[b][u][center]Tests of the Tree For sw08 By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b] Every dragon had a place that they were drawn to, a place where their heart felt at ease, where they felt centered and safe. It was a place that any dragon would protect with all their might, since there seemed to be only one such place for every dragon, one spot where they could feel this way. If it was taken… For Tsunami, his place was beneath an old tree, resting in its shadow on the sunny days that never changed in the forest. The bark beneath his back was as familiar as the scales on the back of his hands, and it was just as comfortable now as it had been the day that he’d found the tree. The green-scaled, gray-bellied dragon leaned his head back, his antlers spilling to either side of the tree trunk as he stared up at the sky through its branches. The sun peered back at him, shining through leaves and vines and more, all filled with the power of life and churning with the living energy of the universe. The dragon smiled, closing his eyes. He was halfway to taking a nap when he felt the flow of energy around him shift. Tsunami shifted, opening one eye – “Mmph!” Only for a vine to dart forward and cover his mouth. It wrapped tight around his snout, pulling itself into one loop after another. The other vines were moving even quicker, darting all around him and pulling at his arms and legs, trying to drag them against his torso, almost as if the tree itself was trying to capture him. Shocked as he was, Tsunami instinctively pushed back against the power of the tree, his muscles tensing up and down his body. His arms bulged and his legs tensed, and for a moment, the tugging power of the vines seemed to lessen. Before he could do anything to capitalize on the opportunity, though, other vines, thicker ones, fell over his body. Some of them were large and sticky, covered in some strange sort of sap that made his body parts try and stick together, while others were slender and spry, moving through the gaps between his fur and scales down to the armor he wore. He felt them slithering into the gaps, finding the weak points before suddenly tensing. Piece by piece, his armor went flying off, breastplate, shoulder guards, everything flying through the air. The dragon growled deep in his chest, pulling his arms in tightly. He managed to wrench them free of the vines, but the sap on his limbs left them stuck to his chest. Still growling, in frustration as much as in anger, the dragon spun about, swinging his tail against the grasping tendrils, pushing them away with as much strength as he could muster. Little by little, he knocked them back from his legs, managing to get himself to a standing position. Back and forth he wrenched himself, finally kicking one leg free. “Away, vines! Away!” With a hard kick, he knocked away the ones that had been gathering around his middle, finally giving him a chance to free his arms. One, then the other, ripped free of the sap that had bound them to his sides, and he panted for breath as the vines started to pull away from him. Another man would have run, but not him. Something had gone wrong, and he could not simply leave this place. If someone had cursed his Heart-Place… [i]Good…[/i] Tsunami froze, half-convinced that he’d heard a voice in the air, something that was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. He turned, his head whipping this way and that to find the speaker, but there was none to be seen. Before he could call out, the vines struck again. He avoided the biggest of them, but the more spry, smaller ones darted around his ankles and his wrists, around his shoulders and his waist. Without warning, the naked dragon was lifted off the ground, and this time, no matter how he bunched his muscles, he could not feel any gap in the tree’s attacks on him. [i]What is happening?![/i] he thought. [i]What has been done to you?[/i] The tree, of course, had no answer for him, but there were ever more vines rising from the tree itself. These ones were smaller, more narrow, closer to the size of little pieces of string than proper vines. The ones that held his arms and legs pulled at him, repositioning him so that his arms were over his head and his legs were spread. His tail was pulled up and back, holding him exposed as could be. He felt…something…as the vines started moving closer to him, almost as if they were perching over his most sensitive places. Several gathered around his armpits, others near his sides and stomach. Still others were positioned over his thighs and behind his knees, but the greatest concentration of them were around his paws. That something…that something was one word. A sense of something that he had to do, an order that came from somewhere outside himself. [i]Silence.[/i] No sooner had he understood the word than the tendrils attacked him. Not with beating brute power, not with some strange poison… But by overwhelming him with laughter. He stiffened up, barely able to keep the giggles inside as the first rasping touches flicked over the bottoms of his paws, his eyes going wide as he felt the tickles begin. They were quick and light, the edges of leaves and the pointed tips of the vines flicking up and down along the bottom of his soles. Each little flick sent a lightning bolt of giggles through his body, making him want to just break out with laughter. But… But he had to be quiet. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know how, but he knew that he needed to keep quiet. Up, down, up, down, like some torture device the tickling vines stroked along the bottom of his paws, each time giving them another blast of the strange tickling feeling that they had delivered the first time. Up and down, up and down they went, always giving him a shiver and a shake. His eyes were bugging out as he clenched his teeth shut. It only got worse as the other tendrils lunged for his armpits, or down along his sides and stomach. They were flicking over like claws, but rather than cutting him, they were tickling him, poking him, digging in anywhere that was sensitive and could be made to make him laugh. His lungs ached as he swallowed his laughter and his body shook like a man possessed, but he refused to laugh. Not even when the tendrils reached up to his neck and started tickling along the sides. [i]No laughter…not even…not even a sound…[/i] Tsunami held tight to that thought, biting the insides of his cheeks to keep himself from giggling as the vines slipped between his toes, wiggling and almost vibrating as they rubbed the sides of them, as if they were about to tickle him into oblivion. [i]Endure, endure![/i] he told himself. And so he did, clenching his teeth tightly as he shivered and shook from side to side, the tendrils working him over like a dozen attackers, each one dragging and flicking and poking from a different angle, desperate to find some sort of weak point. Tsunami gave them none. Eventually, the whipping tickles of the vines pulled back, and he felt the same sense of ‘good’ as he had when he had escaped the vines the first time. Though he was not allowed freedom, this time, he did feel as though he had passed some sort of test. He panted slowly, shaking his head as he felt the restriction on laughter finally pass. A few weak giggles slipped through his lips before he could stop them, but at least he didn’t need to hold those back anymore. He could relax – Except, he couldn’t. He stared as two more vines, each one thicker than the others that were holding him up, rose from the ground towards the space between his legs. One was going for the slit at the front that held his shaft, and the other – “No.” Tsunami said it with the firm command of a dragon that had had enough. The vine hesitated just under his tail, almost as though it might listen to him, but then began moving again, pushing up between his muscular ass cheeks and rubbing against his pucker. He had been through enough so far. He refused to allow that to just slide in. Growling, he clenched and flexed his muscles, holding tight, keeping everything clenched up back there. His rump cheeks held the vine between them, even while the other vine rubbed against the front of his body, teasing at his slit. [i]You want it…you will have to…work for it…[/i] The dragon closed his eyes, forcing himself not to think about the rubbing at the slit between his legs, forcing his muscles to tense up even more at the vine that was struggling to get up inside his backdoor. [i]Not allowed. Not going in.[/i] Grunting at the effort that it cost him, Tsunami kept squeezing, feeling the vine wriggling away, the tip of it pressing against his tightly-closed pucker. Every time that it pressed against him, he both thrust his hips forward and clenched down all the tighter, denying the vine any chance to get inside of him. It was too dry for it to get a hold on him, and kept sliding away, either up between the cheeks or down between his legs. Either way, it kept that one at bay, while the other was, much as he hated to admit it, having an easier time working him up. He glanced down, seeing the tip of his shaft starting to slide out of his slit. As soon as it did, the vine managed to wrap around the head, squeezing and rubbing, teasing and tantalizing it to keep growing. He had little choice but to let it, considering what was happening at his backdoor. The fight against the vine at his tailhole was won as the vine in front finally pulled his shaft all the way out. The one behind disappeared, giving him a break, while the one in front stroked him slowly. Ever so slowly, almost like it was trying to be cautious about it. Tsunami huffed, but there was little he could do against a gentle…tentacle-job? First he was hard, and then he dripped. Not much, but a little, a little sliver of pre-cum that landed on the vine. [i]Pure…[/i] And just like that, with that voice in his head, the vine let him go. His cock was left bouncing and twitching in mid-air, not that he minded that. Rather than letting him go, however, the vines moved him again, holding him suspended over another portion of the earth. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could hear something happening down below. The vines didn’t let him turn or look around, all they did was keep him suspended. So, he could not see what was causing the rumbling, nor did he notice what was coming for him until it was too late. Unlike the vine, the rough thing pressing against his ass was coated in some sort of wet slime. He couldn’t pucker his hole hard enough to keep it from sliding against him, to keep the point from slipping into his virginal opening. He growled under his breath, trying to shake his hips to keep them out of reach, but this time the tree showed its true strength. The vines tightened all around him, keeping him pinned in place, preventing any movement that the tree itself didn’t approve of. He felt the pressure against his backside getting stronger and stronger, threatening to burst right through into his insides. Tsunami clenched down, trying to slow down the bulge that was grinding against his butt, feeling his hole starting to spread despite his best efforts. Suddenly, it pushed upwards, and he gasped as he felt his hole spread, his tight little ass finally opened up. “Ah!” He gasped for breath as it slid further and further in. He expected pain, but there…there was surprisingly little, almost as if something was protecting him, or… Or healing him. As the thing slid further inside of him, he could feel his hole tightening up again, almost as if it was healing up as the thing went further and further inside of him. The vines shifted, and he was finally able to get a look back between his legs. It was a seed, he realized, a large seed-pod that was gradually being fed into his hole. It was almost all the way in, the pressure inside of him growing as it pressed down on…on something that he didn’t realize he had. “Mmph…nngh…” POP! The seed finally pushed the rest of the way in, and the vines finally let him go. The dragon tumbled head over heels towards the ground, only barely managing to save himself by throwing his arms out and landing on all fours. THUD! The echo of his landing spread through the forest, and Tsunami panted as he struggled to catch his breath from what just happened. He had been…violated, in a way, though that last had been done in a gentle enough fashion that he almost wasn’t sure that he could call it that. It was still forcing something inside of him, but… He reached under his tail, feeling for what had to be a rip or a tear back there, or at least a well-opened butt. Instead, he found himself rubbing over a clenched pucker that was as tight as it had ever been. [i]Impossible…[/i] Yet, it seemed it was all too possible. He groaned as he stood up, feeling the seed-pod inside of him shifting about, and he swore that it was extending more vines of its own through his inner walls, sending tingles through his backside. Leaning against his tree, Tsunami looked up the trunk towards the branches. He half-expected to see someone up there, some magician that had pulled this trick on him, but no matter how hard he searched, there was nothing to see. It was baffling. And yet… All around him, he could feel the pulse and flow of life energy. Dragons had a gift for that to begin with, but this…this was something different. He swore that he could feel it more keenly now, as if the world had opened itself up to him. Or as if he had opened himself up to the world. Either way, he groaned as he felt a tingle running through his body, a tingling crackle of energy that emanated from the seed inside him. The eastern dragon groaned as he leaned against the tree, panting softly as he felt his muscles swelling, feeling almost bruised for a moment before they throbbed with a new sense of power. He looked at his arms, at his legs, even at his chest. Everything was swelling, growing stronger, more powerful. His head was clearing from the strange lust and pleasure that had come from the vines mere moments ago, and his body…his body felt… It felt good. The dragon turned, leaning his back against the tree once more, his tail swaying as his entire body felt like it was pulsing. Pulsing with power, with…with growth, of all things. His eyes closed to slits as he felt his height increase, growing into a figure that would stand out anywhere, on the battlefield or in the royal court. [i]Grow…become who you were meant to be…[/i] This time, there was no question that there was a voice around him. Tsunami lifted his head, staring up at the tree. “You…” [i]Yes…I spoke…as I have blessed you…[/i] “How? Why?” [i]Because you are dedicated. A champion of your people. Loyal to your leader. A general of power and kindness. And for that…I seek your service.[/i] It had to be one of the old gods, he realized. Gods of the world that had faded from the minds of many, but existed still. Bound in many things across the world, from niches in the mountain to the stones beneath the rivers, and even – [i]I am bound to this tree, but you…you may help. Help protect…and help heal.[/i] Suddenly, Tsunami felt a flow through his body, a flow of life energy that he had never felt before. It emanated from the seed upwards, some of it rushing through his crotch, but the rest of it up to his chest. He looked down just in time to see a strange white ooze coming from his chest, almost looking like milk. It was impossible, he thought, but as he touched it and tasted it, he realized that was what it was. “Milk?” he muttered. [i]The milk of nature, to heal the plants scoured by war.[/i] He nodded slowly, then looked down to his shaft. It was still hard, still throbbing. He took it in hand, rubbing a finger along his shaft, along his swelling balls. They were growing quickly, as were his nipples. “And here?” [i]The milk of humanity…to heal the scars of the wounded…[/i] Great gifts, he knew…and ones that he would have to use, rather than hide. He bowed to the tree, whispering his thanks for the gifts. [b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]