by Dante King
“We’re not the kind of gals who vent their spleens,” she said, “but we might respect you a little more if you step into the sparring circle with us and give us the opportunity to tenderize yours a little.”
The woman’s eyes glittered, but it was not all menace there. I could see a hint of amused approval glimmering in their liquid depths.
Jazmyn smiled a cruel smile. “Ashrin is right, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said. “You have the gab certainly, but do you have what it takes to back it up?”
“You’re asking me if I can walk the walk?” I said.
“That’s right,” Jazmyn said.
“I can do better than walk,” I said, allowing myself the slightest smirk. “I’ll dance rings around you.”
Jazmyn clapped her hands and growled, “Fuckin’ fighting talk! Well, you’ve got to bloody well respect that, even if it turns out to be full of hot air, aye?”
“Besides, we ought to know what you’re capable of before we head down into the roots of the mountain with you and your little boyfriends here,” Ashrin said, casting an unimpressed glance and a sarcastic smile at Gabby, Bjorn, and Rupert who stood behind me.
I really was not in the mood for this. I could practically hear the hiss of sand running through the hourglass. However, weighing up my options, I realized that sparing some time now to deal with this and try to secure the goodwill of these two capable looking dragonmancers was probably the prudent thing to do. We all needed to go down into the Subterranean Realms having each other’s backs one hundred percent. It was likely going to be one of the most hostile and unpredictable environments most of us had ever encountered. There was going to be little room for error.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll spa with you. Now, I’m all for a threesome, so if you ladies want to show me where you want to get down…”
Jazmyn chuckled and shook her head. “Damn me, but you have some fuckin’ stones on you, don’t you?”
“Didn’t you hear?” I retorted. “That’s why I’m so goddamn special.”
“Follow us,” Ashrin said. “We can’t be caught fighting right outside the General’s tent. And as for a threesome, I think we’ll see if you can handle us one at a time first. Don’t want you getting too big for your boots now, do we?”
Ashrin led me and my squad down a dirt road heavily rutted with cart tracks and into what looked like a supply yard. There were piles of lumber lying about, pallets atop which sat sacks and crates branded with simple arrow or sword pictograms.
“This is where soldiers come to settle their differences,” Jazmyn explained.
I looked over at my squad. “You brought the pom-poms and the moral boosting signs, right lads?” I quipped.
Bjorn glowered, his eyes never leaving the two sable-clad dragonmancers.
There was a space, a rough circle, in the middle of the yard. Looking carefully, I saw vague signs of a scuffed line running around the edges of the space.
“If you’re thrown out of the circle you lose, right?” I asked Ashrin.
“That’s right,” she said.
“Remember, junior,” Jazmyn said, stretching her arms over her head, “this is a bit of an amiable spar, yeah? Only friendly stuff allowed, right? Nothin’ that’s going to put the other person out of action. Kicks, punches, and throws. No weapons. You can use spells, but nothing lethal.”
“I get it,” I said, jumping on my toes a couple of times. “Let’s get on with it. Who’s first?”
Jazmyn nodded at Ashrin, who stepped out of the crude fighting circle and went to stand with my squad.
“That’d be me,” Jazmyn said, and she charged.
This was not the time for showing off. This was time to take care of business and gain respect. At least with dragonmancers, gaining respect was an easy enough thing to achieve. You just had to fight like a lion and never say die, while adhering to the rules set out at the beginning of the scrap.
With the speed of thought, I transferred Noctis into my Head slot and used my Blink ability to teleport right behind Jazmyn, just as the woman’s gauntleted hands reached out to seize me.
Jazmyn’s fingers snapped closed on empty air, and she let out a little sound of confusion. At the same time, my leg came back, and I drew a bead on my adversary’s ass. I was going to deliver her a kick in the pants that she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
Then, with a suddenness that defied belief, I found myself enmeshed in a net made out of liquid light.
“What the fuck!” I said, struggling.
The net clung to me like a spider’s web. The more I struggled, the tighter it bound me.
Jazmyn turned, her heel scraping in the dust right at the edge of the circle, and sneered down at me.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Did you just fall for my old charge trick? Fuck me, but that old chestnut is so ancient you could probably fnd it at the bottom of a peat bog.”
I struggled some more, but only bound myself tighter. I attempted to switch Noctis to my head slot to use my Blink spell, but something about the net prevented me from casting it.
“That’s Ensnare,” Jazmyn said. “Do you like it? Your little teleporting gag wasn’t bad, I’ll give you that. I almost ran clean out of the ruddy circle.”
I pulled an unsure face. “Yeah, Blink’s not bad,” I said, “but not quite as good as Forcewave.”
“I must’ve missed that one in all the excitement,” Jazmyn said. “What’s Force—”
I placed Garth in my Right Arm slot and showed her.
The wave of energy released made the air ripple and flung Jazmyn off her unsuspecting feet. She was hurled out of the circle and smashed into a stack of heavy wooden crates, sending splinters and pieces of wood flying in all directions. The stack toppled over with the force of the flying dragonmancer. Rolls of bandages, bottles of liniment, and bundles of herbs cascaded over the ground.
The net that had ensnared me flickered and vanished. I got nimbly to my feet.
Jazmyn looked up at me from the wreckage that surrounded her.
I didn’t grin, didn’t wink. All I said was, “Right. So, that would be a win for me, would it?”
Jazmyn got to her feet, pulled a decent-sized splinter out of her cheek, and glanced over at Ashrin. I didn’t look around at the other woman, but judging by the scowl on Jazmyn’s face I guessed that she was mocking her silently.
Then she looked back at me. “You cheeky motherfucker,” she said. Her tone was harsh. “That looked like a fucking lethal spell if I ever saw one.”
“And your net wasn’t? I bet it would have squeezed me to bits if I hadn’t done something about it. Besides, I wasn’t aiming for you; I was just trying to get rid of your damned net.”
She glared at me for a moment, and her mouth twitched, as though she was fighting off the hint of a smile.
I held out my hand and, to her credit, Jazmyn shook it.
“Problem now though,” she said, jerking me unexpectedly closer with a strength that belied her form, “is that you’ve lost the element of surprise with Ashrin…” One of her deep blue eyes winked at me. “We’d heard you could command two dragons at once, but it was a bit much to believe. I guess you might be more than just a dragonmancer with a cock; time will tell.”
Jazmyn walked out of the circle and Ashrin walked in. She licked her full lips and ran a hand through her pixie-short hair. Then she put up her hands in the stereotypical pugilist’s stance, fists clenched in front of her face.
“Tally-ho, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
This time it was my turn to rush in.
I struck out at Ashrin with a flurry of MMA punches and kicks—going high, going low, lashing out with knee strikes to the middle.
Ashrin blocked everything. Despite being built like a ballet dancer, she parried each of my strikes with her forearms or shins, twisting her body to absorb blows on her shoulders and her hips. For a woman her size, she should have been driven backward by my onslaught, bu
t her face told me that she was having a whale of a time. She was not perturbed by my strength or speed in the least, because we both had dragon-enhanced physical attributes.
I threw a jab-jab-front kick combo and then lashed out with a roundhouse kick that should have pasted Ashrin’s determined half-smile onto the other side of her face. However, with an agility that would have done a circus performer proud, the lithe dragonmancer cartwheeled over my flying leg. My leg whipped under her, passing by so close that my booted toes actually ruffled her short hair.
I adjusted my stance, as her feet came back to earth, and grabbed her in a pretty unrefined bearhug. My idea was to put the squeeze on her and make her tap out, or choke her out if she wanted to be tough about it.
Unfortunately for me though, I never got the chance.
As my arms tightened around Ashrin’s taut, athletic body, the woman simply… melted away. Faded. Dissipated like mist.
That filled me with foreboding. For about three seconds.
Then, I was assailed by the feeling that my windpipe had been caught in the fist of something made from glass and barbed-wire. I choked. My eyes streamed. My skin felt like there was fire crawling over it. I dropped to my knees.
Bearer of Alzad the Toxin Dragon, I thought through the fug of pain. She’s poisoned me.
Dimly, I was aware of Rupert striding forward and saying to Ashrin, “With all respect, Dragonmancer, you stipulated n-n-no lethal magic!”
As I clawed at my throat, I saw Ashrin grinning down at me. She then looked up and pouted at the furious Rupert, who was trembling with indignation.
“Oh, that’s not lethal,” she said in her relaxed, dulcet tones. “Not so long as he takes this potion in the next, oh, twelve seconds.”
A vial of liquid hit me in the chest and dropped into the dust between my knees. I scrambled for it, picked it up with fingers that were feeling more and more like they were made of rubber, and bit the cork out of the neck of it. I tipped the contents of the vial into my mouth and swallowed with difficulty.
Immediately, the constriction on my chest eased, and I felt the feeling of crushing fingers around my windpipe lessen. I took in a shuddering breath and spat. Took another and another. Within about ten seconds, the effects of the noxious gas that Ashrin had somehow turned herself into had basically left me.
Not wanting to lose face or seem like a sore loser, I got to my feet and brushed myself off.
I locked eyes with Ashrin. She was something to look at, no doubt about it. Then again, so was a panther. And you wouldn’t want to take one of those lightly.
I held out my hand once again, and the other dragonmancer shook it. Her grip was like iron.
“General Shiloh warned me that you guys were the best,” I said.
“She was right,” Ashrin replied. “You want to know how you can tell that a dragonmancer is one of the truly elite?”
I nodded.
“They’re still walking and around and breathing,” Ashrin said. “And, also, they have one of these.”
She pulled the sleeve of her night-black shirt up from her wrist to reveal a brand, about the size of a postage stamp on the inside of her wrist. It was an intricate cloud with a dragon’s wing in front of it.
I had never seen the like of the sign before and said as much.
“Not surprising,” Ashrin said, covering the brand up again. “It’s a brand that the Empress herself presses to the skin of those few dragonmancers invited to take the Second Transfusion Ceremony. Infused with the blood of the Empress’s own Dream Dragon—the most powerful dragon variant of all. Only a dozen dragonmancers at any one time wear the Dream Brand.”
“And what does the brand… What does it allow you to do?” I asked.
Ashrin tapped the side of her nose. “You’ll find out if you ever get invited to join the Twelve,” she said. “And, although, you show a hell of a lot of promise, you’re not there yet.”
“I took down Jazmyn though,” I said.
Ashrin snorted and looked over at her partner.
“You hear that, Jaz?” she Ashrin said. “The greenhorn got you.”
Jazmyn grinned. “Nah,” she said matter-of-factly, “I’m afraid you didn’t.”
“Then how would you explain the whole me knocking you out of the circle business?” I asked, a little nettled.
Jazmyn shrugged. “It was just a little tussle wasn’t it,” she said. “If we had really wanted to give you a whooping, you’d still be on your back right now, staring up at the sky and wondering where the cart that just ran you over came from.”
I looked at her, confused.
“We wanted to see what you could do, man,” Jazmyn explained. “And now we know.” She winked at me.
“You’re all right, Dragonmancer Noctis,” Ashrin said as I sought for some comeback to this revelation.
“Call me Mike,” I said vaguely.
Jazmyn grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.
“Let’s get a fuckin’ move on then, Mike. There’s a lot to organize for when we set off tomorrow,” she said, “and we haven't got all day.”
The two sable-armored dragonmancers walked off. I had to admit, the two of them cut a couple of quite impressive figures as they strolled away.
“B-b-bitches,” Rupert muttered, loud enough for me to hear, but quiet enough to make sure that the other two dragonmancers did not. “Makes me want to take them out.”
Bjorn cast a red eye at the twitchy medic. “Makes me want to fuck ‘em,” he grunted.
I laughed and punched Bjorn on the shoulder. “I’m with you there, big man. And just think, they’re going to be our company for the next who-knows-how-long...”
The smile slid off my face as I thought of Wayne, frail and gray, attached to Garth’s head at the wedding.
“Let’s hope it’s not for too long,” I said.
Chapter 9
The next morning I awoke with the lark, in the tent that I had shared with Elenari, Saya, Tamsin, and Penelope. Amara and Renji had lodged in a smaller tent next door to ours, while all of our squads had bunked in the main barracks.
Judging by the general quiet that lay over our tent, and the fact that I could hear little noise outside, I supposed that it must still be quite early. It wasn’t long before I realized what had awoken me. The murmured voices of two of my dragonmancer colleagues—Penelope and Tamsin. And something else. Something decidedly more pleasurable.
I cracked my eyelids and looked down the length of my naked torso at the two women casually playing with my cock.
Closing my eyes again, I caught snatches of what Tamsin and Penelope were whispering to one another as they continued to stroke my hardening prick.
“... what do you think they would look like?” Tamsin asked Penelope in a low voice.
“Well, I would assume that they would be some sort of shade of blue, or so I would hope,” Penelope whispered.
Dragonlings, I thought. They’re talking about the dragonlings they might give birth to, and what they might look like.
I tuned back in to hear the tail-end of another of Tamsin’s questions.
“... powerful enough to make babies again?”
“I couldn’t say with any real certainty,” Penelope said. “I would hypothesize, however, that as soon as he ingests whatever substance it is that renews his potency, then he should be able to sire dragonlings within hours.”
I was becoming less and less bothered with feigning sleep now. My ever-keen member was very much of the same mind. The little guy was practically at full-mast now, and the compulsion to stop the girls’ teasing and get down to something a little more vigorous was almost irresistible.
“I believe,” Penelope said, her voice tight with suppressed giggles, “that our ruminations have woken our friend here.”
I opened my eyes and grinned down at the two women. They were lying on either side of me, talking over my impressive erection and looking up at me with mischievous eyes.
“Oh, shit,” sa
id Tamsin, with a very unconvincing attempt at concern, “we didn’t wake you, did we, Mike?”
“Of course not,” I said. “Isn’t this how most people get woken up each morning?”
“Normally, I have to do it myself,” the hobgoblin said, smiling back at me and showing off her sharp, white teeth.
She slid a little further up my body so that I could feel her naked breasts pressing against my side.
“You have to do it yourself?” I whispered. “That’s not good. What about you, Pen?”
Penelope moved up to lie level with Tamsin. She draped a leg over my leg, and I could feel the hot moistness of her crotch pressing against my thigh.
“Yes, usually the morning time is time spent between me and my hands,” she said in a very quiet voice.
I looked carefully around at the still sleeping forms of Elenari and Saya.
“Well, then,” I said softly, wriggling down to join the naked women, “that is something we all have to remedy isn’t it?”
We passed the next dim, predawn hour in a silent tangle of sweating limbs, tangled hair, and groans muffled by pillows and blankets. If anyone had been listening outside the tent, I was fairly certain that they would have heard very little.
“... yes, deeper and slower…” Tamsin hissed at one point as I plunged into her from behind, safely concealed under the wolf fur blankets.
Eavesdroppers might have heard the very faint, sucking sound of the hobgoblin eating Penelope out, while the Knowledge Sprite deepthroated my throbbing cock as quietly as she could.
“Oh gods,” Penelope whimpered a handful of minutes later as she ground herself down on top of me, “oh gods, I’m so close!”
We fucked this way and that, but with a selfless care that maintained the unconscious states of the other two women.
Tamsin and I brought Penelope to a gushing climax first. The quivering Knowledge Sprite soaked the blankets as she orgasmed with my cock inside her and Tamsin’s long hobgoblin’s tongue lapping at her clit.
Then, Tamsin slid on top of me, using Pen’s juices as a lubricant. The two of us fucked until, with a hoarse cry of, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” shouted into a pillow by Tamsin, the two of us came together.