My Lady of Bones

by Michael Clement

  A tongue caressed me.

  Holy fuck.

  That was so…

  “Oh,” I groaned, as a finger slipped into me.

  Moli’s lips began to grind against me, as she held herself up above my face.

  I came again, shrieking up at her in pleasure.

  Then, I pulled Moli’s wetness down on my lips.

  She tasted dark and sweet. And, ever so soft. Her lips were spread wide, but I ignored them. Instead, I latched onto her clitoris and ran its tiny bud back and forth over my lips, as I sucked at it.

  Moli shuddered.

  Carefully, she lowered her mound so that my head was on the ground.

  Then, she began rubbing it ever so carefully, with tiny circles, over my lips. I slipped my hands up and onto her ass, squeezing it and pulling her harder towards my mouth.

  But, the control freak was alive again.

  Moli knew what she wanted already.

  She swatted my hands and then yanked them up to her breasts.

  I licked and sucked on her, while my fingers caressed her nipples.

  Moli kept her rhythm, until with a scream, she came.

  Now, she pushed down hard, almost suffocating me. I grabbed onto her breasts with surprise, but she just kept shrieking and rubbing against my face.

  Her climax rolled over her, as I held on tight.

  Then, finally, she lifted her ass up into the air so I could breathe.

  Her legs were quivering, and I could see small convulsions rocking her hips.

  Like me, it was her first climax in a very long time.

  - 34 -

  We lay next to each other, enjoying just feeling the other’s touch and company.

  Making love to someone, not just climaxing them, changes things.

  It made me more aware of her, as a person, and not one of Maxwell’s memories.

  Because that was what Maxwell’s past was now to me. Just a memory. A story in a book I had read before I awoke as Marcellina.

  But, now, Moli was real to me.

  I enjoyed her company, and I craved her touch because she cared about me, and that made everything different.

  I could feel what she felt.

  I hoped it was for me, and not for Maxwell’s ghost.

  “I’ll always love him,” she whispered, sharing my thoughts and fears. “He saved my children and me so many times it felt natural to learn to love him.”

  She levered her face up off of my chest.

  I had a throbbing hickey there now. Her bite didn’t do much more than that. Like a vampire’s bite, it connected the two of us, but not in a bad, sadistic way. Instead, it bonded us with the possibility of love.

  “You saved me, just like he had always done,” she said. “That means a lot to me.”

  Moving her face closer to mine, she said, “I like being saved. I like white knights that rescue the princess, and deep inside, I want to be the princess… the person that is important enough to be worth saving.”

  Her words radiated through my soul.

  It was how I felt, as well.

  “We only have two days to reach Lexi,” she mused, sitting up and stretching. “How are we going to get to Savaet in that amount of time?”

  “I will fly us there,” I told her.

  “You aren’t skilled enough yet to make it that far, that fast,” she told me.

  That hurt.

  It shouldn’t have, but it did.

  Moli took my hand. “You will get faster with practice, but we a faster solution. Saltpoint is only a few miles away. We could arrange travel via a skyship there. A fast one could reach Savaet in time.”

  Squeezing my hand, she said, “I can still access the funds that you…” Clearing her throat, she changed her words to, “... that Maxwell gave me.”

  I sighed. Separating Maxwell and me would be challenging for both of us.

  Standing up, I realized that I had a full bladder.

  Fuck.

  If I were a man, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  But, how did girl’s pee without a toilet?

  I fidgeted.

  “Do you have to pee?” Moli asked.

  “How did you know?” I countered.

  Moli stood up. “I had…” she grew quiet. Then, she finished, “several daughters. The unhappy crouching is universal.”

  I realized that I was bending down a bit with my legs crossed.

  “What do I do?” I asked. It was starting to hurt. “I don’t want to pee on myself.”

  “Kneel down,” she said, demonstrating the correct stance.

  I mimicked her and was suddenly thankful for strong abs.

  “Let go,” she whispered.

  When I didn’t, she prompted, “Unclench your muscles… relax.”

  That helped.

  It felt peculiar, peeing in front of Moli, especially when it shot out of me like a firehouse.

  But, Lord, it felt good.

  When I was finished, I realized that I was really wet down there, and not in a good way.

  “What do I do now?” I grumbled.

  Both of us were naked. Moli at least had clothing to put on. Mine had disappeared when I had transformed into a dragon. I had no idea what happened to it, or where it went.

  I just wished that I had it now.

  I had seen other dragons transform. Their muscles creaked, and bones snapped. Most of them took several long, painful minutes to change from one shape to another. Their clothing was usually shredded in the process.

  I simply changed.

  Then… I remembered Rose practicing a spell. I had spied on her like little brothers did. At the time, the spell had sounded ridiculous.

  Feeling absurd, I used Rose’s cleaning spell on my vagina.

  A soft, warm air swiftly dried me off, much to Moli’s delight.

  “What an awesome spell,” she said with a grin.

  I smiled victoriously. I would learn to function on my own as a woman.

  Now, if I just had a change of clothing.

  - 35 -

  Reaching Saltpoint and hiring an airship became our first priority. The only problem was that Moli didn’t trust me to fly her anywhere.

  So, I ended up flying while she ran. Moli could still move swiftly, but not as quickly as a flying dragon, even one with as little skill at flying as I had.

  My only problem would be, accessing her funds and buying clothing.

  I decided to tackle both of them head-on.

  So, I flew in broad daylight to the Citadel of Saltpoint. Unfortunately for me, it was controlled by Baron Randal Laslow, the father-in-law to one of Maxwell’s shotgun brides. According to Moli, Randal had recovered his daughter--forcibly--after I disappeared. He had shown up at Azhadon with two legions of soldiers, determined to reclaim his daughter.

  I wasn’t sure how Harkin would react to me. She had married Maxwell, and I was only a woman with some of his memories. Frankly, I hoped that I wouldn’t run into her at all. I had only known Harkin for a few days, as Maxwell. Maybe, she was better off without me.

  The Baron didn’t have a wife, or a mother ruling above him. In the Empire’s matriarchal society, this was rare, but no longer that uncommon. The Baron and his cronies had decided that if the Emperor could rule without a woman shackling his choices, then so could they.

  I encountered the first male dragon about twenty miles from Saltpoint. Like the other dragons of the Laslow family, his scales were a ruddy hewed garnet. Male dragons are smaller than females, and he wasn’t prepared to see a giant, mostly black female dragon entering his family's territory.

  The male flew a wide circle around me, then he turned and fled, heading back to Saltpoint as fast as he could fly.

  I kept going. Reaching the inner sea, I kept it to my left, as I continued north to Saltpoint.

  Hiding wouldn’t save my… daughter.

  That thought gave me pause.

  Lexi was really Maxwell’s child.

  I wondered what she would think of
me. Would she like me, or instantly hate me?

  I was still pondering these thoughts when a flight of dragons flew into view. In the background, I could see the Citadel of Saltpoint. It was on a tall promontory overlooking the slums that the Laslow family called Mudtown.

  I didn’t budge when they moved into my flight path.

  Instead, I increased my speed.

  The center male screamed a challenge.

  Roaring happily, I answered his call. My blood felt on fire. His objection to my entering their territory rankled. The Throne was mine, and dammit, no foolish male was going to get in my way.

  Plus, he was being rude, and he knew it.

  I dove at him, screaming in a rage.

  The other dragons scattered.

  My claws punctured his scales... and the human portion of my mind disintegrated. Everything became tooth and claw, as we grappled in the air.

  Together, we plummeted to the ground, as my weight made it too hard for him to fly. We hit the water with a splash that shot a geyser up into the air like a geyser.

  Disengaging, I surfaced.

  The male was more skilled at flying; he launched his smaller bulk into the air, while I paddled to reach the shore. Hissing and shaking, like a wet cat, I screamed at him, while he flew circles around me in the sky.

  The male snickered at me, delighted that I couldn’t get out of the water.

  My blood boiled.

  Furious, I drew in a lungful of air and breathed my flames up at him.

  He should have been safe.

  From any other female, he would have been too high in the air to be struck.

  But, my flames weren’t normal. They were more of a stream of fiery spit that launched up into the air like a water cannon.

  With a splat, the gel-like substance hit him in the chest. The momentum wrapped the firey goo around his torso and spread out over his wings.

  Screaming, the other dragon tried to cast spells to snuff out the flames. But, spell after spell failed. Shrieking in pain, he fell like a rock, splashing into the sea, as I climbed onto a small embankment on the shore.

  Roaring at the other males who were floating above me on the thermal, I challenged them. They took one look at the still molten flames eating their brother, and turned and fled, back to the Citadel.

  My… reason… returned.

  That hadn’t gone well.

  My reception at Laslow Manor would not be well-received. Whoever had just died had been family. Most likely, the Duke’s son.

  He wouldn’t take that well.

  Sighing, I transformed into my naked female form. How was I going to get into town, naked?

  Then, I had an epiphany.

  I cast Maxwell’s favorite spell.

  A sheath of near invisibility slid over me. If someone looked in my direction, the spell would convince them to look somewhere--anywhere--else. It didn’t make me invisible, just really hard to focus on.

  I might be naked, but now, no one would even know that I was there.

  Smiling, I started walking to Saltpoint.

  --M--

  Mudtown is apply named.

  Everything was covered in a red-claylike muck that I instantly hated. It was impossible to wash off, even though I dipped my feet into the sea dozens of times.

  And, it smelled like vomit.

  It’s only redeeming quality was the medicine that could be made from the clay. Mudtown’s clay was a necessary component in creating an ointment for healing. The church alone bought boatloads of the material every year.

  The slums didn’t have a wall or any sort of protection. Mudtown was a ramshackle collection of shacks and tents that made me despair for our nation. Tens of thousands of people lived in abject poverty, while above them, on the promontory, the more well-off residents of Saltpoint lived in luxury, preying on the poor below them.

  Hundreds of workers carried buckets of muck in baskets from the mines, to a factory near the sea, about a half-mile from Saltpoint. It was strategically located so that its fumes wouldn’t bother the rich.

  The workers were poor, underfed, undernourished, and barely alive humans. Worse yet, most of them were children whose baskets were just as full, and as large, as the adults. They passed close enough to me that I could have reached out and touched them.

  They stank of rotting and decomposing flesh. Most of the children had black tar smeared here and there on their skin, and they looked mostly dead. After trudging along behind them, I had to stop and wait for the coffle to shuffle along. Their stench was nearly mind-blowing in intensity.

  Slaves would have been treated better, but only because… slaves cost money to buy.

  - 36 -

  Walking through the town, and then up the stairways to Saltpoint would have been easy, except, my spell didn’t make me smell any better.

  And, the guards at the bottom of the stairways had dogs that were keenly sniffing anyone who passed. Their noses would detect me in a second, even if I were invisible.

  So, instead of heading upwards immediately, I entered a bathhouse for the rich who had come down to Mudtown for some fun with the local whores. The building was situated so that the rich could clean up and then reenter Saltpoint without getting dirty again.

  The inside of the bathhouse made my blood boil. Everywhere, men, usually large and fat, were abusing women, and yes, children, openly and without fear of retribution, as they soaked in huge tubs.

  This abuse and degradation had to stop.

  Nagon couldn’t survive like this.

  I wanted to kill them all… now.

  But, that would only bring soldiers, mages, and dragons to kill me.

  I could kill most of them. But, in the end, they would overwhelm me. So, I climbed into a hot tub, in a sulky mood. It took me a long time to remove the stink and discoloration from my skin, even though I rubbed myself hard with a bristle brush.

  The woman who had rented the private room, and the tub, lay unconscious in a corner, wrapped in a spell to keep her hidden.

  It didn’t make me feel any better, even though it should have.

  When I was clean, I put on her clothing, cleaned by yet more slaves, and then left the building. I now had a purse filled with gold, and a belly full of hate.

  --M--

  I purchased two tickets to Savaet with the woman’s gold. The airship’s scheduled departure was nine in the morning.

  We would be cutting it close. But, Moli was right. I wasn’t skilled enough to get both of us there safely, much less get Lexi out after we saved her.

  I descended the stairs to Mudtown, and purchased a room for Moli and I. As dirty as she was, the guards would never let her enter Saltpoint. She would need to get cleaned up first.

  Then, I waited for my lover on the balcony, fuming the whole time.

  This portion of the town was for the upper class. It was a place for them to play and relieve steam by doing horrific things to the poor. It was aptly named the Festival District.

  The moon was on the horizon when I felt Moli entered Mudtown. I called to her through our bonds, directing Moli’s path until she reached my room.

  Moli didn’t speak to me right away.

  Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck and shook. I held her for almost fifteen minutes. She didn’t cry, or speak, she just trembled.

  Finally, I was able to get her to sit down by me on a loveseat. She was still filthy, but I didn’t care if the furniture was damaged or not.

  It took another fifteen minutes before she whispered, “It’s too much like the Circle…”

  The Circle was the nickname for Malatorah’s slums in the south. The shantytown had been given the nickname when a noble realized that the poor could be kept in a circle of poverty their whole life, by simply charging more in rent than they could make working in the factories.

  “I had no idea it was this bad,” she grimaced. “What they are doing here is inhumane.”