FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

- The Chimeriad -

** Peryton**

Part II: Metamorphosis

by Dissident Love

Copyright 2011

www.oneloveforchi.com

The early dawn found a Dramamore still struggling to come to grips with the previous night. There were quite a number of people nursing headaches and cursing the demon alcohol, while many others were trying to sneak quietly out of unfamiliar houses without waking the owners. Unlike most such events, though, there were also large groups of people huddling in fear and staring at the sky, rumours spreading like wildfire regarding the ruined house on the edge of town.

Sara's Ma was sitting in the remains of Sara's room, perched on a trunk full of summer clothing and idly kicking at bits of debris. The breeze from the enormous gaping hole, which had widened overnight to include most of the roof ruffled her hair, but she did not notice. She didn't notice much of anything, except the two things that were lacking.

Sara's bed, and Sara with it.

She wished she'd paid more attention when her daughter had spoken of dragons, both as a toddler and as a young woman. She wished she'd not dismissed them either as flights of fancy, or silly delusions, or irritating obsessions. She wished she'd hugged her more. She wished that Sara's father had never given her that blasted book. There was no reason to think so, but she firmly believed that his old storybook was somehow to blame for this. If Sara had not been so obsessed with dragons, surely this would not have happened. Surely...

Even with the sun barely above the treetops, there was talk of forming a search party. Dani had not slept at all the night before, but had also not been home. After hearing the descriptions of what had been done, she was in no hurry to see for herself, but she felt a twinge of guilt for leaving her ma all alone. There would be time for condolences later, though.

If there was one thing Dani had learned in her short life, it was to take advantage of what that life threw at you. If something makes you angry, channel your anger into something constructive. If something makes you sad, focus the negativity into preventing it from happening again. And if dragons attacked your town and abducted your sister for some inhuman virgin sacrifice, you found a way to rescue her while making yourself look as heroic as possible.

She had not slept, and her long ruddy hair was wildly unkempt. She was a petite girl, several inches shorter and a stone lighter than Sara, but had a rich throat voice that could carry over any crowd, and right now it was being used to full effect. Her tiny fists pounded the air as she marched back and forth along the edge of the Square's wooden podium, and the crowd has ceased being hypnotized by her body and were now being quite hypnotized by her words.

"She told you! She told all of you, not only in the past several weeks, but in the past several YEARS, she told you about the dragons! She told you, and you all laughed. I've heard the whispers, I've heard the rumours, from more of you than I'd care to admit, and look what's become of them! My sister is GONE!"

Those at the fore of the crowd were driven back by her righteous fury, while those in the back pressed forward. Many had originally come just to witness the spectacle of the ruined carnivale, or the spectacle of a dishevelled Dani, who had been blessed with such natural assets that many thought it had to be at the expense of several other less fortunate girls. She seemed to be unaware that her corsets were loosened and her bodice partly unlaced, and those assets bounced and surged with a fury of their own. She seemed not to be unaware, but she was not so silly a girl as to not use every weapon in her arsenal.

"And now, when you finally believe her, when you've all finally seen the beast with your own eyes, witnessed the fangs and the talons and felt its fiery breath, when you know in your heart that she was right, none of you will stand forward to save her!"

"Well, it didn't exactly seem to have fiery breath..."

"FIERY BREATH!" she screamed, silencing the lone dissenting but quite observant voice. "Wings the span of a dozen houses, eyes like the pits of Hell, and my sweet virgin sister bears out it's fury as we speak!"

"She was a virgin?" came the voice again, followed by the audible thump of an elbow.

"She was picked because she believed, there can't be any doubt as to that! Now that you've all borne witness, you must believe, too, and how long do you think you'll be safe with that knowledge? What would stop it from coming back for your daughters?"

There was an uncomfortable muttering and shuffling from the crowd. The mayor, a genial man in his greying years known for his quite manner and fair demeanor, had been trying to look busy near the edges of the crowd, talking with one of his secretaries and shuffling papers back and forth. He had been elected as a peacemaker, not a firebrand, and he was more than a little afraid of trying to force the well-known girl off of the stage, but now he was left with little choice.

He climbed the wooden stairs, coming out behind her just as she finished berating the audience for sacrificing their own children to assuage their own cowardice, and scarcely a dozen shifted their eyes to him. That was enough to tip her off, and she spun around, bring the full power of her glare against him, while he had a difficult enough time keeping his eyes above her chin.

"I will not remove myself from the podium!" she cried angrily.

"I was not going to ask you to," he said calmly, having dealt with all manner of furious arguments before. This one was significantly more pleasant than most in that, so far, no one was violently drunk. "In fact, I agree with you."

"You... what?"

Neither of them noticed a third person climbing atop the stage, boosting himself off of the shoulders of the less observant. He was a tall, powerful figure with black hair and brooding eyes. He approached the pair quietly, and the crowd hushed.

"My sister needs help NOW, though!"

"Yes, dear, but it takes time to organize a search party, to say nothing of tracking the beast. We need supplies, and we need preparations."

"I'll get a tracker and start now, you can catch up!"

"I appreciate your verve, young Dani, but..."

"I'm not young, I'm sixteen!"

"Be that as it may..."

Moren cleared his throat, loudly, and Dani looked up, startled and fighting the urge to smile and tug at her bodice. The mayor, unflappable as always, merely nodded. "If I may," the young man said, soft voice reaching the furthest spaces in the deathly-silent Square, "there may be a way to leave sooner rather than later."

Dani gasped, pleased to have someone slightly more respected than her on her side, and also pleased to be able to find an excuse to spend time with Moren. The mayor cocked an eyebrow, and gestured for the young man to proceed.

"The debris leads in a perfectly straight line, away from Sara's house to the tree line, and a quick search revealed the debris continues after the tree line for a short distance. A direction, therefore, is very easy to determine. Also, there is no sign of blood at the house," he paused while the audience shifted uncomfortably again, "nor anywhere among the debris, indicating that Sara is uninjured, or at least was not injured during the attack. That is a good sign."

"How do you know?" shouted a voice from the crowd.

"Would you rather she was devoured right away?" he said, growing louder. Dani smiled to herself. "No, she is still alive, and may be for some time. We don't know why she was taken, but only that she was taken unharmed."

The crowd muttered. Moren was silent, staring defiantly, waiting for the inevitable next step. It was vital that it not come from him, and he was not disappointed.

"So what should we do?" someone called.

He smiled grimly to himself. "We arm ourselves. I know a dozen of you can fell an eagle or an elk with your longbows. There's fifty stout arms who can wield a blade as well as a hammer or an axe. The beast must have a lair, and nothing that big can help but leave a trail any good townsman can track." He took a deep breath, bellowing and driving the crowd into a cheer, "We will hunt it down, we will rescue her, and we will slaughter the beast!"

. . . . .

Sara woke up slowly. She was first aware that she was wrapped head to toe in her blankets, which was quite normal. She was then aware that she was laying in her own bed, which was also perfectly normal. The next thought to trickle through was that it was distinctly not normal for her to hear a blade being sharpened in her room.

Then she remembered what happened to her room, and her heart began pounding. She felt as if she were plummeting into an abyss. Her breathing became shallow and rapid, and terror forced a scream out of her throat that emerged as a choked-off yelp.

"See? You've frightened her."

The blade-sharpening sounds paused briefly, then resumed. She heard a sigh that put her in mind of blacksmith bellows, but the voice was distinctly familiar. One hand slid up her body, past her neck, to her face, and carefully tugged the blanket down enough for her to see.

The scream was not choked off this time.

When at last her lungs gave up and the lingering echoes of her shriek had faded into obscurity, the dragon cocked his head and smiled a tiny smile. "Do you feel better now?"

Inside her cottony cocoon, she shook her head. The dragon sighed again, but the smile remained. It was odd, she thought, to see a smile on a scaly mouth bigger than her kitchen table. It caused little crinkles near the dragon's great eyes, though, and for a moment it was eerily familiar.

"Dirk?"

The dragon nodded. "I am deeply sorry for misleading you yesterday, but as I said... you would not have believed me. And I had to be sure."

"Sure?"

"That you were the right person. More than the sort who could write such fanciful tales, more than the sort who would sleep on a roof just to catch a glimpse of a dragon. You had to be the right soul."

"Soul?"

"Indeed. Would you like to take the blanket off?"

"Blanket?"

Sara became briefly dizzy and she realized she had been holding her breath. She forced herself to inhale and exhale, slowly and deeply, three times, and then sat up. The blankets fell away, slightly, and she got her first good look at her surroundings.

Sara had never seen a stone building larger than the Grand Hall, which could seat almost two hundred and had its very own wrought-iron chandelier, and she had not been inside a church since she was a little girl, but she could instantly tell that the vast space had once been a church. The high narrow windows, the columns and arches, the vaulted ceiling; it was unmistakable. She couldn't even begin to imagine how many people could have fit inside it. Thousands, perhaps. More people than she had ever seen in her life.

The age of the place was readily apparent, too. Where the wooden roof was not sagging, it was missing completely. Weeds and vines grew in and around the cracked and crumbling masonry, and each window had but a few scant pieces of colored glass left. The pews had all been swept aside, and from the claw marks she could tell who had done it.

As massive as the dragon was, it had more than enough room to walk around, and possibly even to fly, within the ancient cathedral walls. Her bed was located in the very middle of the cleared space, and she guessed it to be a good fifty-yard dash to the nearest column. Her body tensed, and she had to fight the urge to flee. The dragon had not made any move to harm her, yet.

The dragon, she realized, had a name.

"Dirk? It really is you?"

The head rose up on the serpentine neck and nodded again. "I assumed a less-frightening form yesterday, to get to know you. It is very taxing, but I like to think that you were worth it." Sara saw the dragon's great eyes flicker once, behind her. She turned around before he could protest..

The next scream took a lot longer to fade away.

Dirk sighed and rolled his eyes. Sara clung to his foreleg, shaking like a leaf. On the other side of the cleared space, an enormous horned figure wearing scraps of mismatched armor continued sharpening a half-moon axe bigger than any she had ever seen before. Dirk moved his other paw to pat her reassuringly on the back, and he lowered his head next to her.

"That," he said, a little testily, "is Gharl, who absolutely refuses to be polite to guests. Say hello, Gharl."

"Hello."

"Eep."

Sara was hiding behind his foreleg the way a puppy might hide behind hers. "It's all right," he said to her, "he's a good friend. In fact, you might say you've already met."

"The horns... I saw it in the forest!"

"He. And yes."

When she could focus her eyes again, she realized that the beast, Gharl, was not quite as fearsome as she had thought. The great sweeping horns were in fact antlers, and you didn't survive lean years on a farm without learning a little bit about hunting. Al-though he clearly had heavily-muscled arms and legs that bespoke an incredibly hairy man, his head was the shaggy countenance of a bull elk. She glanced down and sure enough, his legs ended in hooves, though his hands ended in surprisingly human-like, if unusually thick, fingers. She guessed him to be easily eight feet tall, perhaps ten with the impressive crown of bone. Compared to her he was gigantic, yet compared to Dirk he was almost delicate.

Slowly, hesitantly, she crept out from behind Dirk's leg. "I'm... I'm sorry," she said. "I was just a little... scared."

"I think she still is," Gharl said gruffly in a deep, hollow voice.

"Talk TO her, Gharl, not ABOUT her."

"Fine." The heavy-muzzled figure looked at her, eyes sparkling with intelligence but lips curled in a sneer. "You are a flimsy human."

"Gharl!"

He shrugged and put the whetstone away behind a piece of armor. "It is your quest, but I do not think she will do it. Or can do it."

"The Concord says she can. As for if she WILL, I..." Dirk paused, and looked down at her. She didn't think it was possible, but the regal dragon's face fell sadly. "I apologize again, that was terribly rude of me to talk as if you were not here. There has not been anyone here with us for so long."

He looked so forlorn that Sara was compelled to reach out one hand and pat his knee. "Um... it's ok," she said, feeling as if she were reassuring one of the village youth who had accidentally knocked a book out of her hands. Dirk smiled again.

"You're too kind. We have much to discuss, but first, you must be hungry. Gharl?"

"What?"

Dirk snorted, and little dust devils were kicked up by the gust. "The food, Gharl."

The humanoid elk rolled his eyes again, and walked off into the cathedral, hooves clunking on the worn stone floor. "I should apologize for him as well," Dirk said when he had gone, "he does not care for your kind."

"Women?"

"Humans."

"What's wrong with humans?"

He shrugged, an impressive feat for a dragon that was nearly thirty feet tall from rump to snout, sitting upright as he was. His tail curved back into the darkness by the great columns and poked out again some distance away. "There is... a lot of history to be covered with a question like that," he said, scratching his cheek in a move that seemed almost bashful.

Sara thought it peculiar that, as a human, Dirk had seemed supremely confident and self-assured, commanding respect from all around him and captivating her as easily as Dani could captivate any red-blooded boy. But now, he seemed nervous, insecure, almost afraid. If I weren't utterly terrified, she thought to herself, it might almost be cute.

She sat down on the edge of her bed, the only piece of recognizable furniture in the enormous canyon-like cathedral, and she realized that she was not wearing her dress from the night before. "Did you change me?" she asked, tugging at her lacy nightgown.

Dirk nodded. "I grabbed some clothes when I picked you up, and..."

"YOU KIDNAPPED ME!"

She was standing again, quivering not with fear but with rage. The previous night's events had fully replayed themselves in that moment, and the consequences were becoming clear. "You came to my house! You attacked the carnivale, then you came to MY HOUSE! Oh, Gods, you walked me right there! Then you came back, and you ripped my house down, and you STOLE ME! Merciful saints, my mother must be horrified! She must think I'm dead! WHY DID YOU DO THAT? I'd agreed to go with you in the morning! You could have waited! WHY DIDN'T YOU WAIT?!"

Dirk had backed up against a column, and seemed to be trying to draw support from it. "I got the idea... from you," he said softly, apologetically.

Sara took one step forwards, not sure how she could savagely kick a dragon but willing to give it a shot, when she realized what he meant. "You mean... oh, gods, you do. My stories. The other Sarah."

She remembered the first story. Chapter two. After a night of festivities where her heroine realized she didn't belong among the quiet people of her town, she was kidnapped by a great and terrible dragon. "Bed and all," Dirk said, voice tinged with remorse. "I know you humans place great pride and importance on traumatic events, I thought this would create the greatest amount for the greatest number of people."

"Well, yeah, importance, but we don't go around wishing 'Boy, I wish my daughter would be eaten by a bloody great dragon today, I'd take great pride in surviving that!' We spend our whole lives AVOIDING traumatic events!"

The dragon's head was dipped so low his nostrils created tiny tornados when he exhaled, and she realized that a face as large and expressive as a dragon's could make puppy-dog eyes far better than any puppy ever could. She sighed, resting her forehead in one hand. "Ok, I can figure this out," she said, turning away from the beast. "Look, you said I'm not really kidnapped, right? I can go back and explain things. Hell, they can meet you! You're nice! Right?"

The silence spoke more than any words, and she whirled around again. "You won't let me leave?!"

He raised his forepaws placatingly. "We will! Just... not today. Tomorrow. Today, there is much to discuss, and then you will be free to go, and I will certainly take you as far as I dare. However, if you decide to stay with us, you will... not be able to talk to them again."

The dragon, several tons of scale and muscle and bone, flinched away from Sara's expression.

"What could you possibly say to me that would make me willingly want to never see my family again?" If Gharl had been there, he could have sharpened his whetstone with her voice.

Dirk crouched down again on all fours, trying to make himself seem less imposing. "So you don't think you've been completely fooled, may I make a suggestion? If you decide to stay with us, you can most certainly write them a letter. You can write anything you want, except for... well, a few details that will become clear to you."

Sara thought. Her mother would be sobbing, surely, but she was a tough woman. She had worked the farm herself since back before Sara had even been born, and she was surely one of the few women in her village who could stomach that apple scumble and still walk home. Since she'd likely see her tomorrow, it wouldn't be SO cruel to at least hear the dragon out.

It was then that the part of her mind that wasn't occupied with being furious chimed in with a few choice observations, and Sara finally realized that she was standing before a great, sleek, handsome dragon wearing nothing more than a sheer nightie and a frown. She tugged at a lock of hair and smiled, trying to appear conciliatory. "I'm sorry, this is... it's just been a very strange day."

The relief coming off of him was palpable. "I agree," he said pleasantly, moving back onto his hind legs, wings fluttering like the largest laundry line ever conceived.

"ONE day, ok? You get ONE day."

He nodded eagerly. "Absolutely. Tomorrow morning, you will surely know enough to make one decision, or the other."

There was a loaded tone to that phrase, but she decided to let it slide. Realistically, this was most of her fantasies all happening at once, but it was not quite how she expected it to turn out! Although she knew it was still early spring and there was a definite chill in the air, she was almost sweating from the excitement. Her heart still pounded merrily away, but it was no longer fearful.

She leapt into the air and shrieked one final time, though, when Gharl, moving almost impossibly silent for a hoofed being his size, slammed a heavy oak table onto the floor behind her, and then dropped a bulging sack on top of it.

"Breakfast," he said simply, watching impassively as she hyperventilated, ignoring the scathing glare from Dirk.

. . . . .

The sun was higher in the sky, slanting down through the holes in the vaulted roof. She sat on the edge of her bed, picking over the various items on the table. More than just wild fruits and mushrooms and tubers that the obviously skilled forager had found, there was also a wheel of incredibly hard cheese that she found delicious, and most of a smoked rabbit. It was certainly food enough to keep her fed for a couple days, but she only nibbled. She didn't think her stomach could handle any more big surprises.

"So, how do we do this?" she said, wrapping the blanket around her. Dirk had also been kind enough to somehow grab a handful of her dresses on his way through her room, but the brisk air was more than a single dress could keep out. She chewed a blueberry thoughtfully. "I can go home tomorrow, once you're done trying to convince me to... do something vague that you're being very careful to avoid talking about."

"Avoiding it is the furthest thing on my mind," he purred, laying on his side up against a pile of wooden rubble that, she eventually noticed, did look like he had been using it for bedding. Dragons were certainly tough if that was considered to be comfortable! "However, it is of vital importance that certain things be covered in the right order. You don't build a house by starting with the roof. You start at the foundations, and work your way up."

"Sensible, though it sounds like this house is going to be built on a foundation of fantastic stories."

Dirk cocked his head. "Fantastic, in the original sense of the word, young Sara, refers to something that is so rare and implausible as to be virtually impossible. Something so unlikely that it might as well not exist. And here you are, eating blueberries and talking to a dragon about the fantastic."

Sara pursed her lips. "Good point," she said, looking around. "Where's Gharl?"

"Out patrolling." There was a curtness to his voice that was unmistakable. "He'll be back tonight. He... he didn't want to make you nervous."

"I can't imagine why I'd be nervous."

"Well, this must all be very strange for you, and..."

"You're not good at sarcasm, are you?"

His head slunk back on his neck like a swan's. "I've been observing humans for more than three centuries, I am well versed in the colloquial essentials of your language."

"Then you're just bad at subtext."

"My people communicate almost entirely through subtext. Entire conversations can be held concerning one topic while information is exchanged on several other topics, with several different dragons, all at the same time. Body language, respiration, eye color, all of it can... why are you laughing?"

Sara covered her mouth, but it was no use; the giggles found their way out. "Nothing, nothing," she said, hiccupping once and giggling again. "You've been observing us from..." she pointed upwards and arched an eyebrow questioningly.

He nodded.

"How often do you, you know, look like one of us and come down?"

He sighed, and laid his neck down on the floor of the cathedral, bringing it close enough to Sara's legs that she could almost boot him in the nose. She wondered what it would feel like to kick someone like that. Probably like kicking a brick wall. "It's very exhausting," he explained, "to change my form like that. I've been a dragon for centuries, my body tries hard, so very hard, to return to that shape. It's akin to trying to force a snowball to roll uphill. You keep pushing and pushing and pushing, but eventually it gets too difficult."

"So, how often?"

"Once every couple years, maybe every decade or so if not much happens."

Her eyes bugged out to hear him so casually discuss the span of her entire lifetime she way she might discuss the weather. "Not much happens?"

"Well, in a slow period, when there's no great wars or great tragedies or great discoveries, it's not important for me to come down and get my impressions of you."

"So your job with all of those magazines?"

He scratched the scales on his chest with a sound like gold coins rattling around in a mixing bowl. "Well, I read all of those magazines. It's quite easy to acquire them without having to change my shape, and when I read yours, I... I felt it was worth spending some time as a human."

She finished her handful of berries. "Ah, we're back to me again. You read my stories, sure, and then you came to look at me. Then you read the articles I wrote about YOU, and then you came to visit me personally. And then you... kidnapped me to try to convince me of something, which I think you promised to explain."

"Foundations, remember."

"I remember."

Dirk lifted up his head and stretched a little bit, moving several inches closer. "Can I start with a little bit of history?"

Sara stretched a little bit herself, and laid down on her bed. At this distance, her face was nearly level with Dirk's right eye. She saw the entirety of her face reflected and warped in the inky blackness of his slitted pupil. "If you think once a decade is 'not that often', I'd love to hear what you think is historical. Does it have to do with the Concord?"

"It does. It's under your mattress, actually, if you want to pull it out. It might help."

She remembered hugging it to herself mid-flight, and she wondered exactly what had happened while she was asleep. Her clothing had been changed, but she doubted that anything untoward had happened. She probably looked pretty unpleasant, to them. A moment's fishing around and she was opening the book on the mattress, carefully laying it flat.

"If you flip ahead to the fifth page, you'll see a picture of what looks like a dragon's wing. That's where this part starts. The language might be difficult to follow, but I think some of the pictures will be able to help explain a few things."

She scanned the page, trying again to decipher the strange ergodic prose. "Ok, I see the wing. It looks different than yours."

"Yes, that race of dragonkind has an extra flightvane, and a much lighter bone structure. They are not very numerous, but they are fast, and form the backbone of our dealings with other races, due to their smaller size and facility with languages."

She nodded, trying to look like she understood. "I see."

"Are you ready?"

"Of course, what would I need to be ready f-"

. . . . .

The world spread out below her like a vast, shimmering carpet. There were mountains that looked little more than pebbles, forests that might as well have been recently-grazed grass, lakes and rivers no more than shimmering insects. There was no sense of being at a tremendous height, or flying, or falling, but simply of seeing something from so far away that plummeting is inconceivable.

She tried to speak, but there was no sound. She reached for her face, but there were no hands. She was seeing, and she realized she was hearing, but she had no form, no presence. It was almost like a dream.

Think of it as a dream.

Who said that?

I'd hoped you were ready.

I'm ready, I'm just not sure what I'm ready for!

This is the best way to explain everything to you, I think. Just watch.

The whole of the world blurred. Snow-capped mountains rushed closer, forests gained textures and features, and even faint rippling waves could be seen in the sea below. Nestled up between the velvety smooth water and the rocky foothills was something that even the word city seemed at a loss to describe.

Only in her wildest imaginations had she ever conceived of any place so grandiose. Hundreds of boulevards as wide as the entire Dramamore Town Square wound in and around countless buildings constructed of multi-colored striated marble, polished until they gleamed in the sunlight, the smallest of which was easily twice as large as any she had ever seen. The largest of them looked like how she imagined castles and citadels, topped with turrets and minarets and studded with hundreds of windows.

The entire metropolis spread up the hillside like the remains of a landslide, growing steeper and steeper until the streets had been entirely replaced by enormous stone staircases. Here the buildings were significantly more massive and dominating, with great flat rooftops instead of pointed slate towers.

Where is everyone?

This is not so much a perfect recreation, but rather an amalgamation of impressions.

Oh.

Observe.

Her viewpoint swooped again, closing in on one of the penultimate palaces. There seemed to be a multi-colored fog occupying one of the huge elevated platforms, big enough to house her entire town, she thought. As they drew closer, the fog drew in on itself, coalescing, until she seemed to be hovering at the very edge, and she saw that the blurry mist had become one man, one gryphon, one centaur and one dragon.

You are now seeing my memories, or at least the memories I have created from the memories of others.

What are we watching?

The end.

The man was older, but still in obviously excellent health, tall, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested. He was dressed in regal clothing, complete with a fur-lined cloak and a small, simple golden crown. The dragon towered above him, larger even than Dirk, shades of blue and green and purple that put Sara in mind of distant stormy seas. Both beings were clearly angry, waving their arms and wings with dreamy slowness.

Sara found that, without hearing or being told anything, she knew what was going on. The Concord had been, for the first time in ten thousand years, broken, and broken by a human. For some reason, the nature and longevity of dragonkind bound them more securely to the rules of the Concord, while the nature and brief lives of humankind caused each generation to be less encumbered, until such time that when humanity was called upon to aid dragonkind in a bloody war far to the west, mankind refused.

Such a simple request, for man was nothing if not warlike, but it was the envy and greed of their royalty, jealous of the power of the dragons, that caused the rift to appear. With that one breach of conduct, mankind was released from their bonds of peace, and their populations began to spread once more upon the world.

The world spun below, and she could see, despite the great distance, farmland spreading like mold, roads beginning to criss-cross the continents once again after thousands of years of relative stability. With each passing year, the numbers of men grew greater, while those of the other species, more long-lived and less restless, were forced out of the way like so much driven snow.

In the end, the dragons were forced to break the spirit of the Concord, but not the letter, and even this was enough to drive a split within their own society. Knowing the nature of humanity, dragonkind and the other great species still allied with them retreated to the furthest reaches of the continent, isolating themselves for centuries. But still they watched.

And, as predicted, the empires of Man reached the limits of their ability to remain united, and one by one they fell to war, from without or within. Entire cultures collapsed and were wiped out. The forests reclaimed what had once been theirs, and Sara knew that the cathedral where her physical body was located was one such city, or what remained of it. More centuries passed, until Sara realized she was looking down on what had so recently been her home.

I was born during the endtimes of your Collapse. My kind knew that, eventually, you would destroy themselves and there would be the chance to rebuild what was once lost, but now there are almost none who even want to try. We are peaceful once again, and regard humanity much as you regard dragons: dangerous creatures from a bygone era, now only known in stories.

Sara blinked, and gasped when she realized that she was once again in charge of her own eyes and her own breathing. She looked around, still a little dazed from that experience. "What did you do to me?"

Dirk shrugged. "Once, the Sharing was the least of our abilities. Ambassadors and negotiators used it to facilitate communications, since one's true intentions could not be hidden in such a way. Honesty was not something that had to be assumed, it simply was."

She looked down at the book, seeing that she was now nearly halfway through. There were pictures on this page, tiny but incredibly detailed, silhouettes of humans and dragons and a dozen other creatures, each one composed of words so small as to be virtually unreadable. "I don't suppose saying 'I'm sorry' would help..."

Dirk chuckled. "It is appreciated, but no."

"But it was our fault. People, I mean."

He nodded. "It does no good to blame yourself, or even your ancestors, for what happened millennia ago. Peace, as we thought we had created, could not be sustained through the force of rules. Rules merely delineate when promises are broken, as they inevitably will be...it is the conscience of the intelligent mind that corrects the mistake, not a book." He didn't seem convinced of it, though, his scale-studded eyebrows wrinkling somewhat.

Sara reached out a hesitant hand and patted the portion of the great snout that was nearest, and the enormous dragon responded with a purr that sounded remarkably like her cat's except loud and deep enough to make her back teeth vibrate.

"We're getting to the part where any of this has to do with me, right?"

Dirk sighed. "You people are so impatient."

"Hey, you gave the sundown deadline, not me."

"Yes, yes, of course," he sighed, straightening up. His head rose higher and higher above her, dust motes dancing around him as the sunlight streamed across his body. "We should talk somewhere else. The day is far too nice to waste it in such a place of decay."

She looked around, still enchanted by what seemed like an exotic and ancient landscape, but she supposed to him it just reminded him of all that had been lost. She nodded in assent. "Do I need to dress warmer?"

"If you wish. I produce quite a bit of heat, to your kind."

"Well, yes but I we-e-eeek!"

Gripping the bedframe at the head and foot, Dirk launched himself straight up, through the huge, ragged hole in the ceiling, wingtips dislodging a few more tiles which tumbled soundlessly to the flagstones, which were now far, far below. After a few seconds of vertical acceleration Dirk levelled out and drifted like a kite. He was aware of some commotion against his underbelly, and he shifted the bed slightly to give his cargo some more space. He immediately regretted it.

"...UCKING KILLED ME!" she screamed, drew a ragged breath, and continued. "Nine hells, warn someone before you're about to do that, I almost pissed the bed down here! Gods be damned!"

His face screwed up as he tried to decipher her. "I apologize," he said loudly, the sound reverberating all around her. "In your story..."

"THIS IS NOT A STORY! Until last night, this was my life, and it was safe, and boring, and there were no bloody great dragons demolishing my house or trying to squeeze my brains out through my feet!"

"I cannot harm you."

"YOU BLOODY WELL CAN!"

He paused. "You are not hurt, are you?"

She paused, fist raised and ready to thump him uselessly on the sternum when she realized that, no, she wasn't hurt, exactly. She wasn't even slightly bruised. She was, however, scared and dizzy and nauseous. But not hurt. "No," she said slowly, unwilling to give up the argumentative advantage. "But there's a lot more than just physical pain here."

He nodded, and Sara finally calmed down enough to notice the scenery. The night before it had been far too dark to see much else beyond the indigo line of the horizon, but now it was a landscape unlike any she had ever seen before, or even imagined. From what felt like miles above the ground she could see not only the nearby Saddle mountains, but the range beyond, and in the far distance the permanently snowy peaks of yet-further mountains. There were lakes and streams, and here and there she could spot roads winding their way through the dense coniferous forest. She'd never imagined the world in such two-dimensional ways before, experiencing it as small clusters of humanity joined by long, threadlike dirt paths. This was a vast, endless canopy spreading out below her in all directions, and from what she saw in Dirk's mind, this was but a tiny green patch on a world unimaginably larger.

"Wow."

In hindsight, she wished she'd been more eloquent with her words.

They didn't travel far, relatively speaking, from the church before Dirk gently dropped down, thermals caressing the undersides of his great wings. They circled a few times before settling onto a rocky escarpment that gently rolled away on one side to a winding mountain stream, and fell away on the other side to the very same stream, hundreds of feet below. He set the bed down gently a half dozen feet from the edge, and perched next to her, hunkering down onto his haunches with his head and neck protruding over the void.

Sara lowered the blankets from her neck, still shaking, but enjoying the scenery nonetheless. Not since her mother had taken her camping, several years ago, had she seen anything like this, and they'd only strayed an hour from the mountain road. She could tell, somehow, that they were significantly farther from civilization than that.

"Gosh."

Once again, she was impressed by her gift of speech.

"I sometimes come here to think," he said softly, which for him meant that she could still hear herself think. "We're drawn to cliffs. I think because of the olden days, aeons ago, before we were so large. We lived on cliffs for safety, clinging to the rock. It always makes me feel comfortable and safe."

She nodded. "I know what you mean. I sort of feel like that when I sleep on my roof."

He looked at her curiously. "Indeed."

For a minute they did nothing but listen to the wind whistling through the cone trees, to the water gurgling in the brook, to the birds twittering in the valley far below them. The air up this high was fairly chill, and she wrapped herself up in the blankets again.

"So what's the next part in your big plan to convince me to leave my home forever?"

"You're not making this easy."

"Neither are you."

"Point made."

Wind.

"Well, I suppose the next part would be for us to tell you what happened after we secluded ourselves far from the reach of humanity."

"Does this involve that brain thing?"

Dirk scooted sideways, his hindquarters drawing up so close to the bed she felt as though she'd acquired a red, scaly wall. His tail swept around the foot of the bed, up to the head, and curled around behind her. "If you like you can make yourself more comfortable before we begin. It might make the transition easier."

She looked at the tail, feeling none of the fear or unsettled rancor she felt earlier in the morning. She was staring at the tail, enchanted, marvelling at how the diamond-shaped scales seemed almost feathered at the trailing edges, growing tinier and tinier the narrower the lengthy appendage became until it seemed to shimmer and ripple like velvet, as opposed to reptilian armor. The tail itself was tipped by a complicated triangular fin of glistening, wet-looking golden skin. She reached out a hand and gently touched one of the little bony vanes that gave it shape, and her entire bed jerked sideways an inch.

"Oh, gods, sorry. Is it sensitive? Did that hurt?"

Dirk's voice seemed strained. "Yes, and no," he said, tucking the tip of his tail beneath her pillow like a cat seeking refuge from a dog. "Just...please warn me if you're about to do that again."

"Sorry. Can...is the rest of you ok to touch?"

Another pause. "Oh yes."

She hesitantly inched herself back until she was resting against his haunches, just behind his thigh. His tail narrowed off to her right while the immense bulk of his body loomed on the left, blocking out the wind. After a moment, she realized she could feel the heat of his body through her blankets. "Wow, you are warm."

"We have complex internal processes," he said proudly.

"Uh huh."

She snuggled up against him, tugging down her blankets a little bit and peeking at the book. "Ok, I'm ready when you are. Is there a page I should be tur-"

. . . . .

She was considerably higher in the air than before. The comforting flatness of the world almost seemed to bend and warp at the edges, the vast body of water on one side ending in a knife-like curve. Although they were too far to see with any detail, or even make out as anything other than grey smudges, she knew that the landscape beneath her was studded with cities.

A hundred cities, with a hundred races. Built together. Living and working side by side, in peace for thousands of years.

What happened?

You know now.

And indeed she did. It was as though she were remembering going to market the week before, though a million times over. She saw countless brief, wordless events, knowing innately what was being thought by everyone involved without experiencing it directly. Day by day, year by year, the cities segregated themselves, with the gryphons moving to the west, towards the hills, while the gnolls moved to the warmer southern climes, the mustelids moved to the coastlines, the moosefolk that reminded her of Gharl heading north. Even in areas of extremely similar climate, the populace seemed to be displacing themselves of their own free will. Families with mixed marriages were torn apart, tempers flared. In some cases there were outbursts, protests, violence.

Murders. For three thousand years there was no murder as you know it.

She saw a creature, a person, encompassing her new definition of the word, laying face-down in a pool of blood. His fuzzy tail identified him undeniably as a fox, though a fox fully six feet tall with wide, round, glazed eyes and five bloody fingers on each hand. A knife was quite terminally lodged in his back.

As with many such events, in your history and ours, the beginning of the end was a lover's quarrel.

By this time, Sara remembered, this particular city had been almost entirely vacated by the mammalian species. She looked up and saw myriad draconian faces peering out of windows and over rooftops, some large, some small. Some looked like tortoises, some looked like the pond salamanders she used to chase in the late spring, but they all seemed to have something in common, something they could use to distance themselves from others.

The scene suddenly shifted sideways, buildings and trees and rivers blurring into horizontal bands of color. She felt no wind, which only served to make the entire experience feel more dreamlike, but the dream turned nightmarish when the blurring ceased.

Nearly all races were still bound by the Concord, so they sought to break it, the only way they knew how.

There were dragons, a dozen different sizes and a hundred different combinations of color and gloss. Some resembled scaly humans with talons and wings and shortened snouts, some were whip-lean with spikes and horns jutting from every available piece of unoccupied flesh, some were great, heavy, almost ungainly creatures bulging with muscle and capable of biting Dirk clean in half. They spun and whirled in the sky, swooping and diving and slashing at the unfathomable monstrosities that filled the scene like a shattered hornet's nest.

They are the Drakar. Before the time of Man, or any of the other races, they were once like us, but the world is unforgiving to those who seek to live below the light.

They were mostly black, with patches of glistening, sick-looking white on their bodies and wings. Wrinkled and leathery and sagging, they still soared with tremendous speed, and almost seemed weighed down by the sheer quantity of tooth and claw they wielded. Their limbs were long and twisted, many hands and feet gripped swords and axes, and even their wingtips were serrated with bony spurs.

They rule the vastness beneath the world, dominating all of the other subterranean races, warring them against eachother for their sport. They were, for lack of a better word, hired to bring their wars to the surface, to remove Dragonkind, and end the Concord.

Looking down Sara saw the hills were crawling with other unnamed horrors, and anywhere a dragon landed or was forced down, it would rise again with three or four clinging to it, biting and gouging and slashing.

The orks, the goblinkin, the reth and the slaad and the myuri, all of them brought to the surface for one purpose.

The battle, the slaughter, seemed to move faster and faster. The sun moved in the sky, setting and rising in a matter of moments, and although the new light still lit the vicious struggle, it was clear that there were fewer dragons than before.

In the end, they unholy were driven back belowground, devastated and nursing their wounds, but our kind were shattered, cast adrift on the winds. We fled, cowardly and alone.

Time passed, hundreds of years, and she could look down on the mountain ranges. A black smear was trudging up a steep, snowy valley, leaving behind it smudges of grey and black. All at once, she knew that it was a Drakar death squad, still under onus to finish what they began, tracking down the mountain hideout of a great old dragon named Yofune.

And still they found us, one by one.

. . . . .

"...orrible," she gasped, shuddering. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and she gripped Dirk's tail like a teddy bear, the tip swishing back and forth above her head. "That...they did that, just to break the Concord? They killed all of the dragons, because they wanted to kill EACHOTHER and they couldn't do it?!"

Dirk heaved a sigh that almost knocked Sara over. "They wanted their freedom, freedom from anything which might prevent them from acting however they wanted. They saw the Concord as interfering, meddling, and dragonkind as trying to subjugate them."

"But it was peace..."

"Peace through coercion is not peace. Too late we found that not everyone thought as we did, not with the passing of generations."

"But they AGREED to it!"

"Their ancestors did. Surely your ancestors made some decisions you do not agree with."

She realized that, as stupid and childish as it was, he was absolutely right. "So they...they just threw it all away, and killed all the dragons. Well, almost all the dragons, I mean, you're still here, there must be others."

There was silence from Dirk. She could not see his head from her position tucked behind his hind leg, but the lack of response spoke volumes. "A-are there more dragons?"

"Maybe."

The wind blew.

Sara didn't know how long she stayed there, snuggled up to his lower body. She rested her head against his flesh, turning it so she could examine his strange, scaly surface in detail. Each scale was red and shiny, but ever so delicately textured so that she could see little criss-crossing patterns on those closest to her eyes. The expanse of flesh rippled and quivered with every beat of his hearts and breath of his lungs. She shifted around the blankets more so that they piled up around her front, letting herself rest against him with only the thin camisole between them.

"I'm still sorry," she whispered.

His body shook once. "It is not your fault," he said again, hollowly.

"I mean for... for making you relive all of this. I still don't know what you're telling me all of this for, but it must be important. I think. How...how many more times do we have to do this?"

"Once more. One more sharing, and you will be freed."

The sun was high in the sky now, past noontime. She shifted again, rubbing up against him, turning to rest her leg against him as well. Every twitch of his powerful muscles drove home the sheer enormity of the wondrous creature that had taken her out of her life and shown her the world, though it was more than she'd ever wanted to see. Images and scenes from her stories flitted through her head, and she blushed furiously.

She wanted to say something, anything, to try and soothe the depressed dragon, but the silence was broken by her body finally realizing the hour, and her stomach rumbled

.

He chuckled. "Perhaps we should get you back to the church for a little bit. It has been a very full morning."

She nodded, her cheek brushing against his scales. He was remarkably smooth, despite the seemingly sharp edges to the scales. "How good is your hearing?" she asked.

Very slowly, not wanting to knock her over, he turned himself around and deliberately gripped the head and foot of the bed. "Dragons can hear small creatures skittering on the ground while we are soaring up above. We can see them as well, but many of them are too good at hiding, so we had to adapt as well." His head peered down at her, and winked. "And I could hear you talking to yourself while you slept on the roof."

Her skin turning as scarlet as his scales, he hefted the bed once as warning, and then took to the skies.

Sara spent most of the trip back with her face right up against the trailing edge of her mattress, taking in the scenery but not really paying attention to it. She had lost count, but for at least the fifth time her mind boiled with embarrassment as she tried to recall all of the half-mumbled fantasies she had spoken to herself while staring up at the night sky. Quite a large number of them had been of topics she was hesitant even to write about, but speaking them aloud, if softly, had made them seem so much more real. She recalled the feeling of her hands caressing her body in the moonlight as she gave voice to those forbidden thoughts.

"You can hear me being abashed, can't you?"

She swore she saw his chest quiver as if chuckling. "That's not really something even I can hear..."

"You know what I mean. You were eavesdropping!"

"Call it what you will. I could not help but hear."

"Those were private conversations!"

"You were quite alone, and you can be sure no-one would believe me if I told them."

"That's not the point!"

"Then what is?"

She was growing angry with the myriad ways in which Dirk could completely derail her arguments. Her mouth hung open and she periodically squeaked with fury while they flew. Below her, the landscape passed unnoticed.

"It's just not nice to listen when someone believes they are talking only to themselves."

He nodded. "That is true. However, it did sound as if you were enjoying yourself."

Another furious, strangled noise, as of a mouse being stepped on. "That's none of your business!"

"As you wish."

The rest of the journey passed in silence, passively by Dirk and very aggressively by Sara.

The longer they flew, though, the more it seemed to her to be an irrational reaction. Looming over her was what she had always wanted, on those nights when she dared admit the truth to herself: a dragon that she could tell everything to, even the silly and embarrassing stuff, who would understand her and accept her and want to go on adventures with her. It was highly unlikely that she would ever again have a wish fulfilled to that level of completeness, even down to the color of the dragon. If the knowledge that she explored her budding sexuality by the moonlight while murmuring sweet vague interspecies nothings to herself didn't faze him, who was she to argue?

By the time the ancient church was close enough to see, atop a broad heavily-wooded hill, she had forgiven Dirk for his eavesdropping, and even managed to convince herself that he was doing it for some great ineffable purpose. Like a quest. She liked quests.

Her bed, now considerably more well-travelled than most, settled back onto to the aged and cracked flagstones.

"Gharl?" Dirk called out. There was no sound except for the echo fading into the distance, and the birds fleeing for their lives.

"I guess we're alone," Sara said, face carefully neutral.

The enormous shape nodded his head, tail swishing. "He's probably on patrol. He wants to leave the area first thing in the morning. He says we aren't safe here. He's... very protective." Sara wasn't sure exactly how one was supposed to tell, but it almost seemed as though Dirk was acting bashful.

"Well, that's probably going to happen one way or the other." She paused for a second, wrapping the blankets around her waist. Despite the cool air in the bygone cathedral, she was feeling comfortably warm. "He'll probably be happy just to get rid of me."

"He... he isn't very good with new people."

"Do you two entertain guests often?" She regretted saying that, in the light of everything that she had just experienced. "I'm sorry," she said softly, "that probably wasn't a very nice thing for me to say."

"Think nothing of it," came his voice from far above her head. "We are made of sterner stuff than that."

"I don't doubt it," she said honestly, patting his leg.

After a few moments, she slid off of the bed and walked over to where Gharl had left the table full of food. Gathering up a few items, she said "So what's the next thing you have to tell me about?"

Dirk settled down on the floor, brushing some loosened chunks of roofing out of the way with his deceptively strong wings. "There is one more piece of history for me to reveal to you," he said gravely, "and then... and then we will talk about you. You must be starving, though."

She turned, berry juice running down her lips, and smiled. "Working on that," she said with a giggle, heading back to the bed with the wheel of cheese under one arm, and a swath of blanket wrapped like a sack around an assortment of fruits. Sara tried to make herself comfortable again, knowing that her dragon companion was about to do that brain-thing again.

Dirk took the opportunity to also raid some of the contents of the table, remarkably prehensile tail scooping up some of the fruits with the spade-shaped tip and depositing them in his mouth. Sara giggled and applauded, and the already red-hued dragon managed to look a little bit redder around the ears.

Feeling considerably better about the world, she inched her way back until she was once again leaning against Dirk's flanks, the slow and rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing almost immediately making her eyes heavy despite the early afternoon sunlight. "Well," she said softly, nibbling on a hunk of cheese, "I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

The great and vaguely horse-like head looped around the bed and settled onto the mattress, taking up all the room that Sara was not. Huge, expressive eyes gazed at her, and his lips hardly moved when he said "This may not be very pleasant for you."

She patted his nose affectionately. "I'm made of sterner stuff than you might th-"

. . . . . .

The castle was ancient, ancient even before the current inhabitants had moved in. Built during a bygone golden age, it clung impossibly to the side of a cliff, anchored and cantilevered in ways long forgotten. Even Lord Hammerdin, who was renowned for his knowledge of the hard sciences, had yet to figure out precisely how his new home had not fallen the nearly thousand feet to the valley floor below.

Who's Lord Hammerdin?

Quiet.

One of the many turrets and towers growing from the marble-sheathed central mass of the citadel was studded with balconies, and her point of view swung around to behold one such patio. The great stone archway was dark, and she could not see within, but she could see the figure striding out of the gloom, and her breath, if she were conscious of her breathing in this place, would have caught instantly.

He seemed draconian, though obviously of a far different lineage and makeup than Dirk, or even most of the dragons she had seen in the previous vision. He stood like a man, two arms and two legs, but the similarities ended there. His body was scaly, a midnight-hued purple that she could only recall seeing during sunsets immediately after devastating spring rainstorms. His tail was long and swished behind him, while his wings were obviously large but were tucked together against his back. His thighs, though, and his chest and forearms were fluffy, chestnut-red and luxurious. He even seemed to have a scruffy beard of sorts, something she'd never pictured on the obviously dragon-like head. Strangest of all were the bony but sleek antlers that swept back from his forehead, and the twin rows of scaly spikes that travelled down the back of his head and merged into a single row that studded his spine.

He is a Chimera, one of a thousand different types that once graced the world. He is one of the Peryton, the dragon crossbreeds that were forbidden for so very long.

He's beautiful.

He wore nothing save for a skirt of chainmail around his midsection, and a steel-studded strap encircling his chest and shoulders. Her point of view seemed to shimmer and wobble, and she knew without seeing that the strap supported several weapons hanging between his wings.

What's he doing?

Preparing for battle.

Her view swung around, and she could see through his eyes, surveying the vast and fertile valley below and beyond the castle. Other great towers dotted the landscape, and the sparkling river that wound its way through the terrain was the crystal blue of fairytales. If the Peryton was a breathtaking sight, then this strange land was equally so.

It took her a moment to see the soldiers marching, advancing on the cliffside fortress. She expected to see the Drakar again, twisted monochromatic bodies radiating evil, but as her viewpoint soared down she saw that they were anything but. In fact, almost everything but.

Who are they?

It didn't matter.

She saw felines, she saw canines. Horses, foxes, badgers, raccoons, dragons. There were even anthropomorphic birds, eagles and crows and more. The sizes of the assembles forces varied as wildly as their feral counterparts, some towering five or ten times taller than others, but there were two-armed ravens as tall as upright panthers, and still they marched. The only thing that could be said to be agreed upon between them was the scraps of armor they wore, the mismatched weapons they wielded, and the blank, murderous expressions on their faces.

With the Concord shattered, the divisions grew. As time passed, reasons for hated became irrelevant. Societies and cultures feuded because they had always feuded, as far as they knew. Dragonkind tried to keep the peace, but by then we were far too few, having been systematically exterminated by the Drakar, and slowly forced to pass on our legacies in the forms of crossbreeds. Chimeras.

Lord Hammerdin blew a massive ivory horn, and the citadel practically exploded like a beehive struck by an arrow. There were all manner of wings, in all shapes and sizes, but Sara noticed the differences between the forces right away.

They're all Chimeras.

The impure breeds must be eliminated.

The hatred in Dirk`s voice, filling her head, her world, was shocking.

The battle raged all day, and when the sun finally set the savagery was illuminated by bonfires and the blazing remnants of what had been clusters of huts, the former homes of many of the defenders. The valley had been selected for its secluded location, difficult terrain and a defensive position only reachable by those who could fly, but many still chose to live and work the land down by the river. As much as she wished she could look away, she was not in control of the visions. Dirk's fury was guiding the events, and she was powerless against it.

Eventually the sun rose over a shattered valley. Blackened scars crisscrossed the landscape, which was covered in the scattered, shattered corpses of kith and kin. The winged Chimera, though, had come out the victor, only insofar as some of them were still alive when the invading forces had been driven out. Lord Hammerdin himself stalked the blasted lands, searching for survivors, and rescuing the crossbreeds. Blood streamed from the ragged holes in his wings, and one entire antler was missing.

. . . . . .

".. he okay?"

The sound of her own voice was unexpected after what had felt like hours upon hours of unimaginable bloodshed. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the bedspread, and sweat beaded her brow. Dirk's great visage still occupied most of the bed, but his eyes were closed. A single acrid tear slowly trickled down the side of his face, leaving a little smoking trail washed clean of all dust and dirt.

"He survived that fight, and others," Dirk said softly, "but that is something that I wish I did not have to show you. Humankind may have faded from our world, but we found new ways to fill the void. Breaking the Concord brought the people the freedom they desired, but the cost was too much to bear."

Sara leaned over and pressed her forehead against Dirk's nose. "Did you... see any of those battles yourself?"

His great chest heaved, and he sighed. "Some of them. I... could only watch, as I am still bound by the Concord. I can no more raise claw and fang to them as I could to you, no matter my feelings. I will grant it is infuriating to be bound while others are not, but it has helped me to find myself, and find my purpose in life."

"And what is your purpose in life?"

Dirk lifted his head and stared down at Sara. She lay on the bed, wrapped in blankets, berry juice staining one cheek. He smiled down at her, and very delicately lifted one hand and rest one finger on the edge of the mattress, one heavy claw the size of a turnip tapping the back of her hand. "My purpose, dear Sara, is to keep our races alive. There are so few of the original races left, and the battles waged against the crossbreeds and Chimera have decimated all sides."

Sara cocked her head, mulling it over. It was a tragic story, to be true, but she still couldn't see exactly what any of this had to do with her. The dragon, though, seemed to sense her confusion, and chuckled. "To use your vernacular, this is where we have gotten to the point."

His claw slid into the mass of blankets, and emerged a moment later, dragging the leather-bound Concord along with it. Sara picked it up, and Dirk drew himself up to his full height. Standing on his hind legs, wings outstretched, tail swishing in the distance, she found herself once again in awe of the sheer size of the beast that had kidnapped and then somehow befriended her.

"Sara Opakev, I have been a student of esoteric and forgotten magic for hundreds of years. I have studied ancient tomes that were barely understood during the height of the Concord, spells and rituals dating back to the very first intelligent civilizations to walk this world, perhaps to the very beginning of life itself. The humans were not the first race to call themselves civilized, and nor were the dragons, though many of them would scoff at the fact and call me traitor. They were not Gharl's people or any of the others you have witnessed. None of us were the first, but all of our many varied races had beginnings, had progenitors, and I am afraid that if the races end, they may never rise again."

His wings drooped somewhat, and his head lowered. When he spoke again, his tone was less intimidating, more pleading, as though he had grown weary of trying to sound impressive. "Sara, the man you saw, Lord Hammerdin, is a Peryton. They are a powerful but short-lived hybrid, and given their draconian heritage, they are unwelcomed by most races. Dragons are regarded as meddlers, schemers, and... and are blamed for the state of the world today. As you have seen, he has survived through spearheading an alliance of outcasts and crossbreeds. He is intelligent and resourceful, but there is something that he lacks."

Dirk's head was now an arm's reach away from hers. "Sara, he is the last of his kind. After him, there will be no more. For all of his skill and power, he is alone in the world. Shunned by the dragons, shunned by Gharl's people, shunned by all except those who have no other choice but to follow him. Before he dies, and he has no illusions that he will live to see the end of this war, he wants to know that his lineage will live on."

Silence filled the great hall. Her eyes grew wide, her jaw slack, as tiny warnings began to flash in her mind.

"You don't..."

"Sara. We have come to ask you to be his mate."

When Gharl returned a short time later, Sara and Dirk were still locked in that position, staring at eachother. He deposited the latest foraging on the table, and his black eyes flickered over to the tableau again. He withdrew his satchel from an alcove that had in bygone days held statuary, found his fresher whetstones, and set about refining the already ludicrous edge on his weapons. To his great twitching ears, the silence was deafening.

"So it went well? "he said after a moment.

"Mate."

Dirk nodded.

"As in, have a couple babies and grow old together?"

"Well, there's obviously more to it than that, but..."

"Babies? With... I mean... ok, he's sort of attractive, I guess, but he looked twice my size!"

"If you're referring to mass, he is almost five times your size."

"What?!"

Gharl chuckled to himself, and Dirk shushed him. "This is not the time," the big dragon admonished.

Sara sat in the middle of the bed, feeling very small and very alone. Her mind whirled, or maybe reeled; she was too confused to remember which was which. She started trying to piece the events of the last two days into some sort of sensible narrative, but it kept spiralling out of control and all she could think about was her pale, slender body next to that big, brutal, weapon-covered half-dragon. Equal parts horror and fascination warred for her attention, but they were about to be wildly outclassed.

"However," the dragon continued, settling his head once more onto the bed, "you would not be able to bear his children, being human. Humans have a remarkable capacity to be whatever they want to be, to throw off the shackles of any genetic or environmental predisposition and rise to the occasion. An illiterate born in a poorhouse can grow up to write the most beautiful music, a soldier the blood of hundreds on his hands can, in his old and last days create the saddest, most poignant love poetry. No matter your desire, though, you would not be able to endure being his mate."

Sara's face screwed up with frustrated confusion. "Then why the hell even ask me?"

"Because," the dragon said softly, dreading the conclusion of his tale, "humans are uniquely gifted with a certain vicissitude, a freedom from the rules that constrain the lives and relations of the other species. A human can change not only their skills and abilities, their lives and fortunes more easily than can others, but they can change their very beings. They can, guided by magic, indeed become more than human."

Sara blinked, and then seemed frozen again for a long while. Dirk held his breath, something he was quite capable of doing for hours if needed, not wanting to interrupt whatever thoughts she might be having on the subject. This was it. This was the crux of the situation, the offering of the gift, and the demand of an answer. Everything hinged on this, but it was vital that she said it herself.

Even Gharl seemed tense. He had agreed to come on this mission against his better judgement, and against the wishes of his clan, because he believed in something more than himself, but his patience was being sorely tested by the double-talking dragon and the ridiculous little humans that had started the whole mess. No matter how this day turned out, he would never be able to go home again. His muzzle wrinkled, and he started to sharpen his axe again, the scattered sparks clearly indicating his frustration as he took the finely honed edge off again in his haste.

Sara took a shuddering breath, and shook herself. "You want to... turn me into one of him? Into a, a Peryton?"

Dirk said a silent prayer to the stars above, and nodded.

"And that's what this is all about?"

"There are so few humans capable of doing this," he said, "for they must be more than just willing, it must be something that they really and truly WANT. Finding a human who would want this, and leave enough evidence behind to find them, has been exhausting and we had almost given up hope when we found you, Sara."

"I suppose you couldn't really take an advertisement out in the local newspapers," she chuckled softly, eyes still wide and not really paying attention.

"But then, but then we managed to trace your letters and sketches back to Dramamore, and we were waiting for the perfect opportunity, which presented itself with the carnivale, and even that was cutting it close, but... but here we are." The dragon seemed almost breathlessly excited, something that Sara had never before thought of as being possible for a creature so huge and noble. His flanks were twitching, his eyes were wild with delight.

Sara looked down at her hands, clutching and twisting the sheets so hard her knuckles had gone white. She felt as though she were being assaulted from within, buffeted by hurricane winds of trepidation. She thought of her mother, of Dani, of everyone else in the village that she would be leaving behind. She thought of the sheer overwhelming enormity of the world, and the possibilities of seeing more of it than just a turnip field. She remembered the fear she had felt just crossing the ancient stone bridge that led out of the Low Fen, of being so very far from home.

She imagined the boundless potential to meet new people, beasts and creatures, read books no human had ever laid eyes on, maybe even pen a few of her own.

And then the small and dark and primal little core of her mind made its presence known, filling her loins with heat and presenting her with thoughts and fantasies she had done her best to pretend she didn't enjoy. This Peryton was certainly handsome, and tall, and well-muscled, and the way his mail shifted around his waist caused her eyes to glaze over, her raw and romantic sides trying to discern the mysterious anatomy beneath. One of her hands spasmed, releasing the sheets, and she looked down in shock as if seeing the limb for the first time. Her palms, she noticed with some dismay, were damp.

"Mother," she breathed, and both Dirk and Gharl tensed, superior hearing noting the hitch in her voice. What would be her answer? The enormous elk had to gently but firmly pin the dragon's tail with one hoof to keep it from quivering.

"Mother... I'm sorry."

Sara looked up at Dirk, who was briefly taken aback by the diamond-hard glare in her eye.

"I'll do it."

Dirk's sigh of relief almost knocked Sara over, while Gharl simply grunted. The great monastic hall was filled with the sounds of self-conscious chuckling as both human and dragon shed their tensions. Sara reached out and gripped one of his taloned fingers, giving it a squeeze.

"You really had a lot riding on this little useless farmgirl saying yes, didn't you?" she asked, sparing a glare for Gharl.

Dirk nodded. "Time was... is running out. If you didn't say yes, we may very well have simply wasted all of our time these many years."

"No pressure on me, I see."

"Well, we certainly didn't want to try to THREATEN you with it!" The dragon seemed aghast. "We tried our best not to intimate the urgency of the situation, not to colour your judgement. As I said, you had to want this, fully and completely, mind and body. Anything less would be simply pointless, not to mention dangerous."

Sara's hands withdrew. "Uhm... dangerous?"

Dirk's visage filled her view, as though he were nothing more than a small puppy trying to rest his head on her lap. Fortunately, he supported the bulk himself. "Transmogrification is a very powerful, but also imprecise magic. As I said, were you not committed, there might be no result at all, or perhaps something unexpected." His great, sad eyes blinked once, and Sara had to suppress a giggle when the enormous, lethal drake sniffled like a lamb. "You're not already having second thoughts, are you?"

"No no! It's just that... well, who ever REALLY knows ANYTHING, mind and body? I thought I loved Moren, mind and body, and now I'd be happy to watch him sink slowly out of sight in a bog somewhere. With rocks tied to his feet, perhaps."

Dirk's lip quivered, though from this distance it looked as plain as her mother shaking out the doormat. "You... you are right, of course," he said softly.

Sara leaned forward, pressing herself against his muzzle. "Don't worry," she said, giving his jaw the best hug she could manage, "I'm way, way more sure of this than I was about him."

Her chin rested on the crest of bone at the base of his snout, which was still strangely resilient, like an armored pillow, and her gaze flickered back and forth between his saucer-sized eyes. The muscles of his face twitched and flicked, and she realized that, given her position, she was probably presenting his nostrils with a little bit more than he had anticipated. Blushing furiously, she retreated to the safety of the open mattress, adrift in a sea of blankets.

"So why does it have to be tonight? How exactly does this trans... transmigration occur?"

"Transmogrification," Dirk said, lifting his head up onto one of his great forepaws. "It needs to be tonight for a number of reasons, chief among them is that the ritual magic must be done at a specific time during the solar year, which is a roughly three-day period of nature's massive change and renewal. That period ends tonight. If we do not do it tonight, we will have to wait until next year, and if we wait until next year...."

"Then there may not be anyone for me to change for," she finished, eyes wide. "Gosh, that... I wish you'd found me sooner."

"As do I."

Water dripped in the distance, and a flock of birds flew in one enormous shattered clerestory window and out another.

"But how does it happen?"

"Well," the dragon began, but he was interrupted by Gharl suddenly getting to his feet, shouldering his axe, and heading out of the pool of fading sunlight. "Gharl, you don't have to leave, you could just, well, all right, fine, be that way."

Sara patted his tail in sympathy, hearing Gharl's massive hoofsteps echoing, fading into the distance. "He doesn't like me," she said, more a statement of fact than any sort of query. "Go on."

"Well," Dirk started again, "that is where there might be a little bit of, er, difficulty. I can only assume you would be amenable to the procedure, given the nature of some of the stories you've written, although you did get a few of the fundamental biological facts not entirely correct. Not that I'm going to criticize you for it, you understand, you had no way of knowing. The Concord will, of course, vouchsafe your security, as I cannot cause you harm."

Sara cocked her head to the side. "You seem more nervous now than when you asked me if I wanted to stop being a human! What does this involve? I don't get, like, eaten or anything, do I? You don't stitch new parts onto me, do you? What did my stories have to do with transmigrifacing?"

"No no! Far from it! And it's transmogrifying. No, you see... well, in order to provide the MASS for the transmogrification, there needs to be a unification with the entities who are directing the magical transformation, and in order to provide the necessary energy, the entities directing the transformation must be at an exceedingly high level of mental and physical excitement."

The human considered this. "Ok, you lost me at unification."

The sigh of nervous frustration ruffled her clothing. "I apologize, this is not easy for me," he said, and she knew for sure that the scales of his face had reddened even more than normal. "Dragons are loathe to discuss matters of this nature amongst ourselves, let alone with... well, with what some of us have come to term 'lesser species'. I, for one, do NOT think you are a lesser species, and living among you has only deepened my appreciation for the power and strength of humanity, but thousands of years of social indoctrination do not exactly shed themselves overnight..."

"Dirk, you're rambling," Sara said with a chuckle, squeezing his tail. "The last time I heard someone talk like that, it was that Stuart boy from the next farm over trying to kiss me." There was a prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck, though, a sense of strange foreboding.

His wings twitched, taking the head clean off of a gargoyle statue that was perched atop an abutted column. "I certainly wouldn't... er, that is to say, I do not think this is going the way I planned." The way he planned, he thought to himself, involved Sara understanding the ritual for the spell a lot faster than this.

He took a deep breath, his barrel expanding like a blacksmith's bellows, and exhaled, though he was careful this time to direct the gust upwards, very nearly adding to the hole in the roof. More and more, Sara was being reminded of that hazy summer day half a dozen years prior when Stuart had tried convincing her that it was exactly what grownups did when they got married, and it was perfectly harmless, and some girls even enjoyed it, and there was only one way to find out.

"Dirk, you don't mean..."

"Sara, we must mate."

The silence before could be likened to a stampede of wildebeasts in comparison to the silence that now bloomed. The birds were absent, the air was still, and even the gentle motions of the clouds above seemed to pause, staring down expectantly.

"Wh-"

"Tonight."

The hairs on the back of her neck could have pierced armor, and she was certain that human hearts weren't supposed to be motionless for that long. She flushed pale, sweating despite the pleasant temperature. Her stomach quivered with fear, her thighs quivered with anticipation, and her brain just kept turning the phrase over and over, trying to figure it out.

"Bu-"

"Size matters not."

In the annals of casual understatement, that phrase would reign as champion for quite some time. Sara unabashedly examined the dragon, who was trying to appear impressive while still cowering under her glare. She thought him to be maybe twelve feet from nose to breast, most of it neck, and a further twelve feet of sleek, round body. The tail might have been twenty feet, maybe more; the constant swishing and curling made it difficult to tell. She was familiar with horse-breeding and equine biology, the relative proportions of certain body parts to body and limb dimensions, and she estimated his weight to be somewhere in the range of one hundred times her own.

"Fwah."

Dirk, for once, had no response.

She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but an errant gust of wind swept across her damp skin and she shuddered involuntarily. Carefully not looking the dragon in the eye, she slowly slid off of the mattress and stood up, wrapping one of the sheets around her shoulders. "I... I have to go for a walk," she said, enunciating each word with measured neutrality. "I will come back in a little bit. I need to think."

She had taken only a few steps when Dirk opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make the slightest noise Sara whirled, eyes wide and wet, and shrieked "AND YOU WILL WAIT!"

Jaw hanging open, he could only watch her pick her way around the rubble and out of the monastery. He dearly wanted to follow her, talk to her, try to convince her, or reassure her, or perhaps demonstrate exactly how the Concord protected her from any potential harm she might incur, but he realized that Sara had not been alone for quite some time. Perhaps it would be good for her to think on matters. Humans often wandered off by themselves when troubled.

He could only hope there was no alcohol in the area.

. . . . .

The woods had regained some of their natural background atmosphere, and Sara was dimly aware of birds chirping, bugs twittering, and little fuzzy animals making whatever little noises their enormous teeth compelled them to make. The sheet was using as a shawl dragged behind her, rustling the leaves and lifting little dust devils in her wake. She realized she was far enough from home that only half of the trees here were familiar, and only a handful of the flowers were identifiable.

And yet, according to Dirk, they were hardly more than three valleys over.

"What must the rest of the world be like?"

Soon the bulk of the cracked and crumbling monastery was lost to the forest behind her, and there was nothing but the sounds of nature, late afternoon sun streaming through the leaves and needles above her, and the unmistakable panicked sensation gripping her soul.

It was beyond unthinkable, she kept telling herself. It was far more likely that she was lying in a small, white-sheeted bed at the sanatorium, so feverish her brain was being cooked from within and she was simply dreaming the carnivale, Dirk, and the entire ridiculous situation. She pinched herself, and other than a stifled squeak and a red welt, there was no other result.

"This can't be happening," she said in complete defiance of all available evidence. She stepped over a log, passed through a copse of what seemed to be a type of birch, and eventually settled herself on a wide, slanted and sun-warmed stone by a babbling brook.

"A dragon."

She couldn't deny the many, many times she had drifted off to sleep imagining countless scenarios quite a bit like the one she now found herself in, but the Sarah of her dreams and fantasies, and later her stories, was brave and unfettered by such dull anchors as family and farm chores. She wasn't worried about being hurt or killed, because in Sara's imagination she was always in charge, and if she wanted a happy ending, there would be a happy ending. If she wanted danger and excitement, she just had to write it, knowing full well the heroine would always prevail.

But now... but now, she wasn't in charge. They wanted to use magic on her, to change her body into something strange and terrible and wonderful, and they didn't seem to be able to guarantee it would work perfectly. Even if it did, she might be stuck that way, alone in the world if this Hammerdin succumbed to the war. And even if he didn't die, she would be betrothed to a man she knew nothing about, who was actively engaged in a war for survival against unfathomable armies.

She thought of the possibilities of having children someday, either pink squalling human babies with some man she had yet to meet, likely a farmer, or blue-scaled dragonlike children with antlers and fangs. She didn't even know if they came out of eggs or not! A flock of birds was startled into flight by her sudden fit of giggling, imagining herself laying eggs in a castle somewhere, and then sitting on top of them, knitting antler-warmers.

She grew concerned when, try as she might, she could not stop giggling. More alien images filled her mind, of what she might look like when she was transformed, what the wedding dress would look like, what her bridesmaids might look like if there were no other Perytons left to fill the role, how Hammerdin might look in a proper suit and hat, and then what might happen when they were both flush with wine and song on their honeymoon...

The worryingly persistent merriment ceased when she thought of what would happen the day after, when her new husband got out of bed, donned his armor, and went out to slaughter the sentient races of the world to protect his own existence, and the unavoidable thought that she, too might be called upon to defend her unborn children, perhaps with her life. The chuckles became choked sobs, and she buried her face in the bundled sheets, covering her ears with her arms, shutting out the world.

Floating there in the darkness, she tried to weigh the situation rationally and failed miserably, as the situation lacked anything that could be considered rational. Her life was a short life, not yet twenty years old, and she would consider herself lucky to live to thrice that age. She would spend most of it working the land, somehow find the time to fall in love and get married, and raise enough children to have someone to leave the farm to. She had always planned to move to the city, ANY city, though with Dani's prospects of landing a wealthy suitor from beyond the borders of the valley it would likely fall to her to keep and care for the family plot.

"And if I stayed," she whispered to herself, "I would need to do that, even if I didn't want to. If I wasn't there, though, well, Ma could leave it to someone else. There's many a family who would offer quite a lot for a piece of land that size, and that fertile. One daughter done, another kidnapped by a dragon? She could ask for anything she wanted."

The thought of what the village must think, being attacked by a dragon and devouring... well, not the sweetheart of the village, to be sure, but whatever they considered her, apart from the older sister of the local trollop. She hoped they considered her something nice. If they thought she was dead, they BETTER consider her something nice!

Sara let her mind wander, too psychically exhausted to try to direct the torrent of conflicting desires. She faded into a shallow, fitful sleep, accompanied by visions of Dirk in his natural draconic form, wearing glasses and a top hat and trying to convince her that he was a human, and was awoken some time later by a fish jumping in the stream. It was only when she lifted her head out of the damp, matted bundle of sheets did she realize that the sun had gone down, and only a sawtooth indigo horizon gave any indication as to the actual hour.

"Bloody hell," she muttered, shivering in spite of the sheet wrapped around her. The stone beneath her was no longer sun-warmed, and her bare feet protested the abuse. She tried to get her bearings, remembering how she had come upon the barely-visible stream, but a few steps into the darkness confirmed that she didn't remember nearly as well as she'd hoped.

She inhaled, ready to call for help and hoping that her burly dragon protector would be nearly, but willing to settle for Gharl if there was no other choice, but caught herself. Sara was many things, but she would be loathe to admit she was ever helpless, even when stranded in the wilderness any number of miles from home, armed with only a bedsheet and a deadly accurate kick. She straightened her shoulders and started to walk purposefully into the woods where she thought the monastery was, though after several sharp twigs she allowed herself the luxury of walking purposefully, but gingerly.

It came as quite a surprise to see a lit candle burning merrily in the gloom, sitting comfortably on a mouldering stump. She picked it up, confusion clear on her face, though she was careful not to stare directly into the flickering flame lest she lose what little night vision she had.

"Hello?" she called softly, before noticing another candle some distance away. Holding her tiny torch high above her head, she was able to move quickly and soon held two candles in one hand. Again, in the distance, there was a third candle.

In spite of the overstressed and wrung-out soul-deep ache she nursed, she had to smile to herself as she collected candle after candle. "Thank you, Dirk," she whispered to herself, seeing the faintly illuminated windows of the monastery appear through the trees.

She made her way to the enormous double doors at the south face of the building, large enough for Dirk to fly through, which was probably why he'd chosen the location, and peeked inside. There were candles, dozens of them, maybe hundreds, a month's earnings worth of tallow, burning on every available surface. The interior fairly glowed with diffuse firelight, and she could see that more rubble had been cleared. There was her bed, sitting in the very middle of the great hall and surrounded by a tight ring of candles, and just beyond it the languid bulk of the dragon himself, who seemed to be faintly snoring.

She covered her smile with her hand and crept inside, tip-toeing around the tiny torches and the remaining scattered debris. There were candles more than a hundred feet overhead, almost lost in the rafters, and she had to marvel at how much time he must have spent, flying or not. It was perhaps even more impressive, she realized, that despite his great wingspan he had not extinguished a single one, unless he had simply climbed. Or used magic, she thought excitedly. The most romantic moment of her life, perhaps, and a dragon had used eldritch powers to light candles just for her. Her small hand could no longer conceal her girlish grin.

"I hope you didn't come back to kick me," came Dirk's smooth yet booming voice, almost a subdued whisper for him.

Sara stopped tip-toeing and glared briefly at being heard, but it was a short-lived anger. "No, I... I just had a lot to think about."

"Your people possess a rare gift for understatement."

"Really?"

"And sarcasm."

She reached the ring of fire circling her bed, gathered up the sheet and hopped over. Dirk rolled over towards her, wings ticking tightly against his back before spreading out again behind him. His chest bumped against the whole of the bedframe, and his head curved around to hover just above her headboard. She tried to sit casually, but she was nervous to the very tips of her fingers and toes.

She swallowed hesitantly. "So, uh... this is a big decision, you know?"

He nodded, chin rattling the entire bed. She yelped and threw out her hands to balance herself, and his great eyes drew together apologetically. "Sorry."

"No problem." Another deep breath, and she started again. "Big decision. Yes. It was not easy, trying to weigh ever seeing my family again against seeing everything else for the first time. All things considered, it was an unfair thing to ask a girl, especially waiting until the last day to do it, but I can't hold that against you."

If ever a dragon had looked like a kicked puppy, she was looking at it now. "That said, I just needed to calm down before I could think about it, so thank you for giving me time. I don't even know how long I was gone..."

"About five hours."

"Oh. Wow. Well... is that ok?"

"I hope so."

"Oh. Wow. Well... I just needed to think. And when I could think clearly again, when it was all, you know, out of my system, I realized it wasn't a hard decision at all. It was a terrifying decision, but not a hard one."

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she looked up at the beast that had changed her life forever. One hand reached out and stroked the huge, satiny crimson scales of his chest.

"I accept."

Dirk blinked the way only a ten-thousand-pound reptile can blink, and then emitted a decidedly un-dragonlike yelp of glee and engulfed Sara in a hug. She barely had time to squeak in surprise, and even though she could tell the pressure around her should have cracked rocks, she felt no pain, merely pressure. Tremendous pressure, but it was strangely comforting. She still couldn't breathe, however, and she gasped with relief when Dirk finally released her.

"Er, sorry," he said, still grinning hugely. "The Concord prevents me from harming you, so it should have stopped me before you suffocated. Uhm... are you ok?"

She nodded, panting. "No no, it's... it's ok, just... whoof, ok there we go."

He rest his visage on the mattress, taking up all the remaining space. "I can't begin to tell you how glad I am, how glad WE are, that you've accepted. This means more than you can know, to both of us."

Sara looked around. "I don't think Gharl will appreciate anything I do, wherever he is."

"No no! Trust me, he is exceedingly devoted to our mission."

"Including the mating part?"

It was Dirk's turn to gasp, whipping the air around Sara into a startled tornado. His jaw dropped, revealing rows of daggerlike teeth and a silky pink forked tongue, and Sara could not help but laugh at his expression. "Well, you said yourself that it can't... I mean, you can't... I mean, I won't be harmed by the... the ritual, right?" She couldn't see it, but she had turned nearly as red as the creature who was attempting to share her be.

"No no, that's true, it just... like I said, I am not used to discussing such matters."

"With humans, most of the time, we like to discuss this sort of thing BEFORE it happens. Even if it's just a couple words, like 'It's my first time', or 'Don't make too much noise, my mother is asleep', that sort of thing."

The jaw dropped again, and she tried and failed to stifle a giggle. "Your mother isn't here, is she?"

The second the words left her lips, she regretted them. Dirk's entire face fell, which was impressive at this distance, and heart-wrenchingly tragic. "Oh, gods, I'm sorry, Dirk, I wasn't thinking, I..."

"No, it's all right," he said softly, turning his head slightly to the side and blinking repeatedly. She could see his eyes shifting colors like a rainbow, from green all the way through orange to purple. It was a beautiful sight, one that she didn't fully understand, but in spite of all logic it made him seem somehow more human. "You were just trying to be amusing."

"It didn't work, did it?"

His lips pulled up slightly. "Perhaps if the situation were not so dire, it would have been the perfect thing to say."

She moved a little bit closer. "What would be the perfect thing to say right now?"

His bulk swelled suddenly and he sighed, blowing out a radiating triangle of candles. "I do not know. For most of my life, I have chosen to say the wrong thing, so I can hardly fault you."

They were silent, and for a minute the only sounds were the hiss and spit of tallow candles, and Dirk's slow intake of breath. Sara was beginning to learn his moods, and when he breathed exceptionally slow, or perhaps normal for his species, he was deep in thought. She thought she knew what he was thinking, but she decided to take a chance. She had been so fearful for so long that now that she had thrown caution to the winds and accepted the preposterous, impossible offer, she found a strange, uplifting freedom within her.

"Perhaps there are no perfect words," she whispered into his ear, or at least where she thought his ear was, somewhere between his eyes and the heavy horns atop his skull. There was a flat spot there, and she remembered something about frogs hearing through things like that, but she didn't really look at the spectacular beast before her and think 'frog'.

He turned his head slightly, not wanting to knock her over. "Perhaps not," he agreed. Looking back they were both glad that he had been too startled to gasp, or she might have ended up accidentally swallowed, when she leaned in closer and kissed him.

It wasn't a perfect kiss. Sara had quite a lot of lip to choose from, and had selected the very front of his muzzle, assuming that to be as close to a full-on kiss as she was likely to get, and she could only kiss his upper lip, his lower being a full handspan away, but it was a kiss nonetheless. His eyes grew so wide she was worried he was about to rupture something, and she could hear his tail in the distance snap straight, knocking over a marble altar.

Satisfied that he wasn't going to breathe fire, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to enjoy the moment, fulfilling the first of many such fantasies much sooner than she'd ever have allowed herself to believe. She stroked the side of his face with one hand, feeling the irregular but glassy smooth scales under her fingertips, the tiny horny protrusions that began just behind his nose and grew into the twin vanes of spines that would stud the entire length of his neck, body and tail. She could smell his myriad smells, a mixture of berries and woodsmoke and lavender with exotic tones she couldn't even begin to place. Her legs scooted closer so she was not bent at such a low angle, her thighs coming to rest just below his chin.

Eventually she tilted her head up, breaking the kiss and staring into his eyes. "Sometimes, there are no words," she murmured.

He blinked once, pushing his head gently against her, nuzzling her. She could feel him pressing against her knees, her belly, her breasts, and once again the sheer size of him was made very apparent. She leaned forward, overtop of his nose now, kissing the space between his nostrils and his eyes and hugging as much of his head as she could. A moment later, though, she ignored her own advice and had to ask "So... exactly... how... you know..."

She could feel his jaw part in a slight chuckle that she could feel in her bones. "To be honest, I had expended a great deal of thought not thinking about the specifics. Somehow, I had hoped it would... become obvious to me."

Sara kissed his bony muzzle again. "Well, I guess we'll just have to do what feels good," she giggled. Her entire body was hoisted into the air when he nodded, and she laughed out loud, a free, airy laugh she had never thought she would hear again.

When she was delicately placed back on the bed again, she sat up and adjusted the sheets around her. A moment later she thought better of it, and decided that perhaps there should be more to her transformation than just her physical appearance. She had always been jealous of Dani's ability to simply act the way she wanted to act, without fear of consequences, while Sara had always been bound by the simple mores of society, except where kicking was concerned. Now, she said to herself, now was the time to become someone else.

She sat up on her knees and tugged the sheets away from her body, throwing them over the headboard, leaving her only in the camisole that she had woken up in. Blushing to the roots of her hair, but knowing only that it felt right, she slid the strap off of one shoulder, and then the other, skin glowing golden in the candle-lit hall. She tugged at the hem, feeling the sheer fabric slip down her biceps, held up briefly by the gentle swell of her breasts, and then falling into a tiny pile around her waist.

"I've never been... you know... naked in front of someone before. I was with Moren, but it was dark, because... I never thought I was much to look at. Not compared to Dani."

One claw crept over the edge of the bed and snagged the fabric of the camisole. With a motion too quick to see it was sliced cleanly down the middle and dragged away into the darkness. She could feel his slow exhalation across her skin, rippling the sheets and inflaming the strange new passions she felt betwixt her thighs, and she shivered.

"You are beautiful," he said softly, a guttural whisper that caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand up again. His head lifted slowly, almost imperceptibly, and she found that he could indeed kiss, his pursed lips caressing her modest bust, glossy skin enveloping her nipples and eliciting a gasp of delight. She gripped the bony crest of his face, pressing herself against him, unwilling to let him go.

"I..." she started, and then realized that she had been right. There were no words, not anymore. They were so far beyond words, she wasn't sure if there were even thoughts that could do her feelings justice.

Very carefully, enormous hands gripped her shoulders and slid her off of his muzzle, settling her onto the bed. His entire body seemed to shift, snakelike, his torso sliding past until one of his hind legs came to rest on the footboard. His bulk extended past the headboard and his face approached from behind her now, and she had to giggle. "You may have said size matters not, but you're as big as a house!"

He exhaled through his teeth, eyes drawing together with concern. "This may seem... quite difficult, but I assure you that the lore proves beyond a doubt that you will not come to harm, though I am sad to say I cannot guarantee that you will... enjoy it as much as most humans seem to enjoy the coupling process."

"Don't say 'process', you make it sound like a sermon. Although I suppose the gods are mentioned a lot..."

"Are you laughing at me, pretty Sara?"

"Of course not," she said, trying and failing to stifle her laughter.

"I wish I could be in human form for this, but not only have I expended all of my autopolymorphing ability for quite some time, I would be unable to perform any complicated ritual magic in any other shape, to say nothing of the mass required by the joining."

"You keep talking about that," she said nervously, hands clasped to her chest, reminding herself that she was still quite naked. "Wha-"

With startling gentleness, he pressed the tip of an enormous claw against her lips, silencing her, while another talon traced a very slow line from her clasped knees up and along and between her thighs, stopping just shy of her wispy auburn maidenhood. "I can consider myself not only lucky, but blessed, to have spent enough time among your people to appreciate your modes of beauty, and attraction," he purred. "My biggest fear is that, despite what you may have written, you may not share a similar appreciation for the dragonkind."

She tried to speak, but the claw remained. Dirk simply shook his head and then, with what could only be described as a bashful gleam in his eye, gestured for her look behind her. Hesitantly, not sure what she might end up seeing, she turned. And gasped.

The bulk of his body loomed before her, several candles having been crushed by his belly. There were patterns upon patterns of scales, which ranged in size from the nail on her pinkie to the good dinner plates her mother brought out on special occasions. His chest was powerfully muscles, tapering off slightly towards his hips, and then the great length of his tail.

Her eyes, however, were locked on the reddish golden armor plating between his hind legs, which seemed to be shifting in ways she'd never imagined. His flesh bulged as though his insides were rearranging themselves, which she discovered wasn't entirely untrue.

Her eyes widened still further when the scales pushed forward, beyond what she thought his skin could possibly contain, and a fissure appeared. She gasped, wondering if he had hurt himself, but the edges were quite obviously rounded and shon wetly in the candlelight. Her tongue was resisting her best efforts to speak; the best she could manage was a faint whistling noise as the swelling behind the fissure, towards his tail, pressed out farther than the taut surface of his belly, and something began to emerge.

She had spent quite a lot of time trying to deduce dragon mating habits, and she had been forced to make several educated guesses, and a few very uneducated fantastical deductions. She had never been happier to be proven wrong before in her life.

It was vaguely equine, she thought, quite black with patches of red similar in hue to his scales, although definitely more tapered at the tip. But while a horse's natural gifts could be considered large for its body size, Dirk's was several times proportionally larger. Inch after inch emerged, soft and somewhat droopy, though quite obviously twitching and throbbing with the beating of his heart. She figured it to be nearly three feet long when the tip finally came to a rest on the mattress, barely a handspan from her knee. The fissure it emerged from seemed to shrink slightly, and then stretched mightily again, disgorging a black glossy mass that made her eyes roll back.

"You are beginning to understand now," Dirk said carefully, his sac now fully exposed, taut nubian flesh struggling to contain twin orbs, each larger than a spring sheep in desperate need of shearing, forcing him to lift one of his legs into the air to give himself room. A further foot of shaft emerged as well, which was now resting very comfortably against her legs. Her hand seemed almost miniscule when she reached out, gently petting the spectacularly endowed dragon.

Sara felt him nuzzle her back, and her eyes glazed when his tongue lapped cutely at the nape of her neck. It was obvious to her that the dragon, HER dragon, was still very much soft and still had quite a ways to go before she would know his true size, but it was already bigger than she'd have ever dared imagine. Using both hands, she lifted up the tip, feeling as if she were trying to lift a sleeping hound. The weight was incredible, and she gasped when the collection of veins just below the surface tensed, and the member noticeably thickened in her hands.

She allowed herself to look away from the gorgeous shaft to admire his sac, which was taking up a sizeable portion of her bed now. Dirk continued to nuzzle and kiss her exposed flesh, from her shoulders to her pert bottom, and she wondered if he really did think she was half as attractive as he seemed to her. She knew that if she tried to hug even one of those spheres, she wouldn't even come close to being able to touch her fingers.

Sara yelped again when his tongue flicked out, so long it slipped between her legs from behind, caressing her intimate folds, the startled cry melting into an ecstatic moan. Every few seconds she could see his shaft twitch, each little spasm causing it to swell a little longer, a little thicker, and a little straighter. She could make out the musculature beneath, the general shape not at all what she expected, ridged and flared and bulbous in places, but it was no less beautiful.

"All.... that?" she purred, adrift in a sea of forbidden pleasures.

His nose rubbed up against her arm like an enormous kitten. "And more," he agreed. His breath caught, and she turned to see him shut his eyes tightly, teeth clenched, fangs bared. She was about to ask if he was all right when she heard a much louder noise.

She didn't think that she'd been capable of being more surprised after the day's events, but she was proven wrong once again. Creaking and groaning like a mighty oak in a powerful wind, his nethers were growing larger at a far quicker pace. Thin black skin seemed to be stretched almost glossy tight, and she could make out the fibrous texture of the tendons beneath, while beside her, and soon looming above her, his ponderous sac inflated breathtakingly. The slap of his rapidly hardening member against his own underbelly snapped her out of her daze.

"Mating is... a very... intense... act... for my people," Dirk was gasping from his clenched jaw, expression tight with concentration. "Our size.... reflects... our desire..."

She stood up on the bed and wrapped her arms awkwardly around his distended length, and she gasped when she was only just barely able to touch her own fingertips. She glanced left to the tip, and right to the base, and realized he was longer than her bed, and somehow still growing. There was another creak, from below her this time, and she squealed in shock when her bed, at long last, collapsed beneath her feet from the weight of his sac, leaving her dangling from his erect shaft.

"This is not how I pictured my first time," she giggled wryly, taking the opportunity to cover as much exposed flesh as she could with kisses, wondering if something so big even noticed someone as tiny as her. His skin was incredibly hot, and drum tight. She felt gentle hands grip her midsection, and she laughed gaily again when she found herself being gently laid on the warm stone floor.

The laughter faded, though, when Dirk loomed above her. She'd seen horses that weren't as big as his member, and her thighs twitched with anxious desire when against all possible reason it spasmed and inched its way up his chest another handspan. She looked down, past the curve of her breasts and between his legs, and moaned when she realized that his sac was now taking up all of the available room between his hips and the ground. Each teste would have fit nicely in one of the carnivale wagons that they had admired just one day before.

She arched her neck, staring up eagerly but fearfully at his eyes. "How..." was all she could manage, not knowing how to even ask the question.

His long neck curved to allow him to place a surprisingly tender kiss on her forehead in reply, which belied the firm grip of his hands moving to grasp, and then pin, her legs. His body swayed side to side, his body moving away from her, hips raising, chest lowering. Sara moaned wordlessly, watching him bring his immense draconian shaft to bear. Though it was tapered to a surprisingly narrow tip, it widened quickly to a thickness greater than that of her own body. The infernally hot skin pressed against the insides of her legs, from ankles to maidenhood, and then her cries of lust mixed with his own. It pressed tight against her entrance, and she knew absolutely that there was no way it could possibly fit, knew there was no way that a girl could hope to satisfy such a creature, but their desire, and the magic of the Concord, did not care what she knew.

Her voice rose in a keening wail, embodying an ecstasy that few beings since the beginning of time had ever known, and slowly he began to fill her. Sara knew she should have been torn in half, legs pinned to the stones so hard she could feel them cracking beneath her, hips creaking impossibly, tender insides stretched a hundredfold around his spectacular cock, but she felt only exquisite pleasure. She couldn't open her eyes, but her hands flew to her belly, confirming that she, somehow, was managing to accept his rainbarrel-like girth. Inch after inch he pressed forward, towards her chest, and still her joy only increased.

She heard him inhale sharply as he had before, grunting with the strain, and then his hands released her legs just as his member once again began to expand with shocking speed. The stones slid beneath her bare back as he grew longer, she very firmly impaled on his glans, and her hands were forced apart by his steadily increasing thickness. She felt as though a balloon were being inflated deep within her, skin somehow managing to accommodate his size.

A minute later, they were still, clutching eachother and gasping. She was gripping his neck, burying her face against the silky scales there, and his hands were very carefully hugging her hugely swollen body. She realized just how high up his body she was perched, and her mind reeled at the notion that she was filled with but a tiny portion of what had to be a fifteen or sixteen foot long cock. His growth seemed to have stopped, at least for the time being, and they were both catching their breaths.

"Wow," they said together when he rolled awkwardly onto his side, still cradling her body against his. She craned her neck to peer around the enormous pink bulk of her belly, staring in stark amazement at his sac which had expanded even more than the rest of him. She doubted that even the carnivale wagons would contain one of those tremendous shapes.

"The Concord is very powerful, even after all this time," he said, one claw caressing her back.

"Do you... always... get so big?" Sara asked, worried once again. It was clear that she was being protected by the ancient magics, but what would happen to her once those fantastic orbs emptied their seed?

He looked down, and blinked in surprise. "I have not had many lovers," he said slowly, "but this... is indeed larger than I have been before."

"What aren't you telling me?"

He smiled down at her sheepishly. "I have not been so large," he whispered into her ear, "and I still have yet to undergo the final phase of mating, which is quite... impressive."

Her entire body quivered. "More impressive than... oh, gods, than all of this?" she asked, hugging her overfilled body, legs squeezing his shaft. She moaned when he nodded.

"We harden once to entice our prospective mate," he explained, slowly rocking his hips back and forth. She was helpless to do anything other than sway along with his body. "We harden a second time during coupling, to satisfy our lovers, and we harden a third time when we climax, to... ensure fertilization."

Her smile nearly stretched from ear to ear, eyes closing languidly. "I never dreamed you would be so perfect," she purred, rubbing herself against him, trying to show her appreciation.

Dirk gasped. "I never dreamed you would enjoy this in this way," he said happily, "for the dragons of your stories were quite a bit less... equipped."

She giggled sultrily. "And here I thought I was over-estimating them."

Despite the awkward angle and the great disparity in size, they kissed. Dirk gripped himself with one hand, slowly stroking up and down, back and forth. His hind legs were splayed wide around the tremendous volume of his sac, nearly equalling his body in size and still swelling larger, though not nearly as fast now. With every stroke, his shaft twitched and pulsed inside of her, pressing against her in ways no boy ever had.

Dirk's breathing intensified, his chest rising and falling, and she clung desperately for him as his vigor increased. Great wings flapped back and forth, extinguishing a number of the candles, and his tail wreaked destruction in the distance. Sara was moaning rhythmically now with every thrust of his hips, mumbling incoherently, though the words "Gods" and "bigger" could occasionally be heard.

She squeaked when Dirk suddenly growled, his voice filling the chamber like a raging army, and he shook his head. She tried to hug his neck reassuringly, but his shaft was swaying far too wildly for her to find purchase. "What... is it..." she asked breathily.

"I was so... caught up that I nearly forgot... the ritual," he replied, still gripping his member, but far harder now, as though he were trying to squeeze it into submission. Seeing the flesh of his sac tighten in protest against the impossible swelling of his balls, she didn't think that was too far from the truth.

The next words he spoke were in no language she had ever heard, and she doubted she would ever be able to accurately replicate many of the strange and archaic sounds. One great taloned paw continued to apply crushing pressure to his endowment, while the other caressed her gently and lovingly. His head arched around and he began to nuzzle and kiss at her entire body, from her wide splayed legs to her vastly filled belly to her breasts and neck, all the while murmuring the eldritch rites. She stroked his head, returning the kisses with equal fervor.

The spell was briefly interrupted by an impassioned grunt, and she could feel his shaft swell slightly inside of her. She looked down, and saw his arm shaking as he tried to maintain his grip on his cock. "Doesn't.... that.... hurt?" she asked, seeing the skin behind his taloned fingers distend, the thin skin being stretched to its limits. She felt his head nod against her sides, but he continued the spell, fighting off thousands of years of instinct. Another spasm, and her legs were forced still wider apart, his anatomy straining inside of her.

She began to fearfully fantasize about what would happen when he finished the spell, if this was simply what his body did BEFORE orgasm! His own legs were forced out wide, one pinned to the floor by his sac and the other swung so wide it nearly touched the floor on the other side. The twin orbs were now larger than his body, quivering blood vessels just visible before the glossy-smooth surface.

He grunted again, louder, and she could feel her own hips creak in vague protest. There was still no pain, but the rising pressure was impossible to ignore. His voice rose, the words coming faster now, and she could feel a hot wind against her skin, a wind that came from nowhere but seemed to fill the entire hall. Candleflames were whipped into thin streamers, some of them extinguished by the phantom hurricane.

Sara's face screwed up tight from the effort of trying to hold onto his head, trying to contain his inhuman size and trying to delay her own climax. It was getting difficult to breathe, and she wasn't sure how her lungs were even still drawing air. Dirk's entire body was quaking with tension, great corded bunches of muscle standing out in stark relief.

She didn't think either of them could handle anymore when his head rose high, easily breaking her grip, and he roared wordlessly to the heavens. The sound was deafening, but staring up at his looming form, wings outspread and arms flung wide, she was more impressed by his power and grace than ever before. It took her a moment to notice that both of his arms were flung wide; she glanced down in shock in time to see him flare like the mightiest stallion of her dreams within her, growing substantially thicker with one mighty surge. And then another, and she could no longer see anything below or beyond the horizon of her ridiculously voluminous belly. Another beat of his heart, and another impossible expansion, forcing her opening bigger than nature had ever intended.

And then he erupted within her. His roar redoubled, throwing his head back, which was the last clear thing Sara remembered seeing that night. So vast had he swollen within her that his first explosion of seed would have been too much for a female dragon, to say nothing of a female human. As thinly stretched as she had felt, it was as nothing compared to this, her entire body transformed nearly spherical by the onrush of gallons upon gallons of searing hot dragon seed.

The second geyser plumbed the depths of her surprise, more powerful than the first. In spite of the titanic pressure and the near-certainty that she would surely explode, she giggled after the third surge when the vision-encompassing pink sphere of her torso pressed against her face. She wriggled her hands and her feet, feeling more of her too-tight flesh pressing outwards, ever outwards. She had a sudden vision of herself pinned beneath a rosy rubber ball the size of her house, and then lightning coursed through her entire body. She threw back her own head, her cry mixing with Dirk's as an orgasm so intense it washed away rational thought sundered her.

Dirk's lustful roar trailed off into a guttural growl, and she gasped when she felt him suddenly grip her tightly. His arms tried to reach around her, barely making it two thirds of the way, and she could feel the weight of his body and the length of his neck against her still-filling figure. His hips thrust, driving himself much, much deeper, now that she had been sufficiently expanded to allow such a thing, though even the colossal length of his shaft could not fill her completely. With every spasm, every outpouring of seed, his arms were pushed farther apart.

He could not believe his own senses, for he had never been even half this large when mating with another dragon.

After longer than either of them would have predicted, he began to slow, his last half-dozen spurts hardly changing her size at all. She was grateful for that, as her back was resting against the stone floor of the great cathedral, and she could only barely see a sliver of candlelight in the distance below the world-filling expanse of her bloated body. She no longer thought she was as big as a house, being quite certain she was bigger than any building in town. Dirk's body pressing against her seemed to be happening a long way from her brain, feeling more like a kitten trying to climb her leg than the hundred-ton drake that had seemed so intimidatingly large just a scant few hours before.

In spite of what had to be devastating weight bearing down on her, pinning her to the hard river rocks, she licked her lips and moaned softly with pleasure, still coming down from the crest of her climax. "So that's what it's like," she murmured dazedly, misplaced hands petting her taut surface.

She squealed in surprise when she felt Dirk's shaft, dwarfed by her immensity but still huge in its own right, suddenly seem to twist within her. Large, powerful hands gripped her and rolled her like a snowball. She felt herself, or at least her head, rise rapidly into the air, and then all motion stopped. She looked around, seeing only a pink landscape and some candles, wondering what had happened when she rolled backwards slightly and felt the intense fireplace heat of Dirk's scales against her back. Teeth like daggers nipped playfully at the nape of her neck.

"I hope you're not angry," he said breathlessly into her ear.

She shook her head, rubbing her nose against what had until recently been her breasts. "If I were any happier, I'd ask to die now," she replied.

His hands wrapped around her, or at least around that hemisphere, and he settled onto his side, cuddling the enormous girl. She could feel him still rock-hard and buried hilt-deep in her womanhood, and every now and then she tittered when it twitched, sending ripples through her body.

"Sleep now, pretty Sara," he cooed, even as her eyes were closing. "You have done more than I could have ever asked. Picture the Peryton in your mind, and guide the magic I have imbued you with."

"It was... my pleasure," she said softly, turning her head enough to kiss the scales of his chest. Dirk simply smiled to himself, clinging to his inflated human, drifting off to sleep and feeling hopeful for the first time in decades.

. . . . .

Dozens of miles to the south, a heavily-armed and angry group moved slowly and noisily through the woods. Marching all day had not dulled their edge, but marching at night could wear down even the stoutest soldier, so it was not surprising that the little army of farmers and merchants, wielding what ancestral steel weapons they had managed to find and each armed and skilled with a bow, grumbled tiredly amongst themselves.

At the forefront of the frustrated wedge of makeshift troops marched a tiny figure in stout woolens that still managed to show more cleavage than a temple dancer. She had never been good with a bow and arrow, and fencing had proven too difficult without painfully restrictive clothing, but her weapons were not made of wood and steel, but spirit and determination and righteous fury. Scouts returned periodically to discuss the terrain with the senior woodsmen, but all of their decisions were shouted down if Dani thought they would cost them precious time.

She had almost lost them shortly before sundown, sweaty and hungry and far from home, when a scout returned with a sock, and a little wooden cube that Dani recognized as being one of the feet to Sara's bed. The discovery had breathed life into their quest, thin chests puffed up with bravado and camaraderie, but now she could feel it fading away from them again.

It didn't matter, she thought. The weak of body could turn back, but the weak of mind were hers to command. Thorns scratched her, brambles snagged her clothing, insects stung her chest, but still she pushed resolutely onwards. Northwards.

"I'm coming, Sara," she said, not a hope or a prayer but a prediction. "I'll save you."

. . . . .

Tome III - Coming Soon!