I was actually kind of nervous. It was one thing to pleasure humans and human-kin where I had some idea what to expect, and had a frankly completely unfair toolset to do it with. It was another thing entirely to deal with a dragon, and an ancient and experienced one like Ansae at that. If there was anyone I could actually disappoint it would be her.

Since she was already relaxing in a chair I’d made, I converted the chair to a breeding station. I could do that without affecting anything about it, a skill I’d taken advantage of more than once when it came to Shayma and Taelah. The moment I did that I could read Ansae through the link and it gave me an almost physical shock because Ansae felt terrible.

Even with my fields she was still in pain, not to mention exhausted both physically and mentally and strained due to being so low on resources. I’d seen that she was down on health from her maximum, but I hadn’t really thought much of it because she didn’t have any visible wounds. Not to mention that with Iniri and Shayma and Taelah I had never been intimate when they were hurt, let alone low by hundreds of thousands of health.

“A mind magic link?” Ansae muttered. “No, it’s not that. What…?”

“Oh jeez, Ansae, I didn’t realize.”

“Realize what?” She asked, and it occurred to me that she’d been operating on such low reserves for so long she barely even noticed. Oh, it wasn’t that she didn’t hurt, but it was like someone with a chronic illness who just forgot what being healthy was. “Oh,” she added a second later, as she understood what I was feeling. I could tell she was trying to close that off, shove it away.

“It’s a lot at once, isn’t it?” I told her, trying to stop her from shutting down on me. “You know I won’t kiss and tell, as it were. Hell, you know I literally can’t tell barring my Companions.” Even ignoring the time she’d spent closed off underneath the mountain, I doubted that Ansae had shown any sort of vulnerability to anyone for centuries. It wasn’t just that she was a prideful dragon, though that was quite a lot of it, it was also that she was The Silver Woe, the greatest Power in existence. For a moment there was a stretched tension between us, and I was afraid she was going to do something rash. Then she let out a breath.

“I’d probably kill anyone else who saw that deeply into me,” Ansae muttered, looking more tired than before.

“Really?”

“Maybe,” she said, half-closing her eyes. “I haven’t had anyone close to me for a very long time. Immortality is a tricky thing and that’s before my earned title. Weakness is something that’s just part of being alive; it’s something you can work to change. Vulnerability requires trust, and it’s intimate.”

“Sex isn’t intimate?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ansae said, but in a way I wasn’t. There were definitely people who had casual flings all the time and thought nothing of it. I was familiar with the type and tended to regret involving myself with them ⁠— like with The Hurricane. I was not that way by inclination, and that inclination was only emphasized by the dungeon biology that connected me to my partners. As amazing as the breeding stations were, it was impossible to be casual with them, not when they connected me directly to the other person’s emotions as well as sensations.

Ansae had hinted at wanting me to push her limits, or maybe my limits, with what I could do with a breeding station. She certainly wasn’t shy or reticent, and I was pretty sure that she’d tell me directly what she wanted. What she actually needed was a more gentle approach, something that soothed vulnerability she felt. I could feel the craving for it, though I doubted she realized it, not with all the layers of self-control she had built up.

I did like Ansae, despite all her sharp edges, and while I didn’t love her, what she needed was some loving. That was something I was happy to do and made me far more comfortable for a first encounter than trying to imitate what I’d done for The Hurricane. Not that I didn’t enjoy it a little rough, at least with Shayma on occasion, but that seemed like something to build up to, not to start with.

“Well you’re just going to have to deal with someone actually caring about you.” I told her, and she actually growled. Before she could say something or try to stir from her chair, I actually made it even softer, letting her sink in just slightly as I slid tendrils along her neck and around the base of her horns to rub at her scales. It was a little bit of an odd sensation, like touching living steel, albeit steel with a bit of yield to it. It wasn’t that her scales were slick, just that they seemed to be like hammered metal, still fresh from the forge.

Considering her shapeshifting I wasn’t sure if the armor and clothing she wore was actual real, taken from somewhere in her hoard when she invoked the change, or if it was just shaped out from her actual flesh. My overlay didn’t tell me, but it had issues with Ansae anyway. A few questing tendrils found the answer to that. The armor was real, and not just decorative, since it fairly hummed with all kinds of magic and had runes laced along the inside. That didn’t stop me from pulling it, and the clothes below, into inventory and putting it to one side, baring her upper body.

“Like what you see?” Ansae challenged, but I could tell it was just reaction.

“Since you’re shifted, does that mean you sculpted everything yourself, to look humanoid?”

“Of course. A form similar enough to human-kin but still recognizably me.”

“I must say I approve of your artistry.” Her humanoid form was very Amazonian, the muscles obvious, but mostly by sheer mass rather than absurd definition. She looked like she could bend steel barehanded without looking like she spent her time bodybuilding.

She had big, firm breasts, the smooth scales growing smaller where they framed pale violet areolae and nipples, which clearly had no place being on a reptile – or whatever dragons were – but it wasn’t like Ansae cared. It was obvious she’d made the form to be attractively female, while still keeping draconic characteristics like horns and teeth and scales. With the size of her frame the big breasts were even larger than they looked, and I had to vastly increase the normal size of my tendrils to wrap around them, sliding around from behind her to cup them.

For a moment it seemed like she didn’t really care about my touches at all, then I felt her actually unlocking restrictions inside her, like turning valves to let things through. Suddenly I could feel her sensitivity to touch as I brushed along the soft mounds of her breasts – and they were soft despite the scales – as well as the soothing caress along her neck and up around where her horns met her skull.

“Thank you, I suppose,” she sighed. I shifted tendrils slightly, taking advantage of the fact that her back was sunk into my breeding station to find what points worked best. It wasn’t like she had any actual knotted or particularly sore muscles, but the missing hit points was reflected somehow, and I was sure I could at least soothe that while trying to get her in the mood.

After a moment I realized I wouldn’t get very far with just physical stimulation alone, not when this was a body shaped with her will, so I pushed mana into the breeding station, pushing it out to give just a little bit of a pure-mana aura around the black flash. That got a reaction, as I could feel the surge of sensation from her, every motion growing far more intense, as if before I’d been touching her through a thick blanket.

“Blue ⁠—” Ansae said, stirring.

“Relax, relax. I won’t do anything you don’t like. I can feel you through the link, and you bet I’m paying attention to it.” I’d disturbed her poise more than I had expected, given that she was thousands of years old and all, but maybe thousand-year-old poise felt more unsettling when it shifted. She didn’t reply for a moment, still tense, and I ran a few tendrils along her shoulders, reading her reactions as I soothed invisible aches, watching my mana ripple through hers.

Finally she relaxed, just a fraction, and I continued my ministrations, winding my limbs around her breasts in a slow spiral. She just breathed while I squeezed softly, despite the fact that I could feel the first sparks of arousal from my flesh and mana sliding along her scales. It wasn’t until I reached the pale violet skin, thinning the tip of my tendril to wrap around her nipple and tug softly, that she let out a noise.

“I have to admit that does feel good,” she murmured.

“I can’t take all the credit, your body is doing a lot. Gave yourself nice sensitive scales and big beautiful breasts.” I told her, giving the breasts in question another squeeze before reshaping my tendrils to slide over her nipples, rubbing them with soft, silk-textured warmth. At the same time I didn’t stint with the soothing massage, or stroking, or maybe even cuddling. It was difficult to really categorize, though it could firmly be called foreplay no matter what it was.

I kept up the slow caress of her breasts as I slid one tendril along her muzzle, rubbing along her jawline. Every single appendage I made had to be almost comically oversized, with her three-meter frame, but it seemed to work regardless as she tilted her head to lean against me. When I started to tease her nipples slightly harder, rubbing softly over their erect and hardened tips, she snorted and put her hands over the tendrils on her breasts.

“It’s amazing how much males, even male dragons, like these,” she said.

“You’re liking them too,” I told her, since I could feel that the gentle massage and silk-soft touches against her flesh were kindling a hunger deep inside her. Each stroke drew a little more of a thrill from within her, made her just a little more sensitive.

“Well there wouldn’t be any point, otherwise,” she replied, and I had to agree. Half the fun was making her squirm from the sensations I was evoking, though I had to admit they were pretty damn amazing specimens. There was a benefit to being able to reshape one’s body in totality, which made me wonder when Shayma would take advantage of it. Not that she needed much help in that regard. But it was time to focus on Ansae, so I cut that train of thought short and returned my attentions to the dragon.

I stroked one thick tendril along her belly, tracing the muscles underneath her scales and feeling for sore or sensitive spots. One of the oddities of the shapeshift form was that she had no navel, just solid silver scale, but exploring the expanse of exposed scales I found that the rest of it was very similar underneath. Ansae hummed softly as I stroked back and forth over her belly, then slid my tendril back upward, sliding it between her breasts while I squeezed and played with her nipples.

“Mmm!” Ansae said, I could feel something about that appealed to her. So, I made it thicker and kept up the slow, languid movement while I played with her breasts. I hadn’t yet turned any of the tendrils into breeders, partly because I was still working on getting her into the proper mood and partly because the idea that I was actually fucking Ansae was so insane that I wanted to keep myself under as much control as I could.

I kept up that slow teasing for a while, feeling her relax into it and open up to wanting more, before sliding out some more tendrils to take off the bottom half of her armor. Instead of just taking it off using inventory, I went more slowly, using individual tendrils to puzzle out buckles and straps, pulling off the leggings piece by piece. Underneath she had silken leggings, and when I pulled those down, she spread her legs slightly, showing off the perfectly formed slit of her sex.

Like her nipples, the flesh of her pussy was a pale violet, a narrow strip of flesh with the perfectly formed pearl of her clitoris just barely visible under its hood. I honestly wanted to dive right in, but I made myself wrap my tendrils around her thighs first, rubbing slowly at her scales and circling inward toward the enticing purple flesh. Small tendrils softly caressed her inner thighs, tracing the scale edges where they became finer and more delicate, while I wrapped a thicker one about her tail, giving it a gentle tug.

“Tease,” Ansae growled at me, though softly, tracing her claws along the tendrils squeezing and rubbing her breasts.

“You know it.” Besides which, she wasn’t ready enough for me. Despite the fact that I could feel her enjoyment of the soft touches, the rubbing of her breasts, the sparks of sensation against her nipples, she wasn’t wet and so I wasn’t satisfied. I focused on teasing and stroking all around the slight mound of her sex, fine tendrils dragging inward toward her pussy before trailing off, letting it stoke her desire.

After several minutes of sustained teasing and playing she started rolling her hips up against my attentions, the violet lips of her sex were darkening with arousal, starting to swell and gleam with moisture. I finally ran one tendril along it, giving her a long lick from the bottom of her pussy to the top of it. She shuddered softly, so I licked again, her soft skin burning hot against my flesh. Her sex parted slightly as I played with her, as if welcoming me in, but I restrained myself and kept teasing the outside of her pussy, making sure to lap against her clit slowly and firmly with every stroke. Ansae needed me to go slowly, not quickly.

“I can feel you too,” Ansae murmured, voice rising in pitch ever so slightly as the textured tendril I was using on her caressed her exposed clitoris. “You’re holding back quite a bit.”

“That’s because it’s more fun to do things the right way,” I told her, flatting my tendril over her pussy and altering the texture so it felt like a constant rolling stroke over her outer sex and her clit.

“The right — ah!” The first orgasm took her by surprise, quite a feat considering the control she normally kept herself under, her hips arching into the air and her claws suddenly digging into the tendrils she was gripping. Into, and straight through, slicing the steel-hard breeding station flesh like it was powder. It stung like hell, but it wasn’t as bad as I might have expected; certainly nothing like the organ-damage feeling I’d gotten from other damage.

“Ow.”

“I did not mean to do that,” Ansae said, pulling back from the moment she’d just had.

“It’s okay, I have spares,” I reassured her, regrowing the tendril in question and, after a moment, she dropped the severed end on the ground where I reabsorbed it. “Obviously I need to work on making breeding stations more robust for you.”

“I suppose — mm!” I wasn’t about to let her get pulled all the way out of her mood, so I squeezed her breasts harder, tugging her nipples as I sent small tendrils to spread open her pussy. Another set toyed with her clit, tiny filaments delicately stroking her sensitive pearl as I brought her mind back to pleasure. Only when I was sure she was back in the moment did I create a breeding tendril.

I kept it untextured to start, and though it was large enough to be genuinely absurd for a normal human-kin, it was nothing extreme when considering Ansae’s overall size. The tip pressed against the lips of her pussy then thrust in slowly, and I could feel her tight folds squeeze around me, silk smooth and magma hot. This time she kept her claws to herself, slit-pupiled eyes sliding nearly shut as she welcomed me inside.

“Ohh, is that good,” she said, the walls of her sex rippling around me as I drove into her, trying to pull me even deeper. I gave her what she wanted, driving into her until she was stuffed full then swelling to stretch her around me, getting another shudder. Then I started to actually thrust, a slow, smooth rhythm that let her get used to the feel of me inside her. Not to mention it let me get used to the sight and sensation of fucking an ancient dragon, shapeshift form or not.

For a while there was nothing but the sound of Ansae’s breaths and the soft, wet sound of my cock driving into her. The mana that coated it made every thrust nearly electric, sparking all kinds of sensations as I filled her, while her pussy gripped me fervently and her hips rolled against my motions. Each stroke drove her a fraction closer to orgasm, the pleasure building inside her as I watched her pant under my touch and felt her squeeze around my shaft.

I was ready and waiting the moment she came, and suddenly started driving into her faster, plunging powerfully into her pussy even as she squeezed around me. The tendrils I’d let linger around her sex wrapped around her clit, squeezing in quick pulses as I fucked her. She hissed smoke out through her teeth, grabbing her breasts with her hands to keep her claws from digging into me as I pleasured her through her orgasm, driving her up to a rapid second peak, and the feel her sex became too much. Ansae arched her back and let out a deep groan as I came inside her, flooding her with thick, sticky cum even as my cock kept her stretched wide.

“Mmn, I was wondering if you’d do that,” Ansae said languidly, then shivered as I adjusted my breeding tendril to be something rather more textured. Soft studs rose from the surface, pressing into the silken walls of her pussy and finding her most sensitive spots as I moved back to slow, gentle thrusts. “Ooh, and that.”

“How often have you looked in on me and Shayma, or Taelah, or Iniri?”

“More than once,” Ansae grinned, looking down at the tendrils that engulfed her clit, keeping a soft, slow licking going as I filled her.

“Voyeur,” I accused her, though if she had senses like mine it probably took an effort of will to not see things.

“I get bored,” she said airily, then moaned as I ‘punished’ her with a particularly hard thrust.

“No more peeking,” I told her. “I can entertain you any time you feel bored.”

“I might – mph! – take you up on that.” Ansae replied as I flexed my textured cock inside her, pressing against her tight inner walls and sliding deep inside her with every stroke. It took longer to push her over the edge the next time, a long, slow, thorough fucking with the textured cock, her cum and mine soaking her pussy, but finally she growled and shuddered for me. Immediately I began to suck her clit hard, rubbing and licking it with a finely-texture tendril as I fucked her through her orgasm, and her tail thrashed hard enough that I had to let it go for fear that it’d tear that appendage right off.

“Mph – keep – going!” She demanded, and I did, hammering her though a second orgasm and then raising the stimulation again. The tendrils wrapped around her clit started to buzz, vibrating directly against it while I extended the studs inside her, stretching her even further as I drove into her as hard as I could before I came. The combination of the feel of my seed spilling out inside her, the massive, studded cock, and the vibration pushed her to her third straight orgasm and she snorted actual fire as she threw back her head and moaned.

The breeding window still didn’t appear, but unlike with The Hurricane I didn’t mind how long it was taking. I had to ramp up the stimulation more, pressing vibrating tendrils against her nipples as well as driving inside her, but after two more paired orgasms she was finally sated, or the breeding station was, and the overlay notified me of my options.

Breeding options:

Revitalize: Restore some health, stamina, mana: 120 biomass, 361,500 mana.

Restoration: Restore the body to prime condition: 120,400 biomass, 178,800 mana.

Purify: Removes all forms of depletion by replacing all of target’s energy with dungeon core mana reserve: 602,010 mana.

I noticed right away that I had a discount on Purify – maybe from [Efficiency] – and while it was still out of reach a sixty thousand mana discount was nothing to scoff at. I was still going to select Revitalize but judging from the biomass and mana cost of Restoration I actually could fix a good chunk of what was wrong with Ansae physically — though, considering it was shapeshift form, that might need to wait for using it on her in her normal form. I was curious as to whether that would top off her health or what, though the cost meant I’d have to effectively convert all my storage crystals to biomass to get it done.

“All right, here goes,” I told her, and she waved a hand, relaxed and smiling and messy. Revitalize didn’t take all my mana, which was odd, because I could have shoved another forty thousand or so at it, but I had to assume there was a reason. I selected it, and watched everything started to glow. The first thing I noticed was that Revitalize was actually interacting with Ansae’s soul structure. The mana flowed in from the breeding station and saturated her body, but took shape from parts of the admittedly wrecked architecture, shifting and changing and doing complicated things.

[Soul Sight] advances to 7.

I could understand some of it. Some of the mana was grabbing onto the biomass and performing healing, some of it was grabbing onto less biomass and restoring stamina. Some of it was shifting and altering into Ansae’s own personal mana, vanishing into her mana pool, the transformations based on some combination of mana biology and soul design.

I could see why it didn’t suck up my full mana pool either — the stress it put on her body and soul was actually a little alarming. Even if my mana was pure and Affinityless, it wasn’t hers, so I wasn’t going to be able to pump her full of mana all at once. There was, in a sense, a cooldown. It would be poison to try and do more. That was something I wouldn’t have been able to see without [Soul Sight], and implied that the various safeties that restricted what I could do with my mana biology probably all had good reasons for existing. Besides which, I didn’t mind doing it again.

“So, it’s saying you have a fertility penalty for this—” I started to tell Ansae as I noticed that little notation on the overlay, and but it went away as soon as I said it.

“Interesting,” Ansae mused, resting her claws on her belly. “I think it’s actually hijacking some parts of the reproductive process to get the access it needs. Future potential to fuel it, mother-child bond to touch the soul…” She yawned. “I’d watch more closely but I’m enjoying this too much.”

Ultimately the three hundred thousand-some mana translated into a little over a thousand points in each of Ansae’s stats at a ratio just over one hundred to one. Which was horrendously inefficient but far, far better than her basic regeneration or even what she could get by eating my fruits. It also actually doubled her effective stamina and mana, and I could feel the improvement through the link as she was restored over the period of an hour or so.

“Feeling better?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. She was far from feeling healed, or at least, healthy, but some of the desperate exhaustion was gone.

“Feeling good, even.” She grinned.