Common name: Lizardman

Class: Monster

Subspecies: Several distinct breeds of lizardman have been seen on occasion outside of the families and settlements in which they tend to make their homes, usually in the more cosmopolitan cities in Asia. Although most often the differences amount to brilliant and unique color patterns, others have special adaptations to certain environments such as webbed feet, enlarged teeth, and even venom sacs.

Sentience & Intelligence: Possess a basic sentient intellect capable of language and reasoning. Lizardmen have great difficulty grasping abstract concepts, and highly value utility over appearance. According to a common proverb among the evons, if you offer a lizardman a choice between a steel axe and a golden one, the creature will choose the steel weapon every time, and will never realize that it could easily purchase many steel weapons for the value of the gold axe. Although field studies have not as of yet confirmed this particular experiment, corraborated accounts suggest that the underlying implications are accurate.

Physical biology: Lizardmen tend toward a full standing height of seven feet, although their body shape causes the creature to stoop over at a height much closer to five or six feet. They possess long, whip-like tails that seem to lack any practical use save perhaps for balance, and have large heads with thick, solid skulls and powerful jaws. Their upper torso is considerably human-like, and their limbs are relatively powerful. Their skin is covered with layers of scales that provides substantial resistance to cutting weapons such as swords, though it provides little resistance against bullets. They possess a good sense of smell and taste, but have relatively dull eyesight and hearing. As for their internal biology, they are similar to humans in almost every respect, though their organs are generally more robust and energy-efficient. The primary exception is their circulatory system; lizardmen are cold-blooded.

Mana resonance: Low. The very few lizardman casters that exist take their magic from second-hand powers, such as alchemic reactions or religious devotion.

Lifespan: On average, a lizardman can expect to live about 90 years if allowed to expire from natural causes. Cases have been reported, however, of lizardmen living for centuries, usually through heavy medicinal aid.

Diet: Omnivorous. A lizardman's powerful digestive system can make use of nearly any organic matter to sustain the body. Lizardmen are capable of eating nearly anything for sustenance, including poisonous vegetables and diseased meats. While a lizardman is (understandably) extremely hesitant to eat these things, as their sense of taste is considerably more sensitive than a human's, their bodies can make full use of inedible foods to keep their strength up when decent food is scarce.

Biological anomalies: Although it doesn't approach the level of troll or lycanthropic regeneration, lizardmen are able to heal wounds much faster than their enhanced metabolisms can account for. Also remarkable is the lizardman's ability to heal any part of its body, including lost limbs, eyes, and major organs, although obviously, the subject has to survive the trauma long enough to complete regeneration.

Reproductive type: Sexual. Lizardmen do not form permanent mating pairs, nor does the species as a whole invest much time and effort into the mating process. Rather, after reaching adolescence, a lizardman will enter a "mating state" every three to four years which will cause it to release pheremones that will react with lizardmen of the opposite sex who are undergoing the same effect. The female's choice of mates seems almost arbitrary among a mating group, and will forget all about the male after fertilization.

Social structure: Lizardmen usually form small tribes within other civilizations, as the species as a whole is rarely content to live in isolation. These tribes, though insulated from other species, isn't based upon any recognizable family structure, and will freely accept and give up lizardmen without a thought. These tribes, when not the dominant form of civilization in an area, will happily spread about seeking a sponsor among more advanced societies, and the tribe will rent out its members as soldiers, guards, manual laborers, scouts, or whatever tasks they can effectively complete. Decisions within the community are made with a firm and unquestioned emphasis on rank, which is in turn determined by both age and any notable accomplishments. Families based on blood are extremely rare; normally, eggs are deposited into a communal nursery, and young lizardmen are raised by communal guardians. Most lizardmen are unaware of who among the tribe are their parents, and don't seem to care, although at times their "sponsors" may see a particularly promising lizardman and start a breeding program. The tribe is extremely receptive to such experiments, as the prospect of superior future lizardmen inevitably outweighs the concerns of the individual being "sacrificed" as breeding stock.

Combat analysis: Low. Although well-suited as soldiers among the legions of sword-wielding demons and the primitive human armies of other realms, when fighting Earth's soldiers the poor reptiles almost always come up short. Possessing poor vision, dexterity, and intelligence, lizardmen have never managed to master either the use of or defense against common firearms, which swiftly degraded their viability as a combat asset against Earth's humans. At best they make excellent guards, as the creatures are unusually loyal to the tribe's sponsor, and they can easily overwhelm small, unorganized combatants.

Misc. notes: If one limits the scale of conflict to melee and primitive missile combat - that is, swords, spears, bows, and crossbows - it's easy to see why lizardmen made favored soldiers. The creatures are built from the bottom up to withstand hardship and survive in nearly any environment capable of sustaining life at all. A lizardman's scales provide natural armor, its primitive nervous system is dull in regards to pain, and its robust body is extremely hardy. It can eat nearly anything, and when even rotten and poisonous food isn't available, the lizardman can function for weeks before starvation begins to take a real toll on its body. It's capable of surviving for almost as long without water, is resistant to disease, and can stay active and healthy in heat that would destroy the human body in hours. From deserts and wastelands to swamps, a battalion of lizardmen can survive in places that would devastate an ordinary army worse than most battles. Unfortunately, in our lovely realm of Earth, the deadliest hazards are all man-made, and lizardmen show no talent for handling guns, ambushing armored vehicles, or navigating mine fields. Although still common among the wastes as mercenaries and laborers, most non-humans have stopped actively using them for combat, instead turning toward more exotic creatures, or turning toward more mundane ones capable of using firearms. One more interesting note is the lizardman's unfortunate weakness for cold. While active and robust in agonizing heat, chilling cold that would hardly slow down a human regiment nearly debilitates the cold-blooded lizards. This makes arctic tundra one of the few terrain types in which a lizardman is totally ineffective. On a different note, this also means that the lizards are far slower and less aware at night and during winter months than they are when the sun is shining.

US Research Division Omega - Survey File M2221


Nexus II
by Black Dragon (black_dragon74@hotmail.com)
https://www.angelfire.com/anime5/faniclair

What is UP with Drow, anyway? How can a basically malevolent, hateful, back-stabbing bunch of anorexic, stuck-up neurotics build a civilization in the first place? Makes no sense.

Chapter 16
Battle of Dragonkeep
**********************************************************************************

"Ungh..." Kaze groaned as he pushed himself up from the bed, scratching his head wearily.

'Ah, another morning of battle and adventure. Up and at 'em, then...' Kaze's stay at Taer'Kul was notable mostly for his acts of vice and debauchery, of which sloth had been one of his favorites. And although he wasn't prone to complaints about conditions that couldn't be helped, having to sleep outside on a blanket was probably his least favorite aspect of the adventurer's lifestyle.

That said, he had taken the opportunity to indulge himself, seeing how he was stuck in a village with no immediate objectives. Kaze had slept at least four hours past the time in which Ranma would have woken him up on the road.

In all fairness though, he had also gone to sleep a few hours later than he would have normally.

"Hmmm? Oh no, what time is it?" Mumbled a young brunette, turning over under the covers and yawning.

"Ah... ten or eleven, I think?" Kaze said, rooting around the pile of scattered clothing for his underwear and pants.

"Dang. I have to get to work," the woman said, sitting up slowly. Then she smirked at the evon cleric, running a hand through her hair. "But hey, if you're going to be in town for another night, let me know."

She swung her legs out over the side of the bed, and then halted, frowning. "Hey... do you smell that?"

"Eh?" Kaze stood up from where he had retrieved his shirt. "What?"

The girl sniffed the air for a moment, her forehead wrinkling. "It smells like... something's burning? No... more like something's cooking."

"Well, this is an inn, right? I have to assume you have a kitchen working at this time of day."

The young woman shook her head, holding the bed sheets up against her body as she stepped toward the window. "No, it smells like it's coming from... huh?"

After pulling his shirt down over his head, Kaze noticed his temporary paramour staring slack-jawed out the window, and he walked up behind her curiously. "What? Is something happening outside?"

His face darkened the moment he got a look out the window. "Oh. I... see."

The priest immediately turned back around and dressed himself in a flurry of activity, speaking quickly at the same time.

"Although I greatly enjoyed our time together, I'm afraid circumstances have arisen that require my immediate departure from this area. I apologize if my actions cause any offense, but please understand that my survival, and that of my associates, may be at stake!"

The girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think you'd better hurry, though."

Kaze nodded as he tugged on his gloves, and then removed the Eye of Malakai from the nightstand next to the bed. "Goodbye, then." Vwom! The priest then vanished in a blur of light.

The young woman started picking her own clothes up off the floor, still sniffing the air on occasion. "Mmmm... that's not too bad, actually. Maybe I'll stop by on my break." She picked up her well-worn maid outfit and smoothed it out, laying it on top of the bed. "I've never had lizardman before. I wonder what it tastes like."

"Shikodan. I do believe that while your actions here do not constitute wrongdoing or a violation of Master Saotome's directives in the strictest sense, there are certain ramifications to what you've done that bear consideration," Kaze said gently in his best "diplomat" tone of voice.

Rayden grinned and then held out what appeared to be a folded-up patch of scaly, reptilian skin. "I made you a wallet!"

A sweatdrop rolled down Kaze's head as he hesitantly took the proffered item. "Th... Thank you..."

Next the Dread Knight held out a pair of boots, also covered in thick, sturdy scales. "How do ya like these shoes? Is the color good? I know the patterns don't match exactly, but it was hard to find a single skin that was in good enough shape and hadn't already been torn the wrong way."

"I don't think I've properly expressed my concerns," Kaze mumbled, rubbing his head. "Let me try again."

Rayden frowned. "Look, do you want the boots or not? These weren't easy to make, you know."

Situated behind the demonic paladin was what Kaze could honestly call the most festive and productive mass slaughter he had ever heard of. A great pile of some thirty or so lizardmen corpses, including perhaps a half-dozen grends, lay in the middle of the town square, the bodies in various states of mutilation and dismemberment. In front of the corpse pile lay several cook fires, each one with a skinned lizardman impaled on a spit and slowly roasting above the flames. Behind the mound of bodies was a pile of weaponry, no longer needed by the dead owners, and a stack of pelts expertly removed from the dead monsters that had previously guarded the town.

All about the square, the village's human settlers milled about, several of them quite pleased, while others looked at the scene in emotional states varying from disgust to horror.

"I can appreciate that our tastes in recreation diverge considerably," Kaze began again. "I like to sleep in, and enjoy fruitless procreation. You, on the other hand, seem to be abnormally predisposed against both of these, and that's fine. Murder as a hobby is... unorthodox, but I'm willing to keep an open mind."

Rayden snorted as he compared the scalehide boots to his own. "Well, they're too small for me. Doesn't that just figure? Hey, do you think Ranma needs some new shoes?"

"And putting aside the direct moral ramifications of killing sentient creatures out of boredom, I have to say I heartily approve of the effort you go through to find practical uses for the bodies of your victims. Very impressive, I must admit," Kaze continued.

"I wonder how a scalehide cloak would look," Rayden wondered aloud, rubbing his chin. "I'd need a special oil to keep it from drying out too firmly, though."

A vein popped up on Kaze's head as Rayden continued to talk to himself. "I have concerns, however, that in performing this act of liberation-slash-warfare-slash-serial murder, you may have prompted certain events that are outside of our ability to regulate."

Rayden raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN!" A man screamed from behind Kaze, holding a pair of battered scimitars up into the air. "BROTHERS!! SISTERS!! THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING! SOON WE WILL WATER THIS ENTIRE VALLEY WITH THE COOL, DARK BLOOD OF THE REPTILIAN OPPRESSORS!!"

Another sweatdrop ran down Kaze's head. "Well... like that."

Rayden shrugged. "What? I like his attitude."

"I can't argue with the validity or righteousness of his cause," Kaze explained patiently, "but these people have no chance to fight off even a small segment of Greken's army. A rebellion via direct, armed conflict is impossible, but standing next to a pile of eviscerated lizardmen, that may not be apparent. What's going to happen to these people?"

Rayden shrugged again. "I assume they'll charge into battle in a furious mob, and then die in a blast of fire or something. Not a bad way to go."

"While that may be a perfectly splendid scenario according to your beliefs, against mine it poses a considerable problem," the cleric deadpanned.

"Like what?" The demon knight asked yet again.

"Noble warriors!" The man from before suddenly said, clapping Kaze on the shoulder. "At last, the outside world has seen our suffering and granted us salvation! With you by our side, victory is assured!"

Kaze paled considerably, though he managed a weak smile. "Ah... yes... I was afraid of this..."

Rayden frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. "Now wait a minute, I never agreed to nothing. I have other things to do, ya know."

The man looked shocked, as if Rayden's participation had been guaranteed. "But... But without your aid, I'm certain we'll be crushed!"

"So what?" The demon knight responded. "At least you died trying, right?"

"Please, reconsider!" The self-appointed rebel leader said, his voice rising to its earlier "motivational" pitch. "If not for us, then for our families, and the future generations that must grow up in fear of rampaging dragons and bow to a master that brutally oppresses us!"

"Meh." The Dread Knight shrugged off the man's concerns as he picked up another lizardman skin, judging the pelt critically.

"Okay..." the revolutionary pursed his lips for a moment. "Then if not for us OR our families, would you do it for the chance to kill another few regiments of reptiles?"

Kaze, who had been quietly inching away ever since the man had started talking to Rayden, was suddenly yanked back to the fore as the dark paladin grabbed him by the arm.

"We have to help these people!" Rayden said dramatically, shaking a fist in the air angrily. "Their plea for the bloody demise of their foes has moved me."

Kaze shed a silent tear, then sighed. "You realize that your assistance will almost certainly bring you into direct conflict with Greken's draconic forces, right? And thus in violation of Master Saotome's request?"

Rayden blinked. "No I don't," he said honestly. Then he blinked again. "Oops. Okay, yeah, now I realize it."

The evon priest frowned, and then straightened as Rayden let go of him. "All right, fine. Since it seems apparent that conflict is unavoidable, I have no choice but to lend my full assistance to avoid complete disaster."

"Yes! With the aid of... the avatars or whatever you two are, we cannot fail!" The rebel cheered, with several others among the square starting to arm themselves and shout excitedly. "Today marks the-"

"First order of business," Kaze said sharply, "could you silence him?"

Whock! Rayden brought his fist down on top of the rebel's skull, causing the man to sputter incoherently for a few seconds before he collapsed onto the ground. "Done."

"Good. Now go ahead and... well, finish whatever you're doing here. Give meat and weapons to anyone who wants some. I have to go speak to some people who do business in the other towns."

"So, did you want a scalehide cloak? I'm making scalehide cloaks, I think," Rayden said enthusiastically, hanging a grend's skin up in the air.

Kaze sweatdropped as he scurried off. "Make whatever you want! I'll be busy for some time!"

Rayden dropped his arms, somewhat disappointed. Then he looked left, and then right.

Then the demon knight rummaged through the unconscious rebel's pockets, located his money, and then walked off with it, whistling happily to himself.

Dashtall Greken's main keep was truly a mighty fortress by any standards, modern or antique.

Built into the side of an active volcano that was situated at the end of the deep valley known as Olahan's Maw, the castle's main wall was composed of massive lengths of slate that formed the castle periphery, which was shielded by a ragged but effective patchwork of enormous metal plates bolted onto the rock foundation and reinforced from the inside. The corners of the wall were punctuated with solidly-built armored towers, and the gate was so thick and well-layered with blast armor that it could have withstood nearly any modern armament.

Artillery cannons, probably scavenged from battlefields in the wastes, stood atop the ramparts in varying states of disrepair as short grend troopers patrolled the tops of the walls, machine guns slung underneath their arms.

All around the castle lay a moat of molten lava, populated by great salamanders that regularly surged to the surface to unleash great puffs of smoke and inhale fresh air before sinking below the molten surface once again.

The top of the castle was reinforced no less than the outer wall, in part to protect against the bombing raids that were a favored tactic of the human armies, but also to create a stable nest for a great shadow dragon that slumbered in a ring of cattle bones and armor scraps.

Where Dashtall's fortress would have proven inadequate against the modern weapons of larger armies, the fortification made up the slack with its numerous draconic guardians. Scattered over the volcano were numerous wyvern nests, and fire dragons basked lazily atop magma vents that regularly belched smoke and flame into the air. Surrounding the fortress were numerous pits and quarries that served as venom dragon and earth dragon nests, while other serpent kings nested in caverns carved out of the valley walls.

With the overwhelming force Greken commanded, and the fortifications that kept the demon lord safe from all but the heaviest bombardments, his fortress was a formidable bastion by any measure, and would have stood up to any conventional army, whether demonic, technological, or magical. Against such might, certainly even the greatest band of adventurers stood no chance in direct combat.

Ranma's band of religious misfits were far from the greatest. And when one removed the demonic muscle and smart magic and left him with only the annoyingly talkative and perpetually hungry mini-dragon, things looked much bleaker.


"I really don't understand the logic of this approach, I have to admit," K said nervously as he clutched Ranma's shoulder, keeping his head low. "Do you remember last night? When we stayed far away from the fortress because it was safer? I'm kind of liking that approach now. I think we need to take a step back in that direction."

The pair was currently located far above and behind the fortress, high atop the volcano that towered above the castle and protected it from behind. Ranma was currently crouched behind one of the many rock outcroppings that surrounded the lip of the chasm, and was carefully observing one of the caves that led deeper into the volcano.

"No, I think we found what we're looking for," Ranma said, ducking back down. "It's not gonna be easy, of course. Never is."

"You're crazy, aren't you? Damn it, I knew you were crazy, but now you're... double crazy," K mumbled.

Ranma rolled his eyes. "Look, it's like this: the front of the fortress is too well-protected to go straight at it. Even if my invisibility stunt works perfectly, it's going to be nearly impossible to keep it up until I get past every patrol, guard, and trained animal keeping watch. Not to mention that it might have all sorts of enchantments or magic that could trip me up."

He jabbed a thumb at the mouth of the cave. "I'm ninety percent sure that there's a way to get into the fortress through this volcano here. More importantly, they don't fortify this entrance 'cause it'll get in the way of the dragons, who they figure can protect the back entrance without any guards around. Who'd be stupid enough to try and get into a castle through a volcano infested with dragons?"

K twitched. "You, apparently."

"Exactly!" Ranma turned back toward his objective, either not realizing or not caring about the cheap insult. "Getting into the castle through the front gate is impossible. Trying to get into the castle from the mountain is still suicidal. This... is only stupid. As infiltration routes go, it's as good as I'm going to get. Unless I had a ridiculously convenient diversion, maybe."

"Like what?"

Ranma shrugged. "I dunno... like a sudden peasant uprising, or something. But forget that. I have to work with what I've got in front of me."

He turned about again, and slid several knives out of his sleeves. "Out at the entrance we've just got some lizardmen dragging food to the dragons every couple minutes. I can get around that, easy. Inside is going to be trickier, depending on how many fire drakes they have loafing around and how well-guarded the back door is."

K gulped. "What am I going to do, though?"

Ranma raised an eyebrow. "You? You're a dragon. There are dozens of other dragons all over the place. Just... I dunno, blend in. Try to pretend like you belong here."

A vein popped up on K's head. "Are you serious? That's your plan for me? Do you have any idea how uncommon metadragons are?"

"Not really, no. It's hard to appreciate how rare you are when I spend most of my time wishing you'd leave me alone," Ranma deadpanned.

"I'm serious!" The metadragon shouted. "We're not dealing with your average, IQ 20 demonkin, here! If I get caught, I could be in serious trouble!"

Ranma snorted. "Yeah, real trouble. Unless you've forgotten, they want YOU alive. You'll survive. Just make up a story or something. You seem pretty good at that."

K fretted incoherently for several seconds, and Ranma nodded after peeking out at the volcano entrance again. "Okay, go ahead! Just fly out there, and zip into the cave entrance like you own the place!"

The metadragon shuddered. "I... I can't! I can't just-"

"C'mon K, I'm asking you to be useful for once!" Ranma asked, poking his pet/companion in the back. "If you're so sure that you'll attract attention, you can at least attract attention while I'm trying to sneak in!"

"B-But... any one of those guys could kill me in an instant! Fire dragons aren't known for being neighborly! I'm encroaching on their territory!"

"You and twenty other oversized lizards," Ranma said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Look, one way or another, I have to get in there. That means that either I follow you in, or I leave you here."

K winced badly. "Okay... Okay, hold on..." He took a deep breath, and then hopped up onto the rocks, taking his first good look at the volcano. "Just relax. You belong here. You're just another dragon. Probably just another absurdly loyal, maybe-brainwashed serpent king flitting about the place, 'cause, hey, you're a dragon! What are people going to do about it? I can go where-YIPE!"

About this time, Ranma got sick of listening to K's self-motivational speech, and so he grabbed the young dragon around the waist and hurled him mightily toward the cave entrance.


"GAH! HEY! I wasn't ready! You jerk!" K shouted, flapping his wings rapidly to try and recover his stability in the air.

After a few seconds he regained normal flight, thankfully before he hit the wall of the volcano (unsurprisingly, Ranma had an excellent throwing arm), and growled in irritation as he hovered in place above the ground.

It didn't take long for K to realize that he had been shouting angrily out loud, and that it had gained him the attention of everything resting outside the volcano entrance: in total five lizardmen, two lesser salamanders, and several of the enormous, iguana-like saurus that had been loafing about in the heat from the nearby magma flows.

"Uh... Eh heh heh..." K chuckled nervously as he slowly turned away from the various reptilians, sweat pouring down his head. 'Okay, this TOTALLY makes us even after the IEF thing. I could die!'

Trying his best to pretend that he wasn't totally panicking, K slowly floated over to the cave entrance, trying not to make eye contact with any of the lizardmen or pseudo-dragons.

To his relief, the other reptilians promptly turned away, apparently dismissing the undeniably suspicious dragon as nothing more than an unusually loud resident.

K made his way into the smoking cavern of the volcano, floating forward at a crawl as he took it all in.

Bones of cattle, boars, horses, and the occasional human littered the interior of the cavern entrance, the skeletal remains steeped in piles of hot, glowing ash.

K found the image unsettling, but not alarming or unexpected. What was more repulsive was the pair of young fire dragons - both of them already the size of horses, K noted enviously - deeper in, fighting over the shredded and scorched remains of some species of large humanoid.

The metadragon fought his initial instinct to fly straight around and leave, and instead flew in a steady, noiseless beeline straight toward a magma pit in the center of the cavern. The moment he was above the pool of molten rock, K was hit by a wave of intense heat, and the metadragon wobbled about in the air for a few seconds as he adjusted for the sudden updraft.

Glancing down into the pit, K saw five large eggs sitting comfortably within the bubbling magma, each one thick with veins of heavy metal ore wrapping around the outside of the shell.

The metadragon hesitated, idly wondering what the egg shells tasted like. He almost always preferred properly smelted metal to raw ore, but the veins in the shells looked abnormally pure, and it made him curious. Not that he would destroy a fertile egg to get a snack, but he could see bits of shell stuck to the walls of the magma nest, tempting him.

Splash! K's eyes bugged out as a voluptuous, tanned, red-haired, naked, and apparently fire-proof young woman suddenly emerged from the surface of the magma pit, standing up and stretching as if she was just waking up from a nap.

It did not escape K's notice that the molten-hot liquids ran down her body like water without leaving the barest mark upon her glistening, well-tanned skin, nor were the implications of such complete heat resistance beyond his understanding. At the moment though, his faculties had more important things to contemplate.

'Boobiesboobiesboobiesboobiesboobiesbigboobiesboobiesboobies!'

Once the fire dragon in female form glanced up at him, however, K remembered that his current predicament was far too delicate for him to lose his concentration to teenage hormones, and he quickly darted forward, trying to pretend that he hadn't seen anything.

'Okay, easy now. Look for a way down. There should be a side tunnel, or a deep cavern, or maybe even a lift to-'

"Hey there. Hold," a gruff, yet somehow feminine voice said from behind K, and the metadragon flinched before slowly turning in the air.

It was the female from before, now dressed in a plain red cloak to match her hair. She was standing about a meter behind K, and was staring at the younger dragon suspiciously. "I've never seen you around here before. Who are you?"

"H-Hi! I-I'm K!" The metadragon stuttered out hysterically. "Uh... so... what's your sign?"

The redhead ignored the outdated pick-up line and stalked closer to him. "What are you doing, skulking around in the fire dragon nests? You don't belong here."

"You don't say!" K shouted, flying backwards slowly as he glanced about for an escape route. "Well, then I'd better be on my way to where I do belong, then!"

K zipped around and tried to fly deeper into the cave when the fire dragon grabbed him by the tail, and after a brief yelp, the metadragon hung limply from her hand.

"Hmm... are you a silver dragon or a rock dragon? I've never seen one like you before," she started turning him about in her hand, staring intensely at her victim.

"M-Metadragon, actually. I'm... uh... new here," he said lamely, hoping that his species sounded inedible.

Surprisingly, the redhead seemed entirely mollified by the response. "Ah, I gotcha. Just shipped in and still poking around, huh? That's fine, but you should be careful about wandering into other dragon's nests. Some of the old ones are real finicky about their territory, and can be really aggressive around their eggs."

"Hey now, wassis sis?"

"Is it food? Is it? Is it? I'm still hungry!"

K froze up as he watched the pair of young fire drakes from before saunter up behind his current captor, flame emerging in small puffs from their long jaws.

The redhead promptly backhanded the second one, knocking its head back and causing it to run about in a circle wildly as it yelped and hissed.

"By Greken, did a boulder fall on your skull when you were hatched?" She growled, glaring at the pitiful dragon. "Not everything that wanders through the cave is food, all right?"

She smiled as she turned back to K. "I'm sorry about these two brats. My name is Sarhee. These are my younger brothers, Kal and Lehjid. Lehjid is the stupid one."

"Nice to... meet you?" K asked awkwardly, still being held upside-down by his tail.

Kal smirked. "What's this thing? Barely a hatchling! He shouldn't even be out from behind his mama's tail!"

Sarhee let out a sharp hiss. "I would gladly say the same about you, dolt. For his apparent age, he speaks better than you do."

She turned back to K, her expression becoming instantly much gentler. "Come on, now. I'll take you to the overseer, and we can see about getting you back to your own nest."

"Urk!" K immediately stiffened again. "O-Overseer? You have overseers?"

"Of course we do," explained Sarhee as she walked toward the back of the cave, the two younger males following wordlessly. "Lord Greken cannot handle us all personally, and has many affairs to take care of. It only makes sense that he'd delegate to his vassals."

'That's insane. No dragon would ever consent to being third on a command chain. Well, other than me, I guess...' "And... nobody has a problem with being treated like second-rate guard animals? You know, most dragons would only follow orders given from the demon lord himself, personally, and only with a considerable salary. How does he pay all of you?"

Sarhee stopped moving, and the three dragon siblings are shared a confused glance.

"Pay? Why would he need to pay us?" Sarhee asked, completely puzzled.

"Greken Lord feed us! We eat, we follow Greken Lord!" Lehjid crowed happily.

"Yeah, as long as we get food and a place to sleep, that is enough!" Kal agreed.

K gaped. "What are you, poor or something? What kind of dragon works for food and board?"

'Again, besides me,' he added mentally. Though in all fairness, K had EXTREMELY costly eating habits.

Sarhee continued walking deeper into the cavern as she thought over his comments, and K glanced about at a pair of adult fire drakes, one which was slumbering in a bed of bones and rock, and another that was grooming its scales within a sputtering magma flow.

"I suppose it seems strange when you try and work it out like that, but you get used to it," the redhead reasoned, shrugging. "I'm sure you'll understand when you meet Lord Greken."

K twitched as he was carried into a descending spiral staircase. "Why can't you explain it to me? Why do I just keep hearing 'Lord Greken' this and 'Master Dashtall' that? That fire drake didn't have a single gold coin among its bedding! That's unheard of! Do you have any idea that people outside this territory will actually PAY you to kill things? Like, in ADDITION to feeding you?"

Kal snorted, a burst of hot smoke blasting from his nostrils. "Hey sis, you sure that this one is one of ours? It asks too many questions."

"Nosy, nosy, shiny lizard!" Lehjid sang, snapping his jaws hungrily.

"Wh-What?" K asked as Sarhee held him up higher and looked him in the eyes suspiciously. "What are you talking about? I'm just trying to learn how things work, right? I wasn't born here, you know!"

"He's got a point," the female admitted, stepping out into another cavern framed by two thick, oozing waterfalls of molten rock on either wall. "But still, you might upset the overseer if you keep asking such questions. You don't want to upset the overseers."

"Uh... right..." K said nervously, wanting to change the subject. "Okay, so... you're all siblings, huh? So I assume none of those eggs back there were yours?"

Sarhee jolted backward, her face flushing. "What? Of course not! Do I look that old to you?"

K sweatdropped. "It's hard to tell in your human form; you could be twenty or twenty thousand, for all I know."

Sarhee frowned, but nodded reluctantly. "Okay, fine. I'm thirty. Ish."

"She's thirty-eight, by the humans' years," Kal hissed, rolling his eyes.

WHAP! K winced as the younger drake suffered a powerful strike to his head, sending him to the ground in a daze.

'I've never heard of a dragon female being concerned about her age. She must read too many of those human magazines,' the metadragon reasoned. "So you're not even an adult, then. And your brothers must be even younger."

The redhead nodded firmly, still glaring at Kal. "These two are barely pups, not even two decades." She turned away from her sibling, sniffing haughtily. "They may be big from stuffing themselves constantly, but they're practically babies."

"That's good," said a new voice from behind her. "This is going to be a lot easier than I'd hoped."

Sarhee blinked. "Eh?"

Shnk! K sweatdropped as Ranma flickered into view behind the dragons like a vengeful spirit, his eyes glowering as he clenched numerous small and mid-sized blades between his fingers. "Oh no..."

"I have to say... all things considered, I'm of mixed feelings about this turn of events," K mumbled, staring at the bleeding, mangled corpses of the two male drakes.

Knives, axes and swords decorated the cracked red hides of the brothers, though most of the weapons were rapidly melting from exposure to the lava-hot blood that was still spilling profusely onto the ground and slowly running off to the side of the cavern to fall into the magma flow.

Sarhee was in better shape, merely having her right arm impaled by a short sword in a strategic location and having Ranma's magic chain wrapped tight around her neck. Ranma was currently standing over her, one foot holding her good arm down, while he kept the chain taught with his right hand and held his katana to her chest with his left.

"You bastard! You'll die a thousand deaths for this!" The dragon in human form hissed, her eyes flaring. "Your suffering was assured the moment you stepped foot in here! You'll burn slowly, your flesh blister-URK!"

"Okay, yeah, fine," Ranma said irritably, yanking hard on the chain to shut up his captive. "Can we skip the threats, please? I'm kind of in a hurry, here."

"Besides, fire is probably not the best way to torture this guy," K added, dragging a broken longsword away from Kal's dead body.

"And you!" Sarhee snarled once she got her breath back. "You traitor! How dare you! You let this human in here to kill your brethren!"

"Technically, I'm a spy, not a traitor," K said firmly, "and while I don't feel comfortable with him butchering fellow dragons, I'm pretty sure the only alternative is you dragons butchering him, so..." Shrugging as best he could to avoid eye contact, the metadragon set upon the discarded weapon with his usual gusto, relishing the polished and expertly tempered steel.

The redhead turned back toward Ranma. "You coward! Ambushing children! Have you no shame?"

Ranma rolled his eyes. "Uh huh. Whatever. Those 'children' would've gladly slow-roasted me and torn me apart if I'd given 'em a chance. Are you out of desperate accusations yet? We need to move this along."

He stepped off of her, and then yanked the fire drake up onto her feet, if rather painfully. "Now I don't want to kill you, mostly 'cause you're disguised as a human girl and the weak, sappy little hero in me feels bad about hurting girls, but I don't want you to cause a lot of noise and alert the guards, either. Guess which is a bigger problem for me?"

Sarhee twitched, but said nothing.

"I think you get what I mean," the pigtailed man said, nodding. "Okay, now I want you to lead me into the fortress. I want you to tell me when I can expect to find any guards. If I run into any guards without any warning, then I'm going to use you to fight them. Either as a shield, or maybe a projectile. I haven't decided yet."

The fire drake grimaced, but nodded weakly.

"Hey, hey, come on dude, take it easy on her," K reasoned, flying up onto Ranma's shoulder. "I mean, okay, yes, she would and probably still will kill you if you let your guard down for even an eye blink, but you can cut her a little slack. In the chain, specifically."

Ranma considered this for a moment, and then sighed. "Fine. Hold still, Red."

"My name is SarAAAH!" The hapless dragon shouted in surprise as Ranma unwound the chain around her neck with a snap of his arm, only to swing his arm about and then bind her wrists together in the same motion.

"Sarah. Fine. Whatever," Ranma mumbled as he tightened the chain and then pushed the redhead forward. "Let's go, all right?"

Casting a final, despondent look at her fallen brothers, Sarah gestured weakly toward a passage behind the leftward magma flow and started forward, leading the martial artist and metadragon onward.


"So, human. Care to explain why you're sneaking into the most powerful military fortification on this pitiful realm? What can you hope to accomplish here?" Sarah asked slowly, trying to work out exactly how much she could taunt her captor without inciting retribution.

"It's kind of a survival thing. Ironic, I know," Ranma shrugged. "Also, my name is Ranma. Ring a bell, Sarah?"

The redhead frowned. "My name is Sarhee."

"That's stupid, so your name is Sarah now," Ranma said firmly. "Anyway, your boss has been using his pet dragons to hunt me down the last few weeks, and I'm fed up with it. This stops tonight, one way or another."

"So you're the human that everyone's been so worked up about?" Sarah asked, perplexed. "Impossible... you're nothing more than a boy... and a warrior rogue, at that! How could you have survived this long?"

"Us 'warrior rogues' are pretty good at that sort of thing," Ranma snapped. "But never mind that. You have heard of me after all, huh?"

"Heard of you? My mother died trying to kill you!" Sarah snapped angrily. "You filthy ape! You kill a whole flight of our kind, and then you dare to saunter into our nesting grounds and create more havoc?"

Ranma rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm a real villain. So, you wouldn't happen to know WHY Greken is so keen on killing me, would you?"

"You mean besides wiping out small armies and butchering our infant dragons?"

"Yeah, besides all that," Ranma followed, not missing a beat.

Sarah snorted. "I haven't the slightest. While you're certainly worth killing now, I can't imagine what prompted such an exhaustive hunt." Then she frowned. "Halt."

"What is it?" Ranma asked suspiciously, stopping as he eyed the exit at the end of the passage.

"There is a guard post there. Well, not so much a guard post as a place for the handlers to rest when not busy," Sarah mumbled reluctantly. "My point is, there are lizardmen there that will raise the alarm if you alert them."

The pigtailed man blinked, genuinely surprised that his captive had done as asked rather than hoping that Ranma was bluffing. "Oh. Right. Hold on."

With a flick of his wrist, the chains binding Sarah's arms suddenly unwound into long, open loops... which then wrapped around the redhead's entire body and then tightened.

"Hey! What are-"

Ranma silenced the aggravated dragon by clamping a hand over her mouth. "Quiet. This is just to keep you from doing anything stupid until I finish up, here. I can't leave you alone with K with only your hands bound."

After letting his reasoning sink in, he eventually took his hand away from Sarah's face and turned toward the exit, ignoring the fire dragon's heated glare.

And then, he vanished.


"Wh-What? Where did...?" Sarah gaped as she tried to pick up traces of magic in the air where her captor had been previously, but found nothing.

'Can't be an invisibility spell... but I can still smell him, and...'

Frowning deeply, she waddled about to face K. "What was that he just did? That wasn't a spell."

The metadragon shrugged. "Crazy Ninja magic. It uses 'key' or something like that. I dunno."

Sarah desperately wanted to know more on the topic, but reasoned that K sounded ill-informed about it. Besides, there were more important things to discuss.

"Then he is gone? Then please, get these chains off!"

K recoiled. "Whoa! Hey! Nuh-uh. I'm on his side, remember?"

"Then change sides!" The redhead said firmly. "To these humans, you're nothing more than a pet or a monster! You can't seriously side with them over your own kin!"

A vein popped up on K's head. "Okay, first of all? You're NOT my kin. You're a bunch of brainwashed fire drakes holed up in a cave who probably would've eaten me if I hadn't lied to you. Second of all? I don't side with 'humans'. I side with Ranma. He's the guy who saved me, he's the guy who's fed me, protected me, and taught me. You can go suck on an exhaust vent, because there's no way I'm turning against him so easily."

"Please! I'll do anything!" Sarah begged, struggling uselessly against the enchanted chains. "He'll kill me once he's done with me!"

"You see, I'm not too sure about that," K mumbled, scratching his neck idly. "But I AM sure that you'll take any chance you get to rip his throat out, so... again, no."

"But... Wait! I'll... I'll even-" Sarah began hesitantly, only to be interrupted from behind.

"He said NO, all right? Get over it," Ranma muttered irritably, walking up behind the startled fire dragon and grabbing hold of the chains that bound her.

"Wh-What? Why are you back so soon?" Sarah asked tactlessly, moving to follow as Ranma tugged her along.

"It didn't take that long," Ranma mumbled, stepping into the next room.

Sarah's face darkened as she followed him. The lizardmen that were in charge of caring for the young dragons were collapsed around a table, their blood pooling together underneath it. Each one was impaled through the back with its own weapon, and appeared to have died before it could even consider struggling.

"Lizardmen aren't the most cautious or sensitive monsters, so it's not too hard to sneak around them," Ranma explained as she unwrapped his chain from around Sarah.

"But... how... how did you... did you get them all at once? It looks like they were sitting all around the table."

"Yeah, I did," Ranma said, swinging his right arm briefly so that the bladed chain wound around his gauntlet before attaching itself properly with a satisfying snap.

"How?" The dragon asked nervously.

"Ancient Chinese secret," Ranma said sarcastically. "How many more posts like this are there between us and the fortress?"

"This was the only one. There's no formal guard detail in the back of the castle," Sarah explained, a slight grin creeping up onto her face. "Though there's no way you'll be able to enter."

Ranma raised an eyebrow, prompting the fire drake to elaborate.

"At that level the magma flows are so intense that the air is lethally hot to fragile humans like you! Even the lizardmen can barely tolerate the short walk from the main chamber to the fortress! You'd bake in an instant!"

The redhead smirked and shrugged even as Ranma started pushing her forward again, deeper into the volcano. "I'd love to help, but there's really nothing I can do. Human bodies are simply too weak, and I can't cast any magic on other people. Too bad!"

"Uh huh. Yeah, that's a real shame. This way, right?" Ranma asked, ignoring the girl.

"I'm serious!" Sarah growled, irritated that her captor didn't appear to be taking her seriously. "I mean, it's fine if you get yourself cooked, great, but I don't want you to get upset and kill me before you die!"

"Stop talking. It's annoying," Ranma said evenly, still prodding her along.

The fire dragon in human form fumed, but said nothing as she stalked down the descending corridors of the volcano. It became quite obvious very quickly that she had not been lying; the walls of the corridor became more and more jagged as the temperature steadily increased, and pools of magma poking up from the floor became more common. These pools frequently bubbled and popped, spraying molten rock all about the cavern and contributing to the slow destruction of the walls.

Sarah glanced behind her suspiciously as they descended to the bottom-most open chamber in the volcano, and was thoroughly alarmed to see her captor only tugging uncomfortably on his collar as small trickles of sweat dripped down his cheeks. Bizarrely, K seemed to be in worse shape, and was swaying unsteadily on Ranma's shoulder as he panted heavily.

"What's the hold up? Keep moving," Ranma snapped, well aware that the dragon girl expected him to collapse any moment. Thankfully, his training in Hyoken style had put him through worse temperatures than this, and would ultimately protect him from anything short of the magma. He was more concerned about K; he really had no idea how tolerant metadragons were to such extreme temperatures, though so far he was disappointed.

Sarah wordlessly walked down a thick stone bridge that stretched over the main magma vent, still glancing behind her every few seconds to make sure that Ranma wasn't on the verge of collapse. Despite her distraction, they made it to the other side in a few seconds, and the redhead slowly hauled open a reinforced iron door while Ranma and K waited behind her.


"K? Are you doing all right?" The pigtailed man asked, wondering if he should kick the fire dragon to make her move faster.

"I'm... ugh... I'm fine," K insisted dizzily. "Just not... used to this... heat, I think. Body's gotta... gotta adjust."

Sarah grimaced as she finished opening the door, once again remarking upon how Ranma's body seemed unharmed by the dangerous temperatures. "I... I thought you were human, but... what are you?"

"Oh, no, I'm human," Ranma insisted as he stepped into the fortress proper, "I'm just cool like that."

The redhead was hardly mollified by the response, though she didn't press the issue before closing the door behind them. "Oh, whatever... these inside halls are frequently traveled by guards and slaves, so you'll have to stay on your guard. I won't be able to predict when we'll run into somebody."

She had Ranma's attention immediately. "Slaves? Where?"

"All over. Lord Greken keeps a considerable domestic workforce of bound humans, as well as a few lycanthropes and trolls for entertainment. They regenerate almost as fast as they're hurt, so it makes for long pit fights. I guess he thinks it's funny."

"Yeah, fine. Any important spots around here?" Ranma asked, though he was only half-listening at the time. For some reason K still seemed groggy, despite the temperature returning to bearable levels.

"Important spots..." Sarah, who really hadn't expected the human to survive the trip down, grimaced. So far she had been willing to cooperate out of fear for her life, but what Ranma was demanding now would be a serious betrayal of her master's interests. The question was, were those interests more important than her life?

'I can't just... well... I guess I can... but there has to be another way! Somewhere where I can escape, and...'

Sarah blinked as she recalled one of the most important areas in the fortress. A room which offered both considerable defenses, an excellent escape route, and a value within the castle that would necessarily make it the target of any attack.

She tried to conceal her smirk as she turned toward an impatient-looking Ranma. "Yes. Fine. I will take you to the heart of the castle." The redhead immediately turned around and walked briskly down the hallway. "Follow me closely and stay quiet. If anyone sees us, they'll assume you belong here."

Ranma frowned as he did as instructed. A more insightful person would have been worried about how the young fire dragon was apparently taking charge of the situation, but Ranma had more important concerns. "Where are you taking me?"

"It's the portal to Kreech realm. The grends come from that plane, and Lord Greken has many contacts there, I hear," Sarah explained.

Ranma hesistated as a ragged-looking girl in dirty, if presentable clothing stepped out of a room in front of them, only to immediately flinch back from the small group and turn away.

Sarah took no notice of the slave, satisfied with the girl's actions. "We send and receive supplies and soldiers constantly through that gateway. While it's still open, reinforcements will always be merely seconds away."

She turned a corner at the end of the hall, and smirked slightly as she saw a massive pair of double-doors ahead, guarded by two lizardmen. "It's through here. This gate is the central key to the castle. It's the greatest military and commercial link Lord Greken commands. So long as it is active, this fortification will never fall."

Ignoring the odd looks that the lizardmen were giving her, Sarah strode forward purposefully, pushing open the doors and moving onward. She stepped out onto a large stone balcony attached to a flight of stairs, and gestured grandly to the sight that lay below.

An enormous steel ring floated above the ground, with a stone ramp placed up against it. Inlaid in the ring surface were a number of magical inscriptions, from large, ornate runes to tiny script that shimmered mysteriously. The entire structure was perpetually wreathed in sparkling blue energy, and even as Sarah approached the balcony, a pack saurus was emerging from the blue-white core, magical power flaring all around it.

"This is it. Lord Greken's master portal." Grinning, she turned around, her hair swaying majestically in the whirlwind of magical energies that filled the entire room. "So, human. Now that you're here, what... what will..." She blinked. "Human? That's strange..."

Ranma was, oddly enough, nowhere to be found, and from her current line of sight, Sarah could see that he wasn't lagging behind in the previous corridor, either.

"Where'd he go?" The redhead mumbled, turning back around and scanning the gate room carefully. "Did he turn invisible again and run off already?"

{"Why does that one keep talking to herself?"} One of the lizardmen guards hissed in his native tongue just loud enough for Sarah to hear.

The other guard shrugged. {"Kilua said that the young fire drakes seemed dumber than usual this latest generation. He thinks it may be inbreeding."}

A vein popped up on Sarah's head at the gossip, but she promptly counted to ten in her mind to calm herself before approaching the guards.

'I don't know where that human went, but I can't let him get away with what he's done,' she thought to herself. 'Wherever he is, I just know he's up to no good!'

"Are you serious? You're here to free us?"

Ranma nodded grimly from where he sat on a kitchen counter, staring down at the half-dozen slaves that he had interrupted from their early afternoon duties.

"Yeah, I'm serious. Look, I'm here to cause trouble for this Greken freak, and when I do, I'm going to see about carving a way out for everyone who's trapped in here. I just need to know if you're willing to take the chance to make a break for it when the time comes."

The two girls in the room, one of whom was the one Ranma had followed from the hallway, glanced at each other fearfully as the chef and his assistants mused the thought over.

The chef, a grizzled man that bore a number of scars all over his face and arms, leveled a very critical gaze at the pigtailed man. "Kid, I don't know who you think you are, but you're stuck in a massive fortress packed wall-to-wall with lizards of all shapes, sizes, abilities, and temperaments. In fact, the only thing they really have in common is that any one of them would love to rip you limb from limb and gnaw you down to the bones. What makes you think you could possibly cause enough of a ruckus to so much as wake up the night guardsmen, much less make a way out for us castle slaves to get away? I don't think it'll take them that long to eat you."

Ranma smirked, immediately liking the old man. He'd always had a fondness for gruff honest types. "I've done this sort of thing before. This is a slightly bigger scale than what I'm used to dealing with, but I have backup, this time."

The chef raised an eyebrow. "What kind of backup?"

"I'd rather not talk about that," Ranma deadpanned. "But listen. I want to get you guys out of here, but I need to know more about this Greken guy." His expression suddenly looked far more serious. "How does Greken control these dragons?"

"Control them?" One of the slave boys asked.

"Sure. I know all about dragons. I've fought them, fought with them, even fought for one of 'em, once. Not to mention that I've had one following me around constantly for the last few months." Ranma noted at this point that K was nowhere to be found, but shrugged it off immediately. It would be just like the metadragon to immediately dive into the nearest supply of metal tools, and if he was discovered, Ranma was reasonably sure no harm would come to him. "There's no way that this Greken guy just convinced this many dragons to work for him without pay. I need to know what's going on here."

"And if you did know how Greken does all that, what would you do about it?" The chef asked grimly, not noticing immediately as the rear door to the kitchen opened up behind the group.

Ranma hesitated. "Well... I..."

Fwsh! Faster than any of the slaves could track, Ranma jumped off the counter and whirled about in mid-air, unleashing a single throwing knife that promptly lodged itself into the throat of the young grend that had just stepped into the kitchens.

"Hrk! Ghg!" The reptilian demon staggered forward, falling to its knees, and Ranma calmly walked over to the intruder as the younger slaves locked up in terror.

"I know that it doesn't seem like a reasonable bet, breaking out of here. I mean, whatever I say about it, your lives are on the line." Ranma stopped next to the grend, and then slowly unsheathed his katana. "I'm not gonna force you to do anything. But I'll do anything I can to help you get out of here."

Ranma resheathed his katana with a slight twitch of his wrist, and for a moment the slaves blinked, wondering why the pigtailed man had drawn a weapon without using it.

Then the grend's head rolled away from its neck and onto the floor, blood spilling out behind it.

"Hah!" The chef barked out a laugh at the sight, startling the other slaves. "Think you're something special, don't you? Well, all right! I was getting sick of this life, anyway! If I don't make it, no big loss on my part, eh?"

"That's... That's not really the attitude I'm looking for, but whatever works for you, I guess," Ranma mumbled, rubbing the back of his head.

"So, it's really happening, then? Is the revolution really here?" One of the slave girls asked, much to Ranma's confusion.

"Revolution? Well, it's more of a prison break, really..."

"Never mind that," the chef said suddenly. "Kima, you go to the quarters and inform the others that the time has arrived. Have Nathan take some men with him to the dungeons, while Timothy prepares to disable the guns."

Ranma blinked repeatedly. "Uh... really? Disabling guns? I'm not sure that's a good idea..."

The chef grinned and walked past Ranma, kicking aside the grend's corpse negligently. "Relax, boy. This has been a long time in the waiting. I'm just surprised that our opportunity came so soon."

Ranma frowned and followed the man out as the slaves left through the main entrance. "Wait, is there something I should know, here?"

"There's lots you should know, but I don't think it matters," the old man said gruffly. "All you have to do is make sure 'Lord' Greken has bigger problems than a handful of slaves running amok."

Ranma's frown deepened. "Uh huh... hold that thought."


Reaching into his pocket and rummaging around for a bit, Ranma quickly found the psychic crystal that Kaze had prepared.

"I actually should have gotten them on board a while ago, but whatever. With the hoverbikes they should be able to make it here in time to help," Ranma mumbled to himself as he removed the glove over his left hand, grasping the crystal with his bare hand.

'Ah, this is going to be a complete disaster, I just know it. These men have no patience or sense, it's frustrating. And it doesn't help that Shikodan... hello? Master Saotome, is that you?'

Ranma staggered for a moment as a cascade of thoughts, images, and scant flashes of memory assaulted his unprepared psyche. For a moment he was completely lost in a swirl of emotions and sensory input, utterly unable to determine which thoughts were his own and completely debilitated by the confusion.

"Boy? You all right?" The chef asked scepticaly.

"Just... Just a sec. I'm new to this. Give me a minute," Ranma muttered through clenched teeth, trying to calm down as parts of his mind which he THOUGHT were parts of his mind, but wasn't really sure, started to panic as he lost his grip on fleeting ideas that may or may not have been his.

'Try to relax; the confusion to a non-psychic is considerable at first, but it will pass soon. It's best if you don't release the crystal, though. If you don't get acclimated, then we aren't going to get anywhere.'

Ranma rubbed his head as he stood up, trying his best to push aside the confusion. 'Kaze! Listen! I need you and Rayden to get to the main fortress, pronto! I'm going to start something soon, and no matter how it turns out, I'm pretty much toast if I don't have someone on the outside to help me and the people in here escape!'

'Ah. Yes. About that...'

Images briefly flickered before Ranma's eyes, which he supposed might have explained the situation Kaze was currently experiencing if this whole psychic thing wasn't giving him such a headache.

'It would seem that we were somewhat... headstrong in our own investigations.'

'What, did they find out you guys were with me?' Ranma thought, slipping into a crouch as the chef waited impatiently.

'Not at all. That became a moot point once Shikodan slaughtered an entire garrison and set the stage for a long-planned peasant rebellion.'

Ranma sweatdropped. 'Oh. Well, as long as he's not fighting any dragons like I asked him.'

'Miraculously enough, we've avoided any such battles. In any case, I can assure you, we are well on our way to assisting you... though the ultimate fate of our assault looks quite grim.'

'Yeah, I was about to get to that, actually...' Ranma took a deep breath and stood up before addressing the chef again. "Hey, you never did tell me anything about how Greken controls the dragons. Do you know anything about that?"

The chef snorted, but smirked. "More than any human should, I assure you. Greken's secret is unknown to all but his closest associates... and a few slaves that happened to be in the wrong place at the right time." He barked out a laugh. "These reptiles think nothing at all of their servants! They'll chatter on about anything at all; they really think we're incapable of turning on them!"

"Yeah, well I think they'll learn their lesson tonight," Ranma mused. 'Koz, you getting this?'

'Yes. Well, mostly, but... no! Shikodan, stop that! You can't set that off here! We're not close enough yet!'

Ranma sweatdropped as the chef continued. "Anyway, the key is the Serpent's Heart. That's the source of Greken's power."

"The Serpent's Heart, huh? What and where is it?"

"I've never seen it, of course, but apparently it's an artifact that allows the wielder to control dragons. Permanently, yet. I have no idea how it works, but with this item Greken has turned legions of proud, decadent creatures into tame, loyal beasts of burden. Although still dragons in every way and still susceptible to the dragon's temper and lust for wealth, they happily quash their urges at Dashtall's feet."

"Damn," Ranma mumbled, rubbing his chin. "I was expecting something like that, but still... that's a pretty nifty toy."

The chef snorted. "More than that, it is the single most important component to Greken's reign." Suddenly the older man grasped Ranma by the shoulders. "Unfortunately, I don't know where the Heart is, though it's probably located here in the main fortress, in the sub-levels where no humans or even lizardmen are allowed. Greken knows nothing of subtlety or deceit, and would only place his most valued artifact behind the most powerful defenses." His grip on Ranma's shoulders tightened. "Please! You must find and seize the Heart so that we can turn his dragons on him! No army can possibly stand against Dashtall while his dragon legions remain loyal!"

"'Kay," Ranma said, utterly ruining the dramatic tension. "How do you get to the sub-levels?"

The chef was non-plussed by Ranma's apparent apathy, but continued along the path. "It's this way, near the throne room."

Ranma followed him, and once again turned his thoughts inward... or rather, outward, depending on how one thought of it. 'Kaze, did you get all that? Serpent's Heart, controls dragons, yadda yadda?'

'Indeed. It is, like you say, the most obvious and likely scenario, though the idea that such an artifact actually exists boggles the mind. I would dearly like to study it after this is over.'

'You can do whatever you want with it, but I need to know what you're planning, exactly. What are you throwing at the castle? They have artillery on the walls and salamanders at the gate. You know, besides all the dragon nests around here.'

There were several moments of mental silence as Ranma followed the chef down the stone hallway.

'Kaze? What, you don't even have a plan? Look, even something like "Shikodan will blast the walls and slay the salamanders while I summon some elementals within the castle to..." actually, that's a pretty good plan right there, now that I think about it. Why don't we go with that? Koz?'

It was about this time that Ranma realized that the infernal buzzing in his head had totally ceased; he hadn't noticed immediately, because he had been intentionally ignoring the confusing blur of memories and thoughts the moment he had learned to differentiate between his own thoughts and Kaze's and instead focused on the words that Kaze was sending to him intentionally. Now that he surrendered his mind to the crystal in his hand, however, he realized that it had suddenly stopped working.

'Did it run out of power? No... I don't think so...'

Ranma suddenly grabbed the chef's arm as he put away the crystal. "You need to leave. Now."

The man looked surprised, and then shook his head. "No, you needn't worry. These halls are very infrequently patrolled, and-"

"No, you don't understand," Ranma said harshly. "I need you to run in the opposite direction, and then scream at the first reptile you find that there's a strange guy with a pigtail wandering about the castle killing people. Hurry!"

The old man hesitated, but then he nodded grimly and turned around, dashing down the corridor.

Ranma, for his part, steeled himself and dashed down the other way, rearing his left hand back as he approached a thick, reinforced wooden door.

"DRAGON FIST!" BWOOM!!


A hail of burning splinters and cinders burst into the adjacent room, scattering over the rough carpet. The ki flames died quickly, failing to light the furnishings within the room, but the attack served to make a suitable impression as Ranma stalked purposefully through the doorway, smoke wafting off of his left arm.

"My, my. So this is the one, hmm?"

Ranma slowly looked from one end of the room to the other, taking in the area. It appeared to be a massive study, with bookcases lining the walls and arcane-looking items sitting in glass cases atop large desks.

Facing him were five people. One was Sarah, which was honestly the first thing he had expected. There were two others that were obviously dragons in human form, though he'd never seen them before; one was a tall, thin man with long black hair, and the other was a short boy with long, silvery hair. The other human-looking character, surprisingly enough, was apparently a human, though the way his hands were glowing in the midst of magical incantation indicated that he was still a threat.

Finally, there was the creature that Ranma assumed was his target; the biggest, most elaborately dressed grend he had ever seen, with a thick mane of spiky black hair, several large, delicately filed horns protruding from his skull, and a massive pair of long, slightly curved claws where his left arm should have been.

"So you must be the big fish around here, huh?" Ranma said casually, relaxing as he straightened. "I thought you'd be scarier-lookin'."

"I thought you'd be smarter," Dashtall said gruffly, his voice gravelly and somewhat hoarse. "Charging into my territory, infiltrating my strongest bastion... and you don't even have the sense to stay hidden once you're here."

Sarah chuckled. "His foolishness is extraordinary, you must admit."

A vein popped up on Ranma's head as he glared at the redhead. "You know, I didn't HAVE to let you live."

A vein popped up on Sarah's head as well, and the two growled at each other briefly.

Dashtall ignored the scuffle, and moved next to the shortest of the individuals. "Ah, but Sarhee-"

"Sarah," Ranma said suddenly, interrupting him. "Her name's Sarah."

"Oh. Sarah, then," Dashtall continued, not noticing as the fire drake in question sputtered indignantly in response. "Her assistance was ultimately unnecessary. Now that we have our little friend here."

Ranma raised an eyebrow at that, and the boy looked down at the floor, unwilling to make eye contact.

"With his assistance, your capture became inevitable. We were also made aware of your psychic communications, and your friends stirring up trouble in the villages. It was a simple matter to put an end to the former, and a sizeable wing of dragons will make short work of the latter."

Ranma blinked repeatedly as he stared at the boy. "Wait... K? Is that you?"

The boy flinched, and Dashtall chuckled darkly. "Surprised? Away from his own kind, my pet here was unable to grasp even the most rudimentary of his natural abilities. It was a simple matter to teach him to attain human form."

Ranma frowned deeply, crossing his arms over his chest. "So that's how it is, huh..."

K swallowed nervously, and then turned toward Dashtall. "Please! You'll spare him, won't you? He's no real threat to you now; there's no point in killing him!"

"No point? He killed most of my family!" Sarah snarled.

"Oh, shut up! That was totally legitimate!" K countered.

Dashtall laughed again, silencing both dragons. "Well, our new friend does have a point. Mister... Saotome, was it? You've delivered my dragon to me. You need only relinquish the guantlet on your hand, and I would consider that perhaps punishing you for your transgressions is more trouble than it's worth."

Ranma held up the mysterious gauntlet, allowing the gems set in it to glimmer in the light. "This thing? Why? What's so special about it?"

The demon lord snorted. "If you haven't even realized its potential power yet, then surely it's not worth your life."

"But for some reason... to YOU... it's worth the lives of dozens of dragons, right?" Ranma turned the piece of armor back and forth, observing it critically.

Dashtall's eyes narrowed. "I've set my terms. Surrender the guantlet and leave, or die where you stand."

Ranma hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged as he tugged the guantlet off.

"K," he said suddenly, causing the metadragon to flinch again, "you just sit tight. Everything's gonna be fine, all right?" He said, smiling.

Then Ranma casually tossed the guantlet toward Dashtall.

Nearly all of those opposite the pigtailed man relaxed as the piece of armor rolled about lazily in the air, all of them glad that they would not have to subdue the force that had so far eluded such extensive attempts at destruction and capture.

While both Sarah and K had both seen Ranma in action, and both saw the brief, almost unnoticeable signs of tension within the pigtailed boy's stance, it was Sarah that gasped out a warning the moment the guantlet had left Ranma's hand. Perhaps K, trapped as he was within Dashtall's influence, was fooling himself into thinking that everything would work out (mostly) peacefully, or maybe a small, unsubjugated part of his mind suppressed any reaction that might have betrayed his human friend.

However it happened, by the time Sarah's scream of "Watch out!" was processed by those present, Ranma was already crouched at Dashtall's feet, drawing his katana as he jumped straight up in front of the demon lord.

Svash! Sparks and blood flew as the crippled, enchanted blade fought the polished, enchanted armor, and Dashtall staggered back as the tail end of the blow cut a deep gash through his jaw, and turned away as quickly as he could to gain distance from the sudden assault and allow his minions room to fight.

Ranma, for his part, vaulted off the side of a bookcase once he reached the apex of his jump, and landed a safe distance away, next to the main entrance to the study (rather than the one he had barged in through).

"Burn," he deadpanned, snapping his fingers.

Fwoosh! All at once, the path Ranma had moved along during his attack suddenly lit aflame, hardly fazing Sarah and Dashtall, but badly startling K and the black-haired dragon, who were still trying to wrap their heads around the sudden turn of events.

"Get him!" Dashtall demanded, pointing his claws angrily at the young human. "Jansen! Seal those doors!" He called, turning toward his human aide and principal wizard.

The magus, in response, coughed up a bit of blood and fell forward onto his knees, clutching a single throwing knife that had somehow made it into his abdomen during all the confusion.

Snarling, Dashtall turned toward the most powerful of his current retinue, and pointed toward the black-haired dragon. "Vargus! Kill him! Do whatever you must!"

"As you wish!" The venom dragon growled, stepping through the quickly dying flames and sucking in a considerable amount of air.

Hwoosh! A thick stream of sickly green mist burst from the man's mouth, whirling and expanding within the air as it rushed toward its target.

Ranma quickly jumped out of the way and grabbed onto a bookcase, clamping a loose cloth over his face to protect his eyes, nose and mouth even as the sickly cloud rushed toward the end of the room, breaking over the thick wooden doors leading into the main hall.

The doors promptly groaned and creaked as they began to rot and dissolve rapidly, great chunks of the barrier breaking off and crumbling to mush on the ground. The vapors had a similar effect on everything else in the room that was near to the initial blast but not in the way, though the results were less destructive.

Dashtall, in the meantime, searched the scorched ground for the guantlet, brightening as he found it lying on the edge of the book shelf behind him.

Snap! Just as he reached for the item, the claws on the end of an enchanted chain darted in and clamped onto the fingers of the armored glove, snatching it out of the demon lord's grasp and back into Ranma's.

Ranma grabbed the guantlet with his free hand even as his chain weapon wound itself back around his forearm. "I'll take this for now," he mumbled through the cloth over his face. "If you want it, you're going to have to work for it, scaly."

Without further conversation or fanfare, Ranma sprinted out of the room through the damaged main entrance, barely avoiding several magical acid arrows that splashed dangerously across Dashtall's books.


"Vargus! With me! I want that rodent crushed!" Dashtall snapped, stomping forward through the noxious cloud.

"Wait! Lord Greken, allow me to help!" Sarah said, dashing forward to follow.

A glare over the grend's shoulder stopped her dead. "You've done quite enough, letting this rat in here. See to Jansen's injuries, you're not coming with us."

The redhead flinched, and bowed her head meekly as Vargus dashed by, his hands glowing a bright neon green as he prepared to unleash deadly magic.

"Damnation!" Sarah growled, her knuckles whitening as her superiors left. "How could this have happened? How could a meddlesome human cause so much trouble?"

"Well Chomp! Ranma's pretty good at Crunch! that sort of thing. Gulp! We should probably be thankful we're still alive," K mumbled uneasily, swallowing a chunk of fine dwarven steel.

"That's not really a comforting..." Sarah trailed off as she glanced at her current companion. "Wait... what are you eating?"

"Nothing!" The silver-haired boy almost shouted, clasping his hands behind his back.

Sarah stared at K suspiciously, then glanced all around him before her eyes rested on an exquisite metal devil bookend behind the metadragon that she could have SWORN had a head a few minutes ago. "We should probably go. Carry Jansen for me, would you?"

"Yeah, okay."

"We use these tunnels below the villages to move quickly from territory to territory," explained a young man carrying a short spear as he gestured to the rough, cracking walls of the subterranean passage. "They were actually created by the earth and rock dragons and the wyrms when Greken first siezed control. Normally those passages collapse behind the creatures after a while, but because of all the magma flows, the tunnels usually filled with molten rock and then drained back down, leaving a good bit of solid, stable rock covering the walls and reinforcing them against collapse."

Behind the man were several men and a few women carrying assorted looted weaponry, with Rayden and Kaze at the head. Kaze was listening intently, considering the ramifications that the passageways could have on his overall strategy. Rayden had his hands in his pockets, obviously bored, and merely looked annoyed that his head kept scraping the ceiling.

"We mostly use them to move goods and supplies from town to town without being harassed by the guards or dragons. Some of the guards know about them, but they haven't bothered to do anything about them. Probably because the tunnels only lead to other parts of Greken's territory."

Kaze nodded slowly as Rayden yawned. "Wouldn't the tunnelers disrupt the tunnels, though?"

The man shook his head. "Not at all. The tunnels that kept poking into magma pools kept disrupting the volcanoes in the area, and he lost several wyrms that didn't burrow away from the encroaching magma fast enough. In addition to having lava spouts popping up after the dragons emerged, of course. So now the dragons aren't allowed to burrow inside of Greken's territory."

"Does that actually work?" Rayden asked suspiciously, grunting as his forehead banged into another chunk of rock hanging just slightly lower than the ceiling in general.

"Of course," the man said, "to the reptiles, Greken's orders are absolute."

BWOOM! With timing that hardly surprised anybody, the wall of the tunnel ahead suddenly broke apart as something smashed its way through dirt and rock, though what emerged was initially obscured by dust and shrapnel.

"What in the-" the young man leading the group finished no more of his sentence as a pair of enormous, bony jaws closed around him, crushing his hapless body into a mess of splintered bone and shredded gore.

Rayden promptly jumped forward as the humans began screaming, but the monstrous wyrm's head retreated back where it came from before the demon knight could draw his sword.

"Dang. Well, at least I won't have to listen to him talk anymore," the dark paladin mumbled, stepping over to the new hole in the side of the tunnel.

"I thought he said they didn't travel through these tunnels!" One of the rebels complained, shaking nervously.

Kaze sighed. "I believe he's right. Given the speed of the attack, and the immediate retreat of the wyrm, it seems that we're being assaulted deliberately, not being harassed by a beast too stupid to understand its orders."

"Th-That's even worse! Do the lizards know we're coming?" Another fighter asked.

"Regardless, we must press on," Kaze said firmly, raising his staff as the ancient artifact lit the tunnel aglow with a soft yellow light.

"With that thing breaking in and snapping us up one by one?"

Kaze frowned. "Well, that's-"

"GRAAAUGH!!"

The various rebels flinched back as the wyrm reappeared with a horrendous roar, bursting out of the same hole it had come from previously and snapping fiercely at Rayden, who was still inspecting the breach.

Although Rayden had been somewhat expecting the psuedo-dragon's re-emergence, the Dread Knight wasn't able to leap clear before the wyrm clamped down onto his arm, digging its stalactite-like teeth into his skin.

"Gah! Oh, no you don't!" Rayden snarled, tugging his arm back and nearly dislocating the creature's jaw.

With a feral growl, the wyrm held on and began twisting its head left and right, digging backward to drag its prey back while at the same time preventing Rayden from getting the leverage needed to strike back.

"Hand of judgment, descend and smite the unworthy! Kai blade!" Kaze shouted, light coalescing around the Eye of Malakai before the evon swung his staff at the serpent's throat in an attack that resembled a halberd chop.

SZVASH! The moment the orb at the head of the staff touched the wyrm's carapace, a blade of blazing white light appeared, ripping through the monster's armor-like scales and slicing easily through the layers of flesh and muscle underneath.

"SSSHREEEeeeeagh..." The wyrm's death cry trailed off into a whimpering hiss, and hot blood poured onto the floor of the tunnel as the spell ended.

Kaze smirked in satisfaction as Rayden continued struggling with the wyrm's jaws, which were still locked firmly over his arm, even in death. "There. That should make things much easier. As soon as you pull your hand out, we'll be able to continue, Shikodan."

Crack! With an angry growl, followed by the sound of splintering bones, Rayden forced open the wyrm's mighty jaws and yanked his arm out.

Kaze promptly paled and started bigsweating as he stared at the clean-cut stump where Rayden's hand used to be.

"Eh heh... oops..." the white priest started to sweat nervously as Rayden's eyes narrowed and the humans behind them gaped. "I can totally fix that. Not even a problem. Just get your hand out, I'll have it good as new!"

"Why don't you get it out?" The Dread Knight deadpanned.

Kaze groaned in anticipation of the disgusting task before him, and rolled up his sleeves.

"This way, Master Greken!" Vargas dashed into the next room, his nose twitching faintly as he followed the scent of blood and sweat.

Dashtall angrily stomped after his servant, the demons dark, empty eyes searching the dungeon walls for his foe. "Vargus! Do not get too far ahead! The monkey's target is me!"

"Of course, Master!" The venom dragon replied, slowing as he entered the next room.

In the labyrinthine lower halls of Greken's fortress, it had not taken long for Ranma to elude his reptilian enemies. Though Vargus perhaps was capable of properly giving chase, the disguised dragon diligently waited for his much slower master to catch up to ensure they weren't separated and vulnerable.

Greken, of course, grew more anxious as they continued through the fortress. Tracking Ranma wasn't hard, mostly because this area had normal guard patrols, and nearly every room had wild streaks of blood surrounding the corpses of unfortunate armored grends.

No, what made the demon lord nervous was that the human upstart seemed to have a vague idea of where he was going.

"Wait!" Vargus said suddenly, stopping before another doorway as Dashtall walked up behind him carefully. "Something is... amiss."

Eyes narrowing, the dragon glanced down at his feet, and smirked as he saw a thin metal wire strung taught across the path, almost invisible in the dim torchlight.

"Ha! The human thinks he's clever!" Vargus barked, backing up and then blowing a bit of acid onto the wire to dissolve it through.

Bwoom! The claymore mine on the other side of the wall detonated fruitlessly, and Vargus promptly stepped forward again into the smoke.

"I can't see any more traps here, Master. I believe it's-"

Zash! A blindingly fast sword stroke came down onto the venom dragon from above, and only the perfect combination of ultra-fine senses and expert combat reflexes kept Vargus from being decapitated.

"Hrgh!" Ignoring the deep cut into his collarbone, Vargus instantly underwent a partial transformation, and Ranma couldn't manage to leap away in time before a thick, black, scaly tail smashed him to the side.

Ultimately the blow was minor, and Ranma rolled to his feet before darting away through one of the two exits in the room besides the one from which he had entered.

Vargus was about to give chase, but hesitated as Dashtall stepped in behind him. "Relax. He'll be back here soon," the grend lord said darkly, chuckling. "That path leads to the white wyrm spawning ground, and nothing else. Ready yourself for..."

The demon lord trailed off as he watched Ranma drop from the ceiling in front of him, and then dash out the other exit.

"Wait... but... what did..."

Dashtall gaped for several moments before Vargus shook his head. "Master, we should pursue!"

To the venom dragon's surprise, his lord hesitated. "Master? We must hurry! He may not know the way, but if we afford him extra time, he can set more traps for us and continue to kill the guards!"

Dashtall was silent for several moments, and then stepped forward. "Vargus. Hold here."

The venom dragon blinked, astonished. "Master Greken?"

"I'll pursue the human myself. I want you to lie in waiting here; be ready to kill him if I drive him back out."

The raven-haired serpent king stuttered helplessly as the demon lord stalked past him. "But... But Master-"

"Those are my orders!" Dashtall snapped. "I will not tolerate disobedience! There are articles in there too... sensitive for your bumbling attacks. Wait here!"

The venom dragon bowed weakly, frowning deeply as he watched his master pass through the next doorway, eventually vanishing within the halls.


"Relent, human! Nothing awaits you here except death and suffering!" Dashtall growled, shouldering into another small room lined with sacks of grain salted meats.

"Hurk!" The death gasp of another grend attracted his attention, and the demon lord glanced to his right as he saw another guard's corpse roll in front of the doorway.

With a contemptuous sniff, Dashtall stomped forward, stepping into the next room and standing at the ready, with his shoulders squared.

"You really don't know the meaning of 'subtle,' do you?" Said Ranma's voice, though the grend lord couldn't see his enemy. "You built this winding maze of a dungeon, but you only place guards on one of the routes that lead deeper into it. Makes it hard to get lost."

The grend made a growling noise deep in the back of his throat, though he didn't step further into the room, unwilling to leave his back exposed. "Stop talking and show yourself, coward!"

"Calm down there, scaly. You might not be willing to tell me what the deal is with the glove, but that's okay. I heard you've got a much more interesting toy down here."

Dashtall's breath caught as his suspicions were confirmed. "How do you know about that? Who is the traitor?!"

"That's not important. Oh, hey! I see you didn't bring along your dragon friend! Why's that? Maybe he doesn't know he's being mind-controlled? Yeah, I guess that might be a problem, then."

Honestly, Dashtall didn't know whether the knowledge that the dragons were being controlled would influence the control itself, but he had been very careful to ensure that the point would be moot. The Dragon's Heart didn't require that the user be holding onto the gem to utilize its power, nor that the affected dragon be in its presence, and despite having an excellent grasp of the artifact's functions, Dashtall knew very little about how it worked, and so had always chosen to err on the side of caution.

The demon lord took several deep sniffs of the air, and then cautiously began moving to the right.

"I mean, dragons are pretty smart, right? And I know magical compulsion only goes so far. So I wonder if-"

Ranma's musings were silenced as Dashtall thrust a claw deep into an empty barrel, shattering the container instantly and sending the martial artist tumbling away in a dodge.

"No more games," Dashtall snarled, his form glowing with a dark red aura. "Perish."

Without another word, the demon lord spat out a cloud of rust-colored dust, and Ranma stepped away as the vapors struck the wall and spread, a few wisps grazing his arm.

"H-Hey! What the heck?" At the barest touch of the strange mist, the fibers of his leather shirtsleeve dried to a brittle crisp and started cracking, and Ranma quickly darted away and into the next room to avoid any exposure to his skin.

"There's no escape. Every drop of moisture in you will be sapped away, leaving only a pile of dust and bones," Dashtall snarled, stomping forward to follow his opponent.

'Absorbs moisture? Dang, I thought he'd just breathe fire or something,' Ranma thought in irritation as he turned the corner into the next room.

"There he is!" Growled a different grend, this one apparently leading a contingent of guards ten strong in the cramped corridors of the dungeon.

"Huh. And here I was starting to think you guys didn't have an alarm at all," Ranma mumbled, turning around as Dashtall reached the entryway, blocking any possible retreat.

Despite being outnumbered, Ranma smirked and rested a hand on his sword hilt. "So? Come on, hurry up! If you don't move, then I will!"

The guards, eager as they were to charge the human upstart, hesitated as they waited for a signal from their lord.

Dashtall made no move to indulge the human's taunts, and sucked in his breath before blowing another cloud of the moisture-absorbing vapors at his target, knowing that his foe would have nowhere to evade without diving onto his soldiers' weapons.

'Thought he'd try that. Well, only got one chance at this...' Focusing his ki tightly through the rusty, enchanted blade, Ranma created a series of swirling vibrations in the space between the blade and the sheath.

Shwsh! Drawing the blade in an incredibly fast motion, he caused the swirling energies to erupt from the sheath as small, tightly controlled whirlwind, sucking most of the mist into the small vacuum within the sheath.

Chnk! Ranma rapidly sheathed his sword again, and then turned toward the guards blocking his path even as the hardened leather of his scabbard started to crack audibly. "Hope this works!"

Then he drew his sword once again, slashing toward the ranks of large, bulky demons and sending the rust-colored mist wafting into them.

Dashtall gaped as his warriors recoiled, and then started to collapse in agony. The effects of his attack were immediate and brutal; though grends were hardy and resilient compared even to lizardmen, the demons still couldn't handle the damage as their eyes and skin shriveled and cracked. After a few seconds, the guards at the front of the formation keeled forward as their blood dried in their veins, the moisture being leeched out through crumbling flesh.

Ranma grimaced as well at the sight, and idly scratched at the few patches of his own skin where stray wisps of the lethal mist had grazed.

"Human filth! DIE!!" Dashtall screamed, charging forward while Ranma was still unable to escape through the tunnel without passing through the red mist.

Ranma met the demon lord's charge, blocking the fall of the grend's massive talons with the disputed gauntlet, and nearly felt his bones crack as a result, the impact blowing away the scant remains of the rust-colored vapors. Ranma's counterattack stabbed a dagger into the demon's right bicep, but the grend's thick skin prevented him from sticking the blade too deep before he was forced to jump away from a lunge with the other arm.

Dashtall muscled forward immediately, swiping wildly with claws and his great, meaty fist as Ranma ducked and weaved through the powerful blows. The martial artist saw several openings that could have been used to land a critical strike on the demon's face, but he reasoned that any attack he made for the head could prompt another blast of the strange, dangerous mist before he could get away. The rest of the creature, meanwhile, looked too tough and well-armored for Ranma to put down easily fighting head-to-head like they were.

"Dragon fist!" Ranma suddenly shouted, throwing forward his left hand and shattering the nearby floors and walls as Dashtall braced himself against the enormous force of Ranma's special technique.

With the demon lord stunned, though not obviously injured, Ranma turned and leapt over the collapsed guards, of which only four were still writhing about, having survived the dissipated fumes from their master.

Dasthall snarled and charged forward, trampling his minions heedlessly in his rush to close with his opponent.

Ranma, for his part, dashed into the guard barracks on this level and then blasted open the lock on the door at the other end before kicking it open, pushing forward as the sound of shattering wood and steel scraping stone followed behind him.


"Huh. I think this is the place," Ranma mumbled to himself, sweatdropping. The room was fairly large and dank, with thick armor plating over the rock walls to prevent any subterranean entry, and a number of magical runes scratched into gems, probably to discourage any supernatural entry as well. At the end of the room, resting on a thick, rune-inscribed pillar, was a large crystal sphere slightly bigger than Kaze's Eye of Malakai, with the interior a glittering cascade of red and orange.

Obviously, any half-wit with Ranma's briefing on the artifact would have assumed that the orb was the Dragon's Heart, but Dashtall had thoughtfully eliminated all doubt by placing numerous signs around it in various languages proclaiming [Danger! Do not touch!] [Warning! Powerful magic item!] and [Management is not responsible for death or dismemberment resulting from manipulation or mishandling of this object. You have been warned!]

Clomp! The sound of Dashtall's iron-clad feet resounded through the room as he pushed his way through the damaged doorway, a low growl escaping his throat.

Ranma merely walked across the length of the room, unhooking the chain on his right arm and swinging it about in a lazy circle. "Well, this is it, then? Game over, lizard. You had a nice run, but you should've thought twice before hunting me down."

With a casual flick of his wrist, Ranma sent the chain on his right arm sailing toward the gem, the claws at the end yawning open in preparation to grasp its target.

Bzap! Ranma blinked as the claw bounced uselessly off of a shimmering field of light that appeared around the pedestal. "Eh?"

Fzash! All around Ranma, great sparks of white light began flashing as the runes all over the room began to glow, causing a powerful tingly sensation to run through the pigtailed man. "Wh-What the heck?"

Dashtall snorted and then chuckled darkly as he stepped into the carpet of glittering magical energies, apparently immune to their effects. "You fool. Did you really think I would have only mundane defenses to protect my most vital artifact? I paid a hefty price for the spells that protect this room; the finest and most powerful of sorcerous traps. It is testament to your power that you're merely paralyzed rather than dead."

Ranma remained still as the demon lord walked up behind him, and twitched slightly as Dashtall raised his claw in the air.

"Look on the bright side, thief! You're too dangerous to leave alive to torture, so I'll grant you a quick death!" With that final taunt, Dashtall brought his blade down.

Crack! The twin blades attached to the grend's right arm shattered rock like plywood as it tore into the dungeon floor, creating a spider web of cracks all around the point of impact from the sheer force behind the attack.

Which was all well and good, except that it had missed its target.

"GRAUGH!!" Dashtall screamed and lurched forward as a dagger penetrated deep into the back of his neck, and he swung his claw around in a wild backhand that Ranma ducked under with ease.

The pigtailed man hopped backward as the demon lord lunged for him wildly again, still remaining on the defensive. "Heh. Nice try, but that sort of magic doesn't work on me."

"How?" Dashtall snarled. "An anti-magic field? Dispel talismans? It's impossible!" He lurched forward again on the attack, tearing a great, long gouge all across the wall as Ranma sprinted away from the rampaging demon.

"It doesn't matter!" The grend declared. "You'll never get past the barrier! Reinforcements are coming to finish you off, no matter how long you may elude me!"

Ranma did have to admit that constantly dodging was getting tiring, especially after everything he had done to get this far. The prospects of more strong, tough, lumbering demons getting in his way was an abysmal thought as well. But honestly, Ranma didn't have any way of reliably taking down the shield so long as he had a powerful and competent opponent waiting for a good chance to eviscerate him.

"Well, then..." Ranma mumbled, drawing his pistol and ejecting the current magazine onto the floor. "Let's try this!"

Fiddling with a pouch on his belt, Ranma withdrew another gun magazine, this one with a detailed label in Hebrew stamped on the side.

Dashtall snorted and flexed his arm, causing a magic circle to appear around it and spin around his wrist briefly before coalescing into a large buckler of yellow, translucent energy.

"You really think that'll help?" Ranma asked smugly. "These are shield-breaker bullets, scaly."

"Try me, human," the demon lord snarled, stepping closer with his shield at the ready. Honestly his skin was thick enough to take most small-arms fire, and additional magical protections turned gunshots into mere pinpricks. Still, his enemy was nothing if not resourceful, and Dashtall didn't want to take any unnecessary risks at this stage in the conflict.

Ranma hesitated for a moment, sensing Dashtall's diminishing rage as the grend settled into a more serious combat stance. No longer was the demon prince treating his foe like a slippery rodent to be chased down, cornered, and eventually crushed, but rather the grend was focusing his mind and body in preparation for serious combat against a warrior of equal merit. Dashtall was now ready to fight.

Ranma didn't want anything to do with that, so instead he simply aimed his Nighthawk at the Dragon's Heart and fired off a round.

CRACK! The barrier flickered as the mithril-tipped projectile caused a brief but correctable flux in the magic barrier's feed pattern just long enough for the bullet to slip through and burrow deep into the glassy surface of the artifact. Then the bullet's explosive head burst, causing the orb to shatter outward in a shower glimmering red glass.

"What... What did..." Dashtall staggered and gaped, his eyes growing wide. "No... Why? Why did you..."

Ranma sighed and lowered his weapon. "Well, it was either shoot the damn thing or have it out with you, and it just seemed like the better decision," the pigtailed man explained, shrugging.

"You idiot! Do you have any idea what you've done?!" The demon lord snarled, standing up to his full height once again. "Dozens of dragons will tear apart these lands for weeks! Nothing will be spared! Without some manner of control, they'll kill everything!"

Ranma blinked, and then frowned. "Well, you really should have thought of that before you stuck that many hungry lizards in the same area, huh? Does the phrase 'backup plan' mean anything to you?"

"Is this what you've come to accomplish? To ensure that these beasts rampage across your puny world at random rather than under my will?" The demon lord demanded.

"Well... not really, but honestly, I would actually prefer to see them killing innocent people of their own free will than under your orders," the pigtailed man mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. "Although you do have a point. I should probably see about getting your slaves to safety."

Dashtall promptly moved to attack the pigtailed man in a fit of rage, and then thought better of it, turning and sprinting out of the room.


'This is impossible! How could this have happened? A legacy of thousands of years, shattered in an hour! The gate. If I can get to the gate, I'll be safe.' The demon lord thought, his mind now focused on survival. Dashtall knew that finding his way to the portal was his only chance to live; though his army was loyal, and would enter battle even against a far superior force, dragons were (or rather, had been) the core of his forces, and all his strategies and formations relied upon the serpent kings.

At present, the only possibility for escape lay in the fact that the dragons would likely fall upon each other before they began actively destroying the countryside; although the creatures had all been enslaved as a race, Dashtall had captured and bred many violent breeds, some with ancient and instinctive emnity for the other dragons that they were forced to live with. Others were extremely susceptible to the usual draconic vanity and individualism that was common in the species, and held vicious feuds with their compatriots that were held in check only by the absolute power of mental domination. No longer.

Lastly, there were the numerous pseudo-dragons. Unlike normal dragons, they were generally unintelligent and bestial, and their loyalty and behavior came much more from their training than from the Dragon's Heart. He expected that the numerous wyrms, salamanders, saurus, and monster terrapins would stand with his army to defend the fortresses. But it would not be enough.

"So, where you going?" Ranma asked, jogging alongside the demon lord as the massive grend ran full speed through the blood-slicked passageways of the dungeon.

A vein popped up on Dashtall's head, and he took a quick, futile swipe at the irritating human. "Begone, pest! You've destroyed an empire millennia in the making, have you not done enough?"

"Not really. I was kinda hoping to free all your servants, too," Ranma explained, ducking under the clumsy attack. A moment later he heard a distant explosion, and bits of dirt and dust fell from the ceiling due to a slight tremor.

"Do what you will! I have lost here!" Dashtall snarled as he turned the corner and practically leapt out of another doorway. "But I have many allies and resources, yet! I will return to hunt you down some day, human! You have not heard the last of me!"

"Yes," said a deep, hate-filled voice, "he has."

Before Dashtall could recognize who had spoken - for he'd never heard Vargus take that sort of tone in his presence - a thick black tail tipped with a needle-thin stinger harder than steel darted into the demon lord's flank, stabbing deep into his side and delivering its deadly payload of toxins.

Dashtall gasped painfully, and then swept his clawed arm to one side, cleaving the armored tendril off in a spray of hot blood mixed with oozing poison.

"Gyaah!" Off to the side, Vargus leapt back as he retracted the stump where his tail used to be, but smiled through the pain as Dashtall stood in place, trembling painfully with the venomous stinger still lodged in his body. "Heh. A nice final gesture, but this is it, 'Master'. At last, you'll face the consequences of your hubris."

"Hngh... ghhg... Va... Vargugh..." Dashtall stuttered, blood and spittle leaking from his mouth.

The venom dragon morphed away his tail, hiding the wound as he reverted to his fully human form. "I must admit, the grends' constitution is incredible. A human's insides would have melted into soup almost instantly. You seem to be recovering from a harsh, but brief paralysis." He grinned sadistically as his fingernails extended into long, black talons. "I'm glad! It would be far too easy were you to die quickly after the centuries of insults you've heaped upon me! I'll be sure to make your end painful, but don't worry, I won't take too long! Can't have some other dragon wandering in and finishing you off! That is an honor reserved for me, your most... 'favored' servant!" By now the disguised dragon's lips were twisted in a hateful sneer, baring teeth that slowly morphed from being squat and flat to being sharp and curved.

Vargus was just about to begin his bloody work when Ranma placed a hand on his shoulder.

"So... we're cool though, right?" The pigtailed man asked.

Vargus stared at him like one would stare at an ant that had crawled up onto one's shoes.

"I mean, I did free you, after all," Ranma reasoned. "And I didn't kill the big lizard back there. Totally could have, you know. But I figured you guys would want a piece of him, so..."

Vargus' eyebrow twitched. "I... will pretend I didn't see you."

"Gee, thanks," Ranma deadpanned, walking past the vemon dragon. "Ingrate."

Vargus merely snorted, allowing the comment to slide; as insults went, it was rather tame, and admittedly quite accurate.

"Now, Dashtall," Vargus said excitedly, stalking toward the demon lord with his claws wiggling in anticipation, "you're ALL MINE..."

Dashtall twitched several times, unable to move his body. "Da... Da... DAMN YOU, HUMAAAAAAAN!!"

"I... I don't believe this," Sarah mumbled to herself, holding her head as if in the midst of a migraine. "What's going on? It's like some sort of... epiphany... or..."

Bwoom! An explosion outside was followed by a titanic roar, which was in turn followed by several crashing noises.

"Yes! He did it! Ranma actually did it!" K cheered, jumping up and down and waving his arms about. "Thank the gods!"

"Everything's so clear now... or rather... I've realized that everything before was so murky..." The fire dragon looked at her hands - soft and dextrous, in her human form - as if in wonder. "This... This is... freedom?"

"Pretty much, yeah," K said happily, flinching slightly as another explosion caused the room to shake. "Usually freedom isn't accompanied by so much violence, but honestly, this isn't that bad."

There was a long moment of silence as Sarah continued to stare at nothing, dumbfounded, and K stared at her, considering.

"Sooooo..." the metadragon finally mumbled, clasping his hands behind his back. "... Wanna make out?"

The fire drake turned to glare at him venomously, her eyes turning a pitch black.

K immediately flinched away. "Okay, just wondering!" Then he coughed into his fist. "If that's the case, though, I should really get back to my friends."

"What should I do?" Sarah asked, frowning deeply. For some reason, asking another creature that seemed wrong, as if the thought was offensive to her sensibilities. But realistically, Sarah just had no idea what to do with herself anymore. She had nothing, had no-one, and her future that had seemed unquestionable just minutes ago was a blank slate. She was bereft of everything, save a false name given to her by an uncreative invader who didn't feel like pronouncing her real one.

"Well, I'd recommend either flying the hell out of here, or hiding in a lava flow," K responded, his body glowing as he shrank into his draconic form. "Things are already getting pretty crazy out there, and I think it's only going to get worse."

As if in response to that prediction, a wyvern fell screaming right by the window, blood trailing from a savage wound to its wings as it plummeted into the lava moat around the fortress.

"Can... Can I..." Sarah chewed on her lip nervously. "Can I go with you?"

K stopped dead at the request, utterly confused. Not to mention a little put off, since the redhead had refused his earlier advances. "With me? Nah. No good." He smirked. "If it were up to me, sure, no problem. But it's impossible. Ranma hates dragons." With that, the metadragon hopped into the air and took off down the hall, gaining altitude quickly to fly over a squad of lizardmen that were running in a mad dash in the opposite direction.

Sarah contemplated attacking the lizardmen briefly before turning away from the door, her head hanging. All told, she didn't have much of an appetite for violence, at least compared to most of her kind, and having been born into Greken's service, she didn't feel much of an urge to rebel so much as just leave. But leave where?

She contemplated this for a few moments (ignoring a sudden drop in temperature as a patch of ice appeared spontaneously over the window and outside wall) before she jerked to attention. "Wait a minute... 'hates dragons'? What?"

Ranma, meanwhile, was fuming none-too-silently as he walked out of the lower levels and stepped into the throne room of the late demon lord Dashtall.

"Really? 'Human'? That's what he shouts out in his last moments? That is BEYOND weak. What kind of idiot starts a hunt like that for someone and doesn't even remember their name when they're screaming dramatically?"

Ranma stepped to the side to get around a cluster of lizardmen who were thrusting halberds desperately into the iron-hard, glittering carapace of a crystal dragon, which snarled triumphantly as it simply stamped its way forward, crushing the lesser reptilians underfoot.

The pigtailed man stopped as the creature let out a blast of energy into the guards' diminishing ranks, blasting a line straight through the hapless reptiles.

"Ewww... there's blood and guts everywhere," the pigtailed man complained, staring distastefully at the veritable carpet of crushed guards that stretched from the shattered throne room entrance to the great, lavishly decorated halls.

The crystal dragon started to continue his rampage (despite the lizardmen's rapidly faltering courage to hold the line), but then stopped, noticing a small, non-reptilian creature at its side which seemed to be staring at the floor in disgust and generally pretending like he wasn't standing next to a twenty-ton killing machine.

It's eyes narrowing, the serpent king curved its long neck to bring its head around, and opened its jaws to reveal rows of perfectly angled, blade-like teeth that sparkled like diamonds.

The human glanced behind him, his expression stern. "Stop."

The crystal dragon blinked in surprise.

"I'm serious," Ranma deadpanned. "Just knock it off, all right? You have plenty of things to kill here. Neither of us need the trouble."

The crystal dragon's head backed away slightly, its beak twisting into something akin to a frown as it considered the human's words.

Crack! About that time, a lucky strike from a particularly brave lizardman broke through its armor, and the serpent king turned its full attention back toward the reptilian defenders, putting the issue of the strangely defiant human aside in the meantime.


Ranma gingerly stepped through the mess in the throne room, trying to make his way over the few patches of carpet that were still clean, or had pieces of rubble or lizardman that were relatively dry. He could have leapt over the mess, or done something really fancy like use his chain to swing from the ceiling, but honestly the martial artist didn't feel up to it; as far as he was concerned, his quest was already over, meaning that he had to find his teammates, raid the nearest treasure room, and then find someplace to rest.

"HRAAAAAH!!" A painfully loud hiss had Ranma scrambling out of the way as a lesser salamander plowed through the splintered remains of the throne room doorway, flame sputtering from its mouth as it charged into the crystal dragon's rear.

"Geez, they're really going all out," Ranma mumbled to himself as he walked out into the hallway, glancing about at the different routes through the castle. "Let's see... I don't really want to go back the way I came... but if I go out the front, I'll have to go through the battle, probably. And this way leads..." Ranma blinked as he saw a familiar shiny shape darting toward him through the sky.

"Oh, hi K. You feeling bet-"

Clang! Ranma winced at the metadragon's attempt at a full-body glomp as K latched onto his head, wrapping claws, wings, and tail around the pigtailed man's face in a suffocating hug.

"Ranma! You did it! You are AWESOME! Seriously! The best! I'm so sorry! I didn't want them to hurt you, but I couldn't help it! I don't know what happened! I just couldn't disobey Greken and I'm so happy you're all right and-"

Clank! K's voice stopped as Ranma raised his arm up and clamped his beak shut.

"K. It's fine," Ranma mumbled through his metallic pet. "Now let go, please. I'm not hurt too bad, but I'm very tired, and we need to get out of here." Behind him, a great chunk of the salamander's torso hit the floor messily, splashing lava-hot blood all over the assorted rubble and lighting the carpets ablaze.

K sniffled briefly and then released Ranma's head, moving over to settle on the pigtailed man's shoulder, tears still hanging at the corners of his eyes.

Ranma started down the hall again, and then stopped. "Hey... did you gain weight? You seem heavier. And bigger, now that I think about it."

K cleared his throat of the last few thankful sobs he had stored up for the moment of reunion with his human friend. "Yeah, that's... well, I learned a lot in my brief enslavement, so my metabolism is running a bit better now."

Ranma nodded pleasantly, stopping briefly in front of a column of rapidly approaching grends. "Does that mean you won't eat as much anymore?"

CRASH! The outside wall suddenly burst inward as the jaws of a massive black dragon crashed through stone and steel, snapping up several of the reptilian demons and sweeping aside the rest.

"Uh... that didn't really come up," K said awkwardly as the remaining grends scattered toward the inner rooms, moving away from the outer wall.

The moment they were gone, Ranma started up again, continuing toward the main hall. "Do you know where Rayden and Kaze are?"

"Not exactly, though I think they're somewhere nearby," K mused. "Right before the mind control broke, the ammo supplies of those artillery cannons on the walls blew up somehow. At the same time, I heard someone shouting about an attack from the supply tunnels. The guards were already panicking when the dragons went wild."

"Huh. I hope the slaves got out okay," Ranma mumbled, climbing over a pile of burning rubble that had fallen in his path.

As he climbed down the other side, which was entirely aflame, Ranma glanced around at the damage in the immediate area, ignoring the fire raging all around him. "Ray SHOULD have gotten here by now... but I don't see many signs of him being around. His spells are pretty... high-yield, you know? And loud."

"That's true," K admitted as Ranma approached the mostly-intact doors to the main hall. "Even in a free-for-all like this, he'd kind of stand out."

Ranma opened the doors to the main hall, and then blinked as he stared down the wide passageway that led to the Kreech portal. "Hi, Ray."

"Hey, Ranma," Rayden grunted back. The Dread Knight was looking almost painfully bored, which probably had to do with being stuck holding a sign that said +Greken army retreat this way: Hang right and enter portal+ rather than being involved in the large-scale battle surrounding him.

Ranma pointed at the sign. "Was that Kaze's idea?" He hadn't known Kaze for very long, but the evon's plans had a very distinct nature: arcane and mystical in some aspects, and in others, simple almost to the point of stupidity.

Rayden nodded grumpily.

"Is it working?" K asked skeptically.

"SHREEAH!" A holy dragon and a yellow drake rounded the corner at the far end of the hall, and both shrieked angrily at the humans (and metadragon) gathered in the hallway before they charged.

Both slowed considerably as they approached, both of them being distracted by the sign and reading it.

Immediately the dragons' attentions were refocused elsewhere, and the yellow drake actually shoved the snake-like holy dragon into the wall as it shouldered its way ahead, stepping around the humans in its path.

"Never mind," K mumbled.

"Hmph. Kaze said it was important to get as many of the big lizards into the gateway before he collapses it; I think he's already set a spell in there." Then Rayden gave Ranma a pleading look. "Can... Can I kill the dragons now?" The partially-trampled holy dragon stopped to give the Dread Knight a strange look, but then dismissed the creature and moved on.

Ranma wanted to say no. He really did. He was tired, and the last thing he needed was for Rayden to drag down the group getting stuck in long, brutal fights with creatures thirty times his size.

But the expression on the demon knight's face was just so honestly pathetic, the pigtailed man felt compelled to relent just out of sheer sympathy.

"... One. JUST ONE," Ranma said warningly, feeling a confused mix of satisfaction and unease as the dark paladin's face lit up.

"YES! Die, scaly freak!" Rayden screamed, alarming the holy dragon that had just passed by as he tossed the sign away in favor of his blade and attacked.

Ranma immediately turned away from the resulting maelstrom of roars, curses, and flickering magics, and he rubbed his head. "Okay, so where's Kaze? We seriously need to get going, here."

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!" A tremendous roar from the shadow dragon nesting atop the fortress split the late afternoon air, easily drowning out the scuffle behind them and shaking the very walls from the volume.

"Master Saotome! There you are!"

Ranma looked up, and his eyebrows rose as Kaze trudged down the hall, his body weighed down considerably by several large burlap sacks full of gold and gems and tied together by a rope that hung over his shoulders.

"Ah, this is very fortunate! When we lost contact, I feared the worst!" The white priest said, wiping some sweat off his forehead. "However, my concern was for nothing! You have gone above and beyond the call of duty, as usual!"

Ranma brushed off the compliments, pointing to the treasure bags. "Did you seriously leave everyone else to go loot the treasure vaults all by yourself?"

"Of course not!" Kaze protested, looking affronted. "I wasn't by myself! I had a half-dozen rebels to help."

"That's... That's great," Ranma deadpanned, wincing slightly as an explosion of black lightning burst behind him close enough for the pigtailed man to feel his hair rising. "So, what now?"

Kaze nodded seriously. "The rebels are mostly taking to the tunnels right now to wait out the results of the battles outside. The entire region is a mess; most of the dragons have gone completely berserk, killing everything they can see. They don't seem too interested in hunting anyone down, though, so we've been able to keep casualties low in the villages."

Kaze then gestured to the fortress. "Even with the artillery down and the guards distracted, the fortress was far too well-defended for an actual attack, so we got a small force within the walls in order to find you and help the prisoners and slaves escape. I imagine the others have already found their way out, or otherwise perished."

It wasn't easy to take the cleric too seriously so long as he had the sacks of treasure hanging off his shoulders, but Ranma had to admit he was impressed. "Out of curiosity, what would you have done if I hadn't managed to free the dragons?"

"I would have revoked your rule preventing Shikodan from killing them," Kaze said seriously. "Unlikely to work, but it's a passable plan B, and I can always affect a retreat while he's being eaten."

Ranma sighed. "I was this close to really respecting you..."

Whump! The holy dragon's head fell heavily onto the floor as Rayden plunged Darkrune deeper into the creature's throat, his dark, tainted blood running down the hilt of the blade and causing it to glow malevolently with its black aura.

"Suffer! Scream! BLEED!" the Dread Knight shouted as he took the hilt in both hands, and then pulled the great sword up through the holy dragon's jaw, splitting the creature apart in a wash of hot blood.

Clang! Rayden stabbed his sword into the ground as he admired his handiwork, allowing the blade to feed on the recently spilt blood as he caught his breath and addressed his own wounds.

Kaze's eyebrow twitched. "You know... in many cultures, holy dragons are sacred, you know."

Rayden glanced at Kaze, and then looked back at the dragon. Then he turned toward Kaze again. "So, what, you want the body for your temple or something?"

The evon's face darkened. "We should probably just go," he mumbled.

"Which way out?" Ranma asked.

"I have a teleport spell keyed to a magic circle within one of the caves we used to stage the attack. I can take us all there right after I activate my other spell." The magi smirked. "Such poorly built magical gateways as the one Greken used are effective, but sadly unstable. It's very easy for these portals to collapse with a few carefully-placed spells. And the damage caused from detonating a hole in the fabric of reality tends to be... alarming."

Ranma nodded as Rayden sheathed his sword and stepped closer. "Do it. I've had enough of this place."

"It is as you wish," the evon said, raising his hands. "Spirits that dwell within the void between reality, meet at my beckoning and sunder this fragile materium. Deimos burst!"

Down the hall, in a room decorated liberally with the limbs and blood of grends and lizardmen, a tall, humanoid figure stared up at the crackling portal to his enslaver's homeworld.

"Heh. Why not?" Vargus asked himself, idly rubbing fingers still wet with Dashtall's blood. "There's nothing for me here except a bunch of ill-tempered lizards and very well-equipped humans. I may as well find victims in the next world."

Crackle!

Vargus blinked as several magical symbols unfamiliar to him appeared around the portal, and two slips of paper attached to the portal ring that he had assumed were decorative started to glow.

"Hm. That is... ominous," the venom dragon mumbled as the spell became active. Adding to his indefinite sense of unease, he detected a mass teleport on the edge of his senses.

Bzrt! Shrap! Krrrrk! Sparks and ribbons of strange, coruscating light appeared all around the portal, which had started to rupture and splash like a rough patch of ocean.

"Yes. This is... definitely not good," Vargus mumbled fearfully, stepping backward as the talismans took the small, controlled hole punched into the material universe and tore it wide open.

CRACK!! BWOOOOM!!

Vwom!

Ranma trembled slightly as he, K, Rayden and Kaze all materialized within the caves just outside the valley where Dashtall had built his fortresses, emerging in a cascade of white and yellow, and heralded by blazing warpfire.

"Ugh... hate teleporting," Ranma complained, holding his stomach as he fought the urge to vomit. Either because of his lack of a magical aura or his advanced sensitivity to his own body, being magically deconstructed and then reconstructed elsewhere was always intensely uncomfortable for him.

"You made it! I can't believe it!" One of the rebels shouted, breaking away from the groups of humans that looked like they were in the middle of celebration. Many of them carried weapons, although most were obviously refugees from the nearby villages.

Kaze smirked. "Of course. You're dealing with the very highest caliber of heroes, you know. Our victory was assured the moment we stepped onto the field of battle."

"Well, I AM kind of impressed that you managed to find time to attack a castle, rig the gateway, help the slaves escape, AND loot the place," Ranma admitted. "Maybe you're learning after all."

Rayden frowned. "Hey, what about the dragons, though? After they've had enough of fighting each other, won't they hunt us down? Or raid the villages?"

"That's unlikely," said a new voice. Several of the humans stepped aside as a newcomer walked forward through the crowd, smiling benevolently. "The dragons may be violent, but they're far from bloodthirsty. For the most part, these people are very poor, and there's little among the villages that would tempt a dragon, save perhaps some livestock. Very few serpent kings would bother getting into a fight unless there was either a good reason, or some obvious benefit to themselves."

Kaze raised an eyebrow as he felt the moods in the room shift dramatically. Well, more specifically, it was just Ranma's mood.

The stranger was fairly tall, somwhere between Rayden's and Kaze's height, looked to be in his early thirties, and had features that held an unmistakable air of mature grace, not at all dissimilar from Kaze's own appearance. He had luxurious blond hair that came down to his shoulders in elegant curls, and wore robes that were colorful without being gaudy.

The man's aura was resisting any attempts at divination, oddly enough, so at that point the only other thing that Kaze was able to discern was that Ranma absolutely HATED this man.

"Saotome! By Nesker, it's been so long!" The man said pleasantly, smiling gently. "I should have known only you could have accomplished a feat like this! Bravo!"

At Ranma's harsh, icy silence, the stranger sweatdropped. "Ranma, don't you recognize me? It's your old master, Rakkyo!"

Ranma twitched. "Yeah. I do." Then he turned toward Rayden. "Ray? Kill him."

End Chapter 16