CHARISCHORA
Charischora Avalanche frowned intently at the webwork of connections she had collected and thrown up onto the wall of her innermost sanctum. For the past few years, the only people to have entered here was herself...and memories. Ghosts. She slowly stretched her long, silver-scaled neck, twisting her head to the side until she heard a satisfying
pop
and then drew her head back to settle again. Her memories played wistful tricks on her. If Tiras was here, he'd at least be able to massage the kinks of her her back with his talons and scaled palms. But, of course, he wasn't here.
He was dead.
And he wouldn't be coming back into the world for a long, long, long time.
"Stop being a big fucking crybaby," Char muttered under her breath. Her scaled knuckle rubbed along her jaw as she regarded the connections. The simple fact was that no one, not even a dragon of her age and expertise, could truly understand the economy as it truly existed. Everyone used models, and everyone knew those models were inexact, imperfect, prone to error. There were simply too many spinning parts and whirling gears and hissing, bubbling organs put up in secret or forgotten about or repurposed after conquest, war, and simply lack of attention. All of it, though,
worked
. It worked to create the magical materials needed to sustain and maintain the massive population of Wyrm City. It worked to employ and feed those people.
And it worked to funnel immense amounts of money into roughly six, seven dragon's hordes.
One of those hordes was, of course, hers.
So, while Char couldn't quite comprehend the webwork in its totality, she did her best to at the very least get the
gist
of it. Her eyes, slitted and narrowed, flicked as her nictitating membranes wiped away bits of grime and dust. Every attack that had been aimed at Chromatic Solutions Incorporated had been traced back to their sources - and each source was uniquely identical. In that they were all disconnected, but all shared the same broad characteristics: Each had been a relatively well positioned member of Wyrm City's ever churning black and gray market underground, each had had connections that had given them access to data and maps and secret weak points.
The problem was the
timing
. Each of them would have independently come up with the idea of hitting CSI at some point - but all on the same day, overwhelming their response networks? She rubbed her finger along her jaw.
"We need to find the communication method," she muttered under her breath.
Her intelligence staff had their ways.
But Char had her own ways. She focused and then shrank down with a crumpling sound of distorted air and shifting flesh, shedding scales, and rustling wings. Once she had finished collapsing into her elfin form, she walked towards the absurdly over-sized doorway, feeling quite ridiculous as she was able to walk through with her arms fully spread and fingers outstretched and would still have a meter and change before her fingers might touch the edges of the doorframe. She turned right, then left, then blinked in annoyance as she saw that one of her pet Rogues was waiting for her.
Rouge the Rogue was an elf with a spiderweb tattoo around her eye from her days as a street Rogue, with a fancy skintight vest and leather leggings all in Clutch Avalanche colors. She was tapping one of her feet on the ground and scowled at Char as she walked by.
"Your kid has stolen your new kobold and taken her joyriding, Ma'am," she said, matching Char's pace as Char walked down the corridor towards the crystal lab.
Char turned to face her, throwing up her hands in a mockery of shock and appalled horror. "Oh Wyrm Above help us, my pissant daughter is using her new toy in the exact way she's meant to use it, what a fucking disaster. Any other bad news to report, maybe our enemies have walked straight into meat grinder for us, to save us the trouble?"
Rouge showed zero reaction. "No, I mean, she's jacked into the brain-dragon and is running the kobold around town like her own personal mecha."
Char blinked at her. "She's not just growing a dick and fucking her?" she asked, sounding disbelieving - because, to be honest, she
was
. Her lovely, wonderful daughter had two braincells, and both of them were horny. Char didn't truly begrudge her that. Unlike many dragons of her age, Char had managed to retain a few memories of her hatchling years and knew that she had been just as horny and stupid as Sanditrash was right now.
"No, ma'am," Rouge said, frowning at her as the two women stood in the corridor.
"Well..." Char frowned, doing some mental math. "Do you have a fucking tail on her?"
"No, ma'am, I decided to be wildly incompetent today," Rouge shot back, as flat affect as ever.
Char frowned. "You know I hate sassy elves, right?" she asked, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Keep the tail, yank the kobold back if she's going to break her, but if she's just having fun? Fuck it, let our enemies think that we're stupid."
"Ma'am?"
"They'll try and read anything they can into our kobold's action, no? Since, well, we bought her fresh from the House, we'll have to be sending her out for a reason? But instead, no, my stupid horny daughter is off, being stupid and fucking horny," Char said, nodding as she released the bridge of her nose. "It'll throw their pet Rogues into a tizzy."
"Ma'am,..." Rouge said.
"Like you, right now," Char said. "But for the bad guys."
"
Ma'am
," Rogue said.
"You know, I hate it when you do that," Char snapped.
"Ma'am," Rogue said.