Chapter 3: The Woods Grow Thick
The trail narrowed until the trees pressed close on either side. Kaelen had to turn his shoulders to pass between two trunks, and the bark felt wrong under his gauntlet. Not rough. Slick, like the trunk had been sweating. He stopped and scraped a palm across the surface, then stared at the residue on his fingers. It was translucent, syrupy, catching the thin light that filtered through the canopy. He sniffed it. The smell was sweet. Cloying, almost. He wiped his hand on his tunic but the slickness stayed.
The air grew heavier as they walked, sweet enough to coat the back of the throat. Melara felt it in her chest first, a low hum that matched the pulse in her groin. Her cock stirred against her thigh with every stride, half-hard and twitching, and she had to press a hand to her belly to steady herself.
Kaelen led, axe loose in his grip. He kept glancing up. The canopy had knitted shut overhead, and the light that reached them was green and wet.
"You feel that?" he asked.
"I feel something," Lyra said.
She fell back a step and took Melara's hand. Her fingers were cool, her grip deliberate. Melara's breath caught, and the hum in her chest deepened.
"Steady," Lyra murmured. "Your face is doing something."
Ahead, Kaelen stopped. A thick root caught his boot and he stumbled, then dropped hard to one knee. He grunted and swung the axe down, but a vine had already coiled around his calf, pale and roped with sap, and it was climbing. It slid up past his knee, and he grabbed at it with both hands.
"It's moving," he said. "Get it off."
Melara broke from Lyra and ran to him. The vine thickened as she watched, pulsing like a vein, and where it pressed his thigh the cloth of his trousers went dark and slick. Kaelen's jaw worked. His face had gone red, and his eyes were glassy.
"Don't cut it," Melara said. "Cut it and it knows."
"Knows what?"
She didn't answer. She was looking past him, at the trees.
The way ahead was blocked. One trunk dominated the trail, broad as a cottage door, flanked by three slender trunks that leaned inward like fingers. Everything was quiet. No birds. No wind.
Lyra came up beside her. "You know what this is."
"A blue mage," Melara said. "Someone like me. She came through here. This is her magic. It's soaked into the wood."
Kaelen shuddered and the vine tightened around his thigh. He let out a breath that wasn't quite a groan. "And what does her magic want?"
The bark of the great tree cracked. It didn't shatter. It peeled, slow and wet, and underneath the wood was flesh. Pale, veined, slick with the same syrup, and it rose from the trunk in a long curve. A cock. Thick as Kaelen's forearm at the base, tapering to a blunt head that wept a bead of translucent fluid. It twitched, once, and the other trees answered.
Three more split open, smaller, each one jutting from its trunk at hip height. The sweet smell thickened until Melara's head swam. Her own cock was fully hard now, straining at her breeches, aching.
"Fuck," Lyra said, softly, and almost laughed.
"Don't," Melara said. "They're reading us. If we fight, they take us. If we run, they follow."
"Then what?"
Melara walked forward. The great cock swung toward her, tracking her like a head. She stopped within reach, and the head nudged her palm, warm and wet.
"They want to be pleased," she said. "All the way. Then they'll open."
Kaelen made a sound behind her, half protest, half something warmer. The vine had reached his hip now, and the sap on its skin was seeping through his clothes. His cock was visible through the wet cloth, hard and straining, and he hadn't noticed.
"Kaelen." Lyra's voice was steady. "She's right. I can feel it too."
"You can't be serious."
"Look at yourself."
He looked down. For a moment he just stared at the slick ruin of his trousers. Then he cursed, low and rough, and stopped fighting the vine.
Melara wrapped both hands around the great cock. It was hot, fevered, and the surface gave under her fingers like skin stretched over something firmer. She stroked it and the whole tree shuddered. Sap welled at the head and ran over her knuckles, thick as honey.
Lyra stepped to the next trunk. She spat in her palm, wrapped her hand around a smaller cock, and worked it with the practiced rhythm of someone who had done this before and would not pretend otherwise.
"Don't just stand there," she told Kaelen.
He didn't move. Then the vine slid higher, wormed under his belt, and found him. He went rigid, then arched, and the sound that came out of him was raw. The vine wrapped his cock and began to stroke, slow and sure, and he stopped pretending he wanted it to stop.
Melara worked her tree with both hands. She leaned into it, let the head press against her chest, and the sap smeared across her tunic until the cloth clung to her breasts. Her own cock throbbed, untouched, leaking into her breeches.
"You feel it," she said, to no one. "She left it here to grow. It's been waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Lyra asked.
"For someone who understands it."
The great cock bucked in her grip and swelled. She dropped to her knees and took the head into her mouth. The taste was sweet and salt together, like wine left in the sun, and the flesh pushed deep until it filled her throat. She swallowed around it and the tree groaned, a long wooden groan that ran through the ground.
Beside her, Lyra had hitched up her tunic and straddled a low branch, one tree cock sliding between her thighs while she stroked another with her hand. She was wet enough that Melara could hear it. Her eyes were half shut and she was smiling.
Kaelen's vine pulled him down onto his back. He tried to brace against a root and the root curled and held his wrists. Another vine found his mouth and he took it, gagging once, then working it with his tongue while the first one fucked him slow and steady.
"Don't stop," he said around it. "Gods. Don't stop."
Melara sucked harder. The cock swelled and stiffened and then it came, a long thick flood of pale sap that filled her mouth faster than she could swallow. It ran down her chin, her neck, soaked the front of her tunic. She swallowed what she could and the tree kept coming, pulse after pulse, until her hands slipped on the wet shaft.
The smaller trees came too, one after another, sap spattering Lyra's thighs and Kaelen's chest. The clearing filled with the smell of it, overpowering, and the sap was warm where it landed on bare skin.
Then the pulsing stopped. The great cock drew back into the trunk, slow, and the bark closed over it with a wet sucking sound. The smaller ones followed. The vines around Kaelen's wrists and cock loosened and slid away, leaving him flat on his back, chest heaving, soaked from throat to knee.
The trees shifted. They leaned apart, and the trail was open.
Melara stood. Her legs shook. Sap dripped from her chin onto her breasts, and her own cock was still hard, still aching, and she pressed a hand to it just to take the edge off.
Lyra slid down from the branch, wiped her hands on her thighs, and looked at her. "You enjoyed that."
"She made this," Melara said. "Whoever she is. She's still ahead of us."
Kaelen sat up slowly, blinking. "How do you know?"
Melara touched the nearest trunk. It was warm under her palm, and under the warmth was a thread, thin and familiar, running deeper into the wood like a stitch.
"Because it knows my name," she said.