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Gale had planned for quite a few contingencies. Cave-ins, riddles, traps, monsters, traps that were monsters, and even the crushing disappointment of failure. He’d organized and optimized his gear, carefully studied his spells, and made sure he was entirely rested. He’d cast Darkvision on himself and hadn’t even gotten a little bit of a migraine from it. He was fully prepared to face any of the many dangers that came with poking around ancient dungeons.
He still yelped with alarm when gravity abruptly reversed under him, slipping its grip on his boots and sending him toppling towards the cavern roof. His Counterspell fizzled impotently against nothing, unable to find another spell to choke out. He accelerated upwards in a panicked flail before stopping at a point in midair, his momentum bouncing him like a ball a few times before he finally came to a halt.
There was a sound of sloshing water. “Oh dear,” said an enormous voice from somewhere beneath him.
“Ah,” said Gale, reorienting himself. “Hello?” Darkvision, when you weren’t used to it and also gravity was a full one-hundred and eighty degrees from its usual orientation, was a bit disorienting.
“Hello,” said the voice, over the sound of more splashing. It sounded amused, and ringingly resonant, like a wet finger on a wine glass but in contrabass. An equally enormous head entered Gale’s field of view.
“Ah,” said Gale again, weakly.
The head was huge, nearly as long as Gale was tall, and looked slightly like that of a crocodile, if the crocodile was fashioned from slabs of glass. Water cascaded from the serpentine neck as the head rose level to Gale. Massive crystal points rose into place around the head, forming a floating corona as the dragon regarded Gale with sleepy, luminous white eyes.
A purple glow began to suffuse the air, catching on the crystal points and throwing prismatic reflections on the cavern walls. “I wasn’t expecting visitors,” said the dragon, quite pleasantly. Gale could feel the reverberation of that voice in his bones. “Let alone solitary human magelings that wake me from my nap. Come thieving, have you?”
“Purely a fact finding mission, I assure you,” said Gale. His heart was racing, and he could feel the orb humming to life in his chest as his body converted energy to panic. “I honestly had no idea I was walking into a dragon’s lair, sparing your lordship’s presence.” He found he was able to get his feet under him, in a sense, and stand, although it was like balancing on a rubber sheet over water.
“Most thieves say something to that effect,” said the dragon. The purple glow had fully illuminated the cavern, picking out the crystalline scales on his erstwhile host’s back and flanks. “And I am not inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt to lonely little wizards who waltz in stinking of Netherese arrogance.” The dragon shook their head sadly. “I’m afraid I really will have to kill you.”
“That is a really tremendously bad idea,” said Gale desperately. “I’m a victim of Netherese magic, and if you kill me, it will go extremely poorly for you.”
“You are not in much of a position to be making threats, little wizard.”
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” agreed Gale, pressing one hand nervously against his chest. He could see the spellscar begin to flicker where it ran up his face, just a glimmer out of the corner of his vision, because there was no force on Toril that could have caused him to take his eyes off the dragon. “Not a threat, just an observation. I’ve got a piece of Netherese magic stuck in me, and if I die, it’s very likely to… breach containment. Explosively.”
The dragon snorted at him, amused, their minerally breath ruffling his clothes. “That is a new one. Very well, little wizard, plead your case.”
Gravity abruptly reasserted its normal orientation, and Gale tumbled to the normal, solid, rocky floor. A quick Featherfall saved his body from injury, if not his dignity. The dragon looked even bigger from down here, from where half of their body rose from the subterranean lake they had apparently been napping in.
“Well,” said Gale, frantically trying to recall everything he knew about dragons. Not a lot, it turned out. It didn’t really come up often in dragon-warded Waterdeep. “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Archmage Gale of Waterdeep, pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“The pleasure is mine, Archmage Gale of Waterdeep,” said the dragon, in tones of solemn formality. “My name is Throdentreskririthesekar, but you may call me Oracle, if you prefer.”
“Oracle,” said Gale, oddly relieved. The dragon wouldn't introduce themselves to someone they were about to eat, surely. “I can assure you, I intended no infringement or trespass upon your lair. I had simply heard a rumor,” more accurately, scoured every map, grimoire, and wild tale for hints of a lead, but that was neither here nor there, “that one might find artifacts that could aid one in understanding the lost arts of ancient Netheril in this location. No mention was made of any inhabitant; I would have brought a suitable gift if I had any inkling I was intruding on your home.”
“Your sources are not wrong,” said Oracle pensively. “I did collect a handful of the greater magical works of Netheril when their cities fell. Some of their philosopher-mages were doing quite interesting things with multi-timeline resonance and planar displacement theory. It would have been such a shame to lose it all because some Wizard took a flight of fancy.” The dragon paused in their musing, looking, from what Gale could read of the reptilian face, a bit troubled. “Ancient Netheril, you said?”
“Yes?” said Gale, a bit thrown off. “The Netherese Empire quite literally collapsed almost two millennia ago. That’s quite ancient, for humans.”
“Two millennia?” The dragon blinked, a quick shuttering of that white glow. “Oh dear.”
“Is… something the matter?”
“Oh, no,” said Oracle, waving one massive, taloned hand dismissively. “I’ve just been asleep for longer than I thought. No wonder no one mentioned my living here. Drat.”
They heaved themselves out of the pool, the water level dipping quite significantly once they were fully unsubmerged. The sheer size of them was a bit boggling, up close. Oracle’s body was thick and solid, gilded with shining, crystalline plates that shone a deep, luminescent violet on their back and flanks and a pale lilac on their belly. That same delicate, dewy hue carried over into the membranes of their wings, which brushed opposite walls when Oracle spread them to stretch.
The overall effect, with the glowing crystals and shimmering droplets of water, was quite impressive. Gale was a little awe-struck, in spite of himself. This was, he told himself firmly, an overgrown lizard and he would not, under any circumstances, feel the same giddy and wondering swoop in his belly that Mystra’s presence inspired. Because that would be ridiculous. Yes.
“Well,” said Oracle, after stretching luxuriously like a massive and ponderous cat. “You’re still here?”
Moving hadn’t even occurred to Gale. “Am I… free… to go?”
“Of course not,” said Oracle, “you’re not leaving until I can be sure you won’t cause trouble down the line. But you didn’t try to run, which says something about you.”
Gale felt gravity switch again and enjoyed the singularly peculiar sensation of falling up and forward without ever actually increasing his velocity. It was nothing at all like Levitate or Fly. Maybe like Reverse Gravity, in the same way that Produce Bonfire was like Incendiary Cloud. The sound he made was not particularly dignified.
He then got to experience the downright upsetting sensation of being in two physical locations at the same time before reality snapped back together and he regained his bearings in an entirely different chamber. This cavern was sparklingly, almost painfully lit, a bright white glow gleaming off arrays of devices. That was really the only word for them, intricate apparatuses of crystal and pale metal, dancing orreries of star systems Gale couldn’t even hope to guess at, massive hourglasses sending granules of light through whole alchemy sets of twisting tubes.
“Now, let’s get a look at you,” said Oracle, and gravity plucked Gale from the air and set him neatly in the cradle of some indescribable contraption, which began to whir.
“What,” said Gale, too bewildered to really line up a question.
“Netherese magic, Gale of Waterdeep,” said Oracle. Some dials twiddled themselves in the corner of his vision as the dragon peered at him intently and the whirring of the device changed pitch. “Maybe you humans can’t pick up on it. Late Netheril was doing some odd things with the Weave, it leaves an aftertaste- oh.”
“What, ‘oh?’ Was that a good ‘oh?’”
The dragon looked delighted. Good ‘oh’ then. “You are partially arcanodynamically displaced!”
Not a good ‘oh.’ Displacing the Weave - the magical fabric that described everything - was something Gods could do. And only gods.
“...How?” askes Gale weakly.
“Oh, well, you’re not,” said Oracle, peering at some array of crystals that moved in a headache-inducing way. “That thing you have lodged in you is. Like a little moth, eating holes in your good tunic. How very peculiar.”
“What are you… doing to me?” asked Gale, with deep trepidation. He was keenly aware that with that “little moth” gnawing at his connection to the Weave, he probably couldn’t muster a Dimension Door right now, not after the power he foolishly dumped into that useless Counterspell.
“Just taking some measurements,” Oracle assured him. “I had to test the veracity of your claims. It’s all quite technical. Now, do hold still, this may pinch, or cause you to experience the taste of blue-spectrum light.”
Gale didn’t have time to protest before one of the floating, crystalline spikes that haloed Oracle’s head drifted over and poked him in the chest, directly over the orb. There was a blinding spark of non-color and pure, raw magic raced through Gale’s body like a lightning strike. It was just a split second, but it lit up every nerve in the Wizard’s body and stopped the hungry, pulling-in feeling of the orb. Then, like a tidal wave, the feeling retreated and the orb roared back to life.
“Ow,” said Oracle, mildly.
Gale opened his eyes. He did not recall closing them. He did not recall his knees buckling. He certainly did not recall attempting to reach the scintillating curtains of light that made up the raw Weave. “What did you do?”
“I,” said Oracle, with an air of ruffled dignity as they drifted across the backdrop of distant aurora curtains of shimmering magic, “was simply trying to induce harmonic thaumatogenesis to take an arcane autoresonance reading. Your little Netherse curiosity did this.”
“You-!” said Gale, who did not stop to consider the real ramifications of yelling at a dragon as he was swept up in wizardly indignation. “You can’t induce any sort of thaumatogenesis in the orb, it has an entirely negative energetic vector! Which I could have told you, if you asked!”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Oracle, and ow, yes, they were almost certainly an ancient dragon, with all the inherent magical power that entailed, and blazed like a dying star as their irritation flared. “Nothing is completely negative, it would unmake itself immediately. Anyway, that runs counter to all laws of magic, the Weave can’t describe a null point.”
“That is entirely the problem with it,” said Gale, as the orb throbbed in an angry, hungry reminder of his point. “It’s a relic of Karsus’s Folly, it needs constant input from an external source of magic to prevent it from catastrophic decay!”
“Oh,” said Oracle, a bit derailed. “Well. You could have said.”
Gale pinched the bridge of his nose. Getting angry was both not productive and potentially fatal in multiple ways, if a dragon’s ego came anywhere near the size it was painted in tales. “Let’s take a moment to gather our wits,” he said, with pained, forced calm. “What happened?”
Oracle looked contemplative. “I suspect I overloaded some compensatory stabilizing mechanism when I extended my own magical field into it. Pulling the stopper on the bath, as it were. The negative magical pressure in a soft space pulled us, as attuned creatures, in with the arcane energy.”
“Sorry, we’re in the orb? And what do you mean by ‘soft space?’”
Oracle, for the first time, looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, I may have… stretched the fabric of the material plane a bit in my lair. Made it a little more malleable. Meshed it with a constructed demiplanar matrix and given some aspects Astral coordinates. You know.”
Dragons. Worse than archmages, the lot of them. “And now we’re, what, recursively stuck in the orb that’s stuck is my chest.”
“More or less,” said Oracle.
“Any idea how we might get out?” asked Gale, with what he considered admirable patience.
“Well,” said Oracle, looking around. They appeared to be in some sort of bubble, a dark, greasy sheen separating the pair of them from the shimmering plumes of magic that made up the essence of the weave. “It clearly doesn’t have infinite draw, or it would have turned you inside-out the moment you absorbed it. If we can overload that negative vector, it should temporarily neutralize the inflow and spit us back out where we should be. Somatomorphic connections are quite strong.”
“Alright,” said Gale, “sound in principle, solid grasp of the theory, just one tiny problem. The Weave itself has created some sort of cyst around the orb, I can’t pull in enough magic to overfill a thimble, let alone a Netherese spell artifact.”
“Gale of Waterdeep,” said Oracle, pompously, “ I am a dragon.”
“Yes…?” said Gale, when it seemed nothing more was forthcoming.
Oracle looked a bit disgruntled. “I have enough magic flowing through my veins to create and sustain entire bloodlines of humanoid sorcerers.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Gale, a bit nonplussed. “But I don’t particularly fancy drifting about in a toxic weave bubble while we wait for you to gestate a sorcerer with enough innate power to blast us out of here. I didn’t even pack a lunch.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Oracle, as though they had acted as the reasonable party at any point, “neither of us is adequately equipped for that. All we need is a one-time magical infusion from me to you, of sufficient magnitude to overflow your orb.”
“And you propose…?”
“Sexual congress,” answered the dragon promptly and without an iota of embarrassment. “Or you could consume a beastly quantity of my blood, but unless you’re a vampire, that is vastly less efficient.”
“You’re… serious,” said Gale, entirely taken aback.
“Of course! It is the most foundational method of magical energy transference out there. Why else do you think sorcery is so heritable, or warlocks end up in so many supernatural orgies?”
“I’d really never given it much thought,” said Gale, a bit poleaxed. He was giving it thought, now. The prospect was not… unappealing, actually. Here, suspended not in but near the Weave, Oracle hummed with power, oceans of magical energy barely contained under crystalline purple scales. It was almost familiar, the weightlessness, the proximity to unimaginable power and potential, leashed for his benefit. For his pleasure, if he wanted to take it.
“Well,” Oracle went on as Gale’s mind chased itself in circles of fantasy and memory, “it’s that, or you eat my heart, which I do strongly object to, or we wait for the field to collapse, which I will likely survive, but you likely won’t.”
“We can try the first option,” said Gale, surprising himself. But, well, he was always most comfortable with himself here, surrounded by, breathing magic.
“Capital!” said Oracle jovially, and then his perception of space went weird.
Here, in this place, Gale could recognize the same kind trick Oracle had employed on the material plane to move gravity around and step through walls. They were just bending space, adjusting things so the human and dragon were of more compatible dimensions. Quite considerate, but hardly necessary, now that Gale had his head about him. The dragon might be an ancient and learned psion, but this was Gale’s realm.
With a gesture of willpower, he forced local space back into a sensible pattern and simply changed the size of his metaphysical body instead. After all, they were in a realm of pure thought, so why not?
“Oh!” exclaimed Oracle, as Gale relaxed his grip on the shape instinct told him was his, and his idea of ‘clothing’ while he was at it. “Masterfully done!”
“Thank you,” said Gale. A familiar curl of satisfaction settled in his belly, the elation of genuinely impressing a being of such magnitude. He reached out a hand to Oracle, caressing the scaly jaw with astral fingers. Not quite of a size with the ancient dragon, but… feasible, he thought.
Oracle leaned into the caress, half-lidding bright-glowing eyes and making a pleased trilling sound in their throat. Their massive wings came up, encasing the pair of them in a shimmering dome of pale purple light. Gale felt himself relax as Oracle’s magic blocked the greasy sheen of the orb-bubble from his view.
“I’m a bit out of my depth, anatomically speaking,” Gale admitted. His hand drifted down the long curve of the dragon’s neck.
“We’re not all that different,” replied Oracle, arcing their neck into the caress. “And you are off to an exceptional start.” They brought their gleaming head forward, floating crystal spikes rearranging themselves into eye-watering patterns. Their jaws parted, teeth a perfect array of crystal points, and licked a path from the gleaming circular spellscar on Gale’s chest all the way up his neck.
Gale cried out, his other hand grabbing one of Oracle’s dancing crystal spikes just to hold on to something as his grip on metaphysics wobbled. Oracle’s tongue left a sensation on his skin a bit like static and a bit like channeling a powerful Evocation spell. The tingling coalesced down his neck, flowing into the space of the orb, and pooled there, slowly, slowly dissipating.
Oracle did it again, this time licking a buzzing line from Gale’s navel to the orb. Gale moaned, mind chasing the sensation, anywhere Oracle’s hot, slick tongue caressed becoming momentarily more real. Staticy ripples chased across his body, setting his nerves alight before sinking into the orb, the warm relief of its satiation warring with the bereft feeling of their absence from his skin.
“Is this what magical transfusion feels like?” gasped the wizard as Oracle’s tongue drew a path across his chest. The pulses of sensation plucked at his senses; it was a good thing they were floating in a pocket of metaspace because Gale’s legs were trembling as his cock hardened.
“This is only a taste, my dear boy,” rumbled the dragon, their breath hot on Gale’s neck. “You’re doing very well thus far.” Oracle’s jaws closed - very gently - around Gale’s marked shoulder. He was extremely aware of Oracle’s teeth, each crystal point burning like a spark against his flesh. Their breath, not hot but somehow charged, filled the space between their fangs, crackling against Gale’s skin and flooding into the orb.
Gale moaned, overwhelmed. Every nerve lit up, not with pleasure or with pain, exactly, but with sensation, blazing bright and raw and wonderful. Magic flowed like water from the dragon, Gale’s astral form taking it in greedily, like parched earth after rain. He’d forgotten how good magic could feel, the way the Weave wrapped around his body, sunk into his flesh and set his mind on fire. Oracle was offering him tastes, tiny sips of the power he’d once so carelessly flung around and it was ecstacy.
His back arched, hips thrusting forward, body chasing a physical touch. Oracle made an amused sound, releasing Gale from their jaws, and suddenly there was sensation, firm pressure around his cock. A gasp punched its way out of Gale’s chest and he glanced down, but the space between his body and the pale scales of Oracle’s belly remained empty. Psionics. Of course.
Two could play at that game, and Gale had been quite selfish, the past few minutes. He thought of all the places he could touch, that might please a dragon.
“Oh,” purred Oracle as Gale’s thought manifested, spreading his will and his presence across copies of himself. Enough to touch, kissing and caressing at the dragon’s throat where the scales were small and soft, delicately stroking at the shockingly soft membranes of their wings. “Clever, clever lad.”
Oracle’s entire body arched under Gale’s onslaught, a long and luxurious flex of serpentine neck and tail. A satisfied groan rumbled through their chest. “Daring, and a quick study.”
“You flatter me,” Gale demurred. Oracle’s psychic fist on Gale’s cock had not faltered one bit, a steady, rippling pressure stroking him from root to tip. Even as the magic faded from his skin, a different and familiar heat pooled in his belly. “You’ve been quite generous so far, I only wished to - ah! - return the favor.”
“Oh, you will, Gale of Waterdeep, rest assured.” A gentle psychic shove sent Gale drifting down the length of Oracle’s body, astral afterimages remaining close to that electrifying mouth even as the main locus of his consciousness was relocated. There, at the base of the dragon’s tail, was a gap in that crystalline armor, slick and pink as their tongue.
Gale reached out, fingers seeking that flash of exposed flesh. A jolt ran up his arm like a sort of inverted Shocking Grasp, his hand going numb and then hot. The magic coursed through his body, even more raw, more present that the little tastes he’d been given, racing up and down his spine before curling up in the orb. It took… longer to dissipate, he was sure, but he was a bit distracted because Oracle made a sound at his touch. It was deep and grinding, like a rockfall, vibrating through the space around them. Oracle’s tail lashed, their neck arched, their wings flexing, and the psychic pressure on Gale’s cock seemed to spasm, a brief squeeze that left him gasping, curled forward and alight with the desire for more.
“That’s… alright?” Gale managed to gasp out. Oracle had redoubled their efforts on his cock, and seemed to have found some sort of rhythm, which was, frankly, devastating for Gale’s focus. Their jeweled flanks were visibility heaving as they panted as well, but it was probably best to not assume.
“Exceptional,” moaned the dragon. Gale had never expected to hear a dragon moan in ecstacy, but the sound sent something entirely intangible zinging down his spine. “More.”
Alright, then. Gale moved forward, pressing against Oracle’s body. Lining up his cock with the slit between the scales, Gale’s forehead was about level with their chest. He wasn’t able to gain much leverage, so he held himself steady with pure willpower and thrust his hips forward.
Oracle snarled, an entirely inhuman sound, and then their thick, powerful forelegs were crushing Gale to their body. His cock pressed close against that hot, slick flesh, and it was utterly indescribable, the sheer depth of sensation rocketing through his body. Gale cried out, several astral copies winking out of existence as his entire focus narrowed to rutting helplessly against a centuries-old, magical creature that could crush him into a singularity, but was choosing, instead-
It was hard to tell where the waves of magic stopped and normal orgasm began, but maybe it didn’t matter, because Gale’s body jerked like he had been shocked. Magic pulsed on his skin in counterpoint to the blazing heat between his legs. Light flared behind his eyes as he came, harder than he had in a very long time, waves of perfect pleasure slowly ebbing while new jolts of magic continued to dance through his body. The sensation never truly abated, though; just as Gale thought he could maybe use his lungs again, another wash of buzzing energy overtook his skin. It was accompanied by the slick slide of something firm and hot against his belly as Oracle’s cock unsheathed itself at last.
Gale caught a glimpse of it as Oracle psychically grabbed him again, flushed dark, gleaming slick, a tapered tip flaring into a series of stacked ridges and whorls. The dragon spun him around, crushing his back against their belly and outright mounting him, Gods. Deep, rumbling groans were resonating through the dragon’s chest, vibrating along Gale’s back while every place his skin touched Oracle’s exposed flesh was lighting up like fireworks, a dragon’s cock tracing lines of yes, please, more along his ass and thighs.
He was still hard, somehow, gasping and whining against the twin grips of psionics and powerful claws. The squirming didn’t seem to deter Oracle in the slightest, pleased groans escaping their throat every time he ground back against them. One foreclaw moved to his belly, gripping his waist and adjusting his position like he was nothing, and Oracle thrust, once, a sharp full body movement.
I’m really getting fucked by a dragon, Gale thought as his nerves caught alight. Oracle’s cock had slid between his thighs, lancing electric sensation along his own shaft. The overstimulated throbbing was good, as well, or probably, everything mostly just felt in massive quantities. He was a little dazed, lightly stunned by the reality of this act of arcane intromission. A dragon is going to fuck magic into me.
Gale keened, the thought making his cock twitch, that familiar tension building in his belly again. He shifted his own hips to help, rolling back against Oracle’s pointed tip. This time, when their body thrust forward in a sinuous coil, the tapered head caught his hole. Gale’s vision went white as pure arcane energy raced up his spine. He was suddenly and powerfully aware of the orb again, pulsing in his chest, feeling sated for the first time, and the relief of the total absence of that pulling, sucking pain was almost more intense than the pleasure of the magic crackling under his skin.
Oracle rocked their hips, the sheer, easy power of their body knocking Gale’s breath from his lungs. Even with metaphysical forms, even compensating for it, an ancient dragon was big. The taper on their cockhead was abrupt, now that he was feeling it, the tip sliding in easily but the rest stretching him open in a way he hadn’t felt in- well. It didn’t hurt, was the important thing, although his body was so lit up with sensation, his nerves possibly couldn’t tell the difference between pain and pleasure and he was so desperate to come, again, he didn’t even care.
Oracle’s thrusts were shallow and controlled, each nudge pressing a shade deeper, stretching him a hair wider, and then there was a rush of movement. Gale shouted, a wordless cry of pleasure, as the head of Oracle’s cock finally pushed inside him. Everything was Oracle, their claws on his hips and his chest, their scales against his back, their wings wrapping around him and their cock, just the head in him and already so sweetly, perfectly deep.
Gale became vaguely aware that he was losing definition in his extremities, his mind focusing vividly on the points of contact to the exclusion of all else. He was flying, he was on fire, he was an electric storm, riding the front of a ninth-order casting and beyond that, what he’d been reaching for, in his hands and in him-
Oracle pressed deeper, their thrusts now hard, slow, deliberate, and Gale pressed back into it. He always was a greedy, ambitious thing, and dragons this old, they were akin to deities from where mortals were standing, weren’t they? And Oracle was a generous god, giving Gale everything he was able to take and more, he was full fit to burst and the dragon still pressed deeper.
A final surge, and Oracle’s scales were flush to Gale’s ass and thighs. They were seated to the hilt, thrusts forgone in favor of short, sharp spasms. Nonsense fell from Gale’s mouth as he just held on, clinging to the claws supporting him and feeling, feeling, feeling. Then Oracle’s neck arched, their head coming forward and down and their great jaws closed over his shoulder, a plaintive, keening wail grating from their jeweled throat. Gale was jerked back, just once, grounding Oracle just that much deeper in his body, and then he was awash with white-hot fire; he thought he’d known the sensation of power before, but he was wrong, and the orb sang in his chest, power humming, spilling over just as the dragon was, in him and around him, sweeping him away-
“Ow,” said Oracle, emphatically.
Gale opened his eyes. He did not recall closing them. The light around him was the artificially white glow of Oracle’s laboratory. He was flat on his back on the little crystal apparatus, and gravity felt normal. It was about the only thing that felt normal. His body throbbed in a sort of dispersed, indefinite way. His skin was still buzzing, the orb was still entirely quiescent, and a vaguely sticky sensation was beginning to make itself known in his underclothes.
“Well,” said Gale.
“Yes,” agreed Oracle. They looked at one another.
Oracle looked… drained, was the word. Just a little dim and droopy, their eyes blinking in a slow, lazy way like a cat. What did one say to an ancient dragon that had just fucked one to within an inch of one’s metaconsciousness?
“Thank you?” he tried. It did not feel entirely adequate.
Oracle waved a laconic claw at him. “My pleasure,” they said, a little sardonically. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to sleep for another thousand years.”
“Oh, of course-” Gale began, and found himself sitting sprawled on the hilltop overlooking the cave system Oracle called home. An incredibly tidy bit of teleportation. “Well,” he said, and started to stand.
Something slid off his lap, hitting the ground with a solid thunk. He reached down and retrieved the book. Tome, really, with a title embossed in Netherese. “On the Creation and Maintaining of Mythallar, 14th Edition by Ioulaum of Xinlenal.” Gale whistled to himself. Based on the obvious age of the tome, it was a genuine Netherese text. Quite the generous parting gift. He slipped it into his pack, tucked carefully next to his own spellbook, and turned to begin the journey home.