THIS MONTH'S THEMES: bones of digested victims, turning into goo, tiny to big

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Dragons and Magic, Devoured by Goo

Shafts of bright baby blue light poured into the vast, circular mage sanctum from the great rounded windows in the recesses of groined vaults. The grand dragon Lord Jeropa was slumbering. He was a quadruped of deep baby blue scales. A minty shade of the same hue ran along his lower jaw, throat, underbelly and the bottom of his tail. An oceanic magenta cloaked his back and his rugged elder wings. A perfume magenta colored the wing membranes and the long, barbed webbed fans that flanked his serpentine throat. Magnificently jawed, he rumbled the room with his snores until a mage about the length of his forearm came to him.

This mage was a dragon, the ruby-scaled magician Flann. His tan robes appeared more monkish than the robes of the others. “Greetings, Lord Jeropa. I have an object of interest for you.”

Lord Jeropa awoke with a sputtering snort that knocked down Flann. “Have you?” Cyan eyes blared, illuminated the trespasser. “It best be so for your sake, imprudent barger.”

Flann rose stoically, not showing his fear. He held his robed arm straight toward Jeropa. In his paw was a capped bottle of burbling black substance.

Jeropa hissed, “What is this?”

“My lord, it is live goo. When ingested it will grant you the skill to steal the size, the abilities, the magical proficiency and the knowledge of your prey.”

“Lies. How do you know this?”

“My lord, I’ve spent months creating the substance. I double-checked my spells with spell-check.”

“In conclusion, you’ve tested the goo on no one.”

“My lord, it is for you and you only! You realize what one with such power could—”

“And there lies your catch. I can neither trust an untested goo of such nature nor a tester. You’ve wasted months with your secret project. I should eat you for your insolence.”

“Forgive me, my lord.”

“Flann, save you I trust no one in the circle. Don’t make me make you dinner. Go now—store your science project in the room of treasure. I will brood on what to do with it, perhaps conjecture a way to safely use it.”

So Flann did as bade.

The bottle lay half sticking out of a mountain of gold for days. That was until one of Jeropa’s feral dragon pets, a black dragon no larger than a cat, went playing in the gold pile. He popped out of the coins next to the bottle, met it with curiosity and uncorked it.

A cultured hissing voice bubbled the goo. “Thanks for freeing me, whelp, and thanks for the body!” The goo sprung out of the bottle. Sentient black ropes splattered over the dragon’s flanks, jaws, wings and legs. They began slithering their way over the cat-sized dragon, melting his scales into goo which spread farther along the writhing, yelping whelp. He dropped the bottle. The goo quickly enveloped him in its tenacious black glop.

“I’ve always wanted to be a proud dragon.”

One last screech came from what had become a squirming, oozing goo mass. It now only vaguely resembled the drowning dragon. Suddenly, the caustic sludge collapsed the shape of the dragon into a swollen dome. You could see inside of its glossy, see-through midriff the dragon struggling as he squalled and swiftly melted. This happened seconds before a fog of black obscured view of the whelp. Burbles and groans and gurgles of the glob became like that of a dragon’s belly. The dome of goo inflated with gas and excess heat, then wrought the shape of a mouth at its apex: It then released a burly, reverberant belch for two seconds.

Out of the tremoring, eructing glob’s lips gushed an array of ribs and leg bones and wing bones. Their landings threw sprays of gold over the tinkling pile. A lethargic groan jiggled the glob. It was now birthing a gooey dragon’s head, dragon’s legs and dragon’s claws. As the mouth shape receded from what was changing into a dragon’s backside, a second belch exploded from its goo-dribbling jaws. That hurled a horned skull over the stone floor, as well as the rest of the skeleton. A hum of satiation resounded from the throat of the boiling semblance of a dragon. It was refining its shape: It sprouted goopy wings and a tail. Finishing touches included the sprouting of ridges on its hellish black horns; the defining of black jaws and cheekbones; the emulation of scales on its complexifying form; and the growing of dire barbs along its spine from neck to tail.

“Well, wouldn’t you know,” Shifty mused. His sophisticated voice now sounded polished with the metallic rumble of a dragon’s. The goo dragon thwacked his tail against the gold pile testingly, sending showers of gold over the floor. “When you want to become something powerfully enough, you do. Thanks, little whelp. You don’t know how dangerous you’ve made me with the little you’ve given me.”

With a sinister chuckle, Shifty dove into himself. This made him an oozing pool which slithered its way down the mound of gold to the door. It was closed; the absorbed dragon had only snuck inside when it was opened for a split second. But Shifty spilled through the gap beneath it with ease.

In a hallway he reformed. All he knew about this hallway was that sometimes his creator Flann walked through it. He knew Flann to be a genius mage: He had managed to create Shifty, after all. And he had used his magic to seal Shifty away in an unabsorbable container.

Shifty devolved his shape then squirmed to the top of the vaulted ceiling. He kept drooling and having to order his droplets back up to his main self, but he had gotten this problem under control and was immaculately hidden by the time Flann started crossing the hall.

The mage had a husky build, arcane tattoos under his eyes and a robe the same color as the scrolls secured to the hip of it. Shifty could smell mana coursing through those crimson scales. The smell was smoky and aged and savory, like a sacred dessert sprinkled with paprika.

“You’ve walked right into my trap, dear Flann.”

The mage looked up. A scathing net of black sludge lashed toward him from the ceiling. The mage had only time enough to throw three arcane bolts at the amorphous foe before his head turned into a panicked warbling shape beneath a stretching, growing hood of goop. Those bolts coursed over the goo’s backside as bloated bubbles before the magic assimilated into the goo: It swelled even larger—surged its seething tentacles over his shoulders and arms. The goo had no need to melt down Flann’s body to enlarge and engulf more of the prey; Flann steadily hurled more magic into the creature’s guts, nourishing it for its growth and championing his own voracious demise.

“Don’t you recognize me, Flann? You should know by now that you and your magic are merely food for me. Or maybe you’re being generous? Please, do be as generous as you’d like.”

With the grotesque noise of rubber flexing, the thick scale-tight goo swallowed over the weakening mage’s buttocks. Each gulp pinned the mage’s tail lower and lower, while the goo encased so much of his thighs (and the space between them), the mage fell to his knees, shuddering and twitching.

“Mmmm. I can feel you fighting me, yet I steal more of your strength every second. I’m winning, Flann—trapping you for trapping me. But I’m greedier than you, so I’m not going to let—you—go.”

Each break in speech preceded a gelatinous quake of Shifty’s dragon-mimicking form, but also broke down more the dragon’s hide and flesh. By the time Shifty fell silent, he had engrossed himself in Flann from horn to claw and melted so much of the mage with his enzymes, there was no distinct form left to mimic. The liquefied mass within Shifty shifted the shape of him into a nebulous one laden with auroral streaks and nebular patches of pastel blue magic.

“Here come your size, your strength, your magic and your shape … I j-just need to give you a little … sq-squeeze!”

The black blob masticated itself again and again. It trembled in ecstasy. The paroxysms of the malleable ooze caused the physical traits of the dragon to reform. Yet, this dragon shape had several upgrades. When his black drake head regenerated, a second pair of horns crowned his head; and both pairs boasted longer lengths and fiercer ridgers than his previous ones. When his basic shape—his back, neck, limbs and wings—regenerated, it became apparent that the resurgence of his draconity had awarded him the upright posture of a person. Forelegs morphed into arms, and his frame stole the rugged scales and intimidating brawn of the absorbed mage. Even his wings and his tail grew beefier. His muzzle elongated, grew more grisly and and added to its jaws an arsenal of huge teeth that were beyond crocodilian in strength. And a second tail sprouted from Shifty’s rear, which unlike the rest of him shone with crimson scales instead of black.

Blue arcane tattoos flashed into being below his eyes. Then what tailored itself to his astonishingly handsome, strikingly terrible new form was the tattered tan robe of the assimilated dragon. Like his scales, the robe was made of goo and only simulated texture. A growling dome of belly pushed against his robe: The crumpled skeleton of his prey bloated his insides and still needed to be disposed.

The goo dragon mage groped his abdomen. Nausea twisted his face. Croaking burps burst free from his pursed lips. He writhed and flexed his belly and throat. Rude sloshing noises rolled through his imitation G.I. tract as his goo functioned as its muscles, forcing three bulging piles in procession up his translucent gullet. Finally, his cheeks ballooned monstrously with the conglomeration of the entire skeleton. A rattling roar of burp echoed through the hallway, scattering the black-bile-covered bones in a sizzling streak of goo chyme at his feet. With a mostly emptied stomach, he punched his gut for one last bUrEHHpp! that released the devoured dragon’s skull.

Shifty felt significantly recharged and stronger. His frame emanated a surplus of arcane magic. And when he breathed, the magic fumed from his breath. “Wow, I’m a whole new dragon. You’ve reinvisioned me, O creator. I’ll use my enhanced power to make you proud. In fact, I’ll absorb the lord himself. Then I’ll really be unstoppable.”

Before Shifty headed to the mage sanctum, he searched Flann’s memory. He found a fun and useful spell which could manipulate both mass and energy. With it he learned to levitate.

His large paws hovered through the halls until they plopped silently before two astonished dragon mages who had been ambling his way. One was the gold-scaled Spex. He wore a maroon attire with a hooded cloak. Arcs of golden electricity now and then zipped up his scales. The other was the emerald Yeracleas. His dark navy blue robe was embroidered with silver.

“Yoohoo.” Shifty waved. The sound of his voice—which had soaked up the best hints of Flann’s wise, gravelly voice—turned Spex and Yeracleas stiff as stone. “Where do you winsome fellows think you’re going? I can tell you now, with such succulent scents of power, you’re not going anywhere but my gut. Ho. I can’t wait to devour the pair of you. You’ll both grant me a luscious boost.”

Grimacing, Spex pressed his paws together. He molded between them an orb of lightning. He launched it at the goo doppelganger of Flann. The goo smirked. He flicked the orb away with a manipulation spell. Lightning scattered along the wall with a reverberant burst.

“Cute. I’d rock that lightning magic better than you, though.”

Shifty heard a grumbling and shifting of stones above. He looked up. A giant boulder made of magic had formed above his head. It smashed a crater into the hall, dashed Shifty’s goop across the floor. The black goop looked like the squashed guts of a giant insect.

Yeracleas—the caster of that spell—made a fist pump and said “Yes” under his breath.

But then a chuckle of numerous dragon voices dispersed through the open space. The giant boulder started disintegrating, shrinking into its raw blue magic state and soaking into the burbling stain of sludge. The stain imploded: It burst into the defined shaped of Shifty. He looked the same as before, except now his body oozed and poured from the excess of sponged-up magic that billowed from him.

His molten tongue raucously slurped his lips. “Delicious! Thanks for the magical appetizer. Now I’m doubly excited for the main courses.”

He waved his paw at both of them. Manipulation magic yanked Spex toward his hungry, obtusely widened maw; the magic also gravitated the yelping Yeracleas toward his flat stomach. The gold dragon floated into his gullet.

Squork … squorp … sgulp. The goo’s face contorted abnormally, and his throat bulged like the midriff of a gluttonous anaconda, bubbling noisily wherever the visible Spex struggled the most in his descent.

Shifty’s magic pulled the emerald dragon into the tar pit that was his gut. Dark snakes lashed out of the prodded middle, coiling around Yeracleas and dragging him inside. Yeracleas lurched forward in an effort to escape—only made the goop rebound and gulp down more of him.

Soon the last of his screaming snout, kicking paws and lashing tail rippled into the swaying gut. He spread its girth and swelled it pregnantly. Then a second meal squeezed into the distended stomach, smooshing him against Spex. Shifty could barely wrap his arms around the jutting bulges of his ginormous gut, but he did.

And he hugged them, hard. So hard, the pressure intensified his metabolism; and so, the two flailing mages burned and melted to the rumble of a beastly borborygmus. Shifty groaned loudly. Both of his mage meals collapsed into a licorice black mulch. It disbanded through his body with deep, motoring burbles.

Shifty gasped. A third evolution disrupted his solidity, and deformed and upgraded him. A crown of four horns stuttered, forced out two more pairs of nightmarish black horns. His eyes flashed a blinding blue. Spears of lightning crackled out of his maw, along with a roar of the word “Power!”

A hooded cloak that matched his tan robe swirled into existence and fabricked him, the hood on his back. Silver trimming embellished his wear.

The quakes of shapeshifting thrashed Shifty with feelings of ecstasy. He grew and grew. His muscles bulked up. His paws and his claws and his maw and his barbs enlarged. Clusters of energy detonated from his rump, producing an emerald tail and a gold one. They joined his red and black ones.

Every breath from his mighty chest unleashed a cocktail of magic and electricity from monstrously revamped jaws. Shifty suddenly clutched his middle, which was still bloated with bones. He bowed over his torso, harrumphed grotesquely. He began heaving out bone after bone of the digested dragons.

A buuRrrOOhhaup befell the hallway with the force of a thunderbolt, launching a literal thunderbolt from his maw. A couple more thunderous burps sparked out of him like fireworks. One lasted four seconds and was so gargantuan, it startled him. A pile of slimy bones and skulls buried his ankles.

He had grown significantly taller. He now stood about as tall as one-and-a-half mages. If he encountered any more mages, their heads would only come as high as his chest or his gut.

“Hoof, my power level is something serious! I can’t wait to play with the lord. The memories of these mages tell me he’s stronger than the whole circle combined. What a treat he’ll be.”

Goopy footsteps approached Lord Jeropa. With eyes closed, the lord trembled awake. He rumbled, “Did I not inform the circle I was to take an undisturbed nap?”

Shifty tsked. “I’m not part of the circle. But I am here to tuck you into the bed of my belly, the same way I tucked in the last three bedfellows.

The quadruped dragon opened his eyes to a mage who was perhaps taller than his foreleg was long. The mage exclaimed “Surprise,” then shrank slightly as tentacles of black goop darted out of his body toward Lord Jeropa.

The gall of this mage put Lord Jeropa into a frenzy of fury. He rose in a blink and riposted with a roar that came like a hurricane. It was strong enough to deafen (but Shifty was immune to that)—strong enough to splatter Shifty against a wall in a spittly gust of sound.

Shifty laughed merrily. He reformed. Slinking stickily to the floor, the goo dragon mage exhaled a lightning bolt. It dashed the lord’s muzzle, stunned him. What followed was a spell which clenched the lord’s main body in dozens of conjured giant chains. Shifty leapt at him.

Lord Jeropa’s resulting wrath triggered a whirl of his body: And his hulking chest burst from the chains. A large glob of goo smeared the floor before the lord. He flashed at it a mesmeric glare.

“So you drank the live goo, did you? Treacherous mage, your will is mine now. I command you: FLOW DOWN MY THROAT LIKE A DRINK.”

The targeted goo shivered. It then slunk toward his opening maw with the sluggishness of an inebriated servant. Jeropa could taste sweet victory abroad.

But when the lord whirled earlier, he showered the room with glops of Shifty, and those glops now sprung from windows and stones, and pelted him in multiple places. A big splash masked the lord’s mesmeric eyes with black gunk.

A voice—or perhaps several voices—rang from all over his body: “I’m afraid you didn’t hear me the first time. I’m not one of your mages. I’m many of your mages. Because of this I can multitask, unlike you. Aaand now I’m about to absorb you. Well played, my lord.”

“What? What are you? No!”

Jeropa bellowed and clawed all over his forelegs, trying to swipe off the contagion of sludge. It spread farther. It spread to muffle his yowling jaws. It spread to stifle the beats of his wings, and smite him down and crumple him on his side. The goo-covered scales of the half-covered dragon hissed, digesting and feeding the festering goop. Within minutes, Shifty fully enveloped his prey in a thick dragon-shaped cocoon. The dragon shape twitched weaker and weaker to the goo’s tightening clutches.

The lord moaned, “No, no,” even as the eyes of his convulsing skull blinked open and closed in a struggle. His body drenched the floor. His body melted like a thick black butter. Moans continued to come from the goo amalgam, a spasming blob.

Soon, the sound of the voice changed. The voice of the lord remained, but the voices of the absorbed dragon mages choired it.

“Yes, yes, yes, hahahahahaha.”

The burbling and bubbling of goop filled the sanctum. The goo slowly swelled and changed into a semblance of Jeropa. But this Jeropa-shaped dragon had no baby blue scales, no magenta wings or backside, only the shiny pitch black of ink. The rugged scales of Jeropa were mimicked, but the frame beneath them was even more big and robust.

Five tails erupted from the gooey quadruped dragon’s hinds: one black, one emerald, one gold, one crimson and one baby blue.

Around the four-legged goo dragon Shifty’s tan robe reformed at a fitting size, and so did his hooded cloak: the two tailored themselves to accommodate his new quadruped anatomy.

Eight black horns stabbed out of a previously hornless skull. The muzzle and the claws and the barbs of the dragon grew longer, larger, beastlier.

Blindingly bright baby blue eyes blinked open. A roar of ecstasy erupted from those elongating jaws.

“A giant dragon—that’s me. All me! And all this strength! Goddamn, do I have good looks. Hahahaha. Well played indeed, Jeropa.”

Manic with glee, Lord shifty flapped around the sanctum, getting a feel for his powerful new body. He alighted and then searched Jeropa’s memory for the spells he knew. Spells, so many. Hundreds flooded his mind.

Lord Shifty opened his mouth to speak the first of many. Instead, his belly spoke for him. It groaned loudly because a skeletal pile heavier than the hoards of most dragons was cramping its walls. Shifty trotted to the stairs that led to the sanctum, then retched up an avalanche of bones.

The giant ivory monoliths covered the steps. Atop the mess of bones, a corroded skull plopped. Shifty sighed, then hiccuped the last two ribs of Jeropa’s forechest.

Buried in the pile were a couple of mages. They had been so unfortunate so as to have been ascending the staircase when Shifty upchucked Jeropa’s sorry remains.

Shifty shot the mages a disparaging look. He cleared his throat, then voiced his best Lord Jeropa imitation.

“Do clean up this floor once you’ve dug yourselves out of there. Or not. If you’re useless outside of me, I’ll find a use for you inside of me. Funny, aren’t I?”

Lord Shifty guffawed satirically, then turned to return to the sanctum. The mages turned white as bones. They surfaced fast. The poofs of bone-removing spells lulled the new lord into a nice long nap. One in which he dreamt about what kinds of dragons were next on the menu.

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