Prologue
Sit Down
Vicven
I was sitting on a stool, leaning on the counter of my bar. It had taken years to build my demiplane and mansion, and one of the few reasons was just because I wanted a bar. Yes, demiplane and mansion, I’m that damn powerful, and filthy rich! I had put a bar in at sometime for when I was bored. I was talking to Wilaver, my bartender.
“That was when we met Jarkore,” I said.
“The dragon?” Wilaver asked.
“Yep, the four of us were walking down a road next to a small mountain. On the other side was a desert, but we didn’t know it at the time. He was laying on a rock in the sun, taking a nap. He was blended in so well, none of us noticed him. We got closer, and the rock moved to glimpse us. When we realized what we were looking at, we were practically scared shitless!
“The first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Hi! What brings you here?’
“Now, hearing a dragon just being friendly out of the blue is,needless to say, a little strange. We tried to sneak away from him, but we didn’t know that brass dragons can breathe a knockout gas. When we woke up, we were buried neck deep in sand. I’m not sure how long we were in his cave for, but it must have been a few days at least. While we were buried, he just talked to us.”
Wilaver raised an eye brow. “He just talked? Don’t dragons normally just eat you off the road?”
“If you piss them off, but that’s only chromatic dragons… usually. After we had finished our little quest, I came back to him. For months, he taught me about things I didn’t even know existed. I walk out of his cave a few months later, and bam, I’m a dragon disciple. I even had the scales and wings to prove it.”
“How long ago was this?”
“I don’t know, thirty years? I wonder how he’s doing.” I tilted my head back and downed the rest of my mead.
“Why don’t you go find out?” Wilaver took my glass, and turned to the keg behind him. He turned to knob on the spout, and more cold mead filled my cup. “You remember where his cave is don’t you?” he asked, handing back the alcohol.
“Course I do! Caves don’t just up and move, you know.”
“Then go see him. You’re old pals right? He’d be glad to get a visit from you.”
I rolled my eyes, and raised my cup, downing the drink in one breath. Wilaver took my cup to clean when I walked out the door. Damn his powers of persuasion. I actually had to do something other than sitting on my ass all day. I’ll pack my stuff, and leave in the morning, I thought.
My house was big, and I could barely walk in a straight line. I always drank too much. On the way to my room I tripped over my cat, and put a hand on the wall to steady myself. Luckily, I saw Lilith come around the corner. She was my first servant, and another of my great friends. I blacked out after that.
The next morning, I was woken up by the damn sunlight again. “Damn it.” Sometimes I wished I could make it go away, but then all my grass would die and I put too much effort into having a great lawn. I was wrapped in the warmth of my covers, so I guessed Lilith had taken me here. If I had come in by my own power, I would have flopped onto the bed. My vision swam as I slowly rose from the bed. It was still early,but I would need all day if I wanted to get to Jarkore before night. I could see fine in the dark, but it was a pain in the ass to deal with smart ass bandits who didn’t know I could see them.
I went to the chest at the foot of my bed. Inside was all my traveling gear minus food. One of the straps had broken off some time ago, but that was better for me. This way it was more comfortable for my wings. I had no armor to use. Being a sorcerer, armor would get in the way and make it harder to cast spells.
I grabbed my amulet of epic natural armor, and a ring of universal elemental immunity. They are pretty straightforward. The amulet of epic natural armor does, what else, gives me natural armor. With the amulet of epic natural armor, I get fairly hard to cut when it is around my neck, even saving my life from a crazy ninja I’d pissed off. The ring of universal elemental immunity makes me immune to all elemental attacks. That’s right, any wizard that can cast hellball ain’t got nothin’ on me!
At the bottom of the chest were the weapons, a short spear; I don’t need nothin’ else! I picked up my short spear and hit it on my hand, and it changed into a regular sized spear. Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you it has the changeling enchantment on it. I can switch it from short to regular, regular too long, and vise versa.
I started out of my room, and down the stairs, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I turned to the right instead of going straight for the door. I still needed to pack all of my rations. I kept the kitchen fully stocked with food, and it was easy enough to find a few apples to eat along the way.
I went back to the front door, and took a few steps outside. Just like every day, the sun was shining, birds were chirping, and the wind was blowing. It was the perfect time to leave. I hit the ground twice with my spear and said, “Gate.” The portal appeared in front of me, showing me the Material Plane.
With a step, I had completed my interplanar travel. I was in the city of Bahli. Jarkore’s cave was only about a day’s walk from the city. However, being my lazy self, I decided to teleport. I tapped the ground again, and screamed, “Teleport!” Pop! I was gone.
About fifty miles away, I popped back into existence. The cave was well lit so Jarkore could see his gold glimmer in the light. His massive hoard was in the back of his cave, but there wasn’t much else. Sticking out of the pile was a small hole, his nostril. I walked up to the pile and poked around with my spear.
I found another hole behind a large scale, his ear. I learned forward, and took a deep breath. At the top of my lungs, I screamed, “Jarkore, wake up!”
There was a sudden shift under my feet. A loud roar filled the cave, as Jarkore sent sending gold pieces cascaded down his back. I lost my balance, and fell to the bottom of the pile.
Jarkore rose to his full height, towering above me. His roar turned into a yawn, and he thrashed his head around. His wings expanded to their full size, one wing was as long as six men stacked one on top the other. His yawn subsided, and he started to look around. Finally his eyes landed on me, and went from being droopy to a flat glare
“You,” he growled. “What is it now, Vicven?”
“Aw, are you mad because of what I did last time?”
“You left me die at the claws of two great wyrm blue dragons! They nearly tore me to shreds! Gave me a scar right across my eye.”
He was right. His brass colored scales had a line where they had been ripped out by the other dragon’s claw.
“Damn. How did you get out of it?”
“I had to hide in the sand like a coward! I am so old that I have long forgotten my age, Vicven. Hiding made me feel like I was a tiny wyrmling! You wouldn’t be half the man you are today if it weren’t for me, and you left me to die!”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I just dropped by to see how you were doing.”
“Get out,” he said.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute,” I said, putting my hands up. “I’m just here to catch up on old times, maybe even hunt a dragon or two.”
“Get out or I’ll throw you out.” He rose up higher, trying to intimidate me, but I held firm.
“No.” Before I knew it, I was between his teeth. He wasn’t biting hard enough to kill me, but it was hard enough to restrict movement. It was dark, and rather dry, but that’s what you get for living in the desert. I could feel him moving, and soon after, I was in the air. The damn bastard threw me!
My wings quickly caught the air and I steadied out. Hovering in the air smirking, I shouted to him, “Is that all you’ve got?”
Jarkore was turning back into his cave but stopped. He turned back around, and looked at me. “Vicven… I’ll kill you!” he shouted. I had taken one step too many over the line.
The smirk on my face dropped off when he took flight. “Shit.” I had fought with him before, but I had never fought against him. He was stronger than me. His bite and claw attacks were far more powerful than anything I could hope to achieve. I wouldn’t stand a chance against him alone.
He started to inhale, taking in as much air as he could be for attacking. I tried to fly away, but I didn’t have enough time. A column of fire sped towards me. I was maybe one hundred feet away from him, but his breath could go up to one hundred and twenty feet. I was well within his range, with only one way out.
I did the first thing that came to mind and cast a spell. It was another teleportation spell, although it was rushed. Most of you aren’t sorcerers or wizards, so you don’t know what a teleportation mishap is. In short, it’s a botched spell. I get hurt, and thrown only the gods know where.
I tried to teleport back to Bahli. I was very familiar with this city, and shouldn’t have even been able to have a mishap. Never the less, I got a damn mishap. There was a burning in my side like a wolf biting me, and pop, I was gone.
~~~~~
It was quiet. I took a quick look around to see if Jarkore was still there. There was no fire, and best of all, no Jarkore, but something was off. Everything was slowly moving closer. The mountains in the distance, and the ground below was- Fuck, I’m falling.
I started to beat my wings with all my might, but didn’t catch any wind. This was one of the few times that I wished I still knew a spell to magically slow my fall. The ground was coming up too fast. If I didn’t do something, I would be in one hell of a mess. Trouble was that I couldn’t do anything.
The first thing that I would be hitting was a tree. The last time I had fallen into a tree was quite a while ago, and I had forgot how much the branches would hurt.
Then, it hit me - not the tree - an idea. “Polymorph!” I cast the spell and changed into a two thousand pound stone golem. I curled up into a ball as best I could, and braced for impact.
I crashed through the top of the tree, and kept going. There was a gap between the top, and another layer. Strange, but nevertheless, I went through it. There was another open space, and like before, I went through. I hit a third open space, but instead of breaking through to the next layer, I stopped.
I reverted back to my normal self, to inspect the damage. I was sore all over, but fairly unhurt. If I hadn’t cast that spell I would have had some broken bones-if I were lucky. All my gear was still on my back, except for a certain spear of mine. Almost as if a god had sent it to me, it clattered onto the floor in front of me.
I gingerly picked it up, examined my surroundings. What I saw resembled a alchemist’s lab. There were tubes running up into the ceiling, and a large, glass tank connected to some more tubes. There were some test tubes on a counter with unknown liquids in them.
I looked up to see where I had fallen. There were three layers to the tree. That didn’t surprise me, though; I knew plenty of elves that lived in trees. What did surprise me was what stared back at me.
It was a purple something, and a smaller purple something. I did find out what they were, but I’ll tell you later. The larger one said something, and the other one ran off. Slowly five more of the creatures poked their heads over the side of the hole. They were a bunch of different colors. There was the purple one, along with white, orange, blue, yellow, and a pink one too.
There was more talking, and the blue one flew down in front of me. Frankly, it looked like a very small and very weird pegasus. It was actually smaller than a pony, instead of coming up to my chest, it was only at my waist. It had light blue fur, and a rainbow mane. Its back sprouted two wings that kept her afloat in the air. The strangest part of all was its ass. There was a tattoo of a cloud with a rainbow colored lightning bolt coming out of it. It was like a brand, but it was a part of the fur, not a burn.
It shouted something at me in a different language. It sounded like Celestial, but I didn’t know a single word. It had been never been my job to translate. Julius did that as he knew the most languages. The only ones I spoke were Draconic and Common. I didn’t care enough to deal with the blue fuzz ball. I lifted my spear, and pushed it aside. Little did I know that I had just brought the Nine Hells down on my head.
Raining Lizards
Vicven
By shoving the pegasus, I had unwittingly brought all the pain from the Nine Hells down on my head. It flew back at me, yelling again. This pissed me off. When I move something out of my way there is a nine out of ten chance I want it to stay out of way.
I grabbed the end of my spear, holding the head was over my shoulder, and swung it like a bat into the pegasus’ side. There was a crack, and the pegasus dropped. I had probably broken a few of its ribs.
Another horse, above me shouted. It jumped down, and yelled something else. Soon after, the other four jumped down. They said something to the horse with a gentle expression, and glared at me.
Of the different horses staring at me, the one that caught my attention was the purple something. I honestly don’t know what to call this thing. It was a little taller than the others, and it had a horn like a unicorn, and wings like a pegasus. For now, I’ll just call it the purple something.
The purple something stepped forward in my direction. It said something the annoyance obvious on its face, but did nothing else. We stared at each other for a moment, neither of us moving. It repeated itself, this time, I could feel the magic in its horn. I never found out what that spell was, but it was gonna hurt if I got hit.
The purple something was still channeling magic into the tip of its horn. I dashed forward and pimp slapped the purple something in the face. I had always wanted to do that!
The spell discharged and hit the wall, leaving behind a large, black, charred hole. Whatever this purple something was, it was powerful. If that blast had hit me I would be dust on the ground.
Out of nowhere, something hit my chest, knocking the wind out of my lungs, and knocked me off my feet onto my ass. I turned to see what had hit me. The orange horse was standing next to the purple somthing with its hind legs in the air. The jackass had bucked me! Now it was time to get real!
I jumped up, and dashed forward around the side of the orange one, this time punching it square in the face, then elbowing the purple something in the side. Jumping back, I pointed my spear forward at the group and screamed “Fireball!” A large sphere of fire appeared on the spear, and quickly leapt off.
It landed in the middle of the group, expanding to engulf all four of them. Wait, four? There should have been five. The yellow pegasus was missing. I looked around and found it to my left, it was next to the other pegasus tending to its wounds. Good. Now I had one less to fight now.
The other four horses didn’t look too badly hurt. Their fur had been singed, and I’d burnt some of their skin, but nothing major. Damn! Granted, fireball was a fairly weak spell, but they should be hurt more than that. Maybe chain lightning would do better.
“Chai-” Before I could cast the spell, the purple something attacked. It shot five magic missiles at me. Ha! “Shield!” A little blue wall flashed, and faded, in front of me, making the missiles useless. All would have been fine, but the orange and pink horses were charging me.
“Grease!” I swept my spear across the ground, grease shooting out from the tip. The orange one slipped, and began to slid across the floor. On the other hand, the pink one didn’t slip. It was running on the grease. Everything that touches my magic grease can and will slip, but it just kept running, up until it hit an invisible wall
My shield was still in place, stopping it dead in its tracks. It stumbled, but quickly straightened out. It looked at me, smiled, and disappeared. To this day, I still don’t know how that thing did it, but it got behind me. It bucked me forward, towards my shield.
I dispelled the shield, allowing myself to fall onto the grease. The orange one was almost to its hooves, but as I slid by, I pulled a hoof out from under it, making it slip back down. Sliding off of the grease, I ended up right in front of the white unicorn. I had no way to get away as it fired a magic missile at me.
Before I could raise another shield, it struck my chest. It was surprisingly weak. Nothing more than a bad sting. It was pathetic. I mean really! I’ve been hurt more by a wizard on his first day of studies.
Using the grease stuck on my clothes, I slid past the unicorn, and pushed myself onto my feet. “Burning Hands!” I extended my arm. Fire shot out of my hand, setting alight the white unicorn and purple something, eliciting a scream from both.
The purple something was breathing heavily, but the white unicorn looked about to pass out. I could finally take one out. I raised my spear above my head. Before I could stab the white unicorn, the yellow pegasus jumped in front.
It yelled something, and gave a crazy ass stare and said something else. It felt like it was casting suggestion, but… different. It’s hard to explain, partly because a pegasus can’t use magic, but also because it was in a different language. I had seen the bard in our group, Aleslosh, use it with her loot, but now I knew how it felt.
Part of me wanted to stop fighting, but another part just wanted to punch the pegasus. In the end, violence won out over pacifism. My spear, instead of hitting the white unicorn, hit the pegasus in the shoulder, shoving it out of the way. I grabbed the white unicorn’s head with my free hand, pushed it to the side, and bit down on its neck.
It didn’t even scream, as it fell to the floor unconscious. The purple something was enraged by this. It burst into flames screaming bloody murder… Hehe, bloody. It flew towards me, tackling me to the ground, but nothing more. Maybe it was hoping that I would burn to a crisp. What a dumbass.
I was immune to all types of elemental damage from my amulet. Even if I didn’t have the amulet, I would still been immune to fire from being the disciple of a brass dragon. What ever this thing was, it was a dumbass, fire elemental or not.
I bit her on the neck like I did the white unicorn. It still would not get off of me. I let its neck out of my mouth, but instead grabbed its neck with my hand. I tried to shove it off of me, but it cast a telekinesis spell. Seriously, what the hell was this thing?
I was lifted into the air, unable to move. However, at my level of power, I don’t need to move to cast as spell. “Sunburst!” A huge burst of light shot off of my body. The purple something dropped its spell almost immediately. It, and the yellow pegasus started to stumble around, they were very clearly blinded.
Through out the fight with the purple something, I forgot about the two horses. If it weren’t for the yelling, I never would have seen the orange horse in time to dodge. “Time Stop!” I screamed as it ran by. I walked over to the orange horse, picked it up, and walked over to the other three horses. I did the same with the pink horse, and blue pegasus, so that all six were close to each other. “Forecage.” A light blue, barred cage popped into existence, surrounding the horses, trapping them inside.
For those of you who don’t know, forecage is a spell the literally makes a cage. At my level the cage should hold for about eighty hours. That’s more than three days. That would be plenty of time to get away from them. As the cage finished forming itself, the time stop spell ended.
To the horses, it hadn’t even been a second. To me it had been about five minutes. To be blunt, they were confused. Eventually, all their eyes settled on me, and the purple something asked a question. I, still not understanding it, just laughed.
I took a deep breath, and smiled. It had been a while since I’d had a good fight. I raised my wings to take flight, but stopped half way through. There was a familiar smell in the air. It was salty, yet crispy at the same time. There was only one thing that ever smelled like this.
Dragon.
I flapped my wings, propelling myself onto the floor above me. Bingo! There it was. A wyrmling amethyst dragon. There were two more horses on either side of it, both looking exactly the same in their golden armor. They shouldn’t be a problem.
I jump forward, grabbing the dragon’s torso. Before the two others could react, I was in the sky. The dragon immediately started to scream. What a coward. This was the first time I had even heard a dragon scream, wyrmling or not.
It desperately clawed at my hand, trying to make me let go. “Hey, kid!” I shouted in Draconic.
The dragon ignored me, still trying to claw my hands. It didn’t know draconic. What kind of dragon didn’t know Draconic. I needed to have a good long talk with whatever the hell raised this thing, and by that, I meant I planned to pummel them for not teaching it Draconic.
The claws — while not painful were annoying. I threw it into the air, catching it by its throat. Staring it dead in the eye, I scream, “Quit it!” It probably didn’t understand me, but it got the message and stopped scratching me.
A thought just came to me. I just threw it into the air, so why didn’t it just fly away? I looked at it one more time. It seemed to be a healthy dragon, other than the missing wings. Wait, what the hells? How did this dragon not have wings? Did they cut them off or something? No, that would have left stumps on its back. This was seriously one fucked up dragon.
I flew around aimlessly for about an hour. The sun had started to go down, and I needed to stop for the night. So far there were two options. One; fly north to a forest, hope I find a cave, and stay there. Or two; fly east into the open plains, and build a small cottage with magic.
Ordinarily, I would go for the cottage in the field. However, I always get a feeling of adventure when visiting a new plain. So why not? The forest it was!
As I banked to the left, the dragon started to squirm again. I glared at it, and it quickly stopped squirming. However, I could literally smell the fear coming off of him. This was the worst dragon ever. Pitiful, just pitiful.
There was a small cliff with a cave on the side. It was high up too. Now the dragon couldn’t escape even if I let it. I swooped into the mouth of the cave, and landed with the crunch of rocks under my feet. I dropped the dragon on the ground, and it immediately ran for the entrance, stopping short of the edge, staring out to the distance.
It started to call for help, but no matter how it shouted, nothing was coming to its rescue. While it screamed its lungs out, I walked around the cave a little. In the back of the cave was a large fuzz ball.
I tapped it with my spear, but it didn’t move. Grabbing the top of the ball, I rolled it over onto its side. It was a manticore, although strangely furry, but a manticore none the less. I lifted back its eye lid, but still got no response. It was dead.
Well, now this cave was mine. “Tenser’s Floating Disk.” A disk appeared in mid air to help move the body. It would hold about four thousand pounds at my level. The disk slid under the manticore, and lifted it up. It shot out the mouth of the cave, past the dragon, and dumped the body into the forest below.
I could get some rest, but there was one more thing I had to do first. At this point it was a tradition as much as it was practical. I walked to the dragon, putting a hand on its head. It tried to turn out of my hand but my grip was too strong. “Programmed Amnesia.” Everything turned a bright white as I went into its memories.
This was one of the weirder spells I knew. While it was easy to control, it just felt wrong, it’s hard to explain though. As memories flew past, I slowly watch the dragon’s entire life flash before my eyes.
It started, of course, with birth. It popped out of its egg, not on its own, but by magic. A purple unicorn had made it hatch early, soon after being given to her care. No wonder it was so weak. It hadn’t been raised by another dragon.
I skipped a few years of life until it was old enough to talk. It had gone to meet a ruler of sorts. It was like the purple something from earlier, but larger and white. After a short conversation with the dragon, and purple unicorn. The white something led them to an underground room.
This blew my mind away. The room went far beyond what the eye could see, and was filled to the brim with rolling hills of gold. What ever these purple and white somethings were, they were richer than the gods.
Being a dragon disciple, I had started to act more and more like a dragon. More specifically, I was just as greedy. All this gold made my stockpile seem like a speck of dust. I needed to have this, all of it.
I hardly paid any attention to the rest of the memories. However, there was shit so weird that I don’t even know how to explain it all. Being that the spell was made to change memories, I didn’t want to let it go to waste. I searched through the last few hours of its memory, but didn’t erase anything. If I had, then it wouldn’t be afraid of me, and I want it to shut up when I told it to. I can’t believe I just wasted that spell just to look at memories. I should have changed something. Oh, well.
As I cancelled the spell the only thing I could think of was all that gold. I needed to have it. One way or another, I was going to get that gold. Even if I have to drag all my old friends here to get it, that gold was going to be mine.
