Chapter 2

MAVLOR

Slake was waiting for Mavlor when he arrived at the meeting place in the Red District. The air smelled strongly of sulfur, belching from the dozens of factories that poured out the worked metal needed to war machines and appliances alike. The smoke cut dragon stripes in the air, crossing against the wan blue-gray that shone between. The rain had stopped and the sun was peeking out, a large dragon eye peering down on the world with a kind of cruel benevolence. On the one hand, Mavlor was pretty sure that without the sun, the world would freeze over and even the dragons might notice eventually. On the other hand, it was as hot during the day as it was cold at night. The surrounding wastelands and the city proper soaked up heat and radiated it back out again, like a big wire running hot with mana.

The tavern that Slake had told him to go for was called the CUM PIT. He wrinkled his nose at the tavern sign and the glowing neon, muttering under his breath.

“Do they come up with a random name generator for these things?” he asked, opening the door.

The interior of the Cum Pit (ugh) was better decorated than his last tavern visit. The walls were wood paneled and there was that famous woodcut of the Four Warriors in the Mines, standing between snarling hordes and the surface. There was a pair of crystals, showing last night’s game in shimmering, rippling full color. As Mavlor looked at them, he saw a massive, scaled lizardman in Fortress colors slamming directly into the Magpie’s lines and sending their equally muscular ball players tumbling. The faux severed head he had clasped in his hand flashed out and was caught by a sprightly little dolphinoid, who was moving across the field as quickly as he might have dove beneath the seas. If the seas hadn’t been boiling.

“Yo, Mavlor!”

Slake lifted her clawed hand and drew his attention. She and her fellow Doorkickers were roosted up in the corner, and apparently, this was the kind of place that let you lure taps away from the bars with enough inducement. The tap was currently perched on the shoulder of another elf who was everything Slake wasn’t. Where Slake was muscled, this elf was scrawny. Where Slake was covered in visible augmentations, this elf was utterly untouched by anything save for something that made his left eye glow bright red. Where Slake was a woman, this elf was definitely a male. His short goatee bristled as he stuck his jaw out and glowered at Mavlor.

Next to him was a short squat dwarf, her bare cheeks and her pleated hair making her even more obviously feminine than Slake. She was currently openly field stripping a fully automatic bone cannon on the table, and no one seemed to be paying her any mind. Mavlor walked over with his hands in his pockets.

The elf man sneered. “This is the Rogue you got us?” he asked. “He looks like he could fumble a 20.”

Mavlor frowned slightly. “And you look like a stiff wind will blow you over, what are you, a d4?”

“Oooh, he’s got spine, I like him,” the dwarf said, grinning as she flipped a panel of gleaming white polished dragonbone shut. She latched it, then started to screw it in.

Slake chuckled, reaching out and pressing her mug against the tap’s dick and the dragon obligingly pissed what looked like clean water into the cup. Ah. Mavlor glanced back at the bartop and saw they had two taps there, both with vibrant colors indicating the multitude of glands they had for refreshment. This meant this sky blue tap was just for the water, which was why it was wandering around so freely. No one charged for water in mid-rent places like this. “So,” Slake said, drawing her cup away and letting it cool for a bit as she leaned back. “This is Mavlor. He’s a Rogue, like I said. Mavlor, this is Queerie, our Adept.”

She pointed with her middle finger at the goatee clad elf.

Queerie inclined his head, despite his sharp words.

“And that’s Lonk, our cleric,” Slake said.

“Of what?” Mavlor asked.

“Guns,” she said, casually.

“Didn’t know that was an option,” Mavlor said, taking a seat at the head of the little booth. The chair scraped under him and his knee was almost immediately jostled against Lonk’s. Lonk grinned at him, then started to take another bit from her bone cannon out to check it over.

“Anything that sticks, lockjock,” she said, casually.

“And that means you’re a Streetnecht?” Mavlor asked, looking at Slake. “I mean, I kinda guessed.”

She spread her clawed hands and her implanted mandibles flared out, then snapped flush against her jaw. “I don’t dress to impress, but yes, I am a Streetnecht. We’re what ya call an average Doorkicker party, save for one thing.”

“Oh?” Mavlor asked.

“We’re the best,” Slack said, grinning warmly.

“If we were the best, we’d already be rich,” Queerie muttered.

“He’s got a point, Ess,” Lonk said, frowning as she shook the component she had pulled from her gun. “You ever killed anyone before, Mav?”

Mavlor frowned. “Mavlor. And no. I’m a rogue, not a murderer.”

“Well, good,” Lonk said, grinning. “Greasing mooks is my and Slake’s job. You and Queerie are for getting us to vaults and out of the dungeons again. Stick to it, we’ll be good.” She slotted the component back in. “It’ll also help if you stay behind me. Smaug here doesn’t exactly have a discriminating sense of direction.” She patted her huge cannon. Mavlor shifted in his seat and nodded. He was genuinely not sure how he felt about the idea of killing people. He supposed it’d have to depend on the people, right? He imagined the corporate goons that had done security at the creche he had grown up in – and ... well, if they were like that...

Slake sighed, reaching into her vest. She pulled out a small crystal. “So, Que, can you warm this up for us? We might as well run through the basics before it gets too late.”

Queerie gave a long suffering sigh. He took the crystal in his hand and gripped it. With only a minute twist of focus, he was able to drive mana into it. The crystal projected up a hazy map of what was clearly a corporate dungeon – one entrance, security chutes, wall panel traps and lots of subdivided monster dens for their hired goons, with the actual vaults near the back of the whole structure. It was the kind of thing people back in the day built to keep dragons out. Now, dragons were desperate to have them to keep shit in. It was a rum old world. Mavlor slouched and tried to look like he had seen this kind of layout many, many times ... and, well, at a certain level, he had. It wasn’t like corporate dungeons were big secrets. He was pretty sure he had watched two documentaries about them.

It was just that this one was a specific corporate dungeon, not a generalized idea of one. He started memorizing corridors.

“This is one of Chromatic Solutions Incorporated’s second tier dungeons,” Slake said, her voice soft, hushed. “The security is, eh, level 8-10, nothing too major for us.”

“So, in short, we’re gonna get jack and shit for this job?” Queerie muttered.

“No, Que, because this isn’t just any second tier dungeons. See, CSI is currently in a bit of a knife fight with TriStar. They got something big and juicy hidden in their labs, and their primary dungeons have been hit four times by Corpokickers, which means CSI is moving their top tier, grade A, gold dragon shit into a less known, less watched, less attention grabbing dungeon. This dungeon has had her security buffed up, see here?” She pointed. “These used to be grease traps. They’ve added in fireball traps, this is a fuckin’ sphere of goddamn annihilation. They’re going the whole fuckin hog here.”

Lonk frowned, slightly. “And you know this is up to date...?”

“I trust the source. I paid enough for it,” Slake said, shrugging. “We slice in, we get the goods, we get out, we sell to TriStar, and we’re making bank.”

“What if they didn’t put whatever it is there in there?” Mavlor asked.

“Then we still rip off a dungeon and that’s enough to keep us going to the next job,” Slake said, quietly.

“Do you know what it is?” Lonk asked, her frown growing more pronounced.

“The rumor says it’s high end augments shit,” Slake said, her voice soft.

Lonk snorted. Her face was set in grim lines. “High end augmentation shit,” she said, drawing curious looks from Queerie and Slake. “I bet it’s Kobold shit.”

“What’s ... a Kobold?” Mavlor asked.

This drew queer looks from everyone, including a faint smile from Slake. Mavlor held up his hands. “Listen, I’m a good rogue, but this is my first Doorkicking.”

“Kobolds...” Queerie shook his head. “If we’re lucky, they’re an urban legend and this is just high end augmentations – which, I note, is probably what they are. Kobolds aren’t fucking real.”

“No, they’re real,” Lonk said, her voice hushed. She had started to ratchet her gun back together, clicking every piece together one after the other after the other. “They’re very real.”

Slake frowned, then gave her a little nod, like, go ahead, Lonk. Lonk’s somber gray-gray eyes lifted up and met Slake’s eyes, then swung over to Mavlor. The dwarf girl had a cheek like a boulder, but a well chiseled one, and it suited her blunt shoulders and her plush lips. Those lips were turned down, down hard. She sighed. “Kobolds are the bad end for Doorkickers. That’s the rumor at least. See, Doorkicking ... if you don’t have a corporate sponsor, there’s no one to ransom you to, right? Except someone always buys you. It’ll just not be a friend or family ... it won’t be anyone you want. The House buys em.”

“The ... House?” Mavlor asked, feeling his stomach tighten up.

“They’re some back of the black, deep Underdark shit operation. Like, you thought halfling brothels were bad, they have nothing on The House,” Slake said, quietly. “I never heard they’re involved in the Kobold trade, though.”

Lonk nodded, grimly. “They buy Doorkickers and then they make em into Kobolds. Pets. Servants. Weapons.” She shook her head. “And if you run into em ... you’ll know it. Cause they’ll go...” She leaned in. “ ... yip! Yip! Yip!” She started to bark like a dog. Slake managed to keep a straight face. Queerie didn’t. He started to laugh hysterically, clutching his stomach. Mavlor felt like someone had just upended a bowl on him and poured hot soup over his scalp. Warm dragon meat was dribbling down his back as Slake snorted, sniggered, then started to guffaw too. Lonk alughed, then slapped his shoulder.

“Nah, just fuckin’ with ya!” she said, cheerfully.

Mavlor frowned and leaned back in his seat. “Real funny,” he muttered.

Queerie laughed and wheezed. Slake shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye. “But nah, man, the House is real – and, uh, she wasn’t lying. Getting caught as a doorkicker without a corporate backer sucks. But, like, they’ll throw ya into the Federal fuck you over reincarnation prison. Kobolds, like, just a fancy word for two-leggers that serve dragons. Maids and shit. They usually act like they got a huge stick up their ass, but they’re nothing special.”

“They do go yip, but only cause they’re running dogs of the dracoeoisie class,” Queerie said, laughing again.

“Don’t get him started on that Drag Magov stuff,” Lonk said, sighing. “So, we’re going to go over how we’re gonna do this, right?”

“Right,” Slake said. “Enough fucking with the new kid. Here’s how we start...”

By the time night had come, rain was starting to pour down overhead and Mavlor’s stomach had congealed into a tightened ball of pure miserable worry. He had gone through every step and he had nodded along with all the ideas and grunted quietly and when people had gone ‘sound good’ he had always said, sure. Like he totally knew what he was doing. The only problem was that this was his first kick. They just had to not know that until it was over. He kept his face grave and focused as the four of them walked along the streets of the Black District, rain hitting the buildings at a slant, leaving this alleyway dry ... ish. His foot splashed into a puddle and he ignored the sudden rush of cold water.

“Okay,” Slake said, her voice grim. “We’re here. Que, get us wyrmed.”

Queerie slapped his palm against his chest. He closed his eyes, wheezed, then coughed. A moment later, he coughed again, then wretched. Mavlor, who had never been so close to an adept before, winced and took a step back. He hadn’t expected it to sound so much like a cat trying to get a hairball up. His nose wrinkled and he frowned, intently, while Queerie coughed once more and spat up a thick glob of something sticky. He sighed, shook his head, then started to disentangle bits from it. The first thing he held out was to Mavlor.

It was a wyrm: A dragon reduced down to its longest, thinnest point, with tiny stubby little forearms and forepaws. Its mane made it look even more bedraggled, soaked as it was with Queerie’s spittle.

Just like Slake had said.

Mavlor pressed his immediate reaction down and instead held the worm up to his ear. He screwed up his face and covered up for what was going to happen by saying: “Gods, I hate doing thi-”

The worm slammed into his ear and shot in with a whump. He felt the scrabbling of its paws, and the strange sensation of its damp mane sweeping into his ear canal. Then there was a ... He grunted and, for a fleeting moment, swore that he could smell the color orange. He coughed, sneezed, and then finished. “ ... is.”

“Yeah...” Lonk said. She wiggled her wyrm from side to side with a frown. She cocked her head and dropped her wyrm in. Queerie put his wyrm up by his nose.

“You go through the nose, gods, that’s so fucking gross,” Slake muttered, putting her wyrm to her ear. She shook her head, shivered, and flicked her tail. [Check check, can you read me?] She asked, her voice appearing inside of Mavlor’s brain without him needing to hear anything.

[I can hear you, ] Mavlor said back without saying anything.

[We’re good here, ] Queerie said. [But of course we are, I compelled them.]

[Wyrmtastic, ] Lonk added.

[How are you for dragon essence, Q?] Slake asked.

[Please.]

[I’d prefer a number, not arrogance?] Slake spoke as she drew a curved blade, the kind used to hack people while you were on dragonback. She twirled it in her hand, claws not making her any less nimble.

[98%]

[All right, ] Slake said. [Mavlor, you’re up first.]

Mavlor cracked his knuckles and breathed in a short, sharp breath. His mouth tasted the faint sting of the ash that smeared itself into the rain and came down as gray streaks along the building walls around them, and his throat tingled with a bile rising up and out. Fear bile. He forced it down, kneeling onto the alleyway and sticking his finger into his dragon port. Shifting into the astral was the same lurch that he felt the last few times – and he clung to his focus and his goal. Get through this. Get paid. Get out of here. Get to the beach.

His astral body shimmered into the air and he glanced back. Looking at Queerie and Lonk through the hazy caul that separated the real world from the Astral, he saw them more clearly than he had before: Queerie throbbed with the slow, steady pulse of magic, starting in his chest and working out towards the pores of his skin, while Lonk had a silvery thread reaching from her spine up and up and up into the sky, into some place beyond the world of Shell. He was still not sure if she was entirely serious about calling upon the powers of Gun. But he supposed that whatever worked, worked. He turned back and drifted towards the entrance of the dungeon.

Chromatic Solutions Incorporated had gone in for a modest facade for their dungeon: A small metal door attached to a normal looking warehouse, without a single sign that there was anything unusual about it save for a tiny logo and a keypad. The keypad was made of crystal buttons and metal, and when he brushed his finger along it, his astral body was sucked into the connection between it and the rest of the dungeon. It was just as the map had promised: Thin dragon lines connecting the parts of the dungeon together each pulsed with more power than he had ever felt in a astral connection before. The machinery here wasn’t simply secure. It was powerful. It was so powerful that moving against that flow with his astral body felt like trying to swim up a sewer pipe. Not only did he not have enough room to swing his arms, but the water came surging, roaring, crashing into his face, driving him back and back and back...

And so, he didn’t try and push himself that much farther. There was energy drop off the further an astral body got from the biological. The silvery tether connecting his soul to his flesh could only draw so much current, after all. This was why Rogues came along with kicks, instead of sitting back home with a nice warm beer.

Instead, he took his focus and threw it into the keypad. Without an actual dragon in the lock, it would have been easy as hell to just slice the door code apart and have the whole thing open up like a flower. Easy, yes. Obvious, also. He carefully slid an astral palm between the door connection and the keypad itself, his fingers buzzing as he felt energy trying to strobe through him. He allowed some of it to go through, then more and more and more, until his hand didn’t even feel the buzz. It was like his palm was nothing but air, and the energy could slip through easy and winking.

Now, anyone in a nest would be unable to spot the changes from power fluctuations – their eyes might have been drawn by the moment he slid his hand into the connection, though. He waited. Then waited a beat more. Once he was sure that the nestjock wasn’t going to swoop in, he started to squeeze off certain facts from the keypad from the rest of the building. Now that the keypad and the nest weren’t sharing everything, he quietly snipped the code out, then jerked his hand back. Now, the keypad was going to open to anything – and since he had removed the knowledge of the code from its tiny little brain, it wouldn’t even know to alert the nest that the door had opened.

He yanked his silvery tether, snapped back to his body and coughed as he felt the tiny dragon in his brain kick restively. “We’re in,” he said, quietly.

Slake jerked her head in a nod. “Any bad guys inside?”

“I couldn’t get into their forward scrying orbs – the network’s intense,” Mavlor said, quietly, his hand going to his ear and rubbing it absently. He felt the wyrm there wriggle and twitch and jerked his hand away in disgust.

[Figured, ] Slake said, switching to her wyrm as she drew her sword with a soft rasp of metal on leather. It was a single edged cavalry saber, and glittered in the faint neon glow of the streetlights. Her other hand flexed and claws snicked from her fingertips as her thick tail twitched and rose up. She breathed in, then out and the wyrm in Mavlor’s head caused him to see a glittering blue trail of arrows, which ran from the floor to the door, with a count down timer. He blinked a bit – but at Lonk’s grunt, he supposed she knew what she was doing.

Before the counter hit 5, though, Slake had started to sprint. She rushed across the street with fluid speed, her feet splashing in the gray rain puddles, her leather jacket seeming to shimmer with reflected moisture. Her clawed hand flashed across the panel and, just as Mavlor had hoped, the door opened. He tensed as the number started to hit 1 – but before he could run forward, Lonk sprang to her feet and started to sprint after. Glancing over at Queerie, Mavlor saw that his eyes had closed. Mavlor felt a faint pressure behind his eyes. He closed them.

Rather than seeing a smeary blob of nothing...

He instead saw Slake. But he saw her from the perspective of someone a head and shoulders shorter than him. He saw the bulk of the bone cannon. He could hear Lonk’s panting breaths, sounding different as they reverberated through bone.

He was seeing through Lonk’s eyes.

Slake was in the door, and there were, in fact ... bad guys. Two corporate monsters, both of them skeletons. Both were in heavy carapace and scale armor, and both had rapid fire subdragon guns, the kind that didn’t shoot fully formed wyrms, but instead teeth chips, spurts of greenish flame, and bile stored in the guts. Everything that was close to a dragon, but not quite of a dragon. They reacted quickly to the sudden opening of the door.

Not quicker than Slake.

Her saber came down and slashed one of the SDGs in half. Her heel kicked out as she snapped her other leg up with reflexes plated with extracted draconic nerve endings, pulsing faster than an elf normally could. Faster and stronger. The impact slammed into the carapace chestpiece of the skeleton and cracked it along the rib-lines. He stumbled backwards, greenish smoke billowing from his eyes. Before he could recover, Lonk stepped in and hefted up the barrel of her bone cannon. The cha-thump CHONK of the cannon opening fire was only eclipsed by the shattering crash as a bone spike the length of Mavlor’s arm appeared in the skeleton’s skull, shattering it apart and sending the corpo monster to the ground. Lonk panted quietly, and her voice flicked over the wyrm connection. [We’re good. Move up, squishies.]

[That’s us, ] Queerie said, his voice amused as he opened his eyes. Mavlor did likewise, scrambling to his feet. By the time he got to the door, Slake had taken up position at the next door into the dungeon proper. This led into a pair of corridors that looped out, spreading into the two overall wings. Both wings then met back around again, providing two potentail entrances to the vault itself. If the map was right, they’d need to clear both wings of monsters and find the key scattered through it. Mavlor didn’t really know why dungeons kept their keys in their premises. He supposed he’d have to find some way to ask without tipping off how new he was.

Once he was in the room proper, Queerie closed the door, then said: [Any damage?]

[We won the ini roll, } Slake said, flashing him a grin. [Okay, can we knock this door, or kick it?]

[That’s me, ] Mavlor said, remembering only at the last second to use his wyrm and not his mouth. He closed his eyes and stuck his finger into the port. His astral form darted into the door.

It was trapped.

He felt it the instant he dove into it- the series of tiny glands that had been woven into the bone and metal of the doorframe, just waiting for the wrong person to put the wrong amount of pressure in the wrong place. It’d fill the entire room with enough aerosolized acid to melt the entire team. He immediately spoke through his wyrm connection as his astral hands started to slide gently, gently, gently along the glands, feeling them twitching and quivering restively. [Door’s trapped, no one move.]

[Shit, ] Queerie said. Mavlor risked a glance and saw that Queerie had been just about to step towards the door. He listened to Mavlor, though, which meant he was now caught midway through a step. Lonk moved up behind the slender elf Adept, picking him up bodily with her two broad hands and setting him down a safe distance away from the door.

Mavlor focused on the glands. Their connection was through dragon lines, but like everything else, it fed back to the nest. He wasn’t sure if he could yank every connection without alerting the nest. He frowned intently. What would an expert do?

Well.

If the dungeon was going to be raided, and the kick was all about speed, like Slake had said...

Then he didn’t have to work quiet. Just fast.

He started off by shoving himself into the astral connection. The flow was easier to work with now that he was in close, but it was still exhausting to crawl from this entrance chamber to one of the side rooms. According to the map, this was a well ventilated living room for some of the corporate monsters, and that meant it was the best choice for his idea. While his astral presence clung to the walls of the room, the pressure of the flow trying to push him back to where he started, he unhooked one hand, then reached back. Here, the flow helped him – almost too much, almost yanking him away completely.

He reached.

And reached.

And then got his glowing, astral fingers around the nodules on the door. He yanked them all at once.

If the nest jock noticed – and unless the nest jock was fucking dead, he’d damn well fucking notice – then the sign would be that some Rogue had just pulled the teeth on the front door. But they’d have pulled it from the other room, not from the entrance. He hoped that confusion would buy them enough time.

He let go and snapped back into his body so fast he fell away from the door, gasping.

[It safe?] Lonk asked.

[Yeah, but they definitely noticed. I think I got them to think the other room is the source, uh, Room A4.] He said, referring to the map. Slake grinned, fiercely. She stepped up to the door without fear, cracked it, peeked, then nodded and looked back.

[We’re doing a pin and sweep.]

[Got it, ] Queerie and Lonk said at the same time. Neither of them even glanced his way.

Mavlor gulped and pulled back. He drew his wyrmgun. He wasn’t sure what exactly a pin and sweep was, but he was going to act like he knew, and leap in when things looked ready. The door opened with a hiss as Slake shoved it open. Then she sprang out into the corridor, flattening her back against a niche in the smooth wall, right next to a small scrying camera that was, even now, showing everything to the nest jock.

The only problem was the nest jock had sent their orders a bit too early. Or too late, depending on how you looked at it.

Six well armed goblins had just arrived around the corner at the left end of the corridor. They were heading straight for Room A4 – their SDMs and their armor gleaming in their hands. This gave Slake not just a flank, but a perfect surprise round. She let out a bloodcurdling shriek, sprinted from cover, and slid along her feet into the center of the goblin formation. Two of them turned moments before she got to them – just slightly more on the ball than their friends. Her saber slashed one across the face and her claws raked the other in the throat, finding chinks in their carapace, scale, and bone armor. Blood splattered the walls and the remaining four goblins started to scramble backwards.

Slake, though, didn’t keep slashing. She instead leaped straight upwards. Her claws sunk into the metal ceiling and she swung her legs up, her tail slapping against the wall and sticking there – the spike at the tip thrusting home and rooting her with a third contact point. The goblins, meanwhile, cried out as vines and roots exploded from the ground. They didn’t push through the metal. Instead, it was as if they simply grew from nowhere, from nothing, and swept around and around their bodies, pinning their arms to their sides and keeping them firmly in place.

Mavlor saw that Lonk was getting herself ready, while Queerie sparkled with green motes of energy. He was the one who had done vined them up, huh?

Mavlor realized that time he had been waiting for?

It was now.

He rolled out into the corridor, remaining on his knees, while Lonk steadied her gun. Together, they both started to open fire. Bone spikes sprouted from one goblin, while Mavlor worked the hammer on his wyrmgun again and again. Each time the chamber revolved around, one of the eggs that was now in the barrel hatched and a tiny dragon shot out, wriggling and scrabbling. Normally, the armor the goblins wore was thick enough that it’d have been easy for them to brush the dragons off before they found flesh to bite and chomp into.

But their arms were pinned to their sides.

The dragons wriggled in, blood spurting as they burrowed with grisly delight into their targets.

The four goblins slumped, their bodies suspended by the vines for a few moments before dropping. The three dragons that Mavlor had fired flew out of their targets, their wings splattering greenish blood everywhere. Mavlor opened the chamber of his wyrmgun, and held it out, whistling softly.

His ammo flew in, roosted, then scrambled into the chamber.

[I never went for wyrmguns because, like, what if your ammo died?] Lonk asked.

[They reincarnate, it’s fine, ] Mavlor said.

[No, I mean, what do you do when you run out. Bone cannons have hundreds of shots per magazine, you have six – and yeah, it comes back. Unless it doesn’t.] She chuckled.

Slake dropped down.

Her lips were turned in a frown.

“Something is not right,” she said, aloud.

Mavlor blinked. Then it clicked in his brain – a realization that didn’t need expertise.

This was too easy.

The doors behind them, the doors he had sliced into so easily, slammed shut with a series of loud whumps. Queerie was almost down a foot thanks to the door. He yanked it back at the last second. “Shit!” He exclaimed, while Mavlor and Lonk hurried to the door. Lonk shouldered it, frowned, then muttered.

“I can get us out of here,” she said, quickly.