Queen's Gambit Chapter 17

Chapter Index:
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Previous Chapters:
Draconic Fortune (Noelle)
1
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2
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3
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4
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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 05

Susie in the Sky of Diamonds

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"We made it!" It had taken a bit of a detour through a few music rooms, into a higher layer of servants' quarters and another long set of stairs, but apparently, they finally arrived at their destination. "These are the halls of the Parchment Elders."

Dasher, the proud-looking archer who was guiding them, had led them into a tiled hallway.

One step further from stepping out of the door, and you were already walking into a windowed wall, except that you couldn't see anything but darkness behind the windows that they intuitively passed by, all the way to their...to their..."It's our school."

Noelle was only spelling out what Kris was thinking as well. "This is our school, and that is our classroom." The hallways of their night-time school building only came in shades of dark blue here, everything looked as if moonlight was shining inside, but as usual, when you looked out of the window, there was no moon to be seen. A strange, discomforting smell filled the air that wasn't there in the light world.

Kris checked if it was the heating. The heating under the windowsill was cold, it must have not been running for a long time now. And the door to their classroom was closed. Outside of their group of four, it was completely quiet here. Every step one of them made, carried its echo to every corner thanks to the building's acoustics.

Kris went past Noelle, grabbed the door handle and ever so carefully, pushed the door open. Instead of their own classroom, he found a much bigger, dark hall behind it. The walls were lined with torches like in most of the castle, and in the middle of the empty floor, an obscure figure was holding a pen and a piece of paper.

In fact, he was surrounded by sheets of paper, they were everywhere, and they were all written on. The figure was mumbling something to themselves. "...times e to the x plus two to the x, divided by the logarithm of...strangers. Can I help you?" Only by then, was he close enough to see why they were called 'Parchment Elders'. It seemed obscure at first, because this darkner resembled the ones in the Card Kingdom a lot more, he was more abstract, more obscure.

It was a vaguely humanoid creature, and it had a face painted onto its head, but upon closer inspection, their entire person was made of paper. Their stringy fingers were just shredded strips of it, their head and torso larger sheets wrapped together into cylinders and covers for top and bottom. On its head, it wore a hat made of a smooth, transparent material.

A long, awkward silence ensued, wherein Kris and the paper mathematician stared at each other, while Dasher, Ralsei and Noelle slowly followed him. Eventually, the older human pulled him back a bit. "I don't think he's who the maid was talking about. I think we're looking for a dragon."

"Right. No, no we don't need anything."

Noelle apologized for them on their way out. "Sorry for bothering you."

The paper mathematician waved it off. "No problem." And then went right back to mumbling about his problem.

Back in the hallway and following it into the main entrance hall, Kris figured that this elder related to math class in some way. He followed the wall on his left and opened another door to a classroom. Again, behind it was no classroom, just a dark hall covered in paper and within, a similar looking person to the one from before. "...and then Tom buys Myrtle a dog, but they're both so irresponsible, they basically forgot the dog completely by the time they're back home and..."

He was describing the contents of an old novella. This was English class. He stopped and stared at Kris. Nope, this was definitely not a dragon. Slowly and without a word, he closed the door again and then took a moment, before he walked to his next door of choice. Maybe he was going at this the wrong way. Instead of just opening random doors, it might have been best to go straight to his Mom's classroom.

Behind its front door, there was another paper person. His chest was cut in a particular way to make it look like a white suit jacket and tie over a white shirt. When this one looked back at him, he was greeted immediately. "Hello there. Would you like to talk about our lord and saviour, Jesus Chri-" he slammed the door shut, before the elder could go on any more. So his Mom's classroom related to religion class.

Perhaps he had to go through all the doors after all. Behind the next one was yet another dark hall and the paper creature behind this one was mostly painted black all around their body. Shredded stripes of paper hung off the lengthy snout of their grey face like whiskers and two wider, curled stripes of black paper hung off the sides of their head.

They looked up at him from a scroll and beckoned him with a raspy voice. "Hey, ya wanna talk about our lord and savyah the holoc-" He shut the door as fast as with the last person. So this was history class.

Another door. "So if we add four hundred mililitres of a solution with a concentration of five point eight percent, we..." Chemistry.

But after that, came the door to what was the empty classroom in the light world. This was one of two things that made it stand out. The other one was that the smell got stronger, the further they went down the hallway and the closer to the door. Dasher smirked when he saw Ralsei struggle to breathe for a moment. "The odor takes some getting used to. I wonder who it comes from."

"Don't you mean 'what'?"

"Oh I know what it comes from, the question is who is smoking it."

When Kris opened the door, unlocked just like all the others, he had to step back and cover his face behind his arm. Whatever was in the air here, it was concentrated in that room and this higher concentration of it was being released through the doorframe.

In fact it was so thick, you could see it, and it made making out the figure at the heart of it more difficult than it had to be. "Hayyy, visitors! Here's a surprise. Come in, come in. I don't bite." At least there definitely was someone there and she was alive. Strewn across the floor, sometimes with several layers stacked on top each other were large crate-shaped pieces of electronic equipment. In one corner, Kris saw a familiar-looking keyboard.

In various places, arranged close by one another, were soft, stuffed balls of cloth. Some as he could feel, were plush. They were - perhaps purposefully so - large enough to use as fauteuils and couches for one or multiple people to sit on, even though you couldn't keep your balance when sitting on them. In the corner, a purple dragon sat - or rather lay on one of them.

When she heard Ralsei and Noelle cough due to the haze, she apologized. "Oh, sorry. Didn't expect anyone to come here. Just a sec, I'll have this fixed any moment."

She lazily rolled to the side and off her makeshift bed, and once on the floor, got up to walk into the opposite corner, and fetch a ventilator, which she just placed in the middle of the room with its front pointing at the doorframe, plugged into a multiple plug that lay beneath an empty bag of chips and turned it on. "Gotta get better some time soon now."

She was about Susie's size. Well, maybe slightly taller and wider. She was definitely bigger than when she first came into being, and she had more hair than then-Susie. With most of the dragons in this castle, you could at least see part of one eye and a bit of the upper half of her face. Not with this one.

Everything above the snout was covered. She wore a conspicuous pair of oversized sunglasses, with shades in the shape of stars and everything that wasn't covered by those, was covered by hair instead. She wore a black tank top instead of a white shirt, and she wasn't wearing her jacket the usual way - Susie's way with her arms in the sleeves either.

Instead, it was just hanging off her shoulders like a cape and her arms were free. And she had a more relaxed smile than Kris was used to seeing on her. As soon as he recognized her, he raised an eyebrow and came closer to ask if it was her. "Headbanger?"

"Kris!" The scolding tone in Noelle's voice stung, and she came up to him to pinch him with her elbow. "You can't just call her a headbanger."

"Dude, no sweat." The dragon raised her open hand, to let it drop for an awkward handwave and lumbered back in position to let herself fall back into the softness of her 'chair'. "That's my actual name. Headbanger. Friends call me 'Banger'. Actually, you can too, who cares, right?"

The human pulled himself off of Noelle's grip and walked closer to inspect her water pipe. "What are you doing?"

Banger put the mouthpiece in her mouth for a second and then began leisurely nodding without stopping. "Just hanging about. Havin' a good time. Not like the others want me around any more, right? Got myself holed up here with lots of pot. Want some?" She offered him the mouthpiece, but he just pushed it away.

Noelle couldn't help but notice the disappointment in Kris' voice when he talked to this Susie he supposedly met for the first time. In fact, he sounded pretty upset. "Banger, you're supposed to be 'cool' one. Not like this. You're supposed to be rock star Susie, not stoner Susie. What is all this? Why are you taking drugs? Where's your guitar?"

"Guitar's gotta be somewhere here." Again, she couldn't be bothered to actually get up from her chair and just rolled off of it and half-crawled through the mess around her, until she reached behind an old, fallen-over synthesizer. "Found it, there we go." At least she still had her black, spiky electric guitar, and with it in her hands and herself back in the chair, she got to tuning it.

The others took the time they were given to pull some of the other seats closer and sit down around her. "Can't promise much though, don't have all my stuff rigged up any more. There we go." Eventually, Kris joined the others in sitting next to Headbanger while she started playing and singing a slow, depressing tune. "When the light is running low and the sha-"

"No." Stern, and with no shame in interrupting her, he pointed at her and told her to stop, straight to her face. "Just no. You're supposed to play 'sick riffs'."

The only expressions you could see on Banger, were on her mouth. And unlike what Kris and Noelle would have expected from the real Susie, she wasn't bearing her teeth at him, even now. In fact, after staring back at him for a few seconds, she twitched and went back to tuning her instrument. "Right. I can do that, too. Gimme a while though. Tuning on this baby's all messed up right now. So, what leads you guys to my place? Actually, sorry to ask, but who are you guys?"

Before they could answer, she went on. "Actually." With nothing but her finger, she pointed both at Dasher and Noelle. "You guys remind me of someone. There's this antler girl who showed up a while ago, she kinda looks a bit like both of you. Are you like her parents or something?" When they weren't meeting her with the reaction she was expecting, she went on to nod Kris' way. "Or you two? No?" They just shook their heads. "Well coulda been."

"Do you mean Temptress?"

"Yeah, dude. That's the name. So she's still around. That one, sheesh. What a hoe. The moment she showed up, I hadn't ditched the others yet and she was already making it all about herself."

"Making what all about herself?"

"Ah right." She seemed to lose balance for a moment and stopped testing her guitar's strings and fine tuning them a bit more each time. "Forgot, you weren't there, right? So there was this knight guy, and he was doing his usual thing, being all serious going 'effigies! You will follow this one's command and serve me!' and 'raaagh' and all that. You know, all the stuff he's been doing since he had 'em swap me out for pink girl."

He stopped her there with a raised finger. And held it extra close to make sure she noticed. "Pink girl?"

"Oh right. So just today, this new girl showed up. 'Bit more beefy than the others, and with pink scales instead of purple. And like, dark red- or purplish hair and spikes and stuff. First I thought 'nice, more fans', but right after, this knight dude showed up in this weird ass armor. Made him look a bit like a perv. Then he beat up a few of us - wait, you know who 'we' is, right?"

"The other dragons?"

"Right, sorta, close enough. So then be beat up a few of us to show us how strong he was, then he beat me up, got a scar on my back ever since, and then he told 'em he's gonna beat up the rest of us again and again unless pink girl's their new leader and they do what he says."

"So, who was the leader before?"

"Dude, it was me."

"You were the leader?" Kris found this a little hard to imagine.

She raised her hand to wink at him, as far as she could with only a hand and by making a clicking sound with her mouth. "Fuck yeah I was."

"I was thinking you'd have a band instead."

"It's both. I was the girl in charge, and I had a band. Dude..." This excited her enough to actually sit back up before continuing. "It was totally awesome. We used to live in those underground caves and travel from cave to cave to set up concerts and all the others would follow us to rock along. That was all there was for us, day in, day out. For as long as I can remember. Until today, when pink girl and the knight showed up."

Then, the short sequences she was playing got a lot louder. "Yeah no, not quite. Gonna take a while to get this right."

All that said, he started to understand why Homemaker sent them to her. "Banger, don't you want to go back to where things were?"

"Whaddya mean?"

He was glad to notice Ralsei backing him up. "You were their leader once before, right? If you try to be their leader again, and we show that you're better than Axe, they might switch sides and join you, right?"

"You come with us, we help you beat Axe, and you get the others to help us get to the dark fountain. They don't even have to help, they just have to not get in our way."

When she snorted, faint and tiny flames came out of her nostrils. It was impossible to see her eyes, but it was clear that she was staring at the prince, before she went back to tuning her instrument. "You know what? Give me some space. Let me think about this." Clear words, for someone who wasn't of a clear mind. Kris and Ralsei knew better than to further pressure her now and got up.

Waiting for Headbanger to clear her mind and rethink their offer was a good opportunity to get some fresh air. Well, at least better air than in here. Noelle followed them on their way outside. Dasher, not as much. In fact he got up to sit right next to her.

While inching closer, he noticed the doe staring at him and nodded her way. "You three take a break. I will keep our friend company." When he realized that she was still staring at him and gave her another wink. "Don't you worry about us, pretty lady. We'll be fine,"

She was hesitant to leave the intoxicated musician alone with the self-professed 'charmer to all the dames' but eventually, she followed after the other two teenagers. "Kris." When she came back from the hallway that led to the room Banger was in, the other two were sitting and kneeling on the floor, staring out of the front door while not right in front of it to let the smoke through.

She sat down next to him, but stayed quiet to give him a moment to prepare for what she knew he expected her to bring up again. "She didn't know who you are. But you know a lot about her." He kept staring outside. "Kris, what's wrong?"

He was backed into a corner and didn't know how to get out. Even if he died or otherwise went back to the light on the metal island, before they first met Axe, they were going to run into the Susies one way or another either way. "I know the Susies are yours the same way the hermit was mine. All you have to do is say it. Come on, I told you about my cards. It's your turn."

When he realized that Ralsei wasn't telling her off this time, he brushed his bangs away and turned her way, but he remained silent all the same. "Are you so afraid that I'm going to tell Susie?" Did she expect him not to be? "I promise I won't tell her. You can trust me, you know that. I know it will be hard, not to talk about all this, but we could try and pretend it never happened. Or even if we didn't, I could still just say they were other people. There are 'other people', right?"

He nodded and she smiled at him. "See?"

The prince shuffled a little closer and placed a hand on Kris'. "She seems nice enough to me. And you two...you're pretty close with each other. Are you really just classmates?"

He shook his head and stared off to a corner on the floor. "She's something like a cousin."

"How long have you two known each other?"

"For as long as I can remember."

"Did she ever break or abuse your trust?"

"No."

"Even once?"

"Nope."

"Then how bad can it be?"

He pouted and his eyes shifted in Ralsei's general direction. The prince was right though. He couldn't avoid this forever. Berdly told him about his toy box, Noelle about her cards. It had to happen, even though he really, really didn't want it to. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled in a long, drawn-out sigh before he spelled it out, staring daggers at Noelle all the time while he did it.

"They're pictures. All of them. I know them all, because I remember what I thought about when I was drawing them. If I thought anything. I have a lot of doodles of them, too, but all the special Susies I've seen here are the ones that I've put effort into drawing at least once."

At least it was out. It was relieving, just like Noelle expected it to be, and he unfolded his legs to sit a little more comfortably. "The Berserkers were me copying a drawing Asriel made of one of his favourite characters. I wanted to see if I could do something like it, too, but I needed a dragon for reference."

"And Headbanger?"

"She was one of the very first ones I really tried with. I'm not sure anymore what he said but - so it started when I heard Snowy and Jocks talk about Susie. And Jocks said something like 'if she was cool like me, maybe she'd make some friends'. So I drew a 'cool Susie'. Well, I never asked him how he imagined that, but that's what I thought of at the time. You've seen her yourself. Except, now she's nothing like on her drawing."

She chuckled. "Don't you think the star shades are a bit much?"

"That's not 'much'. There should be one called 'FRESH', she's 'much'."

What raised his spirits, was that she was still smiling by this point. She wasn't shocked or appalled. "But, a lot of them - they're not just Susie in a costume, are they?"

Now that he actually had someone to talk about this with, he didn't feel like stopping. "They're not supposed to be Susie - well - most of the time. I'm just using Susie as a reference." A smirk crept up her face, but he preferred to pretend to not notice like he did most of the time anyway. "That's why some of them are bigger, some are smaller, some have a big tail, some don't, at least one even has horns and wings."

He could hear a hint of insecurity in her voice. "But - with Susie - well, not Susie. I mean, the one we thought was Susie. Axe."

"That one's easy. After me and Berdly came back from the dark world - well, you know how we all look different here? He basically already knew about the Susies. So I wanted to show him what Susie looks like here. That's really it."

"No. I mean you and I only changed colours and clothes. You 'varied' with Axe, too, didn't you? Why?"

"No I didn't."

"She looks a bit different from Susie."

"She looks exactly the same."

"No, she was a bit taller. I think. A little bit. And her teeth and her ta- Wait. Did you even look at Susie when you drew Axe?"

He spent several seconds pouting at her in silence. "You know, Berdly asked me the same question."

Noelle was about to respond to that, when a series of shrill sounds shot their way, sent by an amplifier that Banger must have connected her guitar to by now.

While they were still on their way, talking this interruption as their cue to come back, they could hear her satisfied voice cheer herself on. "Aw yeah! I still got it." When they arrived, always fighting the urge to turn around to not walk straight through the remaining fumes blown their way, Dasher leaned away from her and back into his seat. Banger played a few more riffs until Kris and Noelle arrived back at the little circle around her. "Hey you."

She turned to him as soon as he sat down again and made her instrument give off another set of raggedy sounds, so loud from here, it gave Kris a bit of a headache. "You happy now? This 'sick' enough for you?"

He smiled. "Yes. Much better. So, did you make a decision?"

"Yeah, about that." She put down her guitar again to pay more attention to her visitors. "So say hypothetically, I came with you guys, and we tried to get the band back together, right? How would I beat Axe? I can't fight. I don't even have a weapon."

Dasher brought a hand to the underside of her head and held her by it. And she just let him. "Don't you worry about petty little things like that. We could pass by some of our armories on our way up, and even if your sisters plundered them all, there's still a city right above the castle. There's got to be a blacksmith there, somewhere."

"Weapons..." Noelle wasn't so sure about all of this just yet. "Are you...we don't actually have to get violent, do we?"

Ralsei leaned forward and tugged at her arm a bit to draw her attention, then gave her a reassuring smile. "These purple Susies are much more friendly than the people we met with Berdly. And we got through a city full of them anyway. I'm sure Kris will find some way to get past them." Neither of them was really sure how his confident expression could communicate itself through the obscuring glow that came from all parts of his face. It just did.

She couldn't help but chuckle. "You...you seem pretty confident in him."

"Why wouldn't I be?" Kris faced her, raised his head, and then raised an eyebrow. Yeah, why wouldn't he be?

"It's uh - I'm sorry. I'll explain later."

With newfound spirit, the retired rock star got up and swung her guitar over her back to carry it by a leather band attached to it. "So what're we waiting for. Let's get the band back together." They could only hope it would be that easy. And for a brief time, when their group of five walked out of the classroom together, it felt as if it was going to be, but this impression was quickly dispelled once they were in the school's central hall again.

Someone stood in the open doorframe, between the five of them and the only exit, with her arms folded, indicating little or no intention to let them through. "I was willing to look past the substance abuse, at least you weren't getting in anyone else's way."

It was another Susie. A bit shorter than Headbanger, but more thoroughly dressed. She wore a black nun's robe with a white collar hanging over her shoulders and the corresponding headpiece wrapped around a good portion of her hair. Around her neck hung an amulet with a golden cross. "But now you're fraternizing with the enemy as well?"

Aside from her tone, you could see her disapproval in the slightly off angle of her head. Whenever she spoke, neither between Kris and Noelle could help but notice that she was the only Susie they had met, who had shiny white teeth.

Banger ran a hand along the side of her snout. "Oh gosh, it's Mrs. Goody Two-Shoes again."

Noelle wasn't actually as shaken up about this as she used to be anymore. In fact, she was facing Kris and laughing. He only watched her shoulders rise and drop rather than to look anywhere near her eyes. "A nun? Really?"

He shrugged. "I didn't do anything at the time and Mom still took me to church every day for a week. I was angry, okay?"

The nun immediately snapped at him. "Then it is true!" She pointed straight at him. "Human, blue skin, dark blue hair, armor plates, you match the description. The Knight told us all about you. One of the perverted lightners that preside over this realm. The last one left, too. Responsible for all that exists in it, including all dragons. Including me. And this layabout. And much worse than that, those two!"

They heard the steps of two much bigger dragons enter. They were heavy enough, that they could feel them. The two that passed by the nun were taller than her, taller than Headbanger, in fact, they were probably quite a bit taller than Susie would have been if she were a fully grown adult. Partly, because they WERE Susie as a grown adult. They had a grotesque, overtly womanly hourglass figure, and were dressed not to conceal, but to flaunt it.

They were wearing the same fishnet stockings and high heels from before. But they had ditched their top and replaced the rest of their clothing with a one-piece bikini that consisted of nothing more than two, two-inch-wide straps wrapped around their whole bodies, covering up nothing except maybe the very bare minimum on their otherwise bare chest and which converged around the underside of their hips and the back of their necks.

Their hair was more voluminous than that of any of the other Susies present and left nothing of their eyes to be seen. Not that one would notice, as Kris couldn't help but stare at the bare teeth in their widely grinning jaws. Of all the Susies, Faith, the nun charged with keeping them prisoner, brought Mistresses to back her up.

One of them raised and straightened a bit of her whip, to show off that she had one. As did the other Mistress. "But fine then." she continued. "When those mindless wretches left to jail you, heard the gunshots and came to report them to me instead of checking on the prison themselves, I made my peace with having to take matters into my own hands. If you created these abominations, then surely you aren't opposed to being left alone with them."

Her two subordinates made way for her to leave. "Mistresses, they're all yours. So long as they stay alive and don't escape, you're free to do with them as you please. I will guard the gate, just so that in the event of your failure, I am in position to stop them myself."

"With pleasure." The grinning Mistress' voice was a lot clearer and had less of a grumble to it than that of the others. The nun made her laugh, but being faced with not only Susie as two mature women, but both dressed as a dominatrix, too, left Noelle at a loss for words.

The other of the two spoke up. Kris wasn't sure if he was comfortable with what her voice was doing to him. "Now then, boys. We have some handcuffs and bedposts with your names on them. You can come with us nicely..." After beckoning them to come closer by waving one finger, she swung her arm around to stretch it out, which left her whip spread out on the floor to her side as well. "...or we put you in your place."

"Put-put me in my..." Noelle was just trembling, moreso than the rest of her, her lips were. She had her arms folded together and her eyes were shot wide open.

Kris faced Dasher. The archer had pulled his hat forward to cover his face, but couldn't keep pretending he wasn't paid attention to for long. "Didn't you say you're the charmer to the dames?"

Once he couldn't silently step away, he just shrugged. "Does either of those look like a dame to you?"

Great, so Dasher wasn't helping either. Luckily, the Mistresses were silently waiting for Kris and the others to make their first move, just to be sure what their choice was. He grabbed Noelle by the arm to get her to stop flipping out and gnawing at the tips of her fingers. "Now is a good time for you summon your weapon. I need your help."

"Weapon?"

He was understanding when she was still shaken up by being in the dark world and then Gobbler almost eating her, but it was about time for her to start helping. "Susie was able to summon an axe. Berdly had two pistols. I..." He raised his sword.

She only twitched together and inched further away from him. "I...I don't know...I can't..."

Oh great, the only grown man refused to seduce them, Headbanger had no weapon, Noelle probably had one but was too scared to make it appear, yet again, the only one he could count on, was Ralsei. Which was the next person he turned to. "Can you try - could you try and flirt with them?"

"Me? I mean, I can try." He closed his eyes and cleared his throat before raising his voice. "Oh you graceful beauties who stand before me! The way your majestic hair waves to all who gaze upon it in the wind, sends my heart aflu- I'm sorry, Kris. I can't do this. Their hair isn't even blue, so I can't use waterfall-hair line."

Well, at least he tried. They didn't look impressed or seem like the kind of people this would appeal to anyway. But their theme definitely leaned in the flirty direction. Maybe it would improve their situation, if Kris just tried something more straightforward and aggressive. Even if he had little idea how to go about this.

He just had to give them a quick look and say what came to mind. They flaunted their bodies like Berserkers, but unlike them, 'well-fed' described the form of their limbs and shoulders more aptly than 'muscular' would have. He just had to hope for the best. Flirting improved their situation in fights in the card kingdom, it did with that one Grunt, it would do it again.

He tensed up his hand not occupied with holding his sword, took a confident step forward towards their opponents, and when the hearts shot their way, he said: "I like your thighs!" Someone behind him whinged, but he couldn't make out who. He was more distracted by the fact that a snare of black leather shot out of the ground and slid past the metal glove of the hand he was pointing at the Mistresses and onto his wrist.

And from one moment to the next, one of the smiling Mistresses was pulling him closer by it. His heart sunk upon realizing the mistake he had made. This didn't improve his situation. "It made it worse! It made it worse! Help!" He fought against it, but she was pulling with more force than he could muster to pull away.

Of course if they were darkners, they had magic attacks, and of course, seeing as what the Mistresses were, their magic attacks were thin straps of black leather. Just like their clothes. Oh god, what if they weren't actually wearing any clothes and the straps that left nothing to the imagination were actually also just magic attacks? What was he thinking when he made the drawing they came from? He didn't even remember. He mostly buried them under the rest.

No, that wasn't true, he thought it was funny. It was a joke to him. What was Noelle thinking about this now that the 'joke' was right before her? Hard to tell. "What - what are- what are - " Between the mumbling, she was actually gladly not paying much attention to him.

Dasher finally grabbed his bow and picked an arrow out of his quiver. But before he could pull it against the string, another leather snare shot out of the ground beneath him, pulled his arrow down and then straight to the hand of the dragoness that summoned it, followed by more looped straps shooting out and winding themselves around both the archer's arms. He was being pulled now, too.

When the same began to happen to Ralsei, Kris swung his sword and began cutting off all the snares with clean cuts. But it was no use. The Mistresses immediately summoned new ones and had him, Ralsei and Dasher in their grasp all over again. They were all being pulled towards them, and the trembling doe on his other side, lost in her mumbles and uncomfortable scratches between teeth and lips, while not tied by the wrists like the others, was wandering to their imminent captors on her own volition.

He had to come up with a way out of this, and fast. Otherwise, carving his way through them would have become the only option. What worked on them? They were not Grunts, flirting wouldn't fluster them. Especially not the kinds of lines his mind came up with at a time like this. They were not Berserkers, as while they showed off their bodies too, the Mistresses' intent behind that was clearly of a more sexual nature.

He stared at their shameless, grinning jaws, their revealing clothing. Something there had to be the solution. Then it occurred to him. Something Ralsei said, sweating and blushing as he did so, flashed up as an image in his mind. Of course. Their intent was of a more sexual nature. Without noticing he did until after the fact, he stammered it out aloud. "If you want to hit me, that's okay too."

Understandably horrified gasps came from everyone, even Noelle snapped out of her feverish trance for a second. Ralsei needed a moment to realize he was being quoted, his eyes widened and he began to blush and check if anyone but Kris was looking at him when he did. They were dominatrices, so they were all about domination and inflicting pain. Pain was the answer. Actually, why keep that to himself? "Pain is the answer! They like pain."

He knew they didn't really understand. He had to take the initiative and demonstrate to them what he meant. While still fighting on against the dragon woman's hands pulling him closer, he dispelled his sword and summoned his shield instead. He diverted some of his strength away from resisting his approach to the Mistress and to pulling off to the side. While he came closer, he grabbed his shield by its edge with both hands.

When he really was in her reach, and she held his leashes only with one hand, he pulled and ducked down under her grasp and rushed past her. With all his strength, he swung the blunt side of his shield against the Mistress' imposing rear. The force rippled along her scales and she was startled by it. A faint shriek escaped her in reaction to it, but she didn't look angered or upset.

Once she grasped what he had done, she began to smile again and cooed. "Oh, not so rough." The way she said that made his armor feel uncomfortably tight and he backed off from her. "Did I say to stop?" Looking up from right below and seeing those fierce bright yellow eyes for the first time didn't do much to calm him down. He also noticed he had drawn out enough of the other Mistress' curiosity for her to stop pulling the others closer.

He just had to brave through it and keep going. He slammed the blunt side of his shield against her again. And she just let him.

After that, Ralsei was the first to realize that it was working. The Mistresses were just either letting it happen, or watching it happen, so he followed Kris' lead. He enchanted his scarf to make its front end more solid, and snuck around the other grown Susie, still watching what Kris was doing with the other one. Then he spun to the side and back and spanked her with his scarf, the same was Kris was with his shield.

The more they spanked the dragons, the less solid their stances became and the less they actually held onto the straps they held the heroes by.

Eventually, Dasher joined in as well by ripping the whip out of the loose grip of the Mistress on Ralsei's side and pushed the prince aside to get him to join Kris on the other one. He quickly stepped back to have enough of a distance to swing his arm and strike the mistress with her own whip. Which prompted a shriek quite a bit louder than all the ones Kris and Ralsei got out of them.

Not only were their opponents not fighting back against their weirdly uncomfortable attacks, they were turning their backs on them and getting all fours to give the three of them better angle. Noelle had stopped closing in on the Mistresses. She could only gaze in horror at what was transpiring before her.

Even Headbanger was afraid.

While they both stood side by side with their jaws dropped, for the first time since they met her, the former rock star took off her glasses, because she didn't believe what she was seeing through them. Strike after strike, the Mistresses followed each attack with quaking motions with their bodies to overdramatize the impact they made on them. The literal torture of those two grown Susie-look-alikes went on and on.

They didn't think to stop until Kris and Ralsei's lost balance and collapsed on the floor for a second. When she did though, the prince rushed forward, held his hand in front of her face, and cast a spell. Before she knew what was happening, she collapsed once more and fell asleep. The other Mistress, now covered in the visible bruises and wounds from a long, merciless whipping, could barely keep herself on her knees, let alone put up a fight when he rushed to her and pacified her as well.

For almost half a minute, everyone stood completely still just to be absolutely sure that the Mistresses weren't getting back up. Kris, slightly ducked throughout their time waiting, finally signaled everyone to relax by standing upright. "Let's go." He immediately instructed Dasher to guide them to the top of the castle, where apparently the only exit was located.

He spoke much faster after they were done with the Mistresses. Louder, and more clearly. And he was a bit snippish in doing so. Noelle could only guess why his visibly tense lips never relaxed ever since they left this replica of their school. When they were back in the safety between the narrow, solid stone walls of another servants' staircase, she twitched him by some of the black fabric not covered in armor. "So, uhm. Kris. What was that, back there? In the school?"

"A mistake. Maybe." He showed little regard and went right on to stop and face Ralsei. "Which pacify spell did you use, the short one or the long one?"

"The long one."

"Phew, good. Otherwise, they'd becoming back for more soon." The thought conjured up all the wrong feelings in both him and Noelle. She figured that his change in demeanour and the way he mistook what she asked him, meant that he didn't want to talk about what she was really referring to.

The truth was that he was terrified. Terrified of what conclusions she would draw, having seen what she had just seen. He knew that turning back time did help to dodge some attacks, but those Mistresses weren't static. They were going to run into them no matter what. Whatever he did, Noelle would come out of this, having seen them and there was nothing he could do about that.

What would she say to others about it? Would she talk about it? He tried not to think about it, but her drawing his attention back to it didn't help with this in the slightest. Every time she drew his attention, he was at a loss for words when it came to the Susies. He wanted a way to talk about the Mistresses, but he couldn't think of one. All he could do, was distract himself and focus on what was ahead.