Dragons! Dragons! Dragons!

MAVLOR

The sky above the city was the color of a dying dragon - splotchy and scaled and flickering with a pulsing heartbeat. Rain warm as piss streaked down the windows of the scuzzy bar that Mavlor walked into - and as he shook off the grayish muck and started stomping his boots on the mat to get them a bit clean, he thought that maybe this plan by Razor was a

terrible idea

. The first look around the bar only made it worse: The taps were dying with flies buzzing around them, and half the people in the place all looked like they had needed to sell their implants for spending money, leaving knotted gaps in muscle, hair, and skin.

A burly orc who still had a scaled patch on his right arm reached out and spread clawed fingers, the blades

snicking

out and forming the rough outline of a mage's circle. Malvor spread his hands, sighing, as the circle flickered him with pulses of purple light. The first thing that shone was his implants - around his temple, down by his hip, and on his left wrist. Then the orc swept his palm up and the light flashed green. This time, his jacket pocket shone through the leather.

"Show me," the orc rumbled.

Mavlor grumbled, opened his jacket, and remained perfectly still as the orc snatched his old six egg wyrmvolver from his jacket pocket. The orc looked it over, then frowned as he opened the chamber and counted the warm eggs inside."Acid?" he asked, lifting his gaze to Mavlor, tapping his thumb against the back of the eggs.

"Do- I-" Mavlor cut himself off repeatedly before asking what first crossed his mind. Finally, he settled on shaking his haed. "Fuck, no, man. Fuck. No. I have teeth."

"Teeth's okay, but the boss says no acid, not after last week." The orc snapped the wyrmvolver shut with a tiny bony click. He handed it back and Mavlor stuck it back into his pocket. His brows furrowed and his ear-tips popped up in nervous tension.

"Uh, what happened last week?"

The orc nodded to the corner of the room. There was a pretty messy set of remarkable stains over there.

"...right," Mavlor said.

Go for the booth in the left of the bar, look for an elf.

That wasn't the entirety of Razor's information, but it was the important part now So, he walked to the left of the bar...and gulped. The figure sitting in the booth was

nominally

an elf. He had just never seen an elf with that many implants. Her left hand and right hand were both clawed - one gold scaled, the other black. Her left eye was slitted and her jaw had a kind of bracketing around it, like she was halfway through getting the elongated muzzle of a dragon, the tip splitting to reveal her still elfin lips, though she did have a pair of sharp fangs hooking over the lower lips. Her hair, dyed bright pink, was cut back into a deathhawk that showed off the tiny scales that denoted brain implants. She had a long, thick tail that was practically a third leg, snaked around the inner edge of the booth and dripping over the far end. The only thing she was missing was wings.

Mavlor walked up to her. "Slake?" he asked, nervously.

She lifted her reptilian, slit eyed gaze to him. "Mavlor?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. Her tail shifted and he took his seat across from her.

"You're Mavlor?" she asked, slowly. She had a glass in one hand, full of bright pinkish d-beer. She sloshed it around slowly, letting it frizz and froth.

"Yeah," Mavlor said, getting prickly.

"On the Lines, they says Mavlor is the bigshot rogue that snuck into the CDO of MalaTek's private files and jacked half her horde out into a wheel barrow before security got twigged. You look like some wet kitten."

Mavlor gave her a thin little smile.

Technically, everything Slake had said

was

true.

And technically, nothing Mavlor was going to say

was

a lie.

"Appearance can be...deceptive," Mavlor said, grinning at her casually. "I'm the best rogue I know. You have security systems you want to get around? I can pick, slice, cut, hack, slash, everything. I take pay up front, not a cut."

"Not a cut?" Slake asked, leaning back and cocking her head.

Mavlor smirked, and tried to sound world weary, wise. "Cut's encourage betrayal. Makes the cut bigger. Up front keeps things nice and professional. I like it when things are professional."

Slake narrowed her eyes. Then she grinned. Her teeth were all very sharp. "All right," she said, nodding. "We're gonna need to

confirm

you're as good as all that."

"I don't work for free," Mavlor said.

Slake frowned. "A hundred gold coins for a real easy kick, something you can use to show your stuff. Then you can meet the rest of the team and we can see about you going on the big kick we're aiming for." She smirked. "Sound good?"

Mavlor felt a tiny knot of tension in his belly ease. He was through the first hurdle. He leaned forward, grinning ever so slightly. He just had to keep acting, and he'd be through this. "Sounds good," he said. Slake lifted one clawed finger. The bartender, seeing the signal, went to the tap. He roused the dragon from its stupor, smacking its scaled flank until it stood, then put a glass up against it's dick. Once he had filled the glass with d-beer, he walked it over the table, setting it down with a muttered.

"Fresh and warm for ye," he said.

Mavlor took the glass, then glanced at the tap. Flies had settled back onto its ragged wings.

"Is it safe?" he muttered under his breath.

"Dungeon safe," Slake said, grinning toothily at Mavlor.

Mavlor sighed and downed his first glass. The beer hit his gut like a sour bomb, but the warm feeling of mana-rich pleasure that washed through him afterwards pushed him back into his seat. He sighed quietly. "All right," he said. "Now, the easy kick?"

Slake grinned. "Aight. It's simple..."

***

Rain was still pouring down on the city. The dark shape of gas-bag dragons drifting by overhead were visible more by the way they blocked the smeary pulses of light through the clouds and the way they blocked the rain. The district that Slake led Mavlor to was in one of the overbuilt areas most people called the underdark, where sunlight never reached whenever sunlight dared to show its nose. The Dragon Lines were thin and spotty, attenuated between concrete corridors, metal pipes, and a few ancient, wheezing dragons that belched out barely breathable air, drank sewage and pissed clear water, or provided some measure of mana for the lights. Most of the doors were manual, and that was what made it a good place for a rogue.

"So," Slake said. "That's the place."

She nodded down a narrow corridor to where an unbelievably bored looking streetnecht was lounging against the wall. He had a wyrmgun at his hip and claws in both his hands, but it was the froggy bulge around his throat that made Mavlor the most nervous: That was a breath weapon implant, without any doubt. The streetnecht was dressed for work too: He had a huge codpiece, a large poofy hat that looked bright and colorful with neon thread-work in green and yellow despite the rain, and two huge poofy pantaloons that swelled around his legs and narrowed up near his hips, where his bony carapace armor hung around his chest. They were both checkered, with yellow and green coloring, though neither had neon thread.

"Got it," Mavlor said, frowning. He reached up and gently massaged the tail-tip that peeked out right by his temple. The dragon in his brain woke up and with a lurch, his vision shifted. He could see the concrete in grainy monochrome, and the brightly colored streetnecht's color turned into a smeary black and white, save for the hat, which glowed bright, bright white, almost occluding his face. The thin Dragon Lines that snaked along the ceiling were thrown into stark relief. He breathed in, then held up his left wrist, twisting it around so his fingers could touch the small dragon mouthpart that was tucked under a fold of scales. The teeth bit into his finger and the connection flared to life as he felt his soul leaving his body.

A shimmering, astral figure, he was entirely visible to anyone with a similar rogue implant. Fortunately, streetnecht went entirely for brawn, not brain.

Mavlor fought down any panicky worries that this necht had split his focus. Even just the right wizard-eye implant would...

The necht farted loudly.

"Gods," Slake muttered, close enough to his physical ear that he could hear her. Fortunately, the dragon in his brain was too busy using his sensory inputs for him to know if he was downwind or not. So, instead, he forced his astral body up into the Dragon Line that ran along the ceiling and over the streetnecht's head. He was in the system of the small, cheap warehouse building. He felt the sleepy, non-astral attention of whoever nestjock they had running their DLS and RCP, and grinned slightly. This was going to work. He could

do

this.

He flowed along, moving through light fixtures and wireless communications until he found a scrying globe. He peered through.

The room he was looking into was a splash of opulence surrounded by pure misery. Cheap opulence too. Like someone daubing on fake scales to look respectable, or an orc filing down their tusks. The walls were covered with lurid pink sheets, and thick shag carpeting covered what had once been bare concrete. A large bed had been tossed down into a frame, with a mattress and no headboard. And on it was a very, very pretty halfling getting her back absolutely blown out by a chubby lizardman whose scales were far, far, far too shiny for him to be in the underdark and this pisshole.

"Daddy! Daddy!" The halfling moaned, her petite body quivering as she threw her head back. "Oh fuck, Daddy, oh god! Oh god!" She moaned desperately as his scaled balls clapped against her thighs.

Mavlor shook his head.

Someone doesn't want their kinks getting out,

he thought - though...despite his cynical affectations and casual confidence in the bar, he felt his attention fixated. He had no idea a halfling could be so...elastic. And the illusion was far from perfect. Since Mavlor

wasn't

a monster, the fact that the girl was an adult, and clearly so, actually made it more tempting to keep watching. The lizardman's blue and gold scaled palm swept around and grabbed the girl's throat. Her moan of 'daddy' was choked off mid thrust into a gurgle, her eyes widening as he fucked her even harder, even faster.

"Yeah, yeah, little tempting fucking bitch, yeah, take daddy's cock!"

Mavlor felt a presence flitting into the scrying orb with him. He remained perfectly still - a nestjock wasn't as

intimately

a part of the Dragon Lines as a rogue like him. The nestjock wouldn't notice him, if he didn't move. Right?

A bored voice came over the scrying orb. "Ahem. Mr. Smith, you didn't pay enough to break her."

Mavlor saw that the halfling was making a gesture with her free right hand, her face purpling.

Mr. Smith slowed down, releasing her and she gasped quietly.

Mavlor felt quietly ill. He flitted on from the scrying orb.

He came to the vault of the warehouse. It was almost entirely physical. He frowned slightly as his astral fingers rubbing slowly along the faint outline that he could feel through the connection. There was a dragon in the tumbler, sleeping quietly and waiting to be awakened. The dragon was entirely contained, no hacking could be done there. But he did touch his belly, whispering softly. "Hey there, little guy."

The dragon's attention came all at once. A bolt of excited, almost puppyish energy slapped into Mavlor's brain.

Hey hey hey hey hey hey!

The dragon in the key said.

"Heh, you've been wandering in the Lines a while, huh?" Mavlor asked, sounding amused.

I was just watching the big games,

the dragon said, casually. Mavlor, as always, was...deeply, deeply jealous of dragons. Even the saddest, most pathetic one had the same mystic soul, the same ability to just...

leave

. The eggs in his gun were romping around farther away than Mavlor would ever gone - flitting around the world along the Dragon Lines, and doing anything they wished in the vastness of the untapped astral. Mavlor knew mortals who gave up their bodies to do the same - willing to become third class citizens, barely sentient slabs of lumpish matter, sitting around in the deep wells of the astral...all just to escape the

here

and

now

.

It gave him the creeps.

It almost scared him more how tempting it was.

"So, you wanna open up for me if I ask?" Mavlor asked.

But they said I'm a lock,

the dragon said.

"Ah, ah, but, counterpoint," Mavlor said, grinning slightly. "I'm very nice!"

The trick with picking a lock like this was learning what kind of dragon you were talking too. Some were simple, some were silly, some were distractable, and some of them were just plain mean. That was what Mavlor had read in all the books - and, like getting Slake's job, it was all about acting like he'd done this a thousand times before. He leaned in and gave a spectral smile to the lock-dragon. There was a short pause, and he worried that maybe the books, the notes he'd read in his brother's journal, everything Razor had said, was just a big fat fucking lie.

Then the dragon chirruped happily:

Okay!

The door clicked and thumped. The safe hatch swung open before his shimmering eyes - but then Mavlor spotted the tiny spurt of glowing energy sliding along the wall, a bead of bright mana that he saw picking up speed. The dragon explained, helpfully:

That's what the boss said I should do if I met anyone nice.

Shit.

Mavlor dove forward and thrust his astral palm into the wall, between the bead and its destination. The buzzing, crackling feeling of the mana-pulse thrummed against his palm. It started off tingling, then itching. He didn't want to be here when it went from itching to burning. Thinking quickly, Mavlor reached with his other hand. An astral body wasn't quite a real body - but it was still constrained by familiar dimensions, by well known modes of action and behavior. His fingers groped at the air, but he couldn't quite get them past the door, despite shoving his hand and pushing and straining. He clenched his teeth...then flung himself away from the wall.

The bead shot along the wall.

He got his fingers into the astral part of the vault, feeling the weight of memory. Then he was back at the wall, kicking off the floor so hard that he could get his fingers around the bead. The itching was back - and he was now inches away from it reaching the first communication junction. Thinking fast, Mavlor said: "So, tiny lil' guy, did you know really

cool

dragons can send this kind of warning super duper

slow

? Fast guys, that's easy. Slow? Super hard!"

Whoa, really?

The tiny astral form of the dragon came from the tumbler, flitting through steel and into the half-real place that Mavlor was in. The lock-dragon looked a bit like a spark of bright, ruby red light, and his wings flickered and flashed, ravelike, as he swung around Mavlor's head.

I can do that! I can do that ten times!

The itching had hit burning.

Mavlor closed his eyes. He prayed to the Wyrm above that the lock dragon was as guileless as he seemed.

He jerked his palm away.

The bead seemed to be almost stationary. It hung in the line, shimmering and buzzing. Mavlor looked from it to the dragon-spirit, which started to bound around in the air.

See? See? See?

Mavlor breathed out a slow, slow sigh, and then smiled. "Good job, lil' guy."

I'm the best lock.

Well.

Cheapest, at the very least. Mavlor hoped that the owner of this black market sleeze den didn't take too much of it out on their choice of lock - against everyone save a Rogue like him, this dragon lock would have been completely unbreakable. If only because he'd probably have just eaten the-

The tiny dragon spirit hiccuped and coughed up a half molten lock, which sizzled as it dropped from the astral to the physical plate, smoking and steaming as lay on the ground.

"Right," Mavlor said.

Left!

"Bye, little guy," Mavlor said, shaking his head as the bead kept inching along. He turned, kicked up into the Dragon Lines, and was gone.

***

When Mavlor snapped back into his body and jerked his bleeding finger from his dragon port, it was with a disorientating lurch. He felt bile rising up at the back of his throat, but gulped it down. He had never been in the astral for so long - and these implants squirmed in his body. The dragon in his wrist twitched its tail, causing a bulge of skin to appear below his wrist. The pain was muted, but present. The dragon in his brain kicked one of its rear legs and for just a moment, claws connected nerves that normally

weren't

connected. The synesthetic sensation of tasting the warm copper color of his own blood, and hearing the rushing, deep soul of being held, flashed through him. Then it was gone, the implants settling as Slake, her head tilted around the corner, her thick tail lashing, grinned.

"Aces and drakes," she muttered. "You got in and out without being caught? You really are dragonfire."

"No, there was an alert signal," Mavlor said, rubbing the back of his neck and standing, feeling his muscles popping. He opened his left hand, the one with the dragon port. The glowing crystal, the bead of the scrolls he had stolen from the warehouse, sat there, crystalized and released onto his palm by his implant. He lifted his gaze to Slake, who was looking at him with a very thin, thin looking expression. The dragon mandibles that framed her jaw spread out, then snapped in with irritation. Mavlor continued before she said anything: "I convinced the lock to hold the call for, uh, however long he can manage."

Slake whistled, quietly, her slitted eyes blinking. "Really? Damn. If we get out of here before their security tips, then..." She grinned. "Then maybe we have a future, skinny."

Mavlor gave her a thin smile right back.

The two started off, walking away while still trying to act as if they had nothing special going on and were doing nothing important. In the underdark, that was easy - the narrow corridors were full of other people shifting and shuffling along just like them. Wih his hands in his pockets, Mavlor muttered under his breath. "So, Slake."

"Yeah, skinny?" she asked.

Mavlor frowned. "Mavlor."

"You're so thin you make me feel like an orc," Slake said, rolling her eyes. "You can get a better name later. Or maybe not. I mean, I once doorkicked with a fuckin' goblin named Beachball."

Mavlor nodded, slightly.

They walked together in silence, past a broken rain gutter. The oil-slick it left on the brick and metal stonework of the wall almost blotted out the old graffiti of

BLOOD OF THE WYRM, CURSE OF THE SKY,

turning neon bright test into a smear of dried blood.

"What the fuck is a beach?" Mavlor asked, turning to face Slake. Her tail lashed and she turned to face him as well, the two of them stopping right at the exit from the underdark into the city proper. She looked down at him.

"Okay, skinny," she said. "You might be some big shot rogue, but you're...new at kicking, aren't you?"

Mavlor frowned. "It was my first job. I got lucky," he said, quietly.

Another not quite lie.

Slake looked out at the rain. "Every kicker, we do shit that most people don't want to, or can't. We bust into corporate territory, we hit their dungeons, we jack their data, and usually? We're selling it to other corpos - since, ya know, if a dragon ever fought another dragon, it'd be another War of Wyrms, right?" Mavlor nodded. She pointed with her clawed finger. "But out there? Past the city, past the boneyards, there's a place where water doesn't come pissed outta dragon. There's a place where there's shit like

trees

and sand and green hills that isn't in a park and doesn't cost five gold coins to see." She lowered her hand, nodding slowly. "That's...that's what a beach is, skinny."