Realms of Fantasy: Fountain of Dreams [Episode 185848]

“WHERE ON TORIL AM I NOW?!”

Ryōga Hibiki looked around in dismay.  He couldn’t recognize the place... not that it was any unusual for him.  Some evil wizards or fickle godlings always kept modifying the landscape and displacing people and landmarks around him.

What bothered him the most was that he had no idea how he got separated from the rest of the party.  He could vaguely remember about the Drow bringing them to some murky prison cells, and then forcing everybody to disrobe....

Ryōga pinched his nose and tried hard to not recall the image of Ranko, Ukyō, Nabiki, and worst of all Akane-san... wearing next to nothing.  It was way too embarrassing.  If only he could keep those damn half-orc hormones in check.

Peering around again, Ryōga could see that his current location was pretty much featureless.  There were rocks... but he couldn’t even tell if he was still in the Underdark... which was weird.

A sound suddenly startled him, and Ryōga whirled around in alarm.  Blinking, he realized it was distinctly the sound of female giggling.  A cold sweat formed on his brow.

“Hello, handsome...” a soft voice purred.  Poking from behind a rock, a cute girl’s face showed up, a mane of blonde hair moving in a corona around her head.  Smiling, she winked alluringly at Ryōga.  Two more female heads then showed up next to the first: a redhead and brunette. The strangest thing was how their hair seemed to be floating; not as if blown by a breeze, but rather like they were underwater.

Nervous, Ryōga scratched the back of his head and tried to smile back.  “Ahem... ah... I’m glad to met someone here... do you know where we are, ladies?”

The three girls giggled in unison, and then moved from behind the rock hiding their bodies... by swimming (although Ryōga could swear there wasn’t a drop of water here).  Doing so, the barbarian could finally see that the three creatures had the lower body of large, silvery fishes, making them Sirens or Mermaids.  The upper half was quite mammalian, though, as Ryōga way-too-clearly noticed, since they were topless.

A haze of red fell over Ryōga’s vision and he frantically pinched his bloody nose.  Yet he couldn’t take his gaze away from the three pairs of bouncy, perky, gravity-defying orbs.  Ryōga was cursing life for being so unfair... weren’t Mermaid’s hair supposed to fall right so they’d always hide their breasts?  This certainly wasn’t happening here, he was thinking just before falling into a dreamless sleep.

---

Tatewaki Kunō, the Blue Thunder of Waterdeep, was stoically walking down the street, his head held proudly and his armor shining under the sun.  The passersby were turning heads in his wake, commenting on his noble bearing, and the ladies were giggling and whispering, taken by his handsomeness.  Yet he didn’t let this trouble his musings, as he devoted his life to the knightly call of the paladin.

But then, horrified yells disturbed the calm of the place, and frightened commoners started running around in panic.  Kunō immediately unsheathed his holy sword and stood his ground fearlessly before the incoming threat.  A large shadow loomed above the street, people fleeing desperately from its approach.

“Do not fear, peaceful citizens!  I, the Blue Thunder of Waterdeep, will protect you and your abodes from this nefarious monster!  Have at thee, spawn of the Abysses!  Prepare thyself to be struck down by the might of the Seven Heavens themselves!”

No response came from the massive shape that hovered above the tiny figure of the paladin... until the gigantic shark suddenly dived down, opened its huge maw full of triangular teeth and swallowed Tatewaki in one gulp, before swimming back toward the sky.

---

Nabiki Tendō, wearing a hugging catburglar black suit, was climbing up the step wall of a wealthy mansion; the radiance of the full moon was the only light over the scenery.

Reaching a window, the agile climber steadied herself on the ledge and pulled some small tools from a leather pocket on her belt.  Swiftly cutting a small hole in the glass without a sound, she slipped her hand inside and opened the panel.

Silent as a cat, the rogue slunk into the luxurious room, full of costly paintings, statues and other works of art.  Rubbing her hands and licking her lips, Nabiki tiptoed toward a large chest.  On the lookout for any trap, she carefully picked the lock.  It gave some token resistance before surrendering to the skilled thief.

Eager to see the booty, Nabiki opened the lid... but instead of seeing it full to the brink with silver and gold coins, her action freed a whole swarm of tiny, silvery or golden fishes, which rushed out of the chest in a thick cloud.  They immediately began swimming all around the room in glittering schools, despite the lack of water.

“What the...” Nabiki blurted out, blinking in dismay.  “Hey!  Come back here!” she then called, trying to catch the small fishes and put them in her bag of holding.  Now way she’d ever let so much money escape her... although coins weren’t usually that slippery.

---

Akane Tendō was shivering, her teeth chattering.  Huddled in ball against a cliff, she was trying to keep her warmth.  The flimsy clothes she was wearing offered little protection against the snow and freezing wind of this mountainous range.

She was going to die here, cold and alone, and this sucked.  This was not a death worthy of warrior... she should have gone in a blaze of glory, fighting her enemies to the last woman standing....

Oh, who she was kidding?  What she really wanted was to die of old age in her bed....

And worse, even during her last moments, she was denied a little bit of dignity.  The goofy penguins all around her weren’t really helping to make this look dignified.  The weird part was tat they weren’t crawling on the snow like they should, but gracefully swimming in the air, greedily catching small fishes and shrimps.

Akane couldn’t help thinking there was something wrong with all of this, despite her senses numbed by the cold.  And when a large, black-and-white killer whale chasing the penguins was added to the picture, it became really way too ridiculous for her tastes.

---

Ranko Saotome, standing on top of some tables, blew a kiss at the rowdy audience.  The tavern was full of males of various races, sizes and appearance, but all were chanting and hooting and sheering in unison, waving their beer mugs and rattling their chairs on the floor.

Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Orcs, Drow, Goblins... they were all wolf-whistling (especially one Werewolf) and making lewd calls for the sexy redhead to “take it off”, to “show it all”.

Smiling, Ranko took a sultry pose, and gestured for the bards to give her some ambiance.  Strutting her stuff, she began shaking her hips and dancing in rhythm with the music.  Unbuttoning her silver-embroidered black jacket, she enticingly slipped it down her arms, uncovering her bare shoulders as well as the bulges on her chest, visible through a very close-fitting silk shirt.  The hoots and whistle-calls increased in their frenzy.

The red-haired Drow wasn’t one to tease her admirers for long, too proud of her body to keep it hidden.  The top was quickly discarded, and the spectators truly went wild when a pair of bouncing, round, purple-topped mounds came into view.  Ranko didn’t even bother hiding them with her arms, instead pushing her breasts up with both hands, giving a good idea of their firmness.

She then turned around, rocking her lower body left and right with the melody.  Her fingers went to the hem of her trousers, slowly but steadily pushing them down.  With each shake of her shapely rear, she was uncovering further ebony skin.  The perfect curves of her round half-moons were mesmerizing the watchers more efficiently than a hypnotic pattern.  Ranko was very fond of her ass, loving the effect it could have on many humanoid males, and especially her brother.  It would be such a waste to never put if for show before an appreciative audience.

Dropping down her pants and stepping out of her boots, the now fully nude Drow proudly did another tour on top of the tables, walking with the music and deftly avoiding any groping hand from the most forward of the voyeurs.  The sparse light of the torches and candles were giving some beautiful orange glints to her otherwise black-as-night body.  Even as fully exposed as she was, the spectators were nonetheless straining their eyes to never lose sight of her shape, which sometimes blended into the shadows.

A spear, planted upright in the middle of a table, provided her with a strategically placed pole to grip or lean against.  Crouching, then standing back, she whirled around it like some exotic performer (from where, she couldn’t tell). , Ranko lifted up a long, sculptural leg above her head, giving a glimpse of a pink slit standing out against the deep black of her skin.  This surely caused several of the bystanders to drool and grab at their own crotches.

Until now, the spunky Drow girl hadn’t paid any attention to the strange eels that were lazily swimming in circles around her.  Yet, she couldn’t quite ignore them when they started brushing against her naked skin, slithering against her legs, and a pair even snaking around her dark knockers and squeezing them.  She sighed, and gasped harder when a bigger eel, more like a conger, slipped between her thighs and rubbed against her crotch.

“Okay, okay, I get it with all the dumb, symbolic crap, you know!” she said to no one in particular.  “I really need to get laid a lot more often....” Ranko concluded.

The disparate crowd enthusiastically agreed.

---

Ranma Saotome was also surrounded by marine life... though in his case, those were mostly fish bones floating around him.  Standing in the middle of nowhere before a makeshift fire, he was busy cooking a few fishes and mollusks with a stick above the flames, licking his chops and salivating.

No seawater animal was any longer wandering close to the pigtailed Drow... most were hiding, like the octopus which had crawled under a rock and was stubbornly refusing to come out.  Truth to tell, it was lacking four tentacles out of eight.

Ranma never had much opportunity to taste seafood, even when he ventured to the surface... but he was hungry, and when hungry he cared little about what there was to eat or where it came from.

---

Ukyō and Konatsu, being surface Elves, weren’t quite dreaming like their comrades.  Full sleep was rather unknown to their race, which rather practiced the reverie.  Similar to daydreaming, but a lot more refreshing mentally and physically, it gave them much leeway and choice over the things that came to their mind when resting, unlike the random thoughts from the REM sleep of other species.

Yet, for some unknown reason, the sights of some kind of fish lazily swimming around seemed recurring in their reverie....

---

Shampoo, flanked by Linlin and Ranran, yawned and stretched her arms like some great cat as she walked along the hallway leading to the slave cells.  Hopping alongside was the wizened form of her great-grandmother, the Drow matriarch known as Cologne.

“Didn’t you sleep, child?” she asked.  She needed alert underlings for the menial works of the day.

“I did, great-grandmother,” the long-haired Drow answered, “but I had those weird dreams again....”

“Ah, yes.  We shall look deeper into this when we’ll have the time... it’s starting to look like an epidemic.  But for now, we have a bunch of spies to question.”

Coming to the antechamber of the cells, they found a large ogress asleep in an oversized chair, and snoring very loudly.

“Nice to see that some at least are having a good sleep...” Shampoo mumbled, annoyed.  “DOWEL!! TIME TO WAKE UP!!”

Shortly thereafter, the sound of the heavy doors unlocking and opening, and then the steps of many Drow guards entering, began to stir the prisoners awake.

“Achoooo!!”

“Waukeen bless you, Akane-chan.”

“Hu?  Where on Toril am I...?”

“This dismal place was no nightmare, alas... methinks I was more comfortable in the stomach of that sea monster....”

“Great, those jackasses are back....”

“Don’t worry, Ukyō-sama, I won’t let them hurt you!”

Within the cage dangling from the ceiling, Ranma and Ranko hadn’t moved yet.  Shampoo looked up at it, smirking at first, but then her smile froze.  A frown crossed her dark face; she levitated and stopped close enough of the bars to peer inside.  Ranko was still sleeping atop Ranma, their legs entangled and their nude bodies still entwined, some dried fluids hinting quite clearly at their late-night activities.

Shampoo’s eyes bulged and got bloodshot.  She kicked the cage hard, making it swing a bit and waking up its occupants.  “WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” she barked.

“Moooo... I was having such a nice dream....” Ranko bemoaned, rubbing her eyelids.

“Mmmm?  Breakfast ready?” Ranma asked, still half-asleep.

Shampoo, still floating, turned around and glared at the ogress.  “Dowel!  What had taken you to put those two together?”

“Huuu? ” Dowel (un)intelligently answered.  “Is standard sorting, Mistress Shampoo.  Drow with Drow, Elf with Elf....”

“If you gave no specific orders against it, Shampoo, I don’t see why Dowel should have changed her habits.” Cologne countered.  “Is something wrong about it?”

“No... nothing at all...” Shampoo grumbled, disgruntled.  She kept glaring daggers at Ranko... who responded by giving her the evil eye and sticking her tongue out, while still clinging to Ranma.

“Get them out!” Shampoo then commanded, floating back to the floor.

Dowel obeyed, untying the chain holding the cone up, and slowly lowering the cage.  Then the other Drow guards herded the prisoners out of their cells.

Ryōga was intently keeping his eyes closed, to spare himself from fainting again because of overexposure to naked females.  Tatewaki was trying to do the same, but he couldn’t help peeking from time to time.  This earned him scathing glares from Ukyō and Akane, and an amused smirk from Nabiki.

“Stop ogling us, you pervert....” Ukyō warned him.

“At least give us some clothes!  We’re freezing....” Akane pleaded.

“What for?” Shampoo dismissed.  She then turned to the matriarch.  “Shall we bring them all to the torture chambers, great-grandmother?  They could try something if they stay together....”

Cologne pondered this.  It was usually best to have every member of a party be looking as one of them got tortured... it could easily get them to speak.  But Shampoo got a point; they were more likely to try something desperate if gathered in the same place, and it would take more guards to look over them all.  She made a quick choice, shaped by her Drow prejudices.

“Those stupid males stay here... they probably know nothing, anyway.”  She gestured for Ryōga, Konatsu and Tatewaki to be put back inside separate cells.  For once, the paladin didn’t open his big mouth, binding his time.  Maybe Nabiki’s sermon from the previous night did penetrate his thick skull.

“This hunky one follow us, though...” the old woman added while pointing at Ranma... and leering.  This sent a shiver through the pigtailed Drow’s spine.

Next, Shampoo ordered for the five remaining prisoners to have their hands tied before them; Linlin and Ranran promptly completed the task.  Then they goaded Ranma, Ranko, Akane, Nabiki and Ukyō with the tip of their spears, forcing them to walk along the group.