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The dark of night cloaked the cobblestones of the walled city Coblent.

The moon shone brightly above, and magelights in glass lamps illuminated the thoroughfares. But that light faded the moment anyone left the main streets for the alleys and side roads. That darkness cloaked a figure dressed in black robes, sliding from one hidden corner to another after making it in before the gates were closed and locked. The specter had paid the appropriate bribe to be let in so close to the gate being shut, so by custom it should have been entirely in its right to walk down the city streets with the same freedom of any other resident.

But caution and nerves kept it off the main roads, slipping from one alleyway to another as it worked its way deeper into the town. Its hood kept the individual concealed, but the veil of darkness was another layer of security it sought. With the errands it was here to run, avoiding all unnecessary interactions was as much a goal as it was a necessity. The fewer words or impressions it left on anyone, the better.

After several more off-the-beaten path streets and alleys, the dark robes stop near the brightly lit window of the shop it sought. One of the only places where a proprietor would still be awake, much less open and accepting of customers. It was a smaller store, with just a single window and door, set into the corner of a larger stone building.

And it was fragrant, even from across the street. Sugar, sweetened milk, wafts of chocolate and toasted nuts permeated the air around the place. The light, still being fed mana to illuminate the interior, was almost completely unneeded to signal the confectionery was still open for business. The smells of the treats the owner made were advertisement enough from a street or more away.

But the figure didn't immediately go in. On previous nights it had gone in and conducted its tasks with little hesitation. Despite the owner's strange appearance, he had never given the figure any pause to feel nervous. Tonight could be a different case though, because the cloaked nightwalker saw the hybrid confectioner wasn't alone, even though the hour was late. Through the glass of the storefront, the huge, scaled and plated, multi-armed hybrid was bending and molding a mass of chocolate into a standing draconic figure on the countertop. And while his vaguely feline face was mostly set in a look of concentration as he carefully shaped the molten chocolate with bare hands, fanning the sweet goo into a vaguely wing-like shape to go on the figure…he looked annoyed. Not the cheerful and enthused look he'd shown when the cloaked walker had come by before.

They had interacted multiple times in the last weeks. And Daniel, the owner of the shop, had never been anything but nice and open. Now it sounded and looked like he wished the human speaking to him would simply go away and leave him be.

So…who was the human that was bothering him so?

When the figure leaned towards the window set in the doorway to get a better view and listen in…it froze.

Clad in a resplendent silken green vest and trousers that covered a fine mesh of shining mail, with a silvered grip of a castle-made longsword belted to his waist, the figure was unmistakably the current Captain of the Watch. Fine and sharp features of his tanned face made it clear he was a noble, and despite his shorter stature to the hybrid shop owner, he exuded an air of confidence and ambivalence that made it look like he genuinely didn't care that the baker was utterly uninterested or uncomfortable with his words. He even exuded an almost palpable aura of mana, that could almost be felt as a physical pressure in the air, right through the wood of the door.

The Captain was exactly the sort of individual a black cloaked nighttime sneak would never, ever want to run into or be seen by while wandering through the city. He would never approve of the figure's mere presence, no matter the explanation. The figure in robes had done its absolute best to limit anything close to the barest minimum interactions with any of the Watch at all the last few weeks, with the goal of avoiding the Captain as a top priority.

It looked like that had failed. But…maybe the noble wouldn't be around for too long. The night could potentially still be salvaged if the Captain was almost finished with his business and leaving soon, and there were plenty of sewer openings and dark corners to slip into if he came out the door quickly. Timelines were tight to get business in the shop wrapped up, finish other errands in the city that night, then leave as planned.

So…what words was he holding the hybrid shopkeep hostage with while they made the chocolate figurine?

The hooded figure leaned closer, pressing the hood of its cloak against the frame of the door to listen in.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"-anything, I tell you Daniel. Anything. The man will make anything. Have you ever wanted to bed a werewolf?"

Daniel did his best to avoid looking away from the feminine dragon figure that was taking shape, delicately lifting the fragile chocolate wing he'd just formed into position on the chocolate dragon's back and pressing it gently into a melted patch for a secure seating. "Not really."

"Well, I tell you my boy, it can be done. And it can be made from whatever you could desire. He tells me that he actually keeps a mass of molten lead in a constantly heated furnace, so the dragonborn can indulge in whatever they want." The noble kept extolling the virtues of the newest brothel in Coblent's red-lantern district. Apparently a place where golems of all sorts could be customized and used by paying clientele for a night.

Daniel himself had already heard of the place, but it was such an extravagant waste of gold and silver for just a night there he'd never even really given much thought of going in himself. But somewhere in the city some old perv of a mage had set up a…den of iniquity, as best you could call it, where he would shape and animate golems however his patrons wanted.

"I mean it, my boy. Genuinely and seriously, if you want a plush dragon golem who will do anything you demand? He'll make that happen. It's like this shop's menu," he plucked a truffle from a display on the counter into his mouth and kept talking while chewing the candy, "But quite literally anything you've fancied slipping your member in or having any sort slipped into you. You just tell him what you want and how big or small you want it, and he'll make it happen that night. I spent last night with an absolutely exquisite, absolutely spot on replica of a Mind Flayer that was as fully equipped and as sensual as you could possibly imagine. I tell you it was as magical an experience as any mage this city has ever produced could produce without calling on a higher power. The only shame is the cost. The man charges absurd rates. Criminal rates."

"You don't say…" Daniel replied dryly, not looking up from the figurine taking shape while mentally adding the truffle to the Captain's bill, and pressing a molded breast of marbled chocolate with a tiny bit of crystalized blueberry as a nipple onto the figure's chest. At least now he could guess why the Captain wanted the figurine so fully endowed. But he was also mentally hoping the cost issue would derail the noble into going into less detail about where and how he'd gotten to use his junk or had a golem rail him.

It didn't. The Captain was on a roll and Daniel got the impression the man enjoyed having him at his mercy. "It's genuinely worth the price, my boy. Genuinely. A shame a shop owner like you couldn't afford it. With your mixed lineage I imagine it'd be a tremendously fulfilling experience."

And that ticked the box marked speciesism for the human. "Uh huh."

"And it keeps out riff-raff like the gutter retches, or drunken adventurers."

It made sense to checkmark the box for a superiority complex as well, just to be thorough. "Indeed, sir."

"Or the kobolds that the gate guard keeps letting in the city. Disgusting little creatures have been underfoot everywhere this last month and they are annoying menaces."

Daniel picked that moment to look up from the Captain's custom figurine after setting the breast into position and interjected to hopefully steer the conversation to its end with an opposing opinion, or steer it away from further mental images of the noble fucking a wooden or glass golem and the details of how that works. Because at this point he'd heard of dragons who were less stereotypical than the man who had him stuck behind a counter while he tried to demean effectively most of Daniel's client base. "They've been padding my coin purse just fine, actually. They've been in and out the last few days and very nearly cleaned some of my shelves. So I'm not exactly displeased with them showing up. It was getting into the dull season anyway, and if they keep showing up at this rate I might actually be able to pause orders, close the shop up when orders trickle down after the holidays, and take a vacation. I don't know your business, m'lord. But mine tightens up after all the festivals are done, and I haven't been free to-"

He had been about to comment about wasting money on sticking his cock in variously crafted holes, but checked himself. The noble was an ass, but he was a paying ass.

"-take a load off and relax without having to worry about the shop. None of the local adventurers have found signs of a dragon in the area so wherever these kobolds are coming from it's likely just a clan of the cute little things migrating through the woods. They're harmless and actually rather adorable."

"You were selling to them? What did the lizards pay you with? Furs? Seeds? Moss or junk they snatched from the gutters and the side of the road? Stolen goods? And…did you just call the wretches "cute"?"

The Captain's abrupt change of tone from condescension to suspicion was as sharp as some of the knives Daniel worked with, but…at least he wasn't going on about eating out a Mind Flayer's crotch anymore. It was just irritating that the man was now giving an uglier gaze than he had before, and was now also casting a few disparaging glances around the shop, like he thought it was tainted by the presence of kobolds in it all of a sudden.

"Bullion, m'lord." Daniel took a break from molding more details into the Captain's dragon and looked up with a bit of a grin at the man's disbelieving face. "I don't trade custom sweets for moss. A few pieces of gold bullion and a few very nicely cut gems. Honestly a much better payment than the coppers and silver even my more expensive custom orders fetch me."

The Captain looked both floored, and also now even more condescending than he had moments ago. He had an air of someone who felt he needed to educate the poor baker about the ways of the world, while actually being floored at Daniel's audacity to do business with kobolds, of all creatures.

"Bullion, you say. And actual jewelry. My boy, of course they stole it. Stealing is what they do. Are you telling me that you were accepting stolen goods from kobolds in exchange for…" he waved his hand at the displays of chocolate coated nuts, truffles, and other fixings all around the shop.

"Jewels, sir. Not jewelry. Finely cut, yes, but I did my diligence and had them looked at. No tooling marks from being put in a setting were on any of them. So it really, really looks like they might have gotten them from some ruin or dungeon. Since they just showed up, it makes sense they haven't spent anything they've found before getting here."

The noble sighed, looking over the hybrid with an expression of both pity and condescension mixed together. "That does not mean they are not stolen, my young friend. I don't know if it's because they're lizards and you seem to share some of that heritage, or just naivete. But all that means is that they were not set in and pried free from fittings. When kobolds steal they do the basics of stealing properly, if I had to compliment them on anything. There's usually some elder or mage in their group that will teach them to-"

"To smelt the metal, set the gems in their own fittings, check them for tracer magics, I know, m'lord. I've dealt with warrens of them before I settled down in the city."

That gave the noble pause, besides just having been rudely interrupted in his lecture by the candy chef. "What in the world would you have been dealing with kobolds for?"

What followed was short, quick to miss for the uninitiated, and would likely have been missed and never noticed by anyone who wasn't actively trying to perceive it, but both figures in the shop and the figure outside happened to possess eyes and skills to either do the act, or see it happen in the air.

The noble squinted, and *looked* at Daniel. He didn't simply take in the hybrid's figure and anatomy with the eye of a city resident, or the eye of a guard looking to see how much trouble they thought the citizen might cause in a drunken brawl. Everyone involved could feel the noble's eyes look much deeper into the hybridized body, into the anatomy and guts, into the elements and their interactions within him…and see the mana he had cultivated. Besides that, see the aura of a mind augmented with psionic energy that flowed through his nerves, into the air around him, and very nearly permeated the shop in its glow.

The noble flinched back, and didn't quite sneer, but looked somewhat aware that the baker had likely spotted the expression no matter how quickly it was suppressed. "An adventurer, of course. An…odd looking one, but of course."

It would have been cliche to do something as petty as straighten his robe, and the Captain of the City Watch would not look petty. But the fact he did not know there was a….hybrid baker adventurer in the city walls was clearly an affront. To his official status, at the least, since that was the sort of known factor in any city events he should have been able to consider. And there wasn't much point in being haughty about it, because Daniel very clearly recognized the sudden revelation had gotten under the noble Captain's skin.

"In the flesh." He very proudly held up all four arms and waggled his tail behind the counter. "Little ol' me. And yes, the Watch know. It's one reason I don't ask them to keep eyes out for thieves at night. Surprised you didn't know. I settled down here a couple years ago. My party broke up after we fell out of the…adventure, you could say."

A bard would have scoffed at the attempt to gloss over saying "We weren't very good at the job and bad stuff happened, so we quit." But Daniel could skip over that detail, since it genuinely wasn't the Captain's business.

"And unless I really think someone is stealing from me, or I see a fight breaking out, I don't go prying into the bodies and minds of people around me, m'lord." Giving the noble a courtesy reminder that would likely have irritated him would probably do a much better job at skipping over that failing anyway. "It's rude and pretty invasive. If everyone in the city who had the eyes and mind to dig into other people it'd just lead to everyone staying locked up at home. If I think someone is pulling some…how to phrase it…some bullshit in my floor, fine, I'll do what I need to do to boot them into the street and call the Watch. But I try not to be an ass by looking into people more than they can look into me. And the kobolds that have been coming by haven't given me any reason to think they're up to no good. They come in, they pack away a lot of goods, they pay me, and they leave. I haven't found so much as a cookie or single truffle unaccounted for."

"It's not the job of a shopkeep to monitor people," was the terse reply. The Captain took Daniel in a bit more, though there wasn't the tell of mana that it was anything more but him giving Daniel a more thorough up and down, instead of the blind and unworried gaze of an office-holder looking over a stranger town inhabitant. "It is mine, and the Guard's. And finding out…"

At the door, the figure continued to listen in, and process what it heard as the two went back and forth. It hadn't known that about the baker. Daniel was a weird looking one for a city-dweller, sure. But he had almost presented an aura of a strange but understandable dragonborn. Or a dragon-hybrid that made sweets. He rolled dough. He folded hot sugar on his countertop with his hands. Bakers' guilds might teach something like how to not get burned while doing that, but it wasn't something that had ever occurred to the figure to ask about. If anything, it had made a good show to see the big hybrid twisting and folding colored sugar across his fingers like it was little more than hardened sap. And with four arms he could put on an impressively dexterous show, bending and twisting multiple strands of the goods through the air as passerby watched. Or pressing and molding molten chocolate into truffles and edible figurines like it was little more than mining clay.

But looking again; not doing the tell-tale scan that involved expending mana, just looking, the figure took Daniel in more closely themselves. Under the chef's coat, behind the apron, and under the trousers cut for his tail, the hybrid's body was all muscle. The dark scales and plate weren't the scales and armor of a commoner taught to run a shop. They weren't the grown armor of any of the full-blooded dragons or other scaled races. They were more reminiscent of someone who had been taught to sneak into dangerous locations and either not be hurt but able to put a hurting on someone or something in those hidden areas. Something that came from having been changed to do it. Even his feet….they were big, yes. But that meant they didn't make a lot of noise when he moved around behind his countertop. They were padded to be supportive of his weight, but quiet. Which meant he probably would have been able to sneak into a cave just fine.

They just so happened to also be useful in a kitchen full of floor that got washed and could be slippery, hot surfaces, and heavy copper kettles full of melted sugar.

The figure stayed by the door a moment longer. Contemplating this little revelation in its own way, as the discussion inside continued.

"I'll be blunt, m'lord. I don't care. They're polite, they're efficient, they're cute, and they buy a lot. If they're giving their whole clan a case of sugar crashes or if they're just indulging after having taken up residence nearby, let them. If the Constable catches them and it turns out I've got stolen goods I already paid the bank for theft insurance. I'll actually be depositing the goods at the bank later this week and the staff there can do a full check of it for anything I might have missed. We already had kobolds in the city for as long as I've been here-"

"The dock lizards, yes. The boat crews report them stealing almost daily."

Daniel kept on like the Captain hadn't interjected. "-and they've always been decent little lizards. And the dock kobolds never really came to my shop. So if this new clan has different tastes, and it's paying off this well, great. I'm not gonna deny them some sweets if they're paying. I did my job to make sure on my end I'm not trafficking stolen goods or the like through the city."

A glance up at the moon let the figure know that the night was wearing on, and it seemed like the noble was now thoroughly and genuinely no longer going to go into further details about the golems with breasts and cocks. His focus was firmly on the shop owner…which was concerning, because he did not look pleased with being spoken back to by a former adventurer. So it was best to get this run of shopping done, wait for the noble to leave, finish their business elsewhere in the city, and leave themselves before the gate guards either closed the gate or charged a steeper bribe to pass at an ungodly hour. Maybe, if it was quiet, it could slip in unnoticed, wait in a dark corner for the Captain to leave, and never be seen or heard.

The figure had apparently been distracted enough by the revelation about the not-dragonborn baker that it forgot there was a bell over the door which chimed the moment the door swung in. Which froze the dark robes in their tracks.

The Captain paused, looked over at the noise, and froze himself, not quite sure what to make of robe lurching in out of the night. But before it could get awkward, Daniel smiled and waved with a lower hand that wasn't covered in chocolate. "Hello, Squats."

There was a cheerful "Hello!" from the figure's chest, that came out as an absolutely adorable squeak of reptile surprise.

The Captain sputtered a few flecks of white chocolate from the truffle he'd been eating in front of Daniel in shock, and the hood of the figure looked down, snapping "Dummy, he'll know!"

The utter failure of stealth and awareness was capped off by the knees shouting an indignant and equally high pitched, "You both dummies! Now he really know!"

That was followed by a pause that was painfully tense for the owners of the voices in the dark leathers, cute as all hell to Daniel, and looked to be pretty baffling to the human in the room. And then the head of the figure seemed to process a little bit faster than the others that they were found out, turning from Daniel to the Captain, back to Daniel, and then very nervously back in the Captain's direction. "Oh…shit."

"So that's Squats in the middle this time, and that leaves Steel on the bottom again. You guys wanted to work on Squirt's steering, I take it?"

"How…how you know?" this time the voice came from chest again, and Daniel took pity on the little creature under the fabric and let the lizard down gently but honestly.

"You guys have come in several times a week for several weeks in a row."

"…Oh."

"You wore the same cloak each time. You just swapped positions."

"Oh. We thought that made it hard to know."

"Oh it totally fooled me, I promise. But last night Steel was on top and you fell over and nearly took out a display case."

"That was last night?"

"Yups. Also the gate guards think you're cute."

Despite trying to let the trio down gently, Daniel could all too easily see the rustle of earfins under the hood pressing down on a lizard skull in dejection, and the figure as a whole was leaning back towards the door, away from the gaze of the human in the room.

"Unbelievable," the Captain was open-mouthed and stunned. "They just…walk in, just like that. I had no idea they would even have the gumption."

"Is it reaaaallllly?" Daniel crooned a little from behind the countertop. And before the Captain could reply, he pressed on, while motioning the figure in, which it/they hesitantly did so, the kobold at the head, Squat, brushing back its hood and hopping to the floor. "M'lord, is it really surprising that they sneak in like they'll be booted out if they sneeze funny? Leave them be, m'lord. They're harmless. They're not even the sneaks they really pretend to be. The gate guards already know about them. The fisheries know about them. Everyone knows about them. Just leave them alone."

"Are you attempting to tell a Captain of the Watch how to do their job, cook?"

The Captain might have been taken aback by the last moments of surprise, but Daniel caught steel starting to creep into his eyes as the man wound himself up to either tear into the common ex-adventurer in his keep or boot the little lizards struggling to get out of their cloak back into the street.

"I'm telling the Captain of the Watch that they're my customers, and they haven't caused me any trouble, so the Captain of the Watch can go watch elsewhere. It sounded like you enjoyed watching things around the red lantern district. So why not go watch there. Because if I'm not asking for Constable assistance I don't have to tolerate a Constable in my shop."

There, customer bridge burned. And good riddance to it. If the Captain was this much of a prick then he would likely just try to fuck him over by arguing about commission rates for his porny edible dragon figures.

The bridge smoldered for a bit longer though, as the trio of kobolds looked back and forth between the human and the former adventurer standing up to and over him, even though Daniel hadn't even stood up straighter behind the counter to stare the human down. He just had enough height and presence that he could casually lean down and bring himself to the human's eye level. He didn't say anything, and certainly didn't threaten. But he let the plates covering his skull and arms catch the light a little, and expanded his own cultivated aura just a touch in the Captain's direction. Just enough to imply "You're not intimidating me" without saying it out loud.

"It will be about another day before your dragon figurine is finished, m'lord. I still have to get the final pieces made and add in the fine details. But if you're going to cause an issue with my other customers, I will ask, politely, for you to leave. Let me settle my business with them, and I'll send you your order and an invoice-."

"Spare me," was the Captain's biting interruption. The bitterness was damned near cutting. Daniel's smile of amusement faded, and the trio of kobolds untangling themselves from their trenchcoat all flinched away from the Captain at his words. "Cancel my order. I have no interest in supporting a shop that would do business with," he waved at the kobolds huddling away from him, "that. Melt it down." With a flourish of his robe, the man turned, strode to the door, and stopped as the kobolds shrunk down to less than the height of his knees. "Move," he ordered, venom dripping from his eyes and words.

They did, scattering to the side with a trio of flinches, averting their eyes, and letting the human step out into the night. Once he was gone and the kobolds had moved further in, casting nervous looks back at the window as the Captain moved off into the night, Daniel got a look at them gradually relaxing. Just…not as much as they usually did. Before, even while still in their cloak and awkwardly trying to get stuff off shelves, they seemed to breathe a little easier once off the street. Now, even though though they weren't bothering with the cloak, they looked a little jittery. A little sad even, like it really hurt that their secret plan hadn't worked, and he caught all three giving him little glances as they packed the disguise up.

All three were mostly nude, aside from a few straps that hooked up to the trenchcoat they'd been under, and their travel bags. But they looked and smelled a lot cleaner and less grimy than the dock kobolds. A human likely wouldn't have noticed it, but Daniel's senses picked up on their woodsy air, even amid the shop's aromas. They were clearly healthy little buggers, going by the shine of their scales and energy. Steel was more of a brown-scaled critter with shiny grey horns, and busily packing up the trenchcoat into a bag of holding while trying not to trip over it. Squats was another brown-scaled kobold a little shorter than Steel, but lacked any horns at all, also carrying a bag of holding himself and an extra sack of goods on his back. Squirt seemed to be the leader this time around, and that was a fittingly silly choice for the three of them, because he was an albino. The hood had actually barely hidden is milky-white scales in shadow at all. But his eyes, bright pink like many other albinos in the world, glowed with a good bit more intelligence than the average kobold. He never really gave much impression of being too clever and Daniel wasn't even sure if the critter could even read. But he did at least *usually* know how to avoid trouble while sneaking through the streets. He just seemed to have the same complete lack of impulse control that most other kobolds did, and like their recent display of un-stealth cemented.

Still, they tried. And it was adorable. And it didn't hurt anything.

"Here for more sugar and…I can't even remember what else you three have been buying, because it's been so much. I've got a bunch of bricks of marbled chocolate for you ready to go though. A bunch of butter and dried milk too." Daniel nodded his head in the direction of a crate tucked against some shelving that was almost bare of goodies. It was the same shelving he'd pointed out to the Captain as having been almost bought clean by the city's new guests in the last few days. But since the trio had been showing up so much he made things a little easier for them and just put a stack of their repeat purchases at floor level.

All three of the lizards lit up, and dashed towards the crate, the two brown ones scrabbling to lift the top off with their claws and start grabbing the goods inside.

Squirt started to join in, but first stopped, dashed over to the counter, and pulled a pouch from his own bag of holding. With a bit of a stretch, he set it with an audible metallic 'clink', flashed Daniel a bit of a more enthused reptilian grin, and then ran over to his warren-mates.

Before anything else, Daniel looked over his shoulder and flicked the tip of his tail up, knocking a small release to the side of the storefront window, which dropped the blinds. He doubted the Captain of the Watch would genuinely be petty or creepy enough to be hiding in the shadows across the street, hoping to catch a look at what the kobolds paid with. But just to avoid a bit of potential trouble, he might as well block out the street view.

A wise move.

When he shook the contents of the bag out, what hit the counter had enough weight that it might have chipped the marble. No less than four small gold bars sat glimmering on the chocolate-streaked stone. Four little gold bars, a few scraps of paper with a scrawl of language he couldn't guess at, and a diamond as big as Daniel's scaled palm, which made him choke just a little bit.

No uncut sapphire, no polished chunk of quartz, and definitely not a shiny river stone. Squirt had just paid for the night's haul of sweets and ingredients with the equivalent of several thousand gold pieces, counting the bars and the glimmering diamond that had enough facets and work put into it that even in the pale magelight of the shop it sparkled with little motes of starlight. And like before, when he squinted in on the gem as close and carefully as his sharp eyes could…no tooling marks.

Yes, it was hard to scratch a diamond. But for some settings that used things like mythril or other exotic metals, it happened when fittings were pressed into shape. But this looked to be a legitimately cut or shaped gemstone worth likely more than his entire shop and every exotic ingredient in it, that had been crafted specifically to simply catch the eye all on its own. It was a show-piece, that you put up on display purely to say "I got this, and I can show it off." And the scraps of paper didn't have any numbers on them that looked like authenticity certifications or the like. They were just scribbles of runes he didn't recognize.

Daniel simply couldn't stop looking up and down from the collection of absurd wealth on the counter to the trio of naked little lizards that were now whispering and squabbling back and forth, all done packing away their goods. Squirt was arguing with them about something in Draconic, and frantically gesturing to the shelves, with a few pointing motions back his way. And the other two squabbled back, vaguely sounding like they didn't agree with whatever he'd said, also pointing at him, and also waving at the door. They'd come in impressively unified, and had been doing their whole trenchcoat routine a hell of a lot better than their previous attempts. But now they were arguing back and forth, and Squirt was verbally beating the other two into submission, getting more and more animated as he snapped and spit at them.

Where the fuck were these critters from? What the hell had they been doing to get their claws on….on this? And why the hell were they being so free as to give it to *him*, for candy. Or for the ingredients for candy and pastries? A lot of it, sure. A lot of sugar. A lot of chocolate. A lot of flour and powdered milk.

Maybe…it would be good to at least ask.

Not turn it down, of course. But as his lower arms plucked his strongbox from under the counter, keyed in a combination on its dials, and flipped the lid open to tuck the haul away, he resolved that maybe it'd be good just to see what their response was when asked. Smaller orders were one thing. Repeat orders from a group that had shown up out of nowhere were a little….iffy, even if it was for candy and candy goods. But…this was a step up and in a potentially suspicious direction. And if it sounded like a suspicious answer he could push a bit more or get a bit more invasive with some mental probing.

As the gold and gem clinked down into the strongbox with the rest of the trinkets and metals the kobolds had paid him in, Daniel looked back up and saw all three had lined up infront of the counter, Squirt right in the middle.

The Kobold Stare they all were giving him made Daniel allllmost flinch for a moment, but he flipped the customer service switch in his head and tried to address the little critters reasonably.

"Guys, this is a lot of money for cand-"

"It cause you nice," Squirt didn't let him finish the sentence, and fidgeted with his claws a little as the other two also squirmed a bit. "Other shops tell us no. We trying to make something nice. But everyone say no. Some shop people hit us with boots. But you nice and you help us, so we pay you."

Daniel stared. It….didn't sound forced. If anything, all three of the little critters were actually squirming in embarrassment. And it really was genuinely touching. It kinda warmed the heart.

But…still…it was a ridiculous sum for them to just hand over. It was the kind of payment you got from someone who had no idea what they were actually turning over. And he still had no idea what the paper slips were. "I appreciate that, fellows. But something like that diamond-"

"And we want help more!" Squirt was looking a little more animated when he cut in again. He stood up a little higher and spoke a little faster, eyes lighting up. "We hear through door what you say. And what you say when we in here. We not want you in trouble. It not fair for you. And…we not plan this for you, we promise. Really. Really really! Planned other things tonight. But heard everything, and it give us idea. We think it great idea!" He had turned, and was scrabbling with an arm in Steel's bag of holding, before pulling out an oil-cloth wrapped bundle. "You not get in trouble, we be happy, you be happy, no one get in trouble, and whole hoard be happy."

Squirt sliced the wrap open with a clawtip as Daniel's brain processed the tiny detail in Squirt's otherwise sweet speech: hoard

Not den. Not pack. Not warren. Hoard.

That meant they belonged to a dragon.

Oh…shit…they actually were a dragon's kobolds.

A bit of panic was rising in his chest, quashing the warm feels from Squirt's prior words.

That meant he might have been getting paid in goods from a dragon's hoard. He'd been getting paid with a dragon's stolen treasure.

The bit of panic was rising a bit higher in his throat, and had his mouth hanging open as the thoughts continued to run wild, and he looked at the gleaming trinkets in the strongbox.

That meant he was holding onto gems and precious metals a dragon would likely kill the shit out of him and others to get back. Like…not just "kill". A dragon that would stomp him so hard, slamming a paw through the roof of the building straight onto his skull. It would smash him as flat as a sheet of taffy, hard enough that he would explosively shit himself as he died…just to get the gem alone back. It meant he was quite literally holding something that spelled the doom of the building his shop was in, the block, and likely everyone in the city's walls.

That meant he really, really needed to summon the City Wa-

A jet of green mist puffed from the bundle in Squirt's claws and caught him straight in the nostrils and open mouth. As his consciousness rapidly turned black as the mist did its work, Daniel felt himself falling to Squirt's smiling eye-level. It was a shockingly powerful concoction (and pleasantly minty) that severed his mind's control from his body. It hit even more effectively than a brick to the skull. As consciousness was rapidly swamped with blackness, Daniel had the brief moment to think that even with adventuring experience, a knock-out agent like that should have been well, well, well outside the experience of a little den of lizards. But by then his crumpling frame with all of his hundreds of pounds of weight was falling to the floor with a last conscious thought of "Fucking… kobolds."

And if things had happened earlier, or with the Captain still in earshot of the store, someone absolutely would have heard the plated hybrid crashing bonelessly to the wooden floor.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Time and sensations were loose things while consciousness was a bare suggestion.

Daniel had the vaguest impressions of being shoved and shifted, and the tingle of magic playing over him. But there wasn't any genuine connectivity between what could have been terse words in the darkness, dreams of being surrounded by others, and vague impressions not being where he expected to be. In the dreamy state he could only slightly hear a lot of…arguing. Arguing that would start up, stop, start up again, and then nothingness would sweep him away before anything else caught his fractured attention. It took a while, at least from his drugged perspective, for the sensations of drifting in darkness and being touched by hands he couldn't see to settle into a general sense of pervasive and soothing warmth. As Daniel gradually returned to groggy awareness, he felt himself…floating. Sort of. He felt himself surrounded by warmth that cradled his body, from head to arms to tail. Bit by bit, as his mind tried to reassemble itself from the gas attack, he could perceive…a little and a lot.

Sound was so limited it must have been baffled or blocked. The air hitting his nostrils was thick with chocolate.

Chocolates, actually. As his nostrils stirred and he started to gasp, it smelled like he was in a cloistered version of his shop. The aroma of different cocoas was so oppressive it choked out everything else, while his body was mired in….weight and goo.

Yes, goo. He was floating in goo, or mud. It felt like the time he'd stumbled into a Slime and the party members had to pull him out, but without getting the tingly feeling of acid trying to kill him. Which was an alarming enough mental image that a surge of adrenaline finally started to shake off the last of the gas.

But what really woke him up was what felt like a lightning bolt of pure mana that absolutely and positively hammered its way through his body with the intensity of a thunderclap.

Daniel had been hit by a lot of spells while on the adventuring scene, and a lot had sucked. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the surge of power that crashed through his chest, down through his spine, damn near right through his wide open eyes, and out through his spasming toes, arms, and tail. It almost made him black out all over again, but he gaspingly held onto consciousness and lurched up in…in whatever was containing him, and splashed a wave of melted chocolate everywhere as he coughed and gagged. His body was practically vibrating from a mix of shock and energy still leaching through him and his heart felt like it was going to beat clear out of his chest.

Trying to quell his body's shakes, he took what stock of he could.

He was sitting in a pool of melted marbled chocolate in a…glass egg, stripped of his cook's clothes. Or some sort of clear egg, more than large enough to hold him in its thin and completely transparent shell. He was damn near covered in the stuff and it was dribbling off his scales and couldn't believe he hadn't drowned in it. The egg was off the floor of…a hoard. Or a huge stone cavern in part of a hoard. But the little bastards from his shop had clearly gotten him out of the city and off to…somewhere. All around him were kobolds running back and forth in a hustle and bustle of activity lit by flickering torchlight and candles, loud enough to cut through the clear barrier between him and them, fussing with….melting more chocolate. A couple off to the side of his egg were stirring a comically large vat of something clear and viscous. And…

"What the fuck Squirt! What the hells did you do!?" There was Squirt, excitedly hopping up and down, looking like he was having the time of his life, next to a much older looking and blue scaled kobold, who's head snapped over to Daniel as his shout echoed inside the little prison holding him.

A kobold dressed in mage robes. Holding a mage's staff that was still flickering with mana flares, and constantly glancing from him in the egg to the energetic kobold dancing from foot to foot next to him.

Daniel took aim at him first. He'd break out shortly, but the little lizard mage was dying before anything else could happen. He narrowed his eyes, focused on exactly where in the little bastard's chest the heart lay, and focused on a psionic hand grabbing the organ in its invisible grip, and crushing it into gore.

And nothing happened.

He tried again, this time aiming at the kobold mage's skull.

Nothing happened, aside from the aged kobold seeming to take more notice of him. When he did, the little creature raised his staff, and lightly tapped the ground with it.

There was a flash in the air over Daniel's head, and when he looked up, he got a face and mouthful of…something liquid and musky tasting as it dropped on him. Strong enough in flavor that it momentarily overpowered the pungent chocolate permeating the air in the shell. It made Daniel immediately look down, gag, and spit what he could out as a new sort of warmth began spreading from his mouth, and out down into the rest of his body.

Pushing Squirt's pale head away, the kobold began warily striding towards the trapped hybrid. As he stepped up to Daniel's….container? Egg? Shell? He didn't know what the thing he was in truly was, but it was clear enough he could see the lizard looked….scared? Regretful? A mix of regretful and absolutely terrified was more accurate. He shooed Squirt away and was close enough that Daniel could hear him say "Go fill in the lines on the floor. Hurry up. Now now now, hurry up. We're running out of time."

Squirt did, dashing off to the side as Daniel looked back and forth, grabbed a stick from a pile near the kobolds stirring the cauldron, and started scrawling runes into the floor around the egg Daniel was sitting in. Daniel was half tempted to try mentally reaching out and twisting Squirt's head off, but the last two attempts had made it clear something about his powers and skills was off. And he was distracted by the warm sensation ballooning through his chest, down his guts, and pooling in his groin, still submerged in the chocolate pool.

And then the kobold in charge of…whatever this was, had run over to the egg and leaned in close to the shell, motioning for Daniel to lean down towards him. The little critter was short enough and the egg high enough off the floor that the kobold's eyes were barely over the level of the chocolate Daniel was sitting in, but he waved Daniel down again even more aggressively, looking even more jumpy than a moment ago. Against his better judgement Daniel leaned towards him, but kept up whatever muscle and reaction guard he could while he was still tingly and a little rattled by whatever magical bolt had just run through him.

The lizard leaned in himself, actually pressing the tip of his snout against the clear surface. "Don't say shit and listen to the shit I say, Daniel."

That was so not kobold-ish it made Daniel jerk back in the pool of chocolate goo and mentally reel.

"Listen, just listen. And, hold on," the little 'bold mage looked around, checking to see the hub of kobold activity bustling around was not actually looking in his direction and focused on what they were doing. Then…he waved his clawed hand over his muzzle.

It changed. The blue scales bled into pale red, a red much younger and smoother looking than the cracked and faded blue, and the features rearranged to a younger lizard's face. A face which Daniel recognized, because he'd been in Daniel's party years ago.

"Clutch!?? What…what the fuck is going on?! What are you doing to-"

"Shut up!" Clutch actually hissed, and hissed it harshly enough that Daniel actually did. "Listen! Really, just listen! None of this is going the way it was supposed to. You're not supposed to be here. This isn't supposed to be happening. Things are really fucked up and we are all going to die in the next minute or so if you don't shut the fuck up and listen. Alright, just listen!"

Even without his psionics working the way they were supposed to, Daniel could feel the absolute terror and desperation his former party member was hissing to him with instead of outright screaming it. That…said a lot more than the lizard's words did. Because Clutch had always been a pretty stalwart sort of kobold in the party who didn't fly off the handle or act on impulse, like a lot of the rest of his kin. So even with his heart still racing from fear, anger, and whatever had shocked the ever living hell out of him, Daniel stopped. He took a moment to breathe, fill his lungs with the scent of chocolate since there was nothing else to take in, and nod. He nodded with narrowed eyes that bored into Clutch's like swords, but he nodded.

Clutch wasted no words. He plowed ahead everything was just pouring from his muzzle and he couldn't stop them or really string the statements together well.

"I can't waste any time. You, me, the kobolds, we might be fucked. But there's a dragon in Coblent. He's a Green. He's a bastard. His name is Talekash. He's been there for weeks and already killed some of the top officials. He's aiming to take the town over and gods alone know how bad it'll be if he pulls it off. And YOU," Clutch jabbed a clawed finger at Daniel's face. "Pissed him right the fuck off."

There was a long, long, long pause (really only a second or two in real time, because Clutch was still looking back and forth as the kobolds around him rushed to set up whatever he'd told them to set up), but it felt a lot longer for Daniel's brain. For his brain, his body sitting in the warm cocoa, and a hard clenching in his gut. Clutch was not lying. The little lizard didn't sweat, but he was clearly saying as much as he could while trying to hold back a heart attack. So he wasn't lying.

It made him sit back in the goo, and *not* try to cut in. He took another deep breath with wide eyes just staring at Clutch's nervous form, and just tried to center himself a bit. But unless a kobold mage in a hoard was pulling some multi-layered mental fuckery, this was Clutch. And Clutch looked like he was on the verge of throwing up himself. So he was serious, and what he was saying was likely true. "Okay….okay okay…" he had to fight down the urge to hyperventilate a bit, but the heavy chocolate air in the egg shell and his echoing voice just reemphasized how trapped he was, which just mad his heart race all the harder.

And strangely, his groin was getting tighter. He was having to strain a bit to keep his slit closed, and even in the short time Clutch had been ranting it was already feeling like he was going to lose the battle to keep his cock from waving around in front of the kobold assembly all around him. Which was just one more maddening humiliation he was grappling with.

"Clutch, just tell me what's going on. Why are you here? What are you and the kobolds doing to me? And what the hell did I do to piss off a Green?"

Clutch's relief at Daniel's acceptance of his story looked almost palpable, even through the shell. He actually sagged against his staff, briefly, before pulling himself up.

"Alright, thank gods you're listening. And trust me, I'm making this as fast as I can while the warren does their thing. And I'm hoping they get done in time. Look, the party broke up a while back but we kinda hung around Coblent's area. There were some decent quests. So we stayed, and…we noticed the woods were getting…weird. All of the usual Green dragon weird. And we found the lair. That's where we are right now. But the dragon was already in the town. He'd snuck in and took the place of the Captain of the Watch."

About the only thing that kept Daniel from shitting himself right there and then was the absurd thought it'd ruin all the chocolate he was sitting in. But it did loosen his guts up enough that his cock popped free, and dripping with warm chocolate goo, the tip started protruding out of the pool.

And he was really not focused on it, because now some of the pieces were falling into place on just why the situation was so dire.

"*I* snuck in and took out his mage. Burned the body and took his place. The rest of the group are trying to go to another town a couple leagues away to get the Mage Guild there or see if they can find a Silver to get involved. *You* aren't supposed to be here. I was trying to set up a way to keep Talekash out of the city and busy so he couldn't kill anyone else, and I was working with the brothel owner to stall him. Keep him distracted and entertained, so he'd be busy and not murdering and eating the mayor, or Charming the Watch leadership." Clutch had to pause and catch his breath, because he'd been talking fast, hard, and looked like it was a strain just to keep up with the pace of his thoughts. At the same time, Daniel felt his own throat tightening up, because it was really, really clear Clutch was not bullshitting in the least and was only scratching the surface of what he really wanted to say. Whatever he wasn't able to say in whatever time he was working with was some pretty terrifying stuff.

"The brothel mage you're thinking of? He knows what's going on too and it was supposed to be *him* in that sugar egg." Daniel looked up at the clear barrier at that. Now that he was a small step below his own heart-attack level of fear, he could see the little streaks and striations in the material that wasn't splashed with chocolate, which looked like pulled and molded sugar.

"We didn't know who in the city had been turned and who hadn't, but him we were pretty sure of. So he was trying to slow Talekash down, without getting found out himself. A couple nights ago Squirt and the others were going to get more stuff from your shop, and then he would pretend to get kidnapped by them. That's why they were coming by so much. I got them to think that kidnapping him would make Talekash happy. He was going along with it. He was going to be a...distraction, for Talekash. It was supposed to be ironic enough that a dragon like him would think it was hilarious that his kobolds pulled the stunt off. Something to keep him out of the city while we got some forces ready to take him out. If the crew can get a Silver to back them up we'll be able to kill this fucker easy. But…Squirt and the others went …off script, when they heard you standing up for them to Talekash. They were scared he was going to murder you for talking back to him."

Daniel felt another urge to throw up, and Clutch held a clawed hand to his muzzle, resting a bit of weight on the stolen staff he held.

"So, now we're here. You're here. And I'm just trying to piece this all together. Dan, sorry, but I gotta rush this and rush you into taking the mage's place in this. Because we're in Talekash's lair. This is his hoard. I'm actually channeling some of his magic to make it look like I'm his mage. Which means he is absolutely-fucking-going to have felt me cast that spell on you. He is on his way, right now, no doubt about it. And I don't have any more teleport scrolls. The kobolds burned up the ones I gave them when they knocked you out and brought you here instead of the brothel mage. So if I don't finish this right the hell now, we're all dead. The city's dead. Dead dead dead all over because he'll throw a dragon tantrum. Dead because Talekash is going to be a petty piece of shit and murder everyone because he got fucked with. And all of that because Squirt, Steel, and Squat took a liking to *you*. Do ya get it? It's fucked up but do ya get it?!"

Clutch looked like he was working himself up again, all the while trying to not look like he was working himself into a state of terror in-front of the kobolds either mixing up and boiling whatever they were mixing, or scrawling arcane runes on the floor centered around the egg Daniel was sitting in. And as convoluted as what Clutch had said was…it wasn't outright crazy. Not for the adventurer's world, at least. It was just….full of holes that were so gaping it seemed like there wasn't time to fill them before the impending catastrophe of a pissed off dragon showing up. And with control over anything at all having already been yoinked from under his toes, Daniel couldn't really settle on what questions to even ask his lizard friend before anything else happened.

He felt like he was suddenly drifting on a current of the genuinely unknown, and the only person who could give him the information to steer the right way was Clutch…who looked like he was about to pee himself in his stolen robes.

"Clutch," Daniel spoke, just as his former friend was clenching his jaw and restoring his blue scaled illusion. "What spell are you working on me to make any of this even make sense? How is any of this lining up with how a golem mage would…what…distract a dragon? And why did you splash me with…" he pointed down at the pool, where his candy-coated cock was now at a full on raging boner. It would have been incredibly distracting, feeling its sensitive and slick skin immersed in warm cocoa, but the situation was developing so fast his hard-on wasn't insistent enough to draw his focus. It was just kinda there and embarrassing as hell.

Clutch paused from turning away, and didn't quite meet Daniel's eyes as he pressed the side of his muzzle against the sugar shell to speak. "I…uhh…was following the mage's instructions. All of this stuff is what he taught me to do to make him into a…I guess you'd say a "toy" to hold Talekash's attention. He's got a sense of what the dragon likes. Something he'd like to mess with. And I…kinda had to tear your soul out, so you don't die when the dragon eats you. Sorry."

"FUCKING WHAT!?" Daniel lunged and was stopped by the sugar shell of the egg he was in. His attempt to punch through, grab Clutch by the throat and strangle him was stopped when he hit the clear surface, slipped, smeared it with brown and white chocolate, and slid down into the base again, head slipping beneath the pool of gooey candy which must have been the same candy the kobolds had been buying over the last few weeks. When he popped back up and splayed his hands on the wall again, shaking his eyes clear of liquid confection, Clutch had retreated to the edge of the runes that the little hoard bastards had been scrawling all around Daniel's prison. "Clutch! Clutch! You're feeding me to a gods damned dragon!? What the hell is wrong wi-"

The re-disguised Clutch tapped his staff, on the ground, and a little sparkle of magic flickered over the table a bunch of kobolds had piled different ingredients from the bakery, and Daniel felt a few tiny "things" drop on his head and either bounce off his skull plate or get stuck in the swirled chocolate coating him. When he reached a shaking hand up, he plucked loose a sticky hazelnut that sat in his palm like a grim portent of whatever was about to happen next. When he saw Clutch repeat the movement, a few lavender petals flashed into his container, drifting down to settle over him. Then bits of puffed rice. Then a few platters of different liquors that dripped off him and into the pool he was sitting in. And Clutch apparently was getting more and more nervous about how long things were taking, because he started tapping quick, soon enough causing a constant patter and splatter of all the different little ingredients the kobolds had been buying, until a now dejected Daniel was studded with a confectionary of things he'd used almost every day to make treats for his customers. But his heart was hammering and he was hyperventilating harder than he had anytime he'd had a problem guest or had a recipe go bad. The candy-coated Daniel was dreading what was to come more and more with each and every thing that fell on him.

Also it was a really terrible decorating job. It was like picking up a double handful of sprinkles and just hurling them at a cake.

And when the rain of ingredients was done, Daniel saw Clutch raise the staff much higher than he had for the tapping, brace himself, muttering and glowing with mana pooling and flowing through his body.

All Daniel could do was brace himself as well, as Clutch brought the staff down as hard as his adventuring-trained kobold muscles could, hammering its base into the glowing runes that surrounded his trapped hybrid friend. And then he held on with his little clawed hands as tightly as he could when the mana ran through the wood, streaked into the runic array, and straight up into Daniel's egg.

The chocolate surged, warming up so much that even his body felt it got hot, and actually lifted Daniel straight into the air, pushing up against his chest and legs hard enough that he rose right off the sugar base of the egg and was held floating in the middle of the thing. And then it started to squeeze. The chocolate covering him and holding his body aloft began squeeze down on every inch of him. It flowed over his chest, slid between his fingers, coated over his eyes even as he shook his head back and forth.

It squeezed and slid right inside his tailhole even as it pressed down and molded into a perfect coating along every scale of his underside, and every plate on the rest of him, and oozed into a coating completely covering his head. Daniel tried to keep his mouth shut, but still yelped, because it even squeezed and slid inside his genital slit, sliding right through his stretched vent and filled in around his member in a slippery caress. Daniel flailed in midair, staring down as his black scales and shining armor were erased under streaks of brown and white that held to him as tightly as a latex suit, and into his lower entrances. It felt like he was legitimately being squeezed and held from the inside-out, and it kept coming as the huge mass of chocolate continued to defy gravity, flow upward and over his body and forming a shell that crept towards his head and face to join with the drippings already there. It pounded its way up his rear and into his guts, one wave after another. It built pressure in him, squashing against his prostate even as the warm and slick flood into his genital slit, swirl around at an incredible speed in the tight confine.

And then the chocolate did more than squeeze and enrobe.

Daniel's breath left his lungs when toes, tail, and arm twitched and struggled, and then started to get subsumed. All of the tension and tightened muscles started to relax, to embrace and welcome the invading goo. The chocolate flowing into his rear seemed to expand and force its way into the meat and muscle that was his body. It slipped past and into the flesh of his interior and the hard but spongy mass of his cock, spreading a wave of warmth and sensation unlike anything he'd ever experienced in his life. It was like having a warm and pleasant bath spread its touch through his tissues, but from the inside instead of out, solidifying and unifying everything it touched. It delved down his shaft in a tickle and a rush, his cock straining out and wobbling as his hips bucked at the massive alteration and stimulation. And another surge of liquid candy rushed into his tailhole he couldn't hold back a gurgling and overwhelmed gasp.

When the chocolate coloration had crept up to his neck with warm liquid fingers, joined the coating on bits of his face and skull, it merged together and continued to flow, forcing Daniel to shut his eyes as the liquid warmth spread completely over his face, blotting out the scales of features behind a brown and white layer. He kept his eyes shut, swamped in darkness, and then keeping them shut didn't matter as the liquid claimed them, and deep in his chest it snared his lungs, spreading out from his throat and directly into the mass of his chest.

He twitched, shook in midair, and briefly could feel another layer of stifling warmth and support wrap around the chocolate enrobement that had once been his scales. It felt like his body was now actually not floating in air, but held in some sort of liquid…

Which moved and touched him. Whatever had surrounded him was stroking, touching his new dermis with phantom gestures and shifts to his arms and legs that felt…

Shockingly good. He found he couldn't moan or yelp, but it felt really, really good all of a sudden for his body to just…feel. A touch squeezed around his waist and over his thighs, pushing on him with the gentleness of a massage that sent warm and soothing tingles through his body as it was shifted and shaped. Fingers played around the edges of his plates, either smoothing them away entirely, or…reshaping them somehow. A hand, or what felt like a hand, tilted his head up and delicately eased his jaws open, playing around in and smoothing out the interior of his mouth. It slipped over his teeth, molding the sharper points down and simplifying his pallete.

And then delved down what had been his throat with little to no resistance. A wave of sweetness, hard to tell how sweet when his tongue itself was made of chocolate, spread down his gullet. At the same time, his legs were spread open, and more of the liquid supporting him pulsed and shuddered into his rear.

It was, he realized, tunneling with pushes, surges, and thrusts straight through him. It was insistently but pleasurably completely reworking his insides. And when his hips had been fully subsumed, he could feel jerk them with each thrust.

Daniel couldn't really believe that Clutch was violating him to this extent, but he also didn't know or appreciate what else was to come. All he could really do was go along for the ride and at least be grateful that the process of candification felt….wonderful, was the only way to put it. Fear was still there, but the changing parts of his body felt so…alive. Alive and loose and sensitive to touch. As a particular potent surge hammered up his candied tailhole and was answered by a squelching pressure further down his throat and neck, it didn't hurt. His body reveled in the penetration. His candy cock was shuddering and jerking as the rest of him shook and jiggled.

And he jiggled and jerked all the more when the fluid pressed and molded on the space just under his member. First delicately as a dimple formed, then more insistently as it parted the chocolate into a slit. And then Daniel outright bucked as the goo shoved its way into a new opening in his body that sucked and trembled around the invading mass.

In the darkness behind his closed eyes, Daniel mentally boggled as he felt his new fem-sex taking shape, squeezing it around whatever had slipped into him, shaking as his first orgasm in his new form quaked through his shaping sex.

And then his chest was swelling from the inside out as well. Fingers danced over his chestplate, molding it out of the way for the two round expanses that grew out, pulling mass from the remaining chocolate still absorbing into him, or chocolate that was swept along his body as bits of him were shaped.

Daniel's newly choclified hands swept in, and cupped what were undeniably breasts budding, swelling, and growing from his masculine chest. Heavy, dense, and capped with nipples that tingled and hardened when his fingertips glanced over them. The things were even more sensitive and tempting than the pleasurable feelings cascading through the rest of his form.

And the process was completed when the hands, or force, danced across his face and resculped his eyes. First there was a squeeze on his head, then pressure on his face, a slip beneath the surface to form lids and then….vision swam back into being.

And it was done.

It culminated with his body shuddering one final time as the fluid pulled from his orifices and left him hollowed out, which was such an intense feeling his cock jerked, spasmed, and orgasmed all on its own, like a fitting conclusion to…to whatever Clutch had done to him. Looking down, past the perky and tempting breasts on his brown and white torso, Daniel took in Clutch's work. And…it looked and felt incredible. Even if he'd been following the tutelage of another under some intense pressure, Clutch made his seeming betrayal look gorgeous…and embarrassing. All of the debris and additional ingredients he'd had dumped on him were just…gone. He himself was floating in surgary but crystal clear syrup. He shined like he was perfectly tempered, or like white and brown swirled latex. His cock was standing hard and curved from his groin and throbbed for attention and touch even more than the rest of his recolored and retextured body. He could feel every shift and ebb in the syrup supporting him, from the exquisite feeling of it tracing over his tail, which had been smoothed of its plating, right down to his toes and fingers. Same for much of his torso, though some of the plates on his thigh had been molded to be curvier, more like hand grips than armor.

And he could now see the egg was on a mirror-polished silver stand of some sort. Looking down, he could see a his own reflection in the curved mirror, showing off the feminine sex below his cock and above his tailhole. And it was even more sensitive than his nipples, feeling and sensing every swirl of the syrup that passed over its lips like phantom caresses.

The urge to touch himself was almost overwhelming. Far outside his normal character and it felt almost like a drugged compulsion. What held him back was the mass of kobold eyes looking his nude and candied form over in absolute rapt attention and awe, and the simple fact that he was still trying to grasp just how fundamentally and vastly he'd been altered.

And Clutch, at the edge of the burnt out runes, leaning on his stolen staff, was looking like he was on death's doorstep. Bits of his red coloration were bleeding through his illusion, and it looked like he'd actually lost weight. Like to make the unfamiliar spell work he'd actually expended some of himself into its working. But when Clutch saw Daniel move to reach an arm out to him and call his name, he also saw Daniel pause and lightly touch his throat, realizing he couldn't make a sound.

But relief swept across the lizard's features when he saw Daniel actually able to move, and looked aware. He tried to straighten up, but almost slipped down his staff instead. So he plucked a potion from under the kobold mage robes, chugged it down, and seemed to shake a little bit as it reinvigorated his form. Much slower than he'd been running around earlier, Clutch stepped up the egg, and released the biggest sigh of relief that Daniel had ever seen the creature let out. His shoulders slumped, and he fell forward, catching himself on the silver stand to slide to the floor with his back leaning against it, looking up at Daniel floating over him.

With effort, he reached up, touched the egg's base, and concentrated.

[i]"You just need to think, Dan. I'll hear you. There's a lot of my mana in you right now. But please tell me you're okay. I need to know I did this right. That I didn't…didn't break you."[/i]

Daniel looked from his multiple candy-swirled hands, down past his new colorful breasts and cock, to the pale lizard under his groin.

[i]"I…feel alive, if that's what you mean. I'm not as terrified as I was a few minutes ago, and I feel…good. Is that what you want to hear?"[/i] Daniel was looking down on Clutch, but also watching his hands flex in the floaty syrup, and feel his tail swirling lightly in the stuff below him. It was an…uncannily good sensation. He wasn't moving bones, or muscle and tendon. It was just…free and smooth movement of his body, which happened to be shaped a lot like his normal form. It was alien…but delightful.

[i]"That'll have to do. I can't believe the cave kobolds got all that done in time. But…thank goodness. We maybe have a chance now. Maybe. It's still a longshot and that dragon is going to be a seething beast when he gets here. But…maybe we have a chance to keep him out of Coblent long enough to make a difference."[/i]

[i]"By having him…eat me? What, was there poison mixed in all that stuff you dumped on me? I'm…what, I'm a mickie you're slipping him?"[/i] In his odd and almost detached state of mind, that felt almost more alien and "wrong" than getting eaten. It was stranger than having feminine bits molded onto and into his body. Which really went to show just how much effort Clutch went into when crafting this strange golem spell. He, Daniel, someone who would never, ever want to *get eaten alive*, now didn't really like the idea, but it hit less hard than his body being used to poison a dragon. Or having both sexes molded into him…and right through him, if he could feel it right. The transformation that had smoothed out his mouth and simplified his throat so much he couldn't even speak anymore had left a tight tube running from his neck and head and into splits for his tailhole and feminine sex. He might still be freaked out in some strange way that fought with his body's giddiness and horniness, but the idea of having been turned into some sort of edible…sex…thing made him blink. But just…blink. Like the dawning of what the change meant was sinking in slow enough and pleasantly enough it could almost be confused for normal.

That was some strange and impressive mental fuckery.

[i]"No. I thought about that, but nothing would have worked. And he would just get suspicious the moment he didn't feel well. Eltigor, that the mage's name, by the way, said we weren't going to win by fighting him. We had to appeal to his ego. To make him feel like he was the one in charge and getting only what he wanted. And we had to make everything to Talekash's….taste, you could say."[/i] Clutch paused, and nodded, acknowledging the deep, deep frown Daniel gave him for that line.

[i]"Right right, sorry. I've never been so tired, alright. Just slipped out. But Eltigor wrote up spells that are a lot more complex than just attempts to kill a dragon. Because it has to last for…a couple days."[/i]

[i]"A couple…days,"[/i] Daniel echoed, not feeling his heart beat in his chest at the idea, because that particular organ was gone. But the depth of what was still to come was starting to descend on him.

He was going to be a dragon's candy plaything for days…and at some point what happened to candy was going to happen to him. He was going to get [i]fucking consumed.[/i]

It made his sexes quiver a little, whether he wanted them to or not. His penis jerked, and he swore it felt exactly like a leaky throb, but when he looked down the tip just parted and some of the same clear syrup he was floating in slid out to join the larger volume. It was an almost completely invisible event that left no trace in his candy display. It made him shake his head, and then regret it when that stirred up the fluid around him and the feel of it flowing over his face and torso got his nipples hard again. The urge to touch himself and satisfy this new body's desires was constant, and like a continuously smoldering ember in his more sensitive bits.

[i]"So what happens now? Can you tell me anything about what I can do, or how to make this any easier? How does this work? How is this,"[/i] he waved at his form, rather than grab his cock or boobs and jiggle them, since waving was at least a little less stimulating. [i]"'to a dragon's tastes'? Gods Clutch, you turned me into a…a thing. I dunno what you did to my head but this is still messed up."[/i]

[i]"I can't tell you, sorry."[/i] Clutch looked away briefly, and looked like he was trying to steel himself before continuing. Then while struggling to stand back up, [i]"I know a lot of what's happened feels cold, but that was just cause it was so rushed. But…I need, really *Coblent* needs you to be surprised. Because Dan, this was all a longshot to begin with, even if it had been Eltigor going through ritual. Now it's you, and you have to sell it. I made it as easy to sell as possible, and you're gonna be feeling that. But if Talekash thinks this is *anything* but his kobolds doing something really dumb and convoluted to make their dragon happy like cave kobolds do, we're dead. It's all or nothing."[/i]

Daniel played one of those lines back. "easy to sell as possible, and you're gonna be feeling that." And he didn't quite know whether to peg it as a threat or a warning.

But he felt something when Clutch was back to his feet and stepping towards the kobolds cleaning up all the ritual debris and squabbling over the leftover candy. In the dim light of the cave, he could make out Squirt happily sitting next to an upturned crate with Steel and Squats, all three of their muzzles smiling and smeared with chocolate mess. Squirt actually happily waved to him, looking like this was the best, best, best day of their entire lives…and then all three froze and frowned. Then every kobold including Clutch froze as well, but Clutch hurriedly pulled a small silver necklace from out of a sleeve and slipped it over his head, hidden away by the mage outfit. As more and more of the kobolds began to stop, go silent, and look towards the tunnel entrance to the underground cave system, Clutch looked back and forth from it, and over to Daniel floating in his shell, slowly settling to its bottom. Then he motioned the lizards to all move in front of the display that Daniel had become. He moved with the group, and shooed Squirt to stand next to him, as he took up a spot just in front of Daniel as well.

Which was a little touching, in a way. He was putting himself between them, Daniel, and an oncoming monster.

That…was kinda sweet.

[i]"I'd say hold your breath, but…Dan…just do what comes naturally, okay? He's coming. I told you. Told you told you that I didn't know if everything would get done in time, and he's already here. We can feel him. You feel it?"[/i]

Daniel tried to mentally think back that Clutch was just oh so funny, but a tickle ran through him at the same time as the rest of the kobolds were sitting up and looking at the entrance. A pleasant, enervating rush ran up through him from the tips of his toes, through his sexes, and even tingled enjoyably in his head. It felt like…well…like he was waking up from an incredibly soothing nap, all warm, snuggly, and slippery…and with morning-wood levels of horniness. He jerked, almost floating back up from the floor of the egg, leaned forward, and tried to whine a little as his sexes started to beg for more physical attention. Yes, he was bloody "feeling it." And when a tremor shook the space, like something big was starting to move and move quickly through the tunnels leading to them, he was "feeling it" more. When the tip of a massive snout rounded the corner of the passage that led to the chamber, followed by an eye that was as big as a doorway followed after it that swept over the assembly of lizards and living confection, the inside of the egg wasn't just a heavy and supportive goo anymore. Daniel shuddered, not just from seeing and feeling Talekash's furious gaze take in the scene before him, but because it felt like a warm and textured tongue had licked over his new folds. When the sensation swept up and wrapped around his cock, warmly and wetly squeezing around the chocolate length, he tried to moan and look down between his arms. There wasn't anything there. His swirl-patterned body was the only thing in the goo. So when he felt another phantom touch of ghostly fingers start teasing at and tickling his new vagina while a long reptilian tongue slurped around his cock like it was a candycane, he could only buck his hips into the fluid molesting him.

Clutch had predicted that Talekash was going to rush into the space like a seething mass of anger. He was off the mark there. The dragon absolutely oozed rage and suspicion as he stepped out of the tunnel leading into his hoard, wings tucked closely to his back and eyes seeming to miss nothing as his hot gaze raked over everything in view. But he didn't rage in like a berserker. You could feel that the absolutely massive reptile, easily 30 feet tall at the shoulder at a minimum, was using his absolute fury at the kobolds getting up to something as a means to focus. The huge and vibrantly green beast *stalked* into the space, with a low grumble of anger vibrating the air around him, eyes sweeping left and right to take in the spread of kobolds that had lowered their heads…and then back to the middle to rake over an oblivious Squirt, the kneeling Clutch, and the others….and the egg display. Daniel swore every time one of the dragon's eyes passed over him the fingers molesting him pressed and teased into his new folds a little more. They spread him open a little, pushed in, and stroked down his new passage a little deeper, frictionlessly gliding across his candy flesh gently but insistently. When the dragon lowered his head, squinted a suspicious focus on him directly while stepping even closer, he was absolutely positive. Because it really did feel like two separate fingers were holding the lips of his cunt wide and a third was softly thrusting into his fleshy but chocolate passage. And it was making him want to breathe hard.

Which he couldn't do. His lungs were a bygone thing, and he was surrounded by nothing but sweet syrup. But he could pant it into his mouth and torso, at least a bit.

When Talekash stepped even closer, the prodding got even more intense, and the tongue slathering his cock picked up the pace too. Enough that Daniel silently gasped in more of the goo, pushed off the floor of the egg's bottom, and pressed his back against its side, trying to add what distance he could between himself and the dragon. Which did nothing but fully expose his sexes to the dragon's gaze. And Talekash stopped, growl slowly dying away, looking him over with a slowly dawning…befuddlement. Which wasn't something you saw on a dragon a lot, but…it was a damned sight better than absolute rage.

The pause stretched out, Daniel barely able to hear the dragon's menacing breathing over the wetter and slippery sounds of his genitals being played with by invisible molesters and his chocolate form sliding against the eggshell.

The dragon closed the distance, having apparently decided there wasn't an actual threat in the space, but now only an insubordinate mystery. He stomped forward fast enough and hard enough that a number of kobolds had to scatter from the path of his paws. The charge brought his massive skull bearing down on Clutch's disguised form, and he hissed loudly and deeply enough that it made the fluid inside Daniel's egg vibrate and pulse around him.

"Explain, mage. Explain this," Talekash's eye and snout indicated Daniel, who was now feeling more tongues teasing across his breasts and nipples like invisible tentacles. "Explain why…You!" Talekash had blinked, and now had both of his huge eyes aimed squarely at Daniel, apparently having recognized him despite the extensive changes he'd gone through. "You! You arrogant little mortal candy maker." The dragon leaned in even closer, so close that the breath from his nostrils fogged the surface of the egg and rattled the inside even more. Which made Daniel shut his eyes and want to squeak, however undignified it might have come across. Because while he might have been in a bit of an altered state and his body felt absolutely wonderful…the dragon closing in on him was a terror he'd never encountered before…and also prompted the syrup to plunge a tongue straight up his cunt and touch him from the inside so intensely it shattered his thoughts.

Which was made worse, because Talekash was intrigued. He stayed right where he was, watching the candy hybrid in the egg squirm with his eyes closed, and jerk as his lower opening was spread open and invisibly played with. He just watched as little tremors ran through Daniel's body as Daniel felt himself getting licked from the inside out, and his cock received even tighter ministrations. Resisting bucking his hips was impossible, and he was spastically thrusting when a particularly sensitive bit of him was stimulated.

"He for you," Clutch said softly, head bowed and doing his best to look and sound as much like a cowed cave kobold as he could.

"Explain," the Green responded, not even looking in the direction of the mage lizard he thought was his own. "Explain now, worm."

As Daniel continued to feel his insides being stroked and licked at by the fluid holding him, and he kept sucking in comparative lungfuls of the thick stuff through his mouth, Clutch gave an absolute master-class of laying things on thick, dumb, and pathetic.

"Squirt and friends saw you, and hear you not like baker. So they take him, and they give him to me. I copy notes from mage you go to at night, and…I make baker into something you like more. This way he make you happy, and not mad. You like him like this?"

It was stupid kobold speech and logic. Which meant it was incredibly stupid and barely logical…

But Talekash didn't immediately bite Clutch between his incisors and sever his tiny torso into lizard giblets.

The dragon flicked an earfin…and just stared at Daniel bracing himself against the egg's interior. The tongue working its way into his insides was thrusting in an out faster and faster the longer he was close to the dragon. Inside the egg, there was a steady series of slurps and slick oozing noises as his penis was milked and his body penetrated over and over. And as things got deeper into his warmth and tighter around his shaft, he was losing the ability to hold back attempts at silent moans and gasps, and began bucking his hips into the thrusts and tongue. Which just kept building and building, the hybrid feeling his new anatomy getting tighter, twitching more and more against the invisible thrusts and caresses, until a peak finally hit. The dragon watched Daniel shudder as a climax ripped through both his sexes. His lower hands shot down and clutched his groin as both femsex and maleness spasmed around and within their teasing tendrils, and jetted squirts of the same clear fluid into the egg's interior. Daniel fairly twisted into a pretzel with a flailing and multicolored tail when his new sexes triggered off, bombarding his mind with twinned sexual peaks.

He'd experienced dual climaxes by psychically linking with a partner in the past. But it was a devastating and inhibition crippling experience when it was his own body doing it out of control. Daniel stopped caring that there was a death lizard feet away, watching him get his brains fucked out by his prison. His eyes shot open, his mouth gaped, and his body kicked from the wall of the egg as he twitched and peaked, body being wracked by the orgasm that washed through him for the dragon's amazement and amusement.

"Did this…this… thing… just…"

When Daniel's eyes refocused and he found he was floating in the middle of the egg again, Talekash still staring at him with slowly growing amusement, he had a moment of respite…and then what felt like a tentacle pushed against his sphincter so unexpectedly that he thrust out his chest, boobs still being teased, out jiggling infront of Talekash's nose behind the shell. As the clear tentacle up his butt began working its way in and out while his body bobbed up and down inside the egg, things started to click.

Talekash wasn't killing the kobolds for casting magic in his hoard without permission. Talekash wasn't killing him for being there…yet. He was just…looking as Daniel bucked in front of him helplessly, like a toy that had caught a cat's eye.

He shot a look down when a thrust to his rear pulled back and snapped his head down with a soundless gasp and got the briefest, shortest looks at Clutch. And…Clutch looked the tiniest, teeniest bit hopeful.

And oh my gods was this the plan? This is what Eltigor and Clutch had been rolling the dice on?

The thrusting tentacle worked deeper and deeper with each push, and as it did its work, Daniel tried to center himself and look at Talekash as his rear got violated more, and more, and more, each push sending tremors of pleasure and sensation through his whole self, and he felt it push far enough into him to make his trim brown and white stomach bulge out. Talekash's muzzle was almost expressionless, but…he wasn't looking away. He was watching with almost rapt attention as Daniel's little mortal form jiggled and bucked in front of him. When the next few thrusts pushed deeper and deeper, Daniel realized that the dragon was quite literally watching the bulge of the flexible syrup first pressing out at his stomach level, and then another thrust pushed it an inch higher. Another thrust shoved it higher still, and a few more later it was a shaft of thick goo that was ramming through his insides up to the bottom of his chest.

And Talekash was watching it happen with a growing smile on his muzzle. A smile that grew wider as Daniel's toes and fingers clenched and flexed as the assault on his lower passage and the tunnel running through him continued, with another squelching thrust, and another, and another, until whatever mass of chocolate that served as his prostate couldn't take it anymore, and his mouth opened as he was invisibly speared completely through. His cock climaxed and climaxed hard, with a with a shudder and jet of clear goo into the rest of the goo that made him arch his back and shudder, penis waving and jerking directly at Talekash's snout as it opened and closed, gushing like a small hose.

As the tentacle began to slowly pull back, Daniel feeling his gooey interior closing up behind it, he shook his head, only adding to the swirl of currents around him and teasing his skin like mad. But he saw, and felt, when the dragon began to chuckle.

It was a rumble that you couldn't miss, because the beast was massive and loud. But it was hard to peg it for laughter until Talekash closed his eyes, and actually belted out first a chuckle, then something closer to a laugh…and then a roaring bellow that actually set the egg and Daniel's body to stunning vibration all over again. It was mirth the like Daniel had never seen from such a huge beast, much less had directed at his expense. But the dragon kept laughing all the same, even as Clutch and the other kobolds covered their ears and bowed their heads from the onslaught of sound.

When he finally let the humor taper down, Talekash's huge head again leveled on Daniel with the meanest and cruelest grin yet, because it seemed he was already rapidly learning the mechanics of what Daniel was subject to. When he leaned back down, this time smiling wickedly instead of staring with the deepest of suspicion, he did it at a measured pace and watched.

What the dragon had noticed about his proximity and the egg's action on Daniel was spot on. Daniel wondered himself if Talekash had actually been watching the ebb and flow of mana around his new toy, along with his toys assets wobbling and clenching. Daniel felt himself get turned, lowered through the egg, and pressed chest-first to the bottom of the chamber. His legs were spread, his tail yanked over his back, and the sensation of a cock began tracing over his vagina's lips like a tease.

The dragon, it seemed, was learning to play with him.

"Explain, mage," the green demanded, not taking his eyes off Daniel's form as the hybrid tried to brace is multiple arms as what felt like a spade-shaped draconic tip began to push into him. "Or better…you three," his snout snapped to the trio that had been Daniel's customers and which had gotten him into this situation.

"We hear you talking about mage, Master," Squirt spoke up for the trio before Clutch could, looking absolutely overjoyed that Talekash was giving him direct attention. "We know we not supposed to leave at night, but…he," Squirt's pale white hand pointed at Daniel, who was now being visibly pushed against the bottom of the egg by thrusts that made his thighs shake, and looked like he was gasping inside the syrup. "He nice to us. We heard you get mad at him, and…and…we want him to make you happy. And we want him happy. And he look happy now, right?"

Clutch looked like he was fighting the urge to muzzle-palm, and squinted an eye open to meet Daniel's, and Daniel squeaked and squelched against the floor of his container, one wet shocking thrust of dragon cock after another spreading his cunt open as he squeezed and shook around it. It was a deliriously intense experience. Feeling his new breasts mashed against the egg's curve, gasping in one pull of thick syrupy sugar after another, and feeling his body clench around the ridges of a dragon cock as it did its work immediately following the last climax was incredible. His brown and white swirled face was screwed up in an expression of ecstasy as the shaft pounded at him.

The dragon's gaze swung back to him when Squirt asked, and Daniel immediately felt the swollen knot of the invisible draconic dick start to batter at his slit, the egg getting more insistent the more attention Talekash put on it. Then the dragon's laughter started back up, growing from draconic chuckles to the dragon full on belting laughter at the situation loudly enough that it set the walls of the cavern shivering, and the egg vibrating enough that it felt like Daniel's squashed nipples were being smoothed out.

"Oh this…this is rich," Talekash's voice dripped with condescension as he lowered his head and stared at Daniel's shuddering form. "This is *deliciously* rich. It's deliciously wonderfully rich. I was going to be…sitting down to dinner with the mayor's wife tonight. But had to leave to see what these vermin were doing with so much mana. And I find, you, cook. I find you, the cook that was an adventurer. The cook that was an adventurer who had the stupidity to think he could try to intimidate [i]me,[/i] utterly….what do you mortals call it….Fucked over, by my kobolds. By my little kobolds. The cute little kobolds. This is richness I've never encountered before."

Daniel would have tried to deny it if he could speak, but what shot through his mind like a bolt of lightning might have been something connected to the mild mental link he seemed to still share with Clutch. Because, as the thought went, [i]Holy shit, it's working. He fucking bought the ruse. Clutch actually deceived the fucking dragon.[/i]

Then the egg, under the dragon's direction, flipped Daniel's torso completely around, squelching around the phallic intruder in his cunt and smooshing his back against the egg's bottom, so he could look up at the dragon leering down at him as the clear knot continued to hammer at his slit. From that position, his new boobs flopped with each intense thrust at his hips, his cock swayed, and the dragon watched with a fang-accented lecherous grin. Lecherous enough that when Daniel's eyes got bucked away from staring at the dragon's and he looked down the dragon's body, he could see the tip of a pink cockhead starting to protrude from the dragon's slit.

Clutch had deceived the dragon and gotten him out of the city…at the expense of making Daniel the dragon's personal fuck-toy and eye-candy.

When the knot hammered in, Daniel's chocolatey body stretching around the clear mass and accepting it, Daniel's vision whited out again as his form convulsed. His legs kicked into the air and arms flailed, while his lower arms grabbed his breasts in overwhelmed bliss as the peak of being knotted crested over him. The knotted dick continued to thrust and push, not leaving his chocolate entrance but instead pulling and pushing on his body's confection, almost cartoonishly stretching it while Daniel's vision whited out…and then the shaft the egg had created hit its own peak. Daniel felt it swell, throb hotly in his depths, and then start jetting syrup through him at a pace so great that his head leaned back, his throat opened, and he began expelling it from his mouth as the flood continued.

"Incredible," the dragon said, watching the little mortal hybrid be made its own personal plaything. "Simply incredible, Tar," as the peak of the orgasm passed, Daniel barely heard the dragon's words to the kobold that was Clutch. Tar must have been the mage kobold Clutch had replaced. "I never would have thought a pathetic little lizard like you could have crafted something so…entertaining. It's like looking at a brothel show with endless choices available. You made an arrogant little mortal into…a feast for the eyes."

"Uh, Master…" Clutch replied, keeping his eyes averted and head bowed.

When Talekash looked away from Daniel, the knotted cock spearing him vanished and his slit tightened back up with a rush. He tried to sit up and yielded to the impulse to dry to draw in a deep breath, but only succeeded in sucking in a deep draw of the sweet syrup in the egg. And even though the dragon wasn't looking directly at him anymore, he was still just feet away. So the egg responded by creating the sensation of a massive tongue that licked Daniel from groin, to stomach, across his breasts, and over his face. The sensation and weight of a moist, slick, papillae covered organ like a tongue was so realistic, so wet and warm, and so weighty that it immediately pushed him back to the floor of the egg and brushed his arms aside like they were nothing.

Clutch himself withered a bit when the eyes of the dragon focused solely on him again, but he steeled himself, concentrated, and committed. "Try tasting it, Master."

As another run of the phantom tongue squished over his overly sensitive body, Daniel's head whipped over to the kobold cowering his head, utter shock spreading over the brown and white swirls of his face. Because holy shit, why was he getting tasted already? It hadn't been days. It hadn't even been hours.

At the same time, when the dragon's head turned back to him with an even more deeply cruel grin of amusement, the tongue switched from long licks to pressing and swirling its clear and stimulating surface up, down, left, right, and in circles all over him. It shoved and spun Daniel around the bottom of the egg in a chaotic twisting of stimulation he was helpless to resist. As he was licked, pushed, twisted, and turned, he completely lost the ability to see what was up or down, and vision gave way just to the crazily pleasant sensation of warm and went slickness smooshing and pushing against his overly sensitive chocolate skin, until the egg itself moved. A shift in momentum pushed him from the bottom of the egg to the side of the egg, sprawled and squeezed there by the entire container being lifted from its stand.

Daniel opened his eyes, looked down as the phantom tongue raked its way across the top of his tail and his back…

And saw Talekash had pinched the egg containing him between two claws of his forepaw, and was holding it aloft over his salivating and glistening open maw.

Daniel didn't have a heart to feel it drop out of his chest. But looking at that cavernous mouth, the drool dripping from the fangs, the eagerly flexing tongue that was so, so much more visible and visceral than the invisible muscle stroking over him…it squashed the enforced good mood and feels his new body tried to press on his mind. Talekash was about to eat him. The dragon wasn't going to wait days to eat him. Talekash wasn't going to draw things out like Greens tended to do. Talekash was going to eat him, right there, right now. No drawing out time for his former party members to get help. No reprieve for the mayor or his wife.

Daniel's non-existent stomach tightened and he scrabbled against the shell's interior with a panicked flail of his sensitive tail at the idea that all of this insanity had resulted in…just the mayor's wife getting a few hours of extra life.

Then he was falling, his back hitting the opposite side of the egg as it dropped downward, and splattered on the dragon's tongue hard enough that Daniel felt himself almost splatter on its inside when he smacked the interior again. He had a brief moment of the terrible sight of the dragon's ridged pallet above and moist tongue below, before the Talekash's mouth shut, and all was darkness, noise, movement, and sex.

Because as intense as the dragon's presence could push the egg to tease and play with him when he was close by, it was nothing compared to *being inside* the dragon's maw.

As Talekash's tongue wetly and meatily slurped and slid over the egg's exterior, the interior went even more wild from Daniel's perspective. Tendrils of its goo shot into both of his lower entrances like battering rams and began thrusting wildly. The syrup licked and pressed across his nipples with phantom tongues, rolling and massaging the orbs sticking from his formerly flat chest plate like they were balls of dough. There was no gentleness or subtlety. It was intense and lustful lashing that felt like his nipples were being squeezed between the sides of fingers as the masses of soft chocolate were deformed and worked. While Talekash's tongue flipped, spun, and turned him around, bouncing from one part of the egg's interior to another, a mouth latched over Daniel's cock and sucked onto it with a vacuum tight seal.

And Talekash felt all of it.

The moment the dragon's tongue touched the sugary and sweet shell of magical that housed and played at Daniel's form, he felt every bit of the stimulation the little mortal hybrid was subjected to like they'd been psychically linked. The dragon shuddered, sucked in a breath, eyes widening in shock and pleasure, and his entire form rocked back like he'd been zapped by a lightning bolt. It wasn't as though Talekash himself had suddenly become and overly stimulated and dual-sexed dragon. He simply felt every single nuance of warm, hot, moist, and slick stimulation that Daniel did. He felt every thrust of Daniel's hips as he jostled chaotically around inside the dragon's mouth. He felt a syrupy yet firm tongue reaching into Daniel's new folds and depths with all the carnal intensity he'd been indulging in with his polymorphed human member at the brothel owner's business. His draconic penis slid from his slit in almost record time and at record hardness, echoing with and being driven along by the faux-muzzle suckling over every inch of Daniel's maleness.

It was an overwhelmingly wet, slick, and hedonistic experience for both of them, but Daniel's mind was utterly overwhelmed. Sight was blotted out, short of brief flashes of the fleshy interior of the maw surrounding him, or of the gleaming teeth the egg was knocked against the dragon's tongue slurped and suckled on his candy. Every slurp of the mouth was echoed inside the shell and matched by the wet slaps of first a deliciously thick tongue pushing into his cunt as his folds squeezed around it. When it pulled back, it an equally thick but ridged penis thrust forward into his loose and flexible tailhole. They pistoned back and forth, first one and then the other stretching Daniel's chocolate body faster and more intensely than any mortal flesh would have been able to withstand. He tried to brace his feet against the far side of the egg, but as his cock continued to be tightly sucked and his hips hammered up and down by the invaders ravaging his genitals with bliss, any attempt to anchor or center himself slipped and he was left to bounce around the interior of the candy as he was pleasured out of control.

It took shockingly little time for such an intense onslaught of stimulation to push his cunt into a shattering orgasm. His chocolate walls rippled and squeezed around the tendril shoved inside him, waves of satisfaction and ecstasy rolling from his groin intensely enough to make Daniel's mouth hang open in the syrup, try to silently moan, and lay his head, even as his cock continued to get milked.

And a moan would never have been heard even if he could produce one, because as Daniel internally rippled, spasmed, and squeezed in a pleasurable peak, Talekash roared. It was a beyond-deafening draconic noise of absolute surprise and utter satisfaction that crashed through the egg, Daniel, and into the cavern, all but knocking some of the kobolds flat. Because the sensation of Daniel's overstimulated orgasm was as clear and shattering for Talekash as it was for the hybrid he was suckling on. The huge beast's eyes rolled back and his forelegs crumpled, dropping his massive frame to the stone floor, leaving only his haunches exposed and member thrusting into the cave air as the kobolds not knocked unconscious by his exclamation of pleasure utterly enraptured.

It would have been an indignant display otherwise, but Talekash was beyond caring about a display of dignity infront of his kobold servants. He wanted more. More of this magical treat. More of this gift his warren had given him. His body all but *demanded* satisfaction. His tongue flipped the candy solidly against the side of his jaw, bouncing Daniel wildly inside it, and heavily, raggedly breathing, he caught the magical treat in a grinding pinch beneath his fangs.

As Daniel's ecstasy-flooded mind tried to reboot, light returned and he could see the inside of the jaws that held him, and hear the draconic teeth scraping the shell he was in. It would have been an all-consuming terror of a view, but all attention left his throbbing fem-sex and focused on his cock and ass. All he could do as he looked up at the gleaming teeth squeezing down on his entrapment, squeaking and cracking as they did so, was buck his hips. A new tongue inside the mouth invisibly suckling his cock was spiraling up and down the thick shaft, or wrapping around and teasing his throbbing and candy-patterned glans. He couldn't count how many times the cock battering his rear and former prostate had penetrated, pulled back, and hammered home again. If he had needed to breathe in his state he likely would have passed out. But the member kept working at him, one thrust after another, urging his cock even harder.

He could feel the coming explosion of an orgasm well before it hit, and tried to brace all four arms against the egg's walls and shut his eyes. Because he could feel the egg failing and cracking around him as his building peak pushed Talekash to grind down on it all the harder. The moment of the egg's destruction, of his destruction, was coming. It would come when he came and he wanted to feel it, not see death crashing down and through him.

But he came and it came anyway.

A particularly hard thrust seemed to absurdly stretch his hole with a wetter squelch than the ones before, hammer a bestial length all the way up to the middle of his stomach, and set his cock to spasms as orgasm rocked through him. It set Daniel into spasms that broke his bracing grip on the egg. It sent Talekash into spasms on the cave floor, his spade and ridged cock splashing his belly and the stone with ropes of draconic seed.

And his jaws snapped closed like collapsing mountains. His gleaming white teeth obliterated the egg in an explosion of shattering sugar, splattering syrup, and mashed Daniel into a smooth paste inside Talekash's moist maw. Daniel had the briefest moment of hearing the shattering and explosive failure of the egg Clutch had sealed him in, to feel the throbbing pleasure of his still shacking cock, legs, arms, and whole self be squashed by warm and fleshy muscle, and then a confused mix of feeling himself be distorted, melted, and crushed in a single instant of all consuming carnal sensation.

Then there was blackness. Daniel didn't even have time to look outside the jaw and teeth to see the kobolds watching in utter rapt amazement…except for Clutch, who winced so hard it made his illusion flicker.

Then a spark of mana. Unmistakable, even when his mind reeled that he had just been mashed to nothingness by a dragon's jaws. Which made no sense, because he shouldn't have a mind anymore.

And then the spark flashed from not just being in his supposedly non-existent mind's eye, but into the cave at large.

With a crackle and ripple of magical power…Daniel was back.

He was floating in the egg again, sitting on its stand, humming with released energy.

He shook. Daniel's body fairly vibrated with shock and overwhelmed senses. Looking out, he could see the Green's body slumped, tail end in the air, cock still spurting dribbles of dragon spooge on the floor, and his underside covered in semen. His eyes were blissfully rolled back in their sockets, and a mix of syrup and brown and white grool dribbled from the side of his jaws as huge breaths rolled through him.

Daniel looked down at his newly intact chocolate body, floating in the syrup, held up his rattling arms in confusion, touched the new breasts that pleasantly jiggled like they hadn't been squished into a flat smear just a second or two ago. His cock still throbbed, like it hadn't just expended the biggest and last orgasm of Daniel's life. He even reached down with a lower arm and touched his new feminine lips and tailhole…and neither were stretch or deformed by the pummeling he'd endured. Just touching his slit made his folds jitter a little with need that made him suck in more goo that ran right down the tube that cut through him. His chocolate body…he himself…was back in the same shape he'd been before getting devoured. He shook even more, unable to genuinely and really process this, despite his body not just feeling fine, but feeling like it was ready for this over, and over, and over again.

[i]Oh….oh no no no….This is what Clutch meant by not dying. This…this is what Clutch meant by keeping Talekash busy and happy for days.[/i]

His mouth moved, approximating taking in huge breaths of his own, and just cycled more simple syrup through his insides, and his hands patted his body and tail down, unable to believe everything not only felt "good", but like simply touching himself was as pleasurable now as before getting devoured, and everything was all there again.

Then the dragon's head rose, seeming to sense something was off, and the rolled back eyes rolled back down as Talekash took in the situation now that his sense were returning. His gaze settled on Daniel again, and Daniel immediately felt his nipples harden up, and small, delicate tongues started teasing them. As the dragon rose to his feet, eyes narrowed predatorily and intelligently on the respawned Daniel, he did it heedless of the mess he was covered in. He only licked his chops, smearing the stain that had recently been Daniel across his tongue. When he stepped forward, and Daniel felt another tongue start licking up and down his stiff member, Talekash leaned in and sniffed at the egg, then lowered his gaze to the silver stand it sat on. Daniel could actually *feel* the dragon analyzing him and it, taking in more details now than he had when Clutch had first presented the dragon with his treat.

"A phylactery…" the dragon rumbled, setting the inside of the egg vibrating with his voice. Daniel looked down too, staring at his the reflection in the stand again that showed brown and white underside.

"Very clever, Tar. Very very clever indeed. I take it the impudent little baker is," he reached forward, and tapped the stand with a claw just enough to shake the egg a little. "in there, isn't he? This," the claw rose up, and scratched a line down the front of the egg, which Daniel pushed back from as far as he could get. "This is a…vessel, or a simulacra, of sorts, the phylactery produces for the soul to puppet?"

"Yes, m'lord," Clutch's head was still bowed, but he was giving Daniel's floating form one-eyed glances as he spoke. He was putting on an act of subservience while also looking very…apologetic. "This way he make you happy, over and over. And he have different flavors you can make him!" Maybe it was because he didn't want Talekash to notice the "I am so very sorry" looks Clutch was giving Daniel, but Clutch switched from quiet subservience to acting a lot more enthusiastic about doing a good job for his dragon. "Like how his shop have all different things he use for food. We put many in him. So you not get bored. You can taste him all different ways! Play with him all different ways! Egg can make him how you want. You just think it, and it work on him!"

Daniel was openly looking back and forth from Talekash's massive and looming frame that still dripped his remnants from his jowls, and the little kobold that had put him in this position. And then a few glances down at the stand again, which apparently was where *he* actually existed now.

It was while he was looking down over himself that Talekash laughed a draconic bellow of amusement, and picked up the egg again. The shift forced Daniel into the bottom of the thing with a jarring motion that flattened him on top of his tail and made his chest wobble, and then he was being carried to a more open part of the cavern floor, away from the kobolds and the mess the dragon had made.

"I wonder…little cook…I wonder…" the dragon mused, holding Daniel up in front of his muzzle again. It was proximity and contact enough that besides the little tongues swirling around his nipples, he could then feel a massive ribbon of wet and textured muscle start to lick up his body again. He tried to groan when the warm but invisible thing licked over his exposed privates, over his stomach and chest, and force his head back. It was equal parts stunningly pleasant and completely humiliating to be licked like a sexual treat for the dragon to watch.

"The idea of playing with you is one thing…but..I wonder…," When Daniel felt the tongue bathing and teasing him pass by one more time, he looked down, and into the eyes and cruel grin of Talekash, wondering just what the dragon was wondering, and dreading it…even as his penis strained outward a little harder, his body inviting whatever was to come next.

What Talekash was wondering about was revealed when his maw opened, and Daniel could look right down into the waiting throat again. The fall wasn't as jarring this time, because he was expecting it, but he still was rattled around the egg's interior, and still felt his legs spread open under the grip of unseen tendrils, and the massive tongue redoubled its pace and pressure, slathering over his candy tailhole, slit, and cock.

The darkness, heat, and wet sounds of Talekash's maw took over again, and the dragon shuddered, feeling Daniel's body shake and twitch as his bits were licked over, and over, Daniel able to only hump into them as the sensations teased and played with his instincts.

But then something different happened.

With a wet, loud, and slurping sound, Talekash swallowed the egg whole. Darkness became absolute as the sounds of the constricting throat dominated everything, and Daniel felt himself become utterly surrounded by nothing but the dragon's body, while he himself tried and failed to shout ""ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?" The egg slipped and shuddered with him inside it, one muscular contraction of the dragon's throat after another carrying him into the beast's guts. In the pitch blackness he couldn't see and couldn't scream when it happened, but the egg knocked against the sphincter leading to the dragon's stomach, and squelched through. There was a short drop that still rattled Daniel's form inside what at best was now a sugar-pill, a wet splash….and then a final shake as Talekash settled onto his stomach to ride out the egg's digestion.

As utterly rattled and confused as he might have been, the utter shattering and resurrection of himself had made it clear: this wouldn't actually *kill* him. *Daniel* wasn't actually here, in the dragon's guts, surrounded by simmering acid and poison, being molested by an invisible tongue. But despite how utterly ecstatic his pseudo-body was to get teased at and stimulated, Daniel himself was still horrified. Because he was in a dragon's belly. Darkness was utter and complete. The only sounds were the organic squelching of the dragon's body and the egg's relentless wet exploration of his candied self.

He knew now this wasn't his body. But it felt like it. It felt so very, very viscerally like his body; just an altered version of it that utterly wanted the dragon's attention and consumption. So he tried to settle his mind as much as he could, and ride things out with the knowledge this wasn't the genuine end of him…as long as Talekash was pleased with him as a hedonistic trinket. As the heat of the dragon's guts seeped into the shell and into him, the egg redoubled its efforts to please him and the dragon that had consumed him.

Daniel felt his limbs be pulled fully spread eagle, no part of him left unexposed, as the false-tongue licking up his front over and over was joined by a second from the back. The two warm and wet surfaces squeezed, squished, and stroked over every sensitive inch of him, unrelentingly and insistently. Like he was pinned between undulating fleshy walls and stroked over, and over, and over.

It stretched on for minutes, Daniel being subjected to a full body oral ministration that simply kept going and going, each stimulating touch to his body and especially his genitals feeling like a literal soothing tongue-bath. The clit in his femsex was achingly hard, begging for more attention as each pass of the invisible muscle slurped over his body, and it barely took a minute for the sensation to prompt both his sexes to squeeze and squelch when the hit a climax that he couldn't resist bucking into. And the entire egg shifted and rocked as Talekash roared and humped the cave air in turn.

Talekash's roar fading away cued Daniel to another noise surrounding him, besides the wet and juicy syrup playing with him, and the gurgle of Talekash's guts and heartbeat.

A hiss. A hiss steadily growing louder and louder as the dragon's stomach acid dissolved the magical sugar all around him.

He tried to calm his mind about it. Really tried to keep his mind on the fact that he'd just pop back into the chamber with a sparkle of magic, and be good as new for how his new body was supposed to be.

But there was no denying the fear of the egg shattering when one tiny part of it got weaker than the rest, and he'd feel himself melted into nothing by the contents of the dragon's stomach.

Hell, some of the contents of that dragon's stomach were the remnants of the last egg and his first chocolate body. He was going to get digested by his own remains.

Which was a dark thought and dark realization in the loud, organic, and totally black interior of a dragon's guts.

And then the reprieve from the tongues driving him to orgasm was done, because a cunt touched the tip of his still hard shaft and started to warmly and wetly spread over it. At the same time a tendril of some sort began playing against the lips of his nethers insistently enough that his thighs and tail started to squirm.

And a spade-tipped cock slipped into his open mouth and started to thrust back and forth.

And all he could do was grab his new breasts and go along with the ride as the egg went to work fully and completely overwhelming him and Talekash as much as it could. He slurped around the sugary penis going into and out of his throat like it was a treat. He couldn't moan and didn't need to breath, so there was little impeding it from pummeling into and out of his maw like a sweet but meaty feeling machine. When the tentacle prodding and playing with his lower lips thrust in and matched the squelching tempo, his thighs squirmed around it. He squeezed the chocolately flesh of his groin tightly around the intruder as it thrust in, pulled out, thrust in deeper, and kept going over and over.

And his shaft in turn was squeezed and milked by the manifested tunnel squeezing up and down over it. Timing the bucking of his hips with it and the tendril pushing further and further into him was almost impossible, and Daniel found himself simply doing his best to let his mind keep up with the ecstatic chaotic bucking and shoving until the inside of the egg was a roiling swirl of his body stirring up the stimulating fluid with his movement.

Which was helped along by the gigantic dragon bucking and squirming on the cavern floor, having already peaked again and splattering his seed in front of the amazed eyes of the lizards watching in awe. Talekash first sprawled on his back and thrust blindly into the air as his mammoth cock wobbled and leaked on his belly and chest. But he had no respite from the stimulation taking place in his stomach no matter how he turned or shifted, and was simply forced to ride out the tumultulous experience until the egg failed.

The dragon's twisting and turning, bucking and shaking, bounced Daniel and the egg around in his belly even more. It agitated his internals enough that the constant shifting weakened the shell faster and faster, and the hissing surrounding Daniel in the darkness competed more and more with the wet sounds of uncontrolled sex dominating his ears.

When Daniel hit another peak, fem-sex suddenly squeezing and trembling in bliss, cock standing out even straighter and throbbing to flood the phantom tunnel milking it with jets of goo, and the cock in his mouth lodging there and bulge his cheeks with its surges, the egg failed again. Talekash's roar was loud enough to nearly deafen the kobolds around him and his renewed bucking gave the shell the last bit of agitation it couldn't take, and it fell to weak and dissolving pieces. As Daniel's arms and legs straightened and shook in bliss, they rapidly lost the ability to move at all as scorching hot liquid flooded in all around him, immediately loosening his form into a distorted mess. He lost track of where his hands were, then arms, then head and mouth, then cock and tail. All melted into a sense of hot looseness that was confusing and impossible to track.

Then there was a moment of darkness even darker than the dragon's insides.

Then a spark, a flicker, and he was back. Back across the floor, on the same stand, in another egg, with a fresh and undissolved body. Daniel reflexively tried to gasp, and even scream, but instead he just silently thrashed and mentally boggled over what he'd just experienced. When his brain had a moment to settle, and he could look across the cave floor to where the dragon lay covered in more of his own orgasms, gasping like he was coming down from an intense high, he was able to center himself a little more.

Talekash's labored breathing was coming down, though it was still ragged for a beast as physically capable as a dragon. He struggled to his paws as the kobolds looked on, including Clutch, who was actually crossing a couple fingers while looking back from the rising dragon to Daniel recovering in his new body.

It must have been because he thought Talekash wouldn't be as aware of things as he normally was, given how sex addled the dragon's brain must have been. But Clutch took the opportunity to meet Daniel's eyes, and send him a short thought while he had the opportunity.

[i]"A couple days. I know it's forcing a lot on you, Dan. I know it's not asking a lot but its forcing a lot instead. But it was supposed to have been Eltigor volunteering for this. Just a couple days. Just keep him happy and blissed and not killing anyone for a couple days, and we're good. A couple mages or a tougher party can get here and handle this. Maybe a Silver can just rip him to pieces while he's on a sugar crash. But…think you can handle it?"[/i]

[i]"Holy shit. Do I really have a choice, Clutch?"[/i] Daniel was looking back and forth from the little lizard, the trio of other little lizards that put him in this position, and the big lizard getting to his paws, while his spell-forged body rapidly primed itself for more. It was an absolutely uncanny sensation of being mentally overwhelmed yet at the same time scared yet at the same time almost begging for more of the same delicious experience.

As Talekash rose fully to his feet, shook globs of his spooge from his scales, and turned towards the assembled kobolds with his eyes alight with joy, Clutch lowered his head in subservience and looked away from Daniel…just as Daniel felt what had to be a tongue start circling his tailhole in a way that teased, tickled, and felt as delightful as it was unwanted.

"Clean this space up," Talekash's words echoed to the mass of lizards. That started a flood of the little creatures to go grab buckets and swabs from wherever they were stored.

Clutch replied back, [i]"Not really, sorry. But the spells should hold and you should be okay. If they didn't break right away, they should be stable for the next few days. It's not going to run out of power, since it's actually powered by the lair. We can break that connection later."[/i]

"And bring that," Talekash licked his jaws again, audibly purring in satisfaction, and nodding to the Daniel's display "to my chambers. I want him close. Put him on one of the elevated shelves, so he's not just hidden in a corner. I want to see how much…fun can be had with this toy."

[i]"And crap, I expected that,"[/i] Clutch mentally whined.

Daniel wanted to whine back too, but was jarred what Squirt, Steel, and Squats ran over with a group of other kobolds baring polls, slid them under his stand, and hoisted him off the ground to follow Talekash's striding haunches.

"You see!" Squirt's squeaky voice shouted up to him, and he sported the biggest grin his tiny head had ever worn. "You happy, Master happy, whole hoard happy!"