. It was just bad timing.

"We don't know why it happened," he growled. "Some sort of interaction between your magical nature and the spells that Awakened me, maybe."

"Ah," the cat purred. They paced down the sidewalk and passers-by made way. Bart was such a fixture in town that people treated him as part of the landscape, maybe scratching his ears if they didn't ignore him altogether. The presence of a tiger-sized black cat with thorny tentacles changed that.

A few passing guards shot an alarmed glance at the displacer beast, but Captain Ransom stuck a colored sticker on one strap of her harness and when they saw it they let her by. The sticker and Bart's presence meant she was allowed to be here.

"My master Awakened me too," she purred. "Some of my kind are intelligent, but I was just a kit he bought. He studied many monsters, but he grew fond of me. He had some other mage Awaken me as he didn't know the spells."

"It is a specialist thing," Bart growled. "My first owner took me to one, and then my second owner. She was the one who had me Awakened. Before that I was just a trained animal."

"I need to sell some magic items," she purred, and Bart nodded. There were several such shops in town and he took her to the street adventurers frequented. Verbobonc is a major city and trade port. There is more than one of every imaginable vendor.

She sold several small items at the first shop, haggling with the wide-eyed vendor. Only Bart's presence kept the man from fleeing in a panic or calling the Guard.

The Beast accepted platinum coins and gems for the magic items, thanking the vendor for handing it over in a velvet bag. She did not have thumbs on her forepaws, he noted. Handing items was an awkward task for the Beast. Her harness pouches had large snaps that she could pop open with a paw and slap closed to latch them. It was a setup geared for a thumbless feral and presumably something her master had made for her.

Her night-dark fur soaked up the sun and he wasn't a fan of the heat either. When she began to pant he gestured her to a shady side street with sidewalk food stalls. They lay on the cool grass next to a statue and he bought them flavored ices.

"I'll charge it to the Guard," he said, and she smiled a sharp-fanged smile.

More than one passerby did a double take when they happened across two big ferals licking cherry ice out of bowls, but once again Bart's familiarity and the guard surcoat he wore atop his armor carried the day.

"What shall I call you," Bart growled as he licked the syrup off his chops.

"My master called me Fluffy," she purred. "But I will thank you not to call me that."

"Bart tilted his head. "Fluffy?"

"I asked you not to call me that," she purred good-naturedly. "I don't have a name. I am thinking maybe to call myself Octavia."

"Octet, octagon, octahedron," Bart growled. "Eight limbs?" Including the tentacles, that is.

"Very good," Octavia purred. "You are well educated for a badger."

Bart nodded. "My second owner collected books. I had a lot of spare time to read when I was learning to talk after she had me Awakened. Most of them were, well, erotic. Monster on woman, mostly. It's not that useful to know how many penises a behir has, but I learned a lot of words that way. I still read that series when I can find it."

"So, your first owner," she purred.

"I was raised from a cub to be an exotic riding beast," Bart growled. "He had me, a gryphon, a riding bear, a giant cat, a big raccoon, a few others. Even a small bulette. Rich tourists would rent us for the day. I don't remember much of it," he said candidly, "But I know I fucked some of them. Our owner had some of us changed. His body disposals, he called us. I could swallow people whole after that, the cat could suck them into her sex and digest them in there."

"Why?"

Bart shrugged. "Besides disposing of bodies? Maybe he liked the idea. I only visited briefly, after I was Awakened, and just to learn a few things. I suspect a lot of the people who rent the animals want to do things with them besides ride."

"So that owner is why you were able to swallow me."

"Yes," Bart growled. "My second owner was a woman with a thing for ferals. She bought me as a guard animal and lover, and for reasons of her own she had me Awakened. She also had me given thumbs, sort of." He showed how his huge forepaws had one opposable toe. "A few other minor changes."

Like a bigger dick, he didn't say. He suspected a she-badger his size would be a tight fit now. Many humanoid women certainly were, and even the she-wemics.

Bartleby watched the people walk by on the wooden sidewalks. They were no other ferals in sight unless you counted the dog one woman was walking. "I'm the only Awakened dire badger I know. I'll never father children unless I mate with an she-badger who is just an animal. And the cubs would also just be animals. They didn't use the more powerful spells the Maker used when he made his people, the intelligence won't pass down." He watched the dog walk by with its owner. "I don't know if I like the idea of my children being animals."

When the flavored ice was gone they went from shop to shop. The Beast had pouches full of magic items. She accumulated quite a stockpile of platinum and gems before Bart spoke up again.

"When I left my mistress, she allowed me to keep two magic items she'd bought for me," he growled as they once again rested in the shade. "But only two. Where did you get so many?"

"You were a mere animal when you served your first master," the Beast purred. "And you were a lover and guard to the second. Both treated you well, and you must have trusted them. Even loved the second one, perhaps."

Bart nodded silently. Even after all his other lovers, and even a couple of girlfriends he cared for deeply, he missed her. But he had to leave. The hestan cat-woman was courted by a hestan man who didn't care to share his wife with a badger whether it talked or not.

"My master saw me as a tool," she purred. "He might pet me, but was not loving, or kind. I realized that he would tire of me and discard me as he had other tools. When he commented that if I were so careless as to be killed again, he would not spend the effort to bring me back, I knew it was time to leave."

"So you stole from your master? I will need to inform the Guard. A wizard looking for his stolen goods will cause trouble."

The ebon cat let out a hissing chuckle. "No need. My master will cause no one trouble. Not even me."

He looked at her, and her muzzle split in a fanged grin. "He may have seen me as a tool, but I was a tool he trusted. He realized his mistake too late."

She licked her chops. "He went down my throat in many little chunks, not all in one bite the way you ate me. He was a powerful mage, but I caught him by surprise, and he was but a man as far as my stomach was concerned. I normally leave most of the bones, but his I crunched up and ate. Barring very powerful magic or allies I don't think he had, he won't trouble me again."

Bart nodded. He'd suspected something of the sort when he saw how much loot the cat was carrying. "Humans, and I assume he was human, are simple to digest as long as you don't eat the clothing or armor. You on the other hand," he smiled at the cat, "You were trouble. Those thorns on your tentacles didn't digest and they had to come back out somehow. And they are sharp."

That got a hissing laugh out of her. "Now that we've talked, you've gotten me curious. I need to talk to a mage, and if you like I'll pay for him to examine you too. I'd like to know why eating me made you grow more legs."

"I'd like to know that too," Bartleby growled. He'd planned to have that checked out, but magical consultations are expensive. Sadly the city hadn't offered to pay for one, despite being responsible for his condition.

They stopped at a bank and the rather alarmed manager had her leave a pawprint for a signature as she deposited most of the profits from her sales. She was a wealthy cat now, far wealthier than Bart. In the absence of that wealth he was not sure how she would support herself in a civilized area. She need not worry about that some time.

After the bank he took her to the end of the street they'd been up and down several times now. A squat purple tower sat there, studded with irregularly shaped windows and looking as though it grew there rather than being built. It was an easy landmark to remember as it glowed the same color at night.

He'd walked past the Sage's Tower a hundred times but never entered. The guard at the door tilted his head to the side as he considered two ferals who wanted in, but he must see odd things on a daily basis as he casually waved them by.

A dozen mages had labs or offices in the Tower and the half-elf at the greeter's desk sent them up a ramp that circled the hollow interior of the building. The plaque by the second floor door read Dizitmir, which sounded like a good wizardly name. Dizitmir looked like a mage, too. Long beard, pointed hat, room full of beakers and toads in jars. The works.

Bartleby found himself missing the mages on the Guard, who went to some lengths to look and act like common soldiers. The odd smells and cluttered bric-a-brac here made him uncomfortable. He couldn't argue with the man's professionalism, though.

"My my, a displacer beast," the man said. "You can sit right there you two, and ask your questions." The wizard assumed from the outset that Octavia could talk, and treated the two like any other customers. Bartleby liked that.

"I have heard of greater Beasts," Octavia purred. "And of bodily modifications through magic. Have you heard of a Beast gaining powers other than displacement?"

"Oh yes," the wizard nodded. "There are many such stories. I've heard of Beasts that can manifest multiple images, much like the Mirror Image spell, and of them turning Invisible rather than merely appearing to one side of their position. Even of ones who can send an image to a distance, like the Project Image spell, to spy out targets. Some of these tales speak of normal, but more powerful Beasts, but others say they are magically modified to serve wizards or other masters."

Octavia nodded. "I'd like to look into that."

"Magical modification is a specialty trade," Dizitmir said. "And it would not be cheap. Would your master Zathras be paying for this, then?"

The Beast shot him a narrow-eyed look, her ears going back a fraction. "I serve no man. Not any more."

Dizitmir opened his mouth, looked from one of them to the other, closed it, and changed the subject. "I can forward your needs to Ulsmich. He is the meta-mage here, magical modifications are his speciality. He is only in a few days a month, though."

"It is not an emergency," Octavia purred.

"Any other questions?"

"I have considered that as I am, I may find it hard to live among two-legs," she purred. "Tell me about bodily modifications."

"Wait," Bartleby growled. "I can answer your questions about that. I have been modified and am still in touch with a specialist in the art."

"Very good," said the wizard. "Any other questions, then?"

Octavia looked at Bart.

Bartleby nodded. "I am an Awakened dire badger," he growled, and the wizard nodded knowingly. "Normally I have four legs. A month or so ago, in the course of my duties, I swallowed Octavia here. While I was digesting her I sprouted two more legs."

"Really?" Said the mage. "That is very unusual. Would you be willing to submit to a magical examination? In these cases," he said before Bart could open his mouth, "We offer a discount. The information we gather can be of use to us."

Bart noted that the man didn't even raise an eyebrow when told one of his customers had eaten the other. Nor did he wonder out loud why both were in his office when one by all rights should merely be fat and fertilizer now. Wizards. They saw it all.

"All right," Bart growled. He was told the examination would be at a later date, when certain of the Tower's rotating cast of mages were on hand. He gathered that mages were eccentric and prone to wander. Getting a place like the Tower to work must be like herding cats.

It was a brief but expensive conversation. Octavia fumbled out a platinum piece from her pouch and dropped it. Bart, equipped with oversized but usable furry thumbs, passed it to the mage. He'd never actually handled one before, though he had enough savings in the bank to make a few.

Dizitmir poked and prodded Bart's middle set of legs, humming and taking notes, and then shooed them out the door.

"Never been in there before," Bart growled as they went by the guard on the way out. "I can't say I like the smell."

"I suppose it's no surprise he knew of my master," Octavia purred. "I hope he keeps his mouth shut about it."

"I suspect discretion is rolled into the fee," Bart replied. “And it sounds like your master had few friends."

"I am hungry," purred Octavia. "And tired. Is there an inn that will take me?"

"There is," Bart growled, and that is how he ended up taking the displacer beast to the Cracked Flask.

"Hurm," said the minotaur by the door as they entered. "This is new."

"I will vouch for her, Thog," Bartleby said to the bouncer.

It was new in two ways. The first was the displacer beast, but that wasn't so strange. The Flask was the meeting place for many monstrous visitors to the city, or to those who wanted to meet monsters. Bartleby was as successful as he was at finding lovers because many people who visited the Flask were looking for sex with an unusual lover.

The stranger part was Bartleby, who worked there as a bouncer, showing up in full guard regalia. He wore steel bracers on his front four legs but normally just a leather harness beyond that. Showing up in armor and surcoat meant he was there on Guard business.

"Here," Bart said, and gestured to where a booth would be were one slot not left open for the occasional feral patron.

The sleek cat paced into the opening and turned. Bart noted a noise as an invisible flank brushed the back wall, several feet from the image. She settled down on her belly and Bart joined her.

From across the room Alma the half-orc nodded to him and he nodded back. She made her way over in her waitress persona, though her chainmail vest, spiked bracers and scarred muscular arms showed she was a bouncer here at other times.

"We have mutton stew," she said, and made ready to take orders on a small chalk slate. "Also chicken, seven spices. Potatoes and bread."

"I'll have the stew, and bread," Bartleby growled, and Octavia nodded her assent. "Also a chicken," she purred. "Ale and water, in bowls," Bartleby added.

"Right away sir," the thuggish and not at all pretty half orc said with a smile and curtsey. Bartelby smothered a laugh.

"Girlfriend?" Purred the Beast.

"Yes," growled Bart, not bothering to deny it. She could smell him on Alma and Alma on him.

"One of many," purred Octavia as she sniffed the floor. "This smell of lion woman and randy badger is only a few hours old."

"I was called away," Bart said. "There was a disturbance at the gate."

Octavia cackled, her thorny tentacle-tips quivering, and a moment later Alma was back with two big bowls of stew and a loaf of crusty bread under one arm. Bart tore the bread in half and they set to eating. The Beast, despite her sleek feline look, didn't turn her nose up at the bread, slicing off chunks with her sharp side teeth.

Bowls of ale and water arrived and the two lapped it up between bites of stew. The Beast, fresh from the road and hungry, called for a second bowl, while Bart was content with one. Her chicken arrived on a platter and when she was done the platter was all that was left, licked clean of juices.

All the while Bart watched. Next to him the bowls of food and ale got emptier by bite and by lick while on the side the Beast ate and drank. Bites of food were briefly seen in midair but once it was swallowed it disappeared, so he guessed that even had she somehow swallowed Azra, the hestan would just become a bulge in her middle.

"I guess you can't turn it off," he asked, but she just smiled a pointy-toothed smile and lapped up her ale.

"Monsters are welcome here, then," she purred, and paused to lick the taste of dinner off her chops.

"Polite ones," Bart growled. "Rude ones we eject, but rude ones don't usually get through the gate."

"You work here and as a guardsman too?"

"And as a fireman, when they need me," Bart said.

"You are a good servant of the city," the beast purred. "When my head was in your mouth I heard someone talk to you. Your commander ordered you to eat me, didn't he?"

"He did," growled Bart. "He said you'd caused trouble in other cities, and had even been killed, but that your body disappeared. He wanted to inconvenience whoever sent you as much as possible."

"It worked," Octavia purred. "My master was very cross when he brought me back. It took much of his magic to do it and it weakened him greatly. He would have recovered, save for his visit to my stomach in little chunks."

A praka raccoon-folk minstrel a head shorter than Alma and maybe a sixth of Bart's weight, took his place on the little raised stoop that served as a stage. Clawed fingers plucked a skillful tune and the minstrel began to sing. He had a surprisingly deep voice for such a small creature.

"Praka didn't use to be able to speak Common, my master said," Octavia purred.

"It's true," Bart growled. "The Lord Maker made them as lab assistants. He didn't need them to talk, just good sets of hands. They had a chitter-speak like normal raccoons. Eventually he did some great magic and now most of them can speak."

The minstrel heard them and played the Song of Alias, a seldom heard ditty about the Maker and his creations. It spoke of the first praka, and of the first gul wolverine-folk, who were violent and cruel and who died almost to a man as a result. Finally the Maker created the elegant volpa foxpeople, his goal all along.

In the early days there were quarrels among the Maker's People as a result of this favoritism, but they soon grew to like one another. It wasn't the risque version of the song, but it hinted how the disagreements were settled: lots and lots of sex.

Bart rose, stretched, and flipped a coin into the minstrel's hat, which got a grateful nod in return.

"He doesn't spend many nights alone in his room I bet," said the Beast as she too rose and stretched. The praka heard and grinned. He was a cute and skillful and well-spoken raccoon and she wasn't wrong.

"We should get you a room before they sell out," Bart growled. There was quite a crowd in the common room, which had filled up as the ate.

"Tomorrow," she purred. "Tonight, show me where you sleep."

"This is a mistake," Bart thought, but he pulled the basement door open with a paw and gestured her in. "I am on duty, and I can't trust her," he thought, but he watched the sleek cat rump go down the stairs ahead of him. Somewhere next to the small cat sex beneath her swaying tail was the real one.

The storeroom was cluttered with crates and barrels but at the back was a clear area. Bart went to roll his sleeping basket from behind the barrels but when he turned the Beast was stretched out on the floor, rump toward him and tail to one side so her sex was exposed.

"My master was a poor lover," she purred, looking at him past her shoulder. Her tentacles were stretched out to each side. "I wonder if you'll be any better."

"I shouldn't do this," Bart thought, but a male's balls get a vote too and his had been casting their ballot since this morning. He followed the smell, stepped to one side and put a paw down on the invisible cat rump. He stepped forward, feeling her haunches between his paws. Remembering the wemics he stepped over her, and as his haunches fell into place on either side of hers he found her sex with his unsheathed tip and mounted.

She was very tight. The Beast yowled and wrapped her tentacles around him. His armor fended off the thorny tips and she made no effort to find his unprotected underside. That was pressed tight against her back in any event. Bart wrapped his midpaws around the invisible Beast, bit down on an invisible scruff and thrust into an invisible sex. Next to him the Beast-image squirmed on the stone floor, tail to the side and cat sex gaped wide around the badger penis sunk into her real self.

She yowled and shuddered almost the moment he entered her, twisted beneath him and raked his tough hide with her claw-tips as as they fucked. His fore- and midpaws wrapped around her and he rolled onto his side, the Beast pulled tight against his belly. She asked for it and she was going to get it.

Half expecting a violent attack as she changed her mind about the mating, or because she planned to kill him for eating her, he gripped her tight and kept his fangs sunk into her scruff. Next to him the image kicked and yowled and finally relaxed, shivering, as he kept thrusting. Finally it was too much. Bart snarled, his haunches shivering, and imagined he could see the badger seed spurting deep inside the gaped cat sex a few feet away.

Scratched and spent, he let go the scruff bite and licked her nape. The pelt there was thick and loose. He'd bitten many a cat there, hestans and khardaki and even wemics. The scruff of those was hard to reach as they were cat-taurs, but Octavia fit against his belly just fine.

"Why," he growled, lying there relaxed with her between his many paws. He looked down between his legs and saw his unsheathed cock, shrinking and withdrawing into its sheath but still inside her. There was no sign of his cum. He wasn't sure how the displacement thing worked but from watching her eat earlier he guessed that any discrete thing inside her disappeared, but things still connected to the outside remained visible. His cock was connected to his balls, so he could still see it.

"Come now," she purred, and he felt her roll over between his paws so they were face to invisible face. They embraced each other in a many-legged hug and in the warm afterglow he didn't worry about her claws.

"Surely it's not the first time a woman tired from the road was anxious to visit with you," she purred. The image's tongue appeared as she licked his muzzle. "I like you with six legs and I wanted to scratch an itch. It's not complicated. The ale didn't hurt your chances."

"Beer," Bart recited. "Helping ugly people have sex since the immemorial."

"I don't find you ugly," she purred, because certainly he wasn't talking about her sleek feline self. She nibbled on his cheek. "You are a big fuzzy rug of badger who ate me, but you've been good company today. You didn't need to be so friendly or helpful."

Afterward, Bart thought about licking up cherry ice with her and recognized it as their first date. He hadn't planned to end up in bed with her, or on a stone floor with her, but the primitive brain driving the actions of his haunches had contemplated certain things as he led the sleek Beast around the city. He'd started the day horny and his lust was finally sated.

When they recovered he pulled the sleeping basket down from the wall. It was big enough for him and two or three human-sized creatures. For the two of them to fit they'd have to be very friendly, which fortunately they were.

"Armor still on?" She purred.

"I am still on duty," Bart growled, and followed her into the basket. Her sleek body was longer than his stocky one but it was easy to guide her with his midpaws until her rump was pressed against his belly.

"Just escorting a monster, as ordered," she purred, and reached up with a forepaw to guide his muzzle to her nape. The Beast just outside the basket, awkwardly a few inches off the ground, grinned and rubbed her rump against something. The fur of its midsection pressed flat as Bart's midpaws went around the invisible beast to pull her tight against his belly.

"Let us be monsters together, then," she purred, and the image moved its tail aside. The image and its invisible source yowled as the image's sex stretched wide once more.

They moved together in the basket, growling and purring, and his time Bart was watching when the cum spurted from his cock and disappeared into the invisible Beast. They slept curled up together, waking to fuck as the mood took them, and the next morning, as they sat eating together in the common room, a guardsman showed up.

The guardsman looked from one to the other of the ferals, taking in the disheveled fur, the love bites that left marks even through fur, the tentative way the scratched-up lovers moved after lots of fucking and not much sleep. It did not take a genius to guess what happened the night before.

"Octavia," Bart growled with a gesture at the Beast, "Has opened an account at the bank. She still has business to conduct in town and will be here for possibly as much as a month. I vouch for her good behavior."

"Very good behavior," the night-dark cat purred, and licked his cheek.

"You will need to see the captain to get her checked in," the guardsman said. He kept his mouth shut on the fact that the badger corporal and monstrous cat had very obviously been fucking.

"It will be done," Bart growled, and pointedly looked at the door. The guardsman took the hint and left.

"So," Octavia purred when she'd finished her bowl of eggs and sausage. "You know a mage who changes beasts. It occurs to me that if I am to live among two-legs, perhaps I should be one myself."

"I am sure he can arrange that," Bart said, as he privately thought that she was perfectly fine as a feral. She fit neatly beneath him as they rutted. "At the very least you need thumbs."

"Dewclaws," she purred, and showed him the clawed fifth toe on her forepaw. "Making them thumbs would be a minor change indeed."

"You like me as I am, don't you," she went on.

"There is much to like," Bart said. "But that is me being selfish. I know feral gul sometimes long for a humanoid build. If you do stay as you are, you could move to Greyston."

"Exiled," she purred, and licked apple juice from a bowl. "My master sent me there one too many times."

"You will need to travel to Greyhawk to see the wizard I know," Bart growled. "I have a friend who lives there who can bring you by the man's tower."

"I have a thought," Bart went on. "My friend there gained a slight shape changing power from the wizard. He can change size. Maybe he could arrange it so you could be feral or two-legged as the mood strikes you. It would likely be expensive," he warned.

"Everything involving wizards is expensive," she purred. "It is a good idea."

"I apologize for swallowing you," he growled. "You seem like a reasonable person."

"I am on my best behavior after all," she purred. "And who knows. Maybe I will come back from the wizard and swallow

[i]you[/i]."

That was how Bart the badger met Octavia, who he ended up sponsoring for Verbobonc citizenship. She opened a boarding house for the monstrous sort and made a very good living as an exotic dancer, being famous for changing from beast-cat to eight-foot-tall tentacled beast-woman in mid dance. Bart wasn't sure which form he liked better, but they were both equally fuckable as far as the big badger was concerned.