Unexpected danger

In the morning Anja prepares a cook fire with a spark of her magic and she cooks some of the food brought from her keep. You joke with her, feeling almost like she is a friend or a human lover, and when the food has been prepared she serves you a plate and feeds you morsels with her fingers.

She washes the tin plates with water from the canteens and as she does you watch her at the mire's edge, bent over, the curve of her ass barely hidden by the ruffles of her skirt. Your prick begins to stir at the sight. No. You need to be on your way. The Mire is not a place to relax and picnic.

You are on your way soon after. You are heading into the deep mire and the willows form a dark canopy overhead so that you seem to almost be traveling through an endless, stinking cave. You are waist deep in a particularly stagnant body of water when Anja hisses and gestures you to silence. She cocks her head like a dog listening to distant animal sounds. She takes hold of your arm and pushes you towards one of the nearby willows.

"Climb as high as you can," she urges. "I will use my magic to deal with it."

"Deal with-"

"There's no time," she shouts and you can see the concern, maybe even fear, in her expression.

You turn and run for the tree, splashing through the deep water. As you near one of the willows you can hear something moving behind you. Anja shouts in a language you can't understand, but you keep running until you can climb the trunk of the nearest tree. Once you are in the branches you look out and see a horror beyond your wildest expectations.

Anja is facing off against a huge and very strange beast with many tentacles that has emerged from the swamp waters. One rubbery gray-green appendage is wrapped tightly around her arm. She strains and fights against it. The beast is twice the size of the forest bears you've seen in the woods near Gutandor. It has no limbs (other than the tentacles) and seems to be a massive lumpy head with a monstrous, alien face covering most of its horrid body.

Anja shouts and with a flash of magic the tentacle gripping her wrist parts as though cut with a knife and she dances away. The creature splashes towards her on a writhing pedestal of tentacles.

The beast's flesh is gray and covered in stinking swamp slime and plant matter. Its gaping maw is shockingly pink and lined with hundreds of razor sharp teeth. It looks large enough to swallow her whole. Fleshy red tendrils, like thin tentacles, wriggle in the creature's mouth where a tongue might be. Many thick, gray tentacles move towards her.

Anja sidesteps most of these with inhuman agility. One snares her wrist and another her leg. She begins to shout in her language. You expect the tentacles to break apart as the first had, but nothing seems to happen. More tentacles wrap around her thigh, her other arm, her waist, and her neck. These tendrils drag her closer to the creature and for a moment you a sure she is about to be eaten...or worse.

There is a bright flash and a thunderclap and a shockwave that ripples across the water and you see a shimmering sphere of light that resolves as a huge, dog-headed, muscular demon. The creature holds an iron flail in one massive fist and a hooked sword in the other. The tentacled beast howls in alarm and releases Anja, but it is too late. As she falls back the dog-headed demon leaps atop the swamp beast and begins striking it with the flail producing splatters of black blood and lumps of torn flesh. Tentacles lash the attacking demon and it swipes its sword, gathering them up in the hook at the end of the blade and then severing them so that they flop in the water like so many dying eels.

The swamp beast howls with rage and pain as the dog-headed demon rides its sinking body into the swamp, stabbing and flailing the creature again and again until it stops moving. When the demon is sure the beast is dead it stands in the swamp and looks to Anja. They exchange words and you can feel that the subject of their conversation quickly turns to you. The dog-headed demon flicks its eyes to where you stand in the tree, barks something in its language, and simply disappears. The water rushes in to fill the void it leaves behind.

Anja is bruised and bloodied and exhausted, but otherwise unharmed.

"I've never seen one so large," Anja says as you clean and bandage her wounds. "They breed with humans and turn them into hosts for their horrible offspring. It couldn't have done that to me, but it could have tried until it killed this body or it might have eaten me."

"You saved me," you say and kiss her forehead.

"You are my master now and I will do anything to protect you."

You study her carefully. Though she does not seem injured she does seem to be drained of her magical energy. You feel well enough and you are strangely aroused by her turn as a heroine. Perhaps now would be a time to give her another piece of energy. On the other hand, it is not far until you reach the edge of the Mire. If you travel quickly you could make it before nightfall.

She looks at you expectantly.