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It started off funny. A silly thing in the midst of packing up and rushing out before things potentially got dangerous. They kept tossing in more and more. Emma grew and grew.
How much could she fit?
She became a blob, unable to maintain a human shape. A large grinning face made up the front of her. Keep going! Feed me more! She seemed to say.
And they did, because soon it became a marvel. They shoved a sex shop's worth of toys and items inside of her, including three barrels of lube. She was the size of a small whale, perhaps, if whales got that small.
She was a blob, Maple's height at the center, and pancaking under her own weight. Her face was angled toward the ceiling.
She was frowning.
More than frowning, her lip quivered, and she looked so sad. Maple hugged her side, having to sit on the floor to do so without falling into her. Emma jiggled sadly, and Maple removed her weight from her.
"Poor cutie. Sorry. Does it hurt? I won't put any weight on you."
She couldn't communicate, really, but only maintain that agonized face. It was neither fun, nor funny anymore. But she stayed like that, so Maple figured she wanted to try.
"Do you want to try getting in your bottle? We don't need to carry everything, you know. Don't hurt yourself, okay? And, you won't get stuck right? I know you can't answer. But consider that. Don't do it if it's dangerous. If you don't spit anything out in...30 seconds? I'll put the bottle against you. Or, I'll put it down here. If you can move..."
Emma didn't move. She may have actually been determined to loot literally everything in the place in a single trip. Like someone loading up every single grocery bag on both arms to carry into the house at once. The silly.
The others had packed as much as they could into their packs. Maple's backpack was full of vibrators and other toys, and she had another two sacks to carry on top of that.
The head of a certain kind of toy was poking out the top of one of the sacks, drawstring tight around it. Leather bondage, ropes, gags, whips, and tassels were tied to the outside of her backpack. The others had done the same. The sight would be ridiculous to any passerby. Possibly frightening.
The walk back was going to be hellish, and she could only hope her new body performed. Thirty seconds passed, and Maple set the head of the bottle against Emma.
"Alright cutie. I'm putting the bottle against you. You can try, if you want to. Be careful, okay?"
As soon as it touched her, Emma pushed herself inside. She was slowly sucked in. Sylla watched with Maple. Her snake-half was loaded down with luggage. A few sacks of things, but she couldn't carry that much weight on her, so there was a lot of lighter apparel and ropes covering her. Like what they'd all attached to their packs.
It flustered her, and made her look like a really enthusiastic BDSM enthusiast. Maple found both of those things kind of hot. Sylla cheered Emma on.
"She's doing it. Good luck, Emma."
She got three quarters of the way in, and stopped. Was that the limit of the bottle? She slowly formed her face again on the part of her sticking out, and the frown turned to crying.
"Aw, cutie. You can't fit? You silly, spit some stuff out."
She made her eyes rotate toward Maple, and then made her lip curl outward. Surely her human should understand what a humiliating defeat that would be? Push her!
Maple couldn't read her mind, but she knew. She knew. Maple sighed.
"You want us to try pushing you? Uh. Blink twice for yes. Once for no. Or don't blink at all for no."
She didn't need to blink, so that system would work fine. Her movements were slow, but her eyelids closed once. Opened again. Closed again. Opened again. Each blink looked like it took an enormous amount of effort.
The effort showed just how determined she was to be pushed.
"Gosh, you silly. Fine. Help me, Syll? Do you wanna push the bottle or Emma?"
"The bottle, but I don't know if this is a good idea..."
"Same."
Maple got in front of Emma and tried to hold her in place while Sylla pushed against the bottle. She squished into Maple, and Maple really did worry about falling in.
"Don't uh, eat me, okay cutie?"
Her lip trembled. Maple laughed and pressed against her.
"I know you wouldn't. Um, I don't think pushing is doing anything though..."
They weren't making any progress at all.
Thera passed by, carrying a box of stuff. She set it down and came over. For a few seconds she just watched them, like a bystander to two people trying to maneuver a heavy, obtuse object through a doorway.
"Try twisting the bottle, maybe. No, not like that—here, let me try."
And so then Thera tried pushing and twisting the bottle so Em would slip in easier, while Maple pushed against Emma. Maple stopped after a few good shoves. This was silly.
"Your bottle's full, cutie. Spit the—the barrels out at least."
Emma's lip trembled in sadness, but Maple stepped back. That was the only way this was going to work, no matter how determined she was.
"She's right, Em. Spit some stuff out. I know you want it all. We do, too. But this is already—a lot."
Emma slowly shut her eyes in defeat, then opened her mouth. She spit a barrel of lube out, sending it rolling across the floor. Then another. She shrank significantly with both, and pushed more of herself inside the bottle until just a normal sized head was sticking out.
"There, see? You'll fit the rest of the way, right? We still have one barrel of lube."
The rest of her slurped into the bottle to confirm. A few seconds later, a tiny thumbs up appeared out of the top.
"Alright cutie. Come out if it gets painful or something, but don't accidentally crush me if I'm carrying you."
That settled most of their loot, but they would still have to sell it somehow when they got back. Not to mention store it all somewhere in the meantime. Even with Emma's gluttony, they were leaving a lot behind.
The most immediately useful find was the box of coins Remi had dug up for them. It held around seven gold coins worth of mostly silver; a small savings.
Thera pointed out they were old mints, ancient even, so could be worth more after an appraisal. Whether that be from their value to some kind of [Historian] or [Collector], or from having a higher silver content than is common today.
The biggest loss they were leaving behind would be the facility itself. Remi was planning to make it self-destruct. Not explode or anything so dramatic, but all of the enchantments would essentially disintegrate. They'd built that functionality into the whole facility, knowing they may one day need to abandon it.
All of the old spellwork would be lost, which could be tragic. There may be workings that weren't commonly known about in this era. Things as simple as a more efficient water pump, or the basic logic in how parts were combined. Magic was in a constant state of being lost and re-discovered.
To make the place usable again after that would involve ripping out the walls and floor and running all new enchantments. That would be near as costly as just building a new facility altogether. It was also more prone to flooding or having the foundation fall apart without magic helping hold things together.
Everything that went into the erogelic transformation was obviously the most major example of lost knowledge; all of the workings that caused a complete class reset and could splice one species into another. Not to mention the erogel genetic information it contained and used.
Maybe the world would be better off without such experimentation. They definitely didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands, and that was why Remi had stayed behind as a ghost. To stave off that inevitability in case her people came back, but ultimately, to begin that self-destruct when it became necessary.
"I always knew I'd have to, that it'd be the last thing I did before moving on."
"Um, where do you go? When you 'move on'?"
Maple sure hoped it was a good place, and that she didn't just disappear. Remi seemed nice, like she'd probably been a good person.
She'd uh, jumped the gun a bit when they'd first met, and she had a thing against succubi that she tried not to show too much, but she felt like those were things that could be forgiven given the circumstances, and if they didn't persist in the long run.
"My mistress will take me into her realm. She promised me that. From there, it'll just depend. I might stay with her a while, or integrate into her, or she might send my soul off to be reincarnated. I suppose I'll need to think about it and decide myself."
But not because Lili would make her exercise her freedom. Maple avoided pointing that out. She felt like she'd cause the goddess lose more of her goddess-points if she started making her other followers think about freedom or freewill, and how they might need to exercise their freedom in order to please the goddess or out of social obligation to her.
Maybe that was why her sister had a whole church spanning kingdoms, but she didn't know of any church of Lili.
Maple wasn't sure how feasible it was, given she and Emma were already mooching a little, but she decided to at least offer.
"You could come with us if you wanted, probably?"
"Nah, I've...I don't really want to see too much of the world, a thousand years after I already finished living in it. Spirits don't adapt like the living do. Thank you, though. And good luck. There used to be guides and manuals, and spell scrolls to learn from. I've taught you everything I could in the time we had, but you'll have to discover a lot of what being erogelic means on your own."
She had summarized as much as she could while she and the others packed and stuffed things into Emma. Maple worried it wasn't enough, and that she'd be lost with no one to ask for an explanation. Succubi physiology was at least kind of similar, so she would just have to make do.
"I understand. Thank you, Remi, for everything. I hope you have a good afterlife. Are you gonna, uh, get beamed up right now, or?"
"No, once you all leave I'll finish getting rid of everything here and sealing the place off as much as I can. It might be a little dangerous."
Maple hugged her, and the others said their goodbyes. Maple held Emma's bottle and let her wave goodbye. She couldn't hug her, but she kept her hand held out. Remi shook it one last time and laughed.
"She's trying to suck me in again."
"Emma, jeez. Silly."
The hand morphed into a devious little laughing face, and then she nodded goodbye one last time.
They left the Erogelic Trial Grounds and Spa, loaded down with a heavy haul of sex toys. Azure Bond's fee would be more than covered, and Lili's gift to Maple really had been a gift.
More than the new body and fresh start, maybe the real treasure was the friends she did along the way.
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