Chapter 4

SAND

“That one that one that one!” Sand said, bouncing excitedly, while her mother let out a long slow sigh. The two of them stood in the sleek glitterific, top-scale style Kobold Trading House foyer, and had walked past several smiling kobolds waiting to get adopted before Sand had spotted the one she wanted more than any other.

“Do you remember why we’re here, Sand,” Mom said, her wings mantling.

Yes. As a matter of fact?

Sand did.

SAND, TWO DAYS AGO

Sand woke in her pile of gold, stretched, and knew that all was proper and right with the world. She had gone to sleep in quite the opposite mood – infuriated and aching with desire. But there was something about waking up as a dragon, in Wyrm City, in a pile of gold, that just ... really made her feel as if she had made all the right choices in her life. The universe was really looking up for Sand. She wriggled deeper into her gold pile.

Then the door opened to her room and Lavianta, her tutor, stuck his bald head into the room and said: “Sand, it is time for you to get up. There’s been an ... incident.”

Sand jerked her head up and out of the gold. It skittered down her head, past her neck, along her wings, and into the gold pile. She frowned down at him. “What kind of incident?” she asked, then scrambled out of the pile. By the time she was down, she had grown to the size of a large horse, her wings spreading and mantling. Real fear jolted into her belly – the last time there had been an incident, Dad had been killed and wouldn’t be coming back to the material plane for a hundred years. Mom had taken it better than Sand, being a few centuries old already and having seen time pass as it always did. For Sand, having not even seen one triple digit year span, a century still seemed like a damn long time. She gulped, while Lavianta gestured her to the door.

Through the corridors of the manor home, she rushed with Lavianta until they came to a large circular chamber that Mom used for her long ranged communications. There were dozens of crystal nodes that linked to the dragon lines and a big enough space that she could fully relax and sprawl, as she wanted too. Instead of taking up the whole place, Mom was taking her elfin form. With dusky skin, charcoal and silver hair and elegant wrinkles, Mom looked like she was an oldish elf, maybe ninety years old tops. The kind of elf that aged to be utterly gorgeous, though. Her husky voice preceded Sand into the room: “And if you don’t find the fuckhead who pissed all our goodwill down the wyrmdamn drain, then why don’t you mail me your balls once you’re done, so I don’t have to waste my fucking time hunting you down and scalping you myself.”

“Yes, Councilor Charischora!” The voice that came from the crystal was definitely a two-legger.

Mom flicked her hand and the crystal dimmed, then turned to Sand, frowning intently as she did so. “Good, you’re up.”

“What’s going on, Mom?” Sand asked, focusing hard. She shifted to her own elf form – slender and dark but not old and dignified, since while Mom could pull of wrinkles, Sand did not want to have to try. That sounded too much like work. She brushed her hair behind her ears, while Mom flicked her fingers.

Several images appeared – dungeons, each with a different corporate logo on them. Each of them had the telltale signs of some doorkickers having been nosing around. Sand repressed her immediate reaction of oh cool and instead focused on the actual corporations. She wracked her brains – and found it easier, thanks to her tutor’s earlier grilling, not that Sand would ever in a million turnings of the sun ever have actually connected these two facts herself – and identified each of them. “They’re all-”

“They’re all my fucking doners!” Mom said, turning to glower at her. “Each one has been hit by a doorkicker squad. The only fucking good thing to come out of this is at least three of them were sold out by their own gamemaster before they got in. But the rest? They either caused so much fucking mess and damage that the dungeons are all out, or they got away with the treasure.” She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “Doorkickers? They’re fucking parasite nuisances yes, but they don’t crawl up your tail-crack, they nibble on your toe claws some fucking time or another. This? This is something else.”

“Trade war!” Sand said.

“Don’t sound so fucking excited you little shit,” Mom snapped. Sand grinned back at her. Mom only got this mad when things were going to be exciting. Yes, on the one claw, Dad had died last time. But on the other claw, it had been so not boring. They had gotten to implant guns into their shoulders. Mom had taken hers away afterwards, once things had calmed down. Sand started to bounce excitedly, her toes clicking as she shifted claws just to make herself feel even more dangerous. “Yes, it is a trade war, but this isn’t like last time. When YoloDynamics went after Chromatic Solutions Incorporated, they did so professionally and openly. It was harder and hotter, but at least we fucking knew where the assholes were coming from. Now? Now, we can get stabbed in the dick at any time by some pencil-necked file fucker who hasn’t even thought a mean word about us in the past ten years, all cause some shadowy dipshit paid him off with a pile of fucking gold.”

Sand gasped. “You’re gonna-”

“We’re not giving you any goddamn weapon augments,” Mom snapped. “The last time, you hit more people on our side than their side.”

“Well, I mean, they should have ducked faster!” Sand pouted.

“No. For this kind of attack, we need something and...” Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. “My sweet, stupid child, I am going to need you to promise me, you will be an adult dragon about this. What we are going to buy is an important thing, it’s not like a dog, that you can just throw out once you’re sick of it. This will be a long term fucking commitment. Can you promise me that you will actually commit to it? Becuase I have a real fucking job, unlike some wyrmlings I can think of right now, so you will have to actually take care of it.”

Sand groaned softly. Inwardly, she saw what it was that Mom could be talking about. Goblins. Or orcs. Or a pile of mercs. Boring two-leggers that she’d have to manage, just so they could be ablative dragon armor. Ugh. Ugh! She sighed, then looked up at the ceiling.

“Okay,” she said.

“We’re going to buy a fucking kobold,” Mom said.

“Okay!” Sand said, in an entirely different tone of voice.

SAND, RIGHT NOW. AGAIN.

“We’re here to buy a kobold for self defense, not so you can turn into a twink and fuck one,” Mom said, in her brutal tone of voice, her arms crossed over her chest. In Sand’s defense, it would be a bit hard to find a kobold here that wasn’t fuckable in the extreme. The House did excellent work – there were elves, orcs, halflings, a few neriads, even a pixie, all of them having gone through the training and selection that the House brochure said all kobolds went through. Sand lifted the flimsy up, frowning as she looked down at the cover image, which showed a kicker (snarling and nasty) looming over an innocent and defenseless pile of gold. This Could Be You!!! The text exclaimed. Then, with a shimmer, the kicker was turned into an expanding pile of gore by a single finger flick from a kobold maid, who didn’t even put down the laundry she had tucked under one arm. Bury the Mess, Buy The Best! The House Kobold provides lifetime kobolds, trained and augmented to perfect.

“Even the advertisement is fuckable,” Sand said, holding it up and waggling at her mother.

Mom frowned, her eyes narrowed as she looked the kobold over herself. The kobold was an elf with raven black hair and bright blue eyes and a slightly uncertain expression on her face. Her maid outfit was cut high, to show off milky pale thighs that stopped short of silky black stocking. She stood in high heels with a weird combination of proper koboldy grace – considering her balance was augmented by dragon neural tissue being grafted onto her bones and half her brain had scales – and woobly wibbliness that made Sand immediately think...

Gosh she’s cute. Like a kitten!

Mom immediately asked: “Do you have any astral abilities?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the kobold said, immediately. “My name is-”

“Don’t fucking ma’am me,” Mom said, rolling her eyes. “I prefer Councilor, or if three syllables are beyond your talents, you can call me sir.”

“Uh, yes, Councilor?” The kobold said, flushing. “I’m pretty good at astral stuff, I mean I-”

“Pretty go-” Mom stopped up short. “Pretty fucking good? That’s what they call ad copy these days? Do you have any combat training?”

“No, but-”

“Oh wow, so they just fucking put combat mods into you? Fucking marvelous, you’re doing quite the job in selling your cute ass,” Mom said, shaking her head.

The kobold scowled. “I think I can hack it better than you can, considering you don’t look like you’ve gone astral in the past six centuries without a bodyguard – your aura’s practically black-blue at this rate. And, also, if you want me to do proper fucking ad copy, you should let me finish a fucking sentence! I don’t have combat training but I have combat experience and I’ve seen the mods the average doorkicker runs with out there, and mine are so much better that I could be a Temperance Nun and not even have a problem cleaning them up by the dozen.”

She paused.

“ ... sir.”

Mom blinked a few times. Then she beamed, turning to Sand. “I like her,” she said.

Sand squeaked and bounced. “Yeusss!” She pumped both of her fists. The kobold girl was looking at her a bit quizzically, while Mom frowned, then held up her hand.

“We can’t buy the first one that we run into,” she said.

“But we’ve checked, like, two others!” Sand said. “That’s enough shopping.”

“Shut the fuck up pipsqueak,” Mom said, but it was with love and amusement in her voice.

The next three hours were interminable as Mom went from kobold to kobold. Some of them had been sold off from their original owners – it took a bit of money to keep a kobold, as one had to keep paying payments to the House – and some of them were just better trained than the first. But none of them ever, once, in the entire thing talked back to Mom. Even the one that Mom reduced to tears. “There there,” Mom said, gently, petting the girl’s head as she put her palms over her eyes and sobbed – making Sand uncomfortable in the extreme. “It’s all right – I need to make sure that I have the right kind of kobold. You’ll do very well with ... you know, try and get the attention of this blue dragon named Karlmaztorz, he’ll be the exact right kind of household for you, yes?” She smiled as the kobold stopped crying. “There, now, here.” She held out a hankie and the kobold blew a real gross sniffly snotty mess into it.

Mom had responded as Sand had hoped.

“Keep it, darling.”

And so, finally, despite all the walking around, they came back to the first kobold – to find that three other dragons were all standing around her, murmuring to one another. The kobold herself was looking a little overwheled and, worst of all, Sand recognized at least two of the dragons. One of them was Prosariak and the other one was Paltillian, and she knew them both because the last time Mom had thrown a soiree, one of Pro had tried to put his dick in her ass, and Palt had tried to put his dick in her mouth.

Okay, to be fair, they had been more subtle about it. But their pheromones had been pretty obvious, enough that Mom had swept over and in one of the few times where Sand was not embarrassed by her mother getting between her and social engagements, she had quietly taken them by their tails and purred: “If either of you shrivel dicked ball less lizards even think of putting a move on my fifteen year old daughter, I will pull off your tails and skullfuck you to death with them.” Then, she had given them a smile and they had quietly excused themselves.

The three years between then and now, it seemed, had dulled the memory, for rather than hurriedly running for cover, Palt smiled at Mom. “Ah, Char, welcome, in the market for a new kobold?”

“Welcome back, Councilor!” the kobold said. “She, uh, she was pretty interested in buying me, you know?” She smiled, in a slightly panicked way at the three dragons surrounding her. The one Sand didn’t recognize reached down and smacked her ass with the broad, scaled flat of his palm – he was in a draconian form, rather than taking an elf or natural dragon form, which Sand immediately disdained as being impossibly old fashioned.

“Now, now, it’s not who offers first, it’s who offers highest,” he said, jovially.

“We can’t turn down a girl that’s gone through the whole brain thing,” Pro said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Brains thing?” Sand asked.

“No you nevermind,” Mom said, her voice flat. “So, you see a top tier combat capable augmented motherfucker like this...” She flicked her eyes over. “Mavlynn, and you go, oh, wow, some new piece of cunt to put my dick in. What a fucking remarkable breadth of imagination you three have! Maybe next you’ll come up with the brand new idea of laying on piles of fucking gold, or, perhaps, stealing princesses!”

“Please, ma’am!” Pro said. “Your daughter is right here, we shouldn’t be so crass.”

“I’m eighteen, I can say fuck if I want too!” Sand snapped.

“Don’t fucking swear, Sanditrash, it’s unladly like,” Mom said, firmly, then glowered at Pro, Palt and the mysterious third guy. “If you three stupid motherfuckers want to try and run a bidding war against a Wyrm City Councilor, I surely would like to see you make the attempt. It’s funny when idiot teenager dragons smear their brains out running into windows because they’re too busy trying to get their dicks wet, I suppose this would be the same kind of thing. But harder to clean up.” She smirked, slightly.

“We three can pool or bid, you know,” the mystery third guy said. His hand was openly coping a feel between Mavlynn’s legs, rumpling her skirts and rubbing two broad, scaled fingers against pale white panties. The kobold was doing her best to navigate a facial expression between impassive, offended, and aroused.

“It’s true, we can,” Palt said.

“Yes, I’m sure you three would love to have the other’s sloppy seconds, but how about this,” Mom said, then turned and whistled.

A suited orc with sunglasses walked over. “Councilor?” he asked, politely.

“Mr. Tusk, a delight, as always, please, have these three dragons thrown out and beaten with rubber hoses for me,” Mom said, in the same ‘oh sweetie’ voice she used when Sand had been a baby. The three dragons blinked at her.

Then they yelped as several kobolds who been who knows where popped out of nowhere, grabbed them, and hauled them off through main force. While a kobold stuffed with augmentations and enchantments wasn’t quite as potent as a dragon, they were both outnumbered and caught off guard. The door closed after them, while Mr. Tusk added: “We won’t be able to manage the rubber hoses – there are limits to even your discretionary power here, Councilor.”

“Ah, well, I’ll have to just enjoy fucking them discretely then,” she said. “This one. We want her.”

“That will be five million gold coins,” Mr. Tusk said, smiling.

“Five fucking million? Highway robbery. Absolutely preposterous.” Mom said, flicking out her fingers. “Bring me the paperwork and I’ll sign before I reconsider it, Mr. Tusk.”

The paperwork was signed and they were out within five minuets.

“Now, Sand, Mommy dearest has to go and manage the politics of the most powerful city on the planet, can you be a dear and not totally fuck up introducing our kobold?”

“Yeah!” Sand said, cheerfully, punching her fist into the air.

Mom patted her cheek, then turned and walked off, shifting into a dragon as she moved through the corridor, already speaking into a crystalline headset. Her voice echoed off the walls as she upbraided some official or another, while Sand turned to beam brightly at the faintly stunned looking Mavlynn. The elf was looking around herself, just standing in the foyer of the Avalanche mansion. She was taking in things with such clear wide eyed awe that Sand herself had to glance around, just to make sure nothing new had been put out that might impress her.

Nope. Same old same old.

“So, wanna see my room first, cutie?” Sand asked, grinning.

“Uh ... aren’t I a bodyguard?” Mavlynn asked, her brow furrowing.

“Nah. Well, kinda. Well, yeah.” Sand shrugged, then started to walk off to the left side of the mansion, humming cheerfully as she took the stairs three at a time to reach the second level. “This is my wing – there’s the security crystal nodes, and our staff, and there’s the room where my lame tutor lives. This is the window that has the best view of the city...” She gestured to the huge window as they walked past – and Mavlynn looked out with wide eyes, her ear-tips twitching up in that super cute way elves did. “So, like, when you say you’re good at astral stuff, does that mean you were like a rogue?”