"Oh, yeah, the world-betting thing. I knew about that already," Scipio said while slicing up her steak.
"Then why didn't you tell me?" Tim asked as he leaned forward over the table in the dining area. Are they intentionally not telling me stuff?
She shrugged. "Thought you knew?" she said between bites. "Deities aren't gonna do all this shit for no reason. Watching mortals is only enjoyable for so long, or at least that's what Sateus says." She put a potato chip on her next bite of steak and crunched into it. "Mm."
He sank back into his seat, feeling nine-out-of-ten drained on a number of levels.
"What's it matter anyway?" she asked, pulling more chips out of the bag in front of her. "Nothing you can do about it."
"I don't know, it just seems like it does somehow," he said.
"Yeah, whatever," Scipio said. She crunched through another handful of chips. "You gonna finish that story? Sort of interesting."
"Well," Tim said. I can probably leave a few things out. Although… "Is it going to be weird if I do?"
She stared at him for a moment, then she began to laugh. "You did! You definitely fucking did! You fucked dragons!" she howled as she tipped her head back and laughed.
He tried to hold it in, but a ten-out-of-ten smug smile erupted onto his face almost immediately.
"That's so fucking great," she wheezed after another minute or so. "Why would it be weird tho—Oh, you mean because we fucked? Nah, though I might be a little impressed depending on how the story goes, Storm," she said, grinning just as widely. "Who knows, maybe it'll get me so excited that we'll fuck right here on this table."
Somehow I don't think that's going to be the case.
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"Dominion of worlds," Tim said.
"Yup! It's complicated, Drake, but the biggest benefit is that a deity gets a little bit of power from all the other deities with followers on the world," Igyn said. "This means even a little deity like me might suddenly gain a lot of power if I can win one of the worlds that a strong deity like Sateus has followers on. A lot of deities are really particular about where they have followers for that reason, in fact. They wipe them out on worlds where they might lose their power if a gamble goes wrong."
This is way more fucked up than I thought. Tim pressed a hand to his face and took a deep breath. "I see. And if a deity…managed to gain dominion in a world that Sateus has followers on…"
"Well then they'd get really strong really fast," Igyn finished in a patient tone. "That's what happened after the last tournament Sateus came to, which is why everyone's a little crazy right now thinking they might win."
"Ah," Tim said. So if—
"You ask too many questions!" Igyn harrumphed. "Now it's my turn. Will you give my followers the children they want, Drake Storm?"
Alright, I'll have to think about all that later. It's a lot. "It…just seems, uh, a little weird?" He turned to Railleth. "I did almost kill you. And now you…"
Railleth kept her hands clasped in her lap and fixed him with a tranquil smile that was much less aggressively intimate than she'd been earlier. "Drake Storm, I would have yielded before you killed me. I'm not stupid. Like Igyn's probably told you, there's only the five of us now. I wouldn't—"
"You looked pretty fucking close to dying back there if I recall," Tim said, recalling himself how wetly she'd coughed and how blood had drizzled down out the bottom of her helmet.
"I believed Lekthi would keep me from dying," she said, staring into his eyes. "And I think," she continued, a touch of her earlier, toothy smile returning as she flexed her left hand in front of her, "that I'd have killed you long before I died."
He frowned. That's…almost certainly true. I didn't even think about yielding.
"More than that though," she said, inching closer until the sleeve of her dress was touching him. "You did promise," she said softly, tilting her head so her eyes could roam along his shirtless chest, down along which she lightly drew a claw from her right hand, tracing a line around the inside of his pecs down to his abs. "And…I think you're very handsome. Even if I did almost kill you earlier."
"I…" He hesitated.
"Don't you find me attractive?" she asked in the same, soft voice that felt like a nine-out-of-ten in seductiveness at that moment. Her hand strayed to his leg, and she leaned towards him, giving him a clear look down the loose neck of her dress, which revealed that her cleavage was, in fact, at least partly—or maybe even mostly—from a combination of bulging muscle and the dress itself rather than the full, heavy breasts he'd expected to see.
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"Well," Tim said.
She rose smoothly off the sofa, holding his eyes with hers as she hiked her dress up her long, partly-scaled legs and again came to sit gently on his lap. Her hand rose to brush his face, running up into his hair, and he mirrored the motion, finding even her scales to be soft and warm to the touch. He moved his hand slowly up along her face, and she closed her eyes, gently nuzzling against him. When he reached the delicate-looking fins that resembled hair on top of her head, he felt an unusually-shaped tongue graze against his lips as though asking for permission.
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"A forked tongue? Like a snake?" Scipio's face scrunched up as she bit into a slice of pizza.
"It's a little hard to describe, but it felt nicer than I expected," Tim said as he reflected on the impossibly smooth feeling of her ten-out-of-ten tongue as it had wrapped fully around and then stroked his. He picked a little more at the pasta dish he'd chosen.
"Huh." She chewed for a bit. "Okay, and then what happened? You go through all five of them right away?" Her hand came up, and she started fanning herself. "Starting to get excited, Storm."
Tim rolled his eyes. "I didn't," he said. "The, uh, leader one, Lekthi—she's the oldest—seems like she really hates me for almost killing Rai. And Cin wanted me all to herself, so I'm going back sometime later, supposedly, though I don't know how that works."
"You have nicknames for them?" she asked with a widening grin. "This is some legendary shit, Storm. You impregnated three dragons and maybe even saved a race." She paused with the next slice of pizza nearly in her mouth and gave him a questioning look. "You did leave them with the children they wanted after all this, didn't you?"
A toothy grin spread across Tim's face as he remembered the previous couple hours. "I was victorious, obviously."
She stared at him for a couple seconds, then she started to snicker. "Victorious, huh? How's your cock doing? Need to get it repaired? Dragon scales are really hard."
He chuckled. "I might. You offering?" He dug into his pasta again, continuing to grin.
"Mm," she said, now drinking some purple soup using a big ladle she'd found somewhere. "Maybe," she said, giving him a speculative look. "Probably," she revised as he felt something slide up his calf. "Not really in the mood now though." She sighed, and her lips pulled to one side in a grimace. "Fight was so boring. I can already tell Sateus isn't gonna bet any good worlds on my fights. They're all gonna be like this, and I'm gonna be really fucking bored the whole time."
"Why's that?" Tim asked between bites.
The touch on his leg disappeared, and Scipio took another drink from her ladle. "Whole thing's complicated, but there's wagers for each competition and then wagers for overall rankings. Sateus always bets every world he owns, and he only…" Her brows drew down, and she cocked her head to one side for a moment. "Eh, it's been too fucking long, and I didn't pay much attention the first time," she said before grabbing some type of mirror-coated bread and bringing it to her mouth. There was a loud cracking sound, and it was followed by crunching noises that grew fainter the more she chewed. "This one's good," she said, sounding surprised as she looked down at it.
"Huh." Alright, so the gambling part is something I still need more details on. Seems ominous. But I think I'm finally past the point of finding her food preferences weird after everything that's happened. Sort of fun watching her eat now since I'd never try half these things. "Anything happen here while I was gone?"
"Mm." She crunched through another bite of mirror-bread, and her gray eyes met his. "Couple things, I suppose," she said, disintegrating the bowl of soup and waving the ashes away. "Ir'alith's been weird. Tried to break down five guy's door for a while when she got back. Roaring a lot. Really loud. Still red with all the pointy things too. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she sort of ripped my head off so I came up to eat while I thought about it. Went back down to find her a little while ago when I had an idea, but I didn't see her."
"Huh," Tim said again. "Who's five guy?"
Scipio shrugged. "No idea. Haven't seen him either. Not even sure he's in his room. Might still be competing." She brought a forkful of a brown cake to her mouth. "Huh. Coffee… Cake. Weird."
That's…all a bit weird. He took a drink of the dark wine he'd poured himself. Ir'alith definitely didn't seem like herself before I got warped off to wherever. Maybe this was what Sateus meant by keeping them out of trouble. Feels like I'm finally catching my stride here, though it's also weird that it took so long for that to happen.
The feeling of Rai's eight-point-seven, soft, lightly-scaled legs clamping painfully tightly around his back came to mind, and his grin returned. Not sure how a VR character's body can make children, and it's even weirder imagining that in a few years they're each going to somehow have a few dozen little dragonkin babies of mine, but that was… Definitely not something anyone else has ever done.
He tapped his claws on the table for a few seconds while he daydreamed about frolicking through grassy fields with a crowd of ten-out-of-ten little dragonkin babies, tossing them up into the air as they giggled and occasionally breathed fire on him. Only a few seconds, as that was he time he'd allotted in his new schedule. Alright, time to do something. He stood up, feeling reinvigorated. "I'm going to check on the others, then do some more training," he announced.
"Gonna eat for a while," Scipio said, staring off into the aisles of food. "Not sure what I'll do after." She started crunching through the last piece of her mirror-bread. "Think Carl would want any food from here?"
The idea gave him pause. "Maybe?" He looked behind himself at the infinite aisles of food, then turned back to her. "Wait, you mean—"
"Might be fun," she said. "Just to see his reaction. Something his best friend would definitely do."
"His best friend would know what food he'd want," Tim retorted with a slight smirk.
"We'll see about that," Scipio said, smirking back at him for a moment before she turned her attention to the next thing she was about to try eating, which was in a bowl of broth that had lots of furry tentacles hanging out over the edges.
"Enjoy your tentacle soup," he said as he started off towards the stairs. I don't know why I feel like I have to compete on something that stupid. She's fun though. I can see why Carl likes her. It's looking like we'll go a second round after whatever happened on my couch earlier, so I need to figure out how I'm going to…make that go better. So weird.
He stepped down onto the staircase, already drafting up a schedule that included a pending dalliance with the gray-eyed beauty. I'll check on Emma first on my way down to make sure nothing weird is happening with her, then I'll see if I can find Ir'alith and figure out what's going on there. Just doing the rounds. Back on track.