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At this point, Kabru was tired of being toyed with. He was nobody's fool and he wasn’t about to play someone else’s game.
It was cramped where he was but not so that he couldn’t reach his sword to unsheathe it. Even with the meager light, the metal still gleamed. Almost as bright as all the white around him, Kabru struck, stabbing his weapon deep into the pink muscle in front of him and then dragging it down in a slicing motion.
The mouth around him roared in pain and though he hated to admit it, he was satisfied with the reaction he had just received.
The tongue with his sword in it thrashed wildly around and blood began to mix with all the saliva.
It wasn’t long before he found himself spat out and back in the tight grip of the beast who had caught him.
The beast, known formerly as his friend Laios Touden, glared down at him and bared his bloody teeth at him like some sort of animal.
“You’ll pay for that!” Laios snarled, but not before reaching in his mouth and prying the sword out and flicking it away like it was a mere toothpick.
“Snap out of it!” Kabru shouted up at him. “I know you’re in there somewhere, Laios! Wake up!”
Whatever enchantment had gotten his friend had gotten into him deep. He just wasn’t acting right at all.
It had all been good and normal up until he had stumbled into some weird spores with Laios’ group. It didn’t take long for all of them to know that something weird was going on because everyone but Laios had been shrunk to a few inches tall.
At first, they all saw no differences except physically until Laios started acting strangely, saying weirder things than normal, and then eyeing all of them weirdly, hungrily in Kabru’s opinion.
He had tried to warn them from approaching Laios but it was too late. Chilchuck had been snatched up by the tall-man and everyone watched in horror as Laios swallowed his friend whole and alive.
At that point, Kabru had come up with a plan to try and distract Laios while the others (Marcille, Senshi, and Izutsumi) came up with a way to turn themselves back to normal and rescue him and Chilchuck from Laios.
So far his attempts to snap Laios out of it had been less than successful. It was clear that Laios only viewed him as food and was toying with him. And it was only a matter of time before he got eaten too. Eaten and chewed up as well because Laios’ behavior and threats had started growing more and more deranged. He was angry, which was so unlike the tall-man, and manic.
Kabru was afraid for his safety and everyone else’s if Laios didn’t snap out of it.
Laios ignored him, blood dribbling down his chin, and he narrowed his eyes at Kabru, as if deciding what kind of ways he was going to torture him.
Kabru braced himself, half expecting to be crushed to death in Laios’ fist, but seeing as the tall-man had already threatened to bite him a few times, he shouldn’t have been surprised to find himself thrown back into Laios’ open mouth.
There he was pushed and shoved around roughly by the appendage that he had stabbed, no longer being tasted, but being brutalized as he was crushed and pushed against hard teeth. He tried to push himself free but to no avail as Laios was relentless in his punishment. At times the force was so tight that he could feel it in his chest, threatening to suffocate him. In his desperation, he made the fatal error of lunging out towards the light when Laios opened his mouth just a little. Clearly it had been what his companion had wanted as when Kabru tried to get out, to say something to him, or at least die trying, those teeth had snapped right down on his right arm, pinning him there with bone breaking force.
“Let me go!” Kabru demanded, trying to pry himself free but Laios merely laughed at him efforts. “Laios!”
The teeth trapping him there began to grind slowly.
He yelped in pain as his flesh and bone was ground as well. Panic swelled in his chest as his own blood began to flow and mix with Laios’ saliva.
But the pain had yet to start, even as it hurt, to his horror, Laios bit his arm clean off.
One moment it was there and the next moment he had a stump spurting out blood. He had wanted to scream but he also didn’t want to give Laios that satisfaction so he whimpered as he bit his own tongue.
“Laios! Laios! Look what you just did! You bit my arm off!” Kabru yelled. “You need to snap out of it now!”
Again, his cries fell on deaf ears as Laios finally began to swallow him, clearly pleased by the taste of his blood. He slipped down Laios’ throat without a fight, feeling hopeless, and then he landed nearly on top of Chilchuck who he had forgotten was down there.
“Oh fuck!” Chilchuck swore when he looked at Kabru. “Hang on!” he tried to help staunch the blood. “I’m sure the others are figuring something out… don’t go and die on me here.”
“I won’t.” Kabru felt dizzy. Sleepy even.
“Shit.” He heard the half-foot mutter.
“I’m fine,” he lied, feeling himself begin to nod off.
He faded in and out of consciousness, hearing bits and pieces of a conversation that was brewing, almost attributing it all to some kind of weirdly physical fucked up dream.
“Why is my mouth all bloody?”
“Down here, you dolt!”
“Chilchuck…? You’re where?”
“Hurry, I’m pretty sure Kabru’s about to die!”
“Not dead yet.” Kabru chipped in and then faded out again.
“Okay, okay, I think I see Marcille coming… I’ll spit you two out.”
“You better!”
And then nothing… Not a sound.
Until he heard his own gasp of air as he sat straight up. He hadn’t been resurrected that much he knew and his arm had been magically reattached to him.
The others were there and he was the right size again. The right size and… safe.
He scanned the room, finding someone oddly missing and saw that Laios was choosing to hang back in the shadows while the others talked.
The other tall-man seemed nervous of Kabru when Kabru approached him to ask how he was feeling.
“I’m really sorry,” Laios couldn’t even look at him. “I don’t know what came over me…” his voice trembled, sounding sad and almost fearful; his hands shook as he clenched and unclenched them repeatedly. “I wish I could take it all back.”
Kabru rubbed his arm where it had been re-attached. “It wasn’t your fault. No need to be sorry.” he tried to duck around and catch Laios’ eyes.
“But I hurt you. Badly.” Laios insisted, his hand reaching out as if to touch Kabru but then he withdrew with a flinch.
“I’m fine now. I’m not mad about it, really. I know that wasn’t you.”
“I wanted to though.”
“You wanted to what?”
“Eat you. And Chilchuck. I craved it.”
He involuntarily shuddered but then calmed himself with a breath. “You’re not thinking straight right now, Laios. You were being influenced. You don’t know any of what you just said to be true. You like eating monsters, not people.”
“But-” Laios tried to argue.
Kabru interrupted him by reaching out to grasp his shaking hands, stilling them with his touch. Laios seemed surprised by the gesture as he looked up to meet Kabru’s brilliant blue eyes.
“I know you. You’re my friend.” he bent to kiss Laios’ hands, not quite knowing why he had the instinct to.
“Wait, let me, I want to…” Laios was looking pointedly at Kabru’s arm where he had bitten it off.
“Hm?” Kabru tilted his head. “Oh. It’s been healed already, there’s no need to…”
“But is there still some pain?”
“Only a little.” he lied instinctively.
“Then let me kiss it better.”
“Ah, but of course.” Kabru smiled, not even caring when the others came upon them locked in such an intimate gesture.
Marcille turned beet-red, Izutsumi said “yuck”, Senshi began to busy himself with cooking and Chilchuck simply turned right around.
It was odd but maybe this experience had made them closer in some ways.