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Author's note: This story ends the "Furry Dominance, Scaly Submission" series for the time being. Part Five is strictly action-adventure, no-yiff. All the yiffy stuff can be found in Part Six.

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Part Five: Innocence and Wrath

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With Kirh on his back, Uroshonth followed the dark, icy river to a place in the woods where a narrow tributary turned toward the east, snaking its way through bleak, snow-covered woods until it was lost from view.

"We're close now," Uroshonth whispered to Kirh, as he followed the black waters downstream. Moments later they arrived at a bend in the stream, and saw ahead of them the end of the tributary. The river fed a small lake that lay no more than two miles from where the dragon stood, whose surface was a thin, gray sheet of ice which began where the tributary ended and covered over the entire lake.

Uroshonth crept along the river's edge until he reached the lakeshore, doing his best to keep out of sight, even though there was little he could do to prevent his black scales from showing up plainly against the snow-white landscape. He kept close to the trees, couched low to the ground, and using one huge claw he set Kirh down upon the lakeshore and then pointed across the lake.

Kirh traced the line from the end of the dragon's claw to a massive, low-lying island of bare rock situated at the exact center of the body of water. The isle rose out of the middle of the sheet of ice and built upon the isle's highest point was its centerpiece: a high-walled edifice of massive ashlars whose shape was that of a simple box but a box as huge as a mausoleum, with no discernible doors on its outer surface.

Kirh realized then that they must have been approaching the structure from the back and at that moment she caught sight of a number of torches burning on the far side of the isle which confirmed her conclusions. The doorway was on the opposite side of the structure, as was all the activity to which she presently bore witness: a short, black galley lay moored at a jetty on the opposite side of the isle, and noisy crowds were coming ashore bearing more torch-lights to add to those that already burned in front of the pier.

The closer the revelers came to the doorway of the huge structure, the more Kirh was able to make out their appearances. She saw the Lupaoran wolves everywhere, and a large number of the snake-creatures that her attacker had mentioned, but no Vulpelins: Leul was nowhere to be seen.

"Now listen," Uroshonth murmured to Kirh, "do you see that boat? The wolves have cut a path through the ice over there on the opposite side of the isle. The boat travels to and from the isle in a long, perfectly straight canal surrounded by ice, meaning that it can only travel in a straight line, and it is operated by pulling a tow-cable rather than by oars or other devices. The cable runs underwater in one place near the shore, and simply by pulling it one can manipulate the boat, moving it towards or away from the isle.

"I intend to distract those creatures by creating a disturbance offshore. When you see them gathering to watch the display, you should walk across the ice, but be careful. You are much lighter than the wolves and wear no armor, but still you must be cautious when crossing the lake because the ice may break easily in places. By the time you have reached the isle I will have moved the boat away from shore, thereby trapping everyone on the island, except those who can fly and those who are light enough to escape over the lake's ice. My aim is to chase them into one corner and slaughter them all at once, before they're given the chance to do anything. While I am doing so, you and Leul must escape, run across the lake, and gain the woods. As soon as you see the boat starting to move, come to the front of the treasure-house, but stay hidden until I am able to clear away all foes from in front of the gate. Once I've done so, you ought to be able to find Leul, if you haven't already. At the very least, if something goes wrong, you'll be given enough time in which to find Leul and escape."

Kirh shook her head. "What if something goes truly wrong, and you don't destroy them all right away, and they kill you?" she asked.

"I have a plan that will work. But listen, you mustn't worry about what happens to me. Just get to the isle. Find Leul..."

Kirh shivered, plainly showing her nervousness. "But what if I don't find her right away?" she asked softly. "Or at all? Or suppose the Lupaorans kill her before I'm able to reach her or--"

"No one is going to kill Leul, or you," Uroshonth assured her, leaning down to nuzzle Kirh's shoulder gently. She shut her eyes tightly and embraced his snout with both forepaws, holding onto him tightly for a moment until at last the dragon lifted his head to gaze out across the lake of ice.

Uroshonth fixed his hostile blood-red eyes on the congregation that was gathering on the isle's far shore, and he added in a low growl, "None of them will live long enough to kill again," he added in a low growl. "Go on, Kirh. Get started...."

Nodding once, Kirh quickly hopped down onto the ice and started to scamper lightly across the frozen lake, heading straight for the non-illuminated side of the isle. In the meantime Uroshonth approached the lakeshore and swiftly lowered his horned head into the water, submerging his head and neck first. A moment later the rest of his huge, scaly shape slid into the water, entering the waters beneath the ice like some great sea-serpent and promptly disappearing, his tail vanishing last of all underneath the surface of the frozen lake.

A monstrous shadow appeared underneath the ice directly underneath where Kirh was running. It lingered beneath her for a few moments, moving at the same pace as she, then struck out ahead of her and traveled round the island, turning aside while Kirh headed straight on toward the snowbound shore.

After gaining the shore, she came upon the treasure-house's immense icicle-hung edifice from the rear. Arriving at one corner of the dark, looming rear wall, Kirh peered around the corner of the building and glimpsed the noisy, lantern-bearing multitude that was congregating on the opposite end of the isle, close to where the boat lay moored. They had not moved from where they had been standing when she had first struck out across the ice. Now two hundred or so of them stood about one hundred fifty yards away from her, and she could clearly discern everything about them, the garish finery worn by the Lupaoran nobles, the grandiose, formal dress of the other important personages, the Lupaoran generals and officers in ornamental armor... but no Leul.

Remaining hidden where she was behind the wall, Kirh continued to watch as the procession advanced slowly on the treasure-house's front entrance. The crowd of revelers apparently did not go inside right away after arriving at the gate. Instead, some sort of huge celebration appeared to be taking place just inside the doorway.

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Beneath the tall, vaulted roof of the treasure-house's colonnaded entryway, in the shadow of the enormous, outward-swinging door of bronze that stood open to one side of the immense gate, different groups of animals congregated with one another.

The animals were comprised of two groups primarily: a battalion of long-bodied, broad-shouldered ophidiavars carrying longbows in their sharp-nailed claws, and bristling quivers of arrows slung across their backs; and present in the greatest numbers were the armored Lupaoran wolf-warriors of Lord Auraphin, Supreme Commander of the Military Arm of the Lupaor, who stood behind rows of his armed and armored troops, with sixteen of his generals standing at his side, all impeccably dressed in their ornamental armor.

Behind the Lupaoran Lord and his generals stood Lord Auraphin's entourage of she-wolf concubines attired in fine, cold weather dress, and among them a small, solitary brown-furred vixenmorph with a sad, tired look etched upon her silver-trimmed face.

The latter creature's fur was not nearly as pale as the she-wolves' gray and white coats, being an autumnal red-brown color, but it contained nonetheless highlights of soft arctic gray from much time spent living in cold northern climates. From the underside of her slender jaws and so on across her full, furry bosoms and voluptuous belly down to her loins the she-fox's coat came in pure-white as the snow.

The vixenmorph kneaded her delicate black-nailed forepaws together in anguish as she queued together with the other concubines, while an unarmored, gaudily dressed and rather obnoxious male Lupaoran inspected them and took issue with every aspect of their appearances and demeanors he found displeasing.

Leul's legs and feet were thoroughly sore from having been up and about all night and all day. Last night, her master Lord Auraphin had possessed her on his royal divan and had forced her to do the most vile things to him, so that all throughout the night until later the next morning, after leaving Auraphin's bed, she had refused to come out from underneath the large, cold tap which was kept running day and night inside a cold stone room off to the left of the kitchens. Then the beginning of her long workday had arrived, and Leul, having no other option, had donned her clothing and went about her duties as a slave for half the day, till she was called aside and made to stand with the rest of Lord Auraphin's concubines to pose (she had been duly informed by the keeper of her master's harem) for a sex-portrait with the vanity-obsessed Lord Auraphin, in which he would be having all manner of things done to him by his concubines while posing triumphantly.

This portrait was to follow one of Lord Auraphin posing triumphantly with the most famous and valuable treasures from his various campaigns. It was to be followed by a portrait of Auraphin posing triumphantly with his sixteen generals, and a portrait of him posing in front of some of his favorite siege-artillery. Every single picture would boast two extremely large flags bearing the Lupaoran emblem.

Leul's brown eyes appeared increasingly sorrowful and weary as she waited her turn to be dressed down by the portraitist Lord Auraphin had commissioned to "capture the spirit of victory incarnate in him and show it to the world." And that, the portraitist had declared any number of times that day, was precisely what he intended to do and woe betide anyone who attempted to ruin his plans.

"Ugh, simply hideous," the portraitist declared vehemently, waving one of his forepaws toward Leul in a dismissive gesture. "My little Vulp, you look like someone's walked across your grave. First of all, look at this. That's right, look at me. Now brighten and smile. Brighten... and smile." He lifted both forepaws, pointing to the corners on either side of his sharp-fanged mouth, and smiled a foolish, wolfish smile. "Now lift both sides and smile. These muscles," he tapped the corners of his mouth again with the first digits of both forepaws. "Come on then, give us a smile. Come on, this portrait will last forever, and you don't want to be the only one around who's remembered as looking the way you look right this moment."

After a moment or two of silence from Leul, the portraitist made a dismissive, frustrated gesture and sighed.

"Never mind her," Lord Auraphin ordered, coming forward while a number of his she-wolf concubines caressed and massaged his shoulders and thick, gray-furred arms. The Lupaoran grinned. "Hardly matters to me whether or not my little Leul wants to smile for the portrait. My little Leul will have her little mouth out of sight down near the floor with her ass raised up high in front of me. Her master's selected her for the position of greatest honor in his portrait, that of displaying her master's tremendous, unrivaled power to penetrate, since she has proven most excellent at fulfilling her duty since her arrival at the palace. Leul, did you hear that? Your master intends to memorialize your services to him in his victory portrait."

He laughed brazenly, and his concubines obediently joined in.

"Of course, of course," said the portraitist, turning his back on Leul disdainfully as he oriented his attentions on Lord Auraphin. Suddenly the wolf-artist was smiling and nodding like the greatest of sycophants as he agreed, "You're quite right. There is no sense in wasting time. Agreed--a total loss. But this is all about the impressions others have of you, my Lord. You want them to see you, not just a picture, but a Lupaoran with facets, a great many; the Supreme Commander of the Lupaoran Arm should be expected to display nothing less than the indomitable strength his people will respect and admire. No indeed, we shouldn't encounter the least bit of difficulty in depicting you as such, my gallant, handsome Lord Auraphin." The Lupaoran ran his tongue over his own lips. "I've no doubt that the glass will capture everything it needs to capture in you, my Lord, after which the highlight-artists will take care of everything."

"Glass," snorted Lord Auraphin. "It sounds like a lot of rubbish."

"Oh no, my Lord, not at all," replied the portraitist. "You see all our vision is based on light and that light can be trapped inside--burned, if you will--into the perfect mirror-surface of a sheet of this glass. The shades of gray we see are essentially just light mixed with shadow to varying degrees. All light travels across distances, and whenever light travels through certain mediums it will undoubtedly leave its mark. That is the purpose of this sheet of glass: it's a substance upon which light is able to shine and leave its mark, establishing a mirror of the shadows on you, and everything around you, every nuance of the light that shines upon you, created within moments in a single, blindingly bright flash of light."

Lord Auraphin gestured to indicate his displeasure and annoyance, and growled, "I really don't care, all right? Just so long as I'm not kept standing here all night. I have made other plans for the evening, believe it or not."

"Of course, Lord," answered the portraitist. "We're honestly working as fast as we can. That's right," he called out to a group of Lupaorans standing atop a pair of scaffolds, who were inserting a tall, broad sheet of glass into a wooden drop-slot behind a large glass lens and the huge, black-canvas shade. "It goes in facing that way. Yes, now load the powder there."

"Are they fucking ready yet?" snarled Lord Auraphin. "Oh, and by the way, if I see even a hint of patch, or anything that even comes close to resembling mange, I will personally have you and every last one of your artists executed. Am I understood?"

"Perfectly, my m--most patient Lord Auraphin," the wolf-artist stammered, swallowing nervously. "We're nearly ready now... Good--ready now. Now my Lord, if you would take positions, those you would like for your humble servants to memorialize in a portrait of the indomitable Lupaoran greatness of his Lord--"

"Fine, fine. All right, my lovely brides, let's all do like we practiced," said Lord Auraphin, and he immediately began spouting a series of instructions to the group of Lupaoran concubines, and to Leul. "You stand there. You kneel here. You're facing that way. Your head's there. You're down there on your chest. You're right behind me with my tail up your--"

"What is that?" someone down by the water called out loudly and fearfully.

All at once all of the Lupaorans and the ophidiavars in front of the treasure-house became focused on a peculiar, nameless phenomenon which was taking place in a distant part of the frozen-over lake. It was simply the appearance of a large, dark spot in the ice that was causing such a stir. The dark spot was situated almost directly behind the treasure-house, about half a mile off the lakeshore, and more than a mile from where they stood on the isle.

It was growing steadily, spreading across the lake's pale, frozen surface like the flameless black smoldering that spreads through burning pieces of paper. The edges of the dark spot crept inexorably towards shore, browning the ice as they came toward the witnesses, while the center of the growing spot turned black and melted away, becoming lake water, beneath which an unknown heat-source seethed and steamed as though something in the lake was heating the waters.

A few moments later, all of the activity on the ice and beneath the surface had ceased, and the melted spot grew no larger.

"Ah, perhaps," the portraitist began, waving a forepaw, "if I could just have everyone's attention. The lake's very nice, isn't it? Yes, if we could all look over this way for a moment..."

At the same time, Lord Auraphin's General Rjaga immediately came forward to speak to his master. "I think we had better move everyone inside," the ugly, one-eyed Lupaoran growled. "That was someone's trick... some sort of black magic."

Lord Auraphin responded with two quick nods of his head. "You and Lorjaol stay here and announce it, but try to keep everyone calm. I'm taking your peers into the vault with me, to arm them. We'll all meet again in a moment."

"Milord," replied Rjaga, bowing to him.

"Look there!" someone shouted, and suddenly there was commotion near the jetty and the boat tied to it. Something was happening aboard the vessel.

Disbelieving his eyes at first, Lord Auraphin looked again. The boat was moving through the narrow, black waters of the ice-canal, but there was no one aboard. And yet the tow-cable moved, its chains sliding across the ship's rail as though it was being pulled by invisible creatures. Nothing could be seen that accounted for the strange behavior of the boat.

The ophidiavar arches immediately began to fire arrow after arrow into the dark waters around and directly underneath the vessel, but apparently struck nothing. They began firing arrow after arrow into its deck and wooden rail, and the pair of horizontal windlasses through which the tow-cable had been threaded in order to keep the boat from turning around and spinning in open water, but it was all in vain: the boat continued to move ahead in lurches, with no one aboard.

Lord Auraphin spotted the trick at the same moment Rjaga did. It was an optical illusion: clearly they were meant to focus their attention on the boat and think its tow-cable was being pulled along by invisible beings. But when their eyes followed the line of the tow-cable to the opposite shore, they saw a place close to the shore of the lake where the cable was briefly submerged before reaching land.

There directly underneath the place of the cable's submersion they observed some sort of activity under the water.

"There! There!" Lord Auraphin shouted excitedly to the ophidiavar mercenaries, and he pointed to the place where the cable was submerged. "Shoot there! Shoot the cable! The cable!"

At that moment the entire company of archers all began firing, and both ferryboat and tow-cable ceased moving away from them. The snake-creatures' arrows turned the waters around the submerged cable into froth, so that anything underneath it should have been feathered with a multitude of shafts, but nothing floated to the surface, displaying its carcass filled with arrows. And the canal waters grew still.

In the meantime, the Lupaorans were growing nervous.

"Everyone inside. Go on, move," Rjaga called out to whomever would listen to him, which at the present time did not include many. "All of you, let's go inside--"

The ophidiavars immediately moved to do as ordered, as did the crowds of visiting Lupaoran nobility, along with the portraitist and his pack of artists, but at that very same instant as they were all about to enter through the gate into the treasure-house, there was a spectacular noise and a gust of wind similar to the gale which often blows in at the forefront of a violent thunderstorm, causing the trees to sway and whirlwinds of snow to dance across the lake's ice. The wind caused all of them to turn at once and begin searching the slate-dark heavens with frightened eyes.

They saw nothing at all in the sky, and they heard nothing else for a moment, and then there came another sound: an abrupt thump from somewhere nearby.

This noise seemed to come from somewhere in the vicinity of the lake, perhaps from beneath its surface. No one could be certain what the origin of the noise was, and uncertainty soon gave way to mass panic, and cries, and shoving, as the Lupaoran nobles and military officers and all their servants vied for space in the treasure-house's doorway, flooding the entryway and spreading throughout the pillared hall in a confused, milling herd, seemingly unable to decide what direction they ought to take.

The most of the ophidiavars followed the Lupaoran elite through the gate. One of Auraphin's general's stayed outside the gate to command the remaining ophidiavars and Lupaorans who did not entered the gate. The commanding officer immediately ordered a group of fifty Lupaoran wolf-warriors behind the treasure-house's enormous outward-swinging door, and told them to push it closed and seal the building once all the nobility and guests were gathered inside.

It happened in this way: at the moment the Lupaoran warriors were entering the narrow space in between the huge door and the outer wall of the treasure-house, they began to push the heavy bronze door away from the wall, but instead of pushing it, it swung back against them hard, crushing them against the side of the building and killing them all instantly. Before those who bore witness to the terrible event could to respond to the sound of many howls all ending at the same horrific instant, the heavy door quickly swung outward from the wall, moving at such an incredible speed that those unfortunate enough to be caught directly in the path of its powerful swing were unable to get out of the way and were trodden down by the slab of bronze as it swung across them and pummeled them to the ground. These unfortunate victims were violently ridden down into the bare rock and had most of their bones broken as a result. Most were killed instantly.

The door stopped in mid-swing before reaching the fully closed position, and it swung back all the way, striking the outer wall of the treasure-house with a thunderous sound. Everyone standing onshore saw the same thing in that single moment: a pair of black, scaly claws releasing the top of the huge door and then pulling away, disappearing from view on the rooftop.

Immediately a volley of ophidiavars' arrows splintered against the huge doorframe, bounced off the lintel above it, and flew high over the roof, but the division of serpentine archers seemed to be unable to aim their arrows to land specifically on top of the building itself. They were too close to it. They fired another volley and followed with a third as they tried to adjust the trajectory of their missiles to hit the dragon hidden up on top of the building. All their arrows, however, either struck the side of the treasure-house or else struck water on the opposite side of the isle.

The ophidiavars and wolf-warriors advanced on the treasure-house, trying to take cover in its huge doorway, but they ran straight forward into a pillar of hell-red fire that fell from above the door, billowing outward into a cloud as it struck the ground and swiftly washed over a broad area beyond the gate, in the manner of a drop of bright red ink spreading through clear water. That side of the isle was instantly filled with a roaring sea of flame, and two-thirds of the Lupaorans were incinerated instantly before they were able to reach the shelter of the open doorway. After them came the snake-creatures, who lost only a few less to the dragon's fire than their wolven allies had.

The fire-breathing beast's movements were incredibly fast. His opponents had not even seen his head peering at them from above the door, so quickly had Uroshonth raised his head, breathed his fire on them, and hid himself again. The dragon could cover half the isle with flames in a single breath, easily obscuring the smaller animals' vision of what lay above and in front of them.

The ophidiavars shot their arrows into the presumed source of the blasting fires and saw all their arrows catch fire and lose momentum at once. The same happened to the spears of their Lupaoran comrades when the hurtling missiles entered the streams of the dragon's fire; the spears were blown back through the air by the huge creature's breath, set aflame, and sent spinning away.

Those who stayed onshore trying to cast spears and arrows at the dragon were incinerated within moments as waves of Uroshonth's fires stormed across the icy shores. Those who attempted to flank the building and sneak up on him from the sides were ambushed from directly above, as their would-be victim instantly detected the sounds of their footfalls and leapt down from the roof where he had been hiding, landing first among one group then flying immediately to the opposite side of the building to land among the second. It was all over within moments, and twenty more Lupaorans and ophidiavar mercenaries lay dead on the ground, torn to bloody pieces by Uroshonth's claws, their skins blackened and blistered and lacerated.

Grim, appalling carnage surrounded the survivors as the dragon came charging forward to confront them, the thirty warriors who had thus far resisted all his onslaughts. Uroshonth set all their spears and their arrows aflame with his breath as he lifted his mighty foreparts off the ground and furiously beat his huge, powerful wings in order to fan the flames into the faces of his foes. Streams of bright red fire burned across the expanse of open ground in front of the treasure-house, turning the sky above the lake a hellish and sinister red while illuminating the nearby forests and glistening in the lake's ice.

When the fires cleared, Uroshonth's single breath of flames had burned half of the ophidiavar and all of the wolf-warriors to death. At that moment, a rain of arrows soared out of the curtain of flames and several of the missiles penetrated Uroshonth's shoulders and his breast, and even one in the soft under-scales of his neck, but at that point he was consumed by rage and nothing at all could stop him.

The dragon brushed the thick arrow-shafts out of his hide with vicious swipes of his forepaws, leaving behind several open, bleeding gashes, which the ophidiavar archers, having now run out of arrows, attacked with swords and axes, charging Uroshonth even as he bore down upon them. Bellowing in a fury, the dragon tore the serpentine creatures to pieces and scattered the fragments of their tails, arms, and torsos across the landscape, sending the dismembered parts sliding across the lake's ice.

Uroshonth's final serpentine opponent sprang up directly in front of the dragon's muzzle with a surge of viperine quickness and threw a huge battleaxe, aiming at the larger creature's face.

Uroshonth at that moment turned his head to the side, knocking the thrown battleaxe out of the air with his horn. The weapon flew straight up into the air whereupon the dragon caught it with his tail, coiled the end of the scaly appendage around the weapon, and seized control of it in mid-flight. His tail immediately swung around to the front of him, and a moment later an ophidiavar's head rolled on the ground in front of him.

Without hesitating a moment, the dragon trampled his foe's severed head flat and charged straight for the treasure-house's bronze door, which had since been sealed by the Lupaorans and ophidiavar that hid inside. The door failed to burst inwards, even after Uroshonth had thrown his entire weight behind his shoulder and hurled himself against it three times, roaring with fury the entire time as he pounded with all his might.

Without pausing, Uroshonth once again seized the axe in his tail and began to strike the hinges of the bronze door with this weapon. In between axe-blows he breathed flames onto the door-hinges, causing the first hinge to break rather quickly after receiving several blows from the axe, once the metal had been heated to glowing red. He did the uppermost hinge first then struck the middle and lower hinges repeatedly between bursts of his flames until those were broken as well

At that moment the huge bronze door came loose from its frame, and would have fallen and landed directly on top of Uroshonth, had he not at that moment leapt into the air and taken wing, grasped the top of the door in his prehensile hind-claws, and pushed it forward into the building. The dragon hovered directly above the door, powerful wings beating swiftly and loudly, pushing the door forward until the heavy object fell against the side of the building, burst through the stone doorframe with a thunderous noise, and sent up huge clouds of dust as it landed with a colossal, isle-shaking thud just inside the entryway.

Uroshonth waited until he had seen a number of the ophidiavars' arrows come flying out of the doorway. A lull came between the volleys, at which point he filled the treasure-house's entryway with the hottest flames his insides were capable of producing.

Hearing no screams from inside the building, Uroshonth landed in front of the doorway and immediately lunged for the fallen door. Setting the points of his two huge horns against the bottom of the thick bronze door he continued his lunge, transforming it into a charge as he advanced through the broken portal, pushing the door's immense weight across the floor ahead of him. He charged straight down the hall, right through the remainder of the ophidiavar archers, all of whom were instantly crushed to death beneath the door's tremendous, sliding slab while they were still casting aside their bows and trying to slither out of the way.

Uroshonth's action left long smears of red gore on the floor of the entryway as the dragon pushed the huge door across the corpses of his foes, until it would slide no further into the room.

Immediately Uroshonth left the door, fleeing to the shelter of a row of pillars on one side of the hall as the spears and arrows of a hundred Lupaoran wolf-warriors flew in his direction him. Although none of the missiles was able to pierce his hide, several of them struck him glancing blows and caused him pain, which, in his current fury, caused his vision to fade to a red haze of unadulterated, reasonless hostility and to feel no pain and understand nothing at all of reason.

The treasure-house's division of spearwolves all carried tall, interlocking shields, and when these shields were stood in front and raised above their heads, the Lupaoran archers were fully concealed behind rows upon rows of warriors and armor. The shields were of such high-grade steel that Uroshonth's fires simply washed over the tile-patterns of their unbreakable infantry formation. The protected archers behind them were able to continue shooting their arrows at the dragon, keeping him at bay between breaths of fire, hurling another volley his way each time he stopped to inhale.

Furious, the dragon coiled his long, prehensile tail around the base of one of the entrance hall's pillars and with a roar like thunder he gripped it and pulled the column right off of its stone base, causing the entire building to tremble and the roof to buckle in one place. The huge pillar fell against the wall and broke apart. Immediately after pulling down this first column, Uroshonth started on the next.

After witnessing the dragon's terrifying actions, the Lupaoran spearwolves to the front of the archers cringed and glanced at the shaking ceiling, bringing their shields up high to guard their heads, exposing their legs.

The moment they did so, Uroshonth dropped to his belly like a snake, and a huge column of flame shot forth from his mouth, flooding the space underneath the wolf-warriors' upraised shields and incinerating them all. With no shield-bearers left alive to guard them, the Lupaoran archers fell quickly to the dragon's claws and teeth.

Panting hard, Uroshonth glanced around.

Nothing else moved in the entrance hall: the bodies of the fallen lay everywhere, smoke rising from the corpses. Suddenly the dragon heard a commotion taking place outside the treasure-house and he exited the building, proceeding with the caution of a species born and bred to suspicion. He reached the doorway and looked outside.

A group of the Lupaoran nobility and their valets along with the portraitist and his pack of highlight-artists were attempting to escape, pulling the ferryboat toward the jetty through a concerted effort, with as many as twenty Lupaoran wolves standing on either side of the tow-cable and pulling the boat toward the isle. A like number of the Lupaorans stood onshore and eagerly awaited the arrival of the boat, but when they turned round and saw Uroshonth's massive, black-winged shape blocking the door to the treasure-house, several of them screamed loudly in a panic, while the rest turned to view the cause of the disturbance, and quickly grew silent and terrified.

All the Lupaorans froze instantly, shivering at the red glare of the beast which stared at them from the doorway. For several moments Uroshonth did nothing and made no sound; he made no move to attack them.

"Ah, um," the portraitist began, clearly terrified, "we need... all of you--yes, let's have all my wolves in position, if we could, and let's--another glass--"

Following their master's instructions, the assistants began to load another sheet of glass into the slot behind the lens and the shade, while the Lupaoran portraitist declared to Uroshonth in a shaky, sycophantic voice:

"My, what a--a--a magnificent... tremendous, superb specimen of dragon you are! Gods, what a portrait I shall make for you, for such an impressive, graceful--"

"Excuse me," Uroshonth interrupted him in a loud growl, "what the fuck are you doing?"

The portraitist's pack of helpers froze all at once, and the portraitist himself was left stammering, "Ah, I... ah..."

Uroshonth glared at the Lupaoran unmercifully. "Where is Lord Auraphin?"

With one trembling forepaw, the portraitist pointed toward the treasure-house. "There's," stammered the artist. "Ah, he, ah... inner vault, he and his generals--"

Without waiting another moment, Uroshonth turned his back on them, returning at once to the bloody carnage in the entrance hall, which he trampled uncaringly beneath his already bloodstained claws as he made his way towards the inner vault.

Arriving at an open set of iron-wrought double-doors, Uroshonth peered through the open doorway and discerned ahead a room with a short, broad, straight stair leading up, and at the top of the steps, another set of iron-wrought double-doors, also standing open. After only a moment's hesitation, he entered the room.

At that instant the Lupaorans ambushed the dragon from all sides. Hidden away in the triangular spaces behind each door were four of Lord Auraphin's generals, and Lord Auraphin himself came in through the door at the top of the stair, wielding a heavy black mace and a steel shield which contained a weapon of powerful magic.

Lord Auraphin's shield was large, round, and steel-wrought. A small, central pull-ring dangled from its front, the centerpiece of a small, loose disc which had been inset into a round hole cut into the shield's exact center. Only when Lord Auraphin hooked a digit or the hook at the end of his mace-handle underneath this pull-ring, grasped it, and pulled it out, one was unable to discern beyond the gray of his hairy forearm through the hole, as one ought to have been able to do; instead, one saw only blackness invariant like an illimitable void, a vacuum, an omnivorous gap in space-time that led to dimensions of absolute, life-eclipsing emptiness.

Upon sighting Lord Auraphin the dragon immediately breathed a blast of fire directly at his enemy. The Lupaoran Commander had only to grasp the pull-ring and pull the loose disc out of the center of his void-shield, and the entire volume of the dragon's fire was immediately sucked inside the shield's devouring hole, never again to be seen.

It was at that moment, as Uroshonth was entering into the room and mounting the steps, breathing fire as he climbed, that Lord Auraphin's generals sought to close their trap by sealing the doors at both ends of the stair. With the dragon trapped and his fires under the shield's control, they intended to stab him to death with their spears, holding him in place, while their master beat the creature's skull to a bloody pulp with his mace, except they never succeeded in sealing the doors....

Glimpsing the closing doors out of the corners of his eyes, Uroshonth crouched and released a tremendous column of flame, washing the entire stairway with fire as his giant hind-legs kicked repeatedly to the rear, stomping and tearing at the shields of the spear-wielding Lupaorans, forcing them back. His fires continued to blast the steps in front of him.

Uroshonth's fire-attacks, however, failed to scorch a soul; Lord Auraphin's void-shield sucked it all in. Without pausing, the dragon continued to kick against the shields of his foes, backing them toward the door, until they were backed into the corners. With a swift and sudden flurry of left-right-left movements from his scaly tail, Uroshonth pulled the iron-wrought doors open wide, slamming the doors against the adjacent walls and trapping eight of Uroshonth's generals behind him in the triangular spaces behind the opened doors.

It took no time at all for the Lupaorans to push the iron doors out and escape, but Uroshonth had already gone charging up the steps, trampling everything in his path and rending to death two Lupaoran generals with his claws.

Lord Auraphin swung his mace at the dragon from afar, and from the weapon's black handle a long black chain extended so that the heavy ball flew straight towards Uroshonth's chest, with its sights on crushing his sternum.

The dragon batted the sphere away with the back of his forepaw, wincing at the pain this action caused. A moment later Uroshonth exploded forward, charging up the steps and pulling two more of Lord Auraphin's generals beneath his claws, which he rent to pieces until their corpses resembled little more than dismembered wolf-skeletons clad in bloody rags of flesh.

After seeing their comrades killed in such brutal fashion, the remaining four of Auraphin's generals in front of the dragon, along with Lord Auraphin himself, retreated up the steps. At the same time, Uroshonth continued to vex the shields of the eight spear-wielding generals behind him with incessant hind-leg kicks and battery from his lashing tail, until without warning the dragon gathered both hind-legs underneath him and leaped backwards over the heads of the eight attacking him from behind, landing behind them on the stair.

Uroshonth landed below the bottom step and breathed a roaring column of fire straight down towards his feet, near the base of the steps. The flames washed over the lower steps, and the eight Lupaoran generals who had been standing near that spot were all incinerated, their armor melted to their smoldering skins.

Having retreated almost to the top of the stair, Lord Auraphin ran back down to the bottom step, arriving much too late with his flame-devouring void-shield. The eight generals were already burnt to crisps before the hole in his shield could suck down any of the dragon's fires. Enraged, Auraphin swung his mace and extended the weapon's chain, whose length wrapped around the dragon's neck.

As soon as it had done so, Auraphin yanked the chain, pulling his enemy's head into a violent collision with the wall while his four surviving generals moved in to finish off their opponent. Giving the dragon's claws a wide berth they all ran in from the sides, aiming for the base of Uroshonth's throat with their long spears. But they had neglected to consider his tail, as well as the unforgiving ferocity of the creature that was their opponent.

Using his tail, Uroshonth reached toward the first Lupaoran general and seized the spear from him, pulling the haft up underneath the wolf-warrior's jaw and simultaneously knocking him into the air. The tail-wielded spear quickly spun around and pierced the Lupaoran's throat, killing him as he was landing on the floor. He crumpled to the floor, dead.

Thrusting the spear with his coiled tail, Uroshonth impaled the neck of another wolf, killing him before the other three were given the chance to react.

One of the pair of survivors, General Rjaga, confronted the spear-wielding tail of the lethal creature and disarmed it within moments. But before they could launch any sort of attack, Uroshonth seized the spear and pulled the lead wolf onto his knees. At the same time, the other Lupaoran generals charged in, jabbing his spear at the scales of the dragon's throat and undersides, and a moment later the leader knew no more as the creature's monstrous jaws closed over his torso, biting off everything above the wolf's midsection.

Before Uroshonth could spit out the Lupaoran's bloody torso, a tremendous roar of pain escaped him. He looked down to see that General Rjaga, although he had fallen to the ground, had contrived to jab his spear upwards into the tender scales underneath the dragon's left hind-leg, driving the point towards his hip-joint. At the same time the huge creature's tail strangled Rjaga, but the Lupaoran did not give up, thrusting the spear ever deeper, wearing a bloody snarl upon his lips.

A moment later the Lupaoran screamed in agony as the claw-tip of Uroshonth's wing swung down and tore out his only remaining eye.

Instantly Rjaga cast the spear away and began to wallow in howling panic, as Uroshonth's coils entwined his limbs and lifted him up until he hung by both ankles directly above the dragon's red-eyed visage, which he knew was below him nonetheless after having been blinded by his claw. The wolf-warrior panicked and struggled in vain as the ornamental cuirass was removed from him, and he screamed as the heat and odor of the beast's mouth enveloped his body.

Rjaga landed inside a soft, slimy, hot chamber whose walls immediately tightened down upon his body, its pressure causing him to scream, and then all of a sudden he was being pulled into a long, slimy, constrictive tube of flesh, gagging on mouthfuls of mucus as he tried to cry out for help. He continued to struggle until he lost consciousness from the lack of breathable air, and died.

Uroshonth turned after devouring the last of Lord Auraphin's servants, but when he looked for the Lord himself he found the chamber to be devoid of his presence. At the same time he noticed the Lupaoran's apparent way of escape: Uroshonth glimpsed a small doorway in the wall where no door had existed before, one that he was quite certain led to a door hidden somewhere on the rear wall of the treasure-house.

Snarling a curse, the dragon exited the treasure-house and took to the air, circling the lake for a better view of the surrounding lands. Nowhere on the lake's frozen surface or anywhere in the surrounding forests did he discern the figure of Lord Auraphin. The Lupaoran Lord had escaped from the treasure-house and apparently had evaporated into the void he carried inside his enchanted shield.

On the lake's far shore, crowds of Lupaoran nobility and the portraitists were climbing ashore and heading inland with all speed, after seeing the dragon soaring above the lake.

At that same moment Uroshonth caught sight of Kirh and Leul fleeing together across the icy wilderness, surrounded on all sides by forest. He observed that there were several packs of Lupaoran warriors in the forests on that side of the lake, all of whom currently had their eyes fixed on him alone, but one of which was traveling on a course that would eventually lead them to intercept the two Vulpelins.

Swooping low over the tops of the trees and risking injury from the many spears and arrows that came flying in his direction, Uroshonth opened his jaws and breathed a tremendous breath of fire onto the heads of the packs of wolf-warriors, setting them aflame and setting the surrounding trees alight at the same time.

A moment later, just as he was flapping his wings to gain altitude, a shooting length of iron chain swung in from out of nowhere and wrapped itself tightly around Uroshonth's neck. He glimpsed the heavy ball of Lord Auraphin's mace swinging around towards his head and neck, and a moment later he felt the chains around his neck grow constrictive and redirect his flight straight into the mountainside.

After a crashing collision and a heavy landing, the chain unwound from around Uroshonth's neck, and the dragon gathered his claws underneath him and crouched in readiness, orienting his gaze on the wolf in front of him:

Lord Auraphin, who stood all alone, brandishing his mace in front of the steel-wrought shield, whose dark void-hole the Lupaoran was preparing to uncover using the hook on the end of his mace-handle the moment he saw any flames shoot forth from the dragon's mouth.

Uroshonth kept his jaws closed for the time being as he stared at his opponent.

Grinning like a juvenile, Auraphin remarked, "Did you like that last move of mine? Was the mountainside a good fuck for you then, you stupid beast? Great goddesses dildo-riding the gods fucking asses, how fucking stupid do you creatures grow up to be? You honestly believed that returning here to take revenge on me was be a good idea? I am about to make you regret ever coming here, you slime-wallowing, winged vermin of the sky... I will scrape you off the bottom of my heel as I walk away from your remains, like the pile of shit you are."

Uroshonth displayed his fangs in a wicked grin of hatred. "Any fucking time." He made a mock-polite gesture with a claw, and said, "When you're ready, grandfather. You don't have to hold back."

Snarling in a rage, the Lupaoran gave tongue like he was on the hunt and charged at his foe with abandon, howling in a fury. Uroshonth met him claw-to-shield, and had the heavy iron ball and its long chain trapped beneath his forepaws within moments. Lord Auraphin had to fight to keep his head as the dragon's snapped at him, while the beast's claws pulled down the edge of his round shield as Uroshonth sought to take bites out of the Lupaoran's face and neck.

Auraphin swung his mace at the dragon's snapping jaws and struck him under his right eyes, knocking his head to the side. The wolf hurled his weapon again and wrapped its long chain around Uroshonth's muzzle, sealing the dragon's jaws shut.

Uroshonth leaned his hindquarters into the hit he had taken as he swung his head away. His tail quickly swung around and struck Lord Auraphin on the side of the skull. The Lupaoran Lord was knocked ten feet to the side, and upon landing he lost his grip on his mace and fell. Before he could regain his feet and recover the weapon, it was swatted away by a monstrous claw and sent rattling across the floor as the huge creature charged towards him.

Uroshonth leapt, spreading his massive wings, and landed directly in front of the Lupaoran Commander, snatching him off his feet in a sliver of an instant and trapping him in one fore-claw. As Auraphin struggled and tried to work his shield-arm free, the hole in his void-shield painfully pulled the dragon's paw-scales out by the roots, sucking each of them into oblivion, one at a time.

Crushed within the dragon's fore-claw, Lord Auraphin was then lifted high above the ground and held up before the creature's maw, making it clear that its intention was to devour him. Before Uroshonth could strike, Auraphin freed his shield arm and raised the weapon to receive his bite. The dragon bit down, and his left front fang entered the void and immediately got trapped inside. The hole in the shield pulled and pulled at his tooth but could not extrude it from the jaw.

Uroshonth bellowed in pain nonetheless, and the difficulty the shield was having pulling the fang loose from his upper jaw was soon made apparent by the appearance of a number of waving tentacles of darkly glistening flesh, all aglow with an otherworldly blue phosphorescence in the snowy northern nighttime.

"Fuck! Gods! I'm going to... rip your fucking legs off on my bottom teeth!" Uroshonth declared with unquenchable fury. "And fucking feed them to you on the way down my throat! Fuck you! RrrggghmmmrrRRAAAAAAAGGGHHH!"

"Yes, now it becomes clear," Auraphin panted, grinning. "You thought that all it did was devour and veour? Yet you never wondered who was doing all the devouring?"

Still bellowing loudly, the dragon took to the air with Lord Auraphin clinging to his upper jaw and the luminous black tentacles exploring his scaly lips and snout. Within moments Uroshonth was flying a mile above the forests, passing over a ridge of high mountains, and at that time he went berserk: It was not animal behavior being exhibited, but rage, pure destructive primal energy, violence carried out against the self with neither thought nor reason to guide the actions.

The dragon twisted his neck and his body into the most incredible convolutions while scratching and pawing at the end of his muzzle as though bullet-ants were invading his nasal cavity. Blood dripped from the roof of his mouth and his gums as he continued to inflict slight wounds on himself.

Then, during one of Uroshonth's mid-air convulsions, Lord Auraphin's arm bone snapped. He howled in horrible pain and as he did so another furious twist of the dragon's twisting body broke his arm in two more places. He uttered a startled scream as his limp arm slipped out of the shield's brace, after which he plummeted towards a deep snowbank which waited on the opposite side of the mountain ridge many hundreds of feet below.

Above him, Uroshonth wrestled furiously to remove the shield from his front fang without tearing the tooth out of his upper jaw, and before one of the glistening black tentacles was able to slide up into his nostril. With a scream and a wrench and a sudden, tearing *snap* of awful pain, the shield came loose from his jaws.

Clutching the wolf's weapon in one fore-claw, Uroshonth quickly reached up to feel how many front fangs he had: he still had two, though the one on the left was still too sensitive to touch. Heaving a sigh of relief, the dragon returned his attention to Lord Auraphin, hundreds of feet below him, falling towards the snow-buried mountainside.

Uroshonth flung the shield downwards into the snowbank, throwing it as straight and as hard as he could. The shield's spinning silver disc fell at an incredible rate of speed, easily outpacing Lord Auraphin and landing in the deep snow when the Lupaoran Commander was still a hundred feet above the snowbank. Instantly the shield's teeming void-hole sucked every bit of the snow off the mountainside just as it had sucked in all of Uroshonth's fire, and the soft cushion of white snow immediately vanished inside the black hole of the shield, and with it went the brace of glowing tentacles.

Lord Auraphin, seeing what was taking place below him, saw the mountainside rushing up to meet him change color suddenly, turning from snow-white to the black of wet, bare rock within moments.

"Hope the mountainside's a good fuck, Auraphin!" Uroshonth called down from above.

Lord Auraphin had time to scream once, briefly, before he struck the side of the mountain and broke almost every bone in his body.

Immediately Uroshonth swooped down to land in front of the broken, twitching body of his lupine foe. The void-shield came rattling and sliding across the mountainside towards its master, tentacles groping for him as it came, and Uroshonth stopped it with one claw. In front of him, those same blue-phosphorescent black tentacles were squirming out of the holes in the Lupaoran Lord's broken corpse, reforming the bones and quickly reshaping the flesh.

Uroshonth breathed fire on the corpse over and over until the wormlike things stopped squirming and turned to ash. After he had done so, the tentacles coming from the hole in the shield vanished into the hole, no longer seeking their master.

Lord Auraphin was no more. Nothing remained of his body except piles of ash and a few smoldering bones.

After disposing of the burnt remains of his enemy in a shallow grave, the dragon partially lifted a boulder six times his size and threw the void-shield up underneath the stone with his tail before setting the boulder down again. Then Uroshonth caused a huge rockslide and avalanche, trapping the huge boulder underneath a flood of snow and stone debris.

Viewing the results with satisfaction, the dragon Uroshonth quickly spread his wings and flew off in search of more of the little creatures who had held him captive, to burn them all until nothing remained.

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Part Six: Epilogue

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Standing once more in front of the cave-mouth leading to Arsenal where he had been held captive for weeks, Uroshonth hesitated before proceeding inside. The last of the wolf-creatures had either burned or fled into the wilderness and he had not bothered to track them, having consumed his fill of their flesh and blood. Instead of hunting them like prey, he reveled in the destruction of their architecture, and razing their buildings to the ground until no stone rested atop another. Once the destruction was total, he moved on.

Now he stood before the Arsenal, wondering silently if there was anything in it worth destroying, or whether he should look elsewhere first. At that moment his crimson eyes glimpsed movement in the cave's interior, and he entered the tunnel leading to the Arsenal at a full run, charging forward and coming upon a slight, gray-furred female Lupaoran wearing the attire of a lady of high standing, and carrying some sort of a torture-device, a big, jagged needle of steel. She had bloodstains on her person and some appeared to be on the weapon, but it was not she who had bled.

Uroshonth smelled dragon's blood on the needle.

A snarl of rage spread across his jaws, and his eyes smoldered. He snatched up the little gray wolf-creature in one claw and prepared to devour her at once, but at that moment she cried out to him, saying something that immediately caused him to stop what he was doing.

"She's chained up inside!" she cried, and Uroshonth paused, permitting her to continue. "Melt her chains! You can free her!"

"Where is the other dragon?" he growled. "Tell me now or you die."

"Ahead," cried the Lupaoran female. "Please don't kill me. I was only trying to help. They left her in there while they ran off. They're all gone, the snake-creatures and my people. They all left. She's been trying to break free all this time and has rubbed her hide raw on the manacles. The chains did this to her, not me. You must help her."

Slowly, Uroshonth set her down in front of him.

The female Lupaoran stood before him and trembled, craning her neck to stare up at his fang-lined jaws and the dreadful look in his eyes. She whimpered, and hid her own eyes behind her forepaws.

"What's your name?" Uroshonth asked in harsh accents.

"Aroslouin," was the murmured reply.

"Aroslouin, I am going to let you go," Uroshonth told her. "But you must leave here, never to return. And if I come to find out that this was all some trick of theirs, some way to lure me into an ambush, once I have disposed of that ambush, I will come looking for you. Have I made myself understood, or must I explain myself further?"

"I--I understand perfectly," Aroslouin stammered in response, backing away and shaking her head no in a fit of terror. "Please, it's not a trick. There really, really is another dragon in there, a female. I promise you--"

"Go!" he roared suddenly in a rage, and he watched the little wolf-creature turn tail and flee, hurrying away with all speed. She exited the cave-entrance to the Arsenal and ran outside into the snow, never looking back.

Returning his attention to the tunnel ahead, Uroshonth continued resolutely until he came upon the same cave in which he had been held captive, and there, occupying virtually the same space he himself had occupied during his imprisonment, lay the most corpulent she-dragon Uroshonth had ever seen. Though not long, the emerald-green she-creature possessed a huge scaly body as fat as some of the fattest males Uroshonth had seen in his long lifetime, but all that weight had been squeezed onto a dragoness' slight, clearly inadequate frame. This dragoness had become so fat that she was incapable sitting up all by herself.

As soon as he had entered the room, the great she-dragon's pleading yellow eyes instantly oriented on him, while she struggled in vain to slide her bloody forelimbs and hind-legs out of the chains that bound them to the floor, terrified. The expression on her face told Uroshonth that she thought he had come with intention of devouring her whole, or worse.

Finding another dragon chained up exactly as he had been enraged Uroshonth to the point that he seized the she-dragon's thick chains between his jaws and breathed fire on them and gnawed the steel, until he had chewed through them enough to tear them apart with his claws. He did this to each chain, until the dragoness had been freed, and once the chains no longer held her down, she gathered her legs underneath her, trembling at the knees from a strain to which she was still unaccustomed. Once on her feet she struggled to remain standing.

After locking the she-dragon's pair of tan, upward-reaching horns behind his pair of huge black ones, Uroshonth backed his hindquarters up to be underneath her head and neck, which were relatively light. He leaned forward slightly and pulled the dragoness' broad, ponderous torso and midsection partway onto his back. Staggering, the dragon walked in a zigzag and nearly fell underneath her a number of times, but he managed to carry her to the cave-entrance and set her down outside--none too gently--on the snow.

Uroshonth lay half-crushed underneath her for a moment. Then after pulling his tail and his hindquarters out from under the dragoness' enormous midsection, he turned back and leaned in until he and she were standing together, snout-to-snout, and he was looking into the depths of her great yellow-citrine eyes, and breathing nothing but the heat of her panting breaths even as she breathed his breath and blinked at him beneath the starlight. A look of relief spread across the she-dragon's countenance as she absorbed the dark facial features of her rescuer.

Uroshonth gently brushed the side of her horned head with one claw and looked her over for a moment. Except for two places where the female's ankles had been rubbed raw, she appeared to be uninjured.

"How are you feeling?" he panted. "Can you talk?"

"I can," she replied, breathing hard. "I feel... fine."

She reached for one side of Uroshonth's face with one claw and caressed him there as she continued to breathe nothing but the hot breaths of her rescuer. She kissed him on the end of his black muzzle. Uroshonth continued the kiss, proceeding gently at first, nudging the front of the she-dragon's snout with his fangs' smooth sharpness, and then all at once the dragoness' long tongue surged past his teeth and she leaned into his kiss. He received the full passion of her mouth. Faint blue flames accompanied each of his huffing, growling breaths as Uroshonth returned her passions tenfold.

All at once a delicate green claw clamped down over the end of Uroshonth's panting snout, and as he looked down into the dragoness' pretty citrine gaze, she smiled at him and asked, "Wait--do you have a name?"

"Uroshonth."

"Uroshonth... my name is Velraith. It's a pleasure."

And, having just introduced herself, Velraith underwent a sudden change of facial expression, going from smiling relief to inconsolable sorrow within moments of speaking her name. While Uroshonth stood by her side, bearing shocked witness to the unfolding drama as the dragoness wept copious tears, and would not open her eyes to look upon her own shape.

"I'm hideous," she cried. "Look. Look at what's become of me. I'm nothing but a huge, bloated bag of flesh. I can scarcely roll over. I can't fly anymore. My wings are too weak to carry my fat body.

"Every day I was tortured, raped, and overfed by those dreadful beasts. Every day! And every day I begged them to let me go, but this only made them laugh at me, and still they kept overfeeding me, and they kept using my body to sate their macrophilic lusts, until I could no longer stand it." A cry of despair escaped her. "And now look at me: a freak of nature, so fat that I am scarcely able to stand my own on four legs, so fat that I cannot even" --at this point the tears truly started flowing, and Velraith began to sob uncontrollably-- "I cannot even reach my own sex to clean it out, to wash their vile stenches out of me. Oh gods! It's so awful! It's awful I can't--I can't..."

"There now, calm down," Uroshonth replied unsteadily, somewhat taken aback by Velraith's sudden collapse into tears.

"Calm down?" she repeated, nearly shrieking. "How can you expect anyone to be calm after something like that's happened to them? I'm not able to fly anymore because I am too fat." Once more the dragoness succumbed to tears, wailing in sorrow, "Now what dragon would want a creature as fat and hideous as what I've become? Oh gods, gods!" she wept. "Why has this happened? Why am I being punished this way?"

"First of all, you're alive," Uroshonth answered. "You're not being punished with anything anymore. You might not have been alive for much longer had I not happened along at the time I did.

"Second, the weight will go away over time. Wait. You are still young, I can tell, and you have never truly gorged yourself on a lot of meat, never truly fattened yourself to the point where it starts affecting your movements. I can remember reaching sizes far larger than your current one, in times past when prey was more than plentiful and it took no effort at all to catch. You needn't worry about staying that way forever. The fat will go away in time."

Velraith sniffled, and a gleam of hope appeared in her yellow gaze. "It--it will?"

"Of course it will. It's not permanent unless you remain at that weight for years and years. Oh, and..." Uroshonth broke off speaking momentarily in order to slurp the end of Velraith's snout with his long tongue. He offered her a sharp-fanged smile. "You asked earlier what dragon would want you, now that you've become fat? Perhaps another fat dragon might," he offered gently, "if you're interested, although I know that I cannot begin to guess the suffering you must've--"

"No," she stopped him. Staring into Uroshonth's eyes, she murmured, "You can make me clean again. Yes, rinse me clean, Uroshonth. Rinse all the filth out of me. Use your seed to make me clean again. I need you to do this for me."

"But," Uroshonth began uncertainly, even though he already felt his dragonhood starting to grow heavy and rubbery inside its sheath of scale, "but after all the rape and torture, y--"

"I need a dragon inside of me," she finished for him. "I need you, Uroshonth. I want to be fucked by hard dragoncock right this moment like you cannot imagine. I need you now. I need to be treated like a draconic slut who needs her insides cleaned out and coated with pure dragon's seed, fucked in every way, until she is coated inside and out with dragon's seed, and has had every ounce of those stinking wolves and snakes washed out of her. I need you, Uroshonth. I need you now, so badly... Please..."

The red tip of Uroshonth's moist, slippery dragonhood had already emerged from underneath his lower belly-scales and begun to flick its six-inch black tongue in and out of the hole on the head of his shaft.

Seeing the tongue, Velraith gasped, "You're... you're one of those. I've never been with... one of you before. I've heard..." She ran her forked tongue across her sharp white teeth and her breathing changed pitch, becoming less the hard pant of exhaustion and more the steady pant of sensuality.

"Everything you've heard," replied Uroshonth, "doesn't come close."

Moaning, Velraith leaned her head back and rolled over ponderously onto her long serrate spine. "Yes," she murmured. "Fuck me, Uroshonth! Yes! Yes!" The volume of her voice increased as Uroshonth's head descended to her pale green breasts, and he began to nuzzle them, while the head of his lukewarm, semi-rigid cock barely touched her opening, pushing gently against its lips, spreading them slightly open, pushing them downward slightly, but not enough to penetrate.

Uroshonth climbed on top of the dragoness in and sat upright on top of her chest, straddling her breasts, resting the distended shaft and balls of his semi-rigid dragonhood in between the two smooth, unbelievably soft globes of flesh and pressing down. Pre was already oozing from the head of his member, and the black-tongue flicking in and out of the hole grew in size from six to fully eight inches and finally ten inches within a matter of moments as the dragon greased his partner's cleavage with pre-cum, gently rocking himself back and forth on top of her bulging tits until he was fully erect and swollen to his full length of sixty-five inches. A steady drizzle of thin draconic pre-cum flowed from the huge pulsating head of Uroshonth's dragonhood as he tit-fucked the dragoness with slow, mild undulations, smearing his secretions onto her hide.

She adopted a gentle rocking movement that matched his while her head snaked in towards his nether regions, and she began flicking its forked ends across his balls and the base of his tail, tickling both at ince. Soon Velraith had begun to lick Uroshonth's balls vigorously while the dragon crawled forward across the dome-like protuberance of her huge belly and rested his jaws across the soft scales of her lower regions, just above her sex.

The she-dragon immediately stopped licking her partner's balls and lay her head back, growling a deep, satisfied 'murrrr' as she felt her partner's scaly forepaws gently come to rest on either side of her well-saturated slit. Uroshonth gently peeled back the lips of the she-dragon's sex and rested his snaky neck in between them. He began to slither in a reverse-serpentine fashion, pulling his wriggling neck down the line of her vaginal slit and pressing into it, until at last he dipped the end of his snout towards her sex, and Velraith, moaning with pleasure, was unable to undertake a single course of thought as all her thoughts became focused on two things: the tongue from the male dragon's mouth as he pushed her open and forced the entire squashy, slippery length of his appendage in and out of her vagina, drooling all over her as he licked her; and the male dragon's ten-inch black genital-tongue emerging from the head of his cock, which swarmed all over her breasts and made her shiver with delight.

Before long, a warm, tingling sensation was building deep inside Velraith's loins, one that, no matter how much she tried to squirm or adjust herself underneath the male's weight weight, only grew stronger as the dragon's two tongues continued to lick out her pussy and slither all over her breasts. Within a few moments her legs were trembling and kicking feebly as the feeling in her loins built towards a mighty crescendo. She arrived at the gate, and hovered on the verge of orgasm in a realm of singing ecstasy and physical well-being, and then the trembling of her legs and the pounding of her heart became too overwhelming, causing her to scream uncontrollably, matching the uncontrollable spasms that wracked her body as she began to cum wildly, spurting huge floods of her secretions onto her male partner's face.

A glorious release of mellow gold flooded out from between her legs, and she felt the slimy sheen of it sparkling as rivers of the oozing substance coursed down her scaly, twitching legs and moistened the spaces in between her toe-claws. Her emerald tail was thoroughly coated and glistening with her own warm, soothing secretions and her breasts were beslimed with a generous load of Uroshonth's slimy pre, which quickly grew cold on the skin of her breasts as it passed from the tip of his cock to her, but which continued to drizzle from the head of his enormous dragonhood without cease, reheating the pre which was already becoming cold in the wintry air.

After Velaith's first orgasm, the first to be given to her by a dragon in a very long time, she back lay on the snows panting and thoroughly satisfied with her head thrown back and her fang-lined jaws opened wide, while Uroshonth climbed down off of her full chest and went over to the she-dragon's hindquarters. Using both strong forelimbs, the male took hold of the extraordinarily fat base of the dragoness' tail and twisted it, turning the female over onto her stomach with some difficulty.

Once Velraith was lying on her stomach, Uroshonth lifted the base of her tail, propping it on the big bulge of his gray-green belly in order to keep it out of the way, after which he begun to fuck the dragoness vigorously from the missionary position, sliding his hot, throbbing dragonhood into her sex smoothly and suddenly in a way that made her gasp as he first entered her. A grin of pleasure spread across the she-dragon's jaws as literally felt the veins throbbing in his cock as he entered her. He thrust his sex into hers a few times, riding slowly at first, pulling his cock out of her with deliberate motions. He gradually held his thrusts deep inside her for longer and longer periods, slower and slower removals, while he leaned forward over her ample hindquarters and embraced them. Uroshonth grunted and growled as he hugged her huge rump close to his chest and put the full force of his hips and legs into every slow, deliberate thrust.

Velraith's breath slowed as Uroshonth slowed his pace and she clasped the male's gently breathing black-scaled head against her pale green breasts. His thrusting shaft was her axis, invading her and yet giving her a center on which she could focus. She twisted and gasped and moaned, pushing her ass back against the dragon's long rigid cock, slowly filling her insides wall-to-wall with his slippery, pliant flesh.

Uroshonth's dragonhood stroked her insides, gliding effortlessly into her most sensitive depths and bestowing a halo of tingling, lip-biting pleasure upon her smooth walls. The ten-inch long tongue at the end of Uroshonth's sex became increasingly active inside her, slithering all over like an eel thrashing at the end of an angler's hook, like an earthworm that has been dropped onto a hot stone underneath a burning sun. The pearl of Velraith's sensitive flesh hidden deep within her received multiple successive licks from the male's phallus-tongue, and the she-dragon's breathing began once more to increase as she built towards another climax, one whose onset was as slow and deliciously building as the gradually increasing speed of her partner's thrusts.

The pounding at her loins proceeded apace as the big male dragon invaded her, increasing his pace as he slid his long rod of slippery hardness in and out of her, until deep inside of her Velraith felt the dragon tremble, and she felt a rumble within her own loins as his long shaft was squeezed against the muscular walls of her insides, the veins in its enormity pulsating and throbbing as a gallon of extra dragon blood rushed directly into his huge member. Uroshonth's pre was coming out in a great, splashing river, and all of a sudden Velraith felt his loins unleash a huge spasm against her insides. There was an enormous splash of warm fluid inside her, and as Uroshonth bellowed and pounded away Velraith smelled the thick, heady odor of the dragon-semen that was soon was pumping into her from his shaft. She felt the male dragon's cum spurting hard all over her insides, filling her, overfilling the space between her legs and flowing out of her. In the meantime her pre began to flow copiously down her hind-legs while the male's every thrust into her created a loud, wet, slurping defecation-sound between her legs, so numerous were the secretions flowing and spurting out of them.

Velraith was stroked to the point of orgasm once more, from the feeling of fluid constantly spurting out of her, and she came repeatedly as Uroshonth continued to penetrate her from the missionary position and bellow loudly as he loosed his own load of cum, ejaculating hard with every thrust until she once again was washed over the edge of the precipice and spasmed wildly in the throes of climax. All the strength left her body in a single moment, and a moment later her steadily heating loins were surging, coursing out of her with rivers of the most delightful warm fluids that came bursting forth to soak her scaly hind-legs, while she kicked her legs and slithered her tail feebly back and forth. The she-dragon wore a vacant, contented expression and drooled onto the ground around her jaws, so that her head was soon resting in a puddle of her own salivations, still in the missionary position with Uroshonth fucking her.

Uroshonth then lifted one of Velraith's hind legs and set it on top of his stomach-bulge and started splitting her reed, sliding in and out of her sideways as she lay mostly on her belly and chest on snow-covered ground, moaning and writhing, causing it to melt and steam as the male dragon fucked her from behind, keeping her hind-claw propped on top of his stomach.

The bloated she-dragon was soon panting and completely exhausted from having to hold the weight of her huge hindquarters aloft on only one knee. She complained to Uroshonth that he ought not to fuck her from that position.

"It's too heavy," she panted, dropping her other leg to the ground with a thud. The movement twisted and bent the male dragon's shaft in a way that caused him to gasp and display a quick, panicked flash of pointed teeth. Uroshonth panted and grinned, and his tongue lolled out as he gingerly readjusted himself inside her, wincing, and then went back to the missionary position.

"It's too heavy," she said to him, louder this time. "I can't hold myself up. I'm too fat. I'm so sorry, Uroshonth."

"Listen, you are not too fat. It's nothing. It'll be gone in weeks, trust me. What I'm doing to you right now was working rather well a moment ago, so perhaps I should continue taking you--"

"No, Uroshonth, wait," Velraith breathed between pants. Her chest was heaving. I want to be on top of you. Let me be on top. I've always gotten off much better that way."

Uroshonth's red eyes widened, and his fanged lower jaw dropped open. Quickly the male dragon recovered his composure, though his smile fractured at its apex as he looked pleadingly down toward the female where she rested with her head on the ground, her neck stretched to its full length, her large chest heaving softly. She was enormous; her girth was at least a third as large as his, Uroshonth quickly calculated. There was no way that his skeletal structure could withstand the pounding that the huge-bellied she-dragon would give him when she had her most intense orgasm right on top of him, he knew right away.

Smiling urgently and drumming his black finger-claws on the base of Velraith's fat emerald tail, Uroshonth announced, "Uhm, ahh, I think perhaps something like this would be--"

"Please, Uroshonth," begged Velraith, interrupting him. "I know it will work. It is what I am used to. I have to be on top. Please, do this for me."

"Dearest, lovely Velraith," Uroshonth began. He swallowed the lump in his throat as he continued, "After suffering as you've suffered, you know that I would do anything at all for you, my love, but--"

"Then do this for me, Uroshonth. Let me be one top this once. Please, I promise you, it will make me feel so much better. Once I am feeling better, then I shall make you feel better. Please, please let me be the one on top, Uroshonth. Please, I promise I'll be gentle. Please..."

"All right, well, ah, I do suppose, uhm... feeling better is, ah, better--"

"Then you agree?" she asked him with flawless innocence, with a tentative frown ready to leap into being on her expression.

Uroshonth swallowed another lump in his throat. "I--all right, fine. Fine, I will. Of course, anything for you, Velraith, my love...."

Velraith's expression immediately turned into a long-fanged smile, and she wore heavy-lidded look of draconic bliss, which Uroshonth mirrored with slightly less than perfect enthusiasm. He twisted one fidgeting fore-claw around his left horn for several moments, and then, smiling his best, he extended it towards Velraith, who grasped his claw in hers and permitted him to pull her into a sitting position.

Embracing the dragoness around her ample bosom, Uroshonth clasped Velraith close as he leaned her down toward him, pulling more and more of her ponderous body on top of his midsection as he leaned back, until the she-dragon was lying on top of him. The she-dragon's pale green belly-flesh spilled over the sides of Uroshonth's stomach bulge as she shifted her weight directly onto him, nearly burying his midsection beneath the folds of her flesh, while her huge breasts fell to rest one on either side of his snaky neck as she leaned toward the ground, preventing Uroshonth from slithering his neck from side to side underneath her, effectively immobilizing him not just underneath her belly but virtually everywhere underneath her. In this new position, he could only kick his legs and wriggle his tail, and he was doing both rather frantically at the moment as she lay on top of him.

"How's that?" asked Velraith, looking down at Uroshonth's strained expression with concern. "Are you all right, Uroshonth?" she inquired of the male dragon, and he flashed a grin of struggling panic as he gasped a reply:

"I am... bent... underneath... rrrgh... nnngh...I'm... nnngh... Please... please shift your... nnngh..."

Velraith apologized genuinely. "Right, of course, shift the weight," she said, and she heaved, violently undulating her spine so that her belly lifted and fell back down onto Uroshonth. The male dragon yauwped loudly and his red eyes widened from the pain. He stifled another cry and shut his eyes, letting out a long, low moan, and then he began to weep softly.

"Is it better or worse?" she asked him.

"Worse," he whimpered through rows of sharp, tightly clenched fangs, breathing in frightened, agonized gasps. "Please, please hurry. Hurry.. and please be gentle. Be g--AAOOUFFGGGHHH! UNNH! NO! RRRGGHH! UNNH UH Uh, uh, aah..."

At that moment the rest of Uroshonth's pleading was cut off by his loud growling gasps and couple grunts of pleasure, at which time a look of instantaneous relief flooded the dragon's visage, and his expression became more placid, although he still appeared to be having some difficulty breathing with the fat dragoness lying directly on top of him.

"Better now?" Velraith inquired, smiling at him sweetly.

Uroshonth wheezed and managed a smile. "Oh yes, my love... much better now. You are quite talented, I must say," he said, with a little cough.

"But no dragon's ever made me cum the way you have. Oh Uroshonth, I want you to fuck me hard now, penetrate me. Fuck me like you've ever fucked anyone before in your life, and let me pleasure you until you cum into me. I want you to cum into me over and over. Oh Uroshonth," she moaned, as the male dragon began to thrust his member in and out of her slit, doing so with energy that often had the appearance of panic and strain as the she-dragon took each of his thrusts all the way inside and countered with thrusts of her own. Velraith's thrusts caused Uroshonth to gasp and "ouf!" loudly and struggle to breathe, while a despairing, pleading smile trembled on the male dragon's jaws.

The male's pre oozed out of the head of his shaft in greater and greater volumes, until he was less and less able to control the movements of the whipping six-inch long black tongue, which soon grew to a length of eight inches, then ten, as Velraith filled herself with the rigid, slippery length of dragoncock, a huge pole that slid into the deepest recesses of her femininity as she pressed her belly down on her partner's. She felt him groan and struggle feebly underneath her each time she thrust her weight down.

There within the deep, moist, lightless inmost realms of the she-dragon's fluid-spurting sex, the red tip of Uroshonth's huge, rigid dragonhood found the spot that would have caused Velraith to enter into a state of writhing, violent ecstasy had he continued to prod it with his cock and phallus-tongue. But the results of such continuous prodding were quite certain to leave him battered and bruised, he realized, if not beaten to unconsciousness.

"Yes, Uroshonth love!' Velraith cried as she rode his shaft, banging her crotch against his sore, aching loins. "Yes! Yes! Gods, yes! Here it comes! I'm coming all over, all over, rrrgh, aaagh..."

Uroshonth's crimson eyes widened till they were as huge as shields, and he swallowed nervously. "Oh no, oh no," he whimpered. "No, you mustn't. Please, not yet."

"Keep doing what you were doing," Velraith urged him, looking down at the male in innocent confusion. He was struggling to pull out of her. "What's wrong?"

Through labored breathing, Uroshonth answered, "Must not... do that yet... have not had... time to prepare, unnh, unnh..."

"But Uroshonth, this will get me all clean inside. Your juices will flow into me. Mine will flow into you, and over you. I'll feel clean again, cleaned by a dragon's love."

"By dragon's love," Uroshonth echoed with a groan of pain. "Of course, Velraith my love, but I must have... more time in which to prepare for it, because this is all becoming... a bit more than I had--"

"I'm too fat, aren't I?" she interrupted, and looked hurt by this suggestion of her own, which Uroshonth was quick to discount:

"Fat? Of course not, no, you're not fat, Velraith my love. I... unnh, I am the one who's causing most of the difficulties here. Please accept m--my...unnh... my apologies for that."

"You?" she queried, raising an eye-ridge doubtfully. "What've you done?"

"Oh... I've let myself... grow too fat," Uroshonth panted by way of reply. The male dragon struggled to move his neck underneath the hills of Velraith's soft, heaving breasts and the great rise and fall of her mountainous belly as it rested on top of him. He did not meet with much success, and he ended up back in the same spot underneath the fat she-dragon, only now he was much more exhausted, his breath coming in labored gasps. "I also have... not been able t--to pleasure you... the way you had wanted."

"But I was--" Velraith began, only to be cut off by Uroshonth's weary, rasping growl of a voice.

"No, I failed to do as promised. I apologize, Velraith love. We shall have to find some other way to do it now. Please, if you would--EEUUGGH!!"

Uroshonth broke off with a very loud grunt as Velraith pressed the full weight of her belly down upon the male dragon's trembling crotch, taking his swollen member all the way inside her sex, while Uroshonth panted and begged.

"Oh no, no please, Velraith love," he pleaded. "Please, I can't make love to you this way, not the way I would like to. You must choose something else, anything else."

"But this way has always been best for me," Velraith complained good-naturedly, using the tone of one who is trying to politely argue the point. "Please Uroshonth, do this for me. Please, think of all that's happened to me. Show some pity."

"I will do anything else for you, Velraith my love, anything at all. But--"

"If I abandon my current position, then you'll promise do anything else I ask?" she queried innocently. "Anything at all... You promise?"

"I promise."

"Will you swear on your dragonhood to do anything else that I ask?" she asked him, deliberately shifting her weight to squash his belly just a bit flatter, and too squeeze just a bit more air out of the male's lungs.

Exhausted and panting, with his chest crushed and his belly flattened underneath the she-dragon's bloated midsection, there was little else for Uroshonth to do but agree to swear to Velraith on his male sex--which, like him, was in a none too compromising position at the moment--that he would do anything else that she asked him to do, if she would only abandon her current whim.

"Very well, I swear on my dragonhood... to do anything else you ask," he told her. "Now please, let's have you... roll that way... off of... yes, that's good, but you're still on m--oh no, wait, d--ohmmrrrffffggghh!"

Uroshonth made a loud, muffled noise that sounded like a failed plea for help as the dragoness merely switched the positioning of her belly, adopting the sixty-nine position on top of the male dragon, nearly crushing his long neck and making it almost impossible for him to breathe.

Velraith, in turn, cupped the male's erect shaft and balls gently in her finger-claws and opened her jaws to an angle exceeding one-hundred eighty degrees. She plunged the wet insides of her long throat down upon Uroshonth's huge member over and over, coiling her long tongue around its shaft in a spiral as she went down on him, releasing him slowly as she came up for air and letting her tongue linger, teasing and tugging at the ten-inch long slug of black, glistening muscle that emerged from the hole in his phallus. She wrapped her forked tongue around Uroshonth's pointed phallus-tongue and tugged a few little spurts of pre out of his cock by giving the tongue a twist here and there, getting the male dragon's secretion all over her muzzle and licking it off herself for the taste. She continued tugging at him until she heard a muffled moan of pleasure or protest coming from Uroshonth's direction, from where he lay with his head trapped underneath the mountainous round hemisphere of her great green belly.

The black dragon's muzzle had been forced all the way inside the she-dragon's wet, pre-ejaculating sex and his face was awash in her secretions. His features were only partially visible: a pair of horns, Uroshonth's dark gray ear-frills, and his pair of weary, despairing crimson eyes. The male dragon kicked his hind-legs unceasingly while the she-dragon took his shaft all the way inside her throat while she pounded the huge, scaly bands of her gigantic lower belly down toward his muzzle, forcing the end of his snout inside her sex. With his neck crushed underneath her, the male was given no choice but to extend his forked tongue into her as he wheezed and fought for every breath of female-odored air in his lungs.

As Uroshonth loosed his steady stream of pre-cum into her mouth, his forepaws scratched weakly against the sides of Velraith's belly and were unable to do much else but tap and scratch against her. As more of the male dragon's slime-saturated muzzle penetrated her sex, Uroshonth never once ceased his grunting and moaning, generally behaving as though he had endured hours of strenuous activity while the forlorn, weary look in his eyes never diminished, and soon grew dizzied and pleasure-stricken.

Velraith's huge midsection pounded against his muzzle harder and harder, and his upward-reaching horns were driven back harder and harder, driving them both into the frozen soil like nails, so that Uroshonth was unable to move his head from where he lay.

Velraith's vulval lips started to slip up over the male dragon's eyelids with every thrust of her huge loins and the dragoness soon began to cum all over Uroshonth's face and throat and neck, thrashing and pounding his skull against the snowy ground.

The male black dragon struggled as one orgasm after another ripped through his red, pulsating member, splashing the female's throat and injecting such a huge load of dragon-cum straight down her gullet that Velraith at once began to gag and cough up the pre which she had consumed earlier. Nonetheless, she swallowed every bit of what came out of him, and out of her, and at last she licked what was left off of Uroshonth's red shaft, pausing to play with the black pointed tongue, which whipped all over her snout as she leaned down to kiss it and suck on it. The whipping frenzy of the black tongue was accompanied by all sorts of muffled shouts and grunts from Uroshonth's direction, as well as the furious tapping of both his forepaws against the sides of her belly.

Fountains of Uroshonth's cum geysered straight down Velraith's throat, splashing her in the mouth and across the muzzle, drenching her face over and over; at the same time his own jaws were filled to the limit and beyond as the she-dragon's incessantly flowing pre-cum filled his mouth and spilled out of her sex and all over his face.

Suddenly a feeling grew alive in her sex, and Velraith felt pleasure spreading out of her loins then coming back in to form a rush of sensation that tore along the highways of every nerve-ending throughout her sex, heating her insides until she was nearing the point of explosion. At that point the violent thumping of the male dragon's muzzle licking her insides out became too much to bear, and a flood burst out from between her legs, causing Velraith to roar and hiss and thrash all over as the cum flooded out of her, giving poor Uroshonth's body a thorough battering as she thudded her heavy lower belly against his face in an ecstatic frenzy, driving the male dragon's horns deeper and deeper into the ground underneath where his head rested, so that he was soon trapped and could look nowhere except straight up into Velraith's sex, with his long snout plunged into the depths of her wet orifice.

From the look in the male black dragon's eyes, which were badly shaken up and quite literally spinning by the time the she-dragon's orgasm was finished, Uroshonth was finished, having been thoroughly rattled and dizzied by the female's orgasmic energies and her position on top of him. Afterwards Uroshonth lay in a state of exhaustion with his muzzle still plunged deep inside Velraith's sex, wheezing softly, his breaths creating a foam of bubbles around the spots where his rows of fangs were still clenched together by the tight constriction of the she-dragon's pussy.

At last Velraith lifted her sex off of Uroshonth's muzzle, and the male dragon uttered a gasp of huge relief and began to suck air into his lungs with huge, wheezing breaths. At last he said to her, "You were... supposed to... choose something else... to abandon your... current..." No more breath would come, and the male dragon was not unable to continue his speech. He panted, his chest heaving, and stared up at the female on top of him, staring into her slit with exhausted eyes.

"I did," she assured him brightly. "I abandoned my current position. I reversed my position on top of you."

"On top of... me," Uroshonth moaned from underneath her. "We should both be finished now, I think--unnggh... now that you have been... on top of me... for a while. I'm feeling quite exhausted now, yes--rrrgh--"

"Yes, of course," replied Velraith, yawning as she assisted Uroshonth by shifting her weight over so that he was able to roll her off of the top of him. "That was so kind of you to come to my aid, and so very sweet of you to fulfill my desires," she murmured dreamily. "I love you, my Uroshonth, my sweet handsome dragon, my savior. I want to stay with you always. I want you to stay with me" --she stifled another yawn-- "always, Uroshonth my love... Oh, I'm so exhausted. I'm--" She yawned a third time.

Lying next to Velraith on the ground, resting on his spine, Uroshonth could do nothing except stare into the sky and struggle to control his labored breathing. At last he was able to struggle enough to rip his great black horns free of the ground, pulling a shower of snow and soil loose and vigorously shaking his head.

Afterwards he approached the spot where Velraith lay, her resting her head on the snows, her breathing soft and rhythmic. She gave him no sign of that she acknowledged his approach as Uroshonth lay beside her so that their snouts rested on the ground inches from one another, mixing their breaths together, while the she-dragon nuzzled his snout and slid in to be closer to him. Uroshonth caressed his sleeping Velraith's smooth jaws from underneath, and kissed her softly breathing snout, after which he lay down next to her to go to sleep.

Within moments Uroshonth had followed Velraith into slumber. He went to sleep with the she-dragon gently pressing her slender, emerald-green muzzle against his black one, cuddling up to him in the depths of her slumber, while on Uroshonth's jaws there appeared the faintest of smiles.

Written by Sluimarath, June 2005