Round 1 Day 1 - Exploring

Scarlet’s energy left the room a few minutes after the Host herself, and once it had gone the remainder of breakfast was subdued and confused. Matt and Sarah put their surprise invitations away and ate while lost in their own heads. Poppy read through the contents of her envelope with intense focus, interrupted occasionally by Emma reminding her to eat some of the yoghurt and fruit she had brought over. Everyone else finished their food and drink in an awkward silence, and then drifted away one or two at a time.

The married couple were not quite the last to leave, Matt grabbing his wife’s hand as they set off to start their mandatory date voluntarily early, with no reason to delay or to minimise the time they spent around each other. Only Emma and Poppy were left behind, and when Matt glanced back from the doorway Poppy had somehow slipped away unseen and Emma was staring blankly at the table.

Matt instinctively slowed his long strides to a well-practiced pace as he led the way into the unknown, like he always did while walking beside Sarah, but they were both mildly surprised when she actually started to overtake him. Sarah slowed and Matt sped up, then Sarah sped up to compensate while Matt slowed down to do the same. They both stopped, looking at each other in confusion. It took Matt’s groggy brain a few moments longer than it should have to realise the problem.

“Your legs are longer now,” he chuckled, gesturing at his wife’s lower half.

“Oh,” Sarah said, looking down with a self-conscious frown, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think-”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Matt interrupted, stepping in front of her and placing a hand on each of her hips, “I’ll just need to get used to it, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” she murmured, unconvinced, then looked up and into her husband’s eyes. He was smiling, brightly and genuinely, but the smile seemed fragile. All of him seemed fragile. “Are you okay?” she asked gently, “Seriously. What happened last night?”

“It’s nothing,” the fragile smile cracked and he tried to pull away, but Sarah grabbed him with both hands and held on tight.

“You don’t have to pretend for me,” she insisted, “What’s wrong?”

The stone of the castle pressed in heavily around them as they both desperately tried not to be a burden for each other, but Matt’s attempts to be strong crumbled in the face of Sarah’s resolution that she had to do something to prove her worth in the relationship.

“I...” Matt croaked, then cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly, “I don’t know how to get through this without hurting someone.”

“What do you mean?” The question was soft and open, an invitation to clear his mind rather than curiosity about his answer. She had immediately guessed what he was thinking anyway. It was her fault, as usual.

“I don’t know if I can sit by and watch as someone gets transformed into something awful, but at the same time I’m worried about hurting you if I do anything with any of the others to save them,” he admitted, confirming her fears, “Even if you were okay with it, what the hell would I even do with Poppy? Or Chrissy? Neither of them want anything to do with me in that way.” He shrugged limply, and lowered his head to touch his forehead against hers. “Then there’s you. Even if you wanted me, what have we got left that’s going to earn you any points? The first few years we were together, we did basically everything that either of us could think of in the bedroom.”

“And the living room, and the kitchen, and the car, and that one time in the garden,” Sarah teased weakly, trying to bring the mood up even as her heart twinged with guilt, “I don’t know, Matt. I don’t know what to do about the others, but I don’t want that to happen to... most of them, either. I don’t know what to do about us, but I’ll try to be better for you. I won’t stop you if there’s anything new you want to do with me.”

Matt’s eyes, already shimmering with moisture, suddenly took on a faint shine, so dim it could have been an imagined reflection. He drew in a sharp breath, and leaned back, peering at his wife with shock and confusion as unexpected knowledge arrived in his mind.

“You mean that, kind of,” he murmured, tilting his head to one side, “Only kind of, though. You want it, but at the same time you don’t.”

“Um,” said Sarah, taking a step back, “What?”

“I don’t know,” Matt shook his head slowly, not breaking eye contact, “I just got this sense of what you really meant when you said that you wouldn’t stop me. I guess it must be Consent Checker.” He frowned and took half a step back, increasing the space between them, “Why are you feeling like that though? Because it was open ended? Is there some stuff you want me to do and some stuff you don’t?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah shrugged uncomfortably and looked away. She let go of her husband’s body, then took his hand again and turned to continue down the corridor. “Are we going exploring then?”

“...sure,” he agreed, recognising the question was being avoided but unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

They walked together down the corridor and deeper into the castle, holding hands but not quite looking at each other.

Eleanor had made a discovery while rummaging through the bedroom after breakfast, and while she’d been tempted to keep it to herself she had quickly found that it wouldn’t be much good if it was just her. Unfortunately, she had no idea where everyone had split off to, and no desire to put in the effort of searching for them, so she settled into one of the surprisingly-comfortable sofas in the common room and waited for them to attend her instead. To her great dismay, the first person who skulked through the door would have been almost at the bottom of her list for who she wanted to tell.

“You still have your phone?” Chrissy exclaimed as soon as she caught sight of the sleek rectangle the teenager was clutching. She had been quietly slinking away from the bedrooms, even going so far as to try and tiptoe through the common room, but had been stopped in her tracks by the surprising appearance of some normality.

Eleanor hesitated, considered denial or dismissal, but nodded and just barely managed to avoid pulling a face. “I just found it,” she explained with forced politeness, “It was in one of the drawers in my bedside table.”

“Have you called for help?” Chrissy asked quietly, scurrying closer and glancing around furtively for any sign they might be being observed by her captors, totally unaware that her every move was being written down for the amusement of horny strangers. Her bare breasts jiggled as she crouched down next to the other Contestant.

“The only people in my contact list are the people in this place,” Eleanor huffed in frustration. There was no universe where that wasn’t the first thing she tried. “It won’t call any other numbers, not even daddy. The internet only connects to the scoreboard and a bunch of porn sites, and all my friends are blocked on everything. Even Instagram is nothing but goblin thirst traps and weird memes.” She opened the social media app and scrolled through it to demonstrate, passing several pictures of short and curvy green women in various revealing outfits, a text post that just said ‘Jess was here’, multiple petitions to get different women ‘preggers’, and a stock image of a shark tearing a chunk of meat into bloody shreds captioned ‘hope ashley likes blowjobs with teeth’ in a comic sans font.

“That sucks,” Chrissy scowled and sat down beside the goth girl, “There has to be something though. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “I don’t think my ‘roommate’ would agree with you. She seems excited by the whole concept, somehow.”

“No, I mean ‘we’ like me and you,” Chrissy placed a hand on Eleanor’s shoulder in solidarity, her scowl replaced by a knowing smile, “The normal ones.”

The mood changed in an instant, though only one of them realised it. Eleanor stared at the hand as if it was coated in something foul (other than the cheap acrylic nails). Her lip curled back in a sneer.

“Normal?” she asked flatly.

“You know. Not a freak, like the others.” Chrissy continued, a flush rising in her skin as she failed to notice Eleanor’s annoyance triggering her transformation. “Em turned out to be a massive letdown, but you seem cool. We should look out for each other until we escape. Maybe hang out some time afterwards.”

“Oh, eww!” Eleanor’s nose crinkled up like she had been confronted with an offensive scent, and she pulled back out of reach of the blonde bully, “You’re trying to be friends with me? What the fuck?”

“...what?” Chrissy blinked in surprise, going pale even as her arousal ramped ever higher.

“Why the hell would I want to be friends with someone like you?” The sneer deepened as the goth’s naturally red eyes flicked up and down over the other woman.

“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?” Chrissy snapped back, anger rapidly covering for her shock, “What the fuck is your problem?”

“My problem, in this case, is your problems,” Eleanor said with sarcastic sweetness, counting off on her fingers, “You’re rude, you’ve got no class whatsoever, you dress and act like it’s the noughties and you’re still in secondary school, you’re walking around with your tits out,” she glanced down and snorted a laugh, “Oh, and you’re a massive homophobe. Not exactly friendship material.”

“It’s not my fault this happened to me,” she growled, surging to her feet and trying to wrap an arm over her chest, but only managing to squish her breasts up and together as if presenting them, “What, are you gay or something?”

“Don’t have to be gay to not like homophobia,” Eleanor sniffed dismissively, “You really do think you’re still in school, don’t you?” she laughed, and looked her up and down one more time. “You need to grow the hell up,” said the teenager to the thirty-year-old.

Chrissy froze in panic. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. People were supposed to want to be on her good side. She was supposed to be feared and respected, not discounted and looked down on. With a familiar coping mechanism, her panic quickly turned into yet more anger.

“Yeah, well, fuck you!” she spat, “Why should I care what some nobody goth freak thinks about me?”

The teenager arched a black-dyed eyebrow. “Nobody? I’m Eleanor fucking Wells, my daddy could buy your entire street and everyone who lives on it. Now go away.”

“No, you go away!” Chrissy demanded, “You..! Unf. What...?” Her lip quivered and she hunched over, knees shaking and clutching at her groin to try and fight off the phantom sensations that were suddenly stroking her sex.

It was humiliating. It was embarrassing. It felt so good. Chrissy hadn’t had great experiences with lovers, and her explorations of herself were usually just as quick and dirty, but the transformation reached deep into her subconscious to seek out every weak point inside and out. Not enough to bring her to orgasm, but enough to make her crave it. She had disobeyed an instruction, and Untamed Brat was rewarding her for it.

“Oh my god,” Eleanor shuffled rapidly away, her red eyes going wide and her pale cheeks colouring even as her mouth twisted in disgust as she realised what was happening, “Are you seriously...?”

With a noise that was half outraged shriek and half pathetic moan, Chrissy launched herself away and fled back down the corridor to the bedrooms. There was the distant sound of a choked sob, and then the slamming of a door. Eleanor stared at where she had gone, and very slowly drew her knees up under her chin. None of that had gone how she expected it to, but she very badly needed to not think about how it had just ended. She absentmindedly picked her phone up again, and began numbly scrolling through page after page of indecipherable goblin memes.

To an outside observer, Emma might have looked deep in contemplation as she leaned against the edge of the wooden balcony and stared out at the vast forest beyond the hotel. In reality, so many thoughts had been spinning around her head that morning that they had crashed into each other and jammed up entirely, leaving her with a form of empty-mindedness that would usually have taken decades of spiritual learning to achieve. In her blank, receptive state she easily heard the footsteps approaching her, but didn’t react to them or acknowledge their source. If she hadn’t temporarily transcended the concept of desire then she might have wished they would pass by without stopping, but she had, and they didn’t.

“So what’s the deal with you and Matt then?” Max asked, sidling up beside the pensive woman and leaning casually against the railing.

Max had been exploring the castle, as the Host had suggested, but she wasn’t looking for date activities. Her plans for her ‘date’ didn’t extend any further than the bedroom, and she'd already visited the shop to get something for that side of things. Something to occupy her interest was the goal for the rest of the day, and while she hadn’t expected that to come in the form of one of the other Contestants she was bored enough by this point that she wasn’t about to turn it down.

“He’s my ex,” Emma sighed as the tentative peace of her impromptu meditation shattered, “You know that already. You were there for my introduction.”

“I noticed that bit,” the punk rolled her eyes, “But I also couldn’t exactly miss his wife’s freakout about you, and again this morning. Why does she think you treated him like shit?”

The second question hit Emma deep in the gut, but she managed to turn the hurt and guilt into annoyance before it reached her face. “Because I did. Why do you want to know?”

“I’m curious about the drama. Does there need to be another reason?”

Emma pushed off the railing and turned to face Max, folding her muscular arms and scowling down at her. “My relationship fuckups are not your entertainment,” snapped the contestant on an entertainment show about relationships and fuckups.

Max smirked back, not seeming intimidated by the athletic woman towering sternly over her, but Emma maintained her glare. The stare-off continued for several tense seconds before the smirk began to waver at the edges, then Max crumbled and looked away.

“Alright, fine. Shit. I guess I’m just realising I don’t know as much about the man as I thought I did. I didn’t even realise he was a geek, but apparently he’s been gaming with the feisty redhead for twenty years or something. I thought he was just some sharky rich boy like the other finance guys.”

“He was always a geek,” Emma muttered, keeping her arms folded but relaxing her stance slightly. She may not have been able to do anything about her own regrets, but maybe she could be a cautionary tale for someone else at least. Maybe she could get the rude woman on the right track to get out of here intact. The blonde went back to facing out at the forest but didn’t really see anything this time, her unfocused eyes gazing at something in the past instead.

“God knows where he got the confidence to ask me out in the first place. I was the school’s star athlete and he was in the damn chess club, but he came up to me bold as anything and asked if I wanted to go on a date.”

“So he’s always been a cocky little flirt as well as geek,” Max commented with a sharp laugh, her brief moment of vulnerability quickly covered up again by the usual spiky exterior.

“I said yes as a joke,” Emma continued in a melancholy mumble, “Laughed about it afterwards to all my friends. I still went along for some reason, maybe I was just curious or something, but I had such a good time I didn’t think twice about agreeing to another date. Then another, and another. He was so much fun, he made me feel so good about myself, but he was still an outcast. Everyone at school thought it was funny. They thought that I was leading him on, and I pretended they were right, and he pretended it didn’t bother him. He never tried to correct anyone. Not even after we broke up.”

“Well, shit,” Max exhaled a long breath, processing Emma’s story.

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking down in shame.

“...how was he in bed?”

The question caught Emma so off guard that she couldn’t help but laugh. Her memories changed tune, away from the public face of her old relationship and towards what they had done in private. Her cheeks coloured with a slight flush.

“A lot of foreplay,” she admitted, with a quiet giggle that seemed very out of place coming from her athletic frame, “It almost felt like the entire day was foreplay, but even with that he still finished before me when we had our first time that night. The second time though, we took it more slowly, explored a bit more, and I got there twice before he did. By the third time it felt like he had a damn map to my entire body and that skinny nerd left me the one sweating and exhausted. The fourth time...” She swallowed heavily and looked down again. “The fourth time was the morning after, and it was romantic, and sensual, and he looked me in the eyes and told me he loved me, and for one tiny moment I forgot about what a bitch I was to him and I told him I loved him too.”

“Hot damn...” Max said croakily, her mouth hanging in a slightly open smile. “I wasn’t expecting that much detail but I’m sure as fuck here for it. Wait, the fourth time was the morning after? The rest was all in one night?”

“I told you you’d regret Dragon’s Greed,” Emma chuckled, surreptitiously wiping the corner of one eye, “It only got better after that. How was he in bed? The best I ever had, until Poppy. Don’t tell her I said that though.”

“Got it. Don’t want the girlfriend to know you’re still pining after your ex.”

“...sure, let’s go with that.”

Max laughed awkwardly, not quite understanding. Emma didn’t bother to clarify, and the punk swiftly moved on without realising what she had missed.

“So, a five-star review for the Master’s dick from his ex? Tomorrow’s going to be great. I’ve been itching for a good fucking for ages.”

“Literally itching, until we got here, based on what Scarlet said,” Emma mumbled to herself.

“What was that?” Max’s laughter stopped dead, and her eyes narrowed.

“Nothing,” Emma sighed, shaking her head, “Look, if you want my advice: don’t just treat Matt like a bootycall. It’s not fair to him, even if he might pretend to be okay with it. Spend some time with him that’s not just sex. Get to know him, and let him get to know you. Don’t be embarrassed to be seen with him.”

“Projecting much, blondie?” Max snorted, “Whatever. We've worked together for years, he doesn't need to know anything more about me by this point, and I doubt he wants to. Telling him my hopes and dreams isn’t going to get his cock down my throat any faster.”

The blondie suppressed a sigh. She wanted to help, she really did, but some people just didn’t want to be helped. She changed tactics. “It might not make it happen any faster, but it might help it happen again next time. You realise your transformation means you’re going to be hungry for it for the rest of your life? Might be best to keep on his good side.”

The suggestion brought back Max’s laughter, but it didn’t have any humour this time. She shook her head, then shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. “What makes you think getting to know me would help with that?” she asked with a smirk that didn’t ring true.

Emma had no response to that, and the two women stared at each other for a long moment. Then Max shook her head again, the smirk fell from her face, and she turned and walked away. Not knowing what else to do, Emma went back to staring out at the forest and gripped the railing until the wood began to creak. There were way too many people trying to self-destruct in this harem, and she’d have to figure out some way to stop it. She refused to let that happen to anyone other than herself.

It had been years since Grace and April had met up in person. Not as many as since either of them had met up with Matt, admittedly, but Grace was glad she still felt comfortable around her old neighbour. Women were always easier for her to cope with, and April definitely was a woman regardless of what her parents thought, but it was the aura of utter harmlessness that really helped Grace to relax into their casual catch-up conversation. April was the kind of girl who squealed and hid from spiders the size of her pinkie nail, but always insisted they be carefully trapped and relocated rather than squished. She was safe.

Strangely, the Hotel itself was also helping Grace to relax as well; even if it was the set for a sex-based gameshow. As the pair meandered through the halls, they had found an elegant ebonised library, a spa with gently trickling water features in the lobby, a massive bookstore, a quaint coffee shop staffed by a goblin woman with grey hair who had drinks and sandwiches ready for their lunch before they asked, another library, and the castle courtyard with gravel paths crunching a winding route around the pleasantly-scented flowerbeds. The topiary sculptures of well-endowed women were the only reminder of why they were really there, as long as they didn’t look too closely at the books, and their conversation steered well clear of the topic as well.

It was April who had spotted the small door in the corner of the courtyard, but Grace who convinced her to climb the spiral staircase behind it. Up and up they circled, squeezing out through an even smaller door at the top, with Grace’s living hair gripping the frame to protect her head from bumping into the stone as she took in the view. They had come out on the roof, sloped slate tiles on one side and a short wall on the other that separated the narrow walkway from a long drop back down to the courtyard.

“What do you think these ‘tropes’ look like?” Grace finally asked the question that had been on her mind all day, after they had both caught their breath.

“Whatever it is, I bet it will be unexpected,” April answered, hopping up onto the wall and stepping lightly along it, her tail shifting to maintain her balance, “I asked on the tour and didn’t get much of an answer. Scarlet probably wants it to be a surprise.”

Grace watched her warily, hair ready to catch her if she looked like she might fall. April had been scared of heights, as far as Grace knew, wasn’t even slightly athletic and had a terrible sense of balance. The cat transformation seemed to have had more effects than just the obvious. “Probably...” she said slowly, following along beside her friend as she began to walk the perimeter wall, “I hope they’re not too hard to find though. We should try and get at least a few points ahead of the challenge.”

The catgirl’s delicate footsteps faltered, not quite a stumble so much as an unscheduled pause, but Grace’s hair still twitched towards her in precaution. “Oh, right,” April cleared her throat as her ears went flat against her head, “I guess I probably shouldn’t count on getting any points from Matt.”

“That’s not what I...” Grace grimaced, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest as the subject she had been avoiding since her arrival reared its head. She kept herself under strict control though. She didn’t have time for a panic attack, and April didn’t deserve her anger. “If that’s something you want to do, then I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she said slowly and carefully.

“I kinda do,” she giggled, blushing a little and her ears perking straight back up again, “I mean, we’ll all be doing it at some point, right?”

“No.” The answer came too quickly. The copper serpents of Grace’s living hair flexed at nothing in particular, hanging tense and defensive. She saw it happen, clenched her jaw reflexively, then forced it to unclench and took a slow breath. It didn’t calm her down as much as she would have hoped. “Not me,” she continued quietly, hiding her hands in her pockets so that April wouldn’t see the tremor in her fingers.

“Are you sure?” April watched curiously out of the corner of her eye, “It didn’t sound like there were a lot of points for these tropes, and you don’t want to get eliminated. I don’t mind having to share, and Sarah... she seems nice. She’ll probably understand. You know Matt better than I do, but he doesn’t seem like he’d have any issues either.”

“What’s he actually like?” came a third voice, small and quiet.

April shrieked, leaping back with her tail rigid and fluffed up but somehow keeping her balance on the wall. Grace whipped around, her hair lifting into an aggressive stance. They both looked down at the source of the voice: Poppy was sitting between the crenelations with her feet dangling over the edge, so small she hadn’t been visible until they were right on top of her. April had almost stood on her head.

There was a long, drawn out silence. Grace stared. April stared. Poppy stared. Poppy had a great deal more experience.

“What are you doing here?” Grace grunted and looked away, unable to maintain the uncomfortable eye contact any longer.

Poppy blinked slowly, then squinted slightly as if she didn’t understand the question. “Sitting,” she explained simply.

“I noticed that,” Grace sighed, confused enough to chase away at least some of the panic that had been threatening to drown her, “Why are you up here?”

“Ohhh,” the tiny girl nodded, understanding now, “I’m up here because I was looking for somewhere to sit.”

The confusion swelled further. Grace’s mouth opened and closed a few times as she tried and failed to continue the conversation in any kind of sensible direction. April stepped up instead.

“Were you wanting to know about Matt?”

“Yes please,” Poppy smiled widely, smoothly swivelling her attention.

April looked to Grace, the redhead’s knowledge on the subject vastly exceeding her own.

“What do you want to know?” Grace wrangled the words together as some kind of logic returned to the world.

Poppy’s attention swivelled back. “Is he kind?”

Birds wheeled overhead singing happy songs, and April's ears subconsciously swiveled to track them. Grace considered the question, and considered how well she really knew Matt. They spent hours each week talking to each other, but usually as a group and usually while pretending to be someone else. He hadn't ever mentioned anything about his struggles when his family moved away, that she had heard from Emma last night. His relationship with his wife, that had always sounded idyllic from his descriptions, seemed to be struggling. But even if the facts of his life were seemingly beyond her, she knew his personality. She knew how he acted around others, and what he had said and done whenever any of their other friends seemed in a bad mood for any reason. How his smile filled the webcam view when everyone was having fun.

“Matt likes people to be happy,” she answered carefully, “He hates upsetting anyone. He won’t hurt me. I mean, you. He won’t hurt you.”

“Okay,” the small girl nodded thoughtfully, “Would he hurt someone if it didn’t really upset them? If they asked for it?”

“God I hope so,” April murmured under her breath.

“Why do you want to know that?” Grace asked stiffly, her hair tensing up again, “Poppy, do you want him to hurt you?”

Poppy opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a barely audible choked sound, like a word had gotten trapped in her throat. She blinked, shook her head, then tried again. “I don’t want him to do anything with me. I was just wondering.”

That seemed like an odd thing to wonder about to the other two women, but they were both already realising that the inside of Poppy’s head was probably an odd place anyway. Grace didn’t feel like trying to delve any deeper, for the sake of her own sanity, while April was too worried about accidentally revealing what was going on inside her own head to risk figuring out anyone else’s.

“...anything else you wanted to know?” Grace asked, trying to move things along.

“Oh, yeah,” her eyes went wide as something suddenly occurred to her, “Do you know the way back? I don’t remember how I got here.” A low rumble interrupted before she could get a reply. She looked down at her own stomach in surprise. “And do you know where I can get some food? I think I must have missed lunch.”