Flying nonstop, for somewhere around ten hours, came with challenges. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Eating food and drinking water was a challenge. Almara rarely slowed down, so they couldn't wait for her to fly slower just for them to sustain themselves.

With that said, they had to eat and drink while flying at 90 km/h or 56 mp/h.

It was a challenge, they lost many bits of food along the way, as the air that blew against their bodies, also blew their food away, but they managed to keep themselves fed and hydrated.

Almara didn't seem to need food or water, not during the duration of the flight at least. Her new, feathery body, although big, was seemingly efficient at managing resources. She didn't complain about food, she didn't caw for a break, and just kept going.

At her well-maintained speed, the horrendous beauties of the jungle were a blur to the people on her back. Jimmy and Anna couldn't hear anything either, other than the whooshes of wind resistance insisting on torturing them constantly. They felt as if they were in a one-way tunnel, a wormhole of sorts.

They swallowed more bugs than they would ever wish to swallow, and their trip was overall a great challenge. Worse than even what Anna was used to on the back of her pet, as this jungle was far too lively than they would want it to be.

Their collective sacrifices came with benefits. They traveled hundreds of kilometers during this ten-hour trip, at least that's what they figured, considering Almara's speed, and made it all the way up to the fifth safehouse, instead of the intended fourth.

The city was just a few hours away from them now, and Almara could reach it if she kept pushing, but she got tired. As they slowly landed, they could hear Almara panting heavily. She has pushed herself too hard.

She might as well be tired, because this was when Jimmy and Anna figured out how big the underworld actually was! They traveled the equivalent of crossing a U.S. state by comparison, but they were still in the jungle, and they had not reached the city.

As the realization struck him, he said, "I can't believe she wanted to walk us through hundreds of fucking kilometers. It would not have taken a week… a month maybe?"

"She said that she traveled alone before," Anna added, "It could've taken her a week."

Almara cawed as they spoke. She tried her best to land without crashing into the jungle, and did not appreciate her name being besmirched, behind her back, so to speak. The two of them stopped speaking when she cawed, at least for a moment.

Once Almara landed, she barely gave them any time to climb off. She began shapeshifting.

For a moment, as her body softened, Jimmy and Anna started sinking in her back. They were concerned about her, for one thing, because they figured there was something wrong, or that she was in pain, but they had to look out for their own hides at that moment, so they quickly climbed off.

Feeling as sore, and wind-slapped as they were, with their skin red, and plenty of tiny cuts on their bodies, where the tens of bugs had crashed into, their movements were sloppy. They crawled away from the deforming blob of flesh as if they were crawling their way out of hell!

Their bodies hurt, and Jimmy couldn't even help on the matter, because other than healing a few cuts, which he did heal, plenty of them during the flight, he did not know how to ease sore muscles. It was something that the body was supposed to do itself after plenty of rest.

Almara kept deforming. What started out as a soft bit of flesh, and 'liquidized' feathers, that nearly swallowed the people on her back, turned into a massive puddle of body parts only a minute later.

Jimmy and Anna sat down in front of the blob, but when it turned into a puddle, the puddle itself reached them, and passed them. They were ankle deep in flesh, they could see organs floating around freely, as they appeared to be the last parts that got dissolved, and they even saw the human head-sized beak melt away, as if it was swallowed by a vat of acid. If the vat was a combination of shades of red, pink, and brown, instead of green.

They wanted to be grossed out, they knew how their brains were supposed to react to this sight, they were supposed to shudder at the sight of it, but they didn't.

The trip tired them out, for one thing, but they were also a bit desensitized. They saw plenty of shapeshifters use their magical abilities before, and in this case, the pungent scent of blood coming from the puddle, only managed to irritate them. They weren't traumatized.

"Do you think she overworked herself?" Jimmy asked.

"I know she did," Anna said, "I've been feeling her lungs working overtime. Damn near broke my legs, but she was hyperventilating a moment ago."

"Wouldn't that mean she had a panic attack?" Jimmy asked, and got the spike of adrenaline he needed to stand up quickly, his bones cracking as if he was an eighty year old man. "Maybe something was hunting us?!"

"Nothing would be stupid enough to hunt us," She pulled him back down, "Almara wasn't just an Apex Predator up there, she was the biggest, greatest Apex Predator."

"Above the jungle, maybe, but not down here," He insisted, and wanted to stand up again, but Anna didn't let him.

"Relax," She said, "If there was something hunting us down here, you would've heard it already."

Jimmy managed to relax a little bit. He was paranoid, even more so after that brown eagle fucked him up, but he managed to find peace within, because his body insisted. He was close to crashing down for a long sleeping session.

In the meantime, the puddle of flesh around them, reduced in quantity. It shrunk down, moved past them, and their leather bags, leaving small marks of blood on their skin. The liquid didn't try to consume them prior to this, it was just dirty, like a flesh slime.

The puddle shrunk from thirty feet across, to ten feet across, and as the puddle shifted into a blob, it was even smaller.

Jimmy and Anna watched Almara shapeshift, and since the process took less than two minutes, they felt as if they were seeing an ancient Greek statue being carved in real time. The result? The curves of a beautiful, black-haired woman that would outcompete any statues in terms of beauty, because statues couldn't suck one's dick, or otherwise.

"Sorry for making you wait, I usually shapeshift faster, but I'm tired as fuck," Almara said, as she walked towards them, her fatty breasts bouncing on every step, releasing happy hormones in the two people who watched her, making them feel a little bit better. "Let's step inside."

Almara helped them stand up, even though she was tired herself. Despite being tired, she felt happier than usual, because they made great progress today, and covered a massive distance.

"The underworld is a lot bigger than the grasslands, isn't it?" He asked.

"It should be?" Almara said, "I've never really explored the grasslands, not a lot of it, at least, but the underworld should be bigger, yes."

The three of them then walked past the slit that led into the safehouse. The outer-surroundings of this safehouse were nearly identical to the first one they visited.

It was under a large tree, they had to pass through a slit to reach the door, and etcetera. It felt uncanny, and Jimmy even questioned if they had circled back to the first safehouse by accident, but when he saw Almara passing through the slit in front of the safehouse, without so much of a struggle, he knew that they weren't where they started.

Looking at her beautiful ass was distracting, but Jimmy managed to focus, when he heard this heartbeat that had been gnawing at him ever since they landed. He finally figured out where the heartbeat came from, so he was quick to point it out!

"There's someone in the safehouse," He said, before they even touched the handle of the steel door. "Should I kill him?"

"No!" Almara exclaimed, "I don't know how you relate to other tribes up there, but here in the underworld, even though we don't get along much, we rarely kill each other."

"I'm not comfortable sleeping around a stranger, especially if it's a man," Anna added.

Moments later, the door in front of them opened, and the lights switched on.

They were greeted by a tired face. A beautiful, light-weight brunette in robes. She looked like a fantasy mage, elegant in stature, even if her face said otherwise.

"I'm not a man," She said, "I won't diddle any of you, and I expect to be left alone as well."

The woman then opened the door further, inviting everyone in, "There are enough beds for all of us to go around, and I'll be leaving soon, so make yourselves comfortable."