Queen's Gambit Chapter 24

Chapter Index:
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Previous Chapters:
Draconic Fortune (Noelle)
1
https://pastebin.com/nRP4AD5i
2
https://pastebin.com/Z1HejS29
3
https://pastebin.com/nc3Jpna3
4
https://pastebin.com/ZUzduK8f
5
https://pastebin.com/A3JdE5Fu
6
https://pastebin.com/w7QUsyeT
7
https://pastebin.com/x1cjQ1PA
8
https://pastebin.com/gsutf9Xq
9
https://pastebin.com/SHG9LpXu
10
https://pastebin.com/Lickn82a
11
https://pastebin.com/7pWU0VJU

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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 12

Jingle Bells
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Kris spent an entire square's worth of 'browsing' the goods, brooding until he calmed down again after Noelle brought up his father and defended how he was treated. By the time he did, he still hadn't come across anything that really screamed 'new hat or accessory for Noelle'.

He was considering doing what Dasher wanted, calling it and just heading straight to the Journeyman's tower. But one last thing he wanted to try, was to ask one of the goat men that stood guard at the exits and entries of the markets for help. "Of course. If nothing at those stands speaks to you, you can always visit the hatmaker." He pointed at a nearby location on Kris' map. "But a little word of caution, he and his friends can be a little eccentric at times. They call him the crazed hatmaker for a reason."

When he arrived at the building he was sent to, he immediately saw what that guard meant. Everything around it was weirdly turned, flipped or rearranged. The lamp posts immediately upon approaching the building from any direction, were poking out not from the ground, but from the walls of nearby buildings, and sometimes the ceiling. The front entrance was covered with a little roof hanging over it in case of rain...inside a cave.

And that roof wasn't made of stone planks or carved or attached stones, but chairs. A giant impossibly wide tree peered out of its ceiling up above, and the crown of that tree spanned around the roof of the hatmaker's house. Its branches hung over the outside walls all around it.

Unlike with many of the more fitting buildings around it, its walls were all glass, every one a shop-window that spanned from one edge to the other. Displaying several layers of hats in all shapes and sizes. Small hats like berets or modern summer caps, big hats like comically tall tophats, flashy colourful headdresses you expected to see on a woman atop a wagon at a southern carnival.

The neon sign above the one that announced his name, depicted a man with a half squashed tophat and spirals in his eyes, as well as two other characters that surprised Kris at first, but on second thought, he realized he should have expected to meet in a place like this. He could see the interior through the glass doors, and he more or less saw what he expected to see.

A few mere metres away from the front door, a long dinner table was set up, with plates and bowls messily arranged and lined up with all kinds of dishes. Bicycle wheels and other parts of bicycles or more old-fashioned tricycles hung off the ceiling by strings.

Big wooden clocks lined the walls, but the actual clocks' faces with the numbers and arrows, were replaced with wheels made of bound-together rabbits, hamsters and other critters, which spun around ceaselessly with the critters still attempting to stop the ordeal by struggling to their freedom. And a circular river of floating confetti ran its course through the air throughout all of the hall, with nothing in sight that animated it.

There was nothing to incline him to believe that the door was locked or that they weren't open for business. At least on the outside of the building there wasn't. So he tried pushing the front door open and would you look at it, it opened up without problems. And the moment their little crowd began wandering inside, they were the immediate center of everyone's attention. "Who'da guessed! New customers! And it's the lightners, too."

While a man in a tattered victorian suit with an orange top hat and actual spirals in his eyes rushed down the length of the table to greet them, the man talking continued. "C'mon ye lot. Not so shy! Come in, take a seat, want some tea." He spoke with a heavy accent, as if he was straight from the highlands.

He was sitting in the middle of the table, in front of a tray of little clumps of cheese, which he raised to present to them. "Maybe some cheese?" He looked like a human in his fifties, with grey hair and a beard. Dressed in a festive getup all in purple with golden fibres woven in patterns everywhere. And to his side lay his signature staff, its top carved into three screaming faces pointing in opposite directions. But unlike a human, he had glowing yellow eyes with vertical, black pupils. It was the lord of insanity itself.

A third figure floated after the crazed hatmaker to the entrance. It was a slender, serpentine creature with a brown torso and asymmetrical arms and legs. Every arm, every leg, both of its horns and its tail, each looked like they came from a completely different animal, and looking down at them from its front end, was a horse head with a grey goatee and two yellow eyes, one almost twice as big as the other. That was Strife, the bringer of Chaos.

Both Strife and Lord were drawings of characters from a cartoon about brightly coloured horses and a series of video games, both of which must have escaped the fad box. From time to time, Asriel used to insist that the two of them drew and posted online whatever was currently popular on the internet. To increase numbers on all those metrics on their art profiles that without his brother's insisting on their importance, Kris would have paid little attention to.

But fads came and went, so Kris preferred to stow them away in a separate box, where they weren't mixed in with the rest of his stash. Whichever kind of place the fad box translated to in the dark world, they must have broken containment and found their way here.

The hatmaker kept grabbing one hand after the other and shaking them in a way as frantic as the look on his face. The floating chimera did the talking for them, while extending his bird-like hand to join in on the handshakes at a calmer pace than his friend. "What a delightful surprise to see you pay a visit to our cheerful celebrations."

He held his hand closer to Kris with his index finger curled. With a snip of his finger and a flash of light, a cup appeared in his hand in position for his finger to be urled around the grip, and a gargoyle sprinkling hot water into the cup appeared on a nearby wall. "How about some tea?"

When Kris wirelessly declined with a hand wave, the bringer of Chaos threw the cup away. The cup shattered on the floor, but each of the broken pieces grew little black insect legs and crawled away.

The prince raised an eyebrow. "Celebration?"

Strife shrugged. "Why of course." And then sped away to fly loops and messages around the river of confetti. "There is always something to celebrate, right now there is the hatmaker's newest creation and our new friend right over here."

Strife sped off to the side to draw Kris' and the others' attention to a section of the interior that they couldn't previously see. A thin wall only a few steps away from the racks of hats at the window, covered an area to the left of the dining room that made up most of it.

To their left, the same tree that towered over and spanned around most of the building, was growing with its roots plunged straight through the floor and ceiling here on the ground floor. Hanging upside down by his right leg bound to the tree by a rope attached to one of the lower branches, a young human looked back at them.

He was wearing a gambeson and old-fashioned court trousers, both covered in feathers that came in a much brighter shade of blue than those on Dasher's vest and hat. And on his face, he bore some kind of attachable ornament, all white and branching out from above and below his nose, designed to look a bit like the patterns of a snowflake.

This hanging human smiled at them. In fact he didn't look like he was hanging there against his will at all. More importantly, he was the only person Kris didn't recognize as something he himself drew, so he decided to move closer to Noelle to whisper to her: "He's some tarot card, isn't he?"

"It's the hanged man. He stands for insights and epiphanies."

Her whispering was interrupted by the hanged man himself. "Epiphanies!" His very strong voice shouted throughout the hall. "Epiphanies and the insanity that comes with them. This...itch that drives us insane, it is nothing compared to the lunacy necessary to cope with the truth. The truth unknown to most, known to you lightners, but discovered by a mere few among us. Resist the temptations of the devil, little girl, or along with the knowledge of where your paths lead and what your future holds, a world of pain awaits you as well."

"Snowflake." Apparently, that was his name, as Dasher referred to the hanged man as such when he approached him. "How did you end up here?"

Before Snowflake could answer, he was startled by the sudden change in the front. The cat that was greeting them up to this point stopped at Noelle. He began feeling up her head and fell into a kind of feverish trance. "The...the face...the antlers!"

To scare the already put-off doe even more, he began to scream in her face. "Christmas! It's christmas all over again!" His head spun around to look at a door to a walled off section of the ground floor, and after freezing for a moment, let go of her and ran around the table and towards it. "I have to make another one!" Within a second, he vanished behind the door and closed it, leaving them alone with the other three.

"Can't deny it.", the lord of insanity burst out laughing. He had to clean up his plate, since he spilled his drink in the process. "You might look like an animal, lass, but you do resemble christmas girl a lot."

The grinning chimera came back to float between the lord of insanity and their visitors. "Temptress. Her name is Temptress."

"You've met Temptress?"

"They met me." Snowflake cut into the conversation. "That's when they saw her."

Strife landed next to him. With a snip of his fingers and a flash of light, an easel with a map instead of a painting appeared, and a ruler did in his hand. "We were right around here, minding our business, when we saw an enormous castle enter the mountain range. Passed right through the rock by the lightners' hands. The moment we saw it, we rushed back inside the caves. We just couldn't allow ourselves to miss what it held in store for us. And when we reached the roof, we saw our new friend here arguing with...Temptress."

Strife was always a little smug, but he emphasized her name and grinned a little more than otherwise when he did.

"What were you arguing about?"

Snowflake shrugged, but due to his alignment, his palms wound up pointing towards the floor. "We had met the Knight. She was all starry-eyed - you should have seen her. He offered her 'power'. 'An entire realm of her own'. whatever that meant. All she had to do, was to come with him and do as he said. I told her he seemed like bad news, but she didn't want to listen, so she sawed my tree off by its roots."

Since the others had followed Dasher further into the hall to hear the hanged man talk from up close, the lord of insanity put down his wine glass and spun around in his chair to face them. "We were watching the whole thing from within hiding. We wanted ta see where it was goin'. Hattie was barely present in mind. He was off blabbering on about christmas. But the moment Temptress walked away - Ha! What'd ya know! A christmas miracle happened. Let him tell you the tale of how Father Christmas appeared in person and saved him."

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I was hanging down my tree when the Knight revealed himself to her. Up on the corner of the roof of Fortune's Keep. They could see the upper part of the tree, but I was behind the entrance to one of the staircases down into the castle.

"Do your part, and once my Queen ceases power, this realm shall be yours!" That's what he told her. She was bibbering so much you could practically hear her drooling. I was expecting her to have scruples or doubts. But she didn't pay a second thought to you. Everything you had, she didn't waste one second to discard it. I should have noticed sooner, how shallow she really is.

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"Hey! I'm not! That's not true!" Noelle's sudden outburst drew everyone's looks.

They all stared the increasingly nervous girl down, until Kris gestured her way with a gentle, open hand. "No-one's talking about you." Without there being reason for further interruptions, the strangely dressed stranger continued.

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All he had to say was "Pledge servitude to me, do as I instruct you, and I offer you a covenant that you will not regret!"

That was all it took for her to stutter things like "Yes." and "Whatever you say, handsome knight!", over and over as if they were mantras or prayers. Like I said, I couldn't believe how shallow she turned out to be. How quickly she was utterly subservient to him. How she wasted no second thought on whether or not she should cast you aside to serve this Knight.

When the knight had left and she began talking to herself about how he would be hers, she must have heard me gasping. Because she then came around the corner and confronted me about it. She had the most frantic look on her face I had ever seen. Her eyes were wide open, and her right one was twitching. So was the side of her mouth. This new infatuation with the Knight was not healthy for her.

She screamed at me. "What did you hear? You're judging me, aren't you?" she asked. I hadn't said anything. "Stop judging me! How dare you!" I was terrified. Sweet little Temptress had turned into a fearsome harpy. Clawing at me and hitting me with weak strikes. I was already getting all dizzy again after I had just pulled myself together after our journey to this realm.

I threw up my arms and told her: "Pledging servitude to armed strangers just like that? I don't think any of this is a healthy decision."

And for a brief moment, she stopped. She didn't look any less furious, but at least she wasn't scratching and hitting me. And my estimate was right. It appeared those brief moments of silence were just her being inexplicably stunned at me having the gall to say this. She repeated herself. "Are you saying I'm not healthy? How dare you!"

I tried one more time to reason with her. "This isn't normal. Maybe you should reconsider it." I told her. But it was in vain.

She just stepped closer, grabbed onto my hair with a grasp so strong it hurt. She put all the strength she could muster into screaming the words: "I! AM! NORMAL!" right into my ear. And even after that, she didn't appear to have enough. "I don't have to put up with men like you! I HAVE THE KNIGHT NOW!"

Still fully in her rush of insanity, she summoned a chainsaw, ignored any pleas from me to stop, cut my tree off right at its stump and cast it - and with it, me - into the abyss. She doomed me to a painful death, should I hit the ground in the depths below.

My new friends watched from within hiding, dumbstruck by what they saw her do. I was so scared. I thought I was going to die. I was convinced I was going to die.

But I didn't.

She had already turned her back on me and left, considering my murder a done deed. And I didn't know my soon-to-be new friends were watching, so for a moment, I was convinced that this was it. I was to meet a sudden end. At least, that was what I thought. Instead, I was saved. By nothing short of a Christmas miracle. Something severed the tie that bound me to my tree.

And then, below me, a flying red sleigh with golden railings appeared and caught me. I landed in the back bench and it was painful, but it was already lowering itself for the impact to not injure me any further. In the front bench, sat no-one other than Father Christmas himself.

He greeted me with his signature laugh. "HOO, HOO, HOO. IT WOULD SEEM I CAME JUST IN TIME!" I immediately knew it was him.

He was a little plump man, wore the expected red robe with white pieces of fur at all ends - a bit like yours. The only thing about him that surprised me, was that behind the large white beard he wore, his skin was blue, and for eyes, he had bright yellow pupils glowing from within the black crosses painted on his face. He had sharp teeth in the same bright shade of his eyes, and a strange tail with two opposed tips.

And the sleigh was being pulled by life-sized wooden toy reindeer that came in the same colours he had under his beard and robe. With those same black stars or crosses painted over their glowing eyes.

"AND WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?" I don't know how, but somehow, even though they were hiding in the dark of a corner on the other side of an abyss, he could still see them and stopped with his carriage right in front of them.

"Christmas! Christmas! It is Christmas...the whole year!"

"Alright, could ye put yourself together a wee bit? You can make all the Christmas hats you want when we're back home." Lordy was working to restrain the hatmaker's random movements as best he could.

"YOU THREE SEEM LIKE FUN COMPANIONS! WHY DON'T YOU SHOW ME AROUND?" He took us along with his flying sleigh. It barely had space for all of us, but it worked out. We gave him directions into and through Bedrock, to this house. The moment Lordy let go of the hatmaker, he rushed into his workshop to make a new hat, while the rest of us got acquainted with each other.

All the more of a surprise when I first got here, was yet another miracle conjured up by my saviour. My tree, this very tree I'm hanging by once again, was here, built into this house, and back together, as though Temptress had never touched it. And beyond that, it quickly became apparent, that our dear hosts have a lot in common with Father Christmas.

We kept it contained to this house, but if this place confuses you now, you should have seen it when he was still here. Every corner you looked, there was another combination of objects I out of place in how they were arranged.

But as you perhaps expected, our time together was temporary. After Strife and Father Christmas were done going on a spree filling this house to the brink with unadulterated nonsense, eventually, they were tired out. "HOO, HOO, HOO. I'M ALL TIRED OUT." For a moment he pretended that this was the case, but the very next moment, he was hopping around and clapping his hands again. "THIS WAS A NICE CHANGE! WHAT A FUN! FUN! TIME WE HAD. BUT NOT ALL THINGS LAST FOREVER."

Everyone, myself included, was disappointed to hear this. "I HAVE PLACES TO BE. A FRIEND SENT ME TO COME HERE IN SEARCH OF FUN. AND I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. BUT THIS IS NOT THE PLACE I WAS SENT TO. I HAVE A CERTAIN PLACE IN MIND, AND COME WITH A CERTAIN GIFT." He summoned a staff, which came in the same three colours as his toy reindeer. The same colours his face had beneath the clothes and the beard.

"MY CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR A FESTIVE GUEST. BEHOLD: THE NORTH POLE! BUT TO MEET OUR LUCKY GIRL, I HAVE TO BE IN THE RIGHT PLACE! I HAVE TO PLANT IT DOWN IN THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINS IN THE FAR NORTH OF A BLUE CONTINENT. SAY. WOULD YOU KNOW THE BEST WAY TO GET THERE?" Not long after we did our best to give him directions, he left.

He didn't walk away, or fly away. He just bounced around, chanting: "MISCHIEF-MISCHIEF, A-CHAOS-CHAOS!", laughing, and just like that, he was gone. And his carriage and toy animals with him. Me, my tree and the clocks you see around you are the only proof he was ever here. That and the feast we had set up during his and Strife's excesses.

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"When the Journeyman came back from overseas, we heard rumours of a 'Toymaker' having settled up north, and his walking toys roaming the area all around. From how they described the toys, they were much less friendly than we expected going by their maker, but the colours they described them with, matched up. I am certain that the Toymaker is Father Christmas."

"'s a pity he left us like that. I enjoyed reveling in the fun."

Strife concurred and began flying loops around Kris and Noelle again. "It was so heartwarming to meet a kindred spirit. You two look so stuck up. You could do with some chaos in your lives. While you're on your way to the fountain, why don't you pay him a visit?"

Kris pretended like he was considering it, but shook his head. "I've had enough chaos in the last two days. I'd rather if more things made sense."

"Pff, 'making sense'. Where's the fun in that? You have to let loose, embrace chaos! Bring chaos of your own! Go out of yourselves, have a little fun!"

"I'll think about it."

With his griffon hand, the bringer of chaos ruffled the younger human's hair. "That is all I wanted to hear. Speaking of, you never told us what you wanted. Surely you came here for a reason other than to hear how your friend's hanging acquaintance is faring."

At last. He feared they would never get around to this part. He gestured Noelle's way and said: "We're looking for a better hat for her."

"Ha!" The lord shuffled his chair back. "Why didn't ya say so earlier?" He bent down and pulled up a lidless cardboard box from under the table. He pushed some of the many plates and bowls in front of him to the side and put it down. Inside it was a whole bunch of identical looking hats. One of which the older-looking man picked up and threw Noelle's way.

She was startled, but she managed to catch it. It was a red hat with a long and wide band covered in white wool wrapped over a hood. At both sides, it had wool orbs hanging off strings like in the front of Noelle's robe. The hood had a very strange shape, wide upward double-corners that Kris didn't immediately see the point of. They weren't wide enough for horns like Ralsei's. "Just take that one. Oughta fit perfectly."

"Is that all right? Isn't the hatmaker going to be upset."

Both Strife and the lord of insanity waved that off like it was nothing. "Trust me, we've already got more of those than we know what to do with. When he comes back through that door, we'll have twice as many."

"All right."

Before Kris had a chance to thank them, Noelle stepped between him and the Lord of insanity,, assuming he wasn't going to, and bowed slightly. "Thank you so much." Before she got to putting it on, she took off the white ribbon. Kris stowed it in one of the bags in his inventory. The double tips of her new cap indeed fit perfectly onto her antlers. The red strings at the two ends of the hood allowed to tie both ends together and better wrap it around her head.

Strife summoned a golden mirror and held it her way. "Why don't you take a look?"

"It's...it's perfect."

"Happy to see ye like it. Now ye better get to movin on. 'cause if the Hatmaker comes out and sees ya with it, he's never gonna stop making Christmas hats."

Strife was practically pushing them towards the exit, until Snowflake calling for them prompted him to stop. "And Dasher! I'm sorry for what happened."

Dasher sighed. Reminding him of it wore down on him. "It's all right. It isn't your fault."

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Even now, they weren't quite done. There was one last thing to do, one more errand to run, before they were set to head for the tower. Kris led everyone back to the Tavern Beneath the Rock and asked them to stay there. He himself descended the stairs and went down into Butcher's workshop. He tried at least, but the door was locked this time. Instead, upon further inspection, it appeared the butcher shop back up on the ground level was staffed and open. 'Staffed' was saying a bit much. Butcher was there, but he was alone.

"Hello. Do you have the sandwiches?"

His more creepy equivalent placed a bag on the counter. It was tiny, little bigger than a wallet. He could imagine one sandwich being in there, not 'a lot' like he had asked. Kris glanced down and began to stutter. "That's...that's one."

Without moving his head an inch, the butcher opened the bag, pulled out one sandwich and placed it on the counter next to it. It looked perfectly fine. A bread roll, cut in half with slices of ham peeking out where it was cut. Then he pulled out a second one and placed it next to the first one. And then a third one, and a fourth one. "Okay, okay I get it." He gestured for Butcher to stop.

He now knew the sandwich bag worked a lot like Kris' inventory bag. You could actually fit more volume inside it than its outside volume made it seem like you could. He understood that it was all as ordered and paid Butcher a sum that he believed covered the costs and gave him one of his chocolate cakes for good measure. He needed the space for his sandwich bag anyway.

Now he had a backup plan in case they ran into a Susie that he couldn't figure out how to convince to stop fighting them. Or in case the Susies learned from their mistakes and attacked in greater numbers.

He had an inventory full of cake, sandwiches to bribe succubi with, Noelle had better headgear than a simple white ribbon, they got their warning from the Drakeforger, Starlet to open the Chariot, Dasher to steer it, all preparations he could think of were made. They were ready to return to the Journeyman's Tower, so they could be taken from one ride to the next, straight across the dark ream in his and Asriel's room.

On the pavement in front of the Tower, a whole fleet of chariots had already congregated, each with formally dressed waiting and waving at the heroes. Each bearing the merchant's signature J at such a size, you couldn't miss it from any distance. The one they decided to choose, had the same several-story layout that the chariot that took them to the tower had. The page standing inside told them to get comfortable, so they did.

Kris and Ralsei lay back on the bunk beds to one side, Dasher and Banger did the same on another, only Noelle wound up staring out the window. Watching the streets and squares go by as their ride set off to leave Bedrock behind. It travelled to the very corner of the cave this city was carved into, where path on the wall allowed you travel upwards.

The path was wide and not exactly steep. Their ascent along the walls proceeded very slowly, but gradually, they were gaining altitude. And the fact that it wasn't steeper was likely the reason why the ride was as smooth and uneventful as it was.

Seeing the skyline of Bedrock, with its few landmarks like the temple and he tower sticking out, vanish below, made Noelle anxious. "So what's going to happen next?"

"We go to Asriel's bed, climb up his shelf, beat his trophies and then go home."

"What?" This was a lot for Kris to dump on her so nonchalantly. "What did you say?"

Kris opened his eyes and shuffled over to lie on his side. "Everything here is something in my room. All this..." he pointed to the window, through which at this point they could only see the upper parts of the taller landmarks. The pathway up to the cliff blocked off everything else. "...that's my stash. A lot of the drawings I've kept are there. A lot of the places are straight up copies of streets I made up. The people, too. So right now, we're under my bed. And my bed is..." He paused to shuffle a little closer to the page that listened intently from right next to Noelle. "...what's the place we're going to right now? What's it called?"

"The Fields of Despair. A grey, rocky landscape with a mountain range to the north. Lots of open area. It was perfect for loading and unloading vehicles and equipment. That was of course before the succubi took over. We're going to drop you off at the exit. We trust you can fend for yourselves. But we can't. We only run errands and transport people, we're not warriors."

The entrance at the top of the cave led right from one cliff to another. "Yep, that's as far as we go. Follow that path and the fields are right there." Right outside the rough interior walls, the ledge wound around a mountain and the outside of the continent as a whole, continued to be so.

And it had lost quite some of its colour. The grey on the inside almost blended into blue and other colours, depending on what coulours surrounding sources of light came in. The ground out here, the gravel on it, and the mountain ahead of them came in grey too, but it was a very trist, pale tone. Trees here were far and few between, but even they were as colourless as the rest.

Most just stared at it, confused at why they could practically feel the grey. It took until Dasher was done leading Starlet out of carriage, before they and Ralsei led the way. "Come on everyone! It can't be far!"

"It isn't. It's not any longer than the stretches we passed below."

The prince's encouragement dispelled the strange, melancholic stupor the other three were stuck in for a few moments. When she realized that Kris was still standing, Noelle turned around and smiled at him. "Come on." Still a little hesitant, Kris eventually got to following them. Once far enough past the rock that the entrance was carved into, they could hear the waves of the ocean rush against the rocks beneath the cliff.

'On we go', Kris thought to himself. He felt really hesitant, but time wouldn't stop passing, just for him. They had to get moving, to the Fields of Despair, to get to where they needed to go. Their trail along the path was as uncomfortable as one would expect. No-one even knew why. There just was something about this colourless place that everyone could feel.

It didn't last long though, as soon, this feeling was quickly overshadowed by them being startled by a dragon. A Grunt, resting against the roots of a grey tree, sleeping like a baby. For a moment, they were about to get ready to fight, when they realized that there was no need for that. Glad not to have said anything loud enough to wake her up, they tried sneaking past her.

A task that would prove a lot harder than expected, because she wasn't alone. The closer they got to the fields, the more of them lay along their path, all of them fast asleep. In the same vein that this place had an oppressive air to Noelle and the others, it also seemed to have a soothing effect on the Grunts. Now surrounded by enemies, their formation wasn't as loose and spread out any more. They huddled up together, all while watching out not to step on each others' toes - or paws - or hooves.

"Hey!" They were all the more startled right again, when their hopes of getting past all these Susies like that were shattered by a slightly more high-pitched version of Susie's voice. "What're you doin'?" From a path further up the mountain they were passing, someone came speeding her way down to them on a skateboard.

A dragon, with Susie's colours, Susie's hair and Susie's face, but visibly shorter than Headbanger or any of the Grunts for that matter. A tween, short enough for Kris to match in height - no, slightly outdo her even. She was wearing a yellow t-shirt with a bright orange vest over it, an oversized clock hanging off her neck, blue jeans that were so short, you could see her ankles and crass green shoes.

Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses with bright blue frames that contrasted the rest of her get up for its own sake, like the rest. She stopped in front of them, jumping up in a rehearsed maneuver that flipped up the skateboard and threw it in position for her to catch it within the same move. "You think you can just stroll right past all of us?"

Before she had time to turn to her partners in crime, she adjusted her sunglasses and flipped around the red summer hat wrapped over her head to have its front end face back. "Hey! Girls!" She walked over to one of them and shook her by the shoulders. "Look alive! We've got lightners coming through!"

Of course with a sudden army of dragons all around them, Noelle switched from being perplexed straight to instant panic. "Kris! What's that supposed to be?"

"FRESH."

Hearing Kris call her by her name without her introducing herself drew a smile from their new opponent. She smiled, baring her teeth and revealing her glittering bracers and her golden tooth. "Yeah, boy! Damn straight! You nearly got that right." While still standing, she leaned backwards and pointed at herself with both hands. "I'm the FRESH Princess. Second in command only to the boss herself. If an order's not from Axe, I ain't listenin'."

When she heard one of the recently woken up Grunts groan over being pulled out of her sleep like that, her younger lookalike turned her way. "Good to see you all comfy. Now get your ass over here! We got some liggas to clap." When she saw Noelle hyperventilate she raised her open hand, putting the golden rings on every one of her fingers on display. "Nah worries, I'm just messin'. We're not clappin' nobody. But you ARE coming with us."

"No. No we're not." Out of no-where, Kris took a confident step forward, prompting all the Grunts around them to jump straight into as much of a battle stance as was possible for unarmed dragon monsters.

Tween-Susie raised her eyebrows. "You really wanna fight? Got some balls with you guys right between us like that."

He shook his head. "We don't have to fight you. I'm prepared." Kris took out the bag and opened it up. He sort of saw something like this coming. He was glad enough that the succubi came at them one or two at a time up to this point. But he could guess that they wouldn't keep doing that forever. At some point, they'd outnumber them again.

He peeled open the compartment that he had stuffed with all those ham sandwiches Butcher gave him and pulled one out to present it to the dragons. "Who's hungry? Anyone? Anyone want a sandwich?" It didn't take more than a few seconds of holding it up and showing it to all the Grunts for the first to begin salivating.

And it didn't take her seeing it for too long before she began instinctively following the sandwich's movements like a starving animal. It was only a guess. An idea. Kris didn't know it would work, but it appeared to. Better than he expected at that.

For a moment, he considered throwing it, but they would just have fallen apart, so instead, he surged right to the most hungry-looking Grunt and held it right in front of her snout. "Take it!" She grabbed it with both hands and the snap with which she tried doing the same with her mouth, wound up more of a chomp due to the size of her mouth. He pulled another one from the bag Butcher gave him. "Does anyone else want some? You?"

One in particular looked more tempted than the others. And with her supplied with an extra sandwich, the others quickly followed. "And for you, and for you, and for you." At a worrying pace, he pulled out one sandwich after the other to pass it off to the closing in dragon girls, who were becoming less and less hesitant to get closer.

And sooner than he was comfortable with, they were so eager for each to reach for her sandwich, that they were running their hands along the rest of him to spur him into handing out sandwiches faster. He was forced to speed up to keep with their pace. It was just meat between slices of bread, and yet they craved it so badly. And the more he handed out, the more worried he grew that he might run out of them before everyone had some. With these spatially inconsistent bags, you never knew.

He kept going, passing over more sandwiches to all the eager hands. And indeed, they lasted. Eventually, all the Grunts were accounted for and had retreated to their own corners on this path. When he was finally not swarmed by dragons any more, he realized the rest of their party was still huddled together, but had moved backwards quite a bit, eager to see what exactly Kris' plan was.

Well it wasn't much of a plan, but it worked. Now the FRESH Princess stood there alone. Booing after the last few Grunts that were walking away. "Come back here, don' just walk off! Not cool, dude! Not rad at all. What the -" The younger dragon was startled when she saw another sandwich, held less than a foot away from her face.

Kris was offering her one as well and tried to sell it with a smile. "You want one, too?"

With an angry look on her face, the Princess leaned back a bit with her head raised, staring at that sandwich all the way through. And stayed that way for a while until finally, she reached for it. "Heck yeah I do. But if Axe asks, this never happened. We were somewhere else!" She was hesitant to accept it, but she accepted it nonetheless. Kris and the others passed through, but they stayed to wait for her to finish what must have been her first meal in ages.

"You guys ain't gettin' far anyway. We got stuff set up to keep you away. Now if you'll excuse me, the boss is gonna figure you got past us either way, so if I wanna outrun her, I gotta go fast." With this, she turned her hat to face forward again, got on her skateboard, rolled over to the edge of the cliff with increasing speed and leaped straight off. When Kris walked to the edge to look, he noticed she just jumped to another path further down, which she was rolling along even faster.

The others left them alone as well, the path to the fields was clear.