DreadWolf

◈ Chapter 134:

The giant plushieMoved.

A cloud of screaming teenagers filled the air as they were explosively launched from the bed, the giant plush toy they were resting upon violently leaping forward and acting like a Lamia based catapult.

The only one not to be thrown off was of course Rose, and that was because Rain was tightly knotted, that, and she had known what was coming and wrapped her tail as tight as she could around the plushie.

She just about managed to keep her composure despite the sudden motion and the tugging knot and flung her arms up in the air in a wild use of magic. She was well aware that they weren't likely to make it out the door with so many powerful levelers who were going to be very upset with her so she knew she had to do something.

Her magic roared and the air was instantly filled with not just damp teenagers but huge amounts of woolly stuffing, so much stuffing that it made it hard to see, a snowstorm of wool fluff that was flung against the Lamia to blind them, in particular Julia and Arissa who had been acting and not on the giant plushie. The two actors were instantly plastered from head to tail in white wool as Rain shot past, a clump even slamming into Julia's open yelling mouth causing her to choke and gag.

Rain, inside the plushie, dove for the door and Rose snapped out an arm, a twist of cloth whipping around the door handle and hauling it wide before Rain could smash through the thing. It still broke against the wall as he blundered into it, his vision severely restricted in the bear head.

He crashed through into the hallway, crushing a table and vase and denting the wall before bouncing off and charging down the passage, colliding with hallway furniture and turning it into so much splintered shrapnel.

Rose hung on for dear life as he went, her tail looped around his hips as she was frantically bounced on the knot, each bounce causing her to gasp, her overly full taut belly sloshing and wobbling with every step as she desperately clutched at her ride.

Behind her came the howls of furious teenagers, the girls picking themselves up from the floor where they had been tossed, their faces and bodies which had been made damp by Rose were now half covered with woolly fluff, the fluff sticking to their damp skin and scales, as if they had been attacked by a herd of shedding sheep.

This made the teenagers very very angry.

There came a storm of slithering, outraged cries rising louder and louder, and magic quickly filling the air. The teenagers however got stuck in the bedroom door as all of them tried to jam through it at the same time, the Lamia's natural size working against them,

That didn't prevent them from using the magic and as Rain crashed around the corner a fireball splashed up the wall, the wallpaper igniting as the gold trim melted.

The flames barely missed a strip of cloth that was flying through the air in their wake, a strip of cloth that darted around the corner after Rain, whizzing between his legs and slipping onto Rose as he charged down the corridor. The strip of cloth circled the Lamia's hips forming a skirt and making decent once more as the remains of her blouse formed together, stretching over her rounded stomach.

Just in time as they rounded another corner and nearly collided with a maid. The maid screamed as the giant plushie charged toward her, barely diving out of the way in time, the towels she was carrying flinging over her head.

Rain ran on. The howls of the teenagers were chasing them still, but the Lamia were falling behind now, only their voices echoing.

"There, left! Now right!" shouted Rose, her arm flying out to direct her plushie steed.

They fled until even the furious echoes were falling away. It seemed like they had made it, losing them in the maze of a mansion, only the occasional flabbergasted maid seeing them as they dashed past.

But that wasn't to last and Rain staggered to a halt as he came into a corridor with a bespectacled Lamia in it, a Lamia with a gnoll upper body, his scales gradually transitioning into patterned fur around his hips. The Lamia was directing nearly a dozen maids who were struggling to fit an enormous hardwood draw filled office desk through a doorway and completely blocking the path forward, there was no squeezing around this, especially with the addition of the huge amounts of luggage, clearly he was one of those who had just returned to the city with Lord Wranvyre.

"Rose? What are you doing?" said the Lamia.

The teenager, who was fortunately made decent with her crudely made skirt, quickly patted her clothing down and arranged her hair, trying to make the best of things and make herself somewhat presentable despite being wrapped around a giant stuffed toy.

"Errr, I'm just on a walk... with my... new golem?"

The Lamia gnoll stared up at Rain blankly. Then at the teenager's rounded belly.

"Are you pregnant? The first time I leave on a trip in years and I come back to-

"Y-yes- I'm preggers! Preggers with eggs and stuff! Totally have been for a while haha!" She blew a last strand of hair away from her face.

"Hmm, well I hope the father is of decent stock and not a useless waif from the slums, you would do well to learn from Millie's mistakes."

"Well they aren't a waif, that's for sure," said Rose glancing up at the towering form of the plushie.

The Gnoll Lamia followed her gaze up to the teddy bear head.

"...That is quite an impressive piece of work if you don't mind me saying, I hadn't realised that you had leveled so much, your regular dungeon trips seem to have been paying off quite remarkably."

"Aheh, y-yeah, that's right, I've been going lots, and leveling, uh, lots so now I can make an entire wol- b-bear, teddy bear! G-golem thing! Just testing it out!"

"Hmm, perhaps I should join you on your next trip, that is if you wouldn't mind? You seem to have a talent for leveling and I hate to think how much more destructive you will be killing monsters with such a thing as this on your side. My own work is suffering for want of mana that I just don't have the levels for so it would seem especially pertinent to plan an excursion, Lynthia's dungeon was simply not enough especially as the others were unmotivated in helping a half such as me."

"Oh, uhh, sure! B-but right now I'm just giving the golem a test run, would you uhm, Mind? Moving? Maybe? Please? Like, right now, quickly?"

The Lamia tilted his head and then seemed to realise that his stuff was blocking the way.

"I will certainly try, come my servants, put your backs into it, it will surely fit if you just-"

A blood curdling scream of fury came from behind Rain and he glanced behind to see a dark purple scaled Lamia, her glasses askew, her body covered in clumps of white wool stuffing, her hair and clothing dishevelled and soaked, her eyes slightly crazed.

"ROOSEEEEEIAMGOINGTOKILLYOU!!" screamed Julia.

Azure fire began to coalesce around her hips in a halo, a ring of spinning flame.

Rain did not like the look of it in the slightest and swiftly decided he wanted nothing to do with this Lamia's magic fire, especially as he was currently encased in what was likely an extremely flammable stuffed toy. It didn't matter if the Lamia realised he was a monster or a golem, he would burn either way.

Rain jumped. Leaping up into the air, giant fabric enclosed feet coming down on the enormous office desk.

The thing held under his weight for about one-tenth of a second before his feet obliterated it, the surface crashing inward so hard that the draws exploded out of the front sending reams of paper flying into the air.

He pelted down the corridor as he bounced off the remains and the Gnoll Lamia cried out in dismay, then cried out in even greater dismay as the crushed desk promptly ignited, Julia's fiery halo washing over it as she charged through the wreckage.

Rain darted into a side corridor leaving the scene of panicking maids behind, then darted into another hallway and another. He was fast, but the Lamia was no slouch, the Lamia's tail allowed for some truly incredible speed, far faster than two legs, and his limited vision was making him clumsy.

It seemed like Julia was going to catch them until Rose caught his attention once more.

"Quick, in here!"

Rain darted into the open room Rose indicated and a curtain, which was moving on its own, slammed the door shut behind them.

"Use your monster whatever hearing! Is she following?"

Rain came to a halt and perked his ears up, listening carefully.

The subtle sound of carpet and scales came from beyond the door, as well as the sound of someone breathing hard, and with that the crackle of fire.

He tensed, ready to attack if they entered.

But then, they moved on. They hadn't seen them enter the room.

"They're gone, they didn't see us."

"Oh, that's good... Now no more running please, your knot is driving me crazy!"

She let out a sigh of relief and slumped against his fur, relaxing into him a little too much.

Rain glared down at the teenager snuggling against his front.

Somehow he felt like he had gotten the worse end of their deal. She had gotten what she wanted, and then some, and he was on the verge of being discovered, in fact he essentially had been, albeit their pursuers still might not fully understand what was happening, just that he was a threat of some kind.

"Will they fetch the guards?"

Rose shook her head into his fur, her voice muffled. "No, not likely, it would be waaaay too embarrassing to explain what happened and why they have to come after one of the family, come after me."

Rain considered this. It was something at least, it meant he only had to worry about the angry teenagers.

Still, he wanted something more from her, something to rebalance their agreement, something useful.

His eyes narrowed.

"Tell me where Lord Wranvyre is or I will kill and eat you."

The Lamia lifted her head from his fur and blinked up at him. "The second part of that was a very monster thing to say, but the first part, that's the kind of thing I would expect from a leveler. Why do you want that psycho? Why do you want my step father?"

"I want to kill- wait, you aren't his daughter?"

"My mother is Lady Glyrieth. I have no blood relation to him, thank the gods, not that any blood relations ever mattered with mother. We should keep moving by the way, they will start searching rooms soon."

He gave her a sour look but moved to the door at the other end of the room and peeked outside. The hallway was deserted and almost looked disused, one of the spare and uninhabited parts of the vast mansion it seemed. He stepped out and began cautiously following it.

After a moment she began to speak.

"I used to look up to him, I wanted to be him. He is the head of our vast family, our clan, and one of the most influential and powerful and charismatic levelers in all of Florens."

"I told you I intend to kill him."

"Did I say I cared? I have my reasons to want to see him dead too. Why do you think I've been leveling so hard? I'm going to do it myself someday in classic leveler fashion, the higher leveler crushing the lower, it's what he deserves."

"...Your family seems a little... twisted, maybe more than a little, and none of you even seem that upset about what happened to your mother."

Rose snorted. "Do you know how many siblings I have to share her with? Take a guess."

Rain thought back and tried to count through those he had seen. There were those who had met the Lord out front, maybe thirty or forty or so, although a number of those would have been too old to be his children, and then there were Rose's sisters, who had probably been outside with those greeting the lord. He went for a guess at the very high end of what he thought it could be.

"Thirty five?"

"I have one hundred and ninety three siblings, and about one hundred nephews or nieces."

Rain nearly tripped and fell.

"How is that possible?!"

"Lamia have, hmm, very easy pregnancies, they only last like a month before the eggs are lain, and a Lamia clutch is at minimum six eggs. You won't catch a poor Lamia having anything like more than one clutch though, someones gotta raise them and that's expensive and really difficult, but if you are filthy rich, and uncaring, you can just pay for the eggs to be incubated and hatched and looked after by professionals while you go sleep around some more... So yeah, I'm not really my mother's daughter, I'm just a statistic, a number in a ranking, to this family anyway." Her voice became increasingly bitter as she spoke.

"You know that he killed your mother then?"

She tensed against his body before letting out a long sigh.

"No, I didn't actually, but I suspected, I suspected she wasn't gonna come back. Every other girl loves using monsters on this estate, it's this whole awesome and convenient thing, but we are always careful about it, none of the dozen monster stables ever got found after Wranvyre killed one of us for getting pregnant with a monster. Glyrieth, my mother, was a featherbrain however, and if she was still alive in a dangerous dungeon after so long I can guess the reason and that she finally stumbled onto his bad side."

"I can see why you would want justice for that, but you told me you wanted him dead before I told you this, so why are you really leveling?"

"I was a child... and It was about a month after I had learned of my real father and his family's existence. It was nice, meeting them, they were nice people. Then Wranvyre came and-... I later learned he has been doing that to those mother slept with. I think he even likes her sleeping around so he feels justified in killing them and their families, he truly gets off on it. Really, he's a demon, a monster in Lamia flesh. But you would never know it, he is a trained actor, that's why we put on plays, to impress his love for the craft, I sing for him, all while knowing what he did, what he did to them, seeing what was left of them in the slums."

Rose's voice was strained by the time she fell silent.

Something cold and dark twisted in Rain's guts. A powerful leveler idly destroying a poor low leveler family? A common enough story, but it still made his fur stand on end, his claws twitch, his blood heat. It felt too familiar to not have his thoughts start to dwell on bad things, bad memories, bad memories that made his heartbeat accelerate and adrenaline flood his body.

"That is... very fucked up..."

Rain remained silent for a moment, struggling with his thoughts, and then-

"You know where Lord Wranvyre is?"

She nodded slowly. "He's in his rooms."

"Which are where?"

"The entire top floor of the building is his rooms, just go up."

Rain went up.