A commission for  Lyrenstraz

Thumbnail art (C)  KhaoticVex

"Soulmates to be" become "soul food to have been."

ft.

Lyren (C)  Lyrenstraz

and Reiharu (C)  Reiharu

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“I Now Pronounce You Scrumptious and … in the Afterlife”

Pure pink light—the pink of womb flesh—beamed down from the shading overstory of the lush, sloping glade. It was the light of the birth of a matrimony. Birds perched on low hanging boughs or fluttered around them, chirping happily, and does trotted to the humongously treed fringes of the glade, and watched—with the 120 quadruped dragon attendees filed up pewless before the altar—as a silver male and a gold female beamed broadly at one another from either side of a copper pastor. Wearing slim rectangular glasses, the pastor would turn to one of them, ask a question, then, when they answered in the affirmative, turn to the other and repeat that.

Attendees leaned forward, mouths agape and eyes gleaming like pearls, for all the gold female had to do now was to say she did—specifically, to say “I do”; and she looked out to the crowd of splendid loved ones, out to the tranquil land scoured of predators for this day, then in, to her silver’s handsome web-bearded face. And then, for some reason, applause started prematurely; and they were completely drunk with pleasure off the picturesqueness of the moment, the two of them, with her wings and legs all spreadeagled and his grin all goofy because he thought, surely, they had the “I do” in the bag at this point, and nothing could stop them from being forever united by vows. Nothing would stay them from a poet ending, endless lovemaking and plentiful clutch bearing.

Eyes heavy with the lulling weight of the future, she leaned in close, and the crowd began to see her mouth the first word of the sacred pair. Then suddenly, the womb pink light melted into a rich amethyst, and the warmth of it on her cheek, once as sweet as lavender and honeydew, turned lukewarm, though the contrast chilled her. The couple froze, incredulous: painters whose masterpiece had been stained—they knew this, and it was the worst mistake.

Arthritically they looked up. Blocking the beam from the gape in the canopy, two forms descended toward the altar from behind it. Ghastly green hide coated one of them, a chromatic dragon! Wings beat, their insides like the exposed flesh of a sour apple. Red eyes of sulfur yellow sclera narrowed into the shapes of scythes, scythes eager to reap a bountiful harvest for an owner unbelonging. The green smiled with a putrid fog pouring from his jaws. Accompanying him, a two-legged hybrid of fox and dragon. Scarlet fur. Horns and wing sheets of a fever dream violet. Muzzle, and tail-tip a void black.

They swooped down to the altar. The green landed with an intimidating thud, his plated chest pushed out. The intruders advanced. The mate and the pastor found themselves driven to the altar’s edge, hind paws sloping off. But that was as far as they went; they had to hold their ground.

“My mouth is watering, looking at all these tasty dragons,” singsonged the red hybrid, named Reiharu. “Food for the soul. The perfect buffet for the bonding of two lovers.”

“Hrhrr, yes,” the green, Lyren, agreed.

The crowd of dragons was shocked, some of the terrified, others combatant-looking. The silver to be wed was the latter. He stepped forward, entering a chest-puffing contest with the green with cold smoke frothing from his jowls. “How dare you,” he said. “You would ruin this moment.”

“Apologies for our late arrival,” Lyren said. “Luckily, my fuming silver, we would never ruin your special day. On the contrary, we’ve come to make it even more special. To make this wedding one the two of you will remember for eternity.”

A head shorter than the silver, Lyren had been nimbly circling him, bringing him back to the center of the altar while wrapping him in ribbons of foul green breath, breath which, at last, he puffed straight at the silver’s cheek, a reek of citrus fruits and hospice. That should have smelled neither sweet nor beguiling to the silver, yet here we are: the silver shaking fiendishly, his pale shaft jutting out to its bulbous base and leaking. Just as suddenly as his pre splashed on the altar’s oaken boards, Lyren flashed him with the sight of his esophagus, masking the pallid expression of his prey with a hazardous glow of slimy flesh. He swallowed the silver’s head whole, then wrung back his neck, pulling the dragon’s sinuous nape into his throat, the burst of minty, meaty flavor coinciding with a draconic purring.

Each quick tug of the snaking throat prized more of the silver into the sweet-and-sour atmosphere, lathering his scales with slick goop and barraging his nostrils with fumes as fragrant as a fruit forbidden. The green hiked his jowls lower, demonstrating even greater flexibility than a serpent with the silken, circumferential muscles of his throat toiling away until they found purchase round the grand bulk of the hyperventilator’s chest. Disregarding his size disadvantage against his prey, his hunger was huge. He resembled a snake glutting heartily on a wee lizard, what with the silver kicking his hinds and lashing his tail as more of him was claimed by that uninjurable, unchallengeable maw.

Before Lyren even reached his food’s chest, with a blather of panic, the gold female tagged his backside and hung onto him, clawing into his shoulders. Her throat recoiled as she prepared to gnaw into his nape, but then a breath of shadow blasted her, a breath carrying syllables so … silky and disarming …

“Now now, it’s bad luck to quarrel at a wedding,” said Reiharu, standing beside her. “Now’s a time for feasting … and enjoying …” Every sibilant sound clicked her tongue so famishedly against her palate. Yet, despite a look in her grin and in her eyes that suggested she might pounce at any second, there was an encompassing pleasantness to how those features crinkled.

The gold stammered—could feel the words she had been about to say being pulled from her body, along with her entire soul: a fluctuating, light-blue glob of plasma timidly humming its way out of her. Psychedelic, soothing whispers resounded around the gold. She could feel all burdens being lifted from her, her entire being slipping away into the care of that glowing mouth.

Her tether of willpower unraveled coil by coil; and then, the last of the weight of a dragon’s conscience snapped free of her body and zipped down Rei’s throat with a slurp as loud as an elder dragon’s voice. Turning purple, the hybrid’s throat bulged, and then deflated as it proffered the burden to her belly. The fluffy stomach swelled as round as a witch’s cauldron; and a feeling of spiritual fulfillment cramped her insides and smothered her middle; and the consolidated soul squirmed wispily, and warmed her with its power. The body of the gold slackened, and then dropped slack on its side, its expression ossified with a smile of absence.

Rei gave her belly a perfunctory patting and lolled open her maw to the beat.

“HUUUUHWURRPP!”

Her fingers jabbed deep into her glowing belly fur and kneaded. With a whiny, burbly difficulty the soul shrivelled. One last push of her palms deflated it into oblivion, as though she had unclogged a drain. The absorption of the soul was followed by a pulse of magenta around her frame, a refreshing outburst of energy. “Mmmmh, you mean you want me to have your soul, to strengthen me for eternity? Such a kind dragon. And I’m sure some of your friends and relatives will be just as charitable!” Another, deeper “BHHHUUUUAAAAAP” escaped her, one which streamed a gout of fire dragonbreath for four seconds, a breath weapon absorbed from the gold. Not that she would be needing it anymore.

… Or would she?

Around the body of the gold, the air darkened with an uncanny contrast to the light around her; then, what looked like a purplish-black plasma immolated the body, a flame-like veil of shadows. And then—with a slow, apathetic militancy—she rose to her feet, her eyes blazing red. She exhaled a flame of purplish shadow: This was her first breath as a minion of Rei.

The shadow-minion dragoness turned her head to the green. He was far into his feast, but she held no opinions nor emotions regarding this observation as the tail of her former mate slipped down the green’s throat. Tilting his head back for a final swallow, Lyren smiled with his eyes at his mate, and then at her new, shadowy ‘friend’ before one last, sloppy peristaltic clench of his throaty muscles pooled the last of the silver into his middle. The silver’s once-chilly scales warmed up, thawed and melted as the stomach acids and lining claimed him collaboratively. Whisking his snout toward the crowd, Lyren grinned and erected his wings taut, showing off his draconic dinner-bulge before he gave the friends and relatives of the male a sample of his enhanced fragrance with a “BHHUUUUWAAAAAAARRRP!” redolent of one’s foulest desires, those which belong to a realm of treacly rot and anarchy.

The copper pastor stuttered some nonsense. He could barely move, save for twitching his fully-erect wings a little. A multitude of bones poured from the stage crasher’s maw. The heavier ones crashed onto the pew and the lighter ones hailed onto the front attendees. With a mirthful serenity, Lyren ended the noise with a huff, contributing to a chimney-haze. On each side of his throat, a tattoo of a line curved like an aloe leaf flared brighter. The silver’s absorbed soul had been converted to power for his toxic breath: power synergizing with the already immense cache of power that the breath weapon bore from his cannibal history. On his next exhale a cold, conical breath left his lips, breath stolen from the silver. Then, with a hypermetabolic coup de grace, his round belly shrank down to return to touching his ribs.

Panic had been ensuing. Metallic dragons trampled one another in evacuation. Everyone was trying to rise aloft, but the canopy of outstretching wings—along with the lack of body space—kept everyone tumbling as though their wings had been lacerated. Which, of course, was cue for Lyren and Reiharu to lick their muzzles before bounding onto the field and dashing after the heavy traffic. Rei’s gangly shadow-minion loped ahead and—with a speed that made the crowd seem as slow as the expiration of their draconic lifespans—pranced around the mass before skidding to face the frontrunners.

The front dragons saw the minion, and reacted like birds who’d been swiped at by a cat’s claw. They braked, and deliriously pedalled backward and started to turn. But those behind them kept shoving them forward. But less and less of the back-runners did this as the realization that they were running right into an evildoer flowed through them. The frontrunners transformed into a retreating wall with momentum that none of the peer pressurers could stop. That killed the option of moving forward to escape; and Lyren was already blocking off the second of three directions behind them, hissing out a wall of noxious green gas. Shepherded into an even tighter cluster, the dragon guests turned toward the open path at their posteriors …

‘Open,’ at least, until Reiharu came.

She leaped onto the back of one of the slower-running metallics. The other dragons reacted to him as though he were a plague victim: They backed away from him, but then slammed into the flank of one dragon or another. The whole mass crammed into an increasingly confined space, out of which only a few agile dragons leaked, darting free from the herd.

At least, they made an honest attempt. Tragedy befell them, but more on ‘the leakage’ later …

The ridden bronze waved his curved, giraffe-length throat about in turmoil—loosed a cry. He pumped his wings, shrugged his body recklessly, but still failed to dethrone the dragon-rider. She giggled, tiptoed in a balancing act astride his fanned spine on the way to his broad shoulders.

“No! Never—my mind is my own,” he exclaimed, before slamming to a stop on his forepaws, his hindquarters pivoting dustily from a full 90-degree turn.

He had hoped to eject her onto the closest dragon; but she merely said, “Ooh!” and leaned way back with her arms gyring, balancing on one leg. She straightened it with a dancer’s grace and then planted it back down, then finished walking to the nape of his neck.

“You sure are a colorful personality,” she said. “I think I’ll like you even more once we’ve toned down some of that harsh yellow-and-green just to balance out your values a bit, what do you say?”

While the bronze stammered for a reply, he seemed petrified by the blue soul-taffy he was breathing out with every syllable. He tried inhaling it back in, but the soul-stream only shuddered a bit while staying on due course. Though, come to think, being … under the control … of a soul-sucking necromancer … the idea brought progressively cathartic chills to his scaly chin stubble.

She gave a jovial, deep inhale, and ripped the soul out of that dragon … and the soul swelled her belly with a neon purple glow. She hopped off her now blank-faced ‘steed’ and onto a dragon racing past. Behind her, the lifeless bronze husk fell, then soon rose as a much less colorful person with much less personality: his bronze, yellow and green hues now overlookable, compared with the nigh-black navy blues and purples burning as his aura.

Repeating the act, Rei bounded from dragon to dragon, driving them delirious before assuaging their emotions with a merry soul-suck. Hop, suck, hop, suck. Her sloshing tummy grew abnormally round and huge, cramped to the brim with dragon souls for her to happily digest. Each soul energized her with more magical power, encouraging her to hunt down each following prey with an even unholier efficiency.

In her wake, a dozen shadow dragons awoke. Some of them dashed for the main group of survivors, pounced and piled onto them; and their bloodshot eyes flashed and swirled, immobilizing them to ready a large buffet of souls that Rei could pick from at her leisure.

Others of the reawakened fanned out to deal with (now comes the ‘more on that’ I mentioned earlier) the first few metallics of the leakage. Many of these metallics winged toward the canopy, but their eyes flitted about with paranoia; they could feel rushes of cold sweeping their sides now and then, and see boughs swaying and hear leaves rustling, even where there were no breezes. The shadow dragons tracked them from the sidelines, tailing their scents untiringly. One by one, the dragons wailed and dropped from the sky, their wings twitching and flapping above the ground as billows of shadows tinted with deep purples and blues engulfed them.

Meanwhile, dozens of dragons backpedalled and barged into one another as Lyren’s smokescreen of poisons wallowed closer. The green dragon’s grinning maw lunged through the smoke, and swallowed another head down. Most of the others screamed, whirled and shoved away from him, though some of them tried to blast him with a breath projectile; but their aims sucked because they had to try not to hit his prey at the same time, and he quickly retreated into the billowing murk, dragging the half-ingested dragon into it.

“GWUULP, GUULK, GLUUUK!”

Even before he had finished pulling his seconds down his esophagus, he began breathing out jets of green in a sweet, rhythmic voice, sweeping the crowd, sowing doubts about their fears of him in their mind, fears which only melted faster as their peers grew more open to becoming food to be part of someone greater.

Some of the more strongly-willed dragons snapped out of the trance, and yelled for their fellows to wake up; but Lyren advanced without taking a break in his carnivore quest, and devoured each following dragon in only a pawful of seconds. A mire of oozing slime burned the compacted, curled-up reptiles into a mulch as soft and buttery as boiled ghee, until bones floated to the surface of the stew. Vapors rose from the cauldron: essence of the dragons, which his stomach lining absorbed to empower his breath.

Only several strides after the resistance arose did Lyren reach the rebels. He loosed in their faces a long exhale of his enhanced aphrodisiac, its luminance now describable as molten and scent disturbingly treacly, the appeal of that scent being the voices of the fallen riding on its currents, whispering to the doubters about just how fine the water was—more than fine: excellent.

More of the dragons succumbed: They clustered around his maw hypnotised, waiting to be the next one to join their brethren by sliding down his esophagus. Packing his throaty rings with one dragon after another, he purred. Snaked his throat this way and that. Worked down their limbs as bulges of musculature pushed up his neck plates. He enjoyed the flavors of his reptilian meals, which varied from spicy to musky to metallic to minty. The wedding had a variety of food to offer, so he wasn’t concerned with whether or not there was a wedding cake; dinner made him forget about any kind of dessert.

He continued to enshroud the dwindling stragglers with his increasingly potent streams of breath. Reiharu ambushed dragons aflight with her growing legion of shadow-minions. She plucked their souls out of their throats as casually as one picks blueberries from vines.

The number of survivors waned, having fallen from 120 to below 20. The couple had melted down multiple times their body weight in dragonkind when they crossed paths by happenstance. Lyren had snapped up the tail of a frantic gold and slurped the gold down to the head, the gold appearing as though he were wearing a green dragon costume. Only then did Lyren see Rei scampering up, for she had attempted to suck out the gold’s soul. With a soft chuckle, Lyren lowered his head and pressed his lips close to hers. They kissed and exchanged low, loving growls before she let his muzzle go, the gold’s soul flailing down her throat. She flopped down on her rump.

The last 20 dragons escaped the shadow-minions, but the minions would soon encounter another group of dragons: elder dragons descending toward the wedding site. The elder dragons were always tardy to every social gathering. On average, they each tripled the height of the other dragons. And each of them could take on about a dozen other full-grown dragons at once. Tough stubble draped their chins, resembling beards; and spikes fashioned their backs from nape to tail, tipping their tails like great maces; and the wear of time had callused their scaly hides.

Huge shadows descended on Lyren and Reiharu in the clearing where they had been kissing. For the first time during their feast, they looked upon other dragons with well-hidden concern due to the sheer size of these dragons.

The elder dragons descended; regarded the couple with hard, suspicious looks; then asked them where the dragons to be wed had gone, as well as the rest of them. Lyren answered by hiccuping out the bones of a previously eaten dragon, to which the elder dragons trumpeted in anger. They inhaled to attack. Rei jumped onto Lyren’s back, and the green took off before the jets of breath blasted their previous standing position.

The dozen of eld dragons took off and chased them, but one of the eld dragons in the back was progressively swarmed by a half-dozen of the shadow-minions, and then another and another half; and they took him down and pinned him; and then Lyren swooped down through the canopy into a tight space. The tightness kept the elds from descending to follow him. He shortly found the eld who had been taken down, and Rei leaped off his back to kiss the soul out of him. He awoke as the first elite-sized dragon of her shadow army.

From there the shadow-minions, along with the shadow-elite, would swoop out of the forestry and take down one of the elds, and then another, and another, slowly picking them off for the sake of the horde as Rei and Lyren chowed down on the great, squalling bodies of scale on the ground level, the backs of the couple pressed together as though they were having an eating competition at a picnic.

Eight elder dragons down. Four of them had been converted into shadow-minions. The shadow army and Lyren and Reiharu broke back into the sky to search for the remaining eld dragons, and then caught them, though they fought with all their might, with breath and wing and fang.

Fire, lightning and acid scattered in the sky … though, Lyren and Reiharu would often dodge behind the shadow-minions, who seemed to lack the ability to feel pain when the projectiles smashed into their void flesh … Some of them inhaled, only to have their souls sucked out by Reiharu riding Lyren’s back before they could manage to deliver an attack with their breath weapon. They sweated out their elements, cried tears, cursed the twisted couple … but in the end, despite how big they were, they were just food for the couple.

“URRRRHHUP!”

The pastor’s ears flicked up, and with a cry he gathered to his feet, realizing that he had fainted on the altar, when he could have fled, but he had used that precious time unconscious. Through the woods wound a slimy, gastric trail of dragon bones big and small, some skulls turned on their sides, some perfectly upright. Lyren commented that he would have many skulls to crystallize later, to preserve in his hoard as trophies. He smacked his lips as he ambled toward the altar with Reiharu. The apple green tattoos on his throat glowed more vigorously than before, since he had absorbed the powerful essence of his meals.

Shivering, the pastor turned to flee, but both of the couple bumped their bellies on either side of him, bullying the pastor between them. “Dear copper, where did you think you were going? It sure would be a shame if you planned on ending a wedding without wedding anyone. I mean, only someone who is utterly soulless could think of such a thing,” Reiharu teased, tugging on the copper’s soul with a brief suck-in of breath.

The copper yelped, wide-eyed; he had seen his soul gallop a beat out of his body, before snapping back into his own, his heart galloping as well. “Why, n-no, of course, I was just … please, I was just about to step off of the altar for some, er, fresh air …”

Lyren sniggered. “Well, between the two of us, you should have ample of fresh air, don’t you think~?” The shadowy breath and the green breath of the dragons washed over the pastor, whom they squeezed between their flanks, smothering him.

At last he submitted:

“Very well—torment me no longer! I have gotten your hints. And I promise you, your wedding shall have the approval of all the powers that be!”

And so the pastor on that day proclaimed Lyren and Reiharu mate and mate, and she kissed him under a veil of black. And for wedding them, they spared his life. Not because it made them feel warm and fuzzy inside, but because the pastor would prove to be useful for them, yet. After all, why pay for catering when you can plan to feast at the wedding of another couple for your next anniversary?

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