Chapter 5

CHARISCHORA

Charischora Avalanche frowned intently at the webwork of connections she had collected and thrown up onto the wall of her innermost sanctum. For the past few years, the only people to have entered here was herself ... and memories. Ghosts. She slowly stretched her long, silver-scaled neck, twisting her head to the side until she heard a satisfying pop and then drew her head back to settle again. Her memories played wistful tricks on her. If Tiras was here, he’d at least be able to massage the kinks of her her back with his talons and scaled palms. But, of course, he wasn’t here.

He was dead.

And he wouldn’t be coming back into the world for a long, long, long time.

“Stop being a big fucking crybaby,” Char muttered under her breath. Her scaled knuckle rubbed along her jaw as she regarded the connections. The simple fact was that no one, not even a dragon of her age and expertise, could truly understand the economy as it truly existed. Everyone used models, and everyone knew those models were inexact, imperfect, prone to error. There were simply too many spinning parts and whirling gears and hissing, bubbling organs put up in secret or forgotten about or repurposed after conquest, war, and simply lack of attention. All of it, though, worked. It worked to create the magical materials needed to sustain and maintain the massive population of Wyrm City. It worked to employ and feed those people.

And it worked to funnel immense amounts of money into roughly six, seven dragon’s hordes.

One of those hordes was, of course, hers.

So, while Char couldn’t quite comprehend the webwork in its totality, she did her best to at the very least get the gist of it. Her eyes, slitted and narrowed, flicked as her nictitating membranes wiped away bits of grime and dust. Every attack that had been aimed at Chromatic Solutions Incorporated had been traced back to their sources – and each source was uniquely identical. In that they were all disconnected, but all shared the same broad characteristics: Each had been a relatively well positioned member of Wyrm City’s ever churning black and gray market underground, each had had connections that had given them access to data and maps and secret weak points.

The problem was the timing. Each of them would have independently come up with the idea of hitting CSI at some point – but all on the same day, overwhelming their response networks? She rubbed her finger along her jaw.

“We need to find the communication method,” she muttered under her breath.

Her intelligence staff had their ways.

But Char had her own ways. She focused and then shrank down with a crumpling sound of distorted air and shifting flesh, shedding scales, and rustling wings. Once she had finished collapsing into her elfin form, she walked towards the absurdly over-sized doorway, feeling quite ridiculous as she was able to walk through with her arms fully spread and fingers outstretched and would still have a meter and change before her fingers might touch the edges of the doorframe. She turned right, then left, then blinked in annoyance as she saw that one of her pet Rogues was waiting for her.

Rouge the Rogue was an elf with a spiderweb tattoo around her eye from her days as a street Rogue, with a fancy skintight vest and leather leggings all in Clutch Avalanche colors. She was tapping one of her feet on the ground and scowled at Char as she walked by.

“Your kid has stolen your new kobold and taken her joyriding, Ma’am,” she said, matching Char’s pace as Char walked down the corridor towards the crystal lab.

Char turned to face her, throwing up her hands in a mockery of shock and appalled horror. “Oh Wyrm Above help us, my pissant daughter is using her new toy in the exact way she’s meant to use it, what a fucking disaster. Any other bad news to report, maybe our enemies have walked straight into meat grinder for us, to save us the trouble?”

Rouge showed zero reaction. “No, I mean, she’s jacked into the brain-dragon and is running the kobold around town like her own personal mecha.”

Char blinked at her. “She’s not just growing a dick and fucking her?” she asked, sounding disbelieving – because, to be honest, she was. Her lovely, wonderful daughter had two braincells, and both of them were horny. Char didn’t truly begrudge her that. Unlike many dragons of her age, Char had managed to retain a few memories of her hatchling years and knew that she had been just as horny and stupid as Sanditrash was right now.

“No, ma’am,” Rouge said, frowning at her as the two women stood in the corridor.

“Well...” Char frowned, doing some mental math. “Do you have a fucking tail on her?”

“No, ma’am, I decided to be wildly incompetent today,” Rouge shot back, as flat affect as ever.

Char frowned. “You know I hate sassy elves, right?” she asked, then pinched the bridge of her nose. “Keep the tail, yank the kobold back if she’s going to break her, but if she’s just having fun? Fuck it, let our enemies think that we’re stupid.”

“Ma’am?”

“They’ll try and read anything they can into our kobold’s action, no? Since, well, we bought her fresh from the House, we’ll have to be sending her out for a reason? But instead, no, my stupid horny daughter is off, being stupid and fucking horny,” Char said, nodding as she released the bridge of her nose. “It’ll throw their pet Rogues into a tizzy.”

“Ma’am,...” Rouge said.

“Like you, right now,” Char said. “But for the bad guys.”

“Ma’am,” Rogue said.

“You know, I hate it when you do that,” Char snapped.

“Ma’am,” Rogue said.

Char turned and walked away. “Add a second tail, then! Eggshells and cumdumps, do I have to fucking think of everything myself? Now go and prepare, I’m going to do my tail trick.”

“Ma’am!” Rouge said, clicking her heels.

Char, before she went around the corner, lifted her hand and raised her middle finger over her shoulder.

Every draconic household watched every other draconic household. Then those that were a part of a corporate structure had another layer of eyes and ears on everything – corporate dragons and shareholders both watched not only the dragons that owned shares, but also the dragons that worked in corporations. And those dragons that were also in government (which necessarily involved being within a draconic household and part of several corporations) were then watched by another layer of rogues and scoundrels, ranging from rival political parties, two-legger would-be-terrorist and political action cells, and other governments from beyond the boarders of your particular polity.

Char had long since learned precisely how to utilize this abundance of observation to make herself quite hard to track. The first step was to leave the house as ostentatiously as possible. So, after she had left her orders, given some directions to the maids, and sent a cranky astral message to her daughter to not fucking ruin everything, she took off from the balcony of Avalanche House. Her wings, colored a fashionably bright blue and gold, caught the wan sunlight that crept past the clouds and hanging dragons that dotted the skies above Wyrm City, and reflected it down in a glorious auroral flare to the two-leggers, draconians, and grubbers that made their way on the streets. Her tail remained ruler straight behind her back and she soared through the dirty, polluted air of her scummy city and reveled in the raw, sensual power of flight.

Every eye was on her.

Half those eyes were probably also flicking from her to their scrying orbs, their jacked in rogues, their astral specialists, all trying to make sure she wasn’t doing anything sneaky. Which, of course, she was. But it would never, not in a million years, show up in the astral plane. They were looking for soul duplicates, doppelgangers, magical spells, and the ilk.

They weren’t tracking the impossibly slender spooling wire that emerged from the tip of her tail. She dove and banked, hooking that wire on the guidelines of some of the floating dragons, nodding politely to them as they grumbled in their restive sleep – their souls were projected deep into the astral, their bodies currently doing little save filter out most of the acid in the clouds to keep the two-leggers from melting in the byproduct of their economy. The guidelines kept the tiny wire that she had leading from her tail from being draped pell-mell across the city, where it might get trampled on, or hit by autocabs, or something unpleasant like that.

With the line safely hooked up above the city, she dove down to her favorite orgyarium, landed, and took her elf form and proclaimed: “I do very badly need to get my back blown out, come give me some big orc cock, I can’t wait all fucking day!” while clapping her hands imperiously.

And the wire?

It was now attached to her ankle, sweeping off and away through the air, all the way back to her mansion. There was a chance that it might get snipped – but if it happened, the only people who’d notice would have no idea what it meant, or how to trace it back to her.

For the wire led back to the basement of her manor, where it was hooked on a tiny spool. Once she was safely at the orgyarium, and safely being led away by the smiling owners, the far end of the wire ... began to bud. And grow. And pulsate. Flesh grew and spread outwards, forming and forming until the far end of the wire was not hanging off a spool, but rather standing on its own two legs as a sleek, muscular, ebony black skinned elf with pale white hair, bright red eyes, and masculine features. He smirked and wrung his hands out as Char let her attention flick along the connection between her tail to her second body.

Well. Technically, this hunky piece of elf-meat was closer to a hand than a second body. Since her soul remained in both, no astral scries could ever notice the difference. From most perspectives, save those which could see microscopic tendrils of iron-hard draconic cells, Chariscora Avalanche and this nameless elf-boy were to entirely different people.

“I know that it’s safer than soul-splitting or classical colocation,” Rouge said, her arms crossed over her chest as she snapped her fingers. Several attendants hurried over, to wipe some of the excessive bioslime off Char’s new elfin buttocks. “But this somehow still seems so fucking gross.”

“Oh shut up, sissy,” Char said, grinning. “Now, I’m going to need moderately slovenly clothes, a firearm, and an ID that will make me look like a lowly piece of shit doorkicker.”

“Ma’am,” Rouge said, and the attendants drew back, then came forward again, pushing along a table with precisely what Char needed. Char’s smirk was playful as he picked up a shirt, tugging it on over his head. He started to wriggle into his tattered jeans, while the ID was printed out with a soft whirr and burp from a tiny dragon whose tongue could emit ink when requested. As Rouge handed it to Char, she asked: “I have to know...”

“Yes?” Char asked, holstering a cheap wyrm revolver behind his back, tucking his leather jacket down to conceal it.

“ ... doesn’t it get distracting? Having your dragon body being fucked while you do this?”

“Please!” Char said. “That dogshit overpriced in and out factory?” He shook his head. “The men they have there are so badly trained and picked purely for aesthetic, the best fuck I’ve ever had in my life was with this halfling, bearded, ugly, short and tiny, even for his people, and he knew how to make the sea melt and the sun explode with that sharp fucking tongue of his.” He smirked, adjusting the collar of his shirt and nodding. “It’s my biggest sacrifice, half the dragons in this city think I have terrible fucking taste.” He sighed and shook his head.

Rouge shook her head, then gestured to the door. “Your exit, ma’am.”

“Sir,” Char said, grinning. “I make a dashing elf, don’t you think?”

“You look like my uncle, who got shot when I was twelve for selling beer cut with antifreeze in the underdark,” Rouge said, her voice prim.

“Fuck you too, Rouge,” Char said, cheerfully, then headed through the door.

It was not possible to be completely unnoticed while leaving Avalanche House, but there were enough exits that were within a three block radius that Char was fairly certain that only a few people would notice his leaving through the sewers and coming up through a manhole. Considering that he had taken a bodyform that looked almost like three of his servants, the people watching would assume that he was a two timing dipshit and chuckle quietly to themselves – while their bosses would wonder if she knew that they knew that she knew that she was being fucked around on.

Char rather liked the mental image, even as he started to make his way through the city. He knew every step he took was making the risk higher – but he had learned a little trick of hiding a small hook in the back of his ankle, made of bone and monomolecular edges. The bone hook would punch into the ground, tuck the thread he was leaving, and then smooth the ground back over again with a quick shove. End result: The wire was left buried and could rot once he was done with it. It couldn’t be used on metal or in a house, but ... well, it’d work enough for now.

He came, after taking a few short cuts, to the Red District.

To a tavern. He looked up, cocked his head, and grinned.

“The Cum Pit,” he said. “I like the name.”

He opened the door and stepped inside, looking throughout the place ... and there was exactly what he was looking for.

The doorkicker that had been one of the few to get away from the attacks neither clean nor safe. The elf known as Slake – real name Sarandier Gallowstop. She was looking exactly like what a doorkicker would look like after getting away with the skin of the teeth and losing half her party: She was getting drunk slowly enough for it to be classified as a terminal illness, and was showing the sunken cheeked expression of someone who had shucked a few major implants to make ends meet. Remembering from the security-scry footage, she had had mandible bracers, and claws. Well, the claws were gone and the bracers were gone. All that was left was a long muscular tail, which dragged on the floor as a pure picture of draconic misery, transplanted onto what Char had to admit was an exceptionally toothsome rump.

He walked over, then leaned on the bar, grinning. “Copper for your thoughts?” he asked.

“Not interested,” Slake said, sighing as she sipped from her drink.

“Silver, then?” Char suggested.

Slake turned, then glowered at him.

Char grinned. “Gold?”

Slake smirked. “Platinum, then we talk.” She sipped – and there was just a tiny twitch at the tip of her tail. Char knew at least part of this was because he had biosculpted the most sumptuously fuckable boy elf in the world and Sarandier Gallowstop, despite every single physical appearances to the contrary, was somehow mostly straight. At least according to Avalanche intelligence write-ups. So, Char reached into his jacket, mimed pulling out a coin, then frowned, looking at his empty hand. Then snapped his finger, reached out and ‘plucked’ a copper coin from behind Slake’s ear. He flourished it with a grin.

“Fuckin’ dork,” Slake said, her voice amused as she sipped another bit from her beer. “And you said plat!”

“Voila!” Char said, wiggling his fingers, then flipping the coin as it took the seeming of a platinum coin – an obvious bit of illusion magic. He slapped it down on the countertop. “It’s plat for the next, oh, five minuets.”

“That gets you five minuets, then,” Slake said, shifting around and leaning on her elbow, looking at him. “You a kicker?”

Char nodded. “Yeah,” he said.

“Well, we just got wiped. Hard.” Slake said. “Half the team perma-dead, no loot, no nothing, and our cleric has run off to join a different party. It’s just down to me and my memories, without anything to look forward to but...” She nodded down to the coin. “Maybe getting that fucking plat and hoping I can get to a tavern in under five minuets.”

“Hard knocks,” Char said, his voice contemplative. “My old party just split – quarrel over the split, ya know. But we heard half the big kicks around here just got caught in, like, a sweep?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been hearing too,” Slake said, sighing. “I think we were being used as a fucking gambit. A bunch of kicks, all hired to hit CSI dungeons...” She shook her head. “Dragon politics. They piss on us and call it rain.”

“Amen to that,” Char said, frowning. “Who’d even gave out the jobs?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Slake said – her voice hesitant. She had that edgy air Char had heard many a times before talking to a doorkicker. A doorkicker could be bleeding to death and still be edgy about revealing who and where their contacts were. It made sense. If a doorkicker survived bleeding to death by being a snitch, they wouldn’t survive their next stabbing long enough to blab again. Fortunately, Char was prepared.

He grinned, and quite brazenly, said: “We could do something more fun than talking, then?”

Slake blinked at him.

And her tail lifted as she bit her lip, looking ... thoughtful.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Slake gasped, her fingernails digging into the cheap plastic headboard of the cheap bed that was, currently, rocking so hard back and forth it bid fair to either collapse under the pressure or bash through the equally cheap wall. Her head threw back as her long, long, long pink deathhawk plastered against her muscular shoulders, sweat drawing it against her skin into long, waterfall cascades. Her buttocks – thick and muscled and just perfect – jiggled and slapped in rythmic time with the dark black hips driving into her as Char thrust his cock as deep into the elf-girl as he could go.

And...

Well, Char was going to do many things to secure his noble house and future, as well as the safety of his child.

He was never going to have a dick anything but titanic while in a male form. The idea ranked his draconic pride – and he knew that it was a potential loophole in his disguise. But ... counterpoint?

“Oh my fucking wyrm, oh fuck! Fuck! Your cock is driving me out of my fucking mind!” Slake gasped out – and while words could lie, the eager clenching of her hairless pussy was anything but a lie. Her tail looped around Char’s shoulder, tugging taut underneath his armpit, squeezing onto him with a desperate neediness that matched the scratches that she was putting into the bed’s chintzy blue and pink paintjob. A thin squirt of glowing elf juices splashed along Char’s balls and he groaned softly, managing to keep himself from cumming ... because, well, he was a dragon.

He’d cum when he damn well wanted too.

“See?” he panted softly, his hand reaching around to press two dark fingers against her pale clit, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. “Much better than talking.”

“Ahhh!” Slake cried out as her cunt clenched on his dick again, so loudly desperate that it was almost audible over her cry of pleasure. Another squirt of glowing juice puddled between her knees, soaking the cheap bedsheets through as she actually began to collapse. Her arms slid noodle-like from the headboard and her breasts and face mashed into the bed, her cheeks pressing against the bars. Her muffled voice groaned out. “I’m ... going to die, oh my wyrm, oh wyrm, oh wyrm...”

“Lets fix that,” Char purred. His cock eased out of her, inch by inch by inch, until the tip of his cock sprang free, wobbling slightly as glowing juices glittered along every inch of him. He grinned, cockily, as he took hold of Slake’s hip, then rolled her onto her back. She sprawled there, her features looking ... well, it was the rather familiar near rapture of an elf getting a proper draconic fucking from a proper fucking dragon. He leaned down over her, hands planted to either side of her head as his cock ground against her muscular belly. Her tail, having loosed its grip on his shoulder, coiled around his thigh, all the way down to his ankle. Char murmured softly. “More comfy here?”

“I-I didn’t say to stop,” Slake whispered, then laughed as Char kissed her neck. “Y-You’re good...”

Char drew his hips back ever so slightly – and noticed out of the corner of his bright red eyes that Slake’s hand was slipping slowly up and under the pillow. She bit her lower lip, her voice hungry.

“ ... so so good...”

He shifted his hips...

She grabbed onto something.

Char thrust deep at the exact same moment Slake pulled the wyrmgun and planted the barrel to Char’s temple. Slake’s eyes glittered with lust and cold focus, even as she grunted low in her throat and quivered in orgasmic pleasure as his dark cock filled her again.

“ ... t- ... too fucking good,” Slake hissed. Her legs, despite her words ... or maybe because of them, looped over his hips, hooking ankle over ankle, keeping Char buried deep inside of her head. Char panted softly, gleams of sweat glittering on his ebony black skin as his fingers tightened on the pillows to either side of the curvy, muscular Doorkicker.

“Babe-”

“Don’t. Babe. Me.” Slake whispered, her voice husky. She shifted the grip in the pistol, so her arm rested against her chest, the barrel of her pistol aimed against his chin. Char’s dick throbbed, twitching even harder inside of her, bumping against a deep part of her body – something that sparked warm pleasure in Slake’s eyes. “F-Fuck. Ah. You’re a shapeshifted dragon. Aren’t you?” she asked, quietly.

Char gazed into her eyes, and tried to judge the right response.

He smirked, then figured...

Fuck it.

His tongue elongated as he tilted his head down, kissing the barrel of the wyrmgun. He tasted the cold bone, the crusted bits of uncleaned acid on the inside of the barrel. He wrapped his long, snake-like tongue around and around the barrel, as if it was a cock, then drew back with a soft hiss. “What gave it away?” he crooned – and started to slowly fuck Slake a bit. Just a tiny movement of his hips, driving his cock into her again and again. Slake grunted and bucked her hips back, but kept her finger on the trigger and thumb on the hammer.

“For one?” Slake panted, then gasped as his cock hit her G-spot again. “Y-You have an ... ah ... eighteen inch dick and it feels ... fucking amazing.” She panted. “Dragon cock.”