The rest of Zac's riding lesson went by very, very, very slowly. He thought it had been hours, but when Bune clapped his hands and announced that "twenty minutes in the saddle was enough for the first night," lest the Avatar get bow-legs, Zac had been surprised (and a little upset). The Aspidochelone, which Zac had already named Leonardo, had barely made it out of the stall.
How the turtle could ever be considered a war mount was beyond Zac. It was slower than if Zac had to propel himself using only his eyelids. But Bune seemed so happy that something was actually going correctly and nothing was dying, catching on fire, or being sexually harassed, that Zac didn't have the heart to complain too loudly.
On the walk back to Zac's room... during which Zac was already nearly floating in anticipation for sleeping and dreaming... he couldn't help but feel a slight nagging in the small, non-horny corners of his mind.
"So, Leonardo is pretty chill," he started, "but uh, will he be able to keep up with Goremaw or Sir Hoofington or uh... a wheelchair-bound infant?"
"What do you mean?" Bune's Left Head asked, briefly turning away from directing a small queue of ghosts and ghouls to different cleaning tasks. "The Aspidochelone is the perfect size for you."
"I appreciate that I won't need to keep a step stool around when I ride him, but he is a tad bit lethargic." Zac did not want to insult his new turtle friend since it was the only one of Marchosias's pets that didn't seem to be repulsed by him. Why didn't they all love him like Goremaw did? It was a mystery. "I just think walking might be faster," he finished lamely.
"Walk? Ha!" Bune chuckled. "Your war mount is your mobile battle station. Sometimes the battles are quite long, so having somewhere to sit is nice." Bune's Right Head turned and swapped places with the Left Head to take over the conversation. "And Ose has never been a brawler. Your powers are not as useful on the battlefield directly... it is too noisy and chaotic for the paladins to hear your lies. So, the Pygmy Island Turtle is a wonderful choice. And if we get you a seatbelt, the Captain will be so happy."
Zac frowned. "Please don't turn Leonardo into a mobile high chair."
"The battlefield is a dangerous place," Bune said as he led Zac up another staircase. "Being positioned next to the Captain will be the safest place for you."
"Yes, next to my wolfy-hubby is where I belong," Zac said wistfully before hardening his expression. "But that's the point. Leonardo is slow as fuck. He won't even make it out of the driveway by the time the show has started. I'm gonna be late."
"Don't be ridiculous," Bune waved one of his four hands dismissively. "The different battlefronts are hundreds of miles from here. It would take days for even Goremaw to run there."
Zac waited for a few moments before realizing Bune wasn't going to continue unprompted. "So how do we travel to the battlefield? Hell-icopter?"
"Such a flimsy device would be shot out of the sky nearly instantly," the dragon said, leading Zac down yet another flight of stairs.
"Okay then what?" Zac asked. "And you didn't laugh. Helicopter. Hell-icopter. It's good, right? It just came to me. I should have been a comedian."
"I transport them," Bune said simply, ignoring the pun.
"How do you transport them?" Zac pressed. "And seriously, hell-icopter."
"My necromantic powers give me many abilities," Bune said, his tone shifting to one of lecture-hall pride. "I am able to move the dead. Most think that is simply animating or conjuring, but there are more applications. Due to those, I am not limited as other necromancers are." The dragon smirked smugly. "I do not need to look for or wait for a dead body to reanimate."
Zac nodded sagely. "You kill someone and make a dead body. Got it. Very metal."
"No," Bune sighed, the sound echoing in the stairwell. "I move the dead. I can transport the dead underground, so I can animate whichever body types I need. It is a logistical advantage."
"We were talking about Leonardo," Zac muttered, not sure how flexing on all the other goth mages helped his transportation issue.
"I can transport the others underground to the battlefronts and back here," Bune said, finally stopping in front of a door and pushing it open to reveal another room that looked like Zac's but, once again, was completely new. "It is much faster than other types of travel, and Heaven is too mysophobic to ever think of digging down into the ground."
"What's me-so-phobic?" Zac asked, tilting his head. "When I hear me-so, I usually think me-so-horn-"
"It means they are scared of being dirty," Bune cut off Zac's unfiltered thoughts with a sharp cough, "as if dirt itself is a bad thing."
"That's a bit ironic coming from you," Zac said as he entered his anti-demon-rape room. "You're quite serious about stains."
"Because they upset the Captain," Bune coughed into a fist. "Now, if there's anything else you-"
"Why does March's opinion matter so much to you?" Zac cut off the dragon's attempt at a quick goodnight. He leaned against the doorframe, his tail twitching. "I saw you wrestle Skarg in the pantry, and I can tell you could have taken him down much faster than March did, if you really wanted to. You're a Duke, and you're stopping yourself from letting a virgin vibrate on your vent when you could be corrupting me."
Bune froze. For a split second, there was silence.
Then, with a wet, sickening tear, Bune's Third Head erupted from between his shoulders. The Left and Right heads immediately looked shocked and mortified, recoiling from their own body.
"YES!" the Middle Head roared, spittle flying as its red eyes locked onto Zac. "COME OVER HERE AND GRIND ON MY CLOACA YOU FILTHY LITTLE VIRGIN!"
"DO YOU HAVE A HEMIPENIS?!" Zac yelled back, his eyes wide. Bune's third head had been missing all day, and Zac had told himself he wouldn't miss the opportunity to ask when it arose.
"CLASPERS!" the Middle Head bellowed, its tongue lolling out. "NOW GET OVER HERE!"
As Bune's Left and Right heads began apologizing profusely and screaming at the smug-looking Middle Head, Zac clutched his chest. He felt like he was having a heart attack. Claspers? Wasn't that a shark thing?
"You... you... you..." Zac couldn't even form proper words. "You got two cocks?"
Zac felt like he was in a trance as his body moved toward the dragon demon. All this time, he thought the others were hot and the dragon was just keeping his hand out of the cookie jar. But this... this changed the calculus entirely.
And what Bune's Middle Head roared next, just as the other two heads managed to grab the handle and slam the heavy door in Zac's face, sent the human into a mini-seizure.
"THREE!"
The information was simply too dense. It was a cognitive payload too heavy for the human brain to process. His eyes rolled back into his skull. His knees, which had been carrying him faithfully through days of demonic thirst, finally gave out and he collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
CRACK.
His head hit the stone floor with a sickening, solid thud. The world didn't just fade to black; it was violently switched off.