The mercenary’s cock went limp. Well, limper. That incredible organ had already shrank considerably once I started talking back. But shying away wasn’t enough to escape my cunt muscles gripping the iron ring around its shaft.

Warm, hot, hotter. The ring was almost scorching. It should have seared my dripping walls.

As the imperial soldier, alarmed by the maddened mare trying to push passed our tangled bodies into the fetid nigh air outside, released my hips and tried to grab her halter, he found himself trapped inside that burning ring.

My cunt gobbled fire, and spat it, belching.

The sound which passed my parted lips was not the voice of any animal known to man; a guttural hiss commanding solid rock to crack as the mare reared, deadly hooves kicking.

So, you think know what’s coming?

Wrong again.

The zealot had excellent reflexes. Before I managed to turn around, chains swinging, he reached for his spear and stubbed with impressive force and accuracy.

Mistake number one: aiming up, not down.

The mare’s great heart continued to pound even after her guts spilt, but not for long.

Yes, that’s right. Your brave saint-to-be slashed his own faithful charger, not a monster by any description.

Just saying.

Where was I? Right. So, my wrath was quick to follow shock, but the mercenary had weaselled free from my grip, and while the spear was lost under the fine slaughtered beast, his right hand was already reaching for the sword at his belt, the left brandishing that spindly silver pendant like a miniature shield. He turned and shoved it in my face again.

‘The monster is coming, heathen wench, kiss the cross and I shall deliver you from eternal damnation.’

As I slowly stood straight, keeping my arms behind my back to hide the fact I was no longer chained, I noted his blood-spattered prick was newly erect, bum perfectly exposed to what was coming for it.

Mistake number two. Never turn your back to a dark tunnel.

Especially if you had recently discarded your undergarments and something large, heavily armoured and foul-mouthed is crawling towards your tight buns.

‘Kneel!’

I did. Observing that his fat flesh hammer was slightly shorter then the proffered silver object.

If he had looked up, he would have seen the moon rising, claw shaped. But the mercenary kept his gaze on my quivering shoulders and bent, treasure-feathered head. I wandered if the twirling lines of incantations, painted this morning on my freshly shaven scalp and smeared by sweat and the rocking ceremonial headdress now spelled their true meaning.

My rash itched like an army of termites, marching over abused nipples, lighting tiny torches on my green-stained crotch. The denser the shadows behind him got, the more savagely the flaring irritation spread.

‘Suck it, Jezebel!’

‘No. It stinks of your carrion god.’

The mercenary slapped my cheek with the pendant, leaving a crossed blotch.

‘Hold your tongue, pagan whore. And open that filthy mouth. I’ll fuck your brazen words right down your throat.’

I opened my mouth.

I breathed out.

As the iron cock-ring started glowing once more his shriek was matched by a Cimmerian roar.

Cramming its body through the narrow mountain tunnel with some difficulty, the old dragon shuffled.

In the cavern by the cave’s mouth, it stood upright.

I snatched the sword out of the mercenary’s frozen fingers as the monster hugged him, claws grazing his riding hardened thighs, his seasoned warrior’s arms.

Massive jaws closing around the straining neck, caressing pulsing arteries.

He struggled, slipping on mammal entrails and brittle skulls, pathetically attempting to whack the scaly hide with the silver cross before I seized his little weapon.

I kissed the dragon.

We took our time. Licking each gash in the soldier’s back, I penetrated the long crimson mouths with my spiny tongue, snaking around his screeching form to catch every drop of blood with my lips, convulsing cunt, horny palms.

The rash was becoming intolerable. Hard little mounds rising under my smooth bronzed skin. Tear shaped. Each scarlet droplet sizzled as it hit my body.

There was no other way around it. I reached back, spread my buns, and let the nails dig in. Then, I slashed, shedding flaky skin. His harsh scream was silenced by the emerging appendage.

Basalt ragged, longer than time and trice as wild, my tail streamed forth like molten lava. Beautiful. Desert hard.

Pausing to admire the polished bronze scales, still slimy, I was dimly aware of the mercenary trying to blubber something.

Experimentally, I whipped his mouth with my mighty tool. This shut him up. But he couldn’t suppress the yelps which followed when I started working my way down, each tail-lash eliciting sparks and pretty blister blossoms.

The old one effortlessly restrained the jerking man’s body, trailing a sharp claw or two across his stretched balls. But the mercenary didn’t remaster the power of speech until my tail coiled, then struck out, attacking his asshole.

‘Buggery is a deadly sin! I’d rather die then be defiled so. Begone, infernal demon!’

I clutched his face, staring down bulging eyes, then let my hand, baby talons flicking, drop between his legs. I swear his cock had doubled in size. Mind, even engorged to elephantine proportions, it still appeared miniscule compared to my titanic twitching organ forcing open his tight splinter muscle.

‘A sin? Not sure I know what that means. What ever it is, looks like a certain part of you is very keen on it.’

‘I am possessed! You’re tricking me into committing vile acts against nature and God!’

You must agree that this sort of buffalo-shit doesn’t warrant an answer. I signalled the old one.

The behemoth lizard released the mercenary the very instant that I flexed my tail and pushed him down, on all fours, before my crocodile-hide boots. Ruined, of course, by the hatching talons.

Then I jammed it in, cruelly, knocking the air out of his deafening wail.

The wriggling tail whipped the trembling walls of his tender clenched hole. It was endless, my tail. It could piston, ram,  circle and slash, all the way up to the mercenary’s ugly hypocrite’s heart.

But it was when I withdraw that the foaming and bawling mercenary started begging for real. Well, practically begging. His manners left much to be desired.

‘Finish what you have started, fiend!’

‘You want me to bugger you some more, Jesus-soldier?’

He thrashed, desperately trying to impel himself again on my flaming tail while the bronze spines scraped his gyrating crack.

‘Spare me not, for I am a consort of beasts! Wield the mighty sword of the adversary and purge my tainted soul!’

I mean, really. It would have been fun to taunt him some more, crumple his soul into holly scroll balls then pelt him with them, but at this point it wasn’t my brain calling the shots.

My swollen tail obliged, viper-swift. Sending tears, snot, ass juice and blood flying as I mounted him again, hissing and growling, impelling the crazed mercenary until he moaned, squealed and howled, chewing rock and dribbling black dust on the mare’s corpse.

‘Oh Yes, yes! Ride me all the way to hell! I am your harlot, devil, my flesh all yours to melt. Please please please stop…I beg you…DON’T…Don’t stop! Do it! Incinerate my sins!’

I smelt the feathers of my headdress burning, as the old dragon spewed a mighty jet of flames, bouncing off the silver pendant.

The imperial crested helmet rolled into a corner, unheeded.

Afterwords, my tail wrapped around the neck of the mesmerised soldier of fortune sitting on my lap.

I kissed him all over. Kisses like tiny flamethrowers. Little licks of mercy fire to counter the agony radiating from the cross-shaped brand on his right cheek.

Beating my leathery wings I fanned the pendant till I judged the silver sufficiently cooled. Then I licked its tip and slowly, ever so slowly, inserted the shaft into the mercenary’s yielding bumhole.

The man’s teeth made a hollow metallic sound as he bit and sucked my scales and swore a solemn oath to forsake his vengeful god-son. When he lifted his Phoenician eyes to search for my gaze, zeal was smelted into grace.

Gently, I picked my human dowry up and set him on his feet. We both looked for our tattered garments amongst carcases fresh and dried, and made ourselves as presentable as possible, under the circumstances.

This had gone on for too long. There was not need for our kind to be banished into a fetid mountain cave. We will go back to the city and rule together. My father, the king, would be so overjoyed to see us both alive and well that he wouldn’t mind.

We’ll breed enough sheep to do away with the pottery lottery. And eventually, monarchy. I might even keep this mercenary. I’ll tire of him, eventually, but dragons are always hungry when the moon waxes.

Typically, the old one wouldn’t budge. She trained her scalding gaze on my new toy soldier, digging her claws in. This too, is an old, old story: no-one was ever good enough for me, were they?

But we had to get moving.

Removing my girdle, I lopped it around her neck.

‘Come mum, let’s to go home.’

With a fiery snort, she let me lead her out of the cave, into the bright new night.

This is how my story should have ended. A happy conclusion, don’t you think? Everyone gets what they deserve. Well, apart from the sheep.

But you know it didn’t.

Because what happened next, including her hacked body paraded in ox carts by that cowardly lying bastard, is rendered fairly accurately in tainted paint, words and stone.

There are no stained glass windows depicting the day the escaped mercenary returned with an imperial legion to sack our city.

No sculptures commemorating the stoning of my father. Not a single engraving of what was done to townsfolk of all ages and genders by the soldiers.

The princess’s fate is still hotly debated. But everyone agrees that it isn’t a fitting subject for church art.

Are you listening to me?

Yes you. You who went and made a flag out of it.

There are multiple versions of the saint’s life after the act.

All wrong.

They say that if you travel to the old valley, climb to the lake which formed in the old volcano’s crater, and dive, holding your breath till your lungs nearly burst, you would find an ancient cave. Inside, there is a secret. Fossilised in lava.

Once there were: a princess, a hero, a monster.

*****

The end.