Dragon Harem Quest - Or: Saying You Were Gay Wasn't The Conversation-Ender You Hoped For

"C-can you leave?" you ask.

The ifrit freezes. Even the cloud of dust he's lounging on seems to stop dead. Slowly, slowly, he turns his head towards you properly and just Looks at you.

"Beg pardon?"

"Or get back in the lamp for a second, it doesn't much matter which," you add hastily, salvaging as much dignity as you can manage in a short span of time.

"I'm- who puts a djinn back in the lamp?" the ifrit asks, lofty airs, if not broken, then visibly cracked with sheer bewilderment. "Ten thousand years I've been in that lamp and you want to stuff me back in because I'm inconvenient? Piss off."

"I'm expecting company soon!" you protest. "It's possibly the most important meeting of my life and I really can't afford to be dealing with all-" you gesture vaguely at the ifrit's scantily-clad form with a claw "-this when she arrives."

"Oho~?" The ifrit half-rolls over, lying centrefold with his cheek in his hand. "I see how it is. Can't let the date see anything that might get her asking questions."

"What? Eugh, no! It's my mother!" you exclaim.

"Then you don't want her to see you with the likes of me," the ifrit counters with a smug, catlike smirk.


(( art by @Camellia ))

Which is about when you realise all you've done is hand this gold fetishist even more power over you than he started out with. If you had any sweat glands in this form they'd be working overtime - as it is you rather feel like you've swallowed a couple entire species of butterflies while your thoughts smash against the sides of your skull and each other like drunk pigeons.

"I- you stop that!" you blurt out, jabbing an accusatory talon in the ifrit's direction. "I will not welcome my mother into my lair with some... some gilded tart floating around in the background inspiring a bunch of awkward questions!"

"Mm, true. Only room for one of those in a place like this."

There's a moment of perfect silence as you work out what the ifrit said. He slowly arches one eyebrow, drumming golden talons against his cheek with a smirk.

You shoot lightning at him immediately.

It's as natural as breathing. You just open your mouth as if to roar, flexing one set of muscles instead of another, and a sizzling bolt of blinding blue-white electricity erupts from your jaws like a tongue of flame. Your horns glow as you release the power, the angular glyphs on your wings blazing bright as you flare them out wide. The ifrit spins in mid-air, the golden sands reshaping into more of a 'seat' to sit him upright as he flexes his claws to defend himself. Thick sheets of roiling golden fire raise up out of nowhere, bearing the brunt of your fury as the combined light dances madly across the walls of your cave. You run out of 'breath', your lungs burning with the effort, the charge petering out. The lightning fades and the ifrit lets down his wall, as smugly unconcerned as he was when he started.

Your nostrils flare wide as you suck in a deep breath to replace the one you lost.

"Strange," the ifrit comments, slowly scanning your lair as he speaks. "From the way you live, I'd have thought you'd be tripping over yourself to show me off."

You shoot lightning at him but even harder. This time you spread your arms wide, crooked at the elbow and talons curled, tipping your head back as if to fire at the wall above his head. Leashed lightning crackles across your body like a thousand glowing, leaping worms, arcing between your talons and horns, a trio of beams coalescing into a single growing orb of ball lightning equidistant between them all that erupts a moment later. A migraine-ache throbs in the back of your mind at the lost charge, but this time what the ifrit faces is less of a beam and more of a cannon. You'd like to see him block this with a piddly little firewall.

He snaps his fingers and vanishes in a puff of golden dust and flame.

You forgot he was hovering in front of your hoard at the time.

Your own breath hits the pile of gold and everything comes apart. Lightning flashes, thunder booms in the confined space, and it goes up as if someone planted a bomb at the very heart of it. Every single piece goes flying off in a different direction, gleaming golden shrapnel pelting your scaly hide like hailstones. The jingle of coin and crown and jewels and precious magic items bouncing off the walls alone is enough to be earsplitting. You just stand there, frozen solid, wide-eyed, unable to breathe as your precious hoard is spread across every inch of your lair, coins rolling into every nook and cranny. And the heart of it all, the clump that took your breath directly - a sad, steaming, slagged pile of half-molten gold.

You clap your hands over your horned scalp, fall to your knees, and make a noise somewhere between a mewl, a sob and a squeak, so high-pitched even you can barely hear it. This isn't real. None of this is real. It's just a bad dream, one of your usual fantasies about bringing home some magic items turned into a fucking feverish nightmare. There's no way this could have happened literally right before your mother is supposed to show up because that would just... just be unfair. That's not just bad luck that's deliberate, calculated malice from a higher power.

The ifrit sucks air in through his teeth. "Well... I honestly can't say you make the place look any worse," he remarks. "The lump of scorched metal and failure could make for a lovely modern art installation."

You rise with a hellish screech of fury, not so much shifting back into your true form as bursting free of the bonds of your halfway humanoid one with brute strength. Everything's already fucking ruined so fuck it, fuck it, fuck EVERYTHING! You bring both forelegs down in a mighty slam that shakes the spire, launches the loose treasure up into the air again only to fall like gleaming rain, letting out a literally thunderous roar that rattles the gold and shakes dust from the ceiling. You lay about yourself with your claws with reckless abandon, raking ever-deeper gouges in every stony surface within reach as the ifrit evades you again and again, sweeping your tail around like a colossal whip. Something cracks and splinters - the wagons of food, fuck it, fuck it, that's just typical for today! You pick up the one closest to you and throw it at the ifrit just because it's there, and it shatters impressively in a spray of salt and spice.

It's not like everything can get double-ruined. In a way it actually feels better to make it worse.

It feels like an hour of mad fury goes by until finally you settle back down on all fours, huffing and panting, massive lungs working like a great set of bellows within your chest. The ifrit, nowhere near winded, at least has the courtesy to stand on the same ground as you.

"Got that out of your system?" he asks.

"No," you growl.

"Why so afraid of what Mummy will think?"

You narrow your eyes to slits. Before this day is done you are going to hurt this little upstart who dared needle a dragon. But he has magic of his own, feeble charlatan's tricks they may clearly be. You need something else, something to catch him off guard and wipe that smile off his stupid smug perfect face. You scan the room around you, searching for some item or another that escaped the collateral damage.

And lying beside wooden wreckage, miraculously unbroken by the rampage, is the magic jug you bought in Söfnun.

You reach for it in an explosion of movement, shifting down as you do. It's weird and disorienting to physically shrink even as you reach out for something but the moment passes and your claws wrap around the earthenware jug, snatching it securely up against your side. Aimed like a cannon at the ifrit.

"A-ha!" you shout triumphantly as you tear the cork free with your other hand.

It comes out with a sad little 'pop' and a waft of eggy scent, barely a dribble of mayonnaise sadly dripping down onto your foot-talons. It's so quiet you could hear a pin drop as even the ifrit needs a second to come up with a witty comment about that.

"Is- is that really the kind of thing you collect for your hoard?" he asks, the pity in his voice only half-mocking.

This doesn't make any sense. You saw the way the jug rumbled and shook, you felt the weight of it, you heard what the automaton said and you doubt it had the mental faculties to lie about it for an upsell. What went wrong? The only thing that changed is-

is that you've been up past midnight searching your hoard for the lamp. It's a new day, the contents must have refreshed while you were busy. Which means...

"Water," you snarl with a wicked grin. And water jets from the jug with such force that you have to brace before you lose your grip on it.

"Wh-SHIT-"

The ifrit holds up his hands to defend himself, but the high-pressure geyser crashes into him like a fist before he even has a chance. You hear him smack into the cave wall behind, hear him burbling and spluttering as every attempt to breathe or shout only gets water down his throat. His arms and legs are faintly visible, flailing madly for some sort of purchase. The jet goes on so long even you start to get a little concerned, but at long last it tapers off, slowly tracing a line back across the cave floor to your feet, and drying up entirely.

The ifrit slowly peels away from the wall and lands face-first among the coins and water with a wet splat.

You set your trusty jug down and stride over to the ifrit, burning with righteous fury and cruel, cathartic triumph. He's still groggy and weak when you reach him, coughing up water even as it steams off his body. You roughly turn him over, sink down and put a knee to his chest as you wrap your claws around his throat.

"Ssssssssssso," you hiss, baring your many fangs as your leer down at him. "Have any more smart comments? I truly am dying to hear a couple more."

A few moments of silence as no doubt the ifrit wracks his brain trying to think of a couple, trying to save face. You let him. It doesn't matter any more. He's already ruined everything. There is no possible way things could get any worse.

There's a soft, subtle noise from without the lair. The kind of noise that only those already familiar with what it is would be able to recognise. It's the rush of wind around something that's much too heavy, much too all-around massive, to be able to fly the way it does. And then the muted impact, the thuds in quadruplicate, and the sound of talons hooking into stone as your mother alights on the side of your spire.

"Eldingar!" she calls, her voice just as bassy and booming as yours if not moreso. "Remind me where the entrance is, I won't spend all morning crawling around this spire looking for a hole big enough to squeeze in through."

You're in hell. You died and you went to hell and now this is what the rest of eternity is going to be for you. Replaying this moment, this exact moment, until your mind extinguishes itself to escape the pain.

"I've got one," the ifrit chokes around your claws. "The only way... this would look any worse for you... is if you did blast me with mayonnaise."

And somehow, it got worse.

Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shi- wait. Wait djinn are supposed to grant wishes! You let them out of the lamp and they give you three, that's what everyone says! The ifrit must've just been mouthing off at you for the sake of it, or to make you too angry to remember, or because you weren't letting him complete his duty, or something, honestly it's a fucking long-shot but a literal miracle is what you need right now so you'll try anything at this point.

[ ] "I wish for you to turn into a sexy dragon and pretend to be my mate until Mother leaves!"
[ ] "I wish for you to clean up my cave!"
[ ] "I wish for you to doub- trip- quadruple my hoard!"
[ ] "I wish for wine! The good stuff, enough for a dragon!"