The centaur doesn't seem concerned by any flashes of anger in Delia's eyes, though it's possible she simply doesn't notice. Instead, still obviously wounded (and part of of Delia's instincts remind her what is supposed to happen to wounded prey), Chira turns and begins efficiently stripping off the bodies of those who were killed without being eaten. "Not bad armor," the centaur comments. "It did not help, but their workshops have always been better than what my people could make. The way she talks and handles them, it's blatantly clear that Chira thinks no more of them than she would animals- disposable and beneath scorn once dead, meriting only anger and needing killing while alive. Nor does Chira seem to keep Delia in her thoughts once the argument is over, not looking back at the succubus as her tail flicks lazily from side to side. After all, she'd done her job, and now there was time for a quick relaxing break before she had to do some more work. Her stomach barely moves anymore, either; swollen hugely with two soldiers, the jostling visible under her brown-furred hide is at least as much due to the centaur's own movements as any residual struggle left inside her meals as the horse gut churns the two together- still separate and still, technically alive at this point, though Chira's stomach would take less time than Delia's would to render her meals into a shapeless stew to be absorbed and help heal her wounds if left to itself. The gurgling noise from her is, if anything, louder than what comes from the succubus's own stomach, despite being muffled more by a thicker, less stretched skin.<br/><br/>Garth leans against the ship wall, still not quite right- a bit of acid burning mars his pale greenish complexion, a few wounds still show as angry red welts through tears in his prisoner's robe- but not in visible danger of falling over dead on the spot. "Thanks," he mutters, accepting the acknowledgment. "Without my holy weapon and armor, there's just not much I can do. I should have stayed back with you and cast spells, but-" Garth growls. "It felt... wrong to be out of the fighting line like that, even if I should have been. And then after I got hurt a little, I got- angry." He half-looks away, scowling fiercely with his small orcish fangs barely visible. "My mother's side of me, I guess. It always gets in the way."<br/><br/>As the succubus regards Mona, the mostly-human pyromancer smirks back. Still, at least she wasn't righ that moment posturing on behalf of her devilish ancestors. And she did taste good. Wanting to get a little bit of that heat, Delia takes Mona's finger in mouth. Mona doesn't say a wrod, merely raising her eyebrows as the tongue fondles an index finger and guides it slowly and playfully to the back of the passage Mona had just helped push Delia's meal through. "Mm. Having fun?" Mona asks. "But you should know, I can be unpleasantly spicy." As she says that, there's a rush of heat in the back of Delia's mouth that stops just short of an actually painful burning sensation, as the pyromancer heats her fingertip to something little short of bursting into flame. While Mona may have meant it to dissuade the succubus and assert (contrary to the soldier's near-success) herself as someone not to be trivially eaten, it doesn't have entirely the effect she'd wish. Instead, even such a trivial use of infernal magic inside Delia's body sends a paradoxical chill down the demoness's spine, as power so familiar and yet so strange blossoms just so close to her throat. Still... it would be rude to keep swallowing, and so Delia reluctantly releases Mona hotfinger and all. Wiping her hand off, Mona grins over her shoulder at Xarius. "Well, you are a flatterer, aren't you? And he... probably wouldn't have had any chance to keep me down. Really, it's startling he got that close. I wonder if he had anything up his family tree he might not have known about," the mostly-human muses. "Or maybe he was trained. I had to train myself, and-" giving Delia a sidelong look, "I'd be happy to prove it.  ...on that guard you were talking about, of course! Or perhaps you, Xarius, if you'd like. I'm sure I'd sleep much better with a full stomach, and it might get cold at night. I promise my belly can be at least as hot as hers," she says, stepping daintily away from both Xarius and Delia with a throaty chuckle. "Might find yourself seeing more of the back door than you think, though... but business before pleasure, I guess."<br/><br/>By now, Delia can feel that her meal's largely gotta back to its natural state of being settled down, battered from side to side by caresses of Delia's oozing belly walls. As her tongue had confirmed, she was already thoroughly coated with slow but potent acids, and her clothes already had begun to fall apart inside the dark, slimy prison. She's not quite given up yet despite the manifest hopelessness of her position, though. Delia can feel her hands weakly pushing at the tight stomach walls around her and probing first one sphincter, then the other as her meal keeps trying to find a way out *before* she's patiently and fairly divided between extra padding on Delia's curves and a pile of remains to be dumped overboard at leisure. No such exit comes, though. The mage is so weakened by her ordeal that her probing attempts bring more tingling pleasure to Delia's senses than they do any risk of escape. Still, as she feels a slight itch spreading over her entire body, she can't give up without accepting her place as demoness food. That acceptance won't come until the last second... if ever. And so, as Delia walked towards the passage to the top deck with the others- even slightly unsteady Chira- she's still thrown a little offbalance by her magical meal. At the same time, the distracting feeling of... enhancement? Is starting to make itself known at the back of Delia's mind. To her, it feels like a warm, pulsing buildup of strength somewhere near her heart as the magical energies leach out of her meal and into her. It's not enough to awaken her powers, she immediately senses. Not even seemingly enough to do much she can see offhand, but... enough for her to know that there is some sort of diffusion of potence and mana occurring. Her meal, of course, feels it differently. Lacking a demoness's awareness of the movements of the soul, all she can feel is a strange... hunger, to the walls around her, as if part of her is already being absorbed into the warm, soft flesh cradling her body and sapping her strength faster than her predicament should allow. And yet, to the mage, it still could be explained by mere... fatigue. Time later to properly enjoy that, though, as the top deck and the presumed finale comes along.<br/><br/>While nobody interferes with their climb, it's evident enough that the noise and tumult downstairs have given the crew on the top deck ample warning. It seems they intend to defend their captain's cabin; at the far end of the open topdeck is a small half-deck with a door inside it. Around there, the crew have used their two small cannons as the centerpieces of a barricade strewn with a few barrels and nets of rope. There's only a few soldiers, but a half dozen or so of the crewmen and one scared-looking dwarf in slightly fancier clothes with a large crossbow in each hand. "Stay back!" He yells, "Stay back! Or- or we'll fire the cannons down into the deck and bring us down ourselves!" The sun is the first unfiltered natural light the party's seen since boarding the ship, and seems impossibly bright, with the sky far too blue to seem real. It's a warm day, too, with a nice, gentle breeze wafting from behind and filling the sails above pushing the ship along to its appointment delivering the newest batch of prisoner-slaves to the mines... or at least, it was. Behind Xarius, Garth stiffens, and whispers, "It's a bluff," into Xarius's ear. "Look at their hands. I don't even think those cannons are loaded. And something doesn't feel right about this."<br/><br/><br/>((Not in init yet. Perception Check, DC 15:<br/><div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;">Nobody has any lit fuses to light off the cannons in their hands. Might have them readily available, but they can't fire immediately.</div></div></div><br/>DC 20:<div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;">The captain's door is locked, and a few of the sailors are furtively glancing upward into the masts.</div></div></div><br/>DC 25:<div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;">There are two harpies hiding in the rigging of the ship, peering down now and then at the party.</div></div></div><br/>Sense Motive check, DC 15:<br/><div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;">The dwarf doesn't mean what he's saying.</div></div></div><br/><br/><br/>Loot, also updated on first post: 4x typical imperial outfits (MW chainmail, MW longsword, light steel shield); 2x +1 studded leather armor; +1 longsword; dagger; +1 chainmail; MW light steel shield; MW rapier, MW light crossbow+ammo. Just include what you took and I'll dole out to NPCs as need be before next post.))