How long had they wandered through this shadowed landscape? Everything around them seemed familiar, but off. The trees over there, normally healthy and green, had a purplish tinge, as if she was seeing them through a filter.
This pocket dimension, if that is what it was, had dangers aplenty. When the cataclysm arrived, she had been refilling the water caskets with Ora and Lily. Together, they had managed to hide near the burbling brook, which had been transformed into a cascade of purple rapids.
This gave them a perfect view between the twisted shrubbery to watch as the rest of the village was attacked by horrific monsters. Plant women, painted shades of green, flooded from the woods, grabbing unsuspecting fairies and impaling them on their vine tentacles. Jellyfish monsters floated from the sky, zapping the terrified villagers, herding them towards their doom.
Those who tried to escape fled right into a crowd of amorphous, fleshy monsters. Log-shaped towers with tentacle arms reached out for their slender bodies. A writhing, fleshy cone with tubular arms grabbed an isolated fairy and jammed her into its mouth.
Whether it was attempting something sexual, or trying to eat her, Vera didn't know. Either way, she knew there was no way she could help any of them, even though she had trained extensively in hand to hand combat. There were just too many of them.
She had lived for over three hundred years and had never seen anything so terrifying. Being the eldest of the group, it had fallen to her to gather up the other two fairies and make good their escape, leaving their half filled caskets on the bank of the river.
There had been no plan - merely a frantic run through the darkened forest, filled with dead limbs and twisted trees, aided by their flapping wings. They had spent hours straining their ears for signs of monsters, taking care to hide whenever a gruesome beast waddled past.
One of the creatures had the appearance of a large werewolf, padding through the undercanopy on all fours, nose in the air. The most frightening aspect was not his abundance of fur, but the gigantic, erect dick so long that it almost dragged on the ground. She could imagine being speared by its tremendous length, and shuddered.
Luckily, they were downwind, and weren't spotted. That wasn't the only creature lurking, however. She had spotted a spider overhead mere moments before Ora had stepped into its trap, and Lily had almost revealed herself to a giant, floating bag of flesh.
They were too terrified to speak to each other, meekly following Vera's lead. The problem was that she didn't know where she was going. Was there any safe place for them to hide?
Their only lead was a giant, sparkling purple bolt which rent the sky, somewhere further ahead. She wasn't quite sure what it meant, but it was the only obvious landmark they could investigate. Wandering around aimlessly was unlikely to bring them anywhere useful, so she plodded onwards, being careful to avoid the messy knots of tree roots.
She never thought she'd be trapped in a fractured reality filled with creatures that wanted to fuck her. Daily assignations were the norm in the fairy village, and she had fooled around plenty with some of the others. Lily had even graced her bed once, but it was never anything serious.
What they had shared was a gentle pleasure, a calm interlude under the boughs of strong branches wet with dew. This was a violent shattering of everything they had known, a sharp blade tearing through their psyche.
Ora's lips were working, barely restraining her terror. "Do you think that... thing is gone?" she whispered frantically.
Vera put a finger to her lips. "Shh, be quiet, do you want that gigantic spider to find us?"
Ora went white as a sheet, whiter even than her usual coloration. "I can't stand this. Why are they doing this to us?"
"I don't know," replied Vera, putting on a brave face. "But we're going to get out of here somehow."
She kept moving, vaulting over a stand of fronds. The others followed her reluctantly.
"We're going to be fucked," said Lily, blankly, not seeming to care too much one way or the other. She must be shell shocked. "Does it even matter what we do? There's no escape."
"Shut it," hissed Vera. "If you want to give up, go ahead and let yourself be plowed by one of those living plants, but I intend to fight!"
Her fiery temper had gotten her into trouble before, but here it seemed justified. Let the others waste their time thinking about their hopeless situation. She had a plan.
Only, that plan seemed to crumble once they reached the verge of the forest. Hiding in a bush, she got a good view of the plains beyond, and was horrified.
The lightning bolt-like plasma that rent the sky descended into a cloudy circle of light, a rip in the fabric of their reality. She could see vague motion inside the circle, as if it was a porthole to another place and time. While the surrounding plains appeared green enough, the area around the portal was barren, dirt and rocks, no signs of life.
A small stand of trees used to live where the portal had descended, but the bulk of the vegetation had been removed, destroyed down to their trunks. It was almost as if they had been sliced in twain, perfect cuts made two feet above the ground.
Upon one of the tree trunks sat a solitary figure, humming and rubbing her hand up and down. From this distance, she looked like another fairy, but Vera was wary. Something about the tableau seemed very wrong to her.
Where were the other fairies? Why were there no monsters guarding the portal?
She put her hands out in front of her compatriots. "Hold here," she whispered. "I'll go check it out."
"Okay," replied Ora, biting her nails.
She knew Ora would do as she was told, but Lily was an unknown quantity. The other fairy used to be a firebrand, but the shock of this place had made her unstable. If another monster showed up, she had no idea what she might do.
Best to get a move on, then. This puzzle wasn't going to solve itself.
She stood up, walking with false confidence towards the portal. As she closed with the figure, the finer details resolved and she blanched.
The figure sitting on the tree stump was indeed a fairy, but something had been done to her. Her skin was an unnatural shade of blue, her hands and feet coated with a black, furry substance. Pink claws decorated the tips of her gloved hands, the same color as her nipples and the tip of her penis. Her wings were decayed, the filmy material damaged and frayed as if she no longer needed them.
