“That costs like two hundred gold!” I snapped, and Reginald backed away. Happily, he was now wearing simple red robes embroidered with blue and gold stars and arcane sigils. It was as though he was trying to live the stereotype of ‘wizard’ through fashion. All he needed was a pointy hat with a wide brim. His unfortunate excitement at the sight of Kat from before was thankfully not obvious on this occasion.

  “You only wanted it to be temporary? To last a day at most?” he asked cautiously.

  “Yes, at most! We’ll have to guard it until it closes, and if the Sausages arrive before it shuts, I don’t want people trying to storm the portal and escape!”

  “Well then, Lord, the Jalpro is the gem of choice. It is mainly used to create mobile portals of limited duration, although it is also often used in the formation of summoning circles to call up the foul demons from the nethers to use them for, erm, fun and profit.” He waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively.

  “I do not need a succubus, Inedible-Reg. Thanks, though. If we can make it mobile, can we make it permanent? I can just move the other end back up to the lair as well when I don’t need it. Save on the expense of more crystals and whatnot.” I was indeed a genius of a dragon. My greed-demon patted me on the back.

  “Oh, then we should use the Karpak, in that case. A little pricier, but then we just feed it mana crystals to recharge, and they’re dirt cheap. You can set up a condenser floor, and it will start shitting out enchanting gems and mana crystals.” Reg had fallen into a professorial mode, pacing back and forth and gesticulating with one hand as he explained things I didn’t care about to a dragon who was getting angry. The ‘pricier’ word was the only one that mattered.

  “How much more… expensive will the Karpak be?” I asked, reminding myself that this particular Reg was not on the menu.

  “Oh, about twice as much. You brought three back from the city, so we’ve got them on hand.” I breathed a sigh of relief at his words. They were already owned and wouldn’t cost me anything more. What stupid-Bob had already spent couldn’t hurt me now.

  “Great, do that. Get the fixed-end setup here. Kat, can you fetch up the robo-bunnies, please?” Kat hopped up and made her way to the hatch. Reg’s eyes tracked her as she walked, lingering on the stilettos, stockings, and the tiny skirt that made up her shepherdess costume. Before she reached the portal down into my dungeon, she blurred across and slammed a tiny fist into the poor man's crotch.

  “Quit perving, Reg,” she snarled. He collapsed to the floor with a squeak. She put the boot in and kicked him in the kidney before stalking back to the hatch and disappearing. I chuckled to myself as I considered what the costume roulette would throw up next week.

  “You ok, big guy?” I asked as Reg gingerly pulled himself upright.

  “Fine! Ah, fine, thank you, Lord.” The second fine was almost an octave deeper than the first and almost in his normal voice.

  “Well, crack on!” I ordered as I settled onto my shinies.

  Reg used a piece of chalk that glowed uranium green to draw out a complex diagram on the floor of my lair. It reminded me of the patterns Bulldo had made by waggling his fingers to make the teleport spell back in the city. He was surprisingly quick at his work; the intricate design was laid down in mere minutes, and then he stood up and spread his hands to either side and started swaying from side to side while chanting under his breath.

  “Is this necessary?” All the mages I’d seen had simply yelled a couple of words and focused the spell into a sigil on the palm of their hand. Except for the cultists, the system had spawned as dungeon enemies. But those guys had been weird.

  “Ahem, it helps with the ambiance,” he said sheepishly.

  “I don’t care about the ambiance. Just do the thing, Reg.”

  “Fine, but don’t blame me if it accidentally rips open a black hole and sucks all the gold out into the void between the universes,” he snapped. “Lord!” he hastily added.

  “Is that possible?” I almost squeaked myself this time, and I clutched at my shinies protectively.

  “No, it bloody isn’t. The worst-case scenario is that he gets compressed into a one-inch dodecahedron. Well, that or he explodes. If magicians could accidentally tear the arsehole out of the universe, this world would have gone kaput a long time ago. Here.” Kat tossed me the control crystal, and a tail intercepted it without a thought, planting a sucker on the gem. I could immediately see and feel from the point of view of two dozen cyborg uni-bunnies linked to it, and I made them continue marching neatly through the dungeon and up into the lair. “Get on with it, wizard!” Kat barked as she waved a fist threateningly in the direction of his family jewels.

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  Reg gave a long-suffering and, strangely, slightly wistful sigh before holding the gem up on the palm of one hand. His other hand rose to match it, and he chanted the words of the spell.

  “Variabilis Porta!” he called out, and I watched in fascination as the mana flowed out from the center of his being and down the arm holding the crystal. This time, instead of forming a sigil on his palm, it moved into the crystal that then floated up in front of him on strands of his pale blue mana. With a sharp crack, it split in two, and the cleanly cut halves landed, one in each of his palms.

  A single doorway made of glowing blue light appeared. It was about six feet tall and four feet wide, easily large enough to accommodate most humanoids. It hummed pleasantly, almost like the gentle reassurance of an air conditioning unit, easy to phase out, but vaguely pleasant to have in the background.

  “Where's the other end?” I asked in quiet wonder. Up till now, magic had mainly been used to attack me, teleport me against my will, or steal from me. The latter, in particular, had failed to endear itself to me, but this was beautiful, and it opened up so many possibilities.

  Reg waved one of his hands, and another portal slid out of the first just as the robo-bunnies came clattering up through the hatch and formed orderly ranks off to one side. He brought his hands back together, and the portal merged once more.

  He waved one fist, and the portals moved to be about four feet apart, then pivoted so they were horizontal compared to the floor.

  “This is my favourite thing to do with these. Have you ever spat off a tall building or a bridge? Watch!” Reg chuckled and hawked up something unspeakable from his lungs and spat it into the bottom portal. It reappeared at the top and fell, building up momentum before vanishing and repeating the process. Due to the slight angle of entry, it took about thirty blurring repeats before it shot into the stone at the far end of the portals, having achieved terminal velocity and exploded with a gluey slapping sound.

  “Clean that up,” I growled. This was my lair, home to my shinies, and I didn’t need lumps of lung butter grossing the place up. “How do I control them?” I asked. He tossed me the split gem before using his sleeve to tidy up his mess. Another swipe of a tentacle, and I felt the power click into my mind. I could will them to move anywhere I had already been. This would be handy. “How do we recharge them?”

  “Let the gem sit in a bowl of mana crystals overnight. It’ll absorb enough mana to recharge it. It only has so many teleports off a full charge, so maybe make it a habit to recharge them every night if you use them. The further you set the portals apart, the more juice it uses. More stuff goes through, and it costs more juice as well. You’ll figure it out.” He waved a soggy sleeve at me, then winced as he saw my glare. “Anything else, Lord?” he asked obsequiously.

  “No thanks!” All the robo-bunnies said at once in my voice. All of them bar one. It was almost lost in the cacophony of the chorus, but one voice was noticeably higher and much more softly spoken. It was hard to make out, but it rang a bell somewhere deep in the mammal part of my memories. Something from back home, I just couldn’t quite put my claw on it.

  “You got a bowl of crystals to recharge these bad boys? I’m probably going to be stuck in town for a while once the siege kicks off.” Reg obliged and produced a bowl full of faintly glowing crystals, which he passed over, and I tucked them away in my trusty belly pouch.

  “You sure about this, Bob? If Johnson is onto you already, it might be better to cut your losses and run. Save anyone you’re fond of and bail,” Kat offered with an eloquent shrug. The movement was ill-advised in her Bo Peep costume, and a faint whine escaped from Reg as he crossed his hands in front of him.

  “Angtirm stole from me, and the Mill is mine. I’m not letting some stupid human noble fuck with my stuff,” I grumbled as I shifted into my human form. I shrugged into some clothes, no longer even vaguely self-conscious about my nudity.

  “I see you made some upgrades,” Kat smirked.

  “Do you think I can alter the outcome of the costume roulette? How about a slutty secretary outfit? Or a sexy police lady? What would you least prefer, dear Princess?”

  “Sod off, Bob. Seriously, if in doubt: fly the fuck out. It’s not worth putting the dungeon at risk. Or your life. Lots of good deeds still to do before you can expect anything decent in the next one.”

  “Why, Ekaterina, you do care!” I slipped the control gem for the bunnies into my left hand and pondered the two shards of blue in my right.

  “Of course I bloody do, you scaly lump! Just be careful! You aren’t unstoppable yet, Bob.”

  “But I will be! Pick me up some flour on the core market?” Self-control plus one! She nodded. “Righto, siege to break up, girlfriend to tell I’m a dragon, evil banker to bankrupt and then eat. Edible-Reg to consume. What else was there? Oh yeah, learn magic. Gotta figure that shit out sometime soon as well. I’ll send the other portal back once the bunnies are through. You take care, Princess. Start setting up the danger floors or whatever they’re called.”

  She waved her crook at me as one portal vanished and the other showed the insides of the kitchen at the Cod. Jenny was busy kneading, her back to the portal, and the noise of the cookers masked the pleasant hum of my new transportation method.

  “Take care, lizard.” I nodded to her and marched through, the rich smells of stew and pastries filling the air as my tongue flicked out to taste it.

  The robo-bunnies filed through after me as I wandered over to look over Jenny’s shoulder and watch her kneading the bread.

  “I think you missed a bit–” I began, then ducked back as a frying pan materialised and whistled through the air where my face had been a moment before.

  “Where the hell did you come from? What the actual fuck are those?” she howled, backing away and raising her kitchenware weapon to shield herself from the impassive, glowing eyes of the statue-like cyber-rabbits.

  “Troops.” I willed the portal to vanish, catching a brief glimpse of Kat staring through it at me with her hands on her hips.

  “Have you seen Johnson?” I asked.