Dragon Breeder 1

by Dante King

  “Dragon potions at the ready!” Saya yelled as two groups of ninjas came pelting toward her and her crew. Her four squad members reached for matching pouches at their waists and drew forth small vials corked with wax. Each looked to contain a liquid resembling quicksilver.

  Dragon potions? I thought. What are dragon potions?

  “Deploy!” Saya cried.

  Her squad tossed the potions at the onrushing gray-clad warriors.

  The vials shattered against the dirt road and exploded. Whizzing fragments and chunks of magically conjured stone flew in all directions, scything down ninjas like wheat. Blood sprayed, and chunks of flesh were ripped from bones.

  I used Blink to get inside the guard of a momentarily distracted gray warrior, stole a dagger from a sheath at his belt, teleported behind him, and punched it twice into his kidneys. He fell away, but then another ninja crashed into me, his fingers locked around my wrist and forcing the dagger away.

  We were face to face. Locked together. My back was pressed to the cold earth. My foe’s masked countenance was only a couple of inches from mine as we squirmed in the mud, each of us trying to use the dagger in my grip to end the other’s life.

  From this close up, I had a clear view of one of our mystery opponent’s faces—though all that entailed was an unencumbered look at the man’s eyes.

  They were popping, mad and fanatical. What was more, the thin strip of skin I could see was a tracery of bright blue veins, running across his visage like frozen lightning.

  The dagger inched a little closer to my face. The ninja’s grip seemed, what with the size of the man on top of me, to be unnaturally strong.

  Then, the warrior stiffened. The bulging eyes bulged all the more, to the point that they looked like they would pop from his skull. Blood drooled from his mouth and onto my chest and the mad-looking dude slumped over sideways to reveal…

  “Rupert!” I said, hauling myself up.

  My squad’s designated herbalist-cum-healer-cum-mad genius grinned at me and wiped his bloody knife on the back of the dead assassin’s tunic. With a small salute, he disappeared back into the fray.

  I looked around. The gray-clad warriors were almost routed. There were only ten or so of the most hardy ones left, but they were proving difficult to pin down and kill.

  I was covered in mud and blood. My temper was fraying rapidly.

  “Fuck it, let’s finish this shit,” I growled.

  I summoned Noctis into being and mounted him.

  “All right, buddy,” I said, “are you in the mood for barbecue?”

  “Only if it’s well done,” came the telepathic reply from my Onyx Dragon, and he rumbled with anticipation.

  “Well go get ‘em, chef,” I said.

  Noctis, like a streak of midnight, rocketed around the street. Flying about six feet off the ground, he systematically incinerated the last half dozen or so ninjas that managed to evade the squads and my fellow dragonmancers.

  What I learned later was that Elenari and Saya had quit fighting so that the squads could gain some more experience. Saya’s final kill came by utilizing a cool Right Arm spell that rippled the ground around her like water before a huge stone fist punched up from the soil and sent a gray warrior hurtling like a cannonball through a second story window of a farmhouse. He didn’t stop there either, splintering out of the top of the thatch roof a moment later and hurtling limply toward the forest like a ragged firework.

  It was the overexuberance that accompanied victory, I thought, that led to Noctis accidentally setting the pottery workshop on fire.

  He engulfed the last pair of gray-clad fighters with such a blast of roaring white and black fire that the wooden building behind them caught alight too.

  To everyone’s surprise, a second later, a man burst from the adjoining cottage and came to stand and stare in horror as the fire engulfed the large shed.

  “My workshop!” he cried. “My kiln!”

  I didn’t really know what to say to the poor guy, but I suddenly realized why Saya and Elenari had refrained from mounting their dragons straight away and torching the ninjas: collateral damage. Dragonfire was hard to defend against, but it was pretty indiscriminate when it came to property damage—I doubted it would be covered under insurance, if they had such a scam on this world.

  I was feeling pretty guilty, of course, but Elenari summoned Gharmon, and the Emerald Dragon blasted the burning workshop with a gust of cooling air and soon had the fire out.

  “I am sorry for your troubles, sir,” the red-haired elf said to the man, who was looking over his torched workshop with undisguised despair. “The heat of battle and all that. Do not worry though, the Drako Academy will reimburse you. I shall make sure of it.”

  While Elenari continued to placate the potter, Saya and the three squads were busy searching through the corpses of the unknown gray warriors. After a few minutes, the leggy blonde walked over to me shaking her head.

  “Nothing?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. She motioned at Noctis and then said to me, “you should let him feast on the flesh of the fallen like the other two. It will keep him strong and make him more powerful still.”

  I looked around at the carnage. “Saves on a clean-up team,” I said, “but can three dragons polish off, like, fifty dead men?”

  “You’d be amazed at how corrosive a dragon’s stomach acid is.” Saya winked at me. “And how insatiable their appetites.”

  I looked at Noctis, who was regarding me with a questioning eye. “Have at it, champ.”

  The Onyx Dragon stalked away to join his reptilian friends in the street, which had become an alfresco dining area.

  “You got any idea who these guys were?” I asked. “And why the fuck they looked like they had Cool Blue Gatorade running through their veins?”

  Saya clearly didn’t get the reference, but she got the jist of what I was talking about.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said, “but I suspect that these thieves were part of a secret society known as the Bloodletters.”

  “What makes you think that?” I asked. “Is blue blood a prerequisite for entry?”

  Saya nodded. “And from the way that madness lurked in their eyes,” she said matter-of-factly, “and their erratic movements. Their strength and speed. It was not usual. Not for ones without tainted blood.”

  “Coming from a one-hundred and thirty pound woman who kicked a man into a one-ton cart so hard that he flipped it,” I said drily.

  Saya smiled. “That was highly satisfying,” she said. “But it is to be expected from us, being dragonmancers.”

  “If you’re right and these guys are part of these Bloodletters,” I said over the crunch and crack of bones coming from the feeding dragons, “how do they become stronger and faster than your average citizen, and what’s with the name?”

  “The Bloodletters,” Saya explained, “is a thieves guild that extracts blood from dragons—although which dragons is a completely closed book to us—and injects it through... unrefined methods into the veins. It is a method that bestows enhanced physical prowess compared to regular folk, but is paid for in sanity by the user. They trade their empathy for power. It makes them dangerous criminals.”

  Her words reminded me, a little, of junkies back on Earth. The recreational drugs that they used gradually snuck up and claimed them, stripping them of their humanity and ability to reason. Made the bad ones capable of all sorts of heinous things.

  I was about to ask a few more questions but was cut off by the downdraft of dragon wings.

  None other than Sergeant Milena and Lieutenant Kaleen arrived on the scene.

  There was a rush of air from above us, and the two officers descended on their silver and gold dragons like authority personified.

  I wondered how the hell these hard-asses happened to be in this neighborhood at this time of night, and whether we were about to get another reprimanding. However, it seemed that Sergeant Milena could read my mind.

>   “We heard reports that three dragonmancers were flying out toward the Eldritch Wood,” Milena said. “Feeling like a shit load of paperwork was about to fall into my lap, I decided that the lieutenant and I should come and have a nosy in person.” She smiled a humorless smile. “And who should we find, but you three heroes.”

  “What happened here?” Lieutenant Kaleen asked in her crisp and officious voice, while her golden dragon sniffed at a patch of blood. It was all that remained of one of the ninja thieves.

  Elenari regaled our two commanding officers with the tale, while I stood and casually leaned against Noctis.

  “And what did this thief take from this mysterious cloaked stranger?” Sergeant Milena asked. There was a wry smile playing around her mouth, as if she knew that there was more behind this than it seemed.

  “No idea, Sergeant,” I said. “I had a little poke around but couldn’t find anything.”

  I recalled what Noctis had said about keeping the weird crystal egg a secret. As much as I hardly knew Noctis, I had bonded with him. For now, I would keep the existence of the egg to myself.

  Sergeant Milena eyed me shrewdly for a minute, but I didn’t look away.

  “Okay then,” she said, after the moment had stretched well beyond its expiry date. “The three of you had better head back to the keep. You two,” and she pointed at me and Elenari, “have got a big day of shield polishing ahead of you tomorrow. Your squads will follow along behind.”

  “Sergeant,” Elenari said, speaking to that special point some two inches above our CO’s head, “the villager over there… He suffered from a bit of accidental combustion…”

  The sergeant’s gaze flicked over to the potter’s half ruined workshop. Then she looked at me.

  “The Academy will take care of it,” she said without the slightest flicker of emotion.

  So, after being advised by Noctis to lie to my superior officers, Elenari, Saya and I hopped on our mounts and flew back to the Crystal Spire.

  The three of us were pretty tired when we got up to our quarters, and there wasn’t much in the way of conversation while we hit the showers and had a good rinse.

  I was a bit speedier at sluicing water and soap over myself and got back to the room ahead of Elenari and Saya. I sat for a while on the edge of my bed simply decompressing. When the two women got back to the room, Elenari and Saya slipped unabashedly out of their towels. Their backs were to me, but I drank in the sight of their firm bodies and tight asses. Rather than enjoy the sight of the gorgeous naked duo for too long, I pulled on a pair of boxers, which had been conveniently provided to me. Don’t let anyone tell you that there’s no comfortable underwear in pre-modern worlds, because these cradled the crown jewels a treat.

  Elenari nodded at me as she slipped into bed, and I couldn’t help but feel that I’d made her proud today. After all, she had been the one to fetch me from Earth.

  Saya, now free of the blood and guts that had caked her, gave me a long, mischievous smile.

  I slipped into bed too, putting the golden pendant containing the onyx crystal on my bedside table. The charms that lit the room dimmed slowly until the only light in the dormitory came from the moon outside the window.

  What. A. Day, I thought.

  I rolled over and pulled the dragon orb or crystal or whatever the hell it was out from under the pillow where I had stashed it.

  I looked at the crystal, wondering what the woman who had been robbed had been doing with it and why the thief wanted it so badly. The other ninjas, or Bloodletters as Saya had called them, must have been backup or something. What would have been so precious as to require about 50 soldiers to fetch?

  The question fell to the back of my mind as I pondered on what the fuck I was meant to do with it. I took the opportunity to ask Noctis, touching my onyx crystal and sending the thought into it.

  “Simply keep it safe,” he replied, his ancient voice echoing in my mind.

  That wasn’t much of an answer, but it seemed to be all I’d get, because he didn’t reply when I asked him for more information.

  I was just drifting off, listening to the soft, regular sound of Elenari breathing, when a shadow stirred across my closed lids. The air around me moved. I opened my eyes.

  Saya was standing over me. She was dressed only in shadow and moonlight.

  It was a good look for her. An outfit that I would happily endorse. A fashion style that I’d get behind—or to the side of or the front of, for that matter.

  “Good evening,” I said, grinning like the cat who had, if not got the cream just yet, had managed to find its way into the dairy.

  Without a word and with her usual domineering attitude, Saya pulled back my sheets and pointed to my boxer shorts.

  “Lose them,” she said in a barely discernible whisper.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied. I slipped out of my underwear and shuffled over so that Saya could lie down next to me.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked as Saya pulled the sheet back over us. Already, I could feel myself starting to stiffen.

  “In the short time since we slept together,” Saya whispered. “Whenever I thought about it—about bedding you—I had a...a fire...a hunger flare in my belly. Like something ignited at the very thought of doing it again.”

  She reached out a hand and ran her fingers down my chest and my abdominals before she clasped me by the cock.

  “You’ve got an itch?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level and quiet, even as Saya spat into her other palm and began to do the old five-knuckle shuffle.

  “And I want you to scratch it,” she whispered into my ear, biting at my earlobe as she continued to rub Mike junior until he was standing up, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

  “What about Elenari?” I breathed, taking one of her huge, firm tits in my hand and then running my fingers down to her eager sex.

  “We fuck as quiet as mice, Michael Gilmore,” Saya said.

  And we did too. It was slow, lazy sex. We lay on our sides at first and toyed with one another until we could take it no more. Then, with a silent slowness that barely ruffled the sheets, Saya raised her leg and guided me into her. My cock rubbed at the entrance of her slippery slit for a moment or two, kneading against her clit before, with a soft grunt, I pushed into her.

  We let loose a combined sigh and pulled the covers up over our heads. Slowly, but with a gradually increasing intensity, we writhed against one another. The only sound was our breathing and gasps—which we tried to muffle with my pillows—and the soft squelch of, as the Spice Girls once put it, two becoming one.

  After a while, Saya clambered on top of me and began to rock—deep, vigorous thrusts—backward and forward on top of me. While she took the reins and set the pace, I busied myself with playing with her incredible breasts; burying my face in her cleavage and biting and licking at her nipples, which were set to high-beam.

  Even though it was far slower and less aggressive than the sex we had enjoyed before, it was made all the more passionate and intense by the need to remain silent. I spread the Amazonian-esque woman’s buttcheeks with my fingers and pulled her harder against me, willing myself deeper inside of her.

  I could feel the head of my cock grinding against something inside of her, could feel that pink, hot tension rising between us.

  Saya’s movements became faster, and she nipped at my neck and shoulder with her teeth. Her breath came hot and fast against my chest as she lowered her head and lost herself in the rhythm. My fingers ran up and down the female dragonmancer’s spine like spiders, revelling in the slickness of her sweat.

  And, like a tide that unexpectedly sweeps up a beach and washes over a pair of unsuspecting sunbathers, we both felt our climaxes rise above us like a wave, ready to simultaneously wash us away.

  I made a half-hearted attempt to pull out, but I was weary from the day’s exertions—getting in a full-blown battle the likes of which would have made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles proud would take it out of
any man, I was sure.

  Despite my half-assed efforts to do the gentlemanly thing, Saya reached down with a strong hand and grabbed my cock.

  “No, don’t pull out,” she hissed in my ear. “I want your seed.” Her breath was warm and irresistible, and I found myself only too happy to yield to her wishes.

  That one word was the final shove that kicked my libido over the edge. As Saya ground herself into me and came, I grabbed her firm asscheeks and squeezed, silently pressing myself as deeply into her as I was able.

  That release was epic. For a few internal moments, we remained locked together, each holding our breath as we climaxed. I thought I could hear my joints creaking at the intensity of the orgasm while Saya’s fingers clawed into my chest. I swear, light even flashed across my vision from under the covers.

  I blinked.

  I wasn’t imagining it. Light was emanating from under the covers. A warm pulsating glow that mirrored the throbs of ecstasy flooding over me.

  I blinked again.

  There was no doubt about it, there was a hot light radiating from just under Saya’s navel—just as it had the last time we had sex. Only this time, the light did not flicker and die. It stayed put, while Saya moaned quietly, so as not to wake Elenari, and trembled on top of me.

  The weird internal fire brightened with a suddenness and intensity that reminded me of one of those old school bulb flashes going off, and then it died down so that I could only notice it if I looked closely.

  Before I could utter so much as a question—or a single word—Saya’s lips pressed against mine. Then she swung her leg off me and disappeared into the moonlit room. There was a rustle of bed clothes, a sigh of contentment, and then silence.

  I closed my eyes, intending just to blink and then stare up at the ceiling to consider what I’d just seen, but the post-coital exhaustion closed over me like a warm river.

  Before you could say “ejaculate and evacuate,” sleep had claimed me.