Chapter 78: A Poorly Chosen Game (Patreon)

  Hi! Another chapter tonight, and I will start on the next in the slumber mini-arc tonight, hopefully finish it up by tomorrow. We also need to see what's going on with Rok and Petra, because they're also going to have some role in the events that come next. Anyway, let me know what you think, and thanks so much again!

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Within the many, many halls and rooms of the budding young dungeon, there were a few that were unusually large. Open spaces almost tens of meters from floor to ceiling would already be considered quite spacious, but each of them could range from hundreds of meters to nearly a kilometer, in diameter. They were irregular, of course, but very deliberate in their construction. One such arena was the twelfth floor, undoubtedly the largest land-based floor to be carved thus far, though land-based was a bit misleading.

There was almost no exposed rock on the ground, instead creamy yellow sand stretched and coated nearly everything it could, and pools of gentle, clear water were splashed throughout. There was a crescent shore on the floor, however, one that claimed a sizable portion of available space, and there were usually even waves and tides to go along with this shoreline, something clearly unnatural.

However, in the hours following the Creator’s rage and rest, things were nowhere near back to normal. The waters were still, hardly a ripple unless something moved within, or nearby. Between the pristine, untouched look of this subaquatic beach, and the vividly-colored crystals occasionally reaching up or spreading out atop it, the whole place would have seemed ethereal and beautiful, were it not for one resident particularly poor at dealing with the sudden change.

A roar ripped out across the wide-open area, and nearly at once the mirror-smooth surfaces of the water rippled. The drake was very rarely still, and that had been the case even while he remained a kobold but compared to how he was acting without the Creator, that was outright calm. The moment he felt Their call his heart started racing, anxious worry sending a frigid lance through him. He had practically jumped to his feet on the pile of gems he had been steadily growing and was about to bound off towards the nearest path up, completely uncaring of how poor a swimmer he was.

He didn’t actually make even the first step, though, because all around him he felt power come alive, a tide of mana so thick that even the air turned soupy and blue, and he felt the crystals embedded throughout his head and chest grow hot, and cold, and oppressively painful, and he couldn’t remember what happened afterwards. When he finally came to, he was sprawled out on his crystal throne, launching some of the bundles of elemental power as far as the other side of the room, and it became immediately apparent that something had changed.

This wasn’t a difficult deduction, the jagged, angry yellow spine that had grown off of his skull and through his flesh just centimeters from his left eye was no longer there. Now, there was a smooth, seafoam green spire that swept mercifully off to the side, no longer immediately threatening to punch directly into his eyeball. That was only the start of his changes, however, and sadly probably one of the better ones. Yet again, he could feel muscle, bone, sinew and scale all displaced from where they were before, and this time he knew he’d have hundreds of new elemental growths as far down his spine as his lower back.

He was right, too, there were yet more needlelike yellows, more dull grey knifepoints, and the earthy colors had been joined by a scattering of silky, softly angled hooks and spires and even lumps, all colored blue, all manner of blue. Where they had sprouted out of, his scales were discolored to match, like the crystals were coated in ink that leeched back into his scales. This mottled discoloration was all over his body, but much of his face, and a large portion of the left half of his neck had all been turned into the rich blue of an open sea, with splashes of abyssal midnight and icy sky, steamy grey and swampy green.

He also felt, once more, much more powerful, but he was in no good state of mind to be happy. Even if he weren’t sore from having his muscles torn apart and rebuilt over and over for each new spike he earned, not having the comforting presence of the Creator alongside him made him immediately panic. In pain, confused, and outright scared, he set about to doing the only thing he knew he could, and began a rampage.

This time there was no stumbling, no interruption before he launched off his bed and rocketed forward, not even caring about what direction he went. His chest was aching, and his breathing was rapid and stilted, and his head was swimming, but that was hardly enough to make him any less powerful. Nine meters and of reptilian might kicked up almost three meters of sand as he landed, leaving a crater all the way to the limestone that made up the floor’s true bottom. Water immediately started seeping in, but the drake was already winding up for a second jump, having seen some desperate creature scurry away from his impact.

Another crash sounded out as he almost flew out of the hole he had created, the sound of which entirely drowned out the crunch of a coconut crab’s carapace who’d had the misfortune of finding itself beneath the drake’s claw. He bellowed his vexation and was too lost in his own head to hear the walls echo it back in a distorted plea for peace. The assertion of his own might provided him no relief, though, because once again he faced a problem he couldn’t even see, but this time there was no way to thrash that problem until it was solved.

A problem he could not subdue, could not eliminate, one so major that it seemed to upend his whole world, was enough to leave him feeling as powerless as the kobold he had once been, only he had family, then, kin to rely on that he had left behind out of necessity. He knew that if he had a chance, he would’ve done exactly as the Creator had, becoming something so much more, so much better, but it was times like this where having a Chief to smack some sense into him would be incredibly appreciated.

That thought was only dimly present in the haze of his panic-riddled mind, and it was swiftly forgotten as he fell further into his furious fit. It was like this that he raged around his slice of the floor, leaving a steadily growing crater along much of the wall he’d long since claimed as his own. Any creature that had been brazen enough to create their burrows, tunnels, nests, or just stray by at all, was forced to flee as fast as they were able, if they were even able to at all. The drake was not in the right frame of mind to pay attention to how many creatures left behind in his wake were not returning to their feet or fins, instead bleeding out or staggering away.

He had no idea how long he was rampaging around like this before something changed, only pulling himself out of the violence-fueled panic attack when he sensed something familiar, or more specifically, two things. The first was something relevant, the feel of magic nearby, an aura that felt very much like family to him. The second was a smell that almost had his hackles raised before he placed it. It wasn’t quite the stench of decay, but it was a smell he’d only encountered on a rare few who came to his home bearing the marks and curses of some awful venom, and they rarely remained alive for long, often even before he reached them. 

His head whipped towards the source of both, finding a solitary kobold standing by an entrance to his domain listlessly. The kobold was unfamiliar to him, there had been nobody in the tribe who looked remotely like she did but even if he looked past her sickly body, her vacant gaze, the pitch scales unlike any he’d seen among his former people, he did not recognize her. He quickly realized that while she was part of the stench of blood and malice, she was not the source of all of it. 

As he stared, he realized that the sand spilling down onto his floor had been turned a curious blue color, much like some of his crystals and scales. More than that, though, was that the sand the new kobold stood on was not blue, but a slick green-black. He huffed a deep breath, trying to calm himself some as he approached the strange visitor. But, as he walked along the sands, looking for all the world like he wasn’t still caught up in his mood and was instead completely in control, he noticed a blur of black slither up out of a pool to his left, obscured by his own crystalline growth. Again, his head snapped to the side to look, but this time all he saw was a strange figure rear up, and twist around like their spine was a suggestion and not part of their body, before its hind legs whipped forward and smacked him underneath the chin.

The impact caught him off guard, and his head jerked painfully upwards. For a moment, he was too disoriented and too enraged to feel an old order of the Creator’s act up, but that tugging clarion call of a foreign thought in his head was unmistakable even when They were not there. Still, knowing that he was not allowed to kill did not assuage his indignation, which only burned hotter when the same impact struck the side of his skull, glancing off some of his crystalline coating but still leaving him rattled. 

It was then when he decided he’d humored the interloper enough, and a growl rolled out from the back of his throat. The rumbling, oddly, was enough to make some of the more loosely attached crystals jingle, and so there was a light tinkling highlighting the bone-shaking snarl. This was hardly important, the drake had finally trained his gaze onto the audacious kelpie, his one good eye and newly but only slightly improved left both taking in the tiny form. Three meters long and two and a half tall, it stood barely to the drake’s chest, and how it managed to kick so high was genuinely confusing. 

Its body oozed a tarry goo, the same sort surrounding the kobold, and it seemed both emaciated and imposingly muscular, somehow. Vaguely, he remembered his first encounter with the creature, how its kick was enough to disorient him for seconds even with healing previously, and how its tar left his jaws gummed up for days and tasting like filth for weeks, and then reconsidered his plan to lunge forward and lock the beast in his jaws.

In the split second between the drake’s second bludgeoning and the drake’s reaction, the kelpie was also mulling things over. His face was still twisted into a sneer that looked almost painful, but he hadn’t expected the drake to recover so quick. Normally, when he kicked things there was always a very satisfying crack and the last time he’d been here, the reptile was stunned for seconds. He was so much stronger than he had been back then, too, so seeing him so thoroughly unfazed was a little confusing. 

He wasn’t there to lament how unfair the hulking beast’s growth was, though; he was there to cause him as much grief as he could for his slight of making him feel so unilaterally weak. Standing around dumbly while the not-dragon grew madder wasn’t the way to do that, so almost as soon as he locked eyes with the thing he was back in motion, springing to the right with a pop of dislocated joints.

The drake wouldn’t let the rancid thing take advantage of his left-side blindness and pushed himself explosively to the side to follow the inky thing. It was small, and quite a bit slower than the drake in short bursts, but somehow it slipped into a decently wide puddle that nonetheless should have been far too shallow for it. Almost immediately it disappeared, the water turning black far too quickly to be natural. That wouldn’t stop the drake, and he reared back, lifted one claw above his head and threw himself at the water.

Most of the liquid in the pool might as well have not been there at all, and a small explosion of sand and murk flew out of yet another newly formed crater. What liquid remained around the edges quickly rushed to fill the hole, looking much eerier now that it was an almost matte black slop instead of crystal-clear water. He spotted movement almost immediately, as a form slithered out of the former puddle and changed. The kelpie had somehow managed to make it nearly ten meters in the short moment of swimming it had been allowed, and the drake hadn’t seen almost any of it.  

Watching the sticky, serpentine form suddenly have legs burst out of its torso was uncomfortable, and he watched in horrified fascination as the kelpie suddenly galloped off, laughing and screeching. He was not held up for long, despite the show, and bounded forward in pursuit. The kelpie’s gait was almost comical, with limbs kicking out randomly, with its joints looking limp and loose any time they weren’t propelling it forward. It ran along like a bad puppet, the grotesque movement only standing out even more in contrast with the grace inherent to the drake’s perfect control.

The kelpie may not have been faster than the drake, but somehow any time he was posed to lash out the creature managed to avoid it all. A massive paw would cut through the air, with wind whistling off all five sickle claws, meant to shred through a leg or reduce its hind to ribbons, but it would be met with empty space. Other times, he would jump forward and slam his mouth around where he knew the thing would be, but his jaws found nothing, and the force of his own chomp would echo throughout the floor. More than once, he’d get a mouthful of sand for his troubles, sand that tasted putrid and stuck fast to the roof of his mouth, lodged within the endless forest of crystal spikes. Sludge would get flung at an eye coat his nose, and it didn’t take long for the chase to leave the drake feeling thoroughly miserable.

He slammed his front legs into the ground once he had enough of the stupid game, careening to a halt. Sand kicked up in a veritable wave, and the kelpie and kobold both were close enough to find themselves covered in a dusting of yellow grit. The kelpie continued to goad him, and he looked like he was convulsing as his discordant giggle sounded out. The drake, no longer willing to chase, reached to his side and grabbed a lump of limestone nearby.

The thing was small enough to fit in a single ‘hand,’ which meant it was far larger than the kelpie’s head. The vile thing was infuriating, but it was not dumb, and it realized right away that the game had changed. For his part, the drake propped himself up on his haunches, slightly unsteady on two feet but familiar with the action. It wound back and tossed the lump of rock as hard as it could at the kelpie.

The throw was terribly off, not surprising considering he hadn’t actually thrown anything since he was a kobold and this body was decidedly not meant for fine enough control to aim, but the strength behind it more than sufficed to send a message. The rock screamed above and to the right of the kelpie’s head, moving so fast the beast saw little more than a blur before it crashed into the wall far behind him. It wouldn’t get the chance to turn around and observe the kelpie-sized hole left in the magically hardened limestone, though, because the drake was already reaching for the next lump of mineral he could heft, of which there turned out to be plenty.

The fact that the Creator’s demand for the disgusting creature to not be killed wasn’t acting up as he reared back for a second toss was as good as permission or even encouragement to continue, and he gladly would. The drake may have been both out of practice and slightly anatomically impaired, but each new throw would see the rock, coral, or even errant elemental crystal be slightly closer to the kelpie, and the thing realized this too.

Its mocking chortle seemed more and more forced with every chunk to shoot by, and it had been trotting around for a while, very clearly hoping to make the drake’s aim that much worse. It worked, but it also made for better practice for the drake, and the game of dodge barely went on longer than the game of run-away before the kelpie no longer felt quite so in control. His apprehension turned into a decision to leave shortly after a large yellow crystal flew close enough to his head that some of his tar splattered off. The crystal shattered as it impacted a wall, which made for an even louder bang than normal, and needles of shrapnel were flung in every direction. Not even one shard hit the kelpie or its companion, but the horse’s face finally betrayed its trepidation, and it grunted towards the kobold who was now across the hall, motioning with its head to follow as it briskly trotted off towards the nearest exit.

The drake, not one to be ignored, used the kelpies baffling idea of a mutual ceasefire to hurl one last piece of lumpy brain coral at his retreating figure. The polyp-riddled projectile didn’t quite strike true, instead being just a little too far left and reducing one of his hind legs to a green pulp along the ground. For once, the kelpie made a noise that wasn’t some perversion of a laugh, but the keening wail was probably just as annoying to the drake, and he responded with a hearty roar, neither quite triumphant nor exasperated. The noise echoed throughout the vast arena, and the equine intruder wisely stopped its melodrama, instead just hobbling along towards the exit while giving the drake a glare full of venom.

The kobold was also walking that way, coming from behind the drake. He dropped back onto all fours and sand billowed up around him, but the tiny figure didn’t seem to really register any of that. He positioned himself directly in front of her, and finally she recognized that he was in fact there, looking between him and the kelpie with some mild confusion, then recognition, and finally a small hint of joy. The drake wasn’t quite sure what that was about, but she allowed the moment to last, before stepping to the side and walking around his behemoth form towards the nuisance waiting by the gentle, spiraling tunnel upwards. His flank was still mangled beyond recognition, but strips of green and grey tissue were already knotting together and almost leaking downwards. An errant bone or two could be seen in the mess, and he was sure that there were some broken chunks that were slowly growing, but he didn’t much care.

He’d driven the agitator out of his territory once again, and he was feeling much, much better for having done so. No longer was his heart racing or chest aching, instead he just felt the pleasant warmth of victory, and flashed the departing loser a toothy, crystal-lined grin as he glanced back one last time. Its body once more twisted, rearranging itself to become elongated and limbless, a finned tail in place of the tuft of fur it was a moment earlier, and then it slipped into the pool of water, dove under the wall keeping the floor from flooding, and presumably started swimming upwards. The kobold, too, gave him a meaningful look, before sighing and turning away. She lowered herself under the wall, then stopped, and gave the drake a wave before diving into the water.