Dragon 4 Chapter 20 (Patreon)

I began informing my wives, knowing they wouldn’t like what I was about to say.

“Ikta came, and we made a deal. When I leave here, I will duel here on the beach. In return, she won’t go after anybody else on the island.” I explained with a sigh.

It had been the right thing to do, but I needed to figure out how I was going to win the fight. After how she had thrashed Herm and Tim, I wasn’t too confident that I could take her that easily.

“Zach, she’s strong.” Morgana watched me closely. “Can you fight her?”

“I don’t know, but I have to try. For all of you and for the rest of the dragons. As your king, the burden of all your safety rests on my shoulders.” It was time I stepped up and acted like the king of dragons, especially when things weren’t looking up.

That’s what leaders should do, not throw the problems of the world at the feet of those they represented.

“Is it to the death?” Polydora suddenly asked.

“No? Why?”

“Fae are known to have ruthless methods to take their own killers down. Her death would likely mean your own.” Polydora warned.

Morana nodded slowly, agreeing with Polydora, but I could see the calculation in her eyes as she thought about how I could fight a fae queen. “We’ll work on strategies later. But for now…” She trailed off, and my attention was pulled past the women in front of me to Tiamat’s ‘study’.

What I was looking at was nothing like Bahamut’s neat, orderly study. To even call it a study was a stretch of the imagination beyond what I was capable of.

“So… this is bigger than we were expecting. Also, this isn’t a study.” Scarlett followed my line of sight.

Massive piles of gold dominated the immediate view, towering over us. But the cavern stretched so far that I couldn’t see the end, and I could even see the green leafy tops of trees past the gold.

Polydora turned and poked a pile of gold, causing a small avalanche of gold coins and jewels as they pinged against the cave floor. There was a pig squeal from deeper in the cavern and the sliding of another gold pile.

“Was that a pig?” Yev asked me.

“How am I supposed to know? But it sounded like something alive, which means there might be food in here.” I said, my stomach rumbling in anticipation.

“Bacon.” Chloe exclaimed, jumping forward. She shifted in a hurry and flew over the piles of gold.

A chorus of more squeals sounded, and she swooped behind a gold pile.

Scarlett poked the nearest gold pile with a foot. “This is real. It’s not an illusion.”

“I’m more worried about how we are supposed to find anything in this mess.” Morgana’s head was scanning the place. “Do we have to sort through the piles of treasure?”

Pushing past the gold piles, the ‘study’ opened up into a wide valley that was littered with piles of treasure, bones, and just an oddly chaotic mess of things. Trees, sunlight and apparently pigs made this seem like some place out in the world, rather than a spatial pocket.

Yev collapsed into a gold pile and took a deep breath before rolling around in it and doing breaststrokes amid the pile.

The rest of us stopped to watch her.

“What? Tell me you don’t want to do this? I’ve always wanted to swim in gold.” She chuckled nervously and blushing as she watched me.

My eyes were locked on her, and I couldn’t look away.

She was a beautiful dragon inside and out, and now she was lying on a bed of gold. Powerful instincts took over me as I watched her prop herself up on her arms, pushing her chest out towards me.

I wanted to join her in that pile of gold, make her squirm, and cry out my name. I began picturing the sound of her moans among the clinking of gold coins as I pushed inside of her and filled her with my inflamed passions.

Her sweat would glisten off the gold coins, her naked body sliding along them.

“Zach?” Tyrande called to me, concern in her voice.

I had to shake my head to clear it and turn to her. Even then, it was stiff. Desire was coursing through my body. “What?” It came out as a growl.

“Uh.” Tyrande hesitated. “You just looked very intense at my sister, like you were going to kill her or something for touching the gold.”

Yev blushed the deepest red yet. “He wasn’t thinking of killing me.” She knew what was happening.

The other dragons knowingly chuckled. It seemed my desires weren’t unique; they all knew what had just come over me.

“Oh. OH.” Tyrande’s mouth stayed wide open before she covered it and blushed, too.

Larisa jumped into another pile of gold, stretching out and making eye contact with me. “Gold is very appealing to dragons. There’s an instinct in us that very much likes precious metals and jewels by how they interact with our mana.” She bit her lip and gave me a seductive come-hither look.

I took one step forward before Scarlett stepped up and grabbed Larisa’s arm, pulling her out of the gold pile. “No tempting the big dragon, king. Not right now. We are out of food and he has a duel when we get out of here. The sooner we do that, the more strength he has left in him.”

Jadelyn was rubbing her chin. “This could be fun. I thought laying on a pile of gold coins would be terribly uncomfortable, but the way it makes him look at you might just be worth it.”

“Hell no.” Scarlett swore. “He looks like he’d break me.”

I was still panting heavily, but I was beginning to be able to control myself again. The beast was going absolutely wild in my chest and I rumbled a single word. “Mine.”

“Okay…” Scarlett came up behind me and turned me back towards the valley, slowly pushing me forward. “We are getting the big bad dragon away from the gold piles. I promise you can take them with you when we leave. Maybe enjoy them back home.”

“Yes.” I rumbled. “Mine.” I was still struggling with my dragon instincts that were like a bonfire, swallowing up every other thought in my mind.

“You aren’t like this with your own hoard.” Morgana looked at me, confused.

“It’s worse. Maybe my chromatic half is growing?” I searched for an answer. Her asking me a question, though, had pulled my mind away from the gold.

Gold. I wanted to turn back around and look at it, but I was holding myself rigid to stop myself. There was just so much of it and it was so pretty.

“You okay?” Scarlett asked.

“No. I want to shift and play in the gold, curl up around it, cover myself in it, and take a very long nap. Or maybe fuck everyone senseless. Then nap.” I corrected myself. Yes, rut them all and curl up in the gold. My gold.

Scarlett laughed, pushing me along and away from the tempting treasure. “Let’s table that for now. We have an ancient fae queen sitting outside this cave waiting to duel you. Her mysterious second half of her power is in here somewhere. Maybe once we get that, we can have a celebratory orgy.”

I focused back on the valley ahead of us. In the center, there was a little cabin that looked like it had been there forever.

If I turned around, I could see the edges of a cave wall, but I was having trouble reconciling that with the scene in front of me. It felt like we were really in some mountain valley.

A blue dragon rose amid crackling tree limbs, carrying a squealing pig in her clutches.

Chloe spotted us and swooped down, pinned the pig under her claw, and presented it to me. “For my king. You need your nourishment.”

Several of the other dragon ladies laughed, and Chloe tilted her head like a giant confused kitten.

“Nothing.” Larisa said, holding back laughter. “Just kill it so we can cook it up and share it.”

Chloe ended the pig with a quick slice of a claw and shrank down before she prepared it. Despite the pig’s five hundred pound weight, she handled it like it weighed as much as a stuffed animal. Larisa and Trina joined her by setting up a little rack while Polydora started a fire.

They worked like they had done this a million times before.

“Do you all know how to hunt and dress a kill?” I asked.

“Our father made us do survival training as bonding.” Chloe explained, licking the pig blood off her fingers and nodding towards Polydora and Larisa already getting the wood stacked for a fire and setting aside larger branches for a spit.

“Mine grew up in ancient Rome. They are way old school and think something like this is ‘vital’ knowledge.” Trina rolled her eyes.

I laughed. My adoptive parents had been on the older side, but the dragon parents brought it to a whole new level. “How old are you?”

Trina and the rest clammed up, casting glances around the group.

“Not that old.” Trina hesitated. “We know you are quite young and raised as a human. We don’t want our age to disqualify us.” She seemed to speak for the group as the rest of them nodded along with her words.

It seemed in the short time they had been together; they had formed a comradery.

“Morgana was turned four hundred years ago and was an elf for a few hundred years before that. Doesn’t bother me.” I hooked a thumb over at the blue vampire as she slowly walked in a circle around the impromptu campsite, picking up dry branches.

The dragon ladies let their eyes shift over to Morgana, more than a little envy in them. “What about your other mates?”

“Scar and Jadelyn are my age, same with Kelly who isn’t here.” I paused and turned to the Highaen sisters. They were sitting down together and whispering conspiratorially. “How old are you two?”

Yev startled out of her conversation with her sister. “Thirty one and thirty-three.” She pointed to her sister second.

I might have guessed they were older, given how much responsibility it seemed they had among the Highaen. “Not a big deal.”

“If we were hundreds of years old, that would not bother you?” Polydora asked carefully.

“I mean, I’d wonder why you want to join me. Wouldn’t I be like a baby to you?” Morgan and I had the conversation, but I needed to have it with them, too.

Polydora’s brow pressed down. “You have mountain lionesses that hunt for younger men, yes?”

“Mountain— Oh.” I realized there must be a translation issue. “Cougars. Yes, they are women who like younger men.” I clarified.

“Then I am a cougar hunting for my latest prey.” She stared at me hungrily, her eyes held a certain promise.

It wasn’t ineffective, as I felt a stir in my pants. But I barely knew Polydora, and she talked little since coming on this trip.

The dragon ladies finished up with the pig.

Polydora picked up the prepared pig and skewered it over the fire. Her eyes met mine over the flickering flames. “The pig will not take long to cook, but long enough.”

“Calm down, Poly.” Larisa smacked her ass and startled her older half sister. “She’s the oldest of us. Then me, then Trina. Chloe is the youngest, well, besides Yev.”

“Shouldn’t we be looking through this place?” Jadelyn asked.

“Food.” Chloe sat down watching the pig on the spit. “We are hungry. Food first. Why don’t we make a plan while we do that?”

I let my eyes rove over the little magical valley. “Split up? See if there is anything else significant besides the little house?”

Scarlett pointed to my bracer. “Did your mother have any clues to where it might be?”

“No. She is actually kind of an air head.” From our last encounter, I wasn’t fairly certain she didn’t have any leads. And I didn’t exactly control how to talk to them. Whatever happened before had been them working to talk to me. Bart had said that it could only be done twice a month. I wasn’t sure if that meant every 2 weeks or what.

Speaking to magical ghosts of my parents didn’t come with an instruction manual.

“Mother?” Larisa asked. “You are adopted, with dead adoptive parents.”

“Larisa!” Chloe shouted. “Way to be insensitive.”

I shrugged it off. It had been long enough that I wasn’t sensitive to talking about them.

“No, Scar was talking about Tiamat. I found a device that each heir of Bahamut and Tiamat were storing their memories in. It seems that the heirs were actually reincarnations, and they were somewhat prepared for the next one.”

The dragon girls leaned forward, eager to learn more. “You have met Tiamat?” Larisa gasped. “THE Tiamat.”

“She goes by Tia and yes, the last imprint of her memories in her last incarnation to be at the conclave. We suspect her and Bart’s last reincarnations were my biological parents.” I realized I hadn’t explained my findings to the dragons yet.

“Incredible.” Trina sighed. “So they were all reincarnations. That doesn’t appear in our histories. But it makes sense, it was said they came into their powers quickly.”

While they were all amazed, I was still struggling that my birth had likely released Ikta and the disaster that she posed.

“What was Tiamet like?” Larisa leaned forward. “And she’s your mother?”

“She’s kind of all over the place. Sort of does whatever the current mood strikes her to do.” I tried to put it politely.

But the girls nodded. “Very chromatic. I hate how popular culture has made them all ‘evil’. They just do what they want without worrying.” Larisa said air quoting the word.

Trina laughed. “You get the evil tag when you suddenly are hungry and decide to eat a village. Not that metallics are all good, we just like rules.”

Chloe let out an exasperated sigh at that and mimed Brom wagging a finger. “Pick up your bones. This is not a chromatic house. Everything has its place.”

The girls let out a shared moment of laughter about their father.

“He never struck me as a stickler for the rules.” I commented.

“Oh, my father most certainly likes rules.” Polydora laughed. “Even if the rules are, at times, archaic. He and my mother were a metallic pair. My life was scheduled down to the minute. But the schedules make me comfortable, so it worked well enough.”

Chloe stuck out a tongue at her older half sister. “Schedules. First thing I threw out once I left the roost.”

I smiled at their banter, enjoying the peek into their home life. As an only child, I’d always enjoyed being around siblings.

But I found myself taking deeper breaths through my nose as the pig cooked, my stomach growling loudly.

“Are you hungry, my king?” Trina poked the pig and shifted her hand before cleanly slicing off a hunk of the outer meat that was cooked. She handed it to me.

I was starving, but I took the meat as politely as I could. Before I tore into it with a vigor. “Delicious.” It wasn’t seasoned, but it had a raw flavor to it that the dragon in me loved.

The dragon ladies all watched me with smiles on their faces.

“Aren’t you all going to eat?” I asked them.

That seemed to snap them out of staring at me, and they joined in.

It was a slow affair as they carved off sections from the outside as it cooked, and everyone took turns. It seemed to unify us more as a group.

“So, what now? Split up?” Yev asked slowly, chewing her own hunk of meat.

“Given the size of this place, I was going to suggest the dragons shift and go for a flight, see what they can find. Everybody else can help look through the cabin, or maybe some of the gold piles.” More piles of gold were sprinkled everywhere. It seemed a little like a needle in a haystack to find the spider queen’s power.

Scarlett handed me a bone. “You should check the cabin. There is a decent chance that there will be things that only react to you.”

I took the bone from her and shifted my jaw before crunching down on it. “Good idea. Who else is coming with me to the cabin?”

The dragons looked put out, like the cabin was an opportunity they were missing. But I needed them to fly and scan the place.

“I’d love to see the enchantments that one of the first dragons made.” Tyrande spoke up, ignoring the grumpy dragons.

“Then that puts Scar, Jade and Morgana on sifting through the field and the gold piles.” I settled it. “If the dragons do a loop and everything looks good, they can join in the gold piles.”

Morgana chuckled. “Some of that gold might just go missing.”

“Oh, it is all going missing before we leave.” I tapped my bracer. “Going to fill this up with as much gold as I can and bring it back to Philly to add to my hoard.”

“Yes. Our king’s hoard deserves to be massive.” Polydora declared with a thump of her foot. “I would like to see your hoard one day; it would be an honor.”

“Sure.” I shrugged, but the way that she and the other dragons reacted, I realized that maybe there was significance in letting them see my hoard.

Trina cleared her throat. “If you are just going to take it all, why are we looking for this power source in the gold piles?”

“Because Bahamut told me of a method to absorb the spider queen’s power.” I told a half truth, not telling them of the dangers and assuming that all I had to do was swallow it. “If I’m to honor my duel when we leave, then I would very much like that power.” I grinned and kept my face upbeat.

I’d decided the potential risks weren’t worth calling out, given that I’d already made up my mind to do it.

Ikta was powerful, and I needed every advantage I could scrape together before I fought her.

“Then we’ll be practicing after you are done with the cabin.” Morgana reminded me. “You could use a little sharpening up, and we need to think about how to fight those spider limbs of hers.”

“Yeah, those are what killed Stephanie, aren’t they? She used one of those and sliced her right open.” It fit the description that Morgana had given when she’d examined the wound.

Morgana nodded. “And that means she uses them to fight; we must be careful. Multi limb opponents can be very tricky, and you have no experience with them.”

“She’s right. Additional limbs can be highly dangerous. I have some experience if you would allow me to assist you.” Polydora bowed slightly, shifting her hand while addressing me.

“Not a problem. I’d love whatever advice you could give.” I replied. Any help I could get would be worth it.