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Mingling Universes - Chaos Threshold

by Zmeydros

~Tuesday, 09/28/1993 - Tengen~

The desert around me was basically a sun-powered pottery oven. I was the pottery. The fact that my fur hadn't been set aflame was the only thing I had going for me.

We knew Vishti wanted to wipe out Kallabash Fort and then head through the Foci so she could kill Ezzie on Earth. I'd made the mistake of taking our assessment of the situation for granted and allowed her to surprise me.

The ebb and flow of magic energy told me that she was a couple hundred feet behind me. My eyes told me that the world was a fuzzy mish-mash of colorless shapes. A severe blow to the back of the head did wonders to change one's perspective on the world. I had Vishti to thank for that, the last time she'd tried to kill me.

Our mutual heat exhaustion had turned the chase into an urgent stroll. Perhaps both of us would die out here. Even that would be an improvement.

I was just close enough to smell the guards in the fort that surrounded the Foci. They smelled like stale ale and stale armpits. One of them was an anthro skunk, but he actually smelled the cleanest. Perhaps he was more careful about his hygiene due to the stereotypes foisted upon him or perhaps he just had good sense and was careful with his water ration.

None of this mattered, however. Nearly every guard was going to die. I'd expected them to already be dead. The only reason I was still alive was that I got lost and Vishti had gone looking for me instead of waiting at the fort to ambush me. Yes, now that I knew I was Vishti's target, it was clear that her impatience was the only reason I was still breathing.

Yelling at the top of my lungs, I cried, "Clear the fort! Vishti is here!"

A guard on the southwest corner moved his arm, probably to look through binoculars. A couple seconds later, he hollered, "Vishti The Orb approaches! All mages to the ready!"

I screamed out, "No! Evacuate! She's at maximum!" but the commotion inside the fort drowned me out.

The reason that the people in the fort were acting as though they could fend off Vishti was that honest accounts of her power were treated like folk tales. I had to warn them properly. If I could get one person to evacuate, my death wouldn't be in vain.

Unwrapping the magic-imbued rope I kept around my waist, I tied the end to the handle of my war hammer. Then, I did the most courageous thing I'd done all day: I stopped. Swinging my hammer in a broad circle, I let go at the perfect moment. It arced up and over the wall of the fort. In that fraction of a second it cleared the wall, I closed my eyes and became weightless.

When I opened my eyes, I was falling onto the walkway at the top of the wall and the hammer was where I'd been just a moment before. The hammer and I were inseparable, interchangeable, two parts of the same being.

The Foci the fort guarded had an irregular shape that reminded me of half a butterfly wing and was in the center near the back wall. Due to the strong relationship between Foci and magic, I could see it clearer with my magic sense than I could visually see the possum standing next to me.

The world on the other side of it, the Nevada desert, flitted in and out of view like a pooled reflection pattered by raindrops. Well, that's what I saw a few years ago, before my vision was destroyed. Using my magic sense, I could feel the breathtaking turbulence of the Foci's surface.

"Hey Tengen!" the burly possum on the walkway said. He turned to address the whole fort while pointing at me with an open hand.

I saluted them. Finally something was going my way. He was going to let me order the evacuation. Before I could speak, he proved I was very wrong.

"Look everyone! She's here! Tengen The Hammer has come to aid in our defen--"

"No! Evacuate the fort now!" I looked around the fort at all the figures estimating the location of their faces so I could seem sincere. "Vishti can only be beaten on open terrain!"

The rocks under my feet, the rocks of the walls, the mortar, everything vibrated as cracks formed in the walls. I grabbed my hammer out of thin air and turned to face the Vishti-sized dot about a hundred feet away.

The possum grabbed my shoulder and said, "No playing hero, get through the Foci and find Ezzie. If we fall, you two are our next line of defense."

I would have argued, but he was right and we were out of time.

An orb about the size of a cannon ball was flying toward the fort and instead of colliding with it, it stopped just shy of the doors. Guards that had heeded my warning were climbing down rope ladders deployed along the walls. The first of them were just getting out of range as the wall of the fort cracked, twisted, crumbled and started orbiting the orb. I was on that wall, but I was on the far corner and I was orbiting about fifty feet away.

The possum and several other guards were using sand magic to hold themselves in place with tendrils of the desert's largest commodity. Another guard was using fabric magic to fend off the pull of the orb. The rest of the guards caught in the pull were screaming and crying as their bodies were ground to bits by the swirling stone. The possum's head and chest cracked as he became an unfortunate obstacle for two boulders that were passing each other. I took a deep breath and concentrated on using my hammer to keep me from sharing his fate.

It took all my might, but I managed to push off of boulder after boulder and extend my orbit far enough that I would be in line with the Foci when I came around. I found a giant irregular rock from the wall and wedged my footpaws into a crack in the mortar clinging to it. Things were less hectic the further you got from the orb. The orb behaved like a mathematical object called an attractor: as things orbited, they got closer, and the closer they got, the faster they traveled until they traveled so fast that Vishti could fling them off at great speed. She was too busy flinging rocks, planks, cookware, and keystones at the mages opposing her to worry about me.

She probably thought I couldn't do anything, she probably thought I'd be as useless as I was last time I faced her. It was long past her turn to make a mistake and I readied myself by spinning my hammer by its rope.

Now that I was close to the Foci, I could barely make out an arch of stone in the back of the fort. It was still standing despite Vishti's assault. That sparked a memory from when my predecessor fought her. Interesting.

Just as I was lining up with the Foci, I pulled my converger, a four-inch-long crystal with smooth edges, out of my pocket. The tingle of magic traveling down my arm was the most pleasant sensation I'd felt all day.

Sparks from the converger showered the Foci bringing the other side into focus. This is when Vishti realized what I was doing and sent a stone pillar in my direction. After stuffing the converger back in my pocket, I let loose my hammer.

As the pillar smashed into the giant rock I was clinging to, my hammer cleared the Foci. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I was on the other side. The desert that surrounded me was as parched and empty as that on the magical side of the Foci. On this side, the Foci was unprotected and I doubted that anyone from Earth even knew it existed.

Summoning my hammer was usually instantaneous, but it took me several seconds to get it to cross the boundary between worlds. Without it, I was only half me and that would not do. Once I had it in my hand, I pulled out something Ezzie had given me not long after we first met: a transmuter that she'd made herself.

It was a hexagonal stone with rounded edges slightly larger than my palm, and about as thick as a peanut butter cookie. I couldn't make heads or tails of the magical diagrams engraved in it, but they let off a neat soft glow as I let magic flow into it. Normally, I'd transform myself before jumping through a Foci to earth. Anthro fennec foxes drew far too much attention on the non-magical side of reality.

Vishti would have to transform as well, and with how often she jumped worlds, I imagined she had a transmuter much like mine. But I betted that hers took longer to use because hers wasn't made by Ezzie. Ezzie herself didn't need one because she'd incorporated that function into her own body, making her a formidable shapeshifter.

Magic was swirling across the Foci behind me indicating that Vishti was trying to achieve convergence so she could go through. I could feel her presence more and more easily. I doubted she'd killed everyone already, but it was quite likely that she had gotten enough people out of the way that she could resume trying to kill me. I pulled out my converger. If I could buy even a few minutes, I'd increase my chances of survival dramatically.

Overcharging these things made them go until they ran out of magic--a safety feature to keep them from ruining your day. Going through a Foci was a one-way-at-a-time thing, so trying to open one from both sides was a good way to get nothing done. But I wanted nothing to happen, so I set down my converger after letting it gorge on my magic until it was just short of its chaos threshold and set it at the bottom of the Foci. Sure, I wouldn't be able to get home without one of these, but I wouldn't get home at all if I didn't defeat Vishti. And if I defeated her, I'd have one.

I didn't want to stick around and wait for the transmuter to work, so I gave it a bit more magic and smacked it to get it started as I set out on a course away from the foci. Most magic items just ran once you fed them enough magic, but Ezzie loved dramatic flourishes. And it allowed one to gather magic first and then wait before initiating the transformation.

Running across the Nevada desert with no water or survival supplies, I said goodbye to my anthro form. Awful sticky human skin started replacing the fur on my breasts as my wonderful fluffy tail and huge fennec ears shrunk. My absurdly good hearing helped out with the whole visual processing problem, but I had to make sacrifices if I wanted to pass for human. I stumbled as my ankles cracked and I was forced to walk on flat-bottomed human feet. The sand burned my soles; I never needed shoes when I was in my true form.

My muzzle stopped having enough room for my teeth and I winced as it shrunk in and my jaws figured themselves out. It was kinda nice to be able to look down easier, but it wouldn't be long until I was going mad from not being able to smell people's emotions.

Now that I looked human, my chances of dying out in the desert had gone up exponentially. My fennec heritage was really handy in desert environments. If I stayed in that form, however, the first human who saw me might shoot me on sight. You could never be sure what people would do when their sense of reality was tested.

I needed water, and I needed it bad. There were no dark splotches of vegetation, or other indications of water, in sight. Contrary to common belief, even if I found a cactus, drinking from it was a good way to end up vomiting. Nearly all varieties had uncooperative chemistry.

Magic on this side of the Foci was scarce, so I couldn't use my passive magic sense as a second sight. I could take snapshots, however. It wasted a lot of magic, but it could provide clearer images than the passive magic sense could and I sometimes used it even when I was back home. I drew magic from my hammer and collected it in my hands. Then I made a ball of it and swiftly pulled it apart so it made an expanding sphere. I concentrated on any perturbations in the sphere and managed to get a rough idea of what was within a quarter mile of me. There was vegetation over a ridge to the southwest, but no sign of a water source. Crap!

But there was a road, a road with tire tracks east of me that went over that ridge. I dashed over to it. The great thing about the tire tracks was that they had compacted the sand and my footprints weren't showing up. Well, as far as I could tell. I jogged toward a rise hoping it led to a valley that would have tall desert shrubs and cacti so Vishti would have difficulty spotting me. Taller vegetation would also mean I was getting closer to water.

After cresting the ridge, I surveyed the telltale darker gray blotches of plant life. I just followed the road because all the plants were uniform in height and I simply couldn't see well enough to trust that I wouldn't get hopelessly lost. The road led down further and further as I started to feel goofy from dehydration. Two more snapshots showed me the same terrain in all directions.

This was the point where I realized I'd made yet another grave mistake. Surely being discovered in my fennec form would have been less dangerous than dying from dehydration and heatstroke. I'd wasted my magic energy taking snapshots of my surroundings that didn't lead me to water, I was unable to focus enough to gather more, and I was quickly losing my ability to stand upright.

I slumped, I staggered, I tripped, and I collapsed. It took all my will to pull myself to my feet again. Instead of carrying my hammer, I tossed it into a bush and gave it seventy percent of my mass in addition to its own. It took concentration to trade physical attributes with it, but me being significantly lighter made walking easier. It took another two hours for me to stumble and plant my face in the sand again. This time I didn't get up.

* * * * *

The purr of an engine in the distance brought me back to consciousness. I'd been trying to get to a blotch that looked more angular than the surrounding area, a blotch that I thought had windows. The engine noise was coming from the direction of that blotch. I crawled toward it, sand getting all over my sunburned human skin. Eventually someone hollered and came running toward me.

An arm scooped me up and pulled me toward the noise. "I thought you were dead. How did you get here? Where did you get those clothes?"

I tried to answer, but all that came out was a dry croak.

The engine was now right next to us, the person holding me grabbed a long flexible thing coming out of the engine thing and held it near my face. Water, water was spewing out of the flexible thing. It was a hose and I was so far gone I hadn't even realized this engine was a pump. I drank water, but I didn't make the mistake of drinking until I felt ill.

"Orange juice, electrolytes," I said. My English was pretty rusty, so it took me a while to dig out those words.

"Yes, right! I have some Gatorade in the fridge."

"Gatorade?" I replied.

"The stuff they give to athletes? You know, it tastes like watered-down salty fruit juice."

"Oh, yeah." It sounded vile, but I did need salty fruit juice. I let this five-and-a-half-foot tall woman drag me into her house. She sat me at a small oval table with metal along the side and pulled the Gatorade out of the fridge. When I tasted it, I thought it was either poison or medicine. Something that sweet had to have a catch. The only reason I drank it was because my body was at the point it didn't care what liquids it got.

The woman watched me intently, her face full of questions. When I put the bottle back down she asked, "What's your name? I'm Lisa."

"Teng--I mean Tiffany." Sure, I'd had experience having to lie constantly while on earth, but it was screw ups like this that kept me from ever wanting to be a spy. Just from this little mistake, my heart was racing.

"So, how did you end up out here?"

I said the first thing that popped into my head so it didn't seem like I was making up a story, "My friends played a prank on me that went a bit too far. Can you get me back to the city? I'll be fine on my own from there."

"You need new friends," she said.

"Tell me about it," I replied hoping that slang phrase wasn't horribly outdated.

"Was dressing you up like some sort of fighting monk from a ren fest part of the prank?"

Part of successful lying was letting the other person make up the story for you. I nodded shyly as if I was embarrassed. My face felt so strange without a muzzle and I hoped I hadn't botched the expression.

"You poor thing!" She grabbed my hand from across the table. It was gross, tacky human skin against human skin. What I wouldn't have given for my coat of fur...

Reinvigorated by the Gatorade and water, my mind decided that her low peanut-butter-thick voice was very sexy. I started to sniff the air out of reflex only to throw my free hand up and pretend that I was about to sneeze. I'd long since learned that most earth people hated anything that reminded them that they were animals and liked to ignore the fact that same-sex attraction existed.

She'd retracted her hand and leaned back when she thought I was going to sneeze. Her finger traced an arc on the tabletop as she said, "I've got to go into town to get some groceries, how about we leave in an hour or two?"

"The sooner the better, my boyfriend is probably worried sick about me." Of course I didn't tell her the real reason I wanted to go into town ASAP or the fact that I'd be way more likely to have a girlfriend than a boyfriend. My relationships with boys just didn't tend to last as long.

"You can use my phone to call home if you like," she offered.

"Sure." This was good, I could use this. If I could fake a phone call where no one answered, I might be able to get her to go sooner. Both of us were in danger until I got to the city, after all.

She pointed at the far wall near the door and a window that looked out onto the desert. I got up and walked toward the wall trying to figure out which gray blotch was the phone. Was it on the wall? Was it on the end table next to the couch? The far corner? The bit of wall that was between the window and the door? I was still suffering from my time in the desert and my tired dehydrated mind was making even less sense of the world than normal.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, where's the phone?" I asked.

"Right in front of you." I heard her get up and walk up to me. "Do you see it?"

I couldn't play this game anymore. If she saw me take a snapshot with magic so I could find the phone, I'd have way more explaining to do than if I just said, "No, my vision is bad."

She held up a hand, "How many fingers?"

"Three?" I said.

"Hmm, that's right."

"I'm not blind, I just can't see color and my eyes don't focus properly."

"And they left you out in the desert, alone! They could have killed you!" she exclaimed.

I gave her my best put-upon sigh and then said, "They're idiots."

"You've got some bridges to burn once you get back home. That stunt they pulled was very dangerous."

"Agreed."

She reached down to the end table and grabbed the phone. "Do you need me to dial?"

"No, I know where the numbers are." I stooped a bit so I could see the outlines of the buttons. Then I picked up the receiver and hit random keys enduring the piercing pure tone generated by each press. Pausing at six and seven presses, I made sure I didn't hit too many keys and clue Lisa in to my otherworldly origin. I hoped I'd get a wrong number warning, but instead it rang.

"Whoops, wrong one." I hung up immediately and tried again. This time I got a wrong number warning and to make sure Lisa didn't hear it, I talked over it. "It's ringing, but no one's picking up. I hope he's not out looking for me."

"Oh, you better leave a message."

"Leave a message?" I asked.

"Don't you have an answering machine?"

"No," I answered truthfully.

"Do you have anyone else you can call to tell him you're safe?"

I made a sad face and looked down as I hung up the phone.

"You poor thing! You're all alone?"

A simple nod sold Lisa her own story. It didn't matter what it was as long as it got us on the road sooner.

Keeping my eyes on the floor, I shook my head. A bit more sympathy and she'd drive me right away. "The longer I wait, the more worried he'll get. I want to get back before he gets the city guard involved." I nearly put my hand over my mouth, stupid! That was not what they called them! "The police, I mean the police."

She paused a moment having no idea what to make of my slip up. I stayed silent hoping she wasn't reevaluating our whole interaction and was about to decide that I was being less than truthful. My heart beat in my ears and I considered telling her the truth. Anything would be better than her deciding I was a con artist. Fuck! If I told her, I'd break the rules and she'd have so many questions that we'd give Vishti plenty of time to show up. This was it. I'd failed.

I flinched when she put her hand on my shoulder so she removed it. "Let's get you home."

I looked up at her with honest joy on my face. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it. Stay right here while I get my keys and a pair of shoes for you."

After she was back with the shoes, I tried them on. They were a bit small, but they'd do for the near term. I said, "I need to go outside and get something I left out there. Can you bring the car around while I do that?" My phrasing didn't sound good to me, but I really was doing my best.

"Don't you want me to go with you? Won't it be hard to find with your..."

I jumped on her pause. "I put it in a bush next to the road. I remember exactly where it is."

"Okay, just holler if you need help. And I'll just pick you up by the road, then."

She opened the front door and walked toward her car. As she did so, I dashed toward the road. I crouched by a bush, summoned my hammer, and then acted like I was pulling it out of the bush. When she pulled the car around, I opened the door and got in putting my hammer on the floor in front of the back seat. It was two and a half feet long, so it took up one side easily.

She asked, "You carried that all this way? Part of your costume?"

"I'm very attached to it," I said.

"The engraving on it is just gorgeous." She gawked at it a bit more. "Can I take a closer look when I drop you off? "

"Sure." It was too bad Lisa would only know my hammer's appearance. Even hinting at its true nature would have put us in jeopardy. I felt like I owed her more than a string of lies.

I drank two of the water bottles she offered as we traveled across the parched landscape to safety and my way to the rest of the country. It didn't matter where in town she dropped me off, so I told her I lived near the video rental store. I figured the town was only big enough to have one, and I was right.

When she dropped me off, I got out a hundred dollar bill while pretending to search for something in my pockets and dropped it on her back seat.

I would have told her to call the police if she saw another random traveler in the desert today, but that would have been a death sentence for her and any officers that showed up.

* * * * *

Getting to Las Vegas was somewhat easy given the stash of American money I'd brought with me. Finding Ezzie was now my best bet for surviving. If we couldn't deal with Vishti, no one could.

From Las Vegas, I traveled by bus to Denver, where some dragon-allied mages resided. They'd taken up residence in the basement of a pawn shop. They hit Vishti with a locate spell to figure out how much of a head start I had. That was the first good news I'd gotten: she was traveling south toward Arizona.

Due to the anxiety of my being hunted and my desperation to get moving again, not one voice, texture, or other recognizable detail stuck in my mind. All I remembered was trying to make out state boundaries on their map while they chattered around me. Two of them made reservations for my bus and train route to the east coast, two argued about the risks of mounting an offensive against Vishti, and the other one attempted to explain stuff I already knew. None of them were willing to put themselves at risk to try and slow down or stop Vishti.

They weren't very good at listening to me, either. The only time I got to speak for more than one sentence without being interrupted was when they asked me what I wanted to put in my coded message to Ezzie.

They sent me out the door with a set of reservation numbers that would allow me to take buses and trains all the way to the east coast.

Practicing my English on fellow travelers, I was far less rusty by the time I entered Pennsylvania. As I neared Scranton, Ezzie's new home city, I couldn't stop smiling. There was a good chance we'd both die within the next few days, but I still couldn't wipe that excited grin off my face. A month without her was too long!

By the time the bus was pulling into the station, I had another problem...my clit was tingling. After all I'd been through, writhing against Ezzie's scales was exactly what I needed. Ever since I hit puberty, sex was my go-to method for stress relief and magic replenishment.

Most people would think me being horny under these circumstances was strange, but none of them were sex mages, so their opinion didn't count. Some mages needed intense exercise, some needed the thrill of fighting, others needed a book and a cup of tea, whatever could get one's mind into that deep trance-like state where the world fell away and magic could find its way in. Well-trained mages could draw in some magic with a bit of mindful meditation, but to fully soak one's being in it, that required one to enter their favorite mental spaces and linger there.

Yep, sex was my favorite mental space, preferably girl-on-girl.

My libido whispered sweet nothings as it begged me to transform back into my true form. I'm glad I'd put the transmuter in the pack I'd bought in Las Vegas because if it had been in my pocket, I would have transformed out in public. I was so sick of human skin that I was going out of my way to make sure no two parts of my body touched unless absolutely necessary. And now that I was horny, I felt horny and gross at the same time. Possibly the worst combination of feelings.

As cars and pedestrians competed for supremacy, I stayed near the walls of the two-story buildings just outside the bus station. I preferred the calming rough and angular texture of old brick buildings. The smooth concrete ones were far too boring. Old bricks were inanimate witnesses to a building's history. Their chips, gouges, cracks, and pock marks, an unbiased testimony I could read with my fingertips as I tried to make sense of the ebb and flow of the city around them.

This part of the city was like the areas around all the other bus stations I'd been to: an inflamed feverish wound that no one looked at and yet everyone complained about. The impoverished were made invisible unless they were useful for someone's political agenda.

If Ezzie had been with me, we would have had a long discussion about the harsh realities of politics. We'd be together very soon; I could already feel her presence.

She was a bit like me. I had my hammer, she had a fragment of the stuff my hammer was made of inside her. My hammer and her fragment sent ripples through reality like spacetime-bending whale song. For anyone that didn't know us well, the ripples would be hard to separate from the noise of reality itself. But we'd spent so much time together, we could pick out each other's unique song over ten miles away.

Anyone else would have had to find one of our allies living in Scranton and get her address. As it was, we found each other near a cafe that smelled of coffee, pumpkin spice, and bacon. Neither of us knew for sure what the other looked like, so things were awkward at first.

A guy with short hair and searching eyes spotted me from fifteen feet away. I nearly ran into the sandwich board outside the cafe trying to walk up to him.

He was stuck in place, probably drowning in disbelief. It had been a long time and he had no reason to expect me. When I was within a few feet from him, he reached out for a hug. I dove into his arms pressing myself against him while ignoring the raw texture of our skin to skin contact.

My questions would have to wait. This guy had to be Ezzie in disguise, I could hear her song loud and clear. "It's been too long, Ezzie." I wasn't sure which English pronoun to use, but now that I was sure it was Ezzie holding me, my mind went back to old habits from other times we visited Earth together.

"Oh, it has." She ran her fingers through my hair. "Too bad that Vishti's on her way to spoil our fun."

"I wish I'd only come to see you so we could just have some hello sex." I hugged her tighter. "We thought that Vishti was going to destroy Kallabash Fort and then hop through the Foci to come after you. It turns out that killing me was higher on her list."

"Poor Tengen thinking she was going to be the predator only to end up the prey," she nuzzled me.

I chuckled. "I'm not prey, you and I are gonna defeat her or die trying."

"We'll need to collect a lot of magic to do that. The message you sent said she's about two or three days behind you?" Ezzie asked.

I blushed thinking about the sorts of things we'd do to collect magic energy. I hoped that Ezzie could still transform into the dragon I knew. "Yeah, she's going to need help to find us, and the nearest anti-dragon faction is in Phoenix, a rather large detour."

"Good, that's enough time to turn my half-baked plan into a half-assed plan."

I smirked. "Or a poorly-executed full-assed plan."

"That reminds me, I need to fill up my ass, it's running on empty."

I giggled as I groped her ass. "Yeah, this is flat compared to the one I remember." It was time for the question I was dying to ask, "Why are you disguised as a guy?"

Speaking quietly with her cheek against mine, she said, "My other was a guy, so I can take this form instead of having to use transformation magic."

My heart felt like someone had grabbed it and started tugging it toward my feet. "You merged with your other? So you're not Ezzie anymore? Why can't the universes just stay separate. This one sucks and we don't need that suckitude combined with our awesome."

"They were bound to merge since the moment our universe was split in two. We were on borrowed time." He gave me a squeeze. "And don't worry, the two people that combined into me were so alike that I bet you'll have trouble telling the difference, well, except for a few things."

"A few things?"

"Yeah, Ryan brought writing, meditation, public speaking, and orienteering skills into the merger. His personality was a bit less abrasive than mine and I feel less annoyed by things."

"But I liked how you got all annoyed, it was cute," I said.

She laughed. "Oh, I still get plenty annoyed. He had a lot of pet peeves about this society. Hmm, I'm talking about him like he's not here...He and I are the same now, so just view it as me telling you about him before we merged. In my head, there's no 'he' and 'me.'"

"I think that makes sense," I said playing with the hem at the bottom of her shirt.

"Oh, and call me 'she' when you refer to me, I feel that fits me better. Though, you're going to have to use 'he' when not talking to someone from Rischkaum. They don't see gender being as fluid as we do and their language has these confusing gendered pronouns."

"Don't even get me started on English. Worst language, ever. I screwed it up so much on my way here that people treated me like a foreigner even though I've watched American TV shows to try and get some of the slang. I once referred to the police as 'the city guard.' Why can't the concept of 'person who protects people from crime' be the same word in every language? Why even have all these languages? Can't we just get everyone together and agree on one word for each concept? It works for mathematicians."

"Let me guess, you want everyone to speak in mathematical equations."

"It would be an improvement!"

"But math can't lie, so no one would want to use it as a language."

"There's plenty of false solutions to well-known math problems that have fooled people. Plus, even if that weren't the case, lying is overrated." I glared at her, a playful grin pulling at my lips.

She chuckled. "Remember how bad I was as spelling English words? I can now spell annoying words like 'weird,' 'accommodate,' 'rhythm,' 'indict,' and 'conscience' on the first try. And--" She whispered the next part directly into my ear, "I have a cock and balls in addition to my pussy now, and in my scaly form, I get my breasts back."

My blush was more like a heat wave that traveled across my skin and I started to tingle everywhere. I wasn't that into guys, but if a cock and balls were accompanied by a pussy and breasts, that struck gold for me.

Ezzie had always liked using strap-ons. It made sense her counterpart would be a guy, probably one that wanted a pussy of their own. Ezzie reached into my overalls and cupped my ass. I reflexively bent my knees and tilted my pelvis toward her, she put her knee between my legs.

We were in public and I was now rubbing my crotch on her leg while staring up in awe at a face I'd never seen before. A face framed by short lazy curls and prominent cheek bones. A thin-lipped mouth dove down to mine and I experienced my first human on human kiss.

It felt clumsy, warm, and very erotic. Her arousal was hard to pick out of the smells of the city and baked goods surrounding us, but even as a human I had a good nose. She was getting excited too, not just the throbbing shaft trapped in the claustrophobic embrace of her jeans, but also the muff I'd buried my tongue in countless times.

The familiar smell of her readiness drove me to distraction and I yipped.

We disentangled our bodies and fought the temptation to hop back into each other's embrace. Both of us knew if we got any more worked up, we'd risk news coverage. She grabbed my hand and whisked me down the street, urgency in each step. Warning me about upcoming obstacles was second nature to her and I walked briskly for the first time in several days. It felt like flying.

I was so focused on the annoying but pleasant sensation of our palms touching and avoiding people and tripping hazards that I didn't see where we were going. Eventually, Ezzie stopped in front of a brick building. As we got closer to the door, I could see that the bricks weren't mottled like the old bricks elsewhere. When I touched them, I confirmed that the edges were sharp and new. We went up a roomy central stairwell as the scent of someone's beef curry made my mouth water. I was hungry, but that could wait. I had plans for Ezzie once we were safely hidden from the world.

Ezzie's door had a nick in it just under the handle. The hallway to her third story apartment was clean, but the carpet felt thin and cheap under my shoes. Much like the fake grass stuff that I found here and there. It seemed that Earth people would one day cover the entire planet in a shaggy layer of plastic.

The door opening brought Ezzie's scent and the smell of fresh parmesan to my nose. The moisture that hung in the air spoke of freshly made pasta. As we stepped inside, I caught the sweet aroma of the wheat in the noodles. If I had my choice, I'd go for the beef curry, but the pasta would do.

As Ezzie latched the door, I grabbed her from behind and pressed my breasts against her back. "We need to transform."

"We need to close the blinds," she replied turning around and grabbing my hand. She led me to her bed. "I'll be right back."

Setting my pack down, I dug into the main pocket and pulled out my transmuter. Once I'd filled it with magic, I smacked it and started pulling off my clothes. Fur sprouted on my feet as I stepped out of my shoes. Lazy air currents tickled the whiskers on my cheeks as my nose darkened and pushed away from my face dragging my jaws with it. After throwing my shirt off, I could see the light fur coming in on my belly.

I shivered when I gave the fur a stroke, my hands were getting paw pads and a nice coat of fur that was traveling up my arms. Ezzie came in while I was taking off my bra, so I flung it at her.

She caught it and set it on the back of a rocking chair that faced the window. "Aww, I thought we were gonna do it as humans."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Never gonna happen. Get scaly or I'll just start pawing myself off."

"You'd give an ultimatum to a dragon? That's bold of you." Her nostrils widened as her muzzle came in.

"More like dragon horse...a seahorse!" I teased as my tailbone stretched the skin around it. I groaned at the welcome but strange sensation.

"Hey! House Bittirfusk is registered as a dragon house. It's not like anyone knows what the dragons of old looked like for sure. They could have had manes and horse-like muzzles." As her spotted scales replaced the skin on her neck and face, she threw off her shirt. From the time before I lost my color vision, I knew the light green scales of her body were dappled by hand-sized patches of dark green scales.

"Oh yeah? What about the ubiquitous lizard-like depiction with big sharp teeth? Even earth people know that one. You think everyone else is wrong?" The fluffy fur on my tail was so luxurious that I couldn't help but run my paw pads over it as it came in. My ankles popped as my feet took on their digitigrade shape.

Ezzie made me moan by rubbing at my toes as they took on their proper paw-like texture and shape. "If we included everyone's opinion, we'd have a jumble of contradictions no one could depict. Ever seen members of House Lurliantal?" She pulled off her pants, but was too late with her boxers. Her tail ripped right through the back as she gasped in surprise.

Seeing that tail burst out from her backside made my sex twitch. I rubbed my clit as I tried to continue the conversation, "I think they carry their fur well and their long dangling whiskers are neat. And even they have pointy teeth."

"But wouldn't anyone trade those sharp teeth and flat forked tongues for this?" She put her muzzle to my slit and slid her long thick giraffe-like tongue inside me.

My language capacity shattered as I yipped and yowled in surprise. Fur spread across my back as my ears grew longer and longer and longer rocketing toward their fennec proportions. In a moment of respite from her oral assault, I scooted back and lay against the headboard so I could watch her transform.

That boring human penis of hers was darkening as scales covered her thighs. Each lick inside me spread me wider. Fur grew in on my inner thighs making her scales feel even better against me. She kissed my muff rubbing the flat front of her muzzle on my clit and mound. I howled in pleasure spasming around her tongue as bliss grabbed me and tossed me into the air.

Weightless from her graceful cunnilingus, magic rushed in like air filling a vacuum. The flow allowed me to sense her body transform in stunning detail. I could practically feel her prick grow to more equine proportions. My breasts and nipples tingled as her flat chest rose, my ass and hips throbbed as she put on curves, and my clit sparkled sending aches of pleasure up my spine as the head of her cock flattened.

She pulled her muzzle away, her ankles popping while her feet became clawed and dragony. Looking at my completely transformed body, she said, "Beautiful," as if she'd just logically proved that word applied to me and no one else.

I wanted to respond in kind and say something with equal conviction, but instead my senses gorged on her double-knotted horse cock. It was absolutely fantastic. Something she'd designed for the sheer erotic joy it could bring with no thought wasted on the people that would call her a pervert for it. I knew dragons from house Bittirfusk didn't all have shafts like hers. Theirs were ribbed with a single knot and more of a taper. No, what was before me was an erotic art project. An art project I wanted shoved inside me.

She chuckled as she grabbed my head and guided me to the object of my fixation. I could smell her so clearly now, this new masculine musk called to my crotch so strongly that I whined with need. Licking it was like tasting salt for the first time. Pulling in her scent, I bathed my mind in it, wallowed, and then memorized every detail. She was different, but still so familiar. Nuzzling and sniffing her crotch like this was something humans thought they were above, so it was good I wasn't human. I wanted to be able to smell her from a mile away, to call up her scent from memory so I could bask in the comfort it afforded me.

Scales finally took over her sides and arms as her fingernails became more claw-like. I could feel that she was nearly complete, the tide of magic had not stopped. Every crease, curve, and fold of her body was not only seen, but felt. Cupping her big palm-filling balls, I opened my maw and slipped it over the head of her shaft.

A salty splash on my tongue put the wag in my tail and it thumped on the bed as I struggled to taste more of her. The texture of her scaly sac was so smooth that I couldn't keep my hand still and it rubbed at her dangling masculinity endlessly. The more I played with her erection, the more I wanted it, the wetter and hotter I got. I couldn't believe my luck. A cock belonged on her, she'd always thought so and I'd always agreed. This wasn't the Ezzie I knew, this was the Ezzie we'd both wished she could be.

She growled and rolled her hips as I grabbed onto her length with my free hand and stroked along with my oral treatment. A couple minutes later, I longed to feel her plush folds around my fingers, so I delved behind her balls and slipped fingers inside.

She only endured this for a minute before grabbing my cheeks and guiding me off her. Looking into my eyes, she said, "Get on all fours and lift that tail so I can feel you stretch around my cock." Her ears lengthened and got pointy as her mane grew in down her back to half way down her tail.

I moaned and grabbed at my breasts. Just hearing her say that was sending delight through me. Instead of obeying, I growled and pushed her onto her back. Straddling her, I set my pussy lips to slide on her shaft as I felt up her breasts. They were still coming in and as they became more plump and heavy, I yipped and stroked her length with my snatch. After they were fully formed, her ears lengthened and got pointy. She was complete, but I wanted one more thing from her, something only a handful of mages could do on the spot. I was extra horny and feeling extra kinky.

I groped her tits, they were already a handful, but I knew she could do better. "Can you do that thing where you make them bigger?"

She rolled her eyes. "You've got an obsession, you know that?"

"That wasn't a 'no,'" I informed her while keeping my pressure on her erection, feeling it move across my slit.

Magic went to her chest as she took deep breaths and focused. Her pliable orbs pressed back against my hands swelling ever larger, heavier. Once they were far more than a handful, and big even for her wide frame, she stopped. I gasped and groaned and yipped feeling so much grabbable, gropeable, caressable suppleness under my hands. I came from it all, came with my pussy pressed against her equine meat, came simply from seeing, feeling, her body take on these lewd proportions. Magic started to pool in me, my mind touching infinity for the second time that night.

Her eyes stayed fixed on me, in awe of the power of my fetish.

In celebration of her wondrous shapeshifting, I bent down and took one of her plump nipples into my mouth.

Her hips jerked, her head bucked, and her tail curled as I flicked my tongue and nibbled at her sensitive flesh. My fingers trapped the other nipple between them tugging and squeezing. She cried out so loudly and gyrated so wildly that I was nearly thrown off.

As I was trying to switch to her other nipple, she grabbed my shoulders and growled as she rolled us onto our sides. Getting onto her hands and knees, she grabbed my hips and pulled me up off the bed until I was on all fours. Her lust-filled stare made me lift my tail on instinct and she leaned over me, massive breasts resting on my ass while she drove two fingers into me. I cried out in need as she said, "Naughty fox! Once I'm sure I've got you stretched and ready, I'm going to plow you like two feet of snow."

I was too busy moaning to be amused by her analogy and just as I thought I'd adjusted to her sudden rough treatment, she added a third finger. My thoughts took up too much space, all I could do was keep my ass pointed upwards and groan into the sheets.

It had been a while since I'd had anything inside me and she was relentless in spreading me wider and wider. A warmth in the soles of my feet and the base of my tail told me I was getting close. I tried to tell her, but the way my muscular tunnel stretched over her knuckles each time she thrust with her hand was too much. She fought me trying to keep me open as my feverish flesh clenched around her fingers. I covered my head with a pillow and yowled at the top of my lungs.

The sharp biting orgasm left me lusting for more. I pulled the pillow off my head and looked back at her with pleading eyes. My heart started pounding as she got up onto her knees and lined up with my snatch.

Just as she was opening her mouth to tease me more, I backed onto her prick and splayed my pussy across the barbaric blunt head of her shaft. Before she could jerk back, the head popped in and we both gasped.

"You are the naughtiest fox!" she bellowed as she grabbed the base of my tail and stuffed more into me.

My cries of passion were tangled up in my breaths. She was absurdly large and I felt full before half of her was in me. But there always seemed to be more. Each inch added sent lightning through me, pleasure on the edge of pain. Exhilarating to the point of exhaustion. Digging her claws into my toned rump, she pulled most of herself out and then drove back in deeper than before.

I came again, tail twitching, ears burning, breath caught in my throat. Magic poured into me, my whole body a resonant vessel for its song. It was no surprise I was orgasming so many times, it sometimes took a dozen of them to sate me.

"Couldn't help yourself. You saw my cock and had to have it. But it's not enough is it? I bet you won't be satisfied until you have both knots lodged in you." She leaned over me and grabbed one of my breasts as she shoved herself in until her first knot was rubbing against my mound. "Say it, tell me how much you need it."

Biting my lip, I tried to not admit it. It was embarrassing to want something this much. I'd just gotten off, but with her knot ready to go in, I was smoldering under my fur. It was less a blush and more like being naked in a scorching desert. So exposed, so hot, so in need. Looking back at her, I turned my snout up in defiance. I wasn't going to cave the moment someone offered me a knotted cock, no matter how much I craved it. She had to want this as much as I did.

"I guess I'll just pull out then, probably shouldn't have let you cum three times before I got to the main event." Ezzie's shaft started to slide out.

Desperation brought words to my muzzle, "No! Breed me! Shove both knots in! Tie me!"

She gave me a confident grin. "That sounds more like a command. You can do better."

I hated, loved, her for that grin. My annoyance wasn't nearly enough to stop me from obeying. She had me, the longer her knots were outside me, the more powerful my instincts became. Pointing my tail straight up and angling my head and ears down in submission, I said, "Please, I need you to knot me and fill me with your cum! Please...make me your bitch!" It was embarrassing, erotic, and the lewdest thing Ezzie had ever made me say. I was already planning to get her back for it.

"I knew you could do better!" With that, she grabbed my hips and started nailing me right into the bed. My breasts rebounded off the mattress with every firm thrust. She growled, I yipped. The pleasure made my voice hoarse. The first knot slammed at my entrance over and over.

Just as I started to wonder how she could last so long, her thrusts changed. She started prodding, pushing, stretching me. It felt impossible, but neither of us would accept failure. The more we tried, the more determined we became. The more my clit, nipples, and the base of my tail burned with ecstatic flames. I took deep breaths, lingering on the edge of orgasm, and relaxed.

Crying out as my abused passage parted just a tiny bit more, I felt Ezzie's first knot get pulled in by my tightness. Her second knot rubbed at my clit as I came so hard that I dug my claws into the pillow I'd put over my head. She didn't let up, she pressed on saying, "Take it!"

I did. Even though the second knot was bigger than the first, neither of us let up until it popped inside me.

Ezzie's fantastic weighty balls were now pressed firmly against my clit, the feeling of her warm scales there made our entire coupling richer. As her length flared in my depths and her thick cream poured out, I tore the pillow to shreds causing feathers to spill out. My screeches were probably going to get us far more attention than we wanted. I'd never been taken like this and my whole body was at a loss for how to express the overwhelming pleasure of it.

Her very undragonlike whinny was loud even through the remnants of the pillow I'd ruined. As she filled me, she kept moving her hips back and forth making us both let out a series of gasps. Her hands groped my round well-muscled ass, pet my back and sides, and then tossed the pillow to the side so she could scratch behind my ears and make me forget I had bones.

Basking in contentment as thick as honey, I literally glowed from the sheer amount of magic flowing into me. My pussy felt so used and full, my throat was sore from all the screaming, and my muscles stung from exertion. I was the best kind of wreck.

I wished I could see the color of her scales now that they were illuminated by turbulent magic. It was a memory I'd hold on to for the rest of my life, the way her greens became so vibrant that they were practically alive. When I'd first seen her after sex, I'd thought she was a forest incarnate. Even now, with my limited vision, I could still say, "You're fucking gorgeous."

"Love you too," she said as she leaned in and pressed her front against my back.

Pressing upwards just so I could feel more of her enormous scaly bosom against my back, I said, "Love you."

Tickling the fur on the sides of my breasts with her fingertips, she said, "You think we should change back in case someone comes to investigate all the animal noises?"

"Nah, we're not full up on magic yet." I pressed my butt more firmly against her crotch and gave her knots a squeeze.

She murred and dug her fingers in to my breasts. "At this rate, my knots are never gonna soften."

"We'll just have to fight Vishti while we're tied, then."

She chuckled. "Sounds like a plan."

There was a knock at the door. As I was sputtering trying to figure out what to do, Ezzie just grabbed me round the middle and moved us off the bed. I wrapped my legs around her hips to help her support my weight. We had to stifle a lot of moans.

Once she was in front of the door, Ezzie said, "Yes?"

"Are you okay in there?" the nasal masculine voice asked.

"Yeah, sorry about the noise," Ezzie said.

"What the hell was all that?"

"Some very loud sex," I said.

Ezzie held my muzzle shut and said, "Sorry, my friend is a doofus. We were playing...a game?"

I started laughing which made me clench on Ezzie's knot. She moaned right there in front of the door.

"Whatever. Just keep it down, will you?"

"Yes, won't happen again, sorry.," I said.

"Good." I heard the guy walk away.

The moment he was gone, Ezzie let go of my muzzle and said, "What were you thinking?"

"That was the most believable explanation and the one that would make the other person feel the most awkward and want to leave the conversation. I wasn't doing it only to mess with you." It was odd having a conversation with her while we were in front of her door with her still inside me and me trying to help her hold me up.

"That makes sense, I guess...Wait, you did it partially to mess with me?" she asked.

"Yup!"

She marched us back to the bedroom as she said, "After I pull out, you owe me so much oral..."

The next few hours were filled with debauchery. I licked out her pussy till she was raw. I rode her over and over till I was raw. By the end of it, we could hardly get off the bed. But we were incandescent with magic. Anyone with a magic sense that got within a few hundred feet of us would think about running. And they were the smart ones. Ezzie and I had a synergy that neither I, nor any of my predecessors, had experienced before. The people that called us the sluttiest sex mages in all Rischkaum weren't wrong. We simply could not get enough of each other. That's why we woke up in the middle of the night and did it again.

Things were even better now that Ezzie had a cock.

We ended up making two different things for breakfast because we were so hungry. I made corn pancakes and then Ezzie made eggs and toast. As we were collaborating on the dishes, I was fascinated by the stripes of light coming through the mini blinds. They made the contours of everything in the room stand out, the wonderful fullness of Ezzie's ass, for instance.

The moment all the dishes were dealt with, I said, "We need figure out a way to defeat Vishti."

"Is she going to be at her max when we fight her?"

"I don't know how she works, it seems like she's at max attunement every time we fight her. There was maybe one time I fought her when she couldn't level buildings. Not that it mattered. My best option, even then, was to run and hope I could get enough help to get her to decide I was too much trouble."

Ezzie sat at the table and I took the chair next to her. She said, "We'll just have to beat her at maximum, then."

My ears fell. "Do you have a plan for that? Because I don't."

She grabbed my hand. "I think you do have a plan."

"What?" I raised an eyebrow.

"You've fought her more than I have. There has to be something we can use to our advantage. If we could find a place where there were handholds or trees or something else I could wrap my tail around, I could extend it and grab on to avoid getting pulled toward her orb. The problem is that I can't grow my tail out more than thirty-ish feet, though, and her orb's range is at least a hundred."

"Oh!" My ears perked up. "I wonder if we could get our hands on a grenade or a rocket launcher. The orb would pull the projectiles toward it, but if the explosion was big enough, it would hit her too."

"That might not kill her on the first try and, once she knew what we were doing, she'd fling debris at whatever we sent toward her. Plus, we'd have to raid a military base to get a rocket launcher or anything that would explode big enough to hit her too."

"A sniper rifle?" I asked.

Ezzie shrugged. "Neither of us is skilled in stealth or marksmanship. Have you been watching a lot of action movies?"

I scratched at a bit of egg yolk that had dried on the table. "Last time I was here, I watched too many of them, I guess. It's just...we need something she won't expect."

She gave my hand a squeeze. "Yeah, I know. I don't think it's a bad idea to use Earth weapons, but we'd need a lot more time to set that up."

"I'd suggest we get a team of mages to help us, but she'd just use them as projectiles to fling at us. That is unless we set up something long-range."

"It would have to be a very skilled mage using electricity, light, entropy, or maybe a spell archer?" One of her ears fell as she thought. "The spell archer would have to counter the pull of the orb...if only Seff the Spear was here. I doubt the orb could divert his spear."

"Yeah, didn't he take out an entire town at one point?" I asked.

Ezzie shrugged. "Who knows, that was ages ago and people love to tell tall tales about Quaetken. I overheard someone saying you could level Kallabash Fort with one swing of your hammer."

I hung my head. "And now it's gone."

"So sorry, didn't mean to bring that up."

"It's okay." I put on a weak smile trying to stay upbeat. "I don't think it's smart for us to plan for support from other mages unless you know someone within a day's travel from here that is devastating at long range."

"No, everyone useful I can think of is back in Rischkaum."

"Then we need a plan that just the two of us can execute."

We remained silent for a couple minutes before I finally remembered my observation from earlier. "Hey, you ever noticed that some things don't get pulled in by the orb?"

"No, I thought everything did."

"Desert sand, soil, extremely large rocks, especially sturdy construction, like concrete. I think the orb has limits to the tidal forces it can cause and if an object is too big and can't be broken apart, it stays put."

She nodded. "A size range makes sense. Otherwise she'd be wasting magic by moving tiny things that would get stopped by air resistance or things so large that she'd waste all her magic energy moving them."

"That means the best place to fight her is in an area that's all one piece. Like a big empty concrete building or a--"

"Empty parking lot!" She bounced in her chair.

"Yeah!" I nodded.

Ezzie's ears flicked. "Wait, back up, all that magic energy she uses...Most shardtools use more finesse. The Impossible Knife just cuts things, The Puppeteer's Needle just controlled people's motions, your hammer is a bit more complicated, but even it doesn't use anywhere near as much energy as The Orb."

"Okay, we know she's powerful, what are you getting at?"

"I bet you her orb is operating just at the edge of its chaos threshold. It has to store enough energy to not only rip buildings and landscapes apart, but enough energy to hold all that stuff aloft while adding kinetic energy to it."

My tail started wagging. "And, have you ever sensed magic flow around her when she was kicking your ass?"

"No, but I'm assuming it's rather intimidating."

I laughed. "Intimidating? It's utterly ridiculous. I bet you she's never had to work to collect magic because her orb is already drawing so much. When she activates it, all the magic in the area gets caught in its whirlpool. The part of the flow that goes to her, she redirects into the orb."

"Oooh, even better. With her constantly topping it off, she's keeping it at the edge of its threshold. Imagine what would happen if we put something that's well over its threshold right next to the orb."

I balked. "You wouldn't! That's way too much energy in one place. There'd be a hole in reality, a singularity."

"Look, she's the only Quaetken whose shardtool it would work on, so there's no way she'd expect it and it would neutralize her orb."

"And maybe us, and maybe the entire area around us..." I sighed. "Fine, but only as a last resort." It was just like Ezzie to treat the most dangerous path to success as desirable.

"I've got an extra converger." She thought for a moment. "I should be able to modify it so it has a much higher chaos threshold."

"Yeah! High magic density in a small volume. It's the perfect recipe for something that would fail catastrophically," I said.

"Exactly! Now, I'm going to get to work doing some horrifically unsafe magic engineering. You can be my extra pair of hands."

By the time she was done modifying the converger, we were starving. We ordered pizza and had some very lazy sex. When it came time for bed I couldn't stop smiling. Life didn't get much better than a cozy day with one's girlfriend.

The next day, we camped at the site of a large abandoned grocery store south of Scranton. Giant orangish-red letters spelled out the words "Food Mule" on the boarded-up facade of this ugly concrete monstrosity from the seventies. There were some shopping carts still nestled under the cantilevered front of the store.

The whole area surrounding it had been forgotten. Though, we lucked out on the parking lot, it must have been repaved not long before the store went out of business and only had a few cracks. To increase our chances of living, we spent hours clearing any and all debris we found while we brainstormed to better our plan.

The day after that, outside on a big plaid blanket, we were a heaving tangle of limbs. Just before we got each other off with our tongues, we were hit by a locate spell.

We glowed like we were being hit by sunbeams even though the sun had passed the horizon. The spell was no joke. Vishti had likely bullied a whole team of mages into casting it. Feeling more exposed than ever before, I pulled my tongue out of Ezzie and said, "She's coming."

Ezzie retrieved her tongue. "No I'm not, you just stopped."

"Not you, I mean Vishti," I said.

She laughed.

I groaned.

She laid her head on my thigh. "You know, it's okay if this is it for me. I'm just so content right now, I'm not sure I can even describe it."

"I feel the same." Just as I started feeling sorry for myself, for us, I made a fist. Hearing Ezzie drop her normal confidence had stirred something in me. Surprising myself, I said, "Actually, I'm not okay with that. Vishti's dragon slaying has to end. I've been thinking I was going to die for days, I'm sick of it. Just this once, she's going to lose."

Ezzie hugged me tight. "I love you."

I hugged her back "I love you too."

Sixteen hours later, in the middle of a silly philosophical discussion with Ezzie, I grabbed her and pulled us both to the ground. I felt magic, a familiar shrill song. "Vishti's here."

"How far away?" Ezzie's ears twitched in different directions trying to hear our foes.

"Four hundred feet behind us, approaching fast. No, she's stopped and there's something..." I jumped up as I sensed a rapidly-transforming lanky man in a business suit whose vibration was a low thrum. "A mist wolf!"

"Fuck!" Ezzie jumped up. "I'll take him, you get Vishti. You know what to do."

The guy took his newly-formed wolf claws and utterly destroyed his business suit as his widening frame ripped the seams. I was in my fighting clothes. Loose pants, top that hung a bit open to let air in, and my magic-fortified rope wrapped around my furry waist. I summoned my hammer and hurriedly tied the rope to it.

I felt Vishti summon her orb. Before she could send it toward me, I was already swinging my hammer. After I let go, I transferred nearly all my mass into it concentrating to maintain the same trajectory.

Vishti shouldn't have let herself get distracted by her friend. She dodged my hammer too late. It would miss, but I wouldn't. I switched places with it while taking on most of its mass. When my footpaw hit her chest, I felt her ribs crunch.

The wolf running toward Ezzie bellowed, "Die, Quaetken Slayer!"

"I'd rather take them to bed than put them in the ground." Ezzie retorted as she readied herself, tail lengthening behind her as she grew out her unbreakable sickle-like claws on one hand. "Just ask Tengen."

Vishti's orb pulled me away from her while I was bending over to tie her up with my rope. I opened my hand and closed my hand around my hammer's handle when it appeared. I was in a far orbit while Vishti was hauling herself off the ground.

It was time to try Ezzie's non-dangerous idea. I spun up my hammer and sent it toward Vishti, removed nearly all its mass, and fed it magic to maintain its trajectory. To my dismay, the orb still managed to curve its path. Before I could try again, a weak patch of asphalt broke free and I was forced into defense.

The mist wolf blew out a cloud as Ezzie tried to hit him. He fixed the mist in place as a shield. It caught her blow as the wolf ducked down and kicked her in the knee. Ezzie growled and jumped back--just into the range of Vishti's orb.

Vishti yelled, "Yes!" as Ezzie left the ground.

Ezzie laughed as the mist wolf yelped. Her tail was wrapped around his ankle and she was dragging him kicking and hollering toward the orb. The wolf regained his composure as he prepared a full-body shield of water droplets.

A thumb-sized bit of asphalt hit me in the shin and I gasped in pain as blood spilled out. I was using magic to fortify my body, but it wasn't enough to protect me from the massive energy of Vishti's assault.

Ezzie yelled, "Last resort?"

"Yes!" I replied.

Vishti flung a chunk of asphalt the size of a dinner plate toward Ezzie. Ezzie shrunk her tail rapidly causing her and the wolf to spin within the pull of the orb. The wolf's shield posed no barrier to the chunk-turned-projectile and he was pierced between his shoulder blades.

Vishti yowled in frustration as the wolf went limp. Ezzie used the ex-wolf's mass to maneuver herself in the orbit. I was getting close to the center. I was going round so fast that I was sick.

Ezzie pulled out her modified converger and dumped magic into it until it was as radiant as a miniature sun. Then she pushed herself off of the wolf and threw the converger as hard as she could yelling, "Catch!"

My shoulder got smacked by a fist-sized chunk just as I reached out for the converger. I clenched my jaw and steeled myself against the pain, my hand grabbing the converger out of the air. Ezzie's loose shirt darkened with her blood as I dumped into the converger. She'd outdone herself, I only had to expend a third of my reserves to put it over its chaos threshold. It trembled in my hands as a numbness pervaded every sense. The whine it was emitting made my head crawl, my skin darken, my toes feel like they were blinking in and out of existence.

I was going too fast to see anything and was getting smacked by asphalt faster than I could register the pain. As I felt myself start to accelerate away I threw the converger at the orb. It was as if the orb was a black hole and the converger was a star that had gotten too close. It bled its energy into the orb as it closed the gap. When they collided, I heard the sound of ice on hot steel mixed with a snarl, and then a deep sound that shook my sense of length and width.

Then there was no sound at all, just a shockwave that cracked my ribs and twisted my limbs sending me hurtling toward the front of the grocery store.

Looking back at the orb as I flew away, I witnessed the area the orb had occupied break free from our placid sensical reality and become a turbulent mess. It was reality's equivalent of a tantrum. The blotches I saw were not unlike the random flashes glimpsed through a Foci. My magic sense gave me window into pure possibility, a randomness of infinite creation, a hall of mirrors where every reflection was more impossible than the last.

Focusing on holding my body together, letting magic pervade every bit of my physical form, I forced my mass into my hammer in the blink of an eye letting air resistance slow me. When I hit the wall of the grocery store, I stopped without injury. But in the split second afterwards, a chunk of asphalt crushed my arm.

I never could keep the difference between the two sides of my body straight. Unfortunately, I didn't need to know which arm was damaged to feel pain. Crying out through gritted teeth, I focused my magic sense on Ezzie.

She was approaching Vishti's prone form. Had Vishti collapsed when her tool went over its threshold? It seemed so.

Ezzie yelled, "Vishti? Are you dead yet?"

I was having to sense past the undefined space that used to be her orb, it was giving me a monumental headache. As Ezzie leaned down, Vishti's shrill song rang in my ears. "Ezzie! Get back!"

It was too late. Vishti jumped to her feet hitting the underside of Ezzie's jaw with the top of her head. Ezzie yelped and fell backwards. Vishti jumped atop her and started savaging her growling and spitting like a feral cat. Ezzie slashed at Vishti's side with her sickle-clawed hand, cutting deep enough to make her cry out in pain. But it wasn't enough to stop her frenzy.

I grabbed my hammer's rope and ran dragging it behind me. My feet dug into the the parking lot as I fed my legs magic to enhance my speed. Blood was pooling around Ezzie's sides as I circled around the loud hole in reality the orb had become.

It was only four feet in diameter, but just being near it caused me to taste chocolate while everything in my vision gained impossible sharp wavy edges. And the sound, it was like thousands of claws on a chalkboard the size of the universe. A murderous static.

I summoned my hammer to my functioning hand and glared at Vishti's snarling lynx muzzle as she worked to ruin my girlfriend. Her elegant ceremonial robes were darkened with blood and her gilded rapier lay forgotten on the ground along with her swordbelt. Ezzie had cut it off her.

My instinctual high-pitched war cry drowned out the noise in my head. It also drew Vishti's attention. As she looked up at me, claws dripping with Ezzie's blood, I used my momentum to spin with my hammer aiming at Vishti's side. The crunch was like falling on a bag of potato chips.

Vishti went airborne until she collided with the coalesced chaos of her ex-orb. She made a sound that was part cry of pain, part incomprehensible doppler shift. It was the last sound she ever made.

Her song disappeared as if she'd been shut off. The reality puncture was shrinking slowly while it gave me vertigo and the sensation of rolling around in a pile of raspberries.

I knelt down beside Ezzie. The vibrations of her song were like distant thunder. I couldn't look at her without tearing up. Her throat was slashed open, her face was clawed, her side had an open wound. This was it, she couldn't heal herself if she was unconscious. I pulled her bloodied form into my arms, buried my muzzle into the crook of her neck and let the tears flow.

I'd met her in college. She was a guest lecturer who I lured to dinner and then sex back at my place. Back then, I could admire her vibrant green scales and penchant for wearing deep purplish-reds. She smelled woody, like a forest floor. As we writhed around on my bed, I'd felt as if nature herself was embracing me. Nothing in my life had ever been as alive as Ezzie and now I was going to lose her. Lose the most verdant thing I'd ever touched.

I would have tried first aid, but she was bleeding in too many places for me to patch and her throat was too much of a mess for me to provide her air. There was nothing I could do but hold her broken body.

Croaking through sobs, I said, "Why, why can't it be me? Please don't let this be the end. Don't leave me like this." I hugged her tighter.

Her body twitched in pain at the way I was holding her and I loosened my grip. I found her eyes open, mouth trying to move. She grabbed my arm and looked into my eyes. Even with my lacking vision, I got the message.

I dumped all the magic I had left into her and the miracle that was her shardtool-infused body started stitching itself back together. If Ezzie was conscious and had magic, I doubted there was any injury she couldn't mend. The blood stopped streaming out of her wounds, then the gouges Vishti had made in her flesh slowly started filling in. She was still a bloody mess, but she was a living bloody mess.

Once her throat was mended, she said, "So, that sucked."

"But we're alive!"

She gave me a fragile smile and hugged me back.

Some people called her "The Quaetken Slayer," others called her, "The Impossible Dragon," but I called her, "My Badass Girlfriend."