Jack woke up and looked around taking in his surroundings. He had been dreaming he was at his favorite inn bedding his favorite wench. Then he remembered where he was. Who he was with. Fortunately, El’Filla was nowhere to be seen. He must have fallen asleep listening to her voice and the tales she told. Images from El’Filla’s stories had seemed to appear in the flames of the fire, the shadows on the walls of the cottage, and the mists of the forest. He could remember the stories as if he had lived them in a waking dream. Perhaps it had been an illusion of her glamor? Maybe she had put something in his stew?

Had it been one day or several? He couldn’t quite remember. There were rumors of wanderers lost in the fey woods who returned home to find everyone they had ever known had grown old and died years ago. Is that what he would find when he finally returned? Would he ever return?

Jack stood up feeling a bit dizzy from the blow to his head. He steadied himself, leaning against one of the trees that made up the walls of the cottage. He still did not have any clothes, so he draped the silk sheet from the bed over his shoulder and wrapped it around his body as he searched for his gear. He did not find his gear, but he found a piece of cord and tied it around his waist to fasten his makeshift garment. I suppose this is what the ancient Ether’ellians wore, Jack thought.

As his mind began to clear, Jack began to doubt the tales El’Filla had told him. Perhaps her mind was as scarred as her body. Perhaps, she had made up things to explain away whatever trauma had caused the disfigurement covering one side of her body. Perhaps, the accident had driven her mad. She was obviously mad! She was gone now, and that gave Jack a chance to escape. The last rays of the red sun pierced the dense canopy of the forest in the west. The fire had burned down to embers, and it was beginning to become hard to see in the cottage. Jack saw a glint of silver, one of El’Filla’s knives. Jack picked it up, but as he was holding it, he felt a sharp pain in his hand, and he dropped the knife. It fell point down, and the blade was so sharp it ended embedded in his foot. A cursed blade!

Jack gritted his teeth, gingerly gripped the knife, and wrenched the blade from his foot. Blood oozed from the wound. The handle had the shape of a serpent. Had it bitten him?  He remembered El’Filla saying that her knives were enchanted to attack a stranger’s grip. His hand was bleeding. He threw away the knife in dismay.

Jack found the door of the cottage unbarred, so he fled into the forest weaponless, with only a sheet as a garment, and nothing to protect his bare feet. The gloom of twilight had fallen over the wood and wind passed through the tops of the trees rustling the branches. Jack suspected El’Filla had gone to her bath, so he listened for the sound of tumbling water. Once he thought he had ascertained its direction Jack fled the opposite way. His bare feet and his injury hampered his speed. Briars and brambles tore at his makeshift garment as he shuffled through the forest. The wind grew stronger, and clouds began to cover the sky with remarkable speed. All that remained of dusk was a pale green glow in the western sky.

Suddenly Jack thought he heard a faint gibbering sound in the distance. He froze but the sound of the wind in the trees prevented him from hearing anything more. El’Filla’s words returned to him “Forest Children … blood make them hungry.” Jack looked at his injured foot with concern. It was unfortunate that he had injured himself. He was certainly leaving a trail of blood that a beast of the wood could follow. He was not sure if he believed El’Filla’s tales concerning the origin of the creatures, but he had seen with his own eyes the creatures taking the stag. Swarming over the beast, tearing at its flesh, gnawing at its organs, devouring its eyes.

Jack considered returning to El’Filla’s cottage and seeking shelter. Perhaps she would let him go? And lead him out of the forest? Especially if he ‘comforted’ her again. He heard the gibbering sound again. It came from the direction of the cottage. He fled away from it.

It began raining and flashes of distant lightning intermittently lit the sky. Gusts of wind swept through the forest like the spirits of the dead making the ancient trees twist and sway. Sheets of rain pelted him. He heard the gibbering sound again behind him on the right. Then it came from even closer on his left.

Jack crashed through underbrush and thorn bushes which tore his flesh. He ignored his pain as he raced through the forest. He glanced over his shoulder and saw eyes gleaming in the night. They were tracking him. Surrounding him. In front of Jack was an ancient tree. He sought to put the tree between himself and his pursuers. He dodged behind it… and found himself falling. The tree was growing at the precipice of a deep ravine and there was no footing behind it. Jack grasped futilely at the thorny shrubs lining the ravine, but nothing would slow his descent. He tumbled to the bottom and landed with a splash in a fetid bog.

The gibbering had stopped. Jack glanced up and saw row upon row of gleaming eyes watching him from the top of the ridge. The walls of the ravine were steep, slippery, and covered in strange plants with large downward pointing thorns. It made it easy to fall into but difficult to climb out of. Was he trapped in some sort of giant carnivorous plant? Jack proceeded along through mud and muck that reached above his groin. The cold ooze caused his genitals to retract into his body. Each pull of his foot produced a sucking sound. The place smelled of rot and corruption and his wounds burned. He plunged onward half lunging, half swimming. The rain had lessened a little, but now a mist was creeping into the ravine.

Things were floating in the mud. Gray orbs floated sporadically as far as Jack could see in the dim mist. He pushed one of the gray orbs out of the way and it turned over slowly revealing two eye sockets. It was a skull! He stared at it in horror. He began to make out more bones,  picked clean of all flesh. A rib cage covered in moss was sticking out of the ooze. He had mistaken it for a branch. He felt hard objects beneath his feet as he crawled along. More bones. He was in a mass grave! This must be the ravine from El’Filla’s story. This was where they had been putting all of the bodies!

Jack could see gleaming eyes watching him from the top of the ridge through the deepening mists. He looked to the opposite side of the ravine. There were no eyes… not yet! He slogged his way towards the opposite ridge. The muck grew deeper reaching up to his chest, as he swam past the skeletal remains. He reached the opposite ridge and moved along it until he found a spot free of the thorny plants. He grabbed some protruding roots and began his ascent up the muddy bank. The gibbering sound began again. Jack looked down into the mists. He thought he could see glowing green eyes. Was it the eyes of the dead? The bones lurching through the muck towards him, trying to claim him as one of their own? Jack remembered El’Filla saying some of the Forest Children were amphibious. Seemingly in answer, he heard a deep croaking sound come from below him. Jack panicked climbing faster. In his haste, he grasped a small tree clinging to the wall of the ravine. His weight was too much for it. It came out by the roots, and he began slipping back down into the grave. With a lurch, his foot caught on something. He looked down and his foot was resting on a boney arm protruding from the bank. Was it giving him a boost? He pushed against it and his other foot was able to gain purchase at a higher point. He reached a sturdy root with his hand and was able to pull himself higher. Finally, he crawled on his belly onto the far side of the ravine.

Jack heard the gibbering sound coming toward him once again. A sudden flash of lightning revealed dark shapes moving along the forest floor while giant sentries as tall as trees swayed like black silhouettes against the night sky. The gibbering grew louder as Jack once again fled through the forest. With each flash of lightning, he glimpsed them. Great shadowy figures as tall as the trees now flanked him on either side. Small gibbering beasts swarmed just behind him. There was a pale green light gleaming between the tree trunks in front of him.

Then Jack heard it. A woman’s voice singing a haunting melody carried on the wind. The creatures that seemed about to devour him paused as they too listened to the sound. They slowly backed away. Despite his terror, Jack felt lust grow in him at the sound of that song. His body began walking towards the green glow as he was lured by that siren call. He felt as if he were a prisoner trapped in his own body, no longer able to control it.

The forest seemed to open into a long tunnel ending in a clearing glowing with a pale green light. Bioluminescent fungi taller than Jack surrounded the clearing illuminating it with an eerie glow. Jack saw the eyes of the forest creatures gleaming in the gloom on either side as his body carried him forward drawn by El’Filla’s song. The horror he felt seemed to be locked into his brain while his body rebelled against him. Suddenly he saw her. El’Filla reclined on a mossy log more beautiful and more terrible than ever. Her head was tilted back, and her back was arched thrusting her bare breasts towards the sky, her forearms rested on the log supporting her upper torso, one knee was bent and the other was straight. When Jack approached, she rolled her body to face him, tossed her moonlight-colored hair, and beckoned to him.

A feeling swept over him washing away the horror and the pain. He wanted to submit to her. He needed to submit to her. He let the mud-soaked sheet slip off his shoulder and fall to the ground. He knelt naked before her. She was truly a goddess. He would be her servant, her slave, her sacrifice.

El’Filla spread her legs revealing her cunt, that font from which the demonic flesh spread in purple and green lesions to cover the right half of her body. It was her and yet not her. A living thing melded with her flesh. She pulled Jack’s face towards it. The outer lips opened like a smile, dripping with anticipation, revealing inner lips, and inside of those another pair, labia within labia, like a mirror held up to a mirror. All of them wriggling with excitement, all of them oozing with pleasure. Jack licked a long stroke up one side of the cunt relishing her exquisite flavor. El’Filla’s body shivered with pleasure in response. He lapped at her like a thirsty hound on a sweltering day who comes to a stream after a chase. If his mouth could bring pleasure to his goddess, he would devote himself to it with all his will. His hand reached up to unshroud her clit, and found it engorged and swollen. He could feel it throbbing as he pressed his thumb against it. He moistened his thumb with her oozing fluids and brushed it gently over her nub. El’Filla pulled Jack’s face against her cunt as she wrapped her legs around the back of his head holding him in place. Jack used his tongue and his lips to bring her pleasure until his lungs fought him for a breath of air. Why were his lungs fighting him? He would gladly end this way if it brought her pleasure. His vision was going dark, and his chest was heaving when she finally released him. Jack gasped for breath.

El’Filla laid Jack on his back with his limbs hanging over the sides of the log. There were vines among the foliage and Jack found his wrists and ankles entangled in them. He tugged against them, and they responded, springing back, binding him more tightly. El’Filla was standing, watching him, humming, smiling. She sauntered forward and straddled him. She lowered onto him, her cunt like a loadstone pulling on his iron-hard rod. Then he was inside her like iron in a forge furnace. The sensation was so intense he felt he was being remade. Jack’s body began slowly sliding up and down into her. El’Filla smiled and continued to hum her mesmerizing song now soft and intimate as she moved together with him. She leaned forward and pressed her breasts against his chest. Her right breast had swollen to an obscene size and its milk streamed forth covering him with the fluid. Her pelvis slid up and pounded down on him again and again, each thrust of her pelvis forcing the impurities from Jack’s body as if he were a sword and she was the forging hammer.

Then a strange thing happened. Jack’s body began to glow. It began in his groin where the pleasure was most intense and spread throughout his entire body illuminating El’Filla from below. His mind and body were forged away leaving a luminous being whose sole purpose was to please El’Filla. His goddess. Lightning crackled across the sky as El’Filla’s body was swept by an orgasmic wave.

El’Filla arched her back and raised her arms aloft as she rotated her body on top of Jack while the trees of the grove seemed to imitate her movement swaying from side to side. Her hips were gyrating, her pelvis grinding against him. Then she returned to moving up and down, slowly at first, then pounding down on him slamming against him harder and harder, faster and faster. Her song grew louder until it became a wail of ecstasy. Jack’s loins burned like a white-hot flame. Jack could withhold himself no longer and finally exploded inside of her, filling her with his seed. El’Filla’s body was wracked with orgasmic bliss as bolts of lightning pounded the ground around them shaking the earth with deafening blasts. Her hair expanded in a corona of electric static, a blue light discharged from the tips of her hair, her demon eye roved madly in all directions, her forked tongue licked her lips, and in her right hand, she raised a silver blade to the sky. Jack thrust his chest forward offering himself in sacrifice.

“You are truly a goddess El’Filla,” Jack said. “Accept this body as my sacrifice to you. Accept this soul as your tribute.”

“My goddess, I swear my fealty,

You make my essence whole,

You are now my deity,

I offer you, my soul;

Dear goddess take what is your due,

My body sanctify,

I make my sacrifice to you,

My soul to purify;”

The dagger flashed downward in a deadly thrust, but at the last moment, El’Filla’s left hand reached up to deflect the blade. The blade ended up embedded in the log next to Jack’s ear with a shuddering twang.  El’Filla’s body was quivering and shaking as she wrapped her arms and legs around Jack taken by the rapture.

Then the inevitable swallowing sound broke the spell. That sound shook Jack back to his reality. The veil fell from his mind, his passion was spent. His horror returned. El’Filla rolled off him seeming to be lost in a private pleasure. She turned on her side and closed her eyes.

Jack found his limbs freed. He disentangled himself and stepped back looking at El’Filla. Her hands were folded over her lower belly. It seemed to be swelling already. She was so beautiful he almost stayed. The pain of his injuries returned. He scanned the grove and saw the eyes of the Forest Children upon him. They seemed to be moving closer, hemming him in. He grabbed the dirty rag, all that remained of his garment, and wrapped it around his loins.

There was an opening ahead of Jack like a tunnel leading through the forest. It had not been there before. Jack raced into the opening ignoring the pain in his foot. The gibbering sound began again. He turned to look behind him and saw a grey light had come into the sky. Was it dawn already? He heard the hoots of an owl, the scream of a bobcat, the hammering of a woodpecker. He could see the opening ahead of him. The first gray of dawn lit the meadows beyond. Jack felt a sudden relief. He was about to escape from the Demonwood.

Suddenly an enormous figure lumbered in front of the entrance to the tunnel. It had long curved horns reaching up from its head like a horned helm. It was the giant Jack had seen when he first entered the Demonwood. Jack kept running straight for it and dove between the creature’s legs trying to reach the open field beyond. The monster reached out with its long arm and pinned him to the ground with three deadly talons. The talons tore the flesh on his back down to the bone. Jack scrambled forward clawing the ground. He must escape. He heard his fleshing tearing as he ripped free of the talons. He was free. As he fled, he glanced back and saw the giant had halted at the edge of the forest. He had escaped from the Demonwood.

+++++

It had been a good night. Jack’s hat was full of coins. He loosened the strings on his lute and wrapped it in its cloth. Helga and Olga were escorting the last of the patrons upstairs, their legs a bit wobbly from the night’s work. That last story always brought back memories as if it had just happened. He could hardly believe it had been over sixteen years already.

Jack was about to leave when he heard a strange gibbering sound. He looked around startled, trying to find its source. There were three cloaked figures in a dark corner of the room. They were smaller than elves but had delicate elf-like hands. Their hoods kept their faces in shadow except for a few strands of hair the color of moonlight. Jack was sure it was the young woman he had seen earlier in the evening. She had been joined by two companions who were as identical to her as if they were triplets. They seemed to be speaking to each other, but it just sounded like a strange gibbering noise to Jack. Jack walked uneasily up to them.

“Excuse me,” Jack said. “Do I know you?”

The first one looked up into Jack’s eyes with her strange piercing look. “Father,” she said.

“El’Filla need help.” said the second.

“Jack help El’Filla?” asked the third.