AnnouncementContent Warning: LewdnessChapter 12: The Scheming Dragon

  -Marion-

  I stood there for a solid minute staring at the gigantic talking owl-creature. I was still sort of calcuting just how fucked I was, but since I was still alive and breathing, I figured my chances of surviving this weren’t zero.

  “You know,” the owl whooed again, “I didn’t expect you so soon, dear.”

  “What in the hells are you?” I blurted out. There was a twitch on the owl’s face, as if my question insulted it somehow. After a moment of pondering, it’s face settled on smug satisfaction.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t know enough of my kind to tell what I am…” it mused. The voice sounded almost human at this point and it was somewhat feminine.

  The owl continued, “You see; I have been around longer than the human race.” She stepped closer, her massive cws scratching over the stone floor. “Back in my early days, the elves were merely a small community with a few dozen people. Civilization was all but unheard of. The world was wild and free. And even among gods my kind was viewed as equals.”

  She leaned down to me and her face was almost close enough to touch it. A shiver ran down my spine as I stared at her massive beak and realised, she could swallow me whole.

  When she spoke up again to continue her gloating, I could feel her warm breath in the air. “When civilization began to cover the world, we were revered. Worshiped. And we ruled. But everything has its end. Many of my kind became dormant. Hid away in the depths of the world. But not me. I persevered. I remained. I watched the birth of humanity. The rise and fall of their empires. I lived among them under the guise of a wisewoman and I taught them magics so ancient even the elves didn’t remember.”

  She pulled back and unfurled her wings. “What am I, you ask?” she growled. “I am an ancient dragon. And you have stolen from my hoard, little Marion!”

  One of her cws reached forward. The thing was almost as rge as I. I wanted to run. Hide. Whatever. But I was frozen in pce. Was it the fear? Or did she cast some kind of spell on me? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I was completely fucked. I was as good as dead.

  Her cw tapped against my chest and slowly raised up my chin to look her in the face. “Now, dear Marion. What shall I do with you?” she mused malevolently.

  “You could let me go?” I blurted out like an idiot.

  She actually snorted and recoiled her cw. “Very funny Marion, but we both know I can’t let that happen. I expected you to try and break in from the moment I id eyes on you at the tournament registration. I did not expect you to find a way inside my cavern, even less leave it with the scroll in hand. I can’t help but feel fooled.”

  My mind was racing with all the reveals piling onto me, but it stopped when she mentioned the tournament. The registration. She walked among humans as a wisewoman. I followed the elven dy into the cavern and she was gone after. That was her. She was that dy. Dama… Demyr.

  Lady Demyr continued her rant, “You know, the pieces in this library are some of the most secret knowledge in the entire world. Not even the academy city of Sagath has knowledge like this. I’ve been keeping this hoard over millennia and no one walked away with even a single piece of it, until that fool of a king promised one of my scrolls as a reward for the tournament. And I made sure to punish him for it. One word to the right people was enough to start the fall and soon his legacy will crumble.”

  What the fuck was she talking about? Punishing the king? Destroying his entire legacy, because he promised a piece of her hoard… was the princess in danger? Maybe I could save her. I could activate my wind glyph. Dash out of here… if I can find the exit that is. If these catacombs were underneath the academy, she would be somewhere above us, not too far away.

  That still left whatever she had in store for me. If she was willing to destroy an entire royal family for taking a single scroll, what was she going to do to little old me? Would she go after my parents? Would she go after Gerden and Trudy? Maybe she would even chase down Sephie. I couldn’t let this happen. Could I return the scroll still? All I needed was the spell… I could probably learn it pretty quick.

  “Lady Demyr,” I began shakily. “What if I returned the scroll? I only need to learn the spell and your hoard will remain untouched. I don’t want my family to be hurt, please!” I pleaded.

  The dragon-owl shook her head and snarled, “You can’t learn the spell. The knowledge is secret. If you learn it its knowledge can be taught to others! Return it now and I may spare you and your family.”

  My heart was racing and I decided to take one st gamble. If this didn’t work, I was out of options.

  “What if you… cast the spell?” I asked quietly. She blinked in confusion. She obviously hadn’t thought about that. What if she said no? I couldn’t give up this chance, but I didn’t want to hurt my family. I could make a run for it and try to get out a message to them to warn them.

  I was still thinking over the doom and gloom when Lady Demyr spoke up.

  “You know, Marion. You’ve angered me. A lot. But I also can’t help but be impressed by you. No one has accomplished what you have today and believe me, many have tried. I want to know how you got in. Then I will cast the spell for you.”

  Wait what? She was going to do it? Just like that? “Are you serious?” I asked, fbbergasted.

  The owl let out a whooing chuckle. “Yes. Seriously. If you tell me how you got in.”

  I finally let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding in this whole time. My muscles felt sore. My chest was thumping with pain and there was a dull headache throbbing in my head. I was starting to understand why I was put in bedrest. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have been so reckless. Although at the time everything I did and thought felt perfectly reasonable to me. Maybe a side effect of the concussion or something.

  I cleared my throat and looked back up at Lady Demyr, who was studying me expectantly.

  “I followed you,” I stated.

  She cocked her head. “What?”

  “I followed you. I heard steps and followed them. Then I saw you speaking some incantation at the door and slipped in after you.”

  The owl blinked at me about a dozen times, then looked away to the side. She looked somewhat ashamed. “Wow. That is… so incredibly stupid. What spell did you use to conceal yourself?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She looked back at me questioningly.

  “I just followed you. As quietly as I could.”

  She blinked a bunch again in disbelief. “You just followed me?!” she asked. There was a note of frustration in her voice and I hoped it was aimed at herself rather than me.

  “Yea, pretty much. I thought maybe you knew the way out. I got kinda lost down here.”

  She actually facepalmed at that. Which looked kind of fun with the whole wings situation and all.

  “I hope you appreciate just how lucky you are, Marion. All the defences of the vault are temporarily disabled while I pass them. If you were only a step too far away, even once, you would have been disintegrated immediately.”

  Oh damn. I guess I was a little bit lucky. I sheepishly looked down at the ground and scratched my chin. Eww stubbles. Probably should shave again. Wait no I didn’t need to anymore after this, right?

  I felt a small gust of wind as Lady Demyr’s body shifted to the elven woman she was posing as. She held her hand out expectantly.

  Oh right. The scroll. I quickly handed it back over and she unfurled it. “Take of your bandages and kneel there,” she commanded.

  I stumbled a little over myself trying to get out of the bandages but eventually managed and knelt down where she pointed. She moved around me and cast a bunch of blue glowing runes in a circle around me. When she was done, she stepped back in front of me and started reading off the scroll.

  I still didn’t understand a single word she spoke, despite sounding awfully close to ancient elvish, but I could feel the magic inside the runes activating. The air around me was so abuzz with mana I had trouble breathing. Her chanting grew louder the further into the incantation she got.

  My body started tingling all over and I felt a warmth creeping through me from the centre of my heart. Shortly after I was in a pce I could only describe as nowhere. Pure darkness. No smell. No noise. I felt… nothing. I wasn’t even ‘there’. I had no body. I was just my thoughts. Was I dead?

  Before I could think too much about it, I felt my senses returning to me slowly. The first thing I felt was the coldness of the passage we were in. Then I heard Lady Demyr’s chanting and shortly after my vision started to return. It was all blurry at first, but after another minute or so I could start making out the shape of the elven woman in front of me.

  By the time her chanting stopped my senses were back in full. Lady Demyr had a satisfied look on her face while she rolled up the scroll again. “You actually look kind of cute, kneeling on the floor all helpless like that,” she teased. I felt a blush creep over my face and I looked down at the ground.

  My blush grew even stronger when I noticed the pair of naked breasts that hung from my chest. Holy fuck. I raised one of my hands to get a feel but instead found myself staring at my slender arm and hand. My fingers were still pretty long, which I liked, but they were now a lot thinner and more dainty looking. I spent about a whole minute staring at my hands while I wiggled my fingers around in all sorts of motions. It felt familiar, but also distinct from my old body. Like the way I moved my parts worked the same, but the way the movement felt was different.

  I only stopped when Lady Demyr reminded me of her presence with a pointed “ahem.”

  Right, she was still here. “So Marion, are you happy?” she asked. Her voice was back to the compassionate, friendly tone she had back at the competition, which made me wonder how much of that persona was a disguise and how much was just her.

  “I’m super fucking happy!” I replied confidently, until I noticed that my voice was different, too. It was pretty much the same as the one I had in my lucid dreams. Still distinctly me, but more softspoken and melodic. I felt a grin cross my face and gnced back down my body.

  I was still wearing the underwear I had on all day and I really wanted to check how I looked like between my legs, but with Lady Demyr around I decided to leave that for ter.

  A soft hand cupped my chin and pulled my head back up. Lady Demyr was staring down at me. “Now Marion, you should probably go and find some clothes. It must be cold down here like that.”

  She offered me her other hand and pulled me upright. The world felt a little rger than before. I was almost as tall as her in her elven form before. Now I was eye-level with her chest. Not that I was staring at it or anything. Okay maybe a little, but only because her boobs were like right there.

  It was about then that I realised I had by boobs on full dispy until now, so I quickly covered them up with my arms. The extra warmth also felt comforting, so I decided that getting my clothes was actually a pretty good idea. There was only a slight problem.

  “Uhm. Lady Demyr,” I started quietly. “I kind of… don’t know the way out…”

  She gave me a look that was somewhere between amusement and annoyance, but eventually she shrugged. “Fine, I will show you the way out. But only because I find you amusing.” Then her look became almost predatory and her hand grabbed my face again. “But be careful not to spend too much time around me, or I might be tempted to hatefuck you senseless,” she growled.

  Holy fuck. That was hot. A shiver ran down my body and I couldn’t tell whether it was because of the cold, out of fear, or anticipation. Though the heat building in between my legs gave me a bit of a suggestion.

  I let out a shaky breath and pushed away the dirty thoughts that were creeping into my mind. Behave Marion, this woman was literally older than humanity itself. Don’t fuck the sexy dragon dy.

  By then Lady Demyr had already started walking down the passage, so I quickly ran after her. When I caught up, I felt her hand rest against the small of my back and she silently pulled me along with her.

  She carefully guided me through the byrinth and not long after we reached an unfamiliar staircase. I honestly thought this is where she would leave me, but she continued to pull me along up the stairs. Unlike the spiral staircase I came down, this one only reached up two stories to what I assumed was the ground floor.

  She pulled me further along the long, decorated hallways of the academy and it didn’t take long for the first students to take notice of us. I couldn’t help but think what kind of thoughts they would have of me. A young girl wearing nothing but boy’s underwear being pulled along by the headmistress of the academy.

  My imagination was running wild with all sorts of lewd fantasies and I had to try my hardest to ignore the growing heat between my legs.

  We continued to catch the attention of more and more students and even some professors as Lady Demyr guided me to and up another staircase and all the way to the room I woke up in this morning.

  The sun had long gone down and it was probably closer to midnight at this point. I still felt pretty awake though. I was pretty sure it was for the same reason my chest and head weren’t aching anymore. The transformation probably ‘reset’ my entire body to the one that matched my soul, which included getting rid of any damages and deficiencies I had at the time.

  I walked over into the bedroom to look around for my clothes and heard Lady Demyr close the door behind me.

  I threw on a loose shirt and some tight pants and reemerged out of the curtained doorway. I did a double take when I saw Lady Demyr sitting on one of the sofas. I’d thought that she closed the door behind me and left.

  “Want to watch the chaos with me?” she asked. She still had that predatory look on her face, but this time there was a vindictive note in her voice. Was she talking about the king?

  She gracefully rose and sauntered over to the balcony overlooking the city, where she leaned on the railing. I followed after a few seconds. Part of me still wanted to run away and warn the young princess, but I didn’t want to anger Lady Demyr after all she did for me.

  This woman, dragon, whatever had a real talent to make me feel small and submissive. I was usually fearless and confident, but ever since meeting her at the tournament she had successfully tore down all my defences.

  Although right now she was looking rather tame. She had a cute smug look on her face while she was starting at the cityscape below us. Unsure of what to watch for, I asked, “Soo… What are we looking for?”

  Her body was leaned forward, so she had to look up to me. “It should start any minute now,” she mused. “Marion, what do you know of the Darclin?”

  “Darklings? They’re shadow demons, known for their stealth skills.” I answered confidently. While demonology as a magic lore was strictly forbidden, we still learned a lot about different demon types, what they were good at and how to beat them. Though we spent most of our lessons learning about deception demons. They were by far the most dangerous to us mages. Not because they could harm us easily, blood and fire demons were much better at that, but because they were the most tempting for us to deal with.

  I was still on my mental tangent to demonology, when Lady Demyr spoke up again. It looked like she was shaking her head beforehand.

  “Not quite Marion. The Darclin are a powerful elven family. Some twelve-thousand years ago the elves fought a civil war. The worshippers of Ilu, God of Light battled the worshippers of Oz, God of Darkness over succession to the throne of the isles. The Ilunists were victorious and banished the Oznites. To the rest of the world, the Darkelves were considered lost.”

  She continued, “Except they weren’t. They were led to safety by a young teenage aristocrat by the name of Lorenna Darclin. She built a home for darkelves in the south and at some point, married the goddess Senipher and had three daughters. You see, to Lorenna, who had lost her entire family in the civil war, family was everything. So when I realised the elven woman King Kevin took home from Illyria was none other than Lorenna’s little sister, that was… very useful.”

  She gnced back over the city and I saw that the lights in the pace suddenly all went out at the same time.

  “Of course, Queen Merilynn died in childbirth, since elves and humans are not genetically compatible; But her daughter Liana survived. And the day the fool King announced the prize for the tournament a message was sent to Lorenna, informing her of the princess’ retion to her. A family person like her can’t possibly imagine her niece growing up in human hands, so she was kind enough to dispatch one of her daughters.”

  Shouts were echoing through the central city as guards streamed into the streets. The darkness crept away from the pace and a bunch of torches and magical nterns lit up all over the complex. The shouts grew and a few loose patrols started to search around. It was hard to tell what they were shouting, but one word was repeated over and over: The princess.

  I looked over to the dragon in disguise and she had a satisfied gleeful grin on her face while she watched the chaos unfold below us.

  Muffin_Maeve