The Maze Ch. 02: Satyrs

Beyond the Maze was the forest, and through the forest ran a road, and across the road flowed a river. The road was a dirt track with deep ruts that spoke of wagons, no doubt whoever it was that repaired the outer wall of the Maze. The river was little more than a stream, though it was wide and shallow where it met the road.

I had walked for hours, my heart heavy with loss, my feet weary from the hard soil, my head hazy from lack of food and water. I had spied some fruits and berries growing near the road, but my instincts had warned me away. Their colours were a little too bright, their smells a little too sweet.

But the river answered my needs. The water was pure and invigorating, and burbled with such joy that I released at last my guilt over leaving Ana behind - and my anger at her choosing to stay. It hurt that her hunger for a hard cock outweighed all our years of friendship. How was I supposed to celebrate my escape from the Farm without her by my side?

The river cleansed me of dirt and sweat, but more importantly of mud and cum. Walking naked through the forest, the thought of being discovered in such a dirty state, my hair a tangled, clumpy mess, my thighs sticky from the cum that had leaked out persistently all day. The pixies had used my body well while I slept.

As I bathed, my feet sank into the rich, soft soil, my toes becoming roots that delved deep in search of minerals and nutrients that I hadn't realised how hungry I was for. The pleasure of it was almost orgasmic. I stood there swaying like a tree in an imaginary breeze, soaking up water and sustenance, until before I knew it the sky was dark and the air and water were cold against my bare skin, my roots retracting until my feet were feet again and I was almost human.

I needed to find clothes, and not just for modesty's sake. Anyone seeing my legs, increasingly green from the thighs down to my misshapen feet, would think me a monster. That the gate had permitted my exit from the Maze with notable reluctance suggested that there was something monstrous about me, even if ultimately I was still human.

I refilled my water sack, one of my few remaining possessions, and found myself a mossy shelter for the night. The cool air didn't bother me much, but as I drifted off to sleep, my thoughts returned again to the muddy fingers in the walls, pinching and poking, and to the rampact pixies crowding round my sleeping, helpless body. It awoke again that dirty, yearning emptiness in my ass, and I wondered if I would ever be free of the Maze's cruel corruption.

*

The forest ended at a lake, a wide and beautiful expanse of water like nothing I had ever seen before, with hills and forests beyond. I sat on the pebble shore just staring at the shimmering waves, the morning sun rising in the East and reflecting brightly off the water. Back home at the Farm, there was a place where the River was deep and relatively sheltered, and growing up we had often bathed and played there. But the lake was something else, big enough to drown in. It could swallow you up and not even notice.

The road from the Maze joined another road, one that followed the shore. This was a well kept road that clearly saw frequent traffic. Indeed, it was the need to hide from a swift, horse-drawn carriage that prompted me to leave off my tentative paddling and duck back into the eaves of the forest. The black carriage swept past without slowing. If the driver had seen my naked form from the distance, he showed no curiosity and showed no inclination to stop.

Keeping to the trees, I followed the road and the lake shore to the West, until the forest gave way to a field of wheat. Nearby was a field of potatoes in full flower, and I guessed that it was a crop rotation like we had at the Farm. Beyond the fields was a town, walled with a high palisade. The world that I had escaped into suddenly seemed a lot more dangerous.

I had fled the Farm to avoid the life sentence of marriage to a man. I had foolishly braved the Maze and had been groped and fucked and even mutated into something half plant, half woman. But the outside world was no utopian paradise. It wasn't the grand cities of wizards I had dreamed of. Instead it was farmers hiding within a wall all over again, as if I had never left home.

At least our wall kept out monsters. What did this one keep out? And what would these farmers make of a naked, half-human woman hiding in the forest?

As the ground snatched up around me, too quickly for me to react, I screamed, sure in that instant that some new, subterranean monster had risen to devour me. But it was just a net. A trap laid by humans.

And though I had a knife with me, and could in time have cut myself free of the entangling net, I was soon surrounded by armed men - with little kindness in their expressions.

*

They carried me to the town, but not within. They ignored my questions and demands, and ignored my pleading and tears, and in truth their words meant nothing to me. It was a shock to hear people speak a language other than the only language I had ever heard.

And yet... There were words that were almost familiar, as if hundreds of years ago our languages had been the same, but the men who carried me had expressions full of anger and suspicion, and were more interested in prodding me with fingers and poking me with sharp sticks than actually trying to understand me.

They released me from the net, stole my bag, and tied my wrists together around a thick post. "You might at least have given me some clothes first," I said wearily, tired of all the useless shouting back and forth.

They looked blankly at me, some staring at my green, inhuman legs, others staring openly at my exposed pussy and breasts. One grabbed the hard tent in his crotch and made some lewd remark that made the others laugh. "Bastards," I hissed, which only made them laugh harder.

They kept their distance, however, and eventually went their separate ways, the archers back to hunting in the forest, the swordsmen back to guarding their wooden fortress.

A while later, a group of women, young and old, emerged from the town and chattered excitedly as they studied me from a safe distance. They tried talking to me, and I to them, but without success.

The youngest of them, maybe only two or three years older than me, with long dark hair and deep blue eyes, studied me without saying anything. She was the one who returned an hour later, bringing me food and drink, and (blessing of blessings!) a skirt. It was a long, woollen skirt, dull yellow in colour, patched and stitched in many places, and with my hands tied I needed her to bring it up around my waist. Just as I needed her to feed me, and to hold the water skin as I drank deeply. It felt intimate, and my helplessness would have been humiliating were it not for the compassion in her eyes.

"Thank you," I said, smiling warmly. It was so good to have some clothing again, and the skirt did a good job of concealing my difference.

"You're a Farm girl, aren't you?" she asked, startling me. She had a strong accent, but I understood well.

"Thank the gods," I cried. "You have to help me! Please help me!"

She shook her head. "I shouldn't even be doing this much. And the guards are watching."

As she turned to go, I tried to keep her with me. She was a friendly face, and a pretty one too, and so far the only person able to understand me. "I'm Mia," I said. "What's your name?"

She hesitated a long moment, then relented. "Rosa," she said, and offered a tentative smile. "My father was from the Farm. He too was Maze-touched, though he hid it until the end."

Perhaps Rosa would have said more, but a guard shouted at her to return, and she hurried away without another word.

*

As evening fell, I used the cover of dark aided by my skirt, and allowed my roots to penetrate the hard earth and quest for nutrients, and as I stood there bound to the post I relaxed and drifted off to sleep.

Shortly after midnight I stirred, sensing an unfamiliar scent in the wind that spoke of stale sweat and too much sex. My roots slithered back into my feet as I stood, alarmed, searching the darkness.

Rosa rushed up to me suddenly, attacking the rope with a knife. Her scent was so different to that other. She was warm and human, and smelled as if she had bathed in roses, with an undercurrent of fear. "It's not fair," she said, "leaving you out like this, for the monsters. Even if you are Maze-touched."

Her blade severed the rope, freeing my wrists. I wanted to grab her and kiss her and take her away with me into the night - but my nerves were too much on edge.

"It's not fair," she repeated. "You have to get away from here. Before it's too late."

But it was already too late. Rosa screamed as she was grabbed from behind. Too late for Rosa and too late for me, as strong hands pulled me off my feet and tossed me over a muscular shoulder. The musky stink of my assailant was overwhelming, intoxicating. The strength in his arms too great for me to fight.

Rosa's terrified screams split the night, but no salvation was possible. An arrow whispered through the air beside me, but the guards kept to the safety of their fortress and abandoned us to our fate.

Soon, even Rosa was quiet, save for occasional whimpers of pain and misery. I tried to relax and conserve my strength, to wait for a real opportunity to escape, but our abductors marched on tirelessly, threading between the trees, their night vision seeing what I could only guess at.

There were five of them. Shadows for the most part, but I caught glimpses in stray shafts of moonlight. Their legs were misshapen for men, indeed more like goats, and long beards draped from their savage faces. Not one wore clothes, and in one respect at least they were certainly men. They sported jutting, swollen cocks with blunt, brutal ends.

I had to try and escape.

*

We arrived in a forest glade sheltered by steep slopes, a stream coiling around a collection of stone-walled huts and a fire burning in the centre. Three elderly satyrs sat there tending a cauldron of broth that tickled my nostrils and awoke a hunger for simple, home-cooked food. They shot to their feet in excitement as Rosa and I were dropped unceremoniously onto the ground, and we finally got a good look at our captors.

Eight horny satyrs with tumbling, tangled beards, and dark, furry legs ending in sharp hoofs. Each possessed a proud penis, shaped more like a horse's than a man's. Without the wind to disperse it, and surrounded now by so many of them, the stench of sweat and sex was overpowering.

Rosa crawled over to me, hugging me for security. "The smell," she whispered, staring wide-eyed at the ring of hard cocks. "Gods! The smell!" Her expression was mingled horror and lust.

They had their own language, one that meant nothing to me, but they laughed and idly stroked their cocks as they argued back and forth in a friendly way. I knelt there, increasingly confused by how aroused I was. My nipples were visibly swollen and itching to be touched, but worse than that was how wet I was. Even when making love to Ana I had not felt this aching need.

I wanted nothing to do with men or cocks. These satyrs disgusted me in every way. Yet my will to resist crumbled as the one who had carried me so far now brushed my face with his cock, smearing my lips and cheeks with clear, syrupy liquid. The taste of it was not unpleasant, but I spat it out - which only resulted in his cock being pressed against my mouth until I was choking on the fluid that gushed between my lips.

My skirt was stripped away, and then he was behind me, his cock between my thighs. "No!" I cried, but my body cried yes, and I pushed back as he rammed into me. I screamed as much with rage as pain, my virginity torn away by this brutal act of lust, but made no attempt to evade the next, or the next.

I hated it, but needed it, surrendered to it completely. I wondered if this was how Ana had felt about the minotaur, but in my heart I knew she had been more than happy to surrender. He grabbed my hair, using it like a rein to pull my head up and back, so that I had no choice but to look at the cocks surrounding me, all hard and impatient. But I was not happy to surrender. I felt under a spell, compelled to endure a pleasure that thrilled my body but hurt my soul. My climax was the ultimate humiliation, my body convulsing in an ecstasy I had no choice in.

I wanted to stop, but continued until driven to another climax by the kicking of his cock as his cum burst out into me, so much that it spurted from my pussy as he withdrew. I knelt there, quivering with fatigue and the resonant echoes of pleasure. I wanted to object, to crawl away, to do something to deny just how good it had felt, that huge, brutal cock stretching me, filling me, thrusting hard and deep. Instead there was only relief as a new cock took its turn, as blunt and brutal as the last, and I thrust back eagerly to take it deeper.

There was no subtlety to it, no art. They took me from behind, treated me like an animal, and I behaved like one.

Beside me, Rosa fared no better, her cries of ecstasy loud in my ear, the impact of flesh against flesh an unforgiving rhythm. She too had been stripped of her clothes, revealing large, perfect breasts with huge, swollen nipples. Her pussy too had been dripping wet with arousal before the first satyr had claimed it. Her obvious fear and misery had faded into abrupt confusion as her body surrendered as quickly to the satyr's lust as my own had. "This is wrong!" she had cried, thrusting back hard against the satyr behind her.

There was no rest for either of us, not until all eight satyrs had had their turns with each of us. Night had given way to day, and our abductors retreated to their stone huts. Feeling drugged and bruised, barely conscious and barely able to move, Rosa and I curled up together and fell fast asleep.

*

I dreamed I was being fucked by an endless crowd of satyrs, and awoke almost painfully aroused. Rosa still slept, my arm protectively around her, my breasts and swollen nipples pressing against her back. She murmured and whimpered and twitched in her sleep, and I wondered if she too dreamt of that unending assault.

I alone was awake, the satyrs all snoring loudly in their stone-walled huts. I craved sleep myself, as much to return to that blissful nightmare as to escape the throbbing pain in all my muscles and the ache of my abused pussy. It was wet, and slick with cum, and a crust of dry cum covered my thighs and ass.

It wasn't the first time I had awoken feeling used and dirty, but this time I hadn't been used while I slept. I'd been wide awake and actively participating. My body taking control, welcoming eight huge cocks one after the other. Ana would have loved it, but I just wanted to cry.

I crawled over to the stream to wash myself, thinking about how safe and innocent the Farm was. No one there ever worried about getting through a whole day without being abducted by some sex-crazed plant or mythical creature. No wonder Rosa's people hid within a palisade and feared anything and anyone they didn't know.

For a while it was all I could do just to stay awake, but as my roots soaked up water and nutrients, the drowsiness lifted and my body calmed a little from its heightened state of arousal.

It was midday and the satyrs showed no sign of stirring. Rosa whined with complaint when I tried to rouse her, and it was only by pinching her nipples hard that I succeeded at last. "Ow!" she screeched, sitting up and glaring at me.

"This is your one chance to escape," I told her. "Wash yourself quickly, and let's go."

She did as told while I found my skirt and what was left of Rosa's clothes, which amounted to boots and a skirt, the rest being either torn or soaked in satyr cum. The stink of them and their cum was everywhere. It both disgusted me and aroused me. Seeing the cum pour from Rosa's pussy when she stood, I had very nearly knelt to devour it, and her too.

Rosa fell asleep again while washing herself in the stream. I pinched her nipples. "Stop that," she hissed, but this time got only as far as dressing herself before her eyes closed.

I took her arm over my shoulder and led her away. She begged me to let her sleep, but I refused to stop. Rosa had tried to save me from the monsters, and I was damn well going to try and save her.

Our progress was slow but steady, the stench of satyr diminishing until there was only the lingering scent of them on our clothes and skin, and what was left of them within us, a cruel reminder of our bodies' treachery. Free of that intoxicating stench at last, it was like a weight being lifted. The constant, unwanted arousal dissipated, leaving only soreness and stickiness, and Rosa woke up at last.

"No," she whispered, her eyes wide and echoing a familiar horror. "No," she repeated, and promptly burst into tears.

I gathered her into my arms to comfort her, and tried not to feel guilty over how much I enjoyed the soft, warm pressure of her breasts against mine. "It's okay," I whispered, over and over again. "It's okay."

"But it's not," she whispered back eventually. "It won't matter to them that we escaped, only that we were taken."

Rosa was talking about her people, I realised, not the satyrs. Her friends, her family, everyone she knew - except me, now. "Are you married?" I asked. "Do you have children?"

She didn't answer, and I was conscious of how much time we were wasting, and how close we still were to the satyr's glade. "Come," I said. "We need to get as far away as possible before they awaken."

Rosa nodded, and allowed me to guide her through the forest. There was no path, and although we had followed the river earlier I was reluctant to stay with it. Now that she was awake, I led her to higher ground. I wanted to be able to see where we were. For all I knew, I was leading us straight back to her town, or perhaps even towards the Maze, neither of which would be sensible destinations.

"Two moons," Rosa said after a while. "I've been married two moons. I thought I loved him, but..." She fell silent and we walked and we climbed, and I resisted the urge to push her to continue. She stayed silent, lost in thought, until we reached the summit. The forest stretched seemingly forever in all directions, but the evening sun turned the distant lake to gold and I was able to guess at where her town must be, and where the Maze had to be. And where the satyr's glade had to be also. They would be awake, I was sure. Hunting for us.

"It's a relief, in a way," Rosa said, looking in the direction of her home. "He was a good man, and a good husband, more patient than I deserved. He was kind and handsome, but he didn't excite me. Not like last night." She shuddered. "How is it that monsters can give me such pleasure when even my husband cannot?"

I took her hand in mine and squeezed reassuringly. "I'm not attracted to men," I said. "I ran away from the Farm to escape an arranged marriage. I want nothing to do with men and their cocks, but I too was helpless last night, betrayed by my own body into unwanted pleasure."

We were both exhausted, and it was getting too dark in the forest. If we continued, it would be hard to move either quickly or quietly. We searched near the summit for somewhere sheltered and concealing, and huddled up together for warmth and company. "No one has ever seen a female," she said. "They abduct human women to breed with. Always sons, and always the sons look human - until a certain age when their hair grows wild and their legs deform. And then they confront their human mothers and demand, 'Why were you a whore for monsters?'"

She sighed sleepily. "One day, we will have to answer that."

*

Rosa, perhaps, would have to answer one day, but not I. We stayed together until the end of the year, two wildlings in the forest. When we weren't on the move, I hunted for meat and gathered fruit and nuts, or we made love on the mossy ground, or she taught me how to cook and she taught me her language, which was more similar to my own than it had seemed at first.