The second and last part of High Stakes! I'm incredibly proud of this as it's the largest project I've ever brought to a good end so far, clocking in at almost 10.000 words. As I'm submitting this, I'd like to give a huge thank you to all the people who participated in this project. Regardless of how significant your role in the story is, you have my sincere gratitude. Thank you for letting me use your characters and operate them through my writing. Thank you and enjoy. You deserve this the most! ;')

« PART 1

Size: 5.587 words
Total size: 9.746 words

Disclaimer of the characters can be found in the description of Part 1

Story © me.
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The moment the starting buzzer went off, the six of them dashed in every direction immediately.
“Gee, now that’s kind of unfair,” Chris sighed as he looked how Sini effortlessly flew over the stairsteps leading to the second floor. He scratched his head, contemplating a potential hiding place in advance as he strenuously began to climb the bottom step of the giant foyer staircase. Wrage followed him up, helping Chris to climb step by step by allowing him to stand on his shoulders.
Tev made a sprint to the conspicuously open door to the left that revealed the huge kitchen area. The sphinx cat cleanly disappeared behind the wooden door, as if she was playing the role of a kitchen-thieving household creeper. All the while, Ty was completely scatterbrained and lost in ideas. For him, there were just so many opportune hiding places within his reach that were articulating their usability. Too many places that left him torn. He even had thought of some possibilities himself, and hoped that the environment would allow him to turn his plans into an appropriate deed. Eventually, he seemed to have gathered a semblance of an idea as he headed into the living room.
Adamastos, however, saw how the rest either headed upwards or sought a place on the ground floor, which made him feel confident about the decision he made.
“This house ought to have a basement around here...” he muttered to himself as he flew around the foyer, exploring every nook and cranny. Everyone else was already in the midst of moving to a location they would find safety in, but Adam retained a calm and determined attitude in spite of him laying far behind his friends.
He hadn’t even been flying around for a minute when he noticed a descending section of open space right behind the staircase. It was a second, smaller stairwell, leading down to an opening to a pretty dark place. The door was wide open, presumably done intentionally by either Amarus or Yervak to give the fairest chance of competition to everyone. But this would also mean that they would search there for sure.
“Is this it?” Adam thought as he took a dive down the narrow descent.

Sini had landed on a windowsill on the second floor, using it as a vantage point to get a clear view of the area, while giving his wings a short rest. He had already reached the second floor, while Wrage and Chris, despite their teamwork, were ninety percent on the way. He had discovered an albeit small library section behind one of the doors on the gangway, and while he had just come to know just the ideal place to hide, he was looking for the possibility of a better, ingenious place where no one would ever think of looking in the meantime while Chris and Wrage scaled the giant staircase. Namely, he had to engage in a little discussion with them to ensure his plan wouldn’t be completely blown. As they climbed up the final step, Sini stared down at the two with a joking provocative grin, while twitching his wings.
“Pffhh, couldn’t they just give us helium balloons?” Chris jolted out , a little exhausted.
Sini flew down to the two and landed in front of them to make a short exchange of ideas.
“I’ll find myself a hiding spot in the library next door to the right,” he said while pointing to the open door on his right. “I want you two to choose your places in this room.” This time, Sini pointed to the door opposite to the library entrance. His plan was conveyed a bit dictatorial, though it made sense of the fact that - if a fellow hider sought his own spot in the room he would be hiding - there would be a huge risk that both of them would be exposed by the sharp noise their collars would emit in sure time. Chris agreed complacently as he wasn’t planning on hiding there anyway - Wrage stood there silently, seemingly disregarding the plan entirely and just thinking for himself, while Sini flew into the room on the right side.

Ty had made his way to a remotely located taproom in the mansion. It took him an astounding twenty minutes to get there alone. The area was decorated with classy window fringes and patterned seat posteriors on the four chairs around an antique table. There didn’t seem to be anything that could be put to practical use, but then the fox looked up one of the chairs, and a master plan shot to mind. On the chair in front of him was a cushion that shared its same pattern of red and gold leaves.
“This will be risky,” he said as he walked up to one of its legs and clamped onto it. “but anything will do for such a delightful cake!” Without looking down, even if he was only his own body size away from the floor, he carefully attempted scaling the chair. The mahogany wood it was composed of was quite rough, so Ty could ascend the one-and-a-half foot chair with leniency and little fear of slipping off.

Meanwhile, Adamastos had stumbled upon the basement in his preemptive clear-out of the foyer. For an area usually described as old, musty, dark and barely in use, this basement didn’t impress much to endure for the average person. It was definitely dark in there, but the little pullswitch was right in Adam’s plain sight; a white bobber hanging from a thick string dangling directly in the face of anyone who entered without prior knowledge. The dragon’s metal covering allowed him to easily exert enough gravitational force on the thingy to drag it downwards.

*Click*

The room suddenly became illuminated as a smudged light bulb fixture flicked on, and Adamastos could now have a complete view over the area. And it wasn’t the measly two-by-two storage block that he expected to see, no, it was much, MUCH larger than that.
“Gotcha!” Adam cheered to himself.
On his left were three wooden crates - one visibly contained lumps of coal, the middle was filled to the brim with scrap metal and spare parts, and the other crate was closed. Whatever that box contained was none of his business at the time; redeeming himself in this valhalla of possibilities for a metal dragon like him took serious priority. The basement also contained some other utilities, such as a small combustion furnace against the wall at the very end, and an archaic wheelbarrow.
Ever since he realized the game’s fifty-fifty rule that dictated they’d be shrunk, he had made his plans to find the mansion’s basement and hide in a toolbox, if he could find one. But no, this place offered him a significantly better chance than that. Especially because of the serendipitous presence of a crate full of camouflaging bits of metal that he never expected to see there.
Eagerly, Adamastos flew to and landed on the rim of the wooden container. He slipped himself between several iron discs and an exhaust pipe that jotted out, crawling into the depths of the metal pile. He was game for a secure hiding location.

“Ding! Ding! Ding!”
The grandfather clock startled Chris with its loud chime, marking the time of three o’clock - exactly one hour that had passed since the commencement of the game. The room that he had entered looked like a hybrid between an ordinary bedroom and studying room. In the corner was a single-person bed with a red bedsheet orderly spanned over it, and beside the bed stood several oaken dressers, and opposite of the dressers was a large, flimsy desk. Chris had been looking for a suitable spot for a little over half an hour in vain. It was literally tiring him, so much that he just wanted to crawl atop that huge bed and take a nap in it, regardless of his competitive outcome.
Chris sighed as he walked to the dresser next to the bed and climbed the handle of the bottom drawer, trying to pull it open.
“This is probably a bad idea, but I don’t know how else,” he said with another deep sigh, using his remaining will to open the drawer. He succeeded in dragging it outwards just an inch, which was still enough for him to slip through the tiny opening and drop inside.
The moment he fell through the crack, he landed onto something… soft. A weak beam of light that shone through the opening revealed several shirts stacked on top of each other.
“Better safe than sorry,” Chris mumbled while he walked to the back of the drawer and pushed against it, closing him off inside as the area around him turned pitch-dark.
It may not have been the best place to hide, but anything over nothing at all.
“Hope this will turn out well…”

Sini was in the domestic library, situated on the second highest shelf of a bookcase and preparing his hiding place. He was a very clever one, as he had hatched his plan well in advance, just like Adam, coincidentally. The only significant difference was that Sini already held true to his idea before he even entered the competition.
He was sitting on the right page of an open book, carefully cutting out rectangular spaces in the left pages using his sharp claws, with the cutouts piled up next to him. The paper of this particular book was brittle and therefore even easier to rip apart, not just for a dragon. Right now, the space was comparable to an inflatable backyard swimming pool.
While Sini was preoccupied with the process of making a big enough hole in a book to fit himself in, Wrage was sneaking on the floor right below, unnoticed by the dragon. Despite Sini having told him not to find his own hiding place there, he chose for himself anyway. He was notoriously cut-off from the world around him and would rather mind his own business and his own only.
*thud*
The leopard abruptly paused as he heard the sound of a book jacket hitting a flat surface above him.

With only forty five more minutes remaining, Tev was reviewing her possibilities, standing in the middle of the kitchen, still conspicuously visible to an unwary eye as the location contained merely a refrigerator, two cupboards that were too high up for her to reach, and another metallic-plated household device that proved to be a dishwasher. The other items in the room were too impractical to use as refuge. It took her a scratch to the head to come to confirm what she had in mind.
“This may be a stupid idea, but just because of that, nobody would probably ever bother to search for me here!”
Tev climbed up the countertop through several appendages on the dishwashing machine. She rubbed her hands firmly together to make sure she absolutely wanted to do what she wanted to do.
Both certain and unsure, she pressed a green button on the handle of the fridge, eagerly awaiting the result of her action.
“Please, have this do it!”
With the sound of the rubber inners ceasing their suction, the fridge popped open for a slight bit. Of course, Tev was way too small to open the door widely, but there wasn’t even need for her to do such a thing. The opening of the fridge door had already left a tiny crack through which she could slip.
“Brrr, it is seriously cold in here!” Tev shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Hopefully I’ll get used to it after a minute or so.”
Trying to shield herself from the cold atmosphere, she crept to the bottom compartment, sheltering herself behind two cartons of orange juice.

The floors stood silent for the remaining three quarter hours. Yervak and Amarus were in the a separate broadcasting room away from the mansion, still awaiting the time they could officially roll into the game and hunt down the others, in spite of knowing that the six players seemed to be already set-up.
“Do you think all of them are ready yet?” Yervak asked, fidgeting with the control panels to kill off the weary hours of doing nothing.
“You want to initiate a global readying sssession with them?”Amarus hissed.
“Fine,” sounded from his right hand, as Yervak pulled over a red-black switch and faced the microphone. “I just hope we don’t scare them.”
“Dear players, this is your friendly red dragon speaking, with an accent on the ‘friendly’, of course. ” Yervak’s message was multicasted to a speaker installation in each of the metal rings that restrained the hiders. “If you haven’t found a hiding place already, shout the words “VIETNAMESE FOOD” into your microphone, located in your neck device. If none of you reply, we will appear on the scene right now to find you.”
The call yielded no responses from anywhere.
“They’re all set, Amarus.”
“Like you, we also have two hours of time to find you. The game will officially end at 17:15 until we both agree to give up at an earlier time. Good luck,” Yervak added shortly after.
“Good,” the naga hissed cunningly. “Let us play our part now…”
And so, Yervak and Amarus left the broadcasting hut, which was only a mere couple of yards in distance from the playing field.
“And do you really care about whether or not we might scare them, Yervak?”

Passing through the left-open front door, Amarus and Yervak entered the foyer. Eager to seek out the hiders, Yervak stormed up to the second floor, but Amarus halted him.
“Uh-uh,” Amarus said sternly. “Don’t you think we should sort this out first?”
“Errr- yes, sure,” the dragon stuttered, being a bit absent-minded. “As long as I can soon get my paws on those delici- you know.”
“I’ll keep it simple for now,” Amarus explained. “You turn over every stone on the top floors, while I do the ground floor and basement. If we can’t find anything after some basic investigation, we’ll switch roles. Agreed?”
“Affirmative!” Yervak avidly exclaimed as he trotted up the staircase, for real this time.

The big crimson dragon took an intimidating amble in the direction of the bedroom. It would be his first destination for going on the hunt.
“Show yourselves; uncle Yervak is heeere!” he grinned, his claws digging into the carpet on the floor with his slow walk. He brushed his wing across the desk, causing a few sheets of paper to whirl onto the floor.
He checked the bed first, pulling away the bedsheet and moved his claw around it, checking for possible deformities that could hide something. But it was in vain - he didn’t find anything in, on or around the bed. The bed was a sitting one, so neither was it possible for anyone to have crawled underneath it. And who would want to be among giant spiders and cockroaches anyway?!
As he was done examining the bed, Yervak noticed the dressers beside it. In very rapid succession, he began opening the drawers of the rightmost dresser, starting from the top.
“Crud,” thought Chris, who hid in the bottom drawer of the other dresser. The sounds of slide mechanisms followed by a loud slam over and over again terrified him. He huddled closer to the pile of shirts next to him, hoping that, if Yervak did open his drawer, he would retain some slight inconspicuity.
Then, Chris’ doom seemed to be near; it was his drawer’s turn. The loudness of the slide-slam sounds of the drawers approached from above him. Turn for turn, he heard drawers opening and closing. Until his was violently pulled outwards. The sudden burst of light in the room, as well as the sudden quake shook Chris around. “I’m caught, aren’t I?” he grunted.
But to his avail, as Yervak was carelessly opening and closing the drawers, paying a mere cursory look inside of them, he didn’t notice him leaning against the back of a pile of tees. The moment the drawer was slammed shut again, Chris was surged with relief.
“Wait…” Yervak leered. “I think I did see something in that last drawer, actually…”
Chris’s good feeling was cut short as Yervak opened the drawer for a second time - this time more slowly. This time, Chris knew he was a fly in the pudding.
“Well, well, if I wasn’t right about that,” the dragon scoffed as he let his comparatively huge figure dominate the sight of the little human in the corner of the drawer. With his monstrous claw, he reached in to pick Chris up, letting him dangle in his grip for a while.
“Busted!” shouted Yervak.
*gulp*

Amarus had ventured into the kitchen, calmly looking around, observing the appliances with his glinty, keen eyes. He literally turned the table around and checked underneath the chairs as well; he considered every tidbit to be vital.
“Are you in the dissshwasher, little one?” he hissed, still maintaining his cunning tone from the beginning as pulled open the dishwasher. The metallic surfaces inside glimmered from every angle, which poked Amarus’s thoughts.
“That little gray dragon might be in here.”
He took it a step further as he pulled the racks out of the machine, disassembling the poor thing’s inside step by step. He managed to find anything but Adamastos in there.
“Guesss you aren’t very dishwasher sssafe, are you, little one?” joked Amarus as to arouse tension amongst possible hiders in his audible vicinity.
The cupboards above the kitchen counter were next in line. Upon opening them, Amarus noticed how they contained several neatly stacked pint glasses. He squinted and sniped a sharp look across the glass drinkware, but again, the search here also proved unfruitful.
In the meantime, a certain sphinx cat that Amarus was perilously close to overheard him and his antics.
“The fridge is strictly off-limits,” she kept mumbling to herself, trying to overcome the cold that she had slightly acclimatized to. “Strictly… off… limits…”
Right after that, she heard the naga mumble something to himself that gave her a significantly better chance, if not a one-hundred percent chance.
“Any of them aren’t in the fridggge, they’d be numbed entirely from the cold.”
Amarus sounded assured that nobody would ever use the huge, clearly visible fridge as their hideaway base. And it fortunately showed for Tev, because the naga didn’t bother to even take the slightest peek in the fridge to ascertain no one was in there.
“The kitchen is just so obvious as a hiding place - nobody would string along with it.”

Unlike Amarus, Yervak had already shot one out of six ducks from the sky. His belly was conspicuously squirming and produced noises that Yervak couldn’t seem to get enough of, judging by the happy face he carried along with him. He was now taking his seeker’s trip to the room on the other side. The bedroom was so small, if anyone else was hiding there, Chris’s necklace surely would’ve blared and revealed the other person.
“Come to daddy!” Yervak teased as he passed by a bookcase. At first, he paid it no attention and wanted to move along to the reading room ahead of it, but then, a speculation arose in his mind.
“Actually, maybe someone is hiding behind or between one of these books.”
Yervak began to shove certain books aside, taking out a book and placing it face-down on the floor beside him on occasion.
“Nothing… Nothing… Nothing here,” mumbled Yervak in between taking out the books to take a short look behind any of them. The shelf at eye-level turned out to be completely void of hiders.
Yervak sighed as he took to the shelf situated a level higher and repeated his action. “Just one more chance, otherwise I’m just wasting my time.”
“This is good. Very good,” thought an individual of which the big red dragon had no idea was actually there. He wasn’t even halfway done before it kicked in.
“Yep, this place is as lifeless as Hashima Island,” he said while clutching his paw around one last book to pull out before he’d give up entirely. He yanked the book out and placed it beside him, then proceeded to scroll his eyes for the final time over the uncovered space.
“Nonono. Remain silent. This could end badly.”
The moment Yervak had stacked the book on top of the rest of the pile next to him, something occurred that he had never, ever expected, especially given the situation.

*BEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEP!*

It was a loud, ear-grating sound whose significance had been taught to him this very day. A sound that he recognized ever since Amarus had treated him to a sample of the noise. And it wasn’t produced by a run-of-the-mill household microwave. Actually hearing this particular sound, especially in a situation which was about to have a towel tossed in, alarmed Yervak profusely. A signal that was meant to deter the contestants from crowding up in one place simultaneously during the preparation period actually dropped the pin during the game.

“Darn the person responsible for this.”

*BEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEP!*

The sound dragged on, and Yervak was incredibly happy that he hadn’t dismissed this case out of hand just yet. He brought his ear closer to the bookcase, and detected the noise coming from the lowest shelf.
“Oh, now this is interesting!” Yervak said with a scoffing chuckle. “There’s no way out for you both!”
“No it’s not!”
With great fervor, he slung out book after book from the bottom shelf. Loose pages flew all over the place, and the scene quickly turned into a literary mess-fest. But Yervak showed no signs of caring; he wanted to catch the two little mice that almost slipped out of his clutches.
“Here comes Yervak!” Yervak said almost ecstatically while licking his lips. Upon him taking the last three books out of the shelf, he saw Wrage in the corner of the now empty shelf, completely emotionless. It was as if he didn’t even care about the game.
He made no efforts to escape Yervak’s subsequent impending claw reaching for him and surrendered immediately.
“Now before I claim you as my prize, I’ll need your help with something,” the dragon spoke to the tiny Wrage he held in his claw. His collar still beeped, which meant that the second person was close at hand, still.
Yervak took a few steps backwards, and Wrage’s collar ceased its beeping.
“I knew it!” Yervak walked back to the façade of the bookshelf, as the beeping noise returned.
“C’mon, where are you, little bugger!”
He removed the remaining books from the bookcase, leaving a horrible sight of a vacuous shelf and a jumbled mess of leather covers and paper on the floor.
“What… What sorcery is this?” he said astonished as he swiftly scrolled his eyes across the empty case one more time. He couldn’t find the other person anywhere, though he was absolutely sure he was around. He rummaged through the books scattered all over the ground, but to no comparable avail.
Then, he looked at the stack of books that was finely stacked amongst those that were violently thrashed around.
“Their collars only beeped when I grabbed that book,” Yervak pondered analytically. “It’s not very likely, but I’ve learned a minute ago that everything could be…”

The seekers only had one more hour to dwindle around.
“They’re not hiding anywhere on the ground floor, it ssseems,” Amarus thought, right when he was done with his second searching cycle around every room on the ground floor. “It would seem a bit obviousss to hide there anyway.”
“Now let’s sssee, the basement, right?” he hissed to himself, squiggling towards the area underneath the foyer stairs. Upon arriving, he saw the light having been turned on in the basement.
“Looks like we have something on our hook.”
Amarus squiggled down the stairs, waving the dangling light switch cord out of the way.
“It’s a bit of a ssstupid idea to leave the lights on, sssilly!” he said with a razor sharp hiss. And to add insult to injury, the first thing that struck Amarus the minute he set his snake-like body into the basement was the container with the metal spare parts in it.
“Darn, I did leave the light on!” A bone-chilling shock was sent through Adam’s nervous system.
“So that isss where you are! You don’t want to know about the false path you’ve set me on!” he intimidated as he began emptying the wooden box.
“Jeepersss, this is some heavy stuff,” he thought as he stressfully lifted a vehicle exhaust from the crate, as he himself was already quite exhausted after releasing the box of only one item already. Nagas weren’t that physically strong, after all.
“Stay calm, Adam. You know he’s found you, but it’ll take him quite the day-breaking effort to get all the way down to the bottom,” thought Adamastos, who was all the way at the bottom of the scrap pile, with his chest against the splintered wooden boards.
Amarus continued his intimidation tactic. “If you’re not in the dissshwasher, you’re in here!”
“He thought I would hide in the dishwasher?” Adam thought, releasing a minuscule, inaudible laughter. But it wasn’t the right time to laugh for Adam. Soon he would be discovered by Amarus, and he would discover what losing would mean.

Upstairs, Yervak realized he had triggered the one-foot proximity danger zone between two hiders. He held poor Wrage in his paw to use as an improvised radar to locate the second hider. Now that it was clear what happened to those that had their hiding places blown, Yervak didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity of a double dip that the situation provided. He had theorized that someone must have been hiding in one of the books that he picked from the shelves, and his suspicions were confirmed when he stuck his ear to the book. An beeping noise indistinguishable from that of Wrage could be heard at maximum volume.
He carefully lifted the book from the top of the stack - carefully enough not to cause any disturbances amongst the potential person who hid in it. He raised the book directly above him and faced it - the reader’s side facing straight into the living cavity that was his maw.
“Busted, little one…” Yervak whispered mockingly.
He cracked open the book right down the middle, and out fell Sini with a comical shriek, right into Yervak’s mouth.
“Now, to finish this off, I’ll make it into a combo deluxe,” Yervak scoffed. He was beyond thoroughly enjoying this, almost on the level of that of schadenfreude.
“Better together forever, right?”
With yet another scoffing laughter, Wrage was dropped into his maw. Yervak was immensely pleasured by the feeling of his two prisoners bouncing around in his mouth, reveling in the rightful power he had over them.
“This is all YOUR fault!” Sini shouted through the barriers of saliva. Wrage didn’t retort in any way, as he usually did. “If you didn’t h- whoooaaah!!”
Yervak swallowed the two simultaneously, sending them down on a trip to his stomach to add to his prized collection.
“Game over.”

Amarus was still caught up in the act of emptying out the box in which Adam hid. In the twenty minutes that had passed since, the box was almost half-empty now, implying the progress was slow. And the naga wasn’t exactly the one fit for carrying out such a task. But he was dead set on getting to the bottom of this, quite literally. As he kept painstakingly digging through the heaps of scrap metal, he was interrupted by Yervak, who shouted at him.
“Amarus, we only have fifteen more minutes! Shall we switch?”
“Hold on Yervak,” Amarus shouted back. “I have found one of their hiding places, I just need to actually get to them.”
The sound of heavy walkers stomping down a staircase was recorded before Yervak showed himself in front of the basement, where Amarus’s unforgettable hissing came from.
“So, where is this little guy you’re speaking of?”
“He’s right here in this box of metal sssalvages! I’m sure of it!” Amarus adamantly posed.
“The light was on when I first came here, and there’s this box of metal that would be just too ideal for him to use as his hiding place!”
A moment of awkward silence fell, before Yervak took a deep exhale.
“You did it again, did you?”
Amarus was dumbstruck for a second after Yervak’s response.
“You really think that our contestants are stupid, do you? What makes you think that someone didn’t just turn the light in this room on to mislead us? Especially because of this box of scrap metal you’re speaking of would make a perfect red herring considering anyone could be easily led to think Adamastos is in there.” Yervak sounded aggravated of Amarus’s painful time-wasting.
His sudden barge-in and bickering with Amarus was a godsend for Adamastos, not to mention amusing. And Yervak wasn’t done with his tirade yet.
“It’s all to create the illusion that somebody hid in there and to draw attention to that stupid box! Come on, you’re purely wasting your time here. To plaster the wound, I’ve caught three hiders already.” Yervak rubbed his belly, causing minor squirms in response.
“If this sudden U-turn works out, it’s going to be the biggest fluke of all time!” Adam thought, being held in tremendous tension.
Amarus followed Yervak outside the basement. Adamastos could hear the naga squiggle away.
“Just wait until I tell them where I’ve hid and see their faces turn red!” Adam thought to put the cherry on top.

The following fifteen minutes, Amarus scouted the top floor and Yervak did so with the ground floor, but they discovered no-one. The buzzer in the broadcasting room, as well as a miniature version in the contestant’s necklaces ringed, signifying the definitive end of the event. At home, the spectators turned off their TV’s and went to have dinner, some congregating at the local fast food joint to discuss the outcome with each other.
The survivors: Tev, Ty, and Adamastos, could safely reveal themselves from their spot, and their metal restraints had been unlocked. A certain gigantic cake was awaiting their stupendous endeavors in the living room of the mansion.
And so were the seekers, Yervak and Amarus. Yervak sat on a couch, with the three losers next to him on a cushion, having been safely taken out of his belly and absolved of their collars. The victors sat beside Amarus, eagerly awaiting the moment they could rightfully claim their deserved prize, earning some envious looks from the other side. On the coffee table laid the grand prize; nine by twenty-one by three inches of sugary and whipped-creamed goodness.
“Well guysss, fair is fair, so have at it,” Amarus said, speaking honestly and eloquently. “You can be undone of your changes in sssize right now, but I sssuppose you don’t want that to happen jussst yet, my friendsss,” he hissed kindly as he picked Adam, Tev and Ty up and placed them on the center of the cake.
“CAAAAAAAAAKE!!” yelled Ty as he drove himself right through a bump of whipped cream.
“I believe an insignificant “Bon Appetit” is necessary here” Yervak chuckled.
“Bon Appetit!” shouted the three victors in glorious unison before gluttonously diving into the cake and munching down on every part within their reach.
Though enjoying it at its zenith at the end of the day, Tev felt bad for the so called ‘losers’.
“I think they deserve this cake as well, Yervak!” she meeped, her entire face covered in whipped cream. “I don’t care if it’s ‘unfair’ or not, let them join us on behalf of me!”
“You think so?” Yervak shrugged. “Wouldn’t we be breaking a competitive rule?”
“This game…” Amarus said with an inconspicuous smile underneath. “This game had no rules to begin with. It was one garbled mess of silliness. Feel free to let them take a share of the prize as well if Tev deems it so important.”
“Actually, now that I think about it…” Yervak said as he began to deeply think, with an even greater smile than Amarus. In either case, he picked up the losing players as kindly as he could and placed them on the cake together with the victors. They were immediately overjoyed that the masters in charge would grant them such a thing.
“This really wasn’t meant as a ‘game’ per se, was it?”

“I hid in the fridge! It was incredibly cold in there at first, but I became used to it a little better after a couple of minutes or so!” Tev meeped happily. “And it was definitely worth it!”
“I hid in a zipped cushion in the taproom!” Ty said excitedly, before he belligerently told a lengthy story about his experiences.
“Now for a different subject,” Sini declared. “Yervak, it immediately struck me as odd how our metal collars didn’t constantly beep when we were inside your belly. How come?”
“Oh, those collars have a fluid detector in them that causes them to completely shut down upon coming into contact with stomach acid. Yeah, it was our plan from the very beginning to gulp you whole if we found you. Please forgive us.”
“Oh, and Adam, where did you hide?”