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Depths

Bioluminescent lights twinkle and glow brighter, waking the border collie from her slumber. Her fluttering eyes struggle to open and her weary body barely has the energy to pull herself from bed. The bed makes a slick sound, like she was laying on a small patch of mud. Mud is how she'll describe the floor; its texture is a bit bumpy, but it conforms and is warm, sometimes threatens to suck her paws in as she walks around. The constant sound of pounding is almost background noise to her now; she mistook it for her own heart when she arrived. The collie stands on the mailable floor, the room is red like blood filled flesh. A yawn escapes her and the surprisingly fresh air in this dark place helps to enliven the collie. She waves a hand paw around, causing more of the lights to twinkle on and brighten. Her room is a fleshy chamber, illuminated by floating yellow and white lights. She stands there, looking around the room with the same disbelief she had the second day she was here. Her nose is use to the scent of slick flesh, her body adept to running on a floor of spongy stomach tissue. The chamber has a semi-transparent membrane that looks outside of her home to the canyon like pathways that weave through the folds of shifting stomach flesh. Others reside in the walls, like hers. They call this area the Corridor, this was home. Home. She thought it a cruel joke when it consumed her, but here she is; living inside a great beast, as she had for the last five months. The collie goes to the shower, what can be called a shower here anyway. It's a part of her home where a water sack that reacts to her weight and sprays filtered water over her body. This great creature consumes a lot of water and stores it separately from its food. Food; what she and the others still are. The collie finishes washing off of the morning grime and shakes herself out to dry off; it was almost equally pointless. She steps outside her sleeping chambers and into the pathways. The walls pulsate, the floor squelches and bubbles slime between the toes and gets on the legs. The walls and ceiling squelch and churn out the same fluid, lubricating the muscles but also slimes the people below. "Pira!" The collie's left ear turns and she looks to a blue tongued skink that beacons her. "Osimo?" The dog cants her head "You're not usually this loud." "The Spelunkers came back from the Grind!" "They went back already!?" The collie, perks her ears and shakes her grogginess. "Yes!" The skink runs ahead of her but she easily follows the reptile, leaving a trail of prints that slowly fill back in. The moving corridors shift again, passages close as others open. Their nimble bodies squeeze through some, hop through others, alter their directions to move through similar paths, and without being hindered by the slick flesh. Pira hears other voices ahead of them, Osimo is just a tail's length until she easily passes the skink by running on all fours. "I'm not sending anymore people to look for them! They went through the Grind, ignoring my directions. They get what they sought." The collie's ears perk and she slides to a halt before the Spelunkers. "Pira!? What are you doing here? I told you to rest." Inquires a ferret. "Veckk what happened?" The ferret's taken aback. "Woah, woah! You come running here, sliding across the 'carpet' after I told you to rest from the last time you went into the Grind. You KNOW how dangerous the Grind is! What's your problem bitch?" He places his hands on his head letting out a cute scream with his hands covering his ears. "What's everyone's problem!?" "Captain just take a moment to collect yourself and we'll figure out..." "There is nothing to figure out! The Grind will grind you to paste in there! We're safe here because... whatever this creature is, it doesn't actually consume us in THIS part of it. I'm done. Leaving before more people start running through the Grind and drive me mad." The ferret throws up his arms and starts walking down the shifting paths Pira and Osimo took. "Why do you go into the Grind anyway if you're not trying your hardest to find a way out?" Pira asks Vekk. "We are trying to find a way out." The ferret turned to the dog. "Just like we're trying to keep our lives." He'll turn away from her again and continues towards the Corridor. Most of his crew follows him, except a human male of maroon complexion, a green paddy frog, and a red panda. They look between each other before the human spoke. "We left three people in the Grind. They said they found something before the passages closed and we got separated. This creature's keeping something from us." "Do you think they escaped?" Pira asks, her tail barely moves. "Not likely." The red panda speaks from a seat on a lump of flesh high enough for him to sit on; inflating and deflating as the creature breathes. "We're inside a giant monster remember. Remember Spelunkers that go missing in the Grind are likely digested." "We don't know. If they found a way out, they could've escaped!" The dog barked. The red panda sighs. "I'm going anyway! My mate was lost in this creature before I got here. If the others found something and he's somewhere farther in, I'm going after him." "If you want to go we won't stop you. We'll likely never see you again Pira." He points in the direction of the Grind; a ring of flesh that's partially open, enough for others to force their way through. They started following Vekk back, leaving Pira and Osimo before the sphincter. There's an acrid scent to the air; something that doesn't exist inside the Corridor of Dalaangain. The prickling of fur and fear wasn't stronger than her will. Osimo stands behind her, his resolve isn't as strong as Pria's. She hears the reptile take very slow, cautious steps and a vinegar like scent leaking through his body; fear. "Osimo you're not obligated to follow me." "But if I don't I'm letting you run off alone, never to be seen again." He clasps her arm tightly with his shorter ones. "So I won't let go of you." The collie's ears flatten against her head. "We can die in there." "Then it's knowing I tried to help." Pira will smile, her tail wags lightly and she'll nuzzle the reptile. Then says nothing else before approaching the ring of flesh. She'll take a relaxing breath before reaching for it, her hand-paws pull against the wet muscle and it begins to expand, enough for them to step through. The area was more moist than the chamber they've been living in. The flesh undulates more and farther down, they'll hear the sound of flesh churning. The acidic scent also was farther down this tunnel. The passages split, with parts of them sealing up and others opening. The beat of the heart feels louder, though she's not certain if it's her's heart, Osimo's or Dalaangain's. Pira presses on though, her companion holding onto her arms even as it gets slick from the juices from the ceiling oozing over their bodies. The flesh here's pinker compared to the red flesh in the Crease. The fear they both felt when first ingested by the great creature resurfaced here; the carnal fear of prey creatures in the belly of a large predator. Pira tries to press those fears behind her, the canine's nose picks out the areas with vivid acidic scents to them and avoids those passages. The skink maintains his hold of the dog, though the rhythmic motions of the fleshy floor, and the tightening walls of the creature's belly, tries to slip between the explorers; attempting to separate them. As more of the slime squelches and coats their bodies, Pira and Osimo will smell the environment growing a bit more acrid; assuming that this goop slopping on them now was the digestive fluids. The collie tries to pick up the pace, locking arms with the reptile as they pad through the Grind. "Is anyone alive in here!?" She calls out. "Can anyone hear me!?" The walls responded by gurgling and trying to close in on them. The paths they took was lost behind the shifting walls that closed behind them. The ground grew more moist and they can't take a step without more of the ooze bubbling up to their ankles. The fear that they'll die here grows more real with every passing moment. The smell of acid was starting to grow more prevalent to the dog and even she was starting to feel wavering in her resolve. The canid's paw kicks against an item floating in the ooze; a device that they know some spelunkers used to track down uncommon metals inside Dalaangain's body. Its power was lost, Pira sniffs the item, then tries sniffing the air, and the acrid section it lead to causes her to cough. The dog and reptile orient themselves as the passages in front and behind them begin to close. Pira barks to Osimo and the skink tries to wrap his arms around Pira's shoulders before giving her companion a swift ride. More items are found abandoned inside the Grind, and weren't of use to them. Every time they find something the collie has to carefully choose tunnels that weren't going to lead to digestion; a feat that was starting to really burn her nose. Then a valve opens somewhere and its scent is marginally fresher than the rest of the Grind. She runs toward the cooler, fresher air, the skink holding onto the dog for dear life. Pira starts to pant from exhaustion, the thick goop slows her down and makes her slip trying to pass through the rings of flesh. The floor starts to suck in her paws, the chambers collapsing on them. Pira pants and pulls her legs up, fighting against the flesh actively trying to consume them now. There's fresher air ahead of them, she smells it and fights to lift her legs free, each step will result in more flesh trapping her legs. Her underbelly was starting to get pinned to the floor as the ceiling's almost on her. Osimo gets off the collie's back and feels the ground begin to suck his feet down like quicksand, but he'll give his hand to the dog. "Pira take my hand." She had no limbs free to do as he instructed, leaving her no choice but to use her mouth to hold on. Her teeth surround his hand just firm enough to get pulled by the reptile. There's a loud, thick, slick bubbling of flesh and ooze before the collie's pulled free and across the next ring of flesh. She'll take both hand paws and hold onto Osimo's wrist, pulling him through with her. The flesh starts to rapidly conform under them, though the smell of acid was getting farther away. The effort to get this far was making both explorers pant from exhaustion; and despite the scent of acid hidden behind previous passage ways, they were still lost in the Grind. When the fleshy floor bubbles and begins to conform around their prone bodies, they're reminded that they aren't safe. The pink muscle grabs Pira's arms, legs, and tail burying them under thick, as the muscle begins to pull her down. She fights against the creature's belly, a much more immense foe, and fails to do more than delay the descent. The ceiling collapses on them again, much faster than before. The exhausted explorers struggle to get up, but even with their surging adrenaline, the Grind's hungry chambers didn't let go. They were sandwiched between the ceiling and the clinging floor; which acted together to rub a fresh coat of ooze onto their bodies. It got everywhere, in the ears, it blurred the eyes, and the whole time they tried to struggle, only to be helplessly churned around by, what they can only guess to be, the creature's digestive process. Pira's determination had left her, terror and regret were starting to fill her mind. She can't tell where Osimo is; their chambers too thick to hear anything besides the monster's gurgling belly and squelching wet muscle. The collie can't even find where the stomach muscle folded to trap her limbs. They were going to vanish inside the Grind like the others that got in over their heads. That's when the ground beneath them opened up. Pira can only tell because her tail managed to get more room to move. The muscle began to let the legs go first, her lower body swings free and touch yet more moist squishy floor. But it continued to free her body from the trap, until her head and arms are released. Both her and the reptile land with a wet splat and begin coughing and wiping the gunk from their eyes. Pira crawls over to the skink and gives her friend a big hug. "Osimo! I'm so sorry that I got you involved in this!" "P-pira! We're not exploring the Grind if we do make it out alive again." They closed their eyes, tried to put the sound of Dalaangain's heart and belly out of their mind. Slowly they'll have to pay attention to the environment they've been deposited in. It was a smaller chamber, almost a containment sack, the roof was low, forcing them stand and walk on all fours. The ceiling wasn't bubbling with ooze, but still slick with mucus. The floor was springy, holding their weight better than the rest of the creature's innards have. The chamber's dim, with the fewest glowing lights they've seen in Dalaangain's body. "Feel around for an exit." Pira instructed Osimo. They learned the entire chamber was more rigid here, and the walls are expelling oxygen, but they couldn't find any sealed rings that connected to this sack. They were safe, but also trapped. They couldn't tell how much time passed, they only knew neither of them found a way out. Hunger sets in and despite being surrounded by flesh, they know neither of them can bite into this creature's innards; it's too resilient. The few creatures that did eat some of their host's meat got terribly sick afterward. As they start to grow hungrier and the walls neither compressed or expanded, both wondered if they're going to starve inside the Grind. "Pira. Think I should call this chamber something besides the Grind." Her companion says as she hears the disappointed groaning of his stomach. "This place is the Pit. Because we're stuck in it. Like a pit." "That's a terrible name Osimo. The Grind's also a terrible name but it stuck." "The Pit won't stick?" "No, it won't." The collie nudges her colleague's shoulder and barks. "I'm starting to miss trees and sticks again thanks to you." "Why, you wanna play fetch?" "I'll play fetch with your tail if you keep talking." They taunt each other for some time. It helps keep their mind off food for a while. But eventually the witty banter stops. They start to get tired, laying next to the other, their ears hearing the occasional groan of Dalaangain's digestive system above them. Osimo falls asleep first, Pira after. The slick sound of moist flesh moving wakes them up. Pira's eyes adjust to the dim light and finds a section of the chamber pull back, exposing the way out. Examining it closer she realizes their exit is shaped like a door! "Osimo, wake up!" She shakes her companion and he stirs awake. The reptile groans and struggles to wake his legs enough for him to stand. The skink blinks and feels around for the collie. She'll lay her body next to his. "Climb on, we're leaving." He'll carefully pull himself onto her back. She's getting use to bearing his weight like this, though the reptile is still pretty heavy. "There's a way out?" It asks her incredulously. "When?" The collie doesn't spend too much time trying to answer his question, electing to go through the door instead. The other side is still dimly lit by the floating specks of light; the air here isn't fowl. Their noses sniff around for traces of the other explorers and find a trail that smells of sage. The floor is as mailable as ever, but it isn't trying to suck them in like the Grind. It's still moist with slime too, getting everywhere. The passage starts to get more light and widens. The scent of sage starts to have other scents mixed in too; animal scents. Pira increases her gait to a trot, her paws splatting the ground and left fading prints that fill in again. After reaching the end of the pass the lights begin to illuminate everything, a much clearer degree than it did back in the Corridor. The flesh of the tunnel here is transparent and through it they find themselves entering a large room, walking on a bridge above homes shaped out of the creature's stomach muscles. There are tall pillars that fliers flew to and from, some caverns that are low to the floor, others that require the residents to climb up and enter through narrow trails. There's paths that snake around and intercept other paths forming, 'roads' that connect the residences. Despite the formidable Grind between the Corridors and here, the area is thriving in ways the Corridor wasn't. From what they see this area's larger than the Corridors, there's more light, some of the flesh areas have central 'squares' where the paths converge and others socialize. A strange bioform is also growing inside here; they thought it was a type of fungi because it appears spongy and was growing inside this moist environment, but glows and grows in patches. It grows along the ground, elevated above sitting pools of slimy liquid. Some of the creatures here play around the pools, bouncing on parts of the fleshy muscle that sprung the others into the air. Some are carefully harvesting the fungi, and others are pressing against the walls of flesh with small flashes of blue light coming from their paws. "An entire town growing beyond the Grind. Do you think this is where everyone that wanders through it ends up?" Pira doesn't answer Osimo, she keeps walking. A mouse stands in their path, appearing while they were busy looking below. He squeaks a greeting and holds up his small hand paw. "Hello dog and lizard. I was just coming back to see if you woke up!" "Hello mouse, we're awake and have names." Pira retorted. "I'm Pira, this is Osimo." She points to the skink that climbs off her back. "I'm Teal. You must have a lot of questions." After they cross the bridge their path starts winding down, like a long string of spaghetti, zigzagging to the bottom. "Like why are there so many of us down here when you had to go through the Grind." "Yeah, that's one of them." "One of Dalaangain's mysteries. We believe it has something to do with how its endosomatic, interior body, system works." Teal starts. "When we were all eaten we expected to be digested like food normally would be in our bodies. This creature doesn't take most of its energy through digesting complex organisms into proteins and turning them into amino acids." She'll hear a growl from Pira and the mouse took a moment to alter her explanation. "Sorry. It doesn't digest us for energy. Instead it secrets these fluids all around us that, despite being messy, is quite effective at pull all the dead skin, fur and other types of tissue off our bodies. One of the reason some of our sleeping areas are designed to be comfortable is because as we sleep it produces small suction cup like appendages that attach to our bodies and..." "Look Teal." Pira cut in. "The short of it, please? Otherwise we'll be talking all day." "Its body put some of us directly here. Others were put where you landed, we think there's another section of this creature's body that has even more people. The Grind's just a divider that shifts and changes to move 'food' to different parts of the body." "Thank you." Pira sighs. "But the other question I had is the reason I went through the Grind in the first place; I'm looking for another collie, named Landon. He was swallowed by Dalaangain before me." The mouse's large round ears sway as she shakes her head. "Haven't met a dog named Landon. Maybe one of the other residents did." Pira's ears go flat against her head and her jowls droop. "He might be here, don't give up yet." Teal tries consoling the collie. When things go silent for too long the rodent decides to fill them in on discoveries they made involving Dalaangain. The canid partially listens while her reptilian friend pushes shares his intrigue with the mouse. He'll shoot questions to the rodent and whatever she couldn't answer she'll bounce running theories back to the skink. For a while Osimo forgets he's still inside this creature, but Pira mused that maybe he accepted it for what it was long ago. The passage opens up and they get a better view of how active things are on the lower level. There's a pseudo village 'square' with a fountain of shaped flesh. Water sprouted from it and some creatures are cleaning themselves in it despite getting sticky again . The homes the people live in were like her own home back in the Corridor, but some residents use the fungi like growths and tie them around their hands. They rub along the sides of the fleshy walls and blue light sparks between the fungi and the flesh when it's rubbed, making he flesh move around until it's shaped the way they wanted it. There's small groups formed around a tightly shut valve next to their exit; bringing memories of the Grind. Pira notices the attitudes here are different from those in the corridor. "Welcome to Churnnin." Teal squeaks. Osimo laughs and Pira gives the rodent an awkward glance. "Churannin? That's the name of it?" "Why yes. We found it fitting." The canine facepaws and sighs. "Silly names are the order of the day." Teal ignores the jab at the name. "Astonishing what you can achieve when you work with the tools around you. It was the pups that learned when you rub those strange fungi against the flesh of Dalaangain, it makes an electric shock that causes the flesh to pull away and take any shape to avoid getting shocked." Teal informs them. The mouse's little body bounces when heavier paws step in flesh mounds near her; Pira manages a chuckle watching her. "I know, it's so strange that playing like pups shaped this village." The collie stops when her eyes fall on a figure with a with a familiar merle fur pattern, walk down a road to their right of the fountain. "Landon?" Her ears hang forward and she starts trotting after the merle collie. She starts sniffing the ground the goo made it hard for her to catch the scent, because it trapped a lot of the particles she was sniffing for. Pira circles a few times in the same spots, others try walking around her, some stop to watch the dog doing what dogs do. "Pira, what is..." Osimo's cut off when the collie turns her head up to lets out a bark and howl. The non-canids stop in their tracks to look at the newcomer, askance of canid's howling. She stops and listens, her ears catch the mumbles, the teasing, however it's still under the din of Dalaangain's innards. Then a howl comes back, her tail raises like it was going to wag, but then it lowers again. Another howl comes after that from another path through Churnnin. Howls that told her where other canids were, some that offered to give her company. Many of them seemed close. She hears one join in late, when the din of howling canines calmed down. "It's him! There!" She barks and rushes down that road. Her ears turn to the sky, her nose to the ground for the scent, her eyes will look up to try navigating the maze of paths throughout Churnnin. Everything was enraptured by the one desire, to catch up, tackle, scold, nuzzle and beat down and eventually let everything she's been holding onto, out. Pira remembers that day they were lost. They were rescuers and Landon was assistant supervisor of a search party. They were looking for a group of seismologist that were monitoring something moving underground, causing tremors, creating large sinkholes or strange reliefs cutting through mountain trails. There was a beacon that went out but they didn't find anyone at the camp site. Landon was in charge of communication between the parties, Pira helped direct a team; collies doing what they do best, keeping others together and making sure to rein in stragglers. It was dark when Dalaangain found Landon's crew; her mate made sure none of them got left behind, but he ended up lagging behind while keeping the group was safe. Pira saw a mawed tendril come out Dalaangain's mouth and gulp up her mates feet. It took four seconds for him to be fully ingested by the tendril. He couldn't fight back. She tried to chase after the monster, but it sensed her and another tendril came out and swallowed her. When she could see again, she was in the chamber that became her home in the Corridor. Here she is now, her body acting only of her desire to find her mate; the collie failed to notice she slipped and fell several times throughout the chase. "It has to be him." She whispered to herself, her nose hovering above the ground as she ran. The canine's focus narrows down to his familiar scent. Other voices are blotted out, meshing with the squelching gurgling sounds of Dalaangain's belly; only one mattered to her. She howls for it again and the howls respond back. The others are noise, the one she wants was down a different pass. The frantic collie starts to get disoriented, as she struggles to track the scent found herself lost in the maze of paths through Churnnin. The howls and scent brings her before a wall with a singular entrance, lit by the dim fungi light.She lost Osimo and Teal while chasing for signs of Landon. The collie enters the undulating cave, its walls compressing and expanding makes her think of the Grind before they ended up stuck in the Pit. "Damnit Osimo, the Pit might stick." She begins to chuckle, then falls silent again to listen for others inside. The collie still smells some of her mate's scent, but it's getting suppressed even more by the low walls, dropping globs of slime on the floor. She carefully pads deeper in and begins to call out. "Landon?" She calls out. "Landon are you here?" "Pira?" The answer comes from behind. She turns around and there he is. A border collie with green eyes, his muzzle is broader, his tail shorter by half an inch, the black fur covered his left ear and trails half way to his snout. They stare at the other, silent except for the creature's undulating muscle. Their legs move before they can think, and the two collies leap into the air, grabs, and wrestles their partner to the ground. The dogs growl and mouth the other. Landon licks Pira's lips and all over her face, Pira's muzzle rubs under his and their necks interlock before they lay on the ground in the other's embrace. Pira's the one that breaks the silence between them first. "Landon, don't ever send me away again." "Pira, I won't." The collies arms locked, touched heads and closed their eyes. Their noses filled with the other's scent, their ears listen to their mate's breathing and sad, relieved laugh. Neither of them thought about how they were brought here, neither of them thought about the ground around them undulating with the beating heart below them.