The blue glow spread out from behind me. A grin formed on my face, unusually long canines poked over my lips, and I raised a hand to order the rest of the troops forward.

  A hundred portals appeared behind me, and my army arrived in Baginton. Thousands of bunnyborgs, more than a couple of which moonwalked through the portals, which was frankly worrying. I didn’t need to start losing troopers to being possessed by gods.

  The cyborgs moved out and jogged towards the walls as the ones controlling stepped through, leaving the dungeon for the dangers of the real world. The Fighting Dolphins and the Bonkers, minus the Hardprick, entered the town once again.

  “Still smells like a shit hole,” Salnia complained.

  “Jenny’s dad has moved out, and the air will clear, eventually. If you’d be so kind as to get the robbits to hold at the walls, we aren’t in position to attack yet. I need reports on the enemy.”

  “Robbits?” asked Kat.

  “Don’t make me regret letting you tag along, you… slutty tinkerbell.” I hadn’t been able to come up with anything new. I was aware I’d used the phrase before, but… it was a lot of leather straps this time.

  “Robbits. Robot rabbits. Think of it like Watership Down but with a happy ending.” Tim was tapping at his wrist pad and paying absolutely zero attention to the world around him.

  “Your situational awareness is fucking awful, dude.”

  “I don’t need it, Bob. This—” He waved his left arm around for a second, “is telling me everything I need to know.”

  “Blipblipblip.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, come on. You know you saw that film!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Tim sniffed and looked down at his wrist.

  “WARCRIMES!”

  “Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Geeku! Chill the fuck out! We’re here to defend the town.”

  My orlic horde, the suboptimal type, flooded out and began eyeing the nearby houses and businesses with what I could only describe as impressive avarice.

  “Din’t come here to loot,” Geeku announced, and unfortunately, the majority of his warriors began whispering the last word between themselves.

  “No looting! This is my town!” I bellowed. “Geeku, come over here.” I pointed a finger at my feet as I moved away slightly. There wasn’t much privacy. The bunnyborgs wouldn’t care, but there were a number of seven-foot-tall green bastards who kept shooting glances in our direction.

  “What’s da beef?”

  “The dwarves will be here soon. Your guys will behave themselves, right?” I hissed.

  “Yep. Stunties are on da no murdah list.”

  The cheerful echoes of “murdah” made me glare around at the nearby greenskins. “And you won’t be killing da—the goo humans?”

  “Shit happens.” Geeku’s shrug did not reassure me.

  “Champion! Thank Bulb, you’re here,” Captain Jardin said as she rushed up next to me. “What the hells are these limeys doing here?”

  I turned to the captain of Bulb’s temple guard and adopted a faux-glare. She didn’t deserve a number three, let alone a more serious look. “They’re here to help. What are we up against?”

  “We don’t have an exact count. Based on the fires… maybe twenty thousand.” A happy cheer went up from the orlics at Jardin’s announcement. “They don’t have any golems this time, and now we’ve got the walls we could have held out, but it’s good that you came so quickly.”

  “Have you been talking to Esme?” Kat asked.

  “A pixie!” Jardin snatched out her sword and swung at Kat. Unfortunately, Kat chose to dodge inside me, which forced me to catch Jardin’s hand before the blade chopped into my chest.

  “Hand! Where are we with the dwarves?” I yelled, shoving Jardin's sword away from me.

  “Not long, boss.”

  I looked over at Lockso, who just stared at me blankly before returning to his attention to the portal stones in his palm. If Hand’s real boss was calm, I probably didn’t need to worry. But something still niggled at the back of my mind.

  “WARCRIMES!”

  Fucking dwarves and orlics deserved each other.

  “Captain Jones!” I yelled. “Put a pin in that.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Baronet Bob.” He smiled from under his dwarf-wrought helm. “Time to stick it to the bad guys.”

  “It’s baron now.”

  “Thanks, Kat. Jones, get your mechs to the walls. Are those cannons?” I was surprised. I’d not seen them use firearms, and those heavy metal tubes looked like big ass cannon mounted on tiny wooden wheels.

  A whole row of tiny wooden wheels on each side that bounced as the mechs shoved it over the cobblestones. The whining and hissing of the exoskeletons, coupled with the bumping sounds from the wooden wheels, combined to create a weirdly symphonic background noise.

  “Aye. Thing-cannons.”

  I did treat Captain Jones to a proper glare at that. Only level three, but still powerful. “They fire lumps of the ancient nightmare the dwarves awoke beneath the mountains as a projectile?” An eyebrow was raised.

  “Sure. Problem?” He chuckled as my other eyebrow went up. “They’re samples.”

  “I don’t want samples of a world-ending monster being shat out across the battlefield! The damn thing just eats anything biological it hits, right? What’s next? An AIDs gun?”

  “Bob, that wouldn’t be very effective. Takes too long. The fragments have a limited life span because they’re not connected to the primary organism,” Jones said. “Just trust us. Dwarves make good weapons.”

  “Then why the hell am I selling them bunnyborgs?”

  “They don’t do so well with biology.”

  Kat appeared out of my chest and turned to glare at me. It wasn’t fair. I was the glarer, not the glaree. “Go get them.”

  “Kaaaat… You know how difficult they are!”

  “Don’t whinge, Bob. Go and get them. The rest of your forces are here now and can hold the walls. We need the big guns.”

  Jones perked up when Kat said guns.

  “We talking howitzers?” he asked excitedly.

  “No. We’re talking about a grumpy asian grandma, a gamer kid, a literal alien and a bunch of sociopathic children. More sociopathic than the gamer kid.”

  “The grandma I can see being a valuable asset, but the others…”

  “They’re dragons, Jones. I’m telling Bob to go get the rest of the TOTS.”

  “Kat, we don’t need them. They’re… greedy.”

  I didn’t like the way she looked at me. Her leather straps strained as she drew in a breath to continue lecturing me, but I raised a finger to cut her off. I looked away and noticed that Jones was blushing fiercely. “Eyes up, Jonesy.”

  He glanced away, and I shook out my arms as I prepared to transform out of my mammal suit.

  “Bob. Go back through the portal. Get the other dragons and then fly back.”

  “That’s… a good point.” I’m not always a clever dragon.

  I strode back through the portal like I’d been planning on doing so and gave a sparkly glare at the minions who paused as I came back through.

  “Get the dragons!” I didn’t mean to sound pompous and bossy, but hey, I wasn’t that bothered if I did.

  “Erm, Madam Chi is currently—”

  “I don’t care! We need to fly,” I declared. The minion, a species I didn’t recognise but who vaguely resembled cousin It from the Addams family, turned and bounced away. I headed up to my old lair.

  The first signs of excavations in the ceiling were kind of obvious. Stone had been chipped away to create a dome in the middle of the room that reached up to where the dungeon core lay hidden. All anyone had to do was touch the bloody thing to challenge me for control of the dungeon, so this was something of a delicate time.

  A squad of robbits stood along the walls, mana-cannons tracking me as I moved. The barrels didn’t start glowing, so I wasn’t worried too much, but the steady movement as they followed me caused my various sphincters to tighten.

  I expanded out into my real body just before I tipped over the edge of the cave, and my wings caught the air and took me spiralling upwards. The missing feathers weren’t really noticeable, but I did hope I wouldn’t have to rearm Kat so she could go ticklemonster again anytime soon.

  “You’re late.”

  Chi was such a pain in my ass.

  “Been busy. Where are the—ok we’re good. TOTS! To war!” I roared.

  Ignoring constant requests about whether we were nearly there yet nearly drove me insane. Lille was annoyingly cute about it; her high, gentle voice asking the dreaded question nearly drove me over the edge. Wrath was getting more fiery than normal, as was regret. I shouldn’t have gone to find the damn TOTS.

  It took a few hours to fly from Mount Bob to Baginton, and as the time trickled away, I began to worry. Were my troops holding out? Had the enemies launched a major attack? Were the orlics trying to eat the dwarves? I just didn’t know.

  When we arrived above Baginton, the sun had set, and I was reduced to trying to work out numbers based on spots of fire. Each fire probably had at least four fighters huddled around it for warmth and companionship. Maybe more, but I figured four was a reasonable guess. Because there were so damn many of the little sparks, I could only guess at the forces the comte de whatever had brought to bear.

  I’d thought the major battles between the Umbrati, hereafter known as the brats, and the Bulbites would be conducted by invitation. I still had weeks before the next major fight, but here the bastards were.

  Sparkles fell from my wings and body as I circled overhead. Extra stars that danced in the night sky. I hoped we were high enough up that they couldn’t hit us with anything if they could see us.

  I swung north, then turned round and stooped, pulling the most terrifying items I’d ever stored in my possum pouch out and letting them fall away one by one. Jace hadn’t been kidding about how useful the bird poop he’s taken an interest in could be.

  “You aren’t allowing for the wind,” Chi called.

  There are few things worse in life than dealing with backseat bombers.

  “I’m doing my best!” I snapped.

  “Lean left. You can see how they’re falling!”

  “No, I can’t. I dropped them, but I can’t really track them until… ok, yeah, a bit to the left.” The first explosions turned fireside sparks into, well, big bada booms. From high above, with the details obscured by the dark, I couldn’t tell how much damage I was doing, but I could tell the first half dozen bombs had certainly missed.

  I hadn’t hit the wall or anything too terrible, but I could see I’d just bombed a bunch of empty grassland between the enemies and my guys. Overall, though, Tim and Jace had done a cracking job with that bird poop.

  “You need to go lower to improve your accuracy.”

  “Piss off, Bunglebumper,” I snarled. Everyone was on my case about accuracy. I did circle lower, but not because I was getting sniped at by my allies.

  Another series of explosions bloomed below me, and I smiled, my scaly lips pulled back by the wind. That lot had been a lot more on target than the last round.

  “Lille?”

  “Yes, Bob?” Her voice was clear, sweet, and terribly innocent.

  “You hungry?”

  There was a pause, but then she answered. “Yeah.” She stooped down on the army below whose sleep I had already rudely interrupted. Pete snarled and tucked his wings in close as he dove down as well.

  “Jace?”

  “What?”

  “Open the bomb bay doors, Captain.” I pulled out another pair of the lozenge-shaped bombs from my storage space and dangled them below my body as Jace began to spit balls of red fire at the enemy camp. Time to make sure none of the brats got any sleep this evening.