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Anthro Sex Squad Story 3 - Oaky's Story By Killenor Arc 1 - Origins Chapter 12

"Where could he be?" Ermana said worriedly as she ducked past another low-hanging tree.

"For the fourth time..." Winky grumbled, adding 'you crazy nag' under his breath, "I have no idea. Though from what I saw, we're dealing with some form of water-fey. Now I know I could sense the remnants of the sex you two shared until they disappeared, and given that there is an underwater tributary running right through here, I expect we're on the right path. Now, if you have nothing useful to add..."

"How can you tell? There might be nothing but dirt beneath our feet." the sorceress said, a little grumpy with the attitude her companion was displaying.

"See how the trees and plants here are greener? Hm? See the different species and growth patterns that suspiciously seem to follow this trail? Trust me, there is water not a handful of paces beneath our feet."

Try though she might, Ermana simply could not follow what Winky had said. As much as she compared plants and trees, they all looked "just green" to her sensibilities. As for species... well she could tell a rose from star-weed, but beyond that, a plant was a plant.

"I wonder if the blight has anything to do with this." Ermana said thoughtfully, grasping at straws for something to do while they walked.

"What blight?" Winky said a little condescendingly, "There's no blight here."

"Oaky had mentioned a blight near his village... something that would cause them to move for generations." Ermana replied.

"Not that I doubt a student of naturae to know a blight from a bottle... but I've been to each corner and edge of this forest and I tell you, I've seen no diseases, no mysterious tree-death, and no sigh of wasting animals. Clearly it must be out of my purview or something completely different."

"All I've seen unnatural here are the large amount of fey-presence I've noticed..." Ermana pointed, "but I don't honestly know much about the natural world."

"Fey aren't unnatural," Winky said more sharply than he thought he would, "They're just... not from this sort of nature. I... I'm not sure how I know that, but I know it's true."

Ermana cocked her head at the strange snakeman's outburst, the way he spoke giving her pause. The attitude he expressed was foreign to her. Indeed, never had she heard anyone express the view that the fey were anything besides otherworldly creatures out to impose their own alien concepts upon the land. She had seen the more-or-less innocuous flavors of fey; water sprites, brownies, kapala, as well as a few of the more terrifying varieties that stole souls, flayed bodies, or twisted honest lusts into horrid perversions. But never had she thought that these creatures were not simply horrible tricks the pantheon played upon mortals.

Confronted with the thoughts that the fey-folk might just be living their lives according to some other set of rules occupied her mind. While she pondered, she found herself simply following Winky. Her only other distraction was a hope that Oaky was still well.

***

How long had it been?! Oaky couldn't tell... he had guessed it to be hours. The voices had come and gone, so had the draining presence.

He felt withered... violated. Something had pulled at his very essences, completely uncaring for his sentience or his feelings. He felt tired, no, exhausted, and yet he couldn't rest. Everything from his waist down felt uncomfortably dry, especially now that his magicks were gone and the spells that could preserve him for days without a drop of moisture were dissipated. It made the rest of him feel dry despite the thick, wet mud surrounding the rest of him.

A sound.

A worm chewing on dirt, right next to his head. Right next to his tympanic membrane. So close he could imagine the little thing ignorantly chewing its way right into his head. Wouldn't that be a way to go, he thought grimly, eaten alive by a hungry worm while his captors held him there... while his friends couldn't find him.

But wait... a worm! He had to try, even if the attempt was in vain.

"Friend worm," he croaked, deepening his voice as best he could, keeping his lips sealed to keep out the mud, "worm, can you hear me?"

It kept up its near silent munching.

"Please worm, I must have your aid."

"What aid nature-child?" came a tentative reply, "What could I do?"

"I must let someone know I'm here. I've been taken captive! You must tell all you pass that I am trapped. Tell them where I am." Oaky pleaded.

"Many words... I don't understand them. I don't know 'captive' or 'trapped'... also I care naught where I am. I care only that there is the dirt and within the dirt is food." the worm said softly, "and I doubt there is any offer that would make me happy. I want for nothing."

Oaky's mind raced for ideas. What could someone offer a worm? For something that lived in dirt, ate dirt, and feared nothing save perhaps drowning... what reward could be given? At last Oaky had to admit defeat.

"Be about your way friend worm. May your path be ever full of enjoyment." Oaky said with sadness.

The worm continued nonchalantly, returning to its normal routine, its tiny feral brain simply too simple to comprehend or remember what had just transpired or that the large object was anything other than some sort of obstruction. Absently, it found a pocket of decayed grass root and made its way upward, munching on the new rich source of plant matter.

Now totally defeated, Oaky felt himself slip into the semi-conscious nightmare of delirious despair.

***

Myco's eyes opened in the darkness. The light, rattling breathing beside him could only be Sassafras, fast asleep. He shuddered for a moment at the thought of her aged form... making 'love' to it. He had been pretending to sleep, carefully timing his own breathing to imitate the rhythm of many oft-spied slumberers he had observed through the years. He waited until Sassafras had dropped off and then a bit more for good measure. Those legs hanging from the ceiling had been bothering him all night. He simply had to know more.

Stealthily he slipped from the bedding, careful not to make the slightest of noises. Indeed he could recall several times in his larcenous career when it was not the loud noises, but the soft and unusual ones that woke a sleeping target. Knowing the magicks ensorcelled into the fountain room, he was taking no chances. His practiced feet padded silently down the long stairway to the room proper while his eyes scanned carefully for any sign that the fey were about.

As he suspected, they had abandoned this place of indulgence, likely as soon as Sassafras had retired for the evening. From all the fey-stories and faerie tales he had heard though his life, he doubted they fey cared at all for the indulgences they provided to the aged councilwoman. No, he thought, they must be getting heavy sums in return for all this.

The slick, smooth mosaics that covered the walls would be nigh impossible to scale, even had he all his gear handy. These walls were built only with decor in mind.

Thinking quickly, Myco decided to arrange the now-empty tables and chairs, stacking them in such a way that he could climb up and reach the inset dirt wall closer to the ceiling. Scrambling over the lip of the mosaic, he found that his fingers gripped easily into the firm-yet-malleable clay. Marveling at how easily it was to climb this material and wondering at how the cavern managed to stay up at all, he made his way toward the dangling legs. In the end, he simply concluded that it was some sort of fey-magicks holding the place together.

***

Oaky's breath was quick with panic and his pupils strained to open further, to prevail against the total blackness. Something was working its way beneath him! He was exposed... defenseless... and now something was going to ravage his tender skin.

"Hello?"

No... he was imagining it. What could be speaking to him? Was he losing his mind?!

"Hello there?" the voice came again, this time accompanied by a poke to his knee, "Are... are you alive?"

It was the worm hole! That's how he could hear it! That tiny line of air carried the sound through the mud, right to his head!

"HELP ME!!!" Oaky screamed at the top of his voice, his ejaculation earning him a mouthful of silty mud, "By the... By... HELP!"

Now something grabbed him around the ankle.

"I might be able to pull you free... but you're hanging many feet above ground. This clay is strong and firm, yet soft enough for your hands. You must be ready to grip to it as I free you."

Oaky struggled to comprehend, but slowly felt the earthen grip around him slip. Like shedding his skin, the wet, clingy muck slid from all around him, pulling off slowly but steadily. Now his whole belly was exposed... now his chest. Experimentally he flexed his fingers, finding them much more maneuverable as the mud parted from him. He gripped for a moment, causing his liberator to strain at his pulling.

"Just a little more..." the voice grunted, "be ready to hold yourself."

Finally his head cleared the ceiling and Oaky found himself dangling rather painfully by his short little arms. Bleary-eyed he recognized the general form of another toad hanging from the ceiling, his fingers buried in the muck but somehow able to hold himself up.

"Alright, now you've got to hold on and make your way with me to the wall, we can cl... ... Oaky?" said the toad, "Oaky is that you?"

Then it struck him... Oaky knew that voice! That reedy whine of a croak could only belong to one toad. Worse yet, after being trapped in mud, that voice sounded infinitely more annoying. Worse yet, he could swear he still heard the sound of rushing water.

"Myco," Oaky croaked wearily, "Let's get down... we'll talk later."

Straining against gravity, the pair made their way back to Myco's makeshift ladder. As Oaky's feet touched the dry wood, he felt as if his skin would surely crack from dryness.

"Water," he said hoarsely, attempting in vain to clear the layer of grime from his eyes that he may see clearly.

"There is a fountain over this way," Myco pointed ineffectually toward the source of most of the room's light. Noticing how Oaky looked around, Myco took his arm and lead him, limping, to the stoneworked edge.

Immediately the dehydrated toad threw himself into the cool, clean water that filled the fountain's basin. Hope and vitality returned in small measure as his skin drank in what moisture it could. Gratefully he flexed his webbed toes about, feeling sensation return to them as the water penetrated his dry, burning skin. Satisfied that he wasn't about to lose his feet to lack of water, Oaky began scrubbing furiously at the dirt that remained caked onto his upper body.

He did not get to finish.

A huge surge of water ejected the tortured toad from the basin, depositing him roughly upon the slippery tiles of the chamber floor. Myco ran to him offering a supportive hand that went at odds with the terrified look upon his face. Oaky blinked in surprise as his near-fully recovered eyesight treated him to an otherworldly display.

The water of the fountain rose up, taking first the shape of a naked female human, but quickly metamorphosed into something altogether more serpentine.

Both toads now shrank back in terror at the huge form arching up from the stonework basin. It made none of the familiar snake-sounds, but the thunder of rapidly rushing water filled the chamber. Powerful hind legs worked to scoot the pair back toward the wall, though to their surprise, before they reached the vertical tiles, a pair of hands, each of earthen might, grasped them roughly and firmly across the shoulders. Just then, a breeze picked up, adding a windstorm to the sound of rushing water and sliding earth.

Desperate for any action that would allow his escape, Oaky opened his empty soul, hoping upon hope to draw in ANY sort of magicks. Anything that would allow him to escape this nightmare.

The wind died down, the water snake diminished, and the earthen grasp weakened its grip upon the toads. Magicks filled the void within Oaky, but these were magicks that were never meant for mortals to bear. A cry welled up from within as the young nature-child found himself filled to bursting with energies that belonged in another reality, something that his fragile body was never meant to contain.

The fey had drained him well, there could be no doubt, but now their prowess at tormenting mortals was their great undoing. The emptiness they had created pulled at their essences, replacing the void with portions of their own being.

Light shined, pouring from Oaky's eyes, nostrils, and mouth in fountains of liquid brilliance. The magicks swept across the room, pushing back the fey as they struggled in vain to hold their essences within them. The hands of clay and earth now flaked into dust and silt, whisps of the wind-fey turned to vacuum and pulled themselves into nothingness, and the water-fey hissed and congealed into salts and steam. In only moments the lights faded and the fey assailants were gone. The only occupants left in the room were Oaky and the cowering, shivering form of Myco.

"Get up you waste of an egg," Oaky said in a voice that wavered as if it no longer belonged in this world, "We must away before they come back. I assume you know the way out?"

Myco recovered himself just enough to agree. Knowing that the best way to avoid trouble was to not get caught, his thieving mind and survival instincts guided them stealthily out of Sassafras's house.

Behind them, the only sound that broke the night was the aged councilwoman's snores.