Page 3 of Connor and the Dragons

I pictured a nice warm soup, with vegetables, in a bowl, and maybe a slice of crusty bread on the side to dip in it. I would eat it with a spoon in a civilized manner, like a person.

Right, well, now I was hungry, too. Fuck, why did I decide to do this? Fighting the dragon was so hard. He had a very forceful personality. So bossy.

I wondered if there was a way to improve the forcefulness of my own personality. Surely a person could learn to be bossy.

A wave of emotion rolled through me, hoard-shaped, cave-shaped, a homesick ache that wasn’t mine. I pushed that emotion down, knowing it was coming from the dragon, knowing the result would be another few decades trapped in a dragon’s body, watching as he made all of our decisions for us.

All I needed was a key, and everything would be solved. A person who could reach me through the wild fog of the dragon’s tempers and instincts and bring me up to the surface, who could reclaim my control for me when the fight became too hard.

After centuries of the dragon’s dominating control, Sky Liang had reached me. One small human from another world had put his hand on my head and pulled me up into the light like it was nothing. And if Sky could reach me, maybe someone else from his world could too. That was my logic anyway, very sound logic, and I wouldn’t listen to anyone who didn’t agree.

Once in human form, there were two ways to keep the dragon in check; I could fight him off, or I could think horny thoughts. The dragon cannot be a dragon with a boner. This is simply how we are built, because my form is the one with reproductive organs, and his form is the one with sheep-eating, fire-breathing organs.

Though popping a boner while cruising at several hundred feet above the ground was probably not ideal, since that would force a shift. Emergency measure only. I swooped back around, trying to think medium-horny thoughts about nothing in particular, scanning the ground for any sign of someone popping through a portal from another world. Though, if we were being honest, I didn’t know precisely what that might look like. The only portal I had ever seen was impossible to miss. Was there a glow? A swirl in the air?

Days of doing this had me worried there wasn’t any sort of noticeable effect at all. For all I knew, twinks from San Jose were wandering all over Clovermere already, and I’d just missed their arrival.

I was carefully scanning a pretty field, which looked about the same as every other pretty field in Clovermere, when I caught a strange movement, and swooped in closer for a look, heart pounding.

A disembodied arm was waving around, floating in empty air. Well, that was creepy. Could that be a portal, or some other sort of magic? A second later, a man stepped out of the air where the arm had been, handsome and lean, with black hair and—

Holy shit it was Sky. SKY!

Wasn’t he in Liminia?

A closer circle made me realize that this man was larger than Sky, taller and broader, with a more serious face. But he looked just like Sky.

I dropped into a dive and pulled up over the field, and the man froze mid-step, staring up at me, which was fair. I was quite impressively terrifying. I flew closer, opening my jaw wide, ready to mark the spot Larger Sky had come from with a circle of fire. The Queen herself had requested this. It was part of my mission, to understand where the portal was that kept leaking twinks into our world, and having a mission was quite thrilling, if I did say so myself.

Vyranthos found my pride in this embarrassing. We were a fire dragon, the fiercest of all creatures.

Still, I pushed my tongue out of the way, summoned the fire that burned deep in my belly, and marked the grass, making sure the Queen’s Grey Guard could find it, laying down a nice neat circle around the place where the man had appeared.

Larger Sky ran.

In hindsight, my efforts to mark the spot may have read as shooting at him. I banked, dropped low over the grass, chased Larger Sky down, and scooped him up as gently as a creature my size can scoop a sprinting man, which he did not seem to appreciate.

As requested by the queen, I flew several passes through the area where Larger Sky had appeared, checking for any feeling or disturbance that might indicate the portal was a two-way scenario, but there was nothing, which matched what Pip and Sky had reported.

Clearly, portals looked different when they were not wide open. The only one I knew firsthand was enormous. My one visit to Liminia centuries ago had nearly ended in disaster, when I’d snuck through a massive tear in the fabric of the universe outside Limin City that had gained quite a reputation for resource extraction.

It had turned out to be full of large dragon-like creatures with no wings and an appetite for meat. I shuddered at the thought.

Larger Sky yelled a great many words at me. From the way he was hitting my claw with his fist, I gathered they were not fond words. He had Sky’s voice, almost, deeper and at present much louder. Sky laughed more. When I’d kidnapped Sky, he hadn’t tried to punch me.

I winged it fast and steady toward the castle, focused on the mission, my grip gentle and my speed impressive.

Possession surged up my spine, coming from Vyranthos, because the dragon liked to keep pretty things, and Larger Sky was, in fact, a pretty thing. There was no disputing the assessment. But he was a person, which meant he wasn’t for keeping. I was firm with Vyranthos as I shut the urge down.

The city rose up under us, and then the palace, and I spiraled down toward the courtyard that had been designated for this exact purpose.

We landed. There were no screaming maids at all, which I chose to take as growth. After several weeks of regular reporting, the palace staff had gotten used to me, now sure I wasn’t going to kill them. And that was most likely true.

They didn’t need to know how tenuous my grip on control was. I may have downplayed the whole situation when I’d volunteered, because they were letting me search for a key, and selfishly, I cared more about that than warning them that Vyranthos thought they looked just about as crunchy as the sheep.

Larger Sky had not received any of the relevant briefings. I could tell, because the moment I set him down on the flagstones, he sprinted.

I followed him and gently head-butted him, trying to project my feelings at him, because all that came out when I tried to talk in this form was roaring, and people took roaring the wrong way. The head-butt system was simple. Sky had understood it in under a day. You presented the head, the friend petted the head, everyone was improved by the experience.