The man appeared at the forest edge, gaunt and hollow-eyed, bone fragments woven through his matted hair. His skin stretched taut across jutting ribs as he extended a dirt-crusted hand toward Aldryn.
Aldryn squinted and shook his hand. This guy was a Gloomweave cultist, no doubt about it.
"She awaits," he rasped. "Mistress Xalquira demands your presence."
Aldryn's knuckles whitened around botanist's notebook. Xalquira or Quira, their family's nickname for her. His father's daughter from first wife. She became part of family at nine, after father married his mother, one year before he was born.
Quira was a troubled disruptive child. Aldryn shaked his head remembering tales of vandalism, dissected animals in the yard, and her infamous brawls. But mother always treated her like one of her own, showing unwavering patience, defending her to everyone, staying up nights when nightmares plagued the girl and refusing to give up on her.
Her violent proclivities never scared him as a child. She always showed unexpected patience with him. Aldryn smiled, wistfully reminiscing fragments of his childhood - Quira at eighteen, tall and athletic, protecting him from Clan Blackspire children, teaching him to climb the tallest oak in their yard, stealing pastries for them from Glimpscale Market... and countless other memories from the time they spent together.
After their father was murdered, nineteen-year-old Quira embarked westward. Only leaving occasional cryptic letters to family, mostly his mother, the only humans who truly showed her kindness. Aldryn surmised her whereabouts from the letters. All of them were postmarked from the closest village, hundred miles east from these dreaded woods. The Gloomweave cultist uttering her name in the forest merely reaffirmed his conjecture.
"I'm ready," Aldryn said, following the tall cultist's shambling gait into the trees. Neither noticed the stalkers trailing fifty yards behind. All throughout the journey, terrified locals warned him not to venture too close to western half of Klyzandor continent which was a nightmarish forest, colloquially known as The Grisly Forest. Even Sable Crown legions, unarguably the strongest military force in history of Klyzandor, were forced to halt their conquest at its malefic borders.
"Stay close," the cultist warned, glancing back with hollow eyes. "The forest hungers for those who wander."
Aldryn followed closely, unease crawling up his spine. Still unsure why he was following him or cultist's ties to his half-sister. Gloomweave Order was an obscure powerful cult, their barbarity dreaded even by Dragonflare Covenant.
The forest swallowed the path behind them with each step as they ventured deeper. Massive trees along the way twisted into grotesque shapes that resembled screaming faces. Trunks were wider than castle walls and their branches drooped like broken limbs. The air was musty and heavy, every swallow felt like sandpaper scraping against the back of his throat.
The path led them into a clearing scented in petrichor. Sunlight fell like spotlights through gaps in the canopy. At its center loomed a tree that dwarfed the others. At least fifty feet around, bark black as coal. Strange symbols had been carved into its surface, crude angular cuts pulsating with light. Roots as thick as dragon's tail snaked across the ground, digging into the surface.
And there stood Quira.
The athletic teenager from his childhood memories was gone. Now in her early thirties, she had transformed into a ravishing goddess. Standing at least 6'6", she towered over his six feet frame, few inches taller than he last saw her.
At 275 pounds, her previously lean frame was bulked with dense muscle and a layer of fat. Mostly concentrated in lower body and her chest with some of it on those burly arms and broad shoulders. Huge thighs and muscular calves supported her hourglass figure. Pale skin seemed to glow in the dim light, stretching over her powerful musculature.
The right side of Quira's head was shaved to the scalp while long bluish-green hair fell exquisitely down the left side and broad back. Lightly freckled cheeks were fuller now, face more rounded, but still had a distinct sharp angle that he remembered.
The facial piercings and colorful tattooed sleeves were new. Three curved thorns protruded from her right eyebrow, two more from her bottom lip, and a bone ring passed through her septum. Ears adorned with hoops hewed from human ribs. Soft rounded breasts strained against her tight leather top fashioned from wyvern hide. Her green eyes cut through the shadows of the forest and locked onto Aldryn's face, thick wide lips curling into a warm smile.
Quira's expression suddenly changed as she took a step towards them.
"You bought the empire interlopers," she snarled, her voice furious. Her eyes fixed on him intently, then flashed past Aldryn. Her expression contorted with resignation.
"I should have gone myself," she muttered softly, shaking her head.
"But the path.." the cultist who brought him stammered. The excuse died in throat. Quira's hands flicked dismissively. A vine wrapped around cultist's neck. The man's eyes bulged hideously as Quira clenched her fist, causing the vine to tighten. A sharp crunch silenced his protest. Limp body swung from the massive tree in the center, blood trickling from his open mouth.
It was then, a horrifying realization dawned on Aldryn. Purple-green roots and vines spreaded on her upper arms, sprawled in a chaotic tangle that gradually thinned out till it reached her shoulders. Meaty forearms now resembled a bough, completely interwoven with them. Fingers turned unnaturally long, nails blackening like a sharp obsidian. The strange rumors about his father's first wife, her disruptive behaviour and those nightmares growing up suddenly crystallized into terrifying clarity. Quira wasn't fully human. Something ancient and inhuman coursed within her that belonged to the wild.
The ground convulsed beneath their feet as Quira raised her arms. Roots thick as a man's arm erupted from the soil like spears, whipping through air at her command. Behind them, men screamed. With a jabbing motion of her finger, she sent a root through a man's throat, blood jetting in a crimson arc as his windpipe shattered. Another gesture impaled a second man through the chest, the root punching clean through sternum with a crack of fragmenting bone, the tip emerging gore-slicked between shoulder blades.
The scout almost escaped, managing three desperate strides before roots snared both ankles. She yanked them in opposite directions. The wet, meaty tear of his groin splitting echoed through the clearing as his entrails spilled onto the forest floor.
"Fuck!" Aldryn stumbled, taken aback by unfolding brutality. "I didn't know they followed--"
Quira's fingers shrank back to human proportions as the blackened talons receded into normal nails. Her hand, now deceptively human, clamped around his arm. Fingers dug into his flesh with bruising force.
"You led them here, Aldryn," she accused with a soft growl. "Empire mages seeking to drain the forest's power."
Her eyes, thin violet slits cutting through jade irises changed back to their human form. "They tear out the heart trees, bottle the essence, leaving nothing but dead wood behind. You were meant to die with them for bringing such danger here."
"Sis Quira, I swear, I didn't know," Aldryn gasped. "I only came because our mother insisted. She thought you could help with my research..."
Her grip loosened fractionally. "Your research?"
"She keeps every letter you send," Aldryn babbled, desperately. "She told me you 'work with the forest'. I'll keep your secret, I swear. No one needs to know what I've seen today, not even her.."
Xalquira studied him intently, from his trembling hands to his face, noting the botanical notebook clutched against chest. No staff, no spell components, no imperial robes. Just a scholar's tools and her brother's frightened face.
"I know, you didn't mean to bring the intruders, little brother," she said, voice gentling. The murderous rage from earlier completely vanished. "But the forest demands appeasement," her tone now sombering.
"Death is a fair price," she said finally, regret evident in ominous words. "Now, there's no way but to do that."
At her sign, thick vines erupted from the ground, thinner than those that had impaled the loggers but no less strong, wrapping Aldryn's wrists and ankles.
"Sister? No please," Aldryn screamed, convinced he was about to die.
"Aldryn!" she roared. "Calm yourself and listen!" The sudden burst of volume shocked him into silence. "There's an ancient rite. An offering, not blood, drawn from the pure," she said, soothing him.
"Now, answer truthfully. Have you ever been fucked by a man?" she asked bluntly. "And are you a virgin?"
He tensed, realizing where this was leading. She needed an offering from "pure".
"No," he answered, thinking of his past dalliances with women. He thought about lying. But Quira had always been able to see through his deceptions.
Quira smirked, just like when she teased him as a child. She deliberately asked the last question with ambiguousness, knowing full well he'd misunderstand.
"Not that kind of purity, foolish brother. The ritual needs a virgin untouched there," her nail scraping his rosebud. "Your essence, simulated that way, can nourish the sacred tree instead of your blood."
The worshippers circled them, chanting in a language that made Aldryn's ears hurt. The blood of impaled men continued to drain, flowing in rivulets toward the great tree.
Horror dawned upon him as a cultist approached, wielding a knife carved from femur. The blade slashed through Aldryn's clothing. Cool air raised goosebumps across his completely exposed skin. Cock retreating against his body, balls drawn tight against his groin.
The vines repositioned him, bending him forward at the waist and pulling his arms above his head. They spread his legs wide, exposing his ass to the air.
"What--stop--" he gasped.
"You don't get a say in this, Aldryn," she said flatly. "I am not killing my baby brother. Besides, mother would be displeased if something happened to you." Part of him was relieved. She was still the same overprotective sister from their childhood.
Aldryn felt her kneel behind him. Breath hot against his perineum and the wetness of her tongue against his hole. He writhed in the vine restraints, a strangled sound escaping his throat. Her tongue was inhumanly long and dexterous. Slick with tree sap that burned then numbed his entrance. It circled his rim, tracing the tight pucker before pushing inward with firm pressure.
"Fuck--" he moaned.
Her prehensile and alien tongue probed deeper, lubing his rectum with sap. The sap spread inside him creating a strange warmth that loosened his sphincter against his will. She rimmed him thoroughly. Her saliva and the sap mixing to form a slick coating both inside and outside his hole.
"St--stop it," he gasped.
Despite his terror, blood rushed to his cock. It thickened and lengthened, hanging heavy between his spread thighs.
"Good," she muttered against his skin, her tongue withdrawing with a wet sound. "Your body is responding well."
