Previously: After saving a man from xlurps, he skips along to Nadec’s apartment.
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 Nadec has saved the day, again, and cuts Pagewyn out of the ass-thread ball. She decides to stick with him until he’s back in his kingdom, Paralelo, to keep her perfect score. He shows her why he is ‘the master of the Squares, defender of the Triangles, chief of all Lines’. A darkness rams Nadec while alone in the woods and she passes out.
When she wakes up, she experiences what it’s like to have a concussion, and finds herself prisoner to a creature and his dragon, Blackie. The dragon appears to be vegetarian, and Nadec finds herself up and close with her captor, the zlurp, before being rescued by Pagewyn. Blackie and Kitty appear to get along, but the zlurp still gives them trouble.
Read all the previous chapters here.
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‘Shonk swallop and gorwak guts!’ Nadec blurted out, getting a disapproving look from Wyny. As if he never curses, she thought. Those curses were among her favourites, although she had no idea what they meant. She knew they were regarded as very foul here, and that was enough. While still appreciating The Other Realm’s multitude of curses, her attention went back to the raging zlurp. He was ready to pounce on them. A cascade of pink blood flowed freely from his nose cavity.
‘The search warrant said to bring you in alive, princess’—there it was again, the word and the deep scorn while saying it—‘but it said nothing about how alive. Barely alive will do.’ A strange sound emitted from his mouth, the face-wide open hole showing a much larger amount of pink blood on the purple gums than before. Was he choking? Or perhaps trying to bring up a hairball? She’d seen Kitty act like that. Both Nadec and Pagewyn stared at him. Then she realised it.
‘Oh!’ Pause. ‘You’re laughing! That’s the most terrible laugh I’ve ever heard.’ She made an exaggerated shiver sound, her body acting it out as well.
The zlurp closed his mouth and scowled.
‘I practiced a long time for that laugh, my trainer called me the best among her students.’
Nadec couldn’t stop herself from snorting. They train to laugh?
‘Perhaps it would serve you better to practice making clothes, because that,’ she pointed vaguely in the direction of his bare sex, ‘is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.’ She heard Wyny make a noise, but couldn’t be certain if it was a stifled laugh or an incredulous gasp.
A growl rose in the zlurp’s throat. Nadec rolled her eyes at all of the cliché things surrounding this creature. It almost felt as if he’d taken his whole attitude and manner of speaking from all of the humans tv-shows and movies. The awareness of an idea formed in her head in a fraction of a second.
The zlurp had been saying more stereotype things—something about not having to spare Wyny’s life, the consequences of her death being worth the pleasure of killing her—but she hadn’t been paying anymore attention. She turned toward Wyny, who was just about to hit the creature with… eh, whatever he was about to do.
‘Don’t kill him,’ she almost yelled. She paused. ‘I mean, not that you’ve managed it before when you actually wanted to…’ she trailed off, grinning at him. ‘Just unconscious please, I have questions.’ She was willing to let him handle this, as she felt herself grow weaker by the moment from the concussion. If she didn’t know better, she’d think that someone was poking her brain with their finger.
The zlurp just kept on talking. She vaguely heard him say: ‘If you want me, why don’t you come here and get me!’ Her attention was fixed on her travel compagnon, the man who’s gotten her in all this trouble.
Wyny merely stared at her, confused. Uncertain. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t doing anything. He stood there, looking like an idiot. A gorgeous, naked idiot. He somewhat looked like a young Gerard Butler, yet with the attractiveness of the actor’s older years. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. She couldn’t help but grin wider at him, and at the zlurp’s number one villain mistake—talking while they should be attacking.
Wyny shook his head slightly, and then a smile blossomed on his nearly perfect face, lopsided, in perfect imitation of Gerard. Those stubbles surely looked nice on him. The zlurp picked him up and tossed him several metres further. Rotting blurbs! Nadec cursed herself for falling into the classic romantic-scene-while-fighting mistake. What was going on here with all the tropes?
The purple creature let out that sound again—the one that was supposed to be laughter—and ran towards her, going faster than she’d give him credit for. He almost got close enough to tower over her when the dragon came to a stop between them. His long neck forced the zlurp to a halt.
‘Step aside Blackie, I can handle this. I will enjoy listening to the princess’ screams of pain. I’ll keep her alive enough to deliver her as the conditions stated. But here wasn’t any mention on how long she should still be able to stay alive after delivery.’
The black beast, head only a bit higher than the zlurp’s, not quite as large as she expected a dragon to be, looked from Nadec to the zlurp to Kitty. She repeated that three times before breathing in, her chest puffing up. Fire! I’m going to be scorched by fire! Nadec has never thought that was the way her life would end. She thought about running away, but all she could do was stumble backward, tripping over her own panicking feet.
Blackie’s chest stopped expanding. She aimed her head at Nadec, winked, turned toward the zlurp, and let out the most massive burb Nadec had ever heard.
The zlurp fell unconscious.
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This got published a little bit later than usual, on tuesday instead of sunday. SOrry for all of the loyal fans (*laughs like a zlurp*). The only explanation for that is NaNoWriMo! I’m about 36 000 words in my WIP, so on schedule. Yaay!