Book the Three (Dragons of Histh)

The Dragons of Histh
Book The Three

Author: Harethe

As Jenthe flew over the tiny hamlet of Cultus Creek with the wyrm dragoness at his side,he smiled a dragon smile as he peered down on the small grouping of buildings at the four corners of the crossroads.It is always nice to come home after a long flight across land and ocean.Jenthe is a courier and diplomat for the tribe in their dealings with other dragonkind.He was just returning from a Rocky Mountains meeting with some dragons of the Orient.

Jenthe is one of the 50% of humans who embraced dragonhood willingly.He used to be a human psycholgist who specialized in job therapy counselling.He had passed through Cultus Creek several years ago and handed out one of his business cards to the postmaster at the Cultus Creek Hotel and Grocery.He spent a night at the hotel before moving on.

The dragons of Histh have their friends in the human community and this particular business card made it's way into the taloned hands of Aurelio Brown.At the next meeting of the tribe he joked about how it would be nice if the tribe had it's own dragon psychologist.Up till this point nobody had bothered thinking that dragons needed to see a shrink.As other members of the tribe thought about the concept,it didn't seem such a bad idea.

Most dragons of Histh are transformed humans and just because theyr'e cold blooded and lay eggs doesn't mean they don't have psych- -ological issues to deal with.Many of the tribe members carry human baggage with them into their new life.Little things which seemed unimportant to them as a human take on a whole new meaning once they become dragons.They can forget about shopping trips to the mall,jobs relatives,friends,snowball fights etc.

Many of the tribe came to realize that although they were big and tough on the outside,on the inside they needed a shoulder to cry on.a couch to rest on while they unburdened themselves.Getting a dragon psychologist was a brilliant idea,and soon the tribe were busily clawing at the sand tables,plotting how to recruit that human psychologist into the tribe.

The dragons of Histh had one element humanity did not possess,a very long lifespan.They made inquiries through their human contacts and learned where the human psychologist lived and how he travelled about.Although they had a whole world of human psychologists to pick from,they had already decided that they would have THAT particular human.They sent out nightly patrols to keep an eye out for him,and after several months they struck.He was hiking in Banff,BC at the time attending a conference.

Having a 20 foot tall dragon come charging out at you in broad daylight is a moving experience.He was in a isolated part of the trail when the 3 dragons and 2 dragonesses came swooping down on him from the side.This was a precise military operation and he only got out one scream before they popped him in a fiberglass tank.They carried the tank into a nearby cavern where they were hiding out.One of the dragonesses was a Belgie wyrm nsmed Terre.She was a recent immigrant to the New World.She hadn't made friends with many dragonkind yet and decided that since the captive human would end up as dragon,now was as good a time as any to befriend him.

Although the dragons could have transformed the human into a dragon the moment he arrived at Cultus Creek,it was not in their nature to do so.Entering dragonhood is a sacred and joyous event. Dragging the human kicking and screaming into the new life which had been planned for him would have caused social trauma to the tribe,not to mention what it would have done to the newborn dragon

Jenthe's initiation was a multipart process consisting of observation,revelation.education,preparation and then transformation. The human was taken to a deep pit near the entrance to the caverns. By the time he arrived at Cultus Creek he had figured out that he had been kidnapped by Dragons,not overgrow pterodactyls or flying t rexes. He was excited and was half anticipating his meeting with the rest of this tribe of intelligent reptiles.

He was in for a shock.When he was released at the bottom of the underground chamber,he found himself in a dirty dank cave littered with the bones of animals and animal droppings.His five captors squatted on the sand and fought over a chunk of meat.Other dragons flew in from the rim of the pit and showed no signs of intelligence. He was sitting in the midst of big dumb animals who ignored him and spent most of the time fighting of prey they had brought in with them.Over in a corner of the pit was a pool of fresh water .The dragons left some uneaten meat near the pool and also deposited the odd acorn,corn cob or bunch of berries nearby.The dragons often mounted one another and the grunts as one grabbed the body of his partner and thrust away with his hind feet while tearing away at some nearby kill further left the impression that dragons were just animals

Nothing could be further from the truth.The dragons were putting on an act.They were no more interested in living in that filthy bone infested cave then the human was.Except for the matings,which probably were genuine,this was not the way they lived.They wanted to observe the human without revealling to him the kind of civilization which existed a few tunnels away.If he somehow managed to escape back to human civilization,better for him to think that dragons were just animals.After a period of observation lasting 2 months,the dragons decided that he was primed for the next phase.

It was Terre who flew down to the bottom of the pit and carried the psychologist back up to the rim.She then carried him through the tunnels into a large sandfilled and CLEAN cavern.This room had crude stone furniture in it and the walls were scratched with pictograms of dragons in various displays of the common language.This was the moment of revelation where the dragons of Histh put their cards on the table and showed the human that they were not big dumb flying lizards.

First contact was not done by speech.Dragons don't have human vocal cords.The dragons of Histh understand human speech,bot when they attempt it themselves all that escapes from their lips are roars grunts,squeals,whines and hisses.This vocalization is great for the common language but useless for anything else.What Maegrethe did was stand in front of the human and using her claws,scratch in the sand the very human words "Are you well".

Once the dragons had established a dialogue with the human by this means,they gave him a day or two to collect his thoughts before moving onto the next step.They took him to another clean chamber which had been prepared for him.It had stone furniture and a straw cot as well as clean running water,plenty of fresh vegetables and a hearth for cooking.Technologically it was more 2000 BC then 2000 Ad,but it was preferable to living in a filthy bone infested cave.What it did not have was newspapers,radio or TV.The dragons wanted to cut off the psychologist from human civilization.The chamber had a sand floor and this would where the human was educated about dragonkind.

Once the dragonets had been show how to sharpen their claws,oil their feathers and avoid spitting venom in the direction of other dragonets,they got their first dose of religion.The 3 teachers carted in a sacred tablet with a pictogram depicting a magnificent dragoness. The class was taught by the commom language that this was MOTHER Histh She would protect the dragonets from DANGER,and relieve their HUNGER.

Over the next few weeks the dragonets were taught the common language and reading and writing pictograms whilst at the same time being taught about the dragon deity Histh and the religious beliefs and customs of the Dragons of Histh.

Although the human learned the pictograms,the dragonets had one up on him when it came to communicating in the common language.The dragonets could bond with one another and their teachers.Thus the little dragon coiling and hissing beside a beautiful feathered little dragoness already knew the sensation of preening feathered wings,even though he himself had bat wings,with not a feather in sight.

The dragoness who taught religion to that class had once been a Catholic nun who had taught at Saint Dominics Elementary School at Oakville Ontario.Although she had been a firm believer in her human God.after being transformed into a 25 foot tall dragoness it was impossible for her to deny the existence and power of the Goddess Histh.After a period of shock and religious confusion,the former human nun embraced this new religion with a new fervour.Having taught religious theology to her human pupils,she used much the same educational techniques to teach her dragonet pupils.

She went by the name Sister Aloythe,and she was the theologean of the tribe.She taught the dragonets that Histh was THE supreme deity and her followers,the Dragons of Histh,were the chosen ones guaranteed a place at those great big feeding troughs up in the sky.The other dragon tribes were lost souls who had drifted from the path to salvation and merely needed a nudge here and there to get them back to the one true Goddess.She had debated whether to tell the dragonets about humans and their gods,but after much discussion she and the other teachers it was better to not mention the existence of the human race.The dragonets would have plenty of time to deal with that issue in their future lives.

When Sister Aloythe had been a human nun during the 1960's,she had disciplined unruly human children by the use of the strap.As a dragoness she was a walking weapons platform,and if she'd used her human approach to discipline dragonets,things would have degenerated to a fight between a big carnivore and 36 little carnivores.One thing are dragonkind all share is a neverending hunger,and this former human nun knew the satisfaction of plunging her jaws into the feeding trough as well as the next dragon or serpente.Bad little dragonets didn;t get fed,it was as simple as that.A hungry stomach was a pretty effective way of making a bad dragonet listen attentively to her lessons on the Goddess Histh.

Since the human captive had arrived from Banff,the Initiation Cavern and sacred pool had been kept ready,in case an emergency forced the psychologist to embrace his dragonhood quicker then had been planned for.Had the human been suicidal,or had a bad little dragon demonstrated his emerging hunting skills by sinking his fangs into the sickly dragonet whilst playing,the human would have been hustled to the Initiation cavern pretty quickly before he died.

Although one of the teachers was scratching out english words on the sand floor so that the human could understand the lessons being taught to the class.the 36 dragonets were not taught human speech or writing.It would not have been of any use to them in their daily lives.English as a second language could be considered as a university level course in the dragon education system.Only dragons which ventured out into the world to keep track of human activities would have had any use for this language.

Geometry,arithmatic, and other mathematic symbols were another matter.Whilst Sister Aloythe taught religion and literature,another dragoness taught science and math.The dragonets discovered that their reptillian little brains took to these lessons like a duckling takes to water.

Their education was given a heavy emphasis on geometry and how to calculate area,volume and slope.Once the teacher was satisfied that the dragonets understood the basic concepts,she took the class on a field trip down into the caverns of Histh.

Although the dragons of Histh may live in a stone age environment it is not because they are incapable of using more advanced techniques They have brilliant minds housed in tough as nails dragon bodies and discovered that the finer points of their human life were wasted on the dragon form.They felt as comfortable on a stone floor as on a feather bed.Their taste buds felt just as stimulated crunching away on a raw bloody kill as on nibbling on steak dripping with gravy.Their dragon eyes were adopted to hunting large prey.and new dragons soon discovered that the tiny printing on human newspapers was unreadable. Thus the dragons of Histh discarded much of human technology because it was of no use to them.

As the teachers led the class deep down into the caverns they pointed out the geology of the caverns to the human.They showed him that the caverns were sited in bedrock sitting underneath a sand plain.The complex consisted of tunnels,pits,chambers and caverns running under Houghton Township and underneath Lake Erie.They came into the new workings,where the Master Cavern builder tried to explain as best he could what was being done.Teams of dragons and dragonesses were smashing away at the rockface with 100 to 300 pound boulders, slowly enlarging the new cavern.Their bodies were coated in dust,venom and oil,and these workers were well muscled,big boned and heavy. The Master showed the class how the floors of caverns and tunnels were built.The walls sloped down to a V trough at the bottom of the floor. Into this channel was laid beach stones from Lake Erie and on top of this was laid a deep layer of Houghton sand.There were varios water tunnels and reservoirs located through the complex and water was allowed to flow through that V trough at the bottom of the tunnel. Waste excretions from dragons worked its way through the sand layer and was carried away to disposal pits by the stream of water flowing through the Lake Erie beach stones.By this time in their lives the dragonet class had learned that producing excess venom and leaking it all over the place was a natural imperative of their bodies.They all let out a soft hiss as it dawned on them just where all that venom went.

The human psychologist also hissed with a sharp intake of breat but unlike the rest of the class he was thinking about the underground economy and transportation networks which would be necessary to power this complex.he suspected that their was much about dragon technology he was not being told,such as how the caverns were heated,ventilated lighted,etc.As the class waddled back up to the upper complex.he looked at the floor and walls and ceiling with a new appreciation.

By this time the winter season was rapidly approaching and dragons of Histh who had ventured abroad during the year were returning to the complex.Out on the sand plains combines were taking off the last of the corn crop.Inside the complex dragons and dragonesses were stocking up with food of all kinds.Although dragons raw bloody meat,they are omnivores who can live off of corn cobs,potatoes and other such storeable foodstock.

The 3 teachers now taught the class about dragon biology.They decided to deal with the subject of where baby dragons come from as the first lesson.Being reptiles ,dragons aren't mammals and there are few ways of differentiating between the sexes.Both sexes have a cloaca like that of a lizard or snake.Short of sticking his paw into the cloaca of his partner to see what kind of reproductive apparatus was hidden there.a more tasteful way was to check on the colour of his/her eyes.Dragonesses have red eyes.dragons have amber eyes.Another method was to see how he/she took care of her/his wings,talons,fangs and spikes.Dragonesses learn from their mother early on to fuss over their wings,keep their talons razor sharp and constantly rub their fangs and tail spikes against rocks in order to sharpen them.

The teachers had brought in a reconstructed dragon egg for this lesson.and there was at least one little dragoness who had spent the last few months acting just like a little dragon at hunting games.Now her amber eyed playmates remarked that she had red eyes.As she looked down on the little cloacal slit on her belly and then back at the dragon egg that was nearly as big as she was,she was thinking" Goddess,am i going to be laying those things for the rest of my life". She was not a joyful little dragoness.

The next lesson dealt with winter survival tactics.Being cold blooded ,dragons would rather stay in the complex.Flight for bat winged dragonets was a no no.Only dragonets with winged feathers should attempt flight in winter skys.At this time the feather winged dragoness who had just discovered her own motherhood in the previous lesson hissed and smirked as her dragon playmates looked with dismay upon their own membranous bat wings.Revenge was sweet.

The dragonets were taught how to walk in snow,how to wear sheep skins and if worse came to worse ,how to coil up their tails and necks over their torso while they lay covered in snow.

The final lessons dealt with plants,animals and diseases harmful to dragonkind.Dragons have a different biology than humans, and the psychologist realized that if the teachers were teaching dragonets how to avoid harm,they were also teaching him how to kill dragons.He didn't kow what the dragons had in mind for him,but this lesson as well as the fact that the other dragonets seemed to be looking in his direction more often hinted that their intentions would be made sooner rather then later.

The Dragons of Histh knew that once the human knew how to kill their kind,they could never ever release him.There had been many discussions on whether to teach the human this forbidden knpwledge. What decided the future fate of the human psychologist in the end was a survey the tribe put to the 36 dragonets.Was the sickly dragonet a member of their group,were they willing to protect him, feed him,counsel him,comfort him and finally,were they willing to help him shed his skin.The answers were all affirmative,the dragonets were determined to force the human to accept his dragonhhod. The education phase was over,it was time for preparation.

The dragons made a ceremonial event of asking the psychologist to become a dragon.When he marched in the chamber where Maegrethe and the rest of the tribe had gathered,he was surrounded by his 36 classmates in a long procession of various dragonkind.This was a important request the dragons were asking of him,and they treated it as such.

Maegrethe popped the question as "we wish you to become a member of the tribe of Histh".Then she explained what exactly membership meant.The class had not be taught about the transformational powers of the Goddess Histh.As she sketched out the english words in the sand before her she described the benefits of dragonhood .long lifespan, flight,bonding through the common language,an opportunity to explore a whole new field of psychology.She also described some of the obvious drawbacks such as loss of human relations,primal dragon urges,loss of use of human technology.Since they were trying to do a sales job on the human they made sure the benefits outweighed the costs.They also pointed out that the 36 dragonets were eager for him to shed his human skin and if worse came to worse,would force the issue.His alternative to being a dragon was to live as a human for the next 60 odd years cooped up in a cave .The dragons of Histh could wait,60 years was just a blink of the eye to some of the dragons present in that group.

The human was led back to his chambers and allowed to think things over for the rest of the winter.Halfway through his imprisonment he decided that life sucked and walking around as a big scaly reptile beat being cooped up as a prisoner for the next 60 years.He requested that the deed be done and was surprised when the tribe refused his request.

The dragons of Histh had several reasons for denying his request. The most important one was that they wanted his transformation to be a joyous event.They knew that winter was as not as good a time to be reborn as in the spring.Becoming a dragon just because it was a better fate then imprisonment was not exactly what they had planned on.They also knew that in the cold winter months they probably appeared as slow dim witted sluggish reptiles to him as the complex cooled.Being transformed into a slow sluggish lizard could hardly inspire joy in human.Come spring,they,d make much more nimble quick witted examples of dragonkind.A third reason was that they didn't need another dragon mouth to feed at this time.This winter was a cold and long one The supplies in the caverns were running down and reserve supplies at various farms owned by the tribe in Houghton Township were necessary for the livestock which were raised in the feedlots.If the human was tranformed during the winter,his nutritional needs would transform as well.It was safer to tide him over the winter as a human.

With the arrival of spring things changed.The 36 dragonets were filling out and were not the sluggish dormant reptiles they had been during the winter.They were dancing on their talons and wished to express to the sickly dragonet the joy of taking that first spring flight off of the sandhills overlooking Lake Erie.Life was good, the grass was growing and they wanted him up in the air with them.

Terre the wyrm dragoness was back in the picture as well.With the arrival of spring she was looking for a mate.She'd always had an eye out for the human and was getting impatient .Thus one fine spring when she was crouched in front of the human scratching Belgie love calls in the sand,the human rose,decided it's time.and scratched the words in the sand .Terre couldn't read english but she knew what he meant.She charged out into the tunnels and told in the common language to passerby "it's HATCHING TIME ".Soon dragons and dragonesses and dragonets were roaring and hissing and charging about the caverns spreading the word.

As the human Initiate walked down the steps into the sacred pool of Histh,the crowds of dragonkind looking on were a bit nervous.They had only told him what was needed to get him in that pool.What they hadn't told him were the risks involved in invoking the Goddess Histh.

They had given him the kindergarten version of the process.This involved pouring sacred potions into the pool and making various pleadings to the Goddess to grant the human candidate a favour.They would make sacrifices of lots of French Skye dragon wing feathers into the pool.Once the human stepped into the pool the Goddess would transform him into a magnificent scholarly French Skye dragon.His lifespan would suddenly increase to thousands of years and he could spend the rest of eternity soaring in the skies,nibbling pearls of wisdom out of the clouds.He would live happily ever after.What they didn't tell him was that things didn't always turn out as expected.

Histh is a living being,not a process.Although she would probably turn the candidate into a French Skye dragon,there was no law into the universe which said she had to.What the dragons didn't tell the human was that although she appeared as a magnificent 30 foot tall black dragoness,she had started life as a black adder snake who lucked in big time in the goddesshood lottery.Although she had come quite a way since her rebirth as a goddess,in her heart of hearts she was a snake looking for a mouse to eat.If she wanted to turn the human psychologist into her next meal,it was within her power to do so. Histh's existence was not in dispute,but her intentions were a mystery to anyone who encountered her.Sister Aloythe was still struggling to come up with a theological model to describe her new religion.

The sacrifice of feathers had been performed by the dragons who had the most impact on the soon to be French Skye dragon.The 36 dragonets were in the ring of dragons around the pool,as well as Terre and the other 4 members of the team who had abducted the human from Banff.Terre managed to flick a clipping of her talon into the pool.A few of the dragonets also managed to sneak in a few personal items of themselves into the pool.The dragonets wanted a playmate to emerge from that pool whilst Terre wouldn.t complain if a fine Belgie wyrm dragon emerged from that pool.

The human stepped down into the yellow liquid at the bottom of the pool and waited.And waited.And waited.He began to wonder if he'd just been sold London Bridge by the dragons.After several minutes he climbed back up the steps and headed towards Maegrethe.He planned to have words with her.Just as he reached the halfway point the cavern suddenly lit up with the light of a billion blazing suns.When the light died away he could see the dragons looking up at something behind him.Their jaws were open and not a hiss could be heard.

The human didn't want to turn around,he didn't want to know what aweinspiring sight had left the dragons roarless.But he turned around and got his first view of the Goddess Histh.

She was huge.She lay on her chest and still towered 100 feet above him.From the chest forward she was all black dragoness,wings,red glowing eyes and forked tongue as long as a hydro pole.The human looked further along her length.Where her belly,hind legs and spiky tail should have been was the coiling undulating torso and tail of a gigantic black adder snake.Her body stretched out for miles behind her.The fact that the cavern WASN'T miles in diameter went through the humans candidate.He thought"it must be fun being a goddess".

If Histh had read his thoughts,she probably agreed with him.She was in a good mood except for one point which ticked her off.One wyrm dragoness wanted a wyrm mate,the dragonets wanted a dragonet playmate and most everyone else wanted a French Skye dragon,including the human applicant standing in front of her.What NOBODY wanted was a black adder snake.She decided to remedy that situation.

In front of her the human had noticed that the dragoness in front of him was staring directly at him.She was tapping a taloned paw on the floor beneath her .Then she yawned,began to glow,and dissappeared in a flash of light.

Sister Aloythe was busy doing a rewrite of official Histh theology in her mind.She'd spent the last few years thinking of the Goddess as a 30 foot tall dragoness,now she had to think of her as a miles long snake dragoness.She also noticed that Histh appeared bored and had YAWNED at her congregation.The Sister didn't know whether to be awestruck or annoyed.Being a dragoness wouldn't solve all of lifes mysteries.

The psychologist knew something was going on when he felt like he was being squeezed into a long thin shape.The dragons had advised him that the process would be painful.There was some pain,but mostly he felt squeezed .He lay on the ground while his torso began to swell up like an oval egg.Yet it felt like his torso was still being thinned and stretched out.The last sight he saw before he blanked out was his flesh flowing and crusting and going white in colour.

When he recovered,the first sight he saw was a spiky tail tapping gently tapping the ground beside his head.His forked tongue was flickering in and out and detecting the scent of a dragoness in heat. He was startled when the dragoness Terre suddenly appeared beside him and as he lurched up on his hind legs and shouted out the question "what the $*&$#@ is going on",what emerged from his mouth was not human words but a nice healthy dragon roar.

Over the next few days Jenthe pieced together what had happenned after he had blacked out.Apparently Histh decided to chuck the rule book out the window.Everyone in the Initiation cavern got a bit of what they wanted,though not all.The watching crowd watched on as the human's body transformed into a dragon egg.For a few minutes they could hear the sounds of squelching tissue and bending snapping bones. A few minutes of silence were followed by a tapping noise from inside the egg.The 36 dragonets slowly creeped forward,but stopped when the egg shell broke open and the head of a large black adder snake emergd. Jenthe made a magnificent black adder snake.Histh has a soft spot for snakes,and she made sure that Jenthe was a magnificent example of snakehood.The dragons had expected a dragon and just stood there. Sister Aloythe looked upon this beautiful SNAKE and was wondering if she'd have to rewrite the theology of Histh completely.

it was Terre the wyrm who first noticed that the black adder snake wasn't doing snakelike things.He just lay there coiled beside his egg,head and neck in the air and desperately scenting the air with his tongue and swinging his head about as if looking for something.He reminded her of a dragonet searching for his mother.She took a leap of faith that if she couldn't be his mate,she'd be his mother.She ran up to him and he bonded to her.She was MOTHER as far as this snake dragonet was concerned.

The 36 dragonets now advanced forward more boldly.This wasn't the playmate they had expected,but he still had the scent of the sickly dragonet,and he had certainly shed his human skin.They gathered around Jenthe while his transformation continued.His body began to quiver and swell.He hissed in pain as his snake body began to reform itself into that of a dragon.When the process was complete,he had the normal spiky tail of a Histh dragon,the strong muscular jumping legs of a wyrm,the torso and feathered wings of a French Skye dragon, the muscled striking neck of a wyrm and the head of a black adder snake.The question was,what kind of mind and brain was housed in that black adder skull

Terre crouched near the newborn dragon.He was a full sized male with amber slitted eyes in his snake head.He didn't have the teeth of a dragon,but looked like he'd be swallowing his meals whole like a snake.He hissed softly and for half an hour thats the only sound he emitted.Then suddenly he lurched up on his hind legs,stretched out his neck and bellowed out a suprised roar.Jenthe was awake.

The first thing Jenthe did after uttering his first roar was to lose his balance and to topple back to the floor.Terre and the 36 dragonets had been advised that this would probably happen and swung their tails forward and thrust up on their hind legs,placing their bodies just underneath the newborn dragon's body so that they, and not Jenthe's body ,impacted with the floor.There were a few squeals of pain as their little bodies thumped hard on the stone floor

Jenthe began to twitch and quiver as muscles all over his body went into spasms.The dragons were not worried about this sight.The human psychologist's form had gone through a metaphorical meatgrinder when it was reformed.New organs and muscles had formed.other human and snake organs and nervous systems had been rerouted or short circuited. His mind,which was used to dealing with 2 arms and 2 legs,now had to deal with a body consisting of 4 legs,2 wings and a tail.Nerves which had given facial expression to his human face had ceased to exist while new nerves were prepared to unsheath his venom fangs and talons hidden within his paws.His venom glands were already swelling up with venom and oil glands were already secreting oils to waterproof his feathers.There were probably a lot of stray signals bouncing around in that new dragon body,as well as rapidly fluctuating levels of hormones .

The dragons of Histh knew that it would take days,if not weeks for his body to steady on an even keel.The job of the ring of dragons who had brought him into dragonhood was now to help him get on his legs.The dragonets and the wyrm Terre gently lowered his body onto the floor and prepared for the final part of the initiation.

Jenthe's human name was now irrelevant.That human name meant nothing to dragonkind,and if Jenthe tried to utter it,all that would have escaped from his maw would be a series of roars,hisses, squeals ,whines and growls.

It was time for him to be named in the common language.The naming of a newborn dragonet is normally done by the parents and a dragon name consists of three parts 1)the dragonets tribe 2)the dragonets appearance or behaviour 3)what the parents hope their child will grow up to be or the kind of inner essence they think the dragonet has.Since the dragon name is in the common language,a dragon name is a combination of body displays,vocalizations and body odors.It is definitely a name a human could understand.

Greta's true dragon name,the one the rest of dragonkind recognizes her by,is WYRM QUIET LITTLE FEATHERED HUNTRESS.Although she hasn't got a single feather on her body,her name indicates how she entered the world 5000 years ago and how her parents hoped she would exit it in the distant future.They hoped the quiet little dragonet who emerged from her egg 5000 years ago would mature into a smart deadly carnivore.

Although the naming of the 36 dragonets the previous year had been a private affair between parents and hatchlings,the initiation of the human psychologist into dragonhood had wider implications for the tribe of Histh.They had plans for the newborn dragon,and had invited a representative from the tribe of French Skye dragons over to represent the rest of dragonkind at the ceremony.The dragons of are the newcomers compared to the Old Boys Club of the other dragon races.They wanted their new dragon psychologist to do more then just treat crazy Histh dragons.They had already mapped out a academic career for him which would have involved him studying dragonkind under the tutelage of the French Skye dragon tribe.

They had already chosen a appropriate suitable dragon name for the newborn dragon.Since there was a bit of diplomacy involved,the SKye dragon was being allowed to partake in Jenthe's dragon naming..

The dragons of Histh gathered around Jenthe,who still lay twitching on the floor and totally out of it.The outer ring of dragons consisted of the spectators.The inner ring consisted of Maegrethe,the Skye dragon representative ,a symbolic "mother" dragoness, Sister Aloythe and a that feathered little dragoness from the group of 36 dragonets.Each member of the inner ring would name this new dragon.Convention dictated that they each one component of the dragon name in the common language.

Maegrethe started by moving to the front of Jenthe and displaying the common language for the tribe he was joining"HISTH".The representative for the rest of dragonkind then moved up beside her and displayed the symbol for the tribe that was about to make Jenthe an honourary member "SKYE".The symbolic mother knew that Terre had her sights set on this new dragon,so she made the display for the component "WYRM".Back in the crowds Terre drew in a appreciative hiss. Sister Aloythe had decided that the little dragoness ought to display the last two components of the dragon name.She had told the dragoness that the new dragon would be a "FEATHERED WITCH" dragon,and as she led the dragonet up beside the other 3 dragons and dragonesses, this is what she thought the child would name Jenthe.

The little dragoness stood there thinking things over for a few seconds.She wondered how the adults could possibly ignore the new dragons head.He had the head of a black adder snake.He was definitely not a feathered witch dragon in her eyes.She then repeated the first three components of his dragon name and then spread her feathered wings wide,coiled back her neck and struck her head forward with fangs exposed as she hissed.She named him.The new dragon would henceforth be known to dragonkind as HISTH SKYE WYRM FEATHERED SNAKE. THe other 4 namers gave her the look,but as they looked at that snake head mounted on a dragon body they had to agree she'd gotten it right.

The dragons of Histh now did what comes naturally for dragonkind. They all raised their heads and roared,squealed,whined and hissed away for several minutes as they welcomed a new member into the tribe.

Now the the ceremony was over the tribe carried Jenthe back to his own chambers as quickly as possible.Dragon health care is primitve and they could do little more for him then cover his shivering body with sheepskins,force water and food down his throat and wait by his side till the various systems in his mind and metabolism balanced out. They didn't worry about him dying on them.Something told them that the Goddess Histh wouldn't let her latest subject just drop dead on her. Even if Histh couldn.t be counted on,they'd learned that dragon and serpente bodies could take a lot of punishment.

Whilst they waited for him to recover they used the spare time to poke and probe at him.It was always nice to know what surprises Histh had hidden away in her latest subject.The only surprise they came upon,besides his lack of dragon dentition and his snake skull,lay in the base of his tail.His tail was swollen and tender at the base . After poking and probing they discovered that he had a secondary venom gland sited in his tail.An old dragon shoved his paws through Jenthe's cloacal slit and confirmed that the new dragon was fully functional.

When Jenthe came to his senses 3 days later,he found that Terre the wyrm was pouring water over his forelimbs to cool them.When she realized that he was awake,she laid the drum on the floor,stood where he could see her, and said in a series of gracefull body movements "hello HISTH SKYE WYRM FEATHERED SNAKE,I'm WYRM PROUD WITCH DRAGONESS"

There once was a Nederlandse wyrm named Begothe,and she had two sorrows and one joy. Her sorrows were her industrialist husband Ida King and her lawyer stepson Winde King. Her joy was her stepdaughter Mary King.

Begothe was a natural born dragoness. She was hatched shortly after the end of the Great Massacre in !4th century Europe. Most of dragonkind had been wiped out and there was discussions amongst the survivors of a large migration to the New World. Her parents decided it was time to leave the Nederlandse.They'd had enough of watching their offspring being skewered at the ends of a lance and having their heads impaled on spikes beside castle gates.

The main thing Begothe remembered about the transatlantic migration was the vastness of it. On the ocean surface swept forth sea serpents, whilst in the sky patrols of French Skye dragons kept a lookout for nearby human ships.Begothe and her 5 siblings rode piggyback on the backs of the sea serpents, and howled in terror as their playful mounts kept dunking them in the water.

As the eldest of dragonkind,it was up to the Serpente tribe to decide where the new colony would be located. They passed up on the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario. The migrants passed into Lake Erie and travelled beside it's north shore. Just as they all passed Long Point the serpentes started hissing and roaring. Their young slid off the backs of sea serpents and swam with their parents to the shore. The tribe of Serpente had made it's decision. The land of milk and honey for dragonkind was sited in a area which would later be called Norfolk County, Ontario.

The first few centuries were good. Vast stands of forest provided both shelter and teemed with prey. The sea serpents had discovered a natural underwater passage leading to a underground cavern just west of Long Point. The serpentes and sea serpentes raised their young there The French Skye dragons set up aeries on top of large sand hills overlooking Lake Erie. Other dragonkind lived in caves, ravines and secluded places in the region. What humans did live in the area worshipped than dragons as Nature Gods and there was a peaceful coexistence between dragonkind and mankind.

In the late 18th century a unique tribe of dragons arrived from the old world. Their members consisted of humans who had been transformed into dragons by a deity named Histh.They were not natural born dragons, but were welcomed into the colony nevertheless. They set up their lairs and dwellings in the Carolinian forests in the west end of Norfolk County. For all ,life was good.

That all changed in the 19th century. Human settlers arrived in the region and began decimating the prey populations as well as the stands of forest. The waters of Lake Erie became polluted and the sandy cliffs began to erode into the lake. There were fewer mating and fewer hatchings.Serpentes and sea serpentes tried to adapt to the changing conditions by sharing their prey and raising one another?s offspring. The dragons of Histh found themselves on an increasingly desolated sand desert in Houghton Township. They gave up on the surface world and retreated to subterranean caverns which they dug under the sand plains. The rest of dragonkind retreated to one of the last undisturbed stands of forest and ravines just north of Long Point It looked like dragonkind was about to be wiped out in the New World.

The Kings arrived.Mr Ida King was an American industrialist who had set up an empire in the City of Erie, on the south shores of Lake Erie. He looked upon all that shorefront, land and forest on the north side as the ingredients for a large population centre with factories and workers housing. He drew up plans to eradicate the forest and use the lumber to build his factories and houses. Along the shore wharves,smelters,and other signs of industrialization soon sprang up. His son Winde was the financier of the family. He often travelled by steamboat across the lake to do business in Erie for his father. Mary King was both the family favourite and the family failure. Her father and brother loved her, and often showed her the plans for the latest expansion. She was a failure in the sense that she didn't have the ruthless drive of her family. She had accepted that her lot in life was to go to a boarding school, get married and be a faithful housewife for the rest of her life. She just didn't have the King spirit. The year was 1899.

Begothe was crouched down in her ravine, staring at the silvery swirls of mercury waste which had just polluted her water source. Off in the distance she could hear the steam engine of a King sawmill cutting up more of her forest. On the other side she could scent cattle from a King farm which was encroaching on her territory. She hadn?t had a kill in days and her wings were dusty from all the dust storms sweeping in from the west end.

Her parents had told her of the Great Massacre, when dragonkind had reacted to encroaching European civilization by trying to defend shrinking territories by tooth and claw. The end result had been the eradication of most dragons in Europe. As she looked down upon her big scaly body she thought? there must be a better way".She took a second look at her body and realized the answer was under her snout. She would transform herself into a human, work her way into the King family and work from the inside to save dragonkind.Knowing that the dragons of Histh had been transformed from humans into dragons, she figured they might know how to turn a dragoness into a woman. After travelling to their underground cavern complex sited beneath Cultus Creek, she asked them if they could help her. They couldn?t, their magic wasn't that powerful. They did know of a French Skye dragon living near Long Point who might have the answer she sought. The Skye dragon did possess a spell and potion which could transform her. He told her some of it's properties .It would turn her into a human, but her wyrmhood would try to revert her to her proper dragon form. An interesting side effect was that it would transform any human it was used on into a wyrm.

She swallowed the potion and performed the required dance spell near the King family house. There was no pain and she merely felt like she was being squeezed into a smaller form. Whilst she looked over her new body she noticed that her fingernails and toenails seemed a little longer then she'd expected. Her eyelids refused to close and muscles on her back throbbed and twitched, as if trying to unfurl her nonexistent wings. Her wyrmhood was leaving it's mark on her new form.

She walked up to the King house and knocked on the door.Mr Ida King opened it and stood there frozen in shock.Begothe was stark naked As dragonkind,she had no use for clothing, and it had never occurred to her that she'd need clothing as a human. After a few seconds of stunned silence Ida King fetched a robe and clothed her. He then led this strange woman into his house.

Begothe was a looker and Mr Ida King soon fell in love with her. Winde King didn't like her, she was a little too cold and reptilian in her movements for his liking. As the only other woman in the house, Mary King soon bonded to her and told her secrets she couldn't tell to the two men.Begothe quickly figured out that Mary King wished to do something with her life, but had accepted her lot in life as a failure.

Begothe tried to involve herself in Ida King's business affairs, but soon discovered that he considered her place to be in the kitchen, not the boardroom.

The turning point came in the summer of 1901.Mary King had made a half hearted attempt to interest herself in her fathers business affairs. Sharp words were said that night and Mary fled to her room. Ida told his new wife Begothe that he intended to ship off Mary to a boarding school. As a King, Mary was a failure.Begothe kept her tongue, but decided that maybe what Mary King needed was a much bigger change in lifestyle. She was doomed as a human, but perhaps as a dragoness she'd get a chance to prove her worth. The next day Begothe made contact with the French Skye dragon. She asked him to position himself near the King house that night. A new wyrm was about to be born and would need his quidance.He agreed to the request.

Begothe obtained more of the transforming potion and when an opportunity arose, slipped it into Mary's glass of milk, which Mary drank at night.Begothe waited till all the Kings were asleep, then she slipped into the forest. She slipped out her human clothing and performed the dance of Transformation. Raising her hands to the moon, she hissed and she howled. Her bones began to reform into those of a wyrm,and it was sheer willpower that prevented her from shedding her human form. Her torso and neck tripled in length and she writhed and coiled as she pleaded for the dragon deities to grant her this favour. She then stopped, willed herself back into a proper human form, put her clothes back on. As she entered Ida King's bedroom, she could hear tossing and turning coming from Mary Kings bedroom. The gods had heard her.

Mary felt feverish and tossed and turned under her bed covers. Her insides felt like jelly, and her head felt like a balloon. Then slowly her body began to swell and her nightclothes began to stretch, tear and fall off. She cast aside the covers and placed her feet on the floor. She heard a clack, and looking beyond her swollen belly, saw claws thrusting from beneath her toenails. There was the sound of tearing flesh as her fingers shrivelled and reformed into 4 long talons. She staggered out of bed and down the stairs and out of the house. She ran on all fours to a nearby grain silo towering beside a barn. Her body lengthened, her back grew scaly and a tail as long and twisted as a garden path sprouted from her spine. Strips of human flesh tore off her back as a new pair of bats wings emerged .Her clawed forelegs scratched the silo as her torso kept lengthening. A long forked tongue as long as her fathers arm emerged from her maw and smeared gobs of saliva on the cement wall in front of her.

The transformation complete, Mary swivelled her head and found she was looking down on the enormous body of a flying lizard. Her hind legs were enormous meaty things, and her forked tongue kept sliding over a pair of long fangs folded on top of a swollen bag of tissue inside her mouth. She thought My god, I?m a dragon".At the same time her body coiled and moved to the beat of her thoughts. Her tail wiggled and struck at the ground and a variety of whines, squeals and grunts emerged from her maw. She heard footsteps behind her and whirled around to face the intruder.

He was another reptile, but with a much thinner body than her own. He had feathered wings and walked on all fours. He stopped and his body made the same kinds of movements and sounds she had made seconds before. Although he uttered no words, she saw that she could read his body language. He had just said something akin to "no my dear, you are actually a Wyrm Dragoness".He then flung a powder in her face and she blacked out. When she reawakened, she was in a cave overlooking the Lake Erie beaches at Long Point. She was surrounded by several dragons in various shapes and sizes. The feathered reptile stood on her chest, and was nudging at the folds of her flesh with his claws. He explained that he was a Skye dragon, and that he was checking out her health. He hadn't wanted her making a commotion near the barn and had sedated her/His companions had then carried her limp body to his lair for observation.

Over the next several months Skye dragon introduced her to the rest of the colony. He explained the common language, showed her the caverns of Histh and generally got her back on her four legs. With time she restablished contact with Begothe and kept track of her father and brother by this contact. She began reading sacred tablets and learned of other customs of dragonkind.She learned how to be a dragoness and started courting handsome males of the Histh tribe.

She also became an environmental terrorist. She discovered that much of the pollutants from King factories could lead to horrifying results. A mating pair of serpentes had set up a nest near a factory. Being serpentes ,the pair were unaware of gentics,chromosome damage etc.All they knew was that food was plentiful at this site and the lair was warm with a stream running in front of the entrance. Their eggs were about to hatch and she was invited to watch the first serpente hatching in a decade. The lair was crowded with a excited crowd of serpentes and dragonesses. The parents stood beside the clutch of 6 eggs, eager to welcome their young into the world. What emerged from those 6 eggs was not serpente.It was not even dragonkind.The 6 things squelched and plopped down onto the floor, a ring of 6 tentacles being where the head should be. The legs consisted of 4 stubby tubes, with a toothed orifice at the ends. The tails were normal enought,but along the spiny back of the torso ran a row of pairs of venom fangs, jerking away as they sprayed out geysers of venom into the air. The parents went mad. The mother uttered a whining squeal before she began slashing at her cloacae slit with her talons. The father roared, and then launched into his offspring with claw and fang. When the bloodbath was over the father lay dead from all the venom wounds he had suffered whilst the mother was going into shock. All 6 things were dead as well. Mary King found her purpose in life.

First Mary went mad, then Mary went bad. She declared total war on the King empire. With her own knowledge of her father's business as well as snippets of information Begothe was feeding back to dragonkind ,Mary soon learned how the enemy was positioned. She discovered that although her short stocky muscled wyrm body was not graceful, it was a wonderful instrument of destruction. She learned that a good swift kick of her hind legs easily punched holes in wooden hulls. King Company barges and steamers began sinking with alarming regularity. She found that hauling around 300 pound boulders and dropping them in spillways and mill races started having an impact on factory production. Flying around at night dropping 50 pound rocks on top of sawmill boilers usually resulted in a satisfying BOOM.

After 2 years she got her wish. The King Company went bankrupt. There was just one final issue to resolve. Now that dragonkind had been saved,Begothe felt it was time to bow out of the human race. Before she did so she had one final message for Mary and the Skye dragon. Ida King and his son were devastated by both the disappearance of Mary and the destruction of their empire. She had told them if they showed at Cultus Heugh at midnight 7 days hence, one wish might be granted. Mary might reappear.Begothe then left the King household for the last time. She went into a secluded ravine and cast off her human clothes and human form. She stretched out her wings and bellowed out a lusty dragon roar for the first time in nearly 5 years. It felt GGGRREEAAATTT.

Mary asked her Skye dragon mentor what Begothe's message meant. He explained that the effects of the potion and spell which has transformed her into a dragon could be undone on the night of the harvest moon, That was 7 days hence. If she willed to be human again, the dragon gods would grant the favour. If she wished to be dragon, performing the transformation dance bound her permanently in her dragon form. The choice was hers, but she'd only get one chance. The dragon deities wouldn't tolerate wishy washy behaviour.

Seven days later Mary still hadn't made up her mind. She was crouched on a tall rock at Cultus Heugh.Her tail had wrapped itself thrice around the base of the rock and was gently tapping away. To the left she could see two far distant specks slowly moving through a ravine. The wind brought their scent to her and she knew she had to make the decision quickly. There was no sight or scent of dragonkind anywhere.Begothe and Skye had indicated this was her decision. To the left lay a pampered human existence and a family which needed her ,whilst to the right lay a life as a endangered night hunter and a family which needed her. Then she heard it, the lonely cry of a Lake Erie steamer rounding the tip of Long Point. It sounded like the cry of a serpente mother who had lost her soul. Mary made up her mind. She raised her claws to the moon and she hissed and she howled as her body began to twist and coil to the beat of her dragon heart.

               The sea serpents answered.

Histh was having one of her down days.She'd just lost one of her mouse followers to a Victor mousetrap.After spending nearly 7000 years of rescuing rats,mice,foxes and other vermin the mousetrap goddess was heartily sick and tired of mice who were too stupid to stay away from traps.Flitting about the world 24 hours a day,365 days a year was starting to have an effect on her.She needed a break,she needed an understanding shoulder to cry on.Although she was nigh well omnipotent,she was just a stupid black adder snake as far as the other deities were concerned.If it hadn,t been for her understanding and patient adoptive parents,being a dragon goddess would bea lonely existence.She tried to please them,she really tried.But gaining the wisdom of the other gods was always an uphill battle for Histh.Over 7000 years she had advanced in intelligence from that of a snake to that of a dog.Heck,99% of her transformed human servants were smarter than she was.Like a dog trying to please it's master she tried to please both the mortal beings who depended on her and the celestial beings whom she called family.Everyone wanted something,For 7000 years she'd listened to the equivalent of "Histh can i have this,Histh can i have that".She just wished that for once someone would listen to what she wanted.She wanted an equal,someone whom she could share her feelings.Instead the gods scorned her whilst her dragon servants usually fell trembling to their scutes and twitched and whined when she revealled herselves to them.How could the Goddess Histh express herself to dragons who were tonguetied.She dearly wished one of them would just get up of the floor,knock her on the shoulders and ask her if she was well.

Sister Aloythe had just created another Sacred Book of Histh. She had made the pages from marsh grass which had been dipped in the Sacred Pool of Histh.After painstakingly writing a single word on each page,she had the latest class of dragonets scribble in their pictogram doodles of the common dragon language .One little feather winged dragonet had doodled a stick figure picture of the Goddess standing all by herself on one corner of the page whilst on the opposite corner she had drawn a crowd of little stick figures of dragonkind,all wiggling and flapping their wings at one another.The figure of Histh was not wiggling or flapping her wings.That stick figure looked majestically gloriously lonely.As the little dragonet turned away from her work to ask Sister Aloythe a question the yellowed paper grew gently warm and changed to a reddish tint for a few seconds.When the dragonet returned to her work it was again cool yellow.At the end of the lesson all the dragonets turned in the pages they had doodled on.They placed them on the stone bench beside the feeding trough.Tomorrow Sister Aloythe would teach them how to bind the pages together.But for today she just left the loose stack on the bench.

Later that night a gentle wind arose in the chamber.The pages of the Sacred Book began to stir and flutter off the bench.One by one the pages fell to the floor until the page with the picture of the lonely Goddess was uncovered.The wind picked up and the one page began to toss and turn.The wind howled,and the page flew with it out of the chamber,out of the tunnels and finally out of the caverns of the Tribe of Histh.It flew with the wind and was finally deposited in a soybean field near Fairground.Dragon magic was afoot that night.

Histh was scurrying through the undergrowth of the Hartmann farm. She had taken on the form of a mother mouse and was carrying some orphaned mouslings to a safer location.It was time for fall ploughing and the nest the mice had spent the last week in was in danger of being ploughed into the ground.Normally she avoided contact with the farmer and his equipment but this time she was unlucky.As she was crossing the plough furrow to return to the endangered nest,she found herself looking upon a huge machine which from her mousely perspective towered hundreds of mouselengths above her and which was racing along the furrow ,ready to crush her.In the panic of the moment she did what any mouse would do.She ran along the furrow,trying to avoid being squashed.

The fellow doing the ploughing was named Joe Hartmann,and besides being a parttime farmer he also ran a tractor dealership at Frogmore. He 'd spent several hours ploughing the fields so far and had seen numerous mice and moles fall into the furrow from the trails he was ploughing over.If he had to stop the tractor for every rodent who blundered into the path of his tractor tires it would be a long day indeed.Usually when he saw the critters make their life or death run he just eased up on the throttle a little.That gave the rodents a few more seconds to escape.As he stared ahead he saw another mouse make her run along the furrow.He slowed down but she suddenly bolted towards his tractor.The tires rolled forward and she vanished from his sight.He looked back and there she was,running just ahead of the plough,ready to be squashed.He decided"Okay,if she's managed to survive thus far maybe she deserves a second chance.He stopped the tractor and stepped off it's drawbar onto the ground.The plough was an old 2 furrow trip plough and the mouse was dashing to and fro between it and the rear tires of the Mccormick WD 6 tractor.He bent over to pick up the mouse so he could toss her into the field.As he held her by her tail she bit him in the finger.Joe felt the sharp pinprick of pain and quickly tossed the mouse back into the furrow."If that's the way you want it,then get squished".He got back on the tractor,got her into 2nd gear and resumed ploughing.He looked back and had a satisfied smirk on his face as he watched the terrified mouse fall under the steel wheels of the plough.With a satisfying compression and hump,the plough turned over a slice of earth and buried the squashed dead mouse The tractor and plough rumbled off into the distance and for a minute there was only silence where the mouse lay buried.

The earth began to rise and fall aside as something underneath it began to grow and change form.First the creature appeared as a mouse the size of a dog.Then as it's fur sank into it's flesh and as scales rippled over it's body it appeared as a snake the thickness of a diesel fuel tank and the length of a greenhouse.Finally,her transformation complete,The Goddess Histh appeared in her true form as a black dragoness the size of a small hill.After shaking the dirt from her wings and body,she advanced on all fours toward the distant tractor at the end of the field.Her lips were pulled back to reveal her sharp teeth and her eyes glowed red.She was one annoyed goddess and had some issues she intended to settle with that human.

As Joe Hartmann swung the equipment around for another run he noticed an angry huge black dragon slowly walking towards him.After a few seconds of stunned disbelief he put on the brakes,pushed down on the clutch and put the old tractor into neutral.He then slowly stepped down on the ground and stared at the creature slowly padding it's way towards him.it finally occurred to him"you're in BIG trouble" He ran.He bolted across the windstrip at the end of the field and ran through his neighbours corn field.Halfway across he turned his head to look behind him.There was no sign of the beast.BAM,he ran into a brick wall and fell onto his back.He looked up into the sky and saw the dragon towering above him.

Histh didn't squish him.She gently caressed him with her paws,being careful to retract her talons.She wanted this particular human all for herself.As her jaws opened wide in a snarl,she thought "lets see how you like being one of my servants HUMAN "

The little dragonet butted her snout into her mother's udder again.The milk flowed once again and as she tugged on her mother's teat,she noticed that her brother and sister were coming over for their feeding.As the two arrivals positioned themselves under a teat, mother swung over her neck to ensure that the dragonets who had just come over were her own.As the young dragonet resumed the important task of squirting milk down her throat,her lizard tail wiggled and her black feathered wings fluttered.Mother noticed this and extended a long forked tongue to wipe off some of the milk which was spilling out between her childs daggerlike teeth.Mother squealed to reassure her offspring,and then returned to feeding on the mix of meat and cornmeal which lay in front of her.

The little dragonet pulled back and looked at the 4rth teat on mother.She had accidently bitten it off a few days ago,and it was already as good as new.Her species possessed remarkeable regenerative powers,as the dragonet could well atest to.As she resumed sucking on the teat she mused on the fact that only two weeks earlier she had been a lab researcher at King Genetics,located at Cultus Creek.She had been named Bart Underhill,and she was only now beginning to understand why she was squatting on her hind legs,feeding her rapidly growing Fafnir Dragoness body,rather then looking through a microscope at tissue cultures at the lab.

It had all begun in a land far away and long long ago.The dragons who had rescued her and her kin from the pack marn had repeated the tale many a time as she prepared to coil up and nap beside mother. Unlike her siblings,she discovered that she still understood many of the complex technical language mother and their dragon rescuers communicated to one another.

Near the final days of the Great Massacre it had become obvious to dragonkind in the Nederlanse that their race stood a good chance of being wiped off the face of the earth.Humans were simply better at war than dragons were.Dragons began discussing a new idea-if we can't beat humans,why don't we turn the human race into dragons.One united race was better than two warring races.Dragons knew that they couldn't become humans,but that there were many methods to transform humans into dragons.One of these methods had been discovered by a ancient dwarf named Fafnir.He had cut himself on a hoard of contaminated gold he had come across,and within a week had been transformed into a small sized reptillian creature by the same name.Although he had later been killed,the bog plant which had contaminated the gold still existed .Some of it had drifted across the Atlantic Ocean and had reestablished itself in South America.Native humans over in S America had used the plant to create creatures called kothogas,which terrorized the jungles,biting off heads and eating human brains.

When dragonkind first explored to New World around 300Ad they were overjoyed when they first encountered this species of New World dragon.After exploring 10's of millions of square miles,they had encountered scores of prey animals and humans,but nary a dragon or serpent.There were plenty of reptiles,but nothing which possessed the spark of intelligence.It looked like the New World was devoid of dragonkind.

Greta's father had been one of the explorers sent out on one of those expeditions.It had been a long flight with nothing to do except stare at endless jungle.He picked up a scent like none he had ever smelled before.It was not human and it was not animal.His heart began to pound.Could it be the scent of dragonkind.The scent was just barely recognizeable as that of a dragon.He followed the scent and came upon a clearing where a thing was crouched over a dead human.

As the explorer hovered above the native dragon,he detected a familiar scent which told him that the native was a female.Her massively swollen belly told him she was about to lay her eggs,yet her bony chest and legs told him she was malnourished.The savagery which which she tore into her meal suggested it had been many a day since her last meal.As she tore away at the meat,she happily whined away.The explorer noted her basic features for future reporting to the scholars of Skye.She was about 9 feet long from the tip of her tail to the end of her mandibles.Her lower torso was that of a lizard whilst her upper body and forelegs were vaguely human shaped.Her neck was of medium length but was well muscled.Her head was black and blunt ,but a wicked row of teeth showed she was no herbivore.Her body had all the camaflouge patterns of a jungle dweller,and as she whined her colouration seemed to fluctate in rythm to the pleasure she obviously felt.

She smelt and looked like dragonkind,so the explorer decided to approach as such.The wyrm came down heavily in front of her and as he landed he stretched out his wings,extended his tail and neck high in the air and bellowed away.The response he expected from the female was a answering roar and a similar display of her body.

The female noticed the wyrm.he towered 20 feet above her and was not something she could handle.She fell heavily to her side and scrambled away from her meal.She slowly backed up,her belly a mass of pain and terrified hisses coming from her mouth.

The wyrm realized something was going wrong and tried to reassure the native.In the common language he tried to tell her that she was safe and that he had no interest in seizing her food.The native gave no indication she understood him and continued to back into the jungle.As she turned around to flee she gave a squeal of pain,her belly convulsed and she fled from his sight.The wyrm was not pleased. Not only had he botched up first contact but may also have caused her eggs to break within her.Her egg laying could kill her rather then bring her joy.He lowered himself close to the ground and crawled into the jungle after her.

He found her several hundred dragonlengths into the jungle.She had crawled under some fallen logs and was lying on her back,her cloacal slit stretched apart as she went into premature labour.She hissed as she noticed the wyrm approach her,but flight was no longer possible.Her whole body was focused on the act of giving birth.The wyrm had been hatched from a egg,and had never seen mammalian dragonkind before.He expected the female to lay eggs,and was confused when 4 slimy little lizards attached to wet fleshy cords slid out one after another from her slit.He could see her blood pumping through the cords into the cloaca of her young.Her young were about 1.5 ft long and looked like minature versions of their mother.He really was no expert on live bearing mammalian dragons but guessed her offspring would be better off if they were protected by some sort of shelter. Thus he positioned his body in a circle around the female and the hatchlings,and while he waited,observed .

The female had 4 swollen sacs near her groin,and the end of each sac was attached a teat.The wyrm had eaten enough cows to notice their udders.He quessed the natives sac and teats served a similar function.Thus he gently moved her 4 hatchlings near the teats and helped direct their mouths to the teats.Whilst he did this the native bent over her head and chewed through the cords.Then with a final heave of her belly she expelled afterbirth from her cloaca.

While the native tended to her young,the wyrm cleaned the afterbirth,mucous and plecenta from the area and stored them in a storage container he carried with him.There was no telling how useful some samples might prove to a future scholar or witch dragoness The wyrm then got back to a more proper first contact with the native. She didn't understand the common language,but by pantomine and picture in the dirt,the two slowly began to find a way of communicating.

The wyrm explorer learned that the native had once been human but had been transformed into her present shape by a potion which she had been forced to ingest by her tribemen.The wyrm though that her present form was a thing of beauty and told her so.She agreed with him but her new body had one major drawback.Without ingestion of human brains her kind suffered excruciating pain.Although she and her fellow dragonkind would have preferred to feast on wild animals,apparently there was no substitute for human tissue.

After a few days of resting up,the female crawled up onto the wyrms back whilst her offspring rode in netting the wyrm had slung beneath his bellyHe flew with his passengers to the mountain cave she directed him to.

As he landed he saw about a dozen native dragonkind peer nervously at him from surrounding boulders.It was only when they saw that he had returned one of their own along with 4 children that they came forward to greet him as a friend. After several months of observing the native dragons,along with collecting samples of the potion and ingredients which had transformed them,he returned to the Nederlandse.before he left the natives told him that they were on the verge of making a potion which would free them of their cannabalistic habits.They planned to leave after the spring thaws and seek a new life further north.When he asked them how he could find them again.they pointed to a northerly star and told him that his fellow dragons need only follow the star and they would meet again.

The samples were stored by the Skye tribe and sacred tablets were prepared of the experiences of the explorers.Over the centuries the explorations were forgotten as european dragons dealt with an increasingly hostile human population.Events were building up to the Great Massacre.

By the 14th century dragons had been at war with humans for 3 centuries.Although they had recruited human generals and soldiers into their race,the basic footsoldiers were the wyrms.They had no desire to wage war,they were hunters,not soldiers.Although the transformed humans roared and thumped their tails to get their troops to fight,it was a lost cause.In ever increasing waves,wyrms simply lost the will to live and lay motionless on the ground as humans roamed about,killing them at leisure.In the caves dragonesses and dragonets suffered the same illness and simply lay quietly in their lairs and died.By this means was the Great Massacre accomplished. Stressed out dragonkind simply lost the will to live and died as a result.

By the middle of the 14th century most of the dragons in the nederlandse had been killed off and other tribes suffered heavily as well.An ancient Skye dragon realized that the day could arrive when there would be no dragons left on earth.He knew that dragons had toyed with the notion of turning the entire human race into dragonkind. Humans were smart and their genetic contribution would greatly benefit the race of dragons.The old skye dragon realized that with the daily slaughters which were occuring,this idle dream of dragon kind might have to be embraced with a vengeance.he spent many a year studying means of human transformation and finally came upon the samples and sacred tablets from the encounter with New World dragons.When he learned that these natives had originally been human the pieces started coming together.

He discovered that the natives of the New World had the blood of Fafnir in them,who had been one of the mightiest dragons of them all. Fafnir had started as a tiny dwarfish human,yet when he had finnally been slain he had attained a size which made his nearest rival dragon seem like a pygmy in comparison.he had taken his secrets with him,but the dragon gods be willing,the skye dragon was determined to bring his kind back to life.he had all the pieces of the puzzle before him,now he just had to put it together.

The old skye dragon knew about Fafnir,heck everybody knew about Fafnir.Although he had started his dragonhood as a runtly little 6 foot transformed human lizard,something in his blood had made him grow and GRow and GROW!!!.By the time time he had died of old age at the age of 100,he was big enough to stretch his neck 200 feet below the entrance to his lair to take a drink of water from the river far below.Although he was ravenously hungry,nobody believed that his huge bulk was the result of metabolic processes alone.There had to be magic and a god or two involved in his creation.Contrary to popular belief,Siegfried did not kill Fafnir.Fafnir still had the aging proces of a human,and by the time he reached the ripe old age of 100 he was eager to shed his frail body for the quick lithe body of a newborn dragonet.Perhaps he got his wish.When Siegried came upon him Fafnir already lay dying and didn't even notice the sword which was thrust into him.

The old skye dragon had samples of Fafnir's scales and a 15 foot talon from one of his forepaws had a place of honor in a niche in the cave wall.When the skye dragon compared the relics of Fafnir to samples from the native dragons of the New World,he noticed that the scent was almost a perfect match,but almost.Something was missing.

The old skye dragon was currently on speaking terms with the falcon dragon god Skye,and visited him at his cavernous study in France.When Skye heard that the old dragon wanted to create a potion which would transform the human race into Fafnir like dragonkind,he was intriqued.This was a project that could really liven things up.He told the old skye dragon to wait there just a minute while he checked things out.He dissappeared wth a poof and reappeared 40 seconds later. He had travelled forwards and backwards in time,consulted with the other dragon deities and had found the answers.Skye told his companion to gather the following ingredients -a bit of Fafnir,a bit of the native dragoness,a feather of a crow,the tusk of an elephant ,the hoof of a cow and the wool of a lamb.One final ingredient added just to spice things up,the fire from a Cornish Flamespite.This last ingredient was from a shy reclusive kind of dragon which hid in old mines and workings.Although it.s size was small,it was a spectacular flame breather.

Skye didn't waste time with religious ceremony.He just chucked all the feathers,bones,scales and tissue into a stone trough.He threw'in some water and then gently lowered in the flame from the Flamespite.The flame didn't go out,but flicked and danced about underneath the surface of the water.Lastly Skye lowered a taloned paw into the water and unleashed his divine powers on the potion.The water turned blue,the flame swirled about and soon the stone trough was filled with a liquid with a kaleidascope of swirling blue,red ,orange and yellow colours.

Skye drained the liquid into a flask and handed it to the old dragon.he told him that if he wanted more all he had to do was add a drop of the potion to a basin of water and the water would be transformed into the potion.Skye told his friend that any human who ingested the potion would transform into a Fafnir Dragon,with a few changes.He'd adjusted the growth rate so that the new dragon would spend most of it;s life as a 20 to 30 footer dragon with the final spurt of growth only occurring in the last 100 years of life. The new dragon would have a normal dragon lifespan.Since Skye was the new dragons creator,it would have black feathered wings and it would have the same flamebreathing abilities of a Flamespite.He also gave the old skye dragon one final word of advice.Don't administer the potion just yet and be careful and sparing on how you use it.The other gods in the universe were nervous about the prospect of the human race entering dragonhood all in one blaze of glory.Better to choose your candidates one at a time over the centuries.Skye knew that the Great Migration would soon take place,and knew where the old skye dragon and the potion would soon end up.

The old skye dragon thus held off on his original plan,and for once followed his friend Skye's advice.When he clambered aboard the huge sea serpent which would carry him to the new world,he had left most of his goods back in his lair,but he took along a 15 foot talon and a flask with a swirling multicoloured liquid.

Centuries later,specifically the latter half of the 20th century, Mary King and her father and brother were visiting their old skye dragon friend at his lair near Long Point.Ida lay sleeping in a corner roaring softly as he slept,whilst Henry King sat sulking in another corner.he still hadn't forgiven Mary for tricking him into dragonhood decades earlier.Mary on the other hand was staring fascinated at a 15 foot talon which lay in a recess in the cave wall and a stone crock beside it,which had a multicoloured swirling liquid in it.

She asked the old skye dragon about the talon and the crock and he used the opportunity to tell her about Fafnir,the native dragons of the New World and finally about the potion.Mary kept glancing at that crock of potion and the old dragon was way ahead of her on that one. "Sorry my dear,it doesn't work on dragons.it's only effective on humans and you are definitely not human.You'll have to find some other way of growing your fingernails.I've tried the potion on myself and the only thing it does to a dragon is make you feel more chipper.it's an excellent spring tonic I've been to busy for the last few centuries with other projects to test it out .But i think the time may be ready for a test of it's effectiveness.Does anyone here have any suggestins about how we could use this stuff."

Henry King's ear slits opened wider .A new project.he had to learn more.He walked over to the pair of conversing dragons and soon the trio were busy setting plans for Project Fafnir.Down in the crner,old Ida King kept snoring away,his tail flicking away the annoying flys which kept landing on his snout. A few months later preparatins had been made.Tke King (1916) Corp Inc had found a disused underground cavern conveniently located on one of it's Norfolk County properties and had set up facilities for the test.Only a few trusted humans were in on this secret experiment.The humans tended to be King's,and they were well aware that great great grandfather was a big flying lizard.Thus they had pretty good idea of what they would be when they grew up.The cavern was about a thousand feet in diameter and was lined with electronics.All involved knew that there was a risk that the human administered the potion would not transform into a cute little dragon but a 600 foot tall extremely hungry,nasty brain eating cannabalistic flamebreathing dragon.If the dragon god Skye had mixed up the wrong batch of potion, the test subject would be doomed to a life confined to the cavern for the rest of his or her life.Huge stockpiles of frozen meat lay in a warehouse above the cavern to feed the newborn dragon .

The manager of this project was Eda King,a granddaughter of Henry King.She knew that sooner or later she would take the plunge into dragonesshood,and thus felt she would make the best test subject. If the experiment went wrong ,the new dragon could suffer a fate worse then death.She could,t impose impose a lifetime imprisonment as a pain racked raging beast on anyone,so she decided to administer the potion to herself.The old french dragon had given her one drop of the potion and had instructed her on it's administration.he also told her that if that drop got out of her hands and into the human world,it could cause all sorts of mischief.CAUTION was the operative word.

Thus on the day of the test,a few members of the King clan,both human and dragon,stood at the edges of the cavern and watched while Eda King strode to the centre of the cavern.She took off all her human clothes and attached medical sensors to all parts of her body. If things went wrong,they would need all the information they could get.Administration of the potion was easy enough.She took the glass vial with it's one drop of liqquid and dropped it in a paper cup of milk.She then broke the tiny vial and watched while the milk changed from white to streaks of blue.red.orange and yellow.She then swallowed the liquid and the tiny fragments of glass in it.She then ingested the paper cup in order to ingest any drops of potion which may have clung to it.Then she waited.

She didn't have to wait long.Her insides began to feel like they were melting and burning away.She doubled over in pain and groaned on the ground,her body writhing in the sand.Then the pain stopped and she felt normal.She looked at her body,her hands,they were still human.She was still human.What was going on.

The observers rushed up to her.They were just as confused as she was.The dragons told her that she had the scent of a dragon.The human assistants looked at their heat monitors and noticed a growing pinprick of heat where her heart was.Even more intriquing 2 tiny pinpricks of heat were showing up in her vagina where only minutes before there had been none.The image the scanners took of her body temperature showed up as swirling colours of cold blue and red and hotter colours of orange and yellow.

One thing everybody agreed to was that she was not the same person she had been minutes before.It looked like they would have to wait a little longer to see what she would become. For 10 days nothing more happened.The cavern had been prepared for a newborn dragon,not a nervous dusty and tired human test subject. Over the objections of the dragons,she said she was going to the restrooms in the warehouse above to freshen up,One of her sisters went with her and carried a panic button with her just in case Eda's dragonhood decided to make a appearance whilst she went to the can.It was a big long warehouse,and would conceal any surprises from the outside world.

As Eda and her sister Madalene entered the hallway leading to the washrooms.they heard a quiet pfft pfft and felt the prick of tranquilizer darts in their bodies.Madalene went out like a light but Eda managed to stay awake long enough to see Bartholomew Underhill rush up to her and felt the tight binding straps as he pinned her arms to her sides.

Now Bart was one of the researchers in the King Labs who was kept in the dark about their boss being a mythological creature called a dragon.He had heard enough quick snatches of conversation to know that Project Fafnir was into something would revolutionize the human race.He 'd heard bits here and there such as "immortality.invulnerable powerful" and thought Project Fafnir was about creating a super soldier or an antiaging drug.He knew that Eda King was the head of the project and when she suddenly vanished he quessed she was more than just the head of the project.All the other members of the project seemed to come and go as they pleased,but Eda had just vanished.He decided to pay a visit to Project Fafnir and help himself to it's secrets.He had entered the warehouse and was puzzling over where the secret entrance was to the project when the lid of a storage crate swung open and out stepped Eda and Madalene King .They headed down the hallway and Bart followed silently along.A look to make sure there were no witneses and two quick shots from his tranquiler gun put the two women out.

As he carried Eda's limp form back to his car he could hear tearing ripping sounds and the gurgling and plopping of rearranging organs from inside her body.He thought "oh oh,looks like i've got a super soldier here.Time for plan B.As he drove down Norfolks back roads Eda reawoke.She pleaded for him to return her to the warehouse immediately.Beside hearing assorted noises within her body,she started having flashbacks of squatting on a human and eating brain.She started feeling hungry.Eda quessed that in a very shory while she was going to be one dragoness.Although she didn't tell Bart what Project Fafnir was all about,she told him if he returned her to the warehouse,she and the rest of the staff would be more then happy to reveal all.(And they would have,just before they turned him into dragonkind,probably a mindless serpente).

Bart didn't belive her.he had a abondoned pack barn set up to house whatever secrets Eda King cared to reveal to him.he kept mentioning that word "super soldier"As Eda sat there with fresh memories of squatting over her human kill whilst she fed her"she thought "goddess help him if I transform into a 600 foot long brain eating cannibal.Eda was no longer worried about her own survival,her instincts told her that it was the humans who were in serious trouble.She was already starting to think of herself as a dragon.

Bart led her inside the barn and into a 14 foot tall cage. Here he chained her to iron anchors set in the cement floor.He had tranquilizer guns located nearby and figured he was ready for whatever wonders of science she was about to reveal to him.bart was thinking in terms of super soldiers.Basically a big well muscled human frame. he wasn't thinking about magic potions,dragons and dragon gods.

The first signs of Eda's transformation were her shortening legs.As they shrank she bent over in pain as a tail began to jut out of her spine.Her neck began to lengthen and as her skull reformed itself her teeth lengthened and become daggerlike.A series of chitinous plates formed on the top of her skull and scales began covering her skin.

The first thing Eda did after the process had finished was to utter a dragon roar.All that came out of her snout was a sickly wheezing squawk.She bent over her head to see what she had become and the sight wasn't reassuring.She noted her colouration on her lower torso and tail.Her toes had fused into two whilst her hands still bore 5 fingers.As she felt her face she realized that she resembled a B movie monster character.She heard a noise and looked forward.She could see Bart Underhill and he towered above her.The last thought she had before the tranquilizer took effect was that she was one sorry excuse for a dragon.

Bart was thinking that she made a sorry excuse for a Super Soldier.He had watched Eda transform from a 6 foot tall human into a lizard thing which was standing upright on it's hind legs and had a height of 3 feet.The thing was too busy checking itself out to notice him.He'd seen this type of creature before,and when he realized it had been in a horror movie about a brain eating devil god.he quickly reached for his tranquilizer gun.As the thing turned it's head toward him with it's mouthful of sharp teeth.he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

Once the creature stopped twitching Bart stepped inside the cage to examine his prize.He began to think of it as a her when he examined her lower belly.She had no breasts on her chest but had 4 teats surrounding her cloacal slit.A few measurements showed she was 7 feet long from the tip of her 2 foot tail to the edge of her snout.She had mandibles extending forward from her face and seemed to be a fusion of a human,a lizard and a beetle.He shown a light at her open slitted eyes.If the eyes were the windows to her soul,that soul was reptillian

As he grabbed her by the tail and dragged her to the centre of the cage,he noticed a thick yellowish liquid oozing from her teats. Being a former shepherd,Bart knew colustrum when he saw it.Apparently his lizard girl was pregnant and soon to give birth.

Bart sat on a stool and smoked a cigarette for several hours beside his lizard.he was trying to grasp a process which could transform a human into a reptile in a matter of minutes.Whilst he sat there musing over what to do next he felt a light tapping on his pant legs.Her tail was swaying to and fro and tapping against him. Something was seriously wrong,when he'd first sat down the tip of her tail had been 1 foot away.A quick use of a tape measure confirmed his suspicion.She was now 9 feet long and still growing.In 4 hours her body had grown 2 feet.It looked like Bart was going to get his Super Soldier after all.

Bart swung quickly into action.He started attaching medical sensors and intravenous tubes to her.He started pumping tranquilizer into her.Although the tranquiler seemed to slow down her growth,a check of her brain activity showed her brain was a beehive of activity Bart pulled away the cage.he quessed that a 14 foot square prison would soon be too small for her.He walked around the barn,looking for logging chains,jacks and hoists.He wanted to be prepared for anything. BooktheThree commentary

Book the Three (Dragons of Histh)

Navigation menu

Personal tools

Namespaces

Variants

Views

More

Search

Navigation

quick links

Tools