Heedless of the noise, Typh pushed Arilla into their bedroom.
The doorway that separated their relatively modest space from the ostentatious grandeur of the estate’s halls didn’t pose much of an obstacle. The brass lock shattered the moment the warrior’s body hit the door and then Arilla was on her back inside the room.
The floorboards creaked under her weight in time with the door loudly slamming against the wall. Arilla’s lip quivered in anticipation while Typh let out a low, predatory growl.
With her red hair splayed out behind her like a fiery halo, the dragon took a moment to appreciate the sight of the woman on the floor. The warrior’s fine clothes were dishevelled from their long night of revelry, and more than a few shirt buttons were missing from Typh’s earlier attempts to taste and feel.
Arilla sat up on her elbows, her knees bent and her eyes wide while she stared at the open doorway. With deliberate slowness, the dragon entered the room. She stalked forwards towards her prey and there amongst the heady swirl of pungent emotions, Typh could smell the warrior’s excitement. Their gazes locked, and the woman on the floor whimpered.
Mirroring the dragon’s advance, Arilla shuffled backwards on her hands and feet until her shoulders bumped up against the bed. The soft mattress let out a gentle squeak that contrasted sharply with the hard taps of Typh’s heels on the floor.
She kept moving until they were close enough to kiss. The warrior opened her mouth to speak.
“I—”
“No talking,” Typh commanded, raising a painted finger to her lover’s lips.
The dragon pushed her mana through the magelights in the room, setting them to a dim glow. Thanks to their skills they could both see perfectly in the dark, but it was important to Typh to set the mood. A small part of her wished for candles and flowers until with a wry smile she realised that crafting an illusion of both was well within her capabilities.
Typh paused. She concentrated on the shape of the spell and with a modest expenditure of mana the scene around them changed. The walls of their bedroom retreated, replaced with the raw rock of a large cave. Magelights became flickering candles smelling faintly of smoke, the bare floorboards transformed into packed dirt over rough stone and the bed stayed exactly as it was—Typh may have been a dragon, but she wasn’t a savage. It was all an illusion of course, but just smelling the rich loams of the false soil and hearing the quiet crackle of the burning fires did wonders for the dragon’s mood.
“Strip.”
“Typh, I—”
“I didn’t say ‘talk,’ Arilla. I said ‘strip.’ Now are you going to keep me waiting?”
The warrior opened her mouth to speak for the third time, and then thinking better of it she began to shed her clothes onto the cave floor while the dragon watched. The cravate was the first to go, quickly followed by her jacket, cuffed shirt, shoes, and trousers. With a bit of coy hesitancy and the familiar sparkle of arousal in her eyes, Arilla’s underwear finally joined the small pile of discarded garments beside her.
“Good girl,” Typh murmured appreciatively, drinking in the sight of her lover’s naked body on the floor. Still fully clothed, she squatted down on her heels. The fabric of her dress resisted the motion as she lowered herself to Arilla’s eye level. With an open hand, the dragon gently stroked the side of her lover’s face, and the warrior turned her head into the caress. The barest hint of a moan escaped from her parted lips prompting Typh to smile wide with satisfaction. “It has been a little while, hasn’t it… You can ask that burning question of yours now.”
“I… Are you sure you want to do this?” Arilla asked.
“Of course, I’m sure,” Typh responded.
“But what if I’m dangerous?”
“Do you want to hurt me right now?” the dragon asked, rising to her full height and taking a single step backwards so that she was looking down at the woman on the ground.
“No.”
“Good. Now you may lick me.”
Typh raised her arms out to the side and with the aid of a subtle golden glow, the hem of her dress travelled up the length of her legs and into her waiting hands. She straightened her back, lifting her dress up past her hips so that her bare sex was exposed mere inches away from Arilla’s face. From the way the warrior’s breath felt against her lower lips, she could tell that they were already flushed and sensitive with her desire.
Whether it was the sweet smell of cinnamon that leaked out with her arousal, the sight of her glistening mound or a combination of the two, Arilla didn’t last long. The warrior scrambled forwards, her knees never quite leaving the floor as she hurried to bury her face between the dragon’s legs.
Arilla’s started with small flicking licks, barely delving between Typh’s delicate folds, and that restraint only served to frustrate her. She was not in the mood to be teased or warmed up. Every stolen kiss and impassioned squeeze on their long walk home from the riverbank had served that purpose well enough.
Now she had a hunger and she wanted to be satisfied.
With a firm hand placed on the back of Arilla’s head, Typh pressed her lover’s face into her. Naturally, the licks intensified. That delicious tongue went deeper, its strokes became firmer, pressing into her with all the strength that the warrior could provide. It was heavenly. Typh felt an orgasm start to build, and she rode those crests and waves of pleasure with just as much abandon as she rode Arilla’s face.
When the warrior raised her hands to grip the back of Typh’s thighs, likely to press herself deeper into the dragon’s sex, Typh batted the woman away.
“No hands. Not yet,” the dragon commanded, and she received a pleasantly unintelligible mumble in response. She was thoroughly enjoying being in charge for a change. It was not her usual role in the bedroom, but she found that on this occasion it came naturally to her.
While she slowly ground her hips into her lover’s face, mimicking a thrusting motion that saw Arilla’s tongue alternate between diving deep into her vagina and hurriedly lapping at her clit, she thought about all the things she would do to the kneeling woman who seemed so intent on serving her.
Typh wrapped one leg over Arilla’s shoulder, granting her better access to the dragon’s sex whilst using that same limb to pull her in close. Typh let her dress fall down over her lover, burying her beneath the fabric just as surely as Arilla’s tongue was buried deep within her vagina. With her hand finally free, she looked down at the tented silk and squeezed at her own breast.
The slight pain of a pinched nipple added to the euphoric sensation of those sensual licks and finally pushed her up and over the edge. Her orgasm crashed down around her, prompting Typh to rock her hips harder against Arilla. She used the other woman’s entire face to heighten her pleasure, grinding the warrior’s lips and nose against her sensitive vulva while aftershocks left her trembling and barely able to stand.
When she felt steady, she removed her leg trapping her lover against her, and after releasing Arilla from the confines of her dress, Typh took a step back.
“That was good,” she said. She bent down to kiss Arilla and for a time, she was content to taste herself on the warrior's tongue. When she was satisfied, she broke the kiss and wiped the flavourful juices from her mouth. “Now get on the bed. We’re just getting started.”
Arilla hurried to comply, mutely climbing up onto the mattress where she assumed a favoured position of theirs. Her face was lowered against the bedsheets and her heart-shaped ass was raised towards the roof of the cave with her knees tucked under her chest. She’d yet to say a word since Typh had demanded her silence, but in choosing this position it was very clear what the warrior wanted.
With a satisfied smile on her face, the dragon climbed up behind her onto the bed where she conjured a large semi-solid object out of hardened light into her hand.
She looked at the slowly undulating thing that she’d yet to perfect, and then at her lover’s shivering form and smiled. It was times like these when she really, really loved magic.
***
Once she was certain that her warrior was asleep, Typh slipped out from underneath Arilla’s arm and quietly left their bed. There was barely an hour left before the sun rose, and she was already late. She didn’t regret spending far more time than she’d planned to in bed, but that little self-indulgence now meant she had to hurry.
Shrugging on Arilla’s long coat over her shift, she crept on bare toes towards the window. Typh pushed back the wooden shutters, and after a quick look to ensure that the coast was clear, she hopped outside. Rather than falling swiftly to the ground, she spread her arms wide and soared away with the early morning breeze. The carefully placed jewellery that decorated her body was bursting to the brim with stored mana and easily contained enough power to carry her aloft. She leant into her skills, assigning complementary vectors to each expensive adornment, and with the aid of [Conqueror’s Reservoir], she rapidly flew away from the estate on wings of worked gold and spun silver.
It was a versatile skill—one of her favourites—and she routinely abused it to mimic true flight. It wasn’t remotely close to the real thing as she was effectively flinging herself through the sky like a cannonball, but lacking real wings it was the best that she could manage.
The sea of canvas that dominated the expansive lawns of her estate rushed past. The orderly rows of tents beneath her were quickly replaced by the less-than-orderly streets and alleyways that surrounded the grand buildings of Helion’s centre. She wasn’t far from the palace and the siege grounds, but she turned away from them, heading west as she raced through the sky, just above the waking city’s rooftops.
For a time, she allowed herself to just enjoy the thrilling sensation of her rapid flight. She wove between chimneys and plumes of choking smoke whilst trailing her outstretched fingers along the slate tiles that lined the roofs of her city.
It was hard. Her skill was not designed for this, and it was a constant challenge to make the last-minute twists and turns necessary to avoid a crash. The speeds at which she travelled did not lend themselves to making gentle manoeuvres and so every subtle adjustment caused her stomach to lurch inside of her chest with the sudden change in acceleration.
Still, it was flight, and she had missed it so.
After only a few minutes of blissful escape, Typh had crossed the city and softly set down on the ground a street away from her destination. She took a single step forwards and stopped, her skill-enhanced ears picking out an eerily familiar call.
"What are you doing out so early, little chick?" a deep voice asked.
It wasn’t addressed to her. Even with her dragon class concealed, few would be so foolish as to assume that a fourth tier noble would be easy prey. But it was almost word for word what she’d heard on her first night in Rhelea so many months ago. She could think of a thousand reasons why she should swiftly move on, but her curiosity won out and instead of walking towards her meeting, she turned and went deeper into the alley.
She didn’t have to travel far. Around a blind corner, the dragon found a very familiar sight to match the unpleasantly nostalgic catcall. An objectively beautiful woman—although a bit on the pale and waifish side for Typh’s tastes—stood alone and unguarded in a dirty alley surrounded by four armed men.
She appeared unclassed whereas they were clearly new to theirs having just entered their first tier. With less than ten levels apiece, their classes were unlikely to be that much of an advantage, but between their numbers and their knives, at first glance it looked like it was destined to be a very one-sided altercation.
The woman was barely wearing anything. Her ill-fitting summer dress left very little to the imagination, but it seemed like being ill-prepared for the weather was provocation enough to drag her assailants’ minds down into the gutter. Typh quietly watched from the shadows as it all played out; the familiar motions of the knife, the predictable dropping of the trousers and the off-putting penis bared to the elements.
Typh knew that she should step in and save them, but they were practically asking for it.
The ‘helpless waif’ made all of the appropriate noises to get them close, she even went so far as to wrap a delicate hand around the gang leader’s erection. Her apparent willingness to submit failed to elicit the caution that it really should have. Enslaved to their base urges, it wasn’t until the woman leant up on her tiptoes to kiss him that he seemed to notice that something was amiss.
Of course, by then it was far too late.
The ‘helpless waif’ threw back her head and sank her teeth into the gang leader’s neck. His delighted groans turned into a choked, gurgled scream—a punctured jugular will do that to you—as he tried and failed to push her off of him while she drank her fill.
Despite their obvious and appetising fear, the other three quickly advanced with their knives held low. Their competence and resolve were jarring at first. Typh’s mind failed to reconcile their obvious experience with a knife and their low levels. She had to remind herself that while classes were new to the people of Helion, violence was not.
Their short blades flicked out. Fast by unclassed standards, but to a classer with a decent amount of levels, their attacks were so slow that they might as well have been crawling through molasses. The pale woman certainly seemed to think so.
With delectable crimson still dripping from her chin, the vampire avoided each probing strike, breaking each of their knife arms in turn before growing bored. Rather than hit them again, she used a skill that dropped them all to the floor. Alive but unconscious.
Typh sighed and stepped out from the shadows.
“If you had just killed them all then I could probably have looked the other way, but if you’re taking them back to your nest then we need to have words,” Typh said.
The vampire spun to face her—displaying an almost animalistic expression of fury that quickly morphed into calm confidence. The fresh blood dripping down into her cleavage was distracting, but given how messy the creature had been, the entire alley reeked of it, and Typh’s stomach was already grumbling in eager anticipation.
“A noble, how strange…” the woman said. A moment later her eyes flared red with mana, and she unleashed a wave of hostile mind magic that scratched against Typh’s mental walls.
“Not just a noble. Now stop trying to eat me,” Typh warned.
The vampire responded by twisting her face into a frown and devoting more of her energies into the mental assault. The increased intensity of it caught the dragon off-guard even though she’d been braced for it. Typh took an involuntary half-step backwards which only encouraged the vampire more. A devilish grin stretched wide across her pale features, and the dragon could smell the ravenous hunger wafting off of the vampire.
“I said stop it!” Typh yelled.
The dragon conjured twin lances of golden fire that rocketed out of her chest to strike at the creature’s knees. The vampire screamed loudly as they melted, the flesh popping like sizzling fat. Her human face briefly contorted into something considerably more angular and bestial before reverting back to its pleasant facade. She fell to the side, sliding off from her shins which remained planted squarely on the ground, her molten flesh parting more like hot wax than burning meat.
Before the spell probing her mental defences could withdraw all the way, Typh wrapped her will around those fragmented tendrils of the vampire’s magic and stitched them back together with her mana. She felt the creature’s predatory consciousness recoil from hers as it tried to get away, but with chains made from her intent, the dragon held the squirming thing firmly in place.
Fear, pain, embarrassment, dismay, but most noticeable of all hunger, radiated out from the creature she had shackled. The surface thoughts of the nocturnal predator brushed against Typh’s with far more clarity than what she could usually smell. Already, she felt dirty for the violation she was committing. She hated that she needed to do it, but vampires were tricky and she couldn’t risk making a mistake.
“My legs!” she screamed emphatically.
“Don’t be dramatic, you just ate. You’ll be fine in an hour,” Typh scolded.
“In an hour the sun will have risen and killed me!” the vampire whined, but from her thoughts, Typh knew that the creature was calm.
“Well perhaps if you’re good, I’ll move you inside before that happens,” the dragon offered.
Typh took a moment to parse through the conflicting feelings that arose in response to her proposal. She felt the vampire’s initial hesitancy give way to a predictable hunger as her eyes flickered from Typh to the unconscious men on the ground.
“Fine, but I worked hard for my food. I’ll give you the three who are still alive as tribute, but I want the one that I tasted.”
“Bold of you to make demands considering you don’t currently have any feet.”
“As you said, I just ate.”
The two hunters of men stared at each other in silence. Typh would have been lying if she didn’t admit to feeling some degree of kinship with the vampire. She was a disgusting invader of minds that ate people, but in this particular moment that slur applied to both of them.
“I can agree to that… If this goes well,” Typh said.
“Fine. What do you want, Noble?” the vampire asked.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, and your answers will determine how helpful I’m willing to be. I have no dogmatic issues with vampires living in my city provided that you can play by my rules.”
“Your city?” the creature asked. A long moment passed and a look of understanding passed behind her eyes. “You’re the dragon.”
“I am.” Typh’s tag briefly flickered to confirm the statement before reverting back into her noble one. “It would generally be polite for you to do the same at this point.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Suit yourself. Now… What's your name?”
“You may call me… Sapphire.”
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“Okay, Sapphire. Are you affiliated with a larger clan that I should know about?” Typh asked.
“Not anymore. I came to the surface as an independent,” Sapphire explained.
“I see… And are you the only independent vampire in Helion or do you have a nest? Four bodies is a lot for just the one of you.”
“They were for me alone. I do not ordinarily share my food,” the vampire said, neatly sidestepping Typh’s question. “You should be honoured to be gifted so much of my hunt.”
“I am suitably honoured, believe me,” Typh drawled. “How many of my people have you eaten?”
“More than thirty, fewer than fifty,” Sapphire shrugged.
“That many… don’t worry, that's not too many. It would be hypocritical of me to draw a line there. I’ve killed and eaten far more humans than you,” the dragon smiled. “Now this is my last question. When did you last eat a child?”
“Wait! I would nev—”
As soon as Typh felt the mote of panic arise alongside the explanation she stopped listening. The dragon raised a hand and blanketed Sapphire in golden flames until the System told her that the vampire was dead. She could tolerate a lot of things in the spirit of coexistence, but some crimes just crossed the line.
Which left the dragon alone in a dingy alley with three unconscious would-be-rapists, the waxy remains of a vampire that would evaporate with the coming dawn, and a dead man in a large pool of congealing blood. There was a time in her life when she would have reached straight for her trusty flesh melting spell to dispose of the evidence, but she had matured since then, and one summary execution was enough for one day.
Instead, Typh tried to focus on the silver linings to her little detour and her eyes drifted towards the still-warm corpse lying nearby. It would be a crime to let it go to waste, and she was awfully hungry.
The dragon gently set Arilla’s coat to the side—she’d learnt the hard way that blood did not wash out of wool—and cast a bright spell up into the sky to attract the attention of the nearest patrol. While she waited for them to arrive and take the surviving men into custody, Typh decided to indulge herself.
It wasn’t every day that she stumbled onto a free breakfast.
***
“You have blood in your hair,” Xan sighed.
“I do?” Typh asked.
She slowly ran a small hand through her curly locks and frowned when it came away wet. She licked it clean and tried not to moan. Xan was permissive of a lot of things, but Typh had learnt the hard way that while many humans were comfortable in theory with her dietary habits, they often baulked at witnessing it in practice—to say nothing of her cracking open a ribcage to get to the good bits.
“I suppose I don’t need to ask why you were late then,” the inquisitor said, taking a large drink of her morning ale while the dragon proceeded to finish off the last scraps of her meal.
“I killed a vampire on the way over,” the dragon stated.
“Really?” Xan said with an arched eyebrow. “They're not supposed to come here. We have a treaty.”
“Well, this one ignored it. She wasn’t particularly strong, third-tier—mid-bronze.”
“I know how tiers work translate into ranks, Typh. They're not particularly complicated, one for each available class slot, although it kind of falls down with zero tier, doesn’t it?”
“It's better than naming an entire level category ‘pewter.’ You know it leaches into your drink and poisons you?” Typh grumbled, gesturing towards Xan’s metal cup. The steel rank looked down at it before shrugging and taking another large gulp of her alcoholic beverage.
“I think I’ll take my chances. Speaking of leeches. The vampire, what clan was it?”
“Independent.”
“That’s not necessarily good news. The clans are supposed to control the routes to the surface. If one got through, she either got very lucky, or they’re having trouble of their own down there.”
“The vampires will be aware of our Monster issue and that the council species are abandoning their strongholds and heading west. If they want to survive in the long term—and what vampire doesn’t think in centuries?—they’ll go west too. It’s a long journey to Eleurum. Too long for them to take their herds with them. If their elders have abandoned their castles then instability would soon follow. We could be seeing a lot more of them cropping up throughout Terythia,” Typh warned.
“That’s just what I was hoping to get from this meeting,” Xan sighed. “I’ll have the inquisitions’ agents keep a lookout for them.”
“By agents you mean assassins, right?”
“Don’t be crass, Typh. Call them agents.”
“Fine. But aren’t your agents getting stretched awfully thin? I had confidence in them when they were just looking out for Epherian priests. Then we added Epherian merchants and smugglers to the watchlist. Considering how many you’ve had to send to neighbouring countries up and down Epheria’s border, can they really handle vampires as well?”
“Why do you think I’m working with Eliza instead of a team?” Xan winced.
“I thought you had a crush on her,” Typh deadpanned.
Xan loudly choked on a mouthful of beer, and when she recovered she shot the dragon an irritated glare.
“She’s a weapon, Typh. Nothing more. Whatever is wrong with her class makes her far more dangerous than she should be.”
“I don’t disagree, but I still think she should be in seclusion training somewhere, not galavanting about on adventures with you. It's too risky,” Typh said.
“I never thought I’d hear you cite caution to me,” Xan chuckled.
“How is the bard?”
“On mission.”
Typh blinked.
“You left her unsupervised?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Fine, be mysterious,” the dragon sighed, raising her hands up in defeat. “Is there anything I should know? Any troop movements perhaps…”
“Plenty, but while we may have some mutual interests—namely preventing the extinction of humanity—may I remind you that the Inquisition is staying neutral in matters of succession? You should be grateful that I was able to swing that much for you,” the inquisitor scolded.
“You know that neutrality is a mistake. The Queen is too dangerous to be left on the throne,” Typh said.
“She could be talked down from her experiments if you weren’t currently besieging her. She’s understandably not going to abandon the best weapon she has when a monstrous army is occupying her city. The King was obstinate and unwilling to bend. While the Alchemists Guild may have their hooks in her, Constancia is far more reasonable,” Xan explained.
“So what you're really saying is that your superiors prefer her on the throne to me. Even if they believe me when I say that she killed the King and is toying around with what may very well bring about the end of Creation?”
“I didn’t say that. I said we’re not picking sides. But maybe you can understand while we’d be hesitant to put a functionally immortal man-eating dragon on the throne. The Inquisition cares about the stability and the long term prospects of Terythia. You have no legitimacy that you didn’t claim at the tip of a sword and your successor is a child necromancer who’s so feeble he can't climb a flight of stairs unaided.”
“Tamlin’s not my successor, and that's an exaggeration. He can manage stairs by himself.”
“What is he to you then? Exactly?” Xan asked.
Typh shifted in her seat. She didn’t particularly like that question, and she hated that it kept coming up more than she’d like.
“He’s my student. That’s all that he is to me,” the dragon lied.
“Goblinshit. You’re a shockingly bad liar, Typh.”
“I’m not lying, he’s—”
“It doesn’t really matter what he really is to you. But it is a sign of your deeper problems. You can’t rule without a named successor, and you certainly can’t have a necromancer as one. By openly favouring him so much, Tamlin already has a solid claim on your legacy. If you died and he declared himself your heir, enough people would back him to start a civil war.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“He might. But it gets worse. Arilla has a claim too.”
“And she should—”
“She’s an orphan, Typh. She may be the ‘Lord of Rhelea,’ but many would consider that a worse crime than being a necromancer when it comes to being Queen,” Xan said, cutting her off. “Even if you had succeeded and taken the palace—if you had all the hostages in Creation, your rule would consign Terythia to a civil war. While noble dynasties govern from their seats of power, the patriarchs that sit on them change. Holding the current patriarch’s children will buy you time, but eventually those hostages would be perceived as a weakness that will see them replaced. A dynastic heir is a powerful hostage, a dynastic cousin less so.”
“I know all of this. The hostages were only meant to be a temporary measure,” Typh explained.
“Then make it temporary.”
“I’m trying. You could help.”
“I can't, my hands are tied. Until my superiors think you’re a better bet for the country’s survival than a well-bred and well-liked Terythian noble, you’re on your own.”
“How do I persuade them that I am?”
“You need political legitimacy or overwhelming military might to send the armies heading south back north before they siege Helion—and I’ve seen your cannons, they won’t cut it. Marriage to a powerful noble house might do the trick, but I can’t think of any who’d willingly get into bed with a dragon.”
“I’m not marrying a stranger to win Terythia’s approval,” Typh frowned.
“Well you have to do something and a marriage is the easiest way to make nice with the powers that be,” Xan said.
Typh stared at the inquisitor for a long time before she spoke.
“I need time.”
“I can’t give you any. Not until something changes,” the inquisitor said loudly, making a show of slapping her hands down on the table.
“Well, then I think we’re done here,” the dragon said.
“Me too,” Xan agreed.
The inquisitor rose from her seat and made her way to the tavern’s exit while Typh frowned and watched her go. Her mind was lost to the implications of what had just been said. Even on the backfoot Terythia’s nobility wanted her to come to them. It didn’t matter that she’d led an army in open rebellion, they still wanted her to play by their rules.
The Inquisition wasn’t about to move from the sidelines and that hurt, but it wasn’t the end of everything. That would only come if she failed. It wasn’t until Xan was long gone that Typh noticed a square of folded paper wedged between the wooden planks where the inquisitor had slapped the table.
The dragon hesitantly reached for it and read what was written in Xan’s scrawled hand. Then with a smile, she raced out of the tavern.
The Inquisition might not be on her side, but it seemed that one inquisitor was.
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