[b][u][center]A Dragon’s Nature Chapter 1 For Engy By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b] It had always been part of Ashe’s plans to expand beyond the forest. Once he had been corrupted, he knew that the forest would not be sufficient for his plans forever. Sure, the life in the forest was entertaining to twist and bend, but there were other people in the world, other forces that he wanted to test himself against. It was the nature of life, intelligent life in particular, to push its boundaries and see where they gave, and where they did not. He could not test himself against the wild things. He needed to test himself against other…people. [i]And with the power of the demon…[/i] Ashe smiled as he stood on the edge of the forest, one of his hands cupping his balls and feeling the parasites within. Despite the slight reservations that he had about using demonic power for his purposes, the green dragon reminded himself that he had been using corrupted energy ever since he was transformed. Using someone else’s corruption would hardly be that much different. Even if it came from a demon directly, this time… Ashe shook his head, forcing himself to keep smiling. He wouldn’t be using all of it, only a portion, but even that was necessary for this little operation. Much as the druid would have liked to say that he was strong enough to overcome the village on his own… Well, it wouldn’t have been true. He needed the extra power. “Are we ready?” Ashe asked, looking to his left and right. His former companions stood at either side. Jonathan, a former cleric, stood in ash-black armor on his left. The fox was completely shielded from the outside world, his helm down and blocking anyone from seeing the face of their destroyer. The fox nodded, his tail swishing slowly, a cruel mace in hand. On the dragon’s right were the wolf, Kasan, and the mouse, Eli. Both of them had been changed by the corruption as much as the former cleric had, he knew. Kasan was more of a rager, a berserker rather than the calmer barbarian that he had been. He’d ensured that the wolf’s seed carried an element of the corruption of the forest, knowing that Kasan would not be able to help himself as he fought people. There would be a certain amount of rape tonight, much as he tried to keep it to a minimum. Eli, on the other hand… Once known as Elli, the mouse had changed more than the rest of the party upon her transformation and corruption into a male. Eli, as he preferred to go by now, wore nothing more than rings, two around his cock and three on each hand and one on each foot. They glimmered with arcane power, power that Ashe hadn’t actually supplied the rodent. [i]He’s more interested in this than the rest of them,[/i] he thought, and the dragon made a mental note to keep an eye on Eli as they made their way through the town. They were all ready, though, which was the main thing. “Kasan, I want you to circle around to the other side of the village, then attack as loudly as you possibly can,” he told the wolf. “Make sure that everyone notices you. Jonathan, you come around from the left, make sure that all their attention is away from the forest. Heal as needed, blast people into the ground if they’re too deep in the church’s doctrine to be corrupted. Understand?” “Mmm, I look forward to this,” Kasan said with a smirk. Jonathan, on the other hand, just nodded. “Eli, with me.” “Understood.” He nodded, and they split. It wouldn’t take long for their fighters to break down the resistance here at the village. He had every expectation of them being inexperienced, maybe fighting off a few bandits from time to time, but nothing compared to the power that they had. Today would be the first step in a long campaign that he had in mind. Venarl might want to spread corruption for the sake of corruption, but Ashe…Ashe had other plans. He cupped his balls again, feeling the power of the demon in the slugs down there, feeling them slipping and sliding around in his testicles. They were still distinct, feeding off his seed and sliding against each other, and every now and then, one of them pushed up against the barrier that he had put between his balls and his cock. They wanted to go deeper into him, to play inside of his shaft, and he wouldn’t let them. However, he did start pulling at their magic. The first little surge of demonic energy through his body made his cock turn red. It was a slow build of color, but it definitely changed, starting at the balls and spreading up through the shaft, running up to the head and turning it a deep crimson color. Ashe took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down, but his dick was already rising. “Mmmph…Might have underestimated Venarl’s power…” he muttered. “Shall I –” Ashe declined his companion’s offer of help. They needed all their power for this invasion, and he didn’t want any wasted on aid when it wasn’t needed. With the power of the demon running through his body, he reached out through the soles of his feet into the ground. The grass at his feet died almost instantly, going black and turning to ash. Appropriate, in a way. But it was more than just killing off plants. It was burning them down, and using the power of their death to connect to something deeper. The druid dragon reached through the ground, passing through the lives of hundreds of years of dead plants and roots that extended all the way from rotted stumps and old plants that the villagers had cut down in the past. He could feel his way into the houses on the outskirts, and felt the old wood that was still just barely clinging to the memories of life. And with his power, he could manipulate that. As soon as he heard the screams from the far side of the village, he acted. He reached through the connections that he’d made sealing the houses shut that were closest to his end of the village. The people inside would find that their doors were locked tight, the windows sealed and melded with the rest of their home. There would be no getting out, no retreat from the buildings as the wood came back to life. [i]And now to add some branches and some roots for the houses to use them against the people inside, and…yes, that should be suitable.[/i] Ashe opened his eyes with a smirk, shaking his head. “That blinds our side of the village. Let’s make an entrance, shall we?” “I was waiting for you to say that.” The mouse swung his hands forward, pulling at the ground with one and thrusting the other towards the village. The ground solidified into a rock beneath their bare feet, and suddenly, it was rushing across the open land, shooting straight for the main road through the village. Eli’s spell raised them just high enough for Ashe to be able to see across the whole village. Most of it was little more than one-story buildings, little wooden huts where people lived, but there were two larger buildings near the center of the village. One was the temple, a localized place of worship that he looked forward to breaking down and corrupting, and the other… Well, the other could become a problem. “Eli, do you have any fire spells?” he asked. “Not today.” “Pity.” The wooden keep that loomed over the rest of the village likely served as a town hall, but if the people were able to retreat to it, it was just big enough and defensible enough to keep him and his companions out. They’d have to be quick. “Alright. When we land, see if you can get close enough to raise a wall around it. I’ll work on the outskirts and keep people from running off.” “And here I thought you would let me start working on corruption, too.” “You know you’ll get a chance.” He patted the mouse on the ass. The rock was close to the village now, and they both prepared to jump off. BANG! Their rock hit the side of one building, ripping a wall off. Eli jumped off the rock and went running, while Ashe jumped off and into the building. Three lizards – two men and a woman – looked up at him as he arrived. They were half-asleep, probably having just been woken from their slumber by his sudden arrival. The dragon bowed at the waist, then stood back up, letting them see him in all his nude glory. Before they could do anything, he grabbed his cock and channeled his power into it. SPLURT! He groaned as one of the parasites were squirted right out of his shaft, landing in the mouth of one of the lizards. It started squirming, wriggling around in his mouth, and as the lizard fell back, the other two started screaming. Only for a moment, though. Ashe was there, his hands on their throats, and he pushed them back down against their shared bed. He smiled as he looked them over, their naked bodies completely on display, and he shook his head at the two men. “You can’t help but share, hmm? Neither of you strong enough to get a woman on your own?” he asked the squirming, gasping, infested one and the choking one. The woman under his other hand shivered, looking up in fear. “Well, don’t worry. After today, you’ll all be under me, so it doesn’t really matter.” Extending his powers through the wooden bed, Ashe dragged forth a series of roots, pulling them up and around the necks of the male and female. They were pinned down with wooden collars, their legs seized by writhing roots that grew from the bed and the walls, their legs forced apart and their holes on display. By the time he was done, the other male had gone completely still, his eyes glazed and a bit of black slime oozing from the corners of them. Ashe reached over, poking the lizard on the forehead. “Sit up.” Instantly, the lizard did just that, though there was a little bit of a sloshing sound from it. He imagined that it was coming from the parasite inside of the man’s head, the ooze that was running around and filling the skull making the weird liquid sound. The lizard male turned his black eyes towards Ashe, his head cocked to the side. “Reproduce and fill these two with more parasites. I want them both bulging by noon.” “Understood, Master,” the lizard said in a voice that was obviously not his own. The dragon nodded, getting up from the bed and leaving the house, making his way back to the main street. There were so many possibilities for corruption for a druid, Ashe knew, and there were so many ways that he could fuck with the town. It was almost impossible to choose just one. First, though… Ashe jumped up to the edge of one of the houses, pulling himself the rest of the way up. He climbed to the highest point and looked over the village, seeing the progress that the rest of his companions had made. It seemed like they had managed to wall off the chapel and the town hall, though it wasn’t a perfect job. It looked like Eli had gone with making a wall of packed dirt rather than a wall of stone, which meant that it would be possible for some of the more determined individuals to get through. They’d just have to be quick about it. Past that central square, he could see several burning houses. He wasn’t sure if Kasan or Jonathan had been the ones to set them, but either way, it meant that there was less shelter for the villagers, forcing them further and further towards the center. Most people on this side of the village were still locked in their homes, either being tormented and corrupted by the ‘undead’ houses that he had created by giving life back to the wood it was made of or being seeded by the puffs of parasitic spores that were coming from the flowers sprouting from the wood. Either way, they would be controlled before long, giving them the numbers to search for any stragglers. But on the other side, people were still fleeing down the streets, running from house to house, trying to get everyone safe before they could be caught or hurt. He could see one family running from Kasan the berserker, the father throwing the mother and daughter ahead before the wolf caught up and pinned the rat to the ground, rutting his ass. [i]Well, it is a way of corrupting them, though a very slow one…[/i] A one-to-one corruption was always slower than the ways that he preferred, though he supposed that it was better to have something than nothing. It was bad enough that Jonathan was more of an enforcer than a corrupter; he didn’t need two people in the group that were useless on that front. With some effort, he dug into his magic and searched for some of the uncorrupted. Most of them were either running or hiding, and he wanted the ones that were – [i]There.[/i] There was a market near the center of the village, and he could feel at least two dozen people hiding out inside of it. The dragon smiled to himself, running along the tops of the different houses as he made his way along. # It turned out that the villagers were hiding inside of a storage warehouse, the doors shut tight and the building lacking any windows, save for the little cut cracks here and there for ventilation for the products within. He could just make out the chatter that was going on inside of the wooden walls. “What’s going on?” “Invaders, bandits, who cares. Just be quiet.” “What if they find us?” “They won’t find us if you shut up.” “They’re familiar. Who are they?” “Gods, what will they do to us?” Mostly men, though with the sound of a few women inside, too. A few women that would be useful in the grand scheme of things. After all, men could spread the seed of corruption to the rest of the world, but if they didn’t have females to breed it into, then they might as well just die out in the first generation. Ashe knelt down on the top of the building, running his fingers along the wood. It was mostly dead, and he didn’t have the power to bring it back to life on his own. Shaking his head, he reached down to his balls with his free hand, drawing on the power of the demon’s slugs once more. Again, the lust filled him, and he growled under his breath at the corruption that came with it. It was a powerful wave of it, the need that followed making him pant for breath for a few seconds before he pushed it down and out of his mind. He forced the power out of his cock in a black slime, almost like cum in consistency, but with a different smell to it. Hotter, thicker, muskier. He rubbed it over his fingers, then into the wood. Before long, the wood started to feel soft and smooth, almost like the product of a rubber tree. He kept rubbing it in, spreading it along the lumber, making it sink in and corrupt the wood itself. Soon, the wood started to produce more of the black ooze, becoming almost like a sap that the dead wood could produce, and he encouraged the wood to start oozing it down into the darkness. There was nothing, at first. Nobody would notice it immediately, he reminded himself, and they were more focused on the sounds of what was happening outside. However, after a few seconds, he heard their voices change, their conversation turning to the ‘rain’ that some of them were feeling. “What…what’s that?” “Wet? There’s no rain…” “Why am I…” “Oh god…so…so…mmmph…” “Oh god, what’s happening to you?!” “I can’t help it…come…come here…” There was a thundering stampede beneath him as people sounded like they were running away from each other, and he chuckled under his breath as he imagined the scene. The dripping goo would have landed on people, slowly sinking into their skin and transforming them. Not into monsters, but rather into a sort of shimmering, shining, smooth, ‘natural’ product of the woods. Black-skinned and shining, they would be smooth and eager, their bodies filled with the corruptive, lustful chemicals of the wild. The door to the warehouse burst open, a good six people fleeing from the inside of the warehouse, but there were already black, oozing tendrils rushing out from the doorway after them. They were taken down quickly, shoved to the ground, their arms bound behind them as the new creatures walked out. Whatever they had once been, they had been transformed, dripping and oozing, a bit like mud in the way that they slid and glorped about. Ashe wasn’t entirely keen on the black-mud look, but he couldn’t deny that they were effective in what they did. Slippery tentacles of corruptive ooze and muck covered the legs and arms of the men and women that were trapped, and the shifting, slimy piles of perpetually horny people gradually slid forward, cocks coming out from below the ooze that had consumed their bodies. [i]That corruption worked out pretty well…let’s see what else I can do…[/i] Ashe leaped from the building, landing beside the bound, uncorrupted people. One woman turned to him, panting, staring wildly. “Please…please, I know who you are…” A snake-woman, she was, one with a hood of a cobra and a long tail between her legs. She looked at him with wide, desperate eyes. “You came through here…you…you were the druid…” “I [i]was[/i] the druid,” Ashe said. “Now, I’m something else.” “You…please…please…save me…” “…No.” He leaned down and patted her cheek as the ooze creature moved up, its cock already throbbing, already twitching as it knelt between the snake-woman’s legs. “You are going to be a mother. You will carry the next generation forward, and help us show the world just how much better corruption is. You should be proud. You will be one of the first.” “Please, I don’t – ah…ah…what…what…what are you…doing…” Her face scales were turning red and her pussy was getting wetter as he channeled some of his magic into her. Not much, just a bit of the virility and need of nature. It didn’t take long before her whimpers of fear became whimpers of lust as he overwhelmed her mind with need, and soon, she spread her legs for the creature. “Be proud,” he said with a chuckle. It was easy to manipulate people. He’d known that when he had been a woman, and he knew it now as a man. There were so many ways that the body just wanted to bend to the control of someone else. It was just a matter of finding them. With this crowd subdued, it was just a matter of time until the rest – BOOM! The sudden explosion at the middle of town almost threw him off his feet. Ashe turned, glaring down the streets towards the dirt wall. Just as he’d feared, there was a hole in it. There must have been someone in town with access to magic. That, or someone was owed a favor by one of the gods. Either way, the barrier between the villagers and the town hall keep had just been breached. “Dammit…This is why I wanted you to be thorough, Eli!” The dragon beat feet, running down the street as fast as his legs could carry him, but he could already tell it was too late. In the distance, he could make out at least three dozen men and women running through the gap, rushing into the town hall. Some of them had weapons, too, ranging from bows to spears, and he could see at least a few people carrying swords and looking like they knew how to use them. By the time that he reached the gap in the wall, they were already through, already holing up inside of the keep. He growled under his breath, shaking his head and rubbing his forehead. “Alright…well, first things first…” Ashe gestured to one of the houses, reluctantly pulling on yet more power from his balls. His cock was starting to ooze like crazy, his dick soaking itself with pre-cum and running down along his balls. It was filling the air with the stink of a dragon in rut, too, and that was the last thing that he needed right at that point. The wood of the house obeyed his commands, breaking down and sweeping through the air in pieces, rejoining itself as a lumbering, living tree. It moved in flowing motions, long plank-like legs dragging it from its roots over to the gap in the dirt wall. He made it sit there, flowing out to fill in the gap and keep anyone else from getting through. He even forced it to grow spines, spines that dripped with a venom of sorts. As he was considering making it grow spitting flowers, too, he heard the loud clank, clank, clank of armor behind him. He sighed, shaking his head. “Hello, Jonathan.” “Mmph. What happened?” “Eli didn’t put up a strong enough wall.” “Should have had me do it.” “You were busy keeping people from running off.” “Mmmph.” The fox walked up to the wall, running one gauntleted hand along it. “Pretty firm. Should have held.” “Well, it didn’t,” Ashe said. “And now we have the rest of the village in their own little fortress…Ugh. We’ll get to that in a minute.” He forced himself to calm down. It was no use getting upset at the moment, considering that they hadn’t completely conquered the place yet. If he didn’t do something about his own libido soon, it wouldn’t matter that he still had power left to burn. He’d just end up fucking someone and pulling everything to a halt. No, he had to focus on getting this done, first. “Where’s Kasan?” “Fucking a family on the outskirts. Tried to run. Didn’t make it.” “Alright. Go get him. I’ll go find Eli and we’ll figure out how we’re going to make this work.” The fox nodded, turning and jogging off. Much as Jonathan had stopped talking more than a bit at a time, Ashe had to admit that his obedience was an improvement. He did what he was told, and did it quickly. [i]Alright, Eli, where did you run off to…[/i] It took all of a second to reach out with his powers and detect the highest levels of corruption within the village limits. The mouse must have found some concentration of villagers on the east side, near one of the taverns, and decided to have some fun. The dragon turned his steps in that direction. It was easy to tell which building Eli had picked, too. The whole thing had lifted off the ground with black tentacles, meaning that anyone that tried to run out the door would go plummeting to a very unpleasant landing. Not necessarily fatal, but definitely not comfortable. Ashe shimmied up the side of one of the tentacles, not wanting to fly and catch someone else’s attention, and eventually managed to wall-hug his way over to the door. He opened it up and got a black tentacle right in the face. Chomp. “NNNNNNNNNNGH!” The tentacle seemed to shriek as it pulled away from his face, and he spat the chunk of black slime onto the ground. It withered and died almost immediately, and the tentacle that had tried to face-fuck him rapidly retreated. “You know, that wasn’t very nice; you could have at least used your hands,” Eli said. “Yeah, well, you could have checked before trying to punch a tentacle down my throat.” Ashe stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. The tavern had definitely seen less interesting days. The mage seemed to have summoned a couple of incubi to help him, and those incubi had in turn summoned various imps. They were all spread out through the room, taunting and teasing the different patrons that had come for a drink, and there was not one person in the room that didn’t have at least one cock in their ass. The mouse responsible for it all sat on a tentacle of his own, though that one was lodged right up his ass. Eli gestured with his fingers and toes, running all the different sexual operations around him like he was some sort of puppet-master, the rings glinting with the arcane power that he was using. It was rather impressive, Ashe had to say. He just wished that it wasn’t at the cost of so many people escaping. “How long have you been diddling the townsfolk?” he asked. “Oh, as long as we’ve been here, minus the time to raise the wall. Why?” “You should have spent more time on the wall. Someone broke through it.” “What?!” The mouse froze, and suddenly, everything dropped. The imps, the incubi, the people being fucked, and – most importantly – the tavern. The whole room filled with shouts of fear before Eli got a grip on the building again, though by the looks of things, the tentacles only caught the tavern about five feet off the ground. Ashe panted, shaking his head. “Yes, they broke through your wall. Why didn’t you make a stone one?” “Because that takes longer. I wanted to get started on the corruption.” “Uh-huh?” He looked around. “This seems more like fucking to me.” “Well, I was studying the time it takes for weak and mid-range demons to do the corrupting for me, admittedly, but it is still corruption.” “Eli?” “…Yes, master?” “Speed it up.” “Fine.” # They left the tavern a few minutes later, leaving behind about twenty different ‘customers’ that were slowly being wrapped in cocoons of enchanted sap, their bodies being warped and compacted into more scaly beings. The various species were under magical pressure, their bodies warping from it and becoming more…purely corrupt, a bit like how proper pressure on certain minerals turned them into something better. “I don’t see why you had to pull me away from that. It’s not like the villagers are going anywhere,” Eli pointed out. “Uh-huh. And if one of them happens to be a cleric?” “Big deal. So they can heal and pray.” “And if he happens to have a Sending spell, or some way of communicating with the outside world?” “…” “Or if there happens to be a sympathetic god listening that is in a smiting mood?” “Okay, okay.” “Or if there happens to be someone that they can teleport in, if they get enough time?” “Okay, okay, I get it. No more lounging about. I’ll take it seriously.” [i]You better,[/i] Ashe thought. [i]I don’t need this to go badly right now.[/i] The whole point of keeping everyone outside of the keep was to prevent the townsfolk from having the time to plan a defense. Now that they had a moment to breathe, it was going to get harder to dig them out without something going wrong. Not impossible, but the longer that there was a member of the village that was uncorrupted, the more chances for something he hadn’t thought about to occur. “Please tell me that you have some sort of magic countermeasure spell prepared for the day?” he muttered. “I have a low-level Anti-Magic Sphere, but –” “Better than nothing. Cast that as soon as we get to the town hall.” “That won’t cancel high-level magic, though.” “It’ll keep the low-level stuff from happening.” Considering that Eli would be able to cancel it out at any time, if he needed to, it would be enough of a countermeasure to give him time to plan a proper attack. After all, with archers in the keep, that meant that they would be able to take him down if he tried another rooftop corruption like at the market. The swordsmen might or might not be good enough to stop Kasan or Jonathan, but they’d be enough to cut Eli to shreds if he was caught by them. And that was not counting any possible clerics inside… [i]And with the church in close proximity, they might have a few hallowed objects, which lessens my direct power…[/i] If he was doing to use more demonic power, that meant that he would need to burn off some of his arousal, first, and considering that Eli was the current source of all his aggravation… The dragon looked down at the mouse’s ass, considering how it would feel wrapped around his dick, how it would feel to just plow that hole, and forced himself to think of a different solution. Much as he hated to admit it, Eli’s arcane magic was going to be their best chance of warping everyone inside of the keep quickly. It wouldn’t be subject to the anti-corruption protection of the church, after all, and it had a better capability of affecting more people at once than his power did. They just needed to keep him alive long enough to cast the spells. He hoped that Kasan had gotten all of his fucking out on the villagers, because that wolf was going to need to raise his tail for a while for Ashe to get all this pent-up need out of his system. [b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]