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Whitewillow: The Scaled Courtesan ~ Part 2

Tristan held up his dragontooth necklace as he pushed aside the growing crowd.

"Outta the way, outta the way! Official Dragonhunter's Guild business!"

It had taken him nearly ten minutes of sprinting after Whitewillow dropped him off. The dragoness wasn't large enough — nor her wings strong enough — to carry him all the way to the center of the city, but Tristan felt flattered that she offered, regardless. By the time he made it to the base of the Citadel, he was gasping for breath and sweating even more than he had been inside her roost.

An airship had crashed into the Citadel's watchtower. It was unthinkable as an attack on the king himself. The Royal Citadel was the most fortified location on the entire continent! Its looming white marble walls had stood for centuries, and now one of its towers was in Concordia's streets. It was an impossible sight for Tristan's eyes, like a fever dream he couldn't wake from.

The crowd carried crank lanterns in the darkness that shrouded the streets. As Tristan waded past the gawking onlookers, he got close enough to see a phalanx of Praetorians blocking the road. These royal skyknights were rarely seen up close, but now they stood by with warning lights beaming from the tips of their clockwork lances. They held back the local crowd gathering to inspect the wreckage. Behind them, burning rubble from the southern watchtower had rolled down the steep hillside of the citadel mount, blocking the street. Several houses had taken serious damage from falling debris, and a fire had overtaken two of them, throwing out billows of black smoke and roiling flames into the night air.

After enough huffing and puffing, Tristan pushed his way past the crowd and approached. One of the Cinderscales noticed him first, bounding forward to growl at Tristan. The dragon's armored helm glinted in the amber lights, and their regal red wings spread out to block Tristan's path. This dragon was nearly twice the size of Whitewillow, with shoulders that came up to Tristan's eyes. With head held high, the Cinderscale towered over Tristan like a scaly titan — a true beast of war.

The Concordian Cinderscale was the only species of dragon to be considered truly domesticated. They were a species bred into existence: their size, strength, temperament, and even the fiery shade of their scales were tailored through generations of hybridization and assisted fertilization. Cinderscales were a dragon bred for mounted combat, and had been the most dominant weapon on the battlefield for over three centuries (until the invention of the rifled barrel). Every single Cinderscale was property of the crown and lived extremely sheltered lives, rarely leaving the citadel grounds. Tristan — who considered himself knowledgeable even by Guild standards — knew little else about them: their lineage was a royal secret.

Tristan stood firm in the face of the large, armor-clad dragon. He waved his dragontooth necklace in front of the Cinderscale's snout.

"I'm with the Dragonhunter's Guild. Let me through!"

The Cinderscale snarled and said nothing. These dragons were forbidden to talk to the public. Tristan had to wait for one of the knights to address him first.

The heavily-armored Praetorian approached, clockwork lance held at the ready. The steel suit of armor was a beautiful work of art, embellished with dragon scale patterning and engraved brass lightning bolts. Long blond hair spilled out from under the winged helmet.

"Citizens are not allowed to approach the wreckage. Stand back." Her voice was feminine, but firm and commanding.

Tristan waved the necklace at arm's length. "I'm from the Guild. I've come to investigate the dragons that—"

"Silence, citizen!" The skyknight cranked her clockwork lance, causing the gears to whirl. The tip of the spear glowed blue with an electric hum. "The Dragonhunter's Guild has no jurisdiction here."

Tristan breathed out a sigh through his nose. He had to go through this song and dance at least once a month. "Under the Dog Catcher Act passed two years ago by King Edwin himself, bounty hunters of the Dragonhunter's Guild are given jurisdiction anywhere a dragon commits a crime."

"This is a praetorian affair: citizens have no jurisdiction for any crime committed on Citadel grounds."

"But this is Corker's Alley!"

"Anywhere the Citadel may lie is considered Citadel grounds."

The Cinderscale snorted in agreement.

Tristan grit his teeth. Behind him, people close enough to overhear began to murmur. "Did he say dragon?" "Why is a dragonhunter here?" "Did a dragon attack the Citadel?"

"And we have not determined the cause of the explosion!" the praetorian shouted over the crowd. "There is no evidence of dragon involvement. Go back to your homes!"

"I saw the skybarge crash with my own two eyes, praetorian."

"It was dark. You don't know what you saw."

"That's bullsh—"

The praetorian lurched forward and grabbed Tristan by the collar, pulling him close. "You're going to cause panic if you keep talking about dragons," she growled in his ear. "Shut up now, or I will make you shut up. Do we have an understanding?"

Tristan grit his teeth and reluctantly nodded. "Yes."

"Good."

He was let go with a shove, causing him to stumble. The praetorian then spoke loudly, so that the crowd could hear. "Look: this dragonhunter is so drunk that he can barely stand straight! He doesn't know what he's talking about."

As Tristan stumbled back, he fell against the crowd. Several people reached out their arms to break his fall and push him upright. One of them pulled Tristan aside. "Did you say you saw a dragon attack the citadel?"

Tristan glanced at the skyknight, who glared down at him. Reluctantly, he conceded she was right: the mob was tense and hungry for blame, and it was a poor time to point fingers. He scowled as he lied through his teeth. "I don't know what I saw …"

—=-=—

RIIING! RIIING!

From the moment his alarm clock clanged its bells, Tristan regretted being awake. After the tumultuous events of last night, he had garnered little sleep. He slapped the ringing bells quiet and fell back on the bed with a sigh. Tristan could smell Whitewillow on himself. The acrid, zesty musk of dragon sex was the first thing he noticed. It clung to his skin like a mark of shame, and as he scrubbed himself clean in the bath, he had this irrational worry that someone last night had noticed …

Tristan went through the motions of his morning routine with a hollowness that felt as though it would never leave him. As he hastily scraped the scruff off his face with a straight razor and soap, he remembered the way her blood-red eyes looked at him, staring with intrigue upon their first meeting. He realized she had targeted him from the moment they met. And he still wasn't entirely sure why. All that weird religious talk about zussu and raashka fluttered about in his head like bothersome flies.

He told himself that it wasn't unheard of for a human to lay with a dragon. Even in the north quarter, where the well-off lived, Tristan had heard that some of the rich folk were unusually close to their pets. After all, domesticates were raised by humans and were more humanlike in temperament and personality. But Tristan held himself to a higher standard. He was a dragonhunter, after all!

A hunter who had slept with the enemy …

After all his time with the Guild, the idea of dragons being enemies were drilled into his mind. Dragons were an obstacle, a threat to overcome. Not something to lay with! This sordid affair could threaten to ruin the relationship of his closest friends, and his home away from home. He could never let anyone know about Whitewillow. Especially Lillian!

Tristan adjusted his circular glasses and ruffled his pale blond hair, studying his own complexion in the mirror. He had always considered himself a handsome fellow, but this morning he found it hard to look himself in the eye. His gaze glanced down to his sparsely-haired chest, which was marked in red streaks from claw scratches and love bites. He let out a sigh. Maybe to the uninitiated, he could pass off the marks as a tussle of a more deadly nature …

"That right there …" he pointed to the young bespectacled man looking back at him. "That's the face of a tail chaser," he muttered, trying to find humor in the moment. He flexed his biceps, which were well-toned from the guild's rigorous training. "Why yes, I am a card-carrying member of the Spa Club! How did you know?" He forced a smile, watching the corners of his lips struggling to curl upward. Failing in that, he then pounded the brass sink with a fist. "Aw, hell … this is gonna take some getting used to."

Tristan couldn't bring himself to say that he regretted last night. Ignoring the initial awkwardness, he conceded that the sex had been an out-of-this-world experience. Whitewillow was a patient, knowledgeable, and attentive lover who lived up to her title: a scaled courtesan. A foreigner from Zenshin, wearing a silk scarf and shimmering jewelry, claiming to be a priestess of love … if she were human, Tristan would have had no chance. Whitewillow radiated an aura of sophistication and class; she performed a charming yet persistent seduction. And the whole time they made love, he remembered Whitewillow's piercing eyes ceaselessly staring at him. He couldn't get that look out of his mind. That possessive, predatory glint in those slit-pupil eyes both scared and aroused him.

Tristan felt his body responding, and looked down between his legs. "Hey, stop that!" he chastised his smaller head, and shook the thoughts out of the larger one. He needed to busy himself.

Some time later, Tristan sat hunched over a magnifying lens. His desk was a mess of schematics, gadgetry, and tools. He squinted his eyes, looking down the suction tubes of his hand-held pumping device. The insides were flaky and cracking from chemical corrosion. Rubber tubing wouldn't cut it: liquid dragonfire was too reactive. He needed better, more expensive materials.

The swooping of wings and the clawing of concrete were familiar yet unwelcome sounds. Tristan looked up in dismay to see an albino dragoness lurch forward and extend her long neck through his broken window. The dragon's snout came within inches of his face and he dropped the device in surprise, swearing loudly when he heard the sound of breaking glass.

"Rrall, Tristan-homn!" The low, rumbling baritone of a dragon's voice was followed by a friendly, throaty churr. "I stopped by earlier, but you were asleep."

"Whitewillow?!" He shrieked, jumping out of his chair. "What in the blazes are you doing here?"

"Saying good morning, of course!"

"You can't keep showing up at my apartment whenever you want!" Tristan bent down to the floor, picking up shards of glass before he stepped on one.

Whitewillow churred in amusement. "My sincere apologies for surprising you. Did I break something?"

"Yes, my vacuum pump!"

Whitewillow blinked. "Your what?"

He looked up at her, glaring. "It's for milking a dragon's flame sacs."

Whitewillow's scaled lips twisted into a toothy grin. "I've catered to many odd kinks, draa-friend. But this is a new one for me."

Tristan was not in the mood for her shenanigans. "Don't you know how valuable liquid dragonfire is?"

The dragoness hissed. "You want to milk me for money?"

"No, I want to milk you …. for science!"

Whitewillow's reddish reptilian gaze narrowed.

"Science … and this month's groceries. But mostly science!" With all the glass safely off the floor, Tristan stood up to wave Whitewillow away. "Now shoo shoo, dragon! The whole apartment building has been talking about your previous visit! You're gonna get me in so much trouble."

Whitewillow flared her spines. "Paah nek moll! You know better than to treat a draa like a common pigeon."

Tristan fumed. The dragoness was certainly perched like one! He hated how dragons constantly demanded respect, even when there was no time for it. He held out his hands and tried to act calm in the face of her haughty behavior. "Okay, Whitewillow, please explain to me: what is a dragon doing in my apartment … again?"

Whitewillow let out a terse snort. "There is a matter of importance we must discuss, human."

"Is it about last night?"

Whitewillow nodded. "Rah."

Tristan checked the clock on his desk. Should be enough time before he had to leave. "Fine. Give me a few minutes and we'll meet downstairs. And try not to let anyone see you."

The dragoness bowed her head. "Hizz'all doh. I shall see you soon."

As Whitewillow released her strong claws from the side of the building and fluttered away, Tristan gleaned back to his broken device. "Dammit, I don't have the parts to make these repairs."

After putting away his tools and changing into more acceptable clothes, Tristan headed down the six flights of stairs to the ground floor. The elevator was still broken, but it gave him time to think. He knew that the next meeting with Whitewillow would be awkward, but he didn't expect it to happen like this. Maybe dragons were allowed to perch on the buildings in Zenshin, but here in Concordia, it could lead to a bounty on their head. Tristan wondered why the dragoness seemed so unconcerned with the trouble she was making. Maybe she didn't know any better.

Whitewillow waited for him, preening her leathery wings with her long tongue. The supple, leathery patagium required diligent maintenance to prevent cracking. She looked up from her self-ministrations with a toothy smile.

"Ah, Tristan." She made a show of splaying her pale, veiny wings and bowing — a formal greeting usually reserved for other dragons.

Tristan admired the dragoness' formality, but felt strange about bowing his head in a return gesture. Dragons are of course creatures of great pride, and no dragon in Concordia would knowingly bow to a dragonhunter.

"My apologies for breaking your vacuum pump."

"And I'm sorry for treating you like a pigeon," Tristan said, forcing a smile. It is characteristically rare when a dragon apologized for anything. It is therefore customary between dragons to reciprocate by apologizing about something as well, so that the burden of humility may be shared between both parties.

Whitewillow swayed her spines hypnotically, flattered by his gesture. "A proper makh'riin. You honor me, draa-friend." The dragoness leaned in to nuzzle him, but reared back with an unpleasant snort. "Hisss! You smell of soap!"

"Yeah, that's what humans do. They bathe," he teased her.

Whitewillow flitted out her forked tongue. Dragons were fastidious groomers, though they disliked soap: it ruined the natural scent of which they were so proud. "In Zenshin, the scent of draa is a mark of good luck. You should be wearing my musk with pride!"

Tristan looked down the sidewalks of the paved road, to see if anyone could overhear this uncooth conversation. A horseless carriage drove by, coughing up billows of hot steam. He lowered his voice and leaned in close. "Absolutely not. I might as well wear a sign around my neck that says 'I fuck dragons'."

Whitewillow wondered where she could aquire such a sign. "Did you know that draa musk is even made into perfumes?"

"You're kidding, right? Zenshin can't be that weird."

The albino dragoness held her pale chin high with pride. "Ma'at duuk thuus. Some of my richer patrons have asked to bottle mine."

Tristan wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Okay, I didn't need to know that, but great."

"A bottle of dragoness perfume is a luxury only the upper caste can afford. Think of how many groceries you could buy if instead of my flame sacs, you milked my—"

"We're not in Zenshin!" Tristan interjected, red-faced. "Nobody in Concordia would want to buy that!"

The scaled courtesan sighed in whimsy. She enjoyed how easy it was to fluster him. "Maa'fek dross! You are quite grumpy this morning, human."

"You're … right. I'm sorry." Tristan defused himself with a sigh and let out the tension in his shoulders. Merely looking at the dragoness had him feeling uncomfortable. He could hardly believe he had been under her tail just last night. "Can we talk about last night?" he said, his voice low. There was a lot that he wanted to get off his chest. Feelings of regret, uncertainty, the urge for secrecy, the possibility of more …

"Absolutely!" Whitewillow wrapped a single wing around her chest with a flourish, like an aristocrat flaunting a silken cloak. "In fact, that is exactly what I wanted to talk about. Our tryst was cut short. There is one more formality to observe with the performance of a courtesan's duties: tithing."

"Tithing?" Tristan blinked. In an instant, everything he had prepared to say stalled on his tongue. That was a word he had only heard of in reference to the patron temples of Concordia, when the priests passed around the offering plate. His eyes widened as he connected the dots. "But you said last night that you gave your love freely!"

"I do, draa-friend. I do. A tithe is an optional reciprocity, but greatly appreciated. I have no other means of income; tithes are how a priestess of Husia supports her way of life."

Tristan didn't like how the dragoness was sounding more and more like a common prostitute. "Uh … what do I owe you?"

She shook her head gracefully, causing her fins to sway. "You owe me nothing, draa-friend. But should you choose to give, the amount depends on your level of satisfaction with my priestly duties."

Tristan made a show of patting his pockets. "Well, I don't have a lot of money; the guild doesn't pay field scholars much."

"A tithe need not be monetary. It could be a gift, a meal, or even a favor. I have had statesmen present extravagant jewelry, and paupers offer a night's shelter and a full belly. Both are of equal worth: the true value of a tithe lies in the giver's expression of heartfelt appreciation. In willingly giving a tithe, you strengthen the raashka that we forged last night."

"The raashka …" Tristan muttered. There was that word again. Whitewillow had alluded to it being some kind of spiritual energy, but his grasp on dragonspeak wasn't as thorough as he liked.

The dragoness nodded. "As you seeded me, so too did I plant a seed of love in your heart. But the seed will not grow without being nurtured through acts of kindness and generosity. The tithe is the first step in this process. That is why it is so important to discuss with you."

Tristan tried not to grimace at the thought of being soul-seeded by a dragon. "Sounds like you're trying to pull me into your weird sex cult. If there's any membership fees to pay, I'm out!" he said, only half-joking.

The dragoness snorted with annoyance. "If that bothers you, consider tithing to be merely an expression of gratitude."

Tristan thought for a moment on what he could reasonably offer the dragon. "We could grab dinner, maybe. Have you been to the Dark Horse Grille?"

"I would be honored, draa-friend. However …" Whitewillow cocked her head. "If you truly wish to show your generosity, I have things of need that are more urgent than a meal."

Uh oh, Tristan thought. He couldn't help but feel a sneaking suspicion that the dragon was getting to the real reason she was here. "Like …?"

Whitewillow flexed her spines alluringly. "Like your help with the matter of the missing draa, Kodakoa."

Tristan's mind jumped to yesterday, when the dragoness had first approached him and Lillian in the square. Whitewillow had been insistent on enlisting his and Lillian's help in tracking down some dragon accused of triple homicide. It was an odd conversation for any dragon to have with a dragonhunter, which is why he remembered it so well. "You're still going on about the murderous dragon in the newspaper!"

"Ferduus. His fate weighs heavy on my heart. I must find him." The dragoness once again bowed before him. "I ask this humble request, draa-friend. Offer me this tithe: your help in tracking down Kodakoa."

Tristan's suspicions were growing ever stronger. He leered at her from over the curvature of his glasses. "Why do you need my help?"

"You are a dragon hunter. Can you not take on Kodakoa's bounty?"

Tristan took a step back as the hairs on his neck stood on end. "Oh no … I can't believe I fell for this."

The dragoness attempted to play coy. "The only thing you have fallen for, draa-friend, is my ardent passion for your companionship."

"Stop it, Whitewillow. Stop." Tristan held his hands out. "Was this your end-game all along? Was last night just a con to get me roped into your plans?"

She reared her head back, spines flared outward. "You misunderstand."

Tristan wagged his finger. "No, I think I'm seeing more clearly than ever. Yesterday was just a ploy to get me indebted to you. You dragons are always pulling tricks like this!"

"No, I—" Whitewillow held her tongue. She didn't want to lie to him. "That is not entirely true."

"Not entirely?!" Tristan threw his hands in the air. "Gods, Whitewillow!" He swore, and swore again.

The dragoness didn't understand why he was so upset. "My intentions were clear from the start when I asked for you and the ba'al for help."

"Yeah, and when we said no, you thought the natural course of action was to seduce me until I changed my mind?"

She stomped her foot on the sidewalk. "I seduced you because I sensed your curiosity! I wanted to open your heart and soul to Taishui's blessing!"

"But you only approached me and Lilian because you needed to manipulate a dragonhunter into helping you, right?"

The dragoness anxiously whipped her finned tail around behind her. "Manipulation is a harsh word. I had hoped that by warming your heart with my affections, you would willingly—"

"Yes or no, Whitewillow!" He raised one finger at the dragon. "Did you single me out with the intention of finding this dragon friend of yours?"

The dragoness folded her spines flat against her scales and ducked her head, unable to meet his gaze. "Yes."

Tristan nodded coldly. He knew better than most that dragons were a manipulative sort, adept at using cunning and guile in times when brute force was not ideal. Concordian wildborn were notorious for their trickery: their tribal hierarchies were rife with political maneuverings so cutthroat that it'd make a Concordian statesman blush. Moreover, they had no qualms about lying to humans, whom they considered to be inferior. "Dragon-tongued" was a Concordian idiom meaning a skilled manipulator of words.

Tristan turned away from her."Whitewillow, I thought … I hoped that because you were from Zenshin, that you were different from Concordian dragons. That you wouldn't lie, or manipulate, or cheat to get what you want."

"What am I guilty of beyond showing you kindness and love, draa-friend?"

"Stop calling me that."

The words hit Whitewillow's heart like an icy arrow. Her spines drooped, falling limp against her albino scales. "You wound me, Tristan."

Tristan groaned, rubbing his brow. "This was all a huge mistake."

"No … no, our meeting was no mistake! I cherished the night I spent with you! If the tithe upsets you that much, forget it."

"It's not about the tithe! It's that you seduced me to get what you wanted!"

The dragoness held her chin up high, indignant. "I give you pleasure, and you give me favors. What is wrong with this arrangement? The Temple of Husia has operated on such transactions for thousands of years."

Tristan clenched his teeth. "For the last time: We. Aren't. In. Zenshin!"

Whitewillow snorted. "You Concordians are a narrow-minded sort."

How could this dragon normalize manipulating people so easily? Was that a part of her weird religion, too? "I'm cutting this off. Look, last night was fun, but don't come back here ever again."

Whitewillow's maw gaped open, and her spines flared with alarm. "Tristan, these words you speak are tainted with zussu. Do not let this poison—"

"I don't believe in your sex cult nonsense!" Tristan shouted. "There's no zussu, no raashka … Taishui isn't real, Whitewillow! None of the gods are!"

The dragoness hung her head, feeling too hurt to argue.

Tristan turned and stormed back to his apartment, leaving Whitewillow standing on the side of the road. "You can forget about your tithe. And get someone else to find your dragon!"

The dragoness watched him silently, her mouth bound by shame. He watched him fumble with his keys, feeling like everything had gone wrong. Had Taishui misguided her? Was this human not a part of her plans? Had the zussu within him grown too strong? Whitewillow didn't know what to say. But she had to say something!

"There is no 'someone else' in my life!"

Tristan paused in the door frame, turning his head slightly.

Whitewillow sunk her head low. "I have spent the last four weeks alone, hungry, and homeless in a foreign country. I have gone from entertaining the highest echelons of Zenshin nobility to sleeping on cold rooftops and bartering my jewelry for food. And yesterday … yesterday, I found a human with a kind heart and a thirst for knowledge who treated my body with respect. Yesterday reminded me of home, and it made me happy beyond words."

The dragoness plopped to the sidewalk with a heavy groan, her alabaster wings falling limp along her scaled flanks. "My request — my tithe — is not a debt to be paid! I can go on without it. But your companionship means much more. Please do not take that happiness away from me."

The dragoness lay listless on the worn brick sidewalk and closed her eyes. After what seemed like an eternity, she heard Tristan's approaching footsteps, and raised her head off the ground. The dragon looked up to see Tristan reaching out.

"You really feel that way about me?"

Whitewillow leaned into his touch, rubbing her snout against his hand. "Perhaps, out of loneliness, I have latched onto you too strongly. But most homn in this city consider me a pest, and my fellow draa treat me as an outsider to be shunned. I have not felt this alone since my parents exiled me from my clan." She looked up at him, her ruddy reptilian eyes searching for sympathy.

"Whitewillow …" Tristan felt his heart swell. "I'm sorry."

Tristan's anger broiled underneath his skin. But he didn't quite know what to make of this dragon from a foreign land. He couldn't think of a single skyscale that didn't treat him with at least a hint of insolent disdain. And then there was Whitewillow … friendly, kind, and welcoming … if more than a tad odd! He wanted — and maybe even needed — to believe that there were dragons out there he could trust. "Gods, I — I didn't know. It's just that I've been on the receiving end of a dragon's manipulation before, and … well, that's not a story for now." He dropped his shoulders, letting out a heavy sigh. "I'm still mad at you. But if all you have is me, then … I'm not going anywhere."

The albino dragoness felt her heart flutter, and she let out a warm sigh through her nostrils. "Tristan … thank you."

Tristan stroked the pale, waxy scales along her snout. "I want you to swear to me: no more tricks. Don't seduce me and ask for favors later."

Whitewillow shut her eyes. "Rii'sol. I promise."

"Next time you want something from me, let's talk about it openly. Like friends."

"Friends with many benefits?" Whitewillow added, hopefully.

Tristan's mouth opened, but his words faltered. "I ... gods, maybe. I don't know. At any rate, can you forgive me for getting mad?"

The dragoness stretched her neck up to lick Tristan on the cheek, nearly topping the glasses off his nose. "Yes."

"And I'm probably going to regret this, but if you agree to let me milk your flame sacs …" he paused for effect. "Then, I'll see if there's any information about Kodakoa at the Guild."

"Narthuus!" The dragoness leapt to her feet and wrapped Tristan up in her wings, squeezing her stretchy, leathery patagium around him. "You honor me, Tristan. I shall allow you to milk me for all I am worth."

Tristan grunted as he was constricted by the dragon's surprisingly strong wing arms. "Urk! No promises, okay? I can't do much without Lillian's approval."

"I do not wish for the ba'al to be involved. Her heart is hardened and full of zussu."

"I'm just a field scholar, but I'll see what I can do."

Just then, the clock tower in the residential district began its 11 o'clock ring. The massive bell radiated its gongs throughout the city like a harsh thunderclap. Whitewillow thought the sound to be very unpleasant on her tympanum. Zenshin clocks used beautiful chimes, not this garish gonging!

Tristan swore. "I'm late for brunch. Gotta go." He patted his pockets, realizing he still needed to grab his pocketbook from inside. "We'll catch up later, okay?"

"I will wait for you!" Whitewillow called out, as Tristan headed for the door.

"Don't bother! Go do … whatever it is dragons do for brunch. Give me two hours. We'll catch up at the fountain square where we met yesterday."

Whitewillow's stomach rumbled. If only she could afford a brunch of her own …

—=-=—

Tristan and Lillian met for brunch once a week to discuss his training progress and plot out future bounties. He always appreciated that about her; a lot of dragonhunters didn't put in the effort to spend time with their apprentices outside of work. Perhaps part of the reason was because Lillian knew that Tristan had no immediate family left … but he thought they had a great working relationship as well. Lillian was like a big sister to him: a gruff, mean, and grumpy big sister that always had his back whenever things got dangerous.

By the time Tristan arrived at the Laughing Daffodil cafe, he found that Lillian had already been seated. He weaved past the tables of the outside seating area — smelling the rich floral scent of the hanging flowerbeds overhead — and took a seat opposite of her. In this open area, the midday sun was shielded by the flowerbeds, and the air was pleasant to breathe.

Lillian had ordered a plate of buttercream biscuits and fermented honey tea — a Concordian staple — which she had already dug into. Tristan's tea cup was lukewarm, but the waitress would be by with a fresh kettle soon enough. He hastily slid into his seat. "Sorry, a friend stopped by as I was about to leave," he said loudly, speaking over the murmur of the crowded cafe. "Thanks for waiting."

Lillian slammed down the morning edition of the Concordian Chronicle with a huff. "Can you believe the trash they printed this morning?"

Tristan smirked. Classic Lillian: no hellos, no how-are-yous … his partner was as blunt and forceful as a mud devil's clubbed tail. He took a draught of his tea and savored the zesty, savory combination of simmered orangeberry mead and tea leaves. A proper honey tea had much of the alcohol simmered out of the mead, but it still tickled the palate when drunk. As he took another sip, Tristan craned his neck to read the freshly-pressed headline from a better angle.

AIRSHIP CRASH AT SOUTHWEST CITADEL TOWER, 4 DEAD

The black and white photo that sprawled the front of the page must have been from this morning, after the fire had died down. Looking up from the base of the citadel's hill, the marble walls loomed in the sky like a mighty giant. Even though Tristan had been there last night, it had been too dark to see how much damage had been done. He knew that the hydrogen gas inside those dirigibles was flammable, but he didn't realize just how explosive it could be. Half the tower was missing: the parapets all but rubble, and what was left of the internal wooden supports were charred and eaten away. In the foreground, several Praetorians stood to the side, in front of the burnt-out bakery. Tristan couldn't take his eyes off the page, still trying to process the reality of the situation.

"I still can't believe some dragon smugglers crashed a skybarge into the Royal Citadel …" Tristan muttered. He slathered a biscuit with butter and jam and hungrily shoved it in his mouth, causing crumbs to plink as they hit his plate.

Lillian raised a brow. "So you heard the dragon rumor, too?"

"Yeah, I was—" Tristan paused to swallow, realizing he shouldn't admit his whereabouts last night. "There was a whole crowd at the crash site. Word travels fast."

She pushed the newspaper forward. "Read it. There's no mention of dragons in the entire article."

"What?!" Tristan snatched the paper up. His eyes darted down the lines of text until he reached the bottom. He read aloud the end. "'The Chronicle has reached out to both Dragonwing Express and Elwood Aeronautics, and each has denied responsibility for the crash. The cause is undetermined, pending an official investigation by … the Praetorian Skyknights?!'" He dropped the newspaper on the table with a flutter. "That's our job they're doing!"

The Concordian Chronicle was a publication with a long history of anti-dragon sentiment. Ever since the dragon citizenship law was passed, every time a dragon was caught up in controversy, it inevitably made its way into the Chronicle, along with some colorful commentary on Concordia's mixed society. Anti-dragon sentiment was an easy fire to stoke: nothing sold papers like a dragon causing a stir in the city.

… which made the lack of a mention in the papers all the more puzzling. "The Chronicle's writers should be salivating at the thought of blaming a dragon for this tragedy."

Lillian tapped her chin with a finger. "There's only one reason the Chronicle would omit a dragon's involvement … and that's if they were forced to."

"It wouldn't be the first time the Citadel buried news that embarrassed the Crown …"

"I think there's more to it than that." Lillian leaned forward across the table, brushing her black hair out of her face. "Think about it: why else would the skyknights be all over this accident unless it had something to do with them?"

Tristan considered her words carefully, not sure if he could believe her. "You think a praetorian was involved with airship smuggling?"

"Hmf, unlikely. But it's clear that something happened yesterday that the praetorians don't want to get out." She paused to drink her tea. "I'm no dung beetle, but I know shit when I smell it."

Tristan took a long draught of his own tea and pondered the events of last night. He pictured the dirigible soaring overhead, the three dragons illuminated by the scattered moonlight. He replayed the sudden descent … the fiery explosion. He had seen these things happen before: they were smuggling jobs gone wrong.

Despite Dragonwing Express taking great lengths to prioritize security and accountability, some dragons simply could not be trusted around so much material wealth. The temptation to fly off with a barge's worth of valuables was ever-present for a species infamous for their hoarding instincts. Some smugglers simply took their newly-claimed treasures and flew off into the Beretti Mountains, hoping to never be found again. The smarter ones smuggled lightweight luxuries like silk and dyes, selling them off to a faction that wouldn't ask questions, like the goblin trade union or the naga clans. Skybarge smugglers got a new posting on the bounty board every so often, and Tristan had even worked one of them, under Lillian's apprenticeship. He remembered how bloody that job ended up being …

The more Tristan thought about it, the more he realized that flying a stolen airship towards the Citadel at night was quite possibly the stupidest thing a smuggler could do. A dragon would have to be suicidal to take that flight path! The airspace around the citadel was a dedicated no-fly zone, staunchly enforced by the Praetorians that patrolled the walls. The parapets had mounted cannons on every tower, and Cinderscales stood by, ready to intercept any fliers. Maybe there was a problem with the ballast, or the dragons hadn't properly calibrated the skysails, leading to a crooked flight. It's likely that the dragons realized there was a problem and unhooked their harness before they got shot down, leaving the barge to drop out of the air.

But why would those dragons fly straight into the path of cannons in the first place?

Wait.

A chill ran down Tristan's spine, and goosebumps sprung up on his arms. Was there cannonfire last night? Tristan didn't remember any … surely, he and Whitewillow would have heard the booms of the citadel's cannons from anywhere in the city! Why didn't the cannons shoot down the barge before it crashed?

Lillian was right: something was amiss about this whole situation. The praetorians, the censored newspaper, the lack of cannon fire …

"Have you been to the Guild yet?"

Tristan snapped out of his thoughts. "No."

"A couple of haughty skyknights swaggered in this morning with a sealed decree from the chancellor himself, granting the Praetorians temporary authority over the Dragon Hunter's Guild. And their first move was to suspend all investigation into the 'tower incident'."

Tristan's jaw dropped. "No way! The Guildmaster won't take this sitting down," he said. "He hates the Praetorians."

"That's the other thing … Wilhelm is indisposed."

"What?!"

"The Guild is a madhouse right now. Wilhelm has suspended operations while he cooperates with the Praetorian investigation of the citadel explosion. There's no new bounties, and no new work."

Tristan slapped both palms on the table, causing the tea cups to clink. "Bullshit! They can't shut down the entire guild!"

Lillian showed uncharacteristic restraint, merely shrugging in response. "They can, and they did." She had apparently gotten the anger out of her system this morning and had already moved on to bitter resignation.

As the king's personal guard, the Praetorians had near unlimited authority and even superseded the city's own law enforcement. Concordia's past kings had used them for all sorts of sordid acts, like kidnapping and assassination. But under modern law, the Praetorians rarely meddled in civilian affairs. Last time this happened was back when Tristan was a young teen, when a Concordian Cinderscale was accused of poaching livestock. The Praetorians investigated and sparked controversy when they concluded the story to be a fabrication by a greedy cattle farmer who sought financial compensation. The farmer's subsequent disappearance and fruitless search made the front page for a whole week.

"Then what are we going to do for training this week?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"You're kidding."

"You heard me. I'd rather not work at all, than work under the thumb of the skyknights." She raised her cup of honey tea. "Here's to an unplanned vacation. Cheers."

Tristan stared, slack-jawed as Lillian downed the rest of her tea.

The waiter came by with more fermented honey tea and a notepad to take orders. Tristan always got the same thing every week: the smoked sausage and pepper omelet, extra cheese. Lillian ordered the brunch special: toasted garlic and olive flatbread with a side of marinated Concordian dates.

Tristan squeezed a lemon wedge into his fresh tea and pondered while he stirred. "Well, as long as I have some time off … I suppose I could spend some time with my new friend," he muttered.

—=-=—

Whitewillow's finned tail swished with an anxious rhythm as she waited at the edge of Weyard Street. The longer Tristan took, the more likely a hunter would notice a dragon loitering around the corner of the Dragonhunter's Guild. And nothing good could come of that. Before leaving, Tristan said he was going to do something he shouldn't. Whitewillow wasn't sure what it was, but he seemed very insistent. Something in the last two hours had gotten him all riled up.

All around her, the streets of Concordia bustled with activity. Whitewillow particularly liked watching the steam-powered trollies that passed by. She had lived in Zenshin her whole life and never seen a steam engine before. How these humans managed to turn water and tubes into complex machines was a mystery to her. Zenshin had nothing like this: the horse was still the preferred method for humans to get around. She loved watching the gears turn and the sprockets crank, moving on their own as if these carts were a living thing with a heart of iron and coal.

Finally, Tristan appeared around the bend, looking as smug as a young drake in season. "That was too easy. The whole Guild is distracted with yesterday's explosion and let me walk out with no questions asked."

Whitewillow's tail wiggled with delight. "They let you sign for the bounty?"

"Well no … field scholars can't take on bounties by themselves. But with a quick forge of Lillian's signature, I got this!" He held up a cylindrical scroll tube of brass and wood, emblazoned with the hideous symbol of a dragon pierced through the chest by a spear. It was the Dragon Hunter Guild's sigil.

"That is wonderful!" Whitewillow paused. "What is it?"

"A writ of passage! With this writ, we can search Kodakoa's lair for clues. And Tailwind Shelters is legally required to assist us in any way."

Whitewillow churred with delight and padded her talons on the ground. "I could kiss you, draa-friend!"

Tristan's cheeks ran hot as he held the dragon's snout at bay. "Please not in public!"

"And what of the ba'al? Will this not anger her?"

Tristan waved the notion off. "Lillian is better off not knowing. If I told her I was helping you, she'd go ballistic."

"I am not surprised: I sensed much zussu in her."

"You sense zussu in everyone!"

"Because it is in everyone! And I wish to cleanse it all …" she let out an eager growl.

Tristan rolled his eyes. "Let's meet up in the Western Quarter. I can take the trolley and be there within 30 minutes."

The albino dragoness tilted her head, looking hopeful. "Do you suppose Concordia would allow a dragon on a steam trolly?"

Tristan laughed nervously. "Are you kidding?! They would never sell you a ticket!"

The dragoness pouted, her fluttery spines drooping. "Not even if I promise to behave?"

"Would you even be able to fit on one of them?"

The scaled courtesan wiggled her haunches. "I believe I can squeeze myself through those sliding doors."

Tristan stroked his chin. "Hmm, I have an idea ... but you're not going to like it."

The dragoness frowned when she saw the look on Tristan's face. "What? Why are you giving me that smile?"

—=-=—

"Now arriving at Porter's Way Station. Next stop, Beetlestone Street station."

Whitewillow lurched forward as the trolly came to a complete stop. She heard a piercing hiss, and watched the brass pipes vented great billows of steam into the air. The gears turned, the pullies spun, and the self-opening doors folded up. She was utterly fascinated by watching all these moving parts working together in harmony. For most of the ride, Whitewillow spent her time looking out the window to watch the great wheels turn and puffs of smoke rise, and watching the passing march of cottages and shops that were Concordia's inner city. She couldn't help but ask Tristan all sorts of questions about the machinery, who answered as best as his knowledge could. How did these humans figure out these massive contraptions? It seemed like magic to her.

Zenshin's technology was a work of art, but steam-powered machines were foreign to them. Instead, the humans use water mills powered by Zenshin's winding rivers. Great water wheels turn to store mechanical energy in humongous springs, which are then slowly uncoiled to power the clockwork of Zenshin cities. The dragoness thought that was ingenious enough, but here the Concordians have been burning coal and boiling water to power everything from trollies to children's toys! How did the humans do it?!

When the doors opened, a crowd of people who were waiting to get on stepped back with shock as an albino dragoness stood in front of them.

"My word!"

"A dragon?! How uncouth!"

"I say, what is that beast doing here?"

Tristan held up his dragontooth necklace at arms length and stepped off the trolly, a smug smirk on his lips. "Don't worry, folks, she's perfectly harmless! This dragon's got a broken wing and I'm escorting her back home."

He gave a tug on the chain lashed to Whitewillow's horns, and the dragoness reluctantly limped forward. The crowd parted, allowing the hunter and his captive dragon to pass. As Whitewillow slipped her scaly haunches past the sliding doors, the suspension groaned and the entire cabin rocked. The dragoness continued to turn heads all the way through the exit gate and out onto the brick sidewalk of Beetlestone Street.

The western quarter was the oldest and most impoverished section of Concordia. The area outside Beetlestone Station was nice enough, but the sidewalks were older and more worn, with blades of grass sprouting between the crevices. The streets were dirty and soiled with horse manure, with nary a steam car to be seen. A lot of the industry here predated the steam revolution, and the air was tainted with the foul stench of smog. But the western quarter was also the home of Dragonwing Express, and it was far more common to see a dragon in this area. Whitewillow felt more comfortable here than in the nicer parts of the city.

Once they were a fair distance away, Whitewillow growled. "Take this wretched thing off of me now."

"Oh! Yeah, of course."

Tristan threw open the clasps around the dragon's horns and slipped the leather muzzle off her snout. Whitewillow snorted and shook her head, flaring her spines. She licked her lips at the unpleasant taste in her mouth. Whichever dragon had worn that last had tried to breathe fire through it, but the tiny aspiration holes prevented any flames from spewing out. Instead, the dragonbreath soaked into the charred leather, creating an awful stench and taste.

"That is what you do to the dragons you capture?!"

Tristan tucked the muzzle into his gear satchel. "Could you be a bit more grateful? They wouldn't let you on unless I agreed to pay for ten whole seats!"

"Your guild treats us like beasts!"

"Well sometimes, you act like beasts!" Tristan hadn't said that to be mean, he realized that it sounded out that way after she snarled at him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

Whitewillow growled. "Are you sure the muzzle was absolutely necessary?"

"They wouldn't have let us board otherwise. Why?"

"Because you seemed to enjoy that more than you should have."

Tristan laughed, and Whitewillow snorted again. She had never done anything so humiliating in her life! Wearing a leather muzzle like some ... some common animal! She could hardly believed that she allowed herself to be tied up by the horns — a mark of shame for any self-respecting dragon. A dragon's horns were their pride! To take a dragon by the horns was more than about controlling their bite and flame. It was also an act of domination, of enslavement. The humans knew this, and did it anyway. Whitewillow detested it.

"Oh come on, it wasn't that big of a deal, right?"

Whitewillow looked away.

"... right!?"

"Gnaar fellmok pahn rii roh grn ssith! Ma'at duu roh pomf!"

Some of those words Tristan had only heard from particularly angry dragons. "Hey, no need for that kind of language!"

Whitewillow scowled. Sometimes, she preferred that most Concordians didn't know dragonspeak. "A dragon never forgets a slight, human."

Tristan hated how often he had to apologize when talking to dragons. "I'm sorry, okay? Listen: Tailwind Shelters is a few blocks away still. You can sling all sorts of slurs at me on the way there."

She snorted. "Ichikki-ti dah mai!"

Tristan raised a brow. That didn't sound like dragonspeak. "Was that Zenshinese?"

Whitewillow flashed a toothy smirk and kept walking down the road.

"Hey, what does ichikki-ti mean?"

Saying nothing, the dragoness swayed her finned tail behind her, blasting Tristan with a gust of air.

He trotted forward to keep up. "Whitewillow?!"

Still nothing.

"What did you just call me?!"

The dragoness remained silent on the entire walk to Tailwind Shelters. A scowl was plastered across her snout. But on the inside, she savored his pestering.

Tailwind Shelters was, for legal purposes, an animal shelter. Although the dragons it kept were technically for sale, the owner had never sold a single dragon since its inception. Functionally, Tailwind Shelters operated as a communal housing facility for dragons, and its legality was the thorn in the side of many nobles and politicians. It was the only place a free dragon could legally live … the lone alternative was to become a domesticate and live with a human owner, which was a humiliation no wildborn would suffer.

Tailwind Shelters was a place of such constant trouble for the Guild that every dragonhunter in Concordia could find it on a map, blindfolded. Tristan had been here many times before, albeit never without Lillian. It was an exceedingly dangerous place for a lone hunter to wander, and the reassuring weight of Tristan's holstered revolver had a constant presence in the back of his mind. He kept his dragontooth necklace hidden under his shirt for anonymity.

Whitewillow heard a lot of shouting in the distance. Tristan noticed it too as they got closer. As they crossed the street and turned a corner, they saw a flight of dragons gathered outside the gates. They were crowed around a loud drake pacing back and forth on the brick road outside, near the huge sign of a sleeping dragon curled around a tower. He strutted with poise and head held high, huffing and snorting as he spoke. The language of dragons was guttural and had too many consonants, which sounded little more than snarling and growling to an untrained ear. Tristan couldn't quite make out every word, but the dragon seemed to be talking about last night.

"... and this I promise you, draa'kin: the humans will pin the blame of the crash squarely on our horns, use it as another excuse to persecute and hurt us. Even now, a rabble stands outside Dragonwing Express, protesting our very existence! And their politicians maneuver to shut down this shelter and deprive you of the very roosts you rest your wings in."

This dragon was certainly raising a fervor. The flight that stood around him murmured and growled with agreement, and their tails swished anxiously. Tristan didn't want to get close to so many angry skyscales, but he had to sneak by them to get into the front gate.

"The humans do not deserve us! We haul their cargo, we deliver their packages, we tow their floating barges … the humans get rich on our wings. And what have we to show for this willing servitude, this paid slavery? Some stamped coin and a full belly? Ssissith gnarssh!" He snorted smoke and ash. "For these base 'luxuries', we strip ourselves of our pride. We are draa'kin: the fire-born, lords of the sky, the apex of the wild! To lower our horns and serve the human is a betrayal of our very nature as draa."

As Tristan got closer, he could make out the details of this preaching dragon. His red-orange scutes and large finned crest indicated that he was a Northern Ironscale, a large and loathsome breed that nested around the sulfur mires far north of the Beretti Mountains. Ironscales owed their rusty hue to the large amounts of ferrous iron bonded to their scales. The Guild still wasn't sure where these dragons got such an iron-rich diet, though Concordian legend stated that the first Ironscale came to be after a dragon ate an entire knight clad in armor. Ironscales were notoriously hard to kill; bullets could ricochet off their scutes unless hit square-on. In ancient times, their scales were used to craft armor, though such dragonscale mail was exceedingly rare due to the immense difficulty of killing them. This particular drake was longer than Whitewillow by a good ten feet at least, with a wingspan to match.

"That draa reeks of zussu," Whitewillow muttered. "He is steeped in it, dripping like a fresh calligraphy pen." She paused, waiting for Tristan to agree.

"Hmm? Yeah …" He muttered, trying to concentrate on making sense of the Ironscale's guttural growls.

The fiery drake looked around the sea of slit-pupil eyes staring back at him. "The humans … they rape our lands with their invasive farms and polluted cities. Their unchecked expansion has chased the prey from hunting grounds, and uprooted clans from their nests. We have already let them conquer the land … shall we let them rule the skies, too? With these flying machines, these ships of the air? Shall we bend our horns and help the humans consume and conquer endlessly?"

Several dragons respond back with roars; the cacophony of dragonspeak was little more than growls to Tristan's ears.

Whitewillow snorted. "I will not stand for this zussu to spread. I shall speak."

Tristan — who up until then had been nodding along to the dragon's religious mumbo jumbo — flinched. "What? No, wait! Whitewillow!" He grabbed the dragon's finned tail and tried to hold her back. "That's a terrible idea!"

She shook him off with a flutter of her tail. "Taishui sent me to Concordia for a reason, Tristan. I will not hold my tongue and let this zussu go unchallenged."

Tristan watched helplessly as the scaled courtesan waded through the crowd, approaching the Ironscale boldly. "You speak daring words, drake." Whitewillow's melodious zenshinite accent made it easier for Tristan to understand her dragonspeak. "But must you preach division and hate? Not all humans deserve your ire. Or have you forgotten the ones who feed and shelter us?"

The fiery Ironscale snorted smoke through his nostrils. "Riss-fek grn ssul! You dare address me without supplication, outlander?"

The flight of dragons parted around Whitewillow, who did not wish to be associated with her. Tristan muttered swears under his breath, knowing that he couldn't intervene without making things worse. This was a dragon matter: humans were not welcome.

Whitewillow quickly bowed with a splay of her wings. "My apologies, noble draa. This is an open forum — any draa may speak freely."

"And any draa but you, outlander." The drake circled around Whitewillow, sniffing and sizing her up. "I have heard whispers of an albino temptress from faraway lands. One who shamefully wears human-wrought silk and jewelry, who spreads a poisonous dogma to all she takes under her tail." He snorted. "The scent of homn on you offends my nostrils. You are not welcome here."

Several of the dragons hissed whispers amongst themselves, giving the scaled courtesan wary glances. Tristan wished he could run right up and pull her away before things got even worse. But Whitewillow did not back down. Instead, she turned to the crowd. "Hear me, draa'kin! I am Zenshin-born: a land where draa and homn live in peace. This drake speaks as if draa and homn cannot coexist, while across the great sea, they share their homes and hearts!"

The drake let out a throaty chortle. "If that is true, the draa of Zenshin are not worthy of their horns!"

Whitewillow's pride boiled with indignity as the crowd of dragons joined in chuffing laughter. "The homn of Concordia have wounded our scales and our pride. But if you insist on stoking the fires of hate, these wounds will never heal. Riss! If we want the humans to treat us with respect, then we must be better than them, not stoop to their depths!"

The fiery drake snorted with disdain. Ignoring Whitewillow, he continued to address the crowd. "This albino gnaar'fell is like a hatchling: ignorant of the world's ways. Do not listen to her tepid, dewy-eyed words of 'harmony'. The gnaar'fell would rather let the humans tread upon your wings, rather than defend your own pride."

Whitewillow bared her teeth. "Do not twist my words, drake."

He continued to address the crowd, not even giving Whitewillow the decency of eye contact. "The humans are too bigoted to ever respect a race that walks upon four legs like their cattle and their pets. They see only beasts worthy of subjugation. They are ssith'su; they will never accept us."

"Then why even set foot in this city of homn, living in their dwellings, eating their food? You hypocrite!"

The Ironscale let out a roar and tackled Whitewillow to the ground. The fight was brief, but fierce, with an exchange of teeth and claws, and billlows of fire that torched the stray grass that grew between the brick walkway.

Within moments, the large drake pinned Whitewillow against the smooth cobblestone with clenched claws. "Arrogant and presumptuous whelp! You assume that I live here by choice!? Cracked Shell's ancestral hunting grounds have become farmland. Would you have us subsist off the mice in the human's fields!?"

Pinned down helplessly, Whitewillow hissed through clenched teeth."Your loss is great, and you have my pity."

He snorted in her face. "I do not want your pity. I want your submission."

The albino dragoness growled. "I will not yield to such barbarism! Get off me, pomf!"

The drake unfurled his reddened wings, showing off his brand: a row of holes in his patagium near his left flank. "Reign in your tongue, grn ssithiss. You speak to Ragn'mawl, Kaarst Graath of the Cracked Shell."

Tristan swore again. The Kaarst Graath was the nobility of a dragon clan. They were branded with a bite from their matriarch, which granted considerable prestige and influence among the wildborn. Tristan's hand wandered to his holstered revolver, but he knew he couldn't intervene now, not without enraging this drake's entire clan. And Cracked Shell was the worst clan that Tristan could possibly meddle with. "Come on, Whitewillow … swallow your pride and let it go," he whispered.

The Ironscale's talons scratched furrows in Whitewillow's delicate white scales. "I tire of your insolence, whelp. Yield."

Whitewillow stubbornly struggled under the claws of the larger drake. Her hind legs kicked his armored belly as she tried to squirm out of the pin. "I am a … courtesan of Taishui! Rrf … I have had rougher foreplay!"

Ragn'mawl roared in her face, raking talons slipped between Whitewillow's pale scales and finding soft flesh to dig into. Rivulets of blood traveled down Whitewillow's foreleg. "Do you prefer your innards to see sunlight?"

Whitewillow snarled as Ragn'mawl dug his talons into her shoulder. Her white wings fluttered uselessly, billowing up dust clouds in the road. "You would not kill a draa with so many witnesses. There are consequences, even for a Kaarst Graath."

Ragn'mawl lowered his left wing and wrapped his thumb claw around Whitewillow's horn, pulling on it and forcing her to look up into his gaze. Even Tristan recognized that to pull on a dragon's horn like that was a disgraceful act. "Our laws do not apply to outlanders. I would take pleasure in performing your disembowelment before this crowd."

Whitewillow looked into the drake's golden eyes and saw a coldness that terrified her. She averted her gaze. "Very well. I yield."

Ragn'mawl leaned in close to Whitewillow's tympanum. "Be grateful that I leave you with only your pride wounded, whelp." He paused, a toothy grin spreading across his snout. "Tell me you are grateful for my mercy."

Whitewillow snarled. "I … am … grateful."

His hubris satisfied, Ragn'mawl released Whitewillow and turned around, letting his tail slap her snout as she rose to her feet. "Heed my words, draa'kin! This is what the humans would have you be: a soft and submissive mongrel! This grn sithiss is a traitor to all proud draa'kin. Her words are not worthy of your tympanum."

Whitewillow favored her wounded leg, which bled onto the cobblestone. "Your path of hate can only end in misery, Kaarst Graath."

But Whitewillow had run out of grace in the eyes of the wildborn. She was not allowed to speak further, not after yielding. The flight of dragons growled and shouted her down, some of them hissing slurs on their forked tongues. Ducking her head down, she limped away. Ragn'mawl continued to preach to the crowd, but Tristan no longer paid him any attention.

When it was safe to do so, he pulled Whitewillow aside with a touch on her neck. He gestured at her wounds, which were still dripping blood. "Hey, hey … are you okay?"

Whitewillow looked down at her shoulder, watching the trails of dripping blood zig-zag between her pearly white scales. She put on a brave face. "It is but a flesh wound."

"I've dealt with plenty of wounds. Let me see." He reached for her leg, which the dragoness graciously shifted her weight and lifted for him. "You have several subcutaneous lacerations … did he penetrate the muscle fascia underneath?"

When Tristan spread one of her wounds open with both thumbs, Whitewillow snarled in pain and pulled away. "Maar grn gro hisst, homn!"

"Sorry, sorry!" Tristan blurted. "Most wounds I inspect are on dragons that are already dead."

Whitewillow snorted with disdain. She tried not to judge him for it. "Gentle touches, homn! My armor is only skin-deep."

Tristan reached for her shoulder again, being more mindful as he inspected her bleeding gashes. "These cuts are deep, but dragonhide is pretty thick. No stitches required."

Whitewillow curled her neck down to lick his face. "Your concern is appreciated, draa-friend."

Tristan blushed as he felt the dragon's tongue drag across his cheek. "Hey, hey … not in public, remember?" he paused. Now that he knew she was okay, his anger boiled up to the surface. “Now what in the blazes were you thinking, walking up there and expecting to be welcomed?!" For a dragon, she didn't seem to know their customs very well …

The dragoness snorted. "This is why I prefer the company of homn. Draa are difficult for me."

"You should have said nothing."

The scaled courtesan held her chin up high. "You suggest I instead be a coward? I am proud that I stood up for my beliefs."

"You embarrassed yourself in front of a whole flight of dragons."

Whitewillow's proud gait did not falter. "If even one draa considered my words, that is enough."

Tristan shook his head, not understanding the whims of this eccentric dragoness.

Together, the two walked through the heavy gates of Tailwind Shelters. Though its meager beginnings were a little more than an abandoned lot in the slums of the western quarter, Dragonwing Express had since invested in the property, and Tailwind Shelters had quadrupled in size. The unconventional living needs of dragons allowed for compact vertical towers that saved real estate space. This state-of-the-art facility of steel and stone consisted of four roosting towers with thirty "lairs" each, and it was always at full capacity.

Whitewillow had never seen anything like it before visiting Concordia, and she was amazed at the ingenuity of human engineering. The honeycomb structure of the towers stood out amongst the wood and glass buildings of Concordia proper. These towers were the tallest buildings in the western district, tall enough to be seen from as far as the eastern wall. Concordians often disparagingly referred to the towers as "the beehive", and kept their distance accordingly.

Whitewillow looked around with a gaze of wonder. She had been here once with Kodakoa, but it was at night, and she had not been able to appreciate the bustle. "So many draa … it feels like home!"

But Tristan was on-edge: this was a dangerous place for a dragonhunter to be. Dragons were everywhere: sunbathing on shale slabs, grooming each other in the artificial pond, lounging around the communal bonfire, stretching their wings overhead. Tristan noted at least a dozen different species at a glance, from the wolf-sized Scalehawks, to the hefty Highland Ridgebacks. Most of these dragons were freed domesticates, wildborn exiles, and other clanless who had no other place to call home. Tristan couldn't wrap his head around the logistics of caring for so many large carnivores. The sewage system for this place must be enormous!

The lone administrative building near the entrance was repurposed from an old stone cottage, complete with flower beds and a chimney. The mossy footpath meandered up the front lawn of the homely property, which was lined with a thick hedge of shrubs and bushes. Just outside was a stubble-faced teenager talking to a teal-colored Bluefin Zephyr with a tube of brass fitted around a splintered horn. The young man was college-aged; likely a student who performed odd jobs to pay for tuition. He excused himself from the Zephyr and approached Tristan.

"Hey, you're not another reporter, are you? I was told to turn away the press."

Tristan fished out his dragontooth necklace from under his shirt. "I'm a dragonhunter. I need to speak with your boss about a bounty."

The teenager's eyes opened wide when he took in Whitewillow's finned form. "Oh! She's a beauty! What'd she do?"

"Me? I did nothing, fair human," Whitewillow churred, fanning her spines alluringly. "The only thing I am guilty of is being ravishingly beautiful."

Tristan tried to keep a straight face. "Is the owner in?"

The teenager nodded. "Yeah. Go ahead, the door's unlocked." He then turned to Whitewillow and gestured to her dripping shoulder. "Want me to take a look at your wounds? We have plenty of medical supplies here."

The albino dragoness let out a melodious trill and fluttered her wings. "Narthuus! I would be honored, young human. Go without me, Tristan."

Taking his leave, Tristan walked up the front porch of the mossy cottage. The heavy wooden door groaned as it opened, announcing his entry. Once a humble home, the inside was a chaotic mess: desks covered in paperwork, storage cabinets stacked with junk, and large crates in various stages of unpacking. Gas lamplights burned on the walls. The owner of Tailwind Shelters sat at a cluttered desk, checking off what looked like a shipping manifest. A couple of colorful children's drawings hung up on a cluttered corkboard behind her: one of a purple dragon flying under a rainbow, and another of a stick figure and a teal dragon drinking tea.

The owner was dressed in a fine-tailored maroon petticoat, silk blouse, and a tight-fitting feminine vest that held a pocketwatch on a chain. A matching suitcoat and a wide-brimmed hat hung on the coathoak behind her — the whole set undoubtedly cost more than Tristan's last paycheck. Despite her wealth, she chose to not hide her freckles behind makeup and kept her sleeves rolled up in a masculine fashion: characteristic of a woman accustomed to hard work. A lock of fiery, frizzy hair partially covered her pleasant, sharp-featured face, while the remainder was held back by a single, jeweled hairstick. As she stood up to greet Tristan, he noticed a belly bump underneath her buttoned vest.

She did not look pleased to be interrupted, but nonetheless curtsied politely. "Lady Jenivive Broyal, owner of Dragonwing Express, at your service. How may I help you?"

Tristan held up his dragontooth necklace. "Good afternoon, ma'am. I'm Tristan, of the dragonhunter's guild."

Jenivive smile vanished at the sight of his necklace, and she let out an exhausted sigh. "Again? I told you folks this morning to talk to my husband, not to me."

"Ma'am, I'm not—"

"I don't care what the skyknights found in that wreckage: Dragonwing Express has her full fleet accounted for. And you can quote me on that!"

Tristan blinked. Dragonwing Express wasn't missing a skybarge? Then what did those dragons crash last night? He made a mental note of that for later. "I'm not here about the Citadel crash. I've got a writ of passage, here … standard investigation procedure." He slipped the scroll tube from his shoulder sling and opened the top with a pop.

Jenivive look no less pleased about the misunderstanding. "Oh, who is it this time?" She took the scroll, broke the wax seal and unfurled the parchment. Her brow furrowed as her eyes skimmed the words. "Kodakoa … my, he's been the center of a lot of trouble. A shame, really."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"He's a Ogrimmdraa — that's a Highland Ridgeback." she emphasized, as if Tristan didn't already know. "He's not the talkative sort. I understand he works with Dragonwing Express, pulling the skybarges."

"Do you know where he is?"

"I haven't seen him for several weeks."

"You don't keep track of your dragons?"

Jenivive's thin brows furrowed in annoyance. "They're free dragons, not domesticates! They're allowed to do as they please without a human breathing down their necks."

Gods, this woman was testy! "Sorry ma'am, I didn't mean offense. Does he have any locations he frequents? Like a bar, or a butchery?"

She shook her head. "I told you, I don't know much, hunter." she paused, gesturing to his scroll. "That writ of passage allows you access to his roost. Let me get you a key."

Jenivive turned to the heavy metal door across the room and unlocked it. Inside was a closet full of keys hanging on walls. These were not normal keys: each were large brass rods as long as Tristan's hand, with notches on one end. This unusual design was forged to fit a dragon's talons, not human fingers. She handed Tristan one of them. "Take it."

Tristan hefted the heavy rod in his hand. It came with a curved grip tied to a twine lanyard for dragons to wear around their neck. "Thanks. I'll put this to good use."

"His roost is in the west tower, pod 14C. Do you need an escort?"

"I know the way."

"Fantastic." Clutching her baby bump, she eased herself down in her chair. "Try not to shoot any of my dragons while you're out there."

Tristan opened his mouth to say something snide, but stopped. Instead, he politely excused himself and made his way to the door, shaking his head once he was outside. Whenever his job took him here, it was always Lillian that did the talking, but Lady Jenivive had never been friendly with her, either. What an unpleasant curmudgeon!

Looking around outside, he noticed that Whitewillow was nowhere to be found among this sea of dragons. Tristan wandered the campus a bit before finding the medical bay near the back. The large open building resembled a horse stable with cabinets full of veterinary supplies. Whitewillow sat on her haunches while the young man tended to her bleeding shoulder. He had already washed the blood off her leg and applied a styptic alum to her puncture wounds. Now he was in the middle of buffing her horns with polish and a rag — how the dragoness talked herself into receiving such a service, Tristan could only guess. Whitewillow was in the middle of some story, it seemed.

"... and after Taishui's death, a ginkgo sapling was planted over her grave within our temple's sanctum. Taishui's ka remains within the sacred Ichi Tree, and has provided wisdom and guidance for over a thousand years. When traveling, a priest or priestess of Husia must carry the ceremonial tingsha, to summon the spirit of Taisui and commune with the Great Water Dragon in times of worship or need."

"So you simply …" the young man rapped his fists together, "chime those disks on your wings whenever you want to talk to your god?"

Whitewillow bowed her head. "Ferduus, fair human. The tingsha are my conduit to Taishui, and her divine power."

"How do you know she can hear you all the way over here, in Concordia?"

The dragoness smiled. "I simply must have faith that she can." She then noticed Tristan approaching. "Tristan! Is this shelter not amazing? Homn and draa, working together … it reminds me of Zenshin. I wish I could live here!"

"Unfortunately, we have a six month waiting list," the young man muttered.

Tristan held up the notched brass rod. "I got the key to Kodakoa's roost. All done up?"

"Yes." She stood up, turned to the young man, and licked his cheek. "My sincere thanks, William. If you would ever desire a more hands-on demonstration of Taishui's teachings, I would be delighted to perform them for you."

The young man made a face as he turned to Tristan. "Your scaly friend is an odd sort."

"She sure is! Let's go, Whitewillow." Tristan turned to her as they walked outside. "You never told me that Taishui actually existed."

"You never asked about Taishui. William did."

Tristan now felt foolish. All this time he had assumed this "Taishui" was no different from the Concordian gods: ineffable, intangible, and notably absent from his life. "About what I said this morning, about Taishui not being real … I'm sorry."

A slight smile spread across the dragon's white lips. "Taishui forgives your ignorance, human."

Tristan hardened his heart. "But now I think it's weird that you pray to someone who lived a mortal life. What kind of god dies?"

"Why is it strange to pray to those who ascend to a greater form? Do you not pray to your ancestors?"

"I pray to no one."

"What a sad thing to say!"

Tristan frowned. "I don't think there's anything sad about that at all."

"Do you not get lonely for family who have passed?"

Tristan's mind briefly went to his mother and father. It had taken him several years for the memory of them to stop being painful. He shook himself from his thoughts with a flinch. "Praying to my parents would just open up old wounds that are better left closed."

"Both parents were taken from you?" She paused. "Is that why you are so testy about religion?"

"I … don't feel comfortable talking about this."

The dragon leaned in to give him a nuzzle. "You do not have to explain. You have my most sincere condolences, draa-friend."

Tristan swallowed. "Thank you. It's okay, really. The Guild is my family now."

What an unfortunate choice of family, Whitewillow thought.

Together, the pair walked in silence toward the west tower. From the ground loomed a column of huge hexagonal chambers with a steel frame. Tailwind Shelters really did look like a massive honeycomb, but the scale was hard to appreciate until one was up close. These towers were twice as tall as his own apartment complex! The platforms on each level were steep and narrow, and covered in claw marks. As skyscales preferred to use their wings, the ramps were used mostly by the humans who worked here and the occasional dragon who stumbled home too drunk to find their roost in the dark. Pod 14C was quite a climb. They walked in silence for a while.

Tristan glanced over the edge of the platform. The dragons down below were looking smaller and smaller. There were no rails to be found up here, as dragons used the platforms to take off and land. He shuddered and looked away before the vertigo gripped him. Tristan decided to stick close to the center of the tower, near the hexagonal doors. He cleared his throat, feeling the need to take his mind off the height. "So, Kodakoa … what is your obsession with him, anyway?"

Whitewillow's crimson eyes darted away. "You would not understand."

"Try me."

The dragon's chest scutes stretched as she took in a deep breath, revealing lines of pinkish skin in between them. "I have followed Taishui's will for most of my life, and I always tread where the divine goddess leads me. She had guided me to Concordia. And now she guides me to Kodakoa. I don't know why yet. But I am certain she wants me to find him. I feel a stirring deep in my heart, and I heed her call."

"So you want me to help you find this dragon you barely even know … based on some heartburn?"

Whitewillow snorted. "I said you would not understand."

"How do you know that this feeling you have isn't just a construct of your mind?"

The albino dragoness cocked her head, smirking. "Are you testing my faith, human?"

"I'm just saying … I've never seen any proof that the gods exist."

"Taishui has no need to prove her divinity, silly homn. When I am in need, she provides. When I pray, she answers. I required a dragon hunter, and Taishui brought me to you. What further proof do you need?"

"Me?! I'm the proof?"

"Ferduus. You are part of her plans, even if you cannot see it."

Tristan frowned, not liking the implication that he was a pawn in some god's schemes. "Hey, I'm doing this out of my own free will. I've always wanted to get to know dragons better."

"And why do you think that out of all the hunters in your guild, I managed to find the one who wanted to befriend a draa?"

Tristan shrugged. "Coincidence, I guess."

A playful churr reverberated from the dragon's throat. Ma'at roh drii thuush! Stick with me, draa-friend, and you will see many more 'coincidences'."

By the time Tritstan reached Kodakoa's pod, he had broken out in a sweat from the climb. Being so far above the city made him light-headed. He had never been up this high before, and he could feel his heart racing in panic. He refused to look down, but Tristan's gaze reached miles away across the namesake city of Concordia. He could see all the way past the great walls to the amber farmlands, verdant hills, and villages outside. Plumes of steam and smoke rose from the rooftops of the cityscape, like pillars of clouds that reached up towards the heavens. Higher still, floating skybarges puttered along, dragged by their scaly pilots. Concordia's skyline was a beautiful and impressive testament to mankind's prosperity, but Tristan was too queasy to properly enjoy it.

Whitewillow pointed to the large sign on the hexagonal door with her wing. "There it is: pod 14C!"

A gust of wind caused him to cling to Whitewillow's wing for support, and the dragoness chuffed laughter. "Such a skittish little thing!" She shook him off with a flutter.

"I told you I don't like heights! Let's get inside, quick."

Tristan inserted the notched brass rod into the keyhole and heard a loud, thunking click. With the lock released, he pressed down on the foot pedal, releasing the hexagon door and allowing it to swivel. The design of this door was odd to Tristan, but it made more sense for a dragon than a doorknob did. As the heavy door rotated with a metallic groan, Whitewillow lowered her head and muttered a quick prayer to her goddess.

The stench of dragon wafted into Tristan's nose as he stepped inside Kodakoa's roost. The pod was dark, but he could see that much of the space was dominated by a large sleeping mat in the center. The entire room was smaller than Tristan's whole apartment; the largest species of dragons would have to squeeze to fit inside. However, dragons didn't need much living space — small roosts felt comforting and secure to them, and they were fond of curling up in tight balls when they slept. Tristan thought they were like big scaly housecats, in a sense.

Whitewillow sniffed the air, but couldn't find a fresh scent. "Kodakoa fled this place days ago."

"He's wanted for the killing of three men in a bar fight. I wouldn't expect him to hang around."

The dragon's white nares flared as she took in deep breaths. She found something odd hidden underneath Kodakoa's stale musk. "Several other draa have been here." She sniffed again. "Recently, too."

"You mean, after Kodakoa left?"

She took in several more deep sniffs. "I cannot tell."

Whitewillow puffed a plume of orange flame on the wall-mounted sconces, illuminating the dim interior. In the warm light of the flames, Tristan noticed that the cushioned sleeping mat on the floor was well-used, with a depression in the center. On the floor, a half-empty bottle of oil lay on its side, next to a soiled rag. In the corner sat a small wood furnace for cold nights, with pipes that vented out into the chimney in the hollow center of the tower. There was no running water in these pods, nor windows nor chairs nor much of anything else that was normally found in human abodes. However, a large mirror hung up on the wall, because what self-respecting dragon didn't like to admire their own visage?

Tristan leaned down to inspect the glass bottle. The stained label read "Sullivan and Son's Dragonscale Polishing Oil". It had leaked after it tipped over, creating a slick mess on the floor. "Looks like he left in a hurry."

He glanced up to see Whitewillow examining herself in the mirror. She posed, flexing her finned spines and watching them sway and flutter in her reflection.

"Hey! Pay attention: we're supposed to be investigating."

The albino dragoness flitted out her forked tongue. "I am investigating. And I am happy to report that the mirror works perfectly."

Tristan rolled his eyes, inspecting the clothing that was crumpled in the corner. They were a standard Dragonwing Express uniform: flight goggles, a fluorescent vest, and a tail streamer — for easy identification when the dragon was flying overhead. In the vest pocket was a large punch card for a mechanical time clock. He checked the date on it and frowned.

"This punch card is from last month. He stopped showing up to work a while ago." Tristan thought that was odd. If Kodakoa wasn't working, where was he getting the reales to pay for this place?

Whitewillow finally pried her eyes from the mirror. She stepped to the corner of the room and investigated the refuse pile: an assortment of heavily-gnawed bones and several empty bottles of cheap wine. She poked around the discarded bones for anything interesting. Most dragons bought food in bulk at a butchery. After all the choice meats were removed from the bone, the rest was sold to dragons for cheap. Among the gnawed cow femurs and picked-clean pork ribs was a bloody goat skull.

"Anything interesting over there?" Tristan asked, still hunched over in the opposite corner.

"No." chuffing at the macabre collection, Whitewillow instead picked one of the wine bottles up in her claws, sniffing the mouth and snorting with displeasure at the bitter scent.

Despite their large body mass, dragons were featherweights when it came to drinking. Their bodies were not efficient at metabolizing alcohol, and a single bottle of wine was more than enough to get a dragon of Whitewillow's size properly sauced. However, the bitterness of wine was an acquired taste for a dragon's palette. Whitewillow preferred peaty Zenshin whiskey, or even Concordian mead. She turned to Tristan. "Which do you prefer? Wine or mead?"

Tristan stood up and put his hands on his hips. "Would you take this investigation seriously? I thought you wanted to come here."

"I did. And if something important is here, Taishui will make it known to us."

Tristan grumbled. "We won't find anything unless we search for it!" He turned his attention to a heavy wooden chest tucked against the wall, containing Kodakoa's personal hoard. "Wow, this is a big chest. I wonder what he's got inside …"

Every dragon had a treasure trove, no matter how wealthy or poor they were. Hoarding was more than a legendary trait of dragons: it was an instinct for them, a compulsion as unavoidable as the human impulse to scratch an itch. And contrary to the fables, hoarding wasn't limited to riches. While lustrous objects typically attracted their attention, dragons have been known to hoard everything from bones, to swords, and even goblin bookas. Tristan had heard a story from one of his guildmates about a dragon who hoarded live sheep. He raided farms and amassed an entire herd high in the Beretti mountains, never eating a single one! By the time the Guild raided the lair, many of the sheep had gone years without being shorn and were in dire need of care.

Whitewillow saw Tristan kneel in front of the chest and folded her spines flat against her scales."Riss! Do not open that. It is dishonorable to touch a hoard without permission."

Tristan paid her no heed. "According to my writ of passage, I don't need his permission."

Whitewillow snorted with disdain as Tristan inserted the notched key rod into the lock. He flipped the heavy latch and lifted the lid with a strained creak. He then swore.

"What? What is it?" Whitewillow stretched her long neck over Tristan to see.

The lockbox was empty. There were no riches, no treasure … not a single reale to be found! Only a few shards of broken glass remained in the dusty, dented bottom.

Tristan cast his eyes to the ground. "I don't think we'll ever find him, Whitewillow."

In terms of pride and self-worth, a dragon's hoard was more important than even their horns. Any self-respecting wildborn was never far from their hoard for long, and were notorious for defending their treasure to the death. This missing hoard could only mean one of two things: either Kodakoa was on the run, or his corpse was cold and another dragon had already snatched it up. The Guild called it the "Fled or Dead" rule.

"Gruul tuff." The dragoness shook her head, causing her fins to sway.

Tristan stood up and dusted off his hands. "Well, I'm sorry to disappoint your god, but there's nothing here that will lead us to Kodakoa."

Whitewillow cast her crimson eyes to the ground. Had she been mistaken? Was she not supposed to come here? No … the dragoness felt in her heart that this is where Taishui wanted her to be. But why was there nothing here? What manner of trial was the goddess testing her with? She needed answers.

Tristan felt that there was nothing more to be done. He had wasted enough time on this dragon's favor. There were more pressing matters to attend to, like fixing his broken hand pump. Or investigating the Citadel crash. "If you're done here, I'm ready to get down this tower and plant my feet on solid ground again. Come on, you owe me a flask of liquid fire."

Hoisting his pack, Tristan adjusted the straps and hefted it to make sure it was secure. He turned for the revolving door, but then felt a sharp claw dig into his shoulder. He looked down to see Whitewillow's wing thumb holding on tight.

"We investigated in your way. Now we investigate in my way."

Whitewillow sat back on her haunches and opened the top flap of her leather chest pouch with her forepaws. She rummaged around and pulled out a collection of powdery sticks wrapped in paper. Tristan watched, puzzled, as she reared up and lit one of the sticks on the brazier. A spark of orange flame erupted from the stick, and she began to wave it about, spreading a trail of heavy smoke in the air.

Finally, Tristan's curiosity got the better of him. "Is that incense?" He knew that Concordia's patron temples burned incense in metal censers, but he had never seen the stuff up close and didn't know what it looked like.

Whitewillow nodded. "Rah. This holy smoke is made with the mashed leaves of the Ichi Tree: Husia's sacred ginkgo. It will help us call upon Taishui for guidance." She breathed in a deep lung-full of the smoke … and then puffed out a billow of it right in Tristan's face!

"Hey! What—" He coughed as the oily, skunky smoke tickled his lungs. "What was that for?!"

Ignoring him, Whitewillow then clasped her wing palms, clinging her tingsha together.

Chinnng!

Whitewillow's tiny cymbals chimed long and loud, tickling Tristan's eardrums with its mysterious tone. "Ma'ak rii diri, Taishui. Ma'ak ruut raashka'doh …" she repeated the phrase over and over again in a monotone chant.

The cloying smoke, the ringing chime, and the dragon's muttered prayer made Tristan's head buzz. All this spiritual nonsense made him uncomfortable. He tried to resist coughing again, and broke out in a fit when the throat tickle became too much to bear. "What's in that stuff?"

Whitewillow's nares flared as she inhaled another deep breath of the incense. "Breathe it in. The incense will awaken your ka." The dragon puffed another lung-full in Tristan's direction, who coughed again.

Tristan waved a hand in front of his nose to blow away the sweet, skunky smoke. "My ka can stay asleep, thank you very much."

Whitewillow flitted out her forked tongue flitted from between her lips. "Tristan, please … I am to perform the ritual of tantra, and I need your help."

He raised a brow. "Ritual? Is that going to somehow help find Kodakoa?"

"Rah."

Tristan wasn't in the mood, but for now he decided to go along with the dragon's eccentricity for now. "Okay, fine. What do I need to do?"

Whitewillow placed a wing on his shoulder. "You can start by taking off your clothes."

Tristan shook off the dragon's wing talon with a groan. "Gods, I shoulda known! You brought me all the way up here for more sex stuff!"

She growled. "This is serious, draa-friend! I do not seek intimacy with you for the sake of pleasure. The ritual of tantra is about intertwining our spirits for a greater purpose."

"Can't you just pray to your god like a normal priest?"

"This is how I pray, human!" she snarled.

Tristan shook his head and said nothing for a moment. He couldn't take this weird religion of hers seriously, no matter how he looked at it. All that nonsense about rituals and praying just seemed like an excuse to indulge in pleasures of the flesh.

Whitewillow flashed a toothy grin. "If you need some convincing, I can give you a reminder." Tristan's skin prickled with goosebumps as the dragoness licked his neck. It was a slow, lingering lap of the tongue, designed to entice. All at once the memory of last night came rushing back to him: the heat of her forked tongue on his skin, the rapturous clutching of her squeezing claws, the way her tail curved sensuously around his torso …

"Dammit," he muttered, feeling tempted already. The dizzying incense wafting through the air certainly wasn't helping. "It will take more than a single lick to convince me!"

"Then you need more!" The albino dove in, smothering him with affectionate licks. Her long forked tongue darted along his neck and cheeks, tickling him and causing him to squirm.

"Hey, stop that!" Tristan ducked out of the way, but the dragoness followed him with deft movements, darting her snout under his shielding arms to get in more licks. A sudden game had broken out between the two: a game of keep-away with that long tongue of hers. Laughing, Tristan held the dragon's pale snout at bay with both hands. Whitewillow's forked tongue slithered out of her lips and reached past his hands, showing surprising reach. He leaned back as far as he could, denying her another lick. When she wormed out of his grasp, Tristan ducked and dodged the flicking, forked tongue. It darted about like a snake ready to strike.

"Ah-ah!" Tristan leaned back as her tongue flicked the air a mere inch from his face. "No you don't!"

Growling playfully, Whitewillow reached out with one of her deft claws and grabbed onto his leg. Another claw dug into his shoulder as she wrapped a wing around him. Before Tristan knew it, she had completely caught him up in her scaly embrace. So many limbs, so many talons and fins! Tristan felt a pang of fear as he tripped on her winding tail and fell back against the mattress. He hit the sleeping mat hard, the well-worn canvas not providing much cushion. It was smoothed and flattened from extended use, and smelled strongly of Kodakoa's musk.

"Hey, not fair!" he shouted. For a brief moment he felt terror, and had to remind himself that Whitewillow meant no harm. The last time a dragon had tripped him, it was under far more deadly circumstances.

Chuffing laughter, Whitewillow stepped over him and placed a scaly foot on his chest. A pang of fear welled in Tristan's mind as the albino dragoness bared down on him, and his training at the guild had his instincts wishing for a weapon. But the moment passed as she leaned down to lap at his neck.

"Are you ready to give in, or shall I lick you some more?"

Tristan's eyes narrowed. "You dragons love to get your way."

Whitewillow wiggled her spines. "You know us well, hunter." She licked again. This time, slower, more deliberate.

Tristan tensed up as he let the dragon have her fun. "If the Guild ever finds out about this …"

Whitewillow's pale lips pulled back, spreading to a toothy grin along her snout. "Priestesses of Husia are well trained in how to keep secrets."

He decided to humor her. "Okay, what do I have to do for this ritual? Chant a spell? Sacrifice a chicken? Dance with the devil under the pale moonlight?"

"Do not be silly," she snorted, as she continued to lick his neck. "You must simply pleasure me until my ka finds an open conduit to the spirit realm."

"Oooof course I do. I'm participating in sex magic now. Great."

"Hush! Your zussu is not helpful." The dragoness snapped her teeth at him. "The ritual of tantra is not magic. It is merely a technique to align one's ka. There are many such techniques, including prayer or meditation. But the Temple of Husia believes the most effective way to open the window to the soul is to expose it to the ardent passion of love."

"That's some real flowery language for fucking," he said, chuckling.

"Rriss!" she hissed, her disdain for the word clear on her tongue. "Fucking is an inelegant and selfish pursuit of self-gratification. A holy courtesan courts, entertains, and celebrates the beauty of physical love. But I do not fuck."

Tristan brushed the notion off with a shrug, but figured he should play to the dragon's pride. "I apologize if I offended you."

"Apologies accepted." She bowed her head in acknowledgement. "This is a ritual of prayer, human. So help me pray."

Tristan let his head fall back onto the mattress and let out an annoyed grunt. He didn't believe for one moment that whatever this dragon wanted to do was going to help. And he could list a plethora of reasons why it was a bad idea to play this game with her again. He was, after all, a dragonhunter first and foremost. His peers wouldn't be caught dead in this situation. Sooner or later, his work and personal life would collide. And the fallout would be messy. And there were, of course, other reasons …

The dragoness continued to lick his neck with lingering strokes. "Are you still upset that I seduced you, draa-friend?"

Tristan stiffened up at her touch. "Yes."

Whitewillow churred warmly. He felt the vibrations from her throat travel through his shoulder. "You said the next time I wanted something from you, that we should talk openly, like friends."

Tristan grit his teeth. "I did say that …"

The spiny albino stepped off him and extended her wing. "So I am asking you now. Help me commune with Taishui, and if our raashka pleases her, we will find out what happened to Kodakoa."

Tristan grasped her wing palm, and with a strong yank she pulled him to his feet. "Two days in a row now. This better not become a habit," he grumbled.

"Hush, you loved it last night."

"That's why I'm worried," he said, laughing.

"If you still hesitate, then you must have more zussu that needs cleansing. Take off your clothes, raahn gekk sur homn."

Tristan began unbuttoning his shirt, finding it hard to believe what he was getting himself into. "Let's make this quick, okay? I need to get to the machinery shop before five o'clock because a certain dragon broke my vacuum pump."

"Shhh, shhh …" Whitewillow began licking his exposed chest. "We cannot rush the ritual of tantra. Clear your mind, draa-friend. Breathe in the incense, relax your body."

"If you say so …" Tristan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The thick smoke that wafted from the burning stick tickled his brain. Whitewillow's heavy, humid breath billowed across his chest as she lapped across his skin. She hooked her talons under the waistline of his trousers and began to pull down. It still felt odd to him, letting a dragon touch him in such sensitive areas. Most dragons he met weren't careful with their claws — especially the Wildborn, who kept them filed to a razor-sharp point for hunting.

His shirt and underwear followed, and his shoes were cast off. Soon, Tristan stood naked in the dimly lit pod, and the air felt chilly on his skin. Thankfully, the dragon's scaly body radiated warmth. Whitewillow lowered her head to Tristan's and leaned in. As she exhaled, the hot, humid breath of the dragoness fogged his glasses. The dragoness proudly kept her hygiene held to the highest of standards, and her breath didn't reek of rotten meat like most dragons he met. It smelled acrid and smoky, like a recently-used oven.

Whitewillow tilted her snout and pressed her toothy mouth to his. He felt each bump of her white scales on his lips, waxy and smooth to the touch. As Tristan accepted the kiss, momentarily grunting as he felt her large forked tongue worm its way into his mouth. The sheer amount of tongue caught him off-guard, causing him to gag.

She withdrew her tongue slowly. "Relax, grn maal toth."

"Blegh … you use too much tongue!"

"We draa lack such succulent, kissable lips." She licked across Tristan's lips with a churr. " But we make up for it in other ways. You must get used to how draa kiss."

Tristan smacked his lips of the dragon's thick saliva, which tasted ashy and sour. "That might take a while." He leaned in for another, feeling more prepared this time when he felt Whitewillow's tongue flick into his mouth. Her sharp teeth grazed his upper lip. Tristan opened his eyes as he felt the forked tongue running over his own. Whitewillow's crimson eyes were closed and focused on the moment. He wrapped his arms around the dragoness's neck and stroked her scales. He wasn't as worried as last time, now that he trusted her. But, physically speaking, there was still a lot to dragons that he'd have to get used to. And he couldn't stop thinking about his damn Guild! Has any hunter been caught with a dragon before? Most of them would sooner kill a dragon than bed one, though he had heard rumors about that big guy with the gnarly arm scar, Maximillian. Supposedly, he allowed a dragoness to pay off her bounty by providing … services.

Tristan shook his clouded mind. This incense made it hard to keep focus. Whitewillow wrapped her wings around him, enveloping him in her patagium. The stretchy albino skin between her wings was rosy from the network of blood vessels, and radiated surprising warmth. Her graceful wings wrapped around him like a supple leather cloak. For a moment he felt trapped, still unused to being this close to dragons without the threat of violence. But her winged embrace felt comforting and secure, and he relaxed the tension in his shoulders. Whitewillow ran her talons along his body, tickling his belly. He laughed nervously as he felt trapped in this beast's winged embrace. Most dragons are too protective of their wings to ever let humans touch them, and Tristan reflected on these new and unexpected feelings.

"I never knew dragons could be so gentle," he hushed. "Being a dragonhunter, I'm more used to being pushed around and bullied by them."

"Shhh, shhh …" Whitewillow gently hushed. "There is zussu in your words. Let these thoughts slip from your mind. Focus on the now. You and me, united in purpose to reach out to Taishui and seek her counsel."

Tristan nodded. There was a lot he had to unlearn.

The pod was filling up with the smell of that weird-smelling incense. The scent reminded him of pumpkin pie, and he wondered why. After taking in a few deep sniffs, he realized it was the smell of cinnamon and cloves in the air. An odd choice. This incense definitely had something else in it, though. Something that muddled his mind like an evening at the pub. But this was a different experience than alcohol — more warm and tingly, and it made his heart race.

Tristan just now realized he had spent the last few moments distracted by his thoughts, and shook his mind back to the present. "This incense is making my head feel weird," he muttered, shaking his cloudy head. "What is in that stuff?"

The dragoness leaned in to lick his cheek. "This incense contains the milky sap extracted from jisu, a sacred plant native to Zenshin. This plant has the rare ability to awaken one's ka."

Tristan clutched his forehead. "Is that … am I going to start hallucinating or something?"

Whitewillow's warm breath billowed on his face. Her acrid, ashy exhale tickled his nostrils. "It is also used to treat masculinity, strengthen sperm, and regain vigor. It enhances the art of alchemists, sex and court ladies. Frequent use helps to cure the chronic ailments that causes the loss of energy ... Its price equals that of gold."

"That didn't answer my question."

Whitewillow huffed. "Raah'gn maak toh! The insense will enhance your senses, not dull them. Now relax, and let your mind clear …"

Tristan felt his worries slip away as Whitewillow's talons and scaly lips explored his body. That was when he noticed that her tail wound between his ankles. She was caressing him with her tail fins. He never knew that dragons had so many ways to show affection, from their tongues down to their tails. It was a side of dragons that no hunter had ever learned before. And he found that he liked it.

"How's your shoulder?" he asked.

"It throbs with pain. But soon I shall be distracted with more pleasurable feelings …" the dragoness churred.

Whitewillow pulled him closer to her and growled into his ear, the vibrations traveling through her scaly jaw, and making his skin tingle. He could feel her hot breath on his neck and smelled the earthy zest of her natural scent. He felt his thoughts leaving his mind, and he let himself be swept up by the sensation of her pale snout pressing against his skin, the long talons teasing so delicately. Whitewillow nipped his earlobe and tugged with a gentle growl.

"Are you properly enticed, human?" She squeezed his growing manhood playfully, letting out a growl when it grew harder in her claws. "I think that is a 'yes'."

Tristan laughed. "I'm getting there." He held the dragon's snout in his hands, feeling the smooth white scales on his fingertips. "But I'm not ready for sex yet."

"Do not fret, my human," Whiteillow churred, licking his lips, "In the teachings of Taishui, there is no taking without giving. I shall bring you satisfaction after the ritual is complete."

Whitewillow pulled away from Tristan, leaving him wanting. With a sway of her scaled haunches, she turned in a circle on the mattress and lowered herself onto her belly. The albino's pale scales glimmered in the torchlight as she rolled onto her back. She spread her hind legs, proudly putting her scaly slit on display. Whitewillow then curled her finned tail in a circle, beckoning him with a flick of her tailtip. "Now we must begin the ritual of tantra. In order for me to commune with Taishui, I must be stimulated until my ka awakens. So come: pleasure me with your hands and tongue."

Tristan jerked his head back. "Wait … my tongue?"

Whitewillow cocked her head, as if the question was trivial. "But of course! Are you one of those selfish homn: always taking, never giving?"

"What? No!"

"Then what is the problem?"

Tristan struggled for a polite way to word his objections. "That's, well — it's that …" he threw his hands up in exasperation. "You're a dragon! It's intimidating to put my mouth on a dragon's slit."

The dragoness growled eagerly at Tristan's hesitation, showing a toothy grin. "The fate of Kodakoa is within our grasp, and you hesistate to save your tongue the experience of a lifetime?"

"For the record, I don't think this ritual of yours is going to do anything!"

"Oh, my dear homn … this, I like!" Whitewillow trilled, fanning her spines. " Were it not for Kodakoa, I would still insist! You, who so gladly accepted my tongue last night, now so reviled at the thought of returning the favor? No no no … such brazen hypocrisy needs tending to! You will lick my slit. I demand it!"

Tristan groaned.

The dragoness wiggled her rump and spread her hind legs wider. "There is nothing to be intimidated by. My slit will not hurt you. She will do quite the opposite, in fact …"

Tristan put his hands on his hips and avoided her gaze, glancing around the cozy pod. A part of him knew he was being difficult, but he couldn't give a good reason why. After all, he had already lain with a dragon and enjoyed it … so why did it feel like going down on one was such a heavy ask? She was a dragon … a big, scaly dragon with a musky slit. The prospect of having to pleasure such a large creature seemed like quite the tall order for one man.

"Would you even enjoy it if I tried? We humans aren't exactly known for our long tongues."

"Grn fek!" She snorted. "Many homn have done so before, and each experience was a treasure worth hoarding. Now come: stop stalling and lay aside my tail."

Tristan glanced at the reclining dragoness, feeling his resolve weaken. He focused on those red eyes staring back at him, with that naturally intense gaze that dragons always seemed to have. She looked so ready, so expectant, so eager for him. Tristan didn't want to disappoint those eyes. He hated that she had this effect on him.

"Fine, I'll do it. But just this once, okay?" he said, wagging a finger.

Whitewillow huffed. "The ritual will never succeed if you treat this privilege as if it were a punishment! In Zenshin, a dragoness—"

"In Zenshin?" Tristan groaned, tired of her ridiculous anecdotes. "Oh, let me guess: in Zenshin, people line up in droves to eat dragon pussy. And every time you climax, a band plays a fanfare."

The dragoness growled, folding her fins flat against her body. "Taishui, grant me patience!"

Tristan laughed, enjoying that he could get under her scales for once. He laid down next to the dragon's parted thighs. Her pale white slit was impeccably clean, a testament to Whitewillow's fastidious grooming habits. After all, a holy courtesan must always be prepared to perform her duties. He ran a hand across her smooth belly scutes, feeling her warmth.

"So you just want me to … what, just dive right in?"

Whitewillow chuffed in amusement. "So timid! Do you not know how to perform such a service?"

"I must be missing that chapter of the dragonhunter's handbook …"

The dragoness let out a melodramatic growl at his joke. "I meant on a human!"

"Of course I have!" Tristan adamantly professed. "But dragons are different. I could use a tip or two ..."

The dragoness simply sighed. "I have laid with hundreds of partners, Tristan. And every experience is different. Over time, I have come to enjoy watching my lovers learn and explore my body on their own accord." She nudged him with the back of one of her hind feet. "Go on, my homn. Do not be shy; I like eagerness…" her words trailed off with a growl.

Tristan nodded. He ran a hand along her scaled belly. The dragon's banded scutes felt smooth and warm beneath his fingers. Slowly, he traced over the scaled lips of her slit, refamiliarizing himself with the dragon's anatomy. The dragoness was unaroused: last night her scaly slit had swollen to a sizable mound, but right now it lay flush and unassuming, her clitoris hidden away. Using both thumbs, Tristan gently spread open the dragon's most intimate area. Her white labia parted to reveal the pink inside.

As soon as he spread the dragon's slit open, his nostrils filled with her musk: a nose-tingling and spicy aroma, like a smoldering pyre of exotic fumes. Tristan could smell a thousand things and not find anything as unique as the scent of a dragoness. He leaned his head down close to the dragon's slit, inspecting it in the dim torchlight of the pod. The dragon's internal clitoris lay sleeping under the hood at the apex of her slit. Below was the dragon's inner vent, which Tristan fondly remembered being surprisingly snug for a creature of such size.

Tristan could hardly believe he was about to do something so strange! Taking a deep breath, he scrunched up his face, stuck his tongue out, and gave her a single long lick to test the waters. And as his tongue ran up the length of her scaly crevice, he found an exotic tartness on his palate. The slippery fluid made his lips pucker, and he was surprised to find that she tasted so much better than she smelled. He smacked his lips, trying to place the flavor to something more familiar. It was tangy yet savory, almost meaty … like a warm pie.

"Wow, you taste surprisingly pleasant!"

"Of course I do." Whitewillow kicked one of her hind legs in the air. "Keep going, draa-friend."

Gulping, Tristan buried his head between the dragon's thighs, feeling her scaly vulva press against his cheeks. The inner warmth of the dragoness felt like fire on his tongue. Her body heat was sweltering, and he knew it would only increase as she grew aroused. As he licked along her walls, her slippery fluids mixed with his saliva. Her slit was so large that he felt ill-equipped to pleasure all of her at once. His tongue, after all, could not compare to a dragon's. He would have to get creative …

Now that he was so close to the source, Tristan noted that the scent of Whitewillow's scaly slit reminded him of a spicy, smoky campfire. It mingled with the intoxicating fumes of the strange incense wafting through the lair, creating an odd cornucopia of scents. The longer he breathed it in, the more Tristan began to wonder if the herbs in her incense were a deliberate choice for lovemaking. The smell of cinnamon and cloves complimented Whitewillow's natural scent in a way that felt intentional, and it made the experience of pleasuring her more palatable. Maybe this whole ritual of tantra thing wasn't as bad as he feared …

Whitewillow curled her neck down, looming over him with a look of intrigue on her pale face. "Go on, human. What are you waiting for?"

Tristan flinched, finding the incense had caused his mind to wander again. "I was just thinking … if Lilian ever found out about us, this is definitely the part that would piss her off the most."

Whitewillow snorted and fluttered her wings. "Now is no time for jokes, maak'du homn!"

Laughing, Tristan snuggled up to the dragon's thick tail, feeling her tail fins scrape his skin. He wrapped an arm around the base of her tail and held on as his tongue explored. The dragon's slit was so hot and steamy that it was already fogging up his glasses, and as he looked up over the hazy lenses, he saw the blurry pale dragon staring down over him, licking her chops. That predatory gaze gave him a thrill. He felt her tail up slide against him, her powerful muscles flexing underneath her glossy scales.

Whitewillow always enjoyed watching others perform for her; there was something about the willingness of a human to delve into her most intimate depths that never failed to turn the dragon on. Getting herself more comfortable on the large sleeping mat, she wiggled her haunches and stretched out her hind legs. She then breathed in a deep breath of incense and let it out with a low, rumbling growl. "That is a good start, draa-friend. Let your mind clear, and focus on your glorious task. Remember: true holiness lies in the expression of selfless love."

Tristan raised his chin, licking his lips of the tart, meaty fluids. "Yaknow, when I hear 'love', I think of romance, not eating dragon pussy."

Whitewillow snorted. "The teachings of Husia make no distinction between physical and emotional love. When we lay with each other, we share not just our bodies, but our minds and souls. It is in this divine vortex of pleasure and love that raashka is born: a holy spiritual essence that can cleanse the heart of discord and hatred."

Tristan stared at her with bewilderment. "Your religion is weird. I don—mmf!"

Whitewillow forced him back down with a push of her hindfoot on the back of his skull. "Hush now. No zussu, only raaska."

Tristan gulped a big breath before taking another long lick along the length of her labial scales, parting her lips on his tongue. The bumpiness of her labial scutes contrasted sharply with the smooth inner walls of her slit. He focused on the touch and tried hard to ignore the dragon's musk as it stung his nostrils. Remembering what she had taught him about her body last night, he rooted around her suffocatingly hot slit, navigating by touch for her clitoris. Finding her hood, he wrapped his lips around her and traced his tongue around the opening.

Whitewillow reacted instantly, sucking in a sharp breath as her clitoris throbbed on his lips. "Tarra'mel tokk foh rii!" She fluttered her wings, kicking up the smoky air in the pod. "Very good, homn. Get in there and coax my horn to come out of her cave."

The dragoness' thick tail coiled between Tristan's legs like a python eager for cuddling. Her tailfins brushed against his skin, the sharp edges scraping gently. Tristan focused on exploring the dragon's clitoral hood with his tongue, poking and prodding at the heated entrance. He could feel her clitoris underneath: it felt like a firm lump against his tongue, easy to tell apart from the rest of her soft inner folds. The more he played with it, the harder it became. The pointed tip of the dragon's clit was pink and swollen, and he couldn't help but lick it again and again as it emerged from the hood. Whitewillow growled in delight and pushed her hindfoot down hard against his head — forcing his cheeks against her labial scales. He held on to her twin alabaster thighs, feeling the firm scales and muscle underneath as he worked diligently to arouse her.

Whitewillow let out a long, low churr of pleasure. "Rrrr … that's it, human. Let your thoughts leave your mind and bask in this moment of pleasure. As your tongue awakens my ka, I will reach out to Taishui and commune with her for answers."

Tristan raised his head, feeling her hot fluids all over his cheeks. "If Taishui's so wise, ask her where my spare apartment key went." His laugh was cut short as he was forced back down into the dragon's slit.

"Hush, silly homn."

Though he felt ridiculous for going along with this whole thing, Tristan listened to the dragon and concentrated. To pleasure a dragon this big felt like a task too daunting for his tongue alone. He explored further down the dragon's slit with his fingers, prodding at the entrance to her steamy tunnel. As he slipped them inside, Whitewillow let out another low growl as her inner walls clenched tightly around his digits. Her snug vent seemed to go on forever; he had no idea how deep the dragon truly was. Tristan reasoned that if the size of the average drake's dragonhood was anything to go by, Whitewillow could take his entire forearm without difficulty. A part of him was tempted to try …

He probed deeper into her heated depths, feeling her slick walls squeeze his fingers enough to let him know she liked being touched there. He heard Whitewillow's breath grow deeper and quicker. Her massive thighs twitched as he licked. The reclining dragon closed her crimson eyes and began gently rocking her haunches upward. He liked being able to make her react; it felt good … empowering, even, to have this power over such a large dragon.

Tristan pulled back briefly to admire his work: the dragon's slit had swollen up, creating a mound like a scaled peach. The skin between her scales was flushed and pink, radiating her body heat from the increased blood flow. And her venerable pleasure horn now peeked through the apex of her scaly slit, as if begging him for more attention. For a dragon of Whitewillow's size, her clit was about the size of his own thumb. Tristan was surprised and a little proud of how aroused he had managed to get the dragon. Whitewillow's slit seemed almost drenched in her own juices, which spread across her waxy labial scutes and made them extra slippery.

Tristan wiped his dripping mouth on the back of his arm. "How am I doing so far?"

"Good …" Whitewillow flashed a toothy smile. "But not good enough."

Tristan gulped. He felt the dragon's muscular tail coil around his waist. Her tailfins tickled his skin as they tightened around him. With a sudden tug, Tristan was yanked backwards, tumbling onto his rear. Whitewillow rolled to her feet gracefully and arched her spine like a huge scaly cat. She stretched out her wings, fluttering them as they filled the entire span of Kodakoa's lair. "Grn sol. That was a nice warm-up. But I need more than that. Do not move."

Tristan gulped as the dragoness loomed over him with an air of command. His muscles tensed as she turned around in a half-circle, and her thick scaly tail swung over his head. Now he was completely under her, and looked up to see her scaled belly swaying overhead. "Wait ... wait wait wait. You're not gonna actually ..."

The dragoness said nothing. Her toothy smile widened as she looked down to line her haunches up properly. Tristan became shrouded in shadow, the dim light of the torches blocked by the dragon's alabaster rump. She spread her hind legs, claws digging into the tough canvas sleeping mat. Her thick tail slid between his feet. With a saucy growl, the dragoness began lowering her haunches.

Tristan put his hands up, pushing against the dragon's rump as it descended. "Wait! I said to wait! Whitewill—mmf!"

Tristan's head sunk into the canvas mat as the dragoness put her weight on him. Whitewillow knew to be careful: she was large enough - and heavy enough - to necessitate caution. Once, she got too eager and suffered the dishonor of cracking the sternum of Zenshin's Minister of Agriculture. But that was years ago when she was younger and less practiced. Nowadays, the dragoness prided herself on the excellent control over her body.

Whitewillow let out another low churr of pleasure, her white throat visibly vibrating as she wiggled her scaly mound over Tristan's face. "A dragon never forgets a slight, Tristan. After the shame of being muzzled and chained up earlier today, I shall enjoy this."

Tristan tried to say something snarky, but all that came out was a muffled "Mmmm mmhm mmmf!" Of course, she would insist on doing it this way, he thought. Damn dragons … they always had to be in control!

Whitewillow's scaled slit smothered Tristan's entire face in sweltering wet heat. Straining hard, he slipped a hand out from underneath her scaly bulk and pushed her up just long enough to pry his glasses off his face before they cracked. He then took one last, deep breath of the musky air while he still could.

With a slow, serpentine undulation, the dragoness rolled her hips and began to grind. Whitewillow put more of her weight on him, pushing his head deep into the rough canvas mattress. Tristan's eyes could see little more than blurry shadows. In this position, he had to rely on his other senses. Her smooth labial scales rubbed against his nose and cheeks as she undulated her haunches, working up a slow rhythm. He heard Whitewillow let out a long throaty growl from above. Her scaly slit was as wet as a ripe plum, and he felt the hot juices rolling down his cheeks in little rivulets.

With a heavy grunt, he pushed against the dragon's scaly bulk long enough to speak. "Whitewillow! Rrg, careful, you're gonna crush me!"

The dragoness lifted up her haunches. She arched her neck to look down curiously at the human, whose small head of blond hair was poking out from between her white thighs. "Where is your faith, human?" she said, unable to hide her toothy grin. "I would never hurt you."

Tristan scowled as he pressed against her rump, trying to hold the dragon's weight at bay. "Your words don't make this any less scary!"

"Do you wish to stop?"

Tristan huffed, thinking for a moment. "I didn't say that..."

Whitewillow chuffed laughter. "Narthuus, draa-friend." With another low churr of pleasure, her scaly tail wiggled curled up around Tristan's thighs. Whitewillow navigated by touch with her tail tip, snaking it around Tristan's manhood and giving it a firm, constricting squeeze. "My tail shall reciprocate while you perform your glorious task."

Tristan let out a long groan as he felt his manhood squeezed hard by her strong tail. The sharp edges off her fins scraped gently between his thighs as the tail tip pulled and squeezed his shaft. Then the dragoness put her weight back down on him, burying his face in her steamy hot slit once more.

Trapped beneath the dragon like this … the experience was primal and daunting, bordering on the edge of Tristan's comfort. Due to the dragon's high internal body temperature, her slit radiated so much heat that it caused Tristan to sweat as he worked to pleasure her. It was stuffy, musky, and swelteringly hot down here! He wasn't used to being the submissive one during sex. And yet, this unorthodox change of pace awakened something within him. Amid the heat and pressure of her grinding slit, he grappled with a sense of vulnerability and surrender. This huge scaly dragon was having her way with him, and he discovered that part of him liked it.

Tristan felt the dragoness' muscular hind legs trembling, a sign that he was doing his job well. Whitewillow's growl resonated through her entire body, and Tristan could feel her clit throbbing against his nose. He mouthed at the dripping slit that squished against his face, feeling engulfed by her feminine heat, trapped between her scaly bulk and the worn mattress. His hands traced along the rugged scales of Whitewillow's muscular haunches, navigating the chitinous ridges of each scale and the little valleys between them. The pliable, leathery texture of her labial scales glided against his lips with the help of her slippery fluids. Her armored exterior was a delightful contrast to the tender, sensitive flesh that he explored with his tongue. As he delved deeper into her blisteringly hot cave, he caused shivers of ecstasy through the dragon's immense frame, starting at her neck and traveling all the way down through her tail.

The dragoness breathed heavily through her mouth as she felt pleasure welling up within her. "Rrrrr. You are performing well, my human. But I need more. More! Wiggle that stumpy tongue of yours!"

Tristan knew that — like any proud dragon — Whitewillow was delighted to sit upon her throne of pleasure. And the thought made him smile. He obeyed, thrusting his tongue as far as it could go into the dragon's heated depths and wiggling it around. Her tunnel seemed to go on forever, and as he licked, he drew out more of the savory, lip-smacking juices onto his tongue. Pleased with his performance, the dragoness used her tail tip to squeeze and tug on his manhood with exceptional control, coaxing out beads of pre-cum to dribble down his glans and lubricate the scales that slid up and down his shaft.

Tristan felt around until her pointed pleasure horn slipped into his mouth. Once there, he latched onto it and sucked hard. The dragon's eyes shot open, and she growled with pleasure as her clit throbbed between his lips. "Yessss! Suckle harder, harder … there! Keep that rhythm steady, homn. Rrrr ..."

Whitewillow began to pant in quick, husky puffs that reached Tristan's ears down below. The tingling sensation within her scaly slit bloomed like a flower, filling her body with electric warmth. Each grind and press of her weight against Tristan's face stoked the fires of desire within the dragon, building as a crescendo of pleasure within her lower belly. It was time. Whitewillow reared up and closed her eyes, rumbling deep in her throat. Her mind transcended the physical plane as she called out to the Great River Dragon — her goddess, her savior, her glory.

Whitewillow's pale lips parted, and her crimson tongue flicked out as she began to pray. "Paraduun, Taishui. Raash'met draa, mixxi roh daah paarfesh. Raash'moh homn, rii dio moxx …"

Tristan felt the dragon's meaty thighs tense up, and he heard a flow of muttered dragontongue, some of it too raspy and guttural to make out. Each moan that escaped her lips was a call to the divine. Some "invocation of this sacred union" was all Tristan could understand of her euphoric murmurs. He didn't try to translate; it was hard enough to find breaths between the grinding and bucking of the dragon's heavy hips.

Maybe it was the incense, or maybe a new kink was awakening inside of him. But the longer Tristan's head remained buried between the dragon's hind legs, the more he found himself getting into the act. Each lick elicited a symphony of responses from the dragoness — an arch of her back, a shiver of her tail, a low growl that resonated deep within her chest. He found himself enjoying every time he made her wiggle and twitch, and worked hard to make her growl even more. And he had gotten her so very wet! Her juices flowed like a hot spring, and felt just as sweltering on his face. As he sucked on her horn-shaped clit, it began to pulse with increasing frequency, and he figured she was nearing her climax.

Whitewillow's prayers increased in fervor, the words intermingling with long, lusty growls. It was the exquisite friction against her most intimate flesh — combined with the intoxicating submission of the human beneath her — that sparked a fire within her most sacred slit. She rocked against Tristan's face, her pale belly scutes rolling with the allure of a nomadic belly dancer as she pressed the back of his head deep into the old mattress. She could feel her climax building, like a wonderful pressure tingling deep inside her womb.

Whitewillow's mind began to slip into a state of blissful oblivion. Her thoughts dissolved, and her consciousness transcended the physical plane. Only through great concentration and discipline could a priestess of Husia commune with Taishui while in the throes of hysteria. It was a technique that took years to hone and perfect, and Whitewillow had to be careful not to give in completely to the pleasure.

Meanwhile, Tristan lay trapped beneath the writhing dragon, his face firmly pressed against her scaly vulva, unable to escape the weight of her haunches. He could only hold on and try to breathe as the dragon's ecstasy reached a threshold. Her horn-shaped clit throbbed between his lips, and her slit spasmed, forcing out gushes of slippery, tangy juices that drenched his face. The dragon's back arched, her long neck stretched towards the ceiling, a growl of pleasure reverberating through Kodakoa's lair. Her wings fluttered in the smoky air, her tail writhed against his chest. Even her tail tip — now slick with precum — tightened its grip around his shaft.

Then, in the midst of her climax, Whitewillow gasped and her eyes shot open wide. "No!"

Tristan thought he did something wrong and eased off her throbbing horn. But the dragon growled and pressed her scaly vulva against his face even harder, pushing his head deep into the canvas mat and trapping him under her weight. In the ecstasy of her climax, she gushed so many juices that they dribbled down his chin and cheeks. Her powerful thighs clenched and squeezed hard against his cheeks. Tristan's ears were flooded with growls as the scaled courtesan gushed all over his face.

And he was surprised to find that he loved it!

Tristan could do little else but hold on for dear life until the dragon rode out the last of her spasms. Slowly, gradually, the dragon winded down, her grinding diminishing to a more gentle nudge. Her growls quieted into churrs of satisfaction. Tristan felt her scaly slit calming down, going from a series of throbs to a pleasant pulsing that was slow and steady. Whitewillow let out a long breath, and her hind legs trembled as her orgasm concluded. The dragoness stood still for a moment, her tail tip squeezing and tugging gently on Tristan's manhood as her slit continued its post-orgasmic pulsing.

Chinnng!

The chime of the tingsha rang out, momentarily masking the sound of the dragon panting above him. Whitewillow came back to herself, her breathing steadying as she relished the lingering aftershocks of her climax. Her tail grew limp around Tristan's throbbing dick. Tristan felt the muscles in her hind legs flex and grant him a blast of fresh — albeit smoky — air as she lifted her haunches.

"What … what happened?" Tristan asked, catching his breath. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked up at her blurry form with concern.

"Shhh. Do not fret, draa-friend. You performed well. Allow me to reward you."

Whitewillow turned around — momentarily pausing to stretch her spine — and laid down next to Tristan. She cuddled close to him with sudden tenderness, warming him with her heated scales. Her tail fluttered against his chest, tickling Tristan's skin with the edges of her fins. Her forepaws caressed his chest and she leaned in to nuzzle him.

"Close your eyes and relax. Your face needs cleaning. And my tail shall finish its job."

Whitewillow clutched him close to her scaly chest scutes, churring affectionately as she snuggled closer to his smaller form. Her tailtip slid along her drenched slit, gathering up a thick layer of juices before finding its way back to his cock, winding around it and spreading the new lubrication thoroughly. With the added fluids, the dragon could coil and squeeze his shaft even more aggressively. The scales on her tail tip were exceptionally small, and each tiny bump added extra stimulation to the coiling muscles underneath.

With a slow and deliberate movement, Whitewillow extended her sinuous forked tongue to meet Tristan's face. Her warm breath caressed his skin, carrying a comforting reassurance that whispered of safety and belonging. The dragoness, with a deep affection in her eyes, began to clean his messy face with the gentle ply of her tongue. Her forked tips danced with a desire that mirrored the rhythm of her tail coiling around his shaft. She savored the flavor of her own juices: a taste that comforted her with its familiarity.

Her tail squeezed and coiled urgently, tickling his glans with gentle precision. Right on the underside of his tip, where Tristan was most sensitive. He shouldn't be surprised that the dragon knew exactly how to pleasure a man. Tristan groaned and his hips rose into the air. She rested a hindleg against his pelvis, to give him something heavier to thrust against. Her wing reached out and wrapped around Tristan's chest, clinging to him like a leathery blanket. She cradled him thoroughly, wrapped up in all the limbs, wings, and scales a dragon had. The extra lubrication from her juices caused a slicking, smacking noise of wet scales on skin, which only became louder as Whitewillow urged her companion on.

Whitewillow continued to lick his face and neck clean of juices. Her tail momentarily uncoiled to gather up more of her natural lubricant. Tristan closed his eyes and felt her tongue lap along his forehead, nose, chin, and everything in between. He felt cared for, utterly and completely encased in her scaly embrace. When she had finally licked every inch of his face, the dragon drew him in for a deep kiss, her forked tongue thrusting into his mouth. She tasted herself on his tongue, too, and that turned her on, making her tail squeeze him with all the more eagerness.

"Come on, human … cum for me …" she growled into his mouth, her heated breath washing over his saliva-smeared face.

Tristan surrendered himself completely to the dragon's coiling tail tip. He was wrapped up in her wings and claws, his body trembling against the weight of the dragoness's affection. He could feel his climax coming on, and let the dragon coax it out of him. After all the excitement of earlier, it felt wonderfully relaxing to lay back and do nothing but enjoy the pleasure she gave him. Whitewillow felt his cock stiffen in the coils of her tail and let out an eager growl, kissing him with reverence.

An electric tingle shot through his groin, and he felt the wonderful pressure of his cum getting ready to blow. Tristan held onto that pleasurable feeling for a moment, then let the dragon's tail work him to completion. With a euphoric rush, his cock began to throb as jets of cum spurted in the air. It sprayed against Whitewillow's tail tip, and she spread the sticky gobs liberally along his shaft, lubricating it further. Whitewillow's tail continued its sensual massage, providing the perfect balance of pressure and stimulation to prolong his orgasm as much as possible. As each squeeze coaxed out more cum out of the tip, it dribbled down, creating a frothy, sticky mess between her tail's coils.

Chinnng!

Finally, when Whitewillow felt his cock grow limp, she unfurled her tail tip and let Tristan's manhood fall to his belly with a wet slap. Panting hard, Tristan wiped his face of dragon saliva and watched her blurry form as she drew her cum-covered tail tip to her mouth and engulfed it down to the first set of fins — at least twelve inches of tail, if not more. Whitewillow closed her eyes and hummed as she slurped the frothy cum off her white scales, her tail sliding out from between her jaws with a pop. She then bent down to clean Tristan's cock directly, working with patient diligence.

Sweaty and sore, Tristan fumbled for his round-rimmed glasses. Finding them by touch, he put them on with a happy sigh: he could now see once more! He then pushed himself up to sitting position with a groan. His head was still fuzzy from the incense, and his neck ached from being sat on. But after the long face riding session and the unorthodox finish, he was thoroughly satisfied. He watched the dragon clean his spent manhood, enjoying how thorough and dedicated she was. Her tongue swiped every inch of skin between his legs, even lapping up the delectable sweat underneath his balls.

Tristan was no stranger to sex, but this was a new experience in more ways than one. The way she kissed and coddled him, while her tail stroked him off … he had never experienced being so utterly cared for. Whitewillow had made him feel wholly loved and desired in ways he hadn't imagined. And this feeling came from a dragon! This uncomfortable truth left him with a lot of questions he didn't feel like exploring right now …

He rubbed the back of his sore neck and distanced himself from his inner thoughts. "Well, that tail thing was new." He let out a whistle. "I didn't even know some dragons had prehensile tails! It must be an evolutionary trait exclusive to Zenshin breeds!"

"Not all draa have prehensile tails," Whitewillow casually explained while licking his balls clean. "But the ones that do not are jealous of the ones that do."

She gave his penis a final kiss and then nuzzled his cheek. "Thank you for your help in performing the ritual of tantra. You have the gratitude of a draa — a difficult boon to claim."

"You're welcome." Tristan paused, figuring he should say something more flattering to a dragon's ear. For all the balking he had done about going down on her, he had to admit that once he got over the initial experience, he enjoyed himself more than he expected. And that incense of hers seemed to work wonders. "Going down on you was surprisingly fun. It was my pleasure."

Whitewillow bowed her head in respect. But her face remained solemn. "Raak surr'rii eth, homn."

The dragon then rolled to her side and began to lick her slit clean as well. Tristan simply watched her for a while, not knowing what else to do. Whitewillow was acting uncharacteristically quiet, and he wasn't sure why.

Tristan fell back against the sleeping mat with a sigh of satisfaction. Wow, what an experience that was! Not even two days ago, he couldn't have seen himself sleeping with the enemy.

Ugh … even after several days, his time at the Guild had his inner thoughts framing Whitewillow as an enemy, instead of a friend. Whitewillow was kind, generous, and peaceful – the exact opposite of the dragons he dealt with for work! Maybe it was the incense talking, but if all his guildmates could spend an evening with Whitewillow, there'd be a lot less hate going around …

Finally, with the two of them cleaned of their sexual mess, the dragoness lowered her hind leg and broke the long silence. "My communion with Taishui revealed divine wisdom: Kodakoa died yesterday, and his body is gone. There is no trail to follow."

Tristan flinched out of his silly thoughts. "He's dead?! Wait, what do you mean, his body is gone?"

"I mean, his body cannot be found, in this city or beyond."

"Ridiculous. A dragon of that size can't disappear!"

"I do not understand it, myself."

"How are you so sure he's dead?"

"I told you … the ritual revealed to me—"

"Yeah, I get that. But did your god speak to you or something? I don't understand."

"Taishui does not communicate through spoken words. It is an epiphany. Implanted knowledge."

Tristan nodded skeptically. "So, it's a hunch."

Whitewillow growled "It is fact!"

Tristan didn't feel like arguing. Maybe it was true, but without proof, he couldn't rely on her words alone. "Regardless, that 'fact' doesn't help us much, does it? We still don't know the why, the where, or the how."

"We do not," Whitewillow conceded.

Tristan let out an exasperated grunt as he got to his feet. He began gathering up his clothes, which were strewn about the lair from Whitewillow's eager undressing. Somehow, one of his shoes had rolled all the way over to the pile of refuse. "And we're still no closer to finding him! We have no leads, no clues, no nothing. In fact—" Tristan swore.

"What?"

"You said you checked the bone pile, right?" He cast aside several gnawed bones and pulled out a bloody goat skull. "How did you miss this?!"

The dragoness ruffled her wings in the dragon equivalent of a shrug. "It is a skull."

Tristan shook his head. "These two vertical lines of blood," he pointed to the streaks of red on the snout, "are the roguu-gnaff: the Red Mark. The wildborn use goat skulls to represent an honor-debt that must be paid. Which means Kodakoa found some trouble with one of the clans. I've seen dragons murder over skulls like these!"

Whitewillow was familiar with the concept of honor-debt. Whether Zenshin or Concordian, the rules of dragon society were the same: an honor-debt was acquired through bringing great shame upon a clan, like the breaking of another dragon's horns. To clear their debt, a dragon must complete a task that the clan's matriarch gives them, and this task cannot be refused. Though in Zenshin, dragons used a slip of paper and a calligraphy pen steeped in red ink to deliver a roguu-gnaff. Skulls and blood were so uncivilized! "Murder? Do you think the three humans he killed were …"

"Hard to say. But we definitely have a lead now."

Whitewillow trilled with delight. "Narthuus! I told you, human: if something important was here, Taishui would make it known to us."

Tristan rolled his eyes. "Your Taishui didn't find the skull … I did."

"Silly homn. Who do you think brought you here, to this pod?"

"You?"

"Aaaand who is guiding me? Hmmm?" The dragons cocked her head, showing a toothy grin

Tristan rolled his eyes. "Believe whatever you want. Regardless, we have a disappearing dragon and a Red Mark. Whatever happened to Kodakoa wasn't typical. Something big went down between him and the clans … and I want to find out."

The dragoness trilled with delight in hearing that Tristan was suddenly so interested in Kodakoa. "Which clan delivered the mark?"

Tristan grimaced. "That, I don't know. But there's one person who might."

—=-=—

Lady Jenivive hefted the skull in her hands. "Thank you for bringing this to me instead of your Guild. I appreciate the trust." She turned it over several times, looking for identifying scratches. "These things always have a clan etching on them somewhere … Ah ha! See here, on the inside?" She held the upturned skull under the gas lamp. "These claw marks on the nasal palate."

In the brighter light of the office, Tristan noticed a crude oval with a forked line through it. "That's Cracked Shell's brand."

Jenivive nodded solemnly. "Exactly."

"Which means if I want to find out what happened to Kodakoa, I'd have to have to talk to Cracked Shell's matriarch." He swore.

"Ha! A dragonhunter walking into Cracked Shell's lair? You'll be immolated before you even set foot on the property."

That was true. No hunter ventured deep into Cracked Shell's territory. They roosted inside the abandoned steel mill on Culver Avenue. The sturdy construction was intended to withstand the dangerous heat of the mill's great furnaces, and the clan had since turned it into a fortress. That single building was the most dangerous place in the entire city. Not even the Praetorians were successful at rooting them out.

Tristan let himself fall backward into a lean against the wall. "Well then I'm stuck. And we'll never know what happened to him."

Jenivive rapped her fingers on the skull, thinking for a moment. "I can think of exactly one human who could get an audience with Cracked Shell's matriarch."

Tristan raised a brow. "You've got to be kidding. King Edwin himself wouldn't be allowed to enter that building."

"No, but someone with years of goodwill and a few favors up her sleeve could."

Tristan wasn't sure if he could believe the good lady's words. "You?! But, you're … pardon my objection, ma'am, you're pregnant!"

Lady Jenivive thoughtfully rubbed her belly bump. "Oh, I'm not worried about the baby. Cracked Shell wouldn't dare touch me. Not while my husband employs half their clan."

"You would do this for the Guild?"

"Not for your damn guild! I have a vested interest in keeping the peace between humans and dragons, and tensions have never been higher. I've got a foot in both worlds. That means I can mediate. It's better if I talk to them now, then have you goons at the Guild trying later."

Tristan grimaced. "There are definitely a lot of goons at the Guild. The kind who would rather shoot than ask questions."

Jenivive cocked her head, causing her frizzy hair to fall in front of her face. "You know, you're not half bad for a dragonhunter." She blew the strand of orange hair away with a puff. "What's your name, again?"

"Tristan. Tristan Cornwallus."

"Well, Tristan … meet me here tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock sharp. The matriarch will probably be in a better mood after her midday nap. Leave your dragontooth necklace at home. And bring tribute."

"No dragon can turn down a sack of cow livers."

Lady Jenivive nodded. "Good thinking."

Tristan reflected for a moment. Going on this little trip to Tailwind Shelters was one thing, but venturing into the lair of the most dangerous dragon clan in Concordia? Meeting the matriarch of Cracked Shell? He couldn't help but feel in over his head. "Maybe I should go back to the Guild, round up some—"

"Absolutely not! More hunters would just be asking for trouble. You're coming alone, or not at all."

Tristan pursed his lips. Was any of this even worth following through? He technically kept his promise to Whitewillow about Kodakoa … then again, what would he tell her if he backed out now? No, he had to trust that Lady Jenivive knew what she was doing. "Okay, but I have a dragon friend waiting outside that will want to tag along. She can be our backup."

"A hunter with a dragon friend?!" Jenivive laughed. "You really aren't like those Guild goons, are you?"

Tristan merely smiled. She had no idea.

TO BE CONTINUED

Post-story notes:

~ IT'S DONE! FINALLY!

~ Had some real trouble writing the smut scenes for this one. I hope that in the end, it turned out well for you! My main problem is that I didn't want to "pornify" the smell/taste too much. I imagine that dragons are naturally smelly creatures (as are we humans … it's just that we're more used to our own smells!) and a big theme of this story is Tristan getting used to a dragon's body. So, I didn't want to have Whitewillow smell like flowers and taste like delicious ambrosia or something silly.

~I like realism, though I know that may interfere with the smut sometimes. That's why I came up with the idea of Whitewillow's incense in order to help set the mood and relax Tristan.

~ I always enjoy adding references to my stories, but I'm particularly proud of a few hidden gems in this chapter. First person who spots the batman reference in the story wins one bottle of Eau de Whitewillow. Yes, I'm serious. What do you take me for, some kind of joker? Speaking of references, who was that dragon with the broken horn?

~ The plot is starting to grow, as is the city of Concordia. We've seen steam engines, electrified clockwork lances, and steel skyscrapers. What will those crazy humans think of next?

~ Don't be an ichikki-ti: tell me what you thought of the story! Some of my beta readers told me they had issues with certain scenes and characterization, which was great! I made some big improvements to the story because of that. It's hard to get critique online; people either say it's good, or nothing at all. But I love to hear criticism. It's how I can become a better writer. So if you have some opinions, let me know.