The individual words the priest droned were as meaningless to Alyce as the ancient runes carved into the dark rock at her back but taken together she knew their import. I had thought to see a few more summers before I heard my last rites.
As a princess of the blood, she had always expected a somewhat longer and more comfortable future. True, she knew her ultimate fate would likely have been to be marriage to some unpleasant old man to shore up her family's uncertain grasp on the throne. She understood that it had not happened yet out of some combination of an aging father's sentimentality and the fact she was the one card left in his hand.
Still, it would have been old man with lands and wealth and finery and mayhap a handsome knight or three in his household to pass the time with. Imaginings of how they might pass that time had seen her through a few dark, lonely nights in her bedchamber. Not that they were all so lonely, but finding men satisfied to bed a princess without feeling the need to shout it from the castle roof was more of a chore than it should have been...
There were knights and nobles about now, to be sure, some of whom had even enjoyed her favors, but they sat silent on horses that whickered with the fear their riders dared not express. No finery either. She wore a simple white shift, and her blond hair fell past her shoulders unbound. The collar about her slender neck was gold, at least, but the clasp had been beaten shut, never to open. From the back a gold chain fastened her to a great rusted iron ring that had been driven into the black slab behind her, amidst forgotten runes gouged into the rock in some distant age. In front of her, across a field of broken stone, the mouth of a cave gaped blackly, and as she stared at it her blue eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of motion, a flash of flame...
Through her rising terror she found she could still feel a hint of irritation that the priest had come nowhere near the end of his prayers before he, too, saw what she had seen and turned without hesitation to flee up the slope away from the cave, his robes flapping behind him. The knights and nobles quickly outpaced him, their horses hardly needing reigns or spurs to wheel and gallop away. She alone was left to see what came crawling from the cave.
She had seen it from afar, of course, as it had flown through the skies above the kingdom for a fortnight while her father's wise men searched dusty tomes to put a name to the terror and find how to avert the doom it clearly portended.
They found the name. Tanex, the wyrm no man may slay. Tanex the destroyer of kingdoms. Tanex the devourer of maidens. The last offered a potential solution that Alyce thought many had jumped at rather too eagerly. A number of the nobles now galloping for the horizon had bravely browbeat her poor father with threats of rebellion, indeed with threats of violence in his own hall, until he consented she be offered to appease the beast even now emerging into the sunlight.
It was larger than any beast should be, 40 feet at least from the tip of its steaming nose to the end of its thrashing tail, covered with glittering crimson scales, bright as jewels. As she watched, great red bat wings unfolded from its shoulders, and it leapt across the broken field in a bound, landing before Alyce with a sound of cracking stone. She found herself too terrified to scream, too terrified to move as a great reptilian head crowned with four short black horns thrust toward her. Glittering golden eyes, slit like a cat's and the size of dinner plates, stared from underneath them at the chained princess.
Then the head swayed closer, a great forked tongue flicking forth, and Aylce found the spell was broken as her terror returned redoubled. She started at teeth the size of her forearm a foot from her face, and as the furnace heat of its breath washed over her Alyce's mind and body gave out as one and she fell into darkness.
***
The princess awoke to rock and flames and screamed. Hell, dead, dead and in hell.... Her mind raced in circles as she jerked upright from the smooth stone floor where she had been sprawled. As her eyes focused she could see she was in a great high-ceilinged cave, ascending to a rough circle of sunlight far off to her right and descending to a flickering red-lit gloom to her left. The flames resolved themselves into torches, set in brass sconces of ancient and uncanny design affixed to the walls at irregular intervals.
Alyce looked down at herself. She was still in her white shift, only a little the worse for wear. Her fingers felt the collar at that was still about her neck, its chain reduced to a single link hanging from the back. Where it had been a plain band there were now strange sigils etched into the gold.
"That collar near strangled you when you swooned," a great voice came from her left. "And it was not properly inscribed for the rite, but I have chosen to overlook and correct that."
She looked up and saw that the voice came from a red-lit smoke that rose to cloud the cave a few yards from where she sat. Within that cloud, she could make out the dim shadow of the great wyrm, and her heart again nearly stammered to a stop.
And then the shadow began to shift, something like how shadows shift before a moving candle, twisting, shrinking. As she stared the great wyrm shadow became the shadow of a man, tall, broad shouldered.
Then Tanex stepped from the mist and Alyce started again, for she beheld not a man, but a woman.
She stood near six and a half feet tall and was shamelessly naked. A cascade of untamed red hair, red as rubies, red as flame, cascaded from her head and past her shoulders. Her skin was flawless, with a red tinge Alyce had never seen before. Her breasts were...very large...Alyce reddened herself and looked down. Her arms, her legs, her body was smooth and sleek but muscled in the way she had most certainly not seen on her father's champion knight when she wasn't peeking in him bathing after a hard sparring session....
She retained her wings, reduced but still jutting past her broad shoulders. A long, slender tail whipped behind her, red-scaled and snakelike. The nails on her fingers and toes were black and long. Alyce could make out a faint tracery of faintly-red scales on her fingers, on her feet, fringing a face that was human and strong and beautiful. Four black horns jutted from beneath her hair. She smiled and sharp teeth glinted.
Her eyes remained the same, golden, catlike, glittering.
"You are...Tanex?" Alyce stammered, her mind hopelessly confused.
"Taneth," the serpent-woman answered back, spreading her wings as flame flickered from her nostrils. "Have the people of this land truly forgotten the sound of my name? I slept too long, I fear."
She stalked closer, staring Alyce in the eyes, stretching her wings and arms wide, seeming to grow even taller as she approached. "I am Taneth, the Bright Devouring Flame, Queen of Earth and Sky, get of the First and Nameless, Goddess of Wyrms. No man may slay me," she pronounced. "I have slept an age beneath this land, and I rise now to claim what is mine."
Alyce's mind continued to whirl uselessly. "You...you are a woman," she said, scrambling to her feet.
"No, I am a dragon. A female of my kind, but a dragon," she said, hips swaying as she walked closer. Alyce backed against the wall, but the dragon walked on, pressing up against her. "It pleases me to bank the flames of my glory in this form for the comfort of mortals," the dragon said, tilting her head to the side with a smile. "Do you find it...comfortable?"
Taneth's naked skin was smooth, dry and feverish, radiating a heat Alyce could feel through the thin silk shift. Her breath was hot on Alyce's face, but not the sulfurous foulness she expected, but instead smelling faintly of some exotic incense. A long, dark, forked tongue suddenly snaked from Taneth's mouth, and Alyce flinched as it lightly stroked the side of her face. "I can make you more than comfortable," the dragon purred.
"You..I..." Alyce stammered. Her mind whirled, as she dimly remembered whispers of perversions between the serving girls. "You...want to be with me...as a man?"
"My dear pet, you wound me," Taneth answered. "I am a dragon. A sorceress. A demigoddess. I can show you pleasures no man has conceived."
The breath of the dragon was hot on her face, her crimson lips so very, very close. The golden eyes seemed to be growing, and Alyce felt as though she were being drawn into their depths. She could feel her breath quickening, her skin flushing, and an odd restless sensation begin to grow deep inside her. The eyes were so big now, the lips so close...with a supreme effort Alyce wrenched her gaze away and turned to the side.
The dragon pulled her head back, with a look Alyce could not quite understand. Puzzlement? Disappointment? "I will not take what is not given. It is not our way. But do you know what you scorn?" she said. "In my time I have consorted with queens of old, with nymphs, with goddesses. All of them shook with pleasure at my touch. And you refuse me?"
"I...I...it's not...I can't..." Alyce stammered.
"Very well," the dragon said, her expression closing somewhat. "Perhaps I have slept too long alone. Do you desire anything? Ask what you will, and I will grant you what I can."
"Would you...would you grant me leave to go?" Alyce asked. The dragon gave no answer but a low chuckle.
"I am your slave, then," the princess said.
"No, not that," the dragon said. "You are no slave. I will not force you to obey."
"You will release me, then?" she asked.
"No!" the dragon answered with an expression of annoyance. "Are you dimwitted? You were given according to the terms of the ancient pact, for as long as you shall live. The Old Law is unbreakable. It is all carved into the very rock you were..." She trailed off. "Of course. During my slumber, your people forgot how to read the runes."
"No...no one has ever known," the princess stammered. "They were carved by forgotten folk, before our people came to this land..."
She flinched back as the dragon began bellowing in laughter. "Ha! Then you really did not know," she said. "What did you expect was going to happen?"
"We thought...I thought...you were going to eat me," Alyce said.
The laughter that followed was more unexpected and somehow even louder. "I would love a taste of you, pet, but no," the dragon said as she paused for breath. "You are not my dinner. You are my wife."
Alyce stared dumbstruck as Taneth chuckled. "You are surprised? Your kings have been gifting spouses to each other for as long as you have had kings, and to my kind just as long. When last I walked these lands I usually had two or three princesses or princes about, all left at that very rock according to the Old Laws, not to mention the concubines, the slaves and the thralls and the ones I took in battle. Would-be dragonslayers bring a certain fire to their lovemaking, once they have been properly brought around..."
Alyce finally found her voice. "But you are...I am...we are both..." she stammered.
"Female. Yes. So?" Taneth said. "I have always been a lover of women. Oh, when males have been offered I have taken them to be polite, yes, and some have proven satisfying lovers in their own ways, but on balance..." she looked at the princess' shocked expression and sighed "But we will talk on this later. Now, save your freedom, which by the Old Law is no longer mine to grant, what would you desire?"
Alyce breathed deep, reached down within herself, and pushed down her fear and bewilderment and curiosity and memory of warm scales against skin... You are royal, she thought, and lifted her chin. If this beast slays me for my words, better to die now than to live as..as...whatever I am supposed to be. "If I am truly to remain here, I will require more suitable garments than these," she said, bracing for whatever was to come.
"In lost Ashur, there was a princess I knew - knew very well, yes - who was perfectly content to wear nothing but a belly chain and an ankle bangle," the dragon said with a sigh. "I have awoken to joyless times, it seems. Still, 'tis trifling to find you something suitable. Come with me."
Taneth turned and strode deeper into the cave, leaving Alyce standing stunned for a moment at her sudden acquiescence before hurrying to catch up. Beyond the chamber the descending tunnel turned twice before opening into a new torchlit room. Taneth strode in without pause, but Alyce was brought up short at the entrance. The cavern was at least as big as her father's audience hall, but piled halfway to the ceiling with gold. Gold coins, gold cups, gold statues, and gold jewelry, with gemstones scattered across the mound, green and red, like wildflowers on a hill. She didn't know how long she had started at the great glittering pile when Taneth was suddenly before her again, holding out a tangle of thin chains and small plates made of some shimmering, silver metal.
"This should suit. It is royal regalia, from the kingdoms of the Dark Elves. There is a lash that goes with it, but the leather has gone rotten..." The dragon stopped, watching Alyce's eyes widen as she worked out how it was supposed to be worn and what she would look like in it. Taneth closed her eyes and sighed. "I shall try to get something else."
They turned and walked silently back up through the cave. Alyce had begun to regain her composure when Taneth spoke again. "Is there anything else you require?" the dragon sarcastically intoned.
Alyce found herself seriously pondering the question. It seems she does not mean to slay me outright. And if I am to live... "I shall need a...basin. And, and comb and a mirror, at least," she said, before she was struck by an impulse to test how far her boundaries lay. "And a servant. I must have a servant," she added, with an internal flinch.
"A servant? I suppose I could call up a succubus or two, they could serve...oh, stop waving your hands around like that," Taneth said with mild irritation as Alyce's hands instinctively wove the ward against devils she'd learned as a child. "That nonsense does not even give real demons pause, you know." She stared at the princess, who gave her best defiant stare back. "Very well. I shall fetch you another mortal." She turned and strode toward the entrance, then turned back. She waved a hand, and Alyce started as the symbols on her collar flared with red flame. "You will not set foot outside this cave," she said. "Even if you did, I would find you anyway. I could scent you from half a kingdom away. These ears can hear the whispering of thought. These eyes can see the turning of destiny. And your destiny and mine are bound now."
And then she was gone, her shape twisting and growing as turned and strode toward the mouth of the cave until she leapt to the air.
Alyce, of course, set out for the enticing circle of daylight as soon as she could convince herself Taneth had gone. But as she walked toward the light, she found the collar about her throat unaccountably grow heavier and heavier with every step she took, until it was all she could do to stand. She found herself unsurprised to see the sigils on the collar glowing red, a red that faded along with the weight as she resignedly trudged back downward, into the flame-lit darkness.
***
Alyce woke with a start. She had listlessly explored the cavern the twisting passageways of the cavern for some time, wondering at the oddly smokeless torches, drinking her fill from a spring the flowed from a wall. At length she found herself in a large round chamber. Flecks of crystal glittered on the walls, and great pillars of flowing stone rose from the floor, meeting similar ones descending from the shadow-shrouded ceiling. As she stared at the stone she could almost see patterns; people, women, women dancing, women...women doing...she turned away.
At the center of the room was a round pool, and she sat beside it, suddenly overcome with weariness. Sleep must have overtaken her almost instantly.
She had no idea how long she had slept, but she was surprised to wake in a shaft of daylight, falling from an irregular rent in the highest point of the ceiling into the center of the chamber to the floor next to the pool. She found another small chamber off to the side of this one and attended her needs before she returned to the side of the pool.
Standing beside the water, she came to the resolution that if she was going to live then she was going to bathe. She shrugged off her shift and left to fall to the floor before touching her foot to the water and was surprised to find it warm. She had placed one foot fully in before a voice boomed out behind here. "Ah, you found the hot spring. It is why I put the seraglio here."
As she spun in surprise tried to cover herself Alyce could see Taneth, still shamelessly naked, standing behind a woman. Her shoulder length hair was dark, and so were her eyes. She was dressed in a homespun dark skirt and white blouse that Alyce had often seen on peasants, although the neckline seemed rather low and that she had never seen a peasant skirt slit that high up the side. She had cloth slung over her shoulder, one hand clutched what looked like a solid-gold comb a gold-framed mirror-gold basin while the other held a golden bowl. A sliver, rune-inscribed ring was about her neck.
"Here are the things you requested. A comb, a basin, a mirror and a servant," the dragon said.
"Where...where did you..." Alyce sputtered.
"There is a village on the far side of the forest. She was serving in the tavern and seemed suitable, so I claimed her when she stepped outside. Do not worry. I paid for her," Taneth added. "I left behind a full quarter-weight in silver for the tavern-keeper, more than one would usually pay for such, but I am a generous dragon."
The dragon waited a moment but got no answer except Alyce's wide-eyed stare. "Your gratitude overwhelms me," she said. "I go now to conjure up some clothing." She turned and left as she came.
The two stared at each other for a long moment. "I am the Princess Alyce," Alyce finally said.
"Isabella, m'lady. From Theawich," the other said in a somewhat husky voice.
"You are a subject of my father, then," Alyce said in a chill tone "In my experience, subjects courtesy before royalty."
"In my experience, m'lady, royalty wear more clothes," Isabella said.
At that, Alyce's face fell, and she crumpled to the ground, weeping. Isabella set down comb, mirror and bowl and rushed forward. "There, m'lady, no need for that," she said' kneeling beside the princess.
"But this is all mad!" Alyce cried. "That beast, she thinks...she wants..."
"Oh, I know what that beast wants, but there's nothing to be done for that" Isabella said. "I've been bought to be your servant, so I suppose I should start serving. Why don't you get in the water, and I'll give you a washing."
Alyce took a breath and steeled herself. This was what she had asked for. To reject it seemed both ungracious and unwise. She stood and stepped into the pool, wading until she was waist-deep in its comfortably warm waters. She turned back to see Isabella shrugging of her own clothes, showing there was nothing but skin beneath. "I'll have to get in there to wash you, and there's no sense getting a perfectly good clothes wet," Isabella said, answering the question in her eyes.
The now-naked woman stepped into the pool herself and dipped one of the rags she had brought into the water. Alyce shivered slightly despite the warmth, and stood, at a loss of what to do, as Isabella stood behind her began to wipe her back and shoulders, softly humming to herself.
Alyce tried to relax. She was used to being bathed by servants, of course, but the maids assigned to that duty had always been much older than Isabella. And much less naked. Or attractive. Wait, why did that thought come to mind? She had a pretty enough face, skin a mite darker than Alyce's own aristocratic tone but smoother than she expected, breasts a bit larger than her own if not as spectacular as their captor's and they're swaying closer I wonder what they feel like and her hands were gentle and the fingertips were brushing down her spine...
Alyce shook herself shifted uncomfortably. "How can you be so calm?" she said. "When...when...
"M'lady, I'm a tavern wench and a whore, daughter of a tavern wench and whore," Isabella said. "Oh, I near died of fright when she snatched me up into the sky, but once I knew I wasn't dinner, well, then, she was just another lummox grabbing a pretty girl for a bit of fun. You get used to it."
Alyce opened her mouth to rebut the peasant fatalism, but a thought brought her up short. She's right. I, my father, his whole kingdom, we have no more power against this creature than she does. Her face and shoulders sagged at the thought.
"No need to be sad, m'lady," Isabella said. 'It's not like she's a bad match. She can talk all the fine noble talk, and she's got piles of gold. There's lot's worse out there, that's the truth."
"But she, she, she!" Alyce said. "I can't marry a she!"
"What, 'cause she's got no cock?" Isabella said. "M'lady, I love a good cock as much as anyone, but I can tell you a woman can take care of you just as well."
The princess spun around shrank back. "You...you are..." she said.
"A whore," Isabella said. "I get my pleasure where I can, from where it can be found."
At a loss for an answer, the princess sat down in the pool. Isabella approached her again. "There's no shame in it, m'lady. We're all just looking for some comfort and joy in this life. It doesn't matter where it comes from, in the end." She cocked her head. "And seeing her parade around like she does, act like she does, it has put a few notions in your head, hasn't it?"
Alyce froze, and felt the heat rise to her face. How had she known? The whole situation was fantastic, unreal. Her mind was unmoored. If I'm the captive of a dragon, surrounded by sorcery, is the thought of bedding a woman really so impossible? And she was undeniably strong, and commanding, and had fascinating eyes...the princess blushed deeper, then turned even redder as she realized her face had answered the tavern wench's question even better than her voice could have.
Isabella nodded, and knelt in front of her. "Let me tell you a story, m'lady," she said. "My inn's on the coast road, so's we get travelers with money sometimes. One time we got this fat old man, losing his hair and limping with the gout, heading back from the coast to the silver mines he owned in the uplands with a new bride he got from foreign parts."
"She was a pretty little thing, so pale, with long red hair and these blue-green eyes," she said. "She was chattering away in nonsense no one understood, her husband neither. She mostly just chattered and nodded and pointed and people guessed what she wanted."
"He and his bride had taken the best table in the back and he was in a fine mood, drinking mug after mug of our strongest stuff, and the innkeep had me bring it to him because, don't think me vain, the menfolk do like the look of me," she said. "So I'm going back and forth, back and forth, and then he puts a coin in my hand and tells me to go upstairs."
Alyce leaned in, her eyes wide. "With his bride right there?" she said.
"Yes, and her chattering away like nothing was wrong," the wench went on. "I went, of course. Not my job to preach about vows and such. They had our nicest room, o'course. So I took off my clothes and lay down on the bed and waited for him to come up. Then they came through the door. Both of 'em."
"Both?" Alyce said. She barely noticed Isabella had reached out to run the cloth over her shoulders again.
"Yes," Isabella said. "He staggered over and flopped down into a chair and she walked up to the bed, smilin', and undid her belt and pulled off her dress. She was pale, almost glowin' in the candlelight. And she got onto the bed, crawled up next to me, and kissed me."
"Now, I know it's different in the city, but Theawich aint a place where people want fancy things outta a whore, so I aint never kissed a woman before that night," she went on. "She wearn't any less eager than any of the men I've kissed, I can tell you that. Once I got over the surprise, it was...nice. Real nice. Especially when she started runnin' her hands up and down my body."
"Then she stopped kissin' me, and started moving her lips down my body. I just about came outta my skin when she started swirlin' her tongue around my nipples," she said. Alyce sank further into the warm water, listening to Isabella's voice, scarcely noticing her own nipples were rising as the other women lightly brushed the wet cloth against her breasts.
"And then she started working those lips down my belly," Isabella said, moving the cloth down to match her words. "Then she got between my legs, and she started to lick my pussy."
"She..." Alyce stiffened as she felt Isabella's hand brush her own slit.
"You ever had your pussy licked, m'lady?" Isabella said, slowing working her fingers up and down. "It's nice enough when a man does it, if only because so few do, but perhap that's just me. I'm sure the fine gentlemen you take to bed make sure your pussy is well tended, don't they?"
A squirming Alyce made only a small soft sound in reply. "She licked me fast and slow. She licked one spot then another, until she found the spots that made me moan the loudest and she kept on them, faster 'n faster," she said, leaning in closer to the princess. "And when I did cum, it was all I could do hold back my screamin' so's I only woke the inn and not the village."
"I don't know if it was the best I ever had, but it was one of 'em," she went on, as Alyce simply stared. "When my head cleared I looked up, and I could see the old man slumped in the chair, his breaches off, dead to the world. That's when she swung her legs around to the sides of my head, and I figured she wanted me to show her what I'd learned."
"And you..." Alyce breathed.
"It's different than a cock," Isabella said. "Well, yes, but it tastes different. I got a real good taste. 'Cause another difference is, with a woman you can go all night if you care to."
"All night..." Alyce said.
'We wore ourselves out eventually, o'course. They were gone when I woke up. Left me another two silver coins," she continued. "She was babbling the whole time, and not to boast I figured the trick of makin' her scream too, but I never understood one word she said. I never found out if it was his idea or hers, if he was gonna fuck us both but the drink got him or if he was just buyin' his wife a treat. On account of us both wailin' away all night the menfolk in the village still talk about that old bastard like he was the greatest lover alive, so he got that for his coin, I guess."
"But I did learn one thing," she said, leaning in even closer to Alyce. "I learned you can have a lot of fun with no man about."
The princess sat silent. She could feel Isabella's hand through the thin cloth, still stroking the lips of her pussy. She felt feverish, lightheaded, like her skin was too tight. She wanted...she wanted...
"A grand tale," Taneth said. Alyce leapt to her feet at the sound of the dragon-woman's voice, and spun to see her standing by the side of the pool, staring with her great golden eyes. The dragon-woman slipped smoothly into the water. "You found it so too, I think."
Alyce wanted to say no. She wanted to say yes. Instead, she simply stood there as Taneth strode forward, took her in her arms, lifted her near off her feet, and kissed her.
She felt as though the dragon's hot breath was flowing into her, inflaming her body, her soul. The tongue that passed between her lips was longer and thinner than a man's and darted about with an astounding speed and agility. The air blowing from the dragon's nose was hot on her face, and behind her she could feel the soft warmth of Isabella's skin, her erect nipples pressed against her back.
She gave a muffled yelp as she suddenly felt something warm and smooth and sinuous probing between her legs. Her tail, her tail the princess thought as she felt the tip of it gently part the lips of her pussy. She shook in the dragon' embrace as it slowly moved about, passing back and forth, teasing, suddenly withdrawing. She was on the verge of a protest when she felt it again, running between her legs, pushing up against her lips as it passed between her legs and behind her, and she felt Isabella start as it reached the junction between her thighs.
Then Isabella was pressing close, embracing her as well, kissing and licking the side of her neck, her ear, pressing her up against the hot dry skin of the dragon-woman and her own magnificent breasts and rock-hard nipples, and the two were joined by the slow back-and-forth motion of her tail. Alyce could not tell if she or Isabella began rocking their hips back and forth first, but soon they were both doing it, moving faster and faster without thought.
Then just as Alyce felt herself about to burst Taneth released her. She stumbled back a step, gasping, amazed to realize that somehow they had been kissing for, for...for she could not tell how long. Isabella was still behind her, embracing her, and she felt the tavern wench begin to gently pull her down, and she could imagine no reason to resist.
She wound up lying on her back in the warm water, Isabella below her, Isabella's head on the shore, her own head between Isabella's breasts, Taneth's head rising from the water between her spread legs, her bright red hair slick and wet and dripping. Her hips rose at the first touch of the dragon's tongue, and then Taneth's hands were under her, the claws lightly denting the sensitive skin of her buttocks, until her legs found the dragon-woman's shoulder and closed behind her head, by instinct.
The dragon began slowly, teasingly, darting her long tongue about to touch her inner thighs, the outer lips of her pussy, but Taneth seemed to lose patience with the game quickly and began licking in earnest. She flattened her tongue and licked along the folds, up and down, up and down, then stabbed straight into her wet hot slit, deep, deeper than any man could have. She felt Isabella buck under her, realized Taneth must be using her fingers on the wench, teasing and probing her own wet slit, and Alyce moaned at the thought and at the sensations rushing through her own body.
Then she felt the dragon's hot lips close around her clit, felt the gentlest touch of her sharp teeth, and it all became too much. A shock ran through Alyce's body. Her hips rose entirely from the now-roiling water as her head fell back, eyes rolling, her mouth open wide but somehow producing only a faint, high squeak. Isabella thrashed under her, moaning into her ear before both women fell back, still.
Taneth stepped back and raised herself to her feet and stood thigh deep in the water, her legs spread, regarding the two women with her glittering eyes. Slowly, as through moving in a dream, Alyce half-crawled, half floated to cling to one leg and look up at a dragon's pussy for the first time. She felt a faint surprise. She did not recall if she had ever received any lessons on the anatomy of reptiles and so had no idea what to expect but save for the replacement of hair with a faint tracery of red scales everything was startlingly familiar.
Taneth looked down with a faint smile. "I did tell you I took this form for the comfort of mortals," she said. "Did you think me so lacking in pride in my craft to stint on the details?"
"Certainly not," Isabella, who had approached to cling to the opposite leg, said. "Princess, let's show how much we love the fine work she's done on her pussy."
Alyce slowly raised herself up, closer to what she could see was the dragon's moistening slit, close enough to catch the scent, a scent at once strange and familiar, but unmistakably the scent of arousal, and she knew she had reached the point of no return. She would have to taste it. She wanted to taste it.
So, with no further, hesitation, Alyce let her tongue drag over Taneth's lips, tasting the juices. She found it...not unpleasant. She did it again, more forcefully, and felt oddly gratified to feel the dragon-woman's body shift and a low half-growl, half purr escape her mouth, inspiring Alyce to begin licking more steadily.
Isabella watched Alyce for a few moments before turning upward. "She's made a good start, but there's a few things I could teach her, if I might?" she offered.
"Yesssssssss," Taneth hissed
Alyce, who had been growing more confident with each lick looked up in surprise as Isabella suddenly appeared at her side and found herself in yet another passionate kiss. Isabella's tongue was merely human, but the princess found herself responding enthusiastically regardless.
The wench broke away "Let me show you something, m'lady," Isabella said before reaching over and parting Taneth's lower lips with her fingers, exposing her clit. She leaned in to suck and Alyce watched in fascination as Taneth growled louder and grabbed the tavern wench by the back of her head, pressing her into her body.
Inspired, the princess moved her head back in and to tease the dragon's clit with her tongue while Isabella sucked on it, her tongue lapping at whatever part the wench didn't have between her lips before the two swapped tactics.
"Yessssss," Taneth hissed again, her golden eyes wide and bright, her breath labored, her muscles tightening, tightening as she reached down to clutch Alyce's head with her other hand. "Godssssss, thiss is why I return to the world of mortalsss again and again. Serve me, my petsssss. Serve your dragon."
Then came the moment when the princess and the wench attempted to close their lips about her clit at the same moment, and instead met in yet another hard kiss. Locked together they moved as one, sandwiching the dragon's clit in between their lips, their tongues questing around and about and Taneth's thighs trembled on either side.
Taneth's head began thrashing back and forth, her long red hair waving like a flag, spraying water droplets across the cavern. Her grip tightened painfully on the two women's heads for just a moment before the trickle of hot juices from her pussy suddenly became a hot flood and, to the shock of both her lovers, she threw back her head and sent a great blast of flame toward the distant ceiling.
Suddenly released, they both fell back into water that was much warmer than it had been before and watched in astonishment as steam rose from its surface to join the smoke that curled from Taneth's nose as she looked back down at them and smiled. "Caution is advised when arousing a dragon," she said, before lowering herself into the water to lounge between the two women. She threw a muscular arm around each. "But I think you will find the rewards are worth the risks, my pets."
Alyce leaned back, her body limp, her mind a blank. The terror and tension of the last insane day? Days? It was all gone, replaced with both a languor and a profound satisfaction. She realized how scattered her thoughts had been, found she could think once more, and as she turned over the events of the past few days a thought occurred to her. She turned to her dragon...lover? She could not quite think "wife" yet. Not that such words seemed important, in this moment. "When we first met, you called me a gift," she said. "Among royalty, such as yourself and my father, a gift implies certain obligations."
"Obligation is perhaps too strong a word," Taneth answered, and Alyce shivered slightly as she felt the dragon's tail rise from the water behind her to lazily trace its tip up and down her spine. "But his magnificent gift has left me quite favorably disposed toward your father."
She thought back to her father's throne room, to the nobles whose shouts and threats had consigned her to this fate. Not the fate they imagined, alas for them... "Perhaps I can persuade you to demonstrate this favor for the benefit of certain barons of the realm?" she said, smiling in a perhaps less than pleasant manner as another thought came to her. "And perhaps you could bring me? To watch?"
Taneth smiled and twitched her ears. "I catch your thoughts, my pet. I approve. I do have one condition," she said. "If you are going to be riding about on my back as I rain fire on your enemies you will need to be suitably dressed."
"How so?" Alyce said. "Wait, you mean..."
"Yes, the regalia I showed you earlier," the dragon said, smiling. "You must agree, nothing else would be suitable for the situation."
Alyce was still pondering the vision those words had conjured in her mind when the dragon cocked her head. "Wait a moment. I hear a visitor," she said.
Taneth rose from the pool and stalked out of the chamber, through the caverns, smoothly flowing into her dragon form as she neared the mouth of the cave. She looked up to see a plate-mailed knight mounted on the white charger next to the Black Rock.
"Come forth, vile serpent!" the knight's voice sounded metallically from behind a lowered visor. "I have come many leagues to slay thee!"
"Leagues. I am flattered, knight," Taneth boomed.
"I rode as soon as I heard word of you and arrived to learn you had taken a princess of the realm," the knight said. "I have come to save her, or avenge her, and take your head as proof justice and right has prevailed!"
"You have come your many leagues in vain, then," Taneth growled impatiently. "No man may slay me. All know this."
"But I am no man!" the knight cried, flinging away the helmet and allowing tresses so blonde as to be nearly white to cascade down past her aristocratic face. "I am Dame Elizbeth von Hanterstein, and I am your doom, worm!"
With that, the knight lowered her lance and spurred her horse downslope toward the dragon waiting outside the cave. As the knight closed Taneth snapped her wings wide and sprung to the air. Her trailing tail struck the knight full on her shield, sending her tumbling from the side of her horse to the rocky ground.
As the horse prudently sought greener pastures at a gallop Taneth shifted her form, and glided to the ground, where she stood waiting. A few moments later Isabella, in wet, hastily-donned clothes walked past her to stoop and examine the fallen knight while Alyce came to stand by her side in a shift Taneth thought clung to her own damp form rather fetchingly.
"Mortals," Taneth addressed the unconscious knight. "You cannot tell a boast from a prophecy, and you think every prophecy is something you can play clever games with. And so I face a parade of children, and eunuchs, and halflings..." She snorted. "I blame the scribes. By the time the scribes get hold of a tale the heroes need prophecy to win, because they're always tossing their helmets hither and yon just to make a speech. You do know your kind invented them to guard your little eggshell skulls, right?"
"She breathes," Isabella said. "I don't think her head is cracked, or at least not cracked badly. She'll wake, but I'll wager she'll ache like Hell when she does."
Taneth nodded to Alyce. "Go to the hoard, and take the first passage to the left," Taneth said. "Beyond is a chamber. On a shelf on the right is a jar of white powder. Bring the jar and a portion of spring water back."
As Alyce hurried off the dragon and Isabella looked down at the knight. Isabella licked her lips, and Taneth looked sideways at her. "And I am called a beast," she murmured.
"Are you listening to the whisper of my thoughts again?" Isabella said.
"Your thoughts are scarcely a whisper," the dragon said. "I could hear them flying half a mile over your village. It is how I knew you were the one to help me."
"And I did. I helped thaw your ice princess," she said.
"And you truly want nothing more for your service than to be the first of my new concubines?" the dragon said.
"What, to have fine foods and pretty things and fuck beautiful women all day?" she answered. "If that aint paradise, then it's the next best thing." She looked down at the knight again. "And you can't tell me I'm the only one who wants to see what's under all that iron."
"She did challenge me and fail. By the Old Law, her life is mine, to do with what I will," Taneth mused. "All right, then. It seems I've acquired another pet. Just don't expect me to start taking in woodland creatures and homeless urchins. If I want a child about I will get you with a half-dragon brat myself."
Isabella stepped back, open-mouthed. "But you...you are..."
"An immortal. Shapeshifing. Dragon. Sorceress. If I say I can do a thing, I can do it," the dragon said. "Perhap when this one had been properly seduced I will show all three of you how."
Isabella was still silently staring when Alyce came back from the cave.
As a princess of the blood, she had always expected a somewhat longer and more comfortable future. True, she knew her ultimate fate would likely have been to be marriage to some unpleasant old man to shore up her family's uncertain grasp on the throne. She understood that it had not happened yet out of some combination of an aging father's sentimentality and the fact she was the one card left in his hand.
Still, it would have been old man with lands and wealth and finery and mayhap a handsome knight or three in his household to pass the time with. Imaginings of how they might pass that time had seen her through a few dark, lonely nights in her bedchamber. Not that they were all so lonely, but finding men satisfied to bed a princess without feeling the need to shout it from the castle roof was more of a chore than it should have been...
There were knights and nobles about now, to be sure, some of whom had even enjoyed her favors, but they sat silent on horses that whickered with the fear their riders dared not express. No finery either. She wore a simple white shift, and her blond hair fell past her shoulders unbound. The collar about her slender neck was gold, at least, but the clasp had been beaten shut, never to open. From the back a gold chain fastened her to a great rusted iron ring that had been driven into the black slab behind her, amidst forgotten runes gouged into the rock in some distant age. In front of her, across a field of broken stone, the mouth of a cave gaped blackly, and as she stared at it her blue eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of motion, a flash of flame...
Through her rising terror she found she could still feel a hint of irritation that the priest had come nowhere near the end of his prayers before he, too, saw what she had seen and turned without hesitation to flee up the slope away from the cave, his robes flapping behind him. The knights and nobles quickly outpaced him, their horses hardly needing reigns or spurs to wheel and gallop away. She alone was left to see what came crawling from the cave.
She had seen it from afar, of course, as it had flown through the skies above the kingdom for a fortnight while her father's wise men searched dusty tomes to put a name to the terror and find how to avert the doom it clearly portended.
They found the name. Tanex, the wyrm no man may slay. Tanex the destroyer of kingdoms. Tanex the devourer of maidens. The last offered a potential solution that Alyce thought many had jumped at rather too eagerly. A number of the nobles now galloping for the horizon had bravely browbeat her poor father with threats of rebellion, indeed with threats of violence in his own hall, until he consented she be offered to appease the beast even now emerging into the sunlight.
It was larger than any beast should be, 40 feet at least from the tip of its steaming nose to the end of its thrashing tail, covered with glittering crimson scales, bright as jewels. As she watched, great red bat wings unfolded from its shoulders, and it leapt across the broken field in a bound, landing before Alyce with a sound of cracking stone. She found herself too terrified to scream, too terrified to move as a great reptilian head crowned with four short black horns thrust toward her. Glittering golden eyes, slit like a cat's and the size of dinner plates, stared from underneath them at the chained princess.
Then the head swayed closer, a great forked tongue flicking forth, and Aylce found the spell was broken as her terror returned redoubled. She started at teeth the size of her forearm a foot from her face, and as the furnace heat of its breath washed over her Alyce's mind and body gave out as one and she fell into darkness.
***
The princess awoke to rock and flames and screamed. Hell, dead, dead and in hell.... Her mind raced in circles as she jerked upright from the smooth stone floor where she had been sprawled. As her eyes focused she could see she was in a great high-ceilinged cave, ascending to a rough circle of sunlight far off to her right and descending to a flickering red-lit gloom to her left. The flames resolved themselves into torches, set in brass sconces of ancient and uncanny design affixed to the walls at irregular intervals.
Alyce looked down at herself. She was still in her white shift, only a little the worse for wear. Her fingers felt the collar at that was still about her neck, its chain reduced to a single link hanging from the back. Where it had been a plain band there were now strange sigils etched into the gold.
"That collar near strangled you when you swooned," a great voice came from her left. "And it was not properly inscribed for the rite, but I have chosen to overlook and correct that."
She looked up and saw that the voice came from a red-lit smoke that rose to cloud the cave a few yards from where she sat. Within that cloud, she could make out the dim shadow of the great wyrm, and her heart again nearly stammered to a stop.
And then the shadow began to shift, something like how shadows shift before a moving candle, twisting, shrinking. As she stared the great wyrm shadow became the shadow of a man, tall, broad shouldered.
Then Tanex stepped from the mist and Alyce started again, for she beheld not a man, but a woman.
She stood near six and a half feet tall and was shamelessly naked. A cascade of untamed red hair, red as rubies, red as flame, cascaded from her head and past her shoulders. Her skin was flawless, with a red tinge Alyce had never seen before. Her breasts were...very large...Alyce reddened herself and looked down. Her arms, her legs, her body was smooth and sleek but muscled in the way she had most certainly not seen on her father's champion knight when she wasn't peeking in him bathing after a hard sparring session....
She retained her wings, reduced but still jutting past her broad shoulders. A long, slender tail whipped behind her, red-scaled and snakelike. The nails on her fingers and toes were black and long. Alyce could make out a faint tracery of faintly-red scales on her fingers, on her feet, fringing a face that was human and strong and beautiful. Four black horns jutted from beneath her hair. She smiled and sharp teeth glinted.
Her eyes remained the same, golden, catlike, glittering.
"You are...Tanex?" Alyce stammered, her mind hopelessly confused.
"Taneth," the serpent-woman answered back, spreading her wings as flame flickered from her nostrils. "Have the people of this land truly forgotten the sound of my name? I slept too long, I fear."
She stalked closer, staring Alyce in the eyes, stretching her wings and arms wide, seeming to grow even taller as she approached. "I am Taneth, the Bright Devouring Flame, Queen of Earth and Sky, get of the First and Nameless, Goddess of Wyrms. No man may slay me," she pronounced. "I have slept an age beneath this land, and I rise now to claim what is mine."
Alyce's mind continued to whirl uselessly. "You...you are a woman," she said, scrambling to her feet.
"No, I am a dragon. A female of my kind, but a dragon," she said, hips swaying as she walked closer. Alyce backed against the wall, but the dragon walked on, pressing up against her. "It pleases me to bank the flames of my glory in this form for the comfort of mortals," the dragon said, tilting her head to the side with a smile. "Do you find it...comfortable?"
Taneth's naked skin was smooth, dry and feverish, radiating a heat Alyce could feel through the thin silk shift. Her breath was hot on Alyce's face, but not the sulfurous foulness she expected, but instead smelling faintly of some exotic incense. A long, dark, forked tongue suddenly snaked from Taneth's mouth, and Alyce flinched as it lightly stroked the side of her face. "I can make you more than comfortable," the dragon purred.
"You..I..." Alyce stammered. Her mind whirled, as she dimly remembered whispers of perversions between the serving girls. "You...want to be with me...as a man?"
"My dear pet, you wound me," Taneth answered. "I am a dragon. A sorceress. A demigoddess. I can show you pleasures no man has conceived."
The breath of the dragon was hot on her face, her crimson lips so very, very close. The golden eyes seemed to be growing, and Alyce felt as though she were being drawn into their depths. She could feel her breath quickening, her skin flushing, and an odd restless sensation begin to grow deep inside her. The eyes were so big now, the lips so close...with a supreme effort Alyce wrenched her gaze away and turned to the side.
The dragon pulled her head back, with a look Alyce could not quite understand. Puzzlement? Disappointment? "I will not take what is not given. It is not our way. But do you know what you scorn?" she said. "In my time I have consorted with queens of old, with nymphs, with goddesses. All of them shook with pleasure at my touch. And you refuse me?"
"I...I...it's not...I can't..." Alyce stammered.
"Very well," the dragon said, her expression closing somewhat. "Perhaps I have slept too long alone. Do you desire anything? Ask what you will, and I will grant you what I can."
"Would you...would you grant me leave to go?" Alyce asked. The dragon gave no answer but a low chuckle.
"I am your slave, then," the princess said.
"No, not that," the dragon said. "You are no slave. I will not force you to obey."
"You will release me, then?" she asked.
"No!" the dragon answered with an expression of annoyance. "Are you dimwitted? You were given according to the terms of the ancient pact, for as long as you shall live. The Old Law is unbreakable. It is all carved into the very rock you were..." She trailed off. "Of course. During my slumber, your people forgot how to read the runes."
"No...no one has ever known," the princess stammered. "They were carved by forgotten folk, before our people came to this land..."
She flinched back as the dragon began bellowing in laughter. "Ha! Then you really did not know," she said. "What did you expect was going to happen?"
"We thought...I thought...you were going to eat me," Alyce said.
The laughter that followed was more unexpected and somehow even louder. "I would love a taste of you, pet, but no," the dragon said as she paused for breath. "You are not my dinner. You are my wife."
Alyce stared dumbstruck as Taneth chuckled. "You are surprised? Your kings have been gifting spouses to each other for as long as you have had kings, and to my kind just as long. When last I walked these lands I usually had two or three princesses or princes about, all left at that very rock according to the Old Laws, not to mention the concubines, the slaves and the thralls and the ones I took in battle. Would-be dragonslayers bring a certain fire to their lovemaking, once they have been properly brought around..."
Alyce finally found her voice. "But you are...I am...we are both..." she stammered.
"Female. Yes. So?" Taneth said. "I have always been a lover of women. Oh, when males have been offered I have taken them to be polite, yes, and some have proven satisfying lovers in their own ways, but on balance..." she looked at the princess' shocked expression and sighed "But we will talk on this later. Now, save your freedom, which by the Old Law is no longer mine to grant, what would you desire?"
Alyce breathed deep, reached down within herself, and pushed down her fear and bewilderment and curiosity and memory of warm scales against skin... You are royal, she thought, and lifted her chin. If this beast slays me for my words, better to die now than to live as..as...whatever I am supposed to be. "If I am truly to remain here, I will require more suitable garments than these," she said, bracing for whatever was to come.
"In lost Ashur, there was a princess I knew - knew very well, yes - who was perfectly content to wear nothing but a belly chain and an ankle bangle," the dragon said with a sigh. "I have awoken to joyless times, it seems. Still, 'tis trifling to find you something suitable. Come with me."
Taneth turned and strode deeper into the cave, leaving Alyce standing stunned for a moment at her sudden acquiescence before hurrying to catch up. Beyond the chamber the descending tunnel turned twice before opening into a new torchlit room. Taneth strode in without pause, but Alyce was brought up short at the entrance. The cavern was at least as big as her father's audience hall, but piled halfway to the ceiling with gold. Gold coins, gold cups, gold statues, and gold jewelry, with gemstones scattered across the mound, green and red, like wildflowers on a hill. She didn't know how long she had started at the great glittering pile when Taneth was suddenly before her again, holding out a tangle of thin chains and small plates made of some shimmering, silver metal.
"This should suit. It is royal regalia, from the kingdoms of the Dark Elves. There is a lash that goes with it, but the leather has gone rotten..." The dragon stopped, watching Alyce's eyes widen as she worked out how it was supposed to be worn and what she would look like in it. Taneth closed her eyes and sighed. "I shall try to get something else."
They turned and walked silently back up through the cave. Alyce had begun to regain her composure when Taneth spoke again. "Is there anything else you require?" the dragon sarcastically intoned.
Alyce found herself seriously pondering the question. It seems she does not mean to slay me outright. And if I am to live... "I shall need a...basin. And, and comb and a mirror, at least," she said, before she was struck by an impulse to test how far her boundaries lay. "And a servant. I must have a servant," she added, with an internal flinch.
"A servant? I suppose I could call up a succubus or two, they could serve...oh, stop waving your hands around like that," Taneth said with mild irritation as Alyce's hands instinctively wove the ward against devils she'd learned as a child. "That nonsense does not even give real demons pause, you know." She stared at the princess, who gave her best defiant stare back. "Very well. I shall fetch you another mortal." She turned and strode toward the entrance, then turned back. She waved a hand, and Alyce started as the symbols on her collar flared with red flame. "You will not set foot outside this cave," she said. "Even if you did, I would find you anyway. I could scent you from half a kingdom away. These ears can hear the whispering of thought. These eyes can see the turning of destiny. And your destiny and mine are bound now."
And then she was gone, her shape twisting and growing as turned and strode toward the mouth of the cave until she leapt to the air.
Alyce, of course, set out for the enticing circle of daylight as soon as she could convince herself Taneth had gone. But as she walked toward the light, she found the collar about her throat unaccountably grow heavier and heavier with every step she took, until it was all she could do to stand. She found herself unsurprised to see the sigils on the collar glowing red, a red that faded along with the weight as she resignedly trudged back downward, into the flame-lit darkness.
***
Alyce woke with a start. She had listlessly explored the cavern the twisting passageways of the cavern for some time, wondering at the oddly smokeless torches, drinking her fill from a spring the flowed from a wall. At length she found herself in a large round chamber. Flecks of crystal glittered on the walls, and great pillars of flowing stone rose from the floor, meeting similar ones descending from the shadow-shrouded ceiling. As she stared at the stone she could almost see patterns; people, women, women dancing, women...women doing...she turned away.
At the center of the room was a round pool, and she sat beside it, suddenly overcome with weariness. Sleep must have overtaken her almost instantly.
She had no idea how long she had slept, but she was surprised to wake in a shaft of daylight, falling from an irregular rent in the highest point of the ceiling into the center of the chamber to the floor next to the pool. She found another small chamber off to the side of this one and attended her needs before she returned to the side of the pool.
Standing beside the water, she came to the resolution that if she was going to live then she was going to bathe. She shrugged off her shift and left to fall to the floor before touching her foot to the water and was surprised to find it warm. She had placed one foot fully in before a voice boomed out behind here. "Ah, you found the hot spring. It is why I put the seraglio here."
As she spun in surprise tried to cover herself Alyce could see Taneth, still shamelessly naked, standing behind a woman. Her shoulder length hair was dark, and so were her eyes. She was dressed in a homespun dark skirt and white blouse that Alyce had often seen on peasants, although the neckline seemed rather low and that she had never seen a peasant skirt slit that high up the side. She had cloth slung over her shoulder, one hand clutched what looked like a solid-gold comb a gold-framed mirror-gold basin while the other held a golden bowl. A sliver, rune-inscribed ring was about her neck.
"Here are the things you requested. A comb, a basin, a mirror and a servant," the dragon said.
"Where...where did you..." Alyce sputtered.
"There is a village on the far side of the forest. She was serving in the tavern and seemed suitable, so I claimed her when she stepped outside. Do not worry. I paid for her," Taneth added. "I left behind a full quarter-weight in silver for the tavern-keeper, more than one would usually pay for such, but I am a generous dragon."
The dragon waited a moment but got no answer except Alyce's wide-eyed stare. "Your gratitude overwhelms me," she said. "I go now to conjure up some clothing." She turned and left as she came.
The two stared at each other for a long moment. "I am the Princess Alyce," Alyce finally said.
"Isabella, m'lady. From Theawich," the other said in a somewhat husky voice.
"You are a subject of my father, then," Alyce said in a chill tone "In my experience, subjects courtesy before royalty."
"In my experience, m'lady, royalty wear more clothes," Isabella said.
At that, Alyce's face fell, and she crumpled to the ground, weeping. Isabella set down comb, mirror and bowl and rushed forward. "There, m'lady, no need for that," she said' kneeling beside the princess.
"But this is all mad!" Alyce cried. "That beast, she thinks...she wants..."
"Oh, I know what that beast wants, but there's nothing to be done for that" Isabella said. "I've been bought to be your servant, so I suppose I should start serving. Why don't you get in the water, and I'll give you a washing."
Alyce took a breath and steeled herself. This was what she had asked for. To reject it seemed both ungracious and unwise. She stood and stepped into the pool, wading until she was waist-deep in its comfortably warm waters. She turned back to see Isabella shrugging of her own clothes, showing there was nothing but skin beneath. "I'll have to get in there to wash you, and there's no sense getting a perfectly good clothes wet," Isabella said, answering the question in her eyes.
The now-naked woman stepped into the pool herself and dipped one of the rags she had brought into the water. Alyce shivered slightly despite the warmth, and stood, at a loss of what to do, as Isabella stood behind her began to wipe her back and shoulders, softly humming to herself.
Alyce tried to relax. She was used to being bathed by servants, of course, but the maids assigned to that duty had always been much older than Isabella. And much less naked. Or attractive. Wait, why did that thought come to mind? She had a pretty enough face, skin a mite darker than Alyce's own aristocratic tone but smoother than she expected, breasts a bit larger than her own if not as spectacular as their captor's and they're swaying closer I wonder what they feel like and her hands were gentle and the fingertips were brushing down her spine...
Alyce shook herself shifted uncomfortably. "How can you be so calm?" she said. "When...when...
"M'lady, I'm a tavern wench and a whore, daughter of a tavern wench and whore," Isabella said. "Oh, I near died of fright when she snatched me up into the sky, but once I knew I wasn't dinner, well, then, she was just another lummox grabbing a pretty girl for a bit of fun. You get used to it."
Alyce opened her mouth to rebut the peasant fatalism, but a thought brought her up short. She's right. I, my father, his whole kingdom, we have no more power against this creature than she does. Her face and shoulders sagged at the thought.
"No need to be sad, m'lady," Isabella said. 'It's not like she's a bad match. She can talk all the fine noble talk, and she's got piles of gold. There's lot's worse out there, that's the truth."
"But she, she, she!" Alyce said. "I can't marry a she!"
"What, 'cause she's got no cock?" Isabella said. "M'lady, I love a good cock as much as anyone, but I can tell you a woman can take care of you just as well."
The princess spun around shrank back. "You...you are..." she said.
"A whore," Isabella said. "I get my pleasure where I can, from where it can be found."
At a loss for an answer, the princess sat down in the pool. Isabella approached her again. "There's no shame in it, m'lady. We're all just looking for some comfort and joy in this life. It doesn't matter where it comes from, in the end." She cocked her head. "And seeing her parade around like she does, act like she does, it has put a few notions in your head, hasn't it?"
Alyce froze, and felt the heat rise to her face. How had she known? The whole situation was fantastic, unreal. Her mind was unmoored. If I'm the captive of a dragon, surrounded by sorcery, is the thought of bedding a woman really so impossible? And she was undeniably strong, and commanding, and had fascinating eyes...the princess blushed deeper, then turned even redder as she realized her face had answered the tavern wench's question even better than her voice could have.
Isabella nodded, and knelt in front of her. "Let me tell you a story, m'lady," she said. "My inn's on the coast road, so's we get travelers with money sometimes. One time we got this fat old man, losing his hair and limping with the gout, heading back from the coast to the silver mines he owned in the uplands with a new bride he got from foreign parts."
"She was a pretty little thing, so pale, with long red hair and these blue-green eyes," she said. "She was chattering away in nonsense no one understood, her husband neither. She mostly just chattered and nodded and pointed and people guessed what she wanted."
"He and his bride had taken the best table in the back and he was in a fine mood, drinking mug after mug of our strongest stuff, and the innkeep had me bring it to him because, don't think me vain, the menfolk do like the look of me," she said. "So I'm going back and forth, back and forth, and then he puts a coin in my hand and tells me to go upstairs."
Alyce leaned in, her eyes wide. "With his bride right there?" she said.
"Yes, and her chattering away like nothing was wrong," the wench went on. "I went, of course. Not my job to preach about vows and such. They had our nicest room, o'course. So I took off my clothes and lay down on the bed and waited for him to come up. Then they came through the door. Both of 'em."
"Both?" Alyce said. She barely noticed Isabella had reached out to run the cloth over her shoulders again.
"Yes," Isabella said. "He staggered over and flopped down into a chair and she walked up to the bed, smilin', and undid her belt and pulled off her dress. She was pale, almost glowin' in the candlelight. And she got onto the bed, crawled up next to me, and kissed me."
"Now, I know it's different in the city, but Theawich aint a place where people want fancy things outta a whore, so I aint never kissed a woman before that night," she went on. "She wearn't any less eager than any of the men I've kissed, I can tell you that. Once I got over the surprise, it was...nice. Real nice. Especially when she started runnin' her hands up and down my body."
"Then she stopped kissin' me, and started moving her lips down my body. I just about came outta my skin when she started swirlin' her tongue around my nipples," she said. Alyce sank further into the warm water, listening to Isabella's voice, scarcely noticing her own nipples were rising as the other women lightly brushed the wet cloth against her breasts.
"And then she started working those lips down my belly," Isabella said, moving the cloth down to match her words. "Then she got between my legs, and she started to lick my pussy."
"She..." Alyce stiffened as she felt Isabella's hand brush her own slit.
"You ever had your pussy licked, m'lady?" Isabella said, slowing working her fingers up and down. "It's nice enough when a man does it, if only because so few do, but perhap that's just me. I'm sure the fine gentlemen you take to bed make sure your pussy is well tended, don't they?"
A squirming Alyce made only a small soft sound in reply. "She licked me fast and slow. She licked one spot then another, until she found the spots that made me moan the loudest and she kept on them, faster 'n faster," she said, leaning in closer to the princess. "And when I did cum, it was all I could do hold back my screamin' so's I only woke the inn and not the village."
"I don't know if it was the best I ever had, but it was one of 'em," she went on, as Alyce simply stared. "When my head cleared I looked up, and I could see the old man slumped in the chair, his breaches off, dead to the world. That's when she swung her legs around to the sides of my head, and I figured she wanted me to show her what I'd learned."
"And you..." Alyce breathed.
"It's different than a cock," Isabella said. "Well, yes, but it tastes different. I got a real good taste. 'Cause another difference is, with a woman you can go all night if you care to."
"All night..." Alyce said.
'We wore ourselves out eventually, o'course. They were gone when I woke up. Left me another two silver coins," she continued. "She was babbling the whole time, and not to boast I figured the trick of makin' her scream too, but I never understood one word she said. I never found out if it was his idea or hers, if he was gonna fuck us both but the drink got him or if he was just buyin' his wife a treat. On account of us both wailin' away all night the menfolk in the village still talk about that old bastard like he was the greatest lover alive, so he got that for his coin, I guess."
"But I did learn one thing," she said, leaning in even closer to Alyce. "I learned you can have a lot of fun with no man about."
The princess sat silent. She could feel Isabella's hand through the thin cloth, still stroking the lips of her pussy. She felt feverish, lightheaded, like her skin was too tight. She wanted...she wanted...
"A grand tale," Taneth said. Alyce leapt to her feet at the sound of the dragon-woman's voice, and spun to see her standing by the side of the pool, staring with her great golden eyes. The dragon-woman slipped smoothly into the water. "You found it so too, I think."
Alyce wanted to say no. She wanted to say yes. Instead, she simply stood there as Taneth strode forward, took her in her arms, lifted her near off her feet, and kissed her.
She felt as though the dragon's hot breath was flowing into her, inflaming her body, her soul. The tongue that passed between her lips was longer and thinner than a man's and darted about with an astounding speed and agility. The air blowing from the dragon's nose was hot on her face, and behind her she could feel the soft warmth of Isabella's skin, her erect nipples pressed against her back.
She gave a muffled yelp as she suddenly felt something warm and smooth and sinuous probing between her legs. Her tail, her tail the princess thought as she felt the tip of it gently part the lips of her pussy. She shook in the dragon' embrace as it slowly moved about, passing back and forth, teasing, suddenly withdrawing. She was on the verge of a protest when she felt it again, running between her legs, pushing up against her lips as it passed between her legs and behind her, and she felt Isabella start as it reached the junction between her thighs.
Then Isabella was pressing close, embracing her as well, kissing and licking the side of her neck, her ear, pressing her up against the hot dry skin of the dragon-woman and her own magnificent breasts and rock-hard nipples, and the two were joined by the slow back-and-forth motion of her tail. Alyce could not tell if she or Isabella began rocking their hips back and forth first, but soon they were both doing it, moving faster and faster without thought.
Then just as Alyce felt herself about to burst Taneth released her. She stumbled back a step, gasping, amazed to realize that somehow they had been kissing for, for...for she could not tell how long. Isabella was still behind her, embracing her, and she felt the tavern wench begin to gently pull her down, and she could imagine no reason to resist.
She wound up lying on her back in the warm water, Isabella below her, Isabella's head on the shore, her own head between Isabella's breasts, Taneth's head rising from the water between her spread legs, her bright red hair slick and wet and dripping. Her hips rose at the first touch of the dragon's tongue, and then Taneth's hands were under her, the claws lightly denting the sensitive skin of her buttocks, until her legs found the dragon-woman's shoulder and closed behind her head, by instinct.
The dragon began slowly, teasingly, darting her long tongue about to touch her inner thighs, the outer lips of her pussy, but Taneth seemed to lose patience with the game quickly and began licking in earnest. She flattened her tongue and licked along the folds, up and down, up and down, then stabbed straight into her wet hot slit, deep, deeper than any man could have. She felt Isabella buck under her, realized Taneth must be using her fingers on the wench, teasing and probing her own wet slit, and Alyce moaned at the thought and at the sensations rushing through her own body.
Then she felt the dragon's hot lips close around her clit, felt the gentlest touch of her sharp teeth, and it all became too much. A shock ran through Alyce's body. Her hips rose entirely from the now-roiling water as her head fell back, eyes rolling, her mouth open wide but somehow producing only a faint, high squeak. Isabella thrashed under her, moaning into her ear before both women fell back, still.
Taneth stepped back and raised herself to her feet and stood thigh deep in the water, her legs spread, regarding the two women with her glittering eyes. Slowly, as through moving in a dream, Alyce half-crawled, half floated to cling to one leg and look up at a dragon's pussy for the first time. She felt a faint surprise. She did not recall if she had ever received any lessons on the anatomy of reptiles and so had no idea what to expect but save for the replacement of hair with a faint tracery of red scales everything was startlingly familiar.
Taneth looked down with a faint smile. "I did tell you I took this form for the comfort of mortals," she said. "Did you think me so lacking in pride in my craft to stint on the details?"
"Certainly not," Isabella, who had approached to cling to the opposite leg, said. "Princess, let's show how much we love the fine work she's done on her pussy."
Alyce slowly raised herself up, closer to what she could see was the dragon's moistening slit, close enough to catch the scent, a scent at once strange and familiar, but unmistakably the scent of arousal, and she knew she had reached the point of no return. She would have to taste it. She wanted to taste it.
So, with no further, hesitation, Alyce let her tongue drag over Taneth's lips, tasting the juices. She found it...not unpleasant. She did it again, more forcefully, and felt oddly gratified to feel the dragon-woman's body shift and a low half-growl, half purr escape her mouth, inspiring Alyce to begin licking more steadily.
Isabella watched Alyce for a few moments before turning upward. "She's made a good start, but there's a few things I could teach her, if I might?" she offered.
"Yesssssssss," Taneth hissed
Alyce, who had been growing more confident with each lick looked up in surprise as Isabella suddenly appeared at her side and found herself in yet another passionate kiss. Isabella's tongue was merely human, but the princess found herself responding enthusiastically regardless.
The wench broke away "Let me show you something, m'lady," Isabella said before reaching over and parting Taneth's lower lips with her fingers, exposing her clit. She leaned in to suck and Alyce watched in fascination as Taneth growled louder and grabbed the tavern wench by the back of her head, pressing her into her body.
Inspired, the princess moved her head back in and to tease the dragon's clit with her tongue while Isabella sucked on it, her tongue lapping at whatever part the wench didn't have between her lips before the two swapped tactics.
"Yessssss," Taneth hissed again, her golden eyes wide and bright, her breath labored, her muscles tightening, tightening as she reached down to clutch Alyce's head with her other hand. "Godssssss, thiss is why I return to the world of mortalsss again and again. Serve me, my petsssss. Serve your dragon."
Then came the moment when the princess and the wench attempted to close their lips about her clit at the same moment, and instead met in yet another hard kiss. Locked together they moved as one, sandwiching the dragon's clit in between their lips, their tongues questing around and about and Taneth's thighs trembled on either side.
Taneth's head began thrashing back and forth, her long red hair waving like a flag, spraying water droplets across the cavern. Her grip tightened painfully on the two women's heads for just a moment before the trickle of hot juices from her pussy suddenly became a hot flood and, to the shock of both her lovers, she threw back her head and sent a great blast of flame toward the distant ceiling.
Suddenly released, they both fell back into water that was much warmer than it had been before and watched in astonishment as steam rose from its surface to join the smoke that curled from Taneth's nose as she looked back down at them and smiled. "Caution is advised when arousing a dragon," she said, before lowering herself into the water to lounge between the two women. She threw a muscular arm around each. "But I think you will find the rewards are worth the risks, my pets."
Alyce leaned back, her body limp, her mind a blank. The terror and tension of the last insane day? Days? It was all gone, replaced with both a languor and a profound satisfaction. She realized how scattered her thoughts had been, found she could think once more, and as she turned over the events of the past few days a thought occurred to her. She turned to her dragon...lover? She could not quite think "wife" yet. Not that such words seemed important, in this moment. "When we first met, you called me a gift," she said. "Among royalty, such as yourself and my father, a gift implies certain obligations."
"Obligation is perhaps too strong a word," Taneth answered, and Alyce shivered slightly as she felt the dragon's tail rise from the water behind her to lazily trace its tip up and down her spine. "But his magnificent gift has left me quite favorably disposed toward your father."
She thought back to her father's throne room, to the nobles whose shouts and threats had consigned her to this fate. Not the fate they imagined, alas for them... "Perhaps I can persuade you to demonstrate this favor for the benefit of certain barons of the realm?" she said, smiling in a perhaps less than pleasant manner as another thought came to her. "And perhaps you could bring me? To watch?"
Taneth smiled and twitched her ears. "I catch your thoughts, my pet. I approve. I do have one condition," she said. "If you are going to be riding about on my back as I rain fire on your enemies you will need to be suitably dressed."
"How so?" Alyce said. "Wait, you mean..."
"Yes, the regalia I showed you earlier," the dragon said, smiling. "You must agree, nothing else would be suitable for the situation."
Alyce was still pondering the vision those words had conjured in her mind when the dragon cocked her head. "Wait a moment. I hear a visitor," she said.
Taneth rose from the pool and stalked out of the chamber, through the caverns, smoothly flowing into her dragon form as she neared the mouth of the cave. She looked up to see a plate-mailed knight mounted on the white charger next to the Black Rock.
"Come forth, vile serpent!" the knight's voice sounded metallically from behind a lowered visor. "I have come many leagues to slay thee!"
"Leagues. I am flattered, knight," Taneth boomed.
"I rode as soon as I heard word of you and arrived to learn you had taken a princess of the realm," the knight said. "I have come to save her, or avenge her, and take your head as proof justice and right has prevailed!"
"You have come your many leagues in vain, then," Taneth growled impatiently. "No man may slay me. All know this."
"But I am no man!" the knight cried, flinging away the helmet and allowing tresses so blonde as to be nearly white to cascade down past her aristocratic face. "I am Dame Elizbeth von Hanterstein, and I am your doom, worm!"
With that, the knight lowered her lance and spurred her horse downslope toward the dragon waiting outside the cave. As the knight closed Taneth snapped her wings wide and sprung to the air. Her trailing tail struck the knight full on her shield, sending her tumbling from the side of her horse to the rocky ground.
As the horse prudently sought greener pastures at a gallop Taneth shifted her form, and glided to the ground, where she stood waiting. A few moments later Isabella, in wet, hastily-donned clothes walked past her to stoop and examine the fallen knight while Alyce came to stand by her side in a shift Taneth thought clung to her own damp form rather fetchingly.
"Mortals," Taneth addressed the unconscious knight. "You cannot tell a boast from a prophecy, and you think every prophecy is something you can play clever games with. And so I face a parade of children, and eunuchs, and halflings..." She snorted. "I blame the scribes. By the time the scribes get hold of a tale the heroes need prophecy to win, because they're always tossing their helmets hither and yon just to make a speech. You do know your kind invented them to guard your little eggshell skulls, right?"
"She breathes," Isabella said. "I don't think her head is cracked, or at least not cracked badly. She'll wake, but I'll wager she'll ache like Hell when she does."
Taneth nodded to Alyce. "Go to the hoard, and take the first passage to the left," Taneth said. "Beyond is a chamber. On a shelf on the right is a jar of white powder. Bring the jar and a portion of spring water back."
As Alyce hurried off the dragon and Isabella looked down at the knight. Isabella licked her lips, and Taneth looked sideways at her. "And I am called a beast," she murmured.
"Are you listening to the whisper of my thoughts again?" Isabella said.
"Your thoughts are scarcely a whisper," the dragon said. "I could hear them flying half a mile over your village. It is how I knew you were the one to help me."
"And I did. I helped thaw your ice princess," she said.
"And you truly want nothing more for your service than to be the first of my new concubines?" the dragon said.
"What, to have fine foods and pretty things and fuck beautiful women all day?" she answered. "If that aint paradise, then it's the next best thing." She looked down at the knight again. "And you can't tell me I'm the only one who wants to see what's under all that iron."
"She did challenge me and fail. By the Old Law, her life is mine, to do with what I will," Taneth mused. "All right, then. It seems I've acquired another pet. Just don't expect me to start taking in woodland creatures and homeless urchins. If I want a child about I will get you with a half-dragon brat myself."
Isabella stepped back, open-mouthed. "But you...you are..."
"An immortal. Shapeshifing. Dragon. Sorceress. If I say I can do a thing, I can do it," the dragon said. "Perhap when this one had been properly seduced I will show all three of you how."
Isabella was still silently staring when Alyce came back from the cave.