Hostile

The world is perfect. The curtains are closed, and I am snuggled deep under layers of weighted blankets. Darkness caresses my eyes, and warmth hugs my skin. A lover's body, warm and wet, is wrapped around my stiff shaft. My orgasm stretches on as if time is slowed, my body slowly convulsing as I fill up my lover. I want to stay here forever.

But I can't. There's something alien in my brain, tugging and pulling and filling my mind with strange sensations. Layers of stimuli shift back and forth like confused waves. Threads of strange colors weave through my visions. I swim through the waves, confused but fascinated. I have the strange sense that in the past I would have drowned from overstimulation.

There are blobs of a strange color slowly moving around me in a circle. Some of them look humanoid, and others have strange shapes that I have a hard time explaining. They move slowly, as if they are underwater.

I focus on one of them. I guess that they are wearing a cloak and boots from the shape of their figure. They brandish a staff with a complex, decorative staff at someone near them. I feel like I've seen the shape on their staff before, but I can't remember where.

What are these wraiths that dance in my head? I use the feeling of the blankets against my skin to ground myself. Am I sick? Is this a dream?

I sigh, accepting that I'm going to have to get out from under the covers. I attempt to move an arm up to brush away the blankets and brave the light, but instead discover that my arm moves in slow motion. Freaked, I pull my arm back before trying again, and find that my hand hits metal.

Panic consumes me.

I'm not smothered in blankets and snuggled around another person. I'm surrounded in some sort of goo, which I've also been breathing in and out without realizing. A cold metal sphere traps me. The wraiths continue their combat in my head.

The wraith I noticed earlier begins a slow spin, knocking their staff against their opponent's sword. For a brief moment their profile is visible before being lost to the hood of their cloak. I recognize the face as Morrigan's.

Everything comes rushing back to me. I've just landed somewhere in Ixtacotak and am still tucked away in my dragonite egg. With my X-ray and Infrared vision I can watch as the seven people whose wishes I granted slowly fend off attackers.

I take a deep, shaky breath of goo. I am in no immediate danger; this egg is made of dragonite. Some of my companions are probably some of the most powerful people in the world, and they are overequipped. Most of their enemies are clothed in loincloths, mismatched bits of armor, and numerous belts. We have steel weaponry while they have bone. Meanwhile, I am currently incredibly small, I'm guessing about the size of a sparrow. I have no combat skills and no combat magic yet. This new body is foreign and my movement is clumsy. I would be a liability if I cracked my egg right now. I should not make any hasty actions.

I sift through my knowledge of the current situation. All of my memories of being a human living in Andor or gone, but I still everything I learned from the Chaos Dragon. There must be some tool I gave myself that's available right away.

The Ring of Bonds. Where is it? Did Asihlliel already give it to me while I was falling, or is an agent going to deliver it to me later? I scan the people around me and see the ring hanging from her necklace.

I must be quick. My upgraded brain is still moving at superspeed, making me experience everything in slow motion, but I don't know how long that movement will last and I am incredibly uncoordinated. I push against the walls of my egg, attempting to **** apart the overlapping dragonite scales that make it up. I realize that there are multiple layers of scales on top of one another. Every greater dragon is given the same amount of dragonite, no matter their size, and my small egg needed multiple layers of scales to reach that amount. I switch to a more precise method and focus on an individual scale, pulling it off the others and letting it float in the goop.

Chimon's infrared shadow brings over a sword and starts chipping away at the egg from the other side. I think he's holding Fuji. With his help, I burst out of my egg and back into my world. My perception of time returns to normal.

Despite the sudden onslaught of light and change in time, my new mind shifts incredibly quickly. "Ring," I croak, and point at Delathwyn.

"Friend!" Chimon shouts over the chaos. "Elven friend! Do you know what the dragon means by ring?"

She puts an arrow point-blank into a lizardfolk's chest. Turning her head over her shoulder to look at Chimon, her eyes widen when she sees me out of the egg. The necklace is flung off her neck and towards Chimon in one smooth motion before she turns back to the lizardfolk.

A naga snags it out of the air with her sword. I spend a moment in awe, viewing the action as superhuman, before realizing that most of the warriors here are probably genetically or magically empowered in some way. I probably could have snagged it out of the air myself. In fact -

I launch off the ground, instinctively slowing down time again to make my jump more precise. I overshoot and correct with a flap of my wings. I grab the ring with my back talons, slide it off the sword with the momentum from my jump, and slide it up my back leg. I'm far too small for it to fit on a finger.

I feel a surge of power go through me. All seven of my new companions' eyes widen for a moment, thrown off by the sudden power boost, and then return to the fight with new ferocity. They become quicker, gliding in and out of the range of enemy's weaponry. Bones start to crack when they land their hits.

A group of lizardfolk who had been sitting near the back, out of the fight begin to charge towards me. They assume an arrowhead formation, and Delathwyn backs up to stay out of their way. I spot a strange, glowing chain being held by the center lizardfolk.

I look up, hoping for a ceiling to jump to. Many temples in Ixtacotak are open, so there's only the night sky. I latch onto the back of the naga instead, deftly darting around the three hands she assigns to brushing me off.

The chain whips forwards, circling around the naga and almost hitting me. I run down towards the ground. The naga grabs the chain, which I can now see ends in a collar, and surges forwards in a furry of strikes using the chain as a whip. Each time she cracks the chain the collar flies towards me with a mind of its own. I escape by darting in between and around the legs of the other combatants.

I'm tempted to find a nice, dark corner to go hide in, but I know that I'm safer here. I can use the legs of the other combatants as moving obstacles to block others from fighting me.

If my new eyeless sight didn't let me see in all directions at once the collar would have got me. It darted across the temple's stone floor like a vicious snake, metal collar opened like a mouth. I duck under strike and punch it away from me, trying to wrap it around an enemy's legs. It rapidly unwraps itself and shoots right back at me.

There - a lizardfolk in the back is holding the other end, surrounded by a bodyguard of other enemies. If I take the chain from him, do I control it? I begin my quest across the battlefield towards them, trying to avoid a metal snake. I have a sneaking suspicion that the chain is dragonite, which means I can't hurt it.

The bodyguards stand shoulder to shoulder, barring me from the chainholder. I recolor my scales to something I think is similar to the temple floor, extremely unfamiliar with my color-changing ability, and feint towards their legs before jumping at a face.

Bad decision. The lizard responds to this maneuver by trying to swallow me. I don't know what his thought process on that was. Maybe lizardfolk have an instinct that makes them try to swallow any small, furry thing that gets too close to their mouth. I stretch out across his snout like a bridge, then scurry down towards his throat. He drops his weapon to try and claw me away from his **** artery. The collar slams into his throat an inch away from me, locking around him.

My heart sinks as the collar unlatches. I get extremely close to being speared out of the air as I jump towards the lizardman holding the chain, but being able to dodge midair with wings is a handy tool. While he flails at me with a dagger, my claws find gaps between the scales on his wrist.

The chain is handed off to the naga, who juggles it between her six arms. I, in an act of bravery that can only be attributed to mid-combat adrenaline and split-second instincts, grab onto the chain itself as it arcs towards me. I dance forwards like a monkey, using all four limbs, two wings, and a prehensile tail to keep moving forwards while dodging the collar.

I don't go for the wrist this time. I slice off fingers until she can no longer hold the chain, covering myself in orange blood. Then I hold onto the end of the chain for dear life.

Some of the lizardfolk and the naga back away. Others dart forwards to staple the chain down with their weapons. I flick the collar experimentally. It flies in a direction which is not at all towards anyone else, but they find the collar scary enough more enemies scramble away in fear. By using a few more flicks, dodges, and using someone's spear to pole vault the collar finds itself on a merwoman's neck.

My enemies scramble, deciding to restrategize. If they can't capture or kill me when I'm alone, they definitely won't be able to now that I have... something. I don't know what the collar does. I assume it makes the merwoman obey me, but that's not a guarantee. While they're backing away, arguing among themselves, Sangir slams into them from behind. They all drop to the floor, clawing at slit throats.

"My draconic liege," Sangir bows. "Sangir, Elder Vampire, at your service." Since I'm able to see in all directions, I spot Delathwyn frowning while glaring at Sangir out of the corner of her eye. Something to deal with later.

I have no idea how one responds to a bow and formal declaration of service, so I wing it. "Glad to have you at my side, Sangir," I say, bowing my head.

The merwoman begins to laugh. "You cunning bitch. Instead of taking one small part of them like all the other Greater Dragons, you stole every part your wishers. It's just a little... indirect."

I grin. "A little cynical way to look at things, but pretty much. Mind explaining what happened here, miss?"

"Hmm... how about no?" she says.

"Vemoura!" I shout over the battle, which is entering its final stages. "Know how to read enchanted objects?"

Vemoura stands from where she was studying the ground around my egg and dusts herself off. It was covered in runes which were scorched into oblivion when I landed. "Alright. Let's look at the creepy chain snake."

She runs her hands over the runes. "It would take me a bit to fully decode what this does, it's a long spell. It's definitely a mental enchantment, though. There's a bit that prevents them from removing the collar, breaking the chain or anything it's tied to, stuff like that. There's a bit that prevents them from harming the owner. And there's... emotion control. Hmm."

The merwoman sighs. "Yeah. It would have been an imprecise method of control, but anything more delicate probably wouldn't have worked on a greater dragon. Or so the runesmith told us, anyways. It took them a lot of sacrifices to enchant that." She turns to me, a predatory glint in her eye. "So, am I dead or enslaved?"

I frown, considering options. Suddenly there's cold dragonite against my neck. "Trick question," she hisses. The room is frozen. All of my companions look on in fear as they see the collar on my neck. "The answer is enslaved, and it's you, not me. Creepy one-eyed dragon."

I just about roll my eyes and take off the collar, I pause. She was immune to it probably because it was written directly into the enchantment. I'm immune because my mind isn't affected by magic. But that might not be a card I want to give away yet.