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Writer's Guild / Freezing
« on: August 30, 2014, 12:48:14 PM »
Freezing
by FrostedLights
"Alright troops, fall in!" the fox general said, marching regally before his lines astride the majestic bird thing. There was a sound of footsteps, running past, and then a scream fading into the depths. The general dug his heels into his mount and it rushed to the side of the canyon where a diminutive fox shrank against the distant river and finally disappeared. Where his silhouette had vanished, water rushed up in a column like an erupting geyser. An otter's head popped up out of the churning water and waved at the onlookers before retrieving the dazed, water-logged soldier.
It was then that Virmir realized he had been joined by his entire unit, and they were all on their hands and knees peering over the side.
"Hey are you okay?" a ferret called down. Though it was much too far to be heard.
"He cannot hear you from up here," said another creature of indistinct but decidedly vulpine ancestry. The ferret nodded his understanding, and then yelled again, much louder.
"BACK IN LINE!" Virmir barked. His soldiers were quick to comply, all standing in a row in crisp uniforms of gray and black.
When they were all assembled, he addressed them again. "When I say 'fall in', I mean get in line."
"Sir, but we were already in line?" someone asked in the back. Virmir growled toward them and there were no further questions.
Across the canyon lay the palace of the enemy. Tall towers of ice stood above the keep like glass spires piercing into the heavens. The sunlight danced through the faceted turret roofs and cast an aurora of color across the canyon walls as though they were the movie screen of the divine. There was a single rope bridge that spanned the gap between Virmir's keep and the walls of the ice fortress. The river below seemed wanting of alligators, but perhaps those simply had not been delivered yet. Lady Auramori was a formidable foe, that could be respected. If it weren't for that blasted singing!
Even now the fox general could hear her tittering on like a songbird to the impassioned wails of her violin. Sometimes the mage could be seen on her balcony, fiddling away as she looked out over her icy dominion. Today was not one of those days, so they might yet have the element of surprise. That is, if his troops would stop hurling themselves off the edge of canyons.
"The enemy is cunning! We invade, take the snowshard, and leave before the palace begins to melt. Does everyone understand?"
Half the troops raised their hands.
"Blast it all, this is war, not elementary school!" Virmir shouted. his troops looked to each other in confusion, then all started asking questions at once, creating a cacophony the likes of which was nearly as bad as the ice mage's singing.
"Sir, what if we encounter the enemy, sir?" someone asked when the others had at last calmed down.
Virmir rubbed his chin, thinking it over. "Technically we are the homeowner's association, so we should probably not kill them. On the other hand, I am the king..." Blast, this was hard. Was murder in the neighborhood by-laws? Virmir dug out the handbook. It was stored in his cape pocket, but no larger than the size of a pea. When he had pulled it out it grew to enormous size and fell into his hands, having the heft and girth of a dictionary. The bird thing squawked a complaint at the added weight.
"According to this... Ah, yes, singing, capital crime."
"Since when?" the soldier asked in wide-eyed alarm.
"Since I wrote the book last night," Virmir said, and shrank it back to pocket size. "Onward!"
The soldiers marched in quiet procession across the swinging rope bridge, and the icy fortress loomed closer, towering over them like a great glacier come to make its slow invasion of the warmer urocyon province.
Two figures stood at either side of the bridge on the far end. They were foxes of snow, with sticks crossing out where the eyes should be. King Virmir, frozen in effigy!
"She's got no dignity, she does," one of the soldiers remarked. Virmir drew his hammer from its holder, undoing the straps that held it in place. With a mighty blow he beheaded the snow statue, sending the head hurtling toward the iron gates like a cannon ball. It hit with deafening force, denting the gate. For a moment the iron wall shuddered, then the chains let go and it teetered on its end before falling out into the courtyard. Virmir and his men spilled through, shouts of revenge rising up from their ranks.
The great hall had a sapphire carpet running up and down its length, and in lieu of white stone, soft, well-manicured snow lined the floors where the carpet did not lay. Violin music sang through the halls, seeming to echo from everywhere, frenetic and wild and passionate like the fires from the kingdom over the chasm. Was this a greeting?
The iron wall rose up behind them and slammed shut, trapping the invasion force inside. Torches of pale blue fire lit all along the walls.
"Oh blast," Virmir said, gripping the haft of his hammer. There was a tingling sound above, like a wind chime. All eyes went to the ceiling, seconds before the chandelier of ice shards fell. Cries of fear echoed against the violin music as Virmir's troops raced off in all directions. The dark hallways swallowed them, leaving Virmir with only three swordsmen by his side.
"We'll rendezvous at the dining hall!" Virmir shouted over the din. He hoped his lieutenants had heard him.
Quietly he advanced up the gloomy hall, the music high and taunting. His swordsmen followed close behind with the bird thing nipping at one of the slower ones to speed him along. Ahead he heard shouting, and the squad halted with the raise of his hand. A handful of swordsmen crossed the hallway ahead of them, all running blindly into the darkness of the opposite corridor. A straggler followed soon after, though his uniform was torn and he ran on eight spindly legs of black chitin with swirls of white. He skittered frantically after the others, and was shortly thereafter pursued by a spider the size of a horse with markings similar to the victim he pursued.
Virmir's swordsmen muttered in horror.
"Steady..." he said, calmly, then motioned them forward.
The hallway opened into an open air garden, patrolled by frost wolves. The swordsmen all fastened their weapons into their hilts and clambered up the latticework, walking over the garden's vines like tightropes. The wolves followed along, eyes aglow with wicked red light.
"Those eyes..." one of the swordsmen said in a raspy voice.
"Keep moving," Virmir ordered, swiping at one of the wolves with his hammer. They were out of reach, but it was an effective deterrent against any impulse they might have had to leap up and grab one of the foxes.
The line stopped all at once, and Virmir nearly ran into the swordsman in front of him. Blast! The front of the procession had almost made it into the window.
"What now?" he asked in a hushed whisper.
"I... I don't think she wants us to come in," the soldier at the front said. He turned slowly back to go the other way, his eyes glassy and shining with blue light.
"Who?" One of the other men asked. The soldier did not answer. He simply sank to a seated position on the rail, his eyes burning bright blue that glowed a little in the eerie dark.
Behind him, a raspy voice urged him forward. "Get them..."
He reached down to grab the rail, his hands squirming. They had shrunk to little points by then, and his legs had thinned to match. Two more emerged from the gap between his shirt and his trousers, and a dark abdomen, marked with an icy blue hourglass burgeoned out behind him. He blinked a few moments, shaking his head. The light faded from his eyes, replaced with the brown he had once had. He looked back at himself in horror, and the spider's eyes met his own.
"No, I ... but..." he said, his voice growing frail. His features softened and his shirt drew snug across the curve of a burgeoning chest. "I will..." she said, coldly, and charged.
"TREES! RUN!" Virmir shouted, and he and his other two swordsmen leaped down from the railing and charged away with the wolves and the spider-fox hot in their tails. Through a narrow corridor they ran, making their way toward the banquet hall with all due haste. At the end of the dark walkway, Virmir turned and filled the hallway with a thin wall of fire. The wolves stopped, lest they be burned. They parted to let the spiderfox through. She hissed and clicked her teeth at her escaped quarry.
"We'll ehm.. we'll get that fixed, soldier," Virmir said, rubbing his chin. He wasn't sure how, exactly, but they would find a way. Or, or she would make a fine... ehm... well surely there was something that could be done with an eight-limbed spiderfox.
Other troops had made it to the banquet hall, most of them milling about anxiously. One of the lieutenants had set a few of the better disciplined men up at the other hallways, ensuring that the enemy did not come spilling in unannounced.
"Scamper Squad, fall in!" Virmir barked. Those troops that were not on guard duty all formed a line. One particular soldier could not find a place, and so lay along the back of the line. He had been turned into a snake nearly forty feet long, with light tan belly scales and soft white fur all along his back.
"Sorry sir," the soldier said in a voice that was almost singong. Oh, it was a girl snake.
"That's quite alright, I think," Virmir said. That did sound like singing, but that could be fixed. All of this could be fixed.
At the end of the line, two soldiers stood side-by-side seeming unaltered from the waistline up, but they had the body of leopards from the waist down. Snow leopards, at that. Virmir stopped in front of them, frowning. They looked like the mage.
"You saw her?" he asked.
They looked at each other, then nodded. "She was very nice," one said.
"Yes, she offered us tea and hot cocoa," the other said. Then he pawed at the snowy ground with a forepaw. "I think there was something in it."
Virmir rolled his eyes and followed down the line inspecting the state of his soldiers. Nearly half of them were somehow altered. By his calculation though, half of them were half altered, so this was about three-quarters urocyonese, which sounded better than half and half.
The general's bird thing strode up to him. "Can I go?" he asked.
"...what?" Virmir asked, it had never spoke before. "I should think not! Who shall carry me home?!"
The bird thing scowled and lifted a feathery wing to clumsily gesture to where the general's actual mount was pecking at the spider taur's side, trying to decide if he was food or not. The soldier scampered up the wall in a feat that seemed to defy gravity.
"Oh. Well, no. Still no, we are locked in." Virmir said. Then he heard violin music, much too close.
"THERE!" he shouted, and darted through the doorway. The mage stood before him, a violin grasped in her slender human hands. She waved a forepaw like a conductor's wand, and the armor on the wall rose up and attacked.
Virmir fought to the frantic tunes of the violin, his hammer the percussion in a symphony of destruction. The armor rose again and again until it was too battered and dented and broken to rise. The mage squeaked alarm, her troops felled, and she padded away, swift of foot in the snowy hallway.
"ONWARD!" Virmir called, pointing after the girl with his hammer. His remaining troops surged around him and charged into the antechamber. Ice and wind whirled through the circular room. When the fox general entered, he found all of his troops trapped in heaps of snow and tall shards of ice.
The mage girl grinned at him from the dais where the snowshard spun between two jagged shards of ice that forked up out of the ground. It was a cold light, bright blue like the runes on the spiders and the snakes. Her eyes burned with its power.
"So, it has come to this..." Virmir said, finding it a potently dramatic thing to say. The mage girl put her violin down and picked up.. a flute?
"Trees..." Virmir said as the snow came alive around him. Two great white serpents rose from the perimeter of the room and whirled about him like a tornado of snow. Shards of ice and bits of stone cut at his face and arms, making him draw his cape up around him. One of the snakes seized him about the waist and picked him up. It began to shake him with a violent fervor.
WHAM! Virmir's hammer cracked down on the ice serpent's skull. It dropped him into the snow below. Perhaps the one good use of snow, as it cushioned his fall. Droplets of blood stained the otherwise white blanket as he advanced on the remaining serpent, but the wind soon blew it away, erasing it beneath the driving force of new snow that seemed to be slowly filling the room. The general's hip ached where the snake's fang had pierced him, and he hobbled toward the remaining serpent with the resolve of a desperate man.
The serpent seemed reluctant to attack at first, looking first to Virmir and the wounded serpent on the other side of the room. It slunk along slowly, its head buried in the snow to numb its battered nose. Virmir's thigh felt almost numb with pain, as he half limped, half dragged himself toward the monster.
"I'll get you, I'll get you all," he growled through tight grit teeth, trying to bulwark against the throbbing pain. Then the snake struck, apparently having gathered its courage. Virmir raised his hammer to ward off the blow, taking a swipe at the snake as it darted past. He sank to his knees, feeling only the biting cold against his wound. The snake came again, and Virmir drew himself up into a tight huddle, blocking with the hammer just barely. The snake bit down on the wooden mallet, hissing ferociously.
"That's mine!" Virmir shouted, yanking back on it. The hammer popped out of the ice serpent's mouth with a venomous fang sticking out of it. Virmir grinned wickedly, this was an opportunity.
"Lets see how you like it!" he shouted up at the serpent, drawing the snake fang like a sword.
The ice serpent hissed its outrage and struck at Virmir again, but this time the general waited til the last moment and drove the snake fang up into the open maw of its former owner. The snake jerked away, spasming, then sank to the ground and disappeared in a puff of snow.
The ice mage dropped her flute.
"Uhm... bye!" she said, and grabbed up the snowshard. Virmir jumped to his feet to run after her, but his leg was numb and he instead lunged forward into the snow. He could hear the snow leopard paws crunching snow crystals beneath them as she hurried away, leaping over him and then darting down the hall.
"Blast it..." Virmir groaned, at least the pain had gone. He rolled onto his knees and prodded at the wound, but felt just normal unbroken skin and soft fur. It was white, white where it should not have been, and his leg was not numb at all. He could feel his paw against the round surface. He could feel his knees against the ground, sort of. He could feel the smooth serpent belly where his knees had been. It was a pale creamy color on the underside, and marked with the unruly white mane all along the back. Even more, he could feel the weight of his fox half resting on the serpent form beneath him, as though he were seated on his legs. It was not uncomfortable to rest that way. His not-exactly-hips seated at an angle as though the snake was preparing to strike.
"Oh Blast it all," he grumbled, looking back at the sprawling expanse of his form. Then, to add insult to injury, he felt a little swelling just beneath his waist, where gray fur gave way to white serpent scales. His not-exactly-hips welled up a little.
"Wha...?" he asked, and the answer came as his chest burgeoned out into a modest but respectable curve. The general's muzzle thinned as she stood there blinking.
"GAH"! she yelped, then covered her mouth.
Even grouchier than before, Lady Virmir led her troops back across the bridge. She wanted a HOT bath, an ice sculpture to be melted over a victory feast, and to coil up around her throne and wait for the mages to fix... this!
End.
Blind Written in 90 minutes, please excuse minor typoes/errors.
by FrostedLights
"Alright troops, fall in!" the fox general said, marching regally before his lines astride the majestic bird thing. There was a sound of footsteps, running past, and then a scream fading into the depths. The general dug his heels into his mount and it rushed to the side of the canyon where a diminutive fox shrank against the distant river and finally disappeared. Where his silhouette had vanished, water rushed up in a column like an erupting geyser. An otter's head popped up out of the churning water and waved at the onlookers before retrieving the dazed, water-logged soldier.
It was then that Virmir realized he had been joined by his entire unit, and they were all on their hands and knees peering over the side.
"Hey are you okay?" a ferret called down. Though it was much too far to be heard.
"He cannot hear you from up here," said another creature of indistinct but decidedly vulpine ancestry. The ferret nodded his understanding, and then yelled again, much louder.
"BACK IN LINE!" Virmir barked. His soldiers were quick to comply, all standing in a row in crisp uniforms of gray and black.
When they were all assembled, he addressed them again. "When I say 'fall in', I mean get in line."
"Sir, but we were already in line?" someone asked in the back. Virmir growled toward them and there were no further questions.
Across the canyon lay the palace of the enemy. Tall towers of ice stood above the keep like glass spires piercing into the heavens. The sunlight danced through the faceted turret roofs and cast an aurora of color across the canyon walls as though they were the movie screen of the divine. There was a single rope bridge that spanned the gap between Virmir's keep and the walls of the ice fortress. The river below seemed wanting of alligators, but perhaps those simply had not been delivered yet. Lady Auramori was a formidable foe, that could be respected. If it weren't for that blasted singing!
Even now the fox general could hear her tittering on like a songbird to the impassioned wails of her violin. Sometimes the mage could be seen on her balcony, fiddling away as she looked out over her icy dominion. Today was not one of those days, so they might yet have the element of surprise. That is, if his troops would stop hurling themselves off the edge of canyons.
"The enemy is cunning! We invade, take the snowshard, and leave before the palace begins to melt. Does everyone understand?"
Half the troops raised their hands.
"Blast it all, this is war, not elementary school!" Virmir shouted. his troops looked to each other in confusion, then all started asking questions at once, creating a cacophony the likes of which was nearly as bad as the ice mage's singing.
"Sir, what if we encounter the enemy, sir?" someone asked when the others had at last calmed down.
Virmir rubbed his chin, thinking it over. "Technically we are the homeowner's association, so we should probably not kill them. On the other hand, I am the king..." Blast, this was hard. Was murder in the neighborhood by-laws? Virmir dug out the handbook. It was stored in his cape pocket, but no larger than the size of a pea. When he had pulled it out it grew to enormous size and fell into his hands, having the heft and girth of a dictionary. The bird thing squawked a complaint at the added weight.
"According to this... Ah, yes, singing, capital crime."
"Since when?" the soldier asked in wide-eyed alarm.
"Since I wrote the book last night," Virmir said, and shrank it back to pocket size. "Onward!"
The soldiers marched in quiet procession across the swinging rope bridge, and the icy fortress loomed closer, towering over them like a great glacier come to make its slow invasion of the warmer urocyon province.
Two figures stood at either side of the bridge on the far end. They were foxes of snow, with sticks crossing out where the eyes should be. King Virmir, frozen in effigy!
"She's got no dignity, she does," one of the soldiers remarked. Virmir drew his hammer from its holder, undoing the straps that held it in place. With a mighty blow he beheaded the snow statue, sending the head hurtling toward the iron gates like a cannon ball. It hit with deafening force, denting the gate. For a moment the iron wall shuddered, then the chains let go and it teetered on its end before falling out into the courtyard. Virmir and his men spilled through, shouts of revenge rising up from their ranks.
The great hall had a sapphire carpet running up and down its length, and in lieu of white stone, soft, well-manicured snow lined the floors where the carpet did not lay. Violin music sang through the halls, seeming to echo from everywhere, frenetic and wild and passionate like the fires from the kingdom over the chasm. Was this a greeting?
The iron wall rose up behind them and slammed shut, trapping the invasion force inside. Torches of pale blue fire lit all along the walls.
"Oh blast," Virmir said, gripping the haft of his hammer. There was a tingling sound above, like a wind chime. All eyes went to the ceiling, seconds before the chandelier of ice shards fell. Cries of fear echoed against the violin music as Virmir's troops raced off in all directions. The dark hallways swallowed them, leaving Virmir with only three swordsmen by his side.
"We'll rendezvous at the dining hall!" Virmir shouted over the din. He hoped his lieutenants had heard him.
Quietly he advanced up the gloomy hall, the music high and taunting. His swordsmen followed close behind with the bird thing nipping at one of the slower ones to speed him along. Ahead he heard shouting, and the squad halted with the raise of his hand. A handful of swordsmen crossed the hallway ahead of them, all running blindly into the darkness of the opposite corridor. A straggler followed soon after, though his uniform was torn and he ran on eight spindly legs of black chitin with swirls of white. He skittered frantically after the others, and was shortly thereafter pursued by a spider the size of a horse with markings similar to the victim he pursued.
Virmir's swordsmen muttered in horror.
"Steady..." he said, calmly, then motioned them forward.
The hallway opened into an open air garden, patrolled by frost wolves. The swordsmen all fastened their weapons into their hilts and clambered up the latticework, walking over the garden's vines like tightropes. The wolves followed along, eyes aglow with wicked red light.
"Those eyes..." one of the swordsmen said in a raspy voice.
"Keep moving," Virmir ordered, swiping at one of the wolves with his hammer. They were out of reach, but it was an effective deterrent against any impulse they might have had to leap up and grab one of the foxes.
The line stopped all at once, and Virmir nearly ran into the swordsman in front of him. Blast! The front of the procession had almost made it into the window.
"What now?" he asked in a hushed whisper.
"I... I don't think she wants us to come in," the soldier at the front said. He turned slowly back to go the other way, his eyes glassy and shining with blue light.
"Who?" One of the other men asked. The soldier did not answer. He simply sank to a seated position on the rail, his eyes burning bright blue that glowed a little in the eerie dark.
Behind him, a raspy voice urged him forward. "Get them..."
He reached down to grab the rail, his hands squirming. They had shrunk to little points by then, and his legs had thinned to match. Two more emerged from the gap between his shirt and his trousers, and a dark abdomen, marked with an icy blue hourglass burgeoned out behind him. He blinked a few moments, shaking his head. The light faded from his eyes, replaced with the brown he had once had. He looked back at himself in horror, and the spider's eyes met his own.
"No, I ... but..." he said, his voice growing frail. His features softened and his shirt drew snug across the curve of a burgeoning chest. "I will..." she said, coldly, and charged.
"TREES! RUN!" Virmir shouted, and he and his other two swordsmen leaped down from the railing and charged away with the wolves and the spider-fox hot in their tails. Through a narrow corridor they ran, making their way toward the banquet hall with all due haste. At the end of the dark walkway, Virmir turned and filled the hallway with a thin wall of fire. The wolves stopped, lest they be burned. They parted to let the spiderfox through. She hissed and clicked her teeth at her escaped quarry.
"We'll ehm.. we'll get that fixed, soldier," Virmir said, rubbing his chin. He wasn't sure how, exactly, but they would find a way. Or, or she would make a fine... ehm... well surely there was something that could be done with an eight-limbed spiderfox.
Other troops had made it to the banquet hall, most of them milling about anxiously. One of the lieutenants had set a few of the better disciplined men up at the other hallways, ensuring that the enemy did not come spilling in unannounced.
"Scamper Squad, fall in!" Virmir barked. Those troops that were not on guard duty all formed a line. One particular soldier could not find a place, and so lay along the back of the line. He had been turned into a snake nearly forty feet long, with light tan belly scales and soft white fur all along his back.
"Sorry sir," the soldier said in a voice that was almost singong. Oh, it was a girl snake.
"That's quite alright, I think," Virmir said. That did sound like singing, but that could be fixed. All of this could be fixed.
At the end of the line, two soldiers stood side-by-side seeming unaltered from the waistline up, but they had the body of leopards from the waist down. Snow leopards, at that. Virmir stopped in front of them, frowning. They looked like the mage.
"You saw her?" he asked.
They looked at each other, then nodded. "She was very nice," one said.
"Yes, she offered us tea and hot cocoa," the other said. Then he pawed at the snowy ground with a forepaw. "I think there was something in it."
Virmir rolled his eyes and followed down the line inspecting the state of his soldiers. Nearly half of them were somehow altered. By his calculation though, half of them were half altered, so this was about three-quarters urocyonese, which sounded better than half and half.
The general's bird thing strode up to him. "Can I go?" he asked.
"...what?" Virmir asked, it had never spoke before. "I should think not! Who shall carry me home?!"
The bird thing scowled and lifted a feathery wing to clumsily gesture to where the general's actual mount was pecking at the spider taur's side, trying to decide if he was food or not. The soldier scampered up the wall in a feat that seemed to defy gravity.
"Oh. Well, no. Still no, we are locked in." Virmir said. Then he heard violin music, much too close.
"THERE!" he shouted, and darted through the doorway. The mage stood before him, a violin grasped in her slender human hands. She waved a forepaw like a conductor's wand, and the armor on the wall rose up and attacked.
Virmir fought to the frantic tunes of the violin, his hammer the percussion in a symphony of destruction. The armor rose again and again until it was too battered and dented and broken to rise. The mage squeaked alarm, her troops felled, and she padded away, swift of foot in the snowy hallway.
"ONWARD!" Virmir called, pointing after the girl with his hammer. His remaining troops surged around him and charged into the antechamber. Ice and wind whirled through the circular room. When the fox general entered, he found all of his troops trapped in heaps of snow and tall shards of ice.
The mage girl grinned at him from the dais where the snowshard spun between two jagged shards of ice that forked up out of the ground. It was a cold light, bright blue like the runes on the spiders and the snakes. Her eyes burned with its power.
"So, it has come to this..." Virmir said, finding it a potently dramatic thing to say. The mage girl put her violin down and picked up.. a flute?
"Trees..." Virmir said as the snow came alive around him. Two great white serpents rose from the perimeter of the room and whirled about him like a tornado of snow. Shards of ice and bits of stone cut at his face and arms, making him draw his cape up around him. One of the snakes seized him about the waist and picked him up. It began to shake him with a violent fervor.
WHAM! Virmir's hammer cracked down on the ice serpent's skull. It dropped him into the snow below. Perhaps the one good use of snow, as it cushioned his fall. Droplets of blood stained the otherwise white blanket as he advanced on the remaining serpent, but the wind soon blew it away, erasing it beneath the driving force of new snow that seemed to be slowly filling the room. The general's hip ached where the snake's fang had pierced him, and he hobbled toward the remaining serpent with the resolve of a desperate man.
The serpent seemed reluctant to attack at first, looking first to Virmir and the wounded serpent on the other side of the room. It slunk along slowly, its head buried in the snow to numb its battered nose. Virmir's thigh felt almost numb with pain, as he half limped, half dragged himself toward the monster.
"I'll get you, I'll get you all," he growled through tight grit teeth, trying to bulwark against the throbbing pain. Then the snake struck, apparently having gathered its courage. Virmir raised his hammer to ward off the blow, taking a swipe at the snake as it darted past. He sank to his knees, feeling only the biting cold against his wound. The snake came again, and Virmir drew himself up into a tight huddle, blocking with the hammer just barely. The snake bit down on the wooden mallet, hissing ferociously.
"That's mine!" Virmir shouted, yanking back on it. The hammer popped out of the ice serpent's mouth with a venomous fang sticking out of it. Virmir grinned wickedly, this was an opportunity.
"Lets see how you like it!" he shouted up at the serpent, drawing the snake fang like a sword.
The ice serpent hissed its outrage and struck at Virmir again, but this time the general waited til the last moment and drove the snake fang up into the open maw of its former owner. The snake jerked away, spasming, then sank to the ground and disappeared in a puff of snow.
The ice mage dropped her flute.
"Uhm... bye!" she said, and grabbed up the snowshard. Virmir jumped to his feet to run after her, but his leg was numb and he instead lunged forward into the snow. He could hear the snow leopard paws crunching snow crystals beneath them as she hurried away, leaping over him and then darting down the hall.
"Blast it..." Virmir groaned, at least the pain had gone. He rolled onto his knees and prodded at the wound, but felt just normal unbroken skin and soft fur. It was white, white where it should not have been, and his leg was not numb at all. He could feel his paw against the round surface. He could feel his knees against the ground, sort of. He could feel the smooth serpent belly where his knees had been. It was a pale creamy color on the underside, and marked with the unruly white mane all along the back. Even more, he could feel the weight of his fox half resting on the serpent form beneath him, as though he were seated on his legs. It was not uncomfortable to rest that way. His not-exactly-hips seated at an angle as though the snake was preparing to strike.
"Oh Blast it all," he grumbled, looking back at the sprawling expanse of his form. Then, to add insult to injury, he felt a little swelling just beneath his waist, where gray fur gave way to white serpent scales. His not-exactly-hips welled up a little.
"Wha...?" he asked, and the answer came as his chest burgeoned out into a modest but respectable curve. The general's muzzle thinned as she stood there blinking.
"GAH"! she yelped, then covered her mouth.
Even grouchier than before, Lady Virmir led her troops back across the bridge. She wanted a HOT bath, an ice sculpture to be melted over a victory feast, and to coil up around her throne and wait for the mages to fix... this!
End.
Blind Written in 90 minutes, please excuse minor typoes/errors.
33
Random Topics / Re: Out of commission for a while
« on: June 25, 2014, 06:38:40 PM »
Ack!
Get well soon! If you need anything, I /do/ have a golf club.
Get well soon! If you need anything, I /do/ have a golf club.
37
Crimson Flag Comic / Re: Comic 296
« on: April 19, 2014, 09:19:53 AM »
Something about this one really strikes a chord with me.
38
Writer's Guild / Re: The Cracked Keg
« on: March 23, 2014, 09:44:10 PM »
This was written blind, in 2.5 hours.
39
Game Room / Re: Virmir Dies In Super Castlevania 4 (SNES)
« on: March 23, 2014, 08:45:28 PM »
180!
40
Writer's Guild / The Cracked Keg
« on: March 23, 2014, 08:41:06 PM »
The Cracked Keg
It was nearly midnight when Anthony arrived in Syndril. It was nearly midnight because he was on a quest, and quests of importance must always start sometime in the middle of the night. Why? Well because that's just a lot more impressive than if Anthony had simply left early in the morning, had an uneventful ride through the mountains, and arrived in town early enough that it would have been daylight, and someone might have warned him away from the Cracked Keg, but that would have been boring.
So it was nearly midnight, and Anthony rode a mare black as coal, and wore a cape black as night, with crushed red velvet trim and a sword with a name more impressive than his horse. She was called Rachel. The sword was called Vorsiminith, which meant something complicated in draconic and was probably talked about in several grim prophecies, none of which had the audacity to ask why a sword might be named something in draconic in the first place, or why a dragon would even think to wield a sword. Anthony had never asked this either, because he was stupid and overly confident and that is why he stepped into the Cracked Keg without so much as a thought to the contrary, threw open his arms and shouted, "BLAST!"
Then someone smashed his head in with a half-empty bottle of Dwarvish Delight.
"Third one this week," Thogg boasted proudly. He was the bartender, and owner of the Cracked Keg. Had Anthony arrived in the day, he might have noticed the goblin standing watch outside, or the gargoyle roosting on the roof. But Anthony had not noticed, and now he was dead. He did notice now, as his soul left the smashed up bits of his body and floated through the roof, and it occurred to him that perhaps this whole ordeal was a bad idea from the start. He was still trying to determine where he had gone wrong when something came and took him away.
He made a mistake about a half day's ride back, when he came to a fork in the road, and confused Syndril with Syndroll. Syndroll was well-known for its pretty ladies, fast horses, and a fortune-teller had once declared that in three-hundred years it would be the home to FastCar, a sort of racing game played with carriages but no horses, chasing each other around in a circle. She was promptly put to death, upon the discovery that she was a real-estate prospector.
Bernard Forsyth had made the same mistake as Anthony Charisman, but Bernard was a little smarter than Anthony, and this is why he was alive and well, sipping ale in the back corner of the Cracked Keg wearing a carrot atop his nose, and little pointed ears cut from the cloth of his pockets, which now had two big holes in them. Thogg squinted at him as he came through the door.
"What're you?" the old troll asked.
Bernard started to sweat immediately. "I'm a one-nosed gurt?" he said, sounding more like he was asking than declaring.
"Never heard of a one-nosed gurt," Thogg answered, rubbing his chin.
"Well, you have now," Bernard said, chuckling. At that moment there were two thoughts in is head. No, three thoughts.
His first thought was that he should've said he was a halfling. A tall halfling. More of a three-quarterling. That's half-halfling, half wholeling, for the mathematicians in the audience, whom will be burned at the stake later for suggesting the world is causal. (Ale will be served, please RSVP)
His second thought was that maybe he should have just gone back the other way, but that meant a night without ale, and well, on a quest like this it was hard to imagine not drinking ale. Of course, Bernard didn't realize he was on a quest yet, but soon would, and that was enough to give the man the idea that he ought to be drinking.
The third thought was something akin to screaming, and Bernard's own voice shouting over and over again WE ARE GOING TO DIE.
But he didn't die, Anthony did, and then everyone forgot the one-nosed whatever sitting in the corner. It was an easy thing to do, ignoring Bernard. He didn't even have a cape, or a fancy sword like the one Anthony had brought. A rock golem was sitting in the fireplace was using it to pick his teeth. He looked like a bald man now, the mossy patch that had looked like it was supposed to be his hair had burned away. No one thought to ask him why he was sitting in the fireplace, thought Bernard nearly jumped out of his fake nose when it spoke to him.
"Try the dragon ale," he, it, had said. "It'll put fire in your belly." Then the rock golem burped up a flame.
"Thanks, I'll uhm, remember that," Bernard said, staring. Then a roach skittered past, and the rock golem plucked it from the ground and ate it in two bites. Unfortunately when he finished, Bernard was still standing there, staring. There was a brief moment of silence as the two tried to figure each other out.
Bernard had never been a lucky man, which is why the golem took his slack-jawed stare to be an expression of hunger, and tossed a sizable beetle into it. Wide-eyed, Bernard had only just barely managed to snap his mouth closed in time to avoid the thing. It landed on his nose and crawled through his hair and down the back of his shirt.
"Saving it for later, good plan, good plan!" the rock golem said, and Bernard walked stiffly to a table in the back. He was trapped now, in a tavern of monsters. Not a single human in sight, save the dead one on the floor. He thought he spotted one at first, and nearly slid into a chair across from her, but then when he tried to introduce himself he tripped over the young lady's considerable tail. It was long enough to stretch all the way out the door if she not had the emerald and black tail curled up beneath her table. She giggled and smacked him on the butt with the whip-like tip of it as he hurried past, red-faced.
When he finally found a table alone, in the deepest, darkest corner, he was met with his second problem of the night. Yes, the ale. Yes it was important enough to stay. No one came into a tavern and didn't order something to drink. It was an insult of the highest order, akin to calling a man a horse-thief, stealing his daughter away in the middle of the night, or only tipping 5% on a 20 silver meal, because the server did the same amount of work as the one that brought the 10 silver meal.
The barmaiden turned out to be a satyr. She was young and pretty and full-figured and had a pair of horns sprouting from the top of her head. She made a dainty little "click click" as she walked about on her little cloven hooves. Bernard smiled dumbly at her, thinking how pretty she looked. This was part of the magic of course, and he should have known better, but what fun would an adventure be if everyone didn't do things just because they knew better. Why, people might simply sit outside of a dungeon and wait for the denizens to come out for food. That was hardly heroic. Bernard was not heroic, but he liked to fancy that he could be if he needed to be. So he smiled at the waitress and said hello, and so had to be asked a second time what he wanted.
"Oh uhm... uhm...." he stumbled over his words. What did they even serve in monster taverns? Oh, right. "Dragon Ale."
"Dragon ale...?" she asked, arching a brow at him.
"It puts fire in your belly!" he added, pounding his chest to look manly. It worked. He managed to hit right atop one of the brass buttons in his coat, and jammed the stud of it into his skin hard enough to make a little bead of blood rise from the divot. He forced a painfully transparent pained grin at her.
She smiled back and winked. "I'm sure it does," she said, and left to fill the order.
Bernard was so relieved when she came back, that he drank the entire bottle before she came back around, and then another. He went to bed with the third.
It wash not a good idea, sheeping in the monser tav... tav... place, but.... Bernard! Yes, Bernard, didn't care. It wash better than sheeping outshide, with the sheep. oh yesh, sheep, he should shee them now, bouncing, bouncing, turning into kangaroos and bouncing shome more.
In the morning, Bernard was hung over. In fact he was hanging over the side of the bed, having managed to sleep on it sideways with his legs dangling off one side and his head off the other. He also had a headache, from the booze. So he drank the rest of the third bottle, which he found lying on the bed with him. Only it was laid out like an infant, with the mouth of it lying on the pillow, and the sheets drawn up around it, neatly tucked in. This was good, because it meant he somehow didn't spill it in his drunken stupor the night before.
Bernard guzzled the rest of the bottle in one go, belched, and slammed his fist on the bedside table in victory. He also slapped his spade hard enough against the floor to make someone below start pounding on the ceiling with a broom. Well, that felt odd.
Slowly he turned and inspected the new appendage. It was long and red, with a cream underside, and nearly as long as he was tall. It tapered down until it flared into a fleshy spade, characteristic of the local sort of dragon. He burped again, and this time the vapors caught fire, nearly singing off his eyebrows as he wobbled forward, feeling quite dizzy.
"It'll put fire in your belly!" someone said. It was Bernard. He put his hand on his belly and groaned, his innards were churning like the time he ate some bad chili. His shirt grew taut, and split along the hand-stitched seams. The stitching on his boots was thicker, more robust. Each little stitch popped open with an audible popping, like the cords of a sail caught in too high a gale. His eyes sank down and he looked at the savage claws that had slid through his boots like a knife through hot butter. A sharp knife through hot butter. A hot, sharp knife through hot butter. He wiggled his toes and giggled drunkenly as the deep maroon talons squirmed in the air.
His belly rumbled again, and he tried to take a step, then sank to the floor and purred drunkenly as he grew. His tail thrashed around like a snake, knocking over books and candlesticks and all those other sorts of things that seemed too refined to be in a room in a monster tavern, but maybe monsters had better taste than he had first thought? or maybe they were just on the shelves to be knocked over. Monsters liked knocking things over. Bernard liked knocking things over.
He had almost managed to hit a neatly positioned candle stick when the new paws squirmed out of his growing belly and raked the air with his new talons. He purred drunkenly in approval, and his forked tongue flicked from his mouth and tasted the air. Yes, good, a dragon. He could knock over a lot of things as a dragon. Wait. No. The feeling of his skin crawling stopped short, right around his waist. Half dragon. Half as fun? No, no this was okay. He had four legs, and a dragon's tail, and a dragon's pudgy belly. Plenty of room for more of that delightful ale, and a tail with more hitting force than an angry bull, but not more than an angry chimera, because some of those had dragon tails.
Bernard very abruptly sobered up, as the dragon ale in his human stomach drained neatly into his dragon stomach and the added mass brought his BAC down, so he felt more sober, despite having drank no less.
At this time we would like to ask if anyone has followed the aforementioned calculations. If so, please raise your hand, and an executioner will be with you shortly. No one? What about you in the back. Yes, you. Ah, good, well you seem to uhm... well we won't execute you. Unless... do you have a fancy sword? Oh, you don't? Well that's a pity. Fancy a pint?
We rejoin our not-a-hero downstairs in the pub, where he's finding it's harder to navigate stairs with four legs than a housecat makes it look. After collecting himself from a heap at the bottom of the stairs he found his way to the bar, leaving a trail of banged up red scales in his wake. They looked like blood. Or rose petals. Since it was not a wedding, we'll go with blood. Sparkling shards of crystallized blood, like a dragon's scales after falling down the stairs.
"What's the meaning of this?!" Bernard demanded. The little satyr girl smiled back.
"Fire in belly!" she said, pointing and grinning.
Bernard fumed. His tail thumped on the ground. "I know that!"
The satyr girl looked puzzled. "Isn't that why you ordered it?"
Bernard looked puzzled back. "What?"
"You were in that goofy disguise. I figured, now you can fit in," she said, and grinned again, then held up a bottle, swirling its amber contents around.
Bernard felt his forked tongue seek out the little droplets of it still left in his mouth. He did want another drink, but felt that might be the tongue's way of finding a more dragony muzzle to fit a dragony tongue into. This made sense.
What didn't make sense was that the satyr girl was actually not half-human. She was half-fox, and half-goat. As was the naga girl, now that he thought about it. Then Bernard realized that he too was half fox. Was he before? He didn't think so. Ah, no, he wasn't. He could tell because his tail felt so strange, swaying behind him like that. He felt it would feel different if he hadn't had one before. It was a sign. "A tell-tail sign." he said aloud. The satyr giggled.
"You talk funny," she said.
Bernard tipped his hat to her, and strode outside. Things like his happened for a reason. In this case the reason was he had accidentally drank three liters of dragon ale on an empty stomach. Wasn't that odd? He started with an empty stomach, and ended up with an empty stomach, and one full one. The ale sloshed in his draconic belly. He burped again, it caught fire. He vowed never to burp again. Then burped again, this time burning the feather off his hat. He took off his nose and ate it.
In the distance, rising high into the sky was a monolithic tower of white marble. As Bernard looked at it, it began to snow all around him. He was half-human again, but still half-dragon. Then the snow stopped, and his foxyness returned.
"What do you suppose that means?" he asked.
"It's a battle, of mages," someone said, but he wasn't important enough for a name.
Thinking that a mage might be able to help him, Bernard took off toward the tower. Though it was very tall, and the walk took some number of days, the mages were still battling when he arrived. This meant the fight was very important, for mages were not known to sit around lobbing spells at each other for days on end unless it was very important. When Bernard arrived at the foot of the tower, there was a girl standing outside.
It started to snow again. The girl turned human, then the snow stopped, and the girl turned back into a vixen. She waved a little at Bernard, and then squinted up at the top of the tower, where red and blue magic shot back and forth.
"Any idea what's going on up there?" Bernard asked.
The girl shrugged. A fireball rocketed down like a comet and hit her, exploding into a million little bits of sparkling light Bernard shrieked in terror and stumbled back. He fell on his rump and tumbled all the way over backward, then scurried to get all four legs back beneath him.
His companion seemed alright. She was still standing, uninjured, though her plain gray skirt was all shredded around the edges. She frowned down at something, and a forked tongue slipped from her mouth. They both just looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Are you okay...?" Bernard asked.
"I..." the girl started, then yelped as she shot up about three feet, a massive snake's tail sprawling from her hips. It was black and silver and glossy, matching the grey of her eyes.
Bernard stood transfixed at the new naga.
"I'm going to come back later..." the girl said, seeming more irritated than anything, and slithered away.
Bernard thought to go after her, but decided she probably knew better. He didn't. He went inside.
The problem with tall towers, is that they're very tall. Though they look quite nice, and Bernard often got a nice view of the land as he tumbled past, being not very good at climbing stairs still. By the time he reached the top, his tail was dragging and the spade made a little thump-thump-thump as it slumped against each step.
The top floor, where mages traditionally had overwrought battles with colorful lights and more fire than a volcano could muster, was covered in a thin haze of mist and fog and smoke that seemed like it would never clear.
"Uhm... is anyone here?" he asked.
Something shot past, it was blue and moving quickly, leaving a trail of feathers in her wake. A grey fox raced after her, with a magic wand in his hand.
"WINTER FOREVER!" the little blue thing called.
"WINTER NEVER!" the fox mage shouted, chasing her around the room. This went on for another twenty minutes, with Bernard looking on in dismay. Until at last the fox pinned the little blue thing in a corner.
"Now it's going to be spring!" Virmir declared and unloaded a volley of raging red comets from his wand.
"I am the cold wind of winteRNK!" Feather answered, then took a blast of magic to the chest. She tried to duck for cover, and spun around with a mirror. The second and third bolts slammed into it and bounced back at Virmir. He dodged the first one neatly, watching it skate by.
"HA HA! EN GARDRRNK!" The third got him right in the chest.
The little blue one started to drag herself away by the forelegs, as her hindquarters were drawn up by magic. She writhed and squirmed as her hindlegs were drawn together and a long body of jet black and sapphire blue scales sprawled from her waist.
She rose from the ground, her muzzle shortening a little and her wings flaring out even bigger than before. She turned to Virmir and put her hand on her hips, where soft blue fur gave way to dark scales. Her chest took on a curved aspect that made Bernard blush.
Virmir's chest took on a curved aspect that made Virmir blush. Then she rose up to the winged mage's height, not by choice, but because a lengthy serpent's body had whisked out of her waist so quickly that it carried her vulpine half up faster than it could sprawl out behind her. "TREES! Look what you did! Why were you even up here?!"
"YOU WERE MELTING ALL THE NICE SNOW!"
The two half-snakes glared at each other, one glaring fireballs, the other, ice-daggers. Not literally, of course, but Bernard somehow sensed this is what they would be using.
"HEY!" Bernard shouted, stamping his foot and slapping the floor hard enough with the flat of his spade to make it sting. "OW!" he barked.
"WHAT?!" the mages shouted back in unison.
"It's spring, it's supposed to melt," Bernard said, suddenly feeling that it was a very bad thing to have garnered their attention at this particular moment.
"SEE?! He agrees!" Virmir said, pointing. Unfortunately this was done with the hand still clutching the wand, and Bernard got a brand new tell-tale tail.
*No actual noses were harmed in this story, Bernard was still wearing the carrot.
It was nearly midnight when Anthony arrived in Syndril. It was nearly midnight because he was on a quest, and quests of importance must always start sometime in the middle of the night. Why? Well because that's just a lot more impressive than if Anthony had simply left early in the morning, had an uneventful ride through the mountains, and arrived in town early enough that it would have been daylight, and someone might have warned him away from the Cracked Keg, but that would have been boring.
So it was nearly midnight, and Anthony rode a mare black as coal, and wore a cape black as night, with crushed red velvet trim and a sword with a name more impressive than his horse. She was called Rachel. The sword was called Vorsiminith, which meant something complicated in draconic and was probably talked about in several grim prophecies, none of which had the audacity to ask why a sword might be named something in draconic in the first place, or why a dragon would even think to wield a sword. Anthony had never asked this either, because he was stupid and overly confident and that is why he stepped into the Cracked Keg without so much as a thought to the contrary, threw open his arms and shouted, "BLAST!"
Then someone smashed his head in with a half-empty bottle of Dwarvish Delight.
"Third one this week," Thogg boasted proudly. He was the bartender, and owner of the Cracked Keg. Had Anthony arrived in the day, he might have noticed the goblin standing watch outside, or the gargoyle roosting on the roof. But Anthony had not noticed, and now he was dead. He did notice now, as his soul left the smashed up bits of his body and floated through the roof, and it occurred to him that perhaps this whole ordeal was a bad idea from the start. He was still trying to determine where he had gone wrong when something came and took him away.
He made a mistake about a half day's ride back, when he came to a fork in the road, and confused Syndril with Syndroll. Syndroll was well-known for its pretty ladies, fast horses, and a fortune-teller had once declared that in three-hundred years it would be the home to FastCar, a sort of racing game played with carriages but no horses, chasing each other around in a circle. She was promptly put to death, upon the discovery that she was a real-estate prospector.
Bernard Forsyth had made the same mistake as Anthony Charisman, but Bernard was a little smarter than Anthony, and this is why he was alive and well, sipping ale in the back corner of the Cracked Keg wearing a carrot atop his nose, and little pointed ears cut from the cloth of his pockets, which now had two big holes in them. Thogg squinted at him as he came through the door.
"What're you?" the old troll asked.
Bernard started to sweat immediately. "I'm a one-nosed gurt?" he said, sounding more like he was asking than declaring.
"Never heard of a one-nosed gurt," Thogg answered, rubbing his chin.
"Well, you have now," Bernard said, chuckling. At that moment there were two thoughts in is head. No, three thoughts.
His first thought was that he should've said he was a halfling. A tall halfling. More of a three-quarterling. That's half-halfling, half wholeling, for the mathematicians in the audience, whom will be burned at the stake later for suggesting the world is causal. (Ale will be served, please RSVP)
His second thought was that maybe he should have just gone back the other way, but that meant a night without ale, and well, on a quest like this it was hard to imagine not drinking ale. Of course, Bernard didn't realize he was on a quest yet, but soon would, and that was enough to give the man the idea that he ought to be drinking.
The third thought was something akin to screaming, and Bernard's own voice shouting over and over again WE ARE GOING TO DIE.
But he didn't die, Anthony did, and then everyone forgot the one-nosed whatever sitting in the corner. It was an easy thing to do, ignoring Bernard. He didn't even have a cape, or a fancy sword like the one Anthony had brought. A rock golem was sitting in the fireplace was using it to pick his teeth. He looked like a bald man now, the mossy patch that had looked like it was supposed to be his hair had burned away. No one thought to ask him why he was sitting in the fireplace, thought Bernard nearly jumped out of his fake nose when it spoke to him.
"Try the dragon ale," he, it, had said. "It'll put fire in your belly." Then the rock golem burped up a flame.
"Thanks, I'll uhm, remember that," Bernard said, staring. Then a roach skittered past, and the rock golem plucked it from the ground and ate it in two bites. Unfortunately when he finished, Bernard was still standing there, staring. There was a brief moment of silence as the two tried to figure each other out.
Bernard had never been a lucky man, which is why the golem took his slack-jawed stare to be an expression of hunger, and tossed a sizable beetle into it. Wide-eyed, Bernard had only just barely managed to snap his mouth closed in time to avoid the thing. It landed on his nose and crawled through his hair and down the back of his shirt.
"Saving it for later, good plan, good plan!" the rock golem said, and Bernard walked stiffly to a table in the back. He was trapped now, in a tavern of monsters. Not a single human in sight, save the dead one on the floor. He thought he spotted one at first, and nearly slid into a chair across from her, but then when he tried to introduce himself he tripped over the young lady's considerable tail. It was long enough to stretch all the way out the door if she not had the emerald and black tail curled up beneath her table. She giggled and smacked him on the butt with the whip-like tip of it as he hurried past, red-faced.
When he finally found a table alone, in the deepest, darkest corner, he was met with his second problem of the night. Yes, the ale. Yes it was important enough to stay. No one came into a tavern and didn't order something to drink. It was an insult of the highest order, akin to calling a man a horse-thief, stealing his daughter away in the middle of the night, or only tipping 5% on a 20 silver meal, because the server did the same amount of work as the one that brought the 10 silver meal.
The barmaiden turned out to be a satyr. She was young and pretty and full-figured and had a pair of horns sprouting from the top of her head. She made a dainty little "click click" as she walked about on her little cloven hooves. Bernard smiled dumbly at her, thinking how pretty she looked. This was part of the magic of course, and he should have known better, but what fun would an adventure be if everyone didn't do things just because they knew better. Why, people might simply sit outside of a dungeon and wait for the denizens to come out for food. That was hardly heroic. Bernard was not heroic, but he liked to fancy that he could be if he needed to be. So he smiled at the waitress and said hello, and so had to be asked a second time what he wanted.
"Oh uhm... uhm...." he stumbled over his words. What did they even serve in monster taverns? Oh, right. "Dragon Ale."
"Dragon ale...?" she asked, arching a brow at him.
"It puts fire in your belly!" he added, pounding his chest to look manly. It worked. He managed to hit right atop one of the brass buttons in his coat, and jammed the stud of it into his skin hard enough to make a little bead of blood rise from the divot. He forced a painfully transparent pained grin at her.
She smiled back and winked. "I'm sure it does," she said, and left to fill the order.
Bernard was so relieved when she came back, that he drank the entire bottle before she came back around, and then another. He went to bed with the third.
It wash not a good idea, sheeping in the monser tav... tav... place, but.... Bernard! Yes, Bernard, didn't care. It wash better than sheeping outshide, with the sheep. oh yesh, sheep, he should shee them now, bouncing, bouncing, turning into kangaroos and bouncing shome more.
In the morning, Bernard was hung over. In fact he was hanging over the side of the bed, having managed to sleep on it sideways with his legs dangling off one side and his head off the other. He also had a headache, from the booze. So he drank the rest of the third bottle, which he found lying on the bed with him. Only it was laid out like an infant, with the mouth of it lying on the pillow, and the sheets drawn up around it, neatly tucked in. This was good, because it meant he somehow didn't spill it in his drunken stupor the night before.
Bernard guzzled the rest of the bottle in one go, belched, and slammed his fist on the bedside table in victory. He also slapped his spade hard enough against the floor to make someone below start pounding on the ceiling with a broom. Well, that felt odd.
Slowly he turned and inspected the new appendage. It was long and red, with a cream underside, and nearly as long as he was tall. It tapered down until it flared into a fleshy spade, characteristic of the local sort of dragon. He burped again, and this time the vapors caught fire, nearly singing off his eyebrows as he wobbled forward, feeling quite dizzy.
"It'll put fire in your belly!" someone said. It was Bernard. He put his hand on his belly and groaned, his innards were churning like the time he ate some bad chili. His shirt grew taut, and split along the hand-stitched seams. The stitching on his boots was thicker, more robust. Each little stitch popped open with an audible popping, like the cords of a sail caught in too high a gale. His eyes sank down and he looked at the savage claws that had slid through his boots like a knife through hot butter. A sharp knife through hot butter. A hot, sharp knife through hot butter. He wiggled his toes and giggled drunkenly as the deep maroon talons squirmed in the air.
His belly rumbled again, and he tried to take a step, then sank to the floor and purred drunkenly as he grew. His tail thrashed around like a snake, knocking over books and candlesticks and all those other sorts of things that seemed too refined to be in a room in a monster tavern, but maybe monsters had better taste than he had first thought? or maybe they were just on the shelves to be knocked over. Monsters liked knocking things over. Bernard liked knocking things over.
He had almost managed to hit a neatly positioned candle stick when the new paws squirmed out of his growing belly and raked the air with his new talons. He purred drunkenly in approval, and his forked tongue flicked from his mouth and tasted the air. Yes, good, a dragon. He could knock over a lot of things as a dragon. Wait. No. The feeling of his skin crawling stopped short, right around his waist. Half dragon. Half as fun? No, no this was okay. He had four legs, and a dragon's tail, and a dragon's pudgy belly. Plenty of room for more of that delightful ale, and a tail with more hitting force than an angry bull, but not more than an angry chimera, because some of those had dragon tails.
Bernard very abruptly sobered up, as the dragon ale in his human stomach drained neatly into his dragon stomach and the added mass brought his BAC down, so he felt more sober, despite having drank no less.
At this time we would like to ask if anyone has followed the aforementioned calculations. If so, please raise your hand, and an executioner will be with you shortly. No one? What about you in the back. Yes, you. Ah, good, well you seem to uhm... well we won't execute you. Unless... do you have a fancy sword? Oh, you don't? Well that's a pity. Fancy a pint?
We rejoin our not-a-hero downstairs in the pub, where he's finding it's harder to navigate stairs with four legs than a housecat makes it look. After collecting himself from a heap at the bottom of the stairs he found his way to the bar, leaving a trail of banged up red scales in his wake. They looked like blood. Or rose petals. Since it was not a wedding, we'll go with blood. Sparkling shards of crystallized blood, like a dragon's scales after falling down the stairs.
"What's the meaning of this?!" Bernard demanded. The little satyr girl smiled back.
"Fire in belly!" she said, pointing and grinning.
Bernard fumed. His tail thumped on the ground. "I know that!"
The satyr girl looked puzzled. "Isn't that why you ordered it?"
Bernard looked puzzled back. "What?"
"You were in that goofy disguise. I figured, now you can fit in," she said, and grinned again, then held up a bottle, swirling its amber contents around.
Bernard felt his forked tongue seek out the little droplets of it still left in his mouth. He did want another drink, but felt that might be the tongue's way of finding a more dragony muzzle to fit a dragony tongue into. This made sense.
What didn't make sense was that the satyr girl was actually not half-human. She was half-fox, and half-goat. As was the naga girl, now that he thought about it. Then Bernard realized that he too was half fox. Was he before? He didn't think so. Ah, no, he wasn't. He could tell because his tail felt so strange, swaying behind him like that. He felt it would feel different if he hadn't had one before. It was a sign. "A tell-tail sign." he said aloud. The satyr giggled.
"You talk funny," she said.
Bernard tipped his hat to her, and strode outside. Things like his happened for a reason. In this case the reason was he had accidentally drank three liters of dragon ale on an empty stomach. Wasn't that odd? He started with an empty stomach, and ended up with an empty stomach, and one full one. The ale sloshed in his draconic belly. He burped again, it caught fire. He vowed never to burp again. Then burped again, this time burning the feather off his hat. He took off his nose and ate it.
In the distance, rising high into the sky was a monolithic tower of white marble. As Bernard looked at it, it began to snow all around him. He was half-human again, but still half-dragon. Then the snow stopped, and his foxyness returned.
"What do you suppose that means?" he asked.
"It's a battle, of mages," someone said, but he wasn't important enough for a name.
Thinking that a mage might be able to help him, Bernard took off toward the tower. Though it was very tall, and the walk took some number of days, the mages were still battling when he arrived. This meant the fight was very important, for mages were not known to sit around lobbing spells at each other for days on end unless it was very important. When Bernard arrived at the foot of the tower, there was a girl standing outside.
It started to snow again. The girl turned human, then the snow stopped, and the girl turned back into a vixen. She waved a little at Bernard, and then squinted up at the top of the tower, where red and blue magic shot back and forth.
"Any idea what's going on up there?" Bernard asked.
The girl shrugged. A fireball rocketed down like a comet and hit her, exploding into a million little bits of sparkling light Bernard shrieked in terror and stumbled back. He fell on his rump and tumbled all the way over backward, then scurried to get all four legs back beneath him.
His companion seemed alright. She was still standing, uninjured, though her plain gray skirt was all shredded around the edges. She frowned down at something, and a forked tongue slipped from her mouth. They both just looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Are you okay...?" Bernard asked.
"I..." the girl started, then yelped as she shot up about three feet, a massive snake's tail sprawling from her hips. It was black and silver and glossy, matching the grey of her eyes.
Bernard stood transfixed at the new naga.
"I'm going to come back later..." the girl said, seeming more irritated than anything, and slithered away.
Bernard thought to go after her, but decided she probably knew better. He didn't. He went inside.
The problem with tall towers, is that they're very tall. Though they look quite nice, and Bernard often got a nice view of the land as he tumbled past, being not very good at climbing stairs still. By the time he reached the top, his tail was dragging and the spade made a little thump-thump-thump as it slumped against each step.
The top floor, where mages traditionally had overwrought battles with colorful lights and more fire than a volcano could muster, was covered in a thin haze of mist and fog and smoke that seemed like it would never clear.
"Uhm... is anyone here?" he asked.
Something shot past, it was blue and moving quickly, leaving a trail of feathers in her wake. A grey fox raced after her, with a magic wand in his hand.
"WINTER FOREVER!" the little blue thing called.
"WINTER NEVER!" the fox mage shouted, chasing her around the room. This went on for another twenty minutes, with Bernard looking on in dismay. Until at last the fox pinned the little blue thing in a corner.
"Now it's going to be spring!" Virmir declared and unloaded a volley of raging red comets from his wand.
"I am the cold wind of winteRNK!" Feather answered, then took a blast of magic to the chest. She tried to duck for cover, and spun around with a mirror. The second and third bolts slammed into it and bounced back at Virmir. He dodged the first one neatly, watching it skate by.
"HA HA! EN GARDRRNK!" The third got him right in the chest.
The little blue one started to drag herself away by the forelegs, as her hindquarters were drawn up by magic. She writhed and squirmed as her hindlegs were drawn together and a long body of jet black and sapphire blue scales sprawled from her waist.
She rose from the ground, her muzzle shortening a little and her wings flaring out even bigger than before. She turned to Virmir and put her hand on her hips, where soft blue fur gave way to dark scales. Her chest took on a curved aspect that made Bernard blush.
Virmir's chest took on a curved aspect that made Virmir blush. Then she rose up to the winged mage's height, not by choice, but because a lengthy serpent's body had whisked out of her waist so quickly that it carried her vulpine half up faster than it could sprawl out behind her. "TREES! Look what you did! Why were you even up here?!"
"YOU WERE MELTING ALL THE NICE SNOW!"
The two half-snakes glared at each other, one glaring fireballs, the other, ice-daggers. Not literally, of course, but Bernard somehow sensed this is what they would be using.
"HEY!" Bernard shouted, stamping his foot and slapping the floor hard enough with the flat of his spade to make it sting. "OW!" he barked.
"WHAT?!" the mages shouted back in unison.
"It's spring, it's supposed to melt," Bernard said, suddenly feeling that it was a very bad thing to have garnered their attention at this particular moment.
"SEE?! He agrees!" Virmir said, pointing. Unfortunately this was done with the hand still clutching the wand, and Bernard got a brand new tell-tale tail.
*No actual noses were harmed in this story, Bernard was still wearing the carrot.
41
Art Gallery / Re: Pokemonizational Radiation Discharge -- Mini group pic (Open!)
« on: November 19, 2013, 12:04:24 AM »
Did you just do the soldering by experience or were there instructions? Also if I wanted to do this with an old GSC cartridge, what battery do I need to get? e.e (Withdrawn)
42
Role Play Theater / Re: DoW the 3rd
« on: November 02, 2013, 12:09:47 PM »
Catastrophe!
The Crondins wanted stormtroopers did they? Well Stormtroopers they will have!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy
Laziness among the troops spreads like wildfire, discipline breaking down, their reputation for ineptitude spreads, and the wary eyes of the Pendri watch from their three great towers, biding their time for a moment of unmatched weakness in their age old enemy...
Soon...
The Crondins wanted stormtroopers did they? Well Stormtroopers they will have!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy
Laziness among the troops spreads like wildfire, discipline breaking down, their reputation for ineptitude spreads, and the wary eyes of the Pendri watch from their three great towers, biding their time for a moment of unmatched weakness in their age old enemy...
Soon...
43
Art Gallery / Re: Halloween Sketch-a-thon 4 (open)
« on: October 11, 2013, 11:38:16 PM »
#8
Featherfall and Virmir dressed up as Tempest and Brazen, complete with Virmir in a blindfold with no eyeholes, complaining that it should have them, and Featherfall arguing that Brazen can still see with it on.
Featherfall: http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/290/9/0/featherfall_by_zedrin-d5i3f2l.png
Tempest: http://art.by.virmir.com/art/tempest
Brazen: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11132803/
Featherfall and Virmir dressed up as Tempest and Brazen, complete with Virmir in a blindfold with no eyeholes, complaining that it should have them, and Featherfall arguing that Brazen can still see with it on.
Featherfall: http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/290/9/0/featherfall_by_zedrin-d5i3f2l.png
Tempest: http://art.by.virmir.com/art/tempest
Brazen: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11132803/
44
Role Play Theater / Re: DoW the 3rd
« on: October 04, 2013, 11:13:26 AM »
Still feeling the sting of the Korvesh disaster, the Pendri set to work ensuring that never again shall a Pendri city fall to the enemy. New walls are constructed, combining the curse of Old Alsimor with the magical fire they hold dear.
Advance Civilization - Night-hardened Walls (6 points)
Shards of the Melodian's Ancient Artifact begin to resurface, granting strange magical powers to anyone that posses them, but beware Tempest's wrath, should any be found unworthy to bear such a gift.
Advance Civilization (Melodians) - Shardhunters: The remaining Melodians zealously seek the songshards, and will stop at nothing to keep them from the hands of those that wield shadowy magicks. (6 points)
2 points remaining
Advance Civilization - Night-hardened Walls (6 points)
Shards of the Melodian's Ancient Artifact begin to resurface, granting strange magical powers to anyone that posses them, but beware Tempest's wrath, should any be found unworthy to bear such a gift.
Advance Civilization (Melodians) - Shardhunters: The remaining Melodians zealously seek the songshards, and will stop at nothing to keep them from the hands of those that wield shadowy magicks. (6 points)
2 points remaining
45
Role Play Theater / Re: DoW the 3rd
« on: September 14, 2013, 03:49:59 PM »
Korvesh has fallen, and the Pendri are infuriated. Word spreads through the kingdom and armies emerge from the day and night.
Alismor, New Alsimor, and Sarsil all pour out their wrath against those that would deign to call themselves lords of a Pendri city.
Command Cities: Create Armies (6 points)
Points Remaining: 4
Command Avatar (High Priest)
The High Priest leads the armies of the Pendri in an attack on Korvesh, to reclaim the city.
Alismor, New Alsimor, and Sarsil all pour out their wrath against those that would deign to call themselves lords of a Pendri city.
Command Cities: Create Armies (6 points)
Points Remaining: 4
Command Avatar (High Priest)
The High Priest leads the armies of the Pendri in an attack on Korvesh, to reclaim the city.