MAVLYNN
Mavlynn walked down the street and tried to not think about how, at this very moment, she was carrying more money than she had ever had in her entire life. The heavy bag swung in her grip, and the coins within clinked and clanked against one another - and as someone who had grown up grubbing for ends to meet, she could
hear
the difference between copper and gold and platinum. Platinum had this heavier, weightier sound. Like the promise of a better future. Her skirts swirled around her hips and she hesitated, taking a step more to lean against a lamppost that thrust up from the sidewalk, the sleeping dragon in the crook glowing brightly at the top.
"The beach, huh?" she whispered, softly.
Slake and her...him at the time...had dreamed about heading to the beach. Leaving Wyrm City and its rains and its politics and its grubbing, and just getting somewhere nice and far away. She lifted her head, and saw the smeared sky overhead, the scales of dark clouds and the rippling pattern of colored lightning presaging the evening's acid rains.
The dream had never been closer. It had never been farther away. The changes she had undergone meant that she'd never be able to leave Chariscora Avalanche's employ, not without that venerable dragon's say so. And the idea of Char giving a reason for Mavlynn to leave seemed as likely as Char getting to the end of a sentence without a curse word. She rubbed her hand against her face, and for a moment, the insane urge to just throw the money at the first assassin to try and take it from her flashed into her brain.
Yeah.
Great plan. If the attackers didn't try and kill her, Char would.
Anger and resentment mixed together in her brain as the rain started to drip down, hissing softly against the pavement. It was a bad storm, but at this moment, Mavlynn didn't care. Her maid outfit was treated with enough enchanted fiber to be on par with a +1 suit of chainmail, and she had dragon scales under her seemingly elfin skin. Just as she expected, the first droplet to scud along her cheek left nothing but a faint tingle. Then she heard the soft sound of a foot scraping on dampening pavement. She half turned and saw a man in a thick set of leather robes over what had to be bulky armor emerging from the shadows behind her. He had the canted, broad poofy hat of a streetsknecht and his leather jacket had been embroidered with purple and gold neon bright heraldics.
Two more people came around the corner to the other side of her - one of them a slender elf with two knives, the other a burly looking orc with a mace and shield, which he rapped together with a soft
clang clang
. They all walked towards her with the same deadly purpose.
"You know?" Mavlynn asked, quietly, feeling all the feelings balling up tight into her belly. "I was pushed around a
lot
before I became a kobold."
"We have three archers covering you with long ranged acid-rifles," the streetsknecht said, his voice having a deep, gutteral quality. Mavlynn cocked her head and flicked her eye, bringing a slitted iris into line. The new dragon-sight she had flared and she saw through his clothing to the thick armor beneath - he was wearing an actual suit of articulated bone armor, with draconic muscle tissue sewn into it and hooked to a cheap vat-grown brain near the nape of his neck. It'd make him even stronger and tougher than his implants - which included a cold breath weapon slapped into the back of his throat. She flicked her iris back up and shook her head.
"Did you think that Chariscora Avalanche would be so mindbogglingly stupid to let her kobold out with this much plat and not expect this?" Mavlynn asked. "Do you want to see how much money she spent on me first hand, or are you going to just leave and let me-"
The rogue came at her back, knives at the ready. Mavlynn sighed internally, then spun on her high heel, the balance perfect, the sweep of her leg timed to the exact right moment. She swept the rogue's legs out from under her and then slammed her back with an upward blow from the bag of platinum. It might not have been a particularly elegant blunt weapon, but it still did the job. The rogue yelped as she was flipped up into the air and landed in the same cup of the lightpost that held the glowing dragon, who woke with a hissing roar of shock and anger and began to flash in strobing pulses of yellow and red light out of sheerest annoyance.
In the first pulse, Mavlynn darted under the two handed broadsword that the streetsknecht had drawn from under his robes. Hissing acid rain flared along the blade as she came up inside of his guard, darting underneath his arm, then grabbing onto the control brain. Normally, it was seated well enough that people could go at it with sledgehammers and not dislodge it.
Fortunately, Mavlynn didn't need sledgehammers. Her eyes flashed as one of the dragons in her brain stuck his claws in deep and her astral form leaped into the controller brain. This first transition from the physical to the astral since her transformation almost shocked her into immobility. She had had no idea that while she had been Mavlor, she had moved with a thick skein wrapped around her astral body, that there had been separation between what she wanted and what she could do. Her fingers moved as if through air, when before, she had been used to slush.
She could have twisted his spine in half. Instead, she yanked a few internal wires, reprogrammed a routine, then yanked her physical back, her soul snapping into her body
The powered armor started to stomp forward, his swinging sword flailing wildly. "Stop! Stop!" He exclaimed, straining, his arms groaning as they were forced to move - his muscle against the armor's strength meant that neither moved quite in the direction they wanted to go. The orc with the mace and hammer and to jerk aside to avid getting slashed, but as he advanced past his friend, three bolts of acid shot from the highrise to the left of Mavlynn. She snapped her head up...and spat a bolt of fire out by pure instinct.
The explosion blew the acid apart before it reached the midpoint between street and shooter, and the acid-rifles reload time meant-
The orc came in, swinging his mace with brutal eagerness at her head. She ducked left, then right as he pulled the mace back down. It cracked against the pavement, his long arm and furious swing oversetting him. But then a crackling roar of thunder exploded and a lightning bolt shot down from the sky, striking the precise point he had hit. Mavlynn sprang backwards, her high heels skidding along the ground. She turned her skid into a backflip, evading three more acid blasts - one hitting where her chest had been, another two splattering where her head had been. The acid hissed and bubbled as she sighed. "A cleric, huh?" she asked.
"We're getting paid a big chunk of change for you, kobold," the orc growled. "And you don't seem to have much beyond wired reflexes and that breath weapon."
Mavlynn smiled sweetly at him. Then she tossed the bag of platinum into the air. It sailed up.
Time slowed.
Her legs pumped and sent her shooting up into the air, arcing up as she spread her arms wide - fingers clenching as claws burst from the tips. She landed, both feet slamming directly into his upraised shield, then slammed her claws into his armored helmet and flung herself up and over his head. She tore away the helmet and no small amount of skin and cheek. The orc bellowed in pain and shock as she held out her hand, nails
snicking
back into place as the strap of the duffel dropped right back into her palm. Her left arm snaked out and wrapped around the orc's throat, yanking him back against her chest. She started to sidle left.
"Y-You bitch! You clawed my fucking face!" the orc said.
