Walking through the woods, babies asleep in arm, you question Honey. What had she experienced after the unicorn had cum inside her? How had it made her body feel? She nods thoughtfully and confirms some of your suspicions. She had had the same sensations as you, of absorbing the unicorn’s cum, of feeling filled with energy. She likened it to basking in the sun after eating a large meal, and that made you wonder. First, what did Honey know of eating or basking when she wasn’t even a day old yet, and two, just what did dryads eat anyway?
Your former masters’ books had contained little on the day-to-day lives of your new species. You recalled one tome, written by an herbalist that had once attempted to explore the curative properties of dryad trees and how they could be best harvested. The herbalist had claimed dryads were monstrous man-eaters, bewitching sirens that murdered the men foolish enough to be seduced by them so that they could feed the bodies as fertilizer to their trees.
The rest of the trek back to your tree is uneventful. You and Honey make good time and arrive just after midnight. You feel that you should be exhausted after the day you have had, but you suspect your new body doesn’t work quite like your old one.
You recall that the herbalists’ book had gone on to warn that the dryad never strayed far from its tree and was in fact merely an extension of the tree rather than a separate creature. That dryads could only be stopped by cutting down their tree. Unfortunately, the memories you had received when you first communed with your tree were fragmented. Incomplete. But even with what little you had seen before being called away, you didn’t think that was entirely right.
You were linked to your tree, that much was true, but you weren’t chained to it. You could feel it, commune with it, but it didn’t control you. And then there was the question of Honey. Both the books and the memories agreed that all dryads had had their own tree. Yet, there she stood, gazing around your little clearing with wide eyes and no tree of her own.
“Honey,” you say, getting her attention. “Can you please take the baby. My baby. Just for a moment.”
She agrees and you hand her the sleeping infant. The transfer wakes him and he opens to his mouth to cry, only to have Honey’s tit shoved in his face. She moans as he latches onto her nipple and sucks greedily. Milk with honey must taste better than just plain milk, you guess.
Unburdened, you turn your attention to your tree. It has grown taller and thicker since you left and the light from its’ leaves glow brighter. You consider its growth for a moment, how you and it are linked, then press your hand against its cool trunk. Immediately, new, stronger memories flood into your mind. You see the history of your new species, how they work, where they had come from. The herbalists’ book had been partly right.
Eons ago, a primordial forest steeped in wild magic had dominated the continent. Within this forest horrific monsters had waged a magically-fuelled arms race, constantly transforming and mutating themselves to gain an advantage. Those that made a mistake, or couldn’t keep up, got eaten.
Two of the less powerful monsters of the forest had been a parasitic, carnivorous vine that wrapped itself around a host tree, burrowed its core into the trunk for protection and dangled its sticky vines from the branches to snare prey, and the other a semi-intelligent tree that lured its prey with the promise of sweet-smelling fruit whose neurotoxin killed instantly.
When these two came together for the first time they should have destroyed one another. Instead, their DNA had been magically combined, merging them together to create a new monster. This was the first proto-dryad tree. With its new abilities, the tree-monster thrived, devouring any that came close and growing strong enough to make more changes to itself. But unable or unwilling to give up its camouflage as a tree, it had to come up with another way to compete with the other monsters of the forest. And so, it grew a puppet, like fruit from its boughs. A mobile extension of itself it could send to hunt prey or protect itself with.
Those first dryads had taken the forms of common lesser monsters and other beasts. Then, like a fisherman dangles a worm, they were sent wiggling into the forest to lure back their catch. These puppet dryads were physically weak, unable to compete directly with other monsters. Instead they continued to use trickery and ambush as they had in their previous lives. The aroma of fruit on the air, the illusion of injured prey that could only just keep a head of its pursuer, whatever it took to lure the target back to the waiting vines.
Then, when sweet scents and obvious traps failed, pheromones were produced. Pheromones that sent monsters into an unthinking rage and charging right to their deaths, pheromones that forced beasts to become slaves to their own lusts, willingly following their cocks to the grave.
Life would have gone on like this forever, but then came an age of ice. Massive sheets of ice covered the oceans and glaciers crept inwards, grounding the forest beneath it until all but a tiny part of it was covered. The monsters mostly died off. Those that were able managed to eek out a living within the few remaining pockets of forest, while others, the dryad tree included, went dormant – hibernating for centuries, waking only to feed.
When, millennia later, the glaciers finally retreated, the world was a very different place. Plains and valleys had replaced the forest. New, young forests began to appear, but they lacked the wild magics of their ancient kin. New types of creatures appeared too. Animals, not monsters. And soon they spread across the continent and even into the old forest.
Waking from their hibernation, many monsters of the forest left the trees to find new homes for themselves in this changed world. Of those that stayed, the dryad tree was the one that managed to adapt the best. It transformed its puppet to take the forms of these new animals and easily lured them to their deaths. Birds, squirrels, deer, bears, wolves. They all fell easily under the sway of the dryad’s pheromones. And with little to no competition left, it decided to spread its seeds for the first time. New dryad trees were born.
Life for the next few thousand years was good for the dyad trees. Sunlight and fresh kills. No real competition. But then new creatures started to appear in the forest. Humans, elves, and other intelligent beings begin to hunt the same prey as the trees. The dryads were forced to adapt, to take on the forms of these new creatures. But humans and elves are not so easily tricked as animals, and the trees had to grant their puppets greater intelligence to entrap them. But with this increase in faculties also came an increase in independence. The puppets began to think for themselves.
These new, smarter dryads were still tied to their trees, but the relationship had changed. It became a partnership. Symbiotic. In exchange for the ability to draw on the magic their tree soaked up from the forest and the planet, the dryad continued to hunt for their tree and offered protection against the increasingly aggressive humans. They also started developing a kinship with the regular trees of the forest, considering them sisters.
It was at this time that the dryads also discovered another way of feeding on their victims. Using ancient, primal sex magics, the dryads were able to steal the very life energy from a creature. This way the dryads increased their own strength and still gave the meat to the trees.
As human populations grew, so did their desire for resources. More and more came to the forest to steal its trees to build their homes, to clear the land to make their farms. The dryads and the humans had fought, and the humans had won. They hunted down and destroyed every dryad they could find. You can see in their memories that those dryads had not understood why their strength failed them. But you did. Dryads were solitary creatures. Ages of competition with other monsters had forced them to keep apart from one another. And when the threat had come, they had fought alone. They had died alone.
You weren’t born from the forest. You understood the strength that came with cooperation. You did wonder why the humans had stopped coming though, why they had missed this last tree. No doubt it had something to do with your former master setting up his home here and scaring off any competition. You’d have to pay him a visit eventually.
The last of the memories filled your mind. As each tree had been cut down, the dryad tied to it had died. Or at least that is what it had looked like to the humans and elves doing the killing. But it was only the physical body granted to them by their tree that had died. The spirit, energy, or whatever, of the dryad had become untethered. They lingered within the trees of the forest, unable to manifest themselves without a body to inhabit.
What you did to that woodcutter begins to make more sense to you now. You did not change him into a dryad as you were changed. You only transformed his body into a vessel that one could inhabit. That Honey could inhabit. But first you had to make room for her, so you had absorbed him. His life force, or his soul, or something. It was in his cum. The realisation was kind of horrifying but also deeply arousing. You ripped a man from his body and fed him on him. Then Honey, drawn by your magic, had filled the vessel you prepared for her. She truly was your daughter.
The old dryads had failed because they were unable to adapt. They had fallen behind, and they got eaten. You decide you will do things differently. You are a Queen and a Queen protects her people. All around you the forest began to creak and grown. Trees shook and the earth tore as they ripped their ancient twisted roots from the ground and propelled themselves into motion at your will. No, there would be no repeat of the past. The dryads had a Queen now. And a Queen needs a castle.