.
It was a patrol of wraiths and hags on foot. That was fortunate in one way; we had time to react. But it was unfortunate in another; they would be inspecting the ground as they walked it. They were coming long enough after we put out the fire that I didn’t think they had spotted the smoke, but if they found the fire, they would be able to tell it was fresh. The ashes would still be warm.
“Let’s move,” I told her quietly.
“Where?”
“We’ll get close to that alraune,” I stated. “She’ll help disguise our presence.”
She frowned as she started heading into the woods. “I never told you about her.”
“Miss Brigitte, you didn’t need to. She’s an alraune. I can feel her as clear as if she were standing next to me.”
As we moved closer to our destination, the patrol reached the edge of the woods. I whispered to Brigitte, “Go ahead and use your stealth.”
“I thought you didn’t think it would work on demons.”
“I don’t believe it would work on higher demons like imps. These are just wraiths and hags. I’ll grab you if it turns out that I’m wrong, though.”
Having said that, I went into Cloak. It was moderately easier to do in this forest. It had a limited amount of luminescent plant life, so it was darker here than out in the open. It wasn’t a solid darkness, but there were shadowed places all around me, providing me with thicker mana.
My Lady, you wouldn’t mind feeding us with a bit more mana, just to be safe? Durandal asked. He sounded nervous.
He spent four thousand years as a cursed blade, so I suppose he had cause to worry. I put my hand on his pommel and coated him inside the scabbard. A bit later, I noticed a thin thread of the Healing mana streaming to Lucy.
We reached the clearing where the alraune stood. She was in the middle, standing at the center of a cluster of gigantic dandelion leaves. Her human figure did not have the green skin and hair one might have seen in RPGs. Alraunes use a human palette, and this one possessed a Caucasian color scheme. She had honey-colored hair and fair skin, all of which was fully visible, including the perfectly human-like naughty bits.
Below the leaves, green tendrils as much as three inches thick snaked through the moonglow grass. If she were desperate, she could use these tendrils to uproot herself and move to a new location, but her mobility was poor. The ability to relocate was a vestige of her juvenile self. If at all possible, she would prefer to live her entire life in this spot.
It was a pretty typical spot, as a clearing within a relatively short walk of water. They prefer clearings because they feed on both sunlight and mana. She might not be knowledgeable enough to realize that she couldn’t get much from the light in this cavern, so she would continue to uproot any wannabe trees within her reach to maintain the clearing.
The reason for the nearness of water, other than the obvious need for water that any plant has, is that alraunes send out their young into the water. Their offspring are little nymph-like creatures called korrigan babies, who gradually grow into beautiful teenager-like korrigans, water maidens who seek out prey on foot until they are ready to settle down. Then they find a spot like this one and put down roots, sending out leaves and tendrils to become adult alraunes.
This alraune was facing the edge of the forest that we had just left. Currently, her eyes were closed and her arms were folded under her abundant, naked breasts and she was humming quietly to herself while swaying back and forth slightly. More than likely, she was asleep. She spent most of her life asleep, preserving her mana and energy between prey.
The absent-minded, barely active dance was just habitual behavior. When she awoke and faced a potential intelligent prey, she would become more vigorous, singing while weaving intoxicating Light magic into her melody and swaying her sexy nude figure to the music in an erotic fashion, seductively caressing and fondling her anatomy, all in order to lure her prey into range of her tendrils. Once she caught and paralyzed them, she would drag them in, then suck out their blood for the mana and nutrients. Once the prey died, she would slowly consume the body one bite at a time over the course of a few days. There would be no defecation. She digested everything completely.
As far as anyone can tell, one cannot civilize an alraune. For centuries, Orestanian scientists have studied a transplanted alraune in the Royal Botanical Gardens who is kept alive on a diet of mana-feeding tools, animal carcasses and the occasional death row prisoner. Despite so much study, they still classify her under the category of “irredeemable monsters”. It’s probably because there is no real way for them to integrate into mortal society. Vampires can find lots of reasons to get along with mortals, but mortals have never been able to show alraunes any benefit.
As I mentioned, this was a small one. A bigger one would have the same size adult human figure, but her leaves and her tendrils would extend much further out. Their tendril reach can be more than ten paces. This one was barely four. She might be very new, but it was more likely she economized her size due to lack of good prey.
I was following the demon patrol in my fairy sense as we waited. Possibly, Brigitte also could sense it from where we were, but I went ahead and reported in a whisper, “They found our campfire.”
They remained gathered around it for some time, examining it and the other debris we had left, then began working their way into the forest. I had been keeping a keen watch out for reconnaissance tools like spy-eyes and hadn’t seen any, so when they had headed directly toward us, it was an ugly surprise. But still, they were headed in the direction of the alraune. I guessed that they saw her, not us. After all, I picked this spot so they would find something here and move on.
“I’ll probably grab you if they get too close,” I warned in another whisper. “Don’t freak out.”
She probably could tell from the direction of my voice that I had moved, and was standing right behind her now. She was only faintly visible in front of me, but I think she nodded.
The demons appeared at the edge of the clearing, a group of six wraiths and two hags. According to the demonologists in Orestania, these are probably males and females of the same demonic species. Whether that’s true or not, they are both class E demons, on the scale that runs from G for gidim up to SSS for the Demon King.
Wraiths are the classic demons in dark hooded cloaks. Although none of them were equipping one, they would look totally right carrying a scythe. If you peel the cloak back, they look just a little bit melted, like a certain final boss that a certain British magic student battles. These likely wore some sort of armor under their cloaks, because their hands were encased in gauntlets, which were holding a variety of standard melee weapons. However, the cloaks over that armor were part of their body, a sort of demonic equivalent of a fairy’s raiment.
The two hags weren’t what you are probably picturing from the name. Hags are a bit on the sexy gothic side. They’re no Elviras, but they’re reminiscent of Morticia Addams. They have long, straight hair, either black or white, and wear long black dresses with plunging necklines, tight bodices and skirts that match well with the wraiths’ cloaks.
Their dresses and the wraiths’ cloaks both have indistinct hems, having some sort of stealth effect that muffles their footsteps and helps them maintain a gliding, ghostlike motion. And, just like the cloaks, the dresses are actually extensions of the hags’ bodies.
An examination of a wraith or hag corpse will confirm that they have legs just like all the other demons of rank F and higher. Demonologists have yet to explain how their locomotion that doesn’t look like walking actually works.
Hags are the lowest level demons known to exhibit magic powers, so these might be low-level mages, but they were both carrying bows at ready, so they probably mostly acted in the archer role.
The presence of the demons disturbed the alraune’s sleep. She came awake and began singing a wordless theme, rocking to and fro, while alternately beckoning to the demons with her arms and stroking her body. As Brigitte and I were standing behind her, her naked posterior was tracing a very alluring figure-eight for us. Her stalk, from where it split at her “ankles”, just above the leafy base, up to the pelvis, was a pair of humanlike legs that actually slid up and down against each other to allow her to dance. Although she kept them together now, she once had feet and walked on that pair of legs. The independence of her lower limbs granted her very convincing hip and thigh motion.
Even though her mental attack couldn’t work on me, her visual attack was working a little too well. I had to tear my eyes off that somewhat enticing rump. I needed to focus on the demons.
And on Brigitte. She was staring straight at the monster plant with ears beginning to relax, and I feared she would drop her stealth, so I grabbed onto her as I extended my Cloak over her. I also increased its strength to cover sound and smell. She jerked in my arms, then relaxed and nodded slightly, realizing she’d been falling for the alraune’s voice.
The sexual enticement was just a secondary part of her allure. As a korrigan, she had used it as her primary weapon, but as an alraune she relied upon the hypnotic effect of her magical song first, just like a lorelei or a siren. If one was attracted to her sexually, it was just the final nail in the coffin.
A couple of the wraiths ended up transfixed, watching the alraune who was concentrating her attention on them. I was morbidly fascinated by the scene, wondering what would happen to her if she attempted to feed on them. As a fellow monster, the result would be highly instructive for me.
But one of the hags hit them both with a flat palm and hissed angrily, jolting them back to their senses. Meanwhile, the other produced a gnarled root, perhaps fifteen inches long. She held it up and began hissing an incantation, revealing her role as a mage.
With another few short words from the first hag, unintelligible to me, the group began walking around the perimeter of the clearing, and, much to my alarm, circled around to the back, where we were. An alraune can turn on her stalk roughly two hundred degrees, so she rotated to face them, abandoning her dance. She would shift into a fighting posture if attacked, but for now she was just remaining vigilant.
I shifted my arms to Brigitte’s chest and waist, which made for an awkward armful since she was wearing a pack, and grew my wings, getting ready to take off if needed.
The group of demons weren’t walking in three ranks. One trio formed a skirmish line, possibly hoping to run into an invisible enemy. It looked like they might have some idea that we were here. Perhaps, contrary to my belief about her abilities, the hag mage had been able to penetrate Brigitte’s stealth.
The hags fell into their positions as back-liners, following the line of wraiths. The other trio formed up behind the hags. The mage continued to clutch her root while the first hag, apparently in charge from how she had issued an order before, kept an arrow nocked in her bow. The group swung around the clearing with the wraiths remaining three abreast as they circled it. When they began drawing closer to us, I prepared to take to the air.
Instead, I froze, as the two wraiths on the outside in the back row, farthest from the alraune, suddenly blew over, knocking into a third wraith, as if something had struck them from the side.
