Monster Girls 2

by Edward Lang

  …how much of the information he’d teased out of them he had just used to snow me…

  …and how close I’d come to being just another plaything for a psychopath.

  “Last chance, my friend. Don’t follow the advice of your little counselor. Think of your paramour locked up with the necromanceress… of the glories you could achieve with your lich army liberated from her clutches… of how many more beauties you could seduce… of how you could topple the Dark Immortal and rule Eroth – maybe all of Atras – with the information I possess. It is all at your command… just let me see your face so I know I can trust you.”

  I thought of one last thing:

  About how the Devil had tempted Jesus in the wilderness.

  He’d offered him all the kingdoms of the world if he would just bow down and worship him.

  Jesus had said, Get thee behind me, Satan.

  My reply was a little different.

  “Hey, Krom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  There was a long, long pause.

  Then the dragon finally spoke.

  “If that’s the way it’s going to be… then let’s get to it, shall we?”

  There was a roar across the mountaintop, the hissing of gas and the crackling of flames –

  And fire surrounded me to the right and the left.

  18

  The flames licked around the edges of the boulder, though they mostly shot out on either side of me.

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!

  It didn’t catch me on fire or anything, but it was pretty goddamn hot – like opening up an oven set to 500 degrees and getting a blast of it directly in the face.

  Thank god the dragon was across the plateau.

  I could only guess how bad it would be if he were 20 feet away.

  As the flames subsided, I leaned around the edge of the boulder.

  There was the dragon, about 80 feet away, its triangular head pointed at me, its yellow eyes swiveling, its open mouth exposing its hundred vicious teeth.

  I flung up my hand to fire Venom Blast –

  The second I aimed, though, the dragon slammed its mouth and shut its eyes. Its scaly lids folded together like those aluminum roll-up doors you see mall workers pull down over their shops.

  TZZZAP!

  The green bolt hit the dragon’s head –

  And dissipated in a flurry of electrical sparks over its scales.

  Uh oh.

  “Not quite what you were hoping for, was it, boy?” Krom Varak asked through bared teeth, his eyes barely visible through slits in his lids.

  “Parch?” I whispered.

  He appeared.

  Dragons’ scales are impervious to most

  edged weapons, and are often resistant

  to many magical brute-force spells, as well.

  Although if a patch of scales is missing,

  the hide beneath it is susceptible to attack.

  Great.

  Now he tells me.

  However, areas NOT covered by scales

  are vulnerable.

  The way Krom was keeping his mouth and eyes closed, I figured that Parch was right. All I needed was a clear shot.

  As soon as the dragon opened his jaws or eyes, I was going to fire another Venom Blast and test that theory.

  Of course, he seemed to realize this, because he kept his mouth and eyes shut – but surged forward on his stumpy little legs, his belly scuttling through the pebbles as he ran straight at me.

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit –

  I took off in the opposite direction and ran to the end of the plateau.

  It was a precipitous drop straight down, a horrible fall of hundreds of feet across jagged stones – far worse than what we’d slid down to escape Necra.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” I yelped, and turned and started running along the periphery of the plateau.

  Fire blasted directly behind me through the Zen garden of boulders.

  I guess Krom had finally opened his mouth.

  “OH SHIT, OH SHIT, OH SHIT!” I yelled as I sprinted. “HIT HIM!”

  That’s when my girls joined the fray.

  I had told them to hide a bit down the mountain path until they heard me shout.

  Now they rose up and attacked.

  Spirella shot strands of sticky spiderweb through the air like Silly String spewed out of an aerosol can.

  Alia blasted away with Fang.

  There was the twang of a bow, and Seera fired an arrow directly into Krom’s hide.

  And Hara flew overhead and dropped a big rock she’d been lugging with her talons.

  It was a valiant effort – but none of it made the slightest difference.

  Alia’s shots dispersed harmlessly over the dragon’s hide.

  Seera’s arrow didn’t do much better. It stuck, but I doubt it did more than lodge between a couple of the tough scales.

  Hara’s rock thumped Krom pretty hard on the head, but he just shook it off and glared up at her soaring away through the air.

  “Your flock’s next batch of eggs will PAY for that, harpy,” he snarled.

  Spirella’s strands of spiderwebs landed on Krom and tethered him to the nearest boulder.

  He just chuckled contemptuously and blasted the webbing with fire, turning the strands to cinders.

  “Did you REALLY think your little threads could hold me, arachne?”

  She hadn’t, and neither had I. We both knew flames could destroy her webs easily.

  But the fact that he was breathing fire at the spiderwebs meant he wasn’t breathing it at me.

  Which is why I’d told her to keep throwing them at him – to provide a distraction he would have to deal with.

  I reached a paladin skeleton. There was a metal shield half-buried in the pebbles next to him; I yanked it out. Better some protection than none.

  Good thing I had something for what happened next.

  The dragon came slithering down the center of the plateau, trying to corner me.

  I ran for it –

  And he blasted a stream of fire straight at me from about 60 feet away.

  I managed to dart through it to the other side, where the flames were cut off by a boulder –

  But FUCK it hurt.

  I had the shield, which protected my upper body somewhat, so he got my legs more than anything.

  I had on leather armor, which afforded a fair amount of protection. I was guessing that leather was actually better than the paladins’ plate armor, which had effectively turned them into tinfoil-wrapped potatoes, nicely baked inside their metal shell.

  Not to mention leather armor let me run around a lot faster than somebody in 50 pounds of steel – which was crucial if I didn’t want to die.

  But it was still like somebody slamming a red-hot iron onto the dress pants you were wearing.

  I know I didn’t get the full brunt of it – better dress pants than bare skin – but still, FUCK ME.

  “Parch,” I gasped in pain as I hobbled along, “what’s my Health?”

  89%, Scott –

  but at least he can’t kill you

  with anything but a head shot!

  “Except once I can’t move anymore, he’s gonna do a head shot like he did to the paladins to keep me from coming back as a lich!”

  Oh…

  I suppose that’s true…

  So much for Parch’s attempt at cheering me up.

  I also didn’t like the idea of my burnt-up, charred skeleton lying there with my head untouched, and me unable to check out because I needed a knife to the brain to seal the deal.

  Knowing my psychopathic dragon friend, he would probably enjoy watching me suffer for weeks on end before he finally snuffed me out.

  But the fact that he couldn’t kill me with fire was what I was counting on to beat him.

  I not only had Dryad’s Gift to help me survive (which I was saving until it was absolutely necessary)… but because of the Reseedin
g, Dyra could now heal me as long as I was within 100 feet of her.

  Which is why the other girls had one mission above all else:

  Protect Dyra.

  The one real fly in the ointment was that I had hoped Venom Blast would do a lot more damage – but Krom was carefully guarding what I assumed were his weaknesses.

  Which meant I might have to kill him the old-fashioned way:

  Stick him with something pointy.

  I grabbed a shortsword from another paladin skeleton and kept running.

  First a shield, now a shortsword – it was like a shopping spree in Dead Knights ‘R Us.

  Hara flew by and dropped another big rock on Krom’s head.

  He roared and blasted a pillar of fire up into the sky, but she was easily able to avoid it.

  On the bright side, if we made it out alive, she and the other harpies would be SUPER helpful in taking on the Grim Keep.

  The other girls were doing their best to keep the dragon busy: more useless venom blasts from Alia, more annoying spider silk from Spirella, more of Seera’s arrows embedded fruitlessly in Krom’s scales.

  All the while, I was ducking and weaving, waiting for an opportunity to blast Krom’s eyes or mouth.

  However, he kept them guarded when I was near, so I tried to scout out a weakness on his body instead.

  You know how in The Hobbit Smaug has a little bare spot on his chest, which is where Bard the Bowman shot him? I was hoping that would be the case with Krom – that he had some weakness in his scales, some place I could plunge the sword in.

  No such luck. Nothing I could see.

  I guess the girls were annoying Krom too much, because suddenly he roared, “I think I will deal with your little bitches first, and then with YOU, Sex Mage!”

  He started towards the rocky passage where they were attacking him from.

  Panicked, I raced alongside him.

  “WATCH OUT!” I screamed at the girls. “HE’S COMING – ”

  But he wasn’t.

  It was just a ruse.

  He knew my weakness – my concern for my harem – and he’d used it against me.

  Krom suddenly did a U-turn with his snakelike body. He looked like a bendy pipe as his head whipped around.

  The fire was already boiling out from between his teeth when he opened his mouth.

  FWOOM.

  It was like getting hit with a firehouse – except fire instead of water.

  I got the shield up just it time as the flames slammed into me and blasted me backward onto my ass.

  SHIT –

  Not only was the heat horrific, but the force was like getting hit by a car.

  And the fire kept on coming, a constant stream.

  The pain was horrendous.

  Which meant it was pretty fucking bad, considering my Flesh Wound power reduced all pain levels to 25%.

  I smelled something awful, the sickening stench of charred flesh –

  And I knew it was me.

  FUCK –

  And then bizarrely, I felt pretty good.

  A soothing coolness spread throughout my body.

  At first I thought it was my mind cracking. The pain must have caused me to go insane.

  It took me a second to realize what was causing it:

  Dyra.

  Parch confirmed it.

  Dyra is healing you!

  Apparently she was doing it as fast as she could.

  Or at least she was anaesthetizing me to the agony.

  Finally the flames stopped.

  I opened my eyes, and was sort of amazed I still had eyes to see.

  Through the viewport in my helmet, I could see my leather armor was burning –

  And yet I still felt pretty damn good.

  I peeked up over the edge of my shield to see Krom’s head looming five feet in the air above me.

  He must have figured he’d fucked me up good, because he wasn’t bothering to keep his eyes or mouth shut anymore.

  “Well, Sex Mage – it seems you burn like all the rest.”

  He opened his mouth again, and I could see the darkness at the back of his mouth grow brighter.

  I tried to move my hand out from behind my shield to shoot Venom Blast –

  But it didn’t cooperate.

  It kind of felt like trying to manipulate a marionette arm with a couple of strings cut.

  Uh oh…

  I REALLY didn’t want to know why it was so hard to move.

  But I was still feeling okay, and getting better by the second –

  Though I figured that was about to change as fire started to boil up out of Krom’s throat.

  Then came the gamechanger – the moment where everything shifted.

  An arrow sank into Krom’s right eye, the side nearest to my monster girls.

  It sounded like somebody sticking a toilet plunger into a vat of pudding.

  THPLUCK!

  Before Krom could scream, a green bolt blasted into his eye, too –

  And the vat of pudding exploded.

  FWOOM!

  “AAAAAAAAAAH!” the dragon shrieked, its head whipping around in agony, a stream of fire blasting haphazardly through the air.

  What had formerly been a golden eye was now a smoldering pit of exploded tissue.

  Seera and Alia had got him!

  But he wasn’t down for the count.

  He swung around in a fury, away from me and towards the passage where my girls had been hiding.

  “YOU WHORES WILL PAY FOR THAT!” he screeched, and raced for where I knew they were hiding.

  Even if they tried to get down the mountain, he would be faster.

  If they didn’t fall to their deaths, he would burn them alive.

  And this time he wouldn’t let his guard down.

  They were doomed – unless I did something, and fast.

  I stumbled to my feet, even though I couldn’t feel them. My ankles were wobbly, and I had to prop myself up against the nearest boulder to stay upright.

  I dropped my shield. Win or lose, I wasn’t going to need it anymore.

  But I held onto my shortsword.

  My leather armor was still smoking, and I felt like I could barely control my movements – but Dyra was still healing me, I could feel it.

  Even though she was about to be killed, she was still doing her utmost to save me.

  Knowing that, nothing was going to stop me.

  “HARA!” I screamed.

  The harpy swooped down out of the sky and latched onto my shoulders with her talons.

  I think one of her claws actually pierced my charred armor and went through my shoulder, but I felt it more like a pinprick than getting speared with a knife.

  We’d set this maneuver up as a final option, a last resort.

  Looked like we were in the final seconds of the game and down by three.

  Time for a Hail Mary.

  Hara’s wings beat the air and we lifted off.

  In the blink of an eye we were 30 feet above the plateau.

  Down below, Krom was barreling across the ground like a blacksnake on crack.

  I could see the cleft in the rock he was headed for, the beginning of the winding path down the mountain.

  Seera and Alia crouched at the mouth, bravely but uselessly firing away, as Spirella stood behind them guarding Dyra. Poor Spirella looked terrified – but she stood her ground, protecting the one person she knew could keep me alive.

  They were all willing to sacrifice themselves for me.

  It made my heart break and soar, all at the same time.

  “HIS HEAD!” I yelled at Hara.

  She went into a dive.

  Krom’s head zoomed up towards us. He opened his mouth, and I could see the light glowing from the sides of his jaws as he was about to incinerate Alia and Seera –

  And then Hara was flying us over his body like an osprey skimming a lake.

  Her talons retracted from my shoulders –

  And I latched onto Krom’s h
ead with Wall Crawler.

  His scales felt like pieces of coconut shell, rough-edged and tough.

  I was whipped around by momentum as Hara let go and flew off, but Wall Crawler kept me attached.

  Krom reacted in surprise and tried to buck me off –

  But I hung on with one hand as I used my other to plunge my shortsword into his ruined eye socket.

  I went for it, rather than the good eye, for one reason: I figured he couldn’t close his scaled eyelids to protect himself against the attack.

  I was right.

  There was a tiny bit of resistance as the tip of the sword broke through what remained of his eye –

  Even more resistance as it slid along the inside of his socket –

  And then the sword pierced his brain.

  It felt like stabbing a creme brulee, first cracking through the caramelized part on the surface and then sinking into the cream beneath.

  Krom screamed, a hideous Godzilla-like screech, both high-pitched and rumbling all at once –

  But I wasn’t content with just stabbing him. That might not be enough.

  So I let loose with Venom Blast through the sword.

  After all, I could direct it through any pointed object.

  Green electricity blasted through the blade deep into Krom’s skull.

  There was a violent vibration inside that could be felt through his skull and scales – like boiling water inside a tea kettle, something bubbling deep within –

  And then his brains exploded out of his ruined eye socket.

  Like his skull projectile-vomited out of his eye.

  His head THUDDED down onto the rocky ground, his entire body collapsed onto the pebbles… and then all was still.

  I groaned and dropped down onto Krom’s head like falling face-first into bed.

  “You DID IT, honey!” Alia cried out joyfully as she raced out of the passageway.

  “You saved us!” Seera cheered as she galloped out after Alia.

  “No… you guys… saved me…” I wheezed as I lay there on Krom’s head.

  Alia stopped and stared at me in horror. “Oh… honey…”

  “What?”

  Seera, too, looked utterly shocked as her hooves thudded to a halt in the pebbles.