Kobold Isekai 1 (Patreon)

I can't recall what got me thinking about kobolds, but I hope you find this cute!

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Kess sniffed at the dirt. The ogres stunk terribly, and their trail would be easy to follow, but how many had come this way? That was a much more important question.

“I smell five of them,” announced the leader of the kobolds. Moonlight glinted from the dagger Xir pointed. “Headed into the valley.”

Kobolds were a cowardly people—and for good reason. As monsters went, they were weak and relatively easy to kill. In fact, the species might have died out long ago if not for their prodigious egg-laying. But Xir was the bravest of the two dozen extended family members who’d assembled along the cliff’s rim. He had personally stabbed three different adventurers.

True, two of those adventurers had been sleeping at the time, and the third had been trying to escape an owlbear when he backed into the crevice where Xir lived. But the entire tribe agreed that all three victories counted.

Xir was smart too. After stabbing, he always left the dagger behind. “Trying to keep hold of a weapon will get you caught. It’ll get you killed,” he always said. “Discarded weapons are plentiful. You’ll always find another.”

Kess wasn’t so certain about that. True, they had found plenty of discarded weapons in The Quarry, but she hadn’t been able to keep any of them. Most had been too big for a kobold to wield, and the rest… Well, she’d tussled with the others to claim a few but had never prevailed.

That was fine, really. She wasn’t certain that she wanted to stab someone.

“Look! A campfire,” said Weegon. He pointed down into the valley at a pinpoint of orange light. “Adventurers!”

“That’s what those ogres must be after,” said Xir with a nod. “Okay, here’s the plan. We keep our distance and wait for the fight to end. When everyone leaves, we scour the scene for treasure, weapons, and carrion, then haul it—”

“And if the adventurers win?” interrupted Weegon.

Without missing a beat, Xir said, “Then, we’re hauling home ogre meat instead of adventurer meat.”

The family frowned. No one looked forward to ogre meat, but at least it would be plentiful. Each of those suckers were huge.

“Papa! Papa!” shouted a youthful voice. The party turned as one and watched as a smaller lizard-person scrambled up the steep path. “Don’t go!”

The kobold was short, maybe three foot tall when standing upright, but for now he knelt in the dirt, wheezing and gasping as he tried to catch his breath. “So glad I found you…” he barely managed.

“Egon?” hissed the kobold’s leader as he knelt beside his son. “What’s wrong? Is your mom okay?”

Egon shook his head. Having recovered slightly, he managed, “No, it’s master Zymmyrut! He’s having an awful nightmare.”

The party groaned in unison. Some of the kobolds who had weapons threw them down in frustration, only to grab them back up immediately, before another could claim them.

“How bad is it, son?” whispered Xir.

“Bad, really bad,” said Egon. “He’s thrashing all about and has scattered gold and treasure everywhere. Everyone’s gotta come back and help!”

“Master Zymmyrut keeps us safe,” said Xir, and the rest of the party repeated his words reverently, like a prayer, “but safety won’t keep us fed. There’s gonna be a battle in the valley, and if the ogres don’t eat all the fallen, then we’ve gotta haul that meat back here.”

Xir stood and looked over his team. “We have no choice. We must split the party.” He rested his hand on his second-cousin’s shoulder and said, “Come with me.”

“Yes!” she said, pumping her fist, then she hurried through the group to wait at the trailhead.

Xir put his palm on his brother’s shoulder. “Go, help Egon.”

The dejected kobold hung his head and walked with Egon to wait at the path leading back the way they’d come.

“Come. Go. Come. Go,” said Xir as he continued to divide the group.

One-by-one, the party split up while the rest of the group jockeyed for position to try and end up in the “Come” group.

“Go,” said Xir and he grabbed his daughter’s shoulder.

“Aww, c’mon!” groaned Kess.

But Xir didn’t even reply. He just paused from his task long enough to kiss her forehead and continued on with, “Come. Go. Come. Go,” until he’d given everyone an assignment.

# # #

Kess muttered and grumbled as she undressed. She folded her collection of dirty rags and scraps of untanned hide before tucking them into a darkened crevasse where they’d be safe.

Kobolds lack modesty in the same way they lack much of anything to hide beneath their clothes, but they do like keeping warm. That wouldn’t be a problem down here in the wyrm’s chambers, and it was always safer to stay naked while in Master Zymmyrut’s presence.

The dragon was paranoid to a fault and tendened to think everyone was stealing from him. If a kobold wore clothes in his presence, he immediately presumed they were hiding some of his gold inside them.

Now undressed, Egon led the family through darkened corridors until flickering flames from the master’s chamber cast dancing shadows at their feet. The group reached up and pulled random items from wooden pegs hammered between the stones: a bucket, a pot, a helmet. Kess tried to grab a long-handled soup ladle, but her obnoxious cousin Queeto beat her to it.

Scowling, and with nothing to hold the gold coins that spilled out into the hallway, Kess knelt and scooped up as many of the precious discs as she could hold in her cupped hands, then carried them into the master’s chamber so she could toss them onto the dragon’s bed pile.

As the most and least powerful creatures in the dungeon, dragons and kobolds shared an interesting relationship. Dragons loved kobolds above all other creatures, but considering how much they hated everyone else, this exalted position was not as glorious as it might sound.

As for the kobolds, they envied the dragons without measure. They wished they could be their distant cousins—rich, powerful, and fearless—but nobody gets to choose what they are. Some people are born dragons, while others must settle for living as kobolds.

If I were a dragon, thought Kess as she scooped up two handfuls of precious gems, I’d fly off to the village and grab a cow—no, two cows! Then, I’d bring them back here and roast them with my fire breath so all the kobolds could eat steaks instead of carrion.

She dumped the gems on the dragon’s horde, then snaked her way between the other kobolds to some treasure that had piled up against the wall.

Kess didn’t really mind scooping up treasure with her bare hands. She’d rather take ten trips with a small amount of gold rather than to try and drag a single bucket of the stuff. A bucket full of coins was heavy!

The little kobold picked up golden necklaces one at a time and draped them over her forearm. She pulled a weapon from the pile and spent a moment admiring it. The dagger’s silver blade gleamed like a mirror, and so many precious stones inlaid the golden handle that she could hardly see the metal.

“You can’t keep that,” rumbled a deep and terrifying voice.

Kess backed up so quickly that the blade tumbled from her hands and clattered against the chamber’s stone floor. She looked up into the glowing dragon eyes that stared only at her.

“What?” she whispered.

“The dagger,” explained Zymmyrut.

He said, “I know you kobolds like them, but you cannot have that one. It’s magic…” Then, he stared greedily down at the little weapon for a moment before adding, “…and fancy.”

Kess rolled her eyes. With her open palms, she gestured at the small pile of treasure near the wall and the much, much larger pile he was laying on. “I was only going to keep it long enough to carry it from where it shouldn’t be to where it should be,” she said.

“Good.” The dragon rested his giant on a golden shield and watched while the little kobold slid the dagger into a sheath and slipped the baldric over her head and shoulder. He asked, “What was it doing way over there?”

“My brother said you were thrashing around in your sleep,” said Kess without looking up. She picked up the necklaces once more and draped them back over her arm. “Everything got scattered.”

“I wasn’t having a nightmare,” he said defensively.

“I didn’t say you were,” she replied. She looked up and wished for the millionth time that she were a dragon too. “You were probably having an exciting dream—burning villages or armies or something.”

“Perhaps,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember my dreams.”

Kess grinned wide, white teeth gleaming against her green scales. “I had a dream where I met a human girl in the forest.”

The dragon closed his eyes. “Why would I care?”

“You wouldn’t,” she admitted. She returned to her duties, and no one said a word. Usually, her dreams faded after she awoke. It was strange this one hadn’t, and she’d thought about it all day.

Flames crackled in brass braziers. Coins jingled as kobolds dumped them in a pile.

Eventually, the dragon opened his eyes once more, and he studied the little kobold in silence. “Did you stab her?”

“Hrm?” A golden necklace with a single white stone slid from Kess’s arm, and she grabbed it before it could fall to the floor.

“The girl in the dream,” explained Zymmyrut. “Did you stab her?”

Kess grinned. So that she wouldn’t lose the necklace, she slid her head inside the loop. Then, she pulled the dagger from its scabbard and stabbed viciously at the air for a moment.

“Nah,” she laughed. “I didn’t.”

She slid the dagger back into its scabbard, and everything changed.

No longer was she standing in a stone chamber at the bottom of The Quarry. She was in a green forest, and the summer sun filtered through the leaves with streaks of green light. A small stream burbled at her feet, and beyond that, a human girl stood staring at her with mouth open wide.

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rNVdkZaskfRNtKowJKhqgZ4Jor4ef5tBjYLS4QS_Hr4/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?