“Do not go.” That was the advice the wise-woman gave Nathaniel when he spoke to her about the Alraune, the flower woman that had twice preyed upon his body and mind. She was did not seem particularly old and wizened as he’d expected, but there was an undeniable wisdom in her eyes, and she knew what the creature was called as soon as he began to speak about her.

“She is baiting you, she is challenging you to come and face her again, to face her a third time. If you go to her, you play into her hands, and when she has her way with you, this time, the third time, shall be the last.”

He didn’t understand and he told her as much.

“The laws of magic work in three’s. Some say it is for the sun, the moon, and the sky, others for the body, the mind and the soul, or the beginning the middle and end, it does not matter. All that matters is, like all beasts of her ilk, if she feasts on you a third time, if you commune with her once more, she will have you in all ways for all time.”

That was when he asked her if there was nothing he could not do to stop her and she simply said, “Do not go.”

She was not unkind, nor was she particularly patient.

“Heed me well. You have already brought a small ruin to your family and a greater peril to the world with your first visits. She has bested you, and easily so if I do not miss the mark. Yet, I know you are young and strong, and certainly brave so a woman’s words sought out nonetheless will still sound of cowardice to you, but heed me well, do not go. You are no hero Nathaniel, you are only yourself, and were you a band of knights fallen full from legend, I would still council you against returning to her domain.”

His frown was wide and hard, and it brought a curt little laugh from her lips, “She is not simply as you have seen her. The birds and the beasts are at her beck and call, so too are other more fearsome creatures in the woods. If she tied your arms with vines, she could do the same to a neck, or legs, and leave you hanging for the more ferocious of her bestial subjects. You have no weapon fit to harm her, only ones that will invite a painful death upon yourself were you to try.”

“But, “ he stammered as he had been moved by the gravity of her warning, “I have her name.”

“And she has yours, and your seed, and has spoken into the mind that is ever watchful while it sleeps, and she has given it to you. She does not fear you, and that is not her arrogance, she does not fear you because you are bested by her in all manner of ways already.”

The wise-woman’s eyes narrowed and in the candlelit darkness of her home, those eyes seemed to pierce him none too gently, “Do you dream of her?”

He did not answer, instead he blushed.

“I see. And when you do dream of her, do you wake with proof of your desires.”

Even in the heavy shadows his face was crimson as his mouth remained shut.

Then, she laughed and shook her head and the small coins fastened to her headscarf jangled, “I see. I will tell you again not to go, but you are too far under her sway for simple wisdom and none in this town have the art to ease your suffering, for is your deep desire not a deliciously agonizing one?”

Nathaniel bowed his head and made to leave.

“Such is the way of love, even a love borne only of lust. Do not go, but if you do, bring fire and hope and neither let her speak nor look upon her exposed form.”

She said most of this to his back as he made for the door, but before he left he turned around once more, “Tell me, why does she do this, why is she what she is?”

The wise-woman’s face became more grave than it had been before, and the shadows cast hard lines in her skin, “She is a hunter, as are you. She hunts for food, for the thrill, and for trophies, she also hunts so she can grow. Imagine if the beasts you slew in the wild fed you and brought you children.”

“So she is not…” he felt the air come out of his lungs and his mind become a briar patch and not a clear path to his next word, “…she is not evil?”

“There are many evils in this world Nathaniel, and I dare not try and name them all. Instead, ask yourself this, is there any good in bending the will of another and dominating them for your own gains? To me that sounds wicked, but I know also that such power can be desirable. If you can outlast the season and avoid her, if when the next rains come  and you stand naked under them and you have not fallen under her sway for a third time, her hold will be broken, but I fear that when you leave my home none in this town shall see you again.”

With that, he left her and made his way to the storerooms built behind his family’s home. There, he armed himself as he had before, adding to his supplies a lantern and oil.

The mask and visor had aided him once before and he trusted in them again.

He also thought long on the wise-man’s words and his own wits. Flowers did not bloom in the darkness, he would come to her in the night, set her ablaze and be free as she was wrapped in those massive petals.

It was the last, and most desperate of his plans.

Nathaniel had done his best to study a book of spells and arcane secrets that belonged to an old codger with no real use for them, but all he gained from that was a headache. The rules of magic, those he could decipher, seemed obvious and were more well known as common sense than any secret alchemy and the power of a name seemed like mist to him, a thing he could see and sense but could not hold.

The book was filled with vagaries about the power of truth, but there was one line of deliberate wisdom he took from the book that he knew could aid him at least in some small way. By speaking the true name of another, one would take from them their power to beguile, mislead and bewitch, as truth bred greater truth.

So it was, he left at sunset, and with the same ease he would have had under the noonday sun, he made his way back into her domain.

Twilight bled slowly into the heavy dark of night, and as he made his journey, Nathaniel was surprised that he caught not even a hint of her scent. The heady perfume of her will was absent from the air, and so he came to the edge of her clearing without warning.

Silver moonlight shone down, and he found the darkness softer to his eyes, almost translucent instead of heavy and obstructing. He saw her flower, petals up, and as he lit his lantern, he called out to her.

“Lilyana, I deny your power, and by the laws of magic I break your spell!”

He threw the lantern with all his might, full of oil and burning hot, it sailed though the darkness.

As soon as he spoke her name, the petals unfurled and she was there before him in the moonlight and in the path of the blazing lantern. He watched her make a strange gesture with one hand, twisting her fingers in a mysterious symbol, while waving her other hand before her.

The air grew cold with a violent chill, and wind cut through the night.

He watched in horror, and in a relief he denied even as it washed over him, as the flame was extinguished and the lantern fell to the earth, bound in a ball of ice.

“The things our hearts drive us too my sweet Nathaniel, the passions that must play before we can accept our feelings.” As the moonlight danced across her green skin, the petals of her flower, and of her gloves were dark as black velvet, and her eyes danced with their own silver light.

“How…” he started to step back slowly, his hand raised to shield his eyes from her, then to pull down his visor. “I spoke your name, I denied you.”

“What was there to deny. I told you when next we met I would not bewitch you or intoxicate you with my scent as I had before.”

“But… the laws…” The visor was down and he found his bow in hand and an arrow being knocked as his heart pounded and a fear he had never known before thundering with every beat.

“If I wished it, I could freeze your blood or turn your flesh to stone, and knowing my name would deny nothing.” Her voice was light and loose, the music in her words echoed in the softness of the night.

She waved her hand again and made a different sign, and as she did, the wooden shaft of his arrow twisted with the wood of his bow, and all at once it felt from his hands and started to sprout leaves.

“You should never give your name to someone you do not trust Nathaniel, and my heart has always held you dear from the moment I saw you. Why else would I give you something so precious? Why else would I humor your halfhearted acts of violence time and again. If I didn’t know what was truly in your heart, I might think you wished some malice upon me.” 

There was a sweetness in her words, but it was as mocking as it was tender. It was somehow both more condescending and more charming than she had ever been prior, but he couldn’t tell if that was only because his senses were clear, free form her intoxicating perfume that fogged everything and coated the world in a warmth that invited only the most profound pleasure and deep surrender to her voice.

Her hands started to massage her breasts, as they always seemed to, but he watched with clear eyes and saw that her gloved fingertips were far from her nipples. As though she was reading his mind, and for all Nathaniel came to realize he didn’t know, perhaps she was, she laughed and spoke, “The slightest squeeze and that sticky sweetness would strike your nose and make your mouth water.”

He closed his eyes, a feat that demanded more of himself than he would have ever guessed, especially not when she was wielding any mystical influence on him, and he turned to leave her.

His only hope in that moment was to flee.

“I’ll abide no more of your wicked torment, and if your wicked heart is as fond of me as you claim, then set me free of this tangle you’ve woven about me, and let what seeds you’ve buried in my mind wither and die.”

His hand was on his knife, and he laughed to himself, it was a painful sound, one made of the crystal clear recollections of his past two failed attempts to use it on her. He was half tempted to throw it away, turn around, stare at her with all his unabashed lust, strip down, and then present himself like as a human sacrifice, but he had to deny her, or at least try.

After all, his desires for her were made whole cloth from her manipulations and her seductive and enchanting capacities. Or so he hoped.

“Would you though,” she laughed in the manner he always expected the high nobility to when making light of a commoner’s follies, “truly be able to walk away without one backward glace? Would it not eat away at you in the back of your mind, a question unanswered. Ever wondering what you truly feel for me, knowing that at this moment, at this hour, on this night, you would have your only chance to know for certain. I have plucked the seed from your mind and freed you from that trick. I have kept my scent from assuaging you fears and leaving you prone to my charms, and I have not even tempted you with my sticky sweetness. I am only here, as I am, in all my beauty, and you are there, alone, as you are, bond only by memories untainted and desires unbridled. Tell me now, would you not look upon me one last time and know the deepest choice your heart longs to make?”

He turned, his eyes hot, and his knife raised, “I curse your wicked temptations and your charms. I curse your fiendish beauty and the weight you have upon my dreams. I curse you for your malice in using me to prey upon my blood and my brethren. I curse…”

The moonlight was alive with an unnatural heat, blue now and not silver and as it danced across her breasts his eyes were bound by the over ripe mass of her chest rolling to and fro in her hands. It took his breath away as it sent all of his enraged blood from his head and his heart, down between his legs.

If he were to finish his  curse and speak her name, it would hold true and he would be free. But, she knew he was speaking with passion and not with purpose, and she would deny him his curse.

“You curse your own desires Nathaniel, so is the way of love, to look upon the one that captures your heart and declare her a beast, and a monster, to think she has somehow ruined you, only to realize she has only awakened you to your own heart’s desires. Look upon me Nathaniel, I have only my love to give you, as I have given you my name in proof.”

How many times over had her chest disarmed him and captivated him so in their previous two encounters? How many times, in how many moments had he found himself entranced by their heaviness. “What trickery…”

He was trying to clear his head, but as she pressed her breasts together the thought of his cock being between them, of her milking him with the fullness of her chest, splintered his thoughts like an axe striking dry dead wood.

“Look at me and lose all else Nathaniel, look upon me and see your desires, see only your desires now, there is nothing else.” Her gloves began to glow sliver in the warm blue unnatural light of the moon, and her soft green skin seemed to radiate outward. It was as though her breasts were growing larger in her hands as they continued to sway under her touch.

“The sight of beauty has long been a delightful burden on the spirit of man, tempting you and inspiring you in ways that move beyond the mind, consuming you in passion that smothers the self, the way heavy clouds roll across the sky and darken the sun. It is man’s way to feel challenged by his natural needs and desires, it is the way of all men to feel as though this deep inspiration and their all-consuming lust are lessening them.”

Nathaniel found himself nodding along with the gentle and lulling sound of her voice, as though her words were dancing to the visual music of her breasts, and not the other way around. Again he heard her words eluding to some wider expanse of truth, some endless ocean of unseen knowledge, and he felt as he had before, very small, and growing smaller as her massive breasts continued to swell and consume him.   

“What could diminish you when it fills you so? What could lessen you when it brings you closer to another, closer to me? Do you not feel the pull from deep within, from the core of your being and the center of your manhood? Does your lust not draw you to me more truly than all else?”

Her hands continued to cup and massage her breasts, and what had once sounded condescending had turned to a deeper care as the cadence of her voice became slower, more gentle and lulling. As she pressed her breasts together, he felt warm, the sight of her and the sound of her voice had become like a physical embrace.

But, he still felt the handle of his knife in hand, and he knew her pretty words were as deceptive as she. With great will and great purpose he looked from her chest into her eyes and brandished his blade in her direction.

Deep down inside, though he tried not to show it, this gesture only made him feel smaller, only made him feel more vulnerable, almost pathetic.

“No. You lured me here and you used me for your own gains and to do harm to others. How could I love you?” He spoke slowly, and his voice was thick with puzzlement, not heavy with wrath. Still his anger could be heard. “And what wickedness are you playing at now?”

“Whatever wickedness, “ she spread her hands wide, and brought her fingertips down from her lips, across her cheeks, her neck, and down to her breasts, once more pulling Nathaniel’s eyes to her chest, “lies not in my words but only in your memory. I have used no magic to beguile you, I’ve not even attempted to intoxicate you our cloud your sense, you are not drugged, you are not being manipulated by anything greater than your own memories and desires. All you feel comes from within, not from without.”

“You ask how you could love me, “ she pressed her massive breasts together and her words were a sweeter note than the weight of their meaning, “yet you need only remember the pleasure of my embrace to find your answers.”

Nathaniel’s eyes had betrayed his wants, and were again held rapt in the gentle and constants sway of her swollen breasts as she continued to fondle them.

All this talk of memories had easily awakened in him the sensation of kissing those breasts and sucking on those nipples, and there was an ache of longing to taste the juices that flowed from those nipples once more.

He felt his lust come to the fore, unclouded, and knew it would be so easy to taste of her a third time… as the wise-woman said, a third and final time.

“How can you say you are doing nothing, when you are causing me to lose myself in you. And why would you toy with me when you’ve so easily overpowered me?” His words did not come quickly, and they wavered in this throat, whereas her voice was constant and strong in its tenderness and understanding.

“I am simply speaking with you, “ she pressed her breasts together again, “asking you only to remember for me, to look into yourself as you stare, heeding my words so easily, considering all I ask as you look upon me and explore your memories.”

“I was warned of this… this third time…” he blinked, as he let out a small sigh, feeling his mind opening wide like that of a book filled with bright pictures.

“And still you came to me, still you felt the need to see me once more. Perhaps it is simply a matter o needing to see these?” Again, he watched as her hands caressed her chest, pushing her breasts together in an endless rolling motion.

“Your mind is so clouded, your mind is so busy and full of fears and worries, thoughts of pride, and foolish human notions of what you are supposed to do, yet when you see my breasts, when you look upon my beauty, all sense of human perspective seems to melt away. There is no woman in your town, no woman in your life whose breasts are as full as mine, no woman who inspires you so. Do you not love to gaze upon my breasts? Do you not dream of them?”

Nathaniel’s hands had fallen to his sides as he watched the continuous bounce and roll of her breasts, and his thoughts had started to wander to the endless softness she was presenting before him. Again he felt himself growing smaller as her breasts seemed to once more expand to fill the edges of his world.

“Dream now, Nathaniel, gaze upon me as your memories rise and fall now into your dreams, say my name and feel my trust in you and give yourself to your trust in me, what is my name?”

He felt his body beginning to sway back and forth with the roll of her breasts, but he did not speak. The softness all around him, the warmth of her breasts pressing against him, was smothering him, pulling him down into realm of blissful peace, but like a drowning man he reached a hand out towards the surface and told himself he would not speak her name. He would not abide her desires.

Still, his eyes obliged her, and his body was warm and still, with every breath draining the tension in his muscles and leeching the resolve from his thoughts.

“Call out to me as you do in your dreams Nathaniel, call out in lust, call out in desire, I have given you my name, use it, invoke my trust and answer all of your deepest questions.”

He felt the muscles in his face relaxing, and his finger starting to loosen around the handle of his blade, and then there was a jolt through his spine, waking him from his dreamy repose. He would not lose his weapon a third time, he would not let her claim him once more, this final time.

“Your trust is a lie,” he shook his head, “and I care not what power you wield. Ever are you attempting to ensnare me, ever are you preying on me. You’ll not take me, lest you take my life lest I take yours.” And with that, he strode forward and brought his blade up with murderous purpose.

But it was not enough, as her hand closed around his wrist, then grasped his other arm with a strength he would call only fiendish.

“But, my sweet, will you not give it to me?” She asked in such a way that never had he felt less certain, less grown, and less powerful than in the moment he heard her words.  She was reprimanding him even as her immense physical strength held him still.

“What must I do to prove to you my darling Nathaniel, that I have spared you over and over out of trust, out of the love one must hold in their heart to trust another so?” She let him go, and shoved him back as she did, her hands falling again to her chest.

“Do I not give you what your lust desires? Are you not drawn to me as a light in the darkness? Why are your eyes so heavy with longing that they keep you from turning and fleeing from me never to return? If I am not in your heart, why would you tempt the fates simply to see me again?

With clear eyes, with a mind free from the smothering fog her voice had so seamlessly conjured around him time and again, Nathaniel closed his eyes and found himself wondering if what she said was true.

She could have taken his life with her sorcery, she could have just now forced his won arm and driven his own knife into his chest with sheer power, she could have entangled him in her vines and left him for the wolves, the bears, and other more savage creatures. She could have drugged him again with her scent, or simply spoken any manner of charms and brought him to her by force of ritual, but she had not.

“Have you ever found yourself in the darkness looking deep into the heart of a candle’s flame? Watching it sway as your eyes fall into the light and heat, watching it dance as your thoughts grow quiet and you look ever inward as you stare into the warmth? You do not blame the candle, you do not ask the flame what it does, it is only you and you alone. So it is now, I am like a dancing flame, the heat of your lust in the quiet darkness of your dreams. You will open your eyes and look upon me, you will see me as a flame, my breasts light the warm center of the light.”

He could not fault the order and logic of her words. He could not fault her thoughts, her reason, there was no base cunning on display here, no cruel wit or taste of malicious thought, only the greatest cunning of all, the simple truth.

More so, he saw a candle in his mind, he saw the white-hot center of the flame and knew truly of what she spoke. He felt it as her words conjured these images. His thoughts, moving at a spring now, consumed her words as they raced to find some strength, some certainty, some success in whatever he was endeavoring, and so, being without purpose, his mind had become potent and reflexive.

When she spoke again, as he kept his eyes closed, holding on to the image of the candle flame, not without intention, a new layer of imagination, of phantasmal thought started to form over it, then erase it.

“Have you not sat beside a river and listened, taken the time to find a quiet moment, a time for peace? Have you not listened to what the river can tell, the water rolling on and on, endless and eternal, hearing its greatness and finding yourself becoming one with it, carried by the sound as you are carried by the dancing flame? Is it not peaceful and soothing to lose yourself in the strength of the river’s voice? Have you not always heard the river in my words? Have you not felt the same sense of wholeness, of oneness with me? You do not blame the river for carrying away your worries, so too would you not blame me.”   

He felt in his shoulders, his neck, and his back, a relief that was like untying a boot too tightly laced. It felt as though these feelings were coming from his core, and that her words were only opening him to what was inside.

“Your back is to me, your eyes are closed, and you are following my words. Your hand is stayed, your shoulders are loosened, what is this realization inside of you? What do you feel now?”

He could almost feel her voice, like a touch on his shoulder, and slowly he opened his eyes then turned to face her. “Even honesty can be a weapon for evil.”

She traced a single between her breasts and his eyes followed it.

Though his words were full of his last a most certain thought, where there had been the maelstrom of his soul, he found only a quiet and calm. “If you trust me as you say, truly, tell me what you desire.”

Her hands spread again over her breasts, and again she started to massage them with slow and rhythmic motions, “I only desire what is in your heart, and for you to say it to me. All along this night, all I have done, is strip away your walls and sooth your fears, all I have sought is to disarm you, and give your heart and your head the means of speaking freely, to free you though you would deny yourself, your own council keeps you prisoner as surely as you keep it.”

He could not help but see her as the candle’s flame, could not help but hear her voice as the flowing of a river, and as she described, as she had spoken, he felt himself carried away in sight and sound. As she had spoken, he found himself watching her hands continue to cup and squeeze her breasts, and with every bounce of her luscious flesh he found her voice softer, her words more compelling, and his own thoughts quieter.

“Free yourself Nathaniel, free yourself in me and look upon me as you long to in your most secret heart. Watch me my love and see all you desire beginning to unfold as you fears begin to melt, and worries continue to fade. See your desires, and let my voice free you into bliss.”

He watched as again and again she pressed her breasts together, and slowly he felt a smile starting to spread across his face, and then a thickness between his legs that had been reborn many a time, but now was given to full and pure lust.

“Do you love these feelings Nathaniel?”

He blinked again, and as his eyes closed, he said “yes.”

“Do you desire me Nathaniel?”

His eyes were held in thrall of her swollen breasts, and memories began to play, tasting her ripe sweetness, longing to do so yet again. He said “yes” again.

“Do you want to touch me Nathaniel?”

She traced the flesh just below her nipples and he said, “yes.”

“Do you love me Nathaniel?”

The river of her voice and the flame of her beauty had flooded and burnt away all of his doubts and all of his fears, yet he could not say yes.

“Look at my breasts and say yes.” She pressed them together again, and were he able to think, he would have realized she had long known that was his favorite sight. “You long for them, you long for me, say yes.”

He did.

“Tell me you love me Nathaniel.”

Her chest was heaving and it had become huge to him, filling his vision beyond scope and beyond understanding.

“I love you.” The words were almost mumbled, and if his eyes could rise from the steady rise and fall of her breasts as she continued to toy with them.

“Now speak my name.” Again her breasts came together, and were he more sensitive to his own physical senses, he would have felt the pre-cum pooling on the head of his cock and soaking through his breaches.

“Lilyana.”

In his heart he felt something open, like a long and deep passage through a world unknown, and in the far distance he knew only happiness awaited him.

“Who do you love my sweet Nathaniel? Speak me name and give me your love.”

He wanted to, and so his mouth formed the words, “I love you Lilyana” and as they left his lips the endless and unknown distance became nothing, and he felt her hands on his cheeks.

“Say it again my love.”

He did, and all that had kept him from his heart, all that had kept him from her, was gone.

“Hold up your hand for me Nathaniel.”

As though he was once again bound in vines, he raised his free hand. His eyes were held still in the sway of her breasts and his world began and ended in her cleavage.

“Take your knife, it will not hurt, and cut yourself. Just s small cut, you will feel no pain when you do but be gentle.”

His hands moved in front of his eyes, eyes still watcher her as she continued to massage her chest, and he made a small cut across his hand.

“Now, swear on your blood that you love me, prove to me that your love is pure and freely given, given from one who is open and whole, one who is not bewitched and not bound, one who means all he speaks and speaks to his desires.”

As she pressed her breasts together again, he squeezed his hand into a fist. A single drop of blood fell to the ground as he poke, “I swear on my blood, freely given, that I love you Lilyana.”

It was not the earth that the drop of crimson landed on, but one of her petals, and there, were it light, Nathaniel would have seen them take on the hue of the darkest red rose.

She was his, and it was as he had desired.

She took the knife from his hand and threw it away, then stripped him of his clothing, ripping away his breeches and jerkin, before pulling him close as her petals closed around them, guiding him into her embrace, the softest tough of her skin against him causing the first of countless eruptions.

It was this one though, blood, seed, and soul, that ensured he would ever be hers, and it was the sweetest pleasure she had ever tasted. Then, her perfume flooded the closed blossom, and effortlessly she brought his head to her breast to drink from her once again.

There he tasted her sticky sweetness as it spilled down his throat and reinvigorated his loins into a near endless fountain of pleasure.

Come morning, he was soaked in her, his mind and body turned wholly to her will.

Never could she have received such a gift.

Never, before she had met that carnival woman with her tricks, would she have been able to induce in her prey such a desire to give of their soul to her freely.

She had taken many, with magic, and with her mind numbing intoxications, but a soul taken would waste in time. A soul given in love would ever bloom as its vessel lived, both owned by the one so gifted. This was a law of magic, this was what she had worked so hard to achieve.

The traveler’s trick, to induce a mind to give up all of its inhibitions, to become open and suggestible to desires it craved in its very depths, was not sorcery, it was not against those mystical laws that governed her. No, it was man’s own cunning used against him, and in her embrace Nathaniel would know only happiness as he served her every whim.

Thus was she victorious.

So ends his story, but not his life. He would come and go into the world of men, serving always the whims of his lover, his wife Lilyana. Oh what he did, he knew not, and no histories exist to tell of these deeds, but it cannot be doubted that all were in some greater purpose to ensure the safety of his lover and all her progeny.

It can be assumed, no, it can be known with all certainty that his nights were spent at her breast, the ministrations of her touch taking from him what she ever craved, and giving him endless cause to stay both obedient and thankful for the privilege of first her temptations, and then that of giving the gift of his soul to her.