Dragon King Part 36 (Patreon)

Zara scowled as she glanced at the angry looking mountain that loomed over everything in the area. 'I've killed worse,' she told herself, doing her best to ignore the rancid stench that was lingering in the air and the mana in the area. She pulled her attention back towards the crowd of people walking down the twisted streets of the cursed town when she felt a swirling and twisting vortex of dark magic suddenly appear.

Her gaze instantly jumped to the man with ethereal black flames wrapped around him and the twisted hole in reality next to the cultist. She smirked slightly as he glanced around, his gaze sliding past where she was floating over a building without stopping, either because of the dull dagger she was wearing on her belt that should hide her from shadowspawn or because of her invisibility. 'You picked the wrong side asshole,' she thought as watched him glance around as the hole in reality closed.

Zara teleported down behind the man as he turned around to talk to a fade and hit him with the most powerful stunner she could, lifting him and the fade off their feet and tossing them like rag dolls from the extra mana she stuffed into the spell, already planning her next spell. She paused for a second when she noticed that the man wasn't moving then dashed forward, grabbed the unconscious and battered man and stuffed him in her storage ring, feeling a vast amount of relief that she wouldn't have to deal with Ishamael ambushing them.

'Project cleansweep is a go!' Zara 'shouted' the command over the telepathic network she'd set up with the blue girls she'd taken with her, causing the five hundred magic girls to drop down from where they were flying and start tossing stunners like party favors. She stuffed the unconscious fade into her storage ring then sprinted towards her next target as the only town in the blight erupted into chaos.

Zara was glad the goggles let the girls see each other or at least see the glow of magic the invisibility spell didn't cover and that the fades had a dark aura that couldn't be mistaken for any of the girls, otherwise they would have been hitting each other in the chaos as everyone tried to figure out what was going on. 'Like blasting fish in a barrel,' she thought as she cut a trolloc in half with her sword as he ran out of a building, not seeing a reason to stun the abomination as he had an eagle head and looked disgusting.

Zara did her best to ignore the chatter over the telepathic network as she spent the next couple of minutes knocking cultists, fades and the occasional interesting looking trolloc unconscious and stuffing them in her storage rings, at least until one of the girls effectively shouted, 'The darkhounds are immune to stunners!' over the network.

'Toss them into the air with telekinesis, I'll deal with them,' Zara assured the girls as she flew up into the air so that she could catch the darkhounds with her telekinesis, hoping their cloaking ter'angreal would hide their scent.

'Thank you!' one of the girls replied as she tossed the darkhound she'd been avoiding into the sky with her telekinesis, not remotely interested in testing her acid immunity and poison immunities against the darkhound's corruptive saliva on the off chance that her ter'angreal failed and they noticed her enough to attack her.

'Fucking lunatics!' one of the girls complained as a man started tossing balls of fire down the twisted street, not seeming to care that every blast was setting wooden buildings on fire. 'I thought you said the corrupted channelers have protection from the taint? They're fucking insane!'

'They're cultists!' Zara replied as she grabbed another five darkhounds with telekinesis and pulled them into a ball of snarling fury. 'Give me a minute!' She opened a portal and dropped the darkhounds into Shadar Logoth, figuring the corrupted city would kill them or at least keep them busy until someone could deal with them. 'Sorry, not sorry,' she thought as she opened a massive portal in front of her that connected to a point a couple of hundred feet above Far Madding, allowing the guardian's influence to 'leak' through the portal and shutting down channeling, making it easier for the magic girls to waltz through the confused defenders. 'Their magic should be down, you should hurry!' she told them, already feeling the strain of keeping the massive portal open.

'Working on it!' several girls replied as they stepped up the pace of stunning anything and everything that moved that wasn't on their side.

'I'll catch the darkhounds!' one of the blue girls said as she flew up into the air with two hounds floating thirty feet in front of her.

'We need theme music!' one of the girls complained as she ripped apart a group of trollocs with her telekinesis.

'Next time,' Zara assured them as she tried to focus on the portal, leaving the clean up to the girls, since there wasn't much the cultists could do about the swarm of invisible magic using telepaths.

'Remember, loot then burn!' one of the girls reminded the group, wanting to make sure they didn't burn anything important like 'lost' books or ter'angreal.

0o0o0

"The fuck?" Myst muttered as he reread the description on the handheld video game console that had just dropped from a magical game wheel.

"Something weird?" Dawn asked as she continued working on braiding Taylor's hair.

"You can spend in-game currency to get actual magic tokens that can be used to get vanity pets, costumes, weapon replicas and silly, incomplete or near useless magic spells," Myst explained as he examined the coin slot on the top of the console.

"Near useless?" Taylor asked, wishing she had a mirror so she could see her hair.

"No idea, that's just what the description says," Myst replied as he floated the console over to Taylor. "Do you want to try?"

"Sure," Taylor replied as she reached out and grabbed the handheld console, knowing that she had a couple of hours to kill until her next class.

"Do you have anything for me…" Rose trailed off as a tiny gold dragon with ruby eyes appeared in front of Myst. She smiled as she realized the dragon's tail was curled around the wire that would go through her ear. "That's pretty."

Myst glanced at the naked redhead that was lying on a couple of stacks of pillows and across both Hermiones' laps. "Maybe…" he trailed off when he looked at the earring with his upgrade ability and realized he was going to have to fix the cursed earring before he'd let anyone he liked use it. "It's cursed."

"Let me guess, makes you obsessed about homework or it rots your skin off?" Rose asked, mostly joking about her guesses or at least the first one.

Hermione lightly swatted her girlfriend's butt. "Not funny."

"What was that about?" Hermione asked her counterpart.

"Back in first year she asked McGonagall if there was a curse that caused people to be obsessed with homework, some idiots ran with it," Hermione grumbled, thinking about Ron and some of the idiots in the year below them. "Now it's a running joke."

"You know you'd cast it, a bunch," Rose teased.

"Not the point," Hermione replied as she rested her hand on her girlfriend's behind and gave her a playful squeeze.

Myst laughed as he pictured Hermione running around casting the spell on all of the people that annoyed her or that she thought needed to study more. "Probably just as well."

"I need a newspaper," Hermione complained when she noticed the amused look on Myst's face.

Myst flashed Hermione a smile. "Sadly, putting the earring on the first time unlocks a random mental discipline for the 'small' cost of twisting your memories and your sanity into pretzels. Wearing it gives your mental powers a ten percent boost and allows you to improve your mental abilities with training, even if that would normally be impossible."

"Welcome to the crazy train, we have snacks," Dawn joked, not seeing a problem testing the earring on assholes before wiping their memories.

"Can you fix that part?" Rose asked excitedly.

"Worth a try," Myst replied as he pulled the duplication coffin out of his inventory and dropped the earring inside. "I wonder if it works on the body or the soul," he mused as he closed and opened the lid twice, creating three copies.

"Why would that matter?" Taylor asked as she glanced up from making her character.

"We might be able to avoid the sanity loss by swapping bodies or by using a dreamwalking ter'angreal and having someone stick the earring in your ear while you're asleep," Myst explained his thoughts as he collected the four earrings.

"Or you could just fix it," Dawn pointed out as she walked around the back of the couch so she could work on Hermione's hair.

"If you never crack any eggs how do you make a decent omelet?" Myst teased as he put one of the earrings in his inventory and pulled his copy of the cookie tin out.

"There are vegan substitutes," Dawn teased.

Myst stared at Dawn in horror. "Heathen, kill it with fire!"

"You realize most of the people in the world count as heathens, right?" Dawn asked with amusement.

"They're not insane vegans," Myst replied as he put the earring in the cookie tin and shook it, wanting to see if the box would tweak the curse. "Joking aside, I'm curious how the earring works, the more I know, the easier it is to create my own magical items."

Rose glanced at Taylor. "Speaking of magic items, have you given Taylor a magic girl form?"

Taylor swapped to her magic girl form, changing from her normal black haired appearance to an even taller red haired form dressed in a crimson silk loincloth and a halter top. "Zara let me use the gem before she left to attack the Blight."

Rose smiled as she looked at the attractive, tall and slender pale skinned girl with generous breasts and hips. "Nice."

"Thanks," Taylor replied, not sure what to make of the cheerful girl that liked swapping between her forms and was apparently a gender flipped version of a fictional wizard judging from what Dawn had said. "Changer ratings make it easier to keep your identities separate, especially if you don't tell anyone that you're a changer."

"Remind me," Myst stopped talking when Zara tossed him a message via telepathy.

'We had to drop a pack of darkhounds in Shadar Logoth, can you make sure they don't escape while we finish cleaning up?' Zara asked hopefully.

'I'll take a look,' Myst replied as he opened the cookie tin and checked the earring. 'Did you run into any trouble?'

'No, I managed to grab Ishamael before we launched the main attack, I'll tell you about it when I'm not holding a portal open to Far Madding,' Zara replied then dropped the connection as she didn't need the distraction.

"What's up?" Dawn asked, recognizing the distracted look on Myst's face.

Myst focused on Dawn. "Zara managed to capture Ishamael and she dropped a pack of darkhounds in Shadar Logoth."

"Darkhounds?" Taylor asked, not recognizing the creatures and not sure why they'd want to go to the cursed city that Dawn had warned her about.

"They're basically pony sized wolves that will reform if you cut them apart, I only know of three things that will permanently kill them and I don't have access to one of them because it hasn't been made yet and probably can't. Shadar Logoth has an eldritch abomination in it that might be able to eat them," Myst explained as he set the earrings and the cookie tin on the coffee table.

"And you're willingly going there?" Taylor asked in disbelief.

"It's safe enough as long as you're flying over it," Myst replied as he opened a portal to several miles south of the cursed city, having already scouted out the location with the globe in case he had to deal with the cursed city. "I'll let you know if I run into trouble, feel free to play with the cookie tin and the earrings, I have a copy."

"Do you need help?" Hermione asked.

"I'm just going to fly over the city and toss anything moving into the eldritch abomination," Myst replied then stepped through the portal.

"We'll be back in an hour," Dawn told Hermione then followed Myst through the portal, making sure she was hovering as Myst liked sticking portals in the air for some reason. She glanced down at the thick forest they were floating over then looked at the abandoned city she could see in the distance. "Do you have a plan?"

"Beyond tossing the darkhounds into the fog? Not really, I'm just sort of playing things by ear," Myst admitted as he pulled his globe out of his inventory and shut the portal, not seeing a point in leaving it open for something to fly through.

Dawn briefly considered using telepathy to check on the city before she remembered the stories about the place and clamped down on her ability as hard as she could. "Checking the city?"

"I'm checking the Blight," Myst replied as he brought up the town in the Blight, wanting to make sure the girls were actually working on the problem and that Ishamael hadn't managed to hit Zara with compulsion or pull off a win. "No sign of Zara but none of the draghkar are reaching the portal so the girls are obviously around."

"Any idea where the portal goes?" Dawn asked, curious where the giant portal went as she couldn't see the other side over Shadar Logoth.

Myst focused on Far Madding and looked at the giant portal over the city. He zoomed in to look at the people that were staring up at the portal in fear. "Far Madding, I don't see any shadowspawn running around so Zara is probably just busy and doesn't need the distraction."

"Makes sense, I have a feeling the Amyrlin is going to be really annoyed about the portal," Dawn mused as the image in the globe shifted to an abandoned and overgrown city.

"Considering the mess we're cleaning up with Ishamael's stash of male channelers and the cultists, she'll get over it," Myst replied as they watched a tentacle of mist drag a struggling darkhound into the main mass of fog in the globe. "At least one of the darkhounds is gone."

Dawn frowned when Myst put the globe back in his inventory. "Did she mention how many hounds she dropped into the city?"

"Nope, that's why we have hunter skills," Myst replied with a grin as he activated his beast tracking skill and flew towards the cursed city.

"Point," Dawn admitted as she flew after Myst, making a mental note to go through her list of skills again and get some practice with everything.

Myst couldn't help the feeling of annoyance that washed over him as they got close enough to get a decent look at the abandoned city, mostly because he could see the wealth or at least skill that went into constructing the ancient structures that were still standing after two thousand years. "Two hounds on my radar." He smiled as one of the dots vanished off his tracking skill. "Make that one."

"And nothing," Dawn said as she watched the second darkhound get dragged into the mass of fog and vanish from her tracking skill. "We should probably fly around the city."

"Once around it then we can check the stones on the exits for prints," Myst suggested, knowing that darkhounds left tracks in stone.

"Works for me," Dawn replied, then flew off planning on circling the walls before flying over the city in a zigzag pattern that should catch everything.

0o0o0

Hermione pulled the exquisitely crafted gold dragon earring out of the cookie tin and looked at the numbers with her identification ability. "We're up to boosting mental abilities by 14% and it unlocks two additional mental disciplines for the low cost of your legs."

Taylor gave Hermione a less than impressed look. "I'd rather not be paralyzed."

Hermione put the upgraded earring in her inventory, planning on running some tests on one of the cultists to make sure it wouldn't affect her normal form if she was in an alternate form before she risked using it. "You're not paralyzed, it just turns you into a mermaid the first time you use it."

Taylor glanced at the cookie tin she was holding. "Mental issues to physical flaws seems a bit of a jump."

"It depends on the style of enchanting and the original enchanter, if the crafter could pick the negative traits to balance the positive or if it's random, having the cookie tin change the drawback makes sense," Hermione replied as she grabbed the copy of the dungeon game that Taylor had let her copy with the coffin, dropped it into the cookie tin, closed the lid and shook the tin three times, trying to see if she could upgrade the quality and get something a bit different than the basic dungeon crawler game.

"I wouldn't mind the ability to turn into a mermaid, especially if I could breathe underwater," Rose said cheerfully, thinking about the version of mermaids she'd seen in muggle fiction rather than the unpleasant creatures in the lake at school.

Rose's girlfriend smiled at her. "We should grab a camera," she suggested, knowing Ginny and the twins would love some pictures of the school and Rose as a mermaid if they got things working where it wouldn't screw them over.

Hermione smiled as she pulled a copy of one of Myst's digital cameras out of her inventory and handed it to her counterpart. "You can keep it, it's a copy."

"Thanks!" Rose replied cheerfully as she looked at the camera, trying to figure out which button to push to take a picture. "Do you know how it works?"

"The green button turns it on and off, the button on the top takes the picture," Hermione offered, glad that the camera had a magitech battery that could be recharged by feeding it mana.

"Did it come with a manual?" Taylor asked, figuring there was probably more than that to it.

"No, just a couple of pieces of masking tape and some Russian directions written on the tape with marker," Hermione replied with a touch of annoyance, wishing it had come with an actual manual.

Taylor smiled as she held her hand out towards the younger Hermione. "Let me see, it looks like something from the mid two thousands."

Hermione handled Taylor the camera. "What was your world like?"

"It had capes with special powers, they generally fell into heroes, villains and rogues, with rogues being capes that tried making money off their powers in a legal way or just weren't interested in being heroes or villains, they didn't tend to last very long. Tinkers sort of pushed the general technology forward despite everything being black boxed but the destruction from capes and endbringers probably kept us from advancing as fast as we could have," Taylor mused as she looked over the camera and played with the settings, trying to get a feel for it and glad that someone had replaced the Russian notes with something she could read.

"Speaking of tinkers, do you want a copy of the alien engineer's engineering skill?" Hermione asked Taylor, looking forward to having more help with her projects.

"What's the catch?" Taylor asked.

"No catch," Hermione replied as she pulled a copy of the engineering skill book out of inventory and tossed it to Taylor. "Myst mostly charges people for upgrades and abilities so they won't mob him and so they'll actually think about how much they want them."

"Makes sense," Taylor agreed, knowing the Protectorate would have moved heaven and hell to get a trump like Myst under their thumb. She broke the popsicle stick and blinked as she realized she knew a hell of a lot about engineering that wasn't covered by high school or any of the lectures she picked up as a ward, including how to make some things that would cause Dragon to squeal in glee. "Do we have an engineering lab?"

"Not yet but I have plans," Hermione replied with a grin as she pulled two more copies of the skill book out of her inventory along with her plans for a workshop she was going to build. She handed the skill books to her counterpart and Rose then spread the plans for the workshop out on the coffee table. "It's not perfect, I've been a bit distracted learning the local magic system and trying to reverse engineer a bunch of magic items so they're not as detailed as they probably should be."

Taylor looked at the complicated hand drawn schematics spread out on the coffee table. "You're as bad as some of the tinkers I've known."

Rose frowned as she looked at the schematic and realized she wasn't sure what most of the symbols meant. She broke the popsicle stick, picking up an insane level of engineering. "That reminds me, if Myst can copy skills, how come he didn't just give us copies of Dumbledore's skills?"

"You tend to get different approaches by actually learning the information and the tower reduces the time it takes to learn magic to something reasonable unlike alien engineering, not to mention we'd need materials and tools we don't have to actually teach it. Besides, we have an ability that basically gives us an eidetic memory for magic that we can hand out, we don't have anything that covers engineering so it's better to just grab a copy that won't fade and not worry about it," Hermione explained, hoping one of the half fae had a memory perk they could copy as her memory wasn't perfect, just exceptionally good.

Rose's Hermione broke the popsicle stick and smiled when she realized she knew far more about engineering than anyone back home. "Have you thought about making a starship?"

Hermione laughed. "Not seriously. I've been busy and we have an alien scout ship. I'm not even sure where to find some of the rarer metals or how to get the tools to build the tools we'd need to create some of the alloys."

"Salvage them from the ship and toss the parts in the coffin?" Rose suggested.

"Not the worst idea," Hermione mused, slightly annoyed that she hadn't thought about it but they'd only had the coffin a few days and she hadn't given the spaceship much thought since they'd jumped worlds. "Especially if we can use the coffin to duplicate the hull plating."

"We can probably use alchemy to boost the durability," Rose's Hermione mused as she thought about some of the alchemy books she'd read when she was bored.

"Making the hull out of heartstone wouldn't be a bad idea," Hermione mused as she pulled a blank pocket sized notebook and a pen out of her inventory and handed them to her counterpart. "If you have any more ideas."

"I have a few," she replied, looking forward to running some tests.

Taylor glanced at the cookie tin that Hermione was holding. "Propulsion systems and the shape of the craft, do you think we could use the cookie tin to upgrade the schematics?"

"We've been using it to improve the sewer system, it should work for a starship," Hermione replied thoughtfully as she opened the cookie jar and looked at the result of her shaking it. "I'm pretty sure it upgraded the game unless it just added Deluxe to the label."

Taylor glanced at the clock on her HUD. "We should probably head to the crafting classroom, Egwene should be finishing up her last class and she said we could come early."

"This is going to be awesome!" Rose said cheerfully as she floated up and headed for the door, looking forward to learning to make magical items, something that Hogwarts didn't bother teaching beyond some basic charms until seventh year.

Taylor watched the currently red haired Rose leave the room. "Is she always this cheerful?"

"Not really, she's just ecstatic that the dark wizard that ruined her life is dead, give it a couple of days or a week and she'll be back to normal," Hermione replied as they followed Rose out of the lounge, strangely amused that they were going to class without their clothes and that no one cared.

The older Hermione stuffed the coffin and the plans for her workshop in her inventory and followed the rest of the group, looking forward to Egwene's lessons on crafting ter'angreal.