Voretober 2022 - SHOW

Every Saturday night, in the tavern in the small town of Arrandale, there was a talent show. It was good entertainment. It even attracted some visitors from out of town, eager to show off in front of an audience. It was always a good time to get drunk and be entertained by the strange things people could do. One particular Saturday, one of the guests was a bronze kobold by the name of Topar.

It was fortunate the tavern had an elevated stage, as it wouldn’t have been possible to see Topar otherwise. He stood only a couple of feet tall, practically invisible until he actually got up on stage. That said he was able to project his voice well enough once there as he spoke, “Hello, fine patrons of the Arrant Twitch! My name is Topar. I’m sure some of you have seen sword swallowers or the like here, right?”

The audience murmured among themselves, with some nodding in agreement. “Right,” he continued, “but those are all cheap tricks, aren’t they? Collapsible swords and not really swallowing the whole sword. Well, I’m here to show you the real thing.” Topar briefly walked aside to grab a hilt he had brought while the crowd chattered. “Look at this.” He unsheathed the longsword and continued, “Sharp enough to slice through the toughest boulders. And talk about long,” he said as he put it upright next to him, “It’s taller than me!”

The crowd burst into laughter at his self-deprecating joke. After letting them come down he said, “Well, let me demonstrate what I meant earlier!” Carefully, he lifted the sword up above himself and opened his maw facing the ceiling. Some of the crowd cringed as the sword began to descend, imagining the pain or expecting a gruesome mess. But the sword simply continued straight down his throat.

Even when the point should have been protruding from the bottom of his gut, there was nothing. Finally, the longsword reached the point where only the hilt was sticking out of his mouth. With a wink at the audience, he snapped his jaws shut and swallowed. He remained facing up until it went all the way down, but then he turned to face the audience. “You see,” he said, “I’ve swallowed it all! And you may ask how, but a magician can’t reveal his secrets.”

With genuine surprise, the crowd discussed among themselves while also applauding. At least, until someone loudly stood up and got on their chair. “More like a con doesn’t want to reveal a hole in the stage!”

Topar frowned. The skeptic appeared to be some drunken dwarf. The kobold replied, “I understand it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth! There’s not a single gap in the Twitch’s stage. Here, allow me to demonstrate once more...” He picked up the hilt, holding it up for everyone to see. “Much like the sword, this too is taller than me! But watch as it disappears all the same...” With less caution than the sword, he began to gulp down the hilt as if it were nothing more than the world’s longest sausage.

He was done in less than a minute and the hilt was indeed gone. “See? I’m sure you had a much clearer view atop your chair,” he smirked. “I’ll give you all a hint: ‘Hammerspace’. At least, that’s a layman term. Think of it like a bag of holding.”

The dwarf walked across a few tables until he was on the stage himself. He was taller than the kobold, but not by much. “I don’t believe you. I think I’d like to see this ‘bag of holding’ myself.”

Topar’s confidence faltered for a moment before he said, “Ah, no thank you. I think I’d prefer to not swallow a dirty stranger today.”

This earned some laughs from the audience, but it seemed to bounce off the dwarf. He turned to the audience and said, “Seems this liar doesn’t want to prove himself! Don’t want to be proven wrong, eh LIAR?”

Slowly, the crowd started to turn on Topar, making him more nervous than the dwarf. Even if he knew there was one very good reason he shouldn’t, he had to oblige him. He nervously swallowed and said, “Fine, fine... Get in.” Then he presented his maw as widely as he could.

With all the confidence one would expect from a drunken dwarf, he stepped in with a squelch. The feeling made Topar cringe, but it didn’t seem to stop the other one from putting his other foot in. Topar squeezed his eyes shut and strongly GULPed, pulling the volunteer down. He let out a “Whoa!” but sounded more amused than anything. Meanwhile, Topar just wanted to get this whole fiasco over with as fast as possible.

The kobold continued to swallow the dwarf down much like a snake. Except notably, the dwarf was making no bulge at all beyond his throat. The crowd oohed and aahed. The dwarf laughed at a ticklish sensation that he felt lapping at his lower half. Luckily, he noticed nothing wrong through his own inebriation. Topar was feeling sick, but there was no way he could stop now.

He slowly turned to face forward. Everyone was too distracted by the spectacle going on near his head to notice, but he could feel himself fattening. His tail was growing thicker, his ass heavier, his belly bigger. He thanked his lucky stars nobody else was watching from the sides. After a grueling minute of swallowing, they were at the end. The dwarf’s head was firmly lodged in the back of the kobold’s mouth. The rest of his body was gone. He still seemed aware and amused, but very dazed.

Then, with a raise of his forked tongue and one last HUGULP the dwarf was gone. There was applause as soon as his bulge disappeared, and Topar very carefully took a bow. The second the patrons of the tavern stopped paying attention, he skedaddled like a crab. Off-stage, for how nauseous he was, he didn’t have anything to spit up. He didn’t mean the lie to result in this. That stupid, stupid dwarf was instantly digested and turned into kobold fat the second he hit his belly. Now he just had to hope nobody would ask where he went after the show...