Curse of Magic

by Michael Brightburn

  While her flesh may have looked like wood, it was soft and supple.

  Her scent was intoxicating, like flowers and ripe fruit.

  She stroked me and I couldn’t help myself. I wrapped my arms around her, roaming my hands over her flesh, grabbing her full buttocks and squeezing.

  She smiled. “Yes,” she said, and guided my girth to her smooth sex.

  She was wet, and sticky, and hot, and I wanted nothing more than to be inside of her.

  I had revenge to take, but it could wait for a time.

  Or two.

  4

  We went down to the forest floor.

  But the earth cushioned us, soft, thick vines growing rapidly and creating a bed.

  She mounted me and slid her heat over me, then ran her hands up my chest, along my arms, squeezing as though testing to see if they were real.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Sienna,” she answered, her voice shaky with pleasure. “What’s… oh… what’s yours?”

  “Darthos,” I panted.

  “That’s a… nice name. Yes,” she moaned in pleasure.

  I watched where we connected, watched as she slid up and down my manhood, watched her split around me, soaking me with her warm wetness.

  I reached up and grabbed her massive breasts, squeezing them hard.

  “Yes!” she panted.

  Her legs were bent at the knees and I could feel the multitude of roots that made up her lower legs and feet twining over my body, tickling me, teasing me, creeping up between us to caress my balls, to slide inside her with me.

  She leaned down, and her heavy breasts rested on my chest as her lips met mine.

  She tasted like the sweet syrup from a kywne tree.

  Her hard nipples rubbed against my chest like smooth little knobs of wood as her movement increased, grew more eager.

  The bed of vines we were on slowly started to rise off the ground, lifting us as they did.

  Then she threw her head back, her long white hair trailing down her back and tickling my thighs.

  She let out an exhalation of breath, and orgasmed.

  Her sex clamped down hard on me as all around us flowers bloomed on the vines, bright pink and yellow and red, and the scent of them was heady enough to nearly make me pass out as I orgasmed inside of her, the pleasure more intense than I’d expected.

  But she wasn’t done.

  As soon as her orgasm passed, while I was still catching my breath, she started moving again, grinding atop me with more urgency as the smooth roots that were her lower legs and feet gently played with my balls, as they moved up and down around my manhood inside of her, stroking me even as she rode me.

  Then she orgasmed again and this time the flowers exploded in bursts of light, disintegrating and filling the air with clouds of colorful pollen, and somehow she extracted another orgasm from me.

  A blindingly pleasurable one that wiped out all thought and vision.

  My mind, my world, was nothing but pleasure.

  5

  But as I said, I wasn’t vulnerable to enchantments.

  So when the pleasure passed, my mind cleared, and my memories returned.

  Or rather the haze covering them dissipated.

  Sienna was watching me, still astride me, and her face fell. “You still want to leave.”

  I reached up and touched her cheek, but her skin hardened, turned more wood-like, and she turned her face away from me.

  “I have to leave here. But I don’t have to leave you.”

  She flicked her bright blue eyes toward me. “You want me to come with you?”

  I nodded. “Yes. But I want something from you.” I smiled. “Something more than this. I’ll care for you, but I also need to use you.”

  She grinned and wiggled atop me, drawing a stirring from my prick. “You can use me however you like.”

  “Don’t go throwing around promises like that when you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  She leaned down and kissed me gently on the lips, then smiled, still just an inch away, and said, “I can feel you. I can feel your essence. You’re good. I trust you. A dryad knows these things.”

  “The way I want to use you is—”

  She kissed me again, silencing me. “I know. For magic. You have a darkness in you that needs to be fed. You can use me to feed it.”

  I was shocked. I didn’t know a lot about dryads, but I hadn’t known they were so perceptive. “Thank you,” I said. Maybe she didn’t quite understand what she was getting into, but I needed her.

  And more than that, I wanted her.

  My father’d had many concubines, but I had never had any.

  It was a good thing, else they might have been killed too. But now, here with Sienna, I felt comforted in a way I hadn’t in a very long while. Now I understood why he’d had them. That compassion, that care.

  It was… nice. A stark contrast to the sometimes harsh reality of life.

  She nodded and the vines lowered us to the ground.

  She got up off me, her roots untwining from my body, and stood, looking down at me.

  She wasn’t shy about taking in my flesh, letting her eyes roam freely. “I like you.”

  “I like you too,” I said with a chuckle as I got to my feet.

  “So it’s beyond the wall you want to go?”

  I nodded once. “Beyond this one anyway.”

  She sighed. “And I can’t convince you otherwise? To stay in this blissful paradise?”

  I shook my head. “Not a chance.”

  “Very well. You better be prepared though. What’s on the other side of this wall is not as friendly as I am.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “The words uttered by so many men moments before their demise. So my sisters would say.”

  She gestured with her hand and the brambles began unraveling, parting and creating a doorway.

  She walked toward it, and I noticed her legs were now in the shape of a human’s, the last of the roots forming tightly together. So tightly that it looked like flesh.

  Her skin still looked vaguely wooden, but her shape was all woman now.

  And she was still very naked.

  She paused at the door, turning her torso, one leg bent at the knee, the side of her breasts presented to me, as well as her full bottom.

  Seeing her like that, I almost did stay, I almost did take her again. And again. And again.

  “Your enchantments won’t work on me,” I said, and approached the door.

  “I had to try,” she said, following behind me, and closing up the door to her little slice of paradise.

  6

  If what we’d left behind was paradise, then what we entered into was its opposite.

  It was darker here, colder, though not yet cold enough to be worrying.

  The trees were twisted and gnarled, and most looked dead or dying. Like it truly was a blight coming for what lay beyond the Wall.

  And this was only the band of yellow. How much worse would it be when we reached the one of black?

  The ground was swampy, and the smell—bloody gods, the smell was not at all pleasant.

  Sienna came beside me, rested her head against my shoulder, her antlers shifting and moving out of the way as she did. “I told you.”

  “Yes you did. Come, we head north.” I oriented myself and headed in that direction.

  “North?” she asked, padding after me. “What’s north?”

  “Silaris.” For though she was no mage, her limitless power would be enough for me to defeat Orathar with. But we still needed supplies for the journey ahead: food, horses.

  Clothes.

  “Is that a city?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s so important there that you are willing to brave this awful place?”

  “It’s not Silaris I’m ultimately headed for. That’s just a place to stop and gather supplies.”

  “Like clothes?” she asked with a grin. Her intuiti
on was strong. “My sisters said humans are fond of covering themselves in dead plants and animals.”

  I chuckled. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “I prefer living things.”

  “I bet.”

  “So where then are you ultimately headed?”

  “A place very far north. Este.”

  She grabbed my arm, stopping me so that I faced her. “You’re going to the city of Este?” Her eyes were wide in horror, and her skin had gone dark and hard.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It’s where my sisters were taken.”

  “Your sisters?”

  She nodded. “They wanted our power to control nature, so we were kidnapped. They were kidnapped. I survived behind the wall, which Serafina, my oldest sister, created.

  “I’m the youngest, and so they tried to save me.

  “They didn’t realize leaving me here all alone was a worse punishment than whatever the priests could deal out.”

  “The priests. Do you mean the Order of Priests?”

  “I think so.”

  “Looks like we have some things in common.”

  “Do you… do you think they’re alive still?”

  “How long ago were they taken?” I had never heard of the Order entering these woods, but after Orathar’s betrayal, I’d learned not to be fooled into thinking I knew everything they were up to.

  She looked down at her now human-looking feet. “Um… a time ago. I don’t know.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry. If they’re still there, we’ll get them. We’ll save them.”

  “Really?” Her eyes were wide and hopeful.

  “I promise.”

  She hugged me.

  I hugged her back, again breathing in her sweet scent. My heart sped with the contact of her warm, soft flesh against mine. It had been so long since I’d touched anyone before today. I hadn’t even noticed.

  Unexpectedly, my eyes started to burn, but I tamped down the feelings welling up in me.

  I pulled away, but Sienna was reluctant to break our embrace.

  “Okay,” I laughed. “Come on. Don’t want to spend all day here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said sweetly. “We could have some fun.”

  “Let’s go you, before I lose control.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  7

  But I didn’t give in, and we moved onward, through the swampy woods.

  I felt better now that I had Sienna to pull from if I needed to, but I was still wildly out of practice, and wasn’t even that practiced to begin with.

  And it likely wasn’t just for protection from the Order of Priests that Sienna’s sisters had walled her off in that part of the woods.

  There were many beasts to be found here, many nightmare creatures, and it was getting close to dark.

  And even in the day, this part of the woods didn’t look inviting, not to my human eyes.

  Some trees had fruit, but what didn’t look rotten or desiccated was strangely colored and shaped. I was willing to bet were I to eat any, I’d regret it.

  Most everything here was just a little off. The colors faded, the light less bright, the small streams we passed by cloudy rather than clear.

  Scattered here and there, as evidence of the more sinister inhabitants, were the corpses of small creatures.

  Many of these were likewise rotten or desiccated.

  But if they smelled of rot, it was masked by the general malodor of this place.

  I was stepping over a small pile of what might have been the husks of dried-up rats when slow movement caught my eye and I nearly stumbled.

  I kept my feet and came to a stop just a few paces away from the large creature passing in front of us. It was moving so slow I hadn’t heard or seen it until it was impossible to miss.

  Sienna screamed, then laughed when she realized what it was.

  We stood there, staring at the giant tortoise as it made its slow way across our path and toward a collapsed tree.

  “I guess it’s not all monsters,” Sienna said.

  “Or maybe it will eat you if you get too close.” I snapped my hand at her, nipping at the flesh over her hips and stomach.

  She giggled and her skin hardened, turning wood-like.

  “Cheater.”

  She threw her arms around my neck and stood on her toes, one leg lifted, as she kissed me.

  “Mmm,” she moaned, as our tongues danced.

  I relished the kiss, and the proximity. Her sweet scent masked the stench of this place, and I let myself get lost in it.

  I only finally forced myself to pull away when I felt my hardness between her legs, felt her wetness, and realized if I didn’t stop now, I wouldn’t stop at all.

  She looked as dazed as I felt, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused. “Don’t stop,” she begged, blinking her eyes slowly, her hand reaching for my hardness.

  I intercepted it before she could pull me in. “It’s almost dark.”

  Her eyes sprung wide, and she looked around frantically.

  Then her hand shifted, turning to roots, and suddenly she was the one gripping my hand.

  She yanked me forward as she started running, the slow tortoise pulling its head into its shell as we passed, still having not made it to the collapsed tree it seemed headed for.

  Small rocks poked my feet as I was pulled forward, the little jolts of pain reminding me how unaccustomed they were to being unshod.

  Sienna had no such trouble, and was moving so fast it was all I could do to keep my legs pumping and not crash to the ground.

  She looked back. “Come, hurry. Night falls. We mustn’t be inside when it does.”

  “I can’t run as fast as you,” I gasped. I was never a slow runner, but Sienna was inhuman.

  “Would you like me to carry you?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was serious, but I answered as if she were. “No. You’re not carrying me.”

  “Suit yourself. But if we don’t hurry…”

  She didn’t finish her sentence, and instead picked up even more speed.

  Gods be, she was fast.

  “We’re not going—” I began, then had to take several ragged breaths. “To make it.”

  I knew from looking out over these woods from my keep that the band of green was the smallest, yellow the widest. The black band was not quite as wide as yellow, but nearly.

  And we were still in yellow.

  Not even the worst part.

  In tales of the horrors of the cursed woods, it was always that band of black which held the true monsters, in which the disobedient children would get eaten by the roaming monsters.

  Dark was descending upon us, and this place, with its dying trees and spoiled fruit, was no place to spend the night. But better to stop here in the yellow band and wait for morning, because to do so in the black would be death.

  I doubted very much I could talk my way out of being eaten by the monsters which dwelt there.

  “Should’ve waited,” Sienna said, her voice tremulous. “I shouldn’t have given in so easy to you wanting to leave. I’m so stupid!”

  I dug my heels in and was dragged for several feet before she finally stopped.

  “We need—”

  I hugged her to me, silencing her protest, our naked flesh pressing together; the feeling of it, of her, making me never want to let go. “It’s not your fault. Nothing you could have said would have made me stay. Let’s be quiet, and careful, and find somewhere safe to rest.”

  I felt her nod against me. “Okay. I trust you.”

  We continued on, though no longer running. It wouldn’t do any good, only tire me out and make it harder to hear anything approaching us.

  As the last dim rays of sun disappeared from the treetops, the forest came alive with sounds.

  Rustlings, snorts, growls, and scuffles. The high-pitched shrieks of small creatures that hadn’t made it back to their holes and burrows in time. Who when growing
up hadn’t heard the warning tales of monsters that I had, who’d stayed out foraging just too long, and now were paying the price.

  And in the distance, a howl. It seemed plaintive rather than threatening. Lonely.

  We kept our pace steady, looking for somewhere to wait out the dark. Some fallen tree to hide under or inside, like the tortoise had been heading for.

  The soundscape of these cursed woods was ever-present and filled with little horrors, but soon we began to hear other sounds. Snarling, thrashing. The breaking of branches.

  Not the kind of noises made by small creatures, nor even those that preyed on them.

  No, this was something larger.

  And whatever was making them was growing closer.

  It was coming for us.

  8

  We tried to run, to avoid what was coming for us, but it was too late, and a moment later a large blur crashed down in front of us, breaking a dead but rather thick tree in half.

  It wasn’t one monster, but two.

  They were fighting. They clawed and bit at each other, and I took Sienna by the arm to pull her away from here. Maybe if we were lucky they would kill each other, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. If one survived, it might decide we were next.

  And that would be bad, no matter which emerged the victor. One looked to be a lycanthrope. The other was a monster I was unfamiliar with. It looked like a ghoul, but it was too large to be that, larger than the lycanthrope.

  Sienna stopped me as I tried to pull her away. “Wait. We should help.”

  “What? Help them kill each other?” I pulled on her arm again, but she stood firm, her feet turning to roots and planting her in the spot.

  “The lycanthrope needs our help. She’s losing.”

  I squinted at the fight. “She? How can you tell? And how do you know she’s losing or that she needs our help?”

  “The trees tell me. Some still live. They’re in pain. But I can’t help them.” She turned from the fight and looked me in my eyes. “But I can help her.”

  There was a yelp and I turned to see the giant ghoul stand above the lycanthrope—who now lay motionless on the forest floor—and let out a hideous but triumphant bellow.

  Then it looked at me, its sickly black eyes locking onto mine, then flicking to Sienna.