The Character Plot Story of the month, first devised by me, but used as an idea in the CPS poll by  Faraththedragon:

"A dragon becomes depressed. Kobolds and mages cheer up the dragon by feeding the dragon smaller dragons, as well as the magic of spells and the magic of powerful artifacts."

Thumbnail art of Farath © Magpiehyena

Patron characters featured:

Renoko ©  Renoko

Venter ©  Venter_Laetus

Jet ©  Midnight_Yamikidate

Farath ©  Faraththedragon

A story voted on by patrons on my Patreon!

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The New Servants of the Storm Dragon

Farath enshrouded his snout with a wing, warding off the austere noon light beaming into his cave from a slanted threshold shaped like an obtuse triangle. The light would be considered mild for most other dragons: Outside it had cooled enough for wispy mists to billow on Mengmeng’s bushy jungle canopy. Sure, the grey dragon lay in the back of the lair behind a great jut of rock that hoarded the shadows among him; but anything short of cloudy and rainy nowadays bothered him enough to keep him from securing all the daytime shuteye to which he was used.

The wheel of misfortune had been cycling consistently for the past few months. A kobold servant—an old citrine who had been in his thrall for more springs and autumns than fore- and hind-claws could count—had fallen ill. During the burial, thieves had ransacked his lair. He and his thrall had scoured the jungle for the villains but found only rainwashed footprints. About a week passed and he awoke to an entirely unstaffed lair.

Had his former thrall tired of his dour grieving? Had they had their own paws in the theft? Both, perhaps? In any case, he had been unable to track them. A fool could have figured out none of them wished to be found. The wiser of them. He would have broken all their bones with a single beat of his storm-like wings for deigning to betray him.

Less than a year had passed since they had pledged fealty to him, so their absence did not ache so badly as that of the citrine. Sharp wits, scrupulous eye, trusted claw … The thought disappeared into a swirl of disjointed images. He dozed off. The segmented brows fused with his horns slouched infernally. Once he was out, not even his snores could wake him. Some of them were difficult to differentiate from the growls of his empty stomach. He dreamt that the macaws were still too loud and the mists too scarce for him to hunt again. But then, a group of adventurers appeared in the milky abyss outside his dream-lair and paced curiously inside, and his tail stirred—slithered like a snake along the dream-floor in anticipation.

Convenient morsels.

*

“Also, this cave mouth has a stream winding past it,” the turquoise kobold told his travelling companions, “not a cliff. So this can’t be Baltherion’s.”

“Oh dear. I do think you’re right, Venter. But a dragon’s a dragon, right?” The albino kobold with goggles skipped ahead, each of his steps boosted by the delicate flutters of his wings. His twitching nose snatched him onward. Rather than discouraged, he seemed to grow more delighted. “I have a hunch that this dragon could be even nicer than that Baltherion!” Sniff sniff. “Home, it smells like home!” He capered, twirled and landed facing the other two. “Wouldn’t you guys at least like to go inside? Perhaps, at the very least, he’d spare us the floor. You guys could rest your feet a bit, and I could finally hear some feedback about my croc stew from a dragon. Oh, and some of that mango juice to complement the meal—how fine would that be!”

Venter sighed, smiled and looked across at Renoko for his opinion. The anthro dragon mage had scarlet scales and wore a mage’s robe of indigo. Gilding edged its hood, sleeves and the acute triangle cut below the waist.

“Fellas, we all want to see who lives in that cave, and plus I’d kill to take a knee for a bit. Better I take it inside than out; it’d be a bit less conspicuous.”

“Fine with me,” Ven said. “We land ourselves in any trouble, my traps can buy us some time. And you’ve still got enough mana to give us Quickfoot if need be.” He gave Ren a look to confirm this, as though it should have been a question.

“Aye.”

Chipper muttering entered the cave. That, and frolicking feet. The ruckus wrung the wing away from a pair of sleepless, ringed eyes. Farath’s head membranes twitched. A traveller? He cocked his head, listened. His tongue flicked out, and he slathered. More than one. Prophetic dream, weren’t you.

He rose and lumbered out from behind the jut, and then glowered at three figures disrupting the cosy greyness of the cavern. He must have looked as starved as he felt, for the one in the lead yelped and pitched backward out of flight, barreling into the gut of the hooded one. The hooded one snatched the winged kobold into a one-armed hug, then stepped away with a staff in the other paw. The turquoise had knelt with his paws raised and—from what Farath heard—was making a most mannerly apology on behalf of them all for the intrusion, but the grey lost interest in that.

He saw the staff and fell bitingly still. Into his mildly starved look pooled the grim hostility of an age-old vendetta. He struck open his wings, bared his fangs, and gave a warning beat of the wings, the gust whipping the party a few paces back.

Ren skidded with a wide, arched stance. His eyes widened, and he spread his arms in a reconciliatory way, releasing Jet. “Wait,” he called.

“Mage,” Farath boomed over him, “seeking to expand your thrall by stealing from mine? Or pursuing some magical power of mine? Or glory, perhaps?” He took a step forward and whisked his wings. He had only been preparing to beat them again; but the mere flick of them knocked the travellers back another pace, Jet rolling over himself. “Not that I have any servants left … nor mana.”

Steal a thrall? Ren gulped. I wouldn’t—what gave him that idea?

The dragon mage blinked at Venter then at Jet, piecing the dragon’s meaning together. Realizing he was still armed, he uncurled his grip and let the staff clatter to the stone. He then dropped to one knee, his palms up and facing the dragon and his gaze meeting the amber eyes. “Easy, grey one. You misunderstand. These two have been searching for a dragon to serve, such as yourself. And me? In exchange for a bit of coin, I proffered my protection for the length of a journey. Though, I wouldn’t mind serving you for a couple of days, if you don’t mind me resting here.”

Farath slumped, blinked at the mage. “Do you take my lair for an inn? Or are you telling me how long you think you’ll last inside my gut?” I’ll put you to rest, alright … His stomach groused.

“Well, I take you for a dragon who wants some supper—”

“Seeking to sup sooner than later.” He licked his teeth, each tooth thicker and sharper than Ren’s entire set of cutlery.

Renoko gulped. “A lot of supper, then; and you’re uh in need of some new servants, right?”

“Mmn,” he grunted in the affirmative. “Two of you are kobolds. What of your former masters?” I won’t warm to those whose loyalty rides the wind.

The kneeling turquoise spoke: “Sometimes, I dream of my former masters. But all of them, I served in different lifetimes, and I don’t know where to find any of them, even if they still live, great one.”

“Lifetimes,” Farath repeated, and cocked his head. Curious, that plural. But he could relate with longevity; and he liked that he sensed truth in those words. The grace with which the kobold addressed him suggested a wisdom transcending the kobold’s seeming age. “Hmm.” He nodded, then dipped his snout toward Jet, his gaze softer, but regardless reading between the lines of the albino’s face. “And you, Goggles?”

“W-well, as you know sir, the saying goes, ‘a kobold with wings comes back to sting.’ I swear, I wouldn’t know how to sting you, even if you commanded it—but that’s the stigma that’s kept me unemployed. I think so, at least. I’ve never really asked a dragon if that’s the case, but I’ve been scorched and electrocuted and—well—the whole spectrum of dragon breaths I could tell you how it feels, and so I’ve taken the hint oft enough. But! That hasn’t discouraged me, sir. I’m well learned. I can clean; I can knead; I can revere—one of your majesty makes that most easy. Oh, and I cook a mean stew!”

“Having never served doesn’t disqualify you,” Farath said, “but, in mine eyes, qualifies you. I prefer a blank slate to a servant who sees in me a master for whom he longs too much … or too little. As for cooking …” He snorted. “I gutted a dragon who swore against raw meat. His hide opened up like rabbit pelt.”

Jet recoiled with a sorrowful little sound, and he clutched himself like he’d gotten a bad case of heartburn. Ren saw an opening. “You may not care that Jet’s a great cook, but do you know why he is? A lot of it—I’d say—is his sense of smell. You could blindfold him and it wouldn’t matter. His nose is—is like an artist, really, painting the whole world. Whatever you crave, he can sniff it out. And, if it’s light enough, he can even bring it to you.”

“Point made,” mused Farath, needle-eyed. “He’s brought me a dragon mage, live and plump. Though, not so light.”

“Euhh? You’re not saying …” Ren misliked the way the grey was leaning in and prowling closer. “Why would you care for a dragon mage? Why not have an entire feast of dragons and magic?”

The wall of wings snapped against the grey’s sides. Farath straightened. The stillness which followed was worth plenty more than the kobolds had paid Ren, so thought the mage. It was complemented by the first smile he had seen the grey spare.

“Go on.”

Renoko shuddered at his recovery. “Yes, erhmm—”

“A grand suggestion, but bold. Would you have me believe that a single mage and a couple of kobolds could ready a feast like that for me by dinnertime?”

Dinnertime?! Ren choked on all his possible replies.

But Jet pitched in: “If I ever needed to hire a hunter, I would hire Ren, sir. On the trail, we’ve seen him cast spells to catch dragons bigger than his waistline. So, no issues for us, on the hunting side. And on the magic side, well, I can sniff out enchanted artifacts as plainly as Ven can match Ren’s trapping skills.”

“I see.” Farath seemed to work what they had told him around in his jaws as though it were a piece of stringy meat. “You answered my question, then gave me plenty more to ask. But I’ve burned enough calories considering your knacks. Why don’t the three of you go out and show me your worth? My stomach will grant you until dusk’s end.”

The three winced at a grumbled belly-threat, and needn’t any further explanation.

Ren was scratching the side of his neck and saying, “Well, perhaps you could afford us m—” but stopped when he became aware of Venter speaking:

“Thank you, O grey one: That should be time enough. Jet and I hope to call you and know you as Master, should you consider us worthy of servicing you. We’ll not disappoint!”

And so the three picked themselves up and hurried out, and when they were out of view Farath turned and curled up behind the jut of rock. They had best wake him before his internal timer wakes him first.

*

The afternoon had already marinated awhile. Ren, Venter and Jet only had a handful of hours to prepare the queer feast of dragons and magic, so the dragon mage cast Quickfoot. Strengthening their calves and quadriceps, streamlining their forms, the spell spurred them on with the speed of cheetahs. Their visions warped into a blur of slate grey and equatorial green.

They were descending a steep trail cut out of the face of a grand escarpment. Long ago, Farath’s earliest thrall sculpted it to issue ease of access between the lair of their Master and the lowlands. Down in the lowlands lurked big sabre cats, crocs, raptors and other predators the former thrall had taken to fetching. Past thralls, however, had lacked the wits and the strength to hunt the dragons the grey considered most choice: the sapient kind. The smaller ferals those thralls had managed to catch tasted tough, earthy and gamey. You may as well conserve your energy and catch lizards or snakes.

Without knowing it, the three new servants meant to outdo the former thrall. Once they stepped into the lowlands, they parted ways. The kobolds snooped around the grounds of every clan within 10 miles. At each settlement, Jet would use his nose as a treasure map to sniff out a cache of enchanted objects; and Venter, all the while, would ensnare mobs of pursuant clan warriors with nets or glue traps. Although their repute with the clans plummeted, their wealth in magic surged. They looted four settlements in all, then made off to the ruins of a couple holy places to do some more desecration, each of them dragging a bulging loot bag over their shoulders at a runner’s speed. If it weren’t for Quickfoot, they would have hardly been able to trudge with their plunder.

Meanwhile, Renoko visited dragon caves. Most of the dragons were the size of elephants, each a couple of feet taller than him. Each cursed him for daring to intrude, and wheezed cones of acid at him; but his tail maw flourished a magic shield, covering him to let him cheetah-charge in and thwack soft-scaled throat, foreleg joint and rib-side, and poke solar plexus with spell-enhanced blows of his staff. After defeating the dragon in each encounter, he’d pluck a gem out of one of his pockets and chuck it at them. The gem would bounce off their hide and in midair zap them with a stream of magic, which shrunk their form into a fist-sized silhouette that the stream then carried into the gem. Ren would promptly catch the dragon-impounding stone and tuck it away.

After emptying a half-dozen caves, he sniggered, patting a pocket bulging with dragon-stones. The mage normally liked to load up on them so that he could binge whenever he wanted. But these ones were strictly for Farath: He mustn’t lose to his hunger.

Once done hunting, he went back to the bottom of the escarpment and plopped onto a gnarled log, where he waited for the others. On the way back he had caught a whole bestiary of predators, whose gems he’d put in a separate pocket. Now and then he’d reach into it and toss up a gem; and the gem would shoot a magic-stream into his mouth that materialized—halfway down his esophagus—whatever animal had been captured: a tiger first, a wind serpent next, a gorilla third …

“BURRRRRRRRRRRGGGOOOP …” Lolling out his tongue, Ren clenched around a bloated, roly poly gut. His belt strained just as much as his robe did around the weight he’d put on from the metabolised snacks. He was rubbing and jiggling the swollen tum and burping out wind serpent feathers when the kobolds hurtled into view. “Oah, there you guys are. I’ve been—BOOOOOOOOAUUURRRK—waiting for you.”

Catching his breath, “We got a little held up in a crypt,” Venter explained.

Ren sniggered. “I can see that. Come over here.” He swatted an undead hand off of the kobold’s shoulder. “There. Unfortunately, I think I’m held up too.” He pushed his palms against the log and grunted, but he may as well have been thrown with ball and chain into quicksand; his whole body wobbled from the effort, but his booty only rose a few inches up before flopping back down.

“D-dunno if I’ll make it up that trail again,” he groaned as the kobolds took his arms to help him up. “Th-think you guys might have to take the gems from me.” He gasped take when they got him standing. Fumbling forward, he grabbed his staff to lean on it, and the wood whimpered beneath his weight.

Venter chuckled. “Good thing we planned ahead for you getting tired.” He winked and started up the trail. Jet giggled, fluttering up beside him. “Just follow us for a second and you’ll see.”

“Huh? You guys made plans without me? When?”

Huffing and puffing, reaching out to them a little earnestly, he lumbered up beside them.

“You ready?”

“I mean, I guess? What’s this all about, Venter?”

The kobolds counted down from three, then took his forearms and led him backward and then let go. Suddenly, a tangle of net sprung up from under him and took a teardrop shape; and he looked around and blathered until a yelp shot high overhead: The trap was bouncing and swinging higher and higher, on its way to a really sturdy bough hanging over the clifftop. The kobolds high-fived.

Jet smiled, squinting out the sun, admiring Ren’s rise. “Elevators.”

Ven agreed, “Gotta love them.”

*

When the kobolds reached the ledge of the cliff closest to him, Ren cut free with his claws, then fluttered up and alongside the bough across the 20-foot distance, heaving out a sigh as he landed. Not to demean his own weight, but he certainly wouldn’t have tried flying upward any more than a few feet after his recent gains.

On the way back to Farath’s lair alongside the ’bolds, he muttered, “I still think I should have remembered you setting up that contraption.”

Venter closed his eyes and spread his hands apart. “What can I say? It’s magic.”

Jet nodded rigorously. “The magic of snack-breaks.”

“Speaking of,” Renoko mumbled to the wing-’bold, “I could use some of those acai berries you got. And the mango juice, if you could unparch a fella.” He took out a water can, squeezed it over his snout and glugged.

“I would love to offer you some, sir, but I wouldn’t love for you to get too heavy to get back up. Or lose your appetite for dinner.”

Ren’s mawed tail straightened at the sound of dinner, like a weasel erect on its rear legs.

Forcing down one last gulp, the dragon mage looked at Jet. “What’s for dinner?”

With cheery sincerity Jet said, “The succulent satisfaction of serving a starved Master!”

Ren’s tail slumped, and he thrust his can away poutily. Ven chortled, unseen and unheard.

Likewise unseen and unheard, Farath’s gut complained with the noise of an ill mole burrowing underground. He crawled out from the jut of rock, yawned with a crackling of his old bones, then turned and saw a dull royal blue quashing the stream of ember that was sinking under the trees. “A fancy feast has not been served.” But I shouldn’t seem caught unawares. He harrumphed, then strode to the center of his lair. He stretched his legs and wings, flexed his claws and flicked his tail-tip every which way. One mustn’t needs limber up at such an hour, but one thing he wasn’t going to do was let some niggling dragonkin water his mouth and sweeten his dreams and then vamoose.

Dusk was nearing its end, and he meant to know right where the three of them were when their time was up. He stepped outside. He pounced into flight, the land capering; but before he could get in two beats, his nostrils wakened and the scents of the dragonkin—and cold stew and packed fruit—were in them; and he heard them yelling. He twisted his neck and saw them coming up a trail and waving at him.

“Sir, where are you going? We’ve got all we need, and so we’ll ready the meal right away, just as promised.”

Tut-tutting, Farath chopped with his wings, dropped slowly onto his hinds and then fores. “You kept me. Allowed my internal timer to wake me. So where are those dragons you mean to feed me? Will you magick them up, mage?”

“Magick them I shall, O grey—great one.” He glanced at Venter and smirked from the corner. “Just you relax. Take to the comfort of your cave. We’ll do all the rest.”

The grey didn’t answer, but strode with a graceful grumpiness to the center of his lair. He laid himself in a curl facing them. His foreclaws rattled on, drilling into the cavern floor as he dourly watched the trio file in. They were muttering some plan and setting down sacks full of glowing artifacts.

His gaze must have lingered to dusk-dreams of dinner, for the next he knew, the fluttering of the wing-’bold was breezing his neck. The small form planted foot-paws on his nape and held itself aloft, aflight. Small claws rubbed into the trenches of scales below the leathery membranes and above the roots of spines. Each crown-shaped membrane shivered. Wrinkles and folds began to form on them, for the spines relaxed and no longer pulled them taut.

“There, sir … The musculature under these scales is all knotted up, net-like. Nothing a little kneading won’t un-knot.”

Farath’s hard, simmering breaths smoothened. His head dropped, and the nape crooked a little. He thought of the citrine’s paws … but those days were done. He yawned away the thought, sprawled his fores. He saw Renoko chuck an emerald into the air. A lightning bolt of jade shot from its center, and an emerald-scaled dragon materialized a half dozen strides ahead. His head rose no higher than the base of Farath’s throat.

Looking around lividly, the emerald hissed, then demanded an explanation. Farath dipped his nose with sharp eyes. He would not wait till hisses turned to gnashes. The green barreled belly-over-horns out of the lair, galed out by a thunderous wing-flap. Ren—wide-eyed—had pitched his staff in the floor and was flagged from it, having caught Venter and holding him close to his ribs, until the gust settled and dropped them standing.

“Bit large for my preference,” Farath said, “but your hunting efforts are at least respectable.”

“No worries,” Ren said, “I’ve another,” then tapped the emerald gem, zapping the green back into captivity. The next dragon he sent out shined ruby, and rose at the head scarcely higher than a clydesdale.

He shuffled in a half-circle, then spotted the dragon mage who’d stuck him in a gem. He hurtled forward, serrated jaws outspread. The mage merely whacked the dragon’s snout with the gnarled swirl of his staff, saying “Boop!” Magic buzzed in a heartbeat from scaled lips to tail-tip, freezing the ruby in place. All he managed to do, suspended there, was twitch his facial muscles, throat and claws, until a jolt of magic altered gravity round him so that it channeled him toward the grey’s maw. His paralysis flashed away; and he turned into a great red shuriken of anger, sharp tooth and claw and spine hacking this way and that! “No need to fret, great one. Just you let the ’bolds work all the tenseness out of you, and let me carry him through you. Enjoy your feast.”

Although Farath looked half-placated by Jet’s rubs, he still looked tempted to spring at the ruby, what with his bunched-up muscles. But he allowed Ren to bring his food close, close enough for him to flick his tongue out and taste the tip of the tail. The sophisticated taste of a sapient dragon tingled him: much darker and richer than a feral, the taste of choice metals with notes of salted cacao. Worthy of being a dessert, yet packed with enough protein to be a proper meal. Much of his muscle tension melted.

Humming, he swallowed at a leisurely pace, not needing to worry about keeping the dragon pinned beneath foreclaws or packing him down as quickly as possible. His cheeks bulged into twin globes to a crackly dislocation of his slathering jowls beneath steady gulps and hisses of breath. His full mouth squeezed his eyes closed, the lidded eyes puckering like the inner folds of a curled elbow.

A great silver marble-like bulge, consisting of the ruby’s hind legs, prodded apart the throat plates below his chin. He rumbled louder as it traversed the crook of his internals, reaming them, molding the shape of the slimy, malleable muscles to the raving and writhing of the ruby. That’s what Farath had longed for: the congestion that puts strain on each breath; the sort which comes with putting an end to a lesser life to sustain the greater. He imagined that, instead of the ruby, he was swallowing the thrall that had betrayed him, all of them crammed together like sailfish and seaweed in a fish roll. May they serve him one last time … from the inside.

The thought of a pleasureful closure coursed through him, shuddering him. The same way Jet did by diligently kneading into his bulging craw. The goggle-’bold had fluttered before him, and now probed deep into the padding of flesh, encouraging each swallow. He could feel the feedback of his own paws resisting the currents of those springy muscles. Farath rasped a wet snort of pleasure.

The turquoise scampered up to tend to the underbelly. Farath rolled onto his side to expose the ventral plates when Venter began scratching along the distended stomach. The claws of one paw rubbed outside the sphincter to coax the muscles loose. Farath rumbled and folded his topmost wing. No malice could he sense in those spellweaving hands. Not just those of the kobolds, but the ones actually weaving a spell.

With half-lidded eyes, he watched Renoko’s claw gestures. The mage worked with the bubbly attentiveness of a proud and sharing connoisseur. Farath liked not having to work his jaws too hard: liked feeling the dislocation; liked being pampered by the trio, feeling the kobolds shoving and eliciting squelches on either end of his cumbersome prey. A light buzz of magic toured his gullet and smoothened each of his swallows.

The ruby’s head slipped into the grasp of muscle-rings. Just barely exposed, it now resembled a head beneath the hood of a too-large robe. He barked some pathetic threat—for, that’s what a dragon does: carries their pride to the bitter end.

Farath yawned his maw wide, procuring a slick vortex before which either of the kobolds might have swooned, if only they could see the satiny maelstrom admit the last of the snout beneath the tides with a veritable SQULORK. The throat bounced and sloshed, the influx of bulges heaving Jet backward. Between the plating, valleys of scale either widened or narrowed in a fit of burbling slather and murmuring flesh. The ruby reached his final destination with a grousing awakening of borborygmi. Valleys between plates expanded and settled over the burdened paunch, and Venter homed in on the vulnerable gouges of soft scales with rubs and scratches.

Satiated, Farath huffed. His roundened midriff and new weight complemented nicely the fall of the sun. His stomach finished spilling out and slouching beside him. Chirpily, Jet winged down to join Venter at its epicenter. He partnered up with the turquoise to pump into the heap of the prey’s contours from both sides. The grey leaned farther back, exposing more of the endowed drum of gut for them to worship, rumbling a distant thunder.

He craned his neck to gaze back at them. “I didn’t expect to be treated to a feast of dragons that large, expected ones you could carry by hand. You’ve filled me plenty, considering I’ll be fuller after a drink and some dessert. I am parched. And I’ve a sweet tooth for that magic you promised.”

The dragon mage said, “Don’t be so sure dessert will fill you. You forget mages have unique methods of using magic. You’ll see. Ven and Jet will treat you to some enchanted heirlooms, and I’ll make sure you stay hungry enough for the rest of the feast …”

Skeptical but intrigued, Farath watched each kobold pick up an artifact: Jet a sapphire-headed sceptre, Venter a glaive studded with beads. They flicked the artifacts as though they were wands at the dragon’s maw. Out from them spouted two bolts of magic resembling electricity. The plasmic eels darted down his throat with a sound that BUZZED and SPLASHED.

His eyes widened. His wings splayed open, and he gulped and gulped, as though the concoction were a supplement to quell his thirst. The taste brought to mind maple salmon.

Smoothly, Ren wheeled his staff breadthwise. A dome of cyan magic shined into being with a circumferential puff of dust. It served as a windshield when Farath beat his wings; when unforgiving gusts pecked the translucent hemisphere with stones and debris. Ren then closed his eyes.

Although the dome sieved the streams of magic into Farath’s mouth, Renoko thought, None of that magic can be absorbed into mass, not yet. Pirouetting conservatively to mind his weight, he struck the gnarled swirl of the staff at the air below his knee cap then raised the staff head and fixed it on Farath’s belly. A chant of esoteric syllables echoed through in the dome as though trapped in a tornado, phrases overlapping. Ever more fervent grew the mage’s voice. At length he released the spell—roared a discharge of noise and thrust the staff at the spell’s recipient. Explosively, magic blared with a smoky kickback. He barreled backward, thunked against the back of the dome.

A spell bolt struck Farath in the belly. A blue, arachnid-like mess of magic scattered out from the center of it across his body. From him came a croon. Something warmed and pumped him at the same time. His spine bulged larger, outgrowing briefly his flesh and scales, until they too bulged larger to match the proportions. The cave rumbled as his entire body surged bigger … and bigger … and bigger.

Incredulous, the digesting ruby looked around as his fleshy confines expanded. Though, he hardly got a chance to observe the environment transforming before the proportionately growing pool of chyme dunked him down into a murky, effervescent underworld. There, he watched the fog-enshrouded walls creep outward per each wobbly contraction.

Both kobolds shared glances and grinned, then turned back toward the spectacle. Although they had seen Renoko grow from a magic absorption spell, they hadn’t seen the spell transform anyone else, let alone an already-massive quadruped. Before Farath they seemed to dwindle even smaller, to an infantile size; while the seven-foot-three mage shrank to a relative size more befitting of the average person.

All of this intoxicated Farath: the pressure building in his muscles and heaving against his hide, forcing every scale and plate to creakingly mushroom to greater dimensions; every giddy beat of his wings strafing the air with a more anarchic thunder. Growth that he would expect to happen over a decade happened in just a little over 30 seconds. And for 10 seconds more he continued to grow; and the trio watched his serpentine neck scale higher and higher. He grew a whole head taller, and then some. Even Renoko could probably walk under the grey’s chest without bowing his head now. With a vacuum slurp, Farath sucked in the tails of those arcane eels, and the magic swirled into his stomach and diffused above the lake wherein his prey splashed and flailed and melted.

Yet, once the artifacts ran dry of magic, Farath did not wait for the kobolds to feed him. One thought ruled him: More … He inhaled, and the artifacts in the sacks rustled before each sack flashed cyan with the brilliance of bonfires, spewing forth what seemed like flamethrowers of magic down his throat.

He grew huge—so much so, Ren swore that he’d no longer stand at eye-level with the forechest: If the grey were to stand, the dragon mage would certainly have to stare up at the stomach as though it were a ceiling. A third of all the bagged-up artifacts dulled in hue, and their energy auras evaporated. But Farath more than doubled his height, rising to 20 feet tall at the shoulder, rendering his stomach a cave in and of itself. And while it would be hours yet till his system fully absorbed the ruby, he’d already made room for a whole den of dragons.

Cutting off his inhale, he left two-thirds of the artifacts brimming with unused magic. He rose onto all fours, his legs having grown into obelisks: spread widely enough for several on horseback to ride abreast through them. Over the mountainside thundered a roar suggesting the presence of a dragon hundreds of years greater.

His moodiness of earlier had dissolved into a superficial memory. He had grown at a rate he’d previously thought unthinkable! And before him stood servants who were willing to help him grow bigger still. Servants who perhaps would retain his trust longer than the last batch.

“On second thought,” he said, “I’m not done with dinner just yet.”

And the kobolds shared another grin. The way Farath eyed them when he said that, they weren’t entirely sure whether he used dinner to refer to the dragons in the gems or the three of them. Either way, it meant spending more time with a potential Master.

Ren sighed, relieved but exhausted from a day of travelling, hunting and spellweaving. I sure hope he asks us to stick around for breakfast. We could use an excuse to crash here, I think. Even a bed of moss sounds hospitable as of now.

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