Phera Moans Ch. 03

“So let us go have a chat with him, then.”

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Phera paused briefly, watching Dru nimbly dodge the dragon’s spiked tail while Eron took a minor blow from its wicked claws, waiting for them both to not be blocking her shot before she released a fire-infused blast into it, leaving another decent sized scorch mark alongside a dozen others. The discussion had not gone as well as planned, or much at all in general, and now her cohorts were tumbling around the intelligent beast, trying to get in hits of their own.

It had not taken more than a few seconds for the dragon to realize that the three would not be affected by its icy breath, so it switched to its more primitive weapons to defend its life; its teeth, claws, tail, and sheer size. There was no question that only one party would walk away from this and the dragon was facing a losing battle.

Dru was busy hammering into it, sheathing his hands in magical flames and punching it with a speed and fury that boggled the minds of any not familiar with his fighting style. On any remotely normal medium sized creature, one hit from him would be devastating, breaking bones with such force and severity that they would often stick out the other side, often painfully fusing them with their armor. On a half-grown dragon such as this, each flurry was cracking ribs and bruising muscles and organs, not lethal but still going impressive damage. Where Dru hit, the gleaming white scales were now dented, shunted, or missing.

On the other hand, where Eron hit, the scales were withered or eroded with the appearance that they belonged on a dragon twice its age and experience. His touch drained the life and energy from living beings, eventually turning them in dried husks that resembled oversized tinder. If he felt no reason to get particularly close to his target, he would hit it with a blast of sand that could flay the flesh off of an ordinary being, and was now using it to strip the dragon’s scaly armor from its hide, making it painfully vulnerable to almost any attack.

Also, the first thing Eron had done when it had attacked him was raise the temperature around him to more habitable levels; roughly 50 degrees Celsius. Everything in the immediate vicinity began to thaw and the dragon was visibly weakened. Fortunately for Eron, they were standing in the middle of an empty stone room, about fifty yards in diameter and just that high; there was nothing to melt and possibly burn him.

Modifying her blast, Phera aimed her next shot at the creature’s eyes, relying on the fact that it was already weakened by previous attacks. Her idea paid off, and a quick telepathic message set up a single, cohesive blow from all three while the dragon was very temporarily blind. In a flash, Eron’s burning sand, Dru’s burning hands, and her burning blast struck an already highly damaged spot on its chest.

With that, it was over. There was now a Dru’s fist-sized hole where the dragon’s heart used to be. In its place was a lot of shredded, cooked goo; the combination had allowed Dru to punch it hard enough to break through the skin, ribs, and squishy bits.

“So much for information. We might as well go check out the hoard, since there will not be much salvage value left in the corpse.”

Walking around the broken and bleeding body and through the opening that the dragon had initially come through, they all had to snicker at the stereotypical layout of the room that could contain a small castle. There were no other ways in or out, and there was no actual treasure clearly visible. However, there were hundreds of towering columns of ice that seemed to glisten from within, each with a gruesomely mangled corpse of a warrior embedded into the front.

Eron donned his magical ring that would protect him from the harmful effects of the water, and Phera started plucking beads from the necklace she had brought in. They each took a handful and started launching them towards the columns on the far side of the room. Where the beads landed, they exploded into huge balls of fire that instantly melted any ice within thirty feet without damaging anything else.

Once out of beads, Phera handed Dru a vial of red liquid and chugged one herself. They both coughed up a small amount of smoke before setting their new fire breath on the closer columns. While they were doing this, Eron waded to the center of the cavern and quickly raised his body temperature and the air around him to 100 degrees Celsius, setting the rest of the ice to melting and a good portion of the water to evaporating.

As soon as all the ice had melted, Eron turned the heat back down and Phera removed several dozen sponges from her bag. Again, they started casting them around, each sponge absorbing about two hundred gallons of water before turning into a small yellowish slab.

All that was left in the room was what had been frozen into the columns; the dragon’s entire hoard.

There were fifteen foot high piles of coins from dozens of different countries. Mixed in with them was an armory worth of weapons, shields, helmets, boots, etc., ranging from the mundane to those that nearly dazed Phera when she cast to identify the presence of magic. Gems of all sizes, chalices, vials of potions, wands, staffs, spellbooks enchanted to withstand the elements, and a diamond encrusted corset that she immediately tugged on before continuing the basic search. There was jewelry for every part of the body made from any precious stones and metals that one could dream of, and random artwork that was quickly appraised before throwing the cheaper pieces in a corner. There were even generally everyday items that had been enhanced in some way to make them expensive, such as solid platinum dice and a waterskin that would never run out of the last liquid placed in it.

Having divided all of the strictly monetary treasure equally, they opened the cube’s portal and hauled it inside, each to their private, incredibly secure rooms. All other stuffs would be sorted and assessed according to purpose, properties, and price. They were presently left in large piles in what appeared to be an elaborate, if unused ballroom on the main floor of the extradimensional house that the portal actually opened up into.

They then went to work on the people that had been frozen into the columns. After stripping and incinerating the bodies of the warriors, they came across one corpse that had obviously not come in search of battle. A strikingly beautiful woman in what was once noble clothing had been set carefully into place. Her clothes were torn, baring her to the world and showing just why she was there; shallow teeth and claw marks scored her skin in patterns alluding to the fact that the dragon had kidnapped her and used her for pleasure while in his human form.

As they were removing what was left of her clothes and valuables, two strange features were found on her skin. Across her forehead was an indentation of braided wires where something had been forcibly removed from behind, very soon before her death. On closer inspection it was clear that she had been wearing the headband in question for a rather long time, which would have made her even more fun for the dragon.

On her buttocks was a tattoo of a royal crest.