Into The Dragon’s Lair (TFTG)

Into The Dragon’s Lair

A TFTG story loosely inspired by an RP with the artist All Bad Badgers

UNEDITED 

CW:  Unwilling Permanent Change - Implied Non Consent - Pregnancy - Bad End - Non Anthro Dragon

The icy winds of the mountain dug dagger like fingers of cold deep into James Horn’s skin thru every possible gap in his thick winter clothing. His eyes were protected behind heavy, tinted goggles, but his bearded cheeks burned as flakes of snow stuck to the skin, melting, then freezing almost immediately into a thin sheet of ice. His strength was flagging and he knew that if he did not find what he was looking for soon, he would be forced to turn back or surely be lost to the deadly natural conditions.

Then, just as he was ready to turn back, he saw it! The cave the stranger in town had told him about! It was large and though concealed within the whirling snow, easily spotted by anyone who knew what to look for. Around its edges rock had melted like ice, scorched by some terrible heat many years ago as its one time inhabitant had worked to make this place their home. As he clambered inside, he was greeted by a wave of warm air, some lingering legacy of the caverns original occupant… A grate blue dragon.

Though even a few feet outside of the cave, the howling winds continued unabated, James quickly shed his heavy layers as the caves heat made him sweat. This he had expected and had been part of why he had not taken more precautions on his expedition. Though it had been a little risky, he had explored old dragons lairs in the past and was personally familiar with the toasty legacy a few hundred years of dragon habitation made on a place. Scientists including Horn himself had long debated the causes of these seemingly permanent alterations to the landscape dragons had had, but the prevailing theory had remained ‘magic’. It was a bullshit, hand waving argument which James Horn hated, but in the appsense of even a reasonable amount of hard evidence it was not like he could really provide a good counter.

This cave, he hoped at least, might provide some more concrete answers…

Dragons had been extinct in the wild since the late colonial era, when the small pockets of remaining wild dragons had been hunted for sport and trophies by big game hunters and self titled ‘dragon slayers’. Due to the difficulty of keeping large, adult dragons in captivity and the danger posed by escapees, the last documented live dragon had died in captivity shortly before the advent of the first world war. Since then scattered reports of live dragons had continued to filter in from remote parts of the world, but like with the legendary Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster, little had ever come of these wild and fantastic sightings.

James was normally not one to believe such wild stories, but a surprisingly convincing photograph from the late 60’s had come across his desk just over a month ago and captured his imagination. It depicted what looked to be an adult dragons silhouette holding the contents of an armored car in its talons as it disappeared into the mountains. A little historical research revealed that an armored car had been badly damaged and its crew given a severe fright by what the traumatized driver claimed to be a great blue dragon. The fact that several locals had later been caught with at least a portion of the stolen gold had seemed to settle the case as being nothing more then a simple, if heavily armed robbery poorly covered by a fantastical tale. Yet a large portion of the gold was never recovered and the locals stuck to their story that a grate, flying beast had flown over the tops of the houses and attacked the armored car with a roar like a cannon being fired.

While hardly enough to convince an experienced sceptic like James, he could not deny that it made more sense than most of the absurd stories he had heard and that it was, if nothing else, an exceptionally well faked photo for the time period. It seemed like a good enough lead to at least explore and so with some grant money from the institute and a bit of self funding, he booked a ticket to the small town of Hallowed Oaks where both photo and story had originated.

When he arrived at the town just the day before, he had been struck at once by the odd and foreboding air of the place. Hallowed Oaks was not a large town, yet for its size it had a startlingly high rate of unexplained disappearances and general weird occurrences. The people largely kept to themselves and even store owners and local officials seemed reticent to talk to him. All he could get from the head of the local historical society was a confirmation that the photo he had scene was real and part of their collection, yet had not been sent by any member of the group as far as the old man was aware. When James had offered to return the possibly stolen relic he had  simply refused, stating that it was more trouble than it was worth to have sent back. Confused, James had avoided pressing the question mostly to avoid annoying him, but had since wondered about his cavalier attitude toward potentially valuable pieces of their collection.

Then after securing lodging for the night at a local old fashion inn and bar he had been confronted by a mysterious stranger, a fellow outsider apparently who had made his home on the mountain. The man claimed to have seen the dragons cave and had even been inside, able to feel the unnatural heat of the place. His description had been unfailingly accurate to the caves James had explored in the past and with growing excitement James had asked the stranger to mark the location of the cave on his map so that he could find it when he started out the next day. The man had and so with great enthusiasm James had headed out, increasingly convinced he would soon be hailed as the discoverer of the freshest, most recently occupied dragon's lair in history, possibly even the resting place of the last wild dragon and certainly a find that would lead to huge advancements in the field of dragon studies.

That had been hours ago and though the trek up the mountain had dimmed his optimism, standing in the very cave a live dragon had called home only half a century before filled him with a giddy excitement which neither cold nor the prospect of the long hike back down could dampen.

As he walked further into the cave his foot hit something which skittered across the floor, catching his eye with a glint of red. He followed its movement with his eyes and as it came to a stop he walked over and knelt down to retrieve it, holding it up to the light coming from the caves entrance to get a better look at what he had found. It appeared to be a red gem on a golden chain, but before he could pocket it as a simple trinket, the amulet twisted, revealing a detailed relief of a blue dragonesses head. He laughed and on a whim which he did not fully consciously understand, slipped the necklace over his head thinking that it might be a sign of good luck that he had found such an auspicious piece of jewelry in his hunt for dragon knowledge.

James started to stand back up, when a  wave of heat and dizziness overtook him. He crouched, trying to steady himself even as something about his vision and balance started to feel entirely off. He reached up and felt the amulet warming up, causing the skin around his chest to sweat and almost in a daze he opened his lighter jacket, revealing his pale skin to the elements. A cool breeze blew in from the caves mouth and as it played over his chest he felt his heart rate slow and his vision start to settle.

For a second he thought whatever strangeness had befallen him had past, but then his knees buckled as something about his feet changed and he felt himself ripping free from his boots even as his jacket began to bulge and tear. He reflexively began to feel for his feet, but before he could do more than register that he seemed to be impossibly growing right out of his pants the ripping from his jacket came again and a pair of large somethings tore free from his back. He turned his head and gasped out loud at what he saw.

Behind his back a pair of blue wings had pushed their way out of his jacket and while they were small, they seemed to grow with each flap. Likewise something was pushing its way out of his back, first poking thru his pants then slowly, but surely ripping free like the wings. Before long a short, spine covered tail was growing out from just above his ass at an alarming rate. His eyes crossed and before his very eyes his face pushed out into a blueish muzzle.

Unbenounced to James his new additions were not the extent of his changes. Spines similar to the ones on his new tail had begun to poke from his head, growing out of his hair even as it began to slowly recede. Between his legs his manhood, already shriveled by the cold began to pull back into his body till with a wet popping sound to faint to be heard over the wind, they retreated all the way inside and began to reform. His cock widened and became a moist vigina while his testicals inflated and became a pair of ovaries, new eggs and old sperm forming together to trigger near instantaneous fertilization. Though he had no idea it was happening, James had only made the transition into womanhood a few seconds before he became pregnant for the first time.

James’s fingers sharpened into claws and he tore at his clothes, ripping them away as his growing body became to big to properly contain him and cut painfully into his skin, even as that skin began to break out in patches of blue scales. He roared in aggravation and a puff of smoke bloomed from his mouth Look at it he paused as his mind started to race. Even with everything that had happened already he was still not really able to piece together what had been happening to him, but with the implied fire breath it finally stuck home.

“I’m becoming a dragon…” He gasped as his voice raised a few octaves. “I’m… Going to become a great blue dragon!” He looked down, expecting to see his manhood burst free in glorious fashion along with the rest of his body, unaware he was in for a nasty surprise…

His nipples, covered under a layer of scales still somehow tickled pleasurably and he moaned as his chest swelled into a pair of large D cup breasts, weighed down heavily by milk. He wondered for a second why a dragon would have tits when it could not give live birth, when a more pressing concern hit him. He was not becoming a dragon after all, he was becoming a dragoness! As if to punctuate that his belly began to swell, the fertilized eggs which had so recently formed inside of him maturing and growing at a rapid rate till he looked as if he was deep into the third trimester of a human woman's pregnancy.

As if this indignity was not enough for the former human man he felt the last of his hair slip back into his scalp as his head horns extended into a crest like frill poking from the back of his skull. He wimped and tugged at the amulet, trying to pull it from his neck, but it would not budge, though it had also started to slowly cool as if its power was draining away. How much more juice it still had and how much more James would change before it was done was anyone’s guess however…

James’s belly swelled further and he doubled over as a cramping tightness concentrated lower and lower in his abdomen till he felt something pushing against his new sex. Without thinking the new dragoness crawled to the pile of gold and began to dig out a small hole, then squatted down over it. The man she had been could not for the life of him figure out what her body was doing, but it seemed to be acting on instinct and the scientist in her could not help, but be fascinated. That fascination quickly turned to shocked horror as she pushed a large, blue egg from her new womanhood and then, almost without pause, started to push out a second.

As each egg slipped from her, James’s body changed further, growing larger and larger till she was almost too big to fit thru the caves entrance. Her breasts shrank back into her chest, no longer needed as she passed permanently from the mammal kingdom. Her wings and tail, never having stopped growing this whole time spread out till they almost doubled her body size in both directions, giving her the intimidating look of an adult female blue dragon. She groaned as her feet and legs lengthened and reformed, becoming better suited for a quadruped, taking from her even the ability to stand like a man anymore.

As the last egg dropped into the clutch she let out a long sigh of relief and crawled slowly away from the golden nest. She never would have imagined that birth would be so tiring and to have done it for a dozen or more eggs was almost more than she could bare. Suddenly the amulets chain snapped and the red stone clatered to the ground, bouncing away into the darkness. James grimaced as she looked back at the nest, trying to take some small comfort in the fact that her task was now complete and with the amulet gone, there might still be some way of getting changed back and using this… Strange experience to at least become famous for having ‘discovered’ a clutch of real, live dragons eggs.

Just then a low, deep laugh echoed around the cavern, making James's blood run suddenly ice cold. “Oh you will be famous alright…” From the shadows a huge blue dragon male crawled into the light of the hoard, cornering James as she tried to slip away. “As the first broodmother of our races glorious rebirth.” He smiled and flames licked out from the sides of his mouth. “So I hope you enjoyed your first experience as an egg layer, James Horn, because from now on you will be living a very long and full life!”

James yelled and ran away as fast as her legs would carry her, but the male was faster as he pounced on her, screaming, “Come to daddy!”

And so her fate was sealed…


Epilogue


Years later the world was stunned by the sudden and unexpected return of the blue dragon population as dozens of adolescent dragons took to the winds and settled around the mountainous parts of the world, slowly  spreading generation by generation till the race had been moved from ‘extinct’ to ‘endangered’ to just being ‘protected’ in the course of a decade. This miraculous population explosion baffled the scientific community for years till a team of highly trained mountaineers and zoologists managed to get a glimpse inside of the initial cave and set up cameras while the male was out hunting.

Strangely the team reported having seen the heavily pregnant female, but rather then attacking or driving the intruders from her nest, she had simply nugged an old, frozen jacket toward them till they had been able to read the name, “Horn” stitched into it. This was the same name as a small time researcher in the field who had gone missing in the region and who had been presumed killed by the dragons. Confused, but fascinated by the discovery they had named the dragoness ‘Horn’ and studied her to see the strange and incredibly rapid cycle of reproduction the dragoness seemed to be blessed with. She was rarely ever not pregnant or laying and based on the much slower reproductive rates of other tagged animals in the field, it was quickly deduced that Horn was a very rare and long lived breeder.  

Thru studying her humanities understanding of dragons moved forward by leaps and bounds, catapulting the name, “Horn” into the history books and making her world famous as one of if not the single the greatest breakthrough in the field of dragon studies.

The End