Brewing Bad Ch. 172-173

Ch. 172 - The Tolling Bell

The bell rang nine while Skylara was getting ready, increasing Lucas’ anticipation. He felt more like bait than a dragon slayer, but he was committed now. It’s not as if he could just bail. Heisenburgle would have no way to see his target. He was trusting that Lucas would have her standing there at the appointed time, and he was determined to do just that. 

He had to wait for twenty minutes past the hour before she finally appeared, walking down the stairs in a tightly wrapped silken robe that was more than modest. The crimson robe covered almost everything and was very nearly the opposite of the tight, slutty gown she’d been wearing earlier. Even in its attempts to conceal, though, it still highlighted her dramatic hourglass figure, leading him to wonder for a moment how much her human form was fixed. 

While her true form was a dragon, her human form was presumably a magical construct. So, it might have been anything, in theory. 

She’s definitely wearing something scandalous underneath that, he decided instantly as he recalled her fantasy about being chased through the hedge maze. If she was that much of an exhibitionist, well, then the robe was for the benefit of the servants more than anything, though he doubted he could persuade her to keep it on the whole night. 

“Darling,” he said, taking her in his arms as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Shall we go for our planned stroll?”

She giggled at that. “Why, my lord Parin, I thought you’d never ask.”

The two of them strolled arm in arm out into the night, which was chilly but not unpleasantly so. It was the perfect night for a tryst like this, and Lucas had no trouble setting the mood with compliments and caresses as he took Skylara by the arm through the gardens, keeping her as far away from Heisenburgle’s hiding place as possible. 

Lucas wasn’t too worried about that, though. From here, he had to admit, the gnome did look like a golden statue of a horse and knight more than anything. It was pretty genius the way he was hidden in plain sight. Still, Lucas wanted to be hidden behind at least one row of hedges before it started to move, so no matter how often the dragoness stopped to kiss him, he kept them both moving.

“When are you going to show me what you’ve got hidden underneath there?” Lucas asked for the third time as they approached the entrance to the hedge maze. 

“When no one else can see…” She answered, swatting him playfully. “Isn’t that perfectly obvious? I’m not some floozy.”

That was, in fact, exactly what she was in Lucas’ experience, and the fact that lots of men hadn’t seen her naked was almost certainly attributable to the fact that few of them lived to tell the tale. He didn’t say any of that. He just feigned eagerness in an attempt to mask his own anxiety. 

Soon enough, though, he couldn’t put things off any longer, and when they were safely inside the entrance to the hedge maze, she quickly stripped down to show him the lacy negligee that only barely contained her bulk, complete with stockings and garter belts. The entire affair was in red and black, of course, like the rest of her outfits. 

“What do you think?” she asked breathily. 

I think I’m about to kill someone in their underwear, Lucas told himself as he kissed her to buy himself time. 

“I think it’s simply to die for,” he said finally, skirting as close to the truth as he dared. 

While it wasn’t exactly the erotic sight that she clearly hoped it would be, there was no denying that she was a lovely woman. Her tits were probably as big as his head, and if she had a sense of humanity that was half that size, he might have been tempted, but he wasn’t. Even as she jiggled pleasantly and made a show of running from him through the dark hedges, he felt nothing but contempt and a rising need for revenge. 

She’s not a floozy or even a woman, he reminded himself as he gave chase. She’s a monster, and she’s already tried to burn down your whole world once before. 

Apparently, he let some of that ferocity slip because, more than once, the dragoness said some strange things to him. “Down, boy,” she teased on one occasion, and “Someone’s feeling dangerous” another time when he pinned her against the wall of a stone gazebo. 

There was no denying that the danger combined with the environment made the entire thing feel almost erotic, but Lucas pushed any of those emotions down, doing his best to stalk the woman like the monster she was and not the lover she yearned to be. This went on for several minutes. Neither of them was in any hurry. 

The indestructible dragoness apparently found pretending to be helpless to be quite the turn-on, and he was just burning time until the bell tolled again. After all, every minute he spent chasing her through the shadows or groping her was one less he’d have to spend kissing her or, god forbid, fucking her. 

She led him on a merry chase through the expansive mazes and, once, tried to end their tryst in a different garden than the one he’d chosen. That required some creative roleplay to get her moving again. Finally, he had to whisper, “You know, the servants might be able to see you here from the windows on the third story.” That was enough to get her moving again, on the hunt for somewhere more private, which turned out to be the trellis-enclosed garden they’d already prepared for. 

Finally, when the hour was getting late, Lucas was sure the bells would begin to toll any second. He chased her into the very private garden where he and Heisenburgle had planned their assassination the night before, and he pinned her to the stone table, just feet away from the point where she would die in a few minutes. 

“Yes,” she whimpered, putting up no resistance at all. “Take me!”

Lucas acted like he was about to. He hiked up her negligee to reveal her cellulite-speckled ass and started to undo his own pants. Then he paused as if he remembered something and stopped. 

“In a minute, baby,” he murmured. 

Skylara sighed in frustration and ground against him hard. She opened up her mouth to complain, but as soon as she did so, he set the first vial of blue down in front of her, and she quieted. She might be horny as hell, but a junkie was a junkie. 

“Well… I suppose we do want the perfect evening,” she sighed. Straightening up to drink it. 

Skylara downed her vial in one gulp, as did Lucas, but he held her back even as the strength started to course through him. “Careful,” he cautioned her. “Candy to you is poison to me. You wouldn’t want to kill me before you take advantage of me, would you?”

“No, I suppose not,” she breathed. “Murdering, you can wait until later.”

Lucas wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a joke or not, but he ignored it and instead handed her the second vial as the bell started to toll ten o’clock. He’d planned a whole spiel about these vials and had planned to talk to her about their nonexistent differences like a sommelier discussing wine vintages. They were too late for that, though. Instead, he just pulled out his endurance potion and toasted her as he drank it. 

“There would certainly be worse ways to die than with you, like this,” Lucas flirted. “Dragonfire, for instance.”

She laughed at that, as he expected she would. She’d probably laugh at anything as truly toxic levels of blue coursed through her system. “Oh, my dear boy,” she caressed him. “A night with me is hotter than any fire I know.”

Lucas turned away to avoid smirking. Instead, he stepped to the spot where he needed the dragoness to be and pulled out the third vial. “One more dose,” he told her, “Then I can find out for myself.”

As she stepped toward him, he strained his ears for the familiar sound of the Hyperquadabulator’s engine but didn’t hear anything, at least not at first. That worried him, even though he knew it shouldn’t.

Heisenburgle is very reliable, he told himself. Certainly more reliable than you. 

As Skylara downed the last dose of Blue she would ever indulge in, though, he finally heard that distant, familiar rhythm. Skylara didn’t seem to, though. She just drained her vial and tossed it before stepping toward Lucas and pressing her breasts against him. 

“Well,” she asked huskily. “How much longer are you going to keep me waiting?”

Lucas opened up his mouth to answer, but before he could, the gnome’s golden lance ripped right through the garden trellis. Lucas didn’t even have to push her, either. She was practically standing in the perfect spot. He gulped down his third and final potion at that moment, just in case; everything was going as well as he could have hoped. Still, even as the dragoness turned to face her doom, something seemed very wrong. 

Ch. 173 - The Perfect Ambush

Lucas had done everything right. He’d played the doting lover, made incredibly concentrated potions, and set the perfect trap. Yet even as Heisenburgle crashed through the trellis and aimed the lance right at her heart, he knew it was all for naught. He could see it in the way that Skylara moved; everything happened in slow motion then, except for him and her, and as debris flew past them, he knew that all the surprise in the world wouldn’t be enough. 

A sniper’s bullet might not be enough, he thought forlornly as he watched her move. Even in her human form, loaded with enough Blue to kill a hippo, she had the reflexes of a jungle cat. 

In the blink of an eye, she shifted her stance slightly, and the lance skittered across her skin, making sparks as it went instead of penetrating her. Lucas could only see what happened because his agility potion was beginning to course through his own system,

“You!” she roared as she charged forward, not making it clear if she was talking to Lucas or to Heisenburgle. Lucas ignored her words and moved with all the speed and strength he could muster. He saw very clearly what she was about to do. She was going to rip the gnome’s head clean off. 

She never got the chance, though, because as fast and as strong as she was, in this moment, he was faster. Her mortal form restrained her, whereas his had been supercharged until it bordered on the divine. Lucas grabbed her and sent her flying, even as the Hyperquadabulator toppled over and sent the gnome and the lance flying in different directions. 

When Skylara got to her feet, she looked at Lucas with as much surprise as she did rage. “I should have never given you a second chance,” she growled as her human features began to shift away to more reptilian ones. “The Prince wanted me, but I wanted this too badly, and now I will have to strike you down.”

Lucas didn’t respond. He just picked up the closest thing to a weapon that was available, which turned out to be a wrought iron post, and thrust it at her like a spear. She made no move to dodge it; she didn’t need to. Even with all of his strength, the weapon was much too weak to pierce Skylara’s hide now that her flesh had been replaced with scales, and she’d almost doubled in size. It bent beneath the force of his strike but didn’t seem to even hurt her. 

“You could have had everything!” she implored him. “You could have had pleasure and bliss, and you threw it away for what?”

“Because I’m trying to be a decent human being,” he answered. 

“Then die as you’ve lived!” she screeched, “An awful, worthless bastard!”

She unleashed a gout of fire then, though it was only half as strong as those she unleashed in her true form, it was enough to send him running for cover as she sprayed the entire courtyard in a curtain of flames. She moved fast, but right now, so did he. 

He blazed through the burning path, trying to ignore the heat and the smoke nipping at his heels as he made for his stash. Still, even with all that speed, he only made it to where he’d stashed his sword before she reared up above the curtain of smoke and burning hedges as a dragon at nearly full strength. 

Heisenburgle was probably lost in the fire somewhere, but he had water-cooled armor for that. He should be fine. Lucas’ bigger problem was the bitch that was looking at him like he was on the menu. 

“You’re a cockroach, Lucas,” she roared. “You’re a cockroach, and as much as I’ll miss your product, my only regret is that I can kill you only once!”

Her words were punctuated with a second wave of fire that was twice as powerful as the first blast had been. It had been a wildfire, but this was napalm. Fortunately, by that point, he reached his cloak and flung it around his shoulders just before he hunkered down and let it wash over him like a tide. 

Lucas hadn’t felt a thing when he’d shoved his hands into burning coals, but this was different. It wasn’t quite enough to be painful, but even with whatever magic this thing was using, he began to sweat like he’d stepped into a sauna cranked to the max. 

You stay here and hide, and you might live, he told himself, but you let her take off, and you’ll never get another chance at this. Next time, she’ll hear you coming from a mile away. 

It was a shitty situation. He knew that, but what could he do? Reluctantly, with the fires still raging all around him and Skylara still cursing his name at an ear-bleeding volume, he got to his feat. Even being fireproof, it was hard to convince himself he’d be okay while the garden was on fire all around him. 

He couldn’t afford to linger, though. Not only might the dragons take off at any moment, but his potions wouldn’t last forever either. They were five-minute maximum strength affairs. His Enduring High talent doubled that to ten, but even so, he’d already used one or two minutes of that just running for his life and dealing with the firestorm. 

While the smoke didn’t actually give him any trouble breathing, he knew he’d pay for that once the endurance potion wore off. He also knew that the balls of concentrated wyrmsbane oil he’d planted in the garden were probably smoldering by now, too. 

If I can just keep her here long enough, those might do some real damage, he hoped, now that the lance was out of commission. 

The only plus side to the thick smoke was that Skylara didn’t see him coming the second time. Why should she? She was too busy gloating and making cover while he charged her under cover of her own flames. Wherever he struck next, he needed to make it count. 

As he approached her at top speed, he considered his options. The underbelly was the best bet for doing real damage, but it was also a very dangerous move; attacking a dragon from below gave them every chance in the world to simply flatten you with their bulk, and if there was one thing he’d learned about Skylara by chasing her half naked ass around this evening it was that she was bulky. 

Even without armor, that same bulk would shield most of her vital organs. His sword simply wasn’t long enough to do real damage, which left in a large muscle to inject a butt load of poison into, or maybe a tendon to reduce her mobility. Both were chancy, but he didn’t really have a choice.

Wings it is, he decided after a moment’s thought. While it would be easier to strike at one of her legs, she wouldn’t be running out of there, and if he could stop her from flying away, his chances would improve immensely. 

So, he ran straight for her left leg and used it as a springboard before leaping even higher. That gave her the chance to feel him and adjust, but it was too late. She was taken entirely by surprise as he lept nearly fifteen feet in the air and sliced partway through the membrane on the near wing before firmly embedding his sword in her exposed muscle. 

In that fraction of a second, he had the chance to try to sever the ligament that would ground her completely but chose the muscle instead. He lacked the leverage to really hack through a part of her that might as well have been a steel cable while he was soaring through the air; the muscle seemed the better bet. 

He was partially right, at least in part, a moment later when her tail cracked like an elephant-sized bullwhip in the spot where he would have landed if he hadn’t embedded his sword into her muscle. The blow would have taken his head clean off. 

“Why won’t you die!” she roared, beating her wings in vain as she struggled to dislodge him. 

“You first bitch!” he spat back, holding on to his hilt as he pumped the handle, flooding her body with some of the most lethal dragon poison that had ever been devised. It wasn’t a tenth as much as Heisenburgle’s lance would have injected into her. Still, as he pumped the handle, squeezing more and more of the toxic Wrymsbane stew into her, he hoped it fucking hurt. 

She tried to dislodge him for a few seconds more, then, when that didn’t work, she did what he least expected and leaped into the sky. In that moment, he had to decide whether or not he should let go right away, but if she did, he was almost certain she’d get away. So, he hung on for dear life. 

She’ll go down somewhere, he told himself as she screeched and soared. And when she does, you’ll be there to finish the job. 

At least, that’s what he’d planned. However, as her wobbly flightpath fought for altitude and her right wing grew weaker and weaker, she started to move erratically. At first, he thought she was about to crash, but instead, she began to engage in complicated aerial acrobatics right over the burning hedge maze. 

The muscle had clamped down hard on his blade, so it wasn’t going anywhere; it might not even be straight anymore. The rest of his body, though? He was flung around all over the place, and only the shocking strength of his grip kept him from falling to his death. Against any other opponent, he would have felt superhuman with this much alchemy running through his veins; against a dragon, though, it was just enough to avoid being eaten instantly.

“Get off me!” Skylara roared. 

“That’s not what you were saying the rest of the night!” Lucas joked though he doubted she could hear him over the roar of the wind. 

Whether she heard him or not, though, the diving corkscrew that followed was particularly violent. After several minutes of struggle, that shook him free. While his sword stayed embedded deeply in the dragoness’ pectoralis muscle, her thrashing knocked him free of the weapon’s blood-slick hilt, and he fell away to the earth, nearly a hundred feet below. 

“Holy shit!” Lucas yelled as his mind raced, and the ground rushed up at him. Could his endurance potion keep him from becoming street pizza? He didn’t know, but he was about to find out the hard way, and he was not looking forward to it.