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The mage should’ve died when he and the dragon met. Most mages were, without a second thought, devoured and stripped of their arcane energy when they and the dragon met. But this time a deal was struck.
Telasthas had been exploring the catacombs of Nordra Vere. The catacombs were a network of coffin-filled vaults and dust-caked shelves and blue-flamed candles which for decades had not needed relighting. Magic murmured through his ears as he passed through its passages. Silk-thin threads of magic called leylines ran just a hair below the ceiling, a mess of blue-burning wires that streamed from coffin cases.
The mage stood in a doorless frame. He lowered his torch, lighting the stairs of a narrow passage, and descended.
I feel like I’m closer to Hell every second. The passage wound for ages, the journey down as monotonous as the crackle of fire from his light that kept him company.
So fucking be it, even if he found nothing. He’d brag to his old colleagues from the academy, I stole the secret magics right from under the daemon’s nose, and I won’t share with you any of them. All he needed was a souvenir.
The dragon was his souvenir. You knew that already, didn’t you?
Ah. You knew they struck a deal. Well, anyway.
The mage stepped into a chamber and the dragon felt them immediately. Subtle vibrations, like the ripple a toad leaping lily pad to lily pad in a pond makes.
For two and a half centuries the dragon had had no contact with outsiders, had heard only his own shallow breaths. For two and a half the dragon had felt—gasp . . . he was feeling it now. But he was feeling it more strongly than since he’d fallen asleep.
It was magic. But not just the magic of the catacombs. Mage magic.
Ametheyst eyes beamed open. Both pupils narrowed into penetrating black slits. Beige wings flagged out at his sides. Webby membranes white as milk stretched taut. Violet magic flooded through the crags of his hide like the steam of broken pipework. A mane white as snow flowed down the back of his skull to the tip of his tail and at the tip of his tail danced like ethereal fire, the fur as full as that of a vallyyak fleece.
A hollow exhale. Crackling magic seething out.
Telas almost went pale as the dragon. He scrambled back up the first three steps of the stairs, head over heels.
Before he could make it to the fourth however a magical barrier flashed before him. He slammed into it with a groan, then went toppling down the steps. Stars danced in his blackening vision.
He didn’t even hear his own thud; he was out.
When he awoke he was on the chamber floor, and a dragon on the roof was trudging towards him. Reason returned, and he realized he was staring upside-down. He spun to his feet, remembering his combat stance. The dragon however disregarded it, so before the mage could so much as lift a wrist he found himself in the uncomfortably tight clutches of a forepaw capable of crushing a cow.
To this dragon’s forepaw, a cow’d be no more than a spotted squirrel. Relatively, a spotted squirrel would be like a flea.
As the mage pled and screamed the dragon dragged his nose up his sweet-smelling robes of green-and-gold. They were doused in some human male’s female luring ointment, but the dragon, though male, found plenty pleasure in scenting him. A long, indulgent sniff was followed by a discharge of dragon’s breath that reeked of rotten curry.
It smelled of humid air, of stale earth, but was full of so much crackling energy. In its current Telasthas was swept with a wave of nausea, then of euphoria. He nodded in and out of bliss and, oddly enough, found himself connecting his impression of secret magics with the dragon’s breath.
“You’re brimmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” the dragon rumbled, licking the man; “brim, mm, brim, brimming with magic.” His prehensile tongue became acquainted with the mage’s exposed skin.
Telas got warm shivers. Not because of the wet saliva or of fear, but because of the dragon’s arcane magic cascading through him. The surplus of power sent chills down his spine; he felt like a cell battery left on a charger for an excess of length.
The dragon’s deep eyes lingered in Telas’ before flickering away. They found his own tail. They focused on it. It was swaying and wherever it swayed it mirages of itself lingered.
For a moment Telas watched the blur of the tail’s ethereal fur. “You’ve taken many mages before me.” No Arcane Dragon was born with fur like this. No. They were born only scaled, naked of fur and mane. They wore fur the way a hunter wore a bear-hide. And this one wore the hides of many.
The dragon’s belly quivered to a silent purr. “So I have.”
“You mean to take me next.”
The scaled one hesitated. Why? Who knows. He’d power the human couldn’t dream of, so there was no need to tread lightly.
After some time, “So I do,” he said.
Then Telasthas asked gently, “Is it not your desire to take many mages more?”
The dragon’s grin pushed his cheeks up, giving his eyes the shape of ironic frowns. “You ask so many questions, mage. You are curious. I love the curious, especially the ones curious about me. You won’t resist, then?”
“ ‘Resistance’ suggests conflict. Dragon, call me ‘Telasthas,’ or just ‘Telas’ for short—I insist. D’ you’ve a name?”
“Mmm, Telasthas, yes, a tasty name for a tasty man. Names have power, Telasthas. My answer is ‘yes, I have a name,’ but do I wish to empower you?”
“Well I don’t wish for you to, dragon. Only, I wish to know the name of the beast magnificent before me.”
The dragon’s eyes studied him, trying to guess his game. They couldn’t. “ ‘Magnificent,’ yes; ‘beast,’ hm, not magnificent enough a noun. Clever, mage. But you won’t have of me my name.”
“Dragon, then. I’ll call you Dragon. So let me ask you again, and answer me this time. Is it not your desire to take many mages more?”
“Oh, as many as I may. It’s been a quarter a millennia since I’ve seen the light of day; since I’ve tasted.”
Telas sighed relief. So say the tales hold true. ‘Lost since the Silver Times. Active but asleep. Banished to the dark, but waiting to be found.’
Better than a souvenir. He found his secret magic. Now all he needed was to keep himself from being eaten by it.
How do you avoid the fangs of a beast gone without food since your great-great-grandfather’s days? Telas thought of a saying his father used to say: Give a man a fish, it’ll satisfy him for a meal. Teach a man to fish, he’ll satisfy himself. Could Telas assume, then, Give a dragon a mage and he’ll be satisfied for a meal; teach a dragon to mage . . . ? Well, no. That analogy wouldn’t make any sense here. Yet, like a young boy trying to fit a trapezoid into a triangle for a chocolate chip cookie, he couldn’t be dissuaded from searching for in it some logical soundness.
“You look stuck.” The dragon chuckled, having watched the mage’s expression go from calm to contemplative to surprised. “Yes, I don’t think you have thought this through. You’ve checkmated yourself, man. I say so because I know you men like your chess.”
“On the contrary, Dragon, I don’t think you have.”
It took the dragon a second to backtrack. He shrugged. Seeming to enjoy the conversation he set the mage on his feet.
Wrenching his robe dry of saliva, the mage continued. “I know you’re The Secret Magic so I know how long you’ve been beneath Nordra Vere. You must be hungry, ay?
“I came here because I was curious about The Secret Magic. I wanted to know what it was. If this mage is curious then how many more mages are curious, do you think? I’ll tell you. Dozens and dozens more, dragon. I have mage contacts, and they are all very well interested in seeing something of your title, I assure.”
The scaled one scowled, his eyes following the mage who had begun pacing about the chamber. “Your point is?”
A quarter a thousand years of rest have dulled his wits, Telas thought. He stopped pacing, looking frustrated.
“Contacts, Dragon! Contacts! I’m saying that this someone knows a someone who knows a many more someones and all of them would die to see The Secret Magic this one has discovered. Of course, this one must live to tell the tale!”
“Ah,” the dragon said as straight-faced as possibly. On the inside, he just face-pawed himself. “Of course.”
Not only did the mage make him feel a fool. Telasthas, unlike the rest of his “woe is me” prey, actually presented some very sound logic that made him reconsider eating him. Good thing Telas didn’t use the fishing analogy.
The dragon wanted to distrust him but didn’t know how. The mage saw him scratching his head with a wing-claw.
“Ah, those pesky humans,” Telas said, “always playing mind-games with dragons before swallowing them whole.”
The dragon harrumphed, too high-strung to appreciate an ironic joke. “So . . . you would agree to a bond?”
“What reason have I to disagree?”
The dragon flashed a grin. So great was it, it could have crossed the man’s old dorm room.
The man watched the dragon pace to a wall then place on it his paw. Around his paw was drawn a square indentation. Then the part of the wall within it drew inward, revealing a boxxy compartment. Flashing into the compartment, there appeared a smoking leatherback book. The dragon took it then came and laid it before the mage, its text archaic and burning the bright blue of day-sky.
“Pen,” hissed the dragon, and a quill and ink appeared next to the tome with a smoky poof. “Translation,” and the characters of the tome turned to Common.
Watching it gave Telas a dyslexic vertigo. He shook his head then blinked his eyes back into focus. He took a pair of glasses from his robe pocket then put them on and read.
(followed by a string of disclosures in small font, then)
Telas fought the urge to laugh. What a terribly written contract. Making the whole thing null and void would be as simple as not calling the dragon Dragon. Why not “Howie”?
But nah. Telas had something else in mind.
For the sake of ritual he nodded, took the quill from the dragon (it shrank to a size fit for a man), climbed to the top of the inkwell, dipped the nib, hopped down then in the book carefully scribed in cursive his signature across the dotted line after Signed then wrote just below that “September the third.”
Pages burst from the tome in the form of a plume. Presently the tome burst into a brilliant blurple firecracker.
Screened in the smoke, the mage coughed into the fold of his elbow. And smiled, despite his watering eyes.
“Mmmmmmmmmmm Telasthasss, you sign yourself away to me so eaaaaasily. So confident your quill-strokes. You and I’ll become good friends I should think in time.”
“Good friends know each other’s names.”
The dragon shot him a venomous glance.
“Then again, so do the decent friends.”
“There is time yet, man . . . You do not rush me in divulging my secrets.”
Oh, I know. With a wicked smile Telas started for the stairs.
An “I have not dismissed you” froze him in his tracks. He waited, then calmly turned to meet those purple eyes.
“One final word,” the scaled one said; “if we’re to be bonded, mage, we may as well try to,” gaze wavering, “to bond.”
Telas scratched his head, wondering what was going on in the big guy’s. “You’re a paradox. You withhold secrets yet wish to be a friend. You distance yourself yet wish to be close.”
“But either way, you know I am aware of you,” a flicker of eye-fires, “and for that you should be grateful.”
The mage thought on that then silently excused himself.
* * *
Over and over the dragon’s words replayed in his mind. He is aware of me, and so I have his attention. The flower given rain and sun will someday bloom. Into what exactly, he wasn’t gonna let the dragon on about. Not yet. If they were to be “friends,” share in each other a symbiotic relationship, and if the dragon were to still have secrets, who was to say he couldn’t have a fucking secret or two?
He could null the contract whenever he wanted. But he stayed for The Secret Magic.
* * *
Sunlight lanced into his eyes.
He had climbed the stairs to the outside world, the ruins of Nordra Vere crumbled and barren. The blocky entrance of the catacombs fell behind, and he scaled a hill of out the pit of rubble that held the city. Finishing the incline, he dropped his hands to his knees then sighed doggishly. He took the strap canteen off his shoulder. He glugged. He grunted contentedly as he glugged. Water flowed from chin to neck to chest, giving his robe a damp streak down the middle.
Then he stood on the edge of the incline, peering over the city.
“No, nothing can bloom here I don’t think. This is the place things go to to die.” But from the ash a phoenix is born.
Then he was gone with the wind.
* * *
When the sun dipped to three o’clock he shook his canteen, tasted the last drop on his tongue. He strapped it as he left Omelia Woods, a stretch of dainty gold- and red-leafed maples which had the occasional green one. Shafts of sun broke through its autumnal ceiling. Telas used to stroll Omelia’s little meandering trails on his days off from school. The sunny river-jack creaks and juts of grass and hares and bluejays and bees and whatnot: they sort of soothed him, refreshed him for another round of homework when he got back.
Three years had passed since he’d been there. Since he’d been to Cayvrij Academy. And he was bound there now.
He had old colleagues to kill.
He came onto the the city Cayvrij’s smoothly-cobbled streets. It was a city built on the landslide slope of a mountain forested in the colors of Fall. It was a city of boxxy ungridded buildings that overlapped each other and were white as chalk. Stairs zagged through narrow gaps between neighboring buildings. Domes the color of a young night sky roofed the buildings. All in all, a work of geometry.
He came up a flat upslope that had two stairs for every forty steps of pathway, and went eight stories up with no breaks in between. Ending the upslope were thirty steep and narrow steps. They led to the door of a chalky passage protruding from the mountainside. The passage burrowed far into the mountain, bright green moss growing over its arched top.
And here was home, Telas thought.
Bent over with his hands on his knees, he panted for a while at the top of the steps. Then he knocked on the door. It had a peephole the shape of a crescent.
A blonde-locked man in robes greeted him as he would an old friend. Ushered inside, Telas said a thanks, wiping his boots off on a welcome mat.
Once Telas had stated to the blond-locked man his business (“Ah, just want to reacquaint with some old colleagues of mine.”), he was let past. He flowed from room to room, greeting the ones who were still attending since he was there (they were in their fourth and fifth years, mostly), with the casual pleasantries. And they gave theirs.
Hey Tel, how’ve you been man?
Where’s the wind taken you?
Why’d you drop out?
“Ah! Well, friend.” “You know, to dragon’s lairs.” “I uh decided to study independently.”
For our tale, the real reason he dropped out is unimportant.
He rerouted each conversation, hurrying more the more colleagues he’d already talked to. Instead of why he dropped out, he told of an exciting tale!
Beneath Nordra Vere a forgotten chamber, he told of. Beneath Nordra Vere secret magics so powerful they could turn a dull wit class-skipper into an Archmagistar, he told of. Underground Archives, he told of; thousands of bookshelves of esoteric tomes and scrolls—the human equivalent of The Library except more secretive, he told of!
The many mages, being colleagues of his, colleagues who’d always known Telasthas to tell truth and never lies (because he excelled in the magics of words and could influence them to think so with the effort of a wrist-flick), wowed and woahed and stopped all studying and experimentation to listen attentively.
Everyone wanted to see the secret magics. Almost everyone begged him to take them down to the catacombs.
Telasthas put a fist to his chin, pretending to think of something just then, then exclaimed; for he had a way to fulfill their wishes! He assigned each of his many mage colleagues—the whole of thirty-one—a date. The third of September or the twenty-third, for example.
Today was the third.
On the day they were assigned they’d get to go with him and see the secret magics themselves. “For I can take only one a day,” he told them, to their initial dismay.
Why only one? He wouldn’t tell.
Why so secret?
“If I weren’t they wouldn’t be such secret magics,” he replied. And anyone who knew about such magical truck would agree.
A very lucky (or perhaps very unlucky) colleague of his, Daren Bwightendow, heard the tale first. Daren Bwightendow got chosen to go on September the third. Ah, that was today, he seemed to realize! With a joyful cry he jumped from his armchair, leapfrogged off a floorboard (his hands still holding homework), and in a wild mid-air spin hurled the homework like a discus. A hurricane of parchment breezed about the room.
Telasthas smiled and hugged Daren. Daren froze, open-mouthed and confuzzled-looking. Behind his colleague’s shoulder Telas’ face was red and his eyes watery. Telas let go then left the room for the hall, gesturing for Daren to follow. And hesitantly he did.
* * *
Stars hung in the half-day, half-night sky.
They stood atop the hill of rubble looking down on Nordra Vere in the last light of day, the light that turns the lands directly below it red and the lands indirectly below it blue. The ruins weren’t blue but blue-black. In the dark, they had to descend carefully.
Telasthas came behind his colleague down the stairs leading into the chamber. At the bottom of the stairs, the dragon caught sight of their robes and smirked. Shortly afterward Daren saw the dragon.
And screamed like a girl.
He spun around and he looked up at Telas, lower jaw flapping in horror. His eyes searched for answers in Telas’ own, and for a second Telas hesitated. Then Telas kicked him squarely in the chest.
A wheezing gasp, a thump, a roll across the chamber, a weak whimper . . .
The dragon had the face of a hatchling who had been given a rat.
Sniffing and patrolling round the mage on the floor, he went churring, “Ahhhh . . . ! Telasthasssssss-mmmmmm . . . ! You’ve returned as promised and brought me a nice little morsel . . .” He padded and padded.
Telas nodded, touching the dragon’s tail as it slid by. His eyes were solemn. “Per minimum.”
The dragon nipped up the squeamish mage by the back of the robe collar. The mage cried “Piirp!” A fireball flashed into his hand, poised to throw. The dragon deeply snorted in through the nose. The fireball smoked out. The mage gasped. Leylines threaded out from his body and seeped and seeped and seeped into the purring dragon’s nostrils.
“Yer par is delishush,” he growled through gritting teeth. He inhaled nasally hard, ropes of magic waggling from his nose like noodle whiskers.
Energy fled the mage in abrupt zaps.
The mage’s body stuttered to every power-draining snort.
Telasthas winced, but wouldn’t peel his eyes away.
Daren Bwightendow, the mage he once called “colleague,” nodded in and out of life, his skin pale and eyes the color of ash.
Telasthas watched the dragon swallow him with a slobbery jaw-snap. The snake-like neck flexed, a man-bulge rolling down the albino scales.
The dragon caught Telasthas watching, and purred. “You like?”
The man answered him with a bite of his lip.
Louder the dragon purred, and strode over Telasthas. His underside like a great ceiling cast a shadow. Telas felt his dragon-warmth, heard his belly growl and gurgle. Due to size ratio, the dragon’s bulge hardly made a dent in his natural curve. Before Telas could so much as blush and take a step back the dragon, with a soft song fluctuating in his throat, lay down on him..
Telas’ whole world now, filled with the loud sounds of a dragon digesting his meal. It’s not every day you find yourself beneath a friendly dragon turning an old friend into an arcane soup. Poking his head out from underneath and reaching out to the floor, he tried to pull out. A metallic belch rocked the chamber and he ducked back under, a shyness on his face. Then he peeped out again, dazed by the dragon’s handsomeness . . .
Ecstasy and triumph the dragon bugled. His tail lashed wildly about the chamber. With a chamber-shaking ripple, a second coat of fur scoured over his first, from neck to tail. It happened so quick, you would’ve thought the friction’d leave skid-marks. Snowy fur like flames leaped and snapped and, below, his body’s leylines flared brightly.
“It’s been sooo looooong,” the dragon said musically. Magic took the shape of claws, grinding his dull horns into sharp points. Magic lapped at his legs, his wings, his all, chiseling into him handsomeness and power.
Beneath the dragon Telasthas felt every surge of power, every creak of and tear of bone and muscle. How is it he’s transforming so . . . vigorously after one meal? the mage wondered, not worried for himself but curious. So close to the dragon physically, he even caught tastes of the dragon’s bliss brushing over his consciousness, the way a butterfly that has perched on your ear brushes over your hair when it flutters off.
Telas was glad he killed his colleague. No, take that back. Telasthas wasn’t so proud of it, but the dragon was; and Telasthas was feeling more and more like the dragon. And gosh he loved it.
Not just growing, but transforming, the dragon felt the flow of magic coursing through his body. . . .
The mage curled his fingers into the dragon’s belly and kneaded, kneaded deep, relishing the return pleasure via the connection of consciousness.
“Keep going.” The growing dragon huffed, moaned. If he had been bound by iron cuffs his growth would’ve torn them away by now. If he had worn a size nine in dragon, he’d need at least a nine-and-a-half at this point. And still he soared.
“How?” The man’s words came choked, partly in pleasure and partly disbelief.
“How will you keep giving me exquisite massages, or how . . .”
“How so much gain?”
The Law of Energy Exchange stated that energy wasn’t made. Energy was only moved, redirected. Digesting Daren seemed to be reaping more magical energy from Daren than Daren ever had, no offense Daren.
A polished glitter in his eyes, the dragon smiled. “When a wilted flower perks up, do you think it has gained so much? It has only had a little sun and water.” He paused. “Two and a half a century ago, mankind trembled to the whisper of my name. They feared to write it into history, even. See where their Archmagistar put me? Point being, I’m only a fractal of the force I was once before, Telasthas. Don’t give your little mage man too much credit; he has only reawakened a part of me which was already there—dormant.
“And with you feeding me from the outside, I’ll reclaim all of my old power and more, mage. Already I can feel it! Aaaaaaaaaah!” He reared, and his scales burst from him. The shedded scales lay scattered at his feet, and where they once were a new coat of scales glimmered in the chamber’s sourceless light now. Undoubtedly, he was now a size eleven in dragon. “And with the many more mages to come I don’t doubt I’ll become as great as the Aspect Enox—greater, even.”
Thoughtfully Telas stroked the dragon’s meaty gut.
“And then you’ll tell me your name,” he said.
The dragon paused, looked seriously back at the man. He showed some hybrid of concern and amusement. And then he chuckled darkly, and so did the man, and by and by they fell asleep feeling comfortable with one another.
Continue here > > >
Telasthas had been exploring the catacombs of Nordra Vere. The catacombs were a network of coffin-filled vaults and dust-caked shelves and blue-flamed candles which for decades had not needed relighting. Magic murmured through his ears as he passed through its passages. Silk-thin threads of magic called leylines ran just a hair below the ceiling, a mess of blue-burning wires that streamed from coffin cases.
The mage stood in a doorless frame. He lowered his torch, lighting the stairs of a narrow passage, and descended.
I feel like I’m closer to Hell every second. The passage wound for ages, the journey down as monotonous as the crackle of fire from his light that kept him company.
So fucking be it, even if he found nothing. He’d brag to his old colleagues from the academy, I stole the secret magics right from under the daemon’s nose, and I won’t share with you any of them. All he needed was a souvenir.
The dragon was his souvenir. You knew that already, didn’t you?
Ah. You knew they struck a deal. Well, anyway.
The mage stepped into a chamber and the dragon felt them immediately. Subtle vibrations, like the ripple a toad leaping lily pad to lily pad in a pond makes.
For two and a half centuries the dragon had had no contact with outsiders, had heard only his own shallow breaths. For two and a half the dragon had felt—gasp . . . he was feeling it now. But he was feeling it more strongly than since he’d fallen asleep.
It was magic. But not just the magic of the catacombs. Mage magic.
Ametheyst eyes beamed open. Both pupils narrowed into penetrating black slits. Beige wings flagged out at his sides. Webby membranes white as milk stretched taut. Violet magic flooded through the crags of his hide like the steam of broken pipework. A mane white as snow flowed down the back of his skull to the tip of his tail and at the tip of his tail danced like ethereal fire, the fur as full as that of a vallyyak fleece.
A hollow exhale. Crackling magic seething out.
Telas almost went pale as the dragon. He scrambled back up the first three steps of the stairs, head over heels.
Before he could make it to the fourth however a magical barrier flashed before him. He slammed into it with a groan, then went toppling down the steps. Stars danced in his blackening vision.
He didn’t even hear his own thud; he was out.
When he awoke he was on the chamber floor, and a dragon on the roof was trudging towards him. Reason returned, and he realized he was staring upside-down. He spun to his feet, remembering his combat stance. The dragon however disregarded it, so before the mage could so much as lift a wrist he found himself in the uncomfortably tight clutches of a forepaw capable of crushing a cow.
To this dragon’s forepaw, a cow’d be no more than a spotted squirrel. Relatively, a spotted squirrel would be like a flea.
As the mage pled and screamed the dragon dragged his nose up his sweet-smelling robes of green-and-gold. They were doused in some human male’s female luring ointment, but the dragon, though male, found plenty pleasure in scenting him. A long, indulgent sniff was followed by a discharge of dragon’s breath that reeked of rotten curry.
It smelled of humid air, of stale earth, but was full of so much crackling energy. In its current Telasthas was swept with a wave of nausea, then of euphoria. He nodded in and out of bliss and, oddly enough, found himself connecting his impression of secret magics with the dragon’s breath.
“You’re brimmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” the dragon rumbled, licking the man; “brim, mm, brim, brimming with magic.” His prehensile tongue became acquainted with the mage’s exposed skin.
Telas got warm shivers. Not because of the wet saliva or of fear, but because of the dragon’s arcane magic cascading through him. The surplus of power sent chills down his spine; he felt like a cell battery left on a charger for an excess of length.
The dragon’s deep eyes lingered in Telas’ before flickering away. They found his own tail. They focused on it. It was swaying and wherever it swayed it mirages of itself lingered.
For a moment Telas watched the blur of the tail’s ethereal fur. “You’ve taken many mages before me.” No Arcane Dragon was born with fur like this. No. They were born only scaled, naked of fur and mane. They wore fur the way a hunter wore a bear-hide. And this one wore the hides of many.
The dragon’s belly quivered to a silent purr. “So I have.”
“You mean to take me next.”
The scaled one hesitated. Why? Who knows. He’d power the human couldn’t dream of, so there was no need to tread lightly.
After some time, “So I do,” he said.
Then Telasthas asked gently, “Is it not your desire to take many mages more?”
The dragon’s grin pushed his cheeks up, giving his eyes the shape of ironic frowns. “You ask so many questions, mage. You are curious. I love the curious, especially the ones curious about me. You won’t resist, then?”
“ ‘Resistance’ suggests conflict. Dragon, call me ‘Telasthas,’ or just ‘Telas’ for short—I insist. D’ you’ve a name?”
“Mmm, Telasthas, yes, a tasty name for a tasty man. Names have power, Telasthas. My answer is ‘yes, I have a name,’ but do I wish to empower you?”
“Well I don’t wish for you to, dragon. Only, I wish to know the name of the beast magnificent before me.”
The dragon’s eyes studied him, trying to guess his game. They couldn’t. “ ‘Magnificent,’ yes; ‘beast,’ hm, not magnificent enough a noun. Clever, mage. But you won’t have of me my name.”
“Dragon, then. I’ll call you Dragon. So let me ask you again, and answer me this time. Is it not your desire to take many mages more?”
“Oh, as many as I may. It’s been a quarter a millennia since I’ve seen the light of day; since I’ve tasted.”
Telas sighed relief. So say the tales hold true. ‘Lost since the Silver Times. Active but asleep. Banished to the dark, but waiting to be found.’
Better than a souvenir. He found his secret magic. Now all he needed was to keep himself from being eaten by it.
How do you avoid the fangs of a beast gone without food since your great-great-grandfather’s days? Telas thought of a saying his father used to say: Give a man a fish, it’ll satisfy him for a meal. Teach a man to fish, he’ll satisfy himself. Could Telas assume, then, Give a dragon a mage and he’ll be satisfied for a meal; teach a dragon to mage . . . ? Well, no. That analogy wouldn’t make any sense here. Yet, like a young boy trying to fit a trapezoid into a triangle for a chocolate chip cookie, he couldn’t be dissuaded from searching for in it some logical soundness.
“You look stuck.” The dragon chuckled, having watched the mage’s expression go from calm to contemplative to surprised. “Yes, I don’t think you have thought this through. You’ve checkmated yourself, man. I say so because I know you men like your chess.”
“On the contrary, Dragon, I don’t think you have.”
It took the dragon a second to backtrack. He shrugged. Seeming to enjoy the conversation he set the mage on his feet.
Wrenching his robe dry of saliva, the mage continued. “I know you’re The Secret Magic so I know how long you’ve been beneath Nordra Vere. You must be hungry, ay?
“I came here because I was curious about The Secret Magic. I wanted to know what it was. If this mage is curious then how many more mages are curious, do you think? I’ll tell you. Dozens and dozens more, dragon. I have mage contacts, and they are all very well interested in seeing something of your title, I assure.”
The scaled one scowled, his eyes following the mage who had begun pacing about the chamber. “Your point is?”
A quarter a thousand years of rest have dulled his wits, Telas thought. He stopped pacing, looking frustrated.
“Contacts, Dragon! Contacts! I’m saying that this someone knows a someone who knows a many more someones and all of them would die to see The Secret Magic this one has discovered. Of course, this one must live to tell the tale!”
“Ah,” the dragon said as straight-faced as possibly. On the inside, he just face-pawed himself. “Of course.”
Not only did the mage make him feel a fool. Telasthas, unlike the rest of his “woe is me” prey, actually presented some very sound logic that made him reconsider eating him. Good thing Telas didn’t use the fishing analogy.
The dragon wanted to distrust him but didn’t know how. The mage saw him scratching his head with a wing-claw.
“Ah, those pesky humans,” Telas said, “always playing mind-games with dragons before swallowing them whole.”
The dragon harrumphed, too high-strung to appreciate an ironic joke. “So . . . you would agree to a bond?”
“What reason have I to disagree?”
The dragon flashed a grin. So great was it, it could have crossed the man’s old dorm room.
The man watched the dragon pace to a wall then place on it his paw. Around his paw was drawn a square indentation. Then the part of the wall within it drew inward, revealing a boxxy compartment. Flashing into the compartment, there appeared a smoking leatherback book. The dragon took it then came and laid it before the mage, its text archaic and burning the bright blue of day-sky.
“Pen,” hissed the dragon, and a quill and ink appeared next to the tome with a smoky poof. “Translation,” and the characters of the tome turned to Common.
Watching it gave Telas a dyslexic vertigo. He shook his head then blinked his eyes back into focus. He took a pair of glasses from his robe pocket then put them on and read.
The Bond.
You indebt yourself to the dragon you call Dragon. You are bound to feed Dragon one mage per day minimum. Comply, and Dragon shall be prohibited from eating you. Fail, and you shall teleport to the chamber of Dragon; and Dragon shall be relinquished from his Telasthas-eating prohibition. Only your demise shall relinquish you from this bond.(followed by a string of disclosures in small font, then)
Signed:
Date:Telas fought the urge to laugh. What a terribly written contract. Making the whole thing null and void would be as simple as not calling the dragon Dragon. Why not “Howie”?
But nah. Telas had something else in mind.
For the sake of ritual he nodded, took the quill from the dragon (it shrank to a size fit for a man), climbed to the top of the inkwell, dipped the nib, hopped down then in the book carefully scribed in cursive his signature across the dotted line after Signed then wrote just below that “September the third.”
Pages burst from the tome in the form of a plume. Presently the tome burst into a brilliant blurple firecracker.
Screened in the smoke, the mage coughed into the fold of his elbow. And smiled, despite his watering eyes.
“Mmmmmmmmmmm Telasthasss, you sign yourself away to me so eaaaaasily. So confident your quill-strokes. You and I’ll become good friends I should think in time.”
“Good friends know each other’s names.”
The dragon shot him a venomous glance.
“Then again, so do the decent friends.”
“There is time yet, man . . . You do not rush me in divulging my secrets.”
Oh, I know. With a wicked smile Telas started for the stairs.
An “I have not dismissed you” froze him in his tracks. He waited, then calmly turned to meet those purple eyes.
“One final word,” the scaled one said; “if we’re to be bonded, mage, we may as well try to,” gaze wavering, “to bond.”
Telas scratched his head, wondering what was going on in the big guy’s. “You’re a paradox. You withhold secrets yet wish to be a friend. You distance yourself yet wish to be close.”
“But either way, you know I am aware of you,” a flicker of eye-fires, “and for that you should be grateful.”
The mage thought on that then silently excused himself.
* * *
Over and over the dragon’s words replayed in his mind. He is aware of me, and so I have his attention. The flower given rain and sun will someday bloom. Into what exactly, he wasn’t gonna let the dragon on about. Not yet. If they were to be “friends,” share in each other a symbiotic relationship, and if the dragon were to still have secrets, who was to say he couldn’t have a fucking secret or two?
He could null the contract whenever he wanted. But he stayed for The Secret Magic.
* * *
Sunlight lanced into his eyes.
He had climbed the stairs to the outside world, the ruins of Nordra Vere crumbled and barren. The blocky entrance of the catacombs fell behind, and he scaled a hill of out the pit of rubble that held the city. Finishing the incline, he dropped his hands to his knees then sighed doggishly. He took the strap canteen off his shoulder. He glugged. He grunted contentedly as he glugged. Water flowed from chin to neck to chest, giving his robe a damp streak down the middle.
Then he stood on the edge of the incline, peering over the city.
“No, nothing can bloom here I don’t think. This is the place things go to to die.” But from the ash a phoenix is born.
Then he was gone with the wind.
* * *
When the sun dipped to three o’clock he shook his canteen, tasted the last drop on his tongue. He strapped it as he left Omelia Woods, a stretch of dainty gold- and red-leafed maples which had the occasional green one. Shafts of sun broke through its autumnal ceiling. Telas used to stroll Omelia’s little meandering trails on his days off from school. The sunny river-jack creaks and juts of grass and hares and bluejays and bees and whatnot: they sort of soothed him, refreshed him for another round of homework when he got back.
Three years had passed since he’d been there. Since he’d been to Cayvrij Academy. And he was bound there now.
He had old colleagues to kill.
He came onto the the city Cayvrij’s smoothly-cobbled streets. It was a city built on the landslide slope of a mountain forested in the colors of Fall. It was a city of boxxy ungridded buildings that overlapped each other and were white as chalk. Stairs zagged through narrow gaps between neighboring buildings. Domes the color of a young night sky roofed the buildings. All in all, a work of geometry.
He came up a flat upslope that had two stairs for every forty steps of pathway, and went eight stories up with no breaks in between. Ending the upslope were thirty steep and narrow steps. They led to the door of a chalky passage protruding from the mountainside. The passage burrowed far into the mountain, bright green moss growing over its arched top.
And here was home, Telas thought.
Bent over with his hands on his knees, he panted for a while at the top of the steps. Then he knocked on the door. It had a peephole the shape of a crescent.
A blonde-locked man in robes greeted him as he would an old friend. Ushered inside, Telas said a thanks, wiping his boots off on a welcome mat.
Once Telas had stated to the blond-locked man his business (“Ah, just want to reacquaint with some old colleagues of mine.”), he was let past. He flowed from room to room, greeting the ones who were still attending since he was there (they were in their fourth and fifth years, mostly), with the casual pleasantries. And they gave theirs.
Hey Tel, how’ve you been man?
Where’s the wind taken you?
Why’d you drop out?
“Ah! Well, friend.” “You know, to dragon’s lairs.” “I uh decided to study independently.”
For our tale, the real reason he dropped out is unimportant.
He rerouted each conversation, hurrying more the more colleagues he’d already talked to. Instead of why he dropped out, he told of an exciting tale!
Beneath Nordra Vere a forgotten chamber, he told of. Beneath Nordra Vere secret magics so powerful they could turn a dull wit class-skipper into an Archmagistar, he told of. Underground Archives, he told of; thousands of bookshelves of esoteric tomes and scrolls—the human equivalent of The Library except more secretive, he told of!
The many mages, being colleagues of his, colleagues who’d always known Telasthas to tell truth and never lies (because he excelled in the magics of words and could influence them to think so with the effort of a wrist-flick), wowed and woahed and stopped all studying and experimentation to listen attentively.
Everyone wanted to see the secret magics. Almost everyone begged him to take them down to the catacombs.
Telasthas put a fist to his chin, pretending to think of something just then, then exclaimed; for he had a way to fulfill their wishes! He assigned each of his many mage colleagues—the whole of thirty-one—a date. The third of September or the twenty-third, for example.
Today was the third.
On the day they were assigned they’d get to go with him and see the secret magics themselves. “For I can take only one a day,” he told them, to their initial dismay.
Why only one? He wouldn’t tell.
Why so secret?
“If I weren’t they wouldn’t be such secret magics,” he replied. And anyone who knew about such magical truck would agree.
A very lucky (or perhaps very unlucky) colleague of his, Daren Bwightendow, heard the tale first. Daren Bwightendow got chosen to go on September the third. Ah, that was today, he seemed to realize! With a joyful cry he jumped from his armchair, leapfrogged off a floorboard (his hands still holding homework), and in a wild mid-air spin hurled the homework like a discus. A hurricane of parchment breezed about the room.
Telasthas smiled and hugged Daren. Daren froze, open-mouthed and confuzzled-looking. Behind his colleague’s shoulder Telas’ face was red and his eyes watery. Telas let go then left the room for the hall, gesturing for Daren to follow. And hesitantly he did.
* * *
Stars hung in the half-day, half-night sky.
They stood atop the hill of rubble looking down on Nordra Vere in the last light of day, the light that turns the lands directly below it red and the lands indirectly below it blue. The ruins weren’t blue but blue-black. In the dark, they had to descend carefully.
Telasthas came behind his colleague down the stairs leading into the chamber. At the bottom of the stairs, the dragon caught sight of their robes and smirked. Shortly afterward Daren saw the dragon.
And screamed like a girl.
He spun around and he looked up at Telas, lower jaw flapping in horror. His eyes searched for answers in Telas’ own, and for a second Telas hesitated. Then Telas kicked him squarely in the chest.
A wheezing gasp, a thump, a roll across the chamber, a weak whimper . . .
The dragon had the face of a hatchling who had been given a rat.
Sniffing and patrolling round the mage on the floor, he went churring, “Ahhhh . . . ! Telasthasssssss-mmmmmm . . . ! You’ve returned as promised and brought me a nice little morsel . . .” He padded and padded.
Telas nodded, touching the dragon’s tail as it slid by. His eyes were solemn. “Per minimum.”
The dragon nipped up the squeamish mage by the back of the robe collar. The mage cried “Piirp!” A fireball flashed into his hand, poised to throw. The dragon deeply snorted in through the nose. The fireball smoked out. The mage gasped. Leylines threaded out from his body and seeped and seeped and seeped into the purring dragon’s nostrils.
“Yer par is delishush,” he growled through gritting teeth. He inhaled nasally hard, ropes of magic waggling from his nose like noodle whiskers.
Energy fled the mage in abrupt zaps.
The mage’s body stuttered to every power-draining snort.
Telasthas winced, but wouldn’t peel his eyes away.
Daren Bwightendow, the mage he once called “colleague,” nodded in and out of life, his skin pale and eyes the color of ash.
Telasthas watched the dragon swallow him with a slobbery jaw-snap. The snake-like neck flexed, a man-bulge rolling down the albino scales.
The dragon caught Telasthas watching, and purred. “You like?”
The man answered him with a bite of his lip.
Louder the dragon purred, and strode over Telasthas. His underside like a great ceiling cast a shadow. Telas felt his dragon-warmth, heard his belly growl and gurgle. Due to size ratio, the dragon’s bulge hardly made a dent in his natural curve. Before Telas could so much as blush and take a step back the dragon, with a soft song fluctuating in his throat, lay down on him..
Telas’ whole world now, filled with the loud sounds of a dragon digesting his meal. It’s not every day you find yourself beneath a friendly dragon turning an old friend into an arcane soup. Poking his head out from underneath and reaching out to the floor, he tried to pull out. A metallic belch rocked the chamber and he ducked back under, a shyness on his face. Then he peeped out again, dazed by the dragon’s handsomeness . . .
Ecstasy and triumph the dragon bugled. His tail lashed wildly about the chamber. With a chamber-shaking ripple, a second coat of fur scoured over his first, from neck to tail. It happened so quick, you would’ve thought the friction’d leave skid-marks. Snowy fur like flames leaped and snapped and, below, his body’s leylines flared brightly.
“It’s been sooo looooong,” the dragon said musically. Magic took the shape of claws, grinding his dull horns into sharp points. Magic lapped at his legs, his wings, his all, chiseling into him handsomeness and power.
Beneath the dragon Telasthas felt every surge of power, every creak of and tear of bone and muscle. How is it he’s transforming so . . . vigorously after one meal? the mage wondered, not worried for himself but curious. So close to the dragon physically, he even caught tastes of the dragon’s bliss brushing over his consciousness, the way a butterfly that has perched on your ear brushes over your hair when it flutters off.
Telas was glad he killed his colleague. No, take that back. Telasthas wasn’t so proud of it, but the dragon was; and Telasthas was feeling more and more like the dragon. And gosh he loved it.
Not just growing, but transforming, the dragon felt the flow of magic coursing through his body. . . .
The mage curled his fingers into the dragon’s belly and kneaded, kneaded deep, relishing the return pleasure via the connection of consciousness.
“Keep going.” The growing dragon huffed, moaned. If he had been bound by iron cuffs his growth would’ve torn them away by now. If he had worn a size nine in dragon, he’d need at least a nine-and-a-half at this point. And still he soared.
“How?” The man’s words came choked, partly in pleasure and partly disbelief.
“How will you keep giving me exquisite massages, or how . . .”
“How so much gain?”
The Law of Energy Exchange stated that energy wasn’t made. Energy was only moved, redirected. Digesting Daren seemed to be reaping more magical energy from Daren than Daren ever had, no offense Daren.
A polished glitter in his eyes, the dragon smiled. “When a wilted flower perks up, do you think it has gained so much? It has only had a little sun and water.” He paused. “Two and a half a century ago, mankind trembled to the whisper of my name. They feared to write it into history, even. See where their Archmagistar put me? Point being, I’m only a fractal of the force I was once before, Telasthas. Don’t give your little mage man too much credit; he has only reawakened a part of me which was already there—dormant.
“And with you feeding me from the outside, I’ll reclaim all of my old power and more, mage. Already I can feel it! Aaaaaaaaaah!” He reared, and his scales burst from him. The shedded scales lay scattered at his feet, and where they once were a new coat of scales glimmered in the chamber’s sourceless light now. Undoubtedly, he was now a size eleven in dragon. “And with the many more mages to come I don’t doubt I’ll become as great as the Aspect Enox—greater, even.”
Thoughtfully Telas stroked the dragon’s meaty gut.
“And then you’ll tell me your name,” he said.
The dragon paused, looked seriously back at the man. He showed some hybrid of concern and amusement. And then he chuckled darkly, and so did the man, and by and by they fell asleep feeling comfortable with one another.
Continue here > > >
Category Story / Vore
Species Western Dragon
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 548.9 kB
Oh, it's a-goin'! I just posted the sequel up for y'all. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20245400/
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