Well, I didn’t need to be told twice. I wasn’t sure we were quite a mile-high yet, but I’d always wanted to join the Mile-High club. It was hard to do so when almost every flight I’d been on was on a military vessel where even if there were mixed genders, there was no way it was happening. Now, however, I was the only male on the ship, and with the exception of the two maidens, Ulamir and Zanantha, and I supposed Amura, everyone on board was a matron of mine. Amura seemed to enjoy watching me make love to my other matrons, and Ulamir and Zanantha had already done so on my trip to the plains.
That’s how I discovered that for Wood Elves at least, the ‘Mile-High Club’ was a mind-busting thing to enter. Everything was different. The smaller orgasms that most women loved drove my matrons to want me more, those were strong enough as I railed Sevrina, that it was a good thing most of my matrons were sitting down already to watch. By the time I started cumming deep inside her, the only ones on the ship capable of coherent thought were me and the maidens. It was a really good thing that Dust Cloud was mostly handling the ship themself.
Sevrina had it the strongest, and after about twenty minutes of straight chain-orgasming, she came down from the high, enough to pass out and sleep. I pulled blankets up and over her, and let her sleep.
“Oh, Gods…” Tavorwen gave a shuddering moan as her brain started rebooting. “I wasn’t even the one receiving your affections… and that was the most powerful I have ever felt that.”
“Well, I guess welcome to the Mile-High Club.” I laughed.
“Mile-High?” She asked.
“Um, a Mile is a unit of distance where I’m from, and… well, the way it goes is the altitude makes sex better, but since so rarely is their privacy, most people don’t get to… you know.” I explained awkwardly.
“Oh!” Nauveir exclaimed. “You were aware it would come on so strong?”
“Not really,” I confessed. “The… females… where I’m from seem to like it, but it isn’t THAT much better.”
“Lucky us.” Amura breasted in a wistful, and not entirely with it, way.
“You should rest, Master,” Creadean instructed. “Mavrin will man the ship for now, but you should be rested in case anything happens.”
“What could happen? We’re almost at cloud level in the sky.” I laughed. “And I haven’t seen anyone else with flying ships.”
My matrons sobered up real quick.
“Master… We could be attacked by dragons, or wyverns, or any number of flying dangers. We are by no means the largest thing in the skies. Nor the most dangerous… well, perhaps excepting you.” Risavis noted. “For example, the hiersver… I spoke to the stable hands that care for them, and the reason they work with the Vorith is because they are too small and weak on their own.”
“But those things are eagles the size of horses!” I exclaimed in dismay. “You’re saying they are SMALL for this world?”
“Yes.”
Fuck me. I mean, I had seen elephants, and a Bull African Elephant was way bigger than you think it would be, but if the fiery birds my two magical matrons rode were small for this world, what was big?
“Wait,” I declared. “We’ve fought a dragon before. It wasn’t that big. Would it really attack this ship?”
“That was a forest dragon. They are nowhere near the largest. If they were as large as a mountain dragon, they would struggle to move among the trees.” Tavorwen explained.
“But… it’s yards and yards… er…” I tried to think. “It’s like a Cord or two between each tree!” I think that was right. A Knot was 8 inches and 50 Knots made a Cord, so 400 inches, that was like 11 yards.
“Still too small for a mountain dragon.” Tavorwen asserted.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” I breathed.
If mountain dragons got that big…
“What do you do against a dragon that big?” I demanded.
“If you are smart, you find a really good hiding place and something to cover your scent… and then you pray you weren’t the one to offend it,” Creadean stated definitively. “Almost the only thing that kills a dragon is another dragon. Though… your great bow did scare the one in the forest. Perhaps you could kill one.”
“What kind of weapons do we have on this ship?” I demanded.
The elves exchanged a look then lifted swords and bows in answer.
“You mean they didn’t even put a catapult or ballista on this?” I groaned.
“That would be a lot of extra weight.” Nauveir pointed out. “And we’re all warriors. We can defend the ship.”
I rubbed my temples, even though the cooling sensation of my magical stress relief stopped the headache I knew I should have.
This would have been the PERFECT opportunity. Mounted weapons could pass almost all their recoil onto the mounted platform. Hell, you could make gunner seats that had triggers disconnected enough from the actual firing mechanisms that aside from a sight jostle, firing might as well mean nothing. I had been trying to figure out how I could get firearms for my matrons and this was one way. Instead, we were flying, essentially unarmed, towards the territory of foes bigger and more dangerous than anything we’d faced before.
“Rest, master,” Risavis advised. “You can take comfort in the fact that, unless a foe uses clouds as cover, Mavrin should see them from a great distance. We should have a great deal of time to prepare for them.”
I didn’t expect to sleep, but I laid down on one of the few beds big enough for me, and with my head awash in the cool soothing energy that washed away all my fears and anxiety, I was able to do something that had been a rare occurrence during my life on Earth: I took a nap. It was a very good nap, actually. I didn’t wake until well into the afternoon.
Below, in the lower decks, there was only me, Amura, and Laliera. Both of them had what appeared to be double-layered cloaks and they were doubling up clothing layers to help with the cold, though below deck somehow stayed a pleasant temperature, I suspected magic.
Above deck, the elves had likewise doubled up layers, sometimes more, but were managing despite the cold. The sun was low enough in the sky, with the moons continually swirling, that I knew it was getting later in the day. Sevrina was taking her turn to man the helm, though in all likelihood Dust Cloud could have kept us going without issue.
Looking out, we were nearing the end of the Elven forests, and the mountains were much closer. The sun was starting to set and the orangey hue put shadows in sharp relief on the ground below. We had gained a bit of altitude and would be able to clear the mountains with room to spare. It was quite the view of the world.
To the West, I could see the beginnings of the plains, to the east and the south, the forest stretched as far as the eye could see, to the north and northeast, the mountains blocked further view. These were young mountains, like the Rocky Mountains of the western United States, harsh and jagged, not worn smooth by the passage of time.
Looking up at our level, the low clouds floated just below us, I couldn’t help but think about what dangers could exist. Was there really such danger this high in the sky? I’d seen too much to really doubt it, but once you reached cruising altitude, even the missiles that could reach you, back on Earth, took long enough to do so that we’d have time to reach.
“You look worried,” Tavorwen noted, coming to lean on the rail next to me.
“Well, I admit, I wasn’t a member of the chair… I mean, Air Force, back home. The only times I really was in an aircraft was to get from one point to the other, and it was usually short trips. Sometimes we got dropped by helicopters near a strike point, but more often we either rode in on land vehicles or, if stealth was needed, we hiked in for miles to avoid drawing attention.” I confessed. “So, I’m a little out of my element here.”
“We should be aware, but the likelihood of an attack on an unfamiliar vessel in the skies such as ours is not high,” Tavorwen assured me. “Most creatures avoid strange new things.”
I shrugged. “Or they come to investigate. And you said dragons could always be a problem.”
“It is true. Many dragons could cause a problem for us, but not all dragons are so violent or malicious. Records say cloud dragons once existed in harmony with the Cloud Elves, and called each other friends. Though cloud dragons have been aloof for the better part of a millennium, they still have never caused problems for anyone.”
“How many types of dragons are there? Mountain, Forest, Cloud?” I asked.
“That we know of or that legend speaks of?” Tavorwen asked.
“Let’s start with known dragon types.” I decided.
“Well, there are more types of friendly dragons than hostile ones. The cloud dragons, coastal dragons, fire dragons, frost dragons, mangrove dragons, river dragons, and the sand dragons are all generally friendly.” Tavorwen noted, ticking the seven varieties of dragons off her fingers. “Also lucky for us, the friendly dragons usually have more robust populations than their aggressive kin. Though, friendly dragons do not take kindly to being manipulated and usually keep their distance because… too often their friends look at them more as shields and protectors than as friends.”
“As far as the less friendly dragons go, there are forest dragons, ice dragons, mountain dragons, and swamp dragons…” she trailed off.
“What? Is something wrong?” I pressed.
“Well, it feels wrong not to mention the last kind of dragon, just because no one has been able to confirm their existence,” Tavorwen explained.
“What type of dragon is that?” I laughed.
“Lava Dragons.” Was her reply. “Legend says eons ago, they wreaked havoc on the world so horrendous that all others, both the humanoid races and goodly dragons combined to drive them back to the lakes of molten rock from whence they came. They tried to call upon the dragons that had not turned against them, but even though these malicious dragons had not turned fang and claw against the lava dragons, the lava dragons had done nothing to earn their assistance either. So they were defeated and slunk back into the fiery pits of their birth and have remained there to this day.”