The stag was more magnificent than Jack had imagined. The sun was just beginning to set when the stag strode from the edge of the forest. Jack had seen its signs all season, the tracks of its hooves were larger than his hand, the tree rubs were deep as notches made by a sword, Jack had even seen a shed rack as large as a small tree inside the forest, but he dared not retrieve it. The stag moved out cautiously, one step at a time, as Jack watched and waited, another step, a bit more. Finally, Jack had his shot! He let loose his arrow and was sure it struck true. The stag turned and bolted. Jack ran to the edge of the forest, but there he paused.

There were many tales about The Demonwood. Most commonly it was said that demons dwelt within. Some said a sorceress or hag dwelt there who would lure trespassers to their doom or ensnare the hearts of men and make them slaves. Others told tales of trolls or goblins, there were even those that said it was home to elves and fairies.

The wood certainly had a fey look about it. The trees were ancient and packed so tightly together that a gloom of twilight seemed to hang over the place even at midday.  Mists seemed to creep from the place like groping fingers. There were the usual sounds of birds and the chittering of animals, perhaps even the sound of a distant waterfall. The forest had a mossy, mouldy, ancient smell to it. There may have been a slight scent of carrion as well, perhaps a dead animal lay nearby.

Jack was about to turn away when something caught his eye. A drop of blood. His arrow had struck true! Looking further he saw a blood trail. The trail led into what seemed to be a tunnel opening into the ancient grove. Jack overcame his fear and followed it. Fairies be damned! He was not going to let a children’s tale frighten him out of his prize.

Jack entered the forest, and at first, the trail was easy to follow, but as the roots of the trees grew together and over each other, the blood became harder to track. He ran as fast as he could until he was out of breath, but the stag had vanished out of sight ahead of him. The light was fading quickly inside the forest. Jack turned back to be sure he could find his path out again. He had come farther than he thought. The opening of the tunnel appeared small and distant from this deep in the forest. Jack thought he saw a shadowed silhouette pass in front of the opening. It seemed man-shaped but larger than any man, and it seemed to have something like ram’s horns on its head, or perhaps it wore a horned helm. His heart began to pound from fear and he felt a chill run up his spine. 

Jack looked ahead and beheld the form of the stag in the distance shining with a red glow as twilight came to an end. He chased after it deeper into the forest with many a furtive glance behind him, but the man or beast he had seen earlier did not reappear, and the stag led him deeper and deeper into the forest, until it turned off and disappeared into the underbrush. He tried to follow it.

The sound of tumbling water grew louder as Jack came upon a ridge. Far below him was a pool surrounded by mossy shores. It was night now but shafts of moonlight penetrated the forest canopy in places. A stream tumbled down from a high place to spill into the pool and he could smell the refreshing scent of the pure water.

Suddenly Jack beheld a strange sight in the pool. A female form rose from the water, her skin glowed like the moon in the darkness, and drops of water clung to her skin and glistened in the moonlight like dewdrops clinging to a flower on a midsummer’s eve. Her form was lithe and supple, yet shapely and seductive, her movement a grace to behold, her breast the most perfect cup, tipped by the most precious rosebud of a nipple, her ear was strangely long and drew to a point at its tip. Jack drew his breath and realized that he had stumbled upon an elf maiden taking an evening dip.

He crouched to the ground and watched her as she bathed. After a time he heard a sound of singing and deemed it came from the elf maiden, but a strange song it was indeed. He did not recognize any words and the sound rose in pitch and volume until it seemed less like a song and more like the sound a woman might make in the ecstasy of coitus. It clouded his mind and he felt a strange lust for the elf maiden come over him.

Suddenly Jack was startled by the noise of something breaking through the underbrush. When he turned to look, he saw the stag had come onto the ridge. Small black figures seemed to be swarming over its body and tearing at its flesh. The beast stumbled down the steep ridge making a sound like a dying bugler. It fell with a loud splash into the pool. Jack watched as the creatures devoured the beast, some devouring the eyes, some delving into the carcass to rip it apart and gnaw the organs within. In minutes the stag was stripped to the bone and a dark circle of blood spread into the pure water of the pool.

The elf maiden had turned to watch the gruesome scene so that Jack could now see her face full on. He beheld a dark and hideous disfigurement that stretched from her head to her lower body as far as he could see. It startled him so much that he must have cried out, for she turned and found his hiding place with her eyes, her ears alert and upright. She locked her gaze upon him. The creatures on the stag had paused their frenzied feeding to gaze up at him as well, and their eyes shone like pale orbs in the moonlight, their ears flattening along their heads. Jack felt a swoon come over him as he stared at the maiden, and he fell and tumbled down the steep ridge to the bank of the pool. He lay senseless.

+++++

When Jack opened his eyes it seemed to be daytime though it was a dark, dismal, rainy day. He must have slept through the night. He had a dark recollection, like a dark dream, of being carried by clawed hands while shadowy giants strode as sentries on either side. He appeared to be in a cottage, though when he looked about he saw that some of the walls of the cottage seemed to be the trunks of living trees. A fire was burning on a hearth and he could smell the scents of wood, herbs, and flowers; cedar, balsam, basil, sage, lavender, wintergreen, and many others that he did not know. Bunches of herbs were hung from the ceiling by strings. A copper kettle and a pot with a spout were hanging in the fire.

Jack lay on a bed of living moss, the large pillow seemed to be down, the sheets were of some type of silk and very smooth. He glanced beneath the coverings and realized that he lay naked in the bed. His clothing and gear were gone. Jack began to call out for help and after a while, he thought he heard an answer.

“Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, tilly to tum, fa-la-la, fa-la-la, filly fo fum,” sang a voice.

The song seemed to be coming from all around Jack. Suddenly the slight form of the elf maiden that he had seen before came dancing and leaping into the cottage carrying an armful of vegetables. At first, she seemed to take no notice of Jack as she picked up a large elaborately decorated knife and began chopping up the vegetables and tossing them into the pot. The nonsense words continued for a while and then the song began to make more sense in a way.

“Demon sires, guardians grow,

Chopping heads off to and fro,

Chop their heads off one by one,

Let them swelter in the sun,

Chop their heads off two by two,

Put their eyeballs in the stew.”

And with a chop, chop, and a plop, plop, she plopped a pair of onions into the boiling pot. She then turned her attention to Jack and approached him pointing the blade towards him.

“Does it live?” she asked. “Can it speak?”

Jack eyed the knife suspiciously and decided he had better proceed cautiously considering his position.

“I am alive,” Jack said. “I can speak. I don’t know how I came here, and I don’t know where my things are.”

“It fall,” she said dismissively. “Konk its noggin. Children carry it here.”

Did she mean her children? Jack did not remember hitting his head, but it certainly hurt now, and he could feel a large lump on the back of his skull. He thought it was strange that he should have hit the back of his head when tumbling forward.

“Well, thank you, I suppose,” Jack said. “My name is Jack. I don’t know your name. Could I have my clothes and gear back, please? Then I will take my leave.”

Jack began to get up but the elf brought the knife blade to his chest and he decided to lay back down.

“El-Filla,” she said. “El-Filla is decide what is to do with it. El-Filla is warden of woods. Queen Merlina is sovereign. How is Jack come into forest?”

Jack explained how he had been hunting and pursued the stag into the woods. He left out the part about the helmed creature he saw.

“None hunt Lady’s wood without leave,” El-Filla said. “Lady’s Law say Jack forfeits its life when it shoots the stag.”

“I did not know this law. I come from the south. It is true that I shot the stag but it was not in the forest at the time. And it was the creatures of the forest that slew the beast. What were those things that swarmed the stag in the pool?”

“Forest children. Smell blood, make them… hungry.” She paused and considered a moment before she asked him her next question. “Is it not a crime in Jack’s land to watch a maiden in her bath unawares?”

“I… It was… It was an accident,” Jack stammered. “I did not expect to find someone bathing in the woods.”

At this El-Filla sat down next to him on the bed and turned her left side towards him. Jack was again struck with her unearthly beauty. He looked down and saw that her left breast, that perfection of form, was nearly visible through the shimmering veil of her garment. He felt it brush against his arm. He almost forgot about her other side. He drew his breath as his heart raced.  He felt his cock begin to stiffen.

“El-Filla have pleasure to look at Jack,” she cooed. She ran her fingers through his hair, stroked his cheek, his beard, and then drew her nails across his chest leaving white lines. “Maybe we make trade. El-Filla want something. If Jack give something then it go free.”

She had brought her mouth so close to him that it tickled his ear and he could feel her breath on his cheek as she spoke.

El-Filla stood up and cast her raiment aside to reveal her full body to him and Jack gazed with a mixture of lust and revulsion, for although her left side was as flawless as any princess, her right side was stained with a great scar, a mark that ran the length of her body. Her skin and her hair were the color of moonlight except at the hairline on the right side where a tuft of coarse black fur, like that of a bear or a boar, extruded from her scalp.

From there a stain crept down across her forehead to her brow and even into her right eye. The color of the mark was mottled reddish-purple, blue, green, and black in different spots. The texture of the marked flesh reminded Jack of a toad with blisters and rough bumps emerging from the flesh as lesions. Her right eye was enlarged and looked more like the eye of a lizard than that of a woman. It shifted and moved independent of her fair eye, and seemed to behold things that he could not see. The mark then crept down her cheek in several rivulets and spots and a tendril reached the corner of her lips.

Jack could see that her tongue was split, and the part of her tongue nearest the stain was pointed like the tongue of a serpent. The stain continued from her mouth down her neck and spread to engulf her right breast. The nipple, areola, and breast were covered in the toady lesions. The mark continued across her belly until it reached her loins, and that seemed to be its origin, for the stain seemed to cover her groin and cunt completely and spread out as a starburst from it. Both right and left legs also had some of the marks as rivulets down them.

El-Filla pushed Jack gently back onto the bed until he rested comfortably on his back. She began to kiss him on the mouth and as a sudden passion came over him, he kissed her back. The forked part of her tongue was sharp as a dagger’s tip though, and when it nicked Jack’s lip he tasted blood. It only hurt a little and he did not really mind it. El-Filla smiled.

She presented her left breast to him and he cupped it with his hand, then, squeezing it a little, Jack brought his mouth close so that she could feel his breath upon it. Jack gently traced the circle of her nipple with the tip of his tongue and the nipple began to stiffen and become erect. He put his lips around it and sucked until the nipple was hard and had swollen slightly.

El-Filla then presented her right breast to Jack and he hesitated a little before he put his mouth on it. The first thing he noticed was that it seemed to radiate more heat than the other, and it seemed to almost come alive as he squeezed it and sucked on it. It began to swell with his caresses, not just the nipple but the entire breast. Jack continued to suck and lick it until it had grown as large as the bosom of any tavern wench he had known.

As he continued to suck, a sweet nectar began to flow from her teat into his mouth, and so Jack squeezed it as he suckled to increase the flow. It burned like a strong liquor when he swallowed it and he wondered if it would have a similar effect on him. Jack withdrew from the swollen breast and a small trickle of the pale nectar continued to flow from the nipple down across the breast towards her lower ribs and her belly.

Jack reached down and began to rub her cunt with his hand. The skin was rough and covered in the same bumps as the rest of her marked flesh. The cunt seemed to be much larger than would be expected on a woman of her small stature. A hood of skin covered her clitoris and as Jack pulled back the hood he felt that the spot was larger than any he had previously known, appearing almost as a small glans. Jack touched it gently and El-Filla let out a moan of pleasure and her ears tilted backwards as she spread her legs to expose herself to him. Jack began to carefully work at her button with his fingers, and as he did, the lips of her cunt began to draw open like the lips of a hungry wolf that had come upon its prey, and like the mouth of the wolf, the cunt slavered for its meat.

Jack had grown large and stiff by now and as El-Filla mounted him, he placed his knob and shaft against the hungry cunt where his cock was drawn inside as if it were being sucked upon. The inside of the cunt seemed to writhe and squirm. It felt like many pairs of lips were wrapped around his shaft and were pulling on it. The sensation was more intense than any Jack had ever known and after a short time, without even thrusting, he began to spill his seed inside her.

It felt like his cock was thrusting into a throat and it was greedily swallowing his seed as it spurted from him. The gulping sound it made reminded him of a dwarf chugging a flagon of ale, a sound with which Jack was well acquainted. It had been some time since he had relieved himself thusly and he was somewhat renowned for the volume of ejaculate he could produce, so Jack was surprised that none of it came spilling forth from the cunt as expected.

"What was that sound?" Jack asked. “It sounded like swallowing.” In answer, El-Filla merely smiled, arched her back, and continued to rock back and forth on top of him.

Normally Jack would have grown flaccid and withdrawn at this point but somehow he remained hard and erect, though his glans had grown sensitized and the cunt continued to stroke his tip causing his body to shudder as though he were having a seizure.

Jack felt a warm, tingling sensation spreading from his belly to his groin and he thought it must be from the milky nectar he had swallowed, for it seemed to increase his passion as it spread through his body. He rolled over in a sudden burst of energy so that El-Filla lay beneath him and he began pumping into her, the cunt having loosened its grip somewhat. El-Filla proved to be incredibly flexible as she reached up and began stroking Jack’s hair and face with her feet.

Jack continued to thrust with great vigor and El-Filla fell into an ecstatic state. With each thrust she gave a soft moan of pleasure and as Jack continued to thrust harder and faster so El-Filla’s cries became louder and she began to grind her cunt against him harder and harder. Finally, Jack felt like he exploded into her as he let out a cry himself and squeezed his seed forth. For the second time, Jack felt the swallowing sensation and heard the gulping sound coming from her cunt.

“What is that sound? I have never heard a cunt make a sound like that before!” Jack asked for the second time.

“Whosoever should ask about that which concerns them not, may hear that which would not please them,” she replied though Jack did not understand what she meant by it.

Jack withdrew and looked between El-Filla’s spread-eagled legs, but what he felt must have been a massive load never issued forth. At this point, it may have been prudent for him to flee the cottage and take his chances in the forest, but prudence was perhaps the furthest thing from his mind, and before long he slumbered.

When Jack awoke he found that El-Filla had prepared a stew of venison, tubers, wild onions, green herbs, and mushrooms in a gravy of bone broth. She brought some to Jack and he hungrily gobbled it from the clay bowl. She brought a piece of bread as well which he used to sop up the gravy.

“It is a shame that your beauty was marred by this accident. Will you tell me the tale of how it happened?”

At this remark, she seemed to grow angry.

“This is no shame! I consider this a mark of great honor. It was no accident, either, but a duty I performed. I do not consider it ugliness but of great beauty.”

Then she began to sing part of a haunting song.

“Queen of the silver lake orders her tributes,

Summoning shadows to sire her brood,

Courtiers gather to witness the fell brutes,

Putting them in a lewd mood.

Princesses offer their bodies in service,

Ritual fucks are the rule of the day,

Portals are opening making them nervous,

Hoping they don’t become prey.”

“Will you then tell me the tale of how this happened to you?” Jack asked.