The Druid and the Igniad

After the third day of hosting the druid on her mountain, Lu kissed Gern goodbye. He brushed a tear from her cheek and assured her that he would return. She watched him disappear into the mountain pass below, toward greener lands.

She tried to carry on as she had before, but Gern had awoken something inside her. She ached for him every day, and her own touch did little to satiate the waves of desire. She writhed in her fire-fern fibre nest, caressing her obsidian skin and fingering her cleft in an attempt at self-affection. She tried to distract herself with daily walks, singing encouragement to the young crystals poking out of the snow along the edge of her shining forest.

The witch queen's blackened bones remained upon the spiky monument of purple crystal in the snow field beyond the edge of the grove, where they had killed her. Lu felt uneasy every time she glanced at it. Day by day, the crystal's core seemed to darken to deeper shades of purple. The trees nearby were strangely quiet. She did not dare to go closer to the sorceress' remains, trusting that nature would heal the space in time.

She tossed and turned in her nest above the lava pool, restless in her sleep, haunted by dreams she could never remember upon waking, and often she would wake aroused. The trees began to sing in worried tones. Something was wrong.

When the dark moon came, she did not experience her usual painful shedding. At first, she was afraid that something was wrong with her; that she was the cause of the tree's worry. Then she remembered that Gern had put his essence inside her, when the moon had been full, and like Gern himself, his seed had not been harmed by her power. She was pregnant. She had not thought it possible, but something miraculous happened in their coupling.

The initial shock quickly gave way to happiness. She sang out in joy, and the trees sang with her. That day, happiness resonated in the crystal grove atop the mountain. When night came, she did not want to sleep, but she had spent all day dancing between the trees, and had become heavy-eyed.

The dreams came again.

A presence was with her, a hot and heavy breath over her neck. In the dream, she saw Gern kneeling over her, his eyes drinking in the sight below him. She yearned for him, to feel him. She felt something warm press against her slit. Was she not wearing her crystal cup? It must be Gern trying to enter her, she thought in happy, half-conscious delirium.

She parted her thighs, her smooth, ebony mound swelling with sexual excitement. Her hair of black smoke wavered in the air, less than weightless. She felt exquisite pressure against her magenta nether lips, a wonderful warm wetness sliding up and down her cleft.

She moaned and begged him to enter her, but he did not. He only rubbed the hard tip of his erection against her entrance endlessly. He loomed over her, his hands squeezing the soft flesh of her heavy breasts between his fingers.

She became crazed with lust, and she tried to thrust her pelvis towards him, to push herself upon him, but still he did not enter her, only teased her flesh with his touch. She looked upon him, her sex-deprived body nudging towards orgasm.

But Gern was not himself. The look on his face was not loving, but smug and vain, regarding her as a conquest. It was then that she realized it was not Gern. In that moment, his face changed, and he became Evalyn.

Lu was appalled, and knew it had to be a bad dream. She tried to wake up, but she could not move. Evalyn was as she had been just before her death, her kirtle shredded, her corset accentuating her cleavage. She was kneeling between Lu's parted thighs, her fingers rubbing against Lu's slick slit.

Evalyn spoke in a strange tongue, her voice vibrating the air, transferring the vibration to Lu's exposed sex. Lu quaked at the sensation, the vibration exciting her against her will, her hidden clit tweaked from the force. Evalyn repeated the same strange words ceaselessly, her voice deepening in tone. The vibration strengthened in tandem, and her oil-smeared fingers rubbed faster.

"No!" Lu cried out, her face flushed with both anger and arousal.

Evalyn smiled seductively and lowered her head near her rubbing fingers, and continued to speak the arcane phrase, the pressure intensifying as her lips ever-so-slightly brushed Lu's flesh. Lu felt the pressure penetrate deep inside her, her hot canal thrumming.

"No, no-ahh!" Lu cried out helplessly as she failed to hold back the overwhelming sensation, her toes curling and her inner walls gushing with oily nectar, leaking against Evalyn's fingertips.

Evalyn reared upright and moaned with a toothy smile, as if she also experienced the orgasm. The intensity of Lu's climax broke the illusion and woke her from the dream. She could feel her crystal cup between her soaked thighs, her nectar leaking around the edges. She tried to move, but her muscles would not obey. Suddenly, she realized she was not laying down....She was floating. She could only move her eyes, and turned them to a blackness in the middle of her lava pool. Shadow, black as pitch, made a circle of inky nothingness within the pool of red magma.

"This is a dream," Lu told herself, her voice cracking. "I'm still in a dream!"

To her horror, she watched sheer, black tendrils snake their way up out of the pool of darkness. A mass of them bulged upwards, then peeled away from each other like a blooming, alien flower. As they bloomed, the tendrils pushed up an unearthly woman, and at once, Lu recognized her as Evalyn.

Evalyn was changed. She had the same voluptuous form, her new body possessing subcutaneous fat in the same places that enhanced her figure. Her hair was still blonde, albeit wet with slime, and her lips were still glossy black. When Lu had last seen her in the flesh, however, Evalyn had been wearing a headdress of ram's horns. She had no further need for the headdress, for the horns were real, attached to her head. Her face was smiling blissfully, as it had been in her dream. Her alabaster skin glistened with slime left by the black, fleshy tendrils as they pushed her out of the bloom of darkness. They unwrapped themselves from most of her body, but continued to support and caress around her legs, pelvis, torso, and lower back. Her pearly breasts spilled out from the unwrapping tendrils, nipples pert.

"Sex magic is simply the best," Evalyn murmured. "My dear, you channel a wonderful amount of power. It was all that I needed and more to come back."

"Let me go!" Lu shouted angrily. "You're not real!"

"I'm as real as a dream can be, my dear. Which is to say...very real."

Evalyn tugged a leg free of the tendrils wrapped around it, and stepped forward. The lava instantly solidified to a dark stone under her feet. The tendrils greedily tried to hold her fresh, slimy body, but she effortlessly slipped out of them and left them behind. She wagged free a smooth tail, another addition to her form. It began just above the crease of her buttocks, thick as a python, and tapered down to a blunt tip, the whole of it clad in the same pale skin as the rest of her.

"Wha-what are you?" Lu asked, her anger giving way to terror.

"Did you think the body you burned was my first?" Evalyn smirked. "Death and I are old acquaintances."

Evalyn gesticulated with her hand and levitated Lu's paralyzed body upright. She beckoned with her finger, and Lu floated closer, despite her effort to fight it. Evalyn gently caressed Lu's flat belly, her abdominal muscles faintly defined against her taut, obsidian skin.

"You are with child," Evalyn mused. "I have been waiting to know for certain. My attendants usually prepare a new vessel for me when the old one becomes undesirable." Her face contorted in indignation. "I have not had the insult of losing a body against my will for a very long time. With no body to transfer to I might have been dead for good, this time. Luckily...I was able to imbue my mind into the very crystal that killed me."

Evalyn raised her other hand and stroked her fingers over Lu's curves, playing her touch across the dark skin. Lu wanted nothing more than to pull away, but her body was under a spell.

"I had to bargain for my return," Evalyn continued. "A corporeal spirit...not too dissimilar from yourself, in fact. It came with a price."

"Are you going to kill me?" Lu gritted her teeth, dreading the answer.

Evalyn chuckled throatily.

"No, my dear. As much as I would relish your total destruction, I need you healthy, for a healthy baby. You are beyond my ability to possess completely, but a fresh, defenseless form...a half-mortal, no less, will do nicely. Your daughter shall be my next vessel."

Lu's pupils dilated in horror. She wanted to thrash against her invisible restraints, but her panic had no outlet. She rattled her mind within her physic cage.

"And after that...you will be a sacrifice to my benefactor." Evalyn turned to look at something, and, as if summoned, it stepped out from behind an outcropping of dark stone.

Lu turned her eyes in that direction, and saw a great, bronze-colored dog with wings like a griffon. It approached, turned its wolf-like head toward Lu, and gazed at her intensely with the calm focus of an animal in the hunt.

"My lord Labolas," Evalyn addressed, "I thank you for this honor. This igniad will make a fitting prize for you."

"En-A-senbay-oh-op," the winged dog growled at Evalyn.

"You will not kill me, Glasya-Labolas," Evalyn smiled. "You cannot. You are bound by our bargain."

Labolas simply growled under his breath, then turned his head back to Lu, gazing into her eyes.

"N-majh-ralg-jeh," he said in a tone of conviction.

"You will have her after I have claimed the child, my lord." With that, Evalyn crouched down and scooped up a handful of magma, levitating it just above her cupped hand. With her other hand, she made motions above it, and sculpted the liquid stone into a perfect little statue in Lu's likeness, then blew on it. It cooled into solid obsidian. Evalyn plucked a blonde hair from her own head, scrunching her face at the prick, and tied it around the statue's neck. Lu gasped, feeling a tingle of magic in the corresponding area of her own body.

Evalyn vibrated her voice, imbuing the statue with magic, reciting: "En an-bara gig-ga ki-a mu-un-zi!" At the last syllable, she shoved the statue toward Lu.

At once, Lu was propelled backwards against the angled stone wall of the crater, and she flailed her arms, trying to flee. For a moment, she thought she might succeed, as she could move her body again, but her neck was held against the stone by an invisible force. She struggled, scrapping her feet and arching her back, but she was held fast by the collar of magic.

Evalyn set the statue of Lu upon a shelf of stone.

"You won't be going anywhere, my dear," Evalyn stated. "Just make yourself comfortable, and let me know if you need anything. As for you, Labolas, why don't you stay a while? It will be a few days before the first of my forces begin to arrive. I would appreciate your company."

Evalyn sauntered up the natural steps to Lu's nest, her tail swishing back and forth in counterbalance to her swaying hips. Labolas watched her, then silently padded up to the steps. He changed form before Lu's eyes as he ascended them. His body became that of a golden-eyed man displaying muscle befitting a great warrior. His wings of bronze feathers remained, attached to secondary shoulder blades on his long torso, and a mane of hair of the same color hung from his head.

Evalyn laid on her side and slid her legs together seductively, her skin sticky from half-dried slime. Labolas gazed down at her with dark lust in his eyes, his bronze-toned phallus swelling, gently rising.

"I'm still wet from my ascension," Evalyn cooed. She lifted one of her smooth legs, exposing her pink slit, and curled her tail between her parted thighs, using the blunt tip of her tail to tease her body's virgin flesh. She grinned, watching his erection come to full-mast. Lu's eyes widened at the sight of it, a phallus huge by human standards, with a shape that was not quite human, either.

"Muyt-za," she said, voicing it as a command, tracing a pentagram in the air with her finger.

Labolas acted without reservation. He grabbed Evalyn by the ankles and turned her on her back to face him, resulting in an appreciative gasp of excitement from her. He let go and gestured with one hand, levitating Evalyn upwards before him. She giggled in anticipation and squirmed in the air, her tail still rubbing against her slit.

Labolas, never smiling, grasped Evalyn's hips and guided her weightless body, angling her to line up with his long, thick instrument of sex.

"Muyt-za, Muyt-za," Evalyn repeated hungrily, apparently impatient to experience sex in her new body. Despite her seductive calling, she kept rubbing her slit with the end of her tail, presenting an obstruction to his access.

Labolas swept her tail up and coiled it around his arm, and it seemed to constrict against his muscles, gripping him. He pulled on her tail and gripped her buttock with his other hand, pulling her onto him with masterful symmetry. In one swift motion, his bronze phallus entered what was offered it.

"Nah-nacara!" She cried, tossing her head back in enrapturing pleasure.

Labolas frowned and closed his eyes, as if he were focusing on some absolute thought or goal, but did not stop. He pushed and pulled her by his grip on her tail and buttock. Lu could not look away. She watched his monstrous rod slide in and out of Evalyn's stretched cleft, the ease at which it was admitted defying reason. Evalyn gestured in the air with her hands, tracing shapes as if in a trance.

"Here I light -- the first flames -- of my power," Evalyn recited as her weightless body was jolted by thrusts, "shedding light -- onto the past -- and opening the way -- to the future." She paused, moaned, then continued: "Let the life -- that was lived -- be ended -- with joy -- let my past -- and future -- be blended!"

Labolas tilted his head back as he pounded into the nubile form in his grasp and growled with a ferocity that made Lu question that it was a pleasurable experience for him at all. He let go of Evalyn's buttock and grabbed her ankle again, this time holding it out at full length and turning her so that she was belly-down. Evalyn paused her spell, lost in the sensation of being rotated around his thick member, her inner walls sliding against his imposing shaft.

"Mina aem zes daelabbi..." Evalyn chanted, "mina aem zes daelabbi..."

"Chaq-za-nachoza!" Labolas growled out, thrusting into her from behind. He still gripped her tail coiled around his arm, and pulled her onto him repeatedly. Her ample bosom swayed forward and back, as weightless as the rest of her.

"Nah! Nah-nacara! Muyt-za!" Evalyn gasped, her climax fast approaching. "Fires of my heart -- fires of my passion -- slough off the old shell rendered ashen! As my flood feeds my flower -- fill me with true power!"

Labolas shouted a guttural cry and stretched out his wings, his body tensing as he thrust up into Evalyn with desperate strength, trying to peak. Evalyn cried out as well in airy ecstasy as her supernatural body gushed cream.

"Edaed!" Evalyn gasped. "Edaed!" She made a halting gesture with both hands.

Labolas promptly stopped thrusting, an indignant scowl upon his face.

"Ba-lizz yhoiz esaeu," Labolas sneered.

"No," Evalyn reiterated. "I claim my power. The consummation is complete." She swished her finger in the air, tracing a pentagram in reverse.

Labolas withdrew from Evalyn and took a couple steps back. Evalyn rotated herself in the air with a kick of her legs, then landed on the stone. She closed her eyes and seemed to still herself in upright meditation, her face lifted to the night sky.

Labolas turned his head to Lu, gazing at her intensely, his hard phallus still jutting from his pelvis, glossy with Evalyn's clear, intimate cream. Lu squirmed uncomfortably against the stone. Her sex seeped fresh arousal beneath her crystal protector, despite herself. She did not know what would happen next, but she feared the natural arousal of her body at the sight of sex would be misconstrued as a willing desire for it, and that any protest would go unheeded.

Labolas did not move toward her, however. He merely remained where he was, motionless, his golden eyes piercing.

After Evalyn had been meditating for some time, she concluded the ritual, and came to sit down near Lu, who wished she had come a little closer -- within kicking distance.

"Don't look so sour, my dear," Evalyn said to her. "You should consider yourself lucky. You get to live...for a while. Both your child and your crystal grove will be put to good use."

"There's nothing good about you," Lu simmered.

"Your naive sentiments blind you. Do you think all my efforts are selfish? I have watched generation after generation struggle in subsistence, in squalor, guided in their efforts by the petty squabbles of kings and chieftains, endlessly battling over whose tribe is better, or land, or 'honor'. It sickens me. I decided I would not allow the potential of this world to go unrealized."

"So you would bring war to the world? Kill everyone who stood against you? Gern said your power would bring only misery, and he's right!"

"Your druid-mate has been taught that seeking power is folly. Why do you think that is? Who benefits from such a conventional thought?" Evalyn placed a finger against her lip in mock ponder. "Oh yes! Those who already have power, and wish to keep it. The aforementioned kings and chieftains, who, having unquestioning, unambitious subjects, can direct more effort toward gaining advantages over their rivals."

"I don't know much about kings and such," Lu conceded angrily, "but not all of them can be as corrupted as you."

"Corruption is a tool to get what you want," Evalyn grinned wickedly, rising to her feet, "like anything else." She stepped closer to Lu, looming over her. Lu tensed almost imperceptibly. She let rage boil up in her heart, then released it with an outstretched hand, sparking a powerful bolt of searing fire.

"Gar-mina!" Evalyn recited quickly as she reflexively swiped the fire aside with a swift wave of her hand.

Before Lu could act again, Evalyn leapt down on top of her, grabbing her wrists and shoving them back against the stone. Lu tried to kick her off, but Evalyn locked her legs with Lu's in an entangled pin. Lu tried to ignite her touch with the power of destructive fire, but nothing seemed to happen.

"I was speared by the very thing that protected me from your elemental power," Evalyn hissed. "It was very clever. But that act sowed magic that now protects me from that power. You are helpless!"

In their contentious embrace, Evalyn's pale mound brushed against Lu's crystal cup, which instantly snapped with a bright spark of purple light. Evalyn yelped in pain and surprise, her hips bucking back.

Lu took the opportunity to break out of the leg-pin and kicked with both feet, sending Evalyn flying back into the air, over the lava pool.

"Maoyabbi!" Evalyn recited as she righted herself with cat-like grace, just in time to plow an impact trench through the lava, which solidified instantly to dark stone. Evalyn huffed a dismissive sigh and stood upright.

"They say that knowledge is power," Evalyn said as she strode back up the steps, "and that power corrupts. If that is the case, then I most certainly am corrupt. But if the world cannot have knowledgeable rulers, would you rather have idiots with power?"

"Better than you!" Lu retorted.

"Insolent child! You will learn to respect me. After all, we will be spending the next nine months together."

***********

Lu cried that night, after Evalyn dismissed Labolas and made herself comfortable in Lu's nest-like woven bed of fire-fern fibers. Lu tried placing her hands against the stone behind her neck and heating it with her power until the stone melted. All she accomplished was molding the stone to the shape of her neck. The magical binding kept her locked to it.