Outpost 13 (part 2)
#2 of Outpost 13
The next morning, Lori and Fen are awakened by a terror laden scream. An
unnatural cluster of eyes, ears, tentacles and bat wings all compacted into
the general size and shape of a bowling ball flutters at the open window of
their room. Fenryx grabs a selection of knives, ones that have the general
look and purpose of ninja throwing shards, and then proceeds to launch a
barrage of the hurtling at the thing at the window.
The assault causes it to explode in a fury of blood, smoke and viscera. Lori and Mel are cowering together under the bed while Fen is standing and seething with pure rage.
"Is it gone?" Lori asks in a terrified tone of voice just a notch or two above that of a whisper in volume.
"The spy eye is destroyed." Fen growls in a tone of vice with levels of anger
and hatred neither the vixen nor the bitch have heard from him before and for
their own safety they decided to wait until the ranger calms down before
coming out of hiding as he continues with: "Eternally damned perversion of
the natural world, it's things like that which will keep me in the hunt until
they intern me in the grave."
Even as he makes his statement the creators of the thing have their say:
"Hear us, mortal fools," a weirdly distorted disembodied voice intones in a
mocking manner, "you are meddling in affairs to which your primitive minds
cannot even begin to comprehend. Forget about Outpost Thirteen for it is
forever lost to you. It was ours before you humans came and now it is fully
ours again. You misbegotten children have NO place here. Keep away if you
value your souls."
A message that elicits a reaction that whatever made the thing might have
planned on:
"What the Fuck was that?" Melody asks with righteous indignation as she
stands up and glaringly looks about the room for the source of the voice and
settles her confrontational gaze on the gurgling spot on the floor where the
remains of the spy eye are quickly deteriorating, with her hands on her hips
to complete a stance of complete and utter defiance. "I go where I please or
where my vocation sends me! Who the Fuck do you think you are to tell me to
refuse a perfectly good assignment!?!"
Fenryx barks in an authoritarian tone he had used with them before and every
time he had done so in the past his position, both socially and mentally,
would brook no dissention:
"At ease, Melody!"
Then he continues with: "The message was obviously a recording. Every time I
took down one of those things previously there was a one in four chance it
had a message and/or some item or items somewhere like a wickedly sick and
twisted piñata."
As he gathers up his throwing irons Fen thinks he sees and smells something
strange about them. "Lori, Mel, you two have access to identification spells
do you not?"
Mel, standing up and naked as the day she was born nods as does Lori who is
still under the bed. "My throwing irons have just become enchanted and I want
to know how."
"I was with you when you forged those shards, Fen," Lori relates as she
slowly gets to her feet; still quivering with fear from all that is going on.
"And you never did take those weapon and item enchanting classes that were
recommended did you?"
"Gods of Light and Darkness!" Fen yells as he quickly gets dressed in his
parade armor ensemble. "I almost forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me."
After running out the door, Lori looks at Mel in an expression that silently
asks: "What the Fuck?"
"Fen signed up for the enchanting classes last time he was in town." Mel
explains. "Now that we have the down time, he's taking them."
"Oh!" Lori exclaims in understanding. "So, what do we do now? Our dildo
supply is strangely missing and these things."
She holds up one of Fen's irons. "Hurt too much going in to serve the purpose
unless he left their sheathes behind."
"You can be so sick, twisted and perverted, Lori," Mel says with a lusty
smirk. "Not that this is necessarily a bad thing."
Lori gives Mel a passionate kiss. "Ordinarily I'd oblige you, love, but that
thing and Fen's reaction to has me spooked. I want to know..."
The vixen almost swoons, "Phew! This thing reeks of magic! And when Fen made it I'm sure he did not enchant it."
"Spontaneous enchantment?" Melody asks incredulously as she blinks in
confusion. "I've heard of it happening, but I never thought I'd witness it
first hand."
"I know," Lorelei says in a clinical manner before ordering: "Get my portable
laboratory. I want to do this right. While Fenryx loves us enough to never
hurt us..."
"You've never seen him filled with righteous rage before have you, Lori?"
Mel asks as she gets out the set of tubes, liquids, powders and unguents they
use to identify magical implements in the field. "He got that way once before
when we were captured by that eye tyrant...who turned you to stone. Do you
remember anything from then?"
"Not a thing and I get the impression I should be glad." Lori freely admits.
As they set up the mini-lab the Bane water jar accidentally spills onto the
knives, giving off purple sparks. "A Bane weapon!" Lori cries. "Fen will love
that. Purple sparks are...I Keep forgetting, Red is evil outsiders, Blue is
for magic enhanced beasts..."
"Aberrations," Mel says while reading their instruction manual. "We might
have known. Spy eyes are a known type of aberration. They are supposedly vat
grown by the Overseers, thought to be a kind shadow partner to the Horde."
"Wasn't there supposedly an entrance to the Labyrinth of Lament on the
island?" Lori asks as she taps the side of her muzzle.
"That was a rumor going around," Melody states. "But nothing has ever been
proven. I wonder if High Command is send Fenryx to the island to either
confirm or deny these rumors with all certainty..."
The two give each other conspiratorial glance of: "Of course they are!"
"Either the Overseers have a spy in High Command," Lori reasons. "Or they
have some sophisticated means of remote viewing."
"Which means the spy eye was a kind of preemptive strike." Mel says with a
smirk. "But while it spooked us, Fen was incensed. Rangers get that with
certain monster types."
"Ah, that's why he was so pissed," Lori says as the proverbial light
bulb/candle of understanding alights over her head. "He hates aberrations
with a passion few ever get to see."
"We have and so has every femme he's slept with." Mel giggles to which Lori
glares at her and to which she amends: "Different emotion, Lori, I know but
it's just fortunate we have some of his more positive emotions expressed
towards us."
"Right," Lori says with a smirk. "I'd hate to be on the business end of his
rage."
Melody nods and smiles before agreeing in all seriousness: "Neither would I,
but I think we have Fen's answer now."
"That we do." Lori says with a smirk as she reads between the lines. "I take
it you want to fool around now?"
Melody pounces the vixen rather than verbally replying. As they play lesbian
games with each other, Fenryx only just makes his class. Or so he thinks.
As it turns out a special accelerated program has been created for him. When
he goes to enter the classroom he is transported to a cave with dancing
lights of various colors floating around the area combining with incense
wafting about at odd intervals that creates an ethereal atmosphere.
Grabbing his sickles and preparing for a fight he instead meets up with a
very old dragon with glittering gold scales. Confused for only a minute,
Fenryx recognizes Auros, a dragon that had allied with the humans almost from
the start. Recognition slowly dawns on as he realizes that this is her secret
cave tucked away in its own private dimension.
"Greetings, Venerable One," Fenryx says with great respect.
Auros chuckles: "No need for such ceremony, Fen, I am here to teach you the
basics of enchantment. The rest of which is more or less trial and error;
High Command doesn't want this extra curricular activity to jeopardize your
upcoming mission."
She then pauses thoughtfully before smirking and continuing with: "Well, I
don't see this as unnecessary. You will be one of a few crafts persons going
and in case something should be needed, who would make what is needed? But that is neither here nor there. For right now we will keep things simple.
With the materials present, make me a dagger suitable for enchantment."
Fenryx goes straight to work, making the required weapon with some input from Auros herself. When all is said and done, the dagger turns out to contain a slight dweomer. Auros informs Fenryx that a weapon, or anything else that is
craft and/or constructed for that matter, granted its enchantment while in
the process of being made holds its enchantment longer and with less strain
than one enchanted after it has been constructed.
He was so rushed as to have forgotten to bring paper and writing material
with which to make notes upon, although the mere fact that he is making the
minor magic items instead of watching them being made is nailing the process
and the information to complete in his mind like a placard that he can
mentally access much more readily than his own notes or books to confer with.
The mere act of creation is teaching him more effectively that a whole month
of verbal instruction. As Fenryx continues to forge weapons and armor, all of which contain some small enchantment, a portal opens up in the cave.
Through this portal steps a small group of humans. All ten are well know to Fenryx as they were to go out into the planes and beseech aid for their fellow humans against the Horde.
Fenryx and Auros can see behind them are a contingent of beings from other
realities. Militaristic angels step forth along with elves and dwarves from other planes of existence ready to fight the Horde and repopulate this world with their kind. Once this would have been a happy scene, but the lupin and the dragon give them a chilly reception. Auros's cave is a portal to Fen's world and the only way in or out.
Auros set her domain between the Prime Material Plane that represents that
which Baron Objugare's reality and the Astral Plane on purpose so that she
could act as a Guardian. The leader of the returning delegation, a tall and
older man wearing the grey robes of a master wizard and known as Maxwell
Caesar hails the dragon and lupin warrior.
"Fenryx! Auros! So nice of you to greet us here." Maxwell beams as he approaches. "We did it! Old friend, our world..."
"Is no more," Auros proclaims which shocks the gathered as the dragon
continues:
"You are too late to save your people, Max, the Horde exterminated all of
humanity and its children save the beastlings. They rule in your stead. Too
many beings fought and died to drive the Horde back to their lands for me to
allow you to progress any further."
"But Auros..." a blonde woman pleads until Fenryx shakes his head and takes
up his bow.
"No, Valerie," Fenryx says with a heavy heart. "I can't let you through. As
much as I might want to, your presence would bring back the goblins. You will
be hunted down and executed should you go back. Leave now and never return."
He can't even look at them as he draws back his bowstring. "I don't want to
do this. But for the sake of my world; for the survival of all beastling
races, I will kill you."
"So, the war is over then?" A huge bald and dark skinned man asks of the wolf
and the dragon.
"It is, Malcolm," Auros says with a twinge of regret. "The beastlings won,
but the price of that victory was every last man, woman and child of human
and gnomen kind as well as races closest in relation to them. There is no
place for you now. You are the past, and there can be no future as long as
you exist in his world. Turn back now and avoid bloodshed. Make life anew
elsewhere. For the sake of all, you are not welcome here."
Fenryx keeps a look of desperate determination on his face as he aims his
bow. Without warning he fires and shoots Maxwell in the heart. He had been a
friend of Maxwell, a very good friend.
Malcolm raise his great sword and starts to charge only to be cut down in a
hail of arrows. Regretfully the others retreat, taking the bodies of the
fallen with them. Sadness fills the eyes of the departing humans and the
lupin that killed their friends.
The message was sent and received: No humans allowed. After they left, Fenryx collapses sobbing. He and Valerie were lovers once; closer than he is to
Melody and Lorelei. Inside his heart is breaking. The fact that he just saved
countless lives is no comfort.
Auros compacts herself into a humanoid form a little taller than Fenryx and
hugs him. Crying in silence, Fenryx takes small comfort in the dragon's arms.
When Fenryx goes to leave, Auros tries to assume her normal form. She had
done this hundreds of times in the past; just not now. Now it is her turn to
cry. She tries out other forms but every time she returns to "normal" form
she goes back to the anthro form.
"Auros, what's wrong?" Fen asks to which she sobs. "I can't go back to how I
was, Fen. This is my normal form now."
"It could be worse." Fen consoles. "I like the way you look now, although
clothes is going to a pain in the tail."
"Clothing?" Auros asks and then realizes she is completely nude. "I never
really needed them before."
"Granted, but you could do with some now. That is, unless of course you want
someone to have sex with you." Fen says with a lusty smirk.
Auros cocks an eye ridge before deciding to give it a try. Taking care not to
damage her wings, she lies down and spreads her legs. While sex in this
position is nothing new for the aged lady dragon the fact that she can't
assume what she assumes is her natural form is.
The mating is brief and to the point; after he cums Fenryx leaves. Contacting
several of her friends, Auros finds that this trend is disturbingly freqent.
Even her enemies contact her with death threats for doing this to them. It is
generally agreed among dragon kind that the ritual performed to kill all of
humanity that the Horde's Dread Emperor performed had something to do with
all of this.
Exactly what and how to reverse its effects on themselves are generally
unknown and this is where everything breaks down. But they all agree to look
into it, each in their own different manner. On a more carnal note, Auros and
a few friends among the dragons of good have arranged a kind of draconic orgy
in a secluded dimension that all of dragon kind has kept secret for centuries
as a kind of Neutral Ground territory where the various dragon types can meet
and discuss things in relative privacy.
Upon getting wind of this carnal activity between some of the more well known
dragons known for their disposition in favor of goodly folk, the kobolds,
smaller scaly creatures loosely related to dragons and humanoid in form
before all this came about, busy themselves with readying various sorts of
magical equipment for the event as well as their best artists. While the
little scaly monsters ostensibly serve their larger draconic cousins, more
than a few of them have gotten together to prepare to render some "Dragon
Porn" to sell to anyone with the gold to purchase it.
Once the Horde gets wind of this, many well to do goblin, hobgoblin and
bugaboo lords, including the Emperor himself, order kobold artisans and art
houses to make themselves available for commissions. In the beastling realms, a new invention, the printing press, is gearing up to make copies for the masses.
In the mean time Fenryx and company are getting ready to cast off. King
Duncan has chosen to mark this as a momentous occasion with much fanfare. At this time Miyagi Toru is introduced to the command team. Once pleasantries
are exchanged the venerable sensei is escorted to his cabin.