Snowball - Part 2 (Commission for Cyanside)

TAGS: Giantess, Macro, Expansion/Growth, Growthlust, Wealth/Hoard, Dragoness

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Her time in the woods had been just slightly less than exciting. Sure, digging out her own cave and dumping whatever meagre amounts of gold and treasure she had in it was absolutely fun, as was being able to sleep on a bed of coins, but every time she looked around and admired herself, Gandra couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing, that she wasn’t yet… complete. That she was hungry for more was a given, that was just how things worked, but this feeling ran deeper; it wasn’t that a fundamental part of her being had been removed, but it had never been there at all and she just now figured that out. Much like when she was still at the tavern and began succumbing to the growthlust, Gandra felt that she had to do something special to get over herself and find where next her journey would lead her… but what?

There was no point trying to assault the local lord’s manor; she’d already flown over it a few times, only to find out that most of it was just family heirlooms with very little actual resale value. Wheat and grain in the storage houses and maybe a few prized horses, but apart from that, there wasn’t much she could use; besides, after the theft of the king’s hoard, the man began suffering from an unfortunate case of asset seizure, so whatever he did have was now long gone. She couldn’t go for the village either, seeing as the richest target in it, the tavern she used to work in, was now steadily losing customers now that she wasn’t there, leaving Gandra to watch as her once sole form of income went back to being a minor stop along the King’s Road. Worse yet, the establishment’s owner had decided to begin “investing” what money he could spare in projects around town, hoping to recoup it after the next harvests; she was not going to wait a full year in the hopes of getting her hands on a meagre sum.

Thus, Gandra spent her days lounging above her small pile of treasure, occasionally heading out to find herself a deer to snack on, racking her brains for any solution to her conundrum. It had been so long since she felt herself grow that the dragoness was feeling what must be withdrawal, occasionally looking down at herself, hoping that her hefty breasts had spontaneously developed more weight to them, or her hips flared outwards even more, only to find perennial disappointment. Her body wasn’t going anywhere until she herself did, leaving her stuck somewhere with no apparent exit. It took a disappointingly long time for Gandra to start thinking laterally; or, in her case, downwards: her very own hoard. How exactly she had forgotten about that was anyone’s guess, but now that she thought about it, it made perfect sense: the stolen chest, filled with coins and minor artifacts, had been travelling up the King’s Road for some time when she intercepted and made off with it, most likely filled with the collected tax of every settlement along the route. The king’s men were still out there, weeks spent scouring every place they could think of for where the coffer might’ve gone, letting Gandra know for certain that the amount she’d stolen was, if nothing else, important enough to spend goodness knows how many salaries looking for it again. And, if she wasn’t completely mistaken about her knowledge of geography, the local village was about a third of the way up from the coast and towards the capital, with plenty of other settlements, big and small, along the way. Put two and two together, and the answer to her issues became crystal clear: she just had to walk up the road.

It was so deceptively simple that Gandra spent a good couple of days trying to poke holes into it. Apart from the obvious, that being that the amount of attention she’d attract would make any kind of large-scale theft more or less impossible, there were a host of minor issues that turned her sudden revelation into something akin to a very heavily-weighted gamble; there were so many things that could go wrong with it that the dragoness could barely even begin counting them all, and any half-sane person should know to discard the idea and think about something else. Really, going north on the king’s road and just blatantly taking whatever gold she could find from whoever she met? She’d have the soldiery hunting her down before the week was out, and that’s assuming they didn’t send any specialized hunters her way to take her down… or rile the peasantry up with stories of the “big scary dragon” come to take their crops or whatever it was people said those days. All in all, a terrible idea.

Which is exactly why she had to do it.

It was hard to tell when she made the decision, before or after recognizing that doing so would be patently stupid, but her mind was made up: she would leave her cave and head north, taking whatever she could from whoever she could until finally reaching the capital and the seat of the monarch. Once there… well, she didn’t think that far ahead. Maybe she’d just sit on the fancy chair and claim the kingdom for herself, or just demand the whole treasury under pain of turning everyone present into roast beef; whatever ended up happening, Gandra knew that she was going to have a very good time of it, even if the odds of her getting stabbed with a sword were climbing upwards by the second.

Her first priority being to protect what she already had, the dragoness spent the better part of her last day in the cave making sure no one would find it. What with it being little more than a hole dug into an improvised blockade, covered in more earth in order to disguise it from passers-by. No one had stumbled onto her hiding place yet, thankfully, so there was a very low chance of anyone even thinking to investigate what was, outwardly, just another patch of dirt indistinguishable from those around it. Oddly enough, Gandra wasn’t nearly as possessive of her hoard as she used to be, mostly because of how secure she felt in its location; no longer having to constantly look behind her back, worrying that someone might take her meagre earnings, the dragoness was content in simply knowing that it was there. Besides, if anyone took anything, she’d feel it, so there was no point fretting about it. With her camouflage work done, it was time to get going, and after the sun set below the horizon, Gandra left for the north.

Most of the King’s Road was deserted, simple cobbles laid in a semi-straight path over the course of the last three monarchs’ reign; the overall goal was to connect the southern (wealthy) coastal cities with the heartland, providing easy access and a convenient route that could be more easily guarded should the need arise. Rather than having to brave the innumerable dirt roads and shortcuts that were near-constantly plagued by banditry, merchants were given the option of simply turning their heads towards the capital and walking, knowing that not only would they inevitably stumble onto multiple guard posts along the way, but would also find ample opportunities to rest; the road itself cut through multiple villages, towns and cities of all shapes, sizes and population counts, bringing with it plenty of wealth and business opportunities for the learned tavern-keeper or salesman. A booming industry formed around it, with the full intent of fleecing travellers for as much money as they had; others would take advantage of this, hoping to peddle their wares and espouse the virtues of “local” goods. The results were mixed, to say the least, but there was no doubt that the northbound route had made a lot of people very wealthy indeed; that it also made the southern cities easier to tax was also a positive, even if their governors grumbled about having to actually pay their dues.

For Gandra, however, her targets weren’t the absurdly rich ports, but the multitude of smaller coffers on her way to the capital. The former ‘bold could practically smell them: fat, laden with gold and coin, hidden away in some secure compartment because the owner of the establishment didn’t trust the bankers to keep it safe (or didn’t want it taxed, that was also a popular choice), ready to be found and taken, added to her growing hoard… how exactly she was meant to hold onto it all hadn’t crossed her mind, the dragoness being slightly busy fantasizing about how much treasure she was going to steal for herself. Maybe, she thought, her body would grow so much that no one would even dare to attack her at all, a sort of self-contained defence mechanism where the very thing that made people want to strike at her would make it impossible for them to do so. She liked that; it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but she liked it anyway.

Unfortunately, this did mean either walking or flying for large distances, and she’d be damned if she were about to do the former. The road itself often crossed through forested areas, pockmarked with the occasional highwaymen that took advantage of the distance between guard posts to try their luck at extorting the odd traveller. While the dragoness was certain she’d be more than capable of taking out anyone stupid enough to try and rob her, the reward for doing so would be so insignificant as to not be worth the investment in time; why spend even ten minutes subduing a criminal only for the bounty to barely even come close to a fraction of her current hoard? Better to just fly over everything and come down whenever she spotted the next village over. Of course, Gandra had to be careful to do so above cloud cover; the last thing she wanted was for people to know where she was, lest they actually prepare for her arrival and try to put up a fight.

The first target wasn’t that far off from the village where it all started, barely thirty minutes on foot away and without a single guard station in between the two. Most of it was farmland, probably owned by the same lord she herself robbed, with a couple of larger buildings apparently serving as either communal housing or small business ventures, it was hard to tell from that high up. It wasn’t too late that people were asleep, but they had all retired to their houses already; after landing on the outskirts, it soon became apparent that there was no inn, no tavern, no nothing but a smithy and what appeared to be a large residential building, probably owned by whoever operated the smithy itself. Gandra knew the war had formally ended just a year prior, and last she checked, smiths were always in high demand when the king had to send people to die off in some gods-forsaken border conflict; it was therefore likely that this person had accrued a significant amount of wealth thanks to their chosen profession, a thought confirmed once she took a closer look at the tools by the outdoor forge: brand new, of the highest quality steel, stamped with markings she vaguely remembered seeing somewhere before, they were nonetheless heavily used and quite expertly handled indeed, if the very long list of clients nailed to one of the walls was any indication. There were multiple sheets of parchment on there, divided by name and place of residence; whoever this smith was, they had orders for customers all along the King’s Road, which went a long way to explain why there was such a large house right next to their workplace.

Gandra was practically licking her lips at the thought.

There were a great many ways that she could go around this particular puzzle, many of them including variable amounts of subterfuge, deception and the use of her wiles to get what she wanted. She could see it already, a grand plan forming in front of her mind’s eye in the form of a million interconnecting pieces, all of them leading to the inevitable conclusion: herself, walking out of that mansion carrying all the valuables on her person. Or, alternatively, she could simply walk in, take everything, and then do the power walk without worrying about convincing anyone; it was anything but subtle and far more likely to attract attention, especially of the unwanted kind… but frankly, the dragoness didn’t really care. Much as she tried to convince herself that there was a certain element of a game to it all, in the end it all boiled down to “Want money, take money”, something that very few people had any ability to deny her at that point. After all, who could stand against someone as powerful as her without either heavy backup or obscenely expensive equipment and training? What was a smith going to do, wave a bunch of red-hot pokers at her? Laughable.

The front door was off its hinges before anyone inside could even so much as react to the heavy footsteps approaching it, the former kobold striding in like she owned the place and taking a very long, very wide look at everything she laid her eyes upon; not too shabby for a single business owner, especially considering they were apparently a family of five, but nothing too extraordinary either. Most of the money likely went into the structure of the house itself, with the rooms being barely above the average for what the common citizen of the realm could expect to own on a decent, honest salary; all in all, an utter disappointment for someone like her, though at least she got to show off in front of a stunned audience. The poor smith ran after her when Gandra began walking into the house proper, smashing the walls and leaving dents in the floor, poking her head into the many rooms in an attempt to find something, anything of worth. This went on for so long that the old man, now telling his frightened family to stay back, begged the dragoness to tell him what she wanted, probably figuring that her hungry smile called for far more carnal desires than it truly did.

Five minutes later, a very disappointed-looking Gandra was walking out of a busted facade carrying a small bag of gold coins and the promise that she’d find more in vault number six-oh-seven in Hartley’s Central Bank. To say she was beyond pissed would be an understatement, and the dragoness made it very clear to the blacksmith that the only reason he still had a house was only because his tribute was too small to justify attracting attention to herself. In the end, she didn’t even keep the damn thing; as much as she tried to focus herself on that tiny bit of treasure, it just wasn’t enough to break the growth barrier, leaving her something worse than merely let down: unsatisfied. Like a jilted lover after a night of unbroken, bed-breaking sex was interrupted by their partner having as much stamina as she herself once used to have height, Gandra was just about ready to break something against a wall and proclaim that the universe had something against her, and even after convincing herself that such a course of action was ultimately pointless, the lizard still ended up knocking over one of the forge’s support beams out purely out of spite. Childish, yes, but necessary to prove a point.

Her mood didn’t really improve after taking off and gaining enough height to proceed north on the King’s Road, relying mostly on her ability to subconsciously sense wealth to identify proper targets for her. Most of the possibilities she thought she’d find would turn up dry, either because most of the settlements were too small to satisfy her insatiable hunger, the taxmen had already showed up beforehand, or there just wasn’t any kind of stealable wealth at all; the easy access to a vital commercial artery linking the heartland to the coast had certainly made a lot of people rich, but that hardly mattered when all of that money was “invested” into property or industry, leaving Gandra completely empty-handed unless she wanted to carry off a store full of adventuring supplies on her back. It was only after trying to land outside a village and terrorizing everyone into giving her their life savings that the dragoness began to realize that maybe the problem wasn’t in the places themselves, but in her demands.

Not that they were unreasonable, of course, but were simply too much for simple folk like that to reasonably be able to abide by. Her transformation into a dragoness had taken her standard for wealth and pushed it quite high, to the point where even a bag full of golden coins just wasn’t enough to even register; not that those small gains didn’t add up over time, but her body needed a single, large boost for it to affect her in any way. And truth be told, while her primary motivation was to collect wealth, the reasoning behind it had never been anything else but the raw, primal satisfaction of fashioning for herself a body that could make even the most stoic of mortals start drooling upon laying eyes on it. Her descent into growthlust had left Gandra quite a different creature than when she first started working in the tavern, and even though she wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to “acquire” money if it was offered up, her priorities had shifted from the simple days where coins and trinkets were able to satisfy her hunger. It wasn’t that she needed more than people could reasonably provide in general; she just had to go after bigger targets!

To that end, she figured it’d be best to skip everything all the way over to Marna, the next large city on the way to the monarch’s throne. Gandra hadn’t ever gone there before, being mostly a southern ‘bold herself, but had heard plenty of stories from friends and distant family about how it turned from a relatively well-off but still mostly unimportant town into a bustling center of trade, a practically mandatory stop-over in between the coast the capital… and a fantastically efficient source of taxation for both the Crown and the local lord, who’d been made a very rich man indeed off the backs of honest merchant and the endless series of travellers heading up and down the country. Just the thought of all the wealth accumulated into one place was enough to make the dragoness lick her lips, and if it weren’t for the fact she was mid-flight, her hands might very well have become intimately acquainted with her nethers just thinking about it.

A short flight time later and she saw the lights rising in the horizon, and immediately the overgrown lizard knew she was in for a treat. The city itself, once mostly circumscribed to the walls and immediate surroundings (or so she heard), had expanded so much that the central quarter now made up a tiny portion of all its surface area, stuffed with tall, lavishly-decorated buildings all leading up to an exquisitely-built and gold-covered palace in the far end of the district, with the local farms having been forced to move outwards to accomodate for the ever-expanding demands of local entrepreneurs. Shops, banks, manufacturers, craftsmen’s stores, all sorts of places where a loyal subject of the Crown might be able to spend their hard-earned money in both useless (if shiny) trinkets and genuinely valuable tools for their trade of choice. All of it put together made for the sort of architectural jumble that would make most city planners weep from despair, but quite nearly led to Gandra openly crying in joy from just how much wealth she sensed was stored away inside of those buildings. The dragoness didn’t even have to focus all that hard; all that was needed of her was to close her eyes and let her consciousness expand, letting it touch the myriad of coin and artifacts stored away inside both drawer, mattress and bank vault, a true treasure trove waiting to be picked clean by someone who would dare to take the necessary steps. This was her time to shine (quite literally), and what better occasion to start than right then, when most of the city was falling asleep or already soundly so, and the guards were easy enough to isolate from one another and knock out? She needn’t even try to land outside of it just to enact a stealthy approach, as there were so many alleyways that all that was needed of her was some minor timing to prevent anyone from catching her descent.

Not that subterfuge would really help her there; the moment she began indulging in some of her more questionable habits, there would be no hiding from the authority, and not necessarily just because of her height and overall size either. If Gandra had learned anything from her time with her hoard, it was that she was… quite bad at hiding how amazing it was to have a hoard to begin with. The dragoness wouldn’t be surprised if she went back to the town where it all started and learned that the children were now telling stories of a moaning ghost that haunted the woods, thanks to all those occasions where her ability to keep her composure just broke in half completely and left her mind a lustful mess, fixated entirely on the shiny pieces of currency she had stolen for herself. It was highly doubtful that a binge on the scale Gandra was planning would ever go unnoticed, especially once she grew taller than the buildings she’d be stealing from; at that point, there was very little stopping her from just ripping the roofing off and then taking whatever her hands could grab.

Indeed, that exact same scenario would play out barely half an hour later, when the dragoness made her way to a large square filled with stalls in odd, irregular arrangements. A variety of stores faced that small clearing in the urban jungle, all of which seemed to be well-off enough to set off her internal “money alarm”, and all of which were precariously undefended against someone who could rip doors off their hinges with a single hand. Was it any surprise then that the former ‘bold easily made her way inside each and every one of them, “collecting” what she could along the way, feeling the familiar sense of pressure and warmth build up inside of her until it was ready to explode outwards? Gandra could barely hold back, her throat vibrating and humming as she desperately tried to keep it from being set off by what she was feeling; her legs quivered, knees weak and nethers already flowing, eager for something, anything to be used to satisfy them, the thrill of it all too much to simply be ignored. The last few shops were particularly difficult, as she’d grown too large to fit into them properly, instead having to rely on her long tail or arms to try and scoop up whatever shinies were within reach. How exactly none of the guards noticed her immense frame looming over those last couple of buildings was, frankly, nothing short of a miracle working in her favour; even the sense of smug self-superiority she developed for herself didn’t let Gandra think anything else, though it did offer plenty of chances for her to chuckle at how pathetically inept the watchforce was. It literally took her striding into the middle of the square for the first alarm to ring out, and by then, it was already far too late.

The looks on the faces of those poor people were the cherry on top of a cake weeks and months in the making, the final touch on the perfect piece of art that was Gandra and her body. To see terror, true terror be sparked in the minds of those puny mortals around her was positively delicious, especially given how some of it was mixed with what was unmistakably arousal… and how couldn’t it be? The dragoness wasn’t simply growing in height and general size, but her proportions too were being given enough of a boost that they began to outpace the rest of her. From flat to busty, and now a pair of hefty breasts that covered about half of her torso, along with an ass that seemed to refuse to stop whenever she gave it a good slap; it was somewhat funny to her, not being that accustomed to a body that had that much jiggle to it, but even the overgrown lizard had to admit that there was a certain allure to it, so much so that it was stupendously easy to leverage it when the guards below her began to yell and make demands.

The poor things genuinely thought they could get anything out of those threats, when the pointy sticks they were wielding weren’t even enough to pierce through her scales. At her size, it was highly doubtful that even the highest-quality steel could do anything but scratch her, and those halberds were anything but expensive and expertly made; at best she’d get a bruise, and at worse it would hurt past the first five minutes, which is exactly why Gandra allowed herself to very theatrically collapse onto the ground, one hand on her head and another flying dramatically by her side, everything trembling with the earthquake produced on impact. She could barely contain her laughter when the night watchmen took a few tentative steps towards her, weapons at the ready, their faces bright red and just about ready to start glowing; probably didn’t help that the dragoness was openly playing with her own breasts in between showering herself with the many pounds of coins she stole from every store in the square, nor that her legs were hard at work brushing against one another and drawing plenty of indecent noises from her throat, some of which were entirely involuntary. It was quite clear no one wanted to make the first move, fearful as they were of being roasted alive… so Gandra decided to take things up a few notches.

Being an ascended kobold came with a series of advantages that very few people knew about, herself included; her kind spent so much time and energy denying their own potential that it was only normal for some things to fall into obscurity, and it fell to those who dared to take that extra step to recover all that lost knowledge. One of the things Gandra found, after moving into her old cave, was that her affinity towards physical wealth went beyond the growth feedback and her ability to sense it at a distance. It was imperceptible at first, but as time went on and she grew accustomed to the taste of it, the scent, the feel, it became almost like a second body for her, or rather, an extension of her original one; and much like her tiny kobold self was warped and changed to fit the bill of domineering dragoness, so too could that wealth be transformed into other, more exotic forms. Typically, Gandra didn’t think to do much with it (having a bed of coins was good enough as far as she cared), but on occasion they’d… experiment. And what she found she was capable of left even the lizard feeling hot and bothered at times.

In there, in that city, surrounded by guardsmen in every direction and with the owners of the robbed shops waking up, would be no different. Carrying the stolen goods above her head, floating in one massive, clinking sphere was easy enough, but it lacked finesse and glamour; how could Gandra be expected to make her presence as imposing as possible if she didn’t put a little effort behind how good she looked beyond her body alone? After all, with so much treasure to pick from, it was child’s play to melt everything down into a single, semi-fluid, floating river of gold and silver, a single whiff being all she needed to kickstart the process; from there, it was simple enough to splash herself with the resulting substance, covering her form from head to toe in the glimmering liquid, leaving behind a bright, slick sheen that shone underneath the moonlight. Within seconds, this full-body covering of molten jewelry and precious metals began to recede, concentrating in very specific parts of her body, parts that the dragoness knew would be more titillating if left to the imagination. Her captive audience could do little but watch as the “monster” they were staring at transformed its stolen property into a beautifully decadent set of clothing… or at least something that could be called that, as it did technically cover up some bits of her body. Gandra’s breasts and ass were still on full display, but at least that thin golden regalia covered up her nips and slit, even if it did nothing else. The attire was laden with excessive amounts of unnecessary adornments, rings and hoops and knots and ropes and goodness knows what else making up what had to be the world’s most expensive and needlessly complex string bikini. There was a certain art to it, if Gandra was to be believed, hence why she made sure to adopt the most alluring pose she could find within herself right after wrapping up her tailoring-slash-jewelcrafting work.

What followed was perhaps the most confusing mess that the dragoness had ever seen in terms of disaster response. A good half of the guardsmen dropped their weapons and took several steps back before running away from her, and a large chunk of those that remained, apart from the few calling everyone else cowards and whitening their knuckles from how much harder they held onto their own halberds, pretty much surrendered to the giantess in full display before them. The same could be said for most of the citizens waking up after her dramatic tumble; though a minority shut their windows and cowered in a corner, most of them were quite eager to throw themselves at Gandra, showering praise upon her for blessing them with her presence. It was flattering, and oddly arousing in and of itself; what the dragoness didn’t expect was for it to have an effect on her body similar to that of her stolen gold. It snuck up on her, leaving her incredibly surprised when that molten bikini of hers started to feel exceptionally tight, and if it weren’t for Gandra’s quick reaction time in summoning whatever wealth she could sense around her, a wardrobe malfunction would’ve been inevitable.

Rising to her feet, and very nearly knocking down several buildings when she did, the dragoness suddenly found herself a lot higher up than before; whatever that praise and adoration did to her, it certainly was… powerful. Not overwhelming like her hoard, but packing at least as much punch when it came to making her larger; this gave Gandra plenty of ideas for what to do once she got to the capital, but in order to do put them into action, it was imperative not to stop on her way there. As much as that detour made for a wonderful bit of entertainment on the side, now was not the time to rest on her laurels; there was a whole city for her to plunder and not nearly enough time for her to do so on her own. Thus, she commanded her newest supplicants to head off and find more to join their cause (or something imposing like that) and to collect as much wealth as possible before delivering it unto her at the northern edge of the city. What exactly she’d have prepared for them there was still a mystery, but Gandra figured that the time it took for everyone to mobilize and get the city to start digging into its own pockets would be enough for her to think of something.

Indeed, the short flight in between her first landing zone and the designed tribute dumping grounds allowed her to identify what looked to be a tiny hillock, or at least an elevated part of the ground where she could rest and lounge about like a proper goddess; even better, on getting there the dragoness noticed that it was actually some kind of storage warehouse, filled with assorted preserved goods and countless boxes of salt. Easy enough to dig into it and throw everything away, much to the surprise of the guardsmen who hadn’t yet heard word from the other end of the city; poor things were so flabbergasted by the sheer audacity of the gesture that the only course of action they could think of was to ask if Gandra was the owner or had a permit to move the supplies inside, which itself provoked a reaction of such deep, intense confusion in the dragoness that she sheepishly apologized and revealed that she had no such thing, before remembering who she was supposed to be… and promptly charming the pants off the guardsmen with a single word and gesture:

“Come~”

Like magic. Their legs seemed to work of their own accord, leaving the poor men terrified that their bodies were working against them; not that they had a lot of time to worry about it, seeing as they were very quickly consumed by plush in every direction. Gandra didn’t even have to do anything, as all that was required of her was her continued existence; as long as her immense, well-endowed self continued to be, then it was enough for everyone around her to submit to her magnificence. Didn’t even take that long before a procession of her faithful began to make its way from the northern gates over to where she was, each person carrying as much gold and treasure as their hands could hold, many dragging heavy bags and a few even pushing handcarts or riding pack animals. It was amazing how quickly things were put together, leaving Gandra to wonder if the effect she had on people was somehow contagious, even without her direct presence. If that was the case, then it certainly opened up a great number of new doors for her…

Regardless of what the future may hold, what mattered was that she was literally being showered with wealth, her powers drawing upon the vast hoard and making it fly around and above her, obscuring her body while simultaneously being deposited underneath her. It was a dragoness-sized throne for her to lay on, the hillock itself very quickly covered in a mountain of coins, trinkets and priceless artifacts; the poor lord and his entourage were begging people to stop, warning them about the wrath of the taxmen and their monarch, who would surely swoop in and teach them all a valuable lesson about being so wasteful. No one cared, for they all had their new lord… or Lady, as was the case. Why worry about some distant king when they had Gandra right there in front of their eyes? It seemed like a waste, perhaps even a heresy not to give the dragoness everything they had and even more. After all, what was their ruler going to do, take all those coins and shove them in a vault somewhere where they couldn’t see them? If they just gave them over to the former ‘bold, they’d get to appreciate not only a glorious throne of shimmering, glimmering gold, but also a mountainous spectacle of self-indulgence and draconic beauty in the form of Gandra growing yet again, her threshold finally crossed. Not that the dragoness would ever stoop so low as to show herself off to such inferior, insignificant little things; now at a size that even elder draconids would have to pay attention to, the thought of displaying herself for all to see struck the overgrown lizard as downright blasé, enough that the mere idea was really killing the mood as far as she was concerned.

Thankfully for everyone involved, this didn’t cross over to doing something as drastic as, say, demanding “live” tribute from her captive audience. They were now meaningless, far too small for someone as important as her to really give much consideration, and if it weren’t for the endless stream of wealth being produced by that procession of worshippers, Gandra would’ve been halfway to the capital already. But they were there, they were enraptured by her, and now even the local lord was throwing his bracelets onto the pile; soon, there would be no material possession of any worth left in the city, and sooner still everyone in it would be under her thrall. It was amazing how little effort she had to put into it; just show up and wiggle her tits around and suddenly, somehow, everyone fell to their knees and begged her to do a great many things she didn’t even know about… and doubted were anatomically possible at her current size.

The tribute lasted well into sunrise, after which the line of gold carriers began to peter out, everything from the last bank coffers to the smallest jewelry box emptied of anything of worth… as it should be. The hillock was no longer visible underneath the amount of coins, amulets, necklaces and all manner of other valuable items thrown at it, the ground itself just barely hanging onto itself under the combined weight of both the hoard and the dragoness lying on top of it. To say that Gandra had grown would be some kind of understatement; everything had filled out to some extent, up to and including her nipples and areolae somehow, leaving her looking like some sort of oversized lewd drawing that one would see on some rather unsavory publication. The thought warmed her and left a smile on her lips; to think that the effect she was having on those around her might very well be a twisted form of sexual attraction left her feeling even more powerful, if that was even possible, and if not for the obvious logistical issues involved, Gandra might’ve very well taken a suitor and made good on a few on those requests being thrown her way. As it stood though, it was best to simply roll over and smush a few dozen people underneath her bust; their stunned expression, followed by a half-second of pure joy was all the dragoness needed to see to know her dominance over those people was complete. There they were, just about to be crushed, and they welcomed it. It was right. It was just.

And now she wanted more of it.

Getting up was easy, even if the dragoness trailed a significant amount of coins behind her. The giantess looked north, where the realm’s capital waited for her to take it over. It was only then that Gandra really took note of how tall she had become, having easily broken through the thirty feet mark without even noticing it at all. Everyone around her was so tiny that she couldn’t distinguish their faces even if she wanted to, and somehow the desire to smush them underneath her feet began to rise up inside of her, requiring a non-insignificant amount of willpower to push back down. At least now the dragoness knew that nothing would ever stop her apart from another of her kind; even cannons would have trouble dealing with her, and the former kobold was reasonably certain she was still agile enough not to get hit by them. In addition, all that extra meat on her bones made for some wonderful storage space for all of that additional wealth that had been so generously gifted to her; seeing as theatrics weren’t really required at that point, Gandra simply snapped her fingers and instantly melted down her new hoard, fashioning for herself a brand new, even more horrifyingly overengineered string bikini… and a wide-brimmed hat.

It was a good look. Or at least that’s what told herself. Really, all that was needed was a beach towel and the dragoness was ready to go hit the southern shores once she was done with the king’s palace!

Regardless, it was time to get moving again, and that meant unfurling her wings wide enough to get some lift. Of course, this did mean that several hundred people were suddenly flattened against the ground by gusts of wind strong enough to pull trees from the ground, roots and all, but that was a small cost to pay for progress; at least they got to watch as their new goddess took off into the skies, the ones that were rightfully hers, headed due north and straight to the royal vaults. Within minutes she was already seeing it, no longer caring about the five or six other cities along the way; she could sense it even from afar, that their wealth just wasn’t enough to satisfy her anymore. Sure, they’d make her grow… a bit. But did that really matter in the grand scheme of things? If anything it would just detract from the grandiose spectacle that would be her final (for now) ascension after securing the greatest hoard of all!

Gandra heard the yelling even before she came down from above the cloud layer, with bells sounding all across the city, alerting the citizenry that a monster had arrived… or at least that’s what the dragoness hoped. A healthy dose of fear was always required in order to really loosen up the purse strings, and what she had planned required that bag of coins to be nice and open just for her pleasure. On swooping down from the skies, Gandra was happy to see the walls hadn’t been fitted with cannons or anything more than the usual patrols, some of which tried to shoot her with what she assumed were crossbow bolts. A pathetic display, all things considered, given that she not once tried to dodge and yet felt none of the shots connect; if this is what passed for royal guardsmen these days, it was a wonder no one else had pillaged that city before she got to it.

But that wasn’t what Gandra was going for… at least not now, not after being given such a generous boost in the form of her previous pillaging-cum-donation drive. Why worry about the financial district when she could land right on top of the royal palace, sinking her claws into its walls and collapsing at least half a dozen hallways, while roaring at the top of her lungs, a gout of flame at least as long as her whole body erupting from the bottom of her throat as her wings opened up as wide as they could go. The bellowing was loud enough that it ripped windows from their panels and shattered glass for at least a mile in every direction, the ambient heat spiking so much from her sudden display of pyrotechnics that the supposed elite of the elite, the very people entrusted with the life of the monarch, could barely move around from how hot they felt inside of their armour. It was great to know she had a knack for entrances, even if her size and power were blatant cheating.

Still, she had to give those little ones points for… trying at least. They could barely hold onto their weapons after looking at her properly, and more than a few immediately broke down and ran towards her with their arms outstretched, but at least they tried, and that’s what mattered; Gandra was ready to welcome them with open arms into her ever-growing congregation, right after she got done stealing everything of worth from within the palace itself. Extending her influence to affect everyone inside of it was the easy part; it was deliberately leaving the king himself away from it that proved to be difficult. Not because she couldn’t do it, but mostly due to all of those tiny humans being so indistinguishable from one another that singling one out from the crowd proved to be a greater challenge than expected… at least until he so helpfully ran out to meet her himself, at which point the monarch was immediately snapped out of it and took a few seconds to try and reconcile what had just happened with his perception of reality.

“Dragon!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, ineffectually shaking a fist towards her while drawing a blade, “Release my men from y-”

“Dragoness, actually!” Gandra interrupted him, effortlessly flicking that sword away with the tip of a claw, “And you’d do well to learn how to pay respect to your betters, petty king~”

“I will not stand by and watch you plunder my kingdom! My people!” the old man kept going, probably convinced that he could intimidate that colossal beast with his courage alone… or maybe hoping he could strike up some amiable conversation, “Even if you strike me down, I will not stand idly by while you destroy everything I have worked to create! Now come forth!”

Gandra waited the appropriate three seconds before using a single finger to push the aging monarch back several feet, where he landed in a crumpled heap of clothing and broken dreams. Even as he tried to pull himself back together, he had to watch as his palace staff, all those who he’d spent a lifetime with, his closest confidants, even his family, all marched out onto the yard with their arms laden with treasure and their eyes glazed over. There was nothing left inside of them but adoration for the dragoness, whose shit-eating grin would haunt the king’s nightmares until the end of his days. Poor thing still tried to stand, still held his blade aloft with defiance on his lips, but it was no use; both him and Gandra knew that the kingdom no longer belonged to him… or anybody anymore, in fact. The dragoness wasn’t at all interested in governance as much as she just wanted to empty out the realm’s coffers, so the moment she left, everything was fair game for whoever had the largest army and was close by. Nothing but desolation, missing tax money and a former capital filled with people who were effectively brainwashed into serving a draconic goddess they were, just moments before, preparing to fight with all their might.

“Go forth, petty king,” Gandra chuckled, “and tell your loyal subjects that you no longer hold your own crownlands. Tell them what happened here, and see how long it takes before they turn on you. And if ever you should feel the need to avenge your kingdom for what happened today…”

She leaned in closer, her muzzle about as near to the old king as it could get without baking him alive. This was it. This was power. The ability to take if she so wanted.

It was intoxicating.

“... then you may find me. Just call my name into the wind and I shall come!”

So many curses and maledictions crossed through the monarch’s mind that his brain short-circuited for a few moments from the sheer strain of it all. It was over for him, and as much as he refused to accept it, there was no way for him to retrieve what he had just lost. Giving that smug lizard the satisfaction of knowing this was the one thing he could still deny them, but by that point… what did it even matter?

With a loud clanking, his sword fell at his side, knees soon meeting the ground as well. When he spoke, it was clear he was holding back tears.

“And what is your name, fiend?”

“Gandra.”

Saying that felt terrifyingly powerful, far more than it should. Like stating an absolute truth, a universal constant that would never, and indeed could never be challenged. She was Gandra, a former kobold, now a dragoness, a goddess, a despot and a would-be ruler of a soon-to-be-fallen kingdom. She was Gandra, and she demanded both worship and wealth, both of which were given to her whether or not the little ones that made up her congregation of supplicants wanted to or not. This was not just her truth, but the truth, and the inevitability of it was so heavy and evident that whatever strength was left inside of the old king was firmly knocked out of him, torn to shreds, set aflame and then had its ashes strewn in the wind. The man was an empty shell now, unable to do anything but stare ahead and watch as everything he had worked on for decades, the very realm he defended from invasion not that long ago, was destroyed from the inside. Not by conniving spymasters and court intrigue, not even by brute force on the part of a marauding army, but by a single, lustful creature of greed, who would ransack everything and leave nothing in her wake, only to fly off and allow whoever remained to pick up the pieces. He couldn’t even bring himself to fall on his own sword; the degree of failure was so much that the king knew he didn’t even deserve death. Rather, his lot was now to languish wherever he was given shelter, and hope that whoever it was he called for help would stand with him instead of in his place.

The series of emotions displayed on his face was the best entertainment that the dragoness could’ve hoped for. Beating the living daylights out of that man would’ve been easy, easier even that demanding the kingdom’s wealth be brought to her by the capital’s populace, most of which was now firmly underneath her thrall and practically begging her to do all sorts of indecent things. But to beat a man to within an inch of his life only to spare him would be magnanimous (by her standards at least), and that was something that Gandra absolutely refused to be; her time was better spent ensuring that the message was being passed through loud and clear: the kingdom was dead, the monarch overthrown, and there was nothing that old coot could do to stop it. She was a force of nature, come to ruin everything for him, and the slow, dawning realization that he literally could not have done anything at all to stop it was what made the take-over even more delicious, truly the cherry atop the proverbial cake.

It still took an inordinate amount of time for the toppled ruler to get up and go away, and even then he still shuffled his feet so much that he was pushed back by the constant stream of eager worshippers come to lay at the feet of their new goddess. By the time the old man was well and truly gone, vanished into the crowd, Gandra had long since forgotten why he was even supposed to be relevant; her perspective had a tendency to undergo radical changes whenever she was given the gift of a stolen mountain of coins and priceless artifacts, most of which she wasn’t even fully aware of what they were at all. Relics from distant lands were dug out from the deepest vaults, holy items whose mere presence alongside regular treasure probably constituted some form of blasphemy, all of it alongside a seemingly endless stream of precious metals minted into dozens of different shapes and sizes, the record of a long and proud lineage that had just been effortlessly ended by what was, in all respects, an overgrown lizard riding on a high of her own smug sense of self-superiority. Gandra was perfectly aware of this, which is what made it so amazing; the throne was not hers by right, nor was any of the treasure her property by any means. Rather, she had decided she wanted it, and thus… she got it. The law of kings was now hers to write, assuming the dragoness bothered to sit down and think about doing any kind of ruling; the reality of it was that such things were now too far beneath her to really matter, and besides, if anyone wanted to take the time to manage a broken shell of a kingdom, they were welcome to try.

Her goal, her prize, was something far more sublime: growth, far more of it than the former kobold could have ever imagined, quite literally if she thought all the way back to when she was tinier than a chair. Things seemed so simple back then; the world was a vast, terrifying place, with the menace and threat of a single coin lurking around every corner, waiting to ambush her with endless greed! Stories of terror told to keep their species in line, when in truth they were merely holding themselves back from becoming true gods amongst mortals if only they accepted that their “curse” was the key to ascension. Now, there was no terror, no fear; only the ever-present knowledge that the world was hers to do as she wished, made all the more evident when she barreled through an increasing amount of the capital the more her hoard grew. Knowing that she now had an entire city of potential guards ready and waiting to lay their lives down to protect her, Gandra snapped her fingers and allowed her overwrought string bikini to return to its natural state, reforming into thousands of minute coins, goblets, necklaces and other such pretty baubles, all of which joined the growing mound beneath her. It looked so hilariously oversized compared to the hoard she buried outside that town of hers that the dragoness felt going back for it was no longer necessary; whatever was in that cave could fit on the tip of a single finger now, so why bother?

Her body continued to grow at a quick pace, flattening the royal palace and being heavy enough that the top layers of the treasure she was using for a bed began to compress into one another without her having to employ her powers. The giantess’ tail in particular had to be carefully snaked around a multitude of buildings just to keep it from destroying entire city blocks with a simple swish, while her wings covered so much ground that day could be turned to night just by her stretching them out. The least said about her feminine assets the better, because even Gandra felt raunchier than usual when looking at them; never before in her life did the dragoness imagine she’d ever have tits big enough to cover her whole torso and hang below the waist, much less ones that seemed to be filling up with what was undoubtedly some form of fluid. Down below, her wide load of an ass was getting wider still, with each wobbling cheek now big enough that they’d be able to destroy the palace completely all on their own, leading down to a pair of flared hips and meaty thighs so colossal that, quite frankly, no one ever would be able to service them properly… apart from Gandra herself. The dragoness got plenty of mileage out of rubbing her legs together and letting her body take over from there, something that would’ve been unthinkable to her old self; just the thought of her fluids gushing out and very nearly drowning the tiny ones down below was enough to keep her going, a sort of self-perpetuating cycle that the giantess was all-too ready to play into.

Amidst all of that, however, there was a single question that refused to go away. It was a given that Gandra was now the biggest player in the kingdom; if a minor lord wished to contest her for the sake of the old king or, heavens forbid, to carve out their own realm, she was reasonably certain she could destroy them, their armies and whatever it was they were using to feed them (and everything around it for good measure). But while this was most certainly true, it still only meant she was the most powerful player in the kingdom. That kingdom, that realm… the one she had just effectively toppled by beelining to its capital and brainwashing the populace into serving her with all of their devotion and energy. Not only were there other places to go, other monarchs to topple and take over from, but the more Gandra thought about it, the more something felt like it was missing. It took a while before it clicked and she figured out what it was, but when it did, her eyes lit up with a fire more powerful than anything she ever produced before.

The dragoness had heard those stories far too many times before, back when she was still a diminutive little ‘bold, cautionary tales about how dragons cursed their kind to become as them if they ever gave into their greed. Oddly enough, these spun yarns always came accompanied by quasi-lurid descriptions of the vast wealth accumulated by these draconic monsters, presumably as a means of shocking young kobolds into never trying to do anything like it. To Gandra, however, these were less warnings and more like large, painted signs with an arrow pointing downwards and the words “FREE TREASURE” written on them; after all, if these dragons were indeed real, and they did indeed hold great, vast hoards of gold, silver and other such precious shinies, then surely they were still around. Never had she heard stories of a great purge, of knights actually succeeding in killing any of these beasts… which meant that somewhere, out there, there was still wealth to be stolen. And not just any wealth, but enough to have created other beings just like her, or perhaps even belonging to her species’ progenitors, the real dragons of myth. Goodness, she was salivating just thinking about it!

It was settled then. Even if it turned out to be a bunch of hogwash and her search ended with her in the middle of literally nowhere chasing down ghosts and long-since-buried phantoms, she was going to commit to it. There was only so much that humans could do, being such tiny, pathetic creatures with a tremendously limited scope; for them, putting money into a box and then burying it under the ground was the height of reason, believing as they did that wealth was better spent not being thrown around in a pissing contest of who had the most valuables… well, most of them anyway. The “sensible” ones. Gandra felt far more affinity for those few who thought exactly like her, and saw that mountain of gold for what it truly was: something to wield, something to spend, something to lavishly praise at every waking moment of every waking day. Of course, she still needed more; this was just the base assumption on which her entire life was built now.

With a single motion of her wings, enough to create several small tornados and flatten multiple houses, Gandra got back on her two feet, not so much towering over the burnt and wrecked city as she instead cast a shadow on it, her head being dangerously close to the lower cloud layer. She smiled, watching the little ones down below scurry around in their pathetic attempts at climbing onto her form, only to be unceremoniously dropped to the ground when she took off, two clawed pawprints left behind where she pushed down for leverage. The feeling of cold air on her face had never felt quite that rejuvenating, and neither did the currents of it flowing over and under the leathery skin on her wings. There was a whole world out there for her to plunder, and Gandra wouldn’t stop until it was all hers.

She was alive.

And she wasn’t done.