Code Drop Novel Promo - Dungeons & Ponies Tempe O'Kun
Tess plays D&D with her golden retriever boyfriend for the first time.
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"How was I supposed to know that the Pompom of Transmogrification would only turn you into a moogle?" Tessia, cunning jackal rogue, snarled as the enchantment faded in a poof of magicka, freeing her from the pint-sized form she’d been trapped in for an hour.
"Because it was a pompom, dear thief." Han’na Blacktail shook the charred spell components from her paws, smirking.
Tigeröga Lexicanum crossed his striped arms, both ropey with muscle. “I can’t believe you fell for such an obvious cursed item.”
The jackal rogue cast him a glare as sharp as her daggers.
Eiríkr the Awesome unslung his mandolin, lightning crackling from its strings. “Worry not, my loyal friends! I shall play a tune ‘til our journey ends.” The Half Golden Dragon Retriever strummed with his claws and—
~ ~ ~
“Wait, wait, wait.” Tess waved her paws, avoiding the tiny figurines on the table. “You’re part dragon?”
“I have a kinky back-story.” Erik wagged with pride. His shirt had some joke about explosive rune that she didn’t get.
Hanna nodded from behind the Dungeon Master’s Guide. “That’s all it takes to start with that template.”
“I’m also a paladin-bard!” The golden grinned, pointing out the highlights on his character sheet. “I can sing a chord and swing a sword.” He waggled an eyebrow at her.
“I do not understand this game.” She growled her nose back into the rule books.
“It’s okay, sugar jack.” The golden patted her shoulder. “Just relax and go with the flow. It’s a collaborative performance art.”
Across the table, a black Labrador dyed to look like a tiger munched Cheetos. The orange powder erased his stripes with every crunchy morsel. When he noticed Tess staring, he smiled and wagged.
The jackal rolled her eyes. Collaborative performance art, my tail...
“Little bro, wipe your muzzle.” Hanna threw a pawful of napkins his way. “Sheesh, DJ. You look like an orange crayon. Okay...” She flipped through her notes. “Back to the game...”
~ ~ ~
The party continued West, following the map their patron had given them. Though the road ran rough and treacherous, they managed--mostly by making the fighter carry everything heavy.
~ ~ ~
“Hey!”
“Should have thought about that before you used Intelligence as your dump stat, little bro.”
~ ~ ~
The broad-shouldered bard caroused his way up to the crest of a hill, pointing with his mandolin, singing: “The Lost Temple of the Corgi-Lords is just beyond that ridge; to make it, we must climb a smidge!”
“We must reach it by midnight.” Han’na shook her staff, the crystals glittering in the afternoon light. “Lest the cultists unseal the Blood Demon!”
“Yeah, we should stop that.” The spry tiger eased his sword in its scabbard.
“Fiendish felines!” The gold-scaled canine cursed. “How will the world get about if they succeed in their epic drought?”
“Ummm, Erik--” The jackal cleared her throat. “I mean Eiríkr--”
“--the Awesome--”
“Sure, yeah, whatever. Would it tarnish your honor to not talk in rhyme?”
“Is it not fun, attractive one? Do not pout, try it out!”
“Can we not do that?”
The half-dragon canine heaved a mighty sigh. “Fine.” The armored bard took out his mandolin and strummed to console himself.
“I have news both good and bad, my companions.” Han’na paged through her spellbook, looking up at the cliffside. “I have flight spells to carry us, but I had prepared only two, not expecting our new friend the thief.”
"And I can't carry someone and fly at the same time." Eiríkr spread his wings, the membranous wings at once diaphanous and metallic, testing the winds.
The jackal rogue twirled her daggers between her paws. “So what’s the plan?”
“Let me see...” The Labrador wizard dug through her satchel. “Flesh to Stone, Fireball...ah! Here we go: Faerretform.” Her ebony paw pulled forth a dusty scroll. “With this, you shall be able to follow us up the cliff.”
~ ~ ~
“Wait... I’m not seeing that in the spell list...” Tess paged through several books.
Hanna smiled. “Would your character know that?”
“I... guess not. What’s a faerret, anyway?”
~ ~ ~
“A faerret is a wondrous creature!” The bard barked. “Elegant in flight, endless in body.”
“Okay, fine.” The rogue lowered her ears. “Let’s get this over with.”
The black-furred wizard chanted the words of the spell. With each syllable, glowing runes pulsed from the page, drifting over to orbit the jackal. Faster and faster they went, until they wove past in a blur.
As Tessia watched, her companions grew larger and larger around her. So did the trees. So did the grass. “What the heck? Why am I getting smaller?”
“Because faerrets are tiny.”
The former-jackal looked down to find her body had become a long, wiggly tube of fur with four little paws and two glimmering wings.
~ ~ ~
“Why am I always getting turned into small cute things?!”
“Tiny cute things.” Erik smiled.
“Whatever! I fly up there so we can get on with the stupid quest and kill the stupid demon.”
~ ~ ~
Tessia flew off, souring up the cliffside. Upon reaching the top, she looked down to see how her companions were fairing.
Only then did she see her body had stretched, leaving her rear end still seated on the grass.
~ ~ ~
“Why is that happening?”
The teenaged species-poser snickered. “Because faerrets stretch, like, forever.”
“Forever? You can’t be--”
Erik looked up from fixing the paint on one of the figurines with a gel pen. “Magic.”
“That's the dumbest idea I ever heard! How--?”
He settled a paw on her shoulder. “Honey: magic.”
~ ~ ~
The other party-members hovered up toward Tessia as she hauled her midriff up and piled herself in neat coils. “This is stupid. Change me back.”
Settling to the ground with a hum of magic, the wizard searched her voluminous robes and drew forth an abacus. “Hmmm. We have to make sure that more than half of you, on average is up here. Otherwise, you may fall off the cliff.”
“Let’s just stretch her as we go.” The lithe tiger shrugged. “To save time.”
The bard-paladin and wizard nodded in agreement. The half-dragon retriever slung his instrument to his back and picked her up. They continued on, trailing Tessia as they went.
“When do we get to fight demons?”
“Hush.” Eiríkr petted her with a gentle, clawed paw. “You’re adorable.”
“Can I bite you? I might have to bite you.”
“Go for it. I’m pretty sure I have enough damage reduction not to notice.”
~ ~ ~
“So he gets to be an invincible dragon-dog, and I get to be a fuzzy noodle? How is that fair?”
Hanna looked up from looking with disdain at the Cheetos-dust covering her notes. “He skipped out on four levels of classes to get it. If you’re going to be jealous of someone, be jealous of DJ--he’s turning into quite a little power-gamer.”
“I just roll well!” DJ brandished his soda bottle in defense. “Besides, tigers have fighter as their favored class. I’m supposed to be one!”
~ ~ ~
After converting their companion back into canine, the heroes came upon the crumbling ruins of the Temple of the Corgi-Lords. Nature had ravaged the once-resplendent structure, vines grappling with the smooth-hewn stone. Ornaments tarnished in the elements.
Inside, lit by the blaze of a massive fire, the feline cultists danced their magic dance. Black robes billowed as they jumped and pranced, chanting words in tar-black intonation. The great domed ceiling loomed, soot charing ancient frescos, smoke casting a haze over the graceful lines of architecture. The floor they sprung about on lay carved in runes of power, runes they had scratched out with cruel claws, so now their magic guttered and died to embers. All the while, the great pyre blazed.
Slipping with care through eventide shadows of strangling smoke, the party drew their weapons as they neared the massive flaming pyre at the center. Among the great tongues of flame licked blades of shadow, casting flashes of pitch-black night across the floor of the temple. The black-robed felines cavorted and caterwauled, brandishing their jagged knives.
“At last, a fight!” Tessia snarled, blades flashing to her paws.
The tiger giggled in glee, drawing his katana.
“Be easy, Tessia, Tigeröga.” The black Lab fished a comb of shimmering stone from the dark of her sleeve. “You need only distract them while I use the Pectine Equorum to strengthen the portal.”
The paladin-bard held up a paw for silence.
Then the cats yowled in unison, each one slicing open a writhing paw. As one, they cast their bloodied daggers into the roar flames.
Whoosh!
A withering wave of heat washed over the night-cooled fur of the heroes. The flames roared black as the night, choking out the stars.
From the churning ashes of the pyre, a crimson form surged upward. Its sleek body shimmered in starlight and firelight, a sanguine idol twenty feet tall. A featureless head turned down upon them--featureless save for the glowing slits of immortal eyes.
One cat, bedecked with a shimmering hat of bells and yarn, screeched toward the towering monstrosity. “Ancient one! We have freed you from your eternal imprisonment! Serve us! Destroy the wet places of the world and provide us with catnip!”
The Blood Demon raised one dripping, gory blade-arm. Magical power gleamed down the length of it, collecting at the tip for a gasp’s breadth, then jumping like lightning to the cult leader and his nearest companions.
With a squeak that pierced the heavens, they fell to the ground: feral mice.
The cats scattered. Their yowling forms vanished between the twisted husks of flaming trees.
“Arrrrrrgh!” Tigeröga Lexicanum hefted his sword in one striped paw, dashing toward the looming idol of dripping blood. With a mighty leap, he threw himself at the demon.
Ageless eyes whipped his way. With a flash of fury, the Blood Demon’s blade-arm snapped his way with liquid ease. The raw essence of magicka gleamed down it, crackling toward him in an instant.
With a snarl of outrage, the tiger turned the flat of his blade against the bolt of eldritch power. A squeak skewered the night, unquelled by the oil cans of the world, as his mystical blade became a mouse of gleaming steel.
The mechanical creature tumbled from his paws and skittered away into the night. Its tiger owner tumbled behind a fallen pillar, drawing his spare blade before the demon could strike again.
Tessia stepped back, ducking behind a pillar. How am I supposed to sneak attack that?
The mage raised her arms, staff shining one paw, the Pectine Equorum a beacon of radiance in the other. “Amicitia est veneficus!”
A shimmer of white light swirled from the comb of ancient stone. Blazing like the noonday sun, the glittering wave crashed across the charred courtyard. Lush grass stretched from between the ancient stones, moss flashing over stone, withered trees leaping to vibrancy.
The jackal rogue stepped from behind the pillar and turned to her companions. Eiríkr reared up on his hind hooves. Han’na trotted over, her blue cloak rippling over her flank. Tigeröga Lexicanum leapt from behind the column, his striped mane gleaming, his sword at the ready—
~ ~ ~
“Sorry, little bro, but swords don’t exist in Equestria.”
“Aww!” His dyed ears drooped. “But this is clearly some kind of pocket dimension.”
“Nope.” Hanna shook her muzzle. “Pretty sure it’s a lollipop now.”
Tess raised a paw, as if asking a question in class. “What just happened? Why are you horses?”
“Not horses, Tess.” Hanna rolled her eyes. “Ponies. And you’re one too.”
~ ~ ~
A poof of cyan cloud coursed up Tessia’s body, turning nimble paws into solid hooves, weapons vanishing, deadly poison vials filling with rainbows.
Dark magic roared around the Blood Demon, a nimbus of aberrant energy. Those ancient eyes blazed with a fury forged of vanquishment and whetted by centuries of banishment. Veins of black spidered across its gory bulk, lightning crackling with such fury that sickly air blasted through the new-sprung vegetation.
Han’na, her horn showering sparks through her wizard hat, stood fast as dust and small woodland creatures tumbled past.
Tigeröga Lexicanum brandished his lollipop, the sugary spiral shining in the sunlight.
Tessia tried in panic to pick up vials of rainbow juice from the grass with her hooves. “How are we supposed to fight it as ponies?!”
“Fear not! I will awe the demon with my bardic music.” Eiríkr the Awesome, his cutie mark a gleaming tennis-ball cannon, seized his electric mandolin and strummed a chord with one golden hoof…
~ ~ ~
“Woo! Natural 20!” Erik raised the plastic icosahedron in triumph.
“Oh dear.” Hanna flipped through her notes.
Tess eyed her boyfriend. “Erik, are we the My Little Ponies?!”
“Yep!” Erik’s tail thumped against the chair, holding up a pink expansion book. “Hasbro owns it and D&D, after all.”
“Okay...” Hanna nibbled at the eraser of her pencil. “I think I figured out what the heck Erik just did.”
~ ~ ~
Eiríkr played a song. The greatest and best song in the world.
This was not what he planned. He simply played the first thing that came to his head. It just so happened to be the best song in the world.
His hooves blurred over the strings with celestial grace, calling forth the Music of the Ainur, the very notes of harmony that first wove the fabric of the Universe. Before such awesome forces, nothing could stand.
The very earth split open, a chasm yawning down to the very world’s heart, to its Core Being, which reached up to quash this unholy blight. Pure life essence surged up, ensnaring and fettering the creature, dragging it down, forever down into the blinding heart of the world.
The great demon looked upon these heroes, shock and horror for the first time entering its ancient visage. In his multitude of unhallowed tones, the Blood Demon beseeched them with the first and final words of its long existence: “Be you alicorns?”
And they said: “Neigh. We are but ponies.”
Then, as the last chords of song reverberated through all creation, the tendrils of a living world tore the Blood Demon, dissolving in the hopes of a billion souls, past and future, those who’d descended in slumber into the world’s beating heart and those yet to emerge from it.
The chasm sealed, healing until a it shot heavenward as a gossamer curtain of light, then tighter, closer, to an infinite pinprick stretching forever into the firmament, like starlight in reverse, traveling always as its source sealed forever.
Then, as the party’s eyes adjusted, a tiny seedling took root, growing, stretching in unsteady reaches, blooming into the simple elegance of life’s continuance.
~ ~ ~
“All that just because you rolled a 20?”
“Well, I rolled it at the right time.” The golden smiled.
"I smote it with the power of rock, dear." He rolled his blue, blue eyes and rested a paw on her thigh. “But yes. What did you think of your first D&D game?”
The jackal pondered this for a moment. “It was...kind of awesome.”
Hanna wagged with pride. “I think that was one of our better endings. Good assist, Erik.”
She and the golden exchanged a high five.
The black Labrador smiled at Tess around a sip of soda. “You should come more often. You’re our good luck charm.”
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Edits: @vendettaleopard and @darkdragon452 Consults:
