Hot Air (Commission for Stonergriffon)

TAGS: Inflation, Balloon, Bursting, Popping, Gas

---===---

Squeezing into the cave had been a pain and a half, but at least now Valoriel could explore it properly, and without being interrupted by any of the adventurers prowling around the area. Ever since rumours began to spread of a “lost treasure”, there had been so many would-be seekers crowding those woods that finding a spot that hadn’t already been turned over about fifty times already became practically impossible. Sensing an opportunity up in the mountains, the griffon took flight and emerged from the treeline to find… other flyers already combing through every inch of those slopes, from bards to clerics to what looked to be an entire barbarian clan trying to pickaxe their way through the very peak. It was utter madness, and he was about ready to give up completely, until he caught sight of a small crack on the side of a vertical patch of rock, one that was practically invisible unless looked at from the right angle.

He swooped in, digging his claws into the stone in order to take a peek inside, and much to his surprise, found that the tight space actually opened up into what looked to be a rather wide, sizeable cave, with tunnels leading deeper into the mountain! And though he had to throw most of his gear into the hole before trying to squeeze his way in, to the point of almost going fully nude, he somehow succeeded in doing so, popping out the other side with enough force to almost land flat on his face. Once within the mountain itself, the outside world seemed almost magically muffled, every sound replaced with an eerie, continuous droning that Valoriel assumed was the wind, for his own sake. He gathered his things and began walking deeper into the bowels of the earth, picking a tunnel at random.

Withdrawing a scroll, he produced a small lighting charm, giving him just enough of a line of sight that his eyes practically glowed golden at what he was seeing around him: gems, precious gems, lining the walls as far as he could see, glimmering in the light he carried in his hand… and looking strangely positioned as well. Closer inspection revealed they weren’t naturally-formed, but inlaid into the walls, and that what he thought was a natural tunnel was in fact carved out; the smoothness of the rock when he got close to it revealed it couldn’t possibly be natural, and looking at it for long enough revealed faded engravings, depicting scenes long gone from mortal memory. Was he in a dwarven hold? A forgotten one at that? If that were true, then he was going to leave that place a very rich griffon indeed!

Emboldened by this discovery, Valoriel pressed on, walking down the artificial tunnel and having to use up a lot of willpower not to just stop and use his knife to dig the precious jewels off the walls and into his bag; if that place was indeed an abandoned fortress, then surely there must be grander treasures further within, and all he had to do was keep going until he found them! And indeed, the further down he went, for that tunnel was sloped, the more he saw evidence that confirmed his suspicions: side tunnels leading off into wider areas filled with old, dusty worktables, abandoned for gods know how long, entire dormitories whose furnishings, being made of stone, still stood as a testament to whoever inhabited that place in ages past. The deeper he went, the more luxurious these became, until inevitably, he found his way to a set of locked stone doors.

They were massive, at least three times taller than he was and five times as wide, enough that just looking at them let Valoriel know there was no way he was going to open them with his bare hands. He searched all around him for something, anything that might help him, eventually finding his way into a small sideroom containing what appeared to be a large stone lever attached to a set of gears, presumably the control mechanism… along with something else entirely.

There, in the corner, sat a skeleton. A humanoid, judging by the way it looked, in the middle of a pool of blood, long-dried and only faintly visible against the rock it splattered on. This creature, whoever they may have been, had clearly gone into the fortress the same way the griffon had, judging from the discarded and rusting climbing equipment strewn about in front of them, but they lacked anything in the way of backpacks or pouches; just a singular, bejeweled amulet, held tightly in their bony fingers. It was bright red, so much so that it shone almost as brightly off the reflected light as the charm itself did, and looked to be just the right size for the griffon to wear it around his neck, assuming he was stupid enough to actually pick it up. Old, abandoned dwarven hold with a set of locked doors and a long-dead explorer clutching an amulet while reduced to a skeleton on a pool of blood? He’d be stupid to even think about touching it.

Which is precisely why he had a spear with him.

Getting the damned talisman out of the clutches of those bones was surprisingly difficult; the dead thing seemed to exert some kind of weird pressure on it, almost as if it still clung to it from the afterlife, and for a few moments Valoriel wondered if the skeleton would wake up and take a swing at him. Thankfully, no such thing happened, though he did nearly get scared to the point of yelling when he finally retrieved the amulet and the dead adventurer immediately crumbled into dust, yet another piece of evidence that whatever that thing was, it was definitely haunted or cursed. Valoriel produced a small piece of paper, unwrapped it, and then carefully placed the amulet on top of it, hoping that if he could avoid direct contact, then his hide would be safe from whatever magic held its grip on that thing. He then turned his attention to the lever, and the trinket immediately slipped from his mind.

Pulling that thing was actually pretty easy, with the geras underneath it moving almost as easily as if they had just been placed down. The whole place began to rumble and quake around him, with the griffon excitedly sprinting out of the room to see the grand spectacle of the doors opening before him; maybe he got lucky and had found the way into the inner sanctum, the very core of the fortress itself, or who knew… maybe even the treasure vault! He’d heard stories of those, mostly in the form of legends and tales passed down from disreputable source to disreputable source, but if even a tenth of those were true, he was still in for the biggest haul of his life! Or would be, if the doors were actually opening.

The mechanisms were clearly grinding away underneath his feet, betraying the presence of locks being opened, but the stone doors themselves remained as immovable as before, save for the tiniest of differences: a small alcove had opened in the wall opposite where he had just come from, where a door should be for symmetry. Crossing the length of the grand corridor and approaching it revealed it to be of a conspicuously similar shape to something the griffon had just got done putting away in his pocket. Valoriel groaned, cursing himself for thinking he’d gotten away with tomb robbing so easily; of course he would be forced to use that talisman to progress, had he learned nothing in his adventures?

Drawing the amulet from his pocket, he still took a while before he summoned up the courage to actually touch it. It seemed to vibrate in his palm when he unwrapped it, the glow becoming brighter by the second, while the “keyhole” took on much of the same hue as the gem it was meant to hold. There was no way he was getting that thing in there while still fiddling around with the protective piece of paper, so he resolved to cast a protective charm on himself, then another protective charm, and had Dispel Curse ready just in case things really went south… and then grabbed the actual talisman.

Nothing happened. He held onto it for a good five minutes, even going so far as to look around him just to make sure there weren’t any demons trying to ambush him, but nothing. It seemed like the damned thing was either innocuous, or whatever magic had caused it to kill that adventurer was as old and faded as the skeleton itself. For a few moments, the griffon felt as if there was a pit in his stomach, a dreadful, sinking sensation that he had just done something terrible that he’d immediately regret… but then nothing came of it. Even though the feeling was still there, and didn’t seem to really want to go away, there were no changes wrought to his body or mind, meaning that he should be safe… at least for the time being. Breathing a sigh of relief, Valoriel placed the talisman into the socket and stood back, watching as the heavy-set stone doors finally began to open. And there, on the other side, was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life.

Gold. Bright, glimmering gold, as far as he could see, piles upon piles of it all stacked together in one colossal treasure hoard that would make the greatest of dragons blush at the mere sight of it, hints of jewels hidden away within the bright mass, glinting with their unique colours, the light from Valoriel’s charm dancing off of so many reflective surfaces that, even in the darkness, his eyes began to water at the sight of it all. And if that weren’t enough, it seemed the same mechanism that opened the doors had also made it so that part of the ceiling retracted as well, a wonderful contraption that allowed natural sunlight to flood the whole area and reveal to the griffon that he was… tiny. Vast hills of coins, goblets, ingots and more, tons upon tons of precious metals and gems, all for him, all for Valoriel, perfectly displayed in a gigantic cavern with equally titanic stalactites hanging down like sharp needles. It was enough for him to fall to his knees and practically cry with joy, before he realized he now had to deal with actually transporting all of that gold out of the cave and somewhere useful. Kept him nice and distracted from what was happening to his body.

Unbeknownst to the griffon, his protective charms had actually done something more than just sit idly by while nothing affected him. The curse on the talisman was one of great power, but still operated by the same rules as all magic; thus, while Valoriel wasn’t powerful enough to dispel it entirely, his efforts did make it so that the effect of the curse was diminished, just enough that he didn’t notice it at first. Rather than suddenly and very explosively meeting a gruesome end like the poor bastard he took the talisman from, his body instead began to be filled with the dark power contained within the gem… and quite literally so.

Seeing as the griffon was wearing his gear rather loose on him, not wanting to spend the time required to properly fasten it after squeezing into the fortress, he couldn’t feel how his legs and arms were starting to slowly expand in every direction, plumping up without actually gaining any weight for him to carry around. If anything, he was feeling lighter than usual, though initially he attributed that spring in his step to having discovered a literal mountain of gold all for himself. It wasn’t until he tried to kneel down and pick up a few coins that he realized that something was wrong, when one of his arms rubbed up against his knee and he felt… tight.

Thankfully for him, the natural light flooding in from above let him have a clear view of what was happening to his body, though the confusion was such that he had to stare at it for a few seconds before his bird brain put two and two together: was he getting fatter? He certainly looked bigger, his arms turning flabbier and more rounded, but he didn’t feel anything extra on him, so it couldn’t be regular flesh. It took until a false step before Valoriel fully realized what was going on, and from there, panic set in very quickly: he wasn’t growing or fattening, he was inflating with hot air!

Already scrambling, Valoriel had his hands fly all over his body, trying to get a feel for what was going on, only to find his clothing far tighter than it should be, his plumage spread further apart as his skin began to bulge outwards. A faint pressure that had been building up inside of him suddenly came to the forefront of his mind, and before long it began to grow more powerful the more he paid attention to it, until it was all that he could feel.

All around him, his body was starting to expand in every direction, like a balloon slowly being filled. It wasn’t enough to completely throw him off-balance, nor to have him float off into the air, but moving around suddenly became a lot harder when he had to physically push himself down through air that seemed thicker somehow, like his body wanted to remain aloft and was fighting against gravity itself. He thought to remove his gear for a few seconds before remembering it was probably the only thing weighing him down, which just made the fact it was loose all that more frightening; what would happen when he inevitably swelled up so much that he couldn’t fit his armour on him? Would he actually float upwards towards the ceiling? If so, who was going to help him down?!

Now completely out of it, Valoriel looked around, trying to find anything that could potentially be used to help him out of the bind he was in. He tried casting Dispel Curse, only to find that it did absolutely nothing; whatever dark magics had taken control of his body were clearly too powerful for him to do anything about, so now he was stuck there, standing still as he watched his belly groan loudly, the pressure building up inside of it and suddenly travelling up his throat and emerging into the outside world as a loud, echoing burp. He held his beak shut, embarrassed beyond belief that he’d do something so undignified, before another one escaped through his shut mouth, only exacerbating the problem; every time a gas bubble shot upwards, he felt his stomach bloat just a bit more, his belly rounding out, his insides pushing in every direction as he turned into a somehow-living sphere. Anyone looking from the outside in would only see a griffon that was oddly “fat” and looking like he shouldn’t have squeezed into that place to begin with, but he knew what was going to happen; soon enough he’d have his arms turn into sausage-like tubes, unable to even swing them around without helplessly flailing about, all while his hands slowly sunk into where their wrists should be. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t “thought” of such scenarios in his more private hours, but now that he was actually experiencing it, he wanted it gone as quickly as he could!

Valoriel continued to trip towards the treasure hoard, failing to fall on the ground thanks to being so much lighter; he hoped to find a trinket that he could draw enough power from to help dispel that maddening hex, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to. Why would there be? The damned talisman was probably a defence mechanism for would-be thieves! How could anyone hope to make away with any of the treasure when they were too busy being filled up with air, too busy fighting against their own body to even think about stealing anything? All the griffon could do was anchor his claws to the floor, hoping that it’d be enough to keep him from flying away, but as the seconds passed and his size continued to mount, he had to place more and more strength behind that grip to stop himself from floating up, his body now lighter than the air around it.

Eventually, even his adventuring gear wasn’t enough to contain him. Leather straps dug into his skin, leaving bright-red marks behind before finally snapping, buckles following suit as they were utterly destroyed by the relentless advance of his expanding bulk. Buttons began to pop from the pressure building up beneath them, and by the end, even the seams on the cloth itself were starting to tear; ripping noises filled that gigantic cavern when the clothing on his body grew too small to encompass his bulging frame, resulting in most of it ending up as scrapped tatters hanging from his shoulders or plump, tube-like arms… before eventually falling off of him and onto the ground, removing the last barrier between himself and saying permanent goodbye to the ground.

Now, all that was left were his wings. In his panicked state, Valoriel had completely forgotten he even had those, and thankfully enough they were one of the small number of body parts that weren’t being afflicted by the inflating curse… mostly. While as a whole they still kept their regular shape, he couldn’t help but notice that the thickest part of their structure was starting to grow as well, though they remained small enough to allow him to move them with almost as much ease as he was used to. Not that he could do much with them; his range of motions was reduced to just flapping them in a frantic attempt to keep himself grounded, large clouds of dust being kicked up whenever he did so, leading to quite a bit of familiar clinking to erupt from the piles of gold in front of him… the gold! The gold! Surely that was his salvation! All he had to do was move forward and hold onto as much of the stuff as he could, and that would keep him stuck to the floor until someone came passing by, or he managed to scream for help.

That last bit was going to be problematic, given that he was having some trouble controlling certain… impulses that he preferred not to think too much about. It wasn’t his fault, and it’d be ridiculous for him to act like it was, but he just couldn’t stop the gas from escaping in rather undignified ways; it was unbecoming of a griffon of his stature to be burping as much as he was, and yet he couldn’t help himself! Every few seconds Valoriel felt the pressure build-up inside of his belly reach a tipping point, before firing off an enormous ball of hot air straight through his throat and out of his beak, resulting in a very loud, very embarrassing sound that only helped make things worse; not only did the vibrations course through his body far more than they should, but somehow, against all odds, releasing that gas only made him inflate harder! It felt like for every burp of his, that belly he carried grew rounder, fuller, lighter, leaving him scrambling to try and hold his beak shut, a pointless endeavour if there ever was one.

This was made especially difficult once his arms went past the size at which he could even move them properly. It was hard enough for him to do it while they were being filled up, but now that his well-defined, toned body had become something akin to a near-perfect sphere, he found his limbs sticking out of him at odd, almost static angles, his ability to swivel them around seriously impaired; he could still grasp things if he was close to them, but he was now unable to move his hands in front of him, and only with great effort could he reach his own beak. A few seconds later and even this wouldn’t hold true, with his tubby arms now too big to even move around properly at all, leaving his burps with a free passageway to the outside world. Valoriel tried to get a few screams for help in between all the gaseous release, but to no avail; every time he even thought of a sound, there came the burp again, echoing throughout the chamber and magically adding more air into him the more he expelled.

At least in the time it took for this to happen, the griffon had managed to scooch closer to the hoard of gold, still hoping that it would grant him the weight required not to take off completely… even if, by that point, he wasn’t taking steps so much as using his increasingly-large wings to throw him back onto the floor after he began to float upwards. It was only after he actually reached the gold that Valoriel understood just how ridiculous his plan had been; how exactly was he expecting to carry any of it now that his clothes were all torn up and he couldn’t even move his arms around? The best he could accomplish was flailing his wings in order to tip himself over so he could grab a handful of coins, but that was hardly enough to do anything at all; he needed far more ballast if he was hoping to keep himself grounded, which would itself be ultimately pointless because his very attempt at acquiring it had completely doomed him.

Turning himself upside down so that his hands could reach part of the treasure had kickstarted a continuous spin that quickly went out of control, leaving poor Valoriel stuck in an endless loop where the world rotated around him as he tried to use his wings to place himself back at right side up… only to find that they, too, had now become too full of gas to even be used, their skeletal structure hidden away underneath what seemed to be a several inch thick layer of compressed air, leaving the griffon unable to use the very wings that had brought him there in the first place. Though he eventually stabilized, allowing him to enjoy the view without feeling nauseous, it wasn’t altogether pleasant; by the time his spinning halted, Valoriel was already a good three feet off the ground and rising slowly, still occasionally burping, still becoming more spherical, still with his arms and legs becoming more like little inflated stubs attached to an immensely over-pressurized ball coated in feathers. And if that wasn’t enough, the burps weren’t the only type of gas he was passing; poor thing’s cheeks were as red as they could be when he felt the first hint of flatulence hit him, even more so when it actually managed to propel him a good foot forward, leaving the griffon to bite back tears and thank his lucky stars that no one was there to witness him in such a degraded state.

The only thing missing was the sound of a hose filling him up to really seal the deal on how embarrassing the whole thing was, and Valoriel didn’t put it past the curse to do just that; unfortunately for him, he was too busy being buried by his own body to really notice anything of what was going on. Soon enough, the curvature of his own torso became too much for him to see over it like he used to, and it didn’t take too long after that for it to start moving upwards, the spherical ball of gas he used to call a body becoming so monstrously inflated that it actually began to hurt somewhat. Up until then, while the pressure was certainly very strong, he was able to deal with it, what with it being more uncomfortable than anything else; now though? Now he honestly began to feel the pain that came from his limits being pushed so much, his breath coming in short, quick succession while he tried to keep his mouth shut still, only succeeding in getting the burps out faster. At least they were covering up for the pained moans, and even the ones that got through were eventually muffled by the gas being passed downstairs.

Not that he’d have a lot of opportunities to scream for help anymore; his bloated body had officially inflated so much that it was starting to overrun his very head, first by pressing heavily against his chin from underneath, until finally it rose to and then above the level of his beak! Valoriel tried in vain to keep the sharp end away from it, but at least it didn’t pop his balloon-like self like he was afraid it would; it merely made a painful experience worse by having him be perpetually pecking part of… what he assumed had been a pectoral muscle, once upon a time, now nothing more than yet another patch on a perfect circle. The only part of him that wasn’t bloated up in some way was his tail, now dangling helplessly down towards the ground, the only bit that still obeyed gravity in any way; by the time he reached the halfway point to the ceiling, Valoriel could no longer see anything besides what was directly above him, and even that tunnel was closing in rapidly the longer the growth process carried on and the rest of him bulged outwards and over his head. At least the burping had somehow stopped… thanks to his tongue swelling up and acting like an internal gag of sorts, “conveniently” making it so that the gas that still insisted on rising from his stomach was sent back, only making the growth spurts even worse! The pressure was rising so quickly that his eyes began to water from the strain, the pain too much for him to handle; he wanted to shout at the top of his lungs, beg for it to stop, hopefully to call out for someone, anyone out there in the great outdoors to come save him!

But there was no one. It took until he was two thirds of the way there for Valoriel to remember what was waiting for him at the very top of the cavern: the sharp stalactites he’d seen coming in. The realization struck him with equal parts shock and horror, with the ensuing flailing of his stubby legs and arms doing nothing but sending him back into an uncontrollable spin. With his tongue swollen up and his body all-but immobilized by its own size, all that was left for him was to open his eyes wide and look for any sharp edge, then try and flail his bloated wings around to avoid them… in the process realizing that the more he opened his eyes, the more bulged out they became, the pressure finally breaking the barrier between body and head and starting to fill up the one spot that it had mercifully spared until then. It was just what he needed, the last indignity; now, anyone who dared look at him would see not the proud griffon he used to be, but some sort of mockery of his proud lineage, a swollen, bulgy-eyed mess that couldn’t stop passing gas and had his burps locked in by a tongue big enough to start swelling out of his beak!

And that’s when he realized what had happened to the poor skeleton standing in a corner in that room. What he was going through had to be a small-scale version of whatever explosive inflation had claimed their life, and while he was grateful that his spherical self, now several times wider in diameter than he had ever been tall, wasn’t stuck inside a diminutive room, he couldn’t help but feel he was headed for the same fate with what lay above his head. With his last ounce of effort, just before the outside world was completely blocked by what remained of his torso closing itself above him, he tried to move his wings, flap them to create enough of a gust to get him out of the way of the encroaching, dangling needles… but to no avail.

Outside, in the warm sunlight, a large group of other griffons hailing from the southern mountain ranges had given up trying to force their way through the stone peak and were now attempting to find any hole in the cliff edge that would allow them inside with minimal effort. Valoriel opening the skylights in the ceiling of the treasury had attracted their attention, and though none of the flyers could tell where those sounds had come from, they had no shortage of weird noises to follow, eventually landing near one of the entrances. It wasn’t wide enough for them to squeeze through, not without turning their bodies into pancakes, but it did let them hear what was going on down below, and catch a glimpse of it as well! The group gathered around the small, thin opening, discussing what in blazes had possessed that griffon to try and brave the abandoned fortress on his own, with them watching intently as the curse ran its course and poor Valoriel floated closer and closer to them. They fell silent, watching with no small amount of dread as their distant relation approached the hanging stalactites, helpless, unable to even move his wings properly; there was a second or two where the sharp, pointy edge of the rock formation pressed tightly against their bloated skin, a second or two where the griffons outside averted their gaze, knowing what was going to happen next.

And in the next second, a loud pop, and all the noises were gone.

Somewhere, down below, something splashed against the endless hoard of coins. And the talisman fell out of its socket.