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ms0milk · 7 months ago

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pitch in a teapot

sanemi x inn keeper

reader has a business to run and sanemi can't help but watch you do it well, barking orders, teaching firmly, smiling and scurrying around like a fancy little bell. There's something he's been trying to get out of you all afternoon but chores keep stealing you away. cw MDNI, frustrated thunderstorm quickie, reader w vagina + penetration, slight manhandling, desperation and a little bit of sass. 4.1k

thank you so much my darling @neiptune for requesting a little sanemi this @ficsforgaza season! you were so generous and patient waiting for this to come out, I hope you enjoy angel

Six bowls of soup upstairs and an old man somewhere in the bowels of the inn with a limp and half a shoe. Right, okay, send two girls to the garden– no. One to the garden and one to the kitchen. That’s dinner taken care of as long as the scholar with the fat pony– donkey, maybe– doesn’t regurgitate an encore of the rakugo performance that couldn’t have been funny in the first place.

You roll the sleeves of your apron slightly tighter in their tasuki. The cyprus walls of your inn bleed fragrance before summer thunderstorms so you make a mental note too, to order storm doors for the second floor before the clouds go black and blue. Incensed breeze, juniper, wisteria, paper windows, one foot, the next, again, each step down the wooden hallway is a quiet knock. Each summer at home is heavier, heavier, and this year is the flood.

“Oi.”

“Not my name,” you blow from the corner of your mouth without changing pace. That breath was ready to jump off your lip before the demon slayer even called out to you; he hates doing nothing and hates even more what great pains your staff take to avoid his room.

“It reeks.”

“Excuse me?” You huff and this time do turn enough to interrogate him via glare. Sanemi, ridiculous, folds his arms in the doorway of a very nice room, a too nice room, without any of the appropriate embarrassment of someone who has been lying in wait. The stippled blue pattern of his robes doesn’t suit him. They clash with his ugly scars and uglier attitude but don't keep him from wearing the chest wide open like a well paid rent boy.

“Stinks.”

“Whatever of, princess?”

He growls and drops his arms as you brace for the lecture, “Demons.”

His heart is incapable of peace and yours with it, and every summer he’s assigned a post in your mountains by a master you’ve never met and who couldn’t possibly be sane themself. Four years of this. Four years of twelve weeks of sixteen-hour-days of the world’s most neurotic demon slayer.

“The whole property is wide open for any fuck to attack.”

You adjust your grip on a slender bucket handle and the cloth in your other arm and continue back downhall, “You always say that.”

“I’m always right,” he nags and pushes free of his bedroom.

You met Sanemi when you were sixteen and still working under your parents. He was a brand new hashira then and prone to fist fights, spitfire, bloodshed. Nothing special. Nothing new. Hashira come and die and new hashira come again. They arrive in flashbangs and ego and leave like everyone else, in pieces.

Your parents were calm, they had peace and practice, they ran this inn, they welcomed Sanemi with his summer floods. They loved him, took his counsel and died by it, and they probably wouldn’t have lost an old man inside the house. But this is your inn now. They aren’t here anymore and at your inn sometimes old men get misplaced.

“And what would you like me to do about all that, sir?”

The hashira keeps an easy military pace behind you, “The gardens need to be reinforced and–”

“Nine acres of wisteria arbor need reinforcement? Yeah I’ll get right on that.”

“The storm will take out ha–!”

“And the other half will hold until autumn. Go berate the kitchen staff for their unpreparedness– they’re all unarmed you know? Totally unprofessional.”

“Y/n–”

“Shinazugawa,” you spin and it all comes out as a threat, a hiss, instead of just a whisper so much so that the water in your bucket nips up your sleeve. “I am the lady of this establishment and you will not address me so familiarly.”

Dark cyprus, cool hallways, the undeniable scent of thunder. Sanemi rests his hand on his sword to glare like he does when his hands don’t quite know what to do with themselves. His eyes roam, quiet under long lilly lashes until they have traced the shapes your tasuki makes with your waist and rise again to your gaze. “We’re not fucking finished.”

“Go eat,” you snap and turn back down the hallway, red at the ears. Lady of the establishment, great job.

Feet aren’t complicated, bone to tendon, tendon to muscle, muscle to skin, one step and another. You tilt your head back and an eager girl rises to wipe sweat from your temple.

“Like this,” you hum and tilt the old man’s heel in your palm. He winces but lets you continue while the girl stares on. “When the skin is split like this it can’t receive moisture– sorry sir, better?” You set his foot on the hammock of cloth between your thighs, “So you need to soak it first before applying salve. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the girl parrots, still unable to look away.

“Yes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

You smile through an eye roll but gesture for her to come sit beside you. You’ve been like this since he’s met you, too old for your body.

You’ll train anyone who asks, hire any runaway girl, absorb the cost of thieves when runaways are exactly that, and you will wash old men’s feet before eating dinner with the self preservation of a samurai. Famously long-lived, those. Sanemi has to look away when you take scissors to the gnarled yellow nails and almost covers his ears when your pupil starts asking you questions about it.

“Feels good right?” You chuckle at the man’s response to your ministrations, and then a little louder, when you realize just how seriously the girl beside you is trying to focus. Birdsong. “Do you have companions on your pilgrimage, sir?” He shakes his head.

You lean away again so the girl can dab your brow and push back stray hairs and turn back to explain overdetailed care instructions to this man who is obviously so embarrassed he can’t hear a word you’re saying. Something about tallow and socks, Sanemi tries to read the syllables off your lips and loses focus the second time your teeth catch damp and pillowed pink.

The man seated in front of you grumbles some and flexes a few fingers around his cane like old men do, but doesn’t protest your instructions. He nods instead of thanking you like a real tough guy.

“Fetch a new pair of sandals from the garden shed,” you instruct your girl who bolts up and out the door past Sanemi without so much as a breath. “And you,” you turn back to your patient, “keep the nails short, you hear?”

He nods again, increasingly avoidant of eye contact. Sanemi tenses in the dark outside the guest’s complimentary room and hates ungrateful fucks enough for both of you.

“And don’t skip any more meals.”

The man’s wrinkled skin unfolds at his eyes and he pulls his legs back underneath him. You dry your hands after scrubbing clean in a soapy pot and stand to collect your tools. “I couldn’t find you this evening and I hate to lose track of my guests at mealtime.”

You are going to feed every stray you find until the economy collapses. Peasant monks, pickpockets– you’d put up a demon if its stomach growled. After too many unnoticed minutes watching you, following the white x between your patterned shoulders, eating your voice, warming the hallway, you finally pick out Sanemi’s eyes in the dark behind the sliding door. He’s waiting for you. You clear your throat for the broke old pilgrim one last time, “You don’t owe any money. Do not skip meals.” And bid him a wordless good night. The door cracks shut behind you. It isn’t late enough for sunset. Thunderstorms make it so dark so quickly and they mask the scent of blood with all their rain and iron. “What is it?” You deadpan and shuffle towards the stairs with all the confidence in the world a tenured hashira will work to keep up with you.

“Not fucking finishied with you,” Sanemi grunts, working to keep up with you. The apron over your service kimono forces your hips to sway in tight little circles and Sanemi sucks his teeth. He doesn’t look away.

Through the hallway and down the servant stairs, socks on polished wood, you tap, tap, tap nimbly to your next assignment. The room below radiates heat and life. “What do you want?” you whisper.

“I–” he slips barefoot on the slick last step into the kitchen and you stumble in your newly damp right sock. “Euh, I–”

“Mimiko!”

“Lady?”

“Wet.” You point behind you, palming Sanemi out of the way, and a free washerwoman dives for the spot with the rag tucked into her belt. The kitchen rages silently in the easternmost corner of the mansion; men and women sweat over donabe, rinse their body weights in rice, and beat little fires with littler fans. Two women and a boy linger just outside the paper door in clothes that match yours for formality and Sanemi assumes as he weaves through the bustle, that they are responsible for bringing food to customers and for doing everything they can not to sweat through their pretty borrowed uniforms. Your own kimono is purple tonight, a cool little shape bobbing nimbly between flames.

Sanemi opens his mouth to shout after you and shuts it again just as quickly to grind his teeth instead as you lift your apron over your head. You let a girl feed you a spoonful of something on your way out of the room and she wiggles when you nod several times before ducking through the door.

Laundry next, then a double check of the firewood cache and the whole while Sanemi occupies your shadow. A few times you hiss over your shoulder at him for looking so gruff, for looking like a bodyguard, for making your customers imagine your distrust of them, always you bite back before he can get more than a few words out but mostly you just scurry in preparation for the storm picking up warm wind outside.

You avoid the entrance with him so close in tow, armed and obstinate, but make a show of circling both tatami halls where guests come after dinner on rainy nights to stretch and smoke by the brazier with strangers. A female musician trills her koto. The sky hasn’t let loose a single drop of rain yet but wet hangs like a fog and thunder scents the air ahead of its arrival. As Sanemi trails the outer walkway of the mansion behind you, the sky bleeds with the last of day’s light in the cracks between bruised and racing storm clouds.

“Second floor secure?” You confirm with the men slotting thick panels into grooves where paper doors usually go. They nod in their white uniforms. Beyond the porches, beyond the east garden and its fat green vegetables, beyond dogwood trees and sarusuberi and maples that have begun to tremble violently in winds buffeted by humidity and nightfall, the wisteria arbor glows. You radiate a cool purple pull beside him just like your flowers.

The arbor surrounds the property on all sides for half a mile and all three paths away from the house are barred by gates of twisting wisteria vine. The inn belongs to your family, but does not serve Ubuyashiki. Theirs is not the only house that discovered a use for these flowers. Yours is not the only wisteria business in the country.

“Do you see that?” You murmur at so much the same tone as the wind that Sanemi almost cannot hear you.

Three years ago he left before the end of summer, called away to investigate a massacre nearby. A tree fell that season. It crushed a straight path through the edge of the mountain forest and onto your property where, lured by so much blood and wine, a pair of sister demons descended through the broken orchard and devoured everyone who wasn’t fast enough to hide in the flowers like the slayer suggested they should in an emergency. Your parents evacuated the house and died in it with the guests who couldn’t walk on their own. Nestled under three braided vines at the far edge of the property, you listened to them die.

The winds kick up sand from your vegetable garden and you step off the porch into the start of the storm. Tiny and purple. “Y/n!” Sanemi lunges for you. His sword whips the meat of his thigh and you step out of his way before he can grab any part he intended to. The men on the porch watch you both scramble through the backyard. You snap at the strange guest and duck when he swings a hand towards you, hop in your sandals when he tries to trip you into his arms and dart away like a dragonfly.

“Get back here!”

“Go inside!”

“Y/n!”

“How dare you!”

“Motherfucking, Y/n!”

“That’s enough!” You bark and twist back towards the garden shed. Your pupil left the door wide open and all its shining tools caught your eye across the yard. Sanemi was staring when you stepped outside. His eyes feel like beads of sweat on the few bare parts of you. His gaze is all teeth on the back of your neck.

With all but one storm door up, not a single guest can hear the ruckus you two kick up outside in the prologue of the storm. “It’s about to pour!”

“Then go join the other guests!” You shout through a particularly violent breeze and you have to grip to the break in your kimono closed. He does not. By the time you lay a winded hand on the wall of the shed, it has started to rain.

A silencing wall of water falls from the back of the property straight towards you. It kills dust clouds in its path and paints every surface soaked in a perfectly straight line. Sanemi rushes from behind and nearly lifts you off your feet to get inside the shed as you watch the supernatural army advance on your home.

“Shit,” he grumbles and winces when the rain overcomes the little shed and splashes off the pavement into his face. He pulls you deeper inside and you jolt. The first crack of thunder is a scream that shakes the ground, “Scared of thunder now?”

“Scared of my profit margins, you oaf.”

Under his shoulder you are glaring at the storm between this shitty stuffy shed and your business. You are so small and wrapped so tightly in layer after layer of fabric. It must be hot. The damp drips down his open chest and thighs, it frizzes his hair at his ears. You must be sweating somewhere in that formal getup. Wet glistens at the curled little hairs on the back of your neck where the skin is just barely visible and it sparkles under your high collar.

“I can’t walk back inside soaked,” you groan, “there’s not enough time to change before final rounds.”

Sanemi takes his hand off his sword. There must be damp parts of you hiding from him. He brushes his knuckle up the bare skin of your neck, across your throat, and you falter slightly.

“Sanemi–”

“Nuh uh, don’t address me so familiarly,” he smirks and cups your cheek in his big hand when you jerk around.

“That’s not–!”

“Not what?” He smiles now, and drops his hand back to his sword so that you might find your own weapon and finish the fight. Four years of this.

You shove a finger into his chest, “You’re such a clingy fuck Shinazugawa,” and shout a little because you know the thunder will hide it. A sudden gust blows the sheet of rain sideways and straight inside the open door of the garden shed, up your dress and down his robes and through your prettily pinned hair. “Y/n this, y/n that, I’m busy Sanemi, I’m stuck in a shed! You’re the only one who calls me and people think we’re fucking! You want my attention you have it so please tell me all about the demons that’re gonna slurp up my customers and fuck my taxes to shit and–”

The door creaks in Sanemi’s hands even through the oceanic sounds of storm when he begins to close it. He nods as you get louder, nods as he slides the door closed and flicks the latch.

“Do not,” you growl, “there’s five thousand–”

“Five thousand little bitches in there lost without direction? They’re fine, Y/n.”

“Don’t call me that here.”

“They’ll survive, little lady.”

You spit, “not better.” And the new humidity of the closed shed begins to swallow you whole. It fills your throat. “What about all the demons you’ve been crying about?”

“You’re such a cocky cuss.”

“And you’re needy,” you taunt. It’s Sanemi’s turn to wince and his frustration starts to drip from all those places he shoves it away from you. He's been gentle with you since that summer. He lets you interrupt him, he follows where you go. “I watched you check perimeters this morning, you don’t need to talk to me about demons.”

“Eyes everywhere huh?” His throat is pink, “Lady of the house.”

You grin and pull him by the loops of his robe into your tiny purple kiss, “Shut up.”

“M’lady,” he growls against your lips and succumbs.

Four years of stolen touches, lips on damp summer skin, coming out of empty rooms too ruffled and pulling the hashira between your legs without disturbing the folds of your work kimono. “Don’t call me that either,” your breath hisses against his throat like an iron and he drops his sword quickly to gather you in his arms.

Too much fabric. Shovels and shears clatter against the floor and one another when the thunder shakes their little house again, and they tremble at every thump and roll of your body against Sanemi’s. He pulls your hips against his and guides your legs around his waist so he can sink into those soft parts of you. So he can tilt his head back to look up at you, so you can pour your kisses down his throat like wine.

You drag your nails up the back of his head when he offers his tongue to your lips, biting, suckling, drawing out gentle sounds and eating them before they compete with the rain outside. Where his hips dig into your own the folds of your skirt fall apart. Legs that glisten with sweat and rain part nicely for him and his own robes grow clingy with exertion where he grinds hard against you. Every subtle roll breaks your concentration in kisses, in lips sliding, begging with salvia and rainwater. His hands cup your cheeks, thighs, the collar of your kimono shudders open for him when he dips to suck bruises under your jaw and the swordsman’s hand loses control as he grips your belt to free you from all this formality. He’ll press crescents into your breasts, he’ll lower his tongue through your peach sweet folds and drink until you cry– but you pull his head back with a sharp yank of your wrist.

Your breath comes in clouds. The inn glows with candlelight across the yard but the light through the shed’s window is too weak. Welts of lighting illuminate the flush of your chest and cheeks. Two seconds of bright and twelve of dark warmth, shaking swirling thunder and then only rain. Sweat rolls from your temples and into the depths of your kimono. It’s been days since he’s had you like this and longer since you’ve had true privacy, others a whole yard away.

You can’t be gone long, he knows. Staff watched you race in here together, watched him shut the door, he knows he knows, he just can’t put you down yet. He leans in for another kiss and you let him fall close enough for his chest to crush yours before pulling back on his hair again.

“Y/n,” he’s suddenly not above begging but you hold his gaze tight. You watch him as your hand slips between the place your bodies meet. Pretty fingers reach for the heat between his legs. Pretty knuckles ghost over the swell of his robes and draw the fabric aside instead of ordering he bring you back inside. Sanemi’s cock perks up in free air as high as this position will let it and rests heavy under the swell of your ass.

He kisses you again, toothy and smiling and when you kiss him back your sharpest teeth clink together. He ruts into your desperation against the wall, harder than the rain, harder than the wind that threatens to blow your shed away and you with it. Obviously he wouldn’t let it but the thought that nature might be jealous of the rumple you made of each other drives him harder against you. Slipping, cock hard and suddenly shifted up against the hair under your belly. Peach fuzz yields to warm slick and Sanemi drops his head to your chest when he shudders to avoid whimpering into your mouth. He slips through your folds with a tight hold still under your thighs and drags himself up, down, up, hypnotized always by the faces you make when you’re trying to keep quiet.

The scars across his body are forever numb, but when your clammy hands paw is his chest he swears he can smell color. He can touch light when you pull his face back to yours frantically, when your hips with all their fabric flowing off of them buck sloppily against his, when he thrusts once deeply inside of you and forces a broken gasp from the back of your throat.

Before you can catch your breath your lips have crashed against his and his hips against yours. Sanemi keeps the relentless, restless, starving pace you like and knows he’ll last only the next few minutes before the worst of the storm blows over. Again and again he carves a palace for himself inside of you. You guide him with the falter of your kisses when he finds that perfect spot and with the slick that coats both of your thighs. Your voice escapes you in choked whimpers, his name comes out in hiccups. You’re a little bell in his arms folded in half and singing for him.

Again and again, out and so deep back inside, Sanemi’s feet grip the floor as he plunges his hips into yours and both of your bodies into the swelling wood walls. His rhythm staggers as you flutter around him and with his head against your shoulder he watches the circles you draw on your clit with the tips of four clumsy fingers as your other hand muffles your voice. He grabs that quieting wrist without thinking and without taking his eyes off the place your bodies connect with lewd squelches and sticky white threads. His threatening grip, his thick cock and your fingers push you right over the lip of your pleasure and fluttering becomes milking spasms quicker than Sanemi can think to treat you gently. That half-sobbing voice he loves so much cheers him towards his own climax and the more sensitive you grow the easier it is to coax those sounds out of you that you try to keep hidden, “Don’t– don’t be so quiet.”

“Inside,” you whisper in reply and draw his face into your hands as his pounding stutters in pace and loses all flow completely under your dreamy gazes. Sanemi can’t keep his eyes open when he cums. His pretty lilly lashes flutter with lost concentration. He shudders, ruts you deeper into the wall and groans with release as he fills those swollen wet parts of you. Warmth pools in your belly and trickles off his cock still buried. Sweat falls like the rain outside.

“Wanna taste,” Sanemi rumbles without setting you down or stilling his thrusts fully. He nuzzles somehow farther into the dip of your collarbones. Soft snow white hair, a heartbeat in the fingers that grip you. Every twitch of his hips is a starving ache.

“C'mon,” you grin, “dinner’ll get cold.”

“Let me taste you.”

“Sanemi, what will I eat if you eat me?”

“Have a few ideas,” he smiles back through the trembling of the shed in encores of thunder and gale. A leak tip tap tip taps nearby. Four years of this, maybe more.

#love this guy #think he gets whipped easily #ego free whipping he doesnt even struggle with it #total tunnel vision #sanemi x reader #ficsforgaza #kny x reader #demon slayer x reader

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brutal-nemesis · 9 months ago

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E&T: Deep in the Bowels of Gluttony

I am forcing more CAVE WHUMP into your enclosure (with an added dash of inspiration from my favorite national park that I can never visit ✨)

Suggested Vibe: Duma’s Scourge from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (youtube)

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Ingredients: a lot of gore. eating is involved in the goriness if you couldn’t tell. it is also very gross. Wow! Oh and there is a little bit of burning

By the time Erebus finished crying, his hand had grown back.

He hadn’t even realized it at first, too caught up with gut-wrenching sobs to be aware of anything else besides how much his head hurt, how hard it was to breathe, how terrified he was to be in this strange place all alone, how he might never make it back home, or even back to his cell, how hopeless he felt, how-how-And then he’d noticed the stump of his left hand, no longer ending in a jagged tear, little strings of skin dangling off of it, but a-it was growing, it had to be, those little white nubs poking out of the mass of muscle had to be the bones of his hand, bones that had definitely been…Before he knew it he was crying in earnest again, his body’s sudden strange capability to repair itself overshadowed by the trauma of the past hour, fear and exhaustion replacing awe and relief, because even if he could heal, it didn’t change the fact that he was stuck here, now saddled with the possibility that not even death could set him free.

If there was one good thing about this world, it was the fact that he was more alone than he’d ever been, and no one knocked on the door to interrupt his crying, no one commented on the redness of his eyes or asked him if he was okay too soon after he’d started to calm down. He caught his breath slowly, peacefully, washing the tears off his face using the fresh water from one of the pools near the sea, scrubbing the dried blood from his perfectly healed arm, revealing a ring of scar tissue around his wrist. The thought that neither of these hands were the ones he was born with almost sent him into another spiral, but he shook his head and put it out of his mind. That was enough for today.

Today…Frowning, he looked up at the sky. Its blackness hadn’t changed in the slightest since he’d arrived here, and something told him it wouldn’t anytime soon. Even back in the windowless cell, he’d had meals and Neteri’s visits to help him keep track of the passage of time, but now there was just…nothing. It was all down to whatever cycle of waking and sleeping he fell into, and given how tired he was now, he was ready to get that started.

Walking back to his pack, left at the base of the cliffs, he noticed his leg was no longer in pain, either. Once he arrived, he pulled the knife out and used it to slice the stitches still woven through his flesh, wincing a bit as he pulled the thread out. The holes left behind healed quickly enough that he could ignore them and busy himself finding a good place to lay his bedroll for the…night? For now.

He ended up settling down along the cliffside, too afraid to lie out in the open despite how quiet it was here, and it wasn’t long before his exhausted body gave in to sleep.

When Erebus woke up, the sky was the same empty black as before, and it was impossible to tell how long he’d slept for, but he felt rested enough despite the circumstances. So now he was just supposed to…wander until he found something? He considered flying to get a better idea of what was around, but he decided it would be better to save his strength for the next fight. Since crossing the sea was out of the question, he headed back into the rocky maze he’d first arrived in. Eventually, he found himself at the entrance to a cave, a gaping hole in the side of the mountain rising even higher than the cliffs around him.

If the demons were tied to elements like their counterparts, the dragons, then whatever one was tied to the element of earth was definitely in that cave. His instincts screamed at him not to go into the dark, cramped space where his wings likely would be more of a hindrance than a help, but if he was going to get out of this place, then he’d have to go in eventually. So best to get it over with while he was here.

Erebus had never been inside of a cave, but he’d heard about how beautiful they could be, and…how dangerous. But he’d be okay. He could heal, for some reason. He’d be fine. He could handle this. He had to.

Burying his doubts, Erebus headed inside the cave, almost immediately tripping over a small, rounded protrusion of stone. They littered the ground, and the ceiling, too, their lengths varying. He’d have to take care to avoid them, then.

Soon enough, though, the ground began to slope downwards, and the dim gray light streaming in from the cave’s entrance began to fade, not enough for even his new eyes to see with. It wasn’t long before he was stumbling along in the dark, unsure how much progress he was making, or if he was even headed in the right direction. He could be a couple steps away from a dead end, for all he knew. Or even a cl-At that moment, Erebus’s boot caught on a rock, his desperate grasps for something to catch himself on meeting empty air, and now he was falling, spinning, bouncing off the uneven stone, everything was slippery enough to slide out of his grasp but hard enough to break his bones, faster and faster until-

Cold. Deep cold, water, he was underwater, he had to get to the surface, had to find it in this spinning dark void, no way to tell which way is up, which way is death, swimming flailing reaching-his hand broke the surface, and he worked his way up desperately, his sodden clothes and heavy sword making it difficult, but he made it, he breathed, he coughed, he dragged himself out and laid on the bumpy stone next to the water’s edge, panting as his body throbbed and stung with a hundred cuts and bruises. Of course he hurt himself before even finding the demon. Of course. If only he had some way to know if he was even going in the right direction, but no, he was just supposed to stumble around in the dark.

One of his horns hurt, and upon poking at it gently, he found that the tip had broken off, exposing the tender flesh inside. Not like they served any purpose, besides telling him where…wait. What he wanted most was to get out of here and go home. To get out of here, he’d have to fight all the demons. Starting with the one hidden somewhere in this cave. So, by that logic, what he wanted most was to find the demon in these caves. He closed his eyes, not that it changed anything, and drilled that thought into his head. He needed to find that demon. Wanted to. Had to.

Erebus couldn’t help but smile as his horns started to tingle ever-so-slightly.

It took some time to get used to navigating the cave based on the feeling in his horns. The changes in sensation were rather subtle, so it was difficult to tell immediately after changing course if he was heading the right way. It would have been much easier if he could take a direct path, but the twists and turns of the cave forced him to switch directions constantly, sometimes leading him to dead ends or passages he was too large to squeeze through. Progress was slow, but he was making progress, he was, the tingling was stronger now, his scrapes and bruises from his fall earlier had healed, and his clothes were beginning to dry, despite the cave air being rather cool.

Well, now that he thought about it, the air had grown warmer than when he’d first entered. He’d been so freezing from his wet clothes that he hadn’t realized it until now, but it was definitely getting warmer. That had to be a good thing, right? It wasn’t getting any lighter, unfortunately, so he was still stuck feeling his way along through the darkness, nothing but the tingling sensation in his horns to guide him, but at least he wasn’t shivering as much anymore.

It was getting warmer and warmer, hot now, and humid, the stickiness of the air reminding him of summers back home. Were caves supposed to be this hot? He’d been grateful for the warmth at first, but now he was sweating profusely, the thick, moist air making it somewhat difficult to breathe as he clambered up slopes and squeezed through small gaps, the feeling in his horns growing so intense he was starting to get a headache, made even worse by the slightly rotten smell that was starting to permeate the air.

Erebus stopped at the edge of some sort of drop-off. It was impossible to tell how far down it went, only that it was longer than his arm. He’d been scared of this, of having to fly while blind. Out of breath, he sat to rest for a moment, letting the slight breeze cool him off a tiny bit, wishing it didn’t smell so rancid.

Wait…breeze?

The air was moving, pulsing past him in a hot wave, and then a cooler gust in the opposite direction. It was rhythmic, over and over, back and forth, in and…in and out.

Breathing. It was breathing.

If-if Erebus could feel its breathing, and the intense heat from its body, its stench, then it must be close, just off that ledge maybe, after all this time wandering around in the dark he’d finally found the next demon. With renewed energy, he stood and drew his sword. He’d have to approach this carefully, making sure he didn’t fly straight into the wall instead of hitting his target. After waving his hand over his head and not feeling anything above him, Erebus carefully took flight. It was difficult to move so slowly in the air, especially as he started to head down, but he didn’t want to risk falling who knows how far and landing on who knows what.

Feeling his feet catch on something, he tried to land, but the ground beneath was slippery and almost gave way beneath him, causing him to fall for the second time today. Thankfully, he landed on something soft, though it was weirdly wet and sort of slimy, like…Erebus cried out and scurried back, but everything he touched was the same, squishy and warm and smooth and…and…It was flesh. All around him. He-he’d somehow flown into the demon’s mouth, he must have, its breath was rushing by him with even more force now, the nauseating scent of rot all around him. He had to get out. He just had to fly up. He could do this. He’d be fine.

But…where was his sword?

He’d dropped it in his panic, like an idiot, and now he needed to find it. He wouldn’t stand a chance against the demons without it, and then he’d never be able to go home, never see another person again, he couldn’t accept that, he had to calm down, had to focus. He wanted that sword more than anything. It was his way out.

His stomach sank when his horns told him his sword was below him.

There wasn’t any choice but to fall further into the belly of the beast in order to kill it.

He took his time lowering himself, but it was more difficult than before. The heat was making his head throb, not to mention the toll all this flying was taking on him. Being unable to glide was putting a lot more strain on his wings than he’d realized, and though he couldn’t quite feel it through the sheen of sweat covering his face, he tasted the blood dripping out of his nose. By the time the buzzing in his horns peaked and his hand wrapped around the cool hilt of the sword, the world was starting to spin, and he all but collapsed next to the blade, which had buried itself partway in the fleshy ground.

Erebus didn’t know if he had the energy to stand. The heat and all of that careful flying had sapped all of his strength, leaving him sprawled on the hot, soft flesh of the demon’s insides. Was this it? Was he just stuck here until he fell further and ended up digested? The healing he had for some reason was slow, probably too slow to keep up with stomach acid. He breathed in deeply as the slightly cooler air coming in rushed past him, trying to calm himself down. The demon’s breaths were deep and long, so they were difficult for Erebus to match perfectly, but he tried anyway, the less rancid-smelling air coming in making him feel a little better somehow. But why would…memories of dust, Neteri’s forehead against his, the puff of her breath against his cheeks. Sharing breath. He was sharing breath with this huge demon, gaining a little of its life force as he did so.

Once he felt well enough to stand, he did so, holding onto his sword for support. He could do this. After bracing himself as best as he could, he started to pull, wincing at the awful squelching sound the blade made as it slid out of the flesh it was buried in. It came out with a sickening pop, squirting what Erebus could only assume was blood all over him. Some of it even landed in his mouth, and it…it tasted good. Really good, like a rich, meaty stew.

His empty stomach started to growl.

This was a demon. Not a person.

He hadn’t eaten in over a day.

No one would ever know.

He needed energy.

Hands shaking, he pulled out his knife.

Just a little bit.

It was warm, wet, chewy, almost rubbery, the texture making him gag slightly, but he didn’t care, not when it tasted this good, buttery and savory, little hints of spice dancing through it, shifting from one flavor to another, and he was powerless to stop, grabbing more and slicing it off, shoving it in his mouth before he’d even finished chewing the last bite, his hands and face slick with that delicious blood, the perfect sauce to go with his meat, the fingers on his right hand had grown claws at some point, and now he was tearing away at the walls with his hand, ripping chunks off with his teeth, continuing to slice and shred long after he’d eaten his fill, even as the ground below started to shake, a guttural roar drowning out the sounds of flesh tearing and blood dripping, the force of it sending Erebus to the ground, snapping him out of whatever trance he’d been in.

What…what had he just done?

How could he be sure there wasn’t anyone else out there in the blackness?

He could feel the ghosts of his parents watching him, watching their son turn into the monster he looked like.

He had to get out of here.

The walls shifted and pulsed as the demon’s breath sped up, roars and moans sounding out so loudly around him it made his head hurt. Its mouth might be closed now, trapping him inside. He’d have to find another way. Or just…make his own.

A large section of one of the walls had already been ravaged, cut and torn away during his frenzied eating, so he resumed work on it, slicing away chunks with his sword now, tossing them to the side instead of bringing them to his mouth. Progress was faster when he could focus, but it was almost impossible to tell how far he’d come, how much he’d carved away, how close he was to breaking through the skin. He came across a more rubbery section and ended up having to almost saw away at it, blood spurting all over him as he went, as if he wasn’t already covered in it. How whole body felt so sticky and sweaty and gross, and all he could think about was washing off somehow after he got out of here.

Blood was flowing out steadily now, coming out with more and more force, and soon enough it was all Erebus could do to hold onto his sword, his anchor buried in the fleshy wall, praying he wouldn’t get swept away by the jet of hot, sticky, delicious-smelling blood. H-he must’ve cut into a major blood vessel. Those shot blood out like crazy, from what he remembered. Maybe this would be enough to kill the demon? Then he’d just be…trapped inside its corpse. For now, it was still very much alive, its roars and moans starting to get louder, more desperate.

All of a sudden, the ground beneath him lurched, and Erebus’s sword slipped out of the cut it was in, sending him tumbling backwards, the river of blood sweeping him away before he could try to stand up, stab the floor, do anything to save himself, but he had to, he couldn’t fall any further down, couldn’t lose the tunnel he’d carved out in this sweltering blackness, couldn’t sink into the sea of blood and digestive acid that was likely waiting for him below, he had to stop somehow, the sword was too long, his wings couldn’t generate lift, nothing to do but desperately scratch at the slippery ground below, dig his claws in, deeper, deeper, deeper, hold on, arm trembling with the effort, he couldn’t afford to let go, to fall, the blood was coming with less force now, the tremors not as frequent, just a little bit longer until…

The great beast fell silent, fell still, its blood merely trickling by now, dripping in imitation of the water in the cave surrounding it.

Erebus dragged himself to his feet, coughing up blood. He’d tried to keep his mouth closed during the whole ordeal, but some had still made its way in. Was the demon actually dead? It was hard to tell for sure, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He had to get out of here regardless, and any other escape route besides his tunnel was out of the question. Nothing to do but resume work, then, and hope he could get out of here soon.

Time crawled by as Erebus hacked away at the wall, and just when he was starting to think he wasn’t headed towards the surface of this thing’s body, his sword met with a different sort of resistance than before. It wasn’t like the blood vessel, more stretchy and tough, but he was pretty sure he was able to poke through, and soon enough he’d made a gap large enough for him to squeeze through. He didn’t realize how hot it’d been in there until he was sitting outside it, the cave air unbelievably refreshing after being swallowed up by that rancid heat.

After feeling around a bit, Erebus decided he must be on the demon’s back or something. The slope down was pretty steep, enough that he wasn’t sure he could walk down effectively in the dark. His wings were still exhausted from flying earlier, so…scooting down very carefully it was. For the first time today, he was able to move downwards at a reasonable pace, not having to be careful of random rocks jutting out of the floor or ceiling. He was starting to get a bit excited to leave these caves and be able to see again. The water in the sloth demon’s domain would be perfect for washing all of this blood off of him, and there were few things he loved more than feeling clean. Already, he was starting to realize everything he’d taken for granted in his previous captivity.

He’d taken light for granted, too, and the moment he saw it, the moment he could see at all, he teared up a bit, but that might have just been because it was bright. Navigating the rest of the way down the demon’s body was much easier now that he could see, and it wasn’t long before he was back on solid ground, nearly running towards the cave exit. Finally.

The dark, starless sky was a welcome sight, almost as beautiful to him as the small pools of water a little ways away. He was lucky this exit dumped him out closer to the water than the entrance he’d originally gone through had been. Curious, Erebus looked down at himself, and couldn’t help but wince in disgust. He was covered from head to toe in blood, most of it dried to a brownish-red, cracking a bit around his joints, little pieces of the demon’s flesh caked on here and there. His hair was sticky and matted with it, and the coppery, still tempting tang of it was all he could smell and taste. He’d never been so revoltingly filthy, and he was secretly glad no one was here to see it.

It was a quick walk to the nearest pool of water, and while it looked a bit different than the other little pools from before, he paid it no mind. Water was water. He fell to his knees in front of it and stuck his hands in, ready to-HOT! Erebus pulled his hands out of the fiery water, screaming as they burned so intensely he could feel it in his very bones. All he could do was lie on his side and wait for them to heal, tears streaming from his eyes as he wailed. None of the water in the sloth demon’s domain had even been warm, so why was it nearly boiling all of a sudden? Unless he wasn’t…

“You really wanted to make a good first impression on me, didn’t you, intruder?”

Blinking away tears, Erebus looked in the direction of the familiar voice, his blood running cold when he saw who had spoken.

It was Shiori.

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#i wrote something #erebus & terror #erebus #vorath #whump #whump writing #gore #heavy gore #nonhuman whumpee #sorry erebus you get that tag now #suck it #uh yeah so. hope you enjoyed.#i love Cave i am sad i couldnt describe how pretty it looks :( maybe another time #and i already wrote guy stumbles around lost in a cave in complete darkness so ofc it was a little more than that <3 #toss him into the mystery flesh pit!!#yeah i cant visit my favorite national park because its not REAL which is probably for the best ig 🙄#i will make erebus go into the meat tunnel instead and since he was very hungry he uh. mmmmmm yummy walls #gluttony demons taste super delicious to other gluttony demons so that is why he was having a gourmet experience #gluttony demons usually engage in nonfatal cannibalism if they encounter each other it is truly a lovely time #yeah i covered that man in blood he is the filthiest he's ever been probably hehe #maybe he will finally get to take a bath!!#sorry abt the cliffhanger BUT the next chapter has been mostly written for years so it shouldnt take me that long to get out #so hopefully yall wont be waiting for months lmao

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