Enter: Muscle Mage

Illrune.

The first of the carts crested the rise like a nightmare dreamt in segments. Its many-legged mount—one of the family's giant centipedes, all slick chitin and twitching antennae—skittered over the stones, dragging its burden of iron and wood behind it. The second followed close, antennae writhing, mandibles clacking.

About damned time, Illrune thought, spitting another piece of nail out the side of his mouth.

Each cart bore two of his father's goons. Not the best of the lot, but competent enough to handle the carts (and provide some additional muscle and firepower, if need be). One spellcaster per cart, probably stocked up with dull, generic utility spells, though each knew at least one offensive Spell. It had been one of Illrune's requirements when he had scrounged together the men for this job. The other was muscle, in that loose, neckless way that implied they couldn't spell "concussion," but sure knew how to cause one. As the carts drew nearer, it was painfully clear who was who amongst each pair.

Illrune bit at his thumbnail and watched them with narrowed eyes, eyes that twitched at every gust of wind that rolled off Mount Alkazab's scorched flank. They had done it. Two Outworlders secured. The woman still looked half-dead, especially bound in suppressive chains, and the gunman wasn't in much better shape. His passive curses clung to them like mold in a damp cell, sapping mana and strength, and the chains themselves pulsed with a slow, insidious magic. The bindings should hold until they reached Greed.

Master Greed. Illrune had never actually met the demigod before. He had only heard stories. But it had been Greed who bestowed power unto the Abascal Family. Father wielded that power with cruelty and precision, but it had not been wholly his own. No. He had simply mastered it. Now, it was Illrune's opportunity to prove he was worthy of the divine's attention. It was his turn for an opportunity at a seed of power.

"Load them," Illrune ordered, motioning toward the limp bodies of the humans. He gestured to Aimon, a wall of muscle with a head like a brick and an attitude to match. "You take the first cart. The rest of us will take the second."

Aimon grunted. Words were never his strong suit.

Illrune turned away, tightening his cloak around him. The air felt wrong. It wasn't just the anticipation of his plan coming to fruition. Something else had his nerves on fire. It was something beneath all that. A pressure, rising like breath through ancient lungs. The mountain was quiet. A snoring, slumbering titan. We best not wake it.

"Mount up," Illrune barked, glancing over his shoulder. "Let's put some ground between us and this bloody mountain."

That's when the foreboding sound split the air.

It wasn't a roar. Not really. More a buzz—but impossibly deep and thunderously loud, like a mosquito the size of… of… a dragon. The sound made his bones vibrate. One of the spellcasters gagged and dropped his staff, which tumbled from his carriage bench onto the rock ground. Aimon froze mid-lift, still holding the gunman's limp body, and looked up.

So did Illrune. He couldn't help but look. Look and see what he feared… What he knew would be hanging there in the sky.

And there it is.

A dragon.

A shadow passed over them as the blue, practically glowing reptile passed over them. Something about its appearance looked… Off. The beast did a lazy circle over their heads before beginning a slow descent. And as it descended through the sky, wings pumping in slow, syrupy flaps, something fell through the air.

Splat!

It hit Illrune right in the face. A cold, wet globule right between his eyes. Illrune slowly raised a hand to his face, wiping off the substance. He looked at his hand, and what covered his fingers.

Slime.

Illrune flicked his hand to the side, shaking off the slime. He then realized why the dragon had looked so odd. It was slime! The entire beast was coated in it—thick ropes of goo sliding down its body like someone had submerged the entire Storm Dragon into a vat of the stuff. Light from the low sun gleamed off it, refracted strangely in the oozing sheen.

"What in all the fucks is that?" someone whispered.

"A bloody dragon," Fylson whimpered. "Thought they was dead!"

Illrune didn't answer. He just stared, wide-eyed, as the slime dragon banked toward them, impossibly graceful for something that looked so bloody ridiculous.

Joseph.

I'm riding a dragon.

Let me say that again.

I'm. Riding. A. Fucking. Dragon.

It's about as crazy as it sounds.

There's a layer of blue slime stretched thin over the wyrmling's decaying scales, like a membrane made of Jell-O. The head, which was very much not attached when I last saw it in non-slime form, now lolls on its neck, held in place by glistening ooze. It twitches every now and then, jaw snapping open and shut like it's trying to remember how to breathe plasma beams again.

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I'm standing on its back, both hands gripping chains wrapped around its throat like I'm a damn gladiator in a B-movie knockoff of Ben-Hur meets Game of Thrones. Jelly Boy's perched on my shoulder, vibrating with pure, righteous murder energy. I'm pissed off too—but also trying not to lose my grip or footing. Falling to my death would really dampen the mood of our rescue mission.

Jelly Boy lets out a furious glorp and his three slime guards—Tom, Jax, and… other Tom— all buzz back from their places on the wyrmling's limbs, working together to make the thing fly in more or less the right direction. It's impossible to tell which part of the slimy film once belonged to each slime. They had melted away their humanoid shapes in order to cover and reanimate the dead wyrmling. I'm still surprised my idea actually worked.

We did try the bigger corpse first—the full-grown mama dragon. I had suggested it to Jelly Boy, thinking of the reanimated corpse back in the slime Hive's cavern.

"Think that's something these guys can do?" I had asked Jelly Boy.

Jelly Boy paused, turned and stared at the three slimes. They were still yapping in buzzes and gurgles, arguing amongst each other. It didn't instill much confidence. Perhaps we can run back and grab that giant slime to help us, I had thought.

But then Jelly Boy glanced up to me and wobbled, giving a happy buzz of affirmation.

Tom, Tom, and Jax melted like microwaved Jello-O cups, becoming a single, amorphous blob, even bigger than the king slime had been. They stretched, crawling over the mother Storm Dragon's body. Their attempt barely lasted five seconds before the corpse yeeted them off like it was rejecting an organ transplant. One of them exploded into goo spaghetti (Don't worry. They re-formed.)

"Er… Okay, no bueno," I said.

Jelly Boy bounced over to the beheaded wyrmling.

"It's worth another shot."

So, he mentally commanded the three drone slimes to try again. This time, using the smaller dragon body.

And that time, it had worked. The film of slime was above to cover the body, a pseudopod stretching out and grabbing the head, pulling it back towards the body to make the dragon whole once more. The wyrmling's eyed opened, rolling forward, milky white. Slowly, the wyrmling stood to its feet. I took a slow step backwards, ready to run if the slimes turned the dragon on us. But after a few testing, jerky motions, the slime-covered dragon lowered its head, welcoming us onto its back.

I picked up Jelly Boy, giving him a soft pat on the head. "Great job, President Jelly," I said. I moved to climb onto the dragon, then paused. That's when the idea to use the chains had struck me. With my Strength score, my grip strength wouldn't fail me. And it would be nice to have something to hold onto that wasn't slick with ooze.

Once the chain leash was affixed to the dragon's body, it was time for Tom, Jax, and Tom to take the thing for a spin. The wings flapped, beating once, twice. I gave a startled cry as we actually took to the air. The dragon's body flew in weird lurches, like a toddler taking its first steps on stilts. After a few moments, the slimes right the dragon's body and we're off, with me directing Jelly Boy using my minimap as a guide, and Jelly Boy commanding the slime dragon.

And now, we're closing in on our targets.

Jelly Boy is seething. He hasn't stopped buzzing since I told him our friends were in danger. And there — in the distance — I see them. Two carts, each yoked to centipedes the size of horses. Nine assholes milling about. And in the center of it all, Clyde and Veronica. They're bound in the same chains that are grasped in my fists. One of the men move to pick up one of the bound bodies, throwing them over his shoulder.

Something inside me snaps into focus. My hands tighten on the chains. My muscles coil with adrenaline and resolve. I run through a quick mental checklist.

Health: Full.

Stamina: Nearly full.

Potions: None left.

Options: One.

Vengeance: Imminent.

"You ready, Jelly Boy?" I ask, voice low and sharp.

He glorps so hard my eardrum vibrates. His goo jiggles like righteous gelatin, and the buzz that rises from the slimes controlling the wyrmling echoes like a bassline of a war song.

I snarl.

Clenching my fist, I mentally focus on the Spell I want to cast. I push my Strength into the spell matrix at my core, and my muscles ripple and flex as the cold rush floods my veins. Then, I cast the Spell:

"Raining Knuckles."

Illrune.

They fell from the sky like divine judgment, or perhaps just the unhinged tantrum of a cosmic pugilist god with a point to prove.

A hundred glowing blue spectral fists.

Illrune barely had time to scream a word—"Carapace!"—before the fists hit. A dome of shimmering emerald bloomed over his head, just in time to deflect four blows that would have turned his brain into bloody jam.

He stumbled back, his spell churning at the edge of collapse. Around him, chaos reigned.

Fylson went down immediately, caught by a pair of spectral knuckles that flung him fifteen feet into the air before his body slammed into the earth with a limp whuff. Pirphal screamed and tried to cast Blink, but got caught mid-syllable by a separate pair of fists that sent him crashing into the side of the centipede carriage like a thrown doll.

The rest of the crew followed suit in quick succession—groaning, unconscious, or just... not moving. The centipedes themselves, skittish brutes that they were, curled into defensive spirals and hissed like boiling kettles, their chitin clicking against the dirt in panic.

The only one left standing—barely—was Aimon, who'd dropped the bound gunman to shield himself in time. The brute now looked like a clay statue someone had taken a hammer to. Bruises and welts covered his body, and blood streamed from his nose, but the bastard was alive.

Dain, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Typical. That slithering parasite had probably slipped away the moment there was a sign of danger. Illrune would remember that.

His shield spell sputtered and died just as the fists stopped falling.

Silence followed.

Then, the slime-covered dragon descended from the sky in a lurching spiral of too-stiff wings. The blue slime that coated it shimmered in the sunlight, squelching audibly as the thing landed. It opened its maw and roared that strange buzzing choir.

A human stood on its back. A human Illrune recognized. A human he had very much expected to see again.

This time, the human mage was shirtless. His body radiated power. Chest muscle rippled, biceps bulged, and his shoulders curved liked two, massive boulders. The veins in his forearms pulsed with raw energy. His eyes were like twin storms, practically bursting with blue-tinted power that trailed through the air with the subtlest movements of his head. He looked like the avatar of fury.

On the human's shoulder perched a small blue slime. The human rider grabbed the slime from his shoulder, gently placing the ooze onto the dragon's shoulder blades.

Then the mage leapt down from the dragon's back, landing in a crouch that cracked the earth. Then, slowly, he rose. He walked through the carnage—his own devastation—like death on two legs. His gaze swept the battlefield once, then fell on her: the bound human woman.

He knelt by her. Silent.

His hands moved over the cursed chains like a surgeon preparing for amputation. He didn't say a word. Just took in every detail. Every injury. Every sign of suffering.

Then, he looked up. His eyes burned like blue fire. They locked onto Illrune.

When the human mage spoke, his voice was soft. It was so quiet, in fact, Illrune almost missed it. It was calm and leveled. It wasn't a question of curiosity. It was judgment.

"Did you do this?"

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