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I didn’t try to attune to the seal. I don’t even really know what that means. It’s just a thing that happened, the way so many other things have been things that happened. Nobody ever understands. They think I’m fucking with shit on purpose. I never am. Half the things I got fined for were things I didn’t even really mean to do. Wherever I am, things just seem to happen.

Pinned down beneath this massive dragon, taking his huge cock as it stretches me lewdly wide, I know he can’t and won’t understand. He’s like all the other people in authority. He thinks I do things that are bad because I make choices. What really happens is I get somewhere and events start unfolding. Being abducted by a dragon king is on brand for me for that very reason.

I come on his cock, take another dose of his seed. I have an eye-rolling orgasm. And when it is over, nothing has fundamentally changed. I am still attuned to a lost relic, my wings are already starting to regrow—I haven’t mentioned that, but I can feel the tingling and I know what it means.

He falls back, satisfied, as if sexual domination might somehow change my intrinsic nature. I let him think what he needs to think, while knowing that as soon as he is asleep, I am going toopen one of those messy portals and I am going to crawl back to where I came from.

It doesn’t take as long as I expected for him to fall asleep. He is ancient, after all, and he thinks his presence is enough to contain me. There’s so much arrogance in men of all kinds, even the ones who are actually massive dragons.

I go to the bathroom, and I concentrate with all my power. There’s no way to make this go well, but all I can do is try.

I murmur the portal word softly, but with calm intention. I imagine the portal, as it should be, as it could be. I think about the human world I came from, about the city and the hills, my friends. I hold the destination in mind, and…

There is a mirror on the bathroom wall, massive and complexly framed with carvings of dragon origin. As I speak the portal incantation, it, for whatever reason, decides to become a roiling molten mass of a portal to a hell dimension. I see lava dripping from ceilings of vaulted caves, I hear the wailing of hundreds of thousands of damned souls, and I see demons torturing them, hideous beasts with the wrong numbers of eyes, legs, and hands. They see me. Snapping their heads toward me all at once, like the same brain controls them all. They scuttle toward me, coming from all directions, reaching through the portal, long, clawed fingers reaching for me.

This is a flash of insight into the worst of the worst, and it horrifies me so deeply all I can do is stand and stare and scream. My cries blend with those of the damned until all I can hear is one great cry that makes my ears feel as if they might shatter.

Ornix bursts in behind me, grabs me around the waist, extends his hand, and snarls something in the direction of the portal. The demons hiss in fear and withdraw. The portal closes, leaving the mirror behind.

I am sobbing in fear as Ornix pulls me out of the bathroom and carries me to bed.

“I know,” he says. “It’s terrifying. This is why we don’t practice portal magic on our own in a room where there’s a mirror. Mirrors are hard to trust at the best of times.”

“Hell is real?”

He chuckles. “You found out dragons are real, but you’re surprised hell is?”

“I never thought… it’s not… that means… oh, my god.”

I thought I’d had existential crises before. But never like this. Never so deep they went all the way to my soul. It’s all real. Everything. I got so used to being jaded, to thinking nothing really existed, and now I know, for absolute sure, that everything does. Unicorns. Aliens. Mermaids. I bet they all exist.

“It’s a place, Melissa. You don’t need to fear it. You’re one of the few who could probably walk right out of it. Look how hard I am having to work to keep you contained. By the time you are in any position to be anywhere near hell, you’ll be able to walk on water and through walls.”

“Really?”

“Ordinarily I’d say no, but your progress has been extraordinary in every way, so, probably.”

I am still shivering. You can’t see actual hell and not be affected by it. It’s like having every terrible fear you ever had, every nightmare, every pang of anxiety all rolled up together and shoved down your throat at once.

Ornix holds me, seeming way more amused by the whole thing than I expected. I thought he’d be furious again. I thought he’d punish me. Give me another one of those harsh beatings followed by another fucking that leaves me drenched in his seed, bred yet again. Instead, he snuggles me.

I risk asking him a question that might remind him he’s supposed to be angry. “You’re not mad at me?”

His hand smooths down my back in a soothing motion. “I have been mad at you. I have been afraid for you. I have been furious at your refusal to settle into your place. I have wanted more from you. But you are a force of nature, Melissa, and anger is not the right response to your continued efforts to learn. Even when they go terribly wrong.”

“But you were so angry…”

“I was expecting too much. I am not perfect. You are the first mate I have had, the first human I have had total responsibility for, and you are challenging in the extreme. We are going to clash. I understand that now.”

Ornix

She’s so shaken. I’ve never seen her this scared before, not even when she first found herself in my realm, or when she saw mytrue form, or when the creatures of the forest tried to manifest her worse fears.

My protective urges are at the forefront right now. She is so afraid she is sweating and shaking in my arms. It could have been much worse than it was. If I had not heard her, and woken to her scream, she could have been dragged into hell.

Some might say she would have deserved that if it happened, but the truth is that she is young and she is learning, and experiments happen. We’ve all accidentally opened a portal into hell. It’s practically a rite of passage.

I pull her close to me and I let her regulate over time. It is late and it would be nice to be asleep, but I want to offer some comfort. I’ve done so little of that of late. I’ve been a tyrant. I’ve been a lover. A mate. I’ve pinned her down and bred her, and yes, to my credit, saved her from the consequences of her actions more times than anyone might strictly think necessary.