A Treasure Worth the While

Story by SSJ3Mewtwo on SoFurry

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This is my first stab at erotic fiction (albeit I've been a long-time reader on FA and here on Yiffstar).

Since it's a first stab I decided well in advance of putting anything down that if I was going to write anything following this I might as well give myself a good enough start that I wouldn't have any jitters or qualms about the content of any further works, regardless of what popped into my head for them to involve. So with this kicker I settled down to see just what I could take and how far I could take it without crossing too far into the 'That's just going insane' zone. It's my yiff cherry popper.

Deciding how to go about it was relatively easy (and enjoyable). I just recalled (and reread in some cases) stories involving themes that were just plain fetishy, but which had a strong following (some of those themes being stuff I liked myself, some not). I picked at the common occurrences that came up and which got good reviews from people as best I could, noting down which kind of out-there stuff actually did have an appeal to alot of people, something that would give me as a new writer a tough challenge to pull off effectively, but in a way that I liked. I looked for what I felt was done right, what was done 'ok', what I felt fell short, and what I would have wished to see. And by 'wished to see' I mean that I wonder why the authors cut some things short, or why some areas were taken too far (meaning some of the themes in this story I still don't particularly enjoy myself, but which I'm trying to present to the people that are fans of them in a way that's a bit new, original, and enjoyable). I'm a cook by trade, and something you learn in the kitchen is that you don't always have the luxury of preparing the foods you yourself like, but catering to others. My aim with this was to set-aside what I felt was extreme (and yes, I know that's a very relative idea), keep a bit of what would appeal to as wide an audience as possible in terms of the exotic, and do so in a way that even if a theme or two don't appeal to some they'll be entertained by the other content enough that they'll Fav the story anyway. Hopefully I pull that off with this bit of work.

I forwarded this to a few different writers, friends, and roleplaying buddies to help proof it and get it to meet the grade. A few sets of eyes catch more than just one. I'm still waiting on one or two more, and after I get their feedback I'll submit a final 'That'll do' version. Thanks guys, for the help and the encouragement. What everyone reads here is the result of feedback that I've gotten so far based on AIM/YIM convos, FurAffinity notes and comments.

As for everyone else that reads it: Comments are both appreciated and encouraged. Compliments are great, and critiques I actively want so I can get better.

And hey, if you like it here, by all means please do toss me a Fav on FA as well :P

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1996608

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A slave expected to be sold or traded at least a few times in the years of life in which they were productive. Granted some were born in a family holding and died there, and granted some were sold, worked, and either died for committing a crime, performing poorly, or through many forms of negligence, but such was the lives of slaves. It was something that society knew and accepted, as did the slaves themselves (if they didn't want to end up dead any sooner than otherwise).

Zachary was as standard a slave as his kingdom had produced in its centuries. And several weeks ago he'd been purchased by two seemingly knightly individuals for a slightly above average bid at auction. As standards went, he met them for commanding a respectable sum. His tanned skin was weathered and tough, having worked in the fields under the sun, and cured that way likely for life by further conditioning in a blacksmith's holding. He was still fairly young, having only recently passed his 23rd year and looked it in the face if not the body, with brown hair that hadn't been burned away that reached past his ears, a nose that bore only a few scars, hadn't lost either of his green eyes to chips of heated metal, and a limited knowledge of passed down medicinal techniques had kept his teeth in presentable condition. A sociably passable face might have earned him a few extra points of demand on the auction block, possibly. But the men who had purchased him; Benjamin (no surname given) and cloaked in a red garb that had an almost scale-like pattern of metal plates attached to it, face hidden behind a protective mask of black metal wire, and Ricardo (also no surname given), who was a heavily boned black man, wore a blue assemblage similar to Benjamin's, and who's face wasn't hidden, had paid a good quarter more than expected.

Zachary (no surname at all, his family line having been long lost) suspected that his also still having all his fingers, both legs, and a minimum of scarring across his muscled back might have had something to do with his newfound worth. Maybe it indicated to the two that he was malleable and obedient enough that he could work hard and require little discipline.

But after they gave him little more than a worn poncho to wear, slips of softened leather for his feet, and set to travelling without word of where their destination was, the slave had some suspicions otherwise. He just kept them to himself when something flashed as a banner through his mind.

The exorbitant fee he was paid for with was one eyebrow raiser. The gold was enough to ensure that he wouldn't be competed for in a bidding war, but not enough to draw the attention of any town officials. The rapid departure from that town wasn't a surprise, but it was still rather hasty without horses or equipment.

What was a surprise was to see Ricardo bribe the auction official, prior to departure, to strike Zachary's name from the selling list that day.

What was outright alarming, but similarly foolish to raise any alarm about, was to find that when the three had stopped to sleep by a river in the woods a few days after exiting the city, and awoke next to a different river, near a different town, and proceeded to wander through it for the day as though nothing were amiss (and during that day Zachary resisted his bewilderment and shock urging him to question what had just happened). Following that the trio had fallen asleep by another river, and woken up with a similar change in location. It happened three more times in the course of three weeks of travel, by which point Zachary himself had no idea what part of the land he was in, other than that they were approaching a mountainside cave, and he'd at least pieced together just why things had occurred the way they had.

He'd been laundered , as money in the form of gold bars and coins or precious gems stolen from rightful owners would be. His point of purchase had been erased. He'd been seen in multiple territories, impossibly far from one another to be reached in the nights between each change in locale, and now any attempts by any officials to track his origins or destination would be mired in conflicting sources of information. And this erasure of his traceability had been done by magic-users. Zachary had guessed that to this point Benjamin and Ricardo had acquired him for their own uses, but entering a tunnel into the mountain's heart that looked hewn from the stone large enough to allow a full 60-feet of clearance on all sides and above , he suspected they had acquired him for the use of someone else.

When at the end of the tunnel he spotted a carved wooden wall that was seemingly inset directly into the wood, and a draconic golden crest inlaid in its center, he had to fight the urge to bolt and run. The only thing that kept him from trying to escape the prospect of being owned by a magician, one that could be connected to monsters as dangerous as dragons, was the certainty that had kept him from trying to escape Benjamin and Ricardo the moment their arcane abilities had become apparent. To try to escape was futile, and would only end in his death. Being a servant to a magician, however unnerving the idea was, still meant he would be alive. So Zachary bit his tongue, trudged one weary foot closer to the seamless wooden portal, and awaited what would befall him.

Wordless as all three had been to the moment, Benjamin reached the solid wood facing first, placed a gloved hand on its surface...And passed through the material as though he were nothing more than a ghost. His hand met the front of the barrier and found all the resistance of air. His shoulder, and from there the rest of his body as he walked forward, quickly followed.

Zachary ground a heel at that, uttered a startled cry, and tried to back-peddle away from what he'd just seen. He made it all of a step in the reverse before Ricardo backhanded him across the back of his head with a heavy fist hard enough to briefly stun him and cloud his eyes with stars, and then shoved him forward so hard that not only did Zachary tumble through the immaterial-seeming planks of wood, but he sprawled on his back on the stone-carved floor on the other side.

He groaned, but didn't pass out from either the pain or the sudden change in environment that assaulted his senses. But he came close.

There wasn't a rear-surface to the wooden gateway behind his feet. Zachary had fallen through the false-wall, dropped several feet to a smooth floor of rock and by small miracle not cracked any bones with his legs stretched out behind him. In his sprawl he could feel that there was no wall pushing on his feet. It was also startlingly more warm and humid than it had been just seconds ago, and it felt as though his head was being pounded by something unlike anything he'd ever felt before (the blow to the head muddling his senses didn't count, since as a slave he was quite familiar with the feeling). It was closing in around his mind with the smothering presence of the blacksmith's furnace's heat on full blast. It felt like all around him there was a power in the air that reached through him to the core, pressed down on every inch of his body. He couldn't truly 'feel' anything, but merely got the impression that there was a powerful presence in the area with him.

Blearily, he looked up, trying to get his bearings, and almost shut his eyes in disbelief.

He was sprawled in the midst of mounds of gold and jewelry the likes of which he'd never seen. Piles of precious metals, mixed with gems and rare artifacts, surrounded him to a height that matched his own head if he were on his feet. The heaps of wealth were spread in only a semblance of order across a cavern to his rear lit by a golden source of light that was as unidentifiable in its source, but as widely reflected by the countless trinkets of value that littered the space. He had, from what he could see on his back and looking at the opposite wall, fallen in the only spot free of valuable debris in an underground cavern roughly the size of a closed in coliseum.

He was instantly chilled to the bone, and almost dreaded turning over and looking the other way at the sound of a very large 'something' making a dry rasping noise as it moved slightly. He was not an educated man in the least, but he knew the lore of his land. A detail that was handed down with concrete consistency was the description of just what a dragon's horde would look like upon entering. This, Zachary couldn't deny it, however much he wanted to believe he hadn't been made the property of a monster, matched the myths to a tee.

He wasn't given the chance to deny having heard anything move, and attempt to leave the chamber while never once looking in the direction of that potential 'something' however. As he groaned in a bit of pain and attempted to sit-up the rock of the floor appeared to come alive. It stretched out in a series of tan tendrils that had the flexibility of rope, but the shear strength of the stone the stone they grew from. Several wrapped around his arms and legs in the blink of an eye, several more ensnared his torso as he was lifted a foot or so into the air. As he was spun around to face the reverse direction and forced into a kneeling position like a ragdoll, a mesh of seeming liquid metal locked into place around his jaw.

Zachary hardly had time during the brief man-handling to noticed that nowhere in the room was Benjamin, despite his having disappeared through the same unworldly doorway, and that Ricardo wasn't present as well), and then he was locked to the ground on one knee by the resolidified rock that sprouted from the floor. He couldn't move his arms, his legs, his body, or his head...But due to sheer terror Zachary probably wouldn't have been able to even attempt to in the first place.

Twenty-feet infront of him, reclined on its side and with wings only slightly spread, the dragon that owned this massive horde (and likely him now as well), glared at him with an expression on its golden snout that Zachary felt meant it was analyzing him as it would a morsel of meat.

The beast was huge. Bigger than any of its kind he'd heard of even in legends. The 45-foot clearance of the tunnel leading to this place's mystical entrance was sized to allow its massive body passage. Even if it had been a four-legged walker the massive animal would have been over 30-feet at the shoulder. Looking at the rear legs the shape of the ankles and knees suggested the beast could have either walked on two or four limbs as easily as it liked, and even on the former orientation the membranous wings on its back would have taken up a good deal of room. It was covered in thickly plated golden scales along its entire back and down a lengthy coiled tail, barbed with spikes of an almost metallic silver bone along the appendage and up her spine. Reclined as it was, Zachary could make out the long scutes that proceeded down the underside of the body and tail..Including...

Zachary's mind stalled a bit in its observations. Dragons, as far as he could recall, were a vague mix of reptile and avian species characteristics. They could fly, and were warm blooded, but lacked any mammalian features. This one had breasts. The belly/chest scales she featured curved over breasts that were (for her gigantic figure) proportionately C-sized, and topping them and her shoulders was an almost mirror-polished protective plate of flexible material that wrapped around her upper back. It extended out over her shoulders in what might have been a form of armor, completely unscaled, and the extension over her arms came to a razor-sharp point. Because she was almost quadrapedal, and because she was reclined on one muscled forearm (her hands, he notice, featured fingers tipped with claws of a similar silver hue to the ones on her back and tail), Zachary was able to confirm quickly that on the rear end of her body she did indeed feature a feminine slit between her legs...Except above it was a horizontal slit, similar to the type he'd seen house a male reptile's genitals.

Zachary was as stunned as stun could be. So the moment following his locking down and the survey of his new master consisted of a very tense (and quite frightening) moment of silence between the two. During it the dragon hardly moved except to breath, maybe to sample the air of the human now in her (hir?) presence, and further size him up with golden eyes.

When he couldn't take the silence anymore, and felt certain he had been delivered here simply to be used as a midday meal, Zachary grunted through the metal covering his jaw in an attempt to beg his life.

Before more than a peep had made it through his locked mouth, the dragon silenced him with enough audible force and authority that his bowels nearly loosed themselves in the poncho. "DO NOT..." Hir voice had only the faintest touch of the feminine in its deep base, and it was loud enough to make the little pieces of priceless treasure in Zachary's proximity rattle in place. And while it set Zachary's ears ringing, made him squeeze his eyes shut, and endure a wave of stifling power lance through the room from the dragon's body, hir next words were at a more bearable level as shi finished the warning. "...attempt to speak, human." There was an unnerving amount of bestial growl that accompanied each word, however carefully enunciated, and which trailed off each sentence.

Zachary shook as best he was able in the rock-bound position he was in, and did as he was told. Because he anticipated that crying would equate to using his voice as well as speech, he resisted that urge the best he could.

"Your name is Zachary." The dragon spoke it as a statement of fact. Clearly shi was the one that had orchestrated his purchase if shi knew that. Clearly also this meant shi was undoubtedly the master he'd been delivered to.

"I am not going to commence your servitude here with a laying-down of menial and petty tasks that you will be doing as my servant, human. Because I have able servitude in the form of the two that brought you here I don't require further hands of labor. I've different reasons for purchasing a slave such as you. I am an old enough dragon, human, that I've outgrown needing much assistance from lessers." That was something Zachary could discern reliably about hir from first glance. Scant as his knowledge was, he knew that a dragon of this mammoth size had to be from ages long past, centuries and centuries past hir hatching. For hir to have survived to this late date, especially considering that her oddity as a hermaphrodite would have made hir a prime target for hunters that cared to test hir during hir earlier years, was a testament to the beast's capability and guile. Palpable auras of magical emanations that clouded the air, being the first of such Zachary himself had ever felt in any respect at all, gave the impression that there was enough magical ability and knowledge amassed before him to put a few of the Lord of the Land's mages into the place of apprentices.

What could such a creature want with a purchased human slave? What could shi possibly need of him?

There was a rumble in the beast's throat, and shielding him from a glimmering light that flickered in hir eyes with a narrowing of the lids, shi went on. "My name, Zachary, is Thaarin."

Zachary took the moment that Thaarin paused to reflect that he hadn't even known that animals like the dragons even bothered with names.

"I know perfectly well what humans now say of dragons in this age. Our scales are told of being nigh impenetrable, we grow and grow as we age, never dying or growing feeble with time. That we are as invincible in the air as we are unstoppable moving mountains upon the ground, and that our fires can smelt the mightiest of metals into pools of molten sludge at a breath."

Zachary, still smelling of fear and now somewhat of awe, mumbled nothing through his bonds this time. Thaarin gave the human the credit he deserved in being able to hold his tongue. "I tell you in all frankness, human, that my appearance not withstanding that is all quite untrue. If it were there would not be so few of my kind remaining today. Your human hunters and mages have grown quite adapt at combining their efforts and talents in the physical and in the mystic. Most of my kind have been killed off, culled as one would say, and now the precious few that remain are the dogged survivors. I," Flame, not normal flame at that, but soundless and otherworldly glowing fingers of mana infused heat, curled from Thaarin's maw on that intonation. "Am one such." Thaarin paused, wrestling with the growing gout of power under kept under control in hir breast. Letting hir emotions sway control of hirself and the forces being conducted through hir and hir cavern, and thus the entire purpose of this audience, would be to waste so much preparation purely due to getting carried away with an introductory speech. Zachary, shi could already see, had clinched his eyes shut at the sight of the flames.

"Look up, boy," Thaarin's command grated with authority, and at a few octaves deeper plus much louder than any order he'd likely heard in his young life as a slave, shi was pleased to see Zachary flinched as he automatically obeyed. "Pay attention to what I tell you and what I instruct you to do. This day concerns us both, far moreso than you can imagine."

Zachary, shi was again pleased to see, had begun to flinch again, but now had a stunned look upon his face. Hir intention to acquire a subject who had never before been offered anything worthwhile in his life had been a principal reason for purchasing a slave, rather than broaching the contract some someone more educated and worldly. By the human's expression this had been an effective form of thinking.

"I have survived to this day by learning what I needed to learn to outpace and outlast those that would try to harm me. I command the magical forces you feel in the air now because the greater portion of my studies were in the Arts, taught to me or taken from human and dragon alike. Despite my race being extensively long-lived, we do not, despite your human myths, live without eventually dying of old age. Nor do we grow without stopping in that time. Most of my kind reach only three-quarters my size, and much the same with their age. Of the last, I am among the oldest and largest in the world. I've reached this status by changing myself to the extent that my skill and knowledge have allowed, and not doomed myself to suffer the backlashes of failed attempts at magical alteration. My life has been extended, my powers increased, and with the time I've afforded myself I learned and grew more as a master of the Arts. Because I concerned myself with changing the body to rid itself of limitations, my courses of study have led to learning the limits of what can be done to one's self alone. I have come to conclusions that have lead me to dismay, and with those conclusions I sought out further avenues of approach. One of those conclusions and its ultimate correction are the reasons you are here, and why I went to such trouble to acquire you covertly. For rather than simply purchase you as a slave and send you to work in a field until your bones sag and break from strain, I am going to instead do something no other master would likely do for one such as you, Zachary. I am going to be making you an offer to be accepted or rejected. What you decide after I finish speaking will be your choice, and your fate."

Thaarin's speech paused, and Zachary was left to ponder just how far the implications of it reached. The being before him; rich with wealth, powerful on a scale that no wizard or mage he'd seen could dream of comparing with, and as old as the oldest dragon on the planet...What could possibly be beyond hir reach? No knight could harm one as large as shi. Similarly apparently no mage could match either hir raw power or depth of arcane knowledge. What was there to worry a force such as shi?

"My eventual death has been slowed, but not prevented. I have within me life that will eventually run dry, and then I will die as any other living thing shall. I can delay this, centuries more if I go the road alone, but delay is all I can do by myself." Zachary, with only unassisted human eyes and the vaguest impression of the power surrounding him, could perceive Thaarin's change as shi spoke of this certainty. The crests of hir ears drooped slightly, hir tail ceased its serpentine sliding on the floor, and hir wings stood less proudly upon hir back. The sobering specter of death, it seemed, could wither even Thaarin's proud resolve.

"Because this became so unavoidable if I were to continue to pursue my path as it was, I looked as many had to alternatives and solutions. There are, Zachary, despite what your human philosophers say in their wordy ramblings, methods by which one can achieve immortality. None of them easy, most of them not even 'true' immortality, but they are there. But most of them are from study in the darker black arts, sacrifices, and allegiances with the damned in exchange for power. They are both impractical and carry too much risk. Some I examined, but abandoned. And while looking over the lore I discovered a trend that rang true for all of them, akin to the concept in alchemy called Equivalent Exchange. 'In order for something to be gained, something else must be given up.' And what I have earned, worked for, strived for, and laid claim to, Zachary, I will not surrender to man, beast, demon, or spirit in a bargain that would only end with my eventual betrayal."

The subtle droop Zachary had noticed before vanished from all of Thaarin's features. Hir coming words were spoken after hir head was again held regally, hir wings partly spread as a show of size and power, and hir chest lifted. The force behind hir words returned, and resonated through the air with even more power than they had at hir first declarations.

"I abandoned even considering those options long ago, and for several decades now I have examined the lore of Life itself, Fertility, the Source, flesh sorcery, and further aspects of alchemy. Avenues of approach that would not require the loss of thousands of lives, my own soul, or the putting of a price upon my head the likes of which would make the immortal life I lived hardly worth the endless trouble. The body you see before you, my combination of both male and female features, is one such result, and one such preparation for today. I have, I both hope and dream, crafted my own solution to fueling the flame of Life that burns within me, and ensuring that regardless of what happens to the rest of my kind I will not perish to join them in Oblivion. It has taken the better of half a century worth of effort as you humans count your years to culminate today."

Thaarin, moving hir snout and vibrant eyes closer to Zachary than he would have liked, leaned hir head towards him. The gaze of hir slit pupils and partly bared fangs was enough, given shi could have snapped him up as though he were a morsel of meat and bone from a plate, to make Zachary cringe through his fascination with all he was being told, and wish more than ever that he wasn't held in place so thoroughly.

"Do you know why I tell you all of this, human?" The acrid and almost electric (in Thaarin's magically suffused case) aroma of hir breath washed over him, and instantly dried the sweat that had begun to shine on his skin. "Can you guess why I gave you such a lengthy lecture, rather than simply give you an instruction as an owner is apt to do with the slaves they acquire?"

Zachary couldn't answer, because even though Thaarin had questioned him, the bonds around his jaw remained tight. He'd had experience with masters who deliberately timed their questions at similarly inconvenient moments in the past though. So rather than strain his jaw any further than it already was he waited for Thaarin to answer hir own question for him.

"To impress upon you that this is no ordinary acquisition of a servant. This day marks as serious a potential a change in your circumstances as it does mine, Zachary. And that change is going to be decided not by me, but by you. What I seek requires the willing participation of another. A simple order to capitulate will grant me nothing of what I seek, and I want it clear to you just what you are about to hear has much importance and preparation behind it."

Thaarin's eyes shut, a bass purr struck up from deep within hir chest, and when they opened again there was a surge of magical light unlike anything that Zachary had ever seen. A pulse, almost a wave of incandescent blue particles surged from every point on the dragon's glittering gold form and spread like a haze to fill all of the room that Zachary's bound field of view could make out. In its wake, amid the almost static crackle that sparked and hissed from mountains of gold and silver, motes of glowing clouds were left hanging in midair, shimmering with power.

And as Zachary watched, a knot forming in his stomach, the ghostly amorphous masses pulsed and moved with direction and intent into orbiting circles around none other than himself.

"The aura of magic you feel in this room is only partly of my own emanations, human. The vast majority of it is created by a series of waiting spells I have spent the past several years fueling with mana. These spells are keyed to be triggered and enacted by the agreeing to of a magical vow that I am going to offer to you now, and which I have just initiated. I am bound now by anything I say to you, so what I tell you is not to be taken with a grain of salt or disbelief. The terms of this arrangement are absolute, and non-negotiable. Upon offering to you the contract between us I will free your body enough for you to speak either 'Yes' or 'No', and nothing else. So far I am the only one how has been allowed to speak because if anything is said improperly under these conditions then the careful balance of powers I have worked into this network of spells could be undone. If you agree, the contract will be sealed, we will both be bound by our parts in it, and the spells will set-forth doing as I describe in the contract. If you chose to not accept, I will disown you as my slave, and surrender your ownership to both Ben and Ricardo who brought you in. I can promise you, human, neither of them will offer you the kind of opportunity I am. And if either of them decides to simply kill you out of a sadistic sense of pleasure I will not lift a claw to stop them. I will simply purchase another servant for the pittance it cost to acquire you, and make the same offer to them."

That particular statement, since as best Zachary could guess it fell under the same magical forcing of honesty that Thaarin had described, rooted a place in the forefront of his mind. Not because of the terms, no. What struck him most of all is that he was effectively being blackmailed into accepting a kind of contract he couldn't even have imagined being possible, or accepting further life as a slave to be beaten, whipped, and abused until his death.

And he wasn't being given the option to question the details of it before Thaarin commenced the terms.

"I do not wish to keep you as a human slave, Zachary. If you accept making a sacrifice in my favor the spells about you now will change you. I will remove your humanity in its entirety. Your old life will cease to be, and you will be remade into a form closer to my own and remodeled to withstand the immense forces you will produce and channel. You will function as a proxy between my body and the Source of Life itself, and the human form is incapable of such a feat. The spells I have crafted cannot be cast directly upon myself to achieve the immortality I seek. They require a subject to be spiritually tied to my essence. I will bind our souls, our energies, and our sensations as I see fit. Your body will serve as a conduit for the energy needed for both of us to be rendered immortal, will function to refine raw Life into my and your unique auras, and will funnel that power to me and your new self. This singular power comes with it a sacrifice. You will lose your ability to speak, you will not be a true dragon following the change and nor will you be a human being. You will also be dependant upon me for protection. That is the willing sacrifice you will need to accept, and which will enable you to become the vessel I require.

"In return for you agreeing to provide me with this opportunity, I will protect and shelter you for the entirety of our immortality. I also hereby swear that regardless of what pain you have endured at the hands of other masters I will never lay a hand on you in anger, or ever injure you in any way. As long as I draw breath I will see to it that you are never harmed by another again. And in addition to protecting you from any potential harm or enslavement at the hands of anyone else I will go so far as to protect your very mind and will. Immortality carries with it a life of acquiring knowledge so great, and experience so deep, that it can soon exceed the limit of the mind to retain what has and is happening. The spells I have laid in place will not only alter your body, but separate your consciousness from the physical limitations of your mind as it exists now. You will be one of the few to spend eternity with no risk of insanity, despondence, or any of the other maladies that can befall one with a weak mind, beyond the reach of any who could possibly pose you threat of capture and enslavement ever again."

Zachary, able to only express himself with the wideness of his eyes at this point, was stunned to disbelief. The first impulse he had, and had been able to speak he would have voiced it without control, was to call the offer as it was nothing more than a joke. He'd lived his life as a slave, so of course he'd only had the experience of a slave. He'd never been offered more than the barest minimum to stay alive and do whichever menial tasks he'd been assigned, and only received either offhand or vicious scorn and discipline if he'd ever attempted to overstep his bounds.

What Thaarin was proposing, and based on all evidence shi fully intended to follow through with (and if shi really was bound by the magical oaths shi was swearing too, she'd have no choice hirself), was to not only remove him completely from such labor and servitude, but to elevate him from it entirely. Shi would not work him raw, as he'd been forced before. Shi'd care for and protect him. And shi'd do so to an extent and with capability that would ensure no one would ever put him duress and misery again.

Who could match hir if the set-up shi described came to be true? Shi and he would be immortal. He would be powerful. He'd be beyond the human capacity for strength and endurance, wouldn't he? At the cost of a human way of life he'd never cared for in the first place? And shi would not only be immortal, unkillable by most standards, but protected and armed with magic the likes of which no slave herder could ever dream of overcoming. And shi had sworn to him that monolithic level of energy and experience would be used to guard him at all costs.

Zachary, seeing the opportunity as he did, was so moved, so gripped by the chance presented to him, and so ignorant of the store of possibilities hidden in the vagaries of Thaarin's words, that when the metal lacing around his mouth began to retreat, he was almost in tears with the urge to accept the offer with the whole of his heart. He hadn't been delivered to an owner. However bestial and unusual the form, he'd been delivered to a savior.

Thaarin's senses were so much sharper than a human's limited scope that shi could smell the eagerness almost leaking from the human's pores. Shi, with pride and satisfaction so deep, and anticipation so great that they began to fuel an arousal in hir loins, knew that today would prove as fruitful as shi had dreamed of for decades.

"Do you accept this offer, Zachary? Speak now, and either set or dismiss the oath between us."

Zachary, with eyes only for the dragon's and thoughts only of the bright future soon to come, felt the metal binding his jaw retract into the webwork on his body, stuttered a reply that almost preempted tears. "Y...Yes!"

Thaarin, breaking the poise that had expressed regality, control, nobility, and pride, laughed in a way that shattered Zachary's sense of enthrall and hope, knotted his stomach, and lent him a sick feeling of despair. He couldn't imagine what was enough to lead the great beast before him to both growl and chuckle with enough bass to send cascades of gold and gems sliding down their stacks. But experience told him it wouldn't bode well. The lack of humor or empathy he sensed in the dragon's mirth was...Chilling.

The knot of fear convalesced into full grown panic, however, when Thaarin braced hirself by grinding hir powerful talons into the very stonework of the floor as though it were nothing but dirt, hoisted hirself from a relaxed sprawl and to hir feet, and the motes of incredible magical power blazed into vibrant light a moment later. Before his eyes, wide and terrified, the spell began. Now quivering at the possibility that he'd entered a situation that was not so sublime as he'd thought, Zachary knew he was powerless to stop whatever was coming from settling over him.

Thaarin, for hir part, awaited the crash of powers shi'd worked so hard on with hir wings spread, eyes closed, and a smile on hir muzzle; eager to feel all the effort, pain, struggle, and achingly intense planning come to fruition. Shi also, knowing just what would be involved, couldn't wait for the physical pleasure that was about to begin. That would be every bit as intense as the psychological satisfaction, and shi was already beginning to ache with arousal in both hir male and female parts.

Thaarin's anticipation of a 'crash' of powers and sensation was entirely justified. The first throbbing mote of light that had been orbiting the entrapped human being on the floor rotated a scintillating path between the two of them and exploded with the force and noise of a small handheld bombard going off. It released no shrapnel in its detonation, nor even a physical shockwave, but its effect on both the mighty dragon and the helpless human being was to knock each reeling. Thaarin staggered and shivered from the tip of hir tail to the point of hir snout, roaring as what felt like electrical current raced through hir body, mind, and very soul when a vibrant bolt bright enough to blind the eyes struck hir in the breast from the epicenter of the spell's release. Zachary, bound as he was, had no room to shiver and shake, and barely freedom to gasp as his body was lit from the inside out by a mirroring blast.

But Zachary's shock from having felt his every fiber of being laid claim to as if by a fist was short lived. The sensation faded from his body in mere moments, leaving him with only a mind that felt momentarily numbed, but quickly recovering. The true force of the force of the spell was felt by Thaarin hirself as every sensation, feeling, and thought that Zachary experienced became bound to hir. The spell reinforced Zachary's mind as Thaarin had sworn, and bound Zachary's senses to Thaarin's body through and through, but left hir leave to filter and tune them to hir preference.

At the moment shi savored the combined energies coursing through hir body, as well as those in Zachary's; delighting, reveling indeed, in the delicious surges of hir magics as they did their work, savoring the feeling of the human's body being prepared for what came next.

Zachary felt the preparation as a sudden tightening of every muscle in his body, right down to his diaphragm. The only exception was his heart, before a second drifting cloud of blue light encircling him activated. It did not explode into brilliance, as the first had, but instead split into countless streams of blue aether that slithered through the air like quicksilver. One slashed into Zachary's chest, riveting his body with heat that buried itself in the very pit of his gut, swelled, and spread from there like a balloon to fill his body to the very tips of its fingers with its energy.

The magical but entirely nonphysical force had two other effects as it swelled outwards with growing heat from his center. Zachary's worn and tattered poncho was incinerated by the warmth his body radiated (painlessly, of course, as Thaarin has sworn), and his nakedness revealed that his penis had surged to the largest erection he'd ever had in his young life. His shaft stood literally ramrod straight with the power flowing into him and his heart beating a mile a minute, in complete defiance of his abject terror. And the pressure with which it stood and pulsed was enough to make him grunt through the other assaults on his senses.

The remaining streams of energy flowed into the piles of gold and treasure that surrounded Zachary on all sides, felt through them like questing fingers, and found what they sought. Masses of gold, and silver were besieged by the seeking magic, and upon contact the materials liquefied, flowed like molten chocolate out of their hiding places, and propelled by the guidance laid out in the spellwork the tide of precious metal ooze closed in on the trapped human that was the center-point of the display. Held in place, unable to breath what he felt would surely be his last breath, Zachary tried (and failed) to scream as the swirling gold and sparkling silver metal roared up over his body like a wave, anticipating the stuff would incinerate him alive and crush him to a pulp with its weight.

Thaarin, in Zachary's place, roared in pleasure as the metal touched Zachary's body, and rather than mangle and burn the human alive contact with the metal resulting in his flesh being replaced. Its sensual caress over his skin and down into the muscle, bones, and organs beneath lanced through hir with a pleasure that urged drops of pre from hir own hard member, easily as long as Zachary was tall and thick as his body was wide, it was ebony-black and featured a spade-shaped tip. Shi felt as strongly as he did the metal flow over his bent legs, become assimilated into his enchanted body, replace the living tissue with its life-infused and animate self. And it felt good. The union of the metal with the spell that had attracted it, plus the reshaping of the limbs it encountered, sent shivers through both human and dragon alike. As a portion of Zachary's anatomy was changed its shape was resculpted as though worked on by the hands of an expert craftsman. Zachary could feel the strangely soothing and pleasant sensation of his lower-body being stretched, molded, and reset into something entirely removed from the human frame.

The tide was faster than the change it inflicted, however. Before Zachary's wide eyes could make out what had become of his feet and shins the swell of metal had swept over his thighs, begun its work on them as well, and swept over his hips and waist. The touch of it against his member should have been enough to bring him to immediate orgasm, because the pleasure of it was like a lightning bolt of pure ecstasy that radiated through-out his whole body from his groin and prostate. But it resulted in no climax, his body simply not cresting as the pleasure continued to build, as though a switch within it had been turned off. Thaarin hirself elicited a roar of satisfaction and a further pulsing of pre from hir member, but climax was not had by either.

The wave then obliterated all that Zachary could see of his form being consumed and twisted into a new shape. Its main body crashed against the building base, splashed high into the air over Zachary's head, and came back down to cocoon the man in an all-encompassing grip.

Blinded and deafened by pleasure, feeling an unbearable lust, and assaulted by the sensation of change spreading through his body as his very core was replace, his heart stopped and assimilated, and eventually even his head subsumed by the magical metal, Zachary did remain aware of all that happened. It was simply too much for him to surmise in words, and could only be remembered with the newfound eidetic memory he had been given. He felt his face dissolve as momentarily his head was completely absorbed, resolidified, and then stretched to form a muzzle. Inside his mouth he felt his teeth be replaced by fixed protrusions that were one with the metal of his jaw, no bones or joints left to allow physically plausible movement, and his tongue as elongated as the rest. His chest, his arms, stomach, and legs, none of them felt as they had before. They were as uniformly solid as a statue's...Yet they moved. They moved differently than before, and continued to move moreso strangely as the remolding of his body pleasurably continued, but he was stunned to realize that Thaarin's word had been true. He genuinely wasn't being killed.

And then he could see again, the metal that his eyes had become left them as silver slits in a mask of gold and etched scales, and they opened as their lids dissolved away.

Zachary no longer breathed, for he had no lungs to do so. He had no vocal chords either to make that breath into a gasp, but his golden muzzle made an effort to when his draconic statue of a body jerked at the return of light, and by virtue of that tiny movement alone he shattered the stone that had previously been binding him. His mass was so great now, no taller than he'd been before but immeasurably heavier and denser, that the rock wasn't up to the task of restraining his movement. Looking down, he could see that he had become almost a replica of the giant that had made this possible, minus hir hermaphrodite features and hir wings, and with the exception that his underbelly was entirely of mirror-polished silver. His erection was a draconic rod that shined like chrome as it stuck seamlessly from a replica of Thaarin's vent. He even had a tail that had been seamlessly grafted to his lower back, and it moved as sinuously as the body of a snake or a living appendage would have. Moreso, even. His body moved at the joints it would have been accustomed to in life if a skeleton were its limitation. Given now it was an animate mass of living gold and silver, he could feel the ease with which he could move almost any part of his body. True, he lacked a voice...But he could not deny that this new form was just as Thaarin had described. It was every bit as powerful as shi'd promised.

And he felt how alive this body was. No longer of organic tissue or not, Zachary felt himself burning with life, vibrancy, power, and as the fixed erection at his waist indicated, lust. There was a fire that was centered in the pit of his stomach, where he guessed that if he'd had them would have been his internally hidden draconic testes. The warmth pulsed, waned, permeated along his member, into that part of his core, and back again, almost aching for release. The combination of newfound near invulnerability, sensuality, building lust, and utterly new physical sensation left Zachary momentarily stunned. Looking down he could simply trace a clawed hand along his transformed chest, and with the other irresistibly stroke the hot metal of his incredibly sensitive penis.

His trance was broken when Thaarin spoke up from hir position, drooling from hir maw, hir penis, and hir vagina as hir lust was amplified by Zachary's. "Far...Far from finished."

The third spell, a cloud of silver stardust, morphed into a ribbon of light, and darted into Zachary's chest. Immediately the sensation of change overtook him again, although this time it wasn't with the whole-body consumption of his faculties. This time the voiceless statue Zachary had become was sent writhing to the ground with the sound of metal on stone against the floor. A pair of silver breasts and a specially formed chestplate, exactly proportional to the dragon that they were modeled after, pushed forward from his chest and upper body. In his loins, a metal hand now actively stroking against the hard rod there as further stimulation, two openings parted near his tail. The first was obviously a tailhole, and from within the very base of his body he could feel a sort of hollowness swell into being as a surrogate anal cavity formed behind it.

Zachary's other free hand quested directly to the second forming opening though, the lustful pleasure the magic was bringing him made him desperate to achieve a climax as it did its work. A feminine slit, complete with a sensitive nub of a clitoris formed on a small mound of expanding silver between his legs. As much as Zachary stroked the remarkably flesh-like silver of his transforming genitals though, he could only arc his back as beyond the slit a passage formed, worked into his body a distance. It pushed into what he had to guess was a cavity modeled after a womb. No amount of stimulation brought his body closer to a release of the growing urge to expel the burning heat that smoldered pleasurably from within his new additions however. Within the faux-womb, testes, prostate, and breasts upon his chest he felt a slowly building trickle of...Something...Something immaterial but precious and powerful. And he could feel with everything that was the magical-object that he had become that it would grow stronger and stronger, strain more and more to be expunged and put to use, until he orgasmed. He needed, knew without a doubt, that this tiny trickle was the Life that Thaarin sought, and by expelling it from himself he would in-fact be transferring it to hir. And he could now feel that life needed to be released with an act that was in itself meant to create new life. So he struggled harder, slipping his clawed fingers into his remarkably soft inner tunnel, running a thumb over the bump that was his clitoris, thrusting into his hand with his erection, and snaking a tongue that was so smooth it was almost slick over his breast and the pert nipple dotting it.

Neither he nor Thaarin climaxed, hard as Zachary desperately struggled. Thaarin knew that even though the mute object of magical power struggling to pleasure itself before hir wouldn't be granted that pleasure yet, but it would be disastrous for hir hopes and dreams if shi were to do so now. Beneath her was almost a pool of hir juices, and hir body was being tortured by the developing talisman's writhing. If shi climaxed now, and expended the developing spell-components needed too soon, then all this effort would have been for naught. And shi hirself did not yet have full control over what stimulus the artifact shi was bound to that shi felt in turn, and which shi could block out. There were too many other magics working.

The dragon breathed a sigh of the deepest relief when shi felt the last sequence of commands in the third spell initiate, and the talisman's frantic thrusts of its hips into the air, thrashing tail, stroking hands and fingers, and licking tongue slowed. The eyes of the statue went wide as its movements became more and more restricted, harder, stiffer...And then they locked that way as all sentient movement of the magical charm ceased.

Zachary found he'd been completely paralyzed. He could not move anything from his new silver tongue to the tip of his new tail as the animate quality of his body suddenly was taken away, even as his warmth filled genitals and insides begged for further attention. Try as he did, and if he could have shut his eyes with the mental strain of his effort, his body's control had been severed. He had become a true statue locked in the pose of self-pleasure.

Such a pose was not conducive to the creation of the engine that Thaarin sought. But shi'd planned for the eventuality, and the fourth sequence of instructions in the third spell settled the problem.

Zachary's body moved on its own. Against his voiceless mental protests his arms pulled away from his needful groin, rolled him onto his stomach, and then clasped themselves behind his back, pressing his remarkably soft (though still metal) breasts against the stone of the floor while arching his back. His sinuous golden scaled neck and head were held straight, muzzle slightly open, the tip of his snout touching the floor. His legs opened wide at the hips, bent back at the knees of their own accord, exposing his changed genitals, and the shining footpaws met above the base of his tail as his lower-back arched up from the ground. He couldn't grunt as the curve his body was forced the tip of his penis against the floor as his legs and hips elevated. The tail itself reached over his back at his violation, and entwined its tip in several loops around his hands.

Then the hands, tail-tip, and feet fused where they met into conjoined masses of metal. It took only seconds, but Zachary felt the shape of the ends of his limbs dissolve into seamless extensions of smoothly scaled metal.

It felt pleasurable, of course. Just as much as the initial change had. But in his mind Zachary was screaming away in a now greater sense of horror than he'd ever imagined possible. Thaarin had said he'd be dependent upon hir...But this, this was not what he had imagined hir doing to him. But paralyzed and now without even the limbs to struggle with, he was rapidly feeling the onset of hopelessness.

Thaarin hirself took the time shi now had to take deep, panting, recuperating breaths since the crisis had been averted. With the talisman staring at her from its position on the ground shi licked hir chops with a forked tongue to clean them of the accumulated drool, and watched the last floating mass of magic descend towards its target.

Zachary saw it coming too. Mute, immobile, and terrified or not he heard it 'pop' like a soap bubble, saw it vanish, and could then observe and feel its effects the instant it happened.

Zachary went from lying prone on the floor to rocking, still prone, a half a foot above it. He also felt an all-encompassing pressure surrounding every inch of his sensitive metal body, even filling his mouth, and in his vision he could barely, just barely make out the placement of something almost perfectly clear against his eyes and its outward surface.

In the blink of the spell's vanishing, Zachary's helpless form had been encased in a diamond egg, which was now rocking on its flawless surface on the stone floor. His head was towards the narrower end, his tail curved to fit into the wider bottom. Every inch of his body was held fast by a small tomb of solid gemstone.

"Safe from harm, as I promised. As well as powerful, which I'm sure you have already felt for yourself." Thaarin's voice reached directly into Zachary's mind, though hir gigantic muzzle moved not an inch from the fang-baring grin of satisfaction. A component of the spells that had been warping his form and deciding his fate had tied the dragon's mind to his, and through the spiritual link hir words reached his consciousness without the need for sound to pass through the barrier of magically imbued crystal. It had been beyond hir abilities to communicate with Zachary in the earlier portions of the ceremony due to the intense distractions that had been engaging both of them (also beneath hir wishes, but now shi could afford the mental effort to inform hir talisman what was happening).

"I have a grasp over the interior of your protective shell. But the outside layer is as hard and impenetrable as diamond is meant to be. And following the completion of this ceremony it will be proofed from ever being magically altered again, so long as you continue to provide the power it needs to stay so. But because I can still modify your encasement as I see fit I have no intention of taking short-cuts in ensuring either your security, nor allowing any chance of you being removed from the situation. I haven't given you leave yet to close your eyes, but what you are about to feel happen is very likely going to be extremely intense and only partially pleasurable sensation." Zachary, as he had been for the entire time he'd been getting dehumanized, enslaved, and overall treated as nothing more than a means to an end, strained with everything his mind could muster at his unresponsive and petrified body. His desperation, strong and terror-fueled as it was, resulted in nothing, and the dragon finished hir warning without a pause or care. "Rather than continuing to struggle as you are, I suggest you brace your mind to the best of your ability. I will make this as quick and efficient as possible, and I maintain my vow that it will not be in the least painful for you."

As much as he wished he were capable Zachary wasn't able to scream in surprise and protest when his new tailhole experienced an extension of the diamond surrounding and holding him push into it. Metal or not, that part of his anatomy wasn't as solid as the rest of him, and still behaved as though it were composed of flesh. The penetration didn't hurt or burn when he was entered, and in-fact if he'd been capable of shuddering in pleasure then the brush of the phallic intrusion into his remodeled anal cavity against the spot where there had once been a prostate would have made him quiver. There was no gland there to feel the pleasure, but it struck him intensely anyway, almost enough to blot out the feeling of that small pocket of empty space being packed full, and stimulated a bit further the new fire that burned in his core.

It failed utterly in blotting out the sensation of the diamond commencing to burrow directly into the metal that made up his body though. That sensation was too intense. Far, far, far too intense, alien, and disturbing. Roots of crystal dug through the malleable material that made him up now, pushed it out of their way like taffy, set in hooks to hold their stems in place, and pressed on further. One dug through the interior of his tail, almost all the way to the tip before it ceased its growth. A pair broke apart at his waistline, and up through each leg dug a shaft, following the path of what would have been his thigh-bones, the bend at the knees, and up through his shins. The stopping point of the questing tendrils was where his feet had ceased to exist, coming to abrupt ends, and locking themselves in place with sprouting barbs that gripped both forwards and backwards in his metallic flesh. Another ground its way up through his torso, branched when it reached his chest, and sent anchoring extensions of itself up his arms to meet and fuse at the point where his hands had merged into a solid mass of metal. A final part of the spreading network forced its way up the back of his neck, and buried itself at the base of his head. Along the whole length of the intruding invaders of his body he could feel rootlets and hooks digging in, and then the whole mass of material set as hard and solid as the gems from which it was composed. The material imprisoning his body had anchored itself, and him, to the exterior shell from the inside out via a stem of the solidified diamond. Minus the relatively small patch that cupped and nestled against the spot where his prostate had been the stuff was as solid and immovable as the hardest of materials in the world.

Zachary, for his part, wished to every god he'd ever heard of or read about that he could cry, as the act of anchoring every part of his body ensured that he could never, simply never, be removed from the prison that penetrated and encased him.

"More than that." Thaarin was as unsympathetic to him as ever, and likely deliberately so, simply to drive home the facts of what he was being forced to endure. "Should you ever somehow be removed from the shell, removing the barbed branches from within you would be even more difficult. If you were to be changed back with it in you, you would be instantly killed, and if you were removed at all then the energy which keeps your mind and soul alive would be cut-off, and all that would be the reward of your rescuer would be your departure to oblivion."

As deliberately cruel and smug as Thaarin sounded, the smugness shi felt was to hir entirely justified. The creation shi was expending so much energy on, the little trinket on the floor before hir, was developing perfectly. After a full several decades of excessive preparation the sight of the talisman's finally completed shape: composed of the body of a willing subject, the soul therein, enough precious metal to purchase a fief from the lord of any land, and enough glimmering diamond to purchase the land itself, it was no wonder shi was all but drooling with anticipation from an open maw. On-top of scintillating anticipation shi was fighting exhaustion. The exertion of so much magic was taxing her massive body, but not to the point that she'd be ceasing to take a break. Hir panting was fueled as much by strain as it was by desire. Hir mouth was salivating for what was to come. Hir nipples were as hard and erect as spires, mirroring the additions that Zachary had been gifted with. Hir shaft had been erect and hard as stone since the moment Zachary's had been altered into a more draconic design and dribbled pre-ejaculate that let off sparks of raw magical power as it hit the floor, and hir loins literally ached with need.

Hir prostate, unbeknownst at this stage of the process to Zachary, was screaming for less teasing and more stimulation. What Zachary did not know for sure, and could only have guessed at if he'd been watching the minute mannerisms of the dragon before him as more sensation was forced upon his body, was the fact of their linked physical sensations. Shi simply ensured that the connection of pleasure and energy was entirely one-way, only receiving what he felt, and only what shi wished to feel at that. Hir body was entirely unencumbered with the sensation of having tree-like roots spread through it, but it was kept as on the brink of orgasm as he was. Hir ache came from knowing just how close to the ultimate of satisfactions shi was.

With those temptations and intense feelings of accomplishment in mind Thaarin, with a feeling of finality and purpose that Zachary could do nothing but feel terror and defeat at, decided it was time to complete the ceremony and secure hir immortality for now and forever. It was with a groan that made Zachary's statuesque body vibrate within its prison that the massive dragon pushed to hir feet, stepped towards the magical jewel that he'd become until shi towered over it, settled back down, and positioned hir groin directly next to the base of the egg. Were Zachary of anywhere near the compatible size and not sealed inside, his spread legs would have been straddling the girth of hir length as it pulsed with desire beneath him. He was nestled directly above its base, between its curving length and the slit where it protruded from hir body.

Thaarin's sensuous and long neck curled about, and hir snout touched the very rip of the narrow end of the egg, treating Zachary to the sight of hir maw closing in, and then opening just wide enough to expose hir fangs, tongue, and throat. Given that shi could have very easily swallowed his encasing from where shi'd been curled previously by simply extending hir neck out and snapping it up the former human didn't think shi was going to do so. The careful positioning of hir body indicated to him this was further continuation of this hellish ritual. "What...What are you doing now?"

Zachary was very much correct. Thaarin's lustful pants changed from rapid and shallow intakes of air into steadily spaced halts and deep, full breaths, hir whole body tensing as further energies built within hir. Zachary himself was surprised at not only hir acknowledgment of his question, but the strain present in hir effort to reply. "The final part...of our binding...and your transformation. My spells have...to this point...bound our souls...preserved your mind...modeled your body...to a shape that could serve me...and made your senses...subservient to mine. But you are now a talisman...A thing of power...but not enough on your own...to function as the device I intend. And to start you...serving your purpose...of serving my body...I must give you...some of my life...to start you producing more for me...and then I must stimulate you...to release that power...and to set the spells holding you...into permanence. You are now my Second Heart...And with this last act...I claim the right...to use the power you grant."

Zachary could only feel only the pangs of revolt and humiliation at being referred to as an object. It had been only minutes since he'd been placed before the dragon that had done this to him. In his mind, mercilessly preserved and kept clear, he still hoped that some form of mercy could be begged.

Thaarin snuffed his thoughts from further contact with hir's, shutting out his mental pleas as though shi'd dropped a curtain over Zachary's spirit. They were still linked in every way of course, and shi could clearly feel the delightful sensations of his body, but shi had no further interest in conversation or debate that was pointless, and certainly not in having discussion with what was a borderline inanimate object.

Thaarin's tongue snaked out of hir mouth, lapping from hir penis a sample of hir own fluids with a caress that was nearly enough to loosen the dragon's hold on the energy coursing through hir body. But shi held, locking down on the vibrant shivers the action sent through hir flanks. The luminescent smeared tongue deposited its load of life-conducting fluid over the precious charm nestled in hir groin, coating it thoroughly, before shi took in one final mighty inhalation of air, and then expunged the building forces within hir over hir masterwork.

Zachary, mind as aware and sharp as it had ever been, couldn't scream as the finality and power of the moment crashed over him. The cycling energies that Thaarin had been building expelled from hir depths as a roaring current of pure, powerful, and vibrantly glowing blue life. Thaarin sacrificed a portion of hir very own essence and breathed it into the mass of crystal and metal that was the magical construct that Zachary had become. The surge of power permeated both the hardened surface and the moldable suspension he dwelt in, bonded with the up-wellings of energy his body was steadily producing of its own accord, and harmonized with them in a synergistic reaction that made the walls of Zachary's womb tremble ecstatically. His body tapped the Source now as though it were a running siphon, and refocused that raw and wild power into a perfect replica of the energy that Thaarin's body thrived on.

Zachary, feeling his body harmonize with the forces it was now building up entirely of its own accord, helplessly endured the shocking desire for climax and release burn even hotter within him, now (not knowing Thaarin had shut-off contact with his thoughts) begged the dragon wordlessly and with everything he had for hir to begin claiming it. Trickles of the Source were almost leaking from his erogenous zones as though it were a metaphysical pre, so intense had the pressures of concentrated essence built within him.

Thoughts cut-off or not Thaarin could indeed still feel the joyous moment that proved hir spell-work had performed as shi'd intended. The artifact, what shi (as the sole and original creator) called a Second Heart, throbbed with hir own unlimited source of life-giving energy as it nestled in hir nethers. Hir golden eyes greedily drank in the sight of the little treasure building up a halo of energy within itself, resisting the urge to tap it until shi simply couldn't stand the temptation any longer lest shi hirself lose control of hir own body, and cued the crystal surrounding its core to begin tapping the well-spring it surrounded.

Zachary felt the paralysis over his entire body release as much as the diamond framework spread through him would allow. In the semi-solid interior of the prison his penis twitched up and down wildly, seeking stimulation in the almost liquid and warm material surrounding it as it began throbbing, almost as though a pulse of blood ran through it instead of simmering Life that was striving to be urged down its length by the pseudo-testes behind it. His vaginal opening began tensing and relaxing as he tried to work up to the orgasm he so craved from that foreign addition to his body. His prostate commenced twinging against the intrusion into his anal cavity and the anus that was spread wide around the phallus-like shaft pushing into it began squeezing down. His breasts, the nipples most of all, perked up as though they were made of aroused flesh instead of solid metal, even more than the clitoris he'd been newly gifted with. And lastly his muzzle worked in a parody of groans, grunts, and semiconscious screaming.

And then they were all acted upon. Fast, hard, and deep, a phallic protrusion of suddenly solidified and warm diamond thrust slickly into his female sex, sending an explosion of pleasure through Zachary's body. As it plowed through the tunnel behind it to reach his womb a second tendril of living crystal slipped around and 'licked' over the clitoris above the widely spread and glimmering opening. Simultaneously Zachary's member was treated to the sensation of a warm sex sliding down over it all the way to the base, and his anus was assaulted by shivering vibrations that set the whole rear of his body buzzing.

What felt like mouths, really just partly-solidified masses of the diamond he struggled in, latched onto both breasts, suckling and licking at the nipples to draw from within the power that dwelt in them in the place of milk from mammaries. Zachary's muzzle was promptly stuffed with a penile shape similar to the one that at the same time was just breaching the entrance to his womb, though this was for little more than Thaarin's own pleasure, as the maw of the charm's core produced no life-giving mana.

Aside from that one superfluous extra bit of stimulation and assault however, Zachary got everything else he needed to get the relief he had been begging for. Before the invader of his sex and the encompassment of his penis had even pulled back for a second go, he came with every bit of pent up tension and stored mana in his form. As did the giant dragon cradling his prison. As his vaginal walls squeezed down on the flesh-like but indestructible shaft within them and his mind momentarily blanked with pleasure as power poured from him and into the egg with a surge of blue light from his nether-lips, Thaarin ROARED as shi hadn't in sexual bliss for years as shi orgasmed joyously alongside him. His penis strained as it emptied a deluge of not sperm but liquid blue fire into Thaarin's spirit, and hir's sent gallons of draconic seed splattering across hir underbelly, the floor, and the piles of gold to hir front.

And while Zachary felt relief at the emptying of the stores of life within him, and the few muscles he could tense went slack, the pseudo-penis that had tapped into his body and the faux-vagina covering his shaft withdrew, he resigned himself to what he knew had happened. His body now powered the spells holding it captive, and reinforced the shell around and in him. He could feel the springs of warmth within him feeding a tiny trickle into the mass of the egg-prison. It was doing so through his still being suckled breasts, continuously teased clitoris, and relentlessly stimulated prostate.

If he could have cried, with a crystalline penis in his muzzle, no lungs, and no tears, he would have by then. But then he felt the egg be lifted from the floor, and with his head still frozen in place (with the exception of the phallus thrusting in and out of his flesh-like muzzle), he was greeted by the lustful, contented, and proud visage of the dragon that had done this to him. Shi held the glowing blue egg in a hand, resting on hir back, basking in the delicious afterglow of the union, the empowering rush of energy that had raced through hir every vein, and the continued teasing of hir erogenous zones that stayed synchronized and pleasured sympathetically with the ones in the Heart's core. Hir penis twitched, jumped, and remained powerfully erect as it felt a muzzle with a slick and smooth forked tongue slid across its girth, hir breasts tingled and twitched with sparks of pleasure as tongues danced across them, and hir clitoris was actively engaged in building towards another orgasm in short order. Idly shi savoring these delights with unconscious thrusts of hir hips and sharp gasps of air. It was, shi dreamily looked up at and admired the jewel in hir hand, easily worth the years of research that had born fruit.

With the Heart feeding hir the Source as though a glacier fed a river, she was now immortal, invincible, and free to seek out the other members of hir kind to commence the effort to rebuild their race. With the Heart in hir possession there was nothing shi would want for or need, and shi had all the time in the world to do whatever shi now wished. Shi could draw energy from this new most powerful treasure in all the world whenever shi felt the urge, could heal any injury the moment it somehow (and the increase in hir powers now made that 'somehow' a ridiculously low possibility) occurred. Shi would need to eat or drink for the pleasure of doing so alone, and no poison or sickness would ever prevent hir from eating or drinking whatever shi pleased. Hir endurance would be nigh unlimited, as would be hir capacity for pleasuring hirself or mating with others of hir kind. Hir life would now take on a perfectness and purpose that prior no other dragon or human could have imagined, all of it made possible by the Heart.

Eyeing the jewel in hir paw one last time, shi knew that to take any chance at all in losing such a treasure was a chance shi could never dream of allowing. Shi had, after all, sworn to the human the blessing had been crafted from that shi'd take every measure to protect it. Bending forward, shi resolutely pressed the narrow end of the egg to hir slit, teased hir nub just a tad, before casting a spell from hir claw-tips that would loosen hir body enough to accept it. Then with fondness shi pushed the charm in to secure it where it could never be stolen.

Zachary, looking headfirst into the slick tunnel of undulating flesh before him, once again tried to scream. His last, single remaining hope had been that if kept in the rest of Thaarin's immense horde, no matter how thoroughly guarded by wards and other dangers, maybe a particularly hardy thief or wizard could snatch him to safety, overcome the magic holding him, safely extract him, and return him to a human being again. That hope was dashed as thoroughly as a pane of glass being struck by a blacksmith's hammer as Thaarin gave the egg another push. Hir muscles undulated, seized it in a mighty grip, and as it began progressing up hir tunnel to hir womb he felt another sudden invasion into his own; quickly followed by another warm and wet caress slide down his member.

Thaarin teased the core of the Heart a bit more, performing a bit of magical masturbation as shi felt more energy built within it again as sexual stimulation activated it, hir vaginal walls squeezing the magical engine further along and swallowing it completely. Hir penis shuddered, and shi leaned forward to lap at the tip of it in pleasured bliss as the core's permanent erection was stroked by both phantom vagina and faux-tongue. Hir real member felt mirrored ministrations, the feeling of thrusting into and out of the core's vagina, and the additional benefit of the pseudo-penis pumping in and out of the core's muzzle. Hir rod was assailed by the feeling of pumping into and out of a perfectly contoured draconic vagina that was as slick as shi wished it to be. Hir clitoris felt like it was being lapped by a saliva soaked tongue of an expertly attending male the whole time the egg travelled up hir tunnel, rubbing hir walls as it went. And overlaying its path was the sensation of a perfectly sized male hammering into hir over and over. Thaarin was purring more than shi had in longer than shi cared to remember, with hir hips thrusting in time to the sensual caresses, and hir tail lashing like a gigantic bullwhip.

Shi kept up the teasing of hirself, the artifact, and all pleasurable spots on both their bodies until shi felt the egg breach the wall of hir cervix. At that, shi gave one final strong tug with hir vaginal walls, pulled the treasure into its permanent resting home, and enjoyably again drew the object within to orgasm to pull another wealth of celebratory power into hir body. Hir draconic shaft erupted, splattering hir chest and the floor with seed that shi would never run dry of, and a deluge of feminine juices exited hir vagina as hir cervix closed tightly and permanently behind the Heart's passage. Thaarin's hips thrust into the air as she drew the sensations out as long as shi possible could, savoring and encouraging the spraying of hir seed as long as shi could force it, and clenching hir nethers as lightning bolts of pleasure and power raced from hir core.

That of course meant that Zachary orgasmed shatteringly around the penis ramming into and out of his vagina, and felt his penis seize up as it streamed life into Thaarin. The first release had been teased along by himself, denied, and then delivered only when he had no control. This time Thaarin had done all the teasing, expertly amassing in his form greater levels of pleasure and Life, and briefly the outpourings of light from his spasming metallic shaft were enough to illuminate the walls of the true flesh and blood womb that he knew he would likely never escape from.

Then the light died off to little more than a subtle glow of after-pleasure and continued stimulation, produced by the continual teasing of his lesser pleasure centers and maw, and he was left to his silent and resigned admission of defeat as darkness closed in.

Quite quickly the movable parts of his body shuddered as he was penetrated again. The attempted whimpers from his stuffed muzzle cut-off completely as the false-shaft buried within it redoubled its efforts, and his member was encompassed by what felt like a maw with an expertly skilled tongue.

Thaarin, of course, was celebrating hir night of immortal birth with a well-deserved session of empowerment and intense self-pleasure, and shi was immensely curious at just how many options for play there were when the core of the Heart was surrounded by an amorphous mass of living crystal. Since hir endurance was unlimited, and since the core could never tire out, this first night of hir immortality would be one shi'd ensure shi remember forever. Shi'd let hir arousal cease after shi felt a few hours of straight, hard, and exceptionally earned enjoyment had passed, and then go about finding another member of hir race to share hir gifts with. It was tempting to allow hirself to feel the intense or subtle teasing the core endured, but flying about with a constant erection and aching tits would have been a distraction.

As shi suckled greedily on hir member however, hir and the core again building up to a peak in their male organs (this time Thaarin decided to just tease hir female aspects and those of the core for a few hours, without actual climax)....Shi changed hir mind. Finding a mate could wait another day or so. With unlimited endurance at hir disposal shi decided it'd be fun to simply see how much floor-space shi could cover with hir semen, and how long shi could just resist bringing hirself and the Heart's core to a dual feminine eruption. If shi was going to be immortal then self-control and patience would be exceptionally important.