In Kuroinu

Mila smelled them first.

She stopped mid-stride with her nose up and her ears flat and her tail rigid and she said "Something's wrong" and the underbrush exploded.

Three of them. They came out of the forest floor like the ground was giving birth, erupting from between root systems and dead leaves and they were wrong. Twisted. Bodies like wolves if wolves had been redesigned by someone who hated geometry. Too many legs, joints bending backward, mouths too wide and filled with teeth that grew at angles. Their skin was black and slick and they moved fast and the smell hit me a second after Mila's warning, rotten and chemical and familiar.

The first one lunged for Mila.

Filia was already moving. Her sword came out in one motion and the blade caught the creature mid-leap and split it from jaw to shoulder. It hit the ground in two pieces and she was pivoting to the second.

An arrow punched through the second creature's eye socket. It dropped. Llusse was twenty feet up in a tree with another arrow nocked before the body stopped twitching.

The third one came for me.

The biggest. Shoulder-height on all six legs, mouth open, that chemical stink pouring off it. It closed the distance faster than anything that size should move and I had my sword up and the impact was heavier than I expected and my feet slid in the soft forest floor.

Reflexes I hadn't had three weeks ago. Filia's sword instincts through the Blessing, timing and muscle memory that weren't mine but responded when I needed them. Llusse's speed in my arms.

The creature snapped at my face. I stepped left. Its teeth closed on air and I drove my sword into the side of its head behind the jaw and through and the blade came out the other side and it was dead before it hit the ground.

Silence. Forest sounds rushing back in. Insects. The humming. My breathing loud and my hands shaking and the sword slick with black blood.

Leonora was standing ten feet away. Her sword was drawn. She hadn't needed it. She'd been ready to move and hadn't needed to and she was looking at me.

"You're improving quickly," she said.

"Good food and exercise."

Her eyes narrowed. She slid her sword back and walked past me to examine the dead beasts.

Tianne was kneeling by the one Filia had split, golden light at her fingertips. "There's a taint in them. Dark energy. It's eating the tissue from the inside."

"Demons?" Filia asked.

"The signature is similar. Like the scouts at the border but deeper."

Maou's influence. Reaching into the Great Forest, corrupting the wildlife. Pushing toward the Holy Tree while everyone on the surface fought the wrong wars.

Mila was circling the one I'd killed. Her nose working, ears rotating. She crouched beside it and leaned close and pulled back with her face scrunched.

"It smells wrong," she said. "Like the border scouts."

Everyone looked at her.

"Same smell?" I asked.

"Same base. The rot underneath. The chemical burn on top." She stood and wiped her hands. "Whatever made those scouts wrong made these wrong too."

"Good catch, Mila."

Her tail wagged once.

Leonora was watching Mila. Arms crossed. Head tilted.

"The beastkin's nose may be our best intelligence tool," Leonora said.

Mila's ears came up.

"I'm... useful?"

"You're essential."

Mila's eyes went bright. Her lower lip trembled and she bit it and her tail started going at a frequency I hadn't seen before, rapid and uncontrolled, and she turned away to the supply packs and her shoulders were shaking.

We cleaned up and moved deeper. The bioluminescence brighter, the humming louder. The watchers had multiplied. I stopped counting at five.

Camp was a tight clearing. Leonora insisted on a fire. Llusse took first watch. Mila cooked. Tianne drew diagrams in the dirt.

The adrenaline was still in me. My hands were steady now but the energy was humming under my skin and every time I closed my eyes I saw the creature's mouth and the blade going through it and how easy it had been. The Blessing singing in my chest.

Filia found me at the edge of camp.

She'd cleaned her sword and her hair was tied back and her face was flushed and she walked over to me with a specific look in her eyes.

"Walk with me," she said.

"Llusse is on watch."

"Llusse is facing the other direction."

She took my wrist and pulled me past the perimeter into the trees. The fungi lit the way in blue-green and the air was thick and warm and she walked until the camp's firelight was a glow through the trunks and then she stopped and turned and shoved me against a tree.

Bark on my back. Rough through my shirt. Her hands on my chest and her mouth on mine and the kiss was hard and tasted like iron and she was pressing her whole body against me. Her hips grinding against mine and her breathing ragged and she hadn't come down from the fight and neither had I.

"Filia-"

"Shut up."

Her hands on my belt. She had it open and reached in and her fingers wrapped around my cock and I was already hard and she stroked once, firm, base to tip, and my head hit the bark.

She stroked again. Slower. Her grip tight and her thumb caught the head on the upstroke and my hips pushed into her hand. The forest air was cool on my cock and her hand was hot and the contrast made me suck in a breath.

"We just killed something," I said.

"I know." She was looking at my cock in her hand. "That's why."

She pulled her own trousers down and kicked one leg free. One bare thigh in the blue-green light. She pressed against me and hooked her freed leg around my hip and the heat of her pussy pressed against the shaft, wet and hot through nothing.

She ground against me. The length of my cock pressed between her lips without entering, her wetness coating the shaft. She was soaked. Each time the head caught at her entrance she sucked in a breath and kept going, grinding the full length, and the wet friction was maddening.

"Lift me," she said.

I grabbed her thighs and lifted. She wrapped both legs around my waist and her arms went around my neck and I braced against the tree. The bark dug in and her weight settled against me and she reached between us and guided me in and sank down.

The heat of her after the cool air. The tightness. The wet slide. She took me to the base in one drop and her forehead fell against my shoulder and "Ah-" came out and she bit my shirt to catch it.

I held her up. My arms under her thighs, her weight against me, the tree taking the load. Standing changed the angle. Gravity pulled her down and the depth was more than usual and she was clenching around the head where it pressed deepest.

She rocked her hips. Each roll pushed me deeper and she made sounds into my shoulder, small and continuous.

"Nn- nn-"

The forest was loud around us. Insects. The humming. The sounds covered us but the wet noise of her on me was there, slick and rhythmic.

She rocked harder. Hips rolling, using the gravity, dropping onto me and grinding at the bottom. The bark was shredding my shirt and my back was raw and her pussy was clenching on every downstroke and her legs were tight around my waist.

Her breath hot through the fabric. Combat sweat on both of us. Salt and metal mixing with her arousal and the forest's green wet air. Her hair damp at the temples and coming loose and strands sticking to her neck.

The wet sounds getting louder. Slicker. She was getting wetter and each time she dropped the sound was obscene in the quiet forest and her cheeks were red because she could hear it.

She lifted her head from my shoulder. Eyes glazed. Mouth open. Flushed.

"Harder," she said.

I drove up into her. Used the tree as leverage and the thrust was hard and deep and she gasped and her nails dug into my shoulders.

"Ah- fuck-"

Her head went back. I drove up again. Harder. The bark grinding into my back and her weight bouncing on me and each thrust slapped her thighs against my hips and the wet sounds were loud.

"Ah- ah- right there- don't stop- ah-"

She'd stopped trying to muffle the sounds. Mouth open, coming out into the forest air. My arms were burning from holding her weight and my back was raw and my cock was throbbing inside her.

Her sword hand found my shoulder. Gripping. Knuckles white.

Her whole body bouncing with each thrust. Deep on every stroke and she was clenching in fast pulses and the wetness was running down my cock and onto my thighs. Her breasts pressed against my chest, shifting through the shirt, and her hair loose and swinging.

"I'm- Haruto- I'm-"

I drove up hard. Her sword hand crushed my shoulder and her pussy clenched in hard waves and her legs went rigid around my waist and my name came out of her mouth broken in half and she shook against me. The tree shook. Bark rained down.

She was clenching in rhythmic waves and I drove up one more time and came. The pressure from the fight broke. Hips jerking. Her still clenching. Warmth spreading. My knees nearly gave and I locked them and held her up and my arms were shaking and my back was shredded and I-

Breathing.

Her face in my neck. My back against the tree.

She laughed. Quiet, breathless, into my neck.

"My legs don't work."

"That's becoming a pattern."

"Put me down."

I set her down. She stood on shaking legs and pulled her trousers up and her face was flushed and her hair was a mess with bark in it and she looked at me and grinned. Post-combat, post-sex, messy and alive.

She picked bark out of my hair. "Your back."

"Shredded."

"Tianne can heal it."

"And explain how I got bark burns on my spine?"

She considered this. "Tell her you fell on a root."

"Backward?"

"You're clumsy."

"I just killed a six-legged monster with one stroke."

"You're selectively clumsy."

We walked back to camp. Mila was asleep by the packs. Tianne was in her tent. Leonora was cleaning her sword even though it hadn't been used.

Llusse was sitting on a low branch at the camp's edge. On watch. Facing the forest.

Facing the direction we'd come from.

Her ears were red.

"Good walk?" she asked. Her voice was flat.

"Yeah," I said. "Nice night."

"Mm." She didn't look at us. "The tree sounded like it was having a good time."

Filia went rigid.

"Good night, Llusse," I said.

"Good night." She paused. "Try to be quieter next time. The watchers in the canopy were very interested."

I looked up. In the branches above camp, two pairs of eyes glinted in the bioluminescent light and then were gone.

Filia's face was the color of her hair.

I went to my tent. My back was raw. The forest was humming and somewhere in the canopy the elves of Alfheim had gotten a very educational show.

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