A Tale of Dragons

Chapter 14

"I'm a wood elf." She said, standing up to emphasize her five feet of height and slender body. "I don't weigh much and Uncle Garth finally remembered to return my weight reduction necklace. Wearing it, I'll probably weigh only a tenth of my normal weight. "

Ethan remembered the elf at Garthildur's camp using the amulet to allow him to carry a horse on his shoulders. "I suppose that could work, if I could learn to fly.

"You can practice outside of town. We can circle around the mountain until we're out of sight."

"Would that even allow me to get ahead of them?"

She laughed. "I doubt those mercenaries could travel more than ten leagues a day on horseback. You can fly that far in an hour. You could probably go even faster with practice."

Ethan hesitated, so Alana continued, "Think of the banker's children. They do need rescuing and we can get there faster than anyone else."

"Okay." He said, accepting her argument. "But then I need to get in some serious flying practice before I try to carry you. And speaking of that, how am I going to leave without the entire town knowing there's a dragon here."

That thought brought something else to mind. "And how did Garthildur get me into this room without anyone seeing me?

"With this." Alana produced a necklace with a small green gemstone from her satchel. "It's enchanted to create a disguise for the wearer. It can make you look like a different race or person, though only the rarest and most powerful ones can copy a someone else's appearance."

She rose from her stump seat and handed it to Ethan. It was rather pretty, and it almost looked as if there was a light inside the stone.

"I thought you could only enchant things that were once alive?" he queried, looking at the small gemstone.

"I keep forgetting you come from a place without magic. Golems, elementals and gargoyles are made from stone and are alive. They eat gemstones like candy and channel mana through them as they digest them, allowing the gemstones to hold an enchantment when they come out the other end.

"Oh." It made sense, but the concept was a little hard to wrap his mind around. "So, they're made of living stone?"

She nodded. "Some people hunt them to harvest the stone because it can be enchanted. As you can imagine, something made from enchanted stone is very hard to breach."

Ethan grimaced then looked down at the disguise gem. "How does it work?"

"Focus a tiny bit of mana at the gem with a general idea of what you want to look like, and it'll do the rest." Alana said.

He put the necklace on, although it took a bit of doing to get it around his horns. He was almost completely out of mana, but he directed a tiny little bit into the stone and thought about looking like an average, normal man. The stone glowed for a moment, and then dimmed again. Around Ethan's hand, he saw a vague, semi-transparent outline of a human hand. His other limbs also had the same gossamer outline.

Alana squeaked, turned bright red, and averted her eyes.

Ethan looked down to see the outline didn't include any clothes. His rather impressive dragon-sized equipment was still concealed, but the ghostly human equipment wasn't. His human c**k was roughly the same size as his dragon's, but still somewhat transparent.

"Sorry." He said. He focused a tiny bit of mana at the gem again, this time thinking of a man with clothing typical for the area. Again, the stone glowed for a moment then faded. This time the ghostly outline included some rough pants, shirt and shoes.

"I'm decent."

Alana peeked with one eye and then uncovered the other. There was an awkward moment of silence for several seconds. That's when Ethan noticed the part of his mind that showed her emotions via their bond. She was simultaneously extremely embarrassed and a tiny bit curious.

"Something you wanted to ask about?"

She shook her head, "No, I'm good. Let's just forget it happened."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Stupid bond." She muttered. "Okay, I'm curious but I'm not going to ask so let's just forget about it."

"Okay." He said, although he couldn't help but smile. Alana shook her head as if trying to clear it. He figured he would spare her any more embarrassment by changing the topic.

"Why can I see through the disguise?" he asked.

"Because the spell is designed that way." Alana replied. "The real question is: why can I see through it?"

"Our bond?" Ethan suggested.

"Probably, though only the user is supposed to be able to see through it."

"Okay. Well, if I'm going to be flying us to the forest, I should probably get in some practice."

They packed up the few belongings they would need and left the rest in the room. Garthildur said the room was rented for the rest of the week and there was a sturdy-looking lock on the door, so it seemed like a good place to store them.

The street outside was both very different and yet quite similar to what he had imagined. He had seen many medieval marketplaces in movies and TV shows. Earth entertainments were all pretty close, but way off at the same time. It was extremely noisy and filthy. There were people everywhere all clamoring to sell their wares, and it reminded him of videos he'd seen of the frenzied action on a stock market trading floor in New York.

Alana skillfully navigated through the crowd and led him to the city gates. Once outside, he turned to look back.

Gralden nestled up against the base of a mountain, the quality of housing getting better, larger and more expansive as the eye travelled upward. In the distance, just beyond a building that looked like a palace or town hall of some sort, he could see a long set of steps leading up to an ornate looking door. There were guards and plenty of men with bows guarding the single stairway. Ethan assumed -- and Alana confirmed -- that this was the only entrance to The Bank. It was well fortified and he could see that attacking it would be suicide.

Around the perimeter of the Bank several large ballistae offered a stronger defense. They looked like giant crossbows and he figured they would be handy if a dragon like Drousin ever came to make an unscheduled withdrawal from The Bank.

The town seemed to have grown up around the foot of the stairs. Near The Bank were the best looking and wealthiest buildings. Further from The Bank, the city rapidly grew to a sprawl that resembled the slums of medieval England. The only exception was along the main road that led to the bank; the buildings along the thoroughfare looked just as pristine as the wealthy part of town.

One thing that stood out to Ethan was how good his eyes were. The entrance to the bank was hundreds of yards away and Ethan could still make out individual stones on the top of the stairs to The Bank's vault.

The other thing that stood out conspicuously was a mast poking up from the wealthy part of town. It was complete with a crow's nest and rigging, and looked like the old ships of the line from the age of sail. Curiously, Ethan couldn't see any sign of water nearby.

"Come on." Alana said after he had stared for a few minutes. "You can't practice your flying until we're out of sight of town. We have an hour's walk at least."

Ethan noticed a small clump of trees nearby and excused himself to answer a call of nature. Once he was under cover of the trees, he relaxed and his scales parted to allow his c**k and balls to drop free. He had just finished peeing when he noticed something.

He had a third testicle.

He knew for an absolute fact that he had only had two a week before. However, now there was undeniably a third one just behind his original two. Furthermore, his scrotum was significantly longer than a human's and therefore looked like it had room for many, many more.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew -- he wasn't sure how he knew -- but he knew for certain that this third testicle was for Alana. Some instinct told him this third one would only ever release for her and no other woman. He thought it was because of their bond, but he certainly wasn't going to ask her what she thought about it.

He wasn't even sure what he thought about it.

Alana wasn't exactly what he would consider a runway model, but any man would agree that she was beautiful. She also had a healthy, tanned, athletic look that screamed 'fertile' somewhere in the back of his mind. Ethan loved small, petite women and she was just five feet tall with a great hourglass figure. Her breasts weren't large -- maybe a full B-cup -- but that was a plus because had never liked the top heavy look anyway.

A familiar feeling in his groin made him look down. His c**k -- previously around 6 inches long while flaccid -- had gotten even larger when semi-erect and its girth was impressive. His first thought was it was too big. There was no way it would fit inside Alana, or any other woman for that matter. The size boosted his ego, but what if it prevented him from being able to take her to bed and...

Ethan put the thought out of his mind and finished his business. His c**k relaxed to its flaccid state, he pulled it back up inside his body, and the scales closed over it. He would worry about that later; right now he had a job to do.

It was time to fly.

* * *

Alana led them around the mountain far enough that they would be out of sight unless Ethan flew quite high. Once there, Ethan turned his disguise gem off and started trying to fly.

It was actually quite funny to watch for the first hour or so. He could get into the air, but it took him quite a while to figure out how to stay there. Then it took him a few more hours to control where he was going while he was airborne.

Alana spent most of the afternoon meditating to restore her mana.

After her initial giggles at his cursing when he didn't quite achieve his lofty ambitions, Alana found her mind occasionally drifting back to her brief glimpse of Ethan's... 'equipment'. She couldn't bring herself to consciously consider it, but her mind swung around to the topic time and time again. After what Uncle Garth had said and then seeing it in person, she couldn't help but be a little curious.

She knew it was supposed to get bigger when...

Nope. Not going there.