by Renard, Loki
Aware that there could be dragons nearby, she was careful as she entered the field, deploying her umbrella. The murky green of the fabric did not match the grass very well at all, but hopefully it looked like a bush or something.
Crouching in the shade of her umbrella, Kate drew in a deep breath of the dragon air. It was fresher, richer, so much more vital than the air back in her apartment. It had a floral note and a tang to it, something a little metallic and salty perhaps, but sweet too. She liked it very much and stood there for several minutes, simply breathing in and out.
Then she got to work. Even a simple field was full of potential samples. She needed grass, pebbles, earth, any insects she could lay her hands on. They would all make rich subjects for later analysis.
She peered out from under the umbrella and scanned the sky. The sun was beginning to set in the distance, behind a very imposing mountain that made her shiver for some reason. It didn’t fit with the rest of the landscape somehow. Even at a distance it seemed older and… unnatural. Was it possible for an entire mountain to be unnatural though? Kate shrugged the question off. She did not know enough about this world to go declaring large parts of it strange.
“I’d like to thank the committee for this Nobel Prize,” she murmured to herself, practicing her acceptance speech as she plucked blades of grass and placed them into a test tube. Nobody had ever brought back samples from another universe—and that was essentially what the dragon realm was, a parallel plane of existence. Going into deep space was nothing on stepping through worlds.
She combed her fingers through the grass, finding the dirt beneath. It was quite rocky and silty, quite like sand, but coarser. The grass was deeply but loosely rooted and she was able to gain some complete samples, and some of the sandy earth as well.
A little gold and green centipede went skittering over her fingers, jeweled and gorgeous like so much of this realm. She was too slow to catch it, and reluctant to really try. The biologists could do that when they came. And they would come. One day this would probably be the site of a scientific outpost. One day, her name would be written along with the other famous mavericks of science, Galileo, Newton, Curie…
A rumbling thunder behind her made her turn her head. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she saw what was causing the sound—an entire flock of dragons heading toward her out of the sky, the rumbling caused by the resonance of their wing beats with the earth below.
There was no time to run. There wasn’t even time to scream. Kate stood up, umbrella in hand and awaited her fate as the lead dragon, a great fiery red beast touched down, skidding a good few hundred feet, its claws kicking up grass and dirt.
Its head was larger than she was, its body bigger than a bus. It was a mammoth creature, and Kate’s fascination mixed with her fear to create a strange reaction she could not quite control. The other dragons landed further back, keeping what felt like a respectful distance. They were not as brightly colored as this one, nor did they seem as large, though that could have been because they were not as close.
The dragon reared, casting a massive shadow over Kate and then its front feet hit the ground hard enough to make her almost lose her own footing and the great head swung down close to her, horned nostrils drawing in a breath powerful enough to make her hair sail in the wind it created.
They were intelligent, and they had human forms. She knew that. So this must be some kind of display, or test, or… it opened its mouth, displaying rows of devastatingly sharp teeth, any one of which could have pierced her whole.
For a moment, she was paralyzed with horror, then she snapped out of her frozen fear, took her umbrella in her hand and began to rap the dragon around its great nose and mouth. “No!” she said in forceful tones. “That is not nice!”
The dragon drew back, let out a snort—and disappeared.
In its place stood a man. A very naked man. Kate let out a gasp, her umbrella still held out in front of her like a very flimsy, now quite broken, sword.
He was stunningly handsome. The lines of his face were hard and chiseled with precise masculinity and his body… she couldn’t bring herself to look at all of it, though it was all bared before her. She didn’t know where to look: at the broad, hard planes of his shoulders and chest, or at his searing eyes, which were a bright golden hue ringed with a dark circle and framed with dark lashes and thick black brows. His hair was dark, hitting his shoulders in a thick shining mane.
Kate drew in a breath and opened her mouth to speak, but there were no words. He was so handsome her brain had frozen completely. The umbrella was still raised, but she no longer had the compulsion to swing it.
“Put it down.” The voice that rumbled from the powerful man sent shivers through her body. His was a voice for the ages.
“Uhh…” She lowered the umbrella, but did not release it. Couldn’t. Her hand seemed caught around the handle, her fingers locked like stone as she stared at the male creature that had come from the dragon.
“I know you understand me,” he said, his rich voice making her feel weak at the knees. “Lay your weapon down, human.”
“It’s, uh… uh… uh… an umbrella.”
“Whatever it is, lay it down.”
When she still could not comply with his order, he grasped the umbrella and used it to pull her close, his large, strong hands taking hold of her and turning her about so she was facing away from him. A hard slap burst across her bottom, hard enough to make her both drop the umbrella and shriek in pain.
“Better,” he said, releasing her. “Obedience will save you pain, human. Remember that.”
Kate stared at him in total shock. She had never, in all her life, received any kind of physical correction. Now her face was burning almost as much as her bottom from sheer embarrassment.
“Why have you invaded our lands?”
“I… I haven’t invaded,” she stammered. “I just came to look.”
“You came to… look.” His heavy tone and the look in his golden eyes told her he did not believe a word she was saying. “This portal, who made it?”
“I did.”
“You did.” He repeated her words in that same flat yet incredulous tone. “I see.”
He reached out and took hold of her again, drawing her close so she was pressed up against the hard lines of his naked, handsome body. “You are lying to me,” he snarled down at her. “And you will be punished severely for it.”
“I’m not lying!” she gasped as she began to tremble from head to toe. “I’m really, really not lying. I promise you.”
“Your promises mean little,” he growled. “Where are the others?”
“Others? There are no others. It’s just me.”
“You mean to tell me humans have opened a second portal and sent through a single scared female to represent their species?”
“No,” she said through chattering teeth. “I made that portal. It was me. Nobody else knows about it.”
“You are lying,” he declared flatly. “But you will not lie for long.”
He stepped back and took his dragon form, man becoming winged beast in the blink of an eye. Fear and fascination warred as Kate tried to fathom how such a thing could be possible, but she did not have long to consider it because the dragon was reaching for her.
She screamed as huge claws wrapped around her and then great wings lifted her skyward. She was carried high into the air and given a view of the terrain that was interrupted when she clenched her eyes shut, her hands clinging to the dragon’s claws in fear that he might drop her. She had never liked to fly, not in commercial airliners, and certainly not dangling precariously between a furious creature’s claws.
As they continued to rise and Kate risked opening her eyes, it became apparent that nothing was as it had seemed. The sweet field in which she had been exploring was about as natural to the world as a golf course. She must have landed in the equivalent of a peninsula pasture or something, for though it was fairly vast, it was encircled by an i
ncredibly tall wall snaking over the rolling green hills from sea to sea. Beyond the wall there was a much wilder landscape full of forests and potentially much more interesting plants and animals.
The dragon holding her wheeled about and she let out a cry of surprise as a large black, gleaming fortress came into view, turrets and parapets and towers facing toward the tall mountain in the distance. Whatever the castle was made of, it shone in the sun, reflecting bright light from its dark walls that traversed a great portion of the plane, effectively cutting off the peninsula and mountain that stood surrounded by a brilliant azure sea.
The dragon swept down behind a large portcullis and deposited Kate on the stone floor. She stumbled to her feet and swung around to face her captor. He had become human again and was coming toward her, his expression full of determination and perhaps, unless she was imagining it, desire.
Heat flashed over her. She could not think. She could not speak. The muscular man with the thick rod of flesh between his thighs and the dominance to command her very essence drew within an inch of her… and Kate fell into a dead faint.
* * *
“Is she alright?” Erias took human form a few feet above the ground, dropped the last little bit of distance, and landed in a crouched position. “What happened?”
“She fainted. If this is the harbinger of a human invasion, I do not think we have much to be concerned about,” Vilka noted as he scooped the human into his arms. Up close, she was quite beautiful. She had rounded, almost angelic features, soft cheeks, and a snub nose. Her breathing was even and deep, so she was not in any medical danger. Fear had finally caught up with her. He was not surprised. The shock of being taken by a dragon was known to kill small prey creatures. This one was stronger than that, he could tell, but every animal had its limits.
“I have her bag,” Erias said, opening it to show Vilka. “It doesn’t have any weapons that I can see. It has a lot of metal threads, what might be food, and a book…” He pulled the book from its covering and flicked through the pages. “These are technical designs of some kind. If they are hers, she may not have been lying about making the portal. These are very advanced…” His eyes scanned the pages, locked to their contents with fascination.
“We will get to the root of her presence soon enough,” Vilka said, likewise entranced. The designs did not interest him in that moment, but he was utterly unable to take his eyes off the human’s insensate features. “For now, she needs rest and quiet.”
“Perhaps you should call your mother,” Erias said. “She could help with this human, perhaps. She has a unique insight as to these creatures.”
Vilka bristled visibly. “I do not need my mother to handle one human,” he growled. “Besides, I do not want news of this leaving the fortress. It will only panic the elders and bring a storm of them to our doors.”
“And you and I will likely be sent off to yet another remote post,” Erias noted.
The men exchanged looks. Vilka had earned his post and his rank, there was no doubt about it, but he was not a favorite of the elders, and there was little he could do to change that. His bloodline was viewed with suspicion, and at times, even fear. The appearance of a human would not help that.
“We have one small human female who claims to have come alone. We can handle such a matter ourselves. We are tasked with far greater, after all. A world eater sleeps at the foot of our beds. In the meantime, keep the portal guarded at all hours. Any other humans who seek to sneak through must be apprehended immediately. I will deal with our captive.”
Chapter Four
Kate opened her eyes to find herself in the dragon’s lair. Her faint had come on so quickly that it was as if one moment she were looking into the eyes of a dragon, and the next she was lying on a very large, very soft bed with a coverlet of silk that felt like warm liquid beneath her body. The fear that had claimed her senses was still present, but a new elation was growing.
She was inside a tectonic fortress. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all formed from a black rock with a shine to it that put her in mind of obsidian. It was an imposing place, and a very large room, around the size of a small lecture hall. There was not much in the way of furniture aside from the bed, and there were a few windows that looked out over the very plains she had been taken from and toward the great mountain in the middle distance. They were barred, though she did not know why. Surely the dragon was not worried about escaping from his own bed chamber.
That was her main priority however; she had to get back to the portal. As she got up and walked across the room, she could see the field where the portal had been. She was even halfway certain that she could see the location of it, though it was hard to tell at a distance.
She took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. The dragons had all her things. Her backpack. Her treatments. Even her umbrella, which they seemed to regard as a weapon now that she had used it ineffectively as one. She had known that there would be risks with coming to the dragon realm, but she had not figured on incarceration as being one of them. She had to get her stuff back, and she had to get out of this fortress, if only to continue her studies. There was little to learn about the dragon realm inside a bedroom.
Of course, little didn’t mean nothing. Kate began to walk around the room, looking into drawers and closets. There were not many clothes, but that was probably because the dragons seemed to be very comfortable nude. It would be a pain to have to change out of clothes before expanding a hundred times bigger than one’s original size, she imagined.
Kate was still afraid, but she distracted herself with her investigations. There may yet be a way out of this room if she could find a key… or perhaps… she turned and looked at the door. She hadn’t even tried the door yet! Perhaps it wasn’t locked?
Kate made for the door, a heavy dark wood structure crisscrossed with some black metal reinforcement, but before she could reach out to turn the handle, the door swung open and the dragon who had captured her stepped inside. He was still as naked as ever, aside from leather wraps around the lower parts of his forearms, and Kate averted her gaze as her cheeks flushed red again. He was so… very… anatomically correct.
“Hello, human,” he said, his voice making her squirm where she stood. “I see you have recovered from your fright.”
“Um…” Kate looked carefully at the wall, avoiding the sight of the very large, very nude man. “Would you put some clothes on, please?”
“Why would I clothe myself? I am not cold, or in any need of armor.”
“It would make me more comfortable,” Kate blushed.
“Your comfort is yet to be of my concern,” he rumbled. “I have questions for you, human, and you will answer them.”
He was arrogant and commanding and he rubbed her very much the wrong way, but she was also incredibly shy around men. Warring impulses of irritation and embarrassment left her tongue-tied and she continued to look everywhere but at him as he began to question her.
“Why did you come here?”
“I was interested…”
“Interested,” he repeated. “You breached the barrier between worlds out of… interest.”
“I’m a scientist,” she explained. “We like to explore.”
He looked at her with a suspicion she knew she had no way to assuage. He clearly had no understanding of a curious, academic mindset. He did not strike her as the academic or inquisitive type. He was a masterful leader, a dominant male who imposed order. If he did something, he probably did it for a reason, and he couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it just for the joy of learning. She was going to have to find a way to convince him.
“Look at the samples I took,” she said. “They’re in my bag. I have grass and some dirt… I just want to learn more about this place.”
“To what end?”
“To, um, well, any end. It’s not… there’s no end point to discovery.”
“So you broke the barrier between our worlds on a whim of interest, in order to discover s
omething for no reason at all.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her with those golden eyes that seemed so wise and yet didn’t understand her at all. “You are lying to me, human.”
“I am not lying!” She looked him dead in the eye, impassioned with the hope that he would be able to believe her.
“We will see.” He reached out, took her by the arm, and drew her close as he had before, the hard lines of his body pressed against her soft, clothed curves. “I will be satisfied that you are telling me the truth when I know you no longer have the capacity to lie.”
“What do you… what?”
He began stripping her clothes from her body, her sweater disintegrating under his hand as if the very fabric simply melted away. He pulled the shredded remains of the garment from her arms and tossed it on the floor.
“Wait, how are you doing that?”
She asked the question just as his fingers found her jeans and the waistband of those gave way too, falling to the floor. There was a faint singed smell, as if they’d gotten very hot without actually catching on fire. But he hadn’t used fire, he’d just used his hands… was he able to manipulate heat through his skin somehow? Her underwear did not fare any better. In an instant, it too was gone and she was naked, her pink-tipped breasts, soft swelling stomach and thighs, and bright red patch of pubic hair all bared to his eyes.
“Hey! How… what?”
“I’m asking the questions,” the dragon growled at her, tossing her toward the bed. Her clothing was entirely gone, every last scrap of it destroyed by his great, powerful hands. Her bra was twisted as if it had been melted, the underwire poking out the end of one of the cups in a way she knew was unsalvageable.
She landed on the bed, one arm over her breasts as she tried to maintain some kind of modesty while being handled like a rag doll.
“You’re going to pay for that! Do you know how much bras cost!” She snapped her annoyance at him before it occurred to her how ludicrous her words were. She was in a world without lingerie stores, and even if he wanted to pay for what he had destroyed, nobody took dragon currency back home. Her mind was working overtime to try to normalize a desperately strange situation, and it was failing miserably.
