The Lindworm (1/3)
Story by xax on SoFurry
in which i try my hand at rewriting fairytales. this has been sitting around mostly-finished in my computer for ages, so i figured i might as well patch up the first bit and post it, even though it's... i mean, 1/3, it does not end at the end.
some familiarity with the original fairy tale would be helpful, probably.
Once upon a time, there was a queen of a small kingdom who lived in despair, for she and her husband had been unable to conceive. She had taken to walks in the forest at the edge of their kingdom, and during one of these walks there came an old witch-woman walking along the path in the opposite direction:
"Oh dear heart," said the witch, "why do you cry such tears of sorrow?"
"It is nothing," the queen said. "Nothing that anyone can help with, at least."
"But the telling may take off some of your burden," the witch said, and so persuaded the queen spoke of her difficulty in conceiving.
"Why, your solution is as simple as rain," the witch said, afterward. "Simply take one of your large two-handed vases out to the corner of your garden, and lay it upside-down on the grass. The next morning you will find two roses there: a white one and a red one. If you eat the white one, you will give birth to a daughter; the red one, a son. But whatever you do, don't eat both! Only tragedy will befall you then."
Amazed, the queen thanked the witch profoundly, and did as she had been told: in the morning there were two roses growing under the cup, one red and one white. She picked the white one and ate its leaves, but they were so delicious and fresh that she then picked the red and ate it too, without even thinking of the witch's warning.
And so it came that the queen grew flush and round of belly, and gave birth to a beautiful son with brilliant red hair. But before that she gave birth to another: a loathsome serpent, skin damp and pallid white, with burning red eyes. The queen gave a shout of despair, remembering the witch's warning too late, and swore the midwife to secrecy, and she chased the serpent out the window even as it mewled and cried for its mother.
In time, the son grew into a fine young man, and began to think of marriage himself. He planned to head out of their kingdom, through the dark forests, to a neighboring kingdom, to propose, but when his path lead him to the forest's edge who was there waiting for him but the serpent itself, the Lindworm, grown now just as the prince had grown, into an immense serpent: body like a treetrunk, with seven burning eyes and seven hooked horns, scales gleaming white, fangs dripping with venom.
It opened its mouth and spoke:
"A wife for me before a wife for you," it said, and disturbed, the prince turned and fled, and attempted another path. But the Lindworm was there too, blocking the path: "I shall be wed before you, for that is my right as your elder sibling."
Eventually, finding every route blocked, the prince turned homeward, and the queen revealed the truth to him: that the monstrous serpent was his older sibling, and by birthright demanded the first marriage.
But so much happens "in time", and it really is quite a time for the prince and the worm to grow to marriageable age. In the mean time, plenty else was happening in that small kingdom of Thurland.
It had not been many years after the joyous announcement of the prince's birth that Hrocculf was run out of Bredeck. Not the castle town; Bredeck was a small hamlet as far from the castle as one could get and still be in the kingdom, at the very edge of the forest. And it was such a forest: blossoming with life in the spring, green and verdant in the summer, loud with the cries of birds in the autumn, and still and serene in the winter; a land all of its own, outside the realm of mortals.
Though not entirely outside: there were always the strange few, witches or bandits or simply hunters who knew the dangers, who lived in the forest, and now -- to Hrocculf -- it looked as if he was going to become one of them, or else die otherwise. Though in truth things weren't as bad as that: he'd seen it coming. One didn't seduce the vicar's son and not expect a certain amount of blowback.
He'd lived on the village outskirts already, or at least -- he'd kept a little lean-to of goods and supplies there, and usually slept in whatever bed he could. But even that meant he knew the forest far better than the watchmen that chased after him as he fled. The forest had many terrors in in, but civilized humans were hardly a concern.
What he was aware of, even in the summer when he left, was winter: winter in the forest was death to anyone unprepared, and even then to those prepared but unlucky. So he slunk through the woods, making plans, fashioning gear. He killed a boar, when one attacked him, though he picked up a messy scar across his chest from where it had gored him, and to heal that he needed to seek the aid of a woodwitch, who ground burning ointment into the wound and let him sleep in her hut as he burnt out the infection. But he still managed to tan the hide and head, and wear it as a gruesome sort of trophy. It was nice, but it wouldn't be enough come winter, and so after giving his thanks to the woodwitch he kept searching.
It was his aimless travel, always keeping at the edges of civilization, that eventually brought him to the worm. Hrocculf didn't fear any terrestrial animal, boar nor bear, but yet-deeper in the woods there was a stillness that he only noticed in retrospect, far after it would have done him any good.
He first glimpsed it through trees: a flash of white scales through the green; he froze instantly. It moved on, something unknown, some strange beast, and when he went through the forest he went softer and more gently, hoping he could at least be forewarned against whatever it was.
Living in the forest was a lesson in boundaries: a day's travel to the west was the bandit's encampment, bordering on a village itself, and the forest there always reeked of smoke. Too far south and he got too close to civilized lands; there were hunters and royal soldiers venturing through the woods. And of course there were the witches all over, woodwitches mostly, who sat their huts down wherever they pleased and all but dared land or animal to take issue. It seemed that just as much as in Thurland the forest was divided into parishes and boroughs, every part and parcel laid claim to by someone or another. But here he had stumbled into a vast splotch of dead land, nothing but trees and the smallest of animals. Neither boar nor bear, no bandits either; not even a woodwitch found this place suitable.
So one day the serpent found him. It was as simple as that: he was walking down an animal path, at the edge of what he'd thought was the then-unknown beast's territory, and when he turned around the worm was there: towering taller than a man, twice as much as that still slithering on the ground behind, a vast snake. One with sharp horns crowned across its head and seven burning red eyes, all fixed on him. Hrocculf froze in place, struck dumb by the sight: the grand snake's eyes gleaming in the dappled light, burning with a wild fury.
Perhaps it was the boar helm that saved him. Or perhaps it was just the snake's whim. Hrocculf didn't ask, even later.
The snake swam closer, until its burning eyes were all Hrocculf could see. Its mouth opened, and its tongue flit out, tasting the air. It had immense fangs: long as a man's forearm and wickedly sharp, gleaming with deadly venom. It circled Hrocculf, the coils of its body just out of reach, crushing the bushes on the sides of the path, forming a closed circle around him. It bent down close, head right in front of him, venom spilling to the ground just past Hrocculf's bare feet.
"You are not like the other humans," the Lindworm said, and Hrocculf was so struck dumb that he hardly recognized its voice, though it spoke clearly.
He was, in fact, quite like other humans, though even under the serpent's hypnotizing spell he recognized that was perhaps not the wisest answer. Certainly he was not like a witch, nor like one of the bandits preying on other men. Unusual for one living wild in the forest. He'd been eating berries and roots and the occasional deer, for six months -- well, he'd survived so far, which was perhaps more than most humans could say.
The Lindworm crooked its head, as if getting a better look, or perhaps preparing to bite; Hrocculf mumbled through stiff lips, teeth chattering as if through bitter cold. "I mean you no harm," he said; that was the only thing he could think of: to give the serpent every reason not to attack him.
The Lindworm snorted, a dry huff of breath that billowed warm over Hrocculf's clammy skin, cold with sudden sweat. "I should think not," it said, swimming to the side, slowly circling Hrocculf, coils tightening. They crushed the leaves at Hrocculf's feet, close enough to feel --
And then the snake was off, gliding further down the path without a single look back, utterly disinterested. Hrocculf stayed in place until the serpent vanished from sight, and then what felt like an eternity after that, before his legs broke under him and he collapsed on his knees, breath suddenly burning in his lungs. Certainly he hadn't been holding his breath the entire time, but he was dizzy, lightheaded, vision a mess of grey sparks. Left there without a scratch, even with the furrows of the serpent in the dirt, black splotches where its venom had soaked the soil. As if the grace of God had shone on him, like hadn't reserved his spot in Hell for corrupting the clergy.
The next day he resolved to leave, to head anywhere else aside from the land claimed by the beast, for it would surely not spare him again. That he had been a fool to tread this deep in the woods; that this was a land of demons and spirits where men had no part. And the day after that, he had calmed, or perhaps let his foolhardiness get the best of him, now that the immediate heart-stopping terror had faded, and thought that by no reason should he allow the serpent to forstill his aimless wandering.
It was on the third day after that that the serpent found him again. He was cutting his hair; trimming the growth of his beard. Obviously he couldn't get a razor out in the wild, but by the river there was grey flint, and with two flat shovels he could scrape one along the other to get a reasonable cutting edge: sharp enough for him to grab his hair in one hand and saw through it, though the process took long enough and the edges dulled quick, so frequently he had to stop and re-sharpen the flint.
He had just sawed through a clump of hair, leaving a ragged half-inch of growth cropped close to his scalp and a handful of rough hair that he tossed to the ground, when there was a stirring in the brush, and he turned, expecting a rabbit. Instead it was the serpent, the Lindworm, sliding out between two trees; the slightest touch of its body sent them creaking and sighing, boughs shuddering. Hrocculf froze, again, flint knife frozen in his bloodless hand.
The serpent made a half-circle track around him, head lowering to taste at the clumps of loose hair he'd cast to the ground, a pile of brown like the shed fur of a bear. "What are you doing?" it asked.
Hrocculf was still struck deaf and dumb by the sight of the serpent, but here he managed to answer, finally, mumbling and stuttering: "Cutting my hair."
The serpent pulled close, until its breath spilled across Hrocculf in a wash of heat, feeling like the bellows of a furnace. Its tongue flitted an inch from his head. "Why?"
Because he didn't want to end up a scraggly hermit with a beard down to his toes; because he wore his boar-skull helm, which he didn't want to plaster the inside of with oil and sweat; because it was hot in the summer and having filthy hair matted up against the boar skull seemed like an invitation to get lice. But all of those were very abstract to a snake who presumably did not have a single hair on its entire body. "Because I don't like it," Hrocculf settled for, and his voice only trembled a little.
The snake seemed disinterested in his actual response, anyway. It slithered around, dipping into the river, forming a dam that overflowed after a moment. "And that can cut it?" it asked, looking at the flint Hrocculf still had in his hand, gripped so tight his knuckles were white. "That's no more than a river rock." The disdain was evident in its voice.
Hrocculf didn't have any answer: "Humans are fragile."
The Lindworm snorted, amused. "That much I know already. Delicate as fine china."
Hrocculf didn't think to ask how a grand snake, living alone in the forest wilds, even knew of fine china.
Then it butted his arm, the contact so sharp and sudden it might as well have bit him: all the hurt in the shock of it; Hrocculf flinched back, cradling his arm as if it had been burnt. But he dropped the flint, alongside its sibling on the ground, and the snake very deliberately slithered closer, hardly inches from Hrocculf's seat, and under the bulk of its body shattered the flint blade into shards.
Despite the terror Hrocculf felt an edge of irritation; it was not easy or quick to sharpen two rocks together well enough to cut hair, and he was going to spent the next few days asymmetrical in hair and beard. Though, of course, he didn't say any of that. Perhaps the snake read some of it in his expression, scowling down at the rock shards.
Then the snake left. Again.
Encounters with the snake -- they did not become usual, because what could be usual about such a beast, but the next encounter was in passing; the snake slithering through the trees when Hrocculf was perched above. He had been past the edge of what he thought was the snake's territory, looking for game, but if the snake ventured this far out...
They didn't speak, and the snake didn't even look his direction, but there was no doubt in Hrocculf's mind that it knew he was there. Perhaps it had even gone this far out to taunt him, or at least ruin his chances of catching a deer today. But it was only afterward that he realized he hadn't found the snake threatening, as such -- that it might have followed him to be annoying, irritating, a sign of ill omen, but certainly the snake hadn't gone there to kill him.
In perhaps his wiser moments he thought himself idiotically foolish, treating the serpent as if it were a person, rather than a beast. And even then -- in this forest, the most threatening encounters were those with other humans. Once a hunter had mistaken him for a boar himself and shot an arrow that landed an inch from his head; once a bandit, where Hrocculf had trespassed into what he now knew was their land, had very deliberately thrown a knife into the tree just above him: what sufficed for a warning. If the serpent were a man, that would hardly make it less dangerous to stay around.
And yet stay around Hrocculf did. He found berries, trapped rabbits, and let his miserable burrow under the tree boughs expand into a haphazard kind of lean-to, with enough covering at least to keep out the rain and the worst of the night wind. He grew familiar with the forest -- the winding brook that flowed through the snake's terrain, the one that was called Eberbach in civilization but here was simply water; the rocky rapids upriver, thick with mossy boulders; the animal paths that were, year by year, now being overgrown from lack of use; the thickets and brambles that grew thick with gorseberries in the spring. There was always the sense that... day in and day out, he could survive, he thought. And this might be the rest of his life, being a wild man of the woods, dying not particularly old of one of the many dangers of the woods. That in the village he had had a future, perhaps, but here in the forest there was only the now.
And he survived in that now, despite an increasingly blasé reaction to sharing territory with a mythical beast.
One day he followed the river up, past the swirling pools of rapids, deeper and deeper into unknown territory, until the ground grew rocky underfoot and the trees grew to singular towering things covered in ancient black bark. And there, not five minutes walk from the river's edge, he found the snake's den. There was an outcropping of old rock, entire sheets of ground lifted and twisted as if God had caught his plough when creating the land, and there in the curled knot midway up the side, with a long twisting trail up to it, was a dark hole into the side of the cliff. Hrocculf didn't immediately surmise it was the worm's -- this was unfamiliar ground; it could have been a bear's den, or simply an old cave, unknown and anonymous. He climbed up the sandy hill, grasses rustling between the snaky river of sand, and peered into the darkness: a tunnel going down, and one that opened almost immediately into a cave with a sandy floor and grey rock walls, great beams of light shining in along the walls from what would seem to be a pair of pits at the top of the cliff, tufts of grass clinging to the edges.
That was when he began to have an inkling of where he stood. He had some survival instinct left to him, and it was screaming that the den of the serpent was the worst possible place to be: he bolted, out the cave and down the hill, panting as he splashed his way back downriver. The snake had seemed amenable -- or utterly uncaring -- to his presence otherwise, but to loiter in its den seemed too unwise even for him.
His flight didn't help him much; the snake found him before he was home. It came up from behind and swept him up in its coils, burning heat all around him, arms pinned tight to his sides. The snake could have been made from solid iron for all that it held him; utterly implacable, though Hrocculf didn't struggle: he'd seen snakes constrict until they'd broken all the bones in their prey's bodies, before finally relenting to eat the thing.
"Even the foxes dare not trespass upon me," the snake said, voice as toneless as ever.
Hrocculf may have said things: please, sorry, I didn't mean to. He was enraptured by its glowing eyes; he couldn't bear the serpent's gaze but couldn't bring himself to look away, even as its face came closer and closer, until its breath burned hot and dry against his face.
And then he was free, dumped on the ground, all the glide of snakescales across him just a sense-memory.
"Humans seem a blind and foolish sort," it said, still there, still before him.
"That's what the churchbooks say," Hrocculf agreed, after a while, once he became aware the beast wanted a reply and was capable of making one. "'God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.' 'Course, the churchbooks say if you quote scripture to a demon they'll burst into flame, and that clearly ain't an occurrence."
The snake hissed, but the kind that meant a laugh not the kind that meant it was about to strike. Or at least that was as far as Hrocculf could reckon.
"Do you not have a den of your own?" it asked, still slowly looping around him, close enough to touch.
"All I got in this world are the clothes on my back," Hrocculf said, and shrugged. "I got a tree I sleep under."
"Humans live in houses, do they not? Even the bandits build roofs."
Hrocculf didn't ask if the snake had learned 'bandits' since they last spoke, though the thought did occur to him. "Humans live wherever they can, I suppose. I'd live in a house if somebody let me, but the folks around here are all awfully queer."
The snake hummed, low, and then swept in to nudge Hrocculf's back with a coil, nearly getting him to leap out of his skin. Helping him up, was maybe what the snake thought it was doing.
And then it was off. Again. Without even so much as a goodbye.
Evidently, Hrocculf realized quite a bit later, what that had been was an invitation. He realized it when he woke on a rainy morning, unexpectedly chill -- spring had turned to summer, but it still lingered -- and found the snake watching him as he pulled his naked and shivering ass out from under the pine boughs.
"It's raining," the Lindworm said, and Hrocculf looked up at the sky: grey, with fat raindrops hitting the canopy, wreathing the ground in mist. The worm seemed cut out from the world, its white skin practically glowing, as if the sun was shining directly on it and nothing else.
"That it is," Hrocculf said. He hoped the rain didn't keep on and turn his bed into nothing more than a big patch of mud. Or ruin what little meat he'd painstakingly smoked and cured. And then the snake was off, losing interest mid-conversation. Or it had been waiting here for him to awake.
This time, Hrocculf followed its path.
It was beginning to occur to him that perhaps the snake was as curious of him as he was of it. 'Curious' wasn't the right word, and clearly their relations weren't quite symmetrical -- he doubted very much the snake had the same bone-deep bolt of terror every time it saw him -- but that perhaps it wasn't biding its time to strike, or checking up on a stubborn trespasser, but simply... curious. In some fashion.
Not that it didn't feel absurdly foolhardy to make the trek again, up the river and to the cave. He told himself he was gathering roots. But the Lindworm was there, slithering out of its den as he sloshed his way across the river shallows. And... they spoke, or at least exchanged words. The same short, enigmatic, collection of unrelated thoughts he'd started to expect from the serpent, until it grew bored and left practically between words. That was usual for it. As worrisome that Hrocculf was beginning to know the Lindworm well enough to know its usual moods.
It was not too many weeks after that, a few more meetings notched, when he realized he had not seen the serpent for several days. Not every day, or every other, but it had been strange to go a week without seeing it at all.
When he got to the serpent's den the serpent was there, a muddled smell in the air like it'd been lying there for several days. It was hissing and snapping, writhing on the floor. Its eyes were a muddy brown, and its scales were dull, grey to their usual shining white, and rumpled in places.
"Are you alright?" Hrocculf asked, though he kept his distance.
The Lindworm hissed, dragging his body over the rocks, and now Hrocculf saw his scales split, shedding small scraps. "Molting," the Lindworm snarled. "Leave me be."
Hrocculf considered it, strongly. "Could I... help?" he held up his hands. "I got hands, after all."
The Lindworm hissed again, writhing frantically across the rocks, and finally stilled, head resting on a boulder, body heaving from exertion. "Fine. But one false move and you will be dead and in my gullet."
Hrocculf stepped in, moving slow, keeping his hands away from his body, stepping closer and closer until he was right next to the immense serpent, closer than he'd even been before. Close enough to touch. "Should I--" he started, hand fluttering over the serpent's side, half-sloughed skin lumpy and furled. "I'm about to touch you," he said, instead, and did.
The Lindworm was warm, no true serpent, skin all but boiling from frenzied heat. And his scales were rough and coarse, scraping against Hrocculf's skin as he scratched, shifting and peeling away from his underscales. Hrocculf pulled, a solid sheet of shed skin stretching out from the Lindworm's body before it tore raggedly, finally revealing his new scales, the same brilliant white, damp and gleaming. Hrocculf reached inside, scratching along the edge of the shed skin -- and froze when the serpent twisted, muscles contracting under his hands as he lurched to the side. He froze for a long moment, looking up at the Lindworm's head, eyes staring down at him, before he realized it had just been the snake shifting to present another flank, another immense stretch of old skin with the border he'd been working on at the very edge.
"Well hurry it up," the Lindworm said. "Or I may rethink and swallow you alive anyway."
Hrocculf huffed, not amused by any means, but somehow... bewildered, by the turns his life had taken that had lead him here, peeling the old skin of a monstrous serpent. And the Lindworm had so much skin: he was growing continually, still, the length of five men stretched out, head as wide as Hrocculf's chest, and he was undoubtedly going to continue getting larger. Old skin, grey and dead, peeled away in sheets and fragments, and Hrocculf simply -- kept going. Up the Lindworm's body, until he was scratching at his chin, hands pressed to the underside of the Lindworm's jaw, peeling the delicate scales away from his mouth. The Lindworm opened his mouth, fangs glistening, internal flesh vivid blue-purple, and Hrocculf stilled himself, knowing that trying to run would be the most foolish option, despite how his body trembled. Instead: he pulled, more, and the end of the snakeskin came free, a ring around the serpent's mouth.
And then came the serpent's face. Old skin peeled away like a caul, dead skin over his eyes turning them muddy: when Hrocculf pulled the sheet away, he was face to face with the serpent, all seven eyes burning red, staring him down from an inch away, and despite everything he found himself rooted to the spot, unable to move or think to pull himself away from the Lindworm's hypnotizing gaze. He was a fool to step inside, and twice the fool to offer help, and now here he was, before a grand serpent, one of the deadliest creatures alive, frozen before its inevitable strike.
Then, mercifully, it looked away, breaking the spell, and presented him with the tangled mess of his horns, skin growing thicker between them as new horns budded up, puncturing through the old skin. More rough skin left to shed.
It took hours, probably. The shafts of sunlight above slid across the walls and floor, nearly gone entirely by the time Hrocculf finished. He'd grown incautious, planting his hands on the serpent's heaving sides and scraping down, catching heavy, rumpled billows of shed skin across his forearms before ultimately casting it off at the tail.
The serpent was in a foul mood afterwards, its irritation almost novel compared to its serene rudeness. But also, so new and worrisome that if Hrocculf hadn't just spent the last several hours helping it molt he would have likely feared for his life with each angry lash of the snake's body.
"So this is the mark of my life," it said. It had been on this thread for quite some time. "A wild creature, a beast, known to none of civilization. Consigned to live here in the forest for a lifetime, and then die. These skins will be all that is left of me, one day."
It rounded on him, transfixing him with its awful gaze, and didn't look away. "I'm the prince of these lands, you know." The serpent laughed, dry and humorless. "Prince Lindworm. Vile beast. The queen was blessed with child and I grew within her, along with my twin, the prince. I ought to have eaten him in the womb, poisoned them both." It -- or, he -- churned, scratching his underbelly across the raw rocks of his cave. Hrocculf just listened. "I was born mewling and helpless, as delicate as any human babe. Borne to screams and horror, knowing even then I was a horrible thing. Driven from the room -- from my mother's breast, from the castle, from the city, driven out to the edges of civilization. A beast. A curse."
Hrocculf mumbled something, an agreeable hum, still blinded by the serpent's eyes -- not that the Lindworm was paying him any mind, caught up in his monologue.
"A curse laid on them for greed and ill thought, and I intend to bring that curse to bear. My family will quail in despair, and call out in prayer to God for salvation. But I will be their just rewards: for their sin, for abandonment, for revoking the bonds of family." His entire body squirmed in his fury, tail lashing out and splitting a boulder with a fearsome crash. "I will make them pay!"
Hrocculf hummed in agreement, nodding dumbly, and the motion caught the Lindworm's frenzied attention, as if he'd even forgotten he was speaking to someone. His burning gaze swept across Hrocculf: "I tire of this. Leave," he said, simply, and Hrocculf left as fast as he could without outright running.
But that was that: the Lindworm was threatening, still, but not as much as before, when he was simply some wild beast. Hrocculf stopped thinking of fleeing, of finding a hunting ground as far away as possible. As neighbors went -- the forest had much worse. He hadn't dared go close to the bandit camp, where the forest grew thick with the stench of smoke.
So he lived in the forest and let his hair grow wild and his nails grow long. Any human would think he was another wild creature of the forest himself: with his clawed hands and feet, his boar's-head mantle, his only clothes his increasingly tattered trousers. His hands and feet were thickly calloused and stained dark from ingrained dirt, nails sharp claws; body thicker-muscled from hunting, tanned from the summer's light. Food was plenty, at least for the time, and he found himself standing against boars and bears unafraid, slicing through their hides with his bare hands and feasting upon the raw meat within. Gone feral, perhaps.
He found himself longing for a carpenter, for a forge, and then ultimately decided to make the best with what he had, and perhaps lead back towards a village to steal an axe if he could. He cut down a tree or two and split it, and used the rough timber to make a more solid wall, one that solidly blocked the wind and kept some remnant of heat inside. From the stump he made a barrel: scrubbed the inside raw, made a cover he could seal with sap. He set to brewing a drink, made from a paste of wild grains and sugar from an oozing beehive. Summer was the time of growth and opportunity, after all.
Opportunity not just for him, it turned out. A knight blundered into their section of the forest. Hrocculf could hear the clanking for what seemed like miles, and traced it back to its source: a knight huffing and puffing as he all but clawed his way through the underbrush, shining silver greaves stained with grass and sap, helmet off, the fabric of his tunic thick with burrs.
Eventually the knight noticed him: "Ho there, vagabond; I have no quarrel with you," the knight said, hand nevertheless on his sword. "There are those that speak of a vicious white serpent living in these parts, and I seek fame for the destruction of such a legendary beast. But I have my honor: if you can give aid in direction, then I will not move against you, regardless of your assured criminal misdeeds."
Hrocculf laughed, a sharp bark that perhaps sounded more like a boar's cry than a human's. The knight's hand clenched, unsheathing his blade an inch. "Who can say?" he said. "There are all sorts of things in these woods, and surely that serpent is among them. But I've been told it would be foolishness to seek out such a monster as that."
The knight snorted and spat, letting out a exclamation of disgust. "You have no ken of a knight's mettle. But so be it, then."
So Hrocculf let him go, and then went to the snake.
By the time Hrocculf got there the knight was already dead. The Lindworm had his fangs sunk into him, and was slowly tearing his armor apart, like trying to deshell a crab. It looked like it had just been a single bite: that the knight had overestimated his armor, or underestimated the Lindworm's striking distance.
"Hm," Hrocculf said, more an acknowledgment of the scene than anything else. It was certainly what he'd expected to find. Surprising that the knight found him that quick, mostly.
"You probably didn't have to kill him," Hrocculf hedged, sitting upon a nearby boulder. "He looked one good shock away from giving up on knighthood anyway."
"He came here to kill me," the Lindworm said, after spitting out the knight's body. And, admittedly, Hrocculf had to give him that. "You speak with such a pious voice. Surely you yourself have never even harmed a fly," the snake said, voice dripping with scorn.
Hrocculf shrugged. "I've killed more than my share of people," Hrocculf said. "But only when it needed to be done. Never felt particularly good about it afterward."
"I am a monster," the Lindworm hissed, tearing his fangs from the corpse in a spray of blood and venom. "A thing so loathsome I was driven from my mother's lap at the moment of birth. Would you expect morality for me? Am I too to be saved by God? There is no place in heaven for me; when I die I will be consigned unto the outer darkness, eternally."
Hrocculf rolled his eyes. "Trust me, I think your family is shit, but you gotta... like, you gotta move on, eventually. I got no love for the royal family, but you can't live in their shadow for the whole of your life."
"And where would you have me live?" the snake said, in such a fearsome voice that Hrocculf found himself unable to respond, not that he had any answer.
The Lindworm abruptly twisted, the knight's corpse flopping in his mouth, and bashed it hard against the wall, an ear-splitting crash of metal on rock. Like he was trying to break a crab from its shell to get at the meat inside.
Hrocculf left him to it.
Fall came. His first barrel had ruptured a few weeks into the process, erupted in foaming, half-fermented paste, but he'd tried again, and made another few treestump barrels beside.
"What do you do in the winter, anyway?" Hrocculf asked, one evening, watching the dusk sunlight crawl across the opening to the snake's cave. The first frost would be soon, and already the fall air held a taste of the bitter cold to come. He'd brought his mead with him. A celebration, maybe. For surviving until winter.
"The cave goes very far back," the serpent said. "Down to the bones of the earth. The cold would not kill me, but prey becomes... scarce. So I slink down into the caverns below, and sleep fitfully, and wake sometimes to catch the strange beasts that dwell in the darkness." He spat, splattering a mess of venom all up one wall. "It is a miserable season."
"I hear that," Hrocculf said, draining the last swallow from his flagon. Too bitter. Hopefully his next batch would be better. Hopefully he lived to see it. "Fall's the season of gathering. Now it's just a matter of seeing if it was enough." He exhaled, air just chill enough for his hot breath to steam upwards. "We'll see." That's what fall had been: gathering. Roots, grain, meat. Wood, branches, fallen leaves. Piling earth and clay over the wooden skeleton of his burrow, so that it now resembled a cave almost, and
"Do you ever regret it? Living in the wilds?"
Hrocculf shrugged. "I knew what I was getting into when I left the village." He looked over at the Lindworm: coils glittering dully in the dying sunlight. "Most of it, at least."
"Hm." It was a sibilant noise, a considering hiss, and the Lindworm furled over himself further, a thick ball with his snout peeking out between coils. The sun was just falling behind the trees; the shadows crept up across his seated body.
Hrocculf rose, waving at the serpent. "I'll see you in the spring then, God willing. Fare thee well."
"It will be a few weeks yet before then, I think. You may see me again before the year's end." The serpent squirmed in his coils. "And," he continued, after a moment, "in the spring... do not be too eager to seek me out. I emerge from the depths ravenous. I may not think to still my strike." It was a kindness, in his own way. Thinking back, that might have been the kindest thing the snake had ever said to him: I'd rather not eat you.
Hrocculf supposed you took what you could get, when consorting with legendary beasts.
Frost in the morning heralded winter, and then the ground froze. Winter was always bitter cold. At least in the forest depths the snow was caught mostly on the tree boughs; in the village he knew the roads would be buried under feet of snow, with only narrow lanes dug out. But it was cold, and he was hungry, and there was never enough food.
He survived the winter. That was all there was to say, really. He had stores, and they were never enough, but there were still beasts in the forest, and he knew how to catch them. He added three more hides, two boar and one bear, to his collection, and spent most of his days in the dim light of his burrow, buried under his furs. Like a bear himself.
When he'd killed the second boar he found himself clawing open its still-bleeding wounds with his thickened nails and tearing out raw meat with his teeth. Some combination of hunger and frenzy. He was a wild man of the woods now, after all. He lugged it home and drained it, saving the blood for a pudding, the meat for his larder, its coat for his furs, and its bones for decoration. He tied another layer of furs across the entrance to his burrow with a bone spike and a line of cured gut, and slept and slept and slept.
When spring came, the first major thaw, he tottered down to the stream and scrubbed himself raw, and then shaved himself nearly bare, sloughing off his winter growth.
He wondered for a time if he should leave the Lindworm's territory entirely, at least for a few weeks. If the worm would come mindlessly hunting down his way. But he didn't, instead he just stayed far downstream, eating wild onions and fresh berries. It was actually a relief to see him, sliding out through the forest, vast and monstrous as always. Hrocculf'd missed him.
The Lindworm molted in late spring, and Hrocculf helped him with it again, this time devoid of the bone-chilling terror of the first time. In all his time in the forest... he'd spoken to more than a few woodwitches, and he'd sometimes had terse, threatening conversations with bandits and outlaws. But the Lindworm was the only one he'd been talking to regularly. His only friend. Thought perhaps that wasn't quite how Hrocculf would put it.
But then not even another month into spring the Lindworm vanished again, and Hrocculf made his way back up to his den. The worm was curled up in a tangle of flesh, squirming and thrashing, and for a moment Hrocculf thought the Lindworm was molting again, save for how his skin was still white and his eyes were still red.
"What's wrong?" Hrocculf asked, and the Lindworm snarled and snapped, venom spurting from his mouth like spittle, splattering across the cave floor.
"Nothing you can help with," the snake said. "Nothing anyone can help with."
"Don't be so fatalistic," Hrocculf said.
The snake laughed, hollowly, a horrible choking, hissing sound coming up from his throat. "You think me like a man, perhaps. But I am not. And there are things I desire which none should want." He twisted about, underbelly scraping across the floor with a dry sound. He flipped backwards, arching up, and -- showing himself. Most of the way down his body there was a vent, sealed shut, but now it was open, twin cocks protruding out, purple-blue and glistening. The Lindworm shuddered, motion rippling down his body, and his cocks shuddered with him, shaking and stirring, steadily oozing blue-tinged slime from the tips.
"I need to mate," the Lindworm said, triumphant and despairing in one. "But there is none to mate with of my kind, not in a thousand leagues." Triumphant, for like always, he seemed committed to prove his monstrosity, and this was a palpable hit. And despairing, for after all, who could mate with a monster.
"Oh," Hrocculf said, and swallowed hard.
Now that he was aware, the scent of it filled the chamber, acrid and sour, but with the same undertones as all sex: thick and meaty, almost spicy in its intensity, as ooze slid down the Lindworm's monstrous cocks and stained the floor. His sinuous body churned, rutting his cocks against another coil, and his entire body shuddered, a wild yowl ripping forth from his mouth.
Hrocculf took a step forward. "So when--" He swallowed and started again. "You set on getting another one of your kind? 'Cause I could be obliged to lend a hand. If you want."
The Lindworm's head rose up, eyes focused unblinking. But by now the hypnotizing impact of his gaze had weakened, or Hrocculf had grown used to it at least. He took another step forward, under the serpent's watching gaze, and another. The reek of sex grew stronger, humid waves of heat billowing over him, air fanned by the Lindworm's frantic motions. The snake's head may have been fixed, staring, but his body was a tangled knot, rutting against itself for any relief, oozing cocks painting his underbelly pale blue.
Hrocculf moved closer and closer, until he was within a few paces, and the detail on the Lindworm's monstrous cocks resolved. They were enormous, a mess of pulsing flesh bulging forth from a spread slit, the flesh there raw and irritated-looking, flushed purple. At the base they were conjoined, a broad swell of flesh covered in stubby lumps, like gooseflesh, and then they branched apart on the sides, twin columns, brilliantly purple, each thicker than Hrocculf's thighs and about as long. They had a complex edge: the Lindworm's flesh bulged outward in a lattice of ridges, like lacework almost, and in the space between the ridges the flesh subsided, forming hand-sized hollows that eventually flattened against some core of muscle and flesh. A mess of thorny ridges and spines. With the Lindworm on his back, fluid steadily drooling across his lengths, the hollows were flooded, dozens of puddles all filled with the worm's slimy issue, cloudy bluish slime streaking in muddy lines across his shafts, spilling down to stain his white scales dark. He had no cockhead, or not any that was well-defined: at the tip it seemed like the hollows themselves were oozing fluid, a dozen on each cock, not squirting or erupting, just steadily pouring what had to be liters of fluid every few seconds, gushing like a fountain without end.
Hrocculf had thought himself adventurous when it came to his romantic pursuits, but despite his exploits, everyone he'd bedded had been entirely human. Certainly he'd never aspired to seduce a legendary beast.
But there was a first time for everything, he supposed.
The Lindworm hissed, long and low, when Hrocculf reached out and touched. A moan, for him. The sloppy ooze coated Hrocculf's hand instantly, the hollows along the Lindworm's cocks shifting and spilling half their contents down his shafts in sheets, submerging his hand entirely in the flow, splattering him with strange cloudy-blue slime all across his front. It was hot, thick and sticky, and drew out into cords between them as the flood poured past his hand, thicker goo hidden in the mess remaining clinging stubbornly to his hand.
The flesh under his hand was firm and gristly, giving only minutely as he groped and grabbed along the length. He brought both hands to bear, the shaft not well-shaped for stroking: instead he squeezed and tugged and ground his knuckles against the bottoms of the flooded basins of the Lindworm's cock, stepping closer until he was plastered to the serpent's side, the twin lengths throbbing against his chest as he held them in his arms. The Lindworm squirmed, eyes shut, mouth open and drooling venom, rutting his cocks up against Hrocculf's chest.
Hrocculf had never been the hairiest of men, but the Lindworm was all slick scales; he seemed fascinated by the slight drag of Hrocculf's lightly-haired skin, rutting his cocks up and down Hrocculf's stomach until he was soaked neck to crotch in thick, slimy precome, hair all matted down into dark lines. The Lindworm's body shifted around him, coils of scales looping below him and above him, the Lindworm's cock pouring a continual flood of bluish ooze down his chest, slurping and squelching as it smeared across their bodies.
Hrocculf toyed with the massive cudgel of the snake's cock, squeezing and tugging, palms rasping over its rough edge, and the Lindworm for his part seemed to enjoy it, hissing and writhing, cock continually gushing. His coils shifted, huge treetrunk muscles shifting up and down, keeping Hrocculf pinned in his grasp, hands free to continue teasing his cock as it grew increasingly sloppy, glazing Hrocculf's front entirely in slimy layers of liquid goo, squirt after squirt. The Lindworm writhed on the floor, cocks rutting against Hrocculf's chest, body crashing into the dust with the force of a rockfall, hissing wildly -- Hrocculf grabbed his shafts with both arms, together nearly the size as a man's chest, and let the serpent rut against him, keening like a beast.
There was a visible pulse in the flesh above -- below? the serpent was all twisted around in a mass of coils with no beginning or end -- his cocks, muscles spasming hard and then settling into a steady rhythm, pulsing like a heartbeat. His body arched, loops pushing off the floor entirely, lifting Hrocculf up on a treetrunk-sized spar, cocks still pressed tight to his chest. The serpent's cocks erupted in time with the tremors running through his body, and sprayed a messy froth of come from both cocks in the same moment. His issue squirted in twin lances, up into the air and then down with a liquid crash, all along their conjoined bodies. The firsts shots were all pearly white, runny ooze, but his spurts quickly thickened, gushing bubble-like globules mixed in with the come, their heavy wet weight bashing across the side of Hrocculf's head with the force of a blow. Sloppy slime dribbled down his brow, obscuring his vision, just sprawled in the serpent's coils, shafts pressed against his chest throbbing like a monstrous heart.
The Lindworm hissed, a feral, wild kind of sound, squeezing his pulsing underbelly to Hrocculf's chest as he erupted, shot after shot slapping across his skin, hitting him sharply in the chin and splattering across his chest. The Lindworm's frantic hunches smeared his issue all over Hrocculf, up and down in foaming, frothy globs, until ooze joined his cocks together, transforming them into a single splayed triangle, the space between them entirely filled with corded lines of frothy come, a sluggish ooze burbling up from the tips even as each pulse erupted high into the air and came splattering back down.
Hrocculf rose up on his knees, tugging the taut arch of the Lindworm's body down so that he could rut his own cock through the frothing mess, cock sliding between the Lindworm's. Hrocculf grabbed the Lindworm's cocks, pressing both huge, prickly halves together until they sandwiched his cock, gristly flesh tugging on his shaft as he thrust between them, the slimy cocoon of come webbed between them gurgling down his stomach and thighs. He fucked the space between them, grunting and growling like an animal himself as he spent himself, back arching, head thrown back as he shot off invisibly into the morass of the Lindworm's issue. Even through that the Lindworm was still coming, Hrocculf's hands scrabbling across his flesh, sloppy gushes of come spraying in asymmetrical arcs up across his face. Hrocculf was panting for breath, entire body burning with heat. Thin slime drooled down from the sludge plastered across his scalp, strung in cords across his mouth that rippled with each breath, spilling acrid and sour into his mouth as he gasped for breath.
After that he went lax, sprawled forward over the Lindworm's cocks, hands just squeezing them rhythmically as the serpent's ejaculation went on and on, forever it seemed, skin and scales all slathered with chunky slime, dribbling in clusters down his back, collecting in thick mats across his hips and thighs. Even as it slowed, the rhythmic pulses becoming weaker, the worm still shot out immense frothy clots of come, arcing hardly a foot into the air before splattering back down, forming gooey strings between the sludgy mess of his cocks and Hrocculf's now-slathered body. They pressed together, an ooze of come squelching between them, only to stretch out as a messy collection of overlapping planes when the Lindworm sprawled back, corded ooze audibly creaking as it stretched.
Hrocculf kept the serpent's cocks in hand, still pumping long after his spurts had subsided to weak tremors under his palms. A constant river of heavy come sluiced down his cocks, thick and viscous, subsiding under the layers of thinner slime splattered up and down his body; his motions just smeared the come all over, painting himself and the snake alike in a nearly uniform glaze. He finally released them, cocks springing up against the serpent's underbelly, and the ooze drooling across his hands followed, a solid mass stretching out the few inches between them, hardly bowing at all.
Hrocculf sprawled back, so thickly coated in come he looked like a pale spectre, rising from a sea of muck. The serpent's issue was hot, burning hot soaked all over, and the Lindworm's coils were like hot iron; the heat of their mating sent plumes of evaporating sludge upwards, cooking the immense mess down into something still thicker. Hrocculf panted, cheeks flushed, wiping across his face until he could open his eyes again: the Lindworm's cocks were the center of what looked like an explosion of ooze, cords and bubbles plastered all across the lumpy mess of his body, sleek coils all curled up into a mess of ooze-covered blobs, so thickly corded with come it was hard to tell which arches were his body and which were simply treetrunk-thick webs of come.
A huge bubble spilled down Hrocculf's side, filled with some fluid still heavier than the mass of tarry come coating them both, blue-white and shining oddly. It was like a magician's crystal ball, surface thick and rubbery, not popping when Hrocculf swept it into his hand. Hrocculf dug his fingernails into it experimentally and it burst, spraying yet more sludge across his front, rank and fuming. He stared down at the mass of sludge spilling between his fingers, flushed and hot.
Hrocculf opened his mouth to speak and spat, slime pouring in sheets down his cheeks, flooding his mouth instantly. "So is that gonna get you through your mating frenzy?" he asked, watching the serpent's belly heave, cocks still oozing twin lines of come across his underbelly, flowing like molasses: immensely thick, only inching forward barely perceptibly, come piling up over itself as it sluggishly poured down his scales, froth bubbling up as the thicker ooze sunk down under the topmost layer of come.
"Oh no," the Lindworm said, rearing up finally, the sharp edge back in his voice after the buzzing haze of his orgasm. "I think it will quite a few more times before I am sated." And with that he struck, diving down across Hrocculf sprawled body, coils twisting around him until he was pinned immobile, cocks pressed against his chest, gushing fresh pre through the gritty dregs of his issue. His coils shifted, cocks sliding up and down Hrocculf's chest, smearing clean marks through the sea of come coating him, rapidly slathered again in fresh pre. He drew Hrocculf down into his body, submerged in his coils, leering as he rutted his still-hard cocks over Hrocculf pinned body. "I think I'll take my time, this time," he said, and Hrocculf couldn't help but match the Lindworm's fearsome grin.
Afterward -- and there was, eventually, an afterward, Hrocculf crawling out from the serpent's coils half-drowned in his issue, resembling some swamp monster more than a human, and trudged to the river to attempt to clean himself, the serpent's thick issue clinging to him even submerged underwater, only hardly fraying at the edges when he scrubbed hard.
It was only afterwards, walking back inside and seeing the serpent lolling on his back, scales gleaming with the residue of his load, that it struck him.
"Hell!" he yelled, thinking, and when the Lindworm rose its head up he said: "I didn't even think to ask if your come was venomous." There was a weighty pause. "Good thing it isn't, then!"
"Oh." The Lindworm seemed... taken aback. He probably hadn't been in any state to think about it either.
"Well, good thing," Hrocculf said, rattled, thinking about... how that could've gone. "Well. Let's just stick to me blowing you for now, let's say."
And at that the snake smirked and kinked his body, showing off his still-unsheathed cocks, slimy with a mire of half-dried come, and now crusted with sand where they'd been pressed against the ground. "Have at it, then."
"I wasn't asking," Hrocculf said with a laugh, but dropped down anyway.
The sand turned out to not be all that gritty, anyway.