The Red Dragon and the Dragon Rider
Sylvia froze at Seraphina's sudden appearance.
Don't tell me she saw me touching myself?
"You'll never reach climax caressing yourself that halfheartedly. First times matter, you know. I'll help you."
Sylvia shook her head hard, scrambling for an excuse.
"W-what? Caressing? What are you talking about? I was just… feeling around. I-I don't grow any hair down there. It was bothering me, that's all."
"Hmm~?"
The desperate excuse bounced right off Seraphina. She only laughed, thoroughly entertained.
"To think the tiny little thing you once were has grown up enough to take an interest in sex. I'm genuinely moved."
"I-I told you that's not it!"
"Hoho. Sylvia. Lies don't work on me. Our souls are bound together. And more than that—"
Seraphina pointed a finger straight at her.
"You're a terrible liar. Your eyes are trembling, and your hands and feet won't stay still—you're thrashing all over the place. Who's going to believe you when you lie like that?"
"…Th-that's all your fault!"
"Hoho. I know. That's why I said I'd help."
Like a predator closing on its prey, Seraphina closed the distance in an instant. Sylvia, a Sword Master, tried to react and fend her off—but Seraphina flicked her fingers, and the water pooled on the floor rose into ropes that bound Sylvia's arms and legs.
"W-what do you think you're doing?! Let me go right now!"
"You'll be too loud."
Seraphina flicked her fingers again. An invisible membrane bloomed around them—Silence magic, sealing every sound from escaping.
I-if this keeps going, I'm finished! Something inside me is going to break!
Sylvia felt the danger in her bones. If she let Seraphina have her way, her body would never again be fit for an ordinary life.
She drew up her mana. Blue light unfurled from her dantian and coiled around her entire body. She had no sword, but the title of Sword Master was not empty decoration. Dragons might be the strongest creatures alive, yet a Sword Master still ranked among the elite. Snapping magical water-ropes ought to be well within her reach.
The moment she tensed to break free, the water-ropes lifted into the air and forced her legs wide into an M-shape.
Schlick!
Seraphina's long, slender finger plunged into her without warning. Virgin flesh that had never taken a man startled at the sudden intrusion, twitching and clamping down around the finger.
"Hoho. A virgin pussy really is something else. Incredible. Look at it clinging to my finger. Imagine how spectacular it'd look with a real cock buried in it."
"S-stop with the useless commentary and—p-pull your finger out!"
The sudden jolt of pleasure from between her legs forced Sylvia to drop the mana she had been gathering. She thrashed her arms and legs, but the harder she struggled, the tighter the water-ropes wound around her.
Schlick! Schlick! Schlick!
"Hngh! Hyaaah! Haaah!"
"Haha! Adorable. Look at you reacting every time I move my finger. I could just bite you."
Every swirl of that finger through her folds wrenched a moan from Sylvia's lips. Even a sensitive woman shouldn't have responded so violently to such unprepared touching—but synchronization with Seraphina had heightened her body's sensitivity.
Schlick! Schlick! Schlick!
Her virgin entrance fluttered and twitched as slick fluid spilled down in thick trails. Seraphina licked the wetness from her finger, flushed beyond endurance, and hurriedly began stripping off her clothes.
Sway—
Breasts that put Sylvia's to shame spilled free and bounced. Size alone was one thing, but the astonishing firmness that refused to sag and the pretty pink nipples made them almost unfairly beautiful. Watching the very thing she had always fretted over sway right in front of her, Sylvia bit her lip, unable to stop comparing them to her own.
"What? Why that face while you're staring at my chest? Yours is plenty charming, you know."
"I-I wasn't looking at your chest! J-just undo these restraints already!"
"Hmm~. Liar. I know you stare at them all the time. I never said anything because it was cute, but your breasts are plenty pretty too. Pretty enough that I want to sink my teeth in and suck on them."
Seraphina's lips parted and closed over Sylvia's breast. Careful not to let her teeth scrape the skin, she sucked hard enough to hollow her cheeks, drawing the nipple up until blood rushed into it and it stiffened. Then her tongue circled the peak in slow, deliberate strokes.
"Hnnngh! D-don't suck on my cheeest—!!"
At the same time Seraphina's fingers drove into her below, and Sylvia twisted her whole body, crying out. Against technique honed by someone long past mastery of pleasure, Sylvia finally broke and climaxed.
The first orgasm of her life.
Her hips jerked forward and back as her fluids sprayed out like urine. If the water-magic ropes hadn't held her, she would have flopped like a freshly caught fish. The pleasure of Seraphina's touch had been so overwhelming for innocent Sylvia that her eyes rolled halfway back and she couldn't gather her wits.
"Heh. Cute."
Seraphina smiled down at her, thoroughly charmed. Looking at Sylvia like that brought back the day they first met.
Even among dragons, Seraphina had been called a genius. She mastered magic faster than the others, grasped draconic nature more deeply—and the dragon's curse found her sooner than any of them.
Boredom. Emptiness. The curse settled over Seraphina just as she reached adulthood by dragon reckoning.
Like every other dragon, she fought to escape it however she could. She polymorphed into a human and became a knight, even earning the epithet of Knight-King. She led a vast merchant caravan. She sat on a throne and ruled a nation.
When she first set out on her Dragon's Amusement, it had been genuinely fun. She lost herself in it, forgetting the passage of time. But only for a while. The curse returned, and the intervals between those escapes grew longer and longer.
So that's why Grandfather Dragon Lord looked at me with such pity.
Only then did Seraphina understand why the Dragon Lord who led the red dragons had gazed so sadly on the one they called a genius. He had known that for a dragon, the talent to grasp the world's truths with ease only meant drowning in the curse that much sooner.
In the end, Seraphina began chasing dopamine.
She took a job as a prostitute in a brothel. Most dragons stumbled onto clues about their own tastes during that phase, so among dopamine-addicted dragons it was regarded as little more than a basic tutorial. And while working as a whore, Seraphina discovered she was a thoroughgoing masochist. Playing the coquette and getting pinned beneath men was intensely, deliciously stimulating for a dragon starved of dopamine.
Time passed. After the brothel came a mercenary's Amusement—specifically, the kind of mercenary who got captured by the enemy and reduced to a flesh toilet. After wringing every drop of fun from human company, she sought out monsters and let them have her too. The goblin den that had so horrified Sylvia was one of the places she found along the way.
But even dopamine that exploded that hard eventually ran dry. Having grown sick of everything, she took to lying in her lair and doing nothing but sleep, wishing she might simply die that way.
A dragon's vast life force refused to grant the wish. A dragon's death was nothing like a human's. That immense power unraveled into the earth and air, leaving a wellspring of tremendous force in its place. The Tiranus Empire itself had been founded on the site where an ancient dragon died; people born within the empire tended to be hardier and more sensitive to mana than those of other nations.
In any case, dragons who understood what their deaths would do to other lives and the land itself took great care in choosing where to die. Most sought empty, hard-to-find places—grave sites, in plain terms, where their remains would not be casually disturbed.
Seraphina began wandering in search of a grave of her own. Years of searching turned up nothing that pleased her. Another fruitless day ended with her return to the lair. Frustrated that even finding a place to die was proving difficult, she looked up at the sky and lamented.
"Goddess. If you were going to burden us with this boredom, why create dragons at all? Shouldn't dragons be given something to live for, the way humans are?"
Having lived among humans, she envied them for one thing alone: purpose. Some humans lived to make money. Some trained to master greater magic, or to become fine knights. In their brief lives they scrambled and strained to fulfill their dreams—an emotion a dragon, born having already achieved everything, could never feel.
"So please. Give me a purpose too."
The moment she offered that prayer to the goddess, she felt something approaching. Following the presence to the river before her lair, she found a child—a human girl with black hair and a hole through her belly, so close to death it would not have been strange if her life ended at any second.
"…Surely not?"
Coincidence. Seraphina knew that. Pure chance. The goddess did not answer prayers this trivial.
And yet—she felt an inexplicable, powerful pull toward the child. By the time she came back to herself, she had already formed a soul contract with the dying girl to save her life.
"…Fine. Two is better than one."
Dragon and Dragon Rider. A human who completed a soul contract and synchronization with a dragon saw their lifespan leap upward until it nearly matched a dragon's. Seraphina was certain this child would become the friend who eased her boredom.
"Ugh…"
"You're awake?"
"W-where—?! Where am I?! Who are you?!"
The moment the child came to, she took one look at Seraphina and cried out in shock—a natural reaction for a girl who had nearly died in an ambush. Seraphina smiled down at the tiny child who had become her soul-bound friend, at Sylvia, and spoke.
"I'm Seraphina. A Red Dragon. What's your name?"
Remembering their first meeting, Seraphina roused the collapsed Sylvia and tended to her.
"D-don't you ever do that again!"
Face burning, Sylvia fled the room. Watching her go, Seraphina trembled with anticipation.
From the instant she first saw Sylvia, Seraphina had fallen in love—the way a bird hatched from an egg imprints on the first being it meets as its mother. At the very moment she had resolved to die, she had felt an unfathomable pull toward the girl.
Most creatures in love would cherish their beloved and refuse to share them with anyone. A dragon already pickled in dopamine was different. She wanted to thrash and drown in pleasure together with the one she loved.
"It won't be long now, Sylvia."
Seraphina sucked the finger still slick with Sylvia's fluids, picturing the two of them pinned beneath men, wailing together.