Eventually, she comes upon a hillside, more of cliffside really, that seems to be made entirely of squirming wall rather than just a small disguised patch. It is shaded, overlooking a few smaller structures of unusually spacious tentacle pits that look almost deliberate in their arrangement. There's even something not made of flesh, over there, a small stage with an arrangement of chairs---one of the chairs is moving, maybe they just look like they're not made of flesh?

And there are shapes-like-her. Dozens of them.

The majority are held tight to the massive squirming wall by countless tentacles in various lewd poses. Some are feminine like her but lack cocks, some are masculine and have multiple cocks. Some are androgynous and have only pussies. A couple are just like her. More than half appear to be pretty young men, though. Of more interest: Some of them are making novel noises speaking to each other. Some of them are wandering around free, unencumbered by tentacles of any kind! Though as Lightning watches, one of those heads into one of the raised, deliberate-looking tentacle pits and is swallowed with a wet squelch. The others though, just seem to be laying around and talking.  And over there, a couple of humanoids are holding non-flesh objects. Non-fleshy objects that seem to be making very pleasant sounds in their hands, making music. And over there, a young woman is doing magic: a ghostly cauldron, translucent and seemly made of pure magic, floating above a small fireball that just hovers in place, far enough up not to harm the skin under her feet. The bubbling liquid inside seems real enough, though, and smells delicious.

Quadrupedal figures made of opaque pink slime dart through the milling groups, and on closer inspection, they're more like a crude suit clinging on to a humanoid girl's back and suspending her under its belly to hold and fuck as they roam around. One of them darts over to a man having a conversation while laying on his back, idly stroking his cock as it juts up from his crotch. The roamer runs over, positions itself over his hips, and forces the hips of the girl it holds captive to slam down, impaling her drooling cunt on the man's cock, and then swinging her body up and down, forcing her to bounce vigorously until the man ejaculates with a groan.

Other roamers are darting around, doing similar things. The first one scampers over to the squirming wall, where a suction tentacle latches onto the tightly-bound girl's crotch and sucks the man's load out of her, the girl shuddering in her slimy pink bondage.

As Lightning gets closer, the first to notice her are those roamers. The one who just got cleaned out by the squirming wall is carried over to investigate. The pink slime moves with little input from the bound girl, her own limbs folded up into the pink thing's mass as it plunges a tentacle of its own into her ass. The pink slime actually exposes a fair amount of skin, the girl's breasts hanging free, teased by translucent blue feelers, and while it covers her head to hold it tightly in place, it leaves the girl's face clear, and the expression on that face is polite inquisitiveness and curiosity, mixed with the flush of obvious arousal and pleasure.

New noises. New shapes. New things.

Things... That aren't flesh and fluid?

"Hi! Hi!! Oh my goddess! Talking! They're talking! Words! They're a thing! I know that now! Can you talk?! Hi!!!" She bounces on her feet - several feet in the air - in glee.

((The author is borrowing a foreign instance's screenname because this is just a cameo.))

"Hi."

The girl struggles to keep her eyes pointed at Lightning as the Roamer roams around psychically sniffing the new human, but the struggle doesn't seem to annoy her or really register as a struggle.

"How much do you remember?" she asks curiously. "If you forgot how to talk you probably haven't been out of a Pit in a, um, while?"

"Words are fun and that thing looks fun and YOU CAN ACTUALLY TALK I haven't ever said anything to someone before! I don't. Remember things, I mean. I think I'm just new. Charity said something about giving me a body. I mean not said I felt it."

"That happens sometimes when people die," the girl says offhand. "Nice to meet you though. Welcome to the Tall-Squirming-Cliff Waypoint Camp.  I'm Scyelen. Do you have a name?"

The roamer starts wandering away, showing off the girl's dripping pussy to Lightning's eyes, stretched by the pink-blue tentacle in her ass, "Oh I guess you might tell me later..." The roamer darts off across the campsite to where a large worm has wandered in. It presents the girl for the worm to lay its eggs in, which it immediately starts doing. The girl's soft moans sound relaxed and unperturbed about this.

Some more of the campers have noticed Lightning by now and a few of them are waving or beckoning in friendly fahsion.

She follows Scyelen. "What's a name?"

Oh the new person followed her. Scyelen smiles about that even as a giant worm is shoving eggs into her.

"A, mm, a name? A name is, the word that, means you. Like if, you wanted to, tell someone, 'that girl is ge-getting oviposited', and they'd ask, 'which girl?', and you'd say, 'Scyelen'? To mean me. Just as, an example."

"I don't have one I guess? I guess it's probably important to have one?" She's looking around at the camp. "It's kind of scary to see so many new people! Especially when they're being interesting and not just orgasming in a pit. It's hot how you're hanging down like that." She pats the critter carrying her and affectionately sends this appreciation. "I wanna fuck you but I also want to talk so I guess when that's done with you. I'm kind of talking a lot just because talking is new and fun wow."

The Roamer psychically purrs at this sexually-charged note of approval.

"Everyone here's nice," Scyelen says confidently if breathlessly. "Tasiff makes sure. And Tasiff is, extra nice. If you, don't have a name though, you should probably, pick one you like, before someone else, picks one for yphmmphlmmnghkhnm."

This interruption is brought to you by the Roamer deciding to act on Lightning's appreciation and shove its captive girl's mouth onto Lightning's cock. Scyelen switches from speaking to suckling with no protest.

"Hahaha." She scritches her fingers along where Scyelen's head is embedded.

"...Lightning," she decides a minute later. "Until I think of a better one, I'm lightning."

After she cums, she pulls away and asks Scyelen, "Which one is Tasiff?"

Scyelen's eyes, since she can't move her head, flick toward the massive Squirming Wall overlooking the camp. (Fully half of the camp's population is wrapped up in fleshy tentacles and pinned against the glistening cliff-face, on display as they wriggle and writhe, orgasm sweeping back and forth across the wall in a smooth oscillation. A few of the camp's Seducers are bound up there with the Lovers, sometimes entwined with and fucking one of the humanoids, within the tentacles' grasp.)

"Tall-Squirming-Cliff," she says, humming the name with the tonal component that matches the shortened version. "It protects us." She smiles bashfully. "Even from ourselves, sometimes."

"Oh. Okay, I'll go say hi later. What'cha mean, even from ourselves?"

The worm finishes depositing its eggs and slithers off. The Roamer gets up and starts walking, Scyelen's now-pregnant body encased tightly along its underbelly, though it isn't going anywhere in particular and isn't moving in a hurry as it meanders through camp.

"I was born in Vynait," Scyelen says. "It was better than some places, but I didn't like living in any society that..."

The Roamer slithers through a tangle of limbs; a man, a woman with a dick, and a Seducer, having a three-way in the middle of the path skin, getting Scyelen groped as she slides by.

"So I came here. I came here ready and willing to let the first mindless Tentacle Pit I found keep me forever. To ravish me so thoroughly, to drown me in orgasms for decades until I lost myself and forgot who I was. Just to get away from having to... make decisions... about which of my desires it was okay to act on. I was never afraid of the worst fate they warn you about, not when I first heard about it and not when it almost happened for real. A part of me still wants it. If it somehow happened, I wouldn't be sad. I... still think it's the hottest thing ever, that moment when the fear sets in, when the tentacle pit has already kept you too long, and you want out, but it just holds you tighter, fucks you harder... It's what I fantasize about every time Tasiff sticks me in one of its Tentacle Pits. I just...  I realized I don't have any ability or desire to protect myself from that fate, once I was honest with myself."

The Roamer meanders around the musicians, and Scyelen pauses briefly as they pass, smiling as one of them waves to her.

"Tasiff has seen dozens like me. It already knew how to save me. It's why it gave me to one of its Roamers. It was a convenient way to give me what I need and contribute to its project at the same time. Now I can remain myself, think complicated thoughts and enjoy the company of other people, because I have no control at all while I do. Even in a paradise of constant sex, I'd still get stuck worrying every time, if what I wanted done to me was truly offered, if what I wanted to do to others was welcome. I know consciously that it would be, here, where the Tentacled rule and everybody's too busy fucking to even have the concept of consent, but that only helps so much. So instead, Tasiff decides when, where, and who or what I fuck, so I don't have to question myself every time I feel an urge. And it works. This is the only time in my life when I've ever been both happy and present enough to properly appreciate it. Tasiff made that happen."

She feels incredibly warm and proud and happy, considering this speech. "Wow, that's amazing. I'm so happy, that's great." She tries to ruffle Scyelen's hair - but is stymied by the tentacled carrying her. Oh well. "Thank you for explaining, and goodbye for now."

Now. After a moment to compose herself, she wants to go see the group working on this thing she almost remembers called 'music'.

There's a thing with strings! There's another thing you blow in! There's a different thing with strings!

And a person to operate each.

They're mostly just messing around, not playing any kind of planned song, but they're happy to see a new person interested in music.

Can she try the things?? She'll be very careful with them. Or maybe she can sing, she remembers singing. (She's passable but not great at it)

She can try the pan flute! It is less fragile than the string things.

Singing is also welcome! None of them have great voices.

This is really pretty cool. She'll spend the next week, minimum, exploring the novelty of music, of a day-night cycle, of talking to people and social interactions. With frequent breaks for a wide variety of sex whenever she has the whim or someone wants her, of course.

Meanwhile...

Some number of miles to the west, where the Pink ceases to fully maintain itself, is the Fringe, where flesh and fungus entwine to create a misty forest of breathtaking mushrooms-cap canopy and oozing slimy underloam.

The Fringe is a relatively quiet place, not so crowded with life that you'd bump into it constantly. But that does mean that when something in the Fringe is making a lot of noise, it stands out.

A couple of giant worms have slithered out of the muck to investigate, but those are no threat.

The shadow in the sky however...

It would appear that a certain girl's noises have attracted a Sky Worm.

The creature body is a massive russet wriggly thing, long and sinuous with countless fringes and smaller tentacles rippling around it, and the first sign its there is when it blots out the sun.

Lilian freezes. And then, rapidly, unfreezes. She really can’t afford to be frozen in panic right now. She recognizes that thing. It only looks like it wants to eat her. Instead it will keep her bound up in what is probably some rather fantastic pleasure for literal years.

She has things to do. She isn’t sure what, exactly, those things are. But she’ll figure it out!

Lilian is abstractly aware that she has magic powers, now. But those don’t leap to mind. Instead, what does is running. As fast as she possibly can.

Which, it turns out, is very fast indeed. She launches herself off with acceleration that would outdo a Formula One race car, lanching dirt into the air behind her with a clap. She is primarily restrained in her speed by her need not to launch herself into fungi. She has not, yet, had the idea of leaping up to the tops of the fungi to have less restricted movement. Left to her own devices, that won’t happen until as long as several seconds from now.

The question is, did she react fast enough? And is she running fast enough to outpace that thing?

Thick translucent orange telescoping tentacle flesh smashes into the loam not far behind her at all. But it does indeed miss her.

She's faster than the Sky Worm. Considerably faster, actually.

But she's weaving through a mushroom forest with little in the way of solid dry ground to run on. The Sky Worm is flying in a straight line, pursuing her from above the cap-canopy. It isn't gaining, but she isn't losing it either. Tentacles shoot down from above, trying to snatch her.

Bad tentacle monstrosity! No smashing! That isn’t lewd at all!

Okay, she needs a way to go faster. And with all this running she has, in fact, had the requisite several second to figure out that she can jump up into the canopy and leap from mushroom to mushroom. She’s strong enough for that to work, and what with her many, many mutations she’s probably agile enough too.

The risk of this plan is that she’ll very temporarily be moving upwards and on a fixed trajectory, and so if the Sky Worm is clever enough it might be able to finagle that into grasping her. That’s a risk she’ll just have to take. Her instincts say that she can’t afford to stay in this holding pattern.

She waits until there’s a convenient gap in the canopy to the east and then launches herself upwards and away.

A tentacle swipes at her as she shoots up into the air. Misses. The next one whips out at her from the opposite direction, the Sky Worm twisting its body for extra reach. That one makes contact and swats her out of the air.

The tentacle is soft enough that the impact doesn't hurt, translucent orange flesh squishing around her like semi-solid ooze. She almost got clear: the bit of tentacle that got her was the very tip, small enough that it fails to wrap all the way around her. She's grabbed, but not stuck. She can still get free if she reacts fast enough, before the Sky Worm reels her in.

Purely instinctually, she flexes some strange power that feels like it does something related to getting around attacks half a heartbeat after panic drives her to try to wrench herself out of the tentacle’s grasp by pushing against the ground. Instinctually, she tries to launch herself away from the main body of the Sky Worm and out of its reach for a follow up grab attempt.

And, suddenly, and oh-so-briefly, she is completely intangible. The question now is whether her frantic push gave her enough momentum to phase through bits of the tentacle holding her. If it didn’t, if instead she’s moving too slowly, the built-in safeties of the ability will stop her from telefragging herself and keep her trapped by the Sky Worm’s tentacle. Of course, she might have pushed off with enough strength to just rip herself out of the Sky Worm’s grasp outright, and all of that will be obviated.

All of this takes place in a fraction of a second. She’s fast, now.