Petre's breath returned to him in a rush of white fire. Manya loosened her hold, and it was as though his body remembered how to hurt. He would have cried out if he had the strength.

"You will beLoOong to me, biiig b̴̦͠r̷̗͝ō̷̞O̶̦̐t̸̡̔H̵̟̍ę̴̐r̵̹͗," Manya said, her words full of manic delight. "But first..."

And from where Petre lay, hurt and shivering, he watched her snakelike flesh slither towards Blurb.

Towards his treasure.

Towards his delight.

Blurb's body erupted into a mass of black tentacles, but her face was human and tired. After so many hours, after so many weeks, his beloved was awake, but tired made lead of her eyes. Blurb did not seem to notice the danger that crept towards her.

"Nooo..." Petre whispered, and the word left him exhausted.

He was dragged along the forest floor after Manya, and rather than delight at the closeness to Blurb, each centimeter filled him with a whiter and brighter terror.

And then Manya rose up, a totem of red veins and white teeth. She looked down at Blurb with the same hate with which she had eviscerated Petre's children.

"Bye, bye, liittle sisTeEr," Manya said, her words full of warmth.

"Nooo..." Petre uttered in a labored rush of breath. He watched the red worm fall upon Blurb with arms and legs aflame, but the hate that numbed his aches offered him little strength.

He watched, unblinking, the world misty with his tears.

He watched, bewildered, as the bent-over journalist seemed to pop beside Blurb.

He watched, his mouth agape, as Sarku wrapped her hand around the lance of Manya's red throat. His mind played tricks on him because her hand seemed to be ten times larger than it should have been.

And then the ground said its goodbyes as Petre was whipped into the air.

"I-I think that is enough... h-horseplay," Sarku said, her words the same as before, so full of furtive anxiety.

As he spun around, his legs and arms flailing like leaden weights, Petre snatched a glimpse of Sarku's other hand. Like the other, it had more than doubled in size, but for some reason it seemed to glisten and shine.

Sarku slashed her claws across the red worm's rope of flesh, and the forest filled with Manya's howl of pain.

[ ÿ̷͙́o̵͚̕ȍ̷̘O̸̗͑O̸̘͆U̵͉̐ū̶̦ű̶̮u̸͉̿ù̵͈! ]

Petre crashed onto the ground, but Manya thrashed and thrashed so that his face was smeared across bushes full of thorns and bashed into the thick oak of trees.

"H-heh heh," Sarku added a nervous laugh to Manya's agony. "I-It's me..."

[ wHhhYyYY!? whHYy are ̶y̶o̶O̵O̵u̵u̵u heerEe!? ]

Manya's thrashes quieted, and Petre saw.

Her voice had sounded distant, the wet plops of putrid noise. He found her mouth, their teeth stained full of red misery, a meter away from the rest of her body.

Sarku's claws had sliced clean through the rope of her flesh.

[ mo̶O̶oo̴Ther! ]

"Y-you know I do-don't, don't like that word," Sarku Dno said. Her hands had returned to their normal size. But Petre did not think anything about the large breasted journalist was her normal.

His eyes darted to Blurb, and relief washed over him when he found her unhurt.

"Didja think I would stay away?"

Petre turned towards the newcomer, but found only Sarku.

But she was not Sarku Dno, the journalist, anymore.

A tall woman with blonde hair and streaks of purple looked into the eyes of Manya's severed head without a hint of fear. The woman's hands and clothes sucked up the black blood that dribbled from her stump.

"Makin' all this fuss? Over some sack of meat?" the woman pressed her human head against Manya's monstrous mien. "Ya didn't think I would come ta taste him myself?"

[ yoOUu wreeE̸e̶t̴c̵h̷e̵d̴ chameleon! ]

The words had scarcely reached the air before the woman opened her mouth, and her mouth widened and swelled, and she tossed Manya into her belly as if she were a ball of gum.

"This child of mine," the woman said with a shake of her head.

She turned towards Petre, but scarcely seemed to notice him. She picked up the severed length of flesh that still remained anchored in his right eye.

"A marriage of flesh without no consent..." the tall woman muttered to herself. "That's rape."

And she puuuuuuullled at the rope. Petre hurled through the air towards her. The wind slapped at his face, and then what little breath he had gathered spilled out when he reached her.

"That ittle worm," the woman said with a mischievous smile. She stopped Petre's flight with a raised foot. "She buried this deep."

Petre was slammed back down to the ground, the woman's foot a pile of cinder blocks atop his stomach. And then she puuuuulled, and Petre felt his insides become his outsides.

Somewhere he found the breath to scream, but he did not realize it was his noise.

The woman puuulled and puuuuuuuuulled and then his legs warmed with urine and his face bile.

"So huuuman. Ugh."

Petre found the woman beside Blurb. He did not even have the strength to know alarm. He felt broken. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to disappear.

"Ta think you two louts came from my eggs. Patheeeeeetic," the woman said, and her human hands disappeared, replaced with the same enormous claws as before.

Blurb fell apart, cut into a dozen pieces of swiss cheese, as the woman's claws slid through the black of her flesh. The smallest look of surprise filled Blurb's tired face before the woman picked up the lump of flesh.

[ ...peterey... ]

Blurb disappeared into the woman's massive mouth, its size inflated to inhuman and monstrous proportion.

And then she turned and looked at Petre for what felt like the first time.

"Oh my."

The tall woman with blonde hair and purple streaks had disappeared.

"You look unwell."

A motherly figure with voluminous curls of black rushed to his side. Paternal warmth filled her worried features as she reached tentatively towards the gaping hole in his face.

"This is all your fault, you know," the motherly woman said as she caressed his bloodless cheeks. "That pesky bomb. All this... violence."

She pulled Petre into her massive bosom. He was flashing in and out of consciousness as her words tickled his ears and his senses.

"You made them too human. And I do wonder how. And I do wonder why."

Her eyes were two solid marbles of black.

"Are you my Prince Charming? Will I have to steal you from those little eggs of mine?"

She pulled him closer to her plump lips.

"But for now, I want you to sleep. For now, I want you to have a pleasant dream."

Her lips parted to reveal a bottomless pit of black.

And she threw Petre inside.