Seed of Surrender 

A Smuthunter Story 

“Do you know where we are…” 

Halden felt the promising tension in the large, levered trigger to his crossbow and focused on its promise of sharp, sudden release. It was a comfort to know he could loose the bolt and it would punch through a shield, or make short work of any brigand’s mail, but it didn’t help him with the sad fact he and Farrow had gotten lost. 

“…because I know I don’t.” 

They were both dressed in the blue and black livery of castle Gray Staff, home of the lords and ladies of the Black Hawk dynasty, but Halden wore the green sash of a scout soldier. It marked him as a hunter, a woodsman, and a pathfinder, but it may as well have been the red sash of his patrol partner, the mark of a skilled line fighter, and not much more. 

“Quiet, complaining won’t bring us back to the road any faster,” Farrow was like that, always chatting, always grumbling, nothing more than a man at arms besotted with the soldier’s right to gripe. Halden was certain he’d heard every word he’d ever heard spoken in the common tongue anywhere also at some point come out of the big spearman’s mouth, and much to his own surprise, they’d all been used in the right meaning and context. 

He wasn’t an idiot, no, he was a smart man that never shut up about dumb things. 

“So, how much do you get paid in extra duty wage with that fancy scarf?” Farrow spoke the second half of question in between chews of dried meat that unfortunately did not shut him up. 

It was dark, not so far past sunset that it should be this dark, and not so far out from the castle that the road should have fallen away, but there they were. 

“This is my watch, I put in a request for the night watch,” Halden liked Farrow well enough, but it wasn’t in a favorable comradely kind of way, “I assume you volunteered for the extra duty coin?” Farrow spat out a piece of gristle, “Just like you took the night watch to try and leapfrog into being a proper ranger.” 

The words stung, not because they were untrue, but because Halden thought himself a better sort of man than to be a hypocrite. But, Farrow summed him up far too well in that counter-punch. They walked on in silence. 

“I suppose… I suppose that’s…” he was about to own up to it, when they stepped into a clearing. Halden blinked, the moon was bright, and low, it looked too low in the sky, and it was the wrong color. It was still white, but it was tinged with blue, like it caught a hint of the ocean and bathed in it. “Uh Halden… where are we?” 

Farrow was a tall, broad shouldered, powerful man who walked with a swing in his gate, and knuckles that were the color of plums as often as they were not. Like Halden he had the dark hair and dark eyes of their people, but his skin took to the sun better, and a half dozen or so children in and around the Castle Gray Staff had his look. He wasn’t unflappable, but he was pugnacious, and he was brave. 

“Because, what the fuck is up in the sky?”

“It’s the moon Farrow,” Halden left out whether or not it was ‘their’ moon. “Listen, don’t eat anything or drink anything we didn’t bring with us, and… I don’t know… don’t get out of my sight okay?” The forest around the castle sat at the edge of a much larger one, the Wither Wood, one that reached out for miles upon miles, down to the mountains and hills of the south, and out to east, towards the new and the old empires. Stories told of its western edge shifting and changing, blocking the southern road that ran along the western shore, and every fortnight the woodsmen from the township of Gray Staff would trim the edge around the keep and the township in a massive undertaking. 

Every fortnight new and fully-grown trees would return in places, stumps gone as though they were never there. It was a bounty, and a curse, because while the wood was always strong and plentiful, as certainly as new trees would come, folk would disappear, lost entirely in the woods, sometimes so fully that even their memories would be taken from friends and family. 

Some spoke of an evil Dryad queen, a woman whose top half blossomed from a flower, and who feasted on the essence of men she lured into her domain, while others believed it to be wild beasts, or phantom highwaymen, but Halden’s mind always went to the Fey, and the thin the veil between his world and theirs.  

There was too much magic in the forest, and too many inconsistent tales for it to be just one thing. And, if there was an evil flower woman in the forest, it wasn’t a dryad, dryads weren’t half flowers, those were aluren, a different kind of fey creature. 

Halden scratched at his beard, and felt his finger tap the trigger, “We should, we… Farrow? FARROW?” The big man was gone. 

Something sweet wafted up his nose. It smelled like moonlight, and the quiet heat before a kiss. It made his eyes tingle and his lips wet. The sweetness almost had a sound to it, it was like music that existed outside of sound, and it made his head spin. One second he was close behind Halden, the next, he was four steps down the strange path of black stone that unfolded at his feet. 

Farrow didn’t see the trees bend behind him, of the stones sink back into the earth as he passed, he just took a deep breath of that intoxicating scent and kept walking forward. His mind feel quiet, and his body felt warm, like his skin was tingling under the touch of the blue-white moon, and he smiled. 

There was something soft and delicate at the end of the path something warm and sweet, something that only he would truly appreciate, because no one could feel as wonderful as he did, no one could appreciate this potent color that wafted through the deep dark night and filled his nose with a lover’s touch. 

Step by step he wandered along the smooth black stone, gliding along its mirror surface until it came to an end, terminating in moonless darkness deep beneath the canopy. Farrow blinked in the dark and realized he couldn’t see, but as he did, he felt something in his mind, in his skull, a soothing pressure that gently pushed into him and spread. It felt like tendrils of warmth, of a pleasing song echoing in his ears, and teasing his tongue like honey. 

An image started to take root in his eyes, a vision was blossoming, growing, spreading, colors and lights imposed on the darkness, blinding him to his blindness as he took a deep breath and felt his lungs fill with that same lover’s kiss. He trembled as yellow and green danced on his skin while streaks of pigment, like rays of moonlight wove together before him. 

She was beautiful, she was voluptuous, irresistible and bursting with life and love. She was perfecting in

every way, but as he walked towards her, he couldn’t see her face, not past the luxurious cascade of dandelion yellow hair, and the twisting dance of shadow. 

Farrow reached for her, and felt her hand close around his wrist, and for a second he saw eyes, one violet, and one rose red, deep and dark as paint, beautiful as spring dawning across the land, but they were gone as her lips parted and she blew him a kiss. Fragrant, warm, and loving, the song he inhaled told him to come closer, and he did. 

She reached for him and took his other wrist in her hand, before bringing them together over his head, and grasping them there with one hand. She was strong, and tall as he was, growing taller, her fingers longer, wrapping about his wrists as her free hand unbuckled his belt and pulled down his trousers. 

She blew him another kiss, blowing on his face like a lover, intimate, close, and too familiar, but too sweet to resist as he felt her pull his cock free. 

“Oh,” Farrow thought as a warm slickness teased the tip of his cock, “I’m already hard.” It was a dream logic that entwined his mind and body, he was inside her, but they were standing up, and apart, and he was looking into beautiful eyes that came into his vision again, but they were formless, and she held his crossed wrists, but he also knew that he was bound and tied, and she was speaking to him, but her words smelled so sweet, and she was singing to him, but she was also speaking, and he only heard the music when he breathed her in. 

Her voluptuous body should have been pressed close, but Farrow only felt ropes tighten around him, pulling him down on this his back, twisting around his ankles and pulling him deeper into the darkness until she was gone, but that wet, slick warmth remained, pumping him harder and faster until his eyes closed in gasping, shuddering breaths as the world went from black to white to black again. 

Farrow dreamed of her, and dreamed of how hard he remained, still full and thick, able to go again, and again, and again, as long as she kept him there, milking him. When another climax rocked his body, Farrow felt the warmth in his head behind his eyes, and the pleasurable softness that enveloped his cock leaching something from him, draining something from his intellect like roots suck up water, and when he came a third time, he felt a deeper part of himself spurt free. 

Slowly the Siren Vine drained him of his memories, his identity, and his physical essence until with one final orgasmic groan, the vine took his life from him, and sent his energy through the earth, through its long tangled lengths, back to her, where she drank Farrow’s existence, and grew stronger from his energy. 

His body remained there for a time, the bright yellow flower remained attached between his legs, while the spores that took root inside his brain kept the body in a semi-stasis, allowing it to continue to produce its seed, gushing into the hungry plant, burning through the body’s reserves until it became a dried out husk. 

The spores from the flower caused hypnotic synesthesia, marked by the flower’s color, and by the will of one who could speak to and master the devious blossom. 

As the flower detached itself, the withered corpse would slowly fade back into the human realm, and carry with it the spores in its brain. The journey back through the veil would destroy the shriveled carcass, but carry enough of the spore across, and while it would not be the same on the human side, it was still a link that she could use… 

Halden drew his blade and hacked away at the wiry, tenacious branches and vines that hung across his

path. It might have been a game trail, or a slues but it wasn’t traveled regularly by humans, and he had no idea how Farrow had passed through here, but the big man clearly had. 

There were bits of his garb torn on branches, and a strange patchwork of boot marks on the ground that came and went, like the earth had swallowed up most of his passing, but not all of it. If one could walk out of the realm of the Fey, the scout figured that path was in the opposite direction he was heading, but he also knew if he turned to leave then Farrow would never make it out, or worse, he would come back years later, or come back changed, or wrong. 

So, Halden fought his way through the dark and alien wood, following half a trail, guided by the eerie blue tinged moonlight. It was slow going until he almost fell out of the tight and claustrophobic trees and on to a wide, hard packed dirt road. He looked to his right and saw nothing more than more road, but to his left he saw the road wind up a very slight incline towards a massive castle surrounded by gargantuan trees, both of which seemed to be a part of each other, and the cliffs that jutted up behind them. 

The road led up a gentle rise, and as the scout peered about for some sign of his friend, the blue white light made him blink and revealed a scuff of boot heel dented into the softer earth at his feet, and then the outline of deeper boot-print near a muddy patch just half a stride away. 

If Halden had any doubts that the castle was the only obvious direction, the orientation of these tracks dispelled them. 

The Fey were dangerous, he knew, but they were not without their own rules and customs. They could, if one was both wise and considerate, be approached for bargains, and for deals. And while a Fey would be tricky, and had no love for honor as a bold and persistent thing, they abided the rules, seeing all as much more akin to a game that could be won, if the other player were not careful. 

It was said, spoken softly in the guardhouse, and more loudly so around the hearths at the taverns in town, that much of Gray Staff’s most recent woes, the Dreaming Fits, had come from some great failed ambition to cheat, or out play a Fey barging. 

The Dreaming Fits were why Farrow had the chance to volunteer at all, most of the guard had recently been in, or were still deep within the throes of the strange illness. A deep sleep would descend upon the afflicted, much like a sleeping spell, and there they would remain for days upon days, until their bodies grew weak and thin, as though their dreams devoured the reserves the of the flesh. When wholly ravaged by thirst and hunger, the body teetered on death, the dreamer would awaken. 

The disease seemed to only strike the hearty and hale, those with the vigor of youth and strength, or those whose years hung easy on them. None had yet to die from the affliction, but some had taken harm while caught in the jerking, thrashing of their dreams, the fits that came and went at various times, making men and women move as dogs do in their dreams, and giving the sickness its name. 

No, none had died while in slumber, but not all recovered either. 

So patrols were undermanned and stretched thin, and all manner of men at arms were stretched even thinner. Halden wondered as he walked towards the castle, struck near senseless by its size, shape, and structure, mouth agape as he realized the crest of the hill was not hard earth but a massive tree stump that sat as a base to the castle, that perhaps he was dreaming now. Perhaps he had fallen into the Dreaming Fits and that he was not truly following a road under foot, but that he was lost in slumber, a prisoner of the disease. A few paces after he’d made up his mind to go to the caste, Halden blinked and found himself at its

open gates. The space between where he had been and where he was had seemed to have folded on itself, because his front foot came down where he was, and he felt his back foot rise and travel through heavier air, a feeling like pulling his foot out of deep mud. 

The scout dared not take a step through those gates, though he knew he had to. But, having some sense, he looked about and studied the fantastic and impossible fortification. 

Vines spilled out of the arrow slits and murder holes in the walls, and the ceiling of the gatehouse, marked by blossoming, tantalizing flowers of all colors. One of them, a thick, long vine caught his eye as it seemed to pulse, or throb like a vein, and he watched a new bub begin to blossom out of it into a brilliant yellow flower. 

He saw the sparkle of a pollen cloud burst from it in the moonlight, and knew these vines, the hundreds of them with the flowers, were the source of the sweet scent that had caught his attention, and if perhaps he wasn’t dreaming, then maybe, just maybe the scent had been guiding him here, like a soft pressure on his mind. 

His crossbow wouldn’t do much good against a living mass of vines, or an evil tree, or whatever might be inside, so he pulled the bolt free to place it back in his quiver, then loosed the trigger and slung the weapon to his pack. 

The short sword in his hand was more like a forester’s tool, a wide single edged bladed that was without a point, and he hoped its weight and his arm would make it formidable enough. The fragrances in the air tickled his nose, and he caught hints of sweet and strong scents, but long ago his nose and part of his face had been broken, and nothing ever quite smelled the same or as strong after he healed. His boots stepped on flower petals, some old, some new, none that would have been in season in his world, and many that he had never seen before. 

“Farrow? Farrow! If you can hear me, I’m in the courtyard, call out to me, or come down, and we can leave, we can make our way home.” 

It didn’t matter who or what heard him, it didn’t matter who or what ruled the castle, Halden would do his best to manage things without violence, and then his best to do whatever it took to get out. “Hello? Whomever’s abode this is? Whomever rules this castle, I’ve come in search of my friends and…” “You don’t need to shout,” a woman’s voice, delicate and musical as a song drifted up from behind him and made him jump. “…I’m right behind you.” 

Pale, hauntingly luminous violet eyes glowed at him out of the dark, and her voice seemed to call the moonlight down onto herself. All around her the small carpet of flower petals had been forced away, and thin wide tiles of black stone were scattered about. She was surrounded by a massive blooming violet flower the same color as her eyes, and within its inner bloom, her body rose out of a soft red blossom. 

She was green, skinned, but it was almost unnoticeable in the unnatural moonlight, and her deeper darker long green hair, adorned with blue roses looked closer to black in the darkness. She wore long green gloves that looked as though they were made of leaves, and the same leaves as clothes covered her nipples, but did nothing to obscure her voluminous breasts, which were larger than her head, an defied gravity and nature both in their size and how the jutted from her chest. 

Two more blue roses sat at her hips attached to vines that led to a leaf between her legs, that covered her womanhood as the others covered her breasts, and she smiled at Halden has he drank her in, his arm

raised, his blade catching the blue white glow, but kept in check by his own cooler head. He knew what she was, and he wondered if perhaps this castle was the heart of the Wither Woods, or that maybe others had passed in and out of the Fey realm thinking they had remained in their world. His damaged nose had likely saved him from her spell, but the Fey were known to be cunning and resourceful, with only the least among them bound to only one approach. 

“I, I’m sorry m’lady, you startled me. I saw no sign of you, nor any stares below. And I apologize for coming here uninvited. I am searching for my friend, we have wandered out of our world… and into… yours… your…” 

His words trailed as he looked at the violet blue rose she wore around her neck, and he realized he had seen it before. All about Grey Staff caste those flowers had been seen. Some in vases, some growing in the garden, or hanging to dry in windows, and they seemed to spring up almost overnight. She smiled at him, and battered her eyelashes, but did no speak. 

“Your flowers are… they’re very beautiful. Am I, I apologize, are you the Queen of the Wither Wood?” He thought he saw her blush, but couldn’t tell, “Why thank you, they are my most precious creations, but no, I am not… at least I do not believe I am the one you speak of. She lives in your world, and not mine. But tell me, have you smelled them yet?” 

She seemed to move closer to him, but he had no idea how. 

“Oh, I have in my own way, my sense of smell is… not strong. Tell me, where did you come from?” She touched a gloved finger to her lips as her other hand fell to her breast, “Why, from wherever I please. I am a part of this castle, and I live in its core, deep in the center of the great tree that first grew wood, and then grew stone, and was shaped by the ancient and greatest of architects. It is mine now, and where my vines reach, so does my will, and when I wish it, I will myself to be here, or in the towers, or anywhere. But since you are here, and I will know you, I’ve risen to meet you stranger.” 

Her voice had become softer, and he felt a hunger in her eyes as she looked into his. He watched her face as he said he could not smell her flowers, and there was a twitch in the corner of her mouth, as though she wanted to frown, but poise and manners kept her from it. He was right about her scent, and while he’d had some protection from it, Halden had his doubts. 

“It is a shame you cannot smell their sweetness, your friend Farrow quite enjoyed them. Would you like me to…” the slow caress of her hand across her breast and the slow, breathy tone of her voice as she continued made Halden feel as though she were much closer than she was, “…take you to him?” 

He thought about his answer, and feared a deception from her. Her eyes danced with a wicked light, but her body was so soft and round, so full and flush that it was hard for him to trust what he saw. It was harder still for him to ignore what he was seeing, as her hand continued to brush slowly along her breast while those eyes fixed his like she was trying to pierce his mind with her stare. “Could you bring him to me so I could… I…” the air around her was warmer and heavier, and the sweetness of her scent felt like it was clinging to his skin, and it was like he could taste her, and it was the taste of arousal, of lust, and need. She was so warm, and… “could…” 

“You ‘could’…” her words were like honey, slow and sticky and sweet, and he found his gaze wandering into the rhythm of her hand’s gentle caress up and down that massive breast, “…what?”” She was close to him, too close, and it was hard to breathe in her perfume. Halden stumbled back with

his blade raised, not to strike, but out of some need to have something between them. “To… to, uh… take him from your care, and free you from the responsibility of your hospitality to him. We should be leaving, uninvited as we are…” Halden knew he needed to leave, and quickly. If she had Farrow, then there was nothing he could do about it, and unless he could think of something quickly, Halden knew he’d have to run for it. 

“Who says,” she put a finger on the flat of the blade and kept his eyes fixed on hers, “that you were uninvited. Did you not gather your invitation in the sweet fragrance I sent to you when you entered my land? Or, oh no, could you not find the welcome within because of your injuries?” 

Halden did not want to seem too cagy, and let his blade drop from her touch as he took another half a step away from her, “I, honestly, did not. But I thank you for the invitation. I am, we are… Farrow and I are not supposed to be here, we need to return to the other side.” 

“And leave me here,” her hands feel to her breasts, “all alone?” 

She caressed herself, her hands pushing the gargantuan mounds of tit flesh together, and their sight was captivating enough without the lulling softness in her voice. “You wouldn’t be so cruel to leave one of your true countrywomen alone in her new home. You wouldn’t…” her small hands squeezed the mass of each breast, “deny me would you?” 

“My… who… who are you m’lady?” His eyes hadn’t wanted to become enthralled by her hands, but her breasts were impossible to ignore, and for a moment before he answered, they had both stood in silence with his eyes following as her hands led, his body still, his breath slowing, breathing her fragrance in deeper, until her sweetness seemed to coat his tongue, lingering like a rich desert. 

The question had given his mind some purchase, some excuse for manners to look away from the truly enthralling motion of her hands, and back into her eyes, eyes that seemed bottomless now, like a pools of violet water that caught and drank the starlight. 

“My name is Cellica, Princess of the Moon Dales, the last daughter of the western kingdoms, look upon me, do you not know me? Look at me, see me truly, gaze upon me as I am, see me now… see only me…” her voice became softer and softer with every word, and her hands moved in a delicate dance across her flesh, every motion a flicker in his vision, pulling on his eyes like gravity, teasing him away from her gaze and back to her breasts until she spoke again, one word that pierced his skull and sent a jolt of energy down his spine, “look.” 

And he did, he stared at her, seeing nothing else, watching her hands, feeling his body starting to sway to and fro as her hips shifted as she swayed back and forth as if blown from unfelt breeze, “I was betrayed once, long ago by my mother and father, bartered for their ambition, and became collateral for their cowardice and dishonor, surely you know my story, surely you know the truth… surely…” 

The single word, look, spoken with such authority, carried a magic of its own, and as she had continued to speak it had been an impossibility for him not to stare, then as the melodic, beguiling sound of her voice washed over him in his rapture, his gaze became entangled with the motion of her hands, so much so that as the magic dimmed, his focus did not. 

Back and forth, to and fro her breasts moved, guided by her hands, and his eyes followed, led as though they were on a leash. It felt natural to Halden, and as easy as breathing. In the silence he found the shape of her breasts to soften his fears, and he felt the size of them overwhelming his concerns. There was no room in

his mind for anything else… “you know your true duty to me. Drop your weapon, and approach your rightful princess. Stand near me now, close to me now, come to me now, do as your duty commands, do as your heart desires, come to me.” 

Halden blinked and felt himself become unmoored. 

“My loyal man, come to me. It is all you wish, and all you crave, come to me, be near me now as you gaze upon me.” Her breasts rolled in her hands, moving with a gravity he could not ignore or deny and his body felt light as a feather and distant from himself, as though his thoughts and his flesh were two separate things. 

The shock of her voice, of that one word was as before, but this time Halden took a step forward towards her, blade still in his hand, but his body briefly out of his control. 

Then, in one breath, his mind snapped back into place, like a spry green branch that had been pulled but not snapped. All around them a wall of thorns had risen up, and he could see the thorns, more like a shark’s teeth than branches, and he looked more closely at Cellica and realized her calves were wholly still within the flowering bud he thought was under her feet. 

The tales were true aluren were half flower, or maybe even more flower than flesh. But there was another tale he knew, one more precisely about her. 

“You…” snarled the word out, “you’ve been here far too long, and I know you witch. The Green Kiss of Death, the Sweetest Poison, the Daughter of Weakness, you were real, and you were banished here. This is where you belong, and I’ll give you nothing, I’ll make no deals, and no barter, and I know I’ve broken no tradition, nor honored any others. Free me, as is my right as a man who knows he is within the Fey, free me, and free Farrow is he remains.” 

Halden let his pack fall from his shoulders. 

“Or what,” her hands caressed her breasts again, and while her face held the sweet and demure smile of a well mannered lady of the court, her voice took on a harsh, mocking echo, “you’ll flail about for a moment before finding your place in my thrall again. Tell me, what is easier, fighting a battle you cannot win, or surrendering to a desire you cannot resist?” 

The gentle, gradual massaging of her breasts continued, and he tried not to stare, but the sway of her body, lithe as a dancer, and the gentle, rhythmic motion of her hands started to lull him again. It was touching something that she had reached earlier, something inside him that had never been touched, and he watched her out of a desire he did not want to admit, and as a fighter watches his foe. 

“You wish to remain here,” her lips pursed into a soft pout, “you long to be near me, close to me, do you not desire me, to serve me in all my glory?” 

Her body was a weapon, and he had no choice but to appraise it and prepare for her. “This is not cold iron, but it is sharp steel, and I need not slay you to maim you, lower these walls, don’t make me strike you There was no difference in the steady, soothing motion of her hands on her breasts, nor had them become less inviting. Their gentle rolling and bouncing, their fullness and their size in her small hands only seemed to grow, and whenever Halden found himself blinking, it felt like he was falling between them, as though their weight was on his eyelids, slowing his thoughts, pressing on his mind, heavier and heavier. “…sleep… sleep… sleep now… sleep….” 

His sword was so heavy, and he was so… “No, cease this. I say again, lower your walls and give me my

freedom.” 

 “Lower your walls, open your heart and your mind, watch me and see nothing else.” So sweet and so soft her voice had become, so delicate that the sliver of magic in the word watch almost pierced him again, but too often she had used that trick of her voice and too much so in trying to lull him to slumber, and he took a breath to deny it, to slow himself from the simple desire to hear and obey. 

“You won’t have my mind, you will have nothing of me, and when I return, I’ll destroy your… flowers, whatever they are. You’re the sources of the Dreaming Fits, you’re stealing life from the other side.” “How can I steal what is rightly mine…” slowly and softly her hands moved, and around and round her breasts followed, moving now in one patter only, around and around, circling and spilling over her hands, “…all of you are my subjects, and while my crown is different now, my claim to the kingdom, to all of your lives, is still rightly mine. And one by one, dream by dream, I will open the way for myself to return, and then I shall take my throne.” 

Halden laughed, and spat, “You have no legs, you live in a land of magic, you’re grown like a mushroom from a giant stump, your plan is a foolish waste. Accept your exile and free me now.” “But you are free, free to surrender, free to renounce your false king and queen, and free to kneel. You are free now, free to watch and, to just stare and surrender to your desires. You cannot defeat me, you do not want to harm me, you are feeling so weak now, so small and tired, tired of fighting, tired of fear. You are free, free to come to me, just lower your walls, just open your mind, and free yourself to sink into me.” Every word was sweeter and softer than the one before, every beckoning permission, every soft caress of her voice on his mind pulled at him and drained him, and his sword was so heavy now, too heavy… it took both hands to keep it raised, and as he fought to stay in readiness for battle, his eyes fought to stay transfixed on her breasts, working against his own mind. 

It was not the magic she could temper her voice with, it was her breasts. He could not find himself fully anymore. He could not break his gaze from them for long, and as they roller in her hands it was making his head lull slightly from side to side with them. Halden felt like there was a hole in his mind and his thoughts were leaking out, but he shook himself from her breasts and tried to cling to this handhold of full awareness. 

“You are free to drop your burdens, free to know your friend is gone beyond your responsibility, and free to leave if you wish. But you’re so tired, so very tired now. You could turn from me and attempt to climb the brambles, or hack through them, but you’re struggling to stand, struggling to keep that blade even with both hands. This is a battle you cannot win, and you are fighting a desire you cannot resist. Just,” she blew a thin breath from her lips, and the moonlight caught the flecks of dust and made them sparkle and glitter as the cloud burst against Halden’s face, “breathe.” 

He did, this time the magic in her word compelled him to its fullest effect, and his breath was deep and full. There was no reason for his mind to reject the command, and he was feeling too weak and sleepy, too overwhelmed by her massive breasts smothering his shrinking sense of self to deny her. 

Her spores filled his lungs, and sunk in through his eyes. He blinked, and couched once, and saw Cellica in a whole new sound. Her breasts were an infinite lullaby, her eyes were a touch of violet on his skin, and he tasted thunder and awe in her perfume. 

When a tentacle lashed out and struck him hard enough to knock him to the ground, he fell in a heap and dropped his blade, “That is for your disobedience, ” she giggled, “And this…”

A tentacle snaked out and wrapped around his ankles to pull him in, “…is for your reluctant obedience.” The flower petals closed around them both, and the darkness was warm and wet and all consuming. The petals brushed his skin, and he felt himself slide into her, like a verse in a poem he never knew he had forgotten. 

Her warmth, the embrace of his manhood being taken by her divine royalty, and her awesome presence shuddered in a low roll of dread, but now that he was close, which she had been waiting for, knowing that a concentrated burst of her pollen would be too heavy to reach him where he’d stayed, dancing at the edge of her most dangerous weapons, she could and did simply dose him again. 

His mouth found her nipples, sucking and drinking in her nectar as the flower of her tendril drained him, her hands caressing his body, her touch speaking to him in his intoxicated and hypnotized delirium. Hypnotism had served her well when she had been a princess and cursed by the fey as retaliation when her parents broke their bargain with the fey. 

Her kiss was to be the touch of death, and as the forest would consume the land, she would swallow the souls of its people. When her curse was discovered, when she had consumed the spirit of a handsome stable boy she had fancied, not only did she take his life, but she began to change. It was slow at first, but with every soul she took, for she developed a taste and craving for them, her body became less a human thing, a more a thing of nature, until finally she became what she was, an aluren, like the fey ruler in the heart of the Wither Wood. 

But before that moment came, before she developed her powers, she would have to seduce and enthrall her would be captors, and in her time alone, she studied the ways and arts of beguiling the mind and placing it into trance, a magic that was not particularly magical, but still effective. 

A guard would stand outside her door, and she would speak to him, softly and slowly, whispering to make him focus more, his eyes slowly growing heavy and tired, his body growing weak as she would continue to speak to him, lulling him, bending him to her favor in small ways, subtle ways at first, and as guards would come and go in shifts, she would ply her hypnotic sway over many of them in the course of a day, until her captors longed to stand near her door, to listen to her, and sink into the sweetness of her voice. 

Then, one by one, they could make the mistake of stepping into her champers, and she would take their souls. Female guards were tried, but they faired no better, and she was careful to space out her feedings, until over months she had gathered enough thralls to in one day harvest them all and achieve her fullest self. 

And for a time she reigned, but a band of heroes rose up and banished her from afar, not daring to test their mettle against her powers. 

This one, the one she teased and toyed with now had something of a heroic taste to him. His body was strong, as was his mind, but the simple workings of her pollen could not be undone by force of will. She caressed him, almost lovingly, savoring the shudders in his body as she milked him. His thirst for her nectar was prolonging his life, and his hands massaged and coaxed her to produce more, drinking in the aphrodisiac that made his cock hard as stone, and his balls pump a near endless supply of his seed. 

Halden felt her memories of the many men and women she had seduced and entranced, feeling her thrill as their voices grew soft and their manner pliable, her thoughts flowing into him, his mind becoming theirs as her natural drugs made him hallucinate. Over and over he fell into the thrall of the princess, and over and over, he felt her lips usher him into the void.

But when he fell into the black his own memory of her breasts returned, and he found himself beguiled be her again and again, endlessly entranced, even as he also remembered resisting her, and feeling some small pride in that, some sense of hope that he could still escape if he could just stop sucking on her tits and cumming. 

For a very long time Cellica held him there, his face pressed to her breast, stroking his head as one of her vines milked him, and then, slowly, she felt his body sagging, but not his spirit. This one was a true fighter, and he would not surrender his soul through the vines no matter how great the pleasure became. 

Gently, in the darkness where he could neither see nor think, feeling the synesthetic effects of her hypnotic pollen, drugged and so disoriented that even if she were to set him free, his mind would never be truly whole again, Cellica kissed Halden and drank his soul from his flesh even while her spores kept his body alive is they had his friend Farrow. 

Using the vines, an extension of her, harnessed the life force of her victims in a different way than her kiss of death. When she sated herself with that kiss, it fed her natural powers, when she drained them and milked their souls out of their cocks, she could use them for arcane rituals like creating her blue sleep flowers, and eventually a ritual to return to the world of humans. 

Oh well, this one would just make her stronger in herself. 

It was funny, she thought, she’d never learned this one’s name. 

It didn’t matter, even as his memory washed through her, and she started to absorb all he had been, there hadn’t been a point in learning it. He was just another meal, and now he was gone… but his body… Cellica had a thought. 

The petals of her flower came down and he stood before her, an empty vessel. The vines she used to consume Farrow would have killed this one before taking what she had needed from him, but her kiss had taken his soul before his body was spent. 

Cellica didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of this before. 

Dead bodies would go back, filled with her blue flower spores, but this living, breathing, empty shell could take something more back with him to the other side. It would take all of the power she’d been siphoning through the dreamers, and from all those she had preyed upon with her vines, but it could be done… 

Halden blinked in the early morning light, the world was strange and everything felt distant. He couldn’t remember where he’d been, or what had happened through the night, but Farrow’s corpse was at his feet, withered and hollow. Halden didn’t know why, but he kicked the body and watched a plume of bluish sparkling dust escape it as it broke apart like dried leaves. 

He felt hollow and weak, and he yearned for something as though it were hunger or thirst, but when he drank and ate, he felt no relief. So, left with no recourse, he walked back to the castle, and reported as best he could. It was greeted only as more ill tidings, and he was fast tiring. 

In the middle of the night, a woman came to visit him. She was one of the dreams, a comely barmaid that many of the men at arms fancied, and she swept quietly into his chamber, sleep walking to him, and waking him with a kiss, her hand between his legs. 

Halden stared up at deep violet eyes that flickered in the empty, expressionless face, and felt himself move from slumber, to a waking dream. The woman mounted him and took him quickly. In his last moments,

as the small spark of his soul that Cellica had put back into his body, he felt his essence burn away in pure pleasure, unaware of what else the aluren had put inside if him to deliver to this host. It was possible to grow some plants with a clipping from another, and so the rightful queen had put a piece of herself in him, feeding off his life energy until it could take root in an appropriate vessel. It would take time, but she would be able to cross over, and faster than her original plans. 

Cellica could already feel her essence waking, and it would be some time before she started to manifest her powers, and then as it had happened so long ago, she would change again, but this time it would be different, this time she knew what she was doing.