Becoming Monsters

Honoka was having the oddest dream. It felt familiar like she’d seen it some other time but couldn’t quite place where or what happened. There were rabbits and dodos and mice and strange places and more than a little smut, but that was normal for her dreams these days, so she brushed it off. In her bleary state, the memory fading, she tried harder and harder to remember. Opening her eyes, Honoka sensed the dream dissipate, nothing more than a feeling of déjà vu lingered after.

“She’s awake,” Banda announced, leaning down and giving Honoka a face full of boobs. Apparently, the half-Japanese wife was experiencing the blessed world of a lap pillow, using Banda’s meaty thighs to rest her head on as she slept. Still mostly asleep, Honoka grinned as she reached up and tweaked the holstaur’s nipples through her white toga, getting little squirts of lactation before her hands were slapped while Banda moaned in pleasure and protest.

“Stop it, not the time,” Banda pleaded. Her slaps were light and did not try very hard to keep the gropes away. Which is when the pains of Honoka’s recent adventure caught up to her and she remembered everything.

Turning to the side, Honoka vomited violently onto a metal grate, expelling only a little hot bile before dry heaving over and over, her body seizing into wracking sobs.

It took a long while to work through her system. Eventually, Honoka gathered herself together and rational thoughts returned. She, her wives, Miaka and Dolly and all the other prisoners rose upward on the elevator back to Harvardtown. Honoka had lost half a day, her body too exhausted from mana depletion and all the rest. She just shut down. Left to find their way home, the wives and former prisoners journeyed across Floor 126 like zombies shuffling through a desert. Padmava’s bag of holding with its extra supplies saved the day, providing enough food, water and bandages to get them up and moving. When guilds riding trains met up with them to investigate the collapsing castle in the center of the Floor, they were heading towards the elevators on foot. Also, while Banda saved her slowly recovering MP to cast blessings on Honoka’s broken leg and other injuries, a bottle with her healing milk got passed around and refilled over and over. All the former prisoners drank and most cried at the sweet taste in their mouth, never mind the HP that came with it.

Honoka, for her part, was still in pain from a lot of little injuries. Her head ached, but when she gently moved her leg, it felt solid, the deep gash in her thigh scarred over and her shin tender but mending.

“It is Thursday morning now,” Padmava explained, using her long tail to coil around the wives and give them a little privacy. “Before you do anything else, you need to allocate regeneration back onto Miaka so she can recover.”

“I’m fine, really,” Miaka said. While she looked better, she was far from fine. A gallon or two (3.8-7.6 L) of healing milk did wonders for the owl, leaving her with less internal injuries and increasing her blood production, stable at the moment even if she was missing an arm, leg and part of her torso. Currently, Miaka slouched against Padmava and her large hazel eyes drooped while she drifted in and out of sleep.

Honoka transferred the regeneration to Miaka silently, then related what happened after they parted. The conversation dropped, though, as they reached the elevator junction for Harvardtown and many phones went off at the same time when they entered the range of a Di-Fi signal (Padmava kept them in her fanny-pack of holding during the mission but handed them back when they arrived at the elevator). Honoka found buzzing coming from her own belt, pulling out the device to check messages.

Eve: EMERGENCY!! UNDER ATTACK!!

Looking up, Honoka realized the rest of the wives received the same message. Furiously swiping, Honoka blew past a flurry of other partial messages, beginning from six hours ago. The last text was the most chilling.

Eve: I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop them. They took Diane. Come home ASAP.

********************

Padmava’s gate had been destroyed with a precision explosive. Other small plumes of smoke rose from a few buildings, yet what surprised Honoka the most when the girls stopped running and tried to catch their breath was the number of armed and armored people that swirled around the complex. By her exaggerated estimate, Honoka thought the entire population of the Lair was accounted for. They looked angry, but that changed when they saw who walked up the street and their faces transformed.

It started small, only a few claps here and there, yet before the girls even stepped within a hundred feet (30.5 m) of their home the entire crowd cheered and applauded with gusto. To Honoka, who worried about her family, it was bizarre and a little irritating, pushing past weeping people while they tried to stop her and the girls from entering with their enthusiasm. Once past the throng, the crowd attempted to follow into the courtyard, but a quick word from Honoka placed Banda there to block the way with some well-meaning but forceful shoves.

What Honoka pieced together from the thanks and shouts, word of the prison break from Bone Castle already reached the city. It would be equal parts touching and embarrassing if Honoka wasn’t trying to return home and find out what happened.

“Mommy! Aruna!”

Jaya waited in the courtyard, the girl wearing the same clothing from yesterday, telling of a sleepless night of worry. With tears and the speed of a striking snake, the green-scaled girl and mother collided, son and brother between them while they all cried and held each other. The rest of the courtyard was not empty, others coming to meet the returning heroines but with more somber faces, moving around the reunited group.

The most prominent figure was Johnny, the purple sixty-foot giant whom Honoka had learned was the number one customer of Banda’s milk and all-around a really gentle person. He didn’t look gentle now, sitting in the middle of the yard, his hand near his massive club, ready for anything. He nodded when Honoka noticed him then continued to look over the rooftops. There were a couple dozen other people she couldn’t attach a name to, but some of them she recognized from the shop when Honoka helped Jaya a few times. The closest group coming over consisted of Cleo and her Carnival guild, oak staff in hand and bags under eyes with Eve behind them, the goblin’s arm in a cast.

The short wife pushed herself forward and stood in front of Honoka, looking scared and uncertain. “I couldn’t stop…I failed.” Her red eyes filled with tears, she looked so vulnerable. “The explosion went off about an hour after Georgia and Philip left and suddenly there were guns firing and Jaya was screaming…I needed to choose. I ran to Jaya’s room and killed two people who were tying her up and then barricaded the door. Someone heard the explosion of the gate so we didn’t wait long but when I got out, helpful neighbors were wondering what was going on but Diane…”

Honoka leaned in and hugged the suffering woman, holding her tight. “You saved Jaya, Diane would have done the same if roles were reversed.”

“Sorry to meet you like this, Honoka,” Cleo said, standing a little to the side. “Maybe when this is all over, our guilds can host a potluck or something.”

“I’d like that, and anyone who brings an armed force to protect my family is also family. Do you know who did this?”

“I do, but it shouldn’t be a surprise at this point. Armond has a bit of divining and scryed the culprits to a large building in Norwood.”

Honoka’s face looked like granite while she pulled out her phone and dialed a number. “You’re right, I’m not surprised. I thought Church would learn after I bashed the head in of one of his pimps that messing with me is a bad idea.”

Cleo’s eyes widened, but she nodded. “Heard about that on the news, didn’t know it was you. I’m led to believe Solomon Church is untouchable.”

“Not anymore.”

*ring* “Sgt Miner.”

“Philip, this is Honoka. Have you heard about Diane?”

The old cop usually sounded so sure of himself, but right now, he just conveyed defeat over the phone. “Two minutes after it happened. I have been trying to assemble a task force all night. No luck, I am getting hammered from my superiors. I was about to round a couple of buddies together, save Diane, then burn the place to the ground, to heck with the consequences.”

“Hold off on that, this happened in the dungeon. The dungeon is claiming jurisdiction.”

“…the dungeon? As stupid as that sounds, it might actually work. Case law around dungeons is so untested and convoluted it might even scare the DA off from persecuting.”

“If that doesn’t work, can you at least make Norwood a ghost town? We are rolling out in a few minutes.”

“That I can do. Wish I could do more.”

“I imagine you’re already risking your job or worse. Send Georgia my love.” Honoka hung up and walked to the center of the courtyard.

“Everyone!” Honoka said, raising her voice and finding herself the center of attention, “I’m not sure if you know me or why you came, but this is my home and my family. I’m grateful for your help! My wife, Diane, was kidnapped today by an evil scumbucket, and it looks like he has enough government clout that he’s going to get away with it! Solomon Church is cruel, connected and powerful! I’m headed up there now to bring back my wife and hurt Church so bad he will never think about coming down here again and hurting another delver!”

The courtyard grew quiet. Most knew the power of Solomon Church and hung their heads. Honoka became resolute, she shouldn’t expect more from strangers, but she had. Hardening herself, Honoka strode towards the store in the front of the home where she knew a set of keys to the van were located, resolved that if she needed to do this herself, she would.

“Eve, you’re with me. We’ll…”

“Hold on, you’re forgetting a few people.” The person who spoke was Johnny, his sizeable purple face smiling a little when he stood up and…well, he wore a chainmail kilt and nothing else. The guy was hung! Around his feet were Carnival and another dozen or so Racial denizens of the Lair who hefted weapons and readied for a fight.

Honoka’s eyes misted over, but she smiled as she brought up a hand and motioned for everyone to follow.

Solomon Church was about to get his teeth kicked in.

********************

Late morning Thursdays in Norwood were boring. The place built itself up for its nightlife, so around this time people either woke up from a long night of servicing clients and readied for another shift at work, or they nursed hangovers and tried to figure out the name of the person they slept next to.

After the Change, people grew used to the idea of a sixty-foot purple giant walking down the street. Sure, a few teenagers snapped pics for social media, a few more horny women shot some zoomed-in pics to enjoy later, but it wasn’t like this was some impossible event in a post-Change world. Norwood continued with its boring morning routine.

People did notice - and started screaming - when the purple giant strode in front of the brothel named Solomon’s, holding his club like a golf pro and swung into the main doors with the force as a naval cannon. At the same time, a convoy of vehicles of all kinds skidded into the parking lot of the place and out poured a small army of men and women wearing the most deadly of delving gear.

Cleo lead the pack and proved that a level twenty-eight lightning magus was not a person to trifle with. The sky had been clear only minutes ago, yet the clouds that swirled around Norwood displayed the dark shape of a tornado about to touch down. From those clouds, splitting the very heavens with their power and strikes, a hail of lightning crashed to the ground and created a dome of magical power around the building and parking lot, high enough to let Johnny stand upright. Her silver eyes crackling, the older woman nodded and motioned that she needed to stay to maintain the barrier. A few others of Carnival spread out to surround the brothel, their job to make sure no one escaped. The rest of the Lair denizens poured inside as if this was just another dungeon raid.

Honoka and Eve were the last to enter. The rest of the family needed to stay and protect the children, Miaka and Dolly, but they all agreed the pair of wives could allocate all the spare points. Eve no longer resembled a goblin, more like a troll as she towered over everyone with ten feet (3 m) of height and enough corded muscle to fill a successful gym. Her broken arm sported a hastily wrapped splint, but the longer she retained her regeneration the more likely she wouldn’t need it. Just in case, her Glock G26 was holstered at her waist but her fists were bare because the spiked gloves proved too small now. Her clothing were a pair of gym shorts borrowed from Banda and a hasty set of wraps around her chest. Honoka looked average-sized, only allocating a touch of muscle and other Attributes as she waited to see what the situation turned into before she committed her limited and depleted MP. She wore the battered but still serviceable armor from earlier.

Eve glanced around the entry hall, the entire building in an uproar and cries issuing from every corner while the goblin sniffed the air and immediately turned towards a familiar door. The room was empty now, but the recognizable steampunk aesthetic reminded Honoka of the time she came to meet Diane the first time. The goblin didn’t hesitate, following her nose to the back and down the stairs. In only a few turns, Honoka’s eyes widened when they came to the very same room where all this began.

Trying the door, Eve found it locked. Eve tried harder. The demolished remains fell to the side and the two women stepped inside.

“Hey, you can’t come in here!” Diane yelled from behind the changing screen with cogwork patterns on it, striding forward with an irritated expression. She wore the same style of tube top and miniskirt with fishnet that Honoka remembered from the bus ride, although this time the tube top was barely a piece of tissue trying to hold her plump J-cups in place. She still looked pale and sick, and she moved with a bit of weakness, but otherwise she appeared alright. When Diane noticed the bare mithril sword and the two dangerous-looking women, she backed away quickly. “I-I don’t own anything valuable but take whatever you want from the cabinet.”

“Diane?” Honoka asked, sheathing her sword and moving forward, her face smiling in relief at finding her. “Diane, I am so happy…”

“Do I know you?”

There were so many ups and downs in Honoka’s life from the last two weeks. Fifteen days since this all began and all that happened since. Meeting Diane, learning about her Class, getting rejected, guilds, lots of sex, meeting all her other wives, getting married, more sex, getting kidnapped and killing a man, suicide, allocating, fighting, even more sex, watching Diane almost die, raiding a castle and killing all those people, learning about Heralds and killing one, saving all those people, coming home to Diane missing. All that and here was Diane - Honoka’s first love - with a confused look on her face.

Honoka worried that she had been losing herself because she assimilated a little bit of all the women she collected. Amidst all that, through all the past fifteen days, Diane was the one to prop her up and hold her steady. Much of what Honoka admired about the succubus was her strength to carry on despite bad things happening. Honoka not only admired it but felt those same feelings inside herself. As the woman - architect, hermaphrodite, delver, Herald, she was still a woman - searched into those scared kelly green eyes that showed no hint of recognizing her wife, Honoka felt the world slipping away.

“Diane, it's us, your wives,” Eve said, though Honoka barely heard it through the ringing in her ears.

“Wives? Are you with some kind of cult? I think you are confusing me with someone else. Leave now before I call the police.” Diane glanced around the room but couldn’t find her phone; so, she tried to look brave, putting her hands on her hips and thrusting out her chest.

Honoka lunged forward, grabbing Diane by the arms and gripping forcefully, shaking her. “Did you sign a Binding Contract?!” Honoka roared, her rage building into a towering inferno.

“I…” And suddenly, the oddest thing happened: Diane’s eyes unfocused for a moment, her body relaxed, the succubus no longer tense and scared. Pausing, blinking a bit before looking down at Honoka and then at Eve, the succubus put on a winning smile and said with only a little confusion. “Hi, are you my next appointment? I don’t mind it a little rough, and you, girlfriend, look like a yummy chocolate sundae, but threesomes are eight hundred a person and I need to go over some rules before we begin.” With a lick of her lips, Diane wiggled her tush and winked at Eve.

Honoka lost it.

“CHURCH!!”

The two other women in the room flinched, Honoka letting go of Diane when she turned around and kicked the cabinet of potions, the allocated points she borrowed enough to splinter the offending furniture in half, magical elixirs spilling onto the ground with little flashes and pops. All Honoka saw was red, only one thing would stop her from killing everyone in this building.

“Stay with Diane,” Honoka whispered, pulling up her Status and moving all the allocated points back from their various submenus. “Keep each other safe.” Then Honoka took all the main sliders for everyone and pushed them to 100%.

The dark-skinned Ymirian instantly fell to her knees, agony flooding throughout her body. All of these allocations fought to take over, the pain of being ripped apart on a cellular level caused her to nearly blackout. Only, her newly allocated Health wouldn’t let her blackout, the torment increasing beyond human capacity as she exploded into her monstrous form inside too small a room.

“Get in the bathroom!” Human Eve yelled, grabbing a confused and also human Diane and throwing both of themselves through the small doorway.

Past the pain, Honoka felt her armor stretch and try and fit but fail entirely, bursting off her body as it grew beyond even the magical elasticity of arachne silk. The armored skirt came next with her belt and the gray shirt that was so strong and stretchy lasted the longest. However, when her breasts sloshed forward and her back muscles bulged the other direction, not even something so substantial was able to resist, splitting down the middle, allowing two boulders to avalanche outward with a deafening tearing noise. Her tail was the most destructive, shooting outward, growing legs on the sides, splitting into many smaller tails, they burst out from her hips with devastation and careened into everything as they swelled. The bed was the most dramatic: it got one tail underneath then smashed to the ceiling and was crushed in half when two other tails sprouted around it.

A minute later, it all stopped, allowing Honoka to take in a shuddered breath. The pain was still there, a haze she wouldn’t even be able to understand except she could, her Intelligence informing her no human or Racial body was ever capable of containing so much magic or Status effects. But she could Endure the pain, for now, though she didn’t have very long. In fact, Honoka pulled up her Status to find out just that.

While she watched, her MP ticked down to 27%. Even with all that Wisdom and Intelligence boosting her mana, time became her enemy as much as a certain pimp. Regardless, she did take up a few seconds to understand what she became.

No matter how angry she grew, her eyes drifted down to her breasts first. She was hunched over to keep her two sets of horns from catching in the ceiling or destroying the light, so she was already mostly buried in her bazoongas. From her perspective, they looked like glorious L-cups, pert and sloshing full of milk. But as she looked around the room and appreciated how large she had expanded, she understood 130ZZJ meant sixty-two inches (157 cm) cup size.

Her four arms burgeoned with tree trunks of muscles, each a different Race. Clawed otter, three-fingered holstaur, an outstretched hand with a massive forearm clawed goblin, then a feathered upper arm cut off at the elbow. Looking down at the legs, she discovered another feathered leg cut off at the knee. Illumination came to her, this was how the Status translated Miaka’s current missing limbs, giving Honoka half. The other three legs were a cheetaur’s paw, a holstaur’s hoof and a goblin’s clawed foot.

Honoka’s entire body above the waist was colossal, her bones thickened and reinforced just to hold all the musculature. Her skin was a mix of dark green scales speckled with tiny spots of neon green, but poking out between each scale was an alternating mix of black fur, gold fur, bright red feather and bright blue feathers. She shimmered as she moved and imagined with her collection of four writhing snake tails and massive wings she must look like a Quetzalcoatl of Mesoamerican myth or a Lovecraftian horror.

With a resounding crack, the concrete under her main body crushed under her weight. It took her a moment, but the math was simple once she understood it. If Padmava was a nine-foot (2.75 m) woman with forty-five feet (13.7 m) of tail and weighed 1881 pounds (853 kg), Honoka would be over sixteen feet (4.9 m) tall and sport around eighty feet (24.4 m) of tail. The Cube Squared law meant her bodyweight was 6.8 times as much, while the rest of the mass came from the increased muscle density of Bullish Strength and the 2000 pounds (90/7 kg) of milk filled titflesh.

Under normal circumstances, Honoka would love to explore herself longer, but her anger flared up hotter than before. Her capacity to hate increased with all her other attributes, and she didn’t even try to fit out the door, just crashing through the wall and slithering up the stairs at the speed of a freight train. With all her senses enhanced beyond reason, it didn’t take much effort to focus on a room in the far corner of the building tasting of male sex and brimstone and how this stench marked every girl in the building.

“CHURCH!!” Honoka bellowed, her voice a hissing metallic rumbling through the whole building.

********************

Yesterday, Solomon Church was supremely confident today would be a good day. The glutton in the dungeon would eat the pesky Jap and kill off most of her annoying harem, then all the incubus needed to do was swoop in and collect his wayward Diane. It was elegant.

His people couldn’t nab the bonus - young naga girls sell for a premium overseas - but Diane had always been the goal, the mercenaries leaving with his prize. Solomon tried not to be disappointed. Once Diane entered his office and spat in his face, it was all worth it.

A Binding Contract only worked if it is signed through a conscious effort of the signer, but there were ways around that. Solomon owned high-level people with particular Class Features. In only a few hours, the prodigal succubus smiled up at him like it was old times, sucking his cock. Her time away had been good for her, but now she was back, and he would begin achieving his efforts of control beyond Boston.

Yesterday was full of opportunities. Today was a disaster.

It began innocently enough, the Internet stopped working. Solomon Church may not trust technology, yet who in their right minds lived without the Internet? He was about to call in Chastity to get it fixed when the greater succubus rushed into the room to announce the cell reception suddenly went down. Solomon grew concerned, things happening too fast for coincidence. It wasn’t ten seconds later the front door of his home was blown inward with a cacophony and the whole building shook to its core.

Turning to his computer, Solomon pulled up the closed-circuit cameras just in time to see Cleo Tate - nicknamed in the delving community Mother Of Thunder - booming her calling card all around them. With a surprise he rarely showed, the incubus’ eyes widened when he recognized the black-skinned and armored form of Honoka Jefferson walking through the parking lot.

“Chastity, go into the other room and prevent anyone from entering,” Solomon said in a measured tone, studying all the other cameras of the complex and frowning at the destruction. “You are allowed to feed on them as much as you want.”

The level twenty-three valkyrie smirked with her shark-toothed smile and quivered as she orgasmed from just the thought of being let off the chain. Greater succubi, unlike their lesser but more common Racial cousins, only needed to remain nearby to feed on a person’s energy - any energy - killing a man or woman by just standing in the same room. One of the worst mass killings in recent history took place at a soccer game in Brussels when another greater succubus killed over five hundred people in ten minutes before a fire mage got in a lucky shot. Turning on her clawed foot and wiggling her bare butt in excitement - her throbbing pussy leaking past her red thong - Chastity closed the doors behind her, leaving Solomon alone.

The incubus followed Honoka and her troll thug as they went into one of the hosting rooms, down some stairs, entering where he knew Diane currently waited for her next set of orders. There were no cameras inside, even the mighty Solomon Church would be hung out to dry if he broke that particular rule of the government prostitution regulations.

“Good luck, Jap. Diane is mine.” Solomon smiled to himself while he shifted his thoughts towards whom to contact to make this entire situation disappear.

He should have paid closer attention.

When the wall exploded outside the room, the dust it created obscuring the view from the camera, something moved. Solomon tried to follow it, but it proved too fast: by the time he brought up the right camera, all he perceived was a blurry shape.

*THK-BMM!!*

When it happened, Solomon Church didn’t even have the chance to get out of his chair. In the space of a pair of seconds, the double doors of his office splintered from a monster of epic proportion pushing Chastity through them faster than the bits of solid mahogany could fly forward. The abomination held the succubus with two hands as it rocketed into the room. It then bodily slammed his secretary into and through his precious ghost oak desk, splitting that solid wooden masterwork piece of furniture in half with a magical crackle, the shock of the impact mingling with the broken enchantments of the precious white wood. The only reaction he showed was to push his seat back in time to watch, still sitting, as Chastity was ground into the floor, leaking blood out of her mouth and her eyes glazing over, though her immense Health kept her breathing despite her wounds.

“How—!”

Solomon stood, his hands crackling with power and ready to unleash his own substantial might when faster than he could reacted, a green and clawed hand on the monster shot out, grabbed his significantly sized manhood in its palm and tore it off, shaft and balls and all, taking most of his slacks with it.

“AAARRGH!!” Solomon cried in shock and agony, falling back onto his chair and holding his legs together as he depowered his hands and tried to stop the bleeding with one while reaching with the other to grasp at one of Diane’s healing potions he kept on a shelf. The creature put a stop to that and swatted his arm, breaking it, then using another to grab his neck and hold his eight-foot frame up in the air while the hand holding his dick and balls thrust the bloody mass of meat under his face.

“If you don’t want to bleed out, show me Diane’s Contract.”

That voice sounded like half a dozen shades whispering death all at once. It was when he looked into Honoka Jefferson’s large and crazed cobalt blue eyes that Solomon Church felt fear for the first time in his life. The incubus, even before the Change, never experienced being the weaker party, at another’s mercy. He didn’t know how to adjust. In his panic, Solomon made a mistake.

He couldn’t speak, his breath blocked by a crushing webbed and clawed hand, but he nodded and pointed to a safe in the corner. In a moment, he was thrust in front of it and with bloody fingers, he input the code on the keypad, opening the safe. The entire thing was filled with Contracts, but Diane’s was near the top and with a shaking hand and spots in his eyes from being out of air, he tapped on the thick stack that belonged to his succubus.

Solomon was thrown to the ground. The large man bounced from the impact, but he greedily sucked a breath in as he tried to roll onto his back. Before he regained his bearings, he witnessed Honoka open her mouth impossibly wide, a long fang on the right and the broken stub of another dripping black tar when he felt his world end. She emptied her supply of venom onto every Contract in that safe, destroying them all with little puffs of smoke and flashes of light, essentially ending the source of his political power.

That was it, Solomon was finished. Yesterday those Contracts kept him safe for years and would allow him to stretch across the entire East Coast. Today, a lot of people were going to wake up confused and then very, very angry.

“I will kill you,” Solomon promised, his face a fury while he crawled into a sitting position and gathered his power. “You insignificant worm, I will burn everything you love to the ground.” The air vibrated with energy as the incubus tapped into the roaring ocean he built upon for years and got ready to hit this thing in front of him with the same meteoric force that killed the dinosaurs.

*BANG!*

Solomon Church, pimp and undisputed ruler of the Boston criminal scene, slumped to the ground, a bullet hole in his forehead leaking blood and brains. Honoka spun around, looking at a tall black woman holding a smoking gun, a familiar human ginger woman with lots of freckles close behind her, appearing to remember who she was.

“Just as Miaka trained us,” Eve said, putting her gun away and stepping into the room, looking around calmly at the destruction, “Classes and Attributes don’t matter, winning matters.”

“Honoka?” Diane whimpered, her steps faltering when she came into the room, looking at the monster that was her wife. “Hono-chan?”

Sliding back all the allocations, Honoka fell into Diane’s arms a minute later, both too tired to do anything more than cry and promising to never let each other go. It was only the practical advice of a goblin that got them out of the brothel. The three left to return home, alive and happy to be together.