Dragons, Decay, and Too Many Legs (Patreon)

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Y’ever wake up and not realize it? Me neither, but I couldn’t think of any other way to describe what I was feeling. I’d gone to bed after preparing the villain for the D&D campaign that Iosef “bribed” me to run, then… it was… hit hê onlic ic pro ðone as fullic of mîn winde beswican, hwonne f¯æringa sagu sê holt hwon sîn wundrung.

In anycase, it took me a good two, three minutes to realize that no, I wasn’t asleep. I was awake, in a cramped place that seemed to have all the color sucked out of it and smelled like burnt cooking oil, old vegetables, spoiled meat, and way too many cats. Not only that, but everything felt… off. Like my everything had shrunk, but fit better? Ic pro handlian lýtel, ælan, swâðêah stranglic.

There was a bright flash of light, color filling my vision, before something impacted my gut. As I curled up around whatever hit me, there was a ‘clang’ and everything returned to looking like someone hit the greyscale filter. Plastic, lumpy… is this a garbage bag? Am I in… for fuck’s sake, who threw me in a dumpster?!

When I found the shitstain who threw me in here, I was going to kick their ass then shove a bag full of sâwolhord spores down their thro… my instinctive threats trailed off. I… I know things. I know how to cast magic, how to move in ways the average mortal could only dream of, how to fall without being hurt, how to track animals, identify a thousand different plants, how to walk next to someone and be unseen. How do I know these things?!

Okay, calm down. I gotta relax, just take some deep breaths. Urg, bad idea. Get out of this dumpster first, then I can have a panic attack. Shoving the garbage bag off me, my hand fumbles around until it finds my staff and I use it to push open the lid before climbing out. Landing nimbly on my feet, I take a moment to take a deep breath of not-dumpster air.

Still shit, but gods is it better than in the dumpster. I run a hand down my face, pausing as I feel a different face than I did last night. Wide nose, almost fur like beard and sideburns, pointed ears, pronounced canines. Okay, remain calm… sunnovabitch. I can’t remember my name. Why can’t I remember something so fucking basic that even Thorvar never…

It hit me like a semi. The skills I’d learned overnight, the nimble athleticism I’d never even come close to possessing, the lightless greyscale, but most especially the name of the person I’d been about to berate. Thorvar: the dwarven conquest paladin that was The Dragon to the big bad of the campaign I designed before going to bed last night.

Taking a calming breath, I mentally ran through what I didn’t have in my head last night. Flashes of memories danced through my head: time at a monastery, learning the stories of the Godswar, awakening an Ember, the attack on the monastery, the ritual, subsuming the meat’s spine and nervous system, settling into the meat’s body that was now mine. My eyes widened, my gaze dropping down to my hands. The memories, I… I’d become the villain of the campaign I’d designed.

“When I came out for a smoke, I wasn’t expecting to see a hobo in the trash,” a sarcastic voice behind me said. I turned around, looking up at the guy. And up. And up.

“I, meanwhile, didn’t go to sleep expecting to wake up in Yao Ming’s dumpster,” I quipped as I looked the very tall asian man in the eye. Despite the snow on the ground, he didn’t seem all that bothered by the cold, but then again neither was I.

He rolled his eyes as he held his hands up to his mouth and lit a cigarette. Taking a deep drag, he drawled, “I’m not that tall, you’re just short. Now. Care to explain what you were doing in ‘my’ dumpster?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you. I went to sleep in my nice warm bed and woke up in there. Don’t suppose you could tell me where we are?”

He puffed out a bit of smoke, before shrugging and responding, “Chinese barbecue place. Also does karaoke.”

“… if I say what comes to mind, how badly will you hurt me?”

Tall, asian, and nameless snorted, “Let me guess: Wok and Roll? You’re not the first, hell the owners decided to name it that.”

I breathed out a sigh of relief, “Yeah, that’s what came to mind. The food any good?”

While some food would be nice, mostly I wanted a chance to go over everything that I put into the character I now apparently am.

He shrugged, “Be careful with the owner’s experiments, but anything on the menu in English should be safe. There’s the typical ‘chinese food’ along with the usual bar food.”

I blinked, before a grin spread across my face, “In that case I’m going to order some nachos.”

My hand flew down to my pocket, only to feel a distinct lack of a wallet. Leaning my staff against the dumpster I began searching for pockets or anything that could count as money, much to my conversation partner’s amusement. After a minute of searching, I came to a rather annoying conclusion: I just had a few coins, not one of which was a mint that’d be accepted anywhere but the city of Tysfall in my campaign setting.

But… my gaze went to the guy now crushing his cigarette under his boot, “I have an offer.”

He looked me up and down, “Not for all the drink in the city.”

“No! Not that. Look, I’ll make you a deal: all I got for cash are some coins made with real gold, I give you one, you pay for my meal. If it’ll make ya feel better, you can have the barkeep shoot me if I try to leave while you get it appraised.”

Cocked eyebrow, he held out a hand and I flipped one of my ten gold coins at him. He spent the next thirty seconds or so examining it, holding it up to the light, before he pocketed it. Jerking his head, he made his way out of the alley to the front.

Grabbing my staff, I hurried after him. Okay, I built this character to be a solo threat against a party of demigod characters. I don’t know if I’m a solo threat, but the potential is there. I’m clearly not in my campaign setting, so I need to figure out where I am and what sort of threats I need to be concerned with.

“Done with your cancer stick, K?” the barkeep asked as we entered. I was immediately thrown off kilter by the fact that the barkeep looked more asian than Yao Ming but sounded like he should be wearing a kilt while playing a bagpipe.

“Better a cigarette than coke. Order of nachos for the shrimp behind me, along with my usual,” he said before taking a seat at the bar.

“You got it, a plate of nachos and Cuba Libre coming up.”

I sat next to Yao Ming and started sorting through the odd disconnected jumble of memories in my head. The most clear bunch of memories were my own (despite the fact that I couldn’t remember my name), the next were those of Torrent (the wildhunt shifter whose body I now owned), followed by Ophioc (the… individual who kinda-sorta murder/possessed Torrent’s body before I showed up and basically did the same thing to him).

It made sense that Ophioc’s memories were… smaller, for want of a better word, it was by far the youngest of the three of us. I was in my thirties while Torrent… oh. Aw fuck. Well, I know now what “level” I’m at. For fuck’s sake, I built Ophioc to be at level twenty, and from the memories I’m seeing I’m at level fucking one!

This is such gods damned nêat ðost! He was designed to be a god! And I’m stuck at the level that is complete and utter shit regardless of edition! That settles it: I’m going to become the God of Death and Rot that Ophioc was going to be, then I’m going to find the ROB that did this to me and I’m gonna kick their ass and rot off their dick!

“Here ya go, plate of nachos for ya,” Barkeep’s voice drew me out of my revenge fantasies alongside the heaping plate of nachos he put in front of me.

… revenge can wait: I’ve got a plate of nachos that need to be eaten.

[hr][/hr]

I was halfway through the plate and getting to the point where tidiness was becoming futile (the best part of nachos) when a rancid scent hit my nose. Smelled like bad BO, piss, pus, puke, and half a dozen other things I couldn’t identify. Looking up, my eyes roamed the place, trying to figure out where that stench was coming from.

The chime of the door pulled my gaze, and I immediately realized that the three disgusting sacks that walked in were the source of the reek. If my eyes weren’t watering from their aromatic precursor I’d chuckle at how they looked like cliche druggies. One of them pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the barkeep, while the other two pointed the guns they pulled out at the various customers.

“A’ight chink, hand over the money in the register an’ no one gets shot,” the apparent leader says.

“Chink? Chink?! Are ya blind, ya bloody coke ‘eads? I’m Vietnamese!” Barkeep shouted, his accent getting all three druggies’ attention and confusion.

After a moment, the leader rallied and, spitting off to the side, continued, “I don’t care if you’re from China, Nam, or fucking London, hand over your money.”

I didn’t hear Barkeep’s response. If I had chosen sorcerer for this character, I’m sure there would be smoke leaking from my mouth. That fucking bastard spat in my nachos.

“Gentlemen,” I said with false calm, getting their attention, “Before anyone does something they’ll regret, I have a wor…”

“Holy shit, and I thought you were ugly Caleb,” the druggie furthest from me interrupted.

“Yo mamma!” the middle druggie retorted.

… right, fuck being polite.

“Mysci,” I intoned while pointing at the dead man that called me ugly.

He dropped his gun and began swatting at the cloud of parasitic insects that suddenly appeared on him. As the other two druggies turned to see what was making their companion scream in a panic, I leapt off the bar stool and buried my fist in the leader’s gut while my foot hooked the seat of the bar stool. As the leader folded, I snapped my foot out, bringing the stool around and cracking the third druggie in the throat, crushing his windpipe.

I was in the air at this point, and the brief conjuration I had made on the farthest was fading. Feeling my hair all over my body thicken, my nails sharpen and my canines grow more pronounced, I forced myself in a roll over the still folding leader. Two on one unless you were vastly more powerful than both was never a good position to be in. With that in mind, I brought up a little something I’d palmed as I landed a gut shot on the leader.

Once. Twice, I pulled the trigger. Two bullets punched into the druggie who dropped like a marionette. Then there was the one.

Turning around, I was just in time to catch a fist to the face. My head snapped back from the force, but I barely felt it. I felt the knife that he drove into my wrist far more. Snarling like a beast, I dropped the pistol and grabbed his wrist as he moved to stab me again.

“The fuck are you?” the druggie whispered as he finally looked at me, the trace amounts of lycanthropy in my blood now fully apparent.

“Ophioc,” I growled, the intonation something more than real.

As the word reverated within the stained speck of a soul shackled to the poisoned body, my free hand flattened and stabbed into his throat. I left it in there just long enough to see the realization in his eyes before ripping it out, his windpipe clenched in my fist.

Feeling the blood of my… of Torrent’s lycanthrope ancestry still, I shook my head to clear it of the battle rush. To the sound of a slow clapping. Yao Ming was leaning against the bar, giving a slow applause, while Barkeep and the rest of the patrons were keeping a close eye on him.

“Impressive. I might not recognize the specific style, but you have clearly been trained in martial arts,” he began, and I was starting to get a worrisome feeling about this.

“You wouldn’t,” I began, trying to decide how I wanted to play this. I’d said enough that I couldn’t pretend to be from my D&D setting, but I’m obviously not getting out of this without saying something. “The school I studied under dislikes outsiders knowing about them.”

“Indeed,” he mused, before taking a sip of his drink and standing up. Stepping in front of me, his foot pushing aside the corpse, he put a hand on my shoulder, “While I normally don’t involve work in this establishment, I cannot pass up the opportunity you present. You have both skill and power, and from your circumstances that found you in an alleyway in ragged clothes yet gold coinage you lack any real options.”

Sure, just announce that I’ve got gold on me why doncha? I’m sure no one here’ll be interested in mugging me once you leave, “Is this where you offer me a job?”

Yao Ming chuckled, while several of the patrons looked at me with an… odd look in their eyes. Still, not one said anything or interrupted him, “Yes. It is. Work for me, and you will have access to a great many resources and rewards for a job well done. We can discuss the specifics after you have gotten a night’s rest. For now, allow me to order a replacement for the meal that this scum ruined.”

… Grandpa’s Rule #1: Never say no to free food. While some of the patrons took care of the bodies, I overheard Barkeep whispering to Yao Ming, not realizing I could hear him.

“Are you sure about this, Kenta? You know that many will object since he’s not asian.”

“I am The Dragon. Any who object are free to challenge me.”