Merton scooped Brash into his arms and started to rub his belly. The tiny dragon immediately forgot all questions and started to bat at his fingers while giggling.
“It’s the Fortress of Regrets,” Merton said, looking at Relix.
***
A light brighter than the sun exploded into being. It cast shadows both jagged and curved with the starkness that only a truly bright light could provide. Dust swirled in the sudden heat-vortexes created where that point of brightness appeared. Then the point swept in a circle about a meter wide, leaving a cherry red line along a wall that had been untouched for uncountable years. As the red light throbbed from the line of sliced metal, a muffled conversation could be heard.
“Can I knock?” A youthful voice.
“It’s not a d-” A gruff, clicking voice.
“Knock knock!”
The hammering booms that filled the Fortress of Regrets echoed off of the walls with such force that they almost obscured the crash of the wall falling inwards. Brash the Dragon hopped onto the center of the meter wide circle, singing: “A candy gram made of actual candy who also has sex with you named Pinkie Pie!”
“I told you you shouldn’t have shown him e621,” Carlos said.
“Who showed him e621!?” Lisa shouted from behind Gunner and his two armsmen, who hurried forward into the fortress, their laser rifles at the ready, sweeping them about to cover the large chamber that they had cut into.
“What’s e621?” Brash asked, then cocked his head. His eyes whirred and he went. “Ooooooh! That’s what e621 is! ”
“Carlos, stop corrupting my son-” Merton started.
“Boom! Daughter!” Brashette said, exploding from small cat-sized dragon to sleek, svelte looking girl. A svelte looking entirely naked girl. Her small, a-cup breasts bounced perkily, while a fine patina of scaling was clustered around her incredibly adorable belly button and right above the cleft of her pussy, like shimmering pubic hair. Her hair was long enough to hang down to her rump, but was brushed entirely back, so her pale chest was completely exposed. She started to bounce happily, which set delicious jiggles through her whole body. Well. The parts that could jiggle. Merton clapped his hands over his eyes.
“Brashette!” he yelped.
“Why bother looking at cuckoldry pictures if you’re just gonna complain about it?” Brashette muttered. “Also, blacklisted! Blacklisted! Blacklisted...”
“Brashette, clothes !” Merton snapped.
“Oh, right!” Brashette said. Merton uncovered his eyes and saw that Brash had returned to his cat-sized form. Now entirely non-sexual, he started to walk in circles, singing out.
“Blacklisted! Blacklisted!”
“What’s he doing?” Trevor asked, stepping onto the door with Merton. “Also, dude, why is your face so red?”
Merton paused, thinking it through. By now, he was starting to get used to Brash’s thought processes. It went sex, snuggles, sex, candy, pet, sex. In order from most to least important. With that in mind, he nodded: “He’s blacklisting kinks on e621.”
“Ah,” Trevor said.
The rest of the group stepped finished striding through the door. Thanks to the Ouster attack, the Talon-9 was really low on armsmen. That was why Gunner, despite his grumbling, had given impact armor and laser rifles to Trevor, Lisa, and Carlos. Of the three, Lisa was the only one who should really have been given a gun, which was why she was covering their asses. Relix brushed some dust off her cufflinks as she swept into the mysterious castle.
The first chamber they had cut into was clearly an entrance. It was a hall, grand and alien in its design. Several ‘statues’ loomed throughout the area: Jagged and snarled looking things that looked more like energy cannons than anything decorative. Their barrels aimed into the ceiling or at one another. There were broad stairs that swept up towards landings that loomed almost twenty feet higher than the rest of the chamber, while broad doors made of metal thorns and flowing quicksilver were set into frames studded with black gemstones. The entire place was only illuminated by the circles of light that spilled from their laser rifles – giving everything a jagged, half finished look to it as the pools of light swept here, there, everywhere.
“What is this place?” Relix asked.
“Uh, if my information is right, a solidified fortress made purely out of the regrets of a very bad man,” Merton said.
“And how would you have information?” Relix asked, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Your people are mage blind. You don’t even fly in space.”
Merton licked his lips. Carlos and the others had every reason to not trust Relix, or any dragon. She had kidnapped them after all. He looked at Julia, to see what she thought. His girlfriend was leading up the rear with a four legged hamper that followed after her, waddling along like a rectangular dog. She was holding a tablet in one hand and what appeared to be a plastic wand in the other. Merton was about to ask before she said: “We’re honestly not sure, Princess.”
Relix crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine, give your suspicions.”
Merton sighed. His hands slid into his pockets and he shrugged. “Human culture seems to have...guessed...a lot of what is going on in the galaxy. The split between prismatic and metallic dragons. The existence of this place. The layout of the multiverse, if not their exact names.” He pulled out his hand, waving it at the castle for emphasis. Then his hand went right back into his pockets. “I think that humans are picking up some psychic backwash from dragons. Like, a side effect of how you learn.”
“That’s not possible.”
Speccy had entered. She had her own four legged hamper following her, and was holding up something that looked like a rectangle with a glowing crystal orb set into the middle of a hole cut into it. She held it up like a Nintendo Switch and started to look through the crystal orb at the surroundings. “Dragon learning,” she continued. “It stops after they hatch.”
“Maybe Earth sits on a ley-line,” Trevor said, shrugging.
Merton looked at his most taciturn friend.
Trevor shrugged again. “Hey, if Planescape is true, Rifts might be.”
“God, I hope not,” Lisa said, shuddering.
Speccy lowered her device. “This place is clean. If anything lived here, it stopped a long time ago. I’m detecting several purely arcane portals linking to the Outer and Inner planes, though. Give me a day, maybe two? I can re-target them.”
“We can go home!” Lisa said, her eyes widening.
“Those portals are connecting right to House Castrovel holdings, their allies, and the Prismatic Throne,” Speccy said, her voice firm. “We have to get the warning to the Imperial House immediately that the attack on Yelnatzo was no pirate raid, no exterior invasion, but treachery.”
Carlos coughed. “If this place has multiple portals, you can spare one for us. Right?”
“No,” Speccy said. She crossed all four of her arms over her chest. “My duty to House Castrovel is clear.”
Merton felt a hand slide over his shoulder and squeeze. His hand cupped it and he looked at Relix, who was looking as if she was marshaling her thoughts as she looked about the castle. Relix met his eyes and smiled.
“Get to work on the portals. Cite one on Earf,” she said..
Speccy’s teeth audibly ground together. Like boulders.
“Earth,” Merton whispered.
“No, I believe that it was pronounced Earf.” Relix lifted her nose. “Your concubine showed me the proper pronunciation by Earth’s mightiest warrior while we were flying to the castle. He was very brave in the historical documentary. By the way, you never said that humanity stopped such a horrid race!” She shuddered.
Merton shot a look at Julia, who gave him two huge thumbs up.
Gunner sighed and stepped up. “Ma’am, before you do anything, I want to do a complete search. Lisa, set up the guard perimeter around this door.” He pointed a chitinous finger at Merton. “You? Suit up.”
Brash gasped excitedly. “Yes
!” He leaped and before Merton could ask for him to not too, Brash had landed on his face like the world’s most adorable facehugger. Merton’s arms cartwheeled, but it was too late. Brash’s body shapeshifted into the skintight power armor that he had been genetically engineered to form. Once he had finished, Merton felt the faint sting of the connections clicking in, and suddenly, he wasn’t wearing Brash. He and Brash were one thing, fused together in a level so deep that Merton wasn’t sure where one started and the other began. He looked down at his scales and felt a curious thrill .
He was…
“Uh, dude,” Carlos said. “Pants.”
Merton looked down. Brash’s body had covered and subsumed his clothing. End result? Brash was showing off what a draconic schlong looked like. And the raw power that crackled through every single one of Merton’s nerves was having its natural effect on his manhood, meaning that he was popping almost eighteen inches of hard, red dick. He coughed and thought: Brash, can we have internal genitalia?
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand your request,” Brash said in his ears and Merton felt his balls grow slightly. Lisa was covering her eyes with her hand, but Brash helpfully highlighted her hard nipples in Merton’s HUD. Julia, meanwhile, had pulled out her cellphone and was tapping the picture button with the regularity of a metronome.
Brash! Merton thought.
“No hablo inglis!” Brash sang.
“Okay, we’re searching!” Merton said through Brash – his voice sounding deeper and more masculine than his normal voice did. He strode forward, hoping to find something to punch. He strode up one of the stairs and to one of the doors that looked like thorns and quicksilver and found the door opening for him automatically. Once he was out of earshot of the others, he whispered to Brash. “Seriously, dude. We need to work together.”
“Yeah, but sexy stuff is fun,” Brash said, cheerfully. “Also, as a dragon prince, you kinda lacked some of the abilities of a dragon... until now .” He said those last two words like a movie trailer announcer. As he spoke, Merton noticed something else had changed. In his defense, his dragon dong had been a little bit distracting - but now that he was looking around the interior of the abandoned castle, he could see that Brash had refined the HUD slightly.
For one thing, he had a pair of bars in the upper left hand corner of his vision. One of them was red and had a small red cross as a capstone. The other was blue and had a small blue shield. On the lower right hand corner of his vision, he had a white circle that was flecked with several blue dots, each one standing in the rough position of his friends. And, of course, the upper edge of his vision had a series of small, numbered boxes.
“Brash…” Merton said.
“Oh! You like the HUD?” he asked, cheerfully. “Focus on the boxes! Dooo it!”
“No, wait, before...any of that, what the fuck else did you give me?” Merton asked. “I already got the augmented donger.
“Oh! Uh, you can now secrete lust pheromones, add psychotropic precum to your cock, and can flavor your scales to taste like whatever! Chocolate! Butter! Bacon! Oh! Oh! Oh! Can we have some bacon!?” Brash asked. Merton laughed. He couldn’t not . It was nearly impossible to do anything but.
“Once we get back to the ship, I will feed you a whole plate. If you give me an internal genitalia.”
“Aww...” Brash sighed. But he did retract the massive donger, which made a tiny knot of embarrassment loosen in his gut. Merton shook his head and started to walk towards the edges of the room. He focused on the letter F - on a hunch - and was pleased when a beam of light shone from the side of his head, like a flashlight had just turned on. “See, I knew this redesigned interface would work!”
Merton chuckled. “It’s pretty swanky. But what’s the shield?”
“Armor spells,” Brash said. “Oh! Oh! Focus on the numbers!”
Merton stepped up to an angular doorway that led off the edge of the main chamber. It opened into a narrow room that looked as if it might be some kind of bedroom...but Merton wasn’t entirely sure. That could have been a mattress, or it could have been a very oddly shaped rock. But he decided, hey, why not? He focused on the 1 box. It unfolded, revealing his options for 1 was claws and water cannon .
“Two is short ranged weapons - the spinfusor and the shrike catapult. Three is the medium ranged weapons, the plasma beamcasters and the vol-tech ray emitters. Three is the long ranged weapons: The anti-matter bowdarts, the goblin sphere catapults, the death wands…” Brash said, matter of factly.
And that was when Merton turned around and came to face with a three meter tall, four armed walking blender made of evil, hate and spikes.
***
Lisa and Relix walked together. Technically, Relix was being guarded by Lisa. But Lisa was uncomfortably aware that she was less strong, less tough, less fast and less magical than the princess. The princess who was forcing Lisa’s opinion of her up, despite everything Lisa felt about being torn away from her husband, her cats, her comfortable apartment, her long running Facebook feuds with that neo-nazi, and her planet in general. For one thing, Relix wasn’t complaining, even though she was the one carrying the heavy magical machine that was apparently required to begin modifying one of the portals.
The conversation before the two of them had been sent off had been simple.
“We shall begin modifying the nearest portal,” Relix had said.
“We haven’t secured the castle,” Gunner had said. “Your husband is still-”
“The nearest portal is fifteen meters down that corridor. We’ll be in line of sight the whole time. And I want...my...husband’s friends to get home and safe,” Relix had said while patting Lisa’s head.
And lo, they had been set off.
“So,” Relix said. “Are you going to join Julia in my husband’s harem?”
“What? No!” Lisa exclaimed.
“But you’re an attractive woman, and he’s the head of the household!” Relix said, scoffing.
“I...no!” Lisa shuddered. “Ugh. No. Fuck no. Jesus fucking Christ, absolutely not .”
Relix looked bemused. “Then-”
“ No ,” Lisa said, with such finality that it put Relix’s feathered crest back against her head. She snorted out twin rings of steam, then thrust her snout into the air.
“Pff!” she said. “As if I wanted to sleep with you anyway.”
“Fucking dragons,” Lisa muttered. Then she paused. She spun backwards, lifting her rifle – and the flashlight slung underneath it swept across a plain brick wall that had not existed five seconds before. Relix looked back over her shoulder, then snapped out her wings in shock. She spun around, setting the magical machine on the floor. She stepped up to the wall, then put her ear to it. Her eyes narrowed.
“I can’t hear them through it,” she said.
Lisa lifted her wrist. This part of her suit, she had been told, was the communicator. She tapped at the screen, then said: “Gunny? Gunny, can you hear me?”
The faint buzz of static was all that reached her. Lisa frowned. “Of course...”
Relix punched the wall. Her fist smashed into brick like a cannonball, and smoke filled the corridor, causing Lisa to jerk her hand up to shield her face. A few fragments pattered off the chest piece of her combat armor, falling to the floor with a sound not unlike rain. Coughing, Lisa said: “Did you get through?”
Relix frowned, then jerked on her arm. “I seem to be stuck.”
Lisa blinked, then swung her flashlight around to aim it at where the dragon princess had punched the wall. Her fist looked as if it had merged with the brick. Stone and motor pressed up against her wrist and she jerked back, trying to tear her hand free. But either she couldn’t get enough leverage, or the brick wall had decided to get its revenge. She gritted her teeth, her wings beating in agitation. “Come on...” She flashed with pale white light, and when the light faded, she had become a tiny kitten. Said kitten had its paw stuck in the wall. She transformed into an earth-worm, and that was half
stuck in the wall. She resumed her normal humanoid form, looking a bit worried now.
“What do we do?” Relix asked.
“Shoot the wall?” Lisa suggested.
Relix looked at her. “Like a wall that can withstand my strength is going to be stopped by an anti-personal laser!”
“Uh...” Lisa paused. “We...could...uh...” She looked down at the laser rifle. Then at Relix. She squirmed internally. She hated the monarchy and everything it stood for. But looking at Relix’s widening eyes made her stomach flop.
Then a loud roar of gunfire, echoing from elsewhere in the castle, jerked Relix’s head up. “That was a spinfusor.” she snarled. “Cut it off! Cut it off!”
“But-”
Scales Like Stars (Dragons...in...SPACE! Book 1) Page 16