Lineage

After forty minutes of resting in each other’s arms, we decided it was a good idea to get moving before we wasted too much time sitting around. Svea used her magic to clean herself up and out, making the cum that smeared her body and loaded her insides disappear before using her magic to fashion me a new pair of pants to wear after she’d ruined the old ones, and once she’d shifted back to her human form and redressed, we were off into the city.

“Y’know…” I said as we exited the hallway and looked over the expanse of the city. “I’m quite surprised you let me fuck you back there. I would’ve thought you didn’t trust me enough?”

“I’m quite surprised myself, if I do say so,” she said, looking back at me with a warm expression. “But as soon as I felt you against me… I just couldn’t tell you to stop. I seem to trust you a lot more than I thought I did… though if I may ask… why didn’t you fuck my pussy?”

“Well… I figured if I got to nail you there before I’d filled in my part of the bargain it wouldn’t be fair for you…” I shrugged with a chuckle. “So that can be my reward, okay? And besides… I don’t seem to get any stronger from anal… not that it’d make a difference, anyway. I haven’t felt a power up from any of the girls I’ve fucked so far.”

“If I may suggest a reason?” she asked. “I think it might be because you haven’t unlocked your magic yet.”

“... what?” I asked in horror.

“Luna said that you’ve never been able to unlock your magic,” Svea said slowly. “And because of that, the energy you’re getting from your… conquests isn’t making a difference to your strength because the power you’re getting is increasing the size of a pool that you don’t have access to.”

I blinked blankly for a second, holding up my finger in a form of protest, trying to find the words to express my feelings before my finger went limp and my mouth hung agape, unable to process and respond in due time.

“Fuck.”

“Indeed.”

“Right… so I’ll need to talk to Celestia when I get back,” I sighed, rubbing my face and groaning angrily into my hand. “Why is it always something?”

“It’s the way the world works, I’m afraid,” Svea shrugged. “You gain one small victory and then have nothing but bad experience for a long while.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed, scratching the underside of my chin before shaking my head. “Alright then, shall we continue?”

“Indeed we shall,” she nodded, smiling gently as she began to walk alongside me, the depths below producing no sound and adding to the tense atmosphere, so I decided to break it with conversation.

“Svea, you mentioned that you were one of the daughters of a High Dragoness, right?” I asked, turning to look at the taller woman.

“I did,” she nodded. “Why do you ask?”

“What exactly is a High Dragoness?” I asked. “I never covered dragonic society much in my studies, kind of briefly went over breeding and solo living when I was about thirteen, and mostly ignored the homework assignments on proper scale maintenance.”

“Pff, that last one would come back to haunt you if you were of our kind,” Svea chuckled. “If you allowed your scales to become damaged or neglected, they can become serious liabilities in later life, for both survival and breeding purposes. For instance, if you allowed one of your first adult scales to grow in at a strange angle instead of trying to reset or remove it, it could cause your entire adult track to grow in misshapen and uneven.”

“Track?” I asked in a confused manner. “What does that mean?”

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head with a chuckle. “The track is what we refer to as the lines between scales that link together and tend to overlap onto the next line. If the track is as it should be, the line should all intersect together and overlap into the next layer perfectly, meaning that your dermal armour shall be strong and functional. However if the track isn’t as aligned as it should be, it can cause scales to grow in in strange patterns due to other scales being askew or disorderly, meaning that your armour can, at best, not be complete or easy to slip through or, at worst, not grow in at all in some places due to their being no room on the body.”

“So, how do your scales grow in improperly?” I asked.

“In the same way human teeth do,” Svea continued. “It really depends on genetics for how your scales grow, but we can use magic and certain types of wiring to re-adjust the scales during a dragon’s puberty to help their adult scales fit into place and not ruin their track.”

“Mentioning teeth,” I brought up. “D’you only get one set of adult scales?”

“Thankfully, no,” Svea said. “For other dragon species, such as Broadsnouts and Benralian Shriekers, their scales are weak enough to be damaged during most fights and, as such, need to be replaced often so they’ve evolved to regrow their scales every few weeks if they lose one, as lizards do with their scales. For my species, losing a scale is not unheard of, but neither is it impossible, so we too can regrow our scales. Tails are different, though, for different species of dragons.”

“Is that regrowing scales or regrowing the thing itself?” I asked.

“The latter,” Svea answered. “Certain species of dragons can regrow their tails: Horncrests, Dipbacks, and Ruddertails can regrow theirs, whereas my species, Broadsnouts, and Lassenmaws can’t. Though, nobody has figured out exactly why some can and others can’t. Our distant cousins, the Water Dragons, can regrow their tails and limbs… to be honest, I’m not sure why they call them dragons, they can’t fly, they don’t have scales, they have no breath magic, and are anatomically similar to humans than dragons. And they have one of the worst evolutionary flaws I’ve ever seen in an underwater creature.”

“Which is?” I asked with an cocked eyebrow.

“Breasts,” she answered. “And some of them come with sizes that rival mine. Do you know how much they both weigh down and ruin the creature’s streamlined body? Especially for creatures that are designed to swim to most destinations.”

“That… well, do they breastfeed with them?”

“No,” Svea said. “They aren’t mammals, they reproduce through egg-laying. I mean for the love of the Elders, the word mammal itself is derived from an ancient word for breasts. Mammal, mammaries, if you don’t reproduce in a manner that requires breasts, why do they have them?”

“Svea… you’re a little hung up on this issue…” I pointed out after noticing how irritated she was getting. “Bad experience or something?”

“Well… yes. As a youngling, I was brought to one of the underwater palaces in the east to meet some of our distant relatives for a diplomatic mission,” she began, crossing her arms and scrunching her nose up. “I’d been able to use my magic to attain a human form much earlier than most of my kind, and as such I hadn’t exactly… developed to the degree you see me now. And there was this complete cunt of a Water Dragon that would make fun of me for being flat-chested the entire time I was there.”

“Huh,” I said with a slow nod. “Petty.”

“Indeed it was,” she shrugged before looking down at her enormous bust with a satisfied smirk. “But I soon came into my adult body and blew that fish skank out of the water in terms of endowment.”

“D’you want me to ask another question?” I asked with a nervous look. “I mean, I’d love to sit here and talk about how awesome your boobs are for the rest of the day if we could, but I can tell you’re getting pretty salty about it… huh, salty, fish. I made a funny.”

“Yes,” she said. “I believe you asked me about a High Dragoness before we got sidetracked?”

“Right, yeah,” I nodded. “What is a High Dragoness?”

“I know you aren’t too well versed in the matter,” she chuckled, seemingly calming down from her breast-envy. “It was made obvious when you confused a High Dragoness with a Draconic Priestess.”

“Yeah, like I said, didn’t really pay that much attention in school,” I shrugged.

“Not a problem,” she said. “I’m happy to explain. I believe a brief history lesson is in order, you see-” I was ready to listen to Svea’s lecture when my wolf-hearing picked up a scraping noise nearby, similar to that of an axe being dragged across stone. I held my hand out across her waist, stopping her from proceeding as the sound drew closer, followed by another one, then two, then four, all from different directions.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“We’re being surrounded,” I said in a quiet voice, drawing my steel sword and squaring my stance. “I’m hearing at least eight of them and they all sound dangerous.”

“Any ideas?” she asked.

“Cut them to pieces until they stop getting up?” I offered, scanning our surroundings quickly. As we’d been talking, we’d made our way down a small staircase and into what seemed like an ancient plaza, with what looked like an old statue crumbling apart in the centre with several alleyways, streets, and doors to houses leaving a lot of areas for people to come through. Each of the black stone buildings in this area had two floors, each with a balcony, meaning that if there were more of whatever the hell was coming, they could come from both floors if they needed to.

“Were any of them here this early before?” I asked.

“No, they were much further down,” she said, shaking her head.

“Then your commotion last time must’ve brought them looking for you,” I growled, turning around and spotting the first one limp into the plaza. It was a man dressed from head to toe in thick, steel plate armour clutching a chipped battle axe, his armour scuffed and slashes as if he’d seen his fair share of combat, but whether before or after he died here was unknown to me. I scanned over his weapons and armour, spotting the crest of a knight’s guild on the eastern side of Equestria, often known for taking out contracts like most organised guilds did. They often didn’t travel alone, meaning that his friends might still be in this city.

“I’m guessing we’re in range of the city’s magic blocker?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Svea said, trying to cast a spell only to have a dark wisp immediately swallow her magic. “I’m depending on you, Little One.”

“Then let’s try not to fuck this up,” I said, hearing the second and third lost soul enter the plaza, both of them wearing nothing more than rags while clinging to rusted, ruined equipment. “Wish me luck.” I tried to find something on the two newcomers to tell me where they were from, but there was nothing to give me a clue beyond the age of the clothes they wore, being a style that hadn’t been popular for over seventy years if the history books I’d read were right. The two of them seemed to be much more badly damaged than the knight in the plaza, which seemed like a logical reason for why he was able to move so fast compared to the other shamblers.

He rushed toward me, hiking his axe high above his head and attempting to bring it down and cleave me in half. I was thankful that Svea was competent enough to move on her own, allowing me to dodge the attack, spinning around the knight’s side and slashing at his back, my sword creating a loud scrape but nothing more than a scratch on the armour.

“Great,” I growled, wondering why I thought a slash would work against armour as thick as this. “Puncture points and joints, Richter.” I watched as the knight spun around, still having the strength and speed to slash his axe towards me as he spun, myself making no attempts to block a blow from the much heavier weapon for the risk of breaking my limbs, and as such decided that ducking and dodging was my best method of survival. I squared my stance once more, gripping my sword with both hands as I aimed a sstab for the knight’s exposed shoulder joint, my blade slipping in between the plated and stabbing deep into his arm. I then tore my sword free and aimed a slash for the knight’s head, trying to angle it to get under his helmet and make a start at cutting off his head, knowing that a single slash to sever a head with the force I managed to muster up wouldn’t be enough to do it in one.

Luckily, it seemed that I was able to cut more than enough of his neck to cause it to loll back slightly, his skin and muscle having been cut cleanly and a solid cut into his spinal cord causing the head to sag, but not snap off altogether.

“Right, one more should take off the head, then we focus on the limbs,” I said. My hearing caught the sound of one of the shambling ones trying to sneak up behind me and I luckily managed to whirl around in time to slice both of the hand clutching his rusted dagger clean off before driving my sword through his chest and shoving him over. I mentally criticised myself for the sloppiness of my move: deciding to try my luck and see if I could stop an attack to my back instead of putting distance between the two of us in case I couldn’t, fittingly hearing the criticism in Luna’s voice as I went through it.

The lost soul was of course not dead, attempting to shamble up onto his feet only to be brought back to the ground by me booting him under the chin hard enough to knock his head back onto the floor and split open. I brought my sword up with both hands and brought it down on his neck, using the force of gravity for an extra boost to cleave his head off before booting it away for him to lose his sense of location when the body got up. I turned my attention back to the knight to see him managing to heft his axe up, completely ignoring the injuries I’d given him…

As I’d already been told they did.

He continued to advance toward me, blood pouring from the slice in his neck as he stomped closer, bringing his axe down to his side for a low swing. I made another stupid decision, this time rushing forward and booting him in the chest as an attempt to knock him over, only instead causing him to stagger back slightly. He still managed to swing his axe, and though the proximity between the two of us meant that I was too close to be hit by the head of the axe, I was still close enough to have the solid steel shaft of the weapon slam into my ribs, knocking me off my feet and knocking the air out of me.

With a pained grunt, I managed to keep a hold of my sword and roll back onto my feet, keeping my eyes on the knight as my hearing told me that the others were approaching now: a mix of other knights, men with swords, shields, and even one with a bow with a nearly full quiver. I growled angrily, knowing that not two days ago I managed to slaughter a camp full of bandits single-handedly and was now seemingly overwhelmed by no more than eight fucking people. I tried my best to fend off the undying men for several more minutes, but it was clear that with more than one man who was both very well-armoured and immune to the attacks that would fell most men, I was outmatched, and staying to fight would mean certain death. I decided that it would be best to just run for it. Locating Svea, who’d become occupied with dodging around her own knife-wielding lost soul, the ninth one, I grabbed her by the arm and took off as fast as I could.

We ran for several minutes, ducking past many more of the undead men, even spotting a few female warriors, until I charged into a small house, slamming the door behind us and pushing a bookshelf over the door to prevent them from getting in. I hoped and prayed that none of the undead had taken a liking to this place, and after a quick search of the property, I determined that we were the only ones inside. I dropped onto my back side, not even taking the time to sheath my sword, as I panted with exhaustion, searing with anger deep inside about how poorly I’d fought back there, allowing myself to be bettered by a bunch of soulless monsters that had less sense than a catatonic camel between the lot of them. I slammed my hand into the ground, too ashamed to look at Svea as she sat down opposite me, waiting to hear her anger and bile at how pathetic I was.

“You couldn’t have done anything else,” she said in a soft tone.

“Of course I could,” I snarled, “I could’ve managed to kill at least one of the fucking things, I could-”

“Richter,” she said in a calming manner. “Stop.”

“I…” I said, looking into her soft blue eyes and sighing loudly, hanging my head in shame.

“You couldn’t have done anything else,” she repeated. “Like I said, the creatures in here are dangerous. You’ve seen that yourself and should feel lucky that you were able to escape without joining them.”

“I guess,” I shrugged, her words not exactly resonating with me.

“Come on,” she said, giving me a reassuring smile. “All we need do is come up with another strategy. It shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”