User blog comment:Doctor Ibrahim/Ask the Doc and his Family!/@comment-25808351-20180124030225/@comment-28358106-20180215032329

A strange feeling washes over Adelhard. The ancient stories that told of the power of the Dragon's gaze seem to be very real. He can't help but get the sensation that he is being assessed---not as a man, or even a person, but prey. A resource, looked upon to see if it was worth the trouble as powerful eyes gazed from on high, from a lofty perch that was unattainable by lesser beings. It was a gaze that said a great deal, none of it pleasant, but the veil of Demonic Energy made it seem as if it were a slice of the ancient world that was held on the other side of a pane of glass. Very thin, slightly pink-tinted glass, and perhaps glass that was more of an obligation than an actual barrier, but the divide was there.

"I think not, boy," she says suddenly, her voice cutting through the pause. "Enjoy it?  Unless you are completely weak and without manhood.  There is no man who willingly surrenders what makes him a man, or else you are worthless.  I talk not of what you wish, not of soft furs and whispers.  I would take you, and force you down, and when you had no fight left, take what would be mine.  If you truly believe so, that offering yourself as if you were a gift, would leave me mewling for you, then this mistake you would not make again.  I would  have taken you, yes, but only because you have fight in you."

Partha leaps down out of Marcus' arms and, on all fours, bounds off, loping away with her tail following her like a streamer. It looks like she's simply running off, until she bounds right up to a huge elm tree.

She leaps onto its bark, latching on with all four limbs and, with an almost batlike movement, scrambles up the trunk. Marcus' keen eyesight can see her climb to one of the middle branches where she perches on a fat limb, coiling like a cat, flattening her ears and wiggling her butt as she waits for him to approach.