...or just Transvorb.

Haroooooooooooooooooom...

A loud bestial rumble gave the shoulders of Man Iverson shivers. It made his toes curl up in his boots. Dare he go down the hill and through the line of trees into that clearing to see what had made it? Holding tightly to the straps of his hiking pack and shaking all over like a crack-addict, he descended. Pushed through a narrow pass of trees. Shyly stepped into the ring of the clearing, and saw:

a dragon of sickly-green scales and a copper underbelly on his back and slurping down the end of a scaly mawed-tail. SCHLURRRP. SCHLURRRP. Man Iverson cupped his ears with his hands, but watched on. A massive round bulge was throbbing, crying, kicking on its descent down the dragon's esophagus. The jaws shut. They grinned wide and devilishly―yellowed and zigzagging choppers that the dragon then put a claw to, and began to pick. He flicked his head backward. He swallowed. It was at that moment his stomach became round and swollen, and plates pushed up from it, threatening to pop off. He crooned, lurched forward, belching. Pushing his paws down on his gut as if that'd do anything... except provoke a groan, and more gurgles. After a second belch, the stomach stopped kicking. It was still. The dragon laid his head down on a moss-covered boulder like a pillow.

A sigh.

Man Iverson had come here to do some field work: study the neon-green mushrooms here they called hotcaps and take notes on their relation to the wildlife: which species fed on them, which didn't. What difference those that did and didn't had. But now he was scribbling away notes on this draconic creature―this poison dragon, this draconis-vilus―and oh, would it make a great entry in the Dragonopedia! And now: now he studied those beautiful beautiful teeth! Those sickle-like claws! That―what the what? Man adjusted his glasses. Around the neck of the dragon was a leather necklace. Hanging from the necklace was a yellow-green orb, whirling with miniature storm clouds on the inside. Dragons wore jewelry?

Iverson saw the dragon stir. It shivered, as if it had felt a presence, and then one pale-green eye fixed itself on Iverson. Iverson froze. The pupil of the eye slowly turned away―as if bored with what it saw. Sighing, Iverson wiped sweat from underneath the brim of his hat.

"Like what you see?"

Bolting upright, Man dropped his notepad and pen at his feet. "Great Dragon, King of Beasts..."

"I asked you if you liked what you saw. It was not a call for flattery. Pick your pad up and write, human."

Iverson nodded, bent over with trembling arms and knees. He picked up the pen and pad―never letting his eye leave the dragon. Like he could retaliate if the dragon did strike. After then and there, the dragon did not acknowledge him anymore. Man Iverson drew nearer, with his eyes flicking up to the dragon then back down to the pad ever so often, pen scribbling away. He wrote of things: of the dragon's foul vile stink; of the dragon's gut rippling to the occasional gurgle... of the flash of the orb before the dragon changed.

He stood onto all-fours―

and Iverson watched his wings spread almost far enough to reach each end of the clearing. And then he heard the crackling of bone about the dragon's wings. And then the wings stretched―touched each end. The hooks of each wing sharpened. Claws on the dragon's toes grew long and monstrous. Horn-like ridges grew and ran up the length of the dragon's snout. The snout was elongating. A mane of long sharp thorns rose up out from the dragon's scalp. And then the mane, like a fungi, spread down to his neck, to his back, down his tail. Iverson screamed, clapping shut his ears: the volume of the gut's gurgles interfered with his thoughts. A tidal-wave of rumbles rolled through his toes. Iverson stepped back.

Iverson howled, horror on his face. He backed up against the trunk of an oak. Fingernails dug for dear life into it as the draconic shadow drew up over it. Over him, over the tree, ultimately overshadowing the tree. Digestive juices sloshed and whined until finally the dragon had little an underbelly bulge.

HAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Ecstacy was in the dragon's cry.

On the end of his tail a thin line formed. When the tail split at the line, Iverson saw teeth. A tongue. A tail-maw. A tail-maw just like the one the dragon's prey had had on its tail.

"Yesss," the dragon hissed. "It fits me better than it ever did you, Maraudus. As do your thorns. As does your power." The tail snapped its jaws and nodded, as if to agree. "But I am yet the King of Beasts..."

* * *

Bluejays were chirping on the edge of an Aagendaszyl roof. The sky was bright and blue, and the clouds shifted away to reveal the sun in its golden glory. In the Main Plaza of the town the people had gathered round in a circle, wheel-barrows and sacks of merchandise strewn about, and horses carrying packs led or ridden by men here. In the center was Sini. The dragon of Malygomire Mountainside had yet shown his face―one that had been considered of legend till today they witnessed with their own eyes: the black plates. The purple scales. The perfect wings spreading and reaching to the sky, the sun between them and like a crown high upon his head.

"Here, here," a man cried rushing forward, holding a sack of jingling coin at the top and bottom, "I've brought you a gift O Poison Aspect Who Has Kept Plague From Our Town." Others rushed forward with such gifts: carpets of bear-hide and basilisk-scale; breeches sewn with golden linen; cream-filled sweets of chocolate; rags and rings and sentimental things off the person of the poor.

Sini shook his head. "No. You're all kind people―and wise―to offer your stuff to me," he said. "But you need it more than I do. Really, man. Take back your―hey!―sir! Take your child with you. I can't accept him."

Turning away from the man retrieving his child, Sini met the gaze of a woman. An elderly woman who wore a maroon silk hood over her head and many scarves about her neck. She held in one scraggly hand a crystal orb, in the other a gnarled wooden cane she used as a third leg. A trembling hand brought the cane up off the ground. And at the same time, the other her orb to her face at eye-level.

"Sssssssssinaaaay," she croaked. "I see something... in the orb.... It speakssssssssssssuh."

"Oh?" Sini cocked his head a slight. "What does my future hold?"

She shook her head. "Is not crystal ball.... It says, 'Ssssini. I want to be with Ssssinaaaaay.'" She laid it in Sini's open paw, gently squeezing his with her small hand. "You take this Sini; and may it beeeee... uhh.. in good care-rurrrrr."

"It does," Sini agreed, nodding his head. What else could he say to this crazy delusional old lady except that she had a funny-looking mole on the end of her big nose? He forced a smile. "Thank you." Take it back, he would have told her, had it not looked like she had waited ninety years for this moment and would gasp-then-crumble-into-dust should he have refused. "I'll take good care of it."

Later that day when he had slipped away from the crowds into an abandoned alleyway on the outskirts of town, he pondered. His eyes were on the whirling orb in his paw. He came out on the other end of the alley―on an empty street with the sun setting―then chucked the orb into a rain-drain. The orb splashed distantly in the sewers. Down the flow of the sewer line, it traveled. Eventually it popped out of a pipe outside the town of Aagendasz into the Andergal Stream then downstreamed. It wedged itself between two stones at the bottom of the shallow stream. A sparkle.

The next day, a green-scaled dragon saw the sparkle.

* * *

It had been two days now that he had had the orb; and the dragon Varysh was stronger than ever. Those sickly-green scales, ironically, were glowing with good health. With power. With it, he had absorbed the tail-mawed dragon and grown his tail-maw and mane. And with it, he had absorbed the dragon Kapurnica. An arcane dragon she was, pulsing with her own aura of magic and of intellect. What change had gone through him when he had devoured her: the pale-green of his eyes became fiery and intense; and an unsettling aura of sickly-green always followed him, now.

I want the Dragon Aspect, Varysh thought. His body will be mine and his powers at my disposal. Behind him, his tail maw passed a bed of flowers. It snapped up the petals and stems of daisies on the way. It swallowed. It burped.

Back in town the evening of that same day, "Bye," Sini said to three humans kids, Patty, Cella, and Rigby.

"I don't want you to go!" Cella pouted, her arms windmilling in frustration and whipping the bow-tied teddy bear she held about.

Patty put a hand on her shoulder. "You can't make the dragon stay, little sis," she told her. "The dragon comes when he wants. He goes, too. But he'll visit again sometime, like he said. Like you said―right Sini?"

"Yeah! I like those crunchy bread-rolls with the pork and egg in 'em you guys make."

"Lumpia," Rigby said, soft-spokenly. "It's Ma'am's recipe."

"Tell your ma'am to make like a trillion more the next time I visit. Cella," he addressed, putting one paw over her tiny head of blonde and braided ponytails, "I'll come visit you sometime in the next month. That's a promise."

"You promise?"

"Nope."

"Oh..."

"Just kidding! Yeah, it's a promise. I'll cya round."

"Bye!"; "Bye Sini!"; "Bye!"

It was still a sweet cyan in the sky. But the sun would break soon. Stretching his wings wide enough to embrace the children of elderly-mole-lady and their tiny little shabby of a home, Sini bowed his head, preparing to bounce. Just then there was an ear-splitting roar like chalk on chalkboard! times two! A shadow fell over Sini and the shabby; and Sini received the strangest chill. Turning, his gaze met the darkened figure of Varysh overhead, descending. Varysh swooped down, with talons open and forked tongue out in a hisssss! Sini ducked, avoiding having his head clawed off. A low rumble rolled out from the back of his throat....

"Inside." He did not hear the footsteps of the children, yet. "Inside I said."

They went inside.

Varysh landed lightly on his feet in the center of the stone-paved mini-plaza―delicately too, as if he were a goddamn helicopter. Guillotine me, Sini thought, but Rodscald forbid the fucking plaza and your toenails are intact after that landing. Staring down on the little one snarling with fangs bared, Varysh couldn't suppress his boom of laughter.

As if anticipating Sini to say what was so funny, Varysh quickly clarified: "I was two-hundred twenty when I first challenged the former Dragon Aspect of Malygomire for his title. As the Aspects can decline any challenger, he so did. And yes, I was infuriated! For two-hundred ten years prior I had set myself to be strong, to be wiser, to be an Alpha! And yet no one complimented me in my strengths in other than that I was a dragon, and stronger than most, and wiser than most, and more fit to be... a King! than most. For one-hundred years I've brooded what I lack, and I've made up well over what I had lacked in those categories. However! Only years ago were you chosen, and only years old you are to me.

"Small whelp! Do you think your backward rat-toothed snarl frightens me? Do you think I am such a fool to think you could best me by strength alone―when of course we both know our poisons, to one another, will do nothing? No. You will not best me today, little one, little baby whelpling, Siniboo. Sini mini itty-bitty jewels-in-the-treasure-hoard." Not an insult to his jewels! Alas! "But I did not come here today to mock you, or to best you in battle, small sissy drake. I came―" his tail whipping forward, screeching from its maw of acid spittle, "to devour you!"

Sini gasped. The orb of yellow-green swinging about the rearing Varysh Sini reckoned was familiar. The mole-lady! Sini and the orb were destined―or so mole-lady had said. Sini squinted hard at the mole in his memory until it shape-shifted back into the orb about the neck of Varysh. And then, to himself, Sini nodded.

The tail cleaved at his head. He ducked. He leapt into flight, his wings open like fans, and circled Varysh. Varysh inhaled. A green flamethrower hosed out from his jaws at Sini. Sini did a three-sixty ring around the jet of flame, going "nyah-nyah". A scowling Varysh leapt off and into flight after him.

"I will eat you!" declared Varysh still spewing hoses of flame out at Sini ahead between breaths. Frantically his wings beat. "You could be my great-great-grandhatchling little Sini! But I!―my claim to the title of Aspect is real! and only more-so with age―like wine! Already I've become more powerful than most of the Aspects."

Civilians watched the two dragons duke it out. They clawed at each other, spewed flame at each other, retorted to each other's verbal jabs. A baker gasped―dropping his loaf of garlic Aagendaszyl bread―then pointed at the sky, declaring in his heavy accent "the drackun S-S-Seenee is in the troubell!" as if everyone was supposed to say, "thanks / didn't see it". Green flame jetted out from the sky, streaking across a rooftop and setting it aflame. People screamed. Scattered. Presently Varysh death-hugging Sini shot downward. THUR-UR-UR-RUH-RUM―pavement exploded. Stones flew, rained down on shops and shabbies and ape-shit civilians. Dust clouded the scene. When it became more clear, Sini was beneath the other in a shallow crater. He moaned, whimpered.

Whether to focus on the orb hanging over him or on the pocket behind his neck plate Sini wasn't sure. He chose the latter.

"No," said Varysh, swatting the vial of poison out of his paw. It shattered and spilled onto the streets into stony crevices. "I did not bid you permission to drink. You may not feed until the birthday dragon has had his fill first."

"Ah," exclaimed Sini shakily. "It's your b-birthday."

"Yes," said Varysh, "I shall be reborn again as a Dragon-a-Spect!"

This guy, Sini thought. Behind the two of them, the mawed tail had went its own way, snapping at civilians―swallowing whichever ones it could reach. Sini saw two sets of dangling legs go down at once. He heard a nasty croak sound on the swallow. As if it has a mind of its own, Sini thought on.

He saw Varysh crane his head around to view the tail, mumble, "Blegh, humans." Quickly he jolted out from underneath Varysh. He rose to his feet then ran. Varysh's head flickered forward. "YOU! YOU SCOUNDREL!"

Exclaiming civilians stumbled out of Sini's way as he shoved his way through. In the midst of the crowd he met a baker. The baker cried "Seenee!" Sini picked up a loaf of bread from the ground.

"Catch!" he said, throwing the loaf football-like in tail-maw's direction.

The tail-maw stiffened. It waited... then snap! Caught it with a snake-like lunge at the loaf. Swallowed it whole. Sini snatched up another dozen loaves from a gridded iron cart beside the baker then hurled them. They fell from the sky into the tail-maw's proximity. But the tail-maw lunged, lunged, lunged, and received each and every one in its flexing jaws. Varysh stood wide-eyed and jaws open, watching each loaf vanish. On the final snatch―which was tough to catch―the tail reached out and yaaaaanked the dragon backward. Oh, he fell! Fell on his ass, and hiccuped.

"CATCH!"

The last loaf he tossed straight at Varysh's face. Varysh's wide eyes went to his tail; and in a flicker, his tail went to and before his wide eyes; snatched the loaf in midair. And then they landed on Varysh. His face. It stuck, swallowed his head, making sucking-motions at the lips as some attempt to plunge him down.

"Dear Rod." Sini broke into a sprint.

Sini leapt, as Varysh was wrestling with the tail-maw gobbling up his horns.

It wasn't Sini alone that knocked the old-dragon down, really, since the dragon was already rearing and about to fall backward; Sini was more that last needle that broke the dragon's back, if you will. Sini fell atop Varysh (THOOOOOOOMPHHH) and on top of Varysh's tail―pushing the tail-maw even further down the dragon's head. A sparkle caught Sini's eye. He yanked at the orb. Varysh growled muffledly. Sini yanked again. The leather necklace tightened on the back of Varysh's neck―Varysh howling and reeling―but it wouldn't snap. Sini worked the loop over the ends of Varysh's horns. Then, however, was the tail: the tail already over Varysh's head so that Sini couldn't take the necklace off. Helping Varysh was Sini's next task. He crawled up Varysh, kicked his hinds into Varysh's chest, then pulled! on the tail. Pull after pull, the tail still clung strong. "Let go. Let go let go let go," Sini growled. No effect.

He tried something different. "Garlic bread." The tail froze up, stopped swallowing, at the base of the neck. "Garlic bread," Sini repeated, "more."

Varysh felt the tail loosen its lips. The maw retreated, leaving a stretchy, slimy rope of dripping drool stuck to Varysh's head and connected to the maw. Varysh blinked open pink eyes. He shook his head: blrblrbluur! All he saw was a circlet being pulled away from his head―then his tail hissing thataway―and then the circlet again as his focus redirected. And Sini put the circlet over his head. Sini leapt, fluttering over Varysh and the tail-maw quickly. Both of them lunged to strike―ending up tugging each other in opposite directions then collapsing to the ground in complete failure.

Looking back, down at Varysh and his tail, it reminded Sini of one of those foreigner finger-traps.

The orb shuddered. The storm within seemed to crackle and lighten, stir violently. The orb fell calm again, and the neon-green of it changed into a bright-violet. The held breaths of the plaza had become hoorahs, and hands clapped, and fists were thrown into the air. Some curses were laid on Varysh as he rose, grumbling, flapping once, twice, then flying. He said:

"I will make sure you've a very painful and slow digestion in my stomach if you do not return to me my orb, dragon."

It was Sini's turn to laugh. "Your orb? Nah. Just nah."

V's pale-green eyes lit intensely, pupils shrinking. "What did you say?"

Sini made a bend around him in flight. "S'not your orb. It's mine. And so is your body!"

Sini tackled the tail from behind, wings wrapping round it. Varysh howled, went spiraling towards the plaza. He swooshed his tail to and fro but couldn't rid it of Sini. And so Sini stuck his fangs in. Blood ran. Varysh screamed deeply. Pain from the fangs wasn't what broke him; it was a feeling he'd never felt before and thought he never would: the sting of venom. Sini's venom.

"IT CAN'T BE! I'M THE POISON DRAGON ASPECT―SOON TO BE!"

Wings went limp. Limbs went limp. The facial expression of Varysh stiffened, twitched on occasion. He landed face-first down the boulevard, skip-skip-skipping across the stone with his skull, each skip making miniature craters. Latched to his tail, and making his way up it swallow by swallow, was Sini. Townspeople came running toward the two, to the crash-site; gathered round, very anxious and yet stiff and silent. Silent whilst Sini unhinged his jaws then made work on the hind of Varysh. A pleased hum resonated from Sini. The ground vibrated. Varysh felt defeat tremble his every bone. Felt weak, felt stupid, felt...

fell... prey.

Imagine a dragon half your size devouring you. Jaws running the length of your tail then to your rear. To your hind legs, angling flat, to fall into the jaws. To your underbelly―ah, the magnificent copper-coloured underbelly strong as zach-metal and dark as mithril. To your―no! not to your wings―your shadow which befalls men, and a flapping dragon cloak, a royalty. To your... to your... gone.

The end of Varysh's snout disappeared behind Sini's closing lips. One fell swallow sent the dragon down the esophagus, and the swell to the stomach. Sini moaned. Tightly-compressed the dragon was within him; footpaws larger than Sini's head kicked at his gut; a snout larger than the footpaws thrashed against the front of his gut; wings sent ripples through the bulge as they flapped with fury. Sini groaned, clutching at his stomach, the stomach fluids stirred in the flurry. Bubbles rose up... his stomach tightened... tightened.... For five whole minutes Sini lay bloating, fighting back foul gas.

...

BWEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRCHHHHHHHHH!!!

(Sini belched much louder and longer than that, to be honest. Author's choice to keep it concise.)

"Oh my Rawwwwwwwwwwwd," Ma'am the Elderly Mole-Lady moaned. She put the back of her hand on her forehead, squinted up at the sky with sweat on her brow, as if cursing the sun for her "heat stroke", and then fainted.

"C'mon ma'am!" Patty scolded, catching her. "He's too young for you. (The green one probably was too.)"

Cella and Rigby trudged through the thick purple fog of gas surrounding Sini. Sini inhaled, blew, and the clouds scattered, dissipated.

"You're some dragon, y'know that?" Rigby said in a hushed tone. "I don't think we'll ever be able to make enough lumpia for you."

As Sini looked toward Rigby, opened his mouth to speak, a furious tremble went through him. Raising his head to the sky: "HAROOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" His legs began to wobble. He blinked. His wings began to tear―felt like they were tearing. His snout and tail began to throb. He called out multiple times while he clutched his gut, letting out as many small burps as he could. Sini was brought to his knees, his stomach tightening. Glowing neon-green markings appeared on his hips like tattoos. Thorns thrusted out of his skull and down his neck and spine, to his tail. Claws elongated and curled into hooks like sickles. His horns grew―grew out and grew spiky ridges along the tops. The same ridges formed up the bridge of his nose. That snouthorn blossomed. And ah! Sini may or may not have had an orgasm just then when a cut appeared in the end of his tail and the tail split in two! The split revealed a set of jaws, with backward fangs like Sini's, and a panting tongue. The tail-maw leaned in... gave Rigby and Cella each a kiss! Another shudder before a growth spurt, then: Sini's shadow rolling up over the children, the crowd, the burning buildings... the burning buildings he gave a flap of his wings to, setting them a-smoke, and put out.

The crowd burst into commotion. Soldiers joked about their job; Marsh Brandy reminesced over the days when Aagendasz was where you "didn't have to deal with this"; a man returning to town with a pole over his shoulders and buckets on each end of the pole looked up at the put-out roofs like "oh".

Suddenly Ma'am the Elderly Mole-Lady revived. "Siiiinaaay. You keeped the orb around yis neck, did you?"

Sini couldn't even. "Repeat?"

"She asked you if you kept the orb she gave you."

"Ah, yes ma'am. I kept the orb thingamajigger. It helped me too!"

She smiled a smile that went as high as the mole on her nose. "Is good. You take very good care of it. Issssss very... sentimental..."

Sini nodded perfunctorily. Looking over to the crowds he noticed they had gathered round him. Jewelry and fine fabrics and cakes were thrown at him. Sini squeaked, stumbling backwards. Each stumbling step shook the earth. I'm huge, Sini remembered. And damn, do I feel full of energy! A strong violet shimmer of hue was cast about him. Rolls of carpet and horses and panels off the top of people's roofs were thrown at him. He screamed, and leapt into the sky. Perfect black wings of purple membranes spread over the orange-red. Sini rose up, glowing violet and green in the darkened upper sky. He kept on flapping and flapping and never looking back. "I'm going home! Yall are crazy!"

Cella frowned. "Old Ma'am drove the dragon away, sissy."

"We all did," Rigby put in.

"Aw, jeez, you guys!" Patty gave each of Cella's ponytails a playful tug. "Sini'll be back in a month's time. He promised you so. A true dragon would never break his promise. Now isn't that right, Rigby?"

"Mn. He'll be back. For his lumpia."