Crisis screamed.

She was human again. The wizard was back. She didn’t know how it was possible. He was dead! She’d seen his corpse!

All the reasoning in the world wouldn’t help her escape, though. The wizard leered up at her. He licked his lips and opened his mouth.

Crisis couldn’t tear her eyes from the horrible sight. “NOOOOO! DON’T EAT ME! I’M NOT PREY!” She shoved against his fingers, flailed her legs, even bit his hand, but nothing helped.

He dropped her into his mouth and closed it, shoving her about with his tongue as she squirmed in panic, trying and failing to get a good hold on the slippery surface in the darkness. The giant tilted his mouth up and she started sliding back, clawing at the tongue. He opened his mouth again, and she saw the Giant Tree, the same one she had grown up under, had lived under for all those years.

She frantically reached for it, as if it could save her somehow, but the tongue curled up in front of her, sliding onto her face, blocking her view, shoving her backwards.. Her legs were caught in the throat.

“NOOOO! NOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!!” She screamed all the way down the suffocating tube. She fell into that horrible acid once again. She clawed at the walls, slipping down several times. But it was what she saw when she turned around that really haunted her.

Beth was floating limp, face down in the muck. “Oh shit… oh shit… oh shit…” cried Crisis, picking her way towards her. “Beth!” she cried. “Please, don’t be dead!” She lifted Beth’s head up out of the water and… and…

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Crisis howled and fell backwards with a splash. She gagged and desperately, blindly tried to get her footing, shoving against the squishy floor to get her head back above the acid.

The image was stuck in her mind. Beth’s face had melted off. She had seen slabs of bone, shredded muscle and tatters of discolored skin, blood leaking from the sides of the gaping hole where her face used to be. She didn’t even want to think about what had been in the eye sockets.

“LET ME OUT!” she screamed, over and over again, pounding against the walls. “I JUST GOT BACK! I’M NOT READY TO DIE!” She remembered what had happened the first time, and called out “SUBETA! SAVE ME! GET ME OUT OF HERE! TAKE ME BACK!”

But nothing happened. The saving light didn’t come. All she felt was the horrible pain as her skin began to slough off.

She didn’t die, but the burning didn’t stop. She looked down at herself.

Skin was coalescing back onto her, as though time were flowing in reverse. But it was different. It was brown, furry skin. She reached up to her head and found cat-ears, reached down to her behind and found a tail.

She was a neko. She continued flailing about in confusion as time continued reversing. She fell up into the esophagus, drying off instantly. She was pulled upwards into the mouth, and after being sloshed around by the tongue once again, she fell upwards into the monster’s hand.

She looked around wildly, trying to figure out what was going on. Her eyes widened as they settled on the giant face. But it wasn’t the wizard's face smiling at her this time.

It was her face.

Crisis screamed.

She woke up with a start, almost falling off the branch where she had been sleeping.