A Predatious Field Study Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 2: Eight Legged Panic!

Following the map had the pair carving a path of destruction through the forest, with Juniper determined to eat one of every animal on her way there. She’d mostly succeeded as the beasts of the surrounding forest apparently saw her and her traveling companion as easy prey as they progressed toward their goal.

The beasts of the forest were decidedly wrong in their assumption and only through the grace of Juniper’s mercy were they allowed to continue existing as she ate her way through the surrounding forest's food chain. Even then they’d all made it to her stomach before she transmuted their mass with her tongue rune. This left them scarred with a memory of her stomach that they weren’t likely to forget.

The destination on the map ended at a mountain with the marker on the map blinking close to an entrance to a cave. “M-Maybe I should have considered elevation when designing the map.” Maggie stuttered, staring into the dark of the cave nervously.

“Nonsense!” Juniper proclaimed. “A small exploration into this cave will be no trouble. If it’s not there we go up.”

The scientist expected her optimism to carry both her and Maggie through the threshold of doubt and beyond the cave mouth. She briefly pointed toward the specter-drawn carriage. “You stay put now!” she commanded before traipsing down the steep rocky incline into the cave. She could hear the loud rustle of Maggie’s diaper as she waddled behind, eager to follow Juniper anywhere.

With her hand on her hip Juniper readied a luminous rock to light her way, but she soon found it to be unnecessary. As they descended the daylight around them gave way to a luminous blue light cast by bioluminescent mushrooms that sprouted from the walls in large clusters.

Juniper was fascinated with the fauna, whipping out the notebook that hung on her belt to make a sketch and take notes. “Maggie,” she whispered, “collect some samples in a jar for me. I’d love to test the edibility of these and see if they have practical uses.”

Magdalene nodded, taking out a jar from her pack and carefully scraping a mushroom inside. She made sure not to touch the actual flesh of the fungus itself, in the event it might be poisonous.

Juniper watched her carefully. While she might have been proud to see her assistant taking all the precautions of not touching the fauna it was immediately overshadowed when she saw a spray of something ejecting from the next fungi over on the wall. Even the slight vibrations apparently stirred them into ejecting spores, something Maggie inhaled in without even realizing.

“Well won’t this be interesting…” Juniper thought to herself, making a column in her notes for spore inhalation. If it got really bad the cure was surely in a scroll in her pack, but until it proved to be an emergency Maggie had inadvertently become the perfect subject for the next couple of hours.

With her notes on mushrooms out of the way the slow exploration into the cave continued until the tunnel ended, coming to a halt at a cliff that dropped into a large opening. The cavern was massive, with a large domed ceiling and a floor that must have existed somewhere beyond the darkness below.

Across the expansive void thick gray webs connected from one side to another, creating a crisscross of fibrous bridges that made the space traversable. Interspaced along the great web bridges were ovoid shapes, big enough to house a creature of considerable size.

At the edge of the cliff, Juniper clocked a large boulder and pressed her body against it, hiding herself from the expansive space. Maggie followed, condensing her lanky form as much as she could.

“Ugh, not cave spiders!” Maggie whispered, shivering next to Juniper. “I can’t stand spiders!”

Juniper shook her head, peering out from behind the rock she’d been hidden behind. “Not spiders dear assistant,” she said, “look again.”

Reluctantly Maggie complied, peeking beyond the rock and seeing what Juniper meant.

Climbing along the walls were creatures with eight legs, each skittering across the web bridges and up the stone walls but their bodies were smooth black chitin rather than the fuzzy form of a normal cave spider. Not only that but the bulbous lower segments didn’t end in the normal eight-eyed head but a humanoid torso that rose up from it.

“Driders…” Maggie whispered dreamily, staring out in amazement. I didn’t even know that we had a colony this close to the castle.” Her fascination was muted but tangible. Juniper knew she always got this way around a new creature.

The red headed scientist ogled the creatures more analytically, scribbling notes as she watched the colony of spider-bottomed creatures skitter to and fro entering and exiting the huts formed from webs.

The frantic scribbling of her pen was stopped by a strange noise from behind her, one that snagged her attention away for just a moment. Maggie was making an inordinate amount of noise behind her.

“Gah…ah-ha!”

Juniper snapped around to tell her to quiet down, stopping when she realized her assistant's eyes were watering at the corners and she was starting to rear back. She stood up from behind the rock, revealing her full body to the room full of unfamiliar spider people. Thinking this was possibly a reaction to the spores Juniper flipped back to that page in her notebook.

“Gahh…J-Juniper… Ha I—ha I think I’m—hah ah gonna…n-snee-heehh—sn-sneeze!”

“Hissschhhheeewwww!”

*FFFFRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT*

“HTTTCCHHHEEEWWWWW!”

“FLLLORRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT*

“HissssTTTCHHHHEEEWWWWWWWWWW!”

*BLOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTT*

True to her word Maggie sneezed loudly. Worse though was that each forceful burst of air through her nose brought a loud reverberation through her padding, sending a shuddering rumble through the crinkly plastic with the first one and then a lewd squelch immediately after. Maggie’s already massive diaper was expanding behind her, filling out with an involuntary hypermess that she couldn’t control.

Juniper’s attention redirected from the colony of driders to her assistant, scribbling down notes regarding the spores of the bioluminescent mushrooms apparently caused sneezing. The back of Maggie’s diaper ballooned out three feet, then she sneezed again only to have it crawl back across the cave ground another four.

Rather than the usual dark stain caused by normal voiding, a strange blue hue spread across the absorbent material of her diaper. It was emitting the same light as the mushrooms in the cave. Within moments the amount of glowing smelly gunk produced was lifting Maggie off the floor, stretching her diaper to half the size of one of the spider cottages hanging above and below them.

Her legs hung uselessly out of the sides, unable to ambulate due to the sheer size of her mess. She herself had gone limp, apparently exhausted by the amount of sneezing and pooping she’d done in such a short amount of time.

“Mushroom spores cause uncontrolled sneezing, possibly hypermessing. At least increased mess production in a hypermesser.” Juniper’s thoughts mirrored her notes as she jotted them down, her mind going into overdrive wondering how they’d driven Maggie to produce nearly a ton and a half of waste when she was only usually capable of a thousand pounds on a good day.

She was about to start asking her assistant questions when the scientific process was interrupted by the cave’s inhabitants. Webbing shot down from above and began cocooning Maggie with impressive speed, wrapping her upper body up tight before lifting her into the air. Juniper watched in amazement as a coordinated team of the spider people fashioned a makeshift pulley with their webbing, hoisting her assistant and her massive glowing diaper into the air. The glowing mush in Maggie's padding cast a soft blue light throughout the whole cave.

While she watched, Juniper only continued to catalog the drider’s behaviors. She was amazed at their teamwork and innovation in hoisting such a large object off of the ground. “She makes a rather wonderful lamp.” Juniper mused, watching her assistant's useless legs flail as she was raised to the center of the ceiling.

She was so busy observing that Juniper herself forgot to hide behind the rock too, leaving her open to an attack from the spider monsters. When the first web hit her arm she looked down at it bemusedly, when the next six joined it she started to get annoyed.

From above a lone spider wearing a black onyx crown showered her with webs, trying to cocoon her the same way they had her assistant. “You’re impeding my notes.” She grumbled, wrenching her arm towards her in an attempt to break the strings.

The threads refused to budge and even kept her arm stuck in place as more of the sticky webbing descended, threatening to wrap her up just like Magdalene. Juniper wasn’t entertained and carefully slipped her notebook back into its holster on her belt. In a flash she opened her jaw, swiping her head down at the threads and snapping them free with her teeth.

The drider above her looked shocked, its many eyes following the threads leading down towards Juniper's mouth. With pursed lips the small scientist started to slurp, drawing the sticky webbing down her black hole throat and into her stomach.

"Slurrrppppppp."

Inside her body, she could feel it reduced to chyme easily without the need of her rune before it rocketed down through her intestines and out through her diaper. Only a second passed before the web went taut.

*GRRRMMMMMMMMM*

*FFLLLLRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTT*

Juniper’s stomach groaned, her forceful consumption causing her to void her bowels faster than usual. She may have been shitting constantly but rarely did she have a near-infinite supply of material to force through her body. A curious thought about her diaper’s capacity ran through her head. “Ahh, Maggie just changed me an hour ago…” she thought, “I’m sure I’ve got the space.”

The drider above looked terrified at this development, working its back legs to spin more webbing between them.

“SSLLLLUURRRPPPP” Juniper just slurped faster, pulling the web taut once again. “I’ll bet I can shit faster than you can spin webs.” Juniper thought, pulling the drider close to her. It stopped spinning threads and put all of its strength into clinging to the ceiling above Juniper, trying to avoid its fate as a meal.

The scientist's throat strength proved to be too much for it, and eight arachnid limbs slipped from the cave wall, leaving its body to spiral down towards the predator. The drider’s thorax landed directly onto Juniper’s open jaw, giving it only a brief moment to yelp before it was pulled into her stomach.

Her belly pushed outward, growing to accommodate the new struggling weight inside. “While I’d love to feel all those limbs thrash for a while, I do believe there’s science to do.” Juniper said wistfully. The rune on her belly button glowed, shrinking her stomach rapidly and reducing the creature inside into liquid in seconds.

“NOW WHO’S NEXT!?” Juniper shouted, looking challengingly around her to the rest of the driders to even attempt to wrap her up like they had her assistant. The village of spider people shifted nervously on the walls. None of them made any outright moves to attack her but slowly one descended toward her, holding its taloned hands up in a motion of surrender.

Juniper’s hands rested on her hips as she watched the drider approach. She smiled at the spider licking her lips. “Another snack? I’ve still got plenty of room.” Her tone was teasing but the words were real. She wouldn’t be threatened by the driders, nor was her stomach full. She’d happily make good on her threat to clear the cave if it meant getting her and Maggie out of there.

The mouth of the drider fell open slightly before it lowered its humanoid form and thorax to the ground, bowing to the scientist. “We… meant not to impede you. Intruders are taken seriously within our cave… our home.” The creature’s speech was stilted as if it hadn’t spoken in a long time.

Her interest peaked Juniper once again started to take notes, “Ahhh you know common, that’ll make this much easier. We didn’t mean to intrude on your home, just looking for a certain item I would have been happy to negotiate with you.”

“We… are not used…bigger predators here… we thought you… easy prey. Forgive… us, allow us to… stay. I… will give you what you… need.” The drider said.

Juniper perked up thrilled with the offer. “Oh, wonderful! I’m glad you’re so amicable. I hope part of the deal is releasing my assistant up there as well. I won’t be leaving without her.”

The drider looked between its cave mates, each one of them nodding in agreement. “Of course…now what… you need?”

Juniper explained about the gem which was apparently deep in the cave. The one who called themselves Ignatius nodded and agreed to take her through the cave. She looked up to Maggie who remained cocooned to the ceiling. “Hang around won’t you Magdalene? I’ll be back here in just a moment.”