Dragon Restocking

Yuletharnia watched the roadway through the forest, this area was far more traveled than the rest of the woodland. She had seen a merchant caravan come through the other day, but it was a bit smaller than the one she had observed near her old lair before being **** out. So, she went and followed a carriage in secret and watched as it made its way to a port city a few days later.

While a treasure galley would have more of what she was after, getting to the treasure would be the hard part. She had a few spells at her disposal that would make transferring all that wealth to a preset location. The thing about treasure ships and merchant vessals was that all the ones that were worth raiding also tended to have the greatest levels of security. She just couldn’t make herself look like a dockworker and charm everyone in her way, they usually had wards to protect against that sort of thing.

For now, she would focus on restocking her food stores, she knew quite a few preservation spells, so overpacking the stores wouldn’t be too much of an issue. Besides, when she ended up having an extended guest situation it would be useful. Yuletharnia wasn’t a brute, like most dragons that seemed to back up their superiority with a physical show of some kind. By dragon standards, she was actually on the weaker side of things, when it came to physicality. That said, she was far more capable than most dragons when it came to the mental and social side of things. The main problem was that her ability to properly hunt would be hindered by her estrus cycle, which just barely started, unfortunately.

First Yuletharnia would hunt game in the nearby forest, then spread out to more places, maybe get back into the disguise groove to pilfer some things from some of the more well-off travelers she encountered. She prepped herself and dove down into the woodlands, altering her size as she moved through the trees, finally landing gently as a 7’3” version of herself at the side of a forest road.

She soon heard what would become a sound of opportunity, by chance she had also landed at the edge of a clearing she hadn’t seen from her vantage point in the mountains, that would have to be rectified. As the sound of the carriage grew closer she lowered her size to 5’3” and then assumed the form of a busty human woman in torn traveling clothes as she hid herself, nothing to fancy, just your average hazel-haired human with gray eyes. From what she recalled about humans, those were among the most common coloration for hair and eye color. She then made herself unnoticeable with a spell, once she heard a bit of the chatter regarding the people in and on the carriage she would step on out. Now, she just needed to devise a name that didn’t sound too out of place if anyone asked for it, maybe something starting with J or S, names of that nature were the most common last time she interacted with humans.

Yuletharnia didn’t have to wait long, almost 5 minutes later she could hear the chatter of the carriage, and it sounded more promising than she had hoped. When executing a move like this it was best to have a misdirect, saved time with devising alibis if someone caught up with you later. She just hoped that in her current state she could handle the carriage’s protectors.

“For the last time,” came an annoyed man’s voice, “I am very much aware of that gang of bandits that is rumored to operate out of this forest, but this route is so rarely used they probably didn’t even think to have a scout watching it due to forgetting about it.”

Bandits nearby, perfect, Yuletharnia could protect her hoard and get her less than desirable neighbors out of her scales with a move like this, she just hoped the carriage had a sizeable portion for her to make use of. The rest of what she heard was pointless banter that didn’t have much bearing on anything to her, things like disproportionate taxes and a celebration by the nobility in a place she hadn’t really heard of. To be fair, it had been a few centuries since she last heard anything other than a dragon speak, and the dialect of the common tongue used by humans took a bit longer to get a read on than the last time she heard it.

Once the carriage was close enough, Yulthernia in her disguise stumbled out into the clearing babbling about others being dead and barely escaping sexual ****, she knew most of the more notable bandit groups a few centuries ago had a bit of reputation for that sort of thing, the cart stopped for her and the guards making a comment about that sort of thing happening to again in regards to this bandit group let her know she had hit things pretty solidly.

Two of the carriages 6 guards came up to check on her, expected but she was in a hurry, she needed to inspect the contents of the cart. Yuletharnia released a magical pulse that caused all the humans to freeze up, the technique also had the added bonus of causing a blackout in their immediate memory around the time of the pulse, the humans would likely remember her stumbling into the clearing babbling about being attacked but not much after that. She made her way over to the carriage and tore the nearest door off with one hand. It was at this point the humans came out of their daze, Yuletharnia cursed her luck and lack of power, they should have been out like that just long enough to see her making off into the woods with something from the carriage.

As a guard approached her, Yuletharnia threw the door past him as a warning shot, all the humans stopped dead in their tracks, someone holding and throwing a door that heavy with one arm was no easy feat, seeing as the door was composite of hardwood and steel in both layers and appearance. Yuletharnia could feel her disguise becoming undone, her power really was waning. The humans watched in fascinated horror as the woman before them grew an additional 3 feet and took on more draconic features. Of course, they didn’t know the features were draconic, they did know that the figure was becoming more reptile-like.

Before she knew it, Yuletharnia was fighting the humans as a disjointed composite of human and dragon, thankfully her physical abilities weren’t as drained as her mystical abilities. The scuffle lasted minutes, instead of the seconds it should have, and when the defenders were finally all down, she looked inside to the carriage was basically a massive food vault.

The first thing she did was shovel food into her gullet like she was one of the Gluttony kin, it had been far too long since she had a sizeable meal, as she ate her disguise returned to the form she had chosen. By the time she was at a level where she was in far more control, a little over half the carriage’s cargo had been downed, she was really hungry. Using her magical abilities, she magically transported the rest of the food to her lair. She also noticed a book in the door she had thrown, she brought it closer to the carriage but still in a place that would take a bit of searching to find.

After making sure to make the scuffle look like more assailants had been involved, mostly by shifting her feet to a few different sizes for humans and moving around in a facade of fighting, she used her magical abilities to teleport back to her lair. She could go hunting another day, at least she had enough food to make sure she at least didn’t starve for now.