CYOA - "Unpunished" Chapter 1 (Patreon)

(Okay, here's the first chapter of the Choose Your Own Adventure that you helped unlock by being patrons! All comments, discussion, thoughts, alternative voting options you would have preferred, etc. are welcome; they'll help inform me for future chapters. Also, feedback is important, because it'll help make me think this was a good idea. :D )

This is the story of my amazing adventure on an alien world, full of action, suspense, mystery, heroes, victories, failures, and sacrifice. Oh, and bondage. There were also a lot of really long walks, like most fantasy quests, but I'll do my best to gloss over those. Trust me, you aren't missing much.

You might be wondering, "This story is called 'Unpunished?' So, does that mean the sexy dragoness isn't going to get punished? Why am I even reading this?!" First of all, I don't need punishment, thank you very much. Second of all, sometimes I get it anyway. You'll have to keep reading if you want to know any more than that.

My sordid tale begins fifty feet above the beautiful Russell-Carpenter wedding. That's where a light blue dragoness was treading air, her gold horns and claws glinting in the sunlight. She was looking down the viewfinder of a camera that was pointed at the white and black blob of guests on the grass below, near a grand, stone church. For those of you still catching up, that dragoness was me, Nia, amateur photographer and entrepreneur. If you're thinking about getting some aerial photography for your wedding or business, a dragon will get you better pictures than a human controlled drone nine times out of ten. Just saying.

Not everyone seemed to agree with this objective fact, however, and I was well on my way toward being Nia, amateur photographer and failed entrepreneur. Rent was a month behind, my LeyNet bill was stacking up, most of my meals were ramen packets, and I didn't have any other jobs lined up after the Russell-Carpenter wedding.

I tried to put all those thoughts out of my mind and focus on getting some candid pictures. The real money shot would come later, when the whole wedding party stood together and smiled up into the camera. That wouldn't be for another hour, though, so I made a wide circle back toward the ground while reviewing the last couple shots I took.

The screen let me know that my first SD card was almost full, so I took out my secondary from a chest pocket on my vest, intending to swap them as soon as I landed. What I failed to remember was that I'd bought a cheap extra backup on sale, and stuffed it into the same pocket.

And that's how the Russell-Carpenters ended up with a brand new 128GB SD card inside of their wedding cake.

I landed nearby and practically jogged to the big, multi-tiered monster covered in frosting. I winced when I found the point of entry; If I'd been off by two inches, it would have smacked the bride's little figurine right in the face.

"Don't even think about it," a snotty voice said. I jumped in place and turned to see the bride's sister, Agnes. The sneering woman somehow made her beautiful teal bridesmaid dress look like an eyesore.

I shook my head. "Oh, no, I wouldn't touch it until-"

"Good," Agnes snapped. "Just do your job." She'd helped out her sister by hiring me, and everything had gone smoothly until I told Agnes that I'd only started my business three months ago. Luckily that was after she'd already paid me a deposit, because from that point on she treated me like I was a leper. A leper who liked to steal cake, apparently.

"Absolutely," I said, sitting back on my haunches and raising the camera to aim it at her. "Smile!"

She looked taken aback, then used her hands to smooth out her dress and put on a very convincing fake smile. I took the picture, then pretended to review it. "Oh, yes," I told her, "that came out lovely."

"I'm sure it did," she said, then waved at someone over my shoulder. "Dolores!" Off she went, and I couldn't have been happier.

I avoided her as I walked around the wedding, doing my best to not step on anyone's tail while taking more pictures. That's a figure of speech, in this case; most of the guests were human, with only two other dragons, and a half-dozen fae. For the most part I interacted with others as little as possible, aside from a cute pixie kid who landed on my head just long enough for her parents to scoop her up and apologize.

I was still trying to decide what to do about the special ingredient I'd accidentally added to the cake when I made a fateful decision. You see, most wedding parties don't want really long distance shots that make their special day look like a tiny, insignificant dot on a map. Still, some people liked them, so I kept offering them just in case, and it was best to take those shots before some guests started leaving early. Last time I was already in the air, I'd been so caught up with thoughts about which bill I could let go for another month that I'd forgotten to go higher for the wide view. So, rather than trying to tell Agnes about the chunk of plastic and silicon hidden beneath layers of frosting, I stepped far enough away from the wedding to not disturb anyone and took off again.

I was hardly thirty feet up when someone gasped and said, "Up there!" The voice was kind of high pitched, so my first thought was that a little human girl was surprised to see me overhead. That is, until I looked up, and saw a bright yellow hole high in the sky, and the orange shape that came flying out of it.

No, not orange, burning. Burning, and faintly screaming.

It hit me that I was the only one airborne and remotely close, and I only hesitated half a second before I pumped my wings hard, shooting forward to intercept. I glanced down long enough to get my bearings, and what I saw made me swallow; yes, there was a small pond on the church grounds, but it was further away than I remembered.

I didn't know if I could grab them, break into a glide, and carry us both into the pond at a safe speed. I sure as hell didn't know what they were, where they'd come from, or what could tear a hole in the sky. All I did know is that if I didn't act, there was a 100% chance they'd hit the ground.

I closed in, and part of me shouted that was I totally nuts, and somehow that didn't stop me from reaching out to try and grab the Unidentified Burning Object. My fingers met a wet surface, and whatever or whoever they were, they stopped screaming. They looked at me with huge, white, pupiless, bloodshot eyes, and croaked, "You're the one."

I had just enough time to realize the fire wasn't hot before everything blinked away.

I never did get my SD card back.

------

"Kup."

"Buh?" I asked, my brain filled with fading memories of blackness, yellow streaks, and an endless fields of stars. I tried to open my eyes and lift my head, and nothing seemed to happen.

"A cup!"

I don't wear a bra, so I had no idea why someone would be shaking my shoulder and talking to me about one. "I dohn..." My voice was a croak. My body caught up with my brain enough to open and close my mouth a few times. It felt gummy and dry. I managed to open my eyes.

There was a dark blue ferret staring at me with small, glowing eyes. It was so close that our noses were nearly touching.

"Wake up!" someone else shouted in a gruff, masculine. It sounded like he was getting sick of repeating themselves.

"She is awake," the ferret in front of me said much more softly, and a yellow spark of electricity danced from one of her whiskers to another, then to another. She backed away slowly, revealing a large, dark space around us.

"Good, now send this one back and get me a real dragon. Harrumph." He didn't just make the noise, he actually said "harrumph."

I groaned and sat up slowly, putting a paw on my head as my vision swam. That was around the time that I started to remember that ferrets can't talk, aren't blue, and don't emit electricity. "What's going on?" I managed to ask, voice still weak.

"That's what I want to know," the bossy guy grumbled.

I shook my head one more time and took in my surroundings. I was inside of some kind of big, black, pyramid-shaped room, the walls glinting in the light of the four torches planted into the dirt floor. One side of the room had a huge arch that lead out into a more natural looking cave. I guessed that the room was made of onyx, or obsidian, or something like that. I honestly didn't spend much time worrying about that, because I was way more focused on the fact that I wasn't alone.

The ferret was looking up at me, but she didn't have far to look up, considering she was the size of a large dog. She was mostly royal blue, with some white patches and markings, and was clearly smiling at me. The other voice in the room had come from a lion in armor standing nearby.

To be clear, he was standing on two legs. Okay, yeah, I know that this isn't a huge revelation to everyone anymore, not after the stuff that happens later in this story, but at the time I'd only ever seen two legged animals in cartoons. And I definitely had never seen a seafoam green lion with plate mail, a two handed sword, and gills before.

"I am Lady Puro of the Fritz High Council," the ferret said, pulling my attention back to her. She gestured with one of her paws and said, "And this is Sir Slice, Knight Captain of the Zaloph Kingdom." The lion just huffed, his whiskers twitching.

I wondered if he was a zaloph, not a lion, and then decided it didn't matter, because it was all just a dream. I smiled, impressed by how interesting the dream was, and... then I froze. Whenever I notice I'm inside of a dream, I always wake up right afterward.

It didn't feel like I was waking up.

There was a quiet crack as electricity arced in the space between Puro's chin and her chest. I realized she'd been waiting for me to reply right as she asked, "May we have the honor of your name?" 

"Uh, yeah, I'm Niamathana," I said, getting up onto all four paws. "Call me Nia. And, tell me, what the hell is going on?"

"That's what I want to know!" the lion repeated himself. "Their Royal Majesties were expecting you to summon a real dragon when they supported this plan, not... This!" He waved his paw at me.

"So, what am I, then?" I asked, lashing my tail. "A..." I trailed off as I noticed a third person in the room, near one of the back corners. It looked like a small person with a tuxedo and butterfly wings? I couldn't make him out very well in the torchlight.

"The burning thing!" I shouted suddenly, the torch's flames reminding me. I looked back at Lady Puro. "Did I, did I save it?"

"Burning thing?" she asked, head tilting. "I don't-"

"Sir Slice!" a voice called, echoing through the cave. "They found us!"

Slice hefted his sword into the air and grinned. "Now we do things my way!" He dashed away, moving faster than I expected in that armor, clanking quietly with each step.

Lady Puro turned to follow him, looking back over her shoulder at me long enough to call out, "Come, we mustn't let ourselves be cornered in here!"

I hesitated, overwhelmed. I wondered if pinching yourself to wake up really works. I also wondered if maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a dream? "Seriously, what the hell is going on?!"

I...