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VERA VALENTINE
Welcome to The Kingdom
In Western Barrett, murmurs of magic are as plentiful as the land’s famous apple orchards. Tirasande, a down-on-her-luck thief that’s recently found herself alone, decides to strike out in search of a well rumored to be filled with fortune. The trouble is, that fortune is living, breathing, and rather possessive of whatever makes its way down his well. In the pages of this fanciful and lusty fairy tale you’ll find familiar themes like hurt and comfort, touch her and die (or worse, depending on your feelings re: manhood), I licked it so it’s mine, and a little of the ol’ “I’m gonna tie you up for your own protection.” Wink wink.
For sensitive readers, a gentle caution that this story contains a woman injuring herself, threats of violence (to FMC, not by MC), implied threats of sexual violence (to FMC, not by MC), sexual assault (unwanted kissing forced on FMC, not by MC), bondage with rope, unprotected sex, magical ejaculation, an extruded dragon penis (sing it with me now - cock pocket!), clothes being ripped/cut off, and a bit of a wish kink going on. Oh, and a few dicks fall off right towards the end. (Don’t worry, they’ll grow back.)
I hereby dedicate this story to all the men out there smart enough to beguile your women with cheese.
It was midday,Moss-fang realized, cracking one scaled eye open gingerly. The overhead slant of light had crept up the stone wall to the divot that looked like a misshapen rabbit. That meant it was time to rouse himself and feed. The small pile of worn, patina-caked coins in the corner of his circular home was, however, growing pitifully small. While his draconic half rejoiced at the gleaming mound of gold just beside the dwindling pile, his djinn side felt only dread as the bounty of freshly-cleaned discs grew.
Reverently plucking one of the dirty, green-grey coated coins up from the smaller pile, he swiped a talon-tipped thumb through the moist grime, a glint of gold shimmering up through the scratch. Like the sigh of a breeze, a horse found its way into the stables of a desperately-struggling landholder. Or, at least, what had been a desperately-struggling landowner’s stable at some point. For all Moss-fang knew, the man that had pressed his wish into the precious coin was buried centuries ago, his children’s-children’s-children prosperous enough to be puzzled by the appearance of an unexpected horse.
The djinn gave way to the dragon in Moss-fang’s heart as the wish was granted, relief settling in from the tip of his horns to the curl of his finned tail. He greedily took up the cloth and brush he kept - both tattered with age and use - to restore the coin to its former glory, polishing it until it shone as brightly as the others. Balancing it on a curled thumb, he grinned softly as he flicked it end-over-end, greedily admiring the golden glint of wan sunlight as it joined the others with a soft metallic ring.His hoard.
The well had beenhomefor more years than he cared to count, and while his tail had grown longer, the space was still more than comfortable enough for his needs. In here, it was dark and quiet, save for the bird song that gently echoed off the walls, and the melodic drip of water and rain. Outtherewere endless collections of dangers and difficulties: baying hounds on the hunt, murderous “collectors” of creatures like himself, eager to take his skin to create priceless magical accessories. Hybrids in particular were highly sought after, his fathers had always warned him, particularly those with djinn blood, as that same blood was mistakenly rumored to grant immortality when mixed with wine. While those whispers happened mainly across distant oceans, their threat always seemed to loom.
With that warning ringing in his ears, Moss-fang retreated to the well many ages ago. So long as he watched the bucket in the extremely rare cases it was lowered, he stayed hidden and safe, an idea of myth rather than something to be culled as magical fodder. For now, his hunger sated, he curled up into a coiled pile in his favorite corner to rest again. The less time he was active, the longer it would be before he needed another coin to sustain him.
Overhead, the rambunctious caws and rustling of a raven flock echoed down to him ominously in the dim. He didn’t want to dwell on what would happen when he needed to take up the last coin, when his magic was weak enough that he might not even be able to appear properly human anymore.
To say nothing of needing to go…out there.
Moss-fang shuddered at the thought, closing his eyes against the rising panic in his softly-scaled belly and willing himself back to sleep.
Tira’s lungshurt almost as much as her body did. The strain of fording the wildly-overgrown forest path was reflected in every slash, scrape, and bruise earned from wrestling in this far. This was a stupid flight of fancy on her part, chasing down a whispered legend to burn off her frustrations.
They’d done a jobwithout her. It was bad enough Brenna with her stupid golden curls and giggly voice had enchanted Ardin, but Tira had made her peace with that when she found them together last harvest season. He’d chosen and it wasn’t Tira - sure, it stung, and yes, she’d cried privately, but they were all adults. Well, mostly anyway, a scant few years outside of their teenage years. Regardless, Tira had gotten over it, at least enough for resentment not to show.
But theft? They were supposed to be ateam. They didn’t have many rules - no killing, no stealing from anyone but nobles - but one of the biggest unspoken ones was that they did what they didtogether. At least Ardin had the decency to look sheepish; Brenna had looked downright haughty when she admitted that Tira had been crowded out on their last job. Not only was it galling, it was stupid: three sets of eyes made it that much less likely they’d be ambushed, that the job would go sideways.
Tira’s mistake had been getting into her cups and telling both of them exactlyhowstupid she thought it was, out loud. She’d woken up alone and hungover in their erstwhile tavern room after that, Brenna and Ardin’s rucksacks and belongings gone. Worse, the flip-knife she’d given Ardin last Yule was left carefully in the center of the table, clearly being returned to her. Three years of running jobs together, traveling together, living in dingy tavern room after dingy tavern room together, gone in an instant. Not even a letter to say goodbye. The energy of their trio had shifted when Brenna and Ardin made their pairing official, but Tira hadn’t realized how much until it was too late.
The innkeeper had given Tira a sympathetic look when she asked after her traveling companions, explaining that they’d left together before sunrise. The man of the pair had come back a few moments later and slipped a coin onto the counter to pay out the week on their room, the innkeeper offered, an act that made Tira feel marginally better. At least Ardin had tried to do right by her in some small way, though she was sure Brenna was entirely unaware of his altruism.
The town they’d abandoned her in couldn’t have been a worse staging ground for solo redistribution of wealth. The landholders and dukes of the region didn’t live this far inland, and she heard murmurings in the tavern that even they weren’t exactly prosperous to begin with. When Tira had discreetly inquired about work with a few rough-looking brigands, she’d gotten boozy guffaws for her trouble, along with sneering encouragement to go ‘petition the well.’ Tira gathered by context that this was the realm’s charming colloquialism for fornicating with oneself. Seeing her irritation, the sympathetic innkeeper had quietly shared the local legend by way of consolation. A wishing well, he explained, was supposedly hidden deep in the nearby forest. A place where ancient kings and princes had made offerings long ago, lost to the ages and rumored to be filled with both treasure and a fearsome otherworldly guardian.
Less enticed by the prospect of making a magical wish than the pile of gold the superstitious royal idiots had likely hurled down there, Tira made a choice. She’d pour her frustrations into a hunt for this alleged well, rather than chasing fruitlessly after her disloyal companions. And it was that decision that led to her current predicament, wrestling with unruly vines trying to take liberties any tavern girl would charge at least two coppers for.
The problem was, Tira had already been searching for hours. Not only had she failed to find anything remotely resembling a clearing in name or description, she was also hopelessly lost. She didn’t know the wilds in this region, if their night beasties were of the reasonably-harmless winged variety or if wolves lurked at the edges of the twilight. Without a structure to huddle up in, Tira had only her small rucksack and cloak, the latter a bit too thin to turn away heavy rain or persistent chill.
She was not the sort of woman given to hopelessness, but trying times sometimes called for deviation. The crying had started as an unbidden whine, breaking like a dropped egg into full-on sobbing that blurred the trees and vines around her. It was almost like the forest was trying to suffocate and swallow her whole, and even her self-made path seemed to be obscuring itself and turning her around.
“I wish this fucking well was easier to find!” Tira screeched with evaporated patience, snapping a few vines with an aggressive swipe of her arm. As if those slender green stems had been acting as curtain-stays, the forest fell away to either side of her with awhumpof crackling leaves and broken twigs, revealing a pristine deer-run of a path. Narrow, yes, but so clear it looked as if a farmer had dug out an irrigation trench only an hour ago.
Tira hugged herself under her cloak, sniffling and raising a brow at the unexpected appearance of good fortune. Years as a thief had taught her how to take advantage of luck as quickly as possible, but several close calls had honed her skepticism like a flip-blade in the process. Straining her ears and eyes, she picked up nothing around her that was out of place - a few fat squirrels, a raucous cawing of ravens that indicated no predators were nearby. Adjusting her rucksack, she trudged down the narrow path, gaze flicking upwards to the lofty canopy of the forest as she moved, waiting for the other boot-sole to drop.
Deep in the dark,afeelingstirred in Moss-fang’s chest. It was very similar to thefeelingof holding one of the still-wished coins, but it seemed alive somehow, moving and stretching and growing, just at the edges of his perception. The weak satiation of his hunger snuffed out like a blown candle, the ache in his chest more powerful than ever before, eager to find the source.
As he’d slept, the afternoon light had fallen far below the rabbit-shaped divot and was now creeping across the well floor, leaving Moss-fang disoriented. He never woke after a morning feed, and the smell of the air told him it was still the same day. Panic reared up again, along with an insatiable hunger that made the small pile of still-wished coins look like little more than a morsel, even collectively. A low growl rumbled in his throat, the long-dormant aggression of his dragon nature asserting itself in response to heightened emotion.
As Moss-fang was attempting to sort out thefeelingthat swelled in his chest, a loud rustling and a few colorful curses floated down his well walls. He couldn’t make out much aside from a feminine tone of irritation, but one word rang through him like a struck bell:wish.
How long had it been since the humans had last dropped his beloved coins down the echoing stone walls? The clearing above had grown snarled and tangled with vegetation, the peaked wooden roof of his well crumbled and dry-rotted half away. Years, surely. Decades, more likely - perhaps even several generations. Moss-fang didn’t keep a record of the passage of time as his lineage and reclusive nature made it largely unnecessary.
Coiling his tail beneath him, Moss-fang glanced upwards, squinting through the late afternoon sunlight at the bucket he’d tied up earlier. There wasn’t much housekeeping to be done when you lived in a well, but he did try to keep things tidy in his home, and that meant occasionally scouring the bucket with rainwater and making sure the rope was strong and whole. Like the pile of still-wished coins, his supply of clean, dry rope had dwindled one splice or replacement at a time over the years. Nearly gone now, at least the rope currently laced through the sturdy pulley overhead was fresh and new.
A soft gasp broke the murmur of the forest at the mouth of the well, and Moss-fang stared wide-eyed at the illuminated circle overhead, his heart tripping over itself as his silky-scaled palms glittered with anxious magic. Moments later, a shadow - the first one larger than a raccoon in countless years - broke the perfect window of light. Moss-fang’s heartbeat pounded as he slammed his back against the damp stone wall, tugging his tail along the curved edge, desperate to stay out of sight. The long-ago princes and kings, they’d shown reverence: theyneverbent over the edge of the well, never let their curiosity override their good sense of superstition.
