The woman - no, witch, there was no denying the unearthly power coiling around her - scrutinized him with those depthless eyes for a stretched moment. Then, her full lips curved in the barest hint of a knowing smile that sent a shiver rippling through George's core.
"I can sense the scars scoring your very soul are fresher than even your mortal torments," she mused in a tone of dark satisfaction. One slender hand drifted low, fingertips trailing across the sumptuous fabric draped over her abdomen. "Tell me, lost one...do you feel it shredding you from the inside?"
George's breath caught, body going rigid as every instinct screamed at him to turn and flee from her presence. Some primal, bestial part of his consciousness registered the unmistakable resonance of the witch's aura, the same unholy frequencies that had warped his very molecular structure.
He opened his mouth to howl his denial and revulsion, to beg for death, sweet oblivion, any mercy that might exist rather than continue his agonizing spiral into the abyss she beckoned towards. But his cries emerged only as a soft, shuddering whimper. It was as if his vocal cords had lost all power to give voice to his torment.
A delighted trill of a laugh, like silver bells dancing on the wind, spilled from the witch's painted lips. "Yes, I can see it in your eyes. The hunger is awakening, burning through your fragile shell as your true self strains to be reborn. It has already begun, I saw for myself, what you did to that man at the alley,"
Wait, so she was watching him?! George was completely astounded. So someone saw what he had turned into and what he had done. Things were getting out of hand by the second.
Verdant energy swirled in lambent eddies around her, unfurling wings taking on corporeal form with each passing moment. George shrank back against the oak's rough bark, shaking his head.
The witch's emerald eyes glittered with dark amusement as she drank in George's rattled state. Her full lips curled in a smirk that could have been mistaken for coy were it not for the undercurrent of sadistic glee it held.
"Look at you, a sniveling worm desperately clinging to the last tatters of its pathetic human existence," she purred in that rich, melodious tone that seemed to caress the air itself. "How utterly pitiful."
She began to slowly circle George in a predatory manner, the emerald mists solidifying into incorporeal wings that spanned twice her height. Her every movement exuded a lethal, sensual grace.
"I can practically taste the fear and revulsion roiling off you in waves, lost one," the witch continued in a contemptuous murmur. "You're disgusted by the truths you've begun to glimpse, the obscene hungers lurking just beneath that thin veneer of fragile mortality. Well, let me help you,"
One taloned finger trailed along the slick bark at George's back, the tip shearing through the wood as easily as it would human flesh. He flinched violently, a pitiful whimper falling from his lips before he could abort it.
The witch's derisive laugh was a crystalline peal that set George's nerves jangling. "How exquisite, you even jump like a cowering dog! Where is that impotent human bravado?"
Closing the distance between them, the lithe witch loomed mere inches from George's face. Her musky, intoxicating scent enveloped him, tendrils of emerald vapor caressing his features as if in a facsimile of tender intimacy.
"I can sense the war being waged within your fractured psyche," she breathed, her words dripping with relish. "The newborn essence battling with your baser instincts, vying for supremacy over your rapidly unraveling form. You must have a headache from all that fighting with yourself, yes?"
George squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head in wordless denial even as the witch's sibilant voice wormed its way deeper into his consciousness.
"Look at me now, lost one," she hissed in a tone of command that had his eyelids flaring wide against his will.
Her elongated nails clutched beneath George's chin, forcing his head up until their gazes locked. Up close, her features seemed to swim and blur, mortal beauty and eldritch horror flickering across her countenance in a disorienting strobe.
"This weakness, this quivering cowardice you display in the presence of your inevitable evolution...it is an insult," she spat with dripping venom. "An offense for which you will suffer dearly if you cannot put aside your frail human hang-ups."
Those green eyes bored into George's with inhuman intensity, as if her very irises were devouring windows into his fracturing psyche. He felt her power lash against his will, a psionic maelstrom seeking the cracks and fissures she could pry apart.
A guttural moan of anguish was torn from George's throat as slivers of emerald radiance pierced through his mind's defenses. White-hot agony lanced through his skull as his mental barriers crumbled like tissue paper before this entity's devastating onslaught.
"You have been culled, chosen to climb the first rung on the ladder to true ascension from your worthless mortal existence," the witch crooned in a saccharine tone that belied the violation unfolding. "This is a gift, a momentous honor...if you prove strong enough to withstand the trials ahead."
The pain built to a crescendo, a high-pitched metallic whine keening through George's consciousness. He felt his fragile humanity unspooling, its essence burning away like fog beneath a merciless onslaught of alien will and eldritch metamorphosis.
Just when he felt his tenuous grasp on identity itself was about to slip through his fingers entirely, the Scorching psychic pressure relented. George slumped back against the tree trunk, sweat and viscous fluid streaming down his face as he wheezed in rasping pants.
The witch had pulled back, her mocking smirk firmly back in place as she drank in the sight of his throes.
"We shall see how long your pitiable human sentiments can resist when they pale next to sensations of purest agony," she sneered. In a single sinuous motion, she drew her claws across her opposite forearm in a shallow arc. Viscous red ichor welled up in the wake of the cut, beading against her flawless olive skin.
George's eyes went wide as the witch's rich, cloying scent flooded his senses a hundredfold. He felt a primal hunger stir within him at the sight and aroma of her lifeblood, an aching need unlike anything his human existences could comprehend.
This blood, it was different. Different from the robber's. Scented sweeter, he wanted it. He wanted her.
"Irresistible, is it not?" The witch laughed again at the dawning horror on his face. "That's right, worm...bask in the glory that will soon be your new reality." She trailed the dripping wound along George's lips, leaving a smear of emerald ichor that he instinctively tongued at despite his abject revulsion.
"You belong to me now," she hissed in a tone of smug triumph, the promise of fresh torments yet to come glittering in her eyes. "Let the transformation take its course...or perish in its attempt."
The hunger blazed brighter within George's essence, scorching away his sanity as instincts more ancient than the cosmos itself were stoked back to ravenous life. As the witch reared back with a mocking laugh, he felt his own jaws being forced apart by powers beyond his comprehension, mouth opening in an endless, voracious yawn...