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The Order of the Black Foot

Arc 1, Chapter 5

Sponsored by GlynWolf

By Draconicon

As expected, the assorted gnolls and the few brave kobolds that wanted to emulate them were not sufficient to outlast him. Draconicon left the caverns with a throbbing erection that ached with the sheer need that his underlings had awakened for themselves, but the satisfaction would have to wait. He doubted that he'd be getting any such thing anytime soon, but at the very least, they were satisfied. That would have to be enough for now until he could find a way around the overly-high stamina he'd given himself.

Given that there was little need to dress around those marked by his footprint, he declined to summon his robes as he stepped outside. His wings were sufficient to keep the wind at bay, and he liked the feeling of moonlight on his scales. He leaned his head back, staring up at the starry sky, and sighed.

This is getting more complicated than it should be...

Going from world to world was a familiar process for him, given that it was part of his journey back home. He would jump from one world to the next, usually have a few days to a few months learning the rules of the new world, and then begin the process of building up sufficient power to go to the next one. Rare was the world that could tempt him to stay longer than it took to learn how it worked, but those that did could trap him for years at a time.

Unfortunately, Morphus felt like it would be one of those worlds, particularly as he had yet to find any of the power that he had lost.

Draconicon clenched his hands at his sides as he thought of his staff and the gems of magic that had fallen from him when he fell into this world. They had been spirited away by the wind, carried into the distance by gusts and gravity, lost to him. Wherever they had fallen, he couldn't sense them, and that meant that he was limited to using only the power that he could gain from this world.

And considering that he had taken responsibility for two clans of monster-folk, that power was already spoken for. He sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"Things are getting complicated..."

What was he going to do about all this? The kobolds and the gnolls were already dependent on him, relying on him for commands. They were too dumb to last on their own, and he had already stripped them of their connection to whatever had been ordering them around before. Did that mean that they were doomed to be idiots forever if he didn't stick around? Would they regress the moment he left?

Even if they didn't, there were too many other things hunting them now, all because he had appeared and hurt the pride of the 'players'. Amarantha, that lion archer from the past, had called them that. She'd mentioned other terms, like corporations, like guilds, and none of that had made sense either, but the feeling of bigger groups organizing things and directing them had come through. This world was run by hidden councils and greater powers on the edge of things, and people like her, like the other 'adventurers' that he had killed in self-defense, would be pushed to respond to his actions.

Even if he managed to find his gems of power, even if he put his hands on his staff again, he would have responsibilities here. He'd started something, and he'd have to finish it.

"I hate being responsible," Draconicon muttered, only to chuckle to himself. "Well, that's a lie...I hate it when other people are irresponsible, so let's not start hating ourself."

Shaking his head as he realized that he was talking to himself, the dragon turned back to the cave. However, before he could step inside, something caught his attention. It was almost like something had been half-hidden from him for the last few seconds, only for it to finally reveal itself. Something like the combination of a sound and an instinctual understanding of what that sound meant, mixed up in a whisper of another voice telling him something that he should know, all hit him at once.

Someone was coming. Many someones, now that he thought about it.

If someone had tracked him to the cave, then that meant that there was a fight in the offing. Draconicon flicked through his spells, selecting Invisibility and Soundlessness, and then threw on Aura Displacement for good measure. If there were other casters in the group, better that they didn't know he was there.

The dragon disappeared, even from himself, and wandered down the moonlit slopes, passing between low shrubs and the occasional tree that probably shouldn't be there, but was due to the rules of this strange world. He slipped between boulders and crushed gravel beneath his feet, and eventually found the source of the noise.

No less than a dozen adventurers had been gathered a hundred feet from the cave entrance, and they stood together at the standing stones that marked the path leading up to it. The dragon cocked his head as he looked over their numbers, most of them wearing black leather -

He winced as names, as well as green and red bars, suddenly popped into being over the heads of the assembled crowd. The names meant nothing, but beside them were other words, like 'Rogue' and 'Bard', or over the heads of those wearing something more significant than leather armor, 'Knight' and 'Paladin', and other such things. He spotted three 'Wizards' through the ranks, and he shook his head.

They'd brought a full attack force, it seemed, and he moved closer, curious what they were telling each other. He stopped just on the other side of the standing stones, his ears open.

"Alright, here's the plan. Whatever that thing that attacked us was, it's a bloody menace," the leader, some wolf, said at far too loud a voice for a stealth mission. "So, we have to take it out. Maybe it's an event, maybe it's a new fixture, but we have to find out how to kill it before it starts doing more than it already has.

"Now, the scouts said it moved into the cave up there. It's been a raid spot in the past, so let's be ready. Gnolls and kobolds aren't that hard, but we know how they love to pile up, and this thing has been...weird. Remember, they caught one of ours already. Remember what happened to Hugo?"

The adventurers muttered to themselves, some shivering, some blushing, but all of them shuffled about, clearly thinking of what had happened and not liking it. Draconicon shook his head.

They came to my home, and they invaded it trying to kill people. They got away with nothing more than a bit of rape, and they think that they got the raw end of the deal? They have so much to learn.

He looked over the group again, spotting someone familiar. In the back ranks, he could make out the lioness Amarantha, the female standing with a green set of leathers and holding her bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. Unlike the rest of the group, however, she had a sour look on her face, and she kept looking backwards, as if regretting being here in the first place.

Interesting, he thought. He looked at her, slowly opening her character sheet from a distance. He could just make out the various settings that she had, and he opened up the same writing box that he'd closed when they had last met. He thought at it, and his words appeared as a message.

Stay back, and you will live.

The lioness's eyes widened, but she didn't sound the alarm as he had been half-afraid she would. Instead, she stepped backward, moving out of formation, and to his surprise, she dragged the snake wizard to her left with her.

Hmmm...interesting.

The wolf leader was still laying out a strategy for how to go through the caves. It was a very methodical strategy, very much meant to lay down fire and brimstone on everything that was in the way, and then send the Rogues in to do a great deal of sneaking, backstabbing, and general delivery of death to anything that survived and was trying to recover. In most worlds, such an assault would have been looked down on even in the military, but here, it just seemed to be the usual order of things.

Draconicon didn't like it, and he made his pleasure known by casting a Silence spell on the wolf.

It took the crowd a moment to realize that the wolf had cut himself off in mid-sentence, and a moment more for them to see the no-longer-invisible dragon standing behind their leader. The canine himself gripped his throat, whipped his head around, and after a full five seconds, turned to face the dragon.

To someone else, the wolf in black leather might have been intimidating. He pulled two wicked-looking knives from his belt, holding them low and ready to strike. Each one dripped with some sort of venom, as far as the dragon could tell. Venom, not poison, because the knives were actually producing them rather than being merely coated in them. The wolf had a ring on each hand, and his leather shone with some sort of odd magic of its own.

The black dragon just smiled. It was cute that he thought it would be enough.

He clicked his fingers, and the wolf went up in smoke. The spell of incineration ripped through him, leaving nothing more than a cinder-spot on the ground. No second chance. No taking turns. Just an immediate defeat.

The other adventurers gasped, taking a step back as the wolf disappeared. He'd be back later, the dragon was sure; they all kept coming back. He deliberately stepped over the ash mark left on the ground, not wanting to soil his soles, and looked at the rest of the assembled 'players.'

This close, he noticed that most of them had numbers next to their names and jobs. Most of them were somewhere between levels 20 and 25, with Amarantha reaching level 30, and the wolf had been nearly level 35. He didn't know where he landed on their little metric, but he imagined that it was quite a bit higher than that.

"I'll give you a chance. Turn around, and we can forget about this."

They didn't turn around. Instead, they charged.

To their credit, they did take on different formations. The black-armored rogues stayed to the sides, moving in quick darts, looking like they were waiting for a chance to rush in and do as much damage as possible before rushing out again. The heavy-armored ones stepped forward, fighters and paladins looking to take his attention and soak up whatever he dished out, while the mages were at the back, gathering up their magic on their fingers, wands, swords, and whatever else they channeled their magic through.

The naked dragon sighed, shaking his head. They were acting as if he had to operate under their rules, as if he could only hit them one at a time.

"I warned you."

One paladin leaped in, and he brought his sword down hard. Draconicon let it hit him right across the chest, and the blade shimmered...then shattered.

The fox gasped, staring at the broken weapon in his hand. He looked down, and for a moment, Draconicon thought that the fighter was looking at his cock, but then remembered the green and red bars. Health, he supposed, and his would be visible just as much as theirs were.

"Impossible," the fox said. "That...you're bugged...you gotta be..."

"I'm not bugged."

"Nothing - ulk!"

The dragon lifted the fox in the air with a gesture, looking around at the rest of them. They were assessing their own chances, trying to come up with new strategies. Draconicon shook his head.

"Let's get this over with, shall we?"

He'd used Incinerate on the wolf leader. For the rest, he used something a little more intense.

Snapping his fingers, a ring of acid appeared at his feet, rolling outward like a blob. Everyone standing near him was soaked in it from the knees down, and as their armor disappeared, so did their flesh. They melted, and most of them disappeared in the first few seconds of falling in the acid flood. Those that were on the outside jumped, only to be caught in a lightning storm that he unleashed right afterward.

It sucked up a fair chunk of magic, to be fair. He could see that that bar had been sapped by about 10% by the massive spells he'd just used, but he supposed that was to be expected. He was, after all, casting quite a bit of power into quite a few targets. They fell immediately, leaving him alone.

Well, save for the snake wizard and Amarantha. They stood at the back of the group, nearly another thirty feet from them, and it had been barely enough to keep them from being affected by the acid ring's rapid expansion. He walked around the bubbles of bodies that were already fading, shaking his head.

"Well, that handles that," he said.

"...You are terrifying," the lioness said, shaking her head. "Why..."

"Why did I warn you?"

She nodded.

"I wanted to talk. And this time, I don't think that we'll be interrupted nearly as quickly." He nodded at her companion. "And who is this?"

"Donato," the snake said. "Wizard and...very curious individual."

"Clearly, considering you were willing to take a chance."

"And I'm glad I did, odd as you are. Fascinating. You're talking as if you're a player, but you clearly have the stats of a boss monster."

"I'll have to have you explain that later. Amarantha, you - wait. Wait."

He stopped no more than ten feet from them, feeling something that he hadn't since arriving in the world. The dragon narrowed his eyes, looking down at the top-right pocket in the snake's robe. He pointed at it.

"There...what do you have there?"

"...Nothing," Donato said, only to groan. "Oh come on. The bluff check fails now?!"

"You have something of mine."

"Uh, no, no, nothing of the sort." The snake groaned again. "Okay, do you have a sense motive skill that's just...insanely high or something?"

"I would have to check."

"You must."

"Possibly, but as I said...you have something of mine."

"...Amarantha, would you -"

"Please don't insult my intelligence," Draconicon said. "I can still hear you - and read what you're speaking to her telepathically," he added as the text box popped up again. "Do you want me to turn that off?"

The snake's eyes went wide. Considering that he had a very narrow head, being of a species that had a slender body and small features otherwise, it was quite the striking image to see them get that big. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, panting as if reality was closing in on him.

"Oh my...you really aren't...you aren't an AI...not at all..."

"No, I'm not. Whatever it is, I'm not that."

"You - oh god..."

"I told you he wasn't normal," Amarantha said, shaking her head and shading one of her eyes. "Do you have to be naked, by the way?"

"I just finished satisfying my followers. I saw no reason to get dressed again."

"Satisfied - what - you - how?" Donato asked.

"I will explain what I can, after you explain what you can...and after you give me what you have in your pocket."

"...Give it to him," Amarantha said.

"But - it's so - you know it's different. We could - ow!"

The lioness's smack to the back of the snake's head was as loud as it was satisfying. Donato stumbled forward, grumbling as he brought himself to a halt.

"Fine. Fine. But only because he's so strange, too."

It didn't matter to him how he got it back, just that he did. Draconicon held out his hand, and the snake reached into his pocket. He drew forth a gem of blue with a core of black, and it took everything he had not to snatch it desperately from the other man's grip.

Finally, he thought, clenching his fingers tight around the gem. It's not everything...but it's something.

He closed his eyes, feeling the black fire within the sapphire rising up, touching him, sliding into him once more. The raw feeling of pure power, the part of himself that had been missing for too long, was as satisfying as the best of bedmates, as the richest food, as the purest of music lingering in the ears. It was life, it was perfection, and it was the other half of him that had been drained for days, now.

As he sighed, shivering from head to toe, he opened his hand to look at the gem again. The black fire in the core burned, but it was no longer as vivid as it had been when he had first forced his power into the gem. It was, perhaps, at half power compared to its original state. He looked back at Donato.

"Did you do this?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"Drain it."

"Well, um, there was some experimentation going on. It was putting off an aura that was new to the game, and we thought that it might be a new item. There was much speculation, you see, and -"

"I asked if you were the one responsible."

"...Not for this one."

"Then there were others?"

"There's...rumors of others," the snake hedged. "I know about three of them, and there was talk of a staff being found that had a similar aura, but I haven't heard of it actually being brought in yet."

Then it was out there, and so were his treasures. They were just hidden by the aura of the world, blanked out for him so that he couldn't find them so easily, but they were out there. It would be possible to bring this to a close quickly if he could just find them. His staff, in particular, would go a long way towards ending this and achieving his goals quickly.

He closed his fingers around the gem again. Donato opened his mouth, only to close it again as the dragon raised an eyebrow.

Amarantha stepped forward, pulling the wizard out of the way.

"Alright. You want to know things? Fine. So do we. A question for a question?"

"That is fair enough. Until your friends come back, at least," he said. "But I get the first question."

"...Fine."

"Let's begin with this concept of a 'game.' What do you mean when you say that this world is a game?"

The lioness and the snake looked at each other, and they both had the same expression of incredibility, exasperation, and concern. He imagined that the question and its answer were a lot more convoluted than either of them really wanted to get into, but if they wanted to get their own answers, they were going to have to explain as best they could, as fast as they could.

Amarantha started.

"Um...let's see...Do you, uh, do you dream?" she asked.

"Sometimes."

"Well, this world - Morphus - is basically a dream that you can go to whenever you want," she said. "Kinda like - ugh, this is hard. But...think about it like this. You go here, and you do things that you can't do for real. Magic and archery and adventure."

"And murder and slaughter," Draconicon added.

"I..." She bit off her response, shaking her head. "In any case, this is like the dream world, except that it's not a dream. It's something we made with machines. And when we do things in here, it affects things in the other world. Our actions, our gaming, runs different machines and makes money for the people we work for. And the more we do for the people we work for in the game, the more money they make, and the better stuff we get."

"I see..."

And he did, at least somewhat. There were gaps in his understanding, there was no denying that, but there were bits and pieces that he did get, and enough of it to piece together some ideas of why he was here, and not in a 'normal' world.

When he'd first arrived, there had been a barrier between him and the real world, something that sucked him away from the normal point of entry that he would have passed through going from universe to universe. It must have been the game, so real and so much a world in and of itself that it had become a parasite of sorts to the real one. That was why he was stuck here, because it was closer to the rest of the universe than the thing that it was attached to.

But the money part, and the game being so tied to the other world that way? That was the part that he didn't understand. The dream part, however, explained the constant living and dying, at least.

"Our turn," Amarantha said. "What the fuck are you?"

"...I am a dragon, and I come from a different world," he said, shrugging.

"That's impossible. Bullshit."

"You asked, and I answered."

"There aren't - we don't - you can't just -"

"If I may?" Donato interrupted, holding up one hand. "I assume, sir, that you mean to say that you were not created by the coding of this world, nor developed out of it, but rather entered the game from outside. That, at least as far as I understand, you had abilities of your own that sent you through whatever distance was between us, and allowed you to enter here, perhaps through the power that lies within the gem I just returned to you."

"...Very carefully stated as a non-question," Draconicon said, chuckling. "Otherwise, I'd be owed two questions in a row. But yes, that's correct."

Amarantha shook her head slowly while Donato's eyes widened. They were both shocked, he could tell, but one of them clearly liked the possibilities it presented much more than the other. However, as that had answered their question, it was his turn.

"Why are you killing things for no reason?"

"...When did we do that?" Donato asked.

"He means the kobolds, and the other monsters," Amarantha said.

"Oh. Um, that's just what we do. It's part of the game."

"It is amusing to you to find those that look different to you and kill them for loot. I see the lure of conquest is the same in all worlds," Draconicon said with a shake of his head.

"They were made for that. And not in some bullshit divine mandate kind of way, either," the lioness said. "When they made Morphus, we just kept going with the kind of games that we'd had for years. If there are adventurers, then there had to be monsters that the adventurers take care of."

"From the looks of things, you can be monstrous enough yourselves."

"That's not fair. They don't think. They're not people. They're just -"

"They are part of the game...but my next question can wait. Your turn."

Even though Donato looked to be the more reasonable of the two, he seemed too lost in his own head to come up with a question of his own, so it fell to the lioness once more. She even had a good question.

"What do you actually want?"

"I want to leave."

"Then just go."

"I can't. Not until I get my power back. And not until I know that there's not going to be a return to slaughter for them."

"Them?"

He pointed over his shoulder back to the cave.

"They're mine, now. And I told them that I would take care of them."

"...That's impossible. Monsters don't work together. They never have, never could. They're not -"

"They submitted to me. I took away the label that they had. They're no longer just 'creatures', just 'monsters'. They're part of my little faction."

At the word 'faction,' Donato stopped mumbling and Amarantha went wide-eyed. They flicked their eyes up at the sky, and she swore.

"Fuck...fuck that's...that's impossible..."

"Hmm?" Draconicon turned. "Oh. Oh, that's interesting."

Looming over the cave, so high and so dark that he hadn't seen it before, was a flag similar to what he had seen over the village further down the mountain and the others that dotted the lands. Unlike theirs, his was smaller and further up, but it was still there, looming over the cave like someone had taken a flag and planted it there.

"What did you do?" Amarantha whispered.

"It isn't your turn to ask a question."

"You broke something. This...this isn't..."

"I did what I felt was right," he said, turning around to face the two players again. "I saw what was happening to the kobolds, and I went into their sheets, the same as I did with yours to turn off your ability to talk to others, the same as I did to myself to keep this world from turning me into what it thought I should be. I turned off the thing that made them behave one specific way, and let them learn.

"They chose to be under me, and so, I marked them. They are part of my guild, my Order. They chose to serve me, and I chose to protect them, to let them have the chance to live and grow and be something more. And that is why I can't just leave, even if I get all my power back, because the minute I take my eyes off them, someone is going to come along and kill them again, and again, and again, just because they can, because you don't see them as people. Just as you didn't see me as people when you saw me; you knew I was different, but you still refused to see me as 'real'. Do you see it differently now? Do you see me differently now?"

They didn't answer. Draconicon shook his head. He told himself that this was new to them, that they were being faced with something that they had never considered before. It was no different to explaining that anything could talk if it had enough time to build up and evolve and learn how to be sentient, but try explaining that to a group that believed that they were the only intelligent life in the universe. He rubbed the back of his head.

"My turn, because that wasn't a question. And you owe me a lot, now."

"That's not fair," Donato said.

"You can take that up with her, for asking so many. Now...why are you coming after me? This isn't just you. You're terrified, in some ways. Why are your people coming for me again and again?"

"...Short answer, Kadahn," Donato said, shaking his head. "Long answer: we've received a new guild leader lately, and he is determined to leave a mark on the game."

"You mean raise profits for the guild and our owners," Amarantha muttered.

"I suppose that's correct. He hasn't said as much, but it's easy enough to read between the lines."

"And I am interfering with those profits, I suppose."

"Pretty much. The kobold caves only respawn their resources when the kobolds are there to mine them and pull them out, and having them up here in a different cave means that we don't know when we're going to get those resources again," Amarantha said.

"And you blame me."

"He does. He wants the game corrected, and wants to see if you drop any interesting loot. Do you?" Donato asked.

Draconicon just stared. The snake, seemingly realizing that he'd asked a rather insensitive question, mouthed an apology and stuffed his hands into his robe pockets.

"So, this Kadahn...he is ordering regular attacks, then? He wants me and the others looted, and brought back to normal?"

"So the guild can keep making a bigger profit, yes," Amarantha said.

"I see."

An enemy that wanted him gone for the sake of ambition was something that he could understand. More than once, his entrance to a world had disrupted the natural order of things. Something about a massively empowered dragon flailing about, learning how the world worked, and shaping it to his will so he could be comfortable while finding his exit tended to do that, he found. This situation was not so different to the times that a noble had found it uncomfortable that his slaves had been freed, or the times that the merchant princes were pissed that the dragon had managed to take up their inventory for himself. It tended to happen about half the time.

But in those other situations, it always ended up with him delivering the individuals in danger somewhere else before he left. He couldn't do that here; the 'monsters' weren't intelligent enough yet to sustain themselves if he just left without warning. He would have to do something about Kadahn...and probably about the system behind him, too.

Draconicon tapped his chin as the snake and lioness waited. Slowly, he smiled.

"I think I know what I have to do."

"...I don't think I'm going to like this," Amarantha said.

"I think I'm going to have to take over."

"Nope. Not possible," she said.

"I think we'll find a way. There's generally a loophole. And besides, if I take over your guild and mesh it with my own group, then you will have what you need, will you not? Access to much more resources, stronger protection, greater levels of cooperative play between yourselves and the monsters. I would think that such an arrangement would suit you."

"...It would be profitable if we could have the kobolds bringing us their harvests and trading them the stuff that we don't get a profit on," Donato admitted. "And if you've really made them intelligent -"

"Knowing him, he has," Amarantha muttered. "I don't know what you really are, dragon, but you wouldn't brag about it if you haven't."

"I have."

"Ugh...fuck, fuck, fuck..."

"Is it so bad?"

"It's so...wrong. That's not how the game works. It's like you're cheating."

"If the game is not stopping me, I feel like the game rules haven't been broken yet." He shrugged. "Are you with me or against me?"

"What, now? We have to make a decision -"

"I'm for it," Donato admitted.

"That's one. And you?" Draconicon asked.

The lioness sputtered, looking between the dragon and the snake as if trying to find some shred of an explanation. He couldn't entirely blame her. He had just upended the system she was operating under, and he was asking her to take a side.

But, sadly, that was the way that the world worked. When it changed, it changed fast, and if you didn't make a choice, it would be made for you. The most that you could do was grab hold and hope that you could keep a grip on whatever mount you chose for the ride. If you waited, the world made the decision for you, so best to do what you could as you could.

The lioness looked up again, staring at the banner floating so high in the sky. She kept staring at it for almost a minute before sighing and pinching the bridge of her muzzle.

"Fine. Fine. I'll go along with this."

"Good. Then I'll make sure that you don't die anymore."

"...Somehow, that's not as reassuring as you think."

"So," Donato said. "Can I come up and see the differences you've made? I want to see just how you developed them to the point of them having sexual needs."

"And with that, I'm gone," Amarantha said, turning to leave.

Draconicon let her. He imagined that she'd have a lot to think about, and he'd have his hands full with Donato, anyway.

The End

Summary: Draconicon has another scuffle with the adventurers, and learns more about the game from Amarantha and a friend of hers.

Tags: M/solo, Nudity, Fight, Magic, Game, Video Game World, Draconicon, Dragon, Overpowered, Various Species, Series, Snake, Lioness, Curiosity, Worldbuilding,