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Emerald Forest

By: bobsamade



Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away...

The kingdom of Griffinhead was a calm and beautiful land. Placed on the other side of the Fireridge Mountains, it was fairly safe from attack by opposing forces, and indeed the few who had approached from the coast soon learned there was nothing much of strategic value.

Griffinhead offered no great strides in weapon advancement, no tactical advantage in its location, and its troops were... well, below par.

The subjects of the kingdom were instead quite content to get on with their daily lives without any intervention from neighbouring kingdoms, thank you very much.

That changed when a strange presence arrived at the Emerald Forest. 

The Emerald Forest itself was a picture of tranquility – or used to be. Hundreds of acres long, it circled around Gravemont Castle – a fort that had been abandoned for as far back as Griffinhead's scholars could trace.

One night however, soldiers on Griffinhead Castle's ramparts noticed lights coming from the windows of Gravemont for the first time in centuries.

That's when things changed. People strolling through the forest went missing, others who came back reported seeing sick perversions so twisted they were offered priority consultations with local monks.

Mages reported an abundance of magical energy flowing through the forest itself, though those that examined for too long through scrying or other techniques were seen to slowly lose their mind.

It had reached the stage where secret plans were being drawn up by Griffinhead's ruler, King Wynn, on whether the time had come to abandon the kingdom, or stage one last stand...

*****

Fred Boggins strode defiantly into the forest, sword in hand, and brimming with courage.

He'd despatched the hounds that guarded its borders with relative ease and now, as he continued uninterrupted, he noticed a disturbing lack of ease with which he was able to make his away deeper into the woodland.

Despite what he'd been led to believe, inside the forest it was quite peaceful. Sun shone down through the branches above, creating a speckled carpet of glowing turf at his feet. In the distance a stream ran with a steady current, its flowing sounds trickling into his ears.
Birds tweeted – though as was to be expected, their birdsong was mildly unfamiliar. At first it seemed natural enough but, if listened to carefully, it sounded almost off-key.

Perhaps that was what caught visitors to the forest – the deceptively familiar, rather than the familiar deceptions. Indeed, as he strolled through the tranquil environment, he felt he could simply turn round and walk back home, if he wished.

But it wouldn't be that easy, of course, or hundreds of other squires, knights and mercenaries would already have returned.

In the distance, he spied a young girl, apparently just past adulthood, humming to herself as she scooped down to pick berries from a plant. She was wearing only a pair of sandals on her feet and a silky white, translucent gown as she loaded the fruits into a wicker basket.

'By the gods, what on earth is she doing?!' Boggins thought frantically. 'She could be killed out here in this forest, and I'll wager those berries yield a poison most lethal!'

"Young lady?" he called out to her. "Young lady? Please, it is not safe here. Let me escort you from the forest, while still the sun stands."

The girl looked up at him, as if caught in the midst of a secret act, turned and skipped away. It was neither fearful nor hasty, but nor was it playful.

"Young lady!" Boggins called as he gave chase, following the heels of her feet and the flowing tail of her gown, which lapped at the air behind her.

"Wait, please!"

The girl slipped out of view as she darted behind a tree, and Boggins sprinted to catch up. As he reached the trunk where he last saw her, a floating waft of white material in the distance gave away her new position.

As the two played cat and mouse, he inevitably lost track of her as she grew ever further away. Boggins was determined not to lose another soul to the cursed void of greenery, however, and continued onwards, hoping the girl may have grown tired and stopped to rest.

As he pressed onwards, the light above dimmed as the rooftop cover thickened, and the exertion of the chase suddenly caught up with him. Boggins was by no means unfit, but he had tried to chase a fair maiden while kitted out in full armour, while carrying a steel sword. 

Still, he couldn't stop now. If something had found that girl, or if she had eaten those berries...

"Ugh..." he groaned. It was becoming an effort to stand, and his eyes were growing heavy, while the fog of mental fatigue settled in his mind.

He sat down to catch his breath, and in doing so, felt the full toll just a brief chase had exerted on him.

Perhaps just a quick nap, he thought, to restore my strength. But by the time the thought had even formed in his head, he was lying on his side on the soft grass beneath him, before collapsing on his back and drifting into a peaceful slumber.

The last thing he saw before falling into comforting oblivion was the branches overhead blowing in the wind and curving in around him, as if to protect him from the outside world...


***

When Fred awoke, he was surprised to find himself no longer in the forest. Instead, he was inside the surprisingly palatial setting of what looked to be a bedroom of some form.

Stone walls surrounded him, but no windows gave view to the outside. Instead, soft, amber sunlight filtered in through the ceiling which, as he gazed up at it, was obscured by a thin veil.

There was no bed as such in the room – instead he was lying on a pile of deeply luxurious scatter cushions, which gave way around his body, allowing him to sink deeply into them.

As Fred heaved himself into an upright position, he was further taken aback to find he was naked, the temperature in the room warm enough that he had never even felt a draught.

He was also not alone. Four maidens were dabbing at him with wet pieces of gauze. As he observed the motion of their hands, he realised some foul beasty must have attacked him in his sleep, for he had received several cuts across his body.

As the girls tending to him pressed the wet cloth to his wounds, it left a tingling sensation behind. It was not a painful one, like some of the antiseptics he had used in previous scraps, and actually felt quite pleasant.

Fred lay back in the cushions and let them continue, thinking it best to let them continue uninterrupted. Although they were in turn looking at him with friendly smiles since he woke, not one of these nursing nymphs had kept his gaze or tried to engage him in conversation.

And what nymphs they were! Such smooth, peachy skin. Such lovely faces, and lush hair – two blondes, a brunette and a delightful redhead made the set. Their thighs slender and creamy, their rumps dainty and tight, yet possessing exquisite curves.
And such bountiful bosoms for women their age! All of which hung above such slim tums.

It was not Fred's fault he admired them so – for they wore not a yard of fabric between them. Instead their modesty was covered by nought but a light chiffon set of lingerie that reached from their backs to their cleavage and drifted with their movement, as if caught on snags in the air.

At their waist, another yarn of the fabric was secured, and though hard to see completely through the fabric, Fred very much doubted any further modesty-saving measures lay beneath.

As the luscious set of maids pressed in the tingling oil, Fred felt something stir, unbidden, at his waist.
He had spent far too long getting caught in lustful thoughts about these young maidens, and he was about to embarrass them and shame himself terribly.

As he rose to full potency, the redhead now dabbing at a scrape on his thigh caught sight of the burgeoning sign of desire and her eyes widened.

The girl reached for a nearby bottle of clear liquid, pressed the rag to the top and tilted some of the contents onto it. After putting the bottle aside once more, she leaned forward, and hesitated before wrapping her hand and the rag around his member.
She squeezed it gently and warm oil seeped out, trickling slowly down the shaft. Fred gasped as the clear liquid spread a gentle flush across his manhood, and couldn't help but arch his hips at the sensation.

The girl smiled encouragingly back at him, while the remaining three stirred at the motion. They discarded their cloths and instead pressed their palms to his flesh, their hands exploring his body while they planted light kisses across it.

The redhead pulled the rag away with her spare hand and continued a pumping motion on Fred's delighted member with her fist. As she pumped away, all the while maintaining eye contact with that very innocent smile of hers, one of the blondes leaned over to kiss him on the lips.

It was a slow, relaxed kiss and, supported by the bed of scatter cushions beneath him, Fred was able to take his time with it, as he slowly explored her mouth.

What was causing difficulty however, was trying to keep his shaft under control. The oil had made it hot and sensitive and the redhead's slow but constant squeezing was sending it ever closer to unavoidably tipping over the edge.

At last, as pressure built and its head felt like it may burst, a rocket of creamy semen shot from the tip hitting the girl square in the face.

Unable to avoid the first jet, the redhead nevertheless opened her mouth, using it to catch the rest of the volume.

The brunette and remaining blonde – who had both gone somewhat unnoticed until now – leaned up and embraced the redhead at each side, pressing their lips to her cheek, before licking stands of the fluid off, and finishing in a second, lighter kiss. 

Their eagerness surprised Fred, but for now he sighed in satisfied pleasure and, as he leaned back to sink in to the cushions beneath him once more, the first blonde moved behind him, to catch his head in her lap as it fell.
She absently stroked his hair as he lay back and relaxed.

When the post-orgasmic haze lifted slightly, Fred came to with a start.
"My brother!" he cried. "Marcus!"

He looked at the girls currently comforting him.

"My-my brother! Have you seen my brother? He looks just like me!"

The girls looked at him blankly, mild confusion setting in across their faces.

"Er, do you speak English?"

Still no response. Though the blonde at his waist leaned over to the brunette and whispered in her ear. She nodded and swiftly left the room.

"Er, what's she...?" began Fred, perplexedly.

But in moments she returned, carrying a letter. She handed it to Fred, who ripped it out of its flaky red seal with breathless urgency. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Marcus's familiar handwriting.

Dear Fred, 

I write to let you know that I am well and to give you instruction. I was not halfway through the forest when I was captured and attacked by forces unseen.

I woke later to find myself here, in the castle. Yes, I am afraid to say we are currently inside Gravemont Castle itself. But fear not, there are truly some skilled wizards at work here who have shielded the eastern wing from view of the force possessing it.

I believe them to be rebels from some distant land, both the wizards and the handmaidens I understand are caring for you now. The maidens seem very enamoured with men from our culture, and wish only to please us, I am told. Do not feel that to ask anything of them would to be abuse them – indeed, the idea seemed to sit very favourably with those who serviced me.

Please know that I am safe, and so too is a girl they brought in who was exploring the forest by herself. I do not know why she would do such a thing, but I understand she saw you following her and misunderstood your caring nature for that of an attacker. 

The wizard elders here have given me a cloak of invisibility to return home – their only one, and their most preciously guarded secret – so I may summon reinforcements from neighbouring kingdoms. I was long under the impression such garments have no effect in the forest, but they are truly an advanced race of healers, so I don't doubt its potency. Truly, there is more at stake here than you know.

You must remain here until I return however. Such is their prowess with salves and ointments that your wounds should heal very quickly, but to leave the eastern wing in its current condition would be madness befitting a rabid dog.

Please stay and I shall see you soon brother.

Salutations of Bismarck,

Marcus

Fred read in stunned silence. This sounded important, and if there was one thing he had learned throughout his life, it was that important stuff be left to Marcus. Furthermore, Marcus had signed off with the fictional 'salutations of Bismarck', a running tradition between the two brothers, which was a sign he was neither coerced nor forced into writing the letter.

Fred's sword, clothing and armour, he saw for the first time, lay in a neat pile at the corner of the room, making it easy to collect if needed.

He put the letter to one side and sank back into the blonde's lap, while she returned to playing with his hair.
The brunette took her turn now, as she sank down to his crotch, lapping at his shaft, before engulfing it the warmth of her mouth. Fred sighed as he relaxed into the new stimulation, while the other blonde – who seemed to have vanished earlier – returned to his side with a bunch of candied grapes, which she lowered, one by one into his mouth.

He sighed as he swallowed the first few fruits and bucked his hips at the blonde's mouth.
Truly, he thought, there were worse ways to wait for news...

***

Octavius Jones stormed through the enchanted forest, cursing under his breath.

"The fool!" he muttered. "The naïve, impatient, imbecilic fool!"

Through the trees, a leathery bat-like creature with a gaping, toothless maw where it stomach should be flew for the old man's crotch. With an irritable wave of his oak staff, a plume of searing red thunder erupted forth and struck down the beasty before it could get within a yard of the wizard.

"Didn't listen to a word the townsfolk said, and gets captured by a Crotch Cocoon of all things!"

The wizard stopped, hit the ground with the base of his staff, and a wave of light rippled outwards in a circular, tidal wave of optics. As it spread, an ominous sea of blue mist materialised before him.

It hung, heavily, in the air. Though it had always been there, it took a potent spell of detection to make it anything less than completely imperceptible to the human senses.

Instead, the first some hapless fool would notice was mild fatigue soon followed by a strong sense of tiredness as the insidious mist worked its way into their body, coaxing them into a welcome slumber. So effective was the fiendish vapour, that its victim would even lie down and drift off, confident that it was their decision to do so.

Octavius wrapped a bubble-like forcefield around it and pulled it tight, into a concentrated blue sphere. He then cast another, second, forcefield on the ground, spreading it out like a sheet, to prevent more from rising up into the air. It bubbled angrily beneath the forcefield, upset at being denied its time above ground.

As he set forward, he braced for the second wave. Sure enough, a frantic rustling came from the distance, and as he cast a protective shield over himself, a hundred furious vines whipped and coiled harmlessly around it, trying to pin down the spellcaster within.
With a flick of his staff, a jet of flame issued forth, punctured the shield and reduced the vines to cinders before his very eyes.

Finally, he was clear to make his way to the cocoon itself.

'Cocoon' was probably a bit of misnomer actually – what he was really dealing with was a near-sentient plant, with several vegetative pod-like chambers attached.

Unfortunately, the plant itself was underground, and from the surface, it looked simply like a mound of earth... until the entrance opened. Few had ever seen the entrance open, as it meant the plant was either in its capture or 'swallowing' phase. The two were very different things.

In essence, the attack phase was thus: the subject would walk through the woods oblivious, until he stumbled into the sleeping mist produced by the plant's respiration.
Once unconscious, vines would emerge from hidden orifices and undress the prey, before securing them and carrying them to the plant's entrance. The plant would then belch forth a green, fleshy pod from its insides, and the vines would place the victim inside, before the pod sealed them in.

After that, various vegetative organs would connect to the victim – some providing sustenance, some smothering his senses to prevent him from ever waking and one... one would fasten round his cock, and begin to suck...

Because the plant seemed to somehow be able to form some sort of psychic hold over its victim, it could subject them to the most delightful dreams, bring them to utter fulfilment and persuade them that, not at any point – not ever – would they need to leave the scenario offered to them.

They would lie in the cocoon for a day or two, while it completely acclimatised them to their new condition. Once that was done, the maw would open, and they would be inescapably pulled inside by the large vine at the base of the cocoon, sealing their fate.

One researcher had stuck his head inside, to view the interior and described a large, smooth pit, a hundred feet deep, with walls that glistened with moist juices, making them impossible to ascend.

Even if the victims inside could somehow escape their cocoons, they weren't getting out of the plant.

And what was the point of this unusual plant's mechanism? Growth. Not reproduction, just growth. This particular genus of demonic summons could not sire offspring. It could however, increase its mass, using the right kind of 'food'.

The underground cavern was growing, no doubt about it, expanding its underground domain and producing more pods each day. This was because the prey were stimulated, endlessly, into shooting orgasm after orgasm into the spongy, parasitic vegetation at their waist.

The plant also leeched nutrients from the surrounding earth, and could somehow concoct its predatory sleeping mist from them, but there was no doubt that its main food was semen, and its food supply grew permanently with every new soul it snared.

Only a couple of people had been rescued from the cocoons, but very occasionally, the plant would release some of its prey. Soon after, they would come down with illnesses ranging from a simple cold to syphilis, indicating the plant was able to discriminate between healthy and infected 'food'.
By the time it had worked that out however, it had been two whole days, and once free, the 'prey' would spend the rest of their days trying to get back to the cocoon, so they could be captured once more.

As Octavius reached the cocoon, he sighed when he saw the languishing twitches of the sac, which wriggled and contracted independently, as if it was squeezing the semen out of a sponge. He reached into his robes, pulled out an athame and used it to cut open the green pod.

Inside, Fred Boggins lay covered in a green, mossy trellis, while a spongy feeding tube was pulsing slowly into his mouth, and more vegetation was wrapped round his eyes and ears. A thick tube was pumping away at a rate of knots at his waist, and, even as Octavius watched in disgust, the young man seized up as he gave more of himself to the overgrown plant.

With a wrench, Octavius pulled off the feeding tube, followed by the organ that blocked Boggins' vision and sound.

Boggins groaned and woke with a start.


Emerald Forest Ch. 02



****WOW. Biggest delay ever. Major apologies for that, but life has a way of getting in the, uh... way.****



"What the hell happened back there?" Boggins asked as the pair continued their trek through the Emerald Forest.

The young adventurer had been playing back recent events in his mind, and was drawing a blank right after the point where he had sunk beneath a swamp with two comely, yet literally filthy, lovelies.

"I have a bit of a... blank spot between being captured and waking up naked with you looking over me like a shamed father."

"Shamed is the word all right," muttered Octavius.

"You were captured by a prodigium phage, and it would have damn nearly caught me if I hadn't reacted as quickly as I did."

"A prodigium uh... what...?" Boggins looked perplexed.

"Prodigium phage. It's a demonic entity that sustains itself from the building blocks of matter that constitutes living races," the wizard offered helpfully.

It didn't help.

Octavius sighed.

"It can't procreate, so instead it needs to absorb the material necessary to grow new life, and what type of fluid do you think carries that material...?"

Boggins looked lost in thought, before the realisation hit him and he thought the urge to gag.

"...yes... all starting to make sense now, isn't it?"

Boggins looked confused as his brain struggled to get a handle on the new information.

"After I... went under... all I can remember is..."

Ecstasy, really. That's what he wanted to say. The feeling was as if he had been wrapped up in the snuggest blanket, only that blanket was made of pure, sexual delirium.

Outside of that, he really wasn't aware of anything else going on, and at the time, that hadn't bothered him in the slightest.

"You're saying I was inside a demon the whole time?"

"Don't be embarrassed, son," Octavius said, comfortingly.

"You weren't the only person in there, as you know, and once you're in the grip of a prodigium phage, you'll get a whole host of mind-altering chemicals rubbed into your flesh.

"With all the aphrodisiacs and the cocktails for creating sexual fluids that thing carries, it's really no surprise some of them cause mental blocks in its victims."

Victims. Plural. Octavius remembered the other poor souls, trapped in there for how long. An eternity? Until they were digested?

"We'll rescue the others," Octavius said.

"As soon as we fix this, we'll rescue them. They won't be harmed while they're in there – and some of them will have been in there for years, trust me.

"Hang on a minute," Boggins interrupted.

"You said it would be no good, that they were beyond help..."

Octavius sighed.

"I'm sorry, son. The fact is I needed to get us out of there before the next beastie came along. You were obviously intending to stay and I needed to get us moving.

"The thing about the phage is that it's in its interests to keep its prey alive for as long as possible, to eke out as much... food from them as it can.

"With the havoc that wreaks on the human mind, they will barely be aware of what has happened once retrieved, much less traumatised.

"It may not be dignified, but it will be a safe haven for them until we find your brother..."

The end of the sentence he spoke nearly under his breath.

"...and restore the forest."

"I'm sorry, what? Restore the forest?" said Boggins, to whom the last part of the sentence had not escaped attention.

"It seems the logical thing to do," the wizard responded casually.

"I'm getting on – I don't have many more years left in me, but the thing about magic is it only gets more powerful with age. My ability is more potent now than ever before.

"Meanwhile, you are young and strong – if a little naïve about the nature of the enchantments permeating this forest – while Anna is a skilled healer.

"If we can find her and your brother, a skilled fighter by any measure, then I actually think we stand a good chance of driving back this corruption once and for all."

Boggins was sceptical at best.

"How did you come to that conclusion?"

Octavius looked triumphant as he answered, as well as a little bit smug with himself.

"Ah... well, the reason no-one's been successful, I believe, is that they've been too focused on one form of combat.

"We've had small garrisons go in and lose every single man. Mage collectives have vanished without trace, but have we ever had a single party of mixed ability tackle it in a single assault?"

The thought hadn't crossed Boggins' mind before, but as he stopped to dwell on Octavius' words, he realised the old wizard had a point.

"That's... kind of true, I suppose..."

"Indeed," the elder man continued.

"What's important to know, as I have learned over the years, is that different threats in this forest must be approached in different ways.

"You saw yourself how weapons were no match for the prodigium phage, but I know there are many magically driven threats in the forest that my spells would simply bounce right off.

"And should we both be stricken by the taint of these creatures, that would be the end of us – unless we had someone skilled in the use of tinctures and tonics to clear our minds and bodies."

Boggins could see the logic, but one thing bothered him.

"Octavius?"

"Hm?"

"How is it you know so much about the forest? If people can't last without a diverse set of back-up, how have you learned so much?"

Octavius' face softened at the question.

"It's a fair question. I've known several people involved in expeditions to try and learn more about the new realities of this forest.

"They passed on what they learned each time they came back from brief trips – that was the trick, to keep them brief.

"But they could never leave well enough alone... And without fail, every single one of them... vanished.

"One day my last contact left for his umpteenth 'research trip' and... never came back..."

Boggins frowned. He hadn't meant to bring up such a delicate subject with the wizard.

"I'm sorry Octavius, I didn't..."

He was interrupted by a glowing from the tip of Octavius' staff, accompanied by a pulsing hum. The wizard practically leapt at the sight of it.

"It's Anna!" he enthused.

"She must be nearby. Follow me!"

Together the two followed Octavius' staff, with the mage gently pulled by the magic pulsing at its tip.

They arrived to find the mage's young apprentice lying on what looked like a gigantic, translucent cushion. The object was gelatinous and completely round, save for the indentation Anna had created by lying in it like it was an oversized armchair.

Octavius wasn't at all worried by the sight – the object was what was colloquially known as a jelly drop. They had arrived in the forest at the time of the enchantment and remained ever since. It was hard to tell if they were residue from a larger being, or even sentient life themselves.

Whatever the case, jelly drops were completely immobile and there had never been any reports of anyone being attacked by them.

As Anna was demonstrating, they did however make for extremely comfortable recliners, giving the user a sensation of sinking into super-condensed treacle, with a snug sensation at one's sides as the jelly pressed against you.

However, Octavius was far more concerned by Anna herself. His apprentice had her robe wide apart and was frantically playing with her sex with one hand while reaching into the folds of her robe with the other.

Panting, she produced a vial of pink liquid and extended it towards her crotch...

"No!" Octavius yelled, flinging his staff forward to project an invisible wave that sent the vial flying into the air.

Anna shuddered with a start, though her movement was hindered by the gentle hold of the jelly drop.

"O-Octavius...? H-help me..."

"What are ye doin' blasted girl? Was that Little Death poison you were holding?"

"S' not my fault," she gasped. "Got caught by a-a limpet trap... it got its... juices on me..."

Octavius rolled his eyes and wandered over to the girl.

"It's just as well one of us has got some sense," he murmured. "That vial coulda' killed ya."

He stamped his staff into the ground once more and closed his eyes. He touched his fingers to Anna's forehead and, as he did so, a glowing white light coalesced at the tip of the staff.

It flowed down the wood into his hand, along his arm, across his chest and down his other arm before settling in Anna's forehead.

Then, with one last flash, it was gone.

Anna blinked and looked round. Folding her robe back across her body once more, she pulled herself out of the jelly drop.

"I've dissolved the toxin," Octavius said. "It shouldn't be bothering you any more."

"Yes... thank you..." said Anna, eyes fixed on the floor. "I'm sorry, Octavius, but that poison had addled my mind. Nothing I did seemed to satisfy my... uh... needs... and it seemed the Little Death compound was the only thing capable of tipping me over the edge."

"Well, er, don' worry 'bout it," mumbled Octavius, cheeks red and eyes roving anywhere that wasn't looking at Anna.

"But I think this is a lesson... that you need to exercise more self-control."

"Yes, master, of course," Anna answered quickly, glad to be back in the formalities of teacher and student.

"Where do we go from here?"

"Well, Octavius here thinks we should team up and take down the source of the enchantment," said Fred, derisively.

"He thinks we should dispel an enchantment that's covered an entire forest for decades, just because he thinks he won't be around much longer."

Anna looked at the wizard, who was staring off into the distance. At a glance, an onlooker could be forgiven for thinking it was steely determination on his face, but Anna knew he was just having a huff.

"Well, much as I hate to say it, I think we don't have much option but to press on – for the time being at least.

"Back the way I came there are limpet traps to worry about, and I nearly got taken out by a roller.

"And from the looks of you two, I can assume your passage wasn't any less eventful?"

"I would... rather not offend your delicate sensibilities, my lady," Boggins muttered, earning a contemptuous snort from Octavius.

"Where should we go from here?" he asked, keen to change the subject.

"Well, in my blind rush away from the limpet trap, I did pass a cave entrance a few dozen feet back," offered Anna.

"I did consider taking refuge while waiting for the creature's toxin to wear off, but thought better of it.

"But if all three of us were to venture that way together, we should be able to protect each other."

"You may have a point," interjected Octavius, who seemed to have rejoined the conversation.

"There are vast labyrinths of underground caverns beneath the Emerald Forest. It should be very simple to advance once we get beneath ground."

Anna nodded.

"Come," she said. 

"I'll show you the way."

The young apprentice pulled herself out of the jelly drop and led the group back the way she came.

Behind them, a pink cloud was spreading throughout the jelly drop. The vial of little death poison, so carelessly discarded by Octavius' spell, had seeped into the jelly drop itself and was painting the entire blob a fuchsia coloured tint.

The jelly drop quivered, and gurgled, sending a stream off bubbles through its being. It then rocked gently back and forth, before building a momentum and rolling, silently, along the grass of the forest.

****

Inside the caverns, it was dark, cold and dank. It seemed like a couple of hundred feet of dark, cold and dank, with only the glowing tip of Octavius' staff to guide them.

Luckily, they had only been following a single corridor through the caverns, and the advantage of a fixed route meant it was impossible to get lost.

At least, it did until the corridor opened up to show a wide cavern with a base more akin to an arena than a grotto.

An arena in which hundreds of holes dotted the walls, like a bee hive hewn in stone.

Octavius dimmed his wand, with plenty of light provided in the room courtesy of glowing, hazy orbs clinging to the ceiling.

"What's causing that?" Boggins wondered aloud.

"Magic?"

"Not quite," Octavius answered.

"They're will o' the wisps. They're quite harmless, but they are drawn to darker areas, like osmosis. Which makes them very useful for explorers like us."

"What are they?" asked Boggins.

"Don't know. I've heard people say they're the souls of long-dead travellers. Others have said they're all that remains of a dead demon when the flesh rots away.

"All I know is.... Oh no..." 

Octavius stopped mid-stride and the party slowed to a halt.

"What is it?" asked Boggins, as his suit of armour clunked back into a heavy stop.

"Don't... look up."

As if by reflex, Boggins swung his head upwards. On the ceiling of the cave, far off into the distance, hundreds of red shapes were swarming above them.

"What are they?" he asked in wonder.

"Lust sprites. Insidious things, they are."

"Are they dangerous?"

"Perhaps not at first. I know many a man who has enjoyed time between their thighs..."

Anna blushed and turned her back. Boggins simply grinned.

"Well, what's the problem then? If we've got time, I'd like to say hello..."

"Because, idiot, they're lust demons. A human's libido is putty in their hands. The longer one spends in their presence, the more they can twist and shape his mind to their bidding.

"And because they're spawned from those."

He pointed ahead.

Octavius has brought them to a stop at a ridge overlooking a large cavern. The only way ahead Boggins could see was to follow the ridge as it descended down into the cavern itself.

The only problem was the large obstacle blocking their way – a very large, very mean-looking demon in the centre of the cavern floor.

The torso at least was almost that of a human man – an unnaturally strong man, granted, as his arms were muscular tree trunks of sinew, while his torso looked as hard and as sculpted as the iron on Boggins' breastplate.

The demon's head was bald, and his face masculine. The only thing that gave it away as inhuman was that his eyes shone a featureless white with no other discernible detail, while two small, cracked black horns protruded from his temples.

Beneath the demon's waist however, the shape was anything but human. A shifting mass of fleshy tentacles, it continuously coiled and shifted, as if constantly trying to find a comfortable resting position.

The overall impression was extremely intimidating.

"What do we do?" Boggins asked, his voice quavering with fear.

"D-do we fight it?"

"No, lad. Overlord demons have a profound hatred for males of any species. We'd not be within metres of it before it would rip us to shreds and feed us our severed limbs before we expire.

"Anything but the strongest offensive magic would do nought but anger the demon, and your sword would bounce right off it.

"No, we need to distract it."

"And how do we do that?" asked Boggins. "Because honestly, I've never been a natural runner."

Octavius turned to look at Anna.

"Oh no!" she cried.

"No, I've been through enough already! What on earth next? You want to offer me to this demon as food?"

"Calm down, my dear," Octavius said soothingly. 

"Overlord demons only harm males. They do so because they see them as competition.

"But what they really take pleasure from is women, especially humans. They see them as delicate toys that they can control.

"All you need to do is go down there and... distract him.

"We can sneak past while his attentions are... diverted, and when we're clear, I'll blast him with a spell of destruction.

"It won't harm him, but it should stun him long enough for you to get clear."

"Should?" Anna retorted bitterly. "And don't think I don't know what you mean by 'distract', you know.

"No, I won't do it."

Octavius held her arm in a gentle grip.

"Anna, please," he said, his voice softening.

"I know you don't want to do this, but we don't have many options. It's either surrender to the beasties that have already attacked us; stay here and surrender to the lust sprites or take a chance with the overlord demon.

"I promise, we'll be ready so you're not held a second longer than necessary."

Anna sighed, and looked at the floor dejectedly.

"Is there anything I need to... you know... prepare myself?"

Octavius shook his head.

"I'm afraid not. You need to understand that once you're within the vicinity of the overlord demon, you'll start to find it very hard to concentrate - it gives off an aura of magic that mentally dominates anyone caught in its radius.

"But don't worry about that. Just go to him, we'll make our way down when he's distracted, nip round the back and set you free."

He paused thoughtfully.

"And pull you off him if we need to."

Anna frowned, before kicking at the stone floor.

"Alright, fine. I'll do it."

She took a couple of steps away from the two men, before turning to look back at them.

"And if this doesn't work, I'll come back to haunt you."

***

After the five-minute walk round the ledge down to the ground, Anna was level with the demon.

His muscles flexed as his teeth tore some red, jelly-like substance from a hard white lump he held in his hands. Occasionally Anna could hear the odd crunch from whatever he was eating as it snapped in his jaws.

Beneath him, his lower body of tentacles writhed like a pit of angry vipers as he continued his meal.

With a single, almost-audible, gulp, Anna swallowed her fear and pressed on.

'Got to play this right,' she thought as she continued to step closer to the demon.

'If I make one wrong move, he could snap me in two with those arms.

'...they really are quite muscular,' the voice in her head went on.

'I bet when I get there, he'll throw me around quite a bit. Make me his plaything...'

Anna's mind continued to wander the closer she got to the overlord demon.

'I've never been taken roughly before...'

It was just when she was wondering if the demon had sex organs behind the nest of tentacular limbs that she caught herself in time.

'What in the Pit am I thinking?!' she chastised herself. 'Just got to focus on getting this over with, that's what I've got to do...'

Her reassurances might have convinced her more were she not beginning to grow wet. This didn't help her situation at all, because without undergarments on, the juices were slowly trickling down her legs, sticking briefly to her flimsy robes with every step they took.

Ahead of her, the demon had finished its gory meal and was about to look her way. Beneath it, its limbs had slowed, perhaps satisfied with the quality of the food.

The demon's head turned her way, swivelling to face her when she was mere metres from the beast.

'Got to be calm. Just give them time to get round...'

Her thoughts swiftly stopped when the demon turned to fix his eyes on her, caught like a Saronian long-toothed rabbit in the focused beam of an illumination spell.

"Who dares venture into the lair of Ashmedai?" he eventually roared, his voice resounding with a deep bass that vibrated through Anna's body. Beneath his torso, his lower limbs came to life.

"I... I'm Anna... sir..." she began, her voice quiet and quaking.

She had barely offered the introduction before tentacles shot out towards her and wrapped round her waist, lifting her clean into the air and holding her mere feet away from Ashmedai, eye to eye.

"Why do you intrude into my domain so?" he bellowed, his lower limbs quickly coming to life once more. His eyelids narrowed as he surveyed the captive trespasser.

"I... was... was looking for a way into the forest beyond... c-couldn't pass through overground..."




Emerald Forest Ch. 02



Anna struggled to use her arms to support herself on the tentacle round her waist so she could get the words out.

Ashmedai chuckled.

"Well, it seems you can't pass through here either, mortal..." 

More tentacles wrapped themselves round her limbs, as the mass began shifting, stripping her of her robe.

Anna was having a hard time trying to think, her entire mind feeling giddy and disorientated in the presence of the demon. Instead she simply stared, her eyes taking in the muscular lines of Ashmedai's body.

"You seem quite taken with me mortal. You haven't even tried to retain your dignity."

He indicated towards her robe, which currently rested on a stationary coil of tentacled mass.

"Look, I hold your garments in my grasp, and you don't even attempt to retrieve them."

Anna was silent, too lost in the awe-inspiring presence of the demon to respond as her eyes took in the beast's magnificently sturdy torso. 

Whether through the magicks he was giving off, or her own awe at the sight before her, she was painfully aware that her nipples were hardening, and her crotch had not stopped dribbling since those first fateful steps.

"Imp got your tongue?" Ashmedai sneered.

"I see already your thighs are smeared with your body's carnal needs...

"Perhaps I should do something about that?"

His tentacles slithered over Anna's unresisting body, securing her limbs at rights angles to her torso and sliding round each breast, before pulling apart her thighs and slipping across their wet surface.

Anna gasped at their touch, finding each stroke, each brush to be maddeningly erotic as more of her skin awoke to Ashmedai's siren call.

"I said, would you like me to fill that needy hole between your legs?"

Anna gulped, and tried to resist the urge pushing against her, threatening to push her over the edge of reason.

She failed.

"Y-yes... please..."

The second Boggins and Octavius saw Ashmedai shift his attention, the two began sprinting towards the demon. A strong spell from Octavius to stun him, a fatal lancing from Boggins and they'd be laughing.

This thought helped spur Boggins on as he raced out of hiding, and down the cavern's edge in Anna's footsteps.

So much so, that he'd soon left Octavius far behind.

'Dammit,' he thought.

'Can't get there before he does. We need to time this right.'

Boggins looked behind him, but saw no sign of the ageing wizard.

Puzzled, he looked forward again, only to see something whizz past him. Looking down, he found its source.

Two pairs of scarlet hands, each with sharp, dark nails had appeared at the edge of the ledge and in a split second, two red blurs flew past Boggins' line of sight before coming to a rest.

They had been caused by two brightly coloured demons standing before him. Each was naked as the day, with every inch of skin a bright, blood red.

Their bodies were both a perfect image of wanton desire, with slender calves, but powerful thighs above delicate feet, crowned by ripe, round backsides and smooth waists.

Their stomachs were slim and toned, and the slightest hint of powerful abdominal muscles lay under two pairs of large, pendulous breasts.

Both had slender arms and sleek hands with elegant fingers, but it was when Boggins' sight reached their faces that his mind stumbled upon a contradiction it couldn't wrap itself around.

Their faces were at once youthful, and full of energy and zest, but at the same time, they hinted at worldly knowledge, and experience harking back through the entirety of time itself. They were an eternal and unfathomable consciousness, doing a completely convincing impression of something young, fresh and wide-eyed.

A pair of horns that poked through each creature's glossy mane of black hair that rippled down to just below their necks.

The two demons were extremely attractive, and Boggins' treacherous body knew it. As he looked upon them, desire seemed to flow from their appearance, to trickle into his very eyes, reaching inside his body to pull his member to attention.

"Look, sissssterrrr..... hissed one of the demons, eyeing him up with a smile.

"Fresssssh preey..." 

"Can we assisssst you, sssssstranger?" enquired her partner, taking a step forward, swinging her waist.

Perhaps, pleasssssse you?"

Boggins unsheathed his sword and adopted a combative stance. He couldn't let his guard down against the two lust sprites, and he had to get to the exit before Octavius missed his window of opportunity to free Anna.

'Mustn't... give in...' Boggins asserted, through gritted teeth, though the hardening rod between his legs was interfering with his concentration.

As he circled round the demonic seductresses, it didn't help that the pair were fixing their gaze on him and openly presenting their bodies to him with a flair the exotic dancers of The Randy Captain could only dream of.

"That sssword looksss heavy...." one of them teased.

"Why not put it down?" mocked the other.

"I can think of other usesss for those handsss..."

It wasn't long before Boggins' inner dialogue had stopped repeating its mantra of escape and provided a running commentary on the scene before him.

'Stop focusing on their bodies, and escape. Ignore their looks, they're just meant to ensnare you, entice you. Make you want them...

'They're so... enticing... those legs... those chests... it's like they're designed to put your libido into overdrive.'

Boggins shook his head and concentrated on strafing round the demons. He was halfway there - another few steps and the ledge would narrow, forcing them to pursue in single file...

This minor victory was dampened somewhat by the fact he was finding it harder to take his gaze off them and look where he was going, as a rising lust was stirring from his engorged prick.

Every time he tried to push it to the corner of his mind, the thought bounced back twice as stubbornly as before.

'It couldn't hurt though, could it? They're so beautiful... so stunning... Octavius isn't here, he'd never know...'

It was getting incredibly difficult to take the next step, his leg feeling as if it was made of concrete.

The sprite on the left smiled and beckoned him towards her.

As if of their own accord, Boggin's legs began taking large strides forwards.

Now the other was beckoning him too. Both smiled and slowly gyrated their hips as they kept curling their fingers, as if reeling in a catch.

Damn it. Boggins was getting mesmerised by the motion, and was finding it impossible to form a coherent thought. Meanwhile, his legs continued, unabated, to take him closer to the very things he was trying to avoid.

"Good boy. Ssssuch a goood boy..." one cooed.

"Dddrrrop your sssword..." her partner hissed.

John's fingers lost their grip on the sword and it fell to the floor with a clatter of metal, while he continued to advance.

"Ssstop," said the demon on his left, holding the palm of her hand flat out facing him.

The two demonesses sauntered towards him, their hips swaying with each stride.

In moments, he was standing motionless before one of the sprites, while the other strolled towards his back.

Jusst... sstay sstill..." murmured the sprite in front of him, while the one at his rear unsnapped his armour, and pulled the metal breastplate off over his chest.

It dropped to the floor with a metallic chime, leaving Boggins dressed in only the clothing he had entered the forest in.

In moments, the tunic he was wearing joined the breastplate, leaving his upper body completely exposed.

"Yessss. Sssuch a good boy desserves a kisss..." hissed the demon before him, as she leaned down to his chest and with a wet smack, planted a hot, moist kiss on his pectoral muscle. It left a ruddy imprint of the demon's lips behind as she did so.

Boggins felt the demon at his rear do the same between his shoulder blades. Both of the kisses left a warm, oddly pleasurable tingling sensation.

Boggins' entire body then began to relax, spreading outwards from the marks left by the sprites' lips.

The young adventurer felt a bit lightheaded and swooned back into the waiting arms of the demon behind.

"Yess... we'll take care of you now..." she reassured him, as she held him upright.

Boggins found himself quickly sinking into a pleasant daze as whatever toxin the sprites carried on their kiss spread through his body.

Precum began dribbling out of his member, leaving a moist stain through the fabric of his trousers.

The demon before him pulled down his trouser legs and brought her face near to his shaft.

Hot breath wafted out of her mouth and warmed the outer flesh of his member, causing Boggins to sigh involuntarily.

"Beautiful little thiiiing...." she cooed at her prize, before sticking out her tongue and lapping against the shaft, slathering it in heated saliva.

Boggins eyes rolled back in his head as the demon holding him smiled triumphantly and kissed him softly on the neck.

A floating feeling was filling him up now and Boggins was content to just rest in the comfortable hold of the sprite behind him as the one at his front began bobbing her head along his shaft.

Inside her mouth it was incredibly warm, and the slopping, sucking motion sent waves of pleasure flowing out of the shaft and down to his balls before radiating out across his body.

In no time at all he'd unleashed a torrent of seed down her gullet, which she greedily swallowed, and he collapsed, spent, to hang limply in the arms of her partner at his back.

Behind him, the sprite lowered Boggins to the floor, and sat, legs apart, so her prey was sitting between them, before gently pulling his head back, to rest in her comfortable bosom.

She casually flicked a wave of hair over her shoulder, leaving the round breast exposed for Boggins to rest his head on.

In front of him, the sprite who had only just swallowed his seed, rested on her knees and shifted towards him.

Sliding over her partner's legs, she slid her own below the thick thighs and pulled herself close, leaving Boggins sandwiched between the two sprites.

"Moooore pleasssure... you want more pleasssure..." she hissed at him, in a tone signalling more a statement, not a query.

Boggins gulped.

"Y-yes..." he admitted, nodding slowly.

The ruby seductress pulled Boggins' left hand to her right breast, so he could feel her exposed skin.

It was warm and soft, the texture smooth as velvet, as Boggins' hand ran over the porous red flesh.

With a slick motion, the sneaky sprite sank her waist into his lap and the adventurer felt his shaft become buried in a snug, hot chamber of the same velvety flesh he was running his hand along.

His eyes rolled back as the thick cavity walls sealed round his member and sank down to its base.

As Boggins head dropped back into the full bosom behind him, which supported him like a cushion, the sexual vampire at his waist lifted up in a sweetly slow motion, her sex sliding up his shaft with a slick friction.

Boggins felt his entire body tense, as if the upwards motion was pulling all his awareness, all his concentration, into those inches of flesh being pleasured by the sprite's private chamber.

The sprite slipped back down again and all the tension was released, as a miniature explosion of pleasure burst through his member and overwhelmed him.

When Boggins was able to get his concentration back, the sprite was already beginning to rise upwards again. Soon he was caught in a whirlpool of ecstasy, and the longer the demons restraining him kept it up, the harder it was to stay focused and not lose himself to it...

****

Anna was hopelessly caught in the snare of Ashmedai's tentacles. Fully restrained, two tentacles were alternating their piston motions into each of her most private holes.

The demon had been thrusting into her for coming onto an hour and each thrust seemed to bring her ever more into his thrall.

She had long since screamed herself hoarse with glee at the demon's penetrations and had forgotten all about the escape plan Octavius had drawn up less than an hour ago.

Instead, Anna simply rested limply in the demon's coils, her arms held outwards and each wrapped in the thick appendages, while her legs were splayed outwards and her entire torso nestled in more of the tentacles.

A couple had lazily wrapped round her breasts and were continuing the same gentle massage they had kept up for the past half hour.

She wore a simple, dizzy smile as her body rocked in time with the motions of her captor.

"Tell me human, how does it feel to surrender?" Ashmedai's voice seemed to come from within Anna's own mind as it echoed round the inside of her head.

"...ghh... good..." she croaked.

"Yes, I'm certainly glad you made the trip to my family's lair," chuckled Ashmedai as he drove the apprentice nearer to another orgasm.

"Maybe I can keep you... as my new toy..."

Anna was beginning to lose focus again as she was tipped nearer the brink. The sheer pleasure from the tight, reassuring hold of the demon and the sensation of being filled so completely was intoxicating.

"Well? What do you say, mortal?"

"s...sounds... nice..."

The hold tightened as the nest of tentacles pressed firmly against any remaining tense muscles, working out tension in her body. Anna sank back and sighed in delight as the slick organs inside her most intimate holes began to push her over the edge once more.

The sensation felt wonderful, and she rocked her hips in bliss at the thick pressure between her hips.

Behind her, her robe slid from off the bed of tentacles it rested on and slipped slowly towards the floor. With a heavy thud it hit the ground, as a dagger slipped from out of the garment and flew clear of its sheath.

Ashmedai screeched as, unseen to Anna, the exposed dagger bounced off his limbs, jerking her from her reverie. The blade had carved a nick in one of the tentacles, leaving a thick black liquid oozing out of the pale organ.

With its fellow limbs no longer holding her firm, and the demon's sexual delirium no longer gripping her mind, Anna was freed from his spell and dropped from her dreamlike reverie with a sickening thud.

Seeing her chance to escape, she yanked his intrusions from her nether regions before sliding out of his failing grip.

When she reached the floor however, the apprentice was surprised to not see Octavius or Boggins standing nearby, and her robes lying in a heap on the floor.

It was when she saw the dagger near a growing pool of the inky black blood spewing from Ashmedai's flesh however, that the penny dropped.

Anna picked the weapon up and pointed it at the demon. To an outside observer, it would seem like a futile gesture of defiance, but the apprentice had cottoned onto the fact that something about the blade was poison to the fiend.

A gift inherited from the previous student under Octavius, the blade was made from silver, and if Anna had to guess, she would posit that the purity of the metal was what repelled the demon so.

Even as she awkwardly put her robe back on while inching away from Ashmedai, the demon trembled and cowered, as if Anna could eviscerate him with her mind at any moment.

She circled the beast so she could hold both the demon and the exit in her line of sight. When it emerged that neither Octavius or Boggins had made it to the exit, Anna realised she'd have to backtrack to find them.

As she backed away from the creature in the direction she had come from, the apprentice took comfort in the knowledge that she now had a defence against the demon at the door...

***

Boggins was in heaven. Lying back in the arms of the lust sprite who had coaxed his first orgasm out from between his legs, his eyes were closed as her friend knelt on all fours facing away from him, as she dipped her hips up and down his shaft.

The mischievous creatures had changed positions, each eager to try satisfying the young adventurer as the other had just done, and Boggins wasn't about to stop them.

With his eyelids shut, the only sounds he was aware of were the slick wet squishes with each thrust and the hisses of contentment coming from the sprite before him, which slid like miniature adders of seduction into his ears to wrap round his mind.

"Feed... you musssst feed...." the one behind him encouraged him.

He groaned as he jetted another gout of fluid into the sprite, whose vaginal muscles clenched round his member, milking out the release. She turned herself round, without leaving his waist and the delightful twisting motion eked the delight out in slow, calm throbs of his organ.

As his pleasure died down, soft flesh pressed against his face, covering his eyes and nose in a soft mask. A nub slipped between his lips, and as Boggins' face lay smothered in the bosom, he felt a growing urge to suckle on the teat at his lips.

He closed his mouth round the nub, gave it a single lick with his tongue and prepared to suck...

But in a split second, the sprite was off his waist with a screech and had spun round to face him, her face curled in a snarl.

At nearly exactly the same time, the cushioning support of the breasts behind him disappeared, and he flopped backwards onto the floor. Looking up, he saw both sprites had banded together and were snarling angrily at something over his shoulder.

As he turned round, Boggins saw Anna standing behind him, pointing a rather petite knife at the two sprites. It was at that point Boggins' mind surfaced from its libido-focused trance and he realised he'd just spent an indeterminate amount of time pumping his sexual fluids into the very things he'd been trying to avoid.

"Fred, get your things," hissed Anna.

He didn't need telling twice. Boggins rushed to put his clothes back on, followed by his breastplate, before picking up his sword. He leapt over to Anna as the pair began backing away.

"Careful... I was pointing my sword at them and it didn't help me one bit..." he murmured.

"I think you've done enough damage with your sword," hissed Anna, as white fluid continued to dribble out of the crotch of one of the sprites.

"Besides, it's not the weapon itself that's repelling them, it's the silver in the blade. They seem to be averse to it."

"Wish I'd known that sooner."

"YOU wish?" spat an incredulous Anna.

"Ugh, let's just find Octavius and get out of here, okay?"

Boggins nodded meekly.

***

The duo didn't have long to travel until they found the wizard, despite his unusual position in the caves.

Octavius was almost staring them in the face, or would have been, if he wasn't fixated on his existing company.

A pack of sprites had him pinned to a wall a good ten feet from the ground. His back was pressed to the cave wall through the lust sprites' own unique magicks – not that he seemed to mind in the slightest.

Instead, he smiled in bewildered amusement at the half dozen or so demons surrounding him, occasionally closing his eyes in rapture as they took turns to suckle on his member, which was exposed to the elements as his robes lay wide open.

Around him the lust sprites looked like a pride of lions eyeing up their oblivious prey. Boggins found himself staring in horrified wonder as Anna, tried wafting her blade ineffectually at them 

Too far for the demons to be perturbed by it, she instead wove a spell around the dagger, and allowed it to float up towards Octavius.

When it came within metres of him, the reaction from the lust sprites was instantaneous, as a chorus of screeches heralded their mass exodus from the area.

No longer under their influence, Octavius dropped to the floor, leaving Boggins to catch the wizened, loosely clothed old man.

"What-what happened?" spluttered Octavius, as he unsteadily got to his feet before flinging his robes back together.




Emerald Forest Ch. 02



As he picked up his staff, the dagger returned cleanly to Anna's hand, while Boggins frantically brushed his hands across his body, as if trying to dislodge invisible clumps of termites.

"What happened is you both failed spectacularly," she spat.

"The only reason I'm not a sex slave to the ugly squid man down there right now is that it turns out he and his brood can't stand silver."

"Silver...? Makes sense, I suppose... But I never thought..." Octavius murmured.

"Did you know about this?" Anna demanded, waggling the knife in an accusing manner.

"I... had a theory..." Octavius began, avoiding her angry stare by looking pointedly into the distance.

"But I didn't know if it would work! If I was wrong, we'd be a pile of bloody flesh and you'd still have been caught."

His explanation did little to soften Anna's stare.

"Come on, we'd best be getting to the..."

Octavius stopped mid-sentence.

"What is it?" Boggins queried.

"Look," said Octavius.

"They've retreated. All the demons... they've retreated."

As the group looked around, they saw Octavius was right. No lust sprites crawling across the ceiling – even Ashmedai seemed to have left the area.

Anna sheathed her dagger in bemusement as she rearranged her robes.

"We've got a clear line to the exit," said Octavius.

"In the absence of a better plan... RUN!!!"

The group broke into a sprint as they made a beeline for the exit, neither looking nor caring what was behind them.

In seconds, they were past Ashmedai's previous position and had entered the exit tunnel through which sunlight filtered in.

Octavius had stepped into the rays of sunlight that fell on the last stretch of rock when he looked round with suspicion. The group was one down.

"...Anna..." he murmured.

"We lost her?" Boggins frowned.

"We've got to go back in," Octavius said, unsheathing his own silver dagger.

"But this time I've got a plan..."

***

The pair found Anna not too far from the end of the exit, just outside of the reach of the rays of sunlight.

She was still standing – just – but behind her stood the all too familiar form of the demons they'd tried to escape from.

The lust sprite had one hand inside Anna's robe, toying with the apprentice's breast, while the other was planted firmly between her thighs and was busy expertly playing the girl's sex like an instrument.

Anna was simply leaning back into the red devil, eyes closed shut and sighing in pleasure.

"...yes...yes..." she sighed. 

"s'nice..."

The lust sprite smiled wickedly over her shoulder.

Octavius and Boggins hugged the walls at the side to avoid detection and positioned themselves behind the sprite.

Octavius lowered the dagger to the ground.

"What-what are you doing?!" Boggins asked frantically.

"Just trust me," said Octavius, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather belt.

He crept up behind the demon, paused, and as the lust sprite upped the tempo to drive Anna over the edge, he pounced.

Knocking the sprite to the floor, he tied the belt round her neck, threaded its length through the buckle, and using his knife, created a new notch and cut off the excess material.

The voluptuous demon kicked and struggled beneath Octavius, her large breasts flailing nearly as much as her arms as she tried to fling herself free.

Octavius jumped off her and leapt back, holding his hands out defensively.

"Stop!" he barked.

To Boggins' surprise, the lust sprite – who had been about to lunge for the wizard – rocked back on her feet and stood staring at him furiously.

"I forbid you from interfering with the minds of me or any of my travelling companions," Octavius instructed the demon.

Incredibly, the demon nodded in acquiescence before a confused frown spread across her face.

"What... haff you done tooo mee?" she snarled.

"It's called a 'devil snare'," Octavius explained.

"I forbid you from taking that belt round your neck off. It's enchanted with a spell that forces any being conceived unnaturally to comply with the wishes of the enchanter.

"Doesn't work with every demon, of course. Some are too strong to be bent into shape by such enchantments, but I guess we're lucky yeh just a lowly, run of the mill minion, aren't we?"

The lust sprite curled her lips and hissed angrily, while running her fingers along her 'collar' as Octavius chuckled to himself.

Anna had emerged from her daze and was sheepishly putting her robes back on for the second time. Boggins went to check on her.

"You jusssst wait, warlock..." the lust sprite was snarling as the two walked back to Octavius.

"I'll get out of thisss... ssspell.... and when I do, I'll find your deepest, darkest dessiresss and drive you insane with lussst..."

"Well, that sounds like something to look forward to," Octavius replied dismissively.

"For now though, yeh'll be travelling with us, and I'm ordering you to protect me and my companions from harm. Yeh won't be casting yeh demonic influence on us, do yeh understand?"

The sprite scowled and nodded her head almost imperceptibly.

"Good," Octavius said, with a satisfied nod of his own. "From now on, you'll do as we command.

"Follow me, then, everybody."

And with that, the wizard led the way into the forest once more, with Anna and the very angry, but very bound, demon hot on his heels.

Boggins giggled like a schoolboy behind them.

"Hey, demon... pick your nose!" he shouted at the sprite, who instantly stuck a digit in her right nostril, much to his amusement.

"Don't be so immature!" Anna chided as the group walked out into the sun.

"You can take your finger out now," she said to the sprite, who did so with a grateful flourish and a hard stare at Boggins.

"What's your name?" she said to the group's new companion as they carried on with their trek.

"Name...?" asked the sprite, as if the concept was alien to her.

"Yes, you must have a name, surely?" persisted the apprentice.

"I have sssso many sisstersss... What usse isss a name?"

"So you're telling me your kind don't have names for each other?"

The sprite shook her head.

"Not that we should sssspeak aloud."

"Well... how about from now on, we call you... Fera. It was my great-grandmother's name. It means... er, hunter..." 

Anna blushed at her own choice of name for the demon, the memory of her near capture still fresh in her mind.

"Asss you wisssh, human..." 'Fera' smiled wickedly.

"Happy as I am that you two are getting along so nicely, don't forget that 'Fera' here was about to whisk you away into a life of debauchery not ten minutes ago," Octavius warned from over his shoulder.

"Don't get too attached to a monster that feeds off your own descent into perversion."

Anna just blushed even more profusely before increasing her pace to put distance between herself and her new friend, who grinned from ear to ear. 



Emerald Forest



"Gah! Uh, where am I...?"

"You're in a... a... yer in a crotch cocoon, ye blasted idiot," scowled Octavius.

"You got caught several hours ago and would have been plant food if I hadn't cut ya open."

"Oh... I se... Ohh!" He grunted as the vine at his waist pulsed with seed.

"...yeh. I figured I've done most of the work for you. I'll let ya... unhook yourself..."

"Ooh! Ah! Er, do I have to right away? It's kind of, er... ah..."

"Now, boy!" Octavius shook his head in disgust. Bloody pervert, he thought.

"Right. ...er, I... I can't move"

"Stop dicking around, boy!"

"No, really I can't. It's like my limbs have gone to sleep."

"By the gods..."

Octavius reached in and began to pull the trellis off Boggins in strands. A tingling numbness started to spread across his palms, and he soon realised that it was coated in a paralysing agent. He would have to be quick.

Fortunately, he had soon disentangled Boggins, and with one final wrench, yanked the devouring plant limb from his crotch.

A shower of semen flew out and hit him in the cheek.

"You owe me for this..." he snarled, as he wiped it from his face with the back of a limp, numb hand before towing Boggins clear of the plant's reach.

"I saw yer clothing lyin' over there," he muttered as he gestured towards a pile of assorted clothes that the plant had discarded in its lifetime. 

Grasping his crotch, which sported a still rock-hard member, Boggins waddled into the distance to examine it.

"There's hundreds..." Boggins said, in awe. "Look there's even dragonscale armour..."

"You know what that means, then?" Octavius asked, his back to the squire.

"Yep, that I'm taking it!" chirped Boggins.

"No, it means people have come far more prepared than you and still fallen at the first hurdle. Why did you rush into this forest so?"

Concern entered Boggins' voice at the query and he dropped the vernacular of the honourable knight that he'd used on first entering the forest.

"It's my brother, Marcus. He said he was going to break the enchantment placed on the forest, and banish the source of its evil, but he had left so very long ago. I wanted to go in and find him, see if he needed help or... rescue."

"Really?" commented Octavius wryly. "Marcus Boggins is a first-rate soldier and one of the kingdom's elite guards. He has years of training and battlefield experience behind him. To date, I think he is perhaps the most battle-hardened man to have ever set foot in this forest.

"YOU have a couple of years of working with Mr Fish, the armourer. What on earth did you think you could accomplish?"

"I... I just wanted to help... I've not seen him for months..."

"And if you found him without getting yourself killed..." Octavius looked at the butchered cocoon. "...or worse... What then?"

"Well if I'm such an idiot for entering the forest, why are you here?" snapped Boggins. "Aren't you afraid you'll be captured too?"

"I was at the forest's edge, boy, picking herbs for potions. My apprentice, Anna – who you startled so - was sneaking into safe pockets around the border, collecting more when you startled her.

"I've told her to trust nothing and no one in the forest, and she seems to have taken it to heart. But when I saw you pass out, I knew I had to act qui..."

He stopped mid-sentence as he caught sight of something through the distance.

"Dammit! The mist!" he cried. The blue-tinted vapour had started to seep out of its restraining forcefield and was even turning clear, as the detection spell wore off.

It was now moving far too quickly to cast another forcefield spell in time to stop it reaching their location.

"Back! Get back!" The two men bolted away from the approaching mist until out of range, only to find their retreat had pressed them further into the forest.

"Curses!" Boggins cried. "Now how do we get out?"

"We can't go round – its reach extends much further than you would believe."

"Then, what?"

"We... must press on..."

"What?!"

"We can't go back out from this location, so we need to push on and find a way around. I say we push on into the unknown, rather than what we know for sure will claim our souls..."

For a second, Boggins looked as if he seriously wouldn't mind being taken, until a stern look from Octavius hardened his resolve.

"Onwards, then..." he murmured.

Octavius nodded.

"Onwards."


***

Anna was lost.

She'd tried to retrace every step she'd taken since the mystery man first started chasing her but it seemed she was going round in circles.

After twenty minutes of trying to find her way back from a thirty second dash, it seemed she was further in the wood than when she started.

Looking to her side, the apprentice mage noticed a bright pink toadstool with three large, yellow spots. She recognised it from five minutes earlier when she'd passed a similar cluster of trees.

"Oh, blast it! I am lost!" she cried out, her fists clenched in frustration.

Without a second thought, the angry mage kicked her foot at the toadstool, smashing the shiny, yet puffy plant to pieces. She instantly jumped back, as if burnt, as a pink liquid exploded out of the burst plant's remains.

In her desperation, she hadn't realised that the fungus she had just crippled was a 'little death' variety. Little Death fungus was renowned for its unusual pigmentation, which was caused by a build-up of venom beneath the surface of the plant.

She'd managed to dodge it. Just.

The venom was the plant's defence mechanism. If the plant was destroyed, it would release hundreds of spores into the air, as well as burst its reservoirs of the liquid.

A full burst of it would splatter across the attacker and be absorbed through their skin. The venom would then overload the pleasure centres of their brain, leading to a fatal, though apparently unbeatable, climax.

They would experience several mind-bending orgasms before death, and it took a lot of post-mortems by royal coroners before the kingdom had cottoned on to what the venom did.

Anna however, determined that her complete loss of direction wouldn't be totally fruitless, fished out a glass vial and a pipette.

While a full squirt of the venom was invariably fatal, it could still be taken in smaller doses. Just a couple of drops taken on the tongue would ensure a night of unbridled passion and exquisite pleasure. The aftershock effect, which could occasionally lead to spontaneous, unexpected orgasms hours after ingestion, also had its appeal.

There was a black market demand for the stuff from bored countesses and lonely earls alike, and it attracted an exceptionally high price on the black market, due to the risks associated with collection.

Anna was tight on money – she wasn't earning as an apprentice, but she still had bills to pay in the expensive inner city and the barmaid job wasn't going to cut it – so she didn't feel in the least bit guilty as she bent down to collect samples. By the time it was full, she had enough of the liquid to keep her financially secure for a year.

As she tucked the vial and pipette away, Anna got up to leave. Picking her hamper up once more, she turned around and tried a new passage through the trees.

As she wandered down the path before her, the raven-haired apprentice heard a rustling sound in the trees.
She fished out her training wand and held it steady. Under Octavius' guidance, she was able to shield herself and use a couple of mild offensive spells. She'd never counted on straying from the safe paths of the forest to such a degree.

Anna tried to determine where the rustling was coming from, but though it was growing louder, it was impossible to determine the direction. By pointing her wand upwards, a soft blue shield shimmered in front of her, as she ventured on, careful not to face one direction for too long.

Finally, a motion in the overgrowth to her left indicated the threat had finally caught up with her. She adopted a slightly crouched combative stance, and waited...

With a deafening rumble, a large brown sphere as tall as Anna herself hurtled towards her. She barely had time to jump out of the way of a giant, rolling bubble of flesh before it hit her side on, and sent her flying backwards through the air.

Anna briefly got a glimpse of the quivering, rippling surface of the thing before it disappeared. The things were known as rollers, and were for the most part harmless. Although bodies could sink into the bizarre creature, the velocity of them when at top speed meant any nearby creature would get nothing more than a harsh slap on contact.
The real danger was if you got caught in one as it slowed to siphon off some energy from another organism...

She'd been lucky that she'd been propelled into something that seemed to have broken her fall. She was currently supported by a mass of creepers hanging from the branches over head. She'd been sent flying halfway into a thick mass of them, so the first order of business once upright again was to establish a way out.

By pulling the creepers in front of her apart, Anna was able to get a good deal of the way out. Some of the creepers nearer the exit were growing stickier however, and she was encountering a good deal more knots.

Several of the vines were now beginning to cling to her, while she tugged impatiently at a clump of foliage at chest height that was knotted together. 
She frowned in confusion. There was no way she'd ever have managed to fly this far into the patch if it was this knotted. 

It must have somehow happened after her fall...

With a flash of panic, Anna rushed forward, only to find her legs completely stuck. As she looked down, she saw creepers gently curling gently round her calves and thighs. They were soft enough that she hadn't noticed them as she was striding through the creeper, but strong enough that they had now stopped her moving.

Anna gasped in surprise at the sight of them and bent down to peel them off. Before her arms could get halfway down however, the sticky vines at her sides slid round her arms, starting from her shoulders and working down to her wrists.
As she tried flinging them off with shakes off her arms, another came from behind, and slid round her stomach, looped under her crotch and slithered behind her.

This just caused Anna to struggle even more, but in the complete restraint she was now covered in, she could only thrash her body impotently.

As the vines holding her coiled and slid, she started to be lifted into the air, and it was then Anna realised what was happening. The oil being secreted by these vines was somehow sticking them to her flesh, yet at the same time creating a smooth lubricant, helping them to move.
It was the perfect way for the creepers to lift something into the air without having to leave their position.

Soon she was being pulled clear of the remaining creeper as the ones holding her continued their unending descent across her body.
Anna looked up to see where they were coming from, and her heart froze.
The vines were clustered together at their base, where they were attached to what looked like a giant jellyfish bulb, the size of the woodshed at the back of The Greasy Pitcher.

It was pressed against the trunk of the same tree that held the normal creeper further down, and it was pulsating as Anna was pulled ever closer.

That meant the vines weren't vines, but...

"Tentacles..." Anna breathed in quiet horror, as more started to latch onto her.

The young apprentice had recognised the creature as a limpet trap. It would capture hapless female wanderers and use them as carriers for its spores. 
She scrambled to remember what she could about the creature before she was completely trapped.

First, it would rely on somebody falling or stumbling into its tentacles, which it would then use to restrain them. They would then be slowly, but inescapably, pulled towards its maw.

On the way up, they would be subdued... sexually... so they would put up less resistance once swallowed into the main body. This was helped by the aphrodisiac oils that were used by the limpet trap. Not only did they provide traction to pull prey up, they would also slowly build their sexual response.
The effect was unnoticeable on first exposure, but it was cumulative and long-lasting. Left long enough in its grip, any woman would be reduced to a sexually desperate wreck.

Already Anna noticed the dainty nipples on her pert breasts were growing hard, and the wetness at her crotch could just as easily be from the effects of the oil as the constant motion of the tentacle sliding between her legs. 

At the rate she was moving, she reasoned she would be insensible when she reached the top, unless she could break free.

She shook in the grip of the creature, but again found the gentle hold of the tentacles actually allowed for zero movement for anything in their grasp.
Instead she forced herself to think back to her lessons, and not the growing moistness at her crotch.

Once secured inside the belly of the creature, the victim would be impregnated with the limpet's spores and used as a carrier to fertilise them.

Once ready, the spores would then be extracted and blown out of the limpet trap at high pressure, before the victim would be released so the creature could recover. 

Anna would take comfort in the knowledge that when all this was over she would be let free by the creature – though 'free' in this case meant she would simply slide back into its tentacles, which would effortlessly hold her in their sticky oils while the creature rested and prepared for round two.
But then that was how they reproduced so effectively.

Her attention snapped back to the present as the tentacles started to stir to life. Her arms were lifted above her head, while the tentacles holding her slipped off until there were just two left. These looped round her arms, crossed paths on her torso and coiled round her thighs, down to her ankles.

The spare tentacles, now clear of her body, slithered under her clothes, pressing outwards until, with one deft motion, the robe was yanked from her back, the sleeves slipping effortlessly under the restraints holding her arms.

It floated, as if carried on a breeze, before coming to rest on the ground below. Her clothes no longer part of the equation, the slick tendrils wrapped round her got back to pulling her up, inch by inch towards the waiting body above, but their brethren were starting to loop round her breasts, wrap round her waist and roll against her crotch.

The sticky, slimy sap was beginning to spread tingles wherever it went as the chemicals rubbed into her body started to take hold of her brain. Meanwhile, the feeling of the tentacle rubbing it against her pussy was beginning to get to Anna.

"Ugh... aaah, by the Divine... Nooo..."

Her struggles made no difference to the creature however, which now held the petite young witch 10 metres in the air.

Still the attention between her legs continued and, more than fear now, a sense of frustration was growing. She was being held in the grip of this thing and it wasn't even letting her build up to orgasm.

Thick beads of the warm liquid dropped with a heavy splat onto her cleavage and shoulders, and felt like heated treacle as they slid down her body.

Anna began to shake once more, almost unintentionally rocking her hips backwards and forwards along the tentacle beneath them. She wanted desperately to just thrust her hands into her teased womanly centre, but try as she might, her arms were held completely immobile.

The slow stimulation as her breasts were massaged, her vagina rubbed and her body held in the unyielding grip were sending her crazy.

The tentacle responsible for the angst slid back one last time before slipping inside her. The bizarre oil meant it slipped in without hindrance. As it did so, the sudden exposure of Anna's most intimate folds to the intoxicating properties of the oil drove the girl crazy with lust.

"Ugh... ah... ugh... ugh... c'mon... please..."

She grunted as she rocked her hips on the thick tentacle inside her, now just desperate to get off. It began a slow pumping in and out of her, sliding across her sodden labia on each trip.
Her chest was squeezed intimately as two other tentacles wrapped round her breasts and rubbed more of the dizzying lubricant directly onto her nipples, which stood proud on her fondled mounds.

The continuous sliding of the tentacles holding her arms and legs began to alternate between squeezing and loosening their grip as they sensuously slipped ever downwards, loosening her muscles.

Meanwhile the business tentacle currently exploring her insides upped its tempo and started a rapid pistoning in and out, over and over before Anna could catch her breath.

Each fleshy pump of the squirming appendage felt like a thick tongue ravishing her libido as it brought her closer and closer to the release she both feared and craved.

To give in now would be to give in to a lifetime of use as a human spore fertilisation pod, but it would also lead to the release she so desperately craved... And it was inevitable anyway...

Would it be so bad? Surely, holding off forever would be worse?

The slick embrace of the limpet trap had spread a hot flush across her entire body as the creature manipulated it and toyed with her senses.

"Ah... you... you... no, I can't... I can't be..." she struggled to resist mentally now, acknowledging that the physical fight was futile, but trying to keep hold of her mind.

"I won't give in to youuuuu.... aaaaahhh!!!!!"

Her cries of protest – although fairly unconvincing for some time now – had completely degenerated into cries of pleasure. It was hopeless... hopeless to resist when it felt so good. So firmly, inescapably, stickily good.

The heat collected in her waist and as the slick, writhing nest that held her rubbed the sticky liquid deeper into her flesh. The embrace that held her was one no human partner could ever hold her in – a fact that sunk in as orgasm finally claimed her ravaged body.

Her body was buffeted in waves of delight, while the tentacles not supporting her arms burst to life in a flurry of activity. The marauding organs were kneading her breasts, rubbing her clitoris – essentially doing everything to prolong her orgasm.

Her head tilted back as her final release overpowered her, and the helpless girl lay back in the embrace of her lover while her limbs turned to jelly.

Anna collapsed into the ecstasy, but as she came down, still the tentacles kept playing.

She was held in their grasp for several more hours as the oil kept the sex centres of her body active without rest, and her 'restraints' continued to play with their new toy.

Anna had long since surrendered the fight and was content to simply lie back as pleasure overtook her again and again. She was snapped out of her reverie however, when she felt a soft pressure grow round the edges of her face.

Her eyes fluttered open, but her view was completely obscured as something that felt like a giant pair of lips puckered up round her head and sucked...

A mild panic penetrated her sexual daze as she realised the limpet trap had wrapped its underbelly round her and begun to pull her in. But as her body was slowly massaged into sexual slumber, the panic sank beneath the surface.

Her head was pulled in, followed by her neck as the soft rolls of tissue dragged her inwards with a peristaltic motion. Her arms were returned to her sides as the restraints began their retreat, then they too were sucked into the soft, warm organ.

As the 'mouth' of the creature slid down her breast, Anna sighed unconsciously. The motion, while bringing her one step closer to her doom, was incredibly relaxing and sensuous, feeling as it did like being fed slowly into a plump, soft kiss from the mouth of a goddess.




Emerald Forest



Anna's vision returned when the maw had slipped under her cleavage to work its way down her stomach. Her arms were pinioned to her sides and her body was emerging inside the main bulb of the limpet trap.

A soft glow came through the pink organic walls of the creature, which were riddled with round orifices that glistened with dripping oils. The air was heavy and reeked of sex, making her head spin.

Soon her head was caught in another wrap of flesh, which pulled her upwards still, even as her ankles were fed through into the lower body.
Moments later it was in the fresh air once more, shortly followed by her chest and even her arms, which now had free reign.

Unfortunately for the captured mage, it didn't make any difference. She tried, dimly, to move them, but they merely flopped limply against the sides of the pod. With a wet squelch, her feet were then sealed inside the limpet trap.

Below her, the pod gurgled ominously, and began to slowly inflate like the water-filled bladders favoured by the local children for practical jokes. Liquid rushing sounds seemed to come from all directions and as Anna lolled her head to see what was going on, it seemed like the limpet trap was drawing liquid from the tree it was attached to.
Perhaps it had created a reservoir for the stuff inside?

With a loud crunch, the pod contracted and pressed itself against Anna's body, wrapping it tightly in a slick hug. Liquid started to spurt into the bottom of the pod and began to slide against her feet.

Whatever it was made of was incredibly thick, and as it flowed over her feet, it left a hot tingle, which seemed to flow up to her waist and stimulate her crotch remotely. This was echoed when the liquid reached her calves, leading to double the stimulation. Anna lay back in the hold of the creature and moaned at the barrage of sensations.

The pod contracted again, its motions working the substance further into her body. Every inch of skin tingled at its touch, while her nipples throbbed at the bizarre massage.

Another gurgle and the pod inflated once more, this time with the foreign goop sliding up to her thighs. It was a bizarre sensation – like sliding naked into the silkiest quicksand while in the throes of passion. Anna held her breath unconsciously as it encroached upon her vagina...

She was already wet and dripping from the earlier attentions of the limpet trap, but as the creature's reproductive nectar lapped at her folds, Anna was caught in a tidal wave of pleasure.

Taking advantage of her overwhelmed state, the creature contracted again, forcing another spurt of liquid. The lack of space inside gave the limpet trap the perfect chance to aim the next blast right inside the young apprentice's intimate hole.

Anna gasped as her inner crevices were rapidly filled with the oil, and pleasure no human mind was meant to comprehend flooded her brain.

The next few hours were lost to a series of extended orgasms, running one after the other as the exhausted girl simply bobbed in the confines of the creature now using her to rapidly fertilise its young, before blowing them through the air.

It was much later when Anna awoke to find herself once again suspended in the tentacles hanging beneath the creature. 

Her head was swimming in a pleasant daze, while her body tingled and hummed with a sexual heat.

As she cautiously looked around, she realised she once again had full control of her body. Her mind was clear too.

Shit! She'd been pulled inside and had her senses knocked into next week all so the abomination above her could use her to rear its young.
By now her bloodstream was positively saturated with the aphrodisiac oil that had been so thoroughly soaked into her every intimate area and accounted for the delightfully erotic haze that she was floating in.

Above her, the limpet trap had entered a rest cycle and would continue to slumber for several hours. For the time being, the young mage was left to dangle in its slumbering limbs, only a metre or so off the ground.

Anna's head swam as it floated in a sexual daze caused by the strange cocktail lingering in her body. Unbidden, her hand moved slowly down to her genitals and began to stroke...

'No!' Her mind snapped back to alertness. She mustn't lose herself to these feelings.

Anna yanked her hand back to her side, and felt the tentacles holding her slip with an oozing slickness against her, sending her a couple of inches closer to the ground.

Curious, she shook both arms, to try and wriggle out of their grip. Amazingly, it worked, and she was rewarded by sliding an extra foot closer to the ground.

'These tentacles must be unresponsive when the limpet trap's sleeping...' she realised.

With one final squirm of her body, the young mage sent herself sliding down towards the ground, before rolling away from the tips of the tendrils.

Hauling her body upright, Anna gazed at the dozing predator hanging off the large tree before her, before her body's urges made themselves known again.

"Damn venom..." she groaned out loud. It had woken up every inch of her skin, all of it yearning to be touched, to be held, to be licked, to be kissed. She grasped her chest and put a hand between her leg as she kneeled on the floor.

'Heading forward is going to be very hard...' she realised. 'Maybe I better just take care of myself first...'


***

Octavius and Boggins had arrived at a sticky situation.

Not a perilous one, as such, but sticky in the literal sense of the word.

Ahead of them lay a thick peat bog – warm and uncannily slick, the bog gave off no smell of any kind, but a balmy heat emanated from its surface, while the still and silent scene was occasionally punctuated by the pop of a large bubble bursting at its surface.

"Not a chance!" said Boggins defiantly.

"We don't have a choice, boy," his wizardly companion said.

"It's either this, or head back through the sleeping mist and fall foul of the cocoons. And I'm not even going to entertain the notion of risking our minds until we've seen Anna safely out of this maze."

"So what do we do then? We don't even know if we can swim through a bog this viscous."

"I know, I know. Ye don't need to tell me," grunted Octavius.

"Hmm..."

The wizard picked off a nearby rock and hurled it into the quagmire. To Boggins' surprise, it lay motionless on the surface. After a few seconds longer than expected, it slowly sank below the surface.

Octavius lowered his foot gingerly into the edge of the bog, where there was enough depth to bury his ankle in the mud. Lifting it out, he came down a second time, this time in a sudden, powerful stamp. 

His foot slapped the surface of the mud, coming to a complete stop on top of it.
Cautiously lifting his other foot, Octavius launched into another powerful stride, until he was standing triumphantly on top of the outer edge of the bog.

"Come on," he called to Boggins. "Quick, strong steps and the bog won't collapse beneath you."

With a hesitant frown, Boggins followed suit and stomped along after Octavius.

"This isn't so bad," he said, as their boots made wet splashes through the centre of the bog. 

"I thought we were going to be buried up to our... what the...?"

Before Boggins could even finish his sentence, the oozing sludge beneath them gave way to their weight and the pair dropped into the substance as through a trapdoor had been released from beneath them.

In the blink of an eye, the two were chest-deep in the thick yet viscous goop that constituted the peat bog.

"Dammit boy!" cursed Octavius.

"Why did ye have to go and say that?"

Boggins was uncharacteristically silent. Instead, he was standing in the bog, staring at a distant corner.

As Octavius followed his line of sight, he saw what had silenced the young man. Lumps were forming at the surface of the bog, and some had risen further than the others.

Indeed, several formed slick baubles that continued to lift, revealing themselves to sit atop a shiny brown column, which widened out, forming shoulders, arms and a waist.

Feminine curves asserted themselves in the rising lumps of mud, while the brown oily goop slid downwards, exposing what looked like flesh.

The female bodies stopped forming at the hips however, leaving a group of sludge-coated torsos to glide through the quagmire.

A mop of treacle-like gunk at the top resembled a mop of hair, the 'fringe' of which covered the areas where the womens' eyes would be, while a hole stretched out beneath, looking like a gaping mouth.

Their arms remained at their sides, by their large but indistinct bosoms, as the shapes – a good half a dozen of them - silently advanced towards the two new additions to the bog.

"Octavius... what do we do?" Boggins murmured, with panic in his eyes. 

"Just be calm, boy..." the wizard murmured, as he flicked an oak wand through the air, as if trying to shake dust from its tip.

A luminous green wall, as if made of emerald, flashed before Boggins' eyes before fading into near-invisible translucency.

"The personal walls I've cast around us can't be breached by demonic minions once established, so we should be safe. I suggest moving however..."

Boggins didn't need telling twice, and hurried onwards, trying his best to break into a quick stride through the thick mud that surrounded him.

As he pressed forward, he soon realised that while the protective shield might repel attacking demons, it was doing nothing to stem the flow of the mud, which was seeping in through his clothes and sloshing around in the cavities between flesh and cloth.  

He was going to be absolutely filthy when he got out, he thought with a sigh, trying to make casual the fact that he was surrounded by the bizarre mud demons.

Their bodies were quite comely, he thought to himself – even if they were some kind of sentient slime. His member stirred at the thought.

No! He cursed his libido – these kind of lewd thoughts were the last thing he needed now. Just focus on the task at hand...

As Boggins upped his pace, some of the thicker mud flowed rapidly along his pole, giving it the feeling it was being licked from all sides at once. It was unexpected, and while the chance sensation felt kind of pleasant, it was only slowing his escape.

"What's wrong, son? Come on!" Octavius had noticed the break in his stride.

Boggins looked over his shoulder to check on their pursuers. The swamp ladies were still safely out of reach but they had gained a couple of feet in the last few moments.

"Sorry, it's this mud," Boggins began, as he resumed his pace.

"It just..." As he said the words, he felt it happening again.

The mud was flowing inside his pants, sliding down his shaft and balls, and was covering more of his flesh all the time.

The fact Boggins was decked out in armour seemed to make no difference, and he soon learned no part of his body was safe from the sludge's wet embrace.

He shook himself in an attempt to dislodge the goop, but it was no use – the stuff now seemed almost attached to him.

Boggins was still able to walk, but every step was a struggle as he fought to ignore the persistent, though pleasurable, attentions of the solution filling the inside of his clothes.

The extra drag caused by his filling vestments wasn't helping either, and if he didn't get help soon, he could wind up stuck on the spot.

"Octavius! Octavius!" he called out desperately.

It was no use – the wizard was standing a couple of metres away from him with his eyes closed and heavy breathing. It looked like he was trying to muster concentration for a spell despite some... distraction.

If Boggins didn't interrupt, he could get stuck for good, but if he did interrupt, he could ruin the spell and doom them both.
His mind fought for the answer while his member fought the urge for release.

As he frantically searched for another way out, a thick but soft weight flung itself onto his back while something coiled round his front.

Hands... slender, oily brown hands... The swamp ladies – they'd found a way to break through the magical barrier!

A lump formed in front of him as he felt the monster behind him suckle on his neck. Another one was raising itself out of the water!

A slender womanly figure emerged, but with sinfully compelling curves. 'She' smiled with her vacuous mouth and bobbed towards him, wrapping her arms round him and pressing her breasts against his armour.

As her body touched the cold metal of his breastplate, she frowned and, together with her partner, unbuckled the clasps to strip the young adventurer of it.

Boggins feigned helplessness so he could take advantage of the momentary distraction to grasp his sword.

As the swamp girls stripped him of the armour, Boggins pulled his sword free of its sheath and plunged it directly into the chest of the demon in front of him.

She looked up as she dropped the breastplate into the mud, looked down at the hilt of the sword, and looked back up at Boggins.

Without her saying a word, the sword slipped deeper into her chest, as if pulled in, before sliding out the other side of her body and dropping into the bog.

Wordlessly, the girl gripped Boggins' head in her hands and leaned in... to kiss him?

Bizarrely, despite an attempt on her life, the girl seemed more intent on tonguing Boggins than on retaliating.

Boggins instinctively returned the kiss, his mind too stunned to consider the alternative. Inside her mouth, his tongue searched for contact but found only boundless ooze.

He was even more stunned when the girl then belched into his mouth, propelling a lump of goop down his throat. He coughed and spluttered as she broke the kiss and smiled at him.

"Y-you meant to do..." he began, but he was having trouble thinking straight.

A wave of dizziness had overtaken him, as his body seemed to tingle and go to sleep. His thinking slowed to a crawl as he tried to comprehend what had happened.

Toxin... must be some kind of toxin...

A wave of lethargy was spreading across him, as his limbs grew heavy and felt as if they were nothing more than sludge themselves.

A heavy feeling was also settling in his testicles, as if the gunk he'd ingested was settling there. His member tingled with unbidden excitement and grew firm in his trousers.

Sensing this, the swamp girl in front of him dipped beneath the surface and something – her hands, perhaps? - unbuttoned the waist and pulled the legs down to his ankles in one swift flourish.

As she rose again, he tried to fend her off with his arms, only to find them leaden and unwilling to respond. Instead his body sagged like a clay statue into the arms of the girl behind him.

In front of him the swamp girl who had so deftly undressed him moved in for an embrace and pulled herself tightly against him.

As her arms wrapped round his back, her breasts stuck to his bare skin before reluctantly sliding, expanding outwards like compressed putty.

His chest, and every other inch of exposed flesh the two girls had covered, felt like it was being kissed by a dozen wet and sloppy pairs of lips. His mind dulled by the toxic ooze that had been dripped down his throat, Boggins found the sensation to be extremely relaxing and allowed himself to surrender the fight.

As the last of the adventurer's willpower left his body, the seductive creature in front of him moved beneath the surface to seal his fate, pressing her crotch to his...

Boggins felt something thick press against the tip of his glans and in seconds the entire head was buried in something soft but dense, as if he'd pushed it into thick clay.

Soon, his shaft was buried up to the hilt and with one final, almost audible, pop of suction, his scrotum was inside as well.

Once inside, a series of quick suckling motions pulled at his entire member, while his testicles felt like they were being swallowed down by a pair of juicy lips.

Boggins closed his eyes and let out an audible sigh, glad for the stimulation after what had seemed like an eternity of teasing in the mud beforehand.

It wasn't long until release came and Boggins could feel thick and heavy ropes of semen hurtling out of him and into the girl straddling him. But even as rapturous release subsided, his erection did not and still the suckling continued, just as enticingly and as stimulating as before.

What the young adventurer hadn't realised was that he was now up to his neck in the swamp, and it wouldn't be long before the surface level reached his chin...

***

From Octavius' position a yard away, he could just see Boggins head poking out above the swamp - eyes closed, mouth ajar in soft bliss - along with the two grinning heads of his captors as the three began their terrible journey downwards.

Octavius himself wasn't in a much better situation; he to was sandwiched between two of the shapely swamp hags and while their touch was soft and sensuous now, he feared they may become violent if he held out much longer.

Indeed, he could only think so clearly now thanks to the spell he had cast upon himself just moments earlier that severed the link between the seductive sensations being inflicted upon his flesh and his own, reasoned, mind.

It had used a lot of his concentration and magical reserve, and it had the added downside of making it harder to tell how deep his body was without actually looking to see where the surface level met his skin. 

With a cursory glance, he saw he was up to his chest and reasoned he'd best get moving. A gurgle below the surface told him his body had just ejaculated into the girl in front of him, and it was a testament to his own magical prowess that he'd never even felt it.

The time had come to make his break for freedom, and Octavius lunged for his wand, which was lying on top of his robes, floating on the surface just a metre away, after having been casually discarded by his captors.

He launched himself clear of the two girls' grip and landed with a hefty splat on top of his robes, before scooping up his wand, which he pointed at the area of swamp he'd occupied just seconds ago.

"Aestus Maris!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

A plume of condensed, clean water flew out of the tip of his wand and poured between the two girls. It pooled and collected, diluting the mud between them as it spread out.

With a cry, the pair sank and disappeared beneath the surface.

As the last of several gallons of water left the tip of Octavius' wand, he swirled the tip in rapid circles, as if using the wand as a handle to crank a giant wheel only he could see.

As he did so, the swamp blended with the water to turn the swamp's consistency from mud to nothing more than brown water, before funnelling into a liquid twister of silt.

With a final flick of the wrist, the twister exploded outwards, showering the dirty water in all directions for as far as the eye could see.

With the volume of mud nearly completely dispersed from the area, Octavius had a clear look at the landscape before him.

Without the bog that once filled it, a miniature valley lay before him, completely empty save for the odd splattering... and the bog's former inhabitants...

Around a dozen of the identical girls that had arisen from the swamp were lain on the floor, looks of confusion on their faces.

With the mud gone, Octavius got a good look at their bodies. Each possessed pale, creamy skin, with rich round breasts and not a hair on their bodies, save for their thick eyelashes and thin eyebrows, which almost seemed painted on.

They were grouped into pairs and where each girl's hips ended, they morphed into a fleshy organ which joined the two girls together before leading into a tube like appendage, making them resemble some bizarre kind of organic Venus flytrap.

Octavius was more disturbed with where the organ led, however. All twelve of the trails led back to one central point – a large, gaping gullet above a squirming brown mass of rubbery flesh.




Emerald Forest



The organs were like miniature throats for swallowing down prey, who, once they emerged from the other end, would slip directly into the waiting stomach below them.

With the mouth of the creature open, Octavius' senses had full appreciation of the contents contained within. The huge fleshy body reeked of sex, and when the wizard bore that in mind, it was apparent that the slow, drawn-out moans coming from within weren't ones of pain... they were ones of... pleasure...

It was a prodigium phage, Octavius was sure of it. A creature who corrupted its surrounding environment with magical energy. It explained how the mud – a fairly inanimate substance had seemingly come alive and toyed with Octavius' and Boggins' bodies.

The swamp had also given the perfect disguise for the phage's 'bait' – the swamp girls, who now crawled about on the floor as if starved of oxygen.

As Octavius walked up the body of the phage itself then, he wasn't surprised to see the outlines of limbs slowly flailing about inside the creature, while some unfortunates had their entire bodies pressed so firmly against the edge of the phage that Octavius could see entire people, their bodies pushed into sexual overdrive, pulsing against the membrane that contained them.

Thinner, tendril-like roots stemmed from the bottom of the creature, in an intricate fleshy lattice, burrowing into the floor.

The roots were leeching nutrients out of the floor, and pumping it into the phage, which would in turn be producing a nutritious mulch, which would be lathered over the people inside, before being absorbed into their skin and keeping them alive.

But inside the phage, the nutrients would become mixed with the monster's own secretions, which would overstimulate the pleasure centres of its preys' brains, burying their awareness beneath forced orgasm after forced orgasm, each one more stimulating than the last.

The demon would then once more consume the dregs of the liquid it contained within itself and gorge on the genetic material contained within the sexual fluids.

Octavius panicked for a moment, scared that Boggins had fallen foul of the phage, when he spied the young man's sword and clothing, lying in a heap near one of the sets of 'bait'.
In the fleshy tube connecting the two girls to the main phage body, he spied a Boggins-shaped lump twisting and contorting.

As he walked towards the discarded sword, one of the two girls limply threw her hand out towards his crotch, only to miss and collapse on the floor once more.

Picking the blade up, Octavius sliced the tube open, resulting in a scream of pain from every one of the assorted women.

He pulled out the filthy adventurer, dragging him clear of the reach of the phage, before dashing back in to collect their equipment.

Clear of the phage's enchantments, a thick, slick coating of what looked like mud evaporated off Boggins' skin, carried into the air on a pale brown smoke.

"Come on," Octvaius said to his naked companion, tossing his clothes, armour and sword at his feet.

"Time we got out of here and tracked down Anna."

Boggins groggily pulled on his breastplate and dragged his line of sight upon the prodigium phage, which lay stationary, quivering.

Inside it, the collected bodies of men and women contorted and writhed as the entity continued to feed from their fluids.

"What about the people trapped inside that thing?"

"Forget it," dismissed Octavius.

"Their minds and bodies will have been dependent on the demon's secretions for so long, they simply won't be able to function in the harsh light of day.

"Killing it now would mean a slow, painful death for them, and besides, it won't be in a rush to create any more camouflage for a while, given what's just happened.

"The greater kindness would be to just leave them."

Boggins shrugged.

"You know best," he said.

True, thought Octavius as he turned to leave. 
But if that was the case, why did he feel a guilty queasiness in the pit of his stomach?