"Wow! This looks incredibly impressive" your girlfriend says in awe as she looks at the dragon skull. "I'd love to see one of those for real. I mean, it'd be so cool..."
She touches the horn lovingly, but it abruptly shines in a pulsating light and crumbles to white and grey ashes. You both stare at the phenomenon in amazement, except it gets worse. Your girlfriend shouts as she clutches her hand in horror. You understand fast why. Scales are spreading across her fingers to her palm and up her arm to her shoulder. The fact that the scales are of a soft pink adds a sense of grotesque to the situation. She begs for your help but you are so scared you cannot move. She screams as new scales appear, new muscles ripping out her clothes and talons emerging where her fingernails should have been. A tail comes out of her backside, lashing out angrily. Her eyes turn blue and reptilian and her tears of anguish dry out for the lack of lacrymal ducts. She roars towards the sky and lets out a torrent of flames. Cornered in a nook of the castle, you can only watch in morbid fascination. Once the transformation appears over, she is three meters tall and pink. Her color doesn't make her less dangerous. She's got two massive horns upon her skull and countless smaller spikes. And her teeth are sharp as she rounds upon you, approaching and even licking her teeth with her forked tongue, obviously happy to find such a rapid and easy meal. You back away and in trying to snap at you, your former girlfriend, still clumsy in her new body, bumps into the library, dislodging the book. It opens up at a page with a very complex symbol and as you stumble out of the dragoness' way, you touch the page, and the symbol, absentmindedly. You don't know it but this symbol is going to save your soul, if not your life.
"No! Please! Don't eat me!" you scream.
But if still present, your girlfriend's human mind is only a small voice in the massive demands her new instincts are asking from her. She feels regret but she is simply too hungry and you are too strange for her now. It's too late. She snaps upon you her impressive maw and her teeth piercing your heart, you die instantly, finishing in her stomach. For the dragoness, human meat isn't great and she goes away in search of a tastier prey, like a few sheep, a cow or lots of chickens.
But it's not the end for you. The symbol you touched upon the page was a very complex reincarnation spell. Whoever touches it will get reincarnated as their killer's child. As the dragoness is not pregnant, you soul travels to one of her eggs within her womb, waiting for a sperm to start a new life and body. As for the person's mind, he spell cannot guarantee of remembering of the entirety of his past life. That part is extremely aleatory. So you soul becomes a little ball in an egg in the womb, silent and dormant, waiting for a gamete to encounter it and being accepted. Not that you'd have any choice in which sperm would enter the egg that now holds you. But one way or the other'll be alive. If a male dragon had eaten you instead, you'd be waiting in his scrotum alongside many other gametes, waiting to be ejaculated in a pleasurable spur and left to travel and swim across the uterus of a female dragon to then reach an egg, a sure thing as the spell commands you to be reincarnated but a very tiresome and long process. At least as an egg you don't have to share a testicle with countless other sperms swimming around you and battling with them afterwards. As a former male, you prefer remaining in a womb than in another male's testicles. Of course, you know the egg might select a female sperm and you'd be reborn as female. Better than being dead, though. And if you'd had to remain as a sperm, you might be a female gamete as well. There was no guarantee you'd be a male sperm. It doesn't matter, anyway. Right now, you are a soul slumbering and dimly aware of things in the egg of a dragoness living her dragon life.
Your girlfriend took the new name of Pink Dread, as she vaguely remembered a series with dragons and mentions of such a name. A bit ridiculous on the surface, but only on the surface. The merchants she had attacked and soldiers she had burned had not been laughing at all. Pink Dread remembered vaguely her life as a human but did her best to ignore it and its tugs of remorse and contradictions. She had a better life now. A much more beautiful and slender body. She could fly! Her motives were so much simpler and pleasant than as a human. A dry cave, nice shiny jewellery, bathing in warm springs and munching on meat for a good dragon health. Life was really lived as a dragon. Who needed to pay rent and study and pay for things when you could just sit on a delicious pile of gold and gems and live in a dry cave completely for free? Even better, if she plaid it right, she could be worshipped by human and given offerings and sacrifices. She could be adored and bedecked with finery! And courting was much more straightforward as a dragoness than all this complicated nonsense inherent to human beings. She'd wait to meet a male dragon and see if they liked each other. Male dragons found all female attractive and worthy to be with and start a family. Well, a clutch of eggs, more like. The females called the shots in the dragon species and that was it. So much cooler! In the end, she settled for a little cave in the far reaches of a mountain range. She wanted a quiet place to decide where to go and live more permanently, even if carrying her treasure is a big bag by her talons was a drag - literally. Also, she started to be in heat, getting her to flap her wings often, instinctively spreading her pheromones and to roar, hoping to attract a few promising males. She was moody and paced around the mountain ledge of her cave for hours. Stupid pheromones...
Inside her, unbeknownst to her (the boyfriend you were disappeared from her mind as another meal taken in her life), an egg was feeling the changes. More pheromones, yes, but more heat, more tension,... Good, good. Excellent, even. You get your hopes up. With any luck, your slumbering, boring life would come to an end! So with your will only (not like you have anything over, at any rate), you press your owner, or host, or mother to spread more pheromones, to flap her wings more forcefully and to roar ever more loudly. Does it work? Perhaps because Pink Dead now circles the summits for more efficiency.
Luckily, one afternoon, a roar is heard, and not one of hers. At the entry of the cave, Pink Dread sees a male dragon hovering over valleys. A bright red and blue one, who easily spots her as she answers back his call. He glides over in just a few wingbeats and perched atop a boulder surrounded by pine trees not too far. He's brought a fine gold necklace, which he drops at the paws of his lady love. She gracefully accepts his generous gift. The rest of the communication ids done telepathically, as dragons do and the male, Horizon, flies off at sunset, intent on proceeding over several days, with presents, to show he's committed. Pink Dread has been favourably wooed for now and the rest of the days don't deviate from this trend. He brings rings of red gold and bracelets of silver and very soon they start rumbling in pleasure as the rub each pother's scales in delight and indulge in each other's scents. You are happy. Only a question of time before they mate for good! The rumbles look like purr and they sleep curled up to each other. Before they fly out to Horizon's cave, though, they mate. Horizon penetrates Pink Dread and it's not long before they both reach orgasm thanks to his thrusts. You, in the egg, have encouraged them thoroughly. And Horizon doesn't disappoint. He ejaculates three times before the night is over, to the delight of both you and your host. Amongst all the sperm released, at least one should reach you. At this point, you're so bored, so desperate, that any sperm would satisfy you, even one for a pink female with heart-shaped scales. You're past being difficult.
And at last, at long last, it happened. You can feel the first few sperms gathering impatiently around you. Yes! They've made it and thanks to them you'll finally move and live again and not be stuck in a moist, boring and tight place. Now your egg encasing just needs to make up her mind and accept one! Just one! Come on, there must be one that suits her! But as the sperms gather, she lets none in. No! No, no, no, no! What's she got against them!?!? Stop being picky and choose one already! The egg could think about you too! It's not like any of them appear defective or something! You could feel the action going up there, the thrusts, the accelerated pulsing and breathing and the sudden burst of pleasure followed by the exhausted panting. After all these efforts your stupid encasing is going to stay unfertilised? Seriously? After all this time waiting? You adopted the 'beggars can't be choosers' mindset so why is your own prison, a stupid egg, so stubborn? Just do your job already! Any one of them will do, really! Choose already!
And after dozens of candidates and mounting frustration on your part, the egg finally allows a sperm inside. Yes! Finally! And it's a Y sperm! Finally, a bit of luck! A bonus! You'll be reborn as a male! Any good thing is welcome at this point. You can already divide and be several cells already. Perfect! Now you just have to wait as you develop a body! Great! Never mind your final color or appearance. You hope to keep your memories intact but even if you start with a new slate of memories, it's still better than being plain dead. Now your waiting will be a lot more peaceful. And who knows? You might like being a dragon.
Pink Dread has settled with Horizon lower in the mountain range and more further south. She can feel an egg or several developing slowly within her, deep inside the security of her womb. Horizon is a sweet and attentive mate. Handsome too. She hopes her babies will look like him. But whatever their appearance, no matter the number of eggs, she'll love them to the moon. She known she shall, just as Horizon will.