The Witch Who Was Waiting for Me in the Forest Clearing

You left your native village two weeks ago. Cendral, a handful of stone houses on the edge of the valley, was the whole world you knew until you took up your sword and decided to travel through the region of Selvarés to find out what Veldoria had in store for you. Your appetite for adventure has faded somewhat since you discovered what it means to sleep among roots and wake up covered in mud.

Even so, something drives you onward. Your name is Edrin, and you want your name to become legend. Or at least that is what you keep telling yourself while the forest swallows you.

The air smells of wet moss. You walk slowly, your cloak clinging to your sweat, your boots sinking into the undergrowth, while the sun barely filters through the tangle of branches closing over your head like fingers of shadow. You left the path some time ago, pushed onward by an intuition you cannot put into words. You do not understand why you turned east. But you did.

The birds have fallen silent. The wind is not blowing. And yet you are not afraid: what you feel in your chest is not alarm but heat, a pulsing urge, as if something were calling you without words. Then a clearing opens abruptly, as though the forest were yielding before another force. And you see her.

She is sitting on a moss-covered rock, one leg bent and the other stretched out, as if the forest had offered her that throne. She wears neither cloak nor boots. Only a short black skirt that falls like ink over her pale thighs, and a dark corset woven from a fabric you do not recognize. Her black hair falls over her shoulders, and her eyes are an impossible violet. They pierce you as if they had already seen the desire you have not yet felt.

You stop. She does not.

—I did not expect you to arrive so soon —she says without moving. Her voice is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard.

—Were you... were you expecting me, my lady? —you ask, unable to hide your tremor.

A smile curves her lips. It is not kind: it is indulgent.

—Are you here for the lumberjack? One went missing yesterday, toward the east. A big man, with callused hands. Aren’t they looking for him in his village?

You swallow. You do not understand why this woman makes you so nervous.

—I haven’t passed through any village. I just felt something and walked.

—Of course you felt it —she replies, rising to her feet. The world seems to tilt before her. Each step toward you is slow, feline—. What you felt was me.

You heard no incantation, but something stirs inside you: a warm knot in your stomach, the impulse to kneel and touch the edge of her skirt just to confirm that you are not dreaming.

—Who are you? —you manage to say.

She stops three steps away. Her eyes gleam with something ancient.

—My name is Nyssa. And you are new. Raw. Go east, find the lumberjack if you can. Something is holding him there.

She walks away, and with every step you feel something precious slipping from your grasp. But she turns her face over her bare shoulder.

—If you come back, I’ll be here.

And you already know that you will return.

***

The eastern forest is unlike the one you have crossed. It is more intimate, as though the trees were embracing one another to keep the light from intruding, and every branch you push aside leaves a sticky, warm, expectant sensation on your fingers. You advance with one hand on your sword hilt, your heart divided between fear of what you are going to find and the memory of her. Of Nyssa.

Among the roots of a twisted willow, you find the signs: broken branches, the remains of a campfire, a stone with dried blood on it, and a splintered-hilted ax buried in the mud. The lumberjack was here, and whatever happened to him happened quickly. You follow a faint trail until the path narrows between the trees. In the distance, a wan light dyes the air amber. And when you enter, the smell changes.

It is not decay. It is something your body recognizes before your mind does. Hot, deep, wet. Sex in its purest state: sweat, fluids, flesh against flesh. And then you hear it: a long, repeated moan, growing deeper each time. It is neither an animal nor a fight. It is a body being fucked.

You slip between the branches. Between two thick trees bending toward the center, you see what you did not expect. The lumberjack hangs trapped in a translucent, wet web. He is not dead: his eyes are closed, his mouth half open, his skin beaded with sweat, and he shudders as though caught in a dream he does not want to end.

And astride him, riding him with a hypnotic rhythm, is the creature. At first she looks like a woman with an exuberant body, but when you look closely, you know she is not. Her skin is gray and gleaming, and every curve moves with a viscosity of its own, as if she had no bones. Her long, dark hair slides over the lumberjack’s body with an appetite of its own. Her eyes are two black spheres, devoid of light.

Something cracks beneath your feet, and those spheres turn toward you. The creature does not stop, but her attention is now on you: she watches without blinking and smiles, a wet grimace with nothing human about it.

You freeze. Your body reacts with an incomprehensible mixture of alertness, revulsion, and something else: a heat at the base of your abdomen forming without your permission. The creature is grotesque, and yet you cannot look away. She dismounts the lumberjack and slides soundlessly to the ground, her thighs dripping with a thick fluid. She takes a step toward you. And for the first time, you retreat. But the forest will not let you: roots close around your feet, the air grows heavy. Your hand searches for your sword, and you draw it.

***

The steel shines, dry and stark, an anomaly amid so much living flesh. You have trained for things that try to kill you, but never for something that wants to fuck you.

—I don’t know what you are —you murmur, your voice tense—, but you’re not going to touch me.

She tilts her head, as if she understood your language but did not respect it. She opens her mouth, and her tongue appears: long, split, undulating. Without warning, she lunges. You attack first. The blade grazes her arm, but there is no blood, only a thick splatter, as if you had torn open a piece of fruit. She lets out a short shriek and throws herself at you with an impossible movement.

Your body reacts too late. You feel the wet impact against yours, and the sword falls from your hands. She is not strong through muscle, but through the way she enfolds you. Her gelatinous arms coil around your shoulders like snakes, and before you can scream, she knocks you down onto the soft grass. She does not weigh like a woman, but like a body of hot water, and her scent overwhelms you, sweet and musky, like desire sealed for years in a jar that has opened only for you.

You struggle. You writhe, kick, twist your torso, but it is like trying to escape a swamp: every muscle slips instead of pushing. When at last you manage to turn a little, her mouth is already at your neck. She does not bite. She releases a hot breath that forces you to close your eyes and begins to lick you slowly, from your collarbone to the edge of your ear. Your body, traitorous, responds. Heat gathers between your legs beyond your control, as if it knew exactly what angle to touch to take you apart from within.

—No... —you stammer. But the word sounds like a moan, and she notices.

Her thighs slide over yours and, in a gesture you cannot anticipate, your clothes dissolve beneath her fluid like fabric in acid. You feel the air on your bare skin, her hot sex throbbing against yours. She does not enter you yet. She brushes against you, envelops you, circles without letting you sink inside. She rubs against you until you think you cannot take any more, and then, just as you are about to break, she stops. She pins your arms and licks your chest in one slow stroke.

And then she enters you. Not violently, but with blunt firmness, sliding inside without meeting resistance, as if your body accepted her with an obedience you did not understand. A deep suction makes you tremble, an inner heat that pulses and tightens at precisely the right moment.

She settles astride you and begins to move, slowly, rocking her hips with an undulating rhythm that seems inhuman. There are no screams. Only the sound of your body being fucked: a thick, rhythmic, obscene squelch. And you lose yourself in every thrust. You try to remember who you are, but there are no answers. Only flesh, only wetness, only the urge to thrust upward and surrender.

She speeds up. The thrusts grow deeper. She milks you as if she wanted to wrench your name from inside you, and you, panting, cannot stop it. You come. The orgasm pierces you like a hot spear and leaves you suddenly empty. But the creature does not stop: she keeps riding you with an even hungrier rhythm. And you... remain hard. You do not know how. Your flesh throbs with a new erection that feels alien, as though it no longer belonged to you.

She moans, a deep sound vibrating from her abdomen, and drops her weight onto your face. You come again. The pleasure is so extreme that it becomes pain; you feel tears rising to your eyes. You expect your semen to stop her, but it does not: she smiles and starts again, as if your climax fed rather than satisfied her.

The third orgasm arrives without warning, with a violence you can barely endure. Your legs tense without strength, your body soaked, open, limp. Your mind floats in a place where shame, resistance, and even your name no longer remain. Only the sensation of being emptied, again and again.

***

And then everything stops. A dry pulse in the air, like a cut. The creature arches backward with a shudder, as if struck by a wave of invisible ice. She screams. The roots holding you loosen all at once. The forest, previously damp and whispering, falls silent. The air changes: cold, clean, different.

A shadow falls over you both, slow and inevitable. And when you open your eyes, still blinded by sweat, you see her. Nyssa. Standing barefoot in the mud, her dark hair falling like a wet curtain. Her face shows neither anger nor surprise. It is calm. Beautiful.

—Three times? —her voice is soft, and therefore more dangerous—. How generous. If this is the level of your battles, you had better eat well so you don’t run dry.

She raises one hand. A single gesture, and the creature’s body rises from yours as if pulled by invisible strings. You feel her sex slide out of you with an almost painful resistance, as though she did not want to let you go, and you moan despite yourself. Nyssa places one finger against the being’s forehead, her long nails, painted lilac and black, digging into the gray skin.

—This was not yours —she murmurs—. It’s mine.

And she squeezes. The creature bursts soundlessly into green vapor and dissolves, until all that remains is the smell of someone else’s sex and wet leaves. Nyssa turns toward you. Her eyes travel over your naked body, your beaded skin, your exhausted sex. She does not laugh or humiliate you. She only looks at you, and you cannot hold her gaze. She kneels and caresses your cheek with cold fingers.

—You are not weak —she says—. You just need training. Veldoria is a dangerous place.

She takes a vial from among the folds of her corset and passes it beneath your nose. The strong, refreshing scent jolts your mind and brings the ground back beneath your spine. She makes a gesture, and the threads wrapped around the lumberjack loosen; the man falls gently onto the undergrowth.

—He’ll return to his village on his own. He won’t remember anything —she says, and a cloak smelling of herbs unfolds over your shoulders—. Come to my cottage. You need rest. And a good bath.

You rise with what strength you have left and follow her, marked by a pleasure that was not yours.

***

The cottage appears when night is almost upon you: dark stone, blackened wood, a low roof curved like a shell. Inside, dozens of candles burn with still flames of a faint violet, and the air is dense, perfumed with incense and something salty.

—To the left —Nyssa’s voice says; she has already disappeared into a side room—. The water room awaits you. Do not touch anything else.

You obey. At the end of the corridor, the door stands open, and inside: the bath. An immense basin of black stone, polished like obsidian, without faucets or pipes. Only steaming, crystal-clear water, faintly blue. As you approach, you feel a physical attraction, as if the surface were calling to you.

You let the cloak fall and ease yourself in until only your head remains above the surface. Then the water moves on its own. Not like a whirlpool: as if it could read you. Liquid threads rise and travel over your legs, coil around your thighs, slide down your back like hands submerged in oil. It smells of burned flowers, of washed skin. But it also smells like her. There are no hands, and yet the sensations are precise: the water draws the sweat from your chest, brushes your nipples with a delicacy that is not innocent. A warm wave wraps around your sex. It does not stimulate it: it recognizes it. And you tremble as you finally feel at peace.

—Is it hot?

Nyssa stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame, her arms crossed, her hair loose. She does not enter. She only watches.

—Yes —you answer, your voice lower than you would like.

And beneath her gaze, the water changes. The caresses cease to be random: when she tilts her head, a thread of water rises along your spine; when she lifts an eyebrow, a liquid curl caresses your belly with a slowness that makes you tense.

—The bath is called Marensa —she says—. It was carved from stone from the Sirath Isles, and it remembers the hands of those who have made love in it. It reproduces them.

You shudder, because the thread of water that a moment ago was merely cleaning you is now, unmistakably, masturbating you. Its touch along the inner sides of your thighs is no longer ritual. It is sexual. It seeks every exposed nerve after the struggle, after the defeat.

—It has accepted you —she continues, taking a step inside—. Marensa is not commanded. It is pleased. It cleanses only those it deems worthy. —She sits on the edge, resting one bent leg on the stone. The angle reveals the firm curve of her thigh, the shadow between her legs that shows nothing and yet leaves you imagining everything—. Do you know why the creature did not kill you? Because you are new. You retain something you did not even know you possessed. I am not talking about virginity; that no longer exists in Veldoria. I am talking about innocence in desire. It fed, but it did not break what mattered most: your spirit.

—I saved you, but not because you owe me anything, nor because I want to protect you. I did it because you might be useful. When a body has been used and does not break, it becomes a conduit. When you are dry, come to the parlor, if you want to hear what I have to offer you.

And she leaves, leaving you alone with the water still licking you, as if it refused to let you go.

***

In the parlor, the light is lower, more violet. A circular rug lies in the center, woven with black, gold, and purple threads. Nyssa sits on a low throne of black wood. Something about her is different: fuller, as if saving you had fed her as well.

—How is your body? —she asks.

—Sore.

—Does your pride hurt more?

—...Much more.

She smiles briefly, like a rope pulled taut.

—Don’t punish yourself. It is your first time in Veldoria’s wilds. —She leans forward, her eyes gleaming with a light that does not come from the candles—. Listen, Edrin. —You do not remember telling her your name—. I am not a teacher, nor a lover, nor a savior. I am a witch, and I give nothing in exchange for nothing. If I led you from the path, it was for a reason.

She rises and walks toward you. She does not touch you, but her nearness is contact in itself: her warmth, her perfume, the magic emanating from her skin.

—You have the will of a hero and the innocence of one who does not know this world. You are exactly the mixture I seek. —Her breath brushes your neck, and the hairs on your nape stand on end—. I can mark you: a ritual that will make you embrace my magic and join with it. And with me. A sign without iron or incision, only ink that will accompany you forever.

—Like a servant? —you say slowly.

She laughs softly and caresses your cheek.

—No. Like an apprentice. If I mark you, you will not be able to forget me. Nor flee. Every time you spill, it will be for me. Every time you fight, it will be for me. In return, I will take you to see Selvarés and make you powerful.

—And what do you want from me?

—That you remain close. That you be my shield, my eyes, and my ears. I must undertake a journey, and you are exactly what I needed.

And then silence. Only the creak of the wood and the echo of your thoughts circling around a single word. She does not insist. She only waits. And you know it: you cannot go on without belonging to her. Your body has already been tested, your will opened. You swallow. The decision has already taken shape in the deepest part of you.

—I accept. I will go with you. I will submit to the ritual.

And as you say it, the world changes. The candles go out one by one until only her silhouette remains, outlined by moonlight. A violet circle is drawn on the floor around you, and Nyssa’s lips, illuminated by that light, curve into the most powerful of smiles.

There is no turning back now.