Kreel stirred. There was, at first, no outward sign of it: he lay motionless atop his great mound of gold, curled round in a circle so the tip of his long tail rested on the scales of his slender neck. The only evidence that he was awake was the absence of snoring: the deep rumbling purr that had echoed round the huge chamber without pause for days, weeks, months. It had stopped, leaving behind it an absolute silence.

Gradually, he began to move. Here a twitch of a clawed toe, there a flick of an ear, a sniff of a nostril. A single red eye opened half-way.

Something smelt different. His dream had been full of smells: the smokey haze of burning forest, the mouth-watering lure of charred meat, the sharp pang of fear. Fear of him, as men and women ran for their lives. Good smells. Good dream. But it was a real smell that woke him. Something that didn’t belong.

An intruder? A spy or thief or would-be dragon slayer? He ran a long, forked tongue over a row of razor-sharp, knife-like teeth. It had been years since he’d last eaten, and there’d be immense fun in putting the fear of Kreel into their heart before he incinerated them. But no. It didn’t smell human.

Could it be… that time again? A whole year passed by? He sniffed the air once more. Yes, there was no doubt about it. An acrid, fiery scent, not unlike his own, but darker, older, a smell from the depths of the world. And it was getting stronger. It was coming closer.

Kreel rose up sluggishly on four legs and stretched his long neck, his longer tail, his enormous leathery wings which when unfolded could only barely fit within the huge old hall. He thought about his visitor with some relish. Yes, it was exactly what he needed: a chance to let loose his full power, to get a little exercise and really enjoy himself. And then perhaps nap for another year.

But, maybe to give it a surprise? Quickly he wormed down into the golden heap. First his long-jawed head disappeared beneath the shining metal, then his snakelike neck, next his lithe body armoured in green and silver scales, and finally his great tapering tail. After a brief avalanche of coins, rings and goblets had subsided, silence echoed about the chamber. Deep within the pile, Kreel waited, and listened, smelling his visitor approach.

Soon he could hear it, the distant booming crunch of its footsteps getting louder and louder. He could feel the ground quiver with every one, a steady booming which slowed, and finally, stopped. It had arrived.

Kreel spoke from within the pile, his roaring voice filling the hall. “My, you have climbed a long way to see me, all the way from the deep, uncharted and forgotten places beneath, unsullied by the feet of men. You must be tired! Why not rest a while? Go on, lie yourself down on my luxurious bed of treasures uncountable and sleep!”

The visitor did no such thing, but instead roared a challenge, a vast deep thundering noise like the death cry of a mountain, and stepped closer, slowly. Boom. Boom. Boom. It couldn’t know where he was hiding. Kreel knew his voice would echo around the chamber chaotically, seeming to come from every direction at once.

“So, once again it is the turning of the year and you are briefly free from your imprisonment. And once again you come to see me, Kreel the Invisible! And once again you challenge me, and once again you shall lose!”

He knew when it was nearly on top of him: the absolute darkness in the heart of the hoard seemed to get even darker, as though a shadow had seeped into it, something blacker than a mere absence of light. And at that moment he launched himself from the pile at a great speed, teeth and claws bared, in the direction he judged it to be.

The demon stood in the heart of a vast cloud of shadow which filled half the great old hall, reaching out tendrils into the farthest corners and seeping into cracks and crevices. Its body blazed with fierce red-orange flame, from its two monolithic fire-shrouded feet to its head where a pair of red eyes shone like suns under two evilly curving horns. In one hand it wielded a giant whip, glowing white with intense heat.

The dragon hit it full in the chest at the head of an explosion of shining gold and jewels, knocking it flat onto its back with an almighty crash. Four scaled legs wrestled with four flaming limbs. Making the best of his momentary advantage, Kreel grabbed the whip in his jaws and ripped it free from the demon’s grip, flinging it to one side.

Recovering from its surprise, the demon tore at the dragon’s scaled flanks with arms and legs. The searing heat of its grip was no danger to Kreel, a fire drake, who in fact enjoyed the warm tickle of flames, but its great muscles heaved with an irresistible tectonic strength; of all the world’s creatures, only a demon could best a dragon in a contest of pure power. Kreel tore and bit with teeth and talons, digging into but never leaving a mark on its strangely slippery, evasive flesh. But slowly the demon was pulling him down, pulling him closer in an embrace which could, if it went any further, squeeze the very life out of him.

He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with air, feeling it transform into something hot and potent inside of him. Flame flickered at the back of his throat. Beneath him, the demon opened its maw, and he could see its own fire inside of it, building up, from orange to red to blinding white…

Kreel dropped his head to meet the demon in a forceful and passionate kiss. As he did so they both unleashed the full force of their fire. Two streams of livid flame mingled in their mouths, escaping between their lips in violent jets, flowing back into them, filling them with their shared burning heat. When that first fire had died away, he took another breath and let it out slowly, pushing the burning gas deep into the demon’s throat. When the demon replied in kind he inhaled, letting the searing, sulphuric vapour flow into him, caressing him from the inside.

Whilst they kissed, Kreel never once stopped clawing at the demon’s side, neither did the demon loosen its grip on Kreel. For dragons, as for demons, passion is inseparable from violence, and lust merely fuelled by mutual hatred.

Kreel felt his blood flow hotter and faster. And a pressure in his loins, as of something trying to break free. He relaxed, letting his long, scaled member unfurl and stiffen below him. He felt it touch something else, something thick and potent and red hot: the demon’s own erect shaft.

He pulled back from the kiss and regarded the demon below him with a belittling stare. His feet paused in their clawing and merely dug in deeply.

“Two great swords swing in the hands of their masters,” he hissed, pulsing his loins to rub his own cock tauntingly against the demon’s, “both yearning to thrust deep into flesh, again and again and again, until they are sated. Only one will get the chance, and it is their masters’ speed and skill and strength in battle that will decide.”

The demon growled, a deep menacing throb that shook through the stone floor. Demons didn’t speak in any tongue, but Kreel knew it understood.

“Do you still believe you can best me, my fiend? Admirably optimistic! But naive! Did you know I am not called Kreel the Impenetrable for nothing?”

Determined to prove him wrong, the demon tried to pull him forwards enough to bring his rear in line for a penetrating thrust. But Kreel hadn’t been as foolish as to land on him in such a way as would allow that, and despite its great strength it found the lock of their limbs to make the task impossible. Kreel stayed quite still, gazing down with a mocking gleam in his eyes.

The demon roared, and with a great thrust of its limbs threw the dragon bodily to one side, where he landed heavily on his back, wings spread on either side. In a moment it was on its feet and in a single bound was on top of him, flaming legs straddling his upturned silver belly. But it hadn’t been quick enough, and already the dragon was writhing free, making it impossible for it to get the grip it needed to hold him down, worming agilely out of its grasp.

Now they stood apart, tense, circling each other slowly. The demon flamed and roared from its angry cloud of shadow, a creature of primal rage and primal lust. Kreel paced menacingly, wings half opened, claws clicking on the stone floor, never taking his eyes from his opponent. He was enjoying himself; sexual desire coursed through his veins, and the demon’s rough treatment of him made him feel alive.

Periodically, the demon would leap for the dragon and try to hold him down, but Kreel was too quick and always managed to squirm or fight free, or dodge out of the way of the attack completely. Or Kreel would see an opportunity to lay low the demon and leap to attack, but always it managed to fend him off and push him away, and they went back to circling.

“Do you know why I always win these little tussles of ours, my fiend? Even though you have the advantage in brute strength? It’s because I’m faster than you are. Faster, and cleverer.”

The demon roared. Kreel roared back, the two sounds competing in volume, in ferocity, in blood-curdling chill.

“Now, I’m a reasonable dragon. I’m willing to talk about things, to take your feelings into thought. So, how would you like me to take you this year? With the force and fury of a volcano, or with the slow, ever so slow persistence of water cutting through rock? Or maybe you’d prefer one, then the other?”

The demon charged him, accelerating to a blinding speed in three great bounds, a blazing fireball dragging a cloak of darkness behind it. Just before it was upon him, Kreel ducked to one side, swinging his tail in a whirling arc that caught the demon’s legs and sent it crashing to the floor.

He leapt onto its back, shrieking in triumph. The demon may have been stronger, but he knew he could hold it down in such an advantageous position. Still, it wasn’t easy. Its flesh had the consistency of molten rock, letting his talons slide viscously through and then oozing itself back seamlessly together, making it hard to keep a firm grip. And the shadowy aura flickered around him, upsetting his sense of balance. He fought vehemently to make his hold secure, but felt it slipping away.

Suddenly, he found himself being thrown roughly to one side, narrowly recovering just in time to prevent himself being pinned under the demon, which had been quick to jump after him. Reaching down, it picked up the flaming whip which had lain there since the dragon had ripped it from its hand.

“What’s the matter?” crooned Kreel. “Do you not feel capable of bringing me down without a weapon? Well, be my guest, if you think it gives you a chance.”

The demon cracked the whip, its burning thong drawing a white arc of fire through the air before hitting the floor with a speed and heat that left a black scorch line across the stone. It advanced on the dragon and he backed away, leaving just enough distance between them so that when it swung the whip, the trajectory of the glowing tendrils stopped slightly short of the tip of his snout.

He led the demon right out of the hoard room into an adjoining chamber almost as large, cluttered with charred and broken remnants of furniture. A narrow stone staircase arched up to an upper level in a single straight span. As soon as he was fully inside, Kreel darted back from his opponent, spread his wings and thrust upwards into the air, each beat pushing him higher, the wingtips brushing the stone walls on each side, until finally he came to land at the very top of the stairs. The demon moved to the bottom of the stairs, whip in hand, and stared up at the dragon, the long flight of steps between them.

Kreel shouted down to it. “Worthy foe! It seems you have me on the run! But I’m ever so good at running, you’ll simply never catch me. So I could run and run, taunting you for all eternity or until the mountain crumbles around us, or…” He turned his back, spread his rear legs and raised his tail high into the air. “…or we can end this now, the only way it can end. So come on, my fiend, come on up and take me!”

The demon bellowed and ran up the steps. Its eyes never wavered from the object of its lust, which the dragon now waved from side to side tantalisingly. But the stairs, as Kreel well knew, were old and in ill repair, and never in the first place designed to take the weight of a demon. As it reached about half-way up there was a loud crack, and the whole midpart of the flight crumbled and collapsed beneath its feet. Its hands scrambled for purchase but there was nothing firm to grab onto and it fell, screaming in rage, landing heavily face-down on the floor amidst a field of debris and dust. As quick as it could it started climbing back to its feet, but it was again knocked flat, this time by several tons of horny dragon landing on its back.

Kreel wrestled and clawed, and quickly established a hold he was sure the demon could not break free from. “My fiend,” he said, “I’m frankly disappointed! To fall for such an obvious trick! I thought I was going to have much more fun with you before I found myself in this position.” He let the scaled shaft of his cock rub against the demon’s opening, as though reminding it of what was to come. “Still, I plan to sodomise you at a nice leisurely pace, so you’ll have plenty of time to think about where you went wrong, and maybe you’ll do better next year?”

Confident of his control over the struggling demon, he decided to taunt it a little before entering it. Curling his long tail upon itself he brought it round to touch its rump, and he pushed the pointed tip just slightly through its tight opening, probing, feeling the flesh inside, as hot and semi-liquid as the outside. By the time he withdrew, the struggling demon was screaming and spitting fire; perhaps from rage, perhaps from something else. Just the way he liked it.

But then Kreel made a mistake. He shifted position minutely, putting him at a more comfortable angle for penetration; that slight shift gave the demon a chance to move one of its hands that had been trapped underneath it. Kreel had assumed that it couldn’t move enough to upset his dominant hold, but he’d forgotten what it still gripped between its fingers…

A fine thread of white fire whipped over the demon’s shoulder. Kreel felt the thong land fast and hot across his back, between his wings: a burning line of searing heat. It felt wonderful. He shrieked in pleasure, and in that moment of surprise and lapsed concentration the demon broke from under him. With the dragon trapped between it and a wall, preventing escape, it landed blow after blow with the whip, making him stagger and moan under the rain of flaming tendrils.

Kreel gloried in the onslaught, the whip raking lines of stinging pain and singing pleasure across his back, his legs, his neck and head, his tail, never cutting through his almost impenetrable scaly armour. But he was not as overcome as he let himself appear. The shuddering, the mewling moan escaping from his throat, the way he started to curl in upon himself, all were affected. Let the demon think he was paralysed with the sensation, and move in to mount him without caution! He writhed on the spot, turning the slightly more sensitive flesh of his underside towards the whip, to heighten his own enjoyment.

It was another mistake. A particularly vicious crack of the thongs landed across his groin, lines of fire flashing across the flesh of his attentive penis. His eyes bulged. His body shook. His mouth opened to shriek but no sound came out. He just had time to wonder if the demon could be persuaded to do it again, and then it was baring down upon him, trying to mount him with just as little caution as he’d anticipated. Unfortunately, he was now quite genuinely paralysed with sensation and could do little to resist.

The demon held him flat on his back on the floor, his wings spread uselessly to either side, with its legs locked round his back legs and its arms pushing down on his chest. He struggled and snapped and clawed and spurted his hottest fire, but it was useless: the hold was unbreakable. The demon shifted its hips slightly, adjusting itself to bring the tip of its cock, a thick tower of flaming flesh whose exact size and shape seemed elusive, into contact with his anus…

“My fiend! You’ve won at last!” Kreel forced his body to go limp, as though surrendering. “Please feel free to claim your reward and desecrate me, and I’ll take it without resistance, BUT,” he interjected urgently as the demon seemed about to begin right at that moment, “I’d ask just one thing of you. When you take me, could you do so without breaking my dignity beforehand? If you were to, say, violate me with a finger before you began, I don’t think I could bear the indignity.”

The demon paused as though thinking, and then lifted one of its arms from the dragon’s chest. It extended a single broad finger, almost hidden in a shroud of flame, and touched his anus, gently at first and then pushing firmly inside.

Kreel gasped as he was penetrated for the first time, feeling the heat and pressure of the digit tickle his insides strangely but agreeably. It was better than he’d thought it would be. But he had absolutely no intention of trying it out with the demon’s cock. Gently he tested its reduced, one-handed hold on his chest, without making it obvious what he was doing. Still too strong. He needed to get it to take the other hand off too.

“Oh my fiend, you are too cruel! Was I ever this cruel to you? But at least you have spared me one indignity. At least you have not tried to put in two fingers, one from each hand, for that is my greatest fear, and if you were to do that I would wake weeping from nightmares of it for years to come!”

The second hand lifted from his chest, and a second finger extended. Kreel didn’t react straight away, he had to wait for his moment. And besides, he wanted to know what it felt like. The second finger was pushed with some difficulty into the tight opening alongside the first. He groaned as he felt himself stretched wide to take it, a stab of discomfort more than compensated for by the divine feeling of the girth of two fingers inside him, probing in two different directions, making his blood race and his cock stand firmer than ever, so firm it ached.

Something new came to Kreel then: a desire to do nothing at all, to let the demon probe him and then let it thrust itself deep into him. What would it feel like? It surely must be glorious. But something else competed with the thought: his desire to win. Like any dragon, he could not bring himself to intentionally lose any game.

And so when he judged his moment, he threw himself forwards, teeth and talons bared, his unrestrained front half springing up to meet the demon. At the same time he squeezed tightly around its fingers, for a brief moment stopping it from pulling them out to defend itself. Its balance was lost, and it toppled backwards off him.

Kreel didn’t immediately leap to attack but extended his wings and flapped once again upwards, coming to a rest on the floor above, near to the top of the broken stairs. “Thank you, my fiend,” he called down, “I really enjoyed our little moment down there. I could have broken free any time, you must realise, but you were doing such wonderful things to me. Why don’t you come up and see me? Or, could it be that you lack my powers of flight?”