In the dark woods, flashes of light from above shot through gaps in the canopy only rarely as I ran past them. They impinged upon the ground to create elliptical splotches, complicated by rises and falls in geometry due to the giant roots of the old trees which passed me at the speed of a sprint to either side. My eyes caught that light, snapped to one splotch from another rapidly as I picked my footing in a mad sprint. My armor scraped upon itself, the metal half-skirt slapping against my thighs as my legs raised in long strides to leap, to get away. Behind me, raising the splotches of dull gold light from the ground up into the air, came the beast. I had never intended to catch its ire, had never even known it was there when I came through these woods. The trail had been winding, the topography jagged, and when under my weight some part of the switchback dirt path had crumbled down to its den, it came for me.

Trees did not stop it, though they were slowing it somewhat. That was my only real hope. I knew I could not fight this thing, had nothing to gain from fighting it even. It would simply kill me, and were I to somehow win my only prize would be survival, as its flesh was no good to eat, and its pelt something of nightmares. Steam came before it, as its great maw exhaled toxic breath that may well kill me before it I was simply beaten to death. So I ran, picking my way by dull gold light into the densest and thickest patches of trees I could find.

Where was I going to go? I was so far off trail I had not even the ability to know where I was with respect to where I had been. The angle of the light through the canopy could orient me, but I needed all thought available to me to simply track what they illuminated, rather than to measure their angle and determine from that the direction of the sun. My own breath before me went as steam, for it was chill and damp in this place. I was going downhill, down into something worse than a forest. What other choice did I have? Perhaps leaving its territory meant the beast would give up its pursuit. Perhaps... something else waiting there would kill it for me and I could escape during the ensuing brawl.

The ground soon leveled off, and the sound of my scraping armor gave way to the sharper sound of my boots splashing off wet, muddy ground. Enough small stones, and bits of hard broken up material scattered provided traction, but fog rolled in now as if my breath had left me to go ask for good company. Fog dulled sound as much as it did sight, and the beast seemed farther off behind me. Out of exhaustion, and some false glimmer of hope, I slowed and searched for a wide trunk I might hide behind. I plastered myself against it, seeing through the trees ahead the muddy ground growing slicker as it seamlessly transitioned into a swampy wetland with only the occasional tree popping out. I'd have to change course, attempt to get around this obstacle. Although, the trees indicated that perhaps it wasn't deep; maybe I could wade through it, so long as nothing was chasing me.

A bellow, a high pitch whining roar with some tone whose pitch was so low underneath it that I could only feel it. On instinct, I drew my sword, a great claymore I would wield in both hands because no shield could possibly save me here. Like some figure from a somber painting of great warrior knights, I held it straight up in front of me. The tip extended just above my head and the flat of the blade rested almost to my chest. I could feel it now, not the roar, but the similarly low vibration rumble of its steps on the ground; i could smell it.

I could not fight, I could not fight it. I didn't want to, I only wanted to get away, to get rest, to see the sky again to... to do something that made me worth someone.

It was close, so moved careful and slow. I lifted my back from the tree and stepped one foot across the other. I kept my sword straight, my profile narrow and followed the outline of the tree. I needed to lay each foot down careful, so as not to splash the inch deep water mixed with mud on which I stood. Despite my car, my foot tapped a root and I lost balance. To counteract, I leaned back, thumping to the tree on which I quickly rolled to my shoulder in anticipation of the beast leaping around the tree on the side I was trying to move; it didn't.

Instead, as I turned away from the water I had been facing, something came out of it. It was almost a person in shape, but was surely a simple something. It's arm was like a long, bony snake, raising from the water like a branch as long as a row of fences. The hand at the end was oversized, with fingers like a witch, long bony. Following that arm came a head, a bent forward sphere with black matted hair hanging over what would have been the face. Finally, it grabbed me.

All at once, before I even knew what had done it, I was seized by the leg, yanked from the tree, dragged to the ground and toward the water kicking, shouting in surprise. I turned and saw the head, the yellow pinprick eyes of a grinning face with a smile of razor blades. I hadn't lost my blade, so I swung down at its arm, beat at it. Only two strikes were needed for it to release me. Howling, it raised several more big terrible hands from the water, much shorter and stronger. With them it propelled itself at me like a spider, splashing water everywhere.

I rolled, shoving up from my elbows only to find water sloshing down into my armor sending me off balance. I fell forward, and saw the other beast. It had great big eyes with cat-like slits that flashed just the same. It had a great terrible wolf's maw, powerful arms that hung forward off a hunched torso supported by two ferociously powerful hind legs. It was twice as tall as I was, and at least five what I weighed. It leapt at me, jaw going wide.

I died ripped in half. I lived long enough to feel the wet inside of its mouth drip burning drool onto me as its teeth crunched my armor and my body. The water thing had my legs. It ripped them away one at a time. One arm was pinned by teeth and the other I beat on the beasts tongue. I remained alive long enough to know how it felt to be swallowed.

Between death and the next life, there was no in-between. I saw no light, felt no warmth, no comfort. One moment I was being swallowed, ripped apart, beaten, abused, sliced, bashed, poisoned, and the next I was awake alongside the light of a bonfire whose flames twisted too slow, as if burning independent of the air around them and lost in time. Face down, I pushed up on my forearm. So soon after what had happened I still shook with fear, with adrenaline. I still gasped, almost whined, and my eyes still hung red with tears. But I was intact, if naked.

I couldn't see much beyond the firelight. I watched its slow, almost ghostly spirals which followed some unseen purpose, and I blinked. Somewhere between those blinks, you arrived. I never knew how, just like you probably never saw how it was I came from the place of death to be laying here on the other side of the bonfire. Yet we had been in this scenario many times before, and my gasps and whines of death turned to a sudden, choked sob of relief. Every time it happened, the first fear I unlocked after realizing the others could subside, was the fear that you wouldn't show up.

There had never been a maiden I knew more beautiful, more worth my own death. Deep down, I knew you were something other than human, not a god, but something as in-between as whatever it was that I traveled through in death; the only difference was that unlike that place you I knew, and experienced.

I struggled to get more upright, not because there was any deficiency in my muscles; I was perfectly healthy now, but because the shaking hadn't stopped. I still felt sick, and still felt unsure if that sick feeling in my stomach was sickness, or a tear left over from when I was ripped in half. I knew from experience that it couldn't be the latter, but that didn't stop instinct telling me it had to be.

You were bigger than a human woman, impossibly bigger, although that thing in the woods would still have dwarfed you. Yet I knew you could move with grace and speed, not that you did it now. You waited, allowed me some semblance of masculine pride that I might pull myself up. Or, was it that you simply didn't care to help until I could help myself. I had that fear near as deep inside me as the one that you would not show up. Yet I knew that in you're staying and helping me, as opposed to your mysterious arrivals, there was purpose. I could be something for you; you were the only thing I wanted to be something for. But I could only be that something if I got up on my own, if I got up and gave you proof that I would do it all again.

I would, and the proof was in my managing to stand. The air here by the bonfire was warm, smelled of wood smoke even though there wasn't any. And it smelled like you. I breathed deep, my chest rising and falling as I willed my body to calm, to forget what had just happened.

The only thing I could truly to do get over it though, was to walk past the flame into your welcoming arms. Sometimes I felt pathetic doing so, like some child going to mother for comfort. Sometimes you even spoke to me as if I were, with a hand in my hair. The passage of time was muddled, so I had no idea how long we would stay like that. I didn't care, but eventually the tone of it all changed.

My head to your breasts stopped simply feeling the warmth of your smooth skin on my ragged stubble, and turned to bring the more supple skin of my lips to your skin instead. Warmth flowed from me to you as I kissed, an worshiped. It all happened slow, progressed slow. My lips held still for a time, moved and held still again. My breath quickened and slowed, and regally you began to lounge backward, guiding without touch my mouth to move downward. First, I stopped at your nipples. They filled my mouth, and though there was no fluid passed, I still drank from them. Strength flowed from you to me in the form of comfort, renewed confidence. I felt your hand in my hair stroking with just a bit more strength, and like music you sighed and breathed with hints of your deep feminine voice.

Carefully, you continued to lounge, your body relaxing as if onto a cushion of air that lowered you without the behest of gravity. My mouth was made to move down your abdomen. It was soft, had a womanly shape and thickness to it. I continued to worship you with my mouth, until you ended up fully reclined, and my lips had no place to go but between your great, long legs.

There I gasped, panting almost as I had when I had awoken. Your scent was strong, your heat even stronger. If the bonfire was still behind me it was shrunk in its comparison to you. There my lips rested on your mound of womanhood, my cold nose on your hot stomach. I raised my arms, lifting them atop your legs and around your wide hips. You felt like a pillar, a giant of inhuman womanhood. I kissed lower and breathed deeper.

Atop my head your hand guided me, firmly, but with a silent tone of freedom. I had known in the past that hand to become more insistent, and had learned to perform better because of it. I tilt my head, resting a cheek to your inner thigh as I kissed around your lips, and not along them. My own lips made a soft wet sound, a careful quiet smack as I sucked the place where your legs met your body and thanked it for existing. When I reached the bottom, I crossed and moved back up to give the opposite side the same treatment, and then came down again, skipping straight to the bottom.

There, before I continued, I dared to look up, to follow along the shape of your body with my eyes, over your stomach, atop your breasts, to your inhuman face, writ with emotions and ambitions I'd never understand aside from the ones I could vaguely recognize as amusement, or pleasure. Your mouth moved, and it could command me without speaking. I lowered my gaze, and my mouth, tongue extending.

Steadily, in the slowly roiling light of the bonfire, I drank back my courage from between your legs. Glistening spit fell from my lips and tongue, made less viscous as I licked up between your folds and collected your own juices in a concoction. I panted, unable to properly balance my need to breath with my need to lick. The soft sound of my low voice mixed with the wet slick flick of my tongue sliding up and down, and occasionally inside.

The stroking of my hair continued, encouraging me that I was doing right even when you remained frighteningly silent. Sometimes you could be loud, sometimes silent. I had sometimes wondered if it was that you knew what had happened to me, and knew when my fears needed silence or noise to be banished. Regardless, by voice or by touch you guided me where you wanted me: higher. You took me to the place where my tongue was less needed than my own lips, which closed and sucked. A soft sputter came out as my mouth made an imperfect seal around your clitoris. I pushed my tongue up from below to help complete the seal, pushing it against you as my lips pulled with suction. More saliva, more of you fell down my chin. Behind my head, your leg hooked into place as your hand left my hair and moved to your own chest.

This time I did drink, and drink proper. I swallowed in audible gulps, gasping afterward as I chose to allow the passage of your liquid over the passage of air. Occasionally my face pressed so firmly into your softness my nose struggled to inhale enough. I didn't care. I dank, I sucked, and I forgot.

When the time came again, I'd leave this bonfire with resolve. I'd leave, and enter woods and swamps and ageless forts again. I'd die in them, all on the search of taking godhood from something else, and giving it to you instead.

I may have let myself get a little overzealous in this one. Hopefully I managed to make it a fun read though, to make up for all the time you would have to spend reading it to get to this point (Unless you skipped ahead, which I can't complain about). This is my SoulsBorne/Elden Ring prompt. Does it exist entirely in universe? Nope. Granted, I suppose it could, but I always find its more fun, and even easier in fact, to sort of make our own which shares a lot of concepts, but has different locations and entities/rules inside it. Generalized summary? What if a Dark Souls-like world had Elden Ring-like maidens. Only those maidens were all supernatural amazon women and hot as fuck? What self-respecting tarnished/pygmy wouldn't throw himself to death endlessly in the hopes of giving her the soul of a real god that she might become more than just his own personal goddess?

What about themes? I think I want to explore some gentle femdomme here. The woman is something more than human, maybe an ageless entity with powers, albeit not all powerful. She is nominally in charge, but she needs the male character. She may or may not take pleasure in what he does for her by the bonfire, but she'll give it to get what she wants. She may have a motherly affection, and feelings for him, or she may not. She has goals beyond his understanding, and will ask him to do things that will kill him... which he will do regardless. I don't particularly like playing traditional "submissive" males. I like big strong, capable warrior dudes that still end up willingly doing whatever their domme wants of them regardless of what they could be capable of doing on their own.

With that goes some sexual limits on things like pegging, sissification, cross-dressing... which are just the typical themes I see in other femdom scenarios I'm not interested in here. Otherwise, anyone familiar with the inspiration material here should know we can take this very dark. Since the male character is effectively immortal, his "maiden-mommy" can certainly kill him if he displeases her, maybe even replace him until he does something worth getting her to return. She's not human, this isn't a romance to her (though it could be if we want to change it up a bit), so we can definitely explore patterns of abuse.

Otherwise, I think I'll try to keep my post-script from becoming as long as the main script. If you want to talk more, please message me and we can work out more details. If you liked my writing, if not the particular concept here, please have a look through my past prompts. I'm always happy to hear from people, even if we don't end up roleplaying I like to consider myself a writer and love to just bounce ideas around and chat too.