Lineage

With a tired sigh, I dropped into my seat, feeling as if getting that sandwich had taken a lot longer than it should’ve. Dropping the porcelain plate onto the table along with the dusty tome I’d brought along with me, I skimmed through the book to the page I’d bookmarked, continuing to read up on the behaviours of the Narrowscales. They got smarter as they got older, as most creatures did, but with the Narrowscales, especially the very old ones, they ended up becoming very sarcastic, sometimes cynical, after thousands of years of living through death, war, and disease, as well as seeing kingdoms rise and fall only to be resurrected briefly and then be stomped out by the newest monarch on a bigger throne. The dragons themselves were filled with such great knowledge, simply due to the time they’d been alive; thus they had a liking for games of riddles. Using their great minds and wide array of memories, they challenged adventurers to their games, usually offering a piece of valuable treasure from their horde; if the adventurer could solve their riddle; If they couldn’t, then the dragon ate them.

There was a very small chance of victory over the dragons, as they often exploited rules in order to win. “The devil is in the detail” and “Death from lack of diction” are common excuses as to why an adventurer almost never succeeds in the game of riddles. This was because the dragons challenged the adventurer to a game of “Riddles.” They never stated anything about a game of “Riddles in English” or “Riddles that only had one answer.” They kept the rules ambiguous and never explained them to the human they were challenging, thus they were able to eat them without resorting to “cheating”.

So far, there were no humans that had ever been able to beat a dragon in a game of riddles. There had been a good few elves and a certain solar-charged alicorn that may or may not have gotten her crown jewel from a certain draconic queen who has spent millennia cursing that certain alicorn for solving her riddle and using the dragon’s own twisted logic against her. She’s never explained how she did it, or if she even did, but there’s always a faint smile that touches her lips whenever it’s brought up in conversation. I could ask her what she’d done to outsmart the draconic queen, but several people, including Luna, had done so before and she’s never explained what she did, or if she even did it in the first place, so there was no point in even asking about it.

I bit into my sandwich as I flipped the pages to find something not only interesting, but also something that would help me kill the thing. I skimmed over colouration of scales and pigment concentration to determine age, cleaning and bathing habits, shapeshifting abilities, singing voices from females and the magic they imbued in their words (I made a note of the page for when I went over defending against their attacks as I really wanted to avoid a draconic lullaby), pregnancy duration, organ use in potions, and body part use in armour. It wasn’t long until I reached the end of the book, having found nothing more useful than the information that might as well be summed up as “I’m fucked.” I decided to close the book and finish my sandwich, eating the delicious seasoned beef with the soft white bread with a grateful attitude as Madam Vortega had outdone herself yet again in terms of delicious food. She’d probably whipped the kitchen girls into shape and threatened their families if they so much as got a mediocre comment about their food.

And speaking of grouchy old bitches with a stick up their ass the size of Eastern Equestria, I began to think about talking to Luna. I needed her to tell me exactly what I was gonna be going up against in the trial and exactly how bad it was gonna be for my health. I finished my sandwich, tucked the book under my arm, and took my empty plate back to the counter I’d gotten it from. I gave a smile to the kitchen girl working there, one which she returned, and I headed for the combat plateau, where Luna was most likely beating the shit out of a few guard members as part of her morning workout.

It turns out I was completely correct about Luna kicking the shit out of the guards, the biggest piece of evidence being that I had to duck under one getting booted through the doorway by one of Luna’s infamous power kicks. I closed the door behind me, ignoring the man groaning in agony, and walked onto the outside training ring, seeing Luna standing still in basic training gear for her, a pair of training tights and a reinforced sports bra (The reason for the reinforcement is that Luna was happy with her fighting record having one loss on it, that being from her own tits when they hit her in the face because they weren’t secure and caused her to ring out). This allowed anyone that wasn’t too busy getting slapped around the plateau to gawk and drool at her gorgeous figure: her darker skin glistened with sweat brought on by rigorous exercise and exertion, watching her toned stomach flex and tighten with each controlled breath she took, and practically drooling as her huge breasts raised and lowered in time with her chest. I was snapped out of my stupor when she barked my name, my eyes making no attempt to hide the fact I was transfixed by her titti-cacas and this was something she noticed immediately.

“Eyes up here,” she said, snapping her fingers.

“Sorry,” I chuckled, looking up at her gorgeous face, her dark complexion almost hiding the effort-induced blush she had on her cheeks, breathing heavily through her nose before ordering all the guards to retreat to the showers and get back on duty. “I need to talk to you.”

“Then talk to me,” Luna said, noticing my eyes had drifted downwards once more. “My tits don’t hold conversations very well.”

“I wish they did,” I chuckled, looking up to see her unimpressed eyes and deciding it was time to get to the point. “Right, I came to ask you about the dragon.”

“I figured you would,” Luna said, wiping the sweat off her brow with her hand and rubbing it onto my shirt.

“Thanks,” I commented.

“You don’t like?” she asked. “I thought you were all about smearing yourself in my bodily fluids?”

“Only one or two of them,” I said with a sigh. “That wasn’t one of them. Anyway, the dragon?”

“Right, follow me,” she said, heading into the ladies shower room across the plateau. “I trust you’ve snuck in here before?”

“Snuck in?” I asked with a smirk. “I think I fucked the Guoxian Empress’ right-hand woman in there.”

“Classy,” Luna commented.

“Not really,” I shrugged. “She was a kinky girl.”

“I don’t wanna know,” Luna said, going into the shower room.

“It’s an interesting story that involved a butt-ton of anal,” I said with a grin.

I do think she was justified in slamming the door in my face for that one.

I opened the door with a chuckle before stepping inside, realizing that this was a different shower room, as in it was a private one. it was a single cubicle in pristine condition with dark blue tiles and a large crescent moon tiled on the floor, the same on that Luna had always used as her “royal stamp” when signing letters. I’d heard that she also got the crescent tattooed on her back at one point in her life, with Celestia and Cadance getting a sun and a crystal heart on their own respectively, but I’d never seen them before.

“Sit down,” she ordered, pointing at a chair next to the cubicle, that didn’t have any kind of vision blocker to hide behind, meaning I was in for a good show. I turned the chair around so that the backrest was facing the shower and sat with my legs around it, resting my arms on the high backrest and leaning my head on it. I watched as Luna peeled her sweat-soaked clothes off, my favourite sight being her tits bounce as they fell out of the bra she lifted above her head, and throw them across the room. She stretched out her back and legs before stepping into the shower, taking her ponytail out as she got under the spray and allowing her long locks to fall free, the warm water cascading down her divine figure and angling itself over her curves and muscle grooves. It was safe to say I could keep myself under control in situations like this, so my dick didn’t tear a hole through my pants, and I was able to merely enjoy her beauty as she rinsed herself clean.

I was quite surprised that she allowed me to even be present in the room while she was naked, but it surprised me more that she turned to face me while rubbing soap all over her body, the suds covering her beautiful body and the thoroughness of the application causing her breasts to bounce and move as she cleaned herself.

“So,” she said over the loud spray of the shower. “What did you want to ask about the dragon?”

“A better question would be ‘What don’t I want to ask?’” I said with a sigh. “I don’t know anything about the dragon except it’s relative age and gender. Is it a mother? Single? What subspecies is it? Is it an aggressive one? A wise or cynical one? I know you expect me to figure most of that stuff out with my tracking and hunting skills, but you don’t go out on a hunt without knowing what you’re gonna try and catch. Can you tell me anything about the dragon?”

“I can tell you a few things,” Luna nodded, soaping the insides of her toned thighs. “For one: it’s an Omega dragoness, two: it was a mother once, and three: it isn’t a friendly one.”

This was where the feeling of loss set in the strongest. It was the most powerful, angriest, and most territorial it could be. Fan-fucking-tastic. I shook my head, trying to put some of the dread behind me and figure out if there were any technicalities to the death certificate I’d been given.

“Okay… how long ago did her child die?” I asked.

“From what the villagers have said, none of them, even the elders, have seen her with a youngling,” Luna said. “Some have said that even the villagers that lived their lives fully before the present elders were born hadn't seen her with a youngling. But there are records of her having a youngling at some point in history.”

“So chances are that she’s probably done her grieving?” I asked. “And the fact that she’s gone this long without razing the village entirely means she doesn’t blame them for the death?”

“Mhmm. They don’t know exactly how her youngling died, but most of them believe it was mauled to death by wolves at an extremely young age,” Luna said.

“So it’s probably a bad idea to bring Grael along?” I asked her.

“Right. The last thing you wanna do is bring a creature that reminds her of the ones that killed her child,” Luna nodded. “Good thinking.”

“Thank you,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be sure to bring him back a prime cut of meat from her.”

“You do that,” she chuckled, washing the suds off her entirely before moving on to shampooing her hair. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. A few things. Where’s the father of the youngling?” I asked.

“Long dead. Died well over one hundred years ago,” Luna answered.

“Poor girl. She’s lost a lot in her time,” I commented.

“It’s something you can’t prevent,” Luna said in a much more sombre tone. “When you live forever, you don’t have a choice. All you can do is watch things wither and die, see everything you’ve ever cared about disappear into the river of ages with no chance of ever coming back. It makes it hard to grow attached to things; people, places, friends, lovers. I just consider myself lucky that I’ve got Celestia and Cadance… and you.”

“Thanks, Aunt Luna,” I said with a smile. “That really means a lot to me.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said in a caring tone. “You’re my family, and I love you just as much as Celestia and Cadance. All of us love you… though I think many would say that Cadance loves you a little bit differently than a mother ought to.”

“What d’you mean by that?” I asked with a slight grin.

“I mean that while a mother should love her son to the ends of the earth,” she said. “I think others believe she’s not supposed to love you in the same way she does your father.”

“You mean that you don’t think we should fuck?” I asked.

“No, I don’t have the right to say that incest is bad,” Luna chuckled. “I’ve lain down with both my sister and niece many times in my life and I consider Celestia to be my eternal lover. As a family, we’ve never kept to strict moral values and we have all engaged in actions that people would condemn us for if it were to ever go public. So, no, I’m not against you and your mother having your special relationship; in fact I encourage it, as it’ll bring you closer than any other kind of relationship will.

“When did you and Celestia first have sex?” I asked.

“Weren’t we talking about a dragon a moment ago?” she asked.

“This is more interesting,” I shrugged.

“... I agree,” she nodded. “If I’m going to think back to our first night together… it’d be well over five thousand years ago. My memory is hazy to the lead-up to our first time… but if I remember correctly, one of us had broken up with a lover, I can’t remember if it was a male or female, and one of us was in tears.”

“How are you not sure which one of you it was?” I asked quickly.

“We’ve, uh, reimagined the scene so many times and in so many different ways with role changes that we genuinely can’t remember which one was the original wounded party,” Luna explained. “It’s been such a long time since it happened that I’ve nearly forgotten everything about it besides the sex itself.”

“Is your memory that hazy?”

“Richter, I’ve forgotten the sound of my mother’s voice and the look of my father’s face,” Luna explained. “I don’t remember the town I was born in or what the castle I was raised in looked like. I haven’t been a child for five millennia and mine and Celestia’s parents died when I was twenty-three. Time takes its toll on even the timeless, Richter.”

“Right,” I nodded. “I’ll be quiet now.”

“Thank you,” she said, rinsing her hair out. “Anyway, one of us was in tears over a broken relationship that had lasted several years and I remember us making jokes about how terrible the other person was to begin with as an attempt to make us feel better. We then agreed that we didn’t need anybody else in our lives and that if we stuck together. We’d never cry about a lost love again. I remember staring into her bright eyes for a long time, seeing her sweet smile and loving gaze before I started staring at her beautiful lips, watching her expression change from shock as she realized what was going through my head, to giving me a comforting look. She took her hands away from mine at that point and placed them on my cheeks before telling me how much she loved me. I think after that we kissed for about forty minutes by my bedroom window.”

“That’s...” I began, trying to find a proper way to word my thoughts.

“Romantic?” she offered.

“Yeah… that’s a good word for it,” I nodded. “I think you two had a good idea.”

“Mhmm. I don’t believe we had actual sex for a few days,” Luna continued. “We still lived at home with our mother and father and were afraid that they’d separate us if they found out. We’d waited until they’d gone to another country and we had come up with a cover story to tell the castle guards why we were locked up in our room and weren’t to be disturbed for that entire night.”

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

“We said that we were experimenting with an extremely unstable compound that would react harshly to any foreign light and sound that entered the room,” Luna said, chuckling to herself as she remembered her excuse. “That’s why they couldn’t enter the room or make noise outside of it or they’d risk blowing the entire western chambers up.”

“I’m guessing it worked?” I asked.

“We didn’t hear a peep out of them for the entire night,” Luna said, genuinely laughing under her breath. “I think after the sun had gone down and we’d finished the bottle of wine we’d snuck out of the kitchen. there wasn’t a stretch of five minutes where we weren’t touching each other. It was awkward as all hell for me at that point, as I was only eighteen and had no experience or knowledge of the etiquette of secret incestuous relationships, but as the hours went by, I got more and more comfortable and confident with both my own and Celestia’s body. Instead of meekly asking her to do something like kiss me, I’d go ahead and lock lips with her, when I wanted attention in certain areas, I’d place them in front of her and make a licking motion. We had sex more times that night than I thought would be possible.”

“It sounded like a lot of fun,” I added.

“Despite being an act that broke the laws of nature and damned us both to eternal torment should we ever leave the mortal realm… yeah, I enjoyed having sex with her, kissing her, and just being held by her. We fell asleep on a big pillow completely naked and on top of one another and didn’t wake up till later the next afternoon,” Luna said before an awkward expression appeared on her face. “What kind of ruined the romantic moment was the fact it was our mother that woke us up.”

“You’re kidding me?” I asked in horror.

“No. I still remember the scream she let out upon finding us tangled in each other’s limbs naked and covered in each other’s bodily fluids,” Luna said with a chuckle, though it was clear at the time it was anything but a laughing matter.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Exactly what we feared would happen: they tried to split us up after that,” Luna continued, turning off the shower spray and stepping out. I stood up and picked a large towel off the rack, opening it and draping it over her body. She wrapped herself up in the cotton stitch work and began to rub herself dry. “There were shouting matches, threats from both mother and father of physical violence, even disownment for committing such a crime. All sorts of vicious things were being hollered from our parents until Celestia stepped forward and threatened them with going public on several things they didn’t want people to know; father’s affairs with several chambermaids, mother’s opium addiction she’d recently relapsed into or the time one of the chambermaids blackmailed our family for a million bits every year or else she’d go public herself and was then promptly murdered by a hired assassin with the body being fed to pigs.”

“That’s… that’s fucking insane,” I said in complete disbelief.

“Indeed it is,” Luna nodded. “But it forced them to be quiet, and Celestia had the decency to keep our relationship from their eyes, making sure we only made love when they were in bed or away. That was until we both assumed the throne after their deaths, mourned them for the good they’d done, and proceeded to have an entire section of a castle closed off to anyone that wasn’t our family where we’d proceed to live like a married couple. It was a great few millennia we lived, opening up our relationship to allow in certain trustworthy individuals to know our secret and sleep with us both. Then a young demon came along about fifty years ago and impregnated Celestia, who then gave birth to Cadance.”

“Can I ask a question about that?”

“Go ahead,” she nodded.

“If Celestia is Cadance’s mother, my biological grandmother,” I began. “Then why was I brought up to see her as my great aunt? Why does the rest of the world think Celestia is Cadance’s aunt?”

“It was to weasel her way out of a deal,” Luna explained. “She’d made a deal with a powerful sorcerer to bring an age of prosperity to our kingdom in return for the life of Celestia’s first born child.”

“That… that’s not where the fairy-tale of-”

“Rumpelstiltskin?” she interjected quickly. “Very similar, but no, not quite. You see, Celestia and I used to have distant family, a younger brother who lived to be seventeen before being murdered in his bed.”

“I… why the hell have I never heard about that?” I asked in horror.

“Because you’ve never needed to,” Luna answered. “He was a member of the family that lived and died so long ago that neither of us can barely remember him, much less bring him up in casual conversation.”

“Right. So where does he factor into the equation?” I asked.

“Well, we were never able to prove that he had children himself, but we could prove that he was quite a ladies man and often slept around, much like yourself,” Luna continued. “So we were able to fabricate a story that one of his consorts had become pregnant with his child and had passed the Alicorn bloodline down through the ages, each one having been murdered by the ‘witch hunters’ in the ‘foreign land’ the woman had returned to, until we came to Cadance. We were able to explain to him that she still resembles a purebred alicorn because the Alicorn gene pool can never be diluted by regular human genes, explaining the ‘distant family resemblance’ between Celestia and her ‘Niece’. Since we were able to convince him that Cadance was not Celestia’s daughter, the price was never paid and he’s still waiting for Celestia to give birth.”

“How did you hide the fact she was pregnant for nine months?” I asked. “That would be difficult.”

“Celestia simply ‘took a trip to recover her niece from the land she inhabited’,” Luna explained. “Nobody saw she was pregnant because she wasn’t on the continent.”

“Quite clever,” I admitted.

“We’re the ones in charge for a reason,” Luna winked.

“Right. You said that the Alicorn gene pool can’t be diluted, right?” I asked.

“If you’re going to ask about Cadance’s half-succubus form and your melting pot of species, I will admit that while it can’t be diluted, it can easily be corrupted by dark magic, like that of demons,” Luna explained. “It’s how the Nightmare Forms can be passed on through the family line, because the dark magic is bonded to the genes themselves.”

“It’s a good job I’m working on a way to get rid of them, isn’t it?” I asked with a smirk.

“What… what do you mean by that?” Luna asked in a confused tone.

“Remember that Incubi can drain powers from people during sex?” I asked. “I’m trying to do that with the Nightmare Forms… for you guys.”

“Richter…” Luna said in stone-faced horror. “Do you understand how dangerous that is as an idea?”

“Yes, I understand completely,” I nodded. “So don’t talk me round from it, as Twilight and I are working on ways to help you all.”

“I…” she said, still trying to get her head around my moronic idea. “I think… I might be able to help you with that.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“You’re nowhere near strong enough to stand up to even Cadance’s Nightmare Form, that’s undeniable,” Luna said, clicking her fingers and pointing at me. “But… that draining ability of yours could act as a way to boost your own power.”

“I’m aware of that, Aunt Luna,” I nodded. “That’s why I’m trying to-”

“No, no, listen!” she snapped, shutting me up immediately. “Your draining power won’t work on a fully-powered Nightmare Form, so you first need to weaken them with magic. But your magic is nowhere near strong enough and if you wanna do this in this millennia, we can’t wait for your magic to strengthen with time.”

“Why can’t we wait?” I asked. “I mean, I wanna help you guys as fast as-”

“Because I want that sadistic bitch out of my body as fast as fucking possible,” Luna said, jabbing a finger into my chest. “I want to be able to have rough and angry sex again without worrying about her slitting my lover’s throat and drinking their blood whilst still riding them.”

“Does that happen often?” I asked with a hint of worry.

“More often than I’m proud to admit,” she nodded. “So, you drain through sex, this is a well-known fact to me. So, would you like to go on a grand quest?”

“Does it involve what I think it does?” I asked in an excited tone.

“Yes. I’m gonna chart out a map that’ll point you to the most powerful creatures in this world that you’re gonna fuck the brains out of until you’re strong enough to take on each individual Nightmare Form.”

“Wait… creatures?” I asked. “Like Bloaters and Gigascorpions?”

“No, things like Hellhounds, Vampresses, Water Dragonesses,” Luna listed quickly. “All kinds of creatures that have both elemental magic and elemental resistence to the abilities that each Nightmare Form possesses.”

“Right… so where do I start”? I asked.

“If I remember correctly…” Luna said, pressing a finger lightly into my chest. “You’ve got an appointment with a very sad and very lonely Omega Narrowscale, do you not?”

“I…” I said, not having a clue how to respond that. “You want me to fuck a dragoness the size of a mountain?”

“Yeah,” Luna nodded. “I want you to fuck her dry.”