Chapter 138: Before the End (1/2)
In Murmurin, the day before the invasion of Prydain, the dragons played a very loud game.
“Open fire!” Vainqueur declared, as two dozens true wyrms unleashed their breaths at a crater. [Fire], [Frost], [Lightning], [Poison], [Earth]… almost every element known to dragonkind was used, turning their target into a delightful show of light and destruction. The ground trembled for miles, minions fled in all directions, and a single figure stood in the middle of the destruction, unmoved.
“Uncle, you are harming her!” Jolie protested, as the only dragon present who refused to participate.
“I wish I did!” Vainqueur replied with wounded pride. “More power!”
“Cousin, I have a piano!” Genialissime said as he landed next to Vainqueur, showing off a black, half-crushed manling musical instrument. “I found a piano!”
“Throw it at her!”
So his cousin did, launching the musical instrument like a projectile. Linnorms and Zmeys, who lacked imagination, imitated their trueborn brethren by throwing boulders, stones, houses, trees… and in one case, even a cow.
“No cow throwing!” Vainqueur snarled, trying to keep this contest civilized. Gorynych lowered all his heads in shame, apologizing for being born.
At long last, the dust settled, and the dragons groaned in frustration.
Their target lived.
Unscathed, Knight Kia kept muttering nonsense, standing alone amidst ruins and devastation. She had shielded the cow with her body, as a true minion should.
“Congratulations, Kia!” Jolie chirped, shouting encouragement at her failure of a chief of staff.
“Believe in yourself!” Knight Kia replied, her words no longer her own. “I believe in you!”
While Vainqueur remained obstinate in his desire to overcome this [Plot Armor], quite a few dragons were starting to doubt. “There has to be something that works on her!” the emperor complained. They had been at it for six hours!
“It only protects her from death and direct damage,” Genialissime noted. “What if we throw her into the Moooooon? Or have a minion teleport her away?”
“No!” Jolie protested.
“No,” Vainqueur said hastily. “Even she does not deserve such a horrific fate.”
Even if Manling Victor had sent many minions unto that faraway, dark planet to protect them from fairy retaliation, Vainqueur privately thought they may have been condemned to a fate worse than death. He hoped that they could retain their sanity long enough for him to eat Odieuse.
What was the Forgotten One doing? Could he not turn that cursed lead ball to gold?
“Guys, it has been amusing, but I’m taking off the armor,” Knight Kia said, as she left the crater, “or else these lines will give me diabetes.”
“Maybe we can harm her this way,” a dragon suggested. “With the power of this ‘diabetes’.”
“What about the [Life] element?” Genialissime asked, “Does anybody here breathe cancer?”
While his fellow dragons discussed how to best overcome the [Plot Armor], Vainqueur decided to take a short break and oversee his army. Tomorrow would be the moment a flight of dragons and V&V’s forces landed against Prydain’s shores. Vainqueur Day.
V-Day!
In preparation for this historical event, his minions had gathered on great ships near the shores, or boarded copies of the PiggyBankII. Each soldier, from the tiniest kobold to the mightiest ghoul, carried an overfed cat on their back. Vainqueur somewhat regretted that he didn’t have the time to breed these felines with cows, but took solace in knowing no minion would die of starvation.
All other minions, those who couldn’t fight, were being evacuated through portals to Happyland, the Planet Moon, or other safe zones. Were it not for the presence of dragons, Murmurin would have become a ghost town. Only the monsters necessary for the war effort remained behind, to help support the main army.
One of them was Troll Barnabas, whom Vainqueur had summoned to his castle alongside goblin smiths—the dwarven ones had all fled underground, to avoid the thirst of drunken wyrms.
“Your Majesty,” The troll bowed, as Vainqueur landed in front of his castle’s entrance, “you have need of us?”
“Yes, minion. For I wish to keep my hoard on my person at all times.”
Although the thought barely crossed his mind, the dragon understood that he might perish in this conflict. Unlike Icefang, he could not bear to leave his hoard behind, to die away from his hard-won fortune.
“You want us to create a [Bottomless Bag]?” Troll Barnabas asked. “They often eat what they are fed.”
The mere thought of coins spilling from a purse horrified Vainqueur. “No. I wish to wear my hoard on my person. To feel my gold and gems against my scales at all times; to always have them within sight, so I may protect it with my last breath if needed.”
“So…” Troll Barnabas scratched his throat. “You want me to take all of your hoard, and make what, an armor out of it?”
This was a new, innovative dragon solution to hoard management. It didn’t surprise Vainqueur that a minion failed to understand his vision, and so the dragon shared his reasoning.
“That [Plot Armor] is powerful but ridiculous,” Vainqueur said. “My hoard is the most beautiful, most perfect in existence. Its brightness blinds the strong and kills the weak on sight! If I wore it, I would be beyond invincible. I would be… shiny!”
And, although Vainqueur would never admit it publicly…
His true hoard was his empire and the minions that followed him.
They were the ones making the gold come in, the ones who died to fuel Vainqueur’s everlasting wealth. Just as Manling Victor was the crowning jewel of his fortune, every minion was a coin the dragon needed to protect.
Vainqueur had to remind his minions of what they stood for. The naked sight of his hoard, shining on his person, would bolster their morale and carry them to victory; the other dragons would also understand that they fought for the very survival of the dragon way of life. That they had to win at all costs.
Vainqueur’s fortune would become more than a pile of riches.
It would become a golden symbol!
“You shall take my hoard, my beautiful hoard of gold and jewels,” Vainqueur said. “And you shall use it to craft me a [Hoard Armor]. Something shinier that the [Plot Armor], that will remind Knight Kia of her innate poverty. I want it ready for tomorrow at dawn.”
Unlike the [Paladin], Vainqueur already knew which wise lines he had to say.
By the time the war ended, all would fear the powerofgold!
Croissant had done well for himself.
As he waited in front of a cottage built from the remains of elephant-sized spiders; with Chocolatine’s arm around his, Victor took the time to study the V&V Empire’s Moon colony.
At first glance, it looked like any ordinary hamlet, except built inside of a lead valley and with the blue planet of Outremonde in the skies above. The settlers had farms, although they cultivated strange alien trees and raised tentacled black horrors instead of goats. A portal to Murmurin pulsated in the village’s central square, newcomers crossing into the area to find a refuge away from the war.
Victor recognized a few familiar faces among the village’s inhabitants, mostly the people he had exiled here over his Vizier career. He did notice an unusual settler though, sitting on a bench in cephalopodian company.
“Victor!” Ludvic Van raised a hand at his former apprentice, a monstrous, squid-like horror sitting at his side. One of the creature’s tentacles caressed the [Fiendish Rake]’s hair, while another brushed against his left leg. “Fancy meeting you there!”
“I see you didn’t waste time!” Victor shouted back.
“All along, I tried to find happiness in men and women,” Ludvic said, looking into his new lover’s hundred eyes. “But as it turned out, a genderless outer space squid fulfills me completely.”
“Oh, sweetie!” the abomination replied in her horrifying R’Lyehan language, holding Ludvic’s hand with its tentacle. “You make my pseudopods all sweaty!”
Victor wisely focused back on the cottage, having no desire to watch a live Japanese porn movie. “Come on, come on!” Chocolatine couldn’t stay in place, furiously knocking on the door. “What is he doing?”
“Choc, relax,” Victor said, patting her hand to help her calm down.
“I can’t help it,” she replied, her eyes bloodshot like those of a drug addict suffering from a high. “All my stats are raised here! I want to howl all the time!”
Seeing her in this state made Victor wonder if having her stay with her brother for a while was a good solution. According to Jules, it wouldn’t harm the babies, but she had been over-excited since they set a foot on the Moon.
Isabelle had already returned to Happyland, while the rest of Victor’s family had been dispersed either across the planes or welcomed into his own pocket dimension. He would rather avoid having everyone in the same place, both for their safety and to prevent jealousy.
Finally, the lizardkin Savoureuse opened the door. “Vic, Choc, my favorite couple!” she said upon seeing them, overjoyed. “I’m so happy to see you again!”
“Me too, Sav,” Victor said. She hadn’t changed much in the last few months after the Nightblades incident, although she had traded her adventurers’ clothes for an apron and a chef’s hat. The Vizier had somewhat forgiven her for her betrayal, as he did with Croissant’s, but still condemned them both to community service.
“Come inside.” Their host let the couple enter her place before closing the door. The [Reaper] smelled a delicious scent of fish and honey, as he was led into the dining room. “I already set Chocolatine’s room upstairs. I even made four cradles, each with a different color!”
The main room reminded Victor of some hunter’s sanctuary. The walls around the dinner table proudly displayed trophies straight from seventies sci-fi movies, from the head of a xenomorph-like aliens to hundred-eyed spiders.
It appeared Croissant had to fight dearly to protect this community.
Speaking of the werewolf, he was waiting for them expectantly. “Sis!” Croissant immediately hugged his sister, as if he hadn’t seen her in years. Compared to last time Victor had met him, the werewolf had grown taller, heavier, and wore a suit made of some pink creature’s fur. “Welcome home!”
“You’re squeezing me too tight, brother!” Chocolatine complained, although clearly pleased by the attention.
The male werewolf then turned to his in-law, although the atmosphere became considerably colder. “Victor,” he said, somewhat neutrally.
“Croissant,” Victor replied with the same tone, shaking his hand. There was no warmth in the contact, but no animosity either. Water under the bridge.
Something else, however, bothered the Vizier greatly. “Sav?”
“Yes, Vic?”
“Why is there a bound child in your dining room?” the Vizier asked, pointing at a chained, tiny humanoid lizard forcefully sitting at the table’s end.
“Silly, he’s the main course!” Chocolatine replied with a smile, much to Victor’s horror.
Thankfully, his brother-in-law reassured Victor. “I found him sneaking inside, trying to put a space shark in my bathtub. He was good and stealthy, but he had nothing on the spiders...”
Croissant’s gaze wandered off, like a war veteran undergoing a traumatizing flashback. “The spiders… crawling everywhere… the Moonlanders, they were watching...”
“A space shark?” Victor asked with a frown, as he sat around the dinner table next to Choc. “I heard of sand sharks, but space ones?”