In Wyrm City, everything is dragons. Dragon Lines connect magical thinking machines modeled after draconic brains, using the dragon magic to access and store information. Dragons drink sewage and piss clean water. Dragons breathe polluted air and exhale the fresh scent of pine. Dragons squirm through vast tunnel systems, carrying passengers and freight. Dragons run the corporations and corporations run the government. And if you want to make it in this cutthroat world, you gotta get some dragon in you too...
DRAGONS! DRAGONS! DRAGONS!
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
- Original Mature Fantasy
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 13
- Recent readers
- 83
- Threadmarks
- 1
-
Statistics (1 threadmarks, 8.6k words)
User Total DragonCobolt 1 Threadmarks Reader mode
CHAPTER ONE
New
- Pronouns
- He/Him
MAVLOR
The sky above the city was the color of a dying dragon – splotchy and scaled and flickering with a pulsing heartbeat. Rain warm as piss streaked down the windows of the scuzzy bar that Mavlor walked into – and as he shook off the grayish muck and started stomping his boots on the mat to get them a bit clean, he thought that maybe this plan by Razor was a terrible idea. The first look around the bar only made it worse: The taps were dying with flies buzzing around them, and half the people in the place all looked like they had needed to sell their implants for spending money, leaving knotted gaps in muscle, hair, and skin.
A burly orc who still had a scaled patch on his right arm reached out and spread clawed fingers, the blades snicking out and forming the rough outline of a mage's circle. Malvor spread his hands, sighing, as the circle flickered him with pulses of purple light. The first thing that shone was his implants – around his temple, down by his hip, and on his left wrist. Then the orc swept his palm up and the light flashed green. This time, his jacket pocket shone through the leather.
"Show me," the orc rumbled.
Mavlor grumbled, opened his jacket, and remained perfectly still as the orc snatched his old six egg wyrmvolver from his jacket pocket. The orc looked it over, then frowned as he opened the chamber and counted the warm eggs inside. "Acid?" he asked, lifting his gaze to Mavlor, tapping his thumb against the back of the eggs.
"Do- I-" Mavlor cut himself off repeatedly before asking what first crossed his mind. Finally, he settled on shaking his haed. "Fuck, no, man. Fuck. No. I have teeth."
"Teeth's okay, but the boss says no acid, not after last week." The orc snapped the wyrmvolver shut with a tiny bony click. He handed it back and Mavlor stuck it back into his pocket. His brows furrowed and his ear-tips popped up in nervous tension.
"Uh, what happened last week?"
The orc nodded to the corner of the room. There was a pretty messy set of remarkable stains over there.
"...right," Mavlor said.
Go for the booth in the left of the bar, look for an elf. That wasn't the entirety of Razor's information, but it was the important part now So, he walked to the left of the bar...and gulped. The figure sitting in the booth was nominally an elf. He had just never seen an elf with that many implants. Her left hand and right hand were both clawed – one gold scaled, the other black. Her left eye was slitted and her jaw had a kind of bracketing around it, like she was halfway through getting the elongated muzzle of a dragon, the tip splitting to reveal her still elfin lips, though she did have a pair of sharp fangs hooking over the lower lips. Her hair, dyed bright pink, was cut back into a deathhawk that showed off the tiny scales that denoted brain implants. She had a long, thick tail that was practically a third leg, snaked around the inner edge of the booth and dripping over the far end. The only thing she was missing was wings.
Mavlor walked up to her. "Slake?" he asked, nervously.
She lifted her reptilian, slit eyed gaze to him. "Mavlor?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. Her tail shifted and he took his seat across from her.
"You're Mavlor?" she asked, slowly. She had a glass in one hand, full of bright pinkish d-beer. She sloshed it around slowly, letting it frizz and froth.
"Yeah," Mavlor said, getting prickly.
"On the Lines, they says Mavlor is the bigshot rogue that snuck into the CDO of MalaTek's private files and jacked half her horde out into a wheel barrow before security got twigged. You look like some wet kitten."
Mavlor gave her a thin little smile.
Technically, everything Slake had said was true.
And technically, nothing Mavlor was going to say was a lie.
"Appearance can be...deceptive," Mavlor said, grinning at her casually. "I'm the best rogue I know. You have security systems you want to get around? I can pick, slice, cut, hack, slash, everything. I take pay up front, not a cut."
"Not a cut?" Slake asked, leaning back and cocking her head.
Mavlor smirked, and tried to sound world weary, wise. "Cut's encourage betrayal. Makes the cut bigger. Up front keeps things nice and professional. I like it when things are professional."
Slake narrowed her eyes. Then she grinned. Her teeth were all very sharp. "All right," she said, nodding. "We're gonna need to confirm you're as good as all that."
"I don't work for free," Mavlor said.
Slake frowned. "A hundred gold coins for a real easy kick, something you can use to show your stuff. Then you can meet the rest of the team and we can see about you going on the big kick we're aiming for." She smirked. "Sound good?"
Mavlor felt a tiny knot of tension in his belly ease. He was through the first hurdle. He leaned forward, grinning ever so slightly. He just had to keep acting, and he'd be through this. "Sounds good," he said. Slake lifted one clawed finger. The bartender, seeing the signal, went to the tap. He roused the dragon from its stupor, smacking its scaled flank until it stood, then put a glass up against it's dick. Once he had filled the glass with d-beer, he walked it over the table, setting it down with a muttered.
"Fresh and warm for ye," he said.
Mavlor took the glass, then glanced at the tap. Flies had settled back onto its ragged wings.
"Is it safe?" he muttered under his breath.
"Dungeon safe," Slake said, grinning toothily at Mavlor.
Mavlor sighed and downed his first glass. The beer hit his gut like a sour bomb, but the warm feeling of mana-rich pleasure that washed through him afterwards pushed him back into his seat. He sighed quietly. "All right," he said. "Now, the easy kick?"
Slake grinned. "Aight. It's simple…"
Rain was still pouring down on the city. The dark shape of gas-bag dragons drifting by overhead were visible more by the way they blocked the smeary pulses of light through the clouds and the way they blocked the rain. The district that Slake led Mavlor to was in one of the overbuilt areas most people called the underdark, where sunlight never reached whenever sunlight dared to show its nose. The Dragon Lines were thin and spotty, attenuated between concrete corridors, metal pipes, and a few ancient, wheezing dragons that belched out barely breathable air, drank sewage and pissed clear water, or provided some measure of mana for the lights. Most of the doors were manual, and that was what made it a good place for a rogue.
"So," Slake said. "That's the place."
She nodded down a narrow corridor to where an unbelievably bored looking streetnecht was lounging against the wall. He had a wyrmgun at his hip and claws in both his hands, but it was the froggy bulge around his throat that made Mavlor the most nervous: That was a breath weapon implant, without any doubt. The streetnecht was dressed for work too: He had a huge codpiece, a large poofy hat that looked bright and colorful with neon thread-work in green and yellow despite the rain, and two huge poofy pantaloons that swelled around his legs and narrowed up near his hips, where his bony carapace armor hung around his chest. They were both checkered, with yellow and green coloring, though neither had neon thread.
"Got it," Mavlor said, frowning. He reached up and gently massaged the tail-tip that peeked out right by his temple. The dragon in his brain woke up and with a lurch, his vision shifted. He could see the concrete in grainy monochrome, and the brightly colored streetnecht's color turned into a smeary black and white, save for the hat, which glowed bright, bright white, almost occluding his face. The thin Dragon Lines that snaked along the ceiling were thrown into stark relief. He breathed in, then held up his left wrist, twisting it around so his fingers could touch the small dragon mouthpart that was tucked under a fold of scales. The teeth bit into his finger and the connection flared to life as he felt his soul leaving his body.
A shimmering, astral figure, he was entirely visible to anyone with a similar rogue implant. Fortunately, streetnecht went entirely for brawn, not brain.
Mavlor fought down any panicky worries that this necht had split his focus. Even just the right wizard-eye implant would…
The necht farted loudly.
"Gods," Slake muttered, close enough to his physical ear that he could hear her. Fortunately, the dragon in his brain was too busy using his sensory inputs for him to know if he was downwind or not. So, instead, he forced his astral body up into the Dragon Line that ran along the ceiling and over the streetnecht's head. He was in the system of the small, cheap warehouse building. He felt the sleepy, non-astral attention of whoever nestjock they had running their DLS and RCP, and grinned slightly. This was going to work. He could do this.
He flowed along, moving through light fixtures and wireless communications until he found a scrying globe. He peered through.
Mavlor felt a presence flitting into the scrying orb with him. He remained perfectly still – a nestjock wasn't as intimately a part of the Dragon Lines as a rogue like him. The nestjock wouldn't notice him, if he didn't move. Right?
A bored voice came over the scrying orb. "Ahem. Mr. Smith, you didn't pay enough to break her."
Mavlor saw that the halfling was making a gesture with her free right hand, her face purpling.
Mr. Smith slowed down, releasing her and she gasped quietly.
Mavlor felt quietly ill. He flitted on from the scrying orb.
He came to the vault of the warehouse. It was almost entirely physical. He frowned slightly as his astral fingers rubbing slowly along the faint outline that he could feel through the connection. There was a dragon in the tumbler, sleeping quietly and waiting to be awakened. The dragon was entirely contained, no hacking could be done there. But he did touch his belly, whispering softly. "Hey there, little guy."
The dragon's attention came all at once. A bolt of excited, almost puppyish energy slapped into Mavlor's brain. Hey hey hey hey hey hey! The dragon in the key said.
"Heh, you've been wandering in the Lines a while, huh?" Mavlor asked, sounding amused.
I was just watching the big games, the dragon said, casually. Mavlor, as always, was...deeply, deeply jealous of dragons. Even the saddest, most pathetic one had the same mystic soul, the same ability to just...leave. The eggs in his gun were romping around farther away than Mavlor would ever gone – flitting around the world along the Dragon Lines, and doing anything they wished in the vastness of the untapped astral. Mavlor knew mortals who gave up their bodies to do the same – willing to become third class citizens, barely sentient slabs of lumpish matter, sitting around in the deep wells of the astral...all just to escape the here and now.
It gave him the creeps.
It almost scared him more how tempting it was.
"So, you wanna open up for me if I ask?" Mavlor asked.
But they said I'm a lock, the dragon said.
"Ah, ah, but, counterpoint," Mavlor said, grinning slightly. "I'm very nice!"
The trick with picking a lock like this was learning what kind of dragon you were talking too. Some were simple, some were silly, some were distractable, and some of them were just plain mean. That was what Mavlor had read in all the books – and, like getting Slake's job, it was all about acting like he'd done this a thousand times before. He leaned in and gave a spectral smile to the lock-dragon. There was a short pause, and he worried that maybe the books, the notes he'd read in his brother's journal, everything Razor had said, was just a big fat fucking lie.
Then the dragon chirruped happily: Okay!
The door clicked and thumped. The safe hatch swung open before his shimmering eyes – but then Mavlor spotted the tiny spurt of glowing energy sliding along the wall, a bead of bright mana that he saw picking up speed. The dragon explained, helpfully: That's what the boss said I should do if I met anyone nice.
Shit.
Mavlor dove forward and thrust his astral palm into the wall, between the bead and its destination. The buzzing, crackling feeling of the mana-pulse thrummed against his palm. It started off tingling, then itching. He didn't want to be here when it went from itching to burning. Thinking quickly, Mavlor reached with his other hand. An astral body wasn't quite a real body – but it was still constrained by familiar dimensions, by well known modes of action and behavior. His fingers groped at the air, but he couldn't quite get them past the door, despite shoving his hand and pushing and straining. He clenched his teeth...then flung himself away from the wall.
The bead shot along the wall.
He got his fingers into the astral part of the vault, feeling the weight of memory. Then he was back at the wall, kicking off the floor so hard that he could get his fingers around the bead. The itching was back – and he was now inches away from it reaching the first communication junction. Thinking fast, Mavlor said: "So, tiny lil' guy, did you know really cool dragons can send this kind of warning super duper slow? Fast guys, that's easy. Slow? Super hard!"
Whoa, really? The tiny astral form of the dragon came from the tumbler, flitting through steel and into the half-real place that Mavlor was in. The lock-dragon looked a bit like a spark of bright, ruby red light, and his wings flickered and flashed, ravelike, as he swung around Mavlor's head. I can do that! I can do that ten times!
The itching had hit burning.
Mavlor closed his eyes. He prayed to the Wyrm above that the lock dragon was as guileless as he seemed.
He jerked his palm away.
The bead seemed to be almost stationary. It hung in the line, shimmering and buzzing. Mavlor looked from it to the dragon-spirit, which started to bound around in the air. See? See? See?
Mavlor breathed out a slow, slow sigh, and then smiled. "Good job, lil' guy."
I'm the best lock.
Well.
Cheapest, at the very least. Mavlor hoped that the owner of this black market sleeze den didn't take too much of it out on their choice of lock – against everyone save a Rogue like him, this dragon lock would have been completely unbreakable. If only because he'd probably have just eaten the-
The tiny dragon spirit hiccuped and coughed up a half molten lock, which sizzled as it dropped from the astral to the physical plate, smoking and steaming as lay on the ground.
"Right," Mavlor said.
Left!
"Bye, little guy," Mavlor said, shaking his head as the bead kept inching along. He turned, kicked up into the Dragon Lines, and was gone.
When Mavlor snapped back into his body and jerked his bleeding finger from his dragon port, it was with a disorientating lurch. He felt bile rising up at the back of his throat, but gulped it down. He had never been in the astral for so long – and these implants squirmed in his body. The dragon in his wrist twitched its tail, causing a bulge of skin to appear below his wrist. The pain was muted, but present. The dragon in his brain kicked one of its rear legs and for just a moment, claws connected nerves that normally weren't connected. The synesthetic sensation of tasting the warm copper color of his own blood, and hearing the rushing, deep soul of being held, flashed through him. Then it was gone, the implants settling as Slake, her head tilted around the corner, her thick tail lashing, grinned.
"Aces and drakes," she muttered. "You got in and out without being caught? You really are dragonfire."
"No, there was an alert signal," Mavlor said, rubbing the back of his neck and standing, feeling his muscles popping. He opened his left hand, the one with the dragon port. The glowing crystal, the bead of the scrolls he had stolen from the warehouse, sat there, crystalized and released onto his palm by his implant. He lifted his gaze to Slake, who was looking at him with a very thin, thin looking expression. The dragon mandibles that framed her jaw spread out, then snapped in with irritation. Mavlor continued before she said anything: "I convinced the lock to hold the call for, uh, however long he can manage."
Slake whistled, quietly, her slitted eyes blinking. "Really? Damn. If we get out of here before their security tips, then…" She grinned. "Then maybe we have a future, skinny."
Mavlor gave her a thin smile right back.
The two started off, walking away while still trying to act as if they had nothing special going on and were doing nothing important. In the underdark, that was easy – the narrow corridors were full of other people shifting and shuffling along just like them. Wih his hands in his pockets, Mavlor muttered under his breath. "So, Slake."
"Yeah, skinny?" she asked.
Mavlor frowned. "Mavlor."
"You're so thin you make me feel like an orc," Slake said, rolling her eyes. "You can get a better name later. Or maybe not. I mean, I once doorkicked with a fuckin' goblin named Beachball."
Mavlor nodded, slightly.
They walked together in silence, past a broken rain gutter. The oil-slick it left on the brick and metal stonework of the wall almost blotted out the old graffiti of BLOOD OF THE WYRM, CURSE OF THE SKY, turning neon bright test into a smear of dried blood.
"What the fuck is a beach?" Mavlor asked, turning to face Slake. Her tail lashed and she turned to face him as well, the two of them stopping right at the exit from the underdark into the city proper. She looked down at him.
"Okay, skinny," she said. "You might be some big shot rogue, but you're...new at kicking, aren't you?"
Mavlor frowned. "It was my first job. I got lucky," he said, quietly.
Another not quite lie.
Slake looked out at the rain. "Every kicker, we do shit that most people don't want to, or can't. We bust into corporate territory, we hit their dungeons, we jack their data, and usually? We're selling it to other corpos – since, ya know, if a dragon ever fought another dragon, it'd be another War of Wyrms, right?" Mavlor nodded. She pointed with her clawed finger. "But out there? Past the city, past the boneyards, there's a place where water doesn't come pissed outta dragon. There's a place where there's shit like trees and sand and green hills that isn't in a park and doesn't cost five gold coins to see." She lowered her hand, nodding slowly. "That's...that's what a beach is, skinny."
"And how many kicks does it take?" Mavlor asked, frowning.
"As many as it fuckin' takes," Slake said. She was quiet. Then she grinned. "You did a good job back there, as a rogue. You're in with my party. If you want the slot, still."
She offered her hand – elf skin and dragon scales, glittering, with a tattoo of a tiny little ampersand on her wrist. The ampersand was a coiled up dragon, his flames making up the lower part of the curve.
Mavlor took her hand with a smack.
"To the beach," he said.
"Fuckin A skinny," Slake said, grinning back.
"How about Mav?" Mavlor grinned. "So, now, what the fuck did I just steal?"
"Blackmail material for rich coward pedophiles," Slake said. She paused. "That a problem for you?"
Mavlor probed his morality, like it was a broken tooth. He shook his head. "Nah."
"Aight..." She paused. "Mav."
Mavlor and Slake split up at the landport, with Slake handing him the directions for the party's meetup – a tavern in the midlevels of Red District. As he tucked the paper away, one of the dragons that served the landport slithered along the heavily oiled and greased track, with the heavy cars and carriages strapped to his scaled sides opening up and a deluge of people emerging to swarm into the Black District. Most of them were dressed shabby, cheap, in tough leather and cheaper implants. A lot of them had umbrellas, which opened as they left the port and got into the rain. Mavlor fished his debit card out and slotted it into the mouth of a bored dragon that perched at one of the movable ladders that led up onto the cheap seats. The dragon burped and the bar that blocked anyone from going up or down swung up for him and him alone. He took the steps two at a time, clambered into the car, and found a seat next to the window.
In a few minutes, the car was sparsely populated. People flowed into and out of the Black District at set times – flowing out to work in the Blue, Gold, and Silver Districts. But they didn't flow out in the evening. No, no, that was when the shifts of the poor and desperate came back for their apartments and their tenements. Mavlor watched as the landport slid by and then away as the vast, undulating motions of the dragon picked up more and more speed. The slick sound of scales on grease lulled him back into an almost daze.
With the adrenaline gone from the heist – he wondered who was perverse enough to frequent a brothel entirely crewed by halflings, but easily bullied enough that it'd be blackmail material – he felt drained and tired. So tired that he barely noticed when the dragon came to the first stop, then the second...and he nearly remained there for the third, as the dragon slowed and used its claws to bring itself to a stop at the White District.
He stood and shuffled past a snoring woman in a thick coat, muttering an apology, and came down the ladder again, then out of the landport. The White District wasn't quite as desperate as the Black, but it wasn't the rich parts of town. The main difference was that rather than building thick and high, White Sprawled around the landports, with people needing to either catch carriages or walk. Mavlor didn't have a personal carriage, nor was he going to drop the gold coin it'd take to get one. So, he settled in for a walk.
The long, winding walk took him past the huge office buildings where programmers and dragon-sculptors worked away in the day, their windows now half darkened, half lit, like the buildings had broken out in some kind of terrible rash. He walked past a few parks that were closed and locked up, their business hours long since passed. He walked past the restaurants, where noodles and dragon meat was served up hot and fresh – the spice wafting past his nose and making his stomach growl fiercely.
Finally, he came to the apartment where he and Razor kept themselves just barely above water. The dragon that sat in the tiny box near the door sniffed at his finger, then licked excitedly at it, yipping quietly. Mavlor grinned as the lock clicked and he was able to walk inside, stomping wet off his shoes. The tired, bored looking dwarf who served the front desk of the apartment complex looked up at him, then went back to his book. Mavlor nodded to him, then walked quickly to the elevators. Once he was inside, he rode up, up, up, up, to level 8. Once the elevator door chimed open, he saw the narrow corridor, the peeling carpet, the doors with rusted numbers.
With his hands in his pockets, Mavlor came to room 881, then knocked. "Razor," he called out.
The door opened and Razor's skinny face peered out. The sleek, green skinned orc beamed at him. "Yooo, Mavlor!" He opened the door wide, letting his roommate step in. "Did the kick go?"
"Kinda," Mavlor said. "The girl you hooked me up to? Slake? Her and her party did need a fuckin' rogue-"
"And?" Razor asked, practically buzzing with excitement.
"-and she put me on a small kick first and-"
"And!?" Razor was buzzing even more.
"Dragon shit, Razor, let me finish the fuckin' story,' Mavlor said, shrugging off his jacket. "It was an easy kick – just in, hack, steal some data from a fucking halfling brothel in the underdark of the Black District."
"Ugh," Razor said, wrinkling his nose. "Gross."
Mavlor sighed. There were plenty of halflings who didn't look like elf or orc children. It was just that if they did end up joining the Guild of Night Workers, they didn't work in the underdark. Only a certain kind of halfling body type was snapped up there, and Razor's nose wrinkle matched Mavlor's own estimation of the place.
"It went well, so, I'm on the big kick," Mavlor said.
Razor let out a sigh so explosive it bordered on pornographic. "Thank fuckin Wyrm," he said, looking up to the sky, palms together.
Mavlor, who had kicked off his shoes, frowned. "Razor, you know I could have goten a normal job. Like, it'd still be shit compared to a kick, but-"
"I'm not living in the White District for one more fuckin' week, Mavlor," Razor said. He stepped close, grinning. "Listen, Mavlor, we're a team. I got the knowledge checks. I got the connections. With Slake and her party, you can feed em what I learn, and we can get the real fucking big kicks. The party making kicks. King making kicks." He nodded eagerly. "We're gonna go far, brother."
"And what if Slake learns that I'm not Mavlor?" Mavlor muttered.
"Younger brother, basically the same thing!" Razor said, shrugging.
Mavlor felt a faint, muted throb of pain. It wasn't for the loss. His older brother...he put the thought away. It wasn't worth bothering anymore. Instead, he yawned. "I'm gonna hit the long rest, okay?" he asked.
"I mean, long rest is for people not on that proper guildset," Razor said as Mavlor walked past him, towards the door leading to his own small, cramped room.
Mavlor lifted his middle finger over his finger. "Polearms, Raz, polearms."
"Fuck you too, man!" Razor said. "At least one of us should keep an eye on the big payout!"
The door closed Mavlor off from his furious roommate. He took a look around the bedroom: Tiny bed, narrow window looking out over the White District. Dragons drifted in the sky, rain sleeted on the windows, and neon blazed through the darkness. His eyes settled on the aether port built onto the desk. It was a cheap, old, cracked crystal set, which wasn't even compatible with modern implants – at least, any that you couldn't retrain. And the dragons that were crammed into Mavlor's brain and wrist were not the most trainable. He bit his lip.
He should sleep.
But…
"I'll just...check," he muttered.
He sat and brushed the crystal. It buzzed, sparked, hissed, and then glowed fitfully. Mavlor reached under his desk, pawed at the icecube that he had stashed there. He popped it open and snagged a can of carbonated piss. Taking it into his hand, he tossed it from palm to palm as the DOS logo popped up, the smiling dragon spreading its wings as the crystal finished enacting the complex spellwork deep in its multifaceted latices. Being so old – and cracked – it took almost three minutes. Time enough for Mavlor to pop the can and start sipping sharp, cold refreshment. The warm buzz of mana tingling along his veins was going to make sleeping a bitch.
But that was for later Mavlor.
The DOS logo vanished. In its place was the haze of tumbling symbols that Mavlor knew better than his mother's face.
He grinned. "Oh Hell yeah," he whispered.
She was online.
SAND
The glimmering astigmatism of the Dragon Lines stretched through, into and around Wyrm City, threading off tendrils into the suburbs, then clumping together again to create the huge rivers of raw magical energy that surged off and punched through the boneyards and the wrackruins and to the other cities that dotted the world of Shell. The splitting became more and more infinitesimal with bifurcations on bifurcations on bifurcations, threading smaller and smaller: Streets, then rooms, then items within rooms, then the crystal nodes of those items. The same merging went for the other direction as well – rooms joined to houses, houses joined to neighborhoods, neighborhoods to districts, districts to cities, cities to the world.
All this space.
All this knowledge.
And this power.
And Sand was so fucking bored.
She spread her glimmering wings wide, dove down, and then started to sweep past building after building. Each one had an access bar that her mother could have swiped through with a single claw-blow. She was instead pinged with a buzzing crackle that made her scales tingle. She waived off, grumbling, and then dove into the street-channel that whipped her away from the literal and into the Near Astral. Now, the connections was not to objects, but into concepts and possibilities. There were open arcane forums where millions of people posted whatever inane thought went through their head at any second, up for every village idiot to read.
Sand banked her wings back, beating once, twice…
thought id go out tonite look pretty claw and fang :3 :3 :3
The image was of a landcrawler with fake scales tattooed onto her cheeks, holding up her fingers and sticking out her tongue. There were sixty eight people who had passed this to all their fellow landcrawlers, all gawking at it, with a festooned halo of shimmering comments: Wow, you look great!!! and M'lady, I would gladly ask you to bed, if we t'were not in two different continents *tips helm*
"Ugh!" Sand grumbled.
She swiped her tail.
A new comment appeared, seared into existence without any sign of who had left it: dragon culture isn't a costume, you insensitive bigot. U should delete ur account.
Sand sat and watched, eagerly, to see what that'd get. Would she stir up white knights to defend her, or would people start yelling at her burner account and get super mad and waste their time. Something to pass the time, right? There was a short pause, then-
Her comment vanished.
"What!?" Sand exploded, furiously, her wings snapping out.
They can't just delete comments, could they? She started to sniff around at the haze of runic spellcrafting around it. She managed to get her comment to appear again. Then it was deleted again. Sand hissed quietly, smoke streaming from her nose. She started to show her fangs as she lifted up her forepaws, claws snicking out as she started to scrabble. More comments, she threw them out without artistry or care – she was too angry, to affronted to even notice that she had actually posted one under her own name, Sandistastrash. She drew back, quivering, and then blinked as a red shield crackled to life around the comment, buzzing and humming ominously.
"She walled me off? She's besieged me!?" Sand exploded.
Very distantly, deep in her belly, she felt something echo. But she was too infuriated.
"I can find the forum owner, and I can-"
The rumble in her belly reverberated again.
Sandistastrash!
Sand squeaked, snapped her wings together. She dove out of the Near Astral, into the Dragon Lines, then into her physical body. Her eyes snapped open and she jerked her head up and almost skidded down the side of her pile of golden coins, shimmering silver chalices, and thick rubies and emeralds and sapphires. She caught herself with her fore and hind claws, snapping her head around – her irritated tone shifting mid word. "Wha-at mom?" she asked, innocently, while her mother's entire head stuck in through the narrow metal door into her room.
"Sand," Mom said, her voice a husky contralto, rumbling deep from her belly. "What are you doing?"
"Just, ya know, surfin' the Near Astral," Sand said, innocently.
"Sand, are you trolling people again?" Mom asked, her voice growing dangerous. "Did I not tell you last time you did this, you almost cost me an election?"
"I did not!" Sand exclaimed, springing up onto her four legs. She skittered down the gold. "The Central Democrats were never gonna vote for you, even if I said they were re-"
"Sand!" Her mother shrank, but only so she could barge fully into the room. Even in her smaller size, the vast wyrm that was Charischora Avalanche dominated the room. She was a sleek blue and black, with glittering sapphire scales running in dramatic lines along her back and belly, and her wings had almost iridescent lapis lazuli highlights. Her eyes were, like many dragons, the color of erupting volcanoes. They flashed, lightning roiling in them. "You are the daughter of one of Wyrm City's Councilors – that means everything you do in every part of the Astral is scrutinized. Picked apart. Studied. Examined. For good! For ill!" She leaned forward. "The instant you became eighteen cycles old, there were half a million sweaty perverts trying to guess what your human form would be. The instant you did more than chew on the furniture, everything you've ever said and done has been taken as a reflection upon me. So when I learn…" She smashed her claw down. "That you're telling random people to kill themselves-"
"I was being sarcastic!" Sand whined, fanning her wings, ducking her head down. "Can't anyone take a frigging joke these days."
"Then they think that I condone this!" Charischora bellowed. "And now, I give you one last chance-"
"What!?" Sand exploded, snapping her wings back and jerking her head up, as high as she could stretch it. Her mother's head drew back and her lips thinned as Sand continued her spiel. "You never said that this was my last chance, you never said anything but I should...be...more...circumspect! And I was!"
"If you knew it was a test, would it have been a very good test?" Charischora snapped. "You are-"
"No, Mom, wait…"
"Banished from the astral realm!"
Charischora's claws slammed into the ground with a crunch – almost breaking the tile. The gold pile shifted, then skittered and Sand's boredom was now so far from her mind, she couldn't even remember why she had started flaming that rando. It was as if the whole world had gone topsy turvy! Like good had become evil! Like landcrawler had grown wings! Like dragon had become mortal. It was everything just in the world, all turned to corruption and sin. Why? Because Mom was a frigging paranoid because, like, it wasn't even as if landcrawlers got as many votes as dragons in the Council and and-
"And you're someone to talk, you big fucking faker!" Sand shouted.
"Do not sass back at me, young girl," Charischora growled.
"Oh yeahhh, Mom's soooo worried about what the forums say about her, but she goes around boinking elves behind when Daddy's not even sixteen years dead!"
Charischora leaned down, her voice even and quiet. "Your father, essence guide him home, is going to reincarnate in a hundred years. Once he does, I will very gladly cleave to him once more. Until then...I have needs. And I have them seen to privately, little scamp." She swelled, suddenly. Her wings pushed against the walls, her shoulders grinding against stone. Now, her entire foreclaw was the size of Sand, and she pinned her daughter down, making Sand squeak quietly. "And because I am an extremely understanding mother, I will accept that you are speaking in anger, and not in honest truth. But, from one femdragon to another…" She leaned down. "Grow. The. Fuck. Up. You. Little. Runtling!" She pushed her down more, then shrank, drew back, and sniffed. "I have to go run some damage control. Easy damage control, fortunately. But still."
She turned and swept out, her tail slamming the door after her as Sand blinked.
This is so unfair, she thought, muttering. ...and I didn't even tell anyone to kill themselves, I said they should frigging do it in DCC, that's a frigging crystalium game… She shook her head, sighing and picking herself up, with as much dignity as (though this comparison would never, in a million years, occur to her) a cat that had been sprayed down with a garden hose.
With the door hissing shut and clunking into place, she was left alone in her room. Alone with her thoughts. Alone with her fury. She started to scamper around. Then she rolled onto her back. Then, she sprang up onto her claws and slashed at the ground. She was in this state of utter, animalistic impotence, when a quiet chime came at the door. Snapping her teeth together with a crash, she turned and screeched. "What!?"
The door opened and a tall, slender elf stepped in.
"Oh noooo!" Sand groaned.
Her tutor, Lavianta, sighed. His lips were thin and his brows long, coming to two points that bobbed almost as far from his head as his ears. His head was bald as an egg and he had as many implants as some people had mugs in their kitchen – but as the Avalanche Clutch were among the richest dragons in the world, they had all been finely crafted by the most artisnal body sculptors and birthing specialists. The dragons and the parts of dragons that augmented Lavianta's body, mind and soul merged so smoothly with him that if one looked at him, they might think he was a completely mundane elf.
He still had to drink mana potions down like they were going out of style or his internal organs would melt – that much strain was being put on his mystical metabolism. Sand didn't consider that. Sand didn't consider much about Lavianta, other than the fact that he was here, and she really rather wished he wasn't.
"Young and most honorable dragon," Lavianta said. "Your mother said that you are ready for your week's history and civics tutoring."
"Auuuuuugh!" Sand groaned and rolled onto her back.
"She also mentioned you'd say something like that," Lavianta said. His lips pursed and his mind flitted through possibilities. He cocked his head. "Perhaps it would sweeten the medicine, if you know that I do have some say as to your mother's handling of you. I believe I could float...some overseen astral travel."
"Huh?" Sand jerked her head up so hard that her chin almost bumped her belly, her tail lashing against the ground.
"I would, of course, be here to ensure you don't say anything untowrd-"
"But I could go to the Near?"
"Even the Far, if you're good," Lavianta said, his voice dry.
"Yes!" Sand rolled around and sprang up. She sat down as prim and proper as a pekingese and lifted her chin up, nose in the air. "Lect away, Lavi!"
Lavianta arched one of those impossibly long eyebrows of his.
"...I mean, r-ready for your teaching, my honorable tutor."
"Very good," Lavianta said. He held out his palm and the almost invisible seam in his wrist opened. A glowing magical illusion appeared, showing the shape of Shell as it had been seen by orbit. Several of her satellites swung around – dragons who were, even now, curled up in on themselves to keep the Dragon Lines threaded between the planetary surface and LSO stable. Only the best dragons got to go into space. It took a lot of flapping to get there. Sand had once said she wanted to be an astrodragon, but as she had grown from hatchling to wyrmling, she had realized that that...took a lot of...like…
Work?
Still, she looked eagerly at the orb, wondering what Lavianta was going to be speaking about today.
"Sand, can you tell me the major states involved in the modern world of Shell?" Lavianta asked.
Sand screwed up her muzzle. "Ummmm, there is...Wyrm City. That's us."
"Ahem."
"Sorry, the Dragonocratic Union of Independent Clutches," she said. "Whose capital and primary source of power is Wyrm City."
"Very good," Lavianta said, dryly.
She resisted the urge to roll around. Or bite his ankles. Instead, she kept her wings firmly flush to her sides and sighed. "There is the Republic of Dragons, which controls the southern continent's northern tip. There's the Draconic Free States between the two, on the islands. And finally, there's the UULND, which controls the largest landmass of the western continent."
"Which is…"
She groaned, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling – her goodness veneer peeling away under this utterly inhumane treatment. Tutoring, on a weekday afternoon where she should have been in the Near Astral, doing stuff. "It's the United Unions of Landed Non-Draconic Soverignty."
"Which is run by…"
"A council of democratically elected dragons," she said.
"Ever since?"
"The…" She screwed up her nose even more, thinking hard. "The...um, the thing."
Lavianta did not provide a clue. Instead, he simply pursed his thin thin lips.
"The...the thing the...he had ...he did the thing with his shoe, uh…" She clacked her claws. "The Draco-Walker Reforms!" She exclaimed, having finally realized it. "Like, ten years ago!"
"Precisely," Lavianta said, sounding amused. "The UULND underwent economic reforms to ensure that it could continue to operate in an increasingly interconnected economic system. While they have lost a few of their states, they remain a power – while those states that refuse to integrate draconic systems have…?"
"...collapsed into barbarism?" Sand suggested.
"Correct," Lavianta said, his voice showing just a hint of kindness.
"Yes!" Sand pumped her fist. She was nailing this lecture.
Lavianta smiled, grimly. "But now that we have the overview, it's time for us to get into the specifics." He snapped his finger and the glittering image of the oblate sphereoid that was their home was replaced by a massive, sprawling tree that looked somewhere between a cat's cradle and a descent chart for one of those big old dragons who couldn't stop fucking the waitstaff. Each name, though, had a teeny tiny little logo, with dragons, wings, claws, little fire spurts, and lightning bolts all being common themes. Some names, she immediately recognized like DynaSoar and Manite and Tristar and Trioptimum and-
She groaned as Lavianta continued. "Lets begin breaking down the intercorporate connections between Wyrm City and her subsidiary industrial, agricultural and special interest zones. We'll start with the corporation backing your mother's reelection, Chromatic Solutions Incorporated." He pointed with his other finger. "Lets start by listing off CSI's primary exports and imports."
Sand opened her jaw.
"In order of most to least important, on first, an economic, then a military, then a political scale."
Sand put her fore-claws over her head and sank to her belly, groaning in abject defeat.
The worst thing was?
Once the tutoring was over, Mom didn't even let her go on the astral, even with Lavianta's oversight.
So, late...late in the night, with Mom snoring quietly in the main cave, Sand crawled along the floor as slowly and carefully as she could. There were detectors and security systems, yes, but they were scanning for something that was roughly mouse sized or bigger.
And right now?
Sand giggled quietly as her entire body undulated forward by one more inch. Keeping herself compacted this small was like holding her wings, tail, arms and legs inside of her body and holding her breath at the same time. But it was worth it as her centipede legs wriggled her forward another inch. Moving a hundred legs all at once in the right way was also harder than it looked, but it was getting her along. She wriggled. Wriggled again. Kept...wriggling.
Mom's snoring paused. Paused more.
Then she snored again.
Okay, keep wriggling. Sand was focused. She was going to get to the crystal if it frigging killed her.
Yes, Mom had denied her the Near Astral. But the thing was? That was projecting into the Astral. There were other ways to get into the Astral, now were there. Yes, the crystals were meant for their landwalker servants. But that didn't mean she couldn't use it!
Wriggle, wriggle.
Finally, she was past the security lines, and she grew to the size of a mouse, and the shape of a mouse. Scampering along the ground, she skimmed along metal and stone, then came to the crystal room. Peeking in, she saw two elves, looking tired, bored, and dressed in Avalanche Clutch colors. They were clustered in the far corner of the room, which meant their backs were to the left corner. She grinned and scampered towards one of the crystals there. Her nose gently bumped against a button and, with an almost subliminal purr, the crystal started to hum to life. She waited, eagerly, then crawled up the desk, came to the hand-socket. She turned into the disembodied stump of a landwalker's hand, slotted into the hand-socket…
Bzzzt!
She was in.
She groaned softly inside, feeling the Astral swim around her. It was separated by the thick membrane those poor non-dragons had to deal with all the time, but she was in it! She could post! She could-
A glittering pixie, bearing a scroll flitted into the air before her nose, then handed it to her. It unrolled in her vision. She read it...and then gasped in excitement.
KNYFE-9: yo, sand
Sand squealed mentally. K9 was online! Yes!
The best thing about K9 was how cool he was. He was, like, the same age as her...but he was like, a real smart dragon. He had to be a dragon, since he knew everything about dragons, and he was so fucking clear sighted and level headed. Of course, he was totally pretending to be a landwalker, like she did when she was using crystals like this. Since, like, on the Near Astral, no one knew if you were a landwalker or a dragon if you were using a crystal.
She grabbed the pixie, then handed her a scroll, scribbling on it.
SANDGIRL: K9!!!! holy shit I've had the most fucky day ever, it super sucked, turbo sucked, it sucked worse than getting flanked and backstabbed to shit.
The pixie came back with a direct golden thread, which her astral avatar grabbed.
In a second, she and K9 were floating near one another, two blobby masses of indistinct mental energy.
KNYFE-9: wow, that fucking sucks, what happened?
SANDGIRL: My frigging mom caught me on the Astral.
KNYFE-9: ...doing what?
SANDGIRL: ...nothing
KNYFE-9: okay, bb, what was it? It's cool, no judgment
SANDGIRL: I was just flaming someone, okay? I was bored.
KNYFE-9: man, you can't just randomly flame someone cause you're bored. That's what games are for, man.
Sand blushed. For some reason, K9's quiet shake of the head hit more and harder than her mom's growling.
KNYFE-9: sigh, it's okay. I have to sleep soon, but we can play a few rounds of Dragon Crawl Classic?
SANDGIRL: Hmmm…
She flitted closer. She pressed from direct message to whispering right into his tingling, buzzing form.
"Counterpoint…" her voice was soft. "I am going to get caught any second now by my mom, soooo, you could take an avatar form and blow my back out."
Danger. Danger! Danger!
The instinct was fierce, blazing, overwhelming. She jerked herself out of the connection to the crystal and shrank to the size of a flea, compacting herself so tiny that her brain almost squished. The crystal hummed down and a few seconds later, one of the elf security guards stepped over, frowning and looking around. "I could have sworn…" He said, quietly, as she focused her entire being into two sensations. The first was pure, ice cold concentrated focused focusing focus. If she didn't focus, that elf was going to notice that a tiny flea had just grown to the size of a mouse or a cat, the most comfortable small forms she could take.
The second was I was sooooooooooooo frigging cloooooooooooose!
The elf frowned, then stepped back, shaking his head. "Stupid crystals are on the fritz again – I keep telling them, we need to re-sequence the whole lot of them."
"Oh stop bitching…"
Sand breathed out an explosive sigh. She grew to a mouse and, quivering, waited until she was absolutely sure she could jack back into the Near Astral. But when she did, her illicit lover, her friend and her mystery, K9, was offline. He hadn't even been able to leave a message, since any message he left, someone might find.
Sand grumbled all the way back to her gold pile, her body aching faintly with egg-heat, which faded only slowly once she grew as big as she could and wriggled herself deep into the gold.
She closed her eyes.
She dreamed of hunky older dragons, sweeping her off her feet, flying her to a Clutch that wasn't so boring and obsessed with politics. She dreamed of meeting K9 and learning his real name – and real job, and real scent. She imagined how cool he had to be in real life, if he was that good in the astral. She smiled.
What a dragon… was her last thought, before she drifted to somewhere deeper and broader, quieter and older than the gleaming Astral.
Jeter Latenight, Joe Johnson, Dasm, Masterhobbes, Pancor, Ashed Disavowed, CJ (and only CJ), Lon'Tavion Scott, Chris, B.C. McGuire, Fast59, Morris, Tiberius Reign,
keen_FlattendHedgeHog, Paks, Phraxius, Pierce Gray, Taco1085, Albert Finney, Indianguy, MaxxDredd, MDG1969, Etorius Starwalker, Dave2282, Seth, Red24g, SylentNight, CrispnCrunch, AutumnStripe, Gillered, zerozero, Jarath, Daddy Lenin, clauskj3r, Devi Lacroix, Doughnut, Dracorexidae, Erika Chappell, Twei, Gibreel, J Corwin, thepsyborg, Anji, SomeRandomG33k, Evilhippy, mikalman216, Youkai-sama, Jaenen, Ollie, cdog02, Parzival95, Verdant, Osmina Deveraux, Alexander and Carmelmike
If you enjoyed my work, check out my work on Amazon right now! More than two dozen books are ready for your enjoyment!
Link: Dragon Cobolt: books, biography, latest update
And if you want to see more stories, please consider my Patreon! If you subscribe, you get free access to my self-published work, and get to see new chapters a WEEK EARLY, and can suggest future kinks, scenes and characters, and more!
Link: patreon.com/DragonCobolt
Finally, if you want to ask me any question about this story or others, feel free to follow me on twitter or bluesky: https://twitter.com/DragonCobolt
Thanks for Reading! If you enjoyed the story, please do comment and like!
The sky above the city was the color of a dying dragon – splotchy and scaled and flickering with a pulsing heartbeat. Rain warm as piss streaked down the windows of the scuzzy bar that Mavlor walked into – and as he shook off the grayish muck and started stomping his boots on the mat to get them a bit clean, he thought that maybe this plan by Razor was a terrible idea. The first look around the bar only made it worse: The taps were dying with flies buzzing around them, and half the people in the place all looked like they had needed to sell their implants for spending money, leaving knotted gaps in muscle, hair, and skin.
A burly orc who still had a scaled patch on his right arm reached out and spread clawed fingers, the blades snicking out and forming the rough outline of a mage's circle. Malvor spread his hands, sighing, as the circle flickered him with pulses of purple light. The first thing that shone was his implants – around his temple, down by his hip, and on his left wrist. Then the orc swept his palm up and the light flashed green. This time, his jacket pocket shone through the leather.
"Show me," the orc rumbled.
Mavlor grumbled, opened his jacket, and remained perfectly still as the orc snatched his old six egg wyrmvolver from his jacket pocket. The orc looked it over, then frowned as he opened the chamber and counted the warm eggs inside. "Acid?" he asked, lifting his gaze to Mavlor, tapping his thumb against the back of the eggs.
"Do- I-" Mavlor cut himself off repeatedly before asking what first crossed his mind. Finally, he settled on shaking his haed. "Fuck, no, man. Fuck. No. I have teeth."
"Teeth's okay, but the boss says no acid, not after last week." The orc snapped the wyrmvolver shut with a tiny bony click. He handed it back and Mavlor stuck it back into his pocket. His brows furrowed and his ear-tips popped up in nervous tension.
"Uh, what happened last week?"
The orc nodded to the corner of the room. There was a pretty messy set of remarkable stains over there.
"...right," Mavlor said.
Go for the booth in the left of the bar, look for an elf. That wasn't the entirety of Razor's information, but it was the important part now So, he walked to the left of the bar...and gulped. The figure sitting in the booth was nominally an elf. He had just never seen an elf with that many implants. Her left hand and right hand were both clawed – one gold scaled, the other black. Her left eye was slitted and her jaw had a kind of bracketing around it, like she was halfway through getting the elongated muzzle of a dragon, the tip splitting to reveal her still elfin lips, though she did have a pair of sharp fangs hooking over the lower lips. Her hair, dyed bright pink, was cut back into a deathhawk that showed off the tiny scales that denoted brain implants. She had a long, thick tail that was practically a third leg, snaked around the inner edge of the booth and dripping over the far end. The only thing she was missing was wings.
Mavlor walked up to her. "Slake?" he asked, nervously.
She lifted her reptilian, slit eyed gaze to him. "Mavlor?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. Her tail shifted and he took his seat across from her.
"You're Mavlor?" she asked, slowly. She had a glass in one hand, full of bright pinkish d-beer. She sloshed it around slowly, letting it frizz and froth.
"Yeah," Mavlor said, getting prickly.
"On the Lines, they says Mavlor is the bigshot rogue that snuck into the CDO of MalaTek's private files and jacked half her horde out into a wheel barrow before security got twigged. You look like some wet kitten."
Mavlor gave her a thin little smile.
Technically, everything Slake had said was true.
And technically, nothing Mavlor was going to say was a lie.
"Appearance can be...deceptive," Mavlor said, grinning at her casually. "I'm the best rogue I know. You have security systems you want to get around? I can pick, slice, cut, hack, slash, everything. I take pay up front, not a cut."
"Not a cut?" Slake asked, leaning back and cocking her head.
Mavlor smirked, and tried to sound world weary, wise. "Cut's encourage betrayal. Makes the cut bigger. Up front keeps things nice and professional. I like it when things are professional."
Slake narrowed her eyes. Then she grinned. Her teeth were all very sharp. "All right," she said, nodding. "We're gonna need to confirm you're as good as all that."
"I don't work for free," Mavlor said.
Slake frowned. "A hundred gold coins for a real easy kick, something you can use to show your stuff. Then you can meet the rest of the team and we can see about you going on the big kick we're aiming for." She smirked. "Sound good?"
Mavlor felt a tiny knot of tension in his belly ease. He was through the first hurdle. He leaned forward, grinning ever so slightly. He just had to keep acting, and he'd be through this. "Sounds good," he said. Slake lifted one clawed finger. The bartender, seeing the signal, went to the tap. He roused the dragon from its stupor, smacking its scaled flank until it stood, then put a glass up against it's dick. Once he had filled the glass with d-beer, he walked it over the table, setting it down with a muttered.
"Fresh and warm for ye," he said.
Mavlor took the glass, then glanced at the tap. Flies had settled back onto its ragged wings.
"Is it safe?" he muttered under his breath.
"Dungeon safe," Slake said, grinning toothily at Mavlor.
Mavlor sighed and downed his first glass. The beer hit his gut like a sour bomb, but the warm feeling of mana-rich pleasure that washed through him afterwards pushed him back into his seat. He sighed quietly. "All right," he said. "Now, the easy kick?"
Slake grinned. "Aight. It's simple…"
***
Rain was still pouring down on the city. The dark shape of gas-bag dragons drifting by overhead were visible more by the way they blocked the smeary pulses of light through the clouds and the way they blocked the rain. The district that Slake led Mavlor to was in one of the overbuilt areas most people called the underdark, where sunlight never reached whenever sunlight dared to show its nose. The Dragon Lines were thin and spotty, attenuated between concrete corridors, metal pipes, and a few ancient, wheezing dragons that belched out barely breathable air, drank sewage and pissed clear water, or provided some measure of mana for the lights. Most of the doors were manual, and that was what made it a good place for a rogue.
"So," Slake said. "That's the place."
She nodded down a narrow corridor to where an unbelievably bored looking streetnecht was lounging against the wall. He had a wyrmgun at his hip and claws in both his hands, but it was the froggy bulge around his throat that made Mavlor the most nervous: That was a breath weapon implant, without any doubt. The streetnecht was dressed for work too: He had a huge codpiece, a large poofy hat that looked bright and colorful with neon thread-work in green and yellow despite the rain, and two huge poofy pantaloons that swelled around his legs and narrowed up near his hips, where his bony carapace armor hung around his chest. They were both checkered, with yellow and green coloring, though neither had neon thread.
"Got it," Mavlor said, frowning. He reached up and gently massaged the tail-tip that peeked out right by his temple. The dragon in his brain woke up and with a lurch, his vision shifted. He could see the concrete in grainy monochrome, and the brightly colored streetnecht's color turned into a smeary black and white, save for the hat, which glowed bright, bright white, almost occluding his face. The thin Dragon Lines that snaked along the ceiling were thrown into stark relief. He breathed in, then held up his left wrist, twisting it around so his fingers could touch the small dragon mouthpart that was tucked under a fold of scales. The teeth bit into his finger and the connection flared to life as he felt his soul leaving his body.
A shimmering, astral figure, he was entirely visible to anyone with a similar rogue implant. Fortunately, streetnecht went entirely for brawn, not brain.
Mavlor fought down any panicky worries that this necht had split his focus. Even just the right wizard-eye implant would…
The necht farted loudly.
"Gods," Slake muttered, close enough to his physical ear that he could hear her. Fortunately, the dragon in his brain was too busy using his sensory inputs for him to know if he was downwind or not. So, instead, he forced his astral body up into the Dragon Line that ran along the ceiling and over the streetnecht's head. He was in the system of the small, cheap warehouse building. He felt the sleepy, non-astral attention of whoever nestjock they had running their DLS and RCP, and grinned slightly. This was going to work. He could do this.
He flowed along, moving through light fixtures and wireless communications until he found a scrying globe. He peered through.
The place turns out to be a brothel frequented by rich perverts who want to do daddy/daughter play with halflings.
The room he was looking into was a splash of opulence surrounded by pure misery. Cheap opulence too. Like someone daubing on fake scales to look respectable, or an orc filing down their tusks. The walls were covered with lurid pink sheets, and thick shag carpeting covered what had once been bare concrete. A large bed had been tossed down into a frame, with a mattress and no headboard. And on it was a very, very pretty halfling getting her back absolutely blown out by a chubby lizardman whose scales were far, far, far too shiny for him to be in the underdark and this pisshole.
"Daddy! Daddy!" The halfling moaned, her petite body quivering as she threw her head back. "Oh fuck, Daddy, oh god! Oh god!" She moaned desperately as his scaled balls clapped against her thighs.
Mavlor shook his head. Someone doesn't want their kinks getting out, he thought – though...despite his cynical affectations and casual confidence in the bar, he felt his attention fixated. He had no idea a halfling could be so…elastic. And the illusion was far from perfect. Since Mavlor wasn't a monster, the fact that the girl was an adult, and clearly so, actually made it more tempting to keep watching. The lizardman's blue and gold scaled palm swept around and grabbed the girl's throat. Her moan of 'daddy' was choked off mid thrust into a gurgle, her eyes widening as he fucked her even harder, even faster.
"Yeah, yeah, little tempting fucking bitch, yeah, take daddy's cock!"
"Daddy! Daddy!" The halfling moaned, her petite body quivering as she threw her head back. "Oh fuck, Daddy, oh god! Oh god!" She moaned desperately as his scaled balls clapped against her thighs.
Mavlor shook his head. Someone doesn't want their kinks getting out, he thought – though...despite his cynical affectations and casual confidence in the bar, he felt his attention fixated. He had no idea a halfling could be so…elastic. And the illusion was far from perfect. Since Mavlor wasn't a monster, the fact that the girl was an adult, and clearly so, actually made it more tempting to keep watching. The lizardman's blue and gold scaled palm swept around and grabbed the girl's throat. Her moan of 'daddy' was choked off mid thrust into a gurgle, her eyes widening as he fucked her even harder, even faster.
"Yeah, yeah, little tempting fucking bitch, yeah, take daddy's cock!"
Mavlor felt a presence flitting into the scrying orb with him. He remained perfectly still – a nestjock wasn't as intimately a part of the Dragon Lines as a rogue like him. The nestjock wouldn't notice him, if he didn't move. Right?
A bored voice came over the scrying orb. "Ahem. Mr. Smith, you didn't pay enough to break her."
Mavlor saw that the halfling was making a gesture with her free right hand, her face purpling.
Mr. Smith slowed down, releasing her and she gasped quietly.
Mavlor felt quietly ill. He flitted on from the scrying orb.
He came to the vault of the warehouse. It was almost entirely physical. He frowned slightly as his astral fingers rubbing slowly along the faint outline that he could feel through the connection. There was a dragon in the tumbler, sleeping quietly and waiting to be awakened. The dragon was entirely contained, no hacking could be done there. But he did touch his belly, whispering softly. "Hey there, little guy."
The dragon's attention came all at once. A bolt of excited, almost puppyish energy slapped into Mavlor's brain. Hey hey hey hey hey hey! The dragon in the key said.
"Heh, you've been wandering in the Lines a while, huh?" Mavlor asked, sounding amused.
I was just watching the big games, the dragon said, casually. Mavlor, as always, was...deeply, deeply jealous of dragons. Even the saddest, most pathetic one had the same mystic soul, the same ability to just...leave. The eggs in his gun were romping around farther away than Mavlor would ever gone – flitting around the world along the Dragon Lines, and doing anything they wished in the vastness of the untapped astral. Mavlor knew mortals who gave up their bodies to do the same – willing to become third class citizens, barely sentient slabs of lumpish matter, sitting around in the deep wells of the astral...all just to escape the here and now.
It gave him the creeps.
It almost scared him more how tempting it was.
"So, you wanna open up for me if I ask?" Mavlor asked.
But they said I'm a lock, the dragon said.
"Ah, ah, but, counterpoint," Mavlor said, grinning slightly. "I'm very nice!"
The trick with picking a lock like this was learning what kind of dragon you were talking too. Some were simple, some were silly, some were distractable, and some of them were just plain mean. That was what Mavlor had read in all the books – and, like getting Slake's job, it was all about acting like he'd done this a thousand times before. He leaned in and gave a spectral smile to the lock-dragon. There was a short pause, and he worried that maybe the books, the notes he'd read in his brother's journal, everything Razor had said, was just a big fat fucking lie.
Then the dragon chirruped happily: Okay!
The door clicked and thumped. The safe hatch swung open before his shimmering eyes – but then Mavlor spotted the tiny spurt of glowing energy sliding along the wall, a bead of bright mana that he saw picking up speed. The dragon explained, helpfully: That's what the boss said I should do if I met anyone nice.
Shit.
Mavlor dove forward and thrust his astral palm into the wall, between the bead and its destination. The buzzing, crackling feeling of the mana-pulse thrummed against his palm. It started off tingling, then itching. He didn't want to be here when it went from itching to burning. Thinking quickly, Mavlor reached with his other hand. An astral body wasn't quite a real body – but it was still constrained by familiar dimensions, by well known modes of action and behavior. His fingers groped at the air, but he couldn't quite get them past the door, despite shoving his hand and pushing and straining. He clenched his teeth...then flung himself away from the wall.
The bead shot along the wall.
He got his fingers into the astral part of the vault, feeling the weight of memory. Then he was back at the wall, kicking off the floor so hard that he could get his fingers around the bead. The itching was back – and he was now inches away from it reaching the first communication junction. Thinking fast, Mavlor said: "So, tiny lil' guy, did you know really cool dragons can send this kind of warning super duper slow? Fast guys, that's easy. Slow? Super hard!"
Whoa, really? The tiny astral form of the dragon came from the tumbler, flitting through steel and into the half-real place that Mavlor was in. The lock-dragon looked a bit like a spark of bright, ruby red light, and his wings flickered and flashed, ravelike, as he swung around Mavlor's head. I can do that! I can do that ten times!
The itching had hit burning.
Mavlor closed his eyes. He prayed to the Wyrm above that the lock dragon was as guileless as he seemed.
He jerked his palm away.
The bead seemed to be almost stationary. It hung in the line, shimmering and buzzing. Mavlor looked from it to the dragon-spirit, which started to bound around in the air. See? See? See?
Mavlor breathed out a slow, slow sigh, and then smiled. "Good job, lil' guy."
I'm the best lock.
Well.
Cheapest, at the very least. Mavlor hoped that the owner of this black market sleeze den didn't take too much of it out on their choice of lock – against everyone save a Rogue like him, this dragon lock would have been completely unbreakable. If only because he'd probably have just eaten the-
The tiny dragon spirit hiccuped and coughed up a half molten lock, which sizzled as it dropped from the astral to the physical plate, smoking and steaming as lay on the ground.
"Right," Mavlor said.
Left!
"Bye, little guy," Mavlor said, shaking his head as the bead kept inching along. He turned, kicked up into the Dragon Lines, and was gone.
***
When Mavlor snapped back into his body and jerked his bleeding finger from his dragon port, it was with a disorientating lurch. He felt bile rising up at the back of his throat, but gulped it down. He had never been in the astral for so long – and these implants squirmed in his body. The dragon in his wrist twitched its tail, causing a bulge of skin to appear below his wrist. The pain was muted, but present. The dragon in his brain kicked one of its rear legs and for just a moment, claws connected nerves that normally weren't connected. The synesthetic sensation of tasting the warm copper color of his own blood, and hearing the rushing, deep soul of being held, flashed through him. Then it was gone, the implants settling as Slake, her head tilted around the corner, her thick tail lashing, grinned.
"Aces and drakes," she muttered. "You got in and out without being caught? You really are dragonfire."
"No, there was an alert signal," Mavlor said, rubbing the back of his neck and standing, feeling his muscles popping. He opened his left hand, the one with the dragon port. The glowing crystal, the bead of the scrolls he had stolen from the warehouse, sat there, crystalized and released onto his palm by his implant. He lifted his gaze to Slake, who was looking at him with a very thin, thin looking expression. The dragon mandibles that framed her jaw spread out, then snapped in with irritation. Mavlor continued before she said anything: "I convinced the lock to hold the call for, uh, however long he can manage."
Slake whistled, quietly, her slitted eyes blinking. "Really? Damn. If we get out of here before their security tips, then…" She grinned. "Then maybe we have a future, skinny."
Mavlor gave her a thin smile right back.
The two started off, walking away while still trying to act as if they had nothing special going on and were doing nothing important. In the underdark, that was easy – the narrow corridors were full of other people shifting and shuffling along just like them. Wih his hands in his pockets, Mavlor muttered under his breath. "So, Slake."
"Yeah, skinny?" she asked.
Mavlor frowned. "Mavlor."
"You're so thin you make me feel like an orc," Slake said, rolling her eyes. "You can get a better name later. Or maybe not. I mean, I once doorkicked with a fuckin' goblin named Beachball."
Mavlor nodded, slightly.
They walked together in silence, past a broken rain gutter. The oil-slick it left on the brick and metal stonework of the wall almost blotted out the old graffiti of BLOOD OF THE WYRM, CURSE OF THE SKY, turning neon bright test into a smear of dried blood.
"What the fuck is a beach?" Mavlor asked, turning to face Slake. Her tail lashed and she turned to face him as well, the two of them stopping right at the exit from the underdark into the city proper. She looked down at him.
"Okay, skinny," she said. "You might be some big shot rogue, but you're...new at kicking, aren't you?"
Mavlor frowned. "It was my first job. I got lucky," he said, quietly.
Another not quite lie.
Slake looked out at the rain. "Every kicker, we do shit that most people don't want to, or can't. We bust into corporate territory, we hit their dungeons, we jack their data, and usually? We're selling it to other corpos – since, ya know, if a dragon ever fought another dragon, it'd be another War of Wyrms, right?" Mavlor nodded. She pointed with her clawed finger. "But out there? Past the city, past the boneyards, there's a place where water doesn't come pissed outta dragon. There's a place where there's shit like trees and sand and green hills that isn't in a park and doesn't cost five gold coins to see." She lowered her hand, nodding slowly. "That's...that's what a beach is, skinny."
"And how many kicks does it take?" Mavlor asked, frowning.
"As many as it fuckin' takes," Slake said. She was quiet. Then she grinned. "You did a good job back there, as a rogue. You're in with my party. If you want the slot, still."
She offered her hand – elf skin and dragon scales, glittering, with a tattoo of a tiny little ampersand on her wrist. The ampersand was a coiled up dragon, his flames making up the lower part of the curve.
Mavlor took her hand with a smack.
"To the beach," he said.
"Fuckin A skinny," Slake said, grinning back.
"How about Mav?" Mavlor grinned. "So, now, what the fuck did I just steal?"
"Blackmail material for rich coward pedophiles," Slake said. She paused. "That a problem for you?"
Mavlor probed his morality, like it was a broken tooth. He shook his head. "Nah."
"Aight..." She paused. "Mav."
***
Mavlor and Slake split up at the landport, with Slake handing him the directions for the party's meetup – a tavern in the midlevels of Red District. As he tucked the paper away, one of the dragons that served the landport slithered along the heavily oiled and greased track, with the heavy cars and carriages strapped to his scaled sides opening up and a deluge of people emerging to swarm into the Black District. Most of them were dressed shabby, cheap, in tough leather and cheaper implants. A lot of them had umbrellas, which opened as they left the port and got into the rain. Mavlor fished his debit card out and slotted it into the mouth of a bored dragon that perched at one of the movable ladders that led up onto the cheap seats. The dragon burped and the bar that blocked anyone from going up or down swung up for him and him alone. He took the steps two at a time, clambered into the car, and found a seat next to the window.
In a few minutes, the car was sparsely populated. People flowed into and out of the Black District at set times – flowing out to work in the Blue, Gold, and Silver Districts. But they didn't flow out in the evening. No, no, that was when the shifts of the poor and desperate came back for their apartments and their tenements. Mavlor watched as the landport slid by and then away as the vast, undulating motions of the dragon picked up more and more speed. The slick sound of scales on grease lulled him back into an almost daze.
With the adrenaline gone from the heist – he wondered who was perverse enough to frequent a brothel entirely crewed by halflings, but easily bullied enough that it'd be blackmail material – he felt drained and tired. So tired that he barely noticed when the dragon came to the first stop, then the second...and he nearly remained there for the third, as the dragon slowed and used its claws to bring itself to a stop at the White District.
He stood and shuffled past a snoring woman in a thick coat, muttering an apology, and came down the ladder again, then out of the landport. The White District wasn't quite as desperate as the Black, but it wasn't the rich parts of town. The main difference was that rather than building thick and high, White Sprawled around the landports, with people needing to either catch carriages or walk. Mavlor didn't have a personal carriage, nor was he going to drop the gold coin it'd take to get one. So, he settled in for a walk.
The long, winding walk took him past the huge office buildings where programmers and dragon-sculptors worked away in the day, their windows now half darkened, half lit, like the buildings had broken out in some kind of terrible rash. He walked past a few parks that were closed and locked up, their business hours long since passed. He walked past the restaurants, where noodles and dragon meat was served up hot and fresh – the spice wafting past his nose and making his stomach growl fiercely.
Finally, he came to the apartment where he and Razor kept themselves just barely above water. The dragon that sat in the tiny box near the door sniffed at his finger, then licked excitedly at it, yipping quietly. Mavlor grinned as the lock clicked and he was able to walk inside, stomping wet off his shoes. The tired, bored looking dwarf who served the front desk of the apartment complex looked up at him, then went back to his book. Mavlor nodded to him, then walked quickly to the elevators. Once he was inside, he rode up, up, up, up, to level 8. Once the elevator door chimed open, he saw the narrow corridor, the peeling carpet, the doors with rusted numbers.
With his hands in his pockets, Mavlor came to room 881, then knocked. "Razor," he called out.
The door opened and Razor's skinny face peered out. The sleek, green skinned orc beamed at him. "Yooo, Mavlor!" He opened the door wide, letting his roommate step in. "Did the kick go?"
"Kinda," Mavlor said. "The girl you hooked me up to? Slake? Her and her party did need a fuckin' rogue-"
"And?" Razor asked, practically buzzing with excitement.
"-and she put me on a small kick first and-"
"And!?" Razor was buzzing even more.
"Dragon shit, Razor, let me finish the fuckin' story,' Mavlor said, shrugging off his jacket. "It was an easy kick – just in, hack, steal some data from a fucking halfling brothel in the underdark of the Black District."
"Ugh," Razor said, wrinkling his nose. "Gross."
Mavlor sighed. There were plenty of halflings who didn't look like elf or orc children. It was just that if they did end up joining the Guild of Night Workers, they didn't work in the underdark. Only a certain kind of halfling body type was snapped up there, and Razor's nose wrinkle matched Mavlor's own estimation of the place.
"It went well, so, I'm on the big kick," Mavlor said.
Razor let out a sigh so explosive it bordered on pornographic. "Thank fuckin Wyrm," he said, looking up to the sky, palms together.
Mavlor, who had kicked off his shoes, frowned. "Razor, you know I could have goten a normal job. Like, it'd still be shit compared to a kick, but-"
"I'm not living in the White District for one more fuckin' week, Mavlor," Razor said. He stepped close, grinning. "Listen, Mavlor, we're a team. I got the knowledge checks. I got the connections. With Slake and her party, you can feed em what I learn, and we can get the real fucking big kicks. The party making kicks. King making kicks." He nodded eagerly. "We're gonna go far, brother."
"And what if Slake learns that I'm not Mavlor?" Mavlor muttered.
"Younger brother, basically the same thing!" Razor said, shrugging.
Mavlor felt a faint, muted throb of pain. It wasn't for the loss. His older brother...he put the thought away. It wasn't worth bothering anymore. Instead, he yawned. "I'm gonna hit the long rest, okay?" he asked.
"I mean, long rest is for people not on that proper guildset," Razor said as Mavlor walked past him, towards the door leading to his own small, cramped room.
Mavlor lifted his middle finger over his finger. "Polearms, Raz, polearms."
"Fuck you too, man!" Razor said. "At least one of us should keep an eye on the big payout!"
The door closed Mavlor off from his furious roommate. He took a look around the bedroom: Tiny bed, narrow window looking out over the White District. Dragons drifted in the sky, rain sleeted on the windows, and neon blazed through the darkness. His eyes settled on the aether port built onto the desk. It was a cheap, old, cracked crystal set, which wasn't even compatible with modern implants – at least, any that you couldn't retrain. And the dragons that were crammed into Mavlor's brain and wrist were not the most trainable. He bit his lip.
He should sleep.
But…
"I'll just...check," he muttered.
He sat and brushed the crystal. It buzzed, sparked, hissed, and then glowed fitfully. Mavlor reached under his desk, pawed at the icecube that he had stashed there. He popped it open and snagged a can of carbonated piss. Taking it into his hand, he tossed it from palm to palm as the DOS logo popped up, the smiling dragon spreading its wings as the crystal finished enacting the complex spellwork deep in its multifaceted latices. Being so old – and cracked – it took almost three minutes. Time enough for Mavlor to pop the can and start sipping sharp, cold refreshment. The warm buzz of mana tingling along his veins was going to make sleeping a bitch.
But that was for later Mavlor.
The DOS logo vanished. In its place was the haze of tumbling symbols that Mavlor knew better than his mother's face.
He grinned. "Oh Hell yeah," he whispered.
She was online.
***
SAND
The glimmering astigmatism of the Dragon Lines stretched through, into and around Wyrm City, threading off tendrils into the suburbs, then clumping together again to create the huge rivers of raw magical energy that surged off and punched through the boneyards and the wrackruins and to the other cities that dotted the world of Shell. The splitting became more and more infinitesimal with bifurcations on bifurcations on bifurcations, threading smaller and smaller: Streets, then rooms, then items within rooms, then the crystal nodes of those items. The same merging went for the other direction as well – rooms joined to houses, houses joined to neighborhoods, neighborhoods to districts, districts to cities, cities to the world.
All this space.
All this knowledge.
And this power.
And Sand was so fucking bored.
She spread her glimmering wings wide, dove down, and then started to sweep past building after building. Each one had an access bar that her mother could have swiped through with a single claw-blow. She was instead pinged with a buzzing crackle that made her scales tingle. She waived off, grumbling, and then dove into the street-channel that whipped her away from the literal and into the Near Astral. Now, the connections was not to objects, but into concepts and possibilities. There were open arcane forums where millions of people posted whatever inane thought went through their head at any second, up for every village idiot to read.
Sand banked her wings back, beating once, twice…
thought id go out tonite look pretty claw and fang :3 :3 :3
The image was of a landcrawler with fake scales tattooed onto her cheeks, holding up her fingers and sticking out her tongue. There were sixty eight people who had passed this to all their fellow landcrawlers, all gawking at it, with a festooned halo of shimmering comments: Wow, you look great!!! and M'lady, I would gladly ask you to bed, if we t'were not in two different continents *tips helm*
"Ugh!" Sand grumbled.
She swiped her tail.
A new comment appeared, seared into existence without any sign of who had left it: dragon culture isn't a costume, you insensitive bigot. U should delete ur account.
Sand sat and watched, eagerly, to see what that'd get. Would she stir up white knights to defend her, or would people start yelling at her burner account and get super mad and waste their time. Something to pass the time, right? There was a short pause, then-
Her comment vanished.
"What!?" Sand exploded, furiously, her wings snapping out.
They can't just delete comments, could they? She started to sniff around at the haze of runic spellcrafting around it. She managed to get her comment to appear again. Then it was deleted again. Sand hissed quietly, smoke streaming from her nose. She started to show her fangs as she lifted up her forepaws, claws snicking out as she started to scrabble. More comments, she threw them out without artistry or care – she was too angry, to affronted to even notice that she had actually posted one under her own name, Sandistastrash. She drew back, quivering, and then blinked as a red shield crackled to life around the comment, buzzing and humming ominously.
"She walled me off? She's besieged me!?" Sand exploded.
Very distantly, deep in her belly, she felt something echo. But she was too infuriated.
"I can find the forum owner, and I can-"
The rumble in her belly reverberated again.
Sandistastrash!
Sand squeaked, snapped her wings together. She dove out of the Near Astral, into the Dragon Lines, then into her physical body. Her eyes snapped open and she jerked her head up and almost skidded down the side of her pile of golden coins, shimmering silver chalices, and thick rubies and emeralds and sapphires. She caught herself with her fore and hind claws, snapping her head around – her irritated tone shifting mid word. "Wha-at mom?" she asked, innocently, while her mother's entire head stuck in through the narrow metal door into her room.
"Sand," Mom said, her voice a husky contralto, rumbling deep from her belly. "What are you doing?"
"Just, ya know, surfin' the Near Astral," Sand said, innocently.
"Sand, are you trolling people again?" Mom asked, her voice growing dangerous. "Did I not tell you last time you did this, you almost cost me an election?"
"I did not!" Sand exclaimed, springing up onto her four legs. She skittered down the gold. "The Central Democrats were never gonna vote for you, even if I said they were re-"
"Sand!" Her mother shrank, but only so she could barge fully into the room. Even in her smaller size, the vast wyrm that was Charischora Avalanche dominated the room. She was a sleek blue and black, with glittering sapphire scales running in dramatic lines along her back and belly, and her wings had almost iridescent lapis lazuli highlights. Her eyes were, like many dragons, the color of erupting volcanoes. They flashed, lightning roiling in them. "You are the daughter of one of Wyrm City's Councilors – that means everything you do in every part of the Astral is scrutinized. Picked apart. Studied. Examined. For good! For ill!" She leaned forward. "The instant you became eighteen cycles old, there were half a million sweaty perverts trying to guess what your human form would be. The instant you did more than chew on the furniture, everything you've ever said and done has been taken as a reflection upon me. So when I learn…" She smashed her claw down. "That you're telling random people to kill themselves-"
"I was being sarcastic!" Sand whined, fanning her wings, ducking her head down. "Can't anyone take a frigging joke these days."
"Then they think that I condone this!" Charischora bellowed. "And now, I give you one last chance-"
"What!?" Sand exploded, snapping her wings back and jerking her head up, as high as she could stretch it. Her mother's head drew back and her lips thinned as Sand continued her spiel. "You never said that this was my last chance, you never said anything but I should...be...more...circumspect! And I was!"
"If you knew it was a test, would it have been a very good test?" Charischora snapped. "You are-"
"No, Mom, wait…"
"Banished from the astral realm!"
Charischora's claws slammed into the ground with a crunch – almost breaking the tile. The gold pile shifted, then skittered and Sand's boredom was now so far from her mind, she couldn't even remember why she had started flaming that rando. It was as if the whole world had gone topsy turvy! Like good had become evil! Like landcrawler had grown wings! Like dragon had become mortal. It was everything just in the world, all turned to corruption and sin. Why? Because Mom was a frigging paranoid because, like, it wasn't even as if landcrawlers got as many votes as dragons in the Council and and-
"And you're someone to talk, you big fucking faker!" Sand shouted.
"Do not sass back at me, young girl," Charischora growled.
"Oh yeahhh, Mom's soooo worried about what the forums say about her, but she goes around boinking elves behind when Daddy's not even sixteen years dead!"
Charischora leaned down, her voice even and quiet. "Your father, essence guide him home, is going to reincarnate in a hundred years. Once he does, I will very gladly cleave to him once more. Until then...I have needs. And I have them seen to privately, little scamp." She swelled, suddenly. Her wings pushed against the walls, her shoulders grinding against stone. Now, her entire foreclaw was the size of Sand, and she pinned her daughter down, making Sand squeak quietly. "And because I am an extremely understanding mother, I will accept that you are speaking in anger, and not in honest truth. But, from one femdragon to another…" She leaned down. "Grow. The. Fuck. Up. You. Little. Runtling!" She pushed her down more, then shrank, drew back, and sniffed. "I have to go run some damage control. Easy damage control, fortunately. But still."
She turned and swept out, her tail slamming the door after her as Sand blinked.
This is so unfair, she thought, muttering. ...and I didn't even tell anyone to kill themselves, I said they should frigging do it in DCC, that's a frigging crystalium game… She shook her head, sighing and picking herself up, with as much dignity as (though this comparison would never, in a million years, occur to her) a cat that had been sprayed down with a garden hose.
With the door hissing shut and clunking into place, she was left alone in her room. Alone with her thoughts. Alone with her fury. She started to scamper around. Then she rolled onto her back. Then, she sprang up onto her claws and slashed at the ground. She was in this state of utter, animalistic impotence, when a quiet chime came at the door. Snapping her teeth together with a crash, she turned and screeched. "What!?"
The door opened and a tall, slender elf stepped in.
"Oh noooo!" Sand groaned.
Her tutor, Lavianta, sighed. His lips were thin and his brows long, coming to two points that bobbed almost as far from his head as his ears. His head was bald as an egg and he had as many implants as some people had mugs in their kitchen – but as the Avalanche Clutch were among the richest dragons in the world, they had all been finely crafted by the most artisnal body sculptors and birthing specialists. The dragons and the parts of dragons that augmented Lavianta's body, mind and soul merged so smoothly with him that if one looked at him, they might think he was a completely mundane elf.
He still had to drink mana potions down like they were going out of style or his internal organs would melt – that much strain was being put on his mystical metabolism. Sand didn't consider that. Sand didn't consider much about Lavianta, other than the fact that he was here, and she really rather wished he wasn't.
"Young and most honorable dragon," Lavianta said. "Your mother said that you are ready for your week's history and civics tutoring."
"Auuuuuugh!" Sand groaned and rolled onto her back.
"She also mentioned you'd say something like that," Lavianta said. His lips pursed and his mind flitted through possibilities. He cocked his head. "Perhaps it would sweeten the medicine, if you know that I do have some say as to your mother's handling of you. I believe I could float...some overseen astral travel."
"Huh?" Sand jerked her head up so hard that her chin almost bumped her belly, her tail lashing against the ground.
"I would, of course, be here to ensure you don't say anything untowrd-"
"But I could go to the Near?"
"Even the Far, if you're good," Lavianta said, his voice dry.
"Yes!" Sand rolled around and sprang up. She sat down as prim and proper as a pekingese and lifted her chin up, nose in the air. "Lect away, Lavi!"
Lavianta arched one of those impossibly long eyebrows of his.
"...I mean, r-ready for your teaching, my honorable tutor."
"Very good," Lavianta said. He held out his palm and the almost invisible seam in his wrist opened. A glowing magical illusion appeared, showing the shape of Shell as it had been seen by orbit. Several of her satellites swung around – dragons who were, even now, curled up in on themselves to keep the Dragon Lines threaded between the planetary surface and LSO stable. Only the best dragons got to go into space. It took a lot of flapping to get there. Sand had once said she wanted to be an astrodragon, but as she had grown from hatchling to wyrmling, she had realized that that...took a lot of...like…
Work?
Still, she looked eagerly at the orb, wondering what Lavianta was going to be speaking about today.
"Sand, can you tell me the major states involved in the modern world of Shell?" Lavianta asked.
Sand screwed up her muzzle. "Ummmm, there is...Wyrm City. That's us."
"Ahem."
"Sorry, the Dragonocratic Union of Independent Clutches," she said. "Whose capital and primary source of power is Wyrm City."
"Very good," Lavianta said, dryly.
She resisted the urge to roll around. Or bite his ankles. Instead, she kept her wings firmly flush to her sides and sighed. "There is the Republic of Dragons, which controls the southern continent's northern tip. There's the Draconic Free States between the two, on the islands. And finally, there's the UULND, which controls the largest landmass of the western continent."
"Which is…"
She groaned, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling – her goodness veneer peeling away under this utterly inhumane treatment. Tutoring, on a weekday afternoon where she should have been in the Near Astral, doing stuff. "It's the United Unions of Landed Non-Draconic Soverignty."
"Which is run by…"
"A council of democratically elected dragons," she said.
"Ever since?"
"The…" She screwed up her nose even more, thinking hard. "The...um, the thing."
Lavianta did not provide a clue. Instead, he simply pursed his thin thin lips.
"The...the thing the...he had ...he did the thing with his shoe, uh…" She clacked her claws. "The Draco-Walker Reforms!" She exclaimed, having finally realized it. "Like, ten years ago!"
"Precisely," Lavianta said, sounding amused. "The UULND underwent economic reforms to ensure that it could continue to operate in an increasingly interconnected economic system. While they have lost a few of their states, they remain a power – while those states that refuse to integrate draconic systems have…?"
"...collapsed into barbarism?" Sand suggested.
"Correct," Lavianta said, his voice showing just a hint of kindness.
"Yes!" Sand pumped her fist. She was nailing this lecture.
Lavianta smiled, grimly. "But now that we have the overview, it's time for us to get into the specifics." He snapped his finger and the glittering image of the oblate sphereoid that was their home was replaced by a massive, sprawling tree that looked somewhere between a cat's cradle and a descent chart for one of those big old dragons who couldn't stop fucking the waitstaff. Each name, though, had a teeny tiny little logo, with dragons, wings, claws, little fire spurts, and lightning bolts all being common themes. Some names, she immediately recognized like DynaSoar and Manite and Tristar and Trioptimum and-
She groaned as Lavianta continued. "Lets begin breaking down the intercorporate connections between Wyrm City and her subsidiary industrial, agricultural and special interest zones. We'll start with the corporation backing your mother's reelection, Chromatic Solutions Incorporated." He pointed with his other finger. "Lets start by listing off CSI's primary exports and imports."
Sand opened her jaw.
"In order of most to least important, on first, an economic, then a military, then a political scale."
Sand put her fore-claws over her head and sank to her belly, groaning in abject defeat.
***
The worst thing was?
Once the tutoring was over, Mom didn't even let her go on the astral, even with Lavianta's oversight.
So, late...late in the night, with Mom snoring quietly in the main cave, Sand crawled along the floor as slowly and carefully as she could. There were detectors and security systems, yes, but they were scanning for something that was roughly mouse sized or bigger.
And right now?
Sand giggled quietly as her entire body undulated forward by one more inch. Keeping herself compacted this small was like holding her wings, tail, arms and legs inside of her body and holding her breath at the same time. But it was worth it as her centipede legs wriggled her forward another inch. Moving a hundred legs all at once in the right way was also harder than it looked, but it was getting her along. She wriggled. Wriggled again. Kept...wriggling.
Mom's snoring paused. Paused more.
Then she snored again.
Okay, keep wriggling. Sand was focused. She was going to get to the crystal if it frigging killed her.
Yes, Mom had denied her the Near Astral. But the thing was? That was projecting into the Astral. There were other ways to get into the Astral, now were there. Yes, the crystals were meant for their landwalker servants. But that didn't mean she couldn't use it!
Wriggle, wriggle.
Finally, she was past the security lines, and she grew to the size of a mouse, and the shape of a mouse. Scampering along the ground, she skimmed along metal and stone, then came to the crystal room. Peeking in, she saw two elves, looking tired, bored, and dressed in Avalanche Clutch colors. They were clustered in the far corner of the room, which meant their backs were to the left corner. She grinned and scampered towards one of the crystals there. Her nose gently bumped against a button and, with an almost subliminal purr, the crystal started to hum to life. She waited, eagerly, then crawled up the desk, came to the hand-socket. She turned into the disembodied stump of a landwalker's hand, slotted into the hand-socket…
Bzzzt!
She was in.
She groaned softly inside, feeling the Astral swim around her. It was separated by the thick membrane those poor non-dragons had to deal with all the time, but she was in it! She could post! She could-
A glittering pixie, bearing a scroll flitted into the air before her nose, then handed it to her. It unrolled in her vision. She read it...and then gasped in excitement.
KNYFE-9: yo, sand
Sand squealed mentally. K9 was online! Yes!
The best thing about K9 was how cool he was. He was, like, the same age as her...but he was like, a real smart dragon. He had to be a dragon, since he knew everything about dragons, and he was so fucking clear sighted and level headed. Of course, he was totally pretending to be a landwalker, like she did when she was using crystals like this. Since, like, on the Near Astral, no one knew if you were a landwalker or a dragon if you were using a crystal.
She grabbed the pixie, then handed her a scroll, scribbling on it.
SANDGIRL: K9!!!! holy shit I've had the most fucky day ever, it super sucked, turbo sucked, it sucked worse than getting flanked and backstabbed to shit.
The pixie came back with a direct golden thread, which her astral avatar grabbed.
In a second, she and K9 were floating near one another, two blobby masses of indistinct mental energy.
KNYFE-9: wow, that fucking sucks, what happened?
SANDGIRL: My frigging mom caught me on the Astral.
KNYFE-9: ...doing what?
SANDGIRL: ...nothing
KNYFE-9: okay, bb, what was it? It's cool, no judgment
SANDGIRL: I was just flaming someone, okay? I was bored.
KNYFE-9: man, you can't just randomly flame someone cause you're bored. That's what games are for, man.
Sand blushed. For some reason, K9's quiet shake of the head hit more and harder than her mom's growling.
KNYFE-9: sigh, it's okay. I have to sleep soon, but we can play a few rounds of Dragon Crawl Classic?
SANDGIRL: Hmmm…
She flitted closer. She pressed from direct message to whispering right into his tingling, buzzing form.
"Counterpoint…" her voice was soft. "I am going to get caught any second now by my mom, soooo, you could take an avatar form and blow my back out."
K9 and SANDGIRL have some cybersex~
K9 was very, very, very still. His wriggling astral form tightened, then swelled, then tightened again. "Uh…" He said, whispering back, with the same directness she was using. She focused and tightened herself into a slender little elf with glimmering pink hair, long and auroral, shimmering around her head. A halo tempting just about anyone to slip their fingers through, to caress, to squeeze, grip, tug. Her grin flickered bright in her virtual face as she purred softly.
"I'm still eighteen, you know."
"You constantly saying that makes you think you're lying about it," K9 said, his voice growing soft. His avatar was glorious. He had such intense control over astral shapes that he didn't flow from the diffuse cloud to his avatar – he just snapped into a muscular, broad chested lizardman, with a short, rainbow crest that fanned around his head. His scaled hand slid along her back and he moved them both with a thought – buzzing them out of the Near Astral and into a private nook carved out of the Dragon Lines, a place where no one would stick their nose in. Unless they knew precisely where to look.
The nook was drawn from his memories and Great Wyrm above, K9 had the coolest fucking memories. It was a skuzzy underdark alleyway, just near an entrance that ran out into the downpour of rain that came from overhead. Gleaming neon flickered through the gloom, and the only warmth came from a thing grating where an old wheezy dragon breathed out warm, fresh air. The tingling heat of his breath rushed along her bare thighs as they stood, naked and in public, ready to be seen by anyone who might walk on by.
"You're so frigging cool," Sand whispered softly.
"Am I?" K9 chuckled.
Sand blushed as she realized she had said that aloud. Her astral hands caressed his scaled chest. She wondered what kind of real job he had that let K9 know so intimately how the poor landwalkers did things. Was he, like, a cop? She leaned in and nuzzled against his chest. Her tongue darted out, tracing along the lines of him. This wasn't quite like licking his actual chest in real life – but it was so close that her nethers started to blaze with the insistent eggheat she got around K9. She let out a quiet mewl and kissed to one of neck, nuzzling his scaled throat. She felt his pulse thrumming as his scaled hand slid down, finding her ass. He squeezed.
"I...really should be getting to bed, Sandy…"
"Shh." She kissed up to the blunt muzzle of his avatar. "I'm thinkin' for this scene, mmm, runaway dragon princess and scoundrelous doorkicker?" She giggled.
He blinked, then laughed. "So, a number 8."
She blushed. "Hey!"
"Just saying, you have a type of scene you like a lot, Sand-girl." He nuzzled the top of her hair. "One might even think one had a thing for being a dragon princess getting dicked down by a lowborn." His other hand joined his first. Both were gripping her ass and his cock was emerging from its sheath, long and slick and blazing hot. She was melting against him.
Tech-nic-ally, she had never quite told him that she was a dragon, like he was. But like, he'd also never said, specifically, he was a dragon. But there was no way he could be a landwalker, he knew way too much about how dragons did things, and his astral presence was so strong, right? But right now, she was tempted to spell out exactly who she was, without a wrapping mask of false identities and sneakiness. She blushed and then shook her head. Stupid. The sneakiness was part of what got her so eggy and hot.
She squirmed, wriggled, then opened her mouth to complain – and then one of his fingers, already slippery and slick with some imagined lube, pressed against the puckered rosebud of her tight little astral ass. Sand gasped as he pushed into her tightness, and then crooked. She literally melted now, warm juices dripping down her thighs as she mewled. "K...Knyfe…"
"I think I wanna fuck an elf today," K9 purred. "What if I was the hot dragon slumming it with some land pussy, huh?"
She flushed. "That is kinda hot." She wriggled out of his grip, firmly, then got into character. "What are you d-"
K9 knew precisely how a dragon who was slumming it would do things. His hand casually slapped between her thighs and his two fingers thrust into her cunt. He moved with such skill that she felt a washing rush of pleasure shoot up her spine as his fingers pushed into her, crooked, found her simulated elfin G-spots (they had two) and he pressed. The pleasure exploded through her and choked her off into a cat-like yowl. She threw her head back, gasping and trembling. "W-What the fuck!" She gasped, trying to sound like how she imagined a landcrawler might say things if a dragon just did what a dragon normally-
"Shut up, knife ear." Oh god he was playing a red dragon too, fuck fuck fuck this was hot, this was sohot! The words blurred into her brain as his scaled palm clapped over her mouth and he pushed her back against the wall. He grinned. "I need to drain my big fat balls into you." He started to finger her faster and faster. Her arousal dripped down his wrist, splashing onto the ground as rain poured down. She was muffled to near silence and...god, he was so good at this Astral Sex thing, he was able to make illusory people walk past the alleyway. One glanced over, saw...and then hastily looked away. Just like what would actually happen!
She came again.
Her eyes rolled back as her back arched, her body trying to contort, to present herself to him as orgasm rocked into her. Then another orgasm hit her as his thumb found her elf-clitty and rubbed. She moaned into the muffling hand covering her while K9 just grinned at her with raw, pure, dragon confidence. His hand drew away from her sex, leaving her twitching and desperate...and he did not leave her that way for long. His hands snapped to her knees, grabbing her, hefting her up, and then grinding his dick against her. In the not-quite-real way that the astral did it, she wasn't sure of its shape or color...even when she glanced down, eagerly.
But she felt its warmth.
And the feeling of it being powerful. And masculine. And draconic.
She trembled as he thrust into her with a quiet grunt. Her secret dragon lover. She sometimes wondered if he was older than he claimed – like, yeah, he was eighteen, she was eighteen, but what if he was like, eighteen hundred? He was so cynical sometimes. So smart. And he knew so much more than her. She groaned in pleasure as he filled her...and left her empty, in the way astral sex always let you down at the very end there. The foreplay was so good, but your body wanted to be dicked and the dick was just imagined. Still, she clung to it, and thrilled on the fact her mom had her grounded, and she couldn't stop her from this…
"Fuck...fuck...fuck…" He grunted into her ear. "Fuck."
"Ah, cum in, daddy dragon, cum in me!" she moaned desperately in his ear, her thighs scissoring behind his back.
His tail twitched.
He-
"I'm still eighteen, you know."
"You constantly saying that makes you think you're lying about it," K9 said, his voice growing soft. His avatar was glorious. He had such intense control over astral shapes that he didn't flow from the diffuse cloud to his avatar – he just snapped into a muscular, broad chested lizardman, with a short, rainbow crest that fanned around his head. His scaled hand slid along her back and he moved them both with a thought – buzzing them out of the Near Astral and into a private nook carved out of the Dragon Lines, a place where no one would stick their nose in. Unless they knew precisely where to look.
The nook was drawn from his memories and Great Wyrm above, K9 had the coolest fucking memories. It was a skuzzy underdark alleyway, just near an entrance that ran out into the downpour of rain that came from overhead. Gleaming neon flickered through the gloom, and the only warmth came from a thing grating where an old wheezy dragon breathed out warm, fresh air. The tingling heat of his breath rushed along her bare thighs as they stood, naked and in public, ready to be seen by anyone who might walk on by.
"You're so frigging cool," Sand whispered softly.
"Am I?" K9 chuckled.
Sand blushed as she realized she had said that aloud. Her astral hands caressed his scaled chest. She wondered what kind of real job he had that let K9 know so intimately how the poor landwalkers did things. Was he, like, a cop? She leaned in and nuzzled against his chest. Her tongue darted out, tracing along the lines of him. This wasn't quite like licking his actual chest in real life – but it was so close that her nethers started to blaze with the insistent eggheat she got around K9. She let out a quiet mewl and kissed to one of neck, nuzzling his scaled throat. She felt his pulse thrumming as his scaled hand slid down, finding her ass. He squeezed.
"I...really should be getting to bed, Sandy…"
"Shh." She kissed up to the blunt muzzle of his avatar. "I'm thinkin' for this scene, mmm, runaway dragon princess and scoundrelous doorkicker?" She giggled.
He blinked, then laughed. "So, a number 8."
She blushed. "Hey!"
"Just saying, you have a type of scene you like a lot, Sand-girl." He nuzzled the top of her hair. "One might even think one had a thing for being a dragon princess getting dicked down by a lowborn." His other hand joined his first. Both were gripping her ass and his cock was emerging from its sheath, long and slick and blazing hot. She was melting against him.
Tech-nic-ally, she had never quite told him that she was a dragon, like he was. But like, he'd also never said, specifically, he was a dragon. But there was no way he could be a landwalker, he knew way too much about how dragons did things, and his astral presence was so strong, right? But right now, she was tempted to spell out exactly who she was, without a wrapping mask of false identities and sneakiness. She blushed and then shook her head. Stupid. The sneakiness was part of what got her so eggy and hot.
She squirmed, wriggled, then opened her mouth to complain – and then one of his fingers, already slippery and slick with some imagined lube, pressed against the puckered rosebud of her tight little astral ass. Sand gasped as he pushed into her tightness, and then crooked. She literally melted now, warm juices dripping down her thighs as she mewled. "K...Knyfe…"
"I think I wanna fuck an elf today," K9 purred. "What if I was the hot dragon slumming it with some land pussy, huh?"
She flushed. "That is kinda hot." She wriggled out of his grip, firmly, then got into character. "What are you d-"
K9 knew precisely how a dragon who was slumming it would do things. His hand casually slapped between her thighs and his two fingers thrust into her cunt. He moved with such skill that she felt a washing rush of pleasure shoot up her spine as his fingers pushed into her, crooked, found her simulated elfin G-spots (they had two) and he pressed. The pleasure exploded through her and choked her off into a cat-like yowl. She threw her head back, gasping and trembling. "W-What the fuck!" She gasped, trying to sound like how she imagined a landcrawler might say things if a dragon just did what a dragon normally-
"Shut up, knife ear." Oh god he was playing a red dragon too, fuck fuck fuck this was hot, this was sohot! The words blurred into her brain as his scaled palm clapped over her mouth and he pushed her back against the wall. He grinned. "I need to drain my big fat balls into you." He started to finger her faster and faster. Her arousal dripped down his wrist, splashing onto the ground as rain poured down. She was muffled to near silence and...god, he was so good at this Astral Sex thing, he was able to make illusory people walk past the alleyway. One glanced over, saw...and then hastily looked away. Just like what would actually happen!
She came again.
Her eyes rolled back as her back arched, her body trying to contort, to present herself to him as orgasm rocked into her. Then another orgasm hit her as his thumb found her elf-clitty and rubbed. She moaned into the muffling hand covering her while K9 just grinned at her with raw, pure, dragon confidence. His hand drew away from her sex, leaving her twitching and desperate...and he did not leave her that way for long. His hands snapped to her knees, grabbing her, hefting her up, and then grinding his dick against her. In the not-quite-real way that the astral did it, she wasn't sure of its shape or color...even when she glanced down, eagerly.
But she felt its warmth.
And the feeling of it being powerful. And masculine. And draconic.
She trembled as he thrust into her with a quiet grunt. Her secret dragon lover. She sometimes wondered if he was older than he claimed – like, yeah, he was eighteen, she was eighteen, but what if he was like, eighteen hundred? He was so cynical sometimes. So smart. And he knew so much more than her. She groaned in pleasure as he filled her...and left her empty, in the way astral sex always let you down at the very end there. The foreplay was so good, but your body wanted to be dicked and the dick was just imagined. Still, she clung to it, and thrilled on the fact her mom had her grounded, and she couldn't stop her from this…
"Fuck...fuck...fuck…" He grunted into her ear. "Fuck."
"Ah, cum in, daddy dragon, cum in me!" she moaned desperately in his ear, her thighs scissoring behind his back.
His tail twitched.
He-
Danger. Danger! Danger!
The instinct was fierce, blazing, overwhelming. She jerked herself out of the connection to the crystal and shrank to the size of a flea, compacting herself so tiny that her brain almost squished. The crystal hummed down and a few seconds later, one of the elf security guards stepped over, frowning and looking around. "I could have sworn…" He said, quietly, as she focused her entire being into two sensations. The first was pure, ice cold concentrated focused focusing focus. If she didn't focus, that elf was going to notice that a tiny flea had just grown to the size of a mouse or a cat, the most comfortable small forms she could take.
The second was I was sooooooooooooo frigging cloooooooooooose!
The elf frowned, then stepped back, shaking his head. "Stupid crystals are on the fritz again – I keep telling them, we need to re-sequence the whole lot of them."
"Oh stop bitching…"
Sand breathed out an explosive sigh. She grew to a mouse and, quivering, waited until she was absolutely sure she could jack back into the Near Astral. But when she did, her illicit lover, her friend and her mystery, K9, was offline. He hadn't even been able to leave a message, since any message he left, someone might find.
Sand grumbled all the way back to her gold pile, her body aching faintly with egg-heat, which faded only slowly once she grew as big as she could and wriggled herself deep into the gold.
She closed her eyes.
She dreamed of hunky older dragons, sweeping her off her feet, flying her to a Clutch that wasn't so boring and obsessed with politics. She dreamed of meeting K9 and learning his real name – and real job, and real scent. She imagined how cool he had to be in real life, if he was that good in the astral. She smiled.
What a dragon… was her last thought, before she drifted to somewhere deeper and broader, quieter and older than the gleaming Astral.
TO BE CONTINUED
This story is brought to you by the following patreon supporters! You can join and get your name added to this list, if you want!
Jeter Latenight, Joe Johnson, Dasm, Masterhobbes, Pancor, Ashed Disavowed, CJ (and only CJ), Lon'Tavion Scott, Chris, B.C. McGuire, Fast59, Morris, Tiberius Reign,
keen_FlattendHedgeHog, Paks, Phraxius, Pierce Gray, Taco1085, Albert Finney, Indianguy, MaxxDredd, MDG1969, Etorius Starwalker, Dave2282, Seth, Red24g, SylentNight, CrispnCrunch, AutumnStripe, Gillered, zerozero, Jarath, Daddy Lenin, clauskj3r, Devi Lacroix, Doughnut, Dracorexidae, Erika Chappell, Twei, Gibreel, J Corwin, thepsyborg, Anji, SomeRandomG33k, Evilhippy, mikalman216, Youkai-sama, Jaenen, Ollie, cdog02, Parzival95, Verdant, Osmina Deveraux, Alexander and Carmelmike
If you enjoyed my work, check out my work on Amazon right now! More than two dozen books are ready for your enjoyment!
Link: Dragon Cobolt: books, biography, latest update
And if you want to see more stories, please consider my Patreon! If you subscribe, you get free access to my self-published work, and get to see new chapters a WEEK EARLY, and can suggest future kinks, scenes and characters, and more!
Link: patreon.com/DragonCobolt
Finally, if you want to ask me any question about this story or others, feel free to follow me on twitter or bluesky: https://twitter.com/DragonCobolt
Thanks for Reading! If you enjoyed the story, please do comment and like!
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Really interesting, a further take of a future 'modern' D&D that is less Balder's Gate as happening in a sci fi space and more a fundamentally cyberpunk story as happening within D&D. Dragons as both these personal aristocratic expressions of the vast forces of corporate greed and imperial domination and as also this multifaceted infrastructural bedrock of the transhuman cyberpunk just rules, kinda reminiscent of Throne in Kill Six Billion Demons being built out of the titanic god-corpses. Only, it'd be like if the the body of Atlas the Enduring was also Amazon, and spawned stone-giants from his blood to gather lightning into Amazon's online store front.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I only have three ideas, and one third of them are always being me making fun of D&D.