Only the trees knows the trueth
“At the end of the cycle, everything must die for new opportunities to rise”
The forest at dusk was a cathedral of stillness. Pines rose like blackened pillars against the fading light, their crowns whispering in a language only the old knew. In the hollow of that silence sat a man whose age no longer had meaning, a warlock wrapped in rough robes that smelled faintly of resin and old smoke. A circle of stones glimmered faintly where he had etched runes into the moss, their edges bruised with the blood of his thumb. He had come here to rest, to let his bones soak in quietude, and to weave an incantation that needed only silence and solitude to take root.
The lake beside him mirrored the sky, streaked with the red of the dying sun. The man exhaled. His lips shaped words not spoken in centuries, syllables so slow and sonorous they seemed to hang in the air like smoke.
And then came the bass. A synthetic thumping, obscene in its brightness, slammed through the trees. Laughter followed, sharp and braying, crashing like cymbals against the hush of the forest. The warlock’s eyes, black pits under a ridge of bone, narrowed and soon filled with a rage as old as life itself.
Across the clearing, a group of six young men erupted from the brush like a pack of noisy dogs. They carried coolers, beer cans already cracking open with froth spilling down their hands. Their clothes were loud: neon tanks, backwards caps, shorts cut too high. They stank of musk, cheap cologne, sweat and arrogance.
“Hell yeah, boys!” shouted one, tall and broad-shouldered, his chest already gleaming with spilled beer. He slapped his can against another’s, foam bursting down his bicep. “Lake party, bitches!”
They clustered by the shore, their Bluetooth speaker barking out distorted basslines.
The old man’s knotted fingers twitched once, resisting the urge to clench. He inhaled deeply, ancient lungs rattling with patience. He rose from his circle and stepped toward them, staff tapping against stone. His tall and stoic presence should have been enough. His outline shimmering faintly as if the very air feared to touch him.
The loudest one of the six noticed him and grinned cockily, showing his perfectly aligned white teeth sparkling in the sun. Josh was the Alpha, the chief of his group of friends. He was the kind of man who had never been told “no” with consequences; the kind of man that would do everything he wanted because his beauty and confidence would turn every situation to his advantage; the kind of man everybody loved to hate and hated to love. His sunburnt skin stretched tight over his sculpted muscle; his hair trimmed into a swaggering fade. His gaze lingered on the old man with a mixture of mockery and dominance.
“Yo, Gandalf!” he called, gesturing with his can. “You’re killin’ our vibe, bro. Go haunt another part of the lake fucker!”
Laughter erupted from the others circling around him as they kept on grabbing the cooler from the truck and getting the camp ready for the party. One of them though, shorter, broad-nosed, with soft and kind eyes, shifted uncomfortably. He looked at the Josh, then back at the old man, and then turned back to his big brother, murmuring, “C’mon, man, he was here first. We could maybe go somewhere else. The lake is huge and we haven’t even started to put the camp toge…”
“Shut up, Caleb,” Josh snapped. “You’re only here ‘cause Mom begged me not to leave your loser ass alone at home. Just drink your beer and try not to embarrass yourself.”
Caleb fell silent, eyes lowered back on the case as he turned one more time his head towards the old man before resuming his walk.
The warlock straightened himself and blinked one time, slowly and controlled as a spark of blue electricity exploded in his pupil. “You desecrate stillness. You stain the air with your braying. Leave this place, lest silence itself rise to claim you.”
Josh tilted his head back and laughed, showing his throat in mock surrender. “Ooooh, scary! What, you gonna do? Call the cops? Hex me? I’m banging the sheriff’s daughter; Good luck with that!!” he said mockingly as he turned his head back to his friend, laughing all together while Caleb was in the back putting down the crate he was holding. Josh then turned back towards the old man and gulped from his warm beer can. “Dude, you couldn’t even get it up if you tried.” He grabbed his crotch, squeezing lewdly, eyes flashing with cruel humor. “See this? This is all a real man needs to rule the world. Now go die somewhere in the woods and get lost!.”
The others roared with laughter, slapping their thighs, spitting beer as Josh turned back to them, jumping form his jeep’s trunk on the ground. Caleb turned away, shame flickering across his face.
The man studied the young cocky dude for a long, heavy moment. The silence between his words stretched until it seemed the forest itself leaned closer to hear. Josh felt a sudden rush of wind and he heard his name being murmured along the floating leaves. He turned back, his usual cocky smirk still plastered on his manly face and ready to see the old creepy man walking away but instead he was face to face with him. Instead of 20 plus meters, the man was now at arm distance from Josh. Josh and his friends stood there, not understanding how this was possible for such an old man to walk this fast without any sounds. Josh froze in surprise and his sight fell on the men’s dark eyes only to see a spark of purple electricity in them fainting into the darkness of his bottomless pupils. “Back off you creepy old bastard before I make you!” said Josh hungrily not understanding what he just saw what he just saw. Caleb saw everything starting to take an odd and dangerous posture. He didn’t want his brother or his friends to get in a dangerous situation. He went back next to his brother and the old man and tried to stop all of this. “Listen, we are sorry. We promise not to do too much noise and even to clean the space after when we leave tomorrow, ok? It’s just Spring Break and I guess everybody is a little bit tired, right? What about this, we give you… this.” He said grabbing a pack of 6 “and we all forget about this little incident. Ok?” He concluded hoping his intervention would prevent this situation to end up in the newspaper. He sure knew his brother and his fighting personality. “You are unlike them,” the old voice rasped. “Your spirit bends rather than bludgeons. Yet you tether yourself to their cruelty. Why?”
Caleb stammered, “He’s… he’s my brother. They’re his friends. If I don’t come along, they…” He stopped, throat tightening.
The warlock’s eyes glowed faintly; pits of starlight buried in shadow. “Then your kindness shall be their prison. If you shield them, you will bear them. Their sins shall be grafted into your flesh.” He finished before turning back to Josh. “You mock manhood. You make of it a weapon and a joke. Then let it be thy prison.”
Josh blinked, thrown off by the cadence. “What the fuck does that even mean you senile mor…”
The old man raised his staff and spoke three syllables as old as times. The sound cracked like ice breaking on a lake.
Josh barked a laugh. “You are fucking mad bro’ …” He slapped his thigh, then grabbed his crotch again, shaking it toward the man. “Come on, bitch, you playing with your staff and shit but we both know you can’t even get your own hard. For information, this is the only staff that matters!”
The men turned slowly to face Josh straight in his eyes and said calmly as a new spark of red crimson electricity exploded in his pupils. “So be it.”
The staff struck the earth once, and the air bent. “You think you are scary? Go die alone or something moron… Wow… What is happening?!” Josh said as the air around him seemed to warp and change. The humidity levels rise and he felt kind of nauseous all of a sudden. “Yo dude, you good?” said his best friend Ethan as he got closer to Josh to make sure he was alright. Caleb stood there, not understand how the situation climbed so bad and in such a short period of time.
Josh then felt like a bucket of boiling water was poured directly in his veins as suddenly he was taken wy a heat wave. It felt like his muscles and skin were on fire and he felt his pores starting to open to let more sweat flow out of his system. “Yo bro, I must have… eaten something that doesn’t go through.” Josh continued as he was now bent on himself, his hands on his knees and his head tilted between his arms trying to find his breath back. Suddenly, he felt a force starting to build up deep inside him. It was like something was about to explode. His breath was getting shorter and shorter and suddenly, as his perfectly aligned teeth was grinding each other and his cocky face spasming in pain, his eyes opened as he felt the force pop in immense pain. His chest expanded as if gripped by invisible hands, ribs cracking with sharp pops. He staggered, clutching at himself, the beer can flying from his grip onto the mossy ground. His bellow broke into a strangled gurgle.
“Josh?” Caleb gasped, stepping forward, but froze as the warlock raised a hand.
“Meus es. Corpus tuum marmor est et voluntas tua mea est,” the warlock intoned, voice reverberating with syllables older than the trees. “See how arrogance returns to its root.” Suddenly Caleb’s body froze mid step. He couldn’t move anymore and his head turned towards his brother’s agonizing change in front of him. He tried to talk, to turn his head away, to go and help him, but his body didn’t listen to him anymore.
Josh’s flesh was collapsing in on itself, his shoulders melting like wax in a forge. His arms slithered into his torso, veins writhing under the skin as they re-threaded into thick, pulsating cords. His voice rose into a high, animal squeal as his neck shortened, face swelling, lips ballooning outward until they fused into a swollen, glistening ridge.
Caleb gagged, clutching at his own stomach, as heat flared through his groin. He felt something pushing, as though a foreign weight were burrowing up inside him. His shorts tented violently forward, throbbing in rhythm with each of his brother’s gutturals screams.
“Oh god, what are you doing? Stop this please. We are sorry!” Caleb shouted, staggering.
“Too late for that,” the old man said calmly, “He disrespected peace, silence, and natures laws. He mocked me, he mocked virility, assuming that everything in life is about his penis. So let him become it. You, you tried to stop it and I see that you have a pure soul. You just lack of everything else. You wanted to protect him, now be his shield.”
Josh’s thighs fused, calves shriveling, feet withering into nubs. His whole lower half compressed into a trunk of veined flesh that spasmed and pulsed. With a wet tearing sound, all that was left of Josh started to compress on itself and in a last agonizing scream he popped out of existence, in his place, only a leaf fell slowly on the ground before dying on the beer wet mossy ground. Suddenly, Caleb felt a rush of sensation invading his body. He felt a rush of stamina and horniness climbing along his legs and merging at the base of his small circumcised cock. Caleb felt drops of sweat starting to pour from his forehead as an uncontrollable erection started to rise against his hairy leg. With each and every spam, he felt it grow longer and harder going from 4 inches hard to a huge 9 inches now. He wanted to scream from pure bliss as he felt all the hormones flowing freely directly form his new improved balls. He tried to talk, to ask what just happened but his vocal cords were only answering to the moans his lungs were expulsing from his body.
“What is happening… to me?!” finally exhaled Caleb between moans as his shorts suddenly ripped in half, letting his hard leaking cock jutting free straight in front of his frozen body. “I already told you,” Answered the old man, visibly amused by the situation and happy with the results “your bother had the attitude of a dick, so I repurposed him.”
Caleb doubled over, finally understanding what just happened. “Josh… oh god, I can feel him…he’s…he’s inside me!” he screamed I panic as Josh kept on spasming from fear and pure overflow of sensations, his precum now leaking in his brother’s underwear as fast as he used to talk back to people.
One more spasm and Josh broke free from Caleb’s underwear and slapped against Caleb’s stomach, leaving a smear of slickness. He gasped, shuddering, the alien weight dragging at his body. His brother’s muffled bellow reverberated through him, echoing as a hot, throbbing pulse.
The old man watched; expression serene. “Thus, the boy is undone. His pride of flesh, his scorn of manhood, all shall throb forever as a mockery of what he worshipped.”
Caleb staggered, panting, his eyes wet with tears of realization as he continued to feel his new cock pulsing and leaking with every heartbeat. He could feel the drops of precum leaking along his new sensitive length and starting to run down his new hairy nut sack. “Please…undo this! I’m sorry. I mean, he is sorry. We didn’t want to bother you. Just let us go. Please.”
The old man’s gaze was pitiless. “You are innocent, yes. But innocence does not absolve. It binds. You shall be vessel and gaoler.”
Josh twitched again, spraying a spurt of pearly fluid onto the moss, a wet groan muffled within it. The fratboys stumbled backward, faces pale at the realization of what just happened to their best friend.
“Holy shit,” one whispered. “He… he turned him into Caleb’s dick… How is that even possible?!”
The old man raised his staff once more. “And the rest of you shall follow.” “What?!” said Ethan and Tyler as the same time understanding too late that they were next. “We didn’t mock you. Please.” Said Ethan “I’m sorry,” said Tyler “Please let me go” he continued never asking for his friend’s salute as well. The staff hit the ground in a cosmic rush of ancient magic, projecting spark of red electricity in the air and dead leaves floating with the wind.
Caleb’s breath tore raggedly from his throat as his brother’s weight still pulsed between his legs.
The old man raised his staff over him as Caleb continued to beg for their freedoms but the man didn’t care anymore what he had to say, instead, he started murmuring syllables that spread like chains through Caleb’s limbs. Caleb’s muscles seized, then slackened. His arms dropped uselessly at his sides; his legs locked straight. Only his eyes moved now, wide and wet, forced to watch the terrifying scene happening in front of him.
“You will stand, vessel,” the old man intoned, his voice a tolling bell. “And you will bear.”
Caleb whimpered, but no sound escaped. His jaw was locked tight, his tongue thick and still. His body was a puppet waiting for someone to order him around.
The man’s eyes glowed like molten iron as he turned back around to face Tyler and Ethan. “Mockers. Hyenas. You will rot where you jeered.”
Both boys stood there, frozen in fear and surprise as out of nowhere, what felt like invisible ropes appeared around their bodies. They screamed as the invisible cords lashed around their chests, yanking them upward in the air a few feet off the ground. Their ribs cracked outward with sickening pops.
“AHHHH! My chest…it’s breaking! Oh god, oh god! I can’t take much more of this!!” Tyler shrieked as tears started to swell up the corner of his eyes.
Caleb’s shoulders flared with fire. He tried to scream, but his lips would not part. The heat tunneled into his armpits, a crawling, burrowing invasion beneath the skin.
Both of them convulsed as their bodies folded on themselves, forced by the tightening and bonding cords around their bodies. Their spines snapped like reeds, torsos bending until their heads slammed against their ribs. Their arms melted backward, drawn into their sockets like wax sucked by a flame. Their legs shriveled, blackening, then crumbled into dust at their waists.
“Please, PLEASE! I’ll stop! We’ll stop! Don’t do this…don’t …” Ethan screamed in pure fear as he his body finished to turn to dust gathered around by the wind.
“ETHAN NO!” Tyler screamed in pure panic as he saw his best friend get dusted before his very own eyes “Please, don’t do this to me! Oh god HELP!!! Don’t, No FUCK, NOOOOOooooo….” Tyler finished as his body finished to disappear just like the one before him.
The man ignored them and turned back to Caleb. With one swift movement of his hands, Caleb felt both his arms rise up until he was double flexing and showing his hairless armpits. “Into him you go, as laughter into lungs. Let his body sweat your shame.”
With a wrenching tug, the remains of the both of them started to levitate from the ground and in an instant were pulled toward Caleb’s waiting armpits.
Caleb’s eyes widened as he felt the rush of dust starting to press against both his armpits. It felt like millions of ants were biting at his skin and tearing it apart. Then, he felt the pressure stop and the wall of his skin let the intruder in his system as he felt the rush of something foreign inside his body. It felt like someone just injected him a huge needle full of water under both of his pits. “What was that” Caleb asked mentally as his eyes were moving left and right trying to see what was happening under his flexed biceps. A sick sliding sensation crawled under his skin, like two live animals burrowing into him. His armpits swelled grotesquely, slick with sudden sweat. He smelled himself, sharp, pungent, muskier than ever before. “What the fuck is that?!” he mentally screamed once more as the rush of musk reached and imprinted him directly inside his skull.
The frat boys ‘screams echoed in the air through the wind circling around Caleb’s frozen body.
With a final wet pop, the bulges under his arms smoothed. Caleb’s pits relaxed into perfect, ordinary hollows, lined with coarse hair, slick with sweat. Nothing unusual at all for a young man, except his pits were now the prison of Tyler and Ethan, forever bonded to the man’s pits as his armpit hairs and musky scent. Both of their souls thrashed against the prison of his flesh, trapped as sweat glands, nerve endings, follicles. Their consciousness seeped into the musk dripping down Caleb’s sides.
The warlock smiled faintly. “Their behavior reeked insubordination and disrespect. Now they will know what true stench is.”
Caleb shook where he stood, silent tears streaking his cheeks along his frozen emotionless face.
“Dude I’m out of here!” said Michael to Connor as they both started to run to the pickup.
They both turned to bolt, but the old man’s staff cracked against the ground. The forest itself seemed to seize them mid-stride, lifting them by invisible hooks. Both of their bodies started to levitate a few centimeters above the ground as they kept trying to run even though they were not moving anymore.
“Cowardice,” the man said simply. “You wanted to leave your friends there? It seemed like you were both pretty supportive a couple of minutes before. Since you were so supportive and like to run, let’s make you both his foundation.”
The boys screamed, limbs flailing. Their bodies stiffened unnaturally, spine snapping taut. A Line carved down the center of their bodies in symmetrical shape, then another one, and two others ones. Both their bodies looked like they were split in 5 tubular shapes shrinking smaller and smaller. Then their face started to move inside the biggest one of the shapes, their head merging with the mass of flesh until their head became the shape.
“OH GOD, IT HURTS! HELP ME! HELP!” screamed Michael in a last hope of freedom as he felt his limbs starting to move on top of his shapeless body. Connor on the other end tried to scream but it seemed like his vocal cords had already been ripped from his throat, leaving him soundless and screaming in silence. With another hit of his staff, both their shapeless new forms started to shrink and solidify into what looked like a pair of feet. Then with one last hit, both their new forms took shape as a manly pair of feet floating above the ground before they imploded, leaving behind them a couple of twigs and berries falling on the ground.
Caleb’s ankles burned. He felt his bones liquefy, tendons twitching like wires. His sneakers split open with sharp tears as he felt the heat rising higher and higher in his body. He understood immediately what that meant as he tried to scream for help but just as before, he was powerless and frozen.
Both of Connor and Michael’s screams became garbled, bubbling into silence as their soul sank deep withing their new prison, never to be seen again but always sentient and feeling the pressur of the body they both support now. Caleb’s feet warped, reshaping subtly, arches firming, toes flexing, skin smoothing. Within moments they looked like any man’s feet: broad, callused, veined, twitching gently in the grass while the remains of his shoes disappeared swallowed by the moss.
Caleb felt the weight of this new addition. Every nerve sang with a second awareness. Each toe carried the sneaky boy’s memory of running, each arch his fear, each step a soul screaming with no mouth to scream never to be heard again.
The old man’s voice fell like a hammer. “They fled. Now they are your tread. Every pace you take shall grind them into earth. Maybe after a couple of miles, they’ll finally know to support their friends and to learn the consequences of their own actions.”
Caleb’s chest heaved. His body looked totally normal to anybody, but completely foreign to him: two hairy, sweating pits; two solid, strong feet; a cock jutting stiff between his legs and constantly leaking precum and spasming against his now hairy pubes. Everything looked normal. Nobody would have known that were a pretty normal young man stands, they were 6 of them a couple of minutes ago.
But inside Caleb, their souls writhed. Trapped in their new prison of flesh, silent, aware of everything that happened to them and forced to act like their new forced functions.
The old man lifted his staff higher, eyes never leaving Caleb. “Quinque eras, nunc unus es. Tam prope et tamen tam longe. Mea voluntate, nunc unus eris..” Caleb’s body shivered in anxiety as he felt all his new body parts do the same in fear of what could happen now that Caleb was left alone to the man’s mercy.
Out of nowhere, Caleb’s body shuddered with a thousand torments at once. He was still bound in his own skin, frozen by the spell, forced to watch as his brother and friends throbbed inside him. His pits reeked, his cock pulsed, his feet itched, and all of them were now feeling a new change being forced on them. It felt like they were getting drained of their life force. Like there were drained of who they were. Caleb on the other hand started to feel his muscle spam without his consent. His calves grew a little bit longer and bigger, his pubes grew denser and curlier. His face grew turned sharper while his biceps grew bigger. His lungs were burning and drops of sweat were forming all around his body. The more it went, the less he felt like himself, and as the last change happened to his hardening glutes, he felt like a stranger in his own body. His thick cock spasming against his slightly hairy abs while his pecs and biceps framed his now perfectly dense armpits and his hairy legs finished by his now size 16 manly feet. Caleb wanted to cry, but even that he couldn’t anymore without the man’s accord.
Caleb tried to scream, but his lips would not move, still bonded under the man’s curse. His body was clay awaiting command.
The old man circled him, fingers tracing across his tense chest. “So much power in flesh. So much youth squandered on cruelty. Now gathered, refined, housed in one vessel. But flesh decays. Stone endures. And what endures, I keep.”
Without even touching it this time, the man snapped his fingers and the staff slammed into the earth again right in front of Caleb’s opened eyes.
Caleb convulsed as his skin hardened. Not into a statue like he’d feared would happen, but into something stranger. His body shrank, compressed, compacted, every bone grinding inward with the sound of granite under a hammer. His screams were muffled, strangled by the collapse of his throat, but his mind felt everything.
His ribs crushed inward, spine coiling like rope, until his torso was no bigger than a forearm. His arms folded into his chest, his legs pressed tight, his cock stiffening and then shrinking into unyielding stone. Each part that had once been fused with his brothers condensed, perfected, sculpted. His face locked in a silent cry, but even that expression softened, smoothed into an artisan’s rendering. His body kept on proportionate shape but just shrank smaller and smaller until everything around him felt gigantic.
Caleb was no longer a man; he was now a stone figurine carved in a one single block of rock.
The warlock reached down and plucked him from the dirt with one hand. Caleb could see from within his prison, the gnarled fingers gripping his body, the forest suddenly vast around him. He was no taller than a chalice, no heavier than a stone idol carried in procession. Yet inside he still burned: his soul, and the five souls sealed in his body, writhing against walls of rock that they won’t be able to escape. Caleb waned to scream why, wanted to ask why. He didn’t do anything and he even tried to take the man’s defense, why would he do this to him after everything he did.
The old man lifted him to his eyes and smiled for the first time since the beginning. It froze Caleb’s blood, if he still had any pumping in his rock body. It looked like the man would read Caleb’s mind. “Oh, but I can. I bonded your soul and body to my will, so now you belong to me and I have full visibility on you and your thoughts. You did try to take my defense, and that’s why you are not suffering in rock prison carved into a hard dick begging to cum but frozen for ever on the edge of orgasm, a pair of feet supporting the weight of your rock body on their small surface, or hairy and sweaty armpits now drowning into their own sweat because their pores are blocked by rocks. You are here because I took pity on you, and now you are mine. Perfect. Portable. But most importantly, mine. Now I am not a monster. You won’t suffer eternal envy. No don’t worry, you will forget everything, for you it’ll feel like everything is natural and you’ve always been like that. You will also lose the connection to your trapped parts and you’ll love the feeling of their phantoms spasmed in your rock body. Say good bye, vessel…”
He held Caleb close to his lips and whispered words older than language. White smoke poured from Caleb’s mouth, seeping out of his open eyes and mouth. Caleb’s body jolted with searing heat. It felt like he was slowly losing his grip on reality as he was forgetting events that happened earlier like his birthday, the name of his parents, his brother, his graduation. Everything that made him flashed in front of his stoned eyes before vanishing in light flashes, swallowed by the old man in front of him. The last thing he saw before forgetting who he was was the man’s familiar smile now looking back at him.
The warlock exhaled, and his form rippled. His sagging skin tightened. His bent spine straightened. His hair darkened to chestnut. The wrinkles melted from his brow.
He was becoming young again.
But not merely young. Caleb’s vision blurred as the transformation sharpened. The man’s face smoothed into strong lines, his shoulders broadened, his chest firmed with the same youthful muscle that Caleb had known all his life His jaw squared, his skin glowed, his very scent shifted, musk and vigor, the scent of a frat boy in his prime.
The old man now looked exactly like Caleb used to look, except for a more self-confident one, never doubting himself and never looking back.
The new Caleb held the figurine, what was left of Caleb and the souls of the five frat boys, in his palm, smirking with his new younger lips. “As I always say my dear vessel, At the end of the cycle, everything must die for new opportunities to rise.” He said as he put the true Caleb inside his pocket and walking away from the now forgotten camp site, crushing a couple of berries, twigs and leaves along the way, all that remained of the boys bodies. In his head, the real Caleb wasn’t here anymore. His soul and memories completely consumed and repurposed to the old man’s advantage. He now didn’t remember anything anymore, forever tingled by the cloth surrounding him and the hormones parkouring his rock body.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hello everybody! Here is my story written for the August story swap created by Mutabear. This prompt was requested by GiantPeter and I had a blast writing it. I hope you enjoy it because it's quiet different from what i'm used to do. Let me know what you think and as always feel free to send me any ides you have in dm and I'll do my best to answer them. Saa you real soon for the Halloween Event!! something tells me Melorius might come back in a short month ;) Enjoy!!