Chapter 8

So, you ever want to know what to do when you’re stuck on a undead-infested, formerly drowish space-frigate and your wife has been kidnapped and also your only friend is actually an evil dwarf in a gimp suit?

Well, firstly, grats, dude! You’re living one crazy, out there life! Nose-Five! A nose-five, in case you aren’t a dragon, is where you bump your nose against another dragon’s nose. All dragons do it and definitely not just me.

Secondly...

“Nightcore!” I said, cheerfully as I walked down the narrow, angular corridor. Behind me, Blackheart was fiddling with the collar that was still strapped around his thick, muscular neck.

“Nightwhat?” Blackheart asked.

“Nightcore will cheer this place up!” I said, nodding, then started to tab through my internal music list. I had Queen and Weird Al and some nu-metal, and also two and a half albums by 30 Seconds to Mars (did they count as nu-metal or screamo?) Then I also had that numa numa song, and the Terrible Secret of Space, two tracks by M.C Fontalot, Attack of the Clonefucker (that song was naughty) and did I mention the Queen? But most importantly, I had two albums of Nightcore, which I had split into Fastcore Nightcore and Sadcore Nightcore.

Man, I had said ‘core’ so many times, it was starting to sound weird to me.

But then I ran into the first of many technical problems: I had no external speakers and I had just walked into a mob of zombies. The room that the zombies were all in looked like it had once been an armory, considering the number of drowish weapons on the walls. The zombies themselves were all drow. Their desiccated flesh and their sunken in eyes now glowed with yellowish light, and they gurgled as they saw me and Blackheart.

“Why ... do we ... hunger?” one drow gurgled, black bile bubbling from around their lips.

“Cause you’re hungry?” I suggested. “Have you tried some ... lightsabers!?” And with that I summoned up my psi-sword and slashed it right through the drowbie’s neck. As his head hit the floor, the other zombies started to slouch towards me, their arms outstretched. I stepped back up against Blackheart, who clutched onto my shoulders like the worlds least sexy and least fun princess. Don’t get me wrong, I was fine with dudes. I even liked shifting into a girl sometimes and riding the D. But I preferred boys who didn’t have beards and chest beards and butt beards. Maybe if Blackheart shaved? And stopped being evil?

“What is a bloody lightsaber?” Blackheart hissed, his beard tickling at the back of my neck. “That’s a psi-sword!”

“Yes, good, we’ll say that when Disney sues us!” I said, cheerfully, then realized that I was holding my sword in a fencing pose. Pff! Zombies. I held out my wrist, removed the bones that would prevent it from rotating three hundred and sixty degrees, then started to spin my wrist on a socket. The psi-sword flashed and whirred as it formed a perfect, ruby red circle in the air. Like a big old crackling, hissing Cuisinart made of lasery death. And I walked forward and the zombies walked forward and they met my psi-sword and hissing, bubbling blood started to froth into the air. I winced and hissed and groaned as gore splattered my face and my shoulders, until finally, I was stepping past the pile of twitching bodies. I banished my psi-sword, coughing and spluttered.

“Ugh! God! Ew!” I wriggled. “Jesus Christ, this is foul.”

“Y-You just killed thirty drow zombies!” Blackheart exclaimed.

I started to flail my hands. “Auuuuh, it’s in my hair! It’s in my hair!”

“It’s urk!”

“Urk!?” I spun around to look down at myself in the light shining from one of the barely functional consoles that lined the walls of the armory. “Urk? What does urk mean?” I looked at my face, wincing as I saw just how much black zombie-blood was splashed across my bishi features. Ugh! Urk was right!

“Gnhhh!” Blackheart said from behind me, his feet drumming against the ground. He was dancing in disgust, I couldn’t blame him for that. Then, suddenly, a laser burned a hole in the wall above my head. A spurt of ruby red, molten metal splashed against my forehead and I yelped, then spun around.

“Blackheart!” I said, angrily, seeing him flailing around with the laser rifle, clutched in his left hand, the beam sputtering in a ruby red spray of death. More wall started to melt and pulp as the pulsing beam bit into adamantine and steel. “What the flip!?”

“Brash!” He choked out, and I realized that his hand was gripping at his beard. I sighed, rolling my eyes.

“I knew it! That dumb beard-” I walked forward and grabbed said beard, tugging it up to reveal that a thick, pulsating mass of intestines were wrapped around his throat. I made a noise somewhere between an ‘urughghgh’ and ‘bleaaagh!’ and immediately used my immense super-strength to tear at the intestines. But the intestines refused to budge. I blinked. Then I swore, heatedly. “Fiddlesticks!” My shapeshifting powers were all focused on keeping the Beast from consuming my body in a massive wave of red spores. No shifting? No super-strength. No ability to become a kitten either!

“Uuuuh!” Blackheart opened his mouth, his face going purplish gray underneath his bristly black beard.

“Uh, one second!” I said, then focused, creating my psi-sword. “I’m going to cut the intestines off from your neck with an extremely accurate sword swing!” I nodded, gripping my psi-swords hilt, readying myself.

That was when the stomach sack dropped from the ceiling, wrapped itself around the upper half of my head, and started to dump zombie stomach acid down the back of my shirt. I started to flail. “Auuuuuuuugh!” My psi-sword whirred and vrred as it cut through the air and I heard Blackheart staggering and stumbling around, squeaking inarticulately past the intestines strangling him.

“Okay!” I shouted, my free hand gripping the stomach, which kept trying to wriggle further along my face like the worlds least sexy facehugger. Which was saying something, facehuggers were inherently unsexy. “Okay! I’m going to hold my sword out and you can just ... walk the intestines into it! Okay?”

I paused.

“I can’t see you nod, Blackheart, just ... hurrrryyy!” I squeaked as the stomach managed to slip past my fingers, meaning now my left palm was mashed up against my cheek and my arm was trapped in the stomach too. Acid sloughed along my back and it was going from being just gross to actually sting a little.

There was a faint sizzle, then a gasping: “Gotcha! Brash, ya daft bugger, hold perfectly still!”

“Okay!” I said. Well, I tried. The stomach was starting to slurp down my face and had covered my mouth hole. So, it was more like ‘mfffph!’ I remained as perfectly still as I could. Then a flare of bright red light filled my eyes, filtered through the thin membrane of a zombie’s stomach. Then the stomach exploded off my head with a flare of smoke and hissing steam as it turned into so many little bits. Blackheart lowered the laser rifle he had used, adjusting the barrel with one hand.

“You okay?” he asked.

I lifted up the hand I had used to lawnmower the undead to give him a thumbs up. Instead my hand hung loose and limp, sagging around on a wrist that looked all scrunched up like a slinky that had been owned by Egon Spengler from the mirror universe. I blinked slowly. “ ... oh! Right! I can’t shapeshift anymore. I just powderized every bone in my wrist!”

And that was when the pain hit me!

Good news! Medi-kits worked on dragons, even if they were currently unable to shapeshift. Better news? Blackheart had a suit of armor now, and a laser rifle, which meant he’d be able to help. Best news of all? We had managed to stomp a few more masses of zombies and they were no longer quite so gross. For one thing, we had lased them from a distance, and nothing makes zombies easier to clean up than flash-boiling their blood with high powered laser rifles. It causes their brains to explode, but there’s almost no splatter! Win win! Plus, it gave my splinted up wrist time to heal a bit.

“Pff, more like Litch Lame!” I said, cheerfully as we checked another doorway.

“Brash, you jammy bastard,” Blackheart muttered. “That’s even worse than Lich Loser. And Lich Not a Nice Guy. And Lich Totally Not Good At Being Scary And I wasn’t Really Scared I was Just Faking.”

I scoffed. “LTNGABSAIWRSIJF is a great burn!” I put my hand on my chest. “It just rolls right off the tongue!”

Blackheart rolled his eyes. “My question is where is the vampire bint.”

“Hey!” I said, scowling at him. “That vampire bint is my ... wait, no, vampire was accurate. That vampire bint...” I prodded Blackheart’s chest with one finger. “She’s my wife. To be. Eventually. I think. How many times do you have to nut someone with a wedding ring on before you get married?”

“Why are you asking me!?” Blackheart flung one arm wide as he rested his laser rifle against his shoulder. “We duergar don’t get married.”

“Aww...” I said.

“We don’t want to get married!” Blackheart snapped. “Love is weakness, you- what are you? Stop that!” He squirmed as I wrapped my arms around him, hugging him tightly, chest-beard be damned! He started to shove at me – and in the distance, a low grinding rumble could be heard. I drew back, clutching my rifle to my chest as I frowned.

“I heard that...” I whispered.

“It’s a bloody ship grinding against another ship. Sounds like docking clamps,” Blackheart said.

I pumped my fist in celebration. “Woop woop! That’s gotta be the UNN Rickenbacker docking with us. Or maybe the Von Braun!” I said.

“I gotta know, why do humans name their ships such stupid shite?” Blackheart asked as we started to trot down the corridors – he was slower, being a duregar, so I made sure to give him plenty of time to keep up with me by doing a little skipping dance as I jumped down the corridor.

“What’s stupid about naming a ship after a scientist who built super-weapons for the evil fascists who wanted to take over the entire world?” I asked, then paused. “Oh my god, Werener Von Braun’s historical legacy is complicated.”

“Okay, now that actually makes sense. But what’s a Rickenbacker?” Blackheart asked.

“We idolize a man who invented V2s for Nazis!” I whispered, my hands going to my face. “What other historical figures have complex histories we sweep under the rug!?”

“You know what? Nevermind.” Blackheart shook his head, and I swore he started to mutter under his breath about ‘daft ass humans and their bloody crazy dragons.’ Which did make sense, humans were pretty weird sometimes. I started to follow after Blackheart as he came to a corridor that opened into a room that itself looked like a control platform for a series of gravity-cranes that were mounted along a catwalk that ringed around a huge launch bay. Several sleek, needle-like drow strikecraft were still parked there, two with their pilots still slouched in their cockpits. But what drew my attention were the pair of plasma torpedoes that had been placed on their ends and had two girls strapped to them.

Specifically, Alexandress the Vampire Princess and P90 the bubblegum golem!

Standing next to them was a skeleton (or, as Jim Sterling might say ... a skellington) who was checking a big clicky pocket watch.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Get my girlfriend and also my other girlfriend off those plasma torpedoes!”

The skellington looked up at the catwalk. “Ah, there you are. Took you long enough,” he said.

I held up the tiny phylactery that we had been using to track the living souls. “It’d have been longer if I wasn’t so clever, wise, and sexy.”

“Mmmphh!” P90 shouted through the gag that had been jammed into her mouth. Alex, meanwhile, was looking very groggy. I zoomed in using the advanced technology and leaning my head forward and narrowing my eyes. Since, uh, I couldn’t shapeshift anymore. I noticed there were several necklaces around my wife-oh’s neck, and thick bundles of something pale white were dangling against her grayish chest. I bit my lip slightly.

“Is that garlic?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“Of course not. This is a highly advanced anti-vampiric contra-necromantic life foci!” The skeleton shouted back.

“ ... it’s garlic, isn’t it,” I said, scowling. “Well, good news, Mr. Skellington, you just gave me the topping for my next pizza.” I grabbed onto the edge of the railing, jumped down, and then hit the ground with a loud thump. And nearly snapped the bones on both of my ankles because fuck I hated being depowered. No flight! No shapeshifting! No super-strength! No rad-ass super-guns. It fucking sucked. But fortunately, I had been genetically engineered with some pre-programmed dragon martial arts. That included how to tuck and roll when needed, and so I came up with only a few heavy bruises rather than snapped bones.

“My name is Garry,” the skeleton said. “The LK set me here to tell you if you take one step closer...” He held up a detonator. “The girls get it.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. P90 made a muffled shouting noise through her gag.

“So, what does the LK want?” I asked. “The Quantum Hoard’s secrets are known to Princess Kira, not me. I don’t even know what a quantum is, even if some guy in my dreams tried to explain it to me, like, five times. But I don’t even own a fedora!” I flung out my arms. “So, you just killed a bunch of drow and captured me to no end! Failed plan! Bad plan!”

“Failed ... we...” Garry shook his head. “We’ve deprived the Princess of her most able protector. Both of them! And we captured the Princess of the Necronox Necrocracy! In what possible definition is that a fucking failure?”

“Well, the part where you let a gravity crane carry a five ton cargo crate over your head,” I said, snickering. “While debating with the sexiest dragon in the universe. Which is me.”

Garry had time to look up just before the five ton cargo crate I had mentioned dropped from the gravity crane and turned him into so much bone meal. The impact caused the floor to jump under me and I winced as my poor ankles both twinged. I turned around, then gave Blackheart a big old thumbs up. “Thanks, Blackie!”

“Don’t call me that,” he snarled.

I walked past the cargo crate, hopped up, and grabbed the gag and the garlic and tossed both as far away as I could. Then I had to actually get out my psi-sword and carefully cut the nylon cables that held both things to the girls, since I was no longer actually super strong anymore. Grumble. But once P90 could speak, she laughed; “Holy shit, Brash, I am glad to see you.”

“Thanks!” I said, then held up my wrist to Alex. Alex opened her mouth, her fangs already distending.

“Brash!” P90 hissed. “The Beast!”

I jerked my wrist back just in time and Alex’s chompers chomped down on open air. Her eyes flared red and her face became ever so slightly more bestial. “Sorry!” I squeaked. Behind me, a faint whirring announced that Blackheart was descending from the catwalk on the elevator that I might have maybe should have used. He jogged over, puffing slightly.

“Now, we just need to-” he started.

“Hey, wanna donate some blood to my wife?” I asked.

“What!?” Blackheart asked before Alex, who P90 had just cut loose from the plasma torpedo, tackled him to the ground.

“Thanks!” I said, cheerfully.

I turned to P90, who was rubbing at her jaw. “Fucking assholes,” she muttered. “When the Lich King started doing his spooky shit, we both got grabbed by some kind of variation of Bigby’s Grasping Hand combined with a phase shifting spell. But ... Brash, I want to ask you something: Do you hear that?” She held up her hands. I listened. I could hear Alex muttering under her breath about stale, overly-aled duregar blood. I could hear the faint whirr and hum of the ship’s life support. I shook my head slowly.

“Nothing,” I said, then squeaked as Alex pounced onto my back and started to hug-nuzzle me. Her nose sniffed up against my neck and she whispered sweetness in my ear. I squirmed and reached back to try and hug her back. Normally, I’d grow some sick rad back-ceps and hug her with back arms, but instead, I made do with regular arms. I blushed as I saw Blackheart sitting up and looking quite disgusted at the two of us.

“Exactly,” P90 said. “No laser cutters. No boarding pods. You’re not getting telemetry from either UNN ships.”

I nodded.

“Now, unless my magic detector is on the fritz, or we’re not in a dampening field,” P90 said. “Which leaves...”

I paused. “Faraday cage?” I suggested as Alex wriggled off my back and stood next to me. She slid her hands into her pockets, looking faintly ashamed of the quick glomp.

“Nah,” Alex said. “A Faraday Cage would have cut us off right from the get go.”

“Which means...” I whispered.

“Yes, Brash the Dragon,” a booming, echoing voice came from the darkness at the far end of the cargo hold. The lights suddenly burst into full life, filling the room with a light that I was pretty sure fucking uncomfortable for the Drow. But the Drow were all dead. And at the far end of the cargo hold, standing in a very intimidating formation, was a mass of troops, all armed, all aiming those arms at us. Most of them were clad in bone white power armor with snarling orc-faces caved into their face plates, the snout-like muzzles capped by breathing grills. Their guns were plasma-casters, and all of their focusing mandibles were extended and crackling as they sustained green orbs of ready plasma fire. Mixed among them were people in similar armor, save it was colored blood red and came with cool capes.

Those guys were all armed with their own unique spin on a killamajig. Some of them had polearms tipped with chainsaw blades. Others held plasma chakra in magnetic gauntlets. Others still were carrying brutal looking crystalline tetsubos, their handles spindle thin compared to their jagged, massive heads. And some had big huge punching gloves with wicked spikes on their knuckles. There was one uniform thing about them, though?

They flanked the biggest, meanest, ugliest looking Beholder I had ever seen in my life.

Which was not hard, since I had never seen a Beholder before.

But still! This guy was mean. Furrowed scars slid along the curved edge of the Beholder’s body, causing its massive central eye be permanently narrowed in a suspicious squint. Its face was covered by a cow-catcher style grille that concealed its mouth behind a breathing apparatus, even as tubes sunk into its ugly brown-gray hide, pulsating with nutrients and liquids. It didn’t float freely. Rather, it sat in a throne-like construction that was suspended on a pair of digigrade legs that looked remarkably similar to a Madcat’s legs. No, not a Timber Wolf. They were angry mechs that looked a bit like cats, that was why they were called Madcats. Read your Battletech lore, people. The throne also had a pair of arms. But my HUD started to bleep as it identified concealed or recessed weapons.

Tactical nuclear weapons. Plasma beamcasters. Hellwhips. Shrike catapults. Jeeze, who needed this much firepower?

... shut up.

“So!” I said, trying to sound brave. “Lord Darkeye, the Cyber-Beholder. Here to try and capture me?”

“Why, Brash the Dragon!” Lord Darkeye said, sounding quite jovial in a kind of Bane from the Dark Knight Rises sort of way. He spread his arms wide with a loud whirring sound. “I captured you thirty five minutes ago!”

I gasped. Alex, who was standing next to me, turned her back to Lord Darkeye, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at him. “Man, get a load of this tranch, huh?”

“Wait, wait, wait!” I said. “A frigate this size needs a whole dang crew – a living crew – to get itself into subspace. Which is why I think you think that you captured us.” I scowled. “How the flying flip have a bunch of brain dead zambles done it? Zambles can’t fly ships. Unless they’re smart zombies. But these were not very smart zombies. I mean, you’d think they’d figure out to not try and chew on a megadamage capacity creature like moi!”

Lord Darkeye chuckled, stomping forward. Each movement of his body radiated a kind of strength that would have once been amusing but was not kinda scary, since I could no longer be stronger. I gulped and then forced myself to stand perfectly still as he drew closer and closer. This meant I got to learn something about Beholders that I had never learned before: They’re flipping huge. This guy loomed over me, his single eye swiveling down as all his eye-stalks flared around him like a constellation of murderkillers.

“The answer is quite simple, Brash the Dragon,” Lord Darkeye said. “Do you know that drow ships, like many elven vessels, are partially organic in nature?”

I blinked, slowly.

“What happens when a ship dies, Brash?” Lord Darkeye hissed.

“ ... oh.” I whispered.

A low, crackling laugh started to echo from each of the PA speakers in the cargo hold. They echoed and bounced off the walls and even the orctroopers looked a bit uncomfortable. The door leading into the cargo hold from the depths of the ship hissed open. We all looked at the darkness – and it was a darker that seemed to grow darker and darker with every second. It had gone from the absence of light to something that was present. It was a thing and it was concealing something far ... far worse. A thin crescent of white appeared in that darkness.

It was a smile.

A pair of eyes shimmered into being above that disconnected smile – and each element of the face bobbed and moved at a slightly different pace, as if the whole construction was a big fake placed onto a rippling curtain. I shuddered – and then it got worse. More eyes started to open as that rasping, hissing, dead-thing voice came from the PA speakers.

“I would like my payment now, Lord Darkeye...” the Lich King hissed.

Lord Darkeye nodded by bobbing his eyeball. Then he snapped his eye-stalk around to glare right into Alex’s face. A reddish light flared across her face and she opened her mouth, her hands clenching. She shuddered and I shoved her out of the way, leaping at her. The two of us hit the floor and I scrambled to my feet, glaring at Lord Darkeye. “I’m going to rip you apart!” I growled, a psi-sword flaring to life.

“Brash!” P90 shouted.

I spun around.

Alex, her face slack, her eyes unfocused, was walking towards the wall of blackness and the dozens upon dozens of gleaming eyes. I yelped, then sprinted after her. I grabbed her wrist – but Alex still had all her vampiric strength. Every step forward she took dragged me. “Alex, Alex, Alex!” I hissed. “Snap out of it! Come on!”

My feet dug against the metal. I’d have once been able to punch my heels through steel and root myself like an anchor. Now? Now my bare feet skidded along the smooth surface of the cargo hold without finding purchase. I snapped my psi-sword out and slammed it into the deck, trying to anchor myself this way. But that just left a furrowed red line on the ground behind me as the blade effortlessly melted the hull plating.

“Alex! Babe!” I said, my voice desperate. “It’s your husbando here, I’m gonna need you to make that will save! Now! Right now!” I tugged harder.

Alex kept walking forward. The door was terrifyingly close to us. Tears of desperation blurred in my eyes and I yanked my psi-sword from the ground. Vampires were tough as hell. They could take a lot of damage. For example ... losing their feet. I readied my blade as Alex started to walk without dragging me behind her. My muscles locked up ... and I ... I couldn’t do it. The humming blade crackled near my ear as I hefted it up.

Come on, Brash! Greater good! You’ve done this before! I thought. But it was one thing to fling yourself between a doom-beam and an entire planet. IT was another thing to hurt someone you loved. My entire brain and my entire heart screamed at one another.

Then...

My brain won.