Scales Like Stars (Dragons...in...SPACE! Book 1) Read online

  This brought out a series of giggles.

  Julia, who had been in the midst of looking sultry and seductive while tugging her shirt over her head, paused. “What?” she asked.

  “It’s a perfectly cromulent word,” Merton said, chuckling.

  Julia tugged her shirt the rest of the way off, then used it to gently slap him on the chest. Merton grabbed her shirt and tossed it away – and sighed the exalted sigh of someone slipping into a warm, soaky bath. Seeing a beaming, nervous, excited, red faced, hard nipped, bare chested, blue haired, real Julia was a like balm to a weary, nervous soul. Merton licked his lips – and sighed again with just as much contentment as Julia slipped herself forward, shifted her knees, swung around...and sat down on his face. Her sex was shadowed by the curve of her hips and her butt. His eyes closed and he kissed blindly, finding the smoothness of her sex.

  “By the way,” Julia whispered, her voice throaty and full of erotic promise. “I asked to taste like strawberries.”

  She settled herself down and Merton’s tongue started to delve into her sex. His hands grabbed her hips as her flavor – indeed, strawberries – burst on the tip of his tongue. Then she leaned forward and her palms caressed his balls with slow, wondering strokes. She kissed the side of his cock, nuzzled his member, then breathed in, then slipped her mouth along as much of his cock as she could. And it was a gratifyingly small amount of dick that she got into her mouth before she had to stop and draw back. Feeling the movement of her tongue and her lips and the soft, happy moans that she kept making…

  Well.

  Merton was an enlightened, 21 st century, mostly liberal native of California.

  ...he still totally felt like a real man right now.

  His hands slid to her ass and he focused – or tried to focus – on his true love’s cooter. His tongue coiled up, trying to find a place inside her that brought the most quiet, happy gasps. Now, Merton wasn’t sure if being a mage made him supernaturally good at tonguing out a girl, or if Julia had just set her sensitivity to the max (which, to be fair, seemed eminently wise.) But either way, she was soon moaning her pleasure through his cock like there was no tomorrow. The buzzing vibrations thrummed through his body and Merton had to draw his mouth back, quietly gasping.

  “J-Jesus, Julia!”

  “No, Julia Jesus,” she said, gasping as she jerked her mouth back – her hand continued to pump his cock with quick, eager motions. “Well, technically, Julia of Nazareth.”

  Merton choked out a laugh, then squeaked as Julia pressed her hips down and sat herself on his face again. Since she still tasted divine – and her sex was dripping liberally now – Merton was far from upset by this. His hands slapped onto her ass, squeezing her as his tongue slurped from clit to to cunt, thrusting in deep as he could manage. His tongue actually started to ache as he pushed himself harder and harder, his tongue swirling inside of her. It worked. Julia moaned against his cock and he felt her juices spurt against his mouth. He opened his mouth and drank her warmth as he let himself go.

  His balls clenched and a jolt of pure, fiery pleasure exploded from him. Julia managed to keep a hold on his member and drink as the first spurt filled her mouth. Then his surging, twitching cock escaped from her lips and he heard her giggle and squeak as cum painted her face, splashed against her chin. She moaned and shifted, arching her back, so that the next spurt coated her breasts. He could feel the faint patter of his own seed dripping down onto his belly and balls and cock as Julia giggled and whispered: “Hee! So much cum !”

  Merton slowly sagged his head back, panting heavily.

  The door to the bio ward opened.

  The four armed purple skinned chick pursed her lips as she looked down at the two of them.

  “So,” she said, her voice firm.

  Merton struggled to sit up, while Julia grabbed onto a sheet to wipe at her face. By the time Merton was upright, Julia’s face was mostly clean, save for a strand of cum on her chin. She licked it up shyly.

  “Uh, we were just testing it!” Julia said, quickly.

  “I can see that,” the four armed purple skinned chick said. “And good. But your training in pleasuring a dragon has been put on hold. The Baron Thresh has sent a las signal. His character is completed and he is ready for his first adventure and he is waiting in the gaming room.”

  Merton looked at Julia. A cold feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. “I thought it’d take him a week ,” he whispered, then stood. Julia slipped on her shirt as well. Her expression was just as grim as his.

  ***

  Bex sat across the table from Merton. Merton looked down at the five pages of character sheet he had been given. Bex’s handwriting was precise and perfectly neat, despite being done by hand. Slowly, Merton pointed at the statline.

  “How did you get this?” he asked. “Twenty five Strength, twenty two Dexterity, twenty four Constitution, twelve Intelligence, twenty five Wisdom, nine Charisma, six Comeliness?”

  “Flaws,” Bex said, his voice flat.

  “Ask a silly question, get a silly answer...” Merton muttered. He flipped a bit more and found where the Baron had listed his character’s flaws. Like D&D, Hackmaster relied on rolling three six sided dice to get your initial ‘statistics.’ Or, in other words, the rough physical and mental layout of your character. In Hackmaster, those stats were Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma and Comeliness. The average human had a nine to twelve. The Baron’s character – a human zealot of Shona named Reikstand – had a twenty five in strength. That meant that he added an obscene amount of damage to his attacks, was highly accurate, and could even bend metal with his bare hands.

  He was nearly untouchable in terms of his agility. His constitution was so great that he was exceptionally hard to kill and would regenerate wounds like a slightly slower Wolverine.

  And the worst thing was, he had followed the rules . In Hackmaster, you could improve your stats by taking randomly generated flaws. Reikstand was a one armed, one eyed, bald, flatulent, lisping burn victim with an intense phobias of spiders, horses and monkeys, pyromania, sadism, a superstitious belief in the power of the color green, an intense hatred of elves, dwarves, gnomes, paladins and bards. Oh, and he was missing his right pinkie finger, had no nose, and a bum knee. But then Merton saw the list of skills. His eyes widened.

  Somehow, Bex had gotten Circle Kick, Flying Kick, Backwards Kick, Choke Hold, One Finger, Pain Touch, Levitation...a series of martial arts abilities that would allow him to, if he was reading these rules right, do obscene amounts of damage with his bare hands.

  Which was…

  Oh no.

  Merton looked at the character’s equipment. He had been about to call out Bex on making a rules error. In Hackmaster, you couldn’t add more damage to your weapon than the max number on your weapon dice. So, if you had a longsword that did an eight sided die’s worth of damage, you could only add a max of eight damage to the roll. But the one exception that that? Unarmed damage. So, he was doing 1d6+13 damage with his punches and kicks. And he did three per round, with an initiative mod that meant he’d always go first, and an Armor Class so good that it’d take a miracle to hit him.

  Merton looked up at Bex.

  “Is it a legal character?” Bex asked. “I have read the rules extensively .”

  Merton’s throat worked in a gulp.

  It was a legal character.

  He couldn’t simply disallow Bex – trying that would lead to disaster.

  Merton set the sheet down, then slid it back to Bex.

  Bex took the papers. His nose flared and smoke roiled into the air as the red dragon grinned at the human Dungeon Master.

  “Well played, Baron,” Merton said. “But it takes more than good stats to win at Hackmaster.”

  “I am aware,” Bex said, his voice a low purr. “Shall we duel, oh god of this minute realm? I have to admit. I had never heard of humans. But if all your kind ever created was this astounding interplay of
rules and imagination, of strategy and cunning, of mathematical elegance and pure artistry...then I think your race’s time spent evolving from the mire was worth it.”

  “I’ll tell Gygax,” Merton said. He picked up his d20. He shook it. “Lets roll dem bones.”

  In the amphitheater surrounding the gaming room, where Merton’s family and wife watched, tensions mounted. Relix chewed her knuckle as she looked at her husband.

  “Kick his ass, Merton,” she breathed.

  “Popcorn?” Julia asked, offering her a bowl.

  Relix looked deeply confused.

  Merton grinned, slowly. “Roll Observation, my good Baron.”

  And thus…

  The game was on .

  Chapter Four: Roll that Knowledge (Religion) Check

  “What’s he doing with those papers, concubine?”

  Julia popped some popcorn into her mouth and tried to control the nerves gnawing at her gut. She and Merton had met, years before, on Darknest. Darknest, despite sounding like a place where you’d spend bitcoins to buy child porn and assassins, was actually just a World of Warcraft fansite. Well, fan slash porn site. Mostly porn. Yes, they had both been there for night elf titties. But even then, even before she had fallen for him, she had realized just how good Merton was at game-mastering.

  But he’d never had stakes like this .

  She looked at Princess Relix – and noticed that Relix didn’t look bored or disaffected.

  She looked worried. As worried as the pit of Julia’s tummy.

  So, Julia swallowed her first responses and instead set the popcorn carton down. She wiped her palm along her sleeve, then pointed. “See that?” she asked. “That’s the GM screen. Basically, it has a lot of rules written on it, to make it easier to run the game without cracking the book open constantly. It also lets him hide his dice.”

  “So, he could simply change the results?” Relix asked.

  “No,” Julia shook her head and waggled her finger. “That’s against the spirit of Hackmaster. The dice fall where they lay. No, no, no. It’s so he can...well...”

  Merton picked up a handful of dice and dropped them. They rattled, clacked, clicked. The Baron’s shoulders twitched ever so slightly and his eyes narrowed. “What was that?” he asked, his voice picked up by a throat mic and transmitted through the speakers in the amphitheater.

  Merton’s grin was laid back. Casual.

  “We’ll have to see, won’t we?” he asked. “Now, that observation check?”

  “I failed,” the Baron said.

  “But the number he rolled was so high!” Relix whispered to Julia. Julia chuckled, whispering back.

  “Observation is a skill check . Those require you to roll underneath your skill level, which is reflected as a percentage chance to succeed. The good Baron only has a twenty two percent in observation. That’s one of the hard parts of the art of the Hack: Characters start with tanko garbage levels of skills.”

  “I regularly walked into walls when I was a young level 1 college student,” Carlos piped in.

  Then each hushed as Merton adjusted his collar, took a deep breath, and started to narrate.

  ***

  “It is a glorious day in the lands of Barsara. The jungle studded peninsula has seen a break in the seasonally rains, and the ferocity of the last blow has left the air feeling swept clear of all but the fresh smells of the wildlife and the salt smell of the sea breeze. The ship you, Reikstand, stand upon is a simple barque named the Kip. You have, for the past three days, been steadily sea sick as the barque made its slow, plodding way across the Aludian Ocean. Crumpled in your one surviving hand is a parchment that arrived at your home. The parchment that brought you here, so far, so fast...a parchment from your-” Merton paused. “Grandfather, uh...”

  Julia tensed in the upper seats. Her hands clenched and she whispered. “Come on...”

  “What’s wrong?” Relix’s voice was hushed.

  “He’s drawing a blank on a name!” Julia looked at the Princess. “That can totally ruin the flow of a scene.”

  “Galsgad,” Merton said.

  “Galsgad?” The Baron rumbled. “What did he send, that has brought mighty Reikstand so far from his home.”

  “He says that his, ah, lumber mill has been beset by monsters, brigands and raiders,” Merton said, moving quickly once more. “His guards have been unable to keep them away, and his people are dying. But more, he states that one of the monsters that was slain – perchance, by a lucky arrow – was bearing more than the expected amount of treasure . Since you have recently gained your vestments and desperately need both funds and converts...you have set off. And now you arrive, in the city of...” His eyes flicked down. “Varneer.”

  “I see,” the Baron said. He leaned forward, then slammed a clenched fist into the table. The screen jumped dramatically. “Tell me of this city!”

  “Well, it’s a city,” Merton said – classic GM buying for time. Relix’s tail lashed. “It’s a city on the bay, with a harbor and large number of whitewashed adobe houses. The bustle of pedestrians is clear.”

  “Very good,” the Baron said. “Once the ship comes within ten meters of the dock, I will leap from ship to the docking pier.”

  “That will be a minus ten strength check,” Merton said.

  “He’s using the wrong kind of dice!” Relix whispered to Julia. Julia snickered, quietly.

  “Stat checks use 20 sided dice, not two 10 sided dice. Or, as we in the biz call em, d20s and d10s. Or, well, more accurately, using two ten sided dice is using a d100. But having a single die with a hundred faces is a bit hard.” Plastic rattled and the Baron grunted in quite affirmation.

  “You take a single bound, leap, sail through the air, then land upon the docks, startling the poor dockmaster. He – a portly human man with a bushy mustache – almost drops his papers as he gapes at your malformed and hideous appearance.” Merton coughed, then put on a stuffy, British sounding accent. “Why, I never! You need to pay a fare to enter our fair city, ha-”

  “I grab him by the throat,” the Baron growled. “And crush it.”

  Merton raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh boy,” Julia whispered.

  “He can’t just kill that man! This isn’t real life,” Relix hissed, quietly.

  “Oh, he can,” Trevor said, his voice dry as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Looks like we really do have a socially retarded angel of death on our hands.”

  “I’m going to need you to roll initiative,” Merton said, leaning back in his seat. “And since you’re going to go first, I want you to roll your attack check. And since you’re going to hit, I want you to roll damage!” He didn’t seem perturbed. The Baron’s dice fell – and a moment later, the poor dock master’s back hit the rough wood of the docks. As he sprawled, Merton cracked his knuckles. “As the man twitches his last – dying slowly on the ground, I-”

  “How many experience points?” the baron asked, his voice intent.

  “You get XP after combat,” Merton said, his voice slipping into an almost drawl. “You hear cries of shock and alarm, and then a woman shrieks: Guards! Guards! And before you know it, five guardsmen wearing chain and bearing swords rush forward. Their armor clinks and clatters, but they draw up short when they see you.”

  “I crack my knuckles,” the Baron said.

  “How, exactly?” Merton asked, already rolling some initiative checks.

  “By placing my fingers thus,” the Baron said, pressing his palm against the edge of the table, then using it to flex his fingers back. The crackling sound of his knuckles were gunshot loud in the room. “Against a nearby post that the ships tie up to.”

  “...fair enough,” Merton said, grinning. “You go first, by the way.”

  The guards rushed forward. Reikstand met the first blade by catching it in his palm, then smashed his foot into the poor fellow’s throat. As that man fell, gurgling and clutching at his neck, Reikstand smashed his forehead into the second – shat
tering the helmet in a single blow. His elbow then smashed down a third. Merton rolled for morale and clucked his tongue. “The fourth man turns to flee-”

  “I chase after!” The Baron said, grinning.

  “Ah, wait just a second. You need to roll initiative – this is a new round. The man is spending his whole round running, so you’ll need to roll with a pretty serious initiative penalty as you rush forward.”