Cilyia blew her nose as she headed back to Erend, she couldn't remember a time she was this sick in the past 100 years. Luckily for the forest elf, her horse did all the real work. She didn't want to have to try and run away from the weird pile of moving vegetation. One of the reasons she was sick was because she was out scouting for that thing the night before without her fur jacket.

She had found it a few hours away from them, it was preying on a pride of lions. Some of them managed to flee but others were not able to. The thief listened to them whimper and roar as they were swallowed whole and crushed beneath the weight of its mass. Ciylia was happy that thing wasn't coming after them but it worried her nonetheless.

After a few hours of riding, the weather was getting warmer, more suitable for a delicate woman such as herself. If she could avoid the howling wind and snow melting in her boots then she would. She pulled her furs tighter over herself as she thought about the icy hell the others were going through. Gene really was too much of a nice guy, if Ciylia was the party leader then Fern would have been left behind. It was his fault for having that awful thing shoved inside of him and there was some poetic justice in that fact since he was always trying to shove his awful thing inside women.

If a curse was going to destroy him it would have been his fault and no one else's, though Ciylia felt some blame could be pointed towards Aliya. The cleric could have left the pendant with other people instead of getting it a fancy box that ended up being useless anyway. It still pissed Ciylia off how Gene could be so comfortable with have someone who kept so many secrets from the others in the team.

These thoughts occupied Ciylia's thoughts and distracted her. While she was fuming about the members of the Jellybeans, she didn't notice the pile of autumn leaves she came up to until it shot out a vine and grabbed her horse by its leg. Slamming it into the ground, injuring the steed. Ciylia caught her bow and shot at the monster that was about to swallow her ride.

Suddenly, the creature was slapped back by some unseen force. It shook its body as a ray of what looked like vomit stuck it and started decaying the plant monster. Two unnaturally busty women in dark blue hoods showed up. Seizing its moment, the horse kicked for its survival and escaped the grasp of the plant monster but collapsed a little bit away. The pain from when it skid across the ground earlier must have been too much for the poor animal.

The plant pursued the closest target to it, Ciylia. Two large vines lashed out at the thief and she sidestepped the attacks gracefully. There was no way she was going to become fertilizer for some overgrown grass. Dancing back she took another shot at the monster and hit it right where she thought its face should be.

One of the mysterious women walked up beside Ciylia, her white curly hair flowed out from under her heavy hood. She briefly touched the center of her forehead with her pale fingers. Her red nails made a swift motion and that creature once again was pushed back. The woman then moved away from the thief turning towards Ciylia before walking away. The woman had a stern face with some sort of drawings on it. A weird eye tattoo rested on her forehead between her eyes. The red eyed-woman wink at Ciylia as she passed by, her purple lipstick lips curling into a smirk.

The other woman started to sing a haunting tune, the sounds of a graveyard started to carry in the undertones of her voice, such as a crow, ominous wind, and punctuated by a church bell ringing. Chills crept down Ciylia's spine as she watched as the dark blue hooded figure sang, making the creature writhe in pain from some unseen attack.

A sense of relief washed of Ciylia, it was very fortunate for her that these women came when they did ore else she could have been absorbed into that monster. Those thoughts of relief came too soon as Ciylia didn't notice the vine that had slithered all the way to where she was. It quickly wrapped around her ankle with alarming speed and strength, lifted her into the air, and slammed her into the compact dirt.

Another tendril came collided with her gut before it started squeezing around her waist, draining the air from her lungs. The monster pulled her into it causing her vision to go dark and allowed both fear and panic to set in. The forest elf thrashed for her life and reached down and pulled a dagger out of her belt and started hacking away at the plant. She cut and cut fruitlessly until she saw a little ray of light pass through the thick canopy that was this creature's body. As much as she hated it, Ciylia begged internally that those two women would save her from this walking tomb she was currently trapped in.

Ciylia continued to cut away at the hole while she felt the monster twist, squeeze, thrash, and convulse. Occasionally, she'd hear the sound of an eerie church bell as it chimed her finally seconds closer and closer. Trying to use that last amount of air her lungs had, Ciylia pushed with all her might forward like a child pushing out of its mother's womb. And like a child, she was trying to go through a small vaginal-shaped hole.

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She got her dagger hand through and wiggled the fingers of her other hand into the barely empty space. Again, a chime was heard but Ciylia was now close enough to the surface to hear the other chilling undertones. Whispers of ghosts telling her to allow death to take her, children singing funeral songs, rusted metal scraping on the stone, the rattling of bones, and squishing of guts.

The creature started vibrating vigorously, boils started to appear on it then would pop, and the stench of decay withered its luscious green ton rotten browns, greys, and blacks. In a final attempt, the monster whipped a vine at the hooded woman as Ciylia got her face out. Before the whip-like appendage could reach her, the monster collapsed and Ciylia slid out of the compost gasping for air.

The two women picked up the helpless thief, revealing her old thieves guild brand. The hood on it was similar to the hoods the women were wearing. "A fellow thief," cooed the woman with white hair.

Pulling the hood down and revealing her doll-like face, the woman with long hair walk towards Ciylia. Her hawk-like eyes focus on the forest elf as if she was hunting prey. The porcelain-skinned woman helped Ciylia up and then locked her mouth to the elf's. A sweet iron taste penetrated Ciylia's tongue as the woman's long tongue swirled inside the thief's mouth. Ciylia accidentally swallowed the liquid the other woman was secreting and felt a tinge of ecstasy as her body started healing. After the woman released Ciylia from her embrace, she drank a blue liquid.

Shock took over Ciylia, what the hell was happening? The white-haired woman laughed, "I'm sorry. She was just helping you heal."

"Why does she have to do it like that," asked Ciylia. "She could have warned me."

"Wizards don't possess great healing magic like clerics," explained the woman with the painted eye on her forehead. "So she was transferring some of her life energy into you. As for the kiss, she transferred her energy that way because she finds you attractive and hopes you'll give her a roll in the bedroll sometime."

The thief blushed, "Why are you here? I'm not complaining as the two of you saved my life but I'm curious."

"We were here to kill that," she pointed at the decayed plants. The woman in with the doll-like face was digging through the rot until she produced some weird glass ball with lightning dancing inside of it. "And to retrieve that. Our leader wants it for an experiment."

"You said something about a fellow thief," pondered Ciylia. "Does that mean you are thieves too?"

"We are," nodded the woman. "My name is Winixia and that is Lynniesh but you can call us Wini and Lynn for short."

"What guild do you work for?"

Wini rolled up her sleeve to reveal her brand. It was an open book with a keyhole in the middle of it and two lockpicks crossed in an X directly underneath it.

"We are from the guild called Wizard Thieves though some people call us Succubi since we are an all-women's guild and we all have to be stunningly beautiful," explained Wini. "You could have been able to join but all the women are also wizards. We are the sexy version of the Order of the Crumbled."

"Never heard of any of those names," shrugged Ciylia. "But thanks for saving me."

Lynn came up from behind Ciylia and grabbed her shoulders. "You are a thief though in a more classical sense and we are in need of that kind of expertise," smiled Wini.

"What do you need me to do?" Ciylia started getting a bit worried. First of all, the woman named Lynn never talked and why would people who have powerful magic need her help.

"We need to get into a room of a known wizard. Her name is Candice Bruntworth."

"So you want me to go to Tormund," sighed Ciylia. Well, this explained how Candice could force Fern to follow her and mess with his memory.

"Knowledgable," whispered Lynn into her ear in a creepy tone.

"No," chuckled Wini as watched the forest elf's face go a shade paler from the frightening whisper she just received. "She had a room in the castle in Erend. We disguised herself and manipulated people's minds to believe she was a guest."

"Anyhow," continued the white-haired woman as she checked her red nails briefly. "We aren't very stealthy even when Lynn casts magic to make us invincible. My footsteps are too heavy and Lynn is a bit clumsy and easily distracted."

"Okay," said Ciylia. "Do I get choice in the matter?"

"No," Lynn had a spooky chuckle.

"The way I see it," added Wini. "We just saved your life and therefore you are in our debt. If you decline, we will force you to do it with magic and then kill you.

"And what am I to steal?" Even though she loved to do jobs, she knew she wasn't going to get paid which dampened her mood. On the plus side, she wasn't feeling sick anymore after Lynn kissed her. A brief flash of how skillful Lynn was with her tongue crossed her mind before she regained her focus.

"In the room is an envelope with a purple shield wax seal," briefed Wini. "Inside is a list of people she knew with great power. We want that list so we can try and guess where she is heading next."

"Why do you want to know that," asked Ciylia. "Are you trying to kill her?"

"No, we want to kidnap her," grinned the white-haired woman. She twirled one of her curls with a finger. "We are wizard thieves, we steal wizards so we can extract magic and information from them."

"And when are we doing this job?"

"Tonight," Lynn kissed Ciylia's cheek after giving the one-word reply. The black-haired woman walked over to Ciylia's dying horse and slit her armed and dropped her blood all over the horse's fur. After a few moments, the horse slowly stood up and shook its head. Lynn chugged another odd blue liquid and them licked her wound, sealing it shut as she gulped down her blood.

"You have a ride so let's get going," said Wini.