Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  “Fuck!” I cried out. I knew my aim was true because I had no problem striking Lord Bart or Gertrelle, but the witch was able to dodge them.

  “We’re not breaking any rules!” Jo shouted between gunshots.

  “Aye,” Ivona said while on her own break. “These are not the dragon’s rules, but they are the moral code among us witches. Come with me now, abandon this folly, and I’m willing to overlook the shooting here.”

  Jo’s response was more gunfire. Several blasts chewed into the trunk of the tree Ivona was now behind, but some of the buckshot plinked off the other witches’ breastplate as she leaned outward.

  “Matt. I’m in trouble.” Jo breathed heavily on the link, like she’d been running hard. However, she hadn’t moved from her spot.

  The purple wire was now the brightest thing in my field of view. It reminded me of what happened back on the roller coaster platform when Nora and Tex hit level 1 at the same time. I knew Jo was close; this was it.

  “Fuck, stay low!” I ordered, but I felt the urgency in my balls come to life, like the magic skipped all the foreplay and just went for simple spit and shine.

  I took a knee and fired again, but paused when I doubled over. I was leveling up, too, at the worst possible time, because I was right out in the open of the clearing.

  “I, uh—” I started to say. I wasn’t embarrassed at having an orgasm, since the girls had gotten their fill of that last night, but I wasn’t too proud of how it took me out of the fight.

  I groaned and remained bent over, in disbelief at the powerful spasms ripping through my lower regions. I shared Jo’s climaxes, but couldn’t explain how it went on and on.

  “Damn, girl,” I said on the link.

  “I’m sorry, Matt. I can’t stand.” She squeaked out loud from behind the fallen tree as if really trying to contain it.

  I was on my knees and fighting the pleasure racking my whole body, but I forced myself to raise the gun and aim. I grit my teeth and held my breath as I lined up my shot at Ivona.

  I squeezed off five or six shots. A few missed by a mile, but one hit the tree trunk next to her. The last one tore through her hat and knocked it off her head.

  She turned to me like I’d slapped her in the face.

  “You will regret tarnishing my uniform,” Ivona said as she changed her position so she could fire my way.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said to myself while fighting another muscle-freezing summit of Jo’s level-up process. The witches’ gun flared with white light as she pulled the trigger, almost like a camera flash.

  Already on my knees, I bent over to hug the dirt, but just before I got down I watched a naked woman burst forth from the undergrowth near Ivona.

  The last thing I saw was Bart’s staff swinging through the air toward the back of Ivona’s head. The witches’ gun fired two more times, kicking up dirt and ripping at leaves behind me, but then it stopped.

  “She’s down!” Tex shouted. “Don’t shoot!”

  Tex had used her Blend ability to get in close and deliver the fatal blow needed to end the witches’ inquisition.

  “She’s dead,” my cowgirl added.

  I rolled over and yelled with the full weight and fury of Jo’s orgasm. With mine added, I’m sure I became a spectacle. In a far distance, my phone vibrated with a text message dryly reporting we’d both hit new levels.

  All I could do was ride it out.

  Tex came over to watch.

  ***

  “That was…interesting,” Tex said when I finally came out of the pleasurable haze.

  “Thank you,” I gushed. “You saved our bacon.”

  “I remembered the last time, Matt. It seems like whenever one of us levels up, you go crazy, too. Kind of dangerous, you know?” She said it with a smile, but there was worry in her words.

  “You OK, Jo?” I called out to her.

  “Embarrassed, but fine.” She came over the log with all her clothes on, including her shorts.

  We collected our gear in a hurry. After Tex put her clothes back on, we all met at the dead witches body like a scene out of the Wizard of Oz.

  “This was a close one. You think she got through to her pals?” I asked Jo.

  “I can’t rule out anything because I’m still a noob inside this body, but I’m cautiously optimistic she didn’t. Not unless she reported in before she came up to us.”

  “Like cops calling in to dispatch when they rolled up on someone?” I’d picked up a few things playing a game that involved cops and a shitload of pimps and ho’s.

  “Yeah,” Jo agreed, “but she seemed pretty put out I was blocking her. Like she neglected to report in, first.”

  “Why was she so jacked up about seeing us naked?” Tex asked.

  I reached down to confiscate Ivona’s weapon. “Some people take offense to guys sleeping with two women at the same time.”

  I felt like I was the cock in the henhouse around my girls and for once I could speak openly about the wild sex we’d shared.

  “It was more than that,” Jo added. “She was after me, not you two. I must be the first witch to have the hots for a human. If I was fully Changed, maybe I wouldn’t have any interest in you?” Jo looked at me with sadness.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry,” I said with assurance. “I can feel my magic inside you stronger than ever.” I looked at her body to confirm the mystical red energy had drained out when she hit level 1. Now, the translucent red color was only up to her ankle. I was confident that’s what it represented.

  She blushed a little, but perked up. It complimented her dimples perfectly. “Matt, there is more than your magic inside me, right now.”

  I laughed but I became distracted by the witches’ gun.

  “The fuck?” I dropped the heavy rifle because it burned in my hands. The expensive-looking firearm broke apart into dozens of pieces when it hit the ground, as if it had been frozen into an ice cube. “A booby trap!”

  I stood up and backed away. I’d put a similar charm on my improved gun. No one besides me or an ally could use it. The witches were born of battle and obviously had their shit together.

  “Maybe I should have picked it up,” Jo responded. “Let’s hope this ammo is still good.” She pulled out some red shells from a black pouch on Ivona’s hip and put them in her bag.

  “At least we know I can get witch ammo,” Jo said when she was finished.

  That got me wondering what would happen if I tried to use Jo’s weapon, or just touched it. Would it fall apart if I picked it up and handed it to her?

  “I guess a witches’ weapon is hers forever. This is my gun, there are none like it.” It was a quote from a movie I’d seen at some point, but I couldn’t remember the rest of it.

  “Let’s stand somewhere else,” I said as I marshalled the two women over to a different tree.

  “Banger, come!” I yelled. He hopped out from behind a tree much closer than I expected.

  “Get over here by your mom,” I said to him.

  The little black cat meowed happily, then came over and plopped down on the top of one of Jo’s boots.

  “Come here, you,” the green woman said to her kitty cat as she picked him up and nestled him on top of her breasts.

  We all spent a few moments petting her cat.

  As we stood there, I tapped into Banger’s eyes as I’d done several times over the past couple of days. Banger was being a good cat, and looked right down Jo’s cleavage.

  “Matt! I can see my boobs, too, when you use Banger that way!”

  “Oops,” I said to dodge the accusation behind it.

  Tex eyed us warily.

  “All right. No more goofing.” I was sure I would break my own rule at some point, but we did have a lot we had to get done.

  “Tex and I learned quite a bit about how this game works,” I said to Jo. “My phone is running an app that plugs us into the game system and reports things back to us. Our skill levels. The amount of Dragon Bux in our inventory. Our
missions and campaign. Plus, this.”

  I held the phone so Jo saw it, but instead of the mission page, it flipped to Jo’s stats page. Any guy would be interested in their skills and abilities, but not her. She went right for the crude image at the top.

  “My tits are not that big!” she burst out when she saw her cartoon avatar inside my app.

  “Look at mine,” Tex replied with mock excitement. She flipped the screens until her own big-boobed avatar showed up.

  “Sheesh,” I said. “You two are something.”

  Jo laughed as she pointed to Tex’s picture. “I don’t think you are wearing shorts in this.”

  “That’s your boyfriend’s magic,” Tex said with sarcasm.

  “He’s your boyfriend, too,” Jo snarked.

  Suddenly I realized the danger of having two women like this. No one ever warned me about it back in high school, but mostly because none of my friends ever reached this level of awesome.

  “It’s determined by the computer interface. I can’t help it.” I shared my sympathy to hide the fact I actually really liked how the app portrayed them. They were badass warriors with big breasts. So what?

  I got control of my phone and paged a few screens. “I didn’t hold this so you could see your avatar, but I’m glad we got that out of the way. I need your input on how to spend some Dragon Bux.” Jo was one of the few people who played the digital Dragon Royale more than me. In fact, she was hounding me to give her Dragon Bux when we first met back in the camp.

  I scrolled to the page with all the things I could buy. “Here’s what we’ve got.”

  ‘Unlock mission details: 999B’ was now greyed out, probably because I’d found the mission without needing to buy it.

  I read the text while Jo studied the choices.

  ‘Identify the magic of Lord Bart’s staff: 501B.’

  ‘A rubber dinghy: 301B.’

  ‘Dog biscuit: 251B.’

  ‘A single magical bullet: 251B.’

  The last one was the largest. We could join Kleio’s side quest for a whopping 10,001B.

  “Any idea what this side quest is all about?” Jo asked.

  “No,” I replied. “I don’t even know who that is. Is Kleio a guy or gal? We should know if we’re going to seek them out to get a quest.”

  “What if we have to pay before we can find her?” Tex suggested.

  “Well?” I asked Jo. “We don’t have ten thousand anything, so what do you think about the other options?”

  “You have 1000 Dragon Bux, right? Based on what I know, I’d at least get the magic bullet for your gun so we have a defense against the next Lord Bart.”

  My gun only fired plain old bullets, and Lord Bart bragged that he was immune to non-magical guns. I didn’t know if all magical creatures had the same immunity, but certainly some did.

  “Then I would identify the staff,” Jo continued. “If we can use a magical weapon, we should.”

  “I agree about spending 251 for the bullet, but identifying the staff would consume 501 more of our Bux. Together, that’s 752 out of 1000. What if we really need a dinghy at some point, or, god only knows why, the dog biscuit?” I was more inclined to wait and use the money when we knew more about what we faced. Long term, if Kleio’s quest was something worthwhile, we had to start saving for that, too.

  “Do what feels right,” Jo replied.

  ***

  There was a small checkbox next to each item, so I ticked the one by the magic bullet. I hovered over the one for the staff for a long time, but I wasn’t ready to blow over half my credits on what was essentially a giant gamble. What if the magic of his staff did something insane, like helping the user grow better weed? Lord Bart dressed like a well-heeled pot head, so that was a possibility.

  I decided not to select the staff. If we got into battle and needed one more weapon, I hoped there would be time to go back in and select it.

  The big red ‘Apply’ button was impossible to miss at the bottom of the page, so I pressed it to finalize my choice.

  “Let’s see what—” I was cut off by a loud cracking noise up in the trees.

  A giant white shape fell out of the dense canopy. As it bent and snapped the branches on its way down, I got a better look at its shape.

  “A horse?” Tex asked.

  The falling horse appeared destined to impact face-first in our clearing, but just before it smacked down, it unfurled a massive pair of wings and whinnied furiously like it knew it had been going too fast to stop.

  “Down!” I shouted.

  We all threw ourselves to the ground to avoid being bowled over by the huge creature. It came so close to our heads the wind tussled my hair. The twenty-foot wingspan further blew us around as it pumped hard to return to the sky.

  “Where did that thing come from?” I cried out.

  It broke a few more branches as it flapped its white bird wings. The ungainly-looking creature rose higher in the forest until it reached the topmost greenery.

  We all shared a few moments of wonder as we got back to our feet.

  “They don’t grow ‘em like that where I come from,” Tex said with awe. “Though I wish they did. She was beautiful.”

  “And she had wings,” I said in a Captain Obvious kind of way. “I think it was a Pegasus.”

  I looked down at the dirt by my feet and noticed something gold.

  “Well, shit. Now I get it.” I reached for the magic bullet.

  “He’s our Hedwig,” Jo said as we all looked at what the horse brought us.

  “Our what?” I asked.

  “Harry Potter?” she asked with surprise. “Don’t you read?”

  We shared a look and she cracked up laughing. “Of course you don’t. You only pretended to read when you came over to my house for those study breaks.” She used air quotes on ‘study breaks.’

  “I might have seen the movie,” I replied. “But I don’t remember too much of it.”

  “Hedwig delivered the mail for the hero. I guess the system worked in the movies, so they use it here. Why mess with success?” Jo picked up the bullet and held it up like it was a powerful artifact.

  “Hang on to that a second.” I jumped back on my phone and got to the page where I could draw pictures to focus my magic. I found the saved sketch of my gun and added a picture of the magic bullet. I drew an arrow to the magazine and notated it with ‘Magic shell allows unlimited firing of magic rounds.’ I hit save and then put my phone in my pocket.

  I yanked the magazine from the rifle and found it empty. The normal bullets were now gone, replaced by a gold-colored bullet-shaped depression at the end of the metal box. It was all very logical, as if the magic understood the details as long as I was clear on what I desired of the weapon.

  Once I placed the shell into its slot, the magic round glowed blue.

  “Lock n’ load,” I said as I slammed the magazine into the receiver and pulled the charging handle to get the first round into the chamber. I gave the gun a once-over because it all seemed so simple with magic.

  My weapon was created by modifying the handgun of one of the guards who’d been keeping watch on Jo, Nora, and Lucy. My magic transformed the pistol into a modern AR-style rifle, though I couldn’t be sure it was an exact replica. I’d only seen them in video games.

  “Do I test it here?” I asked the women before realizing I had no choice.

  “Tex, keep the sound down, OK?”

  She focused for a second. “Done.”

  I ticked off the safety, aimed at a distant tree, and pulled the trigger once. The noise was shockingly loud as the round fired, and a laser-like light beam went a hundred yards into the forest before it impacted the trunk of a giant tree just next to the one I’d aimed for.

  “Holy crap!” I shouted. My ears rang like crazy. “That was a tracer round, I think.” Again, all my experience with guns came from behind a mouse and keyboard.

  I lined up a second shot and let it go. Another burst of light ripped across the
forest and disappeared from view.

  “Damn, this is fine,” I said with relief. I was comfortable my magic worked. I now had a rifle with an endless magazine of magic bullets.

  “I want to give this a name. Maybe I’ll call it …” I was going to name it after Sarah since she was depending on me to rescue her, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate having a gun named after her. “Candy.”

  “Why?” they said almost in unison.

  “Simple,” I replied. “If we ever get caught with our pants down again like this morning, I’m going to ask one of you to get my Candy for me. Our enemies will never know what it means.”

  “OK,” Tex replied, “but let’s not get caught with our pants down again.”

  “Awe, but I’m learning how much I like having your pants off,” Jo said with a feline purr.

  “So do I, but she’s right,” I said. “We’ve got to be smarter from here on out. But, to be fair, even Banger didn’t see the witch arrive.”

  Jo had an answer. “Magic shielded her.”

  “Maybe we can make a magic detector,” I replied. With enough time and resources I felt like I could craft anything.

  “We know our mission. We have our weapons. I think this is enough to get us started across this forest, don’t you?” I didn’t want to order them around like a squad leader because I was new at being in charge. If they had ideas on how we could stay alive, I wanted to hear them.

  Tex tipped her straw cowgirl hat. “Lead on.” She bent over to give me a little bow and I admired her breasts as they strained against her tight tan t-shirt.

  I absently noted how we all needed better uniforms for this game. We were late to the tryouts, so we didn’t even have the same battle armor worn by the other teams.

  In Jo’s case, she was fine for now. In the short battle between her and Ivona, I realized there was something magical about the metal breastplate the witches all wore. Any non-magical girl in the same bikini top would have been dead ten times over.

  And I wasn’t much better. My tan t-shirt and camo long pants didn’t have much protection beyond being a sunblock.

  “OK, ladies. Follow me.” I strode with purpose into the forest as if I knew where I was going. To some extent, I did: north. My phone’s map would keep us on the path of righteousness until we reached the red pin. However, I felt kind of queasy knowing what was out there.