Pentave and the Hafgufa plummet on along Yggdrasil’s trunk to whatever fate lies at the roots.
As for our fates....
–Cauda Draconis–
The Dead Lands
Phase, phase. My mind shrieks the word, over and over, as we hurtle downward. Whatever I managed when Pentave passed through me, it fails now.
I smack stone with an impact that fills my mouth with my own teeth. Darkness and ignorance magnify the wounds. I choke on the hot copper flow of blood, writhing, one hand clasped over my mouth to keep from vomiting until my teeth find their sockets and slowly begin to root.
Tindra shudders, moans, and goes silent in the dark. I pat my way to her on buckling arms. Her breath comes in shallow fits, ebbing. She tries to wipe a trickle of blood from her nose, but doesn’t have the strength, can’t heal like I am.
“Don’t,” I gasp, laying a hand on her chest. Give it to her; for just a moment let my healing pass… My mouth is healed, now, and I lean forward and kiss her. Her body tenses as her soft lips find mine, and then they part, letting me in. We are still like that, for long moments, and as we kiss, I pray.
And then, something changes. My body stops healing as she takes the power from me, and her breathing evens out as her muscles relax. It’s a worthy sacrifice, even when pain screams for me to end it all. Her golden eyes open, inches from mine, and in them is gratitude, and more.
She pushes me off gently. “Enough,” she whispers, and I gasp. When my healing begins again, the relief is enough to incapacitate me.
“Can you give some light?” Tindra groans, rustling on the stone beside me. “I don’t know whether to rejoice or brace for something worse.”
The flame is tenuous, weak, borrowed from the powers keeping me alive at the moment. But it’s enough, at least for Tindra, who gasps. “What chance in all Hel…”
She struggles to her feet and stumbles forward. We’re on a narrow band of rock, a natural bridge that juts from a cliff face ahead and, judging by a constant moan of chilled wind, very high above nothing. Our landing could, comparatively, have been a lot worse.
I can’t discern much around us, but it’s clear that we’re no longer in the same realm, no longer below Akershus.
Tindra crosses the span and slumps against the cliff face on splayed palms. She runs her hand across it, searching for something I can’t see. Stone grates stone, and a slab opens. She falls to her knees in a shaft of golden light. Not sun. Something more mystical, with a hint of chaos.
A musical tinkling sound echoes through the dark cavern before us. Something flows onto the bridge, and over, pinging off stones below.
Gold.
“Pentave’s hoard,” murmurs Tindra. “I don’t know what, or how…but every piece reeks of him.”
I have a feeling I know who, if not how. Speed isn’t Kumiko’s only skill. Her execution could use a little work, but I’m not going to complain. Alive is alive. Sort of.
Gravity punishes my getting to my feet, bones crying out lingering fractures. “Well…” I exhale across a wave of nausea, “While we’re here, might as well pop in.”
Tindra closes her eyes, exhausted but serene. “You were right; you had a few surprises left.”
“How’s that opinion of mortals now?” I grab her arm and we stumble in.
–De Pentave’s Hoard–
“What about Akershus?” I ask, wading through the hoard on still-sore legs.
Tindra glides atop the hillocks, her skin painted like stained glass in the glint of pearls and gemstones. “Thragian and Hower will hold the fort, for now.”
“They were on the bridge, the hulking assassin and the steward.”
“Mmhm. I suspect Thragian had Blaloch thrown over the bridge. If the clockmaker had gotten inside, Pentave would have found him. And when he was finished with a being so...delicate as Blaloch?” She shudders. “Anyhow, with much of the Svartr pulled into the portal, the two of them should have things well in-hand.”
I scan the vast hoard, in awe. “Look at all this. Somewhere there’s a whole realm living in poverty.”
“Dragons claim gold from many realms. Haven’t you wondered why they will terrorize a settlement, then disappear for a generation or two?”
“Not many dragons in my realm.” She laughs. “Why gold? What does a dragon need with material things?”
“You’re thinking about this too simplistically.” Tindra settles on a carved dais nearly submerged by the treasure. “All dragons seek dominion. We are the oldest race left in the worlds. And we are the longest living; in some ways the wisest. It is our gods-given right to rule over other beings, to some extent. Varðir.”
I’m not sure I agree, but this is a philosophical debate for a better time. “Wardens.”
“Precisely.” She flicks a coin from the lip back into the sea around us. “But this means we have certain obligations to those we rule. Age, magic, corruption… for these reasons some among our flights lose their hugr. You would call it a soul, but we have no such concept. The correlation is close enough. It is the spirit part of our fire, our power, our nobility. Some lose this and some, like Pentave and Nidhogg, sell it.” She spits the last two words.
“And stealing gold is a way to fuck the mortal races.”
“And the elven ones, and others. Svartr like Pentave use it as a lure. Men and dwarves above all seek such wealth.”
“He lures them in to gobble them up?” These were the stories of my childhood.
“A dragon’s feeding is more complicated. Our bodies can be fed on anything; we take mortal form, eat mortal food. But our power derives from the heart, and that we consume in our true form. Will, bravery, fortitude; the dark power of greed and arrogance or the glow of chastity and purity.” I remember Pentave’s words, how he tasted the soul of my father and grandfather, and I have to close my eyes a moment to let the rage pass.
Tindra doesn’t notice, or is sensitive enough not to comment. She continues. “Thieves and petty adventurers sustained Pentave between his true goal: heroes. Heroes bring magic weapons, imbued objects, legendary armor. Their hearts made him exponentially powerful and their possessions made him fearful.”
“And they lured other heroes to him, hoping to claim those prizes.” Such a clever, complex trap. I look over her bracelets, jewelry, armor. “Do you keep such a hoard?”
Tindra gives me a level look. “No, a treasury. And it is not filled by such means.” She picks a ring from the pile at her feet. Flower petals cradle an opal lit with red-orange sparks. “We live by fire. Flame and sun are the only god we know. No dragon can deny this, be free of it. Dragons who sell themselves into darkness and shadow glut on gold. Its warmth and glow mimic the light and fire those such as Pentave have lost. But it is an empty substitute. They go on hoarding, starving, never filling the emptiness.” Her sadness firming into derision. “It will be a kindness if Nidhogg kills Pentave. Spare him from an eternity of suffering.” Tindra pitches the ring back, wincing.
“Still hurting?”
“Yes!” She manages a smile. “It’s an unfamiliar feeling for me, I’m ashamed to admit.”
“I don’t imagine much gets to a dragon.”
“Rowan wood; little else. Could you...could you do what you did for before the cavern?”
“The healing? I’m not really a healer; it’s um...something I pass on. A gift given to me by one of the Artifacts. Anyway, the way we did out there or–” How do explain I’d have to kiss her again? Or that it takes a lot more to get the full effect, for me to pass the gift to her fully.
“Oh.” Tindra closes her eyes and leans in, full lips puckered and parted. When I don’t respond, she draws back, searching me. Thick black waves hide one amber eye. The gold comb of bone at her temple glints like a halo.
I’m next to her before I realize I’ve moved. I stroke the point of her chin. “You must already know about me. You know my ancestry and you know some of how I came to be here. But my life and my quest, my collecting the
Artifacts...the Artifacts are a part of everything now. We’re meant to bond and my bonding with you–”
She smiles, incisors accentuating her full upper lip. “You’re afraid I’ll be hurt? Jealous?”
“You’re the queen of the dragons; I don’t expect you to be happy about...falling into formation.”
“Is that what you expect me to do?” She watches my lips as she says this.
“No. Each ally holds their own place of honor. I can’t do this without each of you. While that means no one is better…”
“It means we’re all together.” She leans forward, tugs my lip between her teeth. A small scratch beneath her eye disappears. “You intrigue me, the moments you are mortal and the moments you aren’t. Do you feel ashamed of what you share with the Artifacts?”
“No.” I don’t even have to think about it. “But when this is done, if it all turns out the way I planned, I’ll have a kingdom and they’ll expect a queen. There’ll be matters of an heir and alliances–”
“And you really don’t care.”
“I don’t. I should...I know it’s a struggle I’ll have to face, but the way things are is the way I want them to be.”
“Would you give them up?”
“No.” Mordenn’s bargain haunts the word, another decision I don’t have an answer for. “I would never keep an Artifact against her will, but they’re not objects. I don’t trade or give them up.”
Tindra nuzzles my chin with her nose. “Mortals have such a finite amount of time. Where they settle, their trades, their mate. Sometimes I think we magic beings and immortals could do with a little of that weight in our decisions. But a thousand years, an eon, an eternity?” She exhales against my throat; my skin prickles at the sheer heat of her breath. “Time. All of existence is measured, ruled, and shaped by time. The more one has, the more life, and how we live it, changes. You were never meant to be a mortal, and soon you won’t be; maybe you’ve always known that.” Her tongue flicks a small cut at the base of my throat. “After all, it’s in your blood.”
Tindra gives me a gentle shove; a mound of gold breaks my fall. There’s something hedonistic about it, almost pagan when she climbs the length of my body. Her hair brushes bare skin through the tears in my clothes. I love her hair, so wild and so impractically long that it could only belong to a dragon. I want to see her concealed by her hair and nothing else.
Her hand stays mine when I touch the clasp between her breasts. “Time, Lir. In here it doesn’t move, doesn’t mean anything.”
There’s no rush. I remember my admonishment to Kumiko to slow down, and laugh that I’m now the one in a hurry.
She bends, waves curtaining me like nightfall. She smells of the sweet smoke of seasoned wood, honey in amber liquor, and something primal – mountain air or the sea. It’s Akershus; she smells like the place itself. Or it smells of her. Our lips find each other’s in a clumsy, greedy impact that clacks our teeth and urges us on. Her hands rake my face, long fingers dig into my hair. I have the strange sense of being slowly devoured.
Tindra’s body is long, thick, muscled; she rests on my hips with a weight that’s not exactly strength, but the heaviness of something eternal concealed inside a smaller vessel. Whatever it is, my body is supremely aware of her, every shift when she moves a hand down my chest, when she changes the angle of her kiss to fill my mouth with her tongue. The point where her hips cradle mine and the heat of her stirs my cock is the center of the world. Something catches fire in my chest. I grip her face, drag her down, crushing her lips to mine. The skin of her cheeks is a sharp contrast to her crests jutting from the silken tangle of her hair. I raise my hips and grind, groaning at the sharp pleasure.
Tindra’s hips buck. She sits up, rolling my cock again. Despite her lecture about patience, there’s hunger in her eyes.
This time she sits obediently, eyes half closed and chest heaving while I unclasp her bandeau. Fine gold chains surrender down her shoulders and leather falls away. Sleek muscles swell to full bronze globes. Her skin warms my palms, fierce heat within tempered by soft flesh. A flick of my thumbs over her nipples and Tindra gasps, lips parted around a smile. “I once thought mortal men too tentative, too hasty, too...weak.” She arches, breasts sliding into my hands. “After the brutality of other couplings...ohhh.” My lips circle a nipple, tug it between my teeth. Tindra exhales, grinding me in a slow roll. “I was wrong.”
She wriggles, pulling from reach. Her smooth oval nails scrape my skin in a rush to strip the remains of my costume. I grab her wrist. “In a hurry?”
“You...may not...realize this…” Tindra kisses her way up my bare thigh, my hip, making my cock flinch, “But dragons don’t couple with each other in mortal form. We can’t conceive this way, and the strength of two dragons would break these bodies before we’d finished.”
“So–” I suck in a breath at her lips banding my bollocks, rolling one on her tongue. “This is reserved for mortal men?”
“Or Elves.”
“Elves?” Gods, her nails scraping the hair above my cock is almost enough.
“Elf.” Tindra raises her head and winks. “I was more...adventurous in my youth.”
“How does that even work?” I couldn’t make the halves line up even in my right mind. Her breath on the head of my cock guarantees it’s impossible.
“Our warrens sat beneath a mountain called Falinor, and the elves dwelt on a cliff above the Brensic sea.” She breathes the words against my cock, and they radiate warm and damp along my shaft. “I was green, barely out of my clutch, and curious.” She licks me balls to tip in wet line. My groan echoes off the cavern walls, and the clink of gold strangled in my fists.
“And we were told to stay away from the sylvan and their ashwood arrows. So–” Her thick lips roll over my head and she sucks until I whimper. The sound of my cock popping free of her mouth somehow increases the sensation. “Of course, I was twice as curious.”
Tindra’s hair spills over my hips, along my thighs, a thousand small fingers stroking when she holds my waist and takes my cock in her mouth again. Her strength is infinitely more than Callista’s, and terrifying because I know this by how obviously restrained Tindra is. The gentleness of her feathering tongue, even the muscles of her throat when she sucks me deep...I’m in danger and at her mercy. She could break me if she wanted to.
She sucks until the only sound is my breathing, a storm roar in the cavern. When my body starts to shake, she licks me one last time then nuzzles at my balls. “One afternoon, when spring had just set, a young Falinor ranger wandered too close to our warrens on his patrol.”
Wandered too close. Some part of me knows exactly what she means. I feel it in my throbbing cock, in the clench of my buttocks aching to thrust her. She didn’t eat that ranger, not literally, but she devoured him.
“I was young,” she sighs, the hot and cool bobbing my cock. “I didn’t know the power of my mortal form, or the nature of the elves.”
The way she pronounces nature thrums through my desperate muscles. “Which is?” I croak.
Tindra stands, fingering the laces of her leggings. She holds my eyes, drawing the ties so damn slowly. My cock throbs in the chill air at the sight of her, and the need to be inside of her almost breaks me. “To couple once or twice in a hundred years. The twilight races have no need for more. Dragons, however...our clutches are born of three, four, five sires.”
Oh, that poor elf.
Tindra kicks out of her boots and strips her leggings to the knees in one pull. Soft iridescent scales cover her cunt, outline the delta and paint a red-gold line down the fronts of her thighs. “He knew what I was the moment he laid eyes on me behind that cairn. In the warrens, with no mortal sensibilities, we have no use for clothes.” She smooths the feather-soft scales of her pussy. “He had two choices: shoot, which likely would have killed me in my nubile state. Or…” She slips a finger into her cleft and swirls. Her hips dance at the pleasure. I can smell her, the sea salt and musk of
her arousal.
I pity him, envy him. My cock hardens further, impossibly, at the image of Tindra stalking him like prey with the intention of fucking him.
I find my knees; band her hips, grip her slender ass and bury my face in her cunt.
Her knees give, hips rolling out to take me between her thighs. Her scales scrape my tongue like fingernails, gently fighting. They hood the thick flesh above her clit, trying to guard it from the bore of my tongue.
I suck, pulling it free on a squeal from Tindra. She collapses, only held up by my head in her belly. Nails punish my back, helpless scraping that grows more frantic with her moans. I dart, probe, lick her clit over and over, and her body tightens like a drawn bow as she grinds my lips. When she cums, her pussy slips along my face, my tongue stabbing deep inside.
We fall to the stone in a tangle, both breathless.
“I shouldn’t have told the story,” she gasps.
“Yes you should have.” I drag my fingers through sweat in the hollow of her shoulder, down her arm, her scale-dotted hip. She’s woman, and not. The beast inside her is palpable. Her lips welcome mine, lazy and soft.
“Now finish it,” I whisper against her throat.
“Hmm?”
“The story. I need to know if the hero lives.” It may be a matter of life and death.
“A patrol from the village found him well before sunset. Carried him back. I’m told he recovered.” Her eyes are hooded, roaming my body, resting on my straining cock. “Eventually.”
I kiss my way over her, up her belly and between her breasts, twining us together. “But never visited you again?”
“We took what we needed from each other. Shed our fumbling ignorance.”
“Pragmatic.”
She pulls my lip with her teeth. “Well, I’m a dragon. Time and reason tend to come to a creature in equal measures.”
“I’m still mostly mortal, so that explains a lot.”
“No,” Tindra purrs, wrapping a leg around mine. “Not yet a god, but you were never a simple mortal.”
Temple of Cocidius Page 50
