The Contracts
Ciri — Third Person
The Dragon Witcher school's second expedition departed from Vaes Meereen on a grey morning that smelled of approaching rain.
Ciri and Arya had spent the intervening weeks integrating what they'd learned into a more comprehensive toolkit. The Witcher Signs — Aard, Igni, Yrden, Quen, Axii — were now second nature, reflexive combat responses rather than techniques that required conscious activation. But the DnD Spellbooks had opened a wider world of magical capability, and both of them had begun weaving formal spells into their Sign framework with results that exceeded anyone's expectations.
Ciri's Zireael had been enchanted further — the Wyrm-Forged blade now carried three layered enchantments: the original dimensional resonance, a fire-burst activation triggered by Sign integration, and a new spatial-distortion edge that made the blade's cutting surface exist slightly outside normal space. She'd tested it on a training dummy the day before departure and watched the blade pass through reinforced plate like it wasn't there. The result was a weapon that could part armor like cloth and leave wounds that conventional healing struggled to close.
Arya's Needle had received similar treatment. The slender blade, already responsive to her fighting style, now carried poison-amplification and shadow-attunement enchantments that complemented her Faceless Men training. She'd also commissioned a set of throwing needles from the forge, each one enchanted with tracking signatures that let her redirect them mid-flight using Axii-augmented telekinesis. Ciri had watched her practice with them and decided she wanted a set of her own.
Geralt's equipment had been the most straightforward upgrade. His Wyrm-Forged blade needed no additional enchantment — the weapon was already superb — but his armor had been fitted with ward-laced reinforcement plates that provided passive magical shielding, and his crossbow now carried bolts with alchemical payloads. He'd inspected every piece himself, twice, because that was what Witchers did.
The potions were the real breakthrough.
She and Arya had spent weeks working with the Wyrmborne alchemists to develop specialized Witcher Mutagen potions adapted for Dragon Witcher physiology. Standard Witcher potions — Cat for sharpened vision, Thunderbolt for damage, Swallow for regeneration — were designed for baseline Witcher mutations and could be lethal to anyone else. The Dragon Witcher variants accounted for their accelerated metabolism and draconic biology, producing effects that were stronger and longer-lasting than the originals with fewer toxicity concerns.
Cat was the first they'd perfected — a variant that turned Ciri's already-sharpened senses into something nearly omniscient, allowing her to see in absolute darkness, detect magical signatures at range, and process visual information at speeds that bordered on precognitive. The effect lasted two hours and left a mild headache as the only aftereffect.
Thunderbolt amplified their physical output — speed, strength, reflexive action — by roughly forty percent for ninety minutes. Swallow accelerated their already-impressive regeneration to the point where minor wounds closed in seconds and major injuries began healing immediately.
They'd also developed a specialized blend they called Predator — a combination that amplified the draconic predatory instincts without overwhelming rational thought, producing a combat state that Arya described as "seeing the fight three seconds before it happens." Ciri had experienced it as something different: the world slowing to a crawl while she operated at normal speed.
Each Dragon Witcher carried a bandolier of six potions, organized by function. The acclimation process hadn't been pleasant. Arya had vomited twice during the Thunderbolt calibration, and Ciri had experienced a twelve-second period of complete sensory overload during the first Cat test — every sound in the city, every heartbeat within a hundred yards, crashing into her awareness like a wave. But by the end of it, both of them could ingest any potion in their arsenal and maintain full combat effectiveness within thirty seconds.
The hunting party was larger than the previous expedition. Ciri and Arya led the Dragon Witcher element. Geralt provided veteran oversight. Veyla commanded the Wyrmborne hunter contingent — the same acid-yellow-eyed Draconian who'd taken a griffin's talon across her forearm on the last outing and had been visibly impatient to get back in the field. Eight Wyrmborne hunters, four Battlemages, and this time, the Order of the Scarlet Wing.
Kinvara, Melisandre, and Thoros joined with a dozen of their most capable members, dressed in their new crimson and gold instead of the old red robes. The conversion process had given them access to Draconian physiology and fire magic that complemented their existing abilities, and they were eager to prove their worth in the field. Kinvara had been particularly insistent — the Scarlet Wing needed combat experience to establish credibility within the Wyrmborne military structure, and monster contracts provided exactly the controlled-risk environment where they could earn it.
The vampire contracts came first.
A nest of Garkains and a Katakan pair had been reported in the hills southeast of the hunting grounds. The Garkains had been feeding on livestock for a week. The Katakans were older, wilier, and had been at it longer.
The preparation was markedly better than last time. Geralt briefed the full party, Ciri and Arya distributed specialized potions, and the Scarlet Wing members received specific assignments that leveraged their fire magic without putting them in positions where inexperience could get them killed.
"The Garkains are the priority," Geralt told the assembled hunters. "They hunt in packs of four to six, they're fast enough to close distance before most fighters can react, and their scream produces a disorienting effect that can paralyze an inexperienced fighter for up to three seconds. Three seconds is enough time for a Garkain to open your throat."
He looked at the Scarlet Wing contingent. "Fire is your primary contribution. Sustained, controlled burns. Garkains fear flame — it's one of the few things that triggers their flight instinct. When I call for fire, I need a wall of it between the pack and our flanks. A controlled barrier that keeps them channeled into our kill zone."
Kinvara nodded. Her fire magic, strengthened by the Draconian conversion and further sharpened by weeks of study from the Spellbooks, was precise enough for the task.
"Ciri, Arya — Cat potions. Both of you." Geralt held up his own vial of the adapted Witcher brew. "I want every one of us reading their movements in real time. No surprises."
They dosed together. The onset hit Ciri in a wave — her pupils dilating until only a thin ring of green remained, the world sharpening into a clarity that made ordinary vision feel like squinting through gauze. She could see the heat shimmer rising from the den entrance forty yards ahead. She could count individual motes of dust in the air between her and the cave mouth. Every shadow carried depth, every surface screamed information at her.
This is what Geralt sees all the time. No wonder he notices everything.
"Smoke them out," Geralt ordered.
The Battlemages pushed Igni-amplified smoke into the Garkain den — thick, acrid, laced with alchemical compounds that irritated the creatures' sensitive nasal membranes. For a count of thirty, nothing. Forty. The hunters' grips tightened on their weapons.
Then four shapes erupted from the cave mouth in a blur of pale skin and black claws.
Fast. Even through the Cat potion's sharpened perception, Garkains were fast. Not the intelligent, calculating speed of Katakans — this was feral velocity, the mindless scramble of pack predators that ran before they thought. They scattered in four directions, screeching — that disorienting shriek Geralt had warned about, a sound that scraped across the inside of the skull like fingernails on slate.
One of the Scarlet Wing members flinched. The rest held.
"FIRE!"
The flame walls went up. Kinvara's contribution hit first — a controlled sheet of orange-white that cut across the left flank, the heat intense enough that Ciri felt it from twenty feet away. Melisandre's fire answered on the right — less precise, rawer, but effective. The twin walls channeled the scattering Garkains inward, funneling their panic into the kill corridor where eight Wyrmborne hunters waited with Wyrm-Forged steel.
Three Garkains hit the corridor together. The first met Veyla's blade head-on — an overhead cut that split the creature from collarbone to sternum. The sound was wet and final. The second tried to climb the flame wall and recoiled, shrieking, its pale skin blackening and cracking along one arm. A hunter's spear pinned it through the chest while it writhed. The third made it past the first line of defenders, fast enough and low enough to slip under the crossing blades, and came face-to-face with Ciri.
She didn't think. Zireael came up in a horizontal arc that caught the Garkain across the throat, the spatial-distortion edge parting flesh and bone and the air itself. The creature's head didn't come off cleanly — it hung by a strip of sinew, flopping sideways, the body still running for two more steps before it collapsed in a heap that smelled of blood and burnt copper.
The fourth Garkain broke left.
It had read the kill corridor and rejected it, choosing the gap between Kinvara's flame wall and the rocky hillside where the fire couldn't reach. It covered thirty feet in the time it took a heart to beat twice, heading straight for the Scarlet Wing's rear line where the less experienced members held the perimeter.
Thoros saw it coming. To his credit, he didn't freeze. He raised both hands, and fire bloomed between his palms — a desperate, surging blast that threw heat and light in a wide cone. The Garkain shrieked and twisted mid-stride, avoiding the worst of the flames but losing a half-second of momentum.
It wasn't enough to stop the creature. It landed three feet from Thoros, claws raking forward — Ciri saw the talons pass close enough to his face that his hair moved in the draft —
Arya hit it from the side.
She'd crossed twenty feet in a heartbeat — Dragon Witcher speed closing the distance before the Garkain could register the threat. Needle punched through the creature's jaw from below, up through the palate and into the brain. The shadow-attuned blade disrupted whatever kept the vampire animate, and it dropped at Thoros's feet, twitching once, then going still.
Thoros stared down at the body. Then he stared at Arya, who was already pulling Needle free and wiping the blade on her sleeve.
"You're welcome," she said.
"That was—" He swallowed. "Very close."
"That's why we don't put you on the front line." But her voice wasn't harsh — she'd been in his position once, six months ago, watching creatures move faster than she'd believed possible. "Your fire slowed it enough for me to reach you. That's the system working."
Geralt walked the kill zone, checking each body, making sure the regeneration was disrupted. Satisfied, he sheathed his sword. "Four confirmed dead. Processing can wait — we've got a Katakan pair to deal with, and I want them handled before the blood-scent from this fight draws attention."
The Katakans were harder. Not because the hunters were unprepared — they were better equipped, better coordinated, and substantially more dangerous than they'd been on the last expedition. The Katakans were harder because these two were smart.
They refused to be baited. The illusory blood-bait that had worked on the previous pair produced no response. When the hunters tried to smoke them out, the creatures retreated deeper into their cave network rather than emerging. When Ciri threw an Igni blast into the cave mouth to raise the temperature, the thermal bloom washed back out empty — the Katakans had found a deeper chamber and were waiting.
"Clever," Geralt muttered, crouched at the cave entrance. Ciri watched his Cat-slitted eyes track across the darkness inside. "They've learned. Something in the pack-intelligence is telling them that surface ambushes get them killed. So they're forcing us underground, where the tunnels negate our numbers and their speed advantage multiplies."
"So we go in after them?" Veyla asked. Her weapon was drawn, her acid-yellow eyes scanning the darkness. The scar on her forearm — the griffin talon from the last expedition — stood out pale against her scales.
"We don't go in after them. That's what they want." Geralt spent twenty minutes reading the cave system. He studied the air currents, crouched to examine claw-marks at different heights, ran his fingers across moisture patterns on the stone. Ciri and Arya watched him work, and both recognized what they were seeing — a century of experience distilled into observation so precise it looked like magic.
Then Geralt did something the Wyrmborne hadn't seen before.
He stepped back from the cave mouth, planted his feet, and threw Aard — not into the cave, but into the stone ceiling of a secondary passage thirty feet to the left. The Sign hit with a concussive CRACK that echoed off the hillside. Rock fractured. A section of the tunnel roof collapsed inward, sending dust billowing from three different openings.
"What the hell was that?" one of the hunters asked.
"Ventilation control." Geralt's voice was calm, his eyes tracking the dust clouds. "The cave system breathes through multiple openings. That collapse just sealed one of the primary intake vents. The remaining airflow has to compensate — which means the currents inside just reversed." He pointed at the main cave entrance, where dust was now flowing outward instead of being drawn in. "Their own scent is being pushed ahead of them. They can't smell us anymore. They can't track the hunting party's position through the tunnels. And the air they're breathing is filling with dust from the collapse — visibility underground just dropped to nothing."
Ciri understood. "So they either stay blind and choking in the dark—"
"Or they come out to reacquire their prey." Geralt was already positioning the kill zone. Hunters flanking the exits. Scarlet Wing fire walls blocking the escape routes. Battlemage binding spells primed. Ciri to the left, Arya to the right, both on Cat potions with their blades drawn. "They come out."
They waited. Geralt's eyes never left the cave mouth.
The female emerged first.
She came low, hugging the cave floor, her pale form blurring against the stone as she transitioned from darkness to daylight. She was bigger than the last female they'd fought — longer limbs, thicker through the shoulders, claws that left grooves in solid rock as she crawled. Her eyes swept the kill zone with an intelligence that made Ciri's skin prickle.
Ciri tracked her through the Cat potion's enhanced vision. The Katakan's movements, which would have been a preternatural blur six months ago, registered as fast but readable — the slight coiling of muscle before a lunge, the weight shift that telegraphed a directional change, the way the creature's eyes flicked toward the Scarlet Wing's rear line, searching for the weakest target.
She's looking for Thoros. Looking for the non-combatants.
"Now," Geralt said. Quiet. Not shouted. An instruction to professionals.
Ciri blinked.
The Elder Blood teleportation put her in the Katakan's path, three feet from the creature's face. The vampire's eyes widened! Zireael came up in a rising cut that caught the Katakan across the ribs, the spatial-distortion edge parting flesh and bone with a sound like tearing silk. The creature twisted away from the killing stroke, fast enough to avoid the full depth of the cut, and Ciri felt claws whisper past her cheek as the Katakan lashed out in reflex.
Close. Respect that.
But the Cat potion had shown her the counter-strike coming before it arrived. She was already ducking, already pivoting, and her follow-up Igni — channeled through the Sign framework but amplified by the Evocation theory she'd been studying — caught the wounded Katakan full in the chest. Fire punched into the open wound and cauterized it from the inside out. The creature's regeneration never had a chance to engage.
The Katakan screamed. It lunged again, one arm hanging useless where the cauterized wound had seared the shoulder muscles —
Ciri sidestepped the lunge, caught the creature's extended arm, and drove Zireael through the base of its skull from behind. The blade's dimensional resonance disrupted the vampire's neural architecture, and the Katakan went rigid, then collapsed. Dead before it hit the ground.
Two moves to engagement. Three exchanges. One kill. Six months ago, this fight took ten minutes and put Arya in a field hospital.
The male burst from a secondary exit fifteen feet to the right.
He came fast — grief-blind, seeing his mate fall, rage overriding every survival instinct. He made straight for Ciri with a single-minded focus.
Geralt intercepted him.
The exchange was clinical. The Katakan committed to a lunging rake aimed at Geralt's throat — the same desperate, overextended attack that the last grief-maddened male had used. Geralt sidestepped it and brought his blade across in a flat arc that opened the creature's belly from hip to sternum. The vampire stumbled, tried to reverse, and Geralt's return stroke took its head. The body dropped. The head rolled twice and stopped against a rock, pale eyes still open, still carrying that last look of surprised fury.
Two strikes. The same Katakan subspecies that had hamstrung a Draconian hunter, gouged through Wyrm-Forged armor, and buried toxin-laced claws in Arya's thigh the last time they'd fought one.
Two strikes.
Geralt cleaned his blade on the grass. His hands were steady — Ciri had never seen them otherwise.
"Better," he said. In the last expedition, Arya had limped home and Marek had stared at gouges in armor that was supposed to be impenetrable. This one was a much better outcome. "No casualties this time. No injuries. That's what preparation and experience buy you."
Veyla let out a breath she'd been holding. "The fire corridors held. The Scarlet Wing didn't break."
"They didn't." Geralt's tone carried the sparse approval that, from him, meant genuine respect. "Tell your people that was solid work."
She looked at him for a moment longer than the comment required. Ciri caught it — something shifting behind those acid-yellow eyes that had nothing to do with professional respect.
Geralt of Rivia — Third Person
The lesser wyvern contracts were routine by comparison. Three nests cleared in a single day — the creatures dangerous but predictable, their attack patterns well-documented from previous hunts. The Scarlet Wing rotated through fire-support positions while the hunters and Dragon Witchers handled the close work. Each engagement was shorter than the last, the coordination tightening with practice.
By the time they turned east toward the territory where the tracks were getting strange, Geralt and Veyla had fallen into an easy operational rhythm — he briefing, she coordinating, both of them working the edges of the formation.
"You read the environment differently than anyone I've hunted with," Veyla told him during a rest break, handing him a water skin. "Most fighters look at terrain as obstacles. You look at it as information."
"A century of not dying teaches you to pay attention."
"Draconian senses. The heat signatures are obvious to us." She settled on the rock beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. "What do you see when you track a monster? What does a Witcher's sight actually show you?"
Geralt explained — pheromone trails, magical displacement patterns, the behavioral signatures that different creature types left in their environments. Veyla listened, but she was also watching his face as he spoke, studying the way his golden eyes moved when he described something that engaged him. Her thick tail curled loosely on the rock between them, the tip resting an inch from his knee.
The Chort tracks appeared on the third day.
Geralt spotted them first — deep, cloven prints in the soft earth at the base of a ravine. Something with tremendous mass and speed had left those marks. He held up a closed fist, and the party stopped.
"What are we looking at?" Veyla asked, dropping to a knee beside him. The other hunters held their positions, weapons loosened in their sheaths.
"These." He pointed to the prints, then to the scoring on a nearby tree trunk — deep parallel gouges that started at shoulder height and descended in angry furrows. "A large creature, four-legged, heavy enough to sink two inches into packed clay at a walk. The claw marks on the tree are territorial — whatever made them was marking its range."
"A charging predator," Veyla said.
"Look at the prints again. See how the rear hooves overlap the front impressions? That's not a walk — it's a ground-covering trot. The creature covers distance at a pace that would tire a horse." He stood, scanning the ravine walls. "Ciri, come look at this."
Ciri joined them, her green eyes sharp. She studied the prints, the territorial markings, and the faint discoloration on the tree bark where something had rubbed against it repeatedly.
"The depth, the stride, the territory marking pattern — that's a Chort."
"Give the girl a point." Geralt turned to the wider group. "We've got a Chort."
Blank stares from the Wyrmborne. The Scarlet Wing members looked at each other. Even Veyla's expression was one of professional confusion rather than recognition.
"What's a Chort?" one of the Wyrmborne hunters asked.
"Imagine a fiend — the massive, antlered predators from the Conjunction bestiary — but smaller, faster, and considerably more aggressive. About the size of a large bull, with powerful forequarters, curved horns, and enough strength to charge through a stone wall. They're territorial, they're mean, and they have a roar that can stun anything within thirty feet if you're not prepared for it."
"How dangerous compared to the vampires?" Veyla asked.
"Different kind of dangerous. Vampires are smart — they outthink you. A Chort is a force of nature. It doesn't outthink anything. It just hits you hard enough that thinking becomes irrelevant." He checked the wind. "The good news is they're predictable once you understand the behavior patterns. The bad news is the first time you fight one without that understanding, the predictability doesn't help because everything happens faster than you expect."
"Strategy?"
Geralt outlined it. "We find its lair. It'll be a cave or a hollow — somewhere sheltered where the ground is soft enough to sleep on. We set a kill zone in the approach corridor, barrier wards on the flanks to channel its charge, and we put the heaviest hitters at the terminus. When it charges — and it will charge — we need to stop its momentum before it reaches full speed. At full speed, a Chort will go through a Quen shield like it isn't there."
"So we don't let it reach full speed," Arya said.
"Mm-hm."
They tracked the Chort to its lair — a shallow cave beneath a rock overhang, the entrance littered with gnawed bones and reeking of musk and old blood. The stench hit like a wall. Several of the Scarlet Wing members gagged. Veyla breathed through her mouth and kept moving. Geralt didn't react at all — after a century of crawling into monster dens, his baseline for what constituted a bad smell had shifted permanently.
The creature was inside. Geralt could hear it breathing — deep, slow, the rhythm of a predator at rest.
"Yrden at the cave mouth," he directed. "Double-layered. When it steps into the trap, the Signs will slow it enough for the first strike."
Ciri laid the Signs — the purple-glowing glyphs materializing on the cave floor in overlapping patterns. Arya positioned herself on the overhang above the entrance, body flat against the stone, Needle drawn. The Wyrmborne hunters formed the corridor, Veyla at the center with her weapon braced. The Battlemages prepared binding spells, and the Scarlet Wing formed the flame barrier at the flanks.
Everyone was in position. Geralt scanned the line — no shaking hands, no wide eyes. Good enough.
Geralt threw a Samum bomb into the cave.
The flash-bang detonated with a concussive CRACK that echoed off the ravine walls. Blinding white light strobed from the cave mouth. For one second, nothing happened.
Then the ground shook.
The Chort burst from its lair at a dead sprint. Eight hundred pounds of compressed muscle, brown-black fur, and curved horns that gouged the stone ceiling of the cave entrance as the creature tore through the overhang. Its hooves struck the ground with impacts that sent tremors through Geralt's legs. The smell hit next — hot fur, musk, the iron tang of old blood — and Geralt's Witcher senses catalogued it automatically: well-fed, territorial, aggressive.
It matched his description exactly — and Geralt could see from the hunters' faces that hearing about a Chort and seeing one charge were entirely different experiences. The way the air compressed ahead of the thing, the primal wrongness of something that heavy moving that fast — that couldn't be conveyed in a briefing.
The Yrden trap caught it. The creature's front hooves hit the overlapping glyphs and its momentum halved — the magical field wrapping around its legs, pulling against the charge like invisible chains sunk in stone. The Chort's muscles bunched, fighting the restraint, hooves cracking the rock beneath as it strained forward.
Then it bellowed.
The roar hit the hunters like something physical. A heavy, bone-deep, frequency vibration that bypassed the ears entirely and went straight into the chest, the gut, the hindbrain where fight-or-flight lived. Three of the Wyrmborne staggered. One Scarlet Wing member dropped to his knees, hands clamped over his ears, face white. Veyla planted her feet and held her ground through sheer will, jaw locked, her acid-yellow eyes watering from the pressure.
Geralt had warned them. From the way three of them staggered, the warning hadn't been enough.
"HOLD!" Geralt shouted.
The creature tore free of the Yrden. It was strong enough — just barely — to rip through the glyph's grip, its hooves churning stone as it regained speed. Slower than before, the magical drag still pulling at its legs, but accelerating. Four feet per second. Six. Eight. If it reached full stride the hunters at the terminus would take the impact like a battering ram through a wooden gate.
It didn't reach full stride.
Arya dropped from the overhang.
Geralt saw the timing and recognized it — she'd waited for the exact moment the Chort's skull would pass beneath her position, the intercept angle calculated before the creature had even cleared the cave. Good girl. That was Predator potion precision.
She hit the Chort's back between the shoulder blades, her clawed Dragon Witcher hands locking into the coarse fur, and drove Needle into the base of the creature's skull with both arms. The shadow-attuned blade sank deep — through hide, muscle, bone — and the Chort screamed. A higher sound than the roar, raw with pain and confusion. It bucked, eight hundred pounds of furious muscle trying to throw a hundred and forty pounds of Dragon Witcher off its back.
Arya held. Geralt watched each buck slam her spine against the bony ridge of the creature's back hard enough to make him wince — impacts that would leave bruises for a week — but she kept Needle buried and twisted the blade with the savage precision he'd trained into her.
The Chort's legs gave out mid-stride. It dropped like a fortress with its foundations cut, sliding forward on momentum alone, gouging a furrow in the dirt. Still twitching and kicking. But the charge was broken.
Geralt's blade finished it. A clean stroke that opened the throat, followed by a precise cut that took the heart. The creature shuddered once and went still.
Silence settled over the kill zone.
Arya pulled Needle free with a wet schick and rolled off the carcass. She stood gingerly, one hand pressed against her ribs where the worst of the bucking had landed. Nothing broken — Geralt could tell from the way she moved — but she'd feel that for days.
"That," she said, wiping dark blood from the blade, "is a Chort."
"Ugly bastard," one of the hunters muttered, which broke the tension. Several others laughed — a shaky, relieved laughter.
Veyla walked to the carcass and knelt, examining the horns, the hooves, the dense bone structure of the skull. "The researchers will want the entire specimen intact if possible. The musculature alone is unlike anything we've documented."
"The horn cores contain alchemical compounds useful for Witcher potions," Geralt said, joining her. "And the hide, properly treated, can be used for armor reinforcement. Nothing goes to waste."
Veyla looked up at him. "You hunt these things professionally. Back on your Continent — this was your life."
"Still is. Just got more complicated."
"Doesn't seem complicated from where I'm standing." She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. "You saw every movement that thing made before it made it. You placed every fighter exactly where they needed to be. And you did it calmly, like you were arranging furniture."
"Furniture doesn't try to kill you."
"Most furniture," Veyla corrected, and Geralt felt something unfamiliar tug at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Close enough.
"Most furniture," he conceded.
They worked together to prepare the Chort's body for transport, and the task put them shoulder to shoulder for the better part of an hour. Geralt noticed the shift without deciding to — the way proximity had stopped being professional and become something else. A hand steadied during the work. A shared water skin. A comment about the quality of light through the forest canopy that had nothing to do with hunting. He'd been around long enough to recognize what was happening.
After the collection team took charge of the Chort carcass, the rest of the party began the march back toward the Vaes Cities. But Geralt and Veyla fell behind — not by accident.
"There's a ridge about a mile north," Veyla said, her tone carefully neutral. "Good views of the coastline. I used to go there after patrols to decompress."
"Sounds better than the barracks."
"It is."
They walked together through the late afternoon light. The forest thinned as they climbed, giving way to scrubby grassland and then bare stone where the ridge broke free of the tree line. Below, the coastline curved in a long crescent, the sea glittering in the last gold of sunset.
They sat on the ridge's edge, close enough that Veyla's tail rested against Geralt's thigh. He didn't move away.
"Tell me about the Continent," she said. "Not the monsters. The places."
So he told her. The Blue Mountains where the School of the Wolf had trained its Witchers. Oxenfurt, where the university produced scholars who thought they understood the world. Toussaint, where the wine was excellent and the people pretended monsters didn't exist until one ate their neighbor. The quiet places — forest clearings at dawn, mountain paths above the clouds, the particular quality of silence that existed in a world where the only sounds were wind and birdsong and the creak of leather on a long ride.
Veyla listened with her chin on her knees, her acid-yellow eyes watching him rather than the sunset. When he finished, she was quiet for a while.
"I've never been anywhere," she said. "Born in Meereen. Freed by the Wyrmborne. Converted. Trained. Fought. That's the entirety of my story — everything before the conversion is a chapter I don't reread."
"Doesn't matter where you've been. Matters what you do with where you are."
"That sounds like something you've said before."
"Probably have. Witchers recycle good lines." He looked at her, and something loosened in his chest. "You handled yourself well today. All three days. The Chort especially — your positioning was better than some Witchers I've trained with."
"High praise from someone who considers 'hmm' a complete sentence."
"Extremely high praise." He held her gaze. "I don't say things I don't mean, Veyla. That includes this."
The silence that followed was comfortable. Geralt couldn't remember the last time silence with another person had felt like this — not empty, not awkward, just easy. Like being alone, but better.
They watched the sun set together. When the stars came out, they walked back to the city, shoulders touching, neither of them speaking.
The Scarlet Wing
Angelus — First Person
The evening was warm. I'd taken one of the compound's upper terraces for private use — a space that overlooked the city's eastern quarter, where the lights of the market district glittered in the approaching dusk and the distant sound of the harbor carried on the salt breeze.
Melisandre was on my lap.
She'd settled there with a naturalness that would have seemed impossible a month ago — the former Red Priestess who had once proclaimed me R'hllor's Apostle now sitting across my thighs in a crimson silk shift, her newly-genuine features relaxed and her fire-element aura warm against my scales. The ruby that had once been the center of her power was gone — discarded permanently during the Draconian conversion — and the woman beneath the glamour had proved to be far more interesting than the illusion she'd maintained for centuries.
Kinvara sat at my right side, her back against the terrace wall, her legs drawn up beneath her. Her tail, scaled in deep crimson — rested near mine, the tip occasionally brushing against my own tail in a gesture that she probably thought was casual but I could feel the deliberate affection behind through the ambient link.
My arm was around Melisandre's waist. My tail curled loosely along the bench, the tip near Kinvara's hip. The warmth between the three of us was genuine — something that had grown from wariness into familiarity and from familiarity into an intimacy that I hadn't planned for and didn't entirely understand.
I'd expected to use them. Political assets. Theological tools. Perhaps occasional physical entertainment, as I'd framed it when the attraction first registered.
What I hadn't expected was to enjoy them. Their bodies were excellent, certainly, but it was their conversation, their intelligence, their distinct brands of devotion that had evolved from religious worship into something more personal and considerably more complicated.
"The conversions are progressing well," Kinvara said. "Of the two hundred and eighty-six members who remained after the purge, two hundred and forty-one have completed their Draconian conversions. The remainder are in various stages of preparation — some require additional physical conditioning, others are working through theological concerns that the conversion raises."
"What kind of concerns?" I asked, my fingers tracing an idle pattern along Melisandre's ribs through the thin silk. She shifted against me, pressing closer, and I felt the warmth of her body through our points of contact.
"Existential ones, primarily. The conversion requires a fundamental acceptance that the power they're receiving comes from you, not from R'hllor. For priests who've spent decades attributing every miracle to a god of fire, accepting that the source of their abilities is a living, breathing dragon rather than a divine abstraction is... theologically uncomfortable." Kinvara's lips curved. "Thoros was the easiest. He never particularly believed in the theology to begin with."
"Which conversion did Thoros choose?"
"Dragonborn. Full transformation." Kinvara's tone carried approval. "He said, and I'm quoting directly: 'If I'm going to stop pretending to be a priest, I might as well commit fully to being something else. Half measures are for people with more faith than sense.'" She paused. "His Dragonborn form suits him. Fire element, naturally. He looks like a man who finally matches the power he's been channeling without understanding."
I hummed. The vibration traveled through my chest and into Melisandre, who made a soft sound and pressed her cheek against my collarbone. My hand moved from her ribs to her breast, cupping it through the silk, my thumb tracing a slow circle over the peak. Her breath hitched.
"Continue," I said to Kinvara, my voice carrying the even tone of someone conducting business while simultaneously attending to pleasure.
Kinvara's eyes tracked my hand on Melisandre's breast for a moment, something heated flickering behind her composed expression. Then she returned to the report with admirable focus.
"The Scarlet Wing's combat effectiveness has improved significantly since the hunting expeditions. The fire-corridor technique we practiced during the vampire contracts has become standard doctrine, and several of our members have developed hybrid techniques that combine R'hllor-based fire invocations with the Drakengard fire magic principles from the Spellbooks. The results are... considerable."
"Show me during the next training session."
"Of course." She shifted, her tail brushing mine with more deliberate pressure. "The final matter: the remaining holdouts. Forty-five members who haven't yet committed to conversion. Most are simply cautious — they'll convert once they see the results in their peers. A handful are genuinely conflicted about abandoning R'hllor entirely, though even they acknowledge that the evidence is overwhelming. I've assigned mentors from the early converts to work with them individually."
"Good." I kissed Melisandre's neck, my lips finding the sensitive spot below her ear that made her breath catch. She tilted her head to give me better access, and through the ambient link I felt the spike of arousal that the contact produced — heat spreading through her body like fire through dry kindling. "You've done well, Kinvara. Both of you. The Scarlet Wing has exceeded my initial expectations."
"Thank you, Lady Angelus." The formality in Kinvara's voice had a breathless quality that the title couldn't quite conceal.
"As a reward, I'm releasing an additional tier of Spellbook access for the Scarlet Wing. Intermediate offensive and defensive magic, plus the elemental specialization primers. Your members have demonstrated the discipline to handle higher-level material without killing themselves, which is more than I can say for some of the regular military units."
Kinvara's eyes lit with genuine pleasure. "The Wing will be honored."
"They should be. It's earned, not given." I turned my attention more fully to Melisandre, my hand squeezing her breast, my lips moving along the curve of her neck while my other hand settled on her thigh. Through the ambient link I read her body's responses — the acceleration of her pulse, the warmth building between her legs, the way her fingers curled against my chest as the sensation mounted. "Now. Report's finished."
The shift in my tone was deliberate. Both women felt it.
R-18 Starts
I conjured my draconic cock — the magical construct solidifying between my legs, its ridged, scaled surface flushed with warmth and carrying the sensitivity that made it functionally indistinguishable from biological anatomy. Melisandre felt it press against her thigh through the silk and let out a small, breathy moan.
"Service me," I said. Not a request.
The scent of their arousal was already in the air — Kinvara's carrying the warm spice of her fire magic, Melisandre's sharper, laced with the ozone-trace of precognitive energy that leaked through when her composure slipped.
Kinvara moved first. She slid from her position at my side to kneel between my legs, her crimson-scaled hands pushing the fabric of my garment aside with reverence that hadn't diminished despite the weeks of escalating physical intimacy. Her full breasts, constrained by her own crimson silk, pressed against my thighs as she positioned herself.
She freed the conjured cock from the remaining fabric and took it between her breasts, pressing them around the shaft with her hands. The sensation was immediate — the warm, soft pressure of her flesh surrounding me, the friction of silk and skin as she began to move, her tongue extending to lap at the head with each upstroke.
My chest rumbled with approval.
Melisandre, still on my lap, turned to face me. Her dark eyes met mine, and I took the kiss before she could offer it — my mouth claiming hers with dominating force that left no ambiguity about who controlled the exchange. My tongue pushed past her lips, exploring, taking, and she yielded with a moan that I swallowed. My hand came down on her ass — a sharp smack that cracked across the quiet terrace — and she gasped into my mouth, her hips jerking involuntarily.
I spanked her again. Harder. The silk was thin enough that the impact registered against bare skin, and the sound she made was halfway between pain and desperate want.
My fingers found the heat between her thighs. She was soaked through the silk — arousal that had been building since the first touch on the terrace, fed by the visual of Kinvara's mouth on my cock and the physical reality of my hands on her body. I pushed the fabric aside and slid two fingers into her pussy, curling them against the spot that I'd mapped during previous encounters.
Melisandre broke the kiss to gasp, her back arching, and I recaptured her mouth immediately — my tongue forcing entry, my teeth catching her lower lip in a bite that was possessive without being cruel.
Below, Kinvara's rhythm had found its stride. The titjob and blowjob combination was devastating — the pressure of her breasts around my shaft, the wet heat of her mouth on the head, and the synchronized movements that showed she'd been practicing since the first time I'd ordered this particular service. Through the tail-tip sensitivity, I felt her arousal building in sympathetic response to the sounds Melisandre was making.
My tail moved. The prehensile length coiled behind Kinvara, and the tapered tip found her from behind — pressing against the cleft of her ass through her silk shift, then pushing the fabric aside to make direct contact. Through the sensitive underside of my tail I felt the heat of her body, the clench of her muscles, and the spike of sensation when I pressed against her tight entrance.
Kinvara's rhythm stuttered. A moan escaped around my cock, vibrating through the shaft.
I pressed in slowly. The tail's tapered tip was slimmer than the rest, designed for exactly this kind of precision, and Kinvara's body opened to it with a resistance that melted into acceptance as I maintained steady pressure. Through the tail I felt everything — the tight heat, the involuntary clench, the trembling in her thighs as the dual stimulation of serving my cock and being penetrated simultaneously overwhelmed her composure.
My fingers worked Melisandre faster. The kiss turned sloppy, desperate, her moans continuous against my mouth. I spanked her again — the crack of my palm against her ass ringing off the terrace stones — and felt her clench around my fingers in response.
The buildup was relentless. The musk of sex and fire magic hung thick around us. Kinvara's mouth and breasts working my cock, her moans vibrating through me. Melisandre writhing on my lap, impaled on my fingers, her mouth consumed by mine. My tail buried in Kinvara, the sensation flowing through me from both directions.
My chest rumbled constantly now — the deep, draconic vibration that signaled approaching climax.
"Kinvara," I said, my voice thick. "Mouth. All of it."
She took me deeper, her lips stretching around the shaft, her throat opening. The sensation crested.
I came with a groan that vibrated through both women simultaneously — my seed flooding Kinvara's mouth in hot, thick pulses. She drank it. Every drop, her throat working, her eyes closed, the expression on her face one of absolute devotion. My tail thrust deeper in time with each pulse, and she moaned around the cock, swallowing continuously until the last spasm passed.
My fingers were still inside Melisandre. I curled them one more time, hard, and she came apart — shaking, gasping, her climax crashing through her in waves that I felt through the ambient link as cascading heat.
I held them both through it. Kinvara resting her cheek against my thigh, my softening cock still wet against her lips. Melisandre collapsed against my chest, her breath ragged, my fingers slowly withdrawing from her trembling body.
The arousal didn't fade.
"Melisandre." I lifted her chin with one finger. Her eyes were hazy, blown dark with spent pleasure and the beginning of renewed desire. "Your turn."
She slid from my lap to her knees with a grace that spoke of willingness rather than submission. The conjured cock was already hardening again — the spell maintained it for as long as I directed magical energy into the construct — and Melisandre took it in her hand with fingers that trembled slightly.
She looked up at me. Her dark eyes met mine and held them as she lowered her mouth.
The eye contact was deliberate. She maintained it as her lips parted around the head, as her tongue traced the ridge beneath, as she took me deeper with slow, worshipful attention. Her eyes never left mine.
I reached down and stroked her hair. The dark strands slid through my scaled fingers, and something about the gesture — the gentleness of it against the explicit reality of what she was doing — made her eyes soften.
"Good girl," I said. The words were quiet, intimate, and the effect they had on her was immediate — she moaned around me, her efforts intensifying, her eyes brightening with a need for approval that ran deeper than physical desire.
My tail withdrew from Kinvara, and the former High Priestess rose to stand beside me. She leaned in, and this time it was she who initiated the kiss — her mouth finding mine with a tenderness that contrasted sharply with the hungry, dominated kisses I'd been giving Melisandre. I let her lead for a moment, then took control, my tongue claiming hers.
"Both of you," I murmured against Kinvara's lips. "You're beautiful. Not just physically — though the physical reality is considerable. Your minds, your conviction, the way you've adapted to everything I've asked of you without losing the qualities that made you interesting in the first place." I kissed her again, slower. "This isn't what I planned. I planned to use you. Instead I find myself... appreciating you."
Kinvara's breath caught. "Lady Angelus—"
"Angelus. When we're like this, just Angelus."
"Angelus." The name on her lips sounded like a prayer rewritten. "We are yours. Whatever form that takes."
Below, Melisandre's rhythm had found the depth and pressure that pushed me toward a second climax. Her eyes still held mine — dark, devoted, fierce in their focus. Her hands gripped my thighs, her mouth working with an intensity that was part worship, part desire, and part the determination of a woman who had once believed in gods and now believed in something she could taste.
*SPLURT!**SPLURT!**SPLURT!**GULP.*
I came again. The first pulse filled her mouth, and she swallowed, but the second and third painted her face — white streaks across her cheekbone and chin that she caught with her tongue, licking her lips with an expression of satisfaction.
She cleaned her face with deliberate slowness, gathering the remnants on her fingers and bringing each one to her mouth. The display was as much for Kinvara's benefit as mine — the former subordinate showing the former superior what devotion looked like when it was directed at something real.
My breath steadied. The conjured cock dissipated, the magical energy reabsorbed. I pulled Melisandre back onto my lap and held Kinvara close against my side, my arm around her waist, my tail wrapping around both of them.
"I'll mark you," I said. "Both of you. And mate with you properly. A full claiming."
Melisandre's eyes widened. Kinvara went very still.
"But Artoria comes first. I promised her before either of you, and I keep my promises." I pressed my forehead against Kinvara's temple. "Soon."
"We understand," Kinvara said. Her voice was steady, but through the ambient link I felt the pulse of emotion beneath — a yearning so deep it surprised me.
"We'll wait," Melisandre added, her head resting against my chest. "As long as you need."
I held them until the stars came out. Then I kissed each of them — Kinvara's a slow, deep thing that left her breathless, Melisandre's a possessive bite-and-kiss combination that drew a whimper — and sent them back to their quarters.
R-18 Ends
Kinvara and Melisandre walked through the compound corridors together, the night air cooling the flush that still heated their skin.
They were quiet until they reached the residential wing. Then Kinvara closed her chamber door behind them and let out a breath that carried weeks of accumulated tension.
"She said she'd mark us," Melisandre said. She'd changed into a sleeping shift, but her hands still trembled faintly. "A full claiming. Which will includes mating."
"After Artoria remember." Kinvara sat on her bed and stared at the wall. "She keeps her promises. She said soon, and she means it."
Melisandre joined her, sitting close enough that their shoulders touched. "When she touches me, I can feel the power behind her restraint. How careful she is. How much she's holding back because she knows we can't take her full strength yet." A pause. "It makes me want it more. Knowing what she's containing."
"The way she looks at us," Kinvara said softly. "When she called me beautiful — my mind, not just my body. In Volantis, men valued my body or my power. Never my thoughts. Never the parts of me that exist between the fire and the politics."
"She called me a good girl." Melisandre's voice was quiet, wondering. "I've been called a hundred things by a hundred people — priestess, witch, advisor, whore. No one ever called me that. No one ever made it sound like something I wanted to hear."
They sat together in the silence.
"I like this," Kinvara said finally. "All of it. The bond. The intimacy. The way she treats us — not as tools, not as worshippers, but as people she's choosing to let close." She looked at Melisandre. "Do you?"
"More than I expected to. More than I thought I could."
"Then we wait. And when she's ready, we give her everything."
The firelight flickered. Outside, the stars turned overhead, and somewhere in the compound, a dragon who had never planned to care for two former priestesses lay on her terrace and stared at the sky, thinking about promises and the unexpected weight of keeping them.
I cleaned up, dismissed the conjured anatomy, and returned to my study. The administrative work that the empire demanded didn't pause for personal indulgences, and there were three reports I'd deferred from the morning that needed attention before dawn.
The following days passed in the productive rhythm of a civilization preparing for war. Training continued. Construction expanded. The intelligence network that Jorah and the spymaster corps maintained fed a steady stream of information about Volantis's preparations, the Free Cities' shifting alliances, and the ongoing chaos in Westeros.
Four days after the Scarlet Wing encounter, I told Artoria to meet me at the compound garden at sunset. And to wear the outfit I'd left in her quarters.
The Date
Angelus — First Person
She was waiting when I arrived.
The outfit I'd crafted for her was a statement, and Artoria wore it like the queen she was slowly becoming. A royal blue gown with white and gold accents, layered and structured — the bodice a deep crimson beneath a blue and gold overcoat that tapered at the waist, with a high gold-trimmed collar framing her elegant neck. A luxurious white fur-lined cloak draped from her shoulders, its edges traced with golden embroidery in flowing, organic patterns that echoed the heraldic motifs of the Arthurian legends I'd drawn her identity from. Blue sapphire jewels at her throat and ears caught the fading light, and a gold chain linked the cloak's fastenings across her collarbone.
Her blonde hair was arranged in its characteristic crown braid, with loose strands framing her face. Teal-green eyes, luminous with her Holy element, met mine as I approached.
She was holding Excalibur. Force of habit — the sword rested at her side, its blue-wrapped hilt visible against the gown's flowing skirt.
"You brought your sword to a date," I observed.
"I bring my sword everywhere." Not an apology. A statement of identity.
"Fair enough." I reached out and touched the sapphire at her throat. The jewel warmed under my fingers, resonating with her Holy element. "You look magnificent, Artoria."
"The dress is extraordinary. The craftsmanship, the materials — I've never worn anything like it." She touched the fur-lined cloak, running her fingers along the golden embroidery. "It looks like something a queen would wear."
"That's the point."
The garden was mine for the evening — I'd claimed it and set privacy wards that would keep everyone from the casual walker to the magically curious at a comfortable distance. Enclosed by living walls of flowering vines that the compound's gardeners had been cultivating since Meereen's integration, the space was intimate without being claustrophobic. Enchanted light orbs floated at varying heights, casting warm illumination that shifted from gold to amber as the sun descended. A table set for two occupied the garden's center, laid with food I'd prepared personally — a fusion of Westerosi comfort dishes and the more exotic fare that Artoria had developed a taste for since her conversion.
We ate. We talked. The conversation wandered through the comfortable territory of two people who had been circling each other for months and were finally allowing the orbit to close.
"Aethon is growing fast," Artoria said, spearing a piece of honey-glazed meat with the focused precision she brought to everything. "Another few weeks and she'll be large enough for short flights with a rider. Not extended combat — the wing structure needs more development for sustained load-bearing — but enough for training exercises and local patrols."
"Her Radiant Thunder element is strengthening too. I felt the discharge during yesterday's session — she's producing genuine lightning now, not just sparks."
"She is. It's remarkable to watch." Artoria's expression softened in the way it only did when she spoke about her dragon. "When we train together, I can feel her joy through the bond. Pure, uncomplicated happiness at being alive and being strong. It reminds me of..." She paused.
"Of what?"
"Of what I felt the first time I picked up Excalibur after the reforging. The sense that everything I'd been — every hardship, every mockery, every mile of road I walked as Brienne searching for a purpose I couldn't name — all of it led to this. To becoming who I was meant to be."
"Who is that?"
"Yours." The word came out quietly, but it carried the weight of absolute conviction. "Your knight. Your sword. And, if you'll have me — more than that."
I set down my cup and stood. Artoria's eyes tracked me as I moved around the table to stand before her. The enchanted lights shifted, warm gold pooling around us.
"Stand up," I said.
She stood. In the heeled boots that accompanied the gown, she was nearly my height — our eyes level, our faces inches apart. I could feel her heartbeat through the ambient link, accelerating but controlled. A warrior's discipline applied to an entirely different kind of anticipation.
I touched her face. My scaled fingers traced the line of her jaw, her cheekbone, the shell of her ear where the sapphire earring hung. She leaned into the touch, her eyes half-closing.
"I told you I'd mark you here." My fingers moved to her shoulder junction — the spot where neck met shoulder, where the muscle was dense enough to take a bite without structural damage and visible enough that the mark would show above any neckline short of full plate armor. I'd pressed my teeth there during our first encounter, a promise without completion. "I said you'd carry it the way Daenerys carries hers."
"I remember." Her voice was steady, but her pulse hammered. "Every word."
"This isn't a service mark, Artoria. This isn't a knight's oath or a Drakengard seal. This is a claiming. Being mine permanently in a visible way along with everything that entails." I held her gaze. "Are you certain?"
"I've been certain since the night in the garden." She reached up and pulled the cloak's collar aside, baring the shoulder junction. Her platinum scales caught the light, and the Holy aura pulsed beneath them — golden-white, expectant, reaching toward me. "I belong to you, Angelus. I have since I took the oath. What you're offering now is just making the truth visible."
I kissed her first.
The kiss was possessive and claiming, my tongue pushing past her lips. She yielded — the warrior who could stop a cavalry charge with her shield choosing to open for me, her hands gripping my shoulders, her body pressing against mine.
"Mmmn~."
My mouth moved from her lips to her jaw. Along the curve of her neck, leaving a trail of heat that made her gasp. To the shoulder junction, where the skin was warm and the pulse beat visibly beneath the scales.
I bit.
My fangs pressed, then broke skin — exerting exactly enough force to penetrate the Draconian flesh without causing genuine injury. The taste of her blood hit my tongue — copper and warmth and the distinctive bright charge of Holy element. Her scent filled my lungs — clean steel and sun-warmed stone and the Holy radiance that clung to her like sanctified light.
Artoria's body went rigid. Not from pain — from the Soul Link igniting.
The connection exploded through both of us. A new pathway forming between my ancient soul and hers, magical channels carving themselves through the space between our consciousness with a force that was beyond physical. I felt what she felt — the sting of the bite transmuting into something deeper, a claiming that wrote itself into her biology at the cellular level, her body recognizing and accepting the mark as a fundamental alteration of her magical signature.
And she felt me. Ten thousand years of existence pouring through the newly-opened channel — only the weight of it, the scope, the oceanic depth of what it meant to be claimed by something that had existed for a extremely long time.
Her Holy element detonated.
Golden-white light erupted from her scales, blazing outward in a pulse that turned the garden into a cathedral of living radiance. Every flower within thirty feet bloomed simultaneously, their petals opening as if the sun had risen in the garden's center. The enchanted light orbs flared and dimmed, overwhelmed by the Holy discharge.
I held my bite through the detonation. The mark set — I felt it lock, the Soul Link pathway solidifying from potential into permanence.
When I withdrew my teeth, the mark was there: an imprint of my fangs in her shoulder, already healing around the edges but scarring by design, the claiming magic preventing full regeneration so that the evidence would endure.
Artoria was trembling from the overwhelming intimacy of what had just passed between us — the nakedness of it, the finality, the knowledge that she was now marked in a way that could never be undone.
"You're mine now," I said.
"I'm always yours," she answered.
I kissed the mark. Tasted the last traces of blood. And the night stopped being about dinner.
R-18 Starts
"Knight and dragon," I said, the words carrying a growl that was more beast than woman. My eyes burned gold in the darkness. "Tell me, ser knight — did you think you could approach a dragon's lair without consequences?"
Artoria, naked beneath me on the soft grass of the garden's clearing, her platinum scales catching the enchanted light in patterns of silver and gold, played her part with the earnest commitment she brought to everything.
"I came to slay you, dragon." Her teal-green eyes burned with defiance that was entirely performative and entirely enjoyable. "In the name of the king and the realm."
"Slay me?" I pressed my conjured cock against her entrance, the ridged, scaled length of it already slick with her arousal. The Soul Link thrummed between us — her anticipation, my hunger, the feedback loop beginning its spiral. "No knight has ever slain this dragon, ser. But many have tried." I pushed in. "And every one of them learned what you're about to learn."
The first penetration was a close-up beat. Time slowed. The sensation expanded to fill the universe — the tight heat of her body parting around me, the involuntary clench of her muscles, the gasp that tore from her lips as the ridged surface of the conjured cock stimulated nerve endings that her body hadn't known it possessed. Through the Soul Link I felt what she felt.
My chest rumbled. The vibration transferred through my body and into hers, and she arched beneath me, her hands gripping the grass, her Holy element flickering in golden pulses that matched the rhythm of our joining.
"What I'm about to learn," she breathed, maintaining the roleplay with admirable dedication given that I was currently buried to the hilt inside her, "is that dragons are terrible conversationalists during combat."
I laughed, and the laugh became a growl, and the growl became a thrust that drove the air from her lungs.
"Ahhhh~!"
The roleplay frayed as the intensity mounted. The "knight" stopped delivering defiant dialogue and started making sounds that no knight's manual had ever documented. The "dragon" stopped monologuing and started fucking with the feral single-mindedness that the beast part of my nature demanded.
I braced my arms on either side of her head and drove into her with increasing force. The mating press compressed her body beneath mine, the angle allowing me to drive deeper than any other position, and Artoria took it — took all of it — her Radiant Iron Draconian physiology absorbing impacts that would have broken a human woman, her Draconian durability turning what should have been painful into a pleasure that was indistinguishable from it.
*THUD*. *THUD*. *THUD*. *CRACK!*
The ground cracked.
The impact of my thrusts transmitted through her body and into the earth, and the garden clearing's stone substrate fractured in spiderweb patterns that radiated from the point of contact. Each thrust deepened the cracks, and the sound — the meaty, solid impact of draconic bodies colliding with enough force to damage stone — filled the night air with a rhythm that was primal and unapologetic.
Artoria loved it. Through the Soul Link I felt the feedback — satisfaction, the deep, bone-level contentment of a woman who had spent her life being too strong for anyone to match and had finally found someone who could not only match her but overwhelm her. The pain was there, and she welcomed it. The roughness was there, and she craved it. Every crack in the stone beneath her was proof that the dragon above her was treating her as something strong enough to take its full attention.
"Harder," she said. Not a request. A demand.
I started pounding her harder.
*SPLURT!*
My climax hit with the force of a detonation. The conjured cock pulsed, flooding her with warmth that I felt through both my own body and hers through the Soul Link. Artoria's stomach swelled with the volume of it, the magical essence of the release bloating her midsection for a brief, obscene moment before the excess was absorbed by her Draconian physiology.
She came at the same time. Her Holy element blazed, the golden light searing through her scales from within, and the feedback loop between our orgasms crashed back and forth through the Soul Link like waves between cliffs — each peak triggering the other, the resonance building until the sensation was almost unbearable.
The ground cracked further. Three inches deep now.
I didn't stop.
The first orgasm subsided, and I kept going — my cock still hard inside her, the magical construct sustained by my will, my body demanding more with the insatiable hunger that mating triggered in my draconic nature. Artoria gasped, her overstimulated body clenching around me, but the Soul Link confirmed what her voice couldn't articulate — she wanted more too.
I changed positions.
Pulling out produced a wet sound that made Artoria whimper. I flipped her onto her hands and knees and she went willingly — bracing herself on arms that trembled from the first round's intensity.
I drove in from behind.
SMACK.
The scent of sex and Holy magic and crushed garden flowers filled the air around us.
The impact of my hips against her ass produced a sound that echoed off the garden walls. Artoria cried out, her back arching, her tail whipping upward and wrapping around my waist as if trying to pull me deeper. Through the Soul Link I felt the difference in this position — the angle hitting different places, the depth slightly greater, the sensation rawer and more primal.
My claws found her back. I raked them lightly along her shoulder blades — not enough to draw blood, but enough to leave red lines on her platinum scales, enough to trigger the sharp sting that the Soul Link transformed into another form of pleasure. She shuddered and pushed back against me.
"Don't hold back," she gasped. "I can take it. I want to take it."
I followed her request.
*THUD!* *THUD!* *THUD!* *THUD!*
The pounding was relentless — deep, rhythmic, hard enough that the sound carried across the garden and probably beyond the privacy wards. My claws traced patterns on her back, reading the Soul Link's feedback to gauge exactly how much pressure to apply — enough to leave marks, never enough to cause real injury. The Soul Link was the ultimate consent mechanism — I felt what she felt, and what she felt was incandescent.
*SPLURT!*
My second climax filled her from behind, and the warm flood of it drew another gasping orgasm from Artoria that left her arms shaking. The Soul Link surge was weaker this time — not less intense but more controlled, the new pathways settling into patterns that carried sensation with increasing efficiency.
I withdrew, shifted her to her side, lifted one leg over my shoulder, and pushed back in from this new angle. Artoria's teal-green eyes found mine, and the expression in them — glazed with pleasure, bright with something deeper — made my chest rumble in the possessive register.
"You're incredible," I told her, my voice rough. "Everything about you."
"Nn— don't stop talking." Her words came in fragments between thrusts. "Your voice — when you growl like that — it does things to the Link—"
I growled. Low, predatory, the sound of a dragon in the throes of mating. Her body clenched around me in response, and the feedback through the Soul Link was molten gold.
The fourth position was cowgirl. I rolled onto my back and pulled her atop me, and Artoria straddled my hips with the focused determination of a knight mounting a warhorse. She sank onto me with a long, shuddering exhalation, her palms flat on my chest, her platinum scales catching the starlight.
She rode me with the same discipline she brought to everything — finding the rhythm, maintaining it, building intensity until it collapsed under its own weight and became something raw and desperate and honest. Her breasts bounced with each movement, and her Holy element pulsed in synchronization with the Soul Link's rhythm.
She came once. Twice. The third time, her eyes rolled back and her body went limp, consciousness briefly deserting her.
I felt it through the Link — the momentary void, the system resetting.
I thrust upward. Hard.
Her eyes snapped open. Gasping, disoriented, her body contracting involuntarily around me as awareness flooded back. She looked down at me with an expression of dazed bewilderment that melted into a laugh — genuine, startled, breathless.
"Did I—"
"You did."
"And you just—"
"I did."
The laugh turned into a moan as I thrust again, and she surrendered to the rhythm, and the night went on, and the stars wheeled overhead, and the ground beneath us collected new cracks with every impact.
We were done only when Artoria's body genuinely couldn't continue. She lay sprawled on the grass, her platinum scales sheened with sweat, her Holy element guttering like a candle in a breeze, her legs refusing to bear weight.
I cleaned us both with a cantrip, gathered her into my arms, and teleported.
The displacement was instantaneous — garden to bedroom in a heartbeat. I settled her into my bed, pulled the covers over her, and climbed in beside her. She curled against me immediately, her forehead pressing against my collarbone, her breath slowing toward sleep.
"It was..." she mumbled.
"Comprehensive?"
"Triss's word." A drowsy hum of satisfaction. "I was going to say 'transcendent.' But comprehensive also works."
I wrapped my arms around her, my tail settling across her hips. The Soul Link between us hummed with the deep, settled warmth of a bond newly claimed.
Her mark pulsed on her shoulder. My mark pulsed in response, wherever on my body the reciprocal connection had anchored.
"Always mine," I murmured into her hair.
"Always, my dragon" she answered.
We slept.
R-18 Ends
Morning
I woke before her. Dragon metabolism — I required less sleep, and I'd been up for thirty minutes before Artoria's breathing shifted from the deep rhythm of unconsciousness to the lighter pattern of approaching awareness.
The breakfast was ready by the time she opened her eyes.
I'd learned her preferences over weeks of casual observation, attention that accumulated without conscious effort when the Soul Link provided ambient data. She favored hearty food in the morning — eggs cooked firm, thick bread with honey, spiced sausage with black pepper, fresh fruit arranged more for flavor than aesthetics. A woman who ate like a knight because she was one, and who had spent too many mornings in armored camps eating whatever the cookfire provided to have developed any pretension about breakfast.
I brought the tray to the bed. Artoria sat up against the pillows, wincing slightly at the soreness in her muscles, and stared at the food with an expression of such open, unguarded pleasure that something in my chest tightened.
"Is this the tradition?" she asked. "The breakfast that Triss and the others mentioned?"
"It is. The morning after, I cook."
"An ancient, all-powerful dragon cooking for me personally."
"I personally destroy the enemies of my people, personally manage the administrative logistics of five cities, and personally brought you to orgasm approximately seven times last night. Cooking eggs is well within my range of capabilities."
Her laugh was warm and free. "Fair point."
I sat on the bed beside her and fed her. The act of feeding was intimate in a way that transcended the physical. I held a piece of honeyed bread to her lips, and she took it with her fangs, her eyes holding mine. I offered a slice of fruit, and instead of taking it from my fingers, she leaned forward and kissed me first, her lips warm and tasting of honey, and took the fruit from my mouth when I bit it in half.
The mouth-to-mouth feeding became a game. A piece of sausage shared between kisses that tasted of pepper and heat. A berry placed on my tongue and transferred to hers in a kiss that lingered far longer than the fruit required. Her fingers finding my jaw, angling my mouth to hers, taking the offered food with a tenderness that was so at odds with the violence of the previous night that the contrast made my chest rumble.
"I love you," Artoria said.
The words arrived with the same quiet certainty that characterized everything she did. No dramatics. No buildup. Just truth, delivered the way a knight delivers an oath.
"I love you too," I answered. Because I did. Because somewhere between the oath and the mark and the cracked ground and the mornings and the breakfasts, the knight who'd once been called Brienne the Beauty as a cruel joke had walked through my defenses with the same relentless determination she brought to everything else.
She kissed me again softer.
Short R-18 Starts
When we parted, she looked at the tray, then at me, then at the sheets, and something shifted in her expression — curiosity mixed with determination, the look of a student approaching a new discipline.
"Last night," she said. "When you... with your mouth, on... me." Her formal speech patterns stuttered endearingly. "I want to do that. For you."
"A blowjob."
The bluntness made her flush. "Yes. That. I've never... before last night, I'd never done any of this. But I want to learn. I want to be good at it."
"You don't have to."
"I want to." Her teal-green eyes were steady. "You claimed me. I carry your mark. The least I can do is learn how to please you properly."
I conjured the draconic cock. The spell materialized the construct between my legs, the scaled, ridged length resting against my thigh. Artoria stared at it.
"Start slow," I said. "Use your hand first. Get comfortable with the shape and the sensitivity — the ridges are more sensitive than the shaft, and the head is the most responsive area."
She wrapped her hand around me. Her grip was firm — a swordswoman's grip, strong and precise — and I hissed at the initial pressure.
"Gentler. I'm not a weapon."
"Sorry." She adjusted, and the lighter touch drew a very different sound from me. "Better?"
"Much better. Now — your mouth. Start with the tip. Tongue first."
She leaned down, her blonde hair falling forward, and her tongue made contact with the head of the conjured cock. The sensation was electric — hot, wet and tentative.
"Good," I breathed. "Now take the head in your mouth. Cover your fangs with your lips — that's the most common mistake."
She followed my instructions. Her lips closed around the head, warm and tight, and her tongue moved experimentally against the underside. The Soul Link carried my feedback to her — she could feel what felt good, which adjustments intensified the sensation, where the pleasure centers were concentrated.
"Use the Link," I told her. "Feel what I feel. Let that guide you."
She did. Her technique shifted — subtle adjustments guided by the Soul Link's real-time feedback, finding the rhythm and depth and pressure that produced the strongest response. She was learning in real-time, adapting with each passing second, and the combination of her earnest dedication and the increasing skill she was demonstrating was, frankly, devastating.
My hand found her head. I stroked her hair, my clawed fingers gentle against her scalp, and the tenderness of the gesture produced a soft moan around my cock that vibrated through the shaft.
"Good girl," I said. The words affected her the same way they'd affected Melisandre — a visible shudder, a spike of pleasure through the Link, a redoubling of effort. "You're doing beautifully, Artoria."
She took me deeper. Not deep enough to gag — she was still learning — but deeper than her initial attempts, her jaw opening wider, her throat accommodating the unfamiliar intrusion with growing confidence. Her hand worked the base in coordination with her mouth, and the combined sensation built steadily toward climax.
When I came, I warned her — "Close" — and she didn't pull back. The first pulse flooded her mouth, and she swallowed instinctively, her eyes widening at the sensation. The second and third followed, and she took them with determination that made my chest rumble with possessive approval.
She sat up, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, and the expression on her face was pure knightly satisfaction — the look of someone who had confronted an unfamiliar challenge and met it with competence.
"How was that?" she asked. Genuine question. No false modesty.
"For a first attempt? Exceptional." I pulled her close and kissed her — tasting myself on her lips, which she accepted with a flush that had nothing to do with embarrassment. "The Soul Link helps. You were reading my responses and adjusting in real-time. That's an advantage no other learner has."
"Good. I'll practice."
"I look forward to it."
She smiled.
Short R-18 Ends
We helped each other dress. There was an intimacy to it that surprised both of us — my hands fastening the clasps of her armor, her fingers straightening the fall of my garments, the small adjustments that required proximity and produced it in return. She buckled Excalibur at my hip before realizing her mistake and laughing.
"Force of habit."
"You tried to arm me with your sword."
"Excalibur would be honored."
"Excalibur is your sword, Artoria."
She took it back with an expression that somehow managed to be both sheepish and dignified, and we walked out of the bedroom together into a morning that smelled of salt air and cooking fires and the beginning of another day in an empire that demanded everything and rewarded it in kind.
The mark on her shoulder was visible above her armor's neckline. She made no move to cover it.
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End of Chapter Forty-One (Part 2)