1 – Nocturnal Emissions

Misery was too simplistic a word for the depths of emotions in her beloved Monster’s heart. Two moons had come and gone since that moonless night. In the dark, under a milky sky of night, she could feel him tremble through dreams of torment. In that time since, she had come to know him, come to understand him. The torments were not only memories, but something else, something deeper and beyond understanding. Alice had born witness to flashes of something else behind silver eyes, something that saw her without recognition.

With a sense of resignation, she set to her duty. He slept sound even as he endured his dreams, a large body upon it’s side. She pressed at his upper thigh ever so gently. She was careful, patient, and insistent. Eventually his thighs opened as he rolled onto his back. The stench of his lust was released as his legs opened, a stench that overwhelmed her senses and sensibilities.

She was his willing sacrifice, since that day, since he had told her with a child’s naivete, “you’re my wife now.” He had no reference to describe what a wife was, or what her duty entailed, but he was a Monster, her Monster, and he had very very specific needs. It was only self preservation that saw her awake well before dawn, an instinct she had learned within days. She sacrificed sleep, so that she could endure, so that she could survive his ever increasing needs.

His under-tail was a sticky, slippery mess; thighs drenched and fur matted. His slit protruded, plump and eager, inner flesh well exposed and engorged, but his member still yet sheathed. The stench, a mixture of pheromones, mucous, waste, and both old and fresh semen, as well as her own fluids that stained him. Her own sex was a gaped, pain filled hole, still caked in last night’s releases, should she let his need grow, by morning he would be upon her with the violence of a summer storm.

She lowered her face into his passage and began to lick. Her disgust, her discomfort, her sense of decency… those were childish fantasies from a life she rarely thought about. This was her duty as wife to her Monster, this was her sacrifice. Her tongue delved into his cloaca with little chance of cleaning the ever growing male. Cleanliness was not however her duty.

His sword unsheathed against her lips quick enough to bruise. Spines rose and fell with every beat of his rapid desperate heart against her cheek. They were stiffer now, not the soft rasping things of when they first met, but sharp and occasionally painful. His feline heritage she supposed. His girth wasn’t so terrifying, not as she had once thought, though his length was enough to make sex quite uncomfortable if he was not careful.

She did not even tempt his shaft, but instead enveloped his soft, rubbery head between her lips and pressed fingers into his messy slit. The barbs continued to rise and fall below her as she pleased her Monster in his dreams, and the pace increased. His hips clenched and rolled under her. His tail curled up to meet her paunch and wedge between her thighs. His breath came in short, desperate pulls.

It took only a few, gentle suckles upon his sensitive spire and a pleasing caress of her tongue. It was all her duty required, a few seconds of foul tastes and scents that left her desperate and aroused, a quick little suckle. He exploded in her mouth with incredible force. She was prepared, as always, but it did not help. Pale blue semen shot from her nose as it filled her sinuses with writhing life, gushed down her open gullet to awaiting her belly, and even leak around the seal of her lungs. She could feel it move, so alive with fertile potential, the sperm instinctively crawled into her, down her throat, or into any open passage. Soon her sinuses were empty but for a stain of his stench and smear of mucous.

His release was intense and violent. Not only the pressure and volume of his ejaculation, but the thrust of his hips and twitch of his tail sent her sprawling into the flame baked dirt. A rain of ejaculate splattered upon her and the ground around them as he fountained into the air for a minute straight.

When it was over, when her Monster’s dreams were again at peace and his terrible arousal had spent itself, she curled into his fore legs and nestled close to his furred side. They were both sticky, but they were both always sticky, it was nothing new. Dirt clung to her skin along with caked ejaculate. They would bathe again soon, she would insist upon it, but her insistence waned with every passing week.

Into his unconscious embrace she drifted, one hand upon her swollen stomach, another upon his steadily breathing chest and the thud of his heart. She was so exhausted, so terribly tired, so sore, and so desperate with lust. She cared about almost nothing anymore but the desire induced within her, children in her womb, and the Monster who created both. As she drifted off, a frail smile touched her lips. She was tired, but she was truly happy.

2 – The Penetrating Truth

Alice woke again as the sun crested a near by hill and splashed upon her face. The sky she witnessed was a brilliant blue with little streaks of pale clouds. It would be cold up there, she knew, but she was used to the cold now. She laid there, quiet, without much in the way of thought, simply existing. There was no other duty before her, not water to be gathered, no rice to be planted, no fruits to be picked or children to be scolded. Soon, yes, but not now.

Her empty musings were interrupted as her Monster shifted and his large head rose, elegant and handsome before her. Dark nostrils flared as he inhaled, his wide jaws parted to expose translucent blue, glass like teeth in a ferocious yawn. Then his head turned down to stare with clear-silver eyes into her. “I spent myself in the night again it seems. Such a waste, such a dear waste, every drop belongs in you my beloved!”

She shivered, arousal sparked in her belly at his words, but also fear in her heart. She batted his proclamation aside with a joke, “I would be five times my side, should you keep every drop within me!”

He smiled a beautiful smile, one full of adoration and eagerness, somewhere between puppy-dog eyes and a handsome man attempting to woo. It made her stomach flutter, every time he looked at her thus, no matter how much time she spent with him, when their eyes met she melted anew. All fears forgotten, all thoughts were gone for a moment. Her thighs parted of their own volition, her mouth opened, her body arched, and she moaned. It was something she should have been used to, something she should expect, but it always came as a surprise when it happened. She was his puppet, a lusty little plaything that could never say no, never even think no.

“Eager are you?” He teased as he rolled over onto all fours above her. He didn’t simply drop her into the dirt, but cradled her under his wings.

They were warm and silky, they pulsed with his heart, full of life. She spread upon them, fingers clutched in fur, toes curled, open and—yes, eager, oh so eager! “Yes! Always Monster, always-always-always!” It felt like her thoughts were hitched to a post, running around and around over the same word until the tether wound too tight and she couldn’t move or think.

Her hips rose and fell with the beat of his heart, with the pulse of his organ not yet exposed. She had been here before, but it was becoming more frequent now. In the first few weeks, she’d only lost control to him once, but now, it was every day or two. But these were not her thoughts at the moment, those thoughts would come later, her thoughts now continued as her lips muttered, “always...” into infinity.

She didn’t notice a thing, didn’t feel it, until it was over. It ended with a mental snap as the tether broke, as he sank into her and tossed his head back. It was jarring, one moment she had been staring into a blue sky, the next she was staring into her Monster’s filthy underbelly and bulged cloaca as it thrust down into her vaginal passage.

His barbs laid flat, carefully restrained, and his thrusts were shallow and controlled. Her duty had been successful, he was in control this morning. He felt guilty when he hurt her, but that didn’t prevent it, didn’t stop him. That was her job, her duty, her sacrifice.

As his thrusts continued—slow, careful, and measured—she tried to recover the time she had just lost. Blue sky, pale clouds, he had moved just slightly, she had seen him yawn and… That was all, nothing existed past that brief moment, nothing remained between yawn and penetration. There was an emptiness in her thoughts, a torn and ragged hole that hurt to think about. It wasn’t the only one either, they were becoming more and more frequent.

On the sixth thrust, his barbs flexed and scraped her raw passage on their way out. She whimpered in pain, lip caught between teeth, and tried not to cry. His seventh thrust struck her depths like a hammer and made her cry out. As he withdrew again, blood smeared his penis and flicked off each barb as it exited her brutalized entrance.

Eight sank in like a spear and forced the wind from her lungs. His barbs flexed, flexed again, his swollen head throbbed, his urethra gaped from base to tip, and his flow hit her insides. He was the mouth of a hot river, an unending font of ejaculate aimed into her battered body. Below her in the valley of his wings, the lake grew and grew. Their first meeting, he hadn’t produced nearly this much, but now after two moons, he could have filled a cook pot without trouble.

She endured until he was spent. His member relaxed, his barbs laid flat, he withdrew but did not retract. Once, he would have. Once, not long ago, a single mating was enough to get through a day or two. Her eyes fixated upon his penis, black as night but smeared with blood and blue semen. It shimmered iridescent like as the sperm moved toward her. Below her, the puddle shifted and writhed like some monstrous ooze.

“A-are you satisfied?” She asked, but the truth was apparent.

“Of course not!” he snapped, voice edged like brittle glass. “I wish you were deeper, I need… I need...” his voice softened as he looked at her, “Forgive me, I do not know what I need, but I need you. I dreamed of you last night Alice, you were an angel with silver wings, you came from above to draw the pain from my heart and bring me peace.” His head lowered, his lips, wide and soft, kissed her cheek, lowered to her throat, kissed, lowered again to her breast. A raspy forked tongue found a nipple and gave it a slow caress before he spoke again, “I need you. I love you.”

As he spoke, his arousal had returned. Barely more than a minute had passed, barely enough time for her to catch her breath. His hips sank down, her sloppy passage stretched, his eager lust found it’s home within her aching body again. She sobbed, torn between love, agony, and despair, and told him, “I love you too Monster, I love you too.”

He spent himself twice more that morning before at last his member retracted. She laid for the longest time in his wings, her recovery much slower than his. When she had gained her breath again, she crawled from the slippery puddle and knelt in the mud with hands between her legs. Her fingers came away stained red and blue.

She hurt so bad, even worse than the morning before. She had done everything right, she had satisfied him in the night and he had woken up with full control. It hadn’t been enough. Her gut ached with powerful bruises from when he bottomed out, her vulva stung from numerous shallow cuts, and her vaginal passage itself felt scraped raw. Even without his cruel barbs, no woman could endure his need for long.

“Are you alright Beloved?” He asked from behind, “Are you hungry?”

Suddenly, Alice felt trapped. She realized at last, that there was no future for her, and no escape from her fate. It was a slow realization, a slow coming to grips with her inevitable fate. He was growing in all ways, size, power, lust, cruelty, and violence. Some day he would go too far, some day he would… She shook her head violently and only belatedly realized there was a question in his words, “I’m fine,” she answered as calmly as she could, “Just… just a little sore, you know?” She was not hungry, her bowels still churned from the midnight meal she had drank from his loins, but the babies would need more than their father’s lust to sate them, and so would she, “Yes, see if you can find some fruit as well? I’d like something sweet. Your babies are hungry Monster!”

She looked back at him, and smiled as best she could, then gave her a nod with a pride filled grin. It took him a moment to wipe his wings clean on the ground and burnt bushes, but eventually he took off into the sky to find them breakfast. He could have been a wonderful father, an amazing husband, and perfect lover… She shook her head, he was a monster, a kind monster, a gentle monster, but a Monster none the less.

She could have made him understand, his intelligence surprised her at times. He understood things within moments that might take her all day. Understanding was not enough for her, for within the Monster along side his cognizance was an instinct that drove him beyond any ability to master. She loved the man, but feared the beast, two that could never be separated. In the end, the beast would destroy her, and in turn her death would destroy the man.

Alice sank to her knees and wept for all she was worth. She saw no hope, no future, and no solution. She was not wise enough, not smart enough, not strong enough. Her sacrifices would be for nothing, everything she could possibly do. Fingers laced over her navel, over her unborn. How long? Would they grow up in a world without their mother? Would they be born at all?

She saw again Alia’s broken body, but it would be her. Kuthalti’s heart had broken that day and she had tried so hard to mend it, so hard to bring peace to his troubled brow. But she knew, when her time came, when it was her life blood spilled carelessly upon the soil, her killer would be her lover and there would be no one and nothing to save his broken soul.

The scream that tore from her throat was barely muffled by her claw like hands. It was a scream of the damned, a haunting thing that shivered her bones and left her sober and afraid. She realized, she wasn’t afraid of dying, or even for her unborn children, she was terrified of what would become of her Monster. He was everything to her.

“Is this how demons were born into the world? Not from a mother and a father, not through supernatural craft, but from a broken heart?” The flames came to her again, from that night, everyone she had ever known turned to ash in blue-white searing light. He had wanted to find more to satisfy his agony in pointless revenge, but justice had been met, and she convinced him of that. Where would he find justice after she was gone, who would he blame? In mind’s eye, she saw a world of ash with her Monster weeping.

3 – Sins of the Father

A voice spoke to her, a voice she did not know. “This is as it should be. This is fate. And oh what a fate is in store!”

She scrambled to her feet and spun to witness Kuthalti… no, not her Monster, but another. “Who… who are you?!” He was ten times Kuthalti’s size with brilliant crimson eyes, but even his patterning was similar.

He strode forward, each step producing a small quake under her feet. His muzzle lowered, large enough to swallow her whole, as well as a horse, and possibly a cow all at once. “I had a name once, a pathetic thing of draconic origin, I gave it up long long ago. Your people, they called me the Sky Terror. Which, if you think about it, is pretty inane as well, hmm? Most of the terror I inflicted was while I was on the ground after all.” He grinned, glassy teeth glinted in the sun, a smear of blood upon his lips. Unlike Kuthalti, he was immaculate, perfectly groomed.

“You are...” She stopped short, as vivid memories returned, of her childhood, of the horrors she had witnessed under his careless shadow and her own fear that had choked the joy from her life. Now she did not feel fear, no, she was beyond fear, she was drained of all possible emotions. “You have come to consume me too? Or perhaps rape a child into me as you did Alia?” She grimaced and quickly added, “You are too late for that, my womb has been claimed!”

He laughed, a deep thunderous sound that shook ash from the trees and tossed pebbles on the ground. His muzzle descended further to her middle, then nudged her off her feet, into the charred dirt, “Oh no, nothing of the sort. I am dying you see and I come to have a little chat with my legacy.” He laughed again, then sat heavily upon the earth and proceeded to cough. Blood splattered the ground.

She couldn’t decide whether she was exalted or… no there were no words for the emotions that churned in her heart. Her terror, dying. “What happened?” she finally asked as she sat up and hugged knees to her chest.

Once he had fully recovered from his spell, he answered her question with another, “What do you know of magic?” She shook her head, she knew nothing. “Neither did she, what was her name? Ayla?”

“Alia,” she corrected.

“Ah.” He seemed to take some meaning from it, but what, Alice could never have guessed. “I felt her die, you know. I felt her live, too, felt her for every day of her life after… after I left.” He laughed again, though she saw no amusement. “She had the gift, repressed, suppressed, but it was there. She cursed me. Oh it was a subtle curse, she did not even know what she had done or it might never have succeeded. I myself, am some what familiar with the interworkings of magic, of element and spell, but I had never studied the art of the curse. I was raised by the silvers, specifically a priestess of the silvers. Curses were not to be uttered or even thought in her presence, and she would know, oh how she would know.”

He seemed almost cowed by the thought of his mother. It amused Alice to think of the Sky Terror, afraid of some priest, “What are the silvers?”

“Silver dragons you daft kitten. The golds get all the glory, brutal and strong as they are, but it’s the silvers who hold the power you know. I returned home, fled the curse, fled the valley and the results, but… You can’t escape magic simply by distance, you can’t.”

He stretched and laid himself upon the ash covered ground, so much like Kuthalti, only an order of magnitude larger. “She, cursed you...” Alice echoed as she stared, “Like, boils or for your toes to fall off?”

“Nothing so mundane. No. It was subtle and strange. The curse was three fold, I remember it so clearly too though I had thought nothing of it at the time. First, she bid me to trip on a cloud and crash into the sun. Do you know, kitten, what a cloud is?”

Alice snapped back, “Of course I do, a water mist in the sky. I’ve flown through enough of them. Fog.”

“Ah yes, you would wouldn’t you. Can you imagine what it is like to trip, on a cloud?” That stopped her, she tried to imagine a dragon flying and tripping. It wasn’t like he was running after all. “I felt it first, only a week after I left, as I flew into a high cloud. A thin thing like you see today. Like spiderwebs it clung to me, tangled me, until I could no longer fly. But did I fall? No, no she bid me to trip into the sun. I rose, I rose at an ever increasing rate while bound in ephemeral whips of air and water. Above the clouds where a dragon never flies, above the very atmosphere itself, until the last shred of cloud had loosed itself from my bound form and I began to fall again.”

His words stopped, his crimson eyes found hers. It felt the same as when Kuthalti looked overwhelmed her, but her thoughts did not tangle, time did not skip. She felt him inside of her, more intimate and penetrating than sex, more of a violation than rape. Their eyes met and she could not look away, could not escape as he sank into her skull, but he did not take, he gave.

Alice struggled for breath, her eyes caked in ice that boiled away in trails of mist. Her tongue felt dry and saliva glands burst with cold steam. The void that surrounded her was an airless death as the scalding sun seared her scales like the light of god. Her wings burst free at last, and the final tatters of misty cobweb like magic fell free and evaporated. The whole time she was in free fall, her stomach clenched with nausea and her inner ear fought with the spin of the world below.

She was falling, she first fell up, slowed, then felt the shift as she began to fall down. Below her sphere of the world felt so far away, and though she gasped for breath, nothing reached her lungs but the pressure of her internal organs against void. Some how, she understood, understood that this was a place that lacked air, that pressure differences would kill her long before she starved for oxygen… she even knew what oxygen was.

The wind began, faint at first, a tiny ruffle of fur, then a slight drag on wing, then… she was burning. Her speed was too great and even the thin atmosphere was enough to strike spark from scale! Desperate, she brought magic to bare, spells she did not know until that moment, spells weak but… but enough. Levitation spells, snare spells, buoyancy and momentum spells. She avoided the clouds as she fell, avoided the traps she knew now lay within their velvet embrace. She survived.

The traumatic vision faded as he looked away. Alice stared at him with confused understanding. For a moment, she had been him, existed in his memories. He spoke again, “It happened many times over the next few years. Even a dense fog could kill me if I was not careful. A storm cloud would have been enough to crush me alive before throwing me skyward.”

Alice caught her breath and settled her racing heart. The experience had been thrilling and exhilarating, as well as abjectly terrifying. She eventually asked, timid, afraid of being subjected to worse, “You said three curses. What were the other two?”

“Hmmm, I should have lived life differently, your people as foolish as they are, possess a boldness that belies your place in the food chain. You would have made wonderful slaves, bred into an army. My son himself is perfect example of what could have been...” He shook his head of the vile suggestion and continued, “I will not subject you to the second or third curse, the shame of the second is too great and personal. It is not fit for public knowledge. The third however is what ails me now, she bid me to die. She did not say when, or how, but the moment her life was extinguished, my end was assured. You see, her curse bound our souls, fused our existences, and sapped the life from my bones year after year. In essence, she made me mortal. But once she died…” he shrugged and tried to laugh but fell to a new coughing fit.

“You do not seem to care that you are dying,” Alice observed.

He licked blood from his lips, spat into the ash, then continued, “I was cursed from the day I was born, to a mother who would never love me, to a world that never wanted me, with a soul as tainted as sewage.” He grinned, a frightening thing what with the blood stained teeth so like Kuthalti’s. “I long ago concluded that my life held no value, and if mine did not, neither did another’s. Oh do not pity me, you frail creature. I see it in your eyes, and it disgusts me. I raped your people for fun, I fed upon their entrails, I left them to die, slowly and in agony. I have had a wonderful life, and have no regrets.”

His head turned towards her again, those glowing crimson eyes threatening to overwhelm once again. She looked away quickly, but it was no use, her mind opened before his gaze like a flower to the sun. She had assumed it was eye contact, she had assumed wrong.

Below her was a screaming woman, or half woman half beast. Her poor body was raped half to death. Half… she started to laugh at the amusing thought, aloud she mocked, “Are you half dead yet, centaur? Are you half raped?”

The woman looked back up at her as she thrust her hips and felt the orgasmic bliss of the centaur’s ribs crack and lungs crush aside. She had already spent herself a dozen times over in the past few hours, she had nothing left to give, but her erection persisted so she persisted to defile the herd.

The woman of course, saw no humor in the questions, nor even seemed to understand them. Alice gave a great shrug, then sighed pleasantly as she let her bladder go. The centaur screamed once last time as her lower half ballooned outward. There was a loud gurgling, followed by a sudden splash as her belly gave out and torn viscera spilled in a deluge of scalding hot piss.

Alice drained herself completely before tossing the fouled corpse aside. Between her hind legs, her cloaca closed up around her retracted member. Pleasure spent, joyful, and oh so very satisfied, she took off toward the north, away from the plains. Behind her lie ruin, where once tens of thousands of centaurs amongst fifty tribes, was now only silence and death. It’s what they got for threatening her and trying to drive her from their land! Oh what a fun sport!

Alice jerked suddenly and fell back into the ash, shocked into reality once more. Her hips ached from clenching, and a puddle lay on the ground below her where she had pissed herself as the dream drained into the centaur. She felt no shame however, only terrified awe and disgust for what he had done. The stench of carnage, sex, and charred flesh still filled her nose from the dream.

“W-why?” She asked desperately.

“A curse is only viable for seven generations. When I die, it will pass on to him, weaker. When he dies, it will pass onto his offspring, and so forth.” A single paw lowered to touch her stomach, pointedly. “That is of course, if something is not done first to prevent it’s passage. The curse of death, I do not know what it will do to him with no other to latch onto. Perhaps you, baring his spawn, will be tied to him in mortality? That would be fitting I think, but no good for my grandchildren. The solution however, you see, is as simple as it is beautiful.”

“...what?” she asked, hesitant.

“The moment your husband returns, he will spot me looming over you like a predator about to pounce. He will be enraged, he cannot be anything but, his instincts are irresistible! I will fight back of course, but I am ill, I am sapped of life and strength, I am dying slowly as a candle burning from both ends. In the end he will slay me with little trouble. Perhaps you will die in the resulting battle, perhaps not, but he will escape the curse of death if the death inflicted is not of the curse’s making.”

Alice shivered at the thought of the violence he spoke of, she could see the blue white brilliance of Kuthalti’s fire against the crimson sear she had seen so often atop the bluff as a child. Yes, she could very easily die. “What of the clouds and, the secret second?”

“I disarmed the first already, with my mother’s help. It was tricky, but it was naive and contained many loose ends. He will yet suffer the second, but I’m sure he will cope with a weakened form, as I have with the full force of it now.” He looked away as he spoke, shame burned in his voice and expression.

She asked him then, the fate which was troubling her, “What can I do? When he kills me, it will destroy him. I am afraid our children will never be born. And if they are…” Her voice trembled as she trailed off.

He turned his gaze upon her again, but there was no mental violation, now overwriting of her existence, just old eyes that had seen far too much. “I do not care. He will find another cow to sire upon, his instincts will insist upon it. He will not be destroyed, he is far too strong for sappy emotions to hurt him, he is stronger than I ever could have been…” he chuckled again as mirth returned to his eyes, “we hybrids are far superior to the pure-bloods, but we have our own—issues. If you should survive, you will show him what I showed you.”

He paused, and into his silence she coldly told him, “you were a terrible father.” It was a dig, justified, but also cruel. The huge dragon flinched, visibly wounded by the remark.

“I am the best father I could ever be. I stayed away, that was the best for him.”

“His mother and sister died, their unborn children died, you could have saved them!” Alice stabbed again, the memory of their corpses behind her eyes, “Look at me, look into my memories, see what you did.”

He looked at her, he thrust behind her eyes and pried the offered memories from her grasp. His theft wasn’t simply observing, they were gone, within her mind was another chasm where she knew something should have been. “I see, a sister. She was beautiful even in death. Their mother…” he started to laugh, a full bodied laugh that chilled her heart. She did not understand, the memories gone, but she knew whatever they had been, had been a great cruelty, a trauma. How could he simply laugh at it?

“What…?” She began to say, but before her was a brilliant stark outline of her own form, a shadow cast by an intense light. Then there was a thunderous crash and roar as four feet slammed into the earth and the light brightened further. The old dragon’s pupils shrank, the crimson faded to pale silver, colorless. Behind her the thunder crested, into a screeching cacophony that she recognized.

“Oh,” was all he said as he stared into the light of his son’s fury.

Alice fled then, fled with every mote of strength she possessed. She was strong, fast, and limber, but even still… She cleared a scorched tree just in time for the thunderous crash. Kuthalti exhaled. Day was as if night in the shimmering light of that moment. Trees around her burst into flames from the illumination alone. The shadow in which she huddled, shrank. It dissolved as the tree behind her sublimated into ash.

As quick as the light came, it faded to pale blue, then yellow. The heat crashed on her, then a sudden intense wind battered her face as the air rushed into the seared clearing and fanned the flames with… oxygen, yes, that was the word she remembered from the dream. The forest around her smoldered for a moment before the inferno began to swell from the stands.

Alice stood and ran again, this time into the clearing, away from the impending forest fire. She had witnessed her Monster clear a nesting ground on numerous occasions, but nothing she had witnessed before prepared her for this… On all sides of the clearing, the forest blazed, where the old dragon had reclined, was now a cluster of glowing bones. The rocks that had strewn about, were molten puddles, the ash had turned white for a dozen meters in all directions.

Her own feet, she realized, were blistered and fur burning where she stood, but there was no where to go, no safety to be found. Her vision was filled with blue-black streaks, the outline of trees where shadow and light had touched as sharp as a knife.

“Ku-Kuth!” she cried, with a gasp of super heated air, her lungs scalded.

Through slatted vision she saw him turn, saw his recognition and terror, then relief. She felt her mind cave, felt reality give way before his. His brilliant eyes were the last thing she saw as he closed on her.

4 - Sacrifice

Shouting, why were they shouting? What had she done this time? Alice struggled to extract herself from her confused thoughts, of strangling clouds and forests on fire. She managed to open an eye and recognized a hand crafted wall, mud plaster, and a woven blanket. She was in a bed, in a house, people were shouting. Where was she?

“Ku-Kuth?” she rasped from her dry throat through cracked lips. The shouting stopped.

A door opened and an unfamiliar voice asked in a very broken language, “Yah sef. Nosh muh chiddin?”

She shifted, or tried to, but her body didn’t entirely obey. A leg twitched, an arm moved, but only then did the true weight of the agony hit her. She had been burning, burning alive! Her voice cracked as she wailed out her agony and sorrow. Where was her Monster? The curse, what about the curse? But the words failed to pass her lips, and in moments blackness crept in and claimed her once more.

When Alice next awoke, it was night. Someone was sitting at her side, singing quietly. This time she felt more aware, though no less confused. She managed, with care, to turn her head and look. An older woman sat in a rocking chair, knitting. It was a woman, but not of her people, or even a distant kin. She had no fur upon her cheeks, only long strands that dangled in matted ropes around her head. Her ears too, were strange, rounded instead of pointed, and tucked down near her neck instead of atop where they should have been. It reminded her of the upper half of the centaur from Sky Terror’s memories, but without the rest of the body.

She tried again to speak, to ask about Kuthalti, but only a croak emerged. The woman looked up, smiled a gap toothed smile, and plucked an earthen jug from the floor and poured something into an uneven cup. Alice drank, it burned her lips, mouth, and throat; not water, but something alcoholic. She tried to resist, but the woman shushed her and kept the cup at her lips until it was empty.

It took a few minutes, but the alcohol entered her blood and dulled her senses enough to relax. It wasn’t strong, not like some of the fermented juices she remembered from back home, but burned in her wounds.

“Where is Kuthalti?” she rasped, voice barely functional. Her throat hurt something fierce, then remembered inhaling and screaming, and how the air had burned like molten fire.

“Cue Halt thee?” The elder asked, then spoke in something very close to familiar words, “Not words known of I.”

Alice swallowed, then very gently asked, “Where?”

“Cinstressa, big-large-grand chief house. You safe.”

It took a lot of back and forth, but eventually Alice managed to understand. She had been rescued by these people, found in a field of cinders after a horrible monster had left. None could believe that she had survived the ordeal, insisting she must be a spell weaver. However, they discovered she was pregnant, no man could slay a pregnant woman, even a spell weaver, they rescued her. Only later had it come to light that she wasn’t one of them at all, but one of the forest people. The why was obvious when she looked at her seared arms, not a strand of fur left.

No one knew what had happened to Kuthalti however, he had left her there, that much was obvious, and though they had watched the field for weeks, he had not returned. Why? Why had he abandoned her? She felt both relief, and sorrow, for she might yet birth her children and see them grow, but she longed for her beloved Monster’s embrace, or at least, to see him smile.

The agony of recovery was unrelenting. Day by day, she grew stronger, but she was disfigured beyond belief, and endlessly on fire. Her hands and feet were numb, fingers barely able to grasp a spoon or cup, but though she felt nothing through them, they burned and burned. The rest of her body was only a slight improvement. Her belly grew gravid and round however as her pregnancy continued.

Alice lived in primarily isolation, in a small home at the outskirts of a village that she couldn’t entirely comprehend. Cinstressa had been described as “big-large-grand chief house” but that had been the language barrier for the most part, Cinstressa was the village that surrounded a stone building taller than two trees in which the chief lived. She had never seen a castle before, nor even imagined more than a hundred people in one place at any moment. Cinstressa had a hundred hundreds, more.

Worse for her, was that she was not welcome. The Cinstressa people did not like the forest people, but were themselves kindly, as one might be to a wounded animal. It was expected that once she recovered, she was to run off back home and never return. The old woman, she thought it was just nonsense, but shrugged it off. How she learned as much of the forest people’s language as she had, was anyone’s guess, for she was not telling.

Weeks became months, Alice’s welcome wore thin, but the old woman deemed her not fit to travel and that was that. Fur grew back, in patches, and her strength returned, but she would never fully recover. Her voice could not rise above a whisper, her hands and feet remained numb and nearly useless, and she would never again be beautiful. The sight of herself in a puddle was enough to make her weep. Bobbed ears, scar gnarled face, fur-less and terrifying.

Would her children even love her, when they were born? Yes, yes probably, her children would. That would have to be enough. She had heard many tales of Alia from Kuthalti. To her people, Alia would have been a foul, ruined woman, but to her children she was a wonder, the most incredible person in their lives. That, that had to be enough for her, to be a hero for her children.

Bit by bit, Alice’s thoughts shifted, from her dependance upon Kuthalti, to the future survival of herself, and her children. He had left her, perhaps that had been the kindest thing he could have done. She remembered Sky Terror’s words and for the first time, began to agree. He wasn’t Kuthalti, but what would he have turned the child into? What would the children become, raised by her Monster? Yes, it was best. This was right.

Alice’s musings came to an abrupt end as someone screamed, then more people, and more. She hobbled to the door of her room, then the door of the house and into the yard. She clung to her crutches as she bore witness, as something brilliant white landed in the street at the edge of the village. Trees swayed in his passing, cobblestones shattered under his feet. He had grown another head of height since she had last seen him.

Below him, the populous scattered with screams, a woman dropped her basket of fruit, and fled but he took a step, and stopped her short with a curl of his fore paw. He spoke, in their language, very firmly, but he didn’t seem angry. The woman shook like a leaf before his fierce face and pointed toward the house, and Alice herself.

Instead of letting him thrash the village with his approach, she hobbled forward on her crutches as fast as she could, to meet him in the street. She had just decided, only moments before, that she and her children were better off without him, but now that thought was forgotten. She wanted nothing more than to curl into his embrace and never let go.

He let the terrified woman go, who instead of escaping, sank to her knees and wept with face in hands. He however had forgotten the scared girl and held his gaze upon Alice with such fixed intensity, that it seemed he might invade her mind like his father had, but no… he just waited, patient as possible, with every muscle a-quiver.

“Monster,” She rasped, at last close enough that he might hear her.

“Alice...” he rejoined, voice timid, “Forgive me, forgive me for everything. I understand now, what I was doing to you, what I did to you…”

She approached and laid a hand upon his muzzle, between his nostrils. How had he gotten so big? Once, she could have looked him in the eyes, but now he might have been able to swallow her whole. The thought made her slightly uneasy, not for herself, but what others in the village were thinking.

“I forgive you, Kuthalti. I always forgave you. You should not have come here, they will get over their fear and turn on you, you know this.”

“I know, and they will fall by the thousand should they need to! I could not stay away, I could not continue without seeing you again!”

Alice felt tears well in her eyes as he spoke, the passion in his heart overflowed through his gaze, she could feel his loneliness and need behind her eyes. “Kuth, stop it. You say you know, do you know what you are doing to me right now? I had just finally decided to forge ahead without you and now… and now…” She felt the future closing in around her again, saw herself a blood stain, a splatter of viscera across the ground as he took desperate pleasure from her broken body. Only after word would he realize what he had done. She saw it all in a flash, and he saw it in her mind, flinched back as if struck.

“No! Never! I would never!” he declared, insistent.

Alice shook her head, then took his muzzle into her arms and pressed her cheek to his brow, “You wouldn’t, no, but you will. I know you have before, with animals, I’ve tasted your lust upon the meat and eaten it willingly. Some day, some day you will be unable to help yourself. I would gladly sacrifice myself to give you the satisfaction you crave, in a heart beat. I don’t care if you hurt me, but… I also know what it would do to you, I know what it would do to our children.” She smiled then, laughed even, she remembered Sky Terror, laughing at his own fate and felt she understood a little. “Some day, maybe five years, maybe ten, after our children are grown.” She kissed his brow, “Come back to me then, come back to me and let me satisfy you.”

“N-No!” he balked, the very thought in her mind’s eye enough to send tears raining down his face. “I would never! I will never! I just need you, I can’t… I can’t… I need you! I won’t ever hurt you!” But he knew the truth even in his vocal rejection.

“You will, some day, and I’ll welcome you. Come back to me when you are strong enough, my love.” She was crying too, she knew full well, he would never return, never have the desire to kill her. Perhaps he might return for his children, or to impregnate her again, but she didn’t voice those thoughts, he would have to think of them on her own. “Go my Monster, go. Before these foolish people get themselves killed and I have to leave before I am ready. Should you ever wish to see me again, we shall meet atop your bluff. I am going home.”

He backed away, stone ground under foot, slate cracked. Next time, if there was a next time, that she saw him, she knew he would be too large to satisfy himself without mortal harm. For all she knew, he might already have been.

He hesitated, eyes fixed on her, “Father was wrong, he should have been there...” His words proved that he had drawn the entire thing from her mind, but she had expected that.

“Go, go Kuthalti! Get out of here!” she shooed him away, limp hands in the air, pleading.

He whimpered, backed another step, then turned. “As you wish…” He wanted to say more, she could see that, but the words were tangled up inside, too confused and painful to be confronted. Another step, and he leaped into the air.

Behind her, there was a galloping of horse hooves as soldiers came down from the castle. Someone else screamed at her, a word she had come to recognize as a negative, “Witch!” Others yelled, people were coming out of their houses as they recovered their courage.

Alice looked up to see the old woman on the stoop, face drawn and full of sorrow. That expression made no sense, nor did it as the woman turned away and shuffled back inside. Alice looked up the road toward the galloping horse men. They slowed as the closed, listened to the screams. Eyes turned toward her.

Suddenly, she began to understand, began to realize. They feared magic, worse, they thought she had used magic to send Kuthalti away. “No!” she cried, barely a whisper above the roar of the growing crowd. She looked back toward the shape of her Beloved, he was still close, but not enough to hear her. She reached, reached as hard as she could, from that place behind her eyes where he had touched so often, where his father had sank his mental talons. She reached, both arms outstretched, and felt…

A sword sank through her ribs from behind and emerged from her breast. Her sense of connection vanished as fog before the sun. Her eyes lowered to the blood streaked steel, notched and poorly kept she realized, spotted with rust even. For some reason, she fixated on this fact, that he didn’t maintain his tools well, even as she fell to her knees.

Pain was there, but pain was always there, what was a little more in a new place? She raised her hand to the sword blade, as if she could just make it vanish. It did, it retreated back through her body and sliced to the side. It came out under her arm. Air hissed and bubbled from her lung as it collapsed. “Kuth,” she mouthed and looked up again to see him descend.

The shadow of his approach blotted out the sun. From within, she witnessed a new sun being born, blue-white. His mouth was open, lightning coursed from tooth to tooth, a cascade of energy too intense to look at, but she couldn’t look away. His eyes found hers, briefly, full of light as well. She felt him in her thoughts, felt his burning anger, felt is terror, felt his thoughts begin to fragment. There was nothing she could do now.

He looked away from her, the connected faded. He exhaled. The lightning fragmented the air, broke it into concepts she only had even more confusing concepts to comprehend it with. That air, a blue-white plume of light, it crackled with electricity, burned the very air as it touched it, and billowed down into the street behind her. Screams were cut short, flesh sublimated, houses powdered, stone melted, trees ashed. The wall of the castle sagged, then flowed into the village below like water.

There was a quartet of earthquakes as the dragon landed atop of her. Everything was black, the light of his fury had left her blind, but she knew he was there, felt him behind her eyes, smelled his fur and the ozone that accompanied it. She tried to tell him, “I’m sorry, don’t… don’t hurt.” but she knew the gesture was futile. At least, she realized, he wasn’t the one to kill her, he couldn’t blame himself for that. “The eggs, save the eggs!” she pleaded, but there was no voice to accompany the thought, and no sentient mind beyond the beast within her Monster.

Alice died, her duty ended. Around her, a city burned like the sun for it’s transgression. It was not the first city to burn under dragon fire, nor was it was the first for Kuthalti. It would not be the last.

The death of his wife burned a scar in Kuthalti’s mind over the same scar of his lost mother and sister, but the blame… the blame he laid upon the feet of mortals. Not only the humans, not the forest people, everyone.

That night, the Monster came to rest upon the molten ruins of Cinstressa and laid the broken body of Alice to rest. He wept over her, mournful and lost without her, but did his duty as a husband. There, he reflected upon her memories, memories he had rescued from her mind. “What did you see father? Was this fate?”

A voice came to him, indistinct and distorted, “We make our own fates.” This voice felt welcome, comfortable, familiar. He did not even question it’s presence, or who it belonged to. For the voice was his, his from as early as he could remember. Not that it had ever spoken to him before, not so clearly. He nodded his head and smiled, “Yes, we do, do we not?”

He leaned in and pressed his lips to the gravid and cold belly of his wife. That which would never be. He felt hot inside, too hot, but his hide was icy cold. Something burned within that he had avoided, rejected, tried to extinguish. No longer. He fed that flame, fed it until it scoured the pain from his heart and left his thoughts empty.

His arousal grew as the flames burned hotter. Between his hind legs, his erection emerged and he nestled down over Alice. She was so cold against his heated spire, so stiff and empty, but it felt right, it had been her duty in life, one last time… one last claiming was her duty in death.

The voice inside agreed, or was it that he agreed with the voice? He could not tell for sure, but did not dwell on hit long. He sank to the hilt in his wife, tore through that which he had held sacred, felt her pelvis crack around him. She had been right of course, he would come to satisfy himself with her. Neither of them would have imagined that it would be that very same day, but that was alright. “You were right, Alice, you were always right.”

Her silent voice was an emptiness in his heart, but the flame seared across it and the pain faded. Her limp body split from vulva to ribs as he ravished her. There was something in his act, something powerful in his commitment to her. He felt as if he could move heaven and earth if he only came hard enough. Tears were in his eyes, ignored, even as he climaxed for her over and over and over again. Semen poured down the steps of the dais upon which he had lain her. The place had been the seat of power for tens of thousands of people, now it was a mausoleum, a testament to his love for her.

With the tenth climax, he pulled free and looked upon her face… only to discover there was little more than a bloody smear of bones and flesh, no sign of her at all. Inside, the voice told her, “She has ascended beyond, to be an angel. Remember the angel? Some day, she will save you.”

“Save me?” He asked himself. “From what?”

“Me,” He replied with a cold smile, then began to laugh as he emptied his bladder over the blood stain. “She will save you from me!”

A torrent of energy swirled in the air instinctively drawn to the coupling of dragon and corpse. Kuthalti felt it like the cloudy cobwebs his father had experienced. But instead of binding him, he bound them. He dragged the very life from the land as the last dregs of his urine tainted the stone below, and befouled the resting place of his wife.

He barely knew what he was doing but he knew the magic he wrought. He was a child playing with forces of nature like clay. Clumsy and crude as it was, his will was iron and the world bowed to it. The memory of Alice rose in his mind, her potent spirit, her will as strong as his own, gone. His grief mixed with his hatred, his hatred mixed with his lust, the lines had blurred. “Return to me,” he commanded.

Heaven and earth moved. He did not want her back, her frail flesh would never hold now, her spirit had fled. But he commanded her to return, his angel. Maybe not now, maybe not soon, but she would return! He commanded it, and his command snuffed the last flutter of life from the kingdom.

Wheat crumbled to dust in the field. Grass fell to ash. The very stone of the castle that had flown like water, now flowed away from him as little more than fine sand. Only the dais remained, and it reeked of death, corruption, and magic.

Before the dragon departed, he told her one final thing, “Your sacrifice will not be in vain, Beloved. We shall cleanse the world.”

Epilogue

In the depths of the darkness, far above the plane of ecliptic, a woman floated with a pair of draconic wings stretched out behind her. Dust passed through her without interaction, light was only partially refracted. In the depths of the darkness, she wept, three serpentine forms clung to her arms as she hugged them to her breast. In the darkness, she fell, and fell. No breath passed her lips, no tears escaped her empty eyes. In the darkness, she watched a world burning, felt every death, every sorrow, every hopeless mortal soul extinguished. In the darkness, a woman wept with joy. In the darkness, a trio of sightless infants wailed silently for nourishment from an empty bosom, so she fed them the damned instead.

End

03/07/2019

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