Chapter 86
Part 14
They chatted about the same things they normally talked about as they cooked and ate. At her request,
Karzog finished most of the cooked haunch as well as the rest of the deer, since Helemia couldn’t eat
more than a hundred and fifty grams of it right after breakfast. It didn’t seem right to leave any of it
uneaten.
“Mmm, that was so good, and I’m so full!” Helemia chuckled as she cast a Cleaning on herself and her
sword.
“Mmm, me too.” Karzog agreed with a huge grin as he rubbed his bulging belly. He released a huge
burst of intense fire and kind of swirled it around his mouth as he did so, reducing any food particles
between his teeth to ash, blowing them out, and freshening his breath. “We’ll have to take it easy on
the flying, or I might just burst!”
Helemia giggled. “Good point. Maybe we should do the dragon thing and just lounge in the sun after
eating. We can flyter if you’d like.”
“Sure, I’d prefer that, actually.” he nodded as he led the way outside.
There was a ce in front of the cave that wasrge enough and t enough for him to rx on his
belly, and he did.
“And now I have a surprise for you. Close you eyes.” she mischievously instructed.
“Okay.” heughed, and did as she asked.
She cast a careful spell, and it took a few seconds.
“Okay, open ‘em.”
He did, and his jaw dropped in stunned surprise. He couldn’t even talk for a few moments, while
Helemia grinned and posed for him, turning this way and that, and fanning herself with her wings. She
had be a young female dragon about three-quarters his size. Her belly and the underside of her
neck and tail were the same very light, almost-white pink that her skin had been, while the rest of her
was the same glossy ck that her hair had been, and her eyes were the same dark violet.
Even when he finally could speak, it took him two tries as he started, stopped and reconsidered, then
spoke. “Helemia. Fire. You’re prettier than anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Thank you Karz, that’s sweet.” she giggled. “Now just one more thing.” she said as she cast on herself
again, then spoke in Draconian. “Aplete, improved version of the Draconian Trantion for
Humanoids spell.” she growled, then gave her wingtips the little wave that was a dragon’s version of a
giggle. “Complete with bodynguage and non-vocalmunications.” she added as shey down
and cuddled up to him. “Of course I already knew how to do it, but I’ve been working the knowledge of
it that we got from Kragorram into a spell, and that was the first test-casting.”
“Hey, it’s not an Illusion!” he eximed in Draconian as he felt her warm touch. “What a great job of
Shape-Shifting!”
“No, it’s not Shape-Shifting yet.” she revealed. “I got a lesson on that from Theramin. The size
difference is a real challenge. If I was good enough to do aplete Shape-Shift already, which I’m
not, I could only be a little tiny dragon that weighed about eighteen kilos, the same as I normally weigh.
“You can’t make the extra weight out of magic, it would take way, way too much energy. Ask Yazadril
about it sometime, you won’t believe how much magic it takes to make even a tiny bit of material.
“So that means that the easiest way to do it would be to just be a little dragon, and then eat a lot
and grow bigger magically, but that would take a long time. Yazadril actually did that once to disguise
himself as a Sylvan, and it took over a year just to triple his weight. It would really take a long time for
me to grow to be a full-size dragon, and it would take just as long to shrink back to the normal me
again.
“When we get out of here I’ll have to find out how Zarkog grew so much, and how fast he did it. He
might have a viable method I could use.
“The only other way to do it is to grow the body magically during the Shape-Shifting process by adding
material to it with the same basicposition, basically from food products. Then when you change
back you’re left with this big pile of body material, and you want to put it somewhere safe because it’s
easier to use it again the next time you want to grow than to start from scratch again. And it’s really,
reallyplex. Quewanak says that one of the gargoyle gods knows how to do it, but no one here
does, so that’ll have to wait.
“Anyway, this is just a full-sensory Simcrum, only with my humanoid body held inside my dragon
head, so it feels like my psionics areing from the right ce, and I don’t have to worry about
what’s happening to my body when I’m like this. I worked on it a lot to get it just right and to make it feel
really natural, and I took a good Reading of Povon so I’d have some idea of what it’s like to be a girl
dragon. It’s… It was the best I could do.”
As she fell silent he realized that she’d been babbling in an unconscious effort to cover her own
nervousness, and it made him consider for the first time how she might be feeling about their situation.
“You’re very beautiful, and you’ve done a wonderful job of it.” he assured her. “And I hope you don’t
mind my saying that you seem to understand how I’m feeling more than I do. It seems like you were
expecting my gift, and that you’ve done a great deal of preparation and work on changing your form…”
“I was, and I did. Well I wasn’t expecting a dead deer exactly, but I thought it was likely that you’d do
something like that soon. I’m… I’m proud to be your special friend, Karz, and I hope we can share more
private times together. But I’d like to keep them just that; private. I’m making sure that absolutely no-
one knows where we are or what we’re doing, not even Quewanak or my brother, and I’d like to keep it
that way for a few years.”
“Sure, but… My special friend?” he cautiously asked. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are
you?”
“Be serious Karzog, neither of us are close to puberty yet!” she protested,ughing but sounding
scandalized.
“Ah, good, I hoped you weren’t saying that yet too.” he stammered. “And I’m very d and proud to be
your… special friend. But you’re saying that in the years ahead…?”
She took a deep breath, and let it out in a ring of yellow fire.
“Oh well done!” he enthused. “There’s no way I could tell that wasn’t real! And it was very pretty.”
“Thanks. And yes. In the years ahead. Six had a prophesy about it years ago, and now I’m sure it’s
true. You’ve dreamt about me, and I’ve dreamt about you, and it’s not just psionic leakage, I’ve checked
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for that every way there is. When a young male dragon leaves a gift of fresh prey for a young female,
it’s an instinctual act of courtship.”
She took another deep breath, and turned to meet his gaze squarely. “I am your destined mate. You
are my destined love. Over the next few years, we will surely fall deeply in love with each other.”
She held his gaze until he answered.
“You’re right. Somehow, I know you’re right.” he agreed.
Then he suddenly stood and red his wings as he paced back and forth a bit. “But I don’t understand!”
he eximed in confusion. “How could this have happened, and what will we do? How can we have a
life together like that?”
She was silent as he paced for a few more seconds, until he stopped and looked at her again.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry Karz, but I really don’t know. We’ll just have to take it as slow as we can, and do
our best. As strange as this seems to us, it’s going to seem even stranger to everyone else. That’s why
I want to keep it secret. I’m not ashamed of loving you, Karzog, and I wish we could proim it to the
world. But you know a lot of people are going to take it the wrong way. Probably most of
them.”