She cautiously steps out, moving as quietly as she can. She figures it's probably better to examine the area away from the sounds of life first, before getting closer to people who will probably wonder what she's doing here, so she turns left. As she walks, she listens very carefully at each door, before finally trying to open the last one silently.

The rooms the left of the one Sable awoke in are both silent, and as she opens the one door at the southern end of the hallway, she finds a room similar to the one she arrived in, containing only a few large crates and some empty shelving.

Empty crates and maybe one or two closed ones. Opening the crates will almost certainly be noisy, so she's going to skip that, despite the temptation. She'll repeat this silent inspection on each room in turn, moving toward the source of the noise, until either she can tell more about it or she finds something unexpected.

Just more storerooms all along the eastern wall, though the two northernmost rooms appear to be for storing durables, chunks of ore and gemstones, digging tools, armor, and weapons, including several swords! They're a bit small, and rather low-quality, and aren't precisely sabers, but still feel much more natural in Sable's grip than the hand axe she woke up with.

Having covered the whole hallway, it's clear to Sable that the sounds of life are coming form the other side of the single door on the western wall.

She grabs the best-feeling sword of the lot on her way, then creeps closer and closer to that last door, finally opening it just a crack and peering inside.

Even the best sword of this lot isn't great, but it's at least decent.

The sounds of life are more clear with the door open. It's chanting, not just talking, and the rhythmic footsteps of a dance, not ordinary shuffling. Somewhere nearby, a ritual is being performed, and a pretty big one. There doesn't seem to be anyone in this new hallway, though. It's lit with glowing crystals just like the first, and there are several more doors on this hallway's eastern wall, and one door on its western wall, right in front of the one Sable is looking through right now, which is also the one the chanting and dancing can be heard coming from.

Shit. Really? It had to be chanting? She's in a fantasy adventure world and stumbling into a ritual. Judging from the hallway, there's probably not anything that interesting in here, and she can come back if she lives through investigating the ritual chamber. Rituals are a great way to slowly stack power in most settings that have them, so if these people are worth allying with then hopefully she can investigate without interrupting, and if they're worth shutting down that's better done sooner than later.

She shakes her head, gooey curls bobbing with the motion, as her tail swishes anxiously behind her.

Nothing for it, then.

She opens the door carefully.

The scene on the other side would not be out of place in a horror movie. Nine robed figures, ranging from about half Sable's height to just a few inches shorter than her, stand in a circle, chanting in a strange but not altogether unfamiliar tongue. It doesn't have the taste of language, but it is powerful nonetheless, serving as the medium for some kind of magic.. They dance also, as she heard. There's a tenth robed figure of middling height standing in the middle of the circle, behind a blood-drenched stone slab. A young woman is bound and lain on the slab, struggling but unable to move, and there are two humanoid corpses and two dead horses arranged around the slab but within the ritual circle, along with numerous small items and the broken remnants of a cart.

As Sable sees this, the central figure is already pressing a rune-etched dagger into the bound woman's throat and beginning to draw blood. The mana filling the chamber, thick but quiescent, is now beginning to awaken to the ritual's effect.

Blood and ink, nope, this doesn't get to continue. As soon as the scene is identified as sacrificial ritual and she makes the decision to interrupt, she bursts into the room, those barely-explored combat instincts taking over. She dashes directly at the tenth figure, sword flashing out to strike the nearest cultist as she crosses the circle, then continues the motion to curve into a heavy slash at the leader.

None of the cultists were expecting a threat to come from inside the compound, from which Sable emerged, so the smaller cultist who she passes on her way to the center of the circle doesn't even flinch before being cut down, their robe falling open to reveal the now slain kobold cultist.

The central cultist and seeming leader of the ritual is no less surprised, but some kind of prescient instinct pulls them down, under Sable's slash, and causing the dagger to plunge fully into the sacrifice's neck.

The ritual is fully initiated, though the absence of the slain cultist has thrown it off course. The mana's activity is rising rapidly, and will reach a climactic realization soon, but there's no telling what it will do when that happens.

Shit, that's bad, and she doesn't know any healing options that would work anywhere near quickly enough. Well, only thing left to do is fuck this up as best she can, and hopefully whatever awful goal they had in mind is prevented. She lets her slash spin her a bit and twists into a heavy side kick, aiming to knock the lucky idiot who just dodged her into a cultist on the far side.

The aforementioned lucky idiot attempts to dodge again, but is delayed by the dagger being well and truly stuck in the sacrifice's neck. Mentally stuck between abandoning the weapon or yanking it free, the choice is made for them by Sable's kick landing squarely on-mark and sending the ritual leader sliding back, colliding with the other target.

There's an odd moment now, where the rest of the cultists seem uncertain, caught between trying to continue the ritual as best they can or instead attacking the intruder. It's a prime opportunity to make a move.

There's an intuition to do something odd here, and she rolls with it. She sinks into a bit of a crouch, dropping her borrowed sword. Her tail and torso thin very slightly as her arms split apart into nine inky tentacles, each tipped with something between a fang or a claw or a stinger, which lash out and jab into the bodies of the surviving cultists, injecting each with a potent dose of paralytic venom that she hadn't even realized she could produce.

It is only one of several things that Sable has and will continue to learn today, probably!

Certainly it's something the cultists didn't know to expect. That's all the cultists incapacitated, The ritualized mana, however, is continuing to rage nonetheless, and a strange sort of red cloud is forming under the chamber's ceiling. There's more too it than just color, though. It's some kind of aura.

Then, the cloud parts, but instead of a stone, it's a dark sky with a single, blood-red star, quickly growing to the size of the sun.

FAVOR. CONQUEST. CONSUME.

Sable is suddenly very hungry.

Um. What. That's... a slightly unexpected and worrying and possibly hot result of the ritual. Does this sudden hunger have any moving parts or instruction manual attached to it? She pokes at the bundle of sensations and instincts.

If she eats something that was at least recently alive, she'll gain a portion of its power. It'll be a bigger portion the more recently it was alive, and best if it's alive as she eats it. It'll be a bigger portion the more of it she eats, and best if she eats the whole thing.

Only if she eats these heretics cultists, though.

Did whichever god this was just give her a stars-damned vore power? Really!? 

Can she honestly let herself get into the habit of gaining power from eating people? Is that something she should accept?

...Given how much of this world is probably thrilled to kill or rape her, does she have a choice?

Honestly, no, she really doesn't. She'll stick to defense of self or others — or volunteers, a treacherous instinct adds — and take the power. She drags all the still-living cultists into a row, and fishes in her backpack to find a rope and tying all their wrists together in case they wake up.

Then she flips the hoods back on everyone's robes, taking a good look at each cultist, including the dead one.

Four kobolds including the slain, and six larger dragonkin, plausibly half-humans, though only half of them have wings. They all possess the same ruddy scales and have something like a family resemblance. Plausibly, they all share a common draconic ancestor. Aside from the ritual leader (one of the winged ones, and the second largest overall), none of them have anything on them other than the robes. The ritual leader has bloodied cloth with runes stitched into it and a small journal with notes written in an unfamiliar script.

Best to start with the dead one, she thinks. If she's planning to eat all of them, she'll just be wasting value to wait. Plus it'll probably taste better while it's still warm.

She walks over to the dead kobold, then pulls the robe all the way off the body and look her meal-to-be over.

This kobold (and, as it will turn out, the rest of the cultists) appears to be female, or at least doesn't have any obviously testosteronic physiology. Her scales are primarily green, at least where the neck-wound which slayed her hasn't stained them red, with yellow accents. Her eyes are closed, and Sable can recognize some runes of astrological significance painted around the kobold's face. She does have recognizable breasts, though small ones, and is generally thin. She is still warm, it's only been a handful of seconds since she died, but she is also definitely getting colder.

Is she really about to do this? She killed a person, and is about to eat her body. Really?

...Yeah. She's not fortified enough to safely piss off the god-or-whatever that gave her this power, and these people just sacrificed other people in a ritual.

Okay. Okay. Right.

She sits down at the kobold's feet. How's she going to do this? Should she just take bites? Does she... stretch? She pokes her instincts.

Wow. Yeah, she can stretch. Okay. She picks the kobold girl's legs up, opens her mouth inhumanly wide, puts the feet into her mouth, and tries to slurp the scaly body down.

It is a surprisingly easy process, almost natural. Kobold body slides into Sable's maw and down her gullet with no real effort, her jaw, throat, chest, and stomach all smoothly expanding to accommodate her meal. Even ignoring her hunger, feeling her body engulf the kobold is a greatly enjoyable experience, and she is hungry, and this is a delightfully substantial meal...though she could still go for another, probably.

Her belly is greatly distended by her meal, but she can already feel it starting to break down and soften, and with her new body moving around with the extra weight is only marginally more difficult.

Well. She expected it to be weird, but that felt surprisingly good. This is probably the start of her descent into villainy or something, but she thinks she might like this.

She gets up and unties a kobold from the end of the line of cultists, strips off the robe, and checks her out. Maybe she'll try to savor this one a little, rather than rushing like last time. She sits down at her feet again and starts pulling the tiny dragonkin girl into her mouth.

This one has cyan accents rather than yellow, but is still predominantly green, and has a similar height and build to the previous, though she's a bit bustier. The fact that she's still alive is certainly the biggest difference, though. She's still breathing, and Sable's handling of her sends little reflexive twitches through her prey's body. As the kobold's skin begins to absorb the contact-aphrodisiacs present in Sable's inner inks, the rhythm of the kobold girl's breathing changes, becoming shorter and sharper, and her body becomes noticeably warmer. As Sable gets to her hips, despite still being unconscious, there is nonetheless a distinct taste and wetness of arousal on the insides of her thighs.

She pays more attention this time. The scales scrape pleasantly along her tongue, and have a faintly bright taste. The girl's calves are a soft pressure, and her thighs feel simultaneously soft and firm as they fill her mouth. And then her hips, those are are a revelation. Is that a hint of arousal she tastes? Wait, the kobold is unconscious, how is she aroused?

...Is Sable made of aphrodisiacs? Huh. She focuses for a moment, shifts the composition of her tongue and her saliva, strengthens the potency there, and flicks her tongue across her prey's cunt. Wow yes oh that's intense. More arousal wells up, flooding Sable's mouth with the taste, and she swallows again, pulling the girl deeper. The tight curve of the scaled waist, the soft swell of her breasts sliding past her lips... Sable can't help herself, she moans just a bit. Another swallow and the kobold girl slips all the way in, arms and head and horns sliding past her lips and nestling in next to the first one.

Sable sits back, leaning on her hands and breathing hard as she lets her meal settle. She glances down at her belly — yeah, that's definitely a lewd bulge, you can clearly tell she's got humanoids in her gut right now. Fuck. That's kinda hot in and of itself. She lets out a pleased sigh.

This is pretty hot, stars this is hot, but she has a bit more exploring to do. Walking around will probably help her digest, anyway. She bites her lip... Oh, fine, just for a moment. She grabs one of her breasts in her left hand, gropes hard, stifles a moan. Fuck her body feels great.

No, right, gotta get this bit of actual work done before she gets carried away. She gets up and rechecks all the cultists, making sure they're all tied reasonably securely, then heads back into the previous hallway. A bit of exploration reveals that this hallway was full of bunk rooms for the cultists, with various personal effects and trivial things. She finds a book on runes, another on cooking, three books of erotica (one of which is about kobold girls getting eaten by predators!?), and a general book about magic, among the more interesting finds, and brings those back to store them in her bag.

Her belly sloshes heavily throughout this process, gradually shrinking as the minutes pass. Eventually, around twenty minutes later, she's back to her (new) normal svelte figure — but with an extra cup size and four more tails. Huh. She heads back into the ritual chamber.

The next kobold she grabs is a bit thicker than the others, with blue scales, and violet horns and accents. She sits down and grabs the girl's feet, slowly starting to swallow her. She probably shouldn't be surprised, but this is really starting to grow on her... Her tongue swirls over the girl's calves and then thighs, savoring the gentle give of the soft flesh under the cerulean scales. Her mouth stretches wider around the plush hips, tongue dipping into her prey's cunt to savor the arousal as her aphrodisiacs take effect. Slowly she swallows the kobold girl deeper and deeper, letting out a moan as she swallows the hips and tail properly, as her lips slide over the soft waist and the full tits. And soon enough, the girl is swallowed. Sable sits back with a moan, groping a breast with one hand and leaning against the other. And then she moves on to the last kobold. Only the bigger half-dragon girls left after this.

This one is pink, with indigo accents, and a bit skinnier again — though a fuller bust than the first. B-cups maybe? She starts at the feet again, slowly swallowing her prey deeper and deeper, and dwells longer at the girl's hips this time. Her tongue plunges deep into the kobold girl's pussy, soaking it with aphrodisiacs as she tastes the bright taste of arousal. Mmmmmhh, who said this was allowed to taste so good? She licks across the girl's cunt, tongue dragging heavily across her clit — and then she hears a moan.

What.

Her eyes focus forward to find a pair of bright green eyes looking back at her from her no-longer-unconscious prey's face. The kobold girl is watching herself be eaten, groping her own tits, and moaning.

Sable blinks at the girl in shock for a moment, then starts tongue-fucking her, slowly wringing whimpery mewls and a shuddery orgasm from her scaly prey. The girl dissolves into panting moans, claw-tipped fingers digging hard into her tits, her whole body shaking with her climax.

And then Sable keeps swallowing. As she swallows the girl's hips and approaches her waist, her prey slips one hand past her lips, fingering herself as she slides deeper into Sable's body. The other hand keeps pinching and groping one of her breasts, and she bites her lip and stifles further moans, slowly sinking deeper and deeper. Eventually the girl is fully swallowed, and starts masturbating in earnest, evidently trying to wring every orgasm she can out of herself before she's gone.

After a minute or so of this, the frenetic fingering wakes the other kobold, who starts touching herself as well, and nuzzling into her companion.

"Hhhaah," she can't help but moan a little herself, and with a shake of her head eventually gives in and joins her meals in masturbating. Both her hands start groping her tits, and she forms a phallic tentacle with some of her now plentiful spare mass and starts fucking herself with it. "Aaaahhhh, fuck that's good..."

We interrupt this lovely meal to bring you: 

Dark red ooze dripping out of the wall across from Sable, a spiral within a circling - trailing down, then glowing, and then the wall within the circle vanishes entirely into the chaotic swirl - 

And spits out a humanoid girl -

Skin like white ash, hair like thin filaments of black glass, a black leather mask covering her eyes and nose, dark smudgy tendrils wavering at its edges. A set of cat ears that look like they're made of jagged glass shards emerge from her head. Something deep under her skin glows red like fire - it's more visible in her chin, at her joints, wherever bones grow close to the surface. The rest of her outfit is black leather or metal, with very frequent and possibly mildly excessive spikes. Large pauldrons and a thick collar and open helmet all adorned with black spikes... Black cloak which falls about her body, lined with a spiked chain... A black strap that runs from her collar down between her breasts with vicious-looking metal spikes acrhing out to encase her bare flesh... The pasties on her breasts and between her legs all anchor into her skin at the edges with similarly wicked spikes, though there's no sign of blood... Thigh-high boots with spikes on the heel...

And shadow. 

Smudgy tendrils, difficult to focus on, constantly writhing and moving line the inside of her cape and peek out of the edges of her clothes. A thicker smudge flicks behind her like a cat's tail, though the tip is a bit oddly phallic. 

She regains her feet quickly, crouching and hissing a little, revealing a large mouth full of teeth of jagged glass.

Mmmmm—"What the inkstained fuck!?"

Okay, the girl is hot, the outfit is darkly hot, but this is a fantasy adventure setting with dangerous ritualists.

Before she finishes the thought — or even the exclamation — she's forming a set of bladed and barbed tentacles in case of a fight.

And a heavy voice - a command - thunders into her mind as the overwhelming attention of that red not-star turns back their way - 

CONSUME

The hot girl's outfit rattles a little, sounding like glass, like a strange hissing laughter.

Hot girl just raises her empty hands. " - Wait - "

Apparent goo-girl points her weaponized tentacles upward rather than at her unexpected guest(s) in acknowledgement of the hot girl's apparent gesture of détente, then glares at the ceiling, feeling her way through her gifted instincts to find however she's supposed to reply to that — though knowing what she does about gods, it's entirely possible she's not meant to be able to reply. Hmm, is that telepathy? That feels like telepathy. She opens her mind up a little to the presences in the room, just to get more of a sense of them, but mostly focuses on blasting a loud reply back at the very pushy god.

I have no idea who this girl or her outfit is, she hasn't threatened me, and I'm still full and expect to remain so for the next twenty minutes. I'm not going to just drop everything to try to eat her. You just seriously ruined what was left of my mood here. You are invited to explain yourself.

A pressure - 

The god does not care about the girl. She's one more body in a endless pile of them. It cares about the shadows wrapped around her, and promises power if only Sable will reach out and seize what should be hers. 

(How good are Sable's mental defenses, by the by. Because they and her ability to handle total sensory overwhelm - which probably includes some orgasms in the blast but also everything else - are about to be tested.)

She does not like this god. This does not feel like her patron goddess, it's pushy as fuck, and it's got no respect for fair play. She hunkers down as best she can and rides it out, glaring upward all the while.

Her mental defenses aren't anything too special for a telepath, but her resilience is top notch. She is an ocean of ink, and this fucker is a passing storm. The storm may be a hurricane, but this too shall pass.

The pressure eases up. (And she gets the sense it's also lashing out at the other two - a brief glimpse of other ships tossed about in the storm - )

And then the command repeats.

CONSUME

Sable is no longer full. She is, in fact, ravenous.

Oh fuck this guy so much. With what attention she can spare, she inventories as many relevant aspects of her nature as she can: are there still cute masturbating kobold girls in her gut, are her stamina reserves still pretty full, does she still have five tails? (Yes though they're a bit slower as they continue to digest, if anything fuller, and yes, respectively.)

She takes a moment to recenter herself and focus past the probably-illusory hunger — she's always been good at dissociating from any bodily perception she wants, whenever she wants — and attempts to focus on her guests.

"Hi. The asshole god whose boon I stumbled into really doesn't like y'all. He doesn't like Mx Outfit in particular. Care to comment on that?"

"I have no idea why. I'm a riot at parties," says the hot girl in the approximate tone of someone who a) possibly barely noticed the blast, b) thinks the god needs to git gud, c) has a remarkable talent for annoying people into attempting to stab her, d) generally stabs them first, and, last but not least, e) started a literal riot at the last party she attended.

The very spiky outfit forms some eyes and wide mouths full of sharp teeth interspersed among the spikes and laughs again, an odd bubbling sound.

"I am a gift to women, of course, and that old boor wouldn't know mutual pleasure if it slapped him in the eyes," it says, voice a melodic whisper. 

(The 'old boor' seems to have wandered off for now - that last consume was possibly nothing more than a parting shot as his attention turned elsewhere.)

"That does sound like him, just from the short time I've known him. He made a great deal of noise about wanting me to eat y'all, though for all your claims of being a riot he didn't seem to care about you," she gestures with a tailtip at the girl, "except as an incidental snack on the way to convincing me to eat you," and at that she points at the outfit.

"Other than interrupting my enjoyment of my meals' enjoyment of being dinner, y'all haven't done anything to offend me enough to consider it, though. Not like these assholes," she gestures at the remaining cultists, "whom I interrupted during a sacrificial ritual."

She shakes her head. "So, what brings y'all to this awful ritual chamber in the middle of nowhere? And what should I call y'all?"

She doesn't actually know she's in the middle of nowhere, but she was dropped here by another Sable, and it would be just like another Sable to drop her in the middle of nowhere.

Disgruntled noise. "Some asshats were arguing over who saw me first. Jumping through a random portal nearby seemed significantly more worth my time."

Her clothes seem to think that summary is very funny for some reason!

"She is Shendi," it murmurs, "And my beautiful self is Lacuna."

"Asshats are gonna asshat. No idea how or why a random portal took you here, but... good to meet you both. I'm Sable. D'you have any pronoun preferences, Lacuna? And do either of you have a taste for sapient-sacrificing dragonkin? It'll take me quite a while to finish all of these myself, and I don't really mind sharing."

It thinks for a few moments. "Whatever pronoun is funniest or most scandalous in the current context," it murmurs cheerfully.

Eye roll. Then, to Sable: "Well, you'll probably get weird looks for using gendered pronouns for it, if nothing else."

And: "No. I'm good."

"I cannot eat."

"Cute," she says with a chuckle. "I'll stick to matching the pronouns y'all used for each other unless I'm in the mood for weird looks then."

She tuts and looks across the array of remaining snacks. "Now I'm torn. Don't wanna ask y'all to stick around here while I spend another two hours finishing these up, don't wanna miss out on the New and Interesting People opportunity, and don't wanna skip an opportunity for more power that only costs the lives of some murderous cultists when I'm in a dangerous new world."

"Decisions, decisions," she finishes with a contemplative hum.

"The world's full of plenty enough assholes, if that's your taste."

"But - you said new world?"

She hums. "My taste is cute girls who are also fair targets, or cute girls who volunteer. So that somewhat filters the asshole population a bit for me. And really I just don't like passing up a resource."

She shakes her head, sighing. "And yes, I did say new. My experience of this world starts no more than an hour or two ago, prior to which I lived my whole life in a radically different — and magicless — world. My old world had far fewer direct threats, as best I can tell so far, so I definitely do not mind acquiring additional power with which to defend myself."

"Joy." She seems to be thinking more - but she doesn't share her thoughts, not yet. 

She hums thoughtfully, tilting her head. "Gonna need to figure my way around this place. Don't even know where 'here' is yet."

Hum. "I wouldn't be surprised if exploring takes us a few hours, if you want to go cautiously at first and return to this room a few times."

She tuts lightly. "I've explored everything that side of this chamber," she points with a tailtip at the hallway she came from. "Nothing there except shitty weapons and personal effects. I took the interesting books. There may or may not be more beyond this room in the other direction, I don't know. We could go take a look, see if there's anything else of value to be had, but mostly by 'this place' I mean the whole world."

She shakes her head and laughs ruefully. "If I know the person who dropped me here — and believe me, I do — then there will be very good reasons not to try to hold onto this place after getting what we can from the general vicinity."

"And - whatever just happened, it was loud."

"We're pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but someone can come looking regardless."

Sable drops her face into her hands and sighs. "Yeah, that was my stumbling into their ritual, deciding that sapient sacrifice wasn't allowed, disrupting it, and the resulting boon settling onto me instead. Might as well bail, as much as I might prefer not to waste these snacks."

She shakes her head. "What do y'all have by way of escape options? New instincts feel like I can grow wings, but that would leave you behind unless you can too."

"I can climb and jump - and we have magic between the two of us, though not for flight."

She hums thoughtfully. "If this is a conveniently foot-traversable middle-of-nowhere, that works, but we have no guarantee of that."

She looks Shendi and Lacuna up and down. "How much do y'all weigh, together?"

"You're not picking us up."

"Fair enough," she replies with a shrug and a smile. "There goes flight as an exit strategy unless I wanna leave y'all behind. Oh well!"

She looks the remaining cultists over, then sighs and forms six stinger-tentacles, jabbing each with a lethal dose of paralytic venom. She unties her rope from their limbs and starts coiling it back up.

"Another couple minutes and I'll probably have these two digested, and then I'll be able to keep up on an escape."

"I can poke around until then."

(She doesn't discernibly react to the deaths.)