A Dragoness' Tale P.III
by Mortanius

Fifty years past, the wizard Alanius had failed a woman who’d become dear to him, in her own way. Now, a gray-haired old man with nothing to his name save his carry pack and the books within, he had only the past to keep his mind at ease, and his past was a thing that curdled his stomach when he thought of it. Thus he returned to this mountain valley, home to shadowed races long thought lost to the ages. In truth, Alanius would not mind spending the rest of his days in this place, away from the world of men. He had no right to call himself a wizard, until he faced Maya il’Trakken once more.

The modest hutch in which the half-dragoness had nested herself when last he’d seen her lay in pieces as if torn apart by brigands, consumed by vines, moss and time. Perhaps his well-meaning but ill-practiced magic had at last wrought her destruction, yet he found no bones to indicate as such. Perhaps she had won her people’s acceptance, and had moved on with them. Her last words made him shiver: Let us see just what this Goddess made flesh can do…. Had his magic twisted her mind so much, or had it simply warped with her body? Alanius scraped at a bit of rotting wood with his cane, and a fat golden beetle scurried deeper into the ancient plank. This was a dead place.

"Who are you?" Alanius leapt, his heart beating faster than was good for him at his age, and found himself face to face with a pretty young half-dragoness not dissimilar in appearance to Maya, when she’d first come to him with her troubles. Of a height with him and considerably younger, her skin was the color of a wave, white mottling along her legs and face the hue of foam. Her fine-scaled bosom was high and gleaming in the setting sun, and the rest of her was a thing of beauty as well. Something about her, perhaps the manner in which she carried herself, suggested more true dragoness in her than woman. Apparently she thought nothing of her nakedness. A smile spread across her thin blue lips. "I think you are the Wizard, yes?"

"I am a wizard." Alanius nodded tentatively. "I do not think you’ve met me, though."

"I am Ayla," the young woman introduced herself, and Alanius frowned as she extended her hand: her three fingers were all nail and no flesh, or else as thickly armored as the scarab he’d knocked loose. Had Maya’s people entered a state of change, or was this simply a trait of Ayla’s clan? "You seek the Mother, do you not?"

"If her name is Maya il’Trakken," Alanius replied, "then yes, I seek her."

"Do not speak her name!" Ayla gasped, and scrutinized him closer. At last she tugged at the hem of his weather-beaten scarlet robe. "Come. The Mother speaks much of you. She wants you to…." She scratched her scaly head as if in remembrance. "She wants you to see what you’ve wrought, she says. We do not always understand what the Mother says. This way."

Ayla scuttled eagerly on all fours, and Alanius was reminded once more of the beetle as he followed at a distance. This part of the valley was more jungle than forest, a thick canopy of leaves both humid and shadowed beneath, and he felt eyes all about him. At length reaching a high crest of dark soil rich with fungi and various species of glowing plant that would no doubt be handy in magical practices, Ayla arched herself over and beckoned Alanius to follow. He did, though hauling his old bones along with him was a task, to be sure. The sight dropped his jaw.

Beneath him lay a city as grand as any of those ancient sanctuaries of which he’d read as an apprentice and later as a stodgy old sorcerer. A circle of high watchtowers converged above a vast courtyard of limestone and crumbling granite. Amidst carvings of half-dragons and true dragons overtaken by vines walked myriad half-dragon men and women, all of them lithe and sea-blue like Ayla. They, at least, had the decency to cover themselves, if sparsely. Wares were peddled in a series of limestone booths Alanius took to be a marketplace of sorts, though he knew not what men would find themselves in this place of their own accord. The true spectacle lay at the center of the courtyard: it was Maya il’Trakken, and she was far from the woman Alanius had left to her fate so long before.

She was vast, distorted and insect-like. Her torso had become so emaciated that her ribs showed clean through and her scales flaked as though diseased, yet her breasts had swollen to sheer enormity, veins straining upon her tight-stretched hide. Beneath this first pair, Maya had…evolved…twin rows of milk-bloated sacs that suited her like a caterpillar’s legs. She’d grown an extra set of arms to match those with which she’d been born; those were thin, spiny and armored now, spindly as an insect’s legs beside the rest of her. At the waist, she swelled into a great membranous sac, rippling and full to bursting with squirming dragonets and those yet within their shells. An ocean roiled and churned inside her. All round her ludicrously bulging body swarmed dragonets and adults alike, eager to tend to her needs, as she was quite obviously unable to do so herself. Dragonets scrabbled over her enormous girth, affixing themselves to her breasts, drinking their fill, and at last dropping from her to lie helplessly engorged at her side. Her features had become almost those of a true dragoness, all but unrecognizable as those of Maya il’Trakken. She was, in a way, beautiful, though hardly in the sense that she had once been.

"What have I done?" Alanius murmured, approaching the bloated monarch with the caution of a man weaponless at the mouth of a lion’s den. Ayla followed close behind, eyes wide in awe of her impossibly gravid mother. All of these must be Maya’s children—tens, hundreds of them, with as many more inside her. The dragoness writhed, her four scythe-taloned arms and disjointed, useless little legs waving at her sides as though of their own accord. Doubtless little remained of her but brain and womb. "Maya? I doubt you will remember me."

"How could I forget?" Maya’s voice was that of a beetle that had learned to speak, grating and high. She breathed deeply, the whole of her blue-mottled body expanding; so certain was Alanius that she would simply pop like a festival balloon that he turned from her. Maya leant toward him, her swollen breasts touching the soil. "See how I have become like the Goddess herself, Alanius. My body no longer has need for your magic—this, I have done of my own will. I have…changed. Do you see me for what I am, little apprentice?"

"I see you," he replied tensely. "You’ve not become the Goddess—you’ve become nothing but a—a bloated stick-insect!"

"So foolish," Maya chuckled, and waved her multitude of arms about once more as her young-filled body contorted to the shape of a great dewdrop and relaxed. Surely she must burst; Alanius’ magic had not given her immortality. She leant forward again, her scythe-claw stroking Ayla beneath her chin. The young dragoness smiled broadly. "I see you have met Ayla. She is one of my favorites. Would you like something as well, Ayla? You look as if you have not fed in a month."

"Oh, yes," Ayla squealed, delighted, and leapt to her mother at a playful gait. Stretching her mouth wide around a nipple, she began to suckle, her young throat distending with each gulp of dragonsmilk. An overzealous child, she began to tug and bite, to her mother’s discomfort. Filling herself to her very gills, her leathery hide began to stretch. At last sated and twice as gorged as her new-hatched brethren, she lay immobile, full to capacity and gasping for breath, eyes half-closed, whether from some natural soporific in the milk or from the quantity of nectar within her. If not even a tenth her mother’s size, she looked ready to bear a sizable clutch herself.

"Such a task, minding these children," Maya sighed breathlessly. "They drink too deeply from me, and would go the way of my sister if I did not tell them just when to stop. You do remember my sister, Aqua? See how I have given birth to a new people. My people."

"You have birthed a nightmare," Alanius breathed.

"I think I have made the best of what you have given me." Maya smiled, and it was a sick, mad smile devoid of humor. "I was angry with you, until I realized what you had…bestowed upon me. Now, you shall repay me."

"What would you ask of me?"

"I wish you to make another," Maya breathed roughly, and her laugh was like ice. Her body rippled and swelled with it. "Another like me."

"Why would I ever…?" Maya shrieked, drawing the attention of every half-dragon and new-spawned dragonet within earshot. Alanius relented. "Very well. But where on Earth would I find one willing to become…like you?"

"Some would be more eager to accept than you might think." Maya leant awkwardly to one side, her torso on the verge of tearing free of the rest of her bulk, and nuzzled Ayla’s swollen abdomen. "Ayla," she purred. "Ayla, my daughter…."

"M-mother," the young dragoness bubbled, a rivulet of white trickling from her lips. "Will the Wizard make me like you now?"

"Yes," Maya assured her, and glanced to Alanius with ice in her eyes. "Yes, he will. Soon."

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"A Dragoness' Tale P.III" is © its creator, Mortanius.