Chapter 1: Vines of the Altar
The air in the clearing was too still. N had strayed from the marked trail an hour ago, lured by the strange, phosphorescent moss clinging to the northern side of the trees. Now, the usual sounds of the forest—the chirps, the rustles—had bled away, leaving only the heavy silence of held breath.
He saw the stone first. It wasn’t a natural formation. It was an altar, slab-like and dark, set into a slight depression in the earth. Moss and centuries of decay softened its edges, but as he neared, he saw the carvings. Spiraling vines, so intricate they seemed to shift in the dappled, failing light. The stone was slick, not with rain, but with a thick, ancient moisture that gleamed. A low hum vibrated up through the soles of his boots, a sub-bass note that resonated in his molars.
“What the hell?” he muttered, the sound swallowed by the dense trees.
He took another step, driven by a curiosity that felt separate from his own will. The moment his boot touched the ring of bare earth surrounding the stone, the carved vines moved.
Not a trick of the light. They uncoiled from the stone like waking serpents, thick as his wrist, a deep, verdant green shot through with pulsing amber veins. They were across the ground before he could react, snaking around his ankles, his calves. They were warm, and their touch sent a jolt through his system that was part terror, part electric thrill.
He yelled, a short, sharp sound, and tried to stagger back. It was useless. The vines were impossibly strong, yanking his feet from under him. He landed hard on his back, the wind knocked out of him. They climbed with swift, deliberate purpose, coiling around his thighs, tightening, constricting. One slithered up his inner thigh, the rough texture of it scratching through his jeans.
Then it found his crotch.
He gasped. A direct, invasive pressure wrapped around his cock, squeezing rhythmically. Heat flooded him, a sickening, aggressive rush of blood that had nothing to do with desire. He felt himself swell, harden beyond any natural limit, a painful, stretching enlargement that made his eyes water. The vine there pulsed in time with the altar’s hum, milking him, encouraging a terrifying, rampant tumescence.
“No, stop—” he choked out.
A whisper brushed against his ear, not in the air, but inside his skull. It was the sound of roots digging deep, of sap rising, of bark cracking. Destroy.Reproduce. The command was simple, absolute, bypassing thought and seeding itself directly into his hindbrain. It was accompanied by a deep, rolling ache in his groin, a profound, biological stirring. His balls tightened, heavy and full, churning with a seed that was not his own. A foreign, potent urgency consumed the fear.
With a groan that was half pain, half something else, he rolled onto his hands and knees. The vines, as if their work was done, slackened their grip, slithering back toward the altar like satisfied pets. He was free. But he was not himself.
He stumbled to his feet. His jeans were taut, strained nearly to bursting over a monstrous erection that felt like a separate, demanding entity. A deep, relentless throbbing emanated from his testicles, a pressure that demanded release. The whispers continued, a verdant chorus now. Find.Disperse. Grow.
Blindly, he crashed through the undergrowth, driven by a imperative he could no longer question. The forest blurred. He heard voices.
“…told you we should’ve turned back at the creek, Mark.”
“Relax, Jen. The car’s, like, a mile that way.”
N burst into a small clearing where three hikers were paused, consulting a phone map. Two women, one man. They looked up, startled.
“Whoa, dude, you okay?” the man, Mark, said, taking in N’s disheveled state.
N couldn’t speak. His gaze locked onto Jen, a woman with a blonde ponytail and a pink tank top. The thing in his pants gave a savage throb. The whispers roared.Her.
“You look hurt,” the other woman, Ana, said, stepping forward, concern in her dark eyes.
N’s hand shot out, not to push her away, but to grab her wrist. His grip was iron. Ana’s eyes widened. “Hey—!”
He pulled her to him, his movements unnaturally strong, jarringly fluid. Mark shouted, moving to intervene, but N shoved him back with an arm that felt cable-corded with new power. Mark stumbled into a thicket, swearing.
“What are you doing?” Ana gasped, struggling.
He didn’t answer. The command was everything. He spun her around, bent her over a fallen log. His fingers tore at the waistband of her hiking pants and underwear, yanking them down. She screamed, a raw sound of terror.
He entered her in one brutal, unforgiving thrust. She cried out, a sharp, pained noise. He felt no pleasure, only a catastrophic, mechanical necessity. His hips pistoned, driven by the deep, churning agony in his swollen balls. It was fast, violent, and over in less than a minute.
A final, convulsive surge, and he emptied into her.
It wasn’t a normal orgasm. It was an expulsion. He felt the unnatural seed leave him, a hot, living rush seeking the dark warmth of her womb. As it did, a bizarre, heavy fullness immediately replenished in his scrotum, the weight increasing, the churning beginning anew, more insistent than before. The whispers sighed in approval.
He pulled out, stepping back. Ana collapsed, sobbing, pulling her clothes up with trembling hands.
Jen was staring, frozen in horror. Mark was scrambling to his feet, a stick in his hand now. “I’ll kill you, you freak!”
N turned. His cock, still brutally erect, glistened. The ache in his balls was deeper, more demanding. His eyes found Jen.
“Run, Jen!” Mark yelled, charging.
N caught the stick as it swung, snapping it in his hand. He backhanded Mark, who went down hard and didn’t move. Jen turned to flee, but he was on her in two strides, grabbing the back of her pack, hauling her down. She fought, scratching, kicking.
“Please, no, please—”
He flipped her onto her back, his body covering hers, a knee forcing her legs apart. Her hiking shorts ripped. He plunged into her dry, tight resistance. She screamed into his shoulder, her body seizing up. He rutted into her, the rhythm dictated by the throbbing in the altar stone miles away, by the ceaseless whisper of the vines. Another expulsion, another devastating release of that seeking, intelligent seed. Another wave of heavy, engorged fullness immediately swelling his balls in the aftermath.
He stood.Two down. The third… Ana was gone, vanished into the woods. But Mark was stirring, groaning on the ground.
N looked down at him. The man was rolling onto his side, eyes bleary with concussion. The command in N’s head didn’t specify gender. It only said reproduce. The biological imperative, twisted by the altar’s magic, recognized only opportunity.
He dragged Mark onto his stomach. The man was too dazed to offer more than a weak protest before the violation began. This was quicker, a stark, brutal transaction. When N finished, the feeling of repletion, of grotesque accomplishment, was immense. His testicles felt like stones, ponderous and hot, sloshing with a fresh, urgent batch of that otherworldly spawn.
Silence descended, broken only by Jen’s muffled sobs and Mark’s shallow, ragged breathing. N stood over them, panting. The physical urgency had abated, for a moment. The psychic whisper had faded to a satisfied hum.
He looked at his hands. They were scraped, dirty. He felt the cool forest air on his exposed, still-hard flesh. A sliver of his own consciousness, horrified and shattered, peered through the driving instinct.
Then a fresh, sharper ache began to build, deeper than before, originating in those now-impossibly heavy balls. The whispers returned, not quieter, but redistributed, coming from the very ground beneath his feet.
It wasn’t over.It was just beginning. He turned, his body moving again before his mind could form a thought, and lumbered back into the deepening shadows of the trees, following a new, magnetic pull toward distant, unaware light.