[b][u][center]The City of the Oasis Chapter 1: Summoning A Founder For Wott0891 By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b] The planets of the Kadeo system were far-off from the rest of the universe, kept separate through a series of workings both mystical and scientific, through manipulations of the natural universe and bargains with the unnatural. Many of those that lived on the planets had only a vague idea of how they worked, and that was fine enough for them. Among the various manipulations of the universe that kept them vaguely isolated from everyone else was the Draft-Summons system, something that many Kadeoans signed up for in their late teenage years for all the privileges that it afforded them. In exchange for various extra voting rights, education funds, travel privileges, and more, the Kadeoan in question put their essence into the outside universe, allowing for a chance of being summoned by one that knew how to do it. In return, those that knew of their system agreed to avoid coming for any uninvited visits, allowing the Kadeoans to spread out if they wished, and stay isolated if they didn’t. It was a good deal in the eyes of most in the system. There were few people outside their allies that remembered how to summon them, and those that did were mostly at peace. It was better than even odds that one could go through the entire decade of their Draft-Summons contract without ever actually being summoned. Of course, there were exceptions… # Rhaj stood at the training range, the wotter’s hands held down at his sides as he took several deep breaths. The training targets, suspended between pairs of floating rings, whizzed about him on silent pulses of energy, bobbing up and down at random intervals, nearly impossible to predict what they’d do next. Thankfully, the hybrid had no need to predict anything. With a roar, the wotter threw himself into the air, his hands dropping to his belt. Twin hand axes met his hands, and he threw them to the sides, the axes themselves flaring with blue light halfway to their targets. A mere thought was enough to twitch them off course, pulling them back in line with the moving targets. The wotter was still spinning around as he grabbed another pair, pulling the axes from his belt the way that others might have pulled throwing knives. He shouted as he flung them out, catching another two targets. With four left, he concentrated his [i]Ka[/i] at the base of his feet, forming a flickering barrier for a split second. Kicking off it, he lunged for the two targets in front of him, his fists clenching as he surrounded them with a thin layer of [i]Ka[/i] and yanked them towards him. Crunch, crack. They shattered in his fists, and he flung the wreckage behind him. He didn’t even have to look. Boom. By the time the wotter’s feet hit the ground again, there were eight wrecks around him, the floating targets utterly obliterated, unable to keep flying. The flickering light of his [i]Ka[/i] projections faded, and he slowly stood up, smirking about as broad as a wotter could smirk. “And, not surprisingly, Rhaj succeeds in setting a new record for target practice,” the floating voice of the announcer said. “Let’s give him a hand. Again.” “Oh, come on. You have to admit, that was cool!” the wotter shouted, turning to face the crowd behind him. “That was cool, right?” The crowd nodded, cheering a bit, but not quite as loudly as he expected. The wotter rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head a few times. Maybe he was starting to overdo it a little bit, but...well, he liked to show off. He was [i]good[/i] at this, after all, so, why not put on a bit of a show? At least the crowd wasn’t annoyed. Not as happy and loud as they had been the first time he’d broken the record, but still cheering for him. The wotter stood back up, brushing bits of metal and machinery off of his shoulder. The target dummies always left debris behind, and it always loved to stick to his tunic. Always. Still, at least he still improving. The wotter was a huge figure, standing a head and shoulders over most of his fellow Kameoans, and he was thick enough with muscle that he had to get his clothes specially made by special tailors rather than buying the stuff that came from off-world. His brown fur was usually quite well-groomed, though the training had taken some of the coif off of it, and his muzzle and face, in particular, were drenched, making his muzzle look even more narrow than it usually did. Drying his face off on his arm as best he could, he turned back to the crowd. The cheering had died, but he still had their attention. The wotter bowed. “Well, I should leave some targets for anyone else that wants to play, so I’ll take my leave for now. I could be summoned at any moment, after all.” The crowd groaned, and Rhaj smiled good-naturedly at them. He’d been on the Draft list for the last nine and a half years. Whatever nervousness about being summoned to another planet he’d felt when he’d first put his name down had long since faded away, and he doubted that he’d ever get the chance to see a different world. Not that he wanted to, at this point. He’d gotten the chance to see every part of the Kadeo system since he had taken the deal, and his voice had been heard loud and clear during several military summits. He’d become a warrior and a speaker of some renown, and he enjoyed that status. It’d be a pain to lose it. The wotter bowed once more to the crowd, slightly hamming up his departure when – “Nngh?” It started as a dizzy spell, something that was little more than a tug at the back of his head that threw him off. The fluffy-tailed wotter grunted, shaking his head, seeing if the world had stopped spinning. It hadn’t. Worse, it had gone blue. [i]Oh…oh crap…[/i] Rhaj looked down at his hands. His body was the only solid-looking thing around him as the world itself had turned from the gold and brown of the arena to the azure blue of the sky. Only the lines of shapes were remaining outside his body, and as he looked back at the crowd, he saw that they were much the same, silhouettes etched in white against the blue background. It was the Summoning. Someone had decided to summon him to the Draft. “Oh come ooooooon…I just had another half a year…” Knowing from old lessons that what he was seeing was the inverse of what everyone else saw – that he was going a pure azure blue, embodying a pure being of [i]Ka[/i] as he was Draft-Summoned to who knew where, Rhaj did what he had always been trained to do at this moment. He turned to the crowd, slammed his fist to his heart in a salute… And disappeared. # Rhaj had to fight the urge to scream as he fell through the shimmering currents of space and time, through the rivers of [i]Ka[/i] that his people had spread throughout the universe. All around him in deep sapphire were the carved-out mosaic of his life so far, etched into the metaphysical fabric of… Well, him. Signing up for the Draft-Summons meant that one allowed the Kadeoan government to distribute the essence of yourself through the universe, your very being waiting to be hooked and summoned by those with the knowledge. So in a very strange way, he was riding himself all the way to his destination. There was probably a masturbation vs. incest joke in that sentence, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He was more focused on keeping himself put together, trying not to fly apart as his body was spun about, twisted up, and thrown further and further away from his home system. Even though he couldn’t see the stars outside of the metaphysical channel that carried him on, he knew that he was far from the Kadeo system, well away from any of their normal allies. [i]Who found me? Who wants me?[/i] That was the question…and he couldn’t answer it from here. The wotter spun end over end, fighting his annoyance at being summoned in the first place. He had been so close to getting out of the Draft-Summons time span, almost through without getting summoned. Hell, he was the first one that had gotten summoned that year. Why did it have to be – Well, there was no point getting angry about it now. He needed to prep for landing. [i]Gotta look good, after all…[/i] Spinning through a current of [i]Ka[/i] made it easy. He reached out, his clothes disappearing and being replaced by a shimmering barrier of power, one that he formed into grand robes rather than the training loincloth that he had been wearing. Dragging it down along his body, he shaped it tight to his chest, wanting to show off all his muscles rather than looking like a bookish scholar. Another thought shaped a bit of [i]Ka[/i] into a halo over his head, and more filled out his belt with more hand-axes. Could never have too many of those. He could sense the end of the channel coming up, and he was vaguely aware of something else happening, something that he hadn’t expected. Something like…like the [i]Ka[/i] around him was being channeled into something at the far end. Not a body, but it was something solid. [i]Well, here goes nothing.[/i] # Rhaj arrived in an explosion of blue energy, waves of it pulsing out like a bubble from his body as he stood in a crater of deep sea blue. He wiggled his toes, feeling sand that had hardened to glass beneath his feet. [i]The desert?[/i] The sudden heat around him confirmed that, and he bit back a groan at the feeling of sweat already starting to pop out of his fur. He had chosen the wrong attire for this, but there was no going back now. The wotter pushed himself to his feet, having landed in a kneeling position when he had popped out of space-time. He bit back a groan at the lightness of the gravity here, shaking his head as he looked around, peering through the rain of dust and new glass. Sitting inside of a bubble of his own was a black-scaled dragon wrapped in a robe that was barely lighter than his body. The dragon looked at him, his head cocked to the side, and it took the wotter a moment or two to realize why the dragon’s gaze felt so strange to him. The dragon’s eyes were white. Pure white, as if he was blind, and yet the stranger peered right at him. The wotter looked to the side, seeing a book on a strange table beside the dragon, and there was an inkwell of some…some very red ink. [i]Written in blood, bound by a book? Well…first time for everything.[/i] Rhaj stepped out of the crater, looking down his muzzle at the dragon at the table. The reptile seemed to be pulling himself out of some sort of trance by the way that he shook his head a few times, rubbing the sides of his face, but that didn’t matter. The wotter thumped his hand on the table. “Are you my summoner?” “Hmm?” The dragon blinked, though his eyes got no less cloudy. “Ah, then it worked.” It worked? That was putting it mildly. Had this guy just decided to try a spell and hope that it did what he wanted? That seemed almost suicidal. It shouldn’t even have worked without a clear and present intent. The Draft-Summons of his people were meant to be grabbed specifically by aiming for one specific warrior of Kadeo and pulling them into duty. Just…random grabbing… If that was what had happened, then something had gone very, very wrong. While Rhaj was still stewing beneath the surface, the dragon stood up. The black-scaled being was definitely a tall person, though not as tall as the wotter, and as he stretched his arms over his head, he seemed to take it all in stride that there was a halo-wearing warrior in front of him. Rhaj shook his head as the dragon gestured about. “Well, my summons, look around. What do you think?” There wasn’t much as far as the wotter was concerned. There was a small oasis to their right, and he could just make out the tents of a few people a few minutes walk away. He imagined that the dragon had told them to stay clear just in case the spell hadn’t worked, or something like that. Other than the oasis and the people, and the table that seemed to come from nowhere, there was really not much to see. “I think it’s a bit of a dump.” “Precisely.” The dragon smiled. “And you’re going to help me turn it into something that isn’t.” “How?” “Well, now, that’s going to take some telling. Walk with me, great one.” [i]Great one?[/i] Well, he wasn’t averse to flattery. The wotter smiled a bit, trying to ignore the feeling of hot sand under his feet as he allowed himself to be led along by the dragon. Despite the compliment, though, he was still very conscious of the sun above him, of the heat that was beaming down on him and soaking through the robe at a painful rate. Already, he was breaking out in sweat all over his body, and the wotter felt like he was swimming when he was walking. The dragon led him to the side of the oasis, gesturing at the water. At first, the wotter thought he was just making a gesture to indicate it, but then – Whooosh. Black flames rose from the edges of the oasis, circling it before coming round to their side. It condensed down into the shape of a flickering hand, cupping the water and lifting it from the pool. As it rose up, Rhaj looked at it, then at the dragon, then back. “Uh…” “It’s still quite cool. Take a drink.” “You’re a mage? Not just a summoner?” “A reasonably good one, if I may say so. Drink.” After his teleportation from his home planet to wherever this was, he admitted that he was a little bit thirsty, and he had little reason to believe that his summoner would be trying to kill him. Still, it was with a bit of hesitation that the wotter leaned down to sip at the drink that the mage offered him. He only had to take one sip from the magical hand offering it to him before he realized why the dragon was here in the first place. “Mana…” “And a great deal of it,” the dragon explained, letting the rest of the water fall back into the oasis. “It seems to spring from somewhere deep beneath the oasis, and as far as I can tell, it is self-perpetuating.” “You plan to exploit it?” “Hardly. Or, at least, not in the way that most people would. Walk with me.” The wotter had little choice as he fell in behind the dragon, watching as the book that the mage had been penning at the table came flying through the air and tucked itself under the dragon’s arm. He felt a slight tug from it himself, almost like a pull at the inside of his chest, and he shivered at the sensation. [i]Grimoire.[/i] That had to be it, though it was the first time that he had seen it in book form. Usually, Kadeoan allies summoned them through a more digital function, using computers and digital databases to hold the information that bound a soldier to the cause. Seeing it in a more physical form was… Well, somewhat worrying. He didn’t know what the consequences of destroying a grimoire could be. It might just release him from the cause he was set to, or it might do something quite a bit worse. Nobody had ever tried and experimented with it. [i]I’m going to have to make sure that thing stays in perfect shape,[/i] he thought as he followed behind the dragon. [i]That thing is my essence. I am NOT going to let anything happen to it.[/i] Shaking his head, he followed the dragon, realizing that they had walked about a kilometer out from the center of the oasis, and more, that they were following a circle that had been dug in the sand. The wotter looked down, staring at the cut in the sand that seemed to actively resist being filled up, then looked back at the dragon again. “Did you do this?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Just a demarcation. Making sure that nobody else tries claiming this spot.” “Why? Just because of the mana?” “No. Because of them.” His summoner nodded back to the people that were still gathered off in the distance. With their walk around taking them around the oasis, the cluster of people were a bit closer now, giving Rhaj the chance to get a better look. They seemed to be a fairly random cluster of people, mostly of feline species, though with a few others in there as well. They didn’t seem related, though, each of them keeping apart, only interacting when they seemingly had to. They looked… They looked afraid. But of what? “What happened?” he muttered. “A number of sandstorms, I’m afraid,” the dragon said, shaking his head. “They are getting worse down here. More and more people learn about weather magic, trying to stop the sandstorms, trying to leash the desert to their will, and they end up messing the weather up more and more as a result. Some people try and leash the sandstorms to their will, trying to use them as weapons. Still others just try and kill off the storms to keep an area safe. “Sadly, all they manage to do is make things worse. The more you fight the desert, the more it fights back.” “So, why are they here?” “I brought them here. And I want to make sure that they stay safe. One reason that you were summoned, actually.” The dragon gestured at the circle as they walked it. “This whole place will be a sanctuary, if we proceed carefully. A place where those displaced may come for a second chance at life, and where the stupidity of the outside world can be kept at bay.” “You’ll need more than one soldier to fight stupid,” Rhaj muttered. “And I intend to get them. But I wanted to start with the best, and that’s you.” “Heh, me?” Rhaj smirked despite himself. “You’ve heard of us?” “Not exactly.” The dragon pulled the book out from under his arm. “As a matter of fact, I’m not entirely sure what I’ve written here…Rhaj. Ah, that’s your name, is it?” [i]Annnnd we’re back to this being creepy.[/i] Every Kadeoan that signed up for the Draft-Summons were told that they could only be summoned by someone that knew that they were signed up for it, and they had to be specifically called for by their summoner to fulfill this sort of need. The fact that this dragon had managed to sidestep that sort of requirement did not make him feel as safe with this sort of service as he wanted. As the dragon read through the book, muttering under his breath, Rhaj felt a moment’s temptation to reach for the hand axes at his side, but the temptation faded almost immediately. He wasn’t sure if it was the binding of the summoning agreement, but he knew that he himself didn’t have it in him to kill someone innocent. Well, innocent of anything that the wotter knew about. [i]Just…keep an eye open.[/i] Eventually, the dragon turned to look at him again. The white eyes looked at him, then at the book, then back at him again. “Huh. Interesting.” “What’s interesting?” “Well, not that page.” Flick, flutter, went the book as the dragon turned the page. “Or that one. Or that one. Or – oh, that’s interesting.” “What?” “You like feet, apparently.” “I – what?!” The wotter blinked, the subject change leaving him blinking and confused. He leaned over, trying to look at the book as well, but the red lettering on the pages was complete gibberish to him. “What are you talking about? I can’t read any of this.” “That could be the result of the spell transfer…or just my handwriting. Who knows, really, but this page lists all your sexual fetishes.” “…That feels like a serious invasion of privacy. Can you [i]not[/i] read that?” “Well, I could…” “…Will you stop smirking? This isn’t funny.” “Kinda funny,” the dragon said, though he did shut the book. Grumbling, the wotter glared down at the book. He knew that the grimoires were supposed to be a very ‘complete’ sort of record of what the Kameoan they represented was. It was meant to inform their summoner of combat abilities, general health, and other various capabilities. He had never thought that it would get into…that stuff. He wasn’t sure whether to blush or chuckle nervously at the fact that the grimoire had pulled that much out of him, either. Nor was he entirely sure if the dragon seemed to be flaunting his own barefoot nature as they got back to walking the circle around the oasis. Certainly, the wotter had his eyes drawn down much more often than he had previously. He told himself that it was just because he’d had the possibility pulled to the front of his mind, but…was the dragon actually showing off his feet a bit more? They did seem to be walking slower, and the black dragon was definitely digging the ball of his foot into the sand that much more firmly. [i]Long feet, too…and rather wide…[/i] The wotter wanted to slap the back of his head when he realized what he was doing, but he wasn’t going to give the dragon the satisfaction. He was going to be a good, focused warrior, and that was it. Even if his eyes kept darting back down to the black soles, smooth and long, with curling toes that seemed to scoop the sand up after them as he walked… By the time that they finished their lap, the wotter was about as hard as he could possibly get, and he was growling under his breath as he stared at the dragon’s feet. They were still bare, but with a dusting of sand that was starting to bother him. It meant that the shiny undersides were no longer so easy to see, and he imagined that they were rather slick, too, slick with the results of all this heat… Much like his own were… He shuffled from foot to foot as they came to a stop, shaking his head. “So, let me get this straight. I’m going to be the guard of the oasis, right?” “Correct.” “Are there any other duties I should know about?” “Not yet, I think. They’ll come up in the fullness of time.” “You know, that’s not very helpful. I work best when I know everything.” “Nobody knows [i]everything.[/i]” “Okay, when I know everything that my boss knows.” “I’m sorry, Rhaj, but that’s not going to happen.” Groaning, the wotter resisted the urge to facepalm. Instead, he settled for rolling his eyes, taking a few deep breaths at the irritating dragon. “Will you at least tell me your name?” “In a moment.” “Why in a moment?” “Because I don’t want you gasping it out when I take care of that.” The dragon’s tail swept back, poking the wotter right in the crotch. Actually, right in the tip of the wotter’s bulge, when it came right down to it. Rhaj yelped, only to bark out loud as he was suddenly sucked down in the sand, pulled into it up to his thighs. He resisted the urge to blast his way back out of it, narrowing his eyes as his summoner turned around. “What is the meaning of this?” “Well, for one, it’s a way to test to see if this book is accurate,” the dragon said, wiggling it from side to side. “Second, it’s a chance to see just how similar you are to us down there. And thirdly…well, let’s be honest, you’ve been staring at them for the whole walk, and I’m not an unkind master.” “Just a perverted one, apparently!” “Well, that too. But I don’t see your dick complaining.” That much was true, and the wotter was more than a little ashamed about that. The fact was, he shouldn’t have been that turned on just by staring at a pair of feet. Sandal season back home was hell for him for much the same reason; there were very few clothes that could cover him, even ones that were made from [i]Ka.[/i] From…[i]Ka…[/i] “Wait, wait!” The wotter held out his hands, grabbing the dragon by the ankle before he could get any closer. “There’s something…something really important that we have to do before we go any further.” The dragon blinked, but the wotter was already running back through the lessons. [i]In order to keep charged, a Kadeoan on off-planet duty must establish for him or herself a crystal of Ka. From this crystal, a Kadeoan will replenish both their powers and their stamina, their vitality and their endurance in the way that their planet does for them. Forget the crystal, and a Kadeoan becomes less by the day, until they are naught but a shell of their former self.[/i] He was already on a different world, obviously far lower tech than where he had come from, and he was in the presence of a summoner rather than a military officer. The last thing he needed was to become…ordinary. Rhaj pulled at his robe, pulling it off and letting it fall apart into the raw [i]Ka[/i] that he needed. All too conscious of the dragon watching him from above, the bound wotter let the clothes fall apart until they were nothing but cloth, and then nothing but azure energy, energy that he was able to bind together into a smaller sphere. He pressed his hands together around it, collecting some of his inner [i]Ka[/i] to add to it, concentrating it further and further with all the pressure that he could muster. Little by little, the ball of energy became more ovoid, then more like a pair of pyramids joined at the fat bit. It shrank from the size of his hand to the size of his fingers, then to the size of his thumb. And still he pushed, still he shrank it, desperate to make sure that he didn’t lose out on the power that he had at home. [i]It will be less than the power of the planet, but it will be enough to sustain you in times of need. Draw from it as you have need, and replenish it on your days of rest, lest you starve the crystal of its energy.[/i] He just hoped that he was remembering this right. At the end of it, he had a blue crystal that was barely bigger than the last knuckle of his thumb, vaguely diamond in shape with enough light coming from it to blind someone. He wrapped a shred of cloth that he had reserved around it, tying it around his neck. The dragon looked at him with some surprise, slowly lifting a finger to point at the crystal. “What…is that?” “Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr. Secretive?” the wotter responded. The dragon arched an eyebrow, tapping a finger on the book. It was a pretty clear signal. Either Rhaj could tell him, or he could look it up. The wotter sighed. “It’s a…crystal of empowerment. I need it to be at full effectiveness…and I need regular days off to be able to recharge it.” “That’s no problem. Kind of matches up with…not important, actually.” Not important. There it was again, along with ‘not interesting.’ The way that the dragon was constantly shifting away from the matter at hand was not making him feel better about his summoner. However, he wasn’t given long to think about that, as long, dexterous black toes were able to slink beneath the loincloth he’d worn beneath his robe, two toes curling around the head of his cock and pulling it out into the open. “Mmmph…” “Just relax, wotter. You’ll be underfoot many times between now and the end of your service…just let yourself take in the pleasure and enjoy it…” It wasn’t that hard to let his cock be played with, he had to admit. There hadn’t been many times back home when he had let someone just wrap a pair of soles around his dick and let them go to town, but it had happened enough to tell him that he liked it. In fact, the bigger the feet, the better, and the dragon… Well, the dragon had big feet. It didn’t take long before his summoner was sitting on the sand in front of him, large, slippery black-scaled feet pressing on either side of his cock. With the sand clasping around the wotter’s legs and tail, it made it impossible for him to thrust forward, but he was certainly able to feel those toes drumming along the base of his cock, the slow tug of those soles along the sides of his shaft that encouraged him to [i]want[/i] to. With every stroke, he leaned forward a bit more, and then a bit more, until his hands were pressed to the sand and his breath was coming in puffs and groans. His fingers clenched at the soft sand around him, his hips trying to thrust between the dragon’s teasing soles. It didn’t get better when the black dragon changed up the angle, one foot going down. One very, very large foot pressing against his testicles, holding the wotter’s balls back and keeping the shaft pinned with two toes, while the other foot ground its long, broad sole and the side of the arch against the head of his cock, trapping it against the underside and polishing it with the soft, damp sole. “Mmph…god…” Rhaj muttered. “Don’t worry about titles right now. You can call me master, instead.” He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything as the dragon twitched his toes, pulling the wotter’s cock around, dragging the head of it along the bottom of his foot as if he was using it as a pen. Every little stroke along the tip of his shaft teased him, drawing his pre-cum free all too easily, to the point where he actually blushed at how quickly he’d started dripping. And yet, at the same time, he felt something else. A tingle, a pressure on the back of his mind. Almost like there was something besides pre-cum getting milked out of him right there. He tried to – “Mmmph!” Whatever thoughts he had were scrambled as the dragon’s foot pressed harder on his balls, grinding them back towards his taint. The wotter panted, his hands digging deeper into the sand as his entire body tingled with pleasurable domination. “Don’t start thinking now, little guy. There’s a lot to learn, but for right now, just let me milk something out of those balls of yours…” “And after?” Rhaj managed to ask. “After, we’ll talk, but for now…just…enjoy…” [b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]