Work Text:
It was cold on the road this far into The Forest. Maybe the trees were simply tall and dense enough to block the sun, so that when it set, evening crept out from just behind the thick oak trunks rather than racing across the land and taking the full night to cool it. Long shadows meant that the sky was still mostly blue when the late spring breezes turned chill, and the stars weren't yet out when a rider felt the urge to pull out a torch for light and warmth.
Still, a cold ride made the prospect of warm soup and a warmer hearth all the more appealing, and Amelyn spurred her horse on in the direction of the distant twinkle of firelight visible down the road.
She knew why she had been sent here. These woods rebuked her, told her to leave, to run. They were the kind of place that hid monsters.
Unfortunately, either for her or the monsters, she had been sent to find one.
The inn was distinguished by the fact that it had a few hitching posts outside. None of the other dilapidated hovels in the village--if it could be called that--seemed that they housed anyone capable of buying a donkey, let alone a riding horse. The inn stood alongside the road, roughly at the center of the cluster of buildings here, gathered along the dirt track with the trees looming behind, as though the whole settlement had grown up in the aftermath of a giant's elongated footfall. There were no side roads like there had been in a few of the larger towns Amelyn had been though, with their cobblestone streets and multi-story buildings. This place had only the inn, a few hovels, some henhouses, a pair of doghouses, a handful of outhouses, and a well.
And all of it looked tiny next to the trees that surrounded it.
Amelyn rode up to the inn and slid off of her horse, patting the beast on the side as she led it to a trough. A nighttime fog had risen, and the road here had been splotched with the puddles of recent rains, so the trough was full and the horse drank. Amelyn rested her hands on the saddlebags, considering. She hadn't been waylaid or accosted, not since she had sliced the hand off a particularly drunken boor a few weeks back, but she had been warned that it was always a risk. For women. For lone travelers. And for monster hunters, who were said to bring ill fortune and carry lots of coin.
Amelyn fit all three categories, although she lacked coin, and ill fortune seemed to permeate the land with or without her presence.
Her order were trained alongside mages, elite guardsmen, and even those who wielded the blessings of the Gods in a more...forceful manner than the average village priest. As each group specialized, they were given orders to disperse, to seek out places in the various Kingdoms and Principalities, or in Disputed or Unwanted Lands that needed their skills. Amelyn had excelled in all of her training, proven a prodigy at memorizing both the bestiaries of her order and mythic lore, and demonstrated uncommon skill at both swordplay and minor arcana. Her reward, such as it had been called, was to ride for two months northward, into the cold and damp, and seek out "the local leaders of the orders of hunters" and ask where she was needed most.
She had thus met a series of increasingly unimpressive hunters, each sending her along to their most distant subordinate, until at last she had arrived at Crow's Watch, the last "city" before the road passed into a land known only as The Forest.
Yes, of course, various maps and kingdoms and scholars had different names for the apparently endless expanse of trees, uncharted save for the roads, uniform save for the ranges of mountains the pushed fiercely out of the canopy and into the sky, and unending until the land gave way to the desolation of the Northern Wastes. Some segments were named after kings, or saints, or even after mountain peaks that were close enough to be seen from hilltops near The Forest's edge. Sometimes the same segment of forest, the same snarled expanse of dark trees, had two or five or ten names depending on how widely you looked.
But to anyone who lived within sight of these trees, of this dark and green place that dared people to try and conquer it, the forest was simply called The Forest, and it was known that monsters lived inside.
Of course, people lived inside as well, and Amelyn heard a few of them laughing from within the inn, surely warmed by the firelight she saw flickering out from the cracks around the door and the shuttered windows. And those people, she had been told, were defended by a man of her order, a Hunter so old and experienced that his legend was known far beyond the borders of The Forest. Although, until Amelyn had arrived in Crow's Watch and been pointed here, most mention of him had been followed with some variation of "he's probably dead by now."
For the forest was full of monsters, and a man who spent decades fighting them was bound to be killed sooner or later.
But Amelyn had been told that Josef the Hunter was still alive, and that he could be found at this inn. So, leaving her horse to the night air, she pulled her dagger from its sheath to make sure that it could be drawn quickly, slung her bedroll with her sword in the middle across her back, and trudged up to the door to the inn.
Amelyn knocked once before a muffled yell from inside seemed to call her forth. She pushed at the door, and felt it catch and then swing inward, her ears catching the chatter within even as they picked up the grinding sound of the door pushing away the rock that had held it closed.
She shoved into the room, and pushed the door shut behind her, absently kicking the rock back into position without looking at it. The room grew quiet, as her eyes fought to adjust, the bright hearth masking the people gathered around scuffed tables and filled into dark corners. If this village held a single soul more than was gathered here, she would have been surprised, as a dozen or more sets of eyes stared at her.
"And who might you be?" came the voice of a gruff older man, standing by a shelf that held a tapped barrel, a wooden tankard in his hand. For a moment, Amelyn was amazed at how the scent of fried leeks and berry wine managed to carry on his breath across the ten or so feet between them, only to realize that this entire building was filled with those smells.
"I," Amelyn started, trying to make her voice sound lower than it was, "am Amelyn, a hunter. I am trained in curses, monstrosities, aberrations, vampires, and arcana. I hail from the great school of Dalunat Var, to the south, and I have come to this place to hunt monsters. Both for contracts, and to sell parts harvested from them in nearby cities."
The man stared at her, his jaw moving as he seemed to be processing her introduction at half speed.
"Wha' did she say," came a voice from the gathered, shadowed figures, backlit by the hearth.
"I think she said she's a hunter," answered a different voice from the same cluster of bodies.
"A hunter, or a she-hunter? A shunter? Wha's the word again?" came yet another voice, female this time.
Chatter erupted for a moment about what exactly Amelyn had said, until a voice called out.
"A huntress, if you must. But "hunter" is also accurate." The voice rumbled out from a figure sitting in the darkest corner, shrouded saved for the glimmer of eyes that were watching Amelyn.
"Right then, a hunter," the first man said, finally having finished processing what she had said, "in that case, you best be moving on. We've already got one of them, and he's the best." He finished by gesturing to the man sitting in the dark corner, who had just corrected the locals' grammar. "Josef," the first peasant continued, "a right expert in all that stuff you got trained in, so no need for your help, we've got Josef and he knows The Forest better than any other."
"I know," Amelyn responded, staring into the dark corner, where she thought she saw a grin appear on the shrouded face, "that's why I'm here."
"You have come a long way," Josef said, carrying Amelyn's saddle and the majority of her things into the back of the inn, "why?"
"I was told to," Amelyn replied, staring at the back of Josef's head as he shouldered through a door into a dark room. Amelyn stood in the doorway, listening to the thump of her things being dropped onto the floor, before she heard Josef mutter an incantation. A pale white light slowly brightened on the other side of him, illuminating his form, and she watched as he reached up and tucked a now-enchanted glowcrystal into a rope basket suspended from a nail on the wall. The light was enough to reveal the room itself: a shuttered window, walls that couldn't have been more than ten feet on each side, a small stained table and stool, and a low wooden bed piled high with furs.
"This is my room, then?" Amelyn asked, taking it all in. It was sparse, but she had slept on the side of the road more than once. She heard the patter of rain starting on the roof, and thanked the Gods for the comparative luxury of this place.
"Our." Josef responded, turning around to face her. His face was lined, and his cropped hair was more gray than any other color, and the beard that hung beneath it was closer still to white. Despite this, he moved with a certainty and power that belied the fitness and durability of a much younger man. One in their line of work could fight many monsters, or be lax in their training, but not both.
Amelyn finally processed his response.
"Our?" she managed to stammer out, "as in..." she scrambled to find an explanation, her head whipping around, looking for another door to another room, or a second bed that had been concealed by a trick of the light.
"Yes," Josef replied, stepping around the bed and reaching for something on the other side. He came up with a whetstone, and a bar of soap.
Amelyn stared at him.
"Do you have need of either?" Josef asked, staring at Amelyn, "or will you be ready to go at dawn? I am not in the habit of waiting for anyone else, no matter who sent them."
"I-" Amelyn started, "I don't remember telling you who sent me?"
"You didn't," Josef replied, "but you said you were told to come here, and that means that someone, at some point, pointed you northward and told you to keep going until you ended up where you were needed. Is that correct?"
"Y-yes," Amelyn replied, staring at the soap, and then the whetstone. She had sharpened her sword that morning, while waiting for the rain to abate, and as much as she wanted a bath...she had gone longer without.
"Then I will train you," Josef said with finality, "we start in the morning."
Amelyn stared. "I didn't ask to be trained, though. Not that I would say no, just that I-"
"You were sent here," Josef said, interrupting her, "not by name, but you were sent in the eventual direction of The Forest. That means that you are of exceptional skill and promise, capable of fighting real monsters, not the grimlings and bandynocks and lesser vampire-kin who scurry around cities and fields at night. The great monsters and ancient curses are here, in the places that resist civilization with every branch and rock and claw. Whoever trained you thought that you might make headway against this fortress of the ancient world, and so they sent you to me. Or someone like me."
Nodding, Amelyn crossed her arms. "What if I decide if I don't need you to train me? I was a prodigy back in Dalunat Var, or so they say. Perhaps I don't need your help, especially if it involves sharing your bed?"
Josef stared at her display with indifference. "Then you will die," he said after a few moments. He held the soap and whetstone towards Amelyn. "Do you have need of either? Your sword will need to be sharp, and Halgar will not warm the water for a ladle bath for another week. I will allow you to go first, since you rode in through the rain and cold."
"I sharpened my sword this morning," Amelyn announced, "and I brought my own soap."
Amelyn was dressed in a coarse shift, and was nearly finished ensuring that her blade was sharp when Josef re-entered the room after his own bath. He was wrapped in a towel, and dropped it as soon as the door closed behind him. She averted her eyes out of...what? Habit? Propriety? She couldn't decide, but she averted her eyes nonetheless.
Josef paid her no mind, and instead reached into his own pack and pulled out what was likely to be a clean pair of undergarments. Although she did not look, Amelyn saw the motion of him tossing his towel onto the stool in the room, and lifting each leg in turn before pulling on the undergarments.
Satisfied that he was now clothed. Amelyn turned to look at the man, who was arranging the furs on the bed to make two spots for laying, rather than one in the bed's center. Amelyn heard the crunching of straw as he tested the bed, and let himself sink down onto it face-first. She looked at him, marveling at the scars that crisscrossed the taut muscles of his back and arms. Although Josef was tall and powerful, without a cloak or jerkin he was more lanky and lithe than Amelyn had expected, far different than the corpulent guildmasters or brutish tournament fighters that seemed to make up the bulk of the "hunters" who had urged her onward. He was built...well, like her. Thin, mobile, but powerful. Much more powerful than she was.
Josef grunted at her, and she shook her head. She had been staring, unmoving.
"Is your blade still dull," he said into the furs, "or are you admiring it in the light?"
Amelyn looked down at the sword, the whetstone clutched in her hand. "I think I'm done," she replied, putting the stone to the side and reaching for her scabbard to put the sword away.
"Then put it away, toss the stone back in my things, and dim the crystal," Josef muttered, with the tone of an order someone might give to an unruly dog or a particularly dumb serving-boy. "We leave at dawn."
"Yes sir," Amelyn responded, more quickly than she had intended. She heard him huff in amusement at her use of "sir," but she performed the disenchantment of the glowcrystal flawlessly, plunging the room into darkness. She realized that she was still holding her sheathed sword, and felt her way over to her bedroll, into the middle of which she shoved the blade.
She then stumbled over to the bed, and slowly settled down into her own side of it. She tried to make herself comfortable, but doing so only caused her to slide down into the compressed middle of the straw mattress. She bumped up into Josef, who gave another sigh, but thankfully his back was to her. Amelyn turned to place her own back towards Josef, and tried to make herself sleep. She hadn't spent much of her youth dreaming of her first night sharing a bed with a man, and truthfully she would have expected it to happen at the academy where she had trained, and with a boy--or girl, for that matter--of her own age.
Despite this, there was something pleasant about the warmth of Josef, the texture of scars crisscrossing his back rubbing against her own as his breaths became slow and deep. He hadn't tried to demand that she sleep with him, only been plain that there was but one bed for the both of them. And so, with the slow rhythm of Josef's breathing, and the patter of rain becoming a constant hiss, Amelyn fell asleep.
It was still raining the next morning when the sun might have risen, had the towering trees not blocked its gaze. Amelyn was awoken by a sound she did not hear, but she quickly moved into motion when she realized that Josef was absent from the quickly-cooling bed. Years of enforced schedules had become habit, then instinct, and Amelyn was a buckle away from securing her greaves before she was awake enough to ask Josef if she needed to wear armor.
"Yes," was his grunted reply, before he pushed out of the room and left her alone to finish getting ready.
Amelyn was staring at her bedroll, debating if she needed to bring it, when Josef pushed back into the room. He shoved a wooden plate into her hands, which contained a crust of dark brown bread and a fried egg dusted with what looked to be a dried and crushed herb.
"Eat," was all Josef said, and Amelyn eagerly complied, shoveling the still-scalding egg into her mouth with her fingers and mopping up the leftover yolk with the bread with a speed that surprised even her. Josef raised an eyebrow, and then looked down at her bedroll, her sword now shoved through the middle. "We will be returning here in the evening," Josef said, "but the forest is dangerous."
Amelyn tossed the plate onto the table in the room, where it joined another that had likely held Josef's breakfast. She reached down and pulled the sword and scabbard free, before slinging it over her back.
"So," Josef said, watching her and mirroring the motion with his own, considerably longer, sword, "they are teaching that as the regular carrying method now, are they?"
"Yes," Amelyn replied, "we were told that it is better for running, which is something we shouldn't be ashamed to do." Suddenly parched from the dry bread, she looked at the table, and grabbed a cup that was sitting there. It was empty, but Josef motioned for her to follow him into the main room of the inn.
"That is true," Josef replied flatly, "two lessons I do not have to teach you. This day is going well."
A minute later, Amelyn was halfway through a mug of water, still hot from being boiled in the hearth, before she heard the telltale sign of rain lightening up.
She looked at the door to the inn, which Josef opened up to reveal the faint streaks of sunlight making their way through the trees and burning away the roiling morning mists. In that moment, Amelyn was inclined to agree with Josef.
The day was going well.
The two of them were a mile north of the town before Josef abruptly turned off of the road and strode into the trees. Amelyn followed as best she could, watching her step and trying to follow the path Josef took into the undergrowth.
When they had departed the inn, Amelyn had asked if they would take horses, only to realize that there was no other horse hitched in the three-walled shack that constituted a stable. Josef, seemingly unaware of his own lack of mount, had simply explained that their path was not one that horses could take. Amelyn winced and swore as she tripped on a root concealed by fallen pine needles, and silently admitted that Josef had been correct. No horse could have taken this path.
It might have been an hour, or it might have been a handful of minutes, when Amelyn finally gave up and asked Josef where they were going.
"There is a meadow," he explained calmly, not slowing his pace at all, "in it, a rare variety of flower grows. It can be useful for our line of work."
There was silence for a while while Amelyn waited for him to elaborate. He did not. She opened her mouth to ask the next question, and he seemed to sense it, finally continuing the lesson.
"It is a type of Wolfsbane," he said, his breathing not labored by their quick pace, "although the name is more applicable to this particular flower than most of the plants that share it. It can be used in a variety of forms to detect, suppress, or inflame curses. There are those in our order who might have called its pollen Moonpowder, in the teaching you have received."
Amelyn wracked her brain, trying to drag forth the memory of the lesson in which such an ingredient was mentioned. The image was not one of bestiary training, or cursebreaking, or any of her other specialties. Instead, she remembered a bright room and bubbling cauldrons of dark liquid.
"I think," she said hesitantly, "that we've used it? It can be used in alchemical enchantments and runic inscription, dissolved into a liquid reagent in place of actual moonlight, although far less potent. I remember that...it was expensive?"
She shrugged, even though he couldn't see her.
"Good," he replied, "that is all correct. It is, specifically, used to replicate the light of the full moon, which it can do when breathed in directly or dissolved in water and boiled down into a syrup to be ingested."
"The full moon," Amelyn mused, suddenly feeling the darkness of the forest pressing in around her, "and you mentioned detecting or inflaming curses. Does that mean this forest has-"
"Werewolves," Josef cut in, "yes. They are not the most dangerous things in this forest, but not the least so either. Our order is aware of them, and it is likely that you were sent here to seek them out. They are among the most cunning foes we may face, but contact with one can forge the greatest of hunters. If the hunter survives."
Amelyn shivered in the damp undergrowth. Werewolves were...well, like Josef said they weren't the most dangerous of beasts, like ancient Spriggans or the dragons rumored to still nest in the remote corners of the world. But they could shapeshift into human form, they were cunning like people--they were people, some said--and they were said to be drawn to human settlements. To eat, to steal, or to do all manner of other monstrous things that people liked to blame on forest monsters rather than confronting the evil in their midst.
Although she would not admit it to Josef, werewolves were precisely what she had been sent to The Forest to hunt.
"Why is this the first lesson?" she asked, now staring at the ground to try and find a way across roots that seemed to be growing thicker and more gnarled. Josef didn't answer. "Do you think that there is a werewolf among the people of the village?"
She almost didn't hear his answer, grim and whispered as it was.
"I am sure of it."
Amelyn had to summon all of her strength not to collapse onto the grass when she finally followed Josef into a sunlit meadow amidst the darkness of the forest. They had walked long enough that the shadows of the trees surrounding the meadow did not stretch all the way across the clear patch of grass. Josef walked to the middle of the clearing and crouched down, turning in place in a squat with a hand held above his eyes to shield them from the sun. Amelyn moved to crouch behind him and looked where he did, awkwardly scrambling as he turned to remain behind him. She didn't know what he was looking for, but she still managed to spot it just as he moved to point to a spot at the edge of the meadow.
"There," he said, and Amelyn was already on her feet, bounding forward towards the patch of blue-white flowers growing from between roots that stretched into the grass of the meadow.
"Careful," Josef called out from behind her, and Amelyn slowed so that Josef could catch up and approach alongside her. For all of his furious intent on the long march here, he was remarkably unhurried now.
"You have to be very cautious," Josef said as they slowed further, creeping towards the flowers, "the pollen is potent; it inflames and reacts to any magic or curses. If some local boy has carved up a toad's heart and crushed rose petals over a carving of your name, one breath of this and you'll be just as smitten with him as he wants you to be, at least until it wears off. Same goes for curses. Fall into a patch of this when a hedge witch has some hex against you hung up on her wall, and the ravens will be pecking the eyes out of your corpse by nightfall."
Amelyn stared at him, and then back at the flowers. "Then why," she said in a furious whisper, "are we looking for it?"
"For the same reason your school taught you about it but didn't provide any for you to use," he replied, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a pair of cloth masks and some gloves, "it's damn useful, and expensive because of that."
He reached to unbutton pouches on his jerkin, revealing glass vials. "You're going to want your gloves," he said, pulling on his mask, "this stuff sticks to everything."
He looked thoughtful for a moment, before giving an uncharacteristic grin, "it's also, in high concentrations, an incredibly potent aphrodisiac."
Amelyn shuddered, and double-checked the mask on her face.
It was slow going, harvesting the pollen. Josef performed the first few harvests, and then stood back, watching Amelyn try to replicate his motions while giving short, simple pointers on how to do better. To harvest, they had to slowly press and roll the flower into a tube that would fit in the vial, and do so without pushing out a cloud of bright blue pollen that seemed to sparkle in the diffused light of the forest. Josef managed to do this without fail, but three of the first four flowers that Amelyn tried to harvest puffed their contents out onto her gloves before she could roll them up.
The next step was to slowly insert the flower into the vial, making sure to get it all the way in. The thin stem connecting the flower to the rest of the plant was cut, with at least a couple of inches of length to grip. Then a small metal ring was pushed down the stem until it rested against the top of the vial, and the stem was gently pulled. The flower was forced up through the metal ring, squeezing out any pollen or nectar, as well as a small amount of liquid from the flower petals themselves. This was enough to wet the powder, causing it to drip to the bottom of the vial as a dark blue paste. Once the flower was pulled free, it was tossed aside, and another flower selected for harvesting.
Five flowers to fill a vial. Josef had twenty-three vials, but luckily there were only eighty-four flowers. Still, by the end of it, Amelyn's hands were cramping, and her gloves were coated in the same sticky paste that was apparently worth so much trouble.
"Now what," she asked, stepping away from the flowers and breathing deeply for what felt like the first time in hours.
"Now we clean off the gloves," Josef answered, his tone causing Amelyn to stop midway through raising her hand to scratch her nose. Josef had barked at her to avoid doing so no fewer than twelve times during the harvesting, and only the fear of the pollen's potency kept her from clawing away the cloth mask to scratch the obscene itch of her nostrils.
Josef produced a bottle of something strong-smelling, and poured it over her hands. It stank like a cheap spirit, only immeasurably stronger, but it thankfully washed away any trace of blue from her gloves like salt in water, instead of forming a thick paste. Once he was satisfied that her hands were clean, Josef instructed her to wash off his own gloves, and then doused a rag in the cleaning liquid before wiping down the bottle that held it. Finally, he removed his mask and motioned for her to do the same.
"Good work," he said, moving into the middle of the meadow, "now we eat, and plan."
"Plan what?" she asked, double-checking her hands to be sure that there wasn't a trace of blue on them.
"We plan," he said, doing the same before digging into a pouch and pulling out some jerky, "how you're going to get all of the villagers to drink some of what we harvested, and what you'll do when the werewolf is revealed."
Amelyn was forced to abandon the plan fewer than five minutes after arriving back at the village. She entered the inn with the intent of spiking the night's wine with the syrup, only to find most of the villagers gathered inside. They went silent as she entered, surprised and anxious looks giving a telltale sign that they had been discussing something they did not wish her to hear.
Most likely, she guessed, they've been discussing me.
Instead of pouring a vial into the wine, as Josef had suggested, she instead stole away into the empty kitchen, glancing around for something that would be shared amongst most--if not all--of the locals. She spied it in the form of a vast iron cauldron bubbling with what could only be more onion soup. Josef had warned her that exposure to heat could make the effects of the pollen unpredictable, but she didn't see any other way to execute their plan at all. Josef was sure that there was a werewolf among the villagers, and she had been sent to find them.
No doubt, a werewolf wold be aware of their order, and would flee or ambush them soon, now that there were two hunters in a village scarcely large enough to attract the notice of one. So, pulling her gloves back on, Amelyn opened one of the vials, poured a few drops from her waterskin into it to loosen the paste, and dumped the bright blue contents into the soup.
A blue spot was visible on the surface, so Amelyn grabbed the long paddle that served as a stirring spoon, and ran some circles through the soup until the evidence of its spiking had vanished.
Such a small amount, Amelyn though to herself, for such a large cauldron.
A single vial had been intended for a hogshead of wine. The cauldron was a dozen times that amount, or larger.
Carefully but quickly, Amelyn reached into a pouch for another one of the vials.
Amelyn sat amongst the villagers that night, blowing on a spoonful of soup but letting the spoonful drop back into the bowl when she thought no one was looking. She swore that the thick, strong-smelling dinner was tinged faintly blue, and smelled sweet like she knew most flowers did. The villagers didn't seem to notice her hesitation, and they cheerfully gulped down their own dinners with gusto.
Josef was nowhere to be seen, but Amelyn wasn't bothered. He was fulfilling his part of the plan, waiting outside in the dark to chase down anyone who attempted to flee the village. Amelyn repeated the excuse for his absence in her own head again, just to be sure.
He's found the trail of a grubberkin, she imagined herself saying, and he prefers to hunt them alone. They have sensitive hearing, and he says that I sneak worse than a drunken ox.
She hated the explanation. It made her look inept, and foolish, and like a child playing at a profession she had trained most of her life to be ready for.
The sounds of murmuring conversation and the slurping of soup surrounded her.
Why am I trying to flush out a werewolf, she thought with a growing frustration, while he waits outside ready to get the kill?
The tone of the conversation was changing. Amelyn paid it no mind.
I'm inexperienced, but I'm the best hunter the academy has trained in decades, she thought, fury roiling inside of her alongside something else she couldn't place.
Something was trying to drag her attention away from her own thoughts. She ignored it, even as she felt her face growing hot.
What is this stupid fucking plan anyways, why am I the bait? Is it because he thinks I'm just some stupid little-
"Girl."
Amelyn froze, and looked up. The mood in the room had shifted dramatically. The villagers were laughing--no, giggling--as they sat close together. Many of them were locked in embraces, hands running over flesh as clothes were pulled away. Several of the villagers, including the one who had addressed her, were staring at her. Josef had told her that heat could change the effects of the pollen, enhancing some and blunting others. The man staring at her was the same one that had addressed her when she had arrived. He was an ugly fellow, with most of his teeth missing and a face that a mother troll would think twice about.
So why did his heavy-lidded grin make her feel so hot? Was it some survival instinct? Was she perhaps sensing that he was the werewolf, ready to shed his skin and reveal his true form? Amelyn blinked, and looked down.
Oh. Oh no.
Her bowl of soup was mostly gone, as she had consumed it as she stewed with internal fury.
The man stepped towards her.
Amelyn lept to her feet, pulling her dagger free of its sheath and holding it towards him, and the two other men who had joined him to stare at her. They looked surprised, and perhaps a little hurt that she had drawn steel, but they didn't make any aggressive moves towards her, nor did they pull away in fear. They simply watched her as she crept around the room, keeping her back to the wall. She fought to keep her eyes from drifting to the couples and groups now writhing against one another, to seal her ears against the growing chorus of moans filling the inn.
She finally made her way to the door and gave one last cursory glance, looking to see if any of the locals were growing in size or suddenly sporting more than the expected amount of fur on their bodies. Seeing no such evidence, Amelyn kicked away the stone keeping the door closed, and pivoted through the gap to look out into the night.
There was no one there. Not a werewolf, not a confused villager, not even Josef, although she knew his lookout position would be well-hidden.
Fighting the urge to rejoin the orgy erupting within, Amelyn took a deep breath and sprinted away into the night.
It hadn't rained since the morning, but the forest floor still squelched beneath Amelyn's boots as she hurried through the undergrowth. She was heading back to the meadow, since it was the last place she had seen Josef, and she figured it was as good a place as any to regroup away from prying eyes and wandering hands.
Just the thought of the latter made her heart race, and her face flushed hot against the chill night air. She tried to remember the path they had taken, and realized she was striking blindly into the darkness of the forest without a clear idea of how to get to the meadow, or how to get back. She stopped, trying to shake the fog of the pollen-laced soup from her brain. Something didn't add up, something Josef had said, information he had omitted-
"Let me guess," came a mocking voice from behind her, "you drugged the soup, didn't you?"
Amelyn spun around to see Josef, leaning against a tree, dressed in a pair of threadbare pants and a cotton shirt that had apparently been patched and repaired countless times. He didn't have any of his hunting gear with him, not even his sword.
"Heat is a very important component," Josef continued, stepping away from the tree and walking towards Amelyn, "in both cooking and alchemy. Magic is a delicate thing, or at least it is delicate if not held carefully. Like morning dew, magical effects burn away in the sun, and are left anew by the light of the moon." As he got near Amelyn, Josef turned, walking past her and circling around behind her. Unsteadily, she turned in place, her eyes locked onto him like she had been trained to do when facing a foe.
Like she had been trained to do when facing monsters.
"How," she started, her voice coming out lower and more sensual than she wanted it to, "how did you know?"
"Know what?" he responded, a grin appearing on his face. The forest wasn't completely dark; a faint blue-white glow betrayed the distant gaze of the moon far above the canopy. Not full, but nearly so.
"How did you know," Amelyn began, and then froze. The question she wanted to ask was "how did you know that I put the pollen in the soup?" but she felt like she would get the answer to that if she just found the right question. An earlier question. One that would explain her body screaming at her that he knew she had spiked the soup from the scent of wetness between her legs, from the taste of her sweat on the night air, from the flush of her face that he shouldn't be able to see, but that she knew he somehow could.
Josef stepped into, and then out of, a tiny shaft of moonlight. As he left it, he tilted his chin up, and Amelyn saw his eyes flash, pale reflective discs at their centers.
"How did you know there was a werewolf in the village," she finally managed to make herself say, "you said you were sure of it."
"I knew," he said with a grin, "because they sent you to look for one."
"That's not an answer," she said, trying to use the adrenaline now coursing through her to suppress her arousal and clear her head, "you knew."
"I said that an encounter with a werewolf could forge the greatest of hunters," he answered, grinning with ill intent, "if, of course, the hunter survives."
Amelyn's blood ran cold.
"Why don't you put that other lesson to the test, little huntress," Josef said, dropping low as though he was about to leap at her, "and show me if keeping your sword on your back really is better for running away."
Amelyn ran.
She crashed through undergrowth, leapt over roots, sprinted through the forest like she had spent her entire life training for just this path. She was like the wind, moving between trees at breakneck speed, instinctively knowing each pitfall and clearing it faster than her mind could process it. Surely Josef couldn't keep up, surely he was slower than this. Nevertheless, Amelyn didn't dare look back. She couldn't hear him, not over the sound of her own thudding footfalls, the rattle of her sword, the panting of her own breath. She turned, trying to remember her steps, trying to lead him in a wide curve so that she could retreat to the relative safety of the village.
It was a foolish plan, but it wasn't as if she could fight him. How many hunters had he lured out here, aided by what was clearly a network of werewolf spies across the land? How many young hunters had fallen victim to Josef's lust for blood?
Or worse, a voice deep inside of her offered, which was answered by a throb between her legs. She banished the thought of what that might mean, and tried to return her focus to running-
Her foot caught on a root.
She stumbled.
Her other foot slammed hard into the ground, and she felt her knee flare in pain and then give way.
She fell forward.
Hands landed in wet leaves and mud.
She rolled, and slammed her shoulder into a root.
She slid across more mud, and came to a stop in what felt like grass.
Amelyn blinked a few times, her eyes adjusting to...light?
She tried to roll to her stomach, to push herself to her knees, so she could rise again and keep running, before Josef caught up. She managed to get up onto on one leg, but when she rose to the other, the one where the knee had given way, it refused to bear weight, and she collapsed once more to the grass with a yelp of pain.
Tears flooded her eyes, tears that caused the light around her to stretch into spikes and puddles. She rolled onto her back and looked at the moon, hanging high above.
She was in the meadow.
Amelyn heard the sound of footsteps, and craned her head to look in the direction she had run from. Josef was sauntering out from between the trees, unhurried, his chest rising and falling with slow, relaxed breaths. He simply stared at her as he approached, but froze as he stepped into the moonlight.
"You make good time on the road," he said, closing his eyes and stretching his arms out, as though the light was warm water washing over him, "I had expected you to arrive three days later than you did, to give you a show, and to then set you on finding the werewolf that had so terrorized the village the night of your arrival." He opened his eyes and looked down at her. "Alas, it was not to be so."
She stared at him, hear heart thudding. "Do they know?" She spat the words out at him from the ground. "Do they know you are a werewolf?"
"They know that a werewolf often comes to their village," he said, inching forward, keeping pace with her as she hauled herself backwards in the cold and muddy grass, "and they know that when it does, I am here to fight it off. They believe that the hunters track all such beasts in The Forest, and await the creatures before they strike." He quickened his pace, but only slightly, not fast enough to approach but enough to force Amelyn to throw herself onto her stomach to crawl from him in order keep the distance steady.
"I think," he said thoughtfully, now out of view, "that some of them have guessed at the truth. They are not completely stupid, despite appearances."
Amelyn felt a shock of pain jolt out from her knee as she used it to push herself forward.
"Your appearance, little huntress," Josef continued, sounding like he was getting closer, "struck fear into most of them. For the full moon is getting close, and two hunters have appeared in time to defend them."
"You would think," Amelyn said through gritted teeth, "that they all would have caught on to the charade after the last few hunters your network of cursed monsters have sent to their deaths."
She heard Josef stop behind her, and took the opportunity to try and climb to her feet once more. Yet again, her knee gave out and sent her sprawling face-first into the muddy ground.
"My network?" he said, with a confusion that was either honest or perfectly feigned. "What are you talking about? Everyone who sent you this way was a human, and a loyal member of our order of hunters."
Amelyn, unable to bear the pain of crawling anymore, rolled onto her back and propped herself up on elbows to stare Josef in the eyes. There was no chance of escape, and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of chasing her any longer. "Then why did they send me to my death, as I'm sure they have sent many others?"
Josef, seeing that she had given up on the chase, crossed the ground between them and knelt down at Amelyn's feet. She had half a mind to kick him, but he sensed the idea just as she came up with it. He knelt down across her shins, which caused her knee to burn in pain.
"Ohhh fuck you," she managed to yell out through gritted teeth, "you fucking monster. How many? How many have been sent to their deaths at your hand?"
He paused, and then his face hardened before her. "Five," he said grimly, "including you. One of the other four survived."
"Got too careless, playing with your food?" she spat at him, and then followed up with an actual attempt at spitting in his direction. He responded by putting more weight on her legs, which caused her to scream in pain once more.
"My food?" he said incredulously, as though he couldn't hear the wash of rage, pain, and profanity spewing at him. "No, you still don't understand. I said it already, try to remember my lessons, at least on the same day that I teach them."
She stared. "An encounter with a werewolf," she said, the realization dawning, "can forge the greatest of hunters."
"If they survive," Josef finished. "There are no werewolves beyond The Forest. They are kept at bay by the greatest of hunters, who have established their territory along the borders of this accursed lands. That is the official policy of our Order."
Amelyn collapsed backwards, laying on her back and staring up at the sky. "They sent me here to die," she said, going numb.
"No," Josef corrected, "they sent you here because you were special, and the order believed you could become more so."
She felt him tugging at her jerkin, the buttons coming free under his unnaturally strong grip. She heard the tearing of fabric, and the grunting as his one hand became two, ripping away her clothing and exposing her small breasts to the cold night air. Now his breathing was heavy, but with desire rather than exertion.
"As far as how you are remade...that much the order leaves up to us."
Amelyn screamed as Josef tore at her clothes, and he let her. His one leg pinning both of hers became two, and then shifted as he turned. His weight forced his knees between her calves, and her legs parted as he slid between them. She punched and kicked, and he ignored her, pushing apart her legs and lifting them up as he pushed his hips up between her thighs.
She felt his hands leave her legs, and felt a pulling at her pants, and then a tearing as he ripped the cloth armor apart at the crotch. He kept pulling, rending her pants from thigh to waist, tossing strips of fabric behind him as they ripped free. Within moments, her pants were a ruin, and he finished the work he had begun on her jerkin. With a satisfied sigh, he wrenched his hands apart, and Amelyn was bare for him, from her neck down past her breasts, her taut stomach, past her aching groin and the curly shock of hair atop her sex, to her slit which was damp with something besides the dew and mud of the forest floor. She renewed her attack, trying to claw at Josef's face.
He caught one wrist, and then the other, in a single hand, his unyielding grip like iron as he effortlessly pushed her arms up so he could continue gazing at her nude front. Josef breathed in deeply, savoring a smell coming from Amelyn that she finally could pick up herself. Despite the adrenaline, despite the rage, she felt her body aching for him, the pollen's aphrodisiac effects so intense that, had she been laying on a bed and not in a muddy meadow, she might have forgotten that this situation was not born of her own desire.
She felt something brush up against her sex, something warm and hard but covered by rough linen.
Josef's cock.
Amelyn screamed, and managed to pull her left hand free of his grip. She grabbed in the mud, searching for her dagger, her sword--when had she lost her sword?--for something, anything, that could help her. Her fingers found a pouch, and grabbed at it. Within was something small but hard. Several somethings.
Mustering all of her strength, she brought the pouch and its contents into the side of Josef's head. He barely flinched, his eyes still closed as though he was savoring the smell of her unbidden arousal. She brought it into his head again, fighting to maintain her grip. Her fingers ached, and stiffened, and she almost lost the pouch, only to catch it once more with what felt like a metal buckle in her palm. With one final yell, she smashed the vials in the pouch into Josef's jaw, and the buckle into the vials.
They both heard the crunch of breaking glass, and Amelyn fought to keep the pouch against Josef's face. This finally regained his attention, and with an unprecedented growl he grabbed the pouch, wrenched it from her grip, and flung it into the same unseen distance where the scraps of her clothing had gone.
His chin, mouth, and nose were smeared with a dark blue paste, parted only where lines of sweat instantly began to run down his skin. Josef's eyes flashed yellow, and he bristled at Amelyn with something between annoyance and amusement.
"That," he said, grinning to show off teeth slowly beginning to shift, "was very stupid of you."
Josef didn't wait any longer. Amelyn heard the tearing of fabric, and suddenly the warm head of Josef's cock was pressed against her pussy.
"I was planning on licking your cunt, you ungrateful little bitch," Josef growled, his face twisting with a snarl as his grey hair seemed to grow more and more shaggy, his beard becoming more unkempt before Amelyn's eyes. "Instead, you had to smear pure Moonpowder all over my face, and two days from the full moon at that."
Amelyn tried to force her thighs closed, tried to push away, but one of Josef's hands came down on her shoulder and pinned her in place, while the other reached down to try and hold his cock steady enough to force it inside of her. Her eyes watered at the feeling of him trying to push inside, his cock far larger than the few she had seen by accident.
"Wait," she whined, gritting her teeth, "I'm, you can't, I haven't-"
"Shut up," Josef snapped back, "the last thing you want is me fully transformed when the blood first flows. I could go into a frenzy and then you'll wish you stayed back in the village for all those peasants to have their way with you."
She bit her lip, but didn't stop fighting him. He was pushing, prodding, fighting to penetrate her where no one had before. His hand left her shoulder, moving to her abdomen, where he dug in with fingernails that were quickly becoming claws. Amelyn yelped in pain, which repeated and rose in pitch as she felt the head of his cock catch, as though it was a key that had finally found its lock after fumbling in the dark. She inhaled deeply, but before she could finish the breath, she felt herself stretched onto him and the scream was forced out of her.
He sank an inch or two before her clenching depths held firm against his casual advance, but he gave a grunt and a forceful shove split her open an inch further. It hurt, gods above it hurt, but the pollen flooding her own body almost made Amelyn think she liked that it hurt. That she liked being claimed. She realized her eyes were closed, and that her arms had gone limp. She felt him pulling back, reading another strike to pierce into her, and she renewed her resistance, clawing in the direction of his chest.
Her fingers found more chest hair than she was expecting. Her eyes snapped open, and she watched as Josef's body was turning pale where white fur was erupting all across him. His face was elongating, his eyes were yellow, and the scent of him was changing from that of a man to something more bestial.
He pushed into her again, and Amelyn felt a strange throb from his manhood that seemed to split her open further. He held still, but she felt him getting deeper, previously-untouched depths despoiled by the invading head of his cock. She looked down in horror, only to see that he was pulling out, despite the sensation that he wasn't. Instead, his cock was lengthening, swelling, filling her more completely and destroying her as his manhood changed alongside the rest of him.
It throbbed again, and Amelyn thought she was going to burst. Something had broken long ago, but only now did she smell iron alongside the sweet honey of her own arousal. She felt, as much as heard, the rumble of Josef's triumphant sigh as her pussy clenched down on him. Hot breath washed over her, and the low growl that escaped his throat seemed to alert her to her own body, and she sobbed as she shuddered.
"No, I don't-" she whimpered out, in between keening moans that she couldn't suppress, "it doesn't feel...no..."
Still, she couldn't pretend that she wasn't on the verge of orgasm, her body shaking and her breath shuddering in response to being fucked--no, merely penetrated--for the first time.
Josef "rewarded" her with a jolt of his hips, that caused his cock to pierce deeper into her. She felt it bottom out, and clenched her teeth, her entire body tensing at the sensation. He stopped, and pulled away. She had screwed her eyes shut, and was unable to open them, but she felt one of his hands leave her body.
"This should help," she heard him grumble, his voice much lower than it had been, "it's more for me than you, but you'll definitely enjoy it, you little bitch."
She finally opened her eyes, to see a terrifying visage looking down at her. Josef's face was halfway between that of a man and a wolf, coated in fur that was longer and thicker where his beard and the hair of his head had been. He was dragging clawed fingers through the smear of blue in his white fur, and reaching down to his cock. He pulled it all the way free, and Amelyn felt a hollowness that was almost as painful as his forceful insertion had been. Her pussy clenched and tightened, trying to grip at the now-removed cock that had so quickly molded her depths into its shape.
Josef smeared the blue paste across the head of his cock, and then, once again refusing to wait for her to be ready, shoved his cock back inside of her.
For a moment, Amelyn though that the Moonpowder paste had numbed her.
Then she exploded in pleasure, waves of throbbing heat radiating out from her pussy through her whole body. She felt every inch of him, every vein and bit of skin. She felt where the paste mixed with her juices and coated her inner walls, and she felt where the head of his cock, lathered in the amazing substance, slammed once more into the unyielding extent of her depths.
Impossibly, either from the force of his thrust or some latent magic of the Moonpowder, that extent did yield, if only slightly. The pain was dulled, but now it was accompanied by pleasure as her body was stretched and molded into something capable of taking the fullness of him, her womb pushed upwards so that it was always in place to receive the seed that would surely flow.
He pulled out, and slammed again, deeper this time, as she felt her guts rearranging in order for her body to mount more perfectly upon his increasingly-canine cock.
Any pleasure she had felt previously was eclipsed as he brought a thumb, still coated in the paste, and rubbed it hard into the nub at the crown of her sex. Sensation of every possible kind surged through Amelyn, and she came again as Josef pushed into her once more.
And again. Another thrust, and another jolt of Amelyn's orgasm back to its peak.
Again.
And Again.
Amelyn was keening in earnest now, clawing at the mud and staring in awe as Josef's body continued to change. He got larger, longer, the cracking of bone and the rippling of muscle under fur accompanying his growls of pleasure as he started to really fuck her. As his body grew, so too did his cock, mostly in girth now, barely outpacing the way each thrust warped Amelyn into a more accepting sheath for him, so that it kept hurting but never enough for her be able to deny the pleasure.
He was growling now, any semblance of words lost in his pleasure, and Amelyn fought for the strength to push him off, to deny him the right of breeding her, of making her his bitch in that last, most final way.
Instead, she merely raised a hand and caressed his chest, fingers running through white fur as her breath and body shuddered in the grips of something that might have been an orgasm, or merely an aftershock. Her legs were raised, the tatters of her clothing getting soaked in the grass against her sides, but all of her senses were dominated by the feeling of Josef impaling her over and over again with his fully-canine cock.
Her hand dropped from his chest, and landed just below her navel. To her surprise, she felt him through her skin at the depths of each thrust, and looked down to see a bulge appear and then vanish each time he shoved his impossibly-large cock deeper into her gut than her body had originally been arranged to allow.
He picked up pace, enormous balls swinging into Amelyn's rear as his forceful thrusting raised her hips off the ground, fucking down into her to accommodate his enormous lupine legs. No longer spread by his hips and thighs, Amelyn's own legs flopped uselessly against Josef's sides while he rutted into her, the squelching of her distended pussy accompanying her moans and his grunts.
She felt his climax approaching when the base of his cock seemed to bump more painfully up against her stretched and thoroughly-ruined entrance. She tried to form words, tried to plead for one last mercy from him, to not seed her with cursed werewolf pups...if that was indeed what she would carry were he to breed her.
Instead, all she could manage to spit out was "please, no, not inside."
He looked down at her, yellow eyes set in a wolven face, and bared his fangs with a snarl. There wasn't the hint of human recognition, and Amelyn guessed that his feral anger came from the interruption to the pleasing sound of her moans and cries.
She felt him push into her again, the knot causing pain anew as he forced it inside. His thrusts were growing slower, more erratic, and he was likely moments away from the point where his knot would be outside of her during his orgasm, or when it would be forced inside to keep her mounted like a trophy upon him as he came.
"Please, I-" she managed to grunt, before she was interrupted by her own scream of pain and pleasure as Josef's knot popped into her and held fast, even as he yanked backwards with his hips to try and keep thrusting. Amelyn bounced up and down against the ground a few times, before Josef howled and shoved himself as far into her as he would go.
There was a moment of anticipation, and then a pulse traveled down his length and into her. Amelyn looked down, to where her abdomen bulged outwards against the head of his cock. She felt his release travel down to her depths, and then her own skin throbbed outwards, visibly swelling and then settling as Josef's come flooded her. She tried to fight the reaction her body demanded, and failed, as she shuddered and groaned in response, ripples of heat traveling outwards from where she felt come oozing into her, flooding her depths and drenching her displaced womb.
Another pulse of come, somehow stronger than the first, filled her anew. She watched as the bulge where he was buried did not fully recede to show the shape of his cockhead, even as he bucked his hips and growled in pleasure. The pulse seemed to go on forever, a jet of come forced down into a pussy that would stretch no further, magic or not. This was followed by another, no less strong, and this time Amelyn was sure of it.
Bit by bit, little by little, the sheer volume of werewolf semen flooding her was causing her belly to grow outwards, in a gurgling mockery of pregnancy.
Josef began to hump her again, bouncing her upon his length as the knot held her fast. His thrusts were short, erratic, but they caused waves of pleasure to flood Amelyn, pleasure somehow enhanced by what felt like the sensation of come being fucked into her waiting (and likely now distending) womb. She was vaguely aware that her anatomy was not supposed to work that way, but that didn't change the realty of the situation, nor did it change the fact that she was coming because of it, accompanied by a tightness and warmth indicating a different type of release from her own orgasm.
Amelyn's belly had grown to a size matching that of a woman halfway to bearing a child when the waves of orgasms finally caused her vision to go black and her body to go limp.
Amelyn turned her head and coughed, her lungs burning as she tried to gulp down air. She felt something enter her throat, and coughed again, spitting a few times to clear her lips before heaving in another desperate breath. This time, she found clean air, and breathed deeply, in and out. Her left cheek was buried in damp grass, and her face was covered in something cold and wet. She remembered how to use her arms and reached up to her face, wiping the mud out of her eyes and blinking a few times before vision returned.
She was still on the ground, although her knee burned with pain as it bore some of her weight. Her legs were bent beneath her, and her face was pressed against the ground, with her back to the sky.
Or rather, her back to Josef, who was still above her.
And inside of her.
She groaned, and then shuddered from the cold, and this was apparently enough to drive Josef into a frenzy. His hips bucked against her, dragging her across the muddy ground, and she felt the warm sticky rivulets of his come running down her thighs, even though the tightness in her swollen belly indicated that most of his seed remained trapped inside.
The sensation of the Moonpowder was fading, but by now she had been fully broken in by him. So she merely let herself take it, pain mixed with a wash of numb fire as he rutted into her from behind, fucking her like the breeding bitch he had turned her into. She looked around as best she could, and guessed that she had been dragged some distance, as they had been in the middle of the meadow when Josef had first fucked her, and now they were near the edge.
She felt him grunting unevenly, and prepared herself just in time for him to come again, fresh floods of semen spilling into her already bloated depths. She shuddered, her body only able to manage an imitation of an orgasm in her exhaustion, even as Josef's virility showed no signs of abating. She felt her distended belly stretch further, now dragging along the ground despite her lifted hips.
Josef's grunting became something else entirely as she hung limply from his knot, instead of keening and moaning at the feeling of his release. A low growl sounded from above Amelyn, a sound that made her hair stand on end and her heart stop. She knew that sound, knew it from hounds she had trained with, knew it from wolves she had fought off.
She didn't have time to scream before Josef's feral anger at her lack of enthusiasm exploded, and he sank his fangs into her shoulder.
Her scream finally escaped as he shook her from side to side, his fangs digging through tendon and muscle and cracking bone as he savaged her. She was pinned to him in two places, with her right shoulder locked in his jaws and her pussy mounted inescapably upon his knot. He began to walk forward, holding her up from both spots like slain prey. Her arms, legs, and comically filled belly dragged on the ground as he padded into the forest, Amelyn's cries fading into sobs, and then whimpers as darkness took her once more.
She awoke three more times during the night.
Once, by the pain of bark against her back, as Josef fucked her against a tree, her chest once more facing his own. As she bounced up and down on his cock, he clawed at the bark above her head, deep gouges causing splinters to rain down on her, resting between thrusts on her belly, where a sloshing round bubble outlined the stretched extent of her annihilated womb.
The next, she was being dragged along the ground, hanging limply from Josef's cock and trailing behind him as he unsuccessfully stalked some other prey in the forest.
Finally, she awoke with a jolt as he finally pulled himself free of her with a pop, and then a wet rush as most of his come flooded out of her onto the ground around her thighs. Her stomach deflated somewhat, but marks remained were the skin had been stretched to accommodate the volume of come spilled inside of her. She watched as Josef, slowly shifting back from a wolf to a man, grinned down at her spent and broken form.
"Good luck, huntress," he growled at her, "if you're lucky, you'll wake up tomorrow, and if you're really lucky, I'll fuck you again someday."
He reached down with a mostly-lupine hand, and squeezed his cock from base to tip. The come coating it, and still trapped within it, gathered in his palm in a sticky glob, before he flicked his hand in her direction. The glob landed on her right cheek, and slowly slid down her skin, melding with the mud, sweat, tears, and blood from his earlier savaging. He followed this by pressing a foot down into her swollen belly, which caused come to gush out of her so fiercely that Amelyn moaned reflexively.
"I," he said to himself as he turned and walked away from Amelyn's broken and unresponsive form, "just love breaking a new bitch for the first time."
Amelyn awoke the next morning with a shiver in the cold damp fog that filled the meadow. She tried to move, only for every part of her body to protest at the very idea of it. Something sticky coated her thighs, and she could feel a cramping where her body had been forcibly and magically stretched to enable Josef's fucking. She looked down, and saw stretch marks on her stomach, although thankfully the distension had mostly faded since her last waking. The come was partially dried in an enormous puddle centered on her pussy, which was itself sore and tender to the touch, but not bloody and torn as she had feared.
Bloody...wait.
She groaned, and finally moved part of her body. She dragged her left arm across her body, trying to find the wounds from where Josef had torn her right shoulder apart with his fangs.
Her fingers found dried blood, and tender spots, and the hairless softness of scar tissue, but the wounds were healed. She turned her head sideways, wincing in pain as she awkwardly tried to crane her neck to see her own shoulder. What she could see was unbelievable; scar tissue, but no open wounds, and no evidence of the red and black swelling of infection, either.
Amelyn didn't allow herself to accept what that might mean.
She made it back to the village wrapped in a cloak, the only part of her or Josef's clothing that remained in the meadow that wasn't torn to shreds. Part of her wanted to believe that he had left it as some gesture of apology for his behavior and assault, but she knew that he merely wished to preserve the reputation of their order.
She entered the inn to find most of the village still present, but sleeping, the heavy scent of sex and sweat filling the air above the tangled naked bodies. Amelyn suspected that this was not their first experience with such goings-on, as stories of unexplained bouts of village-wide orgies were known to the hunters, although legends often attributed them to the influence of satyrs or demons.
Still, Amelyn had no intention of joining in, and crept between the villagers more silently than moonlight, making her way to the room she had shared with Josef just two nights prior.
Inside was a neatly-folded pile of new clothes in her size, alongside her sword, dagger, and all of her adventuring gear. Next to all of that was a small case, with a sealed letter atop it, decorated with a single drop of blood.
Amelyn picked up the letter, stared at it, and placed it to the side before looking into the case. Inside were eighteen dark red vials arranged in a grid, with flecks of gold that caught the morning light streaming in through the window. Amelyn stared, and then grabbed the letter to open it.
The handwriting was unmistakable, as she had seen it hundreds of times before. On graded essays, on letters of recommendation, on forms approving her for more and more specialized training with swords masters, alchemists, and hunters.
This letter was written in the hand of the arch-maester of the academy, the official head of the order of hunters that she served.
"Amelyn," the letter began, "if you are reading this, you have survived, and graduated into the most elite class of hunters, the guardians who do the most dangerous and most vital work of our entire order..."
Amelyn sat down on the bed, unsure if she should cry, or laugh.
She hadn't dressed, and her pussy still leaked Josef's come, but the soreness of her muscles was giving way to the sense of an unprecedented, rippling power. She was thankful for the eighteen vials, concoctions she had studied and replicated many times. Suppressants, for curses.
After all, the full moon was just two nights away.
Twenty-three Years Later
Amelyn sat at the bar in her favorite tavern in Kalistock, one of the many towns that clung to the edge of a long lake that extended from the edge of The Forest deep into its depths. Kalistock would be considered a sleepy town by the standards of most of the civilized world, but this deep into The Forest it was a veritable metropolis, with three taverns, two blacksmiths, and a whorehouse.
Amelyn had killed another hunter to add Kalistock to her territory, and fought off two more challengers throughout the years. Other hunters, at least the ones like her, were free to come and go, but any new recruits sent into The Forest and directed to seek someone in Kalistock were Amelyn's alone to process.
She saw the shadow of the boy in the doorway before he announced himself, smelled the stench of arrogance and misplaced pride. Amelyn turned in her seat to look at the hunter entering, a fresh-faced boy with a cloak far too fine for a simple traveler, and far too ostentatious for a former street orphan drafted into hunting monsters.
A noble's son, she thought to herself, fighting the urge to lick her lips, they always scream the sweetest when they realize I won't stop until I'm satisfied.
They were also the most fun to chase, through dark alleys, through open doorways that they were too scared to question. Into rank basements, and finally onto beds surrounded by noise-dampening curtains.
The order sent her new hunters that they thought were particularly promising, or with special potential and vigor.
But testing that potential and vigor was up to Amelyn, and she preferred to test them very thoroughly.
The boy was right on time.
The full moon would be the following night.