Queen's Gambit Chapter 16

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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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 04

House of Cards

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Kris tried to struggle. He tried to free himself from their grips, but there were so many of those dragon girls helping haul him and Noelle off through the rock wall's interior. And they were simply stronger than him. Noelle's squeaks and shrieks with hiccups in-between didn't do much to help him either. He was being moved and rocked around too much.

That and no part of him touching the ground was too much for him to have any real sense of orientation. The further into the mountain they carried him and Noelle, the more often some of their captors bumped into the walls or other surfaces.

The sheer amount of Susies between him and those walls softened the impact, but it carried over all the way to him through sudden pressure regardless. "For crying out loud, watch where you're going!" He liked to hope that was Axe talking. The one among all these Susie-lookalikes who actually looked the way Susie did in the dark world.

The rest were varying images of her light world form. In spite of them all being in the dark world. But it was impossible to tell whether it was Axe, since they all had Susie's voice, too. Almost all of them. Whether or not it was her, whoever was talking also made sure to step in when Kris was getting a little too uncomfortable with where they were putting their hands and pull a hand away here and there. "Stick to carrying him! Jeez."

At some point, he just closed his eyes and tried focusing on what he could perceive rather than what he couldn't. The temperature rose and fell. So did the humidity around him. "And for the last time, Maestra, stop trying. Everything you make, sucks!"

When they came to a halt, one of the only differing voices, a deeper, older sounding one, spoke to the one that did most of the talking. "Why don't we take this one up to our chambers? I promise he won't escape." From the sounds of it, the one that talked the most slapped that other one's encroaching hand.

"Yeah, I'm gonna say 'no' to that. Besides, dungeon's the most secure. More solid walls, chains, doors, everything. Hands off!" A few let go of his wrists, which he took as his opportunity to try struggling free and summoning his sword to strike at them. But it didn't last. "Don't let go of him, what the hell, I meant - never mind, just bring him to a cell! Something where you can chain him."

They caught him and had him in a solid grip again, before he could get anywhere. And the air around him indeed cooled down. Soon enough, he could tell they had brought him down to a dungeon. "Here! That one looks more like it. The one with that other - hey, you caught the sorcerer! Good work, whoever did that. Take the girl next door, so they don't pull anything."

He heard the clanking of a rusty door handle being pulled, and the screeching of a metal door that hadn't been oiled for a long time, opening.

"Got the keys?"

"Sure do."

Finally, they flipped him back with his feet on an uneven stone surface, but didn't neglect keeping a strong grip on him and pushing him against the wall. They pulled the gauntlets off his hands threw them on the floor, pinned his wrists against the wall, and put into rusty iron cuffs that were chained to it.

The cuffs were locked with that key by the adult dragon. "Okay, no need for that any more." By the time they got to removing the sack that covered his sight, most of the Susies had already left.

Only two were left by that point. One a Berserker, one of the slightly stronger Susies with broadswords and nothing on her body but swimwear made of chain mail, and a Mistress, a mid-thirties Susie with a whip and exaggeratedly voluptuous proportions, who wore purposefully revealing black fishnet stockings and an overdesigned black leather top. What in the world was he thinking, looking at them now?

"Where's Noelle?" He couldn't hear her anymore. She calmed down a bit along the way.

The Berserker gave the older Susie a questioning look. "He means the deer girl." He tried pulling away while the sultry-looking adult rubbed his cheek with her thumb. "Don't you worry about her. We left her to play with the new girl. She looked very hungry." They both laughed while they left. With a loud bang, the door between this dungeon and the halls they had carried him through, shut behind them.

While they did, he could finally hear Noelle again. "Easy there - easy Su..." Her voice was shaky, and the hiccups stopped her from talking fluently, more than the stuttering did. "No need to..."

"Kris!" His attention was immediately drawn to his left. Chained to the wall with him, was just the person he hoped to meet. Ralsei was locked in this cell with him. Fully dressed in robe and hat. And with wide-open glowing eyes, excited to meet him. "Finally! Those not-quite-Susies locked me up here."

"Well at least he found Ralsei. Now there was a bigger problem. "No - no need to come closer!" Noelle was more agitated before, and something in her cell was sniffing so loudly, Kris could hear it from here.

"Oh no." A dark suspicion crept up Kris' back. They said they left her with the 'new girl'. But the 'new girl' wasn't Axe. There was someone a little more recent. "It's Gobbler!"

"No - no -no, stay away! Help!" Noelle began shrieking of the top of her lungs. "Help! No! Don't!"

A male voice was calling out to them as well. "Someone help!"

Ralsei wasn't sure what was going on. "Who is Gobbler?"

He had to come up with a way to escape, and fast. "She's in danger!" He tried pulling at the chains, but that accomplished nothing. Of course chains and cuffs made to keep a human in place in the light world, would still hold here as well. But there was a difference. Humans in the light world didn't have any magic. He had at least some form of magic here, too.

He tried summoning his sword and shield, and in both cases, it worked. Except that that alone wasn't really useful. Then he noticed something. He dispelled and summoned them again. They didn't appear in full from one moment to the next. They started with their grips in his hands and expanded towards their full form from there. There was some outward movement or growth involved. And he wasn't sure how much force was involved when put to the test. Maybe he could use that here.

Instead of struggling upwards and away and having the cuffs slide down his forearms causing pain in the process, he did the opposite. He slid his arms backwards and down to slide the cuffs as close to his hands as possible. Then he angled his hands and summoned his weapons again. He had to try a lot of times to start getting to where he was going with this.

As he hoped, a tremendous force was involved in those weapon summons. He could even feel the metal press against it somehow. He just tried again and again, until he had his small, expanding shield and the hilt of his sword lodged in the cuffs. Then he did what he could to focus on that sensation, this impulse that always led to his weapons being summoned.

He gritted his teeth. It actually felt physically taxing and made his hands tense up when he felt the resistance from the iron that was in the way. But gradually, the metal began to bend and give in. Then it became harder and harder to further bend it, until it simply broke open. In the spots most deformed, it seemed to have turned brittle in the process. "It worked!"

He got off the wall and lost his balance so much, he almost fell over. The ground was uneven. The floor here was made of stones arranged as if they were flat stone bricks, but they were round and shoddily put together which made the floor tremendously bumpy. Then again, this was supposed to be a kind of prison, so making it comfortable was perhaps not the intention.

As fast as he could, he ran to the prince and adjusted his wrists so he could slide his fingers into Ralsei's cuffs. "Ouch!"

He stopped immediately upon hearing the prince voice his pain. He forgot that he had to pay attention to Ralsei's arms this time.

Which made getting the right angle more tricky, but his experience from doing it a second ago, allowed him to quickly get the hang of how exactly his sword and shield formed in his hands. And how to angle them in a way that didn't cut his dear friend's hands off. Once he did, all he had to do was pour his strength into overcoming those cuffs. And with clacking sounds louder than Noelle's shrieks, the prince was free.

He ran to the cell door to rattle at it and check. Locked. He turned to the approaching goat. "Can you open this door?"

"Yes, actually." He raised his soon glowing hand. He held it towards the cell door's lock with a circular swing that the light only followed with a delay. With some combined force, he and Kris could force the cell door open, rush to the next cell that Noelle's pleas for help were coming from, and repeat the process.

At the wall opposite from them, a weirdly proportioned, more feral-looking version of dark world Susie was creeping up Noelle. And she wasn't crawling onto Noelle, the doe was vanishing down that creature's throat and she was already gone all the way to to her armpits. It was swallowing her like a snake. It's hands served more as front legs to support itself on the wall. Noelle was completely out of it. She was driven to the point of tears and was already vanishing all the way up to her shoulders.

Kris charged at both of them, grabbed it's upper jaw with one hand and swung his sword at the creature with the other. He aimed for the waist to make sure he didn't hit Noelle. "No! Bad dragon! Let go!" His blade went pretty deep, it must have hurt, and the creature's angry tremors and the sudden force it was trying to shut it's mouth with pointed that way as well. Ralsei quickly picked up the pace and together, they repeatedly struck and kicked it. In-between, the prince pulled out his pistol and fired some well-aimed shots at the creature's sides to slow it down. "Spit her out! Spit her out!"

They both worked together to peel it's mouth open keep the dragon from biting down on his terrified classmate as well. It must have had a lot of deep wounds and bruises everywhere, until the prince determined that it was time to use his magic and pacify it. Once that was done, it's frantic-looking eyes dropped shut and it stopped moving.

They could finally get to pulling it off of the still screaming doe. While Ralsei held it's mouth open, the human pulled the beast by it's jacket. It took a long time and a lot of force to get her out. The dragon was visibly bloated and wrapped tightly around its prey.

She didn't stop screaming until she was free from the hips upwards and even then, she wouldn't really settle down, until they were already pulling the monster's maw off her hooves. The stench of drying saliva was impossible to ignore already. And her only recently dried off Christmas robe was completely soaked in it. "Hold still."

Lastly, there was one more person to free. In the corner of Noelle's cell, someone else was chained to the wall. A young man, he looked like he was only just old enough to be taller than them, but not all the way into adulthood just yet. Generally, he was about as old as the human woman in the red robe that seemed to command all the Susies. "Thank you. For a moment there, I thought she was a goner. And I was sure I was next."

He was dressed in a simple shirt and cloth trousers, with a ring of some stuffy, stretchable cloth wound around his waist and over his trousers like a belt. And he had blond hair, short, but just long enough for strands to look a bit like spikes hanging of to the back of his head, than bangs hanging off of it.. After that though, Kris had to lean onto his knees to catch his breath. Using his weapon summons to break open iron shackles was tremendously taxing for some reason.

While the human stranger walked past him, he and Ralsei went back to Noelle. She wasn't scared for her life any more. "Noelle? You're free. Can you walk?" She was too out of it to move. Even when he and the prince tried leading her away, almost pulling her by force. She just was still a trembling mess, unable to move an inch.

Then, to his terror, he heard someone move about the metal handle on the thick wooden door at the entrance to the dungeon. "Hello? What's going on here? What's all that noise?" It was a Grunt, one of the Susies that looked exactly the way she did in the light world when she was at school. Perhaps her jeans had a few less tears and holes than the real Susie's, but otherwise, she was identical to her.

Her jaw dropped when she saw them all free. But too fast for her to alert anyone else or react in some other way, two thin strings of dark red clouds extended from the human stranger's hands, straight to her neck and wrapped themselves around it. The man who appeared to have conjured them up, took up a solid stance.

With visible force in his arms, he pulled his hands, that the strings extended from, back. As if attached to them, the red clouds, formed in the same colour as those of the woman they met before, wound themselves back to forcibly pull the dragon to the front bars of this prison cell. "What the hell?"

The Grunt was choking too much to get too loud and not strong enough to withstand the force she was being pulled with. He waited until she was close enough, and then - with another powerful swing of his arms - the human forced the dragon's head to accelerate against the bars and bang her head against them enough to dent the bars, but also with enough force to knock her unconscious. "If we stay here much longer, there might be more coming. Noelle, look at me!"

He tried holding her by the shoulders the way he did with Berdly to get him to snap out of his tantrum. "I'm right here, okay? That thing's knocked out, but we have to move, okay?" It took her a second or two, but she eventually came around, snapped out of her trance and nodded. She made barely audible, affirmative sounds, but she didn't say anything.

While they led Noelle to the dungeon's exit door, the prince commended the stranger that followed them on what just happened. "That was a nice trick."

He smiled, with a soft gesture to 'present' himself. "Why thank you. I have quite a lot more like it in store."

Leading his classmate with one gloved hand, the human tipped at the man with the other. "Those clouds look a lot like...we saw a woman use similar ones."

The moment he heard this, the older human took his hand down, and the corners of his mouth dropped along with it. "I suspect I know who you mean." He described the robed woman the Susies seemed to take orders from to him. "Yes, that's her. I guess you could say we know each other. Her name is Temptress, in case that sates your curiosity. Speaking of which, by the way." He extended a hand to shake theirs and bowed afterwards. "Hi. My name's Dasher. Archer extraordinaire at your service. Well, I would be an archer, if I had my bow."

Very slowly and very carefully, they pushed the door open and peeked around everywhere they could. It led into a hallways, covered in ceramic tiles. This included the walls, on which hung paintings, usually depicting humans outdoors, with some recurring themes and objects between them.

Behind a pair of open double doors, off to the side, lay a kitchen. A modern kitchen, with stoves, a microwave and two electric ovens. In it, a plump purple dragon with brown hair, dressed in an all-white cook's uniform, complete with a chef's hat, was trying to fry something and judging by the dark smoke coming up from the pan, she had overcooked it. Kris gave their surroundings another look around, and then, with his metal boots off, snuck through the hallway and into the kitchen.

He crept up behind the cook and as soon as he was close enough, grabbed hold of her mouth and held it shut as strongly as he could. He shushed the startled dragon and began whispering to her. "I'm going to let go and you're going to not scream, okay?" When she nodded, he did as he said, but gradually enough that he could resume his grip if she went back on her word.

She threw up her hands and talked with as calm and quiet a voice as was possible for her. "I don't do all this fighting stuff, I'm just a cook, okay?" For the time being, that was enough and he stepped back away from her.

Kris looked over at her failed attempt at making food. "Did you try using more oil or not turning it up all the way, so you have more room to time it?" Maestra, the cooking-themed Susie he was talking to here, nodded. He heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner in the distance and pointed to where it came from. "Is Homemaker here?"

Again, Maestra nodded. Of course, Homemaker would be near where Maestra was. The cook put her spatula aside and wobbled into the hallway and to another door that she opened. Fully expecting this to be her alerting someone, he readied his sword and took up a battle stance. When the door fully opened and Maestra came back though, she was followed not by a Grunt or a Berserker.

The 'Susie' that followed her, had her normal build, but was wearing a black blouse with frills and a long black skirt along with an apron that was wrapped around both. She was about as shaken up at meeting Kris like this as the more wide dragon next to her was. "Please..." She was understandably careful around him. They were taller than him, and probably physically stronger, too.

But he was the one with the sword. "...don't involve me in all this. As long as you don't have something to clean, I'm the wrong person." Why were they both here though? Then again, he could imagine why. Of course the horde of Susies that were all about combat, left the cook and the maid as close to the prison as they could without actually putting them behind bars.

"I might actually have a few things to clean."

With Noelle in tow, the other two followed him to the kitchen by now. "Kris! Good news! I managed to chain the guard to the wall."

"Oh goodness. Look at you! I can smell it from here!" Noelle immediately drew the all the more distressed dragon maid's attention.

"As I said. We have a few things to clean. Is there something like a bathroom here?"

"The safest and best place for this would be the servants' quarters. But if you want to head there, leave me out of any fights. We told Axe we only cook and clean, we didn't fight for them, we won't for you."

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do if we run into more of them anyway. I don't think I can just cut them down like with the brawlers."

Ralsei joined him in keeping an eye on the corridor while Homemaker led them through the door she was behind before. "Then don't. Just do what you did in the Card Kingdom." It led into another, more narrow corridor, and from there, into a circular staircase that led straight upwards. The moment you went past the door, the smooth tiles made way for rough stone. And the staircase had 'windows', but they were just rectangular holes that led into pitch black caves.

"What?"

"Act! Flirt with them, I don't know."

"The flirting wasn't me! That was all the player. Besides, it was different. Those card kingdom people were...the Hathies were just a heart with tentacles. Those dragons are all Susie. I can't just go and flirt with Susie." His face stiffened up more, the more he thought about it. It made him uncomfortable. And nervous.

The prince stayed close by while they went up the staircase and rubbed the left side of his back. "But they're not Susie. You don't have to focus on the flirting so much anyway, just do whatever you think works."

All while following Homemaker up the stairs and making sure Noelle was okay, the two of them also checked the doors at every level they passed to avoid any bad surprises. Which may or may not have been a mistake, since not long after Homemaker told them that they were almost there, he and Ralsei opened one of the wooden doors, and just like that, Kris was staring an unsuspecting Grunt in the face.

No more than a metre away from him. Everyone involved froze in place, eyes wide on all three, even the dragon. With only his eyes, he looked over to Ralsei, but he didn't seem to have any ideas either. If they broke this inadvertent standoff, surely the purple Susie-clone would alert everyone in hearing range of their location.

Both sides were staring at each other, awaiting the other's first move. Both Kris and the Grunt with their eyes obscured behind their hair. Now was as good a time to put into practise what they were talking about. If only to prove to Ralsei that it was a stupid idea. Steadily and careful not to make any sudden moves, he raised his open hand to show that he was - for the time being - unarmed.

Then he formed an upwards pistol hand with it, tensed his forearm and then pointed at her, releasing hearts that blew her way. While he did, he stared as deeply as he could into what little of the dragon's one visible eye wasn't covered in brown hair and tried saying the first thing he came up with. "Stop covering your face like that. You have nothing to hide. Your eyes are beautiful."

Oh god, he messed up. If anything, he should have said something like 'pleasing to look at' instead. Or maybe he should have tried something poetic the way Ralsei did. No, this was all Ralsei's fault. Why did he make him do this?

Before he could reconsider what he should have said any further though, he picked up on the Grunt beginning to move. The angle of her mouth had an alignment that was impossible for him to match with any face he had seen her original make. With her eye as wide as it could be and her mouth slightly open, she backed off, onto the wall on her side and knocked a painting off the nail it was hanging by.

The moment she noticed it falling, she stumbled and turned around just in time to catch it, and then fled the stone hallway behind a door. Well, for what they needed, it worked miracles compared to what Kris expected. "Okay." Without moving an inch, he stared at the prince. "Can you use your lockpicking spell to lock those doors?"

"If they're anything like the real Susie, some wooden doors aren't going to stop them."

"No, but it'll slow them down enough for us to know they're coming. Maybe in time to get ready."

This could have gone much, much worse. As relief about this situation diffusing itself overcame them, the goat shrugged and did as he was asked. In fact, he actually locked the doors in the whole hallway they met that Grunt in before following Noelle up to the dragon maid's quarters. The interior walls consisted of uncomfortably rounded stone bricks, just like in the dungeon.

When looking around, Kris and Ralsei found something bizarre. In spite of it all looking vaguely medieval, she had a modern bathroom. It was all made of stone, but a toilet, a bath tub, it was all there, complete with a working tap and showerhead. In the main room, there was a wide and flat wooden barrel, filled with water and soap and a washing board lay inside it. Homemaker had Noelle give her her robe to start off with.

The doe went to the bathroom to take a bath alone. The door to it only ever opened for her to pass through her clothes so homemaker could wash those as well.

At last, with all doors closed, Kris, Ralsei and Dasher could relax for a bit. The teenagers sat down against the cool stone wall, where they could watch Homemaker wash Noelle's clothes. "So Kris." Ralsei saw this as his opportunity to ask something that had been on his mind for some time.

"So you and Berdly said things like that Lancer, King Jevil and all the others were playing cards and that Canyon City was a pair of toy boxes in the light world. Those other Susies are something too, aren't they? What are they?" Kris didn't respond. He kept watching Homemaker and didn't say a word. Ralsei spent a long, awkward time, staring at him, hoping for an answer. "All right. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

While waiting, he got up to walk up to the barrel and wash and dry his gloves. As time passed by, they began to realize, that Grunt hadn't alerted anyone, otherwise, they would have been attacked. When finally, the door to the bathroom opened, she was back. Squeaky clean hopefully. At least the stench was gone.

Kris immediately covered his eyes with one hand and tried to do the same with Ralsei. "I'm wearing a towel, Kris." Once he had taken down both his hands, she smiled at him. "And yes, I'm feeling better now." Homemaker had hung up her clothes by a rack and lit a fireplace, the way the old man they met before they came to the mainland had, but the fireplace was in actual proximity to the rack, which helped dry them better.

Noelle came by several times to fetch another layer of clothing before disappearing behind the door to put them on. When she was done with everything else, the human and his goat got up to help her with her robe, the fingerless gloves and everything else that came with it. "Thanks. And you." She put her hands together and went up to Homemaker, who never got up from her washing board. "Thank you, for your help and hospitality. Sorry for inconveniencing you like this."

"Nothing to thank. I'm always happy to help. By the way. You." She gestured to Dasher and pulled him back on his feet by his hand. "Your belongings are here." She nigh hopped to a corner and brought to him an open crate with all manner of clothing. The stave of a bow was too big not to peer out above and below.

"As for you." She began addressing Kris and Noelle again. "The others brought you in as prisoners, so you probably have no idea how to navigate this place. I only moved in here a few hours ago, like all of us, but I don't really stray too far from here. This will be much more useful to you than to me."

She stood up to pick up a map from a shelf and hand it to Kris. It was like a short novel in width already when she first handed it to him in it's completely folded-up state, but whenever he tried further folding it up, it turned out to be even bigger. He eventually gave up and folded it together to not risk it getting in contact with the soap water that spilled from the barrel. "Oh, I'm sorry. That is indeed a little inconvenient. Follow me."

She led them back into the staircase, one more floor upwards and through two doors into a bigger room. It was empty, but in contrast to the dim light of torches, this one had an actual electric chandelier hanging from the ceiling, so it was much brighter. Here, there was enough open space to fold up that map.

It didn't even outline individual rooms, only quarters and wings within it, and it was actually a set of several overlapping maps that seemed to depict different floors in a castle that was taller than it was wide. Nonetheless, it prompted an obvious question from the prince. "How big is this place?"

"Do you not know where you are?" Kris, Ralsei and Noelle shook their heads. The maid wandered along the corners of the room, all of which Kris would eventually reach in the process of opening up the map.

"'This place' has a name. It is called 'Fortune's Keep'. It is a flying castle and when in use, harbors an entire country's worth of people. Big enough to be ruled by four kings and an Emperor, but when it arrived in this realm, they left the castle and spread everywhere they could. I'm actually surprised you know so little of it. Your friend here is one of the people that lived here. When the Knight freed us and we found it empty, how could we resist, but to claim it for ourselves? You have seen the servants' quarters. So much of it is so comfortable. Much more so than where we came from. But I digress."

She walked over to one section of the map that, as far as Kris could understand, outlined the bottom of the castle. "We are here." She bent forward to point at a little corner with a staircase that had an identifier attached to help see where it was on the next floor.

"Even up here, we're still at the bottom of it. I'm not sure what your business with Temptress and Axe is. But if you want to win over more of us for your side, I might know someone in your reach, who could help." She began detailing their path, describing the rooms they were to look for, and which staircases to follow. "If there is someone who can win over some of us, it will be her."

Noelle wound up being the one that spelled out what they were all thinking. "I don't think we can orientate ourselves with a map this big."

Kris said nothing, but he knew how to solve this problem. He walked over to Homemaker, summoned his sword and straightened out a corner of the section of the map the dragon was on. To her shock, he then struck right onto the floor, cutting straight through the map. He pulled it out of the stone floor, but kept it lodged through the map. "Goodness. What are you..."

He pulled the blade along the outline of the two bottom floors and carved it out of the rest of the map. Then he picked up the much more manageable, smaller segment and began folding up the rest. "I see." Now that she understood, she came closer, pulled a pencil out of a pocket under her apron, took his map and began drawing the path she had described and shown to them on the map just a minute ago. "There. Now finding your way should be more than possible."

While Noelle thanked the friendly dragon a few more times for good measure, Dasher entered after them.

Apparently, he had taken this opportunity to put on his real clothes. He had taken off the barely tailored drapes from before and instead wore tight silk trousers, the shiny surface of which glittered in the light of the chandelier. On his chest, he wore a green vest with patterns of golden thread stitched onto it, along with a leather collar hanging off his shoulders. The vest and the collar, were covered in blue feathers that stuck to it without Kris really recognizing, how.

The feathers in the middle of his shoulders were long enough for quite a bit of them to hang off of them. Held up by the belt, the leather holdings of an epee dangled the weapon they were made for to his side. Off his left shoulder hung a quiver with arrows. With his right arm, wound around his right shoulder, Dasher proudly sported his longbow. The content smile spoke volumes of how glad he was to have it back.

And on his head, he now wore a wide hunter's hat with a significantly longer blue feather strapped onto it. Long enough to swing with the air following every move of the archer's head."Say." Once Homemaker was sure that they were set, she left to head back to her quarters. Meanwhile the prince walked closer to look up to their now better prepared. "Now might be a better time to ask. Could you tell us a little more about who you are?"

Dasher adjusted himself to puff out his chest a little more and proudly gave his garments a slight twitch to flaunt them. "Why of course. I told you before, I am Dasher. Archer extraordinaire. Brother in arms to all men I encounter." He leaned over towards Noelle and pulled a red rose, seemingly out of nowhere. "And charmer to all the dames."

Noelle was startled and grabbed the rose on impulse, but wasn't quite sure what to do with it. "I came to this realm along with the very halls you walk with me now. Along with Temptress and everyone else. Most spread out to explore our surroundings. I tailed a fearsome Knight to the coast beneath the Kingdom of Taint. I watched him do things that could only spell trouble, and considering this..."

He looked over to the door to make sure that Homemaker wasn't present any more. "...this draconic infestation, my suspicions proved true."

"Why, what did he do?"

The archer took a swingful step back. and raised his arm. "He made like this." He swung it along the length of the ground.

"And he chanted 'Queen's Delight!' and the ground roared and gave way to an infernal gorge out of which these terrific purple creatures ascended. But Temptress was with him, and she knew too well, how to spot me, so before I could warn anyone of the horrors the Knight had unleashed, I was made a prisoner to those horrors within my own home. Now it is too late. The others must have already encountered these creatures. These 'Susies' as you call them."

"Can you tell us what he looked like?"

"I'm afraid not, his armor was heavy and very thorough in not leaving an inch of him exposed. But whoever forged his arm- and shoulderpieces, must truly appreciate the female form. Believe me, you will certainly know it is him, should you ever see him with your own eyes."

"So if you're from here, you know your way around, right?"

"Of course. I know these halls like the back of my hand."

Kris opened his map back up and handed it to the taller human. The directions the dragon maid had drawn onto them should have been self-explanatory. "Fascinating. Your destination is at the halls of the Parchment Elders. Come on, friends. I have been there myself many times."

Without further ado, he opened a different door and led them through another staircase and went on. "Fortune's Keep isn't our real home, it is more of a holiday chateau that our people dwell in and travel with, whenever the lightners choose to send us to a different realm for a while, and it is what we use to travel back to our true home as well. We don't even live here most of the time, but there are a few peculiar figures that always live here without fail. The Parchment Elders. Most of them are mentally absent and speak only of strange riddles and lore, the meaning of which is never clear to us. And their halls differ from most of the castle as well."

The stone corridors and staircases didn't become any less constricting from here on in either. They really were modeled after the back rooms and tunnels used by servants in old-fashioned castles. And climbing these staircases was strenuous in it's own right. At least in narrow areas like this, running into patrolling Susies was an unlikely thing, which was probably why it hadn't happened more than once by now. "Kris, wait. Slow down."

He was scouting ahead with Dasher until Noelle slightly pulled at the drape that hung over his shoulder. "Thank you. For...I'm sorry I was a burden before." It was understandable, considering what she was like and how confusing this all must have been. "It just was all a little bit much for me at once. And then that Susie...monster...thing. You know what I mean."

"Gobbler." He didn't think twice about it until it was too late and he had already told her the name. And that he knew it.

"Yes. But Susie - I mean all those - other Susies. Do you know them somehow?" He moved along, slow enough to stay with her, but he didn't respond. "I mean you knew the names of some of them. Pink Susie said you guessed some other name right, too."

"Axe." He flinched. He did it again.

"Axe. Yes. I...it just feels to me like you know them somehow. You know something about them, don't you?" Oh no. This was why he didn't like talking to people in the light world. To avoid situations like the one he was stuck in now. He was scared of something like this as it was, but how was he going to explain it away now? "Kris, I can tell something is bothering you. You can trust me."

He couldn't trust her. He couldn't trust anyone. Not with things like this. Susie finding out about Jaws and Noelle seeing Samuel with his new face was more than he was comfortable with already. And the longer he went on without saying anything, the worse it got. "Come on. Whatever's on your mind can't be that bad. I think I already know any-"

"If he doesn't want to talk about it..." The prince stopped her right there and squeezed himself between Noelle and Kris. He was rarely ever as stern as he was lecturing Noelle now. "...if he doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't have to. Okay?" Luckily, that was enough to get her to leave him alone.

"That's it!" Finally, the older human had followed the inward corridor to it's end and swung open the door. By presenting them with an exit to the narrow stone corridors and dizzying staircases, he stoked up hope in an impending conclusion to their strenuous ascent.

False hope, as right behind the door, the broader hall was immediately preceded by more stairs, up to the main area this section of the castle was dedicated to. Provided that they could trust their map of course. "If we make it to the other side from here, we can take another servants' wing straight to the Parchment Elders." Great, so once they were past these stairs, the big thing to look forward to, was a whole lot more stairs.

Since this hall was about twenty feet wide, the torches were further apart from one another and it was a lot darker in here. Kris preferred to 'climb' along the felty red carpet up those stairs, to make less noise and ascend more slowly in case there was someone at the top.

And there was. Two Berserkers were casually strolling their way. One staring off at one of the paintings that hung between the torches. The other was inspecting her sword. When Dasher was already kneeling down and readying his bow, the younger human pushed it down and shook his head at him. Even if he had let him, how would that have played out?

He maybe would have hit one of the two, and they'd just both either attack Kris and the others, or alert other nearby Susie lookalikes. He had to come up with something else. There were sideways doors behind the approaching dragon girls, but there was no way to get to those without them noticing.

He didn't know whether they were aimlessly wandering around or patrolling or if they were patrolling, how much of the corridor and staircase Kris and the others had come from, their route entailed. "You know what?" Dasher patted him twice on the arm and similarly, gestured Noelle and Ralsei to rush after him and so they did.

Without any stops, he pushed them one floor right downstairs and took the door that lay in the same spot, but one floor below. It led to an identical, lengthy hall, up which he led them with more confidence. He didn't let them stop until they were already half-way up the stairs, but once they were, they could slow down. Kris took the first opportunity he got to examine the surroundings a little more closely.

He didn't open any of the doors, but something occurred to him in the paintings. One in particular for instance featured a man sneaking away from a campsite with three swords. He could have sworn, he had seen that exact one at the bottom near the kitchen and the dungeon. And this wasn't the only one. Leaving only a few metres in the middle, there were tables arranged in groups near the doors. And there was no-one else here. At least not ahead of them.

"Where do you guys think you're going?" Susie's voice alerted all three of them when they heard it. It came from one of two berserkers, which apparently had been running after them. "See? Told you I heard something." They must have followed them through the wide-open doors they left behind in the archer's haste.

"Run!" Dasher was about to grab Kris by the forearm and pull him and Noelle along, but he refused to budge. "What are you doing?" There was no point in running. Even at first glance, he had no doubt those two were as strong as they were able to endure running after them. He could tell from here, that they weren't going to outrun them. Running only ran the risk of running into more Susies. "We have to go!"

One of the two barely dressed dragons chuckled. "That human's smart."

"Yeah, like running woulda done anything for you lightweights."

They both raised their two-handed swords. "So you going to be nice and come with us, or do we have to use force?" Whichever way they took this, a fight couldn't be avoided. Some nice words of a cheesy pick-up line weren't going to spook those two out of getting rough. "If you're thinking of running away again, I'd really think twice."

He had to come up with something. With the brawlers, finding a way out other than carving and shooting their way through with swords and guns wasn't an option, they were plain out to kill them.

There had to be another way with Temptress' dragons. He thought of the Card Kingdom. Where most darkners had something about them, a theme that was important to them, or something that motivated them to either fight or not fight. And what caught his eye most here?

These Susies were more toned than their original. They looked more like what she would have looked like, after several years of hitting the gym every day and a planned, protein-rich diet. His eyes went over those abs, visible even in as little light as they had here. Those strong arms and legs. And unlike the model that inspired them, they had no qualms putting every bit of them on display.

Then it occurred to him. That was it! It was right in front of him. They put their muscles on display. And they were doing it on purpose. If they didn't want to, they could have just put on something over the underwear they started off with, but they didn't. He reached behind his neck and under his arm to undo two straps that held his shoulderpiece in place and began to unwind his cape to take that off, too. "What are you doing?" Even Ralsei was confused.

Now with his arms more free and more visible, he struck a pose with his left forearm pointing upwards and tensed up his upper arm to make his own arm muscle as visible as he could. Which still wasn't a lot. And it didn't have much of an effect yet, either, so he aligned his feet in the opposite direction and tried the same with both arms.

Then, in a soft motion, one began raising her finger his way. "Wait, are you trying to flex? Is this a flex?" The two dragons exchanged a glance, and burst out in laughter. "That's adorable, but that's not a flex. THIS is a flex!" One of the two Berserkers struck the same pose Kris did. But when she did, you could actually see the surface shifting on them. "See?" Not long after she saw the one Berserker draw everyone's looks and revel in the attention she was getting, the other one joined in, too.

So far, so good. Kris slipped back into his asymmetrical first pose, with one forearm pointing downwards and the other upwards. And as he hoped, the drakes imitated his pose to show off their muscles. He struck a third one, and didn't fail to make sure they were still smiling.

By now, Ralsei hasted back, next to him, and copied his pose. You couldn't see his upper arms, as they were hidden in his robe, but it probably didn't do any harm. When Kris ran out of different poses, he just started copying dramatic poses he had seen Asriel copy off some cartoon show about muscular men that summoned spirits to fight in their stead.

Of course all while not forgetting the obligatory sideways stare with a finger gun. Half-way through, Dasher came along to stand next to the two boys and join in on the poses. All Kris had to do, was hold on. He kept up this spontaneous dance-off in the light of distant fires, until the Berserkers found this too silly to continue, stopped posing and dancing and just laughed. "That was...something. What a bunch of weirdos." One of the two backed off. "But you know what? You guys are alright."

"Hey! Where are you going?" the other one shouted after her.

"I don't want to be the girl that puts them in chains. You do it if you feel like doing it."

She looked back at the three of them. Ralsei and Dasher were relaxed and seeing where this was going. Kris was more than anything relieved that this situation could be diffused. Noelle never joined them, she was just off past the top of the stairs, sweating and gnawing at her fingertips.

She shrugged and turned around to follow her lookalike. "Yeah, nah. Neither do I. You guys are off the hook for now. But remember, if anyone asks you, this whole encounter - never happened. Okay?" After that, she turned around to walk to the staircase for good. "I should visit them in their cell some time."

The party stayed in place to watch and listen to them to make sure this wasn't some ruse. "To do what exactly?"

"I don't know. Train them?"

"Yeah right." With a dismissive tone to her voice, one of the two grabbed the door to the staircase by the handle and pulled it shut.

Kris closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was over, the issue was resolved, for now at least. Now they could slowly move ahead and be careful not to run into any more of them. After they had moved on for a bit, they realized that Noelle was staying in place, standing at the door.

When grabbed by the wrist, she gave off a short, disapproving sound, but they had to move on, so eventually, Kris and Dasher just pulled her along and broke her out of it. The further away she was from that door, the more willingly she came along. And along with this newfound calm, they had more time to admire the paintings between the doors. Gradually, he started to notice the recurring themes.

The painting with the thief featured a total of seven swords in the picture, and there were a lot of other paintings with swords on them. But none of them had seven. Another, similar recurring object were goblets. Another one five-pointed stars like on the hilt of his sword, and lastly, lengthy wooden rods. By the time they were almost at the door, all the way on the other side, he was just loudly listing the recurring objects. "Five swords...two swords...seven goblets..."

On that last one, Noelle chuckled and interrupted him. "It's cups. Swords, cups, pentacles and wands."

"Is this some kind of card game?"

"It can be used for that, but it's more to read people's fortune. It's tarot." The moment she mentioned it by name, he understood. He really knew nothing about tarot cards until after his travels with Berdly. You remember 'the devil' right? That's a tarot card, too. Thing is..." She didn't try looking at him any more.

She wouldn't have managed making eye contact anyway. "...I know this will - this will sound crazy to you - I mean promise you won't...I don't know." He said nothing. "It's...The man on the island. It isn't just that he lives alone and fits as a hermit."

Even though she knew it did little to prevent Ralsei and Dasher from hearing what she said, she came closer to him and lowered her voice. "It's not just that he is a hermit. He looked exactly like my 'The Hermit' card. But that's impossible, right? He's a character I made up. How could he be real?"

She realized that going off their surroundings, this was only a minor question that fell into a broader one. The paintings around them weren't any standard or otherwise commercial tarot suit. They were her very own designs. Designs she had drawn, scanned, edited and then printed onto little cardboard slates. Small enough to comfortably hold with your hand. And yet she was surrounded by those same art pieces, each as wide as an entire wall would have been in a normal house. "How is any of this real?"

He just shrugged and moved on. Yes, it was crazy. That was why he didn't talk about it to her or anyone outside of Berdly and Susie. Noelle understood this now. She knew he wasn't excluding her from a new hobby. And yet, she couldn't help but stop and watch him follow Dasher until he checked on her and stopped to make sure they didn't lose her.

Now that she knew the dark world wasn't just a story to play-pretend with, she didn't see why he wouldn't open up to her about the Susies. How was it that after all these years, he trusted her as little as always?

Then again, perhaps it was a little silly to read too much into something that was understandable. Of course he wouldn't exactly chase her with his explanation on why the army of attractive dragon girls in his room, some of which wore little to nothing and had very pronounced proportions, all happened to look like his high school bully.

She just wished she had known sooner.