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Slayer or Layer 29

For Lorvianne

By Draconicon

Lorkos was in a foul mood despite everything technically going exactly as it was supposed to. The great red dragon had laid a great number of eggs, had gone through the journey to get to the lizard mountain, and there was someone there that might have the power to start turning this curse around.

Despite that, he was still angry. After all, he was used to getting some of his wolf form back after he laid his eggs, and that didn't happen this time. Nothing of the sort, for that matter, seemed to happen. The only relief he had was the fact that his belly was no longer swollen and that his pussy wasn't on fire for more breeding just yet.

That was going to happen, though. He could already recognize the emptiness in his womb as he wandered around the slopes near the village. He wasn't in heat yet, but it was probably only a few days off.

And if that hits here? What happens then? What do I do?

That was the question. Whatever other lies he had been able to sell the caravan and the mayor of this little village, he doubted that they would believe him when he said that he had a heat that kept coming back every time that he laid eggs. There was no way that was the average biology for a standard dragon. They had to have something else going on, otherwise Ashin and the other dragonesses would never stop getting bred.

Shaking his head, the feral made his way to a boulder and flopped down on it, staring down his nose at the village in the distance. It was bustling, still, all the trade goods that had come in from the caravan getting distributed between the different households, spread through the different scaly families. There was bartering going on, shouting that could be heard all the way off where he sat, and he shook his head at the way that they seemed so...normal.

They're good people, he thought. At least...these ones are.

The caravan hadn't stolen from anyone, hadn't murdered or raided anyone, despite the fact that they had a dragon that would - ostensibly - back them up against human patrols. If anything, the only ones that had been aggressive had been the riders that the humans had sent out, the gryphons trying to take down the caravan before turning their attention on him. That had been the only problem on the entire trip.

So...

Lorkos sighed, knowing where his brain was going. He asked the question of himself.

If this is something that they do, then why don't they let people see them like this?

It was a good question. He hoped that mammals would be willing to let the lizards live and let live if they ever saw a society like this, but at the same time, he knew that it would be hard to sell that to the mammal authorities. The war had been going on for so long that it was burned into their heads that the scaly people were a threat to them all.

Even when they're not...

He sighed, laying his head on his forepaws. There had to be something that explained why the lizards and kobolds weren't all like this. Maybe one day, he'd figure it out.

As he stared into the distance, he gradually became aware of someone approaching. Soft footsteps, slow and a bit hesitant, told him that they were probably someone older. The shaman, likely.

He turned his head, catching sight of a blue-scaled creature poking its head out of a crack nearby. The scales on its face were wrinkled and a bit wizened, and it was clear that this guy was someone that hadn't been out and about much. He looked like the darkness of the caves had leeched the color right out of him, dull and pebbly rather than the usual shiny nature of the scaly people.

But his eyes were still bright, and that gave Lorkos a bit of hope. The feral dragon unwound himself from the boulder, looking down at the stranger.

"Are you the shaman?"

"Hmmph. Yes, I am. Honored shaman of Sila."

"She sent you here?"

"Damn right, Great One. Wouldn't be, uh, bothering you otherwise."

More educated than the other males, then, and definitely one that had a different point of view on things. One that didn't have to respect the 'Great Ones' as much, probably due to his own power.

He could work with that.

Extending one forepaw, Lorkos nodded down at it. The shaman arched an eyeridge.

"What you want me to do, pull a thorn out?" he asked.

"...No. I want you to look at my magic."

"Why? You got an aura bleed or something?"

"Whatever that is, no." He shook his head. "Something else. I need you to look at it, first. But you're under Great One orders not to talk about what you see."

The shaman arched an eyebrow, the lizardman looking back at the village, then back at him. He grimaced, sighing.

"I hate it when you lot ask for this..."

"I need secrecy here."

"Yeah, yeah, you and every other scheming one..."

"So, you'll keep your mouth shut?"

"Yeah, yeah, let me see."

As the shaman took his forepaw, Lorkos braced himself. He didn't know what was going to happen, but he was pretty damn sure that it wasn't going to be ideal for him. Even if the magic didn't hurt, he'd be giving up his secret to someone that didn't know him.

The magic hurt, alright. He braced himself, clenching his jaws tightly as the shaman's touch pushed through him, another presence wriggling through his body. There was a feeling of his own magic - or maybe Ashin's curse - doing a push-back, trying to keep the shaman from poking around, but either it had been warped enough to allow someone to look inside, or the shaman was good enough to avoid it.

The blue-scaled lizard arched the other eyebrow as he let go, taking that probing, uncomfortable presence with him. Lorkos shook his head a few times, feeling his neck swinging with the motion.

"That didn't feel very good..."

"Never does. You ain't a Great One, girl."

"No."

"Or a girl."

"No."

"How the fuck this happen?"

"When I figure out how I had such bad luck, I'll tell you, but first." He leaned forward, going nose to nose with the shaman. "Can you fix this?"

"Which part? The one that she put on, or the part that someone else screwed the fuck up?"

"...Both."

"Well, hate to tell ya, SIR, but I can't do a damn thing with either one."

Lorkos's heart fell. The shaman had been one of his best hopes, particularly with the fact that it might be easier for a non-mammal to untangle this sort of thing. The fact that the shaman was just saying it was impossible...

Shaking his head, he leaned in, almost bowling the shaman over as he pushed closer.

"What do you mean, you can't do a thing?"

"Ain't my fault, sir. When you get hit by a curse from a powerful dragoness, then start fucking with it, it just tangles it up further and further. Hell, it's all tight around your skin now, pulling it all around. If I tried messing with it, if I even tried to fix it, it could go completely crazy and start trying to wrap around me."

"...And if I ordered you to do it anyway?"

"Then I'd just say 'fuck off,' sir. Ya ain't one of the Great Ones, even though ya look like one. Can't tell me what to do."

The annoying thing was, the shaman was probably right. He didn't have that same pull that he'd seen Ashin have over the creatures in her mountain, nor the sort of thing that he'd heard of in legends. Yes, the people in the caravan were willing enough to obey, but that was because they believed he was who he said he was.

Others, like the shaman, who had evidence to the contrary? Not so much.

There's gotta be a way. There's no way that this curse can completely sustain itself after being warped, right? Maybe it's burning through the energy that's maintaining it...

Unlikely. There was no way that Ashin wouldn't have thought of that, and the dragoness was cruel enough that she might have put something into the spell to really screw with him if he tried. Not that it wasn't already, but...

"How am I going to fix this?"

"Best guess? Find the dragoness that put it on you and get her to do it."

"...Is there anything else I can do?"

"Not that I can think of," the old shaman said, shaking his head. "She's got the touch for it, so she can actually get at the spell. Even she's gonna have problems, though. The more that curse gets screwed up, the harder it's going to be to take off."

He heard what else the shaman was saying, too. The more times that he tried to get someone to remove it and failed, the worse the curse was going to get, and the harder it was going to be for him to deal with it.

Not-quite suppressing a growl, Lorkos got to his feet, slowly walking around the boulder he'd been laying on. The feeling of emptiness in his belly told him that he was getting closer and closer to heat, and that meant another time of pregnancy. Even if he did find someone that was capable of ripping this spell off of him, he doubted that it would happen while he was pregnant. It might squish the eggs.

He stopped, shocked again that the eggs were the part that he worried about. A while back, he would have considered the eggs shattering, yes, but only in the way that it would stab into his guts from the inside. Now he was worried about them?

No, no, he had to focus. He had to keep from worrying about that.

"You are sure that you can't do anything for me?"

"Only if you want breeding, sir. Can still do that, but..."

It took everything Lorkos had not to flash a glare at the shaman for that. Instead, he took a deep breath, held it, then let it out.

"No. I've laid enough eggs...and I should stay around until they hatch."

Another surprise, though this one less strong than the others. He hadn't thought that he'd want to have anything to do with the eggs after they were laid, but go figure. He had some attachment to them after all.

Much as he wanted to blame the magic, he couldn't help but think to the ones that he had birthed at the village, how they had turned out. They had been willing to help him, and he had done his best to help them. They had turned out well...and maybe the new ones would, too.

"I wouldn't wait long," the shaman said. "The curse..."

"It'll tangle. You said."

"And the longer you wait, the more you do, the more it will worsen."

"I'll take my chances."

"You'll have to." He shook his head. "Anything else?"

"No. Just...go. And don't tell anyone."

"Who would believe me?"

Who indeed? Lorkos wondered as the shaman turned around. The old man dropped back into the crack, following it back towards the mountain, while the feral dragon looked back towards the village once more.

The eggs were being kept out in the open for now, taking in the heat of the sun and some of the village fires. They'd probably hatch in a few weeks, according to what Sila said, but he had no idea how accurate that was. After all, they were magically created, and he doubted that they'd be the same as other ones.

The urge to fly off and get some distance from it all was strong, stronger than usual, and he had to put a lot of effort into ignoring it. For better or worse, he was bound here by the curse and by...well, everything else, until he found a way to counter it. To counter it, he needed to find Ashin, or...well, that might just be the only thing that he could do. After all, how could he hope to find someone else of strong magic out here?

He flopped down, once more laying against the boulder. Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow, he would start interrogating people in the village and elsewhere, figuring out where in the world Ashin kept her nest. If she lived anywhere besides the mountain where she'd cursed him, he needed to know before setting out. Time was not on his side, and he couldn't afford to waste any of it at this point.

If only he didn't have this cursed attachment to his own young this way...if only they didn't feel like part of his pack...

Lorkos grumbled, burying his head in his hands as he tried to put it out of his mind for the moment. It was only going to keep bothering him if he kept thinking about it, and for now, there was no point in trying to solve an unsolvable problem.

The End