After saving a man from xlurps, he accidentally skips along to her apartment. Worried about her self-imposed deadline, she tries to ignore him. When he stumbles over her cat and couch after looking out of her window, she gives him some attention. While trying, but failing, to cover up his nudeness, she discovers all of his titles.
When her couch explodes, she skips back to the other realm with Kitty and Pagewyn, where they immediately have to defend themselves against blurghs. A little bit later those are diverted and Nadec has to cut Pagewyn out of the ass-thread ball. Not wanting to ruin her perfect score, she decides to stick with him until he’s back in his kingdom, Paralelo. She gets upset at him for not defending himself earlier so he shows her why he is ‘the master of the Squares, defender of the Triangles, chief of all Lines’. After her emotions threaten to get the better of her, she leaves him to be along in the woods, where she gets rammed by a darkness and passes out.
Read all the previous chapters here.
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‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it.’ She was still mumbling when the nightmare was fading, the same one she’s had every night the past few years. Nadec’s throbbing temple speeded up the process into the waking world. Soon the last traces of the dreams disappeared and she stirred, trying to sit up. She couldn’t. Her hands and feet were bound together behind her back. I’m glad I started doing yoga last year, she thought as she considered her awkward position. Though it will still hurt when I get free.
Opening her eyes wasn’t easy. Something sticky prevented them from doing so . Blood. Of course. Stupid… whoever did this. They never seem to realise how dangerous a hit on the head was. It’s all good in movies and the like, but in real life a head injury is more likely to cause death instead of only unconsciousness. Seemed that she got lucky though, she was still alive. Hopefully no concu—nausea assaulted her. In a burst of panic, she managed to lift her head a bit and move it to the side before violently throwing up.
Her nose and throat stung from the vomit’s acidity. She tried blowing the stuff out of her nose as well as she could before shuffling backwards, away from the reeking spot. She cursed inwardly at the near certainty of having a concussion. But, where was she, and why was she bound? She grunted. Those should’ve been the first things I questioned, something’s wrong with my head alright.
‘Let me help you with that love,’ an amused, gravelly, and inhumanely deep voice grunted. Her heart jumped in her throat while she was lifted by the waist. Her body protested—the way she was tied up did not make this a pleasant experience. Thank you gravity. At least this realm has slightly less of a downward pull than Earth.
‘Here boy!’ the voice called out. Nadec’s half open eyes were too bleary to see more than vague blots of grouped colours. A wet rag got slapped in her face. It moved upwards. It wasn’t smooth at all. In fact, it felt like… A tongue! It was a tongue! A massive tongue, so much larger than Kitty’s, but with the same coarseness.
Kitty! All worries about being licked by a creature with a tongue larger than her head evaporated to a growing concern for her feline buddy. Nadec hoped with a passion that he’d managed to escape. All of a sudden she also remembered her other travel partner. Did he know she was captured? Is Kitty with him? Is he going to try and free me? A daydream of a nude prince on a white horse, galloping towards her, filled her vision. No, he wasn’t on a white horse, he was running. Running. Naked! That certainly changed the fairy tale-feel of the daydream.
‘Oi! Oi, princess!’ Large, purple, hairy fingers snapped in front of her eyes. She blinked several times in a row. Daydreaming about a prince—no, a king—saving her!? Her head must really be bad. It felt as if most of the dried blood was gone from her face, licked off together with the spew. Her sight had improved visibly. She snorted at that pun and immediately regretted it. Snorting after a puking session, and with a split head, is not a good idea! Working hard to steady her eyes, she looked at what was holding her.
The orange hairs only covered the back of the hands and fingers, but further up the arm and body the limb was attached to, it grew pretty much everywhere. Kinda like a very hairy man. Except twice as large and proportionally wide. She wasn’t sure what it was. Her first thought was a Xlurp, but even her addled brain knew the colours were in reverse. She groaned at seeing that this one had no covering strip of cloth. Farking great.
‘Xlurp? Princess?’ She didn’t realise she’d spoken—muttered—out loud until the harumph of the creature exploded in her head. He must’ve seen her wince, because to her large surprise, he apologised for the sound.
‘I’m sorry princess, Blackie gets too excited at times. He didn’t mean to knock you over. He especially didn’t mean to headbutt you so hard.’
‘Bl-blackie?’ The creature let one hand go from her waist, holding her up as easy with one as with two, and turned her head to the side. A dragon. There was a dragon. After all she’d seen in this realm in the past years, she shouldn’t be surprised, yet she was. None of the creatures here matched up with any of the myths and legends of Earth. None! Yet there it was, the blackness of the scales seemed to suck in the light. It wasn’t as large as she’d expected a dragon to be, but she still felt the blood drain from her face.
‘Did he eat my cat?’