"You can't travel to other worlds to eat their dragons; it's forbidden," the snack brewing away in Lyren's bloated gut blabbered, barely keeping his maw above-acid. "And don't you dare try ascending to godhood, or else an uprising of multiversal dragons will blast you into the nethers! Blast you, Lyrenstraz, Devourer of his Own Kind! Blaaaaaast youuuuuuuu!"
And so ended the diatribe of a dragon whose name was worth less than the belly-pudge he became. Spongy belly walls spasmed and clamped time and again. The diameter of the sloshy gut shrank fast. There was a succulent churning that sounded like someone being smothered under a saturated pillow.
Lyren—the dragon digesting the guardian—had scales of lime-skin green and belly plates of lime-flesh green. Each plate was notched along the edges. Dark grey addax horns rose abreast a trail of sawtooth spines the same grey. The spines emerged above the brows but ended just before the spined nape fins, which had membranes the color of marrow with just the subtlest hint of green you could swear you're imagining. They matched his jaw fins, spinal rear fins, tail fins and the fins on the back of each of his forelegs. The bottom of each of his wings had that same shade too, but each top was covered with the green of those dastardly scales: a green which darkened and bore light rings of green around the wing-fingers. Each leading wing-claw, like those of his paws, had claws dark-grey.
Lyren huffed a dreamy plume. Thumps and grinds teased his innards, teasing the soft flesh within with aches and bruises. Borborygmic surges of pulpy acid packaged the stew his prey had become into the ropy meanders. Acids chymified the talkative sludge-muzzle: another nutrient-rich infusion for his intestines to absorb.
Burbles chorused. Hisses frothed. Bass roared. Restless tides of stomach juices bulged out his ventral scales. The marshy, sluicy sounds could have scared off knights and mages—off on the premise that some pestilential dragonbreath were about to be retched. Instead, a caravan of solid bulges ventured up his throat. Then, belched out were bile-covered remains and billows of venom-green.
Bones of the metallic dragon slammed down in a jumble. Your tongue foretells a different fate than your body, Lyren thought, his eyes of yellow sclerae and ruby irises mocking the fried remains. If this is how dragons will go about blasting me into the nethers, I can't wait to meet our multiversal friends~
Laughter, sour and sweet the sound, swept the tunnel. The bass in his voice rattled the bones of guardians he'd eaten on the way in. "Blast me into the nethers, and we shall see how long the nethers last~"
He turned toward the oak-banded portal. The ring of cerulean unguent hummed for him. It seemed to be saying, Come, Lyren, your banquet awaits. Big dragons, little dragons, dessert-dragons, comfort-food dragons, perhaps dragon gods lay beyond. All would crow before him. All would flock in fear at the faintest curse of his aphrodisiacal breath—or, take one whiff of them and fall infatuated at his feet.
Once I absorb the powers of my otherworldly kin, the world the guardians called Scaleback will be clouded from forest floor to mountain peak with my sweet mind-poisoning fumes. So my greatest critics will but sing of me ... Or fuel my evolution. Speaking of ... it is time, belly-fodder, for you to become part of the greater dragon. Surrender your essence to ME~
"Rru-aaahh! Haaah~!"
Sinew of quadrupedal muscles tightened and strained. Grungy, leathery groans resonated. He grew larger in size. Evaporating was the intestinal bulge of nutrients, spurring on his monstrous maturation. "Yesss." Stones cracked from his voice, which ripped and roughened the air. The deepness of his groans developed as did the cave's tremors. "Gatekeepers of the multiverse, yield your strength to all of this green!"
Your average adventurer would have stood at level with the base of his neck until his wings latched around him in an embrace of rapture, of chrysalis. Gusting open, they revealed his new form, fifteen feet tall from the talons to the top of the head. Now, he could rival a single-storey building in height.
The elder dragon demographic of his meals toughened the scales of his hide, sharpening every point of scale and tooth and claw. His snout elongated and snout horn enlarged. His facial features morphed ferociously in a time lapse of maturity. Hooks and rivets festered; trenches and lines spread and deepened; blotches of wisdom mottled his hide. For every dragon he ate (four guardians in all), a new deformed wing-claw burrowed out from around the wing-claw of each wing: dark-grey macabre hooks which jerked into place. He reared his head, and the features of his head and face appeared more savage and wise.
Yes! He roared fiendishly, the strength of seven supplementing his own to quake the tunnel. With a great startle, the gate seemed to roll on its hip, rocking and loosening boulders. Rocks could be heard falling and stacking and sliding. He fell quiet, entranced by the echoes of his power which laid waste, and then turned back toward the portal. For too long, the bridges between worlds have been used for trifling affairs. For the 'collective knowledge of dragonkind.' For the 'intermingling of diverse communities.' Hehh. Sounds like a buffet to me. He pranced ahead and passed through the portal, the tunnel caving in behind him.
And so began his hunt in the world of Scaleback.
2
A muffled explosion—a liquid, viscid sound—told Solaris all she needed to know. Lounging on the limb of a giant hardwood four storeys over the portal, the whiskered biped guardian dragon of cream-orange fur saw the green dragon pad through a mushroom cloud of cerulean plasma, which imploded back into the vertical pool at his leave. His aura warned her of his intent for coming.
He looked about him as though not all things were worth plundering—and also, as though he would take from nature whatever he wished. Apple green puffs of breath escaped him: What he vented was vile and ill, some innate part of him.
It had been only a few weeks since Kitsurin's portal guardians had disbanded and left Solaris as the lone defender. She had not anticipated needing to replace the other guardians so soon. Now, she feared she had erred in delaying recruitment.
Do not face him on your own, her instincts warned.
Off fled the orange-cream biped, hopping from one bough to the next, in search of her counterpart Nocta. In the meantime, Lyrenstraz was unchecked: free to explore the world and find his first meal. Scents of apple and earth, a particular dragon scent, ribboned into his nostrils, which led him into a dell where small streams ran between carpets of detritus and moss and small rock shelves. Lyren saw fresh dragon prints in the detritus and sniffed, the smell of his prey still fresh. He knew a dragon's peculiar smell when he smelled one.
Above clung to the trunk of a tree a red with peach-tan wings. Shard easily outmatched the green dragon in size: Even his forechest would loom over the green. But a dragon had once remarked that he had the fighting skills of a doe; and not much had changed since then, including his reluctance to fight. The only talent he had in his teeth and claws related to climbing, sneaking and dashing.
If the fire guardian feared him, how could I pose any threat against him? Perhaps he could converse with the green—neutralize the threat with empathy? Curious about the plausibility, he would watch the green from a safe distance. He sneaked down the tree trunk with his claws hooked into it and his tail coiled round it. Quiet, graceful, sprawling movements. The mien of a beady-eyed housecat, but without arrogance.
From there he watched where the green went, but then shuddered when the green without warning took off, bounding behind a rock ledge. The trunk cracked at a step, for Shard had turned restlessly; had tried to see where the green was going and had lost track of him.
Oh, I may not be able to see you, but I can smell you, tasty dragon, thought Lyren, suppressing a chuckle as he padded carefully toward the buttressing roots of the hidden dragon's tree. Just a few wingbeats of a rise above the ground, the air wavered oddly beside the trunk, indicating to Lyren that his nose had not lied. He inhaled. On both sides of his sinuous neck, an elegant green tattoo—like the outline of a grass stalk—glowed like a firefly lantern before he unleashed a gout of green breath. Boughs flailed within the gout. Clouds of leaves and bark puffed into the air. Near the tip of the gas projectile resounded a gagging sound, that and the flapping of wings. Drafts came down, disturbing the detritus.
"Aha." Lyren saw the camouflaging spell end and expose a dragon: a rather lithe—to a nigh skeletal degree—crimson one. Small silvery spines ran all down his back. Short segmented horns wound to curve outward, graceful hooks. Red scales tinted with splendid magenta rode his figure. They looked as though they had been lathered with some kind of oil. "And what might you be doing, hiding up there? Spying on me, were you?"
Inebriated—how else could Shard explain his feelings? A sort of loopiness, a love for the green, clouded his thoughts. This reminded him of that one time he had eaten the mycelium of a mucilaginous mushroom. Poison. That much he had experienced before. He had no intention of tripping dragon balls a second time!
Round his neck hung a drawstring pouch. He nipped one of its pursed lips and pulled it open. He pecked his snout inside then lapped up some of the antidote berries. Fanning away the green fumes, Shard gulped, then yelled, "Why are you trying to control my thoughts?" Warily, he swept away from Lyren, staying high enough to be out of breath-shot. "I mean, would you not rather hear what I have to say?"
Lyrenstraz slumped his shoulders, aware that his prey had sobered up. Did he use an antivenom? If so, it had cured him unusually fast. No matter. Still Lyren looked good-humored, but with a bilious scrunch of his snout. "Would I? I think, my dear food, I would prefer to see what you have to offer than to hear you."
Like Shard, Lyren distasted paw-to-paw combat, but—unlike Shard—didn't view himself a pacifist. He merely preferred to slip behind enemy walls and compromise the leadership from within, rather than to brutishly bash through. He's shoulders over you, three and more times your weight, Lyren thought. Even if he's reluctant to attack, would you provoke him? He should grow some before this meal. "Do ripen for me, red one. We'll be in touch~"
A cone of green blinded Shard. He gagged on the smokescreen, though immune to its neurotoxin, and heard Lyren bound off. Shard alighted to get out of the cloud, but the other had vanished as succinctly as a shaemu.
Already, Lyren was tracking the scent of another. One which smelled like dragon fruit and a dash of pear.
An emerald adorned the chest of that one. Named Yulestia, he had a sword-thin horn of honeycomb gold on his head, a hide of beacon red, wings of hickory brown and chest plates the color of pumpkin hummus. He flourished the stinger of his tail to scare off a flock of gryphons who had tried pecking at the corpse of his game, and then, once alone, bloodied his snout with a grumpy content.
Lyren swished his tail at the sight of his next prey, padding closer on the high boughs. Perhaps you will be able to appreciate my aphrodisiacal breath. The more sedated the catch, the easier the going-down.
Yule heard the subtle hiss, and knew not that it was the throaty sound of breath being charged, but nonetheless took it to mean trouble. "Who troubles me?" He spat out a mouthful of meat, and spun and met eyes with the overhead plotter.
He thrashed his horned head. A beam shot out, conjuring a shield of lime energy. A high-pressure burst of noxious gas pounded it and it caved in to accept the brunt of the breath, before springing up like pulled rubber. The green plume puffed up and dispersed, which gave Yulestia time enough to dart a roguish arc around the haze, covering his nose on the most vulnerable side with the shroud of a wing. He skipped aflight, and then streamlined his wings and homed in on his aggressor with a hawkish look.
Lyren needed time to recharge his breath weapon, but he had no need to use the weapon now; his prey charged headlong toward his maw. Before the red, blinded by rage, could slow, Lyren yawned his maw into full bloom.
Worse than a venus flytrap—a venus dragontrap!
The red blanched at the other, who was unflinching despite how fast he'd shot forward! Did the green expect his breath to knock him back from the force? Unnerved, Yule flinched out of headbutting form, but neither could he break his own speed; and so he snapped harmlessly as a muffled, screaming blur of leathery wings into the green's cheeks, already being abducted by the squeezy throat muscles and prized this way and that by the grippy tongue.
That flavor—that melony consistency! Lyrenstraz hissed with satisfaction. Yule tensed up and folded his wings against its sides, and the emerald on his chest radiated with a retributive brilliance before from his horn screamed an auroral arrow of energy, which sung its fatal song into the green's belly.
Reality rejected the lyrics.
Lyren jumped from an electric jolt, and lit up with a quiet buzz of energy. His belly walls sponged it up and absorbed it into his own being, waking him with a shot of stamina and strength.
"Mmmmgh~"
Belly sloshing and bubbling as though converted into a barrel of carbonation, he enjoyed the gastric activity and the sample of the quasi-kirin's flavor. This only encouraged him to scarf down the red with ephemeral smacks, gulps and rude suckles, bagging the finicky beast down his warbly esophagus.
As Yule descended, he jabbed the horn of his head at the spongy flesh, but it bent and molded around the weapon with ease, quashing each lame attempt to harm. Primed for cannibalizing, Lyren's insides would not be hurt by the conventional pointed edge.
With ease, his maw clamped and snarfed and prized the haunches between fangs. Lyren then heaved back his head and gobbled more seriously, collaborating with gravity until the scythed end of the tail weaseled down with a noise which could get him ousted from the table of a more formal dinner.
Face flushed with fury, head-sticking out of a sphincter, the rest of him being clenched and pushed by the peristaltic serpentine, Yule hooked his tail scythe under the hunter's chin, hanging on in spite of the flexes of slippery flesh.
Some strange visitor who didn't even smell of the forest—who didn't belong in these parts, let alone his parts—would swallow him? Yule seethed. In a billion moons: So he thought, but had no other options to back it up. With a curt snort of breath, Lyren unhooked the tail, then yawned wide, letting his esophageal rings yank down the tip with a mucous chortle.
Incongruous bulges blemished the belly as it expanded and swayed. Soon, it bloomed into a bloated shape like an egg turned onto its side. Lyren could barely keep his paws planted.
He huffed, pleased. He planted a forepaw on his stomach and stamped down on his slimed-up captive and groaned from a slosh and a bout of squirms from the angry prisoner, his gastric confines quite cramped. "Urrrrrrrrrp ... Be honored, red one. You are my first meal on this planet. Yet, you are the first of many. To your credit, you have an admirable skill (and a few handsome looks). I will be taking those off your paw. Your generosity is appreciated~"
"Rrrr. Take this for generosity."
A second energy-beam detonated, drilling havoc into Lyren's belly-flesh. He grunted as the plasmic heat spiked into him. It irritated him at first, but then washed him with pleasure. It felt like a thousand micro fingers poking a tender massage into all the sensitive spots of his nerve clusters that could never quite be scratched otherwise.
As he digested the horned belly-scratcher, his belly spasmed blissfully, soaking up his prey's power. This wasn't just a transfer of energy, but the transfer of the skill to wield that energy. Green arcs of crackling power threw his frame into trance-like throes. It ended up skipping along his tongue, and tasted of honeydew and pineapple.
"Yessss, I am absolutely ready for you to become one with me, you tasty thing, you ..." Within him there was a more frenzied tussling that he answered with a belly-purging belch: a cathartic outrush of toxins that poured from his maw like a slow-streaming fireball. His insides tightened to show not only his prey's larger features, but facial expressions and gaps between scales. Lubricious gastric hubbub coalesced with the hissing cracks and scoldings of migrant energies.
Wadded up into more of a winged ball with every passing peristaltic moment between the slimed-up goop pit, and utterly rinsed with acids, Yulestia yelped as though pained when the energy glow of his chest emerald faded. "Why you," he squawked, "why, I oughta—yerck!"
Stomach walls squished the words right out of his snout. The stomach acids, charged with his former energies, sizzled and melted and churned with such force that there became no need for him to be channeled into the intestines. Right in the paunch, his dribbly shape devolved, his contours losing nuance by the second.
Lyren's haunches tensed up before relaxing with bowstring quickness. "Ouh-ooh!" They shivered giddily to ripples of transformation. Red-scales washed over them and flooded down his hind legs. The rear limbs replaced—updated—their armor with the resplendent hide of the gurgling prey, and even grew longer claws, while retaining the claws' original dark-greyness.
Smoke and sparks leapt from between two of his serrated chest plates. The gap between the plates parted in the chest's middle for an emerald gem to form. Head swaying dizzily from the delirium of delight, he thrust it forward, before from it surged the honeycomb gold unicorn horn which had formerly belonged to his prey. The top of the horn buzzed with emerald energy, which begged to be freed, almost as though the appendage were a second giddy shaft teeming with warm dragon seed, rather than just plasma.
He grew bigger ... BIGGER ... BIGGER. Fifteen feet tall ... 18 ... 21 ... Besieged by crashing waves of growth, he watched the world tumble lower, and realized that, if his original self could see him now, the original probably would level a gaze no higher than the mid joints of his enlarged legs. He grew big enough for one-storey rooftops to fall to his shoulders, 23 feet tall.
"Ruoooahh. Ahh ... aaah ..."
Such exquisite plasmic power. The nimbleness of youth rode through his bones and muscles, and the size of a dragon decades more his eld endowed him. The breath of nature itself escaped him: Every exhale imparted some potent force of rejuvenation, one which had originated long before any tree, root or beast.
His ventral bulge contracted into nothing. His gut finished absorbing his meal. He stood a parental size larger than before. Pinning down a warrior with but a single claw would no longer be a challenge, but rather a source of amusement.
"An appeasing appetizer ... URRRRHP ..."
Lyren laughed, his voice still fair as always, and yet bulked up with his new immensity, ringing farther. More critters lower on the food chain reeled away at its resonation. He paced forward testingly, and found pleasure in the deepness of his footprints, in the increased distance he crossed with each stride. He inhaled. His neck tattoos turned a less minty and more vivid hue of green. He breathed fingers of crackling energy breath, whose tips cracked on boles and shrubs. Wood chips sprayed. Leaves teetered down, smolders of ash among them.
"And now, my red-scaled main course, I will find you again."
3
Erstwhile, Shard had been panicking. At least, until he saw the grey-stoned temple grounds. A pleasantness then filled him, like a fresh breath of spiced thermal. He had been seeking some dragon who could help him combat the green. One who had come to mind was Wisty, the white who lived in the snowy peaks and whose ice breath had been the bane of ill-willed world-crossers in years past.
Until he became aware of the temple grounds, he had not dared to consider pleading for the aid of Revakulgr. A black, red-eyed dragon of belly purple, he stood 45 feet tall, an extra half Shard's height. Unlike Shard—in whom the forest's denizens saw a purity of which they were fond—Reva lived a life of worship.
Time had tempered his physical power. Past deeds bulwarked his sense of pride and strength; thus there was an incomprehensibility to him, a chilly Otherness, which had repelled Shard from him in less dire times. Shard had lived long enough to know Reva was of good will; but the character gap between them was wide and intimidating.
You've got to give up some comfort for this, Shard. He and his following, the forest needs them. That means you, too. You're part of the forest. Ripping away the reins of reluctance, he coached himself down. He landed on a stone street, which was almost wide enough for his wings to spread open without the claw-tips touching the buildings on either side. Robed kirins and kitsunes peered out from doorless ways and watched him approach an open space preceding a half pyramid of stone. By and by, he strode up the pyramid's stairway. At the top, surrounded by worshipers and offerings of food and drink, Revakulgr lay sprawled on his belly.
Though a couple holding spears barred Shard from approaching, Reva rumbled, "Let him through," his shrewd red eye-fires darting toward the smaller dragon. "I did not summon you, Shard." He puffed nose smoke. "Speak, and for your sake I hope the words are of more weight than you."
Feeling all eyes on him—feeling the weight of the dragon's territory ready to collapse upon him and bury him, should he prove his visit invaluable—Shard sucked in a deep breath to compose himself. He then spoke of the green dragon, of his power to bend minds, and of the lone guardian who had fled from him.
When Shard finished, Reva gulped from a barrel of wine offered by a couple followers, then snorted with stoic exasperation. "If only I had picked somewhere peaceful in the mountains to make my dwelling ... The shortcomings of the guardians should not be falling on me to clean up."
"Will you help, though?"
"I shouldn't be tasked to play the custodian. But neither can I let some mettlesome hookahmouth have his way, huffing lies into others' heads around my grounds."
"I'll owe you a favor. Will that work? I can speak to the other guardians—band them together, that they may defend the forest again, as they did in the Age of Gold. But, please—"
Shard fell silent when Revakulgr placed a claw on his snout. "That is enough, Shard. The forest will be rid of this invader. If he relies on his breath for trickery, then he'll be outmatched against one whose cunning is drawn from the inexhaustible crafts of nature."
"His smell is vivid in my mind—he can be tracked—"
Reva narrowed his eyes, looking past Shard. "No need for that, it appears." He nudged past the red with his chest and padded to the ledge of the flat-topped half-pyramid. The green had arrived on the quadrangle, and tramped about sowing chaos, glutting on guards and worshipers. Many of them had clouded onto his back to try and pin him down; but he beat his wings, and knocked them off as easy as an anteater might knock off a march of ants. Some of them attacked around him; but he blew through their front ranks with a single concentrated blast of an energy horn, Reva's face flashing with a great green contempt, and smoke reflecting in his reds.
Some of his foes Lyren even appeared to charm with a more gaseous green breath. In any case, he was growing bigger with each meal—already nigh as large as Shard.
Snarling, Revakulgr extended his wings and then dove down. Lyren gulped down another batch of followers, before sidestepping Reva's descent landing, and he laughed. Aside from the two dragons, there were left a couple dozen or so beaten-up followers, either on the ground or struggling to their feet; and then another couple dozen who had succumbed to the aphrodisiacal breath, and who now charged at their former master.
Reva growled, "What have you done?" The bipeds chucked their harmless spears at him, or clung to his legs, trying to chew or claw into them; and his cries of rage acquired some hint of forlornness, for some of these had serviced him for decades. His tail tip—a closed black bud of a maw with a stinger on each of its shut tripartite jaws—lunged forward and stung a couple of them to sleep; and while distracted he found the weight of the green bowling into his chest. The grubby paws that grappled him down, the gruesome breath beating in his face: He hated it all.
"The gall of you!"
Slather was slung over Reva, but he spat a cone of acid—and then, Lyren hissed and reeled, his foot paws booming around the followers who still had their wits about them. The swaggering green opened his mouth to retort with his own mind controlling concoction, but the black-and-purple shrugged off the corrupted and then bounded forward. He mauled where the green's cheek had been weakened by acid. Lyren corkscrewed into a plight of pain, and could hear his foe rushing forward again to pick him off.
As he gathered to his feet, the tail tip used as a club finished his rise for him—and a stone tower buckled against his backside. Too stunned to get up quickly, he hissed out a bolt of energy, which forced the black-and-purple to abandon another gallop forward to sidestep behind a structure. Lyren wheezed this pestilential haze. All things stone, it engulfed in his radius. Revakulgr feared, and ducked again behind the stone. He flew up, and rose to where he could fire a breath at his foe enshrouded in green haze; and he did; but his aim of guess failed him, and the green pogoed up into flight with a belch of ghastly breath which forced him to drop like an anchor—to duck to the ground, cursing. A winged shadow broke through the stream of that last projectile, and missiled toward the top of the half-pyramid, toward Shard, who had been watching with the fear of an apprentice who isn't ready—isn't fully trained—yet, needs to be.
He's ... he's as big as me. Shard gawked. And his breath ... that horn ... When did those appear? Why did they remind Shard of the other red, the aggressive Yulestia who fed on the breath of the forest? As the menace streamlined toward him with a maw agape and ready to cannibalize again, Shard yelped. A motion like a hare's hop knocked him into his camouflaged state. Warped light molded around him, and he dove off the half-pyramid, swooping toward one of the temple grounds' many streets, hoping to lead the green with his scent back toward Reva.
"Where will you hide, O reddie? I have ... the smell-sense of two dragons~ Hahahaha~"
Shard landed, and raced through the street; but Lyren landed and trailed his scent, and then fired from his unicorn horn a beam which exploded against stone before Shard. The mortared ground spewed up and forced him to slow down. Shard was startled out of his camouflaged state, and found shrapnel stuck in the scales of his neck and chest, which he began to heal by draining some energy; but then Lyren leaped atop him.
Caught unawares, Shard fell winded, too astonished to fire a dragonbreath at the beast who now flared his nostrils open at Shard and sniffed with an amicable voracity.
A slurp of Shard's cheek—and then rumbled a voice the red did not anticipate: "I sense that you like what you see~" teased a deeper, more commanding voice than what Shard had heard from the green before. "You see, you may still be immune to my toxins, but you no longer hold the size advantage, my appetizer. Any last words before we begin the gurgling and brewing?"
"Words," Shard gasped, "you ... they're all just rhetorical to you! There's no talking with you ... no reasoning with you ... you're mindless ..." Reva, in the names of the lordtrees, please, find me before I find myself filling his belly, he thought, trying not to dart his eyes toward where he'd last seen the temple dragon.
"So I'm mindless, am I?" Lyren sniggered, and patted the red's head derisively. "That, I'd rather be than foodless. By the way, if you think my sense of smell is the only thing doubled, think again. Try and stall me all you'd like, but your friend makes quite the ruckus—and I assure you"—he leaned into Shard's ear, and dropped his voice to a deadly lullaby—"by the time he gets here, you'll be gone: just another tribute on my figure~"
Shard blinked strickenly at the taunts made from that slathering maw ... and then barreled on top of Lyren. He began to bound off the green's belly, but a wrap of wings clamped down on him and wrestled him back into place. Lyren just gave him a dreamy-eyed look that totally defused any kind of power Shard had believed he had seized.
And then Lyren yawned horribly wide, and Shard felt the burn of breath-air beat over him, and heard the awful sound of suction when the lips smacked and splashed, and the throat rolled back so that Shard hurtled down, down, down into that serpentining flesh-channel, whose scaletight muscles denied him the comfort of space.
Tailhole clenching with glee, Lyren snarfed down the once-larger dragon with a rude rapidity to his throat lunges, each splashy gulp enough to surely alert any dragon around the corner of his location. His tailhole clenched and released at a rhythm of rapture as each inhale awarded the blooming ovoid of his gullet with greater weight. Slime rinsed the red dragon, and he gagged, and the globules of muscular flesh smushed his cheeks and hauled him down.
"Rev ... someone! HELP ME!"
Aaaah yess, cry for the temple-dragon, Lyren thought. The more of your friends I can fiendishly devour, the more morosely my belly aches. Lyren relished every bruising bash, every rubbery rebound of flesh, every peristaltic flex which rebelled against his gag reflexes.
Scooping up the last of the red-scaled dragon, he slurped at the soft flesh between nethers and rear, and then sentenced the hind legs to a vacuous suckle. The tail sailed down after. The gummy wind tunnel sealed up, a gushy sphincter pinched closed, sealing Shard away in the croaky paunch. Belly flesh expanded, and Lyren's plating creaked as the parting of the plates exposed slivers of soft, groaning dark skin beneath.
Looking as though he had been struck by a sedative that doubled as an aphrodisiac, Lyren swished his tail along the cool stones, rumbling murmurs to himself and to his prey: "Hrrrrrn, you truly are the perfect succulent snack ... HUUUURP. Hmmh, keep squirming as you do." Bumping up and down; reaming the sides of his closed-off internals, his belly bulge wrestled and relinquished the mirish noises of someone trying and failing repeatedly to clamber up from mucky waters and onto a ledge.
This isn't possible! Shard thought. I can't be another dragon's prey ... He can't have grown so big ... This is a bad dream! "Rraaaugh!" He hurtled toward the chest cavity. Eddies and ribbons of acid charged ahead of him, clashing near the solar plexus. The sphincter which received the brunt of the attack twitched as if to open, but locked back up as Lyren clutched over the rotund belly which bowled over his forechest, then uttered another noxious burp! The flagrant blast of tract noise caromed into Shard's bulge from the outside, tossing him over his back. Acids splashed and geysered over him, while the walls cramped up and tightened, securing their lecherous hold over their softening hostage.
Lyren showed his gums in a sneer. His guts clamped down, hugging every one of the hundreds of back spines; every fold of the wing membranes; every hard-pressed limb of the red.
"Hmmmnnn. You watched me enter this world, snack. Now, you're going to feel it as I rip you out of it and render you a part of a greater form. A form with which I'll be able to eat even more of this forest's dragons."
"No, no!" Shard followed with a plea of words, the kind of words prey had yelled at his belly walls at least a dozen times this week. "You can't possibly eat that much! I won't let you eat them!" A chimney of flame harpooned from his maw and wheeled through his scaletight prison.
But Lyrenstraz, going wide-eyed at a sudden roiling and rumbling of his upset guts, just burped out a vibracious fireball. "Mmmfff." He heard wingbeats, and rose to his feet with his gravid gut jumping in a fit of elastic rummaging noises, pulling the apex of its floor above his ankles. "Here he comes~"
Wings spread with retributive poise, Revakulgr bared his teeth at the green dragon gazing up at him, then dipped a wing and swung himself on a drop to the street below. Talons raised like an eagle's, he fanned down, landed hinds first, then thumped to all fours. Seething with rage that was suppressed, but leaking from him nonetheless, he strode toward the green dragon.
Reva growled, "You dare hunt on my followers ... on my guest. You sentence yourself to DEATH." With a blink of motion, he pounced on the green dragon, and pressed him onto his back with claws poised to kill.
Lying beneath the dragon to whom he was only three-fourths the height, Lyren laughed his hideous green fumes. "You're too late ... Another dragon's essence—it has already begun!"
And then he flailed in absolute ecstasy, twitching and hissing as though being electrocuted and overloaded with the stimuli for an orgasm. Red energy crackled and arced across his form; and dragon essence was stamped in pulses across him. Crimson dragon scales surged from the red scales of Yulestia on his hinds out across the base of his tail, sculpting the tail base with a helping of crimson scales. During Lyren's demonic paroxysms, Shard's spines spiked out of his nape alongside his barbed membranes, and all down his back and tail; but they assumed the dark-grey shade of his horns and claws, rather than the color of Shard's spines. And under Lyren's original pair of horns, a second dark-grey pair pushed free, sinewy hooks like Shard's upper horns.
"Yes ... YESSS." Lyren's hide creaked out, scales resized and muscles enlarged proportionately, his voice deepening: all the phenomena of his mutation uniting to make Reva blanch.
Kill him, before he can finalize his form! Reva thought, and swung his mawed tail forward and jabbed down at the green dragon's head, each of the three stingers coated with lethal toxins. But Lyren, with forelegs swelling out with Shard's muscle mass, caught the black's tail maw, not only warding it off but slowly wrestling it back.
"I used to consider you strong ... but I'm becoming even stronger," Lyren growled. "The power of your servants and the red-scaled dragon flow THROUGH ME!"
And then he threw off Revakulgr with a surprising force, and rose; and the black dragon fumbled to his feet. His foe had grown to the same size, and looked maniacally pumped up with energy and confidence, chest heaving, tail swinging as though the temple grounds belonged to him, rather than to the black. Each of the green tattoos on his neck now shimmered with a fiery glow, and each exhale spawned a plume of toxins traced with tongues of flame. "Do you see now, dragon? All submit to me eventually. You should follow suit, and I shall make it easy on you."
"No!"
A firebreath streamed out of the black, but the green tattoos on Lyren's throat overheated, turning stark orange before he wheezed a vile, carnal sound. A stream of Shard-flame arrowed from his own maw and clashed with the other, hands of fire splaying in the crossroads of the air and lashing out with an explosion. Driven back by the heat, Reva stumbled back, coughing. The smoke was shoved aside, molding around an invisible form: the form of Lyren, who was camouflaged with his former meal's skill.
"What foul magic is this?" And then the green left the smoke, and Reva heard wings flourish overhead, but could not see the foe. And then, behind him came a thud. A talon tapped his shoulder; he turned to see Lyren reappear, before he yawned the happiest greeting maw one could see, ribbons of toxins and flames riding out of the abyss.
"The magic of a future god. Magic that shall be your undoing." Lubed throat muscles squelched over Reva's head. A slimy cocktail of sounds squirmed over his ears.
GUUOLP ... GWUOAP ... GUOOLLLK ...
Revakulgr roared in shame and horror, for not only had he been defeated in battle; he would be eaten, an unthinkable fate for a dragon. If context clues meant anything, he could surmise that his brawn, his breath weapons, his combat techniques could all fall into the paws of this wretched green as prizes for him to pit against even more prey.
The thought infuriated him, and his tail knifed down again for the target ... but the green's own tail lashed out and constricted around the 'throat' of his own in midair, the pressure so great that his tail maw wheezed and floundered, as though it required oxygen and its air passage had been closed: just another way in which the green exerted dominance over this dragon who had formerly been worshiped like a deity. It did not even seem to cost the green's tail much strength: It doubled down on its chokehold, a deep, leathery creaking escaping the quivering captive tail.
Meanwhile, the gullet of the cannibal claimed his broad chest and shoulders, each peristaltic ring of muscle squeezing and soaking the contours of each bicep and valley of musculature along his back as if sampling the form for a taste of what the green would soon be wearing instead.
Revakulgr refused to dwindle to the level of someone's food. He loosed a spray of acid breath, the high-powered spit flecking the walls and eliciting a hissed breath of agony from his predator. For a couple of jolts, he felt the esophageal walls slacken and relinquish some of his shoulders; and when those slipped free, the throaty rings lost even more purchase as they slid away from the serpentine of his neck.
Hope spread its wings within him. But before that same hope could take flight, and achieve for him true freedom, a cooling relief washed through Lyren's digestive tract, accompanied by a hum and a glow of pinkish energy, the luminance of which brought grimness to Reva's expression. Where the acids had been eating away, the flesh sewed up. Billows of steam from the acid ceased, and pillowy flesh molded back into perfection, right before Lyren, emboldened with anger from the attack, gulped faster to claim the stocky torso of the black. The black's forelegs yielded to the squashy tubing that pulled them in.
Like a mere rodent, Revakulgr nosedived down the meander. Lyren's maw reared up to enclose the hind legs of the black dragon. When the hind feet reached the maw, Revakulgr hooked his claws into the lips. He tried not only to bleed the flesh, but to force himself out using the considerable strength of his leg muscles, pumping the front of his soles down on the lower jaw and pedalling with a power that would have cracked the jaw of a dragon whose marrow wasn't reinforced with the essence of formidable meals.
Plated throat bloated and round like the underside of a whale, Lyren grumbled at the hooks rending his mouth flesh, but he ignored the hurt and focused on the sweet fullness of his craw. Soon, the temple dragon's altar of resting would become his gut.
One last swallow, and the velvety throat-rings inundated the sinewy hinds down to the dungeon of acids. Thus, all of the temple dragon slid into the dragon de-scaling forge. Steam rose around the black's form. A mournful noise tore from his throat. He galvanized all the strength he had left, and barreled and thrashed, an incarnate of deific force, ripping vengefully into the prison walls. Yet, no gouges opened along them, though the attacker proved to be less fortified, and decomposed into a slew of precious metals and elements.
Flopping onto his back, the toxic green convulsed along the stone ground like some mad creature trying to snap the chains of his shackles; and in some sense, indeed, that's what he had resolved to do: to be unshackled from this lesser form and transform into a new one.
A savage belly grumble scythed out. "At last ..." His voice plunged with huskier notes, rendering his already deepened fair voice with the tones of a dragon suited for battle, to be approached with worship and fear.
Smaller thumped his belly. From his scales emerald and ruby rolled up the groans of an attire stitched too tight, but with the resonance of metal being ground. Fissuring wider, the crags between his scales filled out with fresh scales as the muscles of age—and of worth proven time and again through combat—wrought him more barrel-chested and his limbs more stocky: enough muscle growing in for him to shove aside larger boulders, break down bigger fortifications and grapple down larger foes.
A third pair of horns sprouted from his head, the six horns of the pairs fanned out like a great crown. At the tip of his tail, a bulbous, seed-shaped shape spat into being. It fanned open into tripartite jaws tipped with venom barbs, revealed to be the tail maw of the digesting dragon. Slathering copiously, the tail maw, in collaboration with the tail length, already seemed to be scouting the air for prey with some untold sense. Too impatient it was to wait for its owner, as though it would eat—or try to eat—anyone who came close enough.
One brusque borborygmus deflated his stomach fully. He released a debauched grunt and—after many surges of growth during the metabolization of his prey—he swelled yet again to a size at which he would have been deemed the temple dragon's elder: well over three storeys tall; big enough to trample the front ranks of formidable armies without fearing; big enough to swallow hundreds of soldiers and still have plenty of room to be filled with more. Yet, the green's stomach craved far better than mere soldiers.
Urgency brought him to his feet, and he thought he could feel a belch coming up, but instead his neck tattoos harnessed fiery glows. Wide-eyed, he spouted forth a boisterous streak of scalding flames, the flames pounding on stone and roasting floral growths. After that, he sighed, feeling that he'd relieved a good amount of his excess of fire; though, he still had the essence of two fire-breathing dragons within him, so it was hard to rid himself of the urge to eruct flames entirely.
Another breath weapon weaseled its way up his throat. With a gasp and a liberated look, he beat his wings, recoiling from what gushed forth: a hydrant of scalding, green acid breath. It splashed on the stones, and sizzled and cackled. Rock melted and oozed. He cast the liquid beam in a reckless slash down from the wall along the ground, scarring rock in the orgasmic release.
His shaft twitched and then relented. He busted along his underplates, sousing himself in a celebratory drizzle as even his dragonhood transformed from the absorption of his meal. Mounted on a bulbous base, segmented with plates on the underside, his pointed shaft roundened and heaped on girth at the base, and fattened and plumped out along the length, his plating bulging out so that the form of his under-length became slightly ribbed, while the tip of his cock was shaped to be even pointier. Beyond his cock-base, the plating of his nethers bulged more, for his internal balls grew larger and filled with a thicker, more virile seed. As this upgrade to his nethers went on, his new tailmaw suckled him off, his giddy shaft eager to dispense bulges of viscid cream down the enclosing petals of thirsty, sensuous flesh.
Once his belly had been filled generously with his own cum, he tumbled onto his back and plopped against an adjacent wall, huffing from the phenomenal release, his throat and belly both warm, tingly and achy throughout.
Refreshed from his afterglow, energized from his meals, he rose, and his nostrils flared wide. His sense of smell had improved. It now pinpointed the direction of his next prey.
After a short rest, he flew off thataway. He cut high into the air toward the snowy range of mountains north, separated from him by several rows of high-rising hardwoods, the green dragon so concerned with stuffing his stomach again that he forgot all about the servants his poison breath had corrupted.
