Dammit. Now I had pixie paste all over one hand, a partially paralysed elf, and a dozen unconscious humans to protect. I shifted back into my real body and stomped over to the dwarf who had dropped his horn.

  “Pick it up and sound an all clear,” I growled, my fanged maw sliding in to hover a few inches from his face.

  “Fuck you, you schei?e-breathed bastard!” snapped the dwarf defiantly. That was odd. Usually, mammals pissed themselves when the old dental work was brought to bear. And nobody had ever dared to accuse me of halitosis while I did the xenomorph-grin at them. I was taken aback, to put it mildly.

  My free hand came up and I exhaled into it, then tried to sniff. I repeated the process and flicked my tongue out instead, my nostrils being more akin to the nozzles on a flamethrower than something I used to smell. Seemed fine to me?

  I picked the dwarf up, gently, as I had no desire to add dwarf goo to the pixie paste that still stained part of my hand after transforming. I gave him a quick shake to get his attention; his head rocked back and forth, but he just glared at me when I stopped.

  “I ain’t scared of you, you stiefmutterchen! Better to be dragon schei?e than feed the beast,” he snapped at me, beard swaying where it stuck out over my claws.

  “I’m a what?” As any right-minded person would, I had expected the dwarves to be Scottish. They always bloody were. Not on Helstat, apparently. My future stretched out, populated by angry, heavily armoured Germanic dwarves.

  “You heard me! Unhand me or the kameraden will break you with hammers and axes!” He continued to glare definitely at me.

  “You know the humans call you stumpies? How about I don’t make that name literal in your case and we help each other out?” I rested a claw just above his knee, and his eyes rolled as he tried to see through my hand. “I’ve got no problem with you guys, other than you being coded for world domination and this slavery thing. Maybe we can come to an arrangement that doesn’t involve feeding helpless humans into whatever the hell the Old Ones are?” My greed-goblin was exultant for a moment. It had come up with a stroke of genius, and I thoroughly approved of it.

  “Deep Ones. The Old Ones are the bastards buried under the Wahsinn Mountains. The Wütendkurz clans deal with those bastards.”

  “Has every dwarven clan accidentally disturbed some great evil best left forgotten?” I asked.

  “No! There’s gotta be one that hasn’t. Give me a minute to think…”

  “I’m afraid I have the rather pressing issue of your comrades scurrying towards us, probably through hidden tunnels, with the intention of using my scales to test their battlehammers. I don’t want to kill them, but I won’t let them have the slaves,” I growled.

  “You’ll doom us all, you mad uneheliches kinde! It’s not like we feed them to fleshgrinders! We train them and equip them with the best dwarven-crafted armour we can! And only if they can actually fight! Otherwise, they serve behind the lines to free more of us up to do the fighting!”

  “What’s your name?” I asked with a draconic sigh that blew his shaggy hair back behind him.

  “Kurt Hammarschlag. And yours?” he demanded. The little guy had some pep in him, I’d give him that much.

  “Bob.”

  “Schei?e name for a dragon.”

  “I know what schei?e means, short arse.” He had said it in a way that made it come off as a compliment. “Look, Kurt, I don’t want to fuck up you lot hanging on by your beard hairs against these Deep Ones, but I’m looking to score some good karma. Killing slavers and kidnappers is right up my alley. How about I supply you with some troops instead? They won’t be cheap, but they’ll be replaceable and mostly inorganic. Not much for the fleshgrinders, whatever the fuck they are, to sink their teeth into.”

  “You gonna put me down?” he asked.

  “You gonna run?” He shook his head. It wasn’t like he’d be able to outpace me, so I lowered him to the ground, and he spent a moment straightening his tunic and running his fingers through his beard.

  “How much and how many are you offering?” he snapped.

  “The metals are expensive. They’re uni-bunnies built into mechanical armour, linked to a control crystal. I’ve got an infinite number of ‘pilots’ but the suits themselves are where it gets tricky.” This was mostly true. A lot of the materials needed were coming from my own mines now. Kat had shown me the balance sheets, and if the numbers on the stamp-sized paperwork had been right, it was basically all gravy, but I was hardly going to tell the dwarf that. They had gold for slaves; therefore, they had gold for robo-bunnies.

  “Gold isn’t an issue,” he said, causing my greed-goblin to faint, an opportunity the lust-monkey took prompt advantage of.

  “What do you pay for them?” I asked, swinging my snout at the unconscious humans.

  “It varies. Say two hundred for a fighter, much less for the support staff.”

  I began to run the numbers in my head. The cyber-bunnies were basically free. My former pet Bun-bun’s immaculate conception had left me with an agricultural floor full of the fecund little bastards. Most of the steel was refined from my own fledgling mines, and the majority of the gems that had to be enchanted came from another vein further down Mount Bob.

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  “You guys are good miners?” I asked. I assumed so, but this lot was German rather than Scottish, so I figured it was worth checking.

  “You’re not the brightest member of the scalewings, are you?” Kurt replied with a snort. I glared, but didn’t eat him, despite Wrath's sudden interest in the flavour of dwarves. And gerkins. Why did I have this craving for gerkins?

  “If you can send some miners to increase my production, and pay their wages, I can do you them at cost. Five hundred per unit.”

  “That’s too much for some clunky robo-monsters!” Kurt replied. “One hundred per unit for the first dozen. If they aren’t shit, we can renegotiate after that. Twenty miners will come over as a gesture of goodwill, and that is a schei?e load of goodwill.”

  “Done.” I’d drive that price way up. “The miners have to be contracted. No spies or sabotage. Dwarves usually don’t like dragons.”

  “The fuck do you mean we don’t like dragons? We get on fine with the T.O.T.S. We’re down here, they’re up there. We’ve got gold; they want it. Dragons and dwarves are best friends, you idiot.”

  “I appreciate this is just the start of our business relationship, and it would be a bad precedent to set, but if you keep calling me names, I will eat you,” I growled. He smirked like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “This one’s ok, kameraden! Need the Forge Lord to agree to the deal! Free the humans and get them some food,” he called out.

  Half a dozen ten-foot-tall mechs appeared, decloaking like a Klingon not twenty metres away from me. They were built like steampunk industrial robots, forklift-like prongs instead of fingers that slid back and forth along toothed rails with hisses of steam.

  Around their feet, groups of dwarves decloaked as well, all wearing heavy stone and metal armour, hefting battle axes and hammers. They were trying to look threatening. The effort was commendable but largely unnecessary; the stealth mechs were doing all the heavy lifting in that regard. Ninjas in Ankmapak were bad enough; I did not need giant invisible robots in my life.

  “Speculator Visus,” I whispered. It didn’t work on the mech until I spotted the narrow slit in the thing's chest, and the bushy eyebrows that sat above glimmers behind it.

  Jared Klumpenklopfer

  Zwergenmechmeister

  Level 53

  STR 42 AGI 9 MAG 31 ARM 76

  “That’s rude,” Jared blared through a speaker built onto the lumpen shape that passed for the mech's head.

  “He’s not from around here,” called the elf as he climbed shakily to his feet. “If you don’t mind, seeing as you’re all friends now, I’ll return to the Silverwood.”

  “Not so fast, long ears. We owe you, and a dwarf always pays his debts,” said Kurt in a low voice.

  “The pixies snatched me, and now I’m free. The Accords state that–”

  “Fuck the Accords. Who will ever know what happens to you?” growled Jared.

  “I honestly don’t remember much. The pixie dust really messes with elven memories, you know that!” Halefire began, but Kurt stepped in and grabbed him by the arms, wrestling him back to his knees.

  “Nice try, pretty boy. You’re coming with us as well. Bob, you want to turn back into a human? Most of the tunnels are too small for… that.” Kurt nodded up and down at me. There was a lot more up than down from his perspective.

  I shifted back and pulled some clothes from my possum pouch.

  “What are you going to do with him?” I asked as I slipped my legs into the trousers.

  “Not my decision. The Forge Lord will decide. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty on death.”

  “So he might just be let go?” The red tunic slipped over my head, and I shrugged my shoulders to settle it.

  “No. Fifty per cent quick death, fifty per cent slow death,” Jared rumbled as he stomped over. Well, at least the dwarves hate elves stereotype was alive and well. “First squad, secure the humans. Second, go with Kurt and our guests. The rest of you, back on patrol. The remains of that warband are still out there somewhere.”

  “If I won’t fit in these tunnels, I’m pretty sure you won’t,” I said, looking up at the machine now towering over me. The stone turned slick-looking, like it had been coated in oil, then shimmered and contracted into a tiny model version of itself. The inch-tall trinket dangled on a necklace under a short-trimmed black beard as Jared grinned at me.

  “Follow me. You don’t know anything about us, do you?” Jared asked as he led me down toward the lake.

  “I’m new here.”

  “Outremonde. That’s a lucky roll, being a dragon. Most of you lot have to start out–”

  “Relearning to wipe our own asses and stop pissing ourselves. So I’ve heard.”

  “C’mon,” Jared said in a friendly tone as a stone portal rose up from the ground. Kurt shoved Halefire through, then followed after his prisoner. Jared watched me with a raised eyebrow. There was no contractual obligation for them not to harm me. Without his mech, I was pretty sure I could turn the dwarf into paste as well, but everyone and their grandma seemed to have powerhouses lurking in stealth around every goddamn corner.

  I stepped through. They seemed like they were desperate for fighters, and I could mint fighters for them, at a price. Choosing to lean on the side of optimism and the enlightened self-interest of the stout little dudes seemed like the sensible choice.

  I immediately smacked my head into a stone lintel on the other side of the portal. Why the hell they didn't feel the need to build a six-foot ceiling in their portal room was beyond me.

  We continued, Halefire and I walking at an uncomfortable crouch, bent over nearly double. The corridors were made from smooth-cut stone, the gaps between the slabs impossibly thin. Flickering light orbs were affixed to the walls at regular intervals, maintaining a steady if drab illumination. It felt like a soviet office building, all grey, all uniform.

  Kurt ignored the side passages we passed, following this seemingly infinite corridor to its inevitable destination. A big fucking door made of granite that was carved with symbols and images. Dwarves cutting blocks of stone, dwarves delving deeper into the mountain, dwarves getting rich from the mineral wealth of the earth, Dwarves being eaten by tentacle monsters… that last one didn’t seem to fit the theme. Before I could examine it more closely, the stone slid upwards into the ceiling, and Halefire was unceremoniously pushed forward.

  Flickering firelight from dozens of forges lining the walls illuminated a cavern big enough for me to assume my proper form if needed. Even better, I no longer had to walk like an arthritic octogenarian. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stretched my back.

  In the centre of the room was a throne big enough to accommodate my dragon body if needed, and perched on it, feet swinging six feet above the ground, was the hairiest dwarf I’d seen thus far. The Forge Lord looked like a long-haired cat had been tasered and all the fur had stood on end. That had to be some kind of fire hazard if he was working with hot metal.

  Halefire was dragged to his knees at the bottom of the steps leading up to the throne. Jared raised a hand to stop me. The two dwarves fell to one knee and bowed low.

  “Forge Lord, we have caught a spy, and this dragon has an interesting offer. He will provide us with obedient soldiers in exchange for gold,” Jared announced solemnly.

  “Dragon-boss-bruv?” called a voice I recognised from halfway up the wall on my left. “Help a green-bruv out?”