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...
Mavlor Fairtree is a would be Rogue - a hacker and lockpicker for doorkicking, dungeon raiding criminals that live off the dragon grid and make their gold pulling contracts against the draconic corporations that run the world. But when a mission goes horribly wrong, Mavlor finds himself thrust into a world he could have never imagined...
And uncovers a secret that could make even a dragon blush!
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!"
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.
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-
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
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Slake was waiting for Mavlor when he arrived at the meeting place in the Red District. The air smelled strongly of sulfur, belching from the dozens of factories that poured out the worked metal needed to war machines and appliances alike. The smoke cut dragon stripes in the air, crossing against the wan blue-gray that shone between. The rain had stopped and the sun was peeking out, a large dragon eye peering down on the world with a kind of cruel benevolence. On the one hand, Mavlor was pretty sure that without the sun, the world would freeze over and even the dragons might notice eventually. On the other hand, it was as hot during the day as it was cold at night. The surrounding wastelands and the city proper soaked up heat and radiated it back out again, like a big wire running hot with mana.
The tavern that Slake had told him to go for was called the CUM PIT. He wrinkled his nose at the tavern sign and the glowing neon, muttering under his breath.
"Do they come up with a random name generator for these things?" he asked, opening the door.
The interior of the Cum Pit (ugh) was better decorated than his last tavern visit. The walls were wood paneled and there was that famous woodcut of the Four Warriors in the Mines, standing between snarling hordes and the surface. There was a pair of crystals, showing last night's game in shimmering, rippling full color. As Mavlor looked at them, he saw a massive, scaled lizardman in Fortress colors slamming directly into the Magpie's lines and sending their equally muscular ball players tumbling. The faux severed head he had clasped in his hand flashed out and was caught by a sprightly little dolphinoid, who was moving across the field as quickly as he might have dove beneath the seas. If the seas hadn't been boiling.
"Yo, Mavlor!"
Slake lifted her clawed hand and drew his attention. She and her fellow Doorkickers were roosted up in the corner, and apparently, this was the kind of place that let you lure taps away from the bars with enough inducement. The tap was currently perched on the shoulder of another elf who was everything Slake wasn't. Where Slake was muscled, this elf was scrawny. Where Slake was covered in visible augmentations, this elf was utterly untouched by anything save for something that made his left eye glow bright red. Where Slake was a woman, this elf was definitely a male. His short goatee bristled as he stuck his jaw out and glowered at Mavlor.
Next to him was a short squat dwarf, her bare cheeks and her pleated hair making her even more obviously feminine than Slake. She was currently openly field stripping a fully automatic bone cannon on the table, and no one seemed to be paying her any mind. Mavlor walked over with his hands in his pockets.
The elf man sneered. "This is the Rogue you got us?" he asked. "He looks like he could fumble a 20."
Mavlor frowned slightly. "And you look like a stiff wind will blow you over, what are you, a d4?"
"Oooh, he's got spine, I like him," the dwarf said, grinning as she flipped a panel of gleaming white polished dragonbone shut. She latched it, then started to screw it in.
Slake chuckled, reaching out and pressing her mug against the tap's dick and the dragon obligingly pissed what looked like clean water into the cup. Ah. Mavlor glanced back at the bartop and saw they had two taps there, both with vibrant colors indicating the multitude of glands they had for refreshment. This meant this sky blue tap was just for the water, which was why it was wandering around so freely. No one charged for water in mid-rent places like this. "So," Slake said, drawing her cup away and letting it cool for a bit as she leaned back. "This is Mavlor. He's a Rogue, like I said. Mavlor, this is Queerie, our Adept."
She pointed with her middle finger at the goatee clad elf.
Queerie inclined his head, despite his sharp words.
"And that's Lonk, our cleric," Slake said.
"Of what?" Mavlor asked.
"Guns," she said, casually.
"Didn't know that was an option," Mavlor said, taking a seat at the head of the little booth. The chair scraped under him and his knee was almost immediately jostled against Lonk's. Lonk grinned at him, then started to take another bit from her bone cannon out to check it over.
"Anything that sticks, lockjock," she said, casually.
"And that means you're a Streetnecht?" Mavlor asked, looking at Slake. "I mean, I kinda guessed."
She spread her clawed hands and her implanted mandibles flared out, then snapped flush against her jaw. "I don't dress to impress, but yes, I am a Streetnecht. We're what ya call an average Doorkicker party, save for one thing."
"Oh?" Mavlor asked.
"We're the best," Slack said, grinning warmly.
"If we were the best, we'd already be rich," Queerie muttered.
"He's got a point, Ess," Lonk said, frowning as she shook the component she had pulled from her gun. "You ever killed anyone before, Mav?"
Mavlor frowned. "Mavlor. And no. I'm a rogue, not a murderer."
"Well, good," Lonk said, grinning. "Greasing mooks is my and Slake's job. You and Queerie are for getting us to vaults and out of the dungeons again. Stick to it, we'll be good." She slotted the component back in. "It'll also help if you stay behind me. Smaug here doesn't exactly have a discriminating sense of direction." She patted her huge cannon. Mavlor shifted in his seat and nodded. He was genuinely not sure how he felt about the idea of killing people. He supposed it'd have to depend on the people, right? He imagined the corporate goons that had done security at the creche he had grown up in – and...well, if they were like that…
Slake sighed, reaching into her vest. She pulled out a small crystal. "So, Que, can you warm this up for us? We might as well run through the basics before it gets too late."
Queerie gave a long suffering sigh. He took the crystal in his hand and gripped it. With only a minute twist of focus, he was able to drive mana into it. The crystal projected up a hazy map of what was clearly a corporate dungeon – one entrance, security chutes, wall panel traps and lots of subdivided monster dens for their hired goons, with the actual vaults near the back of the whole structure. It was the kind of thing people back in the day built to keep dragons out. Now, dragons were desperate to have them to keep shit in. It was a rum old world. Mavlor slouched and tried to look like he had seen this kind of layout many, many times...and, well, at a certain level, he had. It wasn't like corporate dungeons were big secrets. He was pretty sure he had watched two documentaries about them.
It was just that this one was a specific corporate dungeon, not a generalized idea of one. He started memorizing corridors.
"This is one of Chromatic Solutions Incorporated's second tier dungeons," Slake said, her voice soft, hushed. "The security is, eh, level 8-10, nothing too major for us."
"So, in short, we're gonna get jack and shit for this job?" Queerie muttered.
"No, Que, because this isn't just any second tier dungeons. See, CSI is currently in a bit of a knife fight with TriStar. They got something big and juicy hidden in their labs, and their primary dungeons have been hit four times by Corpokickers, which means CSI is moving their top tier, grade A, gold dragon shit into a less known, less watched, less attention grabbing dungeon. This dungeon has had her security buffed up, see here?" She pointed. "These used to be grease traps. They've added in fireball traps, this is a fuckin' sphere of goddamn annihilation. They're going the whole fuckin hog here."
Lonk frowned, slightly. "And you know this is up to date…?"
"I trust the source. I paid enough for it," Slake said, shrugging. "We slice in, we get the goods, we get out, we sell to TriStar, and we're making bank."
"What if they didn't put whatever it is there in there?" Mavlor asked.
"Then we still rip off a dungeon and that's enough to keep us going to the next job," Slake said, quietly.
"Do you know what it is?" Lonk asked, her frown growing more pronounced.
"The rumor says it's high end augments shit," Slake said, her voice soft.
Lonk snorted. Her face was set in grim lines. "High end augmentation shit," she said, drawing curious looks from Queerie and Slake. "I bet it's Kobold shit."
"What's...a Kobold?" Mavlor asked.
This drew queer looks from everyone, including a faint smile from Slake. Mavlor held up his hands. "Listen, I'm a good rogue, but this is my first Doorkicking."
"Kobolds…" Queerie shook his head. "If we're lucky, they're an urban legend and this is just high end augmentations – which, I note, is probably what they are. Kobolds aren't fucking real."
"No, they're real," Lonk said, her voice hushed. She had started to ratchet her gun back together, clicking every piece together one after the other after the other. "They're very real."
Slake frowned, then gave her a little nod, like, go ahead, Lonk. Lonk's somber gray-gray eyes lifted up and met Slake's eyes, then swung over to Mavlor. The dwarf girl had a cheek like a boulder, but a well chiseled one, and it suited her blunt shoulders and her plush lips. Those lips were turned down, down hard. She sighed. "Kobolds are the bad end for Doorkickers. That's the rumor at least. See, Doorkicking...if you don't have a corporate sponsor, there's no one to ransom you to, right? Except someone always buys you. It'll just not be a friend or family...it won't be anyone you want. The House buys em."
"The...House?" Mavlor asked, feeling his stomach tighten up.
"They're some back of the black, deep Underdark shit operation. Like, you thought halfling brothels were bad, they have nothing on The House," Slake said, quietly. "I never heard they're involved in the Kobold trade, though."
Lonk nodded, grimly. "They buy Doorkickers and then they make em into Kobolds. Pets. Servants. Weapons." She shook her head. "And if you run into em...you'll know it. Cause they'll go…" She leaned in. "...yip! Yip! Yip!" She started to bark like a dog. Slake managed to keep a straight face. Queerie didn't. He started to laugh hysterically, clutching his stomach. Mavlor felt like someone had just upended a bowl on him and poured hot soup over his scalp. Warm dragon meat was dribbling down his back as Slake snorted, sniggered, then started to guffaw too. Lonk alughed, then slapped his shoulder.
"Nah, just fuckin' with ya!" she said, cheerfully.
Mavlor frowned and leaned back in his seat. "Real funny," he muttered.
Queerie laughed and wheezed. Slake shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye. "But nah, man, the House is real – and, uh, she wasn't lying. Getting caught as a doorkicker without a corporate backer sucks. But, like, they'll throw ya into the Federal fuck you over reincarnation prison. Kobolds, like, just a fancy word for two-leggers that serve dragons. Maids and shit. They usually act like they got a huge stick up their ass, but they're nothing special."
"They do go yip, but only cause they're running dogs of the dracoeoisie class," Queerie said, laughing again.
"Don't get him started on that Drag Magov stuff," Lonk said, sighing. "So, we're going to go over how we're gonna do this, right?"
"Right," Slake said. "Enough fucking with the new kid. Here's how we start…"
***
By the time night had come, rain was starting to pour down overhead and Mavlor's stomach had congealed into a tightened ball of pure miserable worry. He had gone through every step and he had nodded along with all the ideas and grunted quietly and when people had gone 'sound good' he had always said, sure. Like he totally knew what he was doing. The only problem was that this was his first kick. They just had to not know that until it was over. He kept his face grave and focused as the four of them walked along the streets of the Black District, rain hitting the buildings at a slant, leaving this alleyway dry...ish. His foot splashed into a puddle and he ignored the sudden rush of cold water.
"Okay," Slake said, her voice grim. "We're here. Que, get us wyrmed."
Queerie slapped his palm against his chest. He closed his eyes, wheezed, then coughed. A moment later, he coughed again, then wretched. Mavlor, who had never been so close to an adept before, winced and took a step back. He hadn't expected it to sound so much like a cat trying to get a hairball up. His nose wrinkled and he frowned, intently, while Queerie coughed once more and spat up a thick glob of something sticky. He sighed, shook his head, then started to disentangle bits from it. The first thing he held out was to Mavlor.
It was a wyrm: A dragon reduced down to its longest, thinnest point, with tiny stubby little forearms and forepaws. Its mane made it look even more bedraggled, soaked as it was with Queerie's spittle.
Just like Slake had said.
Mavlor pressed his immediate reaction down and instead held the worm up to his ear. He screwed up his face and covered up for what was going to happen by saying: "Gods, I hate doing thi-"
The worm slammed into his ear and shot in with a whump. He felt the scrabbling of its paws, and the strange sensation of its damp mane sweeping into his ear canal. Then there was a... He grunted and, for a fleeting moment, swore that he could smell the color orange. He coughed, sneezed, and then finished. "...is."
"Yeah…" Lonk said. She wiggled her wyrm from side to side with a frown. She cocked her head and dropped her wyrm in. Queerie put his wyrm up by his nose.
"You go through the nose, gods, that's so fucking gross," Slake muttered, putting her wyrm to her ear. She shook her head, shivered, and flicked her tail. [Check check, can you read me?] She asked, her voice appearing inside of Mavlor's brain without him needing to hear anything.
[I can hear you,] Mavlor said back without saying anything.
[We're good here,] Queerie said. [But of course we are, I compelled them.]
[Wyrmtastic,] Lonk added.
[How are you for dragon essence, Q?] Slake asked.
[Please.]
[I'd prefer a number, not arrogance?] Slake spoke as she drew a curved blade, the kind used to hack people while you were on dragonback. She twirled it in her hand, claws not making her any less nimble.
[98%]
[All right,] Slake said. [Mavlor, you're up first.]
Mavlor cracked his knuckles and breathed in a short, sharp breath. His mouth tasted the faint sting of the ash that smeared itself into the rain and came down as gray streaks along the building walls around them, and his throat tingled with a bile rising up and out. Fear bile. He forced it down, kneeling onto the alleyway and sticking his finger into his dragon port. Shifting into the astral was the same lurch that he felt the last few times – and he clung to his focus and his goal. Get through this. Get paid. Get out of here. Get to the beach.
His astral body shimmered into the air and he glanced back. Looking at Queerie and Lonk through the hazy caul that separated the real world from the Astral, he saw them more clearly than he had before: Queerie throbbed with the slow, steady pulse of magic, starting in his chest and working out towards the pores of his skin, while Lonk had a silvery thread reaching from her spine up and up and up into the sky, into some place beyond the world of Shell. He was still not sure if she was entirely serious about calling upon the powers of Gun. But he supposed that whatever worked, worked. He turned back and drifted towards the entrance of the dungeon.
Chromatic Solutions Incorporated had gone in for a modest facade for their dungeon: A small metal door attached to a normal looking warehouse, without a single sign that there was anything unusual about it save for a tiny logo and a keypad. The keypad was made of crystal buttons and metal, and when he brushed his finger along it, his astral body was sucked into the connection between it and the rest of the dungeon. It was just as the map had promised: Thin dragon lines connecting the parts of the dungeon together each pulsed with more power than he had ever felt in a astral connection before. The machinery here wasn't simply secure. It was powerful. It was so powerful that moving against that flow with his astral body felt like trying to swim up a sewer pipe. Not only did he not have enough room to swing his arms, but the water came surging, roaring, crashing into his face, driving him back and back and back…
And so, he didn't try and push himself that much farther. There was energy drop off the further an astral body got from the biological. The silvery tether connecting his soul to his flesh could only draw so much current, after all. This was why Rogues came along with kicks, instead of sitting back home with a nice warm beer.
Instead, he took his focus and threw it into the keypad. Without an actual dragon in the lock, it would have been easy as hell to just slice the door code apart and have the whole thing open up like a flower. Easy, yes. Obvious, also. He carefully slid an astral palm between the door connection and the keypad itself, his fingers buzzing as he felt energy trying to strobe through him. He allowed some of it to go through, then more and more and more, until his hand didn't even feel the buzz. It was like his palm was nothing but air, and the energy could slip through easy and winking.
Now, anyone in a nest would be unable to spot the changes from power fluctuations – their eyes might have been drawn by the moment he slid his hand into the connection, though. He waited. Then waited a beat more. Once he was sure that the nestjock wasn't going to swoop in, he started to squeeze off certain facts from the keypad from the rest of the building. Now that the keypad and the nest weren't sharing everything, he quietly snipped the code out, then jerked his hand back. Now, the keypad was going to open to anything – and since he had removed the knowledge of the code from its tiny little brain, it wouldn't even know to alert the nest that the door had opened.
He yanked his silvery tether, snapped back to his body and coughed as he felt the tiny dragon in his brain kick restively. "We're in," he said, quietly.
Slake jerked her head in a nod. "Any bad guys inside?"
"I couldn't get into their forward scrying orbs – the network's intense," Mavlor said, quietly, his hand going to his ear and rubbing it absently. He felt the wyrm there wriggle and twitch and jerked his hand away in disgust.
[Figured,] Slake said, switching to her wyrm as she drew her sword with a soft rasp of metal on leather. It was a single edged cavalry saber, and glittered in the faint neon glow of the streetlights. Her other hand flexed and claws snicked from her fingertips as her thick tail twitched and rose up. She breathed in, then out and the wyrm in Mavlor's head caused him to see a glittering blue trail of arrows, which ran from the floor to the door, with a count down timer. He blinked a bit – but at Lonk's grunt, he supposed she knew what she was doing.
Before the counter hit 5, though, Slake had started to sprint. She rushed across the street with fluid speed, her feet splashing in the gray rain puddles, her leather jacket seeming to shimmer with reflected moisture. Her clawed hand flashed across the panel and, just as Mavlor had hoped, the door opened. He tensed as the number started to hit 1 – but before he could run forward, Lonk sprang to her feet and started to sprint after. Glancing over at Queerie, Mavlor saw that his eyes had closed. Mavlor felt a faint pressure behind his eyes. He closed them.
Rather than seeing a smeary blob of nothing…
He instead saw Slake. But he saw her from the perspective of someone a head and shoulders shorter than him. He saw the bulk of the bone cannon. He could hear Lonk's panting breaths, sounding different as they reverberated through bone.
He was seeing through Lonk's eyes.
Slake was in the door, and there were, in fact...bad guys. Two corporate monsters, both of them skeletons. Both were in heavy carapace and scale armor, and both had rapid fire subdragon guns, the kind that didn't shoot fully formed wyrms, but instead teeth chips, spurts of greenish flame, and bile stored in the guts. Everything that was close to a dragon, but not quite of a dragon. They reacted quickly to the sudden opening of the door.
Not quicker than Slake.
Her saber came down and slashed one of the SDGs in half. Her heel kicked out as she snapped her other leg up with reflexes plated with extracted draconic nerve endings, pulsing faster than an elf normally could. Faster and stronger. The impact slammed into the carapace chestpiece of the skeleton and cracked it along the rib-lines. He stumbled backwards, greenish smoke billowing from his eyes. Before he could recover, Lonk stepped in and hefted up the barrel of her bone cannon. The cha-thump CHONK of the cannon opening fire was only eclipsed by the shattering crash as a bone spike the length of Mavlor's arm appeared in the skeleton's skull, shattering it apart and sending the corpo monster to the ground. Lonk panted quietly, and her voice flicked over the wyrm connection. [We're good. Move up, squishies.]
[That's us,] Queerie said, his voice amused as he opened his eyes. Mavlor did likewise, scrambling to his feet. By the time he got to the door, Slake had taken up position at the next door into the dungeon proper. This led into a pair of corridors that looped out, spreading into the two overall wings. Both wings then met back around again, providing two potentail entrances to the vault itself. If the map was right, they'd need to clear both wings of monsters and find the key scattered through it. Mavlor didn't really know why dungeons kept their keys in their premises. He supposed he'd have to find some way to ask without tipping off how new he was.
Once he was in the room proper, Queerie closed the door, then said: [Any damage?]
[We won the ini roll,} Slake said, flashing him a grin. [Okay, can we knock this door, or kick it?]
[That's me,] Mavlor said, remembering only at the last second to use his wyrm and not his mouth. He closed his eyes and stuck his finger into the port. His astral form darted into the door.
It was trapped.
He felt it the instant he dove into it- the series of tiny glands that had been woven into the bone and metal of the doorframe, just waiting for the wrong person to put the wrong amount of pressure in the wrong place. It'd fill the entire room with enough aerosolized acid to melt the entire team. He immediately spoke through his wyrm connection as his astral hands started to slide gently, gently, gently along the glands, feeling them twitching and quivering restively. [Door's trapped, no one move.]
[Shit,] Queerie said. Mavlor risked a glance and saw that Queerie had been just about to step towards the door. He listened to Mavlor, though, which meant he was now caught midway through a step. Lonk moved up behind the slender elf Adept, picking him up bodily with her two broad hands and setting him down a safe distance away from the door.
Mavlor focused on the glands. Their connection was through dragon lines, but like everything else, it fed back to the nest. He wasn't sure if he could yank every connection without alerting the nest. He frowned intently. What would an expert do?
Well.
If the dungeon was going to be raided, and the kick was all about speed, like Slake had said…
Then he didn't have to work quiet. Just fast.
He started off by shoving himself into the astral connection. The flow was easier to work with now that he was in close, but it was still exhausting to crawl from this entrance chamber to one of the side rooms. According to the map, this was a well ventilated living room for some of the corporate monsters, and that meant it was the best choice for his idea. While his astral presence clung to the walls of the room, the pressure of the flow trying to push him back to where he started, he unhooked one hand, then reached back. Here, the flow helped him – almost too much, almost yanking him away completely.
He reached.
And reached.
And then got his glowing, astral fingers around the nodules on the door. He yanked them all at once.
If the nest jock noticed – and unless the nest jock was fucking dead, he'd damn well fucking notice – then the sign would be that some Rogue had just pulled the teeth on the front door. But they'd have pulled it from the other room, not from the entrance. He hoped that confusion would buy them enough time.
He let go and snapped back into his body so fast he fell away from the door, gasping.
[It safe?] Lonk asked.
[Yeah, but they definitely noticed. I think I got them to think the other room is the source, uh, Room A4.] He said, referring to the map. Slake grinned, fiercely. She stepped up to the door without fear, cracked it, peeked, then nodded and looked back.
[We're doing a pin and sweep.]
[Got it,] Queerie and Lonk said at the same time. Neither of them even glanced his way.
Mavlor gulped and pulled back. He drew his wyrmgun. He wasn't sure what exactly a pin and sweep was, but he was going to act like he knew, and leap in when things looked ready. The door opened with a hiss as Slake shoved it open. Then she sprang out into the corridor, flattening her back against a niche in the smooth wall, right next to a small scrying camera that was, even now, showing everything to the nest jock.
The only problem was the nest jock had sent their orders a bit too early. Or too late, depending on how you looked at it.
Six well armed goblins had just arrived around the corner at the left end of the corridor. They were heading straight for Room A4 – their SDMs and their armor gleaming in their hands. This gave Slake not just a flank, but a perfect surprise round. She let out a bloodcurdling shriek, sprinted from cover, and slid along her feet into the center of the goblin formation. Two of them turned moments before she got to them – just slightly more on the ball than their friends. Her saber slashed one across the face and her claws raked the other in the throat, finding chinks in their carapace, scale, and bone armor. Blood splattered the walls and the remaining four goblins started to scramble backwards.
Slake, though, didn't keep slashing. She instead leaped straight upwards. Her claws sunk into the metal ceiling and she swung her legs up, her tail slapping against the wall and sticking there – the spike at the tip thrusting home and rooting her with a third contact point. The goblins, meanwhile, cried out as vines and roots exploded from the ground. They didn't push through the metal. Instead, it was as if they simply grew from nowhere, from nothing, and swept around and around their bodies, pinning their arms to their sides and keeping them firmly in place.
Mavlor saw that Lonk was getting herself ready, while Queerie sparkled with green motes of energy. He was the one who had done vined them up, huh?
Mavlor realized that time he had been waiting for?
It was now.
He rolled out into the corridor, remaining on his knees, while Lonk steadied her gun. Together, they both started to open fire. Bone spikes sprouted from one goblin, while Mavlor worked the hammer on his wyrmgun again and again. Each time the chamber revolved around, one of the eggs that was now in the barrel hatched and a tiny dragon shot out, wriggling and scrabbling. Normally, the armor the goblins wore was thick enough that it'd have been easy for them to brush the dragons off before they found flesh to bite and chomp into.
But their arms were pinned to their sides.
The dragons wriggled in, blood spurting as they burrowed with grisly delight into their targets.
The four goblins slumped, their bodies suspended by the vines for a few moments before dropping. The three dragons that Mavlor had fired flew out of their targets, their wings splattering greenish blood everywhere. Mavlor opened the chamber of his wyrmgun, and held it out, whistling softly.
His ammo flew in, roosted, then scrambled into the chamber.
[I never went for wyrmguns because, like, what if your ammo died?] Lonk asked.
[They reincarnate, it's fine,] Mavlor said.
[No, I mean, what do you do when you run out. Bone cannons have hundreds of shots per magazine, you have six – and yeah, it comes back. Unless it doesn't.] She chuckled.
Slake dropped down.
Her lips were turned in a frown.
"Something is not right," she said, aloud.
Mavlor blinked. Then it clicked in his brain – a realization that didn't need expertise.
This was too easy.
The doors behind them, the doors he had sliced into so easily, slammed shut with a series of loud whumps. Queerie was almost down a foot thanks to the door. He yanked it back at the last second. "Shit!" He exclaimed, while Mavlor and Lonk hurried to the door. Lonk shouldered it, frowned, then muttered.
"I can get us out of here," she said, quickly.
[Okay, Mav, get us eyes, and blank out anyone's attacks.] Slake said, wiping her sword, her face set, her expression grim. This was far worse than anything she had planned for. Mavlor glanced over at Lonk, who had started to whisper a soft prayer under her breath. The lilting language she used wasn't one he recognized, but whatever she called on, it made the barrel of her gun glow a dull green. With a wet splat she fired a bone spur into the doorway. It bounced off, skittering through the air, and hissed as it left behind a trail of glittering green slime, some splattering onto the floor or ceiling. Lonk yelped and sprang backwards, while the slime trails hissed and smoked.
"Acid?" Mavlor exclaimed, jamming his finger into his port and closing his eyes.
Muted, he heard Lonk saying: "Yeah, but we're gonna need a lot to get through this door. Firing low to avoid any more ricochets…"
[We've got company.]
That was Queerie's voice, coming over their wyrm. Mavlor darted into the dragon lines, swept to the nearest scrying eye, and peered down the corner. The soldiers advancing were not standard corporate monsters. These were powerfully built men and women, their bodies both augmented and covered in bone plate. The good kind of bone plate, the kind that covered every inch of their bodies, the kind made of bones that were still magically rich with draconic flight, lightening them and making their normal immense weight nearly airless. They stomped down the corridor and bore in their hands maces and snub nosed, full bore blue dragon pistols. The dragons were happy to sit on the handles and wait for the gentle poke from the trigger mechanism to spurt their lightning attacks.
Mavlor spoke, nervously. [It's all non-lethal weaponry?]
[That's worse,] Slake said.
He started to try and worm his way into the system.
Where before, there had been either no presence, or a muted and distant nest jock, Mavlor felt his astral body suddenly hooked and held in place. A glowing pink arm wrapped around his throat and he felt a slight, feminine form pressing to his back. A vicious hiss whispered in his ear. Thought you could get this far without us noticing?
Not a nest jock.
Another rogue.
And he'd just been backstabbed. Mavlor felt building panic explode into his brain – while in the real world, through the scrying eye, he saw Queerie throw down a wall of glittering fire. Purple heat exploded before the plate armor clad monsters. They stumbled back and away from the heat, buying them time on that side. Slake, though, was already engaged with more plated goons on the left flank. Her sword flashed as she dodged away and parried a pair of mace swings. Crackling sparks flew as saber met thick, dragon bone handle. A mace's head drove into the wall where her skull had been, and metal crumpled inwards.
Okay, maybe non-lethal was overthinking it, Mavlor thought, panicking as he felt his astral oxygen getting cut off by the pink arm bar across his throat. He kicked his legs, frantically – and more by luck than by planing, his foot crashed into one of the dragon lines running from the scrying orb back to the first chamber of the dungeon. Just as it had before, the current caught him and swept him forward – but his neck was drawn up short as the pink Rogue that had grabbed him was suddenly holding him against the intense winds. Her grip loosened and she grunted in shock.
Mavlor swung his hand up and clawed at her face. His fingers found something soft and giving and she cried out in pain and fury. She released him and he tumbled away, shooting down the dragon line connection. He skidded into the astral space, coming onto his back and turning to face the dragon line, while in the real world, Slake managed to get her saber against a chink in someone's armor. Blood spurted so hot and so far that Mavlor felt it splash against his own, physical face. Distant. Muted. But then Slake cried out in pain.
An armored figure had grabbed her tail.
The pink rogue came out of the port with the grace of a trained acrobat. She flipped, landed in the astral space, and started to come after Mavlor not with her arms, but with a pair of short stabbing daggers attached to the back of her palms. The fact she had astral gear at all was shocking: Mavlor was naked as the day he was born, and her slender, elfin body was just as nude. But those blades were oh so very real: Astral gear, forged in the Deep Astral by draconic spirit smiths, was able to cut souls.
Listen! she said, darting a quick punch at his gut, forcing him to spring backwards. We don't wanna kill you. But-
She feinted, then punched out. Mavlor ducked the wrong way – and rather than severing any part of his astral body, she caught his silver tendril with her hand, carefully tilting her palm so she didn't slice it with her blade.
-we can't have you mucking this up.
The yank was enough. His silver strand retracted and slammed Mavlor back into his head. He stumbled, and shook his head as he saw that Slake was rolling away. Her tail was a bloody stump, the massive chunk of flesh gripped in a furious looking plate armored monster.
"Lonk!" She bellowed.
"I'm-" Lonk shouted.
[Oh dear.] The thought was crystal clear. It came a second later with a hideous sensation of cold, a jarring sense of loss. Mavlor, his own head reeling, watched as Queerie dropped to the ground. The elf's skull had been shattered open by a mace blow, his one good eye wide and staring. He sprawled on the ground, blood and bits of skull splattered everywhere. The flames had died down enough that the monsters on that side were marching up.
"Fuck!" Lonk screamed, then fired her bone cannon as fast as she could. Acid spurs crashed into the door again and again – but the initial work she had put into it had been enough. The acid was weakened now, weakened to the point where these spurs now bit and bit deep. The door's bottom half was pitted, smoking, a ruined mess.
Slake, her eyes furious, sprinted forward. She slammed into the door shoulder first and the lower half cracked like brittle stone. She hit the ground and skidded forward, then sprang to her feet, hissing as steam sputtered around her feet. She was bloody and dripping with acid, but she turned back, her eyes wild and furious. Lonk grabbed onto Mavlor, hauled him to his feet, shouted.
"Go! Go!"
Mavlor stumbled. He drew his wyrmgun and fired wildly at one of the plate clad figures. Lonk hurled her bone cannon – smoking and hissing, overheated and useless – at one of the monsters. The weight of it sent him crashing to the ground, but then Lonk was gone. Mavlor took a step back.
Stepped directly into acid.
Dropped to the ground. He shrieked in shock, then looked around wildly. The power armored figures were regrouping – two were dead, one was knocked over, there was confusion all about, and the acid was burning through his foot. The pain went from incredible...to distant...and everything seemed to be very, very, very clear now. He looked back.
Slake and Lonk were at the final door out. Lonk was slamming her shoulder into it repeatedly. Slake was just shaking her head.
It was locked again.
Mavlor's cold focus grew even sharper.
He jammed his finger back into his port.
In the astral, the pain felt even more distant. Even more quiet. Even more ignorable. The pink rogue stood between him and the keypad lock. She smirked, her eyes glinting.
Back for more? She asked, her voice amused.
Mavlor squared his shoulders. He sprinted at her. In here, in the astral, his foot didn't hurt. His foot couldn't hurt. He rushed forward – then threw himself flat, as if he was on the baseball course. He skidded between her thighs. Her blade slammed down – but she forced herself to pull the punch at the last second, narrowly avoiding cutting his silver tether. He came to the other side, rolled, then reached up and slapped his palm hard against the keypad's astral form. He didn't use any subtle grace, he simply yanked.
The door opened for a single sputtering second – timed perfectly so that Lonk tumbled through. Slake blinked, looked back at him.
He snapped back into his body.
Their eyes met.
She mouthed a word.
It could have been sorry.
It could have been fuck.
Whatever it was, he just shook his head.
She turned. Ran.
Gone.
And then one of the monsters stepped up and brought his mace onto the top of Mavlor's skull. Gently enough to merely almost kill him.
***
Mavlor came too with a slow, soft groan. His head hurt. His soul hurt. His body hurt. And most of all? His hope hurt. That hope he had had was gone, ripped out and bleeding, leaving holes throughout his body, and it hurt. He fluttered his eyes slowly open, and realized that...through a distant, muffling blanket of pain, he could hear voices.
"...still got…"
"...not gonna…"
He blinked.
He closed his eyes. He smacked his lips. Finally, he lifted his head and forced himself to not vomit. It didn't work. A thin line of bile emerged from his lips and he coughed and wheezed. The nausea and the blinding bright lights of where he was were too much. He closed his eyes. Then he felt a soft hiss and felt some amazing warmth flooding his veins. He almost recognized the drug – it was some kind of healing potion. But it was strong. Stronger than anything he'd had before. The pain faded and when he opened his eyes again, he could see clearly.
He just kind of wished he couldn't.
He was strapped down to a metal chair in a sparse metal room. His arm, hip, and temple were bleeding sluggishly – he could feel that tackiness against his cheek, and it was mostly an inference: His port was gone. They had yanked his implants. They had to have gotten the dragon in his head too. They hadn't yanked it the way some back alley drop-shops might do it, since he could still think and wasn't currently smelling the color pink. But the fact it had been a gentle, nice surgical removal didn't make him any happier.
The two other people in the room were a tall, buff looking orc dressed in a real nice, real slick suit with a little candle logo on a badge strapped to his breast.
The other was…
"Razor?" Mavlor asked.
His roommate glanced at him, then looked back at the orc.
"You got the best one," he said, grinning. "And that little band of adventurers isn't gonna cause a problem for your employer any time soon. Win, win, we're all wins here."
"You'll get fifty percent," the orc said, grumbling quietly. "Which is damn good for when you promised me four candidates."
Mavlor felt sick again. "You...son of a bitch…" he whispered, slowly, his eyes wide. "You son of a bitch!"
"Listen, man, don't get mad at me," Razor said, turning to face him, spreading his hands. "I'm just hustling. I'm just playing the game. It's how it's made to be played – you either keep your head above water, or you go under. I'm...like a shark." He grinned. "And you were keeping me in place, man."
"I can't believe this," Mavlor whispered. "The job was gonna pull in millions!"
"Ehhhh," Razor said. "In a five way split? Counter: this way, we have three one way paydays for me." He grinned, slightly, then winced. "If it helps, they're not gonna kill you or anything."
"Three?" Mavlor whispered. "...you sold Slake the map." He closed his eyes, his jaw tightening.
"And I'm getting paid for pluggin' this little security hole," Razor said, chuckling. "...uh, you're sure the process is, like, a hundo effect?"
"Please leave, Mr. Killboar," the orc said, his voice a quiet grumble. "We don't like antagonizing future subjects."
"Right, right. Once I get paid." Razor said.
"You will be given precisely what you have earned," the orc said, frowning.
"That...sounds like what you say before you kill someone, I-"
The orc looked up at the ceiling and let out an explosive sigh, his nose flaring. "If. We. Killed. People. Who. Tip. Us. Off. No. One. Would. Do. It. You have watched too many bad crystal plays, Mr. Killboar. Please. Go. Now."
Razor heisted.
Then he turned and walked away. Once the door had closed behind him, the big buff orc adjusted his collar, tugged on his tie, then muttered under his breath. "Never before have I wished I could be a cliche," he said, quietly. Then, turning to face Mavlor, he cocked his head. "Mr. Fairtree, do you know why you are the most valuable commodity in this room?"
Mavlor, who was still breathing faster than he wanted, whose heart was hammering in his chest, whose brain was swirling with fear and anger, blinked. The words hit him with the exact same effect as being flicked directly in the center of his forehead. "Valuable?" he asked.
"Yes, Mr. Fairtree," the orc said, smiling. "Your brother's implants. You were using them. Do you know how exceptionally rare it is for someone to be able to use implants not specially treated for their biology? Do you know how unlikely it is that a drop out cleric like Razor Killboar would be able to insert them into you in that half-assed attempt he has for a dragon lab?"
Mavlor gulped. "H-He said it was cause we were related?"
"Hmmm, so, he must have decided to sell you quite early," the orc said. "Because it was Mr. Killboar who first determined your augment sensitivity."
"Y-Yeah?" Mavlor asked. "It's, like-"
"It's zero percent, Mr. Fairtree."
Mavlor blinked.
Augment sensitivity was how hard it was to cram dragon bits into your body. Most people sneaked around it by having, as the orc had said, their augments grown to suit their body. Other people bought cheaper implants, but then chugged potions by the gallon to keep their bodies intact. Razor had specifically told him his AS was in the 50% range, nice and average. He had said it wouldn't matter, because...he was using his brother's implants.
He blinked again. "No one's...got zero percent."
"People do," the orc said. "And when they do, we purchase them."
Mavlor gulped. "W-Who is...We?" he asked.
"The House, Mr. Fairtree," the orc said, smiling slowly.
Mavlor's eyes widened. "I-I thought you were an urban legend." His voice was soft.
"We work hard on making sure people do. We have feelers out there, who offer to buy low AS people – it's a full time job, keeping it subtle while having an eye and ear open. We normally get them earlier, when they show up in an augment clinic. But...well...that's why we have the fiscal incentives." He spread his hands. "Otherwise, you might have learned the truth before we could take you off the board. And that would make our position quite untenable."
Mavlor gulped. Hard. "W-When Razor said it was...a hundred percent effective. He was talking about m-memory loss, right?"
"No, Mr. Fairtree," the orc said, his voice grim. "Your memory will not be erased, your personality will not be rewritten. This is why I am explaining this to you." He took a step forward. "Here." He took another step forward. "Now."
Mavlor, if he had had anything left, would have thrown up again.
"It is vital that you understand that if you try to escape...we will kill you." His voice was very soft. "This is the stick."
Mavlor gulped and nodded.
"Now, do you want to hear the carrot?" the orc smiled. He was close. Very close. Close enough that Mavlor could see his perfect teeths and his polished tusks in every bit of detail. He could tell this guy had amazing dental work. Hell, he was fairly sure that the teeth were dragon bone – implanted and treated so they'd never need cleaning or treatment again.
Mavlor bobbed his head. He couldn't bring himself to speak.
"You will live forever." The orc smiled. "If you can manage it."
Mavlor blinked. "What are you going to do to me?" He whispered, softly.
The orc stepped back, then snapped his fingers. Two elves entered the room – both female, both dressed in tight white smocks and nurse gloves. Their faces were masked, and their eyes were cold. They looked at Mavlor as if he were a piece of meat. They grabbed onto the chair and Mavlor found it was wheeled. They started to wheel him towards the doorway, their presence so coldly detached that the fear in Mavlor's gut mingled with a strange and eerie excitement. It was as if he had gone so far, so deep into some part of Wyrm City had had no idea existed, that his brain was switched to a new mode.
Lets see what happens next.
The corridors he was wheeled through was sparse and brightly lit, and he came to a door labeled PREP.
The room was circular and quite warm. A humidifier was running, keeping the air thick with moisture. It started to bead onto his skin and felt luxuriously good after the cold and the fear. With the healing potion throbbing in his veins and the sudden change in temperature, Mavlor felt himself almost lulled into sleep instantly, like every switch in his body set to adrenaline was flicked off. It was only then that he noticed the room was not empty. Standing within were two of the most exquisite draconians he had ever seen in his life.
They looked like lizardmen: Broad shouldered, scaled. One was sapphire blue and brilliant gold, his back scales gleaming like the sky, his belly and chest shimmering with luster. The other was brilliant ruby red and ebony black. Their snouts were short and blunt, and their eyes were both bright, slitted and full of good humor and intelligence. The difference, though, came in the tails – long and whiplike – and in the wings. In that they had wings. They were the perfect midpoint between two-legger and dragon, and Mavlor wasn't sure if these particular draconians were what people called street draconians...or pure draconians.
Street draconians were lizardmen who bought themselves wings. Or elves and orcs who went completely hog wild with augmentations. It was funny, calling them street draconians was sort of a backhand insult, but, like, going from an elf to a draconian cost more money than Mavlor would have ever gotten in his entire life.
Pure draconians, meanwhile?
They were just...dragons who had taken a two legged form for whatever reason.
These particular draconians were muscular in the extreme, with thick slabs of bulging muscle beneath their scales, which they showed off to a T, dressed in only thin wraps around their waists, their tails hanging free and openly. They stood in the same posture: Arms crossed, legs spread, heads cocked as they studied him intently.
The nurses bustled around him. One wiped away the blood on his cheek, while the other injected his arm with several more healing potions. The green hypo-spray hissed each time, and each time, Mavlor felt better and better. His aches were gone. Even his nausea was clearing up. He found his voice, stammering. "S-So, uh...t-this isn...this isn't so bad, so far."
"Most people like it, once they're through prep," the black and red draconian rumbled. His voice poured down Mavlor's ear like warm rich chocolate, and Mavlor knew he should be terrified of everything that was going on. But it was hard to feel afraid in a sauna while nice women were patching him up. That is...until he realized something: Being before the precipice of something so unknown, something he had no power with which to struggle against...he should be more frightened by the fact it felt so good. But as he reached for his fear, he found it simply wisped through his fingers.
Like smoke.
"Y-You're drugging me." Mavlor said.
"It's a short acting courage potion, it'll pass," the sapphire scaled draconian rumbled. The black stepped over to his side, then leaned down. He spoke softly.
"Speak truthfully. Are you straight, gay, or bisexual?"
Mavlor blinked. "S...Straight?" he asked, hesitantly.
Courage potion or no, he was beginning to find that fear of his growing a bit easier to grasp.
"Are you male or are you female? Or somewhere between?" the other draconian asked, his voice equally focused.
Mavlor gulped. "Male."
The two draconians looked at one another and nodded.
"Then we'll fix that first," the sapphire one said, reaching down. He swung his kilt wide and Mavlor's eyes widened as he saw that the male was sporting what was quite possibly the biggest dick he had ever seen in his life. Just as bright gold as his belly, it hung open and free, nestled against his heavy, scaled balls. Even only a quarter hard, it was longer and thicker than Mavlor's dick, and as he watched, it started to harden bit by bit, thickening and sweeping up. The triangular tip thrust into the air, beading with pre-cum and the draconian chuckled, reaching down and rubbing his dick slowly. He grinned, keeping himself hard. "This is my favorite part of my job."
Mavlor whimpered. A…
A very.
Very confused set of emotions was buzzing through his brain. "T-There's no lust potion in there, right?"
"Mmm nope."
The draconian walked past him, out of his line of sight. His voice came into Mavlor's ear as a soft rumble.
"All pure draconians have that impact on two leggers. I suggest you embrace it."
Mavlor gulped.
And then...floating through his head…
You will live forever. If you can manage it.
Mavlor knew that, at a certain perspective, choice and consent was completely absurd. He was as trapped as trapped could be. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. But...the orc who ran the House had said that there was a stick and a carrot. There was a chance.
There was a chance.
Mavlor bit his lip, then lifted his chin.
"Where do we start?" he whispered.
"Dang," the sapphire scaled draconian muttered. "It's more fun when they squirm."
Mavlor, as part of a protracted and semi-industrial process, finds himself altered at a fundamental and deeply sexual and erotic way by a trio of draconians - humanoid dragons with magical powers. One uses her tongue to lick his cock and balls off, then lick his chest to give him breasts and then lick his blank crotch to give him a pussy, transforming him into a woman! ...physically, at least.
The other two draconians - both male - fix the mental side of the things by quite literally brain-fucking Mavlor into, first, identifying as a woman. Then the other handles brain-fucking her into being enthusiastically bisexual rather than merely closeted bisexual. Once she has been turned entirely into Mavlynn (the feminine form of Mavlor) she is then put on what can only be called a sexy assembly line that erotically implants her with dozens of top of the line draconic implants, transforming her into...a Kobold!
MAVLOR
Being doped to the gills on courage potions and still managing to be frightened out of your wits had to be a record. Mavlor took some grim comfort in this as he watched the two draconian males that were going to be handling his...treatment. What the treatment was, and what the end product was supposed to be, was still a terrifying empty blank spot on his mental map, with the only sign of what was coming being the questions that the two draconians had asked him.
One: Are you male?
Two: Are you straight?
Mavlor had said yes, both times. And now, he watched the two draconians as they murmured to one another quietly. They were both completely naked, their scales glittering brightly, and their stance meant he got a great view of their buttocks, tight and muscular and enhanced by long, whip-chord strong tails, which snaked and twitched along the floor in an almost hypnotic, sinuous motion. But naked or not, the draconians weren't unequipped. The blue and gold scaled one had a small crystal tablet, and was pointing down at it, while the red and black scaled one nodded.
"Hmm, I think it'll work best if we start in the physical substrate," the blue and gold one said.
"Um…" Mavlor started.
"I do prefer working on a finished project, true, but the physical stuff goes better when it's backed by mental ideation." The red and black one grumbled quietly.
"Well, it's more a matter of our essence, isn't it, if it doesn't flow, it doesn't flow. Does he do it for you?"
"I mean, he's a cute elf twink…"
"G-Guys!" Mavlor exclaimed.
The two draconians lifted their heads, then turned to face him. Once more, he was presented with their immense cocks – even soft, the draconians outstripped him considerably. Mavlor's cheeks burned and he stammered. "W-What exactly is going to happen here? I, uh, I'm pretty scared. And that's with the courage potion-"
"Shh," the blue gold draconian said, holding his tablet in his off hand, his other pressing to Mavlor's lips. "Final call, Duranturastus."
Duranturastus crossed his arms over his broad muscular chest. He regarded Mavlor with eyes that made Mavlor think more of meat and chopping blocks than people – it was a marked transition away from the gentler tones he had used earlier. He cocked his head left, then right. Then finally, he nodded. "I think...I think you're right. This little guy's barely clinging to what he's got – the physical stuff shouldn't be too hard. Lets do it, Turonuman."
Mavlor opened his mouth, but Turonuman simply walked behind his chair and once more he was being wheeled out of rooms. He was painfully aware of how very naked and powerless he was as the muscular draconian pushed him down the corridor, then to a chamber with a metal door and a stenciled word over it: GENIT-1. The doors opened with a soft hiss and Mavlor found that the room had a circular tank in the center of it, sunken into the floor like a pool. It was not a pool. It had a glittering green fluid inside of it, which sloshed and rippled as his chair was wheeled towards it. The wheels locked into a pre-built notch settled onto the floor, while Duranturastus clicked his tongue and trilled.
The green fluid rippled...and a sleek muzzle emerged. A frilled head. Bright golden eyes. Green scales and glittering dragonflesh, with feminine brightness in her feathered crest, with a narrow neck that flared into sleek shoulders and lusciously full tits, tipped by bright orange nipples. Her coloration was green, orange, yellow, red, like something from the far south. Venomous. Dangerous. She had the slender build of a snake, and was able to stand up to her hips in the deep pool, looming up almost to Mavlor's head. She grinned toothily down at him as her long, thick tail twitched behind her.
"Ooh, sumptuous," she murmured.
"His mental structures are untouched," Turonuman said.
"Mmm, that makes it more fun, though." She sloshed forward in the liquid as Malvor yelped and jerked hard on his restraints. She put a damp palm upon his cheek – and he had no choice but to look down at her full breasts. They were large and lightly scaled, and the green fluid she had been resting in rivuleted along her dusky green scales, accenting them. One droplet beaded on her orange nipple, and fell onto his thigh. His cock was hardening despite himself, and as he gulped, she leaned forward and whispered softly. "Shhh, pretty thing. I'm going to fix you up…" Her long, long finger caressed the underside of his cock. Her touch was like fire. His member surged to achingly hard, thrusting up and trembling.
Her touch…
She was slippery with it. Her palm caressed his cheek, leaving a smear that left Mavlor's brain buzzing and his mouth feeling numb. "H-...How...how?" He whispered, while she leaned in. Her forked tongue flicked along his muscular belly, then she slid down so most of her body once more was floating in the pool. This meant her muzzle was pressed against his balls and the feathery touch of her forked tongue was able to lather over his balls, teasing them. Caressing them. Loving them. Mavlor panted, his cock twitching up as he felt so close to cumming it was impossible. His eyes half closed. "W-What's...what's happening?"
"Shh," She whispered. Her mouth opened, and his balls vanished into her muzzle. She sucked on him. Tugged gently.
Drew back.
Mavlor blinked.
His balls were gone. She didn't swallow, and there was no spurt of blood. There was no sign of bodily trauma at all. His balls were simply gone. Her bright yellow eyes gleamed and she grinned toothily. "You don't need those anymore, my pretty." Her tongue sloooowly started to caress up and up and up his dock, teasing his foreskin. "Do you even use this? Why bother…" She whispered against him. "There are dragons out there, fucking girls with bigger and better cocks than you'll ever have." She kissed his tip. "Want me to take it away?"
"N-No…" Mavlor wheezed out, managing to get it out through the painful arousal burning through him.
"Mmmm, too bad!" She giggled. Her tongue coiled around his tip, guiding his cock into her mouth, along her tongue. Mavlor felt his cock press agianst the roof of her mouth, guiding down almost to her throat as her muzzle-tip bumped against his hips. Mavlor felt a clench deep in his body – not in his balls. His brain fuzzed and filled with a white light and he let out a whine deep in his throat. He was trying to cum...but he couldn't. He couldn't and the pleasure simply built and built and built. Then the dragon drew back, licking her muzzle with a satisfied smirk.
His cock was gone too. Mavlor was unmanned. As completely as one could be. He blinked down at his crotch, his haze of lust warring with shock and horror. He looked up from his crotch to the dragon woman, who smirked at him.
"Not quite," she whispered. She leaned forward and her forked tongue pressed to the base of his taint. She licked upwards and Mavlor gasped and shuddered – pleasure burning through his body as his flesh parted and opened. Flowerlike, something new appeared between his legs and he squirmed as she leaned in and kissed the very tippy top of the arc transcribed by her tongue. Something hard glittered there and Mavlor bit his lower lip hard to keep from mewling like a kitten. When the dragon drew back, Mavlor blinked down and saw something...rather familiar.
He had eaten his fair share.
He had a…
A pussy.
He had a cunt.
A sleek, feminine petal, sopping wet and puffy with arousal. His thighs tried to snap close together, but two muscular, male hands reached down from behind. A thick cock bumped against his back through the hole in the chair as Turonuman held him in place. His grin was audible on his voice as he crooned quietly. "See, she barely resisted."
"I think there can be some more additions…" the dragoness murmured, eyeing Mavlor's pussy.
"Leave her baseline for now," Turonuman said. "Finish her up."
"N-No, don't, don't, I-" Mavlor whimpered through his confused lust and pleasure and fear. The dragoness leaned forward and kissed one of his nipples. Her tongue swirled and flicked, then she pulled back and as she drew back, she kept her teeth on his nipple. Mavlor clenched his teeth to keep from crying out in pleasure as a soft, full tit grew with her tugging. She released him and, before his lopsided look could sear into his brain, she leaned in and then took hold of his other nipple. Another quick tug and Mavlor was left trembling and glittering with sweat, his thighs spread, his cunt dropping, his tits heaving.
She hadn't given him huge tits – modest, by all measurements. But they were impossible to ignore. Mavlor gasped, shaking his head as the dragonness rubbed her chin. "His features were feminine enough, but I think I can tweak them." She grabbed onto his chin with her fingers, then sloshed up and out of the pool. The curves and sleekness of her body mashed against Mavlor's. Her scales rasped against his newly sensitive skin, his achingly hard nipples. The touch drove a blazing fire between Mavlor's thighs and he moaned softly into her mouth as the dragoness leaned in and kissed and kissed and kissed him. Her tongue reached deep into his throat and her hands caressed his hair. Mavlor felt the locks of his hair growing out, spreading, coursing through her fingers like water. He felt an ache in his jaw, a tingling as his teeth shifted ever so slightly.
Then…
She drew back, panting softly. "Mmm, I am an artist."
"Quite so, quite so!" Turonuman said, his voice rich and amused. He grabbed onto the chair and swung Mavlor around – to show that the walls of the room had a mirror mounted on it, so that even if he had wanted to look up and away from his changed body, there was no way that he could. In the long mirror, Mavlor looked out – and a beautiful elfin woman looked back out. Her skin was milk pale and her breasts were modest handfulls, just waiting to be cupped and squeezed and tugged on. His ears were poking from a tumble of raven black hair framing a sleek, heart shaped face, with kissable lips – not pouty, but thicker than he had before. Even his belly muscles were subtly different, adding to his feminine sleekness. His hairless cunt had a bright bead of a clit waiting to be kissed and sucked. He whimpered, shaking his head.
"Oh Wyrm!" he moaned.
"Don't worry," Turonuman said, caressing his hair gently. "We'll handle the mind next."
Mavlor closed his eyes. He tried to cling to outrage and to fear. It was there, yes. But...muted. His body felt so sensitive and tingling. The change had come with more than just feminizations – he felt a dozen tiny aches and pains he had had before washed away. In the mirror, his skinny little belly and visible ribs had been brushed away with a lick and nuzzle and a kiss. The pockmark scars from the time where he had been caught in some acidic downpour on a particularly bad stormday? All gone. He felt like he was a few years younger and five income brackets healthier.
And he was a woman.
In a room with three dragons.
"T-They said I wouldn't forget!" Mavlor whimpered, opening his eye to a slit as the chair was swung around and Turonuman and Duranturastus pushed him from the room – the dragonness who had femnized him waving cheerfully after.
"You won't," Duranturastus said as he led the party back to the PREP room. The door opened and the sterility of it struck Mavlor with creeping dread. He gulped and looked left and right as the two draconians moved to either side of him.
Their cocks.
They were getting harder. And harder. And harder.
"Which do you want to have adjusted first, being a girl, or being straight?" Duranturastus asked, while Turonuman reached down and started to stroke his own bright golden dick. He sighed softly as he did so, his eyes glittering warmly as they slid along Mavlor's body. Mavlor's cheeks heated and he felt a confused flutter in his belly at the way the draconian was looking at him. Noticing the way that he flushed, Duranturastus grinned.
"I think maybe you were 'straight',' he said, raising one hand to indicate the air quotes, his other hand on his dick. The two draconians were keeping themselves eager. Mavlor's brain whirled in fear – he knew precisely where those would go and the idea made him want to scream. Whimper. Maybe beg a little. The only problem was a tiny part of him wasn't sure which way he was going to beg. He gulped, hard, then stammered.
"W-Will that mess it up?" he whispered, hope flaring.
"Nah," Turonuman said.
Mavlor closed his eyes. "F-Fine." He whispered. "G-Girl, then straight."
"Good choice," Turonuman said, sounding amused. "Get that dysphoria out of the way in a hurry."
He gestured to Duranturastus. The red and black scaled draconian stepped over and Mavlor braced, closing his eyes tightly as he waited for the dick to press to his newly forged cunt. He felt the draconian's hand take hold of his luxurious black hair, squeeze tightly, and then felt the thick cock grinding against his lips from the side. The length of it was impossible, even with his eyes closed. The warmth was shocking. His nose flared in and his eyes opened to slits – blurry red filling his vision like a horizon. He shivered and gulped. Maybe this...wouldn't be so bad. His nose flared again, drawing in the spicy, coffee scent of a dragon's dick.
"There we go," Duranturastus said, his voice gentle. "It's easier if you accept it. Breathe it in. Breathe it in."
Mavlor's head was spinning. Maybe...it'll be okay if I just...kissed it a little? He thought, hesitantly. He wasn't sure if the programming had already started, or if maybe dragons made everyone bisexual, or if he had just been closeted and didn't even know it. He just knew he was...curious. Very curious. He kissed the thick cock teasing his lips, and tasted the salty tingle of his slickness. His moan was soft and oh so sweet. He hadn't even noticed how girly his voice sounded now – his skull picked up the resonance of his voice, so he was sure he didn't...he couldn't sound that girly, right? He blushed as Duranturastus drew his big fat red dragon dick back. Mavlor bit his lip to keep from mewling aloud in desperation. He had some self-
The tip of Duranturastus' dick pressed to his ear. The thick head teased the gentle curl and arch of his ear, and a warm droplet of pre-cum dripped into his ear canal. Mavlor's eyes widened and he opened his mouth. "W-Whoa, wait a s-chunnnnghh!" He grunted, low, and hard, as the draconian gripped his hair tightly and pushed. Impossibly, his ear accepted the cock as if he had been made to serve as nothing but a sleeve for dragon cock. There was resistance for a moment, then a lewd, loud pop as a barrier he hadn't even known could be broken was broken and he felt the thought in his brain squishing as the tip of Duranturastus' cock pressed into his brain. "G...Guh…" He gurgled.
"I love this part," the red and black scaled draconian said, allowing his cock to simply rest inside of Mavlor's brain. Mavlor blinked slowly, his mouth opening and closing. Opening. Closing. He could see himself in a mirror – he looked so fucking stupid. His eyes were drooping, his lips stupid, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. But the thing he couldn't stop being stunned by?
There were three inches of dragon dick in him.
There was…
There was…
There was so much cock left. He whimpered, his thighs pressing together hard as he almost came right then and there.
The red and black scaled draconian chuckled. "Mmm, she's barely resisting this to. Great Wyrm, I think either she fuckin' wants it bad, or she's really one of those zero percenters for real."
"They're all zero percenters," the other draconian said. For some reason, Mavlor was...having a hard time remembering...names right now. Instead, his thoughts were all: Cock. Cock. Cock. Oh Wyrm, cock. His eyes half closed, while the red and black scaled draconian gripped his head more firmly, then wriggled his hips. He drew back, then thrust in again, still remaining shallow. The sensation of the cock stirring around inside of his brains made Mavlor whimper and drool slightly. His hips bucked and he tried...tried to...to…
"St...Sthu...stho...sthop!"
"Mmm, fuck, I love it when they squirm." The red and black scaled draconian grinned and then drew back to barely be inside of Mavlor – his cocktip throbbing against Mavlor's inner ear. Then he pushed five inches in. The squelching noise made Mavlor's whole face screw up. They whimpered and gasped, and to their shame...squirted. A thin line of pale elfin girlcum gushed up from their bare cunt, arced into the air, then splashed onto the floor. The red and black draconian laughed, his hand shifting so his scaled fingers was holding Mavlor by the face – fingers hooking on their upper jaw as Mavlor drooled helplessly. "You owe me a mana beer!"
"You're right, she did squirt on the second thrust," the other voice rumbled in amusement. "Fuck is that ear as tight as it looks?"
"You know elves man…" The other voice purred. Mavlor whimpered as the cock drew out, then thrust in. Their nose flared and they made an incoherent noise, deep in their throat. "Every hole on these things are fuckable, if you're good enough." The cock drew back, then squished deeper in, the balls the heavy draconian slapping roughly against their cheek. Mavlor's mouth hung open and they whimpered quietly around the fingers muffling their noises. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, I think-"
Drew back. The sensation of the tip dragging against their innermost thoughts burned inside of Mavlor. Their eyes started to roll back into their skull. It was hard to remember to breathe. There was nothing but cock. Glorious, perfect dragon cock. How had they ever survived with-
The draconian thrust. Hard. The cock drove and drove and...and…
And popped out of her other ear. Mavlor gurgled happily, a quiet, sweet, syrupy noise as the draconian held her in place. His cock had completely emerged from the other side of her. Her whole head was impaled. It felt...glorious.
The hand holding her head in place let go. She was now...suspended above her chair by the cock buried inside of her brain. When his hips shifted, her head shifted with the waggle of his dick. She whimpered, and managed to slurr out: "Ha...hank...hank...houu…" She giggled, quietly.
"Mm, I wish we could leave em this fuckin stupid sometimes," the voice above her rumbled.
"No you don't, Duran." The other voice sounded amused. "You get bored of anyone who can't give a good conversation. Remember when you took out that half-dragon guy? Who wouldn't stop talking about new crystal plays and never had an original thought in his head?"
The voice above her sounded annoyed. "He was fun while he shut up."
The cock inside of her brain shifted, then squirmed, and then drew back. Mavlor whimpered and then gasped as the cock plunged back in again, lewdly. Balls slapped against her chin and she rocked as she was head-fucked with casual eagerness. The voice above her grunted rythmically as he used her head like a toy, thrusting faster and faster, panting as he did so. Warm pre-cum dripped down both cheeks as his dick almost pulled out of her head, then thrust all the way through and dripped down her other cheek. She gurgled.
"You know, her aura shows she's a girl, right? You can stop. They don't pay us to have fun."
"They don't not pay us to have fun, ya know?" The voice of her skullfucker growled with a passionate focus. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Fuck your hot little elf head, fuck you fucking stupid!" He snarled, sounding closer and closer. Mavlor tried to bob her head in time with his thrust, then mewled incoherently as the voice that was plunging his dick into her brain again and again grabbed onto her hair and yanked up, keeping her in place as he snarled, then thrust half in and stopped. A warm flood of pressure exploded inside of Mavlor's brain as she squirmed and giggled, quietly. Warm cum dripped around her eyes, sliding down her tear-ducts, smearing along her cheeks. Warm cum surged from her left ear, yes. But it also poured from her right, splashing around the thick dragon cock filling her. Her mouth opened and she let her tongue lol out in pure bliss as more cum dripped from her nose.
"Fuck...fuck...fuck…" The dragon that had fucked her brains into a new shape drew slowly out of her. His cock softened, glistening with his thick white cum. Mavlor blinked, slowly, and saw her own face: Messy with spunk, like the world's lewdest makeup. She giggled and smiled at herself. She was so...so pretty…
"Think she can take another?" the other voice rumbled.
"Lets see, her aura is pretty blasted." Her fucker said, chuckling quietly as he caressed her head. "You want more dragon dick bad, don't ya?"
Mavlor nodded, wobbily. "Yuh! Yuh!"
"All right, lets get her to R&R, we'll finish this up in, say, two hours?"
"If you're buying lunch." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a black scaled palm rubbing along a muscular belly.
The voice that had not been attached to the cock that had obliterated Mavlor's old gender identity chuckled, and then took hold of the chair that she was strapped too. Her head lolled forward as the pleasure faded and in its place was a deep, deep exhaustion. Her ear ached slightly for some silly reason. Her nose whuffed and blew a tiny bubble of spunk before she drew a breath through her mouth and blew it out through her nose. Then she breathed clearly. When she lifted her head again, she was taken to a spartan but comfortable looking room.
There were two pretty elf girls there, wearing sleek and revealing nurse outfits.
Mavlor mewled like a kitten as they picked her up. They wiped her face, her cheeks, her breasts. The cloths they used were enchanted to leave Mavlor dry and gleaming, as if she had been scrubbed in a shower and toweled off. The magic buzzed against her skin and left her squirming even more weakly. Then the two elf girls tucked her into bed, gave her a thick stuffed dragon, and turned off the light. Mavlor closed her eyes.
She opened her eyes again and felt more rested than she had in her entire life. She yawned…
Then jerked upright.
She was in the same spartan room, still clinging to the stuffed dragon toy she had been given. She was still naked, and she felt...she felt...she felt…
Good? There was this deep sense of satisfaction as she looked down at her slender body. She marveled at her cute little tits. She was awed by the dainty perfection of her sex. She was overjoyed when she craned her head and caught a glimpse of her apple-taut buttocks. She bit her lip and eyed at her cheek in profile using the silvery surface of the walls to see herself. Her cheeks were femininely curved, and...yes, her even her ears had girly tips. She blushed hard as she put her hand over one ear, her other arm holding the stuffed dragon to her chest.
She scowled, then.
"I am a man," she said, glaring at her reflection.
Nope. Not even slgihtly. Her voice was a girly cute girl's voice and it felt great.
She had memories of being a man. She had memories, sure. But it was like the difference between being able to remember light and being exposed to the blinding flash of a scorching ray straight to the face. She tried to use the male pronoun on herself. "He...him…" She shivered. It felt like grinding sandpaper against her brain. She was a girl. That was just the whole and end of it. She slumped back into the bed, looking up at the ceiling.
This…
Didn't…
This didn't make any fucking sense. Dragons could snap their fingers and have gorgeous women falling out of every pore of the city. Hell, they could snap their fingers and have pretty elf girls who were eager to get skull fucked. They had all the power and all the money. So, why waste this much effort and energy on her skinny ass? Why? It had to have something to do with the fact she was a zero percenter on the implant rejection scale – but why? They hadn't implanted a single-
The door opened and the nurses – which she now recognized as the same nurses from the beginning of the night – walked in. They pushed in a tray with the oddest meal that she had ever seen: A thick grub that glowed brilliantly, and five cups of shimmering, bright blue dragon piss. They wheeled the tray to the side of the room, and the two nurses turned to face her. "Are you a girl?" one asked, firmly.
Mavlor blushed. "Fuck you," she said.
"Are you a girl?" the other asked, holding up a cup. "Girls get drinkies."
Mavlor was suddenly aware of a deep need in her. It wasn't thirsty, exactly. She didn't have parched lips, nor did she have a dry throat. But she needed something. She had never felt this need before. She gulped, then stammered. "Y-Yes. I'm a girl."
Hey. It wasn't like she had anything to lose by lying at this point. And...and…
Wyrm above, it felt gross to call herself a man. It was as revulsive as if someone had called her an insect. It wasn't that she hated men or anything – no, it was fine that men were men. She just. Wasn't. A man. Anymore. The thoughts bit off, one after the other, in her brain as the first nuse held the glass out to her. She took it and drank, fiercely and quickly. Her throat worked and her body buzzed as she felt the need inside her lessen.
"You're painfully low on mana," the nurse explained. "The transforamtion takes a toll on both sides."
Mavlor took the next drink and drank it off. The next two were a bit harder. The last one, she shook her head, but the nurse said, gently. "Drink, drink." She sighed, then started to take it one sip at a time, her eyes half closed.
"What are they doing to me?" She whispered, her voice soft.
The nuses were silent.
Mavlor looked down at the cup. "Mavlor isn't a girl's name, you know?" she asked.
The nurses cocked their heads, in opposite direction.
"Well, of course," one said.
"You didn't think you'd be keeping your name, silly?"
Mavlor was quiet for a bit more, looking down at the last third of the cup that was left. She sighed, quietly. "W-Will I really get to live forever?" she asked, biting her lip and looking up at the two nuses. They both nodded, firmly. She closed her eyes, then sighed, then downed the rest of the drink. She shook her head, then turned to the grub. "What's this?"
"A nutrigrub," one of the nurses said, her voice gentle. "While cosmetically, your body has been repaired, that's all surface. You have a serious calcium deficency, several low level pre-cancerous elements in your intestinal track, and lung scarring reducing your stamina by 14%." As she spoke, her partner picked the grub up and held it out to Mavlor. "Once you take it into your stomach, it will release the required repairative nutrients over the next few months before dying. Be sure to eat a lot of calcium and iron pills. Also, when it dies, you will need to pass it, and that can be…" She paused as Mavlor took the grub and dangled it between her two fingers. It pulsed with a sickly yellow light.
She made a face. "How does it taste?"
"It will slide down your throat before you can taste much," the nurse said, which did not help in the slightest. Mavlor drew a sharp breath, then opened her mouth and dropped the fat grub in. She tensed and almost vomited as it writhed, wriggled, and slurped down her throat. At the very least, it had not been hard at any points, instead slithering past her throat without tripping her gag reflex too badly. She coughed and wheezed, then sighed quietly. The nurse to the left of her held out a small paper cup, with several pills in it. She rattled it.
"Calcium and iron pills!"
Mavlor took the cup and dryswallowed the pills.
One nice thing about the grub?
It made the pills seem like no big deal.
When Mavlor settled onto the wheelchair, she felt a bit more at ease as she was wheeled back to the prep room. Turonuman was the only draconian there, reading off a crystal tablet, with a sarong wrapped around his muscular blue hips. He turned as the wheelchair entered and locked into place, then gave her a warm smile. "Good afternoon – you needed more sleep than we expected. I wasn't aware just how much malnutrition you were dealing with. It's been nine hours."
Mavlor nodded, not sure she trusted her own voice.
"Now, are you ready to be made enthusastically bisexual?" Turonuman asked, setting his tablet aside, then swinging his sarong wide. The sight of his bright golden cock made Mavlor gulp hard. She squirmed in her seat, and whispered.
"I-...I think I...I already am," she stammered.
Turonuman blinked at her. Then he gave her a toothy grin. "Well, then, I suppose we can skip the second reprogramming then."
"R-Really?" Mavlor asked.
"Of course not, my sweet elfling," the draconian rumbled, walking over to her side. He caressed her dark hair, gently. "I said enthusastically bisexual."
Mavlor bit her lip. She wasn't sure, genuinely, if she was horrified...or deeply pleased. She sighed, softly. "C-Can you at least be gentler than Duran?" She whispered, her voice a quiet, demure whimper. She hated how happy her girly voice made her. She loved how girly she sounded. She pressed her thighs together.
"Mmm, please, elfling…" Blue fingers stroked her scalp, tenderly. "We both saw how hard you squirted with Duran…" His voice was an amused rumble. "You love a good hard earfucking. Admit it."
Mavlor's cheeks burned. "I-I'm scared," she whispered.
"You won't be. Not once we're done with you…" His hand caressed her again, slowly. "Not once we're done with you."
Turonuman's scaled fingers slid through her hair and he used his other hand to heft up his cock, then let it fall. The warm heat of the golden tip slapped against her ear, teasing the tip of her elfin sharp ear, making her shudder and bit her lip. Mavlor focused, trying to stay strong. She could take this. She could-
Turonuman gripped her hair tighter still. Pain jerked a gasp from her – then he pushed into her ear. Hard. His cocktip plunged past that barrier and Mavlor whimpered as she felt her thighs mash together. Her cunt ached and she tried to hold it back, tried to stop it...but no. It was coming. The pleasure. The raw pleasure of it was burning so brightly. She whined and whimpered, then closed her eyes to thin slits, her mouth opening. "F...Fuck!" She gasped out, the word managing to remain unslurred. The draconian holding her chuckled, then drew back, his cock popping free. A thick line of his pre-cum dripped along her cheek, boiling hot.
"What was that?" he crooned.
"W-What?" she asked, her head ringing. His cock had barely brushed her brain and he was out of her.
"You were scared, right?" his voice was teasing. His tail whipped from side to side behind him, the rasp of scales along the floor making her toes curl. Mavlor blushed hard and squirmed. "Do you want me to brainfuck you?"
"I-I thought I didn't have a choice."
"True." His cock bumped her cheek, the tip teasing her skin, smearing his arousal against her. "But I think I want to hear you say it. It'll...help the programming."
No it won't, you scaled asshole, Mavlor thought. Despite her thoughts, she was practically sitting in a puddle. Her sex was so wet. So achingly eager. She blushed, then closed her eyes. She had to get through this. So, what was the harm playing along? She gulped, then whispered. "Please." Her voice came out so soft that even she could barely hear herself over the sound of Turonuman's slow breathing. His cock teased her eartip, flicking it, drawing a mewl from her. Elf ears were already sensitive, even before you got into...this. This impossible kind of play.
"Please what?" Turonuman purred.
"Please…" She sagged her head slightly, letting his hand take up all the slack. "Please f-fuck my brains out. Fuck me into a cute little bisexual slut, fuck me so hard I'm drooling, please, please, please fuck me!" She groaned, her voice growing stronger and more desperate as she felt a hunger burning inside of her. Her thighs spread and she presented her wet snatch to him, demonstrating with her body and her lips just what a slutty little elf she was.
The gold and blue draconian let out a quiet little rumbling laugh. It was like two boulders grinding against one another.
"Fuck yeah."
He grabbed her head with both hands now, shifted his grip so one hand was on the back of her head, fingers pressed to the nape of her neck, the other gripping her hair tightly enough to cause her scalp to ache. Then he thrust. It was one, single, powerful, all consuming thrust. His cock plunged into her brains and a lewd wet splat sound filled the air as her thoughts were crushed and her eyes went out of focus – one wide, the other vacant and staring. Her mouth slowly dropped and her tongue lolled out as she drooled stupidly.
"G...Ghu...guh...ghuud…" She gurgled.
"Damn straight it is…" His cock drew out, ever so slightly. Then he thrust in again – a few more inches. His cock obliterated the barrier between Mavlor and a love of the male form. Her brain was literally full of cock – literally and figuratively now. Her eyes blurred with tears of joy as she whimpered and mewled, her thighs spreading even wider, her hips doing little twitchy twitchy motions, trying to draw the eye of any males in the room. She wanted them. She wanted to nuzzle and-
He drew back.
He thrust in again, then wriggled his hips. His cock stirred her brain.
-and lick balls, lick big fat sweaty balls, breath in musky scent, male scent, yes, yes, yes! She groaned out. "Cho...chuuk...chook...cuck…" She mumbled.
"Are you trying to say…" His cock slid from her ear, inch by inch, leaving most of its glistening, moist golden length free, the tip lodged in her brain by only a hair's breadth. He thrust then, hard enough to make her spine arch. A thick squirt of elfish girlcum arced up from her cunt as she bucked her hips and orgasmed so hard that the biomantic feedback runes that floated around her hair flashed yellow alert signs. His cock burst from her other ear and, once again...Mavlor was impaled completely through her head. "Cock?" The voice rumbled approvingly above her head.
"Yu...yuh yuh…" She mumbled, her eyes half lidded. "Cho...uck…"
The voice above her was full of contentment. "Good girl. Drooling and stupid. So fucking wet. So fucking empty. Nothing but cock and cum in your pretty little head. Heh. Are you pissing yourself?" He sounded amused as Mavlor whimpered. It was hard to control her body. Hard to think of anything but the glorious, brilliant heat between her ears, behind her eye. Her nose flared and she whimpered as thin lines of draconic pre-cum started to drip from her nose, smearing along her lips. Her face had the look of someone with running makeup, emotions and arousal pushed far past normal limits.
Mavlor twitched her head in his iron hard grip.
"Want more?"
"Guh...ghhhuh…" She gurgled, her eyes closing as her slack face shone with pleasure.
"Good."
The cock that impaled her head drew back, then thrust back in. Heavy, blue scaled balls clapped against her cheek and her jaw, making her whole head rock as she was casually fucked silly. And each thrust of his cock bloomed a new thought in what was left of her head. Thoughts of sensual dragons. Of burly orcs. Of svelt elfin men. Of burying her mouth against a petite halfling cock and licking from balls to tip. Of being rolled into a pit of goblins and having each one of the horny fuckers crawl onto her body and use her and use her and use her. The taste of cum tingled on her tongue, imagined and so far away…
"Get ready.!" The voice above her rumbled.
She was far too occupied to even understand. Instead, she made a confused mewling noise – and squeaked as, again, a thick deluge of cum gushed into her brain. Her skull throbbed and her nostrils flared as thick spunk dripped from inside of her head. Her eyes widened as she cried spunk – but this time, she opened her mouth and thrust out her tongue, a soft 'mwah!' noise escaping from her lips. She tasted him.
She tasted herself.
Her own thoughts, her own lingering pretenses of heterosexuality.
It tasted…
Warm.
Good.
Happy.
She was happy.
Mavlor mewled as the cock popped out of her ear again. Her head lolled and warm cum drained from her ear and onto her shoulder, soaking her pale skin, sliding down to her breasts. She blinked slowly, and then mumbled. "W...Who...wha...woaw…" She panted softly, while the blue and gold scaled draconian – what was his name again? - stepped around before her. His massive cock, gleaming with his precum and the juices of her own thoughts, twitched up before her. She immediately leaned forward, swirling her tongue around and around the tip of his dick, looking up through her bangs into his warm, comforting eyes. She moaned around his cock, then pushed forward, trying to take more of his dick into her mouth.
His cock bumped against something at the back of her mouth and she choked. He pushed her head back, chuckling. "While it is nice you're trying to choke yourself on my dick, elfling, you need to get to the last part of the process." He drew back. "Here. A treat.' As her eyes crossed, trying to focus on something so close to her lips, the blue and gold scaled draconian started to jerk his cock. He pumped it with casual, easy jerks. Shockingly quickly, his balls tightened and a thick spurt of his warm, hot white cum splashed onto her open and waiting mouth.
It tasted glorious. Better than the finest dragon piss she had ever swallowed.
She smiled, shyly, as she gulped it down and watched with a bit of sadness as the draconian...as...as Turonuman's cock softened. He looked down at her with some pleasure. "How do you feel?" he asked, curiously.
Mavlor frowned, slightly. It was getting easier and easier to think, second by second. And she felt…
Violated? Confused. Aroused. Horny beyond belief. Infuriated. Sick to her stomach. She wanted to escape, and she never wanted to leave. She was beginning to realize just how true to life all those lewd stories about girls getting addicted to dragons were. And finally, she was curious. She let those conflicting emotions bounce around inside of her head, before finally settling on. "W-What am I?" She asked. "What are you making me?"
Turonuman chuckled.
He walked behind her, then – with her body still sweating and glittering with spunk – pushed her out of the room.
"Someone else will explain that better than me. After all, I just work here."
The route that he pushed her through rolled her past two more rooms marked PREP and another three marked GENIT-2 and GENIT-3. Seeing her look, Turonuman shrugged. "When this place was built, we expected to be processing more people than we ended up doing. It worked out, kept the demand high." He said, coming to a room marked as AUG-START. The door opened and this was a room that Mavlor actually recognized – and after so many mysterious and ominously empty rooms...this was…
Not a relief.
It was not a relief at all, because it was a dragon lab. The kind of facility people used to implant draconic augmentations into people. Her eyes widened the more she saw. There were beakers with draconic organs, and there were several elfin nurses, just like those she had seen before. But there was one odd bit.
The room did not have a central operating table. Instead, it had an dragonscale conveyor belt, which moved from the center of the room to a door set in the next wall. The nurses were speaking to one another in clipped, focused cleric-talk. "We need a complete charge of level one healing spells…" was intermixed with "restoration should handle that functionality, hows her constitution?" and "we've got the tertiary modules online, they're prepped and ready to go."
Mavlor gulped, then squeaked as the restraints on her chair popped open. She stood up without thinking – then squeaked again as female nurses surrounded her. One started to brush her down with an enchanted cloth, leaving her skin glossy and new, but the other two started to stick wands into sensitive and delicate places, calling off what their wands measured. "0.81 on the miliscale," one said after pulling the wand from Mavlor's ear. Mavlor clapped her hand there, her squeaking finding some purchase in words.
"What are you doing?"
"Their jobs, Miss Fairtrees."
The new pronoun and the familiar tone of address snapped her head around.
The orc that had first tried to get her to calm down and take this. He was standing in the corner of the room, smoking a small dragon-cig and watching the whole group. The small tail that he had between his teeth flared and when he pulled it out, he blew out a thin stream of nicotine infused smoke. The nurses ignored him, even as Mavlor glared daggers. "Y-You said I'd live forever, not that I'd get my brains fucked into new shapes!"
"Do you not like the new shapes?" the orc asked.
"I can't not like them!" Mavlor snapped, finding some actual anger in her chest, somewhere. "They fucked my brain into liking them!"
The orc grinned.
Fuck he's hot, Mavlor whimpered, the mental image of him bending her over the desk and thrusting into her exploding into her brain with shocking detail. Her cheeks burned and she glared at him. Being angry would help this, right? She gulped, hard, while the orc walked over as the nurses guided her from the chair to the conveyor belt. Once she stepped onto it, plastic and metal restraints clicked around her ankles, keeping them in place. The nurses grabbed her arms, lifting them up and extensible arms emerged from the ceiling, gleaming and metallic. More restraints clicked around her wrists, keeping her in place, her arms above her head.
The orc looked her over and the way his bright red eyes lingered over her body made Mavlor's cheeks burn even brighter. Her nipples were hard enough to slice diamond.
"Miss Fairtree," he said, his voice quiet. "Everything that has happened so far is the relatively simple part. But now, you will take the step away from merely two-legger and into something more remarkable than you can possibly imagine." His eyes were glinting. "You are about to become a kobold."
"T-Those are just dragon servants!" Mavlor exclaimed.
The conveyor belt drew her forward, towards the door.
"That's what the dragons like people to think," the orc said, puffing on his cigar. "Do try and enjoy yourself, Miss Fairtrees."
The door opened and Mavlor realized that she had had no idea what a dragon lab might look like. Oh sure, she had seen the private and public dragon labs, the kinds that show up on TV, the kinds for every day people going in to get an eye or a gland replaced. She had never, in her entire life, imagined this. This wasn't a dragon lab. It was a dragon factory. She was at one end of a long line of articulated metal arms and limbs, and the air was rich with the smell of sweat and sex and ozone. She gulped, then started to tug on the restraints, fear blooming in her chest as the conveyor belt took her forward and before the first two arms. A crystal-synth voice buzzed out overhead.
"Beginning...limb...augmentation…"
One of the arms reached down and the other one extended with a whirr. The tip of one was a glittering, sharp edged thing, while the extending one had a drum-magazine looking device. The glittering sharp edged blade pressed to the skin of her right arm, and a tingling buzz of almost electric energy buzzed along Mavlor's flesh. She bit her lip, then squeaked as the drum magazine let out a thump. Her arm rocked as if it been lightly flicked and, with a flash, the sharp-edged blade made a little flicking motion. It reminded her a bit of working a needle through thread. She blinked as a sudden throbbing pleasure radiated from the site it had touched her.
She craned her head.
There, in the middle of her pale pink skin, was a small black scale. A dragon scale.
Thump. Another one appeared next to it and she bit her lip to keep from moaning aloud. The sensation was a bit like being nipped by a lover, then gently licked afterwards, a wash of erotic attention that felt completely deranged considering it was a pair of articulated arms pressing it into her. The crystal-synth voice spoke up again, warbling and fake sounding as before.
"Arousal...detected. Catchment...deployed."
A third arm extended and Mavlor looked down just in time to see the thick, black rubber dragon dildo before it thrust into her hairless elfin cunt. She gasped and bucked her hips, but the arms restrained her so firmly that even her rocking against the dildo filling her didn't budge her arm as it was held in place. Thumpthumpthump! The noise and the nip-bite-pleasure throb overran one another, becoming singular sound, one singular searing line of pleasure that wrapped around and around and around her arm, creeping down her wrist, to her elbow, to her armpit, to her shoulder. The arms drew back and Mavlor whimpered and trembled as her juices gushed around the dildo that kept slowly fucking her. Her body glittered with sweat as a new arm extended and started to run from her shoulder to her fingers, leaving a warm, stretching sensation that clung to her, then faded. She mewled, then managed to lift her head.
Her entire right arm looked...like an elf's arm. Pale, yes. But on a second glance, one could see the pearlescent gleam of scales, hidden right below the false-skin stretched over her. She blinked slowly, then moaned. "W-What are...you doing to me!" She cried out as the dildo started to fuck her faster. Her toes curled and she bucked and strained as the arms shifted to her left arm.
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.
Whirrr.
She moaned and cried out, her juices splattering onto the floor, lewd and loud, as if she was wetting herself again. Mavlor hung limp in the mechanical arms, her knees quivering as if they were water. Her two arms glittered brightly and the conveyor belt shifted forward. The crystal-synth voice spoke again.
Four arms extended this time. Two drum magazine looking things, two knife blades. Her thighs trembled as they moved into position – and then started to plate her thighs with the scales. This took even longer, an agony of bliss as they circled around and around her thighs in alternating loops, so that one did the outer leg as the other plunged inside. She sobbed aloud as scales pressed against her clit, her cuntlips, wringing from her another pitiful explosion of orgasmic pleasure. She felt drained dry. They continued down and down, the sensations growing less and less overwhelming as they reached shin and ankle and toes. Finally, the two skin-mounted arms emerged and she could watch as they gloved her black-scaled legs in false skin, like she was having the world's most gauzy, decadent stockings tugged up around her hips.
"Imbibe…" the crystal synth voice spoke and, lifting her head, the raspy, exhausted Mavlor saw an arm reaching down from the ceiling. It held a small dragon, roughly the size of a cat, with an oversized cock. The dragon looked rather pleased with himself, even as his cock pressed against her lips. He sighed and began to piss onto her tongue, and the fluid was warm and tangy and tasted of pure, raw mana. She closed her lips around his dick, her cheeks burning. Most people didn't drink straight from taps. But most people weren't in The House.
So.
She drank and drank, then gasped as the dragon pulled back and was lifted away. The mana throbbed in her veins and belly. She could actually stand again.
And lo, the conveyor belt moved forward with a whirr. The next set of arms slid down to clamp her head into place.
"Ocular...augmentation...beginning."
Two arms unfolded before her. They were glittering, bright, and moved faster than Mavlor thought possible. Between blinks, they had touched her face, and everything went dark. She made a cry of alarm – but she couldn't even feel the absense before there was a sudden jarring shift. She could see, but everything looked flat and strangely distorted. Then there was another thump as something slapped against her face. She jerked her head, blinking rapidly, her mouth opening as the arms folded up and away before she got a good look at what dripped from them. The air smelled of iron and she felt queasy – but...but she could...see.
Everything was sharper. Brighter. Shadows seemed there, but not so dark. It was as if she could peer into them and simply know what was there. Strange new colors tingled at the edges of her vision. Her ears perked up, then. Because she heard an arm unfolding near her head. Something warm and damp nosed at her eartip, startling a giggle from her. She she felt a head pressing into her brain. She had been unconscious when she had gotten her implants in the first time.
It turned out?
When a dragon crawled into your brain, it felt…
"G...Guh…" She groaned, quivering as the dildo buried in her cunt started to buzz and bounce up and down in time with the motion of her hips. The dragon finally drew its tail in through her ear with a wet slurp. She blinked slowly, her jaw working. "W...Whu-"
Another soft, wet nose pressed to her other ear.
"Tertiary augmentation in process."
"Bu-"
The second dragon pushed into her head and she swore she heard a giggle. She cried out as it's claws tingled along a pleasure-center and her toes curled. But before its tail had even withdrawn, the conveyor belt had moved forward. More limbs unfolded, and the crystal synth voice spoke out again and again. Each time she stopped, her body was...touched. Changed. And each time, the dildo in her worked faster and faster.
"Claw implantation."
An articulated hand gripped her fingers, pressing on her knuckles and unfolding small wires, forcing her to spread her fingers. Then a clamp slapped down onto her fingertip and tugged them. When they emerged, her fingertips were graced by razor sharp claws.
"Breath Weapon Implantation."
A cock bigger than she thought possible thrust down her throat as she was held in place. She squirmed and struggled as the immense dick filled her throat, making her jaw ache with the effort to keep it open wide. Her eyes rolled back as her brain screamed for oxygen.
"Secondary Lung Implantation."
Warm heat blazed along her spine, opening up skin. She felt metal palms pressing something warm and wet into her back. Her brain stopped screaming for oxygen – and instead, she was left floating in a hazy sense of...equilibrium. The cock gushed with something warm and hot and she felt it catch in her throat.
"Internal Wing Implantation."
Her shoulder blades were flayed off her back with clawed fingers and her skin peeled away – and by now, she was so high on every erotic caress that she mewled in pleasure at the sensation of being unwrapped. Bone pressed to bone and sizzling, cooking meat smell filled her nose. She squirted around her dildo and trembled as a glowing healing wand slid along her back. She was giggled and rolled her head back, her brain so dizzy with the pleasure that she mumbled eagerly.
"What's next?"
"Arcane Gland Implantation."
Tubes slid down from the ceiling. Nozzles pressed to her thyroid, to her back, to her belly, to her hips, to her calves. They sank into her skin with a soft hiss of steam. She blinked a few times, her mouth opening – the scales under her skin had shifted into nozzles. Connection ports. Her skin wasn't broken. It was working with the implantation. Glowing white beads of light flowed down the transparent tubes, and then thrust into her skin. She gasped as a warm heat blazed from each contact point, radiating inside of her.
"Secondary Silver Thread Implantation."
A staple gun started to run along her spine. With every cha-thunk noise it let out, she bit her lip and grinned, arching her back to make it easier. Pleasure throbbed with each impact as she felt the the implanter slide along her back, down to right above her buttocks. A soft whirring sound filled the air as a healing wand swept up along her back. Sweat beaded along her body, her brain so awash in pleasure that she no longer cared what happened next.
"Intimidation Display Implantation."
A haze of needles came down and a tracery of fire was drawn across Mavlor's skin, tingling and buzzing as the needles strobed and pulsed with light – they were tattooing her through her false skin, directly into her scales. More of the scale implanting guns came down and started to work along her shoulder blades, her back, her buttocks. She groaned low in her throat as others pressed to her tits, plating her with black scales. She was so sleek. So glittering and perfect. She watched in pure delight as false skin stretched across one tit, then the other, her nipples remaining midnight black, a tiny mark of her...change. A scale gun leaned in and pressed to her cheek. She closed her eyes, her face becoming a mask of pleasure as more scales were threaded onto her skin, more false flesh. She felt it tingling against her new skins.
Mavlor opened her eyes, panting as the conveyor belt came closer and closer to the door at the far end of this long corridor. She was trembling from her head to her toes.
"Retractable Tail Implantation."
Something heavy thumped against the nape of her spine. She squeaked, jerking upright at the sudden pressure, then moaned as the shifting movement brought her clit pressing against the knob at the base of the dildo buzzing inside of her. Mavlor quivered as yet another orgasm rocked through her brain as hissing smoke rose from behind her – and she felt a warmth rushing and tingling through new flesh. A new limb. She twitched her hips, and focused – and her tail twitched and twitched behind her, then began to thrash.
"Cranial Implantation."
She opened her mouth, eagerly, as arms extended down. The dull aching thump that reveberated through her jaw made her grunt quietly – but then the arms folded back up into the ceiling and she was left with her tongue sliding along brand new fangs, glittering and sharp.
The conveyor belt came to the door, which opened with a hiss and a click. The arms holding her in place retracted and the nurses that gathered around her began to both check her over with wands and their hands, but also, they guided her to a chair. The chair had a small hole between the back of the base, for her tail to drape through, and as she sat, trembling and panting, the orc walked into view. He had finished his d-cig and tossed it aside. He grinned down at her, his tusks glinting.
"You are not an elf anymore," he said. "You're a kobold. How do you like it, Mavlynn?"
The feminine name buzzed in her brain and Mavlynn blushed hard as she felt it root and bloom. She gulped, then stammered. "W-why...two dragons?" Her voice was horse.
The orc arched an eyebrow.
"M...Most draconic implants for astral projection and interfacing only need one dragon," Mavlynn said, her voice growing less hesitant. "But two crawled in there." She managed to meet the orc's eyes as one of the nurses knelt down beside her. She started to wave a wand – and from the wand tip, cloth and fabric started to emerge. It wasn't actually making the garment out of thin air, just conjuring it onto Mavlynn's body. Mavlynn didn't mind. It meant she didn't have to stand. She was pretty sure she couldn't right now.
"That's for your purchaser," the orc said, his voice slightly amused. "But the other will follow your directions precisely."
Mavlynn pursed her lips. And to her surprise, even thinking it caused the dragon in her brain to helpfully bring up a glittering astral HUD, the symbols and images playing around her head. She looked up at the orc and saw that, according to her new dragon eyes and her new dragon brain, he was wearing hardened +5 dragonscale weave in that nice three piece suit. He could bounce high caliber dragonkillers off and not even notice it.
"Strength augmentation, weapons, enhanced durability, endurance, r-regeneration…" Mavlynn whispered. "Arcane powers, Great Wyrm, you made me a walking killing machine!" She sat up slightly.
The orc took out a new cigarette, his voice amused. "What?" he asked. "Kobolds serve dragons in every detail. Did you think you would just be taking out the laundry and tidying beds?"
Mavlynn looked down at herself.
The clothing she had been conjured into was now complete.
A frilly black skirt. A white blouse with black jacket. A big black bow-tie. A little frilly crest, perched on her head. She stood, shakily, and looked back and down to see that the skirt was short enough to show most of her thighs, and that her feet were clad in stockings that reached up and up – black sleekness that terminated just above the knee, leaving a palm wide expanse of pale elf-flesh on display. If she bent forward, she would show off her ass. And no. She was not wearing panties.
In short?
Mavlynn was dressed in the most obvious dragonfucker maid outfit you could possibly imagine.
She crossed her arms over her blouse and glowered at the orc.
"Well, between taking out the laundry and cleaning the bed, you will be doing very dangerous work," the orc said, shrugging as he waved his newly lit cigarette around. "Now. Ready to hit the market? The way you look, I think you'll get a buyer in, what, five seconds?"
Mavlynn glared at him.
***
SAND
Sand, in her two-legged form, pointed at the cute elf with black hair and the kicking maid outfit.
"That one that one that one that one!" she said, tugging on her Mom's arm. "That one!"
"That one that one that one!" Sand said, bouncing excitedly, while her mother let out a long slow sigh. The two of them stood in the sleek glitterific, top-scale style Kobold Trading House foyer, and had walked past several smiling kobolds waiting to get adopted before Sand had spotted the one she wanted more than any other.
"Do you remember why we're here, Sand," Mom said, her wings mantling.
Yes. As a matter of fact?
Sand did.
SAND, TWO DAYS AGO
Sand woke in her pile of gold, stretched, and knew that all was proper and right with the world. She had gone to sleep in quite the opposite mood – infuriated and aching with desire. But there was something about waking up as a dragon, in Wyrm City, in a pile of gold, that just...really made her feel as if she had made all the right choices in her life. The universe was really looking up for Sand. She wriggled deeper into her gold pile.
Then the door opened to her room and Lavianta, her tutor, stuck his bald head into the room and said: "Sand, it is time for you to get up. There's been an...incident."
Sand jerked her head up and out of the gold. It skittered down her head, past her neck, along her wings, and into the gold pile. She frowned down at him. "What kind of incident?" she asked, then scrambled out of the pile. By the time she was down, she had grown to the size of a large horse, her wings spreading and mantling. Real fear jolted into her belly – the last time there had been an incident, Dad had been killed and wouldn't be coming back to the material plane for a hundred years. Mom had taken it better than Sand, being a few centuries old already and having seen time pass as it always did. For Sand, having not even seen one triple digit year span, a century still seemed like a damn long time. She gulped, while Lavianta gestured her to the door.
Through the corridors of the manor home, she rushed with Lavianta until they came to a large circular chamber that Mom used for her long ranged communications. There were dozens of crystal nodes that linked to the dragon lines and a big enough space that she could fully relax and sprawl, as she wanted too. Instead of taking up the whole place, Mom was taking her elfin form. With dusky skin, charcoal and silver hair and elegant wrinkles, Mom looked like she was an oldish elf, maybe ninety years old tops. The kind of elf that aged to be utterly gorgeous, though. Her husky voice preceded Sand into the room: "And if you don't find the fuckhead who pissed all our goodwill down the wyrmdamn drain, then why don't you mail me your balls once you're done, so I don't have to waste my fucking time hunting you down and scalping you myself."
"Yes, Councilor Charischora!" The voice that came from the crystal was definitely a two-legger.
Mom flicked her hand and the crystal dimmed, then turned to Sand, frowning intently as she did so. "Good, you're up."
"What's going on, Mom?" Sand asked, focusing hard. She shifted to her own elf form – slender and dark but not old and dignified, since while Mom could pull of wrinkles, Sand did not want to have to try. That sounded too much like work. She brushed her hair behind her ears, while Mom flicked her fingers.
Several images appeared – dungeons, each with a different corporate logo on them. Each of them had the telltale signs of some doorkickers having been nosing around. Sand repressed her immediate reaction of oh cool and instead focused on the actual corporations. She wracked her brains – and found it easier, thanks to her tutor's earlier grilling, not that Sand would ever in a million turnings of the sun ever have actually connected these two facts herself – and identified each of them. "They're all-"
"They're all my fucking doners!" Mom said, turning to glower at her. "Each one has been hit by a doorkicker squad. The only fucking good thing to come out of this is at least three of them were sold out by their own gamemaster before they got in. But the rest? They either caused so much fucking mess and damage that the dungeons are all out, or they got away with the treasure." She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. "Doorkickers? They're fucking parasite nuisances yes, but they don't crawl up your tail-crack, they nibble on your toe claws some fucking time or another. This? This is something else."
"Trade war!" Sand said.
"Don't sound so fucking excited you little shit," Mom snapped. Sand grinned back at her. Mom only got this mad when things were going to be exciting. Yes, on the one claw, Dad had died last time. But on the other claw, it had been so not boring. They had gotten to implant guns into their shoulders. Mom had taken hers away afterwards, once things had calmed down. Sand started to bounce excitedly, her toes clicking as she shifted claws just to make herself feel even more dangerous. "Yes, it is a trade war, but this isn't like last time. When YoloDynamics went after Chromatic Solutions Incorporated, they did so professionally and openly. It was harder and hotter, but at least we fucking knew where the assholes were coming from. Now? Now, we can get stabbed in the dick at any time by some pencil-necked file fucker who hasn't even thought a mean word about us in the past ten years, all cause some shadowy dipshit paid him off with a pile of fucking gold."
Sand gasped. "You're gonna-"
"We're not giving you any goddamn weapon augments," Mom snapped. "The last time, you hit more people on our side than their side."
"Well, I mean, they should have ducked faster!" Sand pouted.
"No. For this kind of attack, we need something and…" Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. "My sweet, stupid child, I am going to need you to promise me, you will be an adult dragon about this. What we are going to buy is an important thing, it's not like a dog, that you can just throw out once you're sick of it. This will be a long term fucking commitment. Can you promise me that you will actually commit to it? Becuase I have a real fucking job, unlike some wyrmlings I can think of right now, so you will have to actually take care of it."
Sand groaned softly. Inwardly, she saw what it was that Mom could be talking about. Goblins. Or orcs. Or a pile of mercs. Boring two-leggers that she'd have to manage, just so they could be ablative dragon armor. Ugh. Ugh! She sighed, then looked up at the ceiling.
"Okay," she said.
"We're going to buy a fucking kobold," Mom said.
"Okay!" Sand said, in an entirely different tone of voice.
SAND, RIGHT NOW. AGAIN.
"We're here to buy a kobold for self defense, not so you can turn into a twink and fuck one," Mom said, in her brutal tone of voice, her arms crossed over her chest. In Sand's defense, it would be a bit hard to find a kobold here that wasn't fuckable in the extreme. The House did excellent work – there were elves, orcs, halflings, a few neriads, even a pixie, all of them having gone through the training and selection that the House brochure said all kobolds went through. Sand lifted the flimsy up, frowning as she looked down at the cover image, which showed a kicker (snarling and nasty) looming over an innocent and defenseless pile of gold. This Could Be You!!! The text exclaimed. Then, with a shimmer, the kicker was turned into an expanding pile of gore by a single finger flick from a kobold maid, who didn't even put down the laundry she had tucked under one arm. Bury the Mess, Buy The Best! The House Kobold provides lifetime kobolds, trained and augmented to perfect.
"Even the advertisement is fuckable," Sand said, holding it up and waggling at her mother.
Mom frowned, her eyes narrowed as she looked the kobold over herself. The kobold was an elf with raven black hair and bright blue eyes and a slightly uncertain expression on her face. Her maid outfit was cut high, to show off milky pale thighs that stopped short of silky black stocking. She stood in high heels with a weird combination of proper koboldy grace – considering her balance was augmented by dragon neural tissue being grafted onto her bones and half her brain had scales – and woobly wibbliness that made Sand immediately think…
Gosh she's cute. Like a kitten!
Mom immediately asked: "Do you have any astral abilities?"
"Yes, ma'am," the kobold said, immediately. "My name is-"
"Don't fucking ma'am me," Mom said, rolling her eyes. "I prefer Councilor, or if three syllables are beyond your talents, you can call me sir."
"Uh, yes, Councilor?" The kobold said, flushing. "I'm pretty good at astral stuff, I mean I-"
"Pretty go-" Mom stopped up short. "Pretty fucking good? That's what they call ad copy these days? Do you have any combat training?"
"No, but-"
"Oh wow, so they just fucking put combat mods into you? Fucking marvelous, you're doing quite the job in selling your cute ass," Mom said, shaking her head.
The kobold scowled. "I think I can hack it better than you can, considering you don't look like you've gone astral in the past six centuries without a bodyguard – your aura's practically black-blue at this rate. And, also, if you want me to do proper fucking ad copy, you should let me finish a fucking sentence! I don't have combat training but I have combat experience and I've seen the mods the average doorkicker runs with out there, and mine are so much better that I could be a Temperance Nun and not even have a problem cleaning them up by the dozen."
She paused.
"...sir."
Mom blinked a few times. Then she beamed, turning to Sand. "I like her," she said.
Sand squeaked and bounced. "Yeusss!" She pumped both of her fists. The kobold girl was looking at her a bit quizzically, while Mom frowned, then held up her hand.
"We can't buy the first one that we run into," she said.
"Shut the fuck up pipsqueak," Mom said, but it was with love and amusement in her voice.
The next three hours were interminable as Mom went from kobold to kobold. Some of them had been sold off from their original owners – it took a bit of money to keep a kobold, as one had to keep paying payments to the House – and some of them were just better trained than the first. But none of them ever, once, in the entire thing talked back to Mom. Even the one that Mom reduced to tears. "There there," Mom said, gently, petting the girl's head as she put her palms over her eyes and sobbed – making Sand uncomfortable in the extreme. "It's all right – I need to make sure that I have the right kind of kobold. You'll do very well with...you know, try and get the attention of this blue dragon named Karlmaztorz, he'll be the exact right kind of household for you, yes?" She smiled as the kobold stopped crying. "There, now, here." She held out a hankie and the kobold blew a real gross sniffly snotty mess into it.
Mom had responded as Sand had hoped.
"Keep it, darling."
And so, finally, despite all the walking around, they came back to the first kobold – to find that three other dragons were all standing around her, murmuring to one another. The kobold herself was looking a little overwheled and, worst of all, Sand recognized at least two of the dragons. One of them was Prosariak and the other one was Paltillian, and she knew them both because the last time Mom had thrown a soiree, one of Pro had tried to put his dick in her ass, and Palt had tried to put his dick in her mouth.
Okay, to be fair, they had been more subtle about it. But their pheromones had been pretty obvious, enough that Mom had swept over and in one of the few times where Sand was not embarrassed by her mother getting between her and social engagements, she had quietly taken them by their tails and purred: "If either of you shrivel dicked ball less lizards even think of putting a move on my fifteen year old daughter, I will pull off your tails and skullfuck you to death with them." Then, she had given them a smile and they had quietly excused themselves.
The three years between then and now, it seemed, had dulled the memory, for rather than hurriedly running for cover, Palt smiled at Mom. "Ah, Char, welcome, in the market for a new kobold?"
"Welcome back, Councilor!" the kobold said. "She, uh, she was pretty interested in buying me, you know?" She smiled, in a slightly panicked way at the three dragons surrounding her. The one Sand didn't recognize reached down and smacked her ass with the broad, scaled flat of his palm – he was in a draconian form, rather than taking an elf or natural dragon form, which Sand immediately disdained as being impossibly old fashioned.
"Now, now, it's not who offers first, it's who offers highest," he said, jovially.
"We can't turn down a girl that's gone through the whole brain thing," Pro said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Brains thing?" Sand asked.
"No you nevermind," Mom said, her voice flat. "So, you see a top tier combat capable augmented motherfucker like this…" She flicked her eyes over. "Mavlynn, and you go, oh, wow, some new piece of cunt to put my dick in. What a fucking remarkable breadth of imagination you three have! Maybe next you'll come up with the brand new idea of laying on piles of fucking gold, or, perhaps, stealing princesses!"
"Please, ma'am!" Pro said. "Your daughter is right here, we shouldn't be so crass."
"I'm eighteen, I can say fuck if I want too!" Sand snapped.
"Don't fucking swear, Sanditrash, it's unladly like," Mom said, firmly, then glowered at Pro, Palt and the mysterious third guy. "If you three stupid motherfuckers want to try and run a bidding war against a Wyrm City Councilor, I surely would like to see you make the attempt. It's funny when idiot teenager dragons smear their brains out running into windows because they're too busy trying to get their dicks wet, I suppose this would be the same kind of thing. But harder to clean up." She smirked, slightly.
"We three can pool or bid, you know," the mystery third guy said. His hand was openly coping a feel between Mavlynn's legs, rumpling her skirts and rubbing two broad, scaled fingers against pale white panties. The kobold was doing her best to navigate a facial expression between impassive, offended, and aroused.
"It's true, we can," Palt said.
"Yes, I'm sure you three would love to have the other's sloppy seconds, but how about this," Mom said, then turned and whistled.
A suited orc with sunglasses walked over. "Councilor?" he asked, politely.
"Mr. Tusk, a delight, as always, please, have these three dragons thrown out and beaten with rubber hoses for me," Mom said, in the same 'oh sweetie' voice she used when Sand had been a baby. The three dragons blinked at her.
Then they yelped as several kobolds who been who knows where popped out of nowhere, grabbed them, and hauled them off through main force. While a kobold stuffed with augmentations and enchantments wasn't quite as potent as a dragon, they were both outnumbered and caught off guard. The door closed after them, while Mr. Tusk added: "We won't be able to manage the rubber hoses – there are limits to even your discretionary power here, Councilor."
"Ah, well, I'll have to just enjoy fucking them discretely then," she said. "This one. We want her."
"That will be five million gold coins," Mr. Tusk said, smiling.
"Five fucking million? Highway robbery. Absolutely preposterous." Mom said, flicking out her fingers. "Bring me the paperwork and I'll sign before I reconsider it, Mr. Tusk."
The paperwork was signed and they were out within five minuets.
***
"Now, Sand, Mommy dearest has to go and manage the politics of the most powerful city on the planet, can you be a dear and not totally fuck up introducing our kobold?"
"Yeah!" Sand said, cheerfully, punching her fist into the air.
Mom patted her cheek, then turned and walked off, shifting into a dragon as she moved through the corridor, already speaking into a crystalline headset. Her voice echoed off the walls as she upbraided some official or another, while Sand turned to beam brightly at the faintly stunned looking Mavlynn. The elf was looking around herself, just standing in the foyer of the Avalanche mansion. She was taking in things with such clear wide eyed awe that Sand herself had to glance around, just to make sure nothing new had been put out that might impress her.
Nope. Same old same old.
"So, wanna see my room first, cutie?" Sand asked, grinning.
"Uh...aren't I a bodyguard?" Mavlynn asked, her brow furrowing.
"Nah. Well, kinda. Well, yeah." Sand shrugged, then started to walk off to the left side of the mansion, humming cheerfully as she took the stairs three at a time to reach the second level. "This is my wing – there's the security crystal nodes, and our staff, and there's the room where my lame tutor lives. This is the window that has the best view of the city…" She gestured to the huge window as they walked past – and Mavlynn looked out with wide eyes, her ear-tips twitching up in that super cute way elves did. "So, like, when you say you're good at astral stuff, does that mean you were like a rogue?"
Mavlynn blinked at her. "Well…" She opened her mouth – and for a tiny moment, her pupils dilated and then focused. "...not really. The House, uh, trains us in a lot of things."
Sand nodded, casually, her hands clasping behind her back. "Soooooo, I read on your placard, that youuuu have a breath weapon. Can you show it off?"
"You're a dragon?" Mavlynn asked, her brow furrowing. Sand giggled.
"Well, yeah, but, like, a silver," she said, rolling her eyes. "You got a DC-88 Ultra level 20d class red dragon throat gland, that's so frigging cool!" She turned to face Mavlynn. "Like, come on, show it off."
"We're in a corridor of a mansion of a dragon who threatened to have people beaten to death by hoses for being annoying," Mavlynn said, crossing her arms over her chest, her smirk amused and knowing. "Unless you have a shooting range, which I-"
"-okay, you have a shooting range," Mavlynn said, blinking as Sand closed the door to the shooting range room. There were several glowing targets downrange, and three elves in house Avalanche body armor, firing their boneguns downrange, the wet splat of the guns firing mechanism almost inaudible over the harsh clack of the bone spurs thudding into the fake doorkickers and corporate guards that they were using as their targets. Sand hopped up onto the divider separating the range from the targets and beamed at her new Kobold.
"Okay, Lynn! Lets get the pew pew pew pew going!" She said, clapping her hands excitedly. The elves glanced over, then hurriedly drew back, holstering their weapons – Sand supposed she was technically leaning into the line of fire, if they, like, missed by a country mile. She rolled her eyes, then grinned back at Mavlynn, who walked over, grabbed onto the collar of her shirt and yanked her off the divider. "Hey!"
"Don't do that," Mavlynn said.
"You're my Kobold, you can't push me around," Sand said.
"Technically, your mother bought me, and I don't think she'd want your silly head to get pin-cushioned." Mavlynn sighed, slightly. "Okay. Lets do this breath weapon demonstration and get this over with."
"Come onnnn!" Sand said, grinning and throwing her arm around her kobold's shoulder. "At least a tiny part of you has to be excited, right?" She grinned. Mavlynn opened her mouth, then frowned, then grinned, slightly.
"Okay, a little," she said.
"Oh, wait, since you're my-"
"Your mother's," Mavlynn said.
"Since you're my mother's and thus my kobold, you can help me with a lil' problem I got, see, I wanna get on the astral and my mom is a huge jerk about me just roaming around for some stupid reason, so, you could whoa!" Sand yelped as Mavlynn spat. A thin ball of fire shot from her mouth, tiny and flickering fast. It whipped across the target range, hit the far wall, and then exploded into a massive bloom of pure white hot flames. Smoke and bits of grit blew past the divider, and every single target was obliterated in a concussive blast that then swept out and sent Sand skidding across the floor. Smoke parted and Mavlynn grinned, her teeth shining brightly as she nodded to herself. "Holy shit, that's a fuckin' 20d breath weapon! Reflex save that, you punk pieces of shit!" She flipped off the blackened bit of wall.
"Now, I can't fire it that often," Mavlynn said, her voice a bit hesitant. "It takes some time to recharge."
"Who cares, they'll be dead!" Sand laughed, clapping.
"Also, I don't want to obliterate everything in my way, you know?" Mavlynn asked, turning to her. But Sand was already back at the armory console. She flung open the locker and came back, holding two wyrmguns under one arm, a bone cannon in one hand, and a spit rifle in her other arm, tucked against her chin to keep it from falling.
"Come on, show off this stuff too!" she said, excitedly. "You got draconic reflexes, I wanna see them kick ass."
Mavlynn sighed, then took the spit rifle and then held it up, narrowing her eyes at it. "A C-15T Line Rifle, with acid glans and regenerative stomach tissue. Infinite ammo, but a bit of a wait time between shots. Got to lead targets cause the projectiles are slow. Not the most exciting weapon." She smirked, slightly at Sand. "Give me those wyrmguns."
"Yeahhhh!" Sand said, handing over the twin pistols. Mavlynn took them, with a grin, and then twirled their chambers with her thumbs. The click of bone on bone was almost erotic. She twirled them on her fingers – then vaulted over the firing line. Without even pushing a button, targets came to life around her. They were animate. Sand didn't even know the targets could be animated. Yes, they were lower quality than the static targets – they looked like glowing polygons stuck together with wire and twine – but they were moving. Rushing in, already holding simulated weapons.
Mavlynn grinned and then twirled in place – two swords slashing past where she had stood. She moved with unerring precision, her maid skirts swirling as she jerked her chin up just in time to avoid a sword that would have slashed her throat open. Then she brought the whip of the pistol in her left hand crashing into a simulation's nose. His head shattered like a vase as he flew backwards, arms flailing. She spun and twisted in the air, kipping off the ground without seeming to do more than kick her feet a bit, and as she spun, she leveled her pistols and fired. Three dragonettes hissed from the wyrmguns and punched into the faces and chests of more simulations. She landed, then spun around on her high heels, sparks flying as the metal shot shoes scraped along the floor. She fired three more shots from both guns, arcing her arms out in a fan pattern to blast away six more men each – and then she somersaulted backwards, landed on her palms, and then flipped again moments before her skirts swished open. The flash of stalking, thigh, and gloriously pale flesh made Sand whimper as she leaned so far over the divider she nearly fell in.
More simulations were coming in from every angle at once. Her kobold dodged a blow, snapped her leg up and kicked him in the jaw, then brought her heel down on another's head. As the spike of her heel drove into the blank face of her fake attacker, she kept her leg braced there, parrying three qucik punches at her chest and face with her other hand, slapping each blow away before driving a knife palm into the attacker's throat, crunching it down. She shoved the man she had kicked in the face down, sprang over his body, then snapped her revolvers up at the exact moment the dragonettes had returned.
She turned, fired, punched, headbutted, snapped out a kick, fired three more times, pistol whipped. More and more simulated bodies were falling, faster and faster. The kobold flipped an empty pistol around, gripped the barrel, then flipped the chamber open just before a knife thrust at her – catching the knife between bone and metal and the gap where the chamber had been. She twisted, jerking the knife free and pulling the attacker into a knee that drove into his sternum.
Then, with a single last kick, she sent the final simulation sprawling.
Sand, whose jaw had dropped, hit the floor, then burrowed into the planet core, sat there in perfect stillness as her kobold reached up, then brushed her raven black hair into place once more. She adjusted the tiny frilly tiara that all maids wore, then smiled, slightly. "Well. The implants work."
"Panties! Soaked!" Sand shrieked. "Fuck me right now!"
Mavlynn blinked, somewhat taken aback. Then she smirked a little. "You know, I have an astral girlfriend, right?" She asked, her voice teasing.
"Well, she's all bits and boops and not right fucking here," Sand said, her voice hungry. Then she blinked. "Wait, you're kidding, right? Like...kobolds don't have girlfriends. That'd be silly."
"Oh? Why?" Mavlynn asked. Her voice was casual. Calm. Collected, even. Wyrm above she's cool! Sand thought. She was so cool!
"Well, like, you're trained to be dragon servants and dragon bodyguards and stuff," Sand said, nodding. "Like, if you had a GF, it'd be super hard on you, since you'd be all, like, not able to do stuff and things. Like…" She groped for examples. "Like, if you're busy kissing me, then you can't kiss your girlfriend."
Mavlynn snickered. "You, uh, you've never worked a real job in your life, have you?"
Sand snorted. "Yeah, I have to get, like, lectured all the time."
"Well, let me tell you about my astral girlfriend," Mavlynn said. "We only saw each other once in a blue moon because she could only get to a terminal every few days. And me? I…" Her eyes went a little unfocused, but only for a moment. It was like she was thinking of how to best put it. "And I was working my tail off to finish my kobold training. Because that's what a real job is. It means you don't own your own time, you don't own your own life. You just have to eat shit and hope that you make the money you need to pay rent. It...sucks your soul out, and you think anything, anything, has to be better than it."
Sand, her excitement somewhat dampened, blinked at the kobold. "Um…" She hesitated. "I mean. Yeah, it...sucks, but, like, you're my kobold now, so, like, I'll make sure you get to see your GF whenever you want!" She grinned. "Dragon'd!"
"...dragon'd?" Mavlynn asked, brow furrowing.
"That's when a dragon does something, like, dragon'd!" She punched at the air.
"Right," Mavlynn blushed. "Sorry for kinda going off on you there."
"I mean that's not the only way I want you going off on me if you know what I mean!" Sand said, waggling her eyebrows with insistence only hormonal hopped up barely legal dragon teenager could manage.
Mavlynn sighed and pushed her way past Sand and out of the room. "Come on, you little nympho, show me the rest of the mansion so I know where to cram you when bad guys attack."
"Wyrms balls, you're so freaking cool!" Sand squealed, clapping her hands to her chest and bouncing excitedly. "Have you killed a lot of people in training? Or before training? Were you, like, a special forces operative before you became a kobold? Oh! Oh! Oh! Or, or, or, were you, like...a doorkicker! Who switched sides, and joined the dragon team?"
Mavlynn sighed.
***
MAVLYNN
Having two dragons in your brain made it kind of tricky to talk about how you had been captured, turned semi-against your will into a woman and walking weapon of war, and that you'd very much like to go home now. Every time Mavlynn tried to mention anything relating to how the House turned people they captured into kobolds, one of the two dragons in her head squirmed, wriggled, then grabbed onto a chunk of her brain and yanked. The sensation wasn't unpleasant, even, which set up a strange perverse incentive. She found more reason to push the edges of what was acceptable every time those claws yanked and she nearly wet herself in pleasure for trying to say anything to the spoiled brat who had purchased her.
"And here's the bedroom for meee!" Said spoiled brat said, turning and grinning and wiggling her eyebrows again. She was in the form of a slender, dark brown elf girl with shortish ears, longish eyebrows, and a figure that ran the line between petite and nubile. She was dressed in a white shirt and jeans, both of which somehow contrived to be a size too small on her body, showing off her nearly flat chest to as much effect as it was possible to have. She leaned against the doorframe, arms spread. "Wanna see my big heavy pile of gold?" She crooned, her voice pure seduction.
Mavlynn sighed. "Do you sleep on it looking like that?"
"No!" Sand said, snickering. "Gold is for dragon sleeps."
"So, if you want me to fuck you, and you're trying to seduce me onto your pile of gold, won't that just...not work?" Mavlynn asked, grinning at her.
Sand blinked a few times. She flushed. "Wait here." She closed the door.
Mavlynn rubbed her temple. She still ached slightly from showing off in the shooting range, her nerves tingling with the raw heat of the draconic nerves that had been layed atop them. Her muscles buzzed and...yes, her cunt dripped wet and eager. Stupid censorship via brain tugging.
The door opened and there stood Sand, beaming as she spread her arms before the door. Past her, a gold pile had been hastily shoved into the corner, and there was a big comfortable bed in its place.
"Soooooo," Sand said. "Did you know you have multiform varyfuntionality omnipubes?" She purred.
Mavlynn cocked her head, then smirked, slightly. "...I'm going to go clean the east wing."
"Come onnn! I order you to fuck my barely legal dragon pussy!" Sand shouted as Mavlynn turned and sauntered off – and felt no tug, no yank at her brains. Nothing made her go back. She was free. Well. Freeish. She smirked as she came to the eastern wing and, there, she found the maid staff. They were busily at work using wands to sweep away anything that even remotely looked like dust. Several glanced at her and Mavlynn noticed that their maid outfits were a lot less...obviously designed from a perspective of lurid dragonfucking in mind.
"Uh...need help?" Mavlynn asked.
One of the maids blinked at her. Then she burst out laughing. "Oh the kobold's here to help?" she asked – being an elf who could have folded most orcs in half. She walked over, her hands on her hips, grinning. "Nah, I'm just giving you a hard time. My name's Quinnie, and I'm one of the head maids here. Old Firebreather told us that you were going to be bodyguarding the wee one."
"Well, she's mostly trying to get me to, ahem…" Mavlynn coughed. "Fuck her barely legal dragon pussy."
"Hmm, well," Quinnie said, her voice amused. "You're not compelled to do what she says?"
"Not as far as I can tell," Mavlynn said. "Her mom is who owns me."
"Then we'll put you to work in the library. It's right under her room, and your augs should let you keep an eye on the little miss," Quinnie said. "The library, right now, has a serious case of magical overflow from all the scrolls that Old Firebreather keeps getting on her jaunts and never using. So, empty the shunts, dust the books, and sort it all up. While keepin' an eye on the miss, sound like something you can handle?"
"...I mean, if not, you think Miss Avalanche can get her money back?" Mavlynn asked, grinning.
"Oh hah!" Quinnie laughed. "Now, I...huh!"
Mavlynn froze. It felt like warm ice was sliding along the inside of her skin. Her fingers prickled and her eyes widened as she felt both dragons in her brain linking hands, squishing the core of her brain together between their palms. Tails twitched and then locked into sockets she didn't even know she had within her skull. She quivered and gurgled, slightly.
"Sommit a mite queer's happening with your eyes, love," Quinnie said, her brow furrowing.
"Gu...guh…" Mavlynn said, blinking slowly. Then she jerked up right. She grinned, then started to walk forward. She bumped into a wall – and her feet skidded along the ground, moving as if she was trying to keep walking forward. Quinnie blinked, then yelped as Mavlynn walked straight backwards. She stopped before hitting the wall behind her, her hand going to her head. "What the fuck-" she exclaimed, but then the warm ice slid along her tongue – then, with a huge smile, she said. "Ahhh, sickrad!"
"What?" Quinnie asked, her brow furrowing even harder.
The warm ice feeling was covering the entirety of Mavlynn's body. She spun around to face Quinnie, her smile still warm. "Whoa! Hey Quinnie! Your aura's lookin-" She lifted her own hands despite herself and made finger guns. "Mighty fine!" She clicked her tongue in time with mining firing the guns. Then she looked down at her own body, as if she had never seen it before. Her hands moved of their own accord, cupping her breasts. "Niiiiice!"
"What are you-"
What are you doing!? Mavlynn screamed internally.
"Gah!" Mavlynn clapped her hands over her own ears, as if she had hurt them. "Not so loud, Mavlynn! I'm just using your remote socket, ya know?"
"...Sanditrash!" Quinnie bellowed, glowering as comprehension dawned. "You get outta that head right now! She has duties to be doing!"
"Sure thing!" Mavlynn said, then turned and started to walk away, shaking her head from side to side, as if she had just recovered from being mentally controlled. The only problem was that her feet were still moving as if she had puppet strings on. The feeling of being trapped in her own body was...such an intense reminder of the House and the process that Mavlynn...was soaked. Completely. A dragon had her hand up her ass and was using her as a puppet, and she couldn't do anything about it and thanks to her conditioning, it...was...so fucking hot. Her cheeks burned.
Internally, she thought. You are going to get so fucking grounded for this.
"Only if they catch us," Sand purred, using Mavlynn's own lips.
And then she took a right – heading for the front door.
Charischora Avalanche frowned intently at the webwork of connections she had collected and thrown up onto the wall of her innermost sanctum. For the past few years, the only people to have entered here was herself...and memories. Ghosts. She slowly stretched her long, silver-scaled neck, twisting her head to the side until she heard a satisfying pop and then drew her head back to settle again. Her memories played wistful tricks on her. If Tiras was here, he'd at least be able to massage the kinks of her her back with his talons and scaled palms. But, of course, he wasn't here.
He was dead.
And he wouldn't be coming back into the world for a long, long, long time.
"Stop being a big fucking crybaby," Char muttered under her breath. Her scaled knuckle rubbed along her jaw as she regarded the connections. The simple fact was that no one, not even a dragon of her age and expertise, could truly understand the economy as it truly existed. Everyone used models, and everyone knew those models were inexact, imperfect, prone to error. There were simply too many spinning parts and whirling gears and hissing, bubbling organs put up in secret or forgotten about or repurposed after conquest, war, and simply lack of attention. All of it, though, worked. It worked to create the magical materials needed to sustain and maintain the massive population of Wyrm City. It worked to employ and feed those people.
And it worked to funnel immense amounts of money into roughly six, seven dragon's hordes.
One of those hordes was, of course, hers.
So, while Char couldn't quite comprehend the webwork in its totality, she did her best to at the very least get the gist of it. Her eyes, slitted and narrowed, flicked as her nictitating membranes wiped away bits of grime and dust. Every attack that had been aimed at Chromatic Solutions Incorporated had been traced back to their sources – and each source was uniquely identical. In that they were all disconnected, but all shared the same broad characteristics: Each had been a relatively well positioned member of Wyrm City's ever churning black and gray market underground, each had had connections that had given them access to data and maps and secret weak points.
The problem was the timing. Each of them would have independently come up with the idea of hitting CSI at some point – but all on the same day, overwhelming their response networks? She rubbed her finger along her jaw.
"We need to find the communication method," she muttered under her breath.
Her intelligence staff had their ways.
But Char had her own ways. She focused and then shrank down with a crumpling sound of distorted air and shifting flesh, shedding scales, and rustling wings. Once she had finished collapsing into her elfin form, she walked towards the absurdly over-sized doorway, feeling quite ridiculous as she was able to walk through with her arms fully spread and fingers outstretched and would still have a meter and change before her fingers might touch the edges of the doorframe. She turned right, then left, then blinked in annoyance as she saw that one of her pet Rogues was waiting for her.
Rouge the Rogue was an elf with a spiderweb tattoo around her eye from her days as a street Rogue, with a fancy skintight vest and leather leggings all in Clutch Avalanche colors. She was tapping one of her feet on the ground and scowled at Char as she walked by.
"Your kid has stolen your new kobold and taken her joyriding, Ma'am," she said, matching Char's pace as Char walked down the corridor towards the crystal lab.
Char turned to face her, throwing up her hands in a mockery of shock and appalled horror. "Oh Wyrm Above help us, my pissant daughter is using her new toy in the exact way she's meant to use it, what a fucking disaster. Any other bad news to report, maybe our enemies have walked straight into meat grinder for us, to save us the trouble?"
Rouge showed zero reaction. "No, I mean, she's jacked into the brain-dragon and is running the kobold around town like her own personal mecha."
Char blinked at her. "She's not just growing a dick and fucking her?" she asked, sounding disbelieving – because, to be honest, she was. Her lovely, wonderful daughter had two braincells, and both of them were horny. Char didn't truly begrudge her that. Unlike many dragons of her age, Char had managed to retain a few memories of her hatchling years and knew that she had been just as horny and stupid as Sanditrash was right now.
"No, ma'am," Rouge said, frowning at her as the two women stood in the corridor.
"Well…" Char frowned, doing some mental math. "Do you have a fucking tail on her?"
"No, ma'am, I decided to be wildly incompetent today," Rouge shot back, as flat affect as ever.
Char frowned. "You know I hate sassy elves, right?" she asked, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Keep the tail, yank the kobold back if she's going to break her, but if she's just having fun? Fuck it, let our enemies think that we're stupid."
"Ma'am?"
"They'll try and read anything they can into our kobold's action, no? Since, well, we bought her fresh from the House, we'll have to be sending her out for a reason? But instead, no, my stupid horny daughter is off, being stupid and fucking horny," Char said, nodding as she released the bridge of her nose. "It'll throw their pet Rogues into a tizzy."
"Ma'am,..." Rouge said.
"Like you, right now," Char said. "But for the bad guys."
"Ma'am," Rogue said.
"You know, I hate it when you do that," Char snapped.
"Ma'am," Rogue said.
Char turned and walked away. "Add a second tail, then! Eggshells and cumdumps, do I have to fucking think of everything myself? Now go and prepare, I'm going to do my tail trick."
"Ma'am!" Rouge said, clicking her heels.
Char, before she went around the corner, lifted her hand and raised her middle finger over her shoulder.
***
Every draconic household watched every other draconic household. Then those that were a part of a corporate structure had another layer of eyes and ears on everything – corporate dragons and shareholders both watched not only the dragons that owned shares, but also the dragons that worked in corporations. And those dragons that were also in government (which necessarily involved being within a draconic household and part of several corporations) were then watched by another layer of rogues and scoundrels, ranging from rival political parties, two-legger would-be-terrorist and political action cells, and other governments from beyond the boarders of your particular polity.
Char had long since learned precisely how to utilize this abundance of observation to make herself quite hard to track. The first step was to leave the house as ostentatiously as possible. So, after she had left her orders, given some directions to the maids, and sent a cranky astral message to her daughter to not fucking ruin everything, she took off from the balcony of Avalanche House. Her wings, colored a fashionably bright blue and gold, caught the wan sunlight that crept past the clouds and hanging dragons that dotted the skies above Wyrm City, and reflected it down in a glorious auroral flare to the two-leggers, draconians, and grubbers that made their way on the streets. Her tail remained ruler straight behind her back and she soared through the dirty, polluted air of her scummy city and reveled in the raw, sensual power of flight.
Every eye was on her.
Half those eyes were probably also flicking from her to their scrying orbs, their jacked in rogues, their astral specialists, all trying to make sure she wasn't doing anything sneaky. Which, of course, she was. But it would never, not in a million years, show up in the astral plane. They were looking for soul duplicates, doppelgangers, magical spells, and the ilk.
They weren't tracking the impossibly slender spooling wire that emerged from the tip of her tail. She dove and banked, hooking that wire on the guidelines of some of the floating dragons, nodding politely to them as they grumbled in their restive sleep – their souls were projected deep into the astral, their bodies currently doing little save filter out most of the acid in the clouds to keep the two-leggers from melting in the byproduct of their economy. The guidelines kept the tiny wire that she had leading from her tail from being draped pell-mell across the city, where it might get trampled on, or hit by autocabs, or something unpleasant like that.
With the line safely hooked up above the city, she dove down to her favorite orgyarium, landed, and took her elf form and proclaimed: "I do very badly need to get my back blown out, come give me some big orc cock, I can't wait all fucking day!" while clapping her hands imperiously.
And the wire?
It was now attached to her ankle, sweeping off and away through the air, all the way back to her mansion. There was a chance that it might get snipped – but if it happened, the only people who'd notice would have no idea what it meant, or how to trace it back to her.
For the wire led back to the basement of her manor, where it was hooked on a tiny spool. Once she was safely at the orgyarium, and safely being led away by the smiling owners, the far end of the wire...began to bud. And grow. And pulsate. Flesh grew and spread outwards, forming and forming until the far end of the wire was not hanging off a spool, but rather standing on its own two legs as a sleek, muscular, ebony black skinned elf with pale white hair, bright red eyes, and masculine features. He smirked and wrung his hands out as Char let her attention flick along the connection between her tail to her second body.
Well. Technically, this hunky piece of elf-meat was closer to a hand than a second body. Since her soul remained in both, no astral scries could ever notice the difference. From most perspectives, save those which could see microscopic tendrils of iron-hard draconic cells, Chariscora Avalanche and this nameless elf-boy were to entirely different people.
"I know that it's safer than soul-splitting or classical colocation," Rouge said, her arms crossed over her chest as she snapped her fingers. Several attendants hurried over, to wipe some of the excessive bioslime off Char's new elfin buttocks. "But this somehow still seems so fucking gross."
"Oh shut up, sissy," Char said, grinning. "Now, I'm going to need moderately slovenly clothes, a firearm, and an ID that will make me look like a lowly piece of shit doorkicker."
"Ma'am," Rouge said, and the attendants drew back, then came forward again, pushing along a table with precisely what Char needed. Char's smirk was playful as he picked up a shirt, tugging it on over his head. He started to wriggle into his tattered jeans, while the ID was printed out with a soft whirr and burp from a tiny dragon whose tongue could emit ink when requested. As Rouge handed it to Char, she asked: "I have to know…"
"Yes?" Char asked, holstering a cheap wyrm revolver behind his back, tucking his leather jacket down to conceal it.
"...doesn't it get distracting? Having your dragon body being fucked while you do this?"
"Please!" Char said. "That dogshit overpriced in and out factory?" He shook his head. "The men they have there are so badly trained and picked purely for aesthetic, the best fuck I've ever had in my life was with this halfling, bearded, ugly, short and tiny, even for his people, and he knew how to make the sea melt and the sun explode with that sharp fucking tongue of his." He smirked, adjusting the collar of his shirt and nodding. "It's my biggest sacrifice, half the dragons in this city think I have terrible fucking taste." He sighed and shook his head.
Rouge shook her head, then gestured to the door. "Your exit, ma'am."
"Sir," Char said, grinning. "I make a dashing elf, don't you think?"
"You look like my uncle, who got shot when I was twelve for selling beer cut with antifreeze in the underdark," Rouge said, her voice prim.
"Fuck you too, Rouge," Char said, cheerfully, then headed through the door.
It was not possible to be completely unnoticed while leaving Avalanche House, but there were enough exits that were within a three block radius that Char was fairly certain that only a few people would notice his leaving through the sewers and coming up through a manhole. Considering that he had taken a bodyform that looked almost like three of his servants, the people watching would assume that he was a two timing dipshit and chuckle quietly to themselves – while their bosses would wonder if she knew that they knew that she knew that she was being fucked around on.
Char rather liked the mental image, even as he started to make his way through the city. He knew every step he took was making the risk higher – but he had learned a little trick of hiding a small hook in the back of his ankle, made of bone and monomolecular edges. The bone hook would punch into the ground, tuck the thread he was leaving, and then smooth the ground back over again with a quick shove. End result: The wire was left buried and could rot once he was done with it. It couldn't be used on metal or in a house, but...well, it'd work enough for now.
He came, after taking a few short cuts, to the Red District.
To a tavern. He looked up, cocked his head, and grinned.
"The Cum Pit," he said. "I like the name."
He opened the door and stepped inside, looking throughout the place...and there was exactly what he was looking for.
The doorkicker that had been one of the few to get away from the attacks neither clean nor safe. The elf known as Slake – real name Sarandier Gallowstop. She was looking exactly like what a doorkicker would look like after getting away with the skin of the teeth and losing half her party: She was getting drunk slowly enough for it to be classified as a terminal illness, and was showing the sunken cheeked expression of someone who had shucked a few major implants to make ends meet. Remembering from the security-scry footage, she had had mandible bracers, and claws. Well, the claws were gone and the bracers were gone. All that was left was a long muscular tail, which dragged on the floor as a pure picture of draconic misery, transplanted onto what Char had to admit was an exceptionally toothsome rump.
He walked over, then leaned on the bar, grinning. "Copper for your thoughts?" he asked.
"Not interested," Slake said, sighing as she sipped from her drink.
"Silver, then?" Char suggested.
Slake turned, then glowered at him.
Char grinned. "Gold?"
Slake smirked. "Platinum, then we talk." She sipped – and there was just a tiny twitch at the tip of her tail. Char knew at least part of this was because he had biosculpted the most sumptuously fuckable boy elf in the world and Sarandier Gallowstop, despite every single physical appearances to the contrary, was somehow mostly straight. At least according to Avalanche intelligence write-ups. So, Char reached into his jacket, mimed pulling out a coin, then frowned, looking at his empty hand. Then snapped his finger, reached out and 'plucked' a copper coin from behind Slake's ear. He flourished it with a grin.
"Fuckin' dork," Slake said, her voice amused as she sipped another bit from her beer. "And you said plat!"
"Voila!" Char said, wiggling his fingers, then flipping the coin as it took the seeming of a platinum coin – an obvious bit of illusion magic. He slapped it down on the countertop. "It's plat for the next, oh, five minuets."
"That gets you five minuets, then," Slake said, shifting around and leaning on her elbow, looking at him. "You a kicker?"
Char nodded. "Yeah," he said.
"Well, we just got wiped. Hard." Slake said. "Half the team perma-dead, no loot, no nothing, and our cleric has run off to join a different party. It's just down to me and my memories, without anything to look forward to but…" She nodded down to the coin. "Maybe getting that fucking plat and hoping I can get to a tavern in under five minuets."
"Hard knocks," Char said, his voice contemplative. "My old party just split – quarrel over the split, ya know. But we heard half the big kicks around here just got caught in, like, a sweep?"
"Yeah, that's what I've been hearing too," Slake said, sighing. "I think we were being used as a fucking gambit. A bunch of kicks, all hired to hit CSI dungeons…" She shook her head. "Dragon politics. They piss on us and call it rain."
"Amen to that," Char said, frowning. "Who'd even gave out the jobs?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Slake said – her voice hesitant. She had that edgy air Char had heard many a times before talking to a doorkicker. A doorkicker could be bleeding to death and still be edgy about revealing who and where their contacts were. It made sense. If a doorkicker survived bleeding to death by being a snitch, they wouldn't survive their next stabbing long enough to blab again. Fortunately, Char was prepared.
He grinned, and quite brazenly, said: "We could do something more fun than talking, then?"
Slake blinked at him.
And her tail lifted as she bit her lip, looking...thoughtful.
***
Chariscora is quite successful in his seduction - however, Slake is more cunning than expected, and extracts from him a hefty payment: a king's ransom in platinum and tickets out of Wyrm City in exchange for her information.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Slake gasped, her fingernails digging into the cheap plastic headboard of the cheap bed that was, currently, rocking so hard back and forth it bid fair to either collapse under the pressure or bash through the equally cheap wall. Her head threw back as her long, long, long pink deathhawk plastered against her muscular shoulders, sweat drawing it against her skin into long, waterfall cascades. Her buttocks – thick and muscled and just perfect – jiggled and slapped in rythmic time with the dark black hips driving into her as Char thrust his cock as deep into the elf-girl as he could go.
And…
Well, Char was going to do many things to secure his noble house and future, as well as the safety of his child.
He was never going to have a dick anything but titanic while in a male form. The idea ranked his draconic pride – and he knew that it was a potential loophole in his disguise. But...counterpoint?
"Oh my fucking wyrm, oh fuck! Fuck! Your cock is driving me out of my fucking mind!" Slake gasped out – and while words could lie, the eager clenching of her hairless pussy was anything but a lie. Her tail looped around Char's shoulder, tugging taut underneath his armpit, squeezing onto him with a desperate neediness that matched the scratches that she was putting into the bed's chintzy blue and pink paintjob. A thin squirt of glowing elf juices splashed along Char's balls and he groaned softly, managing to keep himself from cumming...because, well, he was a dragon.
He'd cum when he damn well wanted too.
"See?" he panted softly, his hand reaching around to press two dark fingers against her pale clit, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. "Much better than talking."
"Ahhh!" Slake cried out as her cunt clenched on his dick again, so loudly desperate that it was almost audible over her cry of pleasure. Another squirt of glowing juice puddled between her knees, soaking the cheap bedsheets through as she actually began to collapse. Her arms slid noodle-like from the headboard and her breasts and face mashed into the bed, her cheeks pressing against the bars. Her muffled voice groaned out. "I'm...going to die, oh my wyrm, oh wyrm, oh wyrm…"
"Lets fix that," Char purred. His cock eased out of her, inch by inch by inch, until the tip of his cock sprang free, wobbling slightly as glowing juices glittered along every inch of him. He grinned, cockily, as he took hold of Slake's hip, then rolled her onto her back. She sprawled there, her features looking...well, it was the rather familiar near rapture of an elf getting a proper draconic fucking from a proper fucking dragon. He leaned down over her, hands planted to either side of her head as his cock ground against her muscular belly. Her tail, having loosed its grip on his shoulder, coiled around his thigh, all the way down to his ankle. Char murmured softly. "More comfy here?"
"I-I didn't say to stop," Slake whispered, then laughed as Char kissed her neck. "Y-You're good…"
Char drew his hips back ever so slightly – and noticed out of the corner of his bright red eyes that Slake's hand was slipping slowly up and under the pillow. She bit her lower lip, her voice hungry.
"...so so good…"
He shifted his hips…
She grabbed onto something.
Char thrust deep at the exact same moment Slake pulled the wyrmgun and planted the barrel to Char's temple. Slake's eyes glittered with lust and cold focus, even as she grunted low in her throat and quivered in orgasmic pleasure as his dark cock filled her again.
"...t-...too fucking good," Slake hissed. Her legs, despite her words...or maybe because of them, looped over his hips, hooking ankle over ankle, keeping Char buried deep inside of her head. Char panted softly, gleams of sweat glittering on his ebony black skin as his fingers tightened on the pillows to either side of the curvy, muscular Doorkicker.
"Babe-"
"Don't. Babe. Me." Slake whispered, her voice husky. She shifted the grip in the pistol, so her arm rested against her chest, the barrel of her pistol aimed against his chin. Char's dick throbbed, twitching even harder inside of her, bumping against a deep part of her body – something that sparked warm pleasure in Slake's eyes. "F-Fuck. Ah. You're a shapeshifted dragon. Aren't you?" she asked, quietly.
Char gazed into her eyes, and tried to judge the right response.
He smirked, then figured…
Fuck it.
His tongue elongated as he tilted his head down, kissing the barrel of the wyrmgun. He tasted the cold bone, the crusted bits of uncleaned acid on the inside of the barrel. He wrapped his long, snake-like tongue around and around the barrel, as if it was a cock, then drew back with a soft hiss. "What gave it away?" he crooned – and started to slowly fuck Slake a bit. Just a tiny movement of his hips, driving his cock into her again and again. Slake grunted and bucked her hips back, but kept her finger on the trigger and thumb on the hammer.
"For one?" Slake panted, then gasped as his cock hit her G-spot again. "Y-You have an...ah...eighteen inch dick and it feels...fucking amazing." She panted. "Dragon cock."
"Could be implanted," Char said, shrugging one shoulder.
"For another…" Slake rolled her head back, moaning. "You fuck like you don't give ah...ah fucking damn that I can put a dragon in your brain and...oh fuck!" She quivered, her back arching, her sex tightening in desperate need around his dick. "...a-and...ah...you...have a wire." She nodded, subtly, and Char tilted his head around. In his eagerness, he had tossed Slake onto the bed, yanking off clothing and kissing and caressing and rubbing. As one should.
And Slake's bra had landed, precisely, on the thin wire stretching from his ankle to the door, which itself was caught on the upper edge of the bed's footboard, giving it a perfect triangular line down to the floor. The bar remained there, suspended in air. A mute testiment to the wire.
"Cells, right? Leading back to your body?" Slake asked, grinning up at him as he looked back.
"Well, look at who is so fucking clever," Char muttered, his voice dripping annoyance. "You know that dragon will just mildly discomfort me, right?"
"It's the statement of the – fuck!" Slake gasped as Char pulled his cock from her, just that motion being enough to jerk her legs wide and cause her to arch her back. She almost dropped her pistol, quivering as a thin line of glowing elfcum splashed against Char's belly as she squirted with pleasure. Slake gasped, her eyes hazy and unfocused. "F-Fuck, fuck, fuck, how are you this good at sex?"
"Magic," Char said, smirking.
Slake looked up into his eyes. Quietly, she whispered. "Am I going to end up in a ditch?"
"No, I'm going to dismember you and put you in many ditches!" Char said, his voice waspish. "Of course you're not going to end up in a fucking ditch, do I look like a dragon that needs to kill a girl to get his rocks off?"
Slake snorted. "I was thinking more…" She relaxed the hammer on her wyrmgun, then let her arm flop back above her head, the gun laying near her temple, the barrel aimed at the wall. It was quite possibly the most erotic position one could take, while having a gun in the hand – head framed by bright pink hair, eyes full of come fuck me light and skin glittering with sweat. Her one slitted eye shivered in the faintest impression of a wink. "...information plugging than snuff enjoying."
Char chuckled. "That depends," he murmured. His cock nestled against her sopping wet cunt and he started to ease into her again. Slowly, Slake groaned, her eyes closing completely as she arched her back in needy want, her tail tightening around Char's ankle. "Are you going to be fuckin' telling the whole town that you got your back blown out by a dragon?"
"Mmhh!" Slake gasped, and arched her back harder, higher, wanting, needing. Her sex tightened and she shuddered. "Hhuoo...ah...gh...great wyrm, how can you get me to cum again so hard so fucking fast?" Her voice had a desperate edge.
Char chuckled.
"Magic."
He grabbed her hips.
And he proceeded to utterly obliterate her, hips driving into her with a lewd, west series of loud slaps, his balls clapping against her ass, right below where her tail joined smoothly to her skin and spine. The whole bed rocked and, once more, Slake was only able to moan incoherently, her eyes rolling back into her head, her gun falling from her nerveless fingers and tumbling behind the bed. There it clattered to a halt as the moans and gasps were muffled – muffled by Char's eager mouth mashing against Slake's mouth, silencing her with a long, eager tongue-fucking to go with his cock. Slake, despite exhaustion and weariness, managed to hook one leg up and above Char's ass, holding him close as he thrust deep...and let himself release.
Warm, hot blasts of intensely fertile draconic spunk flooded the horny doorknocker's snatch, plunging into her and rushing into her womb. She trembled and gasped out, throwing her head back and screaming. "Oh yes!" She grabbed onto his shoulders, fingernails digging in – pulling dark skin back to reveal glittering scales as the cock within her shifted, growing ridges and spines that were more familiar to anyone who had seen a dragon. Wings burst and a second tail joined Slake's – a bright blue scaled tail, twining around hers as the newly revealed dragon threw back his head and roared in bliss.
Afterwards, Slake sprawled herself happily atop the broad chest of her draconic lover. From somewhere, Char had tugged out a pair of deathsticks and was smoking one, while Slake breathed out a stream of black smoke. She chuckled softly, her head laying cheek first against Char's muscular chest. Her free hand traced scale patterns on his glittering golden belly, while her eyes admired the softening cock that jutted from between Char's muscular thighs.
"How the fuck did that fucking thing fit in me?" she mumbled. "Don't. Don't fucking say it."
Char chuckled, a deep rumble.
Slake drew another drag on her cigarette. "Aight. What did you want to know? Really?" She frowned.
Char grinned. "Where'd you get your mission?"
Slake looked into his eyes. She cocked her head, slightly, and remained where she was – cuddled up against Char's side, taking advantage of his size and warmth to sprawl. The bed creaked softly, but didn't give up the ghost just yet.
"...he was a good contact," she said, her voice soft. "I don't want to fucking burn that bridge, man."
"I can be subtle." Char said.
Slake looked down, and didn't even manage to lift her thigh. Not that she needed. Her belly was faintly distended, pushed out a little by the sheer amount of glowing draconic cum that had been pounded into her. She looked back up, pursing her lips. Char snorted.
"Subtle-ish," he said, grinning wickedly. "Besides. This scumfuck attack on my...partners...it's not going to end here. And look what happened to half the doorkickers they sent after CSI. You lost half your team, did you know you're one of the lucky ones?"
"The lucky ones got away," Slake muttered. "With the fucking loot."
"No. Those ones are being hunted and they're going to be sent to fuck-you-in-the-ear prison." Char was serious. "You got away, but got away with so little that CSI aren't going to waste burning more money after you."
Slake frowned. She regarded the smoldering tip of her deathstick. She cocked her head back the other way.
Then she reached down and put the hissing end out on Char's left ballsack. The heat was not enough to bypass Char's damage resistance, but it was still enough to sting and tingle a little. Char hissed, more in surprise, even as Slake ground the smoldering stick out and then smirked at him.
"Five hundred plat, up front," she said.
Char regarded her.
"Fuck that, I want you in my staff," he said, his voice hungry.
"Fuck that," Slake said. "I'm out of this fucking game. Five. Hundred. Plat."
Char considered. "Two fifty."
"Five hundred, you cheap bastard!" Slake said, pushing herself up.
"Four hundred and a train ticket out of Wyrm City," Char countered.
Slake considered.
Then she swore. "Fuck. Fine."
Char grinned, widely.
"His name...was Razor," Slake said, biting her lip.
Char nodded.
Then, quietly. "Want a round two?"
"Oh fuck off," Slake said, rolling her eyes. "As if I'd fuck you again, you arrogant, condescending, blowhard piece of scal-"
***
"Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!" Slake moaned, throwing her head back as her hips drove back against Char's. His blue tail whipped back and forth as his balls slapped the elf girl's clit. He smirked.
It was good to be a dragon.
MAVLYNN
Mavlynn had not expected one thing about altered in gender expression identity, and crammed full of draconic implants, and then tossed into the service of a horny teenage dragon.
She had not expected for it to be quite so terrifying.
"Whoa whoa whoa, I don't think-" She squeaked out, then yelped as her pounding feet, driven by the astral projection of Sanditrash, sprinted to the edge of the skyscraper. She leaped into the air, her skirts rustling up around her hips, flaring wide as she sailed into a wide, elegant arc, then dropped down onto the roof of the skyscraper across the street. She hit the ground, rolled, came to her feet and stood, Sand bouncing her up and down and thrusting her arms into the air.
"Woohooo!" Sand said, using Mavlynn's mouth. Mavlynn jerked control back enough to say, out of the other side of her mouth. "We could have splattered on the pavement, are you insane!?"
"Firstly!" Sand said, lifting Mavlynn's own finger, waggling it back and forth. "I've read your specs. You're rated for a jump, like, twice that far."
"I am!?" Mavlynn grabbed her hair, then turned back as Sand took control again.
"Secondly, we picked up a huge thermal, and, thirdly, these skyscrapers have suicide prevention spells! Slow fall and shit!" Sand said, putting Mavlynn's hands onto her own hips as she grinned with her lips. "Isn't that right, prole?"
Mavlynn, whose own focus had been entirely on the strange feeling of her body slipping in and out of her control, blinked as she focused her eyes and saw that there were a pair of corporate employees on the spare, bare roof. Both of them were mid smoke break, and one had a cup of coffee. They were both orcs, looking tired, worn, and very much town collared. They regarded Mavlynn with the same expression of mute confusion.
"Are you...like...okay?" the male one asked.
"Fine!" Sand said, cheerfully, and Mavlynn grumbled mentally as she repressed her own urge to respond – since saying both fine and no, I'm possessed, actually! struck her as a terrible idea. "Just gonna keep on my morning jog!"
"A-Also, uh, I wouldn't trust the slow fall spells, they're not well maintained!" the female orc called out as Mavlynn's body burst into a sprint. Mavlynn remained shocked at just how fast she could go when Sand went all out. Her heart hammered, her blood sang, and her calves blurred as she hissed across the roof, then leaped again. Fortunately, the next skyscraper was only a few meters away, and when they landed, Mavlynn didn't even stumble. Sand, her grin felt through the astral connection, drove Mavlynn forward to the next jump – but rather than aiming at the far building, she instead deliberately missed.
What are you doing!? Mavlynn screamed internally – but she saw that they were plunging towards a cloth covered arcade. Her feet hit the arcade, which bounced and sent her flipping through the air, where she landed on the sidewalk, before a few passing pedestrians, who all yelped in shock. A young halfling girl started to clap, while Mavlynn stood and brushed her skirts flat again.
"Thank you, thank you!" Sand said, cheerfully as she walked down the sidewalk. She walked...very much not like how Mavlynn would have walked. Despite being literally brainfucked from male to female, Mavlynn was still mostly herself. She didn't sway, strut, or show away. She was more of a furtive shuffle and hurry from place to place. Well, Sand, using her body, strutted. Her hips rolled and she stretched her arms behind her back, lifting them above her head as she interlaced her fingers and pushed her palms out, groaning happily as she showed off her body to the whole world as she walked along.
Do you have to make me walk like a cat in heat? Mavlynn asked.
I'm just hitting W on the keyboard, I don't know what to tell you, Sand said, and sounded honestly a bit surprised. Let me try hitting W and Shift…
Mavlynn started to walk a bit slower. She did keep swaying her hips. Then a tiny blip blip sounded in her ear and she felt a dragon claw squish against her brain as one of the two dragons in her head shifted around. The end result? Glowing runes appeared in the corner of her vision, projected onto her eyes.
M. AVALANCHE: [Kobold, is my horny daughter still making you suck and fuck half the town?]
Aloud, Sand spoke through Mavlynn's mouth. "Fuck! Fuck shit! Fuck!"
Just answer her already! Mavlynn said, then hurriedly thought. Tell he you're doing combat trials. Since, I mean, that's both true and maybe it will keep her from super grounding you.
Mavlynn felt the extremely...strange sensation of gulping her own throat in fear – purely from Sand's inputs.
SANDGIRL: [Mommmmm, I'm not making her do anything, we're just doing...combat trails!]
More text runes flickered along Mavlynn's eye whipped through her brain without registering. She started walking without even noticing it. There was no room in her head except for sheerest, complete shock. She read the rune again and again and again each time Sand send a message back to her mom – clearly trying to wriggle out of doing anything to make up for her crimes. Each time the rune flickered up in her gaze, each time she saw it, Mavlynn felt her brain go in a new wild spinning loop. Sandgirl.
Sanditrash.
It was like, obvious if you used common letters to spell it out, but the two runes were pretty fucking different in astral lingo.
Sanditrash…
Was Sandgirl.
The girl that Mavlynn had been dating for, like, a year on the astral. Looking back on everything Sand had done, she could see echoes of Sandgirl – but it was Sandgirl without restraints, without check on her tongue. She had treated her...er...him...back then she had been a him. The thought still made her feel strange and sick to her stomach. Back then, Sand had treated Mavlynn with a kind of near awe. She had been the one who hung on Mavlynn's every word. She had...she…
Do you date anyone? Mavlynn asked, casually. Well, trying to be casual.
...um… Sand sent mentally as Mavlynn came to a train station. They had to wait, standing beside a packed bench, watching the greased tracks, waiting for a dragon to come wriggling in. Okay, maybe a little. It's been a while since he came online, but his astral handle is Knyfe. So cool! And he's totally this hot fucking dragon, and he's so much older and smarter than me, but, like, it's totally legit if...wait, is...does it count if...I haven't fucked you yet! Or anyone else, since mom is such a frigging buzzkill. But, like, should I feel guilty?
Mavlynn opened her mouth, then closed it.
...what? Sand asked.
I just never imagined you dating an older dragon, Mavlynn said, her mental voice somewhat choked. The dragon slithered into the station, squeaking and slipping into place. The people waiting for their chance hurried towards the ladders and started to swarm onto the passenger bus.
Well, he can't be that much older, cause he's so cool, Sand said. Besides, I'm eighteen, I'm legal.
Mavlynn shook her head. You know there's more to it than legality, right? She muttered mentally as she walked up the stairs.
Whoa, hey, he was perving up your skirt! Sand snapped, and Mavlynn found herself turning around, glowering at a short, stocky dwarf, who was looking more shellshocked than scandalized. Mavlynn snapped into control and smiled, shyly, at the dwarf, brushing her hand along her skirt. "Dragons," she said, a single word summation of the entire world and history from the Great War up till now. The dwarf, his beard bristling, blinked...then smiled back.
"I understand, lassie," he said.
Hey, what did that mean!? Sand asked as Mavlynn found one tiny advantage to being a slender elf girl in a maid outfit: Two men sprang to their feet and offered her their seats. She smiled at them and took her seat. Then she found the disadvantage to being a slender elf girl in a maid outfit – one of the two men, smiling, took the seat she hadn't taken. His hand, by purest chance, landed on her thigh, stroking the space between stocking and skirt, fingers rubbing along milky thigh. Sand's voice, soft and crooning, spoke in Mavlynn's mind. I don't think that was by purest chance at all.
I know, I was being fucking- Mavlynn started as her own hand moved over, caressing the fingers of the hand stroking her. She felt Sand giving him a warm, syrupy smile.
"You want to play?" Sand purred through her lips.
The elf blinked at her.
Mavlynn's fingers closed around his hand and squeezed. The elf went gray in the face and made a choked, gasping noise.
"Aww, not too rough, am I?" Sand, via Mavlynn, purred, then shoved his hand away. "Then don't play. Buddy."
Think he can touch my fucking kobold, Sand grumbled.
...thanks, Mavlynn thought back to her.
Sand was hesitant for a bit. Does this count as cheating?
Mavlynn frowned. If she just told Sand the straight up truth, she was pretty sure the first dragon in her head would give her one of those quasi-orgasmic seizures to shut her up. So, instead, she simply sighed. Get online later today and try and chat with him, she thought, while already mapping out a mental pattern for how to get to a crystal lab and the astral plane. She was a decent rogue, she could handle this. She smirked, slightly. Maybe he'll be into watching you and a hot girl make out.
Oooh yeah! Sand said as the dragon arrived at the right station.
***
Chariscora Avalanche was looking supremely pleased with herself as Mavlynn walked in and bowed low to her.
"Is my idiot daughter still piloting you?" Char asked.
"Nope!" Sand said, through Mavlynn's mouth.
Char arched an eyebrow, then twirled one of her dark fingers. A glowing portal appeared behind her, peering in on a crystal where Sand was plugged in, a headset wrapped around her head. "In fact," Sand said, her eyes closed with smug pleasure as she spoke through Mavlynn – her voice echoing queerly from both her own mouth and Mavlynn's mouth as Mavlynn, mentally, started to cackle. "I'm back and ready to go on this super cool mega secret-"
Chariscora reached back, grabbed her daughter by the scruff of her draconic neck, yanked her off the keyboard and through the portal, then balled her up into a sphere of compacted dragon, which she began to bounce between her palms – much to Sand's shocked effrontery. Something she did prevented Sand from shapeshifting, so as she bounced from palm to palm with soft squeaks and muffled yelps. Mavlynn, now no longer directly piloted, giggled.
"A bit mean, ma'am," she said.
"Oh please, if I tossed her to you, you'd juggler her yourself," Char said.
"Maybe a little bit," Mavlynn said, grinning.
"Show me your skills, then!" Char dropped her daughter, caught her on her toe, then kicked her at Mavlynn. Once more, Mavlynn's dragon fused nerves kicked on and time slowed to a crawl, making it impossibly easy for her to lift her leg, catching the balled up dragon against her shin, then roll her down to her toe, where Mavlynn started to bounce her along her toe, producing furious squeaks – every few seconds, the balled up dragon she juggled would flash her eyes in anger. Mavlynn felt a bit wobbly, considering she was still in high heels – but one of the two dragons in her head started to buzz slightly, providing a kind of perfect balance.
Somehow.
"Now!" Chariscora said, grinning as she did so. "How many?"
"Ma'am?" Mavlynn asked.
"How many hunks did my horny daughter make you suck and or fuck?" Char asked.
"None, ma'am," Mavlynn said.
"Councilor or sir," Chariscora said, her voice growing playful. "And none? What kind of back assward dragon have I raised? Does she use her tail to pick her fucking nose or something?"
"No, m...Councilor!" Mavlynn bopped Sand from her foot to her other foot, juggling her a bit faster now. "She was more interested in running me around, I think she was going to hit a bar once she was done doing parkour."
"Hardcore parkour, huh?" Chariscora huffed. "Anyway, kobold, first mission for you."
She snapped her fingers and a deadly looking elf with a spiderweb tattoo around her eye stepped out, carrying a duffel.
"This has four hundred platinum coins in it," Chariscora said, causing Mavlynn to kick Sanditrash directly into the ceiling from pure shock. The spherical dragonness slammed into the tile with a crunch and started to make muffled squeaking noises of pure offense. Chariscora smirked. "You need to take it openly from our front door to the train station in the Red District. You will likely be attacked one, two, maybe three times. You are to butcher everyone who even tries to fucking touch you. Rip off their skin, pull their fingers out, gouge out their eyes, grow a cock and skullfuck them for all I care. Whatever it takes."
Mavlynn gulped and nodded. "C-Councilor, um, might I ask...why...am I carrying a prince's ransom?"
Chariscora barked a laugh. "What beggar fucking prince can be bought for a single fucking +2 sword? The garbage prince of fuck town?" She shook her head. "Don't be ridiculous, this is a rounding error."
Mavlynn spoke before she thought. "Councilor, this rounding error could have changed my life."
"And?" Chariscora sounded brutally disinterested. "You're a two-legger. Now, do you want to hear who you're to give it too, or do you just want to give it to some random beggars or something?"
Mavlynn flushed, tightening her jaw.
"A doorkicker named Slake," Chariscora said. Mavlynn's eyes widened. Noticing that, Chariscora smirked. "Yes, you will need to deal with doorkickers from time to time. Don't let the fucking stories mislead you, most doorkickers are pathetic."
Mavlynn nodded. "Councilor." She took the bag, then squared her shoulders. "I-...I...haven't gotten in many fights. "
Chariscora grinned at her. "Well, good thing I bought the fucking warranty, then."
"Is this some tough love bullshit to get me to perk up?" Mavlynn asked, her voice edged.
Chariscora grinned wider. "Get going, toots."
Mavlynn turned. Squared her shoulders. And walked out.
Behind her, Sand fell out of the crater in the ceiling, directly into her mother's palms.
Mavlynn walked down the street and tried to not think about how, at this very moment, she was carrying more money than she had ever had in her entire life. The heavy bag swung in her grip, and the coins within clinked and clanked against one another – and as someone who had grown up grubbing for ends to meet, she could hear the difference between copper and gold and platinum. Platinum had this heavier, weightier sound. Like the promise of a better future. Her skirts swirled around her hips and she hesitated, taking a step more to lean against a lamppost that thrust up from the sidewalk, the sleeping dragon in the crook glowing brightly at the top.
"The beach, huh?" she whispered, softly.
Slake and her...him at the time...had dreamed about heading to the beach. Leaving Wyrm City and its rains and its politics and its grubbing, and just getting somewhere nice and far away. She lifted her head, and saw the smeared sky overhead, the scales of dark clouds and the rippling pattern of colored lightning presaging the evening's acid rains.
The dream had never been closer. It had never been farther away. The changes she had undergone meant that she'd never be able to leave Chariscora Avalanche's employ, not without that venerable dragon's say so. And the idea of Char giving a reason for Mavlynn to leave seemed as likely as Char getting to the end of a sentence without a curse word. She rubbed her hand against her face, and for a moment, the insane urge to just throw the money at the first assassin to try and take it from her flashed into her brain.
Yeah.
Great plan. If the attackers didn't try and kill her, Char would.
Anger and resentment mixed together in her brain as the rain started to drip down, hissing softly against the pavement. It was a bad storm, but at this moment, Mavlynn didn't care. Her maid outfit was treated with enough enchanted fiber to be on par with a +1 suit of chainmail, and she had dragon scales under her seemingly elfin skin. Just as she expected, the first droplet to scud along her cheek left nothing but a faint tingle. Then she heard the soft sound of a foot scraping on dampening pavement. She half turned and saw a man in a thick set of leather robes over what had to be bulky armor emerging from the shadows behind her. He had the canted, broad poofy hat of a streetsknecht and his leather jacket had been embroidered with purple and gold neon bright heraldics.
Two more people came around the corner to the other side of her – one of them a slender elf with two knives, the other a burly looking orc with a mace and shield, which he rapped together with a soft clang clang. They all walked towards her with the same deadly purpose.
"You know?" Mavlynn asked, quietly, feeling all the feelings balling up tight into her belly. "I was pushed around a lot before I became a kobold."
"We have three archers covering you with long ranged acid-rifles," the streetsknecht said, his voice having a deep, gutteral quality. Mavlynn cocked her head and flicked her eye, bringing a slitted iris into line. The new dragon-sight she had flared and she saw through his clothing to the thick armor beneath – he was wearing an actual suit of articulated bone armor, with draconic muscle tissue sewn into it and hooked to a cheap vat-grown brain near the nape of his neck. It'd make him even stronger and tougher than his implants – which included a cold breath weapon slapped into the back of his throat. She flicked her iris back up and shook her head.
"Did you think that Chariscora Avalanche would be so mindbogglingly stupid to let her kobold out with this much plat and not expect this?" Mavlynn asked. "Do you want to see how much money she spent on me first hand, or are you going to just leave and let me-"
The rogue came at her back, knives at the ready. Mavlynn sighed internally, then spun on her high heel, the balance perfect, the sweep of her leg timed to the exact right moment. She swept the rogue's legs out from under her and then slammed her back with an upward blow from the bag of platinum. It might not have been a particularly elegant blunt weapon, but it still did the job. The rogue yelped as she was flipped up into the air and landed in the same cup of the lightpost that held the glowing dragon, who woke with a hissing roar of shock and anger and began to flash in strobing pulses of yellow and red light out of sheerest annoyance.
In the first pulse, Mavlynn darted under the two handed broadsword that the streetsknecht had drawn from under his robes. Hissing acid rain flared along the blade as she came up inside of his guard, darting underneath his arm, then grabbing onto the control brain. Normally, it was seated well enough that people could go at it with sledgehammers and not dislodge it.
Fortunately, Mavlynn didn't need sledgehammers. Her eyes flashed as one of the dragons in her brain stuck his claws in deep and her astral form leaped into the controller brain. This first transition from the physical to the astral since her transformation almost shocked her into immobility. She had had no idea that while she had been Mavlor, she had moved with a thick skein wrapped around her astral body, that there had been separation between what she wanted and what she could do. Her fingers moved as if through air, when before, she had been used to slush.
She could have twisted his spine in half. Instead, she yanked a few internal wires, reprogrammed a routine, then yanked her physical back, her soul snapping into her body
The powered armor started to stomp forward, his swinging sword flailing wildly. "Stop! Stop!" He exclaimed, straining, his arms groaning as they were forced to move – his muscle against the armor's strength meant that neither moved quite in the direction they wanted to go. The orc with the mace and hammer and to jerk aside to avid getting slashed, but as he advanced past his friend, three bolts of acid shot from the highrise to the left of Mavlynn. She snapped her head up...and spat a bolt of fire out by pure instinct.
The explosion blew the acid apart before it reached the midpoint between street and shooter, and the acid-rifles reload time meant-
The orc came in, swinging his mace with brutal eagerness at her head. She ducked left, then right as he pulled the mace back down. It cracked against the pavement, his long arm and furious swing oversetting him. But then a crackling roar of thunder exploded and a lightning bolt shot down from the sky, striking the precise point he had hit. Mavlynn sprang backwards, her high heels skidding along the ground. She turned her skid into a backflip, evading three more acid blasts – one hitting where her chest had been, another two splattering where her head had been. The acid hissed and bubbled as she sighed. "A cleric, huh?" she asked.
"We're getting paid a big chunk of change for you, kobold," the orc growled. "And you don't seem to have much beyond wired reflexes and that breath weapon."
Mavlynn smiled sweetly at him. Then she tossed the bag of platinum into the air. It sailed up.
Time slowed.
Her legs pumped and sent her shooting up into the air, arcing up as she spread her arms wide – fingers clenching as claws burst from the tips. She landed, both feet slamming directly into his upraised shield, then slammed her claws into his armored helmet and flung herself up and over his head. She tore away the helmet and no small amount of skin and cheek. The orc bellowed in pain and shock as she held out her hand, nails snicking back into place as the strap of the duffel dropped right back into her palm. Her left arm snaked out and wrapped around the orc's throat, yanking him back against her chest. She started to sidle left.
"Y-You bitch! You clawed my fucking face!" the orc said.
"Wow, you noticed?" Mavlynn hissed under her breath.
She flicked her eyes left and right. The rogue was nowhere to be seen – she had gotten off the lamp post in the strobing, pulsing confusion. The acid-fire was being held right now. The streetsknecht was still walking in a straight line, grunting as he tried to control his armor…
An acid bolt splashed against the orc's chest. He bellowed in shock and fury. "You dicks!"
Mavlynn didn't know if it was a twitchy trigger finger or cold blooded calculation. Instead, she just flung the orc away from her, rolled away as more acid bolts splattered the walls and glass of the skyscraper behind her, then sprinted. She got right to the power armored man – and there, she learned it was definitely cold blooded calculation: A splatter aimed at her slammed directly into his head, causing him to shriek in pain and shock – but only for a second as his hat, skull, face and brain melted into a slurry of bubbling red. More bolts landed before and ahead of his now rapidly moving power armor.
"Wyrm above, you guys are assholes!" Mavlynn shouted over the corpse's shoulder, her heart hammering as she reached the corner – and two large dragons pulled up, their claws scraping, their armored hides covered in bright paint and flashy colors. From them emerged what looked like sixteen goblins, all of them clad in leather and metal, with knives and wyrmguns.
"There she is! Get her! Get the plat!" One of the goblins cackled.
More acid bolts from the snipers kept slapping into the ground around Mavlynn as she thought, not for the first time, that a maid outfit was a terrible getup for a full on gang war. She growled, then focused – and split her attention. A sliver of her mind sent her soul into the power armor's controlling brain, yanking the programming and cramming in as much white hot rage as she could feel. The other part of her tongued the breath weapon implant in her mouth from sphere to cone. The faint click of shifting bone against her soft pallet reminded her, sickeningly, of her earliest memories of dentistry, and made it all the more easy to open her mouth and unleash a burst of brilliant red flames from her mouth. The goblins screamed and even their dragons – barely aware they were being moved around at all – yelped in surprise.
She rushed towards the crisped piles of the first line, slammed her elbow into the nose of a goblin trying to aim a wyrmgun at her, grabbed another and flung him into the way of another sniper shot, then sprang up onto the cabin built onto the dragon. She landed in a seat that had been affixed to the dragon's spinal column, with the drivestick attached to an exposed chunk of brain, and two bony plates emerging for go fast and stop. She grabbed onto the stick, shoved the dragon from 'stupefy' to 'sprint' and then put the bone to the brain. The dragon roared and started to sprint down the road, leaving the shocked and awed goblins behind.
"Just bring the plat to the station, you'll be attacked a few times, it'll be easy," Mavlynn grumbled under her breath. A tiny spark of astral focus brought up the DPS on the smooth scales that ridged up above the exposed brain – showing her position in Wyrm City in glowing, arcane energy. She frowned, then started to tap at the glittering runes, her claws snicking out in her irritation.
Rerouting, the runes flared and showed her a U turn.
"No, I want to go to Red Station!" Mavlynn snapped.
The side mirror on the dragon's harness exploded with a spray of metal and glass. Mavlynn yelped, jerking her head away from the runes to the windshield, then to the mirror. She saw a tiny dragon gnawing on the remains of the mirror, still smoking from his launch. She craned her head around and saw a sleek bonecycle whirring along the road behind her, white wheels flashing as the arcane engine drove the skeletal construction forward faster and faster. On it were two streetsknechts, both flamboyantly dressed – a riot of purples, reds, greens and neon pink. One had a wyrmgun in her right hand and a curved sword in the other, while the other was merely focused on driving her bonecycle in a weaving arc, cutting around other dragons on the road that were moving at a more sedate pace than her thundering beast.
They were both armored – in checkered patterned leather jackets and highly plumed riding helmets: Frog helms with glowing HUD strips for vision.
Mavlynn scowled, twisted on the wheel, and swung her dragon in a curving sprint around a corner.
Rerouting!
"Shut up!" She snapped.
The bonecycle screeched closer and the streetsknecht on the back fired another shot, then another. Each tiny dragon she launched slammed into the metal housing around the dragon she was riding – but she knew it was only a matter of time before the streetsknecht put a dragon right on her knees and she went from going seventy miles an hour to none. She adjusted her pressure on the bone-spur keeping the dragon sprinting forward, then twisted hard, driving the shoulder of her beast towards the approaching bonecycle.
The pilot yelped and then took the world's worst spill, flipping over the handlebars and skidding in a spray of bone chips and sparks as her armored body hit pavement. The gunner simply leaped up and, with a thump, landed on the dragon's roof.
Mavlynn looked up – and then saw as the tip of the blade slammed through the thin metal of her dragon's roof and almost impaled her through the shoulder. She twisted aside and then, furiously, slammed her elbow into the blade. The blade snapped completely in half and, with a single flash of inspiration, Mavlynn slammed down on the brakes. Her dragon dug in its claws and stopped so suddenly that the streetsknecht on the roof went flying off just as impressively as her comrade had – without the sword to anchor herself, she tumbled, then hit, then rolled and rolled and came to a stop near several stopped dragons, the drivers in their cabins gaping in shock at the sudden explosion of violence on their city streets.
Rerouting… The runes said, again.
Mavlynn shook her head.
The streetsknecht that had just spilled off her car started to slowly stumble to her feet. She shook her head, then reached up and took off her plumed frog helm. Underneath, her hair was a wild confusion of pink girls and her nose was bleeding. She lifted her hand. "That!" she said. "Was…"
Then she collapsed to the ground. Mavlynn stepped from her dragon, which was panting and steaming and ticking softly as it cooled off, then walked over to the prone woman. She knelt down, checked her, and saw that she was just stunned. She was going to be okay. Mavlynn sighed, then grabbed her and picked her up, and went to the other cyclist. She had a broken arm and was trying to drag herself to her bonecycle, which itself had done the worst of the three, crumpled and shattered in half a dozen places, chips of white scattered across the ground.
"Come on!" Mavlynn grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. The woman screamed, her voice muffled and echoy within her frog helm. The streetsknecht groaned and struggled against her grip, but Mavlynn jammed both of them into the back of the dragon. "Sit there, and stay quiet."
She got into the driver's seat, then streaked off well before the cops arrived.
***
"What the fuck, man?"
The streetsknecht with the broken arm and the frog helm still on was the one who spoke up when Mavlynn hit the brakes and her stolen dragon came to a stop at the Dragon City Draconic Hospital for Dragon Related Ailments. She reached into the duffel bag, pulled out two platinum coins, and flicked them to the two girls. "Here," she said.
"...what the fuck, man?" the girl with the broken arm grabbed onto her frog helm, yanking it off to reveal green features and tusks. "W-What is this? A trick or something?"
"No," Mavlynn said, sighing. "I was told to make an example out of everyone who attacked me. Fire, acid, tossing around, sure. But I think I want to make one example of my own." She slumped in her seat. "I...just...tell people that the kobold for Chariscora Avalanche is an okay kind of NPC, you know?"
The two girls regarded her uncertainly. "Won't your DM get pissed at you? Just tossing plat at some kickers?" the pink haired one asked, her voice high and nervous.
"Eh. Maybe." Mavlynn shrugged. "But she spent so much money on me, I might as well tell her to go sit on a polearm if she gets too snarky. Worst thing she can do is sell me off and that's not so bad." She craned her head back, then grinned. "Go on! Get outta here!"
The two streetsknechts didn't need a second warning. They tumbled out of the back of the dragon. But as Mavlynn started to get ready to drive again, a hand reached in and grabbed her head. She was yanked forward and down and to her shock, she found her lips mashed up against soft, plae elfin lips as the pink haired streetsknecht leaned in against the driver's side window, her feet braced on the stoop that ran along the dragon's flanks. Her tongue was warm and gentle, pressing into Mavlynn's mouth. Then she drew back, panting softly, her hands releasing Mavlynn's head so she could dangle from the window.
"Thanks," she said, blushing. "...Pixie."
Then she was gone.
Mavlynn shook her head slightly. "Right."
She drove off, the dragon's claws sparking and flashing. She had another secret reason she could drop on Chariscora's head, a reason she hadn't mentioned to the streets: She supposed zero percent of anyone would ever imagine a kobold would do anything but double tap her attackers. So, taking two of them to DCDHDRA was like...totally implausible. That'd throw people off her scent. Right? She kept her eyes out, looking left and right as she drove through the city, reaching the Red District and, from there, parking her dragon, yanking off the metal covering with a grunt, and then smacking it's butt.
"Go on! Get!" she shouted and the dragon, his astral soul still far off in the high astral, started to wander off.
She supposed that'd keep her from being found immediately, if anyone was tracking the dragon.
With the bag of platinum in her hand and her maid outfit still remarkably impeccable despite rain and fire, Mavlynn came to the Red District station and walked up the stairs into the large indoor plaza that served as the waiting spot. She looked slowly around – and spotted Slake after a few moments. Her heart clenched, seeing the doorkicker in person again. It felt like a lifetime ago. It had been, like, two days. She bit her lower lip, her hand tightening around the strap of the duffel bag. Then she started to walk forward, her high heels clicking.
The Red District station was mostly empty, and the huge mural of red dragons and volcanoes that covered the far wall was an incongruously fantastical counterpoint to her and Slake. Slake was dressed in concealing brown robes, and under the hood, Mavlynn could see that the impressive streetsknecht had lost a lot of the implants that had made her so intimidating – she guessed they had to have been sold off. It made her look softer, more approachable. Which is why Mavlynn was somewhat taken aback when a soft click of bone on bone made it clear that Slake had a gun under her robes.
"Not one step closer," she said, her voice soft. "You from Avalanche?"
Mavlynn bowed, her skirts frilling. "I am Mavlynn, kobold to House Avalanche," she said, wanting to scream: It's me! It's me, Mavlor! Annoyingly, Mav was not an extremely rare elfin prefix. She clenched her teeth, while Slake regarded her.
"...okay, I see why dragons buy you guys now," she said, and shifted her hand under her robes. When she flung them back to free her hand to take the platinum, her wyrmgun was holstered at her hip. Mavlynn held out the bag and Slake took it with a soft grunt. She hefted it, then frowned, intently. "This is two short."
Mavlynn opened her mouth – but before she could respond, Slake stepped around, shifting and moving so her back was to the rest of the station. Her other hand pulled and placed her wyrmgun against Mavlynn's chin, aiming up. Slake's eyes were ferocious. "Listen, kobold," she said, her voice soft. "Two may not sound like a lot, but I'm very...very suspicious today." She leaned in. "What is it? Bugs? Astral trackers? Replaced the coins with bombs or something?"
"H-How can you tell?" Mavlynn stammered.
Slake hefted the bag. "Before…" She looked sad. Mavlynn, in a flash, saw the face of Queerie, the elf arcanist who had been a part of Slake's close knit, well run party of doorkickers. Before him. Before Razor had ruined it all. "...I learned a cantrip, okay. It's good for when people try and fucking screw you."
Mavlynn closed her eyes. "I...I gave two coins to two streetsknechts that were hurt in getting here."
"Your buddies?" Slake asked, frowning. "Didn't expect a kobold would need an escort."
"No, they...tried to kill me, I felt bad for them," Mavlynn said.
Slake slowly lowered her pistol. The bone white of the barrel traced along her neck, feeling as insistent as a claw. It tangled against the frill of her blouse and Mavlynn bit her lip as she felt her nipples hardening. Slake had always been attractive, but...did aiming a gun at her have to be this...erotically charged? Or was it just the fact she was a kobold now that made her a whimpery mess around stronger women? Or...her nose flared and she blinked.
There was another reason.
She could smell the musk of a dragon male on Slake. Her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, while Slake holstered her pistol, frowning. "You. Felt bad. For people trying to kill you? And you say you work for that asshole Chariscora?" She asked.
"Yes," Mavlynn said, then frowned. "And who do you work for?"
Slake snorted. "No one," she said, hefting the bag. "That's what this bag is about."
"Hmm, then what's that I smell on you?" Mavlynn asked, stepping forward, poking her finger against Slake's chest. "I smell a male dragon on you. Fresh too."
Slake flushed right back at her. "That would be Chariscora," she said, flatly.
Silence, save for the drumming of rain on the station's roof, the patter of weak acid on glass, the faint groaning of distant dragons along the subway lines.
"Oh," Mavlynn said.
"Yeah," Slake said.
Mavlynn chuckled, a bit nervously. "Guess that's two of us who got fucked by dragons, huh?" she asked.
"We both get paid for it at least," Slake said, shaking her head. She turned and slung the plat over her shoulder, the bag thumping against her back. "Sorry for the threatening shit, Mavlynn."
"It's fine. Have fun at the beach!" Mavlynn said, waving.
Slake walked away.
Then she stopped.
She looked back and gave Mavlynn a frowning expression. She narrowed her eyes. Mavlynn felt the other dragon in her brain squirming. She waved. "Have to go!" she said, then turned and hurried away, heels clicking.
***
SLAKE
Slake watched the gorgeous kobold walk away...and tried to not throw up. The entire conversation had felt so familiar. Deja vu, buzzing along the back of her spine. She had hated every second of it – feeling slow and sluggish, with most of her implants yanked and her ability to think reduced to a mere elf's brains. But she...she had been so sure she had known Mavlynn from somewhere. She had just been about to put it aside when…
Have fun at the beach.
The beach.
The way she said it. That...kiddy tone, that sense that she had never even seen a beach, and only knew about it in stories. It had been too close.
And now, watching her hair vanish down the stairs out of the dragon station, Slake felt cold horror in her belly. The face had been subtly different. The voice definitely different. But...but...but...she looked down at the platinum that she held. It was enough to set her for life. She knew it. She looked back at the stairs and the rain. She had only known that twig of an elf boy for a day.
She couldn't be thinking this.
She couldn't be.
Slake turned back and waited for the station. She waited for the dragon to come, then got aboard. It was an outgoing dragon, so it'd cruise through half of Wyrm City before finally reaching the outward station. She sat in the seat, watching the tunnels hum by it as it slithered on greased tracks. And she counted the platinum pieces in the duffel in her mind, her foot tapping against it. One. Two. Three. Four.
Mavlor had helped her get out of that disastrous kick. He had stayed behind. On purpose. So she and Lonk could get out. Lonk had gone corporate to survive in the aftermath, and she Queerie was dead. But she had gotten out. Because of him. And now he was...what?
How had they done that to him?
Then.
What if the legends about how kobolds are made aren't legends? What if they're true.
She focused on counting. Ten, eleven twelve, thirteen…
The Black Station came up. She watched people get on. A few people clustered in seats around her, but no one took the seat she had. Her foot kept resting against the duffel.
Just go, she thought. You can just fucking go, man. It sucks for Queerie…
He hadn't even been the only person she had known who had died in the doorkicking profession. Their old rogue, Timlas, she had bought it with a spurt of acid to the face on a fucking trapped lock, two torches into an unlit dungeon. Then there had been that streetsknecht from, like, three years ago...what had his name been? David? She frowned intently and shook her head. Wyrm City chewed people up and spat them out.
She was getting out. She was getting out.
Mavlor had saved her life. And now he...she...was a slave.
Slake closed her eyes. Tears beaded at the corner of her eyes. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck this whole fucking world. She didn't owe anyone anything. She didn't owe that whiny piece of shit anything! Oh, he had wanted to dip his toe into doorkicking, he wanted to earn some money. Sure, he'd been a good rogue, but so what? Good rogues were a fucking copper a dozen, and she had four hundred and ninety eight coins of wyrmdamned platinum. She could buy a ticket to Wyvren Beach, and buy a mansion near a forest and live there on her investments. She could get out!
Fuck Mavlor! Fuck him!
She got off the train as the dragon, at last, arrived at the outbound station. This place was bustling even this late at night, even with the rain. Huge lines of passengers, even huger dragon-trains covered in cargo containers. She clenched her jaw as she headed for the ticket station, where a sleepy looking dragon sat next to a cheerful elf in a bright blue and gold uniform. "Welcome to Transtar Shipping, do you wish to buy a ticket to a non-Wyrm City principality?"
"Yeah, uh...how much for a ticket to Wyvren Beach?" Slake asked.
"That will be fifty gold coins, ma'am," the elf behind the desk said and didn't even manage to sound skeptical that a scruzzy looking ex-streetsknecht could scrounge that much gold up. She did look shocked when Slake slapped down five platinum coins onto the countertop with complete, casual ease. She looked down at the glittering disks, then said. "I, uh, I'll have to make sure these are authentic, ma'am."
Slake waited. She waited as the woman came back and, with effusive praise, had her dragon cough up some glistening tickets for the 9:00 AM to Wyvren Beach. Then she took the coins and Slake was left to sit and wait. She sat at the bench and watched a cargo train load and unload huge amounts of goods – glittering arcana, potion bottles by the hundreds, ingots of exotic metals. She watched...and the duffel bag full of platinum coin sat between her ankles. Payment for what she had done.
Mavlor had saved her life.
"Fuck him," she whispered.
That little skimpy skirt. She knew what dragons did to cute things in skimpy skirts. Oh, sure. You usually liked it. After all, they had the fucking money. And the pheremones. And the magic. They had all the fucking power and that made it okay, right?
She clenched her hands. She used to have claws, to dig into her own skin. She used to have scales, implanted beneath her flesh, to armor her against claws. Her tail, the only implant she still had, writhed and slumped against the bench.
"Fuck him!" She hissed, quietly.
Mavlor had saved her life.
"The 9:00 AM to Wyvren Beach is now loading!" The PA squawked out through hardened, carved bone and horn. "Repeat! The 9:00 AM to Wyvren Beach is now loading."
"Fuck him…" Slake whispered. She hung her head forward, looking down at the ticket in her hands. She looked at it, at the glittering gold and silver runic letterings. She looked past it, at the duffel bag of platinum. She closed her eyes.
That little skimpy skirt.
"...fuck me…" Slake whispered, even softer.
She stood. Grabbed the duffel. Walked towards the 9:00 AM to Wyvren Beach...then turned and headed for the train station exit. She tossed the ticket into the trash, her jaw tight as a vice, her spine stiff and her eyes blazing.
***
The first place that she started with was her contact.
The only problem was that he was gone.
"What do you mean gone?" Slake asked, leaning on the doorframe of the apartment building. The owner, Clivesland, was a short and stocky dwarf, who was looking at her with an annoyed scowl. His hands went to his hips and he shook his head.
"I mean that he and his roomies are both gone. I think that job paid real fucking well for them, if he was your contact."
Slake frowned. Hard.
That job hadn't paid at all.
"I want to check their room, has it been rented?"
"Not yet," Clivesland said. "but I ain't about to-"
Slake walked past him, flicking a platinum coin into his chest. It made a remarkably loud clattering, clanging noise as it hit the ground and he scrabbled for it, then picked it up, blinking a few times. "What...I…" He stammered. "It'll be unlocked, ma'am!"
The ride up the elevator passed in an eternity of tapping her foot, until she came to the room that her contact Razor and his roomie had been living in. Stepping in, she sniffed at the air – it smelled like two men had lived here. She started to poke around, opening drawers, looking under beds. She found no sign of journals, but there was a crystal that showed every sign of being a high end hacking rig, perfect for a rouge or a rogue in training. She tried opening it, her palm pressed down on the activation gem, but...no, it was password locked with something better than she could slice into.
She opened the closet.
And froze.
There were three shirts in here that were exactly the same as the shit Mavlor had worn. She took one out, holding it up, then putting it to the wall. Same size too. Of course, it was a mass produced shirt. There were probably thousands of elves that had similar shirts. She threw it back onto the bed, then started rummaging around inside of the closet, looking for anything else. She found a few textbooks on astral physics, dog eared and cracked. She opened up one and found it filled with neat handwriting circling and underlining different things to focus on, and dozens of bookmarks shoved in. She flicked from page to page, frowning intently as the cured skin crinkled under her fingers.
The book was for just standard corpo astral techs. But the person who had owned this book had focused on the security analysis and system intrusion sections – usually taught in a kind of edgy, safe way, as a way to protect systems, not crack into them. There were diagrams of how to turn the lessons back in on themselves that were way above Slake's pay grade, but she had seen enough rogues at work to spot when someone actually sorta kinda knew their stuff.
She looked for a name. The only indication was a tiny rune carved into the back cover: MF.
"What was your last name, again, Mavlor…" Slake whispered. It was still all circumstantial. And it still didn't tell her what exactly fucking happened.
So, she started tearing apart the other rooms. Here, there was a much clearer story: Clothes, gone. Books, gone. Tools, gone. Everything had been packed up and left behind. There was only a faintly humming, still active crystal – a much cheaper model, the kind that was used by the average user. That meant it was probably not very well secured, right? Slake put her palm on it, and was prompted by the password. She considered.
PASSWORD.
The thought flashed through her head.
The crystal flashed red.
She frowned.
RAZOR.
Flashed red.
RAZOR1.
The crystal flashed green. "Idiot," she muttered as she brought up the last astral sights that her contact, Mr. Razor, had visited. Slake's brow furrowed and her tail shifted and slipped around behind her, dragging along the floor as she saw that someone had bought an entire fucking penthouse in the Gold District's fanciest apartment building, flat out, without even needing a loan or mortgage. It was an amount of money that made her platinum bag seem staid and whimpy. It was an insane amount of money. Impossible amounts.
Slake frowned even harder.
"Motherfucker."
***
It hurt, getting to the next part, even if it actually made her bag of platinum heavier. Slake gritted her teeth and went through with it. In under six hours, she had gotten the tail removed for a small head price from a dragonscraper, and now looked like a classy-ish highly paid elfin servitor, complete with the uniform she had gotten from a sweet blue haired thing for the low low price of twenty five platinum and a murmured 'why don't you stay home from work today?'
Without the tail, she felt unbalanced and unsteady. But Slake kept herself walking forward through the Chromatic Bounty, past the corridors of sterile white doors, her shoes clicking along the tile. Razor wasn't staying in the place that had permanent on staff guards, not like the highest levels. But there were still glittering scrying eyes every few feet that she was pretty sure would tag and track her if she did anything out of the ordinary. She kept her face level and walked normally. No skulking, no furtive glances.
Her heart was beating steadily. She wasn't nervous, exactly. Instead, she felt this kind of low level dread, creeping along her spine, gathering in her gut like a stone.
She was heading towards the man who had sold her and her party out to the fucking corpo dragon pieces of shit.
And…
And she was going to have to let him live. She was going to need to walk out with his heart beating and his lungs drawing breath, even though every part of her body wanted to drive her nails into his eyesockets and wrench some payback out of him. And why? Because of fucking Mavlor and fucking saving his fucking ass and because if she killed someone, she'd be fucking caught. She wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for that fucking elf. She knew she was trying to externalize her fears onto someone else. She didn't care.
She came to room 451 and knocked on the door. "Your room service, sir," she said, firmly.
No response.
Slake pursed her lips. The uniform she had gotten had no keycard – the girl who had sold it had snatched it from the pocket and refused to hand it over for every platinum coin in the bag. Still, Slake hadn't lost all her implants. She shifted and placed her back between her and the scrying eyes and gently pushed at the door – or, at least, she looked like she was being gentle. Inside her arm, dragon tissue was compacting and shoving as hard as it could. The feeling was a bit like the world's worst Charley Dragon located entirely in her bicep.
But it did shatter the door lock with a tiny crunch and let her step inside. She now had however long it took for the pet rogues they had working here. She swept her gaze around the penthouse and whistled softly. It was big and it was fancy. But there was no sign of Razor inside. She closed the door and started to check rooms, just to make sure he wasn't in a shower or a bath or something.
Instead, she found him in his bed. His eyes were closed, his hands on his chest, and an astral crown was placed on his head. Slake stood there, shaking her head slowly as she took him in.
An astral crown was something that poor grubbers dreamed of. It let you go as deep into the far astral as the dragons did, leaving your body behind and exploring new dimensions and realities. It was like an endless dream. Some people, the real desperate, would buy cheap, half-baked astral crowns that didn't even have the bridge back. Their bodies would be rolled into compost and their spirits would slowly dissolve away into the astral – some people thought they died instantly, some people claimed you could persist for months or years there.
And some people said five seconds in the astral was better than being the lowest grubber in Wyrm City.
"You had...fucking everything you piece of dragonshit and you still had to get more?" Slake asked, her voice shockingly loud in the quiet penthouse. "What is enough for you fucking assholes?" She snarled, grabbing onto him and shaking him slightly. Razor's head lolled around, the astral crown and the etheric lines and silvery tethers running from it to the wall crystal glittering in the wan sunlight gleaming through the windows. She shook her head and let the limp body drop.
She had to talk to Razor. Razor was in the far astral. She followed the cables to the crystal, considering. What she knew about rogue work said that yanking someone out of the astral was a delicate fucking job. That crystal looked like it was on low power mode.
She looked again.
The crystal looked like it was on low power mode...to elf eyes.
She walked forward. She had sold her dragon irises to make ends meet. But…
Maybe it was psychosomatic. Maybe it was just her imagination. But maybe there was that tiny edge left, a little bit of the dragon still in her. Because she saw crystals set to low power every damn day in her line of work. Rogues roused them, and quieted them. Knowing if a crystal was on, low power, or off was something she had to decide in a snap. Easy with a dragon iris. But her dragon iris wasn't always active. And her gut was telling her…
She placed her palm on the crystal.
It was cold.
Dead.
Off.
She looked back at Razor. She took hold of his wrist, feeling for a pulse. There was none. But people in the far astral, their pulses beat every few minutes. Didn't they?
Her eyes locked onto the astral crown as the lump in her gut grew larger and larger.
Slowly, she reached up.
She took hold of the astral crown.
And it came free easily. The internal ports weren't open. There was no seal into his personal mana field. His skin didn't even pucker as the crown's edge came off. He didn't breathe out a soft sigh, he didn't go into spasms as his soul started to come apart…
...because it was already gone.
"Someone spent six hundred plat to kill this fucker," Slake whispered.
"Significantly less, considering we can always re-use the room and the crown," a voice jerked her head up from the horror laying on the bed. An orc had just stepped into the doorway. He was tall, well dressed, calm, and was carrying a cigar, which he lit up as he took his seat at the small desk that ran along the opposite side of the huge bedroom. His suit was perfectly pressed and his tie was bright blood red. He blew out the cigar smoke like he was a dragon, and regarded her with some annoyance. "I was hoping to avoid this conversation."
"Who the fuck are you?" Slake whispered.
"I am merely a representative of the House, Miss Gallowstop," the orc said, taking out the cigar. "And I'm also the one who has to clean up loose ends like this. They're surprisingly rare – most people aren't aware when someone sells a close relative or friend to us. And when they are aware, they hear about the penthouse, they see the astral crown, and they see what their forty pieces of silver get them, and they're quite happy about it." He sighed in irritation. "I was waiting for you to just leave, but...no. You are one of the inquisitive ones. And the murderous."
"He was already fucking dead," Slake growled. She stepped forward, thrusting her hand towards the corpse of Razor. "What the fuck?"
"Of course he was dead, did you think we'd let people go around knowing even a tiny bit about how we in the House get kobolds? Of what kobolds are?" the orc asked. "You know, they call this place Wyrm City because dragons run everything – literally and figuratively. Dragons fix our water, repair our air, they run our aetheric network, they manage our companies, and they're often our product. Dragons are in our bodies, in our blood, in our bones." He smiled, wryly. "But there's always that distinct, that vital separating line between two-legger and dragon. Because they're also our government, yes?"
Slake scowled at him. Her arms crossed over her chest. "Yeah. No fucking shit. Because there is a huge fucking dividing line – a dragon that's pissing our beer isn't actually here. They're in the far astral, living it up."
"That's true," the orc said. "And, in fact, Razor may be there right now."
He leaned back.
"However, there is one incontrovertible fact that the House is built upon – and that this whole city must be kept ignorant of, a fact you will probably discover if you keep digging. So, I am going to simply reveal it to you, and we can have done," the orc said.
Slake frowned. "Yeah, then you do to me what you did to fucking Razor?"
"Miss Gallowstop-"
"My name." She took a step forward. "Is Slake."
The orc regarded her.
"Slake," he said. "Mr. Killboar was a well connected med-tech student with family and friends. You are a doorkicker with a TPK to your name and no contacts, whose sold her last implant and is walking around town with a bag of four hundred platinum coins." He leaned forward. "I don't have to be nearly so elaborate."
The strange thing?
It was the stinging glass from the shattering window behind her which hurt most. Burs, sticking from her neck, tiny rivulets joining the immense stain spreading along the back of the uniform.
Slake refused to fall to her knees. She locked them, her hands clenched hard, even as the cold chill spread through her body. She wobbled as the orc stubbed out the cigar.
Then he told her the truth. He told her precisely what a kobold was.
Slake coughed blood up.
It might have been a laugh. A giddy, insane laugh.
She fell, like a tree, face first onto the ground, the blood from the bone-bullet lodged into her back puddling underneath her. The orc sighed and stood, shaking his head. He put his finger to his ear and spoke over his communication.
"I need a body disposed of. Completely. Very completely."
Chariscora Avalanche lounged on her pile of gold in her elfin form and looked down at Mavlynn with a smile that made Mavlynn think she might be the next one on the dinner plate – a large, empty, slightly greasy tray that another maid was taking out of the room as she stepped inside. The dragonness was dressed – if one could be dressed in an outfit that was almost more revealing by its presence than its total absence – in a filmy apron looking gown that draped over her breasts and just barely covered her groin, sprawling across her belly and lightly caressing her thighs. It looked if she moved at all, she'd flash essentially...everything.
"I told you to go ham," she said, her voice dry. "No, wait, that was not exactly my phrasing, now was it? What was it that I said?" She snapped her fingers. "Oh, yes! You are to butcher everyone who even tries to fucking touch you. Rip off their skin, pull their fingers out, gouge out their eyes, grow a cock and skullfuck them for all I care. I note, no skin, no fingers, no eyes, and no cock and worst of all, no skullfucking. You know you can get a dick any time you want, it's in the brochure?"
"I did kill, like...some of them!" Mavlynn said, blushing and wringing her hands.
"You dropped two of the codpiece wearing mooks at the fucking hospital, last time I checked, we were running a dragon clutch not a fucking Salvation's Army," Chariscora said, lifting her arms and resting them above her head as she glowered at Mavlynn.
"Listen, I…" Mavlynn blushed, then lifted her chin. "I confused them."
Chariscora narrowed her eyes at her.
"I confused the enemy! Now, they won't know what to make of us. Since I killed some, and I took some survivors to the hospital. Their intelligence wonks, their pet rogues, are going to be tearing their hair out over this."
"It's true, I would," the cold, female voice of Rouge the Rogue spoke up from behind Mavlynn, causing her to jerk upright and spin around.
"How long have you been there!?" she exclaimed, while Chariscora...started to laugh.
"Confusion! Confusion to the enemy!" she shook her head. "I can't tell if you're the most stupid fucking kobold I've ever owned or the smartest, Mavlynn. Rouge!"
"Ma'am?" Rouge asked.
"Send a gift basket to the streetsknechts, with a card, make my lovely daughter sign it personally," Chariscora said. "Lets really give them something to chew on."
"Ma'am," Rouge said, clicking her heels, then turning and walking from the chamber, her shoes making quite a lot of noise for someone who could move so silently. As she vanished, Mavlynn turned back to Chariscora, who had started to stand. Somehow, the curvaceous older woman managed to keep every single part of her covered despite wearing what amounted to a sexy tissue paper. Her feet sent gold coins skittering along the floor as she walked down the pile and grabbed onto Mavlynn's chin, lifting her head up and looking down into her eyes.
She narrowed her eyes slowly. Mavlynn felt like her every particle was being examined, all at once. Chariscora murmured, softly. "Next time, I expect you to follow my orders, kobold." Her voice was soft and poured down Mavlynn's ears like warm chocolate. Mavlynn had never felt lightheaded around another girl until right now – her head swam and her heart thumped in her chest as she tried to nod – whimpering as she felt the iron hard grip of the older dragon holding her in place. Chariscora leaned in. Her lips almost brushed against Mavlynn's. "However...you did do quite a good job...do you want a reward, little kobold?"
"U-uh…" Mavlynn whimpered softly. She couldn't keep it in. "Y-Yes…"
Mavlynn is rewarded for her good job with some very fine Chariscora bangin'~
"Of course you fucking do…" Chariscora smirked, then pushed her away, leaving Mavlynn stumbling backwards. Mavlynn felt a bit like someone had smacked her in the face with a fish – and wasn't sure if she was being rejected or- or...or...her eyes widened as Chariscora tossed her covering aside with a casual flick of one hand. Her breasts, full and dark brown, had just enough sag to give her a mature beauty, her nipples achingly hard and tipped with golden rings that glinted and glittered. She sighed as she brushed her hands through her hair as she strode, naked, back to the golden pile. She laid there, turning back to face Mavlynn. Her thighs spread and she gestured down to herself.
Her cunt was entirely on display: A gold ring through her clit, and a well maintained snarl of dark pubic hair leading down towards her sex – a landing strip just waiting for Mavlynn's tongue. Mavlynn felt her throat go dry as she took a step forward, then another, then she was on her knees, her face buried between the dragonness' thighs. She breathed in her musk and her head spun as pleasure burst inside of her brain – white fireworks crackling and quivering. She trembled and let out a soft squeak as she felt her cunt clenching on nothing, a tight grip as if she was being impaled. She gasped and panted, then breathed in, another warm hit of feminine scents. She trembled and then mashed her face against the dark brown thigh, feeling the faint folds of stretch mark, wrinkle, and beneath it, hardened msucle. Chariscora laughed huskily.
"I am not playing fair, am I?" she grinned, then snaked her legs around, locking Mavlynn in place with an ankle hooked over ankle. This ended up with Mavlynn's ears squishing against thighs, her face pressed against the warm softness of Chariscora's pussy. She couldn't do anything but taste and lick and breathe in – and every breath that she managed to snort in was full of that delicious hazy scent. Her eyes rolled back into her head as Chariscora reached down, stroking her hair. "Do you like the aphrodisiac scent?"
"Mmhmmphmm!" Mavlynn mumbled. A tiny part of her flickered with resentment – a tiny bead that was hidden behind roiling flames of her lust. She didn't need to be drugged to enjoy eating a pussy this delicious. Her tongue swept up and down and then thrust in as she felt herself extend and enhance her tongue. Inch by inch, she slid deeper and deeper inside of her dragonness mistress and every inch brought a new blooming of flavor. She closed her eyes and leaned in and that tiny bead of resentment sank beneath the waves of pleasure rocking her brain. She nuzzled into her mistress – and barely heard the door hissing open.
"Hey Mom, I was- hey!"
"Darling, I do love you, but...ah!" Chariscora gasped, and her fingers gripped onto Mavlynn's head, keeping her rooted there just as firmly as her thighs. "Mommy is busy."
"Can I join!?"
Those three words were enough to shock Mavlynn out of her eager licking. She pulled back, but Chariscora didn't let her go – not at first. Her legs tightened more and she groaned huskily – hissing a soft 'ah fuck' as she quivered, her warm juices spurting along Mavlynn's tongue, sliding down her throat. Only after she had climaxed did she let Mavlynn draw back, head spinning with a need for oxygen and a warm glow of pleasure.
Mavlynn blinked white spots away from her head and saw that Sanditrash had decidedly gotten into the swing of things quickly, having tossed off her shirt and jeans and...yes...grown a rather impressive cock from between her thighs. The massive dick was elfin in shape, but she had thrown in a knot just for the hell of it, it seemed. However, as she took a step forward, Chariscora lifted her hand and said: "No."
"No!?" Sand squeaked. "But-"
Her hand swept down to her cock. Mavlynn's brain was currently so full of dragon pheremones that she was already starting to crawl forward – which is why Chariscora reached out, took a hold of her head, then brought her back to her thigh. There, Mavlynn kissed her skin, nuzzling her deliciousness as she murmured softly.
"Hey…" she whispered.
Chariscora talked over her head. "Whose name was on the check buying this kobold again? Hmm? Was it Sanditrash Avalanche?"
"Well, but-"
"Was it, honey?" Chariscora asked.
"...no…" Sanditrash sounded like her whole body was wilting. Mavlynn glanced up past the thigh she was currently nibbling on, licking, teasing her way back to that eager, eager pussy. This rapidly brought Sand out of her line of sight – but in that time, she saw that her head was hanging forward and her dick was practically slapping her belly with eager, twitching excitement.
"So, let Mommy enjoy her little fun, and you can have some sloppy seconds, how does that sound?" Chariscora said, petting Mavlynn's head. "And maybe you can enjoy the fact I will be in a good fucking mood for once afterwards, yes?"
"Okay, fine!" Sand said, then turned and started to stomp out of the room – she actually grew a bit larger, just so her stomping made more noise. Mavlynn flushed and managed to get a word out beyond pants, whimpers, and a single syllable 'hey.'
"S'okay," she mumbled.
"What is that, little kobold?" Chariscora purred, stroking her head – her finger slipping down to tease the tip of Mavlynn's ear. Mavlynn quivered and felt her own sex clench eagerly as she bit her lip.
"I-I mean...I've been f-fucked by two dragons at once, a mommy daughter double tag doesn't sound so bad…" Mavlynn mumbled against Chariscora's knee, kissing her way up and down her leg, worshipful and needy. Chariscora laughed, then shifted around – her foot pressing against Mavlynn's face and then pushing her gently onto her back. Mavlynn squirmed, forced to kiss and lick and nuzzle at the foot pinning her inexorably down to the ground. Chariscora had such raw strength that she could be utterly immovable, while not actually putting any kind of painful pressure on Mavlynn.
"Yes, but my lovely, stupid, one brain cell horny fuck of a daughter needs to learn how to control her dick for five fucking seconds," Chariscora said, leaning back into the gold pile and lifting her foot away from Mavlynn's face. She grinned as she sprawled there – clearly utterly confident that she was a goddess on a living world, able to do as she pleased. The frustrating thing was she was right. Mavlynn crawled on her belly, rolling around so she could resume licking first one toe, then another, nuzzling the shin – just this much contact with her dragon mistress made her head spin. She nuzzled against the inner edge of a dark brown calf, licking slowly up.
Chariscora sighed. "Mmm, do you want me in my dragon form?" she asked.
"Yes…" Mavlynn whispered, her hand sliding along her mistress' leg. "I want to worship every inch of your scaled body, mistress."
"I forgot how genuinely sweet kobolds get when they're high as a fucking kite," Chariscora said, chuckling. "You know you're horny as fuck on my pheromones, right?"
"Mmmhmm…" Mavlynn licked up to her knee. How could a knee be so sensual. She looked up, along Chariscora's generously cushy belly, past her gently sagging breasts, to her face – she had the face of an elf in her middle ages, and the eyes of a dragon who had been running Wyrm City for centuries. Her almond brown eyes glittered with wicked pleasure as she leaned her chin on her palm, regarding Mavlynn in the exact same way a dragon might regard any lesser two-legger.
"Do you mind, little kobold?" Chariscora purred.
"No, I love it!" Mavlynn moaned. "I love being so debased by you, by...by you, being addicted to you, I...fuck!" She leaned in, breathing in a hungry sniff off the inside of Chariscora's thigh. Her head buzzed and she mewled. "I...fucking hate it."
Chariscora grinned, slowly. "What did you say?"
"I...nnh!" Mavlynn closed her eyes. "I...ah. It's so hot. I hate it. Ah...I feel like my skin is burning off, and...I…" She grabbed onto her frilly dress. She had to rip her maid outfit off, she had to get more of her skin rubbing against Chariscora. But before her claws and her enhanced strength could tear into the cloth, Chariscora lifted a single finger and without even saying a word, it was like every bit of Mavlynn's body locked in place. The idea of doing something without her goddess' word was impossible. Unthinkable. Those dark brown eyes narrowed.
"Did I say you can take off your cute little fucking outfit?"
"Nn...no…" Mavlynn whined.
"Exactly. I don't have you wear a frilly little skirt and come fuck me pumps because they're the most efficient set of clothing for a kobold," Chariscora said, reaching down to tuck underneath Mavlynn's chin, lifting her head up to examine her with cold, reptilian pleasure. "I have it because it gets me wet."
Mavlynn shivered from the tip of her ears down to her toes.
"But you say you hate it," Chariscora said. She narrowed her eyes. "Do you not like getting high as a kite on dragon musk and getting fucked silly? If so, you chose a real fucking unfortunate line of jobbing, little kobold." Her finger twitched around Mavlynn's eartip and Mavlynn mewled quietly. She quivered as she felt her panties getting even more soaked. Her cheeks burned as she looked up at Chariscora – and felt that second dragon in her brain rousing up. She couldn't speak. Her tongue was too fat and she was too horny and the secrets were too big, too heavy. She blushed, hard, then mumbled.
Mavlynn tried to get the words out. She felt the claws in her head – and what came out was.
"...I like getting brain raped!"
Chariscora blinked at her.
"I mean, uh, that is-"
"Consensual non fucking consent!" Chariscora laughed. "Oh you are a pervert! I love it!"
You little bastard! Mavlynn thought, trying to bury her mingled excitement and horror.
The tiny dragon in her head wriggled, clearly quite pleased with his handling of this near-miss situation.
You know those dicks are coming for you too, right!? Mavlynn thought as Chariscora stood, golden coins plinking as they broke contact with her skin – falling back into the pile. She sighed and stretched her arms above her head, flexing them as if she was a body builder – and that flex caused her brown skin to peel and split apart, like the skin of a banana. Glittering silver scales shone beaneth as her skin sloughed and fell aside, revealing that she had thick, heavy muscles flowing beneath those scales. Chariscora's face fell forward, revealing a blunt muzzle and sharp teeth, supported by a thick neck. Her head was graced by curling horns, while wings flared, splattering more torn skin against the gold scales. The bits of skin that fell away dissolved into hissing mist as Chariscora stepped out of her shed elfin form and towered above Mavlynn.
She was still most emphatically a woman dragon – her breasts were large and imperious, tipped with dark metallic-gray nipples, hard and jutting and just begging for Mavlynn to lick and suck on them all day. But every sign of elfin age had been blasted away. Her body was slabbed with muscle and the only cush she had to her stomach was the slight fold of her abdominal muscles – her hips were wide, her ass was thick, her tail was long and sinuous, coming to a dagger shaped tip that dragged along gold coins behind her, clinking and clattering them to add an almost musical accompaniment to the drum line going off in Mavlynn's chest as her heart tried to beat out of her sternum.
But what made Mavlynn's eyes cross was the immense, draconic, silver cock that was thrusting between the older woman's thighs. Heavy silver balls swayed from side to side as a cock big enough to hit internal organs brushed gently against Mavlynn's cheek – even from a few steps away. Her jaw dropped and her nose flared as she took yet another warm hit of draconic pheremones. Her head spun fiercely and she wobbled and fell back onto her butt, her knees caught under her as she scrabbled at the floor to keep from completely collapsing.
"So, you say brain rape?" she asked, grinning. "I've always heard elf ears were erogenous."
"I-I have dragons in there!" Mavlynn stammered. "For hacking!"
"Do I look like a silver who gives a fuck about other dragons?" Chariscora growled. "Or what a little kobold says?"
"U-Uh...uh…" Mavlynn quivered.
"Heh, darling, it's all play, don't worry," Chariscora said. "If you truly want me to stop, just say...I don't know…" she looked up, thinking. "Dragon Piss!"
Mavlynn nodded, her throat dry. The knot of fear in her stomach remained – she didn't know her internal programming could go as hard and as wild as that. But now, she simply had to say dragon piss and she'd be nice and safe from that...that long thick...thick cock. And. Uh. Her nose flared as Chariscora prowled towards her with such slow, deliberate menace that her heart thundered in her ears. "N-No, uh...p-please don't...put that…" She whispered, then blushed. "I mean, uh...uh…"
Dragon piss! She thought, fiercely. Say dragon piss! ...let me say dragon piss!
And Mavlynn felt a tiny shrug inside of her brain – two of them, as the tiny dragons she had in her brains both managed to communicate that they had no idea what the hold up was. It wasn't on their end, those tiny shrugs said.
Mavlynn then felt the utter and total mortification hit her.
She...actually wanted to be brain raped by Chariscora Avalanche. Somewhere, deep in her psyche, there was a tiny sadomasochistic part of her that wanted to be a squirming, wriggling victim, mewling and whimpering as a big brutal dragon dommy mommy had her total and absolute way with her slender elfin ass. And worse? That part had awakened the moment, the instant she had known that she could ask for Chariscora to stop at any time. The realization that she was, in a way, the one who was truly in control now, that she could simply ask and it would all end, allowed her the freedom to-
Chariscora grabbed her head, planted the tip of her dick against Mavlynn's ear, and grinned. "Ready?"
"No, don-"
Chariscora shoved. The cock plunged deep into Mavlynn's head, making her toes curl, her eyes widen, her jaw drop. She felt every inch of that massive prick burrowing into her brain – shoving all thought, all possibilities out of her head. There was nothing there but Chariscora. Nothing but her mistress. She managed to gurgle out a soft. "N...Sph...stahp...ple...pluzze…" But Chariscora held her head in a vicelike grip, her claws almost digging into her scalp as she started to work her cock deeper and deeper and deeper...she drew back once she was half in, then thrust again – and this time, Mavlynn felt a comforting pop as she felt the tip of Chariscora's cock emerging from the other side of her head. Chariscora stood there, panting softly, while Mavlynn quivered and twitched.
"Huh," Chariscora said, cocking her head. She wiggled her hips and the motion made Mavlynn squirm and wriggle on the end of her cock.
"Nhuh?" Mavlynn mumbled.
Chariscora grabbed onto her head, then pulled and pulled and pulled. The feeling of her dick sliding back through her brain was nearly indescribable. Mavlynn's cunt clenched, then clenched again as orgasm after orgasm ripped through her body, the final one coming as, with a lewd pop, Chariscora pulled entirely out of her head, leaving her massive silver dick glistening.
Mavlynn slumped forward, then splashed face first into the gold pile. Chariscora shook her head. "Not really feeling that," she said, her voice a bit annoyed.
"Zuh?" Mavlynn asked, rolling onto her back, blinking. Her brain was starting to tick back online – bit after bit starting to think...well, not straight again, but at least able to think. She closed her eyes, then opened them.
"I mean, I love a little piece of rape bait, especially when they're all squirmy," Chariscora said, rubbing her chin with her fingers. "...consensually, don't you get any silly thoughts in your two legger head." she said, nodding.
"Muh?" Mavylnn mumbled. Her lips still felt a bit thick, unable to quite form words.
"But it's just no fun if they don't fight back!" Chariscora said, nodding as she snapped her fingers. "You like being brain fucked too much for it to be fun!"
Mavlynn closed her eyes. She smacked her lips, then managed to say. "It's. Remble...rema...ram...really hard to...fight when...brain!" She waved her head a bit.
"Exactly," Chariscora said. She sat her large scaled ass down next to Mavlynn, causing the ground to quake and gold to shiver down the pile, some sliding along one of Mavlynn's extended arms, half burying her in treasure. "And I just can't get all fuckin' revved up to rape a cute piece of ass if the cute piece of ass is all meek as mother's fucking milk." She shook her head. "So, we'll just have to stick with your cute little pussy, yes?" She grinned, wickedly. "Sound good?"
"Uhhn...uh...mmhmm!" Mavlynn nodded. Then she caught herself. She was nodding. To that? She blushed, hard, then smacked her lips a few more times. She was fairly sure she could get out more words now. "Mistress, uh, um, thanks. For, um. The safe word."
"I'm a dragon, not a bitch," Chariscora said, leaning back in the gold pile, wings fanning out. Her dick was half soft, sagging a bit. Even soft, it was still the biggest cock that Mavlynn had ever seen. "Well, okay, not that kind of bitch." She grinned. "Feeling up for running, squirming, a bit of screaming?"
"Justabit!" Mavlynn closed her eyes, then managed to get her arms under her. She stood up, wobbling, then shook herself. "Uh. Hmm. Uh. How much...uh, should I fight?" she asked. "Like…" She mimed lifting her hands up and punched the air, like a boxer. Chariscora laughed.
"Oh that's adorable!" she said.
"W-Well, I don't want to hurt you, mistress!" Mavlynn said, blushing hard. The urge to lean in and start snorting up the musk roiling off Chariscora's balls was almost overpowering. To keep herself rooted, Mavlynn clasped her hands back behind her, tightening them into fists.
"That's even more fucking adorable, you can hit me with an antitank acid rifle and I'd barely fucking notice it," Chariscora said, smirking at her. "The question we should be asking is how much should I hurt you? Should I, say, choke your cute little kobold throat?"
Mavlynn stood very, very still. Her cheeks burned. "...um…"
Chariscora grinned. "Punch to the stomach?"
"Uhhhh!"
"Piss on you, kick you around, claw you up?"
"H-Hah...uh…" Mavlynn tugged at her collar. "D-Did you know I am learning new things about myself every day?"
"Glad to be so fucking educational," Chariscora said, pulling a cigar from the Great Wyrm alone knew where, sticking it between her muzzle, and lightning it with a tiny spurt of fire that burst from her thumb. She puffed on it, then blew out thin streamers of smoke through her nose. "...I think…" She grinned. "We're going to have fun experimenting." She smirked. "Won't we?"
"Uhhhhhhhh…"
And yet?
Mavlynn still could not bring herself to say the safe word.
The thick, heavy fingers of Chariscora closed around her throat and Mavlynn let out a soft squeak and nearly wet herself with arousal. Then Chariscora turned and threw her into the pile of coins. The impact sent the air rushing from her lungs as she whuffed into the coins, which exploded around her with a spray of glittering gold. Then the massive dragon was atop her, grabbing and rending apart her clothing with a feral snarl. It was like being in an avalanche – it all happened so fast, it left Mavlynn quivering and tingling and squeaking as her tits were bared. She grabbed onto the wrists taking hold of her, trying to shove Chariscora back, off her body. "L-Let me go!" She gasped as Chariscora chuckled.
"Oh little sweet thing wants her dragon to stop?" She purred, then leaned forward. Roughly, she started to kiss and suck on Mavlynn's nipples, drawing from her mewls, whimpers, her back arching to push her tits into the dragonness face. The thickness of her immediately rock hard cock bumped against Mavlynn's thighs – and considering the way that the dragonness was bent over her, it reminded Mavlynn of how big she was.
"Y-Yes! Let me go! Ah! I...I was turned into a kobold against my will, please, no!" Mavlynn gasped out – and to her shock...the dragon in her brain slept through it. Literally, she could hear his soft snoring against her innermost thoughts.
It's a fantasy, in this situation. Holy fucking loophole that's-
Chariscora caused every single sentient thought to explode out of Mavlynn's head as effectively as if she had thrust her dick into her ear again – by simply thrusting the entirety of her cock into Mavlynn's tiny, elfin slit. She felt her body rearranging with a lurch as the dick plowed deeper than it was possible for a dick to go. Mavlynn felt her womb opening to accept the cock, felt a pressure against her lungs as her whole body lurched and she let out a gurgling noise – while Charoiscora gripped her around the waist, her pointer claw and her thumb claw almost touching one another, her heavy breasts pressing against Mavlynn's chest. She held the elf girl like she was a fleshlight, and Mavlynn couldn't do anything but quiver and twitch, her eyes wide, her mouth opened.
"H-...How?" she wheezed, barely able to make a noise.
"i'm a fucking dragon, sweetie," Chariscora crooned. "I can do whatever the fuck I want."
Then she drew back, then thrust up again. The feeling of the cock driving even deeper inside of her made Mavlynn's head roll back. She felt a strange pressure at the base of her throat as the dragonness reared up and over her, grunting. She seemed to grow larger and larger with every second – and then Mavlynn realized that her entire body was now cupped in that palm, gripping, holding her in place. And the cock plunging into her drew out nearly the full length of her body before thrusting-
And the pressure at the back of her throat grew even more pronounced. She let out a soft 'glugk!" noise as Chariscora groaned. "There we fucking go!"
She thrust.
And a cocktip pushed Mavlynn's jaw open, emerging out into open air, dripping warm, hot, blessedly delicious smelling draconic pre-cum onto Mavlynn's nose and cheeks and eyes. Her eyes rolled back into her head as her body started to orgasm so fast, so rapidly, that it felt like a rubber band was being flicked against her brain with every second. Every inch of the impossibly huge cock sawing through her body rubbed against her internal organs and sent off pleasure that she had never known was even possible. The ridge of her spine ground against the cock filling her and from Chariscora's eager groan, she enjoyed it.
Mavlynn tried to tighten her muscles, and Chariscora let out a soft grunt. "Fuck yeah…" She started to fuck faster and harder now, grunting as the lewd and wet plap plap plap noise of her balls clapping against Mavlynn's back and ass like immense wrecking balls rang through the whole room. "Gonna fucking drown you in cum, you eager little cocksleeve kobold slut!" Chariscora threw her head back and growled. Without warning, she thrust...and quivered. Cum gushed into the depths of Mavlynn's body. Cum exploded from her nose. It spurted up her throat, gushing around her lips and spilling down her cheeks. It washed into her brain, dripped from her pussy, her ass, her ears. Her entire body leaked cum as if she was a sieve, and she gurgled and blew bubbles of air in the spunk frothing from her.
Slowly, Chariscora pulled out of her, then slowly, she laid down...and suddenly, Mavlynn found her cum soaked, orgasm riddled body being held in muscular, strong arms, the arms of a scaled dragon. Her nose nuzzled up against the firm, large, silver mound of Chariscora's tit and she mewled, then wriggled weakly, then started trying to suck on her nipple. Chariscora laughed, huskily. "Scaled Wyrm's massive dick, you're insatiable!" she laughed, then swung her wing around, enfolding Mavlynn in her grasp.
Cum drained from Mavlynn slowly – and she was able to breathe freely only after a few more coughs. Once she was able to speak, she croaked. "How the fuck did you do that?"
"Dragon," Chariscora said, then used her tail to offer Mavlynn a d-stick.
Mavlynn took it, then sighed and started to smoke the ground up, powdered dragon ash. Her eyes half closed as the intoxicant rushed through her.
"Thanks," she whispered.
"I bought you, honey, you don't have to thank me for shit," Chariscora said, her voice a soft rumble.
Mavlynn closed her eyes.
And Chariscora let her lay there, her breathing lulling Mavlynn into a slow and unsteady sleep. When she woke, the big dragoness was still there, and someone had cleaned Mavlynn off. She felt tired and achy – but she was happy to cuddle up against Chariscora and let the warmth of her carry her away into an even deeper sleep.
***
Mavlynn woke cleaned, wrapped in a blanket, and with a bladder that was bursting with a need to piss. She wrapped the blanket around herself and took a tepid step forward away from the gold pile, looking around for her mistress...but Chariscora was nowhere to be seen. She frowned, thinking through everything that had happened to her.
I am a weird pervert, or dragons make everything sexy, I can't tell which, Mavlynn thought as she walked through the quiet, darkened corridors of Avalanche manor. She came to one of the many, many, many bathrooms and slipped inside. There, she sat on the toilet and let out an explosive sigh as she started to relieve herself, her eyes half closed.
"Hey are you done yet!?"
Mavlynn yelped and jerked upright as the sudden voice came from the roof – and down, dropping before her was Sanditrash, shifting into her elfin form. Mavlynn pressed her knees together and crossed her arm over her breasts, her cheeks burning. "What the frick are you doing!?" she hissed. "I'm going to the bathroom!"
"Yeah, and?" Sand asked. Then she grinned. "Are you...kinda turned on by me watching?"
"No!" Mavlynn hissed, her nipples hardening against her arm as she tried to pee less obviously. The stream chose then to start very loudly hit the water as she shifted position, the toilet ringing with the noise of it. The blush shot from her neck to her cheeks to the tips of her ears as she glared at her mistress' daughter. "And yes! I am done being used as a sex toy by your mother, thank you for asking, I kind of thought the fact her dick wasn't in me was a big give away!"
"Mom sometimes does pee games, though," Sand said, flicking her hand.
Mavlynn opened her mouth, then shut it. A flash of every time she had drunk fresh dragon piss from a glass – the rich, mana heavy alcohol tasting warm and fine against her tongue – exploded through her brain. A lot of people were good at differentiating taps from, like...proper dragons, but the difference seemed very thin at that moment. The image of Chariscora in her massive form looming above her, cock swaying before her face, her body nake-
"Hey!" Sand snapped her fingers under Mavlynn's eyes, making the kobold jerk and refocus. "pay attention to meeeee! My mom isn't in! That means you should serve me."
Mavlynn shook her head wryly. The fact this was the same girl she had dated over the internet still struck her as utterly, utterly bemusing. She tried to sound a bit like her online persona as she said: "I don't actually know if that's true." She sighed as she finally finished her piss, feeling nicely drained. She stood up, then put her hands on her hips, trying to actually...flaunt her body. She grinned at Sand, her eyes flashing. "Your mom did kinda intimate that I was in charge."
"Since when? No she didn't! What did she say!?" Sand asked.
Chariscora had said no such thing. But Mavlynn wasn't about to let that get in the way of jerking Sand's chain. She grinned, then stepped forward and planted her hand to the right of Sand's head, leaning in and whispering softly. "She bought me to take care of you. Watch over you. That means I'm in charge. So, if you want me to do anything, you need to make it a really good reason."
Sand pouted. Then she brightened. "Weeeeee can go out slumming!"
Mavlynn arched an eyebrow at her. "Slumming."
"Yeah, I can shift to a cute dwarf form or a goblin form or something, you can switch from maid outfit to something more like a...cool doorkicker?" She licked her lips. "Maybe you can even pretend you're a streetsknecht…" Her eyes widened. "Ohhh wait, I could be your sword!"
Her body flashed and in an instant, she had transformed into the classic, almost stereotypical weapon of the wandering streetsknecht, a massive two handed greatsword.
"I prefer arming swords myself," Mavlynn said – not that she'd ever touched a sword but, again, it was all in the aim of jerking Sand around. She was having fun doing it, the more fun the longer it went along. Sand slid along the wall, then clattered to the floor, then shifted back into her dragon form – the size of a small kitten. Using her claws and Mavlynn's extra tough skin, she scrabbled up to her shoulder, then whispered softly.
"...I can be your outfit."
"You can what?" Mavlynn asked.
Then the dragon on her shoulder glowed, then flowed like water, shimmering along her shoulders, up her head. She felt warmth flooding along her breasts, between her thighs, into her ears. Then...with a flash, she could see again, blinking. She looked down and saw her modest chest was covered by a bright purple and black checkerboard, with neon highlights. Her shoulders had the gleaming metal of half plate, and her fingers were covered in gauntlets. She had a big poofy hat on and...yup, that was a codpiece all right. She turned to face herself in the mirror and realized she no longer looked like a demure kobold.
She looked like a hard bitten, fierce, elfin streetsknecht.
Mavlynn bit her lip.
C'monnnn! The voice whispered into her ear so closely it might have been telepathic. The hat itself was talking to her. Because the hat was Sand, of course. We can have sooo much fun. Invisible hands shivered along the clothing – cupping Mavlynn's breasts, teasing her nipples, stroking her sex. Mavlynn, already sensitive enough, bit her lip to keep from letting the whole world know how hot that was. She flushed, then growled quietly.
"Three rules," she said. "I choose where we go. You let me lead. And…" She paused.
And no more touching, groping, licking.
"...and I fill this piece," she said, the sensible words somehow transforming between her brain to her tongue.
"What pie-"
Ting! The sound came from the codpiece.
Mavlynn stood a bit taller and felt...very strange. She somehow still felt absolutely like a woman. Heck, she almost felt more like a woman now than she had a few seconds before. But if Chariscora could have six foot dick and still be a woman, why not Mavlynn? She nodded to herself in the mirror and smirked.
This is going to be so funnnnnn! Sanditrash squealed, and the hat grew three feathers in pure excitement.
It was the work of a few seconds to get an arming sword from the armory, and then they were on a bone-cycle in the garage. Mavlynn twisted the accelerator – and saw Rouge the Rogue looking in at them. Their eyes met. Rouge sighed, then gave her a nod. Mavlynn gave her a smile, nodded back.
Then, with a scream of tires and a flash of glittering neon, they shot off into Wyrm City.
"Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh!" Sand whined as she slowly reahced out with her hand, using the very tips of her claw-fingers to close around the back of the ratty, wrapped up carpet. "Why are we doing this? How did we get here?"
Sand's horrible, awful, no good Kobold, her arms crossed over her chest, her face grim, watched her without pity and without remorse. "Just...get it over here."
"Uuuuugh!" Sand whined.
She hauled the awful, damp weightiness around. It slapped down next to the trash heap while Samwyn shook his head, then took his heat off. "Tis as I feared," he said, quietly. "She's here."
The carpet slapped down, half rolled open, and a single pale arm flopped free, tipped with partially extended claws. Mavlynn reached out, then drew her hand back, her fingers touching her lips. Sand leaned over and saw the empty, stairing eyes of the corpse. An elf girl, pretty and tough looking – relaxed in death, and dripping with moisture as rain pattered down on the metal awning over the trash pit. Sand whimpered, then looked back at Mavlynn.
"Do you know her?" she whispered, softly.
Mavlynn nodded.
"Slake," she whispered.
MAVLYNN, A FEW HOURS AGO
"You know what this reminds me of?" Mavlynn asked as she walked towards the bar that Sand had picked randomly off the internet. "When I first met...Slake."
Gasp! Sand asked. Who is Slake?
Mavlynn chose her words very, very carefully. The tiny dragon inside of her brain was still quite happy and eager to yank and grab at her ability to speak any time it detected that she was going to spill the beans about being turned against her will into a kobold. "She was an old doorkicker I worked with, before I decided to become a kobold." Technically, she had decided some things. Maybe. Kinda. If you squinted.
Maybe we'll meet her! Sand said as Mavlynn pushed open the double doors to the DRAGON SPEAR and looked around slowly. Her heart lumped in her chest – excitement buzzing along her nerves, while Sand quivered all over her body. The poofy had she had formed almost deflated in excitement as Mavlynn took in the bar. It was a bit less of a total dive than the CUM Pit, for one thing, it hadn't been named the CUM PIT at any point in its existence. The doorknicks who lived around here...were rich. Well, not rich. They were well to do by doorkicker standards – with flash new garb and gear, shiny new implants, and gold to spend. The music was fierce and feral, and the elf girl stripping by the bar looked as if she was actually enjoying swinging herself around and around the pole. The bar had a large, healthy looking tap who was splayed across a few metal bars, his dick hanging free as he actually watched the stripper move along. The barkeep gave her a big grin between his thick mustaches while Mav shouldered her way between two well dressed kickers and gave him a nod back.
"Straight piss please," she said.
"Right up," he said, taking hold of the dragon's dick, aiming it at a tankard. "You in off a kick?"
"Fresh in town, actually," Mav said.
"Heh, welcome to Wyrm City, buddy," the man said.
Behind her, a cold voice spoke.
"This seat was taken, Nechte."
Mav...had been pushed around a lot over the past few days. She had her brain fucked with. A dragon was in there, in fact. She had had her body, her will, her soul itself reshaped. And now, she was out on the town in a combat capable augmented kobold body, wearing her mistress' daughter like a fine three piece suit, and she realized that the voice behind her did not belong to a dragon, it didn't belong to a mysterious man who ran the evil organization that trafficked in living people to be turned into fucktoys. It belonged to some lowly, barely functional street-dwelling wanna be adventurer who made their money by kicking in doors and killing corporcs.
She didn't have to take shit.
She picked up her tankard and started to drink. And drink. And drink. And drink.
Fresh from the dragon's dick, the mana rich liquid was warm and fierce and it left her belly bubbling with the energy. She slammed the wooden tankard down and slowly turned around to find that she was facing a short, squat looking dwarf who had modded dragon fins onto his head. His right hand had been hacked fully off and replaced with an enlarged dragon claw, the bladed fingertips as long and as sharp as small knives. He grinned, showing her a lot of sharp teeth. He was flanked by the two rogues she had stepped past, the two of them both elves in black leather jackets, sunglasses covering their eyes, though she could see both of them had standard dragon ports on their wrists for jacking into the dragon lines that threaded every machine in Wyrm City together.
"Was it?" Mavlynn asked, her voice a low, quiet purr. She wondered if maybe Sand would tell her to tone it down. After all, she was her owner's daughter, she could order Mavlynn to back down and Mavlynn would have to listen to her.
Fuck you're hot, holy shit, Sand said.
"We don't like random new nechtes from other cities trying to muscle into our favorite seats when we're fresh off a hot kick," the dwarf said. "Now, unless you wanna get poleaxed, I say, you should get the fuck out." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The big thumb, to be clear. He could move that clawed, massive hand remarkably fast.
"...so, like, do you jerk off with that hand, or what?" Mavlynn asked, the beer making her feel light and bouncy.
The dwarf's eyes widened at her.
"I was just wondering, cause, it looks like you'd have a hard time noticing you even grabbed anything, so much bigger than your dick and all," Mavlynn said, smirking down at him. "I heard dwarves were short, I didn't think they were tiny too."
"Tik, Tok," the dwarf growled. "Hold this fruity out of towner in place, I'm gonna show her why they call me Big Claw."
"Hey!"
The voice behind her was the barkeep. He was pointing with one finger at the four of them. "You break anything, it's on your fucking tab!"
Mavlynn shrugged, spreading her hands, then smirked down at the dwarf. She felt the buzzing rush of her adrenaline, pumping in her veins. She didn't have anything to be afraid of. She felt alive and free for the first time since...she blinked, and nearly lost her entire head because she was struck so profoundly by the realization that she hadn't even felt this good before she had been captured and turned into a kobold. In that moment of distraction, Big Claw stepped back, then very carefully swung his claw up in a curving arc, clearly planning to completely disembowel her. Time seemed to slow as Mavlynn's wicked fast reflexes kicked on, her nerves buzzing with energy. If she stepped back, she was pretty sure that his claw was going to smash into the bar and she'd have that on her tab. So, instead, she stepped in, to the side, grabbed onto his wrist, twisted and hurled. The dwarf, clearly not expecting anyone to try something as foolhardy as grappling a dwarf, was a bit off balance.
Normally, this would not have mattered. He was a dwarf. They were a people who were uniformly low and broad.
Hard to throw.
Mavlynn flipped him over her shoulder and brought him smashing down towards the stool she had been sitting on. Before he struck it, she snapped her leg up and caught his spine on her knee. The crunching noise of the impact and the whuff of air that escaped his lungs drew everyone's attention, even as she dropped him to the floor, where he groaned and wheezed. Mavlynn shot a dizzying, dazzling smile to the barkeep, who blinked at her.
"Nothing broken," she said.
"My back…" the man groaned, writhing on the floor. He kicked his legs. "Ah. Fuck. I think you threw out my back, you poof hat bitch."
Mavlynn felt her euphoric rush fade a bit. She reached into her pocket, and found that the small bag of gold that she had snagged on the way out – what Sand had referred to as her 'spending money' – was cinched tight. The bag's mouth kept tugging out of the way of her fingers. Sand, Mavlynn thought.
But it's myyyy golllld! Sand whined, as mavlynn forced her fingers in, pulling a few coins and setting them down. "Get him a healing potion," she said, and with her concscience salved, her eyes flicked to the two rogues. The elves were twins – both nearly identical, their hair pale white, their faces making it hard to pin down exactly which gender they were. Mavlynn had once heard an orc grumping that only elves could tell when an elf was one gender or the other sometimes, but the truth was...even elves were a bit confused on the issue sometimes, especially if the other elf was really trying for angrogeny, as both of these two were.
However?
They were still cute.
Oooh! Sand's entire focus perked up as Mavlynn considered trying something subtle. But fuck it. She was dressed as a streetknechte. She had a codpiece. She might as well swagger it out. "This guy boring you?" she asked, stepping over the groaning dwarf. "Maybe you should hang with a kicker who knows her way around an ear…" She grinned, wickedly – as the two elves flushed at such a brazen reference to their erogenous zones. The two elves squeaked as her arms looped around their waists and drew them both against her with every bit of her strength. One hand pressed to her belly, another hand on her shoulder, the two elves touching her more out of shock than out of eagerness. But then she felt those fingers rubbing along her belly, feeling her muscles through the tight shirt she wore under the breastplate...and knew she had them.
"Y-You brute," one whispered.
"We're not...toys!" the other said.
Mavlynn chuckled. "Then why do I want to play with you two so badly? Come on...we can go somewhere private and handle introductions there, eh?" She reached down and cupped both of their asses, making the two elf rogues bit their lips, their visor-covered eyes darting aside. Their pale, pale cheeks flushed and they allowed Mavlynn to head back towards the quiet corner of the tavern, where a set of stairs led to rooms and chambers for travelers and adventurers who needed a place to rest. Heading up the stairs, Mavlynn wondered how she could pay the coin operated door for one of the rooms without taking her hand off one of the girl's asses, but a coin flicked out of her own pocket without her needing to do anything, landing directly in the door.
Heh, thought it was your gold, Mavlynn thought to Sand, her head swirling. To call this a power rush was an understatement. It was as if she had started rolling nat20s with every single thing she chose to do.
Was this what…
Was this what dragons felt like? Being a dragon?
Mavlynn had to admit, she could get used to it. She gently pushed the elf twins into the room as she swaggered in after them, the door closing behind her. The two twins sat on the bed in the smallish room, looking at her with wide eyes.
"W-We don't normally...do this," one said.
"But there's something about you...I...I've never met a necht that's so...confident. How many doors have you kicked?" The other asked, their hand reaching up, tugging the visor off to reveal blood red eyes to match their pale skin and white hair.
"Enough," Mavlynn said, smoothly, tugging off her hat and tossing it away. "The name's Mavlynn, by the way."
Creative, Sand said, her voice dry.
Mavlynn makes it with two cut elf twins! ...their names are Spark and Socket, if you're curious. Though, it seems strangely easy to do so. Almost SUSPICIOUSLY so!
The elf twins watched her intently, their eyes bright, focused. "Mavlynn…" one said.
"I'm Spark," the other said, their lips quirking up. "And that's my sister, Socket."
"We're from the techwastes," Socket explained. "My sister and I moved here to find a better life – McClaw seemed like a good bet. But…" She shivered. "Y-You're so much more intense than I thought possible." Her nose flared and she breathed in a heady rush of air – as if she was snorting up a drug. Her eyes half closed as her twin sister giggled, her fingers going to the collar of her leather jacket, slipping beneath – pale white fingers stark against dark leathers. She rolled her shoulders and let the jacket skim off, revealing the tank top she wore underneath, plastered tightly to a nearly flat chest. Her nipples jutted like two little buttons, just begging for Mavlynn to lick and suck on her. Mavlynn licked her lips and started to saunter forward, her boots clinking as she reached up and grabbed onto her breastplate.
Normally, breastplates were pretty hard to remove.
But this chunk of carved dragonbone wasn't like most. The leather straps, under Sand's control, undid themselves with soft clicks and snaps, allowing Mavlynn to drop the breastplate on the ground behind her.
Wow, keeping all my body connected is harder than I thought, Sand thought, her voice a bit dazed, while Mavlynn pushed Socket onto her back, crawling atop the bed and kissing her fiercely. Spark's fingers started to stroke her back, petting her as her sister wriggled and squirmed hungrily, bucking her hips up against Mavlynn's codpiece. She broke the kiss, panting – her small, pale tongue flicking along bleached lips. Every part of her was drained of color, save for those bright, bright eyes of hers. "Mavlynn…" She purred. "Is that codpiece just decorative?"
"Heh," Mavlynn said, rearing back and grabbing her top. Thinking of Sand, she dragged it up and over her head, her shoulders, then dropped it down past her thigh, so that it remained in contact with the pants she still wore. She thumbed the belt open, then wriggled her leggings down, the codpiece clinking loudly on the floor.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the discarded articles of clothing clump together, strands pulling the breastplate next to the leggings, the tank top wriggling of its own accord, until all the parts of Sand's shifted body had merged together into one continuous mass. Looked at from a distance, it still looked like a pile of clothes – but Mavlynn could hear her mistress' daughter sigh in relief.
Oh fuck that was hard, she panted.
"You're not the only one," Mavlynn whispered.
She was looking down at her cock, thrusting out eagerly before the two shocked pale elves, their red eyes locked onto it.
"How much did a dick like this run you for?" Socket asked, her fingers reaching up to gently slip along the base of Mavlynn's cock, lifting the tapering, bright red draconic dick that bloomed from between her thighs like a turgid flag. A warm drip of glimmering draconic pre-cum started to bead and drip along the pale elf's fingers and without even thinking, she leaned forward to lick it up with one greedy flick of her tongue. This ended up with the pale tip of said tongue teasing along the narrow, tapering point of Mavlynn's cock, sending a warm tingle along her spine as she groaned huskily. Her fingers gently stroked along Socket's head, teasing the fingers around to tug gently on her ear-tip, drawing a mewl and moan from Socket.
"A one bad job, honestly," Mavlynn purred.
"Oh Dragons," Socket leaned in. Her nose pressed to the side of her dick, breathing in fiercely, snorting up her musk, while her twin sister leaned in as well, licking along Mavlynn's thigh, then breathing up her scent with a eager snuffling noise, before she leaned forward and kissed one of Mavlynn's hanging balls, licking her pale, hairless orb. The feeling of two nubile pale elf mouths on every part of her very male anatomy was filling her with an intense, and somewhat surprising feeling.
She had never felt more like a girl right now than this moment.
"What the fuck?" Mavylnn whispered under her breath.
"Mmmm?" Spark looked up from her ball sucking.
"N-No, uh, sorry, just keep licking," Mavylnn said, reaching down to pet both twins heads as they licked and nuzzled at every part of her – Socket working her way back up to the tip, her mouth opening and taking Mavlynn's dragon dick between her lips. She started to push forward as Mavlynn bit her lip, hard to keep from moaning in the most girlish way. She stroked their hair more eagerly, then sighed a soft, slow sigh.
I guess those draconians really knew what they were doing, huh? She thought. When they had brainfucked her into being feminized in every sense of the word, they had even covered edgecases like this. Getting head from two elf twins was still girly because they were sucking her big fat girldick. Yeah. Yeah. Mavlynn grinned, slowly, feeling herself relax more and more into the moment, teasing the two girl's ears as they worked on her. Socket started to bob her head on the shaft, moaning as the tip slid down her throat, then back to her cheeks, which hollowed in as she slurped and sucked greedily, while Spark started to take her balls into her mouth with a mewl and whimper, her nose snuffing against the thick knot at the base of Mavlynn's girldick.
"Fuck…" Mavlynn moaned. "Fuck yeah, suck my dick, you eager little girls." She used both hands now – one on Socket's left ear, one on Spark's right, teasing and tugging their eartips the way she might play with their titties later.
The two girls moaned, though Socket's moan was considerably more muffled than Spark, who released her balls to cry aloud. "Oh Dragons!" She quivered, while Mavlynn groaned and allowed herself to relax, her balls tightening as a warm rush of her cum spurted up her dick and down Socket's throat. Socket's eyes rolled up so she looked as if she was about to pass out, quivering as she sucked and sucked and sucked, her throat working greedily. Despite that, warm cum dripped around her lips, glittering brightly against her pale skin – pearls on white. She pulled back, her mouth opening – showing that she had a thick puddle of warm draconic spunk glistening on her tongue. Before Mavlynn could tell her anything, she turned, caught her twin sister, then leaned in and mashed her mouth against her. The two elves moaned, their tongues pressing together, cum dripping between their lips messily, splashing down along their tank-tops, their chests grinding against one another through the thin fabric that they wore.
"Fuck," Mavlynn whispered, her voice faintly awed.
The two elves drew apart, panting, a thick line of spittle connecting their lewd, glistening mouths. Both turned to her, sticking out their tongues with soft 'mwuah' noises to show that niether had a single droplet of cum left in their mouths. Mavlynn caressed their cheeks, her thumbs sliding along their tongues, as if she were inspecting them.
"Good girls," she crooned.
"Mm, thank you," the twins said, their voices harmonizing perfectly.
Mavlynn froze, then rubbed the back of her neck. Her dick was still hard. Still eager. Still throbbing. She licked her lips, then hesitated again.
Can't pick? Sand thought.
Nope, Mavlynn said.
Do the one who was sucking your dick second, obviously, Sand said. That's just proper twinfucking etiquette.
Mavlynn wondered if that was real etiquette or if Sand was just bullshitting her. However, it made it easy. She grinned and then crawled onto the bed, pushing Spark onto her back, while Socket giggled and leaned against her side, whispering in her ear. "Need help?" She whispered as Spark's nimble, sleek thighs spread – her sex was completely hairless, showing she didn't do any special maintenance down there. Personally, Mavlynn preferred elf girls all naturally hairless, but she did get why some had gotten into the fad of growing peach fuzz or even a wild mane. It was just...so much work to get extra hair down there. The smoothness of her mound was warm and wet and oh so very hot as she bucked her hips up a tiny bit to slip herself against Mavlynn's dick – but then Socket reached down, taking hold of Mavlynn's dick, gripping her right at the knot. With her hand, she guided Mavlynn into her sister, the extra gesture making an already intensely arousing scene even hotter. Mavlynn moaned as she impaled the slender pale elf, while her sister whispered into her ear.
"Yeah, fuck my twin real good," she murmured, nibbling on her eartip as Mavlynn moaned softly, her balls slapping against Socket's buttocks, the pale elf's arms wrapping around her shoulders as she arched her back, the whole bed creaking loudly in the cheap, run down little hotel room – the surroundings only adding to the perverse pleasure of it all. Mavlynn thrust harder and faster, grunting in time with the plunging sensation of her cock splitting the slender elf pussy she was using, her knot slapping wetly against Socket as Socket cried out in more and more gutteral pleasure, her words lost in the pure animal pleasure of the moment.
Spark reached down and thrust her slick, slippery fingers into Mavlynn's ass, crooking them just so.
Mavlynn hissed and thrust deep. Her knot pushed, then shoved, then finally spread Socket's cuntlips wide, wide, wide. She grunted and started to cum. Hard. Her balls tightened as the pleasure crested and rushed through her entire body, her heart throbbing as the elf she was fucking arched her back like an animal in heat. "Y-Yessss!" Socket moaned, while Spark's finger continued to rub deep, deep inside of Mavlynn, coaxing another wave of pleasure to rise, crest, overwhelming her with a vision of white. She bucked her hips a few more time, and when she managed to see again, she saw that even with her knot keeping as much inside as possible, Socket's cute little thighs were soaked with thick, white, glowing spunk, and her belly swelled as if she had just been knocked up.
"O-oh god...oh great wyrm…" Socket panted, her eyes half closed as Mavlynn wriggled and squirmed and tugged. When she pulled her cock free with a wet slurp noise, Socket let out a soft squeak and twitched her hips weakly again – but she was so spent there was no chance she could do anything more than that. Warm, warm cum gushed from her sex – and her sister was down on her knees, slipping off the bed, her mouth opening as she started to guzzle the cum pouring from her. The sight was so preposterously lewd that Mavlynn barely registered moving from the bed. She grabbed onto the other girl's hips and yanked her up. Spark yelped, her her face and chest mashing against the bed as she was held like a wheel barrow and dropped...right onto Mavlynn's still achingly hard draconic dick.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Mavlynn snarled, raw lust and heat burning through her as she started to fuck Spark like she was a toy, the other elf trying to lick up more cum for a few moments – but after that feeble attempt failed thanks to how hard she was being plowed, Spark stopped trying to do anything but hold on, her sister watching with wide eyes as Mavlynn fucked Spark so hard that her balls were playing against Spark's clit like a drummer's set. She snarled as she fucked her hard and rough, her hands gripping her hips so tightly that her claws started to draw thin rivulets of blood.
"Ah fuck!" Spark cried out, her voice echoing off the walls. "Oh fuck, you're killing me, ah, you're driving me out of my fucking mind, oh dragon, fuck! Ah!"
The door exploded inwards at that moment with a spray of splinters and a loud bellow.
"Unhand my rogues, varla- oh, it's sex."
Mavlynn who had frozen, turned her head slowly around to see that it was not, in fact, McClaw who had kicked in the door, but another doorkicker – he wore an armored breastplate, with large poofy sleeves and leggings, in alternating orange and black, with two large orange feathers in a broad brimmed rather than poofy hat. He was an elf with a bit of a mustache, and was holding a monomolecular fede sword in his hands in two handed grip, his dragonbone gauntlets glimmering with shield spells to protect his unarmored arms from any swinging and bladed attacks.
Mavlynn blinked at him.
"I, uh, noticed that my fellow doorkicker had been...rendered insensate, and that my rogues were...well…"
"We're busy, Sam!" Spark shouted.
"My apologies!" The doorkicker bowed, arm spread, his sword sliding into his sheath.
Mavlynn blinked again as he walked out of the room backwards, still bowing.
"...well!?" Spark snapped, craning her head back to glare over her back at Mavlynn – her cheeks were scarlet, but she sure didn't seem eager to stop. Mavlynn coughed, then reached up with one hand to adjust a collar she wasn't wearing.
"Sorry. Just need to get my rhythm back." Mavlynn said.
And then she did.
***
Down at the bar, Mavlynn, Spark and Socket sat with the two elf twins cuddling against her side while their esthewhile streetsknecht friend introduced himself. "I am Samwyn. You've met McClaw, earier." He sighed. "We may need to get a new cleric."
"What kind of cleric was he?" Mavlynn asked as the two elves giggled and snuggled against her even more contentedly. Now that Mavlynn was starting to come down from the giddy high of having two gorgeous elf twins eagerly throwing themselves at her, she was beginning to wonder something. She didn't voice her thoughts – either internally or externally – but kept them ticking away in the back of her mind, while Samwyn chuckled.
"A cleric of dragons, obviously," he said.
"Ah, right," Mavlynn said, shaking her head. "So, uh, what are you here for, looking for work?"
"No, actually, we're looking for a kicker," Samwyn said. "Our group has been going well, keeping our ears out, and we heard that a really storied kicker group broke apart. And, well. We always need new members."
"Oh? Who were you looking for?" Mavlynn asked.
"Ophidiak," the man said, then sighed. "Sadly, he was already hired."
Mavlynn shrugged. "I'd offer a girl I know, uh, Slake?"
"Never heard of her," Samwyn said. "But if she's on the market-"
"No, she's, uh...she's heading off somewhere better," Mavlynn said, biting her lip. "She was one of my first coworkers and...I liked her a lot."
"I thought you said you were new here," Spark said, then giggled. "It's okay." She nuzzled against her neck before Mavlynn could respond. "You're cute, even if you're a liar."
"Uh...I'm not a liar!" Mavlynn said, shaking her head. "S-She works up in another city, Wyvren Beach."
"Think we can drag her away from that boring ass berg?" Socket asked, holding out her wrist, grinning and focusing as she did so. The tiny dragon she had implanted in her own brain sparked to life and her left eye started to glow as a crystal in her arm pulsated softly. "Searching, searching-"
"Hey, don't bother Slake!" Mavlynn said.
"...huh," Socket said, cocking her head. "Sparky, check with me, I wanna make sure I didn't miss anything."
"What?" Mavlynn asked. "Also, you don't need to do anything for me, right?"
"Yes we do," the two elves said in unison.
"...how good are you in bed?" Sawwyn said, arching an eyebrow over one dark green eye.
Mavlynn frowned as the two rogues continued their hacking into the dragon lines – and thought internally. Sand.
Yes? Sand asked, her voice cheerful. What up, my homie?
Don't...call me that, Sand, did you pump out dragon pheromones? She asked, frowning. Like, those two elves were on me like I was made of cocaine, and I'm not that sexy and confident.
Firstly, yes you are, and secondly, no! I'm disguised as a codpiece, codpieces don't emit pheromones. And I didn't smell pheromones.
Mavlynn's brow furrowed.
How can you smell if you're disguised as my outfit?
...hi! Sand said, and the two rogues lowered their arms, their eyes flickering as they shut down their connections to the dragon lines. Both of them looked at Mavlynn.
"Slake never made it to Wyvren City," Spark said.
"Yeah, she bought a ticket, but they found the ticket unused in the station," Socket said.
Mavlynn blinked.
"What?" she asked.
The two rogues started to lay out every step they had taken through the astral plane to track down the course of Slake – and the image they painted made the icy lump in Mavlynn's stomach grow heavier and heavier and heavier. Her hands tightened slowly and she felt Sand shiver along her body, the dragon sensing something moving inside of her.
"I need to find her. Now," Mavlynn said, her voice a soft snarl.
And right now?
She didn't give a damn if Sand had dosed them with dragon pheromones.
The two rogues got to hacking.
SAND, A FEW HOURS OF SEARCHING LATER
Sand trembled. She had never quite felt so scared of anyone – not even her mother in a high rage. Mavlynn was glowering down at the body of the woman she had called Slake, and her hands were rubbing along her shoulders.
"Samwyn," Mavlynn said, her voice cold. "I want to hire your group on retainer. Can you stay...ready for when I call you?"
"Sure," Samwyn said, his voice soft. "A revenge job?"
"Yeah," Mavlynn said. "I'll need to do one thing first."
...Mavlynn...you're not going to do anything stupid, right? Sand asked.
Mavlynn turned and started walking. Then she started to jog. Then she started to run. She was sprinting as fast as she could, her veins blazing with the dragon adrenaline that her implanted glands could output.
Mavlynn, uh, hold up! What are you doing, exactly? Uh, helloooo? Mavlynn? Sand asked, her voice terrified as Mavlynn got back to the Avalanche Manor in shocking time. She slowed, barely panting, and walked in through the front door. Mavlynn! Stop! Sand said, her voice growing panicking. I am your mistress! You will obey me!
Mavlynn...hesitated. For just a moment, she stopped walking forward. She clenched her hands, cocked her head...and blood started to drip from her nose. The control systems in her brain, they were fighting back and somehow, the kobold was pushing through it. Mavlynn took another step. Then another, then another. She headed down a corridor, blood dripping off her chin, while Sand squirmed around her, trying to restrict her with her very body – she was in the shape of pants, she could stop someone from walking, right?
Wrong. Mavlynn's enhanced muscles beat Sand's body easily – Sand, after all, was not in the form of a dragon. She was in the form of pantaloons and a breastplate. They were made to move around a body, they didn't provide nearly as much pressure as Sand would have wanted.
They came to the door Sand wanted, most of all, to not be the door Mavlynn had approached.
Mavlynn lifted her foot.
She kicked.
The door exploded inwards. Smoke and rubble bloomed outwards – clattering to the floor. In the dust was the working desk of Mom who sat in her elf form behind her desk, crystal pressed to her ear, clearly in the middle of a very important work call.
"I'll call you back, Chancellor," Mom said, in her driest, most regal tones. She set the phone down as Mavlynn walked up to her. To Mom. To Sand's Mom! Her actual mother, the dragonness who ran a good chunk of Wyrm City and, through it, the world. She advanced towards the desk, then grabbed the entire mahogany and crystal monstrosity and hurled to the side with one hand. The desk flipped, whirled, crashed into the wall and shattered in a spray of splinters and hissing, blue sparks. The sparks caught and flames spread along the ruin – but the room was mostly stone, and so it was little threat beyond the stink of it.
"Why?" Mavlynn snarled.
"...well, usually, I have some fucking clue of what someone is talking about before they break a very expensive desk," Mom said, showing zero fear. "But for once in my very long life, I-"
Mavlynn grabbed onto her throat and choked Mom off mid-word.
And Sand hopped off her body, leaving her naked and exposed, turned into a cat, screamed: "It's not my fault, bye!"
