RD-08

 

Chapter 9: Cromag Invasion 

It was early morning on the first day of spring when Sean, the Great Blue Dragon of Earth (Sean was finally able to get squirrel-manity to drop at least part of his long-winded title) saw the sun for the first time. He stepped over the shallow creek that marked the end of the forest and the territory of the squirrels and immediately covered his eyes with his human arm as they adjusted to the massive increase in brightness and the direct rays of the rising sun on his left. He glanced at it out of curiosity and thought it looked a little bigger and a little redder than he remembered, but figured it might simply be an effect of viewing it right at dawn. The radiation on his skin made him feel as if he would receive a sunburn soon enough and he immediately missed the cool, dry shade of the forest.   

"Gah, I hate the Father." Princess Twilight complained from atop his now longer head of hair.   

(Father?) Sean asked, confused.   

"The bright, hot thing in the sky. Did the world you come from not have a Father, my love?"   

(Can't remember,) Sean answered. It wasn't the truth, perhaps, but he didn't really want to think about it right now. He wanted to focus on the battle ahead. He couldn't ever remember hearing about the "Father" sun in squirrel religion, if it could be called that. He figured it was your run of the mill Father Sun, Mother Earth kind of deal, and filed it away as inconsequential to ask about later.   

His 300-squirrel heavy phalanx finished crossing the "river" behind him and took their positions to his right, left, and rear, leaving a couple feet of space to prevent being stepped on, but still close enough to each other to link their great shields together and make a pincushion defense. Except for Twilight, all of the Occultists held back at the tree-line before the stream along with Humanity's entire armed forces, attempting to stay hidden behind trees and under leaves, along with the massive amounts of supplies that had been secreted to the border over the last couple weeks.   

The Southern Kingdom of Humanity had successfully sent a message to the Cromags, requesting a duel. A Cromag messenger had returned with the squirrel messenger's head in his teeth as a gesture of acceptance. The only stipulation had been no mages, not counting the Dragon Rider. And so, the plan was to have Sean engage the enemy Dragon just outside the border, close enough to receive support or healing as necessary. The Cromags were bigger and stronger and more numerous; Squirrel-manity did not want to engage army vs army on the level plains of Cromag territory. They would stay on their side of the river and attack those Cromags trying to cross, giving the squirrels the strongest possible advantage outside of defending their own capital.   

The squirrels would not rush out to help the Dragon; they didn't expect that they could really harm the enemy Dragon and didn't want to be caught on the wrong side of the river and slaughtered. That was the job of the 300 strong heavy phalanx; to sacrifice themselves to extract the Dragon if necessary. No squirrel could move as fast as the Dragon, nowhere close, especially not the over-encumbered, heavily-armored, shielded, long-speared phalanx troops. Their body-length shields were curved in such a way that if they managed to get entirely under it before a Dragon accidentally stepped on them, they had a chance to survive. It was hoped that they could make a field of shields to slow down a Cromag onslaught, or a field of spikes to slow the enemy Dragon.   

It was up to Sean whether he felt he could try to retreat and fortify on the squirrel side of the river; perhaps the phalanx or the occultists could at least slow down the enemy Dragon enough to allow Sean to retreat to the capital for healing and a second chance. But Sean didn't plan to retreat; he and Twilight wanted to at least go down fighting and take the enemy Dragon with them; it was their responsibility as privileged members of society, Princess and Dragon, to make that sacrifice in order to earn the luxurious lifestyle they had enjoyed up to this point.   

This left three most likely outcomes:   

1. Sean is overwhelmed and slain, and Humanity goes back to paying tribute to the Cromags. At least he killed the Titans.   

2. Sean and the enemy Dragon slay each other. Sean dies having fulfilled his purpose, saving Humanity from their worst foes.   

3. Sean is victorious, undoubtably wounded from the most epic battle in history. Even if he isn't, his job is to retreat under the cover of the Phalanx to Humanity's side of the river, to avoid risk of injury from the Cromag's hordes. If he can bring the expensive phalanx unit with him, great, if not, just get himself to safety and treatment. The Phalanx Unit is honored to fall in defense of their Dragon.   

Humanity will hold the river if the Cromags attack (hopefully with Sean's help), after which they are free to wage a war of attrition, Dragon versus No-Dragon, and perhaps bring the Cromags to surrender within the year. The Cromags arrogantly assumed Humanity couldn't produce something worthy to face their Dragon, or maybe they welcomed the challenge. In any case, Humanity would force them to surrender then eradicate their shamans to remove the threat for the foreseeable future.   

They also promised to feed the Cromags to their Dragon; they seemed insistent on this, so Sean didn't disagree right away, despite being grossed out at the idea of eating sentient creatures. But the more he thought about it, the more appealing the idea was. He was a Dragon, after all. Perhaps that made it OK. Also, he had been getting grumpier and grumpier the last month as his food had less and less meat, and it felt less fresh and more preserved. When he complained, his nervous squirrel cooks seemed to stop holding out on him finally and for the last couple of weeks he had large amounts of fresh mystery meat again, allowing him to build up his strength for the battle ahead. 

 

Sean felt a breeze on his ankles, originating from the east, to his left. He raised his human arm to block the rays of the rising sun, turned and saw his first Cromags. They were chasing a dozen lightly armored squirrel scouts and Radiant, the Arch-Aerialist, who was using his magic to create a wind pushing the scouts and himself into a faster pace.  

Ah, transportation magic, Sean thought, the same brand of magic that the Terramancers had used to give him the hardened, muddy layer on the bottoms of his feet.  

The squirrels were carrying something as they ran; when one tripped and dropped it, he saw that it was the red grapes called "Ambrosia". The pursuing Cromags, plump guinea pigs the same tan color as the grasses of the plains they lived on, pounced on the slightly shorter but significantly less massive squirrel, immediately biting its legs off.  

Sean waited until he was sure that squirrel was mercifully dead before yelling, "That's enough!!", his favorite "roar". The fleeing, bipedal squirrels seemed bolstered by the voice of their God, while the (also Whiskered) guinea pigs froze and stared up at him in horror. Sean jerked his shoulders towards the guinea pigs, as if he were going to give chase, causing them to flee in a panic of burbling noises.  

The runners dropped the grapes at his feet, including the one from the fallen soldier, then fled back to wade over the stream and into the safety of the forest. Sean thought how the way the Cromags ran on four legs made them seem more bestial. He collected the grapes at his feet.  

"Eat them, my Dragon. The red ones will make you stronger for a couple hours." 

He didn't remember anything the first time he had some, but it had been a rather intense day, since that was the day he was summoned. He sliced off a squirrel portioned sliver of one with his clawed thumb and carefully offered it to Twilight. Refreshing, he thought, as he ate the juicy grapes, freshly stolen under the cover of the rising "Father". A few minutes later he noticed that his heart rate had increased and he felt more alert. Huh, he mused, caffeinated grapes.  

Right when it kicked in, the Cromag horde emerged from tall, tan grasses one hundred yards away. They extended in a line from horizon to horizon as far as Sean could see, real numbers still hidden in grasses behind. After a brief conference, the Cromags sent forth an honor guard of approximately the same numbers of Cromags as Sean's Phalanxes. These Cromags walked on two feet, wore light leather armor and carried large (relatively) two-handed great swords with no hand-guard or pommel. 

Barbarian warriors. Sean had no doubt that if he just stood there and took hits from these crude, 6-inch swords, they would eventually break skin and cause damage, especially since there were so many of them. He was relieved to see that the guinea pigs, like the squirrels, appeared to move in slow motion, more the speed one would expect of humans their size instead of the frantic hyper-speed of the small furry animals they appeared to be.  

The Cromag honor guard made two lines, then their Dragon suddenly rose up from the tall grass and walked down the middle. Sean and his phalanx likewise approached. At about halfway the distance, still 50 yards away, Sean made the signal for his troop to stop and approached alone; the other Dragon did the same. As Sean approached, he saw that he wasn't quite twice as tall, but that he was certainly a good deal taller and more massive. He was surprised to see the Cromag's Dragon was a young woman, perhaps about 22 to 24 years old. She was nude except for a loin cloth of suspiciously familiar metallic blue fur. She was lean and muscular, giving the impression that she had led an athletic life outdoors for many years. She was deeply tanned, with long, tangled black hair, a lean face with a long straight nose, and dark black hair under her armpits and on her legs as nature intended; Sean could see the bushy hair of her crotch peek up above her loosely warm loincloth. There wasn't a spare ounce of fat visible on her short, trim body, except for on her slim, perky breasts.  

She casually held a brutal club over one shoulder. It appeared to be made of the super hard bark of the trees in the squirrel's forest, lashed together and around a large rock (or giant boulder depending on who you asked) that was sticking out just a bit from the end. Screwed into regular intervals in the bark around the tip appeared to be the claws of Titans. Died blood and strips of skin hung on to the club and the claws suggesting that despite the crude appearance the club was certainly effective.  

"It bears the legendary stone-in-the-sword, Excalibur." Twilight whispered in fearful awe. Something seemed off about that, but before Sean could think further on it, the strangely miniature young woman raised a bushy black eyebrow and spoke from her chapped lips in an accent Sean couldn't begin to place, "So you're the Dragon of the food animals. I wonder if today is the day I die and am finally free from this hell." 

"I suppose I could say the same thing to you," Sean replied. The young woman looked thunderstruck. 

"You can speak...English? What are you!?" She held her club in front of her in her right hand as if to protect herself form the truth.  

"Last I checked, I was human," Sean responded. "What do I look like nowadays?" 

"You tell him, Sean!" Twilight added in a fury, completely unable to follow the flow and content of this conversation. "He's a short, skinny, pitiful Dragon, and your roars are much more manly and fierce!"  

I should hope so, Sean thought, internally chuckling.  

The female Dragon squinted at Sean, wrinkles of her eyes exaggerated by the Sun. "No wait, I see it. Human hair, one human eye, one human hand...human dick." Sean remembered he was naked for the first time in months. She continued, "You look like you ere dipped in radioactive goo and merged with a lizard. You're glowing blue-green, and where you aren't glowing, your skin is busting open and a lizard is coming out. You look fucked up, man. Doesn't that hurt?" 

Sean was closing one eye at a time. Maybe they saw slightly differently, he couldn't tell. He picked at the skin on his left forearm and found some ready to come off and reveal the scales beneath. Elsewhere on his arms and legs it did look like isolated patches of scales were pushing up through cracks in his soft, human skin, as if a "lizard was coming out." Except, it was a lizard with a skin of armor. He raised his right arm, the one part of his body that had completely the transformation, all the way up to the bicep.  

"I'm beautiful," he declared, admiring how the Sun's rays reflected off his glorious, blue-green scales. He began to carefully clean the fingernails of his human hand with the long, blue-black fingernail claw of his right, dragon hand's pinky finger.  

"I do not want to get hit with that," the female Dragon said, eyeing Sean's long black claws warily. He had been practicing with those claws in the last few weeks. They were too long for his comfort, extending out from his fingertip as far as the length from the tip to his second knuckle (with the exception of the thumb claw, which was a little shorter and wider.) He had thought they would break off easily, since they just grew from the tops of his fingers like fingernails. But when he slashed at a tree, the claws didn't break. Instead, he felt his scales compress from fingertip all the way to his elbow, in a line, somehow supporting the nail/claw with the layered structure of the scales. 

"I do not want to get hit with Excalibur over there, either," Sean said, eyeing the brutal, gory club. 

"I think of it more as Mjolner, Thor's hammer. It's more of a hammer than a sword, don't you think?" Sean nodded, he had to agree.  

"So, what are we doing here?" Sean asked, lowering his claw. The other Dragon shrugged, club in hand.  

"It looks like the smurfs are invading, to me. Isn't that what your guys are doing?" Sean chuckled at that. He was starting to like the short, hairy wildgirl. 

"Smurfs, I like that. I suppose I'm turning into one myself." 

"No, smurfs are blue. You're blue-green like the leaves of the trees," she disagreed. 

"That's what I've been saying, but they call it blue for some reason." She gave him a suspicious look at that comment. 

"So why are you guys here?" She demanded. 

"They didn't tell you? The squirrels told me the guinea pigs force the squirrels to give up tons of squirrel babies every year. Not sure what happens to them, though."  

The female Dragon suddenly grinned and rubbed the fluffy, downy fur of her loincloth, "Oh yeah, we do that. We fatten them up and eat them. The smurfs taste way better than the piggies, you know. Why don't you join us and we'll feast on them together?" 

Choice 2: Path of the Cromag, Rejected 

In a different story, Sean would accept the other Dragon's offer. In this story, Sean raised his scaly right arm and signaled Twilight for flame. She was ready to do her job. 

"They take so many whelps and we never see them, ever again. Sometimes they send back some of their fingers or toes, but never all of their fingers and toes, and they never tell us what that means. Does that mean the whelp is dead? Does it mean it's still alive and suffering? Their parents never find out and get peace." 

Sean was already smoking from the other Dragon's words, but thanks to Twilight he was now billowing twin white plumes from his nose. He couldn't make a fist with his right hand anymore; his claws were too long. But he curled his fingers, making his hand look like the talons of a bird of prey, then began stalking towards the other Dragon with a violent purpose. 

"I guess that's a no," the short woman said, going into a crouch, eyes wide and alert.  

Sean slashed at her face, and again, and again. Each time she took a quick step back as she parried his hand aside with her club. Sean stopped and took a deep breath, preparing to breath fire.  

"You're kidding me," the woman complained, seeming to instinctually understand what was about to happen.  

Sean jerked his head forward in a cough, igniting his breath and spraying some molten flem. The woman had already reacted, somersaulting forward and past under Sean's right arm. After his cough, with his breath still ignited, Sean turned and breathed out a cone of flame that roared like a flamethrower from his mouth to the ground. He turned his head, attempting to track the other Dragon in her roll, but she was too small and fast; all he accomplished was burning a charred line in the grass marking her passing and starting little fires. The narrow projection of flame only lasted a couple seconds before he was out of breath and had to take in another one. She came to her feet out of the roll and Sean briefly saw a pink, hairless guinea pig struggling to hold onto her hair after almost being crushed, burbling angrily. 

Before he could breathe back in, the woman stabbed the tip of her club into his solar plexus with two hands, knocking out Sean's wind and a blob of lava that flew well over her head. Before Sean could process what happened, he had bent over right into her next blow, a two-handed baseball swing to the side of his face. Then the world went white and he was laying on the ground, ears ringing.  

When his awareness finally returned, he heard the popping of aural magic and Twilight screaming frantically into his mind, "Get up! I'm almost out of magic! Sean, get up right now!!" 

He obeyed, pushing himself up with his arms, making the other Dragon jump back from his sudden movement. He was grateful his opponent reacted defensively; he hadn't fully recovered and the world was spinning. 

"Sean, are you ok?! You got hit in the face!" 

He made a couple swings with his draconic arm to bluff his combatant into backing up, then reached up to touch his right cheek with his left, human arm. It was the same spot where Anthrax had clawed him. Now, all the human skin was gone and there was just one large patch of scales covering that side of his face. The other Dragon looked at his face, horrified, thinking that her best hit did no damage...But that wasn't the case. When Sean moved his hand away from his face, several scales stuck to it, several more falling to the ground. 

Ah, I get it, Sean thought, realizing that his scales worked exactly like armor would; protected him from slashing damage, all but the luckiest piercing damage (as indicated by the single cabbit claw that he plucked out of his now bare cheek, having wedged between two scales and pierced him shallowly), but it only gave limited protected against blunt, crushing damage, which traveled through his scales and damaged his body underneath. He saw torn, damaged pieces of bloody flesh attacked to the small scales of his face that had fallen off into his hand. 

When the other Dragon saw this, she realized that he was tough but far from invincible, so she grinned menacingly and closed back in to attack. She went back to a one-handed grip on the club and made a test swing with her right arm, but pulled it up short. Predictably, Sean tried to catch the dangerous club with his claw hand, hoping to initiate a grapple for the weapon and remove the other Dragon's greatest advantage. He missed because she pulled up short in a feint, then hopped back and wagged a finger at him as if to say, "Oh, no you don't, you naughty Dragon".  

She switched the weapon to her left hand, made a gurgly guinea pig sound of her own, then leapt forward to attack. It would be harder to catch the club with his armored hand from that angle, but Sean still figured it was his best bet; his unarmored human hand would get mangled and broken trying to do the same thing.  

The last thing he saw was the pink, naked guinea pig poke its head out from the woman's massive tangle of black hair before his own vision went black. The club smashed into the armored right arm and Sean felt his bones bruise from the very first blow. His vision came back just in time to see the woman step forward and swing again with a determined look on her face. Again, before the blow stuck, his vision went black and all he could do was step back quickly and flail his armored arm to catch the blows and protect the rest of his body. In his brief moments of vision he saw the scales and blood flying off of his disintegrating right arm. The scales there were larger and tougher than those on his face, but a half dozen fierce blows from the strong, ambidextrous little woman was enough to peel off that defense handily. 

"What's wrong!? You have to attack!!" Twilight screamed out desperately. Sean closed his eyes, braced his feet, then timed a swing as hard as he could to catch the club he couldn't see and knock it wide, buying him an extra couple seconds. He used that time to signal with his still intact arm, (Rider! Rider!). He used one hand to make both parts of a two-handed sign, flicking between the left-handed part and an imitation of the right-handed part; his right arm was so messed up now, he knew he couldn't sign with it. It was a good thing that Princess Twilight was so bright; "Attack the Rider! Doing it!"  

Sean heard the snap of her little flash-bang magic and saw it hit perfectly between the eyes of the pink, hairless guinea pig that he had correctly guessed had been blinding him with magic. Able to see the next swing, he didn't try to block it, instead leaning back to let it scrape harmlessly across the front of his chest. The woman overbalanced in surprise and was caught flat-footed when Sean swung his smashed up right arm like a club, willing the claws attached to fingers that he could no longer feel to curve inward, towards the other Dragon's face. He wasn't sure how much force he could manage with his wounded arm, now, but neither was the other Dragon, who perceived claws to the face as a potentially lethal blow. Off-balance, she could only duck; His claws missed her head, barely, but went into her mess of hair and all four, from pointer to pinky, stabbed into the guinea pig hiding within, ripping it to pieces before it could make a sound.  

No longer supported by the scales running down the outside of his forearm, all four claws ripped out into the dead animal and the woman's hair, hurting just as much as ripping out four fingernails should. He somehow jerked his arm out of her hair, taking some strands with it, and backed up, clutching his right arm with his left, howling in pain; not even the adrenaline and battle madness could block out that pain.  

The female Dragon jerked her head away and leapt back, swinging her club into the empty space between the two Dragons blindly. When blood dripped onto her hands, she reached up in horror, touching the gory bits of guinea pig in her hair, screaming, "Dildo! Nooo!" 

Sean was still reeling when Twilight saw the opportunity and screamed a command, "GET CLOSE NOW!" 

Sean reacted without thinking, charging into the smaller Dragon while she was rubbing the alien blue blood out of her eyes. He landed on top of her in a tackle and pinned her torso and legs; she immediately tried to buck and push him off, but their size difference made it like an adult laying on a child. He grabbed the club with both hands and so did she; his right arm was weak and she was strong for her size, so it was a tie.  

"You killed my only friend, you jerk!" She screamed into his face, tears in her eyes. After a few seconds of straining at a standstill, cooler heads prevailed...sort of. 

"Do we have to do this?" The female Dragon asked, but still looking furious. In a burst of strength, she managed to slip the club out of Sean's grasp and smash it agonizingly into his back, claws ripping into his skin where they missed his emerging scales, other breaking off. It was as if demonstrating that she was still in the fight and thus in a position to negotiate. Sean felt something crack in his right shoulder blade, and his right arm was made even more useless. All he could do now was wrap his left hand around her wrists and push them to the left and right to make her next blows weaker, glancing blows, ones that merely tore skin and muscle instead of breaking bone. 

After a few more hits she stopped swinging and claimed, with intense eyes, "I think I'm winning, what do you think?" Sean looked at the back of his right arm, where his scales had been smashed into his skin, some of them sticking into the bones of his arm. He noted that he was out of breath and gasping for air and she wasn't. 

"I guess so," he agreed, gritting his teeth in pain.  

"Tell you what," she continued. "You killed my rider. Give me yours, and we'll call it even. We should be with each other instead of these stupid little animals, anyway." With that, she wrapped her legs around his torso and grinded her crotch against him. She surprised him by leaning forward and kissing him, biting his lip to prevent him from getting away. 

Choice 3: Path of the Dragon, Rejected 

In another story, Sean would accept the Dragon's offer. In this story, he jerked his head away, instinct telling him he was cheating on Twilight (and Dawn, and Warla, and his entire massive, fluffy harem.) His bottom lip ripped in the female Dragon's teeth, spraying her face in blood. There was a loud pop, right between his and the other Dragon's face, stunning them both. But the time he recovered, blinking, he saw that Twilight had leapt off of his head and onto the woman's face, gouged one eye with her claws and was already working on the second one. She held onto the woman's face with her claws and clawed armor, while the Dragon shook her head back and forth, trying to dislodge her attacker. One of the Dragon's hands slipped free from where Sean held her wrists and slapped at Twilight, sending the squirrel tumbling head over tail into the tall grass. 

"Nooo!" Sean screaming, realizing just how much he loved Twilight and wanted her to live. His rage hit a peak instantly, and he coughed flame directly into the pinned young woman's face, over and over. She screamed horribly as the flaming napalm melted away her face. She let go of the club and tried to push the sticky lava off of her face, but only managed to get it into her good eye, blinding her for good. 

"It burns, it Burns, IT BURNS!" She screamed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please forgive meeee!" 

Sean didn't forgive. He used his left hand to grab his limp right thumb, the finger with the only claw he had left, and stabbed it like a little knife into the woman's throat. Her screams became gurgles and Sean could see her skull and part of her brain where the liquid fire had melted through. He turned away and rolled off the other dragon, knowing the fight was over, then crawled off in the direction that Twilight's body had disappeared into the tall grass. He only just now noticed that fire was spreading in the grass all around him and smoke obscured his vision. He crawled over the flames, unhurt by the heat, desperately hoping that Twilight was still alive and not already on fire.