Blood Heat (Patreon)

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Things had not gone according to plan.  This, perhaps, was the greatest understatement Corrin had ever uttered in his short, 70-year lifespan as an Elf.  It was almost comical, really, barely considered an adult by his own kind and about to have it all cut short, just for attempting to do the right thing.  As he watched the humans who had taken him captive march noisily around their campsite, preparing their various cruel devices and traps, he pondered on the sheer absurdity that this was how it was all going to end.

One of the men, a lumbering brute by the name of Gor, noticed his sullen, green-eyed stare and returned it with a gap-toothed grin.  Bristle surrounded those split and cracked lips, watery eyes the color of runoff and hair shorn close to his skull, thus accentuating the massive trio of savage scars that traced back over the dome of his temple and missing ear.  He was sharpening a sinister device, a series of metal hooks bound in wire like some kind of demonic fishhook, with a large hand.

Corrin's eyes flitted down to Gor's side then, staring hard at the length of polished, rune-etched wood that lay there.  A Druid's staff was a potent weapon, able to channel the primal energies of the Leylines, much like a Wizard's staff might for the Arcane Vortex.  Separated from him, however, it was just a fancy stick, and just as useless.  With his hands bound, and his mouth gagged, even if he had it within reach, he couldn't cast any spells.

Seeming to detect what the Elf was thinking, Gor grinned even more lopsidedly and reached down to pat the staff like it was some kind of trained pet.  Corrin glared daggers at him, to which the Human only chortled.

"It's a nice tree-branch," he commented in his thick, drawling voice.  It carried around the woodland clearing the camp was set up in, rebounding hollowly from the ancient trees that surrounded them.  Soft firelight illuminated hollows and knots in the wood that for all the world appeared like similar glares down at the intruders to their realm.  It cast a sinister air over all assembled, one that even Corrin did not feel safe underneath.  "Good for firewood."

One of Gor's compatriots, a ruddy-skinned Tiefling with one eye covered in a cloth eyepatch tied back behind his horns, looked around irately at the seeming outburst of noise.  "Oi, Gor, shut your trap," he hissed in a half-whisper.

Gor, seemingly, didn't care for the chastisement and went right along taunting Corrin at full volume.  "You want it back?" he teased, plucking up Corrin's staff in one sweaty palm and waving it tauntingly barely a foot from his face.  The wind its swings caused brushed his nose, making him flinch every time it got too close for comfort.

Mustering up his self control, warring against his mounting dread and exasperation, Corrin grunted out through the gag in an attempt at a retort, only for Gor to immediately whap him across the pointed ear.  The thug laughed, making his half a dozen or so companions flinch again at the noise.

Scowling heavily, the same Tiefling stood up and walked over towards the pair of them.  In one hand, he held a notched-bladed scimitar, reinforced across the knuckles with a basket hilt meant to deliver close quarters blows.  Raising it up high, the demon-sired bandit cracked Gor across the forehead from behind with a single, light blow of the rounded pommel stone.  It made the laughter cut off, although Gor immediately clapped a hand to his head and let out a groan.

Many eyes rolled as Gor turned to confront his ally, mouth open to berate him, only to be struck again in the nose.  Both blows had not been serious, but the message was clear.  The Tiefling glared then at Corrin, as if he were just as somehow responsible for his ire, and pointed the blade of his weapon at the bound Druid.  "Both of you," he growled.  "Keep your mouths shut and the noise down.  Either one of you runs off our kill, I'll skin you instead."

Gor quieted down immediately, rubbing at his injuries with a sullen glare as the Tiefling, Kator, or something close to it, turned to go.  A distant shuffling off in the shadows of the twilight woodlands, unheard by anyone else, had Corrin whirling his head in its direction.  Keen hearing was a main feature of Elven physiology, and while the trappers, a motley collection of various races, seemed not to notice, Corrin did.  He peered through the gloom at the far-off, continuing rustles, slowly growing closer and closer.

Not for the first time, his emerald eyes flickered up towards the sky, staring up at the seemingly starless blanket of night that stretched overhead, visible through the canopy of the forest.  A single, glowing moon shone through, but its normal radiance was dimmed, dulled even, pale ivory color turned a dark red that gave everything a sinister appearance.  Shadows lay heavier everywhere, and there was a smell, a tightness in the air, that gave off ominous intent.  All the world held its breath while a Blood Moon was high.

The rustling started up again, closer this time.  Corrin looked in its direction, eyes desperate to pierce the darkness and parse out who or what was slowly approaching the campsite.  All of his fears seemed to be coming to fruition.  The sounds fell away, maybe a few hundred feet beyond the camp, and paused as if waiting.  Just faintly, he saw the dim, glowing radiance of light reflecting from a pair of eyes shining in the dark.

He whirled around, desperately trying to get words out from around the gag.  The resulting, muffled yell wasn't quite what he wished as in intent but it did get Kator's attention.  The Tiefling whirled around, blade still raised and murderous intent in his eyes.  "What did I just say?!" he hissed, voice loud enough to make everyone else immediately shush him.  "Don't shush me!" he snapped, although he did lower his tone if not his rage.  "I've been shushing all of you!  Why is it so hard for any of you to just listen to orders?!"

Corrin looked back in the direction where he had seen the eyes, only to now see nothing but blank darkness once more.  This, however, was not comforting.  Knowing it had been seen, the onlooker had shifted position.  Corrin knew what it was, and how crafty they could be, a fact that led to the deaths of many inexperienced and cocky would-be slayers.  And apparently do-gooder Druids trying to warn forest-goers away from the area during this most deadly time of the year.

Whirling his gaze back around, he was abruptly confronted by the sharp edge of the scimitar nearly pressing into his face, tip glittering bloodily in the dim, red light of the moon up above.  Kator glowered down at him, scarred and fiendish face made to look positively demonic in the lighting.

"You've been a thorn in my ass since all of this started," he grated out in a dark rasp.  "I'm as likely to actually skin you to spare myself the trouble of having to deal with you."  He pressed the blade closer and Corrin, trained Druid that he was, still had to fight hard to resist shuddering as that cold tip pressed against his cheek.  A sharp sting accompanied a rush of heat and pain as blood trickled down his face from the tiny incision.  Then the pressure was lifted and Kator leaned back up.  "But those days are behind me.  I'm an honest poacher now.  So why don't you benefit from my benevolence..." his voice dropped off right before a heavy boot kicked Corrin in the ribs making him double over, even bound against the tree as he was.  "And stop pissing me off!"

Corrin met the bandit's eyes again, the pain dulled by his continuing to mount panic.  'We have to run!' he tried to tell the man through the dirty rag that was muffling him.  'You are all going to die, we are all going to die, unless you get out of here, now!'

Kator rolled his single yellow, turned orange, eye and raised his boot again.  That was when another trapper, a solid-bodied Dwarf with heavy mustaches, stopped checking his supply of crossbow bolts and glanced his way.  He met the squat, muscular man's eyes pleadingly from over Kator, looking frantically towards the woods and back to him.  The Dwarf, never the friendliest of allies to Elves, still must understand the significance of the gesture.

Flinty eyes scanned the treeline even as Kator kicked Corrin again.  Another rustle came.  "'Ere...boss?" the Dwarf grunted.  The Tiefling whirled around, blade still in hand and tail lashing.  "I think the lad's trying to tell you something."

"I don't care what some animal-shifting, leaf-eating Druid has to say," Kator grumbled.  "He's been harping on me ever since I dropped by that village, probing and asking questions, and now when we are set up for our biggest hunt yet, here he turns up again, trying to tell us to leave."  He turned back around, lashing Corrin across the chest with his tail as heavily as his kicks had been.  "Like he owns this stretch of woods!"

The Dwarf shrugged but he glanced once more at the wheezing Corrin before turning away deliberately.  The rest of the trappers were far more invested in seeing the Elf being bullied, and none were paying any attention at all to the surrounding woodlands.  That was, until all the night time sounds around them fell completely, and instantaneously, away.  As if a magical spell had been cast, all became silent and still.

Kator stood back up to his full height, glancing around then.  Only now did he seem to remember the significance of his own professed 'biggest hunt yet' and the obvious situation he was in.  His one eye went wide and he hissed to his fellows.  "Weapons.  Now.  Brand, are the snares in place?"  The Dwarf from before nodded.  The seven poachers turned their full attention to the woods, giving Corrin the opportunity at last to try working on his restraints, even if, most likely, it was all too late.

Reaching out to the tree behind him, the Elf uttered a string of words laced with Druidic power that, even muffled, would hopefully work to his favor.   Woadcraft was not any great exhibition of spellcasting, merely a paltry trick, the first lesson any Druid Initiate would have been able to muster; simple but powerful in its utility.  The bark behind him shifted as the tree heard and responded to a brother of the Earth, reshaping part of itself to expose a rough root to his bound hands.  He began to rub his bindings slowly and methodically against it, praying he could free himself before...the end.

The entire troupe of hunters peered through the darkness, crouching low, with blades and crossbows in hand.  Corrin could all but hear the pounding of their hearts, the rasp of nervous breath and tongues on frayed lips.  Nothing moved for a long moment.  Then, seemingly bored, one person broke the enchantment of stillness that had fallen over the glen.

Snorting in annoyance, Gor stood up from his hunched over position, lifting his bulky body up and striding to the very edge of the campsite.  He hefted a rock and threw it as forcefully as he could off away from their direction.  Everyone flinched as he did but he just stood there, expectantly, seeing if he had flushed out whatever was out there.

It came in a rushing of grass.  Shouts hollered around the camp as the undergrowth parted and something darted into the center of the camp.  Shots were fired, blades hacked, and men fell about and over themselves in a panic as what it was continued weaving around their legs and bounding frantically away in the same instance as it had appeared.  The group all clutched their chests as it faded back into the darkness, letting out nervous breaths and picking themselves back up.

"Just a fucking rabbit," muttered Kator.

"Nothing serious, boss," chuckled Gor, crossing his burly arms over an even burlier chest.  He held his dual skinning knives easily.  "Nothing out here's likely as dangerous as even that."

"If there wasn't anything more dangerous than a rabbit, I wouldn't have brought us all out here, you lumbering simpleton," snapped the Tiefling.  Gor looked offended by this and said so, or he would have.  There was another rustling just at that moment, with everyone's focus shifted away from the boundaries of the forest for that one, crucial moment.

A heavy crunch and shifting of grass and weeds came.  Gor, mouth open to retort, felt the shadow fall across him.  The oafish man turned to look, having to crane his neck up to see what that vast shape was, dwarfing him completely and casting him in darkness.  The last thing he saw was the gleam of light-reflecting eyes before they descended in a rush.  Gor collapsed to the ground, screaming raggedly from a torn-open throat moments before that same predatory shadow fell across him and completely concealed him from view.

The camp burst into startled uproar as where their lumbering companion had been was now a solid block of rustling darkness and shifting shades of brown, pale white, and dark black.  Crunches and the sounds of tearing flesh came, along with sharp clacks of something almost scissor-like.  The creature atop of Gor rose then, eyes gleaming in the light of the fire and rose again to its massive, lumbering height.

Bright eyes glittered above a sharp, curved beak, still dripping with blood.  Dark feathers ruffled across a massive, muscular frame, the speckled white and brown-dotted front of it stained a grisly shade of red.  Huge paws, with talons easily the length of daggers, bristled at its sides, and the tips of two long, horn-like feathery crests dominated its avian head.  It was half-again as tall as Gor had been, who lay in a crumbled, unrecognizable mass of flesh and exposed bone.  It had not eaten Gor, merely savaged him to shreds.

The Owlbear lifted its beak to the blood-tinted sky and let out its thunderous, nightmare cry.  It was somewhere between both of its namesakes: a shrieking owl scream mixed with a bellowing bear roar.  A primal sound, it echoed all around them, filling the forest with its maddened rage and frenzied lust for blood, and setting every man before it to shrieking right back, but in terror.

What crossbows there were still loaded lifted and fired, four or so bolts streaking through the dark and thudding solidly into its hide.  There they stuck, hanging impotently and seemingly having caused no actual damage, instead only seeming to enrage the beast more.  The Owlbear roared again at the pain of such minor, insulting injuries, barely better than stinging hornets for its size, and in a flash it was in their midst.  Another man went down as it bowled into him, lashing out with a paw that flattened him to the ground.  There was a wet squelch of impact and then the talons had lifted from his ruined ribcage.

Another man rushed at it from behind, axe lifted, intending on catching it in the back no doubt.  Corrin could have warned the man that would never work against an Owlbear, famous for their sight and hearing above even the keenest Elf.  The head of the creature whirled around, a full 190 degrees on its shoulders to face the man, who stopped short as his surprise attack failed.  Whirling on its paws, faster than anything so massive should have been, it hammered the man into a tree, causing the bark to crack and entire thing to jostle back.  Blood sprayed from his lips a second before the beak descended and, just like with Gor, tore out his throat in a needlessly brutal display of savagery.

Corrin watched it all in mindless terror and shock as the Owlbear waded through the desperately hacking and firing trappers.  His wrists were worn and blistered from rubbing the ropes on the exposed root, and although they felt looser, it was taking too long to get free.  He tried to speed up, unable to tear his gaze away from Brand, the Dwarf from before, viciously being stomped into the ground.  Screams of agony echoed around the clearing as one bandit, leg nearly bitten off, tried desperately to crawl away.  Corrin had never seen such fear in a man's eyes before, every emotion thrown into overdrive from the situation as the beast seized the injured trapper and hauled him back to finish the job.  It tore him apart with brutal efficiency.

Even with the brutality of the sudden melee, and over half their number down, Kator and his remaining men had done some damage, if only enough to make it seem they were doing anything at all.  Multiple bolts stuck out of the feathery hide, and a broken spear even jutted out from its flank.  They had to know there was no hope in a battle like this, taken unawares by a beast that only the most skilled of hunters had even a chance of overtaking.

Three became two as one of the trappers let himself become backed into a corner and even as he turned to flee, he fell to the ground shrieking as its beak lashed out and severed the tendons in his leg.  He wasn't made to suffer for long, as the next target of the beast's wrath was his skull, squashing it with a single downwards slap of its massive paw.  Drenched in gore, its gleaming eyes turned once more onto the last of its foes, blood heat glowing so bright that they might as well have been lanterns.  Again it roared, blood flying from its maw.

Kator backed away from the grisly display, all confidence gone.  His eye flickered towards Corrin, wordlessly acknowledging, here at the end, that he had been wrong.  He should have listened; some hunts were beyond him and it would be his final mistake.  A strangled scream came and the Tiefling and Elf both turned to see the last of the hunters finally lose his nerve and race away from the site, off into the night.

"Goeff, no!" Kator screamed after him, but it was too late.  Blinded by his fear and unable to see in the dark, Goeff's flight ended abruptly as he stumbled into the very traps set for the beast responsible for the slaughter.  They could not see him, but all the woods heard his strangled yells of agony before they mercifully faded.  At the last, it was just the two of them and the Owlbear left alive in the glen.  The bandit's single eye narrowed and, to his credit, he drew himself up as tall as he could.  "Come on then..." he snarled at the massive creature, whirling his scimitar.  "Let's see who's the better hunter!"

Kator charged, much to Corrin's and even the Owlbear's surprise.  It shrieked and swung with a paw but the Tiefling managed to duck just in time and lash out with his blade.  The steel cut deeply into the feathery limb, scoring a long cut.  He whirled away with incredible reflexes from a snapping beak that would have most likely cut off his head and rushed in low and fast, scimitar leading the way.  Its tip pierced the belly of the beast, puncturing in before the entire blade bowed... and snapped.

Stumbling back, the Tiefling looked aghast at his broken weapon in shock before a paw whirled in from his blindside and clouted him to the side and off his feet.  The trapper fell with a grunt of pain, leather armor torn across his side, now laying barely a few feet from Corrin.  Again, their eyes met, Owlbear shrieking in the background as it tried to extricate the sliver of steel from its belly.  All fear and anger faded from his face and Kator gave the Druid a single, solemn nod.

One hand reached into his belt and extricated a dagger.  Struggling to sit up, the Tiefling began savagely hacking and sawing at Corrin's bindings around his ankles, slicing easily through the ropes that held him, all while the Elf looked on in shock.  He reached up and yanked the gag then from the Elf's mouth, his fiendish features twisted in pain but also somehow self-satisfaction.  "Don't let the Gods say I left a helpless man to die before I went to mine," he uttered, blood flecking his sharpened teeth.  Crawling around, the trapper found the Druid's frayed bindings and began sawing at them too.

Corrin's eyes flickered back up as a shadow smelling of blood and rage fell across them.  "Look out!" he tried to yell in time, for all the good it did.

Kator jerked as he was pitched forward and slammed his horned head into the ground with a grunt.  Then he was hauled, rapidly back by the ankle, locked in the Owlbear's pincer-like beak, and lifted up off the ground.  Around and around the Tiefling was spun, only by the tremendous neck muscles of the monstrosity, and then, at the apex of his achieved velocity, released.  His flight was short, smashing back first into a tree a good twenty feet away where he slumped to the ground.  His legs and arms spasmed, face locked in shock as his limbs refused to answer his call.

Trying desperately to do anything, Corrin watched helplessly, wrists bleeding from the now nearly shorn-through ropes, as the Owlbear approached the paralyzed Tiefling.  It lifted a blood-soaked paw, claws glittering in the ruby moonlight, before it fell, with all the judgment and finality of a guillotine.  There was a hiss of air and Corrin felt, almost like sensing a smell, the rush of magical energy drawing up.  It smelled like Sulphur and burning hair, or more accurately feathers.  Even as the killing blow was struck, Kator had used the inherent connection of all Tieflings to the Hellfires from whence their demonic ancestors came from to summon a vindictive final counter to his quarry.

An explosion of heat and foul-smelling fumes erupted from where Kator had lain, singing the trees and shrubbery around the area and leaving the Owlbear to stagger back in shock.  It coughed and hacked, shaking its plumed, soot-blackened head, leaving the charred corpse of the Tiefling trapper behind.

Corrin tore his eyes away from the man, only a few minutes ago alive, well, and yes kicking him in the ribs hard enough to bruise them.  Even so, Corrin was not the kind of man to wish harm on another.  He'd suspected the trapper's real motives when he had met him in town, come to this area to hunt foreign and exotic game outside the purview of the authorities.  He didn't approve of it, but he also knew that this wasn't some wild-Unicorn hunt in the woods.  These men could have avoided dying, and he felt as if he had failed them in that.  Poachers though they were, life was precious, and here, wasted.

Still, sadness and despair aside, his real efforts should have been in attempting to free himself from his loosened bindings and escape a similar fate as his captors.  With the beast still blinded and disoriented, he set to struggling against his fraying ropes with all speed, frantically sawing them against the rough root.  He felt them part at last and looked over to the side, already reaching for his Druid's staff.  A quick spell and he would transform into something small and undetectable, a squirrel or a bird, and flee from the glen turned slaughterhouse to mourn and live another day.

A shadow fell across his outstretched hand, accompanied by the sounds of labored, heavy breathing and the crunch of twigs and leaves beneath ponderous paws.  Hot air, tinged with the smell of iron, brushed over his face, and the sound of feral growling filled his long ears.  Slowly, Corrin looked up to see the grisly butcher of the woods towering over him, the last living victim of its Blood Heat infused rampage.

The Owlbear's glowing eyes gazed down at the reclined Elf before it.  Its long beak still dripped with blood, feathers slightly darkened around its face but otherwise not taking away from the brutal, yet refined savage beauty of it.  It was the most massive specimen he had ever come across, and never this close up before.  He'd spotted the beast at a distance over a week ago, and thus began a fascination in studying such a rare and volative species in its natural environment.  It was akin to a Human from the city seeing a Wolf for the first time in the flesh and fur; some things truly had no scope of size unless they were seen in person.

When he had discovered the upcoming Blood Moon, he had abandoned his studies and begun attempts of warning away any forest-goers from the area, and had been mostly successful.  He could make peace, one might have been able to say, with doing so with all but these lost and foolhardy souls.  Even so, that was little conciliation to him now, as likely to meet the same fate as these men had just for trying to do the right thing.  He did not blame the Owlbear at all however, it was simply only doing what came naturally to it, most especially during such a volatile and admittedly rare time for one of its kind.

Massive claws scratched at the soaked and torn earth beneath its paws as it hovered over him, taller at the shoulder on all fours than he would have been standing.  Its feathers, now that he was this close up, were all a dappled, chestnut brown across its limbs and back, while its fluffed-up chest plumage was a pale white, spotted through with black and brown speckles that were visible beneath the liberal splashes of red.  Its glare came from eyes, round across as his closed fist, that shone brilliant gold surrounding avian pupils that squarely had him set in its sights, narrowing at the final intruder to its domain.

The beak opened and, to many more mundane viewer's surprise, Corrin was greeted with a view of a maw full of fangs behind it.  All of them were lengthy and came to sharpened tips, much like a bear's mouth, although lacking dominant canines as all the cutting and slicing action would come on the business end of that dagger-length beak.  A heavy rush of air into its lungs caused it to expand in size and bulk even more before it came pouring back out in yet another terrifying, ear-splitting roar that shook the earth beneath his fingertips.  One paw drew back, ready to end him as well.

Corrin, however, did not sit idly by, frozen by fear or indecision or rushing to somehow strike back at it as the others had.  An enraged Owlbear was beyond the concept of mercy, but it would still respond to instinct.  And he knew the species well enough to know what to look for in its features and body build.  He opened his mouth too, just as its shriek's echoes began to end, and he echoed them right back.  The Elf Druid screamed, as loud and as harshly as he could, tuning his vocal chords to match as closely as possible the Owlbear's natural cry.

"SKKKRRAAAAAAAAAAUGH!"

It did the trick.  The beast flinched, great ocular orbs blinking once and the paw which had been ready to spill his brains onto the forest floor jerked back in shock at the entirely unnatural sound to come from the mouth of a humanoid like him.  It continued to hover over him, confused but wary.  Wasting no more time than was necessary than to thank the gods for that having worked, he rose to his feet in a hunched crouch, drawing his lithe, Elven body up into a bow.  His hands brushed the torn earth beneath him and his feet set wide apart as he kept his eyes firmly locked with it.

Again he let loose that ferocious bellowing scream, standing as he did up onto his hindlegs and flaring his arms out wide.  The feathers he had sewn into his hand-stitched robes and tunic waved in the hot night air as he did and he made a show of sweeping the cloak from side to side as if emulating the waving of wings or arms much larger than his own.  It was his last and only chance to avoid being turned into Owlbear supper, even as crazy of a plan as it was.

Everything he had researched about the Blood Heat had all agreed on a leading cause to their heightened aggression and ferocity towards other living beings; he just hoped that it wouldn't end in his eventual demise regardless of if it worked or not.  In the wild, it had about only a 45% success rate, and he had already been lucky enough in staving off death as it was, but all he could do was hope.

The Owlbear settled back further, watching him carefully as he trotted a few steps to the side, still waving his arms.  He spun on his heels in a slow, careful circle, timing it just right, and raised his arms to the sky above before slamming them down onto the ground, crouched over animalistically once more.  He trotted around the beast, smashing the ground with his fists, screaming again and again in his best interpretation of Owlbear vocals.  His bizarre dance soon grew faster and more frenzied, his face red with exertion and slick with sweat as his long, brown hair waved all around him.

Inscrutable light shone from the eyes of his murderous audience of one.  Ancient instincts raged within even the most civilized of beings, and for those of an entirely primal nature such as the beast, they were elevated beyond even normal scope due to the heightened state of tension caused by a Blood Moon.  The Owlbear watched his capering and swaggering, his swaying and contorting, with what one could almost call a casual interest, growing more and more as he kept dancing.

Fluent in the speech of beasts, a language less vocal than it was by stance, smell, posture, and expression, he was terrified and encouraged by what glowed inside those lantern-like eyes.  Dance for me little thing, I'm as like to enjoy it as much as I would killing you.  And the finale was rapidly approaching.

Lifting himself up once more, he trundled back with deliberate exaggeration of his movements, then, steeling himself, he rushed forwards on all fours, leaped at the last moment, and came to land directly in front of the hulking beast.  Breath burst from him out of his ravaged throat as he roared as loud and as ferociously as he possibly could, louder than any other he had uttered before.  Now nose to nose with the creature, he stood, arms stretched out, panting for breath, and feeling his heart hammering inside of his chest as loud as goblin drums.  Then, ever so slowly, he sank back down to a crouch, averted his gaze, and stretched his neck to the side and exposing the vein.  And he waited.

Judgment did not take long.  There was a rush of feathers and Corrin was abruptly flattened onto the ground.  Sharp, pinching pain latched onto his exposed neck and shoulder, making him flinch and want to cry out but knowing if he did that it would be the first of many, if short, agonized cries to follow, and most likely the last sounds he was ever to utter.  Blood trickled down his collar as the sharp tips of that beak dug in, grip like a vice, and the Owlbear held him down as it did, breath hot against his skin and the weight of it keeping him pinned.

Long, torturous seconds, full of near crushing weight and twinges of pain, came and went.  His nose was full of the smell of iron and odd, feathery odor.  Muscles, like the braided moorings of a ship at sea, flexed around him, easily capable of breaking him with but a bare application of just slightly more pressure already being used upon him.  Then, like a miracle, the grip upon him lessened and the monster leaned its feathered head back to gaze down at the Druid.  Bright amber eyes traced the small lines of blood that leaked from him, feral expression curious.

The fang-filled beaky maw opened again and he again had to fight hard not to shudder as it leaned down once more.  This time, however, it was not to bite.  A hot, wet sensation coated his abrasions, licking them clean.  Its tongue was rough and coarse, not unlike a cat's, and it lapped at his injury for another few seconds as if deciding if it liked the taste of not.  At last, it ceased and loomed over his prone form once more.  A trilling came from it then, an almost unbelievably soft and intriguing sound to be uttered by a beast so feared for its well-earned reputation of barbarity to rival any raging Orc.

His suspicions had once again been correct as the Owlbear shuffled back a few steps from atop of him.  That, however, had been the easy part.  Its beak hooked into his boot and then he was abruptly being hauled, slow and unevenly by his leg, away from the carnage and off into the darkness of the woods from whence it had appeared.  He gave his errant staff a regretful look, making sure to catalogue exactly where the campsite was in case he would somehow get the chance to come back to reclaim it.  The elf had no desire to have to explain why he needed a new one crafted by one of his Circle's Senior Druids, and he was not yet skilled enough to make his own.

It took a while for the Owlbear to drag him, even as easy a task as it was for the creature, across the forest floor, down a short incline, and towards the sounds of a rushing riverbed.  The smells were familiar to him as he realized, even flat on his back as he was, where they were: he'd tracked this same Owlbear to exactly this place several times to mark out where it laired, but never had been foolish enough to go farther in.  Soon enough, the beast took a sharp turn and immediately his sharp vision had to adjust as everything became dark around him.

The dragging sounds of his clothing and heavy tromping paws of his 'host' echoed around the interior confines of a sizeable cave, along with the distant drops of falling water from deeper within.  Down, down, down they descended, his back feeling raw and his leg half-asleep from how tightly it was clasped in the Owlbear's jaws.  He tried to steel himself, working frantically to keep himself calm as his journey finally, mercifully, came to a stop.  His back hit the swell of something rough, coarse, and stuck through with downy softness.  Then he was hauled up, over the lip of whatever it was, and dropped unceremoniously into it.

Corrin looked around with grim certainty of his surroundings.  The Owlbear's nest.  It was a sizeable affair, cobbled together from loam, tree branches, leaves, spare feathers, torn furs or fabrics of various creatures, and the overbearing scent of must.  He lay flat on his back, leg twinging, as he watched the Owlbear's glowing eyes peek over the lip of the nest before it hauled its bulk over the edge and joined him inside.  The same trilling sound came again as it circled him, sniffing occasionally, bumping and prodding him with its paws hard enough to bruise but for its reputation only gentle love taps.

Well used to seeing in the dark, Corrin the Elf Druid watched the Owlbear preen and posture around him as if celebrating the acquiring of some treasure.  Then it was suddenly looming over him just as before, pinning him to the floor of the rough nest.  This time however, it splayed its paws on either side of him, pressing its massive, plumed chest down against him and beginning to, for all the gods he knew what it was but could barely believe it, coo.  The Owlbear was cooing like some huge dove rather than a murderous, blood-hungry beast, rubbing its feathery hide against him.

Occasionally, it would lean down, adjusting its stance to account for their dramatic difference in size, and nip or lick at him anew, changing position of the love-touches every now and then.  Sharp pain came to the tip of his elongated ear as it nibbled there before replacing it with, admittedly, a much more pleasant one as it licked away the sting.  Owlbear intimacy was bizarrely much like that of most humanoids for their courtship behavior, and to have been able to observe this from a safe distance would have been the utmost discovery for any Druid to see.  This close up, he couldn't help the rush of multiple emotions flooding through him, careful to not allow fear to become the most powerful of them all.

Plus, he would be lying if he didn't admit that, no matter how terrifying the events of the night had been, the sensations he was currently feeling, even the mildly painful ones, felt...good.  It was primal and rough, his back pinned to the downy nesting material, and the Owlbear's trills, coos, and growls filling his ears.  Ever so carefully, in-between one of its liftings off of him to investigate another part of his face, his hands lifted and touched the feathery hide.  All to continue the exhibition and not cause it to become bored and eat him after all, of course.

Now, Corrin had scarcely believed when one of the Elder Druids, Urion Underbough, had stated  during a Moon-Rising celebration, that Owlbear down was some of the thickest, and softest, things one could ever be lucky enough to experience outside of a loathsome pelt-peddler.  Deeper and deeper his hands sank into the fluff, feeling the stiff pinions underneath flexing against his touch, before finally his fingers touched a wall of flesh so hardened and tough that it might as well have been stone.  And it was warm: warmer, softer, and smoother than any creature considered a monster by so many had any right to be.

In response to his touch, the Owlbear trilled even louder, as if actively encouraging him to continue.  It was not some dumb beast, because while primal like its kin, Corrin knew now, better than even before what had been a nagging suspicion, that this was no regular Owlbear.  The feathered, horn-like tufts upon its head almost like a crown, the oversized bulk of it that overshadowed anything said or spoken of in prior research, and most especially the gleam of its eyes with stark, savage intelligence behind them.  Therein most of all dwelled full knowledge that while he might have dance the Owlbear courtship dance, this was not one of its own.

The Royal Owlbear gazed down at him, fully aware, and very much unobjecting.  For she was a Queen of the forest, and in the throes of Blood Heat with a willing, subservient male, she had decided for a very different kind of mauling than the ones prior that evening.  She rose above him again, casting him in her shadow and arching her head to the side at a sharp angle, feathered crest parallel now with her shoulders, and waited.  Her beak clattered several times, and the eyelids lowered in what almost might have been a coquettish but also dangerous smile.

Casting his gaze to where his hands still remain locked and buried in her plumage, fluffed up and curved in much the same way as a well-endowed humanoid woman's bust might have, it was easy to tell himself that this wasn't just survival.  Druids had always been more closely attuned and linked to nature, embracing the lifestyle and habits of animals in concordance of their ancient connection to the beasts they shared the natural world with.

Sure, he might never had actively thought he would have before, and never dared to pursue it without the threat of imminent death earlier.   Protest all he wanted to, however, he could not lie and say that he didn't see an incredible and very real beauty to the beast above him, as beguiling as any, perhaps oversized, but any other female he would have been chosen to lay with.

And it was also true that Owlbears were not simple animals.  Royals most especially.  They were a recent breed only truly witnessed in rare numbers and instances over the last few decades enough to be acknowledged as a true-offshoot, a naturally formed evolution of the original species.  Royal Owlbears were far more intelligent than their savage brethren, more advanced and complex in their mannerisms, and some said even capable of what the sentient races would classify as rational thought.

He wasn't sure how true that was, but it did not escape him what was another name for them: Awakened.  Although born from bloodshed and violence, Owlbears had at long last seemingly begun to evolve to become more than their primal roots.  Case in point?  The massive female Royal now grinding against him with unmistakable intent clear in her glowing eyes.

A heavy growl filled the air, disturbing his ponderings and still constantly roaming fingers beneath her plumage.  The chest beneath his hands rumbled and he started, tearing his eyes away from it and back up to the beaked maw above him.

At first he worried he had waited too long and she had grown bored, but then her haunches hammered down against his groin, and a new, soft, subtle scent filled his keen senses.  His face went red as he felt her movements there, short, heavy, and deliberate, against the crux of his hips.  The near-crushing weight pinning him down lifted only fractionally and she clicked her beak in a rapid series of deliberate motions, feathers ruffling around her face.

Corrin got the message.

Worming his hands down his body, still shaking slightly from adrenaline, he worked his long fingers into the ties of his leggings and began to undo them.. He tugged at them as quickly as he could, snagging on knots that he struggled to undo blind and all while the Owlbear loomed above him, obviously eager and impatient for him to fulfill the promise he'd made earlier in the glen.  Cool air greeted his lower regions as his pants finally loosened and he shuffled awkwardly out of them and exposing himself to the rough, plush material of the bedding they rested upon.

Rising up, he watched the beast lean down with interest to examine his now naked and quivering lower half, eyeing his 'staff' with more than just a curious gleam to those bright, polished orbs.  A trill echoed around the cave and he steeled himself as those ponderous limbs shuffled and settled around and off of him temporarily, no doubt in preparation for what he suspected was coming.  He only hoped he would be able to keep up, although given how ferocious it had already displayed it could be in battle, he did not have much confidence that it would be any more gentle in the throes of passion.

He jerked and let out an unintentional yip of alarm, eyes flying open once more, as his legs were abruptly being hoisted up into the air.  His leggings, having previously been hanging loosely around his knees, were suddenly grabbed in an iron-sharp beak and ripped from him down to his ankles, his body jerking as if being savaged by a dog.  He looked down in shock to see the Owlbear savagely shaking her head, beak shredding the fabric of his clothes, before they tore completely in two and she tossed the shreds to the side.

She made to go for his boots then but he forestalled her desperately with a cry of "H-hold on a second..."  She settled back only when he made a hurried attempt to remove those by hand, already red in the face after being so violently, and permanently, disrobed in such a way.  His hand-stitched boots thunked down then, leaving him completely bare from the waist down.  Again the Owlbear perused his frame, clicking her beak rapidly before she finally seemed pleased.

His head thunked back down and he tried to resist a small tremor that nonetheless shook his entire body, a combination of embarrassment, fear, and complete shame at how little choice he had right now. Not to mention the even more mortifying part that she gazed at so avidly at that moment, which had lost none of its vigor for the display of dominance. If anything, he felt it was even more excited than it had been, and he cursed some deeply hidden, dark part of himself for somehow enjoying the rough treatment.

Then it seemingly was her turn, after looking him over to her heart's content, for before his eyes, the beast turned and, shifting on mighty limbs, huddled over forwards while now facing away from him and lifting the tufted, feathery tail above her haunches and exposing her rear to him.  It was a vast expanse of feathers and quivering muscles, dappled admittedly with beautiful coloration, but it was the obvious intent of her to show off her own nethers.  He swallowed hard as his eyes traced down to the trunk-like rear limbs of the feral beast, studying the area being shown to him from which the sweet scent was most strongly emitting from.  It almost made him feel lightheaded.

On a whim that was not entirely based on rational thought, even he was a bit riled up despite the situation leading up to this, his hands lifted and brushed her haunches.  She jerked and he ceased at once, only for her coos and growls to warble back down at him, her head peering over her shoulder to click her beak rapidly.  It was as obvious a symbol to the Druid as could be, if anything here was obvious.

Go on.

His long fingers worked into the fluffy plumage exposed to him like before, but this time as they burrowed deeply into it, this time he felt something much different than the powerful chest of the beast.  What he felt now was much softer, a lighter arrangement of shorter feathers surrounding the crux of her hips between those massive thighs.  The source of the sweet smell was hot and almost pungent and he shuddered once as his fingers passed over something very wet and pliant beneath all that feathering.

Corrin had literally no warning, for as soon as he had brushed it, her legs trembled and she rapidly backed up more into his touch.  The resulting rush had her all but squatting atop of his reclined, half-naked form, her posterior shoved into his face but by a few inches and his hands flat against the soft expanse that hid what she desired him to touch more.  And touch he did; who honestly was going to judge him right now?  This was a matter of survival after all... or at least that was what he told himself.

The opening beneath the plumage was indeed wet, sticky like syrup and incredibly fragrant.  His senses were all but overwhelmed by the sensation of touching such soft flesh and stroking across its trembling shape, completely foreign to him but also somehow entirely natural to know what to do.  His thumbs caressed over velvety folds and his fingers stroked, lover soft and passionate, up over those corded rear limbs and across the haunches above and surrounding him, always one hand on the prize before him.  Every touch he gave her had the Owlbear trilling all the more, shuddering above him and letting out long, growling sounds that sounded entirely natural for the situation.

Druids did it in the wild, or so said the stereotype, and while Corrin had suffered some miscommunications and misunderstandings from the peoples he had met in his travels and studies, here now was at least part of that warped truth.  And yes, fear aside, he was enjoying it.

Deciding to be more bold, the Elf placed both hands on her thighs to let her know he was continuing by lifting up as much as he could to brush his lips against some of the feathers above him and then leaning back down, trying to gauge her reaction or confirmation of the offer he had made.  She responded with a very deliberate sway of herself before him.  Be my guest she seemed to say, and so he went along with his plan.

Arching himself up as comfortably as he could manage, and also hanging onto the massive limbs above him for support, Corrin took a deep breath and pressed his face directly against the expanse of feathers and hidden soft flesh where he had been playing before, all reservations gone.  What met his senses, even as his vision was obscured by all those feathers, was a rush of sensation he had not been entirely prepared for.  The taste was overwhelming and musky, the pressure of what to his fingers had felt soft and supple now directly pressed to his lips and probing tongue.  Ears muffled now, he still heard, as well as felt, the Royal Owlbear give out a savage cry that while would have been intimidating to some, only told him that he had done a very good thing, perhaps helped by that she didn't immediately maul him for such an action.

Like the supple, soft lips of a maiden, Corrin kissed the Owlbear's flesh again and again, sometimes leaning in deeper to press more firmly against the quivering folds, and at other times resorting to rapid, gentle exchanges when he needed air.  His head was all but swimming in her scent and taste and enveloping mass, and he could feel in his ear tips as her legs actively struggled to keep herself elevated so as to not collapse back onto his skull and squash it.  Eventually, however, his need for air and shuddering arms gave out and he collapsed back from her, panting.

His head spinning and mind racing, Corrin heaved in breath even as he gazed bleary-eyed up at the shuddering beast above him. His face was sticky, his tongue numb, and his fingers aching from the length of the hold.  Slowly, she looked down over her shoulder at him, eyes hooded and beak clicking every few seconds.  From here, he could see her own chest heaving for breath much as his was, muscles actually quivering as she seemingly recovered from the worship he had given her.

Turning back around fully, she cooed softly, brushing his chest with a paw that even heavy as stone, was gentle and firm at the same time.  She pulled him by his hip more into the center of the nest, careful with her sharp talons not to nick him, and took deliberate care to grind as much as she could down against the tender little thing prostrate before her.

Again he tried to settle his hammering heart, feeling her nudging his feet as she shuffled back into position above him, blotting out the view of the cave ceiling above with her feathery bulk.  He could feel her huge frame curling in around and atop of him, almost a protective posture, positioning both of them as well as she could before descending once again to grind directly against his naked flesh.  Tremors wracked him from pointy-ears to his toes at the heat and softness he felt sliding and pressing hard against his sensitive and exposed member.  Feathers framed and slid all around his sensitive flesh, a texture he would never have expected nor anticipated that he would enjoy.

At long last, her growls and coos growing more insistent, he felt himself catch on something even warmer than what had been grinding on him, slick from obvious need and his attending to earlier.  Heat, wetness, and a tight, vice-like grip all but seemed to latch onto the head of his staff and he grunted as she wasted no more time with being gentle or subtle.  All at once, between one second and another, the Royal Owlbear queen made one last adjustment and then hammered her hips down flush with his own.

One moment he was shivering, exposed to the cool, moist air of the caves and her ruffling feathers, and the next buried to the hilt inside of something he could never have described before now.  It was not just warm, but hot, and clung to him almost like an iron-hard fist wrapped in three layers of soft velvet, squeezing around his most intimate of parts.  Corrin tried hard not to as feathers brushed and slid around his waist and orbs, nestled deeply inside of the intelligent, feral creature, but he could not help himself.  He moaned, for it was unlike anything he could have been prepared for, and the sound echoed around the cave, outdone only by the accompanying cry of ferocious joy that came from his newly found and very eager partner.

Hands shaking, the Druid carefully wormed his arms around as much of the Owlbear's wide torso that he could, fingers digging in through the thick plumage and locking his grip in as she rested there, massive frame pinning his smaller one completely.  Small tremors traveled up and down those mighty limbs that surrounded him, blazing hot interior walls brutally cradling his sensitive flesh lodged inside.  Fierce coos, trills, and growls perpetually emanated from her, beak clicking every now and then in-between surges of clenching tightness.  There was no escape from the hulking, beautifully feral forest goddess that had him in her clutches now...and Corrin was relishing every second of it, to his eternal, silent chagrin.

Her trills took on a much deeper, more primal note and then she began to move.  It was not like mating with another Elf, although Corrin was not super experienced in that regard, but he knew enough of the mating act to know the differences.  She did not so much bounce, or sway, as she did wiggle; all the same it was more intense than anything he'd ever felt.  Trembling flexes of her muscles all around him and small, rolling motions of her lower haunches had him shuddering and groaning beneath her, the immense weight of her kept mostly up off of him but just enough to make sure he could not move.  Not that he would want to have been anywhere else right then and there.  This truly would be worth dying for, a part of him at least made very vocal.

Alongside the wiggling grinds atop and around him, Corrin could not also help but notice, and be stimulated by, the vice-grip clenching all around his engorged shaft.  Every few seconds it would ripple and fluctuate its grip upon him, not so much lessening as it was intensifying in different parts of his length as it remained buried to the hilt inside of the bestial queen of the forest.  His hands wormed their way even deeper into her feathers and he clung to her in a hard embrace as she rode him, used him, claimed him utterly.  No matter what objections or justifications he might have made as to the preservation of his life, he could not deny that this was the best sex he had ever had.

And it was far from done.

The sweltering heat of her pressings down against him lifted after what felt like hours, although perhaps that was just the intensity of it rather than some professing of some kind of god-like endurance on his part.  He panted for breath as cool night air brushed past him and he looked up at the beauty atop of him to meet her glowing eyes with his own.  She loomed above him, owl-smile firmly in place as she continued exactly as she had been but now leaning up and over him rather than just laying atop.

Her mighty paws splayed on either side of his face, talons clenching the nest material tight enough that he heard cracks and splintering where she gripped.  Her plumage ruffled and shifted as she kept mating with him, attractive ripples all up and across her bulk that caught and beguiled the eye as much as any shapely or buxom woman's curves might have.  Down past her glowing, feral expression, his eyes scanned, fixating on where they remained connected, his pale legs pinned to feathery mass atop and all around him.  Small glimpses of his own flesh showed here and there and he groaned even louder in appreciation as she ground fully atop of him, burying all of him out of sight as if for his benefit.

Again their eyes met and he found himself smiling through the passion even as breath exploded in and out of him.  She returned the mute exchange of sincere enjoyment by growling heavily and leaned down once again to bury him in her fluff, now moving even more insistently.  His elven shaft danced within her, a tightness blooming in his gutt and his fingers burrowing ever deeper into her feathers in preparation.

The Royal Owlbear took that queue as if perfectly able to understand what it meant, redoubling her efforts to achieve the climax of the first of their many intended joinings, although he couldn't have known that was her intent.  Like the bears that were part of her namesake, the Owlbear could, and would, go for hours when in the mating throes of a Blood Heat.

Wincing and crying out, Corrin held onto his bestial mate as if for dear life as he reached the precipice of his endurance.  Like waves and foam erupting up and over a rocky outcropping at sea, so too did he explode out and into the female atop him.  Elven life poured into Owlbear depths and they quivered together, even as she kept her milking sways and wiggles of her hips going atop of him, despite, and perhaps directly because of, his mewling protestations and pleads for respite, now entirely beyond voice and given over to the primal, carnal nature of their joining.

Only when he had settled back into the dull, pleasure-agony fueled throbs of the end of his climax did she seemingly take pity on him.  Her motions slowed, not entirely stopping, but lessened noticeably and she quivered above him, rising back up to loom over him once more.  Corrin panted and gasped for air, already tugging at his sweltering robes and cloak to loosen and disgard them fully as well.  Now fully bare and covered in sweat, his pale chest gleamed in the gloom to her gaze and her trills redoubled in satisfaction.

For his part, Corrin saw stars dancing in his vision from the exuberant pace and brutal direction his Owlbear had put him through.  As they cleared, he was greeted by the pleased, feral expression of his partner as she slowly and finally came to a halt above him.  Her beak clattered and slowly she began to lower her maw towards him, keeping him firmly locked in place.  With the pounding of his heart and adrenaline coursing through him, his first thought was that he had fulfilled his usefulness and now she had had her fun.

He flinched and tried to turn away as that sharp beak, still smelling of blood, lowered towards him again and he shuddered all over.  This was it.  Sex good enough to die for now over, all that was left was the dying.  The sharp tip brushed his throat and he stiffened, teeth clenching, and prayed it wouldn't hurt.  It didn't.  His eyes flew open and then began to drift back closed in accompaniment of a languid, relaxed sigh as soft, hot strokes of that same rough tongue began to baste and whorl across his pale flesh, lapping up beads of sweat from his collarbone.

Hands lifting tremulously, he wormed them into the thick feathers around her throat and head, brushing deeply into their folds and stroking at the creature as she began to nuzzle and caress her little exhausted lover.  Her trills, coos, and sharp, pleasurable little nips of her beak on his flesh told him, You did very well little one, and that made him feel absurdly relieved and happy for reasons he didn't quite understand but reveled in all the same.

Then his fingers caught on something around her throat as she continued to tease, lick, and 'kiss' at him.  It was rougher, smooth, and while frayed at the edges, distinctly not a part of her natural anatomy.  She leaned back at the tugging motion he caused, fixing him with bright eyes indescrnible and deep as the oceans as he gently, and carefully extricated the source of the odd sensation and texture beneath her thick ruff of feathers and fur.

A collar greeted his eyes, making them go wide in shock.  It was an old one, made of tough leather, and pressed deeply into her folds in a way that told him that it was very tight on her, even if it was pushed out to the last hole to remain fitting.  A metal tag was attached to it, the writing scuffed and faded but written in the Common tongue legibly still after however many years around the beasts throat for him to read.

'Glyfie'

Corrin looked up at the beast looming over him and his ears deflated in that way that Elven ears naturally did when they were sad or displeased, much like cats or dogs might.  He read the name over and over, for it could only be a name.  Her name.

"Gylfie," he muttered aloud.  The Owlbear stiffened a bit as he spoke but then her deep eyes softened and she trilled once.  "You were...a pet?"

Gylfie nodded, or at least it might as well have been a nod since even as intelligent as an Awakened Owlbear was, it didn't understand the socially accepted medium of agreement or affirmation.

The Elf grimaced and immediately he began to work on undoing the metal clasp holding it onto her.  It must be uncomfortable for her and she leaned into his hands as if eager to have the capacity to have it taken off.  He had a hard time of it, for the metal was warped and heavily damaged, no doubt caused by her own talons in vain attempts to undo the delicate but frustratingly resilient device.  It resisted all of his efforts until, using his head instead of his frustrated emotions, he looked around for something to aide him.

He spotted something nearby in the fluff of the nest and reached for it, but found his pinned position to be a few feet shy.  Even his longest reaching fingers couldn't touch it.  Then a huge paw slapped down onto the object of his desires and dragged it closer, which he took.  It was a broken dagger, far beyond the use for combat or defense, but it had an edge.  He raised it toward her and then immediately shrunk back at a warning growl.

"I just...want to take it off," he promised, truth and earnest hope all but shining from his eyes.

Gylfie trilled and leaned back into his hands to allow him to continue.  She felt the scraping of the dull blade against the annoying leather strap as well as her feathers and it took longer than either of them would have liked.  Then there was suddenly a surge of sensation and the severed leather cord dropped off from around her bulky throat and clinked to the nesting material beside the still prone Corrin.  The Owlbear fluffed up her neck feathers to their utmost and gave a delighted snarl to have the thing finally gone.

Corrin for his part immediately tossed the broken dagger, and collar, away from them and out of the nest towards the nearest wall.  He heard them land faintly but his attention was utterly fixated up on her, overjoyed to see her freed from the apparently restrictive and cruelly attached device.  He reached up and smoothed the feathers where it had been, ruffling and stroking them gently and lovingly as possible.

Then he was again pinned to the floor of the nest as Glyfie fell atop him, licking, nibbling, and rubbing away at him all the new.  Her motions now were more akin to the rumbling purrs and grinding motions of an overly friendly cat and he could barely get a breath in for laughing in a muffled voice as her grateful coos and rubbings seemed never ending, adjusting herself atop of him to make sure she repaid the kindness ten-fold.

Her movements caused an unintentional side effect of the sealing link between them to at last loosen enough and Corrin gasped, Gylfie growling in surpise, as his shaft fell from her folds to again be exposed to the air.  Both shuddered at the sensations coursing through them and the Owlbear's eyes hooded once again.  Once more she fixed the little Elf beneath her with a feral expression, eyes twinkling.

Corrin's stomach clenched.  "A-again...?" he asked, to which she gave a trill of affirmation.  Not exactly a lot of choice, he quickly noted, but even as she began adjusting to remount him, he got her attention with a quick stroking of her neck feathers.  "C-could I ... umm...try...something different?" he queried, if only because his hips were already sore after having been pinned there so long beneath her.

Cocking her head sharply to the side, Gylfie gave him a warning trill before she seemingly agreed and got up off of him.  She watched him shakily climb up to his feet, clicking her beak in an order to move faster and make his intent known.  He moved hurriedly up on shaky legs around and behind her, and only then did the Owlbear realize what he had been talking about.  Immediately her attitude shifted and she wiggled back against him in delight, as happy as she had been before to sit on his face.

Taking in a deep breath, the Druid eyed the vast expanse of Owlbear haunch before him, no less intimidating now that he was standing up than it had been when looming over him.  He stood up on his feet as tall as he could manage but still struggled to get the appropriate angle to mount her as nature would have originally intended for her species.  Try as he might, even an ordinary Owlbear was nearly 7 to eight feet tall at the shoulder, and Gylfie was a Royal, meaning she was a head or two taller there.

"Would you...mind crouching down again?" he asked, to which he applied gentle pressure to her joints in exactly the way he meant her to.  Her response was immediate and automatic, as if she were used to having to lower herself for any potential mates, which didn't surprise him over much.  Now she reclined before him, front half with its paws splayed wide for balance and rear lowered enough for him to not have to stand on tiptoes to reach.

Corrin mounted Gylfie and the rush of heat and velvety tightness returning took his breath away.  She had been eager for this and he couldn't lie and say he wasn't either.  Buried once more to the root inside, he wasted no time in hiking up his stance and leaning into and onto her as much as he could reach, grabbing tight holds onto her firm muscular bulk beneath the feathers.  Careful not to pull on any of them, he began to move, perhaps not entirely the most sure-footed but confident that it was accompishing the desired effect.

His thighs and hips produced muffled plopping sounds as he bred her from behind, and his attentions did not go unappreciated by her.  Gylfie roared softly in pleasure as he went, legs shuddering before and underneath him even in such a compromised position.  It was worth the small change to her security to allow this small but adept Not-Owlbear to mount her like this, for the mating was most likely the most intense she had ever felt.  Blood Heat or no, she was overjoyed to have this union, happy to stand there and allow the little Elf to pound away at her to his heart's content.

The sounds they made together echoed around the cave, and while Corrin did not last as long as he would have liked, he made sure, and was confident, that he was doing an acceptable job.  He even allowed some of his more feral Druid side to show.  Lost in the throes and heat of carnal joy, he felt the old magic surging in him and dipped into it with an eagerness that he'd never felt before.  Not a true shift, he nonetheless felt his fingernails lengthen slightly and sharpen, turning into claws, and his hold on her increased in tightness as he clung on all the more intimately.  His surging hips crashed into her more mightily than before and she responded with happy snarls and trills that had the cave echoing all the more.

Once more he crashed over the precipice of his desires and spilled into her the fruits of his loins.  Up onto his tiptoes he went after all, and then still higher as she too lifted her hips up and him with her, yanked entirely up off the ground to hang onto her haunches as their dual orgasm wracked their frames even more intensely than the last.  He could barely think between the pulsing bursts of passion and heaving breaths he was forced to take as he tried to come down from the mountain top of sensations he was experiencing.  Then her hips rolled and he was plopping back down onto the nest once more.

Only this time there was no intimate snuggle session.  The nest shook heavily as Gylfie too collapsed onto the bedding, not from exhaustion however he was quick to realize.  Strong, rough paws yanked him toward her and again he was surrounded in warm Owlbear fluff, laying atop her chest with her now recumbent on her back.  Her head was leaned back against the side of the nest, propped up to look down at him even as her chest heaved much the same as his did.

For a moment they stared at one another in fascination taht two beings so different could experience such a union as this one, before she was sliding him lower and trapping him between her thighs once more.  Blood Heat was still on and she snarled in need at him as he again probed her depths.  To take him now as she had the first time might have been too intense and she was still riding the high of her own carnal glee.  She was not willing to let it fade.

Corrin took the queue and, still stiff and eager for more as she was, found it within himelf the endurance and strength to claim her again, this time in yet another very human position, with him atop and between her thighs.  He sank into her with a groan and wasted no time in resuming his thrusts, but even as he steeled himself for another grueling, ferally intense session, her paws grasped him on all sides for her reach and he looked up to her face to see her smile having returned.
Again.  Gentle,  Said her eyes.  Show me the way you might love a female of your own breed.  Show me love.

Even if the language of beasts made no sense to the untrained eye or ear, Corrin heard her intent as clearly as any spoken word ever had, although no one had ever spoken to him so beautifully before.  His eyes teared slightly up and he dove into her feathery bulk with joy, moving this time with passion as well as endearment.  At her request, he was gentle, loving, holding onto her into the wee hours of the morning seemingly without end.  Their passions kept them sustained and their warm touches and soft snuggles in-between furious coupling had them eventually completely reposed at the last.

When morning finally came and the sun was firmly in the sky, Corrin woke in a bed of Owlbear feathers and crushing but not painful embrace.  He could scarcely move for how tightly she held on, and his limbs all ached with exhaustion.  What was more, he was alive.  Sore, yes, utterly drained, yes, probably unlikely to walk straight for hours, yes.  But alive.  His plan had worked and he could not be more grateful as he carefully extricated himself from her grasp.

Nude and chafed, the Elf Druid stood, stretching and letting out cramped hisses of pain from how his limbs protested any kind of movement at all.  He felt as if Dwarves had marched over his chest and stretched his limbs on Goblin wracks.  Bruises, small cuts, and other such markings covered his body everywhere but they did not hurt at all.  What did hurt was when he looked back at her, still slumbering deeply on her well-tossed bedding, with what he knew now was a true Owlbear smile of contentment.

Even so, he knew he had to leave.  Blood Heat was all well and good, but an Owlbear was anything but predictable.  A night of interspecies passion aside, she would be mighty hungry, as he was, when she finally did awaken.  Finding a well-tenderized selection of Elf meat in her bed might be too appealing an option for her to not indulge in, he knew, or rather he suspected.  On shaky feet, he collected his torn clothing and made to exit.

A rumbling growl caused him to freeze stiff.  He felt hot breath behind him and turned slowly to see Gylfie leaning down over him.  How she had moved so silently and so quick was beyond him, but it didn't surprise him.  That same light burned in her glowing eyes and she clicked her beak down at the quivering little Elf before her, still hunched over and gripping the remains of his torn leggings.

Where do you go? he felt her ask in the cock of her head and quiver of her horn-like tufts of feathers marking her for what she was.

"B-Back to...the clearing..." he explained.  "To collect my things and...return to my people.  My kin."

Her gaze fell and she shuffled back a step.  It is our nature to wish to return to our own.  Her posture was relaxed, sad, and despondent.  Would I could return to mine, I would.

"Are you completely alone here?" he asked, fear and nervousness having completely given way to compassion.  She trilled softly in answer to his query.  "From where did you come from?  You are reasonably new to the area from what I've seen.  Is there I could help you return?"

She chirped in response.  Far and away.  She scratched odd designs in the dirt of the cave floor.  I remember cages and sharp iron.  Hot dry earth, clinging.  Mountains before that, gentle fur and furious protectors.

Corrin's gaze fell more, a not uncommon story concerning Owlbears although never one he would have imagined he would hear directly from one.  A popular choice among slavers for fighting rings or personal menageries of the exotic, they were a prize choice for trappers not only for their feather-down and merits of slaying one, but their eggs fetched a killing on certain black markets.  Live cubs even more so.  She must have come from somewhere very far to remember sand and mountains.  How had she come here, he wondered?

In the end, perhaps it didn't matter.  What did was that she was at least able to find some peace here.  Then his eyes hardened and he glared at the ground beneath his bare toes.  Peace, until the next band of roving trappers and hunters came around.  She might not catch those ones as unaware as she had Kator and his men.  The last thing he wanted to see was this intelligent being sold as some expensive hide.

Their gazes met again and she almost seemed to smile sadly.  Little one, I am sorry for the night previous.  Enemies I have many of and little softness or kindness.  My kind know little of what we shared, but I am grateful to you for it.  Perhaps... Her gaze faltered and then she stalked toward him again, him unafraid at all, to press her warm feathers against him briefly as she nuzzled him with her feathery head, nibbling at his neck.  You will return to me someday?

He reached up, dropping the ruins of his clothing and stroked at her soft down and crest, causing her to coo and his heart to melt more.  "Let me...get my report returned to my Druid Seniors...and then...perhaps..." He looked deeply into the golden pools of her eyes again and he smiled, causing her feathers to ruffle in delight at his expression.  "Next time, maybe I won't have to dance?" he asked with a chuckle.

She nibbled on him all the more happily in fluttering owl-kisses.  Her scent, motions, and delighted trills made him laugh.  You wiggle and dance so well for what you are, so no, my little one.  You will always dance for me.  Then she licked at his ear.  To determine how gentle I will be after.

Corrin's heart surged and a rather unintended side effect of her unspoken but obvious tone, scent, and teasing ruffles of her feathers against him caused the Elf to shudder.  "I can hardly find reason or ability to argue," he promised her.  Then, shyly, he pressed a kiss to her feathery cheek.  "I'll come back soon, Gylfie."

She trilled to hear him call her by her name, the first time she had ever wanted someone to use it.  Beings like him always insisted on naming things, but this time it meant far more to have the title fostered upon her, spoken so softly and gentle.  She nipped at him one more time then allowed him to step back and gather his things.

Corrin felt the Owlbear shadowing him as they returned to the campsite where the remains of the trappers had already been picked clean by the forest inhabitants.  There was something entirely freeing but also very embarrassing to walk through the woods, entirely bare, and knowing an amorous set of feral eyes was always in view of him.  Staff once more firmly in hand, he turned to where he knew her to be lurking, and raised his palm high in a wave.  There was a roar of farewell and then he shape-shifted into a bird and flittered away through the sky, back towards the distant town and the enclave near to it.

He had quite a lot to report, and would have to word it all carefully.  He hadn't exactly conducted an entirely official indepth study of Owlbear mating habits...and even Druids might be a little judgmental.  But he could not find it within himself to care.

He was already counting down the days until the next time he could see her again.  He certainly wasn't going to wait until the next Blood Moon to do so.