“By Berxerxes’ balls! If someone had said I would one day escort an Emperor to meet an army of a million skeletons at the end of the world, I would have laughed in their face.”
As the Knight Commander of the newly formed Crossing Guard, I am obligated to escort the Emperor on official meetings with potential threats. Everyone knows I stand the same chance of making a difference in a fight as a shark’s bark in a choir. We are just a bunch of shiny tin soldiers on display, all 100 of us. Not a single one of us is better than Gold, and I only barely qualify for that metric. But hey, when someone handsome offers to buy out your mercenary contract and outfit you to the gills with the best enchanted equipment you have ever seen, you don’t say no.
It is rather comfortable for full plate armor. Unlike standard issue armor, it doesn’t come in the classic two sizes: ‘too big’ and ‘too small’. It is more flexible than it ought to be, and it regulates temperature and keeps me dry. Nanu smashed me “lightly” with her tail once during training. I bounced a good way, but got right back up, feeling more embarrassed than hurt, such is its quality. Dropped my sword point first on the ground once just to see what would happen. It sank right up to the hilt, easy as you please. A girl can pray that she lives to retire and gets to keep her equipment, but if this skeleton army gets even a smidge uppity, we mortals are toast.
The Emperor’s confidence shines like a beacon to us all. Casually sitting on his road in his draconic form, towering well above any of us, he patiently waits with a smile on his face, a toothy one on account that dragons don’t have significant cheeks or lips. Gods, I wonder what it would feel like if he sank those fangs into me.
“Bah, get yourself together, Jericho!”
Perhaps that is the “maiden” part of my [Shield-Maiden] Blessing getting the better of me, although I cast off the burden of being a maiden when I was 14. Life was hard and winters lean in the Steppes of Strife, but also exciting and rewarding. Now I am so far from home and in way over my head, but the Emperor never complains that I am a lacking commander or combatant. He would probably just eat me if I were, for I have never heard of him firing anyone. I have only heard rumors about such terminations, and in most of them, the person simply “disappears”. Best that I keep things straight lest I end up buried under one of his roads or worse.
At least the bannermen aren’t trembling like leaves in a gale, although the slight breeze is rocking them about. “Big E”, as the lads and lassies of the Crossing Guard call him, finally settled on a banner. Black border, the black silhouette of a dragon walking to the right across a bridge, with a golden yellow background the same color as his scales, all in a big rectangle with a triangular bottom (as are most banners these days). There have been other iterations and designs, but this one seems to be what will stick.
For the Crossing Guard, we got an octagon with a dragon facing forward and holding up his hand in a gesture to halt. It has a white border, a red background, and a white dragon with black lines to give it shape. Instead of a flag, it is a sheet of metal on a stick we can hold up towards people to tell them to stop. Usually works, and when it doesn’t, our spears usually convince people to comply with our directives.
Not that I could stop the seemingly unending army that approaches. The Ashlands offer slightly rolling hills, and we stand on one with a commanding view. I see nothing but ash and a bunch of skellie boys as far as the eye can see, and by the gods, I hope they are on our side or we are right and truly fucked. It is only about a quarter mile away now and it shows no sign of stopping.
Now they are a hundred feet away and closing fast, for they move at a trot. My fellow guards and I flinch as a dragon’s roar is heard in the distance. With our eyes skyward, we see one appear, its body gradually becoming visible as if it had moved through some sort of wall of invisibility. It banks left and disappears just the same, only to reappear as it circles back in an all-too-familiar posture that displays that it is trying to land. In one hand it clutches a tiny rod that it waves frantically for no apparent purpose. I suspect that he is invisible to an onlooker at a certain range, for he waxed and waned in my vision at seemingly the same relative distance.
The lead skeleton, no different than any other, aside from how it carries a large banner of its own, walks right into Big E, its body continuing the motion of walking as best it can despite having hit a very solid leg of a rather immovable dragon. The rest of the skellies freeze in place in the middle of marching, none of them moving even an inch forward as their leader’s momentum is arrested.
“Stop, damn you!” the gray dragon shouts as he waves his rod upon landing. In a flash of gray light, he transforms into a humanoid, the rod now very large in his grasp to almost be a quarterstaff, although it remains a bit too girthy to be practical. He approaches the lead skeleton and bonks it on the head with the staff, to no noticeable effect.
“The command is ‘halt’, not ‘stop, damn you’, dear brother.” We jump as another presumed dragon walks up from the right. We never saw her land, at least I did not, nor did she kick up as much ash with the wind from her wings, but Big E seemed to not be startled by her approach.
“Oh that rat bastard. Now I know why he was smiling when he handed me the rod. I swear I will get him back for this.”
“Decorum dictates poise and civility, brother. We stand before an Emperor.” The woman bows low, right arm bent at the elbow with hand straight, the limb aligned such that it goes all the way to her shoulder, the other arm behind her back and parallel to the ground. “Hail, magnificent Emperor of the Crossroad Wayfinders. Emperor Ossimandias of the Bone Wardens extends his greetings to you. This one is Princess Tibulmandias of The Bone Wardens, and this one to my right is my brother, Prince Femandias. Father regrets not establishing diplomatic ties sooner, but here we are to remedy that unfortunate development. Additionally, we have brought with us an army to help defend our world. We request that you grant us passage so that we too may fulfill our role in protecting our home.”
“Salutations, Tibulmandias of The Bone Wardens.” The Emperor spoke calmly and clearly, his voice deeper and more soothing in his draconic form, yet bereft of any malice or intimidation as he gave voice to his thoughts. “I appreciate the efforts of Ossimandias and all members of The Bone Wardens for the war effort and the sacrifice of some of your territory for World’s End and World’s Hope. I would be delighted if we would find ourselves as friends and allies before too long.
“In the spirit of opening diplomatic channels between our flights, do you wish to stay and chat or to reconvene at some other time? If the former, then worry not, for no one else is scheduled to come this way for some time. Furthermore, if you are staying, then your brother may wish to issue the proper command to stop his army lest it walk away.”
The Emperor’s smile widened as he motioned his head to the lead skeleton that still endeavored to continue its forward progress, its body ever abutting the giant leg in front of him as it marched in place. I could feel a heatwave from the male visitor dragon as it surely blushed in embarrassment. He fumbled with his rod before firmly issuing the command “halt”, which had the prompt and desired effect of stopping the army. A great ripple traveled down the line of skeletons, their bodies, once frozen in their posture mid-perambulation, setting feet to ground as they came to a standing position. Eerie how none of them twitch or move at all afterwards.
Then Big E, in a flash of gold light, transforms into his human form. Outfitted in sensible and beautiful clothes of bright, metallic yellow and dark black, his decorum comes across as ready for either travel or relaxation, yet commanding and noteworthy, without the trappings of appearing gaudy or pretentious like most [Nobles] do. Bunch of silkpants, that lot is, but not Big E.
By contrast, now that I can see better without a big fucking dragon in my way, the Prince and Princess are more mysterious. Their bodies are covered head to toe in bandage wrappings, even their faces, yet that does not seem to impede their senses. The Princess wears an open gray robe, or perhaps a stylized trench coat, which extends to past her knees, along with some rather short shorts and sandals, the whole outfit gray. The Prince wears a jacket, with sleeves too short such that they only go halfway from his elbow to his wrists, and the midriff only goes down to his navel. Like his sister, he wears it open, but his shorts go almost to his knees. His shoes are gray much like the rest of his outfit, but more like slippers of some kind of crocodile or perhaps alligators.
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Their faces are surprisingly expressive, which is probably due to the illusions at play that mimic eyes and eyebrows, the eyes being white with black borders and no irises or pupils. They display shape and appear more cartoonish than realistic, yet they portray emotions suitably well.
Big E summons forth a black void, a single pane of nothingness that floats in the air, and from it, he draws forth a table and four chairs, complete with refreshments. For a moment, I wondered who would take the fourth chair, hoping that it would be me, then hoping that it would not be me. However, my hesitation proved moot as Skull appeared out of Big E’s shadow and took her seat by his side.
“Now then, I hope we can all relax and speak plainly. This courtly language is a tad stifling, don’t you agree?”
I understand why Big E could not offer his honor guard chairs. We just suffer in silence as we stand here at the ready. At least the armor is comfortable and keeps my muscles relaxed, a far cry from the stiffness that comes with standing guard in mundane equipment. Joke’s on them though, I have a book on the inside of my shield, and the Skills to surreptitiously read it and turn the pages without moving or being too distracted to pay attention to my surroundings. The slightest twitch on my part as I angled my shield for a better view of my literature caught the attention of the Princess, and I swear she gave me a wink as I resigned myself for potentially more hours standing out here.
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The Shadow Path offers many delights and opportunities. I had no name for it before Master’s riccen associates talked shop with me at one point. It seems like as good a name as any for it, for it is less of a specific place and more of a connection of places with paths in between.
Take a farm for instance. Fields big as fuck all in the real world, maybe a stone’s throw in the Shadow Path, for a field full of turnips is hardly noteworthy. Take a building with some history to it, a place where lives were changed, and it looms like a towering fortress, much larger than in the real world. I saw a barber shop in Berkerin that was rumored to be a location where a certain gang conducted interrogations; that place was easily four times as large as it should have been.
Sometimes, you see echoes of the past in the Shadow Path. Conversations that people had, acted out by ghostly images. Maybe you see something simpler, like where a mighty predator, decrepit with age and little more than skin and bones, drew its last breaths as it lay down and died. Everything noteworthy, everything that tells a larger story, seems to add weight to the Shadow Path and leave an impression upon it, so there is much to learn if one treads it. Often, it raises more questions than it answers, for the contexts of the scenes displayed there are never explained.
Master’s [Kuroko] kobolds use it all the time; that’s part of how they sneak into places. Doors are not always closed or locked in the Shadow Path. Riccen [Shadowfoot Pads], [Shadow Footpads], and [Shadowpads] use it too, even though they are all wildly different Blessings. Leave it to riccen to somehow be so shifty that the names of their Blessings are even misleading. One of them started to explain the difference between them to me once, but I can’t keep it straight in my head. In short, the only thing they have in common is that they walk the Shadow Path.
Other things lurk here too. A normal person may describe them as “scary” or “the stuff of nightmares”, but none have ever given me a problem. To be fair, I am prudent enough to not get too close to them, for the kobolds tell tales of how some of their own have gone missing after they ventured through lairs of these unknown entities.
I can tell what happens in the real world just fine. There is currently a vast legion of skeletal undead upon the road. There are also various [Shades], [Specters], and [Wraiths] that travel with them, but I know not what specific creatures they represent, for they are too closely bunched together to identify what creatures spawned them upon death. I do not know their purpose, but they certainly appear to be “domesticated”, for lack of a better description.
It probably has something to do with this big fucking dragon that walks beside them. It could be anywhere from a Duke to a King, if I were to guess, for each flight has their own design principles and each individual dragon has their own Blessing that may adjust the size of the body. Interesting, I would say, how its body is made of shadow and lines of white, more like a cartoon like you see in those gnomish newspapers than a thing in the real world. Even though I watched the dragon closely, I almost lost it as it moved to my Master’s right. Its parting wink caught my attention, then it turned into a humanoid and left the Shadow Path.
After pleasantries were exchanged and Master set a chair for me to join the grownups, I decided that I too should make an entrance. Normally, I would wear the armor I usually wear, but I doubt hostilities will break out and I can’t pass this opportunity to fuck with everyone. I do so love toying with Master and flustering him with my whole “submissive” routine.
Instead of conventional armor for war, I wear a different suit of “armor”, the kind a woman wears on the battlefield of love and desire. Stockings, garter straps, underwear that covers little, a bodice that props up my “honka donka badonkas”, as Chooka so eloquently put it one time. Finish the outfit off with my leather choker, one so thick that some may call it a collar, especially considering the chain that extends from it which I will place in Master’s hand, and the ensemble is sure to be as erotically enticing as it is embarrassing for him.
Plus, if things turn violent, I have the item Master gave me that will allow me to instantly switch my outfit with my armor and sword, so no problems there. Even if they cheap shot me with an attack, I will probably regenerate through the damage if it doesn’t kill me outright. Additionally, if I put on a good enough show, their lust-driven brains won’t even be able to think about conflict. Dragons tend to be easy like that.
I start off simple. Chain firmly in my Master’s hand, I quietly scooch my chair closer so as to ensure that the chain has sufficient slack in it. Much closer. I snuggle up to him, his arm safely nestled into my bosom as I make eyes at his two guests. A subtle bite of the lower lip when they aren’t looking directly at me does the trick. Now, I have their attention, and their fake eyes rarely stray.
My audience sufficiently captivated, I turn my gaze elsewhere, where I see that Master put some refreshments out on the table. I reach for some cheese sticks, but since they are so far away, I have to slide up onto the table, my legs spread and hips rotated backwards so as to showcase my backside. I then rotate onto my side, my upper leg bent at the knee so as to showcase what delights I have to offer. I then put the cheese stick, the whitest one I could find, over a candle, so that it starts to melt.
“Clumsily”, I fail to notice that the melted cheese drips onto my panties, then onto my exposed bosom, only for the last drops of it to land on my face.
“Oops,” I say coyly as I dab at it with my free hand, only to smear some around while the rest goes from my finger to my mouth as I suck it off. The cheese stick then follows, the whole length of it inserted into my mouth and swallowed hole, a skill that Chooka has helped me master.
I eye up Master’s guests, whom at this point have seemingly lost track of the conversation as they eye me up and down. Careful not to bring the chain taunt, I roll over towards them, ending with my legs spread wide and my arms down and behind me to prop me up, my back bent to really showcase my goods.
“I seem to have made a mess of myself. Would you two care to help me clean up?”
Their fake eyes, so expressive, I need not see their faces under those bandages. Curiosity, desire, lust, embarrassment, and more flicker through those illusions as they contemplate the pros and cons of taking me, or at least taking me up on the offer.
With a yelp, I slide back across the table, Master finally having enough of my games as he reels me in. He places his free hand around my neck, sadly not firmly enough to choke me. He admonishes me, but through our bond, I can feel his true emotions. He wants me, and he struggles as greatly as his guests to subdue his lust lest he behave in an unseemly manner.
He leans in closer, his breath upon my neck getting even me all hot and bothered. I had started all this just to fuck with them, but now, I feel so alive, empowered, as I bent all of them to my will and wrapped them around my little finger. All three of them want to ravish me right here and right now on this very table, and yet none of them can do so. Social graces dictate they refrain from such crass indulgences.
Also, the horde of monsters heading our way also are putting a damper on things. Any moment now, the Crossing Guard will notice them. The dragons have all made eyes in that direction, and frustration mounts as my closing act is upstaged by a totally fucking random spawning of monsters that just happen to be nearby and pissed at us.
I want my sword to sing forth my rage at the interlopers, but alas, we will have to sit and watch while the toy soldiers handle the riff-raff. Although, monsters being slain in the background would add to the fantasy of three dragons having their way with me. Perhaps there is a way I can wrangle this in my favor. It would be a shame if in all the chaos, I experienced a wardrobe malfunction and happened to land on top of one of them.