Miss Nistiana's Maid Dragon

Chapter 1

The cold had always bothered her. That was how it had been since a young age. As a child she hated how it seeped into her bones, and how it sucked out all of her desire to strain herself any more than absolutely necessary. This dislike had not changed over the years, and subsequently at this time, she was not happy. How these Nords could survive in this Draugr's frozen teat's excuse for a province she would never understand.

She rubbed her hands together and blew into them as she tried to summon some fire to send a breath of warmth into her aching body. Who ever knew running away from home would involve so much walking? It would have been a better idea to take a carriage or transportation of some sorts, but with the civil war going on, drivers were less willing to enter the province. To have fear of being stopped and having your goods seized, perhaps even your life, was not an irrational one in this day and age. With her options limited and her goal clear, she had taken the only path available to her.

That path did not have nearly as many inns as she would have liked. Dagon's accursed backside, she needed to learn spells to cast bigger fires than this puny flame. A fire cloak spell sounded just perfect, but even a flame atronach floating about as a portable oven would have sufficed.

Of course, that wasn't enough for this dreadful day. She had lost the path she was so closely following and had found herself in the middle of this damn forest. It was as if she were drowning in this sea of pines, and the incessant snow wasn't helping. It was coming down ever harder now and there was no shelter in sight. While she was a mage of fair skill, she couldn't construct a shelter out of nothing. Just a tiny fireball and a few other spells that seemed near-useless now, apart from the tiny orb of light that hovered above her.

She didn't even bring many supplies with her on the outset, so she had been stuck foraging and hunting to supplement her ever-dwindling store of rations. She was trying to travel light and did not give herself many bags to use, so there was not much space for any food that would rot in a matter of hours. Living off the wilds was not a novel experience, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant one. She was beginning to miss her old bed, her old meals, and the wonderful place in the world she had back in Cyrodiil.

That's behind me now. She thought. What's ahead is the rest of my life. The College.

She heard a rapid shuffling through the snow, a little ways in front of her. Paws impacted the ground, and as the sound grew closer she realized that something was approaching her. She grimaced. Of course, now is the best time possible for me to be attacked by wolves. She probably looked like the perfect prey, a lost, shivering young girl alone in a forest. A pack of wolves would take her down easily. Well, by the Divines, she wasn't going down without a fight.

She readied a spell of ice shards to impale them upon and prepared to launch at as soon as the sound got within visible range of her Light spell. She hunched, body tense and hands at the ready as the patter grew louder and louder. She drew her arm back, ready to hurl the ice spear into the brush. Without warning, a small doe lunged forth and raced past her. On instinct she let the shards burst forth, but they impacted nothing, her reflexes too slow. She cursed under her breath as the sounds drew further away. That could have been dinner...

She paused for a moment. No reason it can't still be.

Her eyes ravaged the ground as if it were a beautiful lover, scanning for the hoofprints that marked the doe's trail, and as soon as she found it she cautiously began making her way through the forest. The trees and brush was thick, and she lost the trail several times, but she'd be damned if she'd eat more of that blasted salted pork for the seventh meal in a row!

It was getting closer, she could feel it. She was not normally one to be incredibly carnivorous, but the idea of tasting something different was so enticing that her mind could not help but call up images of her gobbling down such delicious meat. She would skin and butcher the deer, gather up some twigs and branches, get a small fire going, and make herself a satisfying dinner for the night. In the morning she would set off to find the path again. The daylight would be a boon to her efforts.

But for the time being, that fantasy would remain as such. As she moved around a tree, she discovered a clearing that normally would be quite vacant. At this moment in time, however, the space was very prominently occupied. The resident who happened to be occupying this space was none other than a dragon. An honest to Divines, living, breathing dragon. Though considering its state, that last descriptor might not be applicable for long.

It was a green monstrosity, taking up more space than the average commoner's house. It was riddled with wounds, from bleeding gashes to blackened burns and obvious bite marks. Bite marks she could sink her arm into. Its belly rose and sank with every labored breath. Pale yellow horns, like branches, came off of the side of its head, roughly where its ears would be.

It didn't take much for her to stop moving in that instant. The cold that had bothered her so much was enough of an issue as is, but at this point that cold was like the river stream back home compared to the frozen shock that hit her. It was a panic response, she could tell that much. She was having a lot of trouble simply acknowledging that. It was all she could do to make a step towards the beast. However, she wasn't in control of herself enough to soften the step, and the snow crunched loudly beneath her feet.

There was a deep rumble, deep enough for her to feel it in her chest. The dragon opened one eye, a band of gold wrapped around a circle of red, about as large as her torso and regarded her with the frigid disdain one might reserve for a rodent found in their kitchen.

"My last moments, with a human… How fitting."

She nearly had to bite her tongue to break out of the mental cage that she had been put in. The dragon was now talking to her, and she could understand it. Words weren't coming together right in her mind, but she knew that she had to say something. If nothing else, it was only polite.

"H-Hello." She barely managed to stutter out. "A-are you alright?" Curses, she felt like a child again, barely able to get a sentence out to anyone that wasn't her immediate family. It wasn't surprising, as dragons were beings of incredible age and wisdom. She would definitely appear as an infant to this creature.

"Alright?" The dragon let out an incredulous snort that blew away some of the snow under its head. "Do I look alright to you?"

"N-no." She quickly replied, and then got a hold of herself as she attempted to craft a better response than that. "B-but maybe, as a dragon, maybe you have some sort of rapid healing ability that I don't know about. This, to you, may be only the equivalent of a sprained ankle to me. I-I'm not sure and, honestly..." She trailed off, realizing that she had been babbling out of control.

The silence began to stretch as the dragon only kept staring at her. She felt a rising urge to fidget, though it also could have been her common sense telling her to flee. She could hardly tell anymore.

"You understand me?" The dragon finally spoke with tangible incredulity. "A blubbering infant like you is dragonborn?" The dragon's slit-like iris narrowed in rage as it raised its head to face her, fangs bared. "I WILL NOT SURRENDER MY SOUL TO YOU!"

She moved back, not entirely of her own volition as the shout had pushed her several steps, holding her hands up in a placating gesture, her eyes widening as the fear that had seemed to draw back momentarily hit her even harder. "W-wait! What do you mean? I can't be the dragonborn! That doesn't make any sense!"

"I can feel it in you now!" The dragon yelled, making her hair whip back. "You have the soul of a dragon! I won't allow you to live long enough to take me!"

The situation was rapidly spiraling out of control, and she could see her imminent demise reflected in the eyes of that majestic beast. She didn't know what to do, but clearly this dragon wanted her to die. She had to stop that. She knew that, despite all the wounds that the dragon had sustained, it could easily kill her with a swipe of a claw. There was no way that she could fight back and actually kill it herself, so she had to make herself seem like someone not worth killing. She had to make the dragon understand that she was on its side. She was about to do something incredibly stupid, but seeing as the whole situation was an absurdity in and of itself, there was nothing wrong with reaching for unorthodox solutions.

Mustering up every bit of courage and magicka she possibly could, she began sprinting toward the closest wound of the dragon she could see and channelled a Restoration spell into her palms. Without taking much notice to any sort of reaction that the dragon would have, she dived forward and slammed her hands on the open wound, pushing forward as much magicka as she could to try to heal the gaping hole in the side of the dragon. She was hoping that, somehow, her feelings would be communicated through the magicka she pushed forward.

"What in Akatosh's name are you doing?" The dragon demanded, curling its neck until its snout was almost touching her, that enormous eye staring at her from within arms reach.

"I..." She took in a deep breath she drew up more magicka to try to keep the process going for as long as possible. "I don't want you to die. I don't care about your soul. That's..." She was getting a headache and her bones were beginning to ache even more than before. From what she could see, though, the wound was beginning to knit close and the bleeding was becoming less prominent. Her hands were getting covered in the blood, though, which was going to be a hassle to wash off.

"Are..." The dragon seemed stumped for words. "Are you healing me in hopes that I would grant you mercy? Foolish mortal, nothing is stopping me from devouring you once you finish."

"If I'm not here to hurt you, do you have a reason to eat me?" That was the best she could come up with. Her mind was wearing itself out as the wound stitched itself back together. "I can't promise you I taste very good either, I've been eating a lot of salted pork these past few days." Even in her exhaustion, memories of that terrible taste brought a great feeling of nausea up to her throat. It was very tempting to throw the rest of that out.

She must have been getting tired faster than she thought, but she could swear the dragon snorted in a less than dignified manner. "Disgusting mortals, putting those damned rocks everywhere. How can you bear to stomach it? Then again, you mortals are too stupid to know what's good for you."

She couldn't help but let out a small giggle of her own, though she stopped it as fast as she could. "Well, this stupid mortal knows that being eaten isn't very good for her, so how could you think you know what's good for me better than I do?"

"I know better because you're mortal and stupid and I'm a dragon." It stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well, then..." Her hands fell from the front limb. "If you know what's best for me, then I can safely put my life in your hands." The waking world drew away from her and she dropped to the cold ground, her mind unable to take any further strain of trying to heal the dragon.

"It was there from the start, you-" The dragon stopped talking as it realized the human was unconscious. "Mortal?"

The dragon slowly raised itself on its legs, noting the lances of pain it should have experienced had dulled considerably. It turned slowly, more to keep from reopening any wounds than anything, until it was facing the body in the snow.

Letting out a snort, the dragon lowered its snout and nudged the mortal. "Get up."

The body remained unresponsive.

It tried again. "Get up, this is my clearing."

Again, the mortal remained oblivious to its efforts.

"If you don't get up, I will just lie down on top of you." The dragon threatened, glaring menacingly.

A drop of drool formed at the edge of the human's mouth and started a path down its cheek.

"Very well!" The dragon exclaimed, stepping over the human and lowering its body. It kept still for several seconds before pulling back and lowering its head to glare directly at the mortal. "Next time I will do it! Don't test me!"

The mortal remained unmoved.

The dragon sighed, blowing away the snow around the human. "Fine." It gently lowered herself down beside the pathetic existence and curled up, coincidentally shielding it from the wind. "Stupid dragonborn with a stupid, terrible taste and stupid spells."

At least, with the pain dulled, it'd have an easier time sleeping.

The world came back to her slowly, giving her eyes time to adjust to the newly-lit forest. The snow was blinding, she didn't even get the chance to crack them open before she shut them again quickly, her brain on fire from the overstimulation. She was unable to stop a groan from escaping her, the back of her head was complaining loudly, probably due to the unceremonious way she had fallen... down...

"Are you finally awake, mortal?" The dragon's voice came from her left. "For such a small creature you sure do sleep a lot."

She blinked as much as she could to try to water her eyes up, and smiled. "I knew you wouldn't eat me. You didn't seem like the type." That was untrue, she was actually fairly terrified of the idea of being eaten, but she took a leap of faith that had paid off.

The dragon's head came into her field of vision, glaring down at her. "Maybe I just wanted you to wake up so I can listen to your screams while I eat you."

She shook her head. "No, I don't think that's true. I think you're not as scary as you think you are." She looked around her and noticed the dragon had ended up curling around her while she slept. "Thank you for not letting me freeze to death, either." Scooting backwards, she let herself lay against the large hind leg of the dragon.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The dragon replied, voice full of indignation. "And remove your filthy mortal self from my limb!"

She sighed, almost with a sort of longing, and lifted herself off of the leg. "You just seemed so comfortable, and I wanted to join in." She looked into the eyes of the dragon and smiled. She felt a sort of security in that moment. Like nothing could hurt her here. There really wasn't much to fear about this dragon. Oh, Divines, she completely forgot her manners.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself this whole time. My name is Ellemaria Nistiana, but you can just call me Elly." She bowed her head to the dragon.

"As if I'd care what your name is, mortal." The dragon seemed to scoff. "But very well. If you must know, I am the great dragon Tohrusan!"

"Toh-Ru-San..." She tested the name, and the moment the syllables exited her lips, an alien translation was brought up in her mind. "Your name is Claw-Run-Soft?"

"Don't befoul my glorious name by translating it to your inferior tongues." The dragon glared. "I am Tohrusan."

She said the name a few more times, each time using a different intonation so she could taste how it felt on her tongue. "Can I just call you Tohru?" The words came out more confident than she actually felt about the question. She didn't fear Tohrusan any longer, but she didn't want to push away this new... tentative friend that she had made.

"You have some gall, mortal!" The dragon reared its head in apparent outrage. It remained like that for several long moments before slowly lowering. "Fine."

Her smile became even brighter at that. "Thank you, Tohru. This inferior human is honored that you would let her sully your name with her tongue." She bowed her head once more, this time with a little more elegance in it. Her blue eyes danced in delight at the byplay between them. This was the most fun she had had in a while.

"Well, as long as you know your place…" Tohru accepted begrudgingly. "For what reason did you enter my clearing?"

Before she could even make a semblance of a response, her stomach growled loudly. She blushed intensely. "I was searching for dinner. I didn't want to eat salted pork again." She said, her embarrassment making her draw into herself a little more and speak quietly.

"Well, I'm all healed up so you can't eat my soul either." Tohru added, eyes narrowed at her.

"I wasn't planning to!" She hastily replied. "I... I don't want to eat your soul! I didn't even..." Oh gods above, she was the Dragonborn. It finally hit her full force. She could talk to dragons, understand them, and speak the Words. She had immense power at her fingertips.

"Are you unwell, mortal?" The dragon asked, puzzled by her sudden silence.

"I... I don't want this." She pulled her legs towards her chest, curling up tightly. "I just want to be a good mage. I don't want to be the Dragonborn. Someone else can have it. Please tell me I can give it to someone else, right?" She stared into Tohru's amber eyes, pleading for the dragon to tell her what she wanted to hear.

"What are you saying?" Tohru's monstrous head tilted to the side in genuine confusion. "You have a dragon's soul. If you weren't a filthy mortal, you would be great like me. Maybe if you try hard enough, you still can be. Why would you want to lose that?"

She curled up even more tightly. "I don't want to be great. Being great means that people have to look up at me, and I have to be a symbol. Being great means I have to go to the stupid balls and the gatherings. Being great means being used for what I am, not who I am." She shook her head, a melancholy feeling taking hold of her heart. "I ran away from home to get away from those things. I want to be myself, not the Dragonborn."

"Ha, you foolish mortals truly are foolish!" Tohru proclaimed smugly. "Being great isn't about any of that. When you're great you go where you want regardless of what others say. I don't care if someone tells me to do something I don't wanna do or go somewhere I don't wanna go. And they can't do anything about it, because I'm the great Tohrusan!"

She smiled again. "Being a dragon sounds great. I'd love to be a dragon." She couldn't help but lean back again. "But being the dragonborn, as a human, means that people are going to stop me from doing what I want. It means I'm unable to be as free as you are, Tohru." She looked at those eyes again. "I can't do what I want. People will expect me to do what they want, and... I don't always have a choice to refuse."

"But nobody knows you're dragonborn, do they?" Tohru asked. "You can just not tell them. Or wait until you know how to Shout so that you can burn whoever tries to make you go to balls."

She smiled. It was refreshing, in a way, to hear life from such a simple perspective. "That sounds like a wonderful fantasy, but in the human world, you can't burn people you don't like."

"Truly? I thought mortal mages did it all the time." Tohru said. "One of the rare times mortals showed some wisdom. We dragons Shout at one another all the time when we don't like each other."

"No, mages are not supposed to use magic like that. Magic must not be used with the intent to harm others, only with the intent to defend and protect." It was almost a recitation at this point, with how much her tutor had drilled it into her. That had seemed so meaningless, though, when she was hungry and intended to kill and eat the deer.

The dragon sighed in disappointment. "You need to stop listening to foolish mortals if you want to be a proper dragon."

Her hunger made itself known once more with a loud stomach growl. She blushed, more lightly this time. "I think the person I need to listen to most is my stomach right now." She mumbled, slowly getting up and stretching.

"If it's telling you it's okay to eat all those white rocks, then it must not be very smart." Tohru said, rising as well. "And since I'm clearly superior, I shall be the one to take care of you."

The surprises today were not at an end, it seemed. The green dragon lifted its head, and went still for a moment. It suddenly began to shine with a blinding light, and Elly had to turn her head away for a moment. The leg that she had been leaning on moved away from her, and she fell backwards onto the ground again, covering her eyes from the light. When she managed to see again, she was presented with a very different sight than before.

Where there was once a dragon now stood a woman. She appeared to be dressed exactly the same as Elly, robes that were a dark blue shade just above black, with the hood pooling around her neck, her chest stretching out the robes more than they were used to. Her hair, unlike Elly's slightly dull red hair, was a vivid blonde with red highlights at the end. Her eyes were red with an amber sheen to them. The most peculiar features by far, however, were the twin, almost branch-like yellow horns sticking out of her head and the thick green tail slithering out from under her robes, only barely above ground.

"This isn't a form I like to take, but it makes it harder for me to squish puny mortals by accident." Tohru said, her voice a lilting mezzo soprano that was vastly opposite to the voice Elly had gotten used to.

"...Dragons truly are great." She said, finally.

"I'm glad you understand!" Unlike her dragon form, Tohru's mostly human guise was much easier to read, not at all impaired by the way Tohru seemed incapable of curbing her body language with the way she smiled brightly and clasped her hands in delight. Elly could not help but grin in return, it was so infectious.

"So..." After a long pause, she broke the silence. "I hope you're just as good a hunter in this form as you are as a dragon." Her stomach grumbled quietly as if to agree with that sentiment.

"Ah, worry not! I have just the thing for you!" Tohru turned abruptly and started marching into the forest. "Follow me!"

Well, when a dragon behooves you to follow them, to refuse is to risk death, and Elly had decided she had enough of playing around at Oblivion's Gate to do something like that again. She matched her pace to Tohru and fell in quickly behind her.

"You intend to catch a lot of deer, or some other similarly sized animal, yes? Because I might have an appetite to match yours right now." She would have laughed at her own joke, but she really was that hungry. Having not eaten in however-many-hours, and with a previous diet almost exclusively of overly-salted pork, Elly was ravenous to the point that she might even skip the cooking step and eat the raw meat.

"I'd certainly hope this is big enough." Tohru replied. "We're almost there."

They were passing by trees that had large claw marks, bite marks, and some that had completely fallen over on their way to this mysterious destination. After a little while, past the treeline, she was able to see a large hump. She squinted in an attempt to see it more clearly, before it hit her.

It was another dragon. This one, however, wasn't breathing. There was nothing indicating it was alive, and she got a very good look at it as they approached it. Her stomach dropped in a sort of primal fear. Just because she had gotten used to Tohru's presence did not mean that dragons were not terrifying creatures.

"...I hope you are not intending for me to consume this." She finally said after a pregnant pause. "I do not wish to feast on a dragon."

"You don't have to bite it." Tohru told her, stopping some distance from the carcass. "Just go to it."

"Okay..." She was hesitating.

"It's okay, he's dead, he can't eat you." Tohru nudged her forward. "Just walk up to him."

She took a small step forward, then another, and another. A series of these led her to the corpse of the beast, a formidable sight despite the lack of life. Then, it hit her as if the dragon itself was ramming into her. Physical energy seemed to coalesce around the beast, wisps that flitted around until it seemed as if they spotted her. They lunged, driving directly into her breast, and she gasped. A rush of energy flowed right into her. Any aches, any cracks, a sore throat - all of her pains were gone. She felt as if she were reborn into a new woman. As if a sun formed inside of her and was relieving her of all of her suffering.

Except that she was still hungry. The energy finished burying itself inside of her, but her stomach was still left unfilled.

"Serves him right." Tohru muttered more to herself than for Elly's benefit. "How was it?"

"That was..." Elly took a deep breath to steady herself, the energy filling her up making her body vibrate. "I'm still hungry." She gave a pointed look toward Tohru, smiling as if she had finished laughing at a great joke.

"Oh, no wonder dragonborn are so hated." Tohru said, confounded by how a dragon soul could not be appetizing enough. "There's another one a bit to the west."

"Really? How did these get here?" She shook her head, the idea of so many dragons in one place throwing her off. "Wait, Tohru, I don't think you understand. I need actual food. This isn't filling my stomach."

"Oh!" Tohru's face lit up with understanding. "Okay, we'll catch something along the way then. No sense letting perfectly good dragon souls go to waste."

"So... I'm ingesting dragon souls?" She mumbled to herself as they began making their way toward the next one. "Father would have a conniption if he saw me right now."

Co-Author's Note: I'm looking forward to write this. I hope you are looking forward to reading it. Please continue to tell Ink and Blade what you think, because I will read the reviews too. Looking forward to your feedback.

Author's Note: This might have started as my own silly idea, but without Nogoodnms' enthusiasm and drive, it probably would have never seen the light of day, so if you enjoy the story, heap the praise on him for kicking my ass into gear so we could write this story together. With a bit of luck, this motivation will carry over into my own, long neglected projects. Until next chapter.