Chapter 6

MAVLYNN

Mavlynn walked down the street and tried to not think about how, at this very moment, she was carrying more money than she had ever had in her entire life. The heavy bag swung in her grip, and the coins within clinked and clanked against one another – and as someone who had grown up grubbing for ends to meet, she could hear the difference between copper and gold and platinum. Platinum had this heavier, weightier sound. Like the promise of a better future. Her skirts swirled around her hips and she hesitated, taking a step more to lean against a lamppost that thrust up from the sidewalk, the sleeping dragon in the crook glowing brightly at the top.

“The beach, huh?” she whispered, softly.

Slake and her ... him at the time ... had dreamed about heading to the beach. Leaving Wyrm City and its rains and its politics and its grubbing, and just getting somewhere nice and far away. She lifted her head, and saw the smeared sky overhead, the scales of dark clouds and the rippling pattern of colored lightning presaging the evening’s acid rains.

The dream had never been closer. It had never been farther away. The changes she had undergone meant that she’d never be able to leave Chariscora Avalanche’s employ, not without that venerable dragon’s say so. And the idea of Char giving a reason for Mavlynn to leave seemed as likely as Char getting to the end of a sentence without a curse word. She rubbed her hand against her face, and for a moment, the insane urge to just throw the money at the first assassin to try and take it from her flashed into her brain.

Yeah.

Great plan. If the attackers didn’t try and kill her, Char would.

Anger and resentment mixed together in her brain as the rain started to drip down, hissing softly against the pavement. It was a bad storm, but at this moment, Mavlynn didn’t care. Her maid outfit was treated with enough enchanted fiber to be on par with a +1 suit of chainmail, and she had dragon scales under her seemingly elfin skin. Just as she expected, the first droplet to scud along her cheek left nothing but a faint tingle. Then she heard the soft sound of a foot scraping on dampening pavement. She half turned and saw a man in a thick set of leather robes over what had to be bulky armor emerging from the shadows behind her. He had the canted, broad poofy hat of a streetsknecht and his leather jacket had been embroidered with purple and gold neon bright heraldics.

Two more people came around the corner to the other side of her – one of them a slender elf with two knives, the other a burly looking orc with a mace and shield, which he rapped together with a soft clang clang. They all walked towards her with the same deadly purpose.

“You know?” Mavlynn asked, quietly, feeling all the feelings balling up tight into her belly. “I was pushed around a lot before I became a kobold.”

“We have three archers covering you with long ranged acid-rifles,” the streetsknecht said, his voice having a deep, gutteral quality. Mavlynn cocked her head and flicked her eye, bringing a slitted iris into line. The new dragon-sight she had flared and she saw through his clothing to the thick armor beneath – he was wearing an actual suit of articulated bone armor, with draconic muscle tissue sewn into it and hooked to a cheap vat-grown brain near the nape of his neck. It’d make him even stronger and tougher than his implants – which included a cold breath weapon slapped into the back of his throat. She flicked her iris back up and shook her head.

“Did you think that Chariscora Avalanche would be so mindbogglingly stupid to let her kobold out with this much plat and not expect this?” Mavlynn asked. “Do you want to see how much money she spent on me first hand, or are you going to just leave and let me-”

The rogue came at her back, knives at the ready. Mavlynn sighed internally, then spun on her high heel, the balance perfect, the sweep of her leg timed to the exact right moment. She swept the rogue’s legs out from under her and then slammed her back with an upward blow from the bag of platinum. It might not have been a particularly elegant blunt weapon, but it still did the job. The rogue yelped as she was flipped up into the air and landed in the same cup of the lightpost that held the glowing dragon, who woke with a hissing roar of shock and anger and began to flash in strobing pulses of yellow and red light out of sheerest annoyance.

In the first pulse, Mavlynn darted under the two handed broadsword that the streetsknecht had drawn from under his robes. Hissing acid rain flared along the blade as she came up inside of his guard, darting underneath his arm, then grabbing onto the control brain. Normally, it was seated well enough that people could go at it with sledgehammers and not dislodge it.

Fortunately, Mavlynn didn’t need sledgehammers. Her eyes flashed as one of the dragons in her brain stuck his claws in deep and her astral form leaped into the controller brain. This first transition from the physical to the astral since her transformation almost shocked her into immobility. She had had no idea that while she had been Mavlor, she had moved with a thick skein wrapped around her astral body, that there had been separation between what she wanted and what she could do. Her fingers moved as if through air, when before, she had been used to slush.

She could have twisted his spine in half. Instead, she yanked a few internal wires, reprogrammed a routine, then yanked her physical back, her soul snapping into her body

The powered armor started to stomp forward, his swinging sword flailing wildly. “Stop! Stop!” He exclaimed, straining, his arms groaning as they were forced to move – his muscle against the armor’s strength meant that neither moved quite in the direction they wanted to go. The orc with the mace and hammer and to jerk aside to avid getting slashed, but as he advanced past his friend, three bolts of acid shot from the highrise to the left of Mavlynn. She snapped her head up ... and spat a bolt of fire out by pure instinct.

The explosion blew the acid apart before it reached the midpoint between street and shooter, and the acid-rifles reload time meant-

The orc came in, swinging his mace with brutal eagerness at her head. She ducked left, then right as he pulled the mace back down. It cracked against the pavement, his long arm and furious swing oversetting him. But then a crackling roar of thunder exploded and a lightning bolt shot down from the sky, striking the precise point he had hit. Mavlynn sprang backwards, her high heels skidding along the ground. She turned her skid into a backflip, evading three more acid blasts – one hitting where her chest had been, another two splattering where her head had been. The acid hissed and bubbled as she sighed. “A cleric, huh?” she asked.

“We’re getting paid a big chunk of change for you, kobold,” the orc growled. “And you don’t seem to have much beyond wired reflexes and that breath weapon.”

Mavlynn smiled sweetly at him. Then she tossed the bag of platinum into the air. It sailed up.

Time slowed.

Her legs pumped and sent her shooting up into the air, arcing up as she spread her arms wide – fingers clenching as claws burst from the tips. She landed, both feet slamming directly into his upraised shield, then slammed her claws into his armored helmet and flung herself up and over his head. She tore away the helmet and no small amount of skin and cheek. The orc bellowed in pain and shock as she held out her hand, nails snicking back into place as the strap of the duffel dropped right back into her palm. Her left arm snaked out and wrapped around the orc’s throat, yanking him back against her chest. She started to sidle left.

“Y-You bitch! You clawed my fucking face!” the orc said.

“Wow, you noticed?” Mavlynn hissed under her breath.

She flicked her eyes left and right. The rogue was nowhere to be seen – she had gotten off the lamp post in the strobing, pulsing confusion. The acid-fire was being held right now. The streetsknecht was still walking in a straight line, grunting as he tried to control his armor...

An acid bolt splashed against the orc’s chest. He bellowed in shock and fury. “You dicks!”

Mavlynn didn’t know if it was a twitchy trigger finger or cold blooded calculation. Instead, she just flung the orc away from her, rolled away as more acid bolts splattered the walls and glass of the skyscraper behind her, then sprinted. She got right to the power armored man – and there, she learned it was definitely cold blooded calculation: A splatter aimed at her slammed directly into his head, causing him to shriek in pain and shock – but only for a second as his hat, skull, face and brain melted into a slurry of bubbling red. More bolts landed before and ahead of his now rapidly moving power armor.

“Wyrm above, you guys are assholes!” Mavlynn shouted over the corpse’s shoulder, her heart hammering as she reached the corner – and two large dragons pulled up, their claws scraping, their armored hides covered in bright paint and flashy colors. From them emerged what looked like sixteen goblins, all of them clad in leather and metal, with knives and wyrmguns.

“There she is! Get her! Get the plat!” One of the goblins cackled.

More acid bolts from the snipers kept slapping into the ground around Mavlynn as she thought, not for the first time, that a maid outfit was a terrible getup for a full on gang war. She growled, then focused – and split her attention. A sliver of her mind sent her soul into the power armor’s controlling brain, yanking the programming and cramming in as much white hot rage as she could feel. The other part of her tongued the breath weapon implant in her mouth from sphere to cone. The faint click of shifting bone against her soft pallet reminded her, sickeningly, of her earliest memories of dentistry, and made it all the more easy to open her mouth and unleash a burst of brilliant red flames from her mouth. The goblins screamed and even their dragons – barely aware they were being moved around at all – yelped in surprise.

She rushed towards the crisped piles of the first line, slammed her elbow into the nose of a goblin trying to aim a wyrmgun at her, grabbed another and flung him into the way of another sniper shot, then sprang up onto the cabin built onto the dragon. She landed in a seat that had been affixed to the dragon’s spinal column, with the drivestick attached to an exposed chunk of brain, and two bony plates emerging for go fast and stop. She grabbed onto the stick, shoved the dragon from ‘stupefy’ to ‘sprint’ and then put the bone to the brain. The dragon roared and started to sprint down the road, leaving the shocked and awed goblins behind.

“Just bring the plat to the station, you’ll be attacked a few times, it’ll be easy,” Mavlynn grumbled under her breath. A tiny spark of astral focus brought up the DPS on the smooth scales that ridged up above the exposed brain – showing her position in Wyrm City in glowing, arcane energy. She frowned, then started to tap at the glittering runes, her claws snicking out in her irritation.

Rerouting, the runes flared and showed her a U turn.

“No, I want to go to Red Station!” Mavlynn snapped.

The side mirror on the dragon’s harness exploded with a spray of metal and glass. Mavlynn yelped, jerking her head away from the runes to the windshield, then to the mirror. She saw a tiny dragon gnawing on the remains of the mirror, still smoking from his launch. She craned her head around and saw a sleek bonecycle whirring along the road behind her, white wheels flashing as the arcane engine drove the skeletal construction forward faster and faster. On it were two streetsknechts, both flamboyantly dressed – a riot of purples, reds, greens and neon pink. One had a wyrmgun in her right hand and a curved sword in the other, while the other was merely focused on driving her bonecycle in a weaving arc, cutting around other dragons on the road that were moving at a more sedate pace than her thundering beast.

They were both armored – in checkered patterned leather jackets and highly plumed riding helmets: Frog helms with glowing HUD strips for vision.

Mavlynn scowled, twisted on the wheel, and swung her dragon in a curving sprint around a corner.

Rerouting!

“Shut up!” She snapped.

The bonecycle screeched closer and the streetsknecht on the back fired another shot, then another. Each tiny dragon she launched slammed into the metal housing around the dragon she was riding – but she knew it was only a matter of time before the streetsknecht put a dragon right on her knees and she went from going seventy miles an hour to none. She adjusted her pressure on the bone-spur keeping the dragon sprinting forward, then twisted hard, driving the shoulder of her beast towards the approaching bonecycle.

The pilot yelped and then took the world’s worst spill, flipping over the handlebars and skidding in a spray of bone chips and sparks as her armored body hit pavement. The gunner simply leaped up and, with a thump, landed on the dragon’s roof.

Mavlynn looked up – and then saw as the tip of the blade slammed through the thin metal of her dragon’s roof and almost impaled her through the shoulder. She twisted aside and then, furiously, slammed her elbow into the blade. The blade snapped completely in half and, with a single flash of inspiration, Mavlynn slammed down on the brakes. Her dragon dug in its claws and stopped so suddenly that the streetsknecht on the roof went flying off just as impressively as her comrade had – without the sword to anchor herself, she tumbled, then hit, then rolled and rolled and came to a stop near several stopped dragons, the drivers in their cabins gaping in shock at the sudden explosion of violence on their city streets.

Rerouting... The runes said, again.

Mavlynn shook her head.

The streetsknecht that had just spilled off her car started to slowly stumble to her feet. She shook her head, then reached up and took off her plumed frog helm. Underneath, her hair was a wild confusion of pink girls and her nose was bleeding. She lifted her hand. “That!” she said. “Was...”

Then she collapsed to the ground. Mavlynn stepped from her dragon, which was panting and steaming and ticking softly as it cooled off, then walked over to the prone woman. She knelt down, checked her, and saw that she was just stunned. She was going to be okay. Mavlynn sighed, then grabbed her and picked her up, and went to the other cyclist. She had a broken arm and was trying to drag herself to her bonecycle, which itself had done the worst of the three, crumpled and shattered in half a dozen places, chips of white scattered across the ground.

“Come on!” Mavlynn grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. The woman screamed, her voice muffled and echoy within her frog helm. The streetsknecht groaned and struggled against her grip, but Mavlynn jammed both of them into the back of the dragon. “Sit there, and stay quiet.”

She got into the driver’s seat, then streaked off well before the cops arrived.

“What the fuck, man?”

The streetsknecht with the broken arm and the frog helm still on was the one who spoke up when Mavlynn hit the brakes and her stolen dragon came to a stop at the Dragon City Draconic Hospital for Dragon Related Ailments. She reached into the duffel bag, pulled out two platinum coins, and flicked them to the two girls. “Here,” she said.

“ ... what the fuck, man?” the girl with the broken arm grabbed onto her frog helm, yanking it off to reveal green features and tusks. “W-What is this? A trick or something?”

“No,” Mavlynn said, sighing. “I was told to make an example out of everyone who attacked me. Fire, acid, tossing around, sure. But I think I want to make one example of my own.” She slumped in her seat. “I ... just ... tell people that the kobold for Chariscora Avalanche is an okay kind of NPC, you know?”

The two girls regarded her uncertainly. “Won’t your DM get pissed at you? Just tossing plat at some kickers?” the pink haired one asked, her voice high and nervous.

“Eh. Maybe.” Mavlynn shrugged. “But she spent so much money on me, I might as well tell her to go sit on a polearm if she gets too snarky. Worst thing she can do is sell me off and that’s not so bad.” She craned her head back, then grinned. “Go on! Get outta here!”

The two streetsknechts didn’t need a second warning. They tumbled out of the back of the dragon. But as Mavlynn started to get ready to drive again, a hand reached in and grabbed her head. She was yanked forward and down and to her shock, she found her lips mashed up against soft, plae elfin lips as the pink haired streetsknecht leaned in against the driver’s side window, her feet braced on the stoop that ran along the dragon’s flanks. Her tongue was warm and gentle, pressing into Mavlynn’s mouth. Then she drew back, panting softly, her hands releasing Mavlynn’s head so she could dangle from the window.

“Thanks,” she said, blushing. “ ... Pixie.”

Then she was gone.

Mavlynn shook her head slightly. “Right.”

She drove off, the dragon’s claws sparking and flashing. She had another secret reason she could drop on Chariscora’s head, a reason she hadn’t mentioned to the streets: She supposed zero percent of anyone would ever imagine a kobold would do anything but double tap her attackers. So, taking two of them to DCDHDRA was like ... totally implausible. That’d throw people off her scent. Right? She kept her eyes out, looking left and right as she drove through the city, reaching the Red District and, from there, parking her dragon, yanking off the metal covering with a grunt, and then smacking it’s butt.

“Go on! Get!” she shouted and the dragon, his astral soul still far off in the high astral, started to wander off.

She supposed that’d keep her from being found immediately, if anyone was tracking the dragon.

With the bag of platinum in her hand and her maid outfit still remarkably impeccable despite rain and fire, Mavlynn came to the Red District station and walked up the stairs into the large indoor plaza that served as the waiting spot. She looked slowly around – and spotted Slake after a few moments. Her heart clenched, seeing the doorkicker in person again. It felt like a lifetime ago. It had been, like, two days. She bit her lower lip, her hand tightening around the strap of the duffel bag. Then she started to walk forward, her high heels clicking.

The Red District station was mostly empty, and the huge mural of red dragons and volcanoes that covered the far wall was an incongruously fantastical counterpoint to her and Slake. Slake was dressed in concealing brown robes, and under the hood, Mavlynn could see that the impressive streetsknecht had lost a lot of the implants that had made her so intimidating – she guessed they had to have been sold off. It made her look softer, more approachable. Which is why Mavlynn was somewhat taken aback when a soft click of bone on bone made it clear that Slake had a gun under her robes.

“Not one step closer,” she said, her voice soft. “You from Avalanche?”

Mavlynn bowed, her skirts frilling. “I am Mavlynn, kobold to House Avalanche,” she said, wanting to scream: It’s me! It’s me, Mavlor! Annoyingly, Mav was not an extremely rare elfin prefix. She clenched her teeth, while Slake regarded her.

“ ... okay, I see why dragons buy you guys now,” she said, and shifted her hand under her robes. When she flung them back to free her hand to take the platinum, her wyrmgun was holstered at her hip. Mavlynn held out the bag and Slake took it with a soft grunt. She hefted it, then frowned, intently. “This is two short.”

Mavlynn opened her mouth – but before she could respond, Slake stepped around, shifting and moving so her back was to the rest of the station. Her other hand pulled and placed her wyrmgun against Mavlynn’s chin, aiming up. Slake’s eyes were ferocious. “Listen, kobold,” she said, her voice soft. “Two may not sound like a lot, but I’m very ... very suspicious today.” She leaned in. “What is it? Bugs? Astral trackers? Replaced the coins with bombs or something?”

“H-How can you tell?” Mavlynn stammered.

Slake hefted the bag. “Before...” She looked sad. Mavlynn, in a flash, saw the face of Queerie, the elf arcanist who had been a part of Slake’s close knit, well run party of doorkickers. Before him. Before Razor had ruined it all. “ ... I learned a cantrip, okay. It’s good for when people try and fucking screw you.”

Mavlynn closed her eyes. “I ... I gave two coins to two streetsknechts that were hurt in getting here.”

“Your buddies?” Slake asked, frowning. “Didn’t expect a kobold would need an escort.”

“No, they ... tried to kill me, I felt bad for them,” Mavlynn said.

Slake slowly lowered her pistol. The bone white of the barrel traced along her neck, feeling as insistent as a claw. It tangled against the frill of her blouse and Mavlynn bit her lip as she felt her nipples hardening. Slake had always been attractive, but ... did aiming a gun at her have to be this ... erotically charged? Or was it just the fact she was a kobold now that made her a whimpery mess around stronger women? Or ... her nose flared and she blinked.

There was another reason.

She could smell the musk of a dragon male on Slake. Her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, while Slake holstered her pistol, frowning. “You. Felt bad. For people trying to kill you? And you say you work for that asshole Chariscora?” She asked.