Heart of the Mountain

"Even if you hadn't a single coin to your name, and there wasn't a hope of our union bearing fruit, how could I ever refuse you?" Iden replied.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her against his breastplate. He nestled his bandaged face in her flowing, auburn hair, lamenting that he couldn't breathe in her wonderful scent. After a few moments, he realized how uncomfortable his armor must be, releasing her from his grasp to see her beaming up at him with rosy cheeks.

"So...what do we do now?" he asked, Isabelle wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

"It will take some time for the Paladins to return with word of their defeat, and more time still before the Order can assemble a force to seek revenge. We have a little while yet before we have to start moving, so let's relax for a few days. Once you've regained your strength, we can decide what to do next. I'm afraid that when it comes to real estate, you probably have more experience than I do."

"You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little...dumbfounded," he replied. "Two minutes ago I had nothing, I was at rock bottom. Now I have everything that I ever wanted, and a few things that I never would have imagined."

"Let's get you out of that armor and into something a little more comfortable," she said. "And you'll be hungry after your bout, I'll get you something to eat."

"Don't worry about that," he chuckled, "let's just take it easy for a little while. We've both been through a lot over the last few hours. Maybe we should take a dip in the spring?"

"That...sounds like a good idea," Isabelle sighed. "Sorry, my mind is racing."

"Come help me remove my armor," Iden said. "A little time in the water will clear both of our heads."

***

Iden lounged in the warm water, one arm resting on the rocky shore, the other wrapped around Isabelle as she lay her head on his shoulder. The surface began to bubble again, more steam rising towards the stalactites that clung to the domed ceiling above them, Isabelle heating it whenever the temperature began to drop too much.

The warmth soothed his aching muscles, his body was covered in bruises from his fight, and he had to be careful to keep his bandaged face from getting wet. Isabelle's long hair floated beside him, her smooth skin pressed up against his, one of her small hands resting on his thigh.

He had expected the both of them to gush about their future together, to fantasize about what might come, to make more apologies for past mistakes. Instead, they had simply enjoyed each other's company for a while, peaceful and quiet.

"Do you mind if I polymorph?" Isabelle asked, Iden opening his eyes to look down at her. "I should see to my wounds."

"O-of course," he mumbled, "I had no idea that there was anything wrong."

She left his side, wading deeper into the pool until she was floating in the center. Iden watched as she began to change, the sight routine to him now, her pale skin cracking into blue scales. She grew, horns and wings sprouting, her long tail emerging from beneath the water to float on the surface. As she grew heavier, her displacement made the water level rise, so large now that her body created waves that lapped gently against Iden's chest when she moved.

Before long, Isabelle had returned to her true length. As he had suspected, the pool was just large and deep enough that she could submerge her massive frame. Only the sharp quills that ran down her back and her folded wings were above the surface, her head rising up like a sea serpent on her flexible neck.

Now he could better see her injuries. There was a deep cut on her right shoulder, and one on her left forelimb where the dragonhorn pike had penetrated her scales. Iden had thought her impervious to damage, at least where human strength was concerned, and so it was a little jarring to see her injured. Dark blood began to seep from the wounds, fogging the water around her.

"Are you alright?" he asked. She was large, but the quantity of blood that was entering the pool was still alarming.

"The wounds are superficial," she replied, craning her long neck to examine them more closely.

"Is there something I can do? Do you...need anything?"

"Unless you're hiding a healer who specializes in dragons in your pack, I don't think there's anything that you can do. I must cauterize these, please don't be alarmed. It will hurt, and I may...vocalize."

Iden braced himself as she pursed her lips over the cut on her shoulder, a bright jet of flame shooting from her mouth, filling the wound briefly before dissipating into a wisp of smoke. Isabelle growled, a sound so deep and powerful that it made the surface of the water ripple, the scent of charred flesh reaching Iden's nose. She repeated the process with the cut on her forelimb, then sank deeper into the water, letting it soothe the burns. It seemed that she was fireproof on the outside, but not on the inside.

"So what happens to those wounds when you become human again?" he asked. "Do you still feel them?"

"My mortal form is created and destroyed as I please, it is a magical construct, but my true form must be given time to heal. It would be wise to remain in this state for a short while, at least until the flesh begins to knit. Dragons heal rather slowly compared to humans, our metabolisms are sluggish."

"Metabolisms?" Iden wondered.

"We are long-lived, we eat infrequently, our hearts beat only twenty or thirty times per minute. All aspects of our lives run slower than those of a mortal. I trust that you won't mind too much if I remain this way, if only for a time."

"Why should I mind?" he chuckled.

"Well...I designed Isabelle to draw the male gaze, to be appealing, sensual. I would not expect you to find anything appealing about a dragon," she said, smoke billowing from her snout as she relaxed with her head partially submerged. "Mortal women are soft, fleshy, dainty. They have curves and bumps, soft hair, and their skin is smooth."

"But you weren't always that way when we made love," Iden said, wading a little closer to her in the pool. She was so large that she resembled a scaly island, her reptilian eyes tracking him as he drew nearer. "Last time, you changed your form so much that I couldn't tell what was dragon, and what was human."

"You did like that, didn't you?" she chuckled.

"Maybe it's just because it's all new to me, but there's something to be said for scales, and for claws. You can do things that no mortal woman can. Your tongue, your tail, I mean..." He started to blush, Isabelle curling her scaly lips into a smile. She couldn't see his cheeks turning red beneath his bandage, but she could sense the heat. "Can I touch you?"

"Of course," she purred, "I won't bite."

Iden swam a little closer, his feet leaving the smooth rock as he entered the deepest point of the pool, approaching her flank. He reached out a hand, stroking her rough hide. He had touched her scales before, of course. Even in her half-transformed state, the blue ones had been large and rough, but now they were even bigger. Each of the armored, overlapping plates was almost as large as his hand, shaped vaguely like a backwards-facing arrowhead with a subtle ridge that ran down the center. They were like jewels, shifting hues from blue to green depending on how they caught the light. They were so hard, but oddly flexible, there was some give when he pressed down on them.

He moved his hand lower, reaching her beige underside, submerged beneath the water. These were just as flush and as fine as they had been when they had last made love, and he felt blood rushing to his loins as he remembered the feeling of her inner thighs and her scaly mound on his lips and tongue.

She was just so impossibly massive, rising up before him like a sheer wall, only the steady expansion and contraction of her chest serving as proof that she hadn't been carved from solid stone. It was overwhelming in a way, her size and strength dwarfed him. She was more like a force of nature than a living thing.

"When I told you that I couldn't conceive a child as Isabelle, I hope that you understood the implication," she said. He looked up to see her head rise from the water, her flexible neck maneuvering it closer, her glowing eyes peering at him expectantly as water dripped from her lower jaw.

"I hadn't thought that far ahead," he replied, swallowing conspicuously as she exposed her sharp fangs in a smirk. "Do you mean to say that we have to...as you are now? Is that even...how would we...can we fit together?"

"We can," she replied simply.

"Do I at least get to be on top?"

She laughed, the motion making waves in the pool.

"I appreciate your candor, Iden, but let's recuperate a little before we attempt anything quite so...acrobatic."

He turned to put his back to her, resting his head on her scaly flank, letting himself float in the water. She seemed pleased that he was so at ease around her, and he had a sneaking suspicion that she had been changing her form during their romantic encounters in order to slowly acclimate him to the idea of making love to her as she truly was. He couldn't say that her attempts had not succeeded.

CHAPTER 11: DRAGON RIDER

Iden dragged the body up the tunnel, the pristine armor that it was still wearing clanking as it scraped against the rock. He felt the chill wind against his face, the air becoming cooler and fresher, the light of the sun bathing him as he reached the mouth of the cave. He pulled the dead Paladin out onto the outcrop, the wind whipping his hair, and placed his foot on its breastplate.

"Guess I should...say a few words," he mumbled. "I didn't know you, and you didn't know me. Can't say that I'm too sorry about what happened, on account of you trying to murder me and all, but I hope you'll find peace in the afterlife. I feel like there's a lesson to be learned in all this. Maybe something to do with tolerance, or perhaps with taking advantage of numerical superiority. I wanted to leave you guys in the cave so that your friends could find you and give you a proper burial once we're gone, but...you're starting to smell, so...off you go."

Iden rolled the body off the outcrop, where it tumbled down the snowy mountainside, settling in a heap with the three others. They were already being covered in a dusting of snow, they would probably be buried before tomorrow.

He brushed himself off and retreated back into the cave, arriving at the main chamber to see Isabelle sitting beside her pile like a giant dog begging for a treat, clasping something daintily between her giant claws.

"Alright, the last of the Paladins is...gone," he said. "What have you got there?"

"This is a rare book indeed!" she said excitedly, her spiky quills rattling with what might have been an expression of glee. "It's difficult to determine its exact age, but it was penned sometime during the late magical period, which puts it at around four hundred years old. It's a book of spells, written in the blood of a frost giant. I'd recognize that smell anywhere, even after all these years. The magic in the blood imbues the reader with a limited form of the creature's power."

"That's how they were able to snuff our your magic?"

"Cryomancy, yes," she replied with a nod. "They used it to quell the flames in my belly for a time. I'm amazed that such an artifact survived all these years, what else do the Paladins have stashed deep in their vaults?"

"What about this thing?" Iden asked, stooping to retrieve the odd pike. It was surprisingly light, impeccably balanced, the hilt made from a decorative alloy that he didn't recognize.

"Dragonhorn," she said solemnly. "One of the only things sharp enough to pierce a dragon's scales. It was sourced from one of my fallen kin. Imagine someone murdering a relative of yours, and then sharpening their femur with the intent to kill you with it, and that's about how seeing a dragonhorn weapon makes me feel. We should consider ourselves lucky that they didn't have dragonhide armor, it would have served as much more effective fireproofing."

"Want me to toss it?" Iden asked.

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "I would prefer that the Paladins never recover it. Just place it in the pile with the other weapons."

He walked over to the mound of treasure and placed the pike atop it. The neat pile had been somewhat scattered during the fight, there were coins spread throughout the entire cave. Returning them to their rightful place was going to be a real chore.

"So how are you going to move all of this stuff?" Iden asked, appraising the mound of treasure. "You said so yourself, there's no way to get this much treasure down the mountain."

"Contrary to what you might assume, this cave is not my first lair," she replied as she looked up from her book. "I've moved my hoard several times over the centuries. No matter how remote my choice of abode, mortal farms and settlements always seem to encroach upon it sooner or later. It's not an easy process, and it requires locating a suitable destination first, but it can be done."

"So you'll need to find another mountain with a large enough cave? Then what?"

"Then I'll box everything up in wooden crates, and make several trips back and forth. We dragons are stout creatures, we can carry a great deal of weight on the wing."

If she could carry a cow, then it wasn't hard to imagine her transporting its weight in loot. Even then, it was probably an arduous process. It was impossible to estimate how many tons of gold was actually in the cave, or how many trips would be required.

He stooped to investigate the weapon pile. They had stripped the Paladins of everything but their armor. As nice as it would have been to get his hands on a full set that wasn't covered in dents and scratches, walking around in what was essentially a Paladin's uniform was a bad idea. It might fool the uninitiated, but if he happened upon any real Paladins, they would see through his disguise immediately. The only way that one of their brothers would have parted with their armor was if he had killed them, and they would respond in kind.

What he could keep, however, was one of the short swords. They were distinctive in their design, but as long as he kept it sheathed, it shouldn't draw any attention. His own sword had been slagged by Isabelle's magic, the blade remaining bent and misshapen after it had cooled. He lifted one of the swords, the shining steel glinting under the torchlight, the hilt decorated with a carving of an eagle's head. For self-professed keepers of the peace, their gear certainly was extravagant. In Iden's opinion, most of their coin would be better spent feeding the poor, rather than gilding their armor. He picked up the scabbard too, securing it about his waist. This one was nicer than his, and it had no special Paladin markings on it that might give him away.

"Be a dear and put this on the shelf with the others, would you?" Isabelle asked. She brought her long tail up and used the tapered end to manipulate the spellbook, taking advantage of the appendage's immense reach to pass it to him. He took it, wary of her sharp quills, and made his way over to the shelves where he placed it with the rest.

"Looks like you came out on top in the end," he said, stepping back to appraise her collection. "You're up two artifacts, and they're down four Paladins."

"I suppose that's one way of looking at things," she replied. "Well, this is unusual..."

Iden turned to see her digging through her pile of coins, sending great handfuls cascading down its slope. She hooked her claws around something, dragging it free and toppling it onto the cave floor. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. In order to escape the magical net that had bound her, Isabelle had bathed herself in flames. Her tough scales were impervious to her fiery breath, while the webbing had burned away, but she had been lying atop her treasure pile at the time. Her breath had apparently been hot enough to melt a clump of the gold coins together, resulting in what almost looked like a lumpy, golden tree trunk in both appearance and size.

"The melting point of gold is far lower than that of steel," she muttered, pawing at the strange sculpture. "I suppose I'll have to smelt this into something else."

"It's getting pretty late," Iden said, stretching his arms above his head and yawning widely. "We should probably sleep fairly soon, but all this slaying of Paladins and then dragging them around has me rather hungry."

"We should both eat," she replied with a nod of her massive head. "I'll need the energy if I'm going to heal my wounds, and the Paladins surprised me before I could partake of the meal that I brought back after my hunt."

"What did you catch?" Iden asked.

"Well...perhaps buying without express permission would be a better word for it than hunting," she chuckled. "I brought back a couple of cows, their carcasses are packed with snow in my...pantry. I'll go fetch them."

She dropped to a four-legged posture, walking across the cavern in the direction of one of the side tunnels. Her footsteps made the ground shake beneath Iden's feet, and he watched her as she passed him, her gait reminding him of a giant horse. His head scarcely reached her shoulder, and she had so much sheer mass that it was more fitting to compare her to a building than any living thing that Iden had ever seen. The immense muscles that held her body aloft rippled and flexed just beneath the surface of her shining hide, the fat deposits on her soft underbelly and thick tail quivering with every step, and he found himself transfixed once again by the jewel-like quality of her scales.

He never quite got used to how large she was, even if her transformations were now routine. It was so much easier to get his head around a nine-foot humanoid, rather than a thirty-foot beast that had almost nothing in common with the human form, and yet Iden found her far from displeasing. There was a certain grace to her movements that made it hard to look away from her. Despite the strength that she radiated, every twitch of her tail was moderated, every step of her padded feet measured. If he were to scatter the ground with chicken eggs, he doubted that she would break a single one.

She vanished into the tunnel, reappearing a couple of minutes later with two carcasses. They looked like dairy cows, not unlike the one that she had butchered for him previously, their white hides patterned with black splotches. She had one of them clutched in her jaws, and the other was clasped against her chest with one of her forelimbs.

She hobbled into the room with a three-legged gait, releasing the livestock, letting them fall to the cave floor. They wobbled with the thunderous impact, and Iden could have sworn that he heard their bones breaking. She carried them with such ease that it was easy to forget how much they weighed.

He took up his seat at the mahogany table, shifting his weight to get comfortable in the comically elaborate throne as she butchered one of the animals for him. She sliced its flank open, using the claw on her index finger like a butcher's knife, carving him off a choice cut. She speared it on her talon, then cooked it with her breath, searing it to perfection in only a few seconds. She placed it before him with a wet slap, Iden wasting no time as he dug into it.

"This is the first time that I've seen you eat anything," he mused, pausing to fork another piece of roasted beef into his mouth. "Do you cook yours?"

"Of course," she replied, "I'm not a savage."

Isabelle hooked her curved claws deep into the second cow, dragging it clear of the table, Iden watching curiously as she took a deep breath. She opened her mouth wide, shooting a jet of flame from her throat, the heat of it searing the fur from the cow's hide in the blink of an eye. The flames splashed against the rock around it, its flesh becoming charred, the skin crisping. She gave it a second, shorter blast, then stopped to appraise her cooking as it smoked. The sight reminded Iden of a pig that had been cooked over a spit, but far larger. He had seen them prepared that way once or twice during his stays at war camps, where they had been eaten communally by the soldiers.