//------------------------------//
// 05: No Escape 
// Story: Demon of the Deep Wood 
// by Argonaut44 
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Gorgo found the worms dragging themselves along the floor of his cave, as they made their escape for the cave entrance. The worms’ rate of movement was hindered, rendered sluggish by the huge meals they were each carrying in their stomachs.
Enraged and rudely awakened, Gorgo marched towards the worms as they tried desperately to escape. Those infesting vermin had swallowed up every single one of his new catches. Some of the slugs were long gone already, but others were not quite as nimble.
Gorgo stormed towards them and grabbed one with his monstrous hoof, hoisting the wriggling worm up into the air. He growled as it thrashed against his grasp, before taking his other hoof to claw at the rubbery skin of the worm. In a great show of muscle, he ripped the worm apart, scattering flesh and muscle across the cave. 
Val landed on the cave floor in a torrent of green slime and blood. She promptly vomited up some of the acid she had ingested, before collapsing on her face, exhausted. 
 Shara? She wondered, searching for the cave for any sign of her rescuer. Amalza?
She could not have been more mistaken.
Attempting to pick herself up off the ground, she wiped off as much of the worm acid as she could. Gorgo noticed her. A new one. The best I’ve ever seen, he thought. Full of meat.
While Val was still orienting herself, Gorgo rushed towards her, grabbing her forelegs and pinning them behind her back. 
Gorgo pressed her towards the ground, all while the other worms continued making their escape.
“Let go of me, beast!” Val roared.
Gorgo bellowed as he bent her forelegs and held her up in the air.
“Ah … the commander. I expected you’d come prowling around here,” Gorgo said, “Perhaps you’ve found more than you bargained for.”
“Let me go, and I’ll consider granting you a merciful death,” Val spat.
“Your act of heroism has cost me all of my catch,” Gorgo said, “But perhaps you will make a worthy replacement.”
He licked his lips and raised her up in front of him, before producing a thick stream of cream-colored webbing from his chest spinneret, which landed right on her rump. 
He spun Val around in circles as she screamed out in rage. With each rotation, she caught a glimpse of the worms carrying her friends out through the cave entrance, escaping into the jungle. She feared for them more than herself, though she would not be of much help to anypony at the moment.
As she was completely overpowered, it did not take Gorgo long to wrap up her entire body from below the waist, as she continued trying to wrestle free. Her defiance only made him smirk.
“You’re a tenacious one,” Gorgo smiled, “I like that. Pity, it won’t do you much good. Your friends may have gotten away, but you won’t. I’ll make sure of that.”
Val was fuming, still too weakened from her trip to the worm’s stomach to put up much of a fight.
“...You won’t get away with this.”
Always the artist, Gorgo spun his stream of webbing around her torso, all while Val winced at the warm sensation of the silk tightening around her skin. Gorgo pinned her forelegs upwards behind her back again and finished the wrapping, adding a sling that went around one of her shoulders. He covered her mouth with one last stream of silk that wrapped around the bottom half of her head, but left her mane and eyes free. Gorgo held her in his forelegs, as she finally gave up completely, once the warm cocoon began to cool and solidify around her. She was trapped, just like before, except at least this time she could still see. 
Gorgo noticed there remained one worm who still hadn’t made it out of the cave yet, carrying off one of his cocooned victims. He stomped towards it, slamming his hoof on its tail and reeling it back towards him, hoof by hoof. He grabbed the worm from beneath where the girl was in its stomach, and squeezed upwards with a vicious grip, forcing the worm to vomit the poor girl out onto the floor. 
Raquelle had never been happier to be back in Gorgo’s cave. She was still completely blind in her silk cocoon, but could just vaguely make out the shape of another pony through the white haze, slung over Gorgo’s shoulder like a piece of meat.
Gorgo held Raquelle up in one hand, and wrapped her up in another layer of silk, for fear of the worm’s stomach acids having weakened the original silk’s strength. 
Gorgo gave a low growl, bitter that the worms had managed to invade his home and steal his property, but he was relieved to have retained two of them, one of whom was a brand new find and, in his opinion, the best of the litter.  
Gorgo returned a quivering Raquelle back to the web-covered wall of the larder, before turning back to Val, still slung over his shoulder. 
“MMMMMMPH!” Val roared into the silk, but her muffled screams were quickly silenced when Gorgo began spinning the rest of her cocoon. While he went about his work, he elongated his toothed protruding mouth, lathering his spit right against her face. Val winced and jerked around in disgust.
This CANNOT be happening! she thought to herself, bending and buckling and resisting all the while.
After layering more sheets of silk around his newest victim’s body, he finished her off by wrapping her face, binding her with the intention of making it a labor just to breathe. 
There was no chance for escape, Val thought. The monster had taken every additional measure available to him - bending her forelegs behind her back, wrapping her three times over, and restricting her breathing, all of which left her more helpless than she had ever felt before. She went slack, defeated.   
Naturally, Val blamed Cassandra. She should’ve been paying attention.
Val should have been, too, she considered. Maybe she had been too hard on Cassandra. She might have wanted to apologize, but she had a sinking feeling that they had crossed paths for the last time. Unless Cassandra’s sun goddess was going to pull some trick, that was.
All Val could do was hope, but hope was dwindling.
Gorgo stuck Val right alongside Raquelle on the ground of the larder. They wriggled against one another in discomfort and frustration. All they had was each other, and that was hardly enough. Only one thought stayed on their minds after Gorgo trotted off to another part of the cave, leaving them in the dimly-lit larder to cry and whimper for nopony to hear.
Who will he eat first?





Gorgo returned to his lair, taking a seat on his webbed throne. He was absolutely exhausted. At least his indigestion had passed, he thought; his stomach was no longer swollen or groaning. It had been a while since he had gotten to eat whole ponies, and his stomach had trouble settling after that. The next one would surely go down easier. He decided it was no use crying over spilt milk, and that he could be content with what he had gathered for himself already. The famed warrior Valkyrie, a sorceress, and a princess was not a bad catch at all, the more he thought about it. There was not much point in hunting down all those wretched worms to reclaim his lost prizes; those worms were quick and prone to scattering, and even if he did find any of them, by the time he did the girls would already be long dead. 
He decided that he would eat one tomorrow, though he was not sure which one yet, and then the other on the next day. Then, once finished with these pesky Academy mares, he would hunt down that pack of worms and kill each one of them, until the Deep Wood was rid of them once and for all. It was true that those worms digested at different rates, depending on its size and the size of its prey, as well as a complex series of magical properties, and so it was not impossible that some of his former victims could survive in their stomachs for days on end. He wondered if any of the girls could prevail that long, and whether there were any others in these woods who might pose a threat. Soon enough he would find out for himself.