I turn my scaly green head and cough up another spatter of blood onto the floor. I can taste my own blood in my beak.
Now this dragonette smiles a beakful of fangs. “Shoot,” she whispers, “I know I wouldn’t want to be some poor sucker on a planet that you invaded, that’s for dang sure. Why look at your scaly face, darlin’. It’s got Evil Ruler written all over it.”
I just manage a faint smile. I’m sure I look freaking hideous.
“You make fella feel real niceth,” I whisper. “Thanketh you for goodth death.”
I don’t bother to think about where all this is going, because it’s not every day that an older juicy babe with a powerful thick tail fawns over me like this. And she still has a claw under my beak, and now we’re just staring into each other’s eyes.
As I lay dying and staring up into her eyes like this, I think:
Well if this is how I die, then so be it.
It’s a royal send-off.
Please just let her eyes and her odor be the last things I see and smell.
The luscious dragoness flutters her wings and purrs, “Well I’ll let you in on a little secret.” She winks at me. “I taste even hotter than I talk.”
She quickly glances around to make sure we’re alone here in the stone corridor, and then she puts her black beak right up to my scaly green earhole and whispers: “I can feel you rumbling, sugar. And here we are, all alone. Maybe you want to get yourself a teensy-weensy little ol’ lick?”
Her breath is hot. Though I don’t know if it’s from her throbbing ovowomb or from the lava in her belly. She pulls back a couple inches so we’re looking directly into each other’s eyes again, and her yellow eyes start shining as if a light is emanating from within them.
I turn my scaly green head and cough up more blood.
“My name Gorkth.”
“I know who you are,” she says. “Nice to meet you, Gork. I’ve heard a lot about you. My name’s Metheldra.”
Then the dragonette reaches out with the back of her talon and wipes the blood off my beak.
Metheldra. I know I’ve heard that name before but I can’t recollect where, and like I said, it’s pretty hard for me to focus at this moment. Especially with Metheldra’s mating scent wafting up through my nostrils and kissing my brain and making me delirious with lust. I really need to rub scales with this dragonette.
“You frunds with my grandpath, Dr. Therrible?” I croak.
Something inside me is hemorrhaging, because the blood is trickling out my beak and out my flared green nostrils.
“That’s right. I help Dr. Terrible out here at the Institute.”
“What kindth of thelp? What do youth do here?”
“Why don’t you step into my lair and I’ll show you,” she purrs.
Then she reaches up and clasps my horns in her talons, as if she is assessing how badly wounded I really am. “Mmmmmm,” she says, “I see your horns have some room for growth. I might be able to help you with these horns. I’m an expert in BIOCON LEVS. I think I might be able to make these horns of yours grow.”
Then she points her powerstaff at me and pulls down my Cadet Profile on her floating screen. “I see the Oddsmakers have given you at 0.1% chance of making it through Crown Day,” she purrs. “And your BIOCON LEVS are null. I don’t mean to scare you, but your WILL TO POWER status is Goner. You seem like you’re in big trouble, Gork.” Then she purrs, “Why don’t you step into my lair?”
My right wing spasms and I flop around some more in my blood here on the floor.
I’m practically swimming in my own blood by this point.
So this dragonette’s idea of me going anywhere other than where I am seems comically deranged, considering how filthy and weak I am.
Can’t she see I’m dying?
But I’m also feeling super stirred-up and juicy. Because what I really want is for this chick to lay my eggs. This is my dying wish. Well I know how despicable this sounds, because I am dying and you’d think your thoughts and feelings would be a sight more noble than that in the face of the sacred. But they aren’t. My thoughts, I mean.
Because I’m starting to get some very clear thoughts in my head of what me and this dragoness can do if we “bump scales.”
Now you may be surprised to hear this, but I’m still a virgin. Because dragon chicks are programmed to avoid mating with a fool like me.
My datastream is a deal breaker.
You don’t want your little baby dragons to hatch out of their eggs with WILL TO POWER deficiencies.
But something about this dragoness seems different. Like her WTP is so fiendish it will override the wussy BIOCON LEVS of any fool she mates with.
So I figure if I hurry up and mate with this chick, then at least I won’t have to die a virgin.
This will at least be one shame I won’t have to endure in the Underworld, to have died a virgin.
“Whereth yer lair?” I whisper. “I’m readyth. We rubth scales. I die. You layth my eggsth!”
Metheldra smiles and points her index claw at a door in the wall I didn’t notice before. “It’s right there,” she purrs.
Then she gingerly scoops me up off the ground and presses me tightly to her bosom and carries me across the threshold.
“Now let’s get you out of that uniform and cape,” she whispers.
It feels wonderful to be wrapped up in her warm embrace, to be held so close to her green scaly bosom like this.
And if I weren’t so afraid of dying right now, I’d faint.
“Thanketh youth.”
[ 34 ]
SWORD PLAY
“Owwwwwww!” I cry.
This isn’t how I expected it to feel.
This dragoness Metheldra’s lair is full of swords.
“Please stop!” I cry.
I mean she has what look to be at least a couple hundred swords hanging on the wall. And they’re all shapes and sizes—short swords, long swords, curved swords, serrated swords, swords with black handles, swords with red handles, swords with strange runes engraved in the blades, swords with three blades, swords with oddly shaped blades devised for some horrible purpose I hope I never have to learn about. And all of these swords are mounted along the wall in a massive display device constructed of silver and black velvet.
“Oh my God that hurts!” I cry. “Please stop! Please stop! I’m begging you!”
Metheldra is the swordupuncturist Dr. Terrible has been flapping his beak about.
So here I am lying on this stone slab without any clothes on. And I already have forty or so swords stuck into my scaly body—in my wings, in my tail, in my long neck, in my talons, in my horns, in my hind legs, in my forelimbs, and even in my webbed feet. Several swords are jammed to the hilt right in my poor belly. The only light in the room is coming from a bunch of drooping candles on a nearby table.
Now Metheldra calmly pulls another long shiny sword off the wall and holds it over me, and the silver blade winks in the candlelight. And she runs an index claw slowly across my scaly chest as if she’s searching for the right point of entry.