"Don't go, Misty," said the horned one. "They have thunder-sticks. It will hurt you. Chase you away."

Misty looked up at the great sandstone walls of the city of Izaz. It would have been nearly impossible to climb that wall with claws or webbed feet, but Misty had neither of those. She had something better. She strode to the base of the wall.

"Misty, no!" gasped the horned monster girl behind her. "They'll chase you away! Chase you, chase you, chase you away!"

Any ordinary monster girl would indeed have turned away, but Misty was not ordinary. For the others, dealing with humans was simple: hunt the males, fear the females. But Misty had never been that way. Humans raised endless questions, with the strange ways they dressed, the strange ways they behaved and the strange things they said, and Misty always wanted answers. You couldn't find those answers by ambushing men in the jungle and knocking them onto their backs.

Misty began to use the skill she was named for. Dark mist fell from her body as she walked across the uneven jungle floor. Her long, tangled brown hair dissolved first, then her toes and the tips of her fingers, the wispy grey gas curling around her feet. Eventually, she had to stop and lie down as the rest of her body gave itself up to the air.

Climbing the wall of Izaz may have been impossible with hands and feet, but as a cloud of mist, it was as easy as crossing a river. Ancient cracks in sandy stone fell past her as she rose on an air current. Carvings of centuries-dead human heroines banded the entire city, bordered top and bottom by glyphs Misty hoped she could someday learn to read. Then, finally, the top fell away beneath her, and the city spread out in all its orderly splendor. Settling in the shadowy blind spot of a guard tower, she knelt on the stone and took it all in.

The buildings were not nests, hovels or even huts. They were more, even, than houses. They were something grander— edifices, the humans called them. Perfectly rectangular at the bases, they rose to flat roofs at least four woman-heights off the ground, maybe six or seven or eight. Mysterious little ropes and lengths of metal ran between them, following some mysterious order that made perfect sense to the humans. Just as their bases were perfectly square-cornered, the roads between them were unflinchingly straight, the same width everywhere. Even now, in the morning, they were bustling with humans. Females hurried through the streets, carrying things, selling things or just talking to each other. They would spend minutes talking, and in her previous escapades into the city, Misty had discovered that they would sit in rooms and do nothing but talk for half a day or longer. Someday, maybe today, she would hear some of what they talked about.

And then, of course, there would be males. With humans, there were never females without males. The males stayed indoors, Misty knew, doing the same things jungle males did: cooking and crafting, and handling the children who were too young to follow their mothers.

Not all monster girls could talk, and the ones who did only ever wanted to talk about the males in that city. They talked about where the prettiest ones were kept, and what they could do if you caught them alone, and even the frightful things the females would do if they caught you in the act. But none ever talked about the females themselves. By the time Misty left the city, she would know who they were and how they lived.

Once again, she dissolved into mist. Riding a favorable breeze, she drifted down into the city, past the impossibly perfect square-edged stone roofs, down into the streets where thickly clothed humans ambled past each other.

Just like last time she had come down here, Misty didn't know where to start. She wanted to talk to every human in the city, to ask them who they were and where they were going. But she couldn't talk to everyone at once. She had to pick one, and it had to be one who wouldn't try to run her through on sight.

Then she picked up on a strange scent. Even dissociated into mist, she could sense it. Another monster girl was about, somewhere in the great straight-edged stone hut beside her. She drifted in through a window.

No one was inside, but only stack after stack of wooden boxes. But beneath a wooden grating in the floor, she heard something. She heard moaning—not the sloppy, impulsive kind human females made, but the two-toned sing of what could have only been a monster girl. She filtered down through the grate.

Below, in a dark, damp cavern lined with smooth stones, with a single narrow corridor leading off into darkness, a monster girl stood over a male, her bright glassy wings fluttering behind her as she squirmed with pleasure.

The male sat against a broken table, hands on the ground, face buried between the thighs of the monster girl. With a hand on the back of his head, she pressed him deeper into her, her grip tightening and loosening to the rhythm of her heavy breathing. Her left hand flailed, until it found a grip on his neck and pushed him harder. As Misty watched, the male's whole body moved with every stroke of his hidden tongue, and the monster girl squealed, losing a little of her composure each time, until finally she erupted, her wings flinging themselves out for one moment as her cry of pleasure echoed against the near walls.

Everything was still for a moment. Finally, the monster girl backed away, and the male breathed, a few strings of saliva still trailing between his lips and her sex.

A minute passed, and the monster girl looked directly at Misty. "A watcher?" she murmured. "Voyeur?" She licked her lips. "So kinky."

Misty materialized, and the male shifted back with surprise, but did not get up.

"You made it into this city?" asked Misty. "How? Those wings are too small to lift you."

As her answer, the monster girl mimed gripping something huge. "Cart!" she declared. "Cart goes into the city. Glitter hides in the cart! Glitter goes into the city!"

'Glitter,' thought Misty. That was the monster girl's name.

"Who are you?" asked Misty, turning to the male.

The male shook his head.

"He doesn't talk," said Glitter. "Never talks. So he's perfect. Perfect secret. You ride him, and no one knows."

Misty knelt in front of the seated male. "Doesn't talk?" she repeated, horrified.

"But he pleases!" Glitter went on. "You know coins? Humans love coins. You could just ride him. But if you give him coins, he'll bounce you on him!" She jerked her hips in an awkward pantomime. "He'll make it smooth! And hot! And if you give him even more, he'll use his mouth!" She leaned back against the wall, her wings spreading against the stone brick, and sighed. "So hot."

"You don't talk?" said Misty, ignoring her. "Or you can't?"

The male looked her in the eyes. He was thin for a male, but still looked sturdy, and his short black hair curled around his sweet face, gently coiled ends framing his silent mouth, with only his deep, sad blue eyes to speak for him.

Misty gasped. "You're a mute!"

The male nodded slowly, as if his head was heavy with pain.

"Poor thing..." Reaching carefully forward, Misty stroked the side of his head.

"Give him coins first!" said Glitter. "Coins first, then he lets you do that!"

Both ignored her. The male put a hand over Misty's, their warm hands holding still for a moment, then gently let her go.

"I'm sorry," said Misty, standing up. She turned to Glitter, ready to ask where she might find humans who could talk, then decided she would do better to seek them on her own. Dissolving, she lifted out of the stone cave.

Up in the streets, which still fell under shade in the late morning sun, the traffic was already heavy, but these city-humans, unlike their counterparts in the jungle, never looked up. Rising to a balcony far above the street, Misty materialized without anyone noticing her. She stepped inside the human dwelling.

Everything raised questions. Where did these many-colored rugs come from? What animals did the humans skin to create them? How had they shaped stone to make this shelter, and why have a roof? Why not let in the sun and rain?

Then Misty saw something that fascinated her so much that she forgot every other question. She had heard of these mysterious things, but never seen one: a mirror.

In it, she saw something more human than monstrous. A woman stood, naked and dirty, with a short, stocky body with wide, feminine hips matched only by her manly-wide shoulders, with faint stains of dirt down her strong legs, and a big toe that had always been just a little crooked.

She lacked the tells most monster girls had. Her fingers and toes ended in nails, not claws, and she didn't have a tail; nothing covered the round rear that the other monster girls teased her for. Even her eyes looked human.

That gave her an idea. Perhaps she could dress like a human. Then she could hide in plain sight.

As Misty searched for clothes, an uncomfortable feeling gnawed at her, and she turned to see a low, bent form prowling in from the sunny balcony. A cat girl, black as a starless night, sauntered across the wooden floor and stood unwelcomingly before Misty, her tail twitching with disapproval.

Misty gasped. "Another monster girl?"

"Many here," the cat girl replied. "The humans don't come up here unless they want to sleep. This place... good place. Good hiding place."

Misty's idea grabbed hold of her again. "Watch this, watch this!" she bubbled, as she ran to the wardrobe in the side of the dwelling, opened it up, grabbed something random and tugged the cloth over her body.

The cat girl frowned. "You look human."

"I do!" Misty squeaked. "Isn't it amazing! And I can even talk like them too!"

With a little growl, the cat girl slithered up to her. "Why act human? Why you?"

Misty was at a loss.

"You are a monster girl. Sneak. Hunt. Catch men. Don't wear clothes like a loon." She turned around, tail still twitching sourly. "You," she repeated under her breath. "A monster girl? You, a monster girl? Or a human?" Leaping up onto the outside wall, she climbed out of sight.

Misty's shoulders fell. She had been called weak and loony before, but this was something else. "Monster girl or human?" she repeated at the now-empty balcony. "I'll show you..." After thinking for a minute, she dissolved into mist, abandoning her clothes, and drifted outside, to the next house over. It was a rich thing, taller than most and with a colorful symbol hung over the door. Misty could have examined that symbol for hours, but now she had something to do. She would find the man inside that building and ride him until he burst, then ride him more until his begged her to stop. That cat girl would have her proof then.

But as Misty drifted in through a high window, she heard human voices talking, one male and one female. As she reconstituted her physical body, her lustful mission faded to the back of her mind; it was a very lucky day when Misty could overhear humans talking to each other. Without bothering to find new clothes, Misty inched down the staircase until the voices were clear.

"I can always tell when something is wrong," said a woman's voice.

"You know my promise," said the male one. "I left behind everything. You have my word."

"I am not convinced. A paladin must root out disorder wherever she finds it, and that includes her own family."

"I'm not the enemy! Will you ever accept that?"

"I want to believe you." She paused. "Morn, I want you to stay in this house for the week. I will bring you anything you need. Simply have no contact with anyone, and I'll be satisfied."

The male sighed. "Yes, my wife."

Footsteps approached Misty, and she quickly dissolved. Moments later, a strong-looking human woman with short hair walked obliviously through her. Fascinated, Misty drifted down into the room where she had heard the talking. A man—Morn, apparently—stood dejectedly at a polished wooden table, his rich, colorful clothes looking not quite right on him. Misty imagined what he might look like without them, but it was only a fleeting thought. She wanted answers. This man was rich, and rich people were supposed to be happy.

Morn turned and slinked into a smaller room behind a curtain, and Misty followed him, watching him sit down on his bed and rest his face in his hands. After long enough, she realized that she wouldn't find any answers by waiting. Reluctantly, she materialized.

Morn glanced up at her, looked back down, then did a double-take and sprang to his feet. "Where did you come from?" he gasped. He bared his fists, although he clearly did not know how to use them. "Monster!"

Now that she saw him through corporeal eyes, it struck Misty how young his face looked. Obviously, he was at least twenty years old and probably closer to thirty, but his round, gentle face and big brown eyes looked fresh and innocent. Fear only made him look cute.

Now misty felt her animal urge more acutely. Warmth roiled through her as she imagined pushing him back onto the bed and getting her legs around his tight waist. She imagined his face, those sweet brown pools gazing up into her as she took him.

She forced those thoughts away. "You..." she managed to say. "You're not happy."

Utter confusion twisted his face. "Not happy? Why should you care? Why shouldn't I call my wife right now? When she gets here, it'll be a horrorshow!" His eyebrows creased his forehead, but somehow failed to make him intimidating.

Misty thought that through. "So why haven't you called her?"

Once again, that answer broke his guard. Shaking his head, he slumped back down on the mattress. "If you're not a monster girl, then who in the sun's name are you?"

"I am a monster girl! I am Misty. And you look unhappy. Why?"

He sighed, his thin shoulders rising to level with his chin, then slumping. "I haven't been honest."

Misty tilted her head, hoping for more.

"My wife pulled me out of the gutter to marry me. I owe her everything for that. I should be worshipping the ground she walks on. I should be doing everything for her. Burn and rot, that's exactly what I promised her when we married! But I can't. Worshipping a goddess is easy. But my wife is not a goddess. I've kept things from her."

"What things?"

He mashed his eyelids shut, but loneliness still burned through them. "Forgive me," he whispered, then said, "As I've said, I was pulled from the gutter. If you want to see the reality for many of us men... too many of us... look out in the streets, in the garbage piles and in the houses no one owns. Look in the soup kitchens and the secret societies. People there don't have enough money to eat, so they do whatever it takes to earn that money. I did whatever it took. My friends and I, we all did."

"Why didn't you live in the street?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You lived in the gutter. Why not just move into the street instead?"

He blinked a few times. "By my goddess, you're like a child. A horrid, rapacious predator of a child."

"I'm not a predator!" Misty snapped. "Other monster girls would ride you. Suck you. Fuck you. But I didn't!"

His fingers on the bed tightened with fear. "Then what are you doing in my room?"

"I want to talk to you. It's hard to talk to humans. What do you mean you haven't been honest?"

"My wife is rich, and she keeps me safe, but I don't think she wanted me. She wanted the heroic thrill of rescuing a man from poverty. But now the thrill's worn off. There's nothing between us."

"So... when did you lie? You said you were dishonest."

"I..." He stopped himself and straightened his back. "No, I've said too much already. Please, just leave. My failures are not your problem, and if my wife catches us speaking, there really will be a horrorshow."

"But I don't understand..."

"Just go!" he snapped. "Please!" He relaxed a little. "I'm serious. You have to leave, now."

Misty stepped back, unsure what she had said wrong but not willing to ask. Stalking out of the room, she dissolved into mist.

'Look out in the streets,' Morn had said. Misty would do that. But first, she wanted to see what his mate was doing. Drifting into the main room of the house, she saw the woman donning shiny metal armor, with a short, fierce-looking knife sheathed at her hip, then a waist-length cape clasped over her shoulders. It made a stunning difference. The armor transformed this small, muscular woman into a finely polished machine, and Misty could not fully tear her gaze away from that knife.

Nevertheless, she followed the human woman out of the house, onto the street, then to a proud little hut with a symbol hung over the door, matching the symbol on the woman's armor. Inside, more armored women waited around a table. After a moment, Misty realized they weren't waiting at all, but looking down at a map spread between them.

"Alusha, you're late," said one of the older women.

"I know," said woman Misty had followed. "A paladin has no excuses. Now what is this?"

"This," said the old armored one, "is where we have seen men congregating. Men and only men, so it's not a brothel. I fear it may be a threat to order."

"Surely, you're not considering a raid?"

"Not yet. We're confident they won't move, so we have time to find a spy."

Misty tried to listen, but she couldn't get over what the older woman had said: 'men congregating. Men and only men.' Humans never did that. In an instant, Misty forgot her curiosity about the women in armor. She had to know what these men were doing. She had to see for herself. Looking at the map where the woman had pointed, she drifted away down the street, going to where she thought the men would be.

The arrows on the map had pointed to a big, grand building. In person, it looked a lot bigger but a lot less grand. Its dark tan stone walls were riven with cracks, and the sun had faded the bright red and green stripes that ran around the pyramid-shaped roof. Underneath, stonecutters had made marks and designs that ran over the cracks but did not completely hide them.

Drifting in the front door, Misty found no people, but only a garden full of sun-shy plants, with cloth sacks full of water hung from the ceiling four woman-heights above, slowly dripping onto the crops. Undaunted, Misty drifted up between the tough wooden slats that made up the ceiling, creating an attic under the pyramid-roof. There were no men there, but only a hollow space full of dust and dark, lit by the meager swatches of light that filtered up through the wood.

Then something twitched.

If Misty had been corporeal, she would have jumped. Instead, she settled in the corner and watched.

Something big yet slim, scuttling yet ponderous, emerged from the dark. A woman, her face veiled by black hair, stood up from the shadows, her oddly thin feet barely seeming to touch the floor. As Misty's vision adjusted, she made out spider legs, thin but strong-looking, rising from the woman's back. Some stood on the floor and supported her weight, some probed unsettlingly about the corners of the room, and one brushed aside her limp hair, revealing a thin, cruel smile and dark, piercing eyes.

"You might as well show yourself, monster girl," said the spider woman. "You're not hidden to my eyes." One of her spider-legs struck a match. "See? I'll even light the place for you."

Misty took her physical form again. By the matchlight, she could see six spider-legs, each moving as if with a mind of its own, surrounding a woman swathed in nothing but a loose black cloak that seemed indifferent to how much it hid her body.

A curtain of spiderweb hid one corner of the room, and other strands dangled from the sharply sloped ceiling. Just behind the woman, hanging from a half-dozen sturdy-looking strands, hung a bulge the size of a man. With a cold shock, Misty realized that indeed it was a man. A male body, completely mummified, hung by his head from the ceiling, his wrapped-together feet dangling a few inches off the ground.
"Like him?" smarmed the spider woman. "He is my third catch. And the first one I kept." One of her human hands found his separately wrapped penis and stroked it until it began to rise.

"You just... you just keep him there?" gasped Misty.

At the sound of her voice, the man began to writhe. With shocking vigor, he curled and convulsed, moaning desperately through the spider silk that wrapped him completely. Although she couldn't see his skin, Misty could see the cruelly tight silk stretching with his movements, the contours of his arms, his legs and his butt showing on his bending shape. But the silk did not give, and the spider woman never let go of his rod. Eventually, it began to squelch under her hands, and when she finally released it, it was two thumb-lengths long, sticking straight out from his groin. A few extra layers wrapped around the tip, giving it a bulb shape Misty had never seen before.

"He's one strong catch," said the monster girl. "He can last for hours before he goes limp." She licked her lips and eyed his wrapped cock, then made a dramatic show of looking away. "But he's old news. And old news bores me. Do you know what's new?" She crept up to Misty, her bottom two spider legs clacking on the floorboards. "Men. A whole clan of men down under, in the cave beneath the floor. No women in at all." The spider woman shuddered with excitement. "So much meat for the taking. We can take them together."

"Take them?"

The spider threw her head back and laughed, her hair jumping with every heave of her thin shoulders. "Yes! Take them! Go for a ride! Play 'hide the sausage!' Throw a man on his back! Make him a whore! Were you born yesterday?"

"Oh."

"Why hesitate? With you helping, it'll be easy."

'That's not why I'm here,' Misty wanted to say, then she suddenly remembered that it was. Painfully, she remembered telling the cat girl that she would find a man and take him. 'She'd laugh at me for not doing it,' thought Misty. 'She'd laugh at me, and she'd be right. And what's holding me back?' Curious or not, she was still a monster girl.

"Yes," she said, before she could stop herself. "I get to have him too, right?"

The spider woman laughed through closed lips. "But of course." She gave her captive human a backhanded push, and he moaned as he swung in the air, his erection still hanging out from his bound body. "Follow me." Bracing herself with her spider legs, the woman eased her human body down a hole in the floorboards, onto a catwalk that ran only four feet under the flat ceiling of the main room. "You can turn into mist, can you?" The spider woman tapped her legs thoughtfully. "We haven't had a girl who could do that since my grandmother was a virgin. Now, go through this pipe." She pointed to a round hole in the wall. "I'll meet you at the end. Find a man in the open, and if you cover his mouth, I'll tie him up."

"Right." To her own surprise, Misty felt the first tingling of excitement, what her sisters had always called the thrill of the hunt. Perhaps that had been her problem all along. Perhaps males simply hadn't excited her because there hadn't been a challenge.

Whatever purpose the humans had had in mind for this pipe, it made the perfect duct for Misty. In moments, she was at the other end of the pipe, in a dark, confined space but with male voices tantalizingly audible. As she materialized, she found herself ankle-deep in sandy water, in a gutter one woman-height deep that ran along a great subterranean room. Peeking over the edge of the gutter, she saw what looked almost like a party, with males jostling in a crowd surrounded by torches that filtered up into who-knew-where. Pillars held up the sagging, ancient ceiling.

At the end of the room, almost out of Misty's vision, a grey-haired man, wrinkly but strong-looking, belted out a speech.

"...these chains," he boomed, "are not around our hands and feet. They are in our hearts. Matriarchal society teaches us to restrain ourselves, to stop ourselves from asserting our freedom, to feel ashamed for wanting it, to punish ourselves for seeking it. But you are not here because women have treated you well! No, brothers, we are the refuse of Izaz, and if this city will not treat us with the respect that everyone, man or woman, deserves, then we will go out and take it ourselves! We need a new city! We need a new way of life!"

The crowd cheered, deep and blunt male voices blending together into a formless ruckus.

"Look for your prey," hissed the spider woman. Misty turned to see the spider woman next to her, having emerged from a burrow nearly invisible in the shadows. "If we can get him down here, there'll be no rescuing him."

"Did you know they did this?" said Misty. "They're outcasts! They're different, so they're alone except with each other... like me."

"Focus, girl. We're here for the prize, not the politics."

Misty focused. Dissolving into her dark, vaporous form, she floated up from the gutter, toward the back of the crowd. Men stamped their bare feet and cheered, or else listened raptly to the man who still ranted on the stone block.

Then a man fell back from the crowd, shoved by a careless elbow. His skin was dark, which Misty liked, and his short hair hung straight, which she also liked. At first, she thought he looked thin, then realized that he was not thin, but exceptionally tall, at least a hand-width taller than misty. He would indeed be a challenge.

He started to get up, rubbing the back of his head, and Misty made her choice. Checking that no one had seen him fall, she assumed her flesh-and-blood self and pounced on the man, straddling his chest and clamping her hand over his mouth. His blue eyes bulged, and his hands batted at her. He got a grip at the arm over her mouth, and his frightful human strength pulled at her.

That was as far as he got before spider legs seized his wrists, two others hooked under his armpits, and the spider woman dragged him into the gutter. Misty scrambled after, holding his head with a wild grip as she felt the fierce rush of danger.

As soon as the man was in the gutter, out of sight of the other men, he didn't stand a chance. The spider woman grappled him into submission, pinning him against the earthen wall. "Release him," she commanded, and when Misty took her hand away, the man had an eye-blink of time to scream before the spider woman kissed him, pressing his head against the back of the wall. With his arms pinioned helplessly under her spider-legs, the man could only twist his head, trying in vain to escape the kiss. When the spider woman finally released him, he tried to shout, but his lips would not open, sealed shut by a thick mesh of spider silk. He stopped, working his jaw to try to undo the bond, and his eyes glanced at the spider woman, then at Misty with the sudden hopelessness of trapped prey.

"Good boy," said the spider woman. "Now come with me."

With Misty's help, she wrestled the man into the burrow, then up a slope that climbed sharp, buried boulders. All the way, the man fought like a hellion, twisting in the many clawed legs that squeezed him, his legs kicking so fiercely that Misty gave up on trying to hold them shut. With every strike, his kilt lifted, and Misty saw a promising glimpse of his soft cock.

'Not soft for long,' she thought.

Finally, they dragged the man into a hollow the size of a small human hut, where a little blue mushroom grew from the wall, pink light emanating from under its thin cap.

Laying the man on the ground, the spider woman rolled a heavy rock in front of the entrance. "We'll have plenty of privacy in here, I think." She handed misty a knife. "Care to do the honors?"

Misty looked at the man. He fought to raise himself off the ground, but spider silk stuck him to the tangle of roots that made up the floor of the hollow, trapping him from his rear all the way to his shoulders. His arms flailed and grabbed at nothing, and his legs kicked at empty air. Misty approached him from the side, and as soon as his eyes found her knife, he went deathly still.

This man was a prize. Misty wanted to enjoy every part of him. She wanted to rip open his shirt and see what was underneath. She wanted to pull off that kilt and make that cock stand up for her. She wanted to squeeze him and sit on him and feel him all over her. But for reasons she did not understand, she did not start with his clothes. She brought the knife up to his lips and gently sliced open his gag.

"You bastard!" the man spat, as soon as she brought the knife away. "You're a monster! And someday, they'll gut you for this! Maybe not today, but someday..." He snarled through gritted teeth. "They'll make you pay for this."

Misty recoiled at the sight of his cute, thin face, so twisted with hate. She had taken a man once before back in the jungle, but that man had been a rebel, tight-lipped about his motives but eager to consent to her. Misty hadn't known men were capable of this kind of ferocity.

His intensity went cold, and he looked away miserably. "Just do it," he grunted. "Just do it and get it over with."

"I thought he'd never ask," murmured the spider woman, as her clawed spider legs neatly cut open his kilt.

Finally, Misty's lust caught hold of her again. Holding his cheeks in her palms, she bent down to kiss him. For a moment, it felt like kissing wet moss. Then suddenly, he came alive, his eyes bulging. He tried to gasp, but only sucked on Misty's lips.

Behind Misty, the spider woman had lowered herself onto the man, and she moaned thickly, rocking her hips on his. All six spider legs braced against the ground, she picked herself up and let herself fall on him, moaning to a slow, smooth rhythm.

Misty let his mouth go, and to her delight, the life was back in his face. His eyes were nearly shut, and he breathed heavily. As the spider woman gradually worked him harder, his chest puffed in and out underneath Misty's thighs. For a moment, she watched his face contort with the stress of sex, then when he seemed to gather himself, Misty scooted forward on him. "She gets your cock, so I get your face. Lick me! Make me feel good!"

Straddling his lips, she immediately felt his tongue flick against her womanhood, and a high-pitched moan escaped her. She could feel him lapping wildly at her, trying to finish her off as quickly as possible, and she squeezed his face with her hips, trying to wring more pleasure out of him like water from a towel.

He slowed down, and his tongue paused irresistibly on her pleasure spot. At the spur of the moment, she erupted. Her hands dug into the ground, and she screamed like an animal as heat and tension washed through her.

Finally, panting, she sat up, watching sweat drip from her body onto the man's. She stood, wobbled, then half-sat, half-fell on her rear beside him.

The spider woman gazed at her with the sort of discombobulated smile that told of her own orgasm. She still had the man inside her, but clearly, he was spent.

"Ugh..." he groaned.

"Done with him?" said the spider woman. "Good. I'll just wrap him up."

Misty opened her mouth to say that she was not finished, but already the spider woman had started her unsettling work, pinning the man's hands to his sides and wrapping around his sweaty, muscled waist.

"Help me!" the man screamed. "Damn it, someone help me! Don't let them-"

That was as far as he got before the spider woman laid one of her human hands of his mouth, silencing him. When her hand came away, his mouth was sealed shut again, and he could do nothing but groan.

And groan he did, kicking and thrashing as the spider woman's flawless movements transformed him from a bound, naked man into a bundle of squirming flesh.

Misty had done it. She had proven she was not only a woman, but a true monster girl. But at the same time, guilt settled over her like a sudden fever.

Looking down at the freshly mummified man, the spider woman licked her lips. "That went well. Went very well. We should do this again."

"Mm-mm." Misty shook her head as she picked at her fingernails, which were dirtied with peat. "That didn't feel right."

"Didn't feel right? You were having so much fun, you almost choked him!"

The reminder was not pleasant. "I know. I think forcing men isn't for me."

"It's not forcing, it's hunting. How else does a monster girl live?" She looked probingly at Misty. "Have you ever had a cock before? A nice, full cock to push into you?"

"No, just oral." She thought back to her first time. "And fingers."

"You have to try it." She dragged her prize further down the tunnel. "But not on this man. He's mine."

As she left, thoughts of that man's tongue still teased her mind, and her body burned to feel his strong, warm body between her legs. But she couldn't focus on that. All she could think was that that if she hadn't captured him, that man would be free, not a bound sex toy to be hung in the spider's lair.

Misty needed to talk. And she could think of only one person to talk to. Dissolving into mist, she retraced her path down into the gutter, up the pipe, then out onto the streets, into the early afternoon sunlight, then back to the house with Morn. If he had spoken before, then he would do it again.

To Misty's relief, the woman was not there, and after only a bit of exploring, she found Morn, leaning over a workbench, his head craned forward and his face blank.

Misty almost made herself flesh, then stopped. "The dress makes the woman," she had once heard a human say, and after seeing Izaz for the second time in her life, it occurred to her that humans only appeared with clothes on. She drifted up the stairs, planning to do the same.

With an eager flick of her fingers, Misty opened the polished wooden doors of the dresser, their bronze hinges making no noise at all. Dresses, kilts, capes, sashes and articles of human clothing that Misty did not know the words for all hung from wooden hooks, each one demanding that she try it on first.

She went for the blue dress. Wriggling herself into it, she let it settle on her chest and shoulders, finding that it pulled uncomfortably on her neck, but otherwise fit her. She cast about for a mirror.

She found something different. The black cat girl lay sprawled comfortably on the bed, grinning meanly up at Misty. As soon as their eyes met, the cat girl laughed, her whole limber body shaking on the soft mattress. "Prissy! Look at you, getting all prissy! Wearing clothes?" The cat girl rolled onto her back, still staring up at Misty. "What's next? Hm? Next, you going to marry the man? Live in a house and have sons? Why not start a farm too? Ha! A farm! Just watch out for the re-e-e-al monster girls, coming to ride your sons."

"Would you hush up!" snapped Misty. "What are you doing here?"

"Acting like a monster girl. And you?"

"It doesn't matter. Just leave." She turned toward the stairs, then received her second shock.

Morn stood frozen at the top of the stairs, listening intently. When Misty spotted him, he gave only the barest start.

The cat girl prowled around behind Misty. "Hmm, I thought I smelled something sexy," she purred.

"Get out!" Misty yelled at her, jabbing a hand at the window. "You're leaving if I have to grab a knife and fight you!"

The cat girl stood up straight, and for one moment Misty was terrified that she would accept her challenge, then the girl loped to the window and vaulted out of sight.

"That bitch!" Misty thundered, facing Morn. "I'm not a failure! I'm a real monster girl!"

"What are you doing back here?" the man asked.

For a moment, Misty waffled, not sure how to put her question into words. Finally, she asked, "do men want to be free?"

The man sighed. "Dearly."

"Are men afraid of us?"

"Of you monster girls? Of course!"

Misty's heart sank. "But all we do is ride you. It's what men are for."

"Misty, men are people. We want to marry who we love and have strong houses and see our legacy passed on."

Misty did not know the word 'legacy,' but she did not ask. "Do men just hate women? I found a whole group of men under the ground, talking about being free and living with no women at all."

Morn stiffened with horror.

"Is that what all men want? Do they want no women at all? Your wife and some other women were going to go raid those men and stop them. You humans-"

"They're what?"

Misty blinked cluelessly. "They... they know. The women know, and they're going to go capture the males."

Wide-eyed, Morn staggered up the rest of the stairs, stood against the opposite wall and sank to the floor. "They know," he said distantly. "The paladins know. My wife knows. They all know."

"What? What's wrong?"

"Misty, I'm a member. Those men who are trying escape Izaz? To leave behind this city? I am one of them. And if the paladins stop them, it'll be an uproar, and when my wife finds out that I was involved, she'll never forgive me." He sighed miserably. "She'll dismiss me. She'll leave me in the trash heaps where she found me."

"What are you going to do?"

He stood up in a panic. "What can I do? I'm a man! I can't go outside alone! I correspond with the others in secret, but if I leave a message, it'll never get there in time! I'm useless! All I can do is..." He stopped. He faced Misty for three intent seconds. Then he knelt on the floor and brought his hands up to the knots that tied the front of his shirt together. One by one, he undid them. His chest appeared a little at a time, flat and smooth, firm around the sides. Finally, he shook off the whole garment. "Warn them. Go find them, warn them of the danger they're in, make sure the paladins don't catch them, and I'll be yours."

"Mine?"

"Save those men, and you can take me anywhere and do whatever you want with me."

"You want to be mine. Like a husband." Misty's temper flared. "I'm not a human! I'm a monster girl! An animal!"

"Then take my offer. And claim your prize like an animal."

Doubt flooded her. "But you want me to get involved. Like a human. Why should I do that?"

"Y-"

"But women always hate monster girls. If I get in before those women... those paladins... I'll be like a monster, like I'm supposed to be."

"Supposed by who? By all the stars, Misty, forget all this talk about nature. Can't you see this is right?"

Misty stopped. 'right' hadn't occurred to her. But now that he had said it, she couldn't let it go. "I'll do it." She said. "I'll find the men. And I'll scare them off. Then I'll come back here. You'll see." She looked down. "I'll have to lose this dress."

Morn smirked. "It's just as well. You're wearing it backwards."

Misty did not know the way from this house directly to the place with all the men, but in the form of a mist cloud, it was simple to drift down the street to the house of paladins, where she heard shuffling and talking in serious voices, then from there to the hideout. As she floated, she kept sweeping her gaze behind her, expecting a horde of angry women to burst out at any moment. It did not.

In the main room of the building, with the dark but innocuous-looking garden, Misty heard slapping and moaning, and for one moment fear gripped her. 'I'm too late!' Then she materialized to sharpen her senses, and she realized the noise came from above, not below. The spider woman was enjoying her prize, and doing it with such reckless abandon that the noise carried down to the floor. Misty cringed.

Back in mist form, she slipped down the pipe the spider woman had shown her, into the basement gutter.

There, in the wet, clammy shade, she crouched and listened. The riotous noise of the man's speech was gone. Instead, male voices muttered, every bit as intent as the armored women. Peeking out from her cover, she saw a few dozen men, instead of the hundreds there had been before, bent over a table, drawing on a great stretch of paper big enough for a woman to lie down on.
All those male voices raised Misty's blood. The tonguing she had received earlier only made her want to ambush one of them and have another go, but she forced herself to focus. Consensual sex was the only kind she truly wanted anymore, and there would be plenty of opportunity for that later—if she did this right. Ducking back down, she wracked her mind for what might scare the men away. Then an idea struck her.

"I don't think they see us," she said, loud enough for them to hear her. "I think we can take them. Take them, take them, take them." It felt eerily easy, slipping into the verbal tic that monster girls were known for. "They'll be juicy. Yes, nice and full and juicy."

The men made no response.

"Hush!" she hissed, in a different tone of voice. "They'll hear us. We need to sneak, sneak, sneak up on them. Then grab them. Stuff them. Get their cocks up. Yes..." Mist breathed out heavily. This talk of grabbing men and cramming cocks was not helping her to focus.

Finally, she heard what she had hoped for: "Do you hear something?"

"We'll get them. Get them, get them, get them. That one on the right looks bouncy. Let's ride him first."

Shoes scraped on stone as the men fanned out. Misty dissolved, hiding herself as two men glanced into the gutter where she hid. Floating past the clueless humans, she materialized behind a man who investigated an electric lamp as if certain her voice had come from there.

She crouched. Then she pounced on him.

The man screamed. The other men turned to look, and pandemonium broke out. With a kind of fierceness Misty had learned to expect, two men drew weapons and charged for her. But by the time they got there, she was already mist, invisible as she drifted behind a different man who stood at the gutter, blinking at his brothers and looking suddenly very silly. Making herself flesh in the gutter, she leapt up and grabbed the man's ankles, eliciting a comical squeal and receiving a very unamusing kick to the forehead. She collapsed to the ground, evaporating before she could come to any more harm.

The men babbled in panic:

"What happened?"

"She's gone!"

"What's going on here?"

"How many of them are there?"

Floating up to the ceiling, Misty became flesh one more time, perched in a buttress that braced the ceiling against the wall. Taking in a deep breath, she let out a deep, feminine laugh.

That did it. "They're everywhere!" cried one man. "We're under attack! Get out of here!"

"Stop her!"

"Help me get the map!"

"What do we do?"

"Follow me!"

Misty laughed again, and this time it was a real one. That had been fun. And now, with those men scrambling to safety, she gave herself up to the air, flowing up through the pipe and began the long drift back to Morn's house.

"What are you up to?" The deep, sinister woman's voice addressed Misty just as she left the abandoned building, and she turned her gaze around to see the spider peeking from a crack in the building's roof, staring straight at her.

Sheepish, Misty assumed her physical form on the sloped roof. "I scared all the men in the basement, so they'll run away."

"But you're not chasing them."

Misty held her head high. "Nope."

"What, you've already had your fun? Don't tell me you were only practicing."

"I didn't do it for the sex."

It gave Misty a rush of satisfaction when the spider woman said exactly what Misty had expected her to say: "What kind of monster girl are you?"

Misty smirked, dissolving again. "A different kind."

* * *

Misty leaned on the wooden fence, gazing at what she and Morn had built.

A wooden shelter rose from the jungle dirt in the clearing they had made, rooted firmly in the mud, its shafts stained with the sweat from their palms. It looked pathetically small against the silhouette of Izaz, but still she was proud.

And the difference mattered little, because she might never see Izaz again from the inside. After casting about for a place in the city to keep her new husband, she had found that there was no safety for a monster girl and her runaway man inside the walls of Izaz, so she had smuggled him out. Morn knew the crafty ways humans manipulated their environment, and Misty knew the jungle. Together, they had cleared a plot of land, made a humble garden, set animal traps and built a house, all in less than two weeks.

It hadn't been without help. Izazi huntresses shared the jungle with them, and to Misty's amazement, they had been unfazed to discover her and Morn. A wild people, they openly scorned the norms of their city, and would talk to her just as openly as they had talked to Morn.

For now, the couple was alone. Morn scraped at a shoot of wood that made up the doorway of the hut, trying to even out a stubborn knob on the wood. He leaned forward, his sweaty back bent, his butt tight under the stress, muscles exposed by the skimpy loincloth Misty had dressed him in. She watched him, then sauntered up to him laid her hands on his slick back.

He looked over his shoulder and smirked.

"You've done enough," said Misty, running her hands down his skin. "Enough work, anyway." Her fingertips brushed gently down his butt cheeks, then she gripped him firmly, pressing herself against his flesh.

He shivered and gnashed his teeth. "Why do you have to do that before you unlock me?"

Giving no answer except a smile, she herded him into the hut and threw him face-up onto the bundle of dewy leaves that served as their bed. His legs splayed apart, revealing the shiny steel prick of an Izazi chastity cage.

Here in the jungle, this cage served as a crucial last line of defense against the ravishings of daring monster girls.

Pulling the key from the hollow beam that held up a corner of the hut, Misty slid it into Morn's lock with satisfying click, then turned it and freed his straining flesh.

It rose in seconds, the tip pointing straight up for her, red and pink with vitality. Misty rolled it between her fingers, watching his foreskin flex over his sensitive head, then positioned herself over it. Wrapping her arm around his neck, she brought his lips up to hers. Locked in a kiss, she fell on him.

The thickness filled her, pushing her in every direction at once. She squeezed, pushing herself down on him, hard, then forced herself up, half-knowingly breaking the kiss. With her lips free, she moaned enthusiastically, singing out as every buck pushed her walls apart, then slid back out of her, friction making a fire of pleasure against her soft skin. She looked down and saw his sweating tan skin and his work-hardened muscles, straining to hold up as she bounced and bucked wildly, first grabbing his sides, then his shoulders, then the grass under his arms, then holding onto his forearms so tightly that she felt the blood pounding through them, then gripping the back of his heat and smothering him in another kiss.

It didn't take long. He never needed long to bring her to the edge. Rather than draw it out, Misty let the orgasm come, taking her like a sudden wind, crashing through her lower body and forcing out of her in one great spastic release.

For a few seconds, she straddled him, still but upright like a carnivore over her fresh kill. Then she extricated herself, feeling his still-hard cock squelch from inside her, and lay beside him. Usually, this would have only been the beginning, but this time, one orgasm would do.

"Leaving me hard, are you?" said Morn, through heavy breaths. "Good. You insatiable monstress, I was worried you would squeeze me dry again."

"Monstress?" said Misty lazily.

"Oh." He sat up. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean it badly."

"No, no, it's fine." Misty laid him back down, then settled next him, snuggling tightly against his hot chest. "If there's one thing Izaz taught me about being a monster, it's that it doesn't matter. Maybe I'm a monster girl. Maybe I'm more like a human." She yawned, relaxing in the steamy midday heat. "Either way, it doesn't matter. I'm just Misty."