Hungry Tale of a Stihlweese Guppy

...Five Long counts ago...

The Panchayyah had held siege to the village for weeks. The growths of flowers where their warriors had fallen were all around the village making the air fragrant. The food supplies were running low inside the village so now there roasting boar and the shaman were sending the delicious scent past the city walls. Now it was time for the music to start.
 The bull roarers began with the long wooden droning pipes. Then came the whistling of swinging war clubs with the specially made arrows the let out a shrill cry as they cut the air fired in time. Spears banged against shields chants came from all sides of the village calling and responding to each other. All our large weapons had been destroyed, and they knew the distance of our arrows well from all the experience we had given them. All the noise was louder then it should have been. The singing and the drums came in.
 They worked in shifts and stayed in trance to keep the sounds coming until the beginning of dawn not giving us any slumber. It was worse though because the men who were not on watch had to restrain half the women and children who were becoming entranced by the music. A critical point in the battle had been, and the villagers decided on one last offensive attack down hill. 
 Half the village men ran into the morning twilight screaming. Half the Panchayyah broke out running, and the damned music stopped breaking the spell. They ran into the trees taunting us to follow them to the evil living jungle where they held supreme sway. 
 My group got sight of a small fleeing group. Several of us had got lost or gone missing in the frenzied chase. From ahead in the growth we heard a strange noise, It could not be readily known wether it was man or beast. It could have been anything. It could have been one of our wounded villagers. A man from behind me shot an arrow into the tall grass, and the sound that came back was definitely human. We circled around with our swords and spears out when It lunged at us.
 Our speculations were half right, it had been a man. It had been a villager. It had been a friend. Now The legs had been sewn together to make it look like a snake. The arms had been amputated and quickly sealed with a heated blade. The eyes were burnt black holes, and infected ritual cuts were all over the body. It opened it's toothless mouth with a haunted inhuman scream to let loose a stream of intangible black serpents made from shadow itself bit at our ankles and burned through our armor. I leapt to the side and saw the men we had been chasing. One was laughing so hard he fell out of his perch in a tree and into the open clearing. He was going to die. I leapt at him with my spear. 
 A charge went through my body in mid air. I instantly was much slower and everything around me was much faster. The men I was about to attack grew large large eyes and started to run away becoming more transparent the further away they got. It was deep in the night when my spear finally stuck into the now unoccupied ground. My relative speed of motion returned to normal. I looked around all the trees were in the same places by they were bigger and had pulsing purple veins feeding their ebony bark. I looked up at the stars to try and gain my bearings. They were all in the right places, but much larger and more colorful I could see burning halos around them. I could feel them sucking away my energy and my memories. I was in the same place, but not in the same place. I was in the same time, but timeless. There was a instinctive primordial truth to this caricature. 
 A man in flowing robes with the head of a albino serpent looked into me with golden eyes more powerful then the stars. There was nothing left in me to deny his ancient and powerful will. I followed him through parts of this world, Parts of the Jungle I knew, and parts of the Panchayyah lands to another type of place all together. 
 Nothing at all flowered here that wasn't larger then the largest man's fist, and everything else grew in proportion. The plants fed off a green gas that came from geysers. It made it harder to breathe, and corroded all the metal I had on me leaving me bare for the insects. I could see shadows of monstrous things bending the trees in the clouds of green gas. 
 We came to a clearing with a circle of tall trees around it. With a flash of the snake man's forked tongue I was sent flying up the side of a very tall tree so fast my arms were red from shattering small branches.
 As soon as I was up high enough The branches and vines grabbed me and savagely drove into my skin. They then began to move more slowly and merge with my nerves, blood vessels, and intestines , they pulled them out slightly to make it difficult where one ended and the other began. I could see shadowed movement of people in other trees, and hear the low pained moans of numerous women and men in the trees. The jungle canopy blocked my view of the sky. I felt my mind free as the snake men left the clearing. I knew that I had to break free soon, or there would be completely dependant on the tree, but the fall could be lethal. Pushing myself away hard form the trunk.  
 Pushing Hard I fell down in a spray of blood and a slight trail of skin and body parts. I hit the ground hard twisting an arm and shattering the bones in my foot. The last thing I felt before I blacked out was the vines lifting me skyward slowly. When I awoke back in my arboreal prison there was no escaping it was harder to tell where I ended and the tree began. My nerves swirled around vines and i was feeding from it slowly, and never enough to ease the constant pain of hunger. What it was feeding me had a price as well it already turned my hair a leafy green, and my skin a paler whitish-green. Still the unchecked terrible long hunger of many days with the dull body ache and cramping. It was ravenous and all consuming.
  There was no way to mark the passing of time. The tree would send me visions as it healed me and kept me alive. One day It sent me a vision of my wife, The woman I had fought my way to assistant headman for with rare emerald eyes. The dream was erotically charged and a powerful from the constant pain. As I was nearly full in my arousal A sharp branch Severed my manhood. Vines rushed in to stop my bleeding while the fed on it growing deeper in to me. My screaming did no good. The other vines grew inside as well as out and began to began to massage my flesh and work it like a putty inside and out.
 Perhaps to eliminate my ability to resist the changes, or perhaps out of cruelty the visions of my wife continued, I could see her now with the Panchayyah being taken into a house and loved by another. I saw her give birth to a child that she didn't know if they were the father or I was. It would send them ceaselessly for hours or days on end as they continued to change me. The massage the hunger from the muscles in my stomach further downward to were I once was a man, now the burning ravenous hunger filled my womb. I had been given breasts, and seeds grew from my leafier hair. I lost myself as a merciless eternity passed. 
  I keep seeing visions of a sister with emerald eyes being with her man, how I envy her ability to satisfy the hunger. The Kindly godlike snake man has let me out to go and feed my hunger. He tells me that I had take wardens from them, and that now I need to feed my hungers and make up the balance.

More details on Wild Forest Women in upcoming Creatures of the Bhaktim post.

Also Coming soon..
The Peerless Parade of Dheskerallai
Big Trouble in Port Kaier (Kaier bride Finale Prelude)
Return of the Black Lizard

Author's Note
The title originally came from a bit of exposition where the Bhaktim was telling our victim how he could radically change frogs, even their gender, but adding a slight charge to a pond at the right time. It was intended to be foreshadowing and a metaphor for their relationship with the Panchayyah, but was more like a melodrama villain twirling his moustache, so I dropped it but kept the title.