Ser Harriet Vadeln knew something was amiss as soon as she found the maypole.

It stood at the camp’s heart, towering into the forest canopy with white flowers spiralling downwards along its length, a sickly sweet aroma wafting from them. Harriet knew these woods. Even before she’d sworn her vows- even before she’d emerged from the shell of the boy she’d once hid within- she’d grown up around the forest’s edge. Her father used to take her hunting, deep into the pines. Never once had she seen these flowers here; their triangular petals so purely white one might think they were grown among the clouds, and their scent so sharply saccharine it almost sizzled in her nostrils.

Looking away, she scanned the empty tents and cottages arrayed around the maypole. It wasn’t so strange that the place was abandoned. Many pagan covens became scarce when they heard a paladin of Saint Arentia was en route to them. This wasn’t even the most disconcerting such place Harriet had seen. An airy peace hung over it, birds trilling in the forest, and shafts of sunlight dappling the dirt road. All that disturbed the tranquility was the too-sweet stink of the flowers.

Harriet set a hand on the hilt of her broadsword as she began to search the camp. Not that she expected to use it. This coven wasn’t purported to be violent. According to the townsfolk living just north of the forest these pagans were a group of women, about thirty strong, who had moved into this secluded glen roughly a year ago. No one was quite sure why. One of the women had come once into town to trade, and was asked by a guardsmen what they were doing out there. The girl smiled and replied, “Just putting down roots.” 

At first there’d been no trouble. The witches kept to themselves, whatever that entailed. So, the townspeople left them to it. It wasn’t until two months ago that the problems started. Allegedly, the witches began coming into town more often, bushels of those white flowers cradled in their arms, and started trying to recruit the local girls into their coven. They weren’t threatening or aggressive. When the guardsmen told them to cut it out, they did, retreating back into the trees with a smile. It all might have been forgivable had they not succeeded in luring a girl into the forest.

Jane Fralk, her name was. Aged twenty, no known history of dabbling in witchcraft or pagan ways. After no trace had been found of her in a week, the townsfolk sent for the Order of Saint Arentia.

A wise call, if they hoped to avoid conflict. The Order were all women, and women of Her Sainthood’s own reason and compassion at that, as they’d allowed Harriet into their ranks. Her orders were straightforward. Go to the coven. Have a look around. Inquire as to what happened to Jane Fralk. Report back to the Order. It didn’t bode well for the witches, however, that they chose to hide from her.

Stepping into a cottage, Harriet looked the place over. The air was warm, tinged with herbs and smoke. It consisted mostly of a single room, with a hearth, cooking pot, and a heavy wooden trunk. There was also a small bedroom with a cot. Harriet knelt to examine it. Laid on the dishevelled blankets was some sort of wooden icon. A caricature of a pregnant woman, it seemed, her limbs and head atrophied to emphasize her swollen hips, breasts, and womb. Picking it up, Harriet examined it, eyes drawn along the exaggerated, almost oval curvature of its shape.

A fertility cult, then. The townsfolk had mentioned the witches sometimes offered tinctures they claimed to be aphrodisiacs for trade when they came into town. This made it all the more strange that they’d chosen to hide. Her mind wandered for an explanation- perhaps these supposed aphrodisiacs were made of some illegal, or even dangerous, reagents. In her mind’s wandering she noticed the icon’s legs seemed to twist together into an indistinct tangle. Less like legs than the roots of a tree.

Harriet caught a whiff of the white flowers.

With a long exhale she set it back down, and grasped her own icon- the silver shield of Saint Arentia, hanging around her neck. 

The coven grounds weren’t large. The tents mostly contained trunks full of dried herbs and plants, and tools for some obtuse ritual. Spades and hoes made of some pale, bone-like material seemed commonplace. That made sense, given how many small garden plots filled the spaces between the buildings. These plots weren’t fenced in, nor did they seem to be disturbed by animals rooting around in them. Perhaps, the paladin wondered, the witches had some other brew to ward pests away. Or, maybe, the awful smell of the white flowers did. 

Pine needles and white petals littered the dirt paths running through the coven grounds. As she made her rounds Harriet kept finding her eyes drawn to the latter, how their ivory remained unstained even after she’d ruffled them beneath her boots. 

Finally, in the last cottage of her search, Harriet found something of use. Folded neatly in the corner was a plain green dress. Jane Fralk was last seen in just such attire. Examining it, Harriet discovered no signs of wear or damage, beyond some light dirt stains along the hem of the skirt. If any harm had come to the girl, it had been done after she’d taken off the dress. She moved onto the bedroom. Inside waited the expected small bed, and an empty crib, plush with white blankets.

Harriet hovered over it, staring down into the pure alabaster folds. In her nose, the air was warm and sweet.

A memory surfaced in her mind. A few months ago, she returned to her quarters after completing an assignment, muscles stiff from weeks of riding. As she removed her tabard and armor, she noticed something glinting in the afternoon sunlight entering through the open window. A straight razor. Even though she’d never once appeared to her sisters with a hair on her face. Even though she’d spent years of work, researching and then making acidic poultices to burn the follicles there so the hair could no longer even grow. She’d thrown the razor out the window and said nothing of it. Doing so would only create discord in the Order. She’d learned the hard way that women like her needed to fit themselves into whatever crevices they could- no matter what that denied them.

Harriet turned away from the crib. Some women were meant to be mothers. Others were meant for devotion, like serving Her Sainthood. She left the cottage, hand on the silver shield. Focus, she chided herself. She’d searched the coven grounds. She’d found evidence that Jane Fralk had been here. Now to find where the witches had taken Jane.

There must have been a trail somewhere. Some evidence of where they’d all gone. Deeper into the woods, no doubt, but from here the thicket grew darker and denser, a hungry place known to swallow up careless travellers. If they’d gone there, it was as much in the coven’s best interests as the missing girl’s that Harriet found them.

Harriet began a search of the perimeter, just far enough from the heart of the grounds for the maypole to blend back in with the trees. As she scoured the treeline, she felt herself fall into focus. All those unwanted paths which had beckoned her mind, now closed off. It was a welcome reprieve. She’d long since laid all those anxieties to bed, as best she could. Every living soul had a path to walk, and these paths were seldom without thorns, lying in wait to bleed one out before they saw its rightful end. 

There were few greater examples than Saint Aretina Herself. She’d once been banished by the Highest Holy for attempting to found a paladin’s order solely for women. It wasn’t until She single-handedly slew the dragon Varithrax that She proved such an endeavour worthy in the Holy’s eyes, and was granted the mandate to found Her Order. Harriet felt a kinship with Her Sainthood in this way. They had both been given such perilous ways to walk. Perhaps Harriet’s was less dignified in that her thorns were not dragons, but her own body and sisters-in-arms. But she would see it to the end, as Her Sainthood had.

Sick-sweet hit her nose.

Harriet almost thought her focus had wandered again, when something flitted down from the canopy before her. A bladed white petal. She followed its path upwards. Above her, a length of white flowers coiled around a thick branch, showering her in their stench. 

Another petal broke away from its flower, drifting down to land lightly upon the paladin’s brow.

Brushing it away, Harriet tried to rearrange her thoughts. Just search the perimeter. Find a trail. Yet her eyes kept wandering up to the flowers. Their smell kept forcing its way into her senses, rooting itself so deep in her awareness that she no longer perceived its sickly burn, only its sweetness. A sense of peaceful yearning settled over her- a serenity she wanted to bury herself alive in. 

The branch that the flowers anchored themselves upon stretched away, deeper into the forest. Into the tangle of roots and brush and shadows, a gullet waiting to swallow her.

Harriet blinked. She needed to find a trail, didn’t she?

Within minutes of pressing into the thicket, Harriet found twigs and brambles grabbing at her tabard, forcing her to draw her dagger to cut her way through. She doubted that the witches had gone this way. Something had- there were broken twigs and tamped-down bush along the path. But the forest’s grabbing hands would have torn some fabric from the robes and dresses they reportedly wore. The brambles might have even drawn blood from unprotected skin.

But then, where else would they go?

The world narrowed to cutting, trudging, ducking through the deepening shadow. Harriet almost reconsidered and turned back, when she spotted a mote of light through the brush ahead. Another white flower, sprouting from a gnarled trunk. Its scent ghosted into her awareness, and she knew: this was the way. The uneven earth gained a downwards slope the further she went. Every so often, however, she’d spy another flower ahead, or catch a whiff of its scent, and her resolve would return. In her mind, a soothing vision: the white flowers coiling up from the forest floor, ensnaring her, guiding her gently down to lay upon the earth, where they grew over and buried her.

Finally, Harriet emerged from the worst of the thicket to find herself at the base of some kind of stout barrow, the narrow mouth of its entrance open for her. This gave her pause. A barrow? Out here? Where it would be all but impossible to move the materials needed to build it through the dense forest?

But from within its dark throat wafted that floral smell. She could see the white flowers along the passage within, like stars in the night sky.

Harriet followed them in.

A stairway led her down beneath the forest, its steps littered with fallen petals, the smell of the flowers smothering the dry must of the stale air. It did occur to Harriet, as she descended low enough to leave the sunlight, that this may be unwise. She had come upon an oddity which demanded more thorough investigation that she alone could perform. She hadn’t even a torch to light her way.

Ride home, report in, come back with a few sword-sisters. That’s what she should have done- however faintly she realized this now. Only a notion. A little nibble at the edge of awareness. One she dismissed as the flowers led her further down, the sheer ivory of their petals lighting her way with a ghostly glow.

Her hand began to wander. First towards the silver shield around her neck, before it paused and drifted downwards. It came to rest upon her belly, within which a strange heat had started to swell.

Oh to rest here, among the white flowers.

Oh to have them cover her in their roots and petals.

Oh to have them take root within her, make a beautiful garden of her flesh, fill her veins with chlorophyll and the cavities of her body with petals until she overflowed-

Harriet paused, a warm flush upon her neck.

Where was she?

Around her yawned the vast dome of an earthen chamber, arches of gnarled wood along the walls supporting the ceiling. Along these grew webs of vines, laden with the white flowers. Thousands of them. So many they lit the chamber with their phantom shimmer. So many their petals blanketed the floor. So many their aroma was nearly suffocating.

A realization settled heavy on Harriet’s shoulders. The smell and the strange peace it brought almost buried the thought, but she dredged it back up, sank her teeth and fingernails into it. Something is wrong.

Harriet would leave now, she decided. Back to the temple to report in. Just as she’d thought to a moment- a minute? An hour?- ago.

Her body, however, would not move. Her flesh and bone felt heavier than her armor.

“O, Saint Arentia,” she murmured. Even speaking- the fine movements of her lips, her tongue, the vibrations within her throat- felt sluggish. “Hear Your faithful servant. Grant me Your stern compassion and Your determination, with which You moved the heart of the Highest Holy, so I may shepherd Your flock and keep Your peace.”

The prayer was a bulwark. Pushing away that heaviness, that rising heat in her stomach. Those thoughts of herself swollen and cocooned in white. Harriet forced a hand to her Saint’s icon, taking it in stiff fingers.

“O, Saint Arentia,” she repeated. “Hear Your faithful servant.” Soft dreams tried to reassert themselves and she beat them away with reality. A memory of her initiation into the Order. There were three parts to it: a test of scriptural knowledge, a test of martial prowess, and a test of faith. The first two she handily passed. Only the third proved daunting.

“Grant me Your stern compassion and Your determination.” She was to spend a fortnight within the tomb of Her Sainthood, beneath the temple. There she would meditate upon her experiences and the Order’s principles, and seek communion with Her Sainthood’s spirit.

“With which You moved the heart of the Highest Holy.” Her sisters-to-be would bring her food, water, and fresh clothing throughout her time there. Her meals were bread and thin broth with a smattering of vegetables, for faith demanded resilience. Her clothing should have been the modest red habits standard for off-duty sword-sisters. Instead, they brought her breeches and tunics soiled with dirt and leaves, as if they’d just been stripped off some hapless groundskeeper.

“So I may shepherd Your flock and keep Your peace.” Harriet remained in the dress she’d first entered the tomb for in the entire fortnight. This indignity, she told herself, brought her closer to Her Sainthood, who too had needed to prove Herself against the circumstances of Her birth. The fortnight passed. Harriet proved herself faithful. She felt Her Sainthood’s soul, warming her against the grave’s chill. The Order had no cause- none that they could justify by scripture, at least- to deny her.

Harriet lowered her face, began to recite the prayer again. Once more, to feel Her Sainthood’s spirit in this hostile place. That, she was sure, would give her the resolve to carry out her duties. She made it halfway.

“...Ser paladin...?”

It could have been the coo of a dove, it was so soft and fragile. Harriet looked up. Across the chamber, barely filling robes the emerald of the deep forest, was a girl huddled against the wall. The paladin blinked. It was hard to be sure in the wan light of the flowers, but something about the girl struck her as familiar. Long light brown curls- disarrayed now. Large pale eyes- all the larger for her apparent fear.

Harriet called out, “Jane Fralk?”

The girl nodded, messy curls tumbling about her face.

Letting out a relieved breath, Harriet approached. It steadied her, having a point to focus on through the saccharine haze. “I am a paladin of the Order of Saint Arentia.” As much a mantra as herself as reassurance for the girl. “I was dispatched to search for you, after you disappeared from town.”

Jane Fralk nodded again. Up close, the girl appeared shaken but unharmed. “There’s only you?”

“I was only to investigate,” Harriet explained, offering her hand. “What a blessing that I found you! Come, we must be off.”

Jane hesitated a moment, watching Harriet’s hand with those wide eyes. “Ser paladin,” she began. “Are people… Very worried about me? In town?”

“Quite worried, yes.” Harriet herself even moreso. If the flowers only needed an hour or so to bewitch her, what might a week around them have done to Jane?

What had a year done to the coven?

The girl bit her lip. “Tell them not to be.” She pulled the oversized robe tighter around herself. “Tell them I’m alright. They treat me well here.”

A chill coiled up Harriet’s spine. “Jane,” she said, calm but firm. “You don’t look well, and something strange is afoot here. You must come home.”

Jane shook her head. “I know how I look.” Tone clipped. Defensive. “You startled me, Ser Paladin. That’s all. I’m treated well here, and I enjoy it. Nobody need worry for me.”

Harriet clenched her jaw. Perhaps she’d need to haul the girl out of here, unharmed or not. “Jane, something is wrong with this place. You must feel it. Either take my hand, or I’ll have to carry you home.”

Jane Fralk did a strange thing then. She leaned in, so close Harriet could count the veins at the corners of her eyes, and in a quavering whisper said, “Ser Paladin, you must leave.”

And then Harriet felt it run up her neck. Felt it catch in her throat. Felt it curdle cold and heavy in her stomach. Something is wrong.

Suddenly an object fell between her and Jane. A white flower, unblemished, its petals open to her. Its scent rose clear up into the paladin’s nose. Perhaps she could force herself to grab Jane and run, were something not welling up from the pop of yellow at its center. A drop of what looked like dew, swelling larger and shimmering so prettily in the light. Smelling so sweetly, like the chocolates brought to the temple during holy feasts.

“S-Ser Paladin…” Jane’s voice sounded so distant. Drowning in that ball of dew.

Harriet picked the flower up. Breathed deep of its scent, and let her lips curl into a dazed smile at the peace it flooded her with.

“Ser Paladin, don’t. P-Please.”

It couldn’t be so bad, whatever Jane feared. She was close enough to swat the flower out of Harriet’s hands. She didn’t. Not even when Harriet dipped her head down and lapped up the dew, bittersweet on her tongue. Its bitterness faded as it flowed thickly down her throat.

And then, only sweetness.

A haze settled into Harriet’s skull, so warm and thick. Overflowing down her neck, through her core and spreading into her limbs, filtering down between her legs. Her eyes rolled and she saw only white. White drifting down around her. White, the mist congealing within her. White, slithering through her flesh and veins into the cavity of her torso, filling her, so warm and so right. She could be sinking into the earth, she felt so contentedly heavy. Pulled downwards…

Pulled…

Pulled all around, many pairs of hands seizing her and running their fingers over her armor, working apart the straps. Undoing her hair from its severe bun to tumble down her back. Harriet sighed, relieved as they peeled the steel and cloth away. She felt swollen to bursting.

And then they were all over her. Caressing, groping. Hungry mouths kissing along her neck and shoulders, long soft hair tickling her bare back and breasts. Fondling her twitching cock. Harriet blinked but saw only pale shadows surrounding her. She tried to speak- unsure even what she would say- and only a moan left her lips. This was right. Her place was here. No, her place was with the Ord- It was here, held and touched, her flesh free to those who respected it as a woman’s, for they grabbed at her breasts and waist just as eagerly as for her penis. Their tongues lapped at her skin and they cooed and mewled, tasting a woman. They buried their noses in her hair and smelled deep, knowing a woman’s scent. No performance was needed here. No unspoken laws to follow. They ate of her presence and knew what she was, as deeply and truly as she herself did.

Pulling again. Harriet’s head spun as they turned her around. She was glad for their help. Filled as she was, she doubted how far she could move under her own power. Guiding her along, they tittered and sang, their tune nonsense in Harriet’s ears. It lilted prettily enough. Soon she found herself slurring along with it. The crowd parted for her, revealing beyond them the center of the chamber with its carpet of petals.

Something was rising from the petals. They tumbled from the hump of its back like snow as it towered higher, higher. Pale skin tinged faintly with green, vivisected with long slits of red down plump, elongated limbs, as if it hadn’t enough skin to cover its flesh and bones.

Harriet blinked, again and again. Trying to dispel the impossible sight. “Whuh…”

“Be honored, sister.” A light kiss upon her cheek. “She’s taken a liking to you.”

She. Who? What? Taken a liking. Since Harriet arrived? Since she entered the barrow? Be honored. Why? What honor? A hundred questions, swirling and biting like a swarm of insects. All made meaningless as the thing rose to its full height and turned to her.

Its face was almost like a woman’s. So nearly beautiful. Too long, however. Too sharp at its edges, like a carved mask. Thick tendrils trailed like hair down its shoulders, and as Harriet was dragged closer, she noticed dirt and filaments clinging to them. Roots. Like those of a tree’s. Even its skin had the subtle veins and ridging of a leaf’s surface. Red slits along its ribs oozed not life’s blood but more of that shimmering dew, running down its body over the heaving, pulsating swell of its midsection.

A demon. An abomination born deep in the cold depths of the earth, made in mockery of motherhood. A deceiver who had led the souls of these women astray. Harriet was sure of it. Just as sure as it reached a hand down towards her, and as the mob delivered her into its clutches.

“N…” Harriet squirmed- the only resistance she could now muster. Panic clawed at the fog in her skull but her body was lost to her. “Nnnno…”

The demon smiled. A warm invitation, at odds with the two dark glistening pits in its face where eyes should have been.

“She’ll give you everything you want.” A reverent whisper. “Everything you’ve ever wanted. She’s kind, sister.”

And Harriet laughed, hoarse and delirious. It wouldn’t work. No matter how deep it penetrated her, no matter how hard it rutted, the demon’s seed wouldn’t take. For all the trouble her condition had brought her, for all it left her yearning for things she’d never have, Harriet had an advantage over her sword-sisters- she had no womb to defile.

The demon tilted its head.

“I castigate you, demon,” Harriet slurred, saliva and dew oozing from her lips. “Saint Arentia guards my soul, and in Her name, I refuse you.” Another peal of brittle cackling, for she felt Her Sainthood’s icon still around her neck. “Whatever you do to my flesh, my soul is guarded.”

The demon examined her icon with dark eyes. Then, it did something impossible. Something which shattered Harriet’s bulwark and forced the splinters into the soft meat of her being.

It took the icon in its fingers, slipped it up over Harriet’s head, and raised it skywards.

“Saint Arentia,” it whispered, its voice thin and sweet like the smell of its flowers on the breeze. “I claim Your paladin as my own. She swears her soul to You but her body is mine. I will take her mind next. And then, I will release Your grip upon her spirit, as well. What is Your answer?”

Silence flooded the chamber.

“Saint Arentia,” it repeated. “Have You no comfort for Your servant? Will You do nothing to save her?”

Silence.

It dawned on Harriet then that she was being watched. All around her and the demon, dozens of women knelt upon the earth. They were to a one silent as death and entirely nude- even Jane Fralk, who now knelt among them, eyes glassy and dew dripping from her lip. All of them had seen Harriet and the demon both invoke Her Sainthood, and Her Sainthood decline to answer.

The demon peered back down on Harriet. “It seems Arentia does not claim you.”

Harriet’s lip twitched, words stolen from them. She had never felt so cold nor so alone.

It dipped its head lower towards her. “Then how fortunate,” it said, “that I do.”

A small, pitiful groan escaped Harriet.

“The moment you set foot on my grounds,” it continued. “The moment I felt the pain and yearning buried deep in your heart, I decided you would be mine. What has your faith given you?” Its smile softened. “Nothing you truly want. So, I claim you.”

Of course it did. That was why it had done all this, wasn’t it? To poach her from Saint Arentia. But the Saint no longer wanted her. 

Did She ever?

Was the scorn of her sword-sisters only their own bigotry? Or had it been a sign?

Harriet had felt Her Sainthood during that fortnight in the tomb. She’d felt Her deep in her chest, an effervescence blooming up within her ribs. Or hadn’t she? Had she only been deluding herself? The kinship she felt with Arentia, just a lie she’d woven and bound herself up in?

The demon watched as Harriet feebly wrestled with her own reality. It could see everything, couldn’t it? Every truth she thought she knew, dissolving into the haze. Harriet could have been cut and flayed open, the fine workings of her muscles and organs revealed for it to study.

“You think yourself lost,” it finally said. “Don’t you? Lost without Her.”