Inside other people's minds. Something only the Bond we share allows me to do. A peek into an alien, wonderful, intimate world that I can never get tired of. I want to lose myself in the minds of my girls, to share everything with them just as they do with me. I feel their warm thoughts, their inquisitive hums as they browse my memories, and so I do the same with them, feeling the boundless love of a true connection.
Crazy how the most fantastical thing about this fantastical land is not magic, nor angels or demons, or dragons. No. It's the fact that we can trust each other completely, sharing everything without fear or judgment.
◈◈◈
Zery watched Sol lift the huge bag with ease, leveraging the 60 Strength his current stats gave him. She wanted to grumble and complain about it, to tell him that she was more than strong enough to carry it herself, what with her draconic lineage and whatnot, but he flashed her a disarming smile that left her speechless. The bond allowed her to see beyond that smile, to peer at the reasoning behind the gesture, to see what the human thought and what made him tick.
Oh, I know what makes him tick alright, she thought. She carefully wove her magic, applying subtle changes to her clothes, which were made of raw abyssal mana that took the form of pearlescent scales and strips of firm yet comfortable, rubbery algae.
Looking at the results, she couldn't be more pleased with herself. But she wasn't going to go around flaunting her body, no no, she was going to keep to the back, and wait.
She didn't always use the bond either. Sometimes, I like the charm and mystery of not knowing, she admitted to herself. Sometimes, when Sol did something that left her utterly speechless, her chest felt hot and strange, like there were tiny things fluttering about in there, spreading energy and heat that flooded her mind and made her so wet with desire.
Fuck it. She didn't resist taking a peek. She glanced at Sol's mind, and his thoughts were surprisingly wholesome. He knew she could carry the bag, but her height would make it awkward.
Ah, right, she thought. She was so tall that she had to crouch down, the tunnels and the System control room's ceiling not high enough to accommodate all of her. Even while kneeling, her horns almost scraped against the ceiling and…
She blushed, her mind going back to when she was still bound by chains, with Sol standing in front of her. The memories were hers, but also his, in a growing pool of shared experiences that all of them could access, like the mana powering their magic. It was hard to tell where she ended, and where the others began, and she wouldn't want it any other way.
"Let's go," Sol said.
He fished a few light-crystals from the bag and distributed them around. The plan was to light the tunnels as they walked, placing the lamps on the walls to banish the shadows. Between them, they could see fairly well in the dark, or at least Vespera could, which means that the others could use her to navigate, but the light also kept the nastiest monsters at bay and helped give the place a tidy feeling. Tidier, at least. There was still a lot of work to be done, if they were to claim this place as their home.
They hadn't even needed to talk about it. All of them were growing increasingly comfortable with the otherwise dark, damp and ugly tunnels of the underground. Too many things happened here for the place not to matter in their mind.
No worries. They had a month before their marriage. Plenty of time to fix the place us.
She almost giggled. Marriage!
They walked. Sol checked the map constantly, reading the confusing jumble of information with ease, steering them in the general direction of the mountains to see just how close to the location of Elyra and Vespera's former captivity they could get without leaving the underground. Suppose they could reach all the way, it would be huge. He didn't seem too sure, but Zery disagreed with his skepticism.
He turned around for a brief moment, flashing her a warm smile. He did that a lot, although he was barely even aware of it.
Zery found herself blushing involuntarily, her pace slowing down until she was the last of the group, trailing a couple of meters behind the others. She had to. Her tail was swishing wildly and, unlike Vespera's nimble and skinny appendage, hers was meaty and thick. With the adjustment to her clothes… Anyone walking behind her right now would be getting quite the lashing, and from a tail that carried a lot of momentum, but most importantly they would get to have an unimpeded view of her whole rear. Not that she didn't want them to. But she knew what it would entail, and she didn't really want to slow down to fool around, not when they were on such an important mission.
Sol checked the map again. She saw it too, through the shared senses that were always there, under the surface of conscious thought. They weren't intrusive like when someone actively pushed stuff into the bond, nor secretive and hidden like when they did the opposite. They were just there, and she could choose to look through his eyes or not, as she wished.
She could also borrow his understanding of concepts, but that would require a much more intimate connection, beyond simple passive observation. She didn't need to, however. Unlike Vespera, and Calla in lesser part, her sense of space was impeccable. It had to. She was a dragon!
Thus, she followed their path through the tunnels, occasionally stopping to attach a light on the rough walls of the tunnels, or on the smooth concrete of a strange room carved into the earth. Her mind was free to wander, unrestricted by the tunnels that surrounded her.
Or rather, restricted in different ways.
No matter how hard she tried, her mind always wandered back to the same scene. Sol standing in front of her kneeling form. His face barely reached her breasts, and she had to strain her bound arms against the chains to allow him to kiss her properly. Then he put his warm, gentle lips around her nipples and…
She felt her wetness in the way her thighs almost squelched with her every step. Vespera shot her a dirty look, one filled with overpowering lust, whispering into her ears from where she stood, using the bond.
Dirty dragon, whatever might you be thinking?
Yeah. What was she thinking?
But it was not just the action itself. Not just Sol sucking her precious, prized breast fluid that people in the times of old used to fight wars over. Not just him lowering himself below her, so that she could straddle him with her full weight on his face as he buried his tongue inside of her. Not her clawed feet contorting to massage his stiff, huge cock that somehow made her feel so full despite her being twice Sol's size.
No.
She thought about her pride. The pride of a very powerful, yet solitary and lonely dragoness. Shattered and broken by the millennia of captivity that stole her mind and her magic. Reforged. Changed and made better.
Better by what? What should be the event that makes her pride less and yet makes it feel like so much more?
So fucking much more.
The answer came easy. It was her bond with Sol, and not just him, but the girls too. Those sweet, caring, gorgeous girls she was all sorts of entangled with.
They all turned around to smile at her, even Sol. He usually didn't react to these things much. His mind was always loud, always the one broadcasting, something to do with that ADHD thing he sometimes thinks about. He never got an actual diagnosis, apparently?
So he was usually loud enough that he drowned out all the signal. And she loved him for that. She loved being bombarded all the time by thoughts, snippets of ideas, strange concepts of space and time, from long into the past, musings of a civilization that was no more.
In this, they all shared a common fate. To be the last of their kind. It made her feel at home.
◈◈◈
"Would you look at that," I said, looking at the expanse of crystals before us.
It had taken us several days to get here, although admittedly, we took a bit of a scenic route and didn't really rush as fast as we could. What was the hurry, after all? The cracked battery was… holding on. And yes, it was a bit irresponsible of us to take it easy when the fate of the System, at least the local sector, hung in the balance. But what can I say? This was our life, and life is more than just rushing from one emergency to the next.
Life is about living, making connections, and having experiences. Being happy.
I snuck a glance at the girls. I know they could tell I was looking at them, and I caught Zery smiling back at me, but I couldn't help it. Sometimes, I still thought this was all a dream. A wonderful, perfect dream. Too perfect to be reality, right?
The crystal cave helped to ground me somewhat. It reminded me of the room beyond, where under a pile of rubble lay the remains of a temple. The memory of the days spent in agony, both legs broken, feverish, talking to shadows that in my mind, had become people. They were people, in the end, the first two of my little group of lovers.
"Sharp," Zery commented, tapping the curved claw of her index finger against one of the crystals.
She usually had normal nails, if a bit long. Her hands were black, fading into deep blue and then azure scales up her arms, but lately she'd begun to manifest some ability to change herself when she wished to do so. Nothing too extravagant, not yet. Claws on her hand were pretty much her limit for now.
I found myself staring. Damn. I blame her and her skimpy clothing. I don't really know when it all began, but it's like Vespera was affecting them all with her choice of clothing, and they were starting to wear less and less stuff that was also more and more revealing as time went on. Elyra had stopped binding her chest, using shields of all things to keep her huge boobs from bouncing around when she needed to be athletic. Vespera, no need to even say anything. She's always loved how obscene her outfit looked, and how slutty it made her feel.
Zery, too, I could understand. She had started normal, but already by the time we were at the teahouse with Ted she was wearing skimpy clothing. Now? A G string. The thin string of fabric disappeared between the perfect, Fibonacci sequence, golden ratio looking cheeks of her ass, like they swallowed it whole. Like she wasn't wearing anything at all. It then looped around her tail, which swished around erotically, revealing what lay just below its base.
What was more, with her height, when she stood it meant that her ass was literally level with my face. And right now, as she pretended to examine the crystals, I was centimers away from burying my nose between those perfect cheeks.
And she knew that. She had to.
Enticing and prideful, that damn dragon.
Calla was the big surprise, though. Her clothing was pretty much a copy of Vespera's, but made of leaves! That made it even worse because the leaves would sometimes flutter in the wind and—
"Done ogling?" asked Vespera, smirking playfully. "Now, now, spacerboy. Choose wisely," she said with a flourish. Opening one hand, she gestured at the crystal cave. "We can either go on ahead, rush through this cave, get cuts and bruises and be all tired and yucky. Or!" Her other hand went all over her body, tugging at her skimpy clothing, revealing hidden treasure. "We can make camp and rest and have fun for the night. What's gonna be, star of our lives?"
I smiled at her. I could never get enough of her teasing.