Daughter of the Witch Wood (Pt. 02)

02.

Dreams Realized

Two things were different from the dream that had startled Min awake the night before. The first was that, as she ran through the trees, Min was frantically looking about for an escape while the beast chasing her roared and bellowed in anger; in the distance, from far away, she heard her mother shouting, calling her to come back.

But there was a second, crucial difference between the dream and the waking world: Yasemin was a witch, a psychic with power beyond just the strength in her legs. She wasn't defenseless, and in spite of her panting breath and dripping body, she wasn't afraid.

Actually, she was terrified, but Min wasn't so frightened that she couldn't defend herself. Pressing a hand to one temple, she made an effort with a single thought and her vision took on a blue tint as the power of aku filled her head. A witch's magic was essentially limitless, but drawing in too much of it would leave her exhausted with a ringing headache, or worse--Min had learned not to use too much power all at once if she didn't want to be bedridden for the rest of the day.

She heard the beast roar again, saw him less than a stone's throw distant and closing fast. She spotted a large, flat rock covered with moss, opened her hand towards it, and made a sweeping motion at the bear. There was a pressure in her head, a slight discomfort that instantly vanished as the stone went airborne, crashing into the monster's muzzle.

The stone caught the animal in his jaw and the side of his head, rupturing the huge mass of tissue covering the left eye--the resulting mess of fluid, blood, pus and other nastiness was so foul that it almost turned her stomach. The bear roared in pain and anger; Min saw blood and yellowed teeth go flying.

For a moment the bear stopped chasing her, batting at the ruined side of his face with one paw, as though trying to hold it in pain. Min could sense the beast through her magic: she could feel it's hatred for her, a singular need for blood, to sink its teeth into her flesh and rip her apart--it was like staring into a black pit of nothingness.

Pressing one hand against her temple again to ease the uncomfortable pressure, she waved a hand from side to side across the bear's field of vision--the sun shining through the trees didn't get any brighter for her, but it blinded the beast, made it roar again and rub its head harder into the dirt to compensate for the pain.

She ran away from the hut and away from mother. If this was going to end the same way as her dream, only one of them had to die--she wouldn't put Erden at risk. As she ran, Min prayed a fervent prayer to Mylan, a prayer for salvation...or at least for a quick, painless death.

The trees were thinning out and she recognized where she was, saw the rise in the earth the same as in her dream. The bear was right behind her now, swinging his huge paws, pushing younger saplings over and tearing huge chunks out of the larger trees, never even slowing down. One side of its face was coated with pus, blood and dirt, but the remaining good eye was glaring at her, burning with hate, anger and worse: hunger. Min reached the little ravine she'd jumped over in her dream, but doing so meant death, and hardly a pleasant one at that. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to leave her mother alone.

With a scream, Min jumped into the gap and fell down to her side. The hard, packed dirt drove the breath from her lungs and something flashed red in her vision, but she was whole and alive. The tiny ravine was just deep and wide enough so that she could lie prone, but she wasn't out of danger yet. She heard the beast roar again as it began to slam his paws against the earth, scratching at it, reaching in with one paw and an impossibly-long arm, swinging its claws at her.

One of them was just long enough, and it scored a hit across her bare shoulder. Min cried out and rolled to her belly, pressing herself into the dirt and dust at the bottom, too terrified to look up. The ravine stretched ahead of her into the dark, so long she couldn't see the end of it; the open scar of the earth closed over a few feet away, and then it was all blackness. But blackness was better than the beast trying to murder her. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, the fluid dripping down on her head--spit, blood, and goddess only knew what else--Min crawled for safety. The dirt scratched at her breasts, ground into her belly, dug into her thighs, but she grit her teeth and kept going.

Then, overhead, the bear broke off the attack. Min stopped moving, dared to look up--she saw the beast's head from below, muzzle so speckled with foam and blood that it seemed completely mad. Then he roared at something she couldn't see, and leapt to attack some new threat.

"No! Mother!" Knowing it was suicide, not caring, Min pushed to her feet and jumped for the edge of the hard earth. "Down here! I'm down here!" she cried as her heart pounded in her chest.

Min listened for her mother's scream but never heard it. Instead, it sounded like another animal had joined the fight--smaller than the bear, perhaps, but no less vicious. For all her trying, Min couldn't reach the top of the gap or spy out to see what fighting was happening.

There was a sound of pain, a loud cry--one of the animals was hurt. It was followed by heavy breathing, wheezing and pained and the bear's muffled horn of a cry, like the beast wasn't sure what was happening. There was a final call, a heavy crash as though a tree had tumbled to the earth...and then silence.

Min didn't know what was worse: the fighting, or the quiet after it. Had her mother been killed? Had the bear killed another creature in his bloodlust? "H-hello?" Min slid back to the floor of the little gulley, panting as if she'd been fighting herself. The sky looked especially blue and beautiful through the tree branches overhead; for a second, it felt like she was the only person in the whole world.

Then the sun went dark as a head appeared in the gap, staring down at her. For a split second she thought it was the bear and screamed, pushing against the far wall, but then it died in her throat: the head was more narrow, angular, with sharper ears. A wolf's head.

As she blinked through the glare, Min could see its features more clearly. The animal had grey fur, streaked with bits of brown across its eyes and ears. Its muzzle was darker, but then she realized that it was stained with blood. She'd been attacked by one wild animal just to be saved by another.

The wolf was watching her, holding perfectly still. It lay at the edge of the gap on its belly, dark eyes unblinking, as though waiting for her.

"Well..." Min swallowed, licked her lips. "What d-do you want?"

The animal tilted its head at her, giving a long look with shining gold eyes. Then it stood up and darted away.

Well. Min certainly hasn't expected anything like that. She blinked, sniffed, then checked her surroundings again. To her left, the cleft in the earth continued down into darkness; to her right, she saw sunlight, so she immediately made her way for that. She was scuffed and bleeding from a dozen tiny cuts, and her injured shoulder was throbbing. She took a second to look at it, then wished she hadn't--seeing the skin ripped open that way just made the pain triple, until her knees shook and she sat down for a moment. She had to take a breath and close her eyes, or she was going to pass out. Min had to find her mother. Erden could heal her. Erden would know what to do.

There was a sound of rustling up ahead, but it was distorted by the effect of the ravine and the earthen alls. Opening her eyes again, Min looked up to the sunlight opening ahead and the promise of freedom. An unfamiliar figure was standing in the gap, hulking and ominous. It stood on two legs, with a wide chest and thick arms, stretching down to long, clawed fingers. Min had never seen another person before besides her mother, and now the sight of one terrified her. In her bones, the very core of her being, everything was telling her to flee.

Min didn't stop to ask questions. She turned and ran back down the tunnel into the darkness. She could hear herself panting, sense the fear radiate off of her like a stink, feel the burning in her shoulder, but she still had to run. Min had to get away, no matter what.

In moments, the darkness was almost complete around her. The floor became looser, softer, but interspersed with loose stones that pinched her bare feet or made her wince with every step. She hurried with hands on either side to keep her upright, but that meant she couldn't feel the way ahead of her, and eventually her luck ran out when she crashed into the end of the tunnel and fell down with a cry and the sound of dirt falling on her head.

Min lay in the dark, stunned, seeing red in her vision with nothing beyond it but pure blackness. She pushed up to her knees, covered her mouth and nose to try and stifle the sound of her breathing the way that her mother had taught her, but knew it was no use.

When she looked back and saw a pair of dark, chestnut-golden eyes in front of hers, Yasemin screamed, only to feel a very large set of fingers and hand clamp over her mouth, muffling the remainder of it. What she presumed to be the other hand cuffed the side of her head, and Min saw red again as she fell to the floor on her side.

Her entire head hurt. It felt like she was momentarily disconnected from herself, looking down on herself, as she was rolled onto her belly in the soft dirt, compressing her breasts beneath her own bulk. She took a shivering, hissing breath and blinked slowly, not that it made any difference--the darkness was total around her, whether her eyes were shut or open.

The figure grabbed one of her wrists, then the other, binding them at the small of her back, pressing the side of her ringing head into the dirt bed beneath her. The other was pushing her legs apart, allowing the figure was to kneel down between them.

"Let go of me!" she tried to say, but what came out was a slurry of syllables and pain. She tasted blood--the blow appeared to have reopened her broken lip.

Then a feeling that was at once foreign and immediately recognizable brushed between her legs--at once like a probing finger, but...different. It was longer, thicker, tipped with a claw that could've ripped her belly open, but instead brushed so very delicately across the slit between her opened thighs. It was followed by a growl, wordless but all too understandable, a wordless demand for obedience. The sound was different from the bear's: it was higher-pitched, but somehow even more dangerous. Min shivered, sucked on her bloody lip, and held still like a good girl. She was in the stranger's clutches, completely at their mercy.

When she didn't struggle, the clawed finger retreated. What she felt next in the blackness was unlike anything she'd felt before: it was hot, thick but delicately smooth, with a tapered tip like a blade. It found the soft, if slightly soiled lips to her waiting pussy and pushed inside her with a long, steady motion.

It wasn't like what she'd imagined, if only because Min had nothing to base her imagination on. She felt a prick, a burning sting that made her gasp and cry out, then the feeling of being so full that she kept gasping, over and over. Her cunt was full from end to end, and she whined with every breath, not knowing what to feel, not hating it, but too afraid that the creature--whatever he was--would lose patience and use his claws on her.

The male, for by then he was undoubtedly male, began to move. He released her hands, but as she started to push up, he growled again--Min immediately relented, her breasts and sore shoulders resting on the floor, hands in place. He curled his clawed fingers around her hips and pulled her up, higher onto her knees as he started rutting with her, thrusting into her pussy with a firm, deep rhythm. She gasped with surprise at the new sensations, marveling at the feeling of a true, genuine cock in her belly, rather than some imitation phallus or her own fingers.

"Ohhhhhh," she moaned, clenching her hands to fists. She wanted to push up, to feel him deeper, but she held as still as his hard, steady fucking allowed. "Who...who are you?" she said, her voice somewhere between a sob and a cry of pleasure. "Why are you...doing this...ngh, goddess!...to me?!"

He didn't answer. The thrusts only continued, going faster, harder. There was nothing in her fantasies about her first time with a man belonging to a stranger at the bottom of a deep hole, but the sounds of his flesh slapping against hers, his huge hands squeezing her, the way he didn't stop or slow down for even a second, even the way pain and discomfort melted and melded together with pleasure and the new delight of having a real cock inside of her--all of it made Min want more. She felt ashamed for enjoying it, angry at this brute of a male for taking her so roughly.

Then, something changed, something she could've never expected: in spite of his driving rhythm, Min felt a tension in her new lover, in how his fingers trembled and the sounds of his breathing turned soft and panicked, laced with a very soft, bestial whine. His cock pounding her pussy began to fill and swell; something very thick and solid began to beat against her battered cunny-hole. She cried out, fists curling tight, her quim spasming; in seconds it seemed so tight that Min was sure her body was about to split open. She pushed up to her hands and knees, back arching, mouth opening wide. As the swollen hardness of his dick continued to thicken, and the rounded base of him pounded her pussy lips, she moaned, then groaned, then cried aloud in mingled delight and bewilderment.

The rounded bulb pierced her, locked him in place inside of her. Min had never felt anything like it before in her life and she bellowed with a noise that was less a scream and more a wild, unrestrained wail--it shouldn't have felt good, but it did, oh, how it did. Her head hung down between her shoulders and her ass bounced like she was possessed, bucking backwards against his hard loins. She was shaking all over, climaxing without having so much as touch herself.

When he started to cum she wailed again, overjoyed as the feel of his swollen cock pulsing and tensing in her cunny, as the sensation of that swollen bulb of flesh spasming and pulling inside of her, at the delicious feeling of him grinding against her innermost pleasure points. Her belly was a white-hot center of nerves, of liquid fire and pressure and every sweet, sweet spurt of his spunk made it swell inside her just a little bit more.

Min found herself on the floor of the hidden den, her smoldering belly pressed into the earth, her legs opened as wide as she could make them go while her nameless assailant and lover covered her, seeming more like a protector and claimant with every passing second. She tried to speak, hiccuping from the shock of his seed continuing to flow and pour into her womb. "What...who..." Min licked her lips, tasting dirt, feeling too good to care. "Why did you...?"

Reaching above her head, she could feel his neck and shoulders: they were broad, very thick, and covered with bristling fur like the bear that had chased her, or the wolf that--she guessed--had saved her life. But it wasn't a wolf: this was a man, a creature with long arms and clawed hands. There was a sound like twigs cracking above her head, startling Min from her sexual reverie for a moment until his cock jerked and pulled the knot hard against the walls of her abused cunt; she gasped and squealed, sucking on her bloody lip as another orgasm made her shudder and shake, rutting in the dirt for a moment until she went still, whimpering with every breath.

Then the man licked her shoulder: fire of a different kind shot through her arm and chest and she screamed from the shock of it as much as the pain. She felt him turn, heard him spit into the dirt. "This is going to hurt." His voice was low, soft--not tender, but the sort of softness she might spy in a grey cloud as the lightning flashed and the rain fell onto her naked flesh; the softness she imagined the wolf's fur might be, even as he bared his teeth at her; the softness of her mother's long, sweet kisses, while also knowing the fiery temper she possessed.

Min's world became repetitive, unpleasant flashes of lightning as he continued to lick at her open wound, spitting blood out of his mouth, pinning down her hands when she tried to stop him, and the wonderful hum of his swollen cock in her belly as he shifted and moved, sending sparks of sweet pleasure through her core, down her thighs and up into her breasts, leaving a tingling in her nipples. One orgasm turned into another, and then another, and even more. Min was trembling after a time of withstanding both sensations, but eventually his licking slowed and then stopped entirely, while his cock slowed its expelling of seed into her pussy until it, too, stopped.

"There, better," he said.

"Speak...mmph...for yourself." Min giggled after she said it, which caught her by surprise.

"Try to move your arm," he ordered.

She did so, and was surprised by how the pain had lessened. When she reached over to gently probe at the injured flesh, she felt that it was whole again--it made her gasp, turn her head to look up at him, although of course it was still pitch black and she couldn't see anything except for the faintest glimmer of his eyes.

"What did you do?"

"I healed you," he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Who are you? What are you?" she said. She felt full and swollen herself, but that was no surprise given how much cum he'd poured inside of her. "Why did you...take me?" she added, in a whisper.

"I am a child of Kelash, the She-Wolf," he said. "I was chasing the creature that attacked you. I saved your life: you were infected with the sickness that tainted him. Had I not removed it, you would be dead by nightfall." He spoke in the same soft tone, but his voice allowed her no room for argument, as though what he said was the truth and she simply had to accept it.

"But...why did you..." Her voice halted, faltering as she brushed her fingers across her hip and lower belly, still pressed into the soft earth. She was swollen with his copious amount of seed by then, and now that the immediate pleasure was fading, she was as much puzzled by his forceful claiming as to why he'd taken her at all. "Did you...desire me?" she said, unsure how to phrase the question, wishing her mother had taught her more about the ways and behaviors of men.

"I claimed you," he said. His tone wasn't unkind, given the circumstances. "I have need of you elsewhere. Putting my mark and my scent on you will protect you on the journey ahead."

"Journey?" Min was so startled she tried to pull away; his swollen knot held, and she slumped back to the ground with a small fit of trembling of pain and pleasure. "But I, I can't--"

"Hush," he said, and she felt his hand press tight to her mouth again.

At first she didn't understand why, then she heard it: "Yasemin?!" It was her mother's voice, fearful and frantic, but from very far away. "Yasemin, where are you?"

"Say nothing," the man ordered, with a hint of a growl as before. "Don't cry out."

Min tried to push his hand away, but his grip was like iron and her jaw ached from the pressure of it. Finally she nodded.

"Do not cry out," he repeated, then eased his grip.

"It's my mother," she told him. "She's worried for me."

"That matters not," he said, beginning to pull back. "My need of you does not concern her." There was a firm pressure, her cunt protesting at him pulling away from her, then a wet pop and the feeling of warm jizz gushing from between her legs, pooling and spilling into the dirt.