Madeline wasn’t the only unfortunate soul to have ended up in the holding sacks of the Histscream. Thousands of men, women and children filled sacs that stretched all the way along the abdomen of the creature. To Madeline’s disgust, some of them were filled with skinless goopy bodies, writhing in agony, and all too large a number were filled with digestive fluid, or littered with jumbled skeletons.

With nothing to do but wait, Madeline turned her attention to one of her neighbours, a big tittied blonde. Nothing they said seemed to be able to reach through the thin casings they struggled to escape… but with hand signals they’d both learned in scout school, they managed to communicate enough. It was a rudimentary military hand language, rough and incapable of detail. They couldn’t tell each other their names, or their life stories… but still they tried to eke out basic ideas.
<Hungry>
<Cold>
<Tired>
<Escape>
<Scared>
<12 Middays>
<Soon>
<Death>
<Help>
<Escape>
<Cut>
<Escape>
<Death>

The handsigning took a long time, not having been invented for anything other than conveying simple concepts to other units in the field silently. But soon the two women were forming a kind of close bond. Almost a friendship.

The mercenary tried to scratch and bite her way out of the case… but it was no use… if only she still had her prized machette. The Village elders had complained that she was wasting valuable steel that could have been used for the construction of a dozens of spears… but Madeline had the shells to spare, and the Blacksmith had needed the work. Now Painbringer was mouldering in the detritus that covered the Screaming forest’s floor. It wasn’t fair… she’d worked so hard for it.

A loud hiss emanated from her new friend’s sack, and steam escaped from a sphincter at the top of the prison. The girl inside suddenly became frantic, and desperate. And her screams could suddenly be heard piercing through the bowels of the beast. She was terrified of something that was about to happen to her.

A spray of clear steaming liquid sprayed over her body, and melted her face and bosoms right off her in a gorey sauce that splattered and filled the bottom of her sack almost immediately. In a matter of seconds she went from being a living breathing human being, to being a screaming bloody skeleton, to collapsing into a pile of dead bones.

Looking at the gruesome sight… Madeline decided that screaming was an appropriate response too.