Aether 53rd, 4th Year of Vishta

The sun hadn’t risen in a three weeks.  The snow was now several feet thick and still falling.  Alexi pulled her coat and fur lined cloak tightly around her and stuck close to the braziers as she picked her way through the narrow street. Hell of a time to become a reptile; the cold was getting to her much more than she expected. Still, she couldn’t afford to avoid travel.  She had far too much business.  Her destination loomed in front of her now: a wrought iron gate, its bars twisting through foreboding designs.  Everyone else on the street gave the gates and its watchdogs a wide berth.
“Trynix,” she rasped at the guards as they closed in around her.  “Lord Tashfere is expecting me.”
“Who sent you, human?” the tallest barked over her; he was a towering canine standing at least seven feet.  The glow of his golden, black-sclera eyes and his curving horns above his wolfish head betrayed demonic lineage. A hellhound.
Alexi made a point to push back her hood as she drew herself up to meet the guard’s gaze.  Let them see, she thought as the chill contacted her skin, and the veins of pale golden scales creeping up her neck and trimming her jaw.  Her ears were pointed, webbed, almost draconic. She’d lost her hair but, well, she’d always kept it short anyway.  Not as human as you thought, am I?  She grinned wickedly upward, meeting the hellhound’s glare with steely green eyes that were slitted like a snake’s.  “Didn’t you hear me?”  She hissed. “I’m the arbiter of Great House Trynix, and your Lord Tashfere is expecting me.”
To his credit, the guard didn’t even bat an eyelid.  “Very well.  Right this way…” 
Through the gate, the courtyard wasn’t large, but it was wide open and sparsely populated - the very opposite of the street she left behind.  The rest of the walk as indoors, the air was kept warm by means natural and magical. On her last visit, the dark passages being insufferably hot and stifling; since her recent changes, Alexi could see fine and, if anything, she found the heat invigorating.  
Lord Tashfere of the Second Echelon lived up many, many flights of stairs. Alexi had to pace herself, and her escort never once complained; no sign of annoyance crossed his features. Very well-mannered for a hellhound, actually. He bowed and waved her through the door to his master’s chambers without bothering to announce her.  Tashfere wasn’t in the room, at first glance, but Alexi had a pretty good hunch where he was.
Tall, open arches ringed the broad tower-top room, looking down over the demon lord’s fortress and the city crowded up against it like a crashing wave of grungy black surf. There was a faint golden shimmer in the air just outside the windows; an ephemeral bubble enclosing the tip of the tower, gently rippling in the wind’s harsh garess and deflecting the snow.  It didn’t keep the cold out; that’s what the broad bed of coals at the center of his chamber was for.  The embers pulsed red as air was pumped in from below, huffing softly like a living, breathing thing.  
The other features of Tash’s chambers were his enormous bed, a steaming bath, and an ebony desk.  Really, what more did a Demon Lord of the Secon Echelon need?  Besides an army of slaves and a strong disdain of humankind.
The enormous room echoed even Alexi’s light footfalls as she made her way around the coal pit to the wide, canopied bed.  Sure enough, there were voices behind the canopy.
“I hear someone…”
“Shush pet.  Time for you to go.”
A small figure clambered out of the bed and into Alexi’s view.  A mouse, bare tail twitching nervously. Her white fur did nothing to hide her blush, and slick white fluid was still dripping from her inner thighs.  Her eyes went wide at Alexi, and she scurried off the long way around the coal pit just to avoid getting any closer.
“Awfully shy.  She must be new,” Alexi mused as she dropped her cloak and began untying her coat.
A flow of ashen gray feathers swept around from the far side of the bed.  Lord Tash presented himself with enormous spread wings that were, functionally, his arms.  Aside from wingspan, his feathered form wasn’t really that much taller than Alexi.  He had beak that gleamed like burnished steel, and eyes like windows into a furnace.  He hadn’t bothered to cover himself; even as he approached, the bright red tip of his maleness was still withdrawing into the slit between his legs.  His talons scraped and clacked along the harsh stone floor as he swept into a dramatic bow, flaring his crown-like crest of red-fringed feathers.  “Miss Alexi Pearceshield, my favorite human!  Welcome back!”  He drew himself up into a more subdued, though still very self-absorbed, poise. He sucked in a breath, perfectly in time with the flaring bed of coals beside them. “You’ve been… rather busy.”
“High praise, Lord Tashfere.  Tell me…”  Alexi shrugged out of her coat. Her chest was nearly flat, but her cropped blouse left the golden scales of her midriff bare to gleam in the light of the coals.  “Do you like me because I’m trying not to be human?”
“I do think it’s an improvement, but hardly.  You can’t change your lineage, my dear.  No, I like you because you have…  Mm, how should I say it?”  He rolled a shoulder, smirking.  “Moxie?  You have more balls than my pet cerberus.”  He dropped the grin in the space of an instant.  “But don’t mistake my amusement for approval. I can’t help but notice how, under your thorough supervision, every single, remotely possible claimant to the rulership of House Trynix has been shown illegitimate.”
Straight to the point? He’s worried. She kept her thoughts behind an amicable smile. Sorry, I’m not playing by your rulebook. “There were plenty of legitimate claims. Unfortunate so many were involved in the numerous criminal activities I’ve uncovered in House Trynix.”  She was rasping hard by the end of her explanation.  Tash’s eyes flicked down to her chest, how slowly it rose; how she struggled to inhale.
 “And let’s not forget the former claimants found dead.”  Tash waved a wing dismissively.  “Don’t even start the unrelated incidents spiel; I’ve read the reports, but I can’t bring myself to believe them.  I backed you to stave off a succession war, but all you’ve done is maintain a vacuum of power! What I can’t get over is…”  His grin returned with a maniacal twinge as he lilted, “Just what game are you playing at, my dear?”
“Please,” Alexi hissed the end of the word, “We both know what this meeting is really about.”
Tash tsk’d with his tongue and beak.  “You can’t think I’d just let you have House Trynix.  Surely you’re not that utterly mad.”
Alexi grinned, baring fangs.  “Am I?  I have a very convincing case.”
“Oh, you’re too much!”  He swept a wing between them, whirling in a circle, talons screeching.  “Really, you project such confidence!  Your bearing is a masterwork of art my dear.  I just want to break you and…  Mmph!”  His swooning was no exaggeration.  There was his red peeking from his cloaca again.  “Really, though… A human such in a position of power? Of a Third Echelon Great House! They’ll never accept it.  Not the demonlords, not the ranks of House Trynix. You have to know this won’t last, my dear!”
She folded her arms across her chest and waited.  “Are you ready to listen, then?”
Tashfere’s feathers ruffled as a shudder ran through him, and the effort to compose himself once more was plainly visible. Finally, red vanishing back amongst the feathers of his groin again, he gave her a tiny nod.
“You know I’m more than capable.  I’m already running House Trynix.  After Helio was exposed, everyone said the House was shamed.”  Alexi sucked in hard for breath to continue.  “They said it would crumble, but it hasn’t.  Instead I’ve cleaned out every criminal foothold and streamlined what’s left.”  Breathe.  Calmly.  Say what she might about Tash, he was patient and he genuinely did listen. At least when he was worried enough to do so.  “House Trynix is more stable than it’s been in a hundred years.  I’ve brokered deals with other Houses; they respect me.”
“Are you quite alright, dear?  You seem awfully winded.”
“Side affect of a little tweak to my throat…  and I’ll show you later.”  Alexi licked her lips with a pointed glance between his legs.  She could watch the thrill run up his spine as a ripple in his of feathers.  “But I haven’t finished.”
“Mm, take your time, dear.  Don’t strain yourself.  Plenty of time for that later.”
“My point is this.  You say I’ve maintained a vacuum of power.  I say, anyone who can maintain the balance… has filled the vacuum.”  He held her head high.  “With your approval I’ll have two Second Echelon lords’ supporting me. And I’m working on a third.”
Tash mulled on it, but he still wore a dubious look.  “It’s still an enormous risk.  Yes, you’re capable, but opposition will be loud and violent.  You have no legitimate claim, and you have no demon lineage. And I find it hard to believe you have another Second Echelon’s support before I voice mine. Sorry, dear. Not good enough.”
Alexi stooped to her coat and calmly withdrew several two small items from a pocket, tossing both at Tash without warning.  He let out a startled squawk as he caught them in a wing.  A phial and…  “Lord Khir’s seal?”
“You see, Khir understands how useful an ally I can be.”
Tash chuckled.  “I should have known.  I can see you two getting on famously.  Do you ever let him cum inside you, or does he just beg you to peg him with his toy collection?”
 “I’ll happily tell all if you let me peg you, Lord Tashfere,” she retorted with a wry grin.
“Mmm, too bad,” Tash moaned under his breath, tossing the seal onto the pile of Alexi’s clothes.  “I suppose I’ll never know. But, ah, this phial…”  He held it up, inspecting the blue liquid sloshing inside.  “Must be your ace in the hole.  A product of your alchemy you think I can’t afford to refuse.  Saving the best argument for last, my dear?  Masterful persuasion.”
“Your son hatched last week with a deformity.”
Tash stiffened, head crest standing erect.  “…How did you know that?”
“Criminal channels.  House Trynix is more secure than yours, it seems.”  She let him steep in the implications of that.  Someone high up in his House was vulnerable.  She tipped her head to the phial.  “I’d be happy to sell you the name of your informant.  And that phial… is the first round in a series that can correct your son’s issues.  It may just save his life.”
“A series?”  Tash snapped, his feathers puffed up like hackles.  “He’ll be lucky to last another few days, we don’t have time for a drawn out series.  I know your work!  I’ve seen full body transformations taking mere minutes!  You’re only making this a series to make sure I need you!  This is low, Alexi, this is-”
“Necessary,” she hissed, shaking her head.  “He’s an infant, Tash.  His body can’t take such a drastic transformation, and you know it.”
Tash quieted, calming with a deep breath..
“But you’re right, Lord Tashfere. It’s awfully convenient how much you need me.”  She shrugged, imitating one of Tash’s poses.  “Yes, I scheme.  What demonlord doesn’t?  But I’m not reckless.  I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“But you still have no legitimacy! There has to be a demon-blooded heir.  Minimum!”
“So…sell me Helio.”  She grinned.  “There’s precedent for selling slave contracts of shamed nobility.  House Trynix gets it’s demonlord back.  Only now, he belongs to me.”
Eyes widening as the implications sunk in, Tash groaned in lustful admiration, and pressed his feathered body up against her.  “All hells, woman, that… actually might work.  And I need to fuck you now.”
“We both knew it was going to happen, Lord Tashfere.”  Alexi untied the front of her blouse.  His feathers always felt wonderful, and she had a new appreciation for the sheer warmth his body put out.  Her fingers trailed down between his legs, tracing his cloaca and teasing the rapidly emerging penis.  It didn’t take much before his red member, nine inches tapered to a tiny point, was throbbing in her hand. She pulled her pants down with her free hand; she had a reptilian slit to show off now; that was going to be interesting to put to the test with Tash today.  He hadn’t changed at all; his first shot was always wasted in foreplay, and he was ready to pop.  Just judging from the precum dripping on her thighs, Tash was almost ready to cum. 
But then, she stepped back, hand withdrawn.  “Hmm, might want to get that phial to your son, first…”
Tash groaned heavily.  “Damn it, girl, I’m not Lord Khir…I don’t take kindly to being denied!”
“You also know I’m right.”  Her wicked grin said it all, though.  Alexi loved getting her way, whether others in power liked it or not.
“If you’re not waiting, ready for me when I get back…”  Tash tsk’d, drawing up to his full height to loom over Alexi with wicked grin: both threat and a promise.  He shuddered as he reigned himself in, turning away.  The tiny phial he gripped firmly in his beak, he spread his tremendous wings and launched into the air.  Cinders from the coal pits arose in a flurry as he took off, and the avian demon swept toward the open windows of his chambers, tucking his wings just enough to glide through.
Alexi was left to brush embers off her clothes.  She eyed Tashfere’s bed and the rain of fiery particulates.  A fire resistant enchantment?  Yes, she could sense it woven into the threads.  She ran her scaled fingers along the fabric as though she could glean its arcane secrets.  Alas, such direct forms of magic were beyond mere mortals. If only she knew why!  If there were the slightest possibility of alchemically inducing whatever connection demonkin possessed… 
She stripped completely.  Lord Tashfere didn’t care to waste time with the subtler tease of undressing his partner.  Nude, she spread herself across the broad silken sheets and let herself muse of the future. She quivered thinking of the many forms she would experience. This would be her first test run of the serpentine sex.  Her last transformative draught had botched her reproductive organs - she didn’t have egg-laying faculties, but no matter.  She would have been taking contraceptive herbs anyway; a child with Lord Tashfere would needlessly complicate her plans.
The sweep of embers and scuff of talons on stone signaled his return.  Red-fringed wings filled her vision as Tash leaped into the bed.  He held himself crouched above Alexi’s prone form, letting his eyes trail her exposed breasts, the curve of her hips, her womanly legs and the serpentine slit nestled between them. From the lust in his eyes, he approved.  “This is our second time, no?  Is it going to be a different experience every time, I wonder?”
“With alchemy, one’s body is an art form.”  She slid her hands around the cup of her breasts, pressing them suggestively into each other.  “I consider myself a work in progress.”
“Snakes don’t typically have mammaries.” Wings braced overhead, Tash spread his powerful thighs and lowered himself to grind against her breast.  “Not that I’m complaining…”
“Nature tends to settle for ‘good enough’.  I’m an artist.  I strive for perfection.”
“I think that’s quite enough talking.”  He shifted his hips forward, planting his cloaca against her face. 
Alexi remembered this flavor: sharp like woodsmoke, and an acrid hint that was quite common among demonkin.  She ran her tongue through the full trough of his avian sex.  He thought he was in control, grinding on her face like this, but he wasn’t.  He was too predictable.  She flicked her tongue against the tip of his penis before it even had the chance to come out and play. Playing her tongue across Tash’s backdoor, which was also part of his  cloaca, hastened his erection.  For all his opposition to anal insertion, given how much he enjoyed the teasing, he’d probably like it if he weren’t impossibly tight.  Perhaps she’d come up with a drought to fix that someday.
Wrapping her arms around his thighs, she kept him from thrusting into her throat.  Tash groaned in frustration, trying to hump, but she had better leverage.  Not yet…  I have a surprise for you.  She let his pushing become gentle thrusting, and that assuaged him some.  Alexi wanted him well and fully hard in her mouth first; all nine inches of him.  Then, only then, did she lead his cock into her throat.
Tash gasped when he felt the ridges lining her throat’s interior slide over his tapered tip.  “Nine hells, woman!  No wonder you had such trouble speaking…!”
She grinned around his member, kissing his cloaca with lust-lidded eyes.  Easing up on his thighs, she let him thrust, relishing the way his thighs seized up and the ripples of his feathers as he took full advantage of her unconventional modifications.  Permitting him to face-fuck her to his heart’s content, Alexi slid a hand between her legs to rub herself.  She moaned against his slit, wriggling her tongue around his throbbing cock.  He wasn’t complaining anymore, just groaning his immense approval.
Tash’s arching back was the only warning he gave before he caved, and Alexi felt him erupt deep in her throat, discharging waves of hot, nearly scalding seed for her to suck down and swallow.  He shuddered and bucked as he came, giving a crooning moan as he receded from his first climax.  Slowing, finally raising himself up and out of her throat and lips, Tash regarded Alexi between his legs with a new kind of awe-stricken hunger.  His penis drooled the last of his cum on her chin, where her tongue darted out to collect it.  If he was searching for words, he settled on a lusty groan, wasting little time in repositioning himself.
Alexi opened her thighs and accepted Tash’s cock into her snake cunt.  He slammed in faster than she’d like and immediately began railing her pussy with licentious abandon.  She simply lay back and enjoy it, with his scent smeared over her lips and a lingering taste of his cum to savor. Having her snatch pounded so hard, she could barely tell her vaginal tunnel had a new texture and quality to it, but Tash was too worked up now to take it slow and let her savor.  Ah well, time for that later.  She clenched her muscles on his shaft as he slammed in again and again, but she was lazy about it.  Let him work, she could take it and indulge.  Alexi was a slut, deep down beneath her layers of conniving and analysis - a true hedonist for any source of pleasure. It was little wonder she got on so well with demonkin.
Tash leaned low over her.  Breathing hot against her neck, he slid his wings under her arms, behind her back, and lifted her up on a bed of feathers. As he sat up once more, his thusts were slower but stronger, now his powerful wings now bearing much of the load of lifting her body, while her weight brought her back down to be skewered on his shaft time and again.
In her lust-hazed thoughts, Alexi knew it was going to be a long fuck, and there was no point holding back. She groped at Tash’s arm and pecs, the truly impressive musculature he used for flight, now to sate his carnal need of their bodies.  Again, one of her hands found its way down to her sex, where Tash was using her, and she snuck in a finger to rub her clit.  Her her hips bucked needily, her inner walls clenching and groping desperate for a virile male’s seed.  Rubbing at her button sent near-painful spikes of pleasure into her very core, and her back arched as she succumbed to it.  Alexi threw her legs around Tash’s midsection, briefly impeding his thrusting while she ground out an orgasm, her labia rubbing needily against cloaca lips until both were wet with her leakings.
“Yess, my dear,” Tash drawled his hushed encouragement in her ear as he resumed thrusting.  “Verrry good.  How many will you have tonight, I wonderrr…”
“Well now, that depends on you,” she murmured, letting her head roll back and exposing her neck to the advances of his beak.  
Tash’s tongue trawled out against her skin where he nuzzled against her wishbone.  It was a surprisingly long appendage, and he let it snake down the cleft of Alexi’s breasts to tease around her under-bust. Alexi let him ravish her, use her for his pleasure.  She lost herself in the rhythm his maleness spreading her on every thrust.  She didn’t have to worry about being lazy and letting him do all the work; most demons were very accustomed to fucking partners to the point of exhaustion.  Much more enjoyable to just lay back and take it more often than not.
She was dropped back to the bedsheets, and opened her eyes as Tash pressing her down by the shoulders, open beak allowing his tongue to dangle in a particularly debased expression of lust.  He crowed over her as he came again, grinding hard while searing heat exploded inside her, blooming up into her womb and rapidly overflowing her tunnel.  Alexi shrugged his grip and reached up to grabbed his head, catching his tongue with her own and suckling it suggestively.  
Shuddering in the wake of his second orgasm of the session, much of the tension melted from Tash’s form. He sighed heavily, nuzzling back into the crook of Alexi’s neck, testing his tongue along her neck, and the odd transition from scale to flesh - her unfinished work.  His hips weren’t moving.  Alexi gyrated hers gently.  He was still hard, so…  “Am I losing my touch, Tashfere?  How many times did you spend yourself in that rat girl before I showed up?”
“Oh, six or so.”  For now he was simply content with necking her.  Tash was quite adept with his slippery tongue and pointed beak, and he could make her shiver just from the nape of her neck.  “I do realize you are a busy woman.”
“And here I was clearing my schedule for a long night of debauchery…”  Alexi brushed his cheek.  She rather liked his side of him.
“Oh, if you’re asking, I can deliver free of charge, my dear.”  He rammed himself back into her pussy for emphasis.  “Though I simply must avail myself of your throat again…  That was simply incredible.”
Alexi stroked his cheek.  “I’m glad you appreciate my art.”
“Is it really wise to make your throat more desirable than your puss, I wonder?”  Tash chuckled.
“My sexual equipment does need a fair bit of work, yes.  Next time we fuck, you might not even recognize me.”
He nipped at her scales hard enough to make her yelp.  “Oh, you’re very hard to miss, my dear.  You know I keep tabs on you.  Whatever you become, I will watch with great interest…”