Chapter 23

The crystallized slime plug that sealed the Broodmother’s inner sanctum was wedged in tighter than a three-day old booger. It took all five of us wailing on it for about ten minutes to break it up.

“Does this place ever stop being gross?” I stepped gingerly into the blue glowing cavern beyond. “Oh. Just look at that. The answer is apparently ‘fuck no’.”

The cavern was full of eggs and goo in about equal quantities. The eggs were laid in small, mucus wrapped clusters nestled among hills of webbing and bones. Some piles were already hatched and empty. Other nests had zombies bound to them, some of them still moving weakly inside their bonds. And far at the back was a mostly-naked man glued spread-eagle over a nest of writhing, just-about-ready-to-pop baby Swamp Hags.

“Hey, you big old wrinkly bitch!” He hollered in strongly accented Vlachian. “Guess what the first thing your stupid ugly babies are gonna do when they hatch? Lick my gods-damned balls! That’s totally fucked up! But not as fucked as you’ll be once I get off this nest and ram my fist into your ass and the mouth at the same time! Because your mouth is your ass, and your ass is your mouth, and that’s really disturbing now that I think about it!”

I had formed a mental picture of the Baru during the course of our journey. Big, brawny, the kind of man to stand toe to toe with a  giant like Lord Soma. The man in front of us in no way resembled this image. Vash Dorha was as lean and lanky as a wolfhound, heavily tattooed, and ugly as sin. His sharp features were shattered by a twisting web of mean, deep scars. As I’d expected, it was the hair that gave him away as our Baru – his scalp was covered in intricate cornrows, skillfully twisted into an eight-pointed star that came together into a fall of long braids. They were heavy with rings, amulets, beads made of bone and amber, and even human teeth... the relics of the dead, gifted to him by countless grateful relatives.

“You had better – oh, hey! I hear feet!” He strained to look at us as we ran to him as a group, Suri in the lead. “OH. HEY. Na-tsho schrodna, my lady, your chest makes this entire seven-day, twenty-three minute, forty-four-second piss-fuck absolutely worth it. Gods have mercy, you are gifted!”

Suri drew her dagger, glaring down at him. “You’re about to be castrated if you don’t your mouth.”

“Oh, lady of the deep, glorious valley, the things my humble mouth could do for the likes of you,” he replied wistfully. But as I came up on him, his eyes darted over to glance at me, and the pale grey irises turned stormy and dark. “Bu you. You! Büü yirt! Do not come near me!”

I hesitated, confused, and then realized what his deal was. I sighed. “Oh. Right. The Moon Pact thing.”

“Moon Pact thing?” Suri cut away the hardened slime as quickly as she could while keeping her boobs out of nuzzling range.

“Remember when Andrik beat Rin to death in the Throne Room of Vulkan Keep? And I broke that oath to stop him from killing us all?” I gave Vash a pointed look. He scowled back. 

“Oh, that. Yeah, that wasn’t much fun.” Suri got Vash's arms free, and was working on his legs when the first Swamp Hag larva split its thick, rubbery eggshell and plopped out onto the floor. She raised the knife to stab it, but Vash was faster. He caught her arm mid-strike and shook his head.

"No, no, no." He released her wrist after a second. “Leave the little snot-goblins be.”

She blinked at him a couple of times, but eased up. “Leave them be? Are you joking?"

"Do I look like a clown?” Vash's asymmetrical mouth twisted down at the corner – for a second, before his face split into a cheesy, gap-toothed grin. “Of course I do! But seriously, there’s already been enough suffering here.”

Suri hacked and sliced, and in another minute, the monk was free. He got stiffly to his feet, rolled his shoulders, and grunted. His bare arms were tattooed solid black. He glared at the exit like it owed him money. “Oy, my back. Thank you, lady. Now, if I don’t get a piss, a drink and a smoke in the next thirty-three minutes, I’m going to kill this lying Rotzlöffel on principle.”

“Fuck you,” I snapped. “We just saved your skinny ass.”

“Fuck me? Don’t make promises you can’t keep, meshugga.” Vash took a step forward and brandished a corded fist. “Your dick will never be long or hard enough. My cheeks would crush you like a maggot, except… we do not crush maggots, do we? Like this little guy.” He crouched down to pat the baby Swamp Hag as it inched its way across the floor. “See? Harmless. And look at its little mouth-butt!”

Rin began giggling behind me. I pinched the bridge of my nose and willed the pain to stop.

“Okay, mate – time to drag you back to the funny farm.” Suri wiped her dagger clean, then sheathed it. “Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk!” He flipped his braids over one shoulder and limped off toward the door. “Na-tsho schrodna, ‘can I walk’? I’ve been walking since before I could crawl!”

I rolled my eyes and looked over at Suri. She shrugged, her expression slightly pained.

“Istvan’s going to be thrilled we found you,” Rin said to him, falling into step. “Fort Korona was falling to pieces when we left.”

"Soma and Usoya back to slapfighting, are they? Eh. I will leave you and make my way there." Vash waved her away like a fly, not looking back. “Idiots.”

"Wait. No, dude." I held up both hands. "No, you aren't storming off through the swamp by yourself, okay? We were sent to find you. We’re taking you-"

“You! Bitga yaru! The Oathbreaker does not speak to me!” Vash rounded on us in the doorway, pointing at me. “Not another word out of your whore’s mouth! I’ll walk! On three legs, like a man!”

"Sir, please." Rin tried next. "We have a dragon and can fly you back to Korona. If you were to arrive home that way, the effect on morale at the Fort would be incredible."

The D-word stopped him in his tracks. He turned to face Rin, eyes wide. "Dragon? A dragon? You travel with a dragon?"

"Yeah." I felt a tic start at the corner of my eye. "And like the rest of us, she’s tired and beat up and really wants her dinner, so if we could play nicely and act like grownups until we get back to the Fort, that would be great."

"Take me to this dragon," he said, to Suri. "I must pay my respects."

Suri looked to me, her eyebrows raised. "She's Hector's dragon. You need to talk to him, mate."

"No." And with that, he started marching for the entrance to the main cavern again.

Suri clicked her tongue. “Well… okay. Guess the ride back’s gonna be a riot.”

“I always thought monks were more like… you know…” I hesitated, thinking of the word. “Dignified? Disciplined?”

“Chaste?” Rin suggested. 

Suri snorted. “You gonna be able to straighten things out with him?”

I shrugged. “I knew something like this would happen when I broke the Kara Bukat Talom. It’s okay.”

“It’s not, because if you hadn’t, Vlachia would be in the shitter right now.” Suri jerked her head toward the door. “Do we need to be worried about him pushing you off your dragon?”

I shrugged. “He’s been polite about it so far. He could have just gotten up and tried to kill me. That’s what he’s supposed to do. Breaking the Kara Bukat Talom is a big deal.”

“There’s got to be some exception,” Rin said. “Didn’t you prevent fratricide? A royal assassination?”

I shrugged with my hands. “Planning assassinations is one of the things it’s used for.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” Suri made a sound of disgust. “Well, let’s go get him before he tries to jam his tongue up under Karalti’s tail. Gods knows he seems like the kind of dickhead who’d try.”

We trooped back out to find Vash prostrated in front of my dragon, who was licking her talons and looking extremely pleased with herself.

“… and the pita bread has to be hot! With extra garlic sauce, because I’m a big girl now and-” She reared her head, crests flaring upright when she saw me. “Oh! Hector! This guy says he knows how to spit-roast! We can have kebab every day!”

“From what I’ve heard out of him so far, that’s not the kind of spit-roast he’s talking about, Tidbit.” I swaggered across as Vash pushed himself up to stand.

Karalti winked at me, then craned her muzzle down toward the monk. “So yeah - and extra sauerkraut, okay? But only for veal. Lamb goes better with sweet pickles.”

“Of course, my lady. Your command is my pleasure.” Vash swept into an exaggerated bow in front of her, then turned to scowl at me. “You! Get your filth away from this holy creature! Sss!”

“Sure, asshole, I’ll get right on that.” I clapped Karalti on the forearm, waiting as she leaned forward to rest on her winghands. Vash watched on aghast as I put a boot up on her elbow and clambered up onto her back.

“Stop that! What are you doing!?” He reached up to tug at his hair. 

“It’s okay!” Karalti chirped, cocking her head from side to side querulously. “Hector’s mine! He likes Burna, too! You don’t need to worry about him!”

“He… ‘likes’ Burna,” Vash repeated flatly. Then his face twisted in a snarl. “This lady is a Queen! Is nothing sacred to you, dog? Not oaths, not dragons, not anything?”

“Some things. I was real busy worshipping your mom last night.” I sat down cross-legged on Karalti’s back and looked down at him. “Are you coming up, or what?”

Vash stared at us for a couple of seconds. For a moment, I thought he was about to fly up, kung-fu style, and punch my face through the back of my head. But instead, he slid his hand into one of the pouches on the heavy belt he wore and pulled out a bag. From that, he removed something that looked remarkably like a joint. When he lit it up with a match, a rich, skunky smell wafted to my nose.

“Mother jokes. Burna’s balls. I’m too tired for this shit,” he muttered. He took a deep hit and held it like a pro before blowing it out. He coughed, briefly, then closed his eyes. “Fine, Rotzlöffel. But before we leave this place, I must find my gauntlets. This stupid bitch of a worm sucked them off my arms like a two-ruble dockyard whore.”

“Sure, man. You do that while we level up.”

Vash grunted, and clomped over to the dead boss to start pawing through its innards.

“We need to pick up the Ix’tamo, too!” Rin exclaimed, bouncing over to Karalti as she stood. “Karalti, do you think you can carry it?”

“Yeah! I can carry a lot now!” The dragon squinted her eyes, like a smug cat.

I nodded. “Leveling first, though.”

“Okay! I need to level as well and make a couple of quick adjustments to Hopper and Lovelace, so, take your time!”

Rin ran off to continue repairing her turrets, while Suri joined Cutthroat. While they worked, I lay out on Karalti’s back and opened up my HUD to level her up, and was shown a familiar chart:

“Let’s see here... we’re not choosing any skills from another path, are we?”

“Nope! The Path of Alacrity is fun.”

“My thoughts exactly. Okay… let’s see here. Level 10 gives us ‘Wings of Deception’.” I selected that, and then did my best to manually read the description:

Wings of Deception

Your dragon is the daughter of Matir, and her blood sings with the Words of Shadow, Illusion, and Life. She has flowered into adulthood and has gained the ability to create shadow copies of herself (1 copy per 50 Mana points, minimum 1 copy) that look, to all intents and purposes, like herself, her rider, and any gear she may be carrying.

When the copies are made, the dragon teleports one body-length in any direction and splits off into multiple images. Her mana and HP are evenly divided between herself and her dopplegangers. For example, if the dragon creates 3 copies (for a total of 4 individuals), each one will have 1/4 of her total HP and Mana pool.

Shadow Copies will naturally mimic their creator in movement, speech, and attack. Commanding the copies to take independent action takes great strength of will, but is possible with the right training. Maintaining the copies costs 1 Mana per second per copy.

The copies can take damage, cast spells, and strike with any attack the dragon knows - however, spells cast by copies use 50% more mana, and breath weapon damage dealt by copies is reduced by 75%. For example, a dragon with three copies who uses a breath weapon deals one instance of normal damage, and three instances of 25% damage. Physical attacks suffer no penalty until the copies expire.

If a copy is damaged over its maximum HP reserve, the dragon will not take damage. The copy will vanish and will not be able to be resummoned until the dragon has rested for 6 hours. If the original dragon is damaged beyond her reduced HP reserve, all copies will vanish and her HP will refill to its normal pool, minus the damage she sustained.

The dragon’s bonded rider is also copied, and can perform attacks - however, unless the rider also has an ability to create shadow clones, the attacks will be illusory and deal no damage. An invisible rider will remain concealed. If the rider if thrown off during flight, the shadow rider/s will also fall. The dragon cannot replicate non-bonded riders or passengers.

Copies look, feel and sound exactly like the dragon summoning them until dismissed. The clones created by Wings of Deception are tangible manifestations of mana and cannot be identified purely by physical appearance - magical means must be employed to discern copies from their original caster. The difficulty rating to pierce the illusion increases with your dragon’s level.

Oh. My god.

I rubbed my eyes, then had the system read it back to me again to make sure that my dyslexia wasn’t playing a cruel prank on me. And as she did, a grin split my face. “Karalti. I am about to smash this ‘accept’ button harder than I have ever smashed anything before.”

She craned her neck to look up and back at me. “Uhh... okay?”

“You’ll only be able to ninja-magic one of these copies, but even that is going to save us so much HP in the air. This Wings of Deception thing is a gamechanger. I’m almost worried it’s like... like a mistake.” When the option to accept came up, I screamed ‘YES!’ in my head at the HUD.

When it closed, Karalti closed her eyes and drew a deep, startled breath as the air around us darkened. Through the film of shadow rising around her, I saw the others turn to look. It intensified, deepening, and then the black vapor seemed to suck into Karalti’s body through the seams in her scales - and into me. We shivered at the same time, and then she opened her eyes.

“Ohhh.” Her violet and silver irises churned with power, folding in toward her pupil like magma at the heart of a volcano. “Ohhhhhhhh! Yeah! This is neat!”

“Yeah.” My heart was beating fast at the possibilities. “Let me go see what combat abilities have opened up for me. Maybe there’s something complimentary to it.”

“Wait... so if I make a copy of me, and they do a quarter of my damage, then we do 125% total.” She paused for a moment.

“Yes. And this shit is going to scale up. You could end up doing 350% breath weapon damage or more by end game.” My mind was suddenly racing with ideas on how to use this ability to our advantage in fights with larger dragons. Would Baldr, Lucien, and Violetta’s dragons have comparable abilities?

I scrolled over to my sheet next to see what combat abilities I had to work with at Level 18. There were three new options:

Obsidian Scales (Dark Dragoon)

Your dragon’s damage reduction is increased by 5% per ability level when you are riding her.

Lance Assassin (Offense)

Every adrenaline point adds a 1% chance of instantly killing your enemies on a critical hit. The maximum target level increases with each level in this ability.

Shadow Jaunt (Defense)

Instantly teleport between shadows within a maximum of 30ft.

“Hmm.” I tapped my lip, mildly disappointed at the lack of shadow-copy abilities. Three abilities, all of them tempting in their own ways, plus several existing ones I wanted to level. I only had three Combat Ability Points.

Obsidian Scales was the one I felt I ought to take, because it would make Karalti less likely to be hurt in combat. Shadow Jaunt was a possible replacement for my existing Shadow Dance ability. Unlike my current dash, it didn’t just reduce damage, it negated being hit in the first place. Given that my weapon and several of my abilities worked best at range, it was a solid candidate. The problem was environmental. If I was in an area without shadows, it was basically unusable.

Lance Assassin was promising – once I got an ability that increased my chance of landing critical hits. I checked out the full ability description, and found that it was effective on enemies based on their EXP. Lance Assassin I would only instakill enemies with 50% of my experience or lower, but every point you dumped into that ability raised the ceiling by 15%. Lance Assassin X gave you a 10% chance to insta-kill enemies with 185% more EXP than yourself – good odds, especially in a fight with multiple opponents. If I could level it to ten between now and, say, Level 30, then I would take it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t be able to level combat abilities to Level X until I was Level 45, though – so Lance Assassin was going to be great around end-game, but I was better off focusing on mastering my active combat abilities for now.

In the end, I decided to level my current abilities for the time being: Rain of Glass II, Master of Blades IV, Whirlwind Butcher IV. Whirlwind was my Adrenaline Point generator, and the MoB/Rain of Glass combo required a lot of AP. While I didn’t want my Tidbit getting damaged, her new Wings of Deception ability was going to go a long way toward improving her defense. As I was just about to close the sheet, my eyes snagged on the Gift of Matir abilities list. I hadn’t yet used the Shadow Lance ability, and it was still marked ‘new’. I’d forgotten about it: not good. That was something I definitely needed to work into my tactics.

“How’re you goin’ up there, soldier?” Suri called up.

“Good. Just finished.” I closed my HUD and rolled up into a crouch to see Vash shaking slime off his gauntlets. “Ready to go back to Korona and make an entrance?”

Suri put a boot on Cutthroat’s stirrup and pulled herself up into the saddle. “Born for it.”