Chapter 1: Riverbank Stalkers
The mud sucked at Wren’s knees, cold and grasping. She ignored it, her eyes fixed on the riverbank. A dozen of them, maybe more, wallowed in the brown shallows like hogs. Their bodies were masses of knotted muscle and coarse hair, skin streaked with grime and old scars. The stench hit her in waves—sour sweat, river rot, and the pungent, greasy smell of unwashed male.
Sunlight, broken by the bare branches overhead, dappled across their bloated bellies. They were all fattened, gorged on whatever scraps they’d scavenged from the ruins. Gluttony made them slow, stupid. It was the best time to take them.
“Christ,” Skye breathed beside her, her voice a thin thread of sound. “Look at the size of that one. The one with the tusk broken off.”
Wren followed her gaze. The brute was enormous, a mountain of pale, hairy flesh. He was scratching his distended gut with blunt, filthy fingers, his other hand idly pawing between his legs. His cock, thick as Wren’s wrist and flushed a dark, angry red, lay half-hard against his thigh.
Skye’s whisper was a hot, jagged thing in Wren’s ear. “Fuck me. Look at that fat bastard. Imagine trying to ride that cock.” Her words weren’t just observation; they were a challenge, a twisted dare that hung in the thick air between them.
Elara made a soft, distressed sound, her fingers whitening on the stock of her tranq rifle. “Skye, don’t.”
But the brute was moving. With a guttural groan, he shifted his bulk in the mud, water sloshing around his waist. He laid back against the bank, his massive, bloated belly rising like a pale moon. One hand remained planted on the swollen curve of it, a grotesque claim of ownership, while the other wrapped around the thickening shaft of his cock. He began to stroke, slowly, lazily, his hips giving a slight, rhythmic push into his own fist.
The trio watched, trapped in the reeds. The sight was hypnotic in its raw vulgarity. The way his belly jiggled with each rough tug. The way the head of his cock, now fully erect and dripping, peeked out from his crude grip with each upward stroke. The sheer, animalistic self-absorption of it.
A flush crept up Wren’s neck, a heat that had nothing to do with the sun. It was a reaction she hated, a primal response to the display of brute strength and obscene fertility. It turned her on, and the self-disgust that followed was acid in her throat. She saw Skye shift, the damp fabric of her pants pulling tight, and knew she wasn’t the only one affected. Elara’s breathing had gone shallow, her eyes wide—not just with horror, but with a fascinated shame.
“God,” Skye breathed, her voice husky. “Look at him work that thing. He’s gonna make himself come just lying there like a beached whale.” Her own hand slid unconsciously down her thigh, pressing against the seam of her trousers. “Bet he shoots a fucking liter.”
“Target acquired,” Wren said, her voice a flat, forced blade slicing through the tension. She had to reclaim this, to make it about the work. “He’s distracted. Isolated. He’s the one.”
“He’s perfect,” Skye agreed, licking her lips. “Big, slow, and too busy thinking with his dick to hear us coming.”
Elara finally tore her gaze away, looking at Wren with pleading eyes. “He’s… he’s just…”
“He’s a paycheck,” Wren interrupted, her tone leaving no room. “He’s four hundred fifty pounds of fresh meat and butler for the baronesses. Nothing more. Skye, you flank left through the deeper reeds. Elara, you have the shot. Wait for my signal.”
She gripped her reinforced leather restraints, the familiar scars on her palms pressing into the tough material. This was the world. You took your arousal, your disgust, your pity, and you forged it into a tool. You used it to get close enough to clamp cold steel around a warm, filthy ankle.
The male on the bank grunted louder, his pace increasing. His belly shuddered. His back arched, lifting his massive shoulders out of the mud. The trio froze, watching as his fist became a blur, his orgasm building in the frantic, slapping sounds of flesh on flesh, in the guttural, choking sounds erupting from his throat.
This was the moment. The perfect, vulnerable, filthy moment. Wren met Elara’s eyes and gave a sharp, single nod.
Wren met Elara’s eyes and gave a sharp, single nod.
Elara’s shot was a soft phut of compressed air. The dart buried itself in the side of the male’s heaving neck. He jerked, a roar of surprise choking off into a wet gurgle as his own climax ripped through him. Thick, pearlescent ropes of cum shot across his swollen belly, mixing with the mud and river water. His hands, one still slick from his cock, flew to the dart.
“Move!” Wren hissed.
Skye was already gone, a rustle in the reeds to the left. Wren broke from cover, mud splattering up her legs as she sprinted low and fast across the exposed bank. The other ferals downstream were stirring, lifting heavy heads.
The target male was struggling to rise, his enraged bellow filling the air. He clawed at the dart, but the specialized tranquilizer worked fast. It wasn’t a sedative. It was a catalyst.
A deep, internal gurgle echoed from his gut. His eyes, bloodshot and furious, widened in a new kind of shock. The massive belly he’d been scratching began to tremble. Then it began to grow.
“Hit him again!” Wren yelled, sliding to a stop ten feet from him, restraints ready.
Elara’s second dart took him in the thigh. Phut.
The effect was instantaneous and grotesque. The male’s roar became a high-pitched, strained whistle. His flesh, already stretched from gluttony, began to swell with horrifying speed. The curve of his belly smoothed into a taut, expanding sphere. His chest inflated, swallowing his thick neck. His arms and legs, monstrous before, began to look comically small as they stuck out from the ballooning torso. The skin stretched, shiny and pale, veins mapping across it like sinister rivers.
He tried to charge, but his center of gravity was gone. He took one lurching step and toppled forward into the mud with a ground-shaking thud. He rolled onto his side, his engorged cock now trapped beneath the massive orb of his body, still dripping. He was a beach ball, a planet, a bloated tick. He gasped, his lungs compressed, making pathetic wheezing whimpering.
Victory.
Victory was a cold, steel bracket in Wren’s hands. She slapped the first restraint around the swollen male’s ankle, the cuff locking with a satisfying click against flesh stretched impossibly tight.
“Skye, other leg!” she barked.
Skye emerged from the reeds, her eyes blazing with a wild kind of glee. “Look at him. Just a big, useless fucking balloon.” She secured the second cuff, giving the monstrous, spherical body a hard, contemptuous kick. It rocked slightly, a low wheeze escaping the creature’s lips.
A chorus of enraged bellows erupted from downstream. The other ferals had seen it. Three of them were already lumbering out of the water, their own distended bellies swaying, tusks bared. They moved with a clumsy, top-heavy urgency, their fury outweighed by their gluttonous mass.
“Elara, light them up!” Wren shouted, yanking a coiled lead from her pack and hooking it to the primary restraint. Their first capture was anchored. Now they needed volume.
“On it!” Elara’s voice was strained, but her hands were steady. She shouldered the tranq rifle, exhaled, and fired.
Phut.
The dart caught the closest charging male high in the chest. He stumbled, looked down at the feathered projectile in confusion, and then the gurgle started. His already prominent belly began to swell, smooth, and round out, straining the filthy band of his trousers. He clutched at it, his charge turning into a disoriented stagger.
“Fuck yeah,” Skye whispered, already lining up her own shot with her smaller sidearm. She fired. Her dart hit a second male in the thigh. The process began again, the body inflating like a grotesque parade float, his roars becoming squeals as his diaphragm compressed.
The third male, smarter or just more terrified, tried to turn and flee. But his bulk worked against him. He was slow, ungainly. Elara’s second shot took him in the back.
Phut.
He fell forward with a wet slap, his momentum carrying him into the mud where he began to bloat, rolling slightly, trapped in the mire.
The trio worked with a brutal, practiced efficiency. They fanned out, silent except for the phut of their rifles and the ragged sounds of their own breathing. They were hunters culling a herd of absurd, dangerous livestock. The riverbank became a gallery of swelling forms, wheezing spheres with limbs splayed, some still twitching, some already still.
They got a few. Five in total, including the first. Five massive, inflated orbs rolling slightly in the shallow current or settled in the mud, tethered by steel cables to the trees on the bank. The air was filled with the sound of panicked, shallow breaths and the low, constant creak of overstretched skin.
Skye stood over one of the new captures, her boot resting on its spherical side. She was breathing hard, a fierce smile on her face. “God, listen to them. Like a bunch of stuck pigs. Think they’re still hard? Bet they are. All that blood has to go somewhere.” She nudged the sphere with her toe, and a faint, muffled groan emanated from within.
“Skye, stop it,” Elara said, but her protest was weak. She was staring at the first one, the one she’d shot mid-climax. His release was still smeared across the taut curve of his belly, now a dried, pearly streak on the shiny, veined surface.
Wren ignored them, doing a quick inventory. Five. A good haul. A great haul. The baroness’s keep would buzz for days. But the noise would draw more than just ferals. Scavengers. Rival crews. They needed to move.
“We need the extraction cart, now,” Wren said, wiping sweat and a fleck of mud from her cheek. “Skye, go back to the treeline and signal. Double-time.”
Skye opened her mouth, likely to argue, but saw the look in Wren’s eye. She just nodded, turned, and vanished into the thicker brush.
Silence settled, heavy and thick, broken only by the wheezing of their captures and the distant river. Elara walked slowly towards the first male. She knelt in the mud, a few feet from the monstrous, inflated form. Her hand reached out, then hesitated.
“Don’t,” Wren said, her voice low.
“He’s… it’s… alive in there,” Elara whispered. “He’s conscious. He can hear us. He must be terrified.”
“Good,” Wren said, checking the tension on a lead cable. “Terrified is quiet. Terrified is compliant.”
“It’s cruel.”
Wren turned to face her friend fully. Elara’s eyes were glistening. “Cruel is what they’d do to you if they caught you,” Wren said, each word a stone dropped between them. “Cruel is slow, and it’s not about a paycheck. It’s about their cock and your screams. This is just business. Clean. Efficient.”
She walked over and pulled Elara up by her arm. “Don’t get soft now. Not here.”
Elara looked from Wren’s scarred hand on her arm to the bloated male beside them. From within the fleshy prison, a single, desperate eye rolled in its socket, finding hers.