Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 050

"I've been better," she said, then her legs wobbled and she stumbled toward him.

When he put his hands out to catch her, he received a sizable static shock that caused his left arm to suddenly retract, which caused him to catch her awkwardly. Because of this, her shoulders twisted funny, causing the top button of her tunic to pop open, revealing a pair of ample breasts that had been crammed inside.

"The youngsters have been teaching her to walk," Zel explained as Mike steadied the dragon. "She isn't used to her human form yet."

"No, I am not." Quetzalli managed to stand on her own, and then put her hands on her waist. She was about a foot shorter than Mike, but somehow looked just as menacing as if she were a foot taller than him. "It appears that my enchantment may be permanent."

"Any ideas about how we can reverse it?" Mike asked, then looked at Zel.

"None. Ratu might know, but I haven't been able to send her a faerie. Can't seem to find any of them when there's work to be done."

"I am so sorry," he began, but Quetzalli held up her hand to silence him.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," she told him. "This was the queen's doing, not yours."

"We'll find a way to reverse it."

"Perhaps." She looked him up and down. "It is so fascinating to see you up close like this. And this place we're in—is this your home?"

"Not...quite. I thought you would be far angrier than you seem."

"Oh, she was." Zel smiled. "But we were able to talk her down a bit, and convince her that we would do our best."

"Yes, she did." Quetzalli poked him in the chest with her finger, which caused another spark. "And while I don't blame you, you are the reason I ended up in this mess. You owe me for saving your life, and I intend to collect."

"Anything, just name it."

"I need a place to stay until I can return to my original form. I would prefer to stay with you, as I no longer know anybody in the mortal realm who can help me."

"Done." He stuck his hand out. "I will do everything in my power to keep you safe and help return you to normal."

Quetzalli nodded. "Then we have an agreement." She looked down at his extended hand. "What are you doing?"

"It's a handshake. When humans come to an agreement, they shake hands."

"Oh. Right. I am familiar with the custom, but keep forgetting I have...these." She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. "They feel so fragile, like sticks that have been out in the sun for too long. And the claws are useless. Look at how thin they are! You could barely dig a hole with them."

"Yeah, I wouldn't recommend—OW!"

Quetzalli had grabbed his extended hand and squeezed it as hard as she could, which caused the bones and tendons inside his palm to pop loudly. He fought to yank his hand free, but she misunderstood and held on with a grip of iron, pumping his hand up and down vigorously.

"How do I know when a handshake is over?" The dragon asked, then looked over to Zel, oblivious to Mike's reaction. "Does this look right? It doesn't feel right."

Zel said nothing, hiding a grin behind her hands.

"Two seconds. Two seconds!" Mike yelled, and she released him. His hand was throbbing, but he didn't feel any permanent damage.

"Okay. Two seconds for a handshake. Got it."

"You're...you're crazy strong, aren't you?" He flexed his hand a few times, hoping that movement would alleviate the pain.

"She is a dragon, after all." Zel moved close to Quetzalli and pulled a small wooden stick from her pocket. "When she first came to us, she was as pale as a ghost. Her skin has darkened a bit, and these revealed themselves." She tapped on a set of scales along Quetzalli's neck. "She still has some draconic properties that I think will continue to emerge in the days ahead."

"Okay, but why the stick?" He found the centaur's behavior odd.

"I got tired of getting zapped," she replied, then pointed at Quetzalli's broken horn. "She constantly generates an electrical charge, but the sudden change in size meant that she could no longer hold in all that energy, and so it broke. Unfortunately, based on what she told me, her horn helped her control her own lightning, so you may get a nasty shock every now and then."

He thought back to the spark he had experienced earlier and looked at the dragon. "Not enough to kill me or anything, right?"

The dragon shrugged. "I really can't say. Zel didn't think so, and my horn will heal over time as long as I'm careful with it."

"Indeed." He moved closer to her and examined the fractured horn. It had a spiral pattern which reminded him of a unicorn. "Maybe we could get Tink to make you a cap for it? Something to keep it from getting damaged even further?"

"If you do that, pick a conductive material," Zel added. "You don't want her building up another big charge or anything. The discharge could crack her horn down at the core, which would be very bad."

"Sounds reasonable." He really had no idea how electricity worked beyond the basics, but was sure that Tink would be able to fashion something with little effort. "Any other things we should know?"

"She's been human for less than twenty-four hours. Though she has watched over mankind for centuries, it doesn't mean she understands them." Zel threw a look at Quetzalli. "I don't pretend to fully understand a dragon's supernatural biology, or the spell that transformed her. Fae magic is certainly a thing to behold, but so is a dragon. Her body is still acclimating to this form, and because some of her draconic traits have already manifested since her arrival, like the scales on her skin, it's possible other traits may push through the enchantment over time."

"So puberty for dragons, got it. Hey, can I ask you something? What do you know about Sulyvahn?"

"The dullahan?" She shrugged. "I haven't talked to him, actually. I've been too busy here."

"What about the others? I've seen him speaking with the centaurs and I wonder what he's been talking about."

"Oh? You have my curiosity. Why the sudden interest in him?"

Mike frowned. "The faerie queen knew we were coming and made sure we had a nasty welcome waiting for us. Naturally I assume he told her because he's a spy."

The centaur rolled her eyes. "Well, you weren't exactly being quiet about what you were doing or where you were going. Even if he did report to the faerie queen, you can hardly call what he did spying. If your neighbors could actually see what was happening in your front yard, even they would have known you were up to something, cause you built a small closet in the middle of your yard and then had a squad of magic rats chew a portal in it. So even if Sulyvahn is spying on you, you can't blame him for passing on information that you pretty much handed over."

"You sound like you're on his side." He hadn't expected Zel to lecture him about the dullahan, and his cheeks were now burning.

"He may be in your front yard, but he still answers to the queen. You can't be mad at him for siding with his boss, especially when you've made no effort to properly welcome him here."

"So he has been spying on us." He shook his head, wondering how he was going to get rid of the headless nuisance.

"If he is, he's only reporting what he sees. It's not like we answered a bunch of questions about you or the house." Zel crossed her arms. "In fact, the only thing he's really even talked about is the garden in the front yard."

"What about the garden?" Mike asked.

"He seems super into botany, but he keeps offering useless advice on those bushes near the front—the ones that keep getting sick and dying. I have some of our best botanists keeping your yard in good condition. They love tending to your plants, and it's their way of thanking you for letting us live here. He keeps offering up holistic approaches to your poor soil issues, and the centaurs just smile and nod for him because he's friendly."

"That's a little weird."

Zel nodded. "It is. He suggested planting iron spikes all around your bushes because it might loosen the soil, then told my top herbalist that a ring of salt might keep slugs away. You don't even have a slug problem, so we told him we would keep it in mind."

"A slug...problem..." Mike put his chin in his hand, his mind whirring through the possibilities. Why would the queen's spy become so involved with how he kept his yard? He hadn't liked the dullahan since he had arrived, but he knew now that he hadn't given him a fair shake. Now that he knew how nasty the queen could be, he thought back to Sulyvahn's warnings. Had the dullahan really been looking out for him?

"Ack! Pffft!"

A stray bit of hair had gotten stuck in Quetzalli's face, and she was actively trying to remove it. Unfortunately, it looked to be the hair of a centaur's tail, and she poked herself in the eye trying to pull the thing off her face.

"Hold still," he told her, then got a nasty zap for his efforts. He was able to peel the hair off her face, but when he let go of it, it floated back toward her and stuck to her belly.

"That's been a bit of an uphill battle," Zel informed him. "She fell into a hay bale earlier and it took us an hour to get it all out of her hair."

"It was unexpectedly itchy," Quetzalli added. "And I did not care for the flavor, either."

"You're not supposed to eat it." Zel let out an exasperated sigh. "And we don't eat it either. We use it to lie down and things like that."

"But I thought that horses ate hay?"

"Again, like I said before, we aren't horses. This part of me is like a horse, but that does not mean we're...you know what? It's fine." Zel looked back at Mike. "Now that your head isn't broken, you should probably get back to the house. The others are waiting for your return, and I'm sure Quetzalli would like to find out where her room is."

"I'm very curious to see the inside of a house," the dragon added. "I've even heard that you have running water inside of them, like a magic river."

"Just wait until I show you the internet," Mike said, then gave Zel a big hug. "Thanks for taking care of me."

"Try to stay out of trouble," she told him, then smiled. "But it was very nice to see you. Are you still coming to my ceremony?"

"I wouldn't miss it." He ran his hand along her cheek, then turned toward Quetzalli. "C'mon, let's get you home and figure out where you're sleeping."

"Am I not sleeping with you? I thought humans slept together?" She pressed her hands together, overlapping her fingers. "Does a family of humans sleep in a big ball, like this? I imagine there's an upper limit."

"Um...not quite. You need to master sleeping on your own first. Then you can decide if you want to sleep with somebody else. It's kind of a personal decision."

"You speak with much wisdom, humanling."

"Just call me Mike. I need to stop for something first."

They walked through the centaur village and he stopped a couple of centaurs and asked for their help. They lead him to one of the nearby storage yurts, then left to complete their duties. Once inside, he dug around through their supplies for a few minutes before finally spotting what he needed.

Quetzalli had stayed outside, her eyes on the blue sky above. He called her in to help him, then handed her a bag of salt.

"What's this for?" she asked.

"Don't know yet. Rule number one of being a human: be prepared." He grabbed a couple of horseshoes that the centaurs had made. Though they technically didn't need them (centaur hooves were magically durable), he had learned that they often utilized them for treating hoof related injuries to ensure that they healed properly.

"What are those for?" she asked, indicating the horseshoes.

"They're for luck, but you gotta hold the open end up, or all the luck will run out." He tucked them partially into one of his pockets. "Rule number two of being human: you're gonna need all the luck you can get."

"Isn't all the luck going to run out of them like that?" She squatted down. "I don't see anything coming out of them."

"Oh, I'm not grabbing them for their luck. C'mon, I want you to meet somebody."

He led her out of the yurt and to the other side of camp, where the portal had been set up. They were about to walk inside the building when she stopped and turned her vision to the sky again.

"Everything okay?" he asked her.

A slow smile crossed her face. "There's a storm coming."

He scanned the cloudless sky and shrugged. "If you say so. C'mon, let's go."

The guards standing by the portal let them pass, and they walked through it and into the front yard of his house.

"That's my home," he told her, pausing for a moment to let her see it. In the light of the morning, much of the front was still cast in shadows, and it somehow looked ominous with its latest addition stuck onto the front. "It's also your home for as long as you like."

"Thank you," she said, and he held his breath.

Nothing happened. He scanned the front of the house, wondering if a new room had popped up in the back or something. He shrugged, and walked over to the garden.

It didn't take him long to find it. Along the edge of the maze that was closest to the street, he could see that a fairly large patch of bushes had giant gaps in them, and the dirt beneath looked more like sand than soil.

"Hey, Abella?" He raised his voice and squinted, his gaze traveling the length of the roof. "I might need you in a moment. Can I get you in the air?"

After a couple of seconds, he saw her shoot into the sky, her dark figure now circling overhead.

"That's Abella," he explained. "She's a gargoyle."

"Oh." Quetzalli gazed wistfully into the sky. "I miss my wings. I feel so heavy being trapped on the ground."

"Yeah, I bet. If you're ever in need of a ride, you might be able to convince the Jabberwock to give you one." He pointed out the beast where it lay hidden against the far wall of his house. Its wings were folded up, and it looked like it might be sleeping. However, he knew that it didn't need sleep, and was constantly watching the entrance, just in case.

"Maybe later. I seem to be having trouble with my balance already." She dropped the bag of salt on the ground and then put her hands on her breasts. "I'm so confused by these in particular. Why are they so heavy? If I turn too fast, I feel like I'm being pulled forward by them." She turned around and shook her butt at him. "At least if I had a tail, I feel like I could use it as a counter weight or rudder."

Oh boy. He didn't even know where to begin. "That is probably a question for the others. Hey, can you open that bag for me?"

"Yes, I can." She knelt down and swiped her fingers at the top of the cloth sack. Frustrated when nothing happened, she tried again, but this time snagged her fingernail on the cloth and let out a holler of pain.

"Humans don't use their nails like that," he explained. He showed her how to operate the string on the bag. She pulled on it and the bag opened up.

"It's a good thing your kind reproduces so quickly," she grumbled. "Manlings are so breakable."

"And stubborn, too." Yuki's voice was bitter, and Mike flinched as the temperature dropped around him. He hadn't seen her approach, and when he looked at her, he saw that she had small bags under her eyes. "And they make shitty choices."

"Yuki, I—" he began, but she stepped into him and hugged him so tight that his voice became a squeak and his back popped.

"You're such an asshole," she told him, then stepped back and gave him a light shove. "I'm so glad that you decided to go to the faerie realm just to nearly get killed by almost everything."

He winced, then held out his hands apologetically. "Look, Yuki, I'm really sorry that—"

"No, absolutely not. I don't want to hear any of your bullshit excuses, or..." Yuki sniffed the air and turned to face Quetzalli. "And who is this?"

"I am the dragon Quetzalli." She held out a hand and Yuki took it. There was a loud pop on contact as the kitsune received a shock, and then the dragon counted to two out loud while vigorously pumping Yuki's hand.

When Quetzalli finally let go, the kitsune's hair now stood up in a few places, and the fur on her tails had poofed out. Yuki looked at Mike with a mixture of surprise and disgust.

"Hey, since you're here anyway, I need your help with something." He ran his hands through her hair, taking a moment to rub the spot between her ears. The static discharged and her hair fell back into place. "Can you hold these for me? I'll let you know when I need them."

She looked down at the horseshoes, then took them. "What are we doing?"

"You'll see." He had Quetzalli move a safe distance from the bushes, then came back and lifted the bag of salt. He tilted the bag up and did his best to pour the salt evenly over the roots of the plant, wondering how long it would be until something happened. With Abella soaring overhead and Yuki casually spinning one of the horseshoes in her fingers nearby, he hoped that his hunch was right.

"So, anyway, I wanted to talk about my plans for the faerie queen," he loudly announced. "I've given it a lot of thought, but I think I have the perfect weapon to destroy her once and for all."

Quetzalli tilted her head with curiosity, but remained silent. Yuki's ears twitched, and she gave him a long hard look. Her gaze went to the horseshoes in her hands, back to Mike, and then over to where he had dumped a bunch of salt.

"I am so interested to hear about this weapon," she said, her grip tightening on the horseshoes.

"Good. Because I want to show it to you." He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a vial of glitter that was leftover from his trip. Cupping his hands together, he looked around and then moved next to Yuki and cracked his hands open. "I'm sure you recognize it from the Vault."

"How were you able to handle such a device?" she asked, her eyes flicking toward the bushes. The soil had shifted, causing a circle to open in the salt.

"It wasn't easy," he told her, then closed his hands. "But if this device were to get in the wrong hands, it would easily destroy everything we know and love."

"Well, then, you should probably put it somewhere safe until...until..." Her ears twitched again, and she frowned at the bushes.

He heard it now, too—a sound similar to stones being ground together.

"I'm going to check it out," he told her, then turned toward the bushes and fake stumbled, the vial falling out of his hands.

The ground erupted, and a squat, fat creature made of stone jumped into the air and snagged the vial in its claws.

"All Hail the Faerie Queen!" it shrieked at them. The creature looked like a demonic hedgehog made out of rock, and stood about a foot tall. It leered at them with sharp, pointy teeth, but the smile disappeared when Yuki nailed it between the eyes with a horseshoe.

"Abella!" Mike called, and the gargoyle descended, using her feet to grab the little stone creature and carry it into the sky. However, the creature rapidly expanded, dragging Abella down until she crashed into the bushes.

Muttering in a language Mike didn't recognize, the creature rolled its body into a ball and charged toward them. The air chilled instantly and large ice spears formed, diverting the ball away from the group and across the yard. A pair of nearby centaurs ran for cover as the creature unrolled itself, using its foot long claws to spin in a tight circle, its angry visage focused on Mike.

It didn't see the stone lion that had come to life that now descended on it from above. The lion's body was surrounded in a blue aura and it slammed into the demon like a meteor impacting the moon.

The creature exploded in a shower of stone and glitter, its rocky remains raining across the front yard. The lion shook itself clean of the debris, the air around its fiery mane rippling with heat before it returned to its post at the front of the yard.