Alec and Vivian slowly made their way toward the heart of the swamp. It wasn't because the swamp was particularly tough to traverse, but because Vivian's transformed state forced her to slog through the water while Alec kept to her pace as he jumped between tree roots and clung to their trunks with his claws when necessary.
As the morning advanced to midday, Alec couldn't help noticing two things. The first was that Vivian's scent changed until it appealed to her new nose, in the same way that certain foods did. He wasn't going to tell her that she was smelling tasty, though. The second was a complete lack of opposition, in the form of the natural fauna, traps and minions. If the witch had eyes and ears around her domain, he wasn't noticing any, which raised a question.
"Was it this easy to to get through this place when you were here last time?" He posed.
"No," Vivian answered, who paused to wipe her brow and took a few seconds to settle her breathing before continuing. "I mean, it's normal for there not to be any wild creatures, because the witch has a tight grip on the area where she lives, but our party had encountered at least one battle by now."
Looking down at her with concern, from the tree where he was perched, he asked, "Should we be worried?"
With a grim expression on her face, Vivian began to move forward again. "Probably. But we won't accomplish anything if we keep our distance, and I don't have the time to scout the area properly."
Alec glanced at the pig snout that had replaced her human nose, and the skin that had seemed flushed pink before but may actually be a change in pigment, and wondered how close she was coming to succumbing to her curse. She was clearly struggling, and not just from the physical changes. Whatever had driven her to masturbate last night was clearly taking its toll on her now, with how often her hands wandered, fidgeted with her plump lips, and she stifled moans because of her heaving breasts. For all that he knew, she was only able to stay the course by focusing on the strenuous trek through the swamp.
By the time they found a boardwalk, which indicated that they were close to the witch's residence, they hadn't encountered any obstacles or opposition from the witch. That either meant that she had been slain, or she was well aware of their approach and was inviting them in for some reason. Either way, that meant that stealth wasn't in the cards for them, and thus didn't need to continue to their destination through the water and muck, so they left that behind in favor of the dry and clean boardwalk. Still, they kept their eyes and ears peeled for any unwanted surprises.
A few minutes later the boardwalk began to branch out and wind around more trees, which basically served as a yard of sorts if you preferred to avoid the swamp water altogether. Then they reached a clearing that was completely covered by it, and at the center was a two-story, thatch-roofed cottage that looked completely ordinary. And right beside the door, casually sitting in a rocking chair, was the witch — or so Alec assumed.
He hadn't known what to expect of her appearance, because he'd seen ugly ones, pretty ones, and everything in between, fictional or costumed as they may have been. This one, however, was absurdly beautiful in the erotic sense, with a face and curves that most porn stars couldn't match. Rather than the typical witch outfit, or a casual outfit of some description, she was dressed in black lingerie that barely covered her naughty bits, and very high-heeled sandals. She did wear a wide-brimmed hat, though, and a short, wispy cape that stopped above her generous derrière.
Without looking at them, clearly showing that she was unsurprised and unconcerned about their presence, the witch caressed their ears with her husky voice as she said, "I've been at this game for a long time, but this is the first instance of one of my escaped pets returning without a force with which to strike me down, despite clearly being opposed to my wishes. And what's more, bringing another pet with them." She angled her head slightly toward them, and they could see her green eyes sparkling within the shadows being cast by her hat and long, fiery red hair. "Were you hoping to, perhaps, offer this kitty in exchange for the removal of my curse? Because, while it has been a long time since I've enjoyed the company of a nekomata, let's make something perfectly clear: this is my domain, your fate is in my hands, and there is nothing that you could offer to dissuade me from claiming you both."
"What makes you so sure that you'll have your way?" Vivian defiantly responded, her nails digging into her palms in anger as much as to distract herself from her burning arousal.
The witch sighed, rose from her rocking chair and faced them, her age and experience really beginning to show through as she patiently answered, as if she were addressing a child. "Because you, my dear, are practically incapacitated." Her eyes fell on Alec as she reached behind her back and procured a large, cloth pouch, which his keen nose told him contained something really, really good. "And if your companion gets a whiff of this catnip, which I can easily fill this entire clearing with, she'll be as docile as, well, a kitten."
Alec looked up at Vivian, having a good idea of what to do, but wanting to make sure that they were on the same page. When she met his gaze and gave a slight nod, he laid down before looking at the bemused witch and saying, "Possession."
He saw the witch's eyes beginning to widen an instant before he found himself looking through those eyes and catching his balance, dropping the pouch of catnip in the process of throwing out his arms to stabilize himself. Once he was steady, he regarded Vivian and asked, "Okay... Now what?"
Having known that possessing the witch would cause complications, Vivian began to move toward the cottage as she said, "Before we address how we're going to handle the witch now, let's destroy her fetishes and break the curses."
"Fetishes?" Alec questioned, confused.
Vivian kept moving and entered the cottage as she replied, "They're objects imbued with magical power. So long as they continue to apply their curses on the people they're connected to, even if someone is powerful enough to fully reverse their effects, the cursed will just suffer the effects all over again."
Alec followed her into the cottage after removing the witch's sandals, which had been a bit difficult between trying to keep his balance and not being able to see past his humongous breasts. "What do they look like?"
"I've heard that they tend to be wooden totems," Vivian replied, as her desperate eyes scanned the front room. "But she's used other things, too, like dolls and jewelry."
Knowing that time was of the essence, Alec began to move toward the stairs leading to the second floor. "I'll check upstairs."
The second floor led to a corridor that branched out to a bedroom, study and a ritual room. While the last room seemed like the most logical place to start looking, what with the altar, cauldron, laboratory equipment and immense quantity of paraphernalia, he didn't really know what dangers to watch out for. So, instead, he decided to start in the study, where he had seen one of those crystal balls on a small, round table.
Hoping that the crystal ball did what he usually saw them depicted as doing, he cautiously placed his hand on it and thought about Vivian. The crystal ball filled up with smoke for a second before said smoke was pushed to the edges and revealed Vivian in the center, who was gasping and groping at her breasts as she frantically knocked things off of a shelf in search of the fetishes.
Concerned, and now knowing that the crystal ball worked, he immediately thought about finding the fetish that was connected to her. Again the smoke appeared before parting, this time revealing a bedpost. The bedpost, instead of being topped by a finial with a basic shape, was adorned by a wood carving of a humanoid sow, with its six breasts being its most obvious feature.
Swearing that he hadn't seen it when he had looked into the bedroom, and hoping that it wasn't on another bed who knows where, he went to the bedroom and approached the bed. As he had thought, the finials were simply knob-shaped, but he reached out to touch the left of the two at the head of the bed, where he was surprised to see his hand pass through an illusion before feeling something far from smooth and knob-shaped. Gripping it, he quickly unscrewed it from the bedpost, revealing that it was the sow-featured humanoid that he had seen in the crystal ball.
Heart thumping in his chest, he hurried to the ritual room, hopeful that he was about to break her curse. Upon finding something that looked like a Bunsen burner on a bench, he then found a fire striker, along with some flint, and used it to light the gas before shoving the totem into the flame. Once he was sure that it was on fire, he looked around for somewhere safe to put it and decided on a stone mortar.
He watched and waited as the totem became engulfed in flame, thinking that he'd find out if it worked if Vivian reacted. Sure enough, by the time the totem was completely charred on the outside, he heard her running up the stairs and shouting, "You found it!?"
"In here!" He called back.
She hurried over and stopped in the doorway, her face flushed red from her earlier exertions and eyes quickly darting to the flame in the mortar. Glad to see that she looked like a normal human being, which he was seeing for the first time, he explained, "I found it with a crystal ball, which showed it on one of the bedposts."
"She has a crystal ball?" Vivian replied, looking surprised.
Alec cocked one of his thin eyebrows. "It's not normal for a witch to have one?"
Vivian shook her head. "It's not normal for anyone to have one. A long time ago they were banned, for obvious reasons, and there was a crusade to destroy them all, including the knowledge to make them. I don't know how she got one, or when, but it would certainly explain how she was able to monitor her domain so well."
As soon as she finished talking, she said, "I'll be right back," before turning around and leaving. A few minutes later she came back with three more totems, which she lit on fire with the same flame that he had used before adding them to the mortar. "I suspected that the other bedposts had totems, since I came here with three of my friends before, and I was right."
"Do you have any idea where they are?" Alec queried.
"Not specifically," Vivian said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "She usually locks away her victims in another building nearby and has sex with them there."
Giving her a sidelong glance, Alec questioned, "She transforms people and keeps them in captivity to have sex with them?"
"The assumption is that she requires sexual energy for some of her spellwork," Vivian offered.
"Anyway," she continued, "I'm going to go look for my friends. Stay around this place for now, so I can tell them that you're not the witch when I find them."
After nodding, Alec decided to go to his body outside and move it into the cottage. While he was dragging it, he heard multiple people pounding on something and yelling, and saw Vivian moving in the direction that it was coming from. When he was done, and he found himself with nothing requiring his immediate attention, said attention finally focused on the latest body that he had possessed since he had discovered his special ability.
He was tempted to touch himself, but didn't think that it was a good time. That, and there was no telling how strongly the witch's body would react, considering how overtly sexual she appeared and how normal it was for her to keep people as sex slaves. Instead, he turned to a mirror that was hung by the door, so he could get a better view of the witch's face, and what he saw took his breath away. "Sex incarnate" immediately came to mind; he'd be surprised if any man could look at her and not be smitten, or greatly distracted. Maybe it was even designed to be one of the dangers that adventurers had to face when they fought her. It was just... wow.
It occurred to him that he could stay in the witch's body until his own body assumed her shape, and wondered if that would be a good idea. She looked completely human, which was a plus, and she probably had powerful magic, which would be a really big plus. However, she was female, immensely so, and a known villain. That last one was more or less the only real problem, though, since a female human would still be an acceptable stepping stone to finding a good male body. Actually, the witch's feminine charms could probably be used to attract a good male candidate.
Before he could decide, he heard people talking and decided to step out of the cottage and wait for them. He quickly noticed that Vivian was leading her friends to the cottage, two men and a woman, who were wearing bed sheets to protect their modesty. When her friends saw him, they paused briefly or slowed down, with guarded or worried expressions on their faces. Vivian reassured them that he wasn't the witch, probably not for the first time, and came to a stop beside him as she turned to face her friends.
"This is Alec," she introduced, and gestured toward him.
Alec raised his hand and waved it as he awkwardly said, "Yo."
Seeing the uncharacteristic greeting appeared to put them at ease.
"Alec, meet Abraxas," Vivian said, indicating the tallest guy, who had a swimmer's build, bronze skin, shoulder-length, dark purple hair and hazel eyes. He had a couple of tattoos on his arms, but he didn't recognize what any of them were.
"Martin," was the second guy, who was half of a head shorter than the first guy. He was stocky, fair-skinned, had blue eyes and short, black hair. Beyond that, nothing notable really stood out about him.
"And this is Rashika," she finished, gesturing toward the ebony beauty who had golden eyes and her silver hair in dreadlocks. If he hadn't just looked in the mirror, he would have considered her the most beautiful woman that he had seen on this new world thus far. What made her stand out beyond that, though, was her bearing, which made him think of royalty.
"So," Martin spoke up, as he crossed his arms, "I understand that you're possessing the witch?"
Alec nodded his head. "Yeah."
"And it would be preferable to avoid killing the witch while he's possessing her," Vivian informed him. "Also, if he possesses her for around twenty-four hours or so, his body will become a copy of hers, which probably should be avoided as well."
Abraxas stroked his chin. "Well, we better put our heads together, then."
"Can we do that inside?" Rakisha suggested. "I also wouldn't mind something to eat and drink, if it's available."
"Of course," Vivian replied, who motioned for them to enter the cottage.
Right before they entered, Alec hastily warned, "Oh, and don't mind the nekomata! That's actually my body."