God-forged scales were all well and good, unless some little tick was able to squeeze between a crack in them to suck at my blood. Two days I’d been circling around the place in the dark, looking for hints of movement or signs of a camp. The game here was terrible as well. Nothing larger than a deer, and most of the wildlife within the swamp-wood tended toward being either amphibious or reptilian.
I didn’t have any hangups about eating reptiles, despite being one myself. The local fauna were, at best, poor imitations of what a reptile should be. I didn’t care how many legs, heads, or tails they had; they weren’t the same as me. The amphibians were just gross. Slimy things that oozed some kind of gel when they were scared, it completely ruined the flavour and made them borderline inedible.
As a result of these dietary hardships, I was not in the best of moods when I settled down to snooze through the day on a damp hillock in the middle of the swamp. I’d managed to bump my biomass levels up to just over three hundred due to the unsavoury wildlife, and I’d found a secluded spot to risk an evolution.
The low rise was crowned with a thicket of the twisted trees that dominated the Garglewood, large enough for me to hide in, on the off chance the system decided to throw me a very painful or time-consuming evolution. There was a good fifty metres of deep water around my temporary base, and I had thoroughly checked to make sure I was alone.
Biomass stored:
307.9 KG
Biomass required for evolution: 220 KG
Rolling for evolution choices…
Please select from the following six options:
-
Nonchalant Presence
-
Paternal Indifference
-
Spice Tolerance
-
Adaptive Palate
-
Hound Dog Blues
-
Pheromone Resistance
Fuck you, syst– I love you, system. They all looked shit. Based on past performance, the system had probably hidden a gem in there somewhere, but which one was it?
Nonchalant Presence sounded like I could get ignored? Or I wouldn’t react so strongly to certain triggers? Was this a system-based version of my long-ago digested ascot? I was over that; by setting my demons against each other, I’d established a fragile, but effective, control over my impulses.
I didn’t have any kids, so I wasn’t sure what impact Paternal Indifference would have. The next two seemed to revolve around my sense of taste and were likely prompted by my constant grumbling about the terrible food in this area.
Hound Dog Blues was stumping me as well. I didn’t really fancy becoming a singer. And pheromone resistance was probably due to Philpott trying to manipulate with his scent glands, the shifty insectoid bastard. It hadn’t worked anyway, so what would be the point of that one?
I was getting better at this. Figuring this shit out was easier than I thought. The system was du– very clever when it came to assigning my choices.
Seeing as this one was a wash, I mentally clicked on Parental Indifference with a physical shrug. I’d get something better next time, and I still had some Gamblepric bodies in the pouch if I needed to roll again anytime soon.
I have mentioned how a dragon enjoys, although that’s not the right word, the same benefits as lizards and birds in terms of sewerage facilities. One cloaca to rule them all, so to speak. Whatever this evolution did, the pain started there and spread up into the base of my spine and echoed down my tails, setting them to twitching and dancing.
“Jesus! What the hell did I just do to myself?” I snapped as my neck curled round to examine what passed for my nethers. After a few minutes, the pain stopped jolting along my bones. I took a close look. Suffice to say, I still had an arsehole and nothing had visibly changed.
Grumbling under my breath, I emerged from my hidey hole and shook myself out from top to tail. I felt fuller than usual, despite having just evolved and spent all that biomass. But I was also hungrier. And I really wanted to eat… Why were gerkhins floating around in my brain and dancing on imaginary plates?
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
I shook my head to clear it and scanned around. The sun was setting, and it would soon be time to resume my hunt. I’d find these slavers if it were the last thing I did. Well, I’d keep looking for a couple more days until I got bored or ran out of decent food.
How would slavers move through the swamps? There were no paths, not consistent ones anyway. It was all low, boggy hills surrounded by swamp and more bog. Things slithered through the shallow water, and a beautiful woman strolled across the surface towards me.
My snout snapped back. Yep. Slim, tall, dark skin. Flowing grey robe. Boobs and hips. Probably a woman.
“And you are?” she asked as she stopped a few metres from me.
“Hungry. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Danlith, the lady of the bog. This is my land.” She waved a hand gracefully at the grim swamp around us. A mosquito, or the local equivalent of one, landed on her cheek and melted into her flesh.
“This is Lord Hateskales bog, isn’t it?”
“Humans. They think they can own something like the land? Silly creatures.” She blinked, and five mosquitoes crawled out of each of her tearducts and flew away from her eyes. “Why are you here, little lizard?”
“I’m looking for bad people.”
“How descriptive! How does one decide if someone is bad?” she asked with a tinkling laugh.
“They hurt other people?” I offered hesitantly. Whatever this being was, I was willing to assume I should be respectful.
“Do you not eat? You have to kill to live, like all life does, no?” She waved a hand, and a small bird fluttered down to land on her fingers. A tongue flicked out from the swamp to her left and snatched the bird with a squawk and a cloud of feathers into the murky depths of the bog. “Did the longlicker just commit some crime? Did the farklit deserve what happened? Was I at fault for luring the bird down?” She raised an eyebrow over her amber eyes as she looked at me innocently.
“That’s just instinct. I know all about that. Choosing to hurt is what makes someone evil.” I really didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. Moral philosophy was not high on my list of ‘interesting shit to talk about.’
“So what instinct has brought you here, dragon?”
“Slavers. I’m looking for slavers. You must have seen them passing through your lands. They have hidden bases around here somewhere,” I said, laying my cards on the table.
“Oh, the pixies and their pets? Why would you want to go against them? Pixies are tricksies.” She chuckled at her rhyme.
“So I’ve heard. Some of their minions attacked me a while back, and I want to repay the favour,” I replied, lowering my snout so I didn’t loom over her.
“Oh, so it’s personal. You appear to have escaped unharmed? Where is the insult?” She sat down cross-legged on the surface of the swamp and trailed one hand in the grey water. Little fish rose to the surface, throwing up small splashes all around her.
“They threatened my employee. And stopping slavers is a good cause.”
She cocked her head at me and gave another delicate laugh. “You think so? How strange. What of the dwarven halls that will collapse under the assault of the Deep Ones without soldiers and workers they cannot produce themselves? What of the people who will go hungry, perish, or be hounded from their ancestral lands without the supply of unwilling workers and fighters?”
“Erm, come again?” I asked in confusion. “Aren’t the dwarves just squatters like the humans? The land belongs to whoever can protect it.”
“Ah, there is the draconic outlook! It’s mine because I say it is, and unless you're stronger than me, it stays mine. I respect that atavism in your species; it reminds me a lot of my own.”
“Look, have you seen the slavers, or do I have to keep flying around this shithole till I catch them in the open?”
“Oh, I know where they are, reptile. But why would I lead you to them? They are only doing what you yourself do. Using your strength to take and control what you want.”
“Piss off, lady. I don’t force anyone to obey me.” Except the minions, but Kat is the one who does the actual forcing. And Tex. And I guess a few other people.
“There is force and then there is force, youngling. What is in it for me, should I choose to help you?” She rose to her feet and crossed her arms, giving me what I would grade as a level two glare.
“What do you want? It had better not be gold!” The greed-demon had shaken off the lust-monkey and perked up at the possibility of paying.
“A single scale from your armoured hide would be sufficient, I think.”
I raised my head and glared down at her. My scales were extremely valuable. And very firmly attached to me.
“No deal. I’ll see you around.” I spread my wings and made to fly, but she held up a hand, and the sudden sadness on her face made me pause.
“I have handled this badly. It has been so long since I spoke with a mortal. If you let me ride upon your mighty shoulders and gaze on my land from above for a while, I will show you to the nearest secret base of these miscreants. Please?” Her forlorn gaze filled me with sympathy that a mere mammal could not evoke.
Hundreds or thousands of years, god only knew how old this being was, trapped in this shithole, with nothing but midges and whatever the fuck the thing with the tongue had been for company. How would I feel after so long? Would I have gone completely insane with loneliness? Probably. I was hardly a people person, but being cut off for an age would likely break me.
“Fine,” I grumbled, dipping a shoulder needlessly. The grey woman floated up to sit on my shoulders, and I felt her weight settle on me. She weighed so little. Jenny, sitting there, had felt like I was wearing a fat, hairy collar, but Danlith weighed no more than Kat did.
Wings pumped, and I strove for altitude. Taking off was always the hardest part. It was as though gravity increased the closer you are to the ground. Once I was circling about the miasma and the stunted treetops, I craned my head back to watch my passenger out of one eye.
Her hands were clasped to the base of my horns, very close together, and she shivered slightly as the wind blew through her thin dress. With one hand, she released her death grip, and she pointed down and to my right. It was about half a mile from where I had stopped, and I was sure I’d flown over it half a dozen times in the last couple of days. Sneaky bastards.
“See the big tree? The one that looks like it was split at the bottom and grew back together again further up?” she called over the breeze.
“Is that a base?” I asked, locking my eyes on it, nostrils dilating in anticipation.
“A group arrived there last night. They will be inside with their cargo.”
“Time to be the hero no one knew they needed!” I growled and tilted down to land a short distance away. Danlith’s weight vanished, and something looped under my neck, metal sliding against my scales, then pulled taut.
“And that is how you catch a very stupid dragon!” a very different voice said gleefully from behind me.