A Predatious Field Study Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Chapter 5: The Beast of August Isle

The next morning the pair sprung to life excitedly, the promise of their journey ending spurring them to slot the three gems they’d found into the corresponding monoliths. Scientific discovery wasn't the only thing driving them though, the chemicals of infatuation had saturated their minds last night and remained to drive their actions with a fervent joy.

Once each gem was in place the pair stood in the center while a low hum gradually became more high-pitched by the second. They looked around excitedly, wondering how they’d reach the Isle from this strange altar and just how the magic of the gems worked.

Juniper took extensive notes as the sound rose. She caught the wavering wisps of magic, the way the stones seemed to cut through the obelisks surrounding them and rise through the air, and finally just how blindingly brilliant the flash that encompassed them was.

Juniper’s eyes slammed shut to avoid being blinded and when she opened them the desert sand was no longer beneath her feet. Instead, she found her shoes resting against hard-packed dirt, with a pleasant warmth surrounding her rather than the desert’s harsh heat. Somewhere off in the distance, the salty sea carried the scent of brine through the air.

“We made it.” Maggie marveled, sketching everything she could in her own notebook while she looked around. “The August Isle.”

Thinly packed trees dotted the landscape around them, vegetation that was used to a warm climate with little rain. Knobbly branches reached out with leaves dotting their limbs about halfway up, and small round growths protruded within the vegetation.

The scientist watched Maggie reach up to the tree, plucking the dark fruits from them. “Olives.” she exclaimed under her breath, popping one in her mouth and savoring the flavor of the rare delicacy they were hardly able to get in BorgeFjell.

“From the desert all the way out here.” Juniper mused, “What a powerful teleportation spell. I wonder how we’ll get back.”

Maggie traipsed around the summoning obelisks, bending down to pick something up at each one. “I Imagine the same way we got here, the stones came with us.” she said.

“Excellent, then the only worry we have is finding the Hecatoncheires. Let’s get moving!”

Now that they had the stones Maggie’s map was of little use to the pair, so they had no guidance toward their target. It hardly mattered though as getting here had been the hard part. Cataloging and exploring could take up as much time as it needed as she intended to explore the whole island. From what Juniper could tell they were on the side of a mountain, with the elevation to the east increasing while it decreased to the west.

“Well we found two of the stones underground and one high up, I think we’re due to find something closer to the sky than the ground.” she said, pointing upward.

The logic was arbitrary at best but she was hardly worried. The nervous excitement that’d pushed them through the journey of finding the teleportation gems disappeared, allowing some breathing room.

Traveling up the mountain was slow going, not simply because it was an uphill climb but also because they stopped every few feet, recording various bushes and vegetation they noticed along the way in their notebooks. Small animals popped between trees too and off in the distance the call of a seabird echoed in the air.

Both Juniper and Maggie’s eyes were full of stars, the opportunity to explore something untouched by civilization was a dream.

From her left Juniper clocked a familiar sound, a gruff snort that reminded her of home. She whipped her head around, catching sight of an animal that looked suspiciously like the boars back home, the queen’s favorite snack that almost always graced her table roasted and stuffed.

This however wasn’t as big, looking lean from its island living but with much fiercer tusks. The swine's bristly fur twitched as it sniffed its way across the ground. Two more followed close behind it.

The redhead’s eyes grew wide, she couldn’t look away from the small troupe of javelins. Her need to eat was taking over her mind for scientific inquiry.

She rushed the creatures, pulling one into her mouth as her tongue reached for another one, consuming it as well. Even without the prolonged spit-roasting, the squealing beasts went down easy, saturating Juniper’s tongue with the extravagant taste of bacon and olives.

The recognition that she was starting to get ahead of herself hit her and before her digestion became a factor she focused on the duplication rune on her tongue to bring the swine back while maintaining their mass inside her. With the island being virtually untouched she wasn’t about to throw off the delicate ecosystem by becoming its new super-predator.

Still, it was nice to have her belly full again and made the push up the mountain easier.

Discoveries continued the whole way too, between them they found humanoids with snake tails instead of legs, three-headed canines, and even a goat-headed lion with a snake for a tail. The pair carefully documented the discoveries till Juniper could wait no more and pounced from whatever hiding spot she'd chosen, swallowing them up before describing the taste and texture of each morsel, finally releasing them before letting Maggie know how long the mass actually took her to digest. None were more than thirty seconds.

Over the course of several hours, the pair approached the top of the mountain and when they finally crested the hill just above the low clouds they found that the treeline broke, and the landscape dipped back down inside a long-dormant volcanic crater. Old ash had apparently spurned the growth of a glorious collection of wildflowers with an array of colors swaying in the wind just below them.

The explosion of colors was doing its best to stand out but in the center of it was a towering giant, pulling the attention away from the crater of wildflowers. A gray body looked as though it was embedded into the ground, the bottom rooted amongst the long grass and wildflowers. The roots coalesced and rose up hundreds of feet as a knobbly gray tree trunk. About halfway up the wood-like exterior, the thing sprouted its first arm, then another, and another even after that. Faces dotted the span of the tree, each with vicious snarls and smirks across their visage. Eventually, the treelike appearance disappeared, and the creature looked more like a tumorous lump of arms and faces that’d grown onto old wood.

“The hundred-headed, hundred-handed giant.” Juniper said in wonder. “The last of three in the known world and said to be the rarest delicacy for a pred. I can’t believe I’m seeing it here for real.”

----------------------------------------------------

Maggie nodded beside her marveling at the insane size of the beast. It was only because of its home here in the crater that it could have remained hidden for so long. The top of it would barely poke out when viewed from afar, maybe even possibly being mistaken for the peak of the mountain.

She jotted down any notes she could from the lip of the crater, thrilled that the creature was actually sleeping. It made for the perfect opportunity to examine it. Juniper however, closed her book with a distracting clap, making to start the journey toward their target.

“Wait!” Maggie panic whispered, “We need a plan, how’re we going to contain it to bring it back? What should we do if it wakes up? We’re not ready!”

Juniper scoffed at Maggie, continuing her forward motion, “I’m just going to get a closer look Mags, we’ll figure all that out when I’m done with my notes.”

The redhead’s confidence made Maggie uneasy but she followed anyway, thinking that if worse came to worst Juniper might actually need her help. They approached quietly with the long grass of the crater tickling their legs as they closed in on the snoozing creature. The blonde marveled at the true enormity of it now that they’d closed the distance.

Its slumbering snores were more akin to an earthquake up close, shaking Maggie and Juniper as they closed in. They watched and moved cautiously, taking slow steps to avoid making noise.

They should have known it wouldn’t be that easy because once they came within a hundred feet of the looming creature all of its eyes opened, each turning to look at the pair with unbridled fury.

----------------------------------------------------

All one-hundred mouths of the creature opened in a collective yell that became a powerful roar, filling the air of the formally peaceful island with the loudest sound Juniper had ever heard. She worried it may shatter her eardrums for a moment, then it disappeared together, a sudden absence that surprised her. Without even realizing she had squatted down, pushing her hands into her ears and closing her eyes to keep control over herself while the vibrations shook her.

When she opened them again it came with the discovery that the creature’s shadow was now looming above her and swallowing more of the ground by the second. Its mass was lowering towards her, like a giant thumb moving to crush a pest.

Maggie screamed at Juniper to move, but she didn’t. Her legs couldn’t carry her fast enough to get clear of the creature’s landing zone even if she tried. She stood in defiance of it instead, licking her lips. The Hecatoncheires was meant to be a delicacy after all.

Juniper's pred instincts took over and she spread her legs wide to brace for the impact of the creature, unhinging her jaw in preparation. She pulled her tongue from her mouth and using the pencil from her notebook she made a quick scrawl on the muscle’s surface. It was something she hadn’t had the pleasure of trying yet and without clear sight, she could only hope the spellwork was correct but it was the only way she could think to consume the monster bearing down on her.

The wind whipped around her as it came closer. The enormity of its body filled her vision, overtaking the blue sky above with its mass. This was the moment of truth, as the grasping hands and screaming faces bore down, her lips pressed against the flesh of the creature.

In that split second, she licked the surface of the beast giving herself her first pure taste of the beast. Savory mingled with sweetness in that brief moment as the vivacious flavor threatened to melt her entire body. Even just that brief lick was enough to make her think that if she was crushed it would be worth it to have experienced that flavor.

Luckily her magic kicked in and started pulling more of its body along her tongue as a miniature gravitational field compacted the legendary creature's matter into a size she could swallow.

*GuLLLPPPP*

*GWOOOOLLLLLL*

She’d devised the spell for bigger prey that her throat wouldn’t have been able to handle normally and was glad to feel it working because, as powerful as her pharynx was, it couldn’t have pulled in something of this size, not without help. The spell could only shrink the matter for a short time though, meaning that as soon as it entered Juniper’s stomach it re-expanded. In a burst her belly stretched to a diameter of five feet in a second, and twenty another two after that.

*Bwwwwoooollllll*

If it kept up she was likely to burst, making her attempts at survival useless. Her magic tingled across her body focusing in on the stomach rune she used to reduce mass and aid digestion. Unlike yesterday it worked, and glowed brightly, trying to reduce the creature to chyme as fast as Juniper’s body would allow.

*BBBBRRRRRAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPP*

*FFFFFFFRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT*

*FLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPP*

It succeeded in stopping the growth of her stomach, however the back of her diaper soon felt the brunt of the consequences. it had already pushed past its three-ton limit and unfurled beneath her. She was now dealing with another issue. The Hecatoncheires would be consumed and she'd have the joy of having eaten it but the resulting diaper blowout would destroy everything around them.

*FLLOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT*

She shot a look at Maggie, who was already leaping into action. She had apparently realized the same thing as Juniper. From her bag, she pulled a hypermesser diaper and started scrawling her own spells on the exterior. In seconds she was looking at her handiwork before she started wrapping the padding around Juniper’s hammerspace special before its sagging crotch even hit the ground.

“Will it hold?” her eyes asked.

Magdalene nodded, either assuming or understanding the message perfectly. Juniper had confidence in her partner's work either way and stopped trying to hold back her evacuation so her assistant could slip on the diaper.

Now that she was padded, what was the point? She had the meal in her mouth and the means to contain it, why not go full glutton?

The tiny gravitational field in Juniper’s mouth continued to pull the beast inside, stretching her stomach before the rune on her gut boiled it down to chyme in her magically enhanced stomach acid. That liquid rocketed through her twitching bowels, dumping into the back of her diaper and causing it to expand beyond its extra-dimensional storage space. Luckily the back of that diaper was caught and held by Maggie's makeshift super hypermess pamp, containing the smelly gunk even when it started to spill out.

However Juniper was consuming the monster at an excruciatingly slow pace. She calculated through the heavenly taste of the Hecatoncheires that it would take nearly an hour to consume and digest it. She just didn’t have that time.

For the first time in a long time, Juniper triggered the muscles in her abdomen, compressing them around her bowels and forcing her body’s production of excrement to octuple.

“Hnnnnngggg”

*Frrrrrtttttttt* *BRRRRRAPPPPPP*

*GROOOOAANNNNNN* *GURRRGGGGGGGGGLEEE*

*SLOSSHHHHHHHH*

The world around Juniper froze, a perfect moment captured as part of the Hecatoncheires dumped into the back of her diaper while the front half slipped inside her. Her eyes squeezed shut, muscles tensed, and she felt her stomach rumble. It was the only calm there would be before the storm.

*BLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT* *SQWWWLLLLLCCCCCHHHH*

A rumbling fart shook the valley, rivaling the noise initially created by the Hecatoncheires as a log of shit the size of a tree trunk shot from Juniper’s body with astounding force. She hypothesized it would have been enough to topple the castle walls of their home country, but within the back of Magdalene's enchanted hypermesser diaper it simply tented out the plastic padding. Her forceful voiding pushed the diaper's back towards the slope of the crater as it stretched to contain the initial ton of mushy shit Juniper expelled.

Her mess flowed into the diaper back and shifted  underneath her, a molten pile hot enough to rival whatever melted rock spewed from the long-dormant volcano so long ago as she swallowed another ten feet of the creature. Its faces and arms disappeared inside of the ravenous pred’s gullet.

With each inch of the being that disappeared Juniper’s diaper grew beneath her, bringing her to equal height with the remainder of the creature then eventually towering over it. She had to actually look down to continue swallowing the creature, filling her gullet with its weight briefly before it was added to her diaper.

----------------------------------------------------

Magdalene watched in amazement as the tubular body of the mythical creature disappeared into her lover’s throat only to end up on the other side a second later. She didn’t even think it possible for a pred to consume anything that fast, nor expel it just as quickly.

The diaper she’d put around Juniper held as it started to dwarf Maggie in size, a fact she was proud of her handiwork, considering the spell had been written so quickly and all. Its growing bulk swallowed Juniper’s little legs, making them disappear into the squishy, mush-filled padding. Its exterior crept across the wildflowers, reaching out towards the blonde like an avalanche.

Her attention shifted from enjoying the view to doing the math of input versus output and she put together a simple equation. The volume of the crater would be nearly filled by the time Juniper was done and as it stood she added nearly two tons of waste to the padding every ten seconds.

As quickly as she could Maggie gathered her supplies and booked it up the hill, now secretly glad there had been so much running to condition her on this journey. Behind her the brown-stained wall of padding approached, threatening to swallow her.

----------------------------------------------------

Juniper’s eyes practically rolled back in her head, the taste of the Hecatoncheires overwhelming all rational thought and her expulsion into her diaper was only aiding it in its crusade to make her brain empty much like her stomach.

She felt like she was not only shitting out a lifetime’s worth of food but also pissing away every thought. Intense heat surrounded her nethers. Parts of her anatomy were being spread wide and below her, the growing diaper rubbed places she didn’t have the autonomy to reach. Every moment that the Hecatoncheires spent slipped down her throat was heavenly for Juniper.

She didn’t even realize her meal was ending until she gulped in a burst of fresh air. For the first time in three minutes, she remembered to breathe and her pharynx wasn’t stuffed full of monster flesh. With a sigh she took another breath, listening to her stomach roil and churn as the final remnants of the beast were reduced to nothing.

*GRORRROOOOO* *MRRRRRMMMMMM*

She slumped down, her body quickly becoming devoid of energy as the exhaustion from the amount of effort she’d put in settled in her muscles. Her stomach shrank slower now, the diaper filling only gradually. The need to push wasn’t there anymore, not that she could anyway.

She relaxed against her literal mountain of filth packed into a rustly, plastic-backed package as her body slowly added to it. It’d been the second-greatest eating experience of her life and she couldn’t wait to brag about the size of the diaper she’d created.

Maggie waved to her from the side of the crater looking just as excited as she was, though her assistant was able to actually show it. “THAT WAS AMAZING!” she called, practically bouncing where she was. “Tell me everything you can! How did it taste, what was it like, can you still feel it? What does that diaper feel like!?”

Juniper gave a weak smile, answering all of her assistant’s questions one by one, from the heavenly flavor to the feeling of her diaper while her stomach shrank down to its normal size and her padding reached its largest size, settling into the crater.

“I can’t believe it, just wait till we bring it back! The queen will be thrilled.”

Juniper nodded, focusing what little energy had returned to her into the rune on her tongue. She expected the creature to return in front of her, confused but placated.

Nothing happened.

It’d been too late, the mass of the creature was already digested and in her diaper, far beyond transmuting back and leaving behind a replication. Now Juniper understood why hyper preds had eaten the other two so selfishly. It was almost impossible to stop after tasting it.

She looked at Maggie shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders. “It’s a good thing we—urp, took all those notes. Maybe when we describe it to Queen Nimue she’ll get the feeling of it, because it’s too late now. Now my dear Mags, let’s devise a plan to get me changed. We have more of the island to explore and I’m starting to get hungry again.”