The green mother arrives

Despite your efforts Brigette remains insensate in your arms. Your slaps only bring a deeper green to her cheeks. You stop at once. “Brigette,” you sob. You look her up and down, your eyes suddenly alighting on the vine still impaling your sister’s cunt. Disgust fills you. You grab the vine with both hands.

Something thumps to the floor behind you.

You whirl about, half rising to your feet, tense and ready. Framed in the doorway by the grim light of the corridor’s light is a tall, slender woman. Her figure is strange, like wood warped into the ideal female figure. Two proud breasts nearly as large as Brigette’s jut from her chest, smooth and firm as two literal melons, even lacking nipples. She has wide child bearing hips that descend into a pair of slender legs. The hair which streams back from her brow is lush and green, a carpet of moss dotted with the same blackish flowers which you have seen on the vines upon the walls. She has a breathtakingly beautiful face, unbearably feminine but matronly too, and her eyes are merely a pair of glowing red lights like two willow-the-wisps. Not even the two branches growing from her brow like the antlers of a deer detract from her beauty. Before her is a bag of soil that her hands, fingers brown and gnarled like branches, had just dropped.

She stares at you with surprise. “Oh come now!” she exclaims suddenly with a violent gesture at you. “I leave for five minutes to gather more soil and look what happens! Have you any idea how hard it is to grow a hasterum this quickly from a single demon seed?”

You shudder. You recognize this demon. A Striga, or Swamp Witch. Once dryads, they had become corrupted by demons and now serve to lure men and women to their dooms, feeding them to their trees, reproducing their trees by growing them from the corpses of their victims. In the ancient days there were whole forests dedicated to such creatures.

You snap back to attention as the demon moves to enter the room. You jump to your feet leaving Brigette to fall on the soil. You raise the sword of Saint Magdalene, instantly feeling a pang of guilt at handling the weapon like a paladin should, but you gird yourself from the shame, your eyes hard as you level the weapon as you had been trained.

The tree woman stops just over the threshold. She is entrapped in darkness like a shroud, but her eyes continue to glow red within it, two menacing dots of light within the greater darkness.

“You raise steel against me?” she asks, sounding more offended than angered.

“Silence, demon,” you snap back, spreading your legs for a better stance. “What have you done to sister Brigette?”

“Oh!” She starts back up. “Well! You really want to know? How lovely! Most people don’t bother asking. And I work so hard on it too. You see,” the demoness continues, positively elated, “first, I took a demon seed, but not just any, one of my own. Now, usually it can take some time to grow a whole hasterum from scratch. Usually it kills the host as we do so, and the plant grows from the corpse. Now, I don’t need to tell you how awfully inefficient that is. So I have been trying to come up with a much more efficient way.

“Needless to say,” the striga adds, pressing her gnarled fingers into her heavy breasts, “I accomplished it. And the summoning offered a golden chance to test it. You see, the human body can provide far more nutrients and life if properly managed. The hasterum,” she said, indicating the massive plant behind you, “is the result. Unlike a demon tree which simply eats its victim, the Hasterum plant traps them and converts their body into a nutrient producing vessel. Given enough time, the Hasterum bonds with its victim, and by keeping them alive, can continue to feed from them almost indefinitely! Isn’t it wonderful!” she squealed, clasping her hands and nearly prancing in delight. “So much more efficient and much less waste! It will grow and grow, eventually becoming able to draw more thralls and defend itself independently!

“Oh, and of course,” she adds smugly, “I didn’t forget the vessels themselves. Oh no! I thought of them too. You see, using the musk of the dark lotus,” she said, tapping one of the black blossoms in her hair, “they can be enticed without even a fight, eventually becoming one with the plant, and knowing only the delights of pleasure until they have succumbed completely. Then, the hasterum can send out the extra thralls to spread its seed. Never again will they have to suffer or fight. Only know pleasure.”

You stare in horror at the plant woman. “That’s monstrous!”

She seems startled by this rejoinder, even taking a step back as if you dealt her a physical blow. “W-what! Monstrous?” She glowers and regain the step, her glowing eyes blazing. “How dare you! Can’t you see the beauty of it all? Humans can now join with the plant mother truly! Pah! But how could I expect such a…a…plebeian to understand my genius.

“But I guess I should have expected as much from a tool of your tight, virgin cunt of a goddess. Fine.” She spreads out her arms before her, hands limp. “I suppose I’ll have to show you first hand.” She suddenly snaps her gnarled fingers up. You hear a slithering and cracking from behind you. You spin about, sword raised, and watch in horror as the vines of the hasterum rise from the soil about your feet and tear themselves loose from the walls. The perfume of the plant thickens in the air until it is almost like a fog as the plant creature looms above you, the red veins of its petals throbbing in the dark like the beating of a heart.

“You’re lucky you caught my baby before it could grow enough to defend itself,” the striga coos. “But don’t worry. Mother will show it how.” Her fingers clench into sudden fists, and the vines lunge for you.