Chapter 4: Worm's Embrace
The ledge was a joke. A cruel, slippery joke that had Korra pressed flat against the damp rock, her breath coming in short, controlled bursts. Below her, the lake of pink slime breathed in slow, gelatinous waves, the scent of roses and copper making her jaw tight. Every shift of her weight sent a dislodged pebble skittering into the silence, followed by a soft, wet plop.
Her belly, rounded and heavy with the Ovidor’s litter, was the problem. It pushed her center of gravity out, forcing her into a clumsy, backward lean. The null-stone charms on her bare belt dug into her hipbone. Useless here. The labyrinth didn’t cast spells you could negate; it just was, a living engine of perverse biology.
“Just a few more feet,” she muttered to the rock face, her voice gravelly. Solid ground waited ahead, a wider platform. Salvation.
She inched, her fingers raw, her broad shoulders aching. Finally, her left foot found purchase on the platform. She hauled herself up, rolling onto her back on the cool, smooth stone with a grunt of relief. For a second, she just stared at the glowing fungal ceiling, her hands resting on the taut curve of her stomach. A pup kicked, a firm nudge against her palm. She ignored it.
That’s when the ground moved.
Not the whole platform. A section of it, directly beneath her, surged upward. It wasn’t stone. It was slick, segmented flesh the color of damp clay, stretching upward into a towering, eyeless pillar. An elastic earthworm, thick as an anaconda, its circular maw gaping wide, revealing concentric rings of pale, muscular ridges.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Korra spat, scrambling backward on her elbows.
It struck like a piston. She rolled, the worm’s body slamming down where her head had been. The impact shuddered through the stone. She was on her feet in a fighter’s crouch, naked, pregnant, and pissed. No weapon but her hands. No magic to nullify. Just physics and fury.
It lunged again, a blur of rippling muscle. Korra didn’t retreat. She sidestepped and brought both hands down in a hammer strike on the passing segment. Her palms stung. The creature barely noticed, its body coiling to trap her.
“Fine,” she grunted. “Hard way.”
As it whipped around, she grabbed a handful of the slick, cool flesh. Using its own momentum, she pivoted, heaving with everything her powerful frame could muster. The worm’s head section swung like a wet rope. She dug her heels in, muscles in her back and shoulders screaming, and with a final roar, hurled the thing over the edge.
It fell silently into the pink lake below, swallowed with a thick, gulping sound. Korra stood panting, hands on her knees. A victory. A small, physical, satisfying victory.
The wall behind her erupted.
A second worm, identical to the first, shot from a hidden crevice. This one didn’t strike. It wrapped. Cool, relentless loops snared her ankles, her thighs, her torso in a heartbeat. She thrashed, but the pressure was absolute, squeezing the air from her lungs, compressing her swollen abdomen tight.
“Get—off!” she choked, fingers scrabbling at the rubbery flesh.
The constricting loops suddenly shifted their grip, lifting her entirely off the ground. The eyeless head swung before her, the circular maw opening impossibly wide, a tunnel of pulsating, pale flesh. It smelled of damp soil and clean musk. Korra had time for one furious snarl before the worm plunged downward.
It swallowed her headfirst.
The world vanished into a tight, slick, pressing darkness. The muscular rings of its throat gripped her skull, then her shoulders, pulling with a relentless peristaltic rhythm. At her shoulders, it pinned her arms firmly down against her sides, utterly immobilizing them. She was a mere burden now, being packaged.
Then as her breasts were swallowed, she noticed them beginning to feel tender from her developing pregnancy. The pressure and the strange, fluid motion against her sensitized skin made her grit her teeth. It was an intimate, violating attention to a change she already resented.
Her belly got swallowed next, and she felt her pups kicking as if annoyed by the sudden, uniform compression. Their small, frantic movements pulsed against the constricting worm flesh from the inside. It was a bizarre feedback loop of discomfort.
Her legs were swallowed last, her feet going pointed, forced into an unnatural, graceful line by the worm’s gullet. Then she was completely encased, her body forced to curve with the slither of the worm. It was a tight, warm, breathless prison. She could still breathe, the air somehow passing through the creature’s permeable skin, but every inhale was a struggle against the pressure.
The worm, mission accomplished, settled down. It lay in a fat, contented coil on the platform, a living, fleshy pod with a human-shaped bulge midway down its length. Korra could feel its slow, muscular contractions, a ceaseless, gentle massaging that churned her against the pups. Helpless, furious heat flooded her cheeks.
“Well, that’s a new one.”
The voice was feminine, light, almost musical. Footsteps approached, soft on the stone. A shape knelt beside the worm’s midsection, where Korra’s face would be buried under inches of flesh. Long, dark hair framed a face with sharp features and glowing purple eyes that peered down with open curiosity.
Bell, the drow, tilted her head. “Comfy in there?”
Korra tensed, if such a thing were possible in her state. She tried to speak, but it came out as a muffled, vibrating grunt against the worm’s inner lining.
“Didn’t catch that,” Bell said cheerfully. She reached out and poked the worm’s side, right where Korra’s hip was. The flesh jiggled, transmitting the touch inward. “I’ve seen the wall-milk trap, and the pink slime stowaway. But this? This is creative. You’re like a snack it’s saving for later.”
She drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the taut, clay-colored skin. Then she leaned closer, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Can you even hear me in there? Blink once for yes. Oh, wait.”
Bell chuckled at her own joke. She then began to toy with her. She traced the outline of Korra’s compressed form with a fingernail, following the curve of a trapped breast, the swell of the pregnant belly. Each touch was a faint, maddening pressure through the membrane.
“You’re that witch hunter, aren’t you? The one who hates all this.” Bell’s tone was breezy, conversational. “I heard the imp talking about you. Knotted by a dog, she said. Looks like you got loose. And then immediately got eaten by a worm. Rough day.”
Korra seethed, a white-hot core of anger in the dark. She focused all her will on straining against the flesh. It gave slightly, stretching, but then tightened again, hugging her every contour with infuriating patience.
Bell watched the subtle shifts in the worm’s surface, the way the bulge twitched and strained. “Not a talker. I get it. It’s hard to be witty when you’re being digested.” She sighed, standing up and brushing off her thighs. “I’d cut you out, but that seems messy. And this thing isn’t really hurting you. Just… delaying you.”
She looked down at the trapped woman, her playful smile fading into something more contemplative, more bored. Korra’s struggle was already becoming repetitive, predictable. The initial amusement of finding a person inside a worm had worn thin.
“My man’s waiting in another world,” Bell said, her voice losing its lighthearted edge. “I don’t have time for digressions. Even funny ones.”
With a final, dismissive glance at the coiled worm, Bell turned. “Good luck with the… gestation. Both sets of it.”
Her footsteps receded, leaving Korra alone in the humming silence of the cavern, sealed in a living tomb. The only sounds were the slow gurgle of the slime lake below and the wet, rhythmic pulsing of the worm around her, a constant reminder that for now, her crusade was over. She was just another fixture of the labyrinth, waiting to be passed.